life and then fall into peaceful sleep. He looked down at himself
again. Shit He glanced at his soggy, sandy clothes and then up at the
window. He finished another can of beer in quick gulps, his pulse
seemingly spiking with each swallow. He wouldn’t need the threads.
He’d leave his pistol down here too. If things got out of hand, he
didn’t want lead to start flying. He pitched the last can of Red Dog
over the fence, unopened. Let the birds pry it open and get a buzz.
Why should he have all the fun?
He opened the side door quietly and took the stairs two at a time. He
thought about kicking her bedroom door in but found it unlocked. He
pushed the door open, peered in, letting his eyes adjust to the
darkness here. He could make her out on the bed, one long hump. One
long hump. To his alcohol-saturated mind, that phrase was immensely
funny. He took three quick strides and was next to the bed.
Faith stared up at him. “Lee.” It wasn’t a question, how she said it.
It was a simple statement that he didn’t know the meaning of.
He knew she could see he was naked. Even in the darkness he trusted
she could see he was fully aroused. With a sudden thrust of his arm he
stripped the cover off her.
“Lee?” she said again, this time a question.
He looked down at the fine curves and softness of her naked body. His
pulse rose, the blood rocketed through his veins, delivering devilish
potency to a man severely wronged. He roughly bulled between her legs,
flopped down chest-to-chest. She made no move to resist, her body
limp. He started to kiss her on the neck and then stopped. It was not
that sort of thing. No tenderness. He clenched her wrists hard.
She just lay there, saying nothing, not telling him to stop. This
angered him. He breathed heavily in her face. He wanted her to know
it was the beer, not her. He wanted her to feel, to know this was not
about her or how she looked or how he felt about her or anything else.
He was a red eyed drunken sonofabitch and she was easy meat. That was
all. He loosened his grip. He wanted her to scream, to slug him as
hard as she could. Then he would stop. But not before.
Her voice broke through the sounds of what he was doing. “I’d
appreciate if you’d get your elbows off my chest.”
He wouldn’t stop, however, kept going. Hard elbow against soft tissue.
The king and the peasant. Give it to me, Faith. Clean my clock
“You don’t have to do it like this.”
“Whad’cha have in mind?” he slurred back. Navy shore leave in New
York City was the last time he had even come close to being this drunk.
Intense pain clacked against his temples. Five beers and a few glasses
of wine and he was pretty damn well blitzed. God, he was getting
old.
“Me on top. You’re obviously too intoxicated to know what you’re even
doing.” Her tone was blunt, reproachful.
“On top? Always the boss, even between the sheets? The hell with
you.” He squeezed her wrists so tightly his thumbs and index fingers
touched together. To her credit she didn’t even make a whimper, though
he could sense the pain coursing through her in how her body tensed
under him. He pawed her breasts and buttocks, roughly pummeled her
legs and torso. He made no move, though, to enter her. And it wasn’t
because he was too drunk to accomplish the mechanics; it was because
not even alcohol could make him do that to a woman. He kept his eyes
closed, didn’t want to look at her. But he dipped his face to hers.
Lee wanted Faith to smell the stink of his sweat, to soak in the barley
and hops base of his lust.
“I just thought you might enjoy it more, that’s all,” she said.
“Dammit!” he roared. “Are you just gonna let me do this?”
“Would you have me call the police?”
Her voice was like a twirling drill bit against his already throbbing