The Black Room (Door Nine The Deleted Door) - Jasinda Wilder & Jade London

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. “I didn’t think you’d come,” he says, murmuring to my hair. A million questions rifle through my mind. Primary among them: why would he think he’d never see me again? I feel him lift the cigarette to his mouth and inhale. He smokes quietly, exhaling over my head. He flicks the butt into the fire. “Why wouldn’t I?” I ask. He shrugs. “It’s risky.” His palm smooths over my head, fingers brushing through my hair. “For both of us.” “You’re worth it.” I don’t know why I say that, but it feels true. “So are you.” His voice is a low rumble in my ear, his mouth nuzzling my earlobe, my jaw and then kissing along my jawline, my chin, my throat. My hands curl into the fabric of his suit coat as the feel of his mouth on my skin sends tingles through me. I shiver as his hand slides down my spine, cups my ass, his other hand still buried in my hair. We’re in the private study of his home, making the meeting even more risky than it already is. I’m curled up on his lap, knees drawn to my chest, my cheek against his heartbeat, and my palms on his shoulders. He’s big enough and broad enough that I fit like a kitten on the expanse of his powerful thighs, and his chest blocks out the whole world, except for the flicker of the fire behind me. I feather my fingers into his beard, tug his face down, and look up into his liquid brown eyes. He stands up, sets me on my feet, towering over me, staring down at me. He brushes his lips against the corner of my mouth, his hand at the small of my back, tugging me against him. I can feel his erection bulging against the zipper of his trousers, pressing into my belly. He just holds me for a long moment. And then, slowly, as if at war with himself, his fingers gather in the dove-gray cotton of my dress and lift the floor-length hem up to my calves, to my knees, which shake as more and more of my legs are bared. And then the hem is at mid-thigh, and I’m shaking all over and leaning against him, willing him to keep going, or to stop. I don’t know which. My heart is thundering. A part of my mind is screaming at me, inexplicably telling me that this man touching me is somehow wrong, that he shouldn’t have his hands on me, that he shouldn’t lift up my dress any further, that he shouldn’t have it up around my hips now. But then, another part of me is screaming just as loudly, telling me his touch is just...right. “Shit,” he growls. “You’re not wearing panties.” “No, I’m not,” I breathe. He releases me abruptly, and the hem falls to the floor, covering me once more. He backs away slowly, hand raking through his shoulder-length black locks. His palm trembles. “You make it impossible, you know that?” He retreats from me, until he catches up against the wall beside the door. “What do I make impossible?” “Resisting you.” I cross the room, pursuing him, until I’m pressed up against him, breathing in his scent. “Why should you resist me?” “Because you’re not mine,” he growls, his voice thick and tense with frustration. “And I’m not

yours. We shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t do this.” “It feels like you’re mine. Like you should be.” This is the raw truth, rupturing up from deep within me. His fingers bury in my loose blond tresses. He tugs my head back, gently, but firmly. “I know. God, don’t you think I feel the same way?” “Then if we’re not supposed to be doing this, why are we here?” “Because I can’t seem to stop myself. I’ve tried to stay away from you. God knows I have. But I can’t. You make it impossible. And then you show up wearing that damn dress, with nothing on beneath it, and…” he shakes his head, pausing, and then sighs. He continues, “I’ve never been this man before. The kind who does this sort of thing. But there’s something about you, some dark magic that I cannot withstand.” I do nothing but stare up at him; his face a mask of mixed emotions. Desire. Need. Frustration. Pain. Conflict. Anger, even. I want to kiss away all the unpleasant thoughts, so all that remains is the need and the desire and the passion. I lean closer to him, and lift up on my toes. Lips parted, hands flat against the wall of his chest. He watches, scrutinizing my face. His mouth opens, and moves toward mine. His grip on my hair tightens, becoming almost painful. He pulls me flush against his body, tilting my head even more. I cannot resist his hold on me, and have no desire to try. Just kiss me, that’s all I want. Just kiss me. “One kiss,” I whisper. “Just one.” His lips touch mine, a grazing brush. A tease. I’m breathless. But then he lets go of me and jerks himself free. “I can’t. I cannot. I—I just can’t. If I kiss you once, I’ll never stop.” “Would that be so bad?” I ask. “To kiss me and never stop?” He’s in the middle of the room, now. Tense. Ramrod stiff and straight, his features hard and cold. He’s fighting with himself and he’s staring at me, chest heaving, as if remaining there is taking all of his strength. “No,” he admits, “but I can’t. I want that more than anything, but I can’t have it. Not yet.” “Then why am I here? Why did I come here, if I can’t have you?” “You tell me.” He sounds angry. At me? I don’t know. There’s so much I don’t know. He reaches into the inside pocket of his suit coat and withdraws a rectangle of yellow paper. Western Union Telegram is stamped across the top. Beneath that is a typewritten message: CK, I must see you. Please. HT “You sent this to my office.” More anger. Deep, virulent. “My office. You should know better. It was only pure luck that my secretary had stepped out and I was able to receive it myself. I cannot afford scrutiny. You know that. I thought you knew that, at least.” “I’m sorry,” I say. “’I’m sorry’ won’t get me my reputation or integrity back, if we’re discovered.” “Nothing has happened yet.” “Oh no?” He crumples the telegram, tossing it into the fire, and we both watch the edges crinkle and catch, and then the paper is gone in a bright yellow flash of flame. “Nothing has happened yet?” He turns back to me. His eyes burn as hot as the fire, now. “I wouldn’t call what happened in New York last month nothing, would you?” He moves closer to

stand in front of me, huge, exuding power and barely-restrained need. His eyes blaze. His hands are curled into fists. His zipper strains to contain his erection. I bat my eyelashes at him. “I’m having some trouble remembering New York,” I say, endeavoring to sound playful, breathy, toying with him. “Remind me.” “The Hilton Midtown.” His voice strokes the words, rife with heat. “You snuck into my room and waited for me.” “And then?” I stare up at him, breathing deeply. My breasts strain against the bodice of my dress with each breath, and his eyes follow their movements, unabashedly ogling me. “I barely even made it in the door.” He touches my lower lip, almost reverently. He trails his finger down my chin, down my throat, to my cleavage. Tugs between my breasts, and then, with a sound that is equal parts sigh of resignation and moan of desire, he slides his finger between the fabric of my dress and my breast. He bares my left breast. Then the right. My nipples pebble as the air caresses them. “You pushed me back up against the door.” He steps backward, puts his back to the door, reenacting the moment. “And then…” I can’t breathe. My thighs clench together, and my core aches. He cups my breasts in his palms, caresses them, and thumbs my nipples. And then his hands slide up to rest on my shoulders. He applies a gentle pressure to my shoulders. Urging me down. I let him push me to my knees. “You unzipped my trousers.” He toys with a lock of my hair, waiting. I pull at the zipper, lowering it. “And then?” “You pulled them down.” I gather the soft wool of his trousers in my fists, jerk them down around his ankles. His cock springs free, ten inches of wrist-thick perfection, huge and hard and thick, slightly curved. My pussy aches, and my hands tremble. I want it in my hands, in my mouth, in my slit. But I wait. I play the game. “Now what?” I ask, fluttering my eyelashes. “You took me your hands and played with my cock, put it in your mouth. You couldn’t take it all, but you tried.” His voice is low, barely above a whisper, remembering. “God, you tried.” I curl my fingers around his cock, and my thumb and forefinger don’t quite meet. I use both hands, circling around his head, just beneath the groove under his glans. Squeeze. Stroke downward, feeling the soft skin sliding and stretching around the iron of his shaft. “Like this?” I ask. He groans, tips his head back, eyes shuttering closed in bliss, and then he looks down at me. “Just like that. God, you’re so fucking beautiful. Let me watch you choke on it.” I tilt my head sideways and put the length of it in my mouth, tongue sliding against the veined flesh. Opening my mouth as wide as I can, I bury his cock down my throat. He groans long and deep, a guttural bass rumble like the purr of a lion. “God, yes.” He tangles his fingers in my hair, working his grip near the roots, tight, rough, just this side of painful. “Just like that. Keep going. Suck it all. Take it all.” I take as much of him as I can. I begin to gag, and then I back away. Saliva smears on his flesh, stringing from my lips to the fat mushroom head. I can taste him now, taste him on my tongue. I stare up at him, extend my tongue and lick him, stroke the opening with the flat of my tongue, lapping away pre-cum. “You like watching me choke on you, don’t you?” I murmur. “More than you know,” he says. “I love watching those plump lips of yours stretch around me. I

love watching your eyes go wide as I slide down your throat. I love that gagging sound you make when you can’t take any more of me. I love the feel of your hair in my fists. I love, most of all, watching you try to swallow my seed when I come. I love watching it spill out around me, and trickle down your chin.” “Is that what you’re going to do?” I say, slowly caressing his cock with both hands, playing with him, fondling his heavy balls in my palm. “You’re going to come down my throat?” He grips his cock in one hand, rubs the tip across my cheek. Traces my lips with it. “Oh yes. I’m going to fill your mouth with my cum. I’m going to mark you with it.” I shiver. I can feel it. A memory? Almost. Not quite. Or something else. A visceral knowledge of the way he tastes. The way his cum feels in my mouth, splashing down my throat, trickling down my chin. I wrap my mouth around him again, fists gliding lazily at the root of his cock. Slowly, then, I take him until my jaw aches and I have to focus on opening my throat. I can’t help the gagging sound I make, but that only makes him twitch in my mouth, makes him tighten his grip in my hair and thrust deeper. I gag, and take more. Until there’s no more to take, and my nose is against his belly and I’m seeing stars and breathing hard through my nose. I back away, slowly. “Jesus, you took it all. God, you’re so fucking gorgeous, you know that? How am I supposed to resist you when you do this to me?” He groans as I start moving faster, long strokes of my mouth around him, taking him deep and backing away, faster and faster. “I think about you all the time. When I’m working, I think of you. All this last month, I had trouble focusing, because I keep thinking of you. Thinking of this, watching your sexy little mouth on me.” I spit him out and smear my saliva and his pre-cum all over his throbbing length with both hands. I look up at him. “Do you masturbate, thinking about me?” “Sometimes I can’t help it. Good thing I have a private bathroom, isn’t it?” He groans again as I pump his length and suck on the head. “This morning, I went in there and made a mess of myself, thinking about you. Thinking about those huge breasts of yours. I pictured them wrapped around my cock. Pictured my cum dripping all over them.” I lift up on my knees and squeeze my tits around his cock, sliding them up and down. “Like this?” “Fuck…god yes. You’re making it hard to hold back.” “Why hold back?” I ask, moving my torso up and down and squeezing my tits, letting him fuck between them. “Because I don’t ever want this to end,” he says. “The way you make me feel…god, I don’t know what it is about you, the way you touch me, I just…it feels like nothing else ever has.” I grip him with both fists, feeling the tension in his body tighten, feeling his knees flex and his abs harden. I plunge my hands around him and take the top couple of inches in my mouth, sucking, bobbing, and moving on him aggressively. “Fuck, fuck.” He’s breathless, hips driving helplessly now. “You want it all, don’t you? You want me to lose control? You want me to fuck your mouth like it’s your tight little cunt?” “Mmmm-hmmm,” I moan the affirmative around a jaw-cracking mouthful of cock. I release his shaft and palm his ass. I pull him toward me. Encourage him to move. Grip that tight, hard ass of his; claw my fingers into the muscle. His hands bury in my hair, gather the blond tresses in his fists. His eyes fix on mine, and there’s a tableau, then, his cock buried in my mouth, my hair in his hands, him mid-thrust, paused, jaw flexing, breathing hard. As if holding back, still. And then he growls, an animal sound. “You asked for it,” he murmurs. He thrusts hard with his hips, pulls me by the back of my head toward his body. He’s fucking his cock down my throat, hard, fast, abrupt. All I can do then is hold on to his ass and breathe and take

him, because now he’s not giving me any control over what’s happening, he’s just taking. Claiming my mouth as his personal playground. Fucking my throat. I do not derive sexual pleasure from this, but I do enjoy watching him lose control. I enjoy knowing he can’t help this. That I can turn him into an animal. A mindless, rutting beast. He would do just about anything for me, I know, if I promise him this. He doesn’t warn me when he finally unleashes. I can tell, though. His thrusts become jagged, stuttering, uncontrolled. His grip in my hair is painful, and he’s jerking me onto his cock roughly, harshly. I feel him tense. Feel him prepare to come. He’s losing it, grinding now, thrusting slowly. I moan, for his benefit, and that’s what puts him over the edge. I feel his cock throb, once, and warm wetness spurts into my mouth, down my throat. Another pulse, and I can’t contain all the cum he’s blasting into my mouth, can’t swallow fast enough, can’t take anymore, and he keep thrusting, keeps coming, and—just as he threatened, or promised—his cum spills out of my mouth, trickles down my chin. He pulls out of my mouth, fists his length and a thick gush of cum streams out of him and onto my tits. Again, more viscous, warm, white cum spilling over my breasts, sliding wetly down between them. He sags, then, spent. His head falls back against the door behind him. Leaving his trousers around his ankles, he reaches into a pocket of his suit coat and withdraws a handkerchief. He lifts me to my feet, wipes his cum off my mouth, my chin, my throat. Folds the handkerchief, and wipes the mess from my breasts until I’m clean once more. He pulls up his trousers, fastens them, and spears a hand through his hair in an attempt to smooth it back over his head. He strokes his beard, his eyes on me, brown and wild, inscrutable. He turns and places his hand on the doorknob. Something inside me twists. “You’re leaving?” He hesitates. “We shouldn’t be doing this.” “You’ll fuck my mouth, come all over me, and then just leave? Get what you want, and that’s it?” “That’s not—” I interrupt him. “I don’t think so.” “Oh really?” His eyebrow lifts, his voice low and dangerous. I cross the room to the armchair, haul it around to face away from the fire, facing the room. I sit down. My breasts are bare, and I tweak my nipples with my fingers. Then I lift up the hem of my dress, gathering the material up around my waist to bare my core. “I want mine.” I run my index finger up my slit. “I want to see you on your knees, too. I want to watch you bury your face in my cunt.” His hand falls away from the doorknob. He sucks in a deep breath, his eyes fixed on my pussy. Involuntarily, it seems, he crosses the room to stand over me, staring down at me. “You want yours, hmmm?” “That’s how this works. I didn’t arrange this meeting so I could service your cock, you know. I have needs and desires, too.” God, do I. “Needs and desires?” He breathes the question as he sinks to his knees. “Like what?” I feather my fingers through his hair, gather it in my hands, hold it out of the way as he plants kiss after kiss to my thighs, closer and closer to my core. “You. Your mouth. Your tongue.” He laps at my slit. “Like this?” “Just like that. Keep going. Make me come all over your face.” He stiffens his tongue and spears it into me, swirling it against my clit, and I can’t help but gasp

