I screamed his name with my head thrown back, eyes closed, his name like a frantic prayer spilling over and over from my lips, “Domino, Domino, Domino!”

   His face was suddenly above me. “Your arm seems better.”

   I blinked up at him. I’d slid down the pillows and buried myself deeper into them as I thrashed around. The sling was loose around my neck, because my arm wasn’t in it anymore. I managed to gasp, “Yes.”

   “Good, because I want to fuck you now.”

   “Yes, God, yes.”

   He smiled, and my mind could almost process that he was on all fours above me, his arms on either side of my upper body, his knees between my legs. He was already wearing a condom like a pale shadow over the hardness of him.

   He leaned his lower body on top of me but kept his upper body propped above me. He tried to slide himself inside me but couldn’t quite get the angle. If I could have moved I’d have helped him, but I was still lying there boneless and floating on the afterglow of the sex we’d already had. He used his hand to guide himself inside me. I was so wet, but tight, the way I got after oral sex. He was wide enough that he had to push to work himself inside me, one delicious inch at a time. I was making small, eager noises by the time he got himself as deep inside me as he could, our bodies wedded together as intimately as it was possible to be.

   “Look at me, Anita,” he said.

   I’d been watching his body sliding inside mine, but his words made me look up. He was staring down at me. “I want you to look at me while we make love. I want you to look into my eyes the whole time.”

   “I don’t know if I can.”

   “I want to watch your eyes while we make love. I want you to watch my eyes and not my body.”

   The thought of looking him in the eyes the whole time made me uncomfortable, and strangely self-conscious. I might have protested, but I’d been with Jade enough to know why he might be asking this now. She saw too much eye contact during sex as aggression, and that had been with me, another woman; I couldn’t imagine how much worse the issue would be between her and a man. Even in the middle of sex Jade seemed to hide; I could understand Domino wanting someone who didn’t hide. Someone who saw him, and enjoyed being with him, no flinching, no punishing him for being a man. You could have sympathy for Jade’s issues, but her unwillingness to work through them in therapy had limited my sympathy after a while. I didn’t ask if Domino was coming to the same conclusions. I just gave him what he wanted. I looked at him as his body began to work in and out of mine. He stopped moving long enough to throw enough pillows off the bed to give himself a firmer surface for his arms to push against. I stared up into eyes that reminded me of fire as he found his rhythm, a little faster now, but not as deep as he could go, seeking for that first spot close to the opening. I knew my breathing changed, but something must have shown on my face, because he smiled and kept sliding himself over and over in that hip-moving rhythm that had quickened my breathing and made me grab onto his arms where they kept his upper body propped above me. I watched the orange of his iris spread until the red was only a thin line around his pupil as his own breathing began to speed up. I could feel the weight between my legs growing, and knew I was close. I told him so, as I stared into his face and let him see every shade of pleasure, every small frown and smile and gasp, and I watched the same from him. It was almost too intimate, as if we were stripping each other bare in a way we’d never done before.

   Between one second and the next, one thrust of his body and the next, he brought me screaming wordlessly, too overwhelmed for any words to hold. I spasmed with the orgasm, throwing my head back, closing my eyes.

   “Look at me, Anita. Look at me!” His voice was a deep growl, so bass it didn’t sound like him at all anymore.

   I opened my eyes and looked up to find his lips half-parted, his eyes almost frantic. He fought his body to keep its rhythm so I would scream my pleasure just one more time. I felt my nails dig into his arms where I was still holding on. He stared into my eyes and I stared back, and what I saw just a second before looked almost like fear, as if he were afraid to let himself release. His body shuddered above me, stumbled in that rhythm, and he cried out above me, his eyes wide and frantic as he thrust himself as deep inside me as he could get, which made me scream for him again. I felt him shudder inside me, felt him go inside me, his body pulsing with it, which made me cry out again and rake my nails down his arms.

   He finally closed his eyes and bowed his head over me, while his chest rose and fell as if he’d been running. There was a fine sheen of sweat down the middle of his chest. I wanted to touch his curls so close above me, but I couldn’t make my arms work. I couldn’t make anything work. I was just floating in the afterglow of all of it.

   His voice was breathy as he said, “Thank you.”

   It took me two tries to say, “Oh, Domino.”

   He raised his head enough to look at me.

   I smiled and said in a voice that was almost too breathless to work, “Domino, it was my pleasure. Oh God, it was so my pleasure.”

   He smiled then and started to pull himself out of me, one hand going to the condom to make sure everything stayed in place. He half collapsed beside me. “I need to clean up.”

   I patted his chest sort of awkwardly, because it was a bad angle for it. “You do that. I can’t move yet.”

   He got to his feet beside the bed and then staggered into the wall, trying to get into the bathroom. It made me laugh, and he laughed with me. Sex so good you run into walls.

75

   I WAS STILL lying on the bed, letting my mind and newly healed body drift, when there was a forceful knock on the door. It was the sort of knock that police give, very authoritative and loud. The adrenaline rush cleared the floating happiness of afterglow. I sat up and called out, “Domino?”

   There was a knock at the connecting door, and Ethan said, “Coming through,” and opened the door without asking. He had a gun bare in his hand, and I was okay with that. I was scrambling across the bed for the one I’d left handy on the bedside table. Once I had it in one hand and the sheets covering my chest in the other one, I felt a little better. I always needed clothes and weapons to feel really secure.

   Domino came out of the bathroom, still nude, but he had a gun in his hand, which meant he’d stashed one in there somewhere and I hadn’t known it. I was sort of impressed, or sad with myself. “I heard,” he said.

   “Who is it?” Ethan asked from the open connecting door.

   Domino shook his head and went toward the door. Most people would have put their eye to the peephole, but he didn’t. He stood to one side and about a foot from the door, as the knock sounded again, and a man’s voice said, “Hotel security!” The voice had that cop sound to it. I was betting he either had been a cop or was one earning extra money on the side.