Chapter 5 Chapter 5

CASSIAN'S POV

I still couldn't move.

Dominic was standing in front of me, naked, still glistening, still half-hard and my brain had apparently decided to take an unscheduled vacation. The man from the couch was gone. I hadn't even heard him leave. Hadn't noticed anything except the massive wall of muscle and tattoos now occupying my personal space.

"See something you like, sunshine?"

His voice dripped with amusement. Deep. Rough from what he'd just been doing. It scraped against my ears like sandpaper.

I was still staring.

Stop staring. Stop staring. For the love of God, stop…

"Can't get enough of me?" He tilted his head, that infuriating smirk playing on his lips. "I knew you'd come around eventually."

Something snapped inside my chest.

My fist connected with his face before I even registered the decision to throw it. The impact jarred my knuckles, his jaw was like concrete but the satisfaction of watching his head snap to the side was worth every ounce of pain.

“PUT SOME FUCKING CLOTHES ON!" The scream tore out of my throat, raw and desperate. "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? DO YOU HAVE NO BASIC DECENCY? NO SHAME? NO…."

Dominic turned back to me slowly. His hand was cupping his jaw, his fingers pressing against the reddening skin where I'd hit him. A trickle of blood dripped from his lower lip where his teeth had cut into it.

He was laughing.

Not mockingly. Not cruelly. Actually laughing, shoulders shaking, eyes crinkling, dimples flashing like he'd just heard the funniest joke in the world.

And God help me, it was annoying.

It was also…no. No. I refused to finish that thought. I refused to acknowledge the way his laugh rumbled through the room, low and warm and entirely too attractive. I refused to notice how the blood on his lip made him look dangerous in a way that did something complicated to my stomach.

"You," he said between laughs, "are absolutely adorable."

"I will kill you."

"Sure you will, baby." He wiped the blood from his lip with the back of his hand, still grinning. "Sure you will."

He held up both hands in mock surrender, taking a step back. "Okay, okay. You win. I'll put on some clothes. Wouldn't want to offend your delicate sensibilities."

"Go. Now."

"Bossy." He winked and started walking backward toward what I assumed was his bedroom. "Make yourself comfortable on the couch. I'll be right back."

He disappeared around the corner, and I finally let out the breath I'd been holding.

The couch.

I looked at it.

Where, not five minutes ago, Dominic Costello had been getting his dick sucked by a stranger while staring at me like I was dessert.

Disgust. Pure, absolute disgust crawled up my throat. There was no way in hell I was sitting on that thing. No amount of blackmail or phone theft or psychological warfare would convince me to plant my body on the same surface where….

I couldn't even finish the thought.

The moment I heard a door close somewhere in the depths of the apartment, I moved.

This was my chance. Dominic was distracted, probably pulling on pants or whatever he did in his bedroom. The apartment was massive, surely he hadn't hidden my phone in his room. It had to be somewhere out here. A drawer. A shelf. Under a cushion. Anywhere.

I started searching.

The coffee table first. Magazines, a remote control, a half-empty glass of whiskey. No phone. The sideboard next, drawers full of mail and pens and random receipts. No phone. A bookshelf against the far wall, filled with what looked like first editions and a few framed photographs I didn't have time to examine.

No phone. No phone. No phone.

I was on my hands and knees, checking under an antique cabinet, when his voice sliced through the silence.

"Useless efforts."

I froze.

“You're putting in all that work for something that isn't even here."

I turned around slowly, my knees still on the floor.

Dominic was leaning against the doorway, arms crossed over his chest. He'd put on clothes, grey sweatpants that hung low on his hips and a black t-shirt that stretched across his shoulders like a second skin. His feet were bare. His hair was still messy. And his jaw was already starting to bruise where I'd hit him.

He looked... comfortable. At ease. Like he hadn't just orchestrated the most humiliating encounter of my life.

"Where is it?" My voice came out lower than I intended. Harder.

“Where's what?"

“You know what, you absolute menace. My phone. Where is my phone?"

He didn't answer. Just watched me with those dark eyes, that faint smirk still playing on his lips.

I stood up. Stormed across the room. Didn't stop until I was close enough to feel the heat radiating off his body.

Then I grabbed him by the collar of his t-shirt and yanked him down to my level.

