by M. S. Parker
I was stirring the dregs of the soup when the penthouse door opened.
I waited.
But he didn’t come in.
Leaning back, I stared up at the ceiling. I could hear him moving around in his room and I shoved back, gathering up my trash.
He was going to jerk me around like a puppet on a string? Fine. If he wanted to talk, he could come find me when he was ready.
Controlling bastard.
I settled in my room and started to flip through the channels. I rarely watched TV anymore. Barely read. Didn’t do anything that didn’t involve work. I wondered if maybe—
My door opened.
Slowly, I turned my head and found Dominic filling the entrance.
He flicked a look around my room and then his gaze came to me. “Perhaps now is a good time to have that talk.”
Slowly, I rose. Thumbing off the TV, I put the remote down and moved over to the window. The view faced out over Manhattan and the lights and spires of the buildings turned the skyline into a jewel-bedecked panorama.
“Talk,” I said. I glanced at him over my shoulder and realized I was smiling. It was a humorless, bitter sort of smile.
Stand up, Molly had told me. Yeah. I think maybe I needed to do that.
“Sure, Dominic. We can talk.”
Dominic’s gaze slid down to my mouth, then away.
I guess the smile wasn’t a pleasant one because he didn’t smile back. That was fine. I hadn't meant it to be nice. I went back to gazing out over the city.
I had to know where I stood. Where we stood and I had to know soon.
This was just too hard. Either we had something or we didn’t, but if we did…
“I’m sorry about what my mother said, how she acted,” Dominic said quietly, his voice oddly formal, almost strained.
Leaning my head against the pane of glass, I whispered softly, “You’re sorry…for your mother.”
The silence that followed was awful.
When he finally spoke, it was in that same stiff, formal voice and the sound of it made me flinch. “I realize, looking back, that I should have said something. I didn’t. I’m sorry for that.”
“Are you?” I asked quietly.
When he didn’t say anything, I turned and looked at him.
He had turned away. His back was rigid, his shoulders a hard, solid line. He looked so unapproachable.
That was fine. Just then, I didn’t think I could have handled the idea of approaching him anyway.
I think it’s time to figure out just where I stand. The longer I stared at him, the more I realized I needed to know. “Do we have anything here?”
It was a simple enough question, I thought. I didn't know a whole lot about guys, but I did know that guys didn't like to talk about emotions and the general idea of relationships could make a guy gun shy. But the decent ones would man up and deal, right? Especially after something like what had happened.
I'd thought Dominic was one of the decent ones. I was starting to believe I'd been wrong.
He turned and looked at me, his gaze remote. “Of course we do. I think we’ve covered everything we need to cover, Aleena. I am sorry for what happened Friday. I assure you it won’t happen again.”
He was almost to the door when I spoke. I couldn’t see him through the tears in my eyes and I silently cursed myself for not being able to do this without sounding like a simpering ex.
“Damn right it won’t.” I blinked away the tears and managed to at least keep my voice steady. “I quit, Mr. Snow. I’ll work out the time needed for you to find a new assistant, but this arrangement clearly isn't working.”
I started for my bedroom. I needed to get as far away from him as I could. Antarctica sounded ideal.
Before I could open the door, one hand closed around the doorknob. He grabbed my arm with the other hand and spun me around.
“What?” he demanded. There was more emotion in his face than I’d seen all evening. No, this was the most emotion I’d seen in him since that monstrous woman he called his mother had walked in on us.
“You heard me. This isn’t working for me.” Jutting my chin up, I repeated what I’d said only moments ago. “I quit.”
Dominic’s mouth came down on mine.
I locked my jaw when his tongue stroked across my lips, demanding entrance. Despite the heat that twined and stroked through me, I refused to give in. After a few moments, he lifted his head.
“Why?” He remained tantalizingly close. Tormenting close. It was enough to drive me out of my mind.
“Are you serious?” I shoved him away. I had both regret and relief when he went.
Stepping aside, I darted past him and strode out of my apartment, toward the stairs. I’d just leave if I had to. If he touched me again, I’d probably give in, and I couldn't do that.
“I already told you I was sorry!” he shouted.
I stopped at the top of the stairs and turned around to face him. My temper was rising and I was tired of keeping it down. “And then when I asked if we had anything going on, you stiffened up like I’d shoved a hot poker up your ass!”
His reaction to that was…off.
He went white. So pale, like all of the blood had been drained. He turned away so I couldn't see his face. Bracing his hands against the wall, he stared down. “What is it you want, Aleena? Help me out here.”
“Is it really that complicated?” My hands were shaking and I couldn't tell if it was only anger or if desire was mixed in there. “I can't do this back and forth thing, okay? I need to know where I stand with you. Do we have anything going on between us? Do you care about me? Because I don’t know. I’ve never done this before.”
His answer was so quiet, I wasn’t entirely sure I’d heard him right.
“Neither have I.”
“What?” Confusion took the edge off my anger.
He lifted his head and stared at me, eyes glittering. “Neither have I.”
“But…” I flicked a hand, waving the idea off. I didn't want to stop being angry. I needed it to keep from being hurt again. “Dominic, you’ve been around the block more times than a marathon runner.”
