Chapter 55 CAUGHT BETWEEN
Dominic's POV
I knew before she said anything.
The moment she walked back into that suite I felt it, something off, something that didn't belong, and I kept my face still while my whole body went rigid trying to place it because I knew her scent by now the way I knew my own name and something foreign was sitting on top of it.
I didn't push it that night and I didn't sleep either, just lay there in the dark with her breathing steady against my chest and ran through every possibility until morning came and I got up and went to my meetings and sat across from lawyers and court officials and answered questions on autopilot while the other half of my mind was somewhere else entirely.
I came back early.
She wasn't in the suite and that was the first thing, the empty rooms and her jacket gone, and I stood in the middle of the sitting room and breathed and followed the thread of the bond and it led me out of the hotel and through three streets to a café on a corner and through the glass I could see her sitting across from Elias.
I stood outside for a moment and watched.
I knew who he was, I had known since he turned up in the suite the first night, I knew exactly what Elias was and what he wanted and the fact that he was sitting across from Ava in a café telling her things while she leaned forward and listened with those wide eyes made something cold and dangerous move through me that I hadn't felt in a very long time.
I should have gone in.
I didn't, I stood on the pavement and watched them through the glass and told myself I was giving her space, giving her the truth from a source she trusted, which was the charitable version of what I was doing, the real version being that if I walked in there right now I would do something that couldn't be taken back.
Then Elias stood when she stood and he tucked her hair behind her ear and kissed her.
It lasted three seconds and she kissed him back and I counted every one of those seconds standing on a London pavement with my hands in fists and something that was not human trying very hard to come through the surface.
She pulled back and they looked at each other and she left and I watched her walk up the street and turn the corner and I stood there for another full minute before I trusted myself to move.
When I finally walked into the suite she was in the bathroom and I could hear the water running and I put my jacket down and loosened my tie and breathed and told myself to be calm, to be human about this, to not do what every instinct I had was screaming at me to do.
She came out and looked at me and said how were the meetings and I said long and came toward her and put my hands on her waist and felt her lean into it automatically the way she always did and underneath the guilt I could feel how much she wanted me and those two things sat side by side in a way that made it worse somehow, not better.
I kissed her because I needed to and she kissed me back and her hands found my shirt and pulled it loose and when she slid her hands up my back and traced the symbols I made a sound I couldn't help because nobody touched those, nobody ever touched those, and with her it felt like being seen all the way down.
I walked her backward toward the window and she went willingly and I turned her so her back was to my chest and London spread out in front of us forty floors down and I put my mouth to her ear.
"Anyone across those buildings can see straight in," I said, my hands moving to her jeans slowly.
"I know," she said and her voice was already unsteady which did things to my control that I couldn't fully account for.
I pushed her jeans down and slid my hand between her thighs from behind and she was already wet and I closed my eyes for a second because of course she was, the bond between us meant her body responded to my proximity before her mind even caught up, and whatever she felt with Elias today her body still belonged to this.
To me.
"Already," I said against her ear.
"Dominic," she said, which was not an answer and was also all the answer I needed.
I worked her slowly with my fingers, deliberately slow, one finger and then two, curling them while my thumb found her clit and pressed slow circles and she dropped her head back against my shoulder and her hands went flat against the cold glass and she was breathing in short sharp gasps that I felt in my chest.
"Don't stop," she said.
I stopped.
She made a sound of pure frustration and tried to turn around and I held her in place.
"Dominic—"
"Tell me who you were with today," I said quietly, my hand completely still between her thighs.
She went tense.
"Coffee," she said, "I told you."
"Tell me who you were with," I said again, not raising my voice, just holding her there with my hand exactly where it was, not moving, waiting.
She was quiet for a moment and I could feel her thinking and then she said, "Elias."
"And?"
Another pause. "He kissed me."
"And you let him," I said.
"Yes," she said and her voice was small but she didn't try to make it into nothing and I respected that even through the cold fury sitting in my chest.
I turned her around then and she looked up at me with those hazel eyes and I could see everything in them, the guilt and the want and the confusion and underneath all of it the pull that had been there since the first night in Club Obsidian that neither of us could explain or escape.
"Did you want him to," I said.
She held my gaze. "I don't know."
Honest, even when it cost her, that was Ava, and I could not be angry at honesty even when it made me want to break something.
I kissed her hard and she kissed me back immediately, no hesitation, her hands grabbing my shirt, and I walked her to the bed and pushed her down onto it and stood over her and she looked up at me and didn't look away.
I pulled my shirt off and her eyes moved over me the way they always did and I reached down and pulled her top over her head and unclasped her bra and she was underneath me before either of us said another word.
I took my time with her, not gentle exactly, but deliberate, my mouth on her throat and her collarbone and lower, taking each nipple between my teeth until she arched up and grabbed my hair, her thighs pressing against my sides, trying to pull me where she wanted me.
"Please," she said.
I moved lower, my mouth trailing down her stomach, and she was already squirming before I even got there, and when my tongue finally found her clit she said my name so loud it bounced off the walls and her whole body lifted off the bed.
I kept her there for a long time, taking her right to the edge and pulling back twice, both times she grabbed my hair and said things she'd probably deny later, before I finally let her come and she fell apart completely, her thighs locked around my head and my name in her mouth over and over like a prayer.
I moved up her body and pushed inside her slowly and she was still shaking from the orgasm and the sound she made when I filled her hit me somewhere I couldn't name, deep and permanent, and I stayed still for a moment just looking at her face.
"Look at me," I said.
Her eyes opened and met mine.
I started to move, slow at first, deep, watching her face the entire time, and she held my gaze and that was the thing that undid me more than any of it, that she could look at me and not look away, knowing what I was, knowing everything, and still be here.
I went harder and she matched me, her nails in my back and her legs wrapped around me pulling me deeper, both of us past talking, just bodies and breath and that thing between us that had no clean name.
She came again before I did and this time I followed right after her, my face buried in her neck, her name the only thing in my head.
We lay there for a long time not speaking and I had her pulled against my chest and my hand in her hair and I was thinking about Elias's mouth on hers and the pull she said she'd felt and what that meant, what it actually meant, because if she felt the same pull with him that she felt with me then something was wrong, something that went deeper than jealousy.
I pressed my face into her hair and breathed and tried to think past the possessiveness to the thing underneath it.
And then it landed.
The pull she felt with Elias wasn't attraction.
It was the same bond.
I sat up slowly and she made a sleepy questioning sound and I looked down at her and felt the bottom drop out of something.
"Ava," I said carefully, "what did Elias tell you today, exactly, about your mother."
She opened her eyes properly and looked at my face and whatever she saw there made her sit up too.
"That the man she was bonding with was someone he was trying to protect," she said slowly, "why?"
I looked at her and the pieces were arranging themselves into a shape I did not want to look at directly and I said, very quietly, "because I think Elias isn't just someone who knew your mother," and I watched her face while she processed that.
"What do you mean," she said.
"I mean," I said slowly, "I think Elias is the one she was bonding with."