Page 63 of A Debt So Ruthless

“Sit,” I reiterate, and she gives me an are you serious? sort of look as she hops in a circle to face me in front of the toilet.

“What do you think I’m doing over here if I’m not going to sit down?”

I shrug, forgetting to keep the movement to my good shoulder, and grimace.

“Just checking. You have a perpetual need to disobey.”

She slams the toilet seat down and throws her body heavily down on it, then bursts out, “Well maybe that’s because I don’t want to think about what it means when I do obey!”

I blink slowly at her. She clamps her mouth shut, like she’s said something she shouldn’t have, redness staining her cheeks.

“Is that why you left the room and went on your little wine raid?” I ask as I kneel before her. “To prove that you haven’t submitted to me?”

She doesn’t answer and looks away, but I don’t need her to respond to know I’m right.

“I never said you couldn’t leave the room.”

“It was implied!” She crosses her arms over her abdomen and hunches forward, watching me on my knees.

I realize in that moment I’ve never looked up at a woman like this. I’ve never been on my knees before anyone.

Only she could get me on my fucking knees without even having to ask.

“Implied how?” I ask, grasping her ankle and examining the wound again. Fuck me, she’s a bleeder. I’m going to have to take my gloves off and use the sterile ones in the first aid kit. She may consider me an infection, and maybe I am, but there’s no need to make it literal.

“Well, I don’t know! I’ve never been held prisoner before, so forgive me for not knowing all the subtle nuances of the expectations!” she replies.

I can’t exactly respond in kind, can’t tell her that I’ve never held a prisoner before either, because that would be a flat-out lie. Although, usually when someone ends up imprisoned by the Titones, it’s the final step on their journey before they end up at the bottom of Lake Ontario.

Instead of answering, I grab a bunch of towels and stuff them under her ankle, setting her foot down gently before rising and heading towards the sink. I peel off my leather gloves and suds up my hands before rinsing and drying them. I don’t look at my bare skin as I walk back to her and open the first aid kit.

She looks, though. Whatever other remarks she had on the tip of her tongue stay there, her angry eyes sobering.

“Those look bad,” she murmurs as I snap one tight white glove on over top of my scars, then another.

“That’s because they are,” I respond dryly.

“Do they hurt?”

She asked me that before, about the gunshot wound. Why does she wonder if I hurt?

“Not as much as other things,” I grunt.

Not as much as the fact I haven’t been able to take a full fucking breath into my lungs since I first heard you play.

Almost two years of barely breathing does things to a man. Painful things.

“You mean your shoulder,” she says quietly.

Not exactly what I was referring to, but I don’t bother to refute her. Because, yeah, that also hurts like a motherfucker right now.

“I’m sorry.”

Now that has me pausing, glancing up at her face. She looks uncomfortable, shifting back and forth on the toilet’s closed lid.

“What did you just say?” I ask carefully, not quite sure I heard her right.

Her mouth flattens before her lips part once again to speak.

---