Those few minutes of holding Steph in his arms were the most peaceful moments that Dominic had experienced in… well, too damned long.
He and Steph had spent a lot of time together before she’d left, despite the difference in their ages.
A difference that was feeling very unimportant now that she was twenty-nine and a full-grown woman in her own right. Born well after the awful events of Ravensbrück, Steph was a cool four decades younger.
It was an age difference that might seem odd to outsiders, but amongst the Forgotten — whose aging slowed to a snail’s pace in their early thirties and possessed an extended life that was only overshadowed by the Rengalla — it was hardly extraordinary.
When one found themselves with the potential of centuries rather than decades with their partner, age truly was only a number.
And he and Steph had always clicked.
Even after he’d taken up the mantle of leadership for the Forgotten, even after she’d begun dating Seth, they had spent time together.
They were both night owls and had passed many an evening at the swimming hole, their bare feet in the water, their gazes locked on the stars overhead.
He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed that. Her. Not until she was in his arms, making him feel more settled in a handful of minutes than he’d felt in a decade.
Of course, it had never been quite like this. Before she’d been just a friend.
The woman on his lap was different. She was all woman. All softness and sweet curves.
Steph sighed and pushed back, found her feet. “Okay, enough of that.”
His lips twitched. And still full of piss and vinegar.
“Turn around,” she said.
Dom obliged, already having gotten his look — and holy hell — what a look it had been.
Steph was too thin, her collarbones standing out sharply, her bottom two ribs too visible. But that wasn’t what set his blood boiling. Nope, it was her breasts, soft and high, her hips flaring generously from a narrow waist.
He wanted to grab on and go for a ride—
The soft hiss of a zipper opening broke into his thoughts. Dom’s eyes flashed to the mirror, now conveniently located directly in his frame of vision — okay, out of the very corner of his gaze — and almost swallowed his tongue.
She was bent over his bag, the towel gaping open, taunting him with glimpses of the skin of her upper thighs.
Rock-hard.
It was pathetic, his teenaged boy reaction, but he didn’t look away from that glimpse of her in the mirror. Instead, he watched as Steph rifled through his bag and pulled out a pair of sweats and an old t-shirt.
She set them on the counter then bent and examined her clothes before making a sound of disapproval.
“What is it?” he asked, his voice sounding strangled, even to his own ears.
He saw her stiffen and glance at him. Dom kept his shoulders turned to the wall, still watching her out of the very corner of his eye.
After a moment of studying him, she glanced back down at her clothes.
“They’re ruined,” she said.
“I figured that was obvious.” A frown drew his brows together. “Is that a favorite pair of pants or something? Because I can get you a new set.”
Steph straightened and stared at him. Even if he hadn’t seen her in the mirror, he would have felt the weight of her stare on his back.
“No.” She shook her head. “It’s just that all of my clothes are ruined.”
“Okaaay.” Was this one of those tests, designed for males to fail?
“All of them.” Her sigh was loud enough to rattle the walls. “Including my bra and underwear.”
“So?” Seriously, what was the big deal? “Just don’t wear them.”
“Don’t wear them? That’s your big solution?” Her voice was incredulous. “You’re a bigger idiot than I gave you credit for. See these?”
He turned and stared at where she was pointing, to the barely concealed breasts beneath the thin scrap of cotton.
“Uh-arh.”
“I have boobs.”
“Uh… yes.” Good God, did she ever.
“It hurts to not wear a bra.”
He frowned and tore his gaze from the cleavage he wanted to bury his mouth into. “Hurts?”
“Yeah,” she said, clutching her towel closer, probably because it was obvious that Dom was imagining all of the things he could do to those breasts. And not just with his mouth.
But then what she was saying penetrated the fog of arousal. “It hurts?”
Steph rolled her eyes. “Yes, Captain Parrot. It hurts. I’m not flat-chested. They… bounce, and it’s not comfortable. Okay?”
Dom was nowhere near okay, and he was really trying to not focus on Steph’s bouncy breasts, but at least he finally understood what she was saying.
He shook off the Baywatch vision bounding through his mind and said, “Well, I can’t help with the underwear— unless you want to wear a clean pair of mine? But I have an idea about the—“ He cleared his throat. “—boob issue.”
With a small grunt, he pushed up to standing, noting that though the bandage on his ribs pulled, his side didn’t hurt nearly as much as the dizzy-inducing pain of half an hour before. It was probably because all of his blood was currently located in a completely different part of his anatomy.
Dom crossed to her and snagged his duffle, her little intake of breath at the contact making him smile.
He wasn’t in this alone.
It only took a moment to find the first-aid kit inside. He pulled it out.
“Sorry to tell you this,” she said, her voice just shy of acidic. “But Band-Aids aren’t going to cut it.”
The laugh that burst out of him was surprising in its intensity, in its warmth, in its realness.
He hadn’t laughed like that in a long time. Not since… not since before he’d managed to alienate her from his life.
But instead of dwelling on the giant vat of regret that sat in his gut, Dominic focused on the future.
“Not Band-Aids,” he said, scrounging through the little kit before holding up an ACE bandage. “But I think this will work.”
Steph’s mouth fell open, her lips shaped in a soft O he desperately wanted to kiss. He resisted, just barely, mainly because she was studying him intently, her expression gentle, her eyes clouded with an emotion he couldn’t — but desperately wanted to — decipher.
After a moment, she snagged the wrap from him, leaned up on her tiptoes, and pressed a kiss to his cheek.
“I think you’re right,” she whispered. “Now turn around, and I don’t want to see you peeking in the mirror again. Otherwise I’ll have to kick your ass— injured or not.”