Page 46 of Kiss Me Tonight

He doesn’t dispute my claim.

Dark eyes meet mine, then skip away.

I try again, wishing he would actually look at me and keep on looking. “I’m sorry for being late. I asked my sister to pick Topher up from Kevin’s house. Kevin from the team, I mean. Mistake number one, and that’s on me. She forgot him and when he called, I was getting ready and now this—” I wave a hand at my face, careful of his working fingers. “I feel like I’m having an amateur moment when that’s so far from the truth.”

“Bet you got a lot of practice with socializing after being Rick’s wife.”

I almost snort out loud. “One would think.”

“What do you think?”

“I think Rick likes having young women as arm candy. He likes it when the relationship is new and exciting, and there’s nothing he enjoys more than waltzing into a party with a woman who turns heads and stops other men in their tracks.” I had stopped men, too, but not because of my looks. In the beginning, Rick loved to brag about me playing football to anyone who would listen. In the beginning, it felt less like I was a freak-show case he paraded around and more like I was the mother of his child who he felt remarkably proud of.

Unfortunately, beginnings never last forever.

Staring at the shallow dimple in Dominic’s chin, I continue, “Once I wasn’t as young anymore, and my body not nearly the same as it had been before giving birth to Topher, he drew the curtain closed on socializing hour. For me, at least. He never stopped going out.”

Dominic’s voice emerges as pure gravel when he orders: “Close your eyes for me.”

My lids flutter shut on command. The rough pads of his fingers curl under my chin, lifting it up, as he carefully drags the paper towel over the most sensitive part of my face. Did Rick ever touch me so gently? So carefully? It hurts to answer the question, even to myself:No.Not even in those early days of our marriage, when everything smelled like roses and looked like unicorns, and he was still enamored with the idea of being with a woman who had fans fawning over her. Then the fans quieted the longer I was out of the game, and he grew to hate everything that made meme: my short hair and my lack of curves and my brash opinions.

“For the record, I’m not mad at you for being late. Annoyed? Yeah. Did I feel out of my comfort zone? Yeah, I’m man enough to admit it.”

Something in Dominic’s tone sends a shiver skittering down my spine. If he feels the tremor, he doesn’t bring it up.

I swallow past the lump in my throat, my eyes still closed. “The calendar.”

I sense the shift in his breathing. It comes a little faster, a little heavier, as it falls across my temple. “Like you, I took this job for a fresh start. You’re back here because you divorced Rick and want a bite of the familiar. I’m here because I’m tired of pretending to be someone I’m not.”

“Who’s that?” The light behind my lids turns darker—a bruised purple—like Dominic has stepped directly in front of me and cut off my access to the rest of the bathroom.

The hand cupping the back of my head slips south, to where my neck and shoulder meet. Squeezes once. In warning? Lust?

“Gonna have to take a pass on answering. I’m not looking to be that vulnerable.”

“I call bullshit.”

His thumb traces my collarbone, exposed by my lace top. “Maybe it’s not.”

“Maybe you cornered me in this bathroom because you were actually worried about me.” I saw his text asking if Topher and I were okay. Heard the concern through his written words, even if he’ll never voice them out loud. Perhaps it’s the fact that I can’t see him that revs up my boldness, but I decide to call him out on the tangible tension radiating between us. He can pretend all he wants, but there’s no way I’m the only one feeling this—thisheatthat just won’t quit. “Could it be that you’re regretting your decision to not . . . take me home the night we met?”

The gentle tracing stops.

As does my heart.

I blink open my eyes, unwilling to forego the opportunity to study his expression.

Stillness.

It’s the only word that comes to mind looking up at him now. He’s as still, as unmoving, as a glass pond.

Then I meet his gaze, and I feel as though I’ve been launched into a pit of flickering flames. Heat scorches my skin, tugging my knees together. My sex clenches—and though I try to remain perfectly still and wait out his response, my hips give the smallest roll. Needy. Wanting. The paper towel isn’t as damp as it was at first touch, but I still seek it out with an almost keening desperation to ease the fire flaming to life beneath my skin.

I want Dominic—I admit it.

I wanted him that first night we met here at the Golden Fleece and, standing here now with my body caged between his and the mirror, I want him even more.

With the damp paper towel acting as a barrier, he smooths his thumb over my upper lip, directly over the hairline scar that gives my smile a crooked flare. He drops his heated gaze to my mouth, to the slope of my neck, then traces the same well-traveled path back up again. To my disappointment, he curls his hand into a fist—the one that’s been teasing me with caresses that make me want to nip his thumb playfully—and plants it on the mirror above my head. As though dug up from the rubble of the pits of hell itself, he growls, “I don’t eat where I shit.”

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