A Vow So Soulless, page 15
“No, you said something else. Like, muh hree. Or something.” He makes an irritated sound. “I’m butchering it. There was another part, too. Ah kooshla. Ah kooshla muh hree.”
He’s right – he is butchering it. But my breath catches anyway, because it’s close enough for me to hear the real words through the mispronunciations.
“A chuisle mo chroí. Is that what you mean?”
He doesn’t hesitate.
“Yes.”
I swallow, my fingers tightening against his shower-slippery shoulders. I stare at his soaked chest, trying to get my bearings, but it’s hard, because I haven’t heard that phrase spoken aloud for more than ten years. Not since before my mom died.
But apparently I said it to Elio today. And I didn’t even realize I’d done it.
“What does it mean?” he prods me when I don’t speak. His left hand drifts to my chin, holding it firmly and lifting my face to his.
“Mo chroí means my heart,” I whisper, unable to speak at full volume for some reason. “A chuisle mo chroí is kind of like darling, I guess, but more meaningful. It translates to ‘the pulse of my heart.’”
Some unnamed emotion lurches across his face.
“I like when you speak to me in Irish,” he says gruffly.
“I don’t actually speak Irish,” I admit. “I just know a few phrases here and there. My mom used to say that one to me a lot. When I was sick or afraid.”
I still can’t believe I said that phrase to Elio. It’s a deeply personal term of endearment for me, associated with childhood and innocence and a soul-binding sort of love. I never in a thousand years would have expected myself to be calling this man a chuisle mo chroí. But somehow, without even being consciously aware of it, I’d reached down into myself, into my past, into my deepest stores of memory and hallowed feeling and I’d pulled it out. For him.
I’ve never said that to anyone else before.
“You’re supposed to be sitting down,” I stammer, trying to distract myself from the strange mix of emotions rising up inside me like a wave. Nostalgia and longing and grief and something stronger than any of those others, something that tightens all around me when Elio’s dark gaze pushes forward into mine.
“Only because you asked me to,” he finally says. Pain snags along the muscles of his face, twisting them as he slowly lowers himself onto the tiles. I sink down to my knees between his hard thighs, now completely under the spray of the shower and getting more soaked every second. I wish I’d had the forethought to tie back my hair, but it’s too late now, so I toss the heavy clumps of it behind my shoulders.
“What else did your mamma do? When you were sick? Or afraid?” he asks.
I glance at him, surprised by the question mid hair-toss. There’s a disconcerting, ravenous sort of greed in his eyes. But there’s nothing sexual in that gaze, or in the question. It’s a hunger I recognize, though. A hunger I’ve felt myself, a bone-deep emptiness that aches when I see young girls with their mothers, or when I’m sick now and no one gives a damn.
He lost his mother too. I know he has his uncle, his brother, Valentina, and all the other people in his life. But has anyone ever cared for him the way his mother would have, had she lived?
“She would make me tea,” I tell him. And then I feel disoriented all over again, like the tiles are shifting under my knees, because someone has cared for me that way recently. Someone did make me tea when I was afraid, when I was hurting.
And I’m staring right at him.
“What else?” Elio asks.
“She would sing to me.”
His chest rises and falls a little quicker than before.
“Would you sing to me?” he asks.
“God, no,” I say with a startled laugh. “Unlike my mom, I don’t have a beautiful voice.”
“Yes you do.”
“No, I really don’t,” I tell him with a shake of my head. “You’ve never heard me sing.”
“I’ve heard you speak,” he replies insistently. “And I’ve heard you come. I know your voice is beautiful.”
“Well then let’s not ruin your impression of it by having me actually sing,” I say, giving another awkward laugh that Elio doesn’t respond to. There’s not even a hint of a smirk on his face. Just arresting, fully-absorbed intensity.
“Fine,” he finally says. “Then you’ll play for me tonight instead.”
“Hey, I never said-”
“Please, Deirdre,” he murmurs. Has he ever said please to me before? “It’s been too long since I’ve heard you play.”
