Broken

Megan Hart

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Natalie Damschroder for the after-midnight parking lot adventures, the honest critique and the squeeing. Thank you for helping me make this book the best it could be.

To Lauren Dane for the afternoon IM madness and constant support. Thank you also for helping me kick this book in the butt.

To my family, for helping me become the person I am.

To my children for their loving support and pride. “My mom writes books” still makes me smile – even though you’re not allowed to read them until you’re over eighteen!

To Jude Law…well, duh. Because.

To my Internet and real-life friends who listen to me blather on about my writing and actually buy my books. A million thanks!

To Joshua Radin, whose song “What If You” was the backdrop for the scene on the stairs. Thanks for giving me the perfect song as inspiration. I listened to it a hundred times and could listen a hundred more.

To Stevie Falk for letting me borrow her house and her profession, and for answering all my questions.

To my agent, Mary Louise Schwartz, my editor Susan Pezzack, the cover artists and staff at Harlequin who worked to get this book on the shelves – thank you for your hard work and dedication. I can write it, but you’re the ones who put it out there for the world to see.

And finally, to my husband, who listened to me talk about this book for months and months, offered insight, kept me going, hooked me up with medical information and told me how great I was. (And still does.) Thank you for helping me reach my dreams.

Acknowledgments

This book couldn’t have been written without the knowledge and help of the following:

Jake Fischer, who offered insight into living with SCI

Elaine McMichael and Karen Heffl eger, who answered my questions and helped me get the details right

And Michael F. Lupinacci, M.D., who helped me put all the pieces into place and in the right order.

Chapter 01

January

This month my name is Mary and, apparently, I’m as contrary as the nursery rhyme. First I said I wanted to fuck, but now I’m refusing to come out of the bathroom. What I don’t know is that Joe doesn’t like cock teases, nor does he suffer wasting time. He’s already done the wooing, bought the drinks, made the compliments. If I don’t put out in the next five minutes, he’ll put his coat on and go.

I don’t know this because I only met him three hours ago in a bar downtown. His name seemed as if it were a cosmic joke, but out of all the men I met tonight, Joe’s the only one who bothered trying to have a conversation with me. That’s why I picked him. That, and the fact that’s he’s hot and well-dressed, with a charming quirk of a smile that tries to look sincere but mostly doesn’t.

“Mary, Mary quite contrary. How does your garden grow?”

His voice presses against me through the bathroom door. I’ve heard that rhyme a thousand times. Been called Proud Mary. Bloody Mary. Mary Poppins. My parents gave me the name thinking it had no diminutive, but people will always find a way to tease, if they want.

The doorknob is cool under my fingers and turns easily. I open the door to show Joe I’m ready for him. That the wait was worth it. I’ve stripped down to a set of lacy white panties and a matching bra, and I fight to keep from crossing my arms to shield myself from his scrutiny.

His eyes widen a bit. His tongue snakes out to slide along a mouth I haven’t even kissed yet. I want to kiss it. He looks as if he’ll taste good.

“Damn.” The word’s a compliment, not a curse, and I manage a slightly more confident smile.

I turn, slowly, so he can see me from all sides. When I come around again to face him, Joe reaches for my hand and tugs me one step, two, until, like magnets, our bodies attach to one another.

He’s unbuttoned his shirt and the hair on his chest scratches my soft flesh. I shiver. My nipples peak against the lace and heat coils in my belly. Joe’s fingers splay on my hips. I’m all of a sudden too shy to look into his eyes.

He pulls me to the bed—the nice, big king-size he requested from the clerk at the front desk with that same quirky smile that first attracted me. “I’m a bad boy,” that smile says. “But I’m so good you won’t care.” It had worked on me and the clerk, too, who’d taken the extra time to find us a room with a bed big enough for an orgy.

There’s no orgy, though, just me and Joe and the sound of the heating unit blowing the curtains. The hot air coming out of it smells stale, but what did I expect? Frankincense and myrrh?

“C’mon.” Joe’s getting impatient, tugging me onto the bed.

He kisses me, finally, my throat and the curves of my breasts. A shoulder. I arch a little under the feeling of his mouth on my skin, and though my lips part, he doesn’t kiss them.

His hands smooth up my sides and over my belly. When one goes between my legs, I’m startled. He doesn’t notice, or maybe he doesn’t care. He strokes me a few times and I melt into his experienced touch like sugar in a hot pan, all crumbling, scattered grains melting and smoothing into one liquid ooze.

This is all happening faster than I’d imagined it would, but I can’t seem to find the words to tell him to slow down. His fingers find the small, lace-covered bump at the front of my panties and begin a pattern of slow circles. I decide fast isn’t such a bad thing.

“You like that?”

I nod. He smiles and reaches to flick open the front clasp of my bra. My breasts surge out and I moan in the back of my throat. I want his mouth on me, his tongue swiping across my tight pink nipples. I want him to suck on them, one and then the other, while his hand moves between my legs. I’m already wet from his caress. I can feel it when I shift.

He pauses to shrug out of his shirt and I admire his chest. He has a body clothes are made to hang on, but naked, his shoulders are broader than they seemed before, his belly flat and tight with muscles but not rippled with them. His arms look strong, the cords in his forearms standing out as he tugs his belt buckle, unbuttons and unzips his pants. The hair on his chest, arms and belly is a little darker than that on his head, where his hair is the color of a lion’s mane. I wonder if he colors himself blond or if all men’s bodies show such disparity.

He pushes his trousers over his thighs and takes off his boxer briefs. I can’t look. I turn my head away, my breath lodging in my throat and my heart beating pitter-pat under my left breast. The bed dips as he kneels beside me. His hand returns to its shelter between my thighs and strokes me again. I lift my hips, an uncertain cry leaking from my unkissed lips.

“Take these off,” he whispers, giving me no time to comply before he hooks his fingers into the strings at the side and pulls them off himself.

I’m bared to him. My carefully waxed and trimmed bush of candy floss pubic hair. The hard button of my clitoris. My tender flesh, soft with arousal, wet from his touch.

He parts my thighs, spreading me, and I moan. Joe seems to like this, because his breathing gets heavier, faster, the way mine is. He runs an inquisitive finger along my folds and then up to my clit again and, oh, the sensation is indescribable. He rolls my own moisture over the tight bump and my hips jerk.

I feel an unaccustomed weight in my pussy, an emptiness, an ache. More heat blooms in my belly and breasts, that secret cavern between my legs. He rubs my clit and liquid trickles down the curve of my ass, tickling.

He takes one of my nipples in his mouth and it feels so good I whimper. I put a hand to the back of his head, feeling his soft blond locks on the backs of my fingers. He suckles, and my fingers tighten. He mutters something but doesn’t stop sucking my nipple or rubbing my clit, and my breath comes faster and faster until I’m light-headed.

I’ve been with boys before. Making out. Petting. I’ve given furtive hand-jobs in the back seat of a car, stroking and jerking and wondering what all the fuss is about. I’ve been with boys before, but not yet a man, someone who doesn’t plead or fumble. Joe doesn’t even ask, he just does. There’s something so perfect about that, just what I was looking for, and I have no more time to be shy.

Not even when his mouth slides down my body and centers between my legs. I go stiff at once in my surprise, but my small protest becomes a moan when Joe’s tongue flicks along my clitoris.

Oh, holy mother of God.

I’ve imagined this, using my hands or the pulsing jet of a hand-held shower to make myself come. Nothing has prepared me for the reality. His tongue is soft and warm, gentler than his fingers. It’s like water against me, softly lapping like waves against the shore. I arch into the sensation. He licks me. I shudder. He licks me again, and I’m helpless to do anything but spread my legs for him and give him my body.

Tension coils in my belly, and my nipples have grown as hard and tight as pebbles. Tiny moans leak from my throat. Joe pauses to blow against me, his hot breath making me writhe.

I’ve never had an orgasm with another person. I’m not sure I can. I’ve been close a couple times and it always slipped away from me at the last minute.

He stops again, and I’m sure I’m going to lose it. My thighs vibrate. The muscles in my belly tense and release. It will take only the barest pressure to make me go over, just the right touch, but he’s not giving it to me.

He’s doing something I can’t see. Something crumples. The bed moves as he shifts. His body covers me, chest hairs tantalizing my nipples wet from his saliva. His thighs and belly press against mine.

I have time to think of one more name I’ve been called, one that is appropriate but nevertheless tiresome, before Joe grunts and moves.

“Holy hell!” he cries, astonished when I shriek.

“You’re a virgin?”

I’m embarrassed by the entirely involuntary scream, and I stutter, “Y-yes.”

“Well…shit.”

He’s not climbing off me, though I wouldn’t blame him if he did. The pain has faded, replaced by a sensation of fullness, of being stretched. It’s not unpleasant. It’s not exactly comparable to the stories of bliss my girlfriends have been telling, but it’s not as awful as the tales the nuns told of unbearable agony, either. I’ve always wondered how a nun would know.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I hoped you wouldn’t notice.”

A smile tilts one corner of his mouth as he pushes up on his hands to look into my face. “The scream gave it away.”

“I was surprised.”

Something tender creeps into his eyes and he leans in to kiss my cheek. “You should’ve told me. I’d have been gentler.”

Now comes the truth of why I’m here. “I really just wanted to get it over with.”

He looks perplexed. “Why?”

“I’m twenty-three. It’s time. All my friends have done it. I’m tired of being a virgin. I just wanted to…do it.”

He’s still inside of me and it doesn’t hurt, but I’m becoming uncomfortable. This isn’t going the way I’d planned. None of it has except for the part where I find a guy in a bar to take me someplace and get him to divest me of my maidenhood.

He gives a gentle, exploratory thrust. I tense, waiting for pain that doesn’t come. Joe bends to trace the curve of my ear with his tongue.

“You shouldn’t have to just get it over with,” he whispers, voice deep. “Not the first time.”

He slides a hand under my hair, which has spread out on the pillow. He kisses my earlobe, then my neck. His teeth press into the sensitive skin of my shoulder.

He pushes inside me and slides out, inch by inch. He does it again. The next time he moves inside me, I gasp and curve to meet him.

He smiles. “Good?”

It is good, but he doesn’t seem to care when I don’t say so. He moves a little faster and pushes himself back up on his hands. The tendons in his arms stand out. I can look down between us, to the point where our bodies have joined. His dark curls tangle with my lighter hair. He pulls out and I see the base of his erection, the ring of latex sheathing him, glistening. He pushes in and I watch, fascinated, as he disappears inside my body.

Sex isn’t like I’d imagined, but I can’t say whether it’s better or worse. It brings a flush of red out on my chest, and it must spread to my throat because I feel the same heat there. I watch him move in and out of me, and I think, connected. We are connected.

His face has gone solemn in concentration, eyes squinting, mouth creased. Sweat forms along his hairline. I smell him, a crisp bite of soap mixed with something musky and rich, like earth turned over in the garden after a heavy rain. Something like blood. I think it’s lust. I slide my hands up along his chest, feeling his muscles bunch and move, touching the twin tight nipples so different than mine. I pinch one, experimentally, and he groans, so I do it again.

His thrusts are a little less smooth and a tremor runs through his body. He stops and looks down at me. I look back.

Without a word, he rolls us both until I end up on top, legs straddling his waist. I’ve put a hand on his chest for balance, and his fingers grip my hips. He shifts us both with practiced ease, and a moment later I gasp aloud as this new position allows him to sink deeper inside me.

“Lean forward and put your hands on my shoulders.”

I do what he says. When he begins to move again, I’m glad I did. Oh, shit, this is good. Oh, fuck. He fills me all the way, in and out. My clit bumps his stomach with every thrust, and the weight, the heat, the ache is back, though the emptiness has been replaced by the delicious fullness of him stretching me.

He slides a hand between us, his thumb cocked to press against me, and this extra pressure sends exquisite bolts of pleasure shooting through me like lightning.

“Come on,” he whispers. “I want you to come.”

This time, I really think I might.

He fucks me faster. Every thrust rocks my clit against his thumb. I’m being stroked inside and out. My thighs shake. My breath comes in hitches and gasps. I’m burning and frozen at the same time.

He grunts and thrusts harder. Our bodies smack together, my ass against his thighs, belly to belly. My fingers have dug into his shoulders, the palms of my hands pressed hard to his collarbone. The pulse in his neck beats fast and hard.

I can’t stop myself from crying out. It feels too good. I no longer feel my arms, legs, back. I’ve become coiled in tension, everything growing tighter, like a key winding a spring, and I know it won’t be long before it happens, before I spring free.

But not yet. Right now he pushes me to sit up straight. My breasts bounce as his thrusts lift me up and down. There’s no more push-push pressure on my clit, but he replaces it with direct stimulation with his finger, which circles in time to his thrusts. This is even better, almost unbearably better, so good I don’t think I can stand it, so good it almost hurts.

I cry out, “Joe! Oh, God, Joe!” And understand now that the dialogue in romance novels isn’t so unrealistic, after all. I want to shout out more, words of love and gratitude. It would be easy enough to fall in love right now, with pleasure coursing through my veins headier than any wine has ever made me. I shout his name again, then I stop trying to speak and end up making sounds.

