Ruin Me

Cara McKenna

In her head, Robin wants to marry her boyfriend. Everything about her relationship with Jay makes sense—makes her happy—but she can’t bring herself to accept his proposal. Her body has unfinished business with Patrick, the man who saved her life six years ago. For a long time she assumed her potent feelings for Patrick were born of fear, wrapped up in the night she was attacked, but now she’s realizing it’s far simpler than that. She wants him. Always has, always will.

More attached to Robin than the idea of her being faithful, Jay gives her the green light to go after Patrick in the hopes that it will demystify the man and get him out of Robin’s system. It begs the question—if you’ve got permission, is it still cheating? And which will ultimately sway the heart—reason or attraction?

An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

www.ellorascave.com

Ruin Me

ISBN 9781419927430

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Ruin Me Copyright © 2010 Cara McKenna

Edited by Jaynie Ritchie

Cover art by Syneca

Electronic book publication June 2010

The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

Ruin Me

Cara McKenna

Dedication

For the fictional residents of Dereham, Vermont. And for Ellen, who loves lumberjacks.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my editor, Jaynie Ritchie, for continuing to polish up the weird rocks I keep dumping on her desk.

Trademarks Acknowledgement

The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

Bailey’s Irish Cream: R & A Bailey & Co.

Bowflex: Nautilus, Inc.

Carhartt: Carhartt, Inc.

Chuck Taylors: Converse, Inc.

Dartmouth College: Trustees of Dartmouth College DBA

Detroit Pistons: Detroit Pistons Basketball Company

Dumb and Dumber: New Line Productions, Inc.

Dunkin’ Donuts: Dunkin’ Donuts USA, Inc.

Jeopardy!: Jeopardy Productions, Inc.

Jerry Springer Show: Universal TV Distribution Holdings LLC

Los Angeles Clippers: LAC Basketball Club, Inc.

Prozac: Eli Lilly and Company

Saab: General Motors Corporation

Sam Adams: BBC Brands, LLC

Speedo: Speedo International B.V.

Tupperware: Dart Industries Inc.

Wired: Condé Nast Publications

Chapter One

When Jay proposed, I immediately began to cry.

And these weren’t tears of joy, mind you. These were frustrated tears because I really, really wanted to toss my arms around his neck and say yes, but I couldn’t.

I bet Jay wasn’t surprised. I bet if I had tossed my arms joyously around his neck and screamed my affirmations the euphoria would’ve lasted a day or a week, but soon enough the giant asterisk that hovers above our relationship would’ve popped the happy bubble.

I’ll say right off that the problem isn’t Jay. Jay is awesome. He’s my age—thirty-three—and he’s funny and smart and patient and I’m definitely attracted to him. My name is Robin. Jay and Robin. I mean, that’s so obnoxious it just has to be right.

Jay’s the only guy I’ve ever suspected I might want a child with, which is huge, since I’d always assumed I’d take a pass on that. He’d be a great dad. A stay-at-home dad, since he works out of our little house, writing reviews and articles about techie stuff. I like that he gets free smart phones and gaming systems before they’re released and he plays with them for a few days and types up his verdict in his hilarious, trademark style. I like it even more that as soon as the clock hits five thirty he tosses aside whatever toy he’s playing with and starts dinner. I like that he runs or swims every morning and that there’s one of those Bowflex contraptions in his office, and he actually uses it, three days a week. He doesn’t look quite like one of the guys from the ads, but he’s not far off. For a guy you might run into at the drugstore in our little town in Vermont, he’s a total babe.

What I’m saying is, I love Jay. The trouble isn’t him, so process of elimination points a big fat finger at me. I’m not afraid of commitment and I sowed my wild oats enough to know if I’m missing out on anything, and I’m not. Jay’s even better at sex than he is at fixing things, and that’s saying a lot.

When Jay proposed, he didn’t get down on one knee. We were sitting on the couch watching Dumb and Dumber, which is what we watched on our very first date four years ago. We watch it every six months or so because Jay can’t get enough of how I start convulsing when Jeff Daniels whacks Jim Carrey in the back of the knees with a walking stick. This time when I caught my breath again and opened my streaming eyes, I found Jay turned toward me, holding a little polished wood box. I stared at it for a while and when he opened it, I started crying for real. Eventually he closed it and I’m pretty sure I ruined that movie for us forever.

The way Jay puts it, our problem is “that asshole”.

Personally, I don’t think the guy’s an asshole. I can’t, because he may have saved my life. I call our problem “the Patrick issue”. Patrick is the name you’d see typed in fine print next to that hovering asterisk I mentioned earlier.

Yesterday, the day after Jay proposed, he made us breakfast as usual before I left to go to work. We’ve always been good at keeping our disagreements out in the open and not stewing over things, but we hadn’t talked about the proposal since it happened. Twelve hours is about our limit, elephant-in-the-room-wise, and Jay cracked first.

“You want to talk about what happened?” he asked, buttering toast.

I shrugged.

He put the knife down and made an exasperated noise. “You showed me which ring to get.”

“I know.”

“Is this ever going to go away?” he asked. “I mean, are you ever going to be able to say yes to me?”

I pushed my chair out from the dining room table and walked over and squeezed him. He smelled nice, like always. I wondered what was wrong with me that this wonderful man wasn’t enough.

“I want to say yes,” I mumbled into his shoulder.

“We’ve got to figure this out soon.”

“It’s my problem,” I said.

I felt him stroke my hair, heard him swallow. “Maybe we should move,” he said. “So we just don’t run into him anymore.”

I pulled away. “I don’t want to move. I love this town. And my store and our neighbors. We’ll never find another neighborhood in this country and this century where people still drop by to borrow things. I like lending things to people.”

Jay shook his head. “I can’t keep going like this.” He looked older in an instant, his hazel eyes framed by fine lines, those half dozen gray sideburn hairs stark against their brown cohorts. “If you won’t move,” he said, “then I don’t know what else there is we can do. Except, maybe…”

I gave him a puzzled look because I sure as hell had no clue what else we could do.

“Maybe you should… Maybe,” he said again through a huge sigh, “you should just go ahead and sleep with him.”

I felt my face go numb and I snaked my arms across my chest, as if I were naked and trying to hide my breasts. “No way.”

“We both know you want to.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to want to though.”

It’s no secret I’m attracted to Patrick Whelan. It goes beyond a lack of girl-friendly diplomacy to what I can only describe as an allergic sexual reaction. I can’t control or conceal it. When I see him, I start sweating, my whole body starts buzzing and I can’t not look at him.

For the first few years I thought I was having flashbacks—fearful physical reactions to the memory of the guy who held a knife to my throat in the parking lot of Dereham, Vermont’s only bar, before Patrick Whelan spotted us and kicked the living shit out of him. That was the only time I’ve ever touched Patrick. I’d been shaking uncontrollably and before anyone even called the police about the man still lying on the asphalt, twitching and bleeding from his mouth and scalp, Patrick held me. He pulled me down to sit beside him on the hood of my old Saab, and he wrapped his big arms around me and rocked me until I could breathe properly again. Then he told to me to go inside and phone the cops. Twenty minutes later Patrick and I got taken to the station to file a report, and the man who attacked me was taken to the emergency room. He spent a couple nights in the hospital and was released without charges in time to get back to Dartmouth for Monday classes. Seven months after that, Patrick got released from prison, where he served an aggravated assault sentence for having the misfortune of beating the holy hell out of the sheriff’s step-nephew.

This happened more than a year before I met Jay, but despite Patrick and me both being single and becoming friends when I drove up and visited him at prison once a week, we never got together. After he was released, when we’d run into each other at the diner or the bar or a store, we’d just wave politely. I’d work hard to hide the somersaults my stomach was doing, the ones I thought for ages were some kind of PTSD from the attack… It took me a long time to admit I just plain wanted to fuck Patrick’s brains out.

“I can’t sleep with him,” I said to Jay, then bit my lip. “I love you. Plus I really like the idea of monogamy.”

“We’ll never move forward if this doesn’t get resolved. I can live through you sleeping with another man, Robin.”

I blinked a few times, feeling slapped. “Can you?”

“Well, I’m pretty fucking sure it’ll suck worse than anything I’ve ever gone through, but…I know you’d never do it behind my back. You don’t want to hurt me.”

I shook my head vigorously.

“I want to be with you and that might just be a price I’m willing pay to get us there,” Jay said.

I was crying again and the sobs blended into tiny laughs. “Sometimes I can’t figure out if you’re the most rational person I’ve ever met or a complete sociopath.”

He smiled and hugged me and sent me back to the table with some toast and scrambled eggs. “Well, I’m your sociopath. Think about it for a few days. I don’t want to go anywhere, but you need to figure out a way to move forward. So we can move forward.”

He said that yesterday, and when I kissed him goodbye to head out to open my shop, I thought it was the worst idea ever. Now…

Now I’m not so sure.

Chapter Two

I know where Patrick Whelan lives. Everybody in our little town knows where everybody else lives and for how long and with whom.

Patrick lives alone toward the end of a long dirt road that winds into the woods, just on our side of the town line between Dereham and Riverdale. I’ve never been to his house but I find it easily. There’s a bank of mailboxes at the foot of the road and the one labeled fourteen says Whelan on the side. I take a right at the long, anonymous driveway just after the one marked twelve, my old navy hatchback bucking in the dry potholes.

My heart starts to hammer when I spot Patrick’s ancient pickup in the driveway. It’s Sunday morning and I wish I were religious so I could remember I’m supposed to be at church like a good person and get the hell out of here. Instead I park my car behind his truck and slam the door as loud as I can—a warning. I trot up a path of slate flagstones to the door of his small red house and I push the bell, contorting my face into an imitation of casual cool.

But Patrick doesn’t come to the door. He appears around the side of the house with an axe in one gloved hand. This deviates from my script and I falter.

“Hi!” I say, way too perky, and wave like a moron.

“Robin.”

Goddamn, he’s so tall. I always manage to make him shorter in my mind’s eye. He doesn’t smile but that’s not surprising. Patrick Whelan’s not a smiley guy.

“Can I interest you in the word of Our Lord, Jesus Christ?” I ask and grin.

He grins back, cautious. That’s what I always used to say to him when I’d sit down at the table in the correctional facility’s visiting room. It freaked him out the first time but broke the ice once he realized I was kidding. Then it became our greeting. This is the first time I’ve said it since he got released, over five years ago now.

He leans his axe against the side of the house and crosses his arms over his chest. I should mention Patrick’s an honest-to-God lumberjack. That’s probably not his actual job title, but he spends four months of the year in northern New Hampshire, logging. It must pay well because it’s exceedingly dangerous. The rest of the year he works at a lumberyard here in Dereham. I think he does some contract carpentry too, because every once in a while I’ll see his truck in some random driveway, its bed full of two-by-fours. A couple times I’ve been tempted to call him up to do some carpentry for me, but I can never think up a project. Not one that Jay couldn’t probably do a decent job of, anyway. God, there’s a metaphor if I ever heard one.

“Can I help you with something, Robin?”

“Maybe.” Being close to him makes me shake, as always. “Can I talk to you for a few minutes?”

He thinks a second and nods. “You talk, I chop,” he says and grabs his axe and heads around the house again. I follow, watching his ass. You would too, if you were here.

There’s a mountain of firewood at the edge of his backyard. He must have just had a couple cords delivered.

“Don’t mind me,” he says and starts splitting logs at a stump. “You just do your talking.”

I don’t want to launch into the meat of the matter right off, not after we haven’t had a real conversation in half a decade. I toy with the fringe at the end of my scarf. “How have you been?”

“All right.” His brown eyes meet mine. He’s got several days’ worth of stubble and is a couple months overdue for a haircut. I want to run my palms over his face and neck and devour him.

I clear my throat and point to the wood. “Why do you do this by hand?”

“Relaxes me.” He splits a log down the middle with a whack then adds another to the stump. It’s so unselfconsciously manly I have to stifle an urge to tear my clothes off and tackle him.

Instead I ask, “How’s your mom?”

He shrugs. “’Bout the same.”

Despite all those visits, I don’t know a ton about Patrick, but I know his mom lives a few towns away and she’s some kind of compulsive hoarder. I think about Patrick whenever I see a show about people with that problem. I know he worries about her and that she drives him up the wall. Or she would, if you could get to her walls through all the stacks of moldy old catalogs and magazines Patrick said she’s got herself barricaded behind.

“I don’t suppose you could invite me in for a coffee?” I ask. “It’s not really a wood-chopping conversation I’ve come here to have with you.”

He thwacks the blade into the stump and mops his brow. Snow starts to drift down, the first of the season. The flakes land in his dark hair for a second before dissolving. He nods and I follow him to the side door.

His house is small and as soon as I step inside I’m struck by how cool it is. He’s got tons of recessed shelving built into the walls and a handsome granite counter running along one side of his kitchen. Everything feels Spartan and organized—a poorly hidden filial rebellion.

We don’t talk and soon a kettle’s whistling. He puts grounds into a little metal basket and steeps me a cup of coffee.

“Milk?” he asks.

“Please. And sugar if you have it.”

He hands me the mug, royal blue with the logo of his lumber company. I take a sip even though it’s way too hot and pretend it doesn’t hurt, and he sits down opposite me at his little scrubbed pine table, looking patient. He’s got way more grays than Jay, mostly in his temples and his not-quite-a-beard. I think he turned thirty-eight or -nine last January.

“So,” I finally begin. “I want to apologize in advance, about this. It’s really weird, what I have to say. You’re going to think I’m crazy.”

His gaze darts around the kitchen—scouting for escape routes, I suspect—then settles back on my face. “Okay.”

“I, um… I was wondering if maybe, sometime…if I might possibly…kiss you,” I mumble. “Maybe not just kiss. Maybe more. I’m not sure. And not today, just sometime.”

His mouth twitches behind his stubble. His dark eyes widen, which is a strange look for him because normally they’re sort of squinty. He’s got hooded eyes, I think they’re called. They make him look a bit Slavic, like a moody Russian exile from Romanov times, with an Irish name. I realize I’m staring when I should be elucidating.

“So that’s why I’m here,” I say lamely.

Patrick clears his throat. “No offense, if you’re a feminist or whatever, but aren’t you Jay Fleury’s woman?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“He seems like a good man,” Patrick says, cautious and clearly confused.

I nod again. “He’s wonderful.”

His fingers wrestle with themselves, as though he wishes he had a mug, too, to keep them busy. “Well, I’ll be honest with you, Robin. Even if he was a world-class shit, I wouldn’t ever mess with another man’s woman.”

“It was his idea,” I say and watch Patrick’s hands go perfectly still.

“That sounds a bit fucked up. No offense, Robin.”

“It’s a lot simpler than I’m making it seem,” I say, wondering if it might not be the opposite. “Would you consider it? It’s important. To him. To both of us.”

“Why do you need to…do whatever you need to? With me?”

I think I catch his ears go a bit pink then wonder if they’ve been like that all along from the cold.

“I have some feelings for you, and they won’t go away,” I say. “I don’t think I can move on with Jay until I—” I pause, dogged by my own flagrant selfishness. “Oh my God, I’m sorry. This is the most psychotic thing I’ve ever done. I can’t believe I came here and said this to you. I’m so sorry.” I get up and put my still-steaming coffee on the cutting board by the sink, stuff my arms into my coat sleeves and head toward the door. I hear Patrick’s chair scrape behind me.

“Don’t just dump that on me and run off,” he says.

I stop. I turn and look at him and my face must be as red my scarf. “It sounds really horrible when I say it out loud.” I look at his feet. “Like I’m propositioning you. And I guess I am.”

“I gotta say, I don’t get it.”

“Me neither,” I say and I laugh, wanting to die.

“I’ll think about it.”

His words knock the sense clear out of my brain. I blink a few times. “Will you?”

He nods. “Send your man over this afternoon. I want to hear him explain it.”

“But you’d…you’d think about it? You’d be okay with kissing me, or more?” I blush so hard I feel sunburned.

“I’m not okay with anything ‘til I talk to him,” Patrick says, walking over. “You tell him two o’clock.” He pulls the door open for me. “Drive safe now.”

* * * * *

It’s a quarter after five.

When Jay left to go to Patrick’s three hours ago, he’d looked pale and understandably freaked out. I don’t know what I’d have felt if I was him—how I’d feel toward Patrick Whelan. I’d be scared, I bet, because Jay is a slender five-foot-eleven and Patrick’s probably four or five inches taller and he’s pretty jacked, if his arms are any indication. There’s no reason Patrick should have a beef with Jay but that’s bound to be intimidating.

I’d also be super pissed, I think, because if I was Jay I’d have been on my way to talk to the man my long-term girlfriend—who I’m super-awesome to—admits to being obsessed with. Obsessed in a joyless kind of way, I should add. I don’t like having feelings for Patrick. I never think about him when I’m having sex with Jay…at least I never mean to. Sometimes I slip up but I’m always careful to come staring right into Jay’s eyes if we’re face-to-face. Sometimes my brain gets itself in trouble if he’s taking me from behind.

You can probably tell that I fret a lot. It’s one of my dearest hobbies, one that drove my dad nuts while I was growing up. I wish I could call him now and ask his artless, sage advice. He makes everything sound so obvious. If I could somehow explain my problem without creeping both of us out, he’d probably say, “So, Jay’s upset because you want to bang this lumberjack guy? Well, of course he is. Haven’t you ever heard of monogamy? Christ, Robin, it’s not rocket science.”

I jump when I hear the car door slam in the driveway. I run downstairs to the living room like a puppy and watch through the picture window as Jay walks up the side steps. He does a little dance, a shuffly mashed-potato dance on the doormat, cleaning off his shoes before he comes in. It seems obscenely normal in light of what’s going on.

“So?” I ask, nearly falling as I slide across the kitchen floor in my socks.

He kicks his sneakers off and tosses them in the bin by the closet, just like normal. When he looks at me, I can’t read him. He holds his hands up, showing me a pair of red, blistered palms. I notice little bits of wood stuck to his hat.

“Oh my God, he made you chop wood with him? For how long?”

“Three. Fucking. Hours.”

“He didn’t give you gloves?”

“This is with gloves. Look.” Jay raises his arms up like a zombie, not quite to the shoulder. “That’s as far as they’ll go, now.”

“Yikes.”

“Can you take my hat off for me?”

I do and he walks to the table and slumps into a seat, looking wrecked. I sit across from him and clasp my hands, pretending to be patient, dying of curiosity.

“So what happened?” I ask.

“I tried to explain it to him, and I think I made as much sense as I could’ve hoped to.”

“What did he say?”

Jay purses his lips. “He said he likes you. That way. He said he’s always liked you.”

“Really?” My heart doesn’t flutter, I promise you. It sinks straight down into my feet.

He nods. “But he never thought you felt that way about him. Because you always seemed to avoid him, after he was released. And, he said, because every time he runs into you, you always look worried he might headbutt you or something.”

