Page 33 of The Savage

I’m willing to give the Unhinged Salvatore a rest for a second if it’ll get her to move closer, dammit. The veil shadows her throat as she swallows. ‘If the patient calms himself, I’ll pray from here.’

‘No. Closer,’ I growl.

The chair moves closer, swift and silent, conjured by one of the soldiers who has learned obedience and the art of diffusing volatile situations well. I keep an eye on him to interrogate later. He sets it two metres from the bed and fuck, they’re really determined to make me lose my mind.

‘Closer,’ I grit out without looking away from her.

Another scrape. One metre.

‘Jesus Fucking Christ. Closer.’

The legs of the chair bump the bedframe.

A full minute passes while nobody moves. It would almost be comical if entire sanities and families didn’t depend on her next move.

Finally, she jerks forward, a gorgeous feline, with one foot almost fully extended in a balletic arch before she sets it down. Then moves the other.

Whatever Giada Mancinelli has been up to, the innate grace of a ballerina she yearned to be way too long ago hasn’t deserted her.

She still moves like a dream.

And before this mad circus is over, I’ll have her moving that ballerina body right over my cock.

The appendage which I abstractedly note is very much alive and functioning – thank fuck – twitches beneath the expensive cream sheets as she moves closer.

She perches like a bird that knows the hawk is hungry.

I could reach out and touch her now. I don’t. Not quite. But I lift my hand, slow enough not to spook her, and skim the edge of her wimple with my knuckles. Shitty wool hard enough to strip the hide off a donkey rasps on my skin. Holy cloth against unholy man.

Something like a smile twitches at the corner of my mouth despite the burning in my ribs. Of all the things I’ve imagined in six years, this wasn’t one. Her wrapped up like temptation with a halo stapled on. The filthy things I could do to that halo…

I pull my hand back before my heart explodes from a combination of lust and stitches.

‘Who authorised your presence here?’ I ask the soldiers, not her. ‘Who do you answer to?’

The closest soldier keeps his eyes front. ‘Not you, Signor Salvatore.’

I let the silence stretch until it threatens to choke him. ‘That wasn’t the question.’

‘We don’t answer questions,’ he says after a beat. ‘We execute them.’

‘Cute,’ I mutter. ‘Phone.’

No one moves. I turn my head slow and menacing until the doctor flinches. ‘My phone.’

He hesitates. One of the soldiers taps his ear, listening to ghosts, and then, clearly annoyed, pulls a handset from a sealed pouch and drops it on the tray beside me.

My thumb is clumsy with tape and disuse, but muscle memory wins. I unlock it, ignore the flood of unread messages, and open the only app that matters.

There’s a single message waiting.

Nightowl

YOU’RE WELCOME.

The sound that rips out of me is part fury, part snort, and it hurts like the worst torture. I type with deliberate slowness.

Renzo