Unlawful Temptations (The Star-Crossed Series Book 1)

Dominic agreed to clean up the kitchen while I cleaned up the girls.

Only issue with my end of the bargain was that they were still so high on sugar that bath time became an epic fiasco that ended with more water on the bathroom floor than in the tub. Both girls were donned in cute little princess bathing suits from Maya’s room, but me?

By the time Dominic walked in, my cherry-colored tank top was soaked all the way through, and I was a sopping mess with my back against the counter and the shower hose aimed in ready at the girls.

Dominic looked at me. Then to Bugs and Maya. Then back at me.

Then he walked right out.

I was afraid he was mad for .2 seconds before he came back in with arms full of fluffy towels. He called me trouble, I spritzed him with a spray of water, and then Bathtub Royale Part Two was a go.

I’d laughed so fucking hard, my abs were actually sore as I laid in the guest bedroom after putting Maya and Charlotte down for the night. They were out cold, crashing hard from the sugar and water battles.

Me though? I was totally and completely wired.

After my own shower, I didn’t have anything to do except watch YouTube videos on my phone using the Reeds’ WiFi. I needed something—anything—to distract myself from the fact that the man of my dreams and I were sharing a house for an entire night.

Like, literally the man of my dreams.

My fucking subconscious was going to give me an aneurysm it dreamt of him so much. It was to the point I was afraid to fall asleep at night, knowing he was waiting for me in Dreamland with a smile and another dose of the infection.

Maybe that’s why I wasn’t sleeping now. I didn’t know. I was just rolling and tossing for long enough that the exercise actually worked up an appetite. Groaning, I kicked my legs out from the blanket burrito I’d made myself into and left the guest bedroom with the flavor of cupcakes growing on my tastebuds.

I’d already had like four, but one more couldn’t hurt?

It was well past midnight, so it was just me and this monster of a house as I climbed down the stairs to the first floor. The dead air seemed quieter at night. Colder, too. The cotton pajama shorts and virgin-white tank top I’d brought to sleep in weren’t exactly cutting it, but my nipples sure were.

Every inch of me was puckered from the temperature in the house, and I hurried my steps to the kitchen to grab a cupcake so I could zip back up into my comfy blanket burrito. My quick steps slowed though, the peel of my bare feet on hardwood coming to a stop as I saw a light still on in the living room.

My brow furrowed. I mean, not everyone had to worry about saving money on the electric bill like I did, but come on. Conserve energy to save the planet and shit, right?

Sighing, I did a drive-by cupcake pick up in the kitchen before turning on my heel into the living room—

Stopping short at the large frame of a man sprawled in his big red lounge chair, shadowed eyes fixed on me.

“Oh.” Shit. “I didn’t think you were up.”

The light I’d seen was from the tall lamp over his chair, spotlighting a dim, golden hue above Dominic as he sat in otherwise darkness. My breath was chased away by the jaggedly beautiful angles the mix of shadows created on his face. His cheekbones and passionately straight nose were highlighted slants that glowed, while his darker features basked in the shade.

Gray eyes were nearly obsidian and glittering. That mouth of his was a prominent source of attention, all dusky pink and pouty. A wet shine caught the light on his lips, and a furtive glance to the glass of dark liquor hanging loosely in his left hand over the arm of the chair connected those dots.

I shifted my weight, every instinct in me screaming that this was the perfect setup for an epic disaster. Dark lighting, the house asleep except for us, and the man who was far better at keeping our positions platonic blurring his inhibitions.

All that left was me and my sick little heart between us.

And my cupcake.

Half-hooded eyes dropped to the dessert in my palm. “Bit of a sweet tooth, hm?”

My knees wobbled like they’d been replaced with KY jelly. The alcohol had done such unfair things to his voice, making it all rough and thick, almost like he’d just woken up.

“Yeah.” I sucked back a breath, trying to walk towards his chair without reenacting a baby doe standing for the first time. “I figure I should take advantage of the fast metabolism while I can.”

