Page 95 of Dirty Hit
My hands are shaking from restraint. Throwing her into the door wasn’t the problem; I’ve done worse with less provocation. The problem is how fast I lost my temper, how automatic it was, how there was no calculation in the movement—just pure, unfiltered possessiveness.
She had my Little Sin pinned in that old role he’s trying to crawl out of, and the rage inside me snapped like a cheap plastic fork.
I know it’s more than that; it’s always more when it comes to him. She pushed, yeah, but it wasn’t the push that set me off. It wasn’t even because she put her hands on him, although Ireallyhad to hold back because of that.
It was the way he shrank. The way his shoulders curved in, the way his voice went tight and polite and small, the way he looked at her like he owed her the air he was breathing.
I’ve watched him do that for five months with everyone else. I’ve watched him say yes until his eyes go dead. Tonight I watched him finally draw a line, and someone tried to walk right over it.
Not on my fucking watch.
I should be thinking about contingency plans—what if she remembers more, what if she talks, what if someone actually noticed.
But all that takes a back seat to the singular, obsessive thought thathesaw me do that. Not as a rumor. Not as an abstract “Dom’s dangerous.” He saw me live, up close, in a parking lot where the only light came from a broken lamppost.
He’s going to leave me.
He’s going to tell me he can’t do this anymore, that there’s a line even he won’t cross and I just jumped over it, laughing. He’s going to tell me that he can handle his own exes, his ownboundaries, his own trauma, and he doesn’t need me brutalizing everyone who ever made him cry.
Part of me, the smallest part, knows I deserve that. The rest of me is still replaying the look on his face when I told him he was my person.
I pull into my driveway, kill the engine, and sit there for a minute with my hands on the wheel. He came straight here like I told him to. Good boy. My throat feels weirdly tight around the thought.
“Brace yourself,” I say, rolling my shoulders back. “He’s allowed to be mad.”
I get out, grab my bag from the back seat, and lock the car without looking back. Every step up the path sounds too loud: the crunch of gravel, the creak of the porch boards. My palm feels damp when it touches the doorknob, then the lock gives easily and I step inside, already opening my mouth to say his name.
“Br—”
I don’t get a word out before Brendon’s body hits me hard enough that I stagger back a step, the door bumping closed behind me. I think he’s finally snapping, but then his hands are in my hair and his mouth is on mine, hot and rough and desperate in a way I have never felt from him before.
I make a noise into his mouth, shock cracking through carefully arranged composure, and grab his hips to steady both of us. He doesn’t pull back—if anything, he presses in harder. Fingers fisting in my hair, making these wrecked little sounds that vibrate straight into my spine. His teeth catch my lower lip, his tongue slides against mine.
He doesn’t feel afraid right now—he’s wired and high on something that isn’t just adrenaline.
I break the kiss so I can breathe and get a look at him. His pupils are blown so wide there’s barely any green left, cheeksflushed, hair mussed like he’s been running his hands through it for twenty minutes straight.
“What the fuck was that?” I manage, voice rough. “I leave you for half an hour, and you turn into a heat-seeking missile?”
“Shut up,” he says, voice breaking, and surges up on his toes, chasing my mouth again like I didn’t just slam someone’s head into a car half an hour ago.
He’s shaking, but it’s not the brittle, on-the-edge panic I expected. His hips are pressed flush to mine, and there’s no way he doesn’t feel how hard I am, the erection that’s been simmering since I watched him square up to his ex now pressed against the line of his belt.
“Thought you were going to yell at me,” I say, after breaking off the kiss again.
“I was going to,” he says. “On the drive over, I rehearsed it. You can’t just—” He breaks off, shaking his head. “But then I kept seeing the way you just… did it. The way you didn’t even hesitate when she had me cornered. The look on your face when you told me to get in my car. I should be horrified. I should be on the phone with the cops, or with my dad, or with a priest.”
“You should,” I agree quietly.
“But I’m not,” he says, almost angrily. “I got here, and I was shaking, and I thought it was fear—but it wasn’t just that. It was… you. The fact that you did that for me.” His hands tighten on my hoodie. “The fact that I watched you be exactly what you are. No filter. No smile for the cameras. Just… you. Violent and calm and so fucking sure I belong to you that you didn’t even think twice.”
I feel my pulse slam against my throat. “And that’s… turning you on?”
“Yes,” he grinds out, like the admission is being dragged out of him with pliers. “Yes, okay? I was standing in your kitchen five minutes ago, and I just kept… seeing it. Then I realized I washard and I wanted to throw up and I wanted… this.” He jerks me closer. “You. I wanted you.”
Then the pieces click, and another jagged little kink is revealed, courtesy of the worst possible trigger: voyeuristic violence. Watching me hurt someone for him lit him up.
Of course my broken, church-raised, repressed little TA gets off on wrath.
