Chapter Thirty
CHAPTER THIRTY
ANGEL
You can justify just about anything if you want it bad enough.
The logical side of me knew we crossed the line the first time we kissed. But again, justification made it easy. He’s a safe oasis nestled in the eye of chaos. Even though he can be bitter, there’s still beauty in his pain.
He’s cruel and bitter, yet still beautiful.
I stiffen, flung like a rag doll into a storm of static, scratches, and zigzag lightning. I can’t move as images flash through my mind.
I shake, saying the pieces of the Lord’s Prayer I can remember. I have no idea if it’s right. I can’t hear anything over the loud noises, so I cover my ears and close my eyes. I don’t know what makes me look up. It’s a feeling. One that wraps around me like a mother’s arms, but cold. Cold and dark. How can something so beautiful be so dark?
“Are you God?” I ask quietly.
“Hey, where’d you go?” Dominic’s rough voice washes over me as he stands by his bed and loosens his hold on my legs.
Shaken, I slowly slide down his body.
There’s a piece missing. I know it. I can feel it. It was right there.
“Angel?”
I glance at the floor, sure if he looks in my eyes, he’ll see through me to these images. These voices. These thoughts in my head. He’ll ask questions I can’t answer. He’ll tell me this man isn’t real, when I hear his voice.
“Nowhere. I’m right here with you.” To shut him up, I grab the base of my shirt and pull it over my head in one fluid motion, tossing it behind me.
Dominic’s eyes darken. “Fuck, Angel.” The words rumble from his throat in a half growl, half groan as he lunges for me. I’m all too happy to meet his grasp. The less we talk, the fewer questions I have to answer.
The moment his hands touch me, we turn into a frenzy of torn clothing and licked skin. He rips my bra open, and I tug at his shirt. Once I have it off, I run my hands down the hard planes of his chest, tracing the litany of tattoos when he stills both my wrists.
“Don’t be greedy. I unwrapped my dessert first.” Bending his head, he takes a nipple in his mouth.
Throwing my head back, I moan as sensation tears through me. “Dominic,” I beg. Shame is no longer a word I know. He’s pushed me past the point of caring.
Glancing up, he chuckles. “Patience, rook. You might miss something good.”
“Fuck patience,” I groan, running my hands down his chest again. “I need you now.”
“What did I say about being greedy?” He gives my ass a hard slap and moves around me until the back of my legs press against the mattress. “I’ve waited five weeks for this, so I’m going to do what I damn well please. Do you understand what that means?”
I swallow hard as he unzips my skirt and pushes it down my legs, never taking his eyes off me. “Yes. No. Maybe?”
“It means I’ll fuck you when I want to, where I want to, and how I want to.”
I should tell him to go to hell. Instead, I nod like a bobblehead as I tug at the button on his jeans. Releasing the zipper, I dive my hand inside his boxers as a hiss of air falls from his chest. While stroking him, I steal a look up at his face as his body thrusts into my hand.
His eyes are closed, and his jaw pulses around clenched teeth. My rhythm becomes faster and more controlled as I watch the pained expression on his face with fascination.
“Jesus, fuck, Angel…”
“Call me Alexandra,” I whisper, the static in my head commanding my words and actions. Using my free hand, I push his jeans and boxers down to his knees when, without warning, Dominic grabs me by the shoulders and tosses me on the bed.
“You want to role play, dirty girl?” I barely have time to register what’s happening before his jeans are off and he climbs over me, his lips trailing a path up my chest. “Okay, Miss Romanov. But it’s my turn.” He closes his lips around my nipple again, his hand traveling a path down my stomach. Within seconds, white heat rips through me so fiercely I have to grasp the headboard just to anchor myself to reality.
“Dominic!”
“Yes, Miss Romanov? How can I be of service? Would her highness like me to lick that billion-dollar pussy or shall I stuff it full of this big, working-class cock?” Sitting back, Dominic holds my eye as he grabs the base and gives it a few rough strokes .
My mouth goes dry. I knew he was big, but there’s big and then there’s big .
And thick. And long. And…
Oh my God. He’s going to destroy me.
“Cock,” I groan as I hear foil tearing.
After taking my lips in a fiery kiss, he grabs my legs and hooks them over his shoulders. “I plan to fuck you at least six different ways tonight, Alexandra . And you’re going to count every damn one of them.”
