“What the hell is happening?” Elena demanded. “First you and now, this maniac who claims to be her husband?”
“Stop.”
Everyone froze for one eternal second before leaping into action, converging on the hospital bed like carrion around a scrap of meat.
“Cosima,” I breathed out on a sob, reaching out to grasp her calf because Elena and Alexander both had hold of her hands already.
“Bambina,” she croaked, her eyes barely slatted open. “Water.”
Alexander was already tipping a small plastic cup to her lips so that she could sip. “Just a little bit, my beauty. You do not want to make yourself sick.”
“I’ll go get the doctor,” Beau said before dashing out the door.
“You scared me,” Elena breathed in a voice I hadn’t heard from her since she was a little girl. “You terrified me, Cosima. What would we do without you?”
“You would survive,” Cosima whispered hoarsely.
Elena’s hand spasmed against hers. “No, I wouldn’t. So much has happened…”
Cosima’s eyes darted to me and I knew she understood just exactly what had happened during her absence.
“You will survive,” she repeated, giving both of us a slight smile.
“Everyone needs to leave,” Alexander demanded with the kind of authority I had only ever felt before from Sinclair.
“We don’t need to do shit,” Elena cursed, clearly beyond her breaking point.
“Xan,” Cosima scolded softly, tilting her head on the pillow so that she could address her apparent husband. “You came.”
His face softened, growing so handsome that both Elena and I gasped softly. He leaned forward to smooth her hair out of her face.
“I am the only one who hurts you, remember?”
I shared a look with my sister, completely disconcerted by the entire situation, but mostly by the increasingly-more-likely-a-psycho-than-not Alexander Davenport.
Cosima had no such reservations. She leaned into him and dragged a deep breath in like it was the first and only breath she had ever taken.
“I know,” she agreed.
We watched them share an intimate moment before Elena cleared her throat. “Cosima, I know you just woke up but what the actual fuck? You are married?”
“Yes,” she whispered, closing her eyes and resting back against the pillow. “I know you are worried but Alexander cares for me. He is here to take care of me, and so is Dante.”
The doctor hustled into the room at that moment, bracketed by a small contingent of nurses who somehow bustled us out of the way as they went about checking out Cosima.
“You need to leave,” the doctor, a stern man by the name of - no joke - Kyle Steele, demanded.
“I am the husband,” Alexander said, throwing back his shoulders so that he seemed to take up the entire right side of the room.
Dr. Steele stared at him for a moment. “Fine, but stay in the corner. The rest of you, out.”
“It’s okay,” Cosima assured as we stared helplessly at her. “I am awake now. I’ll see you again soon, si?”
We both nodded woodenly and though we didn’t speak on our way to the elevator and rode down together, I knew that we were both more worried about our sister than she had been even when she was in a coma.
Sinclair stood in the doorway, one long line of gorgeous French man, and even though I wondered absently why he didn’t come closer, I was happy for the opportunity to soak him in after days apart.
All that thick mahogany hair was pushed back from his forehead but curled slightly around his ears, overlong once more and striking against his dusky skin, his incandescent irises. His suit was one I hadn’t seen before, a light, luminescent grey that hugged his tall, lean form like quicksilver. I took a moment to note his expression, it’s blankness, and then to hunt for his little tells. His eyes were dark under heavy brows, his mouth firm, unyielding and his stance strong.
A little shudder zipped my spine closed vertebrae by vertebrae until I stood ramrod straight. Because my Dom stood in front of me.
I had called him immediately after leaving the hospital to tell him about Cosima waking up with the strange addition of an honest-to-God husband at her side and I had assumed that we would table the play for the night and talk about what was happening with her.
Apparently, Sinclair had other plans and as I had grown wet the moment I set eyes on him after a long three days apart, I was raring to go.
“When you finish undressing, go into the main room and sit in the chair positioned for you, close your eyes and do not move until I tell you to do so.”
My mouth was dry around the words, all the moisture in my body rushing to between my legs. “Yes, sir.”
I shed my clothes on the move, so eager to have his hands on me, his voice in my ear commanding me to please him that my fingers were shaking.