soaring
There’s a certain, exquisite purity to be found on a billiard table—sixteen flawless, multi-hued spheres interacting on a perfect field of green felt, seemingly random, but as bound by the dictates of physics as planets and stars. Even the vagaries of the old, abused table in the Fishwife Pub are utterly obedient to the laws of the universe. The off-level floor that favors the upper left corner, the soggy banks that set every other rebound awry, even these can be anticipated, measured, and exploited by a player who knows how.
But it isn’t predictability I want tonight. It isn’t the clean, cool, impersonal compliance of the pool balls I’m after, or the shallow satisfaction as the passionless union of geometry, kinetics and skill puts another shot exactly where I’d intended.
I want randomness. I want chaos. I want heat.
I want you.
My marriage is three months dead tonight, my soul coming back to life like a prisoner of war lurching half-blind from a windowless cell and into the light of day. After what seems so much longer than eleven years of swallowing my own needs, pushing them down into a tight and tangled skein of hurt under my breastbone, I’m free.
As I line up my shot, I find myself remembering how as a child I stumbled across a butterfly in my mom’s garden, just emerging from its chrysalis. I remember how it trembled in the sun, how the crumpled folds of its wings unfurled an agonizing millimeter at a time. How the instant those wings were firm, it took to the sky, unerring, its entire existence until then nothing but a slow, patient journey culminating in that first thrilling moment of liberty.
That’s how I feel tonight. That’s what I want. I want to fly.
A cluster of old-timers and regular customers are gathered around the table, watching. I haven’t played in so long—not since the early days of my marriage—but it’s all come back, as natural as breathing. The table’s been mine since my first game of the night, and not long after that they started calling me “Shark” and “Ace”. But my streak is over. To be blunt, I suck. And despite the murmured conjecture that I’ve had one too many glasses of draft, I know it’s not because I’m drunk.
From the moment you walked through the door, I’ve been unable to focus on anything but you. Even now, as I gaze down the length of the cue, I’m not seeing angles and probabilities and the pristine white perfection of the cue-ball. I’m seeing the corded column of your neck as you tilt your head back to sip your beer, the tendons working in your hand as you grip the bottle, the white cotton of your t-shirt stretched taut over a lean torso and broad shoulders.
I shoot and miss, to a chorus of commiseration from the crowd. “Nice try, Ace,” and “You’ll get it back,” and “It’s just one shot, don’t let it get you down.” But I won’t get it back, not so long as you’re standing there, your elbow propped on the bar, your strong, scarred, carpenter’s hand wrapped around your bottle of Bud.
Bill bends over the table, his sleeves rolled up to reveal a huge, lumpy scar on his forearm from a sawmill accident over thirty years ago. Despite that and two missing fingers, he can play like whoa and like damn, and I find myself suddenly hoping he’ll put me out of my misery, quick and clean. He obliges with a four shot run, thank god, because I can hardly stand still anymore, can’t keep my mind on anything but the fact that you’re still there across the bar, chatting with the bartender. You haven’t even glanced my way, and still, all I can think of is how it would feel to slide my hands under the hem of your shirt and explore the contours of muscle and sinew barely visible through the cotton. How it would feel to put them other places.
“You got some quarters, Shark?” one of the old guys asks me. “Get back on the horse?”
“Nah,” I laugh, forcing an artificial brightness. I grab Jen’s arm and tug her in the direction of the door. “I need a smoke. You guys fill your boots. I think I’m done for the night.”
I set my glass on the bar on the way out, ask the bartender to keep an eye on it for me. I don’t even glance at you—I’m terrified if I do you’ll be able to see everything I’m thinking spelled out in the flush that rides my cheeks, and the idea of you seeing it terrifies me. Nothing like a loveless marriage to kill any sense of yourself as a sexual animal. It’s been eleven years since I kissed anyone other than my soon-to-be ex-husband, and over a year since I even kissed him. And god, fucking? My mind flinches away from the mere thought of it, a bright, gorgeous, tempting flower that’s nothing but thorns and hornets when you get a closer look.
Outside, Jen and I shiver in the damp chill of October, the overhang protecting us from the near-constant drizzle of autumn in the Pacific Northwest. She hands me a cigarette and flicks her Zippo. I close my eyes and take a long drag, inhale deep, the smoke searing my lungs.
“You having fun?” she asks. She’s so solicitous it’s funny—or it would be if the habits of an introvert weren’t so ingrained in me now. She’d almost had to drag me here, conspiring with my mom to get me out for a night of not worrying about kids or work or all the crap you have to deal with when you end a marriage. I hadn’t even seen the inside of a bar in years. The wild, party days of my youth feel like they’re a hundred years and a thousand miles away from tonight.
I smile and nod, my imagination still making a slow sojourn under your clothes, the aching emptiness building between my legs. “Hey, does Rhys come here often?”
“Who, Rhys Billingsly? Nah, this is the first time I’ve ever seen him here. Heard he’s on the outs with his wife.”
So that’s what Jen’s been up to while I’ve been playing pool. Hell, can’t say I’m surprised—she knows every bit of dirt about every last person in this town.
“Oh yeah?” I say, feigning a nonchalance I’m far from feeling. “Too bad, they were cute together.”
“Half the town says she tramps around, the other half insists he’s just jealous and controlling.” Jen blows out a long stream of smoke, flicking her ashes down the steps toward the tin bucket half-filled with sand. “Larry told me she cheated on Rhys last time he was out of town. With the dude who runs the daycare where she works, no less.”
“No shit,” I laugh. As a mother of two, I can’t imagine falling in lust while surrounded by a teeming horde of toddlers and preschoolers. Christ, when mine were small, I figured I was doing well if I had five minutes a day to even think about sex. “Wonder if he’ll forgive her.”
“Probably. I mean, have you seen her? Guys don’t divorce women who look like that.”
“Pfft.” I stare at the ember on the end of my cigarette, then cast a quick glance inside to see you laughing with the bartender and one of the regulars, acting as if nothing’s the matter in your life. But there’s something febrile and insincere about your mood that translates itself through the distance between us. I see myself in the reflection off the glass, the flush of new-found freedom warming my face, the ease of motion and emotion now that the weight of a thousand albatrosses no longer hangs from my neck.
I can’t imagine staying with someone just because they’re hot. But there are a multitude of other reasons people stay long past the time when all hope of resuscitation is gone from a marriage. I wonder what your reasons are.
“He’s kind of cute,” Jen muses, tossing her half-smoked cigarette into the bucket. “For an old guy.”
I shake my head. Jen’s barely twenty-three—to her anyone over thirty is old, and once a person hits forty, they might as well be a senior citizen. I often wonder why she’s never lumped me in with the other nearly-deads. Hell, I’m staring down the gaping maw of forty myself, yet somehow she sees fit to show her face in public with me.
She heads back inside, unwilling to suffer the cold even to properly satisfy a nicotine craving. I linger, leaning on the stair rail and savoring the last of my smoke. From inside, your presence draws my glance like a lodestone tugging at iron filings. I see Jen standing next to you, ordering another drink. She turns in your direction and makes some comment, her expression all mischief. You smile back, your eyes lighting up like blue tourmalines.
