At Peace (8 page)

Joe was the same but he was stronger,
keeping me on my back no matter how I tried to roll him. Along the
line he disposed of my panties then he got my bra cup down and drew
my nipple into his mouth sharply. My back arched, my fingers fisted
in his hair as his tongue jabbed at my nipple then sucked it in
fiercely and I fucking
loved
it.

“Yes,” I breathed and he moved to the other
side, scraping my bra cup down again and repeating what he did to
the first, his fingers having replaced his mouth at my other
nipple, they pinched and twisted. It was rough but it felt
brilliant and my hips rose in a reflexive demand.

“Joe,” I whispered, suddenly needing him
inside me, my hand moving from his hair and sliding down the sleek
skin of his back, to his side, his waist but his crotch was too far
away.

He came back over me and his mouth took mine
in another hard, bruising kiss and my hand found him, palming his
groin, finding him hard, I moaned into his mouth and bucked my
hips.

“Fuck me,” I pleaded, rubbing my hand against
him, opening my legs.

He didn’t hesitate, his hand pushed mine
aside and he undid his jeans.

“You on the pill?” he asked, his voice
gruff.

“No,” I answered and felt the tip of his cock
pressing against me. I wanted it inside me so badly it was an ache,
my hand slid into his jeans, curling around his tight ass in an
insistent demand.

“Fuck it,” he groaned and drove in deep.

I gasped then held my breath as he filled me.
He was huge. So big, it was a shock to be that full.

Then I had to start breathing when he started
moving, driving deep, filling me full again and again, rough, hard,
almost brutal, his big hands going to my hips and lifting me to
plant himself deeper. Then I wasn’t breathing, I was panting.

My nails dug into his back, my hips rising,
helping him to go deeper. I wrapped a calf around his waist,
digging my heel into his back to leverage my hips, my other leg
wrapping around his thigh.

“You’re so big,” I whispered.

“You like it,” he pointed out the obvious and
I made no response, I couldn’t, that’s how much I liked it.

“Harder,” I gasped, wanting it harder,
wanting the pounding never to stop, but even demanding it, still
thinking he couldn’t fuck me harder. There was no way he could fuck
me harder but I was wrong, he could and he did.

It built fast, it had been a long time, I
felt it coming and I wanted it. I reached for it, the nails of one
hand scraping his back, the other hand fisted in his hair, begging,
“Fuck me harder, Joe.”

His mouth was at mine, his breath ragged when
he murmured, “You like it rough.”

“Yes,” I breathed.

“Good,” he muttered, kissed me deep and
fucked me harder.

It was happening, I could feel it and when it
started, I tore my mouth from his, arched my neck, my back, and
announced on a throaty, breathy moan, “Joe, I’m coming.”

“Christ,” Joe bit off as it hit me, it was so
huge, my body shook with it and I tightened my limbs around him,
pulling him close.

I felt him thrusting as I came, suspended in
the glorious moment, beautiful.

I was coming down when his thrusts became
even more powerful then his hand left my hip, his fingers sunk into
my hair, fisting and twisting again, his mouth slammed down on mine
and he groaned, his hips driving into mine once, twice, three times
then, on the fourth, he planted himself to the root and
stopped.

His lips slid from mine, down my cheek, my
neck, where he buried his face and he stayed fixed deep. I lay
under him, bearing his heavy weight, feeling full of his cock,
immune to anything but his body, his heat, his weight, his prick.
There was nothing in the world but me and Joe Callahan and I liked
it like that.

Then suddenly he slid out and his weight was
gone, his heat, his body, all vanished and it was just me in the
bed.

I blinked at the suddenness of it then closed
my legs, rolling to my side, curling up, my eyes moving to him in
the dark. He was standing at the foot of the bed doing up his
jeans. Nothing entered my mind. I could still feel him between my
legs, my brain fuzzy with drink and sex, my body sated. He bent to
the floor then straightened, pulling on his t-shirt.

Mindlessly, I watched as his hand went to his
back pocket, he yanked out his wallet, flipped it open, pulled
something out, he returned his wallet to his pocket. My brain still
not having kicked into gear, I didn’t move as he bent over the bed,
putting a hand in it by my belly, the fingers of his other hand
sliding up the inside of my forearm which was lying on the bed.
When he reached my open palm, I felt the edges of a card against my
skin as he curled my fingers around it.

