AN: This chapter is full of swearing, and perhaps an M amount of adult themes. Doesn't it sound yummy? LOL. I still love Bryce. Can't help myself. :D I attempt to update every five days. But in those five days I also try to write another few thousand words so that I'm always writing about sixty or so thousand words ahead of where I'm posting. So if I don't find time to write, sometimes I don't update. Sometimes I get so much response right away that I update quicker. Five days is the average I'm striving for. I'm hoping it'll give me time to have this story written and the first half of part two done as well before I start posting part two. And the reason why there've already been two Saturdays is because she arrived on one. She's staying just over two weeks in actual fact. She arrived on a weekend, there's one in the middle, and she thinks she's going home on the Monday following what is her third weekend in the US. But we'll see. I've already written the first forty pages of part two…I also really like part two. It might just be better than this story, in my most humble opinion. Anywho…Enjoy. T

The Funeral of a Good Girl

By – TempestRaces

Chapter Forty Six – Of Broom closets and Bowie Knives

Sweating under the lights, the only thought on Tempest's mind after five double rum and cokes and an hour of straight flat out dancing was not falling on her ass. It wasn't so much Craig keeping her attention as her love of dancing to hip hop. The fact he was good didn't hurt, but he really could have been any guy who knew where his hands went and what his feet and hips were supposed to do.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew she was going to have to drive her car where ever she ended up crashing because she wouldn't leave it overnight in a parking lot. She knew she had only planned on having one drink or maybe two while she killed time. So how she ended up nicely buzzing and dancing with a nice looking guy she knew was off limits was beyond her comprehension. Craig executed a particularly intricate move and it took all her concentration to follow his lead. She tossed her hair out of her face in irritation, and the tumbled curls danced around her head.

"So, am I keeping up ok?" Craig leaned down to ask in her ear.

"You're ok," she called back with a smile.

Craig answered with a smile of his own. He happened to look around the room and almost did a double take when he saw who was standing between the door and the bar. "You're in trouble," he sing songed down at his companion. "Don't look, but guess who just walked in and is busy staring at us?"

"You've gotta be shittin' me?"

"Nope. You should likely pull a disappearing act."

"He's by the only door out that doesn't have a fire alarm attached, and you can bet he planned it that way. Besides, I can't drive right now and I can't leave the car out there all night."

"Then I would suggest you are going to be having it out with one very upset looking male person named Vince. Maybe you should go to the bar and order a drink. Pretend you don't know he's here. Better if he doesn't actually get within grabbing distance if you're with me."

"You're likely right. I'll be ok. I can handle Vince. I'd rather not, but I can do it."

Craig smirked. "I never had any doubts. Thanks for the dance, and I'll see you tomorrow night?"

"You know it." With a wave, Tempest headed off the dance floor and walked up to the bar. She ordered when the bartender looked her way and waited for her drink. When she realized who was on the bar stool beside her, she did a double take before a grin lifted her lips. "You too, huh?"

"Dragged along for the ride. How you been?"

"Kinda busy. You?"

"Oh, you know, worried about keeping V out of jail. Otherwise ok. He's out for your blood."

"I kinda figured. I didn't figure on him finding me here though. I wouldn't have gotten quite so buzzed had I known. I can't even sneak out the back and take off."

Bryce shrugged. "He'd find you anyway."

"Yeah. It'll be even worse since I was dancing with Craig when he got here. He'll be pissed and jealous. Never a good combination with V." Tempest turned around to lean on the bar as she stared out over the dancing crowd. She gulped her drink. "So, he's really mad huh?"

"Livid. What were you thinking?"

"That five thousand dollars for half an hours work was too good to say no to."

Bryce nodded and looked around. "Here he comes."

"Had to happen sooner or later. How much you wanna bet he was trying to get enough of a handle on himself that he knew he could look at me and not backhand me into next year?"

