I keep having to remind myself that Mel and Alex are at the front of the bus. For two nights, it has been like having constant chaperones. Sometimes Alex moves to the middle of the bus so he can watch TV while Mel’s driving. That puts him about ten feet away from us, with nothing but a thin curtain separating us from him.

I’d hoped that once we dropped the children off, we’d have a little privacy, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. If anything, I feel like a bug under one of those glass magnifying lenses, and I’m just waiting for someone to tilt it toward the light and burn me to pieces.

“I can’t wait until we get home,” Wren says as she pulls the curtain between us and the front of the bus.

I lie back on the bed with my palms behind my head, looking up at her. She’s so damn pretty. Her hair is piled on top of her head in a messy jumble and she must have just washed her face, because it’s all clean and shiny.

She picks up a bottle and squirts something into her hands. “What’s that?” I ask.

She leans toward me and holds her palm close to my nose. “Lotion.” She pulls back and lifts her leg to the edge of the bed, bending her knee.

“Wait.” I sit up and scoot close to her. I take her hand and scrape the lotion from her hand into my palm, and then I rub my hands together, getting it warm. “Let me,” I say, grinning up at her.

“You want to put lotion on me?” she says, her gaze doubtful.

“I’d like nothing more.” I motion for her to sit, and she sinks down onto the covers. Tapping her leg so she’ll adjust her body, I lift her feet onto the bed and start at her ankles. I skim up the back of her calf, and look up to find her biting her lower lip as she watches my hands.

“That feels really good,” she says softly.

“Yeah, you do,” I reply. I smile at her, but she doesn’t smile back. She just stares at me, her gaze hot and needy.

Ever since I told her about Nicky, I’ve felt like Wren has been a little more open. She trusts me a little more, and I feel like, deep down, she’s ready for the same things I am. She’s ready for a family. She’s ready for me. She’s ready to take me deep inside her. At least I hope she’s ready. We just have to find some privacy long enough to do it. Our time will come. I’m just not sure when it’ll finally be.

I turn my body so that I can sit between her legs, spreading her legs around me as she lies back on the pillows. She stares at me sitting there, as I massage lotion into her skin.

“What are you thinking?” I ask, my voice rough and abrasive even to my own ears.

She grins. “Honestly?”

“Yes, honestly. Tell me what you’re thinking.” I grab for more lotion and squirt it into my palm. I don’t think to warm it up and she squeals when my hand touches her skin. She laughs, and tries to push my hands away, but I stroke quickly until it’s warm, and she relaxes.

“I’m thinking about…how much I want you inside me,” she says quietly.

My heart jolts. “Tell me more.” I can’t look at her face, so I concentrate on her skin. She has a mole on her inner thigh, so I circle it over and over with my thumb, pressing and releasing.

“I want to feel you move, inside me.”

Jesus. Fucking. Christ. Me too. “What do you think it will feel like?” I ask.

She lifts her foot and nudges my dick, which is hard as a rock and straining against my lounge pants. I move her foot away, because even her foot touching me is too much. It’s painful and wonderful all at once.

She grumbles, but puts her foot back on the bed, flat, so her knees are bent but her thighs are open.

“What will it feel like, when I’m deep inside you?” I ask again. I nudge her leg. “Tell me.”

“I think you’ll slide inside me, nice and slow, and then you’ll stop, and you’ll wait, because the moment will be so perfect neither of us wants it to end. We’ll come together like we were made for you to be inside me.”

“Do we have to come together that quick? Or can it take a few minutes?”

She laughs and nudges my shoulder with her foot. “It’ll be quick the first time. You’ll push your way inside me until you can’t go any farther. Then you’ll stop and look into my eyes, the way you do. Sometimes I think you can see all the way to my soul, Mick, when you look at me. It scares me, but it’s good too, you know?”

“I do know.” I know exactly what she means. “What’ll happen then, when I’m deep inside you, when I can’t go any farther?”

“You’ll be buried so deep that it hurts. But I won’t mind. I’ll ask for it. I’ll wrap my legs around you and pull you in deeper with the heels of my feet against your ass.”

My breaths grow shallow, and sweat beads my forehead. I lift my forearm to wipe it away.

“Are you okay?” she whispers.

“Fine,” I say. I get more lotion and slide farther up between her legs, getting closer to her center. I rub the insides of her thighs, and she begins to squirm, rocking her hips. “What do you need?” I ask.

She laughs quietly. “You. Just you.”

“Tell me more. What happens next, after I’m buried so deep I can’t go any farther, and you pull me in as far as you can with your heels? What happens then?”

“Then you start to move.”

Oh, God. She’s going to kill me with words like that. “Keep going.”

“I’ll be slippery wet, and you’ll be hard and hot and…mine.”

I let my thumbs sweep under the edges of the tiny shorts she’s wearing, swiping them below the elastic on the inside of her thighs. “Is this okay?” I whisper.

She glances toward the curtain, and I know she’s afraid that someone will hear us, or that someone will know.

“I just want to touch you.”

Her thighs part ever so subtly, her legs falling open, her knees falling toward the mattress. “Touch me,” she whispers.

I pull her little shorts and panties to the side, exposing her slit. Her lower lips are shiny and wet, glistening with desire. I’ve never touched her here, and I don’t know why I’ve waited so long. She’s perfect. She has a neat thatch of hair on her mound, and her clit sits at the top of her slit, swollen and hard.

“Where do you want me to touch you?”

“Everywhere.”

I run my thumbs up her lips toward her clit, pressing gently as I rub up the sides of her slit, until I can feel the swollen bump at the top. I carefully stroke my thumbs up each side, not touching it, not really. I graze it, over and over.

