"It's better if I check your wound though." He reminded her softly.
Marinette thought her cheeks were going to boil from the heat, but she nodded slightly.
To her horror, the man reached for her left foot – he even knew which one to look at – and lifted it up, placing it on his knee. He carefully took off Marinette's shoe and examined her skin, on which dropsy swelled in two places, and in one the skin even burst.
The stranger's lips were pressed together tightly, and Marinette could tell by the tense skin on his forehead that he was frowning behind his mask.
"We have to take care of this first." He said authoritatively. "Otherwise, soon you won't be able to walk, and the evening is just beginning."
"I don't think there are any open pharmacies around…" She muttered distractively.
"I might have a solution for that." The man said as he returned her shoe to its place.
Marinette gasped as the shoe touched the injured skin: until he took it off, the girl had no idea how much this wound hurt – mostly distracted by a walk through Venice with a handsome stranger.
"W-what solution?" She asked, again embarrassed at how he seemed to be able to take care of her every problem.
It would be funny if he came to Paris and took care of Shadow Moth as well, – Marinette thought with a sigh.
Thinking of which…
It was very fortunate that Alix couldn't go to Italy with them and Marinette could leave Kaalki with her in case of Akuma. Having both miraculous – for time and space travel – her friend will be able to find Marinette even without a phone, if necessary.
"We could…" The young man started as the gondola was already sailing towards the pier and Marinette saw that they were approaching Piazza San Marco, recognizing the outlines of some buildings from the photo she saw earlier, when a couple of masked people stood out from the crowd, waving their hands.
"Mari!" Alya yelled as she jumped up and down, and Nino barely kept her from falling into the water.
"Friends of yours?" The stranger asked her as he turned to Marinette with a serious expression and finally lowered her leg from his knee.
"Yes…" the girl admitted with a sigh, somehow upset that her classmates were found so quickly.
The man turned to the gondolier and said something in Italian again, and the boatman nodded back, smiling broadly.
The gondola moored to the street, along which, making their way through the crowd, Alya and Nino in masks were already hurrying.
Her stranger stood up, jumped out of the boat and offered his hand to Marinette, supporting her weight not formally, but with the clear expectation of taking some of the load off her injured leg. Marinette felt her cheeks continue to burn from his attentiveness.
How much paint was still in her and when will it end?!.
"Where have you gone, girl? We were all looking for you!" Alya attacked her with an interrogation. "We decided that you would come here too, and the others are now spread out across the square, continuing to look for you!" She announced excitedly.
"Yes... Thank you... We uhh…" She cast a quick glance at her companion, who was still holding her hand, as if forgetting to let go of it, but his attentive, intense gaze was directed at Alya.
"Can I have your phone number?" He asked the journalist, just as directly and unceremoniously as he had asked about Marinette's injured leg before.
Both girls turned to him in surprise.
"Dude!" Nino was outraged. "I'm standing right here!" He grumbled.
"It's ok babe!" It was Alya who calmed him down, although she was obviously a little stunned too. "I can handle this." She assured, returning to the man holding her friend's hand.
To be honest, Marinette no longer understood what was happening. Did he just ask for her friend's number? Maybe she misread all the signs that he somehow liked her back?
Or wait!
Marinette doesn't have a phone! Maybe he wants to contact her through her friends, because he helped her find them as promised and now he will go about his business and leave her…
The last thought made her very sad and Marinette realized that she wasn't ready to part with her beautiful stranger, even if he may have called Alya one day to find her...
"You're not my type, blondy!" Alya reported playfully, and Marinette woke up from her thoughts and turned to her stranger, hoping that he wouldn't be offended and would still want to take Alya's number to find Marinette...
"You're not mine either, obviously." He answered in a serious voice and briefly glanced at Marinette's hand in his before returning to Alya. "But your friend lost her phone and we'll have to find you somehow." He explained.
"Haven't you already found us?" Alya asked in confusion, voicing the question that had arisen in Marinette's head as well.
"No." He answered decisively. "She hurt her foot, and first we'll go get a first aid kit and take care of the wound – my hotel is just across the channel, then we'll find you."
Alya looked at Marinette, then at their clasped hands as if noticing it for the first time, then back at him.
"And who appointed you as her bodyguard?" She asked suspiciously.
"I did." He answered confidently and slightly defiantly. "Do you have any problems with that?"
Marinette convulsively digested what was happening.
He spoke so confidently and unequivocally, without even asking her, as if the matter had been settled. This should have made her resent, but Marinette felt warm in her chest instead. For once, she didn't need to play the role of a leader in a difficult situation and make decisions...