His dark gaze skimmed down the length of my body, slow and absorbing, as if I was put in front of him to feed his starving eyes. My fingers itched to pull at the hem of my shorts even though it wouldn’t do me any good. He wasn’t even trying to conceal his greedy observation of me, proving that the alcohol in his glass had done its job and staying down here was a bad, bad idea.

Bad ideas were my kryptonite, though.

Dominic’s shadowed stare worked up my top, and my nipples hardened under his gaze. The backs of his cheeks pulsed dangerously, pupils searing with fire as my braless tits pebbled beneath my shirt just for him. He could see them, and there wasn’t a doubt in either of our minds that they were taut for and because of him. The thin fabric of my tank top coasted my sensitive skin in tempered strokes with each heavy breath, and it was high time I changed the subject.

“Is that bourbon?”

Dominic blinked a hard-bitten stare up at me and then drew his focus down to his drink, lifting it up to sit on the armrest. “And coke.”

I nodded, swallowing down the golf ball sized lust blocking my throat.

“Trouble sleeping?”

He made a noise in his throat that sounded like confirmation, but there was something in his cast off stare that said it might be something else. Something younger and off-limits and super fucking wicked.

I was ruining this man’s life and didn’t know how to stop it. I was a black hole sucking up all the good out of him, and pretending it wasn’t happening was proving to be useless. Trying to force us back to before the kiss was like trying to put shattered glass back together with your bare hands. It would never be the same, and we’d both be cut up and scarred by the end.

Still, I fisted a glass shard and kept trying. Blood and scars be damned.

I sauntered between his wide-set legs, feet planted solidly on the floor. Dominic watched me, a subtle twitch to his eyebrow as I stole his drink and pulled back a sip.

Way too much spicy bourbon and not near enough soda popped across my tastebuds, sliding down my throat with a burn. I almost reared back with a grimace, but kept my facial expression in check as the alcohol warmed my chest like sweet fire.

Ah, and just like that, my muscles relaxed from the more spicy than sweet sample, and I found myself wanting more.

I pondered the flavors for a second, tilting my head from side to side.

“It’s not bad. Mine woulda been better.”

Mirth sparkled across those unusually dark eyes. “Did you want me to come knocking on your bedroom door, asking you to make it for me?”

Now that would have been a brilliantly awful idea. If Dominic had come knocking at my door tonight asking for a drink, there was a fatally high chance I would have invited him in for dessert too.

I kept things light and cheeky though with a cock of my hip and a smirk.

“I probably would have said yes.”

Umber brows hooked upwards. “Probably?”

“Yeah. I’m off the clock, sir.”

There was an actual internal gasp inside of my head, like my brain took in air as it registered the ‘Sir’ that just slipped my lips.

Dammit! Light and cheeky. No flirting.

Dominic didn’t show a falter in his expression. Just shifted his hips in his red chair. “You wouldn’t do it out of the goodness of your heart?”

Before I could fight it off, a melancholy magic swallowed up all my attempts at being light, casting them in pitch black guilt.

“We both know my heart’s not all that good.”

My heart was sick. It was fucking choking on the way he was staring at me like he wanted to shield me from myself. Take all my bad words and insults and smother them beneath him until they turned to a puff of smoke he could blow out of existence.

My ailing heart nearly gave out all together when long fingers wrapped around my thin wrist and tugged me down. A gasp stuck in my throat as I fell to his thigh, and he perched me on his lap.

A whole bunch of ‘what the fucks’ barreled through my mind as I sat taller, spine pulling as straight as it could go at the feeling of Dominic’s strong thigh beneath me, all rock solid and big. My heart fluttered like it was trying to grow wings to fly out of my chest and hover above us to be an out-of-body witness to what just happened.

