Chapter 63 AWAKENING
Dominic's POV
Sera talked for a long time and I listened to every word and processed maybe half of it because the other half of my attention was on Ava sitting across the table with her hands wrapped around a mug and her eyes doing that thing they did when she was taking in more than she was showing.
She was wearing the dress from the shop and I knew what had happened in that shop because I could read Adrian's face like a book I'd written myself and I'd seen the way he walked back in behind her and the way she didn't look at me immediately and I had made a decision in that hallway to say nothing because we were past the point where I had the luxury of jealousy and also because whatever Ava needed to get through this I was not going to be the one to take it from her.
But I was still aware of it, sitting quiet and hot in my chest the whole evening.
Sera said something about Ava's mother and Ava went very still and I watched her absorb it and keep her face steady and felt something in my chest pull tight because she did that constantly, took enormous things and held them upright through sheer will, and most people would never know what it cost her.
After Sera finished and the room started moving again, people getting up, my father taking his plate to the sink, Adrian and Elias going to the other room to look at maps, I watched Ava get up and go upstairs and I gave it two minutes and followed.
She was in the bathroom, water running, her hands braced on the sink and her head down, and I came in and closed the door behind me and she looked up at my reflection in the mirror.
"I'm okay," she said.
"I know," I said, which was true, she was okay, she was also exhausted and carrying too much and I hadn't touched her properly since the road last night and I was done waiting.
I crossed to her and turned her around and she looked up at me and I kissed her before she could say anything else and she made a small sound against my mouth and kissed me back and her hands grabbed my shirt and I walked her backward the two steps to the wall and pressed her into it and the kiss went from gentle to not gentle very quickly.
"Dominic," she said against my mouth.
"What," I said, not stopping, my mouth moving to her jaw and down her neck.
"Everyone is downstairs," she said, but her head was already tipping back to give me better access so I didn't take the objection seriously.
"Door's closed," I said against her throat, my hands finding the buttons of her dress, the same ones someone else had undone earlier and I pushed that thought down hard and focused on her skin as the fabric fell open.
She looked up at me and her eyes were dark and I looked back at her and pushed the dress off her shoulders and let it pool at her feet and she stood in the small bathroom in just her underwear and the mark on her shoulder glowing faintly and I looked at her the way I always looked at her, like she was the only thing worth looking at in any room, because she was.
"You're staring," she said.
"I know," I said and kissed her again, deep and slow, my hands moving over her, relearning every inch because I needed to, needed to remind myself and her both that whatever else was happening in this house she was mine and I was hers and nothing complicated that.
I unclasped her bra and dropped it and pulled back to look at her and she let me look this time without covering herself, just stood there and held my gaze and the confidence in that made me want to ruin her completely.
I bent my head and took her nipple into my mouth and she gasped and her hands flew to my hair, fingers tightening immediately, and I took my time there, tongue rolling slow, teeth grazing just enough, and she was already breathing in short sharp bursts and saying my name very quietly in a way that was going to make staying quiet very difficult for both of us.
"Shh," I said against her skin.
"Then stop doing that," she breathed back.
I did it again and she bit down on her own fist and I smiled against her and moved to the other one and gave it the same attention and her knees buckled slightly and I caught her hips and held her up and kept going until she was shaking.
I kissed back up her chest to her throat and then her mouth and she kissed me back hard, both hands pulling at my shirt, getting it untucked, her hands finding the skin of my back underneath and pressing flat there and I felt her touch on the symbols and made a sound I didn't mean to make into her mouth.
She knew what that did to me and she did it deliberately, her fingers tracing the lines slowly, and I pressed her harder into the wall and kissed her deeper and she arched into me and I could feel how much she wanted me even through the layers still between us.
My hand slid down her stomach and under the waistband of her underwear and she broke the kiss and dropped her head back against the wall with her eyes closed and I watched her face while my fingers found her and felt how ready she already was and groaned quietly.
"Fuck," I said very quietly.
"Yes," she said, which wasn't what I meant but also was.
I worked her slowly with my fingers, watching every expression that moved across her face, learning what made her breath catch and what made her grab for me and what made her say my name in that specific way that I felt in my spine, and she was trying so hard to be quiet and failing beautifully, little sounds escaping that she immediately tried to swallow back.
"Daddy," she said, barely a whisper, and I closed my eyes for a second because of what that word did to me.
"Say it again," I said against her ear.
"Daddy, please," she said, her hips moving against my hand, chasing it, "please I need,"
"Tell me what you need," I said, curling my fingers and watching her gasp.
"More," she managed, "inside me, please, now,"
I pushed two fingers in deep and her mouth opened and no sound came out and I pressed my free hand over her mouth gently and she grabbed my wrist and held it there herself while I worked her and her whole body shook against the bathroom wall, her muffled sounds going into my palm, her eyes squeezed shut and then flying open to look at me and the eye contact undid something in me completely.
I kept going until she was right at the edge and trembling and then I said very quietly against her ear, "come for me, right now, be quiet about it," and she shattered, her whole body clenching, her sounds completely swallowed by my hand, her nails digging into my wrist hard enough to leave marks that I would absolutely not mind having.
I held her through all of it, my hand gentling, stroking her slowly as the waves moved through her, her forehead dropping to my shoulder and her breathing ragged and warm against my neck.
When she finally stilled she lifted her head and looked at me and her eyes were completely wrecked in the best possible way.
"Your turn," she said, reaching for my belt.
I caught her hands and held them.
"Tonight," I said, "when everyone is asleep and I don't have to be quiet about it."
She looked at me and then laughed, just quietly, her head falling back against the wall and something about that laugh, real and unguarded, hit me harder than anything else had all day.
I helped her back into her dress and fixed her hair and she fixed mine and we looked at each other in the mirror for a moment, both slightly flushed and trying to look like two people who had just gone upstairs for completely innocent reasons.
"Ready," she said.
"Ready," I said.
We went back downstairs and Adrian looked at us from across the room and said nothing and Elias didn't look up from the map and my father very deliberately kept his eyes on his tea and I sat down next to Ava at the table and her knee pressed against mine and stayed there.
Sera looked up from the corner where she'd been sitting quietly through all of it and said, "are you ready to talk about what comes next," and her voice was the same calm it always was.
I looked at her and said, "tell me about Ava's mother, where she is and who has her," and Sera looked at me for a long moment and then said, "that's the thing, nobody has her, she came on her own, she walked out of that hospital in New York three days ago fully healed and the doctors have no explanation for it," and the table went completely silent.
I looked at Ava and Ava looked at me and I watched the thing that moved across her face, the hope and the fear arriving at exactly the same moment.
"Fully healed," Ava said slowly.
"Fully," Sera said, "and she's been asking for you, she knows where you are and she's been asking for you, which means either someone told her or," she paused and looked at the mark on Ava's shoulder, "the bond is further along than any of us realized.”