“No.” His lip curled, an almost ironic, dismissive sort of sneer. “I’ve had sex. I’ve had sexual relationships and I’ve had lovers and I’ve escorted women to and from social events. None of them have ever gone as far as to ask me if I cared about them. And they wouldn’t have bothered because they knew the answer would be no.”
Something cold went through me, extinguishing the anger and leaving...nothing. My gaze fell away from his and I started to back up. I'd wanted an answer and I'd gotten one.
Before I could get to the steps, he was there. His hands came up and caught my arms. “But you aren’t…” An unfamiliar look drifted across his face. He looked hesitant, uncertain even.
Dominic Snow never looked uncertain.
“I don’t do relationships, Aleena. It’s an ironic twist that I decided to play around with a matchmaking company. Love is all well and good for others, but I don’t believe in it for myself.” Then he lifted a hand and pushed it into my hair. “I’ve never even wanted to care about a woman…until you came along.”
The look he gave me left me feeling stripped bare and if it wasn’t for the massive pain I felt inside, I might have…well, I don’t know what I might have done. Because that agonizing emptiness inside was about to devour me. It was about ready to just eat me alive and I couldn’t think past it.
“You care,” I said, my voice hitching. Dammit. “Or you think you care.”
“Aleena…”
I tugged his hand away and stepped to the side to put some distance between us. “Why are you apologizing to me, Dominic?”
He stood there, staring at me, confusion on his face. Finally, he shoved a hand through his hair. It tumbled right back into place. The unkempt hair and the tight set of his jaw gave him a slightly edgy look, a slightly wild look, a slightly wicked look. I curled my fingers into fists
and rested them behind me. I wanted to reach for him. So bad.
“I already told you. Look…” He stopped and sighed. “My mother has this class issue. I hate it, but I can’t change her. I should have said something and I didn’t. I’m sorry.”
“Oh…your mother has a lot more problems than issues with class,” I said and this time, I didn’t hold back the scorn, or the anger I felt. It burned away some of the pain, or at least hid it.
Dominic’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Aleena, half the people I know—no, more than that—tend to have class issues. I don’t like it, but it’s not like I’m friends with them. I don’t hang out with them. I’m not looking for friendship or anything with them. It’s just how they are.”
“How they are.” I nodded. “And let me explain just how they are. If they're anything like your mother, they're racist, narrow-minded elitist assholes.”
Dominic jerked his head back as if I’d slapped him. “She’s not—”
I took a step forward, letting the little spark inside me burst into a full-fledged flame. “Don’t you dare tell me she’s not racist! What the hell? You think she was calling me exotic because I’m not rich?”
“Aleena…” He opened his mouth, closed it. I could see in his eyes that he knew.
“You’ve never been in my shoes. You can’t know what it's like.” I curled my hands into fists so he couldn't see them shaking. “Now I’m pretty sure if I was some little blond-haired, blue-eyed white girl and she walked in on us, she might have been plenty disgusted, but it goes a lot deeper than that. Because I’m not. She saw me, saw a little colored girl…she saw your hired help and she totally dismissed me as a person. I’m not a person to her.”
Tears burned my eyes now and I swiped them away as they fell. “And you just sat there.”
He reached for me.
I held up a hand. “Don’t. I can’t—” My voice broke and I just shook my head.
The silence that fell was horrible. My heart felt like it was going to split in two as I struggled to get the tears under control. I didn’t want to break in front of him. I wouldn’t break in front of him. After a few moments, I managed to stop the flood and I stared at him. He looked…lost.
“Why did you just sit there?” I asked. “I told you about what had happened to me before. You knew how much her words would hurt me and you just sat there.”
Dominic looked around and finally, he just slid down to the floor. It was…incongruous. I did the same thing, taking up the space on the wall opposite him, and staring at his pale face.
“I’m adopted,” he said softly.
Those were the last two words I expected him to start this conversation off with. I said nothing, just stared and waited for him to make sense.
“I…” He drove his head back against the wall, hard. Hard enough to hurt, I’d think, but he didn’t even blink. “My mother and I haven’t had a good—or easy—relationship in…well. Ever. I know she loves me, but things were never easy. I think she thought she’d be getting this sweet, quiet, gentle little doll she could dress up in doll clothes and parade around in front of her friends and then she could put me back in a box until it was time for the next occasion to show me off.”
The words weren't bitter, just matter-of-fact.
“I don’t know who my birth mother is. For all I know, she was…” He sneered now, infusing the words with the patrician tones I didn't doubt he'd heard from his mother. “Some ‘low-class tramp of a girl’.” He angled his head to the side. “That wasn't the first time she’d walked in on me with a woman, Aleena. And that phrase? That was what she said to a girl I’d brought home with me when I was a teenager. She was a nice girl. I…I think I could have liked her. But she ran out crying after that and never talked to me again.”
“It sounds like your mother enjoys belittling people,” I said.
“She does.” Dominic’s mouth tightened. “I love her, but I don’t really like her.”