Jen heads back to our corner by the pool table, and you stare pensively at your beer, your easy mood gone. I wonder what she said to you, but I don’t want to know. Jen’s like Loki—she’s never so happy as when she’s pitching a wrench into the gears. My stomach knots up as a dozen possibilities occur to me, none of them good, but I can’t stand out here all night in only a tank top. Resolute, I toss my cigarette at the bucket, chuckling to myself as it hits the rim and bounces off into the parking lot to die, hissing, in a puddle. Can’t even hit a target a foot wide. Fuck, I really have lost my touch.
The warm, yeasty smell of the bar washes over me, raising goose-bumps on my arms as I head back inside. My nipples are so hard from the cold they could probably cut glass. I grab my half-drained glass, studiously avoiding eye contact, and head back to the pool table. After rooting around in my jeans pocket, I come up with a quarter, slap it on the rail. Bill grins at me through a scraggle of gray beard, pleased that I haven’t given up yet. I don’t have high hopes for my game at this point, but I need something to do with myself other than drink and try not to stare at you.
I pretend to scan the bar, my glance touching you for no more than an instant. That’s all it takes to send a rush of moisture against the crotch-band of my panties. You’ve turned around, having lost interest in conversing with the bartender, and now lean back with your elbows on the bar, facing the pool table. The posture emphasizes the broadness of your shoulders, the narrowness of your hips, the lean, supple muscles of your torso. Your beer bottle dangles loosely from your fingers, and your eyes seem filled with all kinds of implausible things as they look my way. All this I see in the nanosecond in which my gaze connects with yours before scudding away.
God, when did I become such a coward? Where did that hot young thing I used to be go? Time was when I could walk up to any man in any bar and whisper enough dirt in his ear to make him spring a hard-on then and there. A decade of marriage has turned me into someone I hardly recognize. Eleven years of kids and dishes and laundry and PTA meetings, soccer practice and carpool and help with homework. Eleven years of night shifts, too many bills and not enough paychecks, and always too much month left at the end of the money.
Eleven years of dutiful, joyless sex followed by furtive, lonely orgasms while my husband snored beside me, hogging more than his share of the bed, more than his share of every last goddamn thing, and me carrying more and more of the load alone until the weight of responsibility and resentment almost killed me.
More than a decade of that—no wonder that girl I once was wants nothing to do with me anymore. All I need is thirty more pounds, a pair of “mom jeans” and a fucking fanny pack, and there’ll be nothing left of my soul at all.
Bill has just surrendered the table to a young, wiry guy with Ben Stiller’s ears and Ben Stein’s chin. I’m up next. I’ve been pretending to watch the games while at the same time pretending not to watch you, and even with the little I’ve been able to absorb, I know this guy is good. I fish three more quarters out of my pocket and fit them in the slots. Make my way to the end of the table like a sacrificial goat, knowing I’m as good as dead. From the corner of my eye as I grab handfuls of pool balls and slam them into the rack, I see you detach yourself from the bar and saunter over.
Two balls slip from my suddenly nerveless fingers and rumble across the table. My opponent grabs them before they can go down anywhere and rolls them back to my end. My face is hot, but not only from embarrassment. You’re now just a few feet away, chatting with Bill while keeping an eye on the pool table. Every nerve in my body strains toward you, my cunt damp and hot, my nipples putting on a fine show.
I rack them, and “Ben”, whose real name is Frank, breaks. And damn if the two and the nine don’t go down right then. The rest of the game is a travesty, until, in spectacular fashion, I accidentally sink the eight in the one temperamental corner that’s rejected every other shot I’ve tried to put there.
I find myself laughing as Jen shoves another glass of draft into my hand. I’m aware that I’m being ridiculous. I mean, I hardly know you—our acquaintance is one of smiles and waves in passing from parents of two kids in the same fourth grade class. Hardly a fertile breeding ground for the kind of obsession I’m indulging. I don’t even know if you know my name. I wonder what you’d think if you knew I’m fantasizing even now about wrapping my lips around your cock.
I look over at you, just for a second, and you’re looking back at me. You smile, a small, lopsided smile, the kind that schoolboys use to charm their way out of detention. It does more than charm me. For a moment, I can’t even breathe, can’t think, can’t do anything but smile back.
You take a long sip of your beer, and I watch your Adam’s apple work as you swallow. God, I’ve never seen anything sexier in my life. Jen’s next to me, talking in my ear, and I have no clue what the fuck she’s saying because all I can think about is what the skin of your neck would taste like, what the stubble on your jaw would feel like against my tongue. I’m so fucking turned on I swear I could come in about ninety seconds. A moment later, I excuse myself and head to the ladies’ room to test that hypothesis.
I pick the farthest stall from the door, jerk my jeans down and sit, push my hand between my legs and holy fuck, holy fuck, holy fuck. The orgasm barrels through me, zero to O in less than a minute. For a few seconds, I just sit there, limp as a wet rag, sliding my fingers through the flood of my wetness while two women gossip and primp less than ten feet away on the other side of the door.
Sighing, I force myself to pee. Wipe my fingers on a piece of toilet paper and straighten my clothes. By the time I emerge, the women have left, and I’m alone in the washroom. I stare into the mirror as I wash my hands. A stranger stares back, eyes heavy-lidded and languorous, cheeks pink, lips curled in a smug little grin. I like this woman. She reminds me of the person I once was, more than a decade ago.
When I return to the bar, the lights are on. The pub’s done serving for the night, and the bartender and waitresses circulate, collecting empties and wiping tables. A slow, ponderous exodus ensues, the press of human flesh working its way toward the doors. I don’t see you anywhere. Have you left already, or are you in the men’s room?
“Hurry up and finish your beer,” Jen tells me. “We can share a cab home, but unless you want to wait forever, we should get out before all these other idiots.”
I laugh. “Dude, I live six blocks from here. And I could use the walk.” I’m still horny as all hell, and the last thing I need is to be sardined into the back seat of a cab with a bunch of drunks.
“Suit yourself.” Jen gives me a hug and heads out the door. I sip my beer, lingering with the other die-hards, my eyes straying over and over to the short hallway that leads to the men’s room. But you don’t materialize, and the strange, quivering marriage of anxiety and anticipation that’s plagued me all night seeps away. I shake my head at myself, draining the last of my beer. Christ, it’s not as if you’ve given me any kind of encouragement. A single smile does not a booty-call make.
While I settle up with the bartender, the last of the stragglers wander outside. I pull on my jacket and follow them out, replying to the cheerfully offered “good-night”s and “see ya”s, and head down the flaking concrete steps to the parking lot. Everyone else seems content to squash themselves into the two cabs that sit idling, and I’m glad I decided to walk. The rain touches my face like the mist off a waterfall, that steady, dismal drizzle that doesn’t even count as rain to the locals. It feels good on my hot cheeks, clean and cold. It’s almost two in the morning. I can’t quite believe I stayed out so long. I wonder if my mom’s asleep on the fold-out in the den. I hope so—I’m not sure I want to face her just yet, with the rush of that orgasm still humming in my veins.