My clit is wet from my juices and his finger slips and slides against me. He’s thrusting, I’m rocking, we’re jerking and pumping but somehow managing to keep the pace together.

I’m not quite sure how, but I feel him getting thicker inside me. He closes his eyes, his brow furrows in concentration, and I wish he’d open them to look at me when I come. I want that sense of connection again, but he doesn’t give it to me. I have to be satisfied with looking down between us, to the place his body joins with mine.

Electric sparks tingle in my thighs and down to my curling toes. I quiver. My center burns with spreading outward warmth while the pleasure goes up, up, up, and I’m stretched thin with it. So thin, until at last, I break.

I can’t make a sound this time, knocked so breathless with ecstasy I can’t even cry out. My head tips back so far my hair tickles my back. I explode outward and become scattered pieces connected by nothing more than breath. When I inhale, I merge back together. A second time I burst apart and reform, more quickly and without as much drama.

I breathe in, slow and deep. I look down at Joe, who’s opened his eyes finally, but if I hoped to see something in his gaze I’m disappointed. He’s gone far away inside his own climax. He gasps, thrusting once more so hard he pushes my whole body upward. His cock pulses and he makes a series of small, stuttering groans that trail away as he falls back onto the pillow, spent.

When I can breathe normally again, I get off him. He slides out of me, and I feel an unaccustomed sense of loss. The emptiness has returned, but different than before. The place between my legs aches, too, but the way my body feels after I’ve given it a good workout, used muscles hard they way they’re meant to be used. It’s not a bad feeling at all.

I give myself a mental going over, testing limbs and organs, testing for disruption in the way my body functions. I thought having sex would somehow make me feel as if I sat differently inside myself, but right now all I feel is flushed and drowsy.

I lie down beside him, my head pillowed on his shoulder, and allow myself the familiarity of a hand on his chest. He might be asleep, I can’t be sure. His chest rises and falls steadily. I peek downward, emboldened by my new status as a well-fucked woman, and look over his penis. It rests, still wrapped in the condom, against his thigh. It looks as spent as I feel, and I want to giggle but I hold it in.

“That was better than just getting it over with,” I say.

I tip my head up to see his reaction. Though his eyes are still shut, he smiles.

“I’m glad.”

I wish he’d say more. With passion fading, I feel the need for some reassurance. That I did all right, for my first time. I wish he’d at least look at me.

I don’t expect a declaration of love, or anything, but…something…more. I just gave him my virginity, after all. Even if I’d intended just to get rid of it, it was still a gift. Wasn’t it?

Maybe Joe doesn’t think so. Maybe he’s counting the minutes until he can get dressed and head out. Maybe I should leave before he can.

I get up and swing my legs over the side of the bed. The carpet feels matted under my feet. Dirty. I don’t want to think of who else has walked on it, or for that matter, how many couples have fucked on the bed I’m sitting on. My skin crawls suddenly and I shudder. I pick up my bra, then look for my panties. The white lace has vanished against the white tangle of the sheets, and I paw through the hills and mountains of fabric we made with our fucking.

Joe opens a sleepy eye and rolls on his side to watch me. I find my panties and snatch them up triumphantly. I want to wash, rid myself of the stickiness. There’s no blood, at least, and I send up a prayer to the real Virgin Mary, though, of course, she’d hardly have approved of this night’s adventure.

I go to the bathroom, grab a washcloth, and run it under hot water. Joe enters behind me, and I keep my gaze focused on the water running in the sink. He strips off the condom and tosses it in the trash, then lifts the lid on the toilet and urinates, a long, hard stream. I’m mortified. He reaches into the shower and turns it on. Steam wreathes the air.

“Want to join me?”

“No!” My answer blurts out louder than I’d meant it to.

I step into my panties and hook my bra, then grab my blouse and skirt from the hook on the back of the door. I put my clothes on faster than I’d taken them off, even though my fingers are shaking and I have to redo the buttons.

He’s staring. He’s naked. I smooth my hair and catch sight of my face in the mirror, blurred by steam. Eyes a dark smear, mouth a red slash. I’ve become faceless, which is good because I don’t need to see myself right now.

I can’t read his expression. I’m not sure I want to. A few minutes ago I was desperate for connection. Now I can’t wait to get away.

“What’s the matter?” he asks.

“Nothing. I have to go.”

“Are you sure?”

I’m torn between gratitude that he’s being so calm, and despair he’s not more solicitous. “I’m sure.”

“All right,” he says and turns to step into the shower. “Drive carefully.”

My breath squeaks out of me and I snatch up my purse from the bathroom counter. He looks at me over a shoulder marked by my fingers. His brow raises.

“You sure you’re all right?”

“Yes!” I shout, though I’m not. My voice has gone high and wavery, as if I’m holding back tears. I clutch my purse to my chest. “Thanks for the favor!”

He turns all the way around, hands on his hips, and I wish he’d at least wrap a towel around his waist.

“Look, I’m not sure what the problem is—”

“Of course you don’t!” I won’t insult myself by explaining, either.

“Mary.” Joe’s voice is calm. “Did I misunderstand you back at the Slaughtered Lamb when you put your hand on my ass and whispered, ‘I’ve got at condom with your name on it?’”

That had been my friend Bett’s idea. Not mine. It had worked, yes, but—

“Hey.” He pulls a towel from the rack and covers himself before stepping toward me. He reaches to push my hair over my shoulder. “I thought it was what you wanted. It’s what you said you wanted.”

I can’t argue with that. I’d like to put the blame on him, make it his fault, but the truth is clear. The burden of my virginity had been lifted from me in a pretty spectacular fashion. I was only being a fool if I expected more.

“I did.” My voice still sounds thick, as if I might cry. But I know I won’t.

“You knew what you wanted and you went out and got it,” Joe said. “What’s so wrong about that?”

“Nothing!”

“Sure I can’t convince you to join me?” Joe backs toward the shower as he drops the towel. His grin is quite tempting, but I shake my head. “Okay. You’re sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine.” I think it’s only half a lie. “I have to go.”

“Drive carefully,” he says again.

When the shower curtain rattles closed, I almost change my mind. Instead, I finish dressing and flee the hotel room, leaving behind the stranger who made me into a woman.

“That’s a nice story,” I said. “I like the part about how you made her a woman.”

Joe reached for his paper cup of soda and took a long drink, as though talking had made him thirsty. “Didn’t I?”

“What I find interesting is the idea that a woman has to have sex to become a woman.”

He shrugged and tore open the paper wrapped around his sandwich. He always waits until after he’s told me the month’s tale before he eats, then falls to with gusto as though the telling has given him an appetite. He has turkey on wheat, the usual, but this time with tomatoes. I watch him pick them off, one by one. Joe hates tomatoes.

“Doesn’t it?”

I say nothing, content to sit and watch him eat. I needed time for my body to ease back to the real world, for my heartbeat to slow and my breath to follow. I pulled my sweater around me, feigning a chill, to hide the fact my nipples had gone stiff. Later, at home, I would recall his story, the small details of it, and I’d touch myself until I came. For now, I played the cool observer, the same as I did every month when we met on this bench in the atrium or the one outside in the garden.

“I don’t know what her problem was.” Joe chewed and swallowed. A pearl of mayonnaise clung to the corner of his mouth, and I pushed a napkin toward him.

“She’d just lost her virginity to a stranger. Maybe she felt awkward.”

Of course, I had no idea what Mary felt, any more than I knew what any of Joe’s women thought or felt. My imagination filled in the details of their coupling, taking what he told me and painting a picture from the feminine point of view.

“She was on me like butter on a biscuit. How was I supposed to know she was a virgin? She didn’t act like one.”

“How’s a virgin supposed to act?”

He shrugged again. “I don’t know. But she acted like she knew exactly what she wanted. So why was she so upset when she got it?”

I didn’t answer for a moment, thinking. “Maybe she was disappointed.”

He gave me the grin, the bad boy smile. “Sadie, I did not disappoint her.”

“Oh, that’s right. You made her a woman.”

Joe frowned. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“No. Losing my virginity didn’t make me a woman. Did it make you a man?”

His one-eyed squint shouldn’t have been as enchanting as it was. “I lost my virginity to Marcia Adams, my mother’s best friend. It made me a man pretty fast. I wouldn’t have survived it, otherwise.”

This is a story I’d never heard and my face must have shown it. Joe laughed, one eye still squinted, face tipped up toward the atrium’s glass ceiling.

“Are you going to tell me about it?”

He looked, for one strange moment, shy. I hadn’t thought him capable of it. He shifted on the bench, and I was sure he was for once not going to tell me.

“I was seventeen. She asked me to take care of her garden. Money for college. She told me I could use her pool every day, when I was done mowing the lawn.”

“Sounds like you did more than mow her lawn.”

He rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. “Yeah.”

“And you really think that’s what made you a man?”

I watched him curiously. He turned to look at me, his face solemn and nodded slowly.

“Yeah. I think it showed me what to expect, anyway.”

“I’m not sure that’s the same thing.”

“Well, if losing your virginity didn’t make you a woman,” he said, “what did?”

I said nothing to that, a topic into which I didn’t wish to delve. After a moment, he shrugged. “Mary acted like I was handing her a twenty and kicking her out.”

“Maybe she assumed you were the sort of guy who picks up women in bars and sleeps with them, then expects them to leave.”

“I’d have let her shower first!” He cried, indignant. “Jeez, I’m not a total asshole.”

Yet he didn’t deny he was, indeed, the sort of man who picks up women in bars and sleeps with them, perfectly satisfied with one night.

I didn’t respond, just sipped my drink. Joe set his sandwich down. The sun shining through the glass overhead cut through the giant Boston ferns hanging above us and striped shadows in his dark blond hair. His frown pulled his full mouth into thinness.

“Say it.”

I pretended not to know what he meant.

“Say it,” he repeated. “You want to. I can see it in your eyes.”

“Say what?” I relented. “That you are the sort of man who does that?”

“Keep going.” He sat back against the bench, his arms crossed.

I smiled. “That you’re a cheater? A rogue? That you don’t know the meaning of fidelity? That you go through women like wind through lace?”

“Don’t forget that I’m a silver-tongued devil who’ll say anything necessary to get into a woman’s pants. That my Holy Grail is pussy. That I’ve split more peaches than a porn star.”

I laughed. “Split more peaches? That’s a new one.”

Joe wasn’t laughing. “Go on and say it, Sadie. I’m a manwhore. You think I’m a slut.”

I studied him before I answered. “Joe…”

He wrapped up his food and stood, then tossed it in the pail next to me. He moved like a marionette dancing under the hand of an uncertain puppeteer, all jerks and twitches. He was angry. Really angry, and I stood, too.

“Joe, stop.”

He turned to me. His suit today was black, his shirt bright blue, his tie black with tiny blue dots scattered on the fabric. He put his hands on his hips, ruining the cut of his suit, which probably cost as much as my car payment.

More shadows speckled his blue-green eyes, his high cheekbones, the slope of his nose. No sign of a smile. His glare wrinkled the corners of his eyes, and it wasn’t fair they only made him better looking instead of haggard.

“I know you think it, so you might as well say it.”

“But, Joe,” I said gently. “It’s true.”

“It won’t always be true!” His words rang out, echoing.

The plants seemed to recoil, startled at this shout interrupting their usual peace.

I shouldn’t have scoffed, but his anger had made me angry, too. “Oh, please.”

Joe stalked toward me. I didn’t move away. He stood only a few inches taller but he seemed bigger in his anger. I refused to flinch even when he leaned in so close he could have kissed me, if he’d wanted. This was my role, disinterested observer, as his was playful rogue. I acted as though I wasn’t intimidated, though the truth was, being so close I could count his eyelashes, smell him, feel the heat of his breath on my face, I was. Underneath, I always was. Intimidated and turned on.

“It’s true,” he insisted through gritted teeth.

“I’ve heard that before. But every month you come back here and tell me a new story about some new woman. Or more than one. So you’ll have to forgive me if the idea of you suddenly becoming Mr. Faithful sounds a little funny.”

He jerked away from me, his finger pointing. “And every month, you listen.”

I lifted my chin. “Is it my fault you have stories to tell?”

He made a disgusted noise and gestured with his hands as if he was throwing something away. Maybe me. I wasn’t sure.

“I don’t have to prove myself to you.”

“No,” I agreed. “So why are you trying so hard?”

We’d never argued. Arguments were for people more intimate than I’d ever have admitted we were. Now my heart thumped and heat rose in my cheeks. My stomach churned and a sharp sting in my palms made me realize I’d clenched my fists. So much for the cool demeanor. I relaxed them with conscious effort, and the motion drew Joe’s gaze. He looked at my hands, then back at my face.

“What about you? What are you trying to prove?”

“Me?” The question surprised me. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Why do you listen?”

Now it was my turn to gather up my garbage and toss it in the trash. I gave him my back, intensely aware I didn’t have to see him to know he was looking at me.

