Unlawful Temptations (The Star-Crossed Series Book 1)

The room was so fucking quiet.

Layla and I were still stationed on the other side of the front door. No one was moving. Everything about the moment was very… stuck. Dominic still hadn’t looked up at me, and I warred with myself if I really wanted him to or not.

His gunmetal eyes would undoubtedly be bulleted, and I knew before asking that my skin wasn’t thick enough to withstand the blow right now. One heart-rendering look from him, and I’d be reminded of those awful accusations Layla and his mother put on me.

I’d wobble and sway, thinking about the love they claimed I had for him, and fall to my knees and beg for it not to be true.

A not-so-gentle hand pushed into the small of my back, urging me inside.

Layla slammed the door shut once we were both in. The noise of distraction wheeled me around to my best friend, questions and accusations prepped hot in the back of my throat.

Before I could get any out, fast words started pouring out of her like a faucet with no stopping point.

“You can’t be mad at me! Yes, I tricked you to get you here, but you lied first when you told me that Dominic said it was okay to go out tonight. That ended up being why Ryan was texting me, to see if I was with you and if I could get you here because it wasn’t safe for you to be out.” She huffed when she was finished, leveling me with a stare that trampled my heart in the first stampede of guilt for the night.

I was just gonna go ahead and assume that by the end of the night, I’d be guilt trip roadkill.

Even though I felt sorry, the words weren’t coming out. They were trapped behind teeth locked together by my stubborn temper. It was churning the longer I stood there holding eye contact with her, knowing I’d be on defense for the rest of the night.

I was trapped, literally trapped, in a house with the man I’ve been avoiding all week, and I knew he’d want me to explain myself and I couldn’t. I couldn’t explain what people thought was happening between us, because speaking the words just might make them true.

“I wasn’t completely stupid.” My fingers dug around in my back pocket. “I brought mace,” I defended, showing it to her.

“That was smart,” Ryan commented from the side.

Grateful enthusiasm snapped my stare to him. “Thank you!”

Layla sliced a fearful glare over to Ryan, and he went stiff. I could practically hear him changing from my side to hers. Wuss.

Moving her focus back to me, Layla took a small step in, lowering her voice to just between us.

“If you did all this just so you could get away from him for a night, that’s next level commitment issues, babe.”

I rolled my eyes to the side, staring at the wall instead of her. Dominic wasn’t the only reason I’d gone out tonight. Though, she also wasn’t wrong either. Calling what I had commitment issues was the same as calling a volcanic eruption a campfire.

“Kat.” My sharp gaze cut back to her. “You have to talk to him.”

If possible, my teeth clamped down harder. I felt my cheeks pulse out like Dominic’s always did, and my vision of Layla became obscured by how deep my eyebrows sunk over my eyes in defiance of her. It had taken all my effort, all my strength this week not to talk to him.

Now, I didn’t see how I had a choice.

“You can use the back room if you want,” Ryan spoke up, talking back towards Dominic.

An impatient beat and then—

“Thank you.”

My heart ricocheted at the hollow sound of Dominic’s voice. Had I done that? Had I stripped the color straight out of his voice and made it this monotone vibration of meaningless letters? The ache spreading through my bones said that I had.

It was my fault, and my walls built themselves taller and wrapped themselves in barbed-wire, readying for the onslaught of blame that I just knew was coming. Everyone in the room was mad at me. I’d disappointed everyone in it tonight by being reckless and impulsive.

At least I was keeping myself on brand.

Heavy footfall echoed across the tiled floor of Ryan’s home. The footsteps were familiar and fading farther. Confusion powered my actions as I jerked around to see the last of Dominic’s back disappear down a hallway.

He didn’t even wait for me.

I stared after him with a hurt I had no right to feel burning in my chest. I thought it might be my lightning, and that even it was mad at me. I’d chased away our thunder and gotten exactly what I wanted.

As I walked the same path Dominic went, rounding Ryan’s smallish living room and heading down the hall, I thought about what a brutal storm this was about to be. His thunder would clap and my lightning would strike, and neither of us would come out unscathed.