As I head across the lot toward the back alley, I see you there, leaning against the fender of your truck. I’m not crazy enough to imagine you’ve been waiting for me, but my stomach knots up all the same, and heat floods my whole body. You catch my eye and I stop dead in my tracks, searching for a pretext to begin a conversation.
“You aren’t driving home, are you?” I ask. You’re not plastered or anything, but the cops around here have zero tolerance for impaired drivers, and they’ll be out in droves at closing time on a Friday night.
You flash a nervous smile and tilt your head in the direction of the alley. “I’m walking.”
I can’t believe I’m hesitating. With an inward curse, I force myself to walk toward you. Stop a few feet away, trying to muster the courage to ask if you want to walk together as far as my house. You reach out and take my hand. It seems a very strange thing to do, but the tingles shooting up my arm and the heaviness building between my legs are enough to quell my misgivings.
You start walking, your steps purposeful. This isn’t a meandering stroll home with someone who happens to be heading the same direction as me. My heart is pounding with a thrill I’d thought forever lost to me, the ghost of those crazy nights of my youth when I still had wings to fly. As soon as we round the corner of the building, you stop, press me up against the cinder blocks and kiss me.
I can taste beer on your tongue as it pushes into my mouth, smell the spice of your aftershave, and I’m getting drunk on it. And all of a sudden I’m positive what Jen said to you in the bar. “Lisa’s hot for you, man—and she’s available.” Part of me is furious with her, but another part has already happily succumbed to the inevitable consequences of her meddling.
The cinder blocks are cold against my back, the rain starting to take itself seriously, and yet all I can feel is heat. I slide my hands under your leather jacket and shirt, feel the muscles of your lower back shift and flex as you grind yourself against my mound. I angle my hips forward, increasing the delicious pressure on my clit, and kiss you back for all I’m worth.
You pull back, gasping, your hands on either side of my face, your forehead pressed against mine. We’re both panting as if we’ve just run a marathon, and my limbs are light and shaky with the kind of adrenaline rush that enables small women to lift heavy farm machinery off their children. You close your eyes, one hand skimming down to my breast through the half-open zipper of my jacket. “Jesus,” you whisper, your hand squeezing, sending a shower of sparks through my torso to the place where I ache. “Jesus…”
There’s a hotel a couple blocks over, and you take my hand again and lead me that way. My legs are like noodles—I stumble through puddles as if I’m drunk, but I’m not. Not on beer, anyway. Your grip is so firm the bones of my fingers grind together, but if it hurts, my brain isn’t interpreting it that way.
We cut across the rear parking lot of the medical clinic, and I can see the roof of the hotel just up the steep embankment and across the street, but I’m too impatient. This night has been building inside me for years, and I’m through waiting. I stop in the middle of the parking lot, in a dim circle of yellow mercury-vapor light. Pull you against me, slip one hand around the back of your neck and drag your lips down to mine.
You groan into my mouth, a sound more animal than human, desire boiled down to its most base form. It’s as if we exist only here and now, at the mercy of this moment of shared insanity. I reach between us, cram my hand under the waistband of your jeans, wrap my fingers around your cock. It’s like a bar of sun-warmed steel against my palm, and goddamn does it feel incredible.
“Fuck,” you murmur against my mouth as you walk me backwards across the pavement, out of the reach of the parking lot lights. “Fuck, Jesus, Lisa, you’re so fucking hot…” My back collides with the stucco wall of the clinic and you lean into me, pinning me with all that glorious, lean strength. Your hand is under my tank, crawling upward, cold against the heat of my skin. I shudder at the contact, my breath hissing in as you jerk my bra-strap down and then slip your hand inside the lacy cup and take my nipple between your thumb and forefinger.
“God, Rhys,” I groan, my throat so tight I can hardly force the words out. It’s like you’ve attached a live wire to my nipple, a current running white-hot from the hard knot of flesh, straight down my torso to my cunt.
Growling low in your throat, you drag my jacket off my shoulders, shove my shirt up and fasten your mouth around that jutting bead. You suck hard enough to hurt, but it feels so fucking good I can hardly keep myself from screaming. I wrap a leg around your waist so I can bring more of my pussy up against your thigh, and grind against you. Your leather jacket is slick with rainwater as I unzip it, but not as slick as my cunt is right now.
I want you to fuck me right here in the parking lot, with just an overgrown embankment separating us from one of the busiest roads in town. I withdraw my hand from your jeans long enough to work the buttons of your fly open. Then I’m easing my way to my knees with the wall at my back, and I’m wrapping my lips around you just like I’ve imagined myself doing a hundred times tonight.
You taste of clean skin and heat, the salt bitterness of your pre-come like a drug on my tongue. Your hands are in my hair and you let out a long, low moan, shifting your hips, urging me to take you deeper.
“God, you’re so fucking wild,” you hiss. “I can’t fucking believe how hot you are.”
I glance up into your face, and I can see how hard you’re trying to hold yourself back. And I don’t want it to be over yet, so I make a slow expedition up your body, pushing the hem of your shirt up so I can drag my tongue and teeth over your abs and chest. On my feet again, I push your jacket off and let it fall onto the wet asphalt. You don’t seem to spare a thought for what has to be at least six hundred dollars worth of Italian leather lying in a puddle. I can tell from the look in your eyes that the only thing you’re thinking of is fucking me.
Your hands are shaking as they undo my belt, my fly. You tear my thin windbreaker off and toss it aside, not caring where it lands. Your mouth is at that perfect spot where neck and shoulder meet, your teeth biting hard, your tongue soothing the sting. We’re both soaked to the skin now, and I help you peel my damp, uncooperative jeans and panties down my legs and pull one booted foot free of them. I don’t even feel the cold. All I feel is need, razor sharp and diamond bright, as you manhandle me until I’m facing the wall.
I hear a noise like paper tearing, and ten seconds later you’re inside me, right to the fucking hilt. You wrap one arm around my waist and hold me so tight, your other hand inside my tank top, kneading my breasts, plucking my nipples. Your cock hammers into me over and over as a torrent of dirty talk and endearments pours from your mouth. “Jesus, Lisa, I want to fuck you all night, Jesus, Jesus, fuck, I knew you were wild, I’d see you all the time and Jesus I knew it, you’re so wild, you’re so wild, god you feel so fucking good…”
Your stubble scrapes the skin of my neck, as you pin me to the wall and take what you want. And I give it to you. You fuck me as if I’m the only thing in your universe right now, as if you want to drink me down in one huge swallow. It’s not long before your rapid rhythm falters. You jerk hard against me with a low moan, pound into me one more time, and then you’re still.
I stand there, my legs splayed, the side of my face pressed to the stucco, trying to wrap my head around what we just did. You slip out of me, and I can feel your motions as you roll the condom off your cock. Then your welcome weight is against my back again, and your hand slides between my legs, into the flood of my wetness.
“Fuck, Lisa,” you say against my ear, your tongue playing on my neck, your stubble burning the skin there. “I’m sorry. Shit, I’m sorry.”