“Oh.” That was never my fear. As threatening as Patrick Whelan arguably looks, I’ve always been more afraid of what I’m capable of when I’m within ten feet of him.

“I think he’s like half in love with you, Robin.”

“Do you think that’ll make things more complicated?”

“Probably.” Jay sighs and finally makes solid eye contact. “But I think he’ll do it. Are you… Do you think you’re in love with him?” There’s a cold fear in his eyes.

I shake my head. “I don’t really know him that well. It’s just sexual. Or whatever primal kind of thing you feel when somebody rescues you. I love you,” I add emphatically. “And whatever I feel about him, it’s nothing like that. Like us.”

He nods, solemn but steady. “Well, if I had to guess, I think he’ll do it.”

I marvel that we can even be having a calm discussion like this.

“Although he kept squinting at me, like I was trying to trick him or something,” Jay says.

I smile at him to cut the tension. “Do you still think he’s an asshole?”

He sighs again, so theatrical I assume it’s a joke. “Jury’s still out… I guess he’s okay. He gave us some wood,” he adds. “But I don’t think I’ll be able to get it out of the car for a few days. I could barely turn the key in the ignition.”

I stand and give Jay’s shoulder a squeeze.

“Ow.”

“Sorry.” I pat his head instead. “Go find some football to watch or something. I’ll bring you a beer and start dinner.”

* * * * *

Three days later I’m meeting Patrick at the bar. I dropped by his house again on Monday evening to ask if he’d like to come out for a drink this week and see what happens, or to talk more. He said sure, and now I’m sitting in one of the booths by the window, just before eight o’clock, eyes on the parking lot, heart jack-hammering my ribs. I’m afraid he won’t show and even more afraid he will.

I wasn’t sure what to wear. Jay was around when I was changing and I hope he noticed me putting on my crappiest underwear, so he’ll know I’m not planning on going hog-wild tonight. I’m trying really hard not to appear too eager. Actually, I think I’m overdoing it a bit, acting as if this whole situation pains me greatly. If there’s a tightrope for people walking the line between “selfish harlot” and “dewy-eyed martyr”, it’s very narrow, and the chasm is so deep I couldn’t tell you if there’s a net or not.

Jay’s gone from disbelief to acceptance in the last few days and is now treating the whole thing like a project. He bought a copy of this book called The Myth of Monogamy and seems to be tackling the situation sociologically. Typical, rational Jay. Pragmatism is his Prozac.

From my seat in the booth I can almost see the spot where I got threatened at knifepoint back when I was twenty-seven. Our town is small and the Tap is its only bar. I decided I liked beer enough to get over my bad memories a long time ago.

I hear a door slam out in the dark and then Patrick Whelan’s walking toward the entrance. I look away. I don’t want him to see me watching if he glances at the window, which is so stupid. He spots me when he enters and heads right to the booth and sits down across from me, looking tall and solid.

“Hey, Robin.”

“Hey.” I glance around, feeling as if everyone must know exactly why we’re here.

“You have a good day?” he asks, chattier than I’ve ever seen him. I realize he must be as terrified as me and I relax.

“It was all right,” I lie. I was useless and jumpy at work all day, counting down the seconds to this very moment. “Can I get you a beer?”

“Sure.” He taps my plastic pint glass. “What’s that?”

“Sam.”

He pulls out a battered old leather wallet and hands me a few bucks. “Get us a pitcher. We’ll probably need it.”

I laugh, relieved beyond words. He smiles at me. I haven’t seen him smile like that in years—not since our visits.

I fetch our pitcher. We say cheers and clack our glasses together.

“So,” I say. “Jay can almost lift his arms again. After all that chopping.”

He nods. “I didn’t think he’d keep going for that long.”

“Why’d you make him chop wood?” I ask.

“I figured it might get his aggression out so he wouldn’t snap and try to kill me.”

I laugh. “So you gave him an axe?”

“I’m not really an expert about stuff like this.”

I nod and smile and look down into my beer, turn the glass around and around on its coaster. More Than a Feeling comes on the jukebox and I tap my fingers along to it. “So. Jay said you said you feel…something? For me?”

He nods, casual, as if I’d asked if he’s ever been to Montreal.

I take a deep drink. “I don’t really know what I’m after,” I admit and meet his eyes.

“He said you guys are happy. But you…”

“I’m obsessed with you,” I offer, voice low and private. “Or my body is.”

I catch his eyebrows contract. “Because of what happened?”

“Maybe. Probably.” I didn’t know Patrick before the attack but I’d seen him around town. He never really made an impression before that night. I touch my neck, the spot where my tiny cut faded into nothingness years ago.

Patrick watches my fingers. “And you think if we, if you and me, do something…then you’ll get over it?”

“That’s the basic idea. I don’t know if it would work or make things worse, to be honest.”

“I don’t want to be responsible for breaking up anybody’s home,” he says. “I’m here because your man said maybe it would help you guys. And because I like you. Not just like you, I mean. Because I’m attracted to you.” He huffs out a breath, looking as if he just spoke fluent Esperanto and blew his own mind.

Seeing Patrick this way—sitting across the table from me looking so lost—reminds me of visiting hours. I do something I’d always wanted to do then but wasn’t allowed to. I reach out and put my hand on his wrist and smile at him. He stares at my fingers for a moment then pulls his arm back and covers my hand in his big one. Then he seems to remember where we are and takes it away, eyes darting toward the bar.

“Jay said he thinks maybe you…like me. A lot,” I say.

He nods, giving me nothing to work with.

“I’m a little worried I might end up jerking you around. God, that sounds really egomaniacal. Plus I’m probably jerking you around already.”

Patrick shrugs. “I think you both did your best to explain it. I know the score.” He takes a couple swallows of his beer. “Look,” he says finally. “We can talk this to death for the next five hours, or I can lay it out for you.”

“Okay.”

“I like you,” he says, eyes watching his fingers drumming the tabletop. “As a person. And I’d genuinely like to see your relationship work out.” He clears his throat and continues, quieter. “But I’d also like to sleep with you, or however far you want to take it. I also think this idea’s nuts and I wouldn’t be surprised if it wrecks things with you and your man and I wind up in the middle of it.”

“Oh.”

“But I also think that you and me, we’re not close or anything. Not for a long while, anyway,” he says. “No offense, but there’s not a ton at stake here. You know, friendship-wise? There’s not a lot at stake for me. So sure, I’ll go along with whatever you guys agree on.”

“Wow, okay. Thanks. That actually made everything seem a lot clearer.”

“But listen.” He rubs a palm over his eyes. “I don’t want this to end up like Springer. I don’t want your man calling me or showing up at my house with a shotgun or hassling me at work or any of that. Or worse, taking it out on you. If you think he might get that way, do everybody a favor and call it off now.”

“I follow. I don’t think any of that will happen. He’s known I have feelings for you for four years. Since before I even knew what they were all about. He knows it’s just part of the package with me. And he’s not a jealous guy.”

“Yeah, I guess not… This whole letting-you-be-with-another-guy thing,” Patrick says. “Would you do the same for him?”

I grin, guilty. “Not in a million years.”

He nods. “Anyhow, that’s all I’ve got to say about it. Count me in.”

“Wow…just like that?”

He smiles. “Just like that.”

I feel my body relax. I realize I’ve been hunched forward, shoulders tight, elbows on the table, and now I lean back into the booth’s vinyl padding and push out a long breath. I stare at Patrick, like really stare, because I feel like I finally can, now that everyone knows where everyone stands. I move my foot under the table and press my ankle against his. He presses back. It’s just legs, not even the sexy parts of legs, but I feel energy, electricity zapping through two pairs of jeans and shooting right up my bones into my hair and fingernails. I lose my mind a little. Patrick sips his beer, looking dutifully neutral, scanning the activity around the bar.

Moondance comes on. I push my shoe off and run my stocking foot up the inside of Patrick’s leg. His eyes glaze over. I’m not trying to tease or torture him. I just want to turn him on, plain and simple. I want proof that he wants me back and that I have the power and also the permission to fuck with our boundaries, shamelessly. I rub the ball of my foot up the inseam along his big thigh, stopping an inch or two from where I guess his crotch is.

He clears his throat and refills his glass.

“So,” I say, foot still nestled between his legs. “Are you free later this week at all? Maybe you could invite me over for dinner or something.”

“I’m a pretty lousy cook.”

“Well, I’ll bring something then.”

He nods. “Okay.”

“Friday? Seven?”

“Sure.”

I smile. Friday is perfect. Firstly because I don’t think I can wait more than two days, and secondly because I don’t want this ridiculousness to eat into my weekend time with Jay. I feel as though it’s something I should be fitting in, like a doctor’s appointment.

We sit, sipping our beer, listening to Van Morrison, not saying anything. I study Patrick, and he seems to study me back. I take my foot away as we drain our glasses.

“Well, I better get home soon,” I say finally.

“You good to drive?”

I nod. “Walk me to my car?”

“I can’t stand up yet,” Patrick says. “Why don’t you go use the ladies’ or something and let me cool off?”

I have to bite my lip to keep from grinning, so outrageously pleased that I’ve managed to arouse this man. I take our empty glasses and pitcher and leave them on the bar on my way to the bathroom.

Patrick’s standing beneath the keno monitor when I emerge and I stare at the numbers to keep my eyes from drifting to his crotch. He pulls the door open and follows me out into the parking lot. I walk to my car and hear him behind me.

I turn and smile up at him. “Thanks for meeting me tonight.”

He nods. He looks around us, maybe avoiding my eyes, maybe on the alert for knife-wielding Dartmouth poli-sci majors.

“Can I kiss you good-night?” I ask, more nervous than I’ve been around the opposite sex since eighth grade.

“Sure. Maybe we should go behind my truck though.” He nods to where he’s parked, farther from potential prying eyes.

I put my hand in his and it’s warm and big. He leads me to the edge of the lot and we stand behind his cab, mostly hidden. The parking lot’s got a streetlight at every corner—it didn’t used to, trust me—and I stare at Patrick in the pinky-orange glow and watch the steam of his breath form and disappear in the cold breeze. I watch his lips.

“You’re sure about this?” he asks.

I nod, still focused on his mouth.

When he leans in and kisses me…shit, I don’t know. People talk about melting and that’s how it feels, honest to God. My bones go soft and my body warms and if I wasn’t held in place between a truck and a solid wall of man, I bet I’d fall over. I feel those big, rough palms on my jaw and he angles his head and kisses me deep, filling me with his tongue and his heat and his noises. And he can kiss. My hands flap around, unsure of where to go until I settle them flat against his chest on his black fleece jacket. I feel and hear him groan when I kiss back and it triggers something in me. I pull his zipper down and run my palms over his work shirt, so tempted to rip it open and scatter his buttons all over the asphalt.

He tastes like beer and impatience. His fingers tangle in my hair, hands covering my ears so it sounds as if we’re underwater. I stand on my tiptoes and press myself against him and he’s warm and sturdy and goddamn if he’s not hard for me. I slide one palm down between us, pausing at his belt, needing some natural disaster to stop me from groping him.

Instead there’s a flare of music as someone exits the bar. We both freeze then pull away as an engine starts a few cars down. Patrick releases my head and pushes me back a pace by the shoulders before cramming his hands in his pockets. I meet his eyes and they look as wild as my own feel. I move away a little more and the car swings out, washing us in its headlight beams.

I clear my throat. “Friday at seven?”

He nods. He puts his hand on my back between my shoulder blades and steers me to my car. He watches me climb inside. He waves at me as I start to reverse and I wave back. I wonder if sexual frustration exacerbates blood-alcohol level. It sure feels that way. If I get pulled over on the short drive between here and my house I’ll have to say, “I had only two beers in two hours, officer, but then I made out with a lumberjack. You know how it is.”

I don’t get pulled over, though, and after a minute or two I feel perfectly sober if a bit suddenly exhausted.

One thing that both surprises and relieves me when I get home is how I feel about Jay. There he is, sitting on the couch with a copy of Wired on a pillow in his lap, TV tuned to a basketball game. And I’m attracted to him, just like always. Nothing about it feels diminished. Not cheapened, not weaker compared to what I felt with Patrick. It feels the same, except now there’s a deep vein of gratitude running through it. He stands and I dump my coat and bag and walk over and hug him—hard. He’s wearing my favorite sweater of his, soft merino wool that smells musty in the best way.

He strokes my hair. “How did it go?”

I sigh and sit back on the cushions and he mutes the television.

“It went pretty well.”

“Did anything happen?”

I nod. “Not a lot. Do you want to hear about it, or should I just keep it to myself?”

“No, I want to know,” Jay says. “This is part of our sex life, I think. I want to feel like there’s a place in it for me.”

I feel my brows rise; impressed or skeptical, I’m not sure which. Sometimes his reasoning is like magic to me.

“Okay,” I say. “Well, we split a pitcher and sort of flirted and then I kissed him. In the parking lot. We made out. It was pretty nice,” I admit, and smile, sheepish.

He nods. “How do you feel now?”

“I feel…I feel calmer. And satisfied.”

“Do you think that’s all you needed?”

I look around the living room with an ugly, selfish pang of anger. I hate the feeling and I tramp it down. I don’t have any right to feel as though Jay’s out to spoil my fun.

“I couldn’t tell you yet,” I say. “But right now I feel pretty…sated.” That word sounds stupid in my ears, as if it was never meant to be used in conversation.

Jay pats my knee, looking thoughtful. “Okay.”

“How do you feel?”

“I feel all right,” he says. “It was hard, when you were gone. Not knowing what was happening. But I lived through it and that feels all right.”

I laugh, a goofy, dorky laugh. “You are so level-headed it, like, breaks my brain.”

“I’m trying, anyhow.”

“We decided to meet up on Friday,” I say, plunging onward. “Is that cool?”

Jay blinks and nods and his face is impossible to read. It kills me that the thing I want so badly is hurting him. Not enough to give it up, though, I hear you saying.

“We should set some ground rules,” I offer. “Or you should. About what you’re comfortable with happening.”

“Everything but,” he says, clearly having given this some thought already. “Just not sex. Intercourse, I mean. I want that to be for us, only.”

“Fine with me.” As if I’m in a position to be anything aside from grateful.

He nods, relieved, I think. Then his brows bunch and a breath sputters through his lips.

“What?”

“This is going to sound really weird,” he says.

I laugh. “The bar’s been set pretty high lately, but go on, what’s weird?”

“When you were gone, and I was trying not to think about what you were doing…”

“Yeah?” I ask.

“It sort of…”

Made you die a little inside? Made you go shopping for guns online? Made you hate me, since it probably should?

“It sort of turned my crank,” Jay says.

“Oh.” My mouth freezes in its little round shape.

He laughs, seeming instantly relaxed. “Yeah, it kind of turned me on.”

“Wow. I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Me neither,” he says.

“What about it?”

“I dunno… The idea of you with some other guy. Some guy wanting you and having to come to me to get permission.”

“Well, that’s a zillion times better than you feeling left out or insecure,” I say.

“Yeah. I bet that makes me some kind of Neanderthal pimp-wannabe sexist man-pig.”

“Beats cuckold,” I offer.

“Yeah.”

We sit for a while not saying anything, contemplating Jay’s revelation as we watch the Pistons play the Clippers with no sound.

I finally turn to him. “Do you want to have sex?”

“God, yeah.”

I grin. I’d been worried about that, afraid the next time we’d have sex it’d be a disaster, Jay understandably paranoid that I wasn’t thinking about him.

He tosses aside his magazine and pillow and pulls me onto his lap. I straddle him and we kiss, hard and ferocious. His hands cup my ass, tugging me close and I lock my thighs around his hips, feeling his excitement. I peel my sweater and shirt off, feel his hands on my breasts, squeezing and kneading. I unhook my bra and he wrestles it away, mouth hungry.

“Jay.”

His hips pump, stroking his arousal against mine. I can feel in his touch that he wants to be in charge. He gets this way sometimes and it’s fine by me. I like when he’s all possessive and rough. It usually means I’m naked and he’s dressed, as if I’m the vulnerable one being taken advantage of.

“Get your clothes off,” he mutters against my neck.

I slide off his lap and drop my pants, and my strategically homeliest underwear, and kick them away. He’s got his pajama bottoms on so he just pushes them down to free his erection and he strokes himself, studying me. I wait for permission, eyes on his hand.

He nods, slow and thoughtful, approving. “Fuck me.”

I straddle him again, running my lips up and down his cock a few times.

“Yeah.” His hands guide my hips, making the thrusts aggressive.

“I want it,” I say.

“What do you want?”

“Your cock.” I stare him dead in the eyes. I love when he looks this way, all flushed and mean. His lips are parted and his hazel eyes look green tonight and a little crazy. Horny Jay is worlds different from regular Jay. He’s like a secret only I get to enjoy. I know—my hypocrisy is staggering.

I angle my hips back as he reaches down and guides his head to my pussy. I sink down, slow, and his moan is harsh, giving me a happy chill.

His hands clamp my waist. “God, fuck me.”

There’s no one in my mind except Jay. I’m short and he’s fairly tall and I love how big he feels when I’m in his lap getting ordered around. I find my angles, giving him long pulls, ones that rub his shaft against my clit as I ride him.

“That’s right. Nice and rough.” He pretends this is all about him, but I know better.

I fuck him, hard and steady, hands on the back of the couch, smelling that wool sweater smell, that Jay smell, loving everything familiar and wonderful about this. He wants this to be about power so I keep my romantic feelings to myself.

“Good,” he says. He always knows when I’m close from the way I move—short, greedy strokes, building all that heat and tension in my clit plus whatever intimate clues my pussy is giving him.

“Fuck my cock, Robin.”

I start to moan.

“Tell me how I feel.”

“You’re big,” I say. “Your cock’s so thick and hard.”

“That’s right.”

Technically I think Jay’s about average, but damn if I’ll let him think that when the flattery gets him so insanely hot.

“You’re so big.” I say it again and again, right against his ear, an incantation guaranteed to make Jay lose his mind. I whisper it over and over until the friction drives me crazy and I surrender, riding him slow and deep as the climax rips through my body. He comes too, pushing all the way in and holding there, groaning into my neck as he shoots.

I’m allowed to hold him now. I wrap my arms around his neck and bury my face against his skin. He makes a happy, dirty sound and I laugh. Knowing I haven’t managed to break us is the sweetest relief imaginable. I give him a last squeeze and kiss his temple and get up. When I come back from the bathroom Jay’s got the sound turned back up on the TV. I tug my pants and shirt on and flop down next to him.

“What’s the score?” I ask.

“We’re up, seventy-one to sixty-five.”

“Nice.”

“I love you, Robin.”

I lean against him, glad he can’t see how broad my grin is. “I love you more, Jay Fleury.”

Chapter Three

All through work on Friday, I’m useless.

