16. Chapter 13 | Elle
Elle thought Dom wore too many layers.
A jacket. A tie. A shirt. Suspenders. An undershirt, even. An absurd amount of costuming, conspiring to keep her from the one thing she actually wanted—Dom's bare skin against hers.
Dom's mouth closed over the curve of her neck and Elle's control snapped. The sound that tore out of her was low and smoky, the growl she'd perfected for the cameras and said on cue a hundred times without ever meaning it. This one ripped loose before she could stop it.
Dom pulled back, grinning. "That's the same sound you made over that bread pudding. Nice to know you think I'm so sweet."
Elle swatted her and pulled her into a kiss instead of answering, fisting a hand in the tie until the knot gave, then going for the buttons, fingers clumsy with impatience.
"Let me hang that up before it wrinkles," Dom said, eyeing the jacket already crumpled on the floor.
"I don't care about your jacket." Elle stripped the shirt off her shoulders, cutting Dom off, kissing her until Dom made a small helpless sound against her mouth.
She got a hand under the undershirt, flat against Dom's stomach, hot skin twitching under her palm, and paused—no mark to hit, no one watching, just this.
She yanked the undershirt over Dom's head. Dom hissed, ribs pulling as her arms went up, and for one panicked second Elle's mind lurched toward the kitchen downstairs, toward aspirin—
"Stop. You're not playing my nurse right now." Dom caught her wrists and guided them back.
Right. Not a nurse. Elle looked again with different eyes—small soft breasts, muscle underneath gone taut with wanting her—and her hands found them instead, thumbs dragging over peaked nipples until Dom gasped.
Then lower, over the bruise and the old scars beneath it, her mouth not checking this time but hungry, open and unhurried, the taste of salt and warm skin under her tongue, and Dom's hips shifted beneath her, a low sound catching in her throat.
"Lewis Jordan doesn't get to be the last one who touched you here." Her mouth found the scar at the shoulder and sucked until Dom gasped. "Or here."
Dom went for the zipper like she'd used up every scrap of patience she had. "Do you know how long I've wanted you?" Tooth by tooth, too slow, her mouth trailing the widening gap down Elle's spine. "Every Wednesday after the Sable Hour, thinking about you in that catsuit."
Elle laughed, arching back into her mouth. "You weren't the only one, I'm sure." "But you're the first I've ever wanted to touch back."
The dress fell, and the bra went with it before Elle could think, and then Dom just looked at her—bare to the waist, half-slip riding low, stockings, heels—with a hunger naked enough to make Elle feel more exposed than any camera ever had.
She didn't cover herself. She wanted to be looked at like that.
"I'm not rushing a second of this," Dom said, voice gone to gravel, and Elle's whole body tensed at the promise in it.
Dom walked her back until her knees hit the mattress and followed her down, mouth already at her throat, her collarbone, closing hot over one bare breast until it was torment.
Her hand found Elle's leg, palm dragging up through sheer mesh, thumb tracing the place where stocking gave way to skin, and Elle's hips came off the bed to meet it.
"These need to come off."
Elle reached for the garters herself, but Dom caught her wrists and pinned them, gently, to the bed. "Let me."
She went slow, her hands not quite steady doing it, and that unsteadiness undid Elle faster than speed would have—this woman, unshakeable everywhere else, shaking now, over her.
Her mouth trailed the stockings down, teeth grazing the back of a knee, and by the time they were gone Elle was aching and half out of her mind.
"Dom." Barely a word. "Please."
"Please what." Her palms slid higher, dragging the slip up to her waist. "Say it."
No audience here. Just Dom's dark, waiting gaze.
"Touch me. Don't make me ask twice."
"I am touching you." The smile went wicked, fingers drawing slow, useless circles on her inner thighs—everywhere but where she needed them.
"Dom—" Her hips bucked, chasing.
"Say it again."
"I want you inside me, I want—" The rest broke apart into a gasp as Dom's hand finally slid home, two fingers pushing deep in one long, filling stroke. "Oh god—yes—"
"Say please again." Her fingers curled, finding the spot that bowed Elle's spine. "I like the sound of that."
"Please—don't make me wait—"
Dom kissed her hard and found a rhythm, and Elle moaned into her mouth, louder than either of them meant, and they both froze.
Footsteps. Heavy. Papa Louie's, slowing right outside the door.
Neither of them moved. Dom's fingers stayed buried, unmoving, Elle's pulse pounding around them. If that door opened, it wasn't just tonight that ended.