But I’m not, because your callused fingertips are making my body sing. You flick them back and forth over my clit, and then push them inside me. Christ, your palm is pressing against me just the way I like, and your fingers fuck me hard and fast. My hips are grinding with the mindlessness of pure lust. A small, distant part of me watches as if through a long tunnel, unable to believe I’m really doing this, fucking a stranger half-naked and out in the open where anyone could see. I hump your hand like a demented nymphomaniac on a Spanish Fly bender, and it’s just…so…
Fuck me. I’m there, I’m there, all that pent-up pressure exploding through me on a wave of heat and bliss. I can’t see anything, can’t hear anything, all that exists for me is this glorious, unbearable, unending orgasm.
I’m almost bent double by the time I return to the here and now, your arm around my waist the only thing holding me on my feet. I’m clutching your forearm, my other hand pressed on top of yours between my legs, holding you inside me as the last, lingering spasms of my inner muscles dissipate.
Your mouth is moving across my shoulders and nape, restless and ravenous, and you flex your hips against me. Holy Christ how can you be hard again already? You turn me around, your mouth devouring mine, and half-carry me toward the low concrete retaining wall that keeps the embankment from encroaching on the parking lot. We tumble onto the grassy slope, your weight coming down on me, my legs wrapped around your waist. My jeans and jacket and panties are somewhere in the parking lot, the rain is pouring down on us, and I don’t care about any of it. The ground is soggy and freaking cold under my back but I want you again. Your cock is seated between my labia, and you thrust against me, each motion making my over-stimulated clit scream for relief.
Your tongue rapes my mouth, hard and brutal and more intense than anything I’ve ever felt, so intense it almost scares me. And then you kiss your way down my throat, the scrape of your whiskers like sandpaper on my rain-slick skin. With jerky, ungentle motions, you drag my tank top down, and I wriggle one arm from the wet, clinging cotton. You shove my bra up over the tops of my breasts and then your mouth is on them, gobbling as if you’re starving for the taste of them. You bite and suck, your hands squeezing, and I can’t believe what this rough handling is doing to me. Your desire is bestial and consuming, and my cunt is a flood plain, heat flowering low in my abdomen as I urge you on with my hands and my cries.
“Fuck,” you gasp, tearing your mouth away and burying your face in my neck. “Holy shit, Lisa…” You’re reaching in your pocket, wrestling another condom from the drenched confines of your jeans. You give me a quick, hard kiss, and then rear up on your knees and tear the wrapper open with your teeth. You barely get the thing on before I’m reaching for you, one hand fisted in the front of your shirt to pull you down.
“God, fuck me…” I snarl, hardly recognizing my own voice. “Just fuck me, Rhys.”
You kiss me and kiss me as you slam home once more. I wrench my head to one side, biting my lip to keep from waking the whole neighborhood, my hands clutching at you under the soaked cotton of your shirt, my nails digging deep into your muscled back. You knead my breasts and fuck me hard, every stroke of your cock inside me nudging me further toward no return, toward the intersection of time and place and action where I’ll leave the ground behind and soar.
You pull back, rising up on your elbows, and I can see you looming over me, a dark shape against the streetlights a hundred feet away. I can’t make out your face, but I know you can see mine, and I can’t help but thrill to the power you have over me right now.
“You’re so wild, you’re so wild, ah fuck…” you groan, rearing up onto your knees and taking my hips between your hands. You hold me up off the sodden ground and hammer into me again and again. You’re so fucking strong I know you could make me do anything, and in this lust-dark moment of insanity, I’m willing to let you do anything, anything you want to me.
I reach for my clitoris, rub hard enough to bruise it. “Fuck me fuck me fuck me,” I whisper, over and over, my lust galloping hell-bent and heedless toward another orgasm. I can feel it trying to claw its way out of me, ripping through my insides in its drive for liberty as I stroke my clit in time with your thrusts.
You let out a broken sob, your tempo increasing. “God, Lisa, fuck, I can’t…” And then you’re slamming jerkily into me, your breath leaving you in a long, ragged exhalation.
I can feel your cock bucking inside me, and I let out a strangled gasp as my inner muscles go wild around you and my whole body lifts off the ground. A surge of brightness engulfs my vision as I come and come and come, one hand fisted in my mouth to hold in my screams.
You’re heavy on top of me, your face buried against my neck, breath blasting my ear. I run a lazy hand down your back to your ass, pull you closer into me. “Jesus,” you groan. “Jesus…shit, Lisa, I’m sorry.”
“What?” My veins still thrumming with the aftereffects of the best sex I’ve had in…forever, I can’t quite figure out what you’re sorry about.
You lift your head and stare down at me, your hand pressed to my cheek. “I was gonna get a hotel room. I can’t believe what we…Jesus, you must be freezing.”
I grab you around the back of your neck and pull you down for a kiss. “No, Rhys, it was good. It was…fuck, it was good.” I’m clearly not the most eloquent at the moment, but I’m drunk on pleasure and I’m not even feeling the cold.
You kiss a trail across my cheek to my ear, bite the lobe hard. I’m going to have some serious whisker burn tomorrow—I can feel it already, a stinging rawness all over my face and neck, but I don’t care. I can’t make myself care.
“We could still get a hotel room,” you say, and I can’t even believe you’re suggesting it—I mean, you’ve just fucked me twice in half an hour. A man’s gotta have some down time.
And as I lie there, my hands questing under your shirt, I realize I can’t get a room with you tonight. I have kids at home, and my mom will kill me if I stay out all night. And then I think about how hotel clerks talk, and how it’s a small town, and how the last thing I want to do is give my ex ammunition to use against me during the divorce negotiations.
I kiss you long and slow, wishing your weight could stay on top of me forever. I think you could fuck me a million times and I’d never get tired of it. “I can’t.”
“Okay,” you say, brushing the sopping tendrils of my hair off my face. “Okay.”
You ease yourself off of me, clamber unsteadily to your feet and reach over to give me a hand up. I wrestle my arm back into the armhole of my tank top, tug my bra back into place. My jeans are a dark blob next to the clinic wall, and you go fetch them for me. Not sure where my panties are. The jeans are half inside out, and completely drenched, and it takes a few minutes of ungraceful struggling to get them on and up and fastened. The moment I do, you locate my panties. You smile sheepishly as you offer them to me, along with my windbreaker. I laugh as I pull the jacket on and stuff the panties into one of the pockets.
“Sorry,” you say.
I grab you by your shirt, pull you close, rub the pad of my thumb across your lips. “Don’t be sorry. Don’t.” And then I kiss you.
Your arms come around me, and they’re so strong. You hold me exactly the way I long to be held, the way I haven’t been held in so damn long. And even as your hands start to creep under the back of my jacket, I’m skirling upwards again, trying to climb right out of my body and take to the air.
“I’d see you at the school,” you tell me between kisses, “picking up your kids, and I always wondered about you. Wondered what you were like. You always seemed so ordinary, but I knew deep down you were wild. So fucking wild.”
And I must be, because even though I should be breaking this off and making the long march home to my kids, I’m clutching at you, my lips and teeth testing the texture of the skin at your jaw, your neck, your collarbones. I can’t get enough of the feel of you. I was starving, and instead of bread and water, I’ve been given a feast. Is it any wonder I’m so eager to glut myself on you?
