Dominate (Deliver 8)

Now the tables had turned. While she grieved her friend, her lover, he wasn’t jealous. He only felt an overwhelming, protective need to take away her pain.

Gathering her in his arms, he fought her snarls and weak attempts to break free. Once she settled down, he held her on his lap, cradling her, wrapping her up with his body, and kissing the tears on her cheeks.

“I hear you, Rylee.” He pressed his lips to her ear, breathing her in. “All of you. We’re still here. Our lives matter. Don’t shut down on me.”

She stared up at him, her eyes swimming in rippling silver waters. A choking sound strangled in her throat. Another smothered sob. Then she circled her arms around his shoulders, buried her face in his neck, and wept silently, softly. Each painful hitch in her breath ripped him open and pulled her in.

From the moment he met her, she’d sworn her intentions were innocent, claiming that all those years ago, she’d hurt with him, cried for him, and changed her major to psychology. For him. She’d taken a sabbatical and driven to his house because she wanted to help him.

And he’d treated her like an enemy. Now that he knew the truth, he had to live with his crimes. But he wouldn’t live without her.

Once they escaped the present danger, and they would escape it, he was going to smash through her intimacy issues and convince her she needed him as much as he needed her.

“Evan Phillips didn’t make that call to her ex-husband.” Luke twisted in the front seat and met his eyes.

“No, he didn’t.” Tomas didn’t have proof, but he knew at gut level her neighbor was an innocent casualty.

Either Mason was lying about Evan’s phone call, or someone had called Mason, pretending to be Evan.

The reason for Evan’s murder wasn’t apparent. It could’ve been retaliation of the jealous ex-husband, or a message sent to Tomas’ team, or just a loose end that needed to go away.

For the next hour, he spoke quietly with Liv and Luke, speculating about possible enemies. Rylee didn’t try to push off his lap, her soft whimpers sinking into stunned acceptance. He sat with her in her sadness, his arms tight around her, exactly where he belonged.

If he didn’t fuck this up, he could have more moments like this. Moments when he held her while she was happy, scared, excited, or just wanted to sleep.

He hoped she would sleep now, but he sensed too much alertness in her muscles. She was listening, always eavesdropping, as he and his friends reminisced about missions gone by and gossiped about family drama.

Liv had deliberately confined Van, Tiago, Tate, and Lucia in the same vehicle for thirteen hours.

“Forced proximity,” she said. “They need to work out their shit.”

While that was true, he didn’t believe Tiago’s crimes would be forgiven anytime soon. The crime lord had poisoned Lucia to keep her sick, forced Van and Tate to have sex, and scarred up Tate’s back beyond physical and emotional repair.

Some crimes just weren’t redeemable.

While Rylee sat lethargically on his lap, he used the opportunity to dig out the first-aid kit and treat the laceration on her back. For once, she didn’t fight him. A testament to the despondent state of her mind.

Three hours into the drive, she lifted her head from his shoulder and squinted at the blackness beyond the window. “Where is this safe house?”

“Missouri.” He braced for the backlash.

“What?” Her voice pitched with outrage, and she shoved out of his embrace. “I can’t leave Texas.”

“Too late.”

She scrambled toward the far door. To do what? Jump from the moving vehicle?

He caught her throat, wrenched her forcibly back to him by the neck, and took her mouth. She fought him. Hot damn, she always fought. He groaned against her teeth and kissed her deeper, harder, wordlessly ordering her to return the kiss.

With a hand cradling her ass, he pulled her roughly against him and held her nape in a firm lock.

“Let me go.” Straddling his lap, she seethed against his mouth and shoved at his chest. “You’re kidnapping me!”

“Shut the fuck up and kiss me.” His stomach heated, his mind spinning to untangle the knots of her venom.

Battling her rage with more rage wouldn’t yield a lasting relationship with this complicated woman. While his cock loved her ferocity, they were more than sex. More than her hatred.

She told herself she was done with commitment and love and all matters of the heart. But that wasn’t true.

“You fear intimacy.” He restrained her hands against her back and held her close, chest to chest, mouth to mouth. “But you’ve been in a relationship with me for ten years.”

“You didn’t even know I existed.”

“That changed the moment you walked into my house and upended my world.”

He covered her mouth with his, his tongue insistent, pushing past the stubborn line of her lips. He refrained from using aggressive, overpowering strokes and instead delivered a languorous caress, tipping her expectations into bewilderment.