Yearn

Chapter 23 Lethal Devotion

Chapter twenty-three

Lethal Devotion

Dominic

I didn’t lace Scott’s beer to be merciful.

I did it so the house would finally know who it answers to.

And I knew I was becoming even more of a madman for Teyonah.

But. . .I didn't care.

Soft jazz poured through my basement apartment. Three candles shouldered a warm glow along the walls, the peonies stood in a short white vase on the desk, and the bed was made to hold us both as I devoured Teyonah.

Does she see the madness within my mind? I hope not.

Sandalwood and warm wax braided the air.

So close, I watched her feeling two things radiate off her curvy body.

Fear and arousal.

The inside of my mouth still ached from the fresh piercing. I’d spent my lunch break downtown, sitting in a sterile chair and thinking only of her.

The new silver bulb pressed cool against my tongue.

The appointment had cost six hundred dollars at a private studio in the city—the kind of place that didn't advertise, where clients came by referral only and paid in cash for discretion.

I'd taken time off from the hospital, driven fast so I wouldn’t miss it, and sat in a leather chair that probably cost more than most people's monthly rent.

Worth every cent if it made her scream my name.

I had told myself it was necessary. I’d studied pressure and nerve endings long enough to know what the bulb could do—the right touch to her clit, the right rhythm, and she’d unravel in my hands. I planned to do just that this evening.

I stuck my tongue out.

She blinked. “Dominic. . .did you get your tongue pierced?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to please you.”

“You would have done so regardless.”

“Maybe, but now there’s no doubt.” The smile that spread across my face wasn’t about the piercing at all—it was about what it meant: the lengths I’d go to make her feel wanted, the quiet madness that devotion had turned into.

The hours without her had been sterile and frozen. Empty plates on the table where her kids should have been. A silence in the house that didn’t heal but decayed. Each room upstairs had carried the sound of a man who didn’t belong there—Scott pacing, coughing, opening the fridge like he owned it.

The kids played and he yelled at them to be quiet.

They ended up rushing to their rooms and watching television by themselves.

That was the part that tore at me—the fucking toxic dysfunction he had brought with him.

I heard it through the floorboards, the sharp bark of his voice, the way it cut through their laughter. J had been reading out loud, their voice shaky but proud, and Scott snapped at them—“Stop mumbling like a girl. You’re a boy. Act like one!”

The words hit harder than a fist. I knew it from the way J went quiet, from the pause before the soft pad of his footsteps retreated down the hall.

I wanted to go upstairs right then, pull Scott off the couch, and drive his teeth down his throat.

But I couldn’t—not with the kids there, not with their eyes on me. I couldn’t let them see what it would look like if I gave in to the need boiling under my skin.

So I went upstairs and stayed in the backyard, hands clenched, staring through the window like a starving man. Watching J curl in on their self, shoulders rounded again after weeks of me teaching them to square them, to be proud of their shape, their breath, their right to take space.

Scott had undone it in one sentence.

One stupid, careless sentence.

It wasn’t fair.

J deserved better.

Oliver deserved better.

Teyonah for sure deserved better.

And they deserved quiet nights, not the stink of beer bottles rolling on the table.

The kids deserved a wholesome dinner and a bedtime routine, not fast food grease spread across paper bags and an order to go up to their rooms and be quiet.

Out in the backyard, I pressed my palms against the glass until they ached, until I could feel the ghost of their laughter filling my bones.

Not traumatizing the kids was the only leash I had left.

That was the only thing that kept me outside.

I could wait until they were asleep. I could wait until Scott was alone with his beer bottles.

Then I was able to diagnose and figure out the best treatment. I thought of it like a clinical symptom: the house running a fever. High. Dangerous. A sickness that would worsen if untreated.

Medicine was about dosage and timing.

Too much and the body seized.

Too little and the infection spread.

So I left the house, went back to the hospital, ducked into the supply room, where no one looked twice at a man in scrubs. In there, I grabbed several sedatives in liquid form and tucked them into my bag.

A house cannot heal with constant infection.

A woman cannot breathe when her air is stolen by the wrong man.

Once the kids went to bed and Scott disappeared into the bathroom, I snuck into the kitchen, rushed to the fridge, and grabbed a bottle of beer. Next, a measured draw from the syringe and a puncture to the cap. Soon, I filled the beer with the sedative.

Once done, I put bottle put back into the fridge, went outside, waited, and watched.

When he grabbed that special beer bottle, I smiled.

It wasn’t murder.

Not yet.

It was dosage.

Correction.

Proof that I could regulate the chaos in Teyonah’s life.

And when Scott passed out a minute later and his snores began—thin, uneven, harmless—I knew the medicine was working.

The house was responding to my treatment.

Smirking, I rushed back into the house, took the bottle cap that I’d punctured, and headed downstairs to prepare my place for a romantic evening.

Once done, I texted Teyonah and told her she could come home.

And now, standing before Teyonah, I wanted to give her more than quiet. I wanted to give her breath, a heartbeat that didn’t gallop with fear, mornings that started with me instead of dread.

The whole day had been cold and empty without her and the kids.

This moment right here was the first warmth I’d felt since Scott had returned.

I didn’t just want her body.

I wanted her like an organ I’d been missing.

And I would keep cutting away the rot until she and her boys could live with me for good, no hiding or sneaking around.

She moved away, walked to the other side of the room, and got close to the wall. “I want to know what you did to Scott.”

I could have said a hundred things, but I kept my voice measured so the words would carry their own weight. “I temporarily put him down so we could talk.”

Her mouth parted. “You drugged him?”

“I gave you much needed peace and quiet.”