Your hand is back at my breast, tugging at the nipple through the wet cotton of my tank and the damp, scratchy lace of my bra, your mouth ravening its way from one side of my face to the other. And I can’t help but laugh as you spin me around so I’m facing the retaining wall, and make a grab for my belt buckle. It can’t be more than five minutes since you came—for the second time—and you’re trying to get into my pants again?
You wrench the button open, jerk down the zipper, shove your hand inside. My clitoris is bruised from my own rough handling, my labia tender and sore, but I don’t have it in me to refuse you. And as your fingers probe me, the ache becomes less about soreness and more about need. I lean my head back on your shoulder and moan as you play me like an instrument, one hand at my breast, the other at my cunt.
“Fuck, Rhys…”
You’re pushing down my wet jeans. They slide down to my knees and refuse to go any further. With your hips, you nudge me forward, grab my nape and push me down until my hands are splayed on the slick grass of the embankment, my knees braced against the concrete. Your fingers slip down the crease of my bottom, and I gasp as one pushes gently inside my anus.
Christ, that’s fucking amazing. I shudder, holding my breath as your finger reams me.
“You like that?” you ask, your voice low and thick, vibrating with something dark and needful and oh, so dominant.
“No…” I gasp. “I mean, yes. But no. Not there. Not unless you want me to wake half the town.”
You groan in disappointment, but there’s nothing for it. If you fuck me there, I’ll be screaming in less than a minute. Your finger continues to probe for a moment before reluctantly retreating. You lean over my back, your mouth at my ear. “I will one day soon. I’m gonna fuck your ass. The louder you are, the better.”
My pussy is pouring wetness just thinking about it. You pause long enough to slip on another condom and then from behind you slide a hand into the slickness of my cunt, parting my labia, prodding my clit. “Fuck, you’re wet.”
I almost laugh at the understatement—I’m drenched to the skin, and the rain doesn’t seem interested in letting up. I reach between my legs and let my fingers join yours, sliding up into me side by side. Then I lean down further, grab your cock and pull you closer. You grasp my hips between your hands and push in slowly, inch by agonizing inch. I angle my bottom higher, wanting it harder, faster. With one fist in the vinyl of my jacket, you pull my upper body back until I’m arched like a bow, my head on your shoulder. I put one hand on the back of your neck and turn into your kiss. We move together, like a sinuous, two-headed beast, our bodies joined along our entire length.
Your breath is so hot on my neck and ear, your arm around me like steel strapping, holding me in place. I can’t believe how strong you are. I feel like you could throw me over your shoulder and carry me away, and part of me wants you to. I don’t want intimacy. I don’t want to make love. I want to be taken. To be devoured, consumed by the fire of your need until there’s nothing left of me.
Your hand slides up to my neck, your fingers cradling my jaw, your palm hugging my throat with just enough pressure to make me feel subtly imperiled. Your touch does not bend me to your will. It doesn’t acknowledge that my will is a thing that must be bent. It does not persuade or cajole or seduce, because the reality doesn’t exist in which I won’t give myself to you. Your desire is as much a force of nature as a hurricane or an earthquake. I can neither defy nor yield—I can only hope to survive you, to find a way through your chaos and back to normalcy.
Your voice is in my ear, a string of profanity and praise. I don’t even register the words anymore, just the thick, guttural tone in which you speak them. Your cock plunges and withdraws, plunges and withdraws, and I’m carried on it as on a tide. I can feel myself being pulled under, like a swimmer caught in an undertow, tumbled end over end until I can’t tell up from down, or which way the air is, and even though I’m about to drown I feel like I’m flying. Your hand crushes my cries as they struggle up my throat. All that escapes me is a shuddering wheeze as I come, quivering within the safe circle of your arms.
Awareness seeps back into me, and I realize you’ve stopped. You’re panting against my nape, your mouth gaping open as you drag in huge gulps of air. “Fuck,” you say. “Fuck, Jesus. I…god, I just needed…”
Oh yeah. I just needed, too.
In a daze, I teeter forward, feel you slip from my body, your arms relaxing. I catch myself on the slick, flattened grass of the embankment and for a moment I just stand there, legs quivering, head sagging. I hear the metallic murmur of your zipper, and then you’re gathering me in, turning me in your arms. You clasp my face between your hands, smoothing the wet snakes of my hair from my cheeks.
“I just… I needed…” You close your eyes in frustration, unable to find the words you want. Part of me wonders what you’re trying to tell me, and another doesn’t want to know. If you tell me this was just about an itch that needed scratching, I’m not sure how I’ll feel about it.
“I have to get home,” I say, letting you off the hook. “I don’t even know what time it is.”
“Okay,” you say, your arms tightening around me. You press a quick, hard kiss to my mouth and then step away. “Okay.”
I jerk my recalcitrant jeans back up and wrestle my belt tight. Zip my jacket up to my throat now that the cold is finally starting to sink into me. You grab yours from the pavement and shrug it on, then reach for my hand. It anchors me back in the present, it’s solid and real and comforting.
“Which way?” you ask.
I nod in the direction opposite the hotel and we start walking. My legs are wobbly, and I stumble off the sidewalk and into a puddle, but you pull me back right, your hand squeezing mine. “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
We walk the rest of the way in silence. Two cars pass us by as we hike up the hill, and I wonder if they recognize us—two people walking together who shouldn’t be. The whole thing feels clandestine, like a dirty little secret that’s all the more thrilling because no one else knows. The parking area of my townhouse complex is well lit, but there are a few shadows to skulk into, and we keep to them as much as we can.
“This is my door,” I whisper, ducking into my carport, aware of how voices carry to the other units.
You frown at me, agonizing. “Listen,” you say, your voice soft but intense. “I’m sorry. This was… I should’ve gotten that hotel room. I mean, it wasn’t—”
I put my fingers over your lips, then replace them with my own. Kiss you long and slow. “It was. Rhys, it was good. You’re not going to hear me complaining, believe me.”
You squint at me in the dark, your expression dubious. “You sure?”
“Oh yeah.” I lean my forehead against yours, breathe in your breaths, let my tongue play around your lips. Nuzzle your neck, reveling in the scent of your aftershave. “God, you smell so good, Rhys,” I tell you. My hands crawl into the hair at your nape. I need to go inside, but I don’t want to stop touching you, and your arms are back around me, not a loose, affectionate embrace, but tight like you don’t want to let go.
“I don’t suppose I could come inside?”
I’m laughing, because I can feel your cock pressing into my abdomen. “You want more sex? Good grief, what are you, a machine?”
“Hmm? In a bed might be a nice change…”
God, I wish. “I can’t. My mom’s in there. And even if she weren’t, I can’t have a man in the house when my kids are home. I only just split with their dad a few months ago.”
“It’s not too late to get that hotel room,” you suggest, and I start to laugh until I realize you’re not teasing.
“I can’t, Rhys.” Possibly the hardest decision I’ve had to make in a while.
“Okay.” You close your eyes and nod, but you don’t let go. “Okay. You sure you’re all right?”
I smile against the skin of your neck, bite you once, not hard enough to hurt. “Good night, Rhys.”
