Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 526

SPARROW

Love? I had fallen in love with Scarlett?

The words sat in my chest like a stone I could not swallow, and my heart hammered so hard I could feel it behind my teeth. This was not supposed to happen to me. I had spent my whole life building walls high enough to keep exactly this kind of thing out, and now a woman who had walked into my world carrying a contract and a debt had knocked the entire structure down without so much as raising her voice.

The thought had crossed my mind before. I had caught myself watching her when she was not looking, holding my breath when she said my name, and every single time I had shoved the possibility down and told myself I was being ridiculous. I was not built for this. I was built for variety, for a different woman in a different bed every night of the week, for waking up alone and liking it. Love was for men who wanted to be owned, and I had never once in my life wanted to be owned.

But Dominic knew about these things in a way I never would. He was the one man I trusted to hand me the truth even when the truth had teeth, and he had laid it out as plainly as a balance sheet. He said I was in love, and the certainty in his voice left me no room at all to argue.

Now I was scared.

As much as these feelings filled me with something I could not name, they also made me feel weak. I had watched what love did to men. I had watched strong men go soft around the middle, watched them hand the keys to everything they owned to a woman who smiled at them over breakfast, and now here I was with a heart that had gone and chosen for me without so much as asking permission.

"How do I get rid of it?" I asked Dominic. I did not soften the question or dress it up. "These feelings. How do I kill them?"

The house was quiet when I stepped through the door. I called her name and got nothing back. I walked through the living room and past the kitchen, and then I heard the sound of running water when I went upstairs. I went straight to Scarlett's room, and the bathroom door stood open a hand's width.

She was under the shower, and she was naked.

My body answered before my mind caught up. I was hard in an instant, standing in the doorway like a man who had forgotten how to move, watching the water run down the line of her back and the curve of her ass and the soap sliding down the front of her. She turned, and she saw me, and her hands came up to her chest in surprise.

"Sparrow? What are you doing here?" She pushed the wet hair back off her face and stared at me like I had sprouted a second head. "Why are you standing there looking at me like that? Is everything all right?"