Beautifully Broken 3: Before We Fall

Dominic raises an eyebrow. “So, you romanticize precipitation. Interesting.”

I smile. “I romanticize everything. That’s just me.”

Dominic shakes his head. “That’ll probably get you into trouble.”

I stare at him. “I think I already told you. It’s my nature to like trouble. I’m trying not to, but it goes against my grain. Next question.”

“Why did you get between me and Cris? You could’ve been seriously hurt… even more than you were.”

Dominic is staring at me now with interest, genuine curiosity in his eyes. I shake my head.

“Because I’m a human being,” I answer. “I think anyone would step in and try to keep two people from killing each other. It’s the decent thing to do.”

“Are you decent?” Dominic’s lip twitches.

I smile. “Sometimes.”

“Why did you and your last boyfriend break up? Was he trouble?”

Holy shit. His abrupt change of direction sends a knife through my gut, because the answer to that question is ugly.

Jared was definitely trouble and he killed someone I love.

But I don’t say that. Instead, I murmur, “No comment.”

Dominic rolls his eyes. “Then this game isn’t so fun. Why don’t you just tell me about your childhood or some shit?”

So I do. Anything to get what Jared did out of my head… To not think of those images. The crumpled truck, the blood spatters, the screams when Maddy came to the accident scene.

I talk myself blue in the face to get that shit out of my head.

I tell Dom about my childhood and what it was like growing up with Gabe and my suck-ass parents. I tell him about Brand and how he’s always been like my brother. I tell him how I used to work in the summers for my best friend, Maddy, but then she married my brother and moved to Connecticut. When I pause to take a breath, Dom has his eyes open again, staring at me.

“That big blond guy is like your brother?” he asks doubtfully. “That’s a strange sibling relationship.”

His tone is weird and I narrow my eyes. “What are you implying?”

He shrugs. “Nothing. I just sense some incest there, is all.”

I literally shudder. “That’s f**king gross. Brand taught me to ride a bike.”

Dom just looks at me. “All I know is that the way that guy looks at you is far from brotherly. I know what I know.”

A weird feeling passes through me, because I have been ignoring that new look in Brand’s eye. I keep hoping that I’ll never see it again, but deep down, I know that I will. And deep down, I know that Dom is right.

“Well, it’s nice of you to notice,” I tell him snippily. “But you don’t know what you don’t know. And you’re wrong.”

“I’m rarely wrong,” he answers arrogantly. I can see that he really believes that.

“Does everyone around you always tell you what you want to hear?” I demand. “Do they tell you that you’re a genius, that you’re perfect, and that you’re never wrong?”

“They don’t have to tell me,” he smirks.

Because he already knows. I gag a little and roll my eyes.

“Have they ever told you that you’re arrogant?”

He nods, the corner of his mouth twitching a bit. “That might have been mentioned,” he admits. I can tell that he doesn’t care.

I settle more fully into the crook of his arm, enjoying the way his woodsy scent envelops me, even in the cold air.

“What’s it like to film a movie?” I ask conversationally, changing the subject.

I have to talk about something or I’ll go out of my mind. I could swear the cooler has gotten smaller since we’ve been trapped in here. Dominic closes his eyes again and his fingers rest against my side. I don’t think he even notices, but I certainly do.

“It’s fine,” he tells me. “I’m not much of a people person, but even though millions of people see me onscreen, it doesn’t seem like that when we’re filming.”

“So you’re an introvert?” I ask with interest.

He nods without opening his eyes. “Most definitely. My brothers got the extrovert genes.”

“Ah, yes. The badass rockers. They definitely seem to love the limelight. Is that it… two brothers and one sister?”

“Yeah,” he nods. “That’s it.”

“You’re lucky,” I tell him. “All I have is Gabe.”

“And he’s the only one who counts because your parents are worthless?” Dominic asks with interest, repeating my words from earlier. It’s the first time he actually seems interested.

“So you were listening!” I nudge him. And he smiles. A real smile, the first time I’ve seen it on him. I decide that it’s well worth the wait. His smile almost warms the room up all by itself, like the heavens opened up and the light shone down on us through the clouds.

“I couldn’t help but listen,” he tells me, his eyes almost warm. “You weren’t going to shut up and I can’t go anywhere.”

I giggle and he smiles, and for a second we seem like friends.

“Why exactly are your parents worthless?” he asks after a minute. I’m surprised that he would go out of his way to ask, so even though it makes me uncomfortable, I answer.

“My mom never really wanted to be a mom and she’s not good at it. When she and my dad got divorced, she took it as an opportunity to do whatever she wants to do. She has a new boyfriend every week. I rarely hear from my dad. He always thought it was enough to just send my mom a child-support check.”

