Like last time, Claire stood outside the hospital room, hand on the door, hesitating. This time she sucked in a deep breath and, after only a moment’s hesitation, she pushed in. I wasn’t sure if I should go in with her, especially with such a deeply personal thing happening, but Claire had my hand in a death grip and she wasn’t letting go, so I followed her in.

Connor was there on the bed, but his eyes were closed, and his chest was barely rising and falling. The heart rate monitor beeped very slowly: beep……beep……beep. So slow. Too slow.

Tabitha rushed across the room to her sister. “Claire, thank you for coming, thank god—thank god you’re here.” She hugged her sister tightly and sniffled against Claire’s shirt. “I don’t think he’s going to last much longer.”

Hayley came over and the three girls hugged, both Hayley and Tabitha crying, while Claire remained stoic and dry-eyed, but I could tell she was glad to be with her sisters. Her mother was sitting next to the bed, her forehead pressed to Connor’s hand, her shoulders heaving.

The beeping slowed even more.

Tabitha let out a deep breath, sniffled, and then grabbed Claire’s shoulders. “I know you and Dad—” Her voice shook and then broke, and she started over. “Please say goodbye, Claire. Tell him you’re here. Tell him you forgive him.”

Moira lifted her head to peer at her daughter through tear-hazed eyes. “Last night he just kept repeating, ‘I didn’t know, I didn’t know, I didn’t know.’”

Connor coughed, a slow deep rattle, and the beeping slowed even more.

I put my lips to Claire’s ear. “Say goodbye, honey. Let him know you’re here.”

She shook her head. “I can’t…I can’t—”

But she took a tentative step forward, toward the bed, releasing my hand only reluctantly. Another step. She was visibly shaking, and her hands were trembling like dry leaves in a cold fall wind. She sat in the chair and took her father’s hand. “I’m here, Dad,” she whispered. “I’m…here.”

It was all she could manage before her voice gave out.

“Tell him,” Moira said.

Claire glanced at her mother. “Tell him what?”

“That you forgive him. It’s what he’s waiting for, Claire.”

“What if—what if I don’t forgive him? What if I can’t?”

Moira shuddered as if Claire’s words physically hurt her. “You have to, Claire. Please. You have to.” She stood up and circled around the bed, kneeling on the tile floor beside her daughter, clutching Claire’s arm in supplication. “We made mistakes—he did, I did. You have every right to hate us. To hate me. You’re right about everything you said yesterday. About him, about me, about how I was never there for you. And for those things I am deeply sorry. But…this is it, Claire. It’s the end. Your father is about to—to—” She couldn’t say the word. “Please…Claire. Please.”

“Why is this all on me?” Claire demanded, her voice a desperate, agonized hiss. “I was the victim in all this, and yet I’m the one who has to forgive?”

“It’s what God—” Moira started.

Connor gasped, coughed, and the heart rate monitor spiked, a sudden series of frantic beeps. “Unhhhh…” he moaned. “—Didn’t…I didn’t know…”

Claire sobbed at the sound of her father’s faint words, and she clutched his hand. “Dad, I’m here.”

His eyes fluttered. He tried to open them and I was sure he wanted to look Claire in the face and give her his last words of forgiveness.

But he was too weak. It was all he could do to take a breath.

The beeping slowed—beep………beep………beep…

Claire’s shoulders shook as she clutched her father’s hand in both of hers. Her words were nearly inaudible, meant only for Connor. “I…forgive you, Dad.”

Connor sucked in a deep breath, and his lips moved, but no sound emerged. I stood behind Claire, my hands on her shoulders and I was certain she understood what he was trying to say.

Moira sobbed, and Hayley and Tabitha clustered around her, all of them clinging together.

The tense, throbbing silence was punctuated by an isolated beep now and then, irregular and very slow.

And then the silence changed, altered by the soft steady tone of the sound of a flatline.

Moira went to her husband and laid her head on his chest, sobbing, and Hayley and Tabitha hovered behind her, each crying silent tears, their shoulders shaking.

Claire let out a soft breath. I squeezed her shoulders, and her head bent forward, her chin dipping to her chest.

She stood up, breathing slowly, her thin shoulders rising and falling, her spine straight, and her head high. She stood there for a long moment, staring at the scene before her—the still form of her father, her grieving mother and sisters.

And then Claire turned around, and she gazed steadily at me for a moment, her eyes clear and serene. “Let’s go, Brock.”

I wasn’t sure what to say, to her, or to her mother and sisters, so I said nothing. I simply took Claire’s outstretched hand and led her toward the door.

“Will you stay for the funeral?” Tabitha asked.

Turning to Tabitha, Claire said, “I’ll stay in town until then, Tab. Lynch and Sons, right?”

“Yes,” Moira said, her voice tear-thick. “He’s going to be buried at Rosewood.”

“Just text me with the details.”

