26. Ariana
26
ARIANA
I’m drained now with everything that just spilled out. And it isn’t only the things I told him—it’s the fear that had me in a chokehold once I realized he wasn’t asleep at all…and what he would do to me next.
Calling me a thief. Nothing could stop my tailspin then, not with what happened the last time someone called me that.
Even now, chills chase over my back with the memories of that night with Franco bubbling up to the surface, from where they’d been simmering for years. I’ve been a fool to think I’d dealt with that night. I hadn’t. I’d merely cut it out like gangrene, forcing myself to never think about it, and then expecting the flesh wound to just heal by itself without proper care.
For years, I’ve been functioning on autopilot, until Franco strolled back into my life. Somehow, I managed to get through everything he had in store for me these past weeks, but now that he’s dead…it’s as if I’m finally free and allowed to deal with what he’s done to me. Have I really been watching my back for twelve long years, waiting for him to walk back into my room, just as he had that night?
I have. I don’t know how to deal with what has happened now. I can’t do it alone. The mere idea of finding myself amongst the rubble of that night makes my knees want to cave in.
I’m cold with the memories, but Dominic’s hands are warm and firm where he’s keeping me upright.
Dominic .
What is it with this man? This time, I didn’t talk because I needed to give him something to latch on to like I did over dinner, giving him random safe facts of my childhood. First it was the fear of what he’d do to me now that I’d stolen his gun. But then… I couldn’t hold back, and for the first time since that night Franco came to take as it pleased him, I’ve told someone the truth.
Not just anybody, but him .
Dominic has me. He knows my biggest shame, my darkest secret. I bet he can smell my deepest fear: to go through something like that again.
But he vowed to never hurt me. He’ll kill Franco again and again if he could. My knees buckle, and he pulls me to him, into the circle of his arms where I felt safe from the first time he held me. I press my whole face into his chest and inhale his scent through my quiet tears. Freshly laundered shirt, warm male underneath, a hint of cologne mixed with him. It’s intoxicating.
“Come, sweetheart,” he says softly as he supports me to the door. “You’re exhausted.”
As soon as he’s opened the door, he sweeps me up in his arms and cradles me close as if I’m a treasure, not a woman broken forever by one brute’s actions. Instead of resisting him as I should, I close my eyes and sink into his embrace, my hand lying limply against his chest where I can feel his heartbeats, solid, firm, and without the least bit of exertion at carrying me down the corridor.
As we walk through the kitchen, he passes the counter with the bags of clothes.
“The things Portia dropped off—” I whisper, wanting to reach for it.
“The clothes aren’t washed, and coming from the store, you can’t wear it without washing it first. I’ll have something for you to sleep in.”
His tone tells me not to even think about giving him grief, and I let it go.
It’s only when he lowers me to my feet that I realize we’re in his room, and not in mine. “I?—”
“It’s okay. This bathroom has a bath.” He leads me into the adjacent bathroom which looks palatial in comparison to the small add-on in my room. He leans into the tub, closes the plug, opens the faucet, and tests the temperature to make sure it’s just right.
As he straightens, the room seems to shrink to him and me. His gaze inches down to my chest, to where the little puff shoulders have slipped off what with the corset laces loosening with time, and then to my bare feet. I’ve long lost the flip-flops Portia gave me.
For the briefest seconds, his gaze captures mine, and my breathing stalls at the raw look in his eyes. It’s like he’s clawing back his anger, only being a protector for now. That moment earlier, when he told me where to look to see my effect on him, flashes in my mind’s eye, and I force myself not to drop my gaze to his cock but to keep staring back in his eyes, hating the slow blush heating my cheeks.
With a groan, he opens the double vanity’s cupboard and puts a packaged toothbrush out for me next to his toothpaste. He takes stock of everything else in there. I bet he’s assessing what I could use as a weapon, but I’m done. I’m completely defeated.
“Do you need help?” he asks as he turns back to me, his gaze landing on those two little corset bows that slipped loose.
“No.” It’s barely a whisper, but it sounds more like a question than a dismissal.
“Take your time,” he says.
And with that, he scoots past me, making sure we don’t touch, and leaves me standing alone in the middle of the bathroom, water rushing to fill the tub. He doesn’t close the door, and I wouldn’t dare do so either. It won’t help, and I can’t afford to mess with Dominic Scalera again.
I strip, quietly giving my thanks to the gods for allowing me the luxury of a bath—another thing I thought I’d never have again. I lower into the tub, and the warm water whirls around my tired body. I touch my bullet wound’s dressing, recalling the nurse saying it’s waterproof. Still, it won’t be a good idea to be in here for hours.
It’s quiet as I relax in the water, and I try to screw my emotions back in place and take control of my mind. Next door, Dominic is busy doing things, making noises of drawers opening and closing.
I don’t know what to do with this man. He doesn’t fit the usual profile of the Mafiosos I’ve dealt with all my life.
Any Mafioso whose gun got pick-pocketed would have beat me into submission, if not into the afterlife, and then some more. Physically proving who is in control all the way. Instead, he dared me to shoot him as if he has a death wish. Dared me to make a very pretty hole in his heart.
