Unlawful Temptations (The Star-Crossed Series Book 1)

Three days later, Dominic was home again for lunch and appeared in the archway of the kitchen where I was eating a granola bar while Maya napped.

“Ms. Sanders.” I peeled my attention from my game of Candy Crush up to my boss. The muscles in my neck went rigid beneath the barbed stare waiting for me.

Something was wrong.

His words barely made it through his gritted teeth. “If you could follow me to my office.”

That was not a request.

It was a command, and one he didn’t wait for me to respond to. He showed me his strong back and expected me to follow him blindly, and, well, he was right. I scurried up behind him, blood pumping in my ears as I tailed him from a safe distance up the stairs.

What was this about? Did I do something wrong? I mean, probably. Like, a solid 98% chance that I definitely did something wrong today, but what?

Dominic stepped up to the landing of the second floor, me only a couple paces behind and totally not checking out his ass. Which looked flawless today.

Or so I’d assume.

I followed him into his office, which I hadn’t been in since he caught me in there that first week. It looked pretty much the same, paper and files and more nonsense strewn about. The only thing out of turn that caught my eye was his computer desktop, which had been jerked around to face the door where we entered. The screen was black.

Dominic went up to it, hand hovering over the computer mouse.

He met my stare and held it. There was something about him that made me curl my toes into the floor, sweat sprouting on the back of my neck. I had every bit of his acute attention at that moment, and I wasn’t sure I wanted it.

“Tell me what happened on Monday again, Ms. Sanders.”

Panic splintered in my chest. The sweat collecting on my baby hairs dripped down. Oh shit. Oh fuck. Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Did he know about Daren? Was that why he was asking? Was I giving my guilt away without even saying a word?

A mental check in with my face said yes; my expression was screaming with guilt. I could feel it, muscles shocked still and eyes blown wide.

Still, I tried to play it off.

“What do you mean?”

My voice was meek, a rarity. Another tell of guilt.

Dominic had an ace in his harsh pupils, targeted and holding out for me to give him reason to play it. “How you ripped your shirt and hurt your head. You told me it happened while playing with Maya, correct?”

Oh God, he knew. Somehow he knew about Daren and that I had lied to him. Heat flooded my ears, roiling with humiliation at being caught and being so stupid as to think I could get away with it. I should have told him. Fuck, I should have just told him.

“Sir—”

“Correct, Katerina?” he chided, eyes boiling.

The sound of my full name yanked my spine straight, mouth drying out. It had slipped out of him so naturally, like my name belonged to his teeth and scolding tongue, and anyone who’d ever said it before him was a thief.

I was in trouble, and there were no more flimsy lies I could tell to get myself out of it. My heart sank to my feet, my whole body heavy with dread as I whispered, “Yes.”

Dominic had me and he knew it, settling his long fingers over the computer mouse. “Were you aware Heather put in nanny cams around the house about a month ago?”

And there was his ace. Cameras. I shouldn’t even be surprised that Heather had them installed after I started working here. It was very on brand for her and very bad luck for me. I lowered my gaze, rolling my lips together.

“No.”

He spoke deeper than I’d ever heard him before, the rich sound rolling my shoulders forward. “There’s one in Maya’s room. The entrance to the house. The kitchen. The upstairs loft. The living room.”

He punctuated those words with the intention of them to humiliate, and boy did they ever. Shame washed hot over every inch of me, desperation welling up beneath the heat and pouring out.

Time to beg.

“Sir, I didn’t know he was coming over, I swear.” Thoughtless feet moved me into the room and closer to him. “I didn’t even let him in. He barged in himself.”

Dominic’s jaw clicked dangerously. “I saw that.”

“He was just pissed that I broke up with him, and he wouldn’t leave and—” The more I worked myself up, the more hopeless I felt. My hopelessness blanketed me, suffocating my pride until I couldn’t even feel it inside me anymore. “Look, please don’t fire me. Please? I know you have every right to. He was in your house while your daughter was sleeping, and that’s all sorts of fucked up, but please. It won’t happen again, I swear.”

Dominic observed me with sharp focus as I panted through the end of my pleading. It was exhausting to beg for anything, let alone your future financial stability. My muscles weren’t used to it. I’d plucked my ego dry over the last thirty seconds so I was completely bare, letting Dominic see just how desperate I was, and that kind of debasement was a workout.

Finally, Dominic’s hand over the mouse fell to his side, and the razors in his eyes dulled.

“I’m not firing you, Ms. Sanders.”

Shock lifted my head. “You’re not?”

“No.” He tilted his chin down to the computer screen. “Even though I’m sure that was Heather’s hope when she showed me the video this morning.”

