Chapter 8
Dominic
He looks at me like he hates me and wants me in the same breath.
It’s my favorite look on him.
Shame is written all over his face, but underneath it is that other thing. The one he doesn’t want to name. The one I called out last night and again this morning. The one that dragged the word wait out of him when I was already halfway out the door.
He has no idea how loud he is.
Brendon keeps his mouth shut and thinks that counts as silence, but his body is a fucking confession. The way his throat moves when he swallows. How his gaze flicks from my mouth to my eyes, like he’s begging me not to notice the direction his thoughts are going while also hoping I do.
I know the type, and he’s textbook: repressed, wound tight, raised on sermons full of hellfire and salt. Boys like him don’t white-knuckle through desire and just go to sleep—they either break or find a way to bleed off the pressure, then hate themselves for it.
My palm is on the headboard, my other hand resting on the mattress near his hip. I’m not touching him really, but the threat of touch hangs there as every inch between us stretches thin.
I built this tension on purpose and let it sit, because anticipation is its own brand of cruelty and I want him steeping in it. He fed me the word wait like it killed him, and I’m not about to waste that.
I let my gaze glide slowly over his face, giving him the full weight of it. He tries to stare back, but his eyes go to my mouth again before he forces them back up to mine.
“You keep pretending you don’t want what you want. You keep telling yourself you’re just scared. That’s half the reason you’re fucked up about this—fear you can manage, but desire’s the part you don’t know what to do with.”
His jaw tightens. “You don’t know what’s in my head,” he says.
I huff out a quiet breath. “I know enough to call that you went home and took care of yourself thinking about me.”
Color surges across his cheekbones again, instant and violent. His fingers curl tighter in the blanket, and he glares, but it’s watery at the edges. “You’re disgusting.”
“Probably,” I agree. “Still chained yourself to the thought of me the second you got home, though. Didn’t you?”
“I’m not chained to anything,” he bites out.
Sure. He can say that all he wants, but I don’t need a collar or a chain to know he’s leashed.
He’s already tethered to this—to me—he just doesn’t realize how little slack there is in that chain yet. It’s all in the way he tugged me back from the exit just now without knowing why.
He can’t help it. Good boys never can.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” I say quietly. “Look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t wrap that good little hand around your cock last night while thinking about me.”
He looks like he might spit some righteous bullshit at me, but he doesn’t. He stares at me, frozen, and the silence answers for him.
I smile, slow and filthy. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
His eyes flash. “I hate you—”
“Stop lying to both of us,” I cut him off, leaning in until my nose almost brushes his.
He sucks in a sharp breath, and I feel it ghost across my lips. His eyes flick down again, that same traitorous move, and it makes my own pulse jump.
I keep my voice pitched low just for him.
“You know what I thought about last night? Because, believe it or not, you’re not the only one with a fucked-up imagination.”
He swallows again, throat working under skin that’s too soft. “I don’t… want to know.”
“I thought about your face,” I murmur, ignoring him. “I thought about how you sounded when I pressed my hand to your neck in that office. I thought about how your knees went a little weak, how your eyes rolled just enough to show white.”
His breath shudders out, but he still chases my lips with his. “Stop—”
“I thought,” I continue, ignoring him again, “about what it would look like if I had you in my bed instead of standing against a wall—”
“Dominic,” he whispers, and this time it comes out closer to a plea than a protest.
I lower my voice, angling my mouth so my words brush his lips. “Did you stroke yourself thinking about that? About my hand around your throat while you made those sounds I like? Did you close your eyes and imagine me telling you what to do, instead of doing it in the dark like some dirty secret?”
He lets out a broken noise that sits right between a whine and a groan, and every part of me lights up. The soft little crack in his voice I’ve been craving since his office; it vibrates against my mouth now instead of my palm, intimate in a different way.
I could chase that for hours. I have to push down an insane urge to just pin him again and see how many variations of that sound I can drag out of him before he cries.
But I keep myself in check by inches, holding the leash tight, because blowing this too big, too fast will ruin the fun.
I want him ruined slowly.
He opens his eyes again, and the look in them is pure chaos: fear, anger, want, shame. All of it churning. “What do you want from me, Dominic?”