I own and manage a shop in Dereham’s little town center, selling stationery and bookbinding supplies and photo albums, upscale paper and calligraphy pens, those sorts of things. It’s called Roche Paper & Scissors, as my last name’s Roche, and if you’ve taken grade-school French you know what a terrible pun that is. I paid a local artist to paint the store’s name on the windows in an arch in gold and black, old-timey style. I’m here whenever it’s open, which is ten to six weekdays and noon to four Saturdays. On Fridays I do inventory and it takes me about ten times longer than usual today because I can’t keep any of the figures in my head for longer than a second.

Carrie, my only full-time employee, can tell something’s up. For a twenty-year-old who’s going to develop carpal tunnel from her incessant texting, she’s exceedingly perceptive.

“You want me to do any of that?” she asks.

I’m staring blankly at spools of book cloth, clipboard and pen frozen in my hands as if I’m posing for a statue. The Catatonic Paper Merchant.

“No, I’m cool.”

There’s a laugh in Carrie’s tone. “You aren’t high, are you, Robin?”

I walk over and set the board on the counter. “No, just distracted.”

“Clearly. What are you up to tonight?”

“Oh, just meeting an old friend for dinner,” I say. “I can’t figure out what to wear.”

“Are you going anywhere fancy?” she asks.

“No, just to their place.”

“Just wear what you are now,” she says. “Friends don’t care.”

I look down at my boring black pants, gray sweater, salt-bleached Chuck Taylors.

“I want to look a bit more impressive than this,” I say.

“Ohhh,” Carrie says. She’s insanely blonde, eyebrows so pale they’re translucent. One of them floats up, intrigued. “It’s not a guy, is it? Is it an ex?”

I am literally saved by the bell. The door jingles open and I lavish more attention on the browsing woman who enters than is probably good for business.

Two hours later, standing before my closet, I’m still baffled about what to wear. It’s tough because I want to look sexy, but I don’t want to make too much effort lest I hurt Jay’s feelings.

He wanders into the room. “What are you going to wear?”

“Hell if I know,” I say, tossing my hands up.

“He’s a guy. He won’t really notice.”

I pout at him. “Tell me what to wear.”

“A chastity belt,” Jay says. I study him carefully and he cracks a smile. “What about that polka-dot dress you have?”

“Don’t you think a dress is too dressy?”

“I think you should look smoking hot,” he says.

“Really?”

Jay nods and starts flipping through the hangers. “I mean, the whole point of tonight is sex, right?”

“Well, not actual sex.”

“You should look sexy,” he says and pulls out a couple dresses.

“Are you sure?”

He tosses the candidates across the bed and turns to me, puts his hands on my shoulders. “You know what I said the other night, about this turning my crank?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it still does. We’ve decided to go through with this, so if you’re going to do it, do it right. You want my Neanderthal reasoning?”

I nod.

He rubs his thumbs over my collarbone. “I want you to look insanely hot. Then, in a year or whenever, I want to invite that asshole to our wedding so he has to watch you marry me. And I want him to go nuts with jealousy, knowing what I get and he doesn’t.” Jay smiles, pure evil.

“Patrick’s not an asshole,” I remind him.

“Trust me, Robin—he’s agreed to screw around with my girlfriend. He’s an asshole.”

“You said you think he’s an okay guy.”

“He is, but he’s an asshole too.” Jay kisses my forehead. “Now get dressed and go drive that douche bag out of his mind.”

* * * * *

Jay’s enthusiasm aside, I don’t go so far as to make dinner for myself and Patrick. It didn’t feel right, using our groceries and kitchen to accessorize my infidelity, just as I wouldn’t have gone out and bought a new outfit for the occasion. Instead I drive to an upscale deli and buy some rotisserie chicken and Thanksgiving-type sides and grab a six-pack from the plaza’s liquor store. I get to Patrick’s place ten minutes early. I ring the bell, a paper bag of good-smelling food in each hand.

He opens the door and smiles. “Hey, Robin.”

“Heya.”

He lets me in and I’m glad to be inside since it’s November and I’m wearing a dress and no stockings. My Mary Janes are stiff from the cold, their leather cutting into the backs of my heels. I set the bags on his little kitchen table.

“I have beer in the car too.”

I catch Patrick blushing. “I bought wine. I didn’t know what you’d want this to be like.”

I try not to smile but I do. “This can be however we want it to be. And I’d love some wine. I’d love a lot of wine, actually. I’m a little terrified.”

While I take my coat off Patrick goes to a cabinet and pulls out a bottle, a middle-shelf Australian red with a penguin on the label.

“That’ll be nearly enough for me,” I say, pointing at it. “What are you drinking?”

He looks over his shoulder as he winds the corkscrew in. “You really that scared?”

“I’m mostly teasing. But I am pretty nervous.”

He tugs the cork out with a foomp. “Sorry if this’ll kill the mood, but how’s your man dealing with all this?” He finds two tumblers and pours us each a healthy glass, hands me one.

“Thanks.” I follow him to his living room and look around before I answer his question. He’s remarkably tidy but not quite so much that I worry about his mental health. Patrick’s got lots of bookshelves and lots of books, which surprises me for some reason. Not that he doesn’t seem smart or anything…I’ve just only ever pictured him doing manly, active tasks in his spare time, like refinishing floors or fucking the living daylights out of me.

I sit down on the couch, an old, comfy, mauve monstrosity half-hidden by a colorful afghan. Patrick goes to the hearth and assembles a fire. I know that sounds romantic but I’m almost positive that’s his primary heating method. He’s got a woodstove in his kitchen too. He’s such a lumbercrat.

“Well,” I finally say, watching his back as he gets the flames going. “Jay seems to be taking it pretty well, actually.”

He pulls the wire screen over the fireplace and comes to sit on the couch, a couple feet between us as a buffer. He takes a deep drink and clears his throat. “Seems to be?”

“Yeah, but like legitimately well.”

“I gotta say, I’m impressed.”

I nod. “Me too. Oh, he said we have permission to do everything but. You know, intercourse.”

“All right.”

“He’s sort of into it, now, actually,” I add, wondering immediately if I just shared too much private info about Jay. Then again, he’s sharing me. That’s pretty private.

“Into it, like…”

“Like it turns him on,” I say. “He likes that I’m over here torturing you, I guess.”

“Oh.”

I laugh and take a drink. “Like he’s got some super-amazing car he’ll let you test-drive, but only because he knows you’ll never actually own one yourself and he wants to lord it over you.”

Patrick laughs too. “Kinky.”

“How do you want to do this?”

“Tonight?” he asks. “I was figuring we’d treat it like a date. But if that’s too romantic, we don’t have to.” His gaze drops to my outfit, first-date fare if ever you saw it.

“Maybe more like friends to start out,” I say. “I know I’m sort of over-dressed. That was Jay’s idea. This is like him waxing his super-amazing car.”

Patrick smiles, looking happily puzzled. “You’re a weird couple.”

“So I’m realizing.”

“But sure, friends is fine.”

“Thanks.” I look at the clock. “In that case, can we watch channel five?”

It takes Patrick a second to realize I’m serious then he gets up and switches his late-model television on. We catch most of the first round of Jeopardy! and we drink our wine and shout answers at Alex Trebek. During the ads and the boring part where Alex talks to the contestants we go into the kitchen and dole out the food.

I like being Patrick Whelan’s friend again, sitting on his squishy old couch, watching Jeopardy!, eating Thanksgiving-y food and drinking wine with him. Knowing what dessert’s going to be.

We eat fast and while the contestants are deliberating over Final Jeopardy, Patrick heads to the kitchen and comes back with the bottle. He guessed the answer right and I didn’t, so I clink my refilled glass against his.

He looks over at me, shifty.

“What?” I ask, knowing damn well what.

He takes my wine and sets it on the coffee table beside our dirty plates and clicks off the TV. The room smells like New England winter and I hear the wood popping in the fireplace. He scoots over a cushion and puts his hands to my face.

Patrick tastes of red wine and gravy tonight. He kisses me deep, just as he did in the parking lot, his mouth rough and urgent and dominating. I hold on to his shoulders, hard and strong behind his sweater. For the first time, I worry that I won’t be able to keep my promise to Jay and stop at third base. Patrick’s been kissing me for thirty seconds and I’m already feeling crazed. I push my shoes off onto the floor and break away from him long enough to half recline. He takes my hint, getting one knee between mine and wedging the other in the crease of the couch.

He lowers and I feel all that weight on me. He’s the biggest man I’ve ever been with by far and it’s sinful, his size. I want him to rip me apart like one of those bears with a taste for human meat.

“God,” I mutter against his mouth. “You’re fucking huge.”

He pulls away an inch. “That good or bad?”

“It’s phenomenal,” I say and yank his face back.

He settles closer each minute, his chest grazing mine then his stomach then his hips. His thick thigh pushes the dress up my legs until the skirt’s gathered at my waist. Through his kisses I hear Patrick’s sounds—hungry little grunts and pants. They warm my skin and vibrate my nerve endings. The room felt cold before but now it’s sweltering.

“Take this off,” I say, tugging at his sweater.

He leans back on his haunches and tugs his sweater and shirt up and over his head. His body is even hotter than I’d let myself hope. He’s broad but lean, raw-looking like a wild animal.

“Can I touch you?” I ask, probably looking possessed.

He grabs my wrists and presses my palms against his skin. I feel his stomach, his hips, his arms. This is my new territory, his shapes and smells, the soft hair of his chest, the noises I’m coaxing from him. He puts his hands on mine and rubs them up and down his hard body. I can see him getting hot, the ridge of his cock growing behind his jeans. My mind wills him to force my hands onto it but he keeps them above his waist. I want him to unbuckle his belt and open his fly, take his cock out and make me see it and stroke it and suck it. I want his voice mean and loud, bossing me around.

He gets both his knees between mine and lowers again, pushing his erection between my thighs.

“Patrick.”

“You gotta tell me to stop if I go too far,” he says in a scratchy voice I don’t recognize but adore.

“If you stop I’ll kill you,” I say.

He starts to thrust and I can’t tell you what’s hotter—how hard his cock is, how fierce his arms look or how deep the growl is, rising from his throat. Or maybe it’s the look on his face and those heavy-lidded eyes trained on me, predatory.

My pussy’s hot and wet and in a couple minutes the friction of his fly against my panties is too much. Gosh, what a shame.

“Take your pants off.”

Patrick leans back again and I revise my command. I reach out and grasp his belt for him, jerking the buckle open and fumbling with the button of his fly. I lower the zipper over his erection. He pushes his jeans down his hard thighs and I touch him.

I stroke his heavy cock through his straining underwear. “Jesus, Patrick.”

“Touch me.” His head rolls back as he gives himself over to the pleasure. His hips thrust into my hands. I cup his swollen balls and give his cock slow pulls through the cotton. “Oh God, that feels so fucking good.”

“You have no clue how much I’ve fantasized about this,” I say, in awe of him.

His head comes back up and he watches me, mouth open, cheeks pink. “I think about you when I jerk.”

“About what?”

“About this.” He moans, eyes glued to my hands. “Sometimes I think about the day I got released. I think about finding you waiting for me when I got home that day, in my bed.”

“Jesus, I wish I’d had the balls to. Back then.”

If only I had done that. I know the day Patrick got released he came home to a cold, empty house, one that had been pretty badly vandalized while he was away. I want to make all that up to him tonight.

“I need to see you,” I say.

He moans and pushes the waistband of his shorts down, showing me an impressive measure of mouthwatering, rock-hard cock. I stroke him, tight and slow. When his slit starts to weep I rub the pre-come up and down his length, making him slick.

“Let me watch you,” I beg.

“Lemme watch you then,” he says.

“Whatever you want.”

He stands and gets his jeans and shorts all the way off and I yank my stretchy dress over my head. I don’t own any crazy-sexy underwear, like lacy thongs or push-up bras or any of that. My undies match, at least—blue with white stars. I feel silly in my cutesy get-up until I see the wicked gleam in Patrick’s eye.

“You allowed in my bed?” he asks, standing over me, staring down, chest rising and falling fast.

I nod. He takes my hand and leads me to the next room. He clicks on a dim reading lamp beside his bed. I can smell him here. I sit on the worn goose down comforter and breathe him in. I stretch out on his mattress and he kneels between my legs again.

“Still wanna watch?” he asks.

I nod vigorously, eyes on his dick. He reaches down and tugs at my panties and I bring my legs to my chest and let him slide them all the way off. His dark eyes take me in as I spread my thighs beside his knees. He swallows. One of his hands wraps around his cock and the other inches slowly up my inner thigh, giving me plenty of time to tell him no. Fat fucking chance.

He runs his knuckles over my lips and our moans blend together.

“You’re so wet.”

He dips his fingertips inside me and heat boils up through my cunt, tensing every muscle in my body. He gives me more, two big fingers, and he thrusts in time with his strokes, driving both of us insane for a few minutes.

“You feel tight,” he mutters.

I don’t doubt it. My pussy’s never been this hungry for anyone before and his cock’s so goddamn close. My palms are on his hips, on the dent where his thighs meet his ass. I tug at him. “Let me feel you. Just the tip.”

He lowers, bracing himself on one strong arm. His other hand angles his cock and I feel the smooth, slick skin of his head slide up my lips and over my clit.

I groan and my fingers curl, clawing his ribs.

“God, Robin.” He traces my entrance, slow and cruel.

Shit, it’d be so easy for him to just push in, fill me up, reclaim all the chances I wasted back when I could’ve had this.

“Do you want me?” he asks, almost a whisper. There’s a cruel little gleam in his eye.

I’m too ashamed to say the word so I just nod, teeth clenched.

“Too bad.” His head slides up and down, up and down.

“Patrick.”

“Wish I could,” he says, taunting. Affected or not, his calm is impressive.

“Patrick.”

He pulls away. “Touch yourself.” He watches my fingers take over where his cock left off. He strokes himself, looking mean, just as I always fantasized.

“Play with your clit,” he says. I do and he slips two fingers back inside me. “Think about me fucking you.”

“I am.” I watch his cock, dark and heavy in his fist, I feel his fingers, slipping in and out, rough and deep. But not deep enough.

“What did you think about?” he asks. “Back when we were close?”

He means back when I visited him. Christ, what didn’t I think about? It was tough then, back before I understood that fearful feeling his body gave me. It never stopped me from fantasizing about him though.

“It’s sort of fucked up,” I say, eyes still glued to his dick.

“Tell me.”

“I used to imagine that night.” Saying it makes my throat tight and I try to swallow the anxiety. “I thought about—after you beat the shit out of that guy—I thought about sucking you in the parking lot. Like, while he was still on the ground.” I feel my face color as I admit this. “I’d think about how you comforted me, and I’d imagine that while you were hugging me, I’d reach down and open your jeans and get you hard. And then I’d get on my knees on the asphalt while you sat on my hood, and I’d suck you off.”

Patrick doesn’t reply, just keeps fucking me with his fingers, stroking his cock.

“Say something or I’ll feel like a pervert,” I tell him.

His words come out hoarse. “I wanna fuck you so bad, Robin.”

Relief and arousal course through me, the heat and tightness flaring in my cunt. I watch his cock, dying to taste him. My lips feel swollen, aching to slide over his fat head and suck him and feel his hot come stream over my tongue.

The pleasure tightens into a ball, humming against my fingers, mounting each time his fingers drive into me. I can smell his perspiration and his sex and the room feels surreal around us, a dream.

“God, Patrick.”

“You gonna come?”

“Yes.” I tease my clit and watch the rough pulls he’s giving his dick, watch his stomach clenching with his thrusts, shining with sweat. I imagine him alone on his back, shooting his come right there across those gorgeous muscles. All the strings of my composure snap in quick succession and I’m there, climaxing around his curled fingers.

“Oh good girl.”

I say his name, how many times I don’t know. I go limp as the spasms fade, but he’s still in thrall. His fingers slip out of me and he tastes them, brown eyes staring me down for a long moment.

“Spit in your hands,” he says.

“What?”

“Make your hands wet.” He’s begging now, desperate, all his earlier composure crumbled to dust.

I get both my trembling hands slick and he wraps them around his cock, holding them still. He pumps his hips, fucking my fists, and I understand what he wants. I make them tight, as tight as I guess my pussy would be. He shuts his eyes and braces his arms beside my ribs, strong body above me.

“Yeah.”

“Patrick.”

“Oh God. Say my name.”

I say it again. I lift my hips, hug my thighs to his waist as if we’re fucking.

“Robin. Robin.”

My eyes are wide, unseen by his closed ones. I watch him, his chest and stomach and arms, watch what he’d look like if we were allowed to screw. I feel him faltering above me. His breaths come in harsh gasps, punctuating each thrust. His cock pumps fast and hard and I feel his balls smack the backs of my fingers. We need more spit, but I’m afraid to interrupt him and shatter the illusion.

“Fuck me, Patrick.”

“I am. I am.”

“You’re so big. Give me your big cock, Patrick.”

He’s falling apart—before my eyes, in my hands, all around me.

“Oh God. Here I come, Robin.”

“Give me what I want, Patrick. Give it to me.”

His voice becomes a deep, mean groan. His hips clench and I feel his cock shudder, watch the hot cream lashing my belly until he’s empty.

Chapter Four

For a long time Patrick and I lie on his bed, staring at the ceiling, catching our breath. I worry he might do the manly thing and fall asleep, leaving me in an awkward position where I’ll have to sneak out, stressed about Jay stuck waiting at home, chewing his fingers off, dying for me to get back.

But Patrick gets up first, alleviating my worries. He tosses me a hand towel to clean myself up and I watch him wander into the living room. A clear and precise pang of guilt stabs me. It’s weird, in light of what I’ve just done, but I feel really shitty that I watched Jeopardy! with him. I watch it with Jay most nights. I push the feeling away as Patrick comes back in, dressed.

I sit up and smile at him as he buckles his belt. “Thanks,” I say.

He nods. “That scratch your itch?”

“I couldn’t tell you for sure just yet, but I feel pretty fantastic right now.”

He sits down on the edge of the bed, making me slump against him as the mattress tilts. He presses his lips to my temple. “When’s your man expecting you home?”

“No particular time. But I should head out soon.” I feel him nod. “Thanks for having me over.”

Patrick stands and I follow suit, suddenly shy. I find my panties then pad into the living room to get my dress and shoes back on.

“You should keep the leftovers,” I say to him when he passes me to stoke the fire. “Practice for Thanksgiving.”

He doesn’t reply. He finishes with the hearth and crosses the room, stopping right in front of me. He’s troubled in some way I can’t pinpoint.

I start to say thanks again but his mouth shuts me up, covering mine, the kiss brief but deep.

“I hope I wasn’t too rough or anything,” Patrick says when he steps back a pace. “Earlier, I mean.”

“You were exactly how I’d hoped you’d be.” And more, I amend to myself, picturing his bare body.

He smiles. “You talk a lot dirtier than I expected.”

I offer a guilty grin and shrug.

