Heat prickled the back of my neck and I leaned the mop against the wall. “It’s fine.”
He hummed. “Okay then.”
I darted a look at him. “What?”
He shrugged. “Okay. If you say you’re fine, then okay.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Okay.”
“I mean...” His mouth quirked. “I don’t believe it for a second. Your face.” He unfolded his arms and made a gesture I couldn’t read. “You look very angry. Like you’re about to tear my throat out just for asking. But, you said you’re fine, so you’re fine.”
“I am fine.”
“Okay.” His smile grew. “So, since you’re okay, which we’ve definitely established, then I guess we can talk about that show you put on for me this afternoon?”
My body went hot and cold at the same time, and all the working parts of my brain jammed to a stop. “I—what? No. Ha....” I was going for a sarcastic sort of ‘ha ha,’ but it came out like an asthmatic wheeze instead.
Dominic was still smiling, the bastard. “Do you know what I wanted to do when I saw you this afternoon, Natty?”
“Um... arrest me?”
“No. This.” He strode into the kitchen, crowded me up against the sink, and kissed me. The first press of his mouth was firm, warm, perfect. Then he pulled back and said, “Are you okay with this?”
I nodded, wide-eyed as a possum.
He grinned, which made the second press of his mouth feel wrong, until he got that grin under control, and then showed me exactly how to kiss. And yeah, he’d done this before, that was for sure. He sucked on my bottom lip, and nipped it with his teeth, and the neurons in my brain exploded like fireworks. I clung to his shoulders, and, when I realised his foot was between mine, I think I sort of humped his thigh like a dog. I honestly had no idea what the rest of my body was doing, because I was utterly consumed by this kiss. And when Dominic’s tongue touched mine, it was electric. I shuddered like someone had put a couple of thousand volts through me, and?—
“Oh, shit.” I panted against Dominic’s throat. “I just?—”
I bit the words off, but Dominic wasn’t an idiot. Pretty sure we could both smell my cum.
“Mmm.” He pressed a gentle kiss to my temple, and his hands traced circles on the small of my back. “You’re so hot.”
I should have been embarrassed, but I laughed silently instead. He wasn’t making fun of how fast I’d come, and if he didn’t care, why should I? And he thought I was hot. There was no way I could feel bad after hearing that. And, when I finally leaned back and saw him smiling at me, his expression warm and open, I knew there was no way we wouldn’t be doing this again, for just as long as we could get away with it.
Chapter 9
DOMINIC
I wasn’t sure which was going to kill me first—Natty Harper, or my first meeting of the Dauntless Island Local Council. Which, to be clear, was just Red Joe sitting unhappily in the back room of the Tourist Information Centre while Mavis Coldwell complained about how one of Robbie Finch’s goats had wandered into the village and eaten the chives from her window box.
“I’ve always said those goats are trouble, haven’t I, Red Joe?” she asked.
Red Joe hummed. “You have, Mavis.”
Everyone else hummed too—there were about a dozen of us crammed into the back room. I don’t know if any of the others had council business, or if listening to Mavis was just what passed for entertainment on the island.
Red Joe was not looking very mayoral. He never was, but this evening he looked even less mayoral than usual. He smelled a lot less mayoral too. He’d come straight from the Adeline, and he stank of fish, sweat and diesel. He was still wearing his orange fishing gear. Even Eddie, who was taking the minutes, had put as much distance between them as was practicable in the small room.
“But the difficulty is, how do you know it was one of Robbie’s goats?” Red Joe asked. “Not that I’m doubting you, but there are other people with goats on the island. And there’s more than a few ferals.”
“Like the one that knocked that tourist down a few years back,” an old man said. “You remember that, Red Joe. Same year as the big storm that knocked over Alice Williams’s shed.”
“That was in the seventies, I think, Tall Tom,” Red Joe said. “So it’s probably not the same goat.”
“Must be one of Robbie Finch’s then,” Mavis said, and gave me a narrow look, as though the loss of her chives was somehow my fault.
Shit. Was she attempting to persecute Robbie Finch and his goats at a council meeting because of me? Had she found out about our milk-on-the-downlow arrangement?
