Midnight Heat (Black Phoenix Book 2) (20 page)

Sinking farther into the chair, Dominic tossed an arm over his eyes with a sigh.

A door opened, the sound of Becca moving about the bedroom reached out and grabbed him by the throat. He told his legs to get up and go to her, but they wouldn’t cooperate. Not with doubt still gnawing at him, with fear weighing him down.

He could argue with himself all night, telling himself that she was with
him
, not the doctor. Reminding himself that she’d claimed to have only spent one night with her surgeon. But that wasn’t the full story. There was more to it than she was letting on. More that she didn’t want him knowing. He’d stood in her kitchen and listened to her end of the phone conversation with her mother and he knew. The man Rebecca’s family expected her to have been with was Nathan.

Looking around her condo Dom had to wonder who could blame them. She was educated and smart, with more degrees hanging on her wall than he had gold records. Just the title of the book sitting near his elbow had made his eyes cross. Why the hell would they want someone like him for their daughter? He wasn’t well-dressed or polished or anything like that.

He was a long-haired, ear-ringed bass player with a foul mouth. A forty-year-old man with no family and no home to speak of who lived out of a suitcase. A man utterly besotted with a woman completely out of his league.

And clueless what to do about it.

She’d allowed him back into her world, now what? How did he move what they had from ‘fun’ to something more? How did he let her know he was serious about them becoming serious?

Would she even care? Or would spilling his guts, sharing his secrets with her cause her to leave him? Like that damn little voice inside, the one he could never silence, told him would happen.

Surging up, Dominic slammed his ale onto the side table with enough force it foamed, spewing out of the top like a volcano. Running down the sides of the bottle and dousing her book. “Fuck!” He snatched up the book, then sat there like an idiot, holding it in the air as it dripped. He had no napkins, no towel.

He had no breath left in his lungs.

Rebecca stood in the doorway between bedroom and living room, hair knotted atop her head. Wearing a black lacy corset, that pulled her waist in and pushed her breasts up to spill over the top, and black stilettos on her feet, she was the picture of sex. Garters hung from the bottom, but she wore no stockings so that when she started across the room, hips rolling provocatively, the garters slapped against her thighs.

Every nerve ending in his body went on high alert. For a long silent moment he couldn’t speak. Not a damn word came to mind.

She came to a stop in front of him, removed the sopping book from his slack fingers and tossed it to the floor. A hand to his chest pushed him back into the seat, then with a press of the remote next to his ale bottle, the room was flooded in music. She started to dance, hips rolling and swaying in time, the garters slapping her ass.

His
music he realized just before his brain went soft.

The rest of him went rock hard.

Dominic leaned back in the chair and actually began to sweat. He shifted to give his painfully hard erection a bit more room. Sweet Jesus, she was incredible. He already knew the ways she could move her body while it was joined with his, but to watch her do so in time to his music was intoxicating.

He’d seen women dance before many times, but none quite like Becca. She managed to incorporate modern dance moves with classic rock and sprinkle in the art of strip tease.

Mesmerized, he could only stare as she moved her hand down the front of her body to cup herself. A move so sensual and exciting he had to readjust his position in his seat. She turned her back to him and rotated her hips again so her garters bounced, and his grip tightened on the arms of the chair.

The tempo of the music increased and so did her movements. Twirling around she flipped her head in a way that caused her hair to slide free of its topknot while she arced her hips in a circle.

He groaned aloud.

The corset went first, revealing a bra that cupped her round breasts but left her dark pink nipples free for his eyes to devour, and a barely there pair of panties.

He began to shake.

The first crack in his resistance appeared as she placed her right foot on the left arm of the chair and locked gazes with him, while she took her right hand on a tour down the front of her body. Between bare breasts that begged for his mouth, over her navel to slip into the front of her panties. Her eyes closed, head tipped back, and he could only watch in wonder – dick straining, palms itching – and imagine just what her fingers were doing. He locked his gaze on her hand, wet his lips, and then she was moving again, trailing her damp fingers up her body.

