Kids are such little sadists.

Let me tell you, I’ve dealt with enough psychopaths in my time to know one when I see one, and kids from around two to four years old are little demons, no question. It’s not their fault, of course. They’re still developing the little nubs in their brain, responsible for decent human behavior. For patience and empathy and self-control. I know that. But damn. The kids at school scare me sometimes, and I dread that Matilda will one day get to that age and start back talking, running away when spoken to, and hitting her playmates when she’s frustrated. The thought alone tires me out some days.

I changed the music in the classroom to a peaceful Chopin playlist and waited for the children to settle down. They love this part, the part where we press googly eyes onto our clay hedgehogs. It’s just a lump of clay till it gets the googly eyes. Bless them, they really get excited when the googly eyes come out. People say I’m good with kids. And I am. I understand them. I would never put the real reason on my resume, though. “I’m good with kids because I spent years dealing with the whims and tantrums of the biggest babies ever – men.” But it was probably true.

I brought out the packet of googly eyes and all the kids squealed at once. I loved that. They all sat round me in a circle and I explained how to glue the eyes on carefully, showing them how the hedgehog looked different depending on how you arranged the eyes. They all listened intently, the little lambs, keenly waiting instruction. I love them really, you know that, right? I can tell you that they’re psychopaths and all that because I know you’ll understand. It’s just letting off steam. It’s just me being honest. I would never let any harm come to them, ever. Them or Matilda.

I chatted and helped the kids on autopilot, one part of me easily able to supervise them and guide the day’s art activity, the bigger part somewhere else, far away. I had narrowed the sorry condition of my life down to a few possibilities.

Possibility one: by being greedy and getting too much pleasure all at once, I had exhausted my personal ration of sex in this lifetime and was now destined for a boring, passionless existence to make up for it.

Possibility two: I had done ‘everything’ with Dean and now there was nothing left to do, and that was my fault, and now I was being punished for thinking I could just keep ramping up the intensity forever with no consequence.

Possibility three: I had programmed myself to only feel pleasure when it was paired with pain, and now that I was safe and happy and healthy, nothing turned me on anymore.

Of course, all these possibilities were variations on a theme. I had overstepped my boundaries and now the sexual gods were punishing my hubris and I was destined to be a shriveled housewife to atone for my sins. I was like Ralph now, except I was in my cage far more often, and had to share it with a dozen snot-nosed toddlers.

In a few minutes the moms would come to fetch their babies and Dean would come to fetch me, as he did sometimes when he didn’t have meetings that afternoon. This time, though, he brought along a familiar face with him.

“Charlie!” I said, as I recognized that round face and scruffy beard. I ran over to give him a warm hug, and he smiled and looked around the classroom.

“Damn, look at all this. Dean told me but I had to see it with my own eyes.”

I nodded and smiled at the lingering crowd of moms and kids as they gathered up their jackets and lunch boxes and backpacks.

“Well, believe it. Teaching kids is a piece of cake, actually,” I said cheerfully.

“Yeah, no doubt. And if the little shits misbehave, you can always…” here he cracked an invisible whip in the air and laughed, although he instantly regretted his joke.

“Charlie, shut the hell up, can you just behave for a second?” Dean said and leaned over to kiss me.

In the past I had felt quite blasé about Charlie’s obvious little crush on me, but these days it felt like much-needed fresh air into my little prison.

I kissed Dean and held his arm. Even though we were having tawdry bedroom troubles and had a less than enviable home life right now, we still looked damn good together, and that was the truth. I was proud of him. Proud to stand next to him. Proud of how I looked next to him. It’ll sound strange to you, but though I had trouble thinking of Dean sexually these days, it didn’t stop me from seeing how handsome he still appeared to others. I’d have to be blind to not notice how the other moms drooled after him. He was a gorgeous guy, no doubt about it.

“Are you ready to go? Charlie and I have some good news to share,” Dean said with a smile. I studied his face.

“Charlie’s finally found a girlfriend? Could it possibly be?” I said with a teasing wink in Charlie’s direction.

“We said good news, not miracles,” Charlie said and held the door open for us. I waved goodbye to the handful of remaining moms chatting in the hallway and we made our way out into the parking lot.

“It’s about you-know-who,” Dean said, although that much was obvious. Jeff Cane was like a distant planet in our universe, like a massive gravitational body that, even though invisible, had supreme power over what happened down here on earth to us mortals. Hearing about what antics Jeff was up to in prison these days sometimes felt like reading an astrological chart.

