“Oh,” was all she said.
I looked from her hand to her face. Her eyes were cast down, only slivers of blue visible from my angle, but her answer was in the shape and twitch of her mouth. Her lips were held tightly together, narrowed, straight across, and her cheeks dimpled. She was trying not to smile.
“I mean it,” I said, capping the tube. There wasn’t much I could do about the bump on her head besides clean it off. I pulled her hair away so I could see it. “You’ll have to learn to speak Italian so you can curse me like a good Neapolitan wife.”
The smile broke into a full crescent of teeth. “I’ll invent new words to curse you with. Promise.” She put her fingers on my shirt buttons and slipped them through the holes. “Now get this off. Your arm and your head need attention.”
I got out of my shirt. I thought she wanted to get us naked so I could take her, but the sleeve stuck to my bicep and hurt when I ripped it away. I looked at the raw wound, bordered in gunpowder[→5] and angry pink between the split skin.
“This is going to scar,” she said.
“More proof I lived.”
She spun on her bottom, hopped off the other side of the bed, and padded to the sink. She snapped a worn white towel from the rack and wet it, twisted it into a rope to get the last of the excess water out, then sat next to me.
“No crying now,” she said. “Be a big boy.”
She pressed the towel to the wound. It hurt enough to make me bite back a grunt, but I didn’t make a sound as she cleaned it off. She patted my head with the same cloth. The blood there had been wiped away on the drive down. We’d covered it with my hair so we could pass through customs.
“This already looks better,” she said about my head. “You have amazing healing powers. The arm though…” She dabbed my arm again.
“I guess you’ll clean the children’s knees with a wet cloth too? I can see it.”
“If the children have gunshot wounds, you’re the one who’s going to need first aid, Mister Spinelli.” She squirted my arm with antibiotic gel and ripped open the packet of gauze with her teeth. She didn’t remove the gauze from the envelope. Didn’t move.
“What?”
“I was so busy thinking about myself. I didn’t even think about children.”
I took her chin and pointed her face at me. Close up, I could see tiny pieces of grit inside her scrape. “We’re out.”
“I don’t feel out.”
With the other end of the white towel, I patted the bump on her head, cleaning it. “You’re out. I’m out. We go back to being civilians. We just have to get into LA without being seen and back out again. Should be easy.”
She plucked the gauze from the paper package and looked around for the tape. “I don’t want to be a burden to you.” She taped the square of gauze to my wound, swallowing her nerves. “I’m scared, Capo.”
I took the tape and put it to the side. “You’re not to be scared.”
I’d said it as if it were an instruction. I should have soothed her, but I didn’t know how. So I kissed her. I kissed her long and hard. To suck her fear out of her. To eat it alive and spit out the bones. I pushed her back onto the mattress and kissed her harder. Her hands stayed burn-side up, but the rest of her body arched up to meet mine.
I moved my hips against her, the clothing between us getting hot with friction. “Give yourself to me, and I’ll fuck the fear from you.”
Her eyes fluttered closed as I pushed myself against her, increasing the pressure until I thought I’d burst.
“Your answer, Contessa,” I whispered in her ear. “Your answer. Answer. Answer.” I was ready to get off her if she said no, but I knew she wouldn’t.
“Take me,” she breathed. “You crazy, beautiful bastard. Take me.”