Rogue (In the life of the Rogue Book 1) (18 page)

It was a very bad idea to be here.

She sensed the unease, and stated, “Just wiping the blood off my uncle’s lip.” I cringed but she kept on dabbing. “Relax, Tristan.”

“Why? You’re only stating a fact. I am your uncle.”

Dominique glared at me and started dabbing harder at the cut. I winced.

“Uncles peck the cheeks of their nieces,” she said, “They don’t have their tongues in they’re mouths.”

“We were selling the image of a loving couple.”

“And tonight, when we kissed?”

“There wasn’t any tongue, Dominique, and you kissed me.”

She huffed as if she was swallowing a chuckle from deep down in her throat. I turned away from her hot gaze, and, instead, came a little too consumed in my second dwindling cigarette. The butt was flicked away, two shakes of my emptying pack and I placed another cigarette in my mouth.

Dominique changed the subject of conversation. “Despite what you may have gone through in your father’s office, whatever he said to you, or whatever your grandfather implied, you acted very wisely and saved a very expensive shipment tonight. Ralph is a fool and he will be slowly moved away from the critical parts of the gun operation. You may be the next man to take his place.”

It was an earful that sat in a very disturbing place in the pit of my stomach. “The fuck is this?”

Dominique said nothing.

“Okay, I get it,” I go on, “my father shook your hand tonight. He gave you the ‘job well done, job well saved,’ speech while I got the brunt of his real frustration; the hidden ugly he wouldn’t let you see, at least not yet.” I laughed around my smoke. “He’s still courting the future boss, while he’s too busy spitting in my face, rubbing my nose in my mistakes.”

“So this is where we talk about Harely’s wife? Her name was Katie, wasn’t that it?”

I jammed my finger in her face. “Don’t you dare say her name, you hear me? You don’t bring her up. You don’t know shit about her, or me, for that matter.”

“Oh, I know you, Tristan.”

“The fuck you do, Dominique. I may be a lot of things, but I’m still smart, and I’m still very, very dangerous when I have to be.”

She laughed. “And you think you know who I am?”

“That depends if I give a fuck or not, and I don’t. I don’t need to know you, I know me. And I don’t make a move until I’m pushed, and when I’m pushed – correctly – buildings will fall, worlds will crumble.”

“You’ve been pushed plenty, Tristan, and the only world crumbling is yours.”

“Fuck you,” I snapped and started away from her.

Dominique reached out and grabbed my arm. “You aren’t the only one who had to be raised by a monster. You’re not the only one who learned not to ask questions, not to talk in public places about what daddy does, and not to look directly in the Fed’s lenses when they’re snapping your picture at a funeral. You aren’t the only one who seen the evil in the world, and have that evil be you one day.”

I chuckled to keep from speaking right away, knowing my voice would sound tight and scratchy. “Still, you haven’t seen what I’ve seen, or experienced what I have. Who needs enemies when you have family, Dominique?”

“My father put a gun in my hand when I was just ten years old,” she said, and I couldn’t be sure in the dark, but I thought I saw tears glistening in her eyes, “He took me to his office, and there I saw one of his long time friends – beaten and tied to a chair, and begging for his life. My father helped me aim the gun: center of the forehead, dead center, too close to miss.”

Dominique shuddered and I had to fight the urge not to comfort her.

She shivered again at the memory but continued. “My father told me to pull the trigger and I did. And after, my father took my hand and sat me on his lap. He explained the business right then and there. Everything, all wrapped up in a package that only a child could understand. He was sick even then; already dying of cancer. I started to take over the business at sixteen. You know, try to make it better, but it was too late. The business was gone and the respect was following.”

Dominique quickly wiped her eyes and exhaled. “Your father is very much in control and I respect him. He chose me to run his empire, and I don’t plan on failing him. But, I need you by my side to do it. I want you to be my right hand man, Tristan.”

“Why do you want me as your number one?” I asked.

“There aren’t many men like Ricardo Rogue, or Jarred Rogue, and you’re a combination of both. And I trust you.”

I found this funny. “No one trusts me and no one ever will again.”

“Blue eyes are hard to pass up, Tristan.”

The mention of Katie is a hot punch that hits right in the gut. I swallowed and the pain went with it, back where it belongs and never leaves.

“You know my demons, seems like you’re on a first name basis with my skeletons, but you still trust me?” I asked.

Dominique nodded.

I took the last pull of my third cigarette and flicked it away. “You want to fuck me, Dominique. Not trust me. Wanting to fuck me is a good move if you’re in need of an orgasim that rocks you so hard you forget how to breathe. Yet, trusting me, a
wife fucker
, is a way to get your self killed.”

“Oh, you think?” She argued.

“Oh, I know,” I argued back, “Weak men are dead men in the world of the Rogue.” I shook out another cigarette but didn’t put it in my mouth. “I have to say, I like talking to you, but we need to cool it. Someone may get the wrong idea.”

I stepped past her and made my way for the mouth of the gazebo.

“No,” she called out to me, “You want to fuck me and have me ride you so hard you forget how your chest rises and falls to keep from dying.”

Dominique was baiting me and I knew it. I looked back at my car, sitting peacefully among the more expensive and reliable vehicals my father owned. I now see the car is like me. I, too, stuck out like a sore thumb; tarnished, broken down, and running on my last leg, and, yet, I was surrounded by better suited, better looking, and a hell of a lot more reliable.

Dominique is one of those better suited, and maybe at the top of the list.

Why would she want the wreck in the family? 

“Come on, Tristan. Don’t you want me?” She purred and smiled. “I swear I’m better than my mother.”

I turned to leave but Dominique grabbed my arm again.

“Where are you going?” she asked, almost as if my leaving was hurting her feelings.