With a start, I realized that I felt sorry for him. Sorry for this rich, privileged man who'd grown up with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. Folding my hands in my lap, I thought back over my childhood and realized that maybe it hadn’t been as rough as I’d thought. Yeah, I’d often been ostracized—I'd been the outsider, but some had been through choice. I’d been smart and not like the flirty, giggly girls who cared about clothes and gossip. And I'd been the girl who was never quite white enough or never quite black enough to be accepted into either social circle.
But I had parents who loved me and worked hard to make a good life for me. No matter how bad things had gotten at school, I'd always known that I had a refuge at home.
“She didn’t know how to handle me and my dad…” Dominic shrugged. “He just ignored me. Neither of them knew what to do with a kid, so I…well. I sort of ran wild. I ran really wild. It took...some things to happen for me to get my act together and there are still a lot of issues between me and my mom. I don’t even talk to my dad, so she's all I have. But when she starts talking about class...”
“You think of your birth mother,” I said, understanding dawning.
His eyes came to mine.
“Does she know anything about your birth mother?”
“I’ve never outright asked.” Dominic jerked a shoulder in a shrug. “I…” He abruptly shot to his feet, the motion so sudden, it caught me off guard. “When I say there are problems between my mother and I, I mean serious problems. She uses guilt like a personal accessory and half the time, I just maintain the status quo. It’s easier. I never…”
It was my turn to come to my feet and he turned to me.
“When you’ve never been on the receiving end, Dominic, it’s probably pretty easy to overlook something like racism—especially the casual kind.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “It’s not like she stood there and shrieked at you about daring to sleep with a black girl. Subtle racism though…it’s just as real. It’s just as ugly.”
“It won’t happen again,” he said, his voice rough and tight.
I shook my head. “It will. You already said, you can’t change how she thinks and you know you can’t change how she acts. But the next time she does it…I won’t just sit there. And—”
He cut me off, his hands cupping my face while one thumb pressed to my mouth.
“I won’t just sit there either,” he promised. “I won't let her do that again.”
Chapter 6
Aleena
Still staring at him, I held my breath until his thumb slid over my lower lip, then fell away.
I licked my lips, tasting him there.
His gaze dropped to my mouth. But he took a step back.
Without even thinking, I moved closer.
“I…” I took a deep breath. “Okay, so you said you haven't done relationships. If that's what this is, what it's going to be, I think we just had what probably counts as our first fight, followed by our first make-up.” My stomach twisted, but I forced myself to go forward. Dominic may have been the dominant one when it came to sex, but it was clear, he was going to need a push here. “Now this is where—and I could be wrong—but I think this is where we are supposed to have make-up sex.”
Dominic’s eyes darkened. “Is that a fact?” His voice was low, rough.
I nodded, my face heating as he watched me.
“Just what is make-up sex? What does it entail?”
I shrugged. “I think that’s up to us and what we want. You’ve pretty much made it clear you’re not the hearts and flowers sort of guy, so…”
He reached towards me, wrapping his large hands around my wrists.
“No. I don’t do hearts and flowers,” he said.
He backed me up against the wall and dragged my hands up, held them there. Then he leaned in and kissed me, a hot, open-mouthed kiss that left me sighing in dazed hunger when he finally shifted his attention to my jaw.
“I could give you hearts and flowers though,” he said into my ear. “Is that what you want?�
�
“I just want you.” The confession was barely a whisper.
For a brief moment, he didn't move and I wondered if he'd heard me.
Then he leaned back and stared at me. “Leave your hands up,” he said.
I did, although they slid down some without the support from his.
He cocked a brow, but said nothing, reaching for the big, fuzzy buttons that held my sweater closed. I’d changed after I came home, needing something familiar to comfort me. My favorite sweater and leggings had seemed to fit the bill.
He opened the sweater, but didn’t remove it. It hung open down my torso as he freed the front catch on my bra. “I think I like this style of bra on you,” he said as he slid one hand up to cup my breast, pausing to pluck at my nipple.
I gasped when he gave a particularly hard tug that sent jolts of heat arrowing down to my pussy. How did he know exactly what I needed?
He continued on his path after that, shoving his hands into my leggings and panties, shoving them down, but not completely stripping them away. When I was half naked, he backed away and just stared at me.
I felt terribly exposed, somehow more naked than if he had stripped me completely.
He slid a hand down the midline of my body, from my sternum to my navel and on down until he could slide the tip of his fingers through the thin curls gathered between my thighs. I whimpered and shoved myself forward, seeking out his touch.
He immediately stopped.
“I didn’t tell you that you could move.” There was no doubting that tone.
Anticipation flooded me and he tugged me off the wall.
“Kneel, Aleena.”
I went to my knees, uncertain what to do with my hands, but I figured it out a moment later.
He used the flat of his hand between my shoulder blades and nudged me forward until I was on my hands and knees, then kept on pushing until my face was on the ground, my ass up in the air.
I didn’t even have time to brace myself before he spanked me.
It was hard and almost too painful, but heat still exploded through me. I cried out, squeezing my eyes closed.
He did it again and again and then I felt him plunging two fingers inside me.
