“You don’t listen, do you?” she replies, peering up at me again. “He gave me wings. We’ll go there together, but not before we follow His plan first.”
Her fingers tighten about my waist, pulling at my wounds. I clench my eyes closed, wincing even as the glorious pain fucks with my head in the best imaginable way.
“I need to clean your back,” she muses, her tone gentle. “I shouldn’t have touched you, but I couldn’t help myself.” She tuts, clearly mad at herself. “Where’s your first aid kit?”
Like I’m a lamb being led to the slaughter, she untangles her hands from my waist, then guides me over to the stool she’d been sitting on after she’d fallen over.
I had proof, right there, that she wasn’t one-hundred percent fit. And yet, aside from all these ramblings of wings and God’s plan, she seems lucid. But then, so do I, don’t I?
I blink at her when she repeats, “Where’s your first aid kit?” Then, when I point to a cupboard below the sink, she sighs.
I know why too.
And even though she’s messed with my head to the point where I don’t know what’s up and what’s down, I watch her carefully as she opens the cupboard, and takes a step back so she can look inside without bending down first.
I wonder how many other variations she’s having to make in her regular life to transition into this new phase, one where she’s a little less mobile than I sense she’s used to.
It’s more proof that she’s not as stable as, at first glance, she might appear.
That golden hair just looks like it’s styled into an edgy cut. Her face is a little thinner than the last time I saw her on TV, but that could be down to some fad diet.
She looks normal.
But inside that beautiful head?
I fear she’s anything but, and that makes her dangerous.
For whatever reason, she’s come here, and for whatever reason, she seems to believe she can help me.
There’d been plenty of weirdos who’d taken to me in the aftermath of Oran. Some approached me with kindness, but there’d been a lot of freaks too. I never thought I’d get a stalker from across the ocean... She must have been a kid back when I’d been captive, which makes her far too young to even be thinking of me in the light she evidently is.
What the fuck does she want with me?
She admitted to researching me, and she must have done some heavy work to pull out my previous parishes, although a lie would probably make the archdiocese give her access to me because keeping priests and old members of a flock connected isn’t viewed in a bad light. She’d also said that she’d taken to researching local news stories to discover the truth about the lives I’d slain.
Obsessive.
Unhinged.
Exactly the traits I need in someone who wants to be my savior.
Absently, I watch her. She struggles to bend down, and though I should help her, she’s not going to fall like she almost did earlier. It’s just awkward.
She holds her head, almost supporting it like it’s too heavy for her neck as she leans over and manages to grab the green case the kit’s in.
When she stands again, she leans against the sink after she dumps it on the side, and I watch as she takes some slow, deep breaths.
I’ve been in Rome just over twelve months, and that was when she had the surgery. I can’t imagine what she’s been through in that time, the pain and the medical interventions she’s had.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
The words are hissed out, and for the first time, I sense she’s angry with me.
“How am I looking at you?” I counter, because her back is to me so she can’t even see my expression, never mind know what I’m thinking.
Unless she thinks she has eyes in the back of her head to go with the wings too?
However, in stark contrast to her anger, I feel nothing but calm.
Not because I want to unsettle or rattle her. Make her lose her equilibrium.
Because I don’t.
She threatened me, but she’s no threat.
I see that now.
She truly believes she’s here to help me.
A whack job, for sure, but her ulterior motive is my well-being being well. Not much of a threat in the long run. Especially since I’m curious as to how she thinks she can help me.
Does she think she’s better than the medication the doctors have tried to make me use? Whatever she can suggest, I’ll gladly try. I’ve tried more than most, but each one makes me fall into a pit of depression that is a thousand times worse than what I handle on a daily basis.
Whether it’s a chemical imbalance or not, drugs don’t work on me.
Nothing does.
Except for making a sinner pay.
“I’m not ill,” she rumbles. “I’m getting better.”
Well, that wasn’t a lie, even if I thought it was a case of her stretching the truth.
I say nothing as she turns around and, after reaching for the kit, walks over to me again.
“Take off your shirt.”
She’s turned clinical now, which is a harsher contrast than ever to how she’d been before.
She said she wanted me.
Everything I had to give, nothing more, nothing less. And not as a priest, as a custodian of her faith, but as a man.
I unfasten my shirt, the few buttons I secured together when she started ringing the doorbell, and as I let the cotton fall, she moves around to stare at my back.
No one has seen it before.
Ever.
And I never thought anyone would either.
“How do you clean it when you’re alone?”
“Sometimes I don’t.”
I can feel her tension. “You want it to get infected?”
My mouth purses. “It never does.”
“How is that possible?”
“God’s will?” I suggest bitterly, bowing my head as misery swirls inside me.
“Do you want to die?” she asks, the words soft.
Sad.
Like she hurts for me.
Not because she pities me, but because she doesn’t like what I’m telling her.
