Reprise: A Story of Reincarnated Love

*** Continuation of the party… A Penthouse in the Quartier Pigalle, June 15, 2007 ***

Domi found Labette otherwise occupied and with a muttered apology withdrew to the common room to lean against a wall and idly watch the game of pool – which seemed to be less about the game than about the two girls playing – one of whom was showing an obscene amount of tattooed skin and the other whose lycra outfit was so thin that she might as well have been naked.

When Labette appeared she was still putting herself back together. She beckoned Domi to follow and slipped down the hall and into the large communal bathroom where she washed out her mouth repeatedly before starting to arrange her hair with her fingers.

“M. LaRussa said you wanted to talk?” Domi started, frowning at her own reflection at the next sink. She looked a bit flushed, her eyes were glassy, and her pupils were so large that her normally pale blue eyes looked black. The pot smoke had been very thick in the common room and even the bathroom was dimly lit – mostly by an assortment of cheap black candles and black incandescent lights. The place was an accident waiting to happen.

Labette gave her a sideways glance, and huffed, “What’s up with Sean LeBeque? He said you had dinner with him a month ago and you didn’t say anything?”

Domi winced a little and slumped against the wall on a sigh, “Well, it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t a date. I was so keyed up after my exams that I decided to treat myself and wound up at Napoleon’s tomb. I’d never been in there… He recognized me as an acquaintance of his friend Angelo’s, whom I’d met the week before while waiting for my interview at the bank. We started talking and when he found out I had just taken my last exam as an undergrad, he offered to help me celebrate. We had a glass of wine at a nearby café and then I came home.” She made a dismissive wave of her hand. “I didn’t expect to ever see him again.”

Labette just watched her for a long moment, weighing that explanation. She had never caught Domi out in a lie, but her petite friend was very good at playing her cards close to her chest. Finally, she nodded on a pout and went back to fussing with her hair. “And you were just in a dancing mood tonight?” She asked flatly.

With a soft snort, Domi shrugged indifferently, “He had asked me to come see his gallery – apparently he sells artwork?” She bunched her eyebrows together.

The blonde scowled and cut her flat mate off before Domi could finish explaining, “Do NOT tell me you do not know who Sean LeBeque is.” She sounded annoyed and dumbfounded. But then Domi could not be bothered to remember people that she did not interact with. She could not even remember what actors were in a movie she had just seen. Celebrity just did not fascinate her.

Domi shrugged again, “I gather from the way he speaks, dresses, and acts that he is from money, though he claims to have made his own fortune. He says he does not get along with his family and that his parents live in Spain.”

“He might not get on with them, but he’s still their heir. The man’s worth a mint and every socialite from London to Tokyo has been after him. He used to be in the papers all the time with some pretty bitch on his arm.” Labette’s tone reflected her animosity for those women.

“Oui…” Domi agreed with an unladylike snort, “I suspected as much. I have no idea what he wants from me. He’s all keen to have me come see his gallery, but what do I know about art? I feel so…” She struggled for the word, “bourgeois around him.”

Labette made an ugly, derisive sound. “Well, he looked plenty happy to slum around with you,” she jeered. “If I didn’t know you so well, I would have thought you were trying to sink your claws into him.” She curled her own artificial talons in the air to illustrate.

Domi’s denial was immediate and caustic, “Don’t be ridiculous. When have you ever known me to be out hunting for a man of all things?” Labette noted that she did not look her in the eye. “Besides, all I could ever be is his dirty little secret.”

One dark eyebrow cocked at that, green eyes glittering in triumph, “So you have thought about it.”

Flushing in spite of herself, Domi rolled her eyes at the ceiling. In truth she had thought of little else – awake and asleep – since the day they had crossed paths at the bank. “He is very sweet and a good dancer,” Domi confided in defeat. “But I’m sure all he wants is a playmate – someone who will warm his bed without pressuring him to get married, just because there is no way his family would ever accept some barmaid from the Clichy.”

Labette caught on fast. “So you want him, but you don’t want to be his little slut.” She made a little scoffing sound, “So why not be his mistress instead? I bet he would be very generous…” her eyes were glittering again, this time with naked avarice. She did not expect for one second that Domi would consider the proposal.

And of course, Domi wouldn’t. In truth, she would rather be his slut than his whore, but neither was acceptable. Pulling a face as she turned to look at her forlorn countenance in the mirror, Domi sighed. “He’s persistent as hell. This is going to sound stupid, but I don’t know how to tell him no.” Giving Labette a side-long glance she admitted, “Okay, I suppose that’s not true…”

“He IS tempting – just think of all that money…” Labette agreed with a grin, totally misreading the reason for the wistfulness in Domi’s voice. She grunted and blinked back into reality, “However, I doubt LeBeque will bother you again. While you were dancing I told the old fart about your unfortunate ‘condition’.” She gave Domi a too bright, too tight grin; knowing that she had torpedoed her friend’s hopes, and trusting Domi to decide that it was for her own good.

The brunette went slackjawed and pale. “You did not.” She insisted in a strident whisper, though she knew that Labette had. “Oh good god….” Suddenly the world seemed to spin on its own and she took two numb steps backwards, then staggered back three more until she was leaning against the wall. The idea that Sean thought her mutilated filled her with horror, and yet it shouldn’t. Why should she care what he thought? She could only be his whore, right? – and this took care of that. She would likely never see him again now. That thought should bring relief or satisfaction, but instead it filled her with dread, and the small of her back and the nape of her neck – both recent recipients of his touch – began tingling as if in mourning.

