So the fact that I was one wrong look away from losing my goddamn mind because of Dominic made no sense. And that made me even angrier and closer to taking someone’s head off.
Paying bills wasn’t helping. Why the hell was I paying bills right now? Oh right, so my kids could have electricity and hot water.
I sure didn’t. I’d been taking cold showers for a goddamn week since the time I’d sworn I’d seen Dominic’s blue eyes in the steam.
Dominic “Nicky” Costigan.
Fuck me.
“Dad, can I—”
“Fuck!” I slammed my fist down on the desk, startling Micah so badly he jumped and stumbled into the wall of my office. His eyes went wide, and I counted to three before speaking through clenched teeth. “Sorry, I was in the middle of adding something up.” And now I’d have to start over, but it wasn’t his fault. He was still staring at me like I was going to rip his throat out. “Sorry,” I said again. “Just… bad day. What do you need?”
Micah’s shoulders dropped and he let out a relieved breath. “Bad coupla weeks, you mean,” he muttered. “Anyway, I wanted to head over to Deante’s house to play Xbox. That cool?”
It was Columbus Day and the kids had off school. “Your homework done?”
“Yeah, I did it all yesterday.”
“Then sure. Take the umbrella in the front closet.”
“Is it okay if I eat dinner there? He said he’d order from Pacini’s.”
“Yeah, fine, your sister is gone for dinner too.” She and a friend had gone to the mall.
“Cool, thanks.” He studied me for a minute. “You all right?”
Christ, I must be really bad if my sixteen-year-old was trying to be my therapist. “Just a lot on my mind. It’s fine.”
“Okay.”
As he turned to leave, I blurted out, “How’s Adriana?” That wasn’t what I really wanted to know, but damn, maybe he would throw me a bone and tell me something about Dominic.
Micah turned slowly with a raised eyebrow. “Since when do you care about Adriana?”
“Don’t talk back to me.”
He sighed. “Fine, I guess. Her dad’s a jerk. And her brother’s kind of a mess.”
My breath seized. “What kinda mess?”
“She said he was doing okay when he first came home but now he’s apparently going back to his old ways. Came home drunk with bruised knuckles the other night.”
I worked hard on my breathing so I didn’t lose it in front of Micah. Ah fuck, my lost Dominic. “Sounds rough.”
“Yeah.”
“All right, get gone.” I waved a hand, shooing him out the door.
I focused on paying the bills even as Dominic’s face continued to swim into my vision. The cases of veterans coming home and turning to addictions was staggeringly high. Dominic had dreams and goals. Picturing him drinking because I was a jackass was like a knife in my heart.
Maybe it wasn’t because of me. I hadn’t meant that much to him, had I? I was a grumpy single dad of two teenagers. I was over ten years older. He would be better off with someone else. Maybe someone his age who was less cynical and private.
There was a knock at the door, and I glanced up with a frown. I waited and the knock came again. I wasn’t exactly dressed to greet a stranger. I was barefoot, wearing a pair of sweatpants and an old T-shirt. When the impatient fucker at the door knocked a third time, I walked to the foyer.
When I opened it up, I registered two things: the rain had intensified, and a drenched Dominic Costigan stood on my front porch.
His eyes blazed at me from beneath a mess of dripping blond hair. He wore a pair of soaked jeans, unlaced sneakers, and a T-shirt beneath an unzipped rain jacket. There was a fading bruise on his jaw, and his pale skin was blotchy.
As if the sight of him wasn’t already like a sledgehammer to my gut, he had to open his mouth. “I just want to know what I did wrong.”
My knees nearly buckled at the tremor in his voice. I reached out and gripped his jacket, yanking him inside and slamming the door shut behind him.
He was dripping all over my floor. I gestured to his ridiculous state. “Take off your clothes. You’re flooding my house. I’ll get you a towel.”
A couple of weeks ago, he would have shot me a cocky grin and made a dirty joke. But now his arms tightened around himself, and he shook his head, sending water flying. “No.”
