The Funeral of a Good Girl

By – TempestRaces

Chapter Fifty Nine – Of smouldering Embers and Fanning the Flames

He hadn't really intended to grab her like that. Just to have it out with her outside where there was less chance of them waking the whole house with the fight they were about to have. Then he watched her talk to the other man in his truck. The cop. The cop who drove a GMC Jimmy like some normal man. And watched him grab her wrist and say something to her with that earnest look on his face. And saw her answer with a serious, concerned look on her own. And them having serious, concerned conversations with each other made him so angry he wanted to start punching the walls of the house. So when she walked past where he stood, he threw her into the dark shadows in the corner where no one could see them. He was glad he at least had the presence of mind to make sure she wasn't injured in the move. "Did you let him put his hands on you?" He growled the question without thinking how it would sound. How wrapped up in her it would make him look. How, despite his distaste for her uncalled for jealous reaction, he wasn't above a little of his own irrational jealousy.

"What the fuck?" she growled back, sure of who she was dealing with at last.

"Well?" he pushed, crowding her further into the lee of the porch. "Did you let him touch you?" He didn't give her time to answer, just leaned down and crushed his lips to hers with a snarl. Imagining 'hot cop'—as Mia had spent the night calling the other man—with his hands on Tempest had made sure he spent the night ready to snap something in half. He kissed her hard, pushing his tongue into her mouth as his hands roamed her body. He felt her try to resist him, and was gratified when she couldn't.

Her anger at herself for being unable to roust any interest in herself for Jim made her push back against the obstacle in her path. Namely Vince. She tangled her hands in his hair equally roughly and kissed him back. The emotions involved were raw and angry. She thought that perhaps in that moment she actually hated him for being able to make her desire him when she knew she shouldn't and when she couldn't desire a good man who she should. For smiling at the little blonde like he was a normal, happy guy. For being nice to that blonde in ways he wouldn't be nice to her.

When she got rough with him, like she was infuriated with him, it pushed him farther into the red haze of his jealous anger that she went out with another man, gave another man a chance to touch her body, kiss the lips he was currently nipping harder than he normally would have thought to do. The hand he had cushioning the back of her head closed around a handful of her hair, which he used to drag her head back, exposing the arch of her neck. He bit her hard, and the hand he still had pressed to the small of her back moved down to grab her ass and pull her closer to him. He bit her neck again and she whimpered, her hands still tangled in his hair. He swiped his tongue over the delicate area at the base of her neck where her pulse throbbed rapidly, beating out a staccato rhythm under her skin.

She used his hair as leverage and tipped his head down and to the side, biting the side of his neck hard enough to bruise before moving along to bite at his earlobe. She was wildly angry, and so was he. It was going to be anyone's best guess how it ended. His best guess was that there was about to be a change of venue. The scuffle was about to get really physical and he wasn't taking it there in the backyard. He started to walk backwards, dragging her with him while still kissing her and nipping at her neck and earlobes. Once they were in the house and the back door was closed behind them, he was shocked to find himself pushed forcefully into the wall beside the opening of the basement stairs by a whipcord storm in high heels. She kissed him hard and he grabbed her ass, pulling her flush against his body as he kissed her back.

They were both irate, and it pissed her off worse. What right did he have to be mad at her? She caught him flirting with the blond whore right there in front of everyone and all of a sudden she didn't have the right to check out his competition? Fuck him and fuck the double standard. Her hands pushed up under his tank and her nails started to score across the heavy muscles of his stomach. She was gratified when he hissed out a shocked breath. Her nails bit into his sides next, the sensations they caused biting somewhere between pain and pleasure.

The fact that her outfit was one piece and he couldn't get his hands around her ribcage on her bare skin frustrated him to no end. The dress had to go, but he didn't need to be told it wasn't going anywhere in the dining room. How to get them down the stairs without killing either of them? He didn't want to let her go long enough to walk down the stairs in case she came to her senses long enough to change her mind about the conclusion of their night. He felt the weight of her departure pressing in on him. She was leaving in such a short amount of time and she'd spent a whole night of that time out with some other man. Some loser cop. All the time she had left belonged to him. He needed it all to try and get her out of his blood. He did the only thing he could think to do. He crouched down, put a shoulder in her belly and stood with her over his shoulder. He started down the stairs while she was still in shock.

