Chapter 208
“What kind of a questions that?” Dominic snorted.
I shrugged. “I dunno. I’m curious, that’s all.” I paused, then asked, “What did it feel like?”
Dominic hesitated. Truthfully, I knew exactly what it felt like to be stabbed. I’d been stabbed in my past life, and if things kept going the way they were going in this one, it might happen again. But I didn’t say that.
Finally, he replied, “It actually wasn’t too bad. It was more a feeling of ‘holy shit there’s a knife in me’, and not so much about the pain.”
“Makes sense.”
“Yeah.” I heard his pillow shift, like he was looking at me. “You said you had a traumatic incident involving men and knives. Did you get stabbed at some point?”
My throat tightened. I squeezed my eyes shut tight and tried to force out those images, but it was still painful. Even now, I could feel it.
“I really don’t want to talk about it,” I whispered.
Dominic rolled over to face me. I could feel him looking at me over the pillow boundary. “Why not?”
“Because I’m not…” My voice trailed off. I didn’t know how to explain any of it. Finally, I settled on the truth. “I’m not sure if you’ll believe me.”
“What?” Dominic propped himself up on an elbow. “What makes you say that?”
I didn’t answer.
He sighed, flopping back down. “If I tell you something personal, will it make you feel comfortable enough to tell me?”
I looked at him, surprised. He was still looking at me, and in the darkness, I could see his blue eyes shining, reflecting the light of the moon coming in from outside. For a moment, just a moment, something in me softened.
“Maybe,” I whispered.
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That seemed to be enough for Dominic. He breathed in, as if steadying himself for what he was about to say. Intrigued, I turned my head fully to watch him.
“Earlier,” he said, “at dinner, when you and my mom were talking…”
My stomach dropped.
Oh, no.
“I do want to be intimate with you, Ellie. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. So talking about it… It made me wish for it even more.”
Silence fell.
I stared at Dominic in the darkness. At the tenderness in his gaze. At the faint flush in his cheeks, as if
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confessing such a thing was just as hard for him to say as it was for me to hear it.
And for a moment, it made me,.. happy.
Because, for two lifetimes, that was what I wanted, too. To be held by him, to be treated with the tender love of a mate and not a stranger. To feel comfort in his embrace, and to know that nothing could tear us apart.
But therein laid the issue. Because truthfully, I wasn’t sure if having sex with Dominic would mean for certain that I would get any of those things.
Perhaps in my past life, we had never had sex, but I’d still given everything else of myself to him. Everything, even my life, when I took that assassin’s blade in his stead. I had degraded myself, put aside all of my desires. I had lost every part of myself to please him.
And what had he done?
He’d taken it. All of it. Like a dancer accepting roses after a performance. He took and he took until there was nothing left to take but my very life.
In this life, I couldn’t make that same mistake. I’d already given more than I should have, and I wasn’t about to give my body to him. Because I didn’t know if he would just say sweet things to get me to have sex with him, then rip the rug out from under me at the first opportunity.
In fact, despite that initial pang of attraction, I felt utterly repulsed by the very thought.
“Goodnight, Dominic,” I said coldly, rolling over.
I could feel him watching the back of my head for a while longer, but I didn’t turn around. And eventually, he went to sleep, too.
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