TNT, A Tommy and Tia Novella: The Dominator Series, Book 1.5

  The Dominator 1.5

  A novella

  By

  DD Prince

  Copyright: DD Prince http://ddprince.com. 2019.

  This is a fictional story, the product of the author’s imagination. Copyrights are the property of their respective owners.

  The digital version of this book is licensed exclusively through Amazon. If you did not buy it through Amazon or are not reading it through an Amazon reading subscription, you have an unlicensed pirated copy.

  Thank you for respecting the author’s work and copyright.

  Thank you very much for reading my work! If you enjoy it, please consider leaving a review, even a short one. It’s like tipping your server. Cheers :)

  NOTICE:

  This book is not intended for those under the age of 18. It contains strong language, violence, and sexual content. If you do not enjoy such books, this might not be the book for you.

  If you need to read this warning, you probably shouldn’t be reading this book, because this must be read after book one, which is categorized as a dark romance.

  Dedication:

  For those of you who, even a couple of years after reading Tommy & Tia’s book, mention him as one of your top anti-hero book boyfriends.

  Thank you for supporting my dream. Some of you for the past 4 years, some of you more recently. Much love!

  This book is a companion book to the Dominator series.

  It’s best experienced after you’ve read the whole series, but can be read between books one and two. Do not read before reading The Dominator – or you’ll be lost.

  If you read it after book one, before book two, there will be some minor spoilers, but nothing earth-shattering.

  The epilogue has some bonus material that spoils the Unbound (Book 3) epilogue.

  Contents

  Tommy

  Rewind - Aruba

  Aruba - Four Days Later

  Costa Rica

  The Wedding Day

  The Wedding Night

  Married Life

  Homeward Bound

  -Bonus Scene –

  Your Epilogue!

  DEFINITELY spoiler material for those who haven’t read Unbound (Book 3)

  About Eight or So Months Later

  End of Book Notes

  Reminder:

  Have you read

  The Dominator?

  If not, this book won’t make much sense..

  Tommy

  “Spread,” I demanded.

  She complied.

  Miles of white fabric kept her hidden from me. And that wouldn’t do, so I shoved the dress up above her waist, exposing tiny white silky panties that were covered in cherries. Fucking cherries.

  That thing in my chest flared. That Tia thing.

  She smiled shyly. Shyly. Fuck. My baby girl. She wore these for me. She did so fucking much for me.

  She looked so fucking beautiful today. On her wedding day.

  “Who do you belong to?” I demanded to know, as I fastened her ankles to the spreader bar.

  She looked completely submissive in that wedding gown, looking beautiful, eyes shining with love. With trust. My wife. Lying in a bed of rose petals.

  Mine.

  “I belong to my husband,” she answered, tears shimmering in her beautiful jade green eyes.

  I shut my eyes and let that wash through me.

  Never knew getting married would mean so much. Never knew that my perfect other half was out there. All I had to do was claim her. Had no clue how different it’d feel knowing she wasn’t just mine because I said so, she was also mine before the law, God, the world.

  Yeah, it’s been a bumpy road, and yeah, I took someone and claimed her as mine, as much as she resisted in the early days.

  Naw, it was far from moral, since she probably only opened up to me because I saved her from a fate worse than me in Mexico, but we were here.

  I claimed her, and it would be on the highlight reel of my life, that moment in a bathroom in a hotel in Las Vegas when she first declared that she belonged to me. Not only did I claim her, absolutely willing to hold onto her whether she wanted me or not, but she surrendered.

  And she isn’t broken.

  My Tia is stronger, stronger and wiser, than anyone looking at her might expect a young beautiful girl to be.

  And here in paradise, in the sand by a house I rented for us, we made it legal in front of God, and my family.

  And now it was time to consummate our marriage.

  My thoughts flashed to my father, and not for the first time today. Pop would’ve wanted a full catholic mass. Pop would’ve wanted four hundred plus guests, including his business associates and everyone else who bowed down to him, slapped his back and were ready to suck his dick if he so much as gave the word. He would not have been pleased with the type of wedding I had instead.

  Then again, Pop threatened to hurt her by having a bloody wedding dress left outside my bedroom balcony door when I began to defy him. A signature Tom Ferrano warning. Dare found it and got rid of it before Tia saw it that night, but I saw it after the fact. And it was imprinted on my brain, present in my night terrors.

  And then my father shattered my loyalty to him by taking her from me, knowing full fucking well what she meant to me.

  Pop would not factor here on our wedding night.

  I wanted, no needed, this beautiful fucking dress off her.

  Rewind - Aruba

  Tia

  We were taking time away after the trying weeks we’d endured. Heck, after the whirlwind that been our relationship so far.

  Kidnappings - me twice, not including my initial abduction on high school graduation day. Him once.

  Blood.

  Murder - murder of enemies. Murder of family members.

  Funerals.

  Angst. So much angst.

  Tommy decided we’d get a chance to catch our breath before the wedding. But, not much of a chance, because he insisted he was marrying me at the “first fucking opportunity”.

