Levi
“So this is how someone high up in The Family chooses to live, huh?” Dom asked as he looked around my home.
“Not all of them,” I said with a snort, relieved to see his anger and frustration take a back seat.
It wasn’t gone, of course; I didn’t expect it to be.
He had plenty to be angry about. But then again, Dom had never really been free of his anger.
He had eventually learned how to get it under control and make it work for him, but it was always there beneath the surface.
“I could certainly come up with names that would mean nothing to you, of people who would choose a far more extravagant and ostentatious home.”
“Yeah, well, this suits you better,” he said, walking over to the fireplace and picking up one of the shells on the shelf above it. “I see you’ve been to the beach again.”
“It was the one thing about living in Seattle I missed the most,” I admitted. “I didn’t realize I missed it until I got here.”
“Really? That’s on the coast.”
“Yes, but it’s not the coast around here.”
There was something...dangerous about the coast here that had always felt right.
A pleasant beach walk was all well and good, and you could still find that further south.
What you couldn’t experience was the sheer cliffs and precipices that threatened to drag you into the sea if you didn’t watch your step.
You could stand on the cliffs, and the wind felt completely different as it blasted across you, howling like a furious animal as the waves crashed below.
“True,” he said and looked around, unsure whether he was supposed to sit down or stand around looking lost.
“The furniture is functional,” I told him dryly. “Make yourself comfortable. I need to change the bandage before I forget.”
He raised a brow. “Really?”
I stopped “What?”
“Let me help,” he said. “I don’t think you’re going to do a good job if you try to do it yourself.”
“I can manage,” I told him with a frown.
“It’s your shoulder, Levi. Just let me help you. I’m no doctor, but I can put a bandage on.”
I hesitated, but there wasn’t any reason to say no. It would be easier with help, which the no-nonsense nurse had told me when I’d left the hospital. “Fine, but don’t fuss.”
“Me? I don’t fuss, Moira is the fusser.”
“You always fussed when you thought I was going too hard at something, or God forbid, I was injured,” I reminded him as I walked into the small bathroom. It wasn’t like I needed a whole lot of space, especially when I figured I wouldn’t be spending much time here anyway.
The smallness of the bathroom was made more obvious when Dom followed me in. It was a decent size for me, but for Dom alone, it would have been tight. With me? It was positively claustrophobic as I stood at the sink, wondering what I was doing.
“Are you going to do anything, or do I have to do everything?” he asked, raising his brow and gesturing impatiently.
Sighing, I opened the cabinet next to the tub, pulled out the wraps they had given me, and handed them to him.
It occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to keep the shirt on, and I hesitated.
If it had been someone else helping me, I wouldn’t have thought twice, but we were already bumping into each other as he struggled to open the packaging.
Deciding I needed to get moving before he stopped being distracted by what he called ‘cursed’ packaging, I grabbed my shirt.
My shoulder and arm sang a dirge of pain as I forced the skin to stretch, pulling the shirt over my head, but I kept my reaction to myself as I dropped the shirt onto a hook next to the door.
I was already going to have to deal with Dom giving me shit for the damage, I didn’t need him to know I was in pain as well.
“Huh,” he said as he balled the packaging up and threw it into the trash can next to the sink.
“What?” I asked, trying not to give away how self-conscious I was feeling.
Not that I had any reason to be self-conscious about exposing my body.
I had done it around plenty of people, and sure, in the early years after I’d left Cresson Point, I’d been a little self-conscious, but I had also been a scrawny kid.
I had grown since then, and I had been careful to take care of my body.
If anything, I was proud of what I still managed to do with my body despite spending most of my working life at a desk.
“You cover up being in pain better than some of the fighters I know,” he said with a shake of his head. “Now let’s see if that stays when I start.”
Frowning, I stood at the sink and bowed my head so my expression wouldn’t stare back at us in the mirror.
His fingertips were rough, but he was careful as he removed the dressings the nurse had applied.
Thankfully, there had been no burns, and my jacket was durable enough to take the worst of the blow.
