by Abby Brooks
I can’t help it. My mouth works before I think. “Probably,” I say with a smile and a shrug of one shoulder.
“God, I love your witty mouth.”
“I thought you liked me all silent and obedient.”
“Oh, I like you obedient. But silent? Robotic? Hell no. I love you the way you are, sassy mouth and all.” He undoes his belt and slowly pulls it out of his pants, the hiss of leather on denim filling the small room. “Now,” he says as he undoes his button. “Let me fuck that sassy mouth of yours.”
I’m on my knees before he has to repeat himself. Mouth open, eyes wide as I stare up at him and take him all the way to the back of my throat. He groans and I moan, fully aware of just how the vibrations drive him crazy.
He pulls himself out of my mouth. “Beg me.” And then he thrusts into me again. “Beg me to fuck you.”
Breathless, I pull back. “Please fuck me, Dominic. Fuck me hard.”
A smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. “Stand up.”
I do. My body thrums with need. My panties are soaked and my clit is crying out for contact. A frantic throb that forces me to squeeze my legs together, just to give me a tiny dose of the friction I crave.
“Upstairs.” Dominic’s order is more growl than word and it just does me in. This man is the sexiest experience of my entire life and I am just undone. I pivot, squaring my shoulders and lifting my chin, arching my back just enough to make sure he gets a great view of my ass. And then, with a long glance over my shoulder, I strut upstairs, fully intending to undo him the way he’s undone me.
There’s no doubt in my mind that he wants me in the bedroom. I head straight in and consider being a good girl and just stand there, waiting for him to tell me what to do next. But when am I ever a good girl? I climb onto my bed on my hands and knees and look over my shoulder at him.
What I find makes my insides clench and flutter. He’s got his eyes glued to my ass, his dick in his hand. If lust had a face it would be his. I’ve never felt so beautiful in all my life. After a squeezing his dick in his fist, he tears off his shirt and pulls a condom out of his pants and throws it on the bed.
“Did I tell you to get on the bed like that?” he asks as he climbs up behind me.
I’m working on an answer when he slaps my ass. I cry out, losing my smartass remark in the pain. It’s hot and it’s red and I moan as it fades, slowly crossing the line into pleasure as he rubs and kisses the spot. He strikes the other cheek, the sound ricocheting around my bedroom and I realize that I’m living the life of a porn star. Kneeling on my bed in my red lace underwear and too tall heels, Dominic’s hand prints blazing to life on each butt cheek, my body humming with need and desire and pleasure and anticipation. Since when did my life become such an adventure?
Dominic tugs my panties to the side, doesn’t even bother taking them off. I spread my legs even further as his fingers dip inside me, sliding through my wetness with ease.
“You’re always so wet.”
“Only for you. You do this to me. I want you more than anything.”
There’s a moment of emptiness as his fingers disappear. The sound of a condom being opened. I turn to watch him slide it on because for some reason I love seeing his hands on his dick. I watch as he lifts up off his heels, his cock straining towards me. I watch as he presses himself against me, pushes inside, and finally I feel full.
I am whole once again.
The rest is oblivion. I am lost to him. Nothing but sensation. Nothing but pleasure. He thrusts himself inside me, grunting and moaning, primal sounds for a primal thing as my soul arcs out of my body and twines with his. I stop thinking and just be.
In the moment.
His.
With him.
For us.
My muscles flutter and clench and I’m coming so hard, crying out words that mean I love you and I need you and please take me and keep me and make me yours.
He thrusts inside me one final time, shuddering, coming with a long groan that draws goosebumps rippling across my arms and back. When his spasms subside, he kisses my neck and shoulders, pulls out of me, eliciting one more gasp from my open mouth. I collapse and watch him pull off the condom and throw it away. Kick off my shoes as he comes back to me. Wraps his arms around me and pulls me close.
“I always think I know just how much I miss you until I’m finally with you again,” he says, peppering my hairline with kisses. “And then I feel so much better in so many ways that I realize I had no clue how empty I was.”
A smile starts in my heart and warms my entire body. “I feel the same. My life is empty without you in it. I just wait, counting minutes until you come home.”
He tenses and I realize what I just said. That my apartment was his home. But damn it, he feels like my home. Like I belong with him and the where we are is not important as long as we’re together. I know he feels it too and if he gets all weird because I had the courage to say it then he can just get over himself. What we have isn’t your run of the mill lust-filled attraction stuff. This is boundary breaking, line crossing…
I hold my breath, waiting for his response.
“I love that you call your arms home,” he says and I finally exhale.
“You are my home.” I snuggle in closer so I can hear the rumble of his heart.
“I like that.”
“Me too.” I kiss his chest and revel in him. His scent. The tickle of his chest hair against my lips. The salt of his sweat. “When can I come with you again? I’ve been saving for plane tickets. I want you in more than just these tiny doses I get between trips. I want more than just your body every couple weeks. I want to be by your side.”
The words are out before I have a chance to think twice. They are the most secret part of my soul but the one desire that outweighs every other thing in my life since I came home from Arizona. I want to be with him. Not just because I want to see the world, but because I want him. I am an empty shell while he’s gone and a better version of myself when he’s here.