“She’s the one who found it?”

“Yes. She goes through the footage every few days.”

Talk about being kicked when you’re already down. Dominic seeing that footage was one thing, but knowing Heather had seen it and brought it to her husband like she’d hit the fireable offences jackpot was something else entirely.

Dominic said he wasn’t firing me though, which was some type of miracle if they’d ever existed.

“So, if you’re not firing me, why am I here?”

It was like I’d turned a dimmer low in the room, the mood shifting dark and Dominic following suit. His entire being clenched up. Not just his jaw like normal. All of him turned to marble, chiseling him into a statue worthy of the Gods approval.

Without anymore said, he clicked the mouse.

The computer lit with life, dulled colors forming moving bodies across the screen. My body. Daren’s too. Nerves clustered in my stomach as a movie of my life played out, one that I definitely didn’t buy tickets to.

Daren had me against the wall, and my hands were already on his shoulders. I cocked my head at the screen. I never realized I looked so small next to him. He wasn’t terribly big, and I wasn’t terribly short. I was 5’3” and Daren couldn’t have been over 6 feet, but he looked it there.

He was monstrous over me, or maybe it was just what he was doing that made it seem that way. A few more seconds of screen time showed my shirt being ripped and warmth slapped my cheeks with Dominic standing right here.

How many times had he watched this…?

The situation was sufficiently awkward now with my tits sort of out, and I weirdly scolded myself for not wearing a cuter bra that day. So not the point, but if I’d known I’d be watching a video of this a few days later with Dominic, I might have gone with the red lace that morning.

Next came the stuff that got a little fuzzy in my brain. When I watched Daren help knock my head back into the wall, I figured that might be where the specifics all went. My neck tensed as if it was about to happen again.

A flash of my face caught the camera, and I cringed. Saliva pooled in the sides of my mouth, my stomach twisting in a sickening sort of way. I swallowed both and cast my focus to the middle of Dominic’s chest.

“Why are we watching this?”

Seconds passed, and he didn’t answer me. I didn’t know which I hated more. The silence or being ignored. Out of spite, I switched back to watching the screen and just in time too. I was hitting Daren, going absolutely ape-shit on him until I snapped my head into his.

Next came my knee, and Daren finally dropped to the floor. Another quick snapshot of my face in the camera brought the unsettling sensations back, and I shifted on my feet.

I looked terrified.

A perfect screenshot of helpless.

The scuffle came to an end as three-days-ago Kat ran to behind the sofa. Dominic pressed pause. Silence followed.

I moved my eyes back to the middle of his chest, watching the buttons down his shirt strain as he stretched his chest with a deep breath. Watching him breathe was sort of calming.

Everything that happened next, however, was not.

“I haven’t been able to stop watching that. It’s been burned behind my eyes all day.” His weighty tone pushed my eyes closed. Movement shuffling in front of me fluttered them back open.

Dominic was there. Waiting. Anguished. Furious. “Why didn’t you tell me? I was there minutes after it happened.”

I pulled back a breath, swallowing the thick air. “I thought you’d be mad?”

His browline bunched together like I was stupid for saying it. Like he was pissed that I was so stupid. “Why would I be mad at you?”

I recoiled back, trying to make the same picture with my face that he was giving me. “I don’t know, why are you mad at me now?”

“Because you didn’t tell me. I could have helped you.”

“It had already happened,” I pushed back. Then, I felt the slap of his words resonate. “Plus, I helped myself just fine.”

Dominic Reed came as close to rolling his eyes as I’d ever seen. “Barely.”

I set my shoulders back, teeth edging in ready for a deadly bite.

“Excuse me?”

If he heard my brewing temper, he didn’t adjust his reaction to it. In fact, the cut of his steel-gray gaze sharpened, needled straight at me. “I said barely. You barely escaped, Kat.”

“But I did. I got out of it by myself.”

“With a lucky shot.”

I scoffed and lowered the pitch of my voice, provoking him. “A lucky shot that worked on you.”

Memories of the night I cup checked him burned across his face, scorching the whole thing a threatening shade of red. “That’s not the point. The point is that you couldn’t defend yourself.”

Oh my god, I was gonna throttle him into the next room. I felt the want to lash out bubbling beneath my skin, popping off like tiny firecrackers every second I was still instead.

Through bared teeth, I said, “I’m fine, Dominic.”

“But you almost weren’t.”

He narrowed the space between us so fast, I nearly stumbled. In no time at all, he wasn’t even an arms length away, shooting my pulse through the roof and blistering me with his frostbite severity. “Do you realize if you hadn’t gotten that lucky shot in, that video might have been of your rape instead? Tell me you understand that.”