Then on an even stranger note, those deft fingers sectioned out a piece of my cupcake and stole it up to his mouth and ate it. He fucking ate my cupcake. Well, a part of it, and he did it with this goddamn gorgeous lopsided grin that had me batting my eyes at him just to make sure he was real.

“That’s thievery,” I said, voice failing in volume and succeeding in giving me away.

The feel of his powerful, hard muscles sitting right against my core because he put me there was too much. My thin cotton shorts were no match for the almost rough brush of his sweatpants as I shifted myself against him.

I needed a distraction, pressing the cool glass of his drink to my bottom lip and sipping. Those shadowed eyes traced my tongue as it peeked out to clear up the remnants of bourbon, pointing his chin up at my mouth.

“And that’s underage drinking.”

Yeah, for like, two more days.

“You didn’t arrest me the last time you caught me doing it.”

Mischief pulled a blurry line through his stare, setting my pulse offbeat. “Are you saying you’d like me to correct that, Ms. Sanders?”

The bright metal of handcuffs flashed a blinding bolt of desire across my mind. Sweaty heat followed a pathway down the valley of my breasts, making me clench every muscle in my body. This was bad. This was bad, bad, bad. Those words coming from him were a drunken invitation to give up pretending and give into temptation. Give into the addiction, the sickness, the hurricane we created.

Together, we were so many catastrophic things, and the look Dominic was showing me said he wanted to get absolutely wrecked on us.

Rakish anticipation with a dash of dread was the only cocktail drugging my veins at the moment. “You’re a little drunk, aren’t you?”

He donned a look of lazy consideration, eyelids blinking slowly. “Potentially.”

I waited with expectancy for him to realize that was a risky thing to be right now. That realization never came. He only picked the glass tumbler out of my hand and brought it back to himself, downing another mouthful of liquid regret.

So I’d spell it out for him. “As the responsible one between us, that’s pretty dangerous.”

More amused than anything, he asked, “How so?”

Contemplation held my breath in limbo for a solid five seconds before agreeing with my blunt logic. Honesty is the best policy.

“Because I’m reckless and impulsive even when I’m sober, and apparently, you’re a flirt when you’re drunk.”

There. I said it. I’d keep us on track, using my wheezing heart as a compass to navigate where was safest ground for us to land.

Dominic made an irritated groan in the back of his throat. “God, flirting sounds so juvenile.”

I felt my eyes bulge out. That’s what he cared about?

“What would you rather I call it?”

The sharpened edges of his face softened under the yellow-amber glow, even though the switches on the lamplight hadn’t changed one bit. It was just the electricity in the room bending to the current of what he felt, to the raw magnitude of Dominic Reed.

I knew because my lightning reacted to him the same way—ebbing and flowing and riding his soul as it entangled with mine.

Dominic settled his warm gaze on me, searching through my eyes with this quiet satisfaction, like he discovered something he liked more and more each time he looked at me. “Just call it talking. That’s what it feels like with you. Like the easiest conversation I’ve ever had.”

My heart zapped, choked, and flipped all at once.

This man would kill me.

“That’s just our dumbass chemistry.” I tucked a loose strand of raven hair back behind my ear, ducking my head so I didn’t have to stare at him anymore. It was too much. Everything he made me feel was just too much.

A thumb curled under my chin, leading my head back up. “You don’t seem too fond of it.”

His eyes were as honest as my voice that followed, trembling and breathless.

“I’m not.”

I’m terrified of it.

“Why?”

His question was a slow croon, a husky melody burrowing between my ribs. I pulled back air to respond when he cut me off with a warning. “And don’t say daddy issues, because…” The curve to his mouth was slow-rising and roguish. “I’m not sure what I would do with that in this state.”

My parted lips didn’t stand a chance, even in this anxious atmosphere. They stretched back over my teeth and soft titters of laughter poured out of me. There was all the proof I needed that I was rubbing off on this man. My shoulders shook, Dominic’s quiet rumbles joining in with mine, and together, our uninhibited laughter made the room glow.