Labette watched with interest as Domi slumped along the wall to the floor – her white jeans forgotten. “He was bound to hear it sooner or later anyway…” the blonde shrugged. “And if you want him to know the truth, well, make sure you charge him for the show…” For that really was the only way anyone would truly believe that she was whole, which was why Domi had not fought the rumor in the first place. She was certainly not prepared to raise her skirt just to prove the rumor false!

She never heard Labette leave, nor did she know when her tears turned into sobs. It was not even for Sean that she wept, but for what was the first real instance of what she had long feared: her two worlds colliding and the ugliness of her life with Labette spilling over into the new life she wished to build. Working herself into hysterics as she near-hyperventilated with her forehead on her knees, she imagined herself encountering Sean LeBeque in ten years when she was perhaps applying for a Directorship at an investment company, only to have one of the interviewers mention her name to Sean at a party. Would he tell her secret? Would she be forced to bear the pitying looks forever?

And it was more than that. She had secretly liked Sean’s attention tonight. And even though she knew it was not logical, she had been toying with the idea of going by his gallery during her lunch – she had even been wishing for a dancing date in which she could wear a backless dress! “Oh why did you have to come tonight!” she wailed in a thick, wet whisper. “Why, why, why…”

One of the cubicle doors banged creakily open and a wobbly kid with vomit all over his shirt stumbled out to one of the sinks. Startled and embarrassed at having been sobbing out loud with a witness, Dominique struggled to her feet and bolted out the door, brushing at her cheeks with her sleeves as she stomped down the hall, through the crowded, smoky common room, and through the door. Unwilling to be near people, she eschewed the lift in favor of the stairs. She was a fool for feeling this way anyway. What did it matter what Sean LeBeque thought…?

But the anger would not take hold. And the conflict between wanting to be mad and wanting to cry only made her cry the harder. By time she hit the solace of the cool night air, she once again was gasping for breath like a distraught child. A part of her wanted to run and run and run, but somehow all she could manage was a slow walk as she turned her feet toward home, arms limp at her sides. She bawled freely now, crying tears she had not known she had.

How long had it been since she had cried like this? She didn’t know. There was often no time or privacy for tears. She had known this was coming – and so weren’t her tears foolish? She had known from the moment she started at the École that she was running the risk that the students there would find out about her ‘real life’. By some miracle they had not, but now Sean had – and others would too. And merde, of all the things for him to learn! She blinked hard, clearing her vision and sending two heavy tears down her wet cheeks.

Well, she supposed this meant that she would not have to go to his gallery and risk looking like an ignorant fool in front of him – though now that the option was gone she found that she really did want to go. Mon Dieu, was she really that much of a twit? The self-loathing finally broke over the self-pity and she broke into a run, her tall, inflexible sandals clomping heavily on the sidewalk.


****Meanwhile, on the roof ****

Angelo had drifted off and now idled back to Sean, who looked over the edge of the roof down onto the long street that led to the apartment entrance. Suddenly, he saw Domi, almost staggering out into the street, walking slowly away, limp, lifeless, very odd. His face and neck bristled with prickly heat. “Mon Dieu,” he exclaimed, “why is she leaving? Oh, God, I cannot let her leave! I’m going, Angelo” ….

He was on his feet and bolting toward the fire escape. Now was the time to reel him in, Angelo thought, and he cried out to him, “No! No, Sean! Wait. There’s something you must know!”

But, Sean heard none of it. He dove through the large common room window and tore down the stairs three risers at a time, ignoring people and drugs and obstacles on the floor as he chased after his dreams. He broke out into the street just as Domi began running down the street. She was not yet all that far away. Sean dashed after her in a fast sprint, his arms propelling him like paddle wheels on a fast-moving riverboat. As he closed the distance between them, he gave a hard push with his right leg and felt the brutal, nasty pain of a pull in his calf muscle. He knew he had strained, maybe slightly torn, it, but ran on through the pain, grimacing. He was finally within her reach. “Domi, Domi!” he cried as he passed her on her left side. He was fearful of grabbing at her or accosting her, and settled on the notion of blocking her flight, like a railroad crossing.

The footsteps behind her did not register until they were nearly upon her, startling her into greater speed. She had completely forgotten where she was and at what time of night. That her pursuer knew her name tore a noisy sob out of her throat as she went from anger to panic and then to despair. She wanted someone to care; but she did not want anyone to see her like this.

He sped past her a few meters and then stopped, favoring his aching leg as he wheeled around and stretched out his hands. He felt like Jesus in His final passion, standing there, his open crisp white shirt stretched wide to the margins of his chest. “Domi!” he cried, as gently, but firmly, as he could. “Please, please stop! Stop! Please speak with me before you go. Please stop, Domi!”

Sean LeBeque? She had slowed when the form drew along side and so tripped to a halt before him, chest heaving as she panted through her mouth. Catching the crocheted lace at the cuff of her belled sleeves with her thumb, she hastily swiped at her cheeks, dancing restlessly before him like an anxious mare.

Why the hell had he come after her? He should be disgusted right now and thanking God he found out before things progressed any farther. She folded her forearms on the top of her head and turned about pacing aimlessly in a circle. “Allez-vous, laissez-moi être,” she muttered into her arms. Had Labette sent him? “I know what…” she flailed her arms down looking at the heavens as if willing aliens to come get her now, but her throat closed so that she couldn’t finish her statement. The anger was back, though directed at herself. “Oh, just go…” she repeated she felt like she was on the verge of hyperventilating. .

“What? Que’est-ce? What are you saying? What do you mean to leave you alone and go? Oh, Domi. Be still now,” he said, softly, gently as he could. “Shhhh….Domi, breathe. What are you saying? We … we are friends!”

