As lightly as I can, I brush hair back from his face. It’s sticking to his forehead. He’s sweating.
I walk into the bathroom and retrieve one of the washcloths stacked on the shelf. After wetting it with cold water from the tap, I return to the bedroom to sit on the edge of the bed, wiping the sweat from his forehead. I also try to rid him of some of the dried blood on his shoulder.
That’s when his arm shoots out, hand like a vise around my wrist.
I gasp and he hisses. I look to his face, see he’s looking at me. I can’t help but think how beautiful he is, even with the scars, the leather patch. Maybe more so for them. There’s a darkness about him. Like an angel fallen. One who broke when he hit the ground.
He shifts his gaze to my wrist then and loosens his grip before finally releasing me.
“Mara,” he croaks. I think he wants to say more but I don’t know if it’s the drugs they gave him but his head rolls back on the pillow so he’s looking at the ceiling again.
“You’re not dead,” I say.
He chuckles, the eye without the patch closing.
I set the washcloth down and glance at the door. It’s closed as much as it can be without a doorknob, and I can see the soldier standing just outside through the hole. Do they think I’ll do something to hurt him?
I don’t care about them, though. I look back down at Dante. His big, broken body. Broad, muscular shoulders and arms, a dusting of dark hair on his chest, scars on olive skin, the ridges of muscle cutting across his stomach. The concentrated dark line of hair that disappears into his jeans.
Something stirs inside me at the sight of him like this. He had stripped to his boxers the night before but like this, he’s somehow more naked. And the sensations I feel looking at him make my heartbeat kick up a notch. It’s a strange and foreign reaction.
I decide to lie down beside him, pulling the blanket up a little although we don’t need it. He’s already hot with fever. I move his unhurt arm, tucking myself into his side. It’s warm enough this way. I lay one arm across his belly and feel his hand come up around me, closing over my waist. I look up at his face but he’s still asleep so I close my eyes, too, and listen to his heart beat. The faint hint of his aftershave is still there beneath the blood, sweat and man smell. It’s that last one that has me shuddering in spite of the heat radiating off him. That and the memory of him earlier. When he had me pressed up against the wall. When he promised he’d come back to me.
And I say a thank you to whoever or whatever it was that protected him. That helped him keep his promise. Because it’s impossible that he’s here. That he walked out of that cellar. That he’s alive at all.
* * *
I don’t realize I’ve fallen asleep until a sound wakes me. I blink once, twice, slow to remember where I am. It’s fully dark now, the streetlamp only offering the faintest light.
“Get her out!” Dante orders and I lean up on my elbow looking down at him. I shift my gaze over my shoulder to the door thinking he’s giving an order. Telling one of his soldiers to remove me. But there’s no one there.
Sweat covers him and he feels hotter than earlier. I touch a hand to his forehead, and it comes away slick.
He blinks rapidly, his agitation obvious. He’s dreaming.
I should get Matthaeus. He’ll know what to do. But Dante is talking again, words I can’t make out. His forehead wrinkles, hands fisting then relaxing again and again as he tries to grab for something but only catches air.
“Wake up,” I try, noticing the gun on the floor on his side of the bed. It’s not his. This one is smaller.
“Get her out. Now!” he snaps, and I try again.
“Dante?” I sit up. “Wake up.”
He mutters a string of curses, switches to Italian, his arm reaching as if for the shoulder holster, the gun he keeps there.
I lean across his body and push the pistol out of reach just in case. It goes sliding across the floor to stop in the middle of the room.
But it’s the wrong thing to do because the next thing I know, he’s got me by my arms, and he flips me onto my back. He’s not gentle. He’s above me, straddling me, one hand closing around my throat.
“Dante!”
He’s strong. Too strong even as I wrap both of my hands around his forearm and try to pry him off. I can’t speak. Can’t make any sound at all. He’s crushing my windpipe. And when I try to move my legs, to kick, he tenses his thighs, squeezing painfully against the brand. All the while he’s looking at me but it’s like he can’t see me. Like he’s still trapped inside his nightmare.