Chapter 36 Sloane #2
By the stupid smile that curves my lips when I realize he’s completely naked, and every inch of his skin is pressed to mine.
Warm lips graze my neck, sending shivers down my spine that make me squirm against his lengthening erection. “Be still, angel. I just want to hold you.”
“What if I want more than that?”
“You’re drunk.”
Of course he thinks I’m talking about sex. He hasn’t even considered the possibility I might want more from him than that. That I might want everything. And why would he? This entire relationship has been based on physical need, on lust and desire neither one of us tried to fight.
“Not anymore. Some guy with a bad attitude and caveman tendencies crashed my breakup celebration and sobered me right up.”
“A caveman, huh?” His laugh rumbles in his chest and reverberates through me. I can’t help but smile to myself. Our relationship might be at the end of its road, but I’ll always love being able to make him laugh.
And despite myself, I can’t deny how good it feels to let him hold me. To let the pain of the end of our book fade into the background while we focus on the sweet perfection of the current chapter.
“Yes.” I pick up his hand and pull it to my lips, so I can press a kiss to his palm. “He growls and everything. Some people think he’s an ass, but I put up with him because he does such a good job of taking care of my needs.”
My fingers thread through his, and I drag our linked hands down my body. Past the swell of my breasts, over my belly, and then finally coming to a stop at the apex of my thighs where I am already slick from wanting him too much.
“Sloane.” My name is a warning issued in a voice that belongs to a man standing on the edge of control and deciding whether or not to leap.
He flexes his fingers, nudging my clit ever so slightly and eliciting a moan from me.
“An hour ago you were throwing back drinks to try and get over our breakup, which by the way, I had no idea about, and now you want this. Now you want me?”
My heart splits open, because how can he not see that I’ve always wanted him? How can he not know all of this—the downward spiral of emotions and disconnect between the things I do and say—is because I want him too much?
Enough to convince myself that right now it doesn’t matter if he’s in love with someone else because tonight, he’s mine.
And in the darkness of my bedroom, I can pretend he’s giving me more than his body. I can squeeze my eyes shut, surrender to the need humming in my veins, and forget about the woman who left him with enough shadows to smother the fire he once burned for me.
“Think of it as saying goodbye,” I whisper. Dom pulls his hand away and starts to sit up to leave the bed. I turn over quickly, wrapping my fingers over his bicep to stop him. He stills, letting me hold him there with a grasp he could easily break. “Please, Dominic. I need it.”
I need this last time with him to happen while the minute amount of alcohol in my system is still dulling the pain of having my heart ripped from my chest. And this is the only way I can do it.
The only way I don’t break apart and say all the things I should have said before I asked about that damn tattoo.
In an instant, I’m flat on my back with a glowering Dom over top of me. The position is familiar, every inch of his body pressed against mine, but the tender way he’s holding me doesn’t match the anger in his eyes at all.
He looks ready to tear something apart with his bare hands, while those same hands—one under my head and the other lifting my hips to meet the flared tip of his dick—cradle me with a deference that makes tears well in my eyes.
“Do you need it or do you need me?”
The question takes me back to our first night together, when I said something similar. He’d brushed his nose across mine and asked me what I needed. There was a softness to his eyes then that I appreciated because it fit perfectly with the vulnerability I felt.
Right now his eyes are glowing, outrage and maybe confusion charring the corners and matching the rough edge of his question perfectly. I close my eyes, savoring the way each word settles against my skin with a cutting accuracy that makes me bleed.
I wrap my legs around his waist and rock up into him. I can’t answer his question because the answer is both, and I don’t want to have to explain that to him. Dom realizes what I’m trying to do immediately, and he moves his hips back when I move forward.
“Answer me, Sloane. Tell me what the hell is going on.”
“We’re saying goodbye, Dominic. Think of it as your parting gift.”
He moves his hand around to my hip and pins it to the bed, making my legs fall away from his body. Flames dance in his pupils as he leans in close and skims his lips over mine.
“If you want this to be over, you know exactly what you need to do.”
I bite my lip, willing myself to do the reasonable, mature thing and say those words.
But when I look at him, all I see is the future I was prepared to risk everything for and a man who’ll never know how much I love him.
And I’m raw. Cut open and guts spilling out, bleeding too profusely to behave like anything but the wounded animal I am.
“You’re right. All I have to do is ask you about this, and you’ll go running for the hills again.”