"You crazy fucker." Each word came out through clenched teeth. "Give me my phone back. I'm done playing your games. I only have a year left at this university. Let me finish it in peace."

His smirk widened.

And then his hand was on my waist.

Warm. Large. Possessive. His fingers curled around my hip, and before I could react, he'd pulled me flush against him. My chest hit his. My thighs brushed against his. Every inch of me was pressed against every inch of him, and he smelled like cedar and something darker, something that made my head swim.

“Let go of me…" I pushed against his chest, but he didn't budge. He was a wall. A mountain. An immovable object I had no hope of shifting.

"Looking for this?"

His free hand dipped into his sweatpants pocket. When it emerged, it was holding my phone.

My phone.

The case was the same. The cracked screen protector I'd been meaning to replace. The little charm Darius had given me as a joke last year. It was all there, dangling from Dominic's fingers like bait on a hook.

I stopped struggling.

"Good boy."

The words slid over my skin like oil. Warm. Slick. Wrong. I should have been furious. I was furious. But something in my chest had gone very, very still, and I couldn't seem to remember why pushing him away had been so important.

Dominic leaned in.

His lips brushed against my ear, not quite touching, close enough that I could feel the heat of his breath. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper.

"Now. You'll listen. And I'll talk."

I swallowed.

My throat clicked audibly. I could feel his smirk against the shell of my ear, could feel the vibration of his silent laugh where our chests were pressed together. His hand was still on my waist, his fingers splayed across my hip like he owned it.

Like he owned me.

Before I could respond before I could even think of responding he moved.

One second I was standing. Next, the world tilted upside down. My stomach slammed against his shoulder, and I realized with dawning horror that he'd thrown me over it like I weighed nothing. Like I was a sack of potatoes. Like I was his sack of potatoes.

"Put me DOWN!"

I kicked. Thrashed. Beat my fists against his back. None of it made any difference. His arm was locked around the backs of my thighs, holding me in place with an ease that made my blood boil and my face burn.

"Stop squirming," he said, utterly unbothered. "You'll hurt yourself."

"I'll hurt you…"

"You've tried that." He patted my ass. Patted. Like I was a misbehaving child. "Didn't work."

He walked me over to the couch, the couch, I was going to die and sat down. In one fluid motion, he shifted me off his shoulder and deposited me directly onto his lap.

My back was against his chest. His arm was around my waist, keeping me pinned. His legs were spread wide enough that mine fell open with them.

I was sitting on Dominic Costello's lap.

Like a doll.

Like a trophy.

"Get off me." I tried to scramble away, but his arm tightened, and I went nowhere. "This isn't funny. This isn't…you can't just…"

"I can," he said calmly. "And I am."

He held up my phone, still in his hand, still out of my reach and wiggled it gently.

"You want this back?"

I glared at him over my shoulder. "Obviously."

"You want me to remove your name from the project?"

"Obviously."

"Then here's the deal." He shifted beneath me, crossing one ankle over his knee like we were having a casual conversation at a coffee shop instead of... whatever this was. "One condition. That's all I'm asking."

I went very still. "What condition?"

He leaned forward, his chest pressing against my back, his lips finding my ear again.

"For one whole month," he said slowly, "you'll do everything I say."

I blinked.

“Excuse me?"

"Everything." His voice dropped lower. Darker. It rumbled through his chest and into my spine, settling somewhere in my gut like a lit match. "Everything means everything, sunshine."

The world narrowed to the space between us.

I understood now.

All of it. The project. The party. The video. The scene on this very couch. Every manipulation, every provocation, every carefully laid trap, it had all been building to this moment. To this offer. To this choice.

Fifteen years old. His mother's funeral. The words he'd spoken like a vow.

I had thought, back then, that he was grieving. That he didn't mean it. That time would soften whatever strange claim he'd staked on my soul.

But Dominic Costello didn't soften. He waited.

Five years. He'd been waiting five years for this.

And I, in my arrogance, had walked right into his penthouse and sat down on his lap like I'd been inv

ited.

Karma is a real bitch.

And mine had just come back to bite me in the ass.

The sin I had committed when I was 15 has become my ultimate damnation. And the damnation is Dominic Costello