by Cora Kenborn
I shake, saying the pieces of the Lord’s Prayer I can remember. I have no idea if it’s right. I can’t hear anything over the loud noises, so I cover my ears and close my eyes. 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.
“Hey, where’d you go?” Dominic’s rough voice washes over me as he stands by his bed and loosens his hold on my legs.
Shaken, I slowly slide down his body.
There’s a piece missing. I know it. I can feel it. It was right there.
“Angel?”
I glance at the floor, sure if he looks in my eyes, he’ll see through me to these images. These voices. These thoughts in my head. He’ll ask questions I can’t answer. He’ll tell me this man isn’t real, when I hear his voice.
“Nowhere. I’m right here with you.” To shut him up, I grab the base of my shirt and pull it over my head in one fluid motion, tossing it behind me.
Dominic’s eyes darken. “Fuck, Angel.” The words rumble from his throat in a half growl, half groan as he lunges for me. I’m all too happy to meet his grasp. The less we talk, the fewer questions I have to answer.
The moment his hands touch me, we turn into a frenzy of torn clothing and licked skin. He rips my bra open, and I tug at his shirt. Once I have it off, I run my hands down the hard planes of his chest, tracing the litany of tattoos when he stills both my wrists.
“Don’t be greedy. I unwrapped my dessert first.” Bending his head, he takes a nipple in his mouth.
Throwing my head back, I moan as sensation tears through me. “Dominic,” I beg. Shame is no longer a word I know. He’s pushed me past the point of caring.
Glancing up, he chuckles. “Patience, rook. You might miss something good.”
“Fuck patience,” I groan, running my hands down his chest again. “I need you now.”
“What did I say about being greedy?” He gives my ass a hard slap and moves around me until the back of my legs press against the mattress. “I’ve waited five weeks for this, so I’m going to do what I damn well please. Do you understand what that means?”
I swallow hard as he unzips my skirt and pushes it down my legs, never taking his eyes off me. “Yes. No. Maybe?”
“It means I’ll fuck you when I want to, where I want to, and how I want to.”
I should tell him to go to hell. Instead, I nod like a bobblehead as I tug at the button on his jeans. Releasing the zipper, I dive my hand inside his boxers as a hiss of air falls from his chest. While stroking him, I steal a look up at his face as his body thrusts into my hand.
His eyes are closed, and his jaw pulses around clenched teeth. My rhythm becomes faster and more controlled as I watch the pained expression on his face with fascination.
“Jesus, fuck, Angel…”
“Call me Alexandra,” I whisper, the static in my head commanding my words and actions. Using my free hand, I push his jeans and boxers down to his knees when, without warning, Dominic grabs me by the shoulders and tosses me on the bed.
“You want to role play, dirty girl?” I barely have time to register what’s happening before his jeans are off and he climbs over me, his lips trailing a path up my chest. “Okay, Miss Romanov. But it’s my turn.” He closes his lips around my nipple again, his hand traveling a path down my stomach. Within seconds, white heat rips through me so fiercely I have to grasp the headboard just to anchor myself to reality.
“Dominic!”
“Yes, Miss Romanov? How can I be of service? Would her highness like me to lick that billion-dollar pussy or shall I stuff it full of this big, working-class cock?” Sitting back, Dominic holds my eye as he grabs the base and gives it a few rough strokes.
My mouth goes dry. I knew he was big, but there’s big and then there’s big.
And thick. And long. And…
Oh my God. He’s going to destroy me.
“Cock,” I groan as I hear foil tearing.
After taking my lips in a fiery kiss, he grabs my legs and hooks them over his shoulders. “I plan to fuck you at least six different ways tonight, Alexandra. And you’re going to count every damn one of them.”
His cock settles heavy and hard between my legs, and he holds my gaze as he glides it up and down my opening. I’m almost embarrassed at how wet I am for him, but the low growl in his throat tells me he’s not. With a clench of his jaw, he drives forward, fully embedding himself inside me in one brutal thrust. I cry out, my body protesting while struggling to accept him.
