count all of them.” Pulling out, he moves my legs off his shoulders and rips off the condom. There’s a wicked gleam in his eye as he climbs off the bed. Taking my hands in his, he drags me to the edge of the mattress until my head tips off the edge. “But I didn’t say where.”
“Dominic, what—”
Fisting his cock, which—holy shit—is already hard again, he gives it a few rough strokes before angling it toward my lips. “Count.”
“One,” I say, barely getting the word out before it’s cut off and drowned out by a satisfied groan.
My feet feel stuck in quicksand. I want to move but I can’t.
Pennies. I don’t like pennies.
Go now. Go now. Go now.
The words break through, and the quicksand goes away. My legs move, and I’m running. Running fast as the wind with the smell of pennies trailing after me. I don’t know where to go, so I go to the only place I feel safe.
I won’t cry. Tears are a tool not a weakness. Sinking to my knees in between my bed and my dresser, I shake, saying the broken pieces of the Lord’s Prayer I can remember. “Otche nash, sushchiy na nebesakh…” I can’t hear anything over the loud noises, so I cover my ears and close my eyes. “Da svyatitsya imya Tvoye.”
I don’t know what makes me look up. It’s a feeling. One that wraps around me like a mother’s arms, but cold. Cold and dark. How can something so beautiful be so dark?
“Are you God?” I ask quietly.
My heart hurts as he shakes his head—this boy with the frozen eyes and sad smile. “No. I’m the Angel of Death.”
I sit up and scream until I can’t breathe. Until my chest hurts and my voice breaks to barely a whisper. Held down by death, I thrash, fighting for my life, trapped between static and sound and people I don’t know.
“Angel, baby, stop! Jesus, what’s wrong?”
My eyes open, and the first thing I see is Dominic’s face framed by the burned backdrop of a barely lit dawn. His eyes are wide and alarmed, his hands wrapped around my shoulders as if he’s afraid I might disappear into thin air.
It’s only then I look around, realizing I’m in his bedroom, tangled in his sheets.
“Jesus, what the hell were you dreaming about? I thought…” Slumping back, he scrubs a hand down his face. “Never mind.”
I’m still shaking, but the harder I reach for the fragments of the dream, the quicker they dissolve. Pieces filter in, but they don’t fit together. Nothing makes sense. It’s like playing a record backward and skipping every third groove.
“I don’t know,” I whisper, falling into his arms. “But it’s not over.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Dominic
Closing my hand around my phone, I pull it close to my face, my eyes blurry from lack of sleep. After checking the number flashing on the screen, I let out another gruff curse and hit the answer button. “Hold on a damn minute.”
A soft sigh exhales beside me as Angel rests tangled in a cocoon of sheets. After the nightmare she had, I don’t want to wake her, but I can’t resist brushing a hand over the strands of dark hair spilling across the pillow beside me.
Hearing her sharp intake of breath, I freeze, waiting motionless for her breathing to return to normal. Still lost in her dreams, she rolls forward, the sheet falling to the tops of her thighs.
I fought this. I tried to deny it, but it was inevitable. I knew she’d be the one to get in. What’s worse is that she knew it, too.
“You love me, Dominic McCallum, why don’t you just admit it?”
I would’ve picked up the salad fork and stabbed myself in the eye before validating that statement. Angel was supposed to be a paycheck. But now the thought of never touching her again clutches at my chest like a vice. Being with her feels natural, and that’s dangerous.
The woman has fucked up my perfectly heartless world.
Which brings with it complications. Not counting Rosten and the shit storm a public affair will cause, there’s Luciano.
My blood still boils at the insinuation he threw out the last time we spoke. I played it off, but inside, my brain was an eighteen car-pile up. There’s no way he could know about Phoenix. If he did, I would’ve been six feet under a long time ago.
So what angle is he playing?
I cast a quick glance back at Angel, her dark lashes fanned over her pale