The Scandal You Started, page 29
“I’m not…not an object. Dickhead,” she said between gasps.
“You are mine, nonetheless.” He buried the whisper in her hair and closed his eyes on the warm scent of cherries, vanilla, and her damp skin. “Say it. Say you are mine, and I will allow you your orgasm.”
He heard her sharp inhale before, “Don’t you dare. Dominic, don’t you fucking dare. I will kill you. I will kill you if you stop again.”
“Then say it. Say you are mine. Say it now.” She shook her head furiously, and he growled, irritated with her stubbornness. “You cannot come. I will not let you if you do not. So quickly. Say it, Rayna. Tell me you are mine.”
“No!”
Dominic roared as he wrenched himself out of her clasping sex. Rayna screamed her own anger, her hips rising in search of him. But he pulled off her and flipped her over.
Her head flew up off the edge of the mattress, eyes ablaze, hair clinging to her damp skin. Her cheeks were coloured with the frustration of denied pleasure. Had there been a sword next to her, he had no doubt she would have grabbed it and rammed it straight through his heart.
He wouldn’t have let her, though. Didn’t let her.
Clamping his hands around her waist, her legs dangling over his arms, he lifted her lower half off the mattress.
He shoved his dick back into her. Hard. Without mercy.
She bowed on a torn cry, her legs kicking up and hands catching his wrists.
He pounded into her, thrust mean and fast, not at all like a gentleman. But in that moment, he was nothing but a jealous fiend who needed to mark his woman inside and out. So he fucked her like one. He dented her skin with his fingers enough to leave white shadows around them. Ogled the visible peaks of her nipples, jostling behind her tight T-shirt. Grunted as his balls tightened and senses tunnelled on her.
He pressed forward when she scratched through the hairs at the very base of his stomach.
“You’re too deep,” she cried, ripping at his skin and cleaving a hissed moan from him. “Dominic, it’s too much. Dominic!” She bared her teeth. “Oh, fuck, it’s so good. It hurts so fucking good. I can’t—I need to come. I—”
She lurched one hand to where they were joined, ever so slightly grazing his cock before pressing over her swollen clit. And that single touch, the way she sobbed, the sudden tightness of her very nearly threw him under the racing cart of his orgasm.
“No,” he snapped, plunging hard and sloppy. “Say you’re mine. Tell me you are mine first!”
He was convinced she was going to put him through the torture of not hearing the words that would sate his soul for an eternity and force him to find the will to deny her again.
Except she trapped him in her liquid eyes and breathed, “You’re mine, Dominic.”
They weren’t the words he’d wanted to hear.
They were better. More powerful. Raw. Exactly what he hadn’t known he needed. A sweet sledgehammer to his heart, and a lit match under his pleasure.
He ignited in the exquisite satisfaction of hearing them so intensely that a husky whimper escaped the barrier of his teeth. It would have humiliated him in any other circumstance, but right then, it was the last thing he cared about.
I’m yours, my love.
Dominic couldn’t voice it, but he repeated it over and over in his mind as he gritted down the fullness in his balls and thrust, thrust, thrust. Until the bed shook under them, and Rayna’s head hung off the mattress as her fingers rapidly rubbed back and forth, and the grunted noises coming from him were as loud as the rapid slap, slap, squelch of their bodies.
And gosh, it seemed so sudden and yet not soon enough. The way she locked up all around him, coming up off the mattress onto nothing but her shoulders and his hands as she silently screamed and fell into oblivion.
She dragged him down with her. Slammed him straight into it. It winded him as he choked on her name, ripping the muscles down his thighs and wrenching all sensation from him. Everything except the fire in his groin as his hips gave short jerks, and he spilled every ounce of his seed inside her.
A blissful eternity passed before the ringing in Dominic’s head dulled enough for him to hear Rayna’s heaving gasps threading through his own. She slumped in a trembling puddle on the mattress, slipping from his slackened grip. He collapsed over her on his forearms, his satiated body too heavy to keep upright, and rested his damp forehead on hers.
