CHAPTER NINE
THE WOMEN WERE hovering. Griffin tried ignoring their chatter, but they weren’t just talking among themselves. No, Jane, Tess and Skye were also talking to him—offering up advice on how best to shore up Old Man Monroe’s stair railing. Pestering him with questions about what he thought had happened the night before.
Why the old coot had fallen.
“How the hell should I know?” he muttered, but the funny thing was they didn’t appear much interested in his answers anyway. With barely a pause, they moved on to some other angle. Always talking, talking, talking.
“I need water,” he announced, rising to his feet. He left his tools on the wooden porch and didn’t bother taking his cell phone, which he’d tossed on top of the T-shirt he’d left on a cushioned patio chair. Rex Monroe’s screen door squealed as he pulled it open. It banged behind him as he headed for the small kitchen.
He was filling a glass when he heard his neighbor’s voice. “Skye?”
“It’s me,” he called out, then stepped to the small adjacent den where Monroe was reclined in a ratty chair. The night before, when Griffin and Jane had run to the crumpled form on the porch, the man had already been rousing. Though they’d wanted to call 911, he’d refused any help beyond getting him back to his feet. As of this morning, he claimed no lingering side effects besides a knot on the head and an ache to go along with it. “You want me to get her?”
“You’ll do,” Monroe said. “Come here.”
Griffin hadn’t been in the room in ages, if ever. It was small, holding the recliner, a TV-and-cable setup and rows of bookshelves. One wall was paneled and covered with framed photographs. Some of them were clearly shots of the reporter from his foreign correspondent days. Others looked to be—
His glance darted to the old man. “You have Gage’s work in here.”
Monroe shrugged a thin shoulder covered in a plaid shirt that must have been straight from the dry cleaner, it was so sharply pressed. “He sends me some from time to time.”
“Huh.”
“Those leather albums? Got tear sheets of your articles in them. Only the better ones, of course, which means they’re few and far between.”
The insult didn’t surprise Griffin, but the fact that his neighbor had collected any of his pieces gave him pause. He ran a finger over a binder and noted it was the same style as the one in Beach House No. 9 that contained his stuff from Afghanistan. “You like me,” he said dryly. “You really like me.”
Old Man Monroe snorted. “It’s sad how your standards lower when you get to be my age.”
“Well, clearly your fall didn’t soften your tongue any,” Griffin noted. “And not that I care, but the females are twittering like you wouldn’t believe, so I have to ask. Are you sure you’re okay?”
He waved a liver-spotted hand in the air. “Beyond a few minutes I can’t account for and the little people with the hammers inside my head, I’m fine.”
“It was a good thing that Jane saw you when she did.”
“True. And that you were there to pick me up.” The old man narrowed his gaze on Griffin. “She said it was lucky—you hadn’t been home long. Something about visiting with a man from the platoon?”
“Yeah.” He turned to inspect one of his twin’s photos. It showed a shirtless soldier from the back, ball cap on his head, army issue on his lower half, strapping a weapon at his hips. His head was bent and across his shoulders was inked a wicked-looking tribal tattoo. A line of barbs circled one thick bicep.
Under the shirt collar of Brian Hernandez, the man he’d met at LAX the day before, Griffin had glimpsed the devil tattoo that crawled up the former soldier’s neck. It had been bright red, new-blood red, cherry-red. “Remember when we were cherries?” the kid had asked, touching the thing and using the common term for inexperienced soldiers. “Once I made it to the outpost, I think I was cherry for like thirty seconds.”
“Less,” Griffin had said. Immediately upon climbing from their Chinook transports, they’d been mortared. A welcome from their adversaries across the valley.
“Griffin?” The old man was speaking again, his voice sharp. “You hear me?”
“Sure,” he answered. He’d heard Monroe talking, just hadn’t taken in the words.
“I was wondering why your friend came so far for such a short visit.”
Griffin shot him a look over his shoulder. “Why the hell would you care?”
“Because I’m nosy, obviously. All good reporters are. You should know that. Of course—”
“I’m not very good, I get it, I get it.”
“I was going to say of course I can guess what he wanted.”
“Yeah?” Griffin said. “You’re a mind reader now? How could you possibly know?” He’d had no clue himself going in, but the agitated tone in the kid’s voice when he’d called had taken hold of his insides and wrung them like a washcloth.
