A Vow So Soulless, page 3
“Your tub is getting full,” I point out blithely when she doesn’t answer.
She doesn’t move. She’s studying me with her pretty mouth pinched and her arms crossed over her breasts, like she’s attempting to figure something out. Trying to see a trap from all possible angles.
But there is no angle here. No secret card up my sleeve I’m waiting to play.
I want to marry her and I will fucking do it.
I’ve already come to possess everything else in her life.
Might as well add her vow to the list.
My fiancée – because that’s already how I’m starting to think of her, and Cristo Santo, it kind of makes my dick hard – shakes her head again and then walks over to the tub. She turns off the water then carefully gets in. I watch her closely, primed to grab her if I need to because I’m worried those trauma-weakened legs are going to give out like a baby deer’s. But my Songbird’s made of strong stuff and she gets in just fine on her own.
She refuses to look at me, instead staring mulishly at the foamy bubbles that currently conceal her from her elegant collarbones down. She lifts her wet, soapy arms, tugging at the loose hairstyle on the top of her head until it all comes tumbling down in a wave of liquid fire that makes my heart feel like it’s beating both too fast and in the wrong place – in my cock instead of in my chest.
“Alright. I’m in the bath,” she tells me. “I’m not going to pass out or hold my breath or anything. You can go now.”
I do, but just for a couple of seconds. I leave the bathroom only for as long as it takes to grab the chair from Deirdre’s room. Then I carry it into the bathroom and set it down beside the bathtub.
Deirdre had been leaning back against the tub eyes closed, but they pop open at the sound of the chair being set down and my body dropping into it.
“What are you doing? I said you could go!” she snaps.
“See, the thing is, I actually can’t,” I say. The chair is facing away from the tub. I’m sitting in it backwards, straddling the seat. I rest my forearms along the chair’s back and make myself comfortable.
Deirdre gives a bitter laugh.
“You’re Elio Titone. Pretty sure you could do anything you set your mind to.”
“Almost anything,” I correct her. “Leaving you alone tonight isn’t on that list. I am physically fucking incapable of that right now.”
She rolls her eyes at me, but I’m not exaggerating. I feel like if I walk back out that door, if I put any meaningful distance between us after everything that’s happened tonight, then some vitally important blood vessel inside my head is gonna pop for good this time.
I could have lost her tonight.
It’s something I’ve been pushing down, down, down since we got home. A reality I’ve been stuffing behind softer things like tea and baths because stopping to confront the fact that she could have gotten killed tonight, could have died right in fucking front of me, literally makes me think my goddamn heart might give out.
I’m thirty-four years old. I’m way too young to have a heart attack or an aneurysm or whatever the fuck it is I feel like I’m on the verge of when I imagine losing Deirdre.
Darragh doesn’t know how lucky he is that his men have garbage fucking aim.
If that bullet had so much as nicked her freckled skin…
Rage, and something else, something that feels far too close to panic, make an ugly mess of my guts. My hands prickle and burn. I grip my elbows, forearms still resting along the back of the chair, and I fucking fuse my gaze to Deirdre, as if the intensity of my eyes alone can create a protective layer around her.
She looks like she’s decided to pretend that I’m not here. She doesn’t glance at me and she doesn’t speak, and that’s just fine by me, because I have shit to sort out in my head.
I have to decide what I’m going to do about Darragh. My instincts tell me to gut him like a fish, fill his belly with bricks, and dump him into a frozen fucking lake.
But I also have to be smart about this. Darragh isn’t a lowly soldier or some sniveling ex-boyfriend of Deirdre’s. He’s the head of the Irish mob, protected at all times. Killing him would be astronomically difficult, and even if it were achievable, there’s a very good chance I’d take a bullet to the brain in the process.
And then what? Curse steps up to avenge me, Darragh’s men step up to avenge him, Toronto’s streets run red with blood. And in the Shakespearian-level chaos of the fallout, who the hell is gonna be left to take care of my Songbird?
