by Julia Wolf
His hand snapped out, grasping the nape of my neck and pulling me against him. “I’m angry at the fucking world, Claire.”
“I know,” I whispered. That much had become quite clear to me.
The crazy thing was, I wasn’t afraid of the trembling, barely-controlled man whose hands were on me. When his mouth closed over mine in a desperate kiss, I returned it with equal fervor. I clawed at his bare chest, quietly raging against him and my reaction to him.
“I need you, Claire,” he gritted out.
Dominic backed me into the wall beside the door, kissing me so hard, if lips could bruise, mine surely would be when he was finished with me.
His thick erection prodded my stomach, and I couldn’t stop myself from rubbing against it. That earned me a growl, and my shirt torn off me. His hands were everywhere, rough and insistent. Touching my skin like if he didn’t, it would disappear.
My nails raked ribbons down his sides and back, slipping under the waistband of his sweatpants to draw red lines on his tight ass. There was nothing loving or affectionate about the way we were going at each other. This was need and frenzied desire.
Dominic spun me by my shoulders, leaning his full weight against my back as he used one hand to tug my shorts off. His cock wedged in the valley of my ass as he reached between my legs to drag his fingers through my folds.
“Wet, baby.”
“It seems being pissed off at you turns me on.” He circled my clit as I spoke, so my voice faded out on the last half of my sentence. My back arched, opening me to Dominic’s cock. He kept circling my clit even as he positioned himself at my entrance.
My breath slammed out of my body when he entered me in a merciless thrust. My ass slapped against his taut pelvis as he took me with brutal force. Grunts and huffs were loud in my ear until his hot lips closed around the tendon in my neck, sucking hard enough to bruise.
A violent, soul-shaking orgasm crashed through me. My belly tightened, and my skin vibrated, each nerve ending alive and flaring. Dominic never slowed his relentless pace, plunging into me like if he fucked me hard enough, he’d wipe my memory clean.
“I hate you,” I panted.
“I know, baby,” he answered back. “I hate me too.”
His sweat dripped on my shoulder, and then his mouth was there to lick it up. Goose bumps rose on my heated skin, but Dominic scraped them away with his teeth.
I pressed my hips back, grinding against him. “I need it so much harder.”
Dominic went harder. He slammed into me again and again, grunting and slapping. I tried to keep up with him, but he was in charge, drilling into me like he was trying to fit his entire being inside me.
“You don’t walk away from me.” He gripped my jaw, turning my face to the side. “You don’t sleep in another room. We had a deal.” His eyes were wild, but still so needy and mournful, tears pricked behind mine.
“You broke our deal first.” I kissed him hard, not wanting excuses. This was madness, this thing between us. Reason had no place here.
Dominic tipped my head back as far as it would go, drowning me with his lips and tongue.
“You’re mine, Claire. Mine.”
None of this made sense. We were done in five days. I wasn’t his, and he wasn’t mine. The boiling jealousy raging inside me wasn’t mine. It was borrowed, and the expiration date was fast approaching.
But still, I clawed at the wall as my pussy gripped Dominic’s thick cock. He kissed me through my second orgasm, which left me shattered and weak.
A sharp bite on my shoulder preceded him pushing into me as deep as he could and holding there. He opened his mouth, bellowing my name like a cry for help as he filled me with hot, liquid pleasure.
After a minute or two, he slowly pulled out, and I winced, suddenly aware of how raw I now was between my legs.
He murmured my name, stroking my cheek with his knuckles. It was too tender, too sweet, and I wasn’t ready for that. I couldn’t deal with nice Dominic.
I managed to slide from between the sweaty, panting man on my back and the wall at my front, and snag my T-shirt and shorts. Even though cum dripped down my thigh, I quickly dressed, distancing myself from what we’d just done, then closed myself in the bathroom to clean up.
