He flung himself over Felicity, wrapping his body around hers just as the car slammed right where he’d been.
Horns blared. An ear-piercing crunch of metal slammed again his eardrums. Their car jerked then lurched across the pavement in a head-whipping spin. The putrid odor of smoke and rubber tires filled his nostrils. He glanced and saw his driver, a human servant, crushed beneath the front end of the car that hit them. They stopped moving just as quickly.
Felicity shook beneath him like a twig. He didn’t waste any time. Someone just made an attempt on his life. That thought wasn’t even what made him fling their car door open, shove her out and he next as he rounded the cars to the passenger seat of the car that had hit them. That car that had intentionally hit them. It’d been waiting. That meant someone was watching him and Felicity. Someone knew he was coming this way within the last hour and had planned this on short notice.
Someone wanted him dead.
None of that mattered.
What made him tear off the driver’s side door one-handed, pull out the were who was slumped dazed over the steering wheel and pound his fist repeatedly into it was the fact that Felicity had been in the car.
Someone had almost hurt Felicity.
Dom didn’t just see red, he breathed it.
If someone would have asked him in that moment if he’d ever been angrier he would have said no. He’d never felt this heart-pounding fear before for another person’s life. Now that he had he knew he could never forget it. Never forget the intense, gripping fear that she might have gotten hurt because of him.
The son of a bitch he held by the collar was going to pay.
“Dom, stop it! Let him go! What the hell are you doing?” said Felicity. She came up beside him, frantically running her hands through her hair.
Crunch. Snap. Plsssht.
His knuckles didn’t even hurt even as the were’s face didn’t look like a face anymore. He had to punish him. Make him go away. He tried to hurt Felicity. He wanted to kill her.
“STOP IT!” she screamed.
Dazed, Dom turned to meet her wild eyes. His fist opened and the were dropped to the ground. The bastard wasn’t dead...yet.
Pulling out his phone, he dialed his brother. “Grayson, I need you at...” he spotted the address of the intersection and relayed it. “Make it fast. There’s been an attempt. Yeah, yeah, I think so too.”
He snapped the phone shut then pulled Felicity along. “Which one’s your house?”
She was breathing hard, only a few seconds away from panicking. “What?” Even as he steered her away from the wreckage, her head turned back to look at it.
He jerked on her arm, pulling her into his body and forcing her to look up at him. “I asked you where you live.”
She pointed a shaking finger down the block. Dom didn’t bother trying to walk her there. He just bent down, grabbed her, and lifted her up into his arms. She gasped as her arms went around his neck and a blush crept over her cheeks.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m taking you home.”
“We were just in a wreck! We have to go back. Why were you beating the hell out of that man?”
Anger rose hot and swift inside him. “That wasn’t a man. It was a were, and he’d been waiting for us which means we were being watched earlier. This was a setup. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to get us both out of the open.” He started running. Weres could run just as fast but it’d still be better than idly strolling down a public street.
“There, that’s my house.” She pointed to a small brick home, probably a rental. It was quaint, and no way good enough for her.
He took her keys, opened the door, and shoved them both inside before locking it tight. “Stay here,” he ordered, and then set off to go through her house.
He used all of his senses to catch anything off.
“What are you looking for?” she asked, sounding peeved.
“Making sure no one’s in your house.”
Bathroom, clear. Living room, clear. Bedroom...smells just like her. Great, now he was hard. All rooms clear. He came back to her. She had a raised eyebrow, a cocked hip, and a taunting look on her face.
He wanted to kiss it right off her but now wasn’t the right time.
“My brother will be here soon.”
“Good then he can explain about Beth.”
Dom shook his head. “Not that brother, my brother Grayson.”
Both of her delicate little eyebrows rose. “Well, you have too many brothers.”
A smile curled at his lips. “Couldn’t agree more.”
“So, Grayson’s from...a different mother?” she asked hesitantly.
Dom’s smile was tight. “Yeah, he runs a protection service.”
“As in bodyguards?”
“Exactly but he doesn’t work with humans. His service caters to weres and vampires. It’s a niche market but one that’s quite profitable.”
He liked this, he thought. Just talking to her in her own home. A home much, much more plain than he’d anticipated. In fact, her couch was thread-barren and cheap. Her kitchen table served as her dining room table since her house was a one-bedroom one bath. The wood chairs at the table were scratched and beat up. The board to one of the chair legs hung off, broken.
He had the need, right this very second, to get her the hell out of his dump and buy her a new house.
She caught his gaze and he quickly schooled his expression. Too late, her face paled and she took a step back. She looked almost in pain.
“I don’t want you here.”
“Why?” Need roared inside him to go to her, to pull her into his arms and never let her go. He couldn’t though.
She threw her arms out with a disgusted laugh. “Because this is how poor I am. This is how I live. Maybe now you’ll stop touching me.”
Hearing the pain in her voice made his chest squeeze tight. “What are you talking about?” He didn’t want to stop touching her, he wanted to buy her a new a fucking house. That’s all. Maybe a car too and anything else she could want. A small island, no problem.
“You and me, we don’t mix. Two completely different species of people.”
“We’re both vampires, Felicity.”
She glared at him. “You know what I mean. They take pictures of your family for magazines. I have to feed off a friend when I’m out of blood.”
She’d gone hungry before. The pain in his chest twisted until it became difficult to breathe. He vowed then she would never go hungry again.
“Felicity...”
She held out her hand. “Don’t, just don’t. I’m fine. I’ll earn my own way. I work hard and I’ll earn my keep. But this,” she said waving her hand to indicate her home, “is the difference between your opulent home and my shitty house in the city. Okay?”
“As if I care—”
Her eyes flashed, nostrils flared. “Don’t you dare lie and say you don’t care. I saw the way you looked at my house. It may not be much but it’s mine! I worked for every little piece of furniture I own. It’s mine! And I won’t have you sully it with your high-brow bullshit.”
Dom cooled his expression as he took her in.
She was quite livid.
And it only made her more beautiful.
In that very moment with her cheeks flushed, eyes glowing in anger, and her hair standing out, he wanted to shove her right up against the wall and fuck the living daylights out of her until she was screaming his name like she’d been born to do it.
Only after they each came and she grew weak in his arms would he take her into her small bedroom and fuck her six ways from Sunday until their scents embedded her sheets like perfume.