Chapter 4 - A Surgeon's Touch
That night, a thunderstorm rolled over Lake Geneva, mirroring the chaos inside my head.
I couldn't sleep. The revelations about my mother, the strange, terrifying pull toward Dante, and the suffocating threat of unknown assassins kept me tossing and turning against the silk sheets.
At 2:00 a.m., a muffled thump came from down the hall.
I slipped out of bed, creeping through the dimly lit corridor toward the master wing. The double doors to Dante’s suite were slightly ajar. A sliver of warm light spilled onto the hardwood floor.
I peeked inside—and froze.
Dante was sitting on the edge of a massive leather sofa, stripped to the waist. Sweat glistened across his broad, heavily corded shoulders. The surgical dressing over his left subclavian wound was soaked with crimson blood.
He had a bottle of bourbon on the table and a pair of sterile forceps in his right hand, his teeth gritted in agony as he tried to repack the bleeding cavity with gauze.
"Dammit," he hissed, his breath ragged, veins bulging along his neck.
"You're going to tear the arterial stitch and bleed out on your antique rug," I said, pushing the door open completely.
Dante’s head snapped up. Even in agonizing pain, his eyes flared with deadly instinct, his hand twitching toward the pistol resting on the coffee table. When he saw it was me, he exhaled a harsh, ragged breath and lowered his hand.
"Go back to bed, Stella."
"Shut up," I said, entering the room and shutting the door behind me.
My professional instincts kicked in, overriding every shred of fear. I walked straight to his private bathroom, washed my hands thoroughly with antibacterial soap, grabbed fresh sterile gauze, antiseptic solution, and surgical tape from his fully stocked trauma kit, and returned to him.
I knelt between his parted thighs on the floor, looking up at the wound.
Dante’s body was a map of violence. Old scars—knife slashes, bullet grazes—crisscrossed his bronze skin, woven together with ink depicting Archangel Michael crushing the serpent. But right above his heart was my work: a neat, eight-inch incision closed with precision nylon sutures.
The edge had ruptured. Blood was trickling steadily down his chest.
"You've been lifting that arm," I scolded, soaking a cotton pad in antiseptic. "I told you forty-eight hours of absolute rest. You've been pacing around, making calls, acting like a warlord."
"War doesn't wait for stitches to heal," Dante ground out, his jaw clenching as I pressed the antiseptic pad against the torn flesh.
"Hold still."
I worked with practiced, gentle efficiency. But being this close to him—kneeling between his legs, my fingers pressed against his bare, hot skin, feeling the heavy thud of his heart beneath my palm—sent a dizzying rush of heat through my blood.
Dante looked down at me. His gaze wasn't on the wound.
It was on my face. On my lips.
"Your hands are steady," he said softly, his voice a low vibration in his chest.
"A surgeon's hands are always steady."
"Not when Matteo held the gun to your head. That wasn't just training, Stella. That was steel."
"I was terrified," I admitted, my voice dropping to a whisper as I taped the sterile dressing down firmly. "I thought you were going to die, and then he was going to blow my brains out across Bay Three."
"I wouldn't have let him," Dante said.
I looked up, meeting his eyes. "You were unconscious."
"My soul knew you were there," he murmured.
The air evaporated from the room. My hand remained resting on his chest, right over his beating heart. Dante slowly reached up with his uninjured right hand, his fingers tangling into the loose red-gold curls at the nape of my neck, tilting my face upward.
"Stella," he whispered.
My breath hitched. "Dante, this is... we can't."
"Tell me to stop," he dared me, his eyes darkening to slate-black. "Tell me to let you go."
I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.
He leaned down and crushed his lips against mine.
It wasn't gentle. It was a collision of fire, hunger, and weeks of unyielding tension. A groan rumbled deep in Dante’s chest as he pulled me upward, lifting me effortlessly off the floor until I was straddling his lap, my hands gripping his broad shoulders. The taste of him—bourbon, smoke, and pure possession—drove every rational thought from my brain.
He kissed me like a dying man finding water in the desert, his mouth devouring mine with fierce, desperate intensity. My fingers sank into his dark, thick hair, pulling him closer, responding to his touch with a wanton passion I never knew I possessed.
When he finally broke the kiss, we were both gasping for air, our foreheads resting together in the dim light.
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"Tomorrow," Dante breathed against my lips, his thumb stroking my cheek with surprising tenderness, "we find out the truth. And after that, Stella... I'm never letting you walk away."
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