Or at least, that’s what it seemed like. As if the sound we created was so beautiful, it could be seen.

When it died out, we were left in the afterglow, a smile still spotting both our mouths. I popped off a nibble of my cupcake that was almost gone while Dominic took a drink out of his glass. There was only about a pinky width left.

I didn’t want to go back to where we were before the laughter. I liked this new current we’d drifted to, so peaceful it almost felt like we’d gone back to pretending.

I even tucked my legs up to fit where Dominic’s thighs were parted, getting comfortable like I probably would have a month ago if we found ourselves in this position. It probably would have made Dominic tense up back then, still fighting his fall with our chemistry.

Tonight, he ran an affectionate thumb up and down my spine.

I tried to get used to the feeling, but couldn’t. How could a person get used to the feeling of thunder running up their skin? Instead, I decided on distracting myself with a burning question I’d been wondering all night.

“Have you been sleeping in the bedroom I’m in?”

I wouldn’t have ever asked if it hadn’t been for the wingtip shoes sitting like red handprints in the corner by the closet.

He didn’t stop stroking my spine, but his razored jaw did tick. “You’re avoiding my question.”

“So are you.”

He was quicker to cave than I ever would be, and we both knew my stubbornness could keep us here all night. So, he made it easy with the most difficult answer.

“I have.”

Guilt stomped down on my chest, leaving a giant black imprint.

“Since when?”

The seriousness in his eyes was sobering, and I wasn’t even the one who was tipsy.

“Three Fridays ago.”

The Blame Game teamed up with Guilt this time, both playing ring around my ribcage, changing the lyrics to, ‘Ashes, ashes, it’s all your fault.’

My appetite evaporated, and I crushed what was left of the cupcake in its casing and fisted it tight. I kept my focus on Dominic so he knew that I knew the truth, even if he would fight me on it.

“I did that.”

And of course, he fought.

“No, I chose to sleep in separate bedrooms.”

“Did you tell her why?” I countered, knowing the answer before it was given.

His mouth pressed into a thin line. “Not yet, but when I do, it will be an overdue conversation about our marriage.” The hand on my back gave a squeeze around my waist. “Not about you.”

I didn’t mean this selfishly, but how couldn’t it be about me? Sure, their marriage had been rocky before, but now they were in separate bedrooms as a direct result of our kiss. Heather hadn’t been anywhere in my mind that day in the garage, but she was now.

I kissed Dominic that day because I wanted to, and kissing him was the only thing that made sense in the moment. It felt like breathing to kiss him. Necessary and inevitable. Natural and sustainable. It wasn’t until the sickness set in that I realized it wasn’t like breathing at all.

It was drowning. Choking on air and packing your lungs full of death.

Once I made that connection, and our kiss wasn’t just a onetime consequence but a lingering ailment, I started thinking about Heather.

I plucked his drink from him almost out of spite. “You two just had date night though.”

Date night that ended in a fight, but date night nonetheless.

Dark eyes watched me as I tipped back a swig, finishing the bourbon off. He took the empty glass from me like I was a child worth punishing and lowered it to the floor next to him. “It was an officer’s going away party, and Heather has always liked to be at any of the department parties. She’s very good at schmoozing. It’s like a sport to her.”

“Did you slow dance with her?”

The pointed edge to his stare dulled as I brought us back to a week ago. His expression relaxed, but not because he was calm. Because he was sad, and he shook his head just once.

“The last time we danced together was our wedding.”

Pain split my chest in two, each ache dedicated to something different. One was for Dominic and his broken heart and the defeat sitting in his somber eyes. The second was a stupid, pitiful, ugly ache inspired by the thought that he only wanted me because Heather didn’t want him.

That was the sickness talking, and I knew it. In fact, the sickness kept on talking right out of my mouth as I asked the dumbest question.

“Is that why you wanted to know if I liked to slow dance?” Because your wife doesn’t?