Exasperated, she whirled on him, hands spinning out around her. Her hair was in wild disarray; her shirt pulled up over her shoulders and bunched over her ribs, white jeans seeming to glow beneath the yellow street lamp. For a moment she looked like she was going to scream at him, her hands balling into little fists, but she just hissed at him instead, “Whatever pity you are feeling is for naught,” she assured him in a voice that she had intended to be cold, but was too thick, too hurt, to carry it off. “I do not need it.” She hated herself for wanting it though, for wishing for the comfort of a pair of arms to sob into, even if it was not for the reason he thought. He believed her mutilated to the point of being no longer really female, but the truth was she was just a liar terrified of getting caught. Why, why, WHY did Labette have to say anything!? But that was unfair. She should have told Labette to stop spreading that vile tale years ago.

Inside, Sean turned to churning panicky heat. His chest felt constricted; his belly fluttered almost sickeningly; his skin felt scorched with the flush of fearful confusion; his brow furrowed with trails of worry; his eyes stared with vacant incomprehension, his lips twisted downward to reflect the pain of not knowing … What was wrong? Was she on a drug? Was she a mental case come unglued suddenly now, with no previous signs? Had something happened after she went downstairs? Why should he pity her? What in hell could she mean? Had he done something untoward during their dance? Oooooh – was she wanting to reject him, as had happened more than once in their more rocky past lives? What, what, what??!!! His calf was killing him; his heart was shredding; his head reeled…no! No – ease it all now, he thought, marshaling from some deep recess - a sense aloofness to the details of these circumstances, but not to her or the anguish he could see she was feeling. What she was saying, what it meant, dissolved for that moment as an issue. Domi was the issue. He could not bear to see her so tormented to the verge of hysteria. If HE was somehow the issue, he was also the solution, and he would pursue that now ……

The look of hurt confusion on his face only made her angrier. But she could not call him out on it, not without risking having to discuss it. Pressing the heels of her hands against her temples, she turned and started aimlessly marching away, closing her eyes and shaking her head. The crying had given her a throbbing headache, and she wanted nothing more right then than to be home, safely under the covers where she could lick her wounds in privacy.

He followed her slowly, again passing and facing her. She stood there, hands pressed to her temples, sobbing uncontrollably. Sean’s heart ached for her. He wanted her to let out whatever the demon was – to scream without her voice, to find release and then comfort from him, if at all possible. So much of his soul felt like hers; it always had.

The heels of her hands moved from her temples to her eye sockets, elbows together before her. She sniffed and then let her hands fall; dropping her head back as she smoothed the front of her blouse down with her palms, wiping the tears away. She had always known it was going to come to this. The only thing to do would be to come clean to negate the risk of him spreading the rumor to her potential future employers or others that she might later want to associate with.

It seemed corny, but he saw no other way to wrest her away from her agony, to fix his gaze softly on her down-turned sobbing eyes, so – he dropped, gingerly, wincing in the pain from his right calf, to his knees, and looked up into her teary, reddened eyes. Before she could protest or react or run, he reached out to her with both hands, his palms facing upward, his fingers curving gently upward, and said to her almost in a whisper with a slight heart-felt tremor in his voice, “Domi. Oh, chére femme, scream now! Take my hands; squeeze tight as you can; make that your scream! Just share it with me. Tell me what’s wrong. I’ll not hurt you or laugh or betray what you feel. Here – squeeze! You’ll be calmed, please believe me.” He looked up at her, his eyes soft with the liquid of his own emotions, and reached further to her with his hands.

“It is all a lie, Sean,” she agonized. Downing in self-pity and sorrow, Domi did not know what to do with his offer. She took half a step back and would have paced away from him again, but the tone of his voice kept her still. Squeeze his hands? Was he mad? “I am not angry with you.” She told him, blinking in realization. “I am angry with myself.” Somehow in this position he was only a very little bit shorter than her, so that if she were to embrace him, the crown of his head would fit nicely beneath her chin. Taking his hands to help him save face, she tugged at them and begged softly, “Please get up.” People were staring at them. She could only imagine what they were thinking, seeing her with a man on his knees before her - and her in tears.

He rose, slowly, stiffly, trying to squelch any contortion in his face as the pain in his calf ripped up his nerves like a red-hot poker. “Oh, Domi,” he said, now letting his arms go limp to drop away from her relaxing grip. He could see some relief shading her face, but she was still so, so upset about something. He was clueless beyond belief. “It’s alright now, Domi. I … I just have no idea what has happened, why you are so upset, ma petite. What did Labette say … to whom? A lie? What lie? Did she lie to you about something?”

She could not repeat the falsehood; but realized that it would not be necessary. “If you have not heard the rumor, then you will. M. LaRussa knows. However, it is only that: a rumor.” She sighed heavily and turned her face up to look at the starless sky as her arms wrapped around her ribs in a gesture of self-comfort. “Labette said it in jest years ago, and it was such a…” her voice broke and she had to take a shaky breath before she could continue. “Well, it was so outrageous that it did not occur to me that those that heard her would believe her.” Domi’s voice had become thin and strident. “I…I really don’t think they did at first, but those people told others and pretty soon it was considered common knowledge.” She risked seeking his gaze, her expression a mask of defeat and contrition. “I tried once to tell someone that it wasn’t true, but he laughed at me and wanted me to prove it.” She colored and looked away, swallowing hard. If Sean asked her to prove that she was whole she would just die… An out of control bus would come in very handy at the moment – though of course she was not that lucky. And both sides of the street were clogged with vehicles.

