Her tongue shot sparks all through me.
I could feel the kisses from my lips all the way down to my toes.
She tugged my hair again and the kiss was interrupted. “Promise me it won’t hurt,” she said. Her voice was soft and terrified.
“I can’t promise that,” I answered her.
She moaned when I rubbed my lips against her jawline. My lips parted and my tongue tasted the side of her throat again. She inhaled, deep and hard, and I shivered against her.
I kissed her shoulder as I put my weight on my elbow, breaking away but still with partial contact with her body. My hands disappeared between her parted legs and Dominique intook a ragged breath and nawed on her bottom lip.
I turned away, unable to look at her face.
“No,” she said, “I want you to see as you enter me.”
Her hands were back in my hair, guiding my head back in her direction. I dropped my head to hers, my lips against hers.
She grunted softly as I pushed inside.
Her nails dug into my back.
I pushed myself up on my arms and rocked softly against her, looking deep into her eyes. The heat was excruiting now and I bit roughly on my lips to keep from crying out. Her arms wrapped around my neck and I was kissing her again.
I tore away from the kiss on her mouth and moved to kiss her knees as they inched up my sides.
My tongue dragged between her breasts and up, against her throat where I kissed her chin. I nibbled on her chin then took my nibbling to her bottom lip.
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I can stop.”
“Don’t you dare.”
And I didn’t.
I couldn’t even if I tried.
She was giving me that moment of absolute completeness that I had scoured the streets for, what I had been in Lulina’s arms for, and what I had seduced Katie for.
I was whole and alive and free.
Her heartbeat against me was like a drug and I couldn’t tear away. I wanted more. Needed more because I believed I couldn’t live without it.
I organsimed once and that hadn’t stopped my stride. Dominique curled her lips in a smile, her right eyebrow rising as I continued to push into her.
“Tell me I’m yours,” she said.
“You’re mine.”
She moaned low and hard and kissed me roughly. Her breathing had picked up, her body slowly beginning to shiver.
I dipped my tongue between her lips and tasted her orgasim as it was still building in her throat.
“Tell me who you belong to, Tristan,” she said.
“Is there life outside of you?”
Her nails cut into my back as she rocked against me. “Tell me you love me, Tristan.”
She yelled out and buried her face in my neck. I felt her bite my shoulder as she shuddered against me.
“I love you,” I whispered.
Dominique leaned back, her head hitting the pillow. She looked up at me drunkingly and grinned. “Say it again.”
“I love you.”
“Now kiss me.”
I kissed her.
***
I curled my body against Dominique’s, my arms wrapping around her naked torso and pulling her close to me. I breathed against her bare skin and nuzzled my head against her back.
I felt lightheaded and content.
I felt a smile stretch against my lips as I pulled her even closer to my body, needing to feel her heartbeat over mine.
Dominique patted my arms and exhaled.
I closed my eyes as I moved my face up to her hair and inhaled her sweet scent. My breathing was getting easier now. I was falling to a beautiful sleep and I could feel it nipping at my heels, opening its arms and waiting for me to lift my wings so I could to fly.
But, I did notice that Dominique didn’t have that soft breathing – the breathing one has as they about to close their eyes for slumber.
Her heartbeat was even and steady.
Just like her intakes of breaths.
I shut my eyes tightly as I shook away the rogue thought, but it still persisted, the doubt that I didn’t want to feel was blocking airways as it leaked into my chest and then moved up into my throat.
She’s waiting for me to fall asleep.
And when one does that, they didn’t plan on being here when you woke up. And as I realized this, my eyes had already closed and it was impossibly hard to open them again.
***
“Fuck, Tristan!”
Zander tossed a bottle that sailed across the room, missed my head by inches and crashed against my wall next to the door.
I wiped at the spilled beer as it dripped down my face.
A hooker’s head popped up and away from Zander’s lap.
She wiped her mouth once, her eyes meeting mine. Then she turned back to Zander. “You said I only had to do you.”
Zander shoved the hooker away and she hit the floor too hard, almost hitting her head on my coffee table.
There would be trouble from this.
Her eyes blazed as she wiped her mouth again. “I told you if you wanted to hit me that it would be extra.”
The hooker was sad and old – maybe pushing forty – and her life had been one horrible joke. I could tell ‘em almost at first glance. She had been down this road before, and the smart, new, hookers just grabbed their things and left when the job got violent. Old, seasoned, don’t give a fuck kind, prepared for a fight when they saw one coming.
“Fuck you, limp dick, bastard!” She hissed.
The jab at Zander barely made it out of her mouth before he gave a nasty slap to her face. This time when she fell backwards, her head did hit the coffee table. The table was cheap, not real wood and that saved her life, or an immediate trip to the ER – that is if either me or Zander cared to take her there.
The hooker wasn’t hurt.
The table had cracked in and two. It didn’t have the lucky ending like the tramp had. Its funeral would be on the side of the street soon enough and there would be no tears shed – most likely the same funeral arriagements would have been made if the hooker bit the dust instead of the coffee table.
