54. A Cove

Dom

Leo was silent in the car, staring out the passenger window, so I couldn’t even see her expression. Was she crying? Smiling?

All I’d seen since the shots was her whole body stiffen, her eyes glaze.

She’d done it, though.

We’d got to the bottom of all this shit and she’d done what she needed.

“I like your hair,” I complimented, scared to reach out to hold her thigh as I craved. Those curls she had lost in her teens were back with the shorter look, the waves far more pronounced than before.

“Thanks,” she said, not looking back at me. “There’s less for you to grab, though.”

I chuckled, if somewhat awkwardly, trying to diffuse the tension.

“I’ll find a way, Leonie Lion,” I promised. “There’s enough there for me to hold onto.”

She turned to look at me so slowly that I couldn’t look away despite the turn in the road. Her eyes were heavy, but there were no tear tracks that I could see.

“I’m sorry,” she croaked, her bottom lip wobbling as tears finally started to fall.

I spun the wheel for us to pull up on the curb, cutting the engine before the car stopped.

“Don’t,” I begged, cradling her face with my hands. I wiped her tears with my thumbs as my eyes started to shed. “Do not apologise for what is not your fault.”

“I should have just let it go. I should have just let it go. I can’t ever let it go,” she sobbed. “Even now… it just—it doesn’t feel done. I have wrecked your family and I still don’t feel done.”

“It’s so new, baby,” I told her softly. “Please don’t think you’ve wrecked my family. It was broken long before you were involved, clearly. And, if you’re not aware of what just happened, I killed him, not you. He’d planned to have me murdered; I think he was owed the pleasure.”

“If he hurt you…” she started through gritted teeth and looked up at me with those big, blue eyes.

“You would have fucked him up as badly as you did Firdman?”

“Yes,” she said through her teeth. “You let him off easy.”

“Aiming a gun at you hurt me. I don’t think I’ve ever acted so fast. I don’t think you have ever acted so slowly.”

She shrugged.

“Roc’s going to have to up your training,” I warned, leaning forward to kiss the tip of her nose.

Her nod was small, still half lost to her thoughts. “I did it,” she said as I turned the car back on.

“You did it,” I echoed, pride dominant in my voice as I finally gained the confidence to place my hand on top of hers, resting on her leg. “You did it.”

She breathed a little easier after that, even smiling softly as I used her hand under mine to change gear.

“Where are we going?” she asked, her voice finally her own again.

“Well,” I started, suddenly nervous, “we need to talk. I thought we might have this conversation where we should have eleven years ago.”

She only narrowed her eyes in confusion until I pulled onto the dirt road to the cove.

“I didn’t bring my swimming costume,” she grumbled.

“It’s January,” I reminded her with a small laugh.

Not that she needed the swimwear. She always felt the cold, apart from in the sea. The excitement of getting in the water was thrilling enough for her.

“Hasn’t stopped me before,” she said, placing her other hand atop mine.

“Come on,” I said, and I hated to briefly let go of her, only to reach for her the second I opened the passenger door.

Leonie kicked off her heeled boots, leaving them beside the car. It was the only one in the lot. We were the only couple mad enough to be here on a Tuesday in January at nearly midnight.

We’d been mad enough for that to be regular eleven years ago.

We sat, our backs against one of the mounds of sand, and Leonie pulled her knees up to her chest as she watched the waves crash onto the shore.

“I missed you,” she said, leaning back on my shoulder.

I pulled her close, planting a kiss on her head. “I missed you unbearably. How are you feeling?”

She raised and lowered a shoulder. “Better. It’s sinking in.” Then she straightened to turn and face me. “How are you feeling? I’ve been so selfish, you just…”

I only tugged her back. “Fine,” I told her. “In that regard, I’m fine. I’m just worried about you.”

Searching my eyes, those deep blue pools darting from one eye to the other in scrutiny, she said, “There’s something.”

“I have some questions,” I admitted. “But now is not the time. We’ll get to them. We’ll get to them.”

“Ask me,” she begged, lifting a leg and placing her foot between mine so we were a tangle of limbs. “Distract me.”

“I can distract you with other conversation—”

“Ask me.”

My sigh was deep and long, but she moved back into the position we had frequented only when we were alone as teenagers. She came to sit between my thighs, leaning back on my chest.

Playing with a wave of her hair, I asked, “Did you ever for a second think I could do that to you?”

“Yes,” she said with a nod. “I did. I told you I did, but that was my… I mean, look at it from my point of view. All I could think was you turned off the security cameras and then you were furious with me.”

“If I knew that was going to happen, why wouldn’t I just stay away, Leo?”

“I’m not saying it’s rational. A lot of what I’ve done hasn’t been,” she admitted. “But… to finish answering your question, I didn’t truly believe it for long. I bumped into Jared in Paris.”

Even hearing his name made me stone beneath her. “Jared,” I repeated.

“He told me what you said to him while I waited for you in the car.” She breathed in deeply and swivelled around to face me. “You told him there and then that I was yours. That if he even thought of me, you’d have him killed. You said any threat to me, and you’d personally take him down to hell.”

