First time his, p.18
First Time His, page 18
“Are you just going to stand there?” She closed the laptop.
I wandered over to the bed, dropped into the chair. It was set up like a hospital; maybe Sebastian had pulled it over, or her mom.
“Hey,” she said, smiling. She still looked cute as all hell even with that bandage wrapped around her skull. “Are you going to say anything, Dom?” The smile faltered and dropped. Her emerald-greens widened for a second. “What is it?”
I sighed. It had been so easy rehearsing this, thinking of what I’d say. But sitting in front of her, all I could muster was, “It’s everything, Em.”
She giggled, though I was forced. “That’s a little vague, isn’t it?”
“I suppose it is,” I muttered. I sat up straighter and sucked in a deep-bellied breath. “I’m here to say goodbye.”
“What?” she whispered. Her eyes flitted over me, up and down, as though she was checking to make sure I was the same Dom she knew, not some imposter. “What are you talking about? Say goodbye? Where are you going?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Nowhere, maybe. But that’s not the point. It’s not where I’m going. We could both stay in the city for the rest of our lives, but you shouldn’t be anywhere near me.”
Tears sprung into her eyes, clung to her eyelashes. I had to turn away. Rehearsing this in my mind, I had never imagined the tears. “You’re not making any sense!” she snapped.
“Not making any sense?” I shook my head. “Em, this is the only thing that makes any fucking sense. Look at your head. Look at you. Look what I did. We can’t be together—be friends—be whatever the hell we are after this. You know we can’t.”
“I don’t know that!” she hissed. She slammed her laptop on the bedside table and reached across to me.
I leaned back out of her reach. “Em, don’t.”
“I don’t know that!” she snapped again. “It was an accident, Dom. You’re going to throw everything away over an accident?”
“Throw what away?” I snarled. “Tell me that. I’m nothing to you, Em. Or I shouldn’t be a damn thing to you.”
I leapt to my feet and paced over to the window. Looking into her eyes was too difficult. There was too much Em in there. And myself reflected in them, but I couldn’t be that man—boy—any longer. I couldn’t sit around painting Em, or talking about the future, or flirting with her, or any of that kid shit. I had to be hard. If I was going to slaughter these motherfuckers one day, I had to make myself cold.
But her voice tugged at me. “Dom.”
I turned the other way so that my gaze didn’t pass across her and headed for the door. My heart beat like some wild sprinting animal in my chest, my chest expanding and closing like a great bellows. Everything ached; nothing felt right. I wanted to run out of there as fast as my feet could carry me, but at the same time climb into bed with Em and wrap my arms around her, hold her close, whisper loving words in her ear.
“Dom!” she called when I grabbed the doorknob. “If you walk out like this, I’ll never forgive you!” Rustling sheets. Her feet padded softly against the floor. Her hand came to rest on my shoulder. So soft, so small, the sort of hand a man could clutch forever, trace the lines, make a world of them alone. “You won’t even look at me?”
I swallowed. Just walk out, I urged myself. Just run. Just get the fuck out of here. Yet something willed me to turn. She tilted her head at me, her emerald-greens like knives slicing into me. I had to remember who I was and who I had to become. I couldn’t let her soften me.
“Dom,” she whispered. “Please.”
I grabbed her hand. I would move it from my shoulder. But I didn’t do that. I interlocked my fingers with hers and squeezed tightly, holding on like she might float away. “Em,” I muttered, voice breaking. “Em, fucking hell. Why are you making this so hard?”
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” she said, stroking her fingers down my palm. “It was an accident. You didn’t mean to do it. Don’t be so hard on yourself. I know it’s difficult with Anthony and everything, I get that, I really do, but . . .”
“But nothing.” I tried to pull my hand away; she squeezed tighter. I had to pull with everything I had to get myself free. I took a step away, backed right against the door. “Maybe it was an accident. Fine. But that doesn’t change what happened. I can’t have you close, anyway, not if . . .” I trailed off. “I just can’t have you close.”