Maybe if I was lucky, the collision would be so devastating, it would destroy whatever was left of our limbo sky, and we’d have no choice but to part ways.

Open doors and rooms flanked on either side of me as I trekked down the narrow hall. Ryan’s place wasn’t big, but there were an odd amount of places to be in it. I counted one bathroom, one bedroom, and a junk room slash office before I made it to the end of the hallway where the door was cracked just so.

Dim light spilled through, and I didn’t stop for one second to rethink how I wanted to approach this. I didn’t want to think. I just wanted yelling and bad blood spilt between us, splattering a line down the middle that neither of us would cross ever again.

I pushed right through the door, finding another tiny bedroom with a bed in the middle and packing boxes with all sorts of shit spilling out lined up against the far wall. Dominic was standing a few feet away, but I didn’t risk eye contact. Nope. My stubborn temper twisted me back around fast, closing the door behind me to at least try to pad our inevitable clash.

I breathed a brusque sigh, pushing it out like I was preparing for battle. The air in the room already alluded to the severity this fight would go to, brittle and buzzing with explosive potential.

There was movement behind me, and I snapped around, my defenses sharp and ready to maim.

Instead, warmth and the fresh fragrance of earth enveloped me.

I froze.

Dominic wrapped me up completely, folding me into his hard chest and holding on tight. Even for how warm he was, chills racked my body, springing goosebumps up across my skin like daisies and his touch was the sun. The weight of his head rested on top of mine, a deep exhale tickling my hair.

My arms were trapped at my sides, my forehead pressed against his sternum as I whispered, “What are you doing?”

More hairs tickled on the top of my head as he spoke against it.

“Holding you.”

My lips formed around another W question that I couldn’t get out. Why? Why was he holding me instead of tearing me down and ripping me apart? He was furious at me. He had to be. I’d directly disobeyed him.

He had every right to spit in my face and tell me I was more trouble than I was worth.

Instead, he ran one of his hands up the length of my spine, stroking his affection into me. I shuddered, and so did my defenses. Those walls I’d built so high and ready for the worst Dominic could deliver were breaking down block by block. Each sweetened caress up my back wore down another and then another.

I felt them going, scrambling mentally to rebuild them as they sunk lower.

My heart slapped as I panicked to reinforce what I was losing and at how fast it was happening. I’d been so prepared for the storm—a fucking hurricane—and all I was getting were raindrops down my back, slowly disintegrating my walls like paper.

My hands clamped to fists as I struggled to hold onto it, shaking at my sides. Whether Dominic sensed the fight or not, everything he did next worked against it. His long fingers split through my hair at the nape of my neck, bringing my shaking fists above the waistband of his work slacks, pinching his white shirt between my angry knuckles.

I wanted to push him away with my grip.

Instead, I pulled his waist closer with a strangled whimper.

My back bent to him, that tether in my chest arching me closer than I wanted to be. Dominic hooked me in tighter, anchoring my body to his like he knew I needed him to float, but all I wanted was to drown.

Not drown in love’s ocean, and not drown in him, but drown in denial that it didn’t take less than sixty seconds alone in a room with him for me to lose.

A week of avoiding. Three months of trying to survive the sickness. A lifetime of trying to be better than my mom.

All of those wasted seconds of fighting faded into insignificance when Dominic held me.

Everything I was holding onto snapped inside of me, and I collapsed against him.

My weak limbs molded against his planes of muscles, trying to fuse myself to him if possible. I burrowed myself into his chest, entirely shameless now, and let Dominic make me feel as small and protected as he liked to.

Dominic was happy to hold me, happy to touch all of me so no one else could touch any of me. My head tucked into his chest and moved with his steady breathing, and I felt my lungs try to match his so we were mated in every way conceivable.

The small bedroom was nothing more than unison breathing for several moments.

Then, softly, “Do you feel better?”

I didn’t think before I nodded, because I didn’t have to think to know it was true.