Fucking nobody, that’s who.
Mad Darragh might be a nutcase, but he’s not an idiot. Right now, he believes he’s taking back something that belongs to him, just like his soldiers said. But I don’t think that he would be dumb enough to try to abduct or kill a Titone. His men might not have even realized it was me with her tonight, now that I think about it, because I highly doubt they would have let loose a single shot if they’d been close enough to see who I was. Darragh Gowan chews on grudges like a starving dog with a bone, but I also know that he wants to stay in business and make a shitload of money. Not embroil his entire operation in a feud with the highest levels of La Cosa Nostra over a sweet but ultimately worthless little nobody like Deirdre.
Because really, that’s what she is to them. Her father was bottom rung mafia. Deirdre is even further removed. She doesn’t have money or status or friends.
But she’s got me now.
Yeah. I definitely need to think this through. Don’t rush.
That’s never been a problem for me before. I do what needs to be done – always – but I take my time and I do it with my head screwed on straight.
Only problem is I haven’t had my head on straight since that summer day when Deirdre and the sparking music of her soul blew a big fucking hole in the middle of my life.
I look at her while she sits in the tub, so quietly oblivious to everything she’s done to me.
Deirdre slides down a little, tipping her head back until her hair is submerged in the water, then comes back up. She looks around, her tresses rust-red and sealed to the glorious curve of her neck meeting her spine. Her gaze seems to snag on something in the shower in the corner of the room, and she sighs and stills.
“What is it?” I ask, leaning forward until my chin comes down on top of my forearms.
“Nothing.”
“Deirdre.”
“I just wanted to wash my hair, OK? Is that allowed or do I have to ask permission first?”
“It’s allowed.”
Though I have to say, the idea of her coming to me to ask permission even for the most mundane things is appealing.
Can I take a shower, Elio? Can I go to class today, Elio?
Can I come for you, Elio?
Fuck.
“Whatever. The shampoo’s all the way over there. It’s fine. I’ll wash it tomorrow.”
But I’m already up, crossing over to the shower and entering the big glass enclosure of it. I scan the text on the bottles in here, grab the one marked shampoo, then figure she might want the others too, so I bring them all. Three in total.
I drop back down in the seat, straddling it once again. I put the other two bottles down on the stone floor but keep the shampoo. Deirdre holds out a wet hand for it, but I make no move to pass it over.
Instead, I peel off one glove, and then the other.
Then I squeeze the shampoo into my bare hands, lathering it up without looking at them. I lean further forward until my chest presses against the back of the chair and my elbows reach the edge of the tub.
“Come here.”
“I can wash my own damn hair.”
“I didn’t ask if you were capable of washing your own hair,” I say. “I told you to come here.”
Maybe it’s the baggage of this night weighing down on her slender shoulders. Or maybe it’s the fact that she knows she can’t win against me. With an expression of wary resignation furrowing her brows, she slides over to me, then slowly spins on her ass in the tub until her back is to me.
Merda, she’s got a gorgeous neck. And shoulders so lovely that they just about convince my agnostic ass that God must actually be real, because somebody had to have sculpted them. Beauty that fucking ethereal doesn’t just come out of nowhere. I’m not even entirely sure how someone so beautiful can exist in a world like mine at all.
Fuck me. Even her ears are pretty.
I don’t know if she’s turned me into that much of a needy fucking fool, or if she really is just that terrifyingly special, but in that moment I feel the truly feral need to stroke myself to climax while staring at her ears. Not her tits. Not her cunt.
Her fucking ears.
Cristo help me.
I ignore the twinge in my dick and instead focus on gathering up all that thick, sodden hair in my fists. But then she makes a small, whimpering sort of sound when I run my soapy fingers along her scalp, and ignoring my arousal becomes a hell of a lot harder.
I want to fuck her again.
And it’s not even lust driving me. Not just obsession or physical desire.