Not if . . . not if I was going to make myself into the man I needed to be. Not if I was going to avenge Anthony one day. Not if I was going to kill all the soft parts of myself. And Em was the softest part of all. Em was the only tender thing about me anymore. Everything else was rotten and fucked-up, but Em, the emerald-green tag-along, was soft and warm and perfect.
She ground her teeth. “Don’t I get a say in this? You get to just decide this for both of us? What if I say no?”
I half-laughed. I couldn’t help it. There was something excruciatingly beautiful about the way she pouted. “What?”
“You heard me. I refuse.”
I almost fell into her, opened my arms. It would be so easy to just hug her close and let her convince me. Perhaps I would kiss her and she would kiss me back, and then I’d lay her down in bed and peel her clothes from her and kiss her all over, kiss her until she got hot, and then hotter, and then when she was ablaze we would cum together.
But then I spotted it, the college leaflet on her bedside table. ‘The University of Maine: Achieve, Believe!’ She was leaving anyway.
I shook my head, though it broke something in me. Finally, I hardened. “You want me to stay, but you’re planning on leaving. What the fuck is that, Em? You just want me here until you go? And then what? Then you tell me I’m not good enough?”
Her mouth fell open as tears streamed down her cheeks. “Dom, please, just wait—”
But I was already out the door, pounding down the stairs.
“Dom!” Em cried from the top of the stairs.
I quickened my pace, launched myself out the door and near sprinted down the lane. I turned the corner and walked as fast as my feet would take me. I was breathing too hard. It was as though I could feel the spinning of the earth. I ducked into an alleyway and leaned against the wall, propping my hands on my knees. I was going to be sick.
But instead, tears sprung into my eyes and slid painfully down my cheeks, the first tears I had cried since Anthony’s murder. Then I made myself stand up and wipe the tears dry.
It was time to put boyish ways behind me. I pulled my cellphone out of my pocket and sent the text that would blow my world to hell once and for all.
It’s over, Em. You broke us.
Thirty
Dom
Present Day
I sat upstairs alone, scanning the darkness. Silvio had just called and told me he was working on some shit, wanted to know if I would be joining them. But how could I with Em here? In the nighttime darkness, moonlight and starlight shifted and became new shapes. Like the shape of Em as she fell back and cracked her head against the edge of that bed. And now what I feared would happen was happening. Em was in danger because of me.
I shifted my gun from hand to hand.
I had to stay hard, stay distant, stay firm. I growled out a laugh under my breath. But I’d already fucked up that when I fucked Em. What a Goddamn mess I’d made of everything.
Behind me, Em cleared her throat. “Dom,” she whispered.
“Yes,” I grunted.
“There’s something, I don’t know, it could be nothing. But I just remembered—” She stopped short.
“Just remembered what?” I didn’t turn toward her. I had to watch the street, had to stay sharp, and when I looked at Em it was all I could do not to throw myself at her, grab her, and pull her close.
She walked over to me but stopped at my back. “I’m late, Dom.”
My mouth dried. I tightened my grip on the gun to keep from dropping it. But we promised never to have kids, we made that pact long ago when we were kids; it was the one thing we agreed on, always, without any hesitation. What was happening? Was some mad god playing a trick on me?
“What?” I whispered.
“I need a pregnancy test. Just to check. But I’m guessing you don’t want me going to the store tonight?”
I growled out a laugh. “Is this a fucking joke?”
“A joke?” she hissed. She walked around me, stopping near the window. I grabbed her arm and shoved her softly aside.
“Don’t stand there. Jesus, you wanna make a target of yourself?”
“I need to know, Dom. I can’t just sit here not knowing. Hell, don’t you want to know as well?”
I ground my canines into my lower teeth. This night couldn’t get any crazier. “Yeah,” I admitted. “I guess I do want to know. But—”
“But what?”