Your arms tighten around me, and you push with your hips, letting me know what I’m saying no to. Your mouth teases the skin where my neck and shoulder meet, and the scrape of your stubble across my whisker-burned skin hurts so fucking good. I shudder, waver for just a moment, and then pull away before things get out of hand again. If we end up fucking against the carport wall, my mother won’t be the only one we wake up. The whole damn complex will hear us.
I step out of the shadows and into the glare of my entry light. You stuff your hands in your pockets as if you don’t know what to do with them when they’re not grabbing me and making me succumb. I know you still have a long walk ahead of you, but I’m shivering now that you’re no longer holding me, and I have to go inside. I put my hand on the doorknob, fish my keys from my pocket. Open the door an inch.
“Good night,” I say.
Your expression is so hang-dog, I almost laugh.
“Good night, Lisa.”
I slip inside and watch your face disappear as I close the door. Through the textured glass of the sidelight, I see your shape move away, and I can’t resist inching the door open a crack and watching until you disappear among the parked minivans and overgrown landscaping.
I ease the door back shut and turn the deadbolt with extreme care, knowing how it squeaks. Set my forehead against the cool, painted metal for a moment and just breathe. I can’t believe what happened tonight. Things like this, they don’t happen to women like me—not even to the wild, carefree woman I used to be, once upon a time. Smiling to myself, I flick the outdoor light off and quietly toe off my boots.
I’m shivering in earnest now. Pretty sure I’m at least mildly hypothermic. Slinking past the slightly ajar door of the den, I sigh in relief at the soft buzz of my mom’s snoring. I don’t know what she’d think if she saw me right now, but it’s a safe bet it wouldn’t be anything good.
In my room, I strip off my sodden clothes as quickly as I can, leaving them in a heap on the floor of the closet, pull on a pair of sweats and an old, thick flannel shirt. I fold the queen size comforter in half to double it up on the side of the bed I sleep on. The clock tells me it’s almost four in the morning.
I lie there trembling with chills for a long time, the events of the night replaying over and over in my head. It’s past five before I drift off.
When I wake, everything aches. I stretch beneath the blankets, blessedly warm—thank god—and discover muscles and tendons I never knew I had. They’re a resentful bunch, determined to punish me for the abuse I put them through last night. My face and neck sting like they’ve been scrubbed with lye and a wire brush, and my cunt—holy hell—I think I might have to bite on a belt to keep from screaming every time I pee for the next few days.
And I can’t stop smiling.
“Lisa?”
Oh Christ. My mom’s standing in the doorway. “Mmmm?” I moan, feigning slumber and burrowing deeper under the blankets so she can’t see me.
“The kids are all breakfasted. I have to go make sure your dad hasn’t starved to death in my absence. Did you have fun last night?”
“Kicked ass at pool,” I mumble. Part of me figures I’d better tell her something to explain the marks I’ll certainly have on my visible bits next time she gets a good look at me. “Made out with a guy in the parking lot.”
She tsks at me, and I can almost see her shaking her head. “What time did you get home?”
“Not sure. Pretty late. We closed the bar, and then talked for a long time.”
“Well, the kids are plugged in, so you can probably go back to sleep for a while.” Plugged in—Nintendo or computer games or DVDs or otherwise occupied with a video screen of some sort. Good. I think I could sleep another ten hours.
“Thanks, mom.”
“I’ll call you around suppertime.”
“’kay.”
I listen as she lets herself out, and then roll gingerly over, wincing at all the parts of me that protest the movement. I’m going to be paying for this for weeks, I’m sure.
I try to go back to sleep, but every time I start to drift off some disjointed fragment of last night insinuates itself across my memory and my whole body lights up from the inside. My stomach roils with a whole swarm of butterflies and my cheeks flood with heat every time I move, because each tight, achy objection of my abused muscles reminds me what I did. What we did.
I reach down between my legs, but my clitoris is bruised and sore, my labia tender. No leisurely morning masturbation for me today. I finally drag myself out of bed, the tendons in my legs screaming, and stagger to the bathroom to see what the damage is.
A bedraggled refugee stares back from the mirror, eyes ringed black with yesterday’s mascara, face chafed and inflamed. A scab is forming on the side of my neck where your teeth broke the skin. Holy Christ.
I close my eyes as a wave of heat washes through me, like someone’s just plunged me head-first into a hot tub. Limbs shaking, I strip off my clothes and set the shower on pulverize. Let the water blast me, as if it could wash everything away, every ache, every bruise, every lingering memory of your touch. I stand there under the spray until my overburdened water heater concedes defeat, then bundle myself in towels and slink back to my room.
I sit on the edge of the bed, listening to the small noises of Kath and Jacob downstairs. Glance at the clock. 11:42. I should be up and about my day long since. I go to the dresser and grab panties and bra, a clean pair of jeans, a fresh tank top. Glance at myself in the mirror to see a mottling of black and purple bruises across the tops of my breasts.
My pussy clenches, the contraction of overwrought muscles reminding me of the soreness there. My nipples are tight and aching, still tender from your roughness last night. Jesus. I can’t even look at myself without thinking of you. The evidence of what we did is all over me. Cringing, I lean forward, inspect my face in the mirror. I’m a mess, the skin of my cheeks and neck rubbed raw and red. Even my kids will notice enough to wonder.
Shit.
In bra and panties, I go to the night table and grab the phone. Dial Jen’s number.
“’lo?” she mumbles after nine rings. She’s a late sleeper on the weekends, and she probably drank half a bottle of wine after she got home, too.
“Shit, Jen, I need you to come over here. Bring that mineral make-up you bought off the TV, would you?”
A pause as my wobbly tone penetrates her stupor. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I think so. Bring smokes, too. Fuck, I need one.”
I can hear her peeing in the background—leave it to Jen to bring me right into her bathroom for her morning ablutions. “Okay, I’ll be over in, like, fifteen minutes.”
“Thanks. Bye.”
While I wait, I take stock of my injuries—there’s a bite mark on my earlobe I can probably explain away, bruises on the rounded flesh at the top of my hips, and some swelling on my knees, just under the kneecap, from bracing against concrete. I stretch gingerly and don’t discover a single muscle that doesn’t hurt. It’s a wonder I can stand. In a daze, I pull on my clothes.
Jen, bless her heart, walks in the front door less than ten minutes later. I hear her say hi to the kids, then her footsteps come hurrying up the stairs. She bursts into the room looking like a dog’s breakfast left over and reheated, her tangled hair wild around her face, her eyes like a raccoon’s with the residue of last night’s make-up pushed back up toward its place of origin. She stands in the doorway and looks me up and down.
“What the fuck did you do?” she laughs, her eyes fastened on the bruises peeking above the low neck of my tank. “Holy shit, Lis. You look like you were dragged behind a bus!”
I sink down onto the edge of the bed and reach out with one hand. “Just gimme a smoke.”
Jen slips a cigarette between my fingers and flicks her lighter. I suck in calm along with the carcinogens, let all my breath out on a stream of noxious fumes. My life isn’t ending. It isn’t.
“What the hell, Lis?”
