Chapter 61 MONSTER OF A MAN
Ava's POV
The man wasn't dead.
Dominic said it before I could ask, flat and certain, "he's not dead, he's sedated, something put in his system that isn't natural," and he was already pulling me down the road before I could process it, his hand locked around mine, moving fast.
We were two minutes from the farmhouse when the footsteps came behind us on the dark road and Dominic stopped and turned and I counted at least four shapes coming out of the dark before he stepped in front of me and told me without words to stay back.
I stayed back.
What happened next was fast and violent and I pressed myself against the hedgerow and watched Dominic move through them like they were nothing, not like a man fighting, like something else entirely, something that had been pretending to be a man and had stopped pretending, and when it was over he turned around and he was covered in blood and his eyes were completely gold and I felt the fear hit me before I could stop it, cold and real, sitting right in the center of my chest.
He saw it in my face and crossed to me slowly and I didn't back away and he touched my jaw and said "still me," and I said "I know" and kissed him because my body needed to confirm he was real and solid and here.
He kissed me back hard and his hands shoved my jacket off my shoulders and I let it fall and he pushed me back against the hedgerow and his mouth went to my throat and I grabbed his hair and pulled.
"Fuck," I breathed.
"Tell me you're mine," he said against my neck, his hands already at my jeans, rough and certain, not asking.
"I'm yours," I said.
He pushed inside me without warning and I gasped so loud it split the quiet countryside and he groaned low against my ear and started moving immediately, deep and hard, no warmup, no slowness, just taking what was his and I took everything he gave and asked for more with my hips and my nails and my mouth on his jaw.
"Say it again," he said, his voice that other voice, the one without human edges, his hand gripping my thigh and pulling it higher, going deeper, "tell me who you belong to."
"You," I said, breathless, "Dominic, fuck, don't stop."
"Louder," he said, driving harder.
"You, it's you, I'm yours, please.” and I came apart on that dark road with the countryside silent around us and his name tearing out of me and he followed seconds after with his face buried in my neck and both arms crushing me to him.
We fixed our clothes in silence and walked back and his hand held mine the whole way.
My father was awake when we got in and took one look at Dominic and stood up and Dominic walked past him without stopping and my father looked at me and I shook my head because I had nothing for him right now.
Elias was at the kitchen table with Adrian and nobody asked questions, just Elias getting something to clean up with and Adrian pouring water and pushing a glass toward me and I drank it standing up.
"First light we move," Elias said and everyone agreed and eventually people drifted back to sleep or at least to pretending.
I went to the bedroom and Dominic came in after me and I sat on the edge of the bed and he came and stood in front of me and looked down at me and I looked up at him and the air between us was still charged from the road, from the fight and what came after, and I could feel it sitting between us warm and alive.
"Come here," he said and I went.
\---
We left at dawn in two cars and I was in the back of the first one with Dominic driving and Adrian in the passenger seat and the countryside going grey and green outside the windows and my body still loose from the night before in the best possible way.
About forty minutes out of the city Dominic's hand came back over the center console and found my knee and I looked at the back of his head and then at Adrian who was looking out his window at nothing and I thought about what I was about to do and did it anyway.
I took Dominic's hand and moved it up my thigh, slowly, and I heard his breathing change.
He didn't move his hand back.
I shifted forward on the seat and his fingers slid higher and Adrian was still looking out his window with the very deliberate energy of a man who has decided he is not present in this car right now, and I bit my lip to keep quiet as Dominic's hand pushed under the waist of my leggings.
"Eyes on the road," I said quietly, just to him, and I heard the breath he let out.
His fingers found me and I was already wet and he made a low sound that he kept very quiet and Adrian turned up the radio which was the most professional thing I'd ever witnessed.
Dominic worked me slowly with two fingers, deep and curling, his eyes forward, jaw tight, completely controlled on the outside while his hand under my leggings was anything but, and I pressed my thighs around his wrist and gripped the door handle and tried to keep my breathing even and failed completely.
"You're so wet," he said, barely audible, just for me.
"Shut up," I breathed back, which made him curl his fingers and press his thumb down at the same time and I had to turn my face into the seat back and bite the fabric to keep from making a sound that would have made even Adrian abandon his diplomatic deafness.