But we promised each other, I didn’t say it, though I thought it. We would never make that mistake. Look what happened with our parents; look at our fucked-up childhoods. And now what? We want to do the same to some innocent baby?
“Dom?” she called. “Are you with me?”
“Yeah, yeah. So you need a test. Shit.” I took out my cell and called Silvio.
“Boss, we’re just—”
“Listen, I need you to get one of the boys to run an errand. It’s going to sound strange, but just do it, no questions asked, alright?”
“Sure, boss. Shit, whatever you need.”
Em paced up and down the room once I hung up, hand at her mouth, gnawing her fingernails almost down to stubs. “How long do you think he’ll be?”
“I don’t know, Em. Not too long, hopefully.”
“What if I am, Dom?” She glanced at me.
In the darkness her green eyes seemed even brighter. I wanted to grab her and shove her against the wall, just stare into those eyes until I forgot about everything. Forgot about the world; let them become my world.
“What are we going to do?”
“We talked about this once a long time ago.”
She froze in her pacing. “What are you saying?”
“Nothing,” I snapped. “Just what I said; we talked about this.”
“Are you saying you want to get rid of it?”
“Just wait a second. We don’t even know if there is an it yet, Jesus. Just calm down, alright? There’s enough going on without you losing your cool.”
“Losing my cool? How am I supposed to not lose my cool?”
“Just wait!” I snarled. “Okay? Let’s just wait to see if you actually are pregnant. There’s no point getting into a state for no reason.”
“Into a state.” She pulled up a chair and dropped into it, right next to me, so close our legs could’ve touched. “And I thought this night couldn’t get any crazier.”
“Yeah, I was just thinking that. But it seems the world can always get crazier, no matter how bat-shit it is already.”
“Bat-shit,” she whispered. “You know, I’ve never really understood that phrase. I mean, how is bat shit any crazier than, say, dog shit? Or crocodile shit? Or whatever?”
She giggled, and Goddamn if it wasn’t infectious. I laughed, a deep-bellied one that shook my whole body. She reached forward and put her hand atop mine. “We can get through this together, Dom, can’t we? Me and you? Just like the old days?” She smiled.
The old days. The days where I burned with the heat of a thousand suns with desire to fuck her, every day of that summer. Now that it was done, and the world was changed.
“Dom?”
“You can get through anything, Em. You’re stronger than you know.”
“That’s not really an answer to my question, though, is it?”
I shrugged. “It’s the only answer I can give you right now.”
My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I took it out, swiped to answer. “Yeah?”
“It’s me, boss,” Silvio said. “The kid’s slipped the—uh—the package under the doormat like you asked.”
“Alright, Silvio. Good work, and keep me posted.”
“Course, boss.”
I hung up and went downstairs. Em stepped aside, arms folded across herself as she waited. What if she was pregnant? What then?
I crept to the back door, leaned around the barricade, pushed the door open and quickly grabbed under the mat before the whole thing collapsed on me. I pushed the barricade up against the door and returned to Em leaning against the wall, her foot tap-tapping as though she was halfway toward breaking into dance.
“Is that it?” she asked.
I chuckled. “What else would it be?”
“You don’t have to be such a jerk,” she grumbled. “Give it here please.”
I handed her the small brown paper bag. She took it, tilted her head at it for a few moments, and let out a long sigh and walked into the hallway. “I shouldn’t be too long,” she muttered.
I shrugged. “Take all the time you need.”
Maybe it would be negative, and I’d never have to know if I’d broken my one rule, the rule we’d both agreed upon when we were kids. I’d never have to know if I’d turn out like my old man. No, I couldn’t. Not Diego, that piece of shit, but . . .
I gripped my pistol so hard it bit into my palm as her footsteps padded down the hallway. She closed the bathroom door with a click, and I couldn’t hear anything apart from my heartbeat in my ears and the wind whistling softly against the windows.