She doesn’t want me to feel that way.
Is she for real?
Is anything about this night even happening, or is it a dream sequence gone awry?
Maybe that would make more goddamn sense.
“Not always,” I hedge.
She doesn’t say anything, but then, I guess there isn’t much to say to that, is there?
Not even for dreams that take the shape of pocket pixies who cup cocks as a greeting and lick blood off their fingers.
My body stirs to life at the memory, and I know, point blank, that image will be in my head—dream or not—until the day I die.
The clasp on the box rattles as she opens it, and I tense as I hear her start to set up.
“Seriously, though, how did you clean the wounds?”
“I’d douse a towel in saltwater and lay it on my back.”
“Jesus, that must have been painful.”
“Are you supposed to use profanity in front of a priest?” Anyone else, I’d have reprimanded.
“You’re not a priest,” she mutters absently, and before I can reply, she presses alcohol gauze to my back.
A hiss escapes me as the astringent makes contact, and my limbs lock as I process the pain.
Fuck, it feels good. Weird, not as releasing as when I make the lash marks, but good nonetheless.
She’s thorough, God help me. More thorough than I usually am.
She cleanses everything, and at my side, where she placed the bottle of alcohol on the table, I watch as the level slowly depletes from three-quarters full to nearly empty.
Only then does she murmur, “Jesus.”
“It’ll bleed for a while,” I assure her, knowing that to be the case.
“It looks worse without blood covering it,” she whispers, and something in her voice has me looking over my sho
ulder at her.
I see her tears, more, I see the trails that pour down her face. Three single track marks, almost symmetrical as they course over her cheeks.
She’s beautiful.
Those tears are beautiful, and I want to taste them because they’re mine.
They fell for me.
I twist around, to the point of pain as it pulls on my wounds, and I reach up, letting my hand cup her cheek even as my thumb strokes along the silken curve of her skin.
As I gather some droplets, I stare into her eyes. Misty green, they’re penetrating, even as they make me feel like I could lose myself in them. Like they were a welcoming fog that would shelter me rather than guide me into danger.
The sight and the thought stirs me to release her, and to bring my thumb to my mouth.
The salty liquid is almost floral on my tongue. Like a wine’s bouquet, it seems to react with my saliva, making her collide with me in a fundamental way.
I swallow at the same moment she does.
“Why are you really here, pixie?”
Her nose curls at that. “I’m not a pixie.”
“You feel like something from a dream,” I rasp.
“I’m not.” She shakes her head. “I came here to help you.”
“Why? People don’t do that. They don’t help random people.”
“You’re not random. I’ve known about you for a long time.”
“How long?”
“Since I was seventeen.” She gnaws on her bottom lip. “I know you think I’m crazy. Maybe I am.” A smile appears on her lips, and it’s sheepish and shaken and self-deprecating. It makes me trust her regardless of her admission. “But I mean you no harm.”
“I already figured that out.” I lift a brow. “You shouldn’t threaten a man like me.”
“I’m not a sinner.” Her chin jerks up. “I know I’m safe.”
“Everyone sins,” I tell her, knowing it to be true.
“Not me.” Her eyes light up.
“You blasphemed.”
“Not my religion anymore.”
“Semantics.”
She grins, and despite myself, I grin back at her. “I’m an author. I can outtalk you at the best of times.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
“Give me a chance, and I will.” Before I can say another word, she clucks her tongue. “You’re making your back bleed even more.”
I shrug. “It’ll do that for a while. Every time I move, it’ll tear open the wounds.”
Her brow puckers. “That sounds excruciating.”
I hum with perverse delight. “It is.”
“Savio,” she whispers, reaching over to cup my cheek, mirroring my earlier gesture. “You have to see how fucked up that is.”
“It’s the only way I know how to cope,” I confess, and the words are a weight off—whether it’s my shoulders or my soul, I’m not sure.
She sighs and her breath brushes my face. It’s faintly minty, like she’s been chewing gum. Her eyes turn sad, and though I understand why, I hate that I did that.
I hate that I made those happy eyes turn sorrowful.
“Let me help you, Savio.”
It’s the first time in too long that I’ve been called my name by anyone other than my parents.
“There’s no helping me,” I counter, believing every single word.
“Then what do you have to lose?”
Seven
Andrea
My apartment was only around the corner. I could have easily stayed there, except I didn’t want to.
I wanted to stay here.
When he offered me a room for the night after seeing me clutch at my aching head, who was I to turn him down?
Who was I to refuse when this was exactly where I was supposed to be?
Under his roof.
Sure, I’m not in his bed, but that will come with time.
He’s mine.
I just need to show him the way.
As I stare up at the wall that separates my bedroom from his, I wonder if he sleeps naked. Do priests do that? I mean, I told him he wasn’t a priest, but he kind of is.
