Page 39 of Bellini Bound

“Why don’t you drink a gallon of blood thinner while you’re at it?” Sarcasm leaked into my tone.

“Wouldn’t hurt you to break the rules every now and again,” he shot back, annoyance coloring his words.

My snark couldn’t be contained. “Oh, is that what you were doing when you were shot?”

“No,” he said like an insolent teen.

Yeah, I didn’t believe that for a second. He made a living by “breaking the rules,” and I highly doubted the cops opened fire on him for no reason.

The tweezers hit the sink with a softping,and I dropped to my knees between his open thighs. When I reached for his belt buckle, he jolted, shoving my hands away.

“What the hell are you doing?”

With a one-track mind, focused on offering him an alternative to the whiskey he’d requested for pain management, I hadn’t realized how my actions could have been misconstrued. The minute it hit me what it must’ve looked like to him, I scrambled away so fast I fell to my ass on the tiled floor.

Heat rose up my neck to settle on my cheeks. God, I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.

“Uh, your belt.”

Enzo stared at me like I had two heads. “What about it?”

I scrubbed two hands over my face, blowing out a breath. “Thought you could use it to bite down on.”

There was a beat of silence before a husky chuckle sounded, and I peeked between my fingers to find him smirking.

“Taking it old school tonight?”

My shoulders lifted on a shrug. “Figured it would save me the burst eardrums.”

“Ah.” Enzo inclined his head. “You’re looking out for yourself. Smart. I approve.”

Though I’d spent weeks wishing for this version of him to reappear—cocky, charming, borderline flirtatious—the switch was so sudden that it knocked me off-kilter. I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps this was some kind of trick, a way to get me to let my guard down. For what purpose, I had no clue, but it was wise to remain wary. Outside of the legalities binding us together, I didn’t know Enzo from Adam. He was practically a stranger. One who hadn’t treated me kindly. It only stood to reason that I would be cautious, expecting to get burned.

I cocked my head. “Every minute you waste, your risk of infection increases, and I can’t imagine it’ll be easy learning how to jerk off with your left hand when the right needs to be amputated.”

His mouth popped open, but he recovered quickly, taunting, “You seem awfully worried about my pleasure, princess.”

“I’m not,” I huffed. “Just throwing darts, hoping to hit what’ll motivate you to get a move on.” Pretending to check a non-existent watch on my wrist, I said, “It’s late. If you’re not interested in saving your arm, I can go back to bed.”

“All right. You’ve made your point.” He made a fumbling attempt at unbuckling his belt one-handed, and I smiled to myself, having been right that he would be truly fucked if he lost the other.

He finally managed to pull the leather through the loops around the waist of his black jeans.

I took it from him, folding it in half before bringing it toward his lips. “Open wide.”

With a glare, he did as I commanded, biting down on the thick strip.

“All right, I know this is gonna hurt like hell.” I picked up the tweezers and ran them through the flame of the lighter again. “But try not to move too much.”

He grumbled something around the makeshift gag, but it sounded like agreement, so I decided to proceed. With surgical precision, I moved past the epidermis with the metal pincers. I knew the minute I reached the subcutaneous tissue, because a muffled scream came from Enzo, his entire body trembling as he struggled to remain motionless through what had to be excruciating pain.

“I’m sorry,” I chanted on repeat, digging blindly, hoping to encounter the bullet lodged deep within his bicep.

I straddled one of his thighs to gain more leverage, getting close enough that the sharp panting breaths flying past his flared nostrils fanned the side of my face while I worked.

Blood, thick and red, obscured my field of vision, pouring down his arm. Sweat gathered at the back of my neck, panic rising that I might be doing more harm than good. This wasn’t exactly my area of expertise, but since he refused to go to a hospital, I was his best option.

Relief surged when I finally encountered something solid that, after a few tentative taps, I became confident wasn’t bone.