His work shirt was getting all wrinkled between my fingers as I rolled it into my palm, but he didn’t seem to mind. Messing up his nice shirts was something I did often, and the least consequential thing I ruined in his life.

As softly as he’d asked me, I asked back, “How did you know I felt better?”

A beat. “Because I do too.”

My ear tingled as his voice rumbled against it, full-bodied and painted back to normal. There was a screeching in the back of my head, a voice screaming about how horrible and dangerous it was that all either of us needed was to hold the other, and all was right again. It was yelling to let go and run away before the sickness got any worse, and I heard it.

I was just too fucking tired after this week to do anything about it.

Giving in after being so tightly wound for battle felt so good. It felt like coming home and falling into bed after weeks without rest. I needed to recharge on him as much as he needed to with me.

Without realizing it, Dominic and I slowly began to rock back and forth together.

Side to side.

Unhurried and rhythmic.

It went on for a few more sways before I had to ask.

“Are we slow dancing?”

A smile curved against the top of my head. “Sort of.”

I knew we were both thinking of the same night in his living room, the night where we both learned for the first time that we were more than addicted to each other. All because I asked him about slow dancing.

Now that I’d called it out, it felt cheesy. I couldn’t bring myself to stop though.

“Is it as good as you imagined?”

“Better.”

I pulled back, looking at him for the first time tonight. He was gorgeous. “Liar.”

He didn’t correct me. All he did was show me that adoring tug of his lips that was aimed at me. I wanted to kiss that tug, those lips, every carved angle of his beautiful face. We hadn’t been this close in almost a week, and my tongue was anxious to savor that sweet mint of his.

If holding each other made us feel this recovered, then kissing would make us invincible.

Our slow dance came to a still, but the atmosphere kept buzzing around us. Or maybe I was just hearing the buzzing coming from inside of me. My electric current of excitement hummed beneath my skin, tingling all my nerve endings with the prospect of his soft lips on mine.

He didn’t kiss me though. Not yet, anyway. Instead, those eyes of melted metal tracked up and down my face, a thoughtfulness fanning up his features.

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

Ah. This conversation. “I know.”

He waited for me to say more, and I kept my mouth sealed shut.

“Are you planning to tell me why?”

Because people keep telling me I’m falling in love with you.

Rather than confess the insanity of the real reason, I tried to charm my way out of it. “Can’t you just believe that I turned over a new leaf and was abiding by house rules?”

“I’m 99% certain that hell hasn’t frozen over yet, so no.”

Joy dented my cheeks in an uncontrollable smile. This man was turning into such a smartass.

Wonder whose fault that was.

He smiled at me smiling, and it was the sickest I’d ever felt. I was so lost in it, so weak and mindless for him. Right now, I should have been running. I should have pushed him away. I should have continued ignoring him and making bad choices like I did tonight to avoid the truth stalking me around every corner.

“Are you gonna yell at me for going out?” I asked him, folding his gray-striped tie between my index and middle finger.

Dominic filled his lungs with our air—our own brand of limbo sky oxygen—and moved a hand to my jaw, tracing the line of it with his thumb.

“I wanted to when my mom told me you’d gone out after I called to check in. I wanted to find you and yell at you until you were scared to ever leave the house again.” A sharpness found his cheekbones as his thumb found the plump pout of my bottom lip. He eyed it, voice digging deep. “I wanted to bruise this mouth with a kiss when I found you and make you feel guilty for how worried I was.”

A breath rattled up my throat, washing my desire across his thumb for him to do just that. He could batter my mouth in punishment, paint it black and blue with his lips, and I’d beg for more.

His grazing thumb coasted over to my cheek, petting me like he couldn’t help it. “But I realized that wasn’t fair, and that I couldn’t really blame you for acting out.”

My stare refocused on his. “You couldn’t?”

He shook his head, his storm cloud eyes heavy with guilt.

“Your entire life has been uprooted and put in danger, half because of me, half because of your mom. You’re stuck in a house with a married man that you’re involved with and his wife, and I know she doesn’t make it easy. I’ve asked you to keep secrets and act a particular way around me in the house, and I’ve also made that very hard asking for your attention as often as I have.”

