Yes,Meowwas a dog; her name had come compliments of Milo, who, from what I had come to learn, should never be trusted to name animals.
My bladder could not be put off any longer, and I had the unenviable task of trying to extract myself from a certain someone’s death grip without waking him up. Not that I was worried about actually waking him up, Dom slept like the dead. He’d always teased me that I slept lightly, but had stopped for atime after I told him I’d once lived under a death threat from a rather pissed-off group of smugglers in Canada, and I had never slept deeply again.
No, the real threat was waking him up just enough that his sleepy brain realized I was trying to get away. Which always meant his idiot unconscious self would draw me back, and I’d end up trapped until I could get him awake enough to let me go. It was a careful procedure, made all the trickier by the fact that Meow was now aware I was awake, and her tail was thumping against the bed with a steady, unwavering beat.
“Shh,” I told her as I managed to slip free, moving quickly to get away before he lashed out and got hold of me. I stopped at the end of the bed and scratched the base of her stumpy ear. “Good morning to you too. Way to almost get me caught.”
My bladder was letting me know that if I didn’t make it to the bathroom, it would still empty itself. I didn’t feel like pissing the bed, so I got up, padding across the cool floor to the bathroom, partially closing the door behind me. After washing my hands, I walked into the kitchen and started the coffee machine, but left the rest of my coffee-making gadgets, as Dom liked to call them, in the cabinet. Some mornings, I enjoyed the extra steps and definitely enjoyed the smoother, richer flavor from putting in the extra work, but not this morning.
I did pluck a chocolate from the sealed container I kept on the counter. I might not be rolling in the money I once had, but that didn’t mean I didn’t still enjoy my creature comforts. It wasn’t like I had burned through all my money five years ago, just most of it, but there had still been enough left after I’d sold all my holdings and most of my things in Seattle that I had plenty to live off so long as I didn’t go crazy. Sometimes I realized I was still spending money that wasn’t ‘clean,’ and that gnawed at me. Other times, I reminded myself that it was from my old life, and I wasn’t that person anymore.
And as time went on, I actually believed that.
I poured the small coffee into my cup and started another one, knowing the smell would drift into the bedroom and was the only thing that could reliably wake Dom up without needing a three-man team, a dozen alarms, and a backup glass of ice water. I stepped outside, wrinkling my nose at the chill morning air that still lingered despite June being right around the corner. Sighing, I slid into a pair of slippers but left the jacket hanging next to the door as I stepped out onto the back deck and sat in one of the chairs.
It was funny how the last house I bought for myself turned out to be the one I fell in love with. It didn’t hurt that Dom had wasted next to no time moving in with me, and while I’d teased him about inviting himself, I’d welcomed his presence. We had spent fifteen years apart, and if he wanted to skip the dating and make up for lost time by jumping into living together, I wasn’t going to argue. The closer he was to me, the better, as far as I was concerned.
Although the sun had risen enough to peak through the tree tops and pierce my eye, it hadn’t gotten high enough to warm the forest floor. Mist curled and coiled lazily around the base of the trees, and I watched a squirrel run around.
I sat there in the sort of quiet the middle of nowhere brought. I could hear the waves not too far from the house, and the wind rattling the tops of the trees, while the birds alerted the world to the sun rising. In moments like this, I reflected on how I would never have imagined, or dared to dream, that life could be so peaceful when you weren’t working for one of the most infamous and wanted criminal organizations in the world. I would carry those years with me for the rest of my life, but right now, I could look back on all the stress, worry, brutality, ruthlessness, fear of death, and...shake my head, wondering how I had lived like that for so long.
It was about ten minutes later that I heard the distinct feet of someone too big and graceless leaving the bed. It was followed by a hacking cough, a hard sneeze, and the toilet flushing.
“Good God,” I muttered, waiting until he poked his head out, a steaming cup of coffee in his hand. “How have you managed to become the stereotype of every dad out there without ever having kids?”
He squinted. “What?”
His hair was sticking out in every direction; now he had let it grow. He didn’t need to keep it short, he claimed, because he was no longer fighting in a ring. I let him tell people that, but really, I knew it was because, when his hair had grown long enough to reach his ears, I had told him I loved how soft it was and how nice it felt to run my hands through it. I still teased him, saying he had boy band hair. He looked as big and scary as he always did, but it softened his features, especially when he had bed head.
“Good morning,” I said, taking a sip of my coffee.
“Mmph,” he said, walking out and closing the door behind him to set his mug of coffee on the table and stumble over to me. He buried his face in my neck and kissed it. “Morning.”
“Oaf,” I complained when he nearly knocked me over, forcing me to put my coffee down as well so I could wrap my arms around his neck and pull him closer to give him a proper kiss.
I should have known that was a bad idea if I was committed to sitting peacefully on the back deck. We were both pushing forty, but damned if he didn’t still act like a horny teenager, especiallyin the morning. Although I joked that his sleepy state made his mind regress to a caveman, I had long since begun to wonder if that wasn’t in fact the case.
“Don’t you…”I began, but he was already wrapping his arms around me and picking me up like I wasn’t over six feet tall. “Goddammit, Dom!”
He snorted as I pushed at him, knowing me too well to believe I was genuinely trying to get him off me. I didn’t help when I wrapped my arms around his waist as he manhandled me into the house. He paused long enough to close the door behind him.
“Caveman,” I accused when he dropped me roughly on the bed.
If he had any feelings about my insult, he kept them to himself as he stripped us of our sleep pants before bending down and taking me in his mouth. I moaned softly, wrapping my fingers in his hair and pushing up into his mouth. We had learned that he was never going to rid himself of his gag reflex, but that didn’t matter to me. Just being able to look down and see him between my legs, his fingers digging into my thighs as he held tight while I fucked up into his mouth was always enough.
He was clumsy from being groggy, but he still had me begging him not to stop, but also to stop so he could fuck me. The peace and quiet of the morning was shattered the minute he gave me what I really wanted, pushing up into my guts while I hung onto him. Every time he was deep inside me, all the running, sometimes frantic scattering of my brain would come to a screeching halt, and I was left to focus on the feel of the man I loved.
It was nothing romantic or even hypersexual, just him pushing into me as we made the bed creak under our combined weight. Yet he still managed to make me see stars when he slid deep into me, his rhythm building until he was slapping his hips hard against my ass. When he came, it was deep inside me as he buried his face in my neck, calling out my name and what I thought might have been a few saints for good measure. My turn followed shortly after when he caught his breath, reaching between our bodies to grip me and begin stroking as he lazily kissed me until I was the one calling out.
“Good morning to you too,” I muttered as he unceremoniously slid out of me and dropped onto the bed beside me, pulling me close again. “You’re going back to sleep, aren’t you?”
“No,” he muttered by my shoulder.
I frowned, realizing he had said very little, and now that I thought about it, there was something almost hurried about our sex. The lightbulb went off, and I stroked the side of his face. “Fire, gun, or knife this time?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said softly, and I felt him relax from the tension I hadn’t even noticed. “It wasn’t real. This is.”
“It is,” I agreed, letting him take a deep breath, as if trying to make sure every one of his senses was confirming this was, in fact, real.
