Chapter 6 #2
I'd just watched him break a man for touching me. And I'd liked it, no, I loved it.
We walk out of the bar together, his hand still gripping mine, and nobody tries to stop us. The cool night air hits my face and I suck in a breath, trying to clear my head, processing what has just happened.
Dom leads me to my van where I left it parked in the shadows at the edge of the lot. His car is there too, black and sleek, parked two spaces away.
"You were watching the whole time."
"I’ll always be watching you."
“This is it, isn’t it?” I ask, and he moves me closer to him, tugging at my hand.
"No turning back now. You're exactly what I thought you were. What I hoped you were," he says.
My breath catches as I drown in those brown eyes.
"What's that?"
"Mine."
The possessiveness in his voice should've set off every alarm bell, that he couldn't just decide I belonged to him. But I'd just watched him break a man's bones for touching me. I’d watched him turn violence into something that felt like devotion.
"Your knuckles are bleeding," I say quietly, looking down at his hand that’s clasping mine.
He looks down at his hands, at the split skin and blood. "It’s fine."
"You should clean them."
"Probably."
Neither of us move. The air around us is so heavy with everything we aren't saying. With the moment we'd just shared, with the truth of what we both are, and the knowledge that this moment is a turning point. I know that whatever choice we make next will change everything.
"I have a first aid kit," I hear myself say. "In the van."
His eyes darken. "Is that right?"
"Yeah. You can come with me."
"What about my car?"
I look at the car, then back at him. At this man who'd followed me across the country, who'd watched me from the shadows and committed assault because someone touched me without permission.
"Leave it behind and come with me," I say.
"You sure?"
Was I sure? Sure that I wanted to invite a stalker into my van, into my space and into my life? Sure that I wanted to tie myself to someone who'd just proven he was capable of extreme brutality? Sure that I wanted to fall into this darkness with him, knowing it would probably destroy us both?
No, but I wanted it anyway.
"I'm sure, but we need to get out of here in case they call the cops."
Dom doesn’t question it. I watch him as he grabs a bag and a few smaller items out of his car, before wiping the door handles and steering wheel.
After he throws his stuff into my van, he walks over to the side of the road, and throws his keys into the desert.
My stomach flips with excitement. He’s coming with me.
“What about the cops? They could trace the car back to you,” I say, and he just smirks at me in the most sexy fucking way.
“It’s not my car.”
I'm driving too fast.
I can’t help but fidget in my seat as the highway blurs past in streaks of dark skies punctuated by the occasional flash of reflective road markers.
The speedometer needle hovers around eighty-five, ninety, and I should slow down, but I can't. I can't make my foot ease off the gas or stop my heart hammering against my ribs.
The adrenaline is still coursing through me like electricity, making my skin feel too tight where every nerve ending is hypersensitive.
I can feel the fabric of my jacket against my arms, the soft material of my summer dress against my thighs, the vibration of the van's engine thrumming up through the steering wheel.
And I can feel him.
Dom sits in the passenger seat, silent, his presence filling the entire space. I'm hyper-aware of every movement he makes, like the way he shifts his weight, the sound of his breathing, the way his hand rests on his leg, knuckles still split and bleeding.
The Cure is playing. A Forest. The irony of the lyrics, suddenly I stop, but I know it's too late, I'm lost in a forest, all alone, isn't lost on me. Except I'm not alone anymore.
The quiet between us is weighted with a feeling I can't name. It's not uncomfortable, it's quite the opposite. It's the kind of silence that feels like understanding, like we're both processing what just happened and neither of us needs to fill the space with meaningless words.
My eyes keep flicking to his hands, the right one especially, where his knuckles are split open, blood dried dark against his skin.
There's a smear of it across his palm, and another streak along his wrist where it must have dripped.
I watched those hands break a man's face as they moved with brutal efficiency and without mercy.
And all I could feel at the time was the last thing you would normally feel in that situation.
Arousal.
The realization sits in my stomach like a stone, heavy and undeniable.
I should be questioning what the fuck is wrong with me that watching him beat someone unconscious made heat pool between my thighs, making my breath catch and needing his dick.