“Not so nice when it’s turned around on you, is it?” I could hear his smirk.

I looked at him again. “I’ve been listening to your stories for more than a year now, Joe. I guess it’s just become a bad habit.”

His body didn’t flinch, but his eyes did. “Bad habits should be broken, though, right?”

He turned on his heel and stalked away. Panic flared in me. He was messing up the parts we’d been playing for the past two years. What did that mean? That he wouldn’t be back? Or just that he wouldn’t have another story?

“Joe!”

He didn’t turn, and I had too much pride to call after him again. I waited until he’d disappeared beneath the hanging greens and I was alone in the quiet before I sat on the bench again, my mutilated fists in my lap.

The flowers reproached me, but since they had no voice, I didn’t have to listen.

Chapter 02

I met Adam at a party my freshman year of college. Not at a frat house, this party was at “lit house,” a three-story Victorian monstrosity that had been home to half the English department, grads and undergrads, for as long as anyone could remember. It was its own frat house, in a way, though the graffiti on the basement walls featured quotes from Wilde, Shakespeare and Burns, and the limericks were clever in addition to being filthy. I was there by invitation of my roommate Donna, an English major.

I wasn’t much a fan of beer, but I carried a cup anyway. Donna had abandoned me to hook up with a cute guy from one of her classes. I moved among the crowd in search of the bathroom, listening to drunken discussions about iambic pentameter and poetic imagery along the way.

In the kitchen, looking for the toilet I’d been assured was “just through there,” I found Adam. He lounged on top of the kitchen counter, his incredibly long legs encased in faded blue corduroy pants, immense feet shod in the shabbiest brown oxfords I’d ever seen. He wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of a famous punk rock band. He had an earring glittering in one lobe and long hair. He had a cigarette in one hand and a green short-neck bottle of Straub beer in the other.

“Bathroom?” When I nodded, he pointed to the small door just beyond the door to the cellar. “The door doesn’t lock. But I’ll watch out for you.”

He flashed me a grin of perfect white teeth, the upper front tooth slightly crooked. I was smitten. I used the bathroom and came out to find him in discourse about the writing of Anaïs Nin and how it compared to present-day erotica. I didn’t leave the kitchen for the rest of the night.

It was the first time I ever got drunk.

Later, stumbling home, Donna asked me who he was.

“I don’t know,” I said with beer-bleary lips. “But I’m going to marry him.”

Two weeks later, as I left my room to go to class, I saw him leaving a message on the door of Rachael Levine, my resident assistant. Rachael was fond of lecturing the rest of us on the dangers of drinking too much and having indiscriminate sex. She didn’t seem much good at applying the same lectures to herself, though, even at twenty-two still hitting the frat parties and making a point of leaving her ample supply of condoms out in her room for anyone to see. She also liked bragging about her “brilliant” boyfriend.

His name was Adam Danning.

He turned and flashed me the smile that had so intoxicated me. “Hey. I know you.”

Between one heartbeat and the next, my entire life changed.

“You’re Sadie.”

He knew my name.

How did I talk to him? Tall, handsome Adam. Brilliant lecturer on the differences between erotica and pornography. Drinker of Straub beer and smoker of Marlboro. Boyfriend of Rachael.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to talk much. He walked me to class and spoke about his work in the English department. About the University. About a movie he’d seen the night before. He made it easy to be silent, and I drank his words with more enthusiasm than I’d consumed the beer.

“Lit house party this weekend,” he said as we parted ways at the top of the hill, he to work and I to my introduction to psychology class. “Will you be there?”

Oh, yes. I’d be there.

Six weeks into my first semester, we were eating lunch together three or four times a week and walking to class more often than that. We talked about everything. Politics, movies, art, books, sex, drugs and rock and roll. He recited poetry to me. Adam introduced me to the power of words.

He never talked about Rachael, though she spoke of him, often, to anyone who’d listen and anyone who didn’t. Though Adam and I made no secret of the time we spent together, she didn’t seem to consider me a threat. She went out of her way, in fact, to take me under her wing. She gave me advice, unsolicited, and kept back rolls of toilet paper for me during rush week when the fraternity pledges were ordered to steal it from the dorms and all the stalls went empty. She treated me like an amusing, perhaps slightly retarded, younger sister. She didn’t view me as a threat, probably because I’d carried my “smart” façade along with me from high school. If I’d been “the pretty one,” she might have worried more.

Adam quickly became the mirror in which I saw reflected the woman I wanted to become. He didn’t tell me what to do or think, nothing as crass as that. He just made it easy to like what he liked. Adam led me to discover places in myself I’d never known. I didn’t know what I wanted to study; he was already beginning his graduate work in English literature. He was a devout agnostic and I still went to Sunday mass. He liked the Sex Pistols and I listened to Top 40 radio. There were five years between us, which at the time seemed like an eternity. He was more mature than the boys in my dorm. He had his own apartment, a car, a job. Adam thought and fought with passion burning bright. He was vibrant and alive in a way I envied, admired and coveted. He smoked. He drank. He rode a motorcycle fast on dark roads and had insane hobbies like bungee jumping.

He was brilliant and wild, my Lord Byron, whom Lady Caroline Lamb had called “mad, bad and dangerous to know.”

While playing the part of the brainiac, my sexual experience had been limited to one high school boyfriend who’d been a fan of receiving but not giving oral sex. I’d held onto my virginity more by circumstance than determination. Most of my friends had already taken the plunge into “womanhood,” few with stories compelling enough to make me want to consider it myself. I’d dated a few boys but never tumbled head over heels into the crazy tempestuousness of adolescence so many of my friends had undergone. It might have been better if I had. A sort of training. As it was, I’d never felt the depths of emotion that sent me soaring and plummeting within minutes of each other.

Until I met Adam.

I told nobody of this internal roller coaster. Not Donna, who’d become my best friend. Not my sister Katie, who, two years younger than I, had her high school dramas to keep her busy. I kept the secret of my love inside and turned it over and over constantly, seeking a way to either break it up or figure it out. Like a Rubik’s Cube, or one of those pictures with the hidden images not everyone can see. I’d never been so confused, despairing, desperate and so elated and infused with joy.

I was in love with Adam Danning, and I had no idea of how he felt about me.

I should’ve been ashamed of asking Rachael to give me some of the condoms she was so proud of displaying when I knew I meant to use them to seduce her boyfriend. But when you’re mad, bad and dangerously in love, many things seem excusable that normally wouldn’t.

My first semester had passed unbearably fast. Faced with a month of distance in which Adam would be spending his time with Rachael, I could wait no longer. The day before I was supposed to go home, I armed myself with brand-new panties and the handful of condoms, and I went to Adam’s apartment under the pretense of dropping off the gift I’d bought for him.

He opened the door, shirtless, hair wet from a shower. My throat clutched. Every nerve thrummed. My heart beat in my wrists, the hollow of my throat. Between my legs.

“You got me a present?” He seemed pleased and took the package, which I’d been careful to wrap in nondenominational paper. “Sadie, wow. What is it?”

“Open it.”

Standing in his living room, my knees shaking and my palms sweating, I felt I’d reached a precipice. I wasn’t one for leaping, but I was ready to jump, no parachute necessary and no bungee cord, either. I was going to leap, and I was going to fly.

Adam hefted the volume in both his hands, his grin all the thanks I needed. “e.e. cummings, the Complete Poems.”

“You don’t have it, do you?”

He shook his head and leafed through the pages with the reverence every true book lover has when touching a new volume for the first time.

I’d marked one page with a ribbon of scarlet silk, and as I watched his fingers turning page after page on the way to revealing it, I forgot to breathe. I waited, each moment like drops of honey dripped from a spoon, every one its own universe but tied to all the rest by the thin strands of time.

He stopped when he found the ribbon, and his eyes scanned the words on the page, top to bottom, before he looked up to me. I remembered to breathe, sipping oxygen like wine. My pulse pounded in my ears, similar to the rush and crush of waves.

“Any illimitable star,” he said, and I knew at once I hadn’t made a mistake.

Adam put the book aside. We stared at each other without words but needing none. He held out a hand, and I took it. Our fingers linked, his hand warm and mine cold.

He pulled me onto his lap, straddling him. His shoulders beneath my palms were warm, his skin smooth. My groin snugged up against his bare stomach, and his hands fit naturally on my hips, as if they’d always meant to be there.

We kissed for a long time, sitting that way. His hands moved up and down my body. His erection nudged my rear until we shifted and it pressed up between us. I explored the lines and curves of his body every place I could reach without leaving his mouth or his lap. I traced the lines of his ribs, the bulges of his biceps. I circled the twin round spots of his nipples and counted the bumps of his spine with my fingertips.

By the time we moved toward the bedroom, I was wetter than I’d ever been. My nipples were taut and aching. Sensation crackled along my nerves like Independence Day sparklers, and everything had gone slow and languid, petroleum jelly smeared on the camera lens. Soft and out of focus.

Adam pushed aside the covers on his rumpled bed to lay me down on sheets that smelled of him, his mouth never leaving mine. We stretched out, my legs opening to cradle him against my body. His lips left mine to find the sensitive places on my jaw and throat, then lower as he unbuttoned my blouse to reveal my breasts in my new black lace bra.

He unwrapped me like a package, with slow fingers and low murmurs of appreciation. His hands passed over my skin as he unhooked, unbuttoned, unzipped. When I was naked, he bent to kiss my mouth again and his body aligned with mine, a puzzle with only two pieces. Adam and me. Fitting.

He traced my body with his lips and tongue. I tensed when he nuzzled the curve of my belly, then my thighs. He parted my curls with a fingertip and kissed my clit. When he licked it, I arched into ecstasy at once, giving myself up to his touch. Adam made love to me with his mouth, slowly, until I couldn’t do anything but ride the waves of pleasure and try to remember to breathe.

Adam didn’t fumble with the condom or struggle to figure out how to enter me. He used a hand to guide himself inside, dipping the head of his penis first to smooth the way for the rest. I was so wet he was able to fill me with one thrust.

We both cried out. He bent over me, his face buried in the curve of my shoulder. His teeth grazed me, and I answered with the scrape of my nails on his back. We didn’t move at first. Pleasure had immobilized us. The immensity of what we were doing became real. Only for a moment, and then he eased out with a smooth shift of his hips. Back in, all the way, and I lifted my hips to meet him.

Inexperience should have made me clumsy, but arousal choreographed us. In and out, bodies shifting. Give and take.

It didn’t last long enough for me to come again, a feat of which I didn’t know myself capable at the time. Adam cried my name when he came. His last thrust hurt me more than the first had and I cried out, too.

After, I lay curled in the circle of his arms and slept until it was time for me to get up and leave for home. It took my body three days to recover, until I could no longer feel the effects of him inside me, and by that time Adam had called me twice a day and made arrangements to come see me at my parents’ house. I never asked him what he told Rachael. I didn’t really care.

We were inseparable after that. We got married the June after I earned my masters in psychology. A year later, while I was working on my post-doctoral experience so I could sit for the licensing exam, the binding on Adam’s left ski broke as a result of a manufacturer’s defect. He skied headfirst into a tree, suffered a C5-level spinal cord injury that put him in a coma for three weeks and left him without sensation or voluntary movement from the shoulders down. He was only thirty-six.

Losing my virginity hadn’t made me a woman, but almost losing my husband had. He could have died. There are days I weep with gratitude that he didn’t.

And then, there are days I wish he had.

At home that night, I let myself in the front door with my key. I smelled something good, savory. Probably soup. Mrs. Lapp likes to make soup in the winter.

“Mrs. D?”

She always asks, though who else would be coming in at dinner time? “It’s me.”

She bustled out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. Her tidy gray bun had gone a little askew and wisps of hair had come down around her flushed face. Dolly Lapp cooks and cleans like a dream come true, but she’s more than a housekeeper. She’s a mother, nurse, friend and my life would be impossible without her.

I hung my coat on the hook and set my briefcase in its accustomed spot by the front door. Everything had to stay in its place in my house. There could be no room for clutter, nothing to snag or catch on wheels and block the way.

“I made soup. Come in and have a seat. I was getting worried. You’re so much later than usual.”

“Traffic was bad.” I lied with nary a flinch. Traffic had been fine. The fight with Joe had so unsettled me I’d gone driving, around and around, unable to face the idea of coming home. “But you’re right, it’s late. I should go check on Adam.”

Mrs. Lapp nodded her apple-doll head. “He’s in bed already, I helped him in about an hour ago. Soup’s in the Crock-Pot, Mrs. D, and I’ll just get going. Samuel’s been here since half past five. I set him up in the kitchen with a mug of coffee and the newspaper, but you know how he gets rutchy, setting too long.”

Guilt at my selfishness pricked me. “You go on ahead. I’m sorry you had to wait.”

She fluttered her hands. “Pshaw. Not to worry. Just remember to turn it to low when you’re done, so’s it don’t boil down, and I’ll put it away in the morning. Oh, and your sister called. I wrote down her message by the phone.”

