Be All, End All

Darynn tipped back her bottle and finished off the last of her beer. Carefully she slid it into the hole next to its friends and grabbed a full.

Loud music came at her from the house next door. Voices, the roar of engines, and more music. It was still early, only ten or so, this would go on for hours yet.

There was a group on the back lawn. Looked like they had a cooler, or maybe even a keg and had laid claim to the picnic table. Wanna-be’s all. First weekend since Race Wars, Toretto house. Shit! They’d be bragging to their little friends for months about being there.

Surprisingly, Toretto himself kept them company quite a bit. There were a few familiar faces, the ones he talked to most, but the rest were shadows. He would come out, beer in hand, never sitting, and move through them. After the third visit to the backyard she saw the pattern. Through the crowd, counting heads, checking shadows, then off to the side yard so he could see the back of the garage and down the driveway. He was looking for her. She tipped her beer at him before taking a long chug.

Was he methodically going through the house in the same way? It would appear to most that he was being a vigilant host, which should’ve drawn attention on its own. Dom wasn’t a host, he was just the magnet that drew in the fools.

She’d woken up alone in his bed long after the sun had come up. He’d left clothes out for her, a tee and drawstring shorts, and she’d limped home in private, sore and bruised.

The driveway had been full of cars, the normal set plus two. She’d figured the whole team was in the garage, and Rome and Brian as well. It hadn’t sounded like a welcoming environment. So she’d dressed and left.

That had been twelve hours ago. Two hours ago she’d parked her car two blocks up, still among the cars for the party, but far enough away to not draw notice. The hood of her jacket up, carrying beer, no one had paid her any mind as she walked with others to the party.

In the shadows behind her trailer she’d climbed to the luggage rack and camped out. An overhanging tree concealed her completely while allowing her to see out of her hidey-hole.

Was she hiding? Yeah, for now.

While last night had been awesome, it had left her with some huge unanswered questions. Was this how her existence was to continue? A lackey mechanic that doubled as a convenient live-in whore? She couldn’t complain wholeheartedly. She loved the work and she loved the sex even more, but it went against her nature to be used in any way. And it felt like she was being used. Taken advantage of because she couldn’t turn down the scraps of attention that Dom handed out. Just like every other wanna-be down there.

The crunch of gravel had her looking around her. She couldn’t see, but someone was below her, next to her trailer.

A tiny shake of movement, and then Brian’s head popped up over the edge. She rolled her eyes. Shoulda figured.

“Whatcha doin’?” he asked, crawling until he could sit beside her.

“Watching.”

He helped himself to one of her beers and they sat for a minute watching the house and the people that were outside. Dom stepped outside just then.

“He’s looking for you,” Brian said noncommittally.

She kept her eyes on the ‘he’ in question. “Did he say so?”

“No.”

“Did you narc on me?”

He set his bottle down between his spread legs and leaned back on his hands. “No.”

They were silent for a bit.

“So are you in a funk, or what?”

“Nice talking with you, Bri. You can let yourself down unless you need help from my boot with that first step.”

He sat up, facing her. “Now, settle down. I just want to talk.”

“I don’t. And calling my being confused after a five-way orgy a funk isn’t the best way to get me all mushy.”

“What are you confused about?”

She bit her lip, finally dragging her eyes away from him and buying more time by taking a drink.

He added two and two on his own. “You want him,” he supplied.

Darynn snorted, “It’s Dominic Toretto, Bri, all of SoCal wants him.”

He smiled a little and slid the half-full bottle back into its place. “Yeah, but all of California wasn’t in his bed last night.”

She watched him backing towards the ladder. “So what? So I got the lucky straw. Someone else will win honor tonight and tomorrow night.”

Brian was already down the ladder a bit. “Darynn, I love you, but be fair. He’s not a trophy. He’s just a man.”

Darynn stared after him even after his head ducked below the edge. What the fuck?! She’d thought he’d come to talk to her, not to piss her off and confuse her even more. “Fuck you, Brian,” she whispered.