I raised an eyebrow. “No? I’m not trying to fuck you. I’m trying to raise your body temperature, because you’re a dumbass.”
Dominic was not in the mood for teasing. His eyes narrowed, and for the first time, I saw the temper that must have caused that bruise on his jaw. “You don’t get to call the shots today. Not since you completely iced me out for no goddamn reason. I’m not saying I deserved a huge explanation, but I’m pretty sure it’s human decency to respond to my messages. What, are you embarrassed to be fucking a guy who makes sandwiches?”
“What the fuck? No—”
“Or is it because of your kids? I don’t have to meet them, but it’s not my fault you walked into the deli.” He was running out of steam now, and his voice was strained. “Did I seem needy or something? I barely have any friends. I just liked talking to you, man. It didn’t mean I thought we were going steady.”
“Jesus, that has nothing—”
“And you’re the one who initiated seeing each other more than once a week. I was fine with that schedule and—”
“Holy shit, Dominic, it’s not any of that!”
“Then tell me what it was,” he said, voice rising loud enough to echo in my silent house. “This thing has been driving me nuts. For like two seconds it sure was nice getting your attention, but your shadow is really fucking cold!”
“Then take off your clothes!” I roared, tearing my hands through my hair. Jesus, I was going to have a heart attack. I hadn’t been forced to confront this many emotions since…
Something cold and wet slapped my chest. I stared at the floor, where Dominic’s jacket lay. When I looked up, he was removing his clothes with a vengeance, whipping each piece at me until I was nearly as wet as him. He toed off his sneakers, kicking them so they flew past me down the hall, until he stood there naked, fists clenched at his sides.
His nostrils flared, and then he advanced on me. I didn’t know if he intended to fight me or fuck me, so I met him halfway, gripping his face and pulling him toward me until our lips met.
We both stumbled to the side until we crashed into the wall. I turned, slamming his back into the wall as I lifted him by the backs of his thighs.
He wrapped his legs around me, gripping me like a vise as we devoured each other, as we poured every I missed you into the kiss. I ground against him, and he arched his back, biting down hard on my lip. I reached between us, shoving down the waistband of my sweats and taking both our cocks in my fist.
I pulled back and curled my lip. “Spit.” He stared at me with dilated eyes, not seeming to comprehend the demand. I gestured to our cocks and repeated, “Spit.”
He bent his head, but kept his gaze locked with mine as he spat between us. Using it to coat our hard lengths, I pumped us together. Dominic’s eyes rolled back in his head as he thumped it against the wall repeatedly. I latched onto a vein in his neck, sucking hard as I jacked us.
“Couldn’t get you out of my mind,” I said bitterly against his salty skin. “You’re everywhere, my bed, my shower, my fucking dreams.” He moaned as I fisted us tighter and reached around to tap his hole. “Did you miss this? Did you miss us?”
He released a ragged sound. “Fuck, you know I did.”
My orgasm was barreling down on me, and Dominic’s hips were moving in that desperate way that always let me know he was close. When he erupted between us, I was only a few strokes behind, groaning into his mouth as he panted against me, his hands fisted in my hair.
We didn’t move for a minute, locked together against my wall, my sweatpants at my ankles and my T-shirt splattered with
come.
After he caught his breath, his body stiffened. I let his legs drop to the floor, but he wouldn’t meet my gaze. Flushed and moving robotically, he made a move to grab his clothes but I pinned him to the wall with a hand on his chest. His head went up, and those eyes flashed anger again.
He opened up his mouth, and I knew if I didn’t start talking, I was going to lose him.
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
His jaw snapped shut with an audible click.
“Look, let me get you some clothes, and I need to change my shirt. Then I’ll… explain, okay?”
“You’ll explain.” He still looked wary.
“Yeah, we’ll talk.”
“You’re willingly going to have an actual conversation?”
I stepped back. “I realize I’m not a paragon of conversation skills, but I can use them when necessary.”
“So that means this is necessary,” he said, face slightly clearing.