But I'm not horrified like I should be. I'm turned on in a way I've never experienced before.
It's primal and visceral, so intense that it bypasses my brain entirely and goes straight to my body.
My pulse is still racing, and every time I glance at his bloodied hands I feel that heat intensify.
He defended me, he saw someone hurting me and destroyed them for it. No one's ever done that before.
"You should slow down," Dom says, his voice cutting through the music.
I check the speedometer and see that it’s pushing ninety-five, so my foot eases off the gas automatically, and the van settles back to a more reasonable seventy.
"Sorry," I mutter.
"Don't be." He shifts in his seat, turning slightly toward me. "Just don't want you wrapping us around a tree before we get wherever we're going."
"Where are we going?"
"You tell me, it's your van."
I don't have an answer. I've been driving on autopilot, just putting distance between us and that bar, between us and the man Dom left bleeding on the floor. But now that the immediate panic is fading, I realize I don't actually have a destination in mind.
"There's a rest stop about twenty miles ahead," I say finally. "We can pull over there."
"Okay."
That's it. Just okay. Like he's fine with whatever I decide and he's already committed to being wherever I am. The thought sends another jolt of heat through me. I must be touch starved to be this feral over a few words.
I focus on the road, on the white lines disappearing under the van's headlights, driving in the remoteness that surrounds the van full of turbulent emotions. The Cure fades out and Siouxsie and the Banshees starts up, Spellbound. The driving beat matches my pulse, and I let myself sink into it.
"You're not scared," Dom says after a while, and it's not a question.
"No."
"You should be."
I glance at him. His face is half-shadowed, lit only by the dashboard glow, but I can see his eyes on me. Smouldering and intense, searching for something.
"Why?" I ask.
"Because I just beat a man half to death in front of you and I didn't hesitate. Because I'd do it again. I would do a lot worse."
"It’s fine, honestly, you don’t have to worry."
"But that doesn't scare you?"
I think about that for a second, about what I saw in that bar, about the anger in his movements, and the way he looked at me after, like he was waiting for me to run, to reject him, to prove I was like everyone else.
"No," I say quietly. "It doesn't."
"I’m a little surprised you’re so chill about this."
"I’m chill because he deserved it." The words come out fierce and certain.
"Because he put his hands on me and you made him stop.
Because…" I pause, trying to find the right words.
"Because I've been waiting my whole life for someone who notices me.
Who doesn't pretend everything is fine when it's not. Who doesn't hide from the real world."
"And you think I'm that person?"
"I know you are."
The rest stop appears like a bright light in the neverending night, a small parking area with a few tables and a bathroom building, all of it deserted at this hour. I pull into the farthest spot, away from the single streetlight, and kill the engine.
The sudden silence is deafening. Even the music has stopped, the cassette reaching its end with a soft click. We continue to sit there in the dark, both waiting for the other to say something.
"First aid kit," I say finally, my voice rough. "I need to clean your hands."
"Roxy."
"Please."
He nods and I climb into the back of the van, my movements jerky with residual adrenaline and nerves of him being so close.
The fairy lights glow above me, funnily portraying a cute innocence that does not exist in this van, as I dig through my supplies, locating the first aid kit tucked under the bolted shelf.
When I turn around, Dom has followed me back, settling onto the edge of the mattress.
The space feels impossibly small with both of us in it, with him here in what I call home, I experience sensory overload at his presence. Too many emotions and feelings to acknowledge at the same time.
I kneel in front of him, the kit open beside me, and reach for his right hand. He lets me take it, his fingers curling slightly against my palm. Up close, the damage is worse than I thought with deep splits across three knuckles, the skin torn and swollen, blood crusted in the creases.
"This is going to sting," I warn, uncapping the antiseptic.
"I can handle it."
I pour it over his knuckles and he doesn't even wince. He watches me as I work, his gaze heavy and unwavering. I clean away the blood carefully, revealing the full extent of the damage, then start applying butterfly bandages to the worst of the splits. My hands are shaking and I can’t hide it.
It’s all from proximity and the way he's looking at me.
The heat building between us is suffocating and undeniable.
"Roxy," he says, his voice low.