Chapter 19 #2
I flinched and instinctively tried to pull back, but Dominic chased the kiss, keeping our mouths sealed. He fumbled with something on the counter before his shoulder jerked under my palm.
I barely registered the crash, let alone the immediate ceasing of the alarm, far too distracted by the soft “one more minute” he murmured against my lips.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
Physically, emotionally, mentally, could not handle another full minute of being taunted through my jeans. “Dom… we should…”
“Just one more,” he murmured.
What had gotten into him?
Since when was this a thing?
He’d never been into me like this—ever. In fact, he’d felt so far the opposite way that the second he’d found out about my little crush, he’d defaulted to weaponizing it against me via an exceptionally cruel prank.
But he couldn’t fake this. There was just no way.
He couldn’t fake the erratic hammering of his heart or the way his muscles were trembling under my touch.
Slipping my fingers soothingly over the back of his neck, I stuffed them into his hair.
Then I dug my nails in just a bit and scraped them allll the way back down.
Dominic bucked with a wounded groan, practically ready to crawl onto the counter to get to me, and my insides turned liquid.
He was a wall of scorching heat and trembling agony, and it made me drunk with power.
Then he was thumbing my jeans. Unhooking. Unzipping. Grazing the hem of my underwear, silently asking for permission.
There was something so unexpected and endearing about the way he did it that I accidentally smiled into the kiss. And I swear I felt him melt into me before he pawed at my stomach again, begging.
My thighs quivered, stretching a half inch wider for him as the pleading ache between them grew unbearable. The alarms sounding in my head were barely audible now, like they’d been submerged in molasses.
I needed this; I needed him.
Now.
I clawed at his neck again, hooking my legs around his waist. He took the hint with an excited shiver, stuffed his fire-drenched fingers into my panties… and pressed right into the electric cluster of nerves begging for his attention.
Stars erupted under my skin. I gasped, my fingers and toes curling in response to the sudden surge of flaming electricity ripping through my body.
My legs quivered, my lungs seized, and I had no control over the shuddering moan that writhed out of my throat.
Waves of pleasure rippled underneath my skin, wringing my sanity dry before finally allowing me to crash.
And then everything went very, very still.
Dominic had frozen against me. He wasn’t moving, he wasn’t breathing, and while our mouths were technically still fused together, it was more from genuine shock than anything else.
I eased back, so lightheaded that I would’ve toppled over had he not been holding on to me.
What the fuck just happened?
There was no way that was what I thought it was. He’d barely touched me. His hand wasn’t even fully inside my underwear yet.
Dominic’s swollen lips were parted, his pupils dilated enough to signal a potential medical emergency, and he was gaping down at me with the drunkest, most dumbfounded expression I’d ever seen on a person.
He was out of breath, pink in the cheeks, heavy-lidded, and kept having to halt his body from shifting forward again.
“Did you just…”
Crimson embarrassment crept over every inch of my skin. My teeth clamped together. I shook my head. “Nope.”
His tongue flicked out to wet his pillowy lower lip, and he blinked a few times, like it might help him parse out what’d just happened. Then his forehead pinched, and he moved his fingers, dipping them further down and into my soaked center.
I bit my tongue as the friction made my stomach wither, trying to keep a straight face. But my nails were digging into his round, muscled shoulder, my body was quivering again, and—oh. Fuck me.
I was so wet that his finger slipped right in, curving at an angle that made my left knee give a tiny involuntary kick. The back of my head was tingling. White spots dotted the outskirts of my vision. I was going to start panting again.
“So you didn’t just come,” he murmured, his palm gently pressing to my oversensitive everything.
I shook my head again, my lips sealed as I pulsated around his finger, giving myself away. “Mm-mm.”
His hand moved again, and I almost tore out of my body.
“It’s been eighteen minutes,” I blurted, fully, wholeheartedly embarrassed by how much power I’d just handed him. “I don’t… I don’t think I’m drunk anymore.”
He eyed me for one skeptical beat, then gently retreated his hand. His fingers were drenched with the evidence of how much more one of us wanted the other.
I wanted to crawl into the ground, shut the lid, and never come back out.
Refusing to allow my attention to gravitate down to the unreasonably generous bulge tenting his pants, I gingerly pushed myself off the counter. His eyes tracked me as I stepped around the island on shaky feet and tore a paper towel off its roll. I held it out for him, unable to meet his gaze.
My fingers were trembling, my skin was flushed, my booming pulse was thrusting the rest of me into a full nervous breakdown, and I likely wouldn’t be able to recall my own mother’s maiden name until my brain stopped crying, but I could still control my actions, my words, and how much of myself I was willing to give him.
And the less of me he kept once our thirty days were over, the better.
So when he opened his mouth again, I said, “We were too drunk to remember anything. Your words.”
A stubborn glint sparked in his eyes, and he crumpled the paper towel in his fist as he sucked in another breath… only to pause like he’d just noticed something. “Wait, what’s that smell?”
My head was so scrambled that I had no idea what he was talking about at first. Not until his brows crumpled and he followed it up with, “Did you order food?”
Then I remembered.
“Shit.”
