AN: This is another one of those edited chapters. I think it's edited down to M. Hope so. Anyway, no I won't be emailing the chapters out to people from this site. Sorry, but unless I have personal knowledge of the fact your over eighteen, I'm just not gonna do it. If you're over eighteen, you can join the board where the story's posted and read it there. I'm not tryin' to be a hard-ass, but I don't have time to vet out each person that asks for the story and make sure they're of age. I really don't have time to send out emails every time I update, to be honest. It's already kind of inconvenient that I have to rewrite every chapter, but that's something I knew I was getting into when I decided to post this story here, knowing how this story was going to go. Anyway, sorry to sound like a bitch. The rules of the site say no NC-17 so that's where I have to go with this here. Damn, when did I start giving a fuck about rules? Shit! I must be gettin' old. Grin It has also come to my attention that the timeline isn't as clear as I had thought. The story is set in 1999. That's why the music being played isn't today's top forty stuff. So this story takes place two years before the movie does. The move events will take place in 2001 in the story, because that's when the movie was released. So this part will take us up to just before the movie. Then I'm either going to start a new story for what I'm calling book two, or I'll just do some sort of divider to show were part one ends and two begins. This was supposed to be a quick little story for fun. So much for that plan, LOL. Anyway, if you enjoy this, tell a friend and tell me. If you don't like it tell me, and tell me why! Always, Tempest.
The Funeral of a Good Girl
By – TempestRaces
Chapter nine – Of Bruised Skin and Bruised Egos
They picked out several movies and headed back to the house affectionately known as 'the fort.' When Jesse pulled the car into the driveway it was to find Vince sitting on the front step. Jesse and Tempest got out of the car and started for the house.
"What're you doin' out here?" she called out to Vince as they walked up the lawn.
"Trying to control my temper," he growled in answer.
When they got closer she noticed the crust of dried blood on his lower lip. "He hit you?" she asked, indignant on Vince's behalf. She tipped his head to the side to allow her a better look at his lip.
"About as good as I hit him. Our fearless leader will be showing off a nice black eye for the next few days." He winced as his smile tugged at the cut on his lip, breaking it open again so it started to ooze a bit more blood.
"And then they just left you out here alone to bleed? Did anyone clean that cut at least?"
"I'm fine, Trouble. I'm out here because I was seriously pissed and needed to take a breather. It's not like I've been banished from the house." It was amusing to see a woman ready to go to war with Dom on his behalf. "I've been banged up a lot worse than this. Once or twice I've been banged up a lot worse than this by Dominic."
"What on earth did he hit you for?"
"I think it was when I told him to mind his own fuckin' business he finally snapped and started throwin' fists."
"The next few days are gonna be a barrel of laughs, aren't they?" Jesse asked on a sigh.
"I'd pretty much have to go with yes."
"Maybe I'll go stay someplace else, J." Tempest turned to look at Jesse, Vince's chin still between her thumb and finger. "Half his problem is the fact he don't like me, and in turn the way I act around," she coughed to cover her moment of thought, "around certain elements of this place."
"You ain't goin' nowhere. Dom's just gotta learn to let people live their own damn lives." Vince shook his head free of her grip and stood up. "What movies did you get?"
Jesse named off the three blockbusters and Vince opened the door, motioning for the cousins to walk ahead of him into the house. They put a movie on. Jesse sat on the end of a couch and Tempest leaned against his side, resting her head on his shoulder and curling her feet up under her. The next thing she knew she had Vince's head on her hip and Dom's irate gaze on her face.
"You tryin' to start another fight with me in the middle this time?" she asked out of the corner of her mouth.
Vince looked up at her face, a look of chagrin on his. He knew she was right and that was exactly what was likely to happen. But moving now would just be obvious. "You looked comfy. Don't we look like one big happy fuckin' family?" He smirked up at her.
"Fuck you," she said, but she fought a smile as she said it and there was laughter in her voice.
"That's on the agenda for later."
"Overshare," Jesse said, holding up one hand toward their direction.
"I agree. If you really thought so, you best revise your evening plans now."
"Shut up and watch the movie, Trouble."
"Ditto, your Surliness."
Jesse snorted.
"All of you, shut the fuck up!" Leon yelled, throwing popcorn at Vince to illustrate his point. Vince picked the popcorn off his shirt and ate it.
Mia rolled her eyes. Every day something in her life illustrated very clearly for her the fact that she was either an underpaid daycare worker or a curator of large mammals in the zoo she called home. It didn't help that the only female she normally had around was just as bad, and now the temporary charge was also more ape than lady.
When the first movie ended, she put on the second one. By the time it was over everyone agreed it was time for bed. Everyone but for Tempest and Leon, who were both asleep where they rested.