I came quietly, shaking, my face pressed to the headrest, and Dominic's hand stilled and then withdrew and he brought his fingers to his mouth without taking his eyes off the road and I watched him do it in the rearview mirror and felt my whole body clench all over again.
Adrian changed the radio station.
Nobody said a word.
We arrived at the new location twenty minutes later and got out of the car and Elias's car pulled in behind us and my father got out and stretched and looked around and I stood there on shaky legs in the morning air and Dominic came around the car and stood next to me and his mouth came to my ear.
"Tonight," he said, just that one word, and walked toward the house.
I stood there for a second and then followed and tried to look like a normal person who had not just come apart silently in a moving vehicle while Adrian professionally pretended to be somewhere else.
The new location was a cottage on a private estate, two floors, old stone walls, properly hidden and according to my father completely off any record that the hunters had access to and so far Elias hadn't found a reason to say he was wrong about that so we were treating it as true.
That night everyone ate at the big kitchen table and it was almost normal, just people eating and talking low about what came next, and I sat between Dominic and Elias and the contrast between them was something I was still getting used to, Dominic taking up space the way he always did, certain and magnetic, Elias quieter, watchful, that different pull coming off him that I now understood wasn't about him at all.
Under the table Dominic's hand found my thigh and stayed there, warm and heavy, not moving, just present, and I kept eating and talking and felt it the whole time like a brand.
Then his fingers started moving.
I set my fork down very carefully.
"You okay?" Elias said, looking at me.
"Fine," I said, picking my fork back up, "just tired."
Dominic's fingers pushed the fabric of my leggings between my thighs and pressed and I took a drink of water and focused very hard on what Adrian was saying about exit routes and nodded at appropriate intervals while Dominic's hand moved slow and deliberate under the table and I pressed my thighs together trying to get more friction and less friction simultaneously.
"Ava what do you think," my father said from across the table and I looked at him.
"I think Adrian's right," I said, which was safe because Adrian was always approximately right, and my father nodded and went back to the conversation and Dominic's thumb pressed down and I gripped the edge of the table with one hand under the pretense of leaning forward and dug my nails into the wood.
He kept me there for ten full minutes, right at the edge, not giving me enough to finish, just keeping me wound so tight I could barely think, and by the time everyone started clearing plates I was genuinely furious at him and he knew it and was absolutely fine with that.
I helped carry plates to the kitchen and the moment I put them down he was behind me, his mouth at my ear, his body pressing mine into the counter.
"Bedroom," he said, "now."
"You did that on purpose," I said.
"Obviously," he said.
I went upstairs.
He came up thirty seconds later and closed the door and I turned around and he crossed the room and kissed me before I could say anything else and I forgot what I was going to say, his hands already pulling at my clothes and mine at his, both of us past patience entirely.
He picked me up and put me on the bed and came over me and looked down at me and said, "you have no idea what you do to me," and I said "show me" and he did, thoroughly and at length, his mouth everywhere, his hands demanding, his voice in my ear saying things that made my face heat and my back arch simultaneously, "you're so fucking perfect, take it, that's it, good girl, tell me how it feels,"
"So good," I managed, "Dominic, please, harder,"
"Please what," he said, slowing deliberately.
"Please daddy," I said, and something in him snapped entirely.
He went harder and I took everything and begged for more and he gave it and the old stone cottage walls were thick enough that it didn't matter how loud I was and I was very loud and so was he and when we finally finished we lay in the dark completely wrecked and I stared at the ceiling and laughed, actually laughed, and he turned his head to look at me.
"What," he said.
"Nothing," I said, "I just forgot for a minute that anything else existed."
He reached over and pulled me against him and I settled into his side and the mark on my shoulder was warm and quiet and content and outside the window the English countryside was dark and still.
Downstairs a door closed.
Then another.
Then my father's voice, sharp and urgent, and Elias answering, and both of them suddenly very loud.
Dominic was off the bed before I'd fully sat up and at the door and I grabbed my clothes and followed and we came downstairs to find my father and Elias facing each other in the hallway and between them a woman I had never seen before, standing completely still, looking up at the stairs at me with a smile that didn't touch her eyes.
"You must be Ava," she said, calm and unhurried, like she'd walked into her own house, "I've been looking for you for a very long time," and then her eyes moved past me to Dominic and something in her expression shifted, "and you," she said quietly, "you I've been looking for even longer.”