If The Seas Catch Fire(108)

Sergei took a breath. “After tonight, things will get—”

“I know.” Dom kissed the top of his head. “But let’s have tonight. We’ll deal with tomorrow when we get there.”

Sergei met his gaze.

Neither of them said it, but it was there in Sergei’s eyes as surely as it was ringing in Dom’s ears:

Let’s have tonight.

Because this is all we have left.





Chapter 31


As the dust settled, they lay in silence, still tangled up in each other in the warm glow of the bedside lamp. Dom’s strong arms were wrapped around Sergei, Sergei’s arm draped across Dom’s chest. Somehow they always ended up like this, but it felt less like lazy affection tonight and more like something much needier.

“You know what’s kind of crazy?” Dom asked after a while.

“Hmm?”

“I was talking to my cousin one night. The psychopath.” Dom’s fingers ran lazily up and down Sergei’s arm. “And we talked about the Georgian.”

Sergei’s neck prickled. “Oh really?”

“Mmhmm. I don’t even remember what we were talking about, but at some point I said, ‘well, if the Georgian ever gets that close to me, it’ll be to suck my dick.’”

Sergei pushed himself up and locked eyes with Dom, staring down at him in horror.

Dom’s lips were twisted slightly as if he were fighting a laugh.

Then Sergei snorted. So did Dom. They both burst out laughing. It was gallows humor of the most morbid kind, and laughing at it probably made them the sickest f*cks on the planet, but laughing beat the alternative, so Sergei didn’t fight it.

“You aren’t serious,” he said.

“I am,” Dom laughed. “I was being a cocky idiot, and I knew it would horrify Felice, and… apparently it was truer than I thought.”

Sergei laughed again, shaking his head. “Well, if I’d known you were into that kind of thing…”

Dom rolled his eyes. Then he drew Sergei down and kissed him again. “If I’d known sex with the—with you, would be that good, I’d have come looking for you a long time ago.”

Sergei grinned against his lips. Slowly, though, his humor faded, and reality settled back in. Yeah, they’d found each other. And like it or not, Sergei was still the Georgian, and Dom was still…

He sighed, trailing the backs of his fingers down Dom’s chest.

Dom sobered too, and touched Sergei’s face. Quietly, they cuddled up together again, Sergei’s head on Dom’s shoulder and Dom’s arms around him.

As they lay in silence, Sergei’s mind rattled with all the things they’d learned about each other tonight. All the things they were. All the things they wished they could be. All the things that had put them both on the path to where they both were now.

After a while, he whispered, “Can I ask you a question?”

Dom let his hand drift from Sergei’s face to his arm, and rested it there. “Can’t promise I’ll answer.”

Sergei managed a soft laugh. He shifted a bit, since his elbow and shoulder were starting to ache from holding himself up. “What happened to your father?”

Dom stiffened. “What?”

“Your father.” Sergei swept his tongue across his lips. “I… people around town talk, you know? I’d heard of you, and they all said your uncle adopted you after your father died. After he…” He hesitated, not sure how raw this nerve was. “Betrayed the family.”

Closing his eyes, Dom clenched his jaw. His fingers twitched on Sergei’s arm.

“You don’t have to answer,” Sergei said. “I’m just curious.”

Dom’s Adam’s apple bobbed. After a moment, he opened his eyes, but looked up at the ceiling instead of at Sergei. “The short version is that my father was turning state’s evidence. He’d been arrested a few times, and the last time, he was going to prison for narcotics traveling. Which is a hell of a sentence.”

Sergei nodded. “So I’ve heard.”

“That’s exactly why the Mafia Commission back in the 1980s didn’t want the families involved in the drug trade.” Dom scrubbed a hand over his face and sighed. “Because drugs meant huge sentences, and huge sentences meant plea deals.” He turned toward Sergei. “The feds cut my father a deal. If he could get them bulletproof evidence tying my uncle and the rest of the family to the narcotics trade, they’d put him—and my mother and me—into witness protection.”

“But he got caught.”

Dom winced. “Yeah. I don’t know exactly what happened. I was twelve, so…” He lifted one shoulder in a heavy shrug. “I didn’t even know about most of this until years later. I just know he made a mistake somewhere, or… something. I don’t know. Someone caught on, and it got back to Corrado that he was talking to the feds. So my uncle…” He swallowed hard. “Took care of the problem.”

Sergei cursed in his native tongue. “When you were twelve?”

“Yeah. My uncle took in my mother and me, and then she died when I was fifteen, so he adopted me.” Dom again stared up at the ceiling, eyes unfocused and lips taut. A long, silent moment passed before he said, “If my father had lived, there’s no way in hell I’d be a made man. He even told me when I was a kid, that if the time came and my uncle wanted me to get made, that I shouldn’t.” He closed his eyes, letting out a long breath. “When that time did come, my father was dead, and my uncle had put the fear of God in me. He made me watch my father die, for f*ck’s sake, so I was terrified of him, and I was terrified to say no.” His eyelids fluttered open again, and when he met Sergei’s gaze, Sergei swore he caught a glimpse of that fear, of that young, traumatized kid. “And now this is my life.”