Woah.

“That’s…” His raindrop eyes washed words from my brain and shocked my electric current. The zap stunned my mind blank and overcharged my heart. “That’s really understanding.”

That little frown worried itself between his eyebrows. “You seem so surprised.”

“Most people don’t look past themselves.” I had enough proof of that to last me five lifetimes. “Especially when they’re angry. Except you, I guess.”

I dropped my attention down, knitting my own brows together and mumbling, “Since you seem to break every standard I’ve pretty much ever known.”

I distracted myself with his tie, flipping the tip of it up and down. Dominic’s abs contracted against where we were pressed together as he breathed a soft laugh.

“I would love to take that as a compliment, but I don’t think your standards were set very high.”

Brutal honesty craned my head back up. “What, and yours were set on broken women who come to work for you?”

A look of displeasure etched along his expression, darkening it. His thumb curved beneath my chin, digging into the groove and arching my head back and below his thundering face. “We have to work on that.”

“On what?” I wisped.

“How you see yourself.” The gray of his eyes smoked as he swept them across my face, collecting every breath I gave him like sustenance. “I wish you saw what I see when I look at you.”

The idea of how he likely saw me popped my lips open, and I shook my head. “I don’t wanna know what you see when you look at me.”

“Because you’re scared of the answer?”

I blinked, a subtle cinch pulling at the side of my mouth.

“Am I getting that predictable?”

His amusement wasn’t nearly as subtle, stretching from cheek to cheek. “Not predictable, Ms. Sanders. Never predictable.”

Right, because who could have ever predicted the woman who bitched and moaned about love so much would go so silent in the face of it.

The fact of it was staring right down at me with those eyes that overwhelmed me from day one. I remembered how restless Dominic’s gaze made me feel from the second we met. I remembered it prickling this bizarre sensation on the back of my neck like he was trying to dig beneath my spine with his steel-cut eyes, and I never could have understood why then. There wasn’t an entity powerful enough in this world that could have made me believe fate was real, and that I’d just met it on a doorstep twenty minutes down the road.

Fate wasn’t the hero of our story though. It was the villain, if anything.

It put us in each other’s path just to let us ruin ourselves on each other, knowing perfectly well our story didn’t have a happy ending.

“This is never gonna work,” I whispered up at him, watching his face harden.

All this struggle, all this worry and emotion, and it would all be for nothing more than memories.

His voice wrestled through tight teeth. “Why do you believe that?”

“We want different things.”

Dominic crowded me right up against a wall, eyes burning. “We want each other.”

My head tipped back to the wall, Dominic’s hand still a loose grip around my throat. Flames flickered in his pupils, a fire of determination to have me and to love me. My skin flushed beneath it, a fever invading faster than I had time to control the delirious spew it inspired to come out of my mouth.

“I don’t get why you want me,” I admitted with earnest force. “I seriously don’t. I’m so much more work than I’m worth. I’m difficult and I’m stubborn and I’m fucked up. You’re, you know, good. You’re so good, and I’ve done nothing but fight you. I don’t know why you’re so adamant to keep fighting me back except because you wanna save me. Your hero complex probably got a hard on when we met and you realized how messed up my life was.”

I scoffed a laugh that tried to bring my head down, but Dominic’s grip refused the movement. He forced my head back up and my eyes back on him.

“Would you like me to list the reasons I want you?”

“No.” God, fuck no.

I honestly couldn’t think of anything worse.

“I will,” he pressed, almost like a threat. He was threatening me with all the things he liked about me. “I’ll start at the way you roll your lips together when you’re struggling not to say what’s really on your mind, and I’ll work my way to your strawberry chapstick and tell you how I’m honestly becoming addicted to it. I’ll list every reason big and small until I get to your heart, and I’ll tell you how beautiful it is and how inspiring I find it.”

“Shut up,” I breathed—begged.

