At Peace (9 page)

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.

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.

“Come here,” he growled softly.

My feet took me to him, I put a knee to the
bed and leaned in and Joe did the rest. His hand, lying on the bed,
came up, hooked me behind the head and he pulled me closer, so
close, my mouth was on his.

“I want you back tonight,” he ordered.

He wanted me back.

I smiled against his mouth.

When I did, his eyes grew intense then his
head slanted. I lost sight of his eyes when mine closed because he
kissed me hard, open-mouthed and so long, he came up from the bed,
his other arm curved around me and he pulled me to him. When I
landed on him, he twisted me so my back was to the bed and kept
kissing me.

His kisses were so good, I forgot I was
supposed to be leaving until his lips disengaged from mine and his
face disappeared in my neck.

“Don’t we have nosy neighbors?” he asked my
neck.

“Shit!” I cried, rolled him to his back and
tore out of his arms.

I was nearly on my feet by the side of the
bed before I stopped, put a hand back in the mattress, one at his
scarred cheek, leaned in and gave him a quick kiss.

Then I gained my feet and, not looking back,
I ran from the room, down the hall, through his living room, out
the sliding glass door and to my house.

I was feeling so fucking great, instead of
running, I could have skipped.

* * * * *

The day passed like it was coated with
molasses.

I’d thought to get a nap but once I got
home from Joe’s, even though I’d had virtually no sleep for two
nights, I found I was incredibly energized.

I stripped my bed. I put in laundry. I made a
grocery list. I paid bills. I took a shower and did myself up like
I always did, even after Tim died.

Tim liked my hair smoothed out with the
hair dryer. He liked it when I put on makeup even if he preferred
it light. Tim liked it when I made an effort with clothes. Tim said
I was the sexiest cop’s wife in history and he said it in a way
where I knew he believed it completely and was proud of that fact.
He liked it when I’d come into the Station, he got off on the fact
that the other guys found me attractive (or, at least, he told me
they did). I was his, he told me, and he had something beautiful,
he told me that too. Never, not once, not even when I was heavy
with Kate and Keira, did he make me feel anything but
beautiful.