and clutch him closer, harder, tighter. I writhe against his face as he devours me, slowly, skillfully. He takes his time, working me up to climax, and then slowing down, adjusting his rhythm to keep me off balance, to back me away from the edge. It’s a masterful performance, the way he eats me out. Never hurrying, always in tune with the way I writhe, with the moans I utter, knowing exactly how to slide his tongue against my clit, when to suck it between his teeth, when to flick in quick circles. And then he adds fingers, not one or two, but three, sliding deep, curling, touching me somewhere just so and I can’t control the gyrations of my hips, can’t stop the hoarse whimper, can’t stop myself from clutching his head and grinding my cunt against his eager, talented mouth. I come, and it’s long, hard, and messy. Everything inside me spasms, and I feel something break within me, feel something release, spurt free. He grunts in surprise and backs away, watching as a thin stream of something wet gushes out of me, pulsing and spasming, as my core clenches and contracts, ecstatic bliss wrenching through me so hard I can’t breathe, can’t see, can only arch off the chair and contain the scream behind my gritted teeth. He rocks back on his heels, wiping at his beard, which glistens, damp with my juices. “You got yours, I’d say.” He is intensely self-satisfied, a ghost of a smirk on his usually impassive face. Somewhere a door opens, and then closes. A female voice calls out. “Hello? Are you home?” “Shit.” He tugs my dress into place, hauls me to my feet, and shoves a purse into my hands. “You have to go.” “But—” “Now.” Before I can protest a second time, I’m out the door. It’s dark, quiet. I see I’m in an alley, a crumbling brick wall opposite me—the side of a building. To my right is a dead-end, trash in a corner, a small, overflowing garbage can, a roughly-made wooden pallet, empty, turned on it side. To my left, the alley opens onto a narrow sidewalk, and then a street. A pair of headlights pass slowly by the entrance to the alley; the vehicle is large, the windows reflecting the nearby streetlights. The door behind me closes, and I take a step to the side, away from the window in the door. I’m trying not to panic; this isn’t how it should go. I’m frozen. Behind the door I can hear his boots on the wood floor, hear him quietly moving the chair to its original place near the fire. Then I hear a door open and close. “Ah, here you are, darling.” The thin, sharp click of a woman’s heels on the wood floor. “What a day. I’m dreadfully tired, so I’m turning in. Will you be long?” “No, I won’t be long. You go ahead.” His voice is…masked. I don’t know how else to describe it. Cold, flat, hiding any hint of emotion. My heart is rabbiting, twisting. Sliced, wracked. That woman is obviously his wife. Bastard. I risk a peek in the window. She’s tall, lithe, curvaceous. Knee-length black skirt, tight, molded to her thighs and ass. A willowy white blouse, short sleeved, elegant. And her hair, god, that hair. Thick sheaves of natural red hair, pure ginger glory twisted into an elaborate up-do, baring the delicate column of her neck, a hint of shoulder, pale skin, white as ivory. She is utterly gorgeous. Nearly perfect. And he’s hers. Not mine. You’re not mine, and I’m not yours. I’m the other woman. Tears prick my eyes.

I flee the alley. Mindless, without thought or direction.

.. My feet carry me at a run, tears blurring my vision. I’m the other woman. I’m his affair. I’ve always known this, but seeing it played out in front of me is devastating. An intersection is just ahead. A lone car is stopped, waiting for the light to turn green, and there are no other cars on the road. No light pollution. The stars shine and twinkle overhead in myriad millions, bright and brilliant. This is a small town, and most of the windows are dark. No tall buildings, a handful of dim yellow streetlights spaced far apart. No traffic sounds, no honking of cars in the distance or rumble of trucks. None of the buildings around me are over two or three stories, and the road I’m following leads out of the town proper and into darkness, unlit and unpaved. My feet continue to carry me. I turn left down a narrow side street. It feels…correct, to turn here. Familiar, somehow. Cars are parallel parked on my right, businesses beside them, shuttered, locked down, glass fronts dark—a bakery, a café, a hardware store, a grocery store. On my left is a row of old brick rowhouses, four steps leading up to the front doors. Most of the windows are dark; a few are lit with a yellow-orange glow. My feet stop at one of the rowhouses and carry me up the steps. When I turn the knob the door opens easily. I don’t feel afraid, opening this door, as I’ve done it a million times before. I enter into the narrow foyer. A coat tree stands to one side, hung with a man’s overcoat, a fedora. A large pair of wellington boots sits on the floor nearby. The house is dark and quiet. Directly ahead, a steep, narrow staircase leads up to the second floor. To my left is the formal sitting room containing a long couch, a love seat, and a matching armchair. A coffee table sits in the center of the room. There is a narrow table along one wall beneath a framed painting shadowed in darkness. On the table, I see a silver tea service and a large radio, electric, wood encased, with a tuning knob and a volume knob. To my right, a doorway leads to a kitchen with a black and white tiled floor that stands out in the dim light cast by a tiffany-style light that hangs down from the ceiling. Beneath the light are a small round table and two chairs bathed in the golden light. My throat seizes. Sitting at the table facing me is a man wearing dress slacks, his torso clad in a white tank top. He’s lean, hard, tautly muscled and his feet are bare. Blond and clean-shaven, he is handsome in a sharpfeatured way. Blue eyes flick up to pierce me. Blue as the summer sky and cold as ice. His fingers twist a beer bottle by the neck, rolling the bottom edge along the tabletop. This is my husband—the knowledge is there inside me, automatic and undeniable. My gut roils. “Beer?” His voice is quiet and low, and it reminds me of a snake in the grass. “Sure.” I feel off-balance. Unsure. He was waiting for me. I cross the kitchen and sit down at the table. He doesn’t leave his chair, but leans back and opens the refrigerator door. He pulls out two beers and uses a bottle opener to remove the caps. He sets one in front of me; the other is for him, for when he finishes the one in his hand. I take a sip, waiting for him to speak first. Nerves blaze through me. “Said you were going for groceries,” he says, speaking the words into the mouth of the bottle. “I—” What do I say? I’m utterly lost. “Don’t see no groceries.” He finishes the beer, and starts on the second. “And you were gone a

good long while, especially seein’ as you ain’t got no groceries with you.” He knows. God, he knows. Shame burns in my gut; guilt boils in my throat. How could I do something like this? “It’s him, ain’t it?” His voice is bitter. “That rich fuck from across town. The one with the ginger bitch of a wife. He’s had his eye on you since the day we moved here.” He stands up. Slams back the beer, drains half the bottle, and then sets it down roughly. “Can’t deny it, can you? I knew it. I’ve known for a while, I guess.” “I’m not sure what to say.” His eyes find mine, flaying me with distain. “Nothin’ to say.” A shrug. “You ain’t never loved me.” “I’m sorry.” I stare down at the bottle, at the table, anywhere but at him. His hurt is buried deep, but I see it. “I don’t know how it happened. It just…happened.” He drains the rest of the beer. “Don’t know how it happened?” A laugh, bitter, but not without humor. “He cornered you at that holiday party last year. I saw the way he looked at you. And I sure as fuck saw the way you looked at him. Ya’ll both coulda eaten each other. Right then and there, like some kinda animals. That, or started fuckin’ on the floor or somethin’.” “I…” I shrug, shake my head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say but I’m sorry.” He circles around the table and stands beside my chair. He hooks his foot around the leg of the chair and effortlessly tugs the chair, with me on it, around so I face him. “Look at me.” His voice is low, sharp as razors. I lift my eyes to his. “You fuck him?” “No.” “Bullshit.” “We haven’t had sex.” That much is true. I drink, long swallows of the beer. Swish it in my mouth to remove the taste of cum. To remove, perhaps, the memory of it, as well. “But you done other shit.” I don’t answer, and he nods, turns away. Wipes his mouth with his hand. “I don’t give it to you good enough? That it?” He crouches in front of me. Breath beer-sour, but his eyes are sharp, lucid, angry. He lifts a hand, almost tenderly, to cup my jaw. His palms are work-roughened, his fingers strong. I can feel the strength in his hand even though he’s only barely touching me. I’m trembling under his touch. Will he hurt me? I don’t know. Fear rifles through me. He stares at me, eyes flicking side to side, searching my face. “You screamed plenty loud the other night,” he says, murmuring, barely above a whisper. “So either you was enjoyin’ what I was doin’ to you, or you oughta move to Hollywood and be in a movie.” He leans closer. His lips part and drift lightly across mine, and then his teeth catch my lower lip and tug. The sting of his teeth in my lip is sharp. He releases my lip, but doesn’t move away. His mouth remains almost-but-not-quite touching mine, and I can taste his breath, feel it, hear it. His hand is on my jaw, gentle but insistent. His other is on my thigh, easy and familiar. My heart hammers, and it’s not entirely fear. “Which is it? Huh, babe? You fake it last time I was fuckin’ you, or did you enjoy it?” I can’t answer. I’m frozen, petrified, confused, disoriented. He stands abruptly, shooting to his feet. His strong hand circles my wrist and he yanks me to my feet. I stumble, my low heels clacking on the tile. He catches me against his chest, and I can feel his heartbeat, slow and steady. I can feel his erection, too. He’s getting off on this? He presses his mouth to my ear. “I don’t think you was fakin’ it. See, you been my wife for near on six years now. You may not have ever loved me, but I know for damn sure you enjoyed ridin’ on me like I was a prize stallion or some shit. You’ve never faked it a day in your life. You like it too much

to have to fake it.” I can’t breathe. I don’t think he’s lying, but I wish he were; I don’t want to be this person. He moves his face away from mine, so he can search my face. He nudges aside my hair with an index finger. Tender, gentle, despite the anger in his eyes and the heat in his voice. “So what is it? He got a bigger dick than me? Is it that he’s got more money than me? News flash, babe, he ain’t givin’ up that wife of his. Not for a woman like you. You ain’t gettin’ his money. So it’s his dick? He fuck you better than I fuck you? What is it?” “I don’t know.” My voice is a squeaking whisper. “I don’t know!” “You don’t know.” “No. I don’t know.” I breathe out slowly, fighting for composure. “All I know is I’m sorry I’ve hurt you.” “Hurt me?” He laughs. “Hurt me, she says. That ain’t it, sweetheart. Angry? Sure as hell. Jealous? Hell, yes. Embarrassed. Definitely. Hurt? No, not quite.” I move away from him and back up a few steps. “I’m tired. I’d like to go to sleep.” He follows me. “I don’t think so. Not yet.” He closes in again, and I can’t move away. “How about this. I got me an idea. We’ll play a little game, you and me. All you gotta do is tell me to stop, and you can go to bed. You can even have the bed to yourself, if that’s the way you want it. I can sleep in the other room. So, them’s the rules. Just tell me no. Tell me to stop.” He circles around behind me, and all I can feel is him, all I can smell is him. He is at the center of every sense I possess. I close my eyes, breathe in slowly, and let it out slowly. I feel him, behind me. He presses his nose to my hair and inhales. He gathers a thick sheaf of it in his hands and places it over my shoulder to bare my neck. Damp hot lips touch my nape; I shudder, exhale sharply. He moves, kissing the curve of my shoulder. I feel his fingers dimpling my hip. Dancing across the swell of my ass. Drifting up my spine. His touch is light, sure. I can’t help another shiver, another shudder. I feel him pinch the zipper pull between my shoulder blades. He tugs it down to unzip my dress. I’m not breathing at all now as he unzips it all the way, nestling the zipper just above the small of my back. His lips, warm and moist, kiss the sliver of flesh bared by the open zipper. From between my shoulder blades down, down, down, his fingers nudge open the gap. I feel him crouch behind me, feel his hands slide up the bare flesh of my back, over my shoulders, pushing my dress with it. Stop. The word does not emerge; I am weak. So weak. I’m trembling, yes, afraid, but also something else, something darker. There’s a part of me that’s…excited by this. I want to hate it, yet what I actually feel is hate for that part of myself that isn’t repulsed but, rather, the exact opposite. I just had another man’s cock in my mouth. He had his face in my cunt. And now my husband is touching me. But his touch is…different. He knows my body. I feel my dress pool at my feet. “Damn, baby, look at you all bare-ass under that dress.” He’s still behind me, standing now, mouth to my ear. “Gotta say, you sure are beautiful. You know I’ve always thought that.” His voice tells me he’s speaking the truth. I’m naked. Utterly bare. Trembling, knees shaking. There’s a chill in the air, making my flesh pebble. Making my nipples harden and stand at attention. Or is it him? He’s not touching me, but I can feel him. I feel his mouth again, at my nape. Trickling downward, trailing kisses along my spine. Kissing the left globe of my ass. The right. His hands, then, cupping my ass. Lifting the globes, letting them fall free with a bounce. A pat, gentle, testing, teasing. Palm smoothing in circles on the left side.

