Page 130 of Hard Bargain

“Thought you were straight,” Cassian said after a moment.

Dominic’s mouth tightened. “So did I.”

The words irritated him more than anything, because they were true. It had always been simple. Women. Distance. Control. Nothing that blurred into something complicated. Nothing that demanded to be examined.

Knox didn’t fit into any of that. He wasn’t supposed to. There was no place for him in anything Dominic had ever understood about himself.

And yet.

“So what changed?” Cassian asked.

Dominic’s grip shifted on the wheel. “Nothing’s changed. I still like women. That hasn’t gone anywhere. Men don’t do anything for me.” A pause. “But Knox is apparently different. He’s an exception.”

“So is it just physical?”

“He’s not—” Dominic started, then stopped. He didn’t like that he didn’t know how to finish that sentence.

“What is it then?” Cassian asked.

Dominic stared at the road. His thoughts were circling somewhere else entirely, somewhere he’d been avoiding for weeks. Lust would’ve been easy to explain. Clean. Containable. But it wasn’t just that. He knew it the way you know a truth you’ve spent too long trying to outrun.

Eventually, you run out of places to hide from it.

“He gets under my skin,” Dominic said. “Shouldn’t. But he does.”

Cassian went very still. “Okay,” he said. “That’s… something.”

Dominic didn’t like the weight that came with admitting it. “He shouldn’t matter,” he continued, more to himself than to Cassian. “He’s just a kid who got pulled into something bigger than him.”

But even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t true. Knox wasn’t helpless. He adapted, watched, and learned faster than anyone Dominic had seen in years. He held his ground in ways Dominic hadn’t expected.

“You care about him,” Cassian said.

It wasn’t a question.

Dominic exhaled, tension settling deeper into his shoulders. “I don’t know what it is.”

Cassian leaned back in his seat, studying him. Not with judgment, not even surprise, just taking it all in. “You know you can talk to me,” he said.

Dominic didn’t respond.

Cassian’s gaze shifted back to the road. “I don’t care if you’re fucking women or men. That doesn’t change anything for me.” A pause. “But you should be careful.”

That made Dominic glance at him.

Cassian didn’t look back. “You and I both know the world we’re in. It’s not exactly open-minded. People like to look for cracks. Anything they can use. Something different? Something they don’t understand?” He shook his head. “They’ll call it a weakness before they even think about it twice.”

Dominic’s grip tightened. “I know.”

Cassian nodded. “It’s two things,” he went on. “The obvious one. He’s a guy. That alone is enough for some people to start questioning your authority.”

“And the second?”

Cassian looked at him. “Don’t let people see you care about him.”

That hit differently than the first.

“That part’s worse,” Cassian said quietly. “Doesn’t matter if it’s a man or a woman. The second people think someone matters to you—that’s leverage. They’ll use him to get to you if they think it works.”