I had said pretty much those words exactly.

“You told him I meant everything to you there and then.” She smiled softly, looking down at the small gap between us. Then, her smile froze. “Do you still love me?”

“Of course,” I said and laughed in disbelief. “Nothing could stop that. You could have killed my dad and, as much as I would have been devastated over it, if he had hurt you like that… I can’t just turn my feelings for you off. I’ll never be capable of that.”

She nodded and pressed into my chest.

I finally had her in my arms again and held her close, enjoying the coconut scent of her shampoo and the warmth of her against me.

“I’m sorry for leaving,” she apologised. “I should have spoken to you. I knew I could trust you; I’ve known all along, but it was all a mess in my head. I felt so vulnerable.”

“You’ve been a true Belov these last few months,” I complimented. “Taking no shit, getting stuff done. Rebuilding the Castillo name.”

“It doesn’t mean anything when I wasn’t with the Belov I wanted,” she said sadly.

“Did you ever nearly come back? As in, back to stay?”

“Every time I got on a plane. I rented out your flat in the hopes you would realise. I walked past your office, the same walk we did when we lived together… I wanted you to find me, stop me and… and tell me it would all be okay.”

“It will be,” I reassured her. “It is.”

“Your family hate me,” she grumbled. “Issy will never speak to me again. Your mum… your dad.”

I didn’t pretend to understand the relationship between Leo and my dad. Over the last few months, whenever I would ask, he would only say something along the lines of, “I spoke to her. She’s fine.”

He truly loved her, so I knew he would never hurt her.

“Leonie, you’re seeing this wrong. My dad wouldn’t let anything ever happen to me. Knowing that he sent Firdman to kill me too… It was either you, me or my dad who killed Anton. Either way, he was a dead man walking. If anything, you’ve done us a favour. It was a bit scary at first, I won’t lie to you, but it was worth it.”

“I scared myself,” she confessed with an awkward smile before cuddling back into my chest with a sigh.

“You’re ruthless,” I said and I hoped she could hear the smile in my voice. “My wicked lioness.”

She didn’t say anything, just shuffled somehow closer. I wanted to hold her there forever.

“Don’t go again. Don’t leave me again.”

She tensed. “I… you want me to stay? I can’t stay here.”

“Then let me come with you,” I pleaded, brushing back her hair and tucking it behind her ear. After we’d fucked, this was always a surefire way of getting her to sleep, comforting her.

Four beats passed before she asked, “You still want to be with me?”

“I meant what I said at that beach, Leonie. Exclusively, publicly, legally, I want you as mine. Not one part of that has changed.”

“Legally?” she whispered. That word had made her breathless before.

I cupped her chin, pulling her gently to face me. Her icy eyes were wide and questioning. “I want to own your spirit, your mind. I want to be all you think about. You consume me, Leonie. You’ve swallowed me whole. This is not me asking now, not while today is still going through your head. But I promise you, one day soon, I am making you a Belov. A Belov-Castillo, if you so wish. You’ll be my wife.”

“Yeah,” she said with a shaky laugh, “today is probably not the best day.”

Even though I said it, it still hurt for her to agree.

“Just give me some time,” she said and pressed a kiss to my cheek.

But as she pulled back, kneeling before me and looking down at me, her eyes bore into mine and there was heat there.

We collided. Our mouths came together with a desperate need because I had never needed anyone, but she was crucial. Imperative to my existence. Her fingers curled into my hair before she straddled my lap, pulling me closer as I hardened to a painful force against my trousers.

Fucking hell.

She had shrugged off her coat and was on the buttons of my shirt as I was on the zip of her trousers. I had to get inside her. I had to be inside her. They were skin tight, making it hard to get a good angle but I found her clit and just brushing it had my lioness gasp. I relished in the noise, rubbing against her in tight circles as she rolled against my cock.

“Take these off,” she begged against my lips, pulling at my waistband. “I need you.”

I wasted no time in pulling them and my boxers down, not bothering to take them any lower than my thighs. She stood, kicked off her trousers and didn’t even bother to take off her knickers, instead pulling them to the side as she seated herself on me.

Our groans were the most nurturing noise I could have asked for as she impaled herself on my cock. She ground against me, rocking forward and back, letting me feel her every angle. Her sharp breaths filled my ear as I let her have full reign of me.

“Dom,” she groaned, hands back in my hair. “Fuck, oh my god. Fuck.” Her swearing became a stutter of fricatives as she came, pulsing around my cock.

As she came down, I pressed a thumb against her clit and nipped at her earlobe.

Then she unleashed herself. She set a pace that had me delirious, one I had to match, drilling up into her.

“I missed you,” she was crying. “I couldn’t think of anything other than you. Every time I came with my fingers… I heard your groans, breaths, words. I saw your face, saw your cock fucking me. It’s been that way for years.”

She was going to have me come on the spot.

I grunted and kept going until her breaths were sobs into my shoulder as the forceful tingle at the back of my spine hit and I spilled inside of her.

“Dom,” she sighed and pressed her mouth to mine in a kiss nearly as ravenous as the last. “I want to be yours in all of those ways, too.”