Chapter Nineteen

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Leah

 

 

 

I barely remembered leaving the festival. My tears dried up somewhere along the way back to the hotel, and then I just felt numb. Dominic had placed me next to him in the car and I accepted it without question, not even caring that we were leaving without Davis. I knew he could take care of himself, and I didn’t want to see him. Everything in me wanted to deny what he’d told me, but I couldn’t. I mean, I’d always known she didn’t want me. But to hear that it hadn’t been my dad who kept her away, that he had actually tried to keep her in my life, really fucking sucked. All this time I’d been blaming him, but in reality, she just didn’t give a shit about me. She never had.

We didn’t speak a word until we got up to the hotel room, and then I threw my pack on the sofa and took out my phone. “I need to call my dad.” My voice sounded hoarse, and shook more than I wanted it to.

“Leah. I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Dom slowly reached his arm out to take the phone from me, keeping a careful eye on me as if he thought I might lash out on him.

“Why? Give that back. I need to talk to him about this. I need him to admit that what Davis told me is true, and to tell me why he lied to me all this time.”

“I think you know why he lied to you. And I do think you need to talk to him about it. But I think you should maybe wait a while. Let yourself calm down so you’re less…emotional.” He nearly winced as he said the last word, like he hadn’t quite meant to put it that way.

“Emotional?” I repeated blankly. “I’m not emotional. Just give me the phone.” And then my voice broke and to my utter mortification, I started crying again. Turning away didn’t help my pride at all, but I did it anyway.

“Hey.” His voice was calm and easy in a way that suggested he dealt with crying girls all the time. Maybe in his line of work, he did. I felt him come up behind me just before his hands settled on my shoulders, and when he said, “Come here,” that was all the invitation I needed. Spinning around, I fell against him and buried my face into his chest, and his arms wrapped tight around me and held me in place like he never wanted to let me go. My stomach and heart hurt but my body became putty, completely relaxed and safe. When he led me to the sofa to sit down I followed him easily, keeping hold of him the entire way, not wanting to lose the anchor of his body.

“I hate this,” I mumbled into his shirt, trying to stop crying. “I’m not usually like this. I’m just tired.”

“Hey, it’s okay to be upset. Don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

“I don’t even know why I’m so upset. It’s not like I didn’t already know she doesn’t care about me.”

“Because you got some new information, and you don’t know how much of it is even true or if there’s more to the story. Davis doesn’t know everything.”

“It’s true. I saw it in his eyes. I don’t know, I guess I just always thought she was distant because she had to be. Because my dad wouldn’t let her around me, and I basically grew up without her. I wanted it to be his fault,” I admitted. My chest shook a bit as I said it, but my tears thankfully seemed done. “And all this time I’ve been blaming him, you know? Like, deeply resenting him in ways that are buried so deep I don’t even think about it a lot of the time. It’s just there. It’s a part of me. How do I let that go? How can I?”

“You just do. You let it go. Move on with your life. Maybe, I don’t know. Maybe take comfort in the fact that he loves you enough to try to keep something like this from you. My mom used to straight up tell me my dad didn’t give a shit about me.” He kind of chuckled as he said this, but it made my heart twist in a new way.

“So you never even knew your dad?”

“No. He cut and run pretty early on. I think it’s probably easier that way, though. I never knew any different. You know your mom. You have memories of her being around, probably even good ones. It’s got to feel worse knowing what you’re missing.”

I nudged his shoulder gently with my face as he looked at me, and it suddenly occurred to me just how close we were. “I think it sucks either way.”

He traced a path on my face with his index finger, starting above my eyebrow and trailing lightly down my cheek. “Well, that’s life.”

I nodded. Yeah. It was. And instead of making me feel worse, it actually made me feel a bit more centered. Like, yeah, life sucked sometimes. For everyone. But I was starting to feel stronger in spite of it. I was starting to feel more confident in my ability to handle it. Holding my hand out to Dominic, I said, “I need to call Audrey. Can I have my phone?”

He dug my phone out of his pocket and handed it to me. The arm around my back stayed put, and I leaned into it as I dialed. “Not answering,” I said a moment later. “I could have predicted that.” I sent a quick text asking if she was okay, and to my surprise she replied almost immediately.

I’m fine, the message read. Found one of my friends from Instagram.