“You’ll be pleased to know he’s been denied parole,” Charlie said with some satisfaction. “Remember I was telling you about that special class he was going to try and appeal under? I explained to you about his lawyers trying another angle to get him out? Well, it’s been shut down pretty hard. Buddy’s not getting out. Not for a very long time.”

I felt both of them waiting for my response.

“That’s great news,” I said, not convincing anybody. Dean reached over from the driver’s seat and rested his hand on my thigh.

“You’re probably tired of all this, huh? Me too. I wish it would all just go away. Well, it well and truly is done now.”

“I’m relieved,” I said, and felt the exact opposite.

What’s the point of the supremely evil bad guy in a story if he’s locked away in prison where he can’t do anything to anyone?

We drove on and chatted, me with that part of my brain that could chat and laugh and joke taking care of everything, while that other part of me went off somewhere else to scheme, to think.

I’ll tell you what it did, as we drove in the sunshine back to my pretty house in my pretty neighborhood to see my pretty child. I thought, Dear god, I need something. Anything. A sign. I want something exciting to happen to me. I want the beginning of a new, sexy, breathtaking story. I want my life to start. I’m ready, and I’m not scared. I don’t care if it hurts a little, I want something bigger in life. I don’t know what it is yet, but I’m ready, and I’m asking for …it. For something…”

I don’t believe in god, dear reader, but my heart was praying more fervently than you can imagine. There was no shape or form to my desire; it was just desire, hungry for a container to pour into. I wanted an adventure. I wanted to go on that adventure with him, the man I loved. And oh, how much more I wanted to love him.

“Nora, you here with us?” Charlie said, and snapped me to attention.

“Oh, I’m here, I was just thinking of this afternoon. The moms are coming over, I was wondering whether I had enough drinks and things at home for them…” I said absentmindedly.

“Nice. Man, I wish I was a kept woman,” Charlie said with a goofy smile.

“Shut up, Charlie, Jesus,” Dean said, and shot him a look, but I was no longer paying attention to them.

Back at home Dean and Charlie eventually disappeared off upstairs and left me alone for my ‘girl’s night’ downstairs. There were some women from the neighborhood coming over, and some moms with kids a little older than Matilda. We all shared that kind of forced familiarity you find between fellow prison inmates or people who share a psych ward. We had nothing in common, but the fact that we didn’t really like one another didn’t seem that relevant. I knew that some of them understood that boredom, that malaise of mine better than anyone else, and that alone made them feel like family if not friends.

We sat around, all eight of us, and nibbled the snacks and drank oversized glasses of wine, the TV was on in the corner and everyone was talking at once, decompressing.

“So I keep telling him, you know, it’s something you have to work at. The grass is greener where you water it, you know? I just want him to actually turn up to our relationship, to actually put the effort in…”

“Yeah. He has to show up. To actually own his part.”

“Exactly. That’s’ exactly it. I don’t know why men don’t get that this shit doesn’t happen by accident, like I’m working on it, I’m making all this stuff happen, right?”

“I get it. I hear you. It’s like, it goes deeper than just taking things for granted. It’s like, I think Jake actually thinks the things I do really just happen by themselves, that he’s so used to having it all run smoothly that he’s forgotten the effort behind it all…”

I nodded and sipped my wine.

There are always two evergreen strains of conversation that start off our little girl’s night sessions: the first is how quickly children grow and how old it makes you feel, and the second is the unavoidable, eternal grief of dealing with men and their shit. Sometimes, they’d throw a few jabs at me but I was used to it now. Small communities need the cohesion brought by the black sheep. I was sometimes the black sheep.

“I told him, once a week is plenty. I think we all have this idea that sex is just happening all the time, but if people were honest I think they’d admit it’s much lower.”

Kayla was doing her standard humble-brag routine, playing that game she did, and the moms were smiling and nodding but I knew that they knew that once a week sex was crazy generous, and that Kayla was probably lying, and that all of us knew precisely how much sex all of us were having: zero.

I smiled and drank more wine.

“What I want to know is, why doesn’t anybody ever talk about the quality of sex, you know? As if quantity is all that matters. Like, can we have a rating scale, if we’re busy doing a big tally?”

“Precisely. You’re right. Like, one really good fuck is worth ten mediocre ones, am I right ladies?”

“Oh absolutely. In fact, I think it’s a good thing for the frequency to drop after a few years, it kind of shows that—”

“Oh my god.”

We all turned to follow Kayla’s gaze as her face went white and she stared at the TV.