I took my time, staring at the strange girl in the mirror, with bruises on her neck and swollen lips. This girl was almost unrecognizable, and in some ways, that was a relief. I’d gotten so used to living internally, that when I’d arrived on this tour, I hadn’t remembered how to live out loud. That wasn’t a problem anymore, but in moments like this, I sort of wished to be my old self. If I were, I’d curl tonight up in a tight ball and stuff it away in the recesses of my mind.
The woman I was now washed her face, brushed her teeth and hair, and calmly walked back into the bedroom. Déjà vu hit me when I found Dominic waiting on the end of the bed again.
“Come to our room,” he said immediately.
I shook my head, my lips pressed tight.
He sighed, looking tired and every bit his age, with deep lines around his mouth and etched across his forehead. Then he came to me and wrapped his arms around me, pressing a feather-soft kiss to my temple.
“Please. I need to tell you about Dylan. My boy.” He cleared his throat, then pressed another kiss on my head. “My son.”
Chapter Thirty-three
Dominic
I’d never had a single intention of telling Claire about Dylan. It didn’t make sense to lay my trauma and grief at her feet. But I couldn’t let her fall asleep tonight without at least explaining why I’d behaved the way I had.
She refused to come back to our room, and as much as every fiber of my being wanted to haul her over my shoulder and force her, I didn’t. She was pissed, and I had to respect that, so I pulled her down beside me on the end of the guest bed.
“For what it’s worth, I did check on you. Every time I looked over, you were talking and laughing with the people at your table.” I scrubbed at the side of my head. “You seemed okay, and...I don’t know. I’m not used to having someone I even want to check up on.”
Claire wasn’t interested in hearing that. She barely acknowledged me with a twitch of her lips.
“Chelsea is Dylan’s mother.” I hadn’t told anyone this story, about my past, my kid, any of it, since I met Marta. And even then, it only came out over a blunt and a bottle of tequila. It could be said I wasn’t much of a talker anyway, but about this, I barely knew how to formulate the words.
“I met her back when I was coming up, just getting famous. Back in my The Hype days. We were friends who sometimes slept together, but we weren’t ever more than that.” Leaning forward, I steepled my hands under my chin. “I was only twenty-four when she told me she was pregnant. She wasn’t one-hundred-percent the kid was mine, but she was pretty sure.”
Claire sat as still as a statue, her gaze stuck somewhere around my knees.
“I was basically a kid myself. Didn’t want to be a dad. But once he was born, he was mine. I looked at that wrinkled old man baby face and knew. I had two weeks with him. Chelsea got really overwhelmed at first, so it was just me and the kid a lot of the time. Then she came home one day and told me Dylan wasn’t mine after all. He was my bandmate, Eric’s. They were going to be a family.”
“She took him?” Claire whispered.
“She took him, and I let her. The Hype broke up, I checked out of life, cut everyone off. It was over three years before I pulled my head out of my ass and saw him again. When it came down to it, Eric wasn’t very interested in being a father, but Chelsea stepped up the mom game. Dylan was cool as hell. He called me Dom, I called him kid. I taught him how to play guitar, and we wrote songs together.”
Her fingertip trailed along my knuckles. “You loved him.”
“Of course I did.” I pounded the heel of my hand into my forehead. “I loved that boy like he was mine. He was mine. Though, it took me years to acknowledge that, until he got sick and we knew he wa
sn’t going to get better.”
“The hospital...in Houston?” Her index finger hooked with mine.
“Yeah,” I breathed. “Chels took him there to be treated by a specialist. She moved there with him. My denial was so fucking thick, I kept working, doing concerts, putting out albums instead of soaking up every last minute I could with him. I failed my boy.”
“How old was he when he…?”
“Eleven. He’d be eighteen this year, but I can’t picture him that way. All I see when I think about him are his first breaths and his last. It’s like…” I stabbed at my chest, “everything else became eviscerated the moment he died.”
“I’m sorry.” She wrapped her soft arms around my middle, resting her head on my shoulder. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Honeysuckle enveloped me, thawing some of the hollow ice in my chest.
