by Sadie Black
They parked out front. Rocco killed the engine and dropped the keys on the driver's side floor. Whitney sat up straight and opened her door, the cold rush of air the reminder Rocco needed that he couldn't live in his head so much. Now that the drive was over, it was back to action. He had Whitney's wounds to take care of.
Rocco exited onto the lawn and directed Whitney towards the door. Mikhail had the curtesy to close it, but had left it unlocked. Rocco whisked Whitney inside.
"We've gotta get you cleaned up," he said once she was past the threshold. From the oversized shirt to her lack of shoes, Whitney was a mess. The soles of her feet had to be freezing, yet she did not complain. Her drive was admirable.
"No," Whitney said with a small shake of her head, "I need water first. Maybe food. I'm starving."
Already she was on her way to the kitchen, Rocco found himself trailing behind. For a man who was so used to playing the active role and taking charge, Whitney was giving him a run for his money. She knew what she wanted, and she wasn't afraid to help herself.
She'd taken his lesson about life to heart.
"Then get something to drink and let me cook you dinner," Rocco insisted. Each step forward left him feeling a little more light headed, and it was only then that he realized how much blood he'd lost. While Whitney blazed the way forward, he snuck a glance at his shoulder. Two deep wounds gaped there, bleeding slowed but not stopped. How was it that he was more concerned with her than his own well-being? The stony look returned. He wouldn't burden her with his agony.
Whitney didn't reply. She entered the kitchen and went straight for the sink. Cold water ran, and she washed her hands beneath it before using them to cup water to sip at. There were glasses in the cabinets overhead, but Rocco didn't have the presence of mind to tell her as much. Instead, he plopped down upon one of the kitchen stools and took a deep breath. Pain tore through his shoulder, all the adrenaline from the kill gone. The shitty part was about to begin, and he was going to tough his way through it.
When Whitney was finished drinking she turned off the water and turned to face him. No matter how impartial and detached his face looked, she saw through him. Those deep dark pools of her eyes knew his soul and could see past his defences. It was no surprise when her eyes trailed to his injuries and she pursed her lips.
"Before you do anything, we need to make sure you're patched up. Where are your medical supplies? If this is a safe house, you've got to have some."
Medical supplies. Both of them could use them. Rocco glanced through the kitchen, trying to collect his thoughts. If a job went wrong and he got hurt, there was a staff of doctors on the Lombardo payroll who saw to injuries without hospital visits. It was rare that Rocco took care of injuries like this on his own.
"In the bathroom upstairs, I think. Under the sink, most likely. Or in the medicine cabinet."
Water dripping from her hands, blood cleared from the front of her face, Whitney nodded.
"You wait here and I'll be back, then. Don't move too much."
That wasn't going to be an issue. Without the buffer that adrenaline offered, something as simple as clenching his fist sent pain ripping through Rocco's arm and chest. Not even bullet wounds were this bad. Mikhail wouldn't walk away from their fight, but that didn't mean he wasn't good at what he did. Rocco would be reminded of the Russian's skill for the next few months, or until the injury closed up in full. Mikhail's last act wouldn't be easily forgotten.
Rocco was just glad that it hadn't happened to Whitney in his place.
It wasn't long before Whitney returned with a medical supply kit and an extra box of gauze. Rocco remained on the kitchen stool as she'd told him to, unwilling to move any more than necessary.
"I'm going to clean it up with some disinfectants and make sure it's all wrapped up, and you're going to have to be careful to make sure that wrapping doesn't get wet, okay?"
"Right," Rocco said with a curt nod of his head. It wasn't the first time he'd heard the same. The Lombardo family doctors regaled him with the same tale whenever shit got bad, but he was surprised to hear it come from Whitney's lips. She knew what she was doing. "You said you were a bartender or waitress all your life. Where's this medical knowledge coming from? This isn't stuff I'd guess the girl behind the counter serving me drinks would know."
