Page 31 of Dirty Hit
He considers me, eyes dark. “The next time, we won’t be having a civil conversation.”
A pathetic shiver runs through me at that threat. “Fine,” I say. “I’ll answer.”
He tilts his head. “All of it.”
“I’ll answer your calls and texts,” I force out, the words bitter on my tongue. “Happy?”
His eyes search mine, as if he’s testing how much of that is real and how much is survival. After a long beat, he nods, pushing off me with an ease that suddenly makes me aware of how much he’s been holding back. The mattress springs up a little as his weight leaves, and I suck in a breath like someone loosened a band around my ribs.
“Yeah,” he says, straightening and running a hand through his hair. “I’m satisfied for now.”
There’s something terrifying about that qualifier, but I don’t have the energy to push him on it. I just watch him move around my room, eyes tracing the way he takes everything in without touching much.
He walks to the bedroom door and rests his hand on the knob, glancing back at me. “I’ll see you later,” he says.
He turns the knob, and panic spikes suddenly in my chest, an instinctive flare that hits before I can name it. The thought of him walking out and leaving me alone with the wreckage he just stirred up feels unbearable, the edges of it too jagged to hold by myself. Before I can stop myself, my mouth moves.
“Dominic.”
The word comes out barely louder than a breath, but he hears it. He freezes, hand still on the knob, then turns his head slowly to look at me. The smirk that spreads across his face is slow and viciously pleased.
“Yeah?” he asks, voice drifting back across the room. “You need something, Little Sin?”
Fuck.
I don’t know what to say now that I have his attention. I don’t know what I expected him to do. Apologize? Reassure me? Promise to be gentle? That’s not him. That’s never been him.
He lets go of the knob and walks back toward the bed, then stops at the edge of the mattress. When he’s close, he leans down until his face is inches from mine.
“You don’t get to bait me and then go quiet,” he murmurs, hand braced on the headboard beside my head. “That’s not how this works.”
I open my mouth, then close it again. I don’t have an answer that doesn’t damn me. I don’t know how to ask for space and closeness in the same breath. I don’t know how to explain that I want him out of my life and off my chest and away from my thoughts—and at the same time, I don’t want him to take his eyes off me.
Words fail me, so I say nothing. There’s a spark of hunger lighting up in his eyes, and it makes me feel like a rabbit watching a wolf realize the chase is going to be fun.
Dominic
Helooksatmelike he hates me and wants me in the same breath.
It’s my favorite look on him.
Shame is written all over his face, but underneath it is thatotherthing. The one he doesn’t want to name. The one I called out last night and again this morning. The one that dragged the wordwaitout of him when I was already halfway out the door.
He has no idea how loud he is.
Brendon keeps his mouth shut and thinks that counts as silence, but his body is a fucking confession. The way his throat moves when he swallows. How his gaze flicks from my mouth to my eyes, like he’s begging me not to notice the direction his thoughts are going while also hoping I do.
I know the type, and he’s textbook: repressed, wound tight, raised on sermons full of hellfire and salt. Boys like him don’t white-knuckle through desire and just go to sleep—they either break or find a way to bleed off the pressure, then hate themselves for it.
My palm is on the headboard, my other hand resting on the mattress near his hip. I’m not touching him really, but the threat of touch hangs there as every inch between us stretches thin.
I built this tension on purpose and let it sit, because anticipation is its own brand of cruelty and I want him steeping in it. He fed me the wordwaitlike it killed him, and I’m not about to waste that.
I let my gaze glide slowly over his face, giving him the full weight of it. He tries to stare back, but his eyes go to my mouth again before he forces them back up to mine.
“You keep pretending you don’t want what you want. You keep telling yourself you’re just scared. That’s half the reason you’re fucked up about this—fear you can manage, but desire’s the part you don’t know what to do with.”
His jaw tightens. “You don’t know what’s in my head,” he says.
