DOMINION Bentley Little (accelerated reader books .TXT) 📖

weapon was still on the hood where he’d left it, bagged, tagged, and ready for the lab: a Daneam wine bottle.

He picked up the bag, thought of the bottle still sitting back on his kitchen table, and shivered.

“Lieutenant!”

Horton jumped at the sound of the voice, nearly dropped the bag. He feigned calmness, looked back toward the evidence officer. “Yeah,” he said.

“You through with that?”

Horton looked down at the bag in his hand and nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m through with it. It’s all yours.”

36

April awoke feeling hungover and horny.

She rolled over and squinted at the clock on the dresser but could not tell if it was eight-thirty or nine-thirty. Reaching down, she felt around on the floor next to the bed until her fingers found the wine bottle. It was not quite empty, there were still a few drops left, and she held the open neck of the bottle above her mouth and let the drops fall onto her lips and tongue.

God, it tasted good.

Her left hand slid under the sheet, between her legs. Lazily, she began rubbing herself. She was already wet, and there was a tingling within her vagina that she recognized as the need to be filled.

She’d give anything to have a hard cock inside her right now.

From the front of the house, from the kitchen, she heard the sound of the sink running, heard the rattle of silverware on pots and pans. She stopped fingering herself and let the bottle fall to the floor again.

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a moment, then sat up, leaning against the headboard. She thought about last night, about what Margaret and Margeaux and the others had told her.

Dion?

It didn’t seem possible.

She didn’t want it to be possible.

That was the truth. That was the reason she’d gotten so drunk last night. She’d told herself even as she downed the first bottle that she was tired of being good, that she simply wanted to cut loose after being straitjacketed for 80 long, but the fact was that she was drinking not to feel good but to forget, trying to numb her brain and block out what they’d told her about her son.

Because she knew it was true.

That was the bottom line. She knew it was true. She’d always known, perhaps, on some subliminal level. She’d been surprised, but she hadn’t been shocked or disbelieving when the others had sat her down and explained it all to her, and she’d believed it instantly. All of it.

“Mom?” Dion knocked on the door of her bedroom.

She didn’t answer.

“Mom? It’s almost ten. Are you getting up?”

Ten? She squinted at the clock. It hadn’t said nine thirty. It had said nine-fifty.

“Mom?”

She felt again that tingling, that maddening need between her legs, and she kicked off the covers and stood naked facing the door, not saying anything, half hoping that Dion would open the door and walk in and see her, but when he called “Mom?” again and started to turn the knob, she quickly said, “I’m up! Don’t come in! I’m not dressed!”

“Okay.” She heard him move away, down the hall, and she felt ashamed that she would even consider exposing herself to her son. What could possibly make her act this way? What was the matter with her?

But she knew exactly why she had acted that way, she knew exactly what was the matter with her, and as she stood there, staring at the closed door, her fingers slid down her body, through her pubic hair, and into the soft, spongy moisture between her legs.

It was hard picking up a guy on a Sunday morning.

Not impossible. But hard.

She’d left Dion at home, with a list of chores and things to do, and she’d gone cruising. She hadn’t done that for a while, and it felt good.

Pickings had been mighty slim at the first two taverns she’d hit: barflies, winos, old men. But the third time had been the charm, and at the Happy Hour, she’d found a handsome, athletic young man gone only slightly to seed, an obviously once hot stud now beginning to fray around the edges but still substantially intact.

She sat next to him, drank with him, talked to him, touched him, and when he offered to drive her back to his place, she’d readily agreed.

Now he was naked and whimpering on the bed, the sheets covered with sperm and blood and urine, and she looked down at him, feeling sore and satisfied, and gently ran a finger through his hair. He flinched at her touch, and she felt a warm satisfaction at the response.

She’d been about to get dressed and return home, but she was suddenly in the mood for more, and she glanced at the clock. Three-fifteen. She still had time. Dion wasn’t expecting her home until six.

She knelt before him, reached between his legs, grabbed his bloody, swollen penis.

“No,” he cried. “No more.”

She slapped his face, smiled. “Yes,” she said.

She took him in her mouth, tasted the saltiness of the sperm and the blood and the urine.

She began to suck.

On the way home she stopped at Taco Bell and picked up some tacos for their dinner. She was home in time to see 60 Minutes.

37

On Monday afternoon, Dion was suspended for fighting.

He had never been in a fight before in his life. He’d been threatened by bullies a couple of times in grammar school and junior high, but he’d always managed to avoid getting beat up: running away or not showing up at the prearranged meeting place or somehow using his brains to escape the brawn.

But this time he was the one who started the fight.

Afterward, he wasn’t even sure exactly what had happened or how it had escalated so fast. One minute he was sitting on top of a lunch table with Kevin and Paul and Rick, and the next minute he and Paul were rolling on the cement ground, clutch-punching. Paul had made some joke about Penelope being