"Ah, well, you'd be right," Whitney said. The clasps on the front of the kit popped open beneath her supervision, and she took out some medical grade disinfectant wipes sealed in sterile packaging. "I didn't learn any of this at the bar or at a restaurant. I um, well. Does it matter where I learned it?"
"You bet your ass it does," Rocco remarked with dry humor. "It's not like we're talkin' about cookin' eggs here, I wanna know so I don't die of infection or something." The Italian accent he tried to suppress in public flowed strong and smooth. If she'd seem him kill a man and still hadn't run, it meant she'd stick by him even if he let his tongue loose.
Dark eyes caught his blues for a moment, hesitant. With a tiny shake of her head, Whitney relented.
"Well you know how I said I was caught up and lost in the foster program, right? How I went to family after family until I aged out of the system?"
"Yeah." Before Whitney opened the packaging on the disinfectant, she undid his shirt and slid it from his shoulders so his chest was bare. The shirt had soaked up most of the blood, but the area around his shoulder still looked gruesome. Whitney didn't flinch.
"Well, that had a really big impact on my life. I wasn't always the good girl you're so fond of calling me, you know. When I was a teenager, I fell in with some thugs. Back then I thought they were so cool, so edgy, so big and organized, but really it was just a twenty-something jackass and a bunch of his gangsta friends who thought they were all that. It couldn't have been more than a dozen people in that group, if I had to guess."
"Little crime rings can be bad news," Rocco remarked. Had he been able to, he would have shrugged; the pain was too much to risk such a gesture. "At least in organized crime you've got rules everyone follows, and clear consequences for your actions. Petty crime doesn't have that, and things can get ugly fast."
"Try telling that to sixteen-year-old Whitney and see how far you get. I thought I'd finally found a family. To me, it was like, here's this group of guys who stick up for each other no matter what and are willing to take the fall for one another when the situation gets bad. I thought that it was going to give me the love I needed. I was wrong. But I didn't come away from that experience without learning anything. I learned about respecting myself, and, most important for right now," she tore the packaging on the disinfectant open with her teeth and took the cloth from inside, "it taught me about cleaning up bad wounds on the down-low. When the boys got hurt on a robbery gone bad or a drug deal, I was there to patch them up. Another one of the guys' girlfriends was in school to be a nurse, and she taught me all kinds of things. And it stuck over the years."
"But you go to a doctor to get your hand stitched up after cutting it on a can lid?" Rocco asked, incredulous. Whitney rolled her eyes skyward in a playful manner and shook her head. "Not because I couldn't stitch myself up, but I don't carry tetanus vaccines around. I'm not interested in dying a horrible death because of a can lid."
"Point taken."
The cloth touched his shoulder, cleansing the spilled blood away. As soon as it drew near the wound, the injury started to burn. Rocco grit his teeth and endured. Right now he had to be strong, and around Whitney, he found himself compelled to be even stronger than usual. Pain like this was nothing. He'd take it for her all over again if he had to.
"So tell me about your thug boyfriend. He treat you right, or do I need to go bust his ass?"
Whitney smiled an uneasy, but satisfied smile. The pain in it was distant, but detectable, and it made Rocco uneasy. Despite the short length of their relationship, seeing her hurt felt like a personal blow.
"He was the type of guy he was," Whitney said. The disinfectant cleaned the area around
the wound, then traced over it. Rocco winced. "I thought I was so in love, and he was so in love with me. I was wrong. He didn't treat me how a man should treat a woman, and when it ended, it ended badly. I don't think about that anymore. I'm a different person now."
Different, yet quick to slip between the sheets with one of New York's most dangerous men. Rocco ran his tongue over his teeth as his nerves took over. Was Whitney just in love with the idea of danger and romance, or was she sticking by him for higher reasons? It was hard to tell. But no matter the case, if she were to stick by his side, he'd win her over and give her reason to stay. If a woman was able to sway his hardened soul this much, she deserved a spot at his side. Rocco would keep her there no matter what.
