The only thought passing through Lesley’s otherwise absent brain was how phenomenal Dominic’s big body felt pinning her to the floor. She had no idea she’d been starving. The drive to fill up with his taste, to touch him, to consume him overwhelmed her. He drew back a fraction, and senseless to anything but desire, hungry to explore his terrain, her teeth set to surveying the softest section of his neck, nibbling in a northerly direction that led to his ear.
Breathless, an electrifying chill zipped down Dominic’s spine, and he reclaimed her lips, shifting to his hip, skimming his tongue over the tip of hers. He felt her gummy fingers dig into the skin beneath the sleeves of his shirt.
‘My God,’ she breathed the words. Anything else she said came out as a murmur of nonsense.
‘Slow down, slow down,’ he muttered more for himself than her, sucking the chocolate and mint-sweet taste of her mouth. His hands were as overeager as her kiss had been. His fingers smelled like the rubber gloves he’d worn to dispose of the packrat. In his haste, he wanted to seek out the soft flesh he knew was beneath her cumbersome clothing. He fumbled with the clasps on her overalls. The metal hook and studs were stuck fast and trying to loosen them was like prying open a window that had been painted shut for years.
Glory days, he smiled, slipping under the denim bib, running his palm over her left breast, let’s throw open the sash and let in some air.
When she mewled and whimpered, pressing into his touch, he grabbed her hand, placing it square on his crotch.
The element of surprise didn’t work as well as he’d hoped. His groan held no nuance of pleasure because as her eyes flew open, cartoonishly large and round, her hand jerked, fingers raked across his testicles.
Lesley bolted upright. The contact of an erection grinding into her palm snapped reality into place. ‘What the hell am I doing?’ Well for starters, her smart-mouth inner voice answered, you had your tongue in his mouth and your hand on his—
‘Hey, it’s OK,’ Dominic said through his teeth, as the ribbons of pain subsided, ‘Not exactly the response I was after, but it’s OK. I was going along a little too fast anyway.’
‘I have no idea what was I thinking.’
‘We weren’t thinking,’ he leaned towards her, fingertips brushing against the peaks of her breasts, ‘as much as doing.’
‘Dominic, hang on a second. I’m not a—’
‘I’m thinking now and,’ his teeth grazed over her bottom lip, pulling it into his mouth, ‘I want you.’
Lesley lost her train of thought. Good God, he was a fantastic kisser, the creative fingers on her breast were talented and hinted at extensive artistry, the kind of artistry it had been years since she’d experienced. Was there anything wrong with craving a little art appreciation? Did there have to be a discussion? An explanation? A confession? Couldn’t this just be?
Dominic touched her shoulder, his fingers moved, metal clicked against metal. A denim strap slipped away, uncovering a pink tee-shirt with tiny faded daisies. He brushed away strands of her hair as he scooted closer.
Lesley let her fingertips settle on his jaw. Softly, ever so softly, his lips drifted over hers. The gentlest touch created wildly arcing, webby streaks of energy, the kind exhibited in science museum displays of electricity. He wants you. You want him. Why dispute that, why make it a big deal? Call it what it is: sex, middle-aged-last-hurrah-down-and-dirty-on-the-floor-sex.
She made some small sound and returned the faint, yet erotic kiss, trembling all over from the shock. In slow motion, he lowered her to the floor, his fingers seeking out the pulse beating at the base of her throat, hovering there for a moment with that same electrical current shooting off sparks into her veins, across her skin, across her body.
He dipped into the neckline of the top, high voltage fingertips brushed over the oblique swell of her left breast. ‘Jesus, you feel so good. You taste good too.’ he murmured, leaving her mouth, trailing infinitesimal butterfly kisses down her throat, following the path of his fingers, which had slipped further beneath the fabric. Delicately, the pad of one finger sketched over her nipple, he drew aside the cotton bra, his mouth not far behind. ‘How good will you taste here, Lesley?’
