Mmm,” Jack hums against the back of my neck, his body shifting slightly, hips rocking into mine. “…feels good.”

Sleep seeps away slowly, like honey melting off a warm spoon. I open my eyes, blinking back dreams. The first hint of dawn’s earliest rays stream through folded sheer curtains into our bedroom.

Jack is wrapped around me, one leg draped over my hip with his foot tucked between my knees. His arm circles my chest, holding me snugly against his naked body. He’s warm, his chest pressed to my back, the top of one thigh nestled against the back of mine. Feeling him attached to me like this, feeling his thickness probing between my ass cheeks, it brings on a morning hard-on I’m inclined not to waste, even if it is a school day.

I push back, creating friction, then lay my hand behind me on Jack’s hip, driving fingers into his flesh.

“Ahh…” he moans, his thickness firming against me, his arm tightening around my chest. “Oh god that feels so good,” Jack whispers, coming awake. His hand slips down, reaching around to encircle my generous morning wood.

“Good morning,” I say, rolling my head back on the pillow closer to Jack’s, wanting to be as near as possible.

“Good morning,” he replies, taking me by my hips to pull me back. He leans over me to grab lube from out nightstand; he’s swift to knee my legs apart after. A second later Jack’s fingers, lubed and warm, dip gently inside me.

Before Jack, I never knew how much I liked this part of sex; getting fucked proper, the old-fashioned way. Maybe I was too insecure. Maybe I wasn’t willing to submit. Whatever it was, I’m glad Jack made me realize I like this too.

He pushes inside me and it’s bliss. Our bodies melt together, Jack shoving himself into me deep, covering me, his hands owning every inch of me with his firm grip and gentle caresses.

“Is this what you want?” he hisses in my ear. His teeth pull rough at my lobe, and the sensation sends tingles down my spine as he tweaks my nipples, too.

Jack knows this is what I want. My moans and whines tell him, just as my tight asshole and rock-hard cock tell him. My body speaks to him, surrendering.

His hand joins mine, gripping my length, stroking in time with his full, deep thrusts. Just his hand on me while his dick is buried so deep inside me, is enough to send me spinning over the edge.

I hear myself whine, crying Jack’s name, begging for release. Trying to be quiet is futile as my orgasm builds to a crescendo, then explodes in thick spurts on the sheets between my knees. I come to pieces underneath Jack, crying out, breathless.

“That’s it,” he huffs, fucking me deeper, picking up pace. “That’s… it…”

His cock swells inside me, then the damn bursts with hauling strokes and expletives called to the heavens.

“Fucking hell!” Jack cries, drawing back one last time. We shudder in tandem before we draw calming breaths and fall still in a slick, sweat-glazed heap.

A few minutes later, after we’ve separated and our breathing has eased, Jack and I both descend into muffled laughter.

“You can’t be quiet for the life of you,” he laughs into my neck.

“Me?” I ask. “You’re like a cat in heat. I bet you even roused Millie, and she sleeps like the dead.”

He laughs, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. Millie’s breakfast room is just above our bedroom. If she’s up early with her coffee, she heard a lot. I didn’t say a word when a pair of noise canceling headphones arrived two weeks after she moved in.

He shoves me toward the edge of the bed. “Get up. Get out,” he says. “Get in the shower. You’re taking the kids to school.”

We live close enough to the school now the kids no longer need to take the bus, but when it’s cold like it is this time of year, I don’t want them to walk.

“All right! All right!” I protest. “I’m going. Make me some breakfast, wench! Earn your keep.”

Jack grins at me. “Oh, sweetheart, I think I just earned my keep, thank you very much.”

I glance over my shoulder, grinning and admiring his beautiful, naked form in our bed. “You really did,” I admit. “And you need to keep doing it. It makes me happy.”

* * *

After a quick but sweet shower, we’re all sitting together at the gorgeous farmhouse table in the breakfast nook that Jordan helped us design and Chrissy helped us decorate.

The warm, heavy body of our golden retriever-pit bull mix, Sophie, is pressed heavily against my foot. She rolls over and stretches against my leg with a sigh. She’s not quite a kitten—more like eighty pounds of muscle, drool, and good-natured goofiness. She’s got one bad eye and a limp in her back right leg, but she’s caught more than her share of voles that were trying to destroy our garden. Just like the kids, she’s never let anything slow her down. And like Jack, she’d never let anything happen to the kids.