Sam grabbed the remote and turned the volume up and we all gawped at the screen. I think a part of me knew what had caught their attention a few split seconds before I figured it out.

“Nora, are you seeing this? Nora, oh my god.”

We watched as the face of the man that haunted my dreams and my waking life paraded across the screen, again. It was the same set of images the news stations had used all during the trial. It took me a while to force my ears to make sense of the words filling the living room. I saw the word first before I heard it: ESCAPED. The letters rolled along the bottom of the screen as a young male voiceover explained breathlessly that the infamous millionaire and recently convicted murderer was at large.

I laughed. They all looked at me.

“Oh my god, Nora, are you OK? Do you need a drink?”

I tore my eyes from the screen to find a sea of concerned faces regarding me with horror. He had escaped. He had escaped. He had escaped. The first thought in my mind: I was getting exactly what I asked for.

Kayla’s hand went to mine and she pulled closer to her on the sofa, already well into soothing my non-existent shock. Carried away with this new drama, the women instantly began to talk all at once, but I wasn’t listening to them. All I could focus on was an image in my mind: Jeff Cane, a free man, moving at this very moment closer and closer to me…

“You must be so scared, Jesus, I can’t believe this is happening…” they chirped on and on. Must. There was that word again. I cleared my throat, flicked my hair to the side and grabbed the remote to turn the TV off.

“I don’t care, honestly,” I said. That was a lie. “They’ll probably catch him soon.” Also not entirely true. Who the hell escapes from prison, anyway? What kind of farce was this?

“Do you think he’ll…?” Amanda was talking now, she was the youngest, the other underdog of our group. They all shot her stern looks.

“Don’t scare her,” Kayla said.

“I’m not scared,” I said. Now that was true. In fact, I was… not flattered exactly. But a part of me was thrilled at the thought that Jeff Cane, the Jeff Cane, in his own twisted way, was still probably obsessed with me. That while I was out here living my life, he was in there pining for me. Pining for revenge on me, sure, but pining nonetheless. Murderous millionaires don’t pine after just anyone.

“Do you want us to stay? We understand if you need some time,” Kayla said. I lowered my gaze and tried to think.

“I need to speak to Dean,” I said, and looked up the staircase.

I had asked Dean and Charlie not to keep me too updated on the continuing drama unfolding in the state prison in Corcoran. Either he was in prison or he was out, and the rest I didn’t really care about. But now he was out. The girls were all nodding and standing up to make a hasty exit, abandoning their wine glasses but each taking turns to pat me on the shoulder and look at me pityingly. Of course they couldn’t understand the wild little thought that was suddenly hot in my mind. Of course they had no conception that my life and theirs were nothing alike. That having this pretty little world come crashing down around me might not in fact be the worst possible outcome.

When they were gone I raced upstairs and found Charlie and Dean on the top deck laughing, each with a matching beer in hand, both gazing out over the neighborhood tree line. They turned in unison to look at me as I walked into the atrium. I stood there in the doorway for a moment, heart racing, feeling myself on a precipice. I lowered my gaze and looked at Dean like I wanted to devour him. Something came rushing back to me like a tide that’s been pulled out for a long time but is now all at once rushing back to shore. It was like I had found a bubble of air in this suffocating new reality I was trapped in, and could almost feel my chest heaving to suck it all in.

“Charlie, I think you’d better go home now,” I said low under my breath, my eyes still fixed on Dean.

Charlie set his beer aside and gave me a strange look.

“Um… ok?”

“Now. Dean, I want you. Now,” I said.

Charlie was laughing.

“Dude…”

“Nora, are you ok? Is everything ok?”

“It will be, once Charlie goes and I can get you out of those stupid clothes,” I said and paced into the room, now directing my gaze straight to his crotch. Dean looked down in confusion at his clothing while Charlie awkwardly got up, unsure of how seriously to take me. He looked to Dean who waved him away and gestured for him to leave, then held his hands up in the air and scuttled off, with one last look at us both before walking out muttering.

“Nora…”

“Shhh…”

I grabbed his knees, spread them wide and then plonked myself down into his lap, my torso facing his, and resting my arms on his shoulders so I could stare straight into his eyes.

“No more talking. Just doing,” I purred and teasingly grazed my lips against his without actually kissing, so I could watch him react to the obvious pressure of my pussy against him. I caressed him with my eyes, tilting my head this way and then that way, inviting him to do something, daring him to grab me.

I hopped off his lap and could see his half stunned, half appreciative face as he watched my hands travel all up and down my body, as I decided how exactly to take my clothes off.

