“See? I told you. No one out here.”
Dominic held the pool gate open for me to walk through, tossing watchful glances up and down the walkway. “All that does is remind me we shouldn’t be out here either.”
“Would you relax?” I saddled up next to one of the pool chairs, kicking off my flip flops. “They even left the gate unlocked. They’re basically inviting people in.”
Dominic cut me a hard look over his shoulder.
“Your reasoning is impressive.”
I beamed, pushing my posture straight. “Thank you.”
His eyes rolled shut, a slight tug on his full mouth. He let the gate close behind him, easing it shut so it didn’t make a sound. I puffed a laugh, shrugging off the sleeping shorts Dominic made me put on for the walk down here.
He strode over, glints from the gently lapping pool water casting white streaks over his shadowed face as he watched me kick out of the shorts. I loved that he didn’t hide the way he was staring at me, soaking up every inch of me with eyes so intense, they burned brighter than any star above us.
He didn’t have to hide his hunger, his want, his infatuation with my body. Tonight, it was all his, and he knew it.
Silver eyes traveled up to mine, the backs of his jaw pulsing once.
I pointed my chin in his direction, speaking low. “You next.”
Fixed on me, Dominic began removing his shoes—his godforsaken wingtip shoes because that’s all he had. Next went his undershirt, riding over smooth slabs of muscle up and up until he pulled it over his head, gaze still trapped on me.
His already dark hair appeared darker against the night, nearly onyx as it struggled to stay in place and perfect. He folded his shirt neatly, laying it on a chair next to him. The way the ropes of muscles moved as he did was fucking mesmerizing, especially in the dancing light from the pool.
“What are you thinking?”
The gruff of his voice zapped my focus back to his face, a flash of heat running down the length of me. I swallowed, clearing my throat.
“That we should get in the water.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because if I don’t, I might actually combust,” I admitted, tonguing the corner of my mouth.
His sharp eyes tracked the movement, smoldering dangerously. He nodded, and I hightailed it to the steps leading into the pool, not waiting a moment longer before sinking into it. Every fire-hot patch of skin sizzled and steamed, cooling off as I drowned myself up to the shoulders in the cool water.
My neck loosened, a sigh leaving my lips as I closed my eyes. Gentle licks of water brushed against my back as Dominic entered the pool behind me, silent and an undeniable presence. In my heart of hearts, I believed the water moved for him unlike it did for anyone else. I believe the breeze rolled in softly to match his calm, and even the moon shone brighter and bigger to give him the perfect spotlight.
I turned around to face him, water sloshing over my waist. He was waiting for me, beautiful in a way I couldn’t describe. Beautiful in a way that didn’t have words. His beauty struck thought from my brain and air from my lungs, leaving me exposed and unable to tell him just how much I liked that he was here.
Unable to string the letters together to tell him how much that terrified me.
Somehow, he seemed to know.
“Come here.”
I was moving before he finished the sentence, cutting through the water up to him. I threw my arms around his neck and pulled my legs up around his waist like I was climbing him. A quiet laugh caught between the wind and splashing water, peeking an easy smile on his lips. Warm hands cupped beneath my thighs, helping secure me in place as I wrapped myself around him, molding our wet bodies together in every place possible.
Dominic was smiling in every way a person could. “Hi.”
“Hi,” I breathed back.
Lapping water filled the silence as he scanned across my face.
“How was your birthday?”
Despite the potential kidnappers? “Considering I usually try to skip out on my birthday entirely, I’d say this one wasn’t so bad.”
Dominic’s thick brows pinched. “You don’t like birthdays?”
“I like birthdays. Just not mine.”
“Any reason?”
You could say so.
Usually, I would tell a lie because I didn’t like talking about it. It was a shitty day that started off a shitty year that produced a shitty life. That day was at the center of everything fucked up with me. With Dominic though, lying had never gotten me anywhere and maybe… maybe I didn’t hate the idea of telling him.
Maybe I wanted him to know because I knew he’d care.
