by Jill Sanders
“Dante, are you all right?”
Cracking his eyes open, he saw the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Her dark hair fell over her shoulder in a loose braid and he wondered if it was as soft as it looked. Her large sweatshirt fell off one shoulder to expose the soft skin underneath and a thin, white strip of an undershirt. Her dark eyes showed concern. She was biting her lips in worry and he wondered if those were as soft as they looked, too.
“Who?” He tried to clear his mind, “Who are you?” he asked as he reached up and ran the braid through his fingers. It was as soft as it looked, then he pulled her head down to his to test her softness and taste.
Her hands came up to his chest and she tried to pull away from him, at least until their lips met. He felt the shock from her mouth on his zip through his body and all of a sudden everything was clearer. This was Airlea, his nurse. He was in his parent’s house near Rome, recovering from an accident.
Then her tongue darted out to lick his lips and his mind fogged up again. Her hands were in his hair, then running over his bare chest and arms. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her closer, never wanting to let go.
She tasted like cherries, sweet and tart at the same time. He enjoyed her mouth as she nibbled on his lips, and he closed his eyes on a moan as she ran that mouth down his neck and licked her way to his chest.
He must be dreaming still. This time, he didn’t want to wake up. For the first time in weeks, he felt himself stir and wanted to bury himself in her. He wanted to flip her over and take her, quickly. When he started to move to do just that, the pain was instant. It shot up from his leg and came down from his shoulder.
She noticed his flinch and pulled back. He watched her eyes and could see the moment when she realized what she’d done, what they’d done.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Are you hurting?” She pulled his covers aside, looking at his bandages. There was no hiding the fact that he’d been aroused, his boxers tented over his erection. He tried to pull the sheet back over him, but she just slapped his hand aside.
“Stop.” She was focused on his bandages, paying no attention to his mighty erection, which only made him question if it was indeed mighty in her eyes. “Damn! You’re bleeding.”
That got his mind off his erection. He looked down and he could see the deep stain of blood on his white bandages.
“Damn.” This time it was him who cussed. “I haven’t bled since the hospital. Is that bad?”
“Most likely not. I’ll just take a look. Let me go get some fresh bandages.” She got up and left the room.
He watched her leave and realized he liked seeing her walk away in the tight sweat pants she wore. He couldn’t see a panty line and wondered if she had any on underneath the light cotton.
Shaking his head clear, he wondered why he couldn’t seem to stay focused. Here he was getting blood all over his mother’s linens and all he could think about was getting his nurse between those very sheets.
“It’s probably another side effect from the overdose.”
“What? What overdose?” He tried to sit up a little, to give her better access to his leg.
Her head was bent over him as she gently removed his soiled bandages. “Your aunt gave you too many pills.”
He thought about it, then he said. “No, she didn’t.”
The first thing Airlea thought of was that she had falsely accused a woman of overdosing her nephew. Her hands shook as she cleaned the small tear at his incision point.
“She didn’t give you four pills to swallow the other afternoon?”
“No, she gave me two, and then she had me drink it all down with warm tea that tasted like it had gone bad.”
Airlea’s mind sharpened and she realized that his aunt had drugged his tea. “She must have put the other two pills in your tea. Dante, you’ve had a double dose of Fentanyl. I’ve been checking on you every hour for the last two days. This is the first time you’ve actually been coherent.”
“Two days? I’ve been asleep for two days?”
“Yes, you really had us all worried. I haven’t seen your aunt since that night. I guess she left the house. Your mother and father have been in and out during the day, checking on you.” She cleaned the small cut area and put some antibiotic salve over his incision.
“I should have been more careful. I guess it could have been a lot worse. Your staples don’t come out for a few more days, and your pins and wire frames still have a few months before they can be removed. It looks like we just pulled out a stitch a little early.”
She tried to smile up at him and avoided looking at him directly in the eyes. How could she have let herself get carried away like that? She’d all but jumped him. She might as well have just grabbed a pair of pliers and remove all his staples herself. Now she’d crossed that line with him and there was an uncomfortable silence in the room.
She focused on her task of re-bandaging his incision area. “When you go in, they’ll probably take a few x-rays and update you on what you can do, physically. Then we can start with the next phase of your therapy. We need to get your leg moving for good blood flow.”
“Why did you think that I had been overdosed?”
She looked up at him. His eyes were clear for the first time in days and she could see that he was trying very hard to concentrate on what was going on.
“You’ve been in a drug-induced state for two days. Do you remember taking that picture?” She pointed to the photo that sat on the dresser of him and his sister.