Zander made a move for the hooker. His fists were curled and his eyes were dark and nasty. I stepped in the way. I had seen Zander drunk before but this wasn’t drinking. His eyes were red, blood shot and he was barely standing – more like swaying.
With me standing in front of him, Zander forgot about the hooker. “The fuck you been, Tristan?”
When I didn’t answer him, he lunged for me.
I was quicker and slammed him back into the chair he had been getting his blow job from.
“Stay put,” I cautioned him.
The whore was bleeding. She was high so I figured she wouldn’t know she had been injured until sometime next week. I didn’t want to touch her, but I helped her up anyway. The entire time I was picking her off the floor, I was stuffing dollars in her pocket and leading her to the door.
Zander was still sprawled on the chair. The sight of him out of his mind, drugged, high up and souring while others – like me – had the unfortunate job of watching him fly crookedly and crash.
I kicked Zander’s chair. “The fuck did you take?” My tone was deadly even and deadly agitated.
Zander grumbled something, his eyes half closed. “I asked you a question, man,” he slurred.
His eyes opened slightly, to slits, and he smiled. He rubbed his hands over his face a few times and the smile widened. “I feel so good, man,” he said.
My fists curled over his shoulders, clenching the thin fabric of his jacket. I jerked him off the chair and manhandled him into the bathroom. Zander sang a drunken version of ‘itsy, bitsy, spider,’ as I tossed him through the tight doorway.
His singing was only interrupted when I tossed him down in the bathtub filled with ice cold water.
Zander jumped, his eyes opening wide in the shock. He opened his mouth scream but I slamme
d my fist to his jaw and knocked the scream right out of his mouth.
Water splashed.
He was way too big for the tiny tub, his limbs flailing everywhere, water falling with each jerk. He fought to get out but I fought back, slamming fists into his gut to still him and catch him off guard.
We had never fought.
Never had too many words crossed between us.
At first I had been trying to help him. Now, I was hurting him and I didn’t care. Rage had taken over and I didn’t realize I was seeing red until I reared back and caught him in the side of the face with another punch and I liked the way the hit felt. I wanted to do it again and did. I couldn’t stop, crazed and loving it, I couldn’t stop hurting the only person who would die for me at one point in time and I would’ve died for him.
It wasn’t him I was fighting.
I was fighting myself.
Finally, ever so finally, the mirror between Zander and I was complete. I didn’t know where I began and he ended, or vice versa. He lost himself in drugs and me in women.
We were both losing our lives and wouldn’t dare do anything about it.
The fall from grace had been too fun.
Zander managed to catch me in the eye with a lucky hook. My left arm shot out, an instant counter attack to his hit that damned near knocked his head off. His nose broke instantly. More water sloshed under his heavy body as he fell back into the tub. Blood was nowhere at first then it was everywhere.
Zander tried to breathe but it sounded wet and haggard. His red eyes glared angrily at me as he held his nose. The blood seemed to be pouring. The clear water in the tub was a crimson all of sudden.
It seemed like hours that we were in the bathroom. Zander held his nose and looked at me with a very blurry stare. With me, watching him in an inch of water that was all over my bathroom.
Zander hadn’t been what I would call a smart man. He let life live him instead of him living life. He rolled with the punches, rolled with the way things went and picked up bad habits as he went and blamed it all on circumstances, like he was picking up souvenirs on a bad trip.
Zander was a man who strolled through life with only a few requests: leave him be and let him have his lubricant to life because it was a hard fuck no matter the position you tried.
But, I never wanted that perspective for myself. I wanted to be apart of the flow. I wanted to be part of the Rogue.
We both wanted different things out of life, but still ended up with the same results: no where but downhill.
Zander wasn’t a philosophical talker.
Never had he said something that you had to remember.
And he changed that with a few sentences.
He cleared his throat and more blood flowed because of it. “Tristan,” he breathed my name, “you look down on me for putting a syringe in my arm, but I didn’t look down on you for sticking your dick in another man’s wife.”
His hands curled over the rim of the tub and pulled himself up to a sitting position. “We aren’t different,” he said, “Do you know that? Our drugs of choice aren’t the same but we’re both addicts and we’ll both die from the addiction.” He pointed at me with a bloody finger. “But, I didn’t look down on you, and I didn’t look at you like you disgusted me, like sharing the same room was a problem.”
Instantly another stream of blood moved through the cracks of his fingers. His eyes were watery from the broken nose but I got the sense that if the nose had been fine, tears would have been there.
Zander dropped his hands away from his face. The bone had been broken, his nose was now crooked. I had ruined his flawless face. And somewhere in me, where the murderer that had been awaken when we went to Miami, had found this satisfying.
“You hate me,” he said.
“It’s okay to hate me,” I told him.
He shook his head. “I told you that I never would.” He gave a sad smile. “I guess when I walk out your door I’m not welcome here no more.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that.”
“Tristan, we aren’t good men.”
