Page 176 of Dirty Hit
His eyes are wolf-bright, wild, unseeing. Blood slicks his knuckles, his forearms, and spatters his shirt. His chest heaves, then he focuses, really focuses, and those dark eyes lock onto me near the wall.
Everything in his face shifts.
The fury doesn’t disappear, but it angles. His gaze drops to my cheek, taking in the swelling, the blood at the corner of my mouth, the way I’m half-slumped. His jaw flexes.
A slow, wicked grin carves its way across his face, then he winks at me and turns back to the man beneath him and, with one last, brutal punch, knocks him limp.
The room goes quiet for a second, except for Samson’s barking and the panicked swearing of the other intruder, who’s finally managed to kick the dog away and is stumbling toward the broken back door.
“Uh-uh,” Dominic growls, pushing to his feet in one fluid movement. “We’re not done.”
He grabs the knife from his belt as he stalks across the room—the black-handled hunting knife I’ve felt in far nicer contexts, glinting in the half-light. The second guy tries to bolt, scrambling out into the yard, but Dom’s faster. He catches him on the porch, slams him into the railing so hard the wood splinters, and the two of them crash down the steps in a tangle.
I haul myself up on shaking legs, one hand braced on the wall, and stagger to the doorway. The night air is cold on my overheated skin. My head throbs in time with my heartbeat.Samson limps past me, growling low, but stays inside when I snap my fingers without thinking, falling in behind my heel like Dom trained him to.
Outside, under the weak slice of moon, the world shrinks to the shape of Dominic’s body over the intruder’s.
He’s got the guy pinned on his back in the dirt, one hand locked around his throat, the other wielding the knife. It flashes silver once, and then it’s just vicious movement. I don’t focus on where the blade lands. I don’t need to see the details to know what’s happening. The sounds tell me enough: a choked gurgle, a wet gasp, a thud as limbs go slack.
I should be horrified.
I am not horrified.
My breath catches in my chest for an entirely different reason. My body remembers every time those hands have been on me, what that knife feels like cold against my throat when he’s reminding me who I belong to, how his voice sounds in my ear when he’s half out of his mind and still careful with me.
He wipes the blade on the guy’s shirt in a quick, practiced swipe, stands, and looks down at his work with a cold, assessing detachment that would make most people take a step back.
I take one forward.
He hears me before he sees me. His shoulders tense, knife still loose in his grip, then he turns. The moon hits his face just right, catching the sweat on his temple, the smear of blood on his jaw. His eyes are still sharp with adrenaline, but when he sees me standing there barefoot in the doorway, they soften in a way that has no business belonging on a man standing over a fresh body.
“Little Sin,” he says, voice threaded through with that rough affection that always makes my knees go weak. “You okay?”
I take him in. The split skin on his knuckles. The bruises already blooming along his forearm where someone had landeda hit. The tension running through him like a wire vibrating under the surface.
All the fear I felt five minutes ago when I thought I might die is gone. Burned away, scorched into something hotter and more dangerous.
“Yeah,” I say, and my voice comes out a little rougher than I intend. “He just—” I touch my cheek and wince. “He got one good shot in. I’m fine.”
His gaze tracks my fingers, jaw tightening. “Motherfucker,” he mutters. He steps in close, tilts my chin gently to the side, examining the damage. His thumb is warm against my jaw, careful even now. “Did they touch you anywhere else? Knife, gun?”
“Just the bat,” I say. “And a boot to Samson. He’s going to be dramatic about it for days.”
Samson whines behind me on cue, as if to prove my point. Dominic gives him a look over my shoulder, then returns his attention to me.
“I got in early and wanted to surprise you,” he says, as if that explains anything. “Flight landed a few hours ago and drove right over. But I saw some shitbox car in the trees, and no lights inside. It felt wrong. Then I heard the barking—”
“And decided to make an entrance,” I say, because some part of me is still bratting even with a dead man cooling ten feet away.
He huffs a humorless little laugh. “Decided people don’t walk into my house, hit my boy, and think they can touch what belongs to me,” he corrects. “Not while I’m breathing.”
The words “my house” and “my boy” do something to me I’m not equipped to deal with in this moment. My pulse jumps, heat pooling low in my stomach. I am one hundred percent concussed and turned on by homicide. Fantastic. There really is no salvation left for me.
He glances past me at the cottage. “You call anyone?”
“I tried,” I say, glancing at where my phone probably still lies on the floor. “Got as far as picking my phone up before everything went sideways.”
“Good,” he says, and there’s that fucked up part of me that thrills at the approval even now. “Less explaining to do.”
