I stifled the urge to touch her hair, kiss her cheek, left the room and crossed the hall to Kate’s room.
Kate was like Tim, she slept light. She was a worrier, like Tim and now, like me.
When Tim was alive, I didn’t worry, not ever. I felt, if we were all together, nothing could harm us. We’d take our knocks but we’d survive them. This feeling had a lot to do with Tim taking care of most everything. This feeling was now gone because he was gone, not taking care of most everything and because we’d never be all together again.
I pushed open her door. Kate’s room couldn’t have been more different than her sister’s. Champagne colored walls, black accents, sophisticated except for the posters on the walls. They were for bands I’d never heard of but whoever they were they actually wrote their own music and played their own instruments. Her floor was clear, her stuff organized.
I only whispered her name when I was close to her bed.
“Kate.”
I saw her dark hair on her pillow and she didn’t move either.
I wanted her to move, to roll to her back and say, “Mom, stop acting like a slut.”
She didn’t, she slept and I left her to it.
I walked to the side kitchen door and slid on some Crocs. Then I unarmed the alarm. Then with my hand to the door handle, the sane, good Mom, good person part of my brain won out. I dropped the handle and walked toward my room but my feet took me right by my bedroom door to the sliding glass door at the back of the study. My fingers unlocked it, slid it to the side and I stepped out into the chill night air. I closed the door and walked to the steps of the deck, down them and into the grass.
I turned to Joe’s house.
Through the dark, I hurried to his house knowing this was wrong, it was stupid, he was probably asleep by now anyway.
But my feet kept moving.
His deck was deeper than mine, jutting out further, but it didn’t travel the length of his house like mine did. Mine was rectangular, his was square. The steps on mine were at the front, his at the side and I ran up them, counting them as I went, four steps, then I found myself standing at his sliding glass door.
There was no light on. If he was waiting for me, wouldn’t he turn on the light?
He would, anyone would. No one who shoveled a woman’s snow from her drive would make her meet him for a clandestine sexual assignation at his unlit dark deck. In fact, his whole house was dark.
It was clandestine but he wouldn’t want me to sprain my ankle, would he?
No, he was sleeping. Time to go.
I turned and headed toward the stairs and my heart skipped when I heard the sliding door open but my feet kept moving toward escape. I was almost at the stairs when I was caught with an arm around my waist and pulled back into the heat of his long, hard body.
His rumbly voice sounded in my ear. “Where you goin’, buddy?”
“Joe,” I whispered, my voice trembling and I could say no more.
He let my waist go but grabbed my hand and yanked me into the house. Sliding the door to, he turned to me and bent, lifting me at the knees and waist, he carried me through his living room, down the hall and turned right. Then he carried me to his bed and threw me on it. I bounced only once because, if there was going to be a second time, this was thwarted when his body came down on mine.
His hand was in my cardigan at the shoulder, pulling it down.
“I –” I began.
“Shut up,” he cut me off.
“Okay,” I whispered.
Then his mouth came down on mine.
I was on my knees, Joe underneath me, his hands at my hips, pulling them down to his face.
I had been bent over him, using my mouth and hand on his beautiful shaft at the same time his mouth was on me but what he was doing between my legs with his mouth took my full concentration so I’d given up and when I did Joe had turned me around and settled me back down.
Now I arched my back as the orgasm washed through me. He tugged my hips, his mouth kept working me, voracious, prolonging the climax exquisitely.
Even when I was done, Joe lapped at me and that felt so good, I had to lean forward and clutch the headboard or I would topple over.
Then he moved me, pushing me off but not letting me go, sliding me down his body so I was on top of him, my forehead in his neck, his hands moving on my skin.
He wasn’t done, which was so shocking it could even be record-breaking. I could feel him hard against me and that was impossible. Since I walked in (or, more aptly, been pulled in, carried in, then thrown on his bed), we’d gone at each other like teenagers. I’d had four orgasms, Joe, three. I’d lost count of the positions, lost track of the sensations. Each time we finished, his hands and mouth kept at me, that hollow feeling would come back and I’d need it sated. I’d need to feed the hunger that overwhelmed me, a hunger for him. I’d do anything to satisfy it and I did.
I felt no embarrassment once it started. I didn’t feel like a slut, a bad mother, a terrible person. I didn’t worry about my nudity or if he liked what I was doing. This shit was natural, like I was born to be in Joe’s Callahan’s bed and it was natural to him too, like Joe Callahan was born to be in me.
When his hand slid up my side and in, curling around my breast, I lifted my head to kiss him but caught sight of his alarm clock.
“Shit,” I whispered, maybe the first word I said since he caught me outside other than “Joe,” “Faster,” “Harder,” “Yes,” and “More.”
Joe hadn’t said much at all, then again, he was using his mouth for far better things.
Now his neck twisted and he looked at the clock then at me.
“What?”
“I’ve gotta get home.”
“Why?”
“I have two girls.”
“They awake at six o’clock?”
I smiled at him and, weirdly, his big, warm body stilled under mine and his eyes dropped to my mouth when I did.
“Okay, no, there’s no way they’re awake,” I answered. “But we also have nosy neighbors.”
His eyes slid up to mine and his hand slid from my breast, around my side, up my back and into my hair as he asked, “So?”
“So, Tina Blackstone is a bitch. She sees me coming from your house in the morning wearing a nightie and a cardigan, she’d talk.”
He didn’t respond but he didn’t need to, his face said it all.
Therefore I answered his unspoken repeat of, “So?”
“I know you don’t care but, like I said, I’ve got two girls. It wouldn’t be good if Tina Blackstone talked.” I pulled myself further up his body and touched my lips to his then said softly, “I’ve got to go.”
His hand fisted in my hair and the pads of his fingers dug into my hip, just for a second, then his arms went loose.
But that second counted.
It counted a whole helluva lot.
I slid off him and scrambled beside the bed, feeling suddenly conscious of my nudity. I gave him my back as I pulled my undies up then slipped my nightie over my head. I shrugged on my cardigan at the same time I twisted my feet, toeing my Crocs to right them and then sliding them on.
“Buddy,” Joe called and I turned to see him lying on his side, his elbow in the bed, his head in his hand not, obviously, conscious of his nudity or at least not self-conscious about it.
I didn’t blame him.
His body was far more beautiful out of clothes than in them. Like his face, its perfection not marred by the scars but instead made more appealing, his long, lean, muscled body was not spoiled by the long, jagged white gash that sliced diagonally across his tight abs and the creased, darkened circle of skin halfway between his right pectoral and his shoulder.