“No.” His denial was quick and bullish. It made me snatch my hands from his tie, cowering back into myself and the wall, away from all his determined affection.

Without breaking his severe eye contact, Dominic caught my hands and brought them back up. He placed them on his chest, holding his over mine and refusing to let me go in any sense of the phrase.

“I won’t stop telling you why or how much I want you until you get it. This last week without talking to you or getting one of your sly smirks from across the room or not being able to grab your hand when you walked by was hell.”

He laced our fingers together against his chest, intertwining us so thoroughly, I felt it in my soul. My soul that burned for his. His burned in his eyes. “Having you in my life isn’t just a want, Kat. It’s a need. An unbearable need.”

Unbearable.

My chest caved forward as much as it could with an outrageous huff. A humorless, single laugh with zero substance behind it. My stare danced back and forth over his, searching for the string of sanity that appeared to be missing.

“What happened to cooling it?” I reminded him.

Slowly, he lowered his face towards mine. I might have stopped breathing entirely when he came so close, his nose nudged mine, and his breath kissed my lips in confession.

“I’m a weak man when it comes to you, Ms. Sanders.”

“I thought you said feelings weren’t a weakness?” I murmured back, losing my will to the proximity of his lips.

Instead of being upset that I’d caught him in a word trap, he smiled. “So you do listen.”

“When it benefits me.”

The grooves in his cheeks deepened, threats of his dimples showing. “You’re right.” He nodded, easing closer. “I did say that. Except being weak for you isn’t a weakness. It’s a privilege.”

Fuck me in half.

Did he rehearse these speeches at home or something?

My lightning loved those sweetly spoken words. They were candy-coated kryptonite. Electricity danced and hummed in my chest until my heart was vibrating, electrocuted with happiness and making a warm home for the sickness to stay.

Dominic’s heart thumped beneath my hands, and I wondered about his sickness. Was it as bad as mine? Was it worse? Was he as scared to die from it as I was?

I sucked back a shuddering breath, squeezing his hands in mine and dropping my gaze to the collar of his shirt. It was safer there. It wasn’t as terrifying looking at finely woven white threads as I admitted what he already knew.

“You scare me.”

My voice came out small, smaller that it had ever been.

His thumbs passed a gentle stroke over my knuckles. “I know I do.”

He’d told me as much back at the hotel. He knew I was terrified of just how big my feelings for him were. I’d just never said the words out loud or come as close to giving in as I was now.

Confessing had strung up my muscles so tight, a headache started to crawl up the back of my neck. How Catholics did this however many times a week they wanted, I’d never know.

I kept going though, pushing the words out with strain. “I don’t know how to do this. A relationship. I—People keep thinking I do. Your mom and Layla,” I sighed, unlocking a hand from his to slide up my face.

“My mom?” Dominic’s tone dropped with confusion. “What did she say?”

Oh fuck. “I don’t wanna say.”

Somehow, Dominic got taller over me, looming until he was the ceiling, the sky, the everything above me. His eyes were the stars, glinting and burning.

“I need you to.”

My mouth dropped open, and it wasn’t fair the fucking beauty he was using to overwhelm the answer out of me. He was a goddamn masterpiece of striking persuasion, and I had to look away before I blurted out anything else tonight.

Material shuffled in the quiet room, and a hand appeared on the back of my neck. My awareness prickled, wayward fingers starting slow circles over my tensed muscles. A hushed exhale escaped my throat, eyes falling shut as Dominic worked his fingers along my neck, massaging and loosening me up.

Aw fuck. I knew what he was doing.

I also knew that when his thumb and index finger made it to that special spot at the nape of my neck, I couldn’t stop him. He pinched the skin there with purpose, and my head dropped with a sigh, submitting like he knew I would.

“Dominic…” His name crawled up my throat, scratching deliciously as he turned my whole body to something malleable against him. His intentions weren’t sneaky and his tactics weren’t saintly, especially when he put his mouth on the slope of my neck and painted my skin in dirty kisses.

