"Probably."
Neither of us move. The air around us is so heavy with everything we aren't saying. With the moment we'd just shared, with the truth of what we both are, and the knowledge that this moment is a turning point. I know that whatever choice we make next will change everything.
"I have a first aid kit," I hear myself say. "In the van."
His eyes darken. "Is that right?"
"Yeah. You can come with me."
"What about my car?"
I look at the car, then back at him. At this man who'd followed me across the country, who'd watched me from theshadows and committed assault because someone touched me without permission.
"Leave it behind and come with me," I say.
"You sure?"
Was I sure? Sure that I wanted to invite a stalker into my van, into my space and into my life? Sure that I wanted to tie myself to someone who'd just proven he was capable of extreme brutality? Sure that I wanted to fall into this darkness with him, knowing it would probably destroy us both?
No, but I wanted it anyway.
"I'm sure, but we need to get out of here in case they call the cops."
Dom doesn’t question it. I watch him as he grabs a bag and a few smaller items out of his car, before wiping the door handles and steering wheel. After he throws his stuff into my van, he walks over to the side of the road, and throws his keys into the desert. My stomach flips with excitement. He’s coming with me.
“What about the cops? They could trace the car back to you,” I say, and he just smirks at me in the most sexy fucking way.
“It’s not my car.”
I'm driving too fast.
I can’t help but fidget in my seat as the highway blurs past in streaks of dark skies punctuated by the occasional flash of reflective road markers. The speedometer needle hovers around eighty-five, ninety, and I should slow down, but I can't. I can't make my foot ease off the gas or stop my heart hammering against my ribs.
The adrenaline is still coursing through me like electricity, making my skin feel too tight where every nerve ending ishypersensitive. I can feel the fabric of my jacket against my arms, the soft material of my summer dress against my thighs, the vibration of the van's engine thrumming up through the steering wheel.
And I can feel him.
Dom sits in the passenger seat, silent, his presence filling the entire space. I'm hyper-aware of every movement he makes, like the way he shifts his weight, the sound of his breathing, the way his hand rests on his leg, knuckles still split and bleeding.
The Cure is playing.A Forest. The irony of the lyrics,suddenly I stop, but I know it's too late, I'm lost in a forest, all alone, isn't lost on me. Except I'm not alone anymore.
The quiet between us is weighted with a feeling I can't name. It's not uncomfortable, it's quite the opposite. It's the kind of silence that feels like understanding, like we're both processing what just happened and neither of us needs to fill the space with meaningless words.
My eyes keep flicking to his hands, the right one especially, where his knuckles are split open, blood dried dark against his skin. There's a smear of it across his palm, and another streak along his wrist where it must have dripped. I watched those hands break a man's face as they moved with brutal efficiency and without mercy.
And all I could feel at the time was the last thing you would normally feel in that situation.
Arousal.
The realization sits in my stomach like a stone, heavy and undeniable. I should be questioning what the fuck is wrong with me that watching him beat someone unconscious made heat pool between my thighs, making my breath catch and needing his dick. But I'm not horrified like I should be. I'm turned on in a way I've never experienced before. It's primal and visceral, so intense that it bypasses my brain entirely and goes straight tomy body. My pulse is still racing, and every time I glance at his bloodied hands I feel that heat intensify.
He defended me, he saw someone hurting me anddestroyedthem for it. No one's ever done that before.
"You should slow down," Dom says, his voice cutting through the music.
I check the speedometer and see that it’s pushing ninety-five, so my foot eases off the gas automatically, and the van settles back to a more reasonable seventy.
"Sorry," I mutter.