I’m sorry about Davis. He’s gone. Come back to the hotel.

It’s cool. Not sure where I’ll end up yet. I’m not mad at you. I feel sorry for you tho. She put a sad face, followed by two emojis blowing kisses.

I frowned at that. “Audrey just said she feels sorry for me.”

“That girl’s in no position to feel sorry for anyone.”

“Yeah, I know, it’s just…that’s what I’ve been doing. Feeling sorry for myself. Ugh. I’m over it. Meltdown achieved, now time to move on.”

“To the next level?”

“Yeah.” I looked him in the eye and then admitted, “Except I have no idea what that would be.”

“I have an idea. Can you wait here for a second?”

“Alone?” I acted shocked.

“Just for a minute. The door’s locked, don’t open for anyone, you know the drill. I’ll be right back.”

So I waited, vaguely curious, until he came back in the room holding a door key up. “What’s that?” I asked.

“Key to the pool. Come on. Let’s go swimming.”

The pool was on the rooftop, and it was very much closed at this hour. “How did you get that?”

“Maintenance guy we saw outside. I slipped him some cash and he gave us twenty minutes. So hurry up.”

Not questioning it any further, I followed him upstairs with an excited smile on my face. We entered the dark, deserted area on the roof, and I immediately stripped down to my bikini. Swimming sounded fantastic all of a sudden.

Dom had stripped down too, and I took a moment to admire his body as he came in close to me. His finger slid beneath the front tie to my bikini top, lightly flicking it against my skin. “You should take this off, too.”

“What? No way! There are probably cameras up here.”

He shrugged, stepping away from me, already moving on like he wasn’t particularly surprised at my reaction. “Alright. Just thought you might want to cross another item off the list.” Then he dived gracefully into the pool, barely making a splash.

I dived in after him, feeling the shock of the cold water. When he came up for air, I shoved his shoulders. “I told you I’m not doing the list anymore. It’s stupid.”

“Okay. Just saying, if you wanted to, now is kind of the perfect time.”

“Is this why you brought me up here? To get me naked?”

He couldn’t quite hold back his smirk. “Yeah,” he said, with no shame. “Pretty much.”

As we circled each other in the water, I thought that I should feel offended at his blatant ulterior motives, but I couldn’t push my smile all the way down. I no longer cared about checking stuff off that list, but there was still one thing from it that I wanted to do. I wanted to say yes. If it excited me, even if there was fear alongside it, I wanted to do it.

His expression didn’t shift as he watched me pull the ties at my back free, though he intently watched my every move. The material of my bikini top caught on my hair as I lifted it, and I ducked my head down to wrench the fabric off my body in a way that was probably anything but sexy. But when I lifted the material above water level to show him, his eyes were heated with a look I now recognized. I tossed it onto the pool deck and then, before I could talk myself out of it, I reached down to tug my bottoms off. Thankfully, this task was much easier. Just a quick slide down my legs and then they were thrown to the poolside in a wet clump next to my top, and I was completely naked.

“You didn’t think I’d do it, did you?” I asked this with a hint of smugness in my voice.

“I was pretty sure you would. You stripped down in a public shower in broad daylight, remember? Nothing you do surprises me at this point.”

I loved that. I’d never been daring or unpredictable in any way before. Was that really how he thought of me? Smiling, I pointed at him. “Your turn.”

“No way,” he replied, carelessly resolute. “There are cameras out here. You think I’m crazy?”

With a laugh, I tore at him through the water and he turned from me so I latched onto his back. Only when my chest hit the hard wall of his back did it really hit me how naked I actually was. His skin was somehow still warm, and the wet slide of it against mine felt sinfully amazing. His hands held my forearms that were crossed over his neck and he looked back at me with just the barest edge of a smirk visible in the moonlight. I held my breath for something I couldn’t even name, but then the moment was broken when he swiftly turned, keeping hold of my arms, and dunked my head under water. Sputtering, I came up to the sound of his quiet laughter, and I splashed water at him with both hands.

“Asshole,” I laughed.

“I was defending myself,” he said, smoothly gliding in a wide circle around me.

“I didn’t know you needed defending from me.”

“What if I was naked and jumped on you in a pool?”

My throat went dry for a second as I envisioned it. Or tried to, as I had never actually seen him naked. His dry chuckle brought me back to him.

