Page 23 of Dirty Hit
The closer I get to the door, the louder my heart gets until, by the time I’m standing on his small front stoop, the sound of it is almost all I can hear.
I knock at exactly seven—three short, neat taps, polite and crisp like every visit to a parishioner’s house back home. Except my parents have never sent me to anyone like him.
The door opens faster than I expect, like he’s been standing right behind it. My brain refuses to process what I’m seeing, because this is not the version of him I prepared myself for. In my head, he was going to be in one of his usual casual uniforms: T-shirt or hoodie, jeans, maybe barefoot. The golden boy presentation, polished just enough to look effortless.
Instead, he’s just in black sweats, low on his hips, with no shirt in sight, tattoos stark against his skin. I catch a quick glance of the wolf on his left bicep and a grim reaper just below it, with vines intersecting the spaces between his other tattoos. His hair is hanging loose over his shoulders again, but shoved back.
My gaze drops before I can stop it. It moves over Dominic’s chest, over the lines of muscle I’ve tried very hard not to notice, over the ink that wraps his ribs and shoulders, up the thick column of his throat to his mouth.
He smells the same way he did in my office: clean soap under expensive cologne, that bright, peppery citrus hit layering over darker wood smoke and leather. All of it distinctly him. The scent punches into my lungs so hard I almost sway.
“Hi,” I say, because my brain offers nothing more useful. My voice comes out thinner than I want, edged with desperation.
He leans against the frame like I’m a package he’s been expecting, shoulders loose and mouth curved. “Hi,” he says, casual and amused. “You’re on time.”
“I didn’t want to be late,” I answer, because apparently my mouth is committed to just stating obvious things now.
“Yeah, you’re good at following instructions,” he says lightly, and my stomach flips, because we both know he’s not talking about arrival times. “You okay?”
I bristle automatically, that little flare of defensiveness I’ve been running on since we met kicking in. “I’m fine,” I say too fast, and I immediately want to kick myself because it sounds exactly like what it is: a lie.
He chuckles under his breath, no effort to hide it. “Sure, Little Sin. Come on in.”
The nickname slides under my skin and hooks into my chest. I should tell him to stop, but instead I step past him, crossing the threshold into the warmth of the cottage, every nerve suddenly on high alert.
The layout is the same, obviously; nothing’s moved overnight. There’s the dining table, where we spread out cases and I pretended my hands weren’t shaking. I can’t stop my eyes from doing a quick sweep, skimming over the floorboards, the walls, the corners.
It’s spotless, which doesn’t reassure me as much as it should. If anything, it makes my skin crawl; I’ve already seen how fast he can make a mess disappear.
“You’re not cold?” I ask, because my brain latches onto the one stupid thing it can comment on that isn’t“I licked your boots yesterday and came after grinding on your thigh like a dog in heat.”
He shrugs, the motion drawing attention to his shoulders, the stretch of muscle and ink. “Nah. I run hot.” He tilts his head toward the kitchen. “You want something to drink?”
“Yes, please,” I say automatically. “No. I mean… water. Water’s fine.”
He doesn’t comment on the stuttered answer, just grabs a bottle from the fridge and hands it over. His fingers brush mine for half a second, warm and solid, and a jolt shoots straight up my arm and lodges somewhere in my chest. I pull back too fast, the bottle almost slipping from my hand.
“Careful,” he says, tone mild, like I’m a skittish cat instead of a grown man who should know how to hold plastic.
“Sorry,” I mutter, unscrewing the cap.
The air feels thicker in here than it did outside, like the walls have shifted closer since the last time; or maybe that’s just mebeing dramatic because I know exactly what he’s capable of now. I set my bag down on one of the dining chairs and start unpacking my tools like this is any other tutoring session. My brain is screaming, but my hands are steady, muscle memory taking over where courage is failing.
If I make it look normal, maybe it will feel normal.
I force my voice to stay steady, to live in the boring safe lane. “Sit. We need to go over the cases I sent you yesterday. Did you get through them?”
“Yeah,” he says as he drops into the chair. “Mostly.”
My eyes narrow before I can stop them. There’s a little flick of annoyance that feels comforting, because annoyance is safe. Annoyance doesn’t have teeth, hands, or a voice telling me what a sight I look like on my knees.
“Mostly?” I echo, ready for an excuse. I want him to give me something I can be irritated about instead of… whatever else is lurking under my skin.
“I read them,” he clarifies, and his mouth curls like he knows exactly how much I loathe half-effort answers. “The dense one about administrative review put me to sleep halfway through, but I pushed through this afternoon.”
That throws me more than it should. I feel my expression loosen, my grip on the pen easing a fraction.
“You read them today?” I ask, unable to keep the surprise completely out of my voice. In my head, he’s been running drills and lifting and killing people. Not skimming case law.