“A text message, Claire? Do you have no heart?” Moira asked.

“No, I don’t,” Claire snapped. “I lost it six years ago.”

Despite the anger in her voice, she opened the door softly and closed it just as gently behind her. She said nothing as we made our way to the elevator, and her eyes were dry and distant.

On the elevator, I turned to her. “Claire, I’m—”

“Don’t, Brock,” she interrupted. “Please, just don’t. I don’t want apologies or condolences or sympathies. I just want to go back to the hotel and go to bed.”

I kept silent, holding her hand as we walked from the elevator to the car. She grabbed my hand again in a vise-grip as soon as we were seated in the car and she didn’t let go or relax the strength of her grip all the way from the hospital to our room at the Townsend. As soon as we were in the room, she put out the “Do not disturb” sign, locked the door, and pulled all the drapes closed so the room was darkened.

She stripped naked and climbed into the bed and pulled the covers up to her ears, lying on her side. I stood in the doorway of the bedroom for a long moment, watching her, wondering what I should do, and how I should comfort her.

“Brock?” Her voice was tiny, soft.

“Yeah, baby.”

A quiet pause, and she twisted under the blankets just enough to glance at me with one eye. “Can you…will you hold me? Skin to skin. Just…hold me.” Her voice shook.

“Yes, of course.”

I shed my clothes and slipped into the bed behind her, wrapping my arm around her midsection. She tucked her butt against me, and wriggled her shoulders against my chest.

A long, long silence. I thought she’d fallen asleep, but her breathing never quite slowed enough for that. Eventually, I heard her whisper.

“I didn’t mean it.”

“Mean what, honey?”

“When I said I forgave him, I didn’t mean it. I just…I only said it because I felt like I had to.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. “Claire, I—”

“I think that probably makes me a terrible person, but I’m not going to lie to you. He’s dead, and I can’t cry about it. I don’t know if I’m even sad. I watched him take his last breath, and I just—I feel numb.”

“It’s a lot to process,” I said.

She rolled a shoulder. “Probably.” She turned to look at me. “I notice you didn’t deny that I’m a terrible person.”

“Don’t be stupid, Claire—of course you’re not a terrible person. You can’t undo the kind of anger and the feelings of betrayal that you have for your dad overnight, after one conversation, or even just because he got sick and died. It’s too much to expect to think you could just…erase it all, or to let it go that easily.”

“Do you…are you disappointed that I can’t forgive him?”

“Disappointed?” I searched myself. “No, I’m not. After hearing the whole story, I…I’m having trouble with what he did, too. I don’t know how anyone could behave that way. If I found my worst enemy bleeding in a bathroom, I’d still probably try to help.”

“Well, that’s because you’re a genuinely good person, Brock.” She sighed. “I’m…not.”

“Yes, you are, Claire. Stop berating yourself.”

“I’m really not, Brock. I’m just being realistic and honest about who I am. I’ve turned into a callous person. I feel absolutely no sympathy for my mother because she never protected me. I know I’m supposed to be sad for her that she lost her husband. They were together for thirty-two years. They met when they were sixteen, in primary school in County Clare, Ireland. She was with Dad her whole adult life. He loved her, she loved him, and I—I know those things, the love they had—I know it was real. But why didn’t they love me? They treated Tab and Hayley different than they ever treated me, they could do no wrong.”

Claire swallowed hard. “If I got a C, I got grounded for a week. If they got a C, they got a mild talking-to and a hug, and were told ‘I know you can do better.’ If I came home past curfew, I couldn’t go out again for a month. Tab once didn’t come home until the next morning, on a school day, and they didn’t even bat an eye. And she was fucking sixteen. I was eighteen and still had an eleven o’clock curfew. It’s never made sense to me.”

A thought occurred to me, which I wasn’t sure I should even share, not now. Maybe not ever. But it struck me, and wouldn’t let go.

“What?” Claire asked. “What is it?”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “You just…you tensed. It feels like you thought of something. I don’t know. I’m just getting a weird vibe from you.”

I let out a breath. “I’m not sure I should even say anything.”

“Well now you have to.” She rolled over, pushed against my chest until I lay on my back, and then she settled her head on my arm, her hand on my diaphragm; she wasn’t exactly a cuddle-bug, so this was unusual for her. “Out with it, Brock.”

“Well, it’s just conjecture, okay? Just my own observations and nothing else.”

“Quit stalling.”

I brushed a lock of her short silver-blonde hair behind her ear. “You don’t look anything like your dad,” I said. “You’ve got your mother’s eyes, her hair, her cheekbones, her build. I can see your fierce attitude and independence and all that coming from your dad, but that’s not…that stuff isn’t necessarily genetic. Nature versus nurture, you know?”

Claire froze, to the point that I wasn’t sure she was even breathing until she spoke. “What are you saying, Brock?”

