On this morning, Bruno had come into their bedroom early to speak to Dax, then he left without addressing her. She tried to ask Dax about what was going on, but as always he ignored her questions and goaded her into fucking him instead. Morning sex was unusual for them as was the nap that followed.

He still tagged her ankle to the bedpost but now they slept in a spoon position with her behind him. He liked to hold her arm around his waist and over his abs, so that his body coated hers, providing a barrier to separate her from the rest of the world.

The words he used when addressing her were no less harsh, and in front of Bruno he spent most of his time ignoring her. Yet, when they were alone there had been a subtle shift. She still showed contempt for him, and he belittled and objectified her, but that glimmer of respect they’d garnered for each other hung on, only showing its face in private.

Unsure if he was still sleeping or not, she rubbed her lips on his back, and sealed her lips in a puckered O, to leave a vertical line of kisses on his shoulder blade. She was about to move onto the V of her name, when he spoke.

‘I’ve got plans, Minx,’ he grumbled. ‘You’re not getting any more of me now.’

Sex hadn’t been on her mind – though it was because it always seemed to be around him – but the kisses weren’t a prelude to it.

‘Do you miss the east coast?’ she asked him, he’d revealed that he’d done his growing up in New York.

‘Nope,’ he said, releasing her hand to stretch out his muscles. She stayed against him just to experience the tactile motion of it.

‘You never ask about me,’ she said when he nudged her onto her back and rolled off the bed.

‘Why would I?’

‘We’ve been having sex for a while, Dax. A month. You’re not curious about the woman who has been in your bed every night?’

‘What is there to know?’ he asked, going into the bathroom to turn on the shower, then returning to her in the bedroom. ‘You grew up somewhere, had parents, maybe siblings. I don’t give a fuck.’

She sat up and wrapped herself in the sheet that had been kicked to the end of the bed. ‘I was born in Chicago, we only lived there for a few years, and then we kicked around Ohio where my grandfather lived, that’s where my mom met Ted, in Cleveland. He took us to Detroit, we lived in a shitty trailer park—‘

‘I don’t care,’ he said, standing in full naked glory beside the bed.

‘You cared enough to make sure your cohorts took blood from me before we left LA,’ she said.

‘They had to check that you weren’t diseased.’

‘So you could get your groove on without wearing a raincoat, I know, we had that conversation two weeks ago.’

‘I know, but you’re still bitching about it.’

She bitched about it to remind him of everything they had gone through to get them here. Sometimes when they were alone in this bedroom it was easy to forget that they weren’t a “normal” couple. ‘I hate needles,’ she said.

‘You’ve told me that too, babygirl. Maybe I don’t need to ask questions because you volunteer every damn thing.’

Getting under his skin was as easy for her as ever. ‘Are you going to let me free from here?’ she asked, bending her knee to flash her thigh through the sheet.

He came around the bed with a flick-knife he’d retrieved from the drawer. When she was loose, she grabbed his arms and tugged him forward, bringing him down onto the bed on top of her. Latching onto him, she hooked her arms and legs around his body.

‘I said no more sex,’ he said.

‘Why is getting to know me so dangerous for you? You answer eighty percent of my questions, I know you’re an only child, from New York and you grew up with your dad, until he left you with the circus and took off on you.’ His father had left him with a group of fight organisers, but calling it the circus irked him, so she did it for that reason. ‘Every foster or group home they put you into, you ran away from, and you’ve been on the street since you were ten. You answer all of my questions about the past and none about the present.’

‘I don’t have to answer your questions at all,’ he said, slanting his mouth on hers he parted her lips with his tongue and began to grind his hardening dick against her sensitive inner thigh.

‘No sex,’ she said, taking hold of his arms again. ‘Why is it so wrong for you to talk to me?’

‘Why do you need answers? Why do you need me to care?’

‘Why won’t you admit how you feel? You hate it when Bruno touches me.’ He tensed, sort of proving her point. 'All of the rules I have to follow out there go out the window in here.’

‘In here you open your legs for me on command and that’s all I care about.’

‘And you let me fidget with your dick anytime I want.’

‘Do I?’

‘Case and point,’ she said, squeezing her hands between them to take hold of him with both of them.

‘You can play with my dick later, Minx,’ he said, rolling off her and stretching again. ‘I have stuff to do today.’

‘Stuff like what?’ she asked but he was already on his way to the shower.

Joining him in the bathroom might allow her to goad him into sex, but she wasn’t in the mood to speed her journey down the stairs to join Bruno. The only time she got to shower without a witness was when she was doing it with Dax.

So she left the bed to join him, but by the time she got there he was already rinsing off. He handed her the loofah then squeezed past her in the exit. When they co-occupied the narrow doorway she crowded him, flattening her breasts on him.

‘Where are you going in such a hurry, stranger?’

‘The clingy thing isn’t attractive.’

‘Neither is the distant brooder.’

‘Who are you kidding? Every time I snap my fingers your panties melt.’

And with that statement her arousal cooled. ‘Jerk,’ she said, shoving her way past him to get under the spray.

The draft from the door told her he hadn’t closed the sliding door. When she opened her eyes she could make out the outline of his figure. Stepping out of the engulfing water, her eye was immediately drawn down to his intimidating erection, but the idea of using it faded when she recognised his aloof expression that made her think of the night they met.

‘There’s a guy that owes Mauri money,’ he said, all cool like. ‘A lot of money, Mauri trusted him with some product and didn’t get his return.’

‘So?’

‘So I’m going to get that money back for him today.’

‘If you’re just a thug for hire then what am I?’ she asked.

‘A massive pain in my ass. You’ll be alone with Bruno today, wear the denim cut-offs.’

She’d found them on her side of the closet and worn them two days ago. He’d been unable to keep his eyes, or his hands off her ass. Since their union in the gym when he’d told her to stop wearing bikinis he had given her wardrobe instructions every day and Bruno had never questioned or refuted Dax’s authority in this area.

‘Ok.’

‘Are you comfortable here at the beach house?’ he asked.

‘I’m comfortable with you.’

‘What would you do for me?’ His question came quietly, but determination bled through him. ‘Would you do anything I asked?’

‘I’d give you shit for it first but yeah, I’d probably agree to try most things. I’m not ready for the ass thing yet though, so don’t even go there.’

‘How did they get you?’ he asked as though carrying on a conversation here, like this, was a normal occurrence. ‘How did you end up at the Stark mansion?’

‘I answered an advert for a live-in housekeeper in Vegas,’ she said. ‘Three days after getting the job I couldn’t get out of the house. From there they took me to LA. I had no idea what was going on or who they were until I saw you, downstairs in the living room.’ The story was entirely true, but he didn’t respond. ‘What is it?’

‘Have your shower. I’ll be back this afternoon.’

He slid the door shut and the confined space quickly gathered steam. The scent of his shower gel that lingered brought back her arousal with the subtlety of a freight train. If he was dressing and leaving then all she had waiting for her was Bruno.