In addition, he had already said in the gondola that he would take care of her wound, they simply didn't have time to agree on how. Apparently he meant his hotel, – now it would take who knows how long to get to her own hotel for that, and through all this crowd. And it was painful for her to even stand on her worn foot...
Alya looked at him appraisingly, then at her friend, who stood silently, blinking in embarrassment, then back at the masked man.
"Looks like sunshine-boy's got a competition." She said with an unceremonious smirk, and reached out for his phone.
The man handed her his phone and Alya dialed her number and pressed call. Her phone rang and with a pleased smirk, she returned the phone to its owner.
"Perfect." He said. "I'll send a text with the name of my hotel and my room number so that none of your apparently large company is worried that you let your friend go with a stranger."
"That's very discreet of you." Alya nodded, looking at him with respect.
But the man seemed to have lost all interest in the journalist. He turned to Marinette and lightly squeezed her hand in his, drawing her attention.
"Can you walk?" He asked in a much softer voice than the one he used to speak to her friend.
Marinette nodded, afraid to say anything so as not to betray her excitement: an unfamiliar handsome man was going to take her to his hotel to treat her foot after he saved her from the crowd, took her on a gondola ride through evening Venice, found her friends and made sure they won't get lost again…
She couldn't remember the last time she felt safer than when she was lost in this city...
Marinette took a small step to demonstrate her ability to walk, but the edge of the shoe dug into her wound and she hissed in pain, reflexively leaning more than she intended on his arm.
"I see." The stranger spoke briefly, and before Marinette realized what he was about to do, he picked her up and carried her back to the gondola, which for some reason was still waiting for them.
Did he know what was gonna happen? Was he going to take her to the hotel anyway? Did he stop here just because her friends saw them?
"Looks like the Sunshine-boy lost the competition even before he knew he was in it…" Marinette heard Alya's words after them.
The hotel was really very close to the square and looked very expensive.
But Marinette wasn't at all embarrassed by this, but by the fact that a beautiful stranger carried her there in his arms, throwing a couple of phrases to the administrator at the counter and, apparently, going to his room.
Marinette held on to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and trying not to breathe, because the smell of his closeness intoxicated her again and the feeling of his strong body holding her tightly as if she weighed nothing already completely deprived her of peace ...
She probably shouldn't have reacted to him like that.
As Ladybug, she constantly had to be in close contact with her partner in combat when one of them saved the other, so the close proximity to a strong man wasn't alien to her. But maybe because she only saw Chat Noir as a friend, or because it was in the process of fulfilling their obligations, this man's closeness seemed completely different.
It was intimate, though not impudent, as if he, too, keenly felt Marinette's closeness but didn't express it so as not to embarrass her. He held her without trying to reduce the area of their contact, lowering it to the necessary minimum – as one would expect from a gentleman who simply considered it his duty to take care of her, but for whom her proximity wasn't pleasant.
His touches weren't intrusive. It was as if he took every opportunity to touch her, openly demonstrating her attraction to him, but at the same time remaining within the bounds of politeness, without violating the boundaries of decency, making the touch too frank and awkward.
To be honest, intoxicated by his scent, Marinette closed her eyes, and saw in her consciousness completely different touches that her brain contemplated...
She wanted to run her hand over his strong arms, examining his muscles, squeezing them, testing just how hard they are. Reach for his neck and inhale his scent deeply to see if it could intoxicate her to such an extent that she completely loses her head and forgets decorum...
The door slammed shut and Marinette opened her eyes abruptly, realizing that they were in a hotel room and she didn't even notice how they got here.
The man brought her to the window and lowered her into a small chair, made in the old style – like all the furniture in the spacious room where they found themselves.
From the window, Marinette could see St Mark's Basilica, but she barely glanced there, shifting her gaze to her... still a stranger?
"The first-aid kit will be brought soon." He said as he held out another chair for her injured leg to rest on. "Do you want anything? Maybe water or tea?"
"N-no... t-thank you…" Marinette muttered, only now realizing the absurdity of the situation.
She had already found her friends, but instead of staying with them, she let a stranger take care of her, and even bring her to his hotel room...
He probably said 'return' before because his hotel was so close to the square, she thought. But the situation still seemed strange, and only when she was away from the crowd, alone with him, did Marinette finally realize that all this time she acted intuitively, without thinking about how it could look from the outside.
"Why…" She began, feeling a new wave of heat on her face. "Why are you taking care of me?" She managed. "Surely my phone cost less than all these troubles."
The man stared at her for a moment, then sighed and squatted down, bringing his face up to hers.
"I don't know." He confessed, looking into her eyes. "I usually don't care about people so much, let alone strangers." He glanced at her masked face. "But there's something about you…" He swallowed.
