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Before Jacob.
Before the house, before her dad had his stroke, before Tony had to work so much because Patrick had quit and the economy had tanked and the bottom had fallen out of everything.
Such a stupid sort of miracle. He’d called himself Steve, she’d had a stranger yank off some of her hair, and now she had her husband braced above her, his zipper catching on her dress, so worked up that she had to smile when he tore his mouth away and kissed her neck. She had to smile, because even if she could give herself a better orgasm than he could, she loved him like this. She felt bright and open, sunlight pouring in all over both of them.
Like anything might be possible, if she could just remember how to grip the sledgehammer. If she kept smacking it into the wall.
“How do I get this thing off?” Tony swooped his finger along the neckline of her dress, raising goose bumps across her chest. She lifted her arms and undid the clasp behind her neck, and he pulled her dress away, slowly, almost gingerly, as though there were something special about it. Something precious.
He nuzzled between her breasts. “You smell so good. Like a cookie.”
She smiled. “New lotion.” Tony fondled her breasts. Kissed one, and then licked her nipple and sucked it into his mouth. One of his favorite things to do. She’d hated it when she was breast-feeding. Hated his preoccupation with her breasts, because she’d felt as though the only thing anybody in the world wanted from her was to get their hands on her tits.
Now it felt good, but in an abstract sort of way. The stirring between her legs belonged to some other body, completely non-urgent.
She sifted her fingers through Tony’s hair and watched him. His hungry tongue. Listened to the little sounds of pleasure he made. Felt him press his cock against her thigh, needing pressure. Needing her.
He found the side zip on the skirt and lowered it, sliding the dress off so that she was naked.
He stood, pulled off his T-shirt, shucked his jeans. The humming between her legs dialed up a notch at the sight of him. Sexy arms, sexy chest, handsome face, so intent. So focused. His erection flushed, the slit at the tip wet.
Nothing about him the least bit strange or unfamiliar or Steve.
She opened her arms, and he crawled back up onto the bed and over her.
She opened her legs. He came between them, his hand angling his cock so that the blunt head of it found her opening and then he was pushing, pressing in, stretching and filling her up with that hot, intrusive thing, and this part she couldn’t do herself. Or she could, but she didn’t care to. She only wanted Tony here, like this. Only Tony’s smell, Tony’s cock, Tony’s face so stern, concentrating because she could tell he wanted to fuck hard. He wanted to come. Soon.
She could let him. Wrap her legs around him, tell him, It’s okay. I already had mine. Because it would be an age before she was ready again, probably, and it hardly seemed fair to make him wait. He’d pushed his forearms right up beside her ribs, lowered his head. He was mouthing her neck, not quite kissing her because he didn’t have the focus to kiss her. He had to keep his mind on not coming.
If she shifted just so. If she squeezed. He would—
He groaned. Exhaled. “God, bun, don’t,” he said, and she smiled because she’d known that, too.
It hadn’t been like this between them in a very, very long time. But here they were. Here they were, and it was like this, and she wanted it to last.
“Give me a second,” he said. “You feel so fucking good.”
He lifted his head and looked right in her eyes, and she smoothed her hands over the crown of his head, letting his hair brush her palms and feeling frightened, suddenly.
They didn’t do this anymore. Look at each other. Really look.
She’d been afraid. So afraid that if she looked, he wouldn’t be there.
But here he was.
Here was Tony. Still hers.
She closed her eyes. Not because she was scared. Because she needed to savor it. To take the moment inside her, wrap it up in tissue paper so she could get it out later when she really needed it. Tell herself, There it is. There. Not gone at all.
Tears welled up, and she blinked them away. Relief. Gratitude.
Those girls by the pool—maybe they didn’t know about the hard stuff. They didn’t know what it was like to try so hard to fit a whole marriage in between the kids’ interruptions. Didn’t know what it was like to fight in code in front of three curious young boys because you didn’t even have time to fight, otherwise.
They didn’t know what it was like to love someone so much that you lived for those ten minutes before bed, and when you burned bright for ten years—when you
poured all the love you had into your family, all the energy into feeding and changing and cleaning up after your babies, caring about their school field trips and their bake sale cupcakes, listening to your husband complain about his job, worry about his brother, and you piled on top of it all your own worries—when you did that not for a month or two months but for a year, and then another year, and then another year and another baby—eventually you ran out of light. You stopped thinking that the time when it was going to get easier was right around the corner. You gave up the grand illusion that had carried you through the horrific months of early parenthood, and you realized it was never, ever going to get easier.
You watched your husband figure it out, too. That you could never go back to the way things were. Not when the kids started sleeping through the night, not when they started school, not ever.