“Yeah, I get that.” I jerked my chin high, keeping his stare. “I was there.”

Dominic was growing mountainous over me, his restraint visibly trembling. “Would you have told me then, or would I have found out by being blindsided with a video of it while having my morning coffee?”

His words rattled my head, making me take a step back and puff my chest out at the same time. “Is this about you? I’m really confused right now, because that just sounded like this was about you and how you feel about it.”

“No.” He took another step in. “This is about you and asking for help when you need it.”

“I didn’t need it,” I bit back.

He bit back harder and much, much louder.

“You did!”

In a quick breath, my index finger was over my mouth, and my other hand was over his chest. Gripping, fisting the material of his shirt to ground him back down from his peak of anger. His heart was thrashing beneath my hand, telling me with each frantic beat just how uncharacteristically shaken up he was.

Harsh eyes steadied on my finger over my lips, recollection that Maya was sleeping just a couple rooms down snowing over them both.

Heavy lids closed over the storm, pinching tightly. The space between his brows furrowed so he looked like he was in pain, and any of my temper left standing was shoved to the side to make room for surprising concern. I wanted to smooth out his frown lines and poke at his dimples that were hiding.

Actually, I wanted more than that I realized. My hands wanted more than just that. They wanted to touch his whole face. His cheeks, forehead, nose, mouth, everything. They wanted to trace a map from his eyebrows down to his stubborn chin and then get lost everywhere in between.

I didn’t know we’d made it so close to the wall behind me until Dominic set both hands on it, caging me in. He was tall enough that, even with his head hanging low as it was, I didn’t feel like he was too close.

Too close for boss and employee, yes.

But not too close for us.

That inexplicable chemistry riding between us whispered that this was okay. It caressed down the raised hairs on my neck where Dominic’s breath kissed and focused all my attention on him.

On the weight burdening his strong shoulders, trying to tear him down to my feet. I watched him closer than I’d ever watched anything as he dragged his eyelids up.

And then pain. It stabbed through my chest, and I tried not to gasp or wince or show any sign of it. It felt like someone had exchanged my heart out for a soda can and crushed it inside of me when I saw his eyes.

Like someone had taken a hammer to river rocks and smashed them to bits. Agony radiated out of the breaks in his stare and only got worse as he looked to where the bump on my head was nearly healed.

He didn’t touch me, but he didn’t hide the fact that he wanted to either. There wasn’t much at all hidden about him today. He was letting me see it all, and somehow having the full picture muddled my understanding of it even more.

“You need to learn how to defend yourself,” he started, voice low. “He overpowered you too easily, and it could happen again.”

I dropped my head back against the wall, shaking it. “He’s gone. You don’t have to worry about him anymore.”

Even as I said it, I could see him ignoring me and going to the worst places in his mind. His breathing became choppy, the angles of his jaw crushing together.

“Do you want to press charges?”

“What?” A wash of cold exploded in my chest. “No. It’s not that big of a deal.”

A look passed over him that warred between a sadness that could sink him or a rage that promised to control him. His torrid eyes went everywhere over my face, touching every inch of it that was already flushed and making it burn just a little more.

“What happened was a very big deal,” he said, voice like gravel.

“Well, I don’t wanna do anything about it.”

If we did anything about it, then it became something that happened to me, and I was so sick of being that girl. I’d already had enough happen to me in my life that was out of my control. Right now, I could brush this off as an ex-boyfriend who got too handsy if I didn’t think about it too much.

Dominic’s head sunk past his shoulders with a rasped sigh. “Dammit, Kat.”

Frustration ebbed out of him. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him trying to press as much of it as he could into the wall. Fingers bent, knuckles leached of all color, tendons and veins flexed beneath his skin.

My attention ripped back to his face as he jerked his head up, eyes the brightest shade of gray I’d seen them yet. “You have to let people help you sometimes. I can help you now.”

“How?” I asked, on defense without thinking about it. It was just my go to. Fists up, claws out. “How do you want to help me, Dominic?”

“Let me arrest him.”

“No.”

A growl—there was no other way to describe it—thrummed up his throat. “Then let me teach you how to defend yourself against men like him.”

“I thought you said it would be inappropriate to teach me self defense?” I threw back at him.

At that, he dropped his hands from the wall on either side of me and stood tall. The lines of his face carved deep. “That was before I watched you be sexually assaulted in my own home.”

Sexually assaulted.

Sexually a—

I put a mental block up before the words could finish a second time. If I didn’t think them, then they weren’t true. If I didn’t think them, then the twist in my stomach when I heard them meant nothing.