If I thought Dominic looked sad before, that was nothing against the upset shaping his face now. A wrinkled frown pursed his eyebrows together, silver ringing around his digging eyes.

“Heather was standing right next to me on her phone. I could have asked her to get off of it to dance, but I didn’t. Instead, I spent half the night in my head—” he made sure to enunciate, forcing me to breathe a laugh. “Wondering about this fiery little brunette I know, and if she’d hate the music they were playing like she loves to hate things.”

My lightning went zap.

Dominic looked back and forth between my eyes, making sure I understood him, making sure there was no second guessing going on in my mind or second choice in his.

He kept going. “I was wondering how long into the evening before she got bored and did something like steal a bottle from behind the bar and pour everyone a shot or convince the band to play something upbeat and get the whole room dancing.”

Both. I would have done both.

“I was wondering what she would have worn and if it would have been something picked specifically to drive me up the wall.” His fingers around my waist squeezed, chastising me for something I hadn’t done but totally would.

I inhaled, squirming on his lap as his confession got deeper, throatier, and slowly spiraled me out of my senses.

“I wondered if she knew how to slow dance or if she’d be clumsy at it and that filthy mouth would spin out of control until I kissed it shut. I’d kiss it until she forgot what she was saying and I forgot that she was dancing all over my feet, and all I’d remember was the taste of those strawberry lips.”

My whole body pulled tight, tensing up to keep his dangerous words out of my heart and head, but I felt them slip between my legs anyway, licking and encouraging me to open up to him.

My body was in such an oxymoronic state, terrified to get any sicker than I was but vying for a taste of that sweet death. My mind yelled to get out of there, run back to my bedroom where it was safe while every inch of my skin ached—literally ached—to touch him, kiss him, rub myself all over him.

And my heart. God, my fucking heart was too feverish to make a decision either way.

Two firm hands found my hips and moved me more center, fixing me up on my knees on the seat of the chair between his thighs. I was weak as he moved me, kneeling over him with Dominic’s hands sliding up to the dips of my waist, holding me still. His eyes were shining, fucking shining up at me, his truth creating its own light.

“I thought about that spitfire woman all night long, and that’s why I didn’t ask Heather to dance.”

My breathing stumbled. Actually, all of me stumbled in a full body tremble with only Dominic’s sturdy hands to hold me up. Something in my chest was crying, screaming out sounds that cut like knives. They sliced up and down my front, jagged, unkind rips that hurt so fucking bad, I thought I might die.

Even breathing hurt, and so I stopped that too. I only left enough air to mumble my escape. “I should go back to my room.”

Except the hands around my waist wouldn’t let me. They tightened, fingers biting into flesh and making me grab onto the globes of his shoulders for support. I pinched my eyes closed through the pain so I couldn’t see Dominic’s concern as he spoke, but I sure heard it like it was a gunshot.

“Why do you keep trying to run from me?”

My breath rattled, a lie spilling out between its shakes. “I’m not.”

There was a pause. A deadly one. Something changed over in the air around us, in the way Dominic’s hands burned through my top. What had started as amiable warmth had now turned flammable, like he was hoping to burn my shirt back to threads.

“Ms. Sanders,” Dominic hummed, voice as hot as his touch. “I’d have thought you’d have learned better than to lie to me by now.”

My lower stomach clenched at the change in him—impassioned to controlled in just a few seconds. I squeezed my eyes tighter, filtering my breathing in through slow, uneven patterns. A rough patch—a thumb, I think—placed itself dead center over my chest where it hurt to breathe the most.

He pressed down, denting the blunt edge of his nail just above my cleavage.

“Spread your thighs.”

Air rushed out of me, eyes flying open. “What?”

Dominic was waiting for me, his stunning features the darkest I’d seen them yet. He took his hand up my neck, feeling every inch of my soft skin he wanted with his touch that was more rough than smooth. Dark eyes devoured every reaction I gave him, every quickening of my breath, every flutter of my pulse in my neck that his hand rode up. He consumed it all until his big hand cupped my jaw, trapping me in a firm grip. His fingers indented in my jaw, making my neck curve against his wrist.

