Chapter 2
The party was still alive and well, although perhaps not so crowded as before. Let waded through the crowd, one hand over her cheek, feeling as if the red welt there were lit up like Rudolph’s nose, the other hand tucking renegade wisps of silky black hair back behind her ears.
Dominic and Mo had made it up of the couch and were now dancing. Sort of. Mo was well on her way to unconscious, her movements erratic and rhythmless, but she wasn’t alone. Almost everyone there was drunk and exhausted, one clinging to another in order to remain standing. Letty came up behind Mo and tapped her shoulder, and Mo turned around, grinning and feeling no pain.
“Eyyy, it’s Letty!” she cried. One think Letty liked about Mo was her undying, honest enthusiasm. At first Let had found her bubbly personality completely annoying, but now she appreciated it. Mo was like a five-foot, two-inch ray of sunshine, 24-7.
“Hey, Mo,” Letty said, and allowed herself to be embraced. “Been drinkin’?”
“Oh. Well, yeah, I have. Have you?”
“Haven’t gotten that far yet.” Let raised sullen black eyes to Dominic, and he studied her, silently. She turned her attention back to her friend. “Who’s got your keys, Mo?”
“Ummmm…Dominic.” Mo thumped Dom on the back and then sat down on the floor at his feet, out of nowhere. “Man, I’m tired.”
“All right, that’s enough party for you,” he laughed, grabbing her under the arms and throwing her up and over his shoulder, heading for the stairs. Letty watched, wondering when the last time he’d thrown her over his shoulder was. She sighed, stumbling toward the cooler, and flipped the lid. All that was left was a soupy mix of ice and water and, way down at the bottom, a half-empty bottle of tequila. Let reached in and took the bottle by the throat, twisting off the cap and bringing the bottle to her lips. The liquor seared her throat, but she welcomed the burn, sitting on top of the now-empty cooler and leaning her head back against the wall. She let her eyes fall closed, swallowing a thick lump in her throat, and shook her head slowly. Christ, what was she going to do? Losing track of everything, she raised and lowered the tequila, not sure how long she sat there, and didn’t open her eyes until the bottle came up empty. Blinking, she realized that, in her dazed doze, she had become quite drunk.
“I see you took care of my tequila.” The voice startled her, and she lurched to attention, slipping sideways off the Coleman and landing in a confused heap on the floor, staring, bewildered, at Dominic’s boots. He laughed out loud and stopped, taking her by the arms and hauling her up to her feet. “You’re drunker’n shit, aren’t you,” he grinned, and she scowled back at him.
“Shut up, Dom.”
“I leave for an hour and you get fucking plastered.”
“Leave me alone.”
He released her upper arms. She took one step and her legs folded beneath her. The room a colorful spinning ruckus, she found herself on the floor again, shutting her eyes against the nauseous whirl around her.
“Christ, Let. How much was in that bottle?”
“I don’t know,” she slurred, and it was God’s honest truth.
“Was it a lot?” Dom pried the bottle from her tight, sweaty fingers and turned to his long-time compadre, Vince. “How much of this was left?”
Letty grinned stupidly at Vince, who just shrugged.
“’Bout half.”
“Fuck…Letty, fuck!” Dominic lifted her in his arms like a small child, her head pillowed on his shoulder. With a feline sort of purr, she nuzzled into him.
“Mmmm, nice.”
“You’ll be singing a different song in the morning.”
"It is morning,” she yawned. “How ‘bout we fuck?”
Dominic laughed out loud, the rumbling baritone shaking his chest and her entire body.
“You think so?”
“Yeah,” she said, in a lazy drawl. “Five or six times. Just fuck and fuck and fuck.” Letty was barely aware of the words tumbling over her lips, speaking in stream-of-consciousness, delighting in the feel of his strong arms around her, his hard chest against her side, emboldened by the tequila, out on a limb and not caring.
Dominic’s bedroom was cool, and she sighed contentedly at the change in temperature. Her mind reeled as he laid down, her body falling, falling through the air and landing, finally, in the soft white of the mattress. Letty wrapped a chaotic lock of her long black hair around her index finger. Dominic’s movements to and back from the dresser seemed blurred, slow-motion, the colors dim and strange.
“I am intoxicated,” she whispered, as he eased himself down on top of her.
“You don’t say.” He was smiling, as broad and as bright as she’d seen him smile in months.
“I do,” she laughed, and he captured her lips with his, setting her heart to pounding, a steady heaviness taking hold of her, and for a moment she wondered what had become of his hands, but then she realized that he was fumbling between their bodies, rolling a Magnum down and over himself. He was inside of her then, so strong and sudden that it made her entire lower half throb with a delicious ache, everything rearranging to make room for him because he was huge, and she got exactly what she’d asked for; he fucked her. He fucked her and fucked her and fucked her, her body jolting back with each hard, rhythmic thrust, one hand gripping tight to the small of his back, urging him on, the other locked white-knuckled on one of the rungs of the headboard.
Let came hard and fast, her body shocked and spurred into brutal orgasm by the fervent pumping between her legs, and he laughed at the startled cry forced out of her by her rapture, his laugh filthy and from deep within him, rumbling against the stiffness of her nipples, and he pistoned right through her contractions, onward and upward through the numb limpness of what should have been her afterglow, and she clung to him weakly, arms wrapped loosely around the shoulders of this sweaty, banging beast of hers.