“Yeah.” I kissed her hair, nuzzling my face in her waves. “Chels and I don’t have much in common anymore. Our kid was the one thing tying us together. Grief sent us on our separate ways. We see each other once a year at the gala. What you saw between us was two parents missing their boy. And on the terrace—” I had to stop, breathe, figure out how to say the words.
“You don’t have to tell me anything else, Dominic. This is so much.” Her palm flattened on my cheek. “I don’t want you to hurt.”
What she didn’t understand was I deserved the pain. I had loved that baby, but the second I was presented with an out, I took it and walked away from him. Chelsea would have shared Dylan with me. She wasn’t a monster. But it was easier for me to walk away entirely than deal with my heart being cracked in two again and again seeing him with his real dad.
My selfish decisions cost me years with my boy. If I could relive any choice I’d ever made, it would be that one. I’d still be a grieving, broken man, but at least I’d know I did right by him.
I inhaled more of Claire’s goodness, breathing out the black, black tar of regret filling my chest.
“Chels is pregnant. She’s only twelve weeks, but she did all the testing and knows it’s a boy. That’s what she was telling me on the terrace. And I’m fucking sorry I touched her that way. I’m sorry you saw it and—”
Claire cut me off with a tender press of her lips. She hummed, stroking my hair and holding me. I hadn’t cried since Dylan died. That part of me had been shut off. But being held by this sweet, entirely too young and too good woman, had me on the edge. Claire made me want in every way. For a crazy second, I thought about what it would be like to heal this gaping wound in my soul so I could really, truly have her.
But even the thought of trying to keep her threatened to send me spiraling. I didn’t keep. Life was too fleeting for me to consider anything as more than temporary. No matter how much I wanted it. Or how utterly vital it became.
“I don’t understand how she can want to go through it again.”
“Through what?” Claire asked.
“Loving someone, loving her new baby, while knowing what it’s like to have that kind of love ripped from her.” I shook my head. “I could never. Never.”
“I don’t know.” She rubbed my shoulders and kissed my cheek. “I guess she weighed the risks and decided it was worth it to have that kind of love again. She’s brave, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t because you don’t want to take the same risk.”
I sucked in a ragged breath, reaching for Claire like a drowning man. Even considering what it would mean to let myself feel, to allow myself to love someone the way I’d loved Dylan, pulled me under like a pair of lead boots.
My fingers tangled in the back of her hair, firmly gripping her so we were face-to-face. “I need to know you’re okay. I hurt you, I know that, but I didn’t want to.”
“I’m okay.” Her big brown eyes were wet with tears I’d put there, but they were open and true, so I believed her. “I wish you would have told me what I was walking into, but that doesn’t matter anymore. Thank you for telling me about Dylan. I’m so sorry he’s not here anymore. I know you took the best care of him, though. It’s who you are.”
Panic swirled in a cyclone inside me, and the only way to squelch it was to shut down. If Claire kept saying things like that...no. I couldn’t do this anymore.
I leaned my forehead on hers. “Will you come to our room now?”
“Of course I will.”
We left her bag there to deal with tomorrow. Once we were back in my bedroom, I breathed easier, then easier still when tangled up under the covers. We caressed bare, warm skin, and though I was hard, there wasn’t anything sexual about it. We were finding our way back to each other—back to where we so easily fit—where our lives outside of this tour didn’t exist. It was only us, only this.
“I have Chelsea’s song tattooed on me, don’t I?” she asked with a hint of a grin.
My mouth ached to smile with her, but my muscles didn’t cooperate. “I wrote it with her in mind, but it’s about picking up when it seems impossible. I think it’s your song now too.”
She snuggled against my chest, yawning. “I don’t mind sharing a song with her. She liked my dress.”
“I liked your dress.”
“I like you.” Sleep weighed down each word.
“I like you too, Claire.” Too damn much.