He slides his hands into his pockets. “You think this is the end of all this?”

I can suddenly read his expression—that uncertain end-of-the-first-date look.

“That’s up to Jay.” I decide to tell Patrick something I’m not ready to admit to the man I’ve got waiting at home. I put my hands on his chest, running them over his sweater, studying the little white flecks in the gray wool. “I’m probably never going to stop wanting you.”

One of his black eyebrows twitches. “Oh.”

“Either Jay’s going to put a stop to all this or you are,” I say. “I think you’re both insane for agreeing to it in the first place, so no hard feelings when one of you finally comes to your senses.” Weird, I think, how the two men I’m most attracted to are bossy in bed but do my irrational bidding so willingly while everyone’s clothes are still on.

“Well,” Patrick says, “I enjoyed tonight. If your man stays nuts, I’d be happy to see you again this way.”

“Deal.”

“And tell him not to worry, I know you’re never gonna leave him or anything like that. I still know my role.”

“Thanks. I’ll let you know how he takes it. Maybe—oh wait, Thanksgiving is next week.” I scowl to myself, thinking how quick holidays sneak up when you’re busy orchestrating your inaugural infidelity. “Are you going to your mom’s?”

“Dear God, no.”

“Oh right.”

He shakes his head. “I told her I’m not setting foot inside her house until she gets it cleaned up. Which’ll be never. But I’m driving up there on Thursday and we’re going to my aunt’s for dinner.”

“That’ll be nice.”

“It’ll be hell,” he says. “She gets all bent out of shape when she’s away from her junk, now. She’s convinced somebody’s going to break in and steal things.”

“That sounds rough,” I say.

“I’m used to it. What about you?”

“We’re going to Michigan to see Jay’s parents and sister on Wednesday. Should be fun. I guess I’ll see you after next weekend, sometime.”

He nods and while he takes the dishes and wine bottle into the kitchen, I get my coat and scarf on. We meet at the front door.

“Is it weird if I kiss you again?” he asks.

“Probably. Well, wait, no. I mean, I’m here with permission to act on my feelings for you,” I say. “So I guess that’s fine.”

I catch his tongue flick to the corner of his mouth as he thinks. “These your rules or your man’s?”

I shrug and smile, dopey. “Hell if I know.”

“You’re a weird girl, Robin.”

I shrug again.

Patrick leans down and kisses me, slow and sensual but no tongue. I sneak a peek, curious if his eyes are closed. They are. If he hadn’t made me come fifteen minutes ago I’d probably faint. As it is I feel my legs buckle a little but I keep it together. He pulls away and I watch his lips purse.

I fish my keys out my coat pocket. “I’ll let you know what he says.”

“Can I ask you something?”

I nod. “Sure.”

“Why would you want to be with some shithead who’d sleep with some other man’s woman?” he asks, squinting a dark eye at me.

I bunch my scarf in my fist, trying to find a poetic justification and failing. I think about how Jay might answer. “I don’t feel like I have any choice,” I say. “But you’re the one I need, so I guess I’m just lucky you’re enough of a shithead to go there with me.”

Patrick laughs. I can’t remember the last time I heard him laugh like that. Five years at least, if ever.

I pull the door open. “I’ll see you in a week or two, shithead.”

“Drive safe, Robin. Enjoy your holiday.”

* * * * *

I guess Jay wasn’t too frantic while I was gone. I close the door behind me at nine o’clock exactly, and he’s asleep on the couch with a book on his sternum. His eyes open as I sit down by his feet. I see a couple beer bottles on the side table.

“Hey,” he says, cute and bleary.

“Hey, you. What’d I miss?”

“You’re looking at it,” he says. “Me and my Friday night shenanigans.” He swings his legs to the floor and sits up. “You wanna tell me about it?”

“Let me pee first.”

When I get back, Jay’s in the kitchen watching a bag of popcorn spinning in the microwave. I hug him from behind and wonder if he can smell the enemy on me.

“You’re awful squishy,” he says. “Have a good time?”

I talk into his shirt, muffled. “I did. Thank you.” I realize with a strange start that I’ve just cheated on someone, properly and thoroughly, for the first time in my life. I’m not sure having permission excuses it all that much. The feeling reminds me of the first time I was in a fender-bender, one that I caused. Before then I’d never expected I’d be at fault for such a thing and I remember grieving that day as a hunk of my potential for being a perfect person crumbled away. If I’d known about all this back then, I’d have been a lot easier on myself about denting somebody’s stupid bumper.

The microwave beeps and Jay dumps the popcorn in a mixing bowl. I follow him back to the couch where he clicks on the television but keeps the volume down. It’s what we do sometimes if we need to have a fight, or what constitutes a fight in our hyper-functional relationship. Neither of us actively watches the TV but it gives us something to focus on while we attempt to articulate whatever emotional gristle we’re gnawing through.

Jay stares at the images flashing by on the screen. “So. Tell me what happened.”

“You still want to hear about it?”

“Yeah. Tell me all the horny details,” he says, and tucks into the popcorn.

“Okay…but don’t ask me to compare you guys or anything, all right?”

“I won’t.”

“Good. Well…” I sputter a breath out. “I picked up some food at the deli and went over there. And we had some wine… I watched Jeopardy! with him,” I say, cringing. “I’m sorry. I wish I hadn’t.”

Jay meets my eyes. “Why not?”

“Isn’t that, like, our thing?”

“Jeopardy!’s as ubiquitous as saying you guys drank wine. Don’t worry about it.”

“Oh good.”

His gaze returns to the TV. “What else happened?”

“Well, he made a fire, and we ate dinner and drank wine and kissed and messed around on his couch.”

“Was it romantic?” he asks.

“No, it was more like friends, actually. Even though there was a fire and wine, it didn’t feel like he was seducing me or anything. We just ate dinner and screwed around.” I leave out the part where Patrick kissed me goodnight.

Jay sets the bowl down and grabs a paper towel, wiping his fingers. He turns to face me. His salty lips sting my own, still savaged from Patrick. We make out for a couple minutes and it’s as much a relief as it is a turn-on. His mouth slides to my neck.

“Tell me exactly what you did.” He sounds horny as all get-out. Awesome.

“We kissed, first, and then he got on top of me.”

I feel Jay’s breath flare hot and moist on my throat. “What else?”

“We kind of dry-humped for a while, and he took his shirt off and I touched him. Above the belt.”

Jay’s hand cups my breast as his teeth graze my skin.

“And my dress was up around my waist and he rubbed against me, through his pants.”

“Did you like it?”

“Yeah. It was pretty fucking hot.”

Jay sits back and yanks me into his lap just like the other night. “Then what?” He pulls me close so I can feel how excited he is. Dear God, who is this man?

“I told him I wanted to see it, so he let me. And I touched him.”

Jay pulls the V of my dress down and kisses the tops of my breasts. “Is he big?”

“Yeah, he’s real big.” I hold my breath.

“What did you want to do to him?”

“Everything. I wanted to suck him, really bad. But we didn’t do any of that. I just stroked him.”

“What else?” he asks.

“We went to his bedroom and got our clothes off. Except my bra.”

“Did you want him?”

“Yeah,” I breathe. Jay’s lips take my ear in a way that always makes me go feral. “I told him I wanted to watch him. You know, touch himself. So I lay down and he got between my legs—”

I’m distracted as Jay scoots me back a few inches, undoes his pants and takes his cock out. I study his face, the familiar, glazed look I know and love so well.

“Keep going,” he says.

“I touched him, and he touched me. And he asked me what I used to think about, back when I visited him. Before you,” I add, probably too quickly.

“What did you say?”

“I told him I used to think about sucking him off in the parking lot, that night he saved me.” I blush, still not entirely comfortable with that fantasy.

“Yeah?”

“I didn’t want it that night, of course. But I used to think about it.”

“What did he say?” Jay asks.

“Well, he told me about how he used to fantasize about getting home after he was released and finding me there, waiting for him.”

“Did he want you, tonight?”

I nod. “But he never asked me to. He knows you’re calling the shots.”

“Fucking right,” Jay says and his hand speeds up.

“Then I played with my clit and he fingered me, and I came.”

“Did you jerk him off?” he asks.

“He touched himself, first. Then after I came he made me hold my hands like this.” I wrap both my hands around Jay, thumbs on top. “And he sort of fucked my fists, with his eyes closed, like he was imagining we were doing it.” I run my hands up and down Jay’s shaft.

“Did he come?”

“Yeah, he did.”

“Did you wish you were allowed to screw him?” Jay asks.

“Yeah. But I wouldn’t have.” I think I hide my lack of confidence in this statement pretty well.

“I bet he wanted to fuck you,” he says. “I bet he was dying to, after he felt how tight and wet you are.”

“Only you get to do that, Jay.”

He takes my bait. He pushes me back on the couch and shoves my dress up my legs and yanks the crotch of my panties aside. He sinks in deep, my pussy wet from thoughts of both men.

“God, yeah. This is what he wants.” Jay pumps me fast and greedy. I bet he’d pay for Patrick to have to watch this.

“Take your shirt off,” I say.

He pauses to lean back and indulge me and I grin at him. Jay’s got such a nice body. He’s got hardly any chest hair and he’s pretty muscular, though far smaller than Patrick. He looks different than you’d expect with his clothes off. He used to swim competitively when we started dating. He never won but I always loved going to his meets because he looks damn fine in a Speedo and I wanted all the women in the stands to see who he kissed when the competition was over.

Patrick Whelan, on the other hand, looks exactly how you’d guess, if you have a greedy, idealistic imagination.

I watch Jay’s chest and abdomen as he fucks me. He’s sleek and smooth and commanding. A zillion women would prefer him to Patrick and probably want me stoned for thinking I need more than this.

I watch Jay, but I imagine Patrick. He had that same mean look in his eye as Jay does now. When he fucked my hands he’d been out of his mind, wild and frantic. I liked that. I like that I have the power to make a man that big and self-possessed into a desperate animal. I like that Jay should be the desperate, insecure one, but here he is, banging my brains out as if he hasn’t got a doubt in the world.

I think any woman who says men are predictable should try fucking an ex-con lumberjack and a cuckolded technology journalist in the same day and see if they don’t just have a change of heart on the matter.

* * * * *

“Hey. Robin.”

Carrie gets my attention from the counter and I look up from pricing sealing wax.

“What’s up? Is it time for your break?”

“Nearly. But that guy is across the road. That Patrick guy?” she elaborates, brows raised.

“Oh.” I walk over, casual, and look past the window display to where Patrick is indeed locking up his truck on the other side of Main Street. My pulse hums.

“My dad said he saved your life,” Carrie says, watching him. “Is that true?”

“I don’t know if I’d go that far…but yeah, he did help me when a guy had a knife to my throat in the Tap’s parking lot. A long time ago.”

Carrie’s blue eyes go big and round. “Oh my God, that’s scary.”

“So yeah, that’s my hero, right there.” I point to where Patrick’s waiting for a break in traffic to cross the street. I wonder if Carrie can hear my heart pounding.

“God, I’d be afraid he’d be the one lurking in a parking lot,” she says.

“Don’t say that. Patrick Whelan’s a very nice man.”

“Yeah, but he looks like a psychopath. And I heard he was in prison.”

“Only because he beat the tar out of the guy with the knife,” I say, sounding defensive.

“Wow, really?”

“Yeah. He’s as nice as they come.”

“Well, he looks super-scary.”

“You’re twenty.” God, twenty. That’s probably how old the kid with the knife was. I make my voice breathy and patronizing. “When you hit your sexual peak you’ll be all over guys who look like Patrick Whelan.”

“No way, Robin.”

“Call me in ten years and we’ll see who’s right. And anyhow, don’t let anyone tell you he’s a psycho. He’s my friend.” I watch Patrick jog across Main and head straight for our door. My body tingles, just like always. Like always, I love it and hate it in equal measures. “Why don’t you take your lunch break?”

Carrie hurries out from behind the counter, presumably so she won’t have to greet the psychopath pushing the door in. Patrick watches Carrie jog through the store and up the half-flight of steps to the stationery section then through the door to the back room.

He turns to me. “Hey, Robin.”

“Hey, yourself. What can I do for you?”

“I’ve never actually been in here before,” he says. “Nice place.” He’s got on a black knit cap and gray Carhartt pants, looking like a working-class wet dream. He approaches the counter and as soon as I look in his eyes I remember everything from three nights ago.

“Thanks. You saying hello, or can I help you patronize me?”

“Mostly hello. I just did at job on Brewster Street so I thought I’d stop in. This isn’t weird, is it?”

I pause, about to speak, and we both straighten up on opposite sides of the counter as Carrie reappears in her coat and heads for the front door. “See you at two,” she says.

I turn back to Patrick as the door jingles shut. “No, it’s not weird. I’d ask you if you want to go get some lunch, but I’ve got to watch the shop.”

“Are you hungry?” he asks. “I could grab you something.”

I think a moment. “Yeah, okay. I was going to get a bowl of soup from next door.”

Patrick nods and walks away before I can give him any cash. He returns in five minutes with a deli tub and a brown bag. He takes his hat off and tucks it in a pocket.

“Butternut squash,” he says, and hands me a plastic soup spoon and a napkin.

I peel the lid off the tub and take a deep whiff. “God, I love fall.”

Patrick pulls out a sandwich wrapped in waxed paper.

“Eat over here,” I say, patting the side of the counter away from the register. “In case I actually get a customer.”

“Business slow?”

“It’s not bad, considering. It’s just that everyone’s traveling or at the grocery store. The card companies haven’t made Thanksgiving into a stationery holiday yet. People don’t think about me much until December.”

Patrick nods, looking me over. “You have glitter in your hair.”

“I’m sure.” I shake my head and a few red flecks float down to the floor. “I was digging through the Christmas window display stuff this morning. I’ll be coming in on Sunday to holiday the hell out of this place.”

Patrick takes a few bites of his roast beef sandwich, glancing around the store. His eyes look complex in the daylight coming in through the front windows, deep brown, but with that striated iris texture to them. Everything looks complex just now.

I lean in and eat my soup, elbows on the counter just like how Patrick’s standing on the other side. There’s something familiar and conspiratorial about being close to him, knowing him the way I do now. I get a little nervous thrill, thinking how caught I’d feel if someone did come into the shop and saw me eating lunch with this man who isn’t my live-in boyfriend.

“So,” I say. “Jay’s still taking it pretty well.”

He nods.

“Maybe we can hang out after the weekend?” I want this man now, now, now, but I’m driving to Michigan tomorrow at the ass-crack of dawn with Jay. Jay will drive, and I will spend most of the journey thinking about fucking Patrick Whelan. I always think about sex during long rides, for whatever reason—automotive vibrations maybe or plain old boredom. Jay probably does too because by now I’ve surely programmed him to expect to get laid as soon as socially possible once we reach our destination.

Patrick clears his throat and makes a project of flattening the waxed paper on top of the brown bag. “I’m glad he’s taking it well.”

“Yeah, he’s really shockingly okay with it,” I say.

“I’m glad.” Patrick finally looks up. “But I don’t know if I’m taking it quite so well.”

“Oh.” I feel the blood drain from my face and chemicals invade my pulse. Fear messes with my physiology, blurring and blunting reality.

I calmly grab a piece of paper from the printer and calmly write Back in 15 minutes on it in marker. I tape it to the door and twist the deadbolt. I touch Patrick’s arm as I pass him and he follows me up the steps to the back room. I close the door behind us and sit on the edge of the break table.

“What aren’t you taking well?” I ask.

He holds my eyes with his then looks away as he speaks. “What we’re doing.”

“The cheating?”

“No. The being with you but not actually being with you.”

“The no-sex rule?” I ask.

He pushes a frustrated noise through his nose. “No. The you belonging to someone else thing.”

I look down at his boots. “Do you have feelings for me?” The store phone rings, making us both jump. “I’m sorry. I have to get that.”

He nods as I reach for the cordless. “Roche’s Paper.”

“Hey, lady.” Jay.

“Hey. Can I call you back? I’m right in the middle of something.”

“Just wanted to see if you could pick up some olive oil on the way home.”

“Consider it done,” I say. “See you tonight.” I wait for his goodbye and hang up the phone. “Sorry.”

“That was him?” Patrick asks.

I nod. I watch him take a deep breath.

“So, you have feelings for me?” I prompt. “Because of what we did?”

“I’ve always had feelings for you.”

“Oh. Since that night?”

“Since before that,” he says.

“I didn’t think we’d even talked before then.”

“We hadn’t.”

I frown. I don’t feel exactly creeped out, just disconcerted. “For how long, then?”

“Since maybe two years before that night. It was after your store opened but probably that same year.”

I would have been about twenty-five. That was when my grandmother died and I inherited the money that helped me move to Dereham from Montpelier and open this store and put a down payment on the little condo I owned before Jay and I moved in together.

Patrick licks his lips, looking nervous. “I don’t know if I’m in love with you or anything,” he says. “But I’ve liked you for a long time.”

“Why?” I’m cute enough, I guess, but I’m not infatuation-worthy gorgeous or crazy-charismatic or intriguing. Just a short brunette with a paper shop and a rusty hatchback.

“I was across the street one day,” Patrick says. “At the hardware store. You came running out of your store with a broom and started whaling on these two kids for throwing rocks at birds.”

I haven’t thought about that in years, but as soon as Patrick says it my blood starts pumping, hot with the adrenaline I felt that afternoon. These two teenage boys had tried to rush at the pigeons on the sidewalk and stomp on them and, failing that, they decided to whip rocks at the awning that runs above my store, and the ones to either side of it, where the birds roost. It was right around the time the shop opened, when my grandma’s death was still an open wound. My grandma had loved birds and I completely flipped out. I was young and easily wound up then, plus the store was new and stressful and I felt vulnerable when I was there.

“It was a mop,” I say. I remember seeing red and grabbing it from beside the door and stalking outside and screaming at them. I hit one of the boys hard in the ear and left a big wet sponge print on the other’s tee shirt. I probably looked totally insane, swinging a mop at those idiot kids and shrieking about animal cruelty.

“That’s when you decided you liked me?” I ask. “When I was assaulting junior high schoolers? I’ve probably never been such a spaz in my entire life.”

“I always thought that was really cool, that you did that.”

I shrug. “I think they only took off because they thought I’d call the cops. Not because of my bad-ass samurai-janitor skills.”

“They called you a crazy bitch.” Patrick smiles deeply and it gives him little squinchy rolls beneath his eyes.

“Well, that was pretty accurate. I’m lucky their parents didn’t sue me.”

“You know that night, in the parking lot,” he says. “That wasn’t just luck. That I found you.”

I feel another buzz in my pulse, another sip of a stiff brain-chemical cocktail. “No?”

He shakes his head. “I’d been wanting to talk you all night. Well, I’d been wanting to talk to you for two years, but that night I told myself I finally would. I was going to offer to buy you a drink the next time you dropped your glass off at the bar but then you left. And I was drunk enough to follow you and drunk enough to not think trying to talk to you for the first time in a dark parking lot wasn’t totally sketchy. So I went after you, and you know how all that turned out.”

