Valentina nearly collides with me in the hallway on her way out of my bedroom. I’m not sure I like how comfortable she’s gotten going into my room whenever she pleases, but it was necessary for her to be able to get Deirdre’s room ready when I wasn’t around.
“Wondered where you’d gotten to,” I mutter. I go to move past her into my bedroom, but she plants her hands on her hips and stares at me.
“What?” I grunt.
“I met Deirdre.”
“And?”
“And she’s sweet.”
“Hmm. Haven’t experienced that side of her myself,” I reply as I step past her and into my room. I’m sure Deirdre can be sweet to other people. To me she’s been a bit of a viper. I’ve got the teeth marks in my scarred finger to prove it.
“I’m serious, Elio.”
Something in Valentina’s tone makes me stop and turn. My cousin is smart as hell, but she hides it well when she wants to, behind loud laughter and inane conversation. But she’s not laughing now. She suddenly looks about ten years older than she really is, her face sober.
“You’re serious about the fact that she’s sweet? Fine, I believe you,” I snap. But something prickles along the back of my neck. Dread.
“She’s not cut out for this. She’s not from our world.”
Fucking hell, I need another drink.
“Her father’s an accountant for the Irish mob. Not exactly a white picket fence family,” I remind her.
I can tell by the mulish fucking set to her mouth that she’s not done with this conversation.
“You know what I mean! You need to be careful with her! I just went in there and she looked fucking shell-shocked! She’s gonna have PTSD or some shit.”
“She’ll get over it.”
Valentina gives a short, brittle laugh.
“Oh, like you and Curse did? You gonna tell me your brother doesn’t torture men before he kills them just to keep his demons quiet?” Her voice lowers, but doesn’t soften. If anything, it sharpens, like a knife. “You gonna look me in the eye and tell me you don’t still have nightmares?”
Valentina’s the only woman in my family I’ll let talk to me like this, but even she can tell she’s gone too far. She snaps her mouth shut at my expression and crosses her arms. I take a moment to compose myself before I explode. When I speak, my voice is icy with control.
“I asked for your help with soap and girl clothes and fucking bedsheets. That’s it. I don’t need your advice beyond that, and if I want to hear another word out of your mouth, I will fucking ask for it.”
She hesitates, but because it’s Valentina who couldn’t keep her trap shut even if she tried, she has to get in the last word.
“All I’m saying is, if you’re not careful, you’re going to have agonized over music books and strings and stands for nothing. There will be no one to use them because she’ll be dead. You wanted no sharp things in the bathroom? Fine. No razors, no nail clippers, there’s not even a pair of goddamn tweezers. But there are other ways to hurt yourself if you really want to do it. Other ways to make it end.”
In a second, I’ve got her, my hands wrapping around her upper arms and squeezing.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I’ve never laid a hand on Valentina like this. But what she just said about Deirdre dying has snapped something inside me. Some vital thread of control.
She glares at me for a long moment, as if considering if she should answer me.
“Valentina,” I growl, her name a warning. I don’t like to be kept waiting. And she knows this.
My cousin lets out a short breath then says, “When I went in there, she was in the bath. Under the water. Not moving.”
My feet take steps before my brain can even tell them to. As I slam towards Deirdre’s bathroom, my mind runs over and over the calculations of how long she’s been alone. How long did I stand there arguing with my cousin? Two minutes? Five? Somewhere in the house I hear my uncle calling for his daughter, and Valentina leaves.
I don’t stop until I reach the bathroom and I find Deirdre, not in the bath, but standing with a fluffy white towel wrapped around herself. She jumps and swears, then grabs her towel so it doesn’t fall down, hugging it to herself. I stare at her long and hard, as if to make sure she’s really still breathing, and she stares right back, eyes wide but defiant.
Fuck. Now that I know she’s OK, I realize just how close I am to her in the room. Nothing but a couple of steps and that towel between us. Her hair is soaked, the gingery red turned to the colour of old blood by the water.
I’ve lost blood. My shoulder and head are aching.
And my dick doesn’t care. It’s already responding to her, thickening in the crotch of my pants. I had her dress half-torn off while holding her against me earlier, but somehow this is even more erotic. She’s stripped of everything. Clothing, makeup, blood. All that’s left is her, moisture on her clean skin, running in shimmering little rivers down her chest and legs. I lick my lips, suddenly aware of how fucking thirsty I am. How much I want to put my mouth on her skin and suck.
I don’t. I turn from the room, heading back to my bedroom. I go into the closet, rummaging at the back. There’s a toolkit back there somewhere, and I find it, taking out a hammer. I should probably use a drill to reduce the damage, but I’m too pissed off for precision. When Deirdre sees me with the hammer in my hand, she stumbles backward to the other end of the bathroom and away from me.
But the hammer’s not for her. Turning, I aim a heavy blow at the top hinge of the door. I strike it over and over again until the metal warps and the screws sag out of the wall. Then I crouch, doing the same to the bottom hinge, until the whole door is hanging on by a thread, wobbly as a baby tooth. I toss the hammer down and seize it. I can feel my muscles straining, sutures pulling, but I don’t stop until the door has come loose and I toss it, useless, to the floor.
