I use my hand in tandem with my mouth. Up. Down. I want to hear him groan in pleasure, but Ross doesn’t make much noise when we have sex. He never has. I’m the one who moans and sighs, even if the habit has been lost because of so many years when we had to muffle ourselves so the girls wouldn’t overhear. There’s nobody to hear us now, and I want him to shout from what I’m doing to him. I want him to shudder and writhe and clutch at the comforter while I mouth-fuck him until he can’t stand it anymore. I want him to come saying my name.
There is a surprise when he tugs my hair to lift my mouth from his cock. When he pulls me upward, over his body, to nuzzle and nudge at me through my clothes. Fingers work. We shift, we roll. I’m naked somehow, while he’s still mostly clothed. He pushes me onto my knees and slides beneath me to get at my clit with his tongue, his hands gripping my ass. My hands find the wall above the headboard, my fingers curling against the wallpaper I’ve never liked but have always been too lazy to change.
Oh, this, this, this. Spread wide, thighs trembling, all I can do is ride his face and let the pleasure take me over. He knows how and where and how long. How many times and in what direction. I come, hard, without making a sound.
I slip down his body and find his mouth with mine. The first time Ross ever went down on me, he was shocked when I kissed him, after. But if I can’t stand the taste of myself, how could I expect anyone else to? Anyway, it’s erotic, tasting myself on his mouth.
I slide one hand beneath his head, fingers in his hair. The other goes between us to grip the base of his cock and hold him steady as I slide my body onto his. Our mouths seal for just a moment before the kiss breaks on my sigh.
Twenty-two years. That’s how long we’ve been doing this. The first time was in a cheap hotel room after his fraternity’s spring formal. He told me he loved me first, and I didn’t believe him, but I let him kiss and touch me, anyway.
Ross doesn’t say he loves me now. He pushes up inside me. His fingers grip me a little too hard. His eyes are closed. His mouth is open.
He might always look this way when we make love, but it’s been a very long time since we did it in the light. I put my hands on his face and trace the lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth with my fingertips until he turns his head to capture my fingers with his mouth. He bites gently. Pleasure surges, and I lose myself in it.
This is comfort. This is compatibility. This is familiarity, and it works. We both tip over into climax within moments of each other, and Ross gives me what I wanted. A hoarse shout. It sounds a little, just a little, like my name.
“What’re you up to today?” Ross asks a few minutes later, when I’ve fallen onto my own pillow.
I’d been teasing into sleep, but this wakes me. I scrub at my face before I look at him. “Work. What are you up to today?”
“Gotta put out a bunch of fires. That jackass Bingham can’t do any damn thing right when I’m gone.” He yawns.
I contemplate crawling under the covers and going back to sleep for a few hours, but it would be impossible with him in the house. He will turn on the television or bang the dresser drawers. Run the coffee grinder. He will shake me gently to ask me where to find his socks, his keys. “No, don’t get up,” he’ll say. “I can make my own breakfast.” But I know he wants me to do it, because I’m here and because he’d much rather not do it himself.
I leave my husband in the bed. In the bathroom, I run the water and splash my face. It’s cold, and I swallow it greedily, feeling the chill slip down my throat and hit my too-empty stomach. I fill a paper cup from the dispenser and take it to him.
Ross looks at me as if I’m crazy. “What’s this?”
“I thought you might want a drink.”
“No,” he says with a shake of his head. “I’m not thirsty.”
He pats me on the ass when he passes. I hear the shower running, and I sit on the bed with my paper cup of water still in my hands, and I close my eyes against a sudden sting of tears.
From behind me, cradled in its dock, my phone buzzes with an email message. It will be Naveen, I think, emailing me to remind me about the shipments due to the Philly gallery later today. Or it could be my brother’s wife following up on summer vacation plans. Or it could be junk mail that has slipped through my carefully constructed set of spam filters and is now clogging my in-box. But the message pinging so cheerfully isn’t any of those.
It’s from Will.
Chapter Four
Will takes pictures of buildings.
I’m here to carry things or hold them while he points and shoots. Skyline shots, he tells me, are really popular for stock photography. At home, he’ll manipulate some of them in Photoshop.
“Post apocalyptic scenes,” he tells me with a grin. “Make the city look deserted. Ready for zombies, that sort of thing.”
I’m holding his tote bag over one shoulder, an extra-large cup of coffee in one hand. “Uh-huh.”
“You don’t like zombies.” It’s not a question. He says it as if he already knows me. He points his camera. Takes a picture. Doesn’t even look to see how it came out, just takes another. And another.
“Not really.”
He gives me another grin, his eyes narrowing in sunshine that’s too bright for this time of year. “Vampires that sparkle?”
“No.” I laugh. Shake my head. “Not a horror fan.”
“What do you like, Elisabeth? Chick flicks? Rom-com?” Point. Shoot. He aims the camera in my direction and clicks before I can look away.
Sneaky.
“I like action movies. Lots of shooting and muscle cars. Science fiction, too.” I’d put a hand in front of my face, but that would be too obvious. I hate it when women protest with squeals and cooing about getting their pictures taken, as if the world will end. Or their souls will be stolen. It’s worse than the ones who pose and pout and primp anytime a camera’s within range.
I don’t want him to take my picture because then there will be proof I’m here with him. Not that I have any reason to deny it. I’m in the city on business. I had breakfast with Naveen. Stopped by the gallery to handle some things. I met with Will for coffee, that’s all. And now to follow him through the city as he takes pictures for his stock work. There’s nothing wrong in what I’m doing.
He takes me to a park. We stare together at the giant Easter Island–looking head in the middle of it, neither of us saying much. Just beyond it, a line of people waiting for milk shakes from a stand stretches nearly all the way around the park.
“Those must be some pretty fucking amazing milk shakes,” Will says after a minute or so.
I burst into laughter. It’s loud. Raucous. Unfettered, that’s a good way to describe it, and I stifle it with my hand when he smiles at me.
The weather’s so much nicer today than it was the night we met. The air light and clear and warm enough for me to understand why someone might wait half an hour for a milk shake. I want to stretch out on a blanket in the grass and stare up at the sky.
Will takes a picture of the statue, then looks at the digital image on his view screen. “...Art,” he mutters. “Jesus.”
“You don’t like it?” I follow him along the path toward the street again, but spy something that stops me. I bend to pick it up, already grinning. “Oh!”
“I’m just jealous. What’s that?” Will says, leaning over me.
The shiny piece of gravel’s been broken into a misshapen heart. I lay it flat on my palm to show him. I trace the outline. “See?”
“Cool.” He sounds as if he means it.
“I