“Because it’s what everyone who’s been in theater asks themselves, wonders about, fixates over.” The old man paused. “He wanted to know, what now? We’ve all asked ourselves some version of that. After the brutal thrill of war, what comes next?”
A long moment passed, then Griffin realized he was holding his breath, waiting. Jesus Christ! Waiting for the effing Ancient Mariner to share the secret of life. Death. War.
Whatever.
“I’ve got to finish up outside,” he said, brusque. “The ladies wouldn’t forgive me if your rocky railing means you take another fall.”
“Help me out of this chair, then,” Monroe ordered. “I like to get some real sunshine on me every day, just in case it’s my last.”
“We could only get so lucky,” Griffin said, crossing to give his neighbor his arm. Then they walked together to the front porch. To free up the extra chair for the old man, he tossed his shirt and cell phone to his sister.
The women, predictably, gathered around Monroe, and Griffin didn’t have to check to know that he ate up the attention. Skye, in particular, couldn’t stop peppering the coot with questions. Was he certain he was well enough to be sitting up? Had he remembered anything more about the incident? Why had he gone onto the porch at that time of night anyway?
Rex replied in versions of yes, no and he couldn’t remember. It was possible he’d heard some strange noise, perhaps a scuffling outside his front door.
Skye’s voice rose. “You think someone was trying to get inside?”
Hammer in hand, Griffin looked over from his seat on the first stair only to find Jane was seated beside him. He jumped, dropping the tool. When he reached for it, so did she, and their fingers tangled.
Their gazes met.
He’d been avoiding that, looking at Jane. The only thing worse would be—
“We should talk about it,” she said.
—would be talking about it! His fingers convulsed on hers. “Why? I get it. Your defenses were down because you’d been drinking. My libido was up because I’m a guy.”
Her fingers jerked away from his to clutch the hem of yet another of her maddening, floaty skirts. Gauzy and delicate, they made his palms itch to rip, to reveal, to ride between her slender thighs. “I don’t know what you mean by me drinking.”
He rolled his eyes. “Last night you tasted like tequila and lime, honey-pie.” Feeling sorry for the birthday girl, he hadn’t rubbed it in.
She swallowed. “I turned another year older. So…”
“You don’t have to explain.” What the hell was the point of discussing it? It would only serve to bring it all up in his mind. He’d been in a hell of a temper himself, on edge from his meeting with Brian, from the memories that were intruding more and more often.
Bright red. Cherry-red. The red of new blood.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way! He was cold inside, desensitized, but nobody would leave him alone. All this talk, talk, talk kept rattling him.
Jane’s mouth primmed.
That mouth.
He wrapped his fingers around the hammer and turned back to the task at hand. Nail pierced wood, and he sank it deep, as deep as he wanted to put all the thoughts that kept hammering at him day after day. The war. Erica. Bright red, cherry-red, the red of new blood, Brian.
“Griffin…”
And Jane. Who could have foreseen the fire under that governess guise? And why the hell did he want to touch it so very much? Gage was the real risk taker in the family. But Jane made Griffin want to put his hand in the flame and hold it there.
The burn would make him feel so damn alive.
But he didn’t want to feel at all!
“Look,” she was saying in her librarian voice. It was hushed but impossible to ignore. “I know that I… Uh, that I…”
“Came like a rocket at the flick of my finger?” He could feel her blush, even with his back turned. “Don’t be ashamed, honey-pie. I suppose some men would find it gratifying.”
She made a strangled sound. “Do you have to be so…so crude?”
Yes. Because it would be effective in pushing her away, and he needed to do that, he’d decided. Jane was so much sweet damn trouble under her frothy skirts and prim blouses. While he admittedly ached to get into her body, she’d use it as an excuse to get into his head. And though the explosive chemistry between them could knock her straight out of her crazy, girlie shoes, and while he was more grateful than he could say to know that he had a working cock again, he’d learned some lessons through war.
