Page 151 of Hard Bargain

Dominic’s gaze didn’t waver. “According to who?”

Knox didn’t answer. Didn’t even try.

Dominic let his eyes drift over him again, the tension sitting in his body, the uncertainty in his expression, the fact that through all of this he hadn’t once tried to put distance between them.

“Have you ever done anything like that before?” Knox asked quietly.

Dominic didn’t need to think. “No.”

Knox waited, so Dominic gave him the rest. “Never found anyone as unhinged as me.”

Knox didn’t breathe for three full seconds. Dominic counted. He leaned forward, lips brushing the shell of Knox’s ear. “Get some sleep.”

Knox exhaled, tension slipping away as his body eased back into Dominic’s chest with unquestioning trust. Dominic’s arms tightened around him, anchoring Knox against him like the world itself might try to take him back.

There had been a time—not long ago—when he would have let this slip through his fingers. He would have convinced himself it was temporary, easier to walk away before it could root too deep. He pressed his face into Knox’s hair and breathed him in.

I’m not letting this boy go.

He closed his eyes and felt the certainty settle deep in his bones: he’d found the one thing in this world he would never willingly give up.

Chapter 39

Knox

Knox stood in front of the full-length bathroom mirror and made himself look. The bruising had turned old. What had been black and purple was now a rot of yellow and green, fading in uneven patches across his ribs and stomach.

The knife wounds had sealed, but hadn’t disappeared. They crossed his body in thin pink lines and raised red seams. Some looked like nothing more than scratches, others were thicker, puckered, ugly with healing. There were so many they stopped looking separate. Just a pattern. A part of him now.

He lifted a hand and touched the brand on his neck. The clover was still there. Three leaves and a stem, preserved in angry ridges of healing flesh. It looked permanent. Less like a wound and more like a mark.

His stomach turned.

The bruises would fade. The cuts would soften. But the clover would never let him forget. He traced one leaf with the tip of his finger and felt the skin pull tight and tender—proof someone had hurt him and left their signature behind.

He barely recognized the person staring back. His body was a map of violence. Three weeks ago he’d been butchered. Now he looked… altered. Not destroyed or broken, just different. Changed in ways that wouldn’t reverse.

The worst part was how ordinary it appeared. As if his body could simply accept what had been done to it, close over cruelty, and move on.

For the past two weeks, ever since he’d returned from the hospital, he’d been living at Dominic’s. Though living hardly seemed the right word for the strange new shape their days had taken. He slept in Dominic’s bed every night and woke to warmth at his back or Dominic’s arm heavy across his waist. He wore borrowed T-shirts when his own clothes dragged too rough over healing skin. And he let Dominic hover in ways neither of them acknowledged out loud.

He only returned to his apartment to grab the occasional clothes, toiletries, and whatever else he might need before retreating again.

Back to Dominic.

Things had changed between them. Not in one dramatic way, but in the accumulation of small things. Dominic no longer held himself back. He shared things about his life, quiet admissions that felt like gifts being pressed into his hands. As though nearly losing Knox had made the cost of silence higher than the cost of vulnerability.

He no longer treated tenderness as dangerous. He touched Knox constantly now, often without seeming aware of it—a hand at the small of his back when he passed behind him in the kitchen, fingers brushing Knox’s wrist as he handed him a cup, knuckles dragging lightly over healing skin before sleep.

Sometimes Knox woke in darkness to Dominic’s breathing against his neck, to his solid weight anchoring him after nightmares neither of them named. Half-asleep, Dominic would tighten his hold, refusing even in sleep to let him drift.

Knox had started needing that. Needing him.

It terrified him, because he knew what came with needing someone.

Disappointment.

Pain.