I considered my words with extreme care. “Nothing, for certain. Just…suggesting the possibility that there might be some things in your parents’ past that you don’t know about, which might help explain the disparity in parenting styles.”

She was quiet a while. “I never thought about that, but you’re right. Tab has Mom’s eyes and her hair is a little of both of them, kind of brown and kind of blonde. Hayley has Dad’s eyes and Mom’s hair. I’m all Mom, only Mom.” She blew out a breath. “Holy shit, Brock. Tab and Hayley also both have a birthmark only Dad has, a little splotch of red on their left side, just above their hips. I don’t have that.”

“It could be nothing, Claire. Genetics are weird, and there’s always the possibility of some weird genetic fluke where your mom’s DNA just won out over your dad’s. It’s just a thought that struck me when I first met everyone. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

She shook her head. “No, it makes perfect sense. Except the fact that they’ve been married for so long, and I just can’t imagine Mom cheating on Dad.”

“It could be nothing, like I said.”

“Or it could be everything.”

“Are you going to ask her?”

Claire didn’t answer right away. “I can’t ask her at Dad’s funeral, but yeah, I’m gonna ask. I have to know.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. I have to know, now. I’ll go crazy until I do.” She sighed. “Fuck. I didn’t need any of this.”

“I’m sorry, Claire.”

She tilted to look up at me, and then shook her head. “What are you sorry for? You’re the only reason I’m even halfway sane right now, let alone sober.”

“I just mean my speculation probably isn’t helping anything.”

“Oh. Well, no. But you know me, I’d always rather have the messy, painful truth than a bullshit lie to spare my feelings.”

“Me too.”

She let out another breath. “You okay if I take a little nap? I woke up too early and I’m exhausted.”

“Of course.” I kissed her shoulder. “I might get in my own workout after you’re asleep.”

A minute or so passed before she answered. “You don’t have to…wait for me…to fall asleep.”

She rolled away, curling into a ball, and was soon snoring softly, an adorably girlish little snurk…sigh sound that made my heart twist in a weird, possessive, protective way. I tucked the blankets higher around her shoulders, and found myself staring down at her face, soaking in her beauty. Just…staring at her, feeling so damn lucky that I had met her, and that we were together. I was so proud of her for doing what she did and, deep down, I was sure that things would only get better for Claire. If anyone deserved to feel happy and safe and loved, it was Claire.

I changed into workout clothes and headed down to the gym, where I worked my way through my regular routine, starting with some light barbell lifts to get warmed up; it felt good to push myself and sweat out some of the stress.

My thoughts turned to Claire, and even though we’d only been together for about four months, my feelings for her only grew stronger with each day. She was so smart, and during her time as a combat nurse she had seen some pretty tough stuff so it was no surprise she’d left nursing to work in programming. She’d taken a few courses in Seattle after leaving the Army and had ended up loving it. The Badd brothers’ business ventures were going so well that I knew we could use someone with Claire’s skills to keep the business side of things organized. Of course, that would mean she would have to move to Ketchikan…

And I had to admit it would be so great to have her there on a permanent basis. We could do lots of fishing and flying—she’d said she’d like to learn to fly, and it’d be fun to teach her the basics Soaring above the clouds, feeling beautifully alone in the world, no noise except for the faint drone of the propeller muffled by headsets. I let that image play out in my head as I powered through three sets of twelve double kettlebell cleans, until my arms were jelly and I was gasping. A quick break, and then I knelt on the weight bench and braced one hand on it while rowing with the other, and tried to pull up the image of flying again.

Except now Claire was in the plane with me, giggling as I did a long, wide barrel roll. Of course, thinking about Claire in the plane with me only led me to remembering that time on the way up to Ketchikan from Seattle, when she’d taken off her shirt and told me to put it on autopilot. I’d informed her that the airplane I was flying didn’t have autopilot, and she’d then told me to just make sure I didn’t kill us…and had set about opening my jeans and spending a solid fifteen minutes going down on me.

Fuck, that had been a day to remember.

I wiped down the handles of the kettlebells I’d used, put them away, and turned on the treadmill, trying in vain to banish thoughts of Claire and her mouth as I did a few sets of interval sprints.

Proof positive that a guy can take damn near anything and make it sexual: the interval sprints made me think about when we’d gone hiking together outside Seattle, and she’d pulled me off the trail a good quarter of a mile in and I’d bent her over a fallen tree and fucked her from behind, and her screams of orgasm had shaken birds free from the branches above us.

Damn it, damn it, damn it—we’d already fucked once this morning, and I was raging for round two. What the hell was wrong with me? I’d always had a more-than-healthy libido, but something about Claire just left me constantly horny, always ready to take her again.

I finished my interval sprints and went gasping and heaving back up to our room, sweating, sore, and still rocking a semi. Claire was still asleep, so I hopped in the shower. I had barely started lathering shampoo into my hair when the shower door opened, and Claire stepped in.

