I trace the outline of his cheek, trailing my fingers along his jaw. I feel his jaw flex as he stares down at me, his eyes thoughtful.
“I don’t understand you,” I finally whisper.
“Neither do I,” he admits. “But does it matter? Do you still want to be here?”
I do. I shouldn’t want to, but I do.
I let him lead me back to the veranda, back to the cushioned chaises and ottomans, where he sits down next to me and watches me, thoughtful now. This is the first time I’ve seen this side of him… this introspective side. I tell him that, and he smiles.
“Would you believe me if I told you that I don’t hang around with people much?” he asks, picking up a cracker and smearing pâté on it before handing it to me. “I don’t like gatherings, unless it’s with my family. And now… well, with Cris dating Fiona, I won’t be going to many of them any time soon.”
I take the cracker and settle back into my seat, watching him as I eat.
He’s so graceful and sophisticated, even though he’s not much older than I am. I know those things, his statistics, because I looked them up online. He’s twenty-four. He’s 6’2”. He’s right-handed. Dark hair, green eyes. But those are just things, facts. I don’t know what he thinks.
“Why are you so upset about your sister dating Cris?” I ask hesitantly. “I know you don’t really want to talk about it, but I’d like to know. I hate seeing how much it bothers you. You love your family. It must be something huge to make you stay away from them.”
Dominic tenses now, his leg crossed tighter than it was, and he looks away, out over the valley.
“You’re right. I really don’t want to talk about it,” he finally answers slowly. “I’m sorry that you do, but I can’t. It’s something that happened a long time ago and I honestly just can’t talk about it.”
His face is filled with pain and vulnerability, a unique combination that I haven’t seen there before. I reach up and brush the hair away from his forehead.
“It’s okay,” I murmur. “You don’t have to. I just… it makes me sad to see you upset. I’d like to try and help you figure it out, if I can.”
“You can’t,” he answers sharply. But then he softens his tone and actually picks up my hand. It makes me want to hold my breath, because he’s made it obvious he doesn’t like intimate contact. Yet here he is, holding my hand.
“I’m sorry,” he adds. “It’s just… you need to know that if you’re going to be around me, there’s a bunch of shit about me that you can’t fix. So I don’t want you to try. Don’t get invested in me, all right?”
I suck in my breath at his acidic tone and stare at him as I unconsciously pull my hand away.
“All right,” I whisper limply, stunned by his bluntness. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help asking about your family, because it’s something that I’m curious about… it’s something that I can see hurts you. I like you. I like you more and more each day. And as your friend, I don’t like that anything hurts you.”
“Are you my friend?” he asks suddenly, turning toward me.
I can’t explain why, but the expression on his face hurts my heart. It’s open. For the first time since I’ve known him, his face is completely open to me. I know that he doesn’t do this often… he doesn’t show his vulnerability.
“Yes,” I answer slowly. “I’m your friend.”
He nods, and I honestly don’t know what’s going on here. “And you like me more and more each day?”
I nod in confusion.
“Dominic,” I whisper, not sure of what to say. He looks up at me rakishly, the breeze tousling his hair, and he’s utterly beautiful.
“Don’t love me,” he says simply. “Or I’ll break you. I won’t want to, but it will happen.”
I’m stunned at the utter bleakness of his words, of his voice, of the heart-wrenching expression on his face. I don’t know what happened to him to put it there. But before I can say a word, before I can react, he reaches for me.
I know that for whatever reason, he needs me right now, and god help me, I want to save him from himself. From whatever pain he’s feeling. From whatever it was that hurt him.
I fold into him and inhale his mouth, his tongue sweet and hot against mine. His lips are soft and plunder my own, his hands sliding everywhere. He’s got an urgency now that I can’t understand. I don’t know where it’s coming from, or why he’s in an even darker mood than usual.
Whatever else he is, I can’t deny that he’s sexy. Everything about him is sexy and everything in me wants him. Right now.
He kisses me until I’m breathless, leaning me back until my head barely grazes the chaise behind me. He pulls at my shirt until he’s able to run his thumbs over my nipples, rubbing them into hard nubs.
“Still like me?” he whispers, his eyes boring into mine. I swallow hard and don’t answer. “Yes or no?” he asks, dipping his head and running his tongue in circles around each point.
“Yes,” I whisper limply.
He stands up and unfastens his pants, dropping them to the ground. Crawling over me, his rubs his bare penis against my wet opening, the friction of it creating a firestorm in me, causing me to cling to his strong shoulders.