When Vince started down the stairs with her slung over his shoulder like a sack of some grain product for the second time in her life, she was literally stunned speechless. When she got her wits about her enough that speech would have been possible, she realized that yelling at him while watching his ass muscles work as he descended the stairs had absolutely no dignity at all. And, given the position she was in, she needed all the dignity she could dig up. Given how short her dress was on one side, she was very glad that this time she had something on under it, and that dignity was often overrated anyway. When he entered his room, closed the door and turned on the light, she tensed in preparation for being put back on her feet.

"Better turn the stereo on first, I guess," he said to her, almost conversationally. "I figure that the rest of the house is gonna need all the help they can get not to hear you taking me down a few." He flicked on the lamp before picking up the remote to his stereo.

"Smarter than you look. Ain't sayin' much, but you're smarter than you look," she hissed.

Oh, she was royally pissed with him. Things were going to get a lot angrier before they got better. He turned on the stereo and turned on whatever random heavy rock CD was in the player to a moderate volume. It wouldn't drown her out, but it would at least muffle her words to the rest of the occupants of the downstairs level. Rather than set her on her feet, he tossed her onto the bed on her back. He figured it would keep her disorientated for a further few seconds. He was right and he used the reprieve to take his shirt off. He figured he'd get a head start on her.

She scrambled up and back onto her feet. "Just where do you get off?"

He cocked a brow at her question, implying a pithy answer to her inquiry. When her brows drew together over her pert little nose, he wished he could take back his flippant answer to her question. Ok, so, implying 'between your legs' wasn't the smartest move on his part. She was swiftly forgetting about working off their anger and focusing solely on being pissed off. That wasn't what he had in mind. He forced his voice to sound calm and rational. "You actually went out with the cop. The cop, Temp. Then you let the cop take you home. Home to this house, of all places. And let the cop touch you in the driveway."

She got in his face, crowding into his space. Showing not one iota of what would have been intelligent fear. "The cop spent the whole night paying attention to me." Her growled 'me' was punctuated with a sharp jab to the chest with one sensibly manicured nail. The trend continued as she did. "The cop never once stared at another girl for more than a couple seconds while he was out on a date with me. The cop didn't flirt with anyone but me. The cop didn't let other girls put their hands on him right in front of me. The cop didn't tell me about the other girl he really wanted to screw ad nauseam." She paced away a few steps, tried to control her need to scream. To just shriek with her head thrown back, in some throwback to evolution. If you're dealing with an ape, you might as well act like one! She stalked back over to her opponent and finished with one more swift jab to the sternum. "Jim treated me like a lady." 'Bout drove me crazy, but he still did it.

When she threw Amanda at him, and Mia yet again, all the anger he had gotten over came rushing back in a red wave. He took a step her way. "So it's treating you like a lady when he puts his hands on you?"

"You call that little grab on my way out of the truck putting his hands on me?" She rolled her eyes. "But the answer to your question is yes. It's treating me like a lady when he takes my elbow to help me up curbs, when he guides me through doors ahead of him with a hand on the small of my back. When he hands me into the truck. When he keeps his eyes on me for one whole evening without the necessity of a cat fight to ensure it."

"I'll show you putting hands on you," he growled, taking another step her way to allow him to grab her shoulders before leaning over to kiss her again. Her words conjured up thoughts of the cop with his hands on her waist, holding her hand. Just, no. He had no right. His mouth claimed hers, his hands slid up from her shoulders to cup her face. His mood was still bordering on violent, thoughts of the cop—Jim—touching her body driving him past the point of rational thought. He wanted to find the cop and put an end to the problem. Dead men didn't hold girl's hands, didn't take them on dates. But since that wasn't an option, and in his few lucid moments, he realized how irrational it was to want to kill another human over the simple act of touching a woman that he had no right to feel possessive over anyway, he knew taking Jim out wasn't an option. But that didn't stop the feelings of needing to do it.