“Thought you were napping?” I asked.

“I was.”

“Did I wake you up?”

She shook her head. “Nah. I woke up thinking about you, heard the shower, and…” She shrugged, reaching for my cock, which had finally subsided a little. Not all the way though. “Looks like you were thinking about me, too.”

I grinned. “Damn straight I was. Made it hard to work out. Kept thinking about you, so I had to cut my workout short and come back here for a shower.”

“All roads lead to Claire, huh?”

“Pretty much.”

I rinsed my hair and started washing my body, watching as Claire stroked me.

She knelt down in front of me, the spray hitting my back so only errant droplets touched her, just enough to dampen her hair and bead on her naked chest.

“You’re so sexy, Claire.”

She shrugged a shoulder in a cutesy, sarcastic gesture. “You’re just saying that because I’m on my knees with your dick in my hands.”

“Well, I’m not gonna lie, you’re extra hot like this, naked and wet, but you’re always sexy, babe.”

She only smiled up at me again, and then grabbed the small bottle of complimentary conditioner, tapped a glob into her palm and rubbed it on both hands, and then slathered it along my shaft, so her sliding strokes were slick and slippery, squishing and squelching. I braced a hand on the wall to my left and watched, chest heaving as I felt the pressure build in my balls. I couldn’t hold still, had to move, had to thrust into her hands.

I tugged at her arms. “Stand up and face the wall, Claire.”

She made a sassy face. “No.”

“No?”

She shook her head. “Nope. I’m staying right here, just like this.”

“I can’t hold out much longer.”

“Good.”

I growled as I struggled to push back the need to come. “What are you after, Claire?”

“I said I wouldn’t mind a shower, Brock.” She tilted my cock away from my body, toward herself. “Maybe I wasn’t talking about the water.”

“Oh.”

There was a shadow behind her eyes, though. A hardness to her features, an element of seduction and distraction to this. Her father had just died. Why was she doing this? What was she really after?

“Claire—”

Her eyes met mine, searched me, and then narrowed. “Don’t, Brock. Quit fucking analyzing me.”

Her fists moved in a blur, and I was pivoting at the hips helplessly, her touch slick and hot and firm, and I felt the urge to release become too much to resist.

“I’m not analyzing you, Claire.”

“Yes, you are. You have that look, the one that says you’re trying to figure me out.”

“So?”

“So what if I don’t want to be figured out right now? What if I don’t want to cope? What if I just want this?”

“This being what?”

“This being you. This being this…” she slicked her fists in a tight sliding squeeze around my crown down to my root, “—your big hard cock.”

“You can have me whenever you want, babe, you know that. But it doesn’t have to be like this.”

She stared up at me, her expression revealing only lust, her thoughts inscrutable. “It doesn’t have to be, no. But it’s how I want it right now.”

I growled again. “Fuck, Claire. Jesus, I’m gonna come.”

She slowed her strokes and switched to a slow hand over hand motion, and my hips flexed forward and locked like that as my orgasm tore through me. “Give it to me, Brock,” she murmured, angling my cock toward herself with one hand around the head and stroking my shaft with the other. “Make a mess all over me. You were right, before, you know. I do love it when you come on my tits.”

“That’s what you want right now? My come on your hot little titties?”

“Fuck yeah, Brock.” She shifted closer, kneeling right underneath me, angling me at her chest. “Come on me. Right now, all over me.”

I groaned, thrusting forward, barely able to keep my eyes open as come blasted out of me. It shot in a thick white ribbon all over her chest, and she bit her lower lip, watching raptly as I growled and snarled and thrust into her jerking fist. And then she leaned even closer, shifting downward and opening her mouth, resting the tip of my cock on her chin as she stroked me hard and fast at the base; I squirted another stream of come, this time a web of liquid white lace burst all over her upturned face. It coated her from chin to forehead, and she kept caressing me as I gasped through the last of my orgasm. She laughed, grinning, as my come dripped down her face, on her lips and tongue and nose and cheeks, blinking it out of her eyes…

“Jesus, Claire.”

She swiped a finger across her tits and popped it in her mouth, remaining on her knees in front of me, my come still all over her face. “Did you like that, Brock?” She twisted and swayed in a sultry dance, still clutching my cock in one hand. “Watching yourself shoot your hot load all over my face and tits?”

I felt conflicted, is what I felt. Mixed up and unsure. On the one hand, fuck yeah, it was hot. The whole thing was hot, the way she entered the shower and grabbed my cock and jerked me off all over her face and breasts, yeah, that was hot as hell. I’d actually jerked off to that exact image, when I was stuck working in Ketchikan and Claire was stuck working in Seattle. I’d never have done it, though, and honestly, when I’d imagined it, I’d felt guilty afterward for even mentally using Claire like that, to come on her face.