Too much activity. She should’ve known. Dom stood at the edge of the group in the backyard, someone talking to him, but his gaze was intent in another direction. She watched his head turn, marking Brian’s progress away from her trailer and toward the front of the house, and then he was looking back. Not at her truck or the trailer door, but at the roof. Could he see?

Without a word to whoever was talking to him he started walking, right at her. Shit! So much for being stealthy. Brian’s fat ass clopping away in plain sight had given her up.

She thought of making a break for it. He had quite a distance to traverse. She could abandon her post and make a break for it. It was dark, she could get away. But that reeked of cowardice, and a coward she was not.

So heart thumping abnormally hard, day-old aches throbbing anew, she watched him coming. Had to circle around her truck, then he was below her.

“You going to make me come up there?”

His voice was loud enough to carry to her, but just.

She scooted to the edge, away from the ladder and looked down at him. “You’re not a monkey?”

That thinning of his lips. He really shouldn’t let her get to him so much. “What are you doing, Darynn?”

She shrugged and raised her beer to him, “Having a few drinks at my home.”

“You’re on the roof.”

“So? Nice night, cool breeze, interesting view. Something strange about that?”

Now that muscle in his jaw ticked, she could actually see the shadow along his jaw change.

“Can you fucking answer anything seriously?”

“Hey! Fuck you. Ask a stupid question…”

He looked away from her, looking around his level. His voice was lower when he spoke again. Trying to control that temper? “Where’ve you been?”

“Recuperating.”

That brought his head up. If she didn’t know better she’d say he even looked sorry. No, wait. A guy sorry for causing a chick soreness from his dick? Maybe he just looked concerned, like with whether or not it had been too bad for her to allow it again!

“Are you okay?”

She shrugged again. There was one of those stupid questions. “Sure.” She drank from her beer until it was empty. Scooting back she traded her empty for the one Brian had tapped.

“Rynn, you make it impossible to talk to you.”

She couldn’t see him. Scooting back had broken their line of sight, but she’d heard him. She closed her eyes. Was she pushing him away unfairly? He was a guy. And on top of that he was Dominic Toretto. But then a shiver ran down her back, reminding her of how he’d toyed with her hair.

Moving back to the edge, she looked down at him. Silently she vowed to try to let him talk. He was just so fucking antagonistic and she was so quick to speak without thinking first. “I’ll listen if you want to talk.”

He rubbed a hand over his head, still not looking up at her. “I can’t talk to you. I can fuck you. I just can’t talk to you.”

She smiled. He sounded like he was complaining. “Last time I checked that’s what most guys want.”

“It’s not what I want,” he said on a sigh.

Darynn frowned. It was hard to fathom that she might be wrong, that he was more than he appeared. Was Dom in it for more than the minute, the instant gratification? It went against everything she knew about him. ‘Done and on to the next one’ seemed to be his motto.

“What do you want?”

His hand scrubbed his head this time. “I want to talk to you.”

Darynn rolled her eyes. They were back to that?

But he wasn’t done. “Without work or racing or fucking being there. I want to talk to you for even one hour without anything else there.” His head rose until he was looking at her.

She smiled down at him, “We can’t do that, Dom. If we ain’t racin’ or workin’ we’re trying to fuck.”

He smiled too, “That’s your fault.”

“Yeah, I was the one chasing your skirt for the past four months.”

No remorse in that look. Not like he was going to say that he didn’t want to fuck her, he just seemed to be trying to say that he wanted more than that too.

She raised a brow, “Well, see? That was like five minutes. Does talking about sex count as just talking?”

No comment.

A slow drink and she reseated herself, legs crossed, getting comfortable. “Then we need glass boxes cuz you’re like a pheromone factory and I have an ass that begs to be fucked, so we’re lost.”

He grinned, “You never shut up.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, were you done?”

He shook his head, his smile fading, but not leaving as he looked up at her, “I never wanna be done, Rynn. That’s the point.”

Say what? She hid her frown with a drink.

This distance was good. Maybe they didn’t need glass boxes. Her up a tree seemed to work. Standing side by side they were like magnets, attracted or opposed, but no neutral. With this distance she could still feel his pull, but it wasn’t like she was jumping ten feet down to do something about it.