  Everything was piling up on him. And of course it was, after all we’d endured. He’d say he was fine, shrug off my concerns, but I could see it in the clench in his jaw, the hardness in his whisky eyes. I could hear it in the mild irritation that always seemed to be in his voice. And I felt it in the way he did not rest easy beside me or under me at night.

  He spent a lot of time with his heavy bag. The day before we finished packing up the house was not a good day, and I could feel his frustration with life in the air around him.

  I found him in the basement, not punching the bag, instead in a pose that reeked of distress, body glistening with sweat, gloves on his hands, but his arms were wrapped around the bag in an embrace, his face buried in the Everlast logo.

  I wanted to go in and put my arms around him, comfort him, but I knew he wouldn’t have wanted me to see him like that, so instead, I backed away and went back upstairs with a heavy heart.

  Would a holiday help after all he’d been through lately?

  Planning and then attending Tom Sr.’s funeral. Watching Tessa exist, subsist, in the depths of despair over losing James, then her father.

  Having Lisa go from catatonic for days to suddenly acting like everything was just fine despite the murder of her husband, which she was told was the fault of enemies and that they’d been dealt with. Sarah said she hadn’t even shed a tear at the news. She just went perfectly still. Statue-like. For hours. It was concerning, to say the least. This was followed by her being quiet and hiding out in her bedroom for days.

  We saw her armor slip for just a nanosecond whe
n she announced to all of us, during lunch at the house while we were planning the funeral, that she was pregnant. She was hanging onto this pregnancy as a coping mechanism, it seemed. The timing was probably a blessing. She’d lost her husband, but had something to look forward to. She got to keep this piece of him, of their love.

  As twisted as he was, it was obvious he was something else for Lisa.

  People could say the same about Tommy and me. They likely did.

  Luciana was emanating her feelings of powerlessness like a big beacon, and struggling with how to deal with it all. She had a new baby and a dead father, a broken sister, dead brother-in-law, and angry brooding big brothers. You could feel it in the air around her… her despair, her desire yet inability to fix things. She was coping by trying to mother everyone, even though she was the baby of the family. She did the bulk of the planning with Sarah for the celebration of life and funeral.

  Dario was stepping up in a big way. He encouraged us to go away and enjoy our vacation, then plan our wedding; plan our happily ever after.

  He and Tommy had a heart-to-heart at some stage while they were planning Tom’s funeral and Tommy told me they’d decided that Dario would be staying back and working with a consulting firm to get the bulk of the Ferrano business holdings ready to be sold.

  Life would be moving forward. Tommy wanted something away from the world of crime, if at all possible. He had said he wasn’t sure how possible it would be, though. He told me we’d have to wait and see. His biggest priority was getting me out of the country. He told me he just didn’t feel safe at home after all that had happened.

  First Aruba. A vacation with just us. I chose it because the owner of the ice cream parlor I’d worked at had gone for his honeymoon and said it had hundreds of beaches --- enough to see a different one every day of the year. I loved the idea of visiting a lot of beaches and then maybe having a beach wedding. Tommy arranged the trip and said we’d be meeting the family in Costa Rica for our wedding, there. He’d rent us a big beach house and it’d be a happy occasion. For all of us.

  From there, I had no idea what would be next. Tommy had the wheel, the GPS, and the keys. I was along for the ride, trusting him to take care of us.

  But, I really wanted to take care of him, too. He had on a brave face, wasn’t talking about what’d happened with his father. But, he wasn’t sleeping well and I knew that things were weighing heavily on him.

  Aruba was meant to give us a minute to breathe. And Aruba stole my breath.

  ***

  “I think I could happily stay here forever,” I told him, on the drive to the hotel from the airport, taking in the beauty of the island through the windows of the taxicab.

  He smiled at me, but only with his mouth, not with his beautiful whisky eyes. “We’ll see what happens.”

  There was stress, the dark circles of unrest, and uncertainty all over his features, and it’d all been there since the day Tom Sr. died. And anger. He was definitely angry about being in this position, about his father putting him in the position where he was forced to choose between free will and Tom’s definition of loyalty.

  He didn’t want to talk about it; he wanted to put my mind at ease when I asked questions. A few times, he got snippy, such as on the way to Aruba, when I was asking questions while we sat in the waiting lounge at the airport.

  I’d pushed for information about our long-term plans.

  “What? You don’t trust me to keep you safe?” He glared at me.

  “What? No. That’s not what I’m—”

  “Leave it all to me.”

  “I don’t think it’s wrong of me to ask about our future, Tommy.”

  “I’m tryin’ to fuckin’ figure out our future, Tia.”

  “You don’t have to do that alone.” And he shouldn’t expect to do it alone. I should have input. I should be a part of the conversation --- that wasn’t a conversation, just inner dialogue I wasn’t participating in.

  “Oh. My mistake. You know how to deal with wise-guy kingpins who’ll want you taken out if they suspect you killed your father? By all means, tell me what you think I should do about that. Help me. Whadaya got?”