I scanned the night, grinding my teeth from side to side. This night couldn’t get any stranger. Life couldn’t get any stranger. It was easier overseas when all I had to think about was keeping my brothers alive. This was an entirely different thing, this relationship battleground. But Em and I weren’t in a damn relationship. What the hell was happening to me, thinking shit like that?
She cleared her throat behind me.
I half-turned. She was a shadow angel standing in the doorway, no light except for the ice-blue moon that shafted sideways across her body, dappling her cheeks. Her emerald-greens were the brightest thing about her. Hands clasped, feet together, rocking side to side.
“Well?” I snapped. “Don’t keep me in suspense!”
“He got me two,” she said, stepping into the room. “Two tests, two different brands. Just to make sure, I guess.”
“Okay, good. That was a good idea. And?”
She took another step. The closer she got the more she became a part of the moon. The light washed over her glistening skin. My cock flooded, became a rigid rod; my balls throbbed. Her body was just so right, as though she dialed into a frequency entirely her own, one that only I could hear just for us, and it burned.
“Em?” I growled. “What is this? What did it say?”
“Positive,” she whispered. “They both said I’m pregnant, Dom.”
I was on my feet, across the room to her bookshelf. I ran my hand along the spines. “So many books,” I whispered, because it was easier to talk about anything—anything—than this. “Have you read all these? There must be a hundred books here.”
“I’ve read some,” she muttered. “Not all. Dom, are we going to talk about this?”
I kept my back turned to her as she walked across the room. She stopped close to my back, so close that her heat burned from her body into mine like a furnace. My cock pulsed, the tip driving into my pants. My body trembled and I knew that if I turned, I would take her. I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. Even her talking was making me crazy; it was all too easy to imagine warbling moans in place of muttered words.
“We said we’d never do this,” I managed after a long pause. “We always said that.”
“When we were kids.”
“Yeah, when we were kids. But it’s not like things are any simpler now, are they?”
“No.” She sighed, a breathy ahh that conjured up vignettes of her perfect ass bent over for me, her ass cheek turning red with my handprint. “I know it’s a shock.”
“Yeah, a shock. I don’t know if that does it justice. I mean—shit.”
“Shit,” she agreed. Closer, she moved. She put her hand on my shoulder. Why was I so hard? What the hell was wrong with me? But when she moved her hand around my body and pressed close to me, her breasts flat against my back, I let out a wolf-like growl. I couldn’t help it. “Dom…”
“What?” I reached up, grabbed her hand, guided it down my body, over my belly, down, down . . .
“What are we going to do? I don’t think I can get rid of it.”
“I don’t think I can let you get rid of it, either,” I whispered.
After all the death, could I really do that? After Anthony and all that craziness overseas, after all the killing and the miles of ground soaked with blood, I just couldn’t. But what was the alternative? Fucking hell.
“You’ll have everything you need to raise the kid,” I murmured.
“I will, or we will?”
I moved her hand lower, over my cock. Her fingers formed around the shaft, pressing close through the fabric of my pants. My pistol trembled in my grip as my whole body shook.
I didn’t offer an answer, and she didn’t ask for one.
Thirty-One
Emma
His body was on fire, like there was a volcano inside of him erupting over and over. His back was coated in a thin layer of pinprick sweat, his hand aflame on mine as he pushed it further and further down. Finally, I grabbed his cock. It was so hard pressing through his pants, like it too could erupt.
I let out a trembling sigh as I tightened my hand around it, stroking it up and down. Everything was spinning out of control, but not this. This we could trust, even if life we could not. I rubbed quicker and quicker until his growls filled the room.
“Fuck, fuck, Em.”
“Yeah?” I moaned, stroking as my pussy flooded with wetness, sticking to my panties, my thighs. My nipples sliced into his back, they were so hard. I pressed myself even closer to him, sinking into him, almost becoming one.
Suddenly he turned and slid his hands down my side, my hips, and then around to my ass. He squeezed so hard I let out a squeal and then he yanked me toward him. Bending at the knees, he drove his cock against my pussy, grinding it up and down through the fabric of our clothes. I shifted my hips.