My eyes closed, my mouth opened but I still breathed through my nose. “No,” I heard myself say, “we aren’t. I’ve been trying to tell you that.”
Zander crawled to his feet, holding his nose the entire time. The more he moved the more the blood flowed.
He said, “Well, I believe you now.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
If I was a bird I would fly away… only to return home again
I collected the broken remains of the coffee table and put it all by the door to be thrown away in the morning. It took hours cleaning everything; wiping down the blood in the bathroom and disinfecting it. Truthfully, the bathroom had been cleaned, cleared of any remaining blood within thirty minutes, but I couldn’t stop myself from going over inch of the bathroom, wiping away until my rag unraveled in my hands.
I was trying to clean away the bad choices I had made. There was something still here, ugly and bad and I was doing everything I could with a soapy rag and bleach to get rid of it.
My life had been simple; just a downward spiral that I was comfortable with, but now everything was upside down and I was walking on my head.
I had been sitting on my couch, staring a bottle of liquor and an empty shot glass. I had consumed much but the familiar fuzziness just wouldn’t come. The haze of lost control, and my inability to care, just wouldn’t assert it’self, take my hand and take me to the land of numbness.
I dropped my head in my hands. I gripped my hair and closed my eyes as I tried to fight swell of emptiness.
A sob burned its way through my chest. I was going to cry and I didn’t want to. Not now, not ever. I wanted to be strong and get through this, but there was an underlining message to it all.
It all felt like the end now and I had done it to myself.
I had planned to walk away from Dominique, but I had been fooling myself. I was like a thread in her robe. She tugged me once and I came out in strings.
Lulina had the same effect, but she just didn’t tug at me, she yanked and pulled and I was at her feet and at her mercy.
But now…
Now… Everything was swirling. Everything was coming to its meeting point, to the head and it wouldn’t be pretty at the remains once the explosions started.
My father would kill me for what I had done.
For what I willing did.
And there was no thinking around that, or trying to lie myself out of it.
My hands were shaking as I ripped away the plastic to a pack of cigarettes. My fingers could barely hold the cigarette to my lips as I lit up.
I inhaled deep and blew out softly, watching the smoke move and I fell in love with it. My hands were a little surer now as I undid the button to my cuff. The shaking in my hands was all the way gone as I rolled the sleeve back exposing my arm.
I took the cigarette out of my mouth, turned it in my fingers so the burning ember was pointed down.
I inhaled once as I hovered the cigarette over my arm.
I winced once as I felt the burn of the cigarette of my skin. My eyes closed and tears slipped down my cheeks.
I was not a cutter, but I just wanted to have a pain I could identify and control.
***
I lifted my head when someone knocked on my door. I stared at the locked door, confused at what time it was or the day. It seemed like had been frozen for an insurmountable time.
It was Ally.
Ally…
She looked ridiculous in her choice of clothing – an oversized, red dress that must have been her mother’s. She had attempted make up and failed. It was only then that I realized how low I had sunk. She would never be the same because of me. She would most likely get pregnant at a young age and ruin her life and I had started her cycle to a very miserable life.
“Can I come in?” She had lowered her voice to sound husky and grown up.
I leaned my head against the door and exhaled in re
lief at the cold I felt against my burning forhead. “We can’t do this anymore, Ally.”
She pouted, and I guessed it was another attempt to be sexy. “I’m not going anywhere, Tristan.”
And I knew that. I was too tired to try and change her mind because she was going to get her way.
I started to open the door wider for her to come inside when Lulina’s voice filtered down the hallway.
“Playing with children, Tristan?”
Lulina sauntered up in a long skirt that had a very alluring split on the side. Her top was no more than a push up bra that showcased a very paid for cleavage.
Ally’s face dropped at the look of the woman. If she had thought she looked good leaving the house in her mother’s dress, she had been greatly mistaken and she saw that now.
Lulina barely looked at Ally as she stepped in front of her, her arm pushing Ally away and to the side.
“Tell her to go away, Tristan,” Lulina sweetly demanded.
“Go away, Ally,” I repeated.
“Tell her not to come back, Tristan.”
“Don’t come back, Ally.”
When Ally’s tears began, they didn’t stop. Her face erupted in pain and she slowly backed away from my door. I wanted to cry too as a wave of sadness seemed to creep up out of nowhere and spread through me like cancer.
A tear slipped down my cheek. I quickly wiped away and pinched the bridge of my nose. I was man, and as a man, you had to be strong and never cry.
But all men cried at some point.
Men cried harder than women did. We cried in way of girls and whores and booze and failed angry relationships after the trauma that caused it all.
Lulina smiled at me. “Tristan?”
I said nothing.
She was not here for me to speak.
Ally had disappeared back into the safety of her own apartment, and now that Lulina had marked her territory, she was ready to get just what she claimed.
I still had the door perched open just enough to allow someone in. Lulina ducked her head under my arm and disappeared inside of my apartment.
***
Rogue (In the life of the Rogue Book 1) Page 19