“Yeah, you’re necessary.”
Dominic rolled his shoulders. “Is that because fucking is necessary?”
I shoved him gently so his back hit the wall again. “Let me explain this first. If I just wanted to fuck, I’d get back on Grindr and find some twink who likes to bend over. I like having sex with you, but I also like making you sandwiches and reading whatever dumb shit you message me every day. So shut up and let me get you clothes.”
He shut up.
When I returned, he was right where I’d left him, mopping something off the floor with his wet T-shirt. He stood as I handed him a towel, a T-shirt and a pair of mesh shorts. “What’re you cleaning up?”
“All the water. Also, I was worried I shot far.”
I raised my eyebrows. “How do you know it was you? Maybe it was me.”
He snorted. “Okay, old man. It’s not a competition.”
I walked into the kitchen, Dominic on my heels. “Don’t piss me off.”
After I slapped together a couple of sandwiches and watched him eat, I leaned back against the counter and tugged him to stand between my legs. He braced his fists on either side of me.
“So, we’re gonna talk.” This was an entire conversation I didn’t want to have, but if I wanted to keep Dominic around, I needed to have it. “I enlisted when I was eighteen. Grew up with no money, and I wanted to marry Nadia so I felt like I had no option.”
Dominic nodded without comment. I’m sure he wanted to ask questions, but he seemed to know enough by now to not interrupt or I’d never get through this.
“But then I ended up loving it. I married Nadia and we had two kids, and while our marriage didn’t last, my career with the army did. I was an officer at twenty-nine, when Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was still in effect.”
Dominic’s entire face fell, and his breath whistled between his teeth. He pressed closer to me, and dropped his forehead on my shoulder, like he knew I didn’t want to look him in the eye. I cupped the back of his head, running my fingers through his drying hair.
“There was a guy. Jake. He knew I couldn’t be out because of my job, but he loved taking risks. He got off on it. So I bent my rules for him. He came on base for lunch and we were fooling around in my office when a senior officer walked in.”
Dominic’s arms locked around my waist. “Shit.”
I closed my eyes, trying to drown out the resurging feeling of utter devastation, of everything I’d worked for flushed down the drain because of a blow job. I was bitter that Dominic had served in an era when he could fool around on deployment without fear of losing his career. But that wasn’t his fault. That was something I needed to deal with in my head.
“That was it. They gave me my discharge papers, and I was out on my ass with no skills. I thought I’d lose joint custody of my kids or wouldn’t be able to pay child support because of one mistake. One time I’d gone against my judgment.”
Dominic looked up, and he seemed to want to know if he could speak. I nodded.
“I’m sorry.”
How did those two words feel like they were scraping off a layer of scar tissue?
“It gets a little worse. I stayed with Jake. I thought I needed to stay with him so that at least that discharge meant something, so it wasn’t a waste. Like, hey, I lost my job but I still have you.” I shook my head. “Fucked. It was fucked. I wasn’t the same person after that, and Jake wasn’t either. I didn’t know how to have a relationship, so I didn’t set boundaries. I also didn’t realize that he wasn’t the most stable person. Ignored all kinds of red flags for a long time.” I cracked my knuckles as I thought back on that time period. “Even when I realized he had some issues, I still wanted to be with him. It was just fucked up because he refused to see a doctor or get treatment, and he… had really bad judgment. Which was a major problem since he got really close to my kids. After a while I let him know that I… wanted some space from him, because things between us were souring, and he got desperate. One day he picked the twins up from their babysitter without telling us. Lied to her and said we’d given the okay. For hours, we had no idea where the kids were. He finally pulled up after dark with them crying in the back seat and their car seats unbuckled.”
“Holy shit. What the hell was he thinking?”
“He said he wanted to give us a break, but I knew he’d just… been trying to prove himself to me. That he was helpful or good for the kids or could be part of the family. He didn’t get that he’d had me and Nadia in hysterics for hours and that my kids had been in danger. So I cut it off. Done. I grew up with a grandfather who was more roommate than relative. So when I finally got a family, I told myself I’d protect it with everything I have. No one fucks with family.”