Not enough to be entirely in the clear, though, and I had scraped the living hell out of myself in my tumble onto the ground.
I still didn’t think the nurse had accepted my explanation of a nasty fall, but what was I going to tell her?
That a bunch of psychotic gang members had blown me up, I had every intention of feeding them to the sea when I got a chance.
“This is from the explosion?” he asked as he bumped me with his hip.
“Hey,” I protested, startled by how such a small movement felt like a huge blow. Goddamn, he had grown, but his size still didn’t show how strong he was, even when he was being careful.
“I should have washed my hands first,” he said, doing just that.
“Right,” I muttered, the skin around where he had touched me tingling and distracting me. “And yes...well, no. I wasn’t close enough to the blast to take any damage from the explosion itself. I was knocked off my feet.”
“And piledriven onto the concrete from the looks of it,” he said as he dried his hands.
I grabbed the cream they’d given me and handed it to him. “That is more or less how it felt.”
He snorted. “Knock the wind out of you like the time you insisted you could totally take it if I tried some wrestling moves on you?”
“To even call that wrestling is a crime against actual wrestling,” I said with a smile. “But yes, I remember. Even back then, you were freakishly strong, and even though you didn’t go as hard as you could and slammed me on the bed, it still knocked the wind out of me for what felt like forever.”
“It scared the shit out of me,” he said, and I felt a shiver go down my spine when his breath gusted against my shoulder as he gently applied the cream. “I thought I’d killed you or something.”
“Or something,” I said, trying not to wince whenever his cautious touch had enough pressure that I felt a hot zing of pain shoot up my neck. “It took me a moment to remember how to breathe again.”
“I guess you’re lucky this is the worst that happened to you,” he said.
“True, Will took a far worse hit than me. And that’s not counting the men I lost that day.”
“Will?”
I glanced at his odd tone. “Yes. The son of the man who was running operations in this area before? Will is currently...I suppose the best way to put it is assigned to me.”
“Like shadowing you?”
“I’m not sure what Augustine’s intentions were. Will is clearly not made to be a leader, and no matter how much you chisel at wood, you cannot turn it into granite.”
“I can’t tell if you don’t like the guy or what.”
“He is...well, he’s soft, nervous, and nothing like the sort of person I typically work with and prefer to work with.
That said, he is attentive, he’s a good organizer, and he’s good at streamlining processes.
For now, the best I can do is reduce the son of one of our best leaders to being my personal assistant.
To his credit, he seems happier with that than whatever he probably feared I might make him do, or what Augustine might have told me to do with… him.”
“Felt that, did you?” he asked with a chuckle. “I’m actually surprised you aren’t used to this sort of thing.”
“Dangerous fieldwork has never been my role,” I told him, tensing when he held my arm still with one hand.
I could feel the calluses of his fingers brushing my skin as he used his other hand to apply the cream.
I could say my sensitivity was because it had been weeks since I’d been this close to another person, especially so intimately, but I knew that wasn’t the case.
No, it was because it was Dom and I was remembering things I didn’t know I had any right to think about.
Any right to think about? Not whether or not it’s a good idea to think about them? Wow, that’s telling.
Oh my God, no, I was not going to have my mother’s voice echoing in my head, while I was shirtless in my bathroom, while my former best friend, and the man I lost my virginity to, was running a hand all over me and holding me in a grip that was erotic as hell.
You’re the one constantly reminding yourself I don’t really exist...
Nope, this wasn’t happening, and it was going to stop right now. Even just the memory of my mother had no place in my head while this was going on. I did not need the reminder of her voice in my head while I was getting a hard-on.
At least you admit you’re getting one.
With a huff of annoyance, I pushed the voice away and spared a thought as to why I had to generate such a persistent and correct voice for those internal dialogues.
Not that it wasn’t accurate, my mother had always enjoyed being right.
..something I’d inherited. Not that I hadn’t wondered at the state of my own mind before, but it was somehow a more relevant and pressing concern now I was standing here with Dom.
His presence made me hyperaware of...everything.