“Where’s Matilda? Are the moms—”

“I only want to hear you speak again if it’s to say how much you want to fuck me,” I blurted. He raised an amused eyebrow at me and his eyes lit up.

Fuck I loved him.

Here it was.

Here was the thing, here was it. That sweet, achingly delicious electricity, like some gooey force field between us. That old thrill, familiar and yet always new somehow. God how I’d missed it.

I hooked my thumbs into my leggings and arched my back before sliding them over my ass, giving him a full view of my bare cheeks. I waggled the fabric slowly down, relishing how much he was relishing me. When they lay crumpled on the floor, I got to work whipping my shirt off, then hoisted my bra up over my breasts without removing it. I missed my husband. I missed myself. And I missed being able to let go like this, and get lost in my body.

I hopped back into his lap and he held me gently, reaching up to kiss me. But I returned kisses that were hungry, more urgent. Life was short and hard and boring, why the hell weren’t we fucking all the time? Why didn’t we appreciate each other more? Why did I have the stupid moms over here when what I really wanted was to love my beautiful husband, all the time? I pressed my tongue deep into his mouth and he kissed me back, his hands resting lightly on my hips, just as they had during those early days before we really knew what the hell we were doing.

“Nora, what’s gotten into you,” he breathed, but I kissed away his protests and let my fingers find that old pathway to that most exciting part of him, the part I loved loving the most.

I unbuttoned, unzipped and yanked his trousers open to free his cock, then pressed the silky strip of fabric between my legs against him, stroking up and down to tease us both. Still in awe, he kissed me back. I could have whispered sweet nothings into his neck and breathed how much I loved him. I could have rubbed my desperate little clit against him till I was dripping, sure I couldn’t wait any more. I could have gotten down to my knees to lick him right to where I wanted him. But I didn’t. It was more serious than that.

I needed him.

Not his words.

Not his manners.

His body. All of it.

I slipped my panties to the side, grabbed hold of his still hardening cock and had soon pressed the hot head against and then into me, and before we both realized what was happening, I slid down, and further down, until he was all inside, too deep, too quickly, but I didn’t care. In fact, I welcomed the slight sting of pain, his little gasp of surprise, that little twitch he made inside me. When I could sink no lower I exhaled and breathed him in, feeling him right inside.

Yes. God yes. This was where we were supposed to be. Everything else was bullshit, was a waste of time. This was real, and raw, and worth something. His naked body, crammed tight into my naked body, and our eyes, even more naked than that, entangled into one another’s.

Our bodies knew what to do from there. I let go, and let it take me. Let him take me. His hips rocked, my hips rose and fell to meet them, to accept and release him, again and again, and it was like old times again, and everything else was gone for a moment, except him and I, and that silky stroking, that slick fire inside that we encouraged with each curl of our hips. I bounced in his lap, fingertips in his hair, and felt that familiar quivering spot way inside, that quivering place in me that he’d break open, letting everything knotted inside it burst free.

My husband’s cock, all mine, as far in as it would go. It was the closest thing I knew to a miracle. Picture Verdi’s Messa da Requiem, the Dies Irae, tuba mirum chorus at full blast, playing in my brain, so loud it rattled my foundations, with a full choir of giant archangels, trumpets, an orchestra of brass instruments surrounded by fireworks and pyrotechnics worthy of the day of reckoning itself. Picture a popcorn kernel splitting down its yellow body, threatening to explode into a big plume of white.

I dug my fingernails into his shoulder and paused, finding my breath.

“I love you, Dean,” I said quietly.

“I love you, Nora.”An old greeting. The same words, different every time.

“What would you do for me, darling?” I said, threatening to start up with my hips again, to catch the tail of that wonderful bliss and push us both over the edge.

“Anything. Absolutely anything.”

I bit down as I felt my body twitch against his hard cock, buried completely inside me.

“Anything?” I whispered.

“Anything.”

I clenched down hard and took a deep, greedy breath of air.

“Your father has escaped from prison. I want you to kill him for me,” I said quickly, and as I did, my hips rolled hard against him.

His eyes shot open wide and he tried to say something, but I had already pushed him too far, and his entire expression collapsed into one of hopeless surrender, his eyes searching mine as I felt him uncontrollably spurt inside me again and again. His body bucked and jerked under me and his hands clutched desperately at my hips. He whimpered and writhed but I could no longer hear him over the archangels and trumpets and drums. It was the hottest thing we’d done in months. I came so hard I nearly passed out.