She really took excellent care of us. I smiled. “Thanks, Mrs. Lapp.”

She nodded and headed back the hall toward the kitchen and her impatient husband. Belly empty and growling, I postponed my dinner for another few minutes. I climbed the narrow stairs, a hand on the carved and polished railing Mrs. Lapp kept so clean.

At the top of the stairs, I stopped to listen. To my right was the short part of the hall, with the bathroom, the guest room, the elevator and the stairs to the third floor. To my left, the long part of the hall, with two more rooms, the entrance to the back stairs and the master bedroom and bath. From upstairs I heard the faint sound of the television and then the creak of footfalls. Dennis. A moment later he peered over the railing.

I liked Dennis. At six-foot-two-inches and 230 pounds, he looked like a linebacker, but he was equally sensitive as he was strong. Though he’d only been with us for two years, I could no more do without him than I could with Mrs. Lapp.

“Hi, Sadie. You’re home late.”

“Traffic,” I told him, too.

“I’ll be going out in about twenty minutes. I’ll check on him before I go,” he told me and disappeared into his room again. I heard him talking, then making some calls.

Everything has its price, and the cost of having Dennis and Mrs. Lapp was my privacy. No matter how often I wistfully remembered being able to walk around in my underwear and eat peanut butter straight from the jar, that life was a part of the past. My mother-in-law euphemistically called them “help.” I called them necessity. The three of us worked together like synchronized machinery to keep this household functioning. Without them, I’d have been lost.

I paused in Adam’s doorway to put on the right face. A pleased half-smile with just the right touch of weariness to indicate the battles of the highway. A fond gaze.

Adam was already in bed, but he turned his head to look at me when I came through the doorway. He’d been reading something on his laptop. “Close program,” he ordered the computer. He could operate most everything in his room via the voice-operated command system. “You’re late tonight.”

“I feel so loved. You’re the third person tonight to tell me so.” I kept the reply light, joking, slipping so easily into the role of wife.

I pushed the computer table out of the way and bent to brush his lips with my evening kiss. His mouth felt cold beneath mine, and I closed my eyes, willing it to warm.

“Long day?” Adam asked when I’d pulled away. “You look bushed.”

Even before I could answer, my stomach gurgled, and I put my hand overtop to quiet it. “Mrs. Lapp made soup. I’ll go have some. I wanted to say hi, first.”

He smiled again, still looking so much like the man I’d fallen in love with it made my guts hurt. “Hi.”

“Hi.” I reached to push his hair off his forehead. His mouth had been cold but his forehead and cheeks were flushed. “You feel warm.”

“Ah, you caught me reading.” He wiggled his eyebrows. For a man without the use of anything below his shoulders, Adam never had a problem making his expressions clear.

I looked at his laptop. “You’re reading smut again?”

“Please.” He affected a haughty tone. “It’s literature.”

“For class or for fun?” I stroked my hand across his forehead again, pretending a caress but really checking for fever.

“Class.”

Adam’s poetry had once won national awards. Now he taught online English courses for Penn State University. As far as I knew, he no longer wrote poems.

“Prison Poets?” I straightened a hand that had fallen askew, legs that had bent a bit during the course of the day. I tucked blankets in all around him with swift, practiced movements, making him a mummy.

“The Marquis de Sade versus Oscar Wilde.” Adam’s eyes followed my course around the bed.

“Sounds positively kinky.”

I leaned across him to tuck the blankets on his other side. He breathed in deep and his lips grazed my throat. Heat and memories flooded me.

“You smell so good.” Adam’s voice was hoarser than usual.

I froze. He tilted his head to brush his lips against my skin, and breathed in again. He nuzzled me. My nipples tightened and knees got weak as instant arousal, eager as a puppy, bounded through me at that one, simple caress.

His tongue flickered out. “You taste good, too.”

I turned my face to his and kissed him, our mouths parting. His tongue stroked mine and another bolt of pure liquid pleasure washed over me. I put a hand on his shoulder to steady myself. The flannel of his pajama shirt was soft, the bones beneath padded enough by the fabric not to hurt my palm.

I wanted to kiss him forever, to melt into him. The kiss broke and left both of us breathing hard. I leaned in again, my mouth seeking his and finding it closed to me. Shut out, I pulled away.

“Hey, how about we watch a movie tonight?” My hand lingered on his cheek. “Give yourself a break.”

“Can’t.” He smiled, rueful. “I’m already behind on this stuff from being sick.”

Even a simple head cold knocked him harder than it would have for me. I understood. Even so, my heart still hammered in my chest and my thighs trembled with desire. Joe’s stories did that, but so did Adam’s kisses, as they always had. I leaned close to breathe into his ear and run a hand over his chest.

“I could make it worth your while.”

“Sadie,” Adam said after a moment. “I really need to get this done.”

We looked into each other’s eyes for a moment infinite with silence. I had no illusions that my husband did not know every part of me, every thought, every single stir of emotion. The accident that had taken the use of his body hadn’t damaged his mind. He’d always known me better than anyone ever had.

So why did it so often feel like he’d forgotten?

I pulled away, putting the mask back on. This was not the first time he’d lacked interest in physical intimacy. It wouldn’t, I was sure, be the last. I could’ve asked him why he’d rather read about sex than have it, and in the past, in our life before, I would have. But that was long ago and far away, and those sorts of questions often hung between us, never spoken. We both bore scars, and not all of them were visible. There was enough damage to contemplate without creating more.

“You’d better go eat,” Adam said. “Your stomach is growling.”

I nodded. “Do you need anything?”

“No. I’m good for now. I’ll finish this up and go to sleep.”

The entire room had been adapted to his use. He was perfectly capable of putting himself to sleep without me or Dennis to help him, though he’d still need help with the regular turning that helped prevent pressure sores. Tonight was Friday, and that meant it was my job to wake every two hours and check on him, since Dennis was off-duty for the weekend.

I kissed him again, without the heat from before. “Call if you need me.”

His attention had already gone back to his work, shutting me out. “’Night, babe.”

“G’night.” I pulled the door half-closed behind me and stopped to lean against the wall with one arm crossed over my stomach and the other elbow resting on top of it to support the hand covering my face. I was trying hard not to shake, but not quite succeeding.

“Sadie? I’m heading out now.”

At Dennis’ concerned tone, I straightened up and shifted my features again into neutrality. “Thanks, Dennis. Have a good time.”

He studied me and looked as though he were about to comment, but instead just grinned. “Yeah. It’s open mic night at the Blue Swan.”

I laughed, the sound barely hollow. “Ah. And what are you planning on reading?”

“Me? Nothing. I’m there for moral support. Scott and Mark are going to sing.”

Envy attacked me from behind, biting the back of my neck and jabbing its stinger into my spine like an electric shock. I wanted to go out with friends, have some drinks. I wanted to—

“Have fun,” I told him, and he nodded.

“I will. See ya Monday.”

He headed down the stairs two at a time, quiet despite his size, and I waited until I heard the front door slam before I went down the stairs after him.

I lingered over a single bowl of soup and a mug of hot tea. I washed the bowl and mug carefully by hand instead of using the dishwasher. I fed the fish and set the timer on the coffee maker. I checked the locks on the doors, all three downstairs and the one in the basement.

When at last I climbed the stairs again, the hour had grown late enough that it almost made me wonder if I should bother to go to bed at all. After all, I’d only have to wake again in a couple of hours. I’d regret it if I didn’t, but though every muscle ached and my head throbbed, my mind was too restless for sleep.

I peeked in on Adam. His lights were out and his breathing slow and steady. The faint green glow from the night-light gave his face an alien cast. I didn’t need light to see what I was doing. Adam barely woke as I turned him. We didn’t speak. We never did if we could help it, as if somehow silence made all of this a dream. I finished everything I had to do and made sure he was all right before I crept away.

Though I slept in his room on the weekends when Dennis was off-duty, we no longer shared a bedroom. The room that had been ours now needed every inch for the equipment and supplies that kept Adam functioning. I’d made that room a haven for us in the early days of our marriage, when the rest of the house had been a hodgepodge shambles of late ’70s décor and early ’80s substandard renovation. I’d loved that bedroom and our art deco furniture, salvaged from thrift stores and auctions. I’d loved the bathroom, with its claw-foot tub and Victorian toilet with the pull chain. Now gutted to accommodate a wheelchair-capable shower and toilet, it was a room of function, not luxury.

The room I used was just on the other side of the back stairs. It was much smaller than the master, but I’d cut an arched doorway through the wall into the room next to it, creating a sitting room/study that gave me all the space I needed, and that room connected to the bathroom also accessible to the hall. I only had to share when we had house-guests, since Dennis had his own bathroom on the third floor.

I made certain the intercom was working and set, in case Adam woke and needed me, then set about stripping out of my work clothes. The mirror tried catching my attention, but I ignored it. I no longer knew the woman who lived in there.

I ran a bath and added essence of lavender, then dimmed the lights. I settled into the water and let it enfold me. Hold me. It cradled me, and I slid deeper, up to my chin, while my hair spread out around me like seaweed.

I found sanctuary in the dark and quiet, in the one place where I didn’t have to be strong, optimistic, happy, or anything else anyone thought I should be. Where I couldn’t and didn’t have to pretend I didn’t know the truth.

My husband didn’t love me anymore, and I didn’t know how to make him.

I met Joe two years before, two random strangers sharing a bench in the atrium of a local business complex for lunch. Frigid January weather had made our secluded bench a real treasure, and we’d shared it with the glee of kids who’d stumbled onto a candy shop giving away free samples.

We’d made polite conversation, nothing serious, nothing deep. We checked each other out in the surreptitious way men and women do when they have no intention of flirting but want to see if it might be worth the effort. I noticed his smile first, the expensive suit some time later. He made me laugh almost right away during a time when I thought I’d forgotten how.

Remembering Joe’s smile, I slid my hands over my body in the hot water. The bath oil made my skin slick. Smooth. My palms skidded over my belly and thighs. I sank lower, my ears covered, listening to the secret underwater shush shush of my heart beating.

With one thing or another, I didn’t make it back to the atrium until an entire month had passed. It was something like a magic number—thirty days—and when I flipped my calendar something reminded me about the man on the bench and my feet led me back there as if I had no choice but to see if he were there again. I’d ignored the way my heart jumped into my throat when I saw him striding toward me beneath the hanging ferns. The sun had lit his hair into shining gold. His smile was even brighter than that. That was the first time he grumbled about tomatoes on his sandwich. We spent an hour and half on that bench talking. I didn’t ask him if he had to get back to work. I was late for my first afternoon appointment. And something unspoken had passed between us. An agreement.

In March, I made sure to wear lipstick. In April, we moved outside to the park, where a hanging willow muted the echo of our laughter and made it something secret. In May we shared a thermos of lemonade, in June he brought me a muffin and I’d lent him a book we’d talked about the month before.

By July, the conversation was no longer polite.

The first time he told me a story, I’d sat, riveted to the bench, my sandwich eaten but untasted. Joe was an exquisite raconteur. He left out not even the smallest detail of sensation. He’d enthralled me, bound me with his words.

Joe, in his words, loved women. Their curves, their scents, their moods. He loved long hair, big asses, sturdy thighs, concave bellies, tiny, cherry-tipped tits, blue and green and brown eyes. He loved women, and he loved fucking. And every first Friday of the month, when we met for lunch, he had a new story to tell me. He was Scheherazade, saving not his own life, but mine.

I cupped my breasts, their weight made light in the water’s embrace. I stroked them, passing a palm over my nipples before pinching them both between forefinger and thumb. A sigh leaked out of me as they burned and tightened. I tugged and felt an answering pull in my clit, my cunt, my ass. I moved the firm flesh back and forth, jerking them like twin erections.

My thighs fell open as my hips pushed against the water. Eddies left behind by the motion swirled heat against my clit and I rocked harder, but the pressure was too light to do more than tease.

Still tugging on my left nipple, I slid my right hand between my legs. My clit already poked out of its hood, hard, ready for my touch. I bit my lip, the gentle stroke-stroke enough to make my hips jut forward again. I pinched my clit like I pinched my nipple, moving in time, alternating. The water supported and lifted me. My shoulder blades bumped the bottom of the tub as I pushed my pelvis against my fingers.

My clit swelled. My cunt opened, aching to be filled, and I left my nipple to slide three fingers inside. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t what I wanted—a thick, hard cock fucking me. I dreamed of it, being filled, dreamed of taking an erection down the back of my throat while another filled my vagina, another in my ass, while hands stroked and pulled my body all over. I dreamed of being consumed by men who made me come over and over again with their tongues and fingers and pricks, until I exploded and disappeared.

You didn’t need a doctorate in psychology to analyze that.

I might dream of faceless men who consumed me with their sex, but when I fantasized, it was about Joe. I didn’t need to analyze that, either.

My skin had gone pink from the hot water and arousal. I looked down over the curve of my breasts and belly to where my hands moved between my legs. I wanted more than my own hands there. I wanted Joe’s mouth on me. I wanted to feel him lick the soft, wet slit of my cunt, feel that smile on my clit. I wanted him to fuck me with his mouth until I came.

