Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 332

Chapter 332

CELESTE

I sat in the driver’s seat with both hands still gripping the wheel, though the engine had been off for God knows how long, and I stared through the windshield at the grimy brick wall of the laundromat without seeing it.

The divorce certificate lay on the passenger seat in its crisp envelope, four hundred and fifty million dollars’ worth of freedom that was supposed to have been the beginning of everything, and all I could do was replay the reel of Dominic Ford behind my closed eyelids like a movie I had watched too many times and still could not bring myself to switch off.

I recalled the first time he made love to me. The way he had buried his face between my legs and worked me with his tongue until my thighs were shaking uncontrollably and my hands were fisted in his sheets and I was making sounds I did not recognise as my own. Then he had looked up at me, our eyes meeting over the plane of my stomach, and he had smiled.

A simple, unguarded, almost boyish smile, the kind that said look what I can do for you, look how much I want to do this, look how beautiful you are when you let go. I had never been able to forget that moment. That look in his eyes. It had undone something in me, some knot I had not even known I was carrying until Dominic’s tongue loosened it.

I remembered the day he called me to the stage when he had announced Helix’s funding in front of half the city’s elite while I stood frozen in the crowd, certain I had misheard my own name. The way he had smirked at me afterward, that infuriatingly attractive tilt of his mouth that said he knew exactly what he was doing and he was enjoying every second of it. I had wanted to kiss that smirk off.

I remembered that day in the bathroom, when he had cornered me against the vanity with his hands cupping my face and his eyes drilling into mine as though he was trying to memorise every detail of me, as though I was something precious and irreplaceable and he was afraid I would disappear if he blinked. The way he had kissed me, slow and deep and thorough, the kind of kiss that was not asking for anything but was promising everything. The way his thumbs had traced the curve of my cheekbones, featherlight, like he was touching something holy.

I remembered the day he told me he loved me, and the promises he had made afterward.

I shook my head, hard, as though the physical motion could dislodge the recording still playing on a loop in my memory. The words that had come out of his mouth, his actual mouth, in his actual voice: This is payback for what you did. I am not going to stop until I get bored.

“No, Dominic, it cannot be.” My voice came out hoarse and strange in the empty car, the words bouncing off the windows and coming back to me like accusations. “You could not have been so good to me because you wanted to pay Julian back. Could you? If you were playing me, why did you not play me to the very end? Why did you choose to stop now?

“How do I live without you when every second of my life is filled with thoughts of you?”

My eyes burned and I blinked rapidly, pressing my lips together until they formed a hard, bloodless line.

No.

Absolutely not.

I was a grown-ass woman, a chief scientific officer, a woman who had survived Julian Fisher’s betrayals and Seraphine’s schemes and her own brother’s descent into madness. I was not going to sit in a car crying over a man who had played me, no matter how expertly he had done it.

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