me against the arm of the couch. I don’t know what he’s going to do, but I’m both terrified and exhilarated.
As if reading my thoughts, his lips part in a salacious smirk, and he surges forward, crashing his mouth onto mine, commanding a kiss my body is conditioned to want. For a moment, I lose myself in the feel of his possession. Then I remember this is what he does.
He uses my weakness for him as a weapon against me.
Breaking the kiss, I push him away as I press the back of my hand against my lips. “You were late for the party. Where were you?”
“Angel,” he groans, diving toward my lips again, but I block him, with a palm against his chest.
“Where. Were. You?”
A dark scowl clouds his face. “Can we not do this right now?”
The night we ran lines together runs through my mind. It was the night Rubio confronted Dominic in the garage. I asked him about it, and he told me not to worry.
But detectives don’t show up at your house for no reason.
“That was the night that the photographer ‘jumped’ off the Colorado Street Bridge. The same one you argued with at your house. Was that you?” I shout, shoving his chest. “Did you kill him?”
His stare turns cold. Unfeeling. Black.
“Oh God.” I shudder, the room starting to spin.
Dominic lets out a roar, and I flinch as he wraps his fingers around my jaw. “You want to play show and tell? Fine.” Releasing my face, he grabs a tight hold around my arm and yanks me off the couch. He barely gives me time to stagger to my feet, before dragging me down the hall.
“Dominic,” I beg as he stalks down another hallway like a man possessed. “Stop!”
Finally, he pulls us both into the study. After tossing me into the desk chair, he opens my laptop and logs into his email account. Seconds go by, my heart thundering in my chest until he finds what he wants and clicks on the attachment.
“There,” he growls. “You want to see what I’ve been dealing with? Take a good fucking look.” Once I see what he’s pointing at, my stomach turns inside out. “Thanks to Freddy Wiseman, your pussy was about to become a national headline.”
The image swims in front of me. “No.”
“We were being blackmailed, sweetheart. Good old-fashioned extortion. So, am I sorry that shitbag is dead? No. If you hate me for that, so be it. But I won’t apologize for protecting the woman I lo—”
“No!” I shriek, leaping out of the chair and barreling into him with both hands. “Don’t say it! Not now!”
He doesn’t. His hands seize my face, pulling me against him and kissing me hard. I want to fight him, but I collapse under the force of his touch. I want him. I want this. I need to feel something other than lies and loss. I need his voice in my ear, not hers.
I need to feel what’s real.
In this life.
“Fuck me,” I groan against his mouth.
Dominic’s eyes darken, and he pushes my back against the wall. Jerking my dress up, he winds his fingers around my panties and rips them off with a single tug. Tossing them like garbage, he tears his jeans open, pushing them down just far enough to pull out his cock.
There’s a hum of silence. A sliver of peace just before Hell rises up and rains down on the sinners, drowning them in their own greed and lust.
Dominic and I come together like a force of nature. Like two magnets unable to control the intensity pulling them to each other. My hands tangle in his hair as he lifts me up by my thighs, my legs automatically wrapping around his waist.
His mouth takes mine in a punishing kiss. It’s desperation, and ferocity, and loathing. It’s everything we are and everything we’re meant to be. It’s this house, chanting our names as he reaches between us, guiding his swollen cock toward my entrance.
There’s no teasing. No touching. No whispered words.
I don’t need it. I’m slick with desire and dripping with torture. I rock against him, craving an outlet for everything that isn’t mine. For all the things I’ll never have.
“Please,” I beg, suspended between worlds.
He stares at me with a predatory look in his eyes.
New but familiar.
“Frozen,” I whisper. “Your eyes are frozen.”
I don’t know what that means, but it breaks something in Dominic. Bending his knees, he drives into me with one vicious thrust. I scream at