Page 18 of Need Him Like Oxygen

My men had probably cleaned out three dealers to get as many pills as I now had sitting in a plastic bag in a kitchen drawer. But I wanted to make sure I had enough to keep Cinna comfortable. I knew from looking at her that she was gonna feel worse before she started to get better.

She’d still been a little in shock, still recovering from the adrenaline, before she fell asleep.

Once all that subsided, the pain was going to be insufferable.

In the kitchen, I put a pot of coffee on before reaching for my phone and adding a bunch of shit to my cart. Things to keep dressing her wounds and replace what I’d taken out of my medical kit. A shitton of ice packs. Over-the-counter meds that would help with swelling. A few brace options for her wrist. An assortment of panties.

I didn’t bother with more clothes, since her life would be much easier if she just kept going without pants and wearing button or zip-ups until her wrist healed.

I didn’t say it to her yet, because even hurt and emotional, Cinna was Cinna. And she wasn’t going to hear reason. But I wasn’t going to let her go home when she woke up. I wasn’t going to let her go home… period.

She needed somewhere to rest and recover. She needed someone around to help her with things. Like wrapping her ribs and wrist. Like cleaning up her feet, as needed. Cutting up her food. Getting her things. Even washing her hair.

She hadn’t really wrapped her head around just how injured she was. And maybe that was because she hadn’t even looked at herself yet.

I had a feeling that keeping her dosed consistently for the next two or three days might be the best bet. Get her through the worst of the pain. She’d still be sore. And her ribs and wrist would still be killing her, but all the other pains would have subsided by then.

Each time she woke up whimpering, desperate for me to press the pills into her mouth and hold up the water for her to rinse them down with.

I caught cat naps between those doses, waking up with my heartbeat punching against my ribcage, worried she might have stubbornly snuck out when my eyes were closed.

But she was always right there, lounging in my bed. Like I’d imagined countless times before. More, even, than she would imagine with all my rampant flirting.

In her eyes, I was just a dog in general. And I guess she wasn’t exactly wrong about that either. I damn sure enjoyed more than my fair share of women. So the flirting I did with her was just an extension of that. Casual, not serious.

But if there was ever something I was serious about, it was how much I was into Cinna.

In a physical way, sure. She was drop dead fucking gorgeous. I’d spent more than a few moments in the shower thinking about her long, silky hair wrapped around my hand as I fucked her from behind, or gliding across my thighs as she went down on me. And I was pretty sure if this woman existed in ancient times where they did that kind of shit, monuments would be built to honor the woman’s breasts.

It was more than that, though.

Cinna had been a capo for nearly as long as I had. I got to watch her grow from a young, angry girl, hungry to prove herself just as capable as—if not more than—her male counterparts, into the fearless capo she had become.

I’d seen her kick the asses of men twice her size. Intimidate bosses with decades of seniority on her. Out-strategize the best criminals in the area.

She was a fucking marvel.

And, me? Yeah, I’d been doing some marveling at her.

But I had to respect her steadfast determination not to sleep with any of us. I couldn’t pretend to understand what it was like to be a woman in a male-dominated field, how much rampant sexism she’d had to deal with to finally get the respect she had now.

Even now, though, there was shit she had to deal with that none of us men ever would.

My mind flashed back to the rolled waistband of her pants. Because someone tried to, after already beating the shit out of her, make her suffer one final indignity.

My phone rang on the coffee table, making me knife up and reach to silence it, wincing, waiting to hear Cinna stirring.

“Yeah?” I answered, sliding the answer button blindly.

“That’s how you answer the phone?” Renzo, the boss of the Lombardi crime family, my and Cinna’s boss, asked.

“When I got something warm and pretty in my bed waiting for me, yeah,” I said, forcing a lightness into my tone that I didn’t feel.

“It’s two in the fucking afternoon,” Renzo scoffed, but there was a chuckle in his voice.

“Right. Like you don’t want to be curled up under the sheets with Lore right now,” I shot back.

“That’s fair,” he agreed. “You heard from Cinna?” he asked.

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