I slowed my hands, fingers sliding in and out of my pussy without friction. I pinched my clit again. It had gone dark red, pushing up from my trimmed-short pubic curls. I stroked it up and down and my pelvis jumped again. A spasm shuddered through me.

I wanted to scream myself hoarse with this pleasure. I wanted to moan and whimper. I bit my lip, hard, to keep back a cry, mindful that I was not alone, not ever alone.

I moved my hands away and rocked my hips, moving the water over my clit. Fuck, it was good, almost but not quite like a tongue. I let it lick at me for a while until I shuddered and banged my elbows against the side of the tub.

I could bring myself off in another second. I’d been on the verge all day, first in anticipation of my lunchtime meeting, then with Joe’s story, then with Adam’s unexpected kiss. I’d been slick from need all day, my clit aching. Another second, one more touch and I’d go over.

I waited, breathing hard, heart pounding. The water began to cool. I wanted to come and I wanted to stay poised here forever, with every nerve on fire and every muscle tense. I wanted to feel alive just a while longer.

I waved a hand in the water over my body, not touching my skin but letting the water do it for me. The ripples felt good, and I imagined Joe’s hands. His long, strong fingers and clean, neat fingernails. I’d memorized his hands—every wrinkle of every knuckle, every vein. The exact spot on his wrists where the hair on his arms began.

Thinking of Joe’s hair, I fought back another moan. My hands slipped down to stroke myself again. I wanted to bury my face in his chest hair, to rub the coarse curls of his arms against my eyelids. I wanted to feel his hair on my belly when we fucked, cock in cunt.

I couldn’t stand it any longer. I had to come. I thought I might die if I didn’t let myself finish, right then.

I thought I was dying when I did.

Everything stopped.

Then all at once, it started again. My heart, beating. My breath, held in my lungs, rushed out. Water splashed as my body quaked. My clit had filled to the point of bursting and now it emptied in small, perfect spasms of ecstasy. My anus puckered as my cunt rippled, bearing down on nothing.

Unable to hold it back, I gasped. My back arched and water sloshed over my face. I closed my mouth, fast, so I didn’t choke myself. Some got in my eyes, stinging, but the pleasure was so intense I didn’t care.

When I was done and returned to myself, I put a hand on the edge of the tub to haul myself upright. I was cold and shivered, my nipples peaked now not from arousal but from chill.

Nausea twisted my gut in the aftermath. I was light-headed when I got out, and had to stand, head down, for a moment or two before I felt steady enough to grab up my towel from the hook on the wall.

I moved too fast and the room spun. I got on my hands and knees, my hair sodden and stringy over my shoulders and down my back. I shivered, teeth chattering, and then I wept.

The towel I clutched smelled of lavender and I pressed my face against it to stifle my sobs as I’d bit my lip to hold back my sounds of pleasure. I dissolved on the bathroom floor, giving in to magnificent and overpowering grief.

I loved my husband but wanted to fuck another man. I wanted it so much it tore me apart and knitted me together over and over. I lived for the stories Joe told that let me imagine myself as the women he took to bed. I had called him names, but I was wrong. It wasn’t Joe, it was me.

I was the cheater.

Chapter 03

February

This month, if I have a name, it’s lost in the pounding beat blaring from the speakers in the club. I’m wearing a short, tight skirt and a shirt made up of two scarves tied behind my neck. No bra, and my tits push against the silky fabric like twin melons. They barely bounce when I dance, and I’m proud of them. They’re worth the college tuition they cost to buy.

Guys have been approaching me all night. I let them buy me drink after drink, but I dance alone or with a girlfriend, shaking our asses in time to the pounding rhythm. My skirt rides up over tanned, taut thighs, and tawny hair glistens in the blue strobe lights. I’m hips and tits and hair. I’m smooth, fluid motion. I’m sex for the sake of sex.

There’s a guy watching me from across the dance floor. There are lots of guys watching me, but this one is different. He’s alone, not part of a pack. Just standing there, watching. His long-sleeved, black sweater hugs his shoulders and chest and fades into the black of his trousers, making him a shadow.

I put on a little more effort for him, a wiggle of my hips and ass and tits. I crook my finger. Come hither, stranger.

He detaches himself from the dark and moves forward, cutting through the crowd. I lose sight of him and frown, my dance losing a little of its steam until a moment later when the crowd parts and he’s standing in front of me.

He smiles. I smile. I raise my hands over my head and wiggle, turning, writhing. He likes it.

And damn, he’s a good dancer, too. He molds along my body. One hand goes to my hip. With the other, he curls my fingers around the back of his neck. The back of my head rests against his chest, because even in my four-inch heels he’s still about five inches taller.

We move in time, ignoring the other dancers who sort of bounce up and down, as if on pogo sticks. We move more like water. His hand on my hip drifts down to brush along the hem of my skirt and the bare skin of my thigh.

My nipples get hard. He’s subtle but I know what he wants. I want it, too. It’s not like I’m here to find Mr. Right. More like Mr. Right Now.

The song changes and some people on the dance floor leave. Others join. I turn and tilt my head to smile at him. Fuck, he’s got pretty teeth.

We can’t talk, really. The music’s too loud. We communicate with a look, a touch. He’s good at that, too. He actually looks at my face.

If we’re not going to dance, we need to get off the floor. Besides, I’m hot and thirsty. I gesture toward the bar and he nods, so I grab his hand and tug him along to the bar where he buys me a margarita and he orders a bottle of water.

I don’t think he’s drunk, which is really interesting, considering it’s Saturday night and the entire bar is halfway to wasted, including me. I lift my margarita, and he toasts it with his bottled water. We smile and sip. It’s quieter here by the barest margin, but still not enough for real conversation.

“You wanna go someplace?” I have to shout the question twice before he answers.

He leans in to say directly into my ear, “where do you want to go?”

That’s how we end up at my place. I feel okay with him driving me home since he hasn’t been drinking, and it saves me cab fare, anyway. I live on the third floor of a converted brownstone, and the margaritas have made the stairs too steep for me. Laughing, I stop to take off my shoes. His eyes follow the motion of my fingers unbuckling the ankle strap. His eyes look dark until he raises them to my face, and then I see they’re not dark at all, it’s just that the pupils have gone wide and black.

At the top of the stairs I unlock my door and push inside, then turn and grab him by the front of his black leather jacket. I back him up against the door, closing it, and press my body to his, still cold from being outside. He smells like winter air and leather and smoke, and I pull him down to kiss me, but he turns at the last second so my mouth lands on his cheek.

His hands have found their way to my tits without a problem. His hands are cold, too, and they slide up over the silk scarves and my tight nipples. I push his jacket off his shoulders and toss it on the floor. He bends to pick it up and hang it over the back of a chair.

“Oh, you’re fussy,” I say, as if that’s cute.

He doesn’t deny it. He even smirks a little. Maybe he’s proud of it. I take off my jacket and make a show of hanging it up on the coatrack, using exaggerated movements he watches without changing his expression.

“What’s your name?” This I toss over my shoulder as I head to my kitchen and yank open my freezer to pull out a bottle of lemon vodka.

“Joe.”

I set out the bottle, a shot glass, the sugar bowl. I grab a lemon from the basket on the counter and slice it into quarters.

“Joe, you want a lemon shooter?”

When I turn for his answer, I see he’s followed me into the kitchen.

“Sure.”

I pour a shot, wet the back of my hand with the lemon and sprinkle it with sugar. “Bottoms up.” Down goes the shot, lick the sugar, bite the lemon.

He does one, too. I like the noise he makes when he sucks the lemon. It’s a little half-growl. I wonder if he’d make that same noise if I sucked hard on his cock. And suddenly I want to find out.

I move closer to him and grab his belt. I’m not as drunk as I was an hour ago but I’m still pretty buzzed. Holding his belt helps keep me steady. I’m glad I took off my tottery heels.

“C’mere,” I tell him. “Be nice to me.”

His hands come up to hold my hips. I don’t bother with trying to kiss him. I undo his belt with a couple quick jerks that move his whole body. He’s already hard, and I stroke him through his pants. Up and down. I look up at his face. He’s still smirking, but I recognize the bright gleam in his eyes. He wants to fuck. Well, don’t they all?

As soon as I undo his button and zipper, I push his pants and briefs down over his thighs. He’s got a nice dick. I take it in my hand and stroke it couple of times, hard, and he puts a hand over mine to hold it in place against him.

It’s my turn to smirk. “Too rough?”

“You don’t want to break it.”

He thinks he’s clever, and I have to admit, he’s cute enough to get away with it. Besides, I’m not exactly thinking clearly at this point. I stroke again, moving both our hands along his erection, but softer.

“That better?”

“Your mouth would be better.”

My heart skip. “Yeah?”

He looks down at his cock, and at our hands, then back to my face. “Yeah.”

It’s because he’s looking at my face when he says it that I get on my knees. The tile is cold and hard but I don’t really notice. Maybe tomorrow I will, when I’m sober and my knees are black and blue, but right now I’m focused on taking him in my mouth.

My inhibitions are loose and so’s my throat. I can take him all the way in, a skill I’m proud of. I close my lips around the base of his prick and suck, working my mouth on him a couple seconds before sliding off to add some suction to the head. He pushes forward, into my mouth. I put a hand on his cock to control it. I don’t want to gag. Drunk as I am, I might just puke all over him.

My hand also lets me stroke and suck him at the same time, so he gets twice the pleasure. In another minute, he makes that growly noise and I smile. I suck him a little bit more, getting into the rhythm the same way I did at the club. It’s just a different kind of dance.

He puts a hand in my hair and his fingers tangle, pulling. I wince and suck him a little harder. He’s thrusting hard, now. I let my mouth pop off and look at his cock. It’s wet from my saliva. I pump my fist up and down along it, looking up to watch his face. He’s not looking at me now. His eyes are closed.

A second later, he opens them. “Get up.”

I’m a little clumsy from alcohol and being on the floor for so long, but he helps me with his hands under my elbows. I laugh when he pulls me upright, but the laugh becomes a squeak of surprise when he turns me so fast my head spins. He pushes my hands flat against the table.

I’m bent over at the waist, surprised at how fast he moved. He pushes my skirt up to my hips. Cool air caresses my ass, bared by my thong panties. He runs a finger along the string at the small of my back, then pulls it out of my ass crack and takes my panties off before I can say a word. He pushes my feet apart with one of his and I bend further over the table, my hands skidding along the slick surface. I knock into the shot glass, which rolls off onto the floor but doesn’t break.

I’d protest but he’s already stroking my clit. My pussy’s as surprised as I am, but way faster at acclimating. I’m already wet, I know, because he pushes a finger inside me and then brings it up to my clit again and every motion gets smoother, coated in my slickness.

I make a noise, too. His cock nudges my ass and I spread my legs wider on my own. I lay along the table, pushing my ass into the air so he can reach my cunt. When he puts two fingers inside me, I cry out. He’s doing this thing to me that feels so good I shake, something with two fingers inside me and his other hand fingering my clit. He puts a third finger inside, stretching me as he pinches my clit. The sensation’s so startling, I jump and moan.

“Where’ve you been all my life?”

He doesn’t answer, but I don’t care because he’s finger fucking me so good. My hips rock and I push my cunt against his hand, wanting to take all of him inside me.

“Fuck me!” It’s a command and an invitation. I grope for my purse, slung over the back of the kitchen chair. I pull out the rubber and pass it back to him.

“Just a minute.”

I moan a protest but in a second he’s started up that twin fingering thing again and I’m jittering and jumping under his touch as if he’s hooked me up to a socket in the wall.

I’m so wet he fits a fourth finger inside me. He jerks my clit, up and down, rolling it every so often in a way that makes me fucking mindless.

I think I’m begging him at this point, even though I don’t really want him to stop doing what he’s doing with his hands. All at once I go from “ooh” to “hell yeah!” And there’s no way I could stop myself from coming even if I wanted to. My fingers clutch the table and I shout.

My pussy closes around his fingers. My clit spasms. He stops moving for a moment while my body shakes around him. I lay my cheek on the table and close my eyes. It’s good, so good. I’m spent, breathless.

He takes his hands away. I don’t move. I’m boneless.

He puts one hand on my hip. His cock nudges my cunt.

He pushes inside me slowly, and I make a sleepy noise. He fills me all the way. I push up on my hands a little to take the pressure off my boobs.

He sets a slow steady pace, and I’m happy to take it because I already came and I really don’t care what he does to finish himself off. My clit’s buzzing a little, but I’m not really ready for another orgasm.

“Yeah, baby, fuck me harder.” This seems like a good thing to say.

He keeps the same steady pace. I push up higher, and he unhooks the clip holding my shirt closed behind my neck. The scarves fall open. He reaches around to grab my tit, tweaking the nipple upright. That feels good, too. My clitty’s buzzing harder, oh, fuck, and I’m so wet he slides in and out of me as easy as anything. I moan and push my ass against him.