They pulsed as one where they were still connected in the rasping silence that followed.
For a long minute, he kept his eyes closed and let her breaths steady the beat of his heart as the lingering pleasure warmed his skin like sunshine. But then she shifted under him, brushing weak fingers against his cheek, and the coldness of fear and panic drizzled down his back.
With a quiet noise of pain, he curled himself around her, burying his hands in her hair and his face in her neck. “Do not go on Monday. Please, Rayna.”
Her chest rose, paused, and then sank on a heavy sigh.
She snaked one arm around his shoulders and raked her other hand through the back of his sweat-damp hair.
“You…” Her huff of tired laughter tickled his scalp. “You actually piss me off sometimes, Dominic, do you know that? If it wasn’t for your dick, I’d be so mad at you right now. If you’d have just let me explain before accusing me of betraying you, I could’ve told you I’m not going on another date with Jake.
“He’s meeting us on his lunch break before we go to the mall, so I can give him his sister’s invitation to the exhibit’s opening gala.”
Dominic stilled.
I beg your finest pardon? What?
Chapter 34
Rayna
“So are you two finally dating?” Jake asked when Rayna and Dominic met him during his lunchbreak on Monday in a square of food trucks and packed tables and benches.
Surprise lurched through her heart as she gaped at his grin, and she immediately said, “No.”
At the exact same time as Dominic said, “Yes.”
Her head whipped around in bafflement. As did Dominic’s.
She glared at him, and he glared back, stubborn and furious.
“We are,” he declared.
Dating? No, no, they were sleeping together. Not dating.
But she wasn’t going announce that because, technically, no one was meant to know. It had nothing to do with the fact trying to wrap her tongue around the syllables was…uncomfortable. Especially when they elicited an image of Dominic’s downturned expression in her mind.
Gritting her teeth, she flicked her attention away from the oaf and found herself blushing under the bright laughter dancing in Jake’s green eyes.
“I take it it’s a little complicated,” he teased.
“Not at all,” she grumbled.
As Jake chuckled and Dominic’s aura still flared dark and moody, Rayna dug a hand through the handbag in her lap and pulled out a cream envelope sealed with a red wax stamp.
She smoothed her expression out as she offered it to Jake. “Here you go. This is for Serena.”
Jake took it and flipped it over. “Thank you so much for this, Rayna.” His eyes crinkled with the love of an older brother. “I honestly had no idea what to get her for her birthday this year, but this is perfect. She’s going to love it.”
Rayna’s pride swelled. “I hope she does. But it’s address to you as well, so if you’re free that evening, come with her.”
She ignored the way Dominic bristled as Jake nodded his head to the side. “I don’t think I’ve got a fancy enough suit for a Tregency-style gala, but yeah, I’ll come.”
“They’ll have tailcoats you can borrow for the night free of charge, but a three-piece suit is more than fancy enough.”
“Okay, that’s good to know.” Jake then waved the envelope around. “How’s it coming along though? The exhibit and all the letters?”
Rayna let out a single, exhausted laugh as she glanced across to Dominic. “It’s become a little bit more complicated than we would’ve liked it to be.”
“Oh?”
“Some of the letters are written in a code we can’t crack, which means we currently have an incomplete story and catalogue of them. So we’re kind of stuck, and honestly, it’s driving us all mad. But we still have time to figure it out, and we will…hopefully.”
In the days after meeting Jake, Rayna and Dominic ended up coming home a little later each evening from the museum as the whole team worked hard to solve the mystery of the letters. With the deadline of the first draft of Dominic’s case study report coming up towards the end of the month too, the other four days weren’t much slower for them either.
It was tiring, honestly, yet the joy of it was still somehow exponential.