That’s the fun part, because I could list a hundred things—him on his knees, bleeding for me in ways no one else will ever see. But right now, I want to open the door without blowing it off the hinges.
I hum and pull back so I can see his face properly. “What do you want, Brendon?” I ask instead.
He stares at me like I’ve asked him to choose between Heaven and Hell. His mouth opens, and his throat works. The clock on his nightstand ticks loudly in the quiet room.
“I-I… don’t know,” he whispers finally.
I believe that, actually. He’s been told his entire life that wanting anything outside a narrow list is wrong.
He’s been shoving everything that doesn’t fit into a dark corner and nailing boards over it.
Now I’ve ripped a few boards up, shone a light straight in, and he’s staring at everything inside.
“You don’t know,” I repeat quietly, and he gives me a jerky nod. “Lucky for you, I do.”
His eyes go wider. “Dominic—”
I don’t give him time to finish whatever thin protest he thinks he should make. My hand moves from the mattress to his throat in one smooth motion, fingers wrapping around the column of his neck. I don’t squeeze hard, but his pulse jumps frantically under my thumb.
His lips part on a shaky inhale, and I hear that sound again. A soft, broken whine, dragged up from somewhere deep and unpolished. It hits me the same way now: a chill that runs from the base of my skull, down my spine, settling low in my fucking balls.
There it is—the surrender. The piece of him that’s been dying for someone to hold him tight enough, so he can stop pretending he’s fine.
“Open for me, Little Sin,” I whisper, then lean in the last inch and press my mouth to his.
The kiss hits like a collision. Hours of holding back and imagining this without letting myself admit that’s what I was doing.
His lips are soft and a little dry, parted against mine in shock, and that first contact is like a match on gasoline.
I don’t go gentle, not really, but I don’t go full feral either.
I keep it on that edge, kissing him like I’ve wanted to since the moment he mouthed off to me with his back against his office wall, but giving him enough room to take from me if he wants it.
And fuck me, does he take it.
There’s a moment, right after the shock burns off, where his mouth moves against mine with this raw, inexperienced hunger that hits me harder than anything else.
He doesn’t kiss the way someone practiced does. There’s no slick, rehearsed rhythm; it’s messy, a little desperate, and honest. He makes another noise into my mouth, and I have to curl my fingers tighter around his throat to steady myself.
His hands, which have been fisted in the blanket, come up between us, then slide up my sides instead, fingers bunching in the fabric of my T-shirt near my ribs. He clutches at me, pulling me closer instead of creating space.
The kiss turns messier, heat building fast—his breathing ragged through his nose, mine rougher than I want to admit.
I keep the pressure at his throat firm but not restrictive, my thumb stroking the flutter of his pulse.
It pounds wild, a trapped bird against my skin—terror, desire, anticipation, all of it singing through that single vein.
I feel the precise second the last of his resistance slips: his thighs loosen beneath my knees, the muscles in them unclenching. One heartbeat he’s rigid with second-guessing, the next he melts, legs falling apart like an invitation.
The high hits me at the exact moment his teeth catch on my bottom lip.
I know adrenaline. I know how it floods your veins when someone’s life is in your hands, when you watch the light in their eyes dim slowly, when you feel that final, stuttering heartbeat go quiet.
That used to be the only time I felt anything.
Everything else, even football, even the roar of a crowd chanting my name, felt muted in comparison.
This is the same high I used to chase in other people’s endings.
The only difference is that Brendon’s eyes will be alive and blown wide when I pull back, not empty and glassy. His chest is heaving because I kissed him, not because his lungs are shutting down. The trembling in his hands is from want and nerves, not from oxygen leaving his brain for good.
He’s not dying; he’s coming to life under me.
For a split second, the overlap twists my stomach—because killing and kissing shouldn’t share the same shelf. But then the wrongness twists into something that feels a lot like right in my fucked-up head.
And I am so fucked.
His legs tighten around me. He’s not even aware of it; the motion is instinct, a silent closer. I shift my hips, just a nudge, letting the rigid line of my dick brush his hardening cock. The friction drags a groan from both of us.