SMACK! I cry out and lurch forward under the force of his hand cracking across my ass. Hard. Hard. The stinging ache shoots through me, and I don’t even have time to catch my breath before his hand slaps the right side, too, just as hard. He slaps me with enough force to rock my body, to send searing pain shoot through me. Tears prick in my eyes from the fire of the pain. There’s a searing sensation somewhere else, though. I ache somewhere else. The word “stop” is not on my tongue. God, what’s wrong with me? He caresses each of my ass cheeks with his hands, soft, gentle, tender circles of his palms. And then— SMACK! SMACK! One side, then the other, so fast it feels like a single blow. I cry out again, dance forward, away. “I don’t think so, sweetheart. You know you like it. You always act like you don’t, but you do. So just stand there and take it.” His voice is rough, hard. His left hand steals around my body to cup my breast. My nipple aches, throbs, begs. And he provides release. His finger and thumb pinch the sensitive bud, pinching hard, so fucking hard I can’t even breathe to scream, and then he releases my nipple, and his other hand spanks my ass cheek. Hard as before. I struggle to breathe, to fight the ache between my thighs. Then he pinches my nipple and spanks me at the same time and I cry out, a breathless half-scream, from the pain that sears through me, from the way it sends the burning ache between my thighs into a blazing inferno, so hot and so heavy. A million tons of ripping pressure is building up within me so that I writhe in place, rubbing my thighs together. I’m crying. Hyperventilating, actually. Gasping, sobbing. But he’s not done. Another pinch, to the other nipple, and another spank. One, then the other. And then simultaneously. And I’m on fire, now. Weak in the knees and panting. My skin tingles all over, my ass throbs, my nipples pulse. My core is a knot of pressure and heat. He’s in front of me now, his long lean body still clothed in the slacks and tank top. His zipper is bulging, tented. Bending over me, staring down at me, eyes hooded, expression unreadable. Eyes on mine, he slides a middle finger against my clit, and I whimper. God yes, I think, but I don’t say. I want to say it. Stop, please stop, I want to say, but don’t. He gathers my hair in his fist and tugs my head back so I have look up at him. I meet his gaze, let him see into me. And then he kisses me. His tongue blasts between my teeth, scouring my mouth, tangling with my tongue, his lips moving on mine, stealing my breath, making me dizzy. His finger slides inside me. Deep, curling, sweeping, dragging my essence out and smearing it on my clit. He’s using two fingers now, moving in circles. He keeps a grip on my hair, making sure I’m looking up at him while he fingers me. Dips in, withdraws. Circles. My knees threaten to give out, but I refuse to hold on to him. I don’t know why. I close my eyes and fight it, but he bites my lower lip and whispers. “Look me in the eye while you come all over my

hand. Don’t you close your eyes.” His touch on my clit is deft and sure and quick, two fingers lightly touching, circling just so, finding the perfect pressure and rhythm to force my hips into motion, forcing me to writhe and buck on his hand, forcing me to ride his touch. Two fingers, and I come undone. I cry out, a distraught wail, head tossed back, hair flailing across my face, my knees finally give out. He catches me. I have no choice but to lean against him, cheek to his chest, gasping for breath, panting, trembling, aftershocks quaking through my body. When I’ve recovered, he steps back from me. Peels his tank top off, baring his torso. He’s hard and lean. Whipcord, razor blade. He unbuttons his slacks, letting them fall. He shoves down his briefs and stands naked in front of me. It’s not his dick that caused me to stray; he’s plenty hung. He’s nearly as long as that of the man with whom I’m cheating, and probably thicker. Straight, where the other is curved ever so slightly. He sidles up to me, pressing his body against mine, sandwiching his cock between us. Wraps his arms around me, hands clawing down my spine to grip my ass. Then he bends at the knees, and lifts me. I can’t breathe, cannot see anything but him and his eyes, blue as the sky at noon, hot with desire. Need. Passion. Not love, but…something deep and dark and secret I don’t know the word for. His grip on my ass pulls me apart for him, and my legs wrap around him instinctively, and somehow he finds me without guidance, his cock driving up into my cunt as if it belongs there. He hisses as he fills me, and I can’t even do that for the wild wicked burn of his cock stretching me apart. He’s holding my weight easily, flexing his hips to fill me, and once he’s inside me, he lets me fall to bury himself balls-deep, and we both cry out. “I know you, babe.” He adjusts his grip on me and lifts me, sliding his shaft out, and then he drops me again, and I cry out, loud, a shuddering sound. “I know how you like it.” He fucks once more, driving his hips up, lifting up on his toes, and my cry is strangled, cut off as he drives into me, the force of his thrust and the splitting size of his cock blasting all thoughts out of me, stealing my breath. And then he puts me down and pulls out. I stagger. “Bend over the table,” he commands. I don’t comply immediately, so he grabs me by the arms and pivots me. He snags a fistful of hair and shoves me forward, bending me over the table. The surface is cool and smooth under my body, hard against my face. His touch, when it comes, is surprisingly gentle. Skating up my spine. Brushing my hair aside. Sliding around my hip, between my thighs, fingering my pussy, he fits his cock to my slit. Nudging in. Slowly. Filling me inch by inch, until his hips are flush to my ass. He withdraws equally slowly, holds himself still with just the tip of his cock inside me. Slides. Moves slowly and gently…almost sweetly, almost tenderly, almost lovingly. And then pauses, buried deep. “I know how you like it,” he says. “Not like this, though. Give it to you gentle and sweet, and you don’t get off.” He drives with his hips, fucks into me hard, our bodies meeting with a loud slap, and I can’t help but scream, because he’s right, he’s fucking right, goddamn him. “That’s how you like it. You like it rough. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you don’t like it when I fuck you so hard you can’t walk the next morning.” I can’t tell him that.

Deep down, I know it’s true. Because when he loved me slow, I was silent. When he fucks me hard, I scream. I could feel the strength to tell him to stop gathering when he moved slow and sweet; now that he’s fucking me hard, I have no words. It’s too good. He knows me. Knows just how I like. Knows the angle, fuck, that angle right there, that makes his cock strike inside me so perfectly that I can’t help but cry out, can’t help but scrabble at the table and grind back into him. Can’t help but come, just from the way he fucks me. He feels it when I come. Knows it. Thrusts the way I need it all the way through the wrenching ripping spasms of my orgasm and through the aftershocks, until I’m struggling to keep my feet. And then pulls out. And my knees give out. He lets me fall, and my kneecaps slam onto the tile, painfully. I rest my forehead against the edge of the table, gasping, sweating, panting, gripping the table for dear life. Feel him tug at my shoulder, and I move to rise to my feet. “No, stay down.” His voice is rough and low. Raspy, gravelly, as if damaged by smoke or too much shouting. He tugs me around and I, shaky and weak from my orgasm, comply. I stay on my knees, facing him. Stare up at him. Watch as he slides his fist around his cock, squeezing hard, the thick head sprouting up around his fist, long inches bared. I expect him to thrust into my mouth, expect him to grab my hair. But he doesn’t, he just stands over me, eyes narrowed, jaw clenched, chest heaving as he jerks himself harder and faster and more roughly. I can’t move. Why can’t I move? Why can’t I tell him to stop? He comes hard, with a grunt. Fist slamming harshly down from tip to root, gripping there at the base, pointing at me. At my face. I feel it, hot wet stickiness splatting onto my face, onto my forehead and into my hair and across my nose. Again he comes, this time in my eyes, stinging, and again, on my lips, on my chin. Coating my face with spurt after spurt of cum. Something sharp slices through me, through my chest, through my heart. Stabs into my gut. Humiliation. Disgust. Embarrassment. Anger. I blink, but the cum is sticky, viscous, blinding me. I wipe at it, but only manage to smear it worse. It’s in my nose. In my mouth. I open the one eye that isn’t cum-blinded, and stare up at him. “You fucking bastard.” My voice is the thin sharp hiss of a blade sliding out of a sheath. “You’re the whore. You oughta be used to it.” He bends, lifts my dress off the kitchen floor, wipes his dick clean with it, and then tosses it at me. It lands on my head, draping over my face. Sticks to the cum. “Get out.” “And go where?” I say, removing the dress from my face. The fabric sticks to itself, now. “Fuck if I care. Maybe if you suck a couple dicks, you can afford a motel.” “Maybe this treatment is why I cheated on you. You’re an asshole.” I stand up, put on the dress, not bothering to hide the wince of disgust as the cum-wet fabric sticks to me. I move to the sink, wet the hand towel and wash my face. This gets me a bark of laughter. “Nah. If I’m an asshole, it’s ‘cause you made me this way.” I turn to face him, and damn me, but his expression looks almost pained, as if he’s hurting and hiding it beneath the mask of anger and hardness. “I use’ta love you.” “If you loved me, you wouldn’t kick me out like this.” He merely takes a few slow breaths, his mask hardening, then he turns away, strides out of the kitchen and into the hallway. He returns with a small battered leather suitcase. “Then I guess I was wrong, huh?” Sets the suitcase on the floor in front of me. “Out. Now.”

I lift the suitcase, but don’t move. He snarls in exasperation. Bodily, he forces me to pivot in a circle and into a walk. Out of the kitchen, out the front door, onto the stoop. He pauses to tug off his gold wedding band and tosses it into the street. I hear it tinkle across the ground. “Don’t come back.” The door shuts behind me, the knob hitting me in the back. I hear the deadbolt thud home, a chain rattle and slide in place. Locked out. It’s the middle of the night. I take a shaky step down, two, three, four. Onto the sidewalk. I’m moving, but I don’t know where I’m going. My purse, somehow, is hanging from my shoulder. I open it; inside is a compact, two tubes of lipstick, a handful of ticket stubs, a pencil and a fountain pen, an address book, a change purse, a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches, and—hidden carefully under layers of the other items, a small, tightly rolled tube of cash. My emotions are locked out, shut down. I tighten my back, swallow the lump in my throat and force my feet to move. I’m walking aimlessly. Except…I’m not. My feet carry me back the way I came, somehow, to the alley. I look through the window in the door and see that the fire is doused, the room is empty, and the only light the dim orange glow of the coals. I hear something, above me. I look up: a window is open, one floor up. What I heard was a squeak- bed springs. The knock of a headboard against a wall. I will my feet to carry me somewhere else, but they don’t move. “Oh…oh—god. Yes! Yes!” A woman’s voice, breathy, every other syllable strained, accompanying the sound of slapping flesh. “Is that good?” Him. “It’s perfect, love. Harder!” Her. Slap-slap-SLAP-SLAP “Like that?” Him. “Just like that…don’t stop—don’t stop…never stop!” Her. “Oh…fuck. I’m coming, babe, I’m gonna come.” Him. “Let me feel it—ohhhh—y-yeah, yes, oh god, I feel you coming,” she whimpers. “God, I love you.” “I love you, too.” I’m nauseous. They stop talking, then, but I hear it all. Him grunting. Her moaning breathily, the squeak and slam, his long, drawn out groan of orgasm. Her gasping sob of climax. The slowing of the squeaking springs, and the silencing of the slamming headboard. I can’t move away. What kind of woman am I? I let him, a married man, fuck my throat. Let him eat my pussy. Then I went home and let my husband make me come and let him fuck me, and let him come on my face. And then he kicked me out, and my first thought it to go back to the man I’m cheating with? And then, I overhear him making love to his wife. Not fucking her throat. Not coming on her tits, or her face. Making love to her. Calling her babe. Shame guts through me. Self-hatred. Disgust. Humiliation. My eyes look upward, and there he is. Hanging out the window, shirtless. Fitting a cigarette to his lips. Striking a match. The small circle glows brightly orange, illuminating his face. He stares down

at me. “I’ll be right back,” he says, not looking away from me. “Where are you going?” Her voice says, more distant. “There’s…a stray cat out in the alley. Gonna shoo it away.” “Well, come back fast. I’m gonna want it again before we sleep.” “Oh, you’ll get it again. Don’t you worry about that.” He retreats from the window. Several seconds pass, and he emerges from the door through which he ejected me, not long before. Clad in a thin silk dressing gown, tied loosely at his waist, revealing his muscular chest. He grabs me by the bicep, squeezing too hard, and propels me out of the alley and onto the sidewalk. He glances around to make sure we’re alone. “What the fuck are you doing?” He hisses. I lift the suitcase in answer. “He found out. Kicked me out of my own home.” He passes a hand through his loose, wild black hair. “Dammit. I knew this would happen.” “Does she know?” I can’t help asking. He gestures at the alley. “Did it sound like she knows?” I wait. Hoping for some word from him. Something. Anything. He only stares at me. Finally, after a long silence, his inscrutable brown gaze hard on mine, he rolls his eyes in frustration. “Fuck. Just wait here.” He vanishes into the alley, into his home, and reappears a few seconds later, trailing cigarette smoke like a gray thread. He hands me a small brass key. “Here. Go to the Grey Manor Inn. You know the one, a few blocks north of here—” he points with his cigarette, indicating the direction. “This key is for room nineteen, second floor. Go straight there. Stay there for tonight. In fact, just stay there until I can come to you.” “When will that be?” I hate the tremulous note in my voice. “Tomorrow, sometime.” A shrug. “When I can. After breakfast, perhaps. She usually goes to one of her clubs around nine.” “Thank you.” He nods. Then scrutinizes me, takes a last drag of his cigarette before tossing it away. “I’m not leaving her, I hope you understand that.” My heart pangs again, my gut sinks and falls away. I manage a nod. “Yes. I understand.” Another long moment of silence, and then, just as I turn away, he speaks once more. “He didn’t hurt you, did he? He seems like a rough sort.” I blink away a tear, turning swiftly away from him. “No. He didn’t hurt me.” “So he just threw you out, just like that?” I shrug. “Does it matter what he did? It’s not like you care.” I hear a hiss of anger. “It’s not like that. It’s never been like that. I thought you understood.” “I understand perfectly,” I say, wanting to throw the key back in his face. But I don’t, because I need somewhere to sleep. At least for tonight. A few blocks north turns out to be half a mile, and by the time I find the Grey Manor Inn, my feet throb and I’m barely fighting a breakdown. It’s a three-story building, aptly named. It is constructed of grey stone blocks, leaded and arched windows, a steeply pitched roof, a black awning over the sidewalk. The lobby is empty except for an elderly man behind the check-in desk. “May I help you, ma’am?” I hold up the key, not daring to speak for fear of the sobs I’m barely holding back. The man nods. “Very well, then, ma’am. Welcome back.” I continue to hold it together as I board the elevator, ride it up to the second floor, and find room

nineteen. It’s dark. Silent. Smells faintly of cigarettes. It’s small, just a bed with a nightstand, a desk, a bureau, and a bathroom. I lock the door behind me, staggering for the bed, sobs beginning to wrack me. How did I get to this place? I’m not that woman. I’m not the other woman. I’m not. I can’t be. I fall onto the bed, let my shoes fall off my feet. I don’t bother removing my dress, even though there’s patch of my husband’s cum stiffening the fabric near my left hip. Choking sobs boil through me, out of me, weakening me until I know nothing more.