The expression in her emerald eyes told him she knew she had him exactly where she wanted him as she slipped her visibly wet fingers between her lips and sucked.

“Becca,” he managed before his vocal cords froze.

She’d turned, and ass poised directly before him, began to work those tiny panties down her legs. Giving him an eye level view of her hidden treasures.

Dom was out of the chair like a shot. He had to have her. Hard. Fast.
Now
.

Afraid that if he didn’t get inside her within the next few moments he was going to spontaneously combust, he swept her into his arms and made it to her bedroom in record time. He dropped her on the bed on her hands and knees. “Don’t move,” he threatened, voice raw.

She flipped all of her hair to one side and looked over her shoulder as he struggled to work his zipper over his straining cock. A provocative smile played along her lips. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Unzipping, he pushed the denim down his thighs, and ripped open a condom, fumbling with the damn thing he was shaking so hard. A second attempt wasn’t any more successful when she scooted to the end of the bed, dropped her feet to the ground, and fisted her hands in the bedspread. “Hurry, I want you inside me.”

Out of his mind with need, he finally managed to slip a condom on before he grabbed her hips, held her in place and buried himself inside of her in one hard thrust. He wasn’t slow, and he wasn’t gentle. He’d lost gentle a while back along with reason. He thrust harder and harder, their loins slapping together as he fisted a hand in her hair.

A small, wild sound vibrated up her throat as her body clenched hard. He bent over her back, sinking his teeth into her shoulder, pumping steadily, not slowing even as she whimpered his name. “Dominic, don’t stop. Please don’t stop loving me.”

Driven by his own urgency, he fisted his hand tighter, urging her head to the side so he could look into her eyes. He trailed his fingers over her hip, slipping between her thighs and lightly pinched the bundle of nerves at the apex of her sex. She moaned, shuddering in his arms.

He held her there, right on the edge, as he whispered “
Mine.”
Her body bucked hard, struggling against his hold. “You’re mine, Rebecca.”

“Yes,” she cried out, her body arching and shaking. Releasing the comforter, she reached behind her, grabbed his ass and pulled him deeper. Then he was thrusting hard, groaning, his entire body contracting with her as they orgasmed together.

* * *

“Welcome back.”

Rebecca came awake slowly, stretching muscles taxed by their lovemaking. Dominic was on his back in the center of her bed, arm up, palm cushioning his head. She was pressed against his side, wrapped around him like he was her personal body pillow. “Mmm, how long was I out?”

“A while.”

Stacking her hands on his chest, she dropped her chin atop them and smiled down at him. “Did you sleep?”

“No.”

“Uh-oh.”

“What?”

“You have a very serious look on your face. What are you thinking about? Climate change? The current state of the economy?” A very satisfied smile curved her lips. “The earth-shattering orgasm you so recently gave me?”

“You,” he replied softly, brushing her hair off her cheek. “Us.”

A thrill moved through her knowing he was thinking about them as an ‘us’. She kissed his sternum, his pec, then licked his nipple.

He slid a hand into her hair. “Becca.”

“Are you going to pull my hair again,” she whispered against his chest. “Because that was hot.”

“I’m going to paddle your ass if you don’t behave.”

Would she enjoy being paddled by him? Her entire body quivered. He groaned in response. Feeling feisty, Rebecca bit his pec, laughing when he rolled her beneath him in self-defense.

“How come I’ve never met your parents?”

Her laughter vanished as if it had never been, sucked away by the shock of his words. She stiffened, turned her face away from him. “They’re not important.”

He cupped her face and made her look at him. “They’re your parents, Becca.”

“What about you?” She pushed against his chest, chuffing in frustration when she couldn’t budge him.

“What about me?”

She didn’t want to talk about her parents. Her father’s disapproval. Her mother’s willingness to give up her career for a man who didn’t appreciate her. “It’s not like you ever talk about your family.”

“I talk about my family all the time. I even took you to brunch with them.”

She shook her head. “Those are your friends.”

“They’re so much more than that.”