“That wasn’t supposed to be a stumper,” he said. But his eyes were as glazed over with heat as mine probably were.

To break the tension, I said, “Try and catch me,” and started swimming to the end of the pool. I was fast, and it actually took him a couple of laps to catch me. A couple of times I felt the brush of his fingers and evaded them, but then a hand curved around my waist and pulled me to a very sudden stop.

“Damn, you’re fast,” he said. He didn’t sound out of breath, but I could see his chest moving harder than normal.

“I was on the swim team for four years.”

“In high school?”

“Yeah, at prep.”

“Prep,” he repeated, like it was a foreign word he was only vaguely familiar with. “What was that like?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t like anything. I went there since kindergarten.”

“At the same school?” He seemed surprised by this.

“Yeah.”

“With the same people?”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, mostly, which sometimes got really old. What was your school like?”

“Mostly shitty. Your typical American high school.”

“Everything I know about public school, I learned on TV.”

“Yeah, like what?”

I thought for a second. “Like there’s so many people you don’t even know a lot of them. Everyone wears their real clothes instead of a uniform, with full makeup and perfectly styled hair. Kids spend more time in the hallways than in actual class, and there’s endless amounts of drama and hooking up. Am I getting it right?”

“You should probably stop watching so much TV.”

I laughed and splashed at him, and he grabbed me again and pulled. My back hit his front and his hands lazily wandered down my stomach, spreading out over my hips down to my thighs. “I can’t even think when you’re stark naked like this. I actually have no idea what we were just talking about.”

“Me neither,” I breathed, and it was true. I’d completely forgotten, just like that.

“We need to get back to the room,” he said, and his statement sounded full of husky implications. As if realizing this, he added, “Before we get kicked out, I mean.”

“Five more minutes.” I turned in his arms and let my hands graze the hard muscles on his arms. “I want to float.”

And so we did, on our backs and looking up at the sky, and there was no more talking but I felt so completely at ease and peaceful lying there in the water in the quiet night. I couldn’t remember feeling this content. I never wanted to leave this moment. I never wanted to lose it.

 

 

When we entered the hotel room a short while later, the space felt empty and blindingly bright, the only noise the hum of the air conditioning. Dom went to his room to change out of his swim trunks, and I took the opportunity to quickly shower off. I’d just gotten dressed in a tank top and sleep shorts when he came I heard him come back into the suite.

“It’s me,” he announced, which was protocol but also unnecessary since I hadn’t considered it would be anyone else. It hit me then how safe I always felt around him, how much trust I had in his ability to keep me safe. I’d never felt that around any of my other bodyguards, not completely, and it wasn’t even entirely their fault. It was my own fears that had always gotten in the way before. Without even realizing it, I’d come a long way at overcoming them.

I came out of the bedroom and our eyes met instantly, though mine quickly trailed over the rest of him. He’d put on a gray t-shirt and dark wash jeans, and his black hair was damp, giving evidence that he had showered as well. He looked delicious and yet I had a moment of doubt, of uncertainty. It melted away when I glanced back up and saw the look in his eyes as he took me in. There was no humor there, no soft smirk or playful arrogance, just an intent heat that propelled me forward all on its own. He met me halfway and then I was in his arms and we grasped onto each other like a lifeline, our mouths meeting with a hunger that pulled groans from us both. I went on tiptoes in an effort to get even closer to him, and one of his hands went straight to my ass as he pushed into me, and my entire body burned. I angled my head to deepen the kiss, marveling at how soft his lips were and the way his tongue moved against mine, hot and bold and demanding, like he was devouring me and claiming me, all at once.

I felt like I couldn’t get enough of him. My hands clenched and pulled. His wandered and explored. One of his hands snaked under the waistband of my shorts and into my underwear to curve around my ass. The middle finger came shockingly near my center and if he moved it down about an inch he would have been rubbing me there. I heard myself making these desperate little moans that didn’t even sound like me and it would have been embarrassing, if I had any sense of embarrassment left. I didn’t. Distantly I realized we were moving backward, but I couldn’t place speed or direction until the bed hit the backs of my legs. Our mouths broke apart as our steps came to a halt, and I breathed hard while his face fell into my neck, his lips and tongue on me, tasting and pulling. He kissed his way up my throat, his hand cradling the other side, thumb tracing the line of my jaw.