… I wake in the same position as I fell asleep in: prone across the bed, head pillowed on my arms, feet hanging off the bed. Sunlight streams in a narrow beam from a crack in the heavy drapes, telling me it’s daytime. Which hour, I don’t know; there’s a small alarm clock on the nightstand, reading 8:48. I peel off the dress and take a shower, scrubbing my skin hard. Too hard, perhaps. My husband didn’t bother with niceties when he packed this suitcase. Nothing is folded, everything is just shoved in willy-nilly. I find a dress, a bra, a pair of stockings. There’s a complimentary comb in the bathroom, but no brush, so it must do. My stomach growls noisily. I will not remain here as if imprisoned, waiting for an arrival which may or may not come for hours, if ever. I close the suitcase, leave the room, stuffing the key into my purse. I walk out of the inn and find myself fortunate that there’s a diner across the street, with a view of the entrance to the inn. I ask for a table near the window, and position myself where I can keep watch on the inn. I count the money in the roll: $235. Not a fortune, but enough, I hope. For what, I don’t know. I order food, coffee, and sit. Watching. Waiting. I enjoy the food and drink several cups of excellent coffee. Then I wait some more. A clock on the wall provides the time, the minute hand creeping around to the half hour, and then to the hour. 10:15; 10:30. My heart catches in my throat. I see not him, but her. She’s with a man. Not him, but someone else. Medium height at best, stocky, slicked back black hair, a tailored suit, oxford wingtips, an overcoat over his arm. The fingertips of his hand rest on her waist, near her ass. They enter the Grey Manor Inn. I throw money on the table and scurry across the street. I don’t know why, or what I hope to accomplish. I find them in the lobby, him checking in, her waiting near the elevators. I busy myself pretending to search in my purse, and then they’re on the elevator and I, heart pounding, follow them. I shrink into the corner, away from them. I needn’t have bothered with subterfuge; they each have eyes only for each other. His hands paw at her ass, hers at his shoulders, their lips locked. The elevator stops on the third floor. They lurch off, kissing, stumbling, him walking backward. I let the elevator almost close, and then get off after them. I follow behind them and catch sight of them just as they vanish into a room, closing the door behind them. They can be heard from several feet away. Him grunting. Her moaning. Right up against the door. It’s all I need to hear. More than I need, if anything. I go back down to the second floor, just in time to see the door to room nineteen close behind a tall, broad body. I approach the door and fit the key in the lock. He’s angry. He’s wearing a three-piece suit. Brown, with a pale blue tie. Polished shoes. A pocket watch curves across his chest. His damp hair is combed back neatly. His beard has been trimmed and brushed. He wears a spotless, crisp white shirt, cuffs done with silver cufflinks stamped with a crest. “I told you to stay.” His voice hums with anger.

“I’m not a damned dog, or a servant at your disposal.” “You could have been seen.” “By whom?” He merely stares me down. “Key.” I dig it out of my purse and hand it to him. I wait until he’s tucked it into a pocket before I deliver my news. “I did see someone.” He tenses. “Who?” “Your wife.” His tension bleeds out immediately. “Oh. She meets friends near here. Bridge club, or something.” “You think so?” I wish I could sound more cutting, but I can only manage a sharp sarcasm. “Only if her bridge club meets in this hotel, on the third floor, and if her friend is another man.” “I didn’t take you for the scheming sort.” I gesture at the elevator. “This way. I’ll prove it to you.” He follows me onto the elevator, and the tension has returned, showing in the set of his shoulders, the clench and release of his jaw. “What did he look like?” His voice is quiet, barely above a murmur. “Not as tall as you, stocky, well-dressed. Black hair slicked back. Not ugly, but…not handsome, either.” “Fuck.” This is spat venomously. “So you’re allowed to stray, but she isn’t?” “Stray?” He sounds amused. “Is that what you’d call this? Straying?” “Adultery? Cheating? What would you call it?” He declines to answer, stepping off the elevator as it opens. I lead him to the correct door. He puts his ear to the door, but all that can be heard are voices murmuring low. He glances at me, positions me to the side, out of sight. “Stay out here.” And then he knocks on the door, three sharps raps. “Management!” he calls out, in a loud voice, somewhat higher pitched than his is naturally. A moment, a rattling, and then the door opens. Silence. “Shit.” A male voice, with a Bronx accent. “It’s your husband.” Her voice, surprised. “Wh—what are you—” she sputters to a stop, sighs in resignation, restarts much more composedly, her voice arch, elegant. “I suppose there’s no point in pretending. I know about your indiscretion, you know. Is she here, as well? Wouldn’t that be something? Both of us carrying on our affairs in the same hotel? Which floor are you on?” He just stands there. Hands clenching and unclenching. Silent. “Well? Say something, darling, or go away. I’ll see you at home later.” “At home?” “Well, yes, of course. I’ve known about your little cross-town tramp for some time. This doesn’t have to change anything. We’re all rational adults, after all.” “Rational.” He seems at a loss. “You never said anything.” I can almost hear the shrug in her voice. “You come home to me at night. She’s merely a distraction. You’ll tire of her charms eventually, and that will be that.” A long, long, icy silence. At last, he speaks, and now his voice is merely tired. “You have the advantage, I must admit. I wasn’t expecting this.” “How could you not expect it? You’ve been dallying with that tramp of yours for months, darling. And not discreetly, either, I might add. I smelled her in your study last night. I smelled her on you. I smelled her on your beard. Do you have any idea how disgusting and insulting that is? And anyway,

what did you think I would do? Faint? Get angry? Divorce you? I think not.” A brief pause. “Although, to be fair, I’ve been stepping out longer than you have.” “Really.” This is delivered as a flat, emotionless statement, rather than a question. “Yes, quite. For years, now. Do I really seem the bridge club type to you?” He flinches, as if struck. “So the bridge club…?” “Was a bald-faced lie, yes. Just like your trip to New York was a lie.” “I did go to New York.” “But not for business. The only business you did was with your whore, on her back. Or knees, knowing your predilections.” “She’s not a whore. No more than you are.” “Whatever you say. I won’t bandy words with you.” “You told me you loved me, just last night.” “I do love you. Of course I do! I’m just not in love with you, but then neither are you with me.” “I was.” “And so was I with you, once upon a time. But then there was that dreadful business with the miscarriage. We never really recovered our relationship after that, did we?” “How can you stand there and discuss that so blithely? How can you be so blasé?” Now there’s emotion in his voice. A lot of it, thick and roiling and tense. He steps forward, fists clenching at his sides. “Are you so cold that it meant nothing to you?” “How dare you.” This is spat, hissed. “How fucking dare you, you bastard! I wept for months. I needed you. But you buried yourself in work. You vanished before dawn, and returned after dark. I mourned alone. It wasn’t until I started seeking comfort in other men that I started really healing from the loss. You didn’t think it had anything to do with you that I improved, did you?” “This isn’t the place or time for this discussion.” “Oh no? I think it is. We’ve never discussed it. Why not now? Why not here?” “It’s private.” “Not anymore.” He steps backward, slowly. Glances at me, and then runs his palm over his beard, an agitated gesture. “I’m leaving.” I see a hint of ginger hair as she leans out the door to look at me. Wrapped in a flat sheet, holding it to her breasts with one hand, the other gripping the door frame. Hair wild, an explosion of red around her shoulders. Just-fucked hair. “Oh, it’s you.” She wrinkles her nose as if she smells something foul. “The guttersnipe. I’ve never understood what he sees in you, aside from your admittedly enviable bust size.” Anger burns hot, but shame and guilt burn hotter. “I wasn’t trying to steal him.” A laugh, sarcastic, bitter, superior. “Steal him? Oh, you poor little thing. You could never steal anything from me, least of all my husband. I lost him a long time ago, but that’s not the point.” “You’re a bitch.” I turn to walk away. “I suppose. Better a bitch with culture and class and money than a penniless whore from the wrong side of the tracks, though.” I feel her derision like a knife. I don’t have to look at her to know she’s smirking in triumph. The anger takes over, then, and before I can second-guess myself, I’m whirling, launching my fist at her smug, beautiful face. My knuckles smash into her nose, and she flies backward, screaming, blood spurting from her nostrils. I move to hit her again, but thick arms like iron bands wrap around me, pull me backward, and haul me away. “Enough.” His voice is in my ear, low, deep, rough. “It’s not worth it.” “You broke my nose!” This, from the floor, garbled, through a mouthful of blood. “I’ll have you

arrested!” “Babe, enough.” The New York accent, this time. “You ain’t callin’ no cops.” He leans out, barrelchested torso bare, a towel around his waist, and glances at us. “Why don’t youse guys get the fuck outta here, huh?” “We’re going.” “Put me down,” I say. “I’ll walk.” He sets me down, but doesn’t release me, keeps a grip on my arm with one hand. “No more bullshit.” “I’m done,” I say. “Good. Then let’s get out of here.” He glances back at his wife. “Expect divorce papers within the week. I own room nineteen, on the floor below us. You can have that, for now.” “I don’t want your apartment.” Her voice is sullen, pained. “I don’t want anything from you.” A shrug. “Suit yourself.” “Maybe you oughta take it,” comes that thick accent again. “It might take me a while to find somewhere to put you up.” “I’m not your mistress!” This is shouted, followed by the sound of spitting, and a gob of bloody saliva flies to land in the hallway. “I don’t need anything from you, either.” There’s a brief silence, then scuffling, and then she flies out of the room, tugging on her dress, fumbling to zip it with one hand, juggling her shoes, bra, and underwear in the other, purse on her shoulder. Still bleeding from her nose, blood on her chin and lips, she stalks past us to the elevator, jabbing her thumb at the call button. She steps into her panties, shimmies them up her legs, and then drops her dress into place. Works her arms out of the sleeves one by one, puts her bra on without taking her dress off. She glances around, looking for something, and her gaze settles upon her husband. She reaches out and snatches his handkerchief from his suit coat’s breast pocket, unfolds it, dabs at her nose gingerly, wiping away the blood, folding the handkerchief. She wipes her chin, her lips, and then digs in her purse for a compact. She examines herself in the compact, touches up her lipstick, and runs her hands through her hair to settle it, arrange it. She takes a deep breath as the elevator car arrives, opens, and she steps on, pivoting to face us. She stares hard at her husband, eyes sparking. “Send the papers to my parents in Connecticut. You have the address?” “My secretary does.” “Did you fuck her, too, your secretary?” Her voice is bitter and tremulous. “No.” The doors begin to close. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.” “For what it’s worth, so am I.” She glances at me, and then she lifts her hand toward me, middle finger extended. “Fuck you.” That gives her the last word as the doors close. From behind us comes a chuckle. “Damn, am I gonna miss her. She was a real firecracker. Especially in the sack.” A grumbling growl comes from beside me. But he doesn’t respond. Just presses the call button, shoves his fist in his trouser pocket, and rattles loose change. After a while, the elevator arrives once more, and we ride down to the lobby. I follow him outside, and then he stops on the sidewalk, as if at a loss. “What now?” I ask. He shrugs. “I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting this.” “It’s kind of a mess, isn’t it?” A short, sharp laugh. “A bit of one, yes.” He glances down at me, sidelong. “What’s next for you?”

I mimic his shrug. “I have no idea. I didn’t know what I was going to do before all this happened. Even less so, now.” “We could be clueless together.” He offers me a hesitant smile, as if exploring the idea of a smile for the first time. My heart pitter-patters. “I’d like that.” He nods slowly. Tangles his fingers in mine. He stares at our joined hands, curious, bemused. “Together, then.” A beat of silence. “Have you ever been to the Carolina coast?” I shake my head. “I don’t think so.” “I have a cottage there.” He reaches into his pocket with his free hand. Rattles that change again. “Do you need to get anything?” “Everything I own is in my suitcase.” I lift the suitcase, which has been in my hand this whole time. “OK, let’s get it and then go to my house. It won’t take long to pack a few things.” “I have nothing but time.” He eyes me, a strange expression on his face. “You know, there’s one other thing I have to do, first.” We go across the street and into the diner I had so recently left. He asks to borrow a telephone, dialling a number from memory, his finger swiping swiftly around the rotary dial. “Yes, hello, Mrs. Johnson, it’s me. Put me through to the boss, will you? Thanks, my dear…Good morning, sir. I know I’m late, and I’m sorry about that, but I’m afraid I’m only going to make your day worse. I’m quitting. Right now. Effective immediately. Things have sort of come unglued for me, Jim, and I’m not really sure where I’m going to land. I’ll understand if you can’t provide references, given the unexpected nature—well hell, that’s swell, boss, thanks. You’re too good to me. I know, this too shall pass and all that…yes, sir. No, I’d rather not discuss it, if that’s all right. Yes, sir, just mail my pay check to my home. I’ll be having my mail forwarded to wherever I end up. All right, goodbye. Thanks for everything.” We collect my suitcase and then walk to his home. I wait in his study while he packs a bag, which takes less than fifteen minutes. We’re on a bus within an hour. I doze, then, hours upon hours of passing scenery interspersed with blank spaces of sleeping, my head on his shoulder. Eventually he shakes me with a gentle hand. “We’re here.” I stretch, languid, feline. “Where’s here?” “Charleston, South Carolina.”