“Spread your thighs over my hips,” he ordered, voice composed and final.

I was crumbling inside out and didn’t stand a chance, deciding instead to crumble into him. My knees slid over his thighs, muscles melting against his hard body as I straddled his hips like he told me to.

A lethal rumble of hot breath fanned beside my ear.

“Good girl.”

My heart banged against my chest as it came flush with his, inhaling another hit of the infection. I felt like crying, my back bowing into him because I simply didn’t know what else to do. All I could do was feel and let him make me feel; take away all of my control so I didn’t have to make any decisions about what was happening right now.

Dominic was doing this on purpose, pulling my strings loose so he could control them because he could probably tell I was losing it. I was coming off my axis, and he knew just how to balance me.

He ran his nose down the column of my neck. “You ran from me once. I won’t let you do it again.”

Scorched panic blazed across my bare skin when I realized I didn’t want to run this time. Not if it would hurt him. I didn’t want to do anything ever again to hurt him. So I nodded, limply and desperately, heart spasming as lips made of silk caressed the arch of my neck.

“Why did you run from me that day?”

My focus was loose, muddled between his question and the sensations he was running all along my prickling skin.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” I breathed, somewhere between a sigh and a whimper.

His hand around my jaw slipped back into my hair, fingers wrapping around strands until he had a fist full of it, but he didn’t pull. Not yet.

“Did you plan anything you did that day?”

I shook my head back and forth. “Impulsive, remember?”

Nuzzling his face in my neck, he growled, “Hard to forget.”

My hands on his shoulders squeezed, a moan lining up my throat as he pinched that place on the back of my neck. That place that made all my muscles slack and my power give way to him. I was nothing but heavy panting and feelings. Hot, sticky, needy feelings that centered in my pelvis that was sitting right over his.

The thin cotton fabric between my heat and his was too much and not enough at the same time. I could feel him beneath me, growing hard and thick inside his sweatpants.

“Keep talking, Ms. Sanders,” Dominic instructed, bringing me back to him. I searched every corner of my mind for what I was saying, but my growing need had shoved it all out of the way. The feeling of his cock swelling against me was the only thing in my thoughts.

My head shook feebly. “I don’t remember what I was saying.”

“Why did you run?” A sharp gasp shot out of me, knuckles digging into my scalp as Dominic tightened his fist in my hair.

“Because I’m selfish,” I rasped. The confession tumbled out so quickly, a braid of pain and pleasure pulling the words free.

“I think you have us confused.” Dominic tilted my head back down to him, the black of his pupils eating up the color of his eyes with desire. “Kissing you was the most selfish thing I’ve ever done.”

“I made you do it.” I sunk closer to him, wanting his spicy bourbon breath on my lips and his heart pounding against mine. He let me, watching me from up close like I might disappear any second.

“You didn’t make me do anything. I’d been thinking about what your lips tasted like for weeks.” He thumbed my bottom lip as if he could taste it just by touching it. When he tried to take that thumb away, I flashed my teeth out to keep it in place.

Dominic hissed and grunted at the same time, hips flexing up as I bit down on his finger. I wasn’t thinking, just moving, acting on pure instinct to keep him right where he was. Through a curtain of eyelashes, I peeked up at him as I wrapped my lips around his thumb, sucking back on it.

If punishment ever had a color, it was whatever shade of black Dominic’s eyes just grew to. I could practically hear his teeth crunching as he ground his jaw together while I swirled my tongue around his finger. I stroked it, nibbled at it, hollowed my cheeks around it until fingernails bit into the side of my jaw he was grabbing me so hard.

The blunt outline of his cock in his pants twitched against my core, trying to break through to me. I moaned around his thumb, popping it out of my mouth with a wet smack.

