Dominic didn’t want distance. In one bounding, dominating step, he closed the space between them. His arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her in until their bodies were flush together. If she thought just a single touch on his arm had been devastating, feeling his hard, chiseled core against hers made her want to weep.
He didn’t have to guide her, didn’t have to lift her chin up so their lips could meet. They simply did, as if they knew the steps to this dangerous dance by heart and needed no prompting. Her senses were consumed by him, his scent, his warmth, and she wanted more.
Erica dropped the paintbrush and it landed on the floor with a sharp crack as the wood handle hit linoleum. Her fingers found their way to weave into his hair as the edge of the counter bit into her lower back. He edged between her thighs as their kiss deepened, and something hard and rigid rubbed against the fabric of her sweatpants. So fluid, so comfortable, and yet passionate for no damn good reason.
She pulled away for only a second, her breaths ragged. “This is insane.” It was more to herself, a way to bring herself down from the high before it was too late. That wasn’t what she truly wanted, and Dominic seemed to instinctively know that too.
He wouldn’t allow her to make any more excuses. He shut her up as his mouth came down on hers one more time with demanding force. Could he feel the sparks too? The ones thatexploded into a blazing fire between them that would consume her soon if they didn’t stop?
His free hand reached down and slid under her knee, pulling her leg up, encouraging it to wrap around him. She obeyed without a bit of resistance. It just felt right. A smile played on her lips as his tongue slipped through to tease hers. God, he tasted so good.
She had expected being this intimate with a man would make her feel trapped, helpless, captured. But in Dominic’s embrace, she felt nothing but serenity. It didn’t seem insane anymore, and Erica couldn’t think of a single reason to pull away.
Apparently, Dominic could.
He went rigid and cut off the kiss so abruptly that she literally reeled and had to blink a few times before she could see straight. His eyes were fixed on the windows just beyond the breakfast nook, the ones that looked across the expanse of yard between their two homes. A mask fell over his countenance, the one he had the other day when Officer Spradley came to cart Dominic away. A second later, a low rumble sounded in his chest, and she felt it crawl across her skin. Was he growling? The memory of golden eyes came back like a slap to the face.
“What’s wrong?”
Those words broke the spell, and Dominic turned back, something like stifled rage burning in his eyes. That didn’t scare her as much as what she thought would happen next. Every time he got that look, he left her.
“I have to go,” he murmured. “I’m sorry.”
Dominic stole one more kiss. Then, the cold rushed in to replace him. Erica leaned against the counter, and it took her a moment to gain her bearings. When she did, she rushed after him down the hall, driven more by fear than a need to know exactly why he was leaving her. After a kiss like that, how could she be alone again?
“What’s going on?” Her wounded heart broadcast so vibrantly in those few words.
His hand was on the doorknob when he looked back. Heartbreak had replaced fury in his magnificent blue eyes, and she knew he must have been feeling the weight of this moment too. If he didn’t want to really go, then why didn’t he stay? What was so important?
Dominic grappled with his next words and shook his head. “I’ll try to explain later.”
In seconds, he was gone. She heard no raised voices beyond the door, and only one pair of footsteps thundered down the porch steps. She rushed to the sidelight windows and watched him march down the concrete path into the darkness, alone. The further he walked away, the more she felt herself drawn thin, wispy, liable to blow over at a moment’s notice.
No one had rung the doorbell, no one had knocked, no one was calling on him. Dominic had left completely of his own will and turned to head next door. What the hell just happened? Did she do something wrong? What was he thinking?
She had never been left so ruined by a simple kiss. Oh, but that couldn’t have been a simple kiss. Her lips and tongue continued to tingle with the aftershocks of their passion, and the fire in her belly raged on. Something else happened. Somewhere between the tongue teasing, the thigh caressing, and the hardness she’d felt between her legs, they forged something together in their spirits. With her heart unprotected, that bond between them had hardened and became indissoluble. She couldn’t shake it, couldn’t break it, couldn’t begin to explain it.
Erica covered her face with her hands and felt her legs crumble beneath her until she sat down on the floor in the foyer, nothing but her shuddering breaths to fill the void Dominic had created when he left.
All of a sudden, it felt as if an overwhelming weight settled on her chest, straining against that thing she tried to deny, tried to ignore. Erica wanted to cry, wanted to beat at the floorboards and scream until he came back. This wave of grief seemed familiar, and yet completely new and devastating, and she couldn’t fight it anymore. She never wanted to feel this out of control, but here she was, falling apart again.
She’d see Dominic again. He lived right next door. He wasn’t going anywhere. Then why did it feel like he’d just shot halfway across the galaxy, out of her reach and out of her life completely? What the hell was going on?
Chapter Nine
Dominic could havesmelled her sorrow from across town. Hell, across the state. Its scent mingled with the faded vanilla signature in his nostrils, frothing the wolf into a frenzy because he had to leave her. Damn it, he didn’t want to leave her like that.
Hatred boiled in his veins with each bounding step he took down the sidewalk toward his house. It was hatred for Hank, the one who’d interrupted his few moments of blissful peace. The beta was the reason Erica was broken. If he hadn’t heard Hank show up on Crescent Lane, unlock his front door with the spare key, and invite himself in, Dominic wouldn’t have needed to leave her. He wouldn’t have needed to end that amazing kiss that could have led to more. He’d still be in her arms, where he wanted to be from the start.
He barely remembered charging through the front door or crossing the floor to face Hank in his parlor. He didn’t even know he had partially shifted, fangs out, tawny claws unsheathed from the tips of his fingers, and his eyes glowed a menacing gold.
Reason broke through the red, and instead of wrapping his hand around the beta’s throat like he wanted, Dominic sent his fist flying through the parlor wall. Dust and chunks of plaster tumbled to the floor as his knuckles passed through the old laths, but it wasn’t enough. Luckily, Hank’s dominance came through to try and tame back the alpha’s beast before he tore the house down stud by stud.
The beta grabbed him by the shoulder and threw him away from the wall. Dominance clashed like two mergingthunderclouds, and the air became electrified with hostility. In a moment of blind, feral hysteria, Dominic roared and lashed out, something he thought he would never do toward his beta. The acrid scent of blood brought him back to reality.
Hank snarled and tossed his alpha backward to send him tumbling to the floor in the foyer.
Now he understood why the pack fought, why sometimes there was no provocation behind their need to shed blood and rip into another shifter. As soon as the mania retreated, Dominic gained control of himself again and sent out a stiff, controlled pulse of dominance that fixed Hank just in the archway between the living room and foyer. With his feet cemented by the dominance, alpha and beta were finally able to talk.
