Page 127 of Dirty Hit
He looks unreasonably pleased with himself. “Of course it is,” he says with a wink, then lifts the fork again. “More. Then you’re gonna tell me how the hell you got here.”
I can’t help but giggle. “My car is parked around back again. I didn’t want you to see it,” I say, watching the humor shine in his blue eyes. “Oh, and you never asked for your spare key back, so…”
He shakes his head and holds the fork out again. We fall into a rhythm; he feeds me slowly, making sure I actually swallow and breathe between bites, not just inhale the whole plate and choke. The food warms me from the inside out, settling in the hollow pit where anxiety has been gnawing all week; my head feels less floaty, and my hands finally loosen in my lap.
He starts talking under his breath, not in English—in Russian. The words flow together in that rough, rolling way that always makes me shiver a little. I have no idea what he’s saying, but the way he says it makes my stomach flip, and my face heat. I catch the same sounds I’ve heard before, when he’s half asleep and muttering into my neck, or when he’s really wound up and slips.
“What are you saying?” I ask quietly, more to fill the space than because I expect an answer.
He glances at me, mouth crooking a little. “Trade secret,” he says. “Food first, translations later.”
“Pretty sure that’s not how languages work,” I mutter, but I don’t push. Some part of me likes not knowing. It feels private, like he’s wrapping the silence in something only he understands, and letting me sit inside it.
When the plate is scraped mostly clean, the tight ball in my chest has loosened enough that I can now breathe without it hurting. The carb rush makes my limbs feel heavy in a good way—the way they get after a long day, when you finally sit down.
He wipes a stray bit of sauce from the corner of my mouth with his thumb, then licks it off without thinking; familiar heat curls in my stomach at the casual intimacy of it.
“Good boy,” he says, squeezing my thigh.
My cheeks go hot again. “Don’t,” I mutter, because those words always make my insides go gooey.
He smirks, entirely aware. “What, you don’t like being praised?” he asks innocently. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“I hate you,” I say, which we both know is a lie.
“Sure you do,” he says easily. “Drink.”
Dom hands me a glass of water; I take it, fingers brushing his, and drink greedily. Half the glass is gone before I come up for air. He watches, eyes soft, then takes it back and sets it aside.
“Better?” he asks.
“A little,” I admit. “Still want to die—just with more energy.”
He snorts, then mutters, “Dramatic,” and sets the pan and fork in the sink. “Come on. Couch time.”
I hop down from the counter and my legs wobble a little, but I stay upright. He eyes me, clearly debating whether to pick me up again, then apparently decides I won’t faceplant on the way to the sofa. He walks beside me anyway, hand at my lower back; a solid warmth guiding me through his space.
The living room feels different now than it did when I walked in an hour ago. Less like a stage for a breakdown, and more like… a place we live in. There’s still a faint metallic tang under the usual scent of his house—ghosts of whatever he washed off himself.
He sits first, dropping onto the couch with a soft grunt, then looks up at me expectantly.
The fear that he’ll pull away again is still a raw wound. I’m afraid that if I give him even a second of space, he’ll use it to put distance between us; reconstruct walls he just let me see past.So, instead of perching at the other end of the sofa like a polite guest, I climb straight into his lap.
His eyes widen briefly, then flare in a way that sends a rush of heat through me too. His hands come up automatically, one settling at my waist, the other splaying across the small of my back, steadying me as I straddle him. My knees bracket his hips, my chest close to his, the cuff pressing warm against my wrist where it rests on his shoulder.
“Hey,” he says softly, almost startled. “Look at you, taking initiative.”
“Don’t,” I say, but there’s no real bite in it.
His breath ghosts over my lips. “What?” he murmurs. “You don’t want me to notice how much you missed me?”
“I’m allowed to miss my… student,” I say, weaker than I want.
He huffs a quiet laugh. “I’m not your student,” he says. “I’m your very bad life choice.”
“I think you can be both,” I say, and before he can come up with some filthy reply, I lean in and kiss him.
It’s not usually like this; usually, he’s the one who takes, who decides when we start and when we stop, who catches my mouth mid-sentence and derails my life with one filthy, devastating kiss.
