The kiss tastes much better than the damned smoothie. I want more. I want to pull her into this bed and remind her exactly who she belongs to. But my shoulder gives a sharp, agonizing throb, and I’m forced to pull back, my breath coming in ragged hitches.
"Damn it," I curse, sinking back into the pillows.
"Serves you right," Gia says, though she’s breathless, her cheeks flushed a beautiful pink. She wipes a stray smudge of green from the corner of my mouth. "Now finish your booster. Or I’m calling the nurse back in here to give you a sponge bath."
"I can wash myself."
"You can't even reach your own feet, Rafael. Don't lie to me."
She finishes feeding me the sludge, then helps me change into a fresh shirt—a slow, painstaking process that involves a lot of swearing from me and a lot of eye-rolling from her. Every time her fingers brush my skin, my muscles coil. I want her. I want her so badly it’s a physical ache, worse than the bullet wound.
"There," she says, patting the last button into place. "You look slightly less like a hobo."
"I look like a man who’s been trapped in a room for days."
"Well, get used to it. The doctor says another week of bed rest."
"A week? I’ll be dead of boredom in forty-eight hours."
"Then I’ll just have to find ways to entertain you," she says, a mischievous glint in her eyes. "Maybe I’ll read you some poetry. Or we could play Go Fish."
"I’m going to kill you, Gia."
"You have to catch me first, Butcher. And right now, you can't even stand up without help."
She picks up the tray and heads for the door. She stops at the threshold, looking back at me. The sass is gone, replaced bysomething heavier. "Try to sleep, Rafael. The house is secure. I’m secure. Just... breathe."
"Gia?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't go to the gardens. Not even with the guards. Not until I say so."
She looks at me for a long moment, the silence of the room stretching between us. Then, she nods. "Fine.”
She closes the door, and I’m alone with the silence again.
I stare at the ceiling. I think about the O’Rourkes. I think about the leak. And I think about the way her hand felt on my chest.
Fucking hell.
I reach for the remote and turn the volume up on the news, my mind already working on the coordinates of the counterstrike. But underneath the strategy and the violence, all I can hear is the sound of her voice telling me to have my greens.
Damn it. I think I have fallen for my wife.
CHAPTER 30
GIA
I hate the sound of this rain.
It’s a rhythmic, relentless tapping against the windowpanes that sounds too much like a countdown. Tap. Tap. Tap. Every drop is a second I’m losing, a moment closer to whatever "motivation" my father is cooking up for me. The house is silent tonight, a heavy, velvet kind of quiet that usually makes my skin itch, but tonight, it’s just... still.
I’m sitting on the edge of Rafael’s side of the bed, the medical kit open between us. He’s propped up against a mountain of pillows, his jaw set stubbornly. The room is dim, lit only by the amber glow of the bedside lamp, casting long, dancing shadows across his chest.
"You're being too quiet, Gia," he grumbles. His voice is a low, sandpaper rasp that vibrates in the small space between us. "It’s making me twitchy."
"I’m concentrating," I murmur, my fingers steady as I peel back the surgical tape on his shoulder. "If I go too fast, I’ll take a layer of skin with it, and then you’ll growl at me for the next three hours."