“I told you at the pool that we can’t do this.” I snatched my arm from her grasp.

Dominique grabbed me again. “I’m sorry about what I said. What happens between you and my mother is your business.”

“There’s nothing between your mother and I,” I lied but I convinced myself it was true, at least in this moment. “And even if I was fucking your mother, why would you care?”

She pursed her lips as anger flashed in her face. “I’m your future boss, Tristan, and I was raised by a very old fashioned man, who is accustomed to the old way of life. A man fucking another man’s wife is a sin, a spit in the face to everything that has a moral code.”

“Lulina’s husband is dead,” I whispered, hating that we were having this conversation.

“That wasn’t always the case, now was it?”

“You have nothing to worry about because I’m not having an affair with my sister-in-law.”

Dominique’s hand slipped from my arm. She put her hand in mine and squeezed - her warmth of her palm lulling me, the strength in her squeeze, itching up inside me and settling deep.

It was hard to talk but I did it. “I’m not fucking your mother,” I repeated.

“Good,” she whispered, “because I want you to fuck me.”

“This isn’t a good idea.”

“Tristan, don’t go,” she pleaded.

“You don’t understand how this works, Dominique.”

“I understand more than you do.” She pinched her bottom lip with her teeth, an air of uncertainity in her eyes, “Tell me you want this, Tristan.”

I opened my mouth then closed it, my teeth grinding together. I glanced at my car again – the ugly wreck surrouned by the pretty, expensive, and blemish free – and back to her.

She squeezed my hand again and said the command again. “Tell me you want this, Tristan.”

It was the familiar mantra of ‘tell me what to say, what you want to hear, and I will oblige.’

“I want this,” I said.

“Tell me you want me.”

“I don’t know what it’s like to not want you.”

“Tell me you’re not fucking my mother.”

“I’m not fucking your mother, Dominique.”

She increased the pressure on her bottom lip, before saying, “I want you to make me believe it like your life depends on it because it does.”

I see now that my lie has opened the secrect door in the floor - the door that would lead me deeper, more violently, and more securely, in my downward spiral.

The door that held one, single secret:
How to end Tristan Rogue.

The secret door in the floor would have no stairs to count my desent, but be a gapping hole that I would walk – eyes wide open and acutely aware – and fall right through. I would kick and scream, but that would come later.

Dominique led me deeper into the gazebo, walking backwards and pulling me along. Her back rested against the rail and my body collided against hers.

I felt her thumb outlining my bottom lip. I opened my mouth and my tongue touched her tender fingertip.

Dominique moaned, and, in return, I breathe, feeling heat rush up to my cheeks.

There’s caution here. A red warning scrowling at the bottom, but I miss it all together.

I know what I’m doing is wrong. Not just wrong because she’s my step niece, and her mother trusted me, just enough, with her life. This is wrong because I had been sleeping with a woman for years, loving her in a way I could never understand, and in away she would never clarify for me, but I was licking the fingertip of her daughter, enjoying her moan when I did it.

No. I wasn’t a good man, at all.

I moved my hands to Dominique’s neck. My thumbs massaged the sides of her throat, and I felt her pulse pushing against my fingertips.

Dominique moved in for a kiss, her lips still pinching her bottom lip. She glanced at me briefly, almost appeared scared, inches away from petrified.

I move my head away before she kissed me. Her look formed a thought in my head, and I almost laugh, petulant in my thinking, and chided myself for the random thought.

Yet, still, I asked the question: “You’ve done this before; this won’t be your first time?”

Dominique didn’t answer. Maybe, to her, we’ve talked enough.

I’m not sure.

Her warm mouth enclosed over mine. Her nails racked across my scalp hard enough to leave marks, hard enough for me to wonder if I’m bleeding. It’s a tender, sweet, kiss, an exploring expedition, in a way. It’s not the kiss in the elevator, because we both knew the kiss couldn’t, and wouldn’t, lead any further.

This
kiss is an open doorway that we both want to walk through.

My tongue traced over the soft grooves her teeth had made from her biting her bottom lip.

I heard her moan, and felt her opening her mouth. My tongue tumbled in at the invitation. Her body pressed more roughly against me. Her knee moved inbetween my legs and nestled up into my crotch.

Dominique’s kiss was hot and warm, and I felt her heat even through her thin cotton robe. I hated how my fingers were stupid and clunky as I tried to get the knot loose on her robe.

Her hands were shaking when she touched mine. “Please, Tristan, slow. Please, be slow.”

And I tried to relax.

I wanted to relax for her.

My body had been on autopilot. The nesscary moves were already calculated: kiss, kiss, and kiss some more; get the robe open, see what’s underneath; dick out of the slit of the jeans, condom already ready; condom pulled on tight, no chances I can take with pregnancy – again; one courtesy spit if needed; nudge her legs and she opens for me; and I’m inside and I’m swimming without a life vest, too high in the air with the intentions of never coming down.

I took a deep breath to help with the relaxtion. I was nervous now and I didn’t know why.

Dominique spoke, her voice low and husky. “Please, Tristan, don’t stop.”

And, by God, I don’t want to. Her eyes are half closed, lidded. Her mouth was swollen, red and plump from the bruising kisses. She licked them.

Her warm hands fumbled with my shirt, pulling it up to my arm pits.

I leaned my head against her bare shoulder and inhale and exhale. She’s dismantling me and I can’t figure out how, or why. I don’t like it because it’s confuses me, it’s too strange and too foreign.

I made work of her robe again – slower this time, patient enough. This time I’m not on autopilot. This time, my eyes are open and so are my senses.

Dominique’s robe opened and she had on dark stockings and heels and nothing else.

I used the tip of my index finger to dip beneath the band of her stocking, her skin warm, the muscle flexing.