7.

Chapter 7: 

We arrived at a club. The club was smelling of expensive cologne, spilled gin, and the desperate scent of people trying too hard to feel alive.

Beside me, Chloe was dancing, moving with chaotic energy. She was already four shots deep into a bottle of premium tequila that cost more than most people’s monthly rent. She looked beautiful, wild and utterly reckless.

"Drink, Eva! For the love of God, stop looking like you’re calculating the physics of the floor and just…move!" Chloe screamed over a remix of a song I didn't recognize. She shoved a salt-rimmed glass into my hand. “ Are you even stiff?”

I looked at the clear liquid. My heart was still in pieces, aching from my boyfriend scandal and my failed attempt to get Dominic. I wanted the glass to stop cutting. I wanted to be like Chloe loud, unapologetic, and carefree.

"To forgetting!" I shouted back, though my voice felt thin.

I downed the shot. The burn was immediate with a familiar fire that scorched my throat and bloomed in my stomach. I welcomed it. I took another. And then a third.

Slowly, the world began to tilt with the sharp edges of the room softening into a blur of light. The grief that usually sat like a lead weight on my shoulders started to float. I laughed a real and genuine sound that surprised me. For the first time in weeks, I was just a body in a room full of bodies.

"That’s my girl!" Chloe grabbed my waist, spinning me into the center of the dance floor.

We danced until my hair was damp with sweat and my breath came in short, jagged gasps. Men tried to reach out to us with their hands reaching out like gravity, but Chloe swatted them away with her never ending laughter. She was waiting for someone.

That someone appeared an hour later. Blaise.

He moved through the crowd with the practiced ease of someone who had never been told "no." Ever handsome in a way that made me look at him the second time, his smile never quite reaching his eyes. When he saw Chloe, he claimed her with his hand sliding firmly onto the small of her back.

He glanced at me, his eyes skimming over my face with a condescending flick of his lashes. "Still here, Eva? I thought you’d be home tucked in with a textbook by now."

"She’s with me, Blaise. Back off," Chloe giggled, though she leaned into him.

I felt a sudden, sharp pang of isolation. The alcohol was starting to turn on me, moving from a warm buzz to a dizzying, nauseating swirl. The lights were too bright and the music suddenly started to make my head ache.

"I think... I think I need to sit down," I muttered.

"You need water," Chloe said, checking her phone. Her face went pale for a split second before she masked it with a grin. "Oh, shit. My dad is outside."

The name *Dominic* hit me harder than the tequila. My stomach did a slow but treacherous roll.

"He’s picking us up?" I asked, my voice slurring slightly. "I thought Mateo was coming."

"Mateo’s busy," Chloe said quickly obviously too quickly. I saw her eyes dart toward the back exit where the VIP cars were parked. "But look, Blaise is here and he’s got his car, and also…he says there’s an after-party at the hills."

"Chloe, your dad is literally at the curb," I said, trying to find my balance.

"Tell him I left with Blaise!" She was already pulling her designer coat over her shoulders, her eyes bright with a different kind of intoxication. "He won't care, Eva. He likes you better anyway. You’re the 'sensible' one, remember? Just tell him I was feeling sick and Blaise is taking me to his place to recover."

"Chloe—"

"Go! He hates waiting!" With a final, frantic wave, she disappeared into the crowd, her hand locked in Blaise’s.

I was alone.

I stumbled toward the front entrance, the transition from the humid club to the biting December air making me gasp. The sky was purple…which I wondered why, and the snow was beginning to fall in fat, slow flakes that vanished the moment they touched the pavement.

There, idling at the curb was the black SUV. The engine hummed with a low, masculine growl that vibrated in my chest.

The back door didn't open but Instead, the driver’s side window rolled down.

Dominic Callahan sat there, his hands draped over the steering wheel. He wasn't wearing a coat, just a charcoal-grey dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing forearms that were corded with muscle and dusted with dark hair. 

His eyes found mine, and for a heartbeat, I forgot how to breathe. They were dark, cold, and intensely focused.

"Where is Chloe?"

