RoseAnn Discovers Dominance Pt. 24

\The workings of the male brain were a puzzle to me then, as they still are today. The more I frustrated Craig, even to the point of tears, the more loving and attentive he became. The more preposterous my demands, the further he went in exceeding them. If I demanded a backrub, he would rub fragrant oils into my skin for hours. My back muscles soothed, he'd move on to my shoulders and neck, and down to my buttocks and thighs. Sometime before that point, I was usually aroused to the point where I demanded his tongue. But if I didn't, he'd continue to my feet, and massage them with oil until I fell asleep.

The men in my classes were treating me differently, too. My life with Craig had increased my self-confidence, and perhaps it was somehow visible to other men. Perhaps it was simply that I'd ceased to be a novelty. But I preferred to think I was winning my spurs. I was getting A's in most of my classes. When five o'clock rolled around in the labs, I sometimes stayed behind to repeat a part of an experiment that hadn't gone well. Teaching assistants, perpetual grumblers all, couldn't leave while I was still there, but they didn't seem to mind being alone with me in a big, empty classroom while I took my time repeating a procedure. There were few direct attempts to pick me up. Most were content to lean on a nearby lab bench and tell me their life story, or their girlfriend problems. Because I was a few years older, I began to feel more like a den mother than a potential girlfriend.

As the weather turned colder, I remained outside with the surveying instruments when my other team members gave up and fled indoors. After being raised in Bitumen, these ordeals-by-weather were nothing to me. I'd often made the hike from school to home when I missed the school bus, trudging two miles across bare, flat fields against howling winter winds. Or later, walking over a mile from the trailer to the grocery store in all weather to pick up beer, so there'd be some in the refrigerator for Mike. It had been worth the biting cold or soggy heat to avoid yet another fight.

But during the outdoor surveying exercises, my unfortunate partner had to stay outside with me, too. Most of my classmates looked the other way when I asked for help. Only Paul Winters volunteered and consistently stuck it out in spite of the bitter weather. Without noticing it, we became more and more of a team, not just in surveying, but in chemistry and physics as well. We often did our homework together in the library between classes. When the days grew dark before five o'clock, he'd walk me to the Halstead Street El station and wait with me until the train came, like a bodyguard.

The trouble was, he was growing on me, even as my relationship with Craig grew stronger. Every couple of weeks, he'd tell me about some event he was going to, and would I like to go with him? He was never pushy about it, but I could see the light in his eyes when he talked to me, and I was flattered.

The drafting classrooms were the closest we had to a common meeting place for freshman engineers. This is where gossip was spread, plots hatched, and the social pecking order established. In early December, a buzz began to organize a Christmas Party. One of my classmates was from a Greek family, and arranged an upstairs room in a Greektown restaurant. At Paul's urging, I paid my ten dollars and signed up.

"Your boyfriend's welcome, too," he said. "I think everyone would like to meet the lucky man."

But that evening, Craig shook his head. "I won't be comfortable at a student party, and they're not likely to be comfortable around me. But you should go."

"I'd rather stay home and tease you until you go crazy."

He smiled. "It's important to bond with your fellow students. Someday you'll have a professional job and you'll have to interact with your peers all the time. Some of them may even be your classmates today. Anyway, it's not too soon to start."

"One of my classmates seems to have a thing for me." I watched him closely.

Now he was serious. "I don't own you, RoseAnn. Go and have a good time."

I decided to tease him. "What if this boy wants to have a good time with me?"

He took my hand in both of his. "I'm not at all worried. I trust you--I mean, I have to trust you. The alternative is too awful to contemplate."

At that moment, I felt a rush of love and longing like I'd never felt for anyone. I stroked his cheek with my free hand. The soft look in his eyes made me wet. "Just for that, I'm going to torture you for the rest of the evening, and you won't even be allowed to come at the end. In fact, I might even make you wait longer than I planned." I grabbed at his cock and squeezed.

