“When are you done?” Keira shouted back.
“I’ll be home after five,” I answered, again on a shout.
“Cool! Later Momalicious,” Keira shouted.
“Bye Mawdy!” Kate yelled.
“Be careful!” I yelled back, flicking the covers over my bed and a small, white business card flew up into the air.
I stilled and stared at the card as I heard the door slam in the other room.
The card had settled back on my bed. I saw the print on it and it was blurry because I was not focusing as I stared at it. I was feeling the bitterness and humiliation that leached into my bones last night, bitterness and humiliation I’d made a huge effort to ignore all morning, start burning.
My breath started coming fast and shame bled into the acid that had taken root in my marrow.
Last night I wasn’t so drunk I didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t so drunk I had a hangover. I wasn’t so fucking drunk I shouldn’t have stopped it.
But I didn’t. I not only let it happen, I participated and I’d begged.
Not thinking (I never did when I got angry), I snatched up the card and then went to my jeans which were still on the floor. I pulled the fifty out of the pocket then I dropped the jeans on the bed and marched out of my room. Then I marched through the house out the side door.
Joe’s truck was in the drive.
I had no intention of facing him but I had every intention of making a point.
I was heading toward his mailbox when I heard the music and I switched directions, walking up his yard to his drive, instantly changing my mind about facing him. I saw the garage door open, the music coming from there. Black Sabbath, not Kenzie Elise loud, just loud enough to hear.
There was a car in the garage, the hood up. I couldn’t see what kind of car it was, all I could see was Joe bent over it, working on the engine.
I walked right up to him and when I got close, his head turned to me but his torso stayed bent over the engine. When it did, before he could say a word, not that he was going to, I stopped and tossed the card and fifty in his direction. They fluttered through the air but I didn’t wait to see his reaction, didn’t say a word, didn’t watch where the card and bill landed, I turned and walked away.
I didn’t get very far. A firm hand curled around my upper arm and I was yanked back.
“What –?” I snapped not finishing because he whirled me around and pulled me into the garage. “Let me go!” I demanded as he reached up and, with a violent wrench, he pulled on a cord causing the apparently well-oiled garage door to rumble on its rails and crash down.
There we were, alone in his dark garage with his car and Black Sabbath.
Me and my stupid temper.
“Take your hand off me!” I bit out, twisting my arm and he did, he let me go.
He took his hand off me but only to lift it and, as he did the night before, exactly the same, his fingers fisted in my hair and his other arm wound around my hips, pulling me into his body.
“What are you –?” I started but his mouth came down on mine in a punishing kiss that surprised me, scared me and excited me, the last one far, far more than the first two.
I didn’t want it to happen, didn’t expect it would happen, not in a million years. In fact, looking back at it later, which I did a lot, too much, I didn’t know how it did happen. But one second he was kissing me, the next second he was shuffling me to his car, he yanked the rod out that was holding the hood up and it came crashing down. The sound jolted me but not with fear or surprise, with excitement as Joe pulled my jeans skirt up to my waist, yanked my panties down and they fell to his garage floor then, his hands at my ass, he lifted me. I wrapped my legs around his hips and he planted me on the hood of the car, his hand between us, working his fly, my hands in his t-shirt, roaming his skin.
Then he was inside me, fucking me on the hood of his car, fucking me like the night before, hard, deep, rough, violent and I loved it. I lifted my hips to greet it, my hands curled on his ass to encourage it, my tongue tangled with his in my mouth to build it.
Then I came, not as hard as the night before but different, sharper, shorter, not better, but just as fucking good.
His hips bucked into mine long after I came. He was still kissing me and I locked him tight in my limbs as I took his thrusts until he buried himself to the hilt, growled in my mouth and the taste of that growl nearly made me climax again.
He stayed planted inside me as it hit me I’d done it again, on his car, in his garage no less. I turned my head away but he didn’t seem to mind. He just used this opportunity to glide his tongue along my neck which, it killed me to admit, felt so fucking good it made me shiver.
Then he pulled out and yanked me to my feet.
I was looking to the side and down at the floor but I wobbled, my knees weak from my orgasm and his big hands spanned my hips to steady me. There was something about this, something tender, something so un-Joe that I couldn’t hack it. I yanked free, stepping away, pulling my hair out of my face, beyond humiliated. So far beyond it, I didn’t know what that was. At the same time I felt fucking great, I felt electrified, alive and I hated myself for that but I hated him more.
I leaned down and snatched my panties from the floor, clearing my mind, thinking of nothing but getting the fuck out of there. I yanked them on, shimmied my skirt down and, without looking at him, walked swiftly to the side door.
I didn’t make it. His arm hooked at my belly, his other one wrapped around my chest and he yanked me back into his body.
His lips at my ear, he murmured, “I want you in my bed tonight, buddy.”
I shook my head once, a terse, angry shake even as his words slid through me like a different kind of burn, hardening my nipples, tickling between my legs, bringing back that feeling I had last night, that hollow feeling, that hunger, even though I’d just had him not five minutes before.
I pulled out of his arms, reached out, yanked open the door and ran straight to my house.
I lay on my side, curled into a ball which was my seven hundred and fifty-fifth position of the night.
The room was dark, it was the dead of night and even though I barely slept the night before, I was wide awake.
Not comfortable, I turned and looked at the clock.
One forty-seven in the morning.
I closed my eyes and whispered, “Fuck.”
Joe was next door in his bed, maybe waiting for me.
This was all I could think of from ten o’clock, when I slid into bed with a book I couldn’t focus on, to now.
I shouldn’t go, couldn’t go, I shouldn’t even want to go.
Even knowing this, I threw back the covers and went to my closet. I pulled out a long cardigan, my brain battling itself as I shrugged on the sweater and walked out of the room.
I headed to Keira’s room first. She was a heavy sleeper, like me. Nothing woke her and nothing used to wake me, at least when Tim was in the house, now I woke at the barest sound.
I pushed open her door and whispered, “Keira?”
I looked at her bed, no movement.
I walked in. She had the room at the front of the house, Kate’s room sandwiched between the hall and mine. Keira’s room was girlie, not frilly but full of pinks, purples, daisies and posters of boy bands and teenage vampires. Her clothes were strewn on the floor, her desk a mess. Her curtains were drawn but I could see the darkness of her hair against her pillow. Tim’s hair. Both of them got Tim’s hair, Tim’s eyes, Tim’s lean frame. They’d lucked out.