I expected him to kiss me again, but instead he said, “Shit. I swear I didn’t come in here for this.”

“I know.” I barely knew what I was saying. I could barely even catch my breath, but in spite of this I grabbed his mouth with mine, relishing how easily he opened to me. Without breaking away, I climbed so my knees were holding my weight on the bed, and I pulled him.

But he stopped, hands settling on either side of my waist, his eyes hot and intent on my face. “This,” he said, “is not for your list.”

A wave of frustration swept through me. “Oh, my God. Forget the stupid list.”

“Do you want this?” His eyes held mine captive from a distance that was practically nothing.

“Yes.” This answer came more easily than breathing did in the moment. It was unequivocal and innate and fueled by need. “Touch me,” I breathed. If he touched me where I was on fire, he would know without a doubt just how much I wanted this.

“Where?” His hands crept to the bottom edge of my tank top, slowly pushing the material up. But I didn’t want slow, not then, and that wasn’t where I wanted his hands. I intercepted him, pulling my tank off so quickly I think it left both of us a little stunned.

“Fuck, you’re gorgeous.” His hands went to my breasts, cupping one in each palm, and then his mouth was there, closing hot over one nipple, sweeping his tongue around it and pulling gently with his lips before licking a path to the other nipple. My head fell back to the sensations, it almost felt like too much, like I couldn’t take it, and before I became utterly lost, I grabbed one of his hands and pushed it down. His mouth moved back up to my neck and I felt his dark chuckle against it, weighted with amusement or approval or something I didn’t quite understand just then. Then his hand was in my shorts, nudging the flimsy material of my underwear to the side and gliding one rough, calloused finger through my slick folds.

I nearly came undone. My fingers dug into his arms and noises tore from me that I hadn’t heard outside of porn and my legs felt like they could no longer support me because I was tumbling back onto the mattress into a boneless puddle. Dom followed me, his weight braced above me, his eyes hot on my face, and one finger pushing inside, deep.

“So wet,” he murmured, and that time it was definitely approval I heard.

“Mmm,” I replied. Yeah, I had pretty much lost my ability to make words by this point. His lips brushed against mine and then he was shifting down, pulling my shorts and underwear off and spreading my legs open to his gaze. Wait, I started to say but then his mouth was on me, licking and sucking and I felt my stomach pitch as I pushed up into his mouth. But still something niggled at the back of my mind, and it took a moment to speak through the sensations of what he was doing to me.

“Wait,” I gasped, trying to pull his head up. “Come here.”

After a few seconds, he did, gliding swiftly up my body and then kissing me, wet and open and rubbing across my mouth as if he loved making me taste myself. He had done that last time, too. And, truthfully, I reveled in it. I nibbled and licked at his lips as if wiping him clean, and his answering groan was almost a growl.

His hand was already back to work where his mouth had been, but I knocked it away and tugged on his shirt.

“You’re overdressed,” I managed to say. I wasn’t letting him get away with keeping his clothes on this time.

He gamely pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it aside, and my eyes fell hungrily over his chest, and then my hands did, too. His skin was hot and hard beneath my palms. As he bent down to kiss my neck, our naked chests pressed together and his hand worked its way between us again. “Let me make you come,” he whispered.

Yes. I was so close to letting him. I was so close, period. But… “I want to come with you,” I said. “Please.” My hand was on the button to his jeans before I was even done speaking, pulling it free and then attempting to tug his zipper down, which wasn’t especially easy from this angle. Luckily, he sat back and took over, standing briefly to rid himself of his jeans, and he did it so quickly I couldn’t tell if he’d been wearing underwear with them or not. The thought of him naked beneath his jeans this whole time sent a new thrill rushing through me. But then it was forgotten as my eyes feasted on his naked body for the first time. Well, really, just one part of his naked body. I’d truthfully never considered dicks to be all that attractive, but now, attached to this man, hard and pushing up toward me with base, dirty intent, it made my mouth go dry and my stomach pitch with hot desire.

“I didn’t bring any condoms,” he said, pausing at the foot of the bed, completely comfortable with my perusal of his body.

