by Vivi Andrews
Patch blinked. “Wow. So this thing is the real deal. Grace-inec.”
“Shut up.” Grace chucked a pencil at her.
“Have you told him you love him yet?”
“God, no. I don’t even think that word.”
“You’re right. You have much bigger problems at this stage in the relationship,” Patch agreed somberly.
“Like what?”
“Like figuring out what the appropriate level of Christmas gift is for your significant other when you’re still in that testing-it-out phase.”
“I think for now I’ll focus on surviving Christmas Eve.”
Patch shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
“I will.”
But after Patch was gone, when Grace was gathering up her things and getting ready to leave for the night, she couldn’t stop thinking about Patch’s last words. She hadn’t been thinking about Christmas—the presents, the mistletoe—but now she couldn’t seem to stop. What could she get the man whose most valued possessions seemed to be the weapons he carried?
Unless she could give him back a memory…
Grace grabbed her tablet, pulling up the Organization files. Dominec had said he didn’t have so much as a photograph of his family to remember them by, but the Organization would have surveillance photos. They wouldn’t be the same, but at least he would be able to see their faces.
She typed his name into the search field.
Files encrypted. Passkey required.
Grace glared at the obstinate screen. The Organization had layers of encryption on the files, but she thought Mateo had unlocked them all. Grabbing her tablet, she pulled on her jacket and jogged down the stairs, out of the Alpha’s mansion, and down the path to Mateo’s bunker.
She half expected Dominec to appear on the path beside her, dropping off of some convenient rooftop, but she arrived at the bunker unaccompanied. One of Mateo’s minions was leaving as she arrived and she held the door for him, nodding and wishing him a good night before slipping inside and leaping up the stairs two at a time.
Mateo was hunched over one of his computers, his nose practically pressed to the screen as he typed feverishly.
“Mateo.”
The leopard jumped a mile, vaulting to his feet. An almost guilty expression flashed over his face as he put his body between her and the screen. “Grace!”
Grace frowned. “What are you doing?”
“I—uh—that is—”
“Mateo,” she said, amusement twitching her lips. “Never take up espionage. Now what is it?”
“Side project,” he said, a little too quickly. “I know I have seven tasks with higher priority—I’ve been making as many of those EMP devices as possible to take out security when you go—but I thought I could knock this little project out quickly and—what did you need?”
Grace frowned, moving farther into the room in an attempt to get a look at the screen that had made Mateo so jumpy, but when she caught a glimpse of his work, it was a jumble of code she didn’t have a hope of understanding without Mateo translating. Telling herself she had just startled him—everyone was on a hair trigger right now—she held up her tablet. “I’m coming up against a block on one of the Organization files.”
Mateo’s expression flickered with momentary relief and he reached for the tablet. “Which file?”
“Dominec’s.”
Mateo froze with his arms extended to take the tablet, his eyes going wary as recognition blared across his expressive face. “Right.”
“You already know about the encryption. Were you unable to break it?”
“No. Or, yes, but—” Guilt reappeared for a brief visit among Mateo’s tattle-tale expressions. “It isn’t Organization encryption. I put it there.”
“You encrypted Dominec’s files? Why?”
“Because he asked me to. And before you ask me to unlock it I think you should talk to him.”
“I’m Second of the pride,” Grace said, throwing her rank around for the first time.
“I know. And if you tell me to unlock them, I will. But I still think you should talk to Dominec first.”
Dominec had lied to her. Or maybe not lied, but something was off. Why the secrecy?
She wanted to trust him, but ugly suspicion burrowed into her mind like a worm. Dominec keeping secrets was nothing new, but she’d thought they were beyond that. She’d thought she could always trust him at her back. She’d vouched for him again and again when Roman and Patch and Kye and Adrian and half a dozen others had all questioned whether he could be trusted on their upcoming mission. She tried to restrain the urge to overreact, but that burrowing worm was gaining ground.
She would not put the pride in danger. Not even for a man she might…
God, her stupid heart. The damn thing lurched.
“I’ll do that.”
Grace tucked away the tablet and went to find her feral tiger.
Chapter Forty-Five
Dominec had gone to Grace’s office looking for her and stayed to snoop. At least that was what he told himself, but he hadn’t done much actual snooping. He’d just flung himself into her chair behind her desk and leaned back, closing his eyes, letting the scent of her that saturated this place flow over him and work on the tensions of the day.
He didn’t know how long he had been there when he heard the footsteps on the steps, recognized the familiar tread. A small smile curve his lips, but he didn’t open his eyes.
“Why are your files encrypted?”
That opened his eyes. And killed his smile.
An edge of accusation hung on the words. Dominec leaned forward, bracing his arms on her desk, fighting to keep his expression blank. “Why are you looking at my files?”
“Did you think no one would look at the Organization files while we were planning the attack?” She shut the door, but didn’t move farther into the room, her posture tense and defensive.
He hadn’t given it any thought, actually. He’d long since forgotten the request to Mateo that had once been his top priority.
“Why are they encrypted, Dominec?” she demanded again.