I wandered over to the bed, dropped into the chair. It was set up like a hospital; maybe Sebastian had pulled it over, or her mom.
“Hey,” she said, smiling. She still looked cute as all hell even with that bandage wrapped around her skull. “Are you going to say anything, Dom?” The smile faltered and dropped. Her emerald-greens widened for a second. “What is it?”
I sighed. It had been so easy rehearsing this, thinking of what I’d say. But sitting in front of her, all I could muster was, “It’s everything, Em.”
She giggled, though I was forced. “That’s a little vague, isn’t it?”
“I suppose it is,” I muttered. I sat up straighter and sucked in a deep-bellied breath. “I’m here to say goodbye.”
“What?” she whispered. Her eyes flitted over me, up and down, as though she was checking to make sure I was the same Dom she knew, not some imposter. “What are you talking about? Say goodbye? Where are you going?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Nowhere, maybe. But that’s not the point. It’s not where I’m going. We could both stay in the city for the rest of our lives, but you shouldn’t be anywhere near me.”
Tears sprung into her eyes, clung to her eyelashes. I had to turn away. Rehearsing this in my mind, I had never imagined the tears. “You’re not making any sense!” she snapped.
“Not making any sense?” I shook my head. “Em, this is the only thing that makes any fucking sense. Look at your head. Look at you. Look what I did. We can’t be together—be friends—be whatever the hell we are after this. You know we can’t.”
“I don’t know that!” she hissed. She slammed her laptop on the bedside table and reached across to me.
I leaned back out of her reach. “Em, don’t.”
“I don’t know that!” she snapped again. “It was an accident, Dom. You’re going to throw everything away over an accident?”
“Throw what away?” I snarled. “Tell me that. I’m nothing to you, Em. Or I shouldn’t be a damn thing to you.”
I leapt to my feet and paced over to the window. Looking into her eyes was too difficult. There was too much Em in there. And myself reflected in them, but I couldn’t be that man—boy—any longer. I couldn’t sit around painting Em, or talking about the future, or flirting with her, or any of that kid shit. I had to be hard. If I was going to slaughter these motherfuckers one day, I had to make myself cold.
But her voice tugged at me. “Dom.”
I turned the other way so that my gaze didn’t pass across her and headed for the door. My heart beat like some wild sprinting animal in my chest, my chest expanding and closing like a great bellows. Everything ached; nothing felt right. I wanted to run out of there as fast as my feet could carry me, but at the same time climb into bed with Em and wrap my arms around her, hold her close, whisper loving words in her ear.
“Dom!” she called when I grabbed the doorknob. “If you walk out like this, I’ll never forgive you!” Rustling sheets. Her feet padded softly against the floor. Her hand came to rest on my shoulder. So soft, so small, the sort of hand a man could clutch forever, trace the lines, make a world of them alone. “You won’t even look at me?”
I swallowed. Just walk out, I urged myself. Just run. Just get the fuck out of here. Yet something willed me to turn. She tilted her head at me, her emerald-greens like knives slicing into me. I had to remember who I was and who I had to become. I couldn’t let her soften me.
“Dom,” she whispered. “Please.”
I grabbed her hand. I would move it from my shoulder. But I didn’t do that. I interlocked my fingers with hers and squeezed tightly, holding on like she might float away. “Em,” I muttered, voice breaking. “Em, fucking hell. Why are you making this so hard?”
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” she said, stroking her fingers down my palm. “It was an accident. You didn’t mean to do it. Don’t be so hard on yourself. I know it’s difficult with Anthony and everything, I get that, I really do, but . . .”
“But nothing.” I tried to pull my hand away; she squeezed tighter. I had to pull with everything I had to get myself free. I took a step away, backed right against the door. “Maybe it was an accident. Fine. But that doesn’t change what happened. I can’t have you close, anyway, not if . . .” I trailed off. “I just can’t have you close.”
