Dominion (Alpha Domain #1) (4 page)

After Amber stormed out of the room and curled up on the couch, I took a few minutes to calm myself down the best that I could before I called John.

“Wow, is it over already?” he asked with a chuckle. “What a loser.”

“Yes, it’s over,” I said, my tone clipped. “Keep an eye on her, I’m going to bed. Come see me in the morning.”

“But I’m supposed to be watching—”

“Derek will fill in for you again,” I said between clenched teeth. “You and I need to have a chat.”

I could almost hear his gulp from the other end of the line before I ended the call and tossed the phone down. I took one more glance at Amber’s curled up form before calling it a night and closing the laptop.

It’d been a long fucking day and I had a bad feeling I was in for an even longer one tomorrow.

“
S
o what happened last night
?” I asked curiously as I stepped into Allen’s office the next morning after Derek took over stakeout for me. “When I turned the tablet back on, Amber was on the couch. Did Mr. Wonderful not satisfy her needs?”

I chuckled, but the smile faded when I looked at Allen. His face was stony, not even a flicker of humor after my joke.

“They didn’t have sex.”

“Oh, it’s worse than I thought,” I said seriously as I took the empty seat across from him. “Erectile dysfunction, then?”

Still nothing. I knew that whatever was going on was serious if I couldn’t even get a smirk out of my best friend.

“What’s going on, Allen?”

“They didn’t have sex... because they got into an argument. Chris accused her of seeing some motherfucker in SoHo who offered Amber his coat yesterday.”

I sat up straighter and drew my lower lip into my mouth to keep from immediately trying to defend my actions. I knew he wasn’t finished yet.

“Imagine my surprise when Amber said the man’s name was John. What a fucking coincidence, right?”

“Look, I know you’re mad—”

“You don’t know SHIT!” Allen shouted as he stood up and slammed his hands against the desk. “I told you to WATCH her, John!
Low profile
! What in the hell were you thinking?”

“It was an
accident
, Allen!” I yelled back, standing up and raising my hands helplessly in the air. “I went to leave and the wind blew the newspaper out of my hands. It happened to run into her.”

“How fucking beautiful,” he said snidely. “What a perfect story of how you two met. It’s just like something out of a shitty movie.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You think I was moving in on her?
Seriously
?”

“Why else would you offer her your coat?”

I shrugged, still unable to fully understand the answer to that myself. “I-I honestly don’t know, man. She was shivering and it just… I just did it. I didn’t think about it.”

Allen stared at me coldly for a long moment. I was almost certain that he was going to flip his shit and punch me, so it completely took me by surprise when he abruptly sat back in his chair and buried his face in his hands.

“I asked you to watch her, John. Not to develop a fucking
crush
on the woman I love.”

I reared back in shock. Was he right? Was
that
what this was?

Am I really surprised?

I sighed and dropped back into my seat. “I’m sorry, man. I mean, I don’t even know her or anything. She’s just—fuck, I mean, she’s gorgeous. Any straight man would have had the exact same reaction.”

“Derek didn’t.”

“Derek’s fucking weird,” I muttered. To my surprise, Allen actually laughed. I chuckled along with him and when he looked up at me, I asked, “What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to stop crushing on my stepsister,” he said blandly.

“Got anything else? Cause I hate to say this—I truly do—but if I keep watching her, I don’t think I’m going to be able to stop it.”

Allen nodded sadly as he mentally ran through his options. None of them were good.

He could take over himself and risk Amber seeing him and bolting. He could move Derek over to watch her full time, but he didn’t trust him as much as he trusted me. Or he could allow me to stay her watchdog and just deal with the fact that I was crushing on her.

Or…

“I’ve got a really bad idea,” I said abruptly, drawing his full attention.

“What is it?”

“Let’s break them up.”

Allen’s eyes widened and I knew he hadn’t even considered that those words were about to come out of my mouth. “What? Why?
How
?”

I leaned forward, getting more excited about my plan by the second. “Look, it’ll be win-win-win. She’s already met me so I’ll causally run into her again and ask her out. If we get her away from Chris, we won’t need to worry about keeping her safe because the Sanchez family won’t go after her. And if I get a chance to talk to her alone, I can try to talk her into seeing you again.”