It was a common thing in porn, obviously, but it wasn’t something I’d ever done in real life. Porn wasn’t real life. Nothing about it was real, or believable, or realistic. It was dumb. Once I was inside Claire, I never wanted to leave. I wanted to stay buried as deep inside her as I could get, for as long as I could stay there. I didn’t want to pull out for anything. I wanted to bury myself deep and come inside her.

But this, what she’d just done…fuck yeah, it was hot. But I wasn’t sure if I liked it. I enjoyed it, yeah, but did I like it? The two weren’t necessarily the same thing. She’d done it of her own volition…but why? It’s not like I’d shoved her to her knees and jizzed on her face without warning. She’d come into the shower with the purpose of doing exactly what she’d done.

Was it for me? Or was it for her? What enjoyment did she get out of it? But then, maybe it wasn’t enjoyment she was after…

All that flashed through my head in the space of a few seconds; the water was still beating hot on my back, and Claire was still kneeling on the marble shower floor in front of me, her face covered in my come. She was smearing it around her chest with one hand, and then wiping it off her face with her other forefinger and licking it off. We’d done some freaky, dirty stuff together, but this was the freakiest, by far.

I lifted her to her feet without answering, grabbed a washcloth off the rack, got it wet and wrung it out, and then wiped her face clean, starting at her forehead and wiping around her eyes, down her nose, her cheeks, her lips, her chin, then down to her breasts, and I wrung the washcloth out again before gently and lovingly wiping her breasts clean. When I was finished, she was staring up at me with an expression I couldn’t quite fathom on her face. It was a combination of anger and confusion, mixed with tenderness and the love we both knew was building between us, but which neither of us had expressed yet. There was so much in that expression, and I wasn’t sure what any of it meant.

“What, Claire?” I whispered. “What does that look mean?”

The water was soaking into her hair now, strands sticking to her cheeks. Her skin was pebbled with goosebumps, so I pivoted us until she was beneath the hot water. She leaned up against me, her erect nipples poking against my chest, and she clutched my ass, staring up at me still.

“I just don’t get you.”

“Why? What don’t you get?”

She leaned away, took the washcloth from me and scrubbed soap onto it, then used it to scrub my skin, starting at my chest and working around to the rest of me at a leisurely pace. “I just…I thought that would make you crazy. I thought you’d like that. But you…I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like you…like you want me like that.”

“The hell are you talking about, Claire?” I took the soapy cloth from her and scrubbed her breasts. “It was hot.”

“But?” She saw through me as easily as I did her, that was for damn sure.

“But nothing.”

Why was I lying to her? There was a but to this; I sighed. “That’s not exactly true.”

She lathered soap onto her hands and scrubbed her face and then rinsed off. I shut off the water and we got out, then handed her a towel and dried myself off with another. Claire wrapped the towel loosely around herself and went into the sitting room and sat down on the couch. I followed her, sitting next to her, and she let the towel sag open—Claire had a thing for “air drying”, sitting naked and still dripping wet. She’d towel off her hair a little and make a few cursory swipes over her body, but she let the rest of the water evaporate as she strutted around naked, putting on makeup, doing her hair, picking out an outfit, sometimes even working from her phone. If she was at home for a while after a shower, she’d still be naked more often than not hours later. This was something I very much appreciated.

At the moment, though, it was distracting me from all the thoughts whirling through my head, which I was hoping to discuss.

“Talk to me, Brock.”

“I’ll talk to you if you’ll talk to me,” I responded.

She rolled her eyes at me, and sassed back in a droll, dry, sarcastic tone. “Well yes, Brock, that is how typical conversations work, dear. I talk, you talk, we talk.”

I snorted, reaching over to pinch her nipple. “Smart-ass. You know what I mean.”

She whacked at my hand, trying to stop the pinch. During sex, she loved having her nips played with, but at any other time she hated it, because they were insanely sensitive. “Don’t! Brock, I swear, do not pinch my nipples!”

“How can I not?” I said, imprisoning her wrists in one hand and flicking her nipples with the other hand. “They’re right there, all nice and hard and just begging for a little pinch.”

She struggled, thrashing, and then tried to bite me. “Unless you’re gonna go down on me, you better leave my goddamn nipples alone!”

“Fine by me,” I murmured, and moved to slide off the couch.

“No, no, no.” She grabbed me and pulled me back up, and actually wrapped the towel around her chest to shield herself. “As much as I want you to do that, no. We’re talking. Talk now, cunnilingus later.”

“Why did you do it, Claire?”

“I wanted to. I woke up horny, thinking about you. I heard you in the shower, and decided I wanted to jerk you off.”

“Yeah, but why? Why that? Why not sex? Or a blowjob? Why…that?”

She shrugged. “I dunno. I just…I wanted to feel you. I wanted your come.”

“Come on, Claire. Dig a little deeper.”

She sighed in frustration. “Why? Does it really matter?”

“Yeah, it does, kind of,” I said.

