Page 53

“Did you visit the towns?—”
“Of course not,” she grouses, finally turning around so that she can shoot me an eye roll. “I read the local newspapers. Funny how no one else noticed the connection. Though, perhaps, they were glad to see the backs of whoever ‘killed themselves.’”
My jaw works when she uses air quotes, yet she fails to take into account how obsessive and unhinged she is.
Exactly what I need in a savior…
Absently, I watch her, noting her struggles to bend down. Though I should help her, she’s not going to fall like she almost did earlier. It’s just awkward.
She holds her head by locking her shoulders in a hunched position, but I can tell it’s as if her skull is too heavy for her neck.
When she leans over, she snatches the green case the kit’s in. Upon straightening up, she rests against the sink after she dumps it on the side, and I watch as she takes some slow, deep breaths. A hand lifts to rub her temple.
I’m not the only one with a headache, then.
I’ve been in Rome for almost a year, and the day I arrived, she had her surgery. I can’t imagine what she’s been through in that time, the pain and the medical interventions she’s had. How she’s standing in my kitchen at all is a miracle?—
“Stop looking at me like that.”
The words are hissed out, and for the first time, I sense she’s angry with me.
Because the difference is jarring, I keep my tone gentle: “How am I looking at you?”
“I’m not ill,” she rumbles by way of an answer. “I’m getting better.”
Well, that’s not a lie, even if it’s a case of her stretching the truth.
“Take off your shirt,” she orders when she turns to face me again.
She sounds clinical now, making the contrast in her nature sharper than 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… The question is, can she handle it?
Almost murdering someone didn’t frighten her off, so maybe the state of my body will.
Hiding a laugh at my gallows humor, I unbutton my shirt. As the cotton fabric falls aside, she steps behind me so she can tend to 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?” is her only question.
There’s no shocked gasp. No horrified squeal.
If anything, her tone’s loaded with chastisement.
That shouldn’t make my erection reappear, but it does.
“Sometimes, I don’t bother.”
I can feel her tension despite the two feet that separate us. “You want it to get infected?”
“If only. It never does.”