Chapter 4 #2
My heart slams against my ribs. “Why the hell would I want that?”
He laughs softly, the sound low and warm. “Because you didn’t go to the cops. Because you’re prepping my assignments instead of reporting me. That tells me a lot, Brendon.”
I hate how my name sounds in his voice, softened and dragged out just enough to feel intimate. “Yeah? What does it tell you, exactly, Dominic?”
“It tells me you’re not as good as you pretend to be,” he murmurs. “It tells me you like to be needed. It tells me that when someone puts a leash on you, you don’t fight it. You straighten it yourself.”
My pulse spikes so hard I feel dizzy. “You think you know me after one day?”
“I know enough,” he says, and his eyes are so bright it unsettles me. “I know you’re terrified of me, and you’re angry at yourself for being curious at the same time.”
“I’m not curious,” I snap too fast and way too loud.
He grins, the expression soft and sweet in a way that doesn’t match his words at all. “Sure you’re not.”
My patience snaps at that. A small, frayed thread giving way under pressure. I’m tired of him acting like he’s reading me better than I read myself. I’m tired of him being right.
“You’re not that interesting,” I say, packing as much disdain into it as I can and aiming for a clean hit. “You’re just a violent narcissist with a good PR team.”
He moves faster than I expect, stepping into my space fully and walking me back with his body alone.
No hands, no shoving, just relentless forward motion until my shoulders hit the wall behind me.
The edge of a framed poster digs into my shoulder blade, and I suck in a breath, my spine straightening reflexively.
He plants one hand on the wall beside my head, the other low near my hip, caging me in without touching me yet. Up close, he’s overwhelming. I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. They’re focused entirely on me, the world outside this office clearly irrelevant to him now.
“Say that again,” he says quietly.
Adrenaline surges through me, and I know this is the part where I should shut up, where I should say I’m sorry, where I should smooth things over the way I always do. But the part of me that spent years swallowing words feels spiteful.
“Which part? The violent part or the narcissist part?”
His jaw flexes once, but instead of snapping, he laughs. It’s an amused sound that echoes too warmly in the small room.
“You look tired,” he states randomly, voice dropping slightly. “Rough night?”
I know what he’s doing. He’s taunting me, testing me, pushing at the edges of my composure to see where I crack. His body language says relaxed and friendly, but there’s something in the way he holds himself that screams danger.
“I had work,” I say. “And someone’s essays to fix.”
His mouth kicks up. “You stayed up grading my shit, Little Sin?”
“I stayed up doing my job. Your essays were part of that.”
“Mhm, such a good boy,” he murmurs.
It lands somewhere between praise and mockery.
My throat tightens when I try to breathe, and I just get him instead—all clean spice, cracked pepper, and citrus.
It mixes with soap, the faint salt of his skin, and the grass he’s been running drills on.
The whole blend hits me as pure him—cold and expensive on the surface, smoke and heat underneath.
I know I’m fucked, because my lungs burn and I still drag it in again, wanting it there. It’s expensive, obviously, but it doesn’t smell fake. That’s what danger smells like now.
Dominic lifts his other hand slowly until it hovers near my throat. I stop breathing, and every muscle in my body goes tense.
“Relax,” he murmurs, and his fingers brush my neck lightly before curling around it, thumb resting against the hollow where my pulse flutters wildly. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
The blatant lie makes my heart pound harder. “You say that as if I should believe you.”
He leans in just enough that I feel his breath on my cheek. “You’re standing here instead of screaming for help. That tells me you already do.”
He doesn’t squeeze, he just holds me there, and I’m very aware of how little strength it would take for him to tighten his grip.
The memory of his hands around that man’s throat flashes through my head and my stomach twists, but my body doesn’t pull away. My palms press flat against the wall at my sides, fingers splayed.
“Dominic… please,” I finally beg, even though I’m willing myself to feel fear and not… not this other thing that’s starting low in my belly.
My pulse hammers against his thumb, and his gaze drops, watching it. When his eyes lift back to mine, there’s hunger in them that has nothing to do with violence and everything to do with the way his attention strips me bare.
“You’re shaking,” he says softly.
“I’m terrified,” I manage, the words breaking a little on the exhale. He doesn’t know I’m not terrified of him, but of my own thoughts.
The hand at my neck tightens enough that I feel the pressure, feel the promise of what he could do if he decided to stop playing.
“Dominic—”
“Calm down,” he whispers. “If I wanted to hurt you, you wouldn’t be standing.”
“That’s not a comfort,” I say, voice strained.
He huffs a laugh, breath warm against my cheek. “You’re still talking back.”
“You’re still breaking boundaries,” I shoot back, the words slipping out on nerves and reflex. “That fits the pattern.”
“You really going to sass me when my hand’s around your throat?” he asks, squeezing harder.
My breath stutters, and a sound slips out of me before I can bite it back—a small, helpless whine that embarrasses me the second it hits the air.
As soon as it’s out, I know it’s a mistake.
Dominic goes very still.
His pupils blow wide, then his gaze drops to my mouth and glides back up again. The fingers around my throat flex once, just a fraction, and his breath catches in a way that matches mine.
I know with sinking, absolute certainty that whatever line I thought I could hold between us just snapped, and I have no idea how to tie it back together.