“What about now?” he rasps into my ear. He’s as breathless as I am, I realize.
“Yes,” I murmur, trying to pull him closer, to pull him inside of me. But he pulls away, standing back up and then pausing in front of me, gripping my legs.
Without another word, he bends down, shoving up my skirt and burying his head between my legs.
As feverish as I am, his tongue brings me to a climax within a minute. The wetness of it rakes over me as his hands ravage the rest of me, sliding, kneading, pulling.
I close my eyes, blocking out the moonlight, the veranda, the lights from the valley. I revel in the feel of being close to him, as close as I’ve been yet. He might not have exposed much to me, but I could see that he wanted to. He’s just afraid. And knowing that makes me feel as though he let me in somehow… just a little.
But now he wants to annihilate me. I can see that in his eyes, as he makes me come over and over again with his mouth. His dark eyes gleam, and they are all I can see of his face as he stares intently at me from between my legs. I try to pull him up, to get him to crawl over me, to kiss me, to plunge into me, but he won’t. He stays down… making me come yet again.
I arch into the air, reaching for him, but he won’t allow it.
“I want to feel you inside of me,” I tell him urgently. Because I do. I want him to fill me up. To give me, for just a minute, what he’s not willing to give me otherwise.
Himself.
Completely.
Not bits of him, not pieces of him, but all of him.
He pauses, staring at me, and I can literally see it as his eyes shutter closed. He’s closed to me now, and whatever progress we made tonight is gone.
He smiles his normal smile, the rakish one, the one that millions of fans have seen and loved.
“Not yet, Princess,” he tells me as he climbs to his feet. “Not yet.”
Chapter Seventeen
Dominic
What.
The.
Fuck?
I let the cold shower water run over my body, over my head and my shoulders, down my hips and down to where I really need it.
What the fuck was I thinking?
I was this close to spilling my guts to Jacey. This close to inviting her into my life, telling her my secrets, letting her in.
I blame it on the look in her eyes. The sweet, genuine, I’m-so-concerned-about-you look… and I know that she is. She genuinely cares that something has hurt me. But the problem is… she thinks she can fix it and she can’t.
No one can.
That’s the bitch of it.
I grab a towel and step out of the walk-in shower, before I head to my bed naked.
And alone.
Chapter Eighteen
Jacey
 
; I don’t know what to think.
Even though something felt like it changed last night, like our paradigm shifted, Dominic is back to being cool and aloof. He popped his head into my room early this morning to tell me that he was going to the studio, that he’d be back later… and to relax around the pool.
“Make yourself at home!” he’d called over his shoulder in a very polite way as he walked out.
He didn’t kiss me good-bye, he didn’t touch me at all. He stayed in the doorway where he stood, beautiful and graceful but so very distant.
It’s gorgeous here, and the infinity pool that seems to slip right over the edge of the valley is picture perfect. But there’s only so much time I can spend lounging by the pool. I’m alone and I’m restless.
So I go exploring.
I spent quite a bit of time in his library, rifling through his shelves and shelves of books. He’s got everything from the classics to Tom Clancy. None of the books show any signs of wear, so I have no clue if he actually reads them or if they just line the walls.
His large desk is sleek and modern, made from glass and ebony wood. No pictures adorn it, nothing personal at all. The middle drawer is locked, but I’m guessing it just contains checkbooks and such anyway.
The art on the walls, the many paintings and original photos, fascinate me.
I can tell the masculine abstract paintings are original, but the signatures aren’t anyone I recognize. I’m guessing that they’re local artists… that perhaps Dominic just picked out pieces that he liked because he didn’t feel the need to buy originals painted by the masters.
The kitchen is nice, but boring. Granite, steel, marble floor. It’s sterile because it’s never used. I can see that. To me, kitchens should be the hub of the house, the heart, where everyone congregates. But that’s not so here.
There are too many guest bedrooms to count, all of them lavishly decorated, just like the one I slept in last night. After he’d left me on the veranda.
I don’t know what to think about him. He’s a complete mystery, totally hot and cold. It must say something about me that I want to figure him out, that I’m not running in the opposite direction. I probably don’t want to know what it says about me, actually.
I’m needy.
I’m fucked up.
I know these things, so I push them out of my mind. I already know me. What I want to know now is him.
I stand hesitantly outside of his bedroom door. Maybe I can find some answers within, answers that he’d never tell me. Something, anything, that would make his behavior make sense.
If he doesn’t want you to know, my conscience argues, then you should respect that.
