Chapter 32
Cecily
I was livid.
LIVID.
Until I heard what Dominic said to my dad. The way he defended me. Who in my life has ever done that? Nobody.
My anger melted away, leaving behind confusion and heaps of mortification. Little is worse than tipping up your head for a kiss, and receiving a childish nose nestle. It's like the participation trophy of kisses. Thanks for coming, now go away.
I did everything I could to put Dom out of my mind on the return trail ride. Spring in the desert is impossibly beautiful. Needle covered cacti make room for bursts of vibrant flowers, hot pinks and bright purples, vivid orange and lemony yellows. A sunrise represented by flowers.
No matter how hard I tried, I knew the warmth on my cheeks was from more than the midmorning sun.
Dom and I are going to have to talk about what happened, even though I don't want to.
If it were possible, I would simply ignore him for the next three weeks.
Fake an illness. Cut off my ears. Almost anything to avoid the conversation I know we must have.
We arrive back at the dude ranch, and Quint hands everybody brushes.
He shows us how to properly care for the horse after a ride.
When that is done, Kerrigan asks Grandma if she would like to go for a walk in the meditation garden.
Rainbow, everyone's favorite (but not really) interloper tags along.
Dom is looking at me with reluctance. When I incline my head away from the others, he nods, a silent agreement that his thoughts mirror mine.
"We'll be at the pool later," I tell the remaining members of my family, not that they care. Duke's fingers are itching to work. He's literally twitching, probably envisioning all the bossing around he needs to do.
Dom falls into step beside me. "Cecily—"
"Not yet," I interrupt. "I'd like to be out of earshot of my family."
He nods. We arrive at our casita, and I tell him I'll only be a moment. "We're going for a hike," I say, switching out my boots for tennis shoes. I hand him one of the two water bottles housekeeping has left on our nightstands. "We shouldn't be gone long, but it's the desert."
"Better safe than sorry."
We set out, me in the lead. I'm trying to get a handle on the way I feel, but it's tough.
Emotions are high and intense, and I'm starting to not know up from down.
I went from hating Dom, to begrudgingly being apathetic about him, to wanting him to kiss me and feeling devastated when he didn't. Add to that the way I feel about my family and how much I love my grandmother, and it's a tsunami of chaos in my mind. My heart.
Dom, thankfully, stays quiet as we walk deeper into the desert. I like that about him, the way he is ok with not talking.
The sun rises higher, and the trail gradually becomes less manicured. Rockier. Large boulders accumulate at the base of the mountain, balanced on each other. We stop for water, Dom's eyes watching me even as he tips up his water bottle to his mouth.
"You ready to talk, Menace?" He wipes the back of his hand across his lower lip.
I twist the cap on my water, squaring my shoulders. "You said last night you were ok with chaste kisses. Has that changed?"
"Not at all."
"Then please help me understand that stupid nose thing you did." The mention of it has my body warming again.
Dom sets his water on the ground and takes a step closer to me. I'd take a step back, for the sole purpose of being petulant, but there's a boulder behind me. "I panicked," he admits.
I'd seen an emotion in his eyes when I tipped my face up, but I hadn't labeled it as panic. To me, it was horror. "I suppose the thought of kissing me is panic-inducing." Sarcasm as a salve isn't as soothing as I'd like it to be. Dom's rejection of me refuses to stop stinging.
He's only a couple feet away from me now. There's dust on his right thigh, as if he brushed his hand off on the fabric. "It wasn't about you," he says.
It is without a doubt one of the worst things I could hear.
It wasn't about you, Cecily. Today was about your sister. Today was about your brother. I missed your orchestra concert because I had to work late, it wasn't about you.
Nothing in my family was ever about me, no matter how hard I tried. Until I got older, and stopped trying.
I wish I could cry about this. I wish I could scream into the desert, frighten away the hapless bunnies, send the pack rats scurrying to their middens. I'd choose crying over the reaction that comes naturally: mean.
I lift my chin. "Why do you think I said nothing more than modest kisses? It's because I find you repulsive. I'd rather lick the bottom of the shoes I wore when I married you than have your tongue in my mouth."
A muscle in his jaw twitches. His voice, deep and gravelly and curling low beneath my belly, warns, "Careful, Menace. I like it when you're mean." He takes another step into me, and now I'm bad-tempered enough to move back.
The boulder is closer than I realized, and my back presses against it. My water bottle drops and my breath hitches, a touch below ragged, my pulse thrumming as electricity zips through my veins. "I bet you only like girls with daddy issues."
He takes another step, dropping his lips to my ear, caging me in with his hands on either side of my head. He smells of salty sweat, cedar and orange. "Watch what you say about my wife. She has daddy issues."
His audacity draws a gasp from me. The words are on-target, as accurate as any arrow hurtling toward a bullseye. I don't like them, but they're not wrong.
The front of my thin tank top grazes his chest when I drag a much needed deep breath into my lungs. "You seem protective of your wife," I sass, but the effect is lackluster. Thanks, hormones.
Dom runs the tip of his nose over the shell of my ear. Chill bumps break out over my forearms, even as the sunshine streams over us.
"I'll protect her from villains of all forms. I'll even defend her against herself."
I whimper. I don't mean to, and I hate the sound. His words have pierced my chest, landed in the center of my heart.