“I wanted some privacy,” he snapped. His anger tried to rise up to match hers, but he quashed it. “Does it matter?”
“That depends what you’re hiding.”
“You could have just asked me. Whatever you want to know, I would have told you.”
“The truth?” Insulting skepticism coated the word. “Everyone has told me I’m an idiot to trust you, but I’ve vouched for you. Over and over again. Was I wrong?”
He ground his molars, refusing to answer. Her trust wasn’t worth much if all it took was one lousy little encryption to shatter it completely.
“What’s in the files, Dominec?”
“The usual records of everything that was done to the subject, I imagine.”
“You don’t know? You had Mateo encrypt them without even looking at them?”
“They’re mine.”
“And if you endangered the pride by hiding them away?”
“You can’t pretend you went looking for my files for pride safety.” He rose from behind the desk, prowling around it. “I’m not buying that. If it were for the pride, you would have ordered Mateo to unlock them. End of story.” He stopped with three feet separating them, close enough to see the blue-on-blue circles of her irises. “This is personal. So tell me. Why are you so worked up about an encryption key?”
“Because I love you.”
The words were a shot to the heart, freezing it solid, but Grace wasn’t done.
“I love you and I know it’s stupid. Everyone I know is asking me if I’m sure about you and I’m not sure, Dominec. I’m not even close to sure, but I feel sure, which is the scariest thing of all because I shouldn’t be. And I know you don’t feel the same. I’m not asking
you to. I know I’m throwing my heart after a man who only cares about vengeance and the loves he lost. I get it. But I love you, okay? So I’m stupid and scared and I hate being scared so it just pisses me off until all I can think of is screaming at you—”
He fastened his mouth over hers since it was the only thing he could think of to cut off the stream of words. She’d been gaining momentum with her diatribe, but she wasted no time channeling her anger into lust. She erupted in his arms. Her fingers plunged knuckle deep into his hair, gripping his skull as she devoured his mouth. He grabbed her ass, lifting, and she wrapped her legs around his waist as he pinned her to the door with his body. He ground his hardness against her and she moaned into his mouth, yanking at his clothes.
She loved him.
The words seemed to rattle and echo in his brain—another disjointed, fragmented piece that didn’t quite fit. How could she love him? She knew him too well for that, didn’t she? But Grace wouldn’t lie. Not about that.
He didn’t know how he felt about it. Nor how he was supposed to feel. Other women were probably tender after such a confession, but Grace was voracious and he hid his own confused emotions in the storm of frantic desire she demanded from him.
She wasn’t satisfied until she was naked, her slick heat tight around him as he pounded her into the door. And even then her words were not of love, but demands for more and harder. So he gave her more. He gave her harder. And he lost himself.
Lost in her.
“Well. That was…aerobic.”
Grace peeled her sweat-slick back off the door, bracing her feet on the ground to support herself as Dominec stepped away to draw up his pants.
She couldn’t believe she’d blurted out that she loved him. She’d avoided even thinking it and then there it was, falling out of her mouth on a tide of stupid.
It hadn’t escaped her that he hadn’t returned the sentiment. Hadn’t said a single word to her, as a matter of fact, since her little outburst. Not that she’d expected him to. For all of his accidentally romantic statements, he wasn’t exactly the hearts-and-flowers type.
Grace scrounged for her clothes, finding most of them shredded beyond wear, and thanked her lucky stars that she was a shifter and kept a few extra changes of clothes stashed in her office. She made her way to her small bureau, carefully avoiding looking at Dominec as he put himself to rights.
The urge to revert to snark was strong, if only to put some distance between herself and the raw, uncomfortable welter of emotion that seemed to have taken up residence behind her breastbone. But when she turned back to him after settling a T-shirt and jeans over her nudity, Dominec was standing next to the bag she’d dropped when she entered, holding the tablet she’d tucked inside.
She didn’t know what to say. She still wasn’t sure why she’d lost it so completely over the encrypted file. It had seemed like a massive betrayal, like a confirmation that she was wrong to trust him, foolish to give him her heart, and everyone else had been right about him. But now…
“I don’t need to see the file,” she said.
But he had already crossed the room to her. He held the tablet between them, showing her where he’d pulled up his file, and she watched as he typed in the password to unlock it. M-I-C-A-H.
Her throat grew tight as he handed her the tablet without even looking at the page that appeared on the screen. He walked away and her heart clenched when for a moment she thought he would walk out the door, but he threw himself onto one of her couches instead, watching her with quiet, intense eyes.
“You don’t want to see it?” she asked.
A single decisive shake of his head.
“Would you rather I not look?”
His eyes grew distant as he mulled that one over. When they focused on her again, they were filled with their usual mix of dark emotions. His voice was an angry growl, contrasting his words as he said, “You’re the only one I want to see it.”
“Okay.”
Grace took a breath, propped herself on the edge of her desk, and looked down at the file. The vital stats were all familiar to her. The location field was listed as “Unknown”—which was a comfort in a way. At least the Organization didn’t know where he was. Then she bit the bullet and scrolled down.