Bryce laughed. "Well, get himself in check sure. But he'd never backhand a girl. Not Vince."

There was a hint of something serious in that statement, and Tempest knew it. But she was too drunk, and nervous over the coming confrontation to touch it right now. So she just nodded to show she had heard and agreed with the statement.

"Enjoying your evening?" Vince asked in a deceptively calm voice when he finally reached where they waited.

"It's ok," Tempest answered with a one shouldered shrug. "You?"

Vince didn't even bother trying to come up with an answer. "We need to talk." His eyes scanned the room. "Over there." He didn't for her answer either way. He took a hold of her upper arm, stood her up off her stool and started to march her toward a dark hall at the rear of the room.

"I take it I don't get a say in this, do I?" she asked, amusement at the situation colouring her voice. Vince was nothing if not predictable.

"What do you find funny?" Her finding humour in the situation made him so angry he didn't know how he was still functioning. He'd been pissed but had managed to get his temper under control before. When it became clear she found the situation less than serious, all the anger returned and then some.

"Nothing," she answered. A giggle hiccupped out of her against her will. I should not have had so much to drink! "Ooops," she put a hand over her mouth and glanced up at him, her green eyes dancing with mirth.

"Do you know how easy it would have been for you to end this evening dead in a ditch someplace instead of hiding in a dance club, you little idiot?" Vince growled as he continued to drag her off the main club floor.

"Not as easy as you think. After all, you only knew I wasn't a pro at that kind of thing because you knew me."

She was right and it pissed him off even more. He would have sworn that was impossible but he guessed he would have been wrong. He couldn't get the image of her glistening skin out of his mind. And he couldn't forget her skin was dewy because she'd been dancing all over another man for the last hour. And she'd put her life in danger tonight. Twice. Because she was infuriating. And keeping her in some semblance of line would be a full time job for the rest of her life. For someone, he was quick to amend in his own head. Someone had to. But it wouldn't be him. Not in five short days. She'd be gone, and thankfully, she'd be gone back to somewhere there wasn't quite so much trouble for her to find. An image of her broken by someone stronger than her that had taken exception to her presence in a dangerous deal filled his mind. And all the anger came back and then some.

His grip on her arm tightened and he pushed her ahead of him down a darkened hall.

"Where are we goin'?" she asked in a conversational tone. The anger pouring off Vince would be very scary if she let herself dwell on it, so she was forcing herself to remain calm and collected. As much as she could with his fingers bruising her upper arm, that was.

"Someplace where no one will interrupt me while I yell at you," Vince growled back.

"And you hope to find this place in a crowded club?" The look he shot her at her insolent question told her without a doubt that she should have kept it to herself. Livid was far too tame a description for what Vince was. His grip on her arm was starting to actually hurt as he squeezed harder in his anger. He marched her further down the hall, which cumulated in three doors, all marked staff only. Vince seemed to pick one at random and shoved the door open. The open door revealed a supply closet/maintenance room.

Like every other wall in the place, the walls of the small room were painted a blue so deep it was almost black. There were shelving units filled with various cleansers and paper products against one wall, and a commercial mop in a yellow wheeled pail beside them. Other than those items, and a single small, high window which was longer than it was tall and mounted horizontally in the wall, the room was dark and empty. It wasn't all that much quieter than the rest of the club, but it was far enough removed to allow conversation without shouting. However, she knew Vince had found his goal. Were she to yell for assistance no one would hear her. He used the grip he still had on her arm to back her up against the wall opposite the shelves. He then caged her in, one hand flat on either side of her head as he crowded her. His fury, so far intruded into her personal space as he got right in her face made her edgy, and if she was honest, slightly nervous about what was about to go down. He was furious.

"I'm gonna ask one more time. What were you thinking, doing that for Harry?" He didn't allow her time to answer his question, carrying on with his rant instead. "I don't care how well you think you could have handled anything that came up. You're not involved in that world and you had no business playing with something you don't understand."

