20. Chapter 17 | Dom
Dom crossed the room like she was heading into a fight.
Because Elle had been in a fight. And won.
The image kept hitting her in waves — Elle's fist connecting, no hesitation, no fear. A woman who'd done what needed to be done and not flinched.
Dom knew that feeling.
Elle turned at the sound of her footsteps. Their gazes met. Elle offered her right hand without being asked — palm up, knuckles split and swelling. Not asking for sympathy. Showing her the work.
Dom took her hand, cradling it between her palms. Her thumbs found Elle's pulse point, a rapid thrum.
Still running hot. Both of them.
"You broke his nose," Dom said.
"You taught me how."
Dom looked from Elle's hand to her face. Pupils wide, chest rising and falling too fast. The adrenaline still coursing through her — Dom saw it, almost felt it, mirrored in her own body.
That recognition.
"You know what this is," Dom stated.
Elle exhaled. "Yes."
"The shaking. Your heart racing like that." Dom's thumb pressed lightly against her wrist. "I know it too. Every fight I ever won."
Elle's lips parted.
"I want to be in it with you," Dom said. "While it burns out."
Elle's gaze deepened. "Yes—"
Dom kissed her. Not soft — purposeful. The way one closes distance in the ring, fast, before the other fighter can react. Elle made a sound against her mouth, hands rising to Dom's shoulders.
Dom caught both wrists, pinning them above Elle's head against the wall.
Not to contain her. To focus her. Stay with me. I'm running this.
Elle shuddered, hips shifting forward.
"There," Dom murmured. "Feel that?"
"Yes—"
Dom kissed down her jaw, her throat. Elle's skin tasted of salt and adrenaline and gardenia. Dom breathed her in — still electric from what she'd done tonight, radiating heat like the ring floor after a bout.
She bit down where neck met shoulder.
Elle gasped.
"Still with me?"
"Don't stop." Elle's voice was raw. "Please."
Dom slid her thigh between Elle's legs. Elle bore down immediately, no hesitation, chasing the friction. Dom steadied her with a hand at her hip, giving her just enough.
"Work with me," Dom said.
She kept her there — pressure, slow grind, building and then easing back. Elle chased her. Dom allowed it. Pulled back again.
A fighter learning the jab.
"Dom—" Elle's voice cracked. "I need—"
"I know." Dom released her wrists. Hooked her fingers in the waistband of Elle's underwear, drawing them down. "I've got you."
Then she stepped back.
Elle's eyes flew open. "Don't—"
"Not going anywhere."
Dom walked to the dresser, opened the bottom drawer, and pushed aside the carefully folded, ordinary life inside it — undershirts, spare suspenders, linen trousers — until her fingers found the plain brown package postmarked San Francisco.
It had been sitting there for three months.
She had ordered it with a fighter's commitment — her whole self, terrified yet certain.
She had written her real name and address with her own hand and mailed cash to a stranger in California, trusting them not to turn her in.
Every step was an act of
faith, waiting for someone who mattered.
She pulled out the harness and turned around.
Elle was still pressed against the wall, her skirt pushed up around her waist, bare from the waist down, wearing only stockings, garters, and nothing else. Breathing hard, her gaze moved over Dom and the harness — wide, dark, hungry.
"Do you trust me?" Dom asked.
"Yes," Elle replied without hesitation.
Dom stepped into the harness one leg at a time.
The leather was cool at first, then warmed up quickly — like a good pair of gloves that stop feeling like equipment and start feeling like an extension.
She tightened the buckles, and as the base settled against her clit, she stilled, just breathing, feeling herself already awake underneath it.
It was like wrapping your hands before a fight, the right kind of readiness.
Elle made a low, desperate sound.
Dom looked up. The way Elle watched her — awed, trusting, wanting — touched a deep, unnamed place within her.
"Good," Dom said. "Hold onto that."
She crossed back to Elle, pulled the slip up and over her head, and unhooked her bra. Elle lifted her arms to help — easy, open.
Dom stepped back to look at her.