…. His cottage is a cozy, delightful little place right on the water ’s edge, tucked in among towering palm trees. There’s a deep porch with a swing and steps leading down to the sand. A handrail and faded footboards meander between the dunes down to the sea. Dune grass waves in the warm breeze; the crash of the surf is a gentle, soothing lullaby. He moves about the cottage, opening doors and windows, removing dust covers from the furniture. I find my way down to the beach, let my toes be tickled by the water, watching the sea ripple in the golden gleam of the sun. I lift the hem of my dress up above my knees and wade into the water, deeper and deeper, until I have to raise the hem to my waist. I should be more modest, I suppose, but I can’t bring myself to care. There’s no one in either direction. No one to see me, except him. Just then, I feel him behind me. Wading in after me, wearing a pair of swim trunks and nothing else. He stops and toys with the zipper pull tab of my dress. “This is the only cottage for miles in either direction. We’re alone.” I turn my head to look at him, pull my hair in front over one shoulder. He lowers the zipper to the small of my back, then tugs the dress up and off me. He bunches it into a wad, and tosses it onto the sand. I’m in my bra and panties, feeling a thrill of daring. Feeling, also, very much unsure about what is going on, with him and me. What is this? Where is it going? What does any of it mean? But those thoughts are erased by his touch, his fingertips on my shoulders. Dragging my bra straps aside, he flicks open the catch of my bra. He gives it to the waves. I should care, but I don’t. His touch is magic, sorcery, banishing all the I-shoulds from my mind. I should care that my husband tossed me out, that the man behind me just left his wife. That this thing between us, whatever it is, has its roots in infidelity. I should care that my bra is floating away. I should care that he’s tugging my panties down and that now they’re gone, too. I should care that I’m naked for anyone to see. But I don’t. I do not care about any of that. Not yet, at least. Perhaps I will, later. Or tomorrow. Or next month. I don’t know. What I know is his touch. His hands grazing my ribcage, skating up to cup my breasts. Thumbing my nipple into a diamond-hard erection, sensitive, throbbing. His teeth worry at my earlobe. His chest brushes my back. I can feel his erection, thick and hard. I reach behind me, find the strings of his swim trunks and tug them down, plunging my fist down his hard length. He leans against me, nose in my neck, inhaling. He’s bending at the knees. Nudging my opening with his cock. I gasp as he straightens, driving into me. The water laps at mid-thigh, rising with the waves and receding, teasing just beneath my core. “Jesus…holy shit, you feel so fucking perfect.” His voice is rough and awed. “You know how many times I’ve dreamed about this? How bad I’ve wanted this, with you?” “You did?” I breathe the question. “God, yes. All the time. I masturbated until I was raw, thinking about this.” He swivels his hips, bends his knees, slides out, grunts in my ear, and then slams in. “I fucked my wife and pretended it was you. Last night, I was picturing you. Picturing that blond hair of yours wrapped around my fist.

Picturing those big beautiful breasts of yours bouncing while I fucked you.” I don’t know how I feel about that last admission. “And when you told her you loved her?” “It’d be more true if I’d said it to you rather than to her.” “But it’s not true either way.” “Does it matter?” He sounds irritated. “It might begin to matter, someday. To me.” “Is that what you want from me? For me to tell you I love you?” His voice is tight, tense. He’s huge inside me, motionless, thick and throbbing; I need to move. I ache, and I need to find release. “Not if you don’t mean it.” “Let’s not complicate this, then. I’m not going to say it if I don’t mean it, and you don’t want to hear it if I don’t mean it. I’m not saying I don’t, or that I never will, but I’m just not there yet.” I widen my stance, reach up and clasp my hands around his neck. Sink down so he fills me to splitting. “Shut up and fuck me.” He thrusts up, hard. His palms scrape roughly over my diaphragm, up to cup my breasts. Grip, knead, flick my nipples as he swivels his hips. I moan, lean back against him, hold on to his neck, and let him do the work. I’m not getting there fast enough, though. I keep on hand on his neck, clinging to him for balance, then slide the other one down between my thighs. I press my middle two fingers to my clit, swipe and circle. “God, watching you touch yourself like that…” he grunts and fucks all the harder. “It makes me crazy.” I moan, and my fingers fly faster, press harder. I feel the sizzle and burn of need building, feel him sliding in and out of me, thick cock spreading my pussy open, aching as I stretch to accommodate him. My legs go weak as my fingers move in a blur, heat barreling through me in a grinding blast, gutting me as an orgasm hits, freight-train hard and fast. Instead of following me over the edge, he maintains his pace until I’ve slowed, until I’m gasping and whimpering as the climax recedes, and then he pulls out of me. “You know what I want?” He asks, grabbing me by the arms and turning me around so I’m facing him. I take his cock in my hand and stroke his length, wet with my essence. “I can guess. You want to come on me again, don’t you? That’s what you said you like best, seeing your cum on my skin?” “Now that I’ve been inside you,” he responds, leading me by the hand, pulling me shoreward. “I’ve decided on something else I like best.” “Which is what?” “Watching your pussy take me in.” He snags my panties and bra, which are floating in the water near the shore. “I want to bend you over the bed and fuck you. I want you to ride me. I want to fuck you every way there is, until you beg me to stop.” “I wouldn’t wait for that to happen,” I tell him, following him along the path to the house. I step up onto the porch as he heads toward the open door. “You might be waiting forever, if you do.” He tosses our clothing in a wet heap onto the porch, my dress, my undergarments, his trunks. Naked, and so damned gorgeous. A massive man, six-three or six-four. Two hundred pounds of muscle, not an ounce of fat anywhere on him. Muscled like a god, like a warrior. A thick mat of curly black hair on hard slabs of muscle, taut, defined abs, thick, corded, veined arms. Shoulders broad enough to carry the Earth. A cock the gods would be jealous of, ten inches easily, thicker than my wrist, curved toward his belly, ever so slightly. Jutting up from his heavy balls, shaft wet with my essence. Mmmmmm, that cock.

He reaches behind his back, twists the knob, and shoves the door open. He backs up through it and I follow him. Slowly, though, pretending a casualness I don’t feel. I’m eager. I want more. I always want more of him, and that’s the problem. He’s not mine. Even now, somehow, I feel like he’s not entirely mine. This is an interlude. But that’s fine. I don’t care. I will later, I know. But I’ll borrow bliss today and owe a debt of heartache tomorrow. “Where are you going to fuck me first?” I ask, glancing at the couch. “There?” Turn my gaze to the butcher-block countertop. “Or there?” I peer through the open doorway to the bedroom, where a sliver of the bed is visible. “Or there?” He wraps his fist around his cock, strokes it lazily. Idly. “I’m supposed to choose?” He saunters toward me. “How the hell am I supposed to do that? That’s like offering a starving man an all-youcan-eat-buffet.” He’s in front of me, inches away. The tips of my tits scrape the hair on his chest, a deliciously rough sensation. Despite the rugged masculine beauty of his body, all I can see is his eyes. Brown, molten, scouring my soul. Seeing me. Hungry for me. Needing me. Those eyes, god, I could drown in those eyes. I want to. Drown and never emerge. Remain in their mocha depths forever, lost in him. I want to touch him. Hold him in my hands. Stroke him to orgasm. Fill my palms with his cum. Taste it again. Feel it on my skin. I want him to take me, claim me, make me his. I want to make him mine. I don’t even know if that’s possible…or if it’s even meant to be. I replace his hand with mine. Curl my fingers around his thickness, stroke his length. Feel the silkon-steel in my fist. Relish in the feel of it, caress it, toy with him, not giving him a rhythm to get into. I stare up at him as I fondle his cock, both hands now, then switch to massage his balls, then go back and twist the head and stroke it lazily, slowly, teasingly, lovingly. I caress his cock not for his pleasure, but for mine. For my enjoyment of his beautiful, perfect penis. I take a step backward and pull him with me by his cock. We go to the bedroom, to the bed. I don’t really notice the surroundings, because nothing matters but him and the ache inside me. And my need for him. I need to finish what he started out in the sea, need to feel him finish inside me. I need him to erase what happened with my erstwhile husband. I need to feel wanted. His gaze on my body is a start. The way he reaches for me as I feel the bed hit the backs of my knees, the way his hands caress my skin, greedily but gently, carving his palms over my sides, down to the bell of my hips, cupping my hipbones. Gripping me there, halting my progress up the bed. “Here.” He slides his touch down to my thighs, grips the backs of my knees and lifts my legs, resting my heels on his shoulders. “Let me feel that tight pussy of yours,” he murmurs. “Let me in.” I guide him to my slit. Hold his gaze with mine as I arch my spine up off the bed. I moan, a long, low, growl as he pushes into me. My eyes widen involuntarily as he splits me apart, and then I’m gasping for breath as he plunges deep, filling me until I can’t take anymore, but still he fucks into me, more and more and more of him, stretching me so much it almost hurts, but hurts beautifully, incredibly, and I’m scrabbling at the bedspread and swiveling my hips, trying to…I don’t even know. Take more. Feel him more fully. Experience more of him. “God…oh god…” I moan, arching again, writhing. “More…please…let me feel you.” He moves gently, holding onto my thighs near my hips, pulling me flush against him, my feet now dangling in the air as he leans against me, driving forward with his hips in a slow glide. So gently. Delicately. “Like this?” I shake my head. “No. More. I need more.” I grind against him. “Harder.” He withdraws, slowly, and then slams into me, once, hard. So hard my tits bounce painfully, but his cock in my cunt and, fuck, that’s perfect. So perfect. He slides out, hesitates. Reaches down to caress my breasts. One, the other, both hands, cupping, worshipping. He feathers quick fluttering teasing

touches of his cock in and out of me, just the very tip between the lips of my pussy, teasing, teasing. And then he fucks me, hard. “YES!” I cry out. “Oh fuck…just like that.” He does it again. Teases me with those little fluttering pulses of his plump head almost but not quite inside me, and then slams into me, so hard our flesh slaps and my tits jounce and his hips crack against my ass. “You like it hard?” He growls. “So hard. I like it rough, didn’t you know? I want you to fuck me so hard I can’t breathe.” “Shit…” he groans, the curse drawn out, growled roughly, as if pulled out of him against his will. “Shit, you feel so good. Better than I fantasized.” “What did you picture?” I ask. “When you jerked yourself off to thoughts of me?” “This. Fucking you. Feeling your tight little cunt around my cock. Feeling you squeeze me.” I clamp down around him as hard as I can. “Like this?” He throbs inside me, buried deep, balls against my taint, flesh to flesh. “Fuck yes, just like that. God, just like that. I can’t take it when you do that. I don’t want this to end, you know? I want to hold out and make it last. But when you squeeze around me like that…?” He’s breathless, thrust deep, muscles tensed, sweating now. Holding back. “Don’t,” I breathe. “Give it to me. Give it all to me. Don’t hold back, don’t be gentle, don’t make it last.” I squeeze him again, pulses, now, squeezing and releasing, squeezing and releasing, grinding my hips against him, grinding him in and out of me. He grunts, and his fingers dimple into my flesh, his hands tightening on my thighs, sliding down to grip me by the hips, pulling me to the edge of the bed until I’m completely helpless in his hands, most of my body off the bed, held up by him. Only my shoulders remain on the mattress. “Touch yourself,” he commands. “Touch your pussy. Touch your tits.” My hands scrape across my body, my touch rougher than his would ever be, pinching my nipples and pressing my fingers to my clit. And then he drives into me, as I begin to gasp. There aren’t words for what happens next. There isn’t a descriptor for how hard he fucks me, then. It would excruciating, if I didn’t relish the pain of it, if the pounding force of his hips driving against me didn’t push me to climax so fast I don’t need my fingers. I touch myself anyway, because holy fuck, I don’t think there’s ever been anything like this, or ever will be again, the unutterably perfect way his cock slams into me again and again, so hard I can’t breathe, so hard the pleasure and the pain are intermingled into perfection, drawing screams out of me that reverberate against the walls, echo off the ceiling. His grunts fill my ears, woven through my screams. He fucks me, and he fucks me, and he fucks me, and I squeeze him with all the force I have, touch my clit, and I can’t fight the orgasm, don’t try. I don’t just fall over the edge, I’m thrown over. Blasted past the threshold of climax so hard so fast so furiously it hurts worse than the cracking slapping smacking of his hips against my ass and thighs, a climax so potent and so powerful I don’t just scream but cry, a torrent of wrenching ecstasy and agony in delirious counterpoint, stealing my breath, twisting my body into writhing paroxysms. My orgasm is so blinding I miss the moment when he comes. One second I’m dizzy and screaming and crying and wracked by wave after wave of climax, and then the next I’m struggling to move and he’s on top of me, pinning me to the mattress, panting into my neck, chest heaving, his cock still buried deep. I feel his cum. Wet. Hot. Dripping and sliding and trickling out of me, around his cock and down my inner thighs,

messy, sticky, perfect. He’s shuddering, fluttering his hips as if to milk even the aftershocks of every last bit of bliss. My hands roam his back. Find rough ridges of scars in a network of patches and lines, and then a puckered hole near his shoulder. He gets off me, pulling out reluctantly. He stumbles across the room and out into the hallway, into the bathroom, his steps staggering, as if unsteady. As if I’ve fucked the gracefulness right out of him. I feel proud of that, actually. But as he leaves I really notice his back, and I see the scars. Burn scars and thin lines, all centered low on his back, near his left side. The scar shaped like a puckered hole is up near his right shoulder, inches from his shoulder blade. When he returns, a damp washcloth in his hands, I see a matching scar on his chest. He ignores my curious stare, nudges my thighs apart, and wipes me clean. He looks at me, wordless, his expression inscrutable. He returns the washcloth to the bathroom, and then lies on the bed beside me, hands tucked beneath his head. I curl up near him, but not on him. I’m not sure what’s next. There’s a fan in the ceiling above us, spinning rapidly, stirring the warm air. It’s hot, I’m realizing, now that I’m able to feel or notice anything but him. Humid. The sound of the surf is a pleasant susurrus, marked by the occasional caw of a gull. I touch the round scar on his chest; it’s meant as a question. He extends an arm, reaches for me, and pulls me against his side, my breast squished against his ribcage, my head on his thick bicep. He sighs, deeply, and breathes out. “Got that at Bastogne.” A long, long silence. “Same for the other scar on my back. That one was a grenade. How I made it out alive is a miracle, honestly. Any of us, really. A lotta boys didn’t. Sure you’ve heard the stories by now. Krauts had us pinned. Surrounded, cut off, colder than hell, no coats or gloves, running out of ammo. Fucking coldest days of my life.” He looks down at his feet, wiggles his toes. “Damn near lost my toes to frostbite. It’s why I love it down here so much. Never gets cold. Even now, going on ten years later, if it gets too cold, I flash back.” He’s staring up at the ceiling, watching the fan spin. Eyes vacant, seeing things I’d rather not even think about. I don’t know what to say. How to comfort him. His expression is grim, tense. Angry. Haunted. His whole body is stiff as a board, his arm around my waist tightening, fingers clawing. Jaw grinding. Breath coming in short harsh gasps. “Don’t think much of any of the rest of it,” he says, his tone tight and feigning a casualness I don’t believe. “Normandy, Market Garden, the rest. Doesn’t bother me all that bad. Bastogne? Haunts my fucking nightmares. The cold, more than anything. The endless fucking cold. Gets in your bones and stays there. Heat like this, even now—I know I’m not there anymore but…even heat like this doesn’t quite warm me up. Not all the way.” My heart clenches at the pain in his voice, the despair. What do I say? How am I supposed to comfort him? I move closer to him, drape my thigh over his. Run my fingers through the hair on his chest. Trace the outlines of his pectorals, the grooves of his abs. Just touch him. All over. Caress him. Not sexually, just…to remind him that he’s here. That he’s now. That I’m here. He blinks hard, squeezing his eyes shut, breathing through his nose. Shuddering breaths, as if holding back a mammoth weight of emotion he doesn’t dare release. Doesn’t dare, or doesn’t know how too. “Make me forget,” he whispers. He wrenches his eyes open, and looks down at me. I hold his gaze, so he knows I don’t judge him or think less of him for the moisture filming his eyes, tears he refuses to acknowledge. The desperation, the despair…it’s razor sharp. Cutting. Immense.