"What did you do to my cousin today?" Jesse asked Vince. "She never falls asleep before one am. She's dead to the world and it's only twelve."
As much as he wanted to answer honestly, he knew it wouldn't be a good thing to do. He improvised, cutting down the truth to the bare minimum. "All that walking around the fairgrounds I guess."
"Just let her sleep there," Mia offered.
"I'll wake her," Jesse decided. "She'll be happier waking up downstairs in the morning."
"I'll take her downstairs, let her sleep," Vince broke in. The look on his face dared Mia to have something to say about it. Mia turned away to go upstairs in a huff.
"I could probably carry her down," Jesse offered.
"I can carry her down twice over, so why strain yourself?" Vince teased the less muscular Jesse. He stood up, lifting his head off her hip where it had been pillowed.
"Ok then, night," Jesse said before heading downstairs.
Vince picked up Tempest before kicking Leon in the ribs. He moved on to poking him in the head with his toes when that didn't work to wake his friend. "Hey sleeping beauty! You gonna go to bed or sleep on the floor up here all night?" he asked, teasing Leon with a grin on his face.
"Fuck off," Leon moaned. "I can't get any sleep downstairs until after you go to sleep, you loud ass fucker. Literally."
"Shut up! She wakes up and hears you she'll die of embarrassment and cut me off," Vince grinned down at Leon. "'Sides, she's already dead to the world. After the afternoon we had I think you're safe. For tonight at least."
The leer on Vince's face let Leon know the afternoon had consisted of more than dinner and the fair, as Vince had told Dom. "God dawg, it's not fair. You know Jess was gonna try and hook me up wit' her, right?"
"Shit, really?" Vince hadn't figured on Jesse wanting his cousin mixed up with any of them.
"Yeah, thought she might make his day and move down here if she had a better reason than just gettin' a better job."
He looked down at the woman snoring lightly in his arms. "Damn, why didn't anyone tell me?"
"Because you met her first and it was all over then, wasn't it? But it's cool. I don't think me'n her are all that compatible. She's too much like Jesse in a girl's body for me to think about her that way."
"That's fine with me. I'm goin' to bed."
"You sure I'll be able to sleep tonight if I go to my room?"
"I'd never be positive, but I'm fairly sure."
"Sometimes you're one lucky bastard," Leon called. Vince chuckled in response. "Too bad you're too set in your old ways to know just how lucky you could be," Leon finished in a mumble as he picked himself stiffly up off the floor.
Vince thought he caught the gist of it, but he really wished he hadn't. If they were all going to start in on him about the whole situation he was going to go out of his mind. Why did they all care so much when it was clear that neither of the two people the whole situation actually concerned did? Since he knew he wasn't going to figure it out, he started down the stairs and into his room. He kicked the door closed, stripped off to his shorts and contemplated the woman in his bed who was still wearing her jeans and tank top. In the end he just stripped her down to her panties, pulled one of his undershirts on her and pulled the blankets over her on her side of the bed before sliding in on the other side, surprised that she didn't wake up at any point during the whole routine.
With a groan of frustration he set and turned on his alarm clock. No blowing off Dom tomorrow if he didn't want to start a world war over a girl who wouldn't be around to still be a problem in a few days. He'd have to get up on time and he knew it. There were a lot of things he hated in the world, but getting up before eleven am had to come close to the top of the list. He wasn't the type to sign up for the whole eight to five with an hour for lunch kind of job. He much preferred to rise and live on his own schedule. And that schedule never included becoming conscious before lunch time, if he could help it.
With a groan of a different sort, his brain started working some time later. All he remembered was going to sleep. I'm dreaming! That's it. He convinced himself the only way he was waking up the way he was, was if he was actually dreaming he was waking up the way he was. A small pair of hands were trailing softly across his skin, occasionally using a set of well manicured nails to scrape instead. The touch was different from that of the kind of girl he normally found himself with, and it was mildly puzzling. What she was doing to him took more precedence than thoughts of how she was doing it. But the sensation that they knew each other was different from the perfunctory way things always felt when a person only took racer chasers to bed. They didn't care who they were with; the things they did were merely a means to an end. A way to steal their fifteen minutes of fame any way they could. As they couldn't or didn't race for their fame, they could sleep their way into the beds of those who both did and won. So while they couldn't brag about whom they had beaten or how fast they'd had to go to do it, they could brag about whom they'd done, and what they'd had to do upon arriving in the bed of that winning racer.
In his dream, or so he told himself, he opened his eyes to find out which of the normal suspects from his dream world was present, only to encounter a head of hair not red or blonde, but a color saved from being black only by the hints of deepest red present throughout. Tempest. This was no dream. The way he'd had her figured, she wasn't really forward enough to do what she was doing. Not that he was complaining, just contemplating the shock. A quick glance at the clock showed it was a whole hour before the alarm was set to go off. Lot's of time to ensure we both get out of bed happy, he mused with a grin.