She tried to relax, knowing that, if she did, she might have some chance of coming again. Letting her legs fall open flat against the bed, she craned her neck enough to kiss underneath his chin and get a look at his face. His lips were pressed into a pale, taut line, eyes squeezed shut, brows knit together, deep furrows in his forehead, and his hands were hooked over the top edge of the mattress, lending a driving, rooted leverage to his thrusts. Jesus, he was beautiful. And Jesus, she had missed this. Finding his rhythm, she arched up to meet him, anchoring herself by digging her heels into the bed. Her body was working itself up again, building, and he hadn’t slowed a bit from his first in. She shared his release with him, coming long and hard while he bucked his hips violently against her inner thighs, and she was breathless and humming by the time he collapsed. Her stomach was certainly none the better for the jostling he’d delivered, and once the motion had stopped, the room was spinning and she was wracked by waves of nausea to accompany the aftershocks of their coupling. Dom’s breath was ragged and rumbly, blasting down her arm, and she was completely bathed in his sweat and her own.
“That what you had in mind?” he asked, raspily, and she shrugged.
“Sure.”
“You okay?”
“I might puke.”
“Speaks well of my performance.”
Letty couldn’t help laughing, her stomach lurching up into her throat, and she grew serious, nudging him.
“Get off, Dom.”
He pulled back off of her, out of her, and she rolled onto the floor with a tremendous clamor, then got up onto all fours and crawled toward the bathroom, hauling herself up to hang over the bowl of the toilet, emptying her stomach of what little tequila she’d not already digested.
“That’s so nice,” Dominic said from the other room of the industrial grinding sound as she dry-heaved, and when her guts were finally still, she curled up on the linoleum, the tile cool against her flushed face.
Dom came into the bathroom, and she sensed his nearness, but didn’t open her eyes to look at him, and when he spoke, his voice was soft, rather than mocking.
“Can’t sleep here, baby.” She felt his hands on her then, tugging her up into his arms. He carried her to the bed and laid her down, his movements easy and slow, his heartbeat still fast against her shoulder.
“I love you, Dominic,” she sighed, and yawned as he molded his front to her side, tossing one of his legs across hers, resting his head on her chest.
“Think so?” he asked, and she ran her fingertips back and forth across the prickly velvet of his scalp.
“I know so.”
“Gonna be 18 soon,” he said, and his voice was willowy with weariness.
“Yeah, a month or so.”
Dominic shifted hi weight so that he was on top of her again, taking her mouth in his, and his kiss was gentle, his weight warm and comfortable. She felt much better, and a bit sobered, having thrown up. She wondered whether she tasted like puke or tequila or some appetizing combination of both. Dominic didn’t seem to take notice, if the kiss tasted bad. It continued for what seemed like forever, his lips tugging at her mouth and the skin of her throat, his tongue tracing her jawline and flicking at her ears. She felt tears well up in her eyes, the relief escaping the guard of her bottom lashes and spilling down her cheeks. He smeared the salty wetness across her face with two great thumbs.
“Shhh.” He kissed her, softly. “I’m sorry, Letty,” he murmured, against her lips. “I’m so sorry. Been so fucking busy, you know? There’s no one else, I swear. Come on, baby, don’t cry.” Let wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed his forehead, buzzing and sniffling, and he wriggled free of her grasp, shoving her shirt up over her breasts and to her collarbone, suckling at her nipples, and she arched to meet his mouth, her chin going skyward as his hands massaged down her torso, over her hips, to her thighs, pressing them apart and making room for his face, which he then buried, and she gripped the headboard now with both hands.
She loved the way he went down on her. The first time he’d done it, she’d been writhing and unable to keep quiet. She’d never forget the heat in her cheeks, the tightness in her belly, the tremors pulsating through her legs. Dominic’s mouth was absolutely incredible, and tonight it felt like a soothing massage after that roughneck fuck he’d administered. And his hands roamed, aimless torture, pinching and rubbing and stroking, tantalizing torture to accompany the irreproachable genius of his eager tongue between her legs.
She came with a brilliant explosion of light and color against the black background of her eyelids. The voice that tore up and out of her was unrecognizable as her own, several hoarse cries and then breathless, gasping silence.
Dominic crawled back up her body, and Let felt a rubbery nudge along the top of her thigh as he did so. He’d made himself hard doing that, and his black eyes, just inches from her own, were intense and hungry.
“Is it all right if I come on your belly?” he asked, and she could smell herself on his breath as she nodded. He sensed her hypersensitivity, parting her outer lips with two very gentle fingers and easing into her, an inch at a time, slipping into the humming embrace of her depths. One, two, three, four easy thrusts was all it took, and then he pulled out, sandwiching his cock between his belly and hers, and the thick, sticky eruption spilled hot and fast across her skin.
Dominic well and truly deflated then, flopping onto his back beside her and wiping her stomach clumsily with a corner of the flatsheet. He closed his eyes, still clutching the sheet, and she blinked the sting of sweat out of her eyes with heavy lids, watching him until his breaths were long and shallow. She kept her gaze on his face until all she saw was a dim, cloudy outline of him, and unconsciousness claimed her.