He’d never been armed during his embed year, but weapons had surrounded him all the same. One slow afternoon the soldiers had convinced him he needed to know how to handle every weapon at the outpost. He’d actually touched them many times already—moving a grenade someone inadvertently had left on his pillow or handing a platoon member his M4. But that day he’d learned to load and shoot and had been fascinated by the power in his hands. Maybe it was a man thing, a testosterone-driven interest in a tool, a gadget, but whatever the seductive lure, touching them like that had set his heart hammering. That’s when he’d thought better of what he was doing. That’s when he’d set down the rifle he was holding and backed slowly away, aware that keeping it too close would change him as a man.
Jane was like that. With her in his hands, he’d be changed…he could see her cracking him open like a nut, and he couldn’t risk any of what was in there leaking out.
“I should have known you wouldn’t engage in a civilized conversation,” she muttered now. “Not even about this.”
“You want a conversation?” He swiveled on the step and pinned her with his gaze. She’d been standing out in the sun long enough for the tip of her nose to turn pink. He curled his fingers into a fist so he wouldn’t touch her there. Or anywhere. “Jane, here’s the bottom line. I don’t want you in my bed.”
She blinked those silvery eyes and he glanced away from the—what? Surprise? Hurt? Hell.
“It would be bad for me,” he continued. “And a disaster for you, because I can’t give you what you need….” Her helpless climax of the night before flared across his mind, but he dashed water on it, cooling the heat. “What you really need.”
“Oh.” Her voice was small. Or perhaps insulted. “Thank you for being clear about that. Now I don’t need to apologize for leaving you…unsatisfied.”
He swallowed his groan. “Jane—”
“Griff!” Tess called his name, and she held up his phone, waving it to indicate there was someone on the line.
“Can you take a message?” he called back. Then he put his hand on Jane’s knee. “Look…”
She did, and their eyes caught again. It was like gazing across the water toward the horizon just as the sun left the sky. No obstacles ahead. A silvery slide to forever.
“Griff.” The strange note in his sister’s voice caused him to jerk. He looked up. She was coming across the porch, a tense expression on her face.
His heart jolted. “Gage?” He jumped to his feet. “Something’s happened to Gage?”
“No, no.” Tess put both hands out. “Not that. It’s your friend. That young man you met yesterday.”
“Huh? Brian?”
“That was his mother. She thought you’d want to know….”
Griffin froze. His tongue felt thick. “Just tell me,” he ordered his sister. “Say it quick.” Like ripping off a Band-Aid.
“He’s going to be all right, but…”
“Say it quick.”
“After landing yesterday, on the way home, he crashed. He crashed his car into a tree one block from his parents’ house. It was raining,” she added. “A big storm.”
A one-car crash, one block from home. Yeah, it was raining. A big storm. Inside Brian too.
“His mom wanted to make sure that you knew and to thank you for talking with him,” Tess added.
Griffin stared at her. “Why the hell would his mother say that?” What had the talking accomplished? Nothing. Not a thing. Dropping the hammer again, he ran down the steps, not wanting to discuss the subject—any subject—anymore.
Talking did nothing—as evidenced by that look on Jane’s face and by Brian’s latest disaster. Because the fact was, Griffin didn’t have the right words to help, to heal, to explain any goddamn thing in the world to anyone, least of all himself.
* * *
IT WAS PAST DARK, and David had a simple plan to assuage the loneliness that assailed him every evening in the sprawling ranch house in Cheviot Hills. It was Friday night, and with the weekend ahead, he couldn’t face the quiet workless days without a little fix of his family. He was going to watch over them, just until morning. No one had to know about it but him.
He trudged through the soft sand of Crescent Cove, once again in the wrong kind of shoes. Instead of flip-flops or those leather things in his closet that his daughter teased him were “mandals,” he was in his running shoes. Grains poured into the sides until he felt as if he was wearing lifts. Sloppy lifts that made him stumble a little. He almost dropped the pop-up tent he’d borrowed from his neighbor. The sleeping bags he’d found in the boys’ closet bobbled in his grasp.
It would serve him right to fall flat on his face.
Since it was exactly what he’d done with his life.
Between Beach Houses No. 8 and No. 9 was a clear swath of sand. He intended to set up camp there, close enough to his family to ease his spirit, far enough away that they wouldn’t be aware of his presence. Though they all needed to become accustomed to Daddy keeping his distance.