“You tell me why it matters, and I’ll tell you why I wanted to do that.”

I spent a second organizing my thoughts. “Okay, here it is. I have mixed feelings about what happened in the shower.”

“Mixed how?”

“It was hot, and obviously it felt incredible. The way you just sort of walked into the shower with me and jacked me off? It was hot. And a part of me did find it hot how you wanted me to come on your face and all that. We’ve both been around the block, right? We’ve both had a lot of experiences, but that’s the first time I’ve ever done that. On someone’s face, I mean. Tits, yeah, sure. Not often, but hell, it’s kinda hot, I think any guy will agree to that much.” I paused to think, then continued. “With you, though…I’d always rather be inside you. Like, fuck yes, I love the way your hands feel, and I love the way your mouth feels. But nothing can compare to the way it feels being inside you.”

“I understand that, and I feel the same way for the most part, but I’m not seeing the conflict.”

“For the most part?”

She sighed and shrugged. “I’ll explain later. Keep going.”

“Okay, well…there’s also this part of me that finds it…degrading to come onto your face. I dunno. I mean, I know you chose to do that on your own, for your own reasons. I want to think you’d never do anything you didn’t want to do, just because you thought I might enjoy it. Would you?”

She shook her head from side to side. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t want to do with you, let’s just put it that way for now.”

“Vague, but okay, I’ll go with it. Like, why would you want that? Why on your face? I don’t get it.”

“Haven’t you ever fantasized about doing that to a girl? Me or someone else? Be honest.”

I nodded. “Yeah, of course. But I never actually considered doing it, though.”

“Who was it? When you fantasized about it?”

“You, as a matter of fact. A month or so ago, during the week. You were in Seattle and I was in Ketchikan.”

She seemed pleased by this. “You fantasized about coming on my face? Did you jerk off to it?”

“Of course.”

“I’m kinda mad you didn’t text me and tell me.”

“Really?”

“Not, like, mad mad, just…slightly miffed at worst because I wish you’d shared. I mean, guys jerk off, it’s totally normal, and I’m glad you jerked off to me.” She eyed me. “Honest now, have you ever jerked off to anyone else since we’ve been together?”

“No.”

She scrutinized me. “No? For real?”

“For real. Why would I need to or want to? We haven’t been apart for more than a week, and then not even a full week. And I’ve got plenty of material to think about when it comes to you and us, so if I’m at home alone and feeling like I need to blow off some steam, yeah, I’ll think about you and jerk one off.”

“Do you jerk off when we’re together?”

I shook my head, laughing. “Hell, no. We have far too much sex for that to ever even enter the equation.” I glanced at her. “What about you?”

She ducked her head. “I sort of masturbate all the time, when I’m in Seattle by myself. Like…a lot. And yeah, I always think about you, at least, since we’ve been together. And no, if we’re together, I don’t need to. I’ve got you. If I’m horny, I find you. Much more satisfying than getting out my Womanizer Pro.”

“Your what?”

She waved a hand. “A sex toy. Or, well, a personal female clitoral stimulator, if you want to be specific. An amazing, incredible device that every woman should own. I can come in literally a minute or less with it.”

I gaped at her. “Jesus. I want to see that.”

She smirked at me. “A trade, then.”

“A trade?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Next time you’re in Ketchikan and I’m in Seattle, you record yourself jerking off, and I’ll record myself masturbating, and we send them to each other.”

“What do you think would happen if we just didn’t masturbate at all?”

She stared at me in consternation. “Holy shit, I’d go insane. I’d be crawling the walls by the end of the week.”

“Me too. That’s the point though.”

“I am kind of jealous of your come, now that I think about it. I want it all for myself. Like, I hate the thought of you coming all alone, shooting all that lovely stuff down the drain and wasting it.”

“Exactly. When you come, I want your orgasms to be for me and only for me.”

Claire poked me, suddenly. “How’d we get so far off topic? I still don’t understand what your hang up is about coming on my face if I want you to.”

“I don’t know. I just feel weird about it.”

“Tell me about your fantasy.”

“Pretty much exactly what you just did. I was in the shower when I was thinking about it, so obviously I just pictured you in the shower with me, all wet, on your knees, sucking me off, and then instead of swallowing, you took it on your face and tits.”

“Well maybe next time you take a shower, we’ll do that again, only this time I’ll use my mouth more.”

I grinned. “That’s up to you, babe.”

She eyed me curiously. “Why? Why is that up to me? That’s the part that I’m having trouble with. If you want something, make it happen. Like, if you want me to suck you off, tell me you want me to suck you off. Better yet, show me.”

“Just, like, whip my dick out and slap you with it?”

She shrugged. “If a cock-slap turns you on, then yeah, sure.”

“I’d never do that.”

“Again, why not? I love your cock, and even as big and hard as it is, you can’t really slap me with it hard enough to actually hurt. If anything, I’d think it would hurt you.”

