13. Corey
13
COREY
“ N o!” I sat up, my chest was tight. I couldn’t breathe. What happened? Someone was chasing me. I was….
I rubbed my eyes and looked around. I was in my room. No one else was there.
I’d been dreaming.
It had felt so real, though. Sweat dripped down my face, and it felt like the room was a million degrees, but it was probably as cold as ever. I should take a warm shower, then maybe I could sleep.
I threw back the covers and stood, but as soon as I reached the doorway of the bathroom, I knew I was far too on edge, listening to every sound around me. No way could I stand under the water, naked and vulnerable, unable to hear if someone was after me.
Dom will take care of you.
He was good, but he couldn’t perform miracles. Muffin, Six, and another man were now guarding the house, but I still wasn’t fully reassured. Whoever was after me seemed capable of getting around even the best defenses.
I shivered, cold now, as sweat evaporated from my skin. I really didn’t want to be alone. I grabbed a T-shirt and sweatpants, dressed quickly, then turned on the flashlight on my phone.
I didn’t really think as I made my way to Dom’s room. When I reached his door, I tried to tell myself to turn around. He valued his privacy, and this was way too much of an invasion, but I needed someone to talk to, someone to talk me off the ledge, or I was going to be cowering in bed, waiting for someone to kill me for the rest of the night.
I knocked before I could talk myself out of it.
Footsteps approached the door immediately. Then it flew open to reveal Dom pointing a gun at my chest.
I threw my hands up. “Jesus, don’t shoot me!”
Dom blew out a breath and lowered his gun. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Being an idiot.”
He looked me up and down. “What’s wrong?”
“I had a bad dream.” Shit, I sounded like a kid.
He motioned me in and shut the door. I looked around, unsure what to do. I wasn’t going to sit on the bed, but the only chairs were in a window alcove. All I could think of was the brick coming through the window. What if next time it was a bullet? So I stood there in the middle of the room.
“I dreamed I… Oh, fuck.” Tears stung my eyes. I was falling apart.
“You’ve been through a lot.” Dom’s voice was soft, warmer than I’d ever heard it.
I nodded. “I thought I was fine after what happened—the brick, the window, the whole fucking thing, but I’m not. I don’t want to die. I don’t want you to die. I wish I’d never walked into that office.”
Suddenly, his arms were around me. He held me tightly against him, and I stopped fighting my tears. I forgot everything I knew about him, buried my face in his neck, and let go. I was safe and warm, and maybe things would be okay after all.
I don’t know how long he held me like that, but I finally came back to myself and realized I had literally been crying on an assassin’s shoulder. What the fuck was wrong with me?
“I’m so sorry,” I said as I pulled away from him.
“No need to apologize. You’re scared.”
I was, but I didn’t want to be. “It’s fucking embarrassing. I bet you’re never scared.”
He raised his brows. “You really believe that?”
“Well, yeah.”
He shook his head. “I’m scared all the fucking time.”
My jaw literally dropped. No way in hell had he just admitted that. “What?”
“Get in bed.” He pointed to the large bed with the covers folded down on one side.
My eyes went wide. “What?”
“Get in bed.”
I couldn’t believe he was serious. I’d just gotten tears and snot on his robe, and he wanted me in his bed? “I…um…I don’t….”
“Get under the covers. You’re shivering.”
“You keep the house really cold.”
“You could have asked me to turn up the heat.”
I hadn’t thought that was an option.
He pointed to the bed again. “Now.”
“Yes, sir.”
Oh, shit. I realized how that sounded. Or maybe he wouldn’t be thinking like that. I glanced at his face. Nope. He was thinking it.
He smiled at my distress. “Is that how you want this to go?”
“Oh my god. Dominic, I….”
“For now, all I’m going to do is get you warmed up.”
“You don’t…? I thought you were….”
“Me too. I don’t know what the fuck is going on with me, but I know that I can’t send you back to your room when you’re frightened.”
Heart pounding, I walked to the bed and slid under the covers. Dom joined me, and if I hadn’t been lying down, I might have fainted.
“Turn over,” he ordered. I rolled so I was facing away from him, and he spooned his body around mine.
It felt so fucking good. He might act cold, but I felt the heat of him against me as well as the hard ridge of his cock pressing against my ass. Dear God, he really did want me. This was insane.
“You were married to a woman, but have you?—”
“We’re not going to analyze this now. Before anything happens, there are some things you need to understand.”
“I won’t tell anyone. I swear.”
He sighed. “That’s not what I mean.”
If he wasn’t worried about someone finding out he’d been with me, then I wasn’t sure what was holding him back. It felt great to have his arms around me, but I wanted so much more.
After several moments of silence, he said, “You’re so innocent.”
“I promise you I have plenty of experience. The fact that you haven’t been with a man won’t be any problem.”
“You’re innocent about the criminal world, about what you’ve landed in the middle of.”
Heat rushed to my cheeks. At least he didn’t think I was a virgin. “I hadn’t thought of myself as innocent, but after the last few days….”
“You need comfort, and I want to comfort you, but don’t misunderstand who and what I am. You don’t belong in this world.”