I gasped for him, striking my fingers up his shirt and dragging him in. Dominic let a groan resonate from his chest, getting lost in his own game before remembering why he’d started playing.

“Tell me what she said, Kat.”

He grazed his teeth up my neck without biting down, dragging out the anticipation. Need for the erotic pain spiked up from my core, words somehow falling out of my brain.

“She said something about us. Something stupid.”

“Stupid?”

“Mhm. Really stupid.”

Hot breath washed over my ear, honeyed lips and a husky voice coming next. “Is what she said the reason why you’ve been avoiding me?”

Teeth nipped and nibbled my earlobe, chewing out my next answer. “There might be some correlation.”

Dominic hummed against me, a deep and sensual noise, and I pressed my tits to his chest so I could feel the vibration go all the way down my body. I arched up on my tiptoes to reach him from a better height, curling my arms around his neck to drag his lips closer.

I wanted his kiss tattooed on my skin, teeth drawing out the reds, purples, and blues from beneath while his tongue sealed the art in place.

His hand not dominating the back of my neck tightened around my waist, arm crushing me into his frame of hard-lined muscle. Dominic squeezed all the rational air right out of me, leaving me to gulp down the hazy, lust-muddled oxygen we’d created as he moved his hot mouth across my jawline.

Slow, sweltering kisses tracked closer to my lips, and I panted heavily, mouth parted and waiting for his. Except, right at the corner of my lips, his paused, and he reigned back a couple inches.

“Do you think I’m stupid for having feelings for you?” Dominic asked seriously—so seriously it doused all the heat in the room.

My brain jumbled in confusion for where he’d pulled that question from until I remembered again our night in the living room. I told him exactly how dangerous it felt to kiss him. How his kiss could kill, and I couldn’t be stupid enough to let it get me.

So I nodded, and I didn’t hold back.

“Yeah, I do. You’ve experienced firsthand how shitty falling in love with someone can turn out. I don’t know why you’d ever put yourself through that again. Especially with Maya.”

“What does Maya have to do with it?”

I paused, astounded. “Everything. Do you not think about her before you make stupid decisions?”

“Falling in love is not a decision you make with your head,” he damn near scolded, eyes ringed with silver fire. “And yes, I think about her. I think about her happiness and who makes her happy. Who puts her first and takes care of her.”

His words were so pointed, I knew he had really thought about it, and the conclusion he’d come to stunned my tongue still because it wasn’t even one I could argue with.

Compared to Heather, it wasn’t even a question of who cared for Maya more. She smiled and laughed with me. She cried and worried her little face into a pout with Heather.

Dominic watched me carefully as I put the pieces together that he’d already fit in place. He’d thought so far ahead, I could see the future he’d mapped out in his head designing like constellations in his stare. I saw all of our smiles—mine, his, and Maya’s—beaming and bright with our whole happy hearts crafting their brilliance.

Dominic drew himself back until his arms were almost straight and braced his hands on either side of my head against the wall, giving me space to breathe, to think.

“Are you afraid to be with me because of Charlotte?”

The nail he hit on the head punctured right through my heart. The intrusion rippled an earthquake of pain down my chest; it felt like I swallowed rocks. All the rough edges lodged in my throat, saw-toothed points cutting into flesh and bleeding my voice out to a whisper.

“I can’t get so lost in you that I forget about her.”

Dominic canted his head a hair’s breadth at me.

The leveled gravity over his expression lifted as he moved his eyes between mine. The slats of dark lashes he’d been blessed with fluttered over his luminous stare, black wings batting over gray skies. A curve found the corner of his full mouth too.

He cast his head to the side with a curt breath through his nose at the exact moment I felt my eyebrows plummet in confusion. He brought his attention back to me, ashen eyes warm like the air after an afternoon storm.

“I can’t believe you have trouble understanding why I want you.”

An unanticipated adoration came to life beneath his stare, highlighting along the strict hills of his face and carving my misunderstanding deeper. Dominic swept his wildly enamoured gaze all over my face, his palm cupping my cheek.