Dominic pushes up on an elbow and there is a thunderstorm of things unsaid in his gaze. His eyebrows draw together. “The last time I brought you with me, I almost lost you.”
That is so not the answer I expected. “I’m right here.”
“But you almost weren’t. When you fell…” Dominic shakes his head, his eyes a million miles away. “My heart shattered. I had been afraid to let myself love you, but as you slipped over the edge, I realized that I already did. And I can’t lose anyone else.” He swallows, seeing ghosts. “I can’t have another hole in my heart.”
I push up on my elbow and put a hand to his face. “But the whole time you’re gone? There’s a hole in my heart. I can’t live like this. I was drowning here before I knew what it was to have you in my life. Now? I am…” I struggle for words, stunned to be having this conversation. “Less.”
That’s all I have. The best way to describe the dimming of my life when he’s gone. Sure, I’m more than capable of supporting myself. Of standing on my own two feet. But everything is less than I remember it when he’s not with me. I want to experience life with him because everything is better that way.
“You’re safe here.” Dominic smiles like that makes everything better. Like I’m just going to say oh, well in that case, I’ll just wait here for you to pop in every now and then and everything is fine.
“I’m dying here.”
“No. You almost died out there. What’s going to hurt you in Townsbury.”
I sit up, clutching the sheet to my chest because suddenly I don’t feel comfortable being exposed to him. “You are, apparently.”
“Dakota…” Dominic sits up. Puts a hand to my cheek. “It’s better this way.”
“For who? You? Or me? Because let me tell you something. I am not better this way. I live my life on hold, waiting for these days with you…” I take a deep breath and look him in the eye. Begging him to see what he’s saying and what I’m saying and how they aren’t meeting i
n the middle. “Is this all there is for us? Me waiting for you while you live life and I tolerate it?”
“I can’t risk you getting hurt.”
“I’m hurting here.”
“You’re alive here.”
“That’s up for debate.”
Is this really happening? Are we really sitting in my bed, coming to the hard realization that I am little more than a trophy? Up on a pedestal? Only to be looked at sometimes? When it’s convenient?
“I love you,” he says, sitting up and scooting closer to me. His hands are on my face. In my hair. His eyes are desperate. “I love you so much.”
“I love you, too. But I can’t rot here. Can’t spend my life waiting for you. And I would think that if you really loved me, you wouldn’t ask me to.”
Dominic doesn’t say anything but there’s a war going on behind his eyes. Love and fear and sadness all battling it out, plain as day. He reaches out and pulls me towards him, wraps me up in his arm and I breathe him in. I wait for that feeling of calmness to override the anxiety swarming in my heart but it never does. For the first time since I met him, it feels like Dominic and I are heading in different directions, that we’re not on the same path after all.
I want to cry but I can’t.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“So when are you seeing him again?” Maya is tucked up into the corner of my couch, her eyes full of worry.
“I don’t know. He has a gig in Wyoming. He wasn’t super talkative when he left.”
Chelsea pats my knee. I cringe, waiting for the great big I told you so that I know she’s been holding in since she got here.
“I’m really sorry,” she says and the look in her eyes tells me she means it.
I blink. Flabbergasted. “Go ahead, say all the things you want to say. I’m ready to hear it. You were right and I was wrong. I need a guy with a job and a house and responsibilities. Someone who is rooted in one place. Someone who will do the right thing.” Even as I say it I feel myself fade to black and white. All the color draining from my soul.
Chelsea sighs. “I mean, I want to say I told you so, but I just can’t. I honestly thought Dominic was right for you.”
And somehow, those words hurt more than the ones I prepared myself for. I crumple into her, tears stinging my eyes. She runs a hand through my hair, shushing me like she did when we were little and I had a scrape on my knee that could only mean I was dying.
I kind of feel like dying now. Like I’m shriveling up inside into something old and brittle.
“How could he say he loves me and then leave me?” I ask Chelsea’s shoulder.
“Maybe he’s not gone,” Maya says as if that explains it all.
I sit up and look at her like I’m begging her to make it all better. “He’s certainly not here now.”
“No, but maybe he’ll be back.”
“I don’t want that.” I’m wailing. Throwing a temper tantrum. Letting loose all the emotion I bottled up while he was here. “I want to be at his side. Seeing the world. Holding his hand. It does me no good to be here when he’s there. I can’t live my life waiting for him.”
Chelsea pulls me back into her, shushing me again. “Of course you can’t.”
Maya shakes her head. “That’s not what I’m saying. He’s lost people before, right?”
I nod, not at all embarrassed to admit that I shared his secrets with my sisters when my heart was breaking in two. Okay, that’s not true. I’m mortified that I told his story without permission, but that will be a bridge we have to cross when we come to it. If we come to it. Right now I’m afraid that we’re fresh out of bridges.
“Think about it, Dakota. How must he have felt when you fell off that path? When he looked down and saw you all broken and he couldn’t do anything to help you?”
“I’m sure he felt awful.”
