Page 86 of The Woman in the Hollow
“You came into my room?”
“Stood in the doorway. You didn’t close it.” I wasn’t even aware a growl was building, let alone escaping, until Dom’s lips curved up. “Relax, didn’t see much. Just some of her back. Your body was doing a good job keeping all her secrets.”
“Dom, I swear to fucking God, I’m not above hitting you.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, nodding. “And you’re really gonna wanna in a minute.”
“What did you do?”
“I had to look.”
“Look,” I repeated. Then it dawned on me. “You broke into her place? Dom, I fuckingtoldyou not to.”
“And you’re thinking with your dick and not your mind. You don’t like it, tough shit. You’re not my capo, Dante. You don’t give me orders. Sometimes you forget that.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Yes, he worked for me… at the garden center. As a cover for his parole officer. But we were equals in the Family. Hell, he might even have more brownie points than me, given that he’d gone away for the organization.
“Maybe not,” I agreed, digging in my heels. “But this is my situation that we’re dealing with.”
“Yeah, funny, that. We’ll circle back. But back to the pretty thing upstairs.”
“You didn’t find shit.” Maybe that was stubbornness, but I refused to accept that she was involved.
“Well, I found stuff.”
“What?” I asked, my heart sinking.
“She took a trip to Phallus-ophy,” he said, meaning the local sex toy store. “Got herself something that gives all the good vibrations. Wanna guess when she got that?”
“Dom, that’s none of our fucking business.”
“Couple days after she met you.”
That wasn’t exactly some sort of revelation. There’d been heat almost from the jump.
“I only care about anything you found to link her to this. Everything else is her business to tell me. Or not.”
“I didn’t find shit,” he admitted.
“I knew you wouldn’t.”
“YouhopedI wouldn’t,” he clarified.
“Someday, Dom, I’m gonna rub this in your face. When you’ve got a woman and she comes with her own complications.”
“The only complicated thing I want from a woman is to figure out which position she wants to get fucked in. But keep dreaming.”
I sighed, making my way over toward the fridge to start gathering up ingredients to make breakfast.
“Back to things that are actually relevant,” I said.
“Right. Big Ed’s place.”
“Are the dramatic pauses necessary?” I asked, shooting him a look.
It went against everything I knew was important, but I wanted Family business over with so I could get back to some alone time with Hazel.
