Chapter 56
Aurora POV
My body still trembles with the aftershocks of my orgasm, my skin flushed and slightly damp beneath my clothes I have yet to change out of since coming back to the motel.
I’m curled onto my side now, one leg tangled in the mess of my sheets while my phone is still pressed loosely against my ear. Dominic’s even breathing on the other end of the line comforts me, lulling me into a quiet meditative state.
I wish he were here right now. I miss his warm body and curling up against it. I miss soaking in the little gasps of air he pulls in after coming down from his own orgasm. I miss the steady beat of his heart.
In my haze, I ask the first thing that comes to mind. “When are you coming back to me?”
He lets out a soft chuckle—a rare sound. It startles me because I’ve only ever heard it a handful of times. It’s not cruel or mocking. It’s… warm. The kind of sound you don’t expect from a man like Dominic Guerrero.
It rolls through me, makes me smile before I can help it.
“I’ll be back soon,” he says finally, voice rough with something that sounds suspiciously like fondness.
“Soon,” I echo.
How soon is ‘soon’?
He doesn’t define what that means. Soon could be a day. A week. A month. Hell, a fucking lifetime. With Dominic, it’s impossible to tell. Dealing with the bratva might have complicated things to an astronomical level. However, I won’t know anything until he’s probably back here and I can weasel the information out of him.
“Behave yourself until I get back,” he says, adding, “I’ll be returning before the wedding.”
I smile to myself. “No promises.”
“Cute. Remember I’m not above making one of the twins your personal shadow.”
Then, the line goes dead.
I set the phone on my nightstand with more care than necessary then roll onto my stomach and bury my face into my pillow, groaning into it like that might somehow muffle the chaos swirling around in my head.
What the hell am I doing?
It feel like I’ve been asking myself that over and over again with no actual answer.
I shouldn’t feel this way.
I shouldn’t be fantasizing about peeling my dress off for a man who was ready to throw me and my family under the bus just a few weeks ago. I definitely shouldn’t be feeling this giddy over a warm compliment and the promise of his return.
But here I am.
Again.
Dominic POV
Dominic stared down at the phone in his hand, the soft click of the call ending still humming in the air. He didn’t move for a long moment, his thumb brushing absently across the screen as if it still held the sound of her voice.
For the first time in weeks—hell, maybe months—he felt genuinely lighter.
The tension in his chest from earlier had eased, his mind clearer than it had been in days. The pressure of trying to renegotiate terms with Alek and failing to please him now felt like a distant worry. After hearing Aurora’s voice, none of it mattered. Not when hearing her breath hitch and moan and beg for him had driven him crazy.
He exhaled through his nose, the corner of his mouth twitching in the barest ghost of a smile.
What the fuck was happening to him?
He should be strategizing. Planning their next moves with Romero in the next room Preparing to deal with whatever fall out may happen following Alek’s disappointment that Gianna was officially off the table.
But instead, all he could think about was her and the way she’d whispered his name. The way she asked when he’d be back to her, not just the States. That wasn’t something a woman like Aurora said lightly. Hearing her talk like that had made something shift inside him.
He set the phone down on the bedside table and stared out into the dark Moscow skyline across the way from his bed. The city beyond it glittered like broken glass beneath a midnight sky.
Declining Alek’s offer had been a risk, a big one. The bratva boss seemed unaccustomed to rejection. Dominic wasn’t deluded enough to think there wouldn’t be consequences but at the very least he’d made that choice with some kind of option still on the table.
For the first time in his cold, calculated life, Dominic had chosen a woman over a bargain.
His body still thrummed with the phantom feel of her and her voice, her teasing, her breathless little moans as they spilled out of her mouth while she came. He could finally admit it to himself: he didn’t regret a fucking thing.
Whatever this lightness that filled his chest was, it felt different than usual. It felt… like love.
Was it love?
The word hit him like a sucker punch, almost making him laugh out loud at the sheer absurdity of it. Love. He didn’t believe in an emotion like that. He hadn’t in a long, long time. Not since his mother’s body had been lowered into the ground and everything good and soft in him had been buried with her.
But Aurora had been digging those pieces back up, slowly. Relentlessly. Whether she realized it or not. Now, maybe for the first time in his entire cursed life, Dominic wondered if he was capable of becoming someone different.
Someone better.
Was this what his mother would have wanted for him? A real life with a wife not used for political gain but taken because he wanted her? Not a marriage born from convenience or control, but something honest. Something whole.
It felt foolish. Too soft and naive to feel real. But still… the thought intrigued him.
Maybe it was okay to want this. After all, it was with Aurora. A woman who had surpassed every expectation he ever had of her. Maybe, after everything—after killing his father, avenging his mother, and surviving through overthrowing his family—Dominic Guerrero actually could find a way to be truly happy.
If he could hold on to this fragile, flickering peace, maybe he could rewrite the ending everyone expected for him.
He didn’t have to be his father. He didn’t have to be the cold and ruthless monster everyone thought of him as. He could build something with Aurora, a legacy that didn’t begin and end with violence.
But first, he had to make it home.
To his soon-to-be wife.
Wife.
Dominic liked the sound of that.