She sounded so distraught, so frantic about some undisclosed trauma surrounding a possibly benign falsehood gone awry, but he simply could not make sense of her words. He tried to catch her gaze as he spoke to her softly, his eyes and voice conspiring to sooth and calm his love, his heart bursting to wrap his sweetheart in a cocoon of safety and happiness. “If I knew what all this was about, maybe, well, as a neutral ‘friend,’ I could help a little? Are you better now, Domi?”

Brows knitting together, she gave him a lip-quivering look, the tears welling up again as his compassion threatened to undo her. She took another deep breath in and out through her mouth, then sniffed and swallowed. He was the epitome of everything she wanted and everything she feared. He had already found out this secret – how long until he found out all her others? She imagined he had the resources to discover that she was not who she said she was – and then what? She would lose everything. Her degree would be worthless if they found out that the real Dominique Vasser was dead, that she was nothing but an illegal immigrant posing as a citizen to escape the horrors of home. She would be deported, maybe even after having to serve jail time. Would she have to repay all the difference between citizen and non-citizen tuition? Her friends would know she was a fraud and she would lose... everything. The panic was making it so hard to think!

He could see the return of the tension in her stance, in the sudden flare of some thoughts or feelings in her eyes. It wasn’t over. What spell had befallen her? What was the lie? Why would Labette lie? Sean swallowed his own anguish over all the ambiguity and again tuned his senses to her, watching her every move and expression.

She had to get away from him. Had to make him want to never see her again, make him wash his hands of her. “It doesn’t matter,” she told him harshly, setting her shoulders now that she had decided on a plan of action. She would just have to be a bitch. Shouldn’t be too difficult – she had seen Labette do it often enough. She paused in spite of herself, biting her lip and looking away, unable to lie to his face. “It is just that I do not like men,” she nearly whispered, hands wringing together unconsciously. “So we… uhm… mmm…mmm..maaade it uuupp,” she gritted her teeth together and then rubbed her face roughly with both hands as she mumbled, so I..I wouldn’t be bbbothered.” She tossed her head and raked the nails of one hand over her scalp before crossing her arms and then daring to meet his gaze. Somehow she could not leave it with that lie. “I want you to know that…” she faltered, dropped her gaze and then forced her eyes back to his, “I really enjoyed dancing with you, but,” it was hard to tell if she was shaking her head of if her head was just trembling with the rest of her body.

“Domi!” he spoke now with more volume, and gently commanding force. .“Look at me. Look,” he repeated, now softly, as he moved close to her, stepping on his right foot with a slight limp. “I do not understand, but it doesn’t matter. What do you mean you do not like men? What is this lie?”

She whimpered unintentionally, shoulders falling in defeat as she closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. It did not occur to her that he was calling her assertion that she didn’t like men a lie, but rather that he was asking her again what falsehood Labette had told Angelo. “Oh Sean, you are…” her voice made an ugly crack and she stopped and shook her head, clearly gearing up for another bout of hysteria. She had to get away from him.

It felt to him as if she were on the verge of total, trembling collapse. He steeled himself to shore her up should she crumble before him. He moved closer … closer … saying, “Shhhhh. It doesn’t matter right now. It’s me Domi. Sean. Our dance… it was magic.” He dared now to do it – he had to touch her, provide anchorage. Her arms were bent at her sides, her forearms crossed against her ribs, her hands locked on her elbows. He reached for her, lightly enclosing her elbows with his fingers and then his open palms, and slowly inched up the backs of her arms, the light touch of his finger tips against her skin soft, but his hold firm, keeping her steady and still. “You can tell me … anything… I think you want to tell me something…”

Her mind reeled, the pragmatic part of her searching for a way to forestall this train wreck. Any sensible man would consider her a basket case and be running the other way - so why wasn’t he? For that matter, why wasn’t she?! But no amount of arguing would make her feet move, for he was touching her again. The backs of her arms tingled and the base of her spine arched forward as if to get closer… Unconsciously, she held her breath.

He watched her face intently as he slid his fingers back down, and with no hesitation, over to her crossed arms. It all happened very quickly, but everything dizzied to slow motion for him. He moved up as close to her as he could without pressing against her, and drew her arms away from her body and pulled them gently around his waist, holding them there. He moved into her at the same time, and decisively moved his arms up, around her back, just below her bare shoulders, and pressed both hands wide against her back. He moved his fingers gently, massaging her tense back as he drew them both into a snug embrace, and he rubbed the palm of one hand up to her shoulder blade, holding it there. He eased his head to the side and brushed, brushed, brushed … then rested his cheek tenderly against hers. Holding her, he rocked her ever so slightly on the pivot of their feet. He tightened his arms around her slightly, and whispered into her ear, “It’s alright now, Domi” … and, softer yet, realizing that the likelihood of it meaning anything to her just now was doubtlessly quite remote, he told her with a sigh, “I … I see the orchid.”

The voice that had been telling her to run shut up as she literally fell into her dream. Night after night she had imagined this, and yet it was nothing like she had expected. Where her pillow had been soft, he was hard beneath her hands, beneath her cheek, and against her belly as her body instinctively molded itself to his form. Her fingers moved from his waist up over his ribs and around to test the hard lines of his back with tentative fingers as she rubbed her hot, flushed cheeks against his starched shirt. She shuddered as she buried her face into the crook of his shoulder, pulling at him mindlessly with her hands flat against his back. He smelled just as she had known he would, and she inhaled deeply as she dragged her nose along his collarbone until she could feel his pulse against the bridge of her nose. His breath was so soft compared to the rough caress of his beard; and she felt both weightless and yet so heavy that her knees could not longer support her.