“I’m sure glad you did,” I say. “Well, actually, I wish I’d still been thirsty. Then I guess we would have just talked, without me getting traumatized or you spending half a year in prison.”

“You would’ve let me buy you a beer?”

“Sure.” I probably would have felt intimidated by Patrick though, and I don’t know if my attraction would have ever bloomed the way it did if things had played out how he envisioned. I probably would have flirted politely with him and gone home alone, and he’d have ended up a tiny footnote. April 14, went to the Tap, got hit on by a bona fide lumberjack. Instead he’s got his own chapter in the book of my life. More than that. For the first time in the years Jay and I have spent trying to ignore how the living ghost of Patrick Whelan haunts our relationship, I feel uncertain about how I honestly want all this to play out.

“I want my relationship to work,” I say quietly, trying to remember that it’s true.

Patrick nods and I catch his eyes dart to the clock on the wall. We have a few minutes before Carrie is due back. He steps close to where I’m sitting on the table and against anybody’s better judgment I let him nudge my thighs apart with his. I put my hands on his waist, on his soft, old, flannel work shirt. I feel his lips touch my forehead then my temple. Then he kisses me, once gently with his lips closed then deeper. My body rouses when his tongue slides against mine and my skin prickles as I feel the hum of his moan against my mouth. This time though, more than I want to fuck him, I want to cry. I want to slap him for making this complicated or for yanking open a curtain and shining the harsh light of reality over how complicated it’s been all along. I want to hurt him for how good he makes me feel, but I hate that I have the power to hurt him if I want to. I push him away after an excruciating minute and slide off the table.

“I have to unlock the store,” I say and wipe my lips with the back of my wrist.

Patrick doesn’t reply, just follows me when I open the door and head back to the front. I take the sign down and flip the bolt and find him pulling his hat on, dropping his half-eaten sandwich in its sack.

“I’m sorry if this was a mistake,” he says evenly.

“You probably shouldn’t come by here again for a while. Why don’t you let me come to you after I have some time to think?” I ask.

He nods and heads for the door. “You have a nice holiday, Robin.”

I watch him pull the door open and listen to the bell tinkle, watch him cross the street and climb into his truck and drive off. I glance back down at my unfinished soup and the smell of squash and ginger suddenly makes my stomach turn. I snap its lid back on and toss it in the trash.

* * * * *

It’s dark and damp and cold out when I lock the shop door behind me, five minutes early. During the drive across town, I make a mental list of pros and cons for leaving Jay to be with Patrick.

Con; Jay is wonderful. I think I might want children with Jay.

Pro; Patrick sets me on fire in a way I don’t think I ever want to live without.

Con; Patrick spends a third of the year in New Hampshire.

Pro; Patrick would kill a man to defend me.

Con; I’d be a hugely self-serving bitch.

Pro; Patrick built his own house, so that’s the mortgage taken care of.

Con; what the fuck is wrong with me?

I knock on Patrick’s door at six ten. When he appears I don’t even give him a chance to say hello. “I need to talk about what we started talking about.”

But we don’t talk.

He lets me in and when I get my coat off, I don’t stop there. He watches, wide-eyed, as I strip down to my underwear in his kitchen. He doesn’t say a word. I catch his dark eyes roam from my head to my toes and back in a breath, and then he’s on me. I feel every pound of muscle as that huge man lunges, pushing me against the refrigerator. I feel the fridge slide back an inch across the tile then two strong hands grasp my thighs and wrap them around his waist, holding me up with a hand under each ass cheek. Patrick’s belt buckle jabs my pubic bone but the pain feels so fucking perfect. I’ve never been screwed against a wall, never thought it really happened outside well-choreographed late-night movies, but feeling this man in control of my body, I know Patrick Whelan could do it. His mouth is rough, borderline violent. I run my hands through his messy hair, wanting to pull him so close and hard against me that our bodies fuse into one despicable whole.

His hips push into mine, thrusting, and I hear magnets clatter to the floor and papers crumpling behind my back. Something on top of the fridge teeters and topples and rolls away. Patrick’s tongue is hot and aggressive, filling my mouth exactly how I want his cock to fill my pussy. Between my legs, he’s rock hard.

I find a break in the kissing, enough to kiss him back, slide my tongue between his lips and take the lead for a few glorious seconds. A moan rises from his throat, hot and sharp like electricity. He tears his mouth from mine.

“Why did you come here?” His voice is new, that baritone I thought I knew sounding deeper and darker and full of pain.

“I thought I wanted to talk.”

“This ain’t talking.” He pushes his hips into me a little harder, emphasizing exactly how far this is from talking.

“I can’t stay away from you,” I say, truly accepting it myself for the first time.

Patrick buries his face against my neck, sort of kissing, sort of just breathing, mainly suffering in some complex male way I’ll never fully understand. After a minute he pulls away and lowers me until I’m standing.

“He doesn’t know you’re here, does he?” Patrick asks.

I shake my head.

“What do you want, Robin?” He doesn’t meet my eyes when he asks this—he stares at the sliver of tile between our two pairs of feet, looking hypnotized.

Be a horrible person with me, I think. So I don’t have to be horrible alone. “Let’s go to the living room,” I say.

He holds his ground so I slip away from him sideways and walk into the next room. It’s cold in his house and my body’s showing it—not just ooh-sexy taut nipples, but less attractive evidence too, like the goose bumps and tiny hairs rising all over my chilly, mottled skin. I don’t feel sexy either, but it doesn’t matter. I feel something else, something stronger and totally removed from my ego.

Patrick follows eventually, slowly, as if each step is another chance to change his mind. By the time he reaches where I’m sitting on his couch his expression’s changed. The pain has turned to hunger, the guilt to wickedness. Each button he undoes on his shirt is another increment of time, another squandered opportunity to stop. He drops it off his obscenely strong shoulders and peels his undershirt up and over his head, giving me a front row view of that chest, that stomach. I watch his hands undo his belt, wishing he’d use it bind my wrists together, to tie me up and make me a victim so when he fucks me, it’s not my fault. But he doesn’t. His jeans slip to the ground and he kicks them away along with his socks and stands before me in gray shorts, that delicious bulge filling them. Certain things make sense in this moment, such as pheromones, and the fact that humans are animals, and the idea of mating as a form of biological insanity.

“Come here,” I say.

He gets onto the couch, knees between mine, and suddenly we’re teenagers—frantic, graceless near-naked bodies, groping and rubbing and grasping and panting. His cock feels sinful, pressing between my legs. I want him to rip through our two pairs of underwear and be inside me, pumping. I don’t even care if I come—I just want this bestial version of Patrick to fuck me senseless. I want bruises tomorrow. I want scratches and sprains and bite marks, enough to make Jay leave me and absolve me of my hard decisions and the power I don’t deserve to have over either of these men.

I shove Patrick’s shoulders, force his body away enough that I can cup him. He’s already swollen and hot and heavy, growing even harder as I fondle him.

He leans back on his haunches, watching. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

“About what?” I ask, making the strokes tight and long.

“All the stuff we did on Friday. And everything we’re not allowed to.”

I nod. “I’ve thought about it too. About how you looked when you fucked my fists in your bed.” I see that look now, in his face and those heavy-lidded eyes, in the strained muscles of his body. I feel it in the pulse of his dick against my palm. “Let me suck you, Patrick. Please.”

His voice turns scratchy and shallow. “God, I want you so bad.”

“How do you want me?” I ask, pulling his shorts down to expose every decadent inch. I grip his cock, running my fist up and down, up and down. I push at his hard stomach until he takes the hint and lies back at the other end of the couch, letting me kneel between his spread thighs.

He watches my hand. “Rough, from behind,” he finally says, flooding my overheated brain with every guilty mental image I entertained when Jay fucked me that way.

I lean in and reward his answer with a lap across his slit. I taste his sex as his groan fills my ears, licking until he’s rock-hard, throbbing in my hand. “Tell me more.”

“I’ll go down on you first, ‘til you’re sopping wet,” he promises. I feel his palm, hot on my cheek. I slip his fat head between my lips, sucking as I swirl my tongue over the smooth skin. I taste his excitement, that salty, sinful sex flavor coming in little bursts as his cock tells me how ready he is. His fingers tangle and twitch in my hair, wanting to force me closer but resisting the impulse. I slide him out a moment and meet his eyes.

“I love your cock.”

His lips part and his cheeks flush, his eyes narrow and a darkness passes over his face. “I need to fuck you, Robin. I feel like I’m going crazy.”

I take half his length into my mouth, luxuriating, memorizing, torturing. I cup and squeeze his balls as the other hand strokes him. Part of me wants to make him so insane that he pushes me back onto the couch and takes me, no permission requested or tendered, too fast and too forceful to allow a protest. Then, us. Patrick’s body pushing mine into the cushions, this gorgeous dick taking what it needs. That deep voice, wild and mean, all that damp skin and hard muscle pressed against my bare body. There’s a cloud in my skull, making everything hazy, the way it feels when you stand up too quick from a hot bath. I realize I’m moaning with his cock in my mouth.

“Suck it,” he says. “Suck me, Robin.”

I stroke him harder, moan louder.

“Suck me like you wanted to that night.”

I do. Just thinking about it makes me feel ferocious—fierce and worshipful, needy and thirsty and utterly animalistic. Patrick’s hands turn insistent, palms cupping the back of my head, not forcing but urging. Begging. I take him as deep as I comfortably can, making up the rest with my fist, now slick with spit.

“God, yeah.” His fingers are trembling in my hair, arms tugging, matching the thrusts I’m offering. “Suck me, Robin.”

I slip him from my lips a moment and catch his eyes. “You’re so big, Patrick.”

He groans when my mouth returns. “Is that what you’ve been needing, Robin? A big cock?”

“No,” I say, and lap at him. “It’s you. I need you.”

“I wanna know everything you’ve been dying to do with me.” His hands leave my head and suddenly he’s pushing me away, back to my end of the couch. I recline and Patrick gets on his knees on the floor, yanking my panties down my thighs and calves, slinging one of my legs over his shoulder and propping the other against the back cushions, spreading me wide.

He brings his face close, so close I feel his breath on my pussy when he speaks. “Tell me everything you think about.” His tongue laps, slow and deep, and the sensation zings through me, making my legs jerk.

“Oh fuck.”

“Tell me,” he whispers again.

“I think about you when he fucks me from behind,” I say.

Patrick’s tongue flicks my clit, sharpening my shame with a flash of pleasure.

“I think about you and I tell him harder and faster and I have to bite the pillow sometimes, to keep from screaming your name.”

“You think I’ll be hard and fast?” he asks between licks.

“Yeah. I need you to be rough. You’re so big—your body is. I want to feel like you’re…like you’re owning me.”

His fingertips tease my lips, sliding up and down my slit, threatening.

“God, Patrick.”

“You belong to someone else,” he whispers. “But you fantasize that it’s me that owns you.” His fingers penetrate, shallow.

“Yes.”

I feel more—three fingers now, to the second knuckle. “Tell me how I take you in your fantasies.”

“Rough,” I say again. “And so deep.”

His fingers drive into me as his lips suckle my clit.

“And I imagine you being greedy and fast and mean. And that your hands are on my hips when you take me from behind or if I’m on top and you force my thrusts.” God, I love that idea—being controlled by a man so much stronger than me. “I want you to use me. And I want to see it when you come. I want you to make me watch when you shoot, or make me taste it.”

Patrick makes dirty noises in time with his fucking fingers, grunts and hums and growls. His tongue sets a flickering rhythm against my clit, one that dissolves the muscles in my legs and makes my hands twitch and grasp at his hair. In my mind this man is usually selfish. I hardly ever imagined him doing this, and I’m shocked by how amazing he is at it.

“You’re so good, Patrick.”

His face seems angelic from this vantage, eyes obscured by his dark lashes as if he were sleeping or praying. I admire the angle of his eyebrows and the shapes of his ears amid his chaotic, wavy black hair. The collection of grays at his temples makes him seem so…experienced. Intelligent. Something like that. Like someone who should know better but is here nonetheless, making terrible mistakes with me.

His fingers fuck harder still and his tongue leaves me a moment. “Pretend it’s my cock,” he says.

I close my eyes and focus on the impact of his hand as his fingers pound me. He makes it rough and frantic, makes me hear his skin slapping mine.

“Patrick.” I imagine that dick, hammering me. “Fill me up, Patrick. Nice and deep. Make me feel how big and thick you are.”

“I’ll give it all to you,” he whispers. “Think about it. What does it feel like?”

“Huge. Like you’re splitting me open. Like you’re punishing me.”

“I want it so bad,” he says. “I want you to come on my cock and milk it with your pussy.” Dear God, where did he learn to talk like this?

“I want that too.”

Patrick abandons his verbal torture to focus on my clit. I can feel my climax building. Usually when I come I’m edging myself forward, trying to keep up the momentum until I get myself over the edge. This time it’s as if I’m being pushed. No coaxing, just me grasping and struggling to make it last longer and failing. Patrick’s tongue laps with a steady, firm stroke, every lick driving me closer to the precipice. There’s no mental image in my head to help things as normal. Everything I could ever want to fantasize about is right there. That face, that strong, coarse hand on my thigh, those half-closed eyes, that voice. And when I come, I stammer his name.

Patrick laps me as my legs twitch and relax. His fingers start to thrust again, deep. His eyes are on me, on whatever cruel invitation is spread out before him like a flapping red bullfighter’s cape.

I tug at his hard shoulders, desperate. “Let me make you come.”

Obediently he stands and ditches his shorts and joins me on the couch, hips settling between my thighs. I see his hand trembling when he guides his cock to my pussy and sweeps his head over my lips. The guttural sounds he makes intoxicate me all over again. He runs it up and down, over and over, and not just gentle strokes. Dangerous ones. His head is thick, shining with my juices, sliding and stroking and teasing and threatening. His stomach muscles clench in time with the motions, giving me a glimpse of how he’d look, really fucking me. Then his eyes meet mine and the gleam in them feels a hundred times more forbidden than what’s going on between our bodies.

“Tell me to and I’ll do it.” His voice is gruff and tight and he means it.

“I can’t.”

“Why’d you come here tonight?” That question again, impossible to answer. The expression on his face is wounded and scared. It breaks my heart. He never wanted to be the kind of man who’d ever sleep with someone else’s girl, but I’m making him that way. I’m making him want that so hard it must ache. He pushes against me, just a little. Not quite penetrating, but showing me how it might feel if he did.

“I don’t know why I came here,” I say. “I just had to.” I stare at his body, awed. It’s hard to explain, but when I look at him everything feels right. Everything feels like enough.

“It’s terrible that I’m here,” I add, grasping at a little scrap of sanity. “We shouldn’t have sex…but let me suck you off. I’m allowed to do that.” In theory, anyhow. Not that I think Jay would be so keen right now, considering he’s surely pacing the kitchen, reaching my voicemail, wondering or worrying what’s happened to me while our dinner grows cold.

Patrick stops teasing my pussy and settles back on his knees, stroking himself. “How do you want me?”

I think a moment. Part of me wants to be on my knees, him in charge. But no. “Can we go to your room?”

He stands and I follow him to his bed.

“Lie on your side,” I say, and he does. I lie down the other way, face at his waist, thighs by his head, knees on the pillows. I want as much of our bodies touching as possible when I do this, all the contact I can get. His breathing’s heavy and I feel his stomach swelling and contracting against my breasts, and I think I can even feel his heart beating against my belly. I push one hand beneath his hip and take his cock in the other. He tastes like me when I slip him into my mouth.

“Robin.” He forces an arm under my body so he can hold my ass with both hands. I hadn’t intended it but I certainly don’t protest when he drapes my leg over his shoulder and I feel his tongue on my pussy again. It isn’t like before—he’s not trying to get me off. This is for him, a complement to what I’m doing to his body. I feel his nose against my lips as he suckles my clit and he makes loud, hungry noises. He breaks away to say, “Suck me, Robin. Suck me. Make me come.”

His cock is heavy and intimidating and wonderful, the first couple inches filling my mouth. I fondle his balls, gently squeezing and pulling. I free my mouth to say, “Tell me what you need, Patrick.”

“Just suck me. Hard.”

I leave his balls to wrap my hand firmly around his base. I slip his head in my mouth and take him, aggressive.

“Fuck, yeah.” His hands clamp tight around my flesh. “Just like that.” His tongue laps me in long strokes and I know it’s about him tasting me, not about my next orgasm. I love that thought, that he wants this for his own pleasure and I shiver, imagining him as a ravenous, greedy beast.

I feel when he’s close. His hips move—tiny, involuntary jerks that beg me for more. I keep stroking and sucking and do my best to take what he gives me when he starts to thrust. His mouth abandons my pussy and he fills the room with his moans and pleas.

“Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”

I wouldn’t dream of it. I taste more of his pre-come and on a primal level it’s the most addictive flavor I’ve ever experienced. His smells are all around me, his frantic energy, these intimate parts of him right here in front of me.

“Oh yeah,” he groans. “Yeah. Don’t stop. Please. Robin.”

His hips thrust and freeze a moment and I taste the first spurt. Another thrust, another taste, again and again until he’s empty. I swallow everything he gives me and lave his cock as his body relaxes.

“God, Robin.” He sounds delirious and I feel giddy. I extract myself from his grasp and flip around to lie against him, chest to chest. He grabs me around the waist and pulls me on top of him, knocking out my breath. We kiss for a minute or two—light, fond kisses.

As the euphoria wears off it feels obscene, reveling in this post-sex haze with him. I glance at his bedside clock—five minutes of seven. I’m usually home by six fifteen, plenty of time to hang out with Jay while he finishes the dinner prep. “I need to go soon.”

I feel very cold again, very suddenly. I roll gracelessly off Patrick and pad to the bathroom. It’s odd, his bathroom. Really clean, so bare and white it’s nearly like a hotel. A razor and shaving cream, toothbrush and paste on the sink, a bar of soap and a bottle of shampoo in his shower stall. A stick of deodorant and a nearly empty prescription bottle in the medicine cabinet. I glance at the label—nothing scandalous, just scrip-strength pain reliever. Patrick J. Whelan, 14 Fencroft Drive, Dereham, Vermont. Take up to four times daily for muscle aches.

I quit my snooping and stalling and get myself tidied up. I walk through the living room past where Patrick is finishing dressing, tugging on his socks. I feel his eyes on me through the kitchen threshold as I get my clothes on. When I finish he comes over to me, puts his hands on my shoulders and stares me straight in the eyes.

“I know you’re not supposed to be here.”

I shake my head.

“If you get home and all hell breaks loose, you can always come back here to stay. But if he takes it okay, I think maybe we shouldn’t talk until we’ve both had a week or more away from each other.”