  “Touché.”

  The emotion and misery in his eyes whenever he referred to killing his father? It hurt me to see.

  I knew he was wishing there had been another way. I knew it had to absolutely kill him to have to make that choice there in that moment, of whether or not to kill his father when there was a gun pointed at me.

  I couldn’t imagine taking my own father’s life.

  Of course I didn’t want to say that to him, to make him feel worse.

  But, I belonged to a man who I knew had taken multiple lives. I didn’t know how many, wouldn’t ask, but I knew he would not hesitate to do it again to protect me.

  He was who his upbringing coupled with circumstances and his personality had forced him to be. He took his father’s life out of love for me. Bottom line: he picked me over the man he had been groomed to be loyal to for 29 years.

  And beyond that, I think he picked himself, too. My guess? He had spent his life trying to live up to and even to exceed his father’s expectations. He was drawing a line in the sand around the time Tom got shot and Tom’s reaction and subsequent actions backed Tommy into a corner. He had to stand his ground, exert himself as a dominant man who was not about to live under anyone’s thumb.

  There was a point when Tommy realized that his father’s grooming of him was done and it was more about control. Tommy had control issues of his own, so was certainly going to buck against someone else trying to control him.

  ***

  We were at our own private villa in a lush resort, and it was absolute paradise. This wasn’t a party resort; it was a place where you had your own beach, servants at your beck and call, blue skies above, blue water around you, picture-perfect weather, and privacy. This was a resort for people with money who wanted privacy and to be catered to.

  I was going to be a person of means. After a lifetime of having no money, it was still a foreign concept to me. All we had to do was relax. That’s what this place was for.

  But, he didn’t seem relaxed. I wanted to see the stress of the past few weeks melt away. Badly. He woke last night with a jolt and when I turned on the light, he looked disoriented.

  “Are you okay?” I’d asked.

  He was huffing and puffing with fists clenching and unclenching. A battle stance. It was kind of scary. He stepped outside and paced a minute, then did about a dozen laps in our pool.

  I listened to the swish of the water and waited for him to come back to bed. When he finally did, I tried to initiate sex, to see if it’d help, but he just grabbed my hand to pull it away from his dick and held onto it. His heart was beating so fast.

  He pulled me close and when his heartrate felt like it was returning to normal, I’d fallen back to sleep.

  I knew it would take time. I just wish I knew how to ease his pain or at least take it away for a little while.

  I woke up this morning to sweet lovemaking and gentle kisses from him, his eyes filled with love. He made slow, sweet love to me, reverently worshipping my body. He was sorry for his moods. I knew it. I caressed his face and kissed him softly afterwards, then traced the ink on his chest and arm with my fingertip, enjoying a quiet moment together where he looked stress-free.

  But, a few hours later, I saw him again wearing all that tension on his face. I felt it.

  I’ve decided to try to do something that might help a little, even if it might be considered an unhealthy coping mechanism.

  Break one of his rules. Just a little nudge. Not enough to fully engage the beast in him; just enough to show him I wanted the beast off the leash a little bit.

  If I broke a rule, he’d have an opportunity to take out some frustration on my body. It might help.

  And it wasn’t entirely altruistic, either, because I got my release, too. And I needed it. Being with him, being affected by his dominatin
g energy … I needed it unleashed on me. I needed to feel release from all the tension.

  Feeling his release had become braided with something of mine, something I got specifically when he got his. The build-up as he was about to blow affected us both. Adrenaline would pump. Anticipation would build. And then the absolute rush, that freeing sensation of letting go…

  The freeing sensation was something I craved now.

  These days, my shoulders were often bunched up. My stomach was constantly in knots. And it was creating a ripple effect, because I could see it annoyed him to see me like that. He was already feeling bad, feeling tense, and my reaction to it was ratcheting it up notch by notch.

  Our relationship had become a vicious cycle of stress for us both and I wanted, badly, to fix it.

  ***

  He was reading a newspaper on the patio and I was lounging on an inflatable flamingo in the ocean-fed pool. (An ocean-fed pool that faced a beach, which meant I was in a pool staring at the ocean. Crazy.)

  “So, what about that feeding the iguanas thing?” I tried, swishing my hands through the water, watching it ripple.

  No answer.

  I looked up from the pool water to him, feeling my face get hot as I took in his expression.

  Tommy didn’t look up from the paper, but his jaw flexed, so I knew he was irritated. This was my fourth question to him. He was obviously trying to make a point that he was reading the paper. I was trying to make my point that he should pay attention to me.

  “Tommy?”

  “Not interested,” he muttered.

  “What about a tour? I saw a flyer about this park with caves, and---”

  “How ‘bout we chill here today?” he replied. “Have only been here about sixteen hours. Can we relax for a fuckin’ minute?”

  I swallowed and chewed my cheek.

  He flexed his jaw again and his eyes went back to the paper.

  He must’ve felt my eyes on him because his irritatingly went back up and met mine.

  “I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to do stuff,” I defended with a shrug, trying to smile, to lighten the mood.