The bliss of countless memories of holding her like this through times, centuries, ages passed, and also here and now again, streamed through him with an electrifying chill. Her hands stroking up his side and back spoke in old, so familiar ways, and he shivered warmly as his tension yielded to her touch. His body, the discomfort in his calf, his sense of self – all dissolved in her arms. The contours of her body became the landscape of his, as his body became the landscape of hers. There were no horizons beyond their sudden fusion, tentative though it was. He went nearly mindless for an instant as the velvet brush of her cheek tingled his face. Her hair tickled his neck; her sweet, fresh scent reminded him again of the Catalonian fields in Spain where they had lain on blankets and loved each other under mashed potato-clouded skies; his shoulder softened to receive her face as safe harbor from her panic and anguish; and the sensitive margin of his collarbone shivered under the nudges of her nose. He tightened his embrace to bolster her and hold her near as he felt her go limp and willowy in his arms. His spirit soared.

“Orchid?” She repeated numbly, and then blinked and raised her head as one hand slid around her back to make sure that her panties had not fallen so low that her birthmark was showing. The waistband of her jeans did tend to gap from her body there, but he still should not have been able to see so far down…

He nearly leapt from the spot with her as cargo as he felt her move her hand to touch the small of her back. The birthmark! She was touching the birthmark! Checking to see if it was exposed. It WAS Felicia! No virtual certainty about it now – absolute certainty! The orchid would always be their kenning. It bonded them through all time and all trials.

“No matter,” he whispered. “It was only a thought, my minds-eye feeling – beautiful. Like a delicate, intricate orchid.” He left it there. Nothing more could be said for now.

“Oh,” she whispered, now drawing away in earnest, the magic spell of the moment before broken. Her other hand stroked down his back and around his waist as the heel of her other rested against his chest. “I really should…”

“Oh, Domi,” he again whispered breathily. “No, stay, be here, dance…” He closed the distance she had drawn between them with a single step and dropped a hand down to her belt line and then up under her blouse, up to the middle of her back, pressing hard and drawing her tightly to him. He moved his other hand from her shoulder blade up to the nape of her neck and then to the base of her head, spreading his fingers and pushing up into her thick, rich hair, his fingers grazing her skull gently.

She doubted she could have gotten away even if her feet would have obeyed the command to move. He held the back of her head still now, facing him, and planted a soft, moist kiss on her forehead. Her anxiety seemed to melt at his touch, and he began to stroke her hair upward with his fingers. He kissed down to her eyelids, the inside of her cheek, the bridge of her nose, lips gently nipping her skin with each light kiss. When he kissed her forehead again she closed her eyes, the tension in her arms evaporating, then slipped back around him as his kisses moved down, just like in her dream: the bridge of her nose and then the tip and then…

She felt so soft and warm. He brushed his lips against the tip of her nose and then trailed across her cheek to her ear. He parted his lips and grazed with them on the tip, then the outer curved seam, and then her lobe. He opened his mouth and gently covered the crannies and crevices of her ear, breathing out very softly, wanting to lick her, but holding back. He moved against her slightly, pushing his pubis up against her, and kissed under her ear where it joined her neck. He turned her head slightly with his hand in her hair and licked up behind her ear with the tip of his tongue. Her taste! Oh, the sweet-salty flavor he knew so well! He shivered as if it were his ear being licked.

Oh, he was teasing her, and she did not know whether to be angry and so fight, or to beg him to continue. She wondered briefly if he really knew how good he felt - if he were playing her like he had that handful of female lovers he claimed to have had. She felt a sudden inexplicable jealousy for those faceless women. She should really go… and yet she knew even as she thought it that she wouldn’t, not until she got her kiss.

“Ooh…” she shivered with him when he licked her, the friction of their bodies moving against each other sending white lightning from her ear to the hard pebbles of her nipples and down to the pit of her belly, pressed tightly against the bulge in his pants that she had not even noticed before as she had been concentrating on his hands and mouth. Rocking up onto the toes of the rigid sandals, her weight on the straps, she ground her belly against him, clinging to his shoulders. “Sean,” she sighed in impatient surrender.

His arousal had come on slowly, gradually, almost without notice to him until she pressed herself upon it and seemed to climb up his hard length, raising herself on tiptoes and gnashing her belly against him. He shifted his left leg, moving it into the space between hers, resting it there with no aggression or insistence. His open lips slid onto the side of her neck, and he lipped down, slowly, deliberately, to her bare shoulder. He kissed along the top length of her shoulder, from neck outward, with increased vigor, pressing his lips firmly over the rounded edges of her shoulder bone, pulling up gently on her flesh with each new kiss. He tongued her as he moved outward, lips and tongue dancing delicately, with increasing passion, over hallowed ground. His light hot breath dried the moisture of his tongue as he trailed along her shoulder.

He moved his hand higher up her back and pressed more firmly with it, and withdrew the other hand from her hair. He raised his head from her shoulder as he slid the thumb of his free hand under her chin. He raised her head with thumb and now forefinger curled under her chin, and looked down at her, eyes ablaze with desire, lips moist and parted, poised just above hers. He could see it in her eyes too! The roller coaster had surmounted its apex, and the plunge now was unstoppable. There was no precipice left – they had careened over it, from near hysteria to the bliss of togetherness.

Without knowing how she came to be straddling his leg, she pressed her pelvis against the top of his thigh, hands curling up behind his shoulders as she strained to seal them together.