There’s this deep, unnerving sort of feeling that stirs up when I think about being inside her again. Bizarrely, it almost feels like… sorrow. Or homesickness. Or some kind of breath-stealing nostalgia. Whatever the fuck it is, it hurts. Hurts to even imagine fucking her again because I want it, want her, so damn bad.
But that’s not what she needs tonight.
She needs tea, which I’ve made her. She needs a bath, which I’ve drawn her.
She needs her hair washed, which I’m doing for her.
She needs to be tucked all safe and cozy into bed. I’ll be the one to do that, too.
Right before I tuck my own scarred body in next to hers.
Chapter 4
Deirdre
“You’re way too good at this,” I mumble. I want to be resentful about it, but the bone-melting pleasure of Elio massaging my scalp makes it impossible.
“I know how to take care of my Songbird.”
“Hmm,” I say noncommittally. His fingers dig and glide along every point of my head, rubbing slow, firm circles in the lather, making my whole neck tingle. The bubbles in my bath are starting to disintegrate into nothing, putting more of my body on display, but at this point I’m too tired and relaxed from the massage to care. My skin is warm. The place between my legs stings.
Elio works the lather down the lengths of my hair, tugging ever so gently, which makes my scalp prickle pleasantly.
“How the fuck do you have so much hair?” he asks. A question like that would have made me bristle before. Because I used to get comments and questions about my hair when I was younger and they were almost never nice.
And while I can’t say that Elio is exactly nice, there’s not the undertone of icky judgment that usually accompanies a question like that. He sounds like he’s genuinely asking, like my hair is some new, confusing thing that needs to be explained to him.
“Um. Genetics?”
“No way. I’ve seen your papà.”
“It was thicker when he was younger,” I say, but then bitterness creeps up my throat, and I don’t want to talk about my dad anymore. “My mom had a ton of hair. Different colour, though. It was the most beautiful shade of blonde. I used to want blonde hair so badly. Especially after she died.”
The fact that it’s the anniversary of her death hits me all over again. The events of tonight have distracted me from my grief, but it comes rushing back. So heavy that in normal circumstances it would push my head beneath the water.
But Elio is here. Holding my hair. Anchoring me. Keeping my head above the water.
It occurs to me that it’s probably after midnight by now. The anniversary of her death is technically done. There’s usually a wooden sort of relief that accompanies the days after the anniversary. A numbness different from the sharper pain. Like I have to slowly claw my way back to living.
Strangely, I don’t feel that. At least, not yet.
Maybe it’s because this year was different. Maybe it’s because I went to see her, even if the night did end in a total shitshow. I chew on the inside of my cheek, honestly wondering if, had I known what I know now about how the night unfolded, would I still have wanted to go? I assumed my instant answer would be “no,” but I truly don’t know. And maybe that makes me a terrible person, because people ended up dead tonight.
But still…
It felt right for me to be there. At least at the beginning.
And it felt right with Elio.
In my state of relaxation, I find myself able to slink around the bad parts of the night and remember what happened before. Remember the heart-achingly beautiful bouquet of blooms Elio picked out just for her. Remember the way he knelt down, more respectful than I’ve probably ever seen him, painstakingly cleaning the snow from every nook and cranny of her headstone.
Elio is quiet for a while. He twists my hair, squeezing some of the lather out of it, then suddenly says, “Don’t ever dye it.”
“What, you’re in charge of my hair colour now too?”
“Yes.”
Isn’t that what he said to me on the very first night in this house? Every flaming hair on your pretty little head. All. Fucking. Mine.
I almost want to dye it now just to spite him.
Maybe I would. If…
If some twisted part of me didn’t feel immense pleasure at the thought of him liking it. Maybe even loving it.
I pull away, needing to rinse and for this to be done.
In response, Elio’s fist tightens on the rope of my hair, and for a second I think he’s going to snap it back towards him like a leash. But he doesn’t. He brushes his knuckles against the tender place at the base of my skull, running them gently down the back of my neck, before he lets go.