Maybe this is what he was waiting for, because he moves faster. Our bodies make a slapping sound. His thrusts move me and the table, which skids on the tile floor. I moan louder when he twists my nipple, but what I really need is a finger on my clit to get me off again.

Sudden wetness on my back startles me. He’s stroked the lemon wedge across my shoulder blade. He takes the sugar. Grains tickle my back. The next moment his tongue follows it and he licks me clean.

Wow. I’m really getting closer now. He’s fucking me so hard and fast I have to clutch the table edge to keep from moving. He’s making small, sexy grunts that are driving me crazy with lust.

I’m getting closer but I need a little more. Just a little more something. Then, he gives it to me. His fingers trace the cleft of my ass, probing. His thumb presses against me back there, right on my pucker. My moan catches in my throat and I jump. My hips buck forward. Fuck, fuck, oh fuck, that’s not what I was expecting, but damn, it’s so good…

In another second I’m coming for the second time. My breath stutters out. I try to gasp in another but my orgasm has stolen my breath and the best I can do is sip at the air.

He thrusts into me once more and cries out, voice hoarse. We pant together after that, coming down. My legs tremble and my belly hurts from where it’s rubbed on the table edge, but don’t really care too much because I’m so utterly, totally sated.

He pulls out. By the time I turn around and tug my skirt back down over my thighs, he’s already tossed the rubber in the trash and pulled up his pants. He washes his hands at the sink while I watch.

I’m bleary and tired and still mostly drunk, but I give him a big, smug smile. “Wow.”

He looks at me over his shoulder. Like an afterthought. He smiles. “Yeah, thanks.”

I move closer to him, lazy and cuddly the way really good sex makes me feel. I reach for him, and he lets me hug him but even though I tilt my face up to his, he doesn’t kiss me.

“Hey,” I say, soft and purring. “Be nice to me.”

He bends and kisses my cheek, then gently but firmly pushes me from him and leaves the kitchen. I stare after him, pissed off. I follow him.

“Hey!”

He’s put on his coat. He turns, hand on the doorknob.

“You’re leaving?” I put my hands on my hips, indignant. “Just like that?”

Joe nods once, so solemn I feel like I can’t really rage at him. I mean…it was a hookup, yeah, I get it. But it was really, really great sex, the kind that’s worth breakfast, at least.

“But…”

He shakes his head, stopping me. Then he opens the door and leaves. Only when it’s closed behind him do I realize he never bothered to ask my name.

Joe twirled a straw paper in his fingers, knotting it. He didn’t look at me. He hadn’t looked at me since he sat down.

“Why didn’t you ask her name?” I hadn’t eaten anything. I hadn’t even opened my lunch bag. Though I was only a few inches away from Joe on the bench, it might as well have been miles.

He turned, slowly. Our eyes met. I drew in a breath and held it. The look he gave me was a challenge of some sort.

“Because it didn’t matter.”

Maybe her name didn’t matter, but his reason for not asking did. His story comforted me. This was the Joe I knew, the teller of tales and splitter of peaches. Not the man who last month had threatened to upset the balance of our relationship by wanting to change.

“About last month,” I said finally. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “You were right.”

I nodded, as if he’d made a longer explanation. Not even when we first met had our silence been so uncomfortable. I had to look away, at last, afraid my face showed too much of what I couldn’t say.

“I wasn’t even planning on going home with her,” he said after a minute. “Or with anyone.”

“So…why did you?” I couldn’t help the fascination.

“C’mon, Sadie. You know how it is.”

“No, actually. I don’t.”

Joe let a puff of air seep from his lips, not quite a whistle. “You’ve never?”

“No. Never.” I shook my head to further emphasize my point.

“You’ve never been with someone only once.” His tone sounded disbelieving or envious, I wasn’t sure which.

“I’ve only been with one man.” The admission wasn’t shameful, just…the truth. It seemed to shock Joe, who probably couldn’t comprehend my experience any more than I could his.

“Only one.”

“Yes.”

He shook his head a bit. “Good for you.”

I laughed a little. “You’re avoiding the question. If you weren’t planning on going home with someone, why did you?”

“Because I could. Because she asked. Because…I always do.”

I made a small noise, shaking my head as I unwrapped my lunch. Joe looked over at me as he unscrewed the cap on his bottle of soda. He took a long, slow drink. I imagined him tasting like lemon and vodka and kept my eyes carefully on my sandwich.

“Haven’t you ever done something just because it’s easier to do it than not?”

I didn’t have to think long before answering. “Of course.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s not as exciting as your story, Joe.”

He smiled, leaning forward. “No? That’s too bad. Tell me, anyway.”

I was used to giving people what they wanted. Joe was used to getting it. I told him.

“When I was growing up, my sister and I fell into these…stereotypes, I guess you could say. I was the smart one. She was the pretty one. We kept it up through college, and I guess even now. It’s stupid, but you know how families are.”

“Try being the disappointing one.”

I leaned back on the bench to study him. He was impeccably dressed, as always. Today his shirt was blue, his favorite color. It made his eyes seem greener than usual. He was the epitome of a clean-cut businessman. Whatever he did, he did it too well to be a disappointment.

I laughed. “Oh, you aren’t. You can’t be. Look at you, Mr. Successful.”

He shrugged, smiling. “My parents aren’t impressed with fancy suits and expensive ties.”

I knew he had a sister who was married with children and a brother who’d died. This was the first time I’d heard him talk about his parents.

“As far as ties go, it’s a very nice one,” I told him. “Even if they don’t like it, I do.”

He gave me a one-eyed, squinting grin that made me laugh. “Yeah? You’re impressed by this tie?”

“Keep in mind my knowledge of men’s haute couture is pretty limited.”

He stroked the fabric. “I like this one, too.”

The silence between us wasn’t awkward this time.

“Sometimes,” Joe said after a bit, “it’s just easier to keep being what everyone expects you to be. Even if that’s what you’re not, anymore.”

I nodded, agreeing, and he got up to toss his trash into the pail. “I wasn’t sure you’d be back, after what I said.”

“I couldn’t stay away. I thought about it all month. Just not showing up.”

“So…why did you?”

A slow, hot smile spread across his mouth. “Because I always do.”

I was trying to decide between two mugs of the same shade but different shapes, my concentration entirely focused on my choices, when the distinct sensation of a foreign gaze on the back of my neck prickled my skin. I glanced up, but the man across the aisle appeared as engrossed in his shopping as I was. A look to either side showed us as the only two customers in housewares. Convinced I was imagining it, I bent back to my decision.

Again, I sensed someone staring. This time, instead of looking up, I let my eyes shift from side to side. Nothing. A gradual turn of my head revealed my fellow mug aficionado had moved a bit closer. He picked up a flowered coffee mug, turning it to and fro, then set it back on the shelf.

I turned back to the selection in front of me, but couldn’t concentrate. I wanted something new for my bathroom. It wasn’t brain surgery. I needed to pick one, just one, and yet my every sense now strained toward the man standing behind me. I grabbed up one of the mugs, finally, and stuck it in my cart. I looked over my shoulder.

He was looking at me.

“Excuse me,” he began.

Time slowed as I turned, expectant of something benign. A question. “What’s the time?” or “Do you work here?”

“Are you available for dating?”

My face must have shown my shock. “What?”

Details registered. He had long hair, more than a bit unkempt. He wore a shapeless fatigue jacket and matching, slightly ragged pants. Oh, lord. He was probably part of some outpatient program at the V.A. Hospital.

“Well, I didn’t see a wedding ring…”

I looked automatically to my left hand, where I was, indeed, wearing my wedding ring. I was so stunned by this, the first outright proposition I’d had in as long as I could remember, that I couldn’t even speak. I could only stare.

He moved closer, looking hopeful. “So? Are you?”

“I’m…no, I’m not.”

The man took off running down the aisle. I looked after him, the absurdity of the situation giving the entire experience a surreal flavor. I paid for my purchases, fumbling with my change and laughing too hard at the cashier’s unfunny jokes.

I’d carried myself as a married woman for such a long time, I’d considered myself under the radar of outright flirtation. Either men didn’t notice me, or I didn’t notice them noticing. After the ineloquent come-on, though, I kept my eyes open a little wider. Was the man in the next car checking me out? Was the guy holding the elevator door for me doing it to be polite or was he giving me a once-over when I reached to push the button for my floor? Even if they weren’t, the possibility that they might be preparing to accost me with the offer of a night on the town kept me smiling.

Adam didn’t find it so amusing. “What did he say to you?”

I paused in showing off the new mug. “I told you. He asked me if I was available for dating.”

“He asked you on a date? In the middle of the store?”

“Well, to be honest, I think he was a little off, Adam.” I put the mug back in the bag.

Adam maneuvered his chair away from the computer desk so we were face-to-face. “What did you say?”

“I said I wasn’t.” Even now, the memory made me laugh. “And really, if you’d seen him—”

“What about him?”

I described the man, exaggerating a little to make the story better, but not too much. “I think he was probably on outpatient leave from a mental program. He had that look. Poor guy, his therapist probably told him to go out and take a chance, ask a woman out, and I shot him down. I probably set him back months in his progress.”

Adam didn’t laugh. “Right.”

“Adam,” I said with a sigh. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

“Some guy comes on to my wife and it’s not a big deal?” Agitated, he swung the chair around. It was big and heavy, and though he could operate it with agile grace, it still needed room to move. He nudged the edge of the desk and let out a curse when his papers fell down.

I bent to gather them up. A few lines of text caught my eye, phrasing from his lectures. I put them back in the folder.

“Honey, he wasn’t even cute!”

The look he gave me was long familiar, sardonic, verging on mean. “What does that mean? If he had been cute, you’d have taken him up on it?”

A snappish response teetered on my tongue but managed to cling to the inside of my mouth without spitting itself out. “Don’t be silly,” I said instead.

Adam grunted. His version of pacing was to rock the chair back and forth in small arcs. The room wasn’t big enough for him to move more than that, the chair too bulky to allow for the tight turns he’d need to crisscross the space.

“Adam, it was a funny story. I thought you’d like it. I’m sorry I told you.”

His eyes flashed. “What does that mean, Sadie? You won’t tell me about it again?”

“I’m sure it won’t happen again,” I replied with a sigh. “C’mon. It was just a fluke.”

He grunted again and stopped the pacing. “Were you wearing that outfit?”

I looked down at my clothes. “I was, yes.”

He’d always been a master of expression, with words or without. His snort made his feelings very clear. “Well, no wonder he hit on you.”

That made me laugh out loud. “Oh, really? Because this outfit is so sexy?”

My work clothes were the farthest thing from sexy I could ever imagine, most of the time. Then again, so was I. The Beatles might have written about Sexy Sadie, but that wasn’t me.

“I don’t like men hitting on you, that’s all.” Adam sounded less fierce, more what Mrs. Lapp called grexy.

I went to him and kissed his cheek. “You have nothing to worry about.”

He wasn’t so easily appeased. “Weren’t you wearing your wedding ring?”

That was it. I crossed my arms over my chest. “Yes. I was! You act as if I was out trolling for business! Stop it!”

Maybe I shouldn’t have told him the story, which had been amusing and a bit of an ego boost to me. Adam was moody on the best of days. It wasn’t difficult to figure out why, but once he’d had a much better sense of humor. It was hard to remember he wasn’t the same man I’d seduced with a red ribbon stuck in a book of poetry.

He stopped talking. He went back to his computer and ignored me. I took my mug and left the room.

If he’d been cute, would I have taken him up on the offer? Gone out with a stranger I met while buying a mug? Maybe gone home with him, to his bed, or to a hotel room, to a car, to a back alley where he’d push me against a wall and merge his flesh with mine in anonymous passion?

According to Joe, things like that happened all the time, to him. But Joe never came on to me. I only listened to him talk about it, month after month, and wondered what it would be like to be asked and answer, “yes.”

Chapter 04

“Valentine’s Day is the pimple on the ass of the year.”

My patient’s blunt statement made me laugh. I know her well enough to understand she was using humor to cover up insecurity, but that didn’t matter. What she said was funny, anyway.

“Why do you say that, Elle?” I poured us both another cup of tea.

“It’s a martyr’s holiday.” She added sugar and cream to her cup.

Sometimes, patients are ashamed of me, or rather, their need to see me. Sometimes they embrace me so fully it compromises our working relationship. Elle, whom I found to be bright, funny and compassionate, had managed to strike the perfect medium. We were friendly but not quite friends—with friends the sharing of trouble goes both ways and with us it was necessarily one-sided. Still, our sessions had taken on the tone of two girlfriends chatting, rather than of a doctor counseling a patient. It showed me she was comfortable with me. It had taken her a long time.

I added lemon to my cup. “Ah, yes. Poor St. Valentine. But it’s not that anymore.”

She sipped and gave me a familiar raised eyebrow. “Sure it is. The search for the perfect gift? The despair if you don’t get just the right thing? The depression of not having someone to buy for, or having someone to buy for but not the person you want.”

