The Dominator (56 page)

But was it so awful to be the property of Tommy Ferrano? He loved me. He wanted a life with me. What kind of life we’d have, I didn’t really know, but I was the one he wanted to seesaw through light and dark with. He’d sent me lovely messages while he was gone. He’d missed me. I was here feeling sorry for myself while he was off trying to fix things to make our lives better and missing me while I was ignoring him. Regret lanced through me.

I pulled my sweatshirt up and over my head and unhooked my bra. I took my pants and panties down and pulled my socks off and then I opened the shower door. He turned around and looked at me and finger combed his wet hair out of his eyes and sighed. I pulled the elastic out of my hair and dropped it and then wrapped my arms around him and put my cheek against his chest.

He didn’t put his arms back around me, just stood there, and I thought maybe I’d pushed him too far. My heart squeezed painfully.

“Tommy,” I whispered into his chest and then touched my lips to his wet skin.

“What?” his voice was cold.

“I’ve been a naughty girl.”

His torso stiffened.

“I’ve been cold and distant and living in my head and I need you to bring me back to life. Show me who I belong to, that it’s not okay for me to be like this, to feel like a robot.”

His hands gripped my shoulders and he stared right into my eyes, straight into my soul, even. I needed this.  We needed it.

“You’re free to go,” he said.

I frowned, “Huh?”

“You’re free. Go.”

He left me in the shower. He just left me there.

I pulled my chin off the floor and got into a bathrobe and when I came out of the bathroom, he wasn’t there. I exited via the patio doors and hurried down the stairs, water still dripping off me in just the long white robe and nothing on my feet and saw that all the garage doors were shut. The gates were closed and there were guards mulling about. I didn’t think he’d left that fast so I went back into the house through the main floor patio doors.

Not in the kitchen. Not in his office. Not in the family room. The door to the back hall was open.

I went down the back hall and heard thudding downstairs. I ran back up to the bedroom and queued up the song on my phone I’d been listening to multiple times a day from the laptop during my poker playing on the YouTube and quickly blotted up the water in my hair with a towel, then as I got to the bottom of the basement steps I slipped it into the pocket of the bathrobe. I could hear the thud, thud, thud very loudly. I found him in the gym. He was in just a pair of black gym shorts and he was beating the ever-loving life out of a big heavy bag, his skin still wet from the shower or maybe wet with sweat; I wasn’t sure.

I stood behind him.

“Hey,” I said softly.

He flinched and then started hitting the bag harder.

“Tommy.”

“You have until the count of ten to get outta my sight,” he said, not turning around.

“What? Why?”

“Go upstairs, pack your shit, and go. The guys’ll open the gate. Go. You’re free.”

“Why?”

“I can’t control this rage in me. You stay and I will break you. I know it, Athena. You know it. You’re almost broken now. You need to go now before I finish you off. I’m
that
fucked. And you’re
that
close. Take your casino money, hock the ring, and go. Leave town. Have a nice life. Don’t ever let me know where you are. Don’t.”

I stared at the muscled details of his back as he resumed punching.  I stepped to the side and caught his profile. His jaw was tight, his eyes were narrow and he was punching the bag so hard.

“One.” He said through gritted teeth and then there was a loud thud as he punched the bag.

“I don’t wanna go.”             

“Two,” he said and punched the bag harder.

“Tommy, I don’t.”

“Three. I don’t have the necklace, Athena. It can’t stop me.” He said through gritted teeth and punched again a bunch of times. Pow, pow, pow pow pow.

“I’m sorry I got stuck in my head the last few days. I’ve been through a lot. It’s just been, I just need…”

“Four.” Pow! I think it must’ve been with all of his strength.

“I need you. I want us to figure this out. Together, we can…”

“Five!” he yelled and then he turned around and faced me and whipped his gloves off and to the floor.