It took three tries to set up his makeshift camp. Two times the tent popped up all right but then sprang out of his hold. On the third attempt, he tamed it into submission, but when he crawled inside he kneed over a sharp object that made him roll to his back and cradle his bruised skin. Upon scooting back out and clawing the sand beneath the tent floor, he uncovered a hard plastic shovel. It looked very much like the one that came with the set of sand tools they’d put in the boys’ Easter baskets last spring.
“Thanks, Easter Bun,” he muttered. Then he tossed it aside and dragged the sleeping bags in behind him.
They didn’t have any adult-sized ones at the house. Neither he nor Tess had grown up camping, and the first baby had come too quickly in their marriage to explore it as a recreational possibility. So he’d grabbed the two that the boys brought to slumber parties. SpongeBob SquarePants and Buzz Lightyear. He unzipped them flat, intending to sleep sandwiched between their layers. Good thing. They were so short and narrow that one wouldn’t have contained half of him.
As it was, his feet and shoulders stuck out of each end. But it was enough. He was warmed by being able to gaze on the small cottage that housed his four children and his wife. Flat on his belly, he toed off his shoes and stacked his hands to support his chin as he watched No. 8 through the tent flap.
The low lights coming from the windows wavered in his vision. He was exhausted. Early to work, late to work out, followed by the grinding quiet of the empty house meant he’d slept little since Tess and his children had left him.
In his dream, he was swimming in the ocean. Two seals floated close, their bodies pressing against his. He put an arm around each, riding alongside them toward shore, as happy as he’d ever been in his life. As happy as he’d been from the day he’d met his wife until the morning he’d turned forty years old.
Then something kicked him in the nuts. He awoke with a jerk and a curse. What the…?
“Knock knock,” his brother-in-law’s voice said from outside the tent.
“Griffin?” David craned his neck to peer out the flap. There he saw the other man, flat on his back on the sand, staring up at the sky. “What’s going on?”
“Just a little stargazing.”
It was then that David realized the “seals” he’d dreamed of were instead his middle children, Duncan and Oliver. At some point during his doze, he’d turned over. One of his little guys was plastered against his right, the other his left. The knee to his nuts had to have come via Oliver, who’d been a restless sleeper since the womb.
Tess had despaired during the pregnancy that he was going to be one of those kids who could never sit still. But while Oliver was all boy and as fidgety as the rest of his gender, he became even more active in sleep. When off in the Land of Nod, he twisted and turned and flipped and flopped. His rowdy nocturnal gymnastics were what she’d experienced while he’d grown in her belly.
When Oliver crawled into bed with his parents following a nightmare, they’d learned to stuff pillows around him. David didn’t have any such protection now.
“How come they’re here?” he whispered to Griffin, even as he tightened the arms he’d placed around his sons while dreaming.
“Tess and your daughter are at a movie. Jane—” the way Griffin said the word held a wealth more information than four letters should allow “—said we would watch your boys. Russ is snoozing back at the house with her, but these dudes were still squirrelly. We went for a walk, saw the tent, and while I thought you might be a vagrant, they recognized the sleeping bags.”
“Ah.” David hesitated. “You’re probably wondering what’s going on.”
“Actually,” Griffin answered, “I’d rather not know. Keep it your business.”
His avowed disinterest surprised David. Maybe his brother-in-law had his own surfeit of problems. “This Jane…”
The ensuing quiet spoke yet another volume. Finally, Griffin broke the silence. “She’s worried about Rebecca.”
“‘She’? Your Jane—”
“Not my Jane.”
“But she’s worried about my daughter.” David drew his boys a bit closer. “Why?”
“Jane says girls of Rebecca’s age are prone to rebellion. Your teenager is threatening to get pregnant out of boredom.”
It surprised a laugh out of him. “Tess wouldn’t let that happen.”
“You sure?”
Of course there were no absolute guarantees, but his wife had her reasons to be on the watch for unexpected babies. And as for his daughter… “Girls of Rebecca’s age are prone to dramatic statements too.”
Griffin made a sound of assent. “Christ, they grow up too fast.”
“Yeah.” David felt that familiar claw tearing at his insides. His little girl was a teenager! They were talking about college, and she was talking about pregnancy, and if he blinked a time or two more, both would be real. He was on the verge of losing one of the precious jewels in his life, and finding a way to survive the idea of that kind of loss was why he’d taken to staying late at the office and racking up marathons on his bike in spin class.
