Page 16 of The Club

I take that as a rhetorical question because the answer is obviously yes. I wasn’t thinking enough to make a good decision.

“Why did you clean up after me?” I ask.

“I couldn’t leave that mess, not after I’d been there too.”

“Ah.”

His eyes flick up to mine, making me self-conscious of my disappointment.

“You were careless too,” I point out.

Yes, I’m deflecting, but it’s true. He fucked me bare. I know I’m clean because I’m always careful—last night excepted, of course—and I get tested all the time to be sure. But he didn’t know that when he bred me.

Dominic is too smart to be that careless, which means he was succumbing to a primal need, one he couldn’t deny.

His nostrils flare. He doesn’t like that I’ve pointed it out.

“I’ll get tested.”

“I just got tested last week. I’m clean. Are you?”

A blush shows through his olive complexion. He looks away briefly before meeting my gaze to say, “Yes. I’m usually …”

“More careful,” I supply when he trails off.

He looks away again, clearly not wanting to discuss this further. I don’t know how often he’s had sex with men. I’m sure it wasn’t easy for him to get away with. He would’ve needed to be extremely careful to hide it from his father, and that would have included staying clean.

“You don’t have to be careful with me,” I tell him. He can hit me, hurt me, come inside me. I want him to.

God, do I want it.

His nostrils flare again, but I don’t know what that means this time, and it annoys me that he won’t reply so I ask, “Were you trying to prove something tonight? With her?”

He glares at me. “It’s none of your business what I was doing.”

“I made it my business.”

“What you did was make yourself the center of attention—because you’re an attention whore, Rafael. But I have other interests and other things to do. In fact, I have another date tonight.”

He stands up from the table and tosses his napkin down. “You can get the bill,” he says, and walks out.

SEVEN

Dominic

Even though I’m freezing my ass off in the shipping yard with my mafia partner, Gianni Moretti, this second “date” is still preferable to my first.

I don’t know what I was thinking. It was just default, something I’ve done for years as a follow up to fucking men, like it confirms that my outward appearance is the same as before, my mask still in place.

Why does that matter with my father dead? Don’t fucking ask me.

All I know is that when Rafael came swanning through the restaurant in his outrageous purple, I felt a mixture of terror, anger, and delight.

He’s so unpredictable. He’s so fucking wild. He’s so goddamn beautiful.

I hated him for trapping me in a public dinner with him, but I loved every second of it too. I couldn’t let him see that. I had to cut him down and leave him there, and, yeah, I took a certain, sadistic pleasure in seeing how that stung him. He deserved it.

But the joke was on me in the end—because I can’t stop thinking about him. The way he so deftly ousted Nicole. The fact that he looked so shockingly polished less than twenty-four hours after being so fucked up that I left him passed out, tied up, and covered in blood and cum.

---