Chapter 6: Terms at Dawn
Shiela woke to sunlight striping the dark wood floor and the weight of a man's arm draped heavy across her hip. For a moment she did not move, did not even open her eyes. Her body reported in slowly, one throbbing fact at a time: the raw ache between her legs, the deeper burn further back, the spent looseness in her thighs.
The arm belonged to John. He lay on his stomach on the far side of the bed, one leg kicked out from under the sheet, breathing slow and even into the pillow. The leather cord on his wrist had left a faint red crease in his skin.
She turned her head an inch. Dom sat propped against the headboard beside her, sheet bunched at his waist, a cup of black coffee balanced on his knee. He was awake. He had been awake for a while, she could tell by the stillness of him, the way his eyes were already on her face.
"Morning," he said.
"Morning." Her voice came out hoarse.
He set the coffee on the nightstand and turned onto his side to face her. The movement shifted the sheet off his hip. He did not bother pulling it back up.
"You slept," he said. "I wasn't sure you would."
"I was too tired to do anything else."
"That's not what I asked." He studied her the way he had studied her across the club, patient and unblinking. "You stayed."
She considered lying. Then she considered that there was no point. "I stayed," she said.
Dom nodded once, like a man confirming a fill on an order. "Good. Then let's talk about the next five days."
She laughed, a dry scrape in her throat. "Five days."
"Five days. You, me, and John. No limits, no excuses, no leaving in the middle of the night because you got in your own head." He said it flatly, without heat, laying it out like a term sheet. "You'll stay here. I'll make sure your work knows you're unavailable. I have a guy who does that."
"You have a guy."
"I have a guy."
Shiela pushed herself up onto an elbow. The sheet slid down her shoulder. Dom watched it go without any pretense of manners.
"And what do I get out of this?" she asked.
"Everything you've been denying yourself for fifteen years." He reached out and traced one finger down her sternum, light enough to raise the skin. "You want to know why your marriage died? It wasn't him. It was you. You kept a lid on the pot and let it boil over on the outside. I've seen you do it twice now. The minute it gets too good, you start looking for the door."
"You don't know anything about my marriage."
"I know you don't flinch." His finger stopped at her navel. "You open up like a woman who's been starving. That's not a woman who was satisfied at home. That's a woman who's been counting the years."
She should have been angry. Instead something in her chest went quiet, the way a room goes quiet when the refrigerator stops humming.
"Those are your terms," she said. "Now here are mine."
Dom's eyebrow lifted, just barely. He waited.
"I don't belong to you for five days. I'm here because I want to be, and the second I don't, I walk. I don't answer to you, and I don't answer to John." She held his gaze. "I've spent half my life being managed by a man. I'm not doing it again for a good fuck."
Something moved behind his eyes. If it was irritation, he hid it well. If it was interest, he hid it worse.
"Fine," he said.
"Then it's a deal."
"It's a deal." He took her face in one hand, thumb along her jaw, and kissed her slowly. There was no rush in it. No teeth, no grabbing. Just the warm press of his mouth and the faint taste of coffee, and the deliberate slide of his tongue that told her he had all morning and intended to use it.
She kissed him back and felt her body answer before her brain caught up. The ache between her legs shifted, turned from pain into something hungrier. Her nipples tightened against the cool sheet.
Dom pulled back an inch, his mouth still brushing hers. "Lie back."
She lay back.
He moved over her without hurry, one knee between her thighs, easing her legs apart with the weight of his body. His cock hung heavy against her hip, already thick, already rising. He reached down and ran the blunt head along her slit, gathering the wetness there, sliding it up over her clit in a slow circle.
"Still slick from last night," he murmured. "You're a mess, you know that."
"I know."
He did it again, slower, pressing the head just inside her and drawing it out. Shiela's hips rolled up, chasing him. He pulled away every time.
"Ask me," he said.
"You're an asshole."
"Ask me."
She swallowed. "Fuck me. Please."
He pushed in.
The stretch was slow and total, every inch of him dragging along walls that were still swollen and raw from the night before. She gasped through her teeth and gripped the sheet. He did not stop until his hips were flush against her, his pubic bone grinding down on her clit with a soft, constant pressure.
"God," she breathed.
"Shh." He began to move, long, slow strokes that pulled almost all the way out and drove all the way back in. His rhythm was even, deliberate, the rhythm of a man who had one job and would not be rushed out of it. Sweat gathered in the hollow of his throat. His signet ring caught the light each time his hand braced on the pillow beside her head.
As he worked into her, John stirred on the far side of the bed. There was a creak of mattress, the drag of a body turning over.
"Morning," John said, voice thick with sleep.
Neither of them answered him. Dom kept his eyes on Shiela's face, watching the way her mouth fell open on each thrust.
John sat up, scrubbed a hand over his shaved head, and took in the scene. He did not look surprised. He did not look like a man who had just woken up, either.
"How long's she been awake?" he asked Dom.
"Long enough to negotiate."
John swung his legs off the bed and stood, naked, his huge cock swinging heavy between his thighs. He crossed to the window and stood there with his back to them, looking out at the marina below, letting the morning light break across his shoulders.
Shiela watched him over Dom's arm. The sight of him, calm and unhurried at the glass while she got fucked behind him, did something to her that she could not name.
Dom's thrusts deepened. He hooked one of her knees up over his elbow, opening her wider, and the angle changed. Every stroke now dragged hard over the spot that made her vision swim.
"That's it," he said quietly. "Take it. You don't stop till I say."
Her climax came up fast and dirty, building behind her clit with nowhere to go. She clawed at his shoulder. He did not speed up. He just kept grinding into her at the same measured pace until she broke, her cunt clenching hard around his shaft, her back bowing off the mattress. She came with a long, shaking moan and her eyes locked on his.
Dom followed a few strokes later. His jaw tightened, his hips stuttered, and then he buried himself deep and held there, pulsing, spilling into her with a low sound in his throat. When he pulled out, a slow trickle followed the head of his cock.
John turned from the window. He had been watching the whole time.
"Day one," he said.