“Make me forget,” whispers again. “I need to forget.”

* I don’t know how. How do I comfort a man like him? How do I soothe the scars on his soul? There is only one way. Only one thing he wants from me. I caress my palm over his breastbone, follow the path of my hand with my lips, and slide gentle kisses across his skin, from left shoulder to right. I kiss the scar and he shudders as my lips touch the roughened flesh. I move so my body covers his, my weight on him, pinning him to the bed, reminding him of weight and reality. My hands carve from his shoulder down his sides, to the angled indents of his hipbones; flit my tongue over his nipple; lay my breasts across his semi-erect penis. Writhe and twitch, scrape the tips of my breasts over his shaft, slide the thickening length between them. Kiss along one side of his body, from just beneath his armpit to hipbone, letting my hair fall like a blanket of golden silk on his tan skin. I kiss his belly. Just beneath his navel. Lick the hollow between balls and hip and thigh. He’s breathing hard, eyes shut tight. Fighting some secret war within himself. Run my palms up and down his thighs. Tease his length with my tongue. Caress it with my fingertips. Cup his sac with my palm, massage his balls. Lick up his cock from root to tip with the flat of my tongue. He reaches down, feathers both hands into my hair. Pulls me up his body. “Not that,” he murmurs. “You.” I straddle him to sit on his belly, laying forward, pressing my tits against his chest, and grinding my core against him. Reaching down with my left hand, I find his hard length, guide him to me, and fit him to my slit. Tease him there, not quite letting him in. Kiss his jaw. Right palm on his cheek, beard soft beneath my palm. Flex my hips, roll them. Kiss his cheekbone. Rub my thumb across his lips and press my slit to the head of his cock, breathe a sigh in his ear and sink down onto him. He groans, a long low guttural sound, and he clutches my ass with both hands, tilts his head backward, lift his hips off the bed. Bite his earlobe. Roll my hips to glide my cunt around his erection, breathing and moaning in his ear. The noises aren’t faked or exaggerated; he feels that good inside me. But as good as this feels it isn’t for me, not really I’m a fool. I know this. He’s not mine. This will end. But for now, this is enough. I remain flat on his body, moving only my hips. I curl one arm beneath his neck; the other buried in his hair, then tuck my face against the side of his neck. I’m seeking some semblance of intimacy. Some way of making this less raw, less physical. Seeking a connection with him. A connection I do not deserve. But one I will take anyway, deserved or not. I raise my ass in the air, sliding him out of me, pressing my left temple to his right, our faces cheek to cheek, my hand fisted in his wild black locks, the other clinging to the back of his neck. Then I sink down on him once more, impaling him deep inside me. Make it long, make it slow. Feel, relish, exaggerate every single inch, every millimeter of his cock sliding between my deliciously stretched labia, into my tight wet channel. I press my hips to his until our hipbones touch, until there’s no more of me take any more of him.

His fingernails rake down my spine, palms slide up to soothe where his claws dug into my skin. He clutches a double handful of my ass, lifts me, guides my descent, slowing the impalement, dragging it out, lowering me as slowly as he can. Moaning, grunting, hissing as he fills me. “Oh…fuck. Fuck. How can you feel this good? Better than I imagined. So much better.” His voice begins to buzz and rumble in my ear. “I dreamed of this. So many times over the last few months, I dreamed of this. Of you riding me just like this. But this, you, us, it’s so much better.” “I’ve never felt anything like you,” I say, and though the words surprise me as they emerge, they still feel true. “It’s like your body was made for mine.” Still so slow, the thrust of his hips, the glide of his slick hard shaft. Deliberate, each motion precise, pulling as far out of me as he can without falling out, and then pushing back in just as slowly, just as deliberately, as if to memorize each moment, each second, each sensation. Time ceases to have meaning. There is only the smooth slow wet drive in and drawing out of his cock, only his breath in my ear and his hands on my skin, raking down my back and clawing my ass, burying in my hair, cupping the curve of my body where my legs are folded under me, shins to the mattress. Lifting me, pushing me up, pulling me down, moving me. Gasping in my ear. His cock thrusting inside me. Nothing but that, endlessly. For so long. Minutes? Hours? I don’t know. I press my lips to his throat and breathe in his scent as he begins to gasp raggedly, grunting in my ear, lifting and settling me with more force, but as slowly as possible, almost still, even as I feel him tense beneath me. “Look at me,” he says, his voice rough and raw and bold. “Don’t look away.” I rise up, brace my palms on his chest, and find his gaze with mine. Hold his stare. He wants to move faster, wants to fuck harder. But he doesn’t. He drives excruciatingly slowly. His body begins to shake, his jaw trembling, lips quivering, brows drawing down, eyes widening, his grip on my ass tightening, jerking me down onto him hard, now. Never looking away. He growls, a wordless, animal sound. Withdraws, lifts me up. Slams me down hard, my ass slapping against his hips, driving up into me. Again. Grunting with each thrust. I follow him through it, stay with him, eyes on his, taking all he has to give. Deep down, I want more. I want to come. I want to hear him cry out my name. I want to kiss him. He comes hard, god, so hard. Spilling into me, filling me, grinding deep as he comes. When he finishes, he releases me. Instead of rolling off and cleaning up, I remain laying on top of him. Head to his chest. His cock inside me, cum spilling out. Smeared everywhere. Messy. Sticky. Hot. Wet. Fan stirring the air around us. Surf crashing. His heart hammering under my ear. His hands on my back, following the curvature of my spine. “If only I could have found you first,” he murmurs, more to himself than to me. “If I’d met you first, back in ’46? God, how different would things be?” I shake my head, shrug my shoulders; I don’t know. I don’t know. I wish I did.

** He sleeps. I do not, I cannot. When his hands fall away, slack, and his breathing becomes slow and even, I carefully crawl off him. I consider the shower but opt, instead, for the ocean. I don’t bother with clothing or a towel, walking naked to the water ’s edge, stepping from faded, smooth-worn board to board, then onto the sand. Dune grass tickles my thigh as I skirt between the dunes, and then hot sand squinches between my toes. Cool water laps at my arches, at my heels, up to my ankles, then recedes. A gull caws, wheeling overhead. A sandpiper flutters to the damp sand, darting and fluttering. Wind soughs, tossing my hair out behind me in a long stream. I wade into the water up to my knees, and then leap forward, diving in. I splash beneath the curling, white-foaming waves, kick hard and pull with my hands and arms against the current. Surfacing a few feet away, I stand up, water streaming down my face and between my breasts. For a long, blessed time, I am alone. I swim far out to sea, tiring myself, and then swim back slowly, deliciously tired, wonderfully sore. The sun is setting, but darkness has not yet fallen entirely. The world is stained blue deepening into purple. I return to shore, wringing out my hair. Stars, the brightest of them, have begun to prick the sky. I traipse naked and wet back up between the dunes, back up the old, makeshift steps. And then my heart clenches and begins to pound. The porch of the cabin is deep, painted a chipped, fading white. Suspended from the roof of the porch by a pair of chains is a bench swing, also faded and chipped white, the seat worn smooth. Sitting on that swing is a person. A woman. It is too dark to see much, now, but I know her hair is red. True red, a deep, vibrant ginger, offset by pale, freckled skin, flawless in complexion. The freckles only make her more beautiful, somehow. I climb warily up the steps; my instinct is to cross my arm over my breasts, and pivot to face away from her, hiding my nakedness. I do not. I pretend a confidence in my nudity that I do not entirely feel. The front door is still open wide, and I can see through the house into the bedroom; he is still asleep, turned on his side, still naked, the flat sheet now bunched around his calves. On the floor near the door, where he tossed them, are our clothes. I find my dress, damp from the other wet things, but I shrug into it anyway. There is a railing running the perimeter of the porch, and I lean against it, facing her. Waiting for her to speak. “I always knew he had this place,” she begins, after a thick pause. “But he never brought me here. He’d come down here on weekends. He needed space to think, to be alone, he would tell me.” Another silence. She’s not looking at me, but out to sea. “That’s how it started, for me.” Now a glance at me, quick, then back at the rippling waves and shushing surf. “He worked a lot, always has. I could deal with that, as long as he came to me at night, and I had him on the weekends. But then he’d come down here by himself, and…I was lonely. He never brought me down here with him. He needed the time alone. Time alone? I’m—I was his wife, why would he need time alone? I thought it was me. Something I…some failing I had. So I…I found

someone who made me feel like…” “Like you were important.” I think of my husband, the way he treated me, and I feel a burst of commiseration. She nods, running a fingertip along her lower lip. “Yes. Exactly.” “Why are you telling me this? Why are you here?” “I don’t know.” A glance at him, then at me, then at the cobalt moonlit sea. “I didn’t know where else to go.” “You said you were going to your parents’ in Connecticut.” A shrug. “That’s a last resort.” Now the silence between us is awkward. How could it not be? “What do you want?” “I don’t know. Once I calmed down and took a moment to think, I—everything seems different, now.” “Are you trying to get him back?” “I don’t know if that’s possible, even if you weren’t involved.” “But I am.” A nod. “You are, yes. Which complicates things all the more.” She pushes at the floor of the porch with her feet, setting the swing into creaking motion. “I just don’t understand how we got here. He and I, I mean. Where he had you, and I had—well, Tony, of course, whom you met, but all the others.” “There were more?” “My goodness, yes.” She points at her husband, my lover. “You’ve had him—experienced him. You think anyone else will ever measure up?” I can’t quite look at her as I answer. “No. I don’t think so.” “Exactly. I’ve taken several lovers, but it wasn’t ever the same. There have been a few incredibly handsome men, well endowed, attentive to what I wanted, even…but it’s never the same. There’s just something about him. I don’t know what it is. He can be a bastard sometimes—maybe you haven’t encountered that side of him yet—but even when he’s being a bastard, he’s…” she trails off, shrugging, at a loss for words. “All-consuming?” I supply. She nods. “Exactly. That is it exactly.” “It wasn’t easy for him, you know.” She frowns at me. “What wasn’t?” “With me. He didn’t do it lightly, or easily. I don’t claim to know his motivations, but…he resisted it.” “I imagine he would. Out of principle, if nothing else.” A small, bitter laugh. “It really doesn’t make it better, knowing he resisted it, or that it wasn’t easy for him. It makes it worse, if anything.” “How so?” I sit on the floor, cross my legs, drape the fabric between my knees. “Because for him to compromise himself, to go against his principles, it means it must’ve felt worth it. That you’re worth it. It wasn’t just the allure of…I don’t know, something new, or someone new. He’s not like that. There’s something about you specifically that was worth the guilt. That, or his and my relationship had dissolved more completely than I’d imagined.” A long pause, then a searching look at me. “You said he resisted it. What does that mean?” I shift uncomfortably. “It was obvious we wanted each other, but…we didn’t actually have sex. It was…other things. Before he stopped it.” “And that’s not true anymore, I assume. You and he have had sex.” “I’m not sure I’m comfortable—” “Oh, come off it. There’s no point being shy, is there? We’ve both had sex with the same man. I’ve

cheated on him, you’ve cheated on your husband, and now the two of us are sitting here talking like a pair of girlfriends. What is there to be reticent about, at this point?” I sigh; she has a point. “Yes. We have. We have had sex.” “What changed him? What finally made him give in?” “I think it was seeing you with that man. Knowing you’d…discovering you had been unfaithful first.” “Ah. So knowing I’d cheated first drove him over the edge far enough that he brought you, his mistress, to this place, his sacred haven, and fucked you. This place…you don’t understand, I don’t think. This cottage has been in his family for nearly a hundred years. This plot of land, at least. This particular structure was built by his grandfather, who came here himself as a boy.” “But you’ve never been here?” She shrugs. “It wasn’t a secret, just special. I’m more angry that he brought you here instead of me, than I am about his infidelity. I can’t in good conscious be angry or jealous about that, since I cheated first. But bringing you here? Fucking you here? That hurts more than anything.” A sharp look at me. “Did he tell you about his scars? Did he talk about the war with you?” Loaded questions, both, I think. Spring-loaded. I don’t know how to answer. I don’t want to answer at all, but if I don’t, she’ll read the truth out of my silence. I nod. “Yes. He told me about Bastogne. Not much, but—” She shoots to her feet, leaving the swing rocking erratically, the chains rattling. “Jesus fucking Christ. He told you.” She whirls, and for the first time, I see true pain in her eyes, tears. “He fucking told you? God—what—what do you have that I don’t? What’s so fucking special about you?” She paces toward me, then turns abruptly and clomps down the steps in her pumps. Kicks them off, stalks toward the sea. I remain seated on the floor of the porch. The wood is still warm under my bottom. A long breeze blows, making the tall dune grass wave at the sea. I close my eyes; feel the breeze and the lingering warmth of the day. I hear a floorboard creak. Feel him in the doorway. “I heard yelling.” His voice is sleep-muzzy. “Your wife is here.” I open my eyes, glance at the doorway. He’s naked, erect, staring down at me. A groan. “Shit.” I hear the floorboards again, a moment of silence, and then he’s stomping down the steps, buttoning his slacks, not bothering with a shirt. I watch him make his way through the dunes down to the sea. Exhaustion sweeps over me. I stand up, cross into the bedroom, close the door behind me. Collapse into the bed. I’m asleep within seconds.