“You only wondered what they tasted like because I never respected our boundaries.”

To prove it, I ground my hips over his, rubbing our arousals together. Two large hands slapped on either side of my hips, stopping me with fingers that bit like teeth.

“No, you didn’t.”

My head fell back as Dominic kept me from moving, need building at the apex of my thighs that only he could touch, that only he could make go away. Again, I was panting, my back bending so my braless tits were right in his face, right where his mouth could reach them. My nipples were so fucking tight they ached, and I knew he could see them through the fabric of my shirt, puckered and dying to be sucked on.

We were only here because of him, because he wouldn’t let me go back to my room and decided he’d keep me from spiraling the only way he knew how. My head was a lost cause of fuck ups and panic that neither of us could control, but my body?

That he could control.

That he knew how to rule as if it was his God-given right.

We were stuck in our limbo sky, floating on heavy breathing and hormones as the thunder decided what to do with his lightning. Subdue her tonight so she could explode another day, or give her the release she needed so maybe she could have a peaceful night’s sleep.

The thunder rumbled his chest, brewing a storm to unleash. His hands roamed lower, fingers denting one by one under the hem of my shorts. Skin to skin. I held my breath, held my thoughts, held my soul still for him.

“You were always flirting with me.”

And then it all came undone as the thunder decided to give into his lightning.

“Yes.” The word cracked out of me, pleasure spiking up my belly as Dominic pressed my hips down, grinding me over his stiff cock. I sucked back my bottom lip, chewing over it, knowing I had to be quiet even in this big house.

He did it again. “Provoking me.”

“Yes,” I whimpered, the pressure at my clit singing up to my mouth.

“Driving me to the edge of my fucking sanity,” he groaned, squeezing my ass as hard as he could. Bruises. I would absolutely have bruises of fingerprints in the morning.

I dropped forward, mumbling my, “Yes.” into his shoulder.

He rolled my hips against him again and again and again, his voice getting deeper and hotter and meaner.

“And now I miss it.” His breath was in my ear, kissing dirty lines up my neck. I clung to him, clung to his words and the winding feeling creeping up my legs. “Every day without it has been worse than the last.”

I pulled back just enough to see him, just enough to look him in the eyes. “You’ve been doing so good at pretending though.”

“Because you asked me to.”

“I did.” This time, I was the one to grab his jaw, but only so I could feel him, touch him, bury my feelings for him in the coarse hair of his sculpted jawline. “I need to pretend it didn’t happen.”

“Why?” His voice gripped in desperation. “I need to know why.”

“Because…” My words choked, strangled by the pressure coiling in my lower stomach that was too good. It was fire and ecstasy twisting together, getting tighter and tighter every time Dominic guided my barely covered pussy against his straining cock. He was dry-fucking me to a climax so delicious, I could taste its tangy flavor building on my tongue.

My eyes screwed shut, blinding my world to anything but the electric sensations compiling at my center. A violent gasp ripped out of me, nearly painful pleasure spiking up my belly as Dominic buried my mound against his cock so fucking hard, I saw spurts of stars.

“I didn’t say to stop talking,” he reprimanded, rocking my hips in deeper, slower grooves. “Because why?”

“Because of how it felt.” My voice was a rush. A desperate, pathetic rush of air. “Because of how kissing you felt.”

A threatening, almost pleased growl vibrated in Dominic’s chest. “How did it feel?”

I didn’t think before I said it.

“Dangerous.”

All movement stopped. The sudden stop cranked my eyes open, focusing on Dominic’s face in front of me. Lust flushed his golden skin and dilated his pupils, but it was the earnest confusion carving his features that stood out the most.

“Dangerous?”

Again, not thinking, the words just spilled out.

“It was the kind of kiss that kills. That ruins lives and makes people do stupid things, and I can’t be stupid. I can’t lose myself.” I closed my eyes, pinching them shut hard trying to hold onto the prickling, unsatisfied nerves tensing at my core. “I won’t.”