We went to the animal shelter expecting a kitten, but Sophie was right there, begging us to take her home. Chrissy said it best—all five of us had gotten a second chance with each other, and Sophie needed one too. Jordan bends down to scratch her ear before loading up his plate with pancakes.

“Jordan, what are we doing after school today?” Jacks asks, reminding him, as he scoops a few pancakes onto his plate. “You didn’t forget, did you?”

It’s Jordan’s thirteenth birthday tomorrow, and we’re having a party at the River Rock Climbing gym for some of his friends from school and the other kids in his climbing club. We’re doing the party up right with burgers, cake, and bouldering games for the novices, along with a private belaying wall for the regular climbers.

“We’re going to the card store to pick out thank you notes,” Jordan replies dryly, as if reciting a lesson from a book. “So I can come home after the party and write notes for any gifts anyone brings me.” He shrugs, shaking his head. “I still don’t see why I can’t just say thank you, or text them or something. It’s not the nineteenth century. No one writes letters anymore.”

“No, it’s not the nineteenth century,” I say, forking a piece of bacon from Jordan’s plate, popping it in my mouth with a wry grin. “But good manners are timeless, and I won’t have your friends’ parents thinking we raised you in a barn.”

“What. Ever,” Jordan replies, rolling his eyes.

Just then the back door opens. Millie pops in, clutching the local newspaper in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other. She’s beaming particularly brightly this morning, wearing a Cheshire cat smile, bouncing with a spring in her step.

“Tell me there’s no Karma!” she states, plopping the newspaper down in front of me.

Page one, above the fold, sports a full-color mug shot of Henry Schmidt, with the accompanying headline, ‘Local man convicted of kidnapping, aggravated assault, and attempted murder, sentenced to life term.’

I scan the story, looking for details that came out in court but haven’t been widely circulated yet. I find them under the bold-print paragraph heading, ‘District Court Judge Howell Evans and former Washington County Sheriff Cletus Vossburg facing indictment on records tampering, obstruction of justice, and bribery, related to Schmidt cover-up. Prosecutor argues children’s kidnapping and attempted murder of local EMT, Jack Chance, could have been avoided.’

Jack steps up behind me, peering over my shoulder.

“Orange is his color,” he observes, referring to Schmidt’s county jail jumpsuit. “I hope he got a haircut for court though. That look would definitely not play well to a jury.”

Jordan gets up from his seat, coming around to my side of the table. He leans in looking at the photo of his grandfather and at the damning headline. Without skipping a beat, he peers up at Jack and in the most deadpan delivery, says, “Remind me to send the judge a thank you note. That’s the best present I’ll get this entire century.”

With that, Jordan unceremoniously slurps down the rest of his pancakes and bacon, then sprints upstairs to fetch his backpack and his siblings for school.

Millie watches him go, then turns to Jack and me. She shrugs, her eyes full of wonderment.

“That boy is thirteen going on forty-five,” she states. “He’s dry, like arctic tundra.”

He is. He’s also a good kid with a well-developed sense of right and wrong, social justice, and an appreciation for how fortunate he is. A couple years ago Jordan wanted to be a pilot, then a professional mountain climber. More recently he’s expressed interest in medicine, or perhaps the law.

I asked him if he wanted to be a cop like my best friend Gil. He shook his head and said, “No. Cops are just good for force. I’m talking about the law, as in making better ones, changing bad ones, and making them fair for everyone.”

So, my kid might want to be a lawyer. That makes sense given how much interaction he’s had with the legal system; the good, the bad, and the criminally negligent. Something tells me if Jordan sets his mind to making the world a better place, he’s going to accomplish it. He doesn’t know how to quit fighting for what he believes in.

Maybe one day he’ll be in Congress. God knows the whole country would be better off.

I think Jack planted that seed in him, but between the two of us, it’s taken root and flourished. I think he knows just how proud we are of him, but just in case, I make a mental note to tell him—tell all three of them—again, when we’re on our way to school.

It’s like saying “I love you.” Some things you just can’t hear too many times.

Jack leans down, giving me a smooch on the cheek, taking my empty plate away.

“You need to get going,” he prods me. “You’re going to be late. I hope you have a good day. And, I love you.”

I sip my coffee, watching him clear the breakfast dishes while chatting easily with Millie. Our life is remarkably unremarkable. We’re just two people who love one another, juggling a houseful of kids with extended family and friends helping us at every turn. There’s nothing unique about us at all.

Yet, every single day, I feel like we won the lottery. I feel like the luckiest man alive.