11. Sophie
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Sophie
I’m kissing my neighbor.
I’m kissing my neighbor, who I’ve known for less than a week, in his apartment that I just moved into, while my baby sleeps in the next room and my ex-husband plots God knows what from God knows where.
This is insane. This is reckless. This is everything I promised myself I wouldn’t do.
I don’t care.
Dominic’s mouth is hot against mine, demanding and giving all at once, and I’m drowning in him.
The taste of him, coffee and something darker.
The feel of him, solid and warm and so much bigger than me.
The sound he makes when I tug at his hair - a low, rough groan that vibrates through my entire body.
“Sophie.” My name on his lips is a prayer and a warning. “If we don’t stop now-”
“I don’t want to stop.”
His hands tighten on my waist. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He pulls back, and I nearly whimper at the loss of contact. But then I see his face - the hunger in his eyes, barely leashed - and I forget how to breathe.
“Not here,” he says, and his voice is gravel and smoke. “Not against a wall like some desperate fumble in the dark.”
“Where then?”
He doesn’t answer. He just lifts me - actually lifts me, like I weigh nothing - and carries me toward his bedroom. My legs wrap around his waist automatically, and I feel him hard against me, and oh God, what am I doing, what are we doing-
His bedroom is sparse like the rest of the apartment. Big bed with dark sheets. Nothing on the walls. The kind of room that says its owner doesn’t spend much time here.
He sets me down on the edge of the mattress and steps back.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, suddenly terrified that he’s changed his mind.
“Nothing.” He looks at me like I’m a puzzle he’s trying to solve. “I just want to remember this.”
“Remember what?”
“You. Here. Looking at me like that.” He reaches out, runs his thumb along my lower lip, and I shiver. “I’ve been thinking about this since the coffee shop. Since the foam on your lip. Since you looked at me like I was something worth wanting.”
“You are.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know enough.” I reach for his hand, press a kiss to his palm. “I know you make my daughter stop crying. I know you brought me organic diapers without being asked. I know you stood between me and my ex-husband without hesitation.”
“That’s not-”
“I know you look at me like I matter.” My voice cracks. “No one’s ever looked at me like that. Not even Caleb, who I thought loved me. Not even my mother, who worked three jobs to keep us fed. Just you.”
Something changes in his expression. The hunger is still there, but it’s tempered now by something softer. Something that looks almost like pain.
“You matter,” he says. “You matter more than you know.”
Then he’s kissing me again, and all the words dissolve into sensation.
His hands on my skin as he peels off my shirt. His mouth on my collarbone, my chest, my stomach. The sound of his voice murmuring praise - beautiful, so beautiful, you have no idea - against my ribs.
I’ve never felt like this. Not with Caleb, who treated sex like another obligation to check off his list. Not with anyone.
This is different. This is worship.
“Dominic-” I gasp as his teeth graze my hipbone. “Please-”
“Please what?” He looks up at me, and his eyes are black with want. “Tell me what you need.”
“You. All of you. I need-”
He surges up and captures my mouth, and I taste my own desperation on his tongue. His weight presses me into the mattress, and I arch against him, needing friction, needing more, needing everything he’ll give me.
“Mine,” he growls against my throat, and the possessiveness in his voice should scare me. It doesn’t. It lights me on fire. “You’re mine now, Sophie. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
“I’m yours.”
He makes a sound like I’ve broken something inside him, and then there’s no more talking at all.
***
Later - much later - I lie in his arms and listen to his heartbeat slow.
The room is dark. Quiet. Anna’s still asleep in the other room, and for once, my mind isn’t spinning with fear and anxiety.
It’s spinning with something else entirely.
“That was…” I trail off, not sure how to finish.
“Yeah.” Dominic’s voice is rough, sated. “It was.”
I smile against his chest. “Eloquent.”
“You wore me out.” His hand traces lazy patterns on my back. “Can’t be expected to form sentences.”
“Fair enough.”
We lie in comfortable silence for a while. I should probably get up, check on Anna, start unpacking, do any of the thousand things a responsible adult and mother should be doing. But I don’t want to move. I want to stay here, in this bubble, where the real world can’t touch us.
“Sophie.”
“Mm?”
“I need to tell you something.”
My heart stutters. “That sounds ominous.”
“It’s not - it’s about your ex-husband. About Caleb.” I feel him tense beneath me. “I know him. Or knew him. A long time ago.”
I push up on one elbow to look at him. In the dim light, his face is all shadows and angles. Unreadable.
“How?”
“He dated a friend of mine. Celia.” His jaw tightens. “They were together for two years. I watched him destroy her. Saw the bruises she tried to hide. Heard her crying through the walls.”
Oh God. “Dominic…”
“By the time I finally did something - by the time I found the courage to help her leave - she was a shell of who she’d been.
” His voice is flat, controlled, but I can hear the pain underneath.
“I got her out. Helped her disappear before he could finish what he started. But I’ll never forgive myself for waiting so long. ”
I don’t know what to say. My mind is reeling, trying to fit this new information into the picture I’ve been building. Caleb had another girlfriend before me. Another woman he hurt. Another victim.
How many others are there?
“When I saw him in your apartment that night,” Dominic continues, “when I saw his hand raised to hit you - I recognized it. The pattern. The escalation. The way he looks at women like they’re things to be controlled.”
“That’s why you intervened.”
“That’s why I couldn’t not intervene.” He sits up, takes my hands in his. “I don’t know where Celia is now. Haven’t heard from her in years. But I know she survived because I helped her run. And I swore to myself that if I ever saw Caleb doing the same thing again, I wouldn’t hesitate.”
“You didn’t.”
“I didn’t.” His eyes meet mine. “And I won’t. As long as you need me, I’ll be here. Fighting for you. Protecting you. Whatever it takes.”
Tears are streaming down my face. I don’t know when I started crying.
“Thank you,” I whisper. “For telling me.”
“I should have told you sooner.”
“You’re telling me now.” I lean forward, press my forehead to his. “That’s what matters.”
He holds me for a long time, and I let him. Let myself believe, for just a moment, that this might work. That I might get the happy ending I stopped believing in.
But later, after he’s fallen asleep and I’m staring at the ceiling, something nags at me.
A memory from earlier tonight. While I was settling Anna in the next room, Dominic’s voice through the office door - low, urgent, secretive. Words I wasn’t supposed to hear.
She must never find out who I really am.
He explained about Celia. About knowing Caleb.
But that doesn’t explain the rest.
Who is he really? And what else is he hiding?
I push the thoughts away. I’m being paranoid. Jumping at shadows. Dominic has given me no reason to doubt him.
But as I drift off to sleep, the questions follow me into my dreams.