Sinclair stiffened, his back tensing against Dom’s chest. “Why’re you asking?”
“Because you didn’t even fight with me over my knot.”
Pink tinted the tips of Sinclair’s ears. “Fuck off.”
Dom smiled. Sinclair did want it, then. Enough that he wasn’t even going to risk pushing Dom away. “How’s it feel?”
This time, Sinclair turned, frowning over his shoulder. “Why’re you so chatty suddenly?”
Dom weighed his words, his heart pattering. “Because we’re going to be stuck together for the next half-hour. And I want to know you better.”
Wariness filled Sinclair’s gaze; he studied Dom, trying to figure if Dom was lying. At length, he muttered, “No.”
“No to what?” Dom leaned closer, his skin tingling when their bodies rubbed together. “No other bed partners? Just me?”
He kissed Sinclair’s shoulder—just a light touch, but he never once broke their gaze. Sinclair flushed such a bright red that Dom’s heart missed a beat.
Sinclair hadn’t been with anyone else. He’d even let Dom take his knotting cherry.
Dom had to lean in. He cupped Sinclair’s jaw and kissed him on the lips, slow and deliberate—just a slide of skin on skin. Then, a firm press. So their mouths met fully, an intimate touch.
The way a person should be kissed. Dom’s heart pounded more frantically than the last few times he’d kissed Sinclair, because this wasn’t about sex at all.
Sinclair stiffened, his breath snagging. “The hell?”
Oh, he got flustered so easily.
So Dom kissed him again. Just a chaste kiss. “Never been kissed before, Sinclair?”
“I have,” Sinclair spluttered.
Except he was still blushing when Dom kissed him a third time. Dom couldn’t stop. He wanted to see Sinclair blush, over and over. It delighted all of his instincts.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Sinclair muttered. But he wasn’t even pulling away.
“Kissing you,” Dom answered. Then he kissed Sinclair again, on his lips, then his shoulder, then across his back.
“If this is you playing a trick on me,” Sinclair muttered, scowling, his eyes filled with such a mix of emotions—wariness, dread, disbelief—that Dom needed to hold him close.
“No tricks.” Dom nuzzled his shoulder blade. “You know me.”
Sinclair seemed to hesitate. Then he relaxed against Dom, burying his face against the mattress. “Oh.”
And his blush didn’t recede at all.
So maybe they liked each other. Sinclair couldn’t say it, but that was fine. Dom couldn’t, either.
He settled for dropping kisses across Sinclair’s shoulders, then up the nape of his neck. He slid his arm against Sinclair’s chest, just holding him there.
It felt so strange to be intimate with another alpha. With Mal, Dom had to be careful not to hurt him, because Mal had been fragile. Sinclair was... kind of the same. But mentally. Physically, he seemed to be able to take anything Dom threw at him.
So that was nice. Dom liked the change. He liked lying on top of Sinclair, and not worrying about crushing him. He liked slamming Sinclair against walls, and getting arousal in return. It felt like he could be an absolute animal around Sinclair, and Sinclair wouldn’t break at all.
“Why’d you give me the donuts?” Sinclair muttered. “You didn’t even say they were from you. What was I supposed to think?”
He glanced away as though he was embarrassed, except it only made him kind of... adorable. Dom growled, kissing his jaw. “Wanted to see you eat them.”
That was half the truth. It had started on a whim: Dom had stopped at Ben’s Buns for breakfast one day, and Ben had brought out a tray of chocolate donuts. Dom had gotten a sudden nagging urge to see how Sinclair would react to one of those on his locker.
What Dom hadn’t expected was the way Sinclair ripped into the donut like an animal, and the surprise on his face when he’d tasted it. It had disappeared in seconds. Right after, Sinclair had licked his fingers, glancing at the bag like maybe there might be a second one in there.
Out of curiosity, Dom had changed up the donut flavor the next week.
“So when I gave York that strawberry one...”
Dom growled. “So pissed.”
Sinclair grinned. “I can actually piss you off?”
“You’d better not give those donuts away.”
“Maybe,” Sinclair said, looking rebellious. “You could’ve told me they were from you.”
“You would’ve thrown them straight in the trash,” Dom said.
“Well.” Sinclair looked at the mattress, but Dom knew he would’ve. It was only when they’d become a habit, when he’d caught Sinclair looking at his locker every time he stepped into the locker room, that Dom knew he’d started something he couldn’t stop.
Not that he could stop, when Sinclair had become so possessive of those donuts. He’d made sure to eat them in front of Dom every single time, he’d sucked the chocolate off his fingers, and more often than not, he’d given Dom a hard-on that Dom had to find some way to hide.
Then there were the secret smiles whenever Sinclair dug into a new donut bag. The look of bliss when he rolled the chocolate through his mouth. Because Dom had given him something he liked.
Because he was eating Dom’s donuts.
Dom had made Sinclair smile, and he hadn’t expected to want to see it again, until Sinclair had hit him in the gut with it.
So maybe Dom just liked to see him smile. It didn’t have to mean anything.
It most certainly hadn’t caused Dom to go into a rut.
“Did you sleep at all?” Sinclair asked. “You didn’t change out of your clothes since you got back.”
Dom looked away. No, he hadn’t. He’d been staying awake just in case Sinclair woke and he needed something. But he wasn’t telling Sinclair that.
The fire alarm rang, a loud, shrill sound that made Sinclair jump, tightening around Dom. Dom didn’t have the time to savor it, though.
“There’s a fire?” he asked. The stove wasn’t on. He had no faulty appliances in the house.
Sinclair looked just as confused. Then, dread flickered through his gaze. “I was—I was boiling potatoes.”
20
The Chapter of Many Kisses
Jesse scrambled, hoping that the fire was still