Not if . . . not if I was going to make myself into the man I needed to be. Not if I was going to avenge Anthony one day. Not if I was going to kill all the soft parts of myself. And Em was the softest part of all. Em was the only tender thing about me anymore. Everything else was rotten and fucked-up, but Em, the emerald-green tag-along, was soft and warm and perfect.
She ground her teeth. “Don’t I get a say in this? You get to just decide this for both of us? What if I say no?”
I half-laughed. I couldn’t help it. There was something excruciatingly beautiful about the way she pouted. “What?”
“You heard me. I refuse.”
I almost fell into her, opened my arms. It would be so easy to just hug her close and let her convince me. Perhaps I would kiss her and she would kiss me back, and then I’d lay her down in bed and peel her clothes from her and kiss her all over, kiss her until she got hot, and then hotter, and then when she was ablaze we would cum together.
But then I spotted it, the college leaflet on her bedside table. ‘The University of Maine: Achieve, Believe!’ She was leaving anyway.
I shook my head, though it broke something in me. Finally, I hardened. “You want me to stay, but you’re planning on leaving. What the fuck is that, Em? You just want me here until you go? And then what? Then you tell me I’m not good enough?”
Her mouth fell open as tears streamed down her cheeks. “Dom, please, just wait—”
But I was already out the door, pounding down the stairs.
“Dom!” Em cried from the top of the stairs.
I quickened my pace, launched myself out the door and near sprinted down the lane. I turned the corner and walked as fast as my feet would take me. I was breathing too hard. It was as though I could feel the spinning of the earth. I ducked into an alleyway and leaned against the wall, propping my hands on my knees. I was going to be sick.
But instead, tears sprung into my eyes and slid painfully down my cheeks, the first tears I had cried since Anthony’s murder. Then I made myself stand up and wipe the tears dry.
It was time to put boyish ways behind me. I pulled my cellphone out of my pocket and sent the text that would blow my world to hell once and for all.
It’s over, Em. You broke us.
Thirty
Dom
Present Day
I sat upstairs alone, scanning the darkness. Silvio had just called and told me he was working on some shit, wanted to know if I would be joining them. But how could I with Em here? In the nighttime darkness, moonlight and starlight shifted and became new shapes. Like the shape of Em as she fell back and cracked her head against the edge of that bed. And now what I feared would happen was happening. Em was in danger because of me.
I shifted my gun from hand to hand.
I had to stay hard, stay distant, stay firm. I growled out a laugh under my breath. But I’d already fucked up that when I fucked Em. What a Goddamn mess I’d made of everything.
Behind me, Em cleared her throat. “Dom,” she whispered.
“Yes,” I grunted.
“There’s something, I don’t know, it could be nothing. But I just remembered—” She stopped short.
“Just remembered what?” I didn’t turn toward her. I had to watch the street, had to stay sharp, and when I looked at Em it was all I could do not to throw myself at her, grab her, and pull her close.
She walked over to me but stopped at my back. “I’m late, Dom.”
My mouth dried. I tightened my grip on the gun to keep from dropping it. But we promised never to have kids, we made that pact long ago when we were kids; it was the one thing we agreed on, always, without any hesitation. What was happening? Was some mad god playing a trick on me?
“What?” I whispered.
“I need a pregnancy test. Just to check. But I’m guessing you don’t want me going to the store tonight?”
I growled out a laugh. “Is this a fucking joke?”
“A joke?” she hissed. She walked around me, stopping near the window. I grabbed her arm and shoved her softly aside.
“Don’t stand there. Jesus, you wanna make a target of yourself?”
“I need to know, Dom. I can’t just sit here not knowing. Hell, don’t you want to know as well?”
I ground my canines into my lower teeth. This night couldn’t get any crazier. “Yeah,” I admitted. “I guess I do want to know. But—”
“But what?”
But we promised each other, I didn’t say it, though I thought it. We would never make that mistake. Look what happened with our parents; look at our fucked-up childhoods. And now what? We want to do the same to some innocent baby?