"I wasn't playing. I was made an offer too good to say no to and I took it. I was equipped to handle it, whether you want to hear it or not." Nervous or not, she wasn't about to start playing the damsel in distress now. If he didn't like how she chose to live her life, no matter where she was living it, he knew where the door was.

"Really? You were equipped to handle it?" His control over the desire to shake her violently was hanging on by a tenuous thread, rendering his question a snarled inquiry.

"Yes," she answered his question defiantly. "I was."

He had a point to prove. He couldn't have her thinking that she could manage such a situation. She couldn't, and he could be finding her dead right now, or be the one taking the phone call that the cops had found her broken body on the side of the road. And she had to know that was not acceptable. She had to know that she could not do that to him. To Jesse, he amended his thought. She could not do that to the kid. It would kill him. So better she learned the lesson now, from him, than the permanent and hard way from some thug in a dark, abandoned parking lot. He stood up straight but stayed too close to her to allow her to move away from him. He kept her pressed to the wall with his angry presence. "Take off that rag you have posing as a shirt."

"Excuse me?" Her pulse kicked into high gear at his growled order. She knew she should be outraged. Maybe a little scared too. And she was, a bit of each one. Unfortunately they were both overshadowed by a definite sense of anticipation for finding out what he was planning next. He was livid, she wasn't exactly calm herself. Where was it going to go as it played out?

"I said, take off that black rag before I take it off for you."

"No," she snapped back before thinking better of it. Even if she had thought it through, she figured her answer still would have been the same. No matter how forced her outrage in the face of his orders, she wasn't just going to cave in and do as he told her. Besides, she'd decided that she didn't want Vince anymore. Hadn't she? Of course she had, she reassured herself. So there was no way she was going to take off her clothes because he told her to. And just as that thought registered, he had her shirt bottom in one hand and her two wrists in his other. He always managed to move so fast for such a large man. Before she could do much more than sputter in rage, her shirt was over her head and on the floor behind him. She fought her urge to cross her arms in front of her chest. She still had on a black bra, for crying out loud. He wasn't really seeing anything. "What do you think you're doing?" she snarled. Whether she was secretly enjoying herself or not, she wasn't going to let on to him she was. And her anger was still very much real. Anger and desire were quite capable of mixing into one substance akin to nitrous for her blood, she was swiftly finding. She wondered if it was the same for him, and if it was, what was going to occur when the two burns collided.

"Take off your pants," he ordered instead of answering. "Now."

"I think not," she snapped back. "This has gone quite far enough."

"Maybe you didn't hear me. I said, take off your pants, now."

"I heard you just fine. I simply said no. I'm not taking my clothes off for you because I'm not having sex with you. Therefore, my clothes are staying on. We don't need to be naked to have this fight, so just fuckin' spit it out already. Whatever the fuck you wanna say, say it and go fuck yourself."

He ignored her angry taunt with difficulty and chose to exhibit this feigned indifference to her by repeating his earlier order rather than addressing what she'd said. "Either take off your pants or I'll take them off for you. And if that's the route you take, I'll guarantee you that you won't be wearing them back out of here." He didn't really intend to have sex with her any more than she said she planned on letting him. He was only out to make a point, the point that if a man wanted to force her into things, wanted to hurt her or worse, there would be little she could do about it. That no matter how strong she figured she was, or how tough, when she was outweighed by a hundred pounds, she'd be at someone else's mercy. He took a half step closer to her and took hold of the top of her tight cotton flairs.

She knew he was easily capable of ripping them off her. And then what would she do? She couldn't walk out of the club in a ripped up wifebeater and panties. There wasn't enough bravado in the world to pull that off. Still, she was not doing anything against her will, much to her chagrin. She figured she had to know part of what had always drawn her to Vince was his dominant personality and she was being treated to a huge dose of it right now. Even though her mind knew it would be far better to keep on fighting him off, showing him she didn't want what he was offering, her body still knew that with him was where satisfaction was. Reluctantly, because she hated to give him his way, no matter how much she wanted to give in to him for her own benefit, she moved to bend over to take off her boots in preparation for taking her pants off. She really couldn't afford to let him tear her only pants off her body. She'd never make an escape then.