But… fuck you, the devil side of my brain answers. And that’s the side I listen to. I turn the doorknob, and before I can even think about it, I’m in his room and it’s done. I’ve officially invaded his privacy.
His room is dark and quiet and decorated in masculine colors… grays and creams and blacks. His bed is enormous, and there isn’t anything odd in here, like I think I was expecting. No sex swings or whips or chains. It’s uncluttered. In fact, it’s incredibly clean. It almost seems as devoid of personal effects as a hotel room.
I feel a little guilty as I open his drawers, but I only find neatly folded clothes. The drawers all smell like cedar, like him. I take a deep breath, inhaling the scent, as I eye his closet, and before I can talk myself out of it, I get to my feet and open the doors.
It’s enormous and contains a dressing room inside. A wall of shoes, loafers, and sneakers, and neatly hung slacks, jeans, shirts, and suits. It’s a closet worthy of a king. I’ve never actually seen such a thing before. I sit on a cushioned bench for a minute, just to take it all in.
Like the bedroom, his closet is neat to the point of sterility. There’s nothing here to indicate what he’s actually like. Not one thing… except for the clear fact that he has a lot of shoes and clothes.
But as I stand up, I notice the bench I’m sitting on has hinges. They’re cleverly concealed, but they’re there. Hesitantly, I open the lid and I find myself staring at a shallow black velvet box. The rest of the bench is empty.
Breathing quickly, I lift the box out and stare at it. It’s very light so it can’t contain much. I don’t waste time pondering it. I take the top off.
Inside, there’s a stack of cards and letters, banded together with a rubber band. There’s a little jewelry box, which I quickly discover is empty, and an unopened envelope with Dominic’s name on the front. It was clearly written by a woman and says simply, Dom.
The ink has begun to fade and there’s something hard inside, like cardboard or plastic.
I’m utterly frozen as I stare at it, because I can sense the significance of what must be inside. It was written by someone who knows him well, someone who calls him Dom.
But whatever it is, Dominic doesn’t want to hear it. He doesn’t want to see it. So he closed it away in this bench, away from the light, away from the world, away from him. But even still, even though he can’t force himself to read it, he also can’t force himself to throw it away.
I’d been wrong to come in here. Because I know that whatever I’m holding in my hands is so very intimate. It’s personal and private. And it’s not my business. But also, he’s even more of an enigma now than he was before. I don’t have any answers… I just have even more questions.
With a sigh, I stare at the stack of cards and letters wrapped with the rubber band. They’re all opened. I can see the frayed tops of them, sliced through with an opener. Surely it won’t matter if I just take a peek. Right?
I slip the rubber band off, and it’s old enough that the rubber is tacky and has lost some of its elasticity. I can tell that Dom hasn’t looked at these letters in quite a while, maybe even since he first opened them. But yet, just as the other letter, he can’t throw them away. I look at the top card. There’s a cross with sunshine pouring onto it.
With Sympathy for Your Loss.
I open it, skimming past the canned Hallmark words, skipping to the handwritten note at the bottom.
Dominic, I’m so sorry for your loss. The world has lost a light in Emma. I know this is unbearable for you now, but I’ll be praying a prayer of peace for you. I know that even without her, you’ll be able to go on and do great things. With love and deepest condolences, Jada Milnay
My breath freezes in my throat, and a brick seems to settle on my chest as I stare at the words. A realization dawns on me, cold and heavy.
Emma died.
I have to assume that she was Dominic’s girlfriend… and she died.
My fingers fly as I shuffle the rest of the cards and skim through them.
My condolences.
Heaven has gotten another angel.
My prayers are with you.
She’s in a better place.
Trite words, although what can people really say? There are no words when something tragic like that strikes.
I can hardly breathe as I get to the last card, as I stare at what lies beneath the cards, hidden at the bottom of the stack. Letters.
From Emma.
Girlish, curly handwriting fills notebook papers, with flowers and hearts doodled in the margins. My fingers shake as I read the first one.
Dom,
Thank you so much for taking me to the beach yesterday. It was the perfect day! You laughed at me so much for trying to find the perfect shells, so I enclosed a few for you. I want you to remember the day just like I remember it being: perfect.
-Em
This letter makes sense, because beneath the stack of envelopes, a smattering of tiny shells line the bottom of the box. They’re clearly old, clearly fragile, and now they make perfect sense. They were a memento of a perfect day.
My breath comes quickly as I read the next one.
I feel like I’m looking in on the lives of two lovers.