Chapter 9
My apartment feels smaller tonight. Three days have passed since the parking garage with Kieran, and I can still taste him on my lips when I let my guard down. Which is exactly why I can’t let my guard down.
I can’t kiss any of them again. I can’t risk losing myself in all of this.
I have to be cool and calm and in control at all times.
The knock on my door comes at midnight, sharp and deliberate. Two quick raps, pause, three more. It’s a pattern I recognize, one that makes my pulse spike and my defenses slam into place.
Dom.
I consider ignoring it, pretending I’m asleep, but we both know better. Dom wouldn’t show up at my apartment unless it’s important, and he certainly doesn’t knock with that particular rhythm unless he’s operating in an official capacity.
I open the door to find him filling the frame, all six-foot-three of controlled menace wrapped in dark jeans and a black t-shirt that stretches across his chest in ways that should be illegal.
His brown eyes are darker than usual, almost black in the dim hallway light, and the tension in his shoulders sets off every alarm bell in my head.
“We need to talk,” he says, and his voice carries that edge it gets when he’s trying very hard not to lose his temper.
“About?”
“About the fact that you kissed Kieran Frost in a parking garage three nights ago.” His jaw ticks once. “And about the fact that Marcus has been watching you for five years without mentioning it to the rest of us. Hell, he was watching you before then too, but…”
Shit. How the hell did he find out? A camera? But why wait three days? Why check the camera film for three nights ago?
I step back and let him enter my apartment. Having this conversation in the hallway isn’t an option.
He closes the door behind him with deliberate control, the soft click somehow more ominous than if he’d slammed it.
“How did you—”
“Find out? Marcus told me himself. Seems he thought I should know that the woman I’ve been protecting is playing games with enemies and allies alike.” Dom turns to face me, and the look in his eyes makes my chest tight. “What I want to know is why you didn’t tell me.”
“Tell you what? That I kissed someone?” I cross my arms, putting up barriers even though I know they won’t work on him. “Since when do I report my personal life to you?”
“Since the someone you kissed is Kieran fucking Frost and since you’re not just anyone. You’re Vincent Blackwood’s daughter. You’re under my protection, and apparently, you’re the center of a game I don’t understand the rules to.”
“What do you know about my father’s death?” I ask.
If there’s someone I can trust, it’s Dom.
Even if he might want to act like he can control me under the guise of protection.
Dom goes very still, that predatory stillness that means he’s deciding how much truth to reveal. When he speaks, his voice is quieter, more careful. “More than you think. Less than I should.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting right now.” He moves closer, not quite invading my space but making his presence impossible to ignore. “What I need to know is where your head is at, Raven. If you’re compromised—”
“Compromised?” I snap. “By one kiss?”
“By whatever game you’re playing with four different men who all want different things from you.” His eyes never leave mine. “Marcus wants to use you as a weapon. Axel wants to corrupt you. Kieran wants to claim you. And me?” He stops, his jaw working.
I lift my chin, eyeing him. “What do you want, Dom?”
“I want to keep you alive… even if it means protecting you from yourself.”
The honesty in his voice undoes something in my chest and loosens the knot of tension I’ve been carrying since that night in the garage.
Maybe I shouldn’t, but I reach up to cup his face. His skin is warm beneath my palm, rough with the stubble he never quite manages to shave completely.
“Dom—”
“Don’t.” But he doesn’t pull away from my touch. If anything, he leans into it, his eyes fluttering closed for just a moment. “Don’t make this harder than it already is.”
“What if I want it to be hard?”
His eyes snap open, dark and intense. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“Don’t I?” I let my thumb trace the sharp line of his cheekbone. “You’ve been watching me, protecting me, keeping your distance like I’m something fragile that might break if you touch me, but I’m not fragile, Dom. I’m not some innocent girl who needs to be handled with kid gloves.”
“I know exactly who you are.” His hand comes up to cover mine, pressing it more firmly against his face. “That’s the problem.”
“Then stop treating me like I’m made of glass.”
Something snaps in his expression, that careful control fraying at the edges.
“You want to know what I really want, Raven? I want to strip you bare and learn every inch of your skin. I want to hear you moan my name like it’s the only word you remember.
I want to make you forget every other man who’s ever touched you, kissed you, looked at you like they have a right to. ”
The words send heat spiraling through my body, pooling low and insistent. “Then why don’t you?”
“Because,” he says, yanking me so close to him that I can feel the length of his hard body pressed against me, “once I start, I won’t be able to stop, and you’re not ready for what that means.”
“Try me.”
His control snaps. Dom’s mouth crashes against mine. Dom is pure hunger, an all-consuming fire that burns away every rational thought. His hands fist in my hair, tilting my head back to deepen the kiss, and I return his desperation.
This is what I’ve been waiting for without realizing it, this raw connection that makes everything else fade to background noise.
His tongue sweeps into my mouth, claiming and demanding, and I give as good as I get, biting his lower lip hard enough to make him groan.
He backs me against the wall, his body pinning me in place while his hands explore with the confidence of someone who knows exactly what he wants. When his mouth moves to my throat, I gasp and arch against him shamelessly.
“Dom,” I breathe, and his name sounds like a prayer on my lips.
“That’s it,” he murmurs against my skin. “Say my name like that again.”
I’m about to comply when his phone buzzes insistently in his pocket. He ignores it the first time, too focused on the task of driving me insane with his mouth, but when it buzzes again immediately, he pulls back with a curse.
“Someone better be dying,” he growls, checking the message. His expression shifts from frustrated to grim in an instant. “Fuck.”
“What is it?”
“Fight club. There’s been an incident.” He’s already moving away from me, that professional mask sliding back into place. “I have to go.”
The abrupt shift from heat to business leaves me reeling, but I force myself to focus. “What kind of incident?”
“The kind that requires cleanup.” He pauses at the door, looking back at me with an expression I can’t quite read.
“This conversation isn’t over, Raven, but when we finish it, you need to understand something.
I don’t share. Whatever game you’re playing with the others ends the moment you say yes to me. ”
“And if I’m not ready to choose?”
“Then you better figure out what you want fast. I’m done pretending I don’t want to kill any man who looks at you like you belong to them.” His smile is sharp and dangerous. “Especially Kieran Frost.”
And then he’s done.
I thought I could control this. That I could have fire without getting burned. But Dom doesn’t play at half-measures. And neither do I.
I slide down the wall to sit on the floor, my legs too shaky to support me. Three days ago, I kissed Kieran and felt like I was falling. Tonight, Dom kissed me and I felt like I was burning alive.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, a traitorous voice whispers that maybe I don’t want to choose. Maybe I want to see how far I can push before something gives.
The thought should terrify me. Instead, it sends anticipation singing through my veins.
My phone buzzes with a text from Marcus. We need to talk. Tomorrow. There are things about your father you need to know.
I stare at the message until the words blur, my father’s ghost hovering at the edges of every decision I make.
Dom said he knew more than I think about Vincent Blackwood.
Marcus has been watching me for years, even the ones when I went into hiding.
Kieran claims his family had nothing to do with my father’s death.
Everyone has pieces of a puzzle I’m not even sure I understand, and I’m caught in the middle, being pulled in four different directions by four dangerous men who each think they know what’s best for me.
The smart thing would be to step back, to choose safety over the intoxicating pull of desire and danger.
But I’ve never been particularly smart when it comes to the things I want.
And what I want, I’m beginning to realize, is all of them.
The thought should scare me more than it does.