Truth or Dare; The Dominator II (24 page)

I went to crash but my bed was empty. I panicked a split second but then found her asleep in the living room huddled under a blanket on the sofa. I lifted her and carried her to bed. She woke. I didn’t say anything, just put her in bed, undressed, and then held her. And it took me a long time to fall asleep but once I did it was because laying there in the dark and holding her close, feeling her breathe, feeling her body heat, running my hands through her hair, feeling her totally soft in my arms, totally trusting, and feeling like she was absolutely 100% mine I’d made a few decisions.

Dare

I woke up to her beautiful blue eyes on me.  She was flush against me, we were facing one another on our sides and her head was on my bicep, chin tipped up to look at me, one hand on my chest, the other around my waist.

“Hey,” I blinked a few times, thinking that waking up like this made me even surer of what I’d decided when I finally closed my eyes last night.

“Hey,” she smiled.

Her eyes were shining. Her hair was wild, it was everywhere, a gorgeous mass of waves spilling all over me and my pillows, all wavy and silky and auburn and copper. I looked closely at her porcelain face and could see the scar from the eyebrow piercing, the faint dot from the nose piercing, the dot above her lip where she had a beauty mark piercing. She had a faint dusting of freckles across her nose. I touched each piercing dot individually, “You’re like a pin cushion.”

She smirked, “Yeah. Real glad I got talked out of those ear spacers.” She widened her eyes and for a split second she reminded me of the girl I saw on the Alaska driver’s license. That girl looked like she’d give anyone the finger.

“What do you like to do for fun?” I asked her.

She whispered, “I like to fuck, Master.”

I snickered, “Other than that.” Her words, her tone, her eyes, made me hard. She was in vixen-mode this morning. I fucking liked it.

She squirmed into me. My hand cupped her bottom.

“I’m serious. What do you wanna do today? I’m blowing off work. Let’s go do something.”

“Whatever you want.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Whatever you---”

“Angel.” I gave her a look and she swallowed, expression dropping, looking afraid.

“I wanna get to know you. You’ve gotta wanna do something after 2 years there and the last several days locked up in here.”

“I’d like to know you, too. What do you like to do?”

I gave her an exasperated look.

“I don’t know me right now, Dare. The things I used to do for fun…that feels a million years ago. How about we get to know you first? Please?”

“What do you think about therapy? Do you think it might help?”

She shrugged, “I can’t say. I don’t know.”

“Would you be interested in trying? It could help.”

She studied me for a minute and then nodded slowly, “For you, yes, anything.”

I caressed her face, trying to push away worries that she could pull away from me as she starts to heal.

“Let’s get dressed and get outta here. We’ll go for pancakes, take a walk and see where we end up. I’ve just gotta send a few quick emails.”

“Can we go feed the ducks at that pond across the road?”

“Sure.”

I joined her in the shower after dragging her trunk over. That was it, I was done playing. Done waffling. The alternative, putting her in the spare room or in the apartment down the hall? No. I’d be in there every night carrying her back to my bed. It was pointless to keep fighting it. Fighting it was taking too much of my energy and headspace and that energy and headspace could be put to much better use by using it to deal with Kruna and the other loose ends left by my Pop.

When I climbed in the shower with her she’d spun around looking startled.

“Water conservation,” I said, matter-of-factly, and then grabbed her by the hips and pulled her close.

I kissed her, we washed each other’s backs, and then after washing ourselves got out and got dressed. It was pretty obvious by how she looked at me and how long she took washing my back that she wanted sex in the shower but I wanted to let some anticipation build for a bit and get her outta the house. If I started with her in the shower I’d be in bed with her all day.

“The trunk isn’t in there,” she said.

“It’s in there.” I was rubbing my head with a towel. I motioned to my closet. She stared at the closet door and then looked at me, confused.

“You wanna be mine?” I asked.

She nodded hesitantly, “I
am
yours. For as long as you want me.”

“Then you’re in here with me,” I said. I tossed the towel and slicked my hair back with my fingers.