She now held him secure with her arms coiled up under his armpits, her hands clasped to his shoulders. She took his leg captive with hers and pressed against it with a possessiveness he knew and welcomed. Her eyes were nearly out of focus from their closeness. Her lips beckoned, and he was lost now to a passion he had thought he would never regain. Holding her tight, pressing now hard against her as if to enter every pore of hers with his body, he covered her lips gently with his, parted, and moved his head up and down so that their lips glanced together, up and parted, down and closed.

She wanted this kiss so badly that it seemed then that this was the moment she had been waiting for all her life for. In her dreams, she always woke up just as he made contact, and so when she did not, she moaned in relief, her neck becoming boneless as her fingers dug into his shoulders

He pulled back and brushed across her lips lightly as he watched her, then brushed across the other way, then pulled back and looked deeply into her eyes… “Oh, oh god, Domi!” he exclaimed. He expelled a hot gush of breath and bent back to her, now bracing the back of her head again with his free hand, and sealed his lips fast and hard over hers. All semblance of caution and tentative coaxing were gone. Hesitation blanched through anticipation to fruition! He closed his eyes and twisted his head from side to side as his lips danced hers apart and nibbled on them and shut them and parted them and shut them and gyrated the wild, consuming tango of lovers’ kisses…

Bent half over backwards, Domi stood on the toe of one shoe, her other calf wrapped around his, both as a way to keep him tight against her core and to brace herself - not that he showed any sign of letting her fall over. His words burned through her like a surge of hope, for she was not good at this game, felt overwhelmed by the teasing - delighted and frustrated that he did not seem to be inclined to give her whatever it was that would soothe her burning blood.

Finally, his tongue slipped quickly, easily, into her mouth as he moaned and joyfully entered her body with it for the first time in more than a hundred years…

Oh, that was what she had been longing for since the moment he had touched her. There was absolutely no comparison to this in her experience. The touch of his tongue on hers sent ripples through her until she moaned and all the strength went out of her, save to stroke and suckle him. The heaviness of her body seemed designed to bring him down on top of her, and just as his earlier teasing kisses had made her want this deep fusion of their mouths, the caress of his thrusting tongue made her long for the security of his weight and heat. Somehow she knew now that it would never, ever, be enough. No matter how much of him she had, she would always still crave him.

Sean gripped Domi’s body more tightly now, bending into her as if to blanket her in his heat and fuse their bodies into one. He felt her suckling his marauding tongue as its tentative incursion broke into total invasion. He bored into her hot, wet mouth with his tongue, now wending it over and around and under hers, having his way with her mouth in a rising ferocity that rushed on to untamed savagery. He drove his tongue beneath hers and compelled it to rise in her mouth so he could enslave it with his, sucking it into his with such force that all her defenses were in vain.

“Mmmmuuuu,” he groaned with nearly brutal expressiveness under his breath. The few moments of the one-sided battle inside her mouth stretched into forever. He kneaded the back of her head with his hand and rubbed the other demandingly up and down her back, pulling her more tightly against him as he made love with her tongue. Their heads gyrated in syncopation as the kiss peaked.

He shuddered with a final commanding draw he relaxed the suckling vacuum that had fused them, releasing her tongue to fold back into her mouth and collapse under his. He stroked his tongue roughly, then more gently, then softly back and forth on the surface of hers, pulling his lips slightly away and then pressing them back onto hers with each slowing thrust. He relaxed his hold on her body and felt the limpness of her body in surrender to his. He kissed her lips, winding down the intensity with soft moist nibbles along the length of her lips, the corners, the sensitive thin indentation in the middle of her top lip. He lipped her, pulled away, lipped her, pulled away, brushed her lips, kissed her face aside her lips, brushed her lips again, in a maddening spiral up and away from the mindless abandon they had shared, all too briefly it now seemed.

When he broke the kiss, she chased him, capturing his lower lip with a low sound of protest, though her leg unwound from his so that she was standing on her own two feet again. They were both panting wildly, flushed, and glowing with a sheen of desire. A bike backfired then roared to life noisily drawing her gaze and making her shift as if to get out of the way, though the bike was in the street. In that second the magic was gone and reality took hold. Mon Dieu, she was clinging to a man she barely knew, right there in the street - had been rubbing herself against him like a wanton cat, begging for attention!

The sound of the backfiring bike broke between them as if a cruel announcement that the magic of their kiss had vanished as quickly as it had enveloped them. He trembled as he loosened his hold on her, his arms and legs feeling willowy as the tension eased away from them. They seemed to release each other in the same moment, as if in mutual agreement that bliss found would now be bliss remembered.

Releasing him and jumping back as if he were too hot to touch, she murmured in horror, “Oh, monsieur, I am so sorry…” The tinkle of female laughter reached them from the other side of the street where a trio of young women were heading up the hill toward the apartment building. The sound of the band reached them even here, the thudding bass dominating from this distance. How had she forgotten where she was? How had she forgotten WHO she was.

“Sorry?” he whispered in astonishment. “Sorry – why, about what, Domi?” He stared at her, wild-eyed, seeking a return to the spell just broken. “What are you apologizing for?”

“Je dois aller,” she told him, backing away. “Pardonnez-moi,” she begged his leave, but did not wait for it as she turned and sprinted down the hill away from him toward the metro station in utter horror at her own behavior. It seemed suddenly as if all the world had been watching them – and indeed they would have been visible to anyone looking out the windows on that side, or standing looking out from the roof – not to mention everyone on the street. How had he made her forget herself?!

