Misery Loves Company

Track 9: #BlueVendettaDoesMyMakeUp (Part II)

Misery Loves Company

By: theinkslingerr

Track 9: #BlueVendettaDoesMyMakeUp (Part II)

I think Dominic was trying to hurt me.

We were halfway through his turn and my neck was aching from him constantly moving my head around. He may not have realized this, but I wasn't the girl from the Exorcist.

"Open your mouth." He gripped my chin and forced my jaw down then started tracing my lips with a pencil. As Dominic did this, I struggled to stabilize my breathing.

It turns out that trying not to hyperventilate was hard.

Dominic smirked and capped the lip liner before dragging a thumb under my bottom lip. The somewhat intimate touch set off anxious tremors- a totally different reaction to the butterflies I'd felt in my stomach when Rocco had touched me earlier.

I turned away, no longer trying to hide my discomfort, but Dominic just jerked my head back and forced my mouth open again. I really wanted to bite his thumb off, but he struck me as the kind of guy who might like that, so I kept my teeth behind my lips and sat there like a mannequin.

After Dominic's "hands-on" approach with the liner, he picked up a tube of lipstick and began dabbing my lips. I sighed in exasperation, because it was getting harder and harder to keep my mouth open, and Dominic seemed to be taking his sweet time!

There finally came a point when my throbbing jaw called it quits, and closed without warning. "Mouth open!" Dominic growled, yanking my chin down roughly. I blinked back tears of frustration, trying to focus anywhere but his stupid face.

"Dude, take it easy," Eli chided.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Dominic just brushed it off.

"OK...we're just going to edit this portion out," Ackerman said slowly.

The side of the dark pink lipstick Dominic was using read "Funny Face," and caused a dry laugh to tickle the base of my throat.

Funny face?

I really hoped that was the end result.

I was barely surviving this, how would I survive an entire afternoon of Dominic's aggression?

Sure, I'd noticed that Rocco could be a little aggressive too; a little intense, but that intensity felt...different somehow.

Rocco was that sweltering day at the beach you looked forward to every summer. It usually started out with you hopping around, trying to avoid direct contact with the scorching sand, and ended with you in the ocean; a cool reprieve made more attractive by the soft towel waiting for you on the shore.

But Dominic?

Dominic was a shark in low tide.

And if I wasn't careful, I'd bleed out in the water.

When Dominic finished applying my lipstick, he picked up the fan brush, first tapping it against a sparkly bronze palette before dusting the length of my cheekbones. He smoothed out a couple more things with his fingers then tossed the brush somewhere to his left. The clattering held a note of finality.

"Done," Dominic murmured, running a sparkle-infused hand through his blond locks as he examined my face.

I looked around the quiet room cautiously. Why wasn't any body laughing? Did I look so bad they were speechless? Paralyzed with horror? Filled with pity? Or did they not want to hurt Dominic's feelings and trigger whatever skipping his meds would result in?