She teared up.

I walked over to her and held her close, “I don’t know that this isn’t wrong, baby, but it feels like I have no choice.”

“What do you mean?” She sounded crestfallen.

“I’m tired of fighting with myself over this. It feels like a losing battle. You and me have stuff to figure out but we’ll figure it out as we go. I don’t know where this is going with us but I’m choosing to do the wrong thing here and see where it takes us.”

“Dare,” she whispered, “this feels so
not
wrong I can’t even explain.”

I nodded, getting her, totally getting her.

“And that’s why I’m all in, baby.” She melded into my body, putting her arms around me, “Unpack your stuff in there, make room for it. But do it tomorrow. Right now, let’s go get you some pancakes.”

Debbie never felt like this. She never felt like she was truly mine. Angel felt like she was mine. Could’ve been because she was so willing to be mine. Or maybe it was because lying there with her in my arms the previous night I decided I was just going to take her, fuck the consequences.

She held her emotion in check. I got the impression that was hard for her, that she was happy, that she wanted to show it but she was deferring to me. I wanted to get her out of the apartment for a bit. We got dressed in jeans and tees and hoodies and went for pancakes.

It was nice, it was quiet, though. I wanted to ask her questions, do the things you usually did when you were getting to know someone but didn’t know how to approach things with her so we were quiet, though comfortably so, and while she was taking in the sights around us, I was taking in her.  I couldn’t help but wonder what it’d take to see who she was, who she
really
was.

Afterwards, we were walking through a nearby park and about to feed the ducks. After that I thought we’d walk down to the museum, which was just a few blocks from the duck pond.

“I could see that pond from the balcony, see the ducks. I was thinking it’d be fun to feed them,” she told me so I’d ordered an extra order of pancakes to go and we took them with us.

But as we approached the pond and passed a few benches I got my world rocked and not in a good way. I saw the last person I’d wanna see. Debbie. It was lunch time and this park was in the business district, walking distance from the condo. Deb worked as a receptionist in a local law office according to what Casey said the other night, said Deb had been working there just a few months. I told Casey I couldn’t care less but suspected I’d eventually cross paths with Deb since this neighborhood was where I worked
and
lived.

And there she was, sitting on a bench with another girl eating sandwiches off their laps and laughing and when we spotted one another her smile died on her face. She had her raven hair pulled back in a low ponytail, big silver hoops in her ears, black nails, black trench coat with high heels.  Red billowy scarf the same shade as her lips. I was holding Angel’s hand and froze in my tracks.

Angel almost tripped when I’d halted as she was still walking but I caught her by her waist and pulled her back against my side protectively. Deb gave her the once over and then her eyes were back on me.   I turned on my heel and steered Angel the other way.

Angel said nothing. It was pretty obvious that Deb and I knew one another and that I did not want to see her.

I walked, with purpose, back to the car, and opened Angel’s door.

“Dario!” I heard Deb, who was following.

I shut the door after Angel was inside and ignored the voice, that fucking voice. I got into the driver’s seat. As I was pulling out of the spot she was only twenty feet from my car, eyes on me. Fuck that. I glared at her and then pulled out of the spot and squealed, fish tailing it outta there.

“Are you okay, Dare?” Angel’s voice brought me out of a daze after a minute. An angry daze filled with images of the past.

“Sorry, baby. I’ll find us another spot.”

“Kay,” she said softly.

“Ex-fiancé.” I muttered.

“Oh.”

She didn’t push.

After a few minutes of quiet I said, “Guess you don’t have any of those, at least.”

“Ex-fiances?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, no.” She said that with hesitation.

“No?” I glanced at her.

She looked like she was measuring her words. Her face paled, “I was asked. I, um, I declined.”

“Broke the guy’s heart.” It was a statement, not a question, because I knew any guy who asked her and got told no would have a shattered heart.

“Not exactly.”

I pulled in to the parking lot for the park I’d been at with Lisa the other day.

“Care to explain?”