I stood there staring him in the eye, summoning courage while facing the rage emerging on his face, “You’re not fucking Dumbo the goddamn Elephant who needs the feather to fly, Tommy Ferrano. You don’t need the necklace. I’ll be the necklace. Fuck me, take me however you need to, then hold me afterwards and tell me you love me. Do what you need to do for us both to get back to where we need to be.” I took a step forward.

“Six,” he said it softly, shaking his head back and forth, his voice and his eyes stone cold, warning me.

I took a step back, “What happens if I’m still here when you get to ten? Are you gonna hurt
me
? Are you going to…what? Kill me?”

“Seven.” He took one step forward.

“Babe…” I pleaded.

“If I get to ten, Tia,” he growled, “if I get there and you’re here, you
are
getting hurt. Because it means you’re never allowed to leave. This is your one chance, baby girl. One chance. Take it or accept me for the fucked up sadistic prick I am. Take it or be prepared to be everything I need you to be for me. The love of my life. The only thing that keeps me from going postal. Be sure you’re ready, ready to be there for me, to be what I need whether that means I need to hold you, spank you, whip you, fuck you, destroy you.”

I gulped.

His voice was low, guttural, words came through clenched teeth, “Eight. Make your mind up right the fuck NOW!”

The room might as well have been devoid of oxygen.

“Nine.”  He folded his arms across his chest and his brows were up.  I stared at him. And then I opened my mouth and closed it. Then I opened it again and blew out a long breath, then I turned my back on him and went to leave. I got three steps away and I stopped in my tracks and stood there with my back to him. He said nothing. I stood still. Time stood still. Then, after an eternity, he said, “Ten.” His voice sounded hoarse, pained. And that’s when I started to run for the stairs.

A few paces and he tackled me to the floor. He was on top of me.

“What in the fuck?” He had my arms pinned above my head.

I went limp and looked at him.

“You wait until I get to ten and that’s when you decide to run?” Rage shot out of his eyes and his voice boomed like thunder, “What’s that supposed to fucking mean?”

“It means it’s too late. I can’t go.”

“Do you or don’t you want to fucking go?”

“I don’t.  But I wanted you to stop me, show me you couldn’t let me go.” I wriggled one arm free from his grasp, took the iPhone out of my robe pocket, and hit play on the video app; it played the Stone Sour version of Wicked Game. It was the closest thing I’d found to the version we’d heard in Vegas. I’d listened to it a hundred times in the past few days from the computer.

He grabbed me roughly and flipped me onto my belly, sending my phone sliding several feet away. The song kept playing. Then my robe was yanked off me and I was naked on the cold basement floor. My hips were lifted and I heard him fumble and then he impaled me with one slam of his hips. He had me a few inches off the floor by holding my throat and his mouth was right at my ear,

“You’re mine,” he growled.

“Yeah,” I breathed.

“Fuck!” he grunted.

“I love you,” I whimpered.

“What have you fucking done you stupid beautiful girl?” he moaned, his voice strangled sounding. He kept pounding into me from behind.

“I know,” I breathed, “I couldn’t help it. I fell in love with you. I’m yours.”

He let go of my throat, grabbed my hair roughly and groaned into my ear as he pushed maybe ten or fifteen times before he came inside of me as the song hit the chorus. 

Then I was up, off the floor, in his arms, he grabbed my phone and stopped the song from playing, tossed the robe over me, my face buried in his neck, and he carried me up the stairs and back to our bedroom where he was ready to go immediately and where he then fucked me hard for the next hour or ten, I didn’t know, not letting me come, just pounding into me, using his cock and his mouth and his fingers to repeatedly and torturously bring me right to the edge, to the brink, and then stopping and pounding into me some more, saying dirty filthy words into my ear about how I was his to fuck, how hard he was going to fuck me, about how I didn’t get to come until he allowed me to come, and that today he’d fuck me not only until I couldn’t move but until
he
couldn’t move.