“It seems like a second ago that she was as small as Russ,” Griffin said.
Russ. So small and so dependent. David squeezed his eyes at the raking pain in his gut.
“Dad.” A sleepy Duncan squirmed in his hold. “You’re hurting.”
“Yeah, buddy,” he murmured.
“You’re hurting me.” He wriggled again.
David loosened the arm that was clutching his oldest son. “Sorry.”
“Watcha doing out here?” He butted his head against David’s ribs.
“I wanted some fresh air,” he said. “Can we keep that our secret? Not tell Mom?”
“Sure.” Duncan’s voice slowed. “Have a secret too, with Unc’ Griff.”
David didn’t think he was awake enough to share what it was. “Okay, son,” he said.
“We been peeing in the ocean.” Oliver popped up.
“You’re awake too?” David said, glancing down at his second boy.
“Nope. Jus’ wanted to tell you our secret. Our man secret.” As he settled back down, Oliver kicked David in the shins.
Wincing, he said, “Is that right?”
“Unc’ Griff says there’s stuff we don’t tell girls.”
“Peeing in the ocean seems to qualify,” David agreed aloud, though from Oliver’s sudden bonelessness, he figured the boy had drifted back to dreamland.
“For the record, there’s also been some burping and armpit farting,” Griffin confessed. “We had a contest.”
“Sure you did,” David said, unsurprised. “You and Gage never do anything without making it a competition.”
“Yeah.” Griffin sounded unhappy about it.
“Hey. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“No apology necessary.” Griffin stirred. “You want me to leave them with you?”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” David said. “And I also wish…”
“Another man secret, I get it. I won’t tell your wife where you were tonight.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Tess’s voice said. In the moonlight he could see her bare, elegant feet. She was standing just beyond Griffin. “Because your wife already knows.”
* * *
TESS SAT ON THE sand outside David’s tent as Griffin carried Duncan and Oliver to No. 8. He’d promised to tuck them in and tell Rebecca she was in charge until Tess returned to the house. Why David was camping on her doorstep she didn’t yet know, but she was going to get to the bottom of it. Her avoidance of speaking with him about any serious subjects had merely postponed the inevitable. Tonight she was going to strip every pretense away.
The half-moon cast cool light on the beach, but her husband was little more than a dark shadow inside the confines of the small tent. She nodded at it. “Where’d you get that thing?”
“Borrowed it from the Kearneys across the street,” he said. Then he started crawling toward the open flap. “I should take it back to them.”
“We should talk first.” Tess shifted closer so that he’d have to push her out of the way in order to get out. He froze, as she expected he would. He’d been avoiding touching her for weeks.
“Fine.” His sigh was audible. Then he started speaking in a conversational tone. “What did you and Rebecca see at the movies tonight?”
“I don’t know. My mind was elsewhere.”
“While I ate dinner, I watched an interesting program on the Nature Channel.”
“Really?” She stared at him. Married for thirteen years, separated for several days, and he wanted to engage in small talk?
“Really.”
“No, I mean you really want to talk about fauna or flora instead of our family?”
“It was on solar variation—which is neither animal nor vegetable, of course.”
David had a dry sense of humor that some people mistook for dullness. She didn’t. She knew exactly what he was up to, and it was all about dodging important matters. If she was going to get him on point, he was forcing her to flat-out ask him the tough questions.
Suddenly she felt cold, and she rubbed at the bare skin of her arms beneath her short sleeves. Though she wore jeans, she was shoeless, and she crossed one set of chilled toes over the other. She tried peering into the tent. “Do you have a jacket in there?”
“No.” But then he moved, and she could just make out him stripping off his sweatshirt. He scooted closer to the tent entrance to pass it to her, and the moonlight revealed his bare skin.
The material was warm from his body heat. “But you—”
“I’m fine.” He drew folds of SpongeBob SquarePants around his torso. “Put it on.”
It was a mistake. Once she slipped the sweatshirt over her head, the scent of him enveloped her. You’d think she’d be accustomed to it, but thanks to their separation it was both wholly new and wholly familiar. She and her daughter had sniffed two dozen scents last Christmas before settling on this one. One day two weeks ago, Russ had gotten into it after his bath, and she’d cried smelling David on her baby’s skin.