“Turning down the proposal probably started the chain of events that led to me being here with you right now. My saying
No
wasn’t…wasn’t taken too well.”

It was the start of her revealing things to me. I didn’t want to push and make her clam up but didn’t want to seem closed-off either. I took her hand across the center console and rubbed it.

“Want to tell me more?”

She chewed her cheek a second and her eyes got a faraway look. Her body went tense. She started to tremble.

“Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to.” I touched her face with my fingertips, “I can’t promise I’ll wait forever to push for answers, baby, because if we’re a we then we need everything on the table but also because I gotta find our way outta this world eventually so I may need information from you to help me do that. But you don’t have to do it today.”

“Thanks for giving me time,” she said and loosened up. “You say you’re all in and I wanna be, too. I’ll try. It’s just been such a lot of…” she winced.

“It’s okay. Don’t worry today,” I tried to reassure her.

“Can you tell me? What happened with her? She’s beautiful. Um, unless
you
don’t wanna talk about it.”

“We were together from 16 until we were 22. She cheated. Few months before the wedding. It’d all been booked. Walked in on her givin’ head to the DJ we’d hired.”

Angel winced.

“Wasn’t the upcoming 7 year itch, either. Found out later that she cheated a lot. She tried to get me to forgive her. Wasn’t happening. I also found out a few months after we split that she’d had an abortion. Don’t know if it was mine or not. Maybe she didn’t know either. Guess I’ll never know.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s done. I haven’t laid eyes on her in almost three years, since a few weeks after we split. I have no desire to talk to her so I got us outta there. Let’s go feed some ducks.”

I grabbed the doggie bag and got out of the car and rounded it in time to catch her hand as she closed her door.

She had childlike wonder on her face as she fed the ducks and then I realized it wasn’t just the ducks she was looking at, it was the horses on the other side of the fence along the park’s border. I leaned back on an elbow in the grass and lit a smoke and watched her as she talked to the ducks she fed, telling one it was being too greedy and telling another to hurry up and “get in there”. Then seagulls came and chased the ducks away and she seemed to get off on feeding them, too.

It didn’t take long for her to run out of pancakes and when she sat beside me on the grass I stubbed the cigarette out and put my arm around her and we stared out at the pond in silence for a bit.

I was lost in thought but then noticed she was again watching the stables next door to the park. A girl was riding a horse and it was at full gallop going around a track.

“Like horses?” I asked her.

She nodded and got a little mischievous smile on her face. I felt a pang as that expression made me think of her driver’s license photo. I watched her for a second, hoping she’d reveal something.

“We had horses,” she finally said.

“We?”

“My Dad and I. We had two.”

“So you can ride?”

“Oh, I can ride.”

My pants tightened, “You sure can…” I whispered in her ear.

She flushed but her eyes heated. Then she threw me for a loop. She said, “I…uh…won a few riding awards. For riding horses and uh, riding…um…mechanical bulls.”

I just about tripped over my tongue, “You’re shitting me.”

She got pinker in the cheeks, chewed her lower lip as if pondering something, and then gave her head a shake and said, “Can I see your phone? I don’t know if it’s still there but…can I?”

I passed her my phone and she opened the YouTube app and typed in “Juneau Ace Roadhouse bikini mechanical bull winner 2012”

She certainly had my attention.

She scrolled and then tapped the screen. I moved closer to her and cupped my hand above the phone to block the sun and get a better view.

It was a loud and crowded bar and the camera zoomed in on the bull and a girl got on. It was her. The filming quality wasn’t great but I knew it was her instantly. She was in cut-off jean shorts so short they were practically bikini bottoms and a red bikini top and had bare feet and her hair in ringlets. She had heavy make-up on and a red and white checked bandana around her throat with a tan cowboy hat on. The music started and she threw the hat and then it was like a choreographed number the way she moved on that thing. She gyrated, rode the waves, she whipped her hair around in time to the music, and the attitude on her face? It wasn’t super close-up but I could see it and fuck. Ho…lee…fuck. I watched the 3 and a half minute video fucking mesmerized.