“No, I’m told it was the day after my surgery.”
She nodded her head, “They had you on some very strong medication at the hospital. I know you don’t remember much. The last few days you’ve had a low heart rate and low blood pressure, and you were drowsy and anxious. Your breathing was slowed to almost non-existent. Plus, just look.” She pointed to the new bandage. “Bruising and bleeding is a side effect of an overdose of Fentanyl. There is no reason you should have bled that much from just popping one of your staples. And look at the new bruises forming here. Dante, you were given a very high dose of medicine. Too high.”
He seemed to take it all in, to be thinking about things. “Where is my aunt?”
“We don’t know. She left shortly after admitting she gave you the medication. I don’t think she knew what could happen. I didn’t get a chance to explain…”
He took her hand and she looked up into his dark eyes. His hair needed to be cut and he needed another shave. His chocolate eyes were clear, though, and she realized he looked wonderful.
“What time is it?”
Shaking her head clear, she looked at the alarm clock. “Seven.”
“Morning or night? I can’t tell. Is that the sunrise or sunset?”
She smiled. “Sunrise.”
“Give me a phone.”
Chapter Six
Airlea sat at the kitchen table and watched Florentina cry into her brother’s shoulder. Dante had called her and she’d immediately arrived back home, her face puffy and red from crying. She actually looked thinner and more frail somehow. Airlea actually felt bad.
“Damiano, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what the drug would do. I just wanted to help, he was in so much pain.”
“I know, Florentina.” Damiano patted her.
Then Airlea watched as Florentina glared at her over her brother’s shoulder, which caused a shiver to run down her spine. She’d thought the woman was just an overly protective aunt, but that look told Airlea more about the woman than anything else had so far. The remorse she had been feeling a few seconds ago was gone, and in its place was a desire to protect Dante and herself.
A few hours later as she was waiting for Dante to finish showering, she had pulled all his dirty sheets off his bed and was searching the walk-in closet for more clean sheets. When she heard a noise behind her, she spun around to find Florentina quietly closing the door as she stepped into the small space.
“I know you don’t understand how things work
around here, so I’ll clue you in. You are to stay away from Dante in a personal matter. Do you understand?” Florentina had backed her into the corner. Instead of retreating and bumping her back against the shelves that lined the back wall, Airlea stood her ground.
“I have never gotten involved with a patient before.”
“Yes, but I’ve heard you worked with children until now. Dante is no child. You will stay clear of him or you will answer to me.”
Airlea pulled her chin up higher and looked the woman in the eyes. The nerve of this woman, cornering her in a closet to tell her this. Then her mind flashed to earlier that morning and the kiss she’d shared with Dante. She couldn’t fool herself into thinking she hadn’t been affected by his hot mouth on hers, or the way his hands had lit small fires on her exposed flesh. She kept trying to tell herself all day that it had been the drugs in his system that had caused the incident. But she had been dreaming about kissing him since her arrival, and especially while she had watched him sleeping the last two days. How could she not stare at him and notice that his mouth was made for kissing, that his chest and arms were powerful. She fought the urge to run her hands up and down him, playing with the muscles that corded along the lines.
“I never get emotionally involved with patients.” She looked at the older woman and felt that her point couldn’t be clearer.
The woman nodded her head, but didn’t back away.
“If you ever make me look bad in front of my family again, I will do everything in my power to destroy you.” Then she turned and walked out of the closet without another word.
It took Airlea a few minutes for her hands to stop shaking. She wasn’t afraid of Florentina, she was more mad than anything. She knew there was no way she could have witnessed their kiss that morning. After all, she’d been MIA for two whole days and had only returned after Dante had called her and begged her to come back.
The scene in the kitchen had been repeated between Florentina and Dante earlier. He’d hugged her and forgiven her all while big fat tears slid down her face.
Something just wasn’t right about Florentina. Airlea liked to think she was an excellent judge of character. After all, in her line of work she’d witnessed so many people change right before her eyes. She’d watched mean people turn into kinder characters and the kindest, soft spoken person become a raving lunatic. Pain and vulnerability tended to change people’s personalities.
But then she thought about Angelo. She’d misjudged him from the first time she’d met him. It had even taken a few years of knowing him before she finally went out with him. Thinking about it, maybe subconsciously she’d known there was something hiding deeper within him.
Mentally shaking herself from the memory of Angelo, she grabbed the pile of linens and walked out of the closet and back to Dante’s room. As she made the bed, she tried not to think about how nice it had felt to be pulled down in this very bed and kissed until her toes had wanted to curl. He had needed a shave and she could still feel her chin tingle from his scratchy face, which had felt like heaven on hers.