Nobody’s ever asked me to play just for the sheer enjoyment of listening to me. Not since Mom, anyway. Whenever Dad asked me to play, it was usually to impress his friends. My students asked me to play so they could learn something, perfect their own technique. Their parents came to watch me play to reassure themselves that the person teaching their kid actually had a bit of know-how to work with. Willow came to a few of my recitals to support me, but I know she doesn’t actually have any patience or appreciation for my music.
But Elio does. He not only appreciates it, he’s obsessed with it.
“You really do like hearing me play,” I muse out loud.
“Of course I do,” he scoffs. “I’m your number one fan.”
“Number one fan or number one stalker?” I ask, raising a sarcastic eyebrow even though there’s a little wiggle of pleasure inside me at his words.
“How about number one husband?” he shoots back. “One and only husband since I don’t plan on sharing.”
A sigh makes my chest buckle. I don’t want to argue about the wedding right now, and I definitely don’t need to get him all worked up about it. I ignore his last words and grab a cloth and bottle of body wash from the shower shelf. I squirt the body wash onto the cloth, relishing the bright, herbal spice of the fragrance mixing with the steam.
“Here,” I say, passing it over to him.
He makes no move to take it. He just watches me in steamy silence, challenge in his eyes. He probably expects me to throw down the cloth and stomp out of here, but I harden against the desire to do just that. I can help wash him. He’s hurt because of me. I can stay detached enough, distant enough, to at least do that much.
I crawl forward until I’m between his spread thighs again. We’re so close that the shower completely envelops us both in its streaming heat. Steadying myself with a hand on his shoulder, I begin to stroke along his jaw, gentler against the scar tissue. I’ve never seen him with so much beard regrowth. The stubble is so thick and dark. I run an experimental thumb along the good side of his jaw, a sensation pulling in my belly at the oddly pleasant grit of texture.
“What is it?” Elio asks, his question a humid breath on my cheek.
“Oh. Nothing. I’ve just always seen you so cleanly shaven.”
“Yeah. No hair grows on the scarred side. So it looks kind of weird if I leave it too long. Asymmetrical.” His lips tug up on one side. “I could grow a moustache, though, if you’re into that shit.”
Despite the circumstances, I find myself laughing. Elio’s humour always gets inside me and draws out responses I can’t control when I least expect it.
“While I’m sure that you could pull it off,” I say, drawing the sudsy cloth down to his chest, still chuckling a bit, “I like how you look now just fine.”
Elio’s pectoral muscles go tight, and I don’t know if it’s in response to my touch or what I just said. I didn’t even mean to say it, to be honest. Elio doesn’t exactly have a small ego at the best of times. But it just kind of… slipped out.
Must be because he’s so injured, I tell myself, closing my big mouth and focusing on stroking the cloth over Elio’s skin. Makes me extra nice to him or something.
In the deepest parts of my foolish heart, though, I know that isn’t true. I do like Elio’s appearance, scars and all. The biting, intractable masculinity of his bone structure. The full lips, the hard nose, the dark brows and eyes like charred embers. The attraction to him is inconveniently ever-present, unmistakable, impossible to shake even if I wanted to.
I rise up higher on my knees to follow the line of Elio’s upward extended arm, the one with the splint he’s holding against the tile and out of the water. Then I move to his other arm, sliding the cloth down the hard lines of it until I encounter the puffiness of bruising and swelling along his forearm. He doesn’t flinch as I gingerly pat at the injured tissue.
“Oh, Elio,” I murmur, shaking my head and blinking hard against tears that I pretend are simply drops of water from the shower. “What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that I’d fucking win. Which I did,” he says nonchalantly.
“But was it worth it?” I say on a sigh, my stomach churning when my gaze lands on the poisonous bloom of bruising at his side.
“I’d pay any price for you, Songbird,” he says. “You should know that by now.” His voice lowers, and his hand rises to caress my lower lip. “I meant what I said, you know. That I would have died for you that night. Or any other night since then.”