The lunches spent eating from takeout boxes with Dominic, Cassie, Hania, and Matt as they cursed the men who’d written the letters. Walking back into the farmhouse exhausted, but standing in the kitchen with Dominic, chatting about nonsense while they munched on whatever was in the fruit bowl. Before collapsing into bed at night with his arms around her and the AC on full to fend off the hot July air.
Dominic kept up his routine of swimming in the mornings, and a few days, Rayna woke with him to exercise in the basement gym. Other days, they worked on his report within the comfort of their bed. And when they were done, they found enough energy for a lazy fuck or a hard quickie before they cooked a meal together.
She even let him convince her to waltz around the kitchen a few times. She’d never admit it aloud, but she enjoyed it, dancing and stumbling and laughing without a care in the world.
It was new. Spending so much time with someone she was having sex with and liking every second of it. Even when it took him forever to chop ingredients, or type on his phone, or select a movie to watch, the sweet concentration on his face always melted her frustration.
She was making memories with him she was never going to forget. She was experiencing things she didn’t even realise were altering her soul and feelings things she couldn’t name.
The only uncomfortable part was remembering that it wasn’t going to last. But it was fine, she told herself. That was how it was meant to be. She might have blurred the lines of Study and Guardian with him, but at the end of the day, that was all they were.
That was all they could be. That was all she wanted them to be.
Right?
Obviously. Yeah. Of course. Duh.
They made good historian colleagues as well, she supposed.
Which was why Rayna backed his idea when, two weeks into their hours of trial and error with the coded letters, Dominic said, “The only way to know for sure is by lighting a small flame under one of the letters.”
Cassie choked on a sound of shock and rapidly shook her head from her stool around the white table she was sitting at with Matt. “Absolutely not! We can’t light flames under one of the letters. It’ll burn instantly, and we’ll get into trouble for being reckless with the artefacts.”
“But if Dominic is right…” Matt muttered hesitantly but lifted his gloved hands from his laptop in surrender when Cassie glared at him.
“I just mean that his theory is credible,” he added quickly. “We’ve tried every cipher style on the database and tried so many different alphabet combinations too, but nothing has made sense yet. What if the coded letters are designed to be a distraction from what’s hidden in the actual correspondence Lord Ian wrote and received?”
Cassie waved her hands around. “That doesn’t mean we light them on fire.”
“I don’t think Dominic meant we light them on fire,” said Rayna. “But if we use heat from a hairdryer or something, any alcohol or traces of lemon juice will colour, and we’ll be able to see if any of the letters or words are marked.”
She glanced between Cassie and Dominic. “Honestly, now that I think about it, the method was used by government officials and spies during The Great Rebellion of Zorro.” She gestured to the open, leather diaries placed in the middle of the letters. “And if Lord Ian was as obsessed with the rebellion as we can assume he was, then he was probably aware of the practice.”
Consideration buzzed around the silent research room.
“As the head of the team, Cassie, it’s your call,” Rayna then said. “But I think Dominic’s idea is credible. It’s worth a shot, at least.”
“I agree,” Hania said with a nod.
“Me too,” Matt added.
“Oh, gosh,” Cassie groaned with a hand pressed over her mouth. A thousand thoughts ran through her distant gaze before she sighed heavily. “Okay. Fine. Someone find a hairdryer.”
A hairdryer was found in one of the staff shower rooms, but it took someone from the museum’s Facilities team to unscrew the counter it was attached to and get it unplugged.
Then, Rayna and Dominic gathered on one side of Cassie, while Matt and Hania huddled on the other, all of them looking over the letter they were testing their method on.
Cassie exhaled stiffly. “Okay.” She fortified her shoulders. “I’m ready.”
Rayna stared just as hard as the others when Cassie turned the hairdryer on over the paper pinned under her fingers.
It took a while, each second dragging on for ten, but brown dots began appearing under some of the individual words on Mr Farringdon’s correspondence to Lord Ian.
Hania gasped. “It worked.”
