I BUMPED INTO A stony-faced Dominic waiting in the elevator bank with his security detail. We’d arrived late last night, and I’d crashed hard in bed. The past two days, I’d barely spoken to Dominic outside of work, but whenever we were near each other, I was always aware of everything about him. His breath, his scent, the cadence of his words, his moods. I wasn’t great at reading men—clearly, since I’d been with a lying bastard for so long without realizing it—but I truly believed Dominic was just as aware of me.
He still scared me, but in a different way now. Now, he made me tremble like I did when a rollercoaster crested the top of the hill. The anticipation both killed me and made me feel alive. I wasn’t in a huge rush to see the other side of the drop, but I wouldn’t slow it down when it happened either.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” I quipped as he steadied me by holding my arms.
His hands lingered. “I’m starting to think maybe you like running into me.”
“It isn’t the worst place to end up.” I pushed back from where I’d braced myself on his chest when he barely reacted to my pitiable attempt at flirtation. “Are you going to the hospital?”
“Yes.” His nod was stiff, and the purple shadows beneath his eyes were almost as dark as the mood he appeared to be in. “Where are you headed so early?”
“My parents live right outside the city, so I’m spending the morning with them. I haven’t seen them since I left my ex, so I’m not sure how things will be.”
“Do you think they’re mad at you for leaving?”
“No.” I shook my head hard enough my curls slapped my cheeks. “No, definitely not. They’re disappointed, but they don’t blame me, given the way it ended.”
He took that in while we rode the elevator down, so I tapped on my phone to order an Uber.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Ordering my ride.” I glanced up from my phone to find Dominic leaning over me. “What are you doing?”
“Thinking you should just ride with me. Depending on where you’re going, my driver can drop you off first or after they drop me off.” He closed his hand over my phone. “I don’t want you riding with a stranger.”
The soft plea behind his order made me want to say yes, so I did.
It turned out my parents’ house was on the way to the hospital, so we drove there first. Dominic spent the ride sitting across from me, staring out his window, one of my feet tucked between his. He hadn’t even looked at me when he’d done it. His large, brown leather boots had closed around my rose gold oxford and kept it there the entire way.
Dominic finally looked my way when the car idled at the curb in front of my parents’ house. If possible, his eyes were even more black than normal.
“What time will you be ready to go back?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but don’t worry about it. I’ll just order an Uber like I’d planned on.” I tried to pull my foot back, but he kept it trapped between his.
“Let me know when you’re ready. I’ll send the car if I’m not finished.”
My first instinct was to argue, but I didn’t. For one, it would be silly to decline an offer like that. Moreover, the tightly held together look Dominic gave me made me want to take it easy on him—to give him a win. He seemed to need it.
“Okay. I’ll call,” I said softly. “You’ll have to let go of my foot, though.”
My request drew his eyes down to our feet. He stared for a moment, then flicked his eyes back to mine. “I like when you wear these shoes.”
“I wear them every day.” He finally released my foot, so I slowly drew it back. “But thank you. I’ll see you later.”
Dominic nodded, then turned back to his window. I watched the car pull away, then faced my parents’ house. I hadn’t grown up in the modest, brick rancher, but they’d lived here long enough that when I visited, it had started to feel like coming home.
As soon as I started up the path to the front door, my mother threw it open and screeched my name. Their cocker spaniel, Gladys, came flying out, her long ears flapping in the wind. This dog barely knew me, but she acted just as excited to see me as my mom, who’d swooped me into a fierce hug. My dad, tall, stoic, and sweet, followed her, wrapping his long arms around me and holding me against his chest.
“My baby girl’s here!” My mom clapped and hopped between two feet while Gladys yipped at her heels.
Dad cupped the back of my head and gave me a long look. “How are you, Claire? You look right as rain.”
“I’m doing pretty great. My job is this big adventure everyday—”
Mom sucked in a deep breath. “I saw the limo.”