He sucks in a breath as my fingers brush over his inked skin. “I didn’t leave because of the tattoo, Sloane.”
“You want me to believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Fine.” He breathes a sigh of genuine relief before I continue. “I’ll let it go if you tell me something about her. You can choose anything you want. Her name. How you met. How she broke your heart.”
“Jesus, Sloane.” He pushes off of me and moves to the side of the bed. “Why can’t you just let this go?”
I sit up, crossing my arms over my chest as I watch him start to put his clothes back on. “Because you won’t tell me the truth, Dominic! Even though I already know it.”
“You don’t know anything!” he roars, prowling toward me with a wildness flashing in his eyes.
When I flinch at his sudden advance and harsh tone, he stops short.
Just barely reining in the fury rolling off of him in waves.
“If you did know, I wouldn’t have to tell you that you’re the only woman who has ever owned any part of me.
And it’s always been you, Sloane. For twelve fucking years, you’ve walked around with my soul clutched between the same fingers you wear Eric’s rings on.
You’re the ghost I’ve been chasing. Now look me in the eyes and tell me you already knew that. ”
Every one of his words sends a thunderous wave of shock coursing through me. This can’t be true. It can’t. There can’t be a version of this life where Dominic has been in love with me for twelve years. Where he stood by and watched me fall in love with his best friend.
It just can’t be.
“What are you—” My voice is shaking, every word a warbled version of itself, so I clear my throat and try again. “That’s not possible. You haven’t liked me from the first moment we met.”
His lips curl into a bitter smile. “That day in the dorm wasn’t my first time meeting you, angel.”
“Yes, it was, Dominic. Otherwise, I would have recognized you when you walked into the room. I would have remembered meeting you. I would have remembered.”
“You were drunk, Sloane. It was the first party of the year, and it felt like everyone who moved on campus early was packed into that one small house. There were so many fucking people there, but the moment you walked in, all I could see was you—”
“Stop!”
My stomach rolls as I process Dom’s description of a night I’ve seen in my dreams many times over the years but have never fully remembered. I try to pull the pieces together in my mind, to force myself to remember something that could refute his story, but I can’t get anything to stick.
“You wanted the truth from me, angel. This is it. This is our truth.”
“Dom, please.”
I hold up my hand because I need a moment of quiet. Just a few seconds to get the gears in my brain to start turning. He presses his lips together as I begin to mumble through my recollection of that night, more to myself than him.
I remember the hours before the party he’s talking about. My mom and I argued on the phone. She called me a constant disappointment, and I finally accepted I would never be good enough for her. Then I decided to fit eighteen years’ worth of teenage rebellion into one night.
And, because I had no idea how to be a rebel, I made a trouble list.
Back then, the worst thing I could imagine doing was wearing a dress that barely covered my ass, getting drunk at a frat party, and…
Oh no. The very last item on my list was something about spending the night in a guy’s bed, but the next morning, I woke up in my own.
Nothing but hazy images and the distinct feeling I was forgetting something important.
I curl my arms around my middle, attempting to hold myself together as the most impossible truth seeps into my bones. “It was you?”
Dom is silent, and I have to look at him to see if he heard my question. He stares at me with eyes so soft, so tender, I find it hard to believe just moments ago he was a raging fire.
“Yes.”
“But I…I didn’t even check that off my list. I woke up in my bed. Alone.”
“Because I took you home, angel.” The words are soft with the slightest bit of heat coating them. An accusation. “I left a note.”
“No.”
My entire world tilts on its axis as disbelief swirls in my gut.
Even though he’s confirmed it, I still don’t understand how this can be true.
For years I thought I dreamed up the person I spent the last part of my night with.
Crafted him and our soul-deep connection, forged in a matter of hours, in the depths of my mind.
Now Dom wants me to believe he’s the mystery man from my dreams and I belonged to him before I belonged to Eric. Which would mean our seemingly random connection—the one I never understood on his end—wasn’t sparked by the night at Club Noir. It was reawakened.
This is too much.
“Sloane—”
“Please don’t say anything else.” I clutch myself tighter, rocking back and forth. “I need you to go.”
Dom stares at me, and I force myself to hold his gaze. He presses his lips into a hard line and nods like this played out exactly how he expected it to, and he’s mad at himself for thinking it could have gone any differently, but he doesn’t say anything else.
And when the door shuts behind him, I’m left with nothing but silence and the regret of asking him to leave when all I wanted was for him to stay.