“So if I legit smacked you across the face with my dick, you’d be like hell yeah, and start sucking?”

She nodded. “Absolutely.” Claire’s gaze was steady, open, and scrutinizing. “I’m not sure how well you really understand me, Brock.”

“What do you mean?”

A sigh. “I’m a perpetually horny girl— not sure if you’ve noticed. I like sex, a lot. I want it literally all the time. I used to joke with Mara that not only am I built like a boy, I think about sex as much as a boy.”

I tugged at the towel, and she dropped it so I could thumb her nipple. “You are not built like a boy. You’re all woman, Claire.”

“You wouldn’t prefer someone built more like…oh, say, Mara, for example?” She cupped her tits, hefting them as if they were several sizes larger. “Big bouncy titties and an ass that don’t quit?”

“Mara is an attractive woman,” I conceded. “But she’s got one fatal flaw.”

“What could that possibly be? Her face is just as beautiful as her body.”

“No, that’s not it. Yeah, she’s a lovely girl in every way.” I hesitated, for the sake of drama. “Except that she’s not you.”

Claire glanced at me askance. “Oh my god, Brock. That sounds like something out of a romance novel.”

“But true all the same.”

“What about your other girlfriends? Were any of them like me?”

“What you mean, like you?”

Claire gestured at herself, a sweep of her hand from head to toe. “Short and skinny and not very well-endowed.”

“Claire, do you remember how we met?” I asked.

She frowned, and then nodded. “Well yeah, of course.”

“Who initiated contact?”

She rolled her eyes. “You did.”

“And who was the first one to suggest leaving the bar and going to your hotel?”

She bit out the word as if admitting it was painful. “You were.”

“Have I ever, ever given you any indication that I feel absolutely anything but total and genuine attraction to you?”

“No, but—”

“But nothing. What the other girls I’ve been with look like doesn’t matter. They’re not you—you’re you, and I’m attracted to you. No, you don’t have the biggest tits in the world, but so what? I get off on touching them and seeing them and putting them in my mouth. And yeah, it was hot seeing my come splattered all over them.”

She shifted in place, swallowing. “Don’t bullshit me, Brock.”

“I would never bullshit you, Claire.” I gave it a moment, and then went with my question. “So, why did you do that, for real?”

She shrugged, a tiny lift of one shoulder. “I wanted to. That was one reason, and it was a real reason. I really do think about your cock all the time, and want it all the time. I think about you coming, and it turns me on. Seeing you naked turns me on. Seeing you wet turns me on. So you in the shower, naked and wet, having a big messy orgasm? Yeah, it turns me on.”

“So then why didn’t we have sex?”

“Because sometimes I want other things.” She paused, glancing at me almost shyly—there wasn’t usually a single shy molecule in Claire’s body, so this was something new, something deep. “I’ve—I’ve never had sex with the same person for as long as I have with you, and…it’s weird. Usually with other guys, I’d get bored. We’d fuck, and it would be over. But you…you hold my interest. I never stop wanting you. But I don’t want to just fuck you every time I’m horny. I like the full range of experiences. And with you, it’s always different, it always feels new and just as hot, just as erotic.”

“That makes sense.”

“But it’s…I don’t exactly know how to put any of this into words, but I’m trying. For you.” She ruffled her hair with one hand, brushing errant strands away from her eyes and then wiped her damp palm on the towel. “Being with you as long as we’ve been together, I’m learning there’s…what’s the word? There’s a—a rhythm, I guess you could say. To us.

“Like, for real, we fuck all—the—time. And I absolutely love that about us. I’ve never had so much sex in my life, and it’s amazing. As much as I was a slut before—and still am, I guess, but now I’m a slut for you…there’s a rush in the unexpected and the different. With you and me, though…I still want all that. I want to blow you, because I do genuinely like doing it to you. Do I derive sexual stimulation from it? Of course not. Sex isn’t always about just receiving stimulation. I like giving the stimulation just as much, being the stimulation—I like knowing I can make you feel good, make you crazy, make you want me, make you come so hard you can’t walk straight.”

“I’ve never talked this openly about sex with anyone else.” I eyed her, searching, thinking.

Claire stared back, and then frowned. “You look like you’re about to psychology me.”

I nodded, shrugging. “Well, yeah, I guess so. I mean, I’m trying to put all this into the frame of some of the things I’ve learned about you lately.”

Claire rubbed her face with one hand. “Goddammit. I don’t want to talk about that shit. It’s old news, Brock.”

“No, it’s not. It’s relevant, whether you want to admit it or not.”

“How so?”

“I mean, you said it yourself: you figured if your dad thought you were a slut, you might as well earn it.”

“That was just a dig.”

“A dig, yes, but not just a dig.”