“You have to promise not to tell anyone. I mean not a single soul.”
The mattress dips as she settles beside me. I can feel her concerned eyes on my face, and who could blame her for worrying? I look like I’ve been forced. Raped.
“Lis.”
“I fucked Rhys last night.”
“You okay?”
I can’t help the slow smile that engulfs my whole face as I turn to her. “Oh yeah. It was fucking amazing, Jen. I can’t even begin…” At a loss, I reach back into the red heat of my memories and extract the words you spoke last night. “It was so fucking wild. I’ve never, ever been…shit, Jen. He was unbelievable. He went three times in less than an hour, and then he wanted to get a hotel room.”
“Wait, where did this all happen?”
I grin over at her, knowing I’m about to shock her panties right off. “In the clinic parking lot.”
“Oh my god!” From the look on her face, she can’t decide whether she’s shocked or impressed. “Oh my god, Lisa! In public? Three times?”
“Then he walked me home, and wanted to come in for more,” I elaborate, shaking my head in bemusement. “He was a fucking machine.”
I let her chew on that for a few minutes while I gnaw on my own worrisome bone. Because the fact that you fucked me three times in less than an hour isn’t half so memorable as the way your arms felt around me, the way your hands…handled me. I’m not sitting on my bed beside my best friend, already halfway to orgasm, from the memory of you fucking me. It’s something else, something far simpler and much more complex than that.
“Holy shit, Lis. I’m so fucking jealous.”
I laugh, feeling like I’ve been pumped full of helium. As if at any moment, I’ll just slip free of my moorings and float up into the sky. “You got that make-up?”
Jen roots around in her purse and comes up with a bottle and a compact. “It really works—covered that black eye I had before me and Brad split up.”
I smile my thanks and get to work. The make-up is heavy and cakey, but it does the trick, covering all that red whisker burn until a little swelling around one eye is all that’s left. It doesn’t do so well on the bite mark, but I suppose I can stick a band-aid on that and joke that I cut myself shaving if anyone hassles me.
In five minutes I’m feeling more human, normal enough to face my kids. I head downstairs and find them on the living room floor bickering over MarioKart, an open box of Corn Pops lying on its side on the carpet in front of them.
“Hey, mom,” Kath says cheerfully. “Didja have fun at the bar?”
“Kicked ass at pool,” I tell her, reaching for the tin of coffee while Jen digs up an ashtray. “Those bastages didn’t know what hit them.”
She grins at me. “Yeah, guys always think they’re better than you, ’til you prove ’em wrong.”
“Go ahead and prove it, Kath,” Jacob ribs her, and they go back to their delightful, highbrow repartee of “your mama”s and fart jokes.
Jen and I settle in the breakfast nook, waiting for the coffee to finish brewing. I bum another smoke, grimacing at my newly reemerging addiction. Just what I need.
“So he and his wife are through?” she asks in a low voice.
I shrug. “Not sure. We didn’t really talk about it. Or anything. It was mostly just…”
“So you slept with a married man?”
“If you want to get technical, I’m still married. But I don’t know. He sure wasn’t acting married last night. But that doesn’t mean…”
“You’re right, Lis. You totally can’t tell anyone about this.”
“I know.”
I picture you and your wife sitting side by side at the last school concert, watching your girls recite Casey at the Bat. It occurs to me that I’ve never seen you together anywhere else in town, but that doesn’t always mean much. I’m already starting to feel guilty. I don’t know Cindy any better than I did you, but she seems a pleasant enough person.
“So what happens when you see him?” Jen asks, getting up to pour us both a coffee.
“I think I need to talk to him. Let him know I don’t have any expectations.” I shrug with a nonchalance I’m far from feeling. “It was just a one time thing—doesn’t need to be anything else.”
Jen shakes her head in amazement. “I don’t even know how you can think about talking to him, Lis.”
“Don’t have much choice, do I? I mean, it isn’t as if I can just keep the kids out of school and go into hiding. We’re going to run into each other, it’s just a matter of time. It’s best to just get it all out.”
She looks at me as if I’m some kind of hero, when inside I’m in knots at the mere thought of talking to you. I don’t know how I’ll manage to speak a coherent sentence without everyone in the vicinity knowing exactly what I’m thinking. Even as I recite the words in my head, my body is clamoring in protest. One time thing? it howls at me. Not a chance in hell.
Jen guzzles down another two cups of coffee, then drives me down to retrieve my beat up Civic from the bar parking lot. Your truck isn’t there.
She tosses me a few more smokes before giving me a hug and heading off home for a nap before work. I climb into my car, feeling the dampness seep directly from the upholstery and into my sore muscles. I check myself out in the rear view mirror to see what the make-up looks like in natural light. Not bad, really. Better than I expected. With a last wry smile at my reflection, I grab one of the cigarettes cajoling me from the tray in the dashboard, and push in the car lighter.
I take the long way home, not ready to let my kids know I’ve picked up the habit again, and find myself driving past your house. Your truck’s not there either. I let that soothe my conscience a little, but it seems like my every other breath is tight with arousal, images encroaching, and each time they do, another surge of guilt hits me. I suddenly realize I’ve been driving ten minutes and don’t remember a single thing about the road.
Fuck, I’m an idiot. It’s not like I’ve never been the other woman before, it’s not as if I feel like it’s my duty to keep the married men of the world faithful. I held to my own vows through some seriously miserable times, and I never thought they were anyone’s but mine to keep, but I can’t seem to recapture the casualness with which I viewed adultery in my youth.
And even more galling than the realization that I fucked a married man is the certainty that I’d do it again. All you’d have to do is take my hand, and I’d go anywhere. Do anything.
Sex. It’s only sex, I tell myself. Sex is never worth so high a price, not even the best sex I’ve ever had, with the only man I’ve ever been with who was able to…reach inside me and rip out my soul. I tell myself it was only the extremity of the moment—the cold and rain, the parking lot, the muddy, yellow light, the gritty texture of stucco under my cheek. You could have been any man, anyone at all, and it would have felt exactly the same.
As the rest of the weekend passes in a whirlwind of chores, bickering kids and stilted conversations with my ex, I almost convince myself it’s true.
Monday morning I drive the kids to school. Your house is on my route, and I see your truck back in the driveway. Goddamn it.
When I pull into the parking lot at three, I scan the area for your vehicle, but it isn’t there. You used to pick your girls up as often as not, but today they walk home, hunched under the weight of their backpacks. Nearly two week go by—twelve days of steadily dwindling memories and my slowly diminishing responses to them. I’m still occasionally taken by surprise when I see a close-cropped head of sandy hair in the aisle at the grocery store, or feel the lingering soreness of my inner thigh muscles when I stoop to pick something up off the ground, but the flush that floods my body is less intense now. I ache, but it’s a sweet ache, tempered by time and distance.
I don’t see a trace of you anywhere in all that time, other than your truck in the driveway of the house you share with your wife. By the second Friday morning, I’m positive you’re avoiding me, and it sucks because I don’t want to make your life difficult or complicated. By now, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that what happened can never happen again. Whatever went on between you and Cindy, you’ve decided to stick it out. I’m relieved, in a way. It frees me of the need to make a decision about you, one way or the other.
