I don’t want to wake her, but my back and right leg are locked up tight.
Easing her from my arms, I clench my jaw so hard, my teeth ache. But I manage to sit up without groaning. Not bad for an almost-fifty-year-old with enough titanium in his body to rival the Six Million Dollar Man.
But after three of my six daily exercises, I can’t help myself. A painful trigger point takes me by surprise, and the sound I make is part grunt, part hiss, and part strangled cry.
“Leo?” Her voice is still husky with sleep, and it does things to me that are damn inconvenient wearing only my boxers with a therapy ball under my ass. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I manage and let myself topple onto my side. “This is my normal.” I toss the knobby ball into the corner where I don’t have to look at it again and shift to hide my mangled right foot.
She draws the covers to her chest, facing me as I reach for my least favorite torture device, The Stick.
“What is that?” Domina asks. “It looks like broken pieces of PVC pipe…”
Grimacing, I bend my right knee and start rolling the damn thing up and down my hamstring. “It helps with myofascial release.” At her obvious confusion, I adjust the angle and add, “It loosens up the muscles and helps with blood flow. Or so my PT back in Venezuela claimed. Hurts like hell, but without it, my flexibility is shit.”
“And the rest?” She gestures to the various therapy balls and foam-covered rollers lined up against the wall. “You need all of them?”
Admitting how fucked up I am shouldn’t be so hard. She saw me completely naked last night and didn’t blink twice. Butseeingmy scars is nothing compared to learning my body is FUBAR without half an hour of painful exercises each morning.
“Every day.” The two words follow a deep groan as I move The Stick to the side of my leg and roll up and down along the ligament connecting my hip to my shin. I have to pause to catch my breath, the pain making my eyes burn. “I’ll make coffee in a few minutes. I’m almost done.”
Domina pats the duvet until she finds her discarded clothes. “I can take care of the coffee. But you need to add your own sugar.” She feigns disgust and pulls on her tank top, giving me a brief glimpse of her breasts.
My body responds immediately, the earlier agony forgotten in a heartbeat. “Or…we could go back to bed. We have a couple of hours.”
She pauses, the sheet still covering her from the waist down. “Are you…flexibleenough yet?”
Rising with only a little pain, I grin. “I’ll manage, baby.”
* * *
At promptly 9:00 a.m.,a black sedan with tinted windows pulls up in front of our apartment building. Domina hasn’t stopped fidgeting since I taped a thin switchblade to her back. I hope to all that’s holy Cortez was right and they won’t frisk her or send her through the metal detector.
My Glock 19 and chest harness are hidden inside the lining of her briefcase. The most dangerous weapon I have on me? My phone.
“That’s your usual guy?” I ask, my hand tight around her wrist while the uniformed driver holds the back door open.
“Yes. Viejo picks me up every morning.” She glances over at the man and smiles. “This is Leo. My boyfriend. He meant no offense.”
With his dark sunglasses, Viejo’s expression is damn near unreadable. “Sorry, man. This is my first political rally. Wasn’t sure what to expect.”
In the back seat next to me, Domina tugs at the labels of her tailored blue jacket. Every few moments, she shifts in her seat, clearly uncomfortable.
I cover her hand with mine and lean in to whisper in her ear. “No one’s going to know unless you keep fidgeting.”
She huffs, wriggling one last time before she settles. “This is all new to me, Leo. My life—despite my career—is boring.Normal. Two years ago, Manuel treated the entire staff to dinner at a five-star restaurant. Until this week, that was the most exciting thing to happen to me in as long as I can remember.”
I try for a wink. “So the bar for amazing dates isn’t very high? Lucky me.”
With a weak smile, she shifts closer to me. “Maybe after the election, we could try boring for a while?”
We.
My entire world tilts on its axis. It doesn’t matter that I felt something for her the first day we met. That yesterday—when I wasn’t panicked about her safety or convinced I’d ruined everything between us—was one of the best days of my life because I spent it with her. Or that sex with her was so intense, it felt like my first time.
“Leo?” she asks. “Did you hear me?”
I give her hand a squeeze. “If you want boring, you get boring.” With my lips pressed to her ear, I add, “Except in the bedroom.”