The footsteps moved on. A door shut down the hall.
"That was close," Dom breathed against her throat.
"Too close." But Elle was still climbing anyway, fear burning off into something reckless and hungrier than before. "Don't you dare stop."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
She didn't go gentle this time, her thumb finding the spot that made Elle's whole body go tight and staying there, hard and fast, while her fingers curled deep, and Elle bit down on her own hand to keep from screaming.
"Look at you. Coming apart for me already."
She let herself be loud anyway. She'd built a whole career on looking like she wanted things, and this was the first time it had ever been true—that made her reckless with it.
"Dom—I'm gonna—"
"I know. Let go."
She broke with her teeth in Dom's shoulder, an old habit, thin walls and CJ down the hall, and came apart in waves that left her somewhere she'd never been. Dom didn't stop until she'd wrung every last one out of her.
Silence after, ragged breathing falling into sync, Dom's fingers still deep inside her, neither of them in any hurry to end that.
"Jesus Christ," Elle finally managed.
Dom laughed and eased her hand free. Elle whimpered at the loss. The kiss that followed tasted like her.
"Let me touch you." Elle said it low, right against her mouth. "Please. I want to."
"You don't have to—"
"I know I don't have to. I'm asking." She pushed at Dom's shoulder, insistent, and Dom started to roll and stopped hard, a sharp sound, her hand flying to her side.
Elle sat up and pressed light fingers to the spot. Dom flinched. "There's a crack under that. I can feel it. Not tonight—not that way."
"I wanted—"
"I know exactly what you wanted." She kissed her knuckles instead. "Let me give you something just as good."
Dom didn't answer right away. Her jaw worked, her gaze fixed somewhere on the ceiling, like she was deciding how much to hand over. "I don't usually," she admitted finally. "Let someone. Usually I just let you—whoever—finish, and that's the end of it."
"Not tonight." Elle got her settled on her side, then straddled her good thigh and had the belt and button and zipper open before Dom finished lifting her hips to help. White cotton, already soaked through.
"Not used to this," Dom said again, voice dropped to nothing. "It's not usually... my role."
Kissed her slow instead of answering. "No roles tonight."
Dom nodded, her jaw tight. Elle slid her hand under the waistband and found her ready, wet heat radiating off her before her fingers even reached skin, hips already lifting for it.
She didn't rush. She touched her light at first, just watching, and when Dom moaned and pushed up into it, she took that as answer enough and kept going—slow circles, barely any pressure at all.
Dom's hips rose to meet every pass, seeking more than Elle was giving her.
Elle slid one finger in. Just one. Dom was tighter around it than she'd expected, and the sound she made wasn't pain.
"More," Dom said, low, almost begging. "I can take more."
Elle gave her a second finger, slow, and Dom's whole body arched up off the bed, a sound tearing loose that Elle felt land in her own chest.
"That's it. Let me hear you."
Dom came with her head thrown back, a long broken cry with nothing behind it to catch or muffle, loud enough that Elle was sure it carried straight down through the floorboards. She didn't stop moving until the last of it had wrung itself out of Dom completely.
They lay tangled together, both wrecked. Elle eased her hand free and Dom made a small broken sound at the loss.
"Goddamn," Dom breathed.
Dom's arm came around her, and after a while, a lazy kiss to her temple.
"And to think," Elle said, tracing a finger along the edge of the bruise, "if you hadn't gotten yourself smashed up in that brawl, we could've done this weeks ago."
"Honestly? Never regretted a fight more in my life." Dom's mouth found the crown of her head. "Rethinking boxing altogether, if it's going to keep me away from this." Her thumb found Elle's nipple and stroked it, slow, like she had all night to prove her point.
Elle didn't have a reply for that. She just pressed closer, Dom's thumb still tracing slow circles, and let herself think it instead.
In Hollywood there had always been someone—sometimes a woman, soft and blonde and terrified of being seen with her in daylight, sometimes a man who liked showing her off at dinner parties like a rare thing he'd acquired, and once, for six reckless months, both at the same time, neither one knowing about the other.
She'd had plenty of lovers, but there had always been that word waiting for her like a costume she couldn't take off—exotic, like her skin were a flavor to be sampled.
Even in her private life she'd never gotten to be a June Cleaver, full of chaste kisses and gentle smiles.
Here, in this room, with the bar gone quiet below and Dom's heartbeat slowing under her ear, she didn't feel exotic at all.
She felt wholesome. She felt like she was home.