He is an outlier, and I’m out of my depth.
I soap up everywhere and rinse off the water, then stand. As I do, I look towards the bedroom door where Dominic is still busy. It’s quiet now—he’s listening to me, as I listen to him. I tug a bath towel off the heated railing, dry off with swift swipes over my body, and wrap it around my breasts. I reach for the toothbrush and brush my teeth. He isn’t watching me, but I can feel his attention on me, dissecting every move to predict what I’m going to do next.
I’ve left the dress on the vanity, and as I’m done brushing my teeth, I reach for it. His voice comes from next door. Deep, masculine, but gentle.
“I have something here you can sleep in, Ariana.”
It isn’t a summons, but it isn’t as if he brought it over to me. I was naked in the bath, so…
It’s an invitation to come fetch it.
I pad out of the bathroom, and he is standing by the foot of the bed, looking at something on his phone, with clothes in his other hand.
When I come closer, overly conscious of his size and the fact I’m literally wrapped in a bath towel he can pluck off my body with one little tug, I blush. The stupid blush that speaks a thousand words. Hopefully, he’ll think it’s the heat of the bathwater.
“Here,” he says as he looks up. “At least it’s clean.”
“Thank you.” Now I don’t want to raise an arm to take the clothes, because what if this towel actually drops? I’ve twisted it tight, but I don’t trust anything right now. I chew my lip as I’m stalling, and in these few seconds, his gaze slides down my body, and I freeze up even more.
“Sweetheart,” he says with a sigh as he tosses his phone to the bed. “What’s it going to take for you to trust me? You’re like a deer in the headlights here. And that after—” He breaks off.
After I told him I got raped and have never recovered from it. Yes. I’ve been a deer in the headlights for twelve years when it comes to being physical with anybody.
“Will it help if I tell you I only have sex with women who have given me their written consent?” he says, staring into my eyes. “Like on paper, word for word what they want and don’t want, what they need from me, how I can best serve them, then signed in real ink, while they are completely mentally there? Not under duress? Not intoxicated? Not drugged? Not on a date? Heck, I don’t even do those.”
His words are slow to sink in. Written consent. Wants and needs. Ink. He must be into BDSM, and the mere idea sends a warm rush down my spine to my sex. I’ve always found everything around sex repulsive. But when he says things like that, it does this to me?
I’m still in a stupor when he shakes out the clothes he was holding and drops the one piece to the bed.
“Come on, you’re going to swim in it, but it’ll be comfortable.” He scrunches up a plain black T-shirt and has the neck over my head in one gentle swoop, then he guides my arms into the sleeves so tenderly, it’s as if he is dressing a sleeping child.
He tugs the T-shirt down, and it’s clean, smelling of laundry soap, but under that layer, there’s more. His scent has been trapped in the fabric or maybe it’s just me, homing in on everything about him with my new, sharpened sense of smell.
“I’m going to take off the towel, okay?” he says, and I nod, in a haze. The T-shirt is big enough to cover to my mid-thigh.
He has the towel by its edge, and with a gentle pull, it comes loose and puddles at my feet.
“Now this is going to be interesting,” he says with a wink as he picks up the men’s sleeping shorts from the bed. “They are wash-worn and soft, so…”
So…
I swallow as he goes on his haunches and then nudges me to step into the wide legs. His sleeping shorts. If he looks up, he’d see my sex. The place where Franco ruined me for life, but Dominic doesn’t look up. Of course he doesn’t.
It’s only when both my legs are in and he pulls the shorts up, making sure the T-shirt covers me all the way as he straightens in the process, that our gazes meet. His eyes tell me he doesn’t miss a thing, and yet, the look in them doesn’t make me want to shrink away in fear. In fact, I can’t look away. I want to be dragged in deeper, down into the heart of him.
All those gentle, almost imperceptible touches. That get to him the most.
I’ve never been treated like this before. With such reverence and care.
He lets go of the waistband, and the boxer shorts sag and barely keep up. He chuckles, and I reach for them to keep them in place. If I move in the night, they’ll slide right off. He is that big, and I’m that small in comparison. This man is all muscle with the build of a weightlifter—not one who started yesterday; he’s been at it for years.
“Let me,” he says as I fumble with the T-shirt to get to the short’s waistband. His hands slip underneath the T-shirt’s fabric, and his fingers kiss my skin as he takes the waistband and rolls it up several times. His knuckles brush against my bandage, and he stills, his touch a warm glow to my skin. “You’re still okay here?”
I shrug. “I haven’t looked.”
“Need pain meds?”
“It’s okay.”
“I’ll give you something in case.”
He traces the edge of the bandage with a fingertip, below my belly button. He’s checking the bandage’s seal, but the delicate touch sends a shiver of goosebumps down, lower, seeming to steal between my legs and right to where a slow steady bass has been pulsing for hours now. I bite down on my bottom lip not to gasp. All those gentle, almost imperceptible touches.
“Lie down, sweetheart. Let me have a proper look.”
We’re right at the bed, and it’s only a matter of caving in. My legs don’t want to hold me up anymore, so I do.