The teasing, bare whisper of his words and lips floating over her skin was heavy with seduction, with promise. Lesley couldn’t think. Dominic’s head lowered, closing that tiniest space, and his tongue flicked over the distended little stone.
‘Good. You taste very good,’ he lapped at her nipple, ‘you taste fantastic, divine, amazing, absolutely fuckable.’
Right then, she understood what he wanted and what she really wanted were poles apart. She didn’t want to be a fuckable novelty. Sex could just be sex, but the difference between his inquisitive conquest, maintaining a lie, and the crush she’d developed on him was no small matter. She tumbled onto a very rocky shore of self-deceit.
Yeah, giving in to mind-bending, electrifying lust was really smart. ‘This is bad.’ Lesley pushed his head away and drew back, swallowing, pulling at her top. ‘This is wrong. I started to tell you twice before, except for some stupid reason I decided to just let you think whatever you wanted, but I can’t let this happen this way. I can’t do this.’
‘Uh-huh. That’s what a lot of women say just before they do, do this.’ His mouth advanced back up to hers again.
She turned her head. ‘I’m not what you think I am!’
‘I know.’
‘You do?’ Her eyes went round.
‘Yeah.’ Dominic curled a clump of hair behind her ear. This close he could see some of that strawberry blonde was shot through with strands of white. Not silver like his, white. He wondered if he’d find white hair anyplace else. God knew he sure wanted to explore and chart out all her hidden territory. ‘Of course I knew. It wasn’t hard to figure out.’
Lesley felt a gust of relief soar though her body. ‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank God! I don’t know why I didn’t tell you outright. I guess I thought it was too complicated. Why didn’t you say something?’
Dominic ran his thumb over her bottom lip. ‘I’m saying it now. The other night in the truck, I thought I was wrong, but you felt it too, didn’t you?’
‘Oh, yeah, but I couldn’t…I didn’t know what to—’
‘I know trying something new is a little scary, but there’s no reason to be scared now, is there?’ Dominic said and watched the colour drain from her face, the green toned paint vivid on the suddenly whiter canvas of her complexion.
She sat up, ground glass in her voice, ‘I must have stirred a couple of teaspoons of dipshit into my coffee this morning.’
He smirked. ‘And maybe I sprinkled a little idiot over my eggs, but it doesn’t matter. I want to be on my back, naked, with you straddling me. I can be man enough and admit since the day those bees stung me, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about how you look naked. Glory days, Lesley, I want to bury myself inside you as far as I can. I don’t care if you are a lesbian.’ He reached out and traced his finger across her bottom lip.
Lesley jerked away, ‘Oh, my God, this really is about playing Man in the Yellow Hat to your Curious George!’
‘I’m damned curious about you.’ A split second later, Dominic caught himself on his elbows before his head hit the new floor.
‘Son of a bitch!’ she spat after she shoved him, climbing to her feet, turning away. ‘I’m not a lesbian!’
Dominic sat up and scratched his chin. So she was wigging out. That was fair. He had, after all, rushed things a little bit. She had no idea how feral she made him. ‘I’m sorry. I know it must be confusing.’
‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘Yes. You want to change your mind. You want to pull an Anne Heche and I’m OK with that. If you want to try, I’m all for it. Christ, I know that sounds sleazy, but I’m all—’
‘What?’
‘I mean whatever you want to call it, fine. I’m trying to be supportive. Is it wrong th
at I’m frank about wanting to sleep with you?’
The loose strap of her overalls swung in an arch when she whipped around, stamping her foot like a spoiled five year old. ‘Get your curious monkey ass out of my house.’
‘Hang on a second. You’re pissed off because I’m being honest?’
‘No, I’m pissed off because you’re not listening! I’m not a lesbian!’
‘Come on, Lesley, I don’t think it’s a big deal. You’re a very attractive woman however you want to be. I don’t care what kind of label you want to give yourself. I’m broadminded and I want you. You. Here and now. Nothing else matters.’
Her inhale was quick, she was poised to erupt; her mouth opened, livid words took shape on her lips, except there wasn’t any actual sound production, only her nostrils flared. Exasperated, she headed for the hall.