“Dom?” she called. “Are you with me?”
“Yeah, yeah. So you need a test. Shit.” I took out my cell and called Silvio.
“Boss, we’re just—”
“Listen, I need you to get one of the boys to run an errand. It’s going to sound strange, but just do it, no questions asked, alright?”
“Sure, boss. Shit, whatever you need.”
Em paced up and down the room once I hung up, hand at her mouth, gnawing her fingernails almost down to stubs. “How long do you think he’ll be?”
“I don’t know, Em. Not too long, hopefully.”
“What if I am, Dom?” She glanced at me.
In the darkness her green eyes seemed even brighter. I wanted to grab her and shove her against the wall, just stare into those eyes until I forgot about everything. Forgot about the world; let them become my world.
“What are we going to do?”
“We talked about this once a long time ago.”
She froze in her pacing. “What are you saying?”
“Nothing,” I snapped. “Just what I said; we talked about this.”
“Are you saying you want to get rid of it?”
“Just wait a second. We don’t even know if there is an it yet, Jesus. Just calm down, alright? There’s enough going on without you losing your cool.”
“Losing my cool? How am I supposed to not lose my cool?”
“Just wait!” I snarled. “Okay? Let’s just wait to see if you actually are pregnant. There’s no point getting into a state for no reason.”
“Into a state.” She pulled up a chair and dropped into it, right next to me, so close our legs could’ve touched. “And I thought this night couldn’t get any crazier.”
“Yeah, I was just thinking that. But it seems the world can always get crazier, no matter how bat-shit it is already.”
“Bat-shit,” she whispered. “You know, I’ve never really understood that phrase. I mean, how is bat shit any crazier than, say, dog shit? Or crocodile shit? Or whatever?”
She giggled, and Goddamn if it wasn’t infectious. I laughed, a deep-bellied one that shook my whole body. She reached forward and put her hand atop mine. “We can get through this together, Dom, can’t we? Me and you? Just like the old days?” She smiled.
The old days. The days where I burned with the heat of a thousand suns with desire to fuck her, every day of that summer. Now that it was done, and the world was changed.
“Dom?”
“You can get through anything, Em. You’re stronger than you know.”
“That’s not really an answer to my question, though, is it?”
I shrugged. “It’s the only answer I can give you right now.”
My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I took it out, swiped to answer. “Yeah?”
“It’s me, boss,” Silvio said. “The kid’s slipped the—uh—the package under the doormat like you asked.”
“Alright, Silvio. Good work, and keep me posted.”
“Course, boss.”
I hung up and went downstairs. Em stepped aside, arms folded across herself as she waited. What if she was pregnant? What then?
I crept to the back door, leaned around the barricade, pushed the door open and quickly grabbed under the mat before the whole thing collapsed on me. I pushed the barricade up against the door and returned to Em leaning against the wall, her foot tap-tapping as though she was halfway toward breaking into dance.
“Is that it?” she asked.
I chuckled. “What else would it be?”
“You don’t have to be such a jerk,” she grumbled. “Give it here please.”
I handed her the small brown paper bag. She took it, tilted her head at it for a few moments, and let out a long sigh and walked into the hallway. “I shouldn’t be too long,” she muttered.
I shrugged. “Take all the time you need.”
Maybe it would be negative, and I’d never have to know if I’d broken my one rule, the rule we’d both agreed upon when we were kids. I’d never have to know if I’d turn out like my old man. No, I couldn’t. Not Diego, that piece of shit, but . . .
I gripped my pistol so hard it bit into my palm as her footsteps padded down the hallway. She closed the bathroom door with a click, and I couldn’t hear anything apart from my heartbeat in my ears and the wind whistling softly against the windows.
I scanned the night, grinding my teeth from side to side. This night couldn’t get any stranger. Life couldn’t get any stranger. It was easier overseas when all I had to think about was keeping my brothers alive. This was an entirely different thing, this relationship battleground. But Em and I weren’t in a damn relationship. What the hell was happening to me, thinking shit like that?