“Fuck!” he growls, his pale blue eyes darkening. “Relax, Angel.”
“I can’t,” I cry, shaking my head side to side. “You’re too much.”
“Don’t fight it,” he says, punctuating the words with another roll of his hips. “Let me take what’s mine.”
Something about those words passes through my wall of defenses and burrows into my brain. Deep down, I know it’s the truth. I am his. In ways even I don’t understand. This moment was meant to happen. This connection, no matter how many times severed, was supposed to mend this way.
So, I nod, not trusting myself with words.
Drawing his hips back, Dominic slams into me just as hard, the pain mixing with pleasure as each thrust discovers something new. A rhythm that makes me grip the sheets. An unknown spot that draws cries of his name from my throat. New intimate details that belong only to him.
The more I react, the rougher his thrusts become. Sweat coats our skin, our bodies slipping against each other as we both chase an orgasm I know I’ll never come back from. I fear not only its power, but its aftermath.
“Fuck!” he roars. “Come for me, Angel.”
When his thumb presses hard against my clit and rubs in merciless circles, my last shred of control slips away, and I not only fall over the edge, I run toward it and free fall to the ground with no regard for anything but this feeling of pure ecstasy. Immediately, Dominic’s hips jerk, and he sinks his teeth into my calf, letting out a muffled groan as he comes.
The room falls silent except for our ragged breathing.
“Count it,” he mumbles, kissing the bite mark he left on my skin.
I blink. “Huh?”
“I told you I was going to fuck you at least six different ways tonight, and you were going to 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 cheeks.
And what game is she playing?
Letting out a frustrated growl, I roll off the side of the bed and pull on my boxers. After closing my fingers around a pack of cigarettes and lighter, I close the door behind me and step out of the back door into the quietness of the dawn.
Shaking a cigarette from the pack, I pinch it between my lips and flick the lighter. Inhaling deeply, I blow a haze of cloudy smoke into the air before lifting the phone back to my ear. “What do you want?”
“I don’t want anything, you jerk off. I called to give you an update.”
I rub the back of my hand against my temples. “What more could there be?”
“Do you want to hear this or not?”
“Fine. Make it quick, I don’t have all day.”
“Watch it, McCallum,” he growls. “You don’t pay me enough to listen to your bullshit. How about I hang up, and you can figure it out for yourself?”
“Fine, what’s so important you need to call me so damn early?”
“There’s been a situation.”
This conversation is starting to piss me off. “I don’t like situations.”
“And I don’t like shit being out of my control, but we don’t always get what we want.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Anger swells in my chest, and I throw my cigarette down, stepping on it with my bare foot and crushing it into the cement.
Last one. I swear.
I listen as his voice filters through the line, my chest getting tighter. A distant roar swells in my ears with every confession and every truth I don’t want to hear.
By the time we hang up, I’m numb.
Sometimes things happen in your life you never plan for. Decisions are made in the midst of chaos that you bury in the past. You never question right or wrong or outcome or consequence. You put those decisions in a box and set it aside. Because what happened yesterday is over. All that matters is today.
Until yesterday becomes today.
I don’t know how much time has passed, but the dark mist of dawn has disappeared, and the bright light of a new day burns my eyes. One that comes with a choice.
Opening the patio door, I walk down the hall, Angel’s incoherent nightmare-infused words ringing in my ears.
“Are you God?”
My eyes focus on the bedroom door, a sense of dread resting in the pit of my stomach. For a moment, I consider getting in my car and getting the hell out. But I can’t do that to her.
Because I made a promise once.
And pinkie promises are binding.
Lies are fascinating things. They’re like a grain of sand in between your toes, rough and uncomfortable, but the more you walk around, the less you notice it. It becomes normal, and before long, you don’t remember a time when it wasn’t there.
Tell a lie long enough, and just like sand, before you know it you don’t remember the truth. Wear a mask long enough and no one knows your real face.