Once he’s released my hair, I’m off like a shot, as if I’ve built up some kind of careening momentum being held in place there. I skid along the bottom of the bath to the other side so forcefully that a small tidal wave sloshes up against the white wall of the tub. I clumsily dunk my head backwards, scrubbing viciously at my scalp, trying to get rid of all the good feelings Elio has created there. But I can’t. Because it’s like his touch has sunk in deep. Past the surface of my skin, into the muscle and bone.
I give up, and once my hair is rinsed decently enough I sit up again.
“Want me to scrub your back now?” he asks, and there’s a crooked sort of smirk on his mouth. But there’s nothing casual or teasing in his eyes. He looks at me like his gaze can swallow me whole.
“No,” I say. “I’m going to get out now.”
I’m too tired to do the rest, and if I’m too tired then that means Elio is going to take over and wash every single inch of my body, I just know it. I cannot handle that right now. Soaking in the sudsy water is enough for tonight. At this point I just want to dry off and get into bed.
Elio rises from his chair and grabs a clean, fluffy towel from the nearby rack. He pats his hands dry on it without looking at them, and I can’t tell if it’s because he’s specifically avoiding looking at the scars, or if it’s because he’s so unwilling to let me out of his sight. Even when he bends to retrieve his gloves, sliding them back on one at a time, he’s still watching me.
I wonder if he’s going to just stand there and make me get out of the bath to grab my own towel, soaking and vulnerable under his gaze. But, somewhat surprisingly, he instead walks around the bath until he’s behind me. He opens up the towel, letting it hang between us, and I cautiously stand up with my back to him.
The towel immediately envelops me, going around my shoulders in a warm, fluffy hug. Only, it’s not just the towel hugging me, but Elio. He’s got his big arms around me from behind, locking at my front in a tight embrace. He bends down along my right side, the scarred left side of his jaw brushing my cheek as his chin comes to rest on my shoulder. This isn’t just hugging now, this is holding. He inhales, his lips moving against the side of my throat, and I’m sure he’s about to say something to me.
But he doesn’t.
Instead, he just straightens up and starts rubbing the towel along my shoulders and arms. Then, he lifts me easily out of the bath, setting me down on my dripping feet. I let out a shaky sigh, because at some point he’s turned on the heated flooring and it feels like pure magic seeping into the soles of my feet. I still find it so surreal, so surprising, when he does those small things solely for my own comfort. He controls me, spanks my ass until it burns, won’t let me go anywhere or do anything that he decides isn’t allowed…
But he also makes me tea and washes my hair and ensures that my feet are warm.
I could have a whole lifetime beside him and maybe never figure him the fuck out.
“Hold this,” he instructs me, thrusting the edges of the towel into my hands. I pull it around myself like a cape while he fetches a second towel and then bends to dry my legs. I go still, shivery heat pulsing through me as he works his way up from my right foot to my calf, my knee, my inner thigh. Blood rushes between my legs so fast it almost hurts when the towel grazes my tender skin there.
But Elio is all business. He whisks the towel away from my sensitive places, moving on to my other leg until the only wet things left on me now are my hair and – I hate to admit it – my pussy.
“Alright,” he says, standing and tossing his towel aside. “Let’s go.”
I don’t want to follow him out of the room – I can at least get my pyjamas on my own – so I go ahead of him. But maybe this is even worse, because I can feel him stalking right behind me, his gaze hot on my back.
I flick on the light in my room’s walk-in closet while Elio looms in the closet’s doorway, leaning his good shoulder against the doorframe, arms crossed. Still keeping my towel fastened around myself, I grab a pair of loose, yellow silk pyjamas. I yank on the pants one-handed, then once they’re on let my damp towel drop and quickly pull on the shirt with my back to Elio.
At the last second, I realize I haven’t put on any underwear, but I don’t seem to be actively bleeding anymore, so fingers crossed it’s alright. And if I get blood on these nice silk pants, does it even matter much? It isn’t like they’re actually mine.