"So what I'm hearing is, if this joker comes by you again, I've gotta step up and take care of business."
"You don't really have to do anything," the words were raw and vulnerable. Rocco opened his eyes, biting back on the stinging pain of his wound to give Whitney his full attention. There was something haunted about her eyes, like she'd come to realize what a terrible situation she now found herself in. Had the shock finally worn away to expose the good girl beneath? Was she going to run like all the others had?
Their eyes met. Whitney hesitated, holding the disinfectant away from his shoulder. Her lower lip trembled, but in the next moment she found the force of will inside her self needed to stay strong. Whatever demons she struggled against disappeared, and she smiled at him in full. Radiant, dazzling Whitney was back again.
"...But I won't stop you from teaching a lesson to jerks from my past if that's what you want."
He smiled back. Warmth bloomed in Rocco's chest, the air between them thick with something he hadn't felt since he was a naive young teenager noticing women for the first time.
"You can count on it," he murmured as he reached out with his good arm to take her empty hand. "I've got your back."
"And I've got your shoulder," Whitney replied with a playful grin. "Let's get you bandaged up."
Step by step she progressed, dabbing at his wound and cleaning out little bits of fabric from his shirt as she went. When Whitney put the disinfectant away and pulled out a curved needle and medical grade thread in its place, Rocco's stomach lurched.
"You're gonna sew me up?" he asked.
"Um, well yeah. Have you seen how big these wounds are? If we don't stitch you up it won't heal. Haven't you had stitches before?" Eyes curious, yet still lighthearted. Rocco took strength from them.
"Well, yeah, but always from some uptight looking doc in medical scrubs. Guess it just feels more official."
"So then get me a white lab coat, if it makes you feel better." Whitney grinned. "I promise, I'm an old pro at stitches. Your doctor won't be able to tell they aren't his."
Doctors never made Rocco squeamish. He'd spilled enough brains that gore wasn't an issue. So why was he so anxious around Whitney? It wasn't because she lacked professional medical training, because Rocco had taken help from people who knew less. He realized he hated the thought of exposing his weakness to her, and that fear was causing him to be weaker yet.
The only way past that fear would be to embrace it.
"Sew me up, Doc," he instructed. Whitney grinned and posed the needle near the site of the injury.
"It sounds cliché, but um, this is going to hurt a little."
But when the needle bore through his skin, there was surprisingly little pain. One stitch drawn closed and tied off, Whitney started a second. As she worked, Rocco forced himself to relax. If Whitney had enough faith in him to trust him even after he'd tried to kill her, he could trust her back. By the time she was drawing the last stitch to a close, he looked over to examine her handiwork. It was impressive, no doctor would be able to tell it from stitches done up in the emergency room.
"All done," Whitney announced as she drew the needle away for the final time. "I'm going to cover it with some antibiotic ointment and then wrap it up. You need to change the bandaging every twenty-four hours, or if it gets wet or really dirty. I think the stitches should stay in for about a week, but um, maybe you should get to a medical professional before then, just in case."
Aftercare was something Rocco was well familiar with, and so when Whitney spoke, he watched her face instead. Heart shaped, beautiful eyes, lush lips... God, was she gorgeous.
"Right." The word lingered between them, the space between them growing heavy once more. Whitney leaned forward subconsciously in an effort to close the space between them. Rocco was more than aware of what she did, her every move on his mind. Mikhail's blood was still splattered across his chest, neck, and chin. He didn't want to kiss her with gore covering him.
"Let's go get cleaned up," Rocco suggested in a whisper. "You can wrap me up after that."
"Okay." The exchange did not disturb the chemistry between them. Instead, Whitney took the hand of his uninjured arm and guided him to his feet. The touch was soft, and he craved more of it.
Hand in hand, comfortable in their silence, they walked from the kitchen and up the stairs to the bathroom.