We were still pretending after all. Tomorrow when I woke up, I could pretend like I hadn’t opened up to him because I wanted to. I may have been a shit liar to others, but I was a fucking wizard at lying to myself. I could make myself believe anything if I tried hard enough.
Dominic gave an affectionate squeeze around my waist and pushed the truth right out.
“My eighteenth birthday is when my dad walked out on us.”
I held my breath. Over his face, I waited and watched the outrage take hold, stringing through his thickly shaped brows and seeping into the divots of his quickly souring stare. Even his skin beneath mine scorched hotter, boiling the water around us.
“In his defense, I think he forgot it was my birthday, and he left at like, three in the morning the day of, so…” I trailed off, feeling awkward and naked, never a good combination of things to be.
Dominic hadn’t said a word, instead taking on that favored expression of his that made his thoughts hieroglyphic.
“You’re kinda wondering what you got yourself into, aren’t you?” I asked, pushing out a weak laugh.
The pathetic noise seemed to jostle him out of his own head. He blinked, taking his stare up to my forehead, moving it down and around my entire face in a sweeping caress. Eventually, he centered back on my eyes, wearing a sadness woven just for me.
“No. I just don’t know how anyone could leave you.”
My heart or the lightning—or both—zapped.
“It’s pretty easy.” I curved my fingers over some flyaways tickling my ear. “Once you get to know me.”
“I know you pretty well, and I don’t want to leave you.”
I smiled a sad smile. “Give it time.”
Everyone left everyone eventually, one way or another.
My dad left on my birthday. My mom disappeared into herself shortly after. My grandparents already dead at that point, there was no one left to leave. It was just me and Charlotte. Aside from the exception of Layla, I was a person people left. It was something about me. The ugly in me made them do it, I guess.
Lucky people were loved in spite of their ugliness.
No one wanted to stick around me long enough to love me in spite of mine.
That was okay, though. I didn’t need them to love me. I only needed my baby sister, and that’s why Dominic Reed was such a complication.
Especially when he said things like, “Time is one thing I’m sure will only make me more addicted to you, Ms. Sanders.”
My lips stretched to a closed smile, and I looked down between us. “It’s funny that you use the word ‘addicted’.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what I call what we have in my head. I call it our Heroin Chemistry.”
The silence that followed stretched out like a ripple.
“That sounds intense.”
I flashed my eyes up, catching him with unflinching focus. “Because it is. Isn’t it?”
Almost like he didn’t want to, he nodded—a rigid thing of uneasy acknowledgement. I was glad to see he was unsettled by it, or at least by the potency of its name. Its title was a deadly thing.
“Is that why you panic around me?” he asked, voice soft like the water. “Because of this heroin chemistry?”
A fist clenched in my chest, gripping all my air tight.
“You said we wouldn’t talk about it on my birthday.”
Out of the pool, Dominic raised his arm. His eyes fell to the black watch fit around his wrist, bright blue numbers lighting it up, and he showed it to me.
“Your birthday ended twelve minutes ago.”
My mouth fell open at it, an indignant grumble spilling out. “Stupid technicality.”
Dominic’s hand dipped back below the surface, grabbing around my upper thigh. Then, we were moving, walking back through the water to the edge of the pool. I let him move me where he wanted me, lifting me up and setting me on the pool’s lip, my butt and legs still in the water and Dominic still between them.
He’d given me physical leverage over him, my head slightly above his and him staring up at me, the high slant of his cheeks donning shiny droplets and his eyes looking like rain. Sorrowed and serious, gloom swelling his pupils.
“When we leave here tomorrow, I’ll be around you to protect you. It could be weeks, it could be longer. How are you going to feel having me around that much?”
“Depends. Can we go at each other like two teens who just discovered 3rd base?”
While the edge of his mouth curled up, it didn’t reach his eyes.
“I’m serious.” My kittenish smile fell, drowning in the water below. “Tell me what happens tomorrow when we’re done pretending nothing’s wrong.”
