At some point, my hand had found the back of Dominik’s jacket and has been clenching it in my fist hard enough to ache. I let go. The ache stays.
“You shouldn’t have—” I start and don’t know how to end the sentence.Stood up to him. Said no. Put yourself between us like you could hold back a hurricane with a promise.
“Look at me,” Dominik turns around and says, voice low. It isn’t a command so much as a request that knows it’ll be answered. I look. There’s anger in his gray eyes. Underneath it is something else, worse. Something that looks like fear turned into resolve.
“He’ll take everything from you,” I whisper. “He’ll take your position. He’ll take me. He’ll take?—”
“He won’t,” he says, with a certainty that should comfort but terrifies me instead. He steps closer, and closer again, until the heat of him changes the air between us. “Because I won’t allow it.”
His hand lifts, hovers a fraction from my cheek—one heartbeat of permission—and then his fingertips slide along my jaw, slow, deliberate, like he’s memorizing every inch. I should step back. I should say a hundred sensible things like I don’t want to start a war between him and his brother. My skin answers him before my mouth can. Heat spreads across my chest then down my stomach.
His lips meet mine, soft at first before turning possessive, demanding entry. I open for him, and shiver at the brush of his tongue along mine, promising things it shouldn’t.
“Dom…” I breathe out, wishing that I could collapse into him and leave everything else behind.
Dominik presses me up against the nearest wall, one hand resting near my head to cage me in. He kisses me harder like he has something to prove.
25
Alina
Dominik’s handtrails up my side. His touch is like fire, but the burn feelsgood. I place my hand on top of his, but I don’t push it away or stop him. I follow his movements as his hand glides upward, moving over the curve of my breast and around to the back of my neck.
Dominik stiffens a little when his wound grazes my body, and that’s enough to send me hurtling back down to reality.
I pull away from the perfection and rightness of him to say, “Gavriil offered me a deal.” The confession feels like stepping onto thin ice. “He said if I went with him, he’d spare Archer, and he would spare you.”
Dominik’s eyes darken in a way that should scare me but doesn’t. “You will not agree to anything that allows him to touch you,” he grits out. Each word is clean enough to cut before his lips claim mine again. They claim and don’t relent until I let out a gasp when his thigh slips between mine, the pressure making my cheeks flush.
“I told him no,” I say against his lips, because I need him to have that, to put it in a place inside him that keeps the worst parts quiet. “I couldn’t do it. Not like that.”
“Good girl,” he murmurs, then praises me again with a searing kiss.
I should hate those words, his approval. I don’t. My lungs forget to breathe. Then I remember…
Pressing my palms to his chest to put space between us, I look up at his eyes and ask, “Why didn’t you tell me about Archer and that the meetings with the biker had been going on for months?”
“You know why,” Dominik replies quietly.
“My brother has made his decisions. You don’t have to keep protecting me from them. I can handle the truth. Always.”
“I know you can, hellcat,” he says. “From now on, I’ll give you the truth.”
“Okay,” I say in relief because I believe him. I know he was only trying to keep me from having to endure more pain, no other reason.
“Gavriil said tomorrow,” I remind him, because the deadline has to be put between us to keep it from pushing us closer. “What are you going to do?”
“Work,” he says, and the word is ugly and comforting at once. “Move men, guns, and money.” His thumb traces a line under my ear, barely pressure, just enough to teach my pulse to jump. “And keep you close.”
“You can’t keep everything,” I say, softer than anything I’ve said all day. I’m not sure which of us needs to hear it more. “Not with Gavriil holding a knife to your throat.”
He leans in and kisses me gently, just enough that his breath warms my mouth. The restraint is worse than any surrender. “Watch me,” he says.
The room tilts, delicate as a full glass of water in a shaky hand. My body answers for me, a shiver I can’t swallow. I have a moment where I see myself from the outside—a brave woman in a worn tee, hair down, eyes too wide, mouth learning a man by heart—and I don’t know which part of that should make me turn away. I don’t turn.
Dominik’s hand drops to the edge of my shirt, thumb brushing the hem like a question he already knows the answer to and respects anyway. I grab his hand and shove it underneath. His gray eyes widen in surprise as his calloused palm strokes along my side, higher until he’s cupping my bare breast. Dominik groans and squeezes. I feel the pull of pleasure between my thighs.
The wrong, traitorous throbbing that started back when Gavriil showed up increases tenfold. I don’t pretend to understand my body’s reaction to danger masquerading as a man. If I had to guess, I’d say part of me just wants to be the one who unravels men like that—rips off their emotional armor and makes them feel vulnerable and weak for once—and I hate myself for it.