I was fine, and Dominic was wrong.

“I don’t need you to help me or protect me or whatever it is you’ve convinced yourself you have to do for me.”

His eyes darkened so fast, I actually thought I heard a boom of thunder outside.

“That video says otherwise.”

“That video proves that I handled myself just fine, and I can do it again.”

I held my head high and didn’t dare look away. The not-so-friendly lightning in my veins kept me upright, vibrating my body with too much energy to back down from now. We were in a standoff, and I tried to remember that saying about thunder and lightning.

Something about whenever you see lightning, count the seconds until the thunder claps, and that’s how many miles the lightning is away from you. That’s how far you are away from danger.

If that were true, Dominic and I were screwed. There was no warning between us. No few seconds to run and find shelter. The lightning and thunder were simultaneous, here and now, and we were both about to get fried.

A flash of grey pierced my stare before he sealed himself off again. He became stone, his voice following the same flat path.

“You honestly believe you could fight off any man, whenever you want?”

I jutted my chin up. “If they’ve got balls, I can smash them.”

A moment of silence passed between us.

Dominic skirted his gaze down, nodding slightly. Victory trembled the corner of my mouth, daring to inch up as Dominic seemed to back down.

I won.

Thunder: Zero

Lightning: One thousand, because it’s my scoreboard.

It was in the middle of mentally fudging my own points that it happened.

And it happened in the time span of a sharp breath.

That was all I let out anyway as a hand lashed around my wrist, and the room went spinning. I didn’t even yelp as I was shoved up against the wall I had my back to half a second ago, almost smacking the thing with my cheek.

The world was too dizzy, and I was too slow to realize what had happened until my arms were locked behind my back, and Dominic was the one holding me.

“What about now?”

I didn’t answer, couldn’t answer him right away. I was still reeling from the happenings of it and mentally checking in with every part of my body to feel out which ones were trapped and which ones were free to kick his ass.

Unfortunately, most of my body was ensnared by his, and I wiggled between the wall and him searching for a way out. When I didn’t immediately get it, a flame lit inside of me, holding still under my heart and slowly catching the whole thing on fire.

“You can’t move, can you?”

The flame got even hotter at how fucking certain he sounded.

“I could still kick your ass right now,” I grit out, breathing already turning reckless.

“Then do it. Prove me wrong.” He adjusted his fingers around my wrists to get a better grip. “I know you’re dying to.”

A snarl coiled up my throat, my chest heaving as much as it could pressed against the wall. I struggled harder, jerking my shoulders until they cried in pain. Dominic’s firm hold didn’t let up.

I bowed my back to ease the strain on my shoulders, breathing heavily. “You know you’re just pissing me off, right?”

“Because you know you can’t get out of it, and you’re too stubborn to admit it.”

The wailing in my shoulders and huge presence behind me told the rational part of my brain that he was right. Except the willful side of me was still in the game, and it always played to win.

“I can still move my legs and my head. I could easily—”

His hand not holding my wrists appeared on the back of my neck, fingers pinching the nape. The move pulled a gasp from me and straightened my spine all the way up.

Oh god. Every fighting muscle in my body loosened. The pressure he had on that exact spot was…

Absolute dominance.

Like when an animal bites the back of a smaller animal’s neck, not to kill them, but to control them. Calm them down. That’s exactly what Dominic’s particular grip was in human form.

While he was busying my mind with that, he’d taken the expanse of his frame and sealed it up against me so I couldn’t move any part of my body. The only part of me that was moving was my heart, and it was fucking flying.

“You were saying?” Confidence coated his tone while his soft breath brushed the shell of my ear.

Fuck, what was I saying? Something about winning or losing or…

“I don’t know,” I breathed honestly.

Literally, I couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t his confident grip on the back of my neck or how his entire body was touching mine. I could feel every curved muscle, where his belt buckle was digging into the small of my back, how warm he was, everything.

And it all felt so good.

The inspired feel of him was doing all sorts of haywire things to my brain. It was melting all the coherency away like snow, revealing the core of my makeup: a filthy desire to do just about everything I shouldn’t.

I wanted to be a little bit bad and moan his name to see if I could feel his taut muscles tensing to the immoral sound of it rolling off my tongue.

Scratch that. I wanted to be a lot bad and wriggle my ass against him to feel the outline of his cock grow inside his pants. Just the idea that I could feel him so intimately rushed blood straight out of my head and between my legs. My tits got heavier, nipples tightening, lips parting as I began to pant.