Claire stood up, paced away—I shamelessly stared at her tight, round little runner’s ass as it wiggled with her steps. “Do we really have to go here?” It was a rhetorical question, though, because she started answering before I could speak. “Fine, yes, that was a true statement. Before that night, at that party, I’d only messed around a little. There’d been about a half dozen guys that I sort of dated—more just…hung out with at most. We’d go to parties and mess around in their cars and shit, mostly innocent teenager stuff. Lots of kissing and heavy petting, letting them cop a feel, letting them put their hand in my pants and see if they could make me feel good. Until that night at the party, I’d never even made a guy come, never let a guy make me come, and I’d never been totally naked alone with a guy. I’d been skinny dipping once, but that was with a lot of other people so it was different.”

“Damn. So you really were a virgin in pretty much every way.”

“Sure was. Never even sucked a dick before.” She clutched the towel to her breasts, facing away from me, letting it hang loosely at her sides to frame the graceful sweep of her spine and the taut bubble of her ass. “Then that party happened, I got wasted, and I ended up getting kicked out of the house for making a stupid mistake.”

I found it hard to breathe. “Goddammit,” I snarled. “The thought of what happened to you makes me so angry I could break someone.”

She gave me a soft, reassuring smile over her shoulder. “Don’t, Brock. I’m glad you feel that strongly, though.” She turned away again. “You know what’s weird, and kind of a good thing? I don’t really remember what happened. Just…vague impressions of a guy, things being...clumsy and awkward and not what I expected it to be.”

A pause, then. Claire stared into space, thinking.

“So, yeah, I don’t remember it. The real pain, the really deep, long-term fucked-up pain comes from how my parents treated me regarding the miscarriage and, really, throughout my life. They called me a slut and a whore, and kicked me out. I mean, yeah, I went to a lot of parties and got drunk a lot, smoked, did drugs with my friends, and it was a pretty safe assumption on their part to think I was having a lot of sex, too. I get that. I was a problem child, a rebellious, angry teenager. But that was their fault, the way they parented me. I just wanted attention, you know?

“Basic psychology, I guess. And I was angry, I wanted my space, my freedom. I wanted to be treated like an adult, like someone with value, but my parents didn’t seem to think I had any. They automatically assumed the miscarriage was a result of me going out and fucking a lot, and was just punishment for my sins. It was the last straw, as they saw it. Well, after that, I was alone. Lived with my friends, but that welcome ran out after a while because I was all kinds of fucked up, for obvious reasons.

“Going through that miscarriage was absolute hell on its own. Agony and terror—those words don’t do it justice, Brock. That was the worst moment of my life, before or since. Being disowned for it was a close second, though.”

She sighed deeply, and then continued. “I told you about how I joined the Army, and how I was gonna kill myself. Somehow, that scary decision was a turning point. I decided to live, to own my past, to own myself, to own everything, including the pain, the hate, and the anger. I joined the Dark Side, you might say. I just gave into it. I fucked a guy from another unit during basic, and that kind of…opened me up to sex. It was harsh and rough and not sexy at all, and I got off on it. I mean, real talk, now? The guy totally used me to get off and then bailed the second he shot his load. But while it lasted, as short as it was, I liked it. So I tried again with a different guy from a different unit, but I made him wait until I’d gotten close, which he found hot, and we both came, and that was like…it was a light bulb moment.

“I made sex about me. Guys could use me—guys would use me, I knew that. But if I used them back, that was a game changer. See, I discovered most guys don’t give a shit if you’re only using them for sex, as long they get the O. So I used guys for sex. I got what I wanted, and I spent a lot of time and effort figuring out what I wanted.”

She paused yet again, and when she spoke once more it was very quietly, almost inaudible. “And deep, deep down, so deep I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it like this until now…yeah, it was about Dad. It was a fuck you to him. Call me a slut? Call me a whore? I’ll show you what a slut is, old man. It was more than that, but whatever ‘it’ was, was buried deep in my subconscious. And, yeah, that was part of it, too.”

“And now?”

She didn’t answer for a very, very long time, and I remained quiet, giving her the space and time I knew she needed. “I honestly don’t know, Brock. I think a lot of it will depend on what Mom tells me. I also think…I feel like things are changing for me, inside me, and it scares the hell out of me.”

I stood up and crossed the space between us, slid my hands around her, wrapping my arms around her middle. She dropped her towel, and I dropped mine, so there was nothing between us.

“I’ll be with you through it all, Claire,” I whispered. “No matter what.”

“What if I change into someone you don’t like?”

“Impossible.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I mean, unless you turn into some simpering, useless airhead, yeah I do know.”

“Like, ohmygod, as if.” She said this in a scarily accurate Clueless impression, and then laughed. “Okay, no, there’s literally no chance of me turning into that.”

“Then we’ll be fine. You’ll just have to trust me.”

“Easier said than done.” She twisted in place and put her chin on my chest, staring up at me. “But I’ll try.”

“That’s all I’m asking, honey.”