I snatched the mitts out of the drawer behind him and opened the oven, retrieving the steaming, bubbling dish right as it was starting to burn around the crisp, golden edges. Placing it on the stovetop, I quickly shut the door and turned back around, blocking it from his view.
“Are we done here?” I asked, fighting to keep my voice even. “I want to finish up with the groceries and go work out in the garden for a bit, unless there’s something else you need?”
I couldn’t tell what he was more confused about—the food I was very clearly trying to hide behind my back or my complete and utter refusal to acknowledge what’d just happened.
“I thought you said you wanted to talk.”
“It can wait.”
His head jerked to the side, almost like he wanted to clear it so he could think. Then he started to move, closing in on me, until I had to push to the tips of my toes and lean back to keep the lasagna hidden.
“Aren’t you going to check on your phone?” I tried, even though we both knew there was no point. Its screen was smashed to irreparable bits. The thing was toast.
“What’s that smell?” he asked again, and something heavy started knotting in the pit of my chest.
“Oregano. I was hungry.”
He held my gaze for a handful of breathless seconds, then yanked open the drawer to my left and took out a fork.
My heart jumped. “I wouldn’t risk it if I were you. I’m not a very good cook, as we both know. Pretty sure the meat is still raw.”
“I’ll live,” he insisted, and my back was starting to hurt enough from the awkward bend that I had ten, maybe fifteen seconds of arguing left in me.
“You honestly might not.”
It took no effort whatsoever on his part. He simply picked me up by the waist and moved me a foot to the left like I was an empty cardboard box. My cheeks flamed when the dish came into full view.
I had no idea what I’d been thinking.
I mean, I did, but that’d been before he’d made me unravel with a single touch of his finger. Now, it just made me feel even more vulnerable.
Clearing my throat, I folded my arms over my chest and squared my shoulders. “It’s not a big deal, so don’t make it one. Tit for tat; we’re even now.”
Dominic’s lips had parted, his eyes tracing the two words I’d written over the baked cheese with strips of beef: THANK YOU.
It was Rosie’s thing. On the third Wednesday of every month, she’d cook each of us our favorite meal for dinner and use the ingredients to label the dishes with our names. Or a little note.
Sometimes, I loved the words so much that I’d eat around them, preserving their message for as long as possible.
Sometimes, I wished I’d told her I loved her as many times as she’d written it out for me.
“Spiced donair lasagna. Light on peppers, heavy on the cheese,” I overexplained, desperate to fill the silence.
I didn’t know if it was still his favorite, but the smell alone used to make him drool.
It didn’t matter where he was on the property.
He could’ve been swimming in the pool and would still somehow pick up on the scent and go barreling into the house before Rosie had even had a chance to close the oven.
“Consider it a thank-you gift,” I said. “For letting me take the bed last night instead of dumping me into the tub or out on the curb or something.”
He also could’ve woken me up or left me on the couch. But he hadn’t, so…
Dom grazed one of the letters with the tip of his fork, then gently stabbed into it, releasing a puff of steam.
It was way too hot to eat—needed at least a few minutes to cool before being served.
Dominic, as a fully functioning human adult with twenty-six years of food-eating experience under his belt, must have known this.
Yet he still went ahead and shoveled a forkful of dripping lava straight into his mouth anyway.
Without waiting.
Without blowing.
Without prepping with a glass of ice water first.
I physically recoiled, wincing as he chewed once, twice, before going eerily still. His face turned beet red.
I ran to the fridge and grabbed the milk, thrusting it toward him. “What’s wrong with you?” I asked, my own tongue itching with a phantom burn. “You couldn’t wait two minutes before—”
“It’s the same.” He didn’t touch the milk. “It’s the exact same. How is it the exact same?”
“Because I’m not actually an incompetent, illiterate moron and can follow a fucking recipe. Is this your first time interacting with hot food? Why wouldn’t you wait?”
“Where did you get it?” His voice was hoarse, like he was on the other side of a major coughing fit. Probably because he’d burned his throat.
“Where did I get what?”
He swallowed rather roughly, meeting my gaze. “The recipe. Where’d you get it?”
My stomach dropped. He looked… upset. Like maybe I’d crossed a line. “I still have her recipe book. Why?”
The fork slipped from his hand, a puff of disbelieving air spilling out of him. “What—still? You have her recipe book? Still?”
“It was an early graduation gift,” I explained, a little surprised she hadn’t at least mentioned it to him. “I’d told her how much I was going to miss her cooking when I moved away for college, so she gifted it to me. We were supposed to…” I trailed off, hesitating.
“You were supposed to what?” he pushed. Rather intensely, might I add.
A new wave of emotion started compounding with the embarrassment still burning in my chest. I shrugged. “Nothing. She just… we had an agreement. I was supposed to FaceTime her every Monday so we could cook together. One recipe a week. But, you know.”
Instead, she’d left and blocked my number, so I’d had no choice but to get really good at deciphering her rushed cursive.
I couldn’t look at him anymore.
Couldn’t look at anything, really. My surroundings were becoming a little too blurry for comfort, and a large frog was trying to take up residence in my throat.
“Anyways, I’m gonna… garden if you…” I couldn’t get through the full sentence before the frog wiggled, fracturing my voice. So I just turned around and left.
Fortunately, salt water was widely recognized to be great for gardening.