Page 133 of Monster

“No more secrets between us?” I asked quietly. He nodded. “That’s either a very brave thing for someone in your position to say, or a stupid one.”

“See it as brave,” he said arrogantly.

“You’ll really tell me everything? The investigation?”

I shot him a pointed look. He squeezed me tightly for that comment.

“Not gonna tell you shit about the investigation. You’ll only use that as an excuse to leave, and you need to get it through to your head. You ain’t ever leaving, baby. As for the other shit, as long as you think you can stomach it.”

“Aren’t you afraid I might use it against you? I could go to the cops.”

He shrugged. “That’s a risk I’m willing to take with you.”

I couldn’t believe he would trust me with all his secrets like that. Did he do this with all the women he was sleeping with?

But no, something told me this was as new to him as it was to me. And something about that thought made my chest light.

“So, do you want to leave for the night? Come meet my brothers? And my oldest?”

I bit my lip. Before he came home, I had wanted to leave the house, even for a little while. But now that he was here, all I wanted to do was spend the time with him in bed.

I wanted to meet his brothers, though. I wanted to see that part of his life that I wasn’t privy to. I nodded. “Okay. Let me change first, and we can go.”

* * *

We tookhis bike to the bar, which wasn’t that long of a drive, much to my disappointment. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask Dominic to keep driving.

I was getting used to riding.

And I loved it.

But we arrived, and Dominic helped me climb off before I could say anything.

The bar wasn’t that much different from the place we’d gone to for lunch, though it was much more lively, and even from the parking lot, I could hear loud rock music from inside.

Dominic grabbed my hand and squeezed. “Ready?”

“Ready,” I said, a little excited and nervous about meeting the important people in his life. Especially his son. Technically, I had seen Kai when he went with his dad to rescue Braxton and me, but I had never talked to him.

I was only older than him by a little over a year, which meant I was closer to Kai in age than I was to his dad, my…

I didn’t exactly know what Dominic was to me.

My captor? My boyfriend?

I shook my head. He acted with enough possessiveness of me to be either of those things.

We walked inside the bar, and the first thing I noticed was all the people.

There were just so many people around—some crowding around the bar; some on the dance floor, grinding against each other; and some sitting at the scattered tables.

Dominic didn’t seem fazed by the scene, though I supposed he was used to it by now.

He maneuvered us through the crowd, and like he was the king of the castle, everyone moved out of his way quickly, some calling out greetings to him.

I caught the eyes of a few women we passed, and none of them looked at me with a welcoming expression.

I hate that my first thought was to wonder how many of these women he had slept with… or was currently sleeping with.

---