A shaking breath packed my lungs, and I dropped his intense stare. Come tomorrow morning, the clock was up on this act that I’d been playing more than him. All he had to do was pretend I wasn’t in danger—which he failed—and not talk about my panic—which he failed.
I was way more willing to play the part of careless and willfully ignorant. Sign me up for that all day long. Ignoring whatever danger Dominic thought I was in was easy peasy. Ignoring that how I felt about him crumbled my entire foundation was the real trick, but I was loving pretending.
I loved kissing him when I felt like it. I loved holding him and him holding me without fear of being caught. I loved pretending like, for just a day, I was allowed to drown in him, and it was okay if I never came back up for air.
For today, the sickness hadn’t been deadly. It had been like flying.
Now, Dominic was clipping my wings and letting me crash back down to reality.
The truth rammed around my ribcage, letting me experience the pain of it from the inside before I let it out. Guilt, even though I didn’t have a reason to be guilty, muted my voice to a murmur.
“The only thing that’s changed since yesterday is your marriage ending.”
Wind rustled bushes and swayed trees around us, whistling a soft note for the pause between us to ride along. Dominic ended it, breaking the softness with his hard-edged voice.
“You still don’t want me?”
My teeth clenched at his words, grinding as I turned my head away. Steam could have come out of my nose I was suddenly so hot and so angry. I hated that he was bringing that up. I hated that I said it. I hated that by the timbre of his voice, he knew it wasn’t really true.
So much hate and nowhere for it to go.
“Kat, look at me.”
“What?” I snapped, a one word dagger. He searched back and forth between my slitted eyes.
“Why did you get so upset just now?”
My lip curled back. “Because you’re bringing up things I don’t want to talk about.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m childish and immature and petty.”
He didn’t buy it for a second. “You and I both know that’s not true or why.”
“Then why did you ask me?”
“Because I wanted you to say it.”
“Say what?”
He hesitated for only one second, and that silent second only built the anticipation higher. Made it and me breakable.
“You’re scared of your feelings for me,” he stated boldly.
And I was right. It did break me.
Panic felt like a balloon expanding inside of me, fast and squishing between every organ. It was more than uncomfortable, more than intrusive, and I shifted myself where I was sitting as if I was about to bolt. The only thing keeping me there was how Dominic had started rubbing his hands up and down the tops of my thighs in purposeful, steady movements.
He was smoothing down the razored edges of my panic one stroke at a time, a firm look in his eyes saying he knew what he was doing. He was pushing me and pacifying me at the same time, dropping me in the middle of the ocean but keeping my head above water so I could breathe and talk and survive with him.
“You like me, and you don’t want to. You care about me, and you don’t want to. You think about me as much as I think about you, and you wished you didn’t.”
An audible breath rattled up my chest. My stomach cramped and I grabbed at where it hurt, fisting my skin like I could tear it off and pull out what hurt.
Our eyes still locked, Dominic cupped a hand over mine, carefully easing my fingers back and away, replacing my hand with his, flattening it over my stomach. He pressed, but not hard. Just enough to put some pressure behind the heat he was delivering with his touch, relieving some of the ache like he was slowly burning it out of me.
“The only thing I don’t know is why you’re so afraid of it all.”
“Didn’t you hear the story?” I rasped. “Daddy issues.”
The gray of his irises turned thoughtful. Weighty.
“Do you think I’ll leave you?”
Yes, but that wasn’t it. He’d leave me, and he’d take my heart with him and away from Charlotte who needed it more than either of us. She already had a heartless mother. I couldn’t hollow out my chest and become another zombie parent to her.
“I think you’ll ruin me like I ruined you.” I held his eye, stomach fluttering as I told him, “Except I don’t want to be ruined.”
I was already damaged goods.
Plenty damaged and plenty brittle, despite the hardened face I put on. A strike from Dominic would do me in for good. He had that much power in his potential to love me.
For the first time since he set me up on the pool ledge, he looked away. His focus centered on my chin instead, spots of somber consideration fading in and out over his face. Muscles in my hand twitched to reach out and touch him, run my fingers through his thick hair and stroke the stubbled line of his jaw.