His pre-capture history was listed first. And there, just as she’d suspected, were the missing photos of his family. There were surveillance shots, but also a few candid and posed pictures of the smiling family—obviously stolen from the house.
The boy had enormous green eyes. He took after his mother, but there were traces of Dominec in him—the slightly unkempt black hair, the dimple in one cheek.
Dominec was smiling in the photos—actually smiling, though there was something wry and slightly cynical about it even then. His face was whole. Grace had been right. He was a heartbreaker. The kind of man who knew he was every woman’s fantasy, black eyes dark with knowing devilment.
His wife was stunning, but then Grace had expected her to be. Beautiful, undeniably, with something sly about her smile. Ksenia Giroux, the captions labeled her. She had the delicate, fine features of a supermodel and her flawless makeup and perfect hair gave her a high-maintenance air. Slim and feminine in every way, even the photos of her made Grace feel overgrown.
“Your wife was lovely,” she whispered.
Dominec was on his feet so quickly she barely tracked the movement. He crossed to her in a rush and she half expected he would rip the tablet from her hands and fling it across the room, but instead he loomed at her shoulder, gazing down at the screen with his hands gripping the edge of the desk behind him like he was afraid to touch.
His gaze devoured the photos. She didn’t try to imagine what he must be feeling, looking at those faces for the first time in a dozen years, seeing the confirmation of memories he hadn’t even been sure were real in their smiles.
It was jarring, seeing everything that had been stolen from him laid out in photographs—not just his wife and son, but himself as well. His entire life.
Grace’s throat closed off. “So delicate little brunettes are your type, huh?” she choked out, struggling for humor.
The joke fell flat as Dominec continued to frown ferociously down at the tablet.
Jealousy rose up at the reminder that she had lost her heart to a man who would always belong, heart and soul, to a memory. A woman so perfect and petite that Grace couldn’t even compete with her ghost.
She dared to rest her free hand on the firm muscle of his shoulder. “We’ll avenge her. I promise.”
His brow furrowed and he lifted his gaze from the tablet to lock with hers. “Don’t compare yourself to her.”
A flush rose to her cheeks since she had been doing just that. “What do you mean?”
“You’re nothing alike,” he growled. “I loved her.”
Okay, ouch.
Grace swallowed hard. There was no fucking way she was going to cry.
“I loved her as the mother of my child,” he went on. “I loved her as a fixture in my life that I thought would be permanent, like the tides love the moon, something that will always be there but they can never control. She was a constant annoyance, but not an unwelcome one. But you.” Dominec took the tablet from her hands and set it on the desk behind her. He cradled her jaw in both hands, letting the black depths of his eyes bore into hers. “I am not the man who loved her anymore. I will never be that man again. I am something much worse. I am broken pieces now. And you, Grace. You are the mortar holding together the ill-fitting bricks of my soul. Don’t ever compare yourself to her.”
It was a miracle her heart didn’t fall right out of her chest and land at his feet as an offering when he said things like that. It certainly felt like it had. Especially when he kissed her.
This kiss was completely unlike the frenzied rush of their last coupling. It wasn’t gentle—she wasn’t sure D
ominec had gentle in him—but for all the power branding her as his, there was sweetness too. She melted for him, helpless to resist that kiss or her own feelings that stirred at his touch.
He swept her off the desk and into the cradle of his arms, carrying her back to the couch he’d recently abandoned. They peeled away their clothing and Dominec settled himself between her thighs, inching himself inside her with deliberate, measured pulses.
The mortar that holds his soul together.
There was no defense against words like that. She wrapped him in her arms and legs, meeting his mouth when he kissed her and matching his thrusts as he began to move inside her.
She had not thought that she could love him more.
She was wrong.
Chapter Forty-Six
Wrapped in Dominec’s strong arms and a fog of post-coital bliss, Grace eyed the discarded tablet where it had landed on her desk. Her back was to his front as he spooned her on the narrow couch and she traced lazy patterns on the forearm secured across her stomach, holding her to him. But her thoughts were on those files.
“Why did you encrypt them?” she asked softly, trying to use a tone that wouldn’t shatter the lovely post-coital glow.
His muscles went rigid around her before slowly, deliberately unknotting again. His reply was a breath of sound against the back of her neck. “I didn’t want anyone seeing what was done to me. It’s mine.”
She understood that. Few things were more private than pain.
She linked their fingers together, settling herself more deeply into the warmth of his body. She wouldn’t look any more. She had seen Micah and Ksenia. More importantly, Dominec had seen them. Everything else in the file would remain his.
She had resolved not to ask. But then he began to speak.
“When the Organization captured me—though I didn’t know that’s what they called themselves at the time—after the initial battery of medical tests, I was earmarked for one of their special programs. Sigma Project. That was the name I overheard my handlers use. I was Sigma Two. Not because I was the second one to enter the program, but because they needed to replace the previous Sigma Two who had been killed during one of their tests shortly before I was acquired. We didn’t have names, just numbers. And my only interaction with the other shifters in the program—at least at first—was when they wanted us to fight one another.”
