Page 51 of Sinner's Vows

“Now this is going to be interesting,” he says with a wink as he picks up the men’s sleeping shorts from the bed. “They are wash-worn and soft, so…”

So…

I swallow as he goes on his haunches and then nudges me to step into the wide legs.Hissleeping shorts. If he looks up, he’d see my sex. The place where Franco ruined me for life, but Dominic doesn’t look up. Of course he doesn’t.

It’s only when both my legs are in and he pulls the shorts up, making sure the T-shirt covers me all the way as he straightens in the process, that our gazes meet. His eyes tell me he doesn’t miss a thing, and yet, the look in them doesn’t make me want to shrink away in fear. In fact, I can’t look away. I want to be dragged in deeper, down into the heart of him.

All those gentle, almost imperceptible touches.That get to him the most.

I’ve never been treated like this before. With such reverence and care.

He lets go of the waistband, and the boxer shorts sag and barely keep up. He chuckles, and I reach for them to keep them in place. If I move in the night, they’ll slide right off. He is that big, and I’m that small in comparison. This man is all muscle with the build of a weightlifter—not one who started yesterday; he’s been at it for years.

“Let me,” he says as I fumble with the T-shirt to get to the short’s waistband. His hands slip underneath the T-shirt’s fabric, and his fingers kiss my skin as he takes the waistband and rolls it up several times. His knuckles brush against my bandage, and he stills, his touch a warm glow to my skin. “You’re still okay here?”

I shrug. “I haven’t looked.”

“Need pain meds?”

“It’s okay.”

“I’ll give you something in case.”

He traces the edge of the bandage with a fingertip, below my belly button. He’s checking the bandage’s seal, but the delicate touch sends a shiver of goosebumps down, lower, seeming to steal between my legs and right to where a slow steady bass has been pulsing for hours now. I bite down on my bottom lip not to gasp.All those gentle, almost imperceptible touches.

“Lie down, sweetheart. Let me have a proper look.”

We’re right at the bed, and it’s only a matter of caving in. My legs don’t want to hold me up anymore, so I do.

27

DOMINIC

It’s important that her wound heals. If nothing else, I know about aftercare when it comes to this type of thing. I bet this bandage isn’t as good as it needs to be, what with her shenanigans escaping our clinic, running around giving me hell, and then taking a bath.

She’s giving me hell, all right. But I’m playing her, too, so all’s fair in love and war.

“Scoot all the way up,” I say, wanting to have her lying flat, so she can’t kick me in the nuts without me seeing it coming. This one…she’s not to be trusted.

When she’s rested her head on a pillow, eyes wide, hands nervously twitching by her sides as if things are about to get really inappropriate, I take a deep breath.

I’m really only interested in making sure her wound is properly sealed.

I don’t want to peel the clothes I just put on her right off again.

I don’t want to touch her with such gentle care, she’ll forget everything Franco’s ever done to her. Wipe this slate clean with my own hands, and replace those memories with quiet caressesthat would ripple through her, arousing her like she’s never been aroused before.

I don’t want to mix my antidote into the poison she still carries within her.

With trained stoicism, I ignore the woman in front of me and quietly lift the T-shirt away and lower the pajama shorts two inches, baring her beautiful, creamy skin. I drag the shorts another inch lower because what I really want is another look at everything else going on her skin below her belly button.

First comes Randazzo’s tattoo which can still pass for body art if you don’t know what it means. And then, the real ugly scars that knot me up with such anger, my fingers start to tremble.

“What do these mean, sweetheart?” I ask, testing the scars by running a finger beside them.

They aren’t very long, and they were done in different batches, all at various stages of healing. And then, there’re the cigarette burns. Four in a line. I’d guess they’re maybe two weeks to three weeks old. Someone killed these cigarettes on her, giving her second degree burns that weren’t treated properly. I close my eyes, trying to contain the anger that’s got nowhere to go.

“Franco was counting the days he was holding me. Those are the tally marks. The last time I saw him before we flew here, he came with a friend. He didn’t have time so they just used their cigarettes to number the days until his return…he was planning to kill me, but he never came, and then things turned around, and I ended up here.”

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