Dominic watched her clomp through spilled paint, stamping a trail of celery-coloured footprints across the pristine, blonde wood flooring in the living room. He knew she was struggling with her sexuality, and he was trying to be compassionate, but it was hard not to laugh, especially when she looked down at her feet and realised the result of her little tantrum.
Lesley grabbed a handful of hair, loosening further clumps from her already untidy ponytail, strangling off a scream of frustration before it got very far. After a shudder of suppressed rage, she spun and marched back, tracking more prints over the floor, squinting. ‘Honest? You’re honest?’ she hissed as she wiped her feet on an unmarked section of drop cloth, ‘Your brother was a liar and so are you! Why don’t just come right out and say why you want me!’
With the twist of his jaw, the curl appeared in his lip, a muscle twitching along the left side of his sculpted face. ‘All right, stop it,’ he squeezed her wrist, ‘stop this right now and leave your sorry history with my brother out of this. What the hell is going on? How did we go from nearly making love to making war? What’s the matter with you?’
‘My history?’ Lesley jerked from his hold. ‘My history?’ She began to transfer her weight from foot to foot.
Dominic had always thought it was just an expression, but she was actually hopping mad. ‘Take a breath. Calm down. We can talk about this rationally.’
She said through her teeth, ‘Rationally? What the hell do you know about my history except the lies your brother told you, the bullshit you believe, and the fact you won’t listen?’
That did it. Dominic’s frustration broke through his reasonableness. They were both consenting adults. She didn’t get to lay blame at his feet just because she changed her mind. ‘I can’t believe you’re making this about my brother. All you had to do was say no, sorry I made a mistake, I got scared. I would have been fine with that. I would have understood.’
‘Is this as some kind of payback for Terry, Dominic? Were you planning this all along? Showing up with flowers and candy, stepping in to help me, it was all just part of some payback for your miserable brother?’
‘Payback for Terry? I apologised for thinking you were responsible for his sorry state, but you’re way of line here. Why would I want payback for Terry?’
Dominic thought this was all ridiculous. Lesley may have been the catalyst for his brother’s debauchery, but she had no idea about anything he’d done since then, just like she had no real knowledge about Stefanie. It was possible she knew Terry was a womaniser and a compulsive gambler. She might even know Terry was a petty thief who’d pilfered twenty thousand from his parent’s bank account. Kyle could have told her all those things. But there were things even his son didn’t know about the louse of a brother who’d fucked…
Dominic’s spine stiffened. ‘I don’t want to talk about this anymore.’ He took a couple of steps back, shaking his head in disgust. ‘I tried to be nice, I’ve been more than nice, but I’ve just run out of patience. We’re done here. I’m done.’ He turned and began to make his way towards the front door, picking his way around the ladder and paint mess.
She followed him. ‘Where are my glasses?’ she snarled.
‘How the hell should I know?’
‘You had them last.’
‘I gave them back to you.’
‘Then how come I’m not wearing them?’
A comic book bubble of illumination nearly exploded above his head. He’d dropped her glasses when she’d kissed him.
Sunlight spilled in through the windows, spreading a glow over the half-finished wall, drop cloth, and mess of upended paint. Dominic surveyed the splatter of greenish white. In three strides, he crossed the latex-coated space and dragged her spectacles from a sticky, not quite green puddle. There was only a hairsbreadth between passion and anger and he was walking a mighty wobbly tightrope. He went back and slapped the dripping frames against her sternum, wiping his paint-slathered fingers on her breasts. As perverse as it was, he was incredibly turned on, even more than he had been a few minutes ago. ‘Here you go, Miss Junior Prick Tease.’
Lesley looked down. The chunk of rock packed into his pants was as obvious as the wet fingerprints on her top. ‘You know what, Walks With Hard-on, there’s something I’m curious about.’
‘What’s that?’ he smirked into her face, his breath puffing into her eyes, his stained thumb smearing a streak of war-paint on her cheek.