A stab of pain slices through me as I admit it out loud. It’s like announcing to the world, Hey, there’s something so wrong with me that my parents don’t care if I’m alive. But Dominic doesn’t seem to see it that way.

“Their loss,” he shrugs. “That’s what I tell myself whenever I hear a bad review or someone totally disses me. It’s their loss. Not yours.”

“If you really believe that, then I admire you,” I tell him. “I guess I’ve got thinner skin than that.”

“Well, there’s your first mistake,” he answers. “You’ve got to grow some thick skin. Or some balls.”

“I’ve got balls,” I announce. “They’re made of steel.”

Dominic laughs. “Really? This I’ve got to see.”

In a flurry of sudden movement, his arm snakes around my waist, finding its way to my crotch. With one hand on my back holding me in place, he strokes me with the other, just for a second. The heat from his palm melds with the heat between my legs, and a million needles shoot down into my legs, weakening my knees.

I gasp and my eyes meet his, and I’m frozen as my heart pounds and my fingers shake.

“It appears that you don’t, in fact, have balls,” he tells me quietly, without removing his hand from my crotch.

“It was a figure of speech,” I croak needlessly, although of course he knows that. “You can move your hand now.”

“Oh, can I?” His voice is velvet, smooth as butter.

Instead of moving it away, his fingers move against me and my nerve endings burst into flame, spreading a fire from my crotch to my thighs to my chest.

Why aren’t I moving away from him?

The simple answer is: I don’t want to. I should want to… Dominic Kinkaide is an a**hole most of the time. But holy shit, he’s a sexy a**hole. And to be quite honest, I don’t think I could move to save my life. It’s like I’m suspended here, dangling from the tips of his fingers.

He lowers his head and his lips graze my ear.

“Still want me to move? Because I know an excellent way to keep warm.”

My breath hitches again, at the intimacy in his tone, at the warmth of his lips, at the way my heart has taken off in my chest. I open my mouth to say something and nothing comes out.

Dominic moves his fingers again, rubbing me on the outside of my pants, urging me toward a precipice that I’m not sure I want to climb toward. Not with him. Yet I can’t move away. I gulp.

“You want to,” he says knowingly. “You’re wet. I can feel it through your clothes.”

Very purposefully, just like he does everything else, he holds his fingers up like a trophy, his eyes glued to mine. As I watch in astonishment, he raises them to his nose and inhales them.

“Are you feeling warm yet?”

I watch his lips as he speaks the words, husky and low. His lips are full yet manly, and suddenly I ache to lean over and press mine to his, to touch them in any way that I can.

But I don’t.

Because I’m not a girl who gets used. Not anymore.

“No, not at all.”

But Dominic takes that as a challenge. He’s not used to hearing the word no and he’s not about to start now. I see that in his dark eyes a scant moment before he dips his head and consumes my mouth.

I say consume instead of kiss, because that’s what he does.

He consumes me.

His lips are fiery and hot and he kisses me with a fierceness that touches a secret part of me, moist, hot, firm, sexy. I want to inhale him, to suck him down. I vaguely feel his hands on my back, his warmth emanating through my clothes, his hardness pushing into my softness.

I’m breathless when he pulls away.

“What about now?”

For the life of me, I’m afraid to answer that. Instead I pull away, just a bit, just enough that there is some space between us, but I can still absorb his warmth. As my teeth chatter, both from the cold and from the sudden absence of his lips, I answer.

“I’m good.”

He laughs, a husky, low, naughty sound.

“Oh, I’m sure of that.”

And just like that, I’m drawn back in… in toward his sexy smile, his arrogant gaze, and his knowing smirk. He’s bad for me. Very bad for me. I’ve got to remember that.

He will decimate you, I tell myself.

But my problem is, every time I look into his dark eyes and see the mysterious things that lurk there, I forget that. I forget everything that is supposed to matter.

Chapter Ten

Dominic

Burying my hand in Jacey’s crotch makes my balls swell and my dick harden.

It’s true.

The idea that she’s good turns my thoughts to a place I shouldn’t be thinking about. It makes me want to find out how good she actually is.

Jacey stares at me in fascination, and for some reason I want to bask in that look, to lay in it for hours, to soak it in. Mainly because she’s not looking at me that way because of who I am; she’s looking at me because of how I’m making her feel. Her eyes are wide and innocent and soft.

I like that.

“Let’s get warm, Jacey,” I suggest, my meaning very clear as my hand slides to her thigh, where my fingers dig into her leg, kneading it.

“No,” she stammers. “I can’t. I—”

Suddenly the cooler door opens, bringing with it a rush of warm air. The humidity of it hits me in the face and I raise my head (and my hand) in surprise.

“What the hell?” Joe barks, his harsh voice a sharp interruption as he sticks his gray head in and glares at us, as if we chose to be stuck in here. “Get out of there. We’ve been hunting for you.”