Page 73 of Savage Proposal

“Yes, I do.” Ineededhim to help me wash the day away. I didn’t want to think about any of it ever again.

“No,” he said. “If you’re feeling better in the morning, absolutely, but not now.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“It’s not healthy to use sex to cope with violence.”

I laughed. It was an angry, hollow sound. “Nothealthy? Really? That’s what you’re going with?” I put space between us, angrily toweling at my hair. “What was healthy about you making me come after you told me that my father sold me out, exactly?”

Lorenzo didn’t come any closer, and somehow, that was even more comforting than him taking me in his arms. I wanted to snarl and gnash my teeth; I wanted to be angry at him for denying me. But anger was so hard to hold on to when I felt that cold slipping back in. “Hearing bad news isn’t quite the same as seeing a man getting his fingernails ripped off at the nail beds,dolcezza.”

Nausea gripped me by the throat, and bile rose in my throat…but I wasn’t haunted by what I had seen. More, it was thelackof feeling that was turning my stomach. “I don’t care that he was in pain,” I said. “I don’t care that Damian and Elio are probably elbow-deep in his entrails right now. Does that make me a monster?”

Lorenzo didn’t placate me, and he didn’t try to sing me a pretty tale. Instead, he shrugged. “If not caring that the man who nearly killed you is dead makes you a monster, then at least you aren’t alone,dolcezza.”

I pressed a hand to my chest. “Is this what you feel all the time?” I asked. “Numb?”

“Sometimes,” he admitted. “But I don’t feel guilt over it. That’s probably how you know that you’re not a monster. You’re numb in response to what you’ve seen and how you’re processing, yeah? But you also feel bad about it. I don’t, and I haven’t since I was in my teens.”

“But, how?”

“Father David deserves everything that happens to him,” he said.

I didn’t disagree with him, but I couldn’t formulate my thoughts. Lorenzo, thankfully, wasn’t in a mood to rush me. We got dressed, and he stayed in the bathroom with me as I applied moisturizer to my face and brushed my teeth. Normally, he wouldn’t stay to witness my nighttime routine, but he didn’t want to leave me alone and I appreciated that.

Afterward, Lorenzo tucked me into bed and made sure that I was fully cocooned under the blankets. “You’re not staying?” I asked when it became clear that he wouldn’t be climbing in with me.

“I need to check on Damian and Elio and arrange for the cleaners first.”

The way he said cleaners didn’t sound like he would be hiring a housekeeping crew to come in. “You’re going to erase Father David.”

It wasn’t a question, but he nodded anyway.

“And you’ll come back when you’re done?” It was such a pathetic question, but I didn’t think that I could stand him being gone for too long. For all that was fucked up and wrong here, Lorenzo was who I trusted most.

CHAPTER 45

Isabella

Ididn’t expect to sleep at all, but the next time I woke, soft sunshine was coming in through the windows. Lorenzo was still snoring softly beside me; he was lying on his stomach. He looked younger with his face relaxed in sleep.

He cracked open an eye. “I can feel you staring at me,dolcezza.” His voice came out as a deep rumble that made me shiver.

“You look different when you sleep,” I said softly, scooting closer to him.

He pushed himself up on his elbow. “Different how?”

I smirked at him. “Younger, for one.”

Lorenzo rolled his eyes. “Fucking brat.”

My heartbeat ticked a bit faster, and the gentle ache between my thighs that I woke up throbbed. “I am a brat,” I told him. “You should do something about it.”

Lorenzo’s eyes were heavy on me. I could feel his gaze almost as surely as I would his hands. I braced myself for a similarrejection to last night, or for him to ask me if I was sure, but instead, he reached for me, pulling me against his side.

“You look different in the morning too,” he said, leaning down to brush his lips against mine. He traced the apples of my cheeks with the tips of his fingers, the curve of my mouth. “I like you all sleep rumpled.” I snorted and tried to roll away, but he tightened his grip, keeping me in place. “You look good in my clothes too.”

What? I looked down and realized that I had put on one of his T-shirts last night. How out of it was I that I didn’t even look at what I was putting on?

---