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She blushes as she says it, like she rethought her confession halfway through but completed the thought anyway. Her guts impress me, make me want to give as much as she is, which is the point, I suppose.
I sit on the barstool next to her, trying to decide what to divulge.
“First, I’ll agree that was something different. You are different.” I run my hand along her bare thigh, wishing I could avoid the rest of the conversation and just throw her on the island and fuck her again. Maybe a little less missionary this time, perhaps with her cheek pressed to the granite and her apple ass in the air for me. I have a suspicion I’ll always want to be inside her. Every moment I’m not feels like I’m missing an integral part of my being. She’s the one person I’ve ever felt totally at ease with, and being inside her . . . it’s heaven.
But I owe her something beyond the physical, at least for a moment. “Something that made me smile? Once upon a time, I was a little boy.”
She feigns shock, teasing me with a hand on her cheek. “You? A little boy? That’s hard to imagine. You seem like the type that just sprang forth, fully-grown and serious, with the weight of the world on his shoulders. You were probably born with an Armani suit on. Tell me I’m wrong.”
I laugh, shaking my head. “I wasn’t that bad.”
“Well then, tell me about Little Dominick. Paint me a picture of that first.”
I think back, nodding to myself as I recall the memories. “Actually, I guess I was a bit like a mini-me even then, a serious child who mostly read, played chess, and excelled at school. I didn’t really have many friends, at first because I was quiet and studious, not really the gregarious kid who drew people in.”
Allie hums, and I continue. “Later, some who were in the know became afraid of me because of my dad. But as I grew up, I learned to use that to my advantage, and I spent most of my teen years as a bit of a hellion, confident that no one could or would dare touch me. I was, I’m sorry to say, a bit of an entitled jerk. Ironically, I’d become what I thought I didn’t want to be. That changed on my sixteenth birthday though.”
In my mind, I can see my mother holding up my favorite chocolate cake, a sad smile on her face illuminated by the single candle. I hadn’t understood it then, but she’d known that when I blew out that candle, my world would change and I would become an apprentice for my father.
“That was when I started working for my father as his right hand . . . good, bad, or ugly, and there was plenty of each. It shaped me, changed me. I’d already gone from a quiet, nerdy kid into a rowdy street urchin too cocky for his own good, but after that I became . . . The Boss.”
It’s the first time we’ve acknowledged the elephant in the room since she first found out exactly who I am. It’s been mentioned in conversations, but it’s the first time those words have crossed my lips about myself in her presence. I gird myself for her reaction, ready for the judgment and the disgust to cross her face.
But there isn’t any. Instead, she studies me silently for a heartbeat, then another. “You’ve heard the expression ‘rough around the edges’?”
I nod, unsure where she’s going with this. “Yeah?”
She continues. “I think that once upon a time, you were rough around the edges. I’ve heard stories. Hell, I’ve seen you have to handle business in the club a time or two. You’re street smart, willing to cheat, get dirty, do what’s needed. But also, like a sword, you’ve honed your edges through years of work, experience, and knowledge, and now, you’re more like the sharpest blade, gleaming and dangerous on the surface. But still with that roughness at the core. You are The Boss, with all that entails, but you’re also still that quiet boy too. You’ve spent so long trying to hide it . . . but I see it. And to me, I think it’s the best part about you, Dom. You know what I’ve noticed?”
“What’s that?” I ask, and she gives me a smile that stops my heart again.
“You almost never curse in your work. You don’t need to because you let your intelligence help you get your point across with a fierce elegance. But when we’re together, you do curse, and I think it’s because you relax around me, let your rough edges show. Side note—it’s hot when you talk dirty, so don’t be using fancy language for that shit or I’ll cover your mouth so you don’t distract me with some thees and thous. A well-timed ‘Fuck, Allie’ can sometimes say more than a whole Shakespearean sonnet, know what I mean?”
