A stranger in his shirt
922 Words
The sun had already risen by the time I opened my eyes.
Dominic was gone. Again.
The space beside me on the bed was cold, untouched, like he hadn’t even slept. Like everything that happened last night — the fight, the closeness, the almost — was nothing but a dream I had no right to claim.
I sat up slowly, the sheets falling from my shoulders, the silk clinging to my bare skin. I wasn’t naked. But I felt exposed in a way that had nothing to do with my body.
The penthouse was too quiet.
And I hated how I’d started memorizing the silence. The way it stretched after his absence. The way it reminded me I was living with a man who wore his walls like armor and his distance like a sword.
I wandered into his closet, hoping to steal one of his hoodies. Not because I was cold. But because I wanted to feel like I still existed in his world — even if I wasn’t allowed to touch it.
Instead, I found one of his shirts.
White. Crisp. Expensive. Still smelling like him.
I slipped it over my head and rolled the sleeves to my elbows. It hung down to my thighs, swallowing me whole.
Just like him.
⸻
Twenty minutes later, I was in the kitchen, barefoot and searching through a fridge full of ingredients I didn’t recognize.
I had just cracked two eggs into a bowl when I heard his voice behind me.
“Trying to poison yourself?”
I jumped.
Dominic stood at the threshold of the kitchen, suit flawless, tie undone, hair still damp from the shower. He looked like the cover of a magazine, if that magazine was about heartbreak, ambition, and men who never asked for forgiveness.
“Trying to make breakfast,” I said flatly.
“You cook?”
“I exist, Dominic. I didn’t just materialize in a wedding dress.”
He smirked. “You wore it well, though.”
I turned back to the stove before he could see the way my cheeks burned. I hated that one compliment from him still had the power to make me forget how cold he was.
He walked over slowly, like a predator studying his prey before pouncing.
And then he stopped.
“You’re wearing my shirt.”
I froze.
“It was the only thing that wasn’t silk and screaming my sister’s name.”
His silence stretched.
I didn’t turn around.
“Do you want me to take it off?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.
“No,” he said quietly.
My breath caught.
“No,” he repeated, voice firmer. “It suits you.”
I glanced over my shoulder. He was looking directly at me. And for once, there was no coldness in his eyes.
Just heat.
Dark. Unapologetic. Dangerous.
I looked away before I melted.
“I didn’t know you had a meeting this early,” I said, stirring the eggs.
“I don’t.”
“Then why the suit?”
He took a step closer.
“Because it keeps me from doing things I shouldn’t.”
His voice was low now. Right behind me.
I stopped moving.
He was so close I could feel the heat of his body radiating through the thin cotton of his shirt — the one now clinging to my thighs, baring too much and not enough all at once.
“What kinds of things?” I asked softly.
His fingers brushed the back of my arm. Just a whisper. Just enough to make me stop breathing.
“You know what.”
I turned, slowly, my heart hammering against my ribs.
He was right there.
Tall. Beautiful. Destroying me with one glance.
“Say it,” I whispered.
He didn’t.
Instead, his hand moved — slowly, deliberately — to the collar of the shirt I wore. His thumb brushed the open neckline, the pad of it just grazing my collarbone.
“You walk around my house,” he said, “in nothing but my shirt. Looking like temptation I never asked for.”
“Then look away,” I whispered.
“I can’t.”
His voice cracked on that last word. Not weak. But controlled. Like he was holding back a hurricane behind that calm.
I reached for his wrist, half of me expecting him to pull away.
He didn’t.
Instead, he stepped in, until there was no space left. Until his breath was on my lips, until the air between us stopped being air and became something thick, magnetic, irreversible.
“Touch me,” I said.
He didn’t move.
“You’re my husband. So touch me.”
His jaw tightened. His fingers curled into fists.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I want to,” he snapped. “And that’s the problem.”
I blinked.
“I want you,” he said, voice rough and low, “in ways I shouldn’t. In ways that will ruin what’s left of both of us.”
And just like that, he stepped back.
He turned away, ran a hand through his hair, and said nothing more.
I stood there, heart still racing, skin on fire.
And for the first time since this marriage began, I realized the real danger wasn’t Dominic’s coldness.
It was what was hiding underneath it.
The heat he refused to release.
The hunger he tried to bury.
And the terrifying possibility that when it finally broke through — it would swallow me whole.
- Writer