Elle was still breathing heavily, flushed all the way down her chest. Dom had seen fighters look like this in the locker room after a win — that undone, barely-contained aliveness. She had never wanted to touch it before.
Now she wanted to touch nothing else.
Dom's hands found Elle's breasts and felt the heat even before touching the skin — the warmth a body carries after running hard.
She knew that warmth, had pressed her own face into a towel that felt like this after a good fight.
She brushed her thumbs over Elle's nipples and felt Elle's whole body respond, a corresponding beat in Dom's chest.
Bending her head, she took one nipple in her mouth, no warm-up, just direct.
Elle cried out, her hands flying to Dom's head, fingers in her short hair.
Dom worked her, one then the other, reading every sound, every flinch, the way Elle's hips kept shifting forward, seeking what they weren't getting yet. She knew what Elle needed and chose when to give it.
"Please—" Elle gasped. "Dom, please—"
Dom lifted her head. "Right here."
She picked Elle up — years of training in every muscle — and Elle wrapped her legs around Dom's waist without being asked. Dom pressed her back against the wall, arm braced, keeping her steady. She reached between them. Gripped the base. Positioned herself.
Then she paused.
Looked up at Elle's face.
"I love you," Dom said. "Before anything else."
Elle's face crumpled for a second. "I love you too. Please—"
Dom pushed in just an inch, feeling it — not just Elle opening but the base pressing back against her own clit, that first solid point of contact. Like a punch landing true, feeling it travel all the way up your arm. Except this went further.
She paused, letting them both feel it.
"More," Elle whispered.
Dom gave her more, slow — watching Elle's face, reading every flicker. Not teasing. Working. When fully seated, she stilled, arm shaking slightly from Elle's weight.
"Okay?"
"God—yes. So full—"
Dom pulled back. Thrust in — firm, deep.
Elle's head dropped back, a sound escaping she immediately tried to swallow.
"CJ's upstairs," Dom said quietly.
Elle bit her lip. Nodded.
Dom set her rhythm. Deep, deliberate. With every thrust, she felt the base grind against her — not enough to push her over, just enough to build.
A slow accumulation underneath everything else.
She varied her pace the way she'd vary combinations, reading Elle's body, pulling back when Elle got close — but her own body was keeping its own count the whole time.
Building whether she attended to it or not.
This was the thing about a good fight. You couldn't stay outside it.
Elle's inner walls started to flutter. Dom slowed.
Elle made a desperate muffled sound.
"Not yet." Dom's voice was low. "Stay with me."
She built her back up. Then eased off. Built her up again. Patient. In control. Feeling everything through the base, through her hands, through the way Elle's body talked back.
Dom felt herself getting close — the pressure cresting, her own body tightening. She'd been holding herself back so long it had become a current she was swimming against.
She wasn't going to make it much further.
"Touch yourself," Dom said, rougher than she meant. "Let's finish this together."
Elle's hand slipped between their bodies. Found her clit. She gasped, and Dom felt her clench hard.
"Stay there."
Dom thrust deeper, holding that angle. Elle's fingers working in time. Dom watched her face — pleasure building in waves, the post-fight adrenaline finally finding somewhere to go.
"Look at me," Dom said.
Elle's eyes opened, finding her face. Wet with tears she probably didn't know were falling.
"I love you," Dom said. And thrust home.
Elle came, clenching around Dom in deep rhythmic waves, mouth open, silent.
Dom felt every pulse through the base, felt it in her clit like an answer, like the same bell ringing in two places at once.
Her hips drove forward and she was gone—not graceful, just her body taking what it had been building toward the whole time.
She pressed her face into Elle's neck, letting it move through her.
When she could breathe again, she kept moving, gentle now, working them both through it until Elle went slack.
Dom eased them down to the floor, back against the wall, Elle in her lap. They sat there breathing.
Elle shook, emptied of adrenaline.
Dom held her, one hand stroking her back.
"You're okay. It's over," Dom reassured.
"I was so scared," Elle said into her shoulder. "I thought—if he took CJ—"
"He didn't. You stopped him."
"I couldn't lose him. Couldn't lose you."