“You remember saying that?” I ask, surprised. He’d said it when he was buried inside me, right on the edge of coming, and a part of me had wondered if it was something that just came out in the heat of the moment, arousal-induced but ultimately meaningless.
But he did jump between that gun and me. Used his body as a shield without a thought to where the bullet might land.
And he did it again today with Darragh.
He’s hurt me, he’s confined me, he’s stripped me of so much.
But he’s also protected me more than anyone else in my life. When I was left for dead, abandoned in the darkness, he was there.
He’s always there.
Picking up the jagged pieces of me even if he’s the one who broke them.
Before I even know what I’m doing, I’ve dropped the cloth, both my hands rising and cupping his jaw. Elio gives a shuddery exhale, tipping his head slightly to the side, nuzzling into my touch. But he doesn’t close his eyes. He keeps them fixed on me, like he’s afraid I’ll disappear.
Tentatively, my mouth shaped by the unspoken sound of his name, I press my lips to his.
For a long moment, Elio is utterly still. He doesn’t even part his lips to let his tongue touch mine like I expect him to. My mouth moves along the tense seam, softly searching. My fingers thread through the soaked, heavy locks of his hair, black as squid ink beneath the water.
I don’t know if I’m apologizing for his pain or thanking him for protecting me or telling him something else, something that I’m probably not even ready to confront yet. Something that feels an awful lot like admitting that I’m his.
No. No. I’m not. I can’t.
That’s not what I’m trying to tell him with this kiss. But I…
I keep kissing him anyway.
When my tongue prods gently at the closed-off wall of his mouth, Elio’s locked muscles suddenly jerk into violent motion. He grasps me hard by the shoulder and shoves me back. It’s a small movement, very carefully calculated so that I don’t lose my balance and fall backwards, but I can feel the brutal force in it all the same. Elio takes in a strangled-sounding breath, like he was drowning and somebody only just dragged him up for air.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, pulse quickening with embarrassment and guilt. “I was… I just.”
“Fuck, Deirdre. Fuck.” He presses his hand to his side, just beneath his ribs where the bruising is worst, then fixes me with a wolf-hungry stare. “While I’m recovering from this whole internal bleeding situation,” he pants raggedly, “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t just casually stop my fucking heart like that.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again, this time a whisper, choked and thick. “Did I hurt you?”
“Yes,” he grits out, “but not in the way you might think. Not physically. And that’s the fucking problem.” He breathes out harshly and snatches up the cloth, finishing the job I started, scrubbing beneath his arms, between his legs, down to his feet, though he grimaces when he has to bend.
“You,” he says, dropping the cloth into a bedraggled heap between us, “are a singularly scorching point of pain for me, Songbird. But it’s not like this,” he holds up his wet, scarred hand, “or like this,” he points to the bruising on his side. “It’s here.” He plasters his hand against his chest, lets it harden into a fist, then thumps it once, then twice, like a heartbeat.
“If it hurts so much then just let me go,” I gasp, a sob building in my throat that I refuse to release.
“Can’t,” Elio says with a grim smile. “You’re the wound and the treatment all at the same time. I can’t fucking stop myself. Can’t let you go because I always fucking need more. I’m like that guy with the wax who got too close to the sun. What the hell was his name?”
“You mean Icarus?”
“Yeah. That one. You’re gonna melt my fucking wings off, Songbird.” His gaze turns solemn, but there’s still that ever-present, clawing hunger in it. “Maybe that’s why I’m so hellbent on clipping yours.”
I stare down at the luxurious, expensive tile, water sluicing over it like spilled blood. My thoughts are such a mess that I don’t even try to sort through them and come up with a response. Instead, half-blind with shower water and tears, I grab the cloth and squeeze it. I don’t know if it’s a peace offering or payment or a way to protect myself, but whatever it is, I hold it up between us and say, “Do you want me to keep going?”