It was the closest he’d been to his father in months.
Tears stung her eyes now, but she pinched the bridge of her nose to keep them at bay. How could David have done this to her? To them?
She drew up her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her shins. Her gaze drifted to the right, and she watched the calm surf spread its white apron across the sand with a soft shush. Any other time it would be a comforting sound.
But only the truth would comfort her now. “Are you having an affair?” she blurted out.
His stare poked at her. “What?”
“Are you— No! Don’t answer that!” What was she doing, she thought in a panic. A “yes” wouldn’t comfort her at all. She drew her legs closer and squeezed shut her eyes. “I can’t do this,” she muttered against her knees.
“Then don’t do it,” David urged. “Come back to the house. Move back in with the kids, and it will be just like before.”
She lifted her head. “Like it was a week ago? Like it’s been for months?”
He hesitated. “I’m a good provider.” It sounded defensive. Guarded.
As he’d been since his fortieth birthday.
Then words she hadn’t planned tumbled out of her mouth. “I’ve been thinking of having an affair myself.”
“What?” David erupted from the tent, then rocked back, so that he was half in, half out. “Has that bastard Reed Markov been after you?”
“No,” Tess said, waving a hand. “Geez, David, he’s sleazy.”
“You were the one cozying up to him at lunch.”
“Because he actually might have work for me. And the sleaze is automatic with him. He puts it on in the morning when he gets up, just like you put on your…your dress shirts, lightly starched.”
She thought she heard her husband’s teeth grind. “So the other half of this affair you’ve contemplated is some fantasy man?”
Agreeing to that would be the easy path. But hell, if she wanted no barriers between them, then she couldn’t lie. “Tee-Wee—Teague White. He had a crush on me when he was a kid.”
“Him and probably three hundred thousand other men thanks to that damn OM commercial,” David said, his voice tight. “I’m going to kill him.”
“You can’t do that. He’s been a perfect gentleman. As far as I know, I’m the only one with naughty thoughts.”
David twitched at that. It drew her gaze, and she could see more of him in the moonlight. The sleeping bag had pooled at his hips to bare his torso. Since all the gym time, she’d only caught glimpses of him as he’d crossed from the shower to his closet. Yes, those fifteen pounds he’d grumbled about were gone, but until now she hadn’t made note of what had taken their place.
His chest was chiseled. Slabs of pectoral muscles were situated above rippling abdominals. His shoulders were heavier and wider now, with biceps that bulged when he shifted to lean back on his hands.
Whoever said women weren’t aroused by visual stimulus were full of baloney.
Except, she thought, her heart contracting, she’d take her softer, loving David any day over this finely cut stranger who wouldn’t look her in the eye or hold their youngest child in his arms. I’m sorry, she thought. I’m sorry that I got pregnant when we weren’t planning another.
Just like they hadn’t planned the first.
She wondered now if that was the explanation for the change in him. He’d never expressed feeling trapped into marriage after she’d told him about Rebecca, but maybe when baby Russ arrived those feelings had finally arrived too. Of course it took two to make new life, but she’d hated the pill, and the diaphragm was clearly not as effective when it came to them. After both unplanned pregnancies, she’d had the guilty yet pleasurable notion that their exciting, vigorous sex was to blame.
“So you’ve been having thoughts about another man,” David ground out.
She shrugged. “You haven’t denied thinking about women.”
“Oh, I’ve had plenty of carnal thoughts, Tess.”
Her heart squeezed.
“About one woman in particular.”
Her lungs contracted.
The stranger who had once been her husband spoke again. “I’m going to get my hands on her.”
Dying on the beach might be all right. The tide would come in and sweep her and her pain away.
“I’m going to get my hands on her right now.” And then he had her in his grip and was tugging her into the tent before she could comprehend his meaning.
It was just sinking in as his mouth latched onto hers. Without thinking, her palms slid over those pumped biceps and those new, heavy shoulders. If the recently acquired muscles made him look like a stranger, touching them only enhanced the unfamiliarity. Then she curled her fingers in the short, velvet nap of his hair at the back of his head, and her pulse settled a little. This was recognizable. And so were his lips, the sure thrust of his tongue, the taste of the kiss.