His hand reached up and softly cupped the curve of Marinette's face, lifting it slightly towards him. His thumb traced her lower lip and stopped at the middle of it, then pressed down on it, opening her mouth slightly, and Marinette exhaled a shuddering breath.
A shiver ran through her body at his touch, and her chest heaved in anticipation of more.
The man looked at her lip, still pressed down by his finger, and his mouth reflexively opened too. He licked his lips and swallowed, and Marinette felt her eyes close and her lips twitch, wanting to be the next thing that tongue touched.
"You remind me of someone I've met before." Marinette heard his soft voice, and before she could comprehend his words and become indignant, there was a knock on the door.
Marinette opened her eyes abruptly, but the feeling of his touch was already gone from her face, as was the man himself, already heading for the door to open it.
The maid brought a first aid kit, and as he politely said goodbye to her, Marinette convulsively digested what she had heard.
Did he just say she reminded him of someone else?!
What an idiot she was!
Of course, it was a huge stupidity to assume that a beautiful stranger would take care of her just like that, because he fell in love with her at first sight even in a mask or something like that!
Of course she reminded him of someone else! Someone he was probably really in love with, and Marinette herself had nothing to do with it!
Reality hit her with such force that she even shook with anger. But he had nothing to do with it, of course. He even openly told her that she reminds him of someone...
Marinette was angry only at herself for believing in a fairy tale that doesn't exist!..
Meanwhile, the man returned with a first aid kit, placed it on a chair next to Marinette's foot, and bent down to remove her shoe.
"Don't!" Marinette exclaimed as she took her leg away from him.
During the time they spent together, they seemed to be in constant physical contact, and often quite close, so that her reaction seemed inappropriate even to her, because letting him patch her wounds at this point felt much more natural.
"I... uhh…" Marinette was embarrassed by her own exclamation. "I can do it by myself."
The man didn't seem taken aback by her words. He calmly turned to her and carefully looked into her face.
"Is it because of what I said?" He asked in a flat voice, embarrassing her even more.
Was it not customary in society to pretend that nothing was happening so as not to embarrass anyone? Why ask such direct questions to which she was not prepared to give direct answers?! because it would mean admitting that she believed in a romantic fairy tale and managed to get carried away by it, invented a bunch of all sorts of stupid things for herself, and...
"No... I just... you've already done so much for me... and I…" Marinette mumbled, averting her eyes.
The man squatted down next to her again and took her hand.
"Listen," He started. "I can be too direct and people usually don't like it." He said evenly, continuing to stare into her eyes. "But in my opinion it makes life easier."
Marinette didn't take her hand away from him, even though she knew she should have. His touch brought her back to the sense of a fairy tale despite the painful epiphany she had just experienced.
"Just because you remind me of someone else doesn't mean that the tension between us is caused by that fact, or that it matters at all."
Her cheeks instantly flushed again.
'Oh my God,' Marinette thought, 'Is he really going to talk about this directly as well?
"Perhaps it drew my attention to you," The man continued. "And even if so, it's probably only because of the mask, and when you take it off, this impression will disappear altogether." He squeezed her hand slightly. "But now I just don't want to leave you, and this has nothing to do with what initially attracted me to you."
Marinette looked at him, slowly digesting his words.
"Because of the mask?" For some reason, this was what got her attention the most out of everything he said. "Do I... remind you of someone because of the mask?"
"It's uh... it's red, and she also wears a red mask." He confessed. "The color of your eyes and your hairstyle, and you even from Paris…" He sighed. "But like I said, I don't think that my obsessive desire to claim your lips and never leave them is due to this resemblance. It's just…"
He didn't have time to finish, because Marinette grabbed his face with both hands, pulled him sharply to her and smashed their lips together.
Her mind probably snapped at that part where she reminded him of Ladybug, but after the last phrase, she completely lost her head...
Because it seemed to her that she wanted to kiss him for an eternity, and the fact that she reminded him only of herself only brought the fairy tale back into place. And the frankness with which he told her about what he felt just completely struck her.
The man froze only for a moment, probably from surprise, but the next second he was already kissing her eagerly in return.
True to his words, he clung to her lips, claiming them with such determination as if he wanted to enslave every bit of them to his power while he had the opportunity, and Marinette felt she never wanted him to stop…
His palm rested on the back of her neck, guiding her head as his tongue entered her mouth, greedily probing its contents with a commanding motion that Marinette longed to obey, allowing him to dominate her...
She couldn't breathe anymore, but the choice between pulling away from his kiss or suffocating didn't seem as obvious as it should have been, because the unbridled passion that suddenly took possession of her was something completely new, completely unfamiliar to this day, and seemed like something to die for.