Once we’re both inside, I close the door behind us and lock it. I flip on a light switch and the short hallway of the small Italian village house is illuminated in a low yellow-orange glow.
“Bathroom, now,” I say simply.
I grab him by his large, warm hand and pull him down the hallway, through the living room to the bathroom where I sit him down on the edge of the bathtub and turn on the light.
“God, you’re a fucking mess,” I mumble.
“Thank you,” he murmurs in response.
I sigh and turn on the water in the tub, finding a washcloth nearby and wetting it with hot water.
“I can barely see what needs to be stitched up with all this blood,” I comment.
I brush the washcloth along his chest and arms, noticing as he winces every now and then. There’s a part of me that wants to say this can’t possibly be as bad as the pain of them actually inflicting the wounds upon him, but I don’t. I know what’s its like to have someone hurt you and not be able to show them how much. I can imagine Damian felt the same way I would in his shoes. I’d want to keep my captors from knowing just how much they were hurting me.
So, now that he’s safe, I let him express his pain any way he wants to.
I squeeze the bloody water out of the washcloth and then rewet it.
“Why didn’t you just run?” I ask him.
Damian’s eyes shift up and look right into mine. I find myself grateful that they didn’t do anything to mar those eyes of his.Pretty as sin and reflecting my concerned expression right back at me.
“And leave you behind to clean up the mess?” he asks. “No. I couldn’t do that.”
I slowly clean along his chest, wiping the blood and what appears to be ash from his skin in gentle strokes.
“You could,” I disagree.
He tilts his head to the side slightly. “I didn’t want to.”
“Because…?” I ask him as I turn my gaze away while ringing and rewetting the cloth another time.
“You really don’t know, Les?” he murmurs in response.
I turn to look at him once more, and I lift the washcloth to his face.
“I want to hear you say it,” I admit.
Damian’s eyes darken and his voice is even lower when he speaks.
“I care about you, Alessio,” he tells me. His face draws in even closer and I stop wiping at his jawline to observe his mouth. His lips are cracked slightly, and it only makes me lean down further.
“Do you?” I ask him with a small smirk on my face. “I couldn’t tell.”
Damian growls low in his chest and reaches a hand up to grab at my shirt near my shoulder.
“Don’t make me say I’m falling for you, Dresvanni.”
I can’t help but chuckle. My ears and neck heat up. Every part of me feels as though it’s covered in goosebumps as I lean in even closer and our lips nearly touch.
“I won’t if you won’t make me say it,” I agree.
The next thing I know Damian’s lips press to mine. He kisses me firm and passionate. The kiss of someone who didn’t know whether or not they were going to make it out alive. I kiss himback with all the urgency of a man who didn’t know if he was going to see Damian again.
The kiss is somehow more intimate than any of our kisses before, despite being softer and closed mouth.
I pull back from the kiss to look into his still bloodied face. “I’d prefer if you didn’t get captured again,” I whisper.