__ “It doesn’t matter.” This is him. I hear his voice beyond the door. I’m awake instantly, but don’t rise from the bed. “How can you say it doesn’t matter?” Her voice is much quieter than his, but still tense, sharp, angry. “Of course it matters! If we want to make this work—” “This doesn’t change anything,” he says, interrupting her. “There’s nothing to make work.” “But we just—” “And it doesn’t change anything. You can’t change the fact that you’ve slept with—how many did

you say it was? Eleven?” “Twelve.” Her voice is tiny, insolent. “Twelve other men during the span of our marriage.” A cough of disgust. “Twelve. You can’t change that, and I can’t forget it, or forgive it.” “And what about her?” “Same thing. I can’t change that I’ve been with her. And, honestly, nor do I want to.” “Not even if it meant our marriage survived?” “Our marriage…god. Was it ever real?” A brief pause. “Don’t answer—that doesn’t matter either. We can’t change anything. And for the record, no. Not even then. Because there’s one other thing I can’t change.” “And what’s that?” Her voice is flat, now, uninterested. Sullen. “That I feel more for her than I ever did for you.” A choked cry, cut off. “You fucking bastard.” I stand up, now. Curious. My stomach roils, my heart falling away—either that, or rising up into my throat. The door never latched properly, apparently, because it’s cracked open. I peer through the crack. All I can see is her. Wiggling her toes in her shoes. Smoothing her palms down her stomach. Blinking hard against tears. “It was real.” She whispers this. “It was real.” “When? When was it real?” She shakes her head, shrugs. “At the beginning? I loved you. I still love you. I know things are confused right now, but I do. I always have. That never changed. I was lonely…you were always working.” “And why do you think that is?” His voice is sharp, cold. “Hmm? Why do you think I chose to stay at the office all day rather than come home to you? Why do you think I spent so much time alone here?” “I don’t know!” She stomps her foot in emphasis with the last word. “If I knew, we wouldn’t be doing this.” I can feel his silence. It is his silence, too. It belongs to him, somehow. “You were shut off. Distant. Whatever love we had, whatever connection we had…it disappeared. Dried up.” He says this reluctantly, as if admitting it, stating it outright makes it more real, or causes him to feel it all over again. A cry of frustration. “Because you were always gone. You were the distant one.” “So where does it all go back to, then? Where did it start? Since you’re so determined to have this conversation…you tell me where we went wrong. Where we lost each other.” I can’t not listen, but I hate this. I hate hearing their pain. Hers, too. It’s no less real, no less excruciating to overhear. A long, long silence. This one shared equally. Then her voice, broken now. “The…when I lost the—when I miscarried.” An inhalation, from him. Shuddering, gutted, let out slowly, shakily. “You changed.” This sounds very much like an accusation. “So did you.” He doesn’t deny it. More silence. “So we didn’t just lose the baby, we lost each other.” “And now here we are.” “And now here we are,” he agrees. A sniff. “I hate this.” Slowly, his voice impossibly deep, rough, raw. “Yeah.”

I can’t stand here anymore. “I don’t belong here,” I say, stepping out into the living room. He won’t look at me, neither will she. My throat constricts. Words rise up in my gorge, fade, and die. There’s nothing I can say. There’s nothing to say. He was never mine, and I knew it. She’s on one side of the room, he’s on the other, and so I have to pass between them to get to the rest of my things. I keep my eyes to myself, refusing to make eye contact with either of them. I all but run across the room to my little pile of undergarments. Tug on my panties, step into my shoes, slide my purse over my shoulder, and clutch my bra in my hands. The front door is still wide open; it’s dawn, just barely. No one speaks, but I can feel both of their gazes on me as I step across the threshold, onto the porch. Down the steps to the sand. The air is cool, now, but the day will warm up quickly. The sea is silver, rippling under the gray haze of dawn, with a sliver of orange just beginning to mark the eastern horizon. Dune grass waves, the surf crashes, a gull caws. Sounds of the seaside; sounds of peace. I close my eyes and listen. Feel the breeze on my face, ruffling my hair, curling over my skin. Tugging my dress between my knees. “Where are you going?” His voice calls from the porch. I sigh. Do not turn. If I look at him, I’ll waver. “I don’t know.” “Listen, I—” “Don’t.” I cut him off, sounding a little sharper, a little more brusque than I intended. “She was right, back at the hotel. I could never steal you from her. I never meant to. We just got carried away, I guess. It doesn’t matter.” “What happened with me and her just now was—” “None of my business. It was you and your wife. She’s your wife. And I’m—I was never even your mistress. Just…a distraction.” “It’s more than that.” I shake my head, and the wind flips a lock of my hair across my eyes. “No.” “You could be. Should have been.” “Stop, okay? Just…stop.” A long silence. Finally, I can’t help it. I turn and look at him. Tall, broad, a scarred, hard-muscled warrior. A man from a different time, it seems, standing there shirtless, hair loose and wild around his shoulders, thick and black and tangled, his beard wind-ruffled, his eyes narrowed, brow furrowed, jaw clenched. He’s carved out of marble, motionless, arms crossed over his chest. He uncrosses his arms. Reaches for me. “Don’t leave.” I back away from him. Shake my head. “I have to go.” Somehow, I just do it. I know it. I feel it. I’m pulled inexorably away. Behind the cottage is a dirt track, the road leading away. The cottage is surrounded by a thick stand of huge, swaying palm trees and dense, flowering bushes, providing a living, natural fence between the road and the private beach beyond. The only access to the road is through a white wicker archway positioned between the trunks of two palms. Within the archway is a door, a white door. Simple slats of white wood with cross-braces at top and bottom, and a simple latch; grass and trees and the tan dust of the road are visible between the slats. I take another step toward the archway. And a second. And then, with an act of will, I close my eyes, grasp the latch in my hand. It’s cold, so cold. So cold.

I see him, feel him. His his hands on me. Stripping me. Caressing me. Laying me in the bed, kissing my skin. Moving in me, showing me with his body what he cannot seem to express with his words. I shudder. I want that back. Those few, brief, fragile moments of belonging. Of mattering. Of being cherished, treasured, wanted. Those few moments of hope. I dare not turn, dare not look into his molten brown gaze, dare not allow myself to subsume to his tidal pull upon me. I let out a shaky breath, and depress the latch. I want to lean back against the solid wall of his chest, feel him breathing. His palms finding mine, and then laying his hands on my belly. I want to feel his breath on my shoulder. My neck. My jaw. My heart pounds like tympani. I want to feel his breath on my cheek, taste it on my tongue. I open my eyes, and turn to look into his. Turmoil. Conflict. Pain. Resignation. Knowledge of farewell. Even so, my lips touch his. Graze, brush, slide like a whisper in the darkness. I push the door open, tearing myself away from him. The threshold is before me, and he is behind me. There is no in between, no waiting, no putting it off. My feet obey some unheard command, a pulling, a pushing. I step through, and his hands fall away, his heat diminishes, his presence is occluded by darkness and cold and then Nothing— Nothing— Nothing—

*** Silence. Perfect, utter silence. A drowning quiet. A longing, deep and unfulfilled, a need, bone-deep, soul-deep for something I cannot have; the first sensation. Pang of loss, bite of guilt, acid bite of shame, burning heat of lust, a deep delicious soreness in all the right places—all of these roiling and coiled and wedded and mingled together; the second sensation. I open my eyes; the third sensation. I’m in the room of black doors. There is a white cot under me. A small square black table sits to my left and on it a thick white candle, flickering merrily, rivulets of melted wax dripping down the sides to pool and harden on the silver candlestick. Around me are six pools of orange-yellow light. Six doors. Four black, one green, one silver. I lay still, feel my heart beating. My breath soughing in and out slowly, my heart thumping in my ear; these are the only things that exist, within and without. How long do I lay, thus, in the warmth of that candlelit room, not thinking, not feeling, barely even existing? I do not know. Time out of time. No, that isn’t right either. There is no time. If you cannot measure the passage of time, then there is no time. The only measure of anything is the candle, the pool of hardening wax around the silver candlestick, the infinitesimal shortening of the candle. I feel a tiredness in my bones, a lethargy in my muscles, an unwillingness to get up. I close my eyes once more, feeling the heaviness of sleep pulling me under, and then I’m floating as I drift under the meniscus of consciousness into that place of not sleeping and not quite being awake. I remember. Wishing I could be his. Knowing I’m not. Nearly kissing him. A tease, an almost-kiss. I remember a different version of him. But there is confusion, even there. Despite the rushing chaotic bliss of lust, acquiescing to the hunger within, even then… Questions unanswered. Unasked, even. Questions without form, without substance. Just the knowledge of them, the idea of them. Was there a fighter? Him, still. Sleep pulls me down, drowns me. Drowns the memories. Drowns time. Everything fades. Memory, knowledge of anything. Knowledge of myself, my body, my mind. Only darkness remains, only the vague point of I, floating in eternal nothingness. Floating away. Drifting.

That infinitesimal point of I, that dot that is me, it brightens. Resolves. Hardens. Expands. The darkness is not my friend. Don’t let it swallow me. I. I am. I am. The point of I becomes a pinprick of light. And then it grows. Flickers. Dances, wavering and jumping, twisting and leaping, guttering, flaring. A candle flame. It calls to me. Breathes upon me, and into me. I cling to that life, that light, that breath. Let it push through me. Let it diminish the darkness, until I can feel myself once again. Feel the fullness of my body, the expanse of my mind, the presence of my sense of self. The darkness wants to pull me down, it desires me. Seeks me. Hunts me. But I sense there is something alive in the darkness of unseeing. My eyes flick open, and I sit up and look around. I see six doors. The first door… The boxer. Big. Rough. Dominant. Possessive. Virile and primal. The ropes. His violent refusal to kiss me. It doesn’t come rushing back; no, it flits and meanders, out of sequence. The way he fucked me, there at the end. As if it was the last time he’d ever see me, hold me, touch me, fuck me. The second door… The second door is gone, and my memory, fuzzy and hazy and vague tells me little. I focus, think, strain to remember. It only just happened, but it feels like a thousand years ago. Memory, hard to grasp, slippery. The blond man and my man, light and dark, lean and lithe versus broad and massive. A flurrying glut of sensation. A reveling in debauchery. Slipping and sliding down into delicious, all-consuming sin, two men fucking me into delirium. Then her, the scarlet goddess, her mouth on my core, the hunger for her burning inside me, secret at first but then wild and undeniable. Then just him, just us, being filled, taken. A connection, deep and dark and fraught, and ever so briefly felt. Almost kissing him, but not quite. Not quite. I scan the room, the remaining doors. Skip over the cutting pain of the green door, the revulsion of the silver. Number three, then. The handle is a delicate glass knob. The faceted glass, and the rattling knob are familiar. Twisting. Pushing. A door that creaked and squealed on protesting hinges. Eventually, when the soreness and languidness has faded, I rise off the cot. I touch the floor with my feet. Stand up. Pivot in place, scanning the pools of light and the blackness between. My legs move, my feet carry me across the empty space. I halt in front of a door. Black, with a large silver numeral 4 at the center. Lower down, on the right side of the door, is a handle.

**** Into darkness. Heat. Humidity. The scent of bodies, but not unwashed. Soap. Oils. Perfume. The commingling scents and heat is cloying. I can see nothing. Something presses against me on one side: a body. Soft, warm. The flesh gives in a way that only a woman’s flesh does. Another jostling bump in front of me. Behind me. To my left, my right. The sound of breathing. Hoarse, fearful breaths. A whimper. And then—sudden light. Brilliant, blinding. A pair of doors opening. A man’s voice, rough, slurred, and accented. “C’mon, c’mon, girlies! Step on out here, now! Don’t be shy, ya’ll. Step out, step out.” Motion, as those around me begin to shuffle forward, bumping into each other, jostling, holding onto whatever is near for balance; a hand grabs my shoulder, another my arm, someone pushes at my spine, small hands, trembling fingers. “Now ya’ll make a line, right here. Right here. Stand still, now. No fidgeting, no talking.” I blink in the blinding light, squint, close one eye. The sun is glaring through a window, beaming directly at me, flaring across my vision. I can see only shapes, forms. An arm, a hand clutching a cane. A hat, broad-brimmed, low-crowned. A swirling drape of a coattail. A boot. Spurs jingle. I smell sweat, now. Leather. Dust. There’s a hint of swirling cold, as if a door had just been shut, and the cold still lingers. I’m shuffling, bare feet on smooth wooden flooring. A hand grabs my arm, roughly jerking me to one side and then stopping me in a precise spot, squeezing my arm. Stay put, that squeeze said. He strides away; a shotgun tucked under one arm. I’m still blinking, but I can see a bit more clearly, now, as my eyes adjust. A line of men stand abreast, opposite me, with a bank of windows behind them. They’re all dressed warmly. Fine leather gloves, one clutching a crystal-topped walking stick, another a riding crop, a third a lever-action rifle. Thick wool coats swirl around boot heels. Snow clings to the soles and heels of the boots. Cravats are tied under necks. Gold chains arc across chests and disappear into watch pockets of vests. I count seven men, ranging from white-haired and weathered to barely old enough to shave, most in between somewhere, but the quality of each man’s dress speaks of wealth. Their demeanor and posture shout power, dominance, and utter surety of their place in life. Eyes gleam arrogant, all. To my left and my right are women standing abreast in a line. The women, unlike the men, are all of an age: young, nubile, beautiful, none over twenty-five. There are twenty of us, and I stand directly in the middle. We are each of us clad identically in a thin cotton robe. Not even a robe, really, so much as a knee-length bolt of thin, rough-spun cotton with holes for the arms, tied closed with a length of rope. It obscures our bodies, but yet does little to cover us, or keep us warm. Fear hammers at my heart. No one is speaking, but the silence is fiercely thick with anticipation, ripe with fear from the women beside me. Lust burns in the eyes of the men. Boots scuff as weights shift, hands in gloves curl into fists and release, or are tucked into trouser pockets. We women only shiver and tremble. Boot heels click sharply on the wood floor, calling everyone’s attention. A man enters the room from my left, striding with focus and arrogance between the lines of men and women. A woman follows behind him but she stops just inside the door and stands, waiting. The man has a burlap sack in his hands, which clacks and clatters as it swings with his swift stride. He stops at the far right end of