Maybe, on the outside, he still is, but on the inside? Nope. He’s a regular Joe.
Which, honestly, makes his crimes that much worse.
My nose crinkles at the thought, and I choose to discount the word ‘crimes.’
Not that they’ll spare him whether he’s a man of the cloth or an everyday person.
Or would they?
Maybe I should research that just in case everything goes to shit.
It soothes me to know that we’re in the same house, and I curl up on my side, watching the wall like I can see through it.
My body aches from the day’s adventures and, truly, I need to sleep.
Though I stayed relatively calm throughout the ordeal downstairs, cleansing Savio’s back?
Nightmare.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.
Not ever.
And I’ve dealt with friends who’d come to me after their spouse or partner had attacked them. Linda’s husband had accused her of cheating on him with one of his partners—he worked in a law firm. He bleached her fucking hand because, he said, it needed to be clean.
I mean, it made no sense to me. Unless he thought the partner had only received a hand job from Linda.
Is that what happened in extramarital affairs?
I guess there was more to the story than Linda told me, but dealing with the burns on her hand had been bad enough.
It soaked through enough tissue to damage the skin, but not to the same extent that the whip had to Savio’s back.
And the worse part of all?
It wasn’t to purge himself of sins, but to self-harm.
I don’t think even he registers that, and that concerns me.
He’s farther along this path than I could have ever expected, and the sad thing is, he thinks I’m the crazy one.
Sure, I think I’m an angel and I have wings and my brain has been operated on, but I function quite well among society.
I’m nice. People like me. They want to be my friend—even more so now that I’m famous, but in the grand scheme of things, they want to be friends with me, too, because I’m cool.
I like to help people—not to make myself feel good, but because I’m like that. I’m kind.
Not to sound bigheaded or anything, but there’s no point in lying about something like that, is there?
But Savio?
He’s dour.
I saw him chatter with the parishioners, sure. Priests don’t have to do that. They could just retreat to their office after a service, not communicating with their flock at all.
He had, however, and it had surprised me. It had also surprised me how he handled the kid in confession. But every other person who’d come to that booth?
He hadn’t been particularly feeling.
I purse my lips at the thought, wondering how I could help him.
I don’t think sex is a salve, although if any man truly needs to have sex, it’s Savio. He practically oozes testosterone. Like, on an epic scale, and I don’t think he knows that either.
I’m probably shit in bed.
That’s what happens being a virgin at my age, but hell, he’d be so ready to explode the second I got him between the sheets he wouldn’t care.
Regardless, sex isn’t going to cure him.
Maybe just being able to be candid with me would?
I want him in all ways. I have ever since that first time I’d seen him. Something about him is it for me. He personifies all the stuff I appreciate in a man.
And even though half of him was covered in blood today, yikes, his body? All muscle. Like muscle on top of muscle on top of muscle.
Yum.
He has these big veins running down his biceps, which might have been gross, but I know they were pumped because of what he’d been doing—whipping himself.
Fuck.
; I try to imagine the frame of mind you have to be in for that to feel like a solution to a problem, but even as my mind puzzles over it, I know I’ll never comprehend his choice.
Of course, all thoughts are thrown to the wind when I hear him shout.
I should have anticipated it.
Maybe I did.
Maybe that’s why I’m still awake even though my head aches like a pile driver’s been gnawing on it, and I’m so tired my eyes are burning from staying open.
With his past, nightmares are to be expected.
And all this time, he’s been dealing with it alone.
My heart aches for him, and I register that even if I never get him as I want him, even if I never take him away from this life and bring him out of the dark and into the light, I’ll always try to be his friend because I’ve never met someone more in need than Savio.
He is, I realize, what all my other friends had been leading up to.
They were training wheels for my first go on a big girl bike.
As I scramble onto my feet, I cringe when my head whooshes again. Blood surges into it, making white spots dance in my vision for a second. That means I’ve pushed it, but I already know that. I’m supposed to practice gentle exercises to increase my mobility, and the past few days, I’ve been doing a lot of walking.
But I forge on ahead, rushing out of the room and barging straight into his.
This place is no home. It’s another cell. Plain, unadorned. I mean, I know men like to keep things simple, but this is so bare it’s representative of the man.
There are no pictures on the dresser or nightstand, none even on the bookshelves that line one wall.
It’s just a simple room.
Spartan.
Miserable.
He’s tossing and turning on the one luxury—a double bed.
He has to be in excruciating agony from his back colliding with the sheets, but he doesn’t seem to care.
The anguished sounds escaping him, the noises he makes?
Pain fills me on his behalf.
And I want to help more than ever.
But I can quite easily see that he’s violent, and my body isn’t equipped to handle that.
He doesn’t just whimper or make mewling sounds in his sleep. No, he’s thrashing. Half the sheets are off the bed, torn from the mattress. His feet kick, his arms flail like...
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