Dominic nodded, his jaw set and expression grim. “Is that why you have all these rules about keeping things separate?”
“Yeah.”
“But you broke some for me,” he said.
“I did.”
“Do you regret doing it?”
“No.”
“So—”
“My life is simple,” I said sharply. “I don’t want a boyfriend bringing me lunch while I’m on a job, because I don’t want to deal with clients being dramatic about it. I don’t want to hold hands at fucking high school events and hear people’s homophobic crap. I don’t mix up boxes anymore. You were in one and my family was in another.”
“I never asked to meet your kids. Never even hinted at it.”
“I know that. When I walked in the deli, and I saw you there… things mixed. I lost my mind.” I blew out a breath. “You have to know I was wrecked. I didn’t respond to you because I didn’t know what to fucking say and my first reflex was to entirely back off. But that, that I did regret.”
“I see.” Dominic rocked back on his heels, restless as he churned this around in his mind. “So you want to do what we’ve been doing.”
“Yeah. No mixing things.”
“We meet up and we bang.”
I gave him a look. “We talk too.”
His lips pulled to the side in a skeptical, smartass grimace.
“Okay, we can talk. I’d like to talk. Like… the way friends do.”
Now that wise-guy expression was reaching maximum intensity. “You wanna be friends?”
“What? Friends talk about jobs. We did that.”
“True. And you’re the only person who’s encouraging, so…” He shrugged and looked away.
I couldn’t tell what was bothering him, and pings of worry bounced around inside me. What if my explanation wasn’t enough?
“I’m sorry for icing you out, Dominic. Our time together was as good for me as it was for you. I haven’t had… someone to hang out with in a long time. I just thought I was doing the right thing. But I get it if you don’t want to deal with this. You deserve someone who’s going to—”
Dominic scoffed. “Don’t do that ‘you deserve…’ bullshit. I’m twenty-seven, I’m not out, I work at a deli, and live in my parents’ basement. I’ll decide what I dese
rve.”
I snorted, and it turned into a booming laugh. Dominic stared at me like I’d grown another head.
“Dude, what was that sound?”
I scowled. “Why does everyone have to act like it’s the coming of Christ when I laugh?”
“Maybe because that’s about how often you do it.”
“Shut up.”
“Make me.”
* * *
Dominic
I sat at the table in Luke’s kitchen and couldn’t help taking a closer look around. Our previous encounters had always been carefully planned, and he’d tried hard to erase all traces of his real life from the house. There had been slipups here and there, but other than the hoodie and his daughter’s running shoes, the place had been spotless.
Now, I saw signs of life.
A stack of dirty dishes. Another hoodie tossed over the back of another chair. A silver Yeti cup with Michelle’s name stenciled on in yellow cursive. There was also a huge stack of paper sitting on the counter that looked like a monstrous review packet for a history class.
“Is that the kind of work your kids get?” I asked, pointing at the packet. “Adriana doesn’t get that much and still cons me into doing parts of her homework.”
Luke didn’t answer for a moment, and I wondered if I’d pushed too fast too soon. The guy had barely been able to reconcile the fact that I was vaguely acquainted with his children and now I was chatting about homework.
“Never mind. Sorry.”
“It’s fine.” Luke jerked a large Tupperware container from the refrigerator. “Michelle did it for Micah, and I told her to erase all the answers. He has the entire week. He can do it himself.”
“Now I feel like a sucker for doing Adriana’s stuff.”
“You are a sucker.” Luke’s mouth twitched. “In more ways than one.”
“Shut up.”
I propped my elbows up on the table and watched, mystified, as he heated up something that smelled fucking miraculous. And not like pasta. Living with my family had ruined bagels and pasta for me. It was a sin.
“What you cookin’?”
“Beef stew.”
“You made it?”
Fast Connection (Cyberlove #2) Page 10