"Leave the shoes," he ordered gruffly.

Never breaking eye contact, she started to wiggle out of her black low rise pants. She allowed him to see that he hadn't broken her, that she wasn't giving in to his will so much as saving herself the humiliation of leaving the room in her panties because of his inability to make a point without violence. When she got her pants down so far they caught around her boots and she had to bend over to stretch the material over the tops of her shoes. She did her left leg before moving to the right, finally breaking eye contact with him so she could focus on the task at hand, bent over to reach her shoes.

And when she stood back up she had a handful of his hair being used to pull his head backward to expose his neck and a wicked looking hunting knife pressed to his jugular before he could blink, though he did manage to do so in shock after the fact, she noted. She backed him around so that he had his back to the wall, reversing their positions. He lifted his hand to grab her wrist and she pressed slightly harder on the knife. He felt the blade kiss his skin hard enough to sting but yet not hard enough to draw blood. "Move any way that I don't tell you to and I'll slice you well enough to put you down. Understand?"

He didn't acknowledge her in any way, but he didn't make any more movements her way either. His eyes flashed angrily in the dim light from the moon outside the single high window. If she'd thought he was hellishly pissed before, she'd had no idea. But somehow, being the one with the weapon made her feel much more secure about her position. "Now, given that I'm holding you to the wall with a bowie knife, I think you'd have to agree that I wasn't helpless now, and I wasn't without the skill to protect myself then, either."

Standing in front of him in a black lacy bra and a scrap of black something with a lot of strings pretending to cover the rest of her, holding a huge knife on him, she was the hottest thing he'd ever seen. He was so angry he was seeing red, but she was still the hottest female he'd ever seen in his whole life. He couldn't deny it. She had a knife to his throat, she'd caught him with his proverbial pants down because he hadn't expected her to have a weapon on her, and he should be deeply embarrassed. Yet, he wasn't. He was mad and not just with anger, though he was still infuriated with her. He was also mad with a need to reverse their positions and use that knife to cut the necessary straps to take the scrap of black off her lower body and have her right there in the supply closet of a dance club with the throbbing beat of dance music washing over them.

There was the anger at himself that he knew he should have been feeling back when she'd surprised him with the knife. He was more mad at himself for wanting her again than he was for letting her get past his defences with a weapon. He had planned this as a lesson that would go only as far as her acknowledging that she easily could have been forced to do things she would never want to do, and would never recover from being forced into before she was killed or left for dead by the very people who had perpetuated violence against her. But now it had gone beyond that. Now he wanted her again more than he wanted to teach her a lesson. But what to do about it while she had him pinned with a sharp object millimetres away from his jugular, and he still wanted to spank her a great deal, he didn't know just yet.

Tempest decided a little turning of the tables was in order. "Take off your shirt," she ordered as a smirk teased up the corners of her mouth. Turning the game around on him lessened some of her anger. Turnabout was fair play, didn't they say? When he didn't move to comply, the smirk left her face. "Unless you want to be explaining to Bryce why you're shirtless and bleeding when you leave this room, you had better do as I asked. Otherwise, I will cut the shirt off of you and make sure the knife cuts your skin for my trouble."

She almost seemed upset with him enough to do it too, he noted. Much for the same reasons as she had obeyed him, he did as she asked and pulled his tank up and over his head. It was more out of the self serving desire to have less clothes between their skin than any genuine fear of her. And then, taking advantage of the fact she had had to move the knife away from his neck to allow him to remove his shirt, he grabbed her wrist, twisted it and grabbed the knife as it fell from her limp hand as she whimpered softly in pain and shock. He hated to hurt her—so much so that it sickened him slightly—but he hated to have a dangerous looking blade pressed to his skin worse. In a flash their positions were reversed again and he had her crowded against the cinderblock wall again.

