Page 23 of Dominate

I close the door behind me.

The click drags his head around.

He goes very still. Something wild flashes across his face and vanishes before I can name it, the look of an animal that hears the trap spring.

“We need to talk,” I say.

“No. We don’t.”

“Bullshit.”

I cross the room. He stands, and now the table isn’t between us, just two bruised, bleeding bodies and a lot of tile.

“You can’t say something like that and then pretend⁠—”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You said you can’t stop thinking about me.”

The words hang in the air. The overhead panel hums. In the hall, someone laughs as they pass.

Zane’s throat moves. “You misheard.”

“I was two inches from your face.” I hold up two fingers. “Try again.”

He goes for the door.

He moves fast, all that Ironside polish, but I step into his path before his hand finds the knob. My shoulder meets his chest. It’s not a shove, just a wall. He stops, and the heat coming off him could melt steel.

“Move.”

“No.”

“Rivera.”

“Why are you so scared?” I stay right there, close enough to see the pulse jumping in his temple. “What do you think happens if you admit it?”

“You don’t understand.” His voice cracks straight down the middle. He hears it and clamps his mouth shut, then forces the rest out. “My whole life. Everything I’ve built. Every single thing.”

“Is making you miserable. I can see that much,” I say quietly. “Everybody can.”

He flinches like I hit him.

That might be the worst part. I have hit him, and it landed cleaner than anything in that cage.

“I know what it looks like from the inside,” I say. “I spent eighteen years in a closet built out of other people’s expectations. My father’s. My neighborhood’s. Every guy who ever told me what a man does and what he doesn’t. I know how warm it is in there. How safe it feels. And I know what it costs to stay.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know you look at me like you’re starving.”

His jaw locks.

“I know you got hard in that shower and never once tried to hide it. I know when I had you pinned on that mat, the last thing on your mind was fighting.” I pull in a breath. “And I know what you said out there.”

He’s shaking. I can see it in his hands, fine and constant, the same tremor that rattled mine at the press conference. Zane Butler, undefeated, untouchable, standing in a medical room with tape on his knuckles and nowhere to hide.

I lower my voice.