Rage surged, clean and white. The memory of last night raked its claws—the way he’d spoken to her in her own kitchen as if she were some common slut he could bark at. That night, I had felt the animal in me lift its head and growl.

“Dominic. . .you can’t drug him. I don’t want you getting in trouble over my bullshit—”

“With the way he talked to you last night. . .” My jaw flexed. “He’s lucky to be alive right now.”

She shifted back a step.

I followed the movement with my gaze.

“Don’t talk like that, Dominic.”

“Why not?”

“Because sometimes when a person talks like that. . .they slip up and actually do it.”

“I’ve got more than enough money for bail and a legal team that can keep me out of jail—”

“We’re not going there.”

“Not we, but me.” I crossed the room and planted my palm on the wall above her shoulder—not touching her, only remaking the space.

She watched the line of my muscular arm like an answer she wasn’t ready to give.

I matched her breathing for three full cycles, then slowed mine, pulling hers down by degrees until her shoulders loosened against her will.

“What you did tonight was dangerous.” Her bottom lip quivered.

“The children were upstairs. Plus, like I said. . you could get in trouble for something like this and you have your whole life ahead of you, Dominic. Think of yourself and leave my drama alone. You’re supposed to be a doctor, not a prisoner. ”

“I’m supposed to protect you.” I didn’t blink. “I sent my legal team to help you today.”

“I talked to one of them. They wouldn’t tell me how much they will charge—”

“Because I’m paying, and before you say no, understand that for me there is no other option,” I spoke through clenched teeth, “Use the team to get him the FUCK out of this house.”

“I will. . .thank you for the lawyer.”

“My legal team updated me on the bullshit court order. Scott bribed a judge on the golf course to sign it. They can provide proof and tear the court order apart.” My mouth went hard on the next part. “But they’re saying seven days—that’s their guess.”

“That’s what they told me. Although. . .they left the bribe part out.”

“They have ways of finding things that others can’t.”

“Still. . .how did they find it—”

“That doesn’t matter. I don’t intend to wait seven fucking days to have my family back.”

She widened her eyes. “Dominic. . .”

Rage rose within my chest, but I made sure to steady it. Teyonah wasn’t the target, and I didn’t want to scare her anymore.

“Dominic. . .we can wait seven days and do this the right way.”

“Since the first night I kissed you. . .I’ve been a locked animal out of its cage. I can only hold myself back one more night. That’s it.”

“We can wait. . .”

Not me.

Seven days was a lifetime when a wolf was staring at raw meat.

Plus, seven days of Scott's voice in J's head, rewiring everything I'd spent months healing.

Fuck no. He has to go.

Danger and devotion rattled within my chest. “He spoke to you like you were replaceable. You’re not. You’re a queen. My beautiful queen.”

She bit her lip.

“I will tear down any man who forgets that.” My voice dropped into the truth’s darker register. “I will kill him.”

“Don’t say that. . .please. Don’t make threats like that—”

“I don’t make threats. I make room.” I let my knuckles skim the line of her jaw.

“Oh, Dominic. . .” She leaned into the touch and sighed. “My mind says this is wrong, but my heart says this is right. Is this what love and protection feel like?”

“It is.”

“I wouldn’t know. You’re the first man to truly give it.”

“And I’m the last man too.” My palm cupped her throat and my thumb rested on the soft beat of her pulse.

This is a case of obsession too, Teyonah, but I can’t tell you that because for me there is no cure.

Her eyes glimmered in the candlelight like they were wet with some grief they hadn’t had time to name. It made me furious at the world that had taught her to be afraid of the exact thing built to shelter her.

My heart ached. “I’m in love with you.”

A sound left her—too soft to be a laugh, too rough to be a sob. “You shouldn’t say that until my mess is gone.”

“I am in love with you, and you are my queen. I don’t care about your ex or that fucking court order.”

“You should. This situation is a toxic mess.”

“I want your toxic mess. I want your mornings. I want to be at the table with your kids and laugh. I want the dull days, not just the bright ones. I want your pain. I want your love.”

Her eyes watered.

“If he doesn’t leave before the seven days, I will make him stop breathing.”

“No. We will wait for those seven days. We will do things the right way.”

“This man is trying to take and destroy what’s mine.” I kissed her.

Not soft.

Not asking.

I kissed her like I was writing her name into me with fire. My mouth pressed hard against hers, sealing every protest before it could rise.

Her gasp fed me and it was sweet oxygen to a man who’d been starving all day.

I framed her face with my hands, thumbs stroking her jaw even as my teeth scraped her bottom lip.

Mmm.

She trembled, but she didn’t pull away.

Inside my chest, the wolf and the man snarled the same truth: she was mine.The kiss deepened—my tongue demanding, claiming, not just tasting her but erasing every trace of him.

Scott’s voice.

Scott’s smell.

Scott’s fucking gaslighting shadow.

Gone.

Burned out of existence by me.

When she finally let herself melt into me, her arms lifted, fingers knotting in my hair. That small surrender nearly broke me. I dragged her closer, grinding the length of my body into hers, breathing her in like she was the only thing keeping my lungs alive.

I pulled back an inch, just enough for her to feel the heat of my words across her mouth. “I want your kisses. I want your body. I want your oxygen. I’ll starve until you feed me. I’ll burn until you cool me.”

“I want you too,” she said into the tiny space between my mouth and her skin. “It’s fucked up but. . . I’m glad you drugged him—”

“It’s not fucked up.”

“It is and. . .I don’t want to say things like that but it’s true.”

I kissed her again.

The jazz throbbed low and slow around us.

“Teyonah. . .I need more than kisses.”

“He’s upstairs.”

“Fuck him. If he wakes up, I’ll put him back to sleep.”