Page 21 of Tempting My Mafia Monster

She didn’t matter. I couldn’t care what they did to her. I paced, repeating the words. She didn’t matter. If she never came back, it wouldn’t matter. It would be better.

But the more time passed, the more I realised that wasn’t the case. I cared. And when I saw her face and looked into her eyes, I knew they’d hurt her.

And. It. Fucking. Mattered.

Someone touched her who wasn’t me.

After what I’d pulled in the cage, McKenna knew I wouldn’t stand for it. I’d shown my hand and given them something I’d sworn to never have again: a weakness. And it was all her fucking fault. I should have snapped her neck the moment I laid eyes on her. But I hadn’t, and here we fucking were.

After she’d cleaned as many of the wounds as possible and bandaged the few that wouldn’t stop bleeding, she knelt and nudged my shoulder. I forced my swollen eyes open. She held two pills between her fingers, lifting them towards my lips.

I didn’t want them. I never took painkillers, but when she pressed her fingers to my mouth, insisting, I opened for her. She dropped them onto my tongue, and I closed my lips around her fingers as she pulled them free. Her eyes widened as they met mine, her cheeks flushing. She glanced away and picked up a glass of water. My jaw clenched as her hand glided gently under the back of my neck, trying to support my head as she forced it up. Too tender. Too much. I took the glass from her and sat up myself, my ribs flaring as I twisted away from her so the wall could support me instead.

She stayed kneeling by the side of the bed, staring at me in that way that made me feel more human than beast. No one had ever looked at me like she did. As if she saw something beyond death and destruction. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t kill her. She was wrong, of course. But that didn’t matter. I just liked the way she looked at me.

As she packed away the first-aid kit, her eyes kept sweeping over my body with concern, as if she wasn’t satisfied with the job she’d done. She’d taken more care and time than I ever had, so I was convinced it was more than good enough. Little did she know, the drugs they pumped into me before every fight would help my body recover more quickly, anyway. I needed to be ready for the next one.

She placed the first-aid kit on her lap, her fingers fiddling with the metal clasp as she stared down at it.

Her shoulders rose slowly as she drew in a breath from somewhere deep inside her. It wasn’t a calm, settling breath but the kind someone takes when they’re about to face their greatest fear. The air shifted around her, keeping me hypnotised and making it impossible to look away.

“I–” The vowel barely formed before she swallowed it and tried again. “I’ll need to clean and redress the cut on your eyebrow. And the one on your left side. Every few hours. To prevent infection.”

Her voice was quiet, but it wasn’t weak. She spoke in blunt, factual sentences, yet her words sounded like a delicate song. It was disarming, like silk over glass.

“They’re deep,” she continued, her eyes fixed on the kit in her hands. “You… you should have them stitched. I can do that. If you let me.”

I blinked at her with my one good eye, the other too swollen and pulsing. A ragged exhale scraped past my lips as I remembered how to breathe. I’d never heard a softer voice. If it weren’t for the dull roar of pain in my broken body, I might’ve believed I’d already bled out, because only an angel could sound like that. Beneath the soft vowels and careful consonants, there was a sexy European accent, telling me English wasn’t her first language, though she spoke it perfectly.

She kept her eyes cast down, refusing to look at me as she took another shaky breath before continuing. “I think you have two cracked ribs, judging by how you’re breathing. And a possible concussion. So I need you to stay awake.”

She said it as if it were important, as if I were important.

Speak. Say something. If only to hear her voice again.

“You a nurse?” The words felt strange as they left my lips after months of silence. My rough, thick Irish edges sounded like rocks tumbling down a cliff compared with her voice. That they even filled the same space should have been a crime.

For a second, I thought she wouldn’t answer. She’d slip back into silence, and I couldn’t think of anything more fucking devastating.

Her eyes slowly rose to meet mine.

Fuck.

Where I expected to see something fragile and timid, I saw only caution. She’d calculated the risks of speaking, of lifting those pretty fucking eyes to look at me, and had decided it was worth taking.

“In another life.”

My heart raced as I realised this woman had always had a voice; she’d simply chosen who deserved to hear it. That she’d deemed me worthy was too fucked up to get my head around.

“So, will you let me?” she asked, looking up at me through her long lashes. I was pretty sure I’d let her do whatever the fuck she liked, as long as she didn’t stop talking or looking at me like that.

“What?”

“Stitch those wounds.”

I swallowed, leaning my head back against the wall. That was a bad idea. I couldn’t stand being touched. The Raw Mercy was mostly out of my system, but the trauma I carried wasn’t. A simple shoulder shove, a brush of someone’s fingers, a whore’s tongue in my mouth; it didn’t matter what; it always sent me into a black hole.

“I don’t like to be touched.”