He repeatedly slapped my ass, he pinched my nipples hard, he bit into my shoulder, not drawing blood but definitely leaving a mark, when he came again, and then he was immediately hard again and took me again. At the end, he drove his fingers into my sopping wetness and then he wet his cock with me and then told me, “Your ass is mine.” I tried to get away, squealing “Wait,” but he didn’t wait. He got me on my side lying down and he pushed his cock slowly into my ass, taking my anal virginity. At first it burned, it scorched, but then he told me, “Give in to me, relax and let go, baby,” and when the word ‘go’ left his lips, my muscles loosened and the feeling transcended, changed from pain to something else, something I wouldn’t quite call pleasure at first but in my head I think it was about giving in that made the pain change and then while his cock was deep in my ass he grabbed my clit, tweaked it and said, “Come for me, baby,” and I started to build to the peak I’d been waiting for, my legs shaking so hard I couldn’t control them, and he was moaning into my ear, rotating his hips against my backside, and then I came harder than I’d ever come in my life. I was done; it was as if a thousand pieces of me had shattered all over the bed.

Tommy

She was in my bed, in my arms, we were tired and sore in all the right places and for her, some of the wrong places, and almost all was right in the world. Almost.

“Are you awake?” I asked.

“Sorta.” She answered, her head on my chest, her leg locked over mine, one of her hands up at my face with her fingers tangled in my hair.

“You okay?” I asked.

“My legs are still shaking. And my bum hurts,” she said softly and then she started to laugh.  I laughed a little and then we were both laughing, holding each other, kissing each other, and then she had tears in her eyes. I kissed them away and she snuggled tighter to me, “I think you totally destroyed my ass.”

I laughed a little, “It’ll feel better tomorrow.”

She let out a dreamy sigh, “I love you.”

“I love you, baby. Thank you.”

“Thank
you
,” she answered and I squeezed her tighter.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Don’t.” I said.

“No, I am. I just… I went backwards when I found all that out and just shut down, I…” she trailed off.

“It’s okay,” I whispered and kissed her forehead, “You’ve been through a lot.”

We laid there together for a long time and neither of us spoke. Finally, when it was obvious we weren’t going to sleep she looked up at me and ran her thumb across my lower lip,

“Tell me about your trip?”

I leaned sideways and shifted and then reached into the sheets and pulled off three or four sticky pieces of puffed wheat cereal that was stuck to my thigh. I gave her a funny look.

She laughed, cackled even. Laughed for so hard and so long she made me remember her age. Barely an adult, still young enough and still Tia enough to giggle uncontrollably like that. It was cute. Maybe all was not lost. Not yet. I tossed the cereal on the nightstand and when she regained her composure, I dug into my story.

“Dare and I went to see his mother. She wouldn’t tell us shit. We tried to dig into the past and she wouldn’t talk. She was like a cornered animal. Dare got pissed. But then as we were leaving, her husband stopped us and we went for a drive with him. He knew what my father had put her through, he knew a lot of shit. He said it took him years to earn her trust and that she was
that
broken from Pop. The guy’s just headed into end stage Cancer so he told us he has nothing to lose and that it’d give him some degree of peace to tell us things that might mean change for the family, for Annette’s kids and grandkids.

My father
was
looking responsible for the death of his third wife. He almost killed Annette, too. Annette escaped with the kids because he was a sadistic psychopath. Used to beat her. Used to tie her up during sex.” I stopped and swallowed, letting that sink in for her, “And because she got the real idea of what he got up to in his business life she decided to run. He tracked her down in Italy, hauled the kids back and left her there threatening to kill her if she turned back up. He started letting her see the kids once a year but that was it.

He’s responsible for the death of your uncle, too. It was a power play. It got him Joe’s end of the profits and let him take the business to the next level and it was supposed to get him your mother, too. They split because of his temper and because of what he was getting up to in business. But then he sweet talked her into leaving your father and somehow she found out about Joe and that’s when she left and had the abortion, an abortion she chose to have, not was forced to have. Your father might not even be aware of that.