His voice seemed to travel through the air and settle right between my thighs, making them hot.

"She... she went with Blaise," I stammered, clinging to the door handle for support. "She said she was... she wasn't feeling well that Blaise is taking her home."

If he knew it was a lie then he certainly didn't care.

"Get in, Eva." 

Now…this wasn't a suggestion but a command.

I fumbled with the passenger door and slid inside. The interior of the car smelled of him, expensive leather and cedarwood. The heater was blasting, but I was still shivering.

He didn't pull away immediately. He just sat there, staring straight ahead through the windshield.

"You're drunk," he said.

"A little," I lied, my head lolling back against the headrest.

"And you're also trembling."

"It’s cold."

"The heat is on full blast, Eva." He turned his head then, his gaze sweeping over me. I was wearing a silk slip dress that offered no protection, the fabric clinging to my curves. I felt exposed. 

He put the car into gear and pulled away from the curb. The city lights flickered past us in a blur of gold and white. I watched his hands. They were large, capable hands and I couldn't help but imagined them sliding down my pants… on me.

The thought made my breath hitch. I was grieving, I told myself that I was broken and drunk and looking for a distraction. But as I stole a glance at his profile, the sharp line of his nose, his heavy brow and the flexed muscles on his chest. I knew it was more than that because it was an attraction that felt like a sin.

"My daughter thinks she's wise," Dominic said suddenly, his voice cutting through the hum of the heater. "And Blaise is a parasite."

"She loves him," I whispered.

"She doesn't know what love is what she knows Is obsession. She knows the chase." He glanced at me again, his eyes lingering on my mouth. "And what about you, Eva? What do you know?"

"I know that I'm tired of being the 'good' girl," I said, the alcohol giving me a sudden, reckless surge of courage. "I'm tired of being the one who gets left behind while everyone else plays."

The silence that followed was heavy. We reached the outskirts of the city, the sprawling estates of the countryside rising up like dark fortresses against the snow.

Dominic slowed the car as we turned into the long, winding driveway of the Callahan estate. The pine trees were heavy with snow with their branches bowing. He didn't drive up to the front door. Instead, he pulled the car into a darkened turn-off near the edge of the gardens, where the shadows of the oaks were deepest.

He killed the engine.

The silence was deafening. I could hear the tick-tick-tick of the cooling metal and the sound of my own frantic pulse.

"Eva," he said, his voice dropping.

I turned to look at him as he was leaning toward me, his presence overwhelming the small space. I was burning from the inside out.

"Yes?" my voice was barely a breath.

He didn't answer with words instead he reached out, his hand moving slowly but deliberately. I expected him to touch my face or o brush a stray hair behind my ear.

Instead, his large hand landed on my thigh.

The heat of his palm seared through the thin silk of my dress causing my pussy to throb. His fingers were long, blunt-tipped, and heavy. He didn't move them; he just let the weight of his hand settle there, claiming the space.

I should have moved or made a joke. I should have opened the door, ran into the house. But I stayed. My legs felt like lead, and my heart was screaming.

“How do I tell him that I've always fantasized him?”

“That I do badly want him or that a mate glance at him got my pussy wet.”

His thumb began to move, a slow, agonizingly rhythmic stroke against the sensitive skin of my inner thigh. Higher. Just an inch.

"You shouldn't be here with me," he whispered, his eyes locked on mine. "You should be inside, dreaming of your innocent stories."

"I don't want to dream," I said, my voice breaking.

His hand tightened, his fingers digging into my flesh just enough to hurt—and just enough to make me whimper. He leaned closer, until I could feel the heat radiating from his body, until the scent of him filled my entire world.

His other hand came up, his thumb catching my lower lip and pulling it down, exposing the damp pinkness beneath.

"You have no idea," Dominic growled, his gaze dark with a hunger that terrified and thrilled me, "the kind of fire you're playing with."

He leaned in, his breath ghosting over my skin, his hand sliding even higher, reaching the lace of my underwear. I didn't pull away but leaned into the touch, my eyes closing as the first real spark of a dangerous, ruinous obsession took hold.

My fantasies were coming to life!

---