“No man should be allowed to get this close to you without your permission,” he murmured. His voice was unadulterated sin, and thank God he had me so tightly against the wall, or I would have fallen to my knees and asked for forgiveness later.

Hot breath eased along the curve of my neck, my pussy fluttering at the sensation and throaty voice that followed.

“I could do whatever I wanted to you right now.”

Like he was proving his own point, he moved his fingers on my neck just so, a small massage that bowed my head back for him and slipped out a faint moan, both actions involuntary.

His deft fingers squeezed my wrists as I let the small sound go free, a punishment and warning in one. My head was swimming, too much humid air filling it to keep track of what I was doing or saying. I’d never been this pliant before, my body feeling more like water than anything solid.

Dominic had done that to me, and I was desperate to know if he did it on purpose. Was I putty in his hands because he wanted me to be or because this was part of the lesson?

“Anyone could get this close,” he snarled in my ear, closer than ever and shooting electric tingles down my legs.

His anger was back, and I couldn’t help but gasp at it and how biting his grasp was on my wrists. It was good though, so fucking good. I squirmed as much as I could between him and the wall, stifling whimpers like a bitch in heat.

Dominic must have mistaken my squirming as uncomfortable because he eased off, loosening the hold he had around my wrists. A cry of protest surged up my throat, but I caught it as his hand on my neck moved.

It was slow and thoughtful, a gentle ride of skin over skin. “There’s so much bad out there. You need to learn to protect yourself from it.”

I held my breath, not willing to risk even breathing if it could shatter this moment. Dominic was officially lost, forgotten to his words and surroundings, and I was shamelessly curious for what his wayward mouth might say.

An absent-minded touch traced across the baby hairs at my nape. “You have no idea how…”

He dropped off, and my heart squeezed.

I was hanging, dangling in mid-air for him to finish what he was going to say in the softest voice to ever touch my ears. It was like a cloud, wispy and gentle, floating in some limbo sky we’d created together.

A sky where thunder and lightning blended in harmony. An affair orchestrated of blinding lights rolling in dark clouds, pirouetting to an endless drumbeat.

Unfortunately, I never got to hear what else he had to say. In the next second, I was dropped out of our sky as a lonely wind rushed over my back. It was cold—freezing, in fact, and I clammed up all my muscles trying to hold on to the heat that was there seconds ago.

It all happened so quick. One second he was there, confusing and arousing the fuck out of me. Now, I turned to find him at the far end of his desk, huge shoulders hunched over it and staring at paperwork as if he could will it to catch on fire.

Breathing. I wasn’t quite doing it yet, and my heart was smacking against my lungs trying to get them started again.

What the hell just happened?

My lips were locked open in shock as I dove off a cliff in my head, diving into all the questions and assumptions forming. Like, 95% of that was him proving his point about self-defense. It was the 5% left that had my brain glitching.

What was he about to say when his brain had untethered itself from his mouth?

Dominic was ignoring it all completely, standing over his desk and pretending like he hadn’t been sandwiching me against the wall like ten seconds ago.

Even as he spoke to me.

“Heather’s having dinner with her parents tomorrow night. Do you think you could get someone to watch Charlotte so you could stay late?”

Tomorrow. “How late?”

Words. Oh wow. That was a surprising success on my part.

Still, no eye contact. “Just a couple hours.”

“What about Maya?”

This time, he flipped a paper over on his desk to give merit to how invested he was in it and why he couldn’t be bothered to meet my eye.

“I’ll set her upstairs with a movie.”

I opened my mouth, the words coming out slow. “So you can teach me self-defense?” Lord, it sounded even more asinine when I said it out loud.

Gunmetal eyes cut up to me so unexpectedly, my heart snapped back. He was all business now. “As we’ve established, you need to learn.”

Yeah, but is that smart?

The heroin chemistry riding in my veins whispered yes. Everything else in my body screamed a big fat no.

It didn’t seem as I had much of a choice, though. Still standing there like my wires had been short-circuited, Dominic clipped a disciplined glance down my frame.

“Bring workout clothes.”

Dear lord, my thoughts were in a tailspin. So much was happening too fast. I tried to think if I even had anything that would qualify as workout clothing, but my mind couldn’t even manage that. I was fried. Turned out I was right about Dominic and I, but the storm we created struck us both in different ways.

It shocked Dominic back to the basics. Rules and order and control.

Me? I was fritzed to the bone, hairs still standing on edge, and heart racing towards an attack.

Dominic didn’t spare my malfunctioning self a second glance.

“That will be all, Ms. Sanders.”

I blinked. Somehow, I got my feet to move and shuffled out of his office, head still full-on spinning.

Well, tomorrow’ll be interesting.