Dom pulls back, but only a few inches so he can look at me. "I couldn't stand the thought of the first time I really experience kissing you to be in front of your family, or for show. It's personal, and private, and I demand it be genuine."
I want to give in. I want to wrap my arms around his neck and lose myself to his mouth. Closing my eyes, I tip my head back until it meets the hard surface. "We have to stop at kissing," I tell him, even as my lady part is nearly pulsating at the top of my thighs.
"Of course," he agrees. "You deserve a lot more than a dusty, sweaty fuck in the desert."
It's startling, hearing it come from his mouth, but in the best way. A way that makes me squirm, sending heat up my thighs. Projecting images into my brain of precisely what it is he says I deserve more than.
Dom's hand works its way behind my head, cupping me. His other hand slips over the small of my back. "What I want from you right now is the kind of kiss that would make your family blush."
My eyes open, and I take him in. His angular jaw, the plains of his face, his denim eyes and the way the sun lightens them. "Yes, please."
I meet him halfway, because I am as ready as he is.
Dom is not gentle, or rough, but lands at the sweet spot between.
Hot and light against my mouth, and then deeper, fuller.
Desire races through me, pinpricks along my skin as if I've tangled with a cactus.
I reach for his shirt, fisting the fabric, drawing him closer to me.
His hand leaves my back, gliding up my rib cage.
At my neck, he swipes his thumb over my jaw.
He leans into me until I'm against the boulder once more, the hard cold of the rock cutting through my shirt, the knotted fabric at the bottom pressing into my lower back.
I sigh into his mouth. Perhaps it's a groan.
His kisses turn deeper, rougher, less contained.
My hands run over his shoulders, his back, his waist, pulling him closer to me.
I don't know when the last time was that I felt this way. Maybe never. This need, this want, this urge to lose myself entirely to this man.
His touch drifts lower, feathering over the top of my chest, left bare by the cut of my shirt.
My hands rake through his hair, and I arch into his touch.
He cups my chest with one hand, his other hand still protecting the back of my head from the unforgiving boulder we're leaning against. I groan into his mouth when his thumb brushes over my shirt, pressing myself into him, willing our clothes to melt away.
He breaks the connection of our mouths, spinning me until my hands are braced on the rock.
His lips skim my upper back, his teeth combing over my skin, and a hungry groan lifts in his throat.
He flattens against me, his hand snaking around my midsection, dipping under my shirt.
My backside presses into him, his hardness. Heat floods the tops of my thighs.
We haven't spoken, we are simply a hurricane of craving and yearning, ache and thirst. How can one kiss be enough? Kisses this hot can never satisfy. For the rest of my life, all kisses will be compared to this.
His hand finds my bra, slips into it. My flesh fills his palm, his thumb stroking my nipple. "Cecily," he says my name roughly into my hair. "This is—"
He cuts off. What was he going to say? This is bad? Good? Wrong? Stupid?
"I know," I say, hoarse. This kiss is a combination of many things, and I don't think I want to hear him name them.
I'm so delirious, so crazed for this man, that I'm considering suggesting we go back to our room.
Will it really make it that much harder to get an annulment if we give in, just this once?
Can we lie? I'd known I was attracted to Dom, but this physical response to his hands, his mouth, is beyond what I knew to be possible for me. I want him, plain and simple.
"Dom—"
A loud yell sounds from the distance. We freeze, dragging in heavy breaths. I look down at my breast that has popped out from my shirt, held in Dom's strong hand. "What was that?" he asks, lips at my ear. His thumbnail scuffs my nipple, back and forth, making my legs a little less sturdy.
"I don't know," I whisper, and the sound comes again. It resembles a greeting, a hey or hello.
Then a splash. Dom lets me go. He steps back, and I straighten myself up. Back into my bra goes my breast.
"Are we close to the pool?" Dom asks. "I thought we walked in a straight line, but maybe we were in more of a circle than I realized."
"I'm positive we walked away from the ranch." I turn around. Meet his eyes. He looks ragged. Out of sorts. He looks like he wants me, like we were interrupted.
His eyes rove over my face. He reaches out, runs his thumb across my lower lip, and I find my face lifting into his touch, wanting it so desperately. "You're swollen," he husks.
"I was properly kissed," I say. "In a way that would make my family blush."
Dom's eyes heat. "As you should have been."
My heart pinches. When he says things like that, it makes me feel uncomfortable in a good way. I don't know how to grapple with someone who makes my experience, me, a priority. But Dom does, unfailingly.
"Do you want to go see what the ruckus is about?" He offers me a hand.
I nod. "Yes." I place my hand in his, expecting him to walk us toward the sound, but he hauls me into him, taking me by surprise.
"One more," he says, "because I'm not sure there will be another." He captures my mouth, holds me to him, molding against me. My arms wrap around his neck, holding on, riding the high. With the way we respond to each other, perhaps it is better if this is it.
When we've stepped away from one another, attempting to get our bearings, he says something that takes me by surprise. "I looked up the official definition of menace, and after today I am more convinced than ever that it is the right word to describe you."
My eyebrows lift, urging him to continue.
"A person or thing that is likely to cause harm." His head shakes slowly. "You, Cecily, could not be more of a menace."