Page 71 of Dirty Hit
He obeys without arguing, which tells me everything I need to know about how fried he still is from last night and this morning. He drops into his usual chair at the dining table, setting up his materials with automatic precision, while I pull my meal prep from the freezer and toss it into a pan.
The sizzle fills the silence between us, grounding and domestic in a way that feels obscene for someone like me. He watches me from under his lashes while pretending to review his notes, his eyes tracking the way I move around my own kitchen.
We eat. I shovel food in, because practice always leaves me starving, and he nibbles more politely, but gets through enough that I’m satisfied he isn’t running on coffee fumes alone.
The more he eats, the more color comes back into his face. By the time we’re at the table with our laptops and his stack of cases, he looks almost normal. He slips into teacher mode fast,which is one of the reasons I let this whole setup get as far as it has.
“Okay,” he says, tapping his pen against a printed case. “Walk me through the holding in this one, in your own words. And this time, don’t just say ‘the Court said fuck you’ and call it a day.”
God, he’s feeling comfortable enough to sayfuckwithout a blush or stutter.
“The Courtdidsay fuck you,” I point out. “Just with more Latin.”
“Then translate the Latin,” he says, arching a brow. “Come on. Head in the game, Beast.”
The nickname in that context makes me fucking pleased. I lean back, lace my fingers behind my head, and start talking through the case, stripping the legalese down to the bones.
It goes like that for a while—back and forth, him pushing, me answering—until we hit one of the more tedious administrative decisions and I lose patience with the way the court framed its reasoning.
I mutter under my breath, the disgust slipping out in the language I learned at my mother’s knee before I can stop it.
The pen in his hand goes still. “You… speak Russian,” he says, sounding weirdly delighted and thrown at the same time.
I look up, caught. “Yeah. I thought my last name gave it away.”
He blinks, leaning forward slightly. “You never… you’ve never slipped like that before,” he says. “Not around me.”
“I try not to,” I say. “Old habit. When I’m pissed, or tired, or bored, it’s where my head goes. You already have enough dirt on me without hearing me swear in more than one language.”
“It’s… pretty,” he says, surprising me.
I snort. “Still sounds like knives and glass to me.”
“That explains why I couldn’t find any of those curses on Duolingo,” he mutters, then flushes when he realizes he admitted that out loud.
“Oh my God,” I say, laughing. “You tried to learn Russian on an app.”
“Shut up, I was curious a couple years ago,” he says defensively, rolling his eyes, but there’s also warmth there now—a new thread of connection I didn’t have to force.
After an hour or so, he leans back, stretches his arms over his head with a tiny groan as his spine pops. His sweater rides up a little to show a strip of skin above his waistband. My brain short-circuits, and decides we’re done studying.
I close my laptop, lean back in my chair, and let my gaze sweep over him. “Come here,” I say.
He looks up, blinking. “We’re not done,” he says automatically. “We still need to go over—”
“I said come here, Little Sin,” I repeat, patting my thigh.
A blush creeps up his neck. “Dom…”
My voice drops. “Brendon.”
He swallows, eyes flicking down like he can’t not look where I’m indicating. “We’re supposed to be working,” he says, but it’s half-hearted, more habit than refusal.
“We are working,” I say. “On your obedience and my impulse control. Win-win.”
His lips twitch like he wants to argue and call me on how bullshit that is, but the part of him that listens when I use that tone is awake and stretching. He pushes his chair back slowly, stands, and walks around the table.
“Sit,” I say, patting my thigh when he stops in front of me.