“She’ll never agree to that,” Allen said firmly with a shake of his head. “At best, the only person who will win here is
you
since you’ll be the one in bed with her. Isn’t that right?”

I sat back and crossed my arms over my chest. “I won’t lie to you. If she asked, there’s no fucking way I’d say no.”

Allen snarled at me. “Nice of you to start telling me the truth
now
, after I had to fucking force it out of you in the first place.”

I really couldn’t argue with that and I winced. “I’m sorry, Allen. But I think this plan will work. And I can get her back to you, I know I can. Hell, you never know. Maybe I’ll start to get to know her and realize I don’t even like her.”

“That’s highly unlikely. Amber is…” he trailed off, his eyes moving past me to stare blankly at the wall as he searched for a good word. “Just incredible. There’s no one else like her.”

“We’ve reached an impasse, Allen. The only way out of this is if you be honest with me now. Tell me why she isn’t speaking to you.”

“I told you, after the—”

“Just tell me, dammit! I can hear it from you, or I can ask her.”

He stood up at my bluff, looking down at me with a deep frown. “You’re going to let a woman you don’t even know come between us?
I
have reason to be angry. You don’t.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re missing the entire point here. I’m not suggesting that you give me your blessing to date your stepsister.”

“Then what exactly
are
you suggesting?”

I huffed and ran a hand through my hair, trying to think of the simplest way to phrase my thoughts. “I guess I’m suggesting you let me get close to her and talk her into speaking to you again so we can both be in her good graces.”

“And by good graces—”

“I mean both of us get to have her.”

T
his was
the most ridiculous bullshit I’d ever heard.

“You want to share a woman? Share my
stepsister
?
Sexually
?”

John shrugged. “Why the fuck not? It’s not like either of us have the time to balance a relationship with what we do. It’d be a win-win all around. When I’m busy, she’s yours. When you’re busy, she’s mine.”

“And when we’re both free?”

John grinned. “Then we’ll share. And not like in a sword-crossing way. I love you, man, but I don’t want to touch your dick. No offense.”

I stared at my best friend blankly, unable to even process the fact that he was legitimately suggesting this. It was like the idea had blown up some vital piece in my brain that I needed for sorting information and the only thought that kept running through my head was—

If John’s plan works, I’ll get to have Amber. Even if I have to share her, it’d be better than never having her at all.

“How in the hell would you get her to agree to this?”

John smirked cockily. “In case you didn’t know, I’m extremely charming. And besides, what woman wouldn’t want, not one, but
two
very attractive men lavishing her with attention?”

“Oh yeah. It’s every woman’s dream to be lusted after by her stepbrother and his best friend,” I said with a disbelieving snort.

John tilted his head to the side and looked at me curiously. “You know, the only way I could get this to work is if you give me full discretion of what happened between you two. I need to know if it’s something forgivable or if I’d be wasting my time.”

“It’s nothing… I didn’t
do
anything to her. She just wasn’t thrilled when I…”

“When you what?” John asked expectantly, leaning in across the desk.

“I might have beaten the shit out of her high school sweetheart.”

“You
what
?” John asked with a roar of laughter. “Oh my god, why does that not surprise me?”

I frowned. “It’s not funny. If I had been a year older at the time, I probably would’ve gotten locked up for the damage I did to that kid. Little punk.”

“Why’d you beat him up?”

I sat back in the chair and wished I had a drink. “There was this big party going on one night, but Amber got the flu and missed it. I didn’t really want to go, but for whatever reason, I did anyways. To make a long story short, in my quest to find an unoccupied room to hide out in, I wound up finding her boyfriend buried balls deep in the town bicycle. I saw red.”

“I bet,” John murmured. “A lot of red?”

“Oh yeah. My first real fight, and it wasn’t much of one. I really fucked him up.”

“So what happened next? Amber found out I take it?”

“She found out I beat him up, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her
why
I did it. I don’t know why, I just.. I didn’t think it was my place. Not right away anyway. Later on, when I tried to tell her the truth, she freaked the fuck out and accused me of lying to cover my own ass.”