I kept my hand where it was.
“So what do you want from us?” he questioned after a moment, setting his attention back on me.
Truthfully?
I wanted to be selfish with him. I wanted to kiss him whenever I wanted. I wanted to always be touching him in any small or big way I could. I wanted to always be there when he laughed because it was such a fucking blessed sound, and I loved watching his dimples sink into existence.
I wanted to soar with him and be with him like there was nothing to be afraid of.
That was my truth that I’d never admit out loud because my reality was deafening in comparison. My sick heart wanted those things, but my brain knew I couldn’t have them. I had every potential inside of me to be weak like my mother, and it was wrong to let Dominic think it was a weakness I’d ever give into.
“I don’t wanna lead you on and get your expectations high.” Or up at all.
His face fell, but only slightly.
“What if we go slow?” he countered, treating me so carefully.
I pushed a pathetic laugh. “Well, you’re still married so I think we’d have to.”
At that, something eased over his expression, molding it indecipherably. He took his stare out to the water, breathing deeply and evenly. I stayed still, studying his strong profile as I felt his hand over my stomach lose tension, and then I lost it completely when he took it to the side of me, resting it on the ledge.
I’d never felt colder than I did in that empty spot where his hand no longer was.
With his gaze still cast off, he started talking.
“Ryan interrogated me on the way here about you. I think it was half him trying to keep me from spiraling out, half him wanting gossip. He’s—” Dominic paused in thought, the end of his mouth twitching up as he shot me an arched glance. “Layla’s going to have her hands full is all I’ll say.”
I breathed a soft laugh, and so did he. He kept his gaze to the side, watching the water like I caught him watching me so many times before—quietly considering and lost in his own head of intricate thoughts.
“But I… wasn’t hiding my worry over you well, and I knew that,” he continued. “So he had questions, and I told him about the divorce and that you were special to me.”
Special to me.
Those words warmed my chest like a match lit right beneath my heart. That same flame caught my heart on fire and consumed it in the mouth of the flame, foreshadowing the disappearance of my heart altogether to this man.
“He asked me what was going on between us, and I didn’t have an answer.”
Finally, he turned those heavy-hitting eyes back to me, serving me a blow that put the first crack in my resolve tonight.
“I don’t have any interest pretending I don’t want to see where this can go with you. Any thought that I could stopped existing the moment I realized you were in danger, and I couldn’t breathe again until I saw you. The thought of anyone taking you away from me hurts enough to know that this isn’t fleeting and that I want you in my life.”
His words said he wanted me in his life.
The way he was staring at me said he needed me in it.
My brain went all topsy-turvy and my heart started squeezing, suffocating on all the sickness. “You’re just getting out of a marriage. Shouldn’t you want to pump the breaks a little before flinging yourself into anything stupid?”
And we both knew this would be stupid. He was older and a father. I was younger and broken in more ways than one. Knowing him might have put my life in real danger and knowing me turned his upside down in less than three months.
He didn’t seem to care.
“Like I said, we can go slow.”
My cheeks barely moved as I breathed a laugh, confounded and overwhelmed. “This doesn’t sound like you’re giving me much of a choice.”
Dominic thought that over for a minute, the ends of his eyes turning up.
“You’re right. I’m not. I’m forcing you to date me and give this a shot.” He looked rather proud of himself. Proud and smug and sexy as fuck.
Why did he have to be so hot?
“Somehow I don’t think dating should be at the top of either of our lists right now.”
A peculiar glint developed in his eyes, gathering slowly as his hands moved next to me. They came back to my thighs, sliding deliberately up to grab my hips.
“Maybe not,” he agreed. A low, throaty agreement.
Excited air hitched in my throat, realizing that curious glint in him was a mischievous one as he gripped my body, dragging me back down into the pool until my legs crossed behind his back. The wet heat of our bodies met beneath the water, desire pulsing one goddamn blinding flash between us as he rumbled against my lips.