“That’s the best reason to be wary of a relationship with me,” he admired, thumb stroking a line across my cheekbone. “It’s also not possible.”

I flitted back at his statement and the confidence he delivered it with.

How did he know?

That adoration lording over his expression stayed put as he brought his other hand to mirror its mate, cupping both sides of my face.

“You obviously don’t have enough faith in yourself and your ability to be the most obstinate woman I’ve ever met.”

Again, my brows tangled in agitation and defiance. Dominic seemed even more worshipping as he smoothed his thumbs over my scrunched browline, working out my distress and smiling faintly.

“There is no way you would ever let Charlotte come second to me.”

Ah. I saw where he was coming from now. Except, he was forgetting about one key, game-changing factor that always accompanied the insanity of love.

“When you break my heart or I break yours,” I jutted my chin up at him. “What about then?”

I didn’t miss the infamous tick of his jaw as he heard ‘when’. Heartbreak was inevitable though, and so was the delirium that came with it.

“Even if something like that happened,” he began, forcing the words. “You’re far too stubborn to let me affect how you take care of your sister. In fact, I think you’d up your caretaking just to spite me if that were the case.”

I blinked, lowering my gaze to his strong chin.

I hadn’t thought of it that way.

If I could choose only one certainty about my personality, and it wasn’t my disdain for love, it would be my stubborn ability. Plenty of people I’d met, even growing up, said that my stubborn streak was my biggest downfall, but I always emphatically disagreed.

It kept me in my lane. It kept me safe. It inflamed my ability to deny until denial was my new truth, and I was fucking proud of that fact. I could bend my whole world to the outline I wanted it to fit, down to the most infinitesimal details if it made me feel better.

Which meant, yes. Dominic was right. Of-fucking-course I would be too stubborn to let a broken heart—to let love—interrupt Charlotte’s life. Even if I was crippled by it, my tenacity would keep me upright in front of Charlotte if purely to spite Dominic for breaking my heart.

“You’re cute when you realize I’m right.”

His smug tone brought my gaze up, a losing battle with a smile waging on my lips.

“Shut up.”

He chuckled, and the sound was somehow sweeter than ever before. It sounded new and fresh, like a million possibilities rolling through the beats of his laughter. The strangest feeling percolated in my ribcage, and I didn’t know what to name it.

It didn’t feel as severe as the lightning or as scary as the sickness.

It was its own unique, foreign feeling, lighter than anything I’d experienced before. It filled me with helium, lifting me up, up, up until I felt like I could soar and never come down.

Dominic had the softest look on his hard-lined face, the contrast a thing of perfect beauty. “You have no idea how incredible you are, do you?”

Familiarity prickled in the back of my mind, and my new, light as air feeling floated the words right out of my mouth.

“Your mom also said you thought that.”

Dominic’s mouth relaxed back to something serious as I brought us back to that topic. I might have done it on purpose too. The gray of his irises smouldered with intimacy, carrying back and forth from my lips to my eyes.

“What else did she say?”

I steadied myself with a measured breath. The words were there, sitting in my special feather-light sensation and ready to jump off. With my stubbornness to protect me, I felt like I could do it. I could say it.

And then I did.

“That she thinks we’re falling in love.”

And I’ll be damned. He didn’t look the least bit surprised.

“Does that make you want to run from me?”

The steady timbre of his voice alone had my toes itching to bolt, but I stayed in place and nodded beneath him. Just because I could admit it out loud and wield my tenacity like a shield didn’t mean I wasn’t still terrified. The nightmare of a broken heart and what it would turn me into still held firm in my gut.

Dominic leaned down, ghosting his satin-soft lips against mine.

“Do you want me to kiss you until you forget about it for the night?”

My mouth parted against his, our lips brushing like teasing puzzle pieces one move from locking in place. Inside, I had the terror, the sickness, and now this new weightless feeling, and it was all so much. Chaos was unfolding within me, and Dominic knew how to make it all stop.

So I reached up to fist the collar of his shirt, desire resounding through my voice.

“I want you to do more than kiss me.”