She allowed her hands to play across the muscles of his bare back. He'd been flirting with the blonde in the shop today, but it was thoughts of her with another man touching her that had driven him to the brink of insanity with jealousy. It was her he had waited all night on. Imagining the worst. That had to count for something. So when she felt his fingers tug at the zip of her dress before tugging at the tie at her nape, she did nothing to stop the downward motion of the black cloth, allowing it to puddle inky around her feet. She'd known where she would end up at the conclusion of her night all evening long. It didn't come as a surprise. She still knew she had to make him work for it. And she still knew she had every right to be pissed off.

"Did his hands on you make you feel like this?" he ground out against her mouth.

He was so jealous it almost frightning. It was frightening in many ways. How quickly could he turn into over-possessive, scary, stalker boyfriend? It didn't matter. In a few days she'd be far too far away for him to find it practical. She didn't answer his question with an answer, but rather with a question of her own. "Did her hands on you make you crazy like mine do? Does thinking about another man holding her hand make you want to break things like thinking of Jim touching me does?"

He didn't answer her either. The answer to both questions was painfully obvious. He pushed her back onto the bed and looked at her lying there where she landed. Her hair was a wild curtain of inky fire around her shoulders. Her skin looked like pale honey in the weak lamplight, the curves of it hidden only by the black lace boyshorts she had been wearing under her dress and the knee high black leather boots still on her feet. He caught one of her legs at the ankle and lifted it before lowering the zipper of her boot toward her foot and pulling the shoe off her leg. He repeated the motion on the other side before crawling over her onto the bed. Her arms found their way around him, welcoming his presence even though her anger still burned as hot as his. He turned out the light.

And as he lay wrapped around her afterward, wrapped in her hair like a silken, scented cocoon, he had to muse that the metal from the stereo likely hadn't saved poor Leon from hearing more than he bargained for. It was a hell of a way to burn out one's anger though. Much better than letting it smoulder and spark for days. He clicked the radio off with the remote, which he found on the pillow behind her head. He wrapped one of her curls around his finger, rubbing the texture between it and his thumb almost absently. He sighed. "She's Bryce's sister and I've known her since before grade school. Since before Dominic. Almost since before I can remember because I only vaguely remember when she was born. There will never be anything more than friendship between me'n Amanda. She's practically my sister. I knew I wasn't catching you once you took off but I was gonna tell you at supper. Then you never came home for supper because you were out with the cop." He spit out the word cop like it tasted bad. It was clear he hadn't totally forgiven her for going out with the other man.

"Jim and I had literally no feelings for each other in any sense of anyone's world." It was her turn to sigh. She would rather not admit the fact she hadn't been able to find herself attracted to the handsome officer to Vince. "He knew it from the beginning of the night and so did I." It felt like giving him too much ammo against her. But she couldn't say nothing after he'd told her about the other girl. "It was like dating your best friend. I only went out with him in the first place because I was pissed off at you for the blonde skan—" she thought better of her comment when she thought on the information she had been provided with. "The blonde chick."

He chuckled a moment at her catty comment before sobering. "How's the hand?" Had their violent sport reopened her wound? How did she make him forget she was still female when she pissed him off? He sure didn't treat her like she was anything less than his equal in size and strength then.

"Fine. I'm fine." She yawned.

"Yeah, I agree. It was a long night." Walking around angry, unable to settle and looking for an excuse to pound someone or something into dust and not being obliged. "Night."

"Umm," was her only answer.

She was over half asleep already, her deep, rhythmic breaths warming his chest. With a split second decision, he decided that Dom could survive without him until ten or so the next day. It was already two thirty. There wasn't any way he was getting up at eight. It just wasn't happening. Not after the night he'd had. He unplugged the clock with a rumbled 'oops' before settling comfortably on his back, draping the girl half on top of him with a contented sigh that she slept through, secure in his presence. How're you gonna sleep when she's not around to be that comfortable weight of skin on skin on top of you? He told himself to shut up, took a deep breath of air scented like her hair and fell quickly asleep.