Chapter 42

"I know," came his clear, short answer.

"Then what the hell are you doing?" She demanded. Her anger was slowly rising to boiling point. She couldn't believe he had the audacity to sound impatient. She was pretty sure her wound had expanded instead of healed thanks to him.

Di Mo's movements suddenly stopped. Pain seared through her once more as he grabbed her flesh and held it tightly. "This is what I am doing," he said menacingly. His eyes glinted with ill-intent. In one swift movement, she found herself pushed back into the bed with Di Mo's heavy weight on top of her. He replaced the hand on her flesh with his mouth. Momentarily shocked and angry, Lily struggled, attempting to punch him off with her fists. He responded by pressing down even harder so that it became impossible for her to move.

"Di Mo, you — Ow!" She yelped suddenly as he suddenly breathed in, sucking her flesh in painfully. "Let go of me! Di Mo!"

He did so, although not after a few deliberate beats. Raising his head, he asked, "Will you stop complaining then?"

She nodded fervently. "Fine, fine, I will."

"Remember that you belong to me," he informed her candidly. "I can do what I want, and you have no say." He began rubbing the ointment on her again.

Lily shut her eyes in frustration, all the while cursing Di Mo and every Di Clan ancestor all the way up to his great-great-great-great-great-great-and so on grandfather. He would see. One day, she would get revenge for this.

Di Mo smoothed the medication vigorously over her pale skin, kneading and tugging and massaging it over the entire area. She laid herself back in his arms with her teeth clenched tightly together.

There was a rare moment of peace as she sat quietly and he applied the ointment. However, it was suddenly interrupted by Di Mo, who exclaimed loudly, "Son of a bitch, what the fuck is this thing?"

Lily had closed her eyes, but they flew open at his voice. She turned to see his face tense with fury, the veins nearly popping out of his head and his eyes dark with anger. She lowered her head curiously to see what he was talking about.

She wasn't sure whether she was supposed to crack up or get pissed at the sight before her. Di Mo's hands were tangled in bandages as he hopelessly attempted to wrap the cloth around her wound. It wasn't working — when he circled the bandage around her chest, it slipped, and when he got it on her wound, he couldn't get it around her chest.

So that's what he had been doing then. All the pulling and pushing of her chest area was because he had been trying to adjust the bandage on her and couldn't figure out how to maneuver the cloth around her breasts. She cursed inwardly yet again. Did this man not understand the magic of communication? Instead, he just did as he wished. His bedside manner was a blasphemy; she wondered why he even bothered. She was pretty sure that several years of her life had been knocked off by him.

"Put it through here," she finally muttered, getting impatient with his struggling attempts.

Di Mo frowned and followed her instruction, and miraculously, the bandage wrapped around perfectly and settled where it was supposed to go. He raised an eyebrow. So it seemed that he was really not one to fiddle with this kind of stuff.

The torturous process of Lily's bandage changing was finally over; she couldn't help but let out a huge long sigh of relief. Her body was more sore than it was before she had woken. She leaned back against Di Mo, once against just breathing in an attempt to relax.

Lily lay weakly against Di Mo after he finished with the medicine. He frowned upon seeing the droplets of sweat that clung to her body and hesitated for a moment before deciding to reach for a cotton towel nearby and carefully wipe the perspiration from her skin.

"Get well soon. I have no need for useless servants."

He laid her back down on the bed slowly. Lily rolled her eyes when he wasn't watching. It wasn't as if she asked to get shot, and her recovery was out of her control. The guy was a joke and so egotistical. But she was too lazy to pick a fight with him — the pain had no yet subsided, and she felt exhaustion take over as she closed her eyes and fell asleep.

Di Mo visibly relaxed as soon as her eyes shut and softly padded out of the room, shutting the door quietly behind him. There were still things he needed to do.

~~~

The physician was good at his job, for several days later, Lily found that she had recovered enough to get out of bed and slowly move around.

She was currently ambling along languorously in the villa garden. The lush green vegetation of the grounds lifted her spirits tremendously. It was nice to finally be able to walk around outside after having spent so many days stuck in bed. The garden was noticeably void of pretty flowers and plants; instead, it was covered in trees, but she wasn't going to complain. Any nature was better than none at all.

The grounds were filled with people going in and out — unfamiliar faces, though of course, there were very few faces in the clan that Lily recognized to begin with. Regardless, she kept away from them. It was better to mind her own business and not get into anything here.

Following that line of thought, she suddenly realized that she should be thankful for her timely gunshot wound for giving her the opportunity to avoid traveling with Di Mo and diving headlong into dangerous situations that always seemed to involve raining bullets. Her heart couldn't handle it. But still, such a serious injury seemed too high a price to pay.