She cleared her throat behind me.
I half-turned. She was a shadow angel standing in the doorway, no light except for the ice-blue moon that shafted sideways across her body, dappling her cheeks. Her emerald-greens were the brightest thing about her. Hands clasped, feet together, rocking side to side.
“Well?” I snapped. “Don’t keep me in suspense!”
“He got me two,” she said, stepping into the room. “Two tests, two different brands. Just to make sure, I guess.”
“Okay, good. That was a good idea. And?”
She took another step. The closer she got the more she became a part of the moon. The light washed over her glistening skin. My cock flooded, became a rigid rod; my balls throbbed. Her body was just so right, as though she dialed into a frequency entirely her own, one that only I could hear just for us, and it burned.
“Em?” I growled. “What is this? What did it say?”
“Positive,” she whispered. “They both said I’m pregnant, Dom.”
I was on my feet, across the room to her bookshelf. I ran my hand along the spines. “So many books,” I whispered, because it was easier to talk about anything—anything—than this. “Have you read all these? There must be a hundred books here.”
“I’ve read some,” she muttered. “Not all. Dom, are we going to talk about this?”
I kept my back turned to her as she walked across the room. She stopped close to my back, so close that her heat burned from her body into mine like a furnace. My cock pulsed, the tip driving into my pants. My body trembled and I knew that if I turned, I would take her. I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. Even her talking was making me crazy; it was all too easy to imagine warbling moans in place of muttered words.
“We said we’d never do this,” I managed after a long pause. “We always said that.”
“When we were kids.”
“Yeah, when we were kids. But it’s not like things are any simpler now, are they?”
“No.” She sighed, a breathy ahh that conjured up vignettes of her perfect ass bent over for me, her ass cheek turning red with my handprint. “I know it’s a shock.”
“Yeah, a shock. I don’t know if that does it justice. I mean—shit.”
“Shit,” she agreed. Closer, she moved. She put her hand on my shoulder. Why was I so hard? What the hell was wrong with me? But when she moved her hand around my body and pressed close to me, her breasts flat against my back, I let out a wolf-like growl. I couldn’t help it. “Dom…”
“What?” I reached up, grabbed her hand, guided it down my body, over my belly, down, down . . .
“What are we going to do? I don’t think I can get rid of it.”
“I don’t think I can let you get rid of it, either,” I whispered.
After all the death, could I really do that? After Anthony and all that craziness overseas, after all the killing and the miles of ground soaked with blood, I just couldn’t. But what was the alternative? Fucking hell.
“You’ll have everything you need to raise the kid,” I murmured.
“I will, or we will?”
I moved her hand lower, over my cock. Her fingers formed around the shaft, pressing close through the fabric of my pants. My pistol trembled in my grip as my whole body shook.
I didn’t offer an answer, and she didn’t ask for one.
Thirty-One
Emma
His body was on fire, like there was a volcano inside of him erupting over and over. His back was coated in a thin layer of pinprick sweat, his hand aflame on mine as he pushed it further and further down. Finally, I grabbed his cock. It was so hard pressing through his pants, like it too could erupt.
I let out a trembling sigh as I tightened my hand around it, stroking it up and down. Everything was spinning out of control, but not this. This we could trust, even if life we could not. I rubbed quicker and quicker until his growls filled the room.
“Fuck, fuck, Em.”
“Yeah?” I moaned, stroking as my pussy flooded with wetness, sticking to my panties, my thighs. My nipples sliced into his back, they were so hard. I pressed myself even closer to him, sinking into him, almost becoming one.
Suddenly he turned and slid his hands down my side, my hips, and then around to my ass. He squeezed so hard I let out a squeal and then he yanked me toward him. Bending at the knees, he drove his cock against my pussy, grinding it up and down through the fabric of our clothes. I shifted my hips.