* * *

The Christmas party was a Thursday evening, the second week of December, after the final exams. We had the second floor banquet room of a tiny place along the row of restaurants on Halstead Avenue that fringed the neighborhood known as Greektown, just across the freeway from the university. The music reached the sidewalk outside and grew louder as I climbed the steps. A table at the top was covered with tiny glasses of clear liquid. After I'd parked my coat on a table with the others, I picked up one of the glasses and downed it in a gulp. It smelled like licorice and tasted like battery acid. I choked on it, and a waiter, who'd been watching me, laughed out loud.

"Don't worry," he said. "After five or six of those, you'll beg for more."

Gasping for breath, I wheezed, "Can I mix it with something?"

"No, ma'am. Ouzo won't mix with anything. You have to drink it straight."

Paul appeared and slapped me on the back. He was laughing, too. "Are you okay?" The band, consisting of a trumpet, and drums, and a lute-like instrument, started to play again and he had to shout to be heard. "I guess someone should have warned you about ouzo. But you get to watch others come in and toss back a shot."

Someone pulled a Santa cap from a box and put it on my head, just as Paul handed me another ouzo. "This time, slowly."

I sipped and tried to make conversation, but the music was loud in the small room. People shouted to be heard over the band, so there wasn't much to do but drink. Over two hours, I put away at least six shots, barely noticing them and not keeping count. From somewhere inside, I listened curiously as my voice rose in pitch. I laughed too much, even when there was nothing to laugh about. I was getting drunk, but I hadn't been among so many people near my own age in a long time. If I couldn't drink a little too much here, where could I?

I tried to dance with Paul, but the beat of the music was all wrong. Nicolaidis, the student who'd arranged the party, tried to teach us a Greek dance, but people were already too drunk, and the attempt ended in chaos.

Paul had been hovering over me since the beginning of the party. I finally noticed his constant presence and found that I was comfortable with it. When he shouted over the band, "Let's go outside for some fresh air," it seemed like a good idea. The room was getting hot and the air thick with cigarette smoke. We grabbed our coats and went out to the street. The icy air felt good in the lungs.

"I thought I was going to choke in there," I said. "I'm not good with cigarette smoke."

"It was bad. I'm not sure I'll want to come back here again. There's too many of us, and not many options if you don't like ouzo." He took a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, but seemed to think better of it and put them back.

I was drunk enough to get personal. "You're a handsome guy. Why don't you have a regular girlfriend to bring to these parties?"

"I did, but she dumped me during the summer when I dropped out of pre-med. She was furious. She said she didn't want somebody who was going to spend his life drifting from one thing to another. But she took up right away with another pre-med. I guess she just wants to be a doctor's wife."

"That's selfish of her."

He shrugged. "Not really. If her goal is to be a doctor's wife, more power to her. Better to find out now. Suppose I'd hung on for ten years and then found out about her."

"Anybody new on the horizon?"

"There's no rush. I don't see the need to hook up now, with three and a half years of college left. I can afford to wait until the right girl comes along, or..." He paused, as if gauging whether to continue.

"Or...?"

He looked me in the eye, not smiling. "Or until you and your Prince Charming break up."

I jerked my head back in surprise. "Is that you, or just the ouzo talking?"

He put a gloved hand on my shoulder. I was about to shrug it off, and changed my mind.

"That was a stupid thing to say," he said. "We can't just be friends anymore, can we, now that cat's out of the bag? There'll always be tension between us."

"I can forget it if you can."

"Well, I can't. It's been waiting to bust out of me since classes started. I guess it took getting good and drunk to let it out. You're the sexiest and most beautiful woman I've ever seen."

I smiled without looking at him. "If the light were better, you'd see me blushing." By now, I was feeling guilty for continuing this conversation. But not guilty enough to stop.

"You shouldn't blush if it's true. Anyway, you don't seem the blushing type."

I pulled up my collar and turned my back to a sudden gust of icy wind. "I get embarrassed like any other girl."

"Hard to believe. You always go around oozing confidence, like nothing could faze you. That turns a lot of guys on, you know."

"Confident women turn you on?"

"They can turn any man on. There's nothing sexier than a woman who knows what she wants and is willing to reach out and take it. I guess some guys instinctively want to break that confidence and make her weak and dependent again, but I think most men just can't help being drawn in."