"You got anything else sharp hidden someplace that I should know about?" he growled.

She shook her head no, feeling a small measure of true fright for the first time all night. She had held him at knifepoint and threatened to cut him and now her only security measure, the knife, was in his hands. She had threatened to cut his skin with it and now he had the weapon, not her. All the clothes she had left were her underwear and a pair of clunky boots and she'd made him take off half of his clothes. She was definitely feeling some fear, but it wasn't over what he would do to her with the knife. It was more a fear that they were going to have sex again, and there was nothing either of them could do about it. Not when they'd already gotten so rough with each other. It was like foreplay between them, and it was obvious from the way they were both breathing heavily and eyeing each other. The fear was largely because she had no idea what it was going to do to the fragile repairs of her very self that she had barely completed after the last time he had used her and tossed her away so hard and quickly it shattered her inside. Not that she could admit that out loud, and not that she could deny herself the animalistic passion she could sense was about to be unleashed between them. She did spare a moment to regret her lack of self control. Then she resigned herself to the inevitable.

Normally totally in tune with her emotions, even if he was blind to what they meant most of the time, at this point his lust blinded him to her genuine fear. All he could sense and see and feel was desire. He slid her blade against her skin, under her panties and used the sharp tip of the knife to cut both black straps crossing her hips. The shredded cloth fell to the floor. The feel of the cool metal knife against the flesh of her hips made her shudder as her breath hitched.

He pressed the hand he still had fisted around the knife handle against the wall slightly above and to the right of her head. His free hand he slid over her hip, down to rub across the slight convexity of her belly before sliding lower. As he touched her in all the right ways, her head fell back against the wall with a moan. When he realized their fight had done the same thing to her as it had to him, some emotion hit him in the gut with the force of a well placed kick. There was too much emotion between them, but fuck him if he could do anything about it now.

She couldn't hide what she wanted. Not from herself and not from him. The need to have him again was too great. He was touching her in all the right ways to make sure her self protecting resistances melted away and he likely didn't even know he was doing it. When she exposed her neck to him he lowered his head and bit her on the pad of flesh where her shoulder and neck joined. It was a dominance move, and she knew it, but he kept it so gentle, so careful to only hint at what he could do and ensure his touch only drove her further into a fog of desire instead that a moan escaped her again. She heard something metallic hit the floor and opened her eyes reluctantly. Her knife was discarded on the floor beside them and the hand that had been holding it was now cupping the side of her face.

"Tell me to stop," there was a subtle begging tone to his voice which was unfamiliar. "I promised myself that I wouldn't do this to you again, no matter how much I wanted to. But I can't stop myself right now Trouble. This wasn't what I planned when I took you down here, I swear to you. But looking at you like this," he paused as his eyes scanned the moonlit, luminous expanse of her almost totally bare skin, "I can't do the right thing and stop on my own. But if you tell me to, if you tell me that I'm a fuckin' prick for what I did and that you want me to leave you alone, I don't care if it kills me. I'll do it. So please, tell me you want me to stop."

He was so beautiful to her, standing there in the faint light, begging her not to let him break her again that her heart melted just a little. She wanted nothing else more than she wanted to feel like she belonged in his arms. And when things were right between them, they were always right enough to ensure that she felt like in his arms was where she was made to be. "But I don't want you to stop." It was her turn to press her hand to his cheek. "I would have been fighting you off tooth and nail if I did. And no matter what you think, you'd be at least hurting in several places to show for it. So no, I don't want you to stop." She watched with a kind of breathless impatience as his mouth slowly lowered toward hers. As their mouths fused and his hands fisted in her hair as he pressed into her space, she lowered a hand toward the zipper of his pants.