“That’s probably wise,” I say.

“I shouldn’t have come by your work, just like you shouldn’t have come here. So let’s not talk until at least next weekend. Why don’t you call me if you see fit? Or don’t call if you think that’s better.”

I nod. He lets me give him a quick hug and a kiss on his stubbly jaw. He walks me to the door and holds it open.

“Have a nice holiday,” he says.

“You too. Happy Thanksgiving.”

Chapter Five

I feel near to vomiting as I turn the knob to the side door of the house. I’m not afraid of Jay’s anger, but I’m shaking, petrified of the pain I might see on his face. I checked my phone in the car before I left Patrick’s and he’d called three times. Two messages.

“Hey, lady. It’s six forty. Did you go to Italy to get that olive oil?” Shit. I forgot about that.

Then, “It’s almost seven. Give me a call so I know everything’s okay.”

I push the door in and there he is. Jay. Jeans and a button-up sweater. Jay’s one of those rare, slender, modern men who can make a cardigan seem hip. He’s stirring pasta sauce in a pan by the stove, looking as though it’s all he’s done in the last hour. He must have heard the car when I pulled in. The fact that he doesn’t stop stirring to hug me says he came to the right conclusion about my whereabouts.

“Hey, you.” Still stirring. “Where have you been?”

I had the whole drive to think up a lie and I think it’s some meager sign of redemption that I didn’t. I meet his eyes. “I’m sorry. I stopped by Patrick’s on the way home.” “Stopped by” in this case meaning I drove clear to the far side of town.

Jay’s expression goes blank. “Oh,” he says, and keeps on stirring.

I shrug my coat off, sure that I’m sending a huge cloud of enemy-male scent wafting in his direction.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I should have called. And I forgot the oil.”

His hazel eyes look grayish-yellow tonight and distrustful. “I see.”

I’m not sure what else I can say. I’m very good at admitting when I’m wrong but this isn’t like stranding Jay with inadequate toilet paper or shrinking his sweater. There’s nothing I can offer that will fully express how far off the deep end of wrong I’ve plunged.

“Did you guys…” He trails off.

I shake my head. “Nothing you said we couldn’t.” If barely. “But I should have called to ask. I don’t know what to say. I did it without thinking.”

“You knew I’d be here, waiting and making dinner. Expecting you.”

“I know.”

He looks down, at my knees or something behind me. “That’s pretty shitty, Robin. I’m pretty fucking pissed.” You have to really know Jay to spot the signs that back this statement up. I know all of them. His ears are pink and there are tight lines beside his lips. His voice sounds flat. His eyes look dull and they won’t meet mine anymore.

“Would you like me to leave or go in a different room?” I realize I’m wringing my hands and will them to be still.

“Dinner’s ready,” he says. “Why don’t you eat in here and I’ll take mine in and watch the game.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t really want to talk to you right now, but I’ll let you know when I do.”

“What do you think about tomorrow? Should we still go?”

Suddenly, Jay laughs. Not a big laugh, but a genuine one. “I’m not going to break up with you, Robin. We’re still getting up at five and driving to Michigan. If I’m still pissed, it could be a long-ass thirteen hours.”

“Okay.” I want to hug him so badly. It’s strange how only a half-hour ago Patrick felt like the entire world. Now that I’m here, Jay is the only man I can imagine. “I’ll be in here then.”

“If I don’t speak to you before I head up,” he says, “you should still come to bed. Just don’t talk to me, if you can help it.”

I nod. I dawdle in taking off my shoes and scarf, creating plenty of time for Jay to get his dinner and leave the room. I walk to the stove. Marinara sauce with big slices of chicken sausage. The linguine look sticky and gluey, overcooked and in need of oil. I hope dinner tastes so bad that I can’t eat it since I probably deserve to go hungry. But I will eat, because not eating would be a willful display of self-punishment and Jay hates theatrics. He meant what he said. He doesn’t want to talk to me right now. Everything else can go on like normal.

Like normal.

I stare at the pans a long time. I know I’m going to do the dishes like normal after dinner, but I bet I’ll do a better job than I ever have before in my whole life.

* * * * *

Jay did talk to me before we went to bed that night. We didn’t have a discussion, but when he came into the kitchen to drop his dish in the sink, he stopped behind where I was sitting at the table and put his hands on my shoulders.

“I always knew this whole idea was crazy,” he said softly. “But tonight was the first time when I couldn’t recognize you during all this.”

I held my tongue, feeling his fingers gently squeezing and releasing as he thought. “I’ve been really good about what you need.”

“Yes,” I said. “You’ve been amazing.”

“You really let me down tonight. I would have said it was okay, if you’d just asked me. It really fucking hurts that you didn’t.”

I nodded.

“Am I losing you, Robin?”

Maybe. “No.”

Jay sighed, long and mournful. “I don’t really want to talk about it anymore,” he said. “Let’s sweep it under the rug and get on with everything.”

“I’ll never do that again,” I promised him. “And I don’t think I’ve ever felt so horrible in my whole life. I’m so, so sorry I hurt you.”

God, I was. I still am. There’s a danger when you’re with someone who loves you enough to forgive you and you know that about them. I’d never exploited that aspect of our relationship before—never did something bad because I knew Jay would eventually forgive me. And I didn’t mean to do that, Tuesday night with Patrick. I went there as if under a spell. I feel utterly humbled, having accidentally abused my power. Over both of them.

Thanksgiving went as it always does. We had a couple lovely meals and played board games and took long walks with Jay’s parents and his younger sister. Jay treated me as he always does, both in their company and when we were alone. The only thing different was that we didn’t have sex.

Penitent or not, I thought about Patrick a lot when we were in Michigan. I thought about how lonely I suspect he is. I thought about him pulling up to his mom’s house and seeing piles of stuff looming behind the garage windows, or whatever evidence of her hoarding might be visible. I imagined him sitting in his truck with the engine running, refusing to go inside. I pictured him having a frustrating holiday and then driving back to Dereham to his cold house all alone, sleeping in his cold bed. A couple times I pictured him lying on that bed, jerking off, thinking of me, but I caught myself and pushed the image from my brain.

Presently I look up from my crossword at the smell of burning ginger.

“Fuck!”

I run across the kitchen and yank a sheet of blackened cookies from the oven.

It’s Sunday afternoon and Jay wanders in from his office holding the business section of the paper.

“Everything okay? Smells smoky in here.”

“I burned the first batch,” I say. “It’s okay, there’s plenty more dough.”

Then the smoke detector blares, those hateful, mind-splitting beeps assaulting my ears. Loud noises terrify me—I fear the smoke detector more than an actual fire. I run into the other room and up the stairs. It stops shortly and I know Jay’s climbed onto a chair and disabled the battery. I go back down to the kitchen as he’s opening windows, letting the freezing outside air drift in to fix my mistake.

“Thanks.” I’m jangled, nerves buzzing like wasps. Tears come to make up for all the ones I’ve been blocking since Tuesday.

Jay hugs me while I sob into that favorite, good-smelling sweater of his. I feel his palm running up and down my back, feel the cold air on my hands and face, smell the scalded sugar. I step away when I’m calm.

“Thanks,” I say again, and wipe my cheeks on my sleeve. I go back to the counter to roll out a fresh ball of dough. Jay stands beside me and watches. I hand him the male gingerbread person cutter. The other one has a skirt and before you decorate the cookies they look like bathroom door icons. We cut out the shapes, doing our best to make them tight like tessellations and not waste the dough. I’m going to ice them when they’re cool and leave a heaping plate of them on the counter at the shop tomorrow. I did the holiday decorating there this morning and aside from the crying and the recent drama, I’m feeling very sparkly and yuletide-y. Christmas is like Bailey’s to me. It’s so sweet you don’t notice yourself getting drunk on it until you wake up with a hangover on December twenty-sixth.

Jay slides the sheet into the oven and I muster the good sense to set the timer.

“Thanks,” I say for the third time.

“I think we should have that asshole over for dinner,” Jay says, the words like a baseball flying out of the clear blue sky to hit me in the teeth.

“What?”

“I think you should ask Whelan over for dinner.”

“Dear God,” I say. “Why?”

“Because he’s a part of our lives now, like it or not.” He’s leaving something out of this answer, I can sense it.

“I sort of… I sort of assumed you’d forbid me from seeing him anymore. After what happened on Tuesday.”

“The longer he stays a taboo, the longer you’ll want him,” Jay says. “See if he’s free some night this week.” He turns away to move dishes from the drying rack to the cupboards. “Tell him to bring a bottle of something.”

I blink at his back a few moments. “You aren’t planning on murdering him, are you?”

Jay laughs. “Just ask him. He might say no.”

I feel uncomfortable. Not suspicious, just…scared. About talking to Patrick. About hearing him say he doesn’t want to ever see me again. I’m positive he’s decided that’s best in the few days since I made him an accomplice to infidelity.

After the dishes are put away Jay wanders back into his office. I stand stock-still in the middle of the kitchen floor, staring at the motion of the curtains as the breeze pushes them in. I shriek when the oven timer buzzes.

* * * * *

The gingerbread men are going over well. I missed out on Black Friday, keeping the store closed through Thanksgiving weekend, but the first few days of shopping are mall days, when shoppers want to hit a dozen stores all in one trip. People think about cards and crafts more after the initial big-picture items are purchased. Business is bustling today, Monday. The locally made stockings are selling especially well.

At twelve forty-five I get Carrie’s attention, once the lunch-hour rush begins to lag. “I have to run an errand in a bit,” I say. “Will you be okay for a half-hour?”

“Sure thing.”

At one fifteen I get into my car in the little employee parking lot behind Main Street. I drive ten minutes to the edge of town to Mullaney Lumber, a long, spruce-colored building like an airplane hangar. Rows of fresh-cut Christmas trees are lined up in front of the parking lot.

It smells good inside, like a new house. Paint and sawdust and potential. I head to the nearest apron-clad employee, a chubby man wearing a Santa hat and a down-home friendly smile.

“Afternoon, miss. Can I help you?”

I grin and try to look as un-sordid as possible.

“I’m trying to find Patrick Whelan, but I’m not sure what department he’s in.”

“Whelan’ll be out back.” He motions for me to follow him and takes me down the fixtures aisle and through a heavy door into a cold warehouse. We walk to where some guys are unloading a pallet of boards off a forklift. I recognize Patrick by his height.

“Whelan!” the friendly man shouts.

Patrick turns and I catch his eyebrows bob up above his clear safety glasses. He leaves the project to walk over. He’s wearing a forest green hard hat and thick gloves and a work shirt with his last name embroidered above the pocket.

“Thanks,” I say to the friendly man, who does as I hope and leaves us alone.

Patrick glances around then leads me out through a back door, into the bright sunshine and the cold and the privacy.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you so soon,” he says.

“How was your Thanksgiving?”

“Aggravating,” he says, making a face to match. “Why are you here?”

“You’re invited to dinner,” I blurt.

His brows jerk up again and stay there. “Am I?”

“Jay wants you to come over. And he said he’s not planning to murder you. You can think about it first, of course. But he said pick a day this week and bring something to drink.”

Patrick’s dark eyes roam all over the lumberyard. He takes his gloves and hard hat off and runs a hand through his matted hair. It looks as if he got a trim for the holiday but it’s still pretty messy, just how I like it. I breathe him in while he ponders and marvel again at how his proximity makes me flush.

“Um,” he says, putting his hat back on. “Thursday?”

“Sure, whatever you want.”

“Do you know what this is all about?” he asks.

“Not really. I think he wants to clear the air. Or demystify you. I think he thinks if I see you somewhere boring, like my house, you won’t seem so…exotic. Or irresistible.” I feel my cheeks color.

Patrick shakes his head. “You are one fucked-up couple, Robin.” This time when he says it, he doesn’t smile.

I’m tempted to defend us but he’s right. “So, Thursday? Feel free to change your mind, just let me know ahead of time if possible. I’ll let you get back to work.”

He nods and motions with his hand after he tugs his gloves on. “Go around the side so you don’t get clocked by something.”

I head toward the corner of the building, looking at him over my shoulder. “I’ll see you Thursday. At seven!”

* * * * *

By six thirty-five on Thursday night, I still don’t know what Jay’s up to.

I watch him open the oven and reach in to peel the foil off the top of the casserole dish so the cheese on top of the lasagna will brown just right. He makes a kick-ass lasagna and he knows it. I wonder if he’s trying to impress Patrick or shame him by showcasing what a perfect husband he’d make. Maybe he just felt like Italian tonight.

I wander around the first floor of our little house, puttering. Not cleaning, just doing things no one will ever notice—squaring up the angles of the photo frames on the mantle and pounding the couch cushions until they’re fluffy. I’m painfully aware of my own house right now. It’s a cute place with decent furniture and neat accent pieces. It looks decorated, unlike Patrick’s, and it’s bigger than his house. I wonder for a moment if he’ll feel poorly because of these facts, but then I realize two things. Firstly, Patrick built his own house, with his own hands. He surely made it the exact size he wanted. Secondly, he probably makes more money than Jay and I combined, so it’s not as if he couldn’t own nice things if he wanted to. These thoughts flip-flop my worries, making me feel shallow and materialistic.

The doorbell rings and I abandon my self-analysis.

I open the door to find it’s started snowing again. Patrick has on his black knit cap and fat flakes are sticking to it. I see his truck parked in the driveway behind my Saab. Surreal.

“Hey there.” I step aside to let him in.

“Hey. Smells good.” He hands me a wine bottle shrouded in a paper bag. He glances at the carpet and my stocking-feet and pushes his boots off and leaves them on the front step.

And then suddenly, Patrick Whelan is in my home, standing in his gray wool socks in my living room. In Jay’s living room.

“Come on through,” I say.

He follows me into the kitchen and I set the wine on the table. Jay puts the lasagna on the stovetop and takes off the oven mitts. He turns around and looks between us.

I’ve only seen Jay and Patrick interact a handful of times. Usually it’s at the Tap, where Jay’s always made a point of offering to buy Patrick a beer, an unspoken debt for him possibly saving my life all those years ago. Except for that day Jay went to Patrick’s to talk about this arrangement, I don’t think they’ve ever exchanged more than a dozen polite words on a given occasion.

“Hey.” Jay steps forward with perfect confidence to shake Patrick’s hand. “You can hang your coat by the door.”

Soon enough, I’m pouring three glasses of wine as Patrick takes a seat at the table. Jay sets down three plates and the parmesan cheese shaker, two big forks and one small one, a roll of paper towels. He sits across the table from Patrick, me parked between them, apropos of farce.

Patrick looks to each of us as I serve myself.

“So,” he says. “Robin said you aren’t planning to murder me.”

Jay smiles down at his empty plate a moment. “No. Although the idea has some appeal.”

“I don’t see why I’m here,” Patrick says, stripping the veneer of sociability right off the entire evening.

Jay shrugs. “Just a bit of a summit. Thought we could all use a little air-clearing.”

“Am I here to have the law laid out about how you think this is going to work?” Patrick asks, looking openly impatient as he dishes out his food.

“I don’t know how this is going to work,” Jay says. “If you think this is fucked up,” he says, waving around the serving spoon Patrick hands him, “try being on my side of it.”

“I wouldn’t let my woman mess with some other man if I was you,” Patrick says, damn cold.

My eyes volley between them and I gulp nearly all my wine before they’ve even touched theirs. Amid the squeaks of forks against plates, they continue their manly caucus.

Jay nods at me. “I love her, and I’m going to marry her. You saved her life and now she wants you—she needs you—to fuck her brains out. For whatever reason. She seriously can’t control it. And I love her more than I love the idea of her being faithful to me, so I’m going to have to let you.” Jay digs into his food, having said what he needed to.

Patrick eats, too, brow furrowed. I suspect he’s wondering the same thing I am. Does Jay mean Patrick should fuck my brains out tonight?

“Pass the paper towels,” I say.

Patrick does and he says to Jay, “Then what? What happens after me and her…” He trails off.

“No clue.” Jay shrugs. “I don’t want to share her, trust me. We’ve been happy for four years. I’m hoping the more she gets to know you, the less she’ll need you. I think she’ll get bored with you and maybe realize how good she has it at home.”

“I know how good I have it,” I say quietly, ignored.

“But she’s mine,” Jay reiterates. “And if you want her, and she wants you, I’m going to be a part of it.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, mouth full.

“I get to watch,” Jay says after a pause. “And you have to watch us,” he adds to Patrick.

Patrick’s normally hooded eyes go wide, so wide you can see white all around his brown irises for a second. There’s a pouch of food in his cheek where he froze in mid-chew, and he swallows and sets down his fork. I wait for him to push his chair back and storm out of the house, but he reaches for his wine instead, downing half of it.

“When?” he asks.

I wouldn’t be more shocked if he’d challenged Jay to pistols at dawn.

“Tonight,” Jay says.

I think something insanely banal, just then. I think, Thank goodness my period’s not due for a couple days.

Patrick nods. “Fine. Where?”

“Here,” Jay says. His territory, I think.

“Fine,” Patrick says again.

The men tuck into their food, me vibrating with adrenaline between them. My intuition is tugging frantically at my sleeve, demanding my attention, but I kick it away. The rest of the hurried meal passes in silence and Jay stands up first, taking his plate to the sink. When he comes back he pulls me to standing by the arm. I can sense Patrick’s hackles rise, perceptible as a dog growling.

Jay takes hold of my shoulders, his eyes darting over my face. They look green tonight. His hands slide up to my neck and he kisses me. Regular kisses at first then deeper. Cinematic kisses—deep and smooth and meant for Patrick as much as they are for either of us. It takes me a few seconds to relax into it but when I do, I melt like butter.

A chair squeaks against the floor and Jay breaks away from me as Patrick steps close. I see Patrick’s brown eyes staring into Jay’s hazel ones, posing a question. Jay glances to me then puts a palm on my back, gently urging me toward Patrick. If being literally passed back and forth between these two men wasn’t so incredibly hot I’d be insulted by their pushiness.

I catch Patrick’s eyes for a second before his face lowers. He tastes just like Jay—same wine, same tomato sauce, acidic and salty. He tastes different too. Feels different. He’s just plain bigger, a bigger jaw under my fingers, bigger hands tangling in my hair. I want to see Jay’s face, to check that this is actually turning his crank as it did in theory. I don’t though. I surrender to Patrick’s mouth. His tongue delves deep and explicit, stroking mine, multiplying all the heat Jay roused in me.

He breaks away. He keeps his head close, asks me something Jay’s not meant to hear. “Is this what you want?” he whispers.

I breathe my answer against his cheek. “Yes.” Maybe.

I hear him swallow before he replies, nearly too quiet even for me. “I’d never share you.”

I lick my lips and stall a moment before I look at Jay. There’s a gleam in his eye, honest to God—there’s an actual brightness there like a tiny fire. It’s either anger or arousal or a hybrid of the two. He curls his finger to beckon me over.