It spun her away from the present.
She was nineteen again, her birthday just the week before. She’d had one lover before him, the summer after senior year, the king of the prom who’d bumbled his way through her virginity. But David was a man, and he was the steady, mature kind who didn’t feel it was an ego blow to ask for directions.
Do you like this? he’d whispered in her ear, pinching her nipples just hard enough to make her gasp. His hand had traveled lower. Shall I rub light and fast or hard and slow? Just the words had enflamed her.
Now her husband reached for the zipper of the tent, and she heard him draw it down, prohibiting all light. It only drew her further into the past. He’d shared a two-bedroom house in the valley with a guy who was working in the financial district, both of them saving their paychecks. David’s room had held a queen bed, a side table and a narrow window. With the curtains drawn it was a dark, intimate space where a girl could hold her guy’s head to her breast and not worry that he’d see the embarrassing ecstasy on her face as he sucked her nipple deep.
She wanted that now. She wanted it so badly that she yanked both the sweatshirt and T-shirt over her head in one move. David was already working on her bra, and she felt her skin flush hot as the silky fabric brushed the taut tips when he tossed it away.
Her bare torso rubbed against his. He was hard where she was soft, and he grunted when she ran her hand down the front of his pants and cupped him over his jeans. Nineteen-year-old Tess had done that too, bold as could be in the darkness, but she wouldn’t have dared to attack the fastenings.
She did now, though, and another distinctive vriiip of a zipper sounded over their heavy breathing. His erection nudged the palm of her hand, and she squeezed it in greeting, eliciting a half groan, half moan from David. He went for her zipper then too, but she didn’t release her prize; instead she caressed it with the C of her fingers, stroking up and down until she felt a drop of wetness meet her thumb. She smeared it over the crown, and he cursed, rolling away from her touch.
Her protest died as he yanked at the legs of her jeans. The denim hit the side of the tent with a thwap. Her white panties rose like a feather in the air. She didn’t see them fall because her eyes squeezed shut as David crouched between her spread thighs.
He’d done that same thing in the sex cave in the valley. Let me, he’d said then. Don’t be embarrassed. You’ll like it. Don’t keep me out. Don’t push me away. Never not let me have you, Tess.
Now, as she had at nineteen, she allowed him to hold her steady, his palms on her inner thighs, his thumbs peeling her open like an exotic fruit he was intent on savoring. A blush burned over her skin. The prom king had probably not even known about the part of her body that David found so easily with the tip of his tongue.
Just the tip. Just the tiniest flick.
The sound she made now was louder than the one she’d made then. At nineteen, she’d swallowed back as best she could those passion noises that had crawled up her throat. David had praised the small moans and whimpers. “Yes, baby,” he’d said against her wet flesh. “Show me that you like it. Let me hear how good it is for you.”
The numbers guy was nimble in so many other ways.
Just when she thought he’d nudge her over the precipice with the edge of his teeth, he’d flipped her onto her belly. The nineteen-year-old hadn’t known this would become her favorite position.
But David had discovered it almost from the first. She could still remember her hot cheek against the cool surface of his sheet. He’d pushed her long hair off her neck and kissed her nape, then pressed a flight of butterfly kisses against the skin of her back, crossing her shoulders and dipping down her spine. Imagine her shock when he’d bit her bottom!
He did it now too, but she didn’t squeak as she’d done then. Instead, she lifted into the sting-and-suck of that carnal kiss and felt the throb of it everywhere, at the tips of her breasts, in the pulse points of her wrists, as an insistent ache between her thighs.
She was too empty there. “David…” she heard herself moan.
He ran his thumb along the seam between her cheeks, brushing past a tiny indent that made her skin break out into goose bumps, until he dipped just the pad against the wet, aching well where she wanted his erection.
“Please, David…”
“You’re so ready for me.”
“I am. I am so ready.”
He laughed at the urgent note in her voice, the laugh of a man who knew his way around a woman’s body. At nineteen she’d been only grateful for it.
She was still thankful. “Come inside.” The Tess of the present was bold enough to wiggle her butt at him.