“But really think. Put yourself in his shoes. Twice before he lost someone he loved, right?” She waits for me to nod before she continues. “And if he is really the same as you, someone who feels big emotions, think how those losses must feel to him. How scary it is to let someone else inside. Maybe he just needs to work through all that before he knows what to do.”
“Or maybe I just got myself wrapped up with the wrong person again.” I’m not in the mood to cut Dominic any slack. I’m in the mood to throw a great big pity party and get all the love and attention I can for my poor scraped up heart.
Maya shrugs. “Maybe.” I can tell she doesn’t believe it, and for some reason that gives me hope.
Can I give him time to figure out what he wants? Can I sit here with my banged up heart, living this colorless existence, and wait for him to decide if he’s strong enough to fit me into his life? All I’ve got right now is a great big maybe.
I know that if he can’t heal the wounds on his heart enough to have me by his side, then I can’t be with him. And I know that if I can’t be with him, I will shrivel up inside.
“I should have listened to you guys from the get go.” I’m whining into Chelsea’s shoulder.
She pushes me up. “You know what?” she asks, finally wearing her Big Sister Voice. “No. You were right not to listen to us.”
“Huh?” This may be the first time Chelsea has ever admitted to me being right about anything.
“Do you love him?”
“Totally.”
“Have you ever loved anyone like this before?”
“Never. He has changed my life.”
“So, how could that be bad?” Chelsea scooches off the couch and kneels in front of me. “I have never ever loved someone like you love him. What do they say? It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?”
Tears fall from my eyes and I shake my head, wiping them away. “That’s just what the people who haven’t felt like this say because they don’t understand. I hurt like I’ve never hurt before.”
“But love is like that, isn’t it?” Maya asks from her place on the couch. “Pleasure so intense it blends right into pain. Imagine what he’s feeling right now.”
I look at those big, dark eyes of hers and think of Dominic’s and somehow that soothes me and sets me off again all at the same time. I want him because he’ll make me feel better and I can’t have him because he might not want me and that just makes me feel worse. My thoughts of him, even the most beautiful, happy memories of our time together, are jagged. They prick at me and I just live on that line between pleasure and pain. Loving him so much it hurts.
My sisters stay with me until I manage to trick us all into thinking I might be okay. As they’re standing to go, I’m laughing at their jokes and starting to think it might all end up okay. That this is just a hiccup on our path, not a divergence. Not the end. I hug them and I thank them and hug them and thank them again.
“You guys are the best,” I say, waving from my doorway.
“We know!” they call back in unison, blowing kisses at me.
I pour myself a shot of whiskey in my Grand Canyon shot glass. Throw it back and imagine I’m kissing him, tasting the whiskey from his tongue. Maybe, just maybe, I can give him time and space to work through all this.
And maybe, just maybe, when this is all over I’ll be at his side, holding his hand as we travel the globe. I’ll be smiling too wide, filled with every color imaginable. Maybe this pain right now is just the price of admission.
I head upstairs and curl up in bed, where his scent is still on my pillow. Where I still remember the way he looked, those dark eyes staring up at me. I feel surrounded by him and he isn’t even here. His taste in my mouth. His scent in my nose. His name in my heart.
Needing him, I grab my phone and open up Instagram, moving on instinct to his profile. My heart soars when it sees his face and then falls to the ground at the very next picture. It’s almost the exact same picture he took of us that first night we met. The one where he’s smiling and I’m staring and it might be the first time I felt beautiful.
Except that�
�s not me with him. It’s another woman. And he’s not smiling at the camera, he’s staring at her. His eyes dark and hungry. A look that I thought was mine is now hers.
Numb, I scroll through the comments. A swell of virtual high fives, referencing some video on his channel. Even though my heart is screaming that it’s already had enough, I click on over to YouTube and find the newest upload. It’s him, with that woman who must also be a bartender. It’s our video, but with different actors. The crowd cheering him on as he sets up a trick. The woman all coy and flirty, totally melting under his gaze. She doesn’t figure it out and somehow I know that it’s because she actually doesn’t know how.
The crowd loses its mind when she concedes and he pulls her close. He doesn’t kiss her, but his eyes are devouring her. I drop my phone like it burned me. Storm downstairs and pace the living room. I want a drink. I want to call him. I want to throw something. My hands are fists and my jaw is a vise and my heart is still upstairs, sobbing in the bedroom.
I pour myself another drink. Vodka this time. But it still tastes like whiskey because I never rinsed out the shot glass. With his taste in my mouth and tears in my eyes, I race upstairs and pick up my phone.
Fuck you, Dominic Kane.
I send the text, hands shaking. Heart racing. Life shattering and falling to my feet like shards of broken glass scraping against me, biting into my skin.
Phone in hand, I pace my living room. Scream into a pillow. I don’t want to admit it, but I’m waiting for a reply. An explanation. A chance to scream at him.
I never get one because he never replies.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Even my sisters are broken hearted. Because they fell for it, too. They thought, like I thought, that I found a love that transcends all other loves. That I found a soulmate. That we would be the kind of couple that inspired books and movies and who lived happily ever after in a world that doesn’t believe in that anymore.
Turns out, I just met a creep who’s really good at selling himself.