His cock settles heavy and hard between my legs, and he holds my gaze as he glides it up and down my opening. I’m almost embarrassed at how wet I am for him, but the low growl in his throat tells me he’s not. With a clench of his jaw, he drives forward, fully embedding himself inside me in one brutal thrust. I cry out, my body protesting while struggling to accept him.
“Fuck!” he growls, his pale blue eyes darkening. “Relax, Angel.”
I shake my head side to side. “I can’t. You’re too much.”
“Don’t fight it.” The words are punctuated with another roll of his hips. “Let me take what’s mine.”
Something about his command passes through my wall of defenses and burrows into my brain. Deep down, I know it’s the truth. I am his. In ways even I don’t understand. This moment was meant to happen. This connection, no matter how many times severed, was supposed to mend this way.
So, I nod, not trusting myself to speak.
Drawing his hips back, Dominic slams into me just as hard, the pain mixing with pleasure as each thrust discovers something new. A rhythm that makes me grip the sheets. An unknown spot that draws cries of his name from my throat. New intimate details that belong only to him.
The more I react, the rougher his thrusts become. Sweat coats our skin, our bodies slipping against each other as we both chase an orgasm I know I’ll never come back from. I fear not only its power, but its aftermath.
“Fuck!” he roars. “Come for me, Angel.”
When his thumb presses hard against my clit and rubs in merciless circles, my last shred of control slips away, and I not only fall over the edge, I run toward it and free fall to the ground with no regard for anything but this feeling of pure ecstasy. Immediately, Dominic’s hips jerk, and he sinks his teeth into my calf, letting out a muffled groan as he comes.
The room falls silent except for our ragged breathing.
“Count it,” he mumbles, kissing the bite mark he left on my skin.
I blink. “Huh?”
“I told you I was going to fuck you at least six different ways tonight, and you were going to count all of them.” Pulling out, he moves my legs off his shoulders and rips off the condom. There’s a wicked gleam in his eye as he climbs off the bed. Taking my hands in his, he drags me to the edge of the mattress until my head tips off the edge. “But I didn’t say where.”
“Dominic, what—”
Fisting his cock, which— holy shit —is already hard again, he gives it a few rough strokes before angling it toward my lips. “Count.”
“One,” I say, barely getting the word out before it’s cut off and drowned out by a satisfied groan.
My feet feel stuck in quicksand. I want to move but I can’t.
Pennies. I don’t like pennies .
Go now. Go now. Go now.
The words break through, and the quicksand goes away. My legs move, and I’m running. Running fast as the wind with the smell of pennies trailing after me. I don’t know where to go, so I go to the only place I feel safe.
I won’t cry. Tears are a tool not a weakness. Sinking to my knees in between my bed and my dresser, I shake, saying the broken pieces of the Lord’s Prayer I can remember. “Otche nash, sushchiy na nebesakh…” I can’t hear anything over the loud noises, so I cover my ears and close my eyes. “Da svyatitsya imya Tvoye.”
I don’t know what makes me look up. It’s a feeling. One that wraps around me like a mother’s arms, but cold. Cold and dark. How can something so beautiful be so dark?
“Are you God?” I ask quietly.
My heart hurts as he shakes his head—this boy with the frozen eyes and sad smile. “No. I’m the Angel of Death.”
I sit up and scream until I can’t breathe. Until my chest hurts, and my voice breaks to barely a whisper. Held down by death, I thrash, fighting for my life, trapped between static and sound and people I don’t know.
“Angel, baby, stop! Jesus, what’s wrong?”
My eyes open, and the first thing I see is Dominic’s face framed by the burned backdrop of a barely lit dawn. His eyes are wide and alarmed, his hands wrapped around my shoulders as if he’s afraid I might disappear into thin air.
It’s only then I look around, realizing I’m in his bedroom, tangled in his sheets.
“Jesus, what the hell were you dreaming about? I thought…” Slumping back, he scrubs a hand down his face. “Never mind.”
I’m still shaking, but the harder I reach for the fragments of the dream, the quicker they dissolve. Pieces filter in, but they don’t fit together. Nothing makes sense. It’s like playing a record backward and skipping every third groove.
“I don’t know,” I whisper, falling into his arms. “But it’s not over.”