That made me laugh. “Yeah, I’ve been taking regular limo rides. It’s pretty crazy how quickly I’ve gotten used to it.”
“I always knew you were meant for bigger things,” she said.
The truth was, my mom had encouraged me to marry Derrick after the first time she met him. That I’d been nineteen and unsure of my own feelings for him hadn’t mattered. She saw herself in me—the plump part of herself to be specific—and thought because I’d landed a catch, I needed to hold on to him since there was no telling if another man would ever be attracted to me. And when Derrick wanted me to be a homemaker instead of making my own way with a career, my mom had encouraged that too, to keep him happy and coming home to me.
The funny thing was, my dad looked at my mom like she hung the moon, even now. And from the way he told it, he—the tall and handsome former jock—had done all the chasing to win her over. My mom hadn’t wanted anything to do with him, but he’d had his sights set on her. He finally got her to go to their high school senior prom with him, and the rest was history.
I couldn’t really explain why she’d been so worried for me. Annaliese said everyone hated at least one part of themselves, and having a fairytale ending didn’t erase that hatred, unfortunately.
That was all the past, though. If my mom said I was meant for bigger things, then I’d trust she meant that. I had no idea what I was meant for, just that it wasn’t being Derrick’s wife, and it certainly wasn’t allowing a man to ever control me.
I spent a couple hours working on a puzzle with my parents, then my mom went into the kitchen to make lunch. When she left the room, my dad grew serious, and his normally mild countenance pinched into something grim.
“Claire, I would like you to reconsider pressing charges against Derrick.”
I sighed. I should have known this would be an issue. “It’s done. If I try now, I’ll get in trouble for making a false statement to the police. As long as he’s out of my life permanently, I’ll be satisfied.”
His long fingers curled into a tight ball, which he slammed against his leg. I jumped on impact. My dad rarely raised his voice, and he never got rough. Seeing the color rise in his face and the fist in his lap made me anxious.
“I would kill him if I could. If you’d walked in looking any worse for wear and didn’t have that beautiful spark in your eyes, I can’t promise I wouldn’t have done something extreme.”
“Dad.” I dropped my forehead to his shoulder. “I’m okay. Please, please don’t worry about me.”
He pressed his lips to my temple and held them there for a few seconds. “My Claire. No woman should ever be hurt by a man, but you—” His voice cracked, and so did my heart. “You have the softest spirit and try to see the best in everyone. For that ghoul—I refuse to call him a man—to take you for granted…well, it makes me spit fire.”
We held each other for a solid minute, neither crying, but oh, I was close. I’d done all my sobbing the night I had to call my parents and tell them what had happened. They were such good parents. Great even. I never wanted them to worry about me, but they had, and they still did.
By the time my mom announced lunch would take place on the patio, we had pulled ourselves together. My phone began to ring on our way out, so I grabbed it and told my dad to go ahead.
“Hey,” I answered.
“Are you ready to go?” Dominic sounded exhausted, even though it had only been a couple hours since I’d seen him.
“I’m not. But you should go back to the hotel and rest. I’ll catch an Uber and meet you at the venue later.”
“No. I said I’d give you a ride, and I will.”
I pressed two fingers between my eyebrows, willing myself not to argue. “Okay. Well, my mom just set up lunch on the back patio. I’ll see if she can wrap my food up and—”
“Take your time, Claire.”
I hung up with a promise to be done in twenty minutes, then rushed outside to join my parents. Lunch was laid out on the center of the table—pasta salad, mini sandwiches, fruit skewers, and baby carrots and celery—and my mom was in the middle of attempting to mime a movie title to my dad.
“‘The Princess Bride!’” I yelled.
She shook her finger at me. “Oh my word, you’re a cheater. You can’t hop in the game right in the middle.”
“Fine, you can have the win.” I grabbed a sandwich and a few carrot sticks, crunching down on one. “Sorry, Dad. Mom wins.”