That afternoon, the skies are nearly black with storm-clouds, the wind blowing hard off the water, the waves capped with pale froth. Around 2:30, it starts to rain so hard the streets are like rivers. Windows fogged, I pull in to pick up Kath and Jacob, my defrost fighting a losing battle with the humidity.
The kids run for the car with their coats pulled up over their heads, bound inside soaking wet and sputtering. I pull away to see you in your truck, waiting for your girls. My stomach almost drops right out of me, but I manage a friendly smile and a wave as I drive away. Your startled smile shakes a laugh out of my tight gut, and Jacob demands to know what’s so funny.
“Nothing,” I tell him. “Never mind.”
I get them home, get supper going. Kath knows how to thicken the stew when it’s ready, and I put on my make-up and head off to work my four hours at the pizza joint. When I get home, there are dishes to be done, dirty clothes on the floor of the bathroom, and the kids are more than ready for bed. I get them settled and change the channel from anime cartoons to House. Drag out the laptop and check my facebook page. Answer an email from my sister in San Diego.
It’s almost one before I head off to bed, sliding under the blankets. As soon as I close my eyes, I’m transported back to that night, my body suffusing with heat. Seeing you again has brought it all back, fresh and raw. With a sigh of defeat, I slide my hand under the waistband of my panties and stroke myself to a quick release. As I ball my hands under my chin, the musk of my arousal flooding my nostrils, I wonder how long I’ll have to deal with this. How long will I coast on that one encounter, will I ever get to a point when I want to masturbate to something different?
I’m just drifting off when I’m jolted back to wakefulness. I lie there for a moment, staring into the dark, wondering what woke me. Roll over and close my eyes. A moment later, it’s back, a soft, furtive knocking.
My stomach tightens, pushing my pounding heart up into my throat. I’m a woman living alone with her kids. A knock after midnight is almost never a good thing.
Pulse hammering, I rise, slip my bathrobe on over the oversized, paint-stained t-shirt I wore to bed. Tiptoe down the stairs to the den, nudge the curtain aside an inch so I can see who’s there. Another knock.
Your profile against the parking lot lights is instantly recognizable, and I release a pent-up breath, relieved that it’s nothing sinister, but suddenly awash with dread, anticipation, hunger, guilt. You raise your hand to knock again, and I slide the window open.
“Rhys? What are you doing here?”
You glance at me, then away. Your hand, poised to knock again, dives into your pocket. You look like a thirteen-year-old boy confronted with a girl at a school dance. And me? All I can think of is the baggy shirt I have on, and the old, tatty panties I’m wearing because my period’s due any day and I don’t want the good ones stained. I feel like a schlub, but that doesn’t stop me wanting you.
“I just…I saw you today, and I…ah, I was walking by, and…”
“Actually, I’m glad you’re here,” I hear myself saying, my voice as steady as a surgeon’s hand. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you. To…well, to let you know that I’m okay with what happened. And you don’t need to worry about anything. I know condoms can fail, but my tubes are tied and I haven’t been with anyone but my ex in over ten years. You’re safe.”
You look at me as if I’ve grown a second head, but I push on, this speech well-rehearsed. “And, well, it was incredible, but it doesn’t need to be anything other than what it was, you know? It was exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it, and that’s all. I’m not going to go all Fatal Attraction on you, and boil your kids’ bunny-rabbit or anything. I’m not interested in making your life complicated or getting in between you and your wife.”
“Oh,” you say, seeming more uncomfortable than ever. “I was kind of worried…”
I force a laugh, dragging one hand over my face, wondering what it would be like to fuck you in a bed. The lights on, with all my imperfections on display, all those consequences of having kids that were invisible in the shadows of the parking lot.
“I mean, I’m not saying I wouldn’t love to do that again,” I add, cringing. I never was good at improv and here I am ad-libbing my way straight to hell. I should be sticking to the script—it was great, but it’s over. “Because holy shit, it was amazing.”
You perk up, and part of me hates you in that moment, because I know all I am to you is an easy lay. But another part of me is on fire, ready to do what you want, if only you were to step closer, take my hand, whisper something filthy in my ear.
“So you live here all by yourself?” you ask.
I chuckle, and the sound is cynical and hard, even in my own ears. “Me and my kids, yeah. Don’t think you can come climbing in my bedroom window, either. I’m not interested in getting my tires slashed or a brick thrown through my window, Rhys.”
“Yeah,” you say. “I understand.”
No! my body screams. Don’t understand! Just fuck me again. Make me forget the sloppy shirt I’m wearing, the nineteen linear feet of stretch marks on my abdomen, my less than perky, post-breastfeeding tits. Make me forget I wasted the last eleven years on passionless, obligatory sex with a man who didn’t know the first goddamn thing about what I need. Make me burn.
“Only reason we got away with it the one time is because no one was left around to see us leave the bar together,” I say, clamping one hand between my thighs to appease the ache. You can’t see what I’m doing. I almost wish you could. I wonder what you’d do, imagine you crossing the small distance between the welcome mat and the window, imagine the mingled smells of beer and aftershave washing over me before your lips come down on mine.
“Yeah,” you say, scratching the stubble on your jaw, your other hand still crammed into your jean pocket. I wish I was that hand, nestled next to your cock, breathing in that scent that drove me wild as I knelt on the wet pavement two weeks ago. “I know.”
“But it was fucking wild,” I say, staring off at the lopsided, unkempt topiary next to the complex’s playground, that hasn’t been trimmed in years. “You should have seen me the next day. Bruises all over, whisker burn so bad I had to use special make-up to cover it up. And this”—I point to the bite mark on my neck—“still hasn’t healed.”
I risk a glance at you to find you staring at me, a strange, hard hunger in your eyes. In that moment, I want to fuck you so bad, I’m almost choking on it, but I say nothing. You’re not mine to have. And if you want me, you’re going to have to do more than show up at my door at 1:30 in the morning.
Come to the window, my body begs you. Come here and make me insane for you, like you did that night. On kiss, one touch, is all it would take, and I’d be fucking you right here on the floor of my den.
“You should go,” I hear myself saying. “Before someone wanders by and sees you. I’m in the middle of a divorce—I have to be careful what gets back to my ex. I definitely can’t have a man in my house, not while my kids are here.”
“Okay,” you say, nodding in understanding even as every cell of my body strains in your direction. You step away, hesitate, turn back. You look like you want to say something, I can see the questions forming in your eyes, but in the end, all you tell me is, “Good night.”
“Good night, Rhys.”
I step back from the window and slide it shut, settle the curtains back in place. I can hear you through the thin glass, your footsteps scrunching on the rock-strewn pavement. Before they fade from my hearing, my back is against the wall, legs splayed, my hand inside my panties. I picture you at the window, your hands reaching, pushing their way inside my robe to tug my nipples through my ratty t-shirt, your mouth on mine. There’s a wall between us, but you’ve got me, got me in so many ways I’ll never be able to fight my way free, and as my orgasm washes through me I understand there’s nothing I can do. I want you.
I stumble back up to bed, and drop off, the smell of my musk lingering in my nostrils.