He cradled her to him once her feet were back on terra ferma and felt her shudder as the cool air of the room blew over her overheated, damp skin. He hated himself just a little in that moment, as she rested her head on his chest as though it was made to be there. Yet his arms still held her close and all he could think of was getting her home, tucking her into his bed and holding her where he knew she'd be safe for what was left of the night. Unable to fight the motion, he kissed her forehead softly. Her eyes flickered open.

"We should get back to Bryce before he comes looking for which ever one of us is still alive and to offer his services to move the body," he said in a low tone, unable to keep the contentment out of his voice. Hate himself for the action or not, he never felt better than after he'd been with her. It was more than just sexual gratification, and the whole concept of that scared the hell out of him. But it was like a moth to a flame. He knew it was bad for him on the whole, and knew he shouldn't even think about touching something so deadly, but damned if he could help himself anyway.

"Um," she answered on a yawn, stretching sinuously against his chest. "It's late."

"You're right, it is. Now, let's just find your clothes."

She giggled. "Your shirt is hanging off the mop handle."

"Good to know," he answered, before snagging the shirt and pulling it on. He then picked up her knife and slid it back into the sheath tucked into the top of her boot. He picked her things up off the floor while he was crouched and handed them to her.

The fact that he'd rearmed her after she'd used her knife against him touched her in some way. He had set out to teach her a humiliating lesson about what he perceived her limits were. There had been no kindness in the gesture either. It had been purely self serving on his part. And she'd returned the favour by putting a knife to his most venerable vein and threatening to use it, with some seriousness. She might not have cut his jugular but she certainly would have cut his skin and drew blood if he'd pushed her. And he had to know that. Yet, he'd given her back her knife without so much as a word of caution. She redressed herself in her pants and wifebeater, lost in thought. He was always doing that one thing that started to nullify all the asshole things he'd done before. But still, how long until he shattered her this time? She had no idea where her panties had ended up and figured since they were wrecked, there wasn't much sense wasting a lot of time looking for them either. When she was dressed, Vince moved to open the door.

"He's going to know what we did," Tempest said as Vince hauled the door open.

Vince started to protest but stopped. She was right. She looked far too dreamy and her lips were far too red and swollen for having just come from a fight. And he was willing to bet he looked far too content and satisfied with himself to have just tanned her ass as he'd threatened. But what was done was done. "He knew we were going home to do the same thing on the night you met him, so I doubt he'll be too scandalized. Come on, it's time to go home."

They collected Bryce who gave her the once over but gave Vince a dirty, mean look before following them out the door. Vince tossed his keys at Bryce. "I'll get it back from you tomorrow." He turned to Tempest and held out his hand. She deposited her keys into his palm without a fight. She was too tired and still slightly too intoxicated to really want to drive. She allowed Vince to take the lead role once again and slid onto the passenger seat of her own car. Once Vince was in and settled she looked up at him.

"There is a condition to you getting to both drive my car and take me with you where ever we're going."

"Oh, and what's that?"

"We are not going back to Dom's. No discussion, no debate, no nothing. I'm not going back there tonight. I told Jess I'd think about going back tomorrow. But I am not going back tonight."

"Temp, it's three am. Where else do you want to go?"

"Don't care, but it won't be back to Dom's."

"It's not exactly Dom's you know. It's where all of us live."

"If he gets to play lord and ruler of all he surveys than at least for tonight I'm not willing to stay there."

She delivered this assurance to the passenger side window, not to his face. Her arms were folded across her chest and she'd ground out the statement through her teeth. It was clear she was dead serious about her willingness to spend the night at their house. He refused to think of it as just Dom's because it was his home too. But none of that changed the fact that if he simply drove home he had no doubt she'd refuse to come into the house and they'd have a huge fight on the lawn that would end with her taking off, being in no shape to drive or not irrelevant.

"Fine," Vince answered on a sigh.