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“Fine, fine.” She finished her wine and smiled. “Forget the macaroni and the crush. I’m taking you out. You’re getting your first tattoo or you’re getting laid.”
“I don’t do one-night stands. Or needles.”
“Welllll, if you want to get over Dom . . . you will tonight.” She turned off the stove before I could protest. “You have your whole life and a lot of Doms to still meet.”
I laughed. “Doms, huh?”
“Would it be so terrible if the next guy you date is dominant in the bedroom?”
“Yeah, no, thanks. Don’t like being tied up. Or having my hair pulled.”
Hooking my arm with hers, she led me to my bedroom, a woman on a mission. If I was doing this, I definitely needed to change. Probably into something more flattering than the sweats two sizes too big and the oversized tee that said: WTF inside a square, with The Element of Surprise! written beneath it. Yeah, I was a dork, but WTF certainly summed up my reaction when I’d bumped into Carter on that rooftop.
“You’ve never been tied up or had your hair pulled.” She stopped walking and unhanded me. “Shit, I’m sorry. The terrorists, did they?—”
“No, they didn’t,” I reassured her quickly so she didn’t feel bad. “I just can’t imagine myself being with someone who bosses me around, even in the bedroom.”
“Not even Carter Dominick?” She playfully lifted her brows a few times.
“Ugh, I hate you.”
Maybe he had dominated me in the bedroom in my fantasies a time or two, but I had to forget him and my fantasies. “Okay,” I relented. “Tattoo it is.”
5
CARTER
WASHINGTON, D.C. – APRIL 2015
“Can you talk to me? You’ve been distant since you came home.”
I glanced at my wife in the passenger seat of her Jag. She’d had a few glasses of wine before we’d left for the restaurant and had insisted on driving. I’d taken the keys from her and slipped behind the wheel despite her protests. We were now on our way to a dinner I sure as hell didn’t want to go to.
“Carter.” She pouted, and I returned my focus to the road, so I didn’t kill us.
“You’re the one who’s been acting strange since I got back from my trip,” I tossed out. A little deflection didn’t hurt, but it wasn’t a lie either. I’d already reminded her of the fact she’d needed those glasses of red just to force herself to get ready for reservations she’d made.
“I love how you call top-secret missions ‘trips,’” she said around a hiccup.
“Why don’t we just turn around?” I knew exactly how tonight was going to go—end in a fight after dinner, and we’d sleep in separate rooms. “Cancel dinner with your friends. Spend some time together at home. You can even blame me.”
“No. We’re already almost there. And they’re your friends, too, by the way.” She crossed her arms over her chest, eliciting another hiccup, and continued to pout.
I took the water bottle from the cup holder and handed it to her. “Not my friends.”
“Right, right. You don’t have friends who don’t wear a uniform.”
I frowned but remained quiet.
“That was uncalled for,” she mumbled. “I’m sorry.”
I relaxed my shoulders, the tension there retreating at the hope there wouldn’t be a fight. It was the last thing I wanted after spending the past week chasing down a smuggling ring in Costa Rica. I’d returned home only to have my superiors tell me to back off the new leads we’d developed as a result of that op, ordering me to let the other scum-of-the-earth traffickers just go on their merry-fucking-way. Harper Brooks, the relatively new officer I’d worked alongside, had been even more pissed about it than I was.
But I couldn’t tell my wife why my mood was so sour because it was need-to-know and classified. Part of me wanted to break orders and protocol, though, and open up to Rebecca. Maybe, just fucking maybe, she’d understand me a little better.
“Do you hate me?” she asked, catching me off guard.
“Not as much as I love you,” I grumbled.