Sean stood for a second in stunned silence. She was ‘sorry’, had asked him to ‘pardon’ her in formal third person tense rather than the familiar, and was off running away, down the street and into the night.

“Domi! Domi!” he yelled after her, instinctively as if his words would arrest her flight and draw her back. They did neither. “Wait! Where are you going? You can’t… you can’t…” his cries were frantic as he broke into a struggled trot after her. His right leg was useless, the calf muscle by now swollen and no doubt bruised with pooling blood in the shreds of the tear. He had to stop her. He limped after her, his mind racing.

She felt dirty, whorish – and even worse than that, she had behaved like a slut, not even intelligent enough to demand payment for the use of her body. No… the real horror of it was that she could hardly charge for something she had wanted so badly… Tears of shame blinded her, but dried before they could fall with the speed of her noisy escape. The tapestry and leather covered wooden soles of her sandals clopped hollowly on the pavement, punctuating his cries for her to stop. That he sounded shocked and hurt were not lost on her. She had treated him horribly, led him on and then ran away. She could not blame him for hating her – and hadn’t that been what she wanted? No, she thought with a strangled sob. She hadn’t wanted him to hate her at all; she had wanted him to lie down on top of her and let her wrap her arms and legs around him while kissed her again. But how long until his kisses turned into inquiries that would destroy her life?

Mon Dieu, what had she done? What HAD she done?

The underground, he thought to himself as he limped after her receding figure. She would dash to the underground to escape to somewhere … wherever home was, anywhere to distance herself from him. It was the only assumption he could make now. Alright, he thought, she has but one route to get there. Down the street, around the corner, on for three blocks and then through a small tunnel under the hillside that had a broad pedestrian walkway. The tunnel emptied into a deserted block just two blocks away from the underground. There were no residence or business buildings there. Sean had observed all this, as if by provident foresight, on the drive in. And, he had noticed one other thing: A side street emptied into the middle of that block just beyond the tunnel. It could be accessed by a couple of turns – a right and a left – off the three blocks around the corner. He could speed there with his car and intercept her. He would shake her senseless! No, no, he would not! Ohhhhhh! Such anguish. He wanted her now, again! “Domi, please, stop!” he cried one last time as she neared the corner, further from him with each passing second.

Sean’s car was parked just up the street toward the corner, curbside in front of an antique salon. He could see it and hastened toward it just as Domi rounded the corner and was gone. He fumbled his keys out of his pocket. The vest! His vest was still up on the roof. Ah – it could wait. Angelo would safeguard it.

He engaged the car auto lock as he drew up to the jet-black 2007 Aston-Martin DB9 Volante convertible and the doors clicked unlocked. He threw himself behind the wheel, wincing as his calf complained with pain. The ignition turned before he even had the door closed, and he engaged the six-speed manual clutch and was off. He negotiated a careening u-turn and sped down the street to the corner, banking sharply right. He could see Domi up ahead as she passed under a street lamp, still a good two blocks from the tunnel. Time was his guardian angel just now. He could make it.

Downshifting, he took a wild, tight right turn at the first cross street, then a screeching left at the next. He sped on for three blocks past the base of the small hill she would soon be tunneling through. At the next intersection, he wheeled to the left into a narrow street that entered the one Domi would be on after leaving the tunnel. He stopped just at the corner, lowered his window, and waited to hear her footfall.

There! There it was! She had traversed the tunnel and would be at the intersection any moment. He gunned the Aston-Martin and pulled it into the intersection, dramatically blocking it like some police action maneuver. She was running towards him, only a few meters away. He threw the car door open, hauled himself out, slammed the door shut, and took a step toward the approaching fugitive. She would crash right into him in a moment. She could not avoid it.

Being out alone at night normally made her hyperaware of her surroundings, but the trauma of the last few minutes had her so distracted that she had not even heard the car coming until it nearly ran her over. She gave a short, startled scream, jumping away – and in so doing nearly collided with the driver who had popped out of the car like a madman in a movie – or a gangster.

“Dominique!” he called, sternly, commandingly, as she drew within inches from him.

She was panting from exertion, emotion, and fear as she stood gaping at him first in confusion and then in disbelief. “Sean?” Why would he come after her? Didn’t he understand that she could not allow herself to be his slut? Why would he chase her?

There was something in his eyes that had not been there before – as if the gentleman had been stripped away and left a monster in his stead. For the first time, Dominique was physically afraid of him. Shaking her head she took a tiny step backward and started to turn as if to run around the auto and continue on her way.

It took a single step to meet her where she had stopped. He riveted his eyes on hers, stepped up to her, and clamped his hands tightly against her upper arms, up at the sides of her shoulders, pressing together hard as if to squeeze her still. He could have shaken her like a rag doll, and almost felt like doing it, but instead, turned her around and backed her up into the side of his car. He was neither gentle nor brutal about it – he was simply decisive and not to be deterred.

Now utterly terrified, Domi became mindless, pulling at his wrists as she struggled ineffectually to get herself free. In spite of everything up until now she had not been afraid with him. In fact, she realized that she had taken for granted that he was too much of a gentleman to hurt her, unlike the aggressive bar patrons who sometimes took ‘no’ personally and felt the need to maul her. “No… please…” she begged, her Georgian accent showing through in her panic as she tried to break his hold.

His voice was low, deep, monotone, and demanding in timbre. He showed no anger. He showed only persistence at seeking answers and at commanding her attention. He tightened his hold on her shoulders and pressed his legs against hers, effectively imprisoning her in front of him.