Then he trailed his fingertips down my hip
and outer thigh as he said, “Call me, buddy, anytime you need a
ride home.”

My body locked at his insinuation but I had
no chance to ask a question or make a retort, he disappeared and,
seconds later, I heard the outer door closing.

I laid there a long time, curled mostly naked
on my bed, the air in my room chill as the knowledge seeped into me
that I just let me next door neighbor, Joe Callahan, a man I
disliked, fuck me so hard I ached. I’d even begged him to do
it.

And it seeped into me that, after thirty-five
years, I’d just taken my second lover and I’d done this like a
slutty, drunken barfly, letting a guy I barely knew and didn’t even
like pick me up, take me home and fuck me so hard I ached. Hell, he
didn’t even need to work at it, he just dragged me out of the bar,
I followed him to my house and then he dragged me to my room.

And it seeped into me that this guy, Joe
Callahan, thought he could do that to me whenever it struck my
fancy to let him, calling him to service me and then he’d pull out,
leave me mostly naked and alone and not even kiss me before he
left. And I couldn’t fucking blame him.

And this knowledge seeped into my bones,
bitter and humiliating.

I heard the front door open and I froze.

Kate was home.

I whirled into motion, jumping off the bed,
pawing through my clothes on the floor, I found and yanked on my
underwear. Then I ran to the bathroom, pulled Tim’s robe off the
hook on the door and shrugged it on, feeling for the first time the
soft, warm flannel against my skin like a burn.

I tied the belt tight and walked into the
living room, pulling my hair out of my face, hoping to God my
daughter couldn’t read the heinous deed I’d done in my expression
or the line of my body. I looked to the DVD clock under the TV in
the living room and saw it was two after midnight. My responsible
Kate was home on time and her boyfriend, who I didn’t want to like
or trust, had brought her home by curfew.

I headed to her room, the light coming
through the door which was opened a crack.

I stopped at the door and knocked softly.

“Yeah, Mom,” she called and I pushed the door
open and stood in its frame, my arms wrapped around my belly.

“Hey baby, have a good time?”

She was texting someone and I knew it was
Dane even though he just dropped her off. Her head came up from her
phone and she grinned at me.

“Yeah,” she said softly, her face just as
soft.

Oh fuck.

“Dane have fun?” I asked.

She nodded and looked back down at her phone.
She hit send, slid it shut and tossed it on her nightstand.

“I like him, Kate, he’s a good kid,” I told
her, her head twisted to me and she studied me a second before she
dealt a blow she didn’t know she was dealing and, if she did, it
would cut her to the quick. Kate felt. She felt everything but she
felt other people’s pain far more than her own, one of the few
things she got from me.

“You think Dad would have liked him?”

I hid my flinch at her question and I did it
by thinking about her question.

I’d made a pact with Tim early on that we’d
always be open and honest with our girls. A pact that he regularly
broke as they grew older and he found he had trouble with the facts
of life and relaying them to his daughters, seeing as they were
female. A pact, since I was female, I was able to keep.

“No,” I told her, her face fell and I went
on. “But only because you’re his little girl and you always will
be. He wouldn’t like him, not now, but he’d come around because
Dane’s a good kid.”

Her face brightened, just slightly, and she
asked, “You think?”

I walked in, got close to her, wrapped my
hand around her head and pulled her temple to my mouth.

“I know,” I whispered and kissed her before
finishing. “Get some sleep, honey.”

Her body had leaned into mine with my embrace
but she pulled away when she replied, “All right, Mom.”

“Sleep tight.”

“You too.”

I walked to the side kitchen door, locked it,
armed the alarm and then moved back to my room and got in bed
wearing Tim’s robe, thinking that sleeping tight was an
impossibility with what happened that night.

I was right.

* * * * *

“
Home for dinner!” I shouted my order to my
girls from my room as I heard them preparing to go to the mall and
I finished preparing to go into work.

It was late morning after the Joe Incident.
Bobbie had called and asked me to put in a few hours. She might
have gotten a good full-time worker when Sabrina quit but that
still meant she was down a part-time worker and hadn’t found anyone
she liked to replace me and since Bobbie didn’t like many people
that would probably take awhile. Overtime was beginning to be a
regular thing but I wasn’t complaining.

“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.