He puts his mouth to my ear. “Go to the bedroom and put on something sexy.”

I nod, nervous, and cast a glance back at both of them as I leave the dining room.

As I climb the stairs I wonder what they’re talking about. I bet Jay will be laying down some ground rules for Patrick. I push the dimmer switch up until the bedroom lights are barely on and I stare at our pillows and covers, unable to fathom that Patrick’s about to be here with us. Unable to fathom that Jay is inviting his sexual rival here to desanctify our bed with another man’s memory. Then I realize something incredibly obvious. I’m about to finally have sex with Patrick Whelan.

And all at once, I know why Jay’s doing this. He’s not letting Patrick be a part of our sex life—Jay’s making sure he’s an inextricable part of my soon-to-be sex life with Patrick. He’s going to make sure that whatever happens after tonight, if there should ever be a me-and-Patrick, it’ll be haunted by Jay, just like he’s had to put up with Patrick haunting our twosome from the very beginning.

I bet Jay trusts me exactly as much as I trust myself. Clever boy.

The sexiest underwear I own is a matching silk bra and panties set, plum-colored. I look at myself in the full-length mirror when I’m changed and marvel that this is the woman who’s managed to corrupt and compromise the two intelligent and attractive grown men currently circling each other in her kitchen. This must be how pretenders to the throne feel. Powerful and paranoid.

I hear footsteps on the uncarpeted stairs. Jay enters carrying one of the dining room chairs. He sets it by the dresser, a stadium for a one-man audience with a perfect view of the action. Tomorrow morning one of us will probably eat breakfast sitting on that chair.

“You look good,” Jay says, nodding at my underwear.

I shiver and rub my palms together, though it’s probably perfectly warm in here. “Thanks. Are you sure about this?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think we’ll regret it?” I ask.

Jay walks over and we sit together on the edge of the mattress. “Strong relationships survive way worse things than threesomes,” he says, running a blissfully familiar hand up and down my arm. “If you and I are supposed to stay together, we’ll get through this. And I’m okay with this, really.”

If we’re supposed to stay together…

“I’d never do this for you,” I whisper. “With another woman, I mean. No chance in hell.”

“I know,” he says and kisses my temple. “I love that about you.”

“That I’m a hypocrite?”

“No, just that you’re honest about how horrible you are.” He grins at me, bumps my shoulder with his. “I know how your brain works, Robin. You’re probably psychoanalyzing this sixty levels deeper than me or that asshole downstairs ever will.”

“Probably. And don’t call him an asshole.”

“I know you,” Jay says. “And that’s why I’m not worried about what’s going to happen after tonight.”

I wish I were as confident as Jay.

I pray to God Patrick Whelan is lousy in bed. That might make everything way simpler.

More footsteps mount the stairs and Patrick appears at the door. I stare at his silhouette framed in the threshold, lit by the glow leaking up from the den. The fact that he’s here makes me realize I don’t know him that well. I wouldn’t have guessed he’d agree to this. I wonder if that makes him more horny than honorable or just more desperate to be with me than I ever imagined.

“Take a seat,” Jay says.

Patrick sits on my other side on the bed. I succumb to a moment of female insecurity and glance down to check how unflattering this posture is to my stomach. I feel Patrick scrutinizing my body too, but without any criticism. A broad, warm, half-familiar hand drifts up to cup one of my breasts, sucking the air from my lungs. Patrick leans in and kisses me again, softer than before. I feel Jay’s hand on my shoulder, urging me to lie down. I recline on my side, head on the pillow, and Patrick lies down to face me. Jay slides up behind me, warm mouth on the nape of my neck, palms on my waist. Smooth palms, way different from the coarse ones Patrick explores me with.

“You can touch him,” Jay says, voice low just behind my ear. Then his fingers reach around to settle on my mound over the silk, knuckles surely touching Patrick’s stomach. He strokes my clit, light and teasing as I start to survey Patrick.

He seems brand-new tonight, surrounded by so many familiar things. The bed feels predictable beneath me, as does Jay’s body behind me and his fingers between my legs. Patrick feels foreign. His smell stands out, and his voice when he clears his throat. I rub my hand over his chest, his arm, his neck.

“Get him hot,” Jay whispers. “Then he can watch us.”

My hand slides lower, passing by Jay’s, passing over Patrick’s thick belt, finding him already hard behind his jeans. He groans faintly at the contact. His hands slide from my belly to my collarbone and back, weighing my breasts with each pass. There’s a magic to Patrick when he’s turned-on, a teenage-boy quality that contradicts his steady façade. I cup my palm over the ridge of his erection and angle my head to kiss him, deep. He grunts against my mouth as our tongues tease and explore, igniting me.

Between my legs, Jay strokes my clit with perfect mastery. We know each other so well, he’s better than I am at getting me off. I can feel him too, his hard cock pressed to my butt. The heat builds like a drug, changing everything. The room grows warm, as hot as the two male bodies against mine. Jay’s hand slips inside my panties, multiplying the pleasure threefold.

He makes a happy noise behind my ear. “She’s already wet.”

I hear Patrick suck in a breath through his nose. His tongue plunges deeper, sweeping against mine, making my hand tighten around his cock. His mouth leaves mine to whisper, “I want you so much.”

Jay takes his hand away. “Go sit on that chair, Whelan.”

Patrick gets up, walks obediently to the chair by the dresser and waits.

“Sit on the edge of the bed,” Jay tells me.

I do.

He sits behind me, both of us facing Patrick. “Spread your legs,” he orders.

I do.

His hands stroke up and down my thighs, slow and rough, his short-nailed fingers curled into harmless claws. I gasp as his hand comes back to my center, stroking my lips through the silk. Patrick and I share a private, awkward dance, both our pairs of eyes meeting then moving to each other’s crotches, meeting again, fleeing again. Beneath the pleasure Jay’s giving me there’s a wide river of wrong running through this. Not just societal wrong, but intuitive, this-ain’t-right wrong. Part of me wants to tell Jay to stop, but it’s vetoed by the bossier parts that are throbbing against his fingers.

“Take these off,” he says, thumbs tugging at my waistband. I stand for a second and push my panties to the floor. I sit and Jay’s fingers resume their touch. Five feet in front of me, Patrick’s nostrils flare. His lips part when Jay slides two fingers inside me and the flush in his skin is ten times hotter than the penetration.

“Take it out,” Jay says to Patrick. “Let her see.”

As always, Patrick pauses before he acts but he eventually obeys, opening his belt and his fly and pushing down his shorts. He wraps a hand around his erection.

“He’s big,” Jay whispers, right in my ear. “Is that what you fantasize about?”

I nod, feeling intoxicated by the guilt of the lie. As I told Patrick, my attraction is to him, not his body.

“Did you suck him yet?”

I nod again. Patrick’s hand starts moving up and down his length.

“You make him come?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you swallow?” Jay asks.

Patrick breaks his silence to speak for me. “Yeah, she swallowed. She drank it right up.”

I freeze, feeling Jay’s fingers do the same on my clit. I’ve never heard Patrick talk this way—dirty, sure, but not with an intent to incite. I hold my breath and wait for Jay to explode. Instead he puts his mouth to my temple and says, “Tell me about it, Robin.”

I take a breath. “I begged him to let me. On his couch. I got him as big and hard as I could, and teased him while he told me how he wanted to fuck me.”

“You want to fuck my girl?” Jay asks.

Patrick’s eyes jump from my cunt to my shoulder—to Jay’s face. “It’s all I can think about.”

“Did he eat you?” Jay asks me, fingertips circling my clit.

“Yeah,” I say.

“Come over here,” he says to Patrick. “I want to see you get on your knees and make her come.”

Patrick tucks his cock back behind his shorts, slides off the chair and walks forward on his knees, settling between my thighs. I hold my breath. Jay’s fingers tease me, dipping inside, taunting Patrick.

“She’s so wet already,” Jay says.

I feel his slick fingertips stroke my lips, and the look in Patrick’s dark eyes deepens all the longing. Jay takes his hands away as Patrick brings his face close. Jay cups my breasts, tweaks my nipples through the fabric to spread heat through my chest. Patrick’s tongue flicks my clit and my thighs jerk. His strong hands hold them steady. He laps at me for a long minute, flicking his wet tongue against my lips before he pushes the tip inside. I whimper at the sensation and close my eyes, the sight of his face all at once too intense.

“Taste her,” Jay says.

Patrick makes a hungry noise, plunging his tongue deep. The pleasure is tearing me apart, so hot, so massively screwed up—this big man’s mouth on my pussy, Jay’s palms coaxing pleasure from my breasts as his breath steams against my neck. Two men. Jay’s fingers move to the front clasp of my bra, exposing my breasts, fondling them.

“I get to fuck her bare,” Jay says. “I should have fucked her first and made you eat all my come out of her.”

I gasp and my eyes pop open, unsure if what he said is utterly, insanely hot or completely fucked. But only Jay gets to decide what’s hot or fucked tonight. Patrick doesn’t protest the idea, just keeps doing what he’s been ordered to, fucking my pussy with his mouth.

Jay lets one of my breasts go, reaching down to my mound. He makes a V with his fingers on either side of my lips, pulling the skin a bit tighter, exposing my clit more to Patrick. I know Jay must feel Patrick’s tongue and Patrick must be licking Jay’s fingers and the idea that they’re sharing the barest of sexual contact sends a crackling bolt of selfish pleasure through me. I think something evil as their hands and Patrick’s mouth pleasure me—about Jay’s ultimate revenge, making Patrick suck him. I don’t think there’s any chance of that happening but the thought makes me so hot I feel the climax reach boiling, the heat in my toes and the muscles of my legs, gathering and whirling in my pussy and breasts and my skin and my shaking hands.

“She’s coming,” Jay says. “Don’t stop fucking her ‘til I say.”

Patrick obeys. His licks and sucks grow rougher as I lose myself, turning the orgasm from exquisite to excruciating.

“Keep going,” Jay orders.

I wriggle and jerk between them, my clit dying for a respite, but Jay knows how I work. There’s peak to the torturous sensitivity and once they get me over it the second climax rips through, twice as hard as the first.

“Drink it up,” Jay says.

I feel utterly wrung out and I know Patrick must be drowning in my come. His tongue laps, lips suck, and I feel his fingers coaxing all my juice out so he can swallow it.

Jay speaks close to my ear, the shallowness of his voice giving away his arousal. “You happy now, Robin?”

“Yes.” The tiny word comes out polysyllabic from my hitching breath.

“Is two men enough for you?” Jay asks.

“Yeah.”

“You want us both at once?”

I don’t know exactly what he means, and I hesitate, falling back to earth with an unceremonious plop. Jay knows anal skeeves me out and I look over my shoulder at him, nervous.

“Maybe he can fuck you from behind while you suck my cock.”

I don’t have a chance to decide if this idea is brilliance or sadism because Patrick suddenly stands, zipping his jeans over his erection and buckling his belt, looking ten feet tall.

“I can’t do this,” he announces. That’s all he says. He turns and leaves the room, heavy footsteps thumping down the stairs. I stare wide-eyed at Jay and he nods to the door to say I should go after him.

With my bra still flapping around my shoulders I grab my bathrobe from the hook by the dresser and nearly break my neck, yanking it on and stumbling down into the den. The front door’s open and Patrick’s tugging his second boot on. I rush to him but realize I have no clue what to say.

He straightens up. “I’m sorry, Robin. I can’t do this.” He walks to his truck and I follow.

“No, I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know this was what he had in mind. If I’d had time to think about it, I might’ve realized it’s insane.”

He looks down and shakes his head. “You have no clue how bad I want you… But I can’t share you. Not like that. You guys’ll have to work this out without me. I’ll see you around.”

I think I’ve earned a far harsher ear-bashing than this, considering how massively Patrick’s been getting dicked around for the supposed benefit of my relationship. I hug my robe closed as he climbs into his driver’s seat and slams his door. He rolls his window down and leans out on his elbow, eyes trained on my bare feet in the snow. “Go inside, Robin. Go back up to your man.”

His engine starts and his lights flick on, making the white numbers on my license plate flare before he swings his truck out onto the street. I watch him drive away then I watch the empty road, snowflakes passing under the streetlights. After a minute or two Jay comes out and leads me inside on my prickling feet.

I tie my robe closed and wander into the kitchen and clear the table. Jay stands in the threshold, quiet for a long time.

“Robin.”

I dole the leftover lasagna into a Tupperware, thinking Jay better finish it because there’s no way I’ll be able to.

“Robin?”

I look over my shoulder and I don’t recognize the man standing there, dressed in my boyfriend’s clothes. Whatever person Jay became tonight…well, I’m largely to blame for the change. But I hate him for letting it happen. He’s supposed to be the rational one.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

I turn on the tap and fill the casserole dish to soak. I want to grab the open bottle of wine by its neck and whip it against the tiles at Jay’s feet, but I recork it instead and set it beside the toaster, turning it neatly label-side-out.

“Robin—”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” I toss all the utensils into the casserole dish and dry my hands on a rag. I walk past Jay to head upstairs but he grabs my arm and turns me around.

“Let go of me.”

“I’m sorry.” He doesn’t let go, but he’s not hurting me.

I feel a big ball of something thick in my throat just before the tears come. When I cry Jay’s hand loosens and I yank my arm away and go upstairs to try to shower off the creepy awfulness I’m feeling. His pillow’s gone when I go to change into my pajamas and I know he’s exiled himself to the couch. I wish I’d beat him to it because I want him to be the one lying in the dark, surrounded by the memories of everything royally fucked that just happened in here. I lie awake so long I end up going to the bathroom and swallowing a nighttime cold medicine capsule. It gives me restless, disturbing dreams, but it sure as hell beats consciousness.

Chapter Six

A week isn’t remotely long enough to mourn someone you’ve been with for four years.

Actually, I think I’m mourning us both, collectively, Jay-and-Robin, and how we were up until last Thursday. We made sense before then. I miss making sense. And I miss Jay too, more than I’m pissed at him. Strange how he managed to be the one who took things too far.

He left on Friday while I was at the shop. He propped a note on the dining room table, right where the parmesan cheese had been sitting the evening before.

Robin, I’m going away for a couple weeks to give us both time to think about what we want. Let’s not call each other until next weekend unless there’s an emergency. Love, Jay.

“Away” means Michigan, I assume. Jay’s got plenty of old college friends there he could crash with. Someone must have given him a lift to the bus station or the airport, as there were fresh tire treads in the snowy driveway when I got home that night. I wonder what he told them. His stuff is still in the house, minus his laptop and some clothes. I guess you might say we’re having a separation. I smile grimly to myself, thinking about explaining that to my dad.

“Dad, I have some sad news. Jay and I are separating.”

“Separating? You’re not even married. You modern kids. You make everything into a goddamn hippie drum-banging therapy retreat.”

I miss my dad. Today’s Thursday. Maybe I’ll drive up to Maine and visit him this weekend and cook him a belated, mini-Thanksgiving dinner and pick his brain about how to know who you’re supposed to be with…though he’s probably not the one to ask. I think he only ever loved my mom, and after she died he never tried dating anybody new, as far as I know.

It’s been deadly cold this week. Dog walkers pass in front of the shop windows and they yank the leashes with a new impatience, more interested in getting back indoors than indulging their pets’ olfactory curiosities.

I slit a shipping box open on the floor of the stationery section and unload stacks of colorful cover stock, and Carrie helps me price and deposit them in the appropriate cubbies. She acclimated to my emotional vacancy by Tuesday and has stopped asking if everything’s okay. She must know Jay and I are on the outs, since he usually calls once or twice a day to say hello or ask a favor. He hasn’t called since requesting the olive oil. Which I still haven’t picked up. I’ve been using an old bottle of canola oil instead and it’s foul.

Carrie’s a nice girl and I know she cares that I’m upset. I also know she’s got a bit of a crush on Jay, and how could she not—he’s easily the hippest guy in Dereham. She’s bright and she was raised in the gossip-centric atmosphere of a small town with long, boring winters. She’s hardwired to not miss the fact that Jay and I split up within a stone’s throw of Patrick visiting me at work. Her sympathy is like a cupcake with a rusty nail in it, a big old biteful of tetanus lurking beneath cheerful pink icing.

The end of the day comes after an eternity of anticipation. I want to see Patrick tonight. I’ve waited so I can tell myself I’m not running into his arms too soon after Jay left me, and now I need desperately to talk to him. About what, I don’t know, but logic hasn’t ever gotten itself much of a foothold in my dealings with Patrick.

I go home and heat up some soup for dinner then head to his house just after eight. His driveway’s empty and as I drive to the Tap I worry maybe he’s gone nuts and skipped town in the last week. But there’s his old truck. I park beside him and my jitters kick in as I slam my door. I run to the entrance, just as I used to run from the neighbors’ house back to mine after dark when I was a kid, breakneck speed in case goblins tried to grab my ankles as I flew past the hedges.

I see Patrick the second I push the door in. He’s at the bar talking to old Hank Grenier, who owns the hardware store. I watch them for a minute, guessing at their conversation. Probably something manly about lathes or table saws or contemptible, modern women. I gulp a deep breath and round the bar to where they’re sitting, taking a seat next to Patrick. He’s still talking and doesn’t see me.

“But the manufacturing’s all gone overseas,” he’s saying to Hank.

Hank smiles past Patrick at me. His big ears are weighed down by his even bigger bifocals. “Ahoy there, Robin. How’s business your side of Main?”

Patrick’s eyes are round as he swivels to face me. “Hey, Robin.”

I address them both but look only at Patrick. “Hey, guys. Business is fine, thanks, Hank. How about you?”

There are two ways the men in Dereham handle gossip. Typically they ignore it, figuring it’s too frivolous to bother with. Hank, however, is a seasoned practitioner of the second approach—innocent, tactless, male nosiness. “Heard you and Jay Fleury split up.”

“Sort of,” I say. “We’re taking a break.” My eyes jog to Patrick’s face for an instant, which is all it takes to catch his mouth fall open.

“Always thought he was a decent guy,” Hank says, shaking his head.

“Yes, he’s lovely,” I say. “But you know how relationships can be. We were at that juncture. You know, get married or call it quits.”

Hank laughs and I can see in his hugely magnified eyes that he’s a bit drunk. “This new crop of kids with their internet lifestyle—these young bucks don’t know how to commit anymore,” he says, bundling himself in the earned wisdom of his roughly seventy years. “Probably doesn’t know how good he has it with you.”

I let Hank get it all wrong, not to protect my own reputation but because telling him I’m the gun-shy one would prompt a conversation I’m not willing to have. It would start out fatherly in timbre and wind up with an awkward, generationally disturbing flirtation. Pass.

“Hey, Patrick,” I say. “How’s lumber?”

“’Bout the same as always. How’s paper?”

“Bit pulpier than lumber.”

I order a beer and Patrick and I begin a long and mind-numbingly dull conversation. By the fifth minute, still on the topic of paper, we inspire Hank to slide off his stool to go in search of more thrilling company.