“Why?” he asked. “Why did you run? What do you think you are doing, Dominique? You dance with me. You kiss me. You run away from me. You avoid me. You refuse to come to my gallery. You tell me about some crazy lie that is not a lie. Why did you run?”

She was no longer filled with fear over the imagined harm he could do to her career or even with him finding out that she was not really a citizen and so having her deported, but with the idea that he was going to beat, rape, and/or kill her right there in the deserted alley. How many times had some drunk grabbed her at the bar or followed her out back during her break, or even chased her home? How many times had some man grabbed her ass or her breast while she was serving drinks – or pushed her into a wall and tried to force his tongue down her throat? Gabby’s provocative uniforms and cheap liquor had gotten her into all sorts of bad situations – not to mention Labette’s habit of parading horny men into their home.

Yet never had she been this vulnerable, not since that horrible summer when she was fifteen… The tears were streaming down her cheeks, though she kept her face turned away and hidden behind a veil of soft chestnut hair as she pushed at him and twisted in his grip. “That’s why I told you!” She asserted, her voice strident and girlish in her terror. “Please let me go!”

“I don’t care,” he said softly, looking now at her with passion. His voice became filled with feeling, but with no dilution of strength and insistence. “You are a liar,” he whispered, almost conspiratorially, “but I will not let you get away with it! I do not give a damn if you do ‘not like men’! I only care that you … like me! And you do. You know me, Domi. You know me without knowing it! Tell me you do not like me. Do it! Lie to me. Just try! Tell me!”

But Domi could not answer, having dissolved into choking sobs, interpreting the change in his tone to lust and liking it no better than the anger he had seemed to radiate a moment earlier. In a late bid for freedom she tried to kick at him by wedged her knee up against her chest in the hopes of pushing him away with her sandal, but she was unable to get her foot into position before he was too close.

He pressed against her harder as he felt her resistance, her attempt to escape from him. His pelvis and chest now touched her. She would not answer him – she seemed determine to ignore his very presence, even as he tried to engage her in some discourse.

“I will have you, Dominique! And you will have me!” he announced, commanded. He slid them side ways, forward to the fender of the Aston-Martin, and he suddenly pushed her back onto the hood, grasping her shoulders still. She fell onto her back, her buttocks and upper thighs on the top of the fender, the rest of her legs angling down to the road. He stood over her with his legs spread wide over hers, and he bent onto her upper body, crushing his chest onto hers. His breath hissed onto her face. “Tell me you do not like ME!” he demanded.

She managed a little scream when he dragged down the car, and fought him earnestly, if ineffectually until he had her hopelessly pinned almost to the point that she was unable to breathe. Frantically, she pushed at him, horrified that only a few minutes ago she had been wanting him to lie atop her… Oh god, what had she done?! “Pleeasssse,” she begged in English, her voice a low keening like a wounded animal. “Let me g…”

He cut off her reply by charging onto her mouth with his. For the second time in less than twenty minutes, he claimed her lips and kissed her now brutally, forcing her lips to part and assaulting her with his tongue roughly, ravenously. There was no stopping him. He writhed his upper body on hers, mauling her pert breasts with his chest, trapping her legs with his, and pushing his arms tightly against hers as his hands never loosened their grip on her shoulders. He ignored all her sounds and movements beneath him and expressed his love for her in primal, pagan lust. He might as well have entered her sex up on that hood. He was out to sate a hunger for her that teetered him to the brink of insanity.

In the face of his aggression the fight left her and she became still, imagining herself not even inside her own body, but watching the scene as if a disinterested third party, her eyes tightly shut. In truth he never really hurt her, but there was no escaping him and no question now that he meant to rape her. He had even said as much. Dominique knew a moment’s ironic triumph at the fact that she had worn the tight jeans instead of a skirt that could be easily tossed up, but doubted they would prove to be a barrier for long. Her frame was so small and soft compared to his hard length, as if their entire bodies were nothing but analogies for the hard bulge he was grinding against the soft, folds her jeans protected. Where a moment before she had been terrified, she now felt surreally calm – even to musing that his hands would tear away her clothing just like his cock would tear through her virginity.

But as quickly as he had assaulted her, he pulled back from the kiss, moved away on trembling legs, and looked down at her sprawled on his car hood. But she was so beautiful. Sean’s pique at her flight and seething passion dissolved into adoration and loving desire as he looked at her. His eyes welled with warm, stinging liquid emotion. “Go now, Mademoiselle Vasser. Go to your chambers of dislike for me. Just go.”

For the longest moment she did not move, stunned into shock by the assault and disbelieving that it was over. She really only heard his last two words, and them only dimly as she drew her first deep breath since it had begun and rolled onto her side with a pitiful moan, drawing her knees up. Her arms were the first to recover, clawing at the edge of the car to pull herself over until she flopped onto the ground, climbed unsteadily to her feet and started away on legs so wooden that they did not feel like her own.

When she was fifteen meters away she risked looking back at him, red-rimmed eyes wide with numb fear, her kiss-swollen mouth slightly agape as if she were panting. He looked crushed somehow, small… and the confusion of that image knitted her brows together as she turned to stare at him. But there was nothing to say, nothing to do… and surely she was not supposed to go comfort him after what he had done? She shook her head in answer to her own silent question, the action serving to clear it somewhat so that she turned numbly and continued toward the metro station, looking like a woman ravished and abandoned to the streets.

Sean caught her glance for a quick instant as she looked back at him over her shoulder. He stared into her eyes, boring into them with as much energy as he could from the widening distance between them, then turned and, without another look, slumped into the car, his injured leg throbbing, and closed the door. Deep in thought, he drove slowly back to the party slowly to collect Angelo.