"Interesting analysis," I said. "What kind of man are you?"

He laughed. "The cold is making me sober, so I know enough not to answer that. But I envy your boyfriend."

Would he envy Craig if he knew what his life with me was like?

"Would you believe that less than two years ago, I was a housewife in a little downstate town, obediently washing my husband's filthy work socks and putting up with his drunken rages?" The cold air was sobering me up, too, and reminded me I was talking far too much.

"I won't call you a liar, but it's hard to believe. You look like royalty, like you could have any man on his knees in no time."

"Any man?" I teased. "Even you?"

"Especially me." His eyes widened. He wasn't sobering up as quickly as he thought.

We both had the same reaction at the same time, but Paul spoke first. "Are you ready to go back inside?" It seemed we were both grateful to escape the increasingly intimate conversation.

When we reached the top of the stairs, the food was being put out on the buffet tables, and a line was forming. I tried to lose myself in the pushing crowd, but Paul stayed at my shoulder as we loaded up our plates.

By the time we'd finished eating, I realized that the music had stopped a while before, and the band had gone. And I'd downed two more ouzos without thinking about it. The crowd was thinning and the waiters were getting fidgety.

I looked at my watch. Eleven-thirty. Or was it twelve-thirty. My eyes were not focusing well. "Jesus, Paul, I've got to go."

"Tomorrow's Friday. Exams are over."

"I think I'm going to have a bad headache tomorrow. You don't want to be around me then."

One of the students, Mohammed, who claimed he hadn't had anything to drink, was offering rides home. I decided that was quicker and safer at this time of night than the El, and I stuffed myself into his car with five others. Paul crowded in, too, and more or less sat on my lap. It took three tries to get the door to close.

The driver might have been sober, but he drove like a maniac, fast and carelessly, missing two red lights and skidding around corners. Paul rolled around on my lap with every sudden turn and lurch. Horns blew at us and once I heard the squeal of tires. Eventually, Mohammed stopped on some nameless street and dropped off two people, so Paul was able to sit down on the seat, though still pressed tightly against me. We took off again, making a U-turn that threw us all against the doors.

The swerving and sudden panic stops began to work their magic on my stomach. What I expected to be a burp burned in the back of my throat. I was going to have to work to keep my stomach down.

Paul asked, "Are you okay?"

"A little stomach upset, that's all," I said, but a wave of nausea overtook me at that moment.

We made another stop, and still I held my stomach down. It was a struggle.

The next stop was Paul's place, a nondescript door next to a tiny shop on a street corner. I thought we were in the Bridgeport neighborhood, but I wasn't sure.

Paul got out. "RoseAnn, you'd better come with me now, before you make a mess of Mohammed's car." I wasn't capable of resisting, and I took his hand and let him help me from the car. The door slammed and Mohammed squealed away as if trying to escape the flames of Hell.

"A little dry toast and some tea will settle your stomach..." Paul began, but the mention of food was all it took. Nausea rolled up my stomach as I leaned over, supporting myself on a mailbox. I puked on the sidewalk. The spatter, some of it still recognizable, glittered in the streetlight. But I wasn't done. Paul held my hair back as I vomited two more times.

"Maybe I'll take you up on that toast and tea," I whispered weakly.

Paul unlocked the door, and we climbed two steep flights of stairs. My legs were wobbly after all that vomiting. The old-food smell in the stairwell didn't help. I was out of breath when Paul opened his apartment door and I stumbled inside. I pulled off my boots and shed my jacket as he guided me to the bathroom. I immediately went to my knees and retched unproductively into the toilet. Again, he held my hair like a gentleman.

I slumped against the bathroom wall and rested, cursing the ouzo and everything Greek, until Paul came back with a cup of tea.

"I cooled it with a bit of ice so you don't have to wait. Just sip it until it settles your stomach." He held the cup as I sipped, and supported my head from behind with a gentle hand. "I wiped the puke off your boots, too, before it dried."

After that, I remembered nothing.