John frowned and shook his head. “Alright, I can see why that would be grounds to piss a girl off, but it’s not enough to hold a grudge.”

“You didn’t let me finish,” I chided, giving him a disapproving look. “She didn’t talk to me for our entire senior year unless she absolutely had to. It wasn’t until right before prom that word got out that the douchebag was still cheating on her, and by then I think she was so embarrassed about not believing me that she never even apologized.”

I trailed off as I lost myself in the memory of prom and everything that went down that night. I could hardly believe that it had been nearly eight years since the last time she had actually spoken to me.

“
H
ave fun
, kids!” my mom called as she pulled the car away from the curb.

I turned to Amber with a hesitant smile and offered her my elbow, but she ignored the gesture. I could feel my cheeks burning from the sting of rejection as I followed her into the gym, which was all decked out with decorations for prom.

I immediately sought out my small group of friends and we lingered by the bathrooms for most of the night, secretly passing around a bottle of vodka and sneaking sips when no one was looking.

The night passed quickly enough and the prom court was called, Amber’s dumbass ex-boyfriend somehow managing to snag the position of king. My heart broke a little for her when she didn’t win queen, but I could see the tiniest hint of relief on her face that she wouldn’t have to share a spotlight dance with her ex.

“I’ll see you later, guys,” I said absentmindedly to my friends as I handed the bottle back and made my way across the gym.

When I reached Amber, she turned to me with a blank look, devoid of any emotion. “What do you want?”

“Do you want to dance?” I asked shyly, already knowing what the answer would be but wanting to try regardless.

Amber sighed. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Allen. People are talking about me enough already,” she bitterly added.

A light bulb went off in my head. “Then do you want to take a walk?”

She hesitated for a second before nodding. “Yeah. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

We walked side-by-side out of the gym and she called my mom from her cell phone, requesting that she come pick us both up. We decided to walk around the parking lot while we waited and I could feel my heart pounding hard in my chest as I tried to force out the words that were lodged in my throat.

“I’m sorry for not believing you,” she said, completely out of nowhere. “If I had listened to what you tried to tell me last year, I could’ve spared myself some embarrassment.”

“You have nothing to be embarrassed about. He’s a piece of shit who doesn’t deserve someone like you.” Amber smiled at that and I felt encouraged by her reaction. “Amber, I need to tell you—”

“You know what’s crazy?” she asked, cutting me off. “The reason I didn’t believe you was because I thought you were jealous,” she admitted with a laugh and I felt a nervous chill run up my spine. “Leslie told me you had a crush on me and at first I thought she was full of shit, but when you beat up Don I thought maybe she was right after all. Crazy, huh?”

I cleared my throat awkwardly. “Yeah, crazy.”

“What’d you need to tell me? Sorry for cutting you off, I was just worried I’d lose my train of thought.”

I forced a smile onto my face and shook my head. “Nothing important.”

“
W
ait
, wait, wait. So you two made up after all? When did it turn to shit?”

“Don’t fucking interrupt me and you’ll find out!”

John raised his hand in mock-surrender. “Jesus, I’m sorry! Please continue.”

I rolled my eyes. “Well, after my mom picked us up and we went home, I had a change of heart…”

I
timidly knocked
on Amber’s door—not loud enough to wake up our parents, but with just enough force that I knew she would hear it. After a few moments, I heard the soft pad of her footsteps moving through the room and shortly after, the door hesitantly opened.

“Can I come in?” I whispered.

She frowned but nodded, opening the door further so I could step past and into her room. She closed it silently and I clenched my jaw as my eyes roamed over her tiny pajama set.

As if this conversation wasn’t going to be awkward enough already. Now I had the wonderful addition of a semi to deal with.

“What’s up?” she whispered as she moved back to sit on her bed and gestured for me to do the same.

“I wasn’t entirely honest with you earlier,” I said nervously, twisting my hands together as I sat down on her bed and faced her. “I
did
remember what I wanted to tell you.”

“What was it?”

“Well, uh… Leslie was right, Amber. I do have a crush on you.”

She looked completely taken aback and it made it that much harder to muster up the courage to continue. As she opened her mouth to speak, I held up a finger and placed it over her soft, pouty lips. It took all of my self-control not to kiss her right then.