“I’m sensing some anxiety over Valentine’s Day.” How easily I put on the doctor’s cap. Girlfriends or not, Elle was there to talk, and I to listen. She didn’t always take my advice but then, not all of it was good.

The way she tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair meant what I’d said was true, but I didn’t push. Some of my colleagues favor a more antagonistic approach, call my methods the “soft and fuzzy” school of psychology. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I can only do my best.

“I do love him.” She spoke low, but not hesitant. “It’s not that I don’t.”

A year before she wouldn’t have admitted that much. I offered a smile. “So then, what is it? You’re afraid to buy him something?”

“It’s so much pressure.” Elle shrugged and spun her spoon around in the cup. “And I think…I think he’s going to make this a big one.”

“More than flowers and candy, you mean.”

She nodded, her face shadowed. “Yeah. I think so.”

“We’ve talked about this.” I sipped my tea, watching her. “How relationships grow. It’s part of change.”

She laughed, ruefully. “I know. Dr. Danning, I know that.”

I knew she did. Elle had been with her boyfriend for over a year. She danced around the idea of marrying him and having children, of making what she called a real life. She had other issues, bigger ones, but it all came back to that in the end. Marriage and children, whether she could take what he offered her or not, whether the past had any right to influence her future any longer. She’d come a long way in the year she’d been seeing me, but sometimes it’s the sunshine that frightens us more than the big black shadows.

“It’s just hard.” She sounded ashamed. “It shouldn’t be. He makes it so easy. But it’s hard, anyway. Even when I fight with him, he just comes back with something so perfect I can’t chase him away.”

“Do you really want to?”

She sighed. “No. But do you know how hard it is to be with someone who’s perfect?”

“Nobody’s perfect, Elle.”

She gave me a look. “Some are more perfect than others, Dr. Danning.”

I laughed a bit. “Yes, that’s true.”

She stirred her cup as if she could dissolve her troubles the way she dissolved the sugar in the tea. “I keep thinking…”

“Yes?” I asked, when waiting for her to continue failed to prompt her into speaking.

“What if he’s the last man I’ll ever sleep with for the rest of my life?”

I fussed with my own tea to create distance from a question that hit too close to home. “Would that be so awful?”

Elle put her cup on the edge of my desk and rubbed the arms of her chair, her face angled away from mine. “No?”

“You don’t sound so sure.”

The look she gave me was pure, vintage Elle Kavanagh, stubborn and self-effacing with a hint of snark. “I anticipate the rest of my life being a very long time.”

“From your mouth to God’s ears,” I told her, and we both laughed.

“I don’t want to cheat on Dan. But I’m afraid I might. Just because.”

“Those things don’t happen by accident.”

She seemed chastened by my sterner than usual tone. “I know.”

I studied her before saying, “The offer still stands, if you want it.”

She looked up. “See both of us. I know.”

“Dan’s a wonderful man and he’s been good for you. You know putting the onus of your happiness on someone else isn’t healthy. But neither is refusing to allow someone to help you gain it.”

“I know, I know, I know!” She groaned, tipping back her head. She grimaced. “Bleah! I know! Stupid fucking Valentine’s Day!”

“Maybe you’re getting yourself too worked up. What are you doing for him?”

She straightened in her chair. “Heart-shaped meatloaf. With asparagus. And some sex.”

I meant to answer right away, but sudden immobility stifled my words. I filled my cup with tea. I didn’t want to cover the fact I couldn’t speak. The teapot rattled against the cup and I had to force my hands to steady.

I envied her. Fiercely. Suddenly. Horribly. I envied Elle for her meatloaf and plans for lovemaking to celebrate a holiday she hated. I envied her fear that she had something to lose.

“Dr. Danning?”

I put on the doctor mask. I owed her that. We might laugh and drink tea, and I might be privy to her deepest, darkest secrets, but we were not friends.

“It sounds lovely. I’m sure he’ll enjoy it.”

She nodded, slowly. “Yes. I think so.”

“And whatever happens after, Elle, remember that he’s doing it because he loves you. And it’s all right for you to love him back.”

It wasn’t the first time she’d cried in front of me, but this time her tears made my own throat close in sympathy. Or perhaps I wanted to weep for myself, and not with compassion for her. Either way, when I handed her the box of tissues, I took one for myself, too.

“When does it stop?” she asked, as though I had all the answers.

“I don’t know, Elle. I wish I did.”

It wasn’t the first time I didn’t give her the answer she was looking for, but it was the first time I felt I’d failed her.

When did it stop? That was the question of the day. When did the fear go away, when would I stop longing, when would I cease wanting something that was wrong?

It was easy for me to sit in my doctor’s chair and counsel Elle not to cheat on her lover, but what right did I have to be so smug? I could give my patients advice but couldn’t take it from myself. If I’d been in front of me, I’d have counseled myself to understand that my feelings were normal and natural. That my marriage had undergone tremendous strain and changes because of Adam’s disability. That wanting and missing sex was natural and normal, and the desire to be held, to make love…yes, even to fuck, that was normal, too.

I was normal.

But I also would have counseled myself to stop seeing Joe. That the emotional infidelity was as real as if I’d gone to bed with him, and perhaps worse because merely sating a physical need was one thing but the inevitability of what was happening was something else, entirely.

Just because Joe and I never touched didn’t mean we weren’t having an affair.

I knew it. I didn’t want to stop it. Frankly, I couldn’t stop it. The first Friday of every month, our lunches, his stories and the relief they gave me were a bright and shining thing in the otherwise gray palette of my existence.

It was wrong, and I didn’t want to let it go.

The ringing of my cell phone distracted me from my navel-gazing. I took the call at once, fearful as always it would be from one of Adam’s caregivers, telling me there was a problem.

“Sades, it’s me.”

My sister Katie. She sounded tired. She usually did, now.

“How are you?”

“Fine. Did you get my messages?”

For one shameful moment, I actually thought of blaming Mrs. Lapp on my lack of response, but in the end good morals won out over self-preservation. “Yeah, I did. I’m sorry, I’ve just been busy.”

“Tell me about it. I know what you mean.”

I couldn’t. She didn’t. It was just something she said, not a literal invitation. I made a noncommittal noise.

“What’s up, Katie?”

“Oh, the usual. Haven’t heard from you in a while, that’s all. Thought I’d check in.”

That meant she needed to talk. “What’s going on?”

Her muffled sigh made me frown. “Oh, the usual. Lily’s been driving me crazy and Evan’s no better. He’s been out of town traveling and just doesn’t seem to get that staying home all day with a cranky toddler is not the best way to get me in a good mood. And I’m still feeling sick almost all the time. First trimester sucks.”

I made my voice as soothing as I could. “I can imagine.”

“I really need a night out.” Katie sounded close to tears. “Can you come to the movies with me?”

“I wish I could, but—”

Going to the movies meant juggling Adam’s care schedule. It meant staying out late when I had to be up at four in the morning the next day so I had time to get ready myself before helping to get him started on his daily routine. It meant having to put on the happy face for my sister, who had problems of her own and didn’t need mine.

“Oh, Sadie, c’mon.”

“Katie, I can’t. Okay? I just can’t.”

Her sigh punched my eardrum. “How’s Adam?”

“He’s fine.”

“You have big plans for V-Day?”

I cleared my throat. “Same old thing.”

“Are you guys coming over for Dad’s birthday?”

“I’ll be there.” I’d already arranged for Dennis to be available on Saturday for a few hours.

“Just you? Not Adam, too?”

Sisters always know just how to push. “If he wants to, Katie, but I don’t know how he’ll feel.”

She didn’t call me on the lie. I already knew Adam wouldn’t want to go to my parents’ house. He didn’t ever want to go anywhere anymore, even though he could.

“I could come over there and watch a movie, if you can’t go out. I just need to get out of the house, Sadie, you can’t even imagine.”

When I didn’t reply, she stopped, maybe embarrassed. “Hey, if you can’t, that’s okay.”

A good big sister would have been there for Katie. I wanted to be the good big sister I’d always tried to be, but in the end the thought of it was simply too daunting.

“Maybe next week, okay?”

“Sure. Fine. Whatever. I’ll talk to you later.”

I wanted to be there for Katie, the way I always had. I wanted to listen to her troubles and offer advice. Make a difference. Do the right thing. I wanted to help her the way I helped my patients, but when it came right down to it, I couldn’t. I was afraid.

Not that I couldn’t help her, because I was pretty sure she just needed a compassionate ear. I was afraid listening to my sister’s woes would prompt me to reveal my own, and I couldn’t risk it. Putting a voice to my feelings, saying aloud the thoughts that gnawed daily at my conscience, would make them real in a way I was certain I didn’t want them to be.

I’d spent the past four years wearing a brave face, convincing myself by convincing everyone around me that I was fine. That we were fine, Adam and I, as fine was we could be. If I didn’t have that façade, I wasn’t sure what I would have.

Joe was right. It’s easier to keep being what you are, even if the only person who expects you to be it is yourself.

Adam and I didn’t share a heart-shaped meatloaf. Mrs. Lapp cooked a pot roast and potatoes in butter and parsley, which I ate in his room with him at a table lit by candlelight. I cut his food into tiny pieces and fed it to him, bite by bite.

“Happy Valentine’s Day.” His smile was as bright and charming as he could make it. The smile I’d fallen in love with.

I toasted him with champagne in a glass that had been a wedding gift. We talked about our day. About Dennis, who’d left earlier for a big Valentine’s Day party at the Rainbow.

“I told him not to bother coming home early.” Adam wiggled his eyebrows. “Told him I had big plans.”

“Oh, really.” I settled back in my chair. Champagne had made me giddy. Lighter. “You think so, huh?”

“Oh, I know so.” He looked toward the wardrobe in the corner.

I’d found it at a flea market, covered in dust and cobwebs, the handles broken and the door off its hinges. I’d fixed the door, polished the wood and replaced the broken handles with authentic ones I’d bought from an online auction. It was my favorite piece from our bedroom suite and had once contained my frilly lingerie and pajamas. Now medical supplies filled the drawers.

“Look in there.” He jerked his chin, the extent of his ability to gesture.

I got up and crossed to it, giving him a backward glance. “Adam? What did you do?”

“Just look and see.”

I opened the door. A box wrapped in red foil waited for me. I lifted it out, my heart thumping as fast as it had the first time he’d handed me such a gift. It was large but not heavy, and a giggle bubbled out of my throat.

“What is it?”

“Open it.”

I hesitated, looking toward him. He looked hopeful and a bit mischievous. I’d seen that combination in him before. He’d been on one knee at the time, a much smaller box in his hand.

All at once, I was afraid to open the package, afraid to see what my husband had bought for me. I caressed the smooth wrapping. It felt cool under my fingertips, and slippery.

“Open it, Sadie.”

I took the box back to my chair and fussed with the table, pushing it out of the way so I could sit and hold the box upon my lap. It weighed far heavier on my legs than it had in my hands.

“C’mon.”

I couldn’t put aside his eagerness any longer. I slid a fingernail beneath the taped edge and the paper fell away. The box under it was plain and white, without markings. I lifted the lid.

“Oh, Adam.”

He laughed. “Do you like it?”

I lifted the sheer red fabric and held it to my chest. I wanted to cry but didn’t. I forced a dry tone.

“Who’d you buy this for, you or me?”

“Are you kidding? They don’t make those in my size.” He grinned and raised the bed a bit higher with the remote control. “Stand up. Put it on.”

I stood. The baby-doll nightie had thin straps and a pair of matching thong panties. It wasn’t something I’d have chosen for myself, but I could see the appeal.

“Where did you get this?” A vision of Adam sending Dennis on the errand heated my cheeks.

“I ordered it online. Dennis wrapped it for me, but don’t worry, he didn’t see what was in the box. I was worried it might not be what I ordered but I knew you wouldn’t want him to check it out.”

“Is it what you ordered?” I held it up, turning it from side to side.

“Oh, hell yes.”

We hadn’t made love in a long time. Nearly a year, as a matter of fact, the last time prompted by Valentine’s Day. It had ended badly, with both of us in tears. I wondered, now, what had prompted this effort and knew it was the man in the store I’d told Adam about.

“Put it on.” Adam’s voice was hoarse with a familiar longing, and I couldn’t deny him.

I’d been naked in front of him thousands of times. In the dark, in the light. He’d seen me change a tampon, use the toilet. Held my hair when I puked. And still, I hesitated to strip out of my clothes in front of him now.

“I’ll go into the bathroom.” I offered it hesitantly, uncertain, and to my relief he nodded.

“Yes. Do that.”

In the bathroom I avoided my reflection as I took off my clothes and laid them neatly on the chair. I held up the lingerie to my bare skin and shivered with sudden, fierce longing. When had I last worn something like this? Garments made to arouse? I favored the practicality of cotton panties and bras, serviceable underwear meant to cover, not entice.