“But I don’t want to wait to have you, Ms. Sanders.”
Then he claimed me like we both knew he could.
He took ownership of my mouth with a kiss so hot, the water threatened to evaporate around us. I melted—muscles, defenses, resolve, all of it. It all melted into him until I was as pliant as the water, moving and whimpering and moaning whenever he told me to.
Dominic overpowered everything about me until I was basic instinct and nothing else, clawing at his back to get closer. He pressed all of me into the pool wall, my back grazing against the cement as he folded me against it with his powerful body like I was nothing more than paper.
An untamed moan tore up my chest as greedy hands gripped the underneath of my thighs, his thumbs coasting near the strap of black fabric between my legs. I bucked against him, wanting more than I knew he’d give me.
This was sexual manipulation at its finest, knowing I lost all my sensibilities whenever he touched me, and also knowing he wouldn’t take it farther than this kiss.
“Maybe—” I tried to speak, but he kissed over it, pouring all of himself into that kiss until I was drowning. God, it was like being crashed in waves over and over and over, barely able to catch my breath before being sunk under again.
I broke away, throwing my head back, gasping for air and trying to save myself.
“Maybe we do no strings attached,” I panted, his lips latching onto the arch of my neck. He growled into me, the noise reverberating all the way down between my legs, my core clenching.
“We can go into this with no expectations or labels or anything.”
I gasped a sharp cry, his teeth sinking in above my collarbone and making my pussy fucking weep. I clung to him, knowing his bite was a discipline for the suggestion, but it was the only way I’d agree to this.
If I set his hopes low now, the crash would be easier later on when I let them down.
If we kept it strictly physical and agreed to something casual, maybe I could survive him. I’d be playing with something deadly and addictive, but if we shook hands on keeping this light and fun, I could bow out before it ever became anything else.
We were gonna be around each other a lot until this whole kidnapping thing blew over, and we’d already proven we couldn’t keep our hands to ourselves. Now that he was getting a divorce, why not have a little fun until the papers were signed?
Then we could fuck each other to our hearts content and part ways not having to wonder what we were missing. We’d know, and we’d get our fill of each other and move on.
I quite liked this new plan. I liked it a whole lot.
Dominic pulled himself away from my neck, fixing me with eyes both speculative and intense.
“If I agree, will that help you not panic around me?”
I nodded.
He searched my face, taking notes in his head that I had no privilege to. I hated how he could do that, turn the light to his thoughts on and off whenever he wanted. I always wanted to know what he was thinking.
“All right.” The backs of his jaw pulsed once. He nodded stiffly. “For now.”
For now was all that would ever matter.
I grinned, pulling him back down to seal our dirty deal with a kiss. Dominic had just deepened it when a voice called out awkwardly.
A voice that did not belong to either of us.
“Hey, you two?”
Dominic ripped our lips apart, a scathing crimson finding the rise of his cheeks as his eyes jumped to the new guy behind us.
“The pool is closed so…” The voice trailed off, and I sputtered a laugh. Grabbing the back of Dominic’s head, I hid his face in the crook of my neck with a roll of my eyes and turned my face to our cockblock party ruiner.
“We’ll get out. Thanks.” And I waved the tall, lanky janitor away, his shoulders slouching and cheeks pinked as he went.
Laughter still bubbling in my chest, I twisted back to Dominic, the flaming humiliation contained beneath his skin enough to turn the pool into a hot tub. I nudged him out of hiding with my shoulder. A streamlined exhale blew through his nose as he raised his head up, expression flat and grim.
“This is why people shouldn’t break rules,” he grumbled.
I threw my head back, the echo of amusement carrying off into the night. My stare found his, the tips of my fingers pushing back a rogue strand of his dark hair so it looked perfect like he would want.
With a smile on my face, I mused, “That was adorable.”
He groaned, pulling me in tight. There was just the faintest curve to his mouth.
“Something tells me you’ll be the death of me, Ms. Sanders.”
I sighed a happy sigh, ghosting my lips over his.
“And what a sweet death it will be.”
