Page 24 of Dominate

“So tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you feel nothing, and I’ll walk out that door and we never speak of this again.”

The silence stretches long enough that I start counting seconds. Six. Seven. Eight.

His gaze drops to my mouth.

Stays there.

“Zane,” I whisper.

He breaks.

His hand fists in the back of my neck, and he hauls me in and slams his mouth against mine.

There’s nothing gentle in it. Nothing careful or clean. His lips are chapped, his teeth catch mine, and the split in my lip reopens and floods my mouth with copper. He doesn’t care. He kisses me like a man going under, like every second of the past two months has been building up behind a dam and I’m the crack that finally lets it through.

I meet him with everything I have.

My good hand buries itself in his wet hair and yanks. He groans into my mouth, a rough, broken sound that shoots straight down my spine. I bite his lower lip. He answers by dragging me forward so hard we both stumble, crashing into the counter, then the wall. The cabinets rattle.

His back hits the plaster. I pin him there.

I feel it the instant he understands what just happened. The reversal. Every position we’ve fought over for five rounds, every time he tried to bury me and I slipped free, and now I have him against the wall, my forearm across his chest, and he doesn’t fight.

He lets me.

“Fuck,” he gasps against my mouth. His eyes are squeezed shut. “Fuck, I can’t⁠—”

“Then don’t think.”

I slide my thigh between his legs, and his whole body jolts. His head drops back with a thud.

“Just feel.”

He moans.

Not a stifled sound. Not a breath through his teeth. A moan, full and shameless, and his hips rock forward against my thigh like he has no say in it. Heat pours off him, salt and copper and cedar. His fingers dig into my waist hard enough to bruise. Under my palm, his heart pounds so fast I can feel each beat like a fist against my hand.

I have imagined this for two months. Every version. Every angle. None of them got close.

I kiss the corner of his jaw. His throat. He arches into it, a raw noise leaving him, and I think, This is real. This is really happening. An examination room. A cot. A smell of antiseptic. The man I was supposed to destroy tangled around me, shaking apart.

“Micah,” he breathes.

My name. First time.

It undoes me more than the kiss.

Then voices in the hall.

Two of them, coming fast. A woman, brisk. A man answering. Heels on tile, the squeak of rubber soles, a trolley wheel rattling.

Zane’s eyes fly open.

I watch it happen. Watch the glaze clear, watch the gold sharpen and snap back into fear. He shoves both hands against my chest and I stumble backward, catching the counter with my hip. He wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist, hard, like he can scrub the last thirty seconds off his skin.

“Zane.”

“This was a mistake.”