“How are you?” Patrick asks, voice low.

“I’m sort of a wreck and sort of relieved.”

“So, are you two…” His eyes dart away and he trails off, just as John Mellencamp starts crooning from the speakers.

“He left, but he hasn’t gotten his stuff out or talked to me about the mortgage or anything. We’re separated, I guess. It’s up in the air.”

“I’m real sorry I was a part of it,” he says.

I laugh. “I’ll bet.”

“No, sorry for you guys—”

“I know, I’m just teasing you. And I’m the one who should be sorry. Sorry for you.”

He shrugs and takes a sip of his beer. “I could’ve said no.”

“And you did…just a couple weeks later than maybe you should have.” I smile at him, apologetic.

Our heads are close, scandalously close by Dereham’s low standards. “It’s like Jay said, though—if he and I are supposed to survive this situation, we will. Maybe we’re not. I don’t know yet.” I suspect I do, though, if only I’d let my intuition get a word in edgewise.

Patrick nods.

“I’ll understand if you want me to leave you alone,” I go on. “Last week was royally fucked up. I totally get if you want me to back off—”

Patrick gets to his feet and I don’t know how it happens but somehow, suddenly, he’s kissing me. Right here in the bright, ugly light of the too-many beer signs. He’s standing, I’m sitting, and he’s bent over, lips on mine, hands on the back of my head. The music fades to a dull hum as Patrick eclipses my world. A long, low whistle from the bartender cuts through the dark then I’m lost again.

Patrick lets me come up for air after ten seconds or ten minutes—I couldn’t tell you which. I hear Jack and Diane just ending so I guess it was somewhere in the middle.

I glance around and about twenty pairs of eyes are on us. A couple townies laugh and a couple more make teasing, flirtatious noises. Someone claps. I feel my face color and take a deep drink of my beer.

Patrick’s still standing. He empties his glass and makes a throaty noise after he swallows, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“You wanna come home with me?” There’s more to this question than just its boldness. Patrick’s eyes are loaded with fear and hope and held breath, their jumpiness telling me that he really, truly likes me. A lot.

I nod. Patrick pulls a ten from his wallet and tosses it on the bar for the both of us. I swing my legs to the side and slide off my stool, tighten my dangling scarf around my neck as we walk to the door. Patrick’s hand envelops mine under the keno monitor. The door eases shut to cut off another lascivious whistle from the peanut gallery and he leads me across the crunchy, salted asphalt to his truck.

“You want to follow me?” he asks, letting my hand go to find his keys.

“Yeah. That’s probably easiest. For tomorrow.”

He nods and I watch his Adam’s apple jump. He gives me a last look and climbs into his truck. I get in my car and we flip our lights on together and I follow him out of the lot and onto the dark road. The world looks crisp, as if it’s under the influence of some drug I’ve never tried. Everything’s sharp and clear and I watch the occasional red bursts of Patrick’s brake lights as I tail him to the edge of town. I bet I don’t blink once before I pull into his driveway and flip my engine off. We slam our doors nearly simultaneously and his outside lights come on, leaving me blind for a few seconds as we walk to the front steps.

I hear the key in the lock, the creak of a hinge, the flip of a switch as he illuminates the kitchen. I close the door behind me and look up at him, blinking away the blobs in my vision. He seems very real. I don’t know how else to say it.

I glance at his fridge, wondering if things’ll be like that time I came over without permission. Rough and frantic. When he steps to me and leans in close, I know it’ll be nothing like that. I wrap my arms around him, feeling the pilled fleece of his jacket with the cold still clinging to it, breathing in that wintery, lumbery Patrick Whelan scent from his neck.

“He’s about to leave you,” he says, “and it’s still not enough to keep you away from here.”

I shake my head.

“What does that mean, Robin?”

“That I’m lousy at learning my lessons?” I offer, knowing it’s too trite a reply to the question he’s really asking.

“Is this only about sex?” He steps even closer, stubbing the toe of my shoe with his boot.

“Is it only about sex for you?” I ask.

“Of course not. You think I’d fuck around with somebody else’s relationship just over sex?”

“That’s sort of how you packaged your offer,” I say.

He comes so close I have to step back, back, until I’m against the wall. Patrick braces a hand beside each of my shoulders and leans in. “Things’ve never been simple between us, have they?”

I shake my head again, looking into his eyes, remembering all those hours I stared into them from across the visitation room table. Definitely not simple, no. Though it could have been.

“I really thought we’d give something a try, after I got out,” he says.

“I was too afraid of how I feel when I’m around you.”

“You feeling it now?”

I nod. His breath flares against my temple.

“I seem to have a real knack for complicating your life when you’re only trying to help me,” I whisper.

He pulls back, face so close I can’t bring his features into focus.

“I don’t regret that night,” he says. “In the parking lot.”

I frown. “You lost seven months of your life because of that.”

“Even if you’d never visited me in prison, that night would’ve still been worth it, because I got to spend those couple hours with you at the sheriff’s office. But then I ended up getting to see you every week, just you and me. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

I put my fingers on his stubbly jaw as I ponder this. “Do you think you’re in love with me?”

He nods.

I laugh, soft. “Do you wish you weren’t?”

He shakes his head. “Nope.”

I press my mouth to his, a long, shallow kiss while my hands explore his face.

He licks his lips as we separate. “I’ve been real good about not badmouthing your man this whole time,” Patrick says. “But I’d like to make a case for myself. Or at least try and explain how I see things.”

“Okay.”

“He wants you so much, he’d let you be with another man if that’s what he needed to do to keep you.”

I nod.

“I want you so much that if I was him, I’d kill that other man.”

My eyes dart between Patrick’s as I try to guess if this is poetry or hyperbole or the honest-to-God truth.

“And I’d spend another fifty years in prison,” he says, “and it’d still be worth it.”

I blink a few more times.

“Me and your man,” Patrick says, “we’re both fucked-in-the-head crazy in love with you. You need to figure out which kind of crazy you want to be with and cut one or both of us loose.”

I nod, slow and long, studying his zipper pull before I look up. “I think I know which kind of crazy I want.” I bring my lips to his neck and kiss his cold skin from his collar to his ear. His big fingers tangle in my hair and I feel his moan as much as I hear it.

He pulls away. “You think you might ever love me?”

“I think I might already…but I’m not sure. I know what I’ve felt for Jay is love, but with you…it doesn’t feel anything like that.”

“What’s it like, then?”

“With Jay, it was always comforting, like a warm glow or whatever. With you, I look at you, and I feel…itchy. Like I’m going to claw my skin off, I want you so much. I don’t know if I know you well enough to say if I love you yet.”

Patrick’s eyebrows bob up a moment. “You know me better than anybody.”

“Oh.” I try to comprehend the loneliness of this statement. “Really? I feel like I hardly know anything about you.”

He shrugs. “There’s not that many layers to me.”

I bet he’s wrong. I picture him as a tree for a moment, with all those rings. He probably only sees the bark or the leaves, not the inside parts, the ones that reveal his violent and self-sacrificing layer, the helpless, sexual, passionate layer, the boy in the center who grew up amid the clutter and misery of his mother’s beloved squalor. I want to cut in deep and see the different layers of Patrick Whelan and get my hands sticky with sap from all the unpleasant bits.

I unzip his jacket and put my hands against his work shirt, tracing the thread spelling out his last name with my fingertip.

“Make love to me,” I say.

Patrick kisses me, first. Sweet and thorough.

He pulls away and takes my hand and we walk to his room. He switches on the light. “Hang on,” he says and leaves me.

I hear him starting a fire in the living room and I notice how cold it is. I unwind my scarf, taking in his room for the first time. His walls are wood-paneled, stained a dark oak color. He has a couple nicely framed photographs on his walls and I wander over to one. It’s black and white, a picture of pigeons on a busy urban street. I’m still staring at it when Patrick comes back in.

“Did you take this?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “I bought it because it reminded me of you, actually,” he says, and he blushes, visible even by the dim reading lamp’s glow. “I always think about you when I see pigeons.”

I walk over to him and walk my nails up his arms in a creepy manner. “All those mites and ticks and diseases,” I tease.

“You know why,” he says, quiet.

“What does it mean that our common character flaw is whaling on idiots who are ten years younger than us?”

“I don’t care what stuff means,” Patrick says, still quiet.

I let him hold my jaw and tilt my face up to meet his. His kisses come slow, perhaps a celebration that I don’t have to leave tonight after we’re done using each other’s bodies. He covers my mouth with his, slips his tongue between my lips, just enough to taunt. He lets my face go as I push the sleeves of his jacket down his strong arms. Our clothes fall away—shirts and pants and socks and underwear—until we’re standing in the warming room, naked, studying each other.

Patrick’s the first man I’ve seen who looks sexy with his clothes off. Not that naked men aren’t sexy to me if I’m in the mood, but usually they seem a bit dopey with all their stuff just dangling how it does. Not Patrick though. Everything about him seems right, as if he were designed without clothes in mind. I smirk by mistake.

“What?”

“Sorry. You just look so damn good naked.”

He doesn’t seem to know what to do with this compliment so I go ahead and kiss him again, pressing my body right up against his. He moves close as he did in the kitchen, pushing me into the wall. He has to crouch to keep us kissing since he’s over a foot taller than me. I feel his cock growing hard against my hip as our mouths wrestle.

“Can you do what you did, that time against your fridge?” I ask. “Can you hold me up against the wall?”

He reaches down and grabs me behind the knees, lifting me up so I can wrap my legs around his waist, pinning his erection between my pussy and his stomach.

“Is this how you want to do it?” he asks, not sounding at all as if he’s burdened by a hundred and thirty pounds of woman.

I shake my head, smiling at him. “Not tonight, anyhow. I just like that we could, if we wanted to. I’m just objectifying you.”

Patrick’s eyes narrow until they’re nearly closed and he laughs—a throaty, sweet, manly chuckle. “You get weirder and weirder, the more I get to know you.”

“Want to go to your bed?”

“Sure.” He carries me over there and lets me tumble onto his comforter and the anxious grappling begins in earnest. He climbs on top of me, that big body casting mine in its shadow. I hear him through the kissing, delicious wet grunts full of hunger.

“Do you have condoms?” I ask.

“Someplace.”

“You better get them.”

Patrick leaves me to disappear into the bathroom and return with a box, frowning. He pulls out a plastic square.

“What’s wrong?”

“How expired can a condom safely be?” he asks, squinting at the wrapper.

“Golly, I don’t know. A year, maybe?”

“We’re cutting it close.”

I remember that scene from Grease in the back of Kenickie’s car, glad I’m not at risk of repeating its cautionary tale. “I’m on birth control,” I offer. “And I’m clean. You know, in case it like disintegrates on us.”

“Me too. I don’t get around much,” Patrick says and we both glance at the boxful of corroboration he’s holding. I scan his body again and all I can think is, Damn, what a waste.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I say and pat the covers beside my hip.

He tosses the box on his nightstand and joins me on the bed again. I push his shoulder so he lies on his back and I touch him. I love the way his eyes fly to my hand as I grip his shaft, how they go a bit vacant as I make his cock heavy and hard and big.

“Robin.”

I keep all my attention on him, running my fist up and down, torturously slow. He covers my hand in one of his and tightens it, making the strokes rough. His voice is sexier than any other gorgeous, obscenely masculine part of him, that deep voice moaning and grunting and telling me just how badly he wants this.

“I thought about this a lot,” he says.

“About me touching you?”

He nods. “Yeah. You’ve got really soft hands.” He watches a few moments longer and swallows, deep. He looks me in the eyes.

“What?” I ask.

“Do you think this’ll ever happen again? After tonight?”

“Yeah. Why?”

He swallows again. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to be really lousy. I promise I’m usually better than I will be tonight.”

I pause with my hand still wrapped around him and lower my chest to his, burying my face against his neck, and I laugh. Patrick laughs too, his ribs jumping beneath me.

“Just a disclaimer,” he says and I hear a wide smile in his words.

I push myself back up and straddle his hips, settling my pussy on the underside of his cock. I slide up and down, slowly to start. He watches for a minute, breathing labored. Then his hands grasp my hips and he speeds up the friction.

“God, Robin.”

“You feel…awesome.” Literally. I am full of awe from how wonderful he feels beneath me. I lean down and suck in two brimming lungs’ worth of Patrick Whelan. He probably showered after work but it’s all there, his smell.

Patrick flips us onto my back and I feel his hips take over for mine. There’s a force behind his thrusts, a strength that intimidates me as much as it turns me on. For a gorgeous minute he rubs his cock over my wet lips then my impatience comes to a head.

“I want you.”

“I want you too,” he says.

“No, I really, really want you.” I tug at his hips to tell him it’s an order, not a sweet-nothing. “I need you. Now.”

His breathing halts. He takes the condom from the bedspread beside us and gets it open, rolls it on, angles his head to my entrance.

“Now,” I say, tugging on his hips. “Now, Patrick.”

Nearly six years, my body’s been screaming for this. Patrick puts his weight behind his cock and though my pussy’s probably wetter than it’s been ever before in my entire life, it’s not a perfect moment. I suck in a breath as he starts to penetrate.

“Okay?” he asks.

“Just stay right there for a minute.” I ooze out a long exhalation, ordering my body to relax. “Okay, go a little deeper.”

Another couple inches and he feels wonderful, now. Patrick pulls out all the way then drives back to that depth.

“Wow,” I say, staring between our bodies.

He doesn’t say anything, looking as though he’s in deep concentration. He gives me another inch, starting to pump faster. I want all of him, deep, deep, deep until our hips touch.

“More. Please, Patrick.”

He pushes into me, hard, and I yelp at the sharp cramp he triggers. He pulls out halfway, looking down at me with wide eyes, half concerned, half out-of-his-mind horny.

“Sorry,” he says. “Use your fist. Gimme a couple more inches.” He guides my hand to his cock and wraps my fingers around him at my pussy lips. He starts to fuck again, and I love the feeling of his skin sliding through my hand, his balls hitting me when he pushes deep. There’s something sweet and so elementally us about the fact that we don’t fit. We’re wrong together, right down to our anatomy. I smile so hard I can’t even bite it back.

Patrick looks insane in the best way imaginable—eyes wild, muscles clenched. I watch with wonder as his shaft drives in and out between our bodies. I never knew a cock could get so stiff and swollen. I never would have guessed the man attached to it could be so attached to me. Amazing.

He sucks shallow breaths through his gritted teeth, rabid. “God, Robin.”

His strokes are pure sexual heat, blazing hot but not enough to make me come. The fingers I have wrapped around him are in the way of me getting what I need.

“Patrick.”

“Yeah?”

“I really want to come. Can you go shallower for a minute?”

He nods like a madman—as if he’s drowning and I asked him to hold his breath just a little longer, please. He leans back on his haunches, thrusts going from animal to machine for me, giving half his length so I can play with my clit. He puts his hands on my knees and closes his eyes.

The pleasure mounts fast as I rub myself, watching Patrick. “God, you feel incredible.”

He inhales sharply, closes his eyes tighter. “Please don’t say anything,” he says. “I’m trying really, really hard not to come.”

I keep my mouth shut, letting Patrick concentrate on whatever’s holding him back from the edge. As much as I need my fingers, I need him too. I need to hear him, moaning. I need to look in his eyes, if only they’d open.

“Patrick—”

He groans, frustrated by my inability to respect his wishes.

“I don’t care if you come,” I say. “Just please, Patrick, open your eyes.”

Those heavy lids lift as his lips part. His hands tighten over my knees and I tease myself, frantic, knowing it’s a race now.

His sounds return, gasoline on my fire. I can sense how violently his body wants to intensify this, the muscles of his stomach and hips fluttering, struggling to stay in control of the pace and the depth.

“Fuck, Robin.” He lowers down, hands beside my ribs. His cock is calling the shots and within seconds he goes too deep, shocking me with another cramp and making me gasp.

“Fuck. Sorry.” He pulls out, turns me onto my side, spoons his body behind mine. He guides himself to my pussy, the position keeping him from ramming too deep.

I prop a leg up and stroke my clit, insane with the pleasure and the contact—his firm muscle against my soft backside, the aggression of his thrusts and his noises.

“God, Robin.”

He’s gone. For a dozen beats his dick hammers me, graceless and unspeakably hot, then he pushes deep and holds as he shoots. I come just after him, the spasms clenching me tight around that still sinfully hard cock.

I hear his voice, soft now, urging me. “Yes, yes, yes.” A warm, broad palm kneads my hip until I’m still. He strips the condom away and we lie this way a long time and it feels right, his big, damp body wrapped around mine, possessive.

The wake of the sex is like the days following a hurricane. Things are askew, scattered, altered, and my sense of safety and normality is battered. There’s cleanup to do and adjustments that need to be made but I’m not ready for all that. I want to rest here in our smoking rubble for a long time and appreciate the force of the storm.

We lie still, surrounded by the triumphant smell of our bodies, our breathing calming in tandem. After maybe thirty minutes I shift my legs and yawn. I discover Patrick’s been lying in wait, his silence more patient than sleepy. He climbs on top of me, staring down. He smiles, the gesture subtle and warm and familiar.

I smile back. “Hey.”

“Are you tired?”

“Not too tired,” I say.

“What do you want to do?”

I graze my palms up his body and think. My hands answer his question, wrapping around his cock, fondling and savoring the feeling of him, the weight as he grows. He rests back on his haunches between my legs to watch, running his hands along my calves.

“You’re really beautiful,” he says.

“Oh. Well, thank you.”

He nods. “I always hoped the other people thought you were my girlfriend when you came to visit me.”

I laugh, charmed by this announcement. “Sometimes I felt like I was… I wish they’d let you get food packages in there. I would have learned all sorts of new and impressive cookie recipes.”

We stop talking, both watching my hands on Patrick’s hard cock. I stroke him until I can see and smell how ready he is, until a clear bead forms at his reddened head. His face has turned restless, that wonderful strain tensing his features. I watch his throat as he swallows.

He slaps my hip, gentle. “Turn over.”

I get onto my hands and knees for him, craning my neck to watch him get another condom ready. He slides in deep, smooth and confident as if we’ve been doing this for years. And in our minds, I guess we have.

A strong hand clasps the front of each of my thighs. He urges me to bring my legs together, the skin between my thighs adding the distance he needs to take me harder. “Oh, Robin.”

It’s just like my fantasies, feeling all his weight behind me, his voice punctuating the impact. The steady rhythm grows faster and rougher until he’s pounding me. He kneads my ass, tugs my hips into his thrusts, loses his tempo as his pleasure turns frantic.

“Patrick.”

“Yeah. Say it again.”

I moan his name, feeling his cock stiffen with each repetition. “This is exactly what I wanted, all that time,” I tell him. “You feel so amazing.”

“I wanna make you come again,” he says and I hear that beautiful desperation dripping