Page 53 of For the Love of the Gods

I was a second away from stomping on his foot just to see him squirm. Instead, I backed up a step. “I’m not in the mood for this, Dominic.”

“Why?” The question was so layered I didn’t even know where to begin. It was a plea and a curse all in one.

“I don’t owe you anything,” I snapped, throwing his own words back at him.

Dominic stepped toward me, pressing me into the wall. “I beg to differ.”

I breathed in and was only assaulted by Dominic’s cologne. It did absolutely nothing to calm me down.

“Just leave me alone, will you?”

Dominic looked at me like there was no way that was happening. “You know, it is so interesting to see how you pull the mask down for other people.”

I tensed. “What do you mean?”

“Last night and this morning. Laughing and breaking bread like you care about those people.”

“I do care about those people,” I shot back, throwing air quotes to emphasize how stupid calling my friends ‘those people’ was. What the fuck?

“Then why lie to them? Or did you lie to me?” Dominic pressed, stepping into my space and sending an excited rush through me. I pressed it down. “Which one is it?”

And just because I was over this shit, my head pounding and my heart breaking, I told him the truth. “Both.”

“Like I said. Pretty. Lies.” He punctuated the words by dragging a finger over the perimeter of my face.

I pulled back, escaping the tingles the rough scrape of his finger beckoned on my face. “Then listen to me now, because I’m telling the truth. Stop. Bothering. Me.”

Dominic laughed, his eyes sparking with something close to excitement. “Never.”

I tried to move past him, but he lifted both hands to my upper arms and kept me trapped between him and the wall. I was going to knee him in the balls.

“I don’t think you fully understood that promise, Rose,” Dominic said, leaning close. Sick, twisted anticipation coursed through my chest. “I will never stop bothering you.”

“You’re nothing if not predictable,” I breathed, my eyes dropping to his mouth.

He noticed. Shit.

“Normally.” It was Dominic’s turn to look at my lips. And consequences and how much he twisted my stomach into a knot be damned. I wanted him to kiss me. He looked like he wanted to too.

And then he got an evil little glint in his deep brown eyes. Dominic pulled back and left me heaving, then strode down the hallway, tossing a “See you tomorrow, sweetheart” over his shoulder.

It took me a second, but then I realized he had just done the opposite of what I accused. That leaving, instead of kissing me, was going against the grain.

Being unpredictable.

Chapter 15

Dominic

Rose was cutting me up. Like the thorns of her namesake.

My chest and stomach felt tight and ready to snap and my hands literally ached with restraint. I knew,knewI shouldn’t fucking go there.

And yet somehow, leaving her standing in that hallway, her lips glistening and pouting like they were begging for my mouth, felt like the most sacrilegious thing in the world.

My once comfortable bed felt itchy and hard under my back, like it was trying to force me out of it.

To slam through the doors separating our rooms—barely three inches of wood, far too easy to break through—and drag Rose out of her covers and under me.

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