Dad grumbled about how put upon he was, but I didn’t miss him holding Mom’s hand under the table, or her feeding him a strawberry from her plate.
I was in the middle of miming Blair Witch Project when my mom yelped, “Oh my word!” and my dad stood from his seat. I followed their gazes and gasped to find Dominic entering our yard from the back gate.
He held up both hands. “I’m sorry to interrupt. Claire isn’t answering her phone and I wanted to see if she was ready to leave. I’ll wait in the car.”
“This is Dominic, my boss,” I hurried out to my perplexed parents. My phone was lying facedown on the table. I picked it up, and there were several missed calls. “I’m sorry I didn’t hear it ring. We might have been laughing too loud.”
Dominic’s head cocked slightly. “That’s the finest excuse for missing a call I’ve ever heard.”
Dad peered down at me. “Isn’t he the one on the posters in your room?”
“Yes.” I rubbed my forehead. “Yes, that’s him. I’m touring with him, as you well know.”
Dominic’s soft chuckle brought my eyes to him. Only the corners of his mouth were tipped up, but for him, it was a lot.
My dad crossed the lawn to shake Dominic’s hand. “Have you had lunch? My wife made quite a spread, so we’ve got plenty. I’d rather Claire not rush away, if at all possible.”
Dad and Dominic couldn’t have looked more different. Dad resembled Bill Nye the Science Guy, and Dominic…well, he was Dominic, alarmingly sexy. But it hit me that they were closer in age than Dominic and me. My parents had Annaliese when they were still in college. They were only fifty-one. I’d never found any of my parents’ friends attractive. To me, they were old. But they weren’t rock stars with golden skin, killer tattoos, and eyes that could burn entire countries to the ground.
“Uh…” Dominic’s eyes darted to mine, and I nodded, “if you’re sure it’s okay. I have some time.”
Mom made up a heaping plate of food for Dominic, and Gladys parked herself beside him, nudging his leg with her head until he pet her.
Mom batted her lashes at Dominic. “Do you want to hear embarrassing stories about Claire?”
Dominic wiped his mouth with his stars-and-stripes napkin. “Yes. I’d very much like to hear them. I can’t picture Claire doing anything embarrassing. Although, she seems to be prone to stumbling.”
The wink he gave me was so subtle, I almost missed it. Thank goodness my mom did.
Dad ruffled my hair with his big palm. “She might stumble, but she always catches herself.”
Mom rubbed her hands together. “I have a few up my sleeve. I hope you’re ready.”
She spent the next half hour telling Dominic about the haircuts I gave myself in middle school, and the time I won every single prize at an awards banquet in high school, the people in charge scrambled to invent new awards to give to the other kids. She also described in great detail how many of his posters I’d once had in my room and how often I’d listened to his music.
Each time Dominic cracked a smile, he covered his mouth, but he couldn’t hide the crinkling around his eyes. He seemed especially amused by how big of a fan of his I’d been when I was younger.
The afternoon slipped by quickly, and sooner than I wished, we were saying goodbye to my parents and climbing into the limo. Dominic settled across from me, and when I looked at him, I saw a brute sadness. His day weighed heavy on him. Melancholy filled his limbs.
Why did I want to be the one to lift it? I knew better. A woman couldn’t fix a man, especially not one who didn’t want to be fixed.
“Your embarrassing stories were really just humble brags,” he said out of nowhere.
“Except for the posters.”
He nodded. “Not so much embarrassing, more disconcerting for me considering what I think about doing with you.”
My breath caught in a knot at the back of my throat. “What do you want to do?”
He muffled his chuckle with his hand, facing his window. “I just met your parents. Doesn’t feel right to describe in detail the way I want their daughter’s lips wrapped around my cock.”
“No, that doesn’t seem right.” But wrong was what I wanted. Wrong and dirty were what I longed for. “We won’t tell them.”