He got her attention and she smiled cheekily at him when she knew he was awake. "Hope you don't mind waking up a bit early. I must have fallen asleep early last night."
"Yeah," he rasped.
"I figured when I woke up early I must have. It doesn't take long for me to get bored when I'm stuck in bed with nothing to do, so I made my own fun."
He started to make some of his own before an evil grin crossed his face as he looked at her. "I'm gonna try and be quiet not to wake Leon," he told her with a grin. "Think you can handle it?"
"I can do my best."
He went out of his way to make sure she couldn't keep up her end of the deal. She got so caught up in the heat of the moment he knew that being quiet was the last of her priorities. He wasn't so different. She already had a few tricks she knew drove him over the edge. Quiet just wasn't something either of them seemed capable of.
Some time later she smirked at him, her breathing still slightly out of rhythm. "Do you think we saved Leon from an early wake up call, or were we too loud?"
"I don't know. You can ask him later. I don't care anymore." He settled her against his chest with a contented sigh.
She buried her head in his shoulder in embarrassment at the suggestion. "I'm not asking him if he's heard us. It's bad enough to me they all know what's going on."
"You're an adult and so am I Trouble. It doesn't matter if they know what two adults do with their free time."
"I know that, but it's almost disrespectful to Dominic when he'd clearly rather we didn't."
"I live here too. If I wanna share my room and my bed with you and you're agreeable, I don't appreciate Dom and Mia butting into the situation. Jesus, you'd think from how they act I accosted you the second you stepped outta your damn car and tied you up in my room to become a slave to my desires. We both know it's the other way around."
"I dunno. You did accost me the second I got outta my car. Actually you accosted me on the phone before we even met, remember?"
"Yeah, I'm the ignorant prick who was just tryin' to give you directions."
"You were pretty ignorant to me."
"I was havin' a bad day."
"When aren't you?"
"I'm predictin' today goes pretty good."
"I'll just bet you are."
"I'm half tempted to phone in sick and keep you here all day."
"I told Jesse that he could make plans and have me all to himself today. Guess you might as well go to work."
"Thanks." He faked a deeply wounded look. "Used for sex and kicked out of my own bed. What's the world coming to?"
"Dunno." She watched as Vince slid out from under her and stood up, walking toward his dresser. "You know, the alarm hasn't gone off yet."
"It will in ten minutes."
"You're right. At your age, ten minutes clearly isn't enough time for you to recover from the first time and," she raised an eyebrow, "get ready to go again." She watched him stalk back over beside the bed.
"How old did Jesse tell you I am?" he growled.
"Twenty two."
"Ok, so he didn't lie. That ain't exactly old you know."
"Looks like a million from where I sit."
He did some quick mental math. "Jesse'll be twenty next month, so that makes you nineteen don't it?"
"Three months shy of twenty."
"And I'll be twenty three in September, so that only makes me just under three years older than you."
"Seems like decades when you're so easy to wear out and decrepit."
He was on her like a flash. "I'll show you easy to wear out."
"You know your alarm is gonna go off any minute, right?"
He reached behind himself and threw the clock radio on the floor with enough force to rip the plug out of the wall socket. "I set it twenty minutes earlier than I had to anyway, hoping to convince you to give me a quick reason to have a nice day."
As he lay wrapped around her spoon style in the center of the bed later he mumbled, "Still think I'm too old?"
"No. I think I'm gonna die young. But as you say, at least I'll die happy."
"You'll recover." He looked at the still functioning clock on his wall. "I really do have to get up now or I'll be late again. I gotta get in the shower."
"You could call in sick like you said. Sleep a bit longer."
"You made plans with the kid, remember? Doubt you wanna tell him your plans with him are called on account of you spending the day in bed with me."
"You're right," she answered, blushing. "Go take your shower. I'm gonna just pass out until Jesse comes to wake me up."
He got out of bed after leaning over her to kiss her mouth. Once he was up he handed her the shirt she had been wearing and her underwear. "You might want to put some clothes on so he's not scarred for life."
"Good point." She wiggled into her underwear and started to pull his undershirt over her head.
"Maybe I will go tell Dom I'm not feeling good." Watching her wiggle around into the clothes had brought to mind other things that made her wiggle around in his bed. He had to honestly admit he had had about a months worth of sex in the last few days, but when it was sex with her he couldn't get enough.
"No you won't," she mumbled, already half asleep again. She was feeling pretty relaxed.
"You're right. I'll see you tonight. We're supposedly goin' racin'. You can ride in my car and hang on my arm so no guys feel it necessary to offend you by tryin' to pick you up, ok?"
"We'll see," she said, clearly already half asleep.