It was none of his business who Sammy fucked. Dominic was just Sammy’s… Who, exactly, was he to Sammy? Just an older man he lived with. A friend. And nothing else. He didn’t own the boy and this weird possessiveness was fucking gross.
“I ask because I care about you,” Dominic said, painfully aware how inadequate it sounded.
Sammy scoffed. “I care about you, too, but I don’t ask such intrusive questions about your personal life.”
“You can ask whatever you want,” Dominic said testily. “I have nothing to hide.”
There was silence on the line.
Sam cleared his throat. “So have you seen her?”
“Who?”
“The Japanese woman you used to see.”
Dominic narrowed his eyes, unhappy with the change of subject. “Asami? Yes, actually.”
They’d had a lunch together two days ago. Their breakup had been amicable enough, so the meeting hadn’t been awkward. Just strange. It was strange to see the woman he once loved and feel… pretty much nothing.
And he had really been in love with her. Dominic could remember the instant infatuation, the fascination, the lust, the answering attraction in her dark eyes. She hadn’t been the target, but she had worked for the company he had infiltrated in order to find cyber-terrorists who intended to attach malware to the massive online video game the company had been developing. The slight conflict of interest didn’t stop him from doing his job and he had successfully completed his mission, despite being thoroughly distracted by a beautiful woman in his bed. Of course, Asami had eventually found out that the American graphics designer she’d fallen in love with was actually a British intelligence officer. They had broken up because he wasn’t willing to leave MI6 and move to Japan, not even for her. Asami hadn’t been angry when he had told her that. It wasn’t her style. She had stepped close, pulled his head down, and kissed him.
“You know where to find me when you get tired of playing James Bond,” she had told him before he walked out of her life.
Deep down, he had thought she was right and that eventually they would rekindle their relationship.
But two days ago, as he sat across from her at the restaurant they used to frequent, Dominic realized he couldn’t imagine being with her. The feelings were gone. There was nothing left except a superficial attraction to a beautiful, intelligent woman. She hadn’t changed in the three years since he’d last seen her—still petite and beautiful, her heart-shaped face as stunning as he remembered—but her laughter no longer warmed his chest, and the curve of her lips didn’t make his heart beat faster. It was strange, because he didn’t remember ever falling out of love.
“You aren’t coming back, are you?” Asami had said quietly, her doe-like eyes deceptively soft.
He could see regret and wistfulness in her gaze, but she didn’t seem heartbroken. Part of her had clearly moved on.
Just as he had, without realizing it.
“Oh,” Sammy said, pulling him to the present. “Was it—did it go as you expected?”
Dominic didn’t know how to answer that. He had expected that when he saw Asami again, he would feel as enamored with her as he once had been, and it would make the complicated mess of emotions eating at him lately go away. So in a sense, his meeting with Asami had been a major disappointment. But he supposed it had been good to see her and get closure.
“It was good,” he said in a clipped voice, still annoyed by the change of topic. He wasn’t done talking about Sammy’s date with that pimpled kid. Just thinking about Andy’s lips on Sammy’s, Andy’s tongue in Sammy’s sweet mouth, made him want to hit something. Or kill something.
“You’re coming back, right?” Sam blurted out.
What?
“Of course,” Dominic said slowly, wishing he could see Sam’s face. “Whatever gave you the idea that I’m not coming back?”
Sammy said nothing.
Dominic felt his heart speed up as something occurred to him. “Do you miss me?”
He could hear Sammy inhale shakily.
For a long while, there was only silence. All Dominic could hear was the sound of Sammy’s breathing. It felt incredibly intimate, as if they weren’t half a world apart.
He closed his eyes and thought about their last evening together, remembering how it felt to lie on Sammy with his face pressed against Sammy’s tummy through the shirt Sammy was wearing—Dominic’s shirt—and could feel his body ache for the simple intimacy and perfection of it. He remembered the silky smoothness of Sammy’s thighs against his hands as they parted to accommodate Dominic between his legs.
“Do you miss me?” he said again, his voice hoarse and barely recognizable.
“Yeah,” Sammy whispered at last. “I miss you so much.”
Goddammit.
Dominic felt his hand move down to his dick, which was half-hard already for reasons he didn’t want to think about. He gave it a slow stroke through his trousers.