“My suitcase.” I jumped up and went to my open suitcase on the floor, rummaging around until I found the unopened box. Dom was already stretching out on the bed when I returned, and so I tossed the box between us and I lay down alongside him. In spite of my body being close to bursting, I wasn’t ready to get right to the act when I had this gorgeous man to explore for the first time. Catching his mouth with my own, my hand came between us and wrapped around him, stroking and learning the feel of him, amazed at how soft the skin felt, and how hot it was. How his hard length seemed to grow even thicker in my hand.

He let me play for about a minute before he lost patience and wrestled the box of condoms open, pulling one out and shifting over me to press my body down with his. The hard length of his erection pushed against me and my breath caught as he sat back to put the condom on, something I watched with eager and amazed eyes. Keeping hold of the base of his cock, he leaned into me again and caught my mouth in a slow, drugging kiss, moving his hips until the tip of him pushed into my entrance. I grasped his sides, feeling the muscles clench and move beneath my fingers, and I angled myself up to take him, wanting as much of him as there was for him to give. Our mouths separated and I pushed up just as he pumped forward and then I was full of him and our eyes held with an openness that felt intimate and stark. He felt huge inside me, but as he slowly started pumping his hips my body relaxed to accept him, and then something else quickly took over. Our bodies moved faster, finding a rhythm that felt primal and full of need. It shut everything beyond us out. I didn’t think about where we were, where we came from, where we would go after this.

For once, the moment was all that mattered.

Our mouths came together in a rough kiss just as his hands came underneath me to tilt me upward. When I realized how amazing that felt, I braced my feet on the bed and pushed myself up further and there it was, what I’d been on the precipice of after being worked over so well by his hands and mouth. The edges of my vision blurred and my body soared and split apart, clenching and pulsing around him and he kept moving through it, kept me moving, kept me coming so hard and long it felt like I was completely disassembled by the end of it. As I trembled hard with the aftershocks, I felt his thumb graze the side of my face and it smeared wetness and I realized there were actual tears from the force of my orgasm. I wasn’t sure what to think about that, but then his mouth was on mine again and he was pumping into my body faster and deeper until he groaned deep in his throat and his movements leveled out and slowed and I rode with him through it all. By the time he went still and collapsed into me, breathing hard into my neck, we were sweaty and trembling and completely out of breath.

And then I was introduced to yet another part of sex I’d never experienced before: the blissful aftermath. The way we held each other as we tried to catch our breaths. The way our hands still traced over each other’s slick bodies, mine sliding down his back and curving around the hard muscles of his ass. His moving down my sides and squeezing my hips. And the way I felt open and vulnerable in a way that I wasn’t yet ready to think about, so all I could do look into his eyes when his head lifted to meet mine, and let it happen.

Dom looked as relaxed as I felt. He nudged my mouth open and kissed me, slowly, lazily, and then he punctuated this with a kiss on the cheek before shifting to roll over and sit up. A sound of protest came out because I still had no barriers whatsoever and I didn’t want to lose the weight of him on me. He glanced back when he heard this, even as he stood up and moved away. I realized then that he was pulling the condom off.

“Be right back,” he said. Just these words made my whole body hum in pleasure, and that was when reality started to creep back in and I realized I was dangerously on the verge of professing my undying love and offering to have his babies and holy shit, I needed to get a hold of myself and dial it down by about ten degrees.

I was a bit closer to earth by the time he crawled back in next to me, though I didn’t protest when one arm scooped underneath me and pulled me into his warm and naked body. I searched for something to say that would make me sound normal and like my world hadn’t just been irreversibly rocked. “So why didn’t you bring condoms with you?” Yes. That was the first thing I thought to ask.

He answered me with no indication of thinking this was a weird question. His fingers trailed up and down my side as he spoke. “Because I was one hundred percent certain this was not going to happen.”

“Really? When you were packing, you never even considered it or let yourself think about it?”

He gave a grunt that could have been a tired attempt at a laugh. “Thought about it more than once. But never to the point I considered bringing condoms. That would have been admitting intent.”

“And you had no intent?”

“No. Not here. Not really at all. But you’re pretty much impossible to resist.” I smiled, not bothering to hide my pleasure at that, and he continued, “I’m not thinking about the ramifications of this tonight. We’ll deal with all that when we go back.”

“But we go back tomorrow,” I said, frowning. Suddenly that seemed depressingly soon.

“I know.” He dropped a kiss against the side of my head near my temple. “Which is why I plan on spending the rest of the night fucking your brains out.”