“I want… Merda.” In a jab-quick movement, he closes his huge hand over mine, squishing the cloth harder between my fingers. “You have no idea how many times I’ve imagined you in this shower with me. Soaked. Naked. Up against that fucking wall.”
Warmth extends tickling tendrils inside me as the image flares in my mind. The place between my legs feels swollen and very wet, and I don’t think it’s just because my clothes and panty liner are drenched from the shower.
Elio releases my hand just as suddenly as he first grabbed it.
“Go dry off,” he says, looking away from me for the first time since we got in here. “Put on something warm and comfy.”
“I’m not just going to leave you sitting here alone!” I stammer, annoyed that he’d even suggest it. “You’re hurt!”
“Deirdre.” The sound of my name is like a physical bite. A fanged warning, a nip that breaks the skin. “If you stay in here any longer I am going to forget every single fucking thing Morelli told me about resting and healing and keeping my blood in the broken parts of my body instead of sending it all to my fucking cock. Go dry off,” he orders me again. “For the love of fucking God, save all that pretty disobedience for a moment when I’m more inclined to be able to deal with you properly.”
His eyes flash and I can practically feel the swift slap of his leather-gloved hand against my ass. A sick part of me wants to shove back against him simply because I know I’ll run up against that sort of punishment eventually. Something wrong inside me wants to push him and push him and push him until he snaps.
But not while he’s so hurt. Not like this.
“Fine,” I say. “But only because I’m worried about you and not because I’m scared you’re going to punish me.” I’m no longer on the verge of sobbing and I pin him with a defiant look. “I am not afraid of you, Elio Titone.”
“Do you think you should be, Deirdre Titone?”
Confusion at his words, intensified by the unexpected addition of Titone to my name, jars me, makes me pause. I feel like there’s a trap inside that question, but I can’t tell what it is. Elio’s face gives nothing away.
“I… I don’t know.”
Silence settles, so thick it blunts the sound of the shower hitting the tile. And us.
We stare at each other, so close that we would touch if either one of us moved even slightly. But we don’t.
“Go,” Elio finally urges me softly.
Shaken by my desire to disobey and a sharp need to stay with him, I rise to my feet and go just like he told me to. But I don’t go far. I’m not about to leave him when he’s as hurt as he is.
After I’ve stripped out of my soaked clothes and dressed in dry ones, I walk back into Elio’s bedroom and I don’t stop until I’ve reached the doorway the leads to the bathroom.
He’s out of the shower now, standing at the sink with a white towel around his hips, running an electric toothbrush along his teeth. He’s got a new pair of gloves on already – at least, there’s one on his left hand. The right hand may as well be gloved with the thick black splint covering up so much of it. The bandaging at his shoulder is gone now. I can see the deep purple mark signifying the place Dr Morelli yanked out the bullet, the place where he was stitched up on my birthday. Yet another scar to add to all the others. But that one he got for me, and the sadness of that fact crushes down on me so hard that for a moment, I can’t breathe.
Elio doesn’t seem to notice me watching him from the doorway. The mirror is so fogged up that neither of our faces are reflected back for him to see.
He’s leaning heavily on his splinted hand at the counter, but otherwise he seems mostly alright, if you can call it that, for the moment. I’m relieved that no matter what happens – even if he were about to pass out right now – I’d be able to get to him in an instant. It’s so darkly ironic that I don’t know whether to smile or to scream, but I can’t help but be grateful, for the very first time, that there are no doors left in here to lock.
Chapter 18
Deirdre
I’m so used to spending time alone in this house that I expect having Elio here all day is going to be awkward, even suffocating, except it isn’t. It’s oddly nice to have him here, even though we aren’t speaking or really doing anything together at the moment. He’s currently dressed in a soft pair of grey sweatpants, shirtless, propped up against a mountain of pillows I insisted on shoving behind him. I’m sitting on his bed, at the foot of it facing him, my laptop balanced on my legs that are crossed at the ankles.