Three weeks, one day, and four hours. That’s how long I’ve lived a lie since that night at Amalia.
Sitting on the third floor balcony, I look out over the grounds and remember the words I discounted so long ago.
“Fate always finds a way.”
Resting my arms over the thick rails, I inhale and let it out slowly without a wheeze or a cough. Smirking, I tip the neck of my beer bottle back and take a long drink.
It’s also been three weeks, one day, and four hours since my last cigarette. My lungs thank me, but my nerves are pissed as hell.
Especially since I still haven’t told Angel about Luciano. To be fair, she hasn’t asked. If she brings it up, I’ll tell her enough to satisfy her while holding enough back to keep her off the Vitoli radar.
Since that night in his office, Luciano has remained quiet. Too quiet. Which means he’s watching and waiting, analyzing my every move and following my every step.
Our tentative truce is shaky at best.
The scales are balanced for now, but it’d take only one miscalculation to bathe these walls in blood for the second time.
There’s a rattle of glass behind me followed by the click-clack of high heels. “I’ve been looking for you. What are you doing out here?”
“Just thinking.”
Angel nestles in beside me, leaning her head against my shoulder. “About what?”
“Time.” Or lack thereof. Staring out at the darkening sky, I tip my beer back again. Angel stands quietly as I lean over the railing, rolling the nearly empty bottle between my palms. “How did filming go today?”
Her shoulders shrug lightly against me. “Same as always. Rosten tried to do everyone’s job and made a bunch of homophobic remarks. By the fourth one, a production assistant had to escort Brent off the set.”
My grip tightens around the bottle. For three weeks, I’ve bit my tongue. A studio executive’s purpose is to fund projects. They make sure everything runs smoothly then get the hell out.
Not Greg Rosten. Not this project.
According to Angel, he’s on set every day, pushing people around and playing director, especially during sex scenes. No surprise, I was banned from the set before filming even started. It’s probably for the best. If I saw him get off on seeing her naked, I’d end
up in jail.
Which is why I have an unlikely ally in Braddock’s boyfriend. He has been on set every day, keeping an eye on things and reporting back to me. The guy hates Rosten almost as much as I do and promised to look after Angel.
He’s a good guy, and his boyfriend’s becoming tolerable, too.
Okay, fine. Braddock isn’t so bad. I kind of like him now. Since coming out, his popularity has tripled, if that’s even possible.
Hollywood, man. Fickle as fuck, but they’ll take up a cause like a bad habit.
“Did he at least get one good swing in?”
“Unfortunately, not. Which I guess is a good thing. He doesn’t have a former actress-slash-cocktail waitress to conspire with to pay off the debt.” Tipping her chin up, she bumps her hip against my leg and grins.
I wince. Not just because two weeks ago, I came clean to Angel about the lawsuit, which—fuck you Milly—she already knew about, but because the more time we spend together, the harder this weight presses on my chest.
I wish I looked at her the same now. I wish I looked at her and saw my Angel, but I don’t. I don’t think I ever will again. All I see is penance.
I wish I could let her go, but I’m in too deep to turn back now. Not only for my own selfish reasons, but for her protection. At the least, I owe it to her to make sure her world doesn’t become as tainted as mine.
Cupping her cheek, I trace those full lips with my thumb. As if commanded, they part and her eyes flutter closed. Lowering my hand, I grit my teeth and turn away. With a groan, I set the beer bottle on a side table and drop onto the chaise lounge.
Angel watches me, her fingers twisting by her side before taking a few tentative steps. “Hey, are you all right?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”
“You’ve just seemed off lately.” She looks down, her cheeks flushing blood red. “If this is about what happened last night, I—”
“It’s not.”
Angel flinches at my tone. Admittedly, it’s sharper than I intended, but I’m in no mood for this conversation. Things are fucked up enough without analyzing why my girlfriend flipped out in the middle of sex, crawled into a corner, and cried for two hours.
