Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

Cinna

My face healed first. The swelling lessened with each passing day, my eye opened up, and while there were still bruises smattered across my skin, I looked like myself again.

My wrist hurt like a bitch when I had to take off the brace, but when it was on, I slowly began to be able to use my hand in small ways. Pulling up the covers in bed, shooting off texts, or picking up light items.

It was the goddamn ribs that threatened to never get better.

Even when I thought they might be getting better, I would do something like turn too fast or raise my arm too high, and I’d feel like I was about to black out from the pain.

Still, I eased down and then off of the pain meds, not wanting to have a dependency to deal with when all of this was said and done.

Besides, the pain was… helpful in other ways.

Namely keeping me from doing something world-shatteringly stupid like climbing Davide like a tree the way my body had been begging me to do almost since I arrived in his apartment.

Objectively, it was time to go home.

I didn’t need Dav to bring me meds because I couldn’t get them for myself. Or to get me food. I was even managing to wash my own hair now. Though that was out of my steadfast determination not to be naked around him again because, quite frankly, I didn’t trust myself.

I didn’t understand my lack of self-control around him all of a sudden. I’d never been someone who struggled to control their baser instincts. Sex was, you know, fine. But it wasn’t like I was walking around thinking about it all of the time, eye-fucking hot men I came across on the street, waking up tangled in sheets from vivid dreams about them.

Not even Dav.

Until now.

I woke up with the tendrils of desire still clinging to me. And it only intensified. When I would come out and catch him fresh out of the shower, a towel draped scandalously low on his hips. When he got himself all dressed with that familiar tobacco, leather, and vanilla scent clinging to him from his cologne.

God, it was bad enough that I even found myself freezing mid-stride when I came out of the bedroom at night to find him sleeping on the couch wearing nothing but his thin, low-slung sleep pants.

We weren’t even going to talk about the way need clawed at me when, on one of those trips, I came out to find him having similarly happy dreams, his hard length pressing against the material of his pajama pants.

Or how the only way I’d been able to tolerate it had been to go back into the bedroom, slide my hand between my thighs, and try to sate the hunger with an orgasm.

It did no good, though.

It wasn’t just about the sex, just the pleasure.

It was about Dav.

And that, well, was dangerous.

Hence why I needed to get my ass back home.

But week three ticked by, and I still found myself crashing at his place, walking around like it belonged to me too. Doing laundry. Making coffee. Stealing his extra razor. Ordering things delivered to his address.

We were playing house.

And a part of me was terrified that it would come to a point where I wouldn’t just want to play anymore.

“Spill something?” Dav asked, coming out as he slid in cufflinks, finding me staring at the couch.

“No. I’m taking the couch tonight,” I told him.

I didn’t feel guilty sleeping in his bed when I was a walking bruise. But it was time to let the man get a decent night of rest in his own bed. And I figured it was a step toward going back to my place.

Even if the idea of that filled me with dread in a way that both confused and terrified me.

Confused because, well, I never spent any time there anyway, save for sleeping and showering.

Terrified because the fear was starting to take root and grow. Like the time I’d drawn a gun on Dav when he’d been coming home, a knee-jerk reaction. Because I was afraid of being attacked again.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’d never welcomed being attacked. But I’d always accepted that it was a part of my work, that it was the life I chose. And I’d never been fearful of it.

It was not good that this attack was having this lasting of an impact.

I needed to force myself back out there on the streets, into the thick of things. Get my confidence back.

“Absolutely not,” Dav said as he made his way into the kitchen.

I wasn’t going to argue with the man. I was just going to do it. Clearly, he was on his way out. By the time he got back, I would be on the couch.

“Where are you heading?” I asked, glancing at the clock, then having an immediate stab of irrational jealousy at noting how late it was. Was he going on a date?

“Renzo’s,” he explained.

The boss of the Lombardi family had a pretty open door policy at his place. All his capos came to hang out, to eat, drink, play pool, catch up with one another, and maybe talk a little business.

We didn’t gather there as much as we used to since Renzo married Lore, but everyone was still invited over on a regular basis.

And, normally, I would be there.

At least just to show my face.

Were people going to talk when I wasn’t there?

I could probably fake it now. Get some of that makeup that hides tattoos, slather it on my face to cover the bruises, and just move more carefully, so no one saw that I was favoring my ribs.

“I’ll mention that I ran into you,” Dav said as if reading my mind. “That you were in the middle of something. They don’t need to know it’s sitting on your lovely ass and recovering.”

“I can’t ask you to lie to Renzo for me.”

“It’s not a lie. It’s an omission.”

“Which is still a lie,” I reasoned.

“Okay. You want me to tell him you’ve been crashing in my bed for a few weeks, covered in bruises, and barely able to move?” he asked, watching me shift my feet. “Exactly. So an omission it is.”

The intercom buzzed, making my whole body jolt, the adrenaline snapping through my veins.

“I’ll be eating at Renzo’s, so I ordered you dinner,” he explained, reaching in his wallet for a tip.

“I’ve been managing to feed myself for many years now, you know,” I told him, even as that gooey sensation in my chest started again.

“And now I get the pleasure of doing it,” he said as he went to the door, then disappeared into the hallway for a moment. “Eat. Get some sleep. I’ll try to be quiet when I get home,” he said as he placed the bags and a tray of drinks on the island.

With that, he was gone, leaving me to check out the bags, finding that he not only got me a coffee from the place I liked, but the lemon-lime soda I preferred, a big serving of fettuccini Alfredo with chicken and broccoli, and a slice of cheesecake.

That gooey sensation only intensified as I pulled each item out, realizing that I’d never known a man who knew how I took my coffee, let alone what dinners I liked, and what kind of dessert tended to call for me in the middle of the night.

I mean, this man had even had the delivery guy pick up a can of whipped cream because I’d mentioned once that I liked to use that as a topping on my cheesecake.

I took my food to the coffee table, eating while watching someone turn their garage into, I shit you not, a giant craft room.

And I didn’t, not for one moment, wish that Dav was sitting there beside me, grumbling about paint and wallpaper choices, or wondering how the hell two public school teachers could afford a hundred-thousand-dollar renovation.

When I was done, I made up the couch and lowered myself onto it, pleased when the movement created more of an ache than the stabbing pain I’d been dealing with in my ribs for weeks.

Did my paranoia have me placing the gun Dav gave me on the coffee table? Yes, yes, it did. I may have also stashed my mace in between the cushions and my knife under the pillow.

Then, to the sounds of drilling and sawing on the TV, I drifted off to sleep.

Which was probably why, at first, I thought it was a dream. Just another in a long line of sweet moments that led to sweaty bodies entangled in one another in bed.

It was the only explanation for how Dav had managed not only to come into the apartment, but reach down and slide his arms under my body before he even woke me up fully.

By the time I realized it wasn’t a dream, I was already being lifted into Dav’s arms and cradled to his chest.

My senses filled with him.

Tobacco, leather, and vanilla surrounded me, dizzying in its intensity.

The heat of him warmed my chilled skin.

I settled into the strength of his arms, the breadth of his chest.

Sure, I was still a bit hazy from sleep, but I felt oddly drunk on all things him at that moment.

“What are you doing?” I asked, managing to think through the desire starting to overtake me.

“Taking you to bed,” he murmured, his voice a soft caress teasing across overly sensitive skin.

“Okay,” I agreed, snuggling in, every part of me deciding that Dav taking me to bed was the best idea in the world.