It was time to rinse away the filth of the past and embrace a clean future together.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Four
Rocco
The water ran hot. Swirls of steam rose in lazy spirals skywards, fogging the window and the mirrors. Whitney stood at his side, watching. Dressed in mismatched clothing, hair sticky with blood and crazy from the drama of the last twenty-four hours, she did not look traditionally beautiful.
Rocco found her stunning.
A splash of lavender bubble bath scented the air and added suds to the rising water. The sunken Jacuzzi tub occupied the back right corner of the bathroom, Rocco turned the jets on. Suds sprang to life and filled the surface, thick and plentiful. The show brought a smile to Whitney's face.
"I've never been in a tub like this before," she admitted, keeping her voice low. "It seems so luxurious."
"You're going to love it."
The sunshine in her smile was enough to warm a heart as dark as his. Rocco couldn't help but smile back.
The tips of Whitney's fingers reached out and ran down his exposed chest. Rocco had just his pants and shoes to worry about stepping out of. Whitney was more than happy to help with that. Tender fingertips ran down his stomach and to the belt of his pants, loosening it with care. Rocco watched, heartbeat picking up. To see her undress him like this was a thrill. When, at last, his pants fell around his ankles, Rocco stepped out of them and his shoes all at once. The socks he wore beneath were quickly disposed of. Whitney indulged in his nude form, letting her eyes linger wherever they pleased.
"You too," Rocco murmured. "We might as well bathe together, right? That way you can make sure I don't fuck up any of the stitches you just put in."
"Mmm," Whitney hummed in reply. Before she could begin to undress, Rocco stepped forward and lifted the loose t-shirt she wore with the hand of his uninjured arm. Whitney raised her arms as the shirt rode up, and soon the garment slipped from her body and pooled on the floor next to his pants. Flawless dark skin and beautiful breasts were his to behold, yet still Rocco wanted more.
Her hands slipped down her own body to the button of her jeans, and she undid the fly to expose her nude body beneath. With a tilt of her hips she slid the jeans downward, revealing her gorgeous thighs and the smooth crest of the mound Rocco had come to adore. When at last she was naked, she raised her gaze to catch his and managed a tiny smile.
"Why don't you get in the water first, Mr. Lombardo?" she asked, voice curved with sultry intonation. The utterance of his last name sent a shiver down Rocco's spine, and he hesitated to part from her side, craving the feel of her lips upon his.
Whitney followed him into the tub, letting her hand trail down the ridge of his spine until it settled on the small of his back. Rocco glanced over his shoulder at her, catching the hint of her smile and the soft curves of her body. Her hand, gentle and yet insistent, guided him f
urther into the tub until he settled, and her with him.
"You've got me worried about you getting your stitches wet," she told him as she sunk down in the suds. Soapy bubbles hid her body from the shoulders down, and Rocco's imagination worked in overdrive to make up for it. Beneath the suds his body was awakening to her. There had never been a creature as beautiful. "Let me wash you."
There had never been a time that he had brought a woman to bathe with him and felt this kind of a pull towards her. With Whitney, he felt like he was freshly navigating the waters of attraction only to drown in her rip tides.
"Only if you let me return the favor," he told her. The pitch of his voice had dropped slightly.
"I wouldn't want it any other way."
A soft sponge hung from a white rope upon the wall behind Rocco's back. Whitney moved through the water and straddled him to reach it, their bodies brushing one against the other, slicked by suds and water. To feel her soft skin so heated and delicate spiked Rocco's arousal, and he felt himself stir to life. If he were a lesser man, Rocco would've pinned her to the tub wall and taken her right then and there.
"You're not hurt anywhere else, are you?" she asked as she brought the sponge to his chest and began to wash away the thin layer of sweat and grime that had accumulated there.
"No," Rocco replied. The sponge dipped back into the water, then traced up his abdomen and chest until it went over his uninjured shoulder. Whitney's touch was perfect. "I came right from the prison to where I knew he'd be taking you. Mikhail was a man of habits. I'm just glad he didn't decide to break away from them today."