If I could have, I would’ve put some space between us. Instead, I stood in the middle of the tracks, a train barreling straight for me, with full knowledge I’d be flattened on impact. That was an ending I knew.
It was the unknown endings I wouldn’t stick around for. Because nothing lasted forever, no matter how much I wished it wasn’t true. I’d done my share of hoping for forever, and those days were done for me.
Chapter Thirty-four
Claire
Somehow, we’d made it to our last stop of the tour. Nearly two months had gone by since I’d staggered onto Dominic Cantrell’s plane. Annaliese had joked about me coming home a different woman, and I felt different. Somewhere along the way, I’d found my confidence again, and my youth. Life didn’t have to be serious or about achieving goals. It was too short not to be enjoyed.
I had enjoyed the hell out of my life over the last two months. Dominic had been the centerpiece of that, sure, but it wasn’t all about him. Marta was never getting rid of me. The Seasons Change had a fan for life. Rodrigo was the brother I’d never had, nor wanted, but I loved him more than I thought possible. Tomorrow night was the last show, then we’d be packing up and heading home.
So, it was natural for me to be sad this was all coming to an end. Even if I saw them again—and I really thought I would—we’d never be able to recapture this exact magic. The Seasons Change were going to blow up and join the big leagues any second, and…well, Dominic and I were parting ways for good.
Marta slapped me on the shoulder. “No frownies, kidlet. I disapprove.”
“But I’m sad. I’m not allowed to be sad?” I stuck out my bottom lip so she’d take pity on me.
“Save it for when you go home. Tonight is about drinking with friends and making really stupid memories that’ll make you giggle every time you think back on them.”
“Fine. That actually does sound better than moping around here.” Even though here was a stunning penthouse in Chicago with views of Lake Michigan from the walls of windows spanning the length of the condo.
“The old man still has no plans of joining us, right?” Marta asked, referring to Dominic.
“No, he’s staying home to putter. You know how the olds like to putter.”
She snorted so loud, we both froze, eyes wide, then fell into a fit of giggles.
“No you didn’t, girl. He will murder you,” she said through laughter.
Once we straightened ourselves out, I went to find my old man, who had just gotten back from working out in the building’s gym.
Dominic was pulling on a pair of jeans when I walked into the bedroom. My stomach clenched both from how unfairly handsome he was and how much I already missed him. After he
told me about Dylan, I’d half expected him to pull away, but instead, he’d held me even closer.
Ending things wasn’t my choice anymore. If I could keep this man I’d fallen for so wholly, I would. But he made it clear again and again our time was finite, and I had to believe him, even though it felt like he never planned on letting me go either.
“Hi.” I paused at the door. “Can I come in?”
He crossed the hardwood floor to where I stood, slipped his hand around my waist, and tugged me inside. “I always want you where I am. That shouldn’t be a question at this point.”
“You never want to be alone?”
A line formed in the center of his forehead as his eyebrows pressed inward. “I want to be alone with you.”
I snorted a laugh. “That’s not alone.”
“If I have the choice between stewing in my own thoughts and spending every waking second with you, it’s going to be you every single time.”
“Whoa.” My heart flipped and lodged in the back of my throat. “That was incredibly sweet.”
He shrugged like he hadn’t said something big. “It’s just the truth.” He dipped his head to nibble on my neck. “Can I watch you get ready?”
“Only if you promise not to derail me by luring me into bed.”
Marta and I were going out with The Seasons Change to Adam’s favorite dive bar. He’d grown up in Chicago, so some of his friends were coming out too. I’d invited Dominic, but to my surprise, he declined. Then he reminded me he was Dominic Cantrell and couldn’t just hang out at dive bars at this stage in his life. He didn’t really blend, and neither did his two brick-wall bodyguards.
Dominic sat in the bathroom, talking to me while I took a shower. When I told him how amazing the acoustics were, he took the hint and sang a few songs. I hadn’t taken enough advantage of having my own rock star at my beck and call, and now, it was almost too late.