Choppy breathing filled the pause between us before he spoke, almost like he didn’t expect me to say what I did.

“You’re not stupid.”

“Dominic,” I cried as quietly as I could, jerking my hips.

A controlled exhale washed my chin, my lips, my cheeks, tasting of him. Sweet and spicy. I could feel him staring at me, digesting my confession and what to do with the trembling, begging, defective woman on his lap. My heart was slapping against my ribs, the need expanding between my thighs bordering on agony.

And just when it hit the line of dying out or becoming actual pain, the hands holding my ass squeezed. A sharp cut of air sliced up my throat, piercing the quiet room as he pressed my heat over his, not to torture answers out of me, but to make me come.

Dominic had made his decision about the woman on his lap, and he decided to make her come. He decided he’d have my orgasm and then my heart, taking both from me like his name was written on them.

I was already in such a delirious state of need that I didn’t care in the moment. All I cared about was reaching that finish line and having Dominic cross it with me. I anchored myself to his shoulders, head kicking back as I shamelessly rubbed myself all over him, making a mess of my shorts and his pants. The air smelled like sticky sex, and I wasn’t even embarrassed that it was coming from me.

Dominic liked it, I think, dropping his forehead to my chest to bathe me in his ragged breathing. He held me so tight, hands dragging my ass back and forth, back and forth, harder and harder over himself until I was writhing. My legs were twitching over him and unintelligible sounds were falling from my lips.

They were getting louder, and I was losing all control over them. All of my senses were drowning, condensing into one, narrowed focus between my legs.

Pulsing. Heating. Fucking crying through my panties.

A hand clamped over my mouth, rough fingers muffling my noises as they grew untamed. Dominic held his bear paw of a hand over my mouth, thrusting his hips up, rocking mine back, pushing and pushing us until I fell first.

The twisting, tightening, desperate feeling winding up my stomach finally wound too tight and snapped. Hard.

Moans raked up my throat, moans I didn’t even realize I was making until Dominic squeezed his hand over my mouth to smother them. Tiny explosions went off over every inch of my sweaty skin, pulsating pleasure consuming my body. Dominic made a short, tormented groan himself as my body stiffened up the spine in his hold, and my orgasm made itself known.

He didn’t stop our dancing hips though, keeping the friction going against my clit to milk my orgasm until tears pricked the backs of my eyes. It was too much. My body was on sensory overload, nails tearing into Dominic’s shoulders and pulling low hisses from him.

I was on the verge of begging him to stop when his hand slipped up the back of my shirt, leaving my hips and flattening my chest to his. He ducked his face into the crook of my neck, arm looping around my bare waist and crushing another moan out of me.

Then his muscles were tensing, hips jerking once, then twice, and the sexiest slew of grunts and groans were buried into the hollow of my neck. I might have come all over again listening to him, feeling his shoulders draw taut beneath my palms, thighs flexing as he found his orgasm against me.

I hated that I loved that he used me to hide his noises in. Almost like he needed me. Almost like we were equals.

Gently, Dominic eased his hand from over my mouth, but instead of dropping it, pushed it back into my hair. He cupped the back of my head, bringing my forehead to rest against his. We sat there, breathing in the post orgasmic haze of what we’d done, eyes locked together. He stroked his thumb along the back of my neck.

“What we just did was stupid.” I tensed against him even though I knew it was true. He wasn’t finished though. “Whatever you’re feeling between us is not.”

Lightning struck between my ribs, delivering another dose of molten sickness to my heart. A shiver raced up my spine, curling around every freshly sated muscle and pulling them rigid. Dominic just kept caressing my neck with his thumb, trying to smooth the tension out of my body because now he knew.

He knew why it was there.

“I think we’re in trouble,” I breathed.

Dominic looked back and forth between my eyes, that ring of truth making his shine.

“I’ve been in trouble since the moment I met you, Ms. Sanders.”