I felt like a virgin again. I slipped the panties, no more than a triangle of lace held together by two straps, up my legs. The thong slipped between my buttocks, an odd but sensual sensation I wasn’t sure I liked. The lace covered my pubic hair while the straps crossed my hips, where the bones most definitely didn’t jut forth as they had on our wedding night.

“Sadie?”

“I’ll be right there!”

I pulled the gown over my head and adjusted the fit. It barely covered my breasts and split in the front to swing open as I moved. The hem hit me mid-thigh but provided no real coverage. The entire outfit had been designed to reveal and enhance, not conceal.

When I looked at last into the mirror, I saw my cheeks had flushed and my eyes sparkled. My nipples had gone tight beneath the nylon, and already the lace between my legs was rub-rubbing in a way that made me shiver.

It’s a rare woman who can view herself in an outfit like that and not find flaws, but I wasn’t unhappy with what I saw. I was no longer a bride, true, but time hadn’t been cruel, either. No children had stretched my stomach and breasts, and diet and exercise had kept me in shape. There was no reason for me not to show my husband my body, displayed in the finery of his gift. Yet it took me a full minute to gather the courage to turn the door handle and step out.

Candlelight is forgiving, but if I’d had any doubts about how Adam would see me they vanished the moment I stepped through the door. His eyes gleamed, and his low whistle of appreciation sent a warm flutter through me. I moved closer to the bed, foolishly shy, and twirled slowly so the material flared out from my hips and thighs.

“You’re fucking gorgeous,” Adam said.

My heart skipped at his words, so affecting. It had been a long time since he’d written poems praising the arch of my eyebrows and fullness of my lips. “You like it?”

“What do you think?”

In the past, his erection would have let me know how much. Now I had to be satisfied with the curve of his mouth and tone of his voice. I was ashamed to find them poor substitutes, and forced myself not to think about it.

“Come here.”

I moved closer to the bed. Déjà vu hit with me with force and I stumbled and had to steady myself. For one moment I’d imagined him reaching for me with such clarity I’d felt his hands on me. Breasts, belly, cunt. I’d felt his kiss on my bare skin, his tongue on my clit.

“Kiss me.” Adam’s voice was rough. His eyes roamed over my body, touching me in all the places he’d once stroked and licked and nibbled. He looked at the sheer triangle between my thighs, and his eyes gleamed. He licked his mouth.

Always, in our life before, Adam knew what he wanted and how to get it, was never afraid to ask for things I’d have been unable to voice aloud. Adam had liked dirty talk, bedroom games, adventure, all things in which I’d been content to follow but never lead.

I kissed him. Our breath mingled. He stroked my tongue with his, making me gasp. I wanted his hands on me but had to be content with putting mine on him. His shoulder blades jutted forth and I moved my hands to cup his biceps, so still.

Our faces so close, I could almost forget the rest of him had changed. I could pretend it was like the past, when he could lift me with one arm to toss me, laughing, onto our bed where he’d cover me with his body and pull orgasms out of me like pearls on a string, one after the other.

“I want you so much,” Adam said.

“You have me.”

Something flickered in his dark blue eyes, and I wondered if he was thinking about the man who’d propositioned me in the store. “Touch yourself for me?”

I had to swallow hard at that request. Masturbation was such a private thing, a solo pleasure. For me, a necessity. Release. It kept me faithful, at least in body.

“Sadie? Will you?”

I nodded and stepped back. My hands went up to cup my breasts. Adam’s gaze went there, avid. Bright color had flushed his cheeks. I let my thumbs rub across my nipples, making them hard again.

“I love your breasts.”

This was how it had to be, with us. He would make love to me with his words while I acted out his commands, bringing myself the pleasure he couldn’t.

“Take them out of the nightgown.”

I did, easily enough, for it was made for easy access. I licked my fingertips and pinched my nipples, wetting them. Adam groaned. I did it again, until they glistened and darkened with arousal.

“Yeah, just like that. Stroke them. I love to lick your tits, just like that.”

My breath caught at his words. He used to whisper them to me before taking my nipple between his lips and suckling. The memory made my nipples throb, and I rolled them with my fingers until I had to moan, myself.

“I want to taste you, Sadie. Let me see your pussy.”

I sat in the chair, my legs spread so wide the panties could no longer cover me. I pushed the scrap of lace to the side, showing him my clit, my cunt, my thighs. His words became his hands and tongue, my hands his cock.

He told me how he wanted to lick me, to suck my clit between his lips and eat me until I screamed. I groaned, spreading myself open to his sight. I licked my fingers and circled my clit, rubbing fast until my hips jerked upward. I pushed a finger inside me, then another, feeling my wetness. The heat. I closed my eyes and lost myself in Adam’s voice, in the story he wove of our passion.

“You’re so tight and hot,” he told me, and he was right.

My cunt closed around my fingers. My hips lifted again. I withdrew and used my slickness on my clit, making the motions smooth. I found a pace I liked, mimicking the way he’d have used his tongue.

“You’re so beautiful,” he told me, over and over, until I wanted to scream at him to shut up. To stop talking and fuck me. To come with me so hard there would be no breath for speeches.

I came, but alone, and at the last minute it wasn’t Adam’s face I saw between my legs, but Joe’s. I cried out, the noise of passion not so different from despair, and was ashamed the pleasure ripping through me was made no less because of my guilt.

I kissed him when I could breathe again, and we smiled at one another. I nuzzled his neck, the way I used to, and peppered kisses all over his face. Our embrace was no less because only I could make it.

I love you.

Words that used to slip from my lips without thought now stuck in my throat. At times like this, when he was being soft and warm, I could almost believe this was all working the way it should. That tomorrow would be better than yesterday and we’d move past this pit stretching deeper and wider between us every day.

I’d always wondered why people who’d throw away an appliance that had ceased to function would hang on to a marriage that no longer worked. Next to my husband, the only man I’d ever loved, ever made love with, ever slept beside, I thought I knew.

Hope.

Chapter 05

March

This month my name is Brandy, and I giggle a lot. This annoys Joe, but he pretends it doesn’t because he wants to get laid. I also snap my gum while we’re talking, unaware this makes him want to scream. You wouldn’t know it by the way he smiles. All teeth.

I met Joe a while ago in the coffee shop where I work. He comes in a few times a week for coffee and muffins for his office. The other girls and I giggle about him all the time, because he’s so cute. A businessman. I have a thing for businessmen, all buttoned up in their suits and ties. I like to think about what they look like under all those clothes.

He asks me out, not for coffee, thank god, though you’d be surprised how many assholes do. What, I work in a coffee shop, you think I don’t like to do anything else?

No, Joe asks me out someplace real nice, a real fancy place with tablecloths and flowers and, like, waiters who describe the specials with all these fancy words like they’re reading a play.

I borrowed a dress from Cyndi, the girl I work with. She’s way jealous Joe asked me out, but that’s cool because she’s got a boyfriend anyway so she can’t really go out with Joe even if he did ask, which he didn’t because he asked me, instead. Brandy.

“Like the song?” He asks when the waiter’s gone with our orders.

“Huh?” I never heard of a song called Brandy, though I do know it’s a kind of booze.

“Never mind.” Joe doesn’t seem to talk much, which is cool, because I talk enough for both of us.

I tell him all about the classes I’m taking, and he seems really interested that I’m studying communications. I want to be an anchorperson on the news someday, but, like, it’s totally cool if I have to be the weather girl first because everyone has to start somewhere. Joe nods at this, like he totally gets it, and I’m glad because my last date just tuned me out and tried to get into my pants right away, if you can believe it. Like I’d just put out, just like that. I work in a coffee shop. I’m not a prostitute.

Joe listens to me all through dinner, which is awesome, real linguine and clam sauce. I ask him if he wants some but he just shakes his head and says he doesn’t eat shellfish. That’s fine, because he doesn’t mind if I nibble at his dinner. I mean, maybe I should have asked before sneaking a bite, but then he says don’t worry, go ahead and finish it if I want, he’s done.

Well, hey, I’m not about to pass that up. I don’t make much working in the coffee shop and college is a real bitch to pay for. Linguine beats the hell out of ramen noodles.

“It’s nice to see a girl who eats.” Joe settles back with his glass of wine, watching me, and I pause.

I figure he’s making fun of me, maybe, because I know I could lose a few pounds. I straighten my back to make sure there aren’t any rolls showing over my belt and I push my boobs forward. When the waiter asks if we want any dessert, I’m dying to dive into a piece of chocolate lava cake, but I say no, thanks.

“You’re sure?” Joe lifts one perfect, golden eyebrow, and my whole body feels gooey and warm. He’s so cute. “We could share a piece.”

Sharing’s okay, so I tell him that’s great. His grin is like looking at sunshine. I melt a little more. God, he’s hot. And sweet. And a really, really good listener. He’s the nicest guy I’ve been out with in, like, forever.

The waiter brings our chocolate cake and two forks, but Joe pushes the plate more toward me. I love that he’s a gentleman, letting me take the first bite. All of the bites, actually.

He watches me eat. His eyes follow the fork from the plate to my mouth and stay there. I lick my lips, afraid I’ve smeared them with chocolate. My heart’s beating a little faster with all the attention he’s paying me, and I’m not sure what to think of it. He’s looking at my lips as if he might want to eat them instead of the cake. My thighs quiver at the thought.

I wouldn’t mind if Joe wanted to lick away the chocolate from my lips. That’d be super hot. It’s been a long time since a guy kissed me, nearly a month. I made out with someone from my Comm Media class down at the Hardware Bar, but that’s all. He wanted more, and, like, I’m cool with the whole friend with benefits thing. It’s just that you’ve got to be friends first, and I barely knew him.

By now I’ve finished all the cake and Joe’s only licked up the whipped cream. He eats the strawberry, too. It’s my turn to watch his mouth work. I watch the way his tongue licks the cream off the berry’s pointed end and I imagine he’s licking me, instead. This time, my clit pulses and I shiver.

“Are you ready to go?”

I’m not. I’d really like to sit here with Joe for a few more hours. I don’t want our date to be over, not when I’m having such a good time.

It’s not like I can say that, right? I nod. “If you want.”

I still hope he’ll say, “let’s have another drink, Brandy, ’cuz I’m having so much fun I don’t want to leave.” But, of course, a smooth guy like Joe doesn’t say stuff like that. He might look as yummy as a movie star, but this isn’t the movies.

He helps me with my jacket and when his hands stroke my shoulders, I want to throw myself into his arms and attack his mouth, right there. I hold off, though, because this is a real classy place, and besides, I don’t want Joe to think I’m easy.

He listens to me talk some more on the drive back to my place. I’ve never been with a guy who listens like Joe does, and I know he’s really paying attention because every so often he makes a little noise and nods his head. I give him directions to my apartment building. When we pull up in front, I look up to see if the lights are on in the front room. It’s dark, which means my roommate isn’t home yet. I really, really, really don’t want this night to end. It’s been so perfect, from the way he held the door for me to the way he picked up the tab without a second thought.

So I invite Joe inside.

“Sure,” Joe says. “That sounds nice.”

For a second I’m sure he’s going to say no. His face has that look guys get when they’re trying hard to think of an excuse to turn you down. But then he smiles at me again, until I’m like, a puddle of goo on the front seat of his car.

Will he think it’s nice when I jump on top of him and shag him silly? That’s what I wonder when I lead him inside and show him where to hang up his coat. I hang mine, too, and I’m turning to ask him if he wants something to drink when the sight of him dries up every single word I meant to say.

He’s taken off his suit jacket. His shirt is pink. Damn, that is hott with two freaking t’s. Dark pink oxford shirt with a deep maroon tie. His pants and jacket are charcoal grey with the hottest pin stripes I hadn’t noticed in the restaurant’s dim lighting. He’s watching me gape like the biggest dork ever as he tugs his tie loose from his throat and unbuttons the top button of his shirt, and so I recover real fast and pretend I had something in my throat to clear it.

“Want something to drink?” I squeak and my cheeks like, catch totally on fire. Joe doesn’t seem to really notice, or maybe he’s such a gentleman he pretends he doesn’t. Either way, his smile fills me up like someone pumped me full of helium. I want to float up to the ceiling from that smile.

“Just water.”

I’ve seen him drink coffee, sometimes tea, a glass of wine with dinner. Now, water. I don’t have any bottled water and I’m a little ashamed, but he says tap water’s fine, and can he have some ice?

I have ice. I have some limes and lemons, too. They’ve been in the fridge for, like, ever, and they’re actually my roommate Susie’s but she won’t care if I use them. I slice them into quarters and Joe takes a slice of each for his glass. I do, too. It tastes good, but then I get a full-on taste of lemon and it makes my mouth twist.

Joe laughs. “Sour?”

I realize he’s moved pretty close to me. He smells as good as he looks, which I’ve already noticed is pretty damn delicious. In fact, he smells better. It’s not Drakkar or Polo but something else, I’m not really sure what. So I ask him.

Joe laughs again and puts his glass on the counter. He leans against it, one foot crossed over the other. Even his shoes are pretty and I realize I’ve never asked him what he does. I don’t really know anything about him, even though I’ve told him plenty about me.

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