“Dom—”

“You want to talk, I’ll tell you anything you want to know.” He rolled off her, shifting to a seated position. “I don’t talk about parents because I don’t have any, Becca. I’m an orphan. At least I think I am. Who the hell knows for sure?”

How could he not know whether or not he was an orphan? “What is that supposed to mean?”

“My mum was an addict who sold herself for drugs. My father…who knows? She probably didn’t even know who he was. It’s a bloody miracle I’m alive today, that she didn’t stumble into an alley for an abortion. She sure as hell didn’t want me,” he said matter-of-factly.

Jesus.
As an addict, it was a miracle she’d carried him to full term.

“Lucky for me, I had a grandmother who came looking the moment she learned of me. Found me, half-starved and filthy next to mum’s body.”

“Your mother died in childbirth?”

“Nah, she OD’d afterward,” he said casually, looking like it was no big deal, even perfectly normal, but it wasn’t. “Took one look at me and shot up so much heroine she—”

“God, Dominic.”

“I spent a few days in hospital before gram could take me home.”

She knew what he wasn’t telling her. It wasn’t just malnourishment that had put him in the hospital. He would have been born addicted to his mother’s drug of choice. Rebecca looked up at her beautiful man, and an ache went through her. Pain for what he suffered, even if it was at a time he never would recall. She linked her fingers with his and squeezed his hand.

Dominic sighed. “Gram did her best for me. Raised me until I was sixteen.”

She knew his answer before she gave voice to the question. “Why only sixteen?”

“She died.” The anguished whisper had her crawling closer. Kneeling at his side and wrapping her arms around his trembling body. “The day after my sixteenth birthday.”

“At least you had Noah and the band.” He’d had Noah. When the only relative he had in the world passed, Dominic had Noah and the band. They’d become his family, just as he’d said. “Oh my God,” she whispered. That first day, the very first day after they’d met, he’d taken her to meet Noah, and she hadn’t even…”Why?”

“Why what?”

“You introduced me to Noah.” He’d introduced her to his
family
, an action that was usually reserved for those special people you wanted to build a relationship with. “But you walked away from me. Why?”

Dominic shrugged, his eyes shuttered.

“No, no you don’t. You said you’d tell me anything, Dom, so tell me why?”

He murmured something too soft to catch and then shook off her arms, shifting to the edge of the bed. “You were going to leave me.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“You would have. Eventually.”

She stared at the hard planes of his back, his broad shoulders, tight with tension, and thought about what he said. How she was going to leave him. Even though she’d never planned to. She’d fallen in love with him, why…

Everything clicked into place. He’d been let down over and over again in life. “Even Noah let you down.”

“Noah’s never let me down.”

“Yes. When he left music. He walked away from it, from you. He left you, just like your mother, your grandmother.”

“He was grieving over Danny’s death. He was lost.”

Her thoughts were in a whirl, which made sense since the earth was shifting beneath her feet. “Yes he was, but that didn’t make the hurt less, did it?”

Dominic pushed his fingers through his hair and stared at the ceiling. He didn’t deny it.

“Dom?”

“I didn’t want you to look at me one day and wonder what you’d gotten yourself into. I know what I am, Becca. I’m a long-haired, ear-ringed, uneducated musician. I come from trash and only excel at two things; playing the bass and pleasing a woman.” His voice was a conflicting mix of pain and pride.

“Dom—”

“What if you looked at me one day and decided anything was better than another minute with me?”

“What?” she whispered. Her chest ached. “Jesus, nearly three years lost because—”

“I’m not a good guy, Rebecca. My entire life I’ve used women then tossed them aside as if they were nothing. Just like my mum tossed me.”

Just as he’d tossed her.
Those words went unspoken, but they hung in the air between them.

“But I’ve changed. It’s taken me forty years to be the man I am today. I’m still not perfect, but I…” Surging to his feet, he scooped his jeans off the floor and pulled them on.

“What are you doing? You’re running again?”

“Is that what you think?”

“You’re getting dressed.”

Sadness filtered into his expression. “And your mind automatically goes to me running? I thought we were past that.”