“Mick,” she says. She glances toward the curtain again.

“Shhh.” She smells like sex, and the salty scent of her tickles my nose. She rocks her hips. “Will you lift your shirt?” I nod toward her chest. “Let me see.”

Slowly, she lifts the tail of her shirt over her flat stomach, raising it inch by inch. The plump bottoms of her breasts appear first, and then she lifts the shirt over them. Her nipples stand hard and proud, her breasts pert but heavy enough that they fall toward the right and left like plump, ripe fruit.

A sound I don’t even recognize leaves my throat. Wren looks toward the curtain again. “They didn’t hear me,” I say to reassure her. I look at her breasts as I rub my thumbs up and down her center, until finally I rub across her clit. She jolts and then stills as I press my thumb tightly against her nub. I don’t move. I hold it there. Her mouth falls open and she bites back a sound.

“Shhh,” I say again.

“Mick…” Her hips roll, and my thumb slides around in her wetness.

“Is this what you want?”

“Yes.”

I rub a tight circle, my thumb slippery but firm. “Right here?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes fall closed. “Look at me.”

“I can’t.” She squeezes her eyes tight. I pull my thumb back and her eyes fly open. “Please,” she says.

“Keep your eyes open.”

She nods and chews on her lower lip. I press against her clit again, drawing a small circle as I slide a finger inside her. Her hips buck.

“I’m so close,” she whispers.

“I know.”

“So close—”

And then she comes apart right under my thumb. Watching her come in the shower was a beautiful sight, but this…this is everything. Her flat stomach scrunches up as her body bucks.

“Don’t stop,” she says, and she rides it out, her passion erupting and then slowing to tiny ripples, like a wave on a pond, strong at first and then smaller, and easier, and lighter.

Her body stills.

And so does the bus.

Wren looks toward the curtain as the bus comes to a stop. My finger is still inside her, and her inner walls are still pulsing, but she freezes and stares at the curtain.

A voice calls out, “We’re going to get a cup of coffee. Be right back.”

“Okay,” Wren calls out, her voice shaking.

“Do you want anything?” the voice calls again, and I can almost hear the amusement in it.

“No, thank you,” she calls back.

The door opens and closes, and I pull my finger from her heat, sliding her panties back over so she’s covered. But Wren pulls herself up, and stands in front of me, sliding her shorts and panties down her legs quickly.

“What are you doing?” She’s naked, standing in front of me, and I have to ask that? Really?

“I want you.” She climbs up to straddle me, reaching between us to pull my lounge pants away from my stomach, over my dick, and then she pushes my shoulders so I rock back on my hands. She pulls my dick away from my stomach. And then…then she sinks down on me, taking the head inside. She goes slowly, and I can’t stand it. I lift my hands and wrap my arms around her, bringing her down hard and fast on my dick, until she’s seated on top of me.

“Oh my God,” I groan. I lift her shirt so I can pull her nipple into my mouth. She brushes my mouth away.

“Just fuck me,” she says. “Fuck me now. Please.”

I hold on to her hips and pull her down hard and fast on top of me.

Almost immediately, I feel her walls clamp down on me. “Feels so good,” she says.

It feels better than anything.

“I’m coming,” she warns.

I hold her close as I pump inside her, once…twice… and then, “I’m coming too.” I squeeze her hips, pulling her as tight against me as she can get, as I come inside her slick, wet, tight walls. She milks me and I can feel the tiny quivers inside her. She holds me tight, her hands in my hair, pulling until her orgasm passes. Then her hands gentle, and she softly rubs my hair, collapsing against me.

And then I realize something’s off, because I feel her tense. “We didn’t…”

“We didn’t what?” I want to hear her say it. I want her to tell me it’s okay.

“We didn’t use a condom.”

“I’m clean. I got tested the last time I gave blood.”

“Me too. After the baby…” Her voice trails off.

“Then we’re okay, right?”

She lifts from my lap, standing up. She picks up her little shorts and her panties, and slips into the bathroom. A minute later, she comes back, all dressed like she was before. She’s quiet. Too quiet. And stiff. Too stiff. She won’t even look at me.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“I’m not on birth control,” she says.

“And?”

“And we didn’t use a condom.”

I’m not sorry. “Is that okay?” I watch her face closely.

“Did you mean to do that?” she asks.

“Did I mean to come inside you?”

“Yes. Did you mean to come inside me?” she repeats. Finally, her eyes meet mine, and in hers…I think I see fear. And anger. And a little bit of sorrow. It’s that last one that kills me.

“I don’t know.” And I don’t. I’d like to think it was intentional. I’d also like to think it was an accident, but I don’t know. All I know is that I finally had her. I had her in my arms, with her tight around me, and I love her. I love her and it just seemed right. But it must not have been right. It must not have been right at all.

I was wrong. She wasn’t ready. I just didn’t know it.

She nods and climbs under the covers. I try to pull her to me, but she rolls away, putting inches between us. Instead of letting me wrap myself around her, she reaches back and takes my hand, holding it tenderly against her hip. She says nothing, not even when the bus door opens and we get on the road again.

She hasn’t completely shut down on me, but she’s close.

“What are you thinking about?” I ask the darkness.

She doesn’t answer. I know she’s not asleep.

I tug her fingers, trying to get her attention. “Can you talk to me?”

“I’m not thinking about anything,” she finally says. She rolls further onto her stomach and lets me slide an arm around her. She pretends to go to sleep, but she’s tense in my arms for a long time. Too long.

I made a mistake. A big one.