Cassie turned the hairdryer off and let out a hearty, excited laugh. Hania joined in with a little clap, Matt was absolutely gobsmacked, and Rayna gleamed up at Dominic as his irises shone with wonder.
“You did it,” she muttered, her voice thick with amazement.
“I would not have without you,” he whispered back.
Someone shook a whole load of bottles of fizzy drinks inside her, and they all expanded so full of bubbling air, she felt like she would shoot off with them. Right into Dominic’s arms.
But Cassie made them both jump when she sang his name loudly.
“You are a star, young man,” she said, beaming. “Gosh, I could hug you right now. I won’t! That would be inappropriate, but gosh, do we owe you as a team for saving us from another day of blindly running around in circles.”
Dominic grinned and shook his head. “Not at all. It was a collective effort.”
“Oh, shush.” Cassie waved her hands around, dismissing his modesty. “Name your price right now. I’m in such a good mood I might even be able to convince the team to let you take one of these letters home with you, or—oh, wait.” Her brows shot up in a dinging moment as she glanced at Rayna. “The articles. You can show him what you were looking into, and we can see if there’s anything else the library or archives might have for him.”
Blotchy, molten heat fired through Rayna as she gaped at the older woman the way a child who’d been publicly outed by a parent would.
Cassie! What the fuck?
She was caught by Dominic’s curious stare, and fuck, her face stung like her skin had been ripped off. She swiftly directed her gaze away.
“Articles on what?” he asked.
“Well, unlike Rayna,” Cassie explained, “you’re a temporary agent who doesn’t publish research, so we probably won’t work with you again. That’s just kind of how Two Worlds works, as I’m sure you were made aware. So we were putting together a little parting gift for you. Just a little something in your personal area of interest. But we can add to it if we’ve found what you were looking for.”
Cassie’s expression danced with mischief. “We’ll let Rayna here show you later, seeing as she personally worked so hard to find it.”
Hania and Matt wore the same grinning look of knowing a big, juicy secret, and realisation peeled off another layer of Rayna’s skin.
Fuck. They knew. They knew something was going on between her and Dominic.
Except her heart battered not in concern, but with jittery nerves.
Gosh, she hoped Dominic liked it, because she’d broken so many POTeM rules for him trying to find it.
Again.
Dominic
Rayna was nervous.
Dominic had never witnessed her so. It was odd and endearing.
He was curious to find out what this so-called gift was that was making her blush whenever he caught her gaze.
After a few more hours of discovering the secrets Lord Ian and Mr Farringdon had been hiding within their missives, he finally left the research room with Rayna to find out.
She led him into the museum library, a private space split into two big areas connected by a short corridor, full of dark shelves and bound books placed between newer ones. Attached to the second area was a small, closed room with a hefty table and chairs.
Rayna collected a book from the old, grey-haired man who’d been tidying one of the shelves before they disturbed him. Then Dominic followed her into the last room and closed the door behind them. The yellow lights automatically switched on above them.
Without a word, she pulled out one of the eight wooden chairs to make space for them to stand at the edge of the square table and placed the book down. Then she glared up at him with rosy cheeks and a stubborn mouth as if he’d made her do something she didn’t want to do.
An adoring smile quirked his lips. “Why are we here, my love?” he said, keeping his voice quiet even though they were alone. It was unlikely the old man would hear them.
She sighed and straightened. “Do you remember when we first started the case study report, you asked if I knew about your history, and I said only what I’d been told, but even then, I wasn’t allowed to tell you anything?”
“Yes. You also said there was nothing you could do to stop me if I chose to do so by myself.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
She blinked in surprise. “Wait, you didn’t?” He shook his head. “Why not?”
Oh, Dominic had been curious for sure after he’d been taught the full capabilities of the internet. But by that point, he’d already been half in love with Rayna. He hadn’t seen the point of reading about a life where her name wasn’t written next to his.