That earned me another stifled laugh. “Claire, Claire, what am I going to do with you? I should stay away.” He slapped the leather bench beside him. “Seeing you with your parents, how loved you are, how sweet and perfect…the only thing I’ve got is dirt.”
That Dominic Cantrell, one of the most successful and well-known musicians in the world, would call me perfect made me wonder if I’d entered another dimension. I wasn’t perfect in any way, but maybe I was different enough from the women Dominic had been with that he saw me as something precious and unsullied.
That pissed me off. I wasn’t anybody’s sweet little thing anymore.
“Then stay away. I don’t want to be a source of frustration for you.”
“Claire,” he gritted out, “I’ve never been so fucking frustrated in my life. I have no business looking at you, but you’re all I see.”
“Do you want me to quit?” The very idea twisted in my gut, but I’d do it if I had to. I had started over once, I could do it again.
“No.” He said the word with such vehemence, he nearly shouted. “No, you’re not quitting. This is my problem.”
If he only knew I’d crawl across the floor of the limo and kneel in front of him if he gave me an opening. I’d suck him just like he wanted, and I’d love every second of it.
“Why is it a problem?” I tucked my hands in my lap, my smile demure. Dominic unleashed desires in me that had been completely dormant my entire life. I would never beg, but I would tease until one of us broke.
“Just let it be. I’m on edge already. I can’t do this with you.” He flexed his fingers again and again, then he patted the seat beside him. “Come over here.”
Heat immediately pooled in my belly as I crossed the small space. Dominic tugged me down flush beside him and fisted the back of my hair, tilting my head to the side. He wasn’t gentle, and his beard on my neck was even more rough, but my whimpers weren’t from pain. He buried his face in the crook of my neck and inhaled so deep, I thought he might swallow me up.
“Claire.” He pushed my T-shirt aside and bit into my shoulder. Goose bumps instantly rose on my skin and my thighs clenched tight. One bite, and I was more turned on than I’d been in ages.
He moved his mouth along my shoulder, biting down harder each time, like he was testing me to see if I could handle his need. My fingers threaded in his silky hair, pulling him closer. Dominic’s groan vibrated my skin, sending little electric shocks down my spine.
His teeth ravaged my shoulder and neck, but each time he bit me, he licked away the pain. I’d never been touched this way, and it was a pity. It turned out, this was exactly what I’d been needing.
Dominic drew a line straight up the center of my throat with his warm, wet tongue, and tugged my head so far back, he took my breath away. The rough pads of his fingers caressed the line of my jaw and traced the bite marks he’d undoubtedly left on me. Then he buried his face in my neck again, inhaling my scent like this was his last chance.
His arms circled my middle, nearly pulling me into his lap. He murmured my name each time he kissed and bit me. My underwear was soaked, and I worried my jeans would leave a damp spot on the seat. He had me on edge, and he hadn’t even kissed my lips.
Our car came to a rolling stop, and only then did Dominic pull away. His eyes were glazed and unfocused, but his arms remained banded around me.
“Jesus, Claire.”
That made me laugh and scratch my nails along the side of his head. “I think that was all you.”
He captured my hand from his hair and gently bit the inside of my wrist, then pressed a kiss there. “You see what you do to me?” His head fell back on the seat, arms loosening. “I’m gonna need a minute or two before I get out of the car. You need to go.”
“I can wait with you.”
He huffed a laugh, slinging his forearm over his eyes. “Do you think my dick’s going to go down if you’re sitting beside me, smelling as good as you do right now? Fuck, Claire, I can smell how wet you are.”
I didn’t know whether to be flattered or deeply ashamed. Maybe both. I scooted away, but Dominic caught my hand, stopping me.
“I want you to go to your room and finish yourself. Then text me how long it took.”
I nodded once. “Okay. I will.”
He sighed, his head falling back again. “Good girl.”
I made him wait. Exactly one hour after I left the car, I texted him two words:
Three minutes.
He texted me back immediately:
Two.