Trying to think about something else, she remembered the scene his aunt had made earlier. She couldn’t blame Dante for forgiving her. She’d been very close to her own aunt when she’d been alive. She had spent every summer at her place in Venice when she had been a child. Her cousins had been like the siblings she’d always wanted. Anthony and Gilbert were quite a few years younger than her and she’d doted on them like they were her own. Actually, they were the reason she had decided to work with children. She’d been such a natural when dealing with the two boys that her aunt had decided to have her stay every summer until she’d gone away to college. She had only lived two hours from them, but spending the whole summer in Venice made her feel like she was such an adult.
Just as she finished making the bed she heard the water turn off in the bathroom. Knowing he would need help, she knocked on the door and went to help him get out of the shower.
Not giving Florentina another thought for the rest of the evening was easy, since she was staying busy with Dante. Since waking up, he’d been demanding to walk around. He was probably feeling the effects of not moving a muscle for two days. No doubt he was sore from just lying there. She’d tried to move his good leg around while he’d been out, but every time she’d tried, he’d almost kicked her, so she’d given up.
She walked into the bathroom, and seeing him wet and wrapped in nothing but a towel affected her. His hair needed a trim and he needed another shave.
“Do you want to shave?”
When he nodded his head in reply, she realized he was avoiding making eye contact with her.
“You don’t have to apologize for kissing me.” She smiled and noticed that his eyes had zeroed in on hers.
“I wasn’t going to.”
She tilted her head and tried another tactic. “Why not?”
He was standing just outside the shower, holding onto the towel rack and looking at her, blushing like a school boy, which only made her smile more.
“You are so easy to tease.” She walked over and grabbed his arm and helped him hobble over to the chair that still sat in front of the mirror. He still leaned on her for support and had yet to touch his bad leg to the ground. She knew he needed to move it around and not put too much pressure on it. He’d yet to use the cane that sat leaning against the wall. Every time she tried to hand it to him, he would toss it on the floor and scowl at it.
He sat down quietly and avoided looking at her. She stepped back and leaned against the door.
He started putting shaving cream in his hand, but when he noticed she wasn’t leaving the room, he turned and looked at her.
“Are you going to stand there and watch me?”
“I was thinking about it. I’ve never witnessed a man shaving before.”
His eye brows shot up. “Surely you’ve dated before.”
“Oh yes, but I haven’t seen any of them shave before. My father died when I was very young. I was raised by my mother and aunt for the most part.”
“I’m sorry, it must have been hard on you.”
“No, not really. I knew he loved me and my mother and aunt never hesitated to show me their love. I had a good childhood. How about you?”
He was spreading the shaving cream on his face and stopped to look at her in the mirror.
“I had an interesting childhood. I, too, was raised by a parent and their sibling. My father and aunt were here one hundred percent of the time, and my mother came and went.” He dropped his eyes and focused on his task.
She watched him glide the razor over his face and marveled at his smooth strokes, which only got her thinking about his hands and how they would feel on her. She’d had a few lovers in her life and she didn’t feel guilt or regret about any of them except for her last one. Regret wasn’t really the right word for what she felt about him; dread was more like it.
She tried to lock away those memories of her time with Angelo, like a bad movie that you wanted to forget spending a bundle to see and wasting all that time to watch.
Her eyes watched Dante’s hands and remembered how he’d pulled her down on top of him. She’d felt every inch of him and had wanted to dive under the covers and enjoy herself. She remembered what his mother had said the day she’d arrived. She even understood that sex was a natural step and if he was focused on her, he couldn’t be focused on self-pity, the phase of recovery that most patients ended up being stuck in the longest.
Sex with Dante would not only be fun, it might help her heal from the betrayal she’d suffered. Recovery from a relationship was not much different than recovering from an accident. You just needed a little time to get back on your feet, but once there, you had to keep moving to get the juices flowing.
Boy, could Dante make her juices flow. Since arriving she’d had several dreams involving him, each one steamier and more detailed than the last.
She was so deep in her thoughts she didn’t register that he had finished
his task and was staring at her in the mirror.
“I didn’t apologize, because I want to do it again.”
She watched him in the mirror and knew that he could tell what she’d been thinking about. Walking slowly over to him she stopped and leaned against the countertop, looking down at him.
“Your aunt warned me to stay away from you and your mother said…” she chuckled.
“What did my mother say?”
“That you’d either throw things at me or try to seduce me.”
“My aunt can go to hell and my mother was wrong.”
“Oh?”