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“Care to translate?”
“It is hard to translate precisely to English, but I said that we are bound until the stars fall from the sky, until all life ends.”
He was quiet for a time, stroking my hair with his perfect, healing hands. “I know how you are. If you start to feel the prison doors closing, you run. Whether you want to or not, you always just run. Your biggest fear is a cage. Do you know what my prison is?”
“What?”
He spoke in Druidic again but translated before I asked. “Every step you take away from me is a prison. That’s where you left me. I’ve been in purgatory. I’ve spent most of my life there, knowing you were somewhere in this world, apart from me. I’m asking you to change your very nature to set me free from that, and I’d like to know if you can do that for me, for our family, but it has to be of your own free will. I can’t be your jailor.”
“You were never that. I would love to stay with you, there’s nothing I want more. I just don’t see how it can work. As Arch you can’t—”
“Just do your part. Leave the politics to me.”
“On one condition,” I said, shifting my tone.
He watched me like I was fascinating, like he had no idea what I’d say next, and he didn’t.
I was a song he’d heard a thousand times, and he still never knew how to guess the next verse.
“Anything,” he said softly.
“No more hoes,” I said with a straight face.
He smiled at me, and it was like the sun rising, brilliant and beautiful and a reason to love life.
“Well?” I pressed when he just laughed.
“No more hoes,” he said, kissing the palm of my hand.
“Are we really crazy enough to give this thing another go?” I asked him, hugging him bare chest to bare chest, our hearts beating together.
“Finally, you’re getting it,” said Dom succinctly. “Good to see that you’re paying attention at last. And you didn’t ask, but I haven’t touched another woman since you strode back into my life seven months ago. I swear it.”
I processed that, his chin rubbing against the top of my head. I remembered clearly that another woman was walking in even as I left his bedroom right after our reunion seven months ago.
“I sent her home the second you stepped out of sight.”
“You aren’t allowed to start reading my mind.”
I could hear the smile in his voice. “I wasn’t. It isn’t one of my powers. I just know you that well. Parts of you will always be a mystery, but other parts of you I know better than you yourself do.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE GOOD BROTHER
“Dom, are you going to show us the set where you guys staged the moon landing?” asked Christian cheekily.
“No,” Dom said casually. “That sets been taken apart and turned into an alien habitat.”
The ride to the hidden desert bunker was accompanied by countless Area 51 jokes from Christian, which was expected. What wasn’t expected was Dom throwing out a few of his own.
He smiled at the look on my face. “What?” he said into my ear. “You forgot I have a sense of humor? You cast me as a villain in your little drama and forgot I was more nuanced than that.”
“You were never the villain. I cast myself in that role.”
“Another poor choice for the part. How about this? Stick around longer, and you’ll see more from me than rage and lust.”
He had a point, and I stayed quiet and stewed about it for a time.
