by Tee O'Fallon
He closed the door behind them, then switched off the overhead chandelier. Light from her bedroom bathed his face in an eerie light. He glanced down at her open shirt and his eyes narrowed, but not in a lustful way. He was angry. About what she didn’t know and didn’t care. She was the only one who had any right to be angry.
“How dare you?” she sputtered.
Ignoring her, he stormed over to the windows, limping, and yanked the curtains closed. Next he took her gently by the arm and drew her toward the sofa. She resisted, tugging backward because the last time they’d sat on that sofa they’d wound up in bed. She didn’t think she’d have the mental or physical fortitude to resist his fiery kisses, or the tender touch of his rough hands on her bare skin, or—dammit.
As soon as they reached the edge of the sofa, Dom’s arms came around her waist and his lips crushed hers.
She shoved at his chest, feeling the steely hardness and strength of his pectorals beneath her fingers, but he only held her tighter, pressing his erection more firmly against her belly. Despite her mind screaming at her not to respond, her body didn’t listen. Heat shot to her core, and she writhed against his hard length. Her fingers uncurled, her hands flattening against his chest, not to push him away but to dig her nails into all that steely muscle. And before she could finish the thought—don’t kiss him back—she was doing just that.
No sooner had her lips parted than Dom’s tongue slipped inside, tasting and swirling, tangling with hers. His hold on her loosened, and his kiss eased in its intensity.
“Stop,” she whispered, knowing it was already too late. She was a goner.
“Do you really want me to stop?” he said against her mouth, then slanted his lips across hers, gently angling her head for better access. Then his mouth began a slow, sensuous path down her chin to her neck. Shivery tingles danced across her skin, leaving her with a sense of bonelessness. “Do you?” he asked again.
She went limp in his arms and let her head fall backward as he kissed the hollow at the base of her throat. “Noooo,” she said on a throaty sigh, feeling as if she were floating in some erotic mist.
“No, what?” he mumbled as he gazed down at her breasts, which were now covered only by her satiny pink bra.
Where did my shirt go?
He leaned down and fastened his mouth on one of her nipples, nipping it through the thin fabric. She gasped and arched into him.
“Baby, if you want me to stop, say it like you mean it.”
God, but she wanted him, and she wanted him to stop.
This is madness. To give in to him so easily. The very moment he touched her, for Chrissake.
One of Dom’s large, very warm hands slid to the small of her back, the other skimming down to squeeze her buttocks. He shifted his mouth to her other breast, tantalizing the nipple to a peak so hard she thought she would scream if he didn’t take her bra off.
“I—” She closed her eyes. Her breathing came rapidly, more like panting, as he removed his hand from her buttocks and worked open the front closure of her bra. His lips found her bare nipple, and he sucked it into his mouth. A bolt of electricity shot to her core, and she surged her hips forward. “I can’t do this,” she kept telling herself, then realized she’d said the words out loud.
“Can’t do what, baby?” He spread his legs, pulling her mound against the juncture of his thighs, pressing her against the firm bulge beneath his jeans.
In one swift movement, he turned and gently lowered her to the sofa. He kissed her deeply, slanting his mouth feverishly across hers, first one way then the next. His five o’clock shadow bristled against her skin.
She locked her legs around the backs of his thighs, powerless beneath his ministrations, breathing heavily into his mouth. The bulge at his crotch pushed against her, and she couldn’t get close enough. She was burning with need. The need to have him thrusting inside her.
Where’s my willpower? My self-respect?
Nowhere around this man.
Drawing on reserves she thought had been blown sky high, she snapped open her eyes. “I can’t do this,” she panted between ragged breaths.
Dom lifted his head, his chest heaving. His eyes were glazed and half closed.
She shoved at his chest until he rested his weight on his elbows, staring down at her. “I’m not like you.” She flung her arm over her face, unable to meet the intensity of his gaze. “I can’t make love like you can. Like it’s just sex. I won’t let you do this to me again. I won’t let me do this to me again. Get off me, and get out.”