He caressed her hip with one large hand. He had calluses that were new, and they made her skin prickle in reaction. She rubbed her tight nipples against the sleeping bag beneath her. After this, SpongeBob and Buzz Lightyear were going to have to be replaced by brand-new cartoon characters.
Thoughts of the kids intruded. Oh, God. What was she doing? She started to rise, but David’s hand clamped hard on her hip bone. His other pressed between her shoulder blades, holding her in place.
His body curled over hers, and his mouth kissed her ear, his hot breath tickling the whorls. “Don’t keep me out. Don’t push me away. Never not let me have you, Tess.”
She let desire spin her back again. She was nineteen, in the capable hands of an incredible lover. Of a real man, a mature man, who caressed her cheek with his mouth as his thick, solid shaft tunneled inside her. She arched, trying to force him deeper, faster, but David was chuckling again, that dark, confident chuckle that had her twisting to abrade her stiff nipples on the surface below her. His hands found hers, and he twined their fingers, gripping tight as he took her that last inch.
They both made satisfied noises and went still.
He was throbbing in her channel, and she tightened it around him, squeezed him as she’d done with her hand. He groaned. “You’re so good, baby.”
The nineteen-year-old had thrilled to that. She’d done it again, and then he’d started thrusting, helpless, she’d thought, against her wiles.
Now she knew better. Nothing about David was helpless when it came to bedding her. He moved deliberately, pulsing deep, thrusting shallowly, driving her mad by not giving her the vigorous pounding rhythm that would get her off. “David,” she said and craned her neck to take his mouth in a kiss.
He sucked on her tongue, and she arched into his next stroke. “Please.” She pushed her bottom higher.
His fingers slid free of her right hand. Still thrusting, he passed his hand over her shoulder, down her spine, around her hip. Then two fingers slid between her softness to brush the hard bundle of sensation. A shudder rolled through her. He circled her there with the wet tips, tight, tight orbits that didn’t let up even as he plunged inside her with more force.
Still, his movements were controlled, each one designed to propel her to orgasm. Her knees slipped against the sleeping bag, and so she wouldn’t flatten, she reared back. It upset the rhythm.
And brought him root-deep.
They both froze again. His heart was pounding against her spine. Their harsh breaths echoed off the nylon walls. She squeezed the fingers of his left hand, and he moved again, withdrawing to drive inside her once more. His right hand went back to its work too.
And Tess let the final pleasure begin to wind inside her. With every turn, her body tensed, until she was tight like a violin string, vibrating at her own personal pitch of bliss. “David…” she moaned again.
“Yeah,” he said, her suave lover finally losing his power of speech. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” And on that last word he started shuddering. Her body caught hold and used those tremors and the firming touch of his fingers to take her away….
“To infinity and beyond,” David muttered as he dropped atop one sleeping bag, flinging his forearm over his eyes.
Tess lay beside him, quiet, reveling in the renewed closeness. Then reality struck, leaving her appalled.
“David.” Her voice was faint. “God, David, we didn’t use anything.” They’d never been this irresponsible. Those two unplanned pregnancies had been due to birth control failure, not the failure to use birth control.
“It’s all right,” he said.
A hot tear slipped out of the corner of her eye and dripped to her temple. “Positive thinking in this regard has never worked well for us.”
“I was snipped two months ago.”
The sentence didn’t make sense. “‘Snipped’?”
“I had a vasectomy. And I’ve been tested since. When I ejaculate? No swimmers.”
She stared in his direction, even though she couldn’t see him any better in the dark now than she had before. “You…you did that without consulting me?”
His quick gesture she could only sense. “We didn’t want any more kids, right?”
They hadn’t planned on the fourth. A second hot tear escaped her eye. Without another word, she started feeling around for her clothes. The tent was so small they were easy to discover, and the wife in her even neatly piled David’s when she encountered them.
That’s who she was, of course. A wife. They might have briefly recaptured the initial excitement of their early relationship, but she wasn’t nineteen any longer. No matter what happened when they were skin-to-skin, it didn’t alter how he’d changed either.
She was the mother of four, and she’d gotten exactly what she’d come for. She’d stripped every pretense away to discover that David wasn’t the same husband and father that he’d been in the past. He was unwilling, Tess understood now, to be that same man.
Where that left her, she didn’t yet know.