This wasn’t exactly Cowboys and Indians, but Lesley knew there was no way she was going to blink or back down. He was not going to intimidate her or coerce her into anything – no matter what the fluttering between her thighs said. ‘Just admit this is part of an adolescent fantasy, like screwing two women at once,’ she sneered back, squinting, the lines of paint cool on her cheekbone.
‘I’d like to pretend I know what you’re talking about, but—’
‘The blood hasn’t returned to your brain.’
His top lip arched in a dead-on Billy Idol impression. s he jeered into her face, Lesley inhaled the scent of subtle, masculine deodorant, fury and openly raw sexuality. Despite her disgust, despite her hostility, her body responded, and damn if she didn’t want to give a little rebel yell and crush her mouth back against his.
Instead of grabbing his ears and darting her tongue between his lips, she grabbed his chin, dug in with her fingertips and glared up into his face. ‘You had some kind of daydream with a dyke you always wanted to fulfil, didn’t you? Flat on your back buried inside me, ha! Well, screw you, cowboy!’
Dominic pulled from her grip and ran a hand over his eyes, forgetting his fingers were fouled with paint. He had to admit there was a certain modicum of truth to it. While it hadn’t been on his mind when they’d been rolling around on the floor, ever since he saw clueless Tilbrook’s misplaced interest, in the deepest, most juvenile recesses of his mind, just like she suggested, he had wondered if he could flip her like she flipped a house.
‘Oh, God,’ he mumbled and wiped his face with the cleanest part of his shirt. Horrified, furious, aroused, he walked to the foyer, pushed open the screen door, and stepped outside.
Lesley followed him and grabbed the back of his shirt. ‘It’s funny, the things we deceive ourselves about, isn’t it? It’s funny how we only hear what we want to. It’s funny we can’t see the truth when it’s right under our noses because it ruins the perfect picture we have. I did that once and it’s no way to live. You’re living like that now. When it comes to Terry, your whole family lives that way.’
Dominic shook off her hand and tried to glower at her, but he couldn’t. She was mixed up about her gender preference, and he was…he was…Christ, he was turned every which way. Too many ideas, too many feelings were crowding for space in his head, screaming out different things all at once. Shut the door in her face. Kiss her again. Get in the Jeep. He swallowed hard.
She said it very quietly, ‘Thank God he survived the dyke. Isn’t that what your mother says about me every Thanksgiving? Well, congratulations, now you have too.’
Dominic felt a flare of embarrassment shoot up his neck. He lifted his head and met her gaze.
Chapter 11
She could have taken out her tension by ripping out the last of the hideous wallpaper in the laundry room. It would have been easy to slap on spackle and fill holes left behind from the curtain rods in the master bedroom, or paint the upstairs hallway, but the day was too hot. The temperature had hit ninety, a rare thing for Los Alamos. Instead of renovating and sweating off a few pounds of water weight and resentment, Lesley pushed her grandfather’s shopping cart around the air-conditioned comfort of the Walmart Supercenter in Española.
GP whistled and shifted his silver insulated bag out of the child seat. He dropped a package of toilet paper into the cart. Lesley pulled it out and replaced it with a brand that was two ply instead of one. ‘Minchia, that kind costs too much. It’s not like you’re gonna use it at a tea party. You’re just gonna flush it down the crapper, so why waste the money?’
‘Look at it this way,’ she said, thrusting the metallic bag into his hands, ‘The less paper there is, the more you’ll use, the more you’ll have to buy.’
‘Oh-ho-ho, aren’t you a snappy little crab this afternoon.’
‘I’m not snappy, I’m emulating you.’
‘Sweater Girl, you’ve been crabby since lunch.’ He put the insulated sack back into the seat and reached into the cart to pull out a bag of pretzel rods. ‘I know you get that from me, but if you’re really interested in emulation you’d buy the cheap stuff to wipe your ass.’ He ripped open the package and planted a pretzel between his teeth. He looked like he was puffing a cigar.
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