Page 82 of The Ecstasy of Sin

“What happened to your dad?”

The grief washes over me again, a fresh sadness settling into my heart when I remember the day he died.

To my surprise, Hunter wanders over. He falls into step beside me, bumping my leg with gentle nudges like he can sense my sadness. Like he’s saying: I’m here.

I reach down to stroke behind his big, soft ears, and he looks up at me with the most soulful eyes. He’s a healer, this one. I’m sure of it.

“Her death broke him. I think he died with her that day,” I say sadly, thinking back to the terrible scream my dad let out when he realized she was truly gone. “I wasn’t enough for him to stay. He ended up drinking himself to death right there in our family home.”

Dominic says nothing, like he’s lost in thought. I look down at my hands, fidgeting with the sleeves of his sweatshirt, the fabric soft beneath my fingers.

“One night I woke up in the middle of a migraine attack. I was starving, my stomach hurt so much. I went downstairs to try and find food…” My voice wavers, transported back to that night. I almost can't finish. “And I found him dying on the couch from liver failure.”

Dominic stops walking, reaching out to grab my hand. I gasp when he pulls me into his arms, and I stumble against him. My hands land on his chest, my head tilting back to look up at him.

“You’ll never experience starvation again. Do you understand me? Never. Again.”

A blush creeps up my neck, the warmth of his body chasing away the cold of the awful memories.

A moment passes between us, and I realize just how serious he is. How strongly he feels about my well-being. I wonder if I’ll ever get used to it.

“Tell me you understand,” he murmurs, brushing his lips against mine in a tender kiss that feels so much like a vow. “Tell me.”

“I—I understand,” I whisper.

He kisses me like I’m an oasis and he’s been lost in the desert for years.

When I first met Dominic, I thought he’d be all rough edges—selfish, ruthless, the kind of man who takes without asking and never bothers to give anything back.

And yet every time he kisses me, it completely wrecks that image. There’s so much sensuality in the way his mouth moves against mine, it feels like I’m being worshipped with every stroke of his tongue.

Every time his lips touch me, the rest of the world goes quiet. My thoughts scatter, my knees go weak, and all I can do is cling to him like he’s gravity itself.

When he finally pulls back, I’m flushed and breathless. This man’s mouth is a weapon.

“Good girl,” he murmurs, then he releases me and continues walking down the trail, as if he didn’t just shatter me with a kiss and the perfect kind of praise.

“How long were you in foster care?”

It takes me a solid minute for my mind to come back from where it went floating through the clouds. I jog to catch up with him, and when I do, he reaches out to take my hand in his.

His fingers thread through mine like we’ve done this a hundred times, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

I stare down at our clasped hands. The simplicity of it catches me off guard. We’re just walking down a forest trail, holding hands… it’s almost like he’s my boyfriend.

I swallow past the lump in my throat. “A little under a year.”

“Were they good to you?”

His eyes stay fixed on the path ahead, watching as Hunter chases a squirrel up a tree, but I can feel the silent threat behind his words.

I hesitate for a moment, wondering what he’d do if my foster home had been abusive like his was.

He killed a stranger who tried to take my life in the middle of the city, where anyone could’ve seen him. What would he do with a little time, a little planning, and a list of names of the people that hurt me?

The thought makes me shiver.

“They didn’t hurt me,” I say with a shrug. “They mostly ignored me, and made me do a lot of the house work, while they collected their check from the government.”