Page 166 of Hard Bargain

Knox’s gaze slid away. “It’s nothing.”

“That’s a lie,” Dominic said, catching his chin. “Try again.”

He let out a long breath. “I’ve told you I love you. More than once. You’ve never said it back.”

The words were soft. The hurt underneath them wasn’t.

Regret hit hard. Because Knox was right. He hadn’t said it. Not once. His thumb stroked the pulse in Knox’s throat. “You think I don’t feel it?”

Knox shrugged, vulnerable and stubborn at once. “I don’t know. You don’t say it.”

Dominic’s pulse kicked. Ordinary declarations felt meaningless next to what lived inside him, but he saw the doubt and knew it was his fault. “I didn’t say it because the word love is too damn small. You want a name for it? Call it obsession. Call it worship. Call it whatever you like. But understand that it doesn’t end. Not in this life. Not in any other.”

Knox’s throat bobbed. “Dominic—”

“But if you need the words… here they are.” Dominic went on. “I love you in ways that should scare us both.” He kissed him, sealing the vow against Knox’s mouth. “And that is the mildest thing I feel.”

Knox’s smile was blinding. “I’m not scared.”

Dominic rolled, pinning Knox beneath him, the vow still thrumming in his blood. He looked down at him and thought about the boy who locked eyes with him across a champagne room. The boy who’d licked his sweat off his throat like he’d been starving for it. The boy who’d held on in a concrete cell for forty-three hours and hadn’t broken. The boy who’d run to LA because love terrified him more than violence, and came back anyway.

“Good,” Dominic murmured. “Because you’re never getting rid of me.”

Epilogue

Knox

Six months later

Knox stood alone in the bathroom, facing the mirror in nothing but black boxers. Nine months ago his skin had looked like a crime scene. Torn apart. A body that shouldn’t have been able to piece itself back together.

Tonight, it just looked… lived-in. White seams and raised ridges crisscrossed his body, mapping every place where he’d been broken and every place that had refused to stay that way.

His thumb traced a long scar beneath his ribs. There had been a time when he couldn’t look at himself without feeling like something had been taken from him.

That time was over.

The scars weren’t damage. They were evidence that he’d been pushed as far as a person could go—and held.

His hand rose to the clover at his neck. The skin had healed, but the mark was permanent. It had been meant to reduce him to something powerless. But Dominic had taken the same shape and carved it into his own skin. In doing that, he rewrote the meaning. It was no longer something done to Knox. It was something they shared. Something that said more than words ever could.

The door behind him opened. Knox’s gaze lifted, catching Dominic in the mirror as he stepped into view. He was dressed in a dark suit, fitted to perfection. It was almost unfair how naturally power sat on him, how effortlessly he wore it.

Knox looked at him in the reflection. Dominic’s attention moved over Knox slowly—every mark, every line, every inch of bare skin—with the unhurried focus of a man looking at what he considered his.

He stepped closer. The space between them disappeared, his hands settling low on Knox’s hips. Knox leaned back into him without hesitation, their eyes still locked in the mirror.

Dominic’s hand moved, thumb brushing up along Knox’s throat until it settled over the clover. “You’re beautiful,” he said.

Knox let his head drop back against Dominic’s shoulder. There were still traces of the old insecurities that surfaced now and then—instincts, fears that didn’t vanish just because his life had changed. They came less often now. When they did, they carried less weight. Easier to recognize for what they were: leftovers from a version of himself that no longer existed.

Because this was real.

Dominic had made that much clear in every possible way.

“Get dressed,” Dominic said. “Meeting’s in fifteen minutes.”

Knox nodded. “Has everyone arrived?”