“What are you doing?” Deirdre whispers, fear and anger warring on her face.
“Taking off this door.”
“I can see that! But why are you doing it?”
I don’t answer her. Don’t tell her that the thought of her dying in my house makes me feel like there’s smoke in my eyes and in my lungs. Like there’s fire all around me, like I’m fourteen again and I can’t fucking breathe. Instead, I just point to a small dot in the corner of the ceiling. Deirdre’s gaze follows my finger and she gasps.
“Is that a camera?”
“There are cameras in every room of this house,” I tell her. There are even cameras in my rooms. But the feeds to the cameras in her rooms and mine are the only ones that don’t go to the main security hub of the house. They’re private feeds that go directly to an app on my phone and laptop. No one else has access to them, not even Curse or Enzo, my head of security.
But she doesn’t need to know that. The more eyes she thinks are on her at all times, the less stupid shit she’s likely to pull.
“This is insane,” she says, shaking her head. “You are insane.”
I don’t reply to that. I just grab my hammer and head out of the bathroom. She follows me, fury rising in her voice.
“I am absolutely not using that bathroom if there’s no door! I’ll just use your bathroom.”
“Be my guest,” I tell her, hefting the hammer when I reach the bathroom in question. “Because I’m taking that door off, too.”
I end up taking down three doors and tossing them out into the hallway. Both bathroom doors and the door that separates our bedrooms from each other. Deirdre watches me the entire time, clutching her towel like it’s armour. When I’m done, I take the hammer back to my closet. At the last moment, I decide to toss it, along with the other tools, into the safe. Some of those tools could do some real damage to a person, and if Deirdre doesn’t hurt herself, she may decide to smash my head in with a hammer in my sleep. Since I’d prefer to keep my brains inside my skull, I lock the safe.
I stand and turn, catching sight of my Songbird in her room, no door between us. This night may not have gone completely to plan, but something about this feels right. Deirdre here now, in a room that may as well be my own without a door for separation. I turn off the light in my room which makes hers glow all the brighter. I see her standing there through the open doorway like an angel illuminated. Watching me in the darkness from her place in the light.
With her eyes on me, I start to undress. I shed my dress shirt and then move to my belt. I don’t miss Deirdre’s sharp intake of breath and the way her eyes dip to my fingers as they undo the buckle and peel down the zipper. I let my pants fall, fully aware of how my thickened cock has created a bulge in my underwear. Deirdre’s grip tightens on her towel, her knuckles bone-white.
But she doesn’t look away. She’s transfixed. Like she’s fucking entranced. I wonder if there’s something a little bit sordid inside my Songbird, because she’s staring at my crotch like it’s hypnotized her, and I don’t think it’s entirely due to fear.
I may as well finish this. I sleep naked, and I don’t plan on changing that just because she’s in the other room. I kick off shoes, socks, pants, then lose my underwear, letting my shaft bob free. Colour rises in Deirdre’s cheeks, and fuck, I’m about to get all the way hard at this rate, just from her staring. Her gaze on my dick is like a physical touch, a shivering caress of contact. All that violin playing probably gives her strong fingers. A tight fucking grip.
That thought makes my dick twitch, a noticeable throb of movement. It breaks whatever spell has held her in place, and she scurries away to the light switch in her own room, turning off the overhead lights before switching off her bedside lamps. I stay where I am, listening for her, catching the sounds of her rustling through the closet that Valentina’s stocked for her. When I catch a shadowy glimpse of her again, it looks like she’s wearing some sort of pyjama set. Shorts and a silky top with skinny straps, her wet hair in a clump, twisting like a snake down her back.
I expect her to get into bed, but she doesn’t. She retreats into the doorless bathroom, keeping the lights off, and stays there. Silence tells me she’s not running water or doing much of anything else in there, and I realize she’s waiting for me to move away. She’s hiding from me with nothing but shadows as her shield.
It’s pointless, really. You can’t use darkness to hide from a monster. It’s like using water to hide from a shark. While bleeding. Profusely.
I chuckle, my breath stirring the air. I wonder if she hears it. If the sound makes her tense up. Frightens her or infuriates her.
I move away from the door, grabbing my gun out of the pile of clothes on the floor. I shove it under my pillow, then lay my head down on top so there’s no way for her to get to it without waking me. I’m a light sleeper. Have been since fourteen.
I stay awake, listening until I hear the quiet but unmistakable slip of Deirdre’s body between bedsheets. She’s exactly where I want her. Where I’ve wanted her since she was eighteen years old and I saw her making music in that sundress on a hot summer’s day.
She’s finally here. Snug as a bug in the bed I paid for. In the house I own. In the city I rule.
Even though my dick is aching and my shoulder’s pounding, there’s a satisfied smirk on my lips as I finally close my eyes.