the line, then reaches into the sack. He withdraws a small square of slate. Shoves it into the hands of the first woman in line, reaches into his trouser pocket and comes up with a chunk of chalk. Scrapes a single vertical line on the slate. Steps to the side, reaches into the sack for another piece of slate, hands it to the next woman. Inscribes a 2 with a quick flick of his wrist. And so on down the line. I am number ten. When he reaches the end of the line, he tosses the sack aside, shoves the chalk back into his pocket, and brushes his hands together. He is tall, immensely tall, six foot six, perhaps. But thin and wiry. Elegant. Sharply dressed in a three-piece suit, pocket watch, and a bowler hat on his head. He wears a graying brown beard trimmed in the Van Dyke style, the ends waxed and twisted into points. His eyes are cold, hard, and emotionless. Diamond blue and diamond sharp. Calculating. He stands at the leftmost end of the line, between the men and the women. He withdraws his pocket watch, flips it open, consults it, and replaces it. “Let us begin.” His voice is cultured, smooth. “You have all put in your thousand just to be here. The first to put in another five hundred gets first pick.” “Here.” The oldest man, white haired, white goatee, craggy features, weathered skin. “Five hundred.” He withdraws a stack of bills from an inner pocket and extends it. It’s clearly pre-counted and accepted as such, for the man with the Van Dyke doesn’t count it, but pockets it immediately. “Very well.” A hand sweeps to gesture at us women. “Take your pick, sir, and place your offer.” The older man steps forward, crystal-topped walking stick thumping. He’s on the far right of the line of men, two from the end. His step is spry, strong, and quick, despite his obvious age; the walking stick is an affectation. A foot away from the woman at that end, number one, he stops. Eyes her up and down. Blinks once, as if in dismissal. Moves to the next, another dismissal, on to the next without pause; the same silent disregard. At the third woman, he stops, nods to himself. Reaches a large, gnarled hand for her robe tie. Pauses with the end of the rope in his fingers, glances at the other man, as if for permission. He receives a nod; a single sharp tug and the rope is untied; her robe falls open, baring her naked torso. His eyes narrow flit up, down, perusing. He drops the end of the rope, takes the slate from her, steps back one pace. I cannot look away, dare not speak, can only watch in numb, disbelieving horror. Crooks his finger. “Step forward.” The girl hesitates, and then steps forward. Her hands are at her sides, clenched into fists. Whiteknuckled. She has straight black hair, hanging down to mid-spine. She stands, shaking, waiting. He flicks his finger again. “Off with that. Lemme see you, girl.” She ducks her head, and her shoulders lift as she breathes in deeply then lets it out through pursed lips. Lifting her chin, vying for courage, she shrugs the rough cotton away, and it droops, billows to pool on the floor at her feet. She is thin. Narrow hips. Strong, though. High, round buttocks. Long legs. He twirls his index finger at her. “Turn.” She pivots in a slow circle. Small breasts, tips upturned. Pale, pale skin. Her ribs show, but not from malnutrition, rather simply due to her lithe, svelte frame. As she pauses facing us, her eyes scan ours, left to right. A tear trickles down her cheek. “Back around,” comes the gruff order. She crosses her hands in front of her groin, and the man steps forward. Grabs her wrists, shoves them aside effortlessly. He reaches, curls his fingers between her thighs, roughly shoving them inside her, right here in front of everyone. She cringes away, whimpering. Click-click. The sound is unmistakable, loud in the silence—a gun being cocked. “No touching

until you have made your payment, if you please, sir. And you, girl—I believe you were informed of the rules before you were brought in.” His gaze rakes to include all of us. “I shall repeat the instructions, so there can be no misunderstandings. You will not speak. You will not move. That means no covering up. No cowering. Do as you’re told immediately. The buyers are not allowed to touch you until they have bought you, but if they do, you will allow it until such time as I see fit to stop them. Is that clear?” He glares at us, and a few girls mutter responses: yes; yes, sir. He cuts his glare to each of us in turn. “I did not hear all of you. Do you understand the rules?” There’s a louder chorus of agreement. I feel apart, separate, numb, disoriented, and do not speak. Immediately, that unnerving diamond gaze fixes on me. He steps toward me, sharp quick steps. Lifts his hand, in which is now a small revolver. He touches the barrel to the underside of my chin; the mouth is a cold round o digging into the soft flesh just back of my jawbone. “I didn’t hear you, darling.” In that low voice, razor sharp, the term of endearment becomes an epithet, a threat. “Do…you…understand?” I wobble my chin up and down. “Yes—yes, sir.” The hammer is cocked, and I can see bullets in the chamber. He steps away, turns, gestures with his empty hand at the woman still standing at the door: she’s dressed in a voluminous gown of jade silk, the bodice cut indecently low, propping up a broad expanse of cleavage, the skirts belling out from her waist and trailing behind her. Her blond hair is pulled back from her temples and over her scalp and is tied behind her head, the rest is loose around her bare shoulders; her eyes are precisely as blue and hard and calculating as the man running this sale of human flesh, making her his sister, despite the difference in hair color. “If anyone sees fit to break these rules, you shall be sent with my sister here. She runs a brothel, you should know. And the clientele that visits that establishment, well, let us merely say they are not quite as…savory…as the men standing before you. I shall leave the details to your imaginations. Suffice to say, silence and cooperation is, by far, the better option of the two choices left to you.” He holsters the gun beneath his left breast. Gestures at the white-haired buyer. “My apologies for the distraction. Have you decided, sir?” The other man nods, stroking his white beard. “I have. Two thousand for the shy little thing here.” He holds up the slate. “Two thousand for Number Three.” A quick nod, the pointed Van Dyke beard dipping. “Accepted and agreed.” A bundle of cash is counted by one, then handed over and counted by the other. The girl, bought and sold, kneels shakily to retrieve her robe. That gnarled hand grabs her by the bicep, lifting her to her feet. “Oh, you won’t be needing that.” The leer in his voice makes my flesh crawl. “But…” her voice is quiet, achingly delicate, tremulous. “It’s—it’s cold outside.” He doffs his coat, draping it over her thin shoulders. “Wouldn’t want you to be cold, now, would we?” He pinches her nipple, twists it viciously, until she whimpers in pain and tries to curl away. “That wouldn’t do at all.” He tugs the edges of the coat closed, and buttons it up. It’s comically big on her. Draping past her feet, trailing on the floor. Sleeves sagging inches past her fingertips. He prods her into motion, guides her to a doorway leading outside. She picks her way on bare feet across the threshold onto hard-packed snow. The door closes behind them, sending with it a gust of icy air. My nipples pebble in the sudden blast of cold, nearly poking through the thin muslin. Opposite me, in the middle of the line, a pair of eyes drift down, fixing on my prominently visible nipples. Brown eyes. Hard, not quite cold, but…blank, perhaps. Studiously so, maybe. Familiar eyes,

in some strange way. Black hair swept back beneath a black, wide-brimmed, low-crowned hat. Full beard cropped close to his jaw. His eyes slide back up to find mine. I cannot look away. Don’t dare. Around me, one after another, women are sold. Purchased, hustled outside. Some naked, some with their robes on, others with a provided cloak or coat. All weep piteously, but quietly, as they’re sent with their new masters. Their owners. Finally, there is one man left. The seller moves to stand beside me. “Quite a prize, this one. Minimum bid of two thousand. If you cannot or will not meet that, then I’m afraid you, my boy, are out of luck. Entry fee is non-refundable, remember.” His fingers twitch, and the rope knot flies apart. A sweep of his hand, and the robe drifts to my feet, baring me completely. My knees shake. Nipples throb, ache. I wish desperately to cover my core, to cower, to hide. But I do not. I stand, shoulders back, fists clenched shaking at my sides, my eyes on the man who, I am positive, is about to purchase me. Opposite me, brown eyes rake down my body. Slowly, so slowly. Beside me, a hand grips my shoulder, forces me to turn in a slow circle. “I chose this one myself. The high bid, I freely admit, is meant to deter you, that I might claim her for myself.” His voice is in my ear, a low murmur, boiling with lewd promise, a provocative threat. He inhales deeply, and his palm slides across my hip, dares close to my core. “Lots of curve to this one. Imagine the delights to be found in all this—” he cups my breast, and I cannot suppress a shudder of revulsion— “sweet, lush, firm flesh. Imagine the fun you could—“ “Six thousand.” The offer comes brusque, rough, harsh. “Six? But sir, I —” Brown eyes flash dangerously, a hand brushes a coat edge aside, hovers over a gun butt. Threat is woven through that deep voice, deadly and unmistakeable. “Six thousand. Now get your hands off.” A thick stack of cash flies to thump at the seller ’s feet. The seller bends, retrieves the cash, straightens; he doesn’t stop to count it. “Very well, very well.” A moment of taut silence. “Do you wish—” “Leave us. Now.” This is a command, snapped in a voice which brooks no disobedience. The seller, the guard with his shotgun, the madam and the remaining women all leave, and now I’m alone. With him. Sold like so much meat. His eyes roam my body, rake over my form. They take in my breasts, my core, and my hips. He moves toward me, boots clomping noisily, spurs jingling, coat tail billowing behind him. He circles to stand behind me. “You belong to me, now.” He speaks this from behind me. Close, too close, smelling of wood smoke and leather and wool. His voice is a deep, rasping grumble, rough, rocky, but his speech is articulate, educated. “You understand this?” I shake, tremble, and manage to nod. Clear my throat, find my voice. “Yes. I—I understand.” “Good. Then there won’t be any trouble.” His boots thunk across the wood, and he kneels to retrieve a pile of neatly folded clothing from the floor near the far wall, beneath the bank of windows. He returns to me and hands me the pile. “Get dressed. We have far to ride, and it’s not getting any warmer.” I dress quickly. Flannel underwear. Wool stockings. A thin, fine wool slip or underdress, tight against my skin, hem at my knees. Another one, looser and longer, made from thicker, coarser wool, coming to my shins. A blue-gray calico dress, ankle length, snug at the bust and hips, blossoming into

voluminous skirts at the waist. A thick wool coat with a deep hood. Warm, fur-lined boots, a little too big. Thick mittens. When I’m dressed, he nods once, and moves for the exit, clearly expecting me to follow. I move after him, noticing the holsters tied low on both thighs, revolver handles visible as his coat flaps. He mounts a huge black horse, its flanks smeared with white patches; he’s gripping the reins of another, smaller paint, holding it for me as I make my way across the snow. I mount, settle my skirts over my thighs, and accept the reins. He eyes me. “You run, I’ll catch you.” Reins in one fist, the other gloved hand on his thigh. “Won’t go well for you, if I have to give chase.” “I won’t run,” I tell him. There’s nowhere to run, nothing around us but trees and snow and mountains in the distance. It’s a frozen hellscape, and I have no clue where we are. So no, I won’t be running away. He’s my only hope for staying alive, it appears. Staying here clearly isn’t an option, nor would I choose that even if it were. I’ll take my chances with this man. “All right then. Stay close and keep up.” He rolls his spurs lightly against his horse’s flank, and it glides into a smooth trot. My horse follows automatically, stopping just behind the other horse. Twenty or thirty minutes of riding, and it becomes obvious we’re in the foothills of a massive mountain range, and that we’re headed up into them, angling for a notch between two sky-spearing, snow-capped, craggy peaks. Trees carpet the waist and shoulders of the mountains, and surround us in thick, impenetrable ranks of pine and spruce and fir, with the mountains visible in patches and glimpsed between rustling needles and arm-thick branches. So far, we’ve stuck to a path meandering through the forest. Not a road, nothing so grand as that. More of a narrow dirt track, once a deer path, perhaps, now used by people. Another hour, and we break through the forest’s edge. Before us is a wide frozen lake, snowblanketed, and beyond it miles and miles of wide open space bellying up to the rise of the mountains themselves, rolling hills and fields dotted here and there with stands of trees, birch and aspen. The sky above is clear blue, cloudless, a wide cerulean dome that suffocates by virtue of its overwhelming expanse. It is bitterly, bitingly cold. I tug the hood of my coat over my head, burrow back into it, and rub the tip of my nose with a mitten. Despite my warm garments, cold seeps into my bones. We angle around the lake, and as we ride, I notice that my new owner ’s head is never still, but always swiveling and scanning, and occasionally he twists around to glance at me, or behind us. The skirt of his duster is draped across his horse’s rear, the edges pulled away to leave his guns free. He sits straight, spine flat and ramrod stiff, yet his body moves loosely and easily with the rolling walk of his mount’s gait, reins in one hand resting on the pommel of his saddle. “Where are we going?” I ask, finally summoning the courage to raise my voice. “Home.” “And where might that be?” He gestures with the reins, pointing at the notch between the peaks. “Other side of those mountains. Three, four days ride, maybe. Depends on how much snow there is in the pass.” He twists in his saddle, glances at me. “Why? You eager to get there?” There’s a thinly veiled hint of salaciousness to his words. I shrug, trying for indifference I do not feel. “Only curious.” He doesn’t quite smile, but the ghost of a smirk touches the corners of his lips. “Only curious. Right.” He swivels back around to face forward, and says nothing more. Home. Three or four days in the wilderness, in the dead of winter, in the company of a man who owns

me. Tears prick hot behind my eyes, but I force them down. They will do no good, and will only freeze on my face. Besides, something tells me tears will not move a man such as he.

© Copyright © 2016 by Jasinda Wilder and Jade London. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THE BLACK ROOM: DELETED DOOR No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author ’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

& Jasinda Wilder Visit me at my website: www.jasindawilder.com Email me: [email protected]

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My other titles: The Preacher's Son: Unbound Unleashed Unbroken Biker Billionaire: Wild Ride Delilah's Diary: A Sexy Journey La Vita Sexy A Sexy Surrender Big Girls Do It: Boxed Set Married Pregnant Rock Stars Do It: Harder Dirty Forever Omnibus From the world of Big Girls and Rock Stars: Big Love Abroad The Falling Series:

Falling Into You Falling Into Us Falling Under Falling Away Falling for Colton The Ever Trilogy: Forever & Always After Forever Saving Forever From the world of Wounded: Wounded Captured From the world of Stripped: Stripped Trashed From the world of Alpha: Alpha Beta Omega Harris: Alpha One Security Book 1 Thresh: Alpha One Security Book 2 The Houri Legends: Jack and Djinn Djinn and Tonic The Madame X Series: Madame X Exposed Exiled Badd Brothers: Badd Motherf*cker Standalone titles: Yours Non-Fiction titles: Big Girls Do It Running Jack Wilder Titles: The Missionary

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