Dom's arm tightened. She said nothing, just held on.
The sobs came then—the ones that had waited through the fight, the confrontation, the adrenaline. Dom didn't try to stop them. She knew this part. The way a fighter cries in the locker room when nobody's watching but their trainer. You hold them through it. You don't flinch.
Eventually, Elle quieted. Then stillness.
"Sorry," Elle mumbled.
Dom tilted her chin up, made her look.
"Don't," she said. "Not with me. Not ever."
Elle's eyes were red-rimmed, mascara tracked down her cheeks, hair wild, lips swollen. She'd never looked more like herself.
Dom kissed her softly. Just that.
She stood, unbuckled the harness, set it aside, pulled Elle up. Elle swayed, and Dom caught her, swept her up before she could protest.
"I can walk—"
"I know." Dom carried her to the bed. "Let me anyway."
She laid her down and knelt, unclipped each stocking, rolled them down, pressed her mouth to Elle's calves, her ankles. Elle watched Dom's face—the concentration, the care, the same hands that had just worked her open now impossibly gentle.
Dom found her own undershirt in Elle's drawer—she'd been letting Elle steal them for weeks—and helped her into it.
She disappeared into the hallway, came back with a damp cloth, a bowl of ice water, a clean towel. Sat on the bed's edge and took Elle's right hand.
Knuckles split and swelling, bruising deep purple.
A boxer's hand.
"This is gonna sting."
She cleaned the dried blood slowly. Elle hissed but stayed still. Dom knew exactly how much pressure was too much—she'd had her own hands done like this a hundred times.
"You really got him," Dom said.
Elle's laugh was still wet. "Felt good."
"It always does."
She wrapped Elle's hand, pressed the ice against the knuckles, wet the cloth again, and reached for her face. She wiped away the mascara tracks—patient, like cleaning a cut between rounds.
"There. That's better."
She stripped her damp undershirt, found a clean one, and climbed in.
"C'mere."
Elle fit against her side, head on Dom's shoulder, ice-wrapped hand on Dom's stomach, Dom's palm flat against Elle's ribs, feeling her heartbeat finally slow.
Quiet. New Orleans outside the window. CJ's soft snoring through the wall.
"Do you think he'll come back?"
"Not tonight." Dom's arm tightened. "Not after what you said to him."
"But eventually—"
"Eventually we deal with it together. You're not alone in this anymore."
More quiet.
"I've never—" Dom started, stopped. "No one's ever—"
She couldn't finish.
Elle pulled back enough to look at her, her good hand cupping Dom's cheek.
"I know," Elle said.
"How?"
"Because I haven't either. Not like this."
Low light from the streetlamp filtered in. They looked at each other.
"I love you," Dom said, needing to keep saying it, to make up for all the years no one had.
"I love you too. So much it scares me."
"Don't be scared. We've got each other. We've got CJ. We're going to be okay."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
They kissed—slow, unhurried. When they parted, Elle settled back with a long exhale.
After a few minutes, Dom said, "Let me see."
She unwrapped Elle's hand carefully. Swelling was down some. Splits still raw, bruising deep.
"You're going to have scars."
"Good." Steady. Certain. "I want to remember. The night I stopped running. The night I chose you." A beat. "The night I found out I could fight."
Dom brought Elle's hand to her mouth, kissing each knuckle, careful to avoid the splits.
"I'm going to remember it too."
Elle was already drifting, burrowing closer.
"Dom?"
"Yeah, baby?"
"Don't let me go."
"Never. On CJ. On Papa Louie. On my life."
Elle's breathing evened out. Dom held her in the quiet as the last of the adrenaline drained from her own body—slow, like water.
The movement had left her in that cell for being too deviant, too queer, too much herself. Claudette had collected her cut while Dom bled.
But Elle had thrown a punch tonight for their son. Had stood her ground. Had found out she was someone who fights.
Dom already knew she was.
Same, she thought, watching Elle sleep. We're the same.
She pressed one last kiss to the split knuckles, then set Elle's hand down over her own heart.
Always.