He was right about that, but couldn’t I enjoy myself while I was here?
“I don’t have feelings like a regular person,” Dom confessed. “Those I did have were taken from me years ago.”
He was wrong. Right now he was feeling concern for me, and he loved his sons, I was sure of that. I didn’t doubt he rarely expressed his feelings openly, but he had them.
“What happened between you and your ex-wife?” I wouldn’t have had the nerve to ask if I was looking into his eyes, but I was in his bed, he was holding me against him. He was…interested—at least his dick was. Surely that gave me the right to at least one personal question.
I might regret my question in the morning, but for now, I would take anything—touch, fucking, information—that I could get.
“I was never in love with her. Our marriage was arranged, and I simply accepted it.”
“And your sons…?”
He ran a hand through my hair, and I bit back a whimper. “You know they aren’t Lisa’s, don’t you?”
“Yes, don’t be mad at Beatrice for telling me.”
“I’m not. It’s no secret. I did love their mother, but I didn’t tell her, didn’t show her, and she hid the fact that the boys were mine. She was an addict, and I didn’t know how to deal with that. I should have gotten her help. I should….”
His voice caught, and he drew in a deep breath. “I regret a lot of things, but pretending I didn’t love her was the worst of it.”
“So you…couldn’t marry her?”
“No. That wasn’t how things worked in our family back then. Marriages were made to form alliances, and the boys’ mother wasn’t part of our society, so I married Lisa.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He huffed. “Don’t be sorry for me. I’m a fucking asshole.”
“No, you’re not, and your sons don’t think you are either.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“They told me how much they care about you.” His hold tightened, and I regretted revealing that I’d talked to them.
“They talked to you after you saw them in my office?”
“Yes. Don’t be mad at them. They wanted to make sure I was getting along with you.”
“Did they threaten you?” I considered how to answer. “Corey?”
“Not exactly. They’re concerned about you, and wanted to be sure things were going well with me here.”
“Did they tell you to take pity on me, to…?”
“No. I… What you did tonight… You protected me even when it hurt you. You’re amazing.”
“If you knew everything I’ve done, you wouldn’t say that. I killed a man a few hours ago.”
I’d heard the shot but pretended not to. “One of the guards?”
Dom nodded. “He was a spy for Lisa.”
Oh fuck. “Then I guess I understand. Who would do that?”
Dom pressed his lips to my neck, making me shiver. “He had his reasons, but we don’t have to worry about him anymore.”
I pressed back against him. “I’m still scared.”
“Don’t be. You’re safe.”
“Am I?” I wanted to believe that, but tonight proved otherwise.
“Yes, because I’m here.”
“But….”
He brushed my hair off my face and spoke right next to my ear. “Not now. I’m trying to tell you about Lisa.”
“Why?”
He was silent for a moment. “I can’t explain it, but I need to.”
“Okay.”
“Lisa surprised me. No one surprises me, but I bought her act, believed she was exactly who she appeared to be—the vapid daughter of an ally who loved fashion and spent most of her time shopping or at a spa. I traveled a lot. We didn’t see each other much, and when we did, she was…accepting but never passionate. Our marriage was a sham, but that was what I’d been raised to expect.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Don’t feel sorry for me, I was a fool.”
“You were doing as you were told. Plenty of men?—”
“I’m not most men.”
“No, you’re surely not.”
He brushed his lips over my neck again, and I groaned.
“So, are you into men now?”
He nipped at the flesh behind my ear before answering. “Not before you. Not really?”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t fucking know. I’ve seen men and thought they were beautiful, like art, but I don’t just want to look at you. I want….”
“What do you want to do to me?” I kept my voice low, barely audible.
“Everything.”
I might have swooned if I hadn’t been lying down. “Fuck.”
“Not now, though. Not tonight.”
My cock was so hard just from hearing him admit that he wanted me. “Please.”
“No. You need to understand who I am.”
“I do.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Lisa was working with a man I was hunting, a weapons dealer—not just working with him, fucking him too. They were meeting when I was away. At first, I thought he pulled her into the sick things he did, but it was her all along. She didn’t care who she killed or who she exploited to get what she wanted—money and power—but I didn’t see it, didn’t give her credit. She sure taught me a lesson.”
“What happened?” I needed to know but I was afraid of what he would say, afraid of finding out how he’d been injured.
“She told me she’d overheard a conversation at a party. She knew where this man would be the next day.”
“Oh my God.” The story kept getting worse. No wonder Dom was cold and bitter.
“She’d never given me information before, but I thought it was a coincidence. She said the man who was to be my victim had harassed her years before, and she was eager for me to bring him down. I fucking believed her. When I went to take him down, he wasn’t there, Lisa was. She was the main one behind the selling of weapons to some of the nation’s most ruthless drug dealers. I haven’t seen her since that night.”
I imagined how betrayed he must have felt. What a nightmare. I struggled against his tight hold until he let me turn over. “None of that is your fault. She treated you like shit and?—”
“There’s more, but I can’t talk anymore, not now.”
“No matter what you say, you are a good man, and I…I want….”