The cushion shifted, and she lifted her arm to see he’d risen and stood looking down at her. His eyes were troubled, regretful even. His broad chest still rose and fell rapidly.
“Fuck.” He shoved his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t come here to take you like some kind of asshole barbarian.”
She pursed her lips. “Yeah, right.”
“I didn’t,” he all but shouted. “I—I came here because…shit, I don’t know why I came here,” he muttered. “When you answered the door half naked, looking so incredibly beautiful, I couldn’t stop myself. Daisy, I never stopped thinking about you.”
The serious look in his eyes and his furrowed forehead almost made her believe him. Then common sense slapped her in the face. “Are you telling me you haven’t been with another woman since we slept together a year ago?”
He blew out a breath and lifted his gaze to the ceiling.
“That’s what I thought.” She pushed from the sofa and searched for her blouse, which he’d somehow rid her of without her even remembering when or how he’d done it. Finding it on the floor partially beneath the coffee table, she scooped it up and slipped into it. With trembling fingers, she managed to button it and retie it at her waist.
She stormed past him, needing to get the hell away from him ASAP. With all the sparks that had flown between them only minutes ago, she still didn’t completely trust herself. And speaking of sparks—the kind she so hadn’t had with Jack—there’d been enough to rival the Macy’s Fourth of July fireworks show.
Damn you, Dom Carew. And damn me for being so weak where you’re concerned.
Almost being so weak, she reminded herself proudly. She’d stood her ground and told Mr. Asshole-Barbarian Detective where to go.
With her heart pounding, she stormed into the kitchen and poured another finger of Cognac into a snifter. Tipping the glass up, she took a hefty swallow, grateful for the slow burn it made all the way to her belly.
He still hadn’t left. She should kick him out, is what she should do. She spun to put her plan into action and collided with Dom’s chest.
“It’s a piss-poor night when I drive a woman to drink.” He glanced at the snifter.
“Why are you still here?” She brushed past him into the living room. Absently, she deadheaded a dried-up flower from an African violet perched in the center of the coffee table. When he followed her inside, she sat in her wingchair and crossed her legs. “You’ve had your fun. Now you can leave.” She gestured with her hand toward the door.
“That’s not how it was.” Without invitation, he sat in the middle of the sofa, facing her with his forearms resting on his knees.
Just like Jack had. Only when Jack had sat in her sofa, she’d been uncomfortable at his presence in her apartment. When Dom sat there, she wasn’t exactly uncomfortable. She was confused and all twisted up inside. She should thoroughly hate the guy, but all she could think was how pathetic she’d been at believing for one stupidly naive moment that something would be different this time.
“Dom, please leave.” She rolled the smooth curve of the snifter back and forth against her forehead. “I’m tired, and I have an early day tomorrow. I have to hire another driver to handle the overflow from the Piazza contract.”
He didn’t budge. “You’re seeing someone. Your new driver.”
“What if I am?” She took another sip. “That’s no business of yours. And what were you doing? Spying on me?�
�
He drew his brows together. “I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“Seriously?” She barked out a laugh. “Of all the gall. You’re nothing but a damned hypocrite. What gives you the right?”
When he clenched his jaws, the muscles of his way-too-handsome face stood out in rigid perfection. “Not a damned thing.”
“Finally, something we agree on.” Tears pricked the backs of her eyes. She had to get him out of her apartment before she started crying like a lovestruck teenager whose high school crush didn’t return her feelings.
She blinked rapidly, then noticed the troubled look had returned to Dom’s eyes. What does he have to be troubled about?
“Embrace the suck,” he muttered.
“Did you just say, embrace the suck?” She shook her head. “Is that warrior-speak for lie down and take it? Because I most certainly refuse to lie down with you again. Ever.”
A steely look came into his eyes, making them appear more gray than blue. “How exactly did you come to hire your new driver?”
“Why do you care?” She exhaled loudly. “If you’re jealous, that’s your problem.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. She got the distinct impression he was holding back a lot of anger. Anger she didn’t understand the source of.
“Humor me. I’m not leaving until you do.”
“Fine.” Anything to get him out the door. “My regular driver, Gus Padagno, was hit by a car and badly hurt. He’s still in the hospital, and when he gets home he’ll be laid up for at least a month before he can come back to work. So I hired Jack.”
“How did Jack,” he said the name with a notable hint of irritation, “know you were looking for a new driver? Did you place an ad in the paper?”
“No.” She couldn’t take the intense scrutiny of his stare so she rose and began pruning dead leaves from her favorite fern on a plant stand in the corner of the living room. “He showed up the day after Gus’s accident. He had a CDL, and it’s not easy to find a driver with that kind of license so I hired him on the spot.” She hazarded a glance at Dom and saw his eyes had narrowed to slits.
“Don’t you think that’s a huge coincidence? Him showing up the very next day after your driver gets mowed down?”
“Well, yes,” she admitted. “But I was desperate. We’ve gotten so busy lately, and I needed a replacement driver right away.” Her hands stilled on the plant. “What are you suggesting?”
“Did the driver of the vehicle stop to provide information to the police?” he asked.
“It was a hit and run.” She clenched the dried leaf in her hand. “But I don’t see what that has to do with Jack.”
“Maybe nothing.” He began stroking his jaw, reminding her of how disgustingly good a five o’clock shadow looked on the man, and how sexy it had felt against her skin while he’d been kissing her into freaking oblivion.
Her cheeks felt red-hot at the unwanted memory. She didn’t know what was going on here, but she wasn’t about to entertain Dom’s unfounded jealousy.
“Don’t look at me like that.” She dropped the dried leaves into an empty pot. “Jack showing up when he did might be coincidental, but it doesn’t mean there’s anything nefarious going on. You’re a cop. To you, everyone’s a threat.”
“I’m not a cop anymore.” His eyes hardened. “I got fired.”
“What?” She took a step toward him, then stopped. She’d been hit with the urge to comfort him, which was ridiculous under the circumstances.
He shrugged. “I did some stupid things, and they finally caught up with me.”
“I don’t believe it.” And she didn’t. From everything she knew about him, something didn’t add up.
“Believe it.”
She shook her head. “I don’t.” The anger she felt toward the NYPD for firing Dom was misplaced. She shouldn’t care one bit what happened to him. It was just that it didn’t make sense. Neither did the compassion she felt.
You have to stop this. Get him out of your life once and for all.
She stalked to the door, feeling the heat of his gaze burning into her back. “I want you to leave. Now.” She yanked open the door.
He cursed, then rose from the sofa and met her at the threshold. She couldn’t take the softening of his gaze as he looked down at her so she stared at her toes. But she couldn’t stop breathing in whatever it was about him that always smelled so good. Cologne, aftershave, something fresh and clean. She exhaled, wishing she could permanently eradicate whatever connection they had, knowing it was impossible.
Please, please, please leave.
Her vision blurred, and she blinked back the tears. She had half a mind to shove him out the door, but he was at least two hundred pounds of solid male muscle. That, and she had a bad feeling that in her pathetically weakened state of mind she shouldn’t touch any part of that hard body again or risk doing something stupid.
When he reached out and cupped her cheek, a warm current shot down her neck, to her breasts, and straight to her toes. She closed her eyes, unable to meet his. To round out her humiliation, a trickle of tears leaked from her lids.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. Then he was gone.
Daisy didn’t open her eyes until she felt the shift of air in his wake. She remained rooted at the open doorway, her hand trembling where she gripped the knob. Dom’s booted footfalls echoed in the hallway, followed by the click of the stairwell door.
A lump formed in her throat, and the bone-deep loneliness she’d been experiencing lately returned in spades. As much as she’d been tempted by his touch, she couldn’t go through that again. She wasn’t strong the way people thought she was. That was part of the false image she’d learned to project long ago after her own family—or what was left of it—had thrown her to the curb. That outer strength had stood her well, until the one night she’d spent with Dom. A night that felt like coming home.
With still-trembling fingers, she closed the door, then turned the deadbolt and inserted the security chain. She’d really thought there’d been something between them. Big mistake. Tonight had not only reopened a wound inflicted by one man a year ago but wounds inflicted by her family after her parents had died.
How can I ever trust my instincts again?
It had taken half a lifetime to come out of the emotional shell she’d hidden behind as a teenager and another half to create a persona she could hide behind. To this day, she still used laughter and flamboyancy to mask the pain that she might be alone for the rest of her life. She had so much love to give and no one to give it to.
She leaned back against the door, slowly slid to the floor, and wept.
Chapter Nine
Dom stared up at Daisy’s curtained windows on the third floor and jammed his hands into his pockets. Fuck. All he ever seemed to do was hurt her. He didn’t blame her for being angry. He’d practically attacked her like an animal in rut.
I was out of line and out of control.
Jack’s presence in her life was unacceptable from every imaginable angle. The man was an assassin. A cold-blooded killer. As fucked-up as it was, that wasn’t his first thought when he’d seen him follow her up the stairs.
Every second Jack had been in Daisy’s apartment, he’d tortured himself by imagining the two of them together, making love in her bed. After Jack had left and Dom had gone inside, he’d been overcome by the mother of all primitive Neanderthal instincts to erase the other man’s touch from Daisy’s body. Hell, he’d wanted to possess her.
Make her mine.
He stood on the sidewalk, watching until the light went out in her living room before heading to his Explorer. What a clusterfuck.
After he yanked open the driver’s side door he dropped onto the seat and gripped the wheel. He had to put aside his personal issues and focus on Daisy’s safety. He wondered if he’d made the right decision in not telling her exactly who and what Jack really was.
She already knew what the Pyramid was. A year ago, when they’d thr
eatened Alex and Nicky, he’d rammed the point home as to how dangerous they were. Daisy would never be able to act natural around Jack if she knew the truth, and Jack would become suspicious. But leaving her alone with the guy would worry his gut into a tank-size ulcer. He had an idea how to fix that little problem, although Daisy would probably have a conniption. Hell, he didn’t know how he’d get through it, either.
He punched in the number of the police dispatcher, preparing to give his shield number and request database information on Daisy’s driver, Gus Padagno, but he ended the call before it was answered. Shit. Dispatch wouldn’t give him anything. He was no longer officially employed by the NYPD, and they would already have been advised of his status. From this point forward he was persona non grata.
As he started the Explorer he cued up Gray’s number. It was around eleven o’clock, but this couldn’t wait.
“You okay?” Gray asked in a hushed tone.
“Apologize to Alex for me, but there’s been a development.” He checked his side-view mirror, then pulled onto the street. For the next five minutes, he explained to Gray about Jack Schneider’s employment at Highland Floral and the hit and run on Daisy’s driver, Gus.
“Sonofabitch,” Gray said, and Dom heard the rustling of bedsheets.
“I have a plan on how to deal with Daisy’s safety, but she’s not gonna like it.” In all likelihood she’d kick him out of her shop on his ass.
“Give me a minute to log in,” Gray said.
He braked for a red light. “I’m guessing employment at Highland Floral gains Schneider access to something he wouldn’t otherwise have. Daisy’s shop caters to all kinds of events. Weddings, birthdays, bar and bat mitzvahs. There’s no way to find out the names of everyone on all those guest lists. Even Daisy wouldn’t know. But the Piazza reopening is a big event attended by the mayor and a slew of local politicians. It’s been all over the news for weeks.”
“But why the Piazza?” Gray asked. In the background, Dom heard beeping as Gray’s computer turned on. “Based on our intel, the original target was One PP. We were going on the assumption that they were planning to take out as many cops as possible, but even with the mayor’s presence, the Piazza won’t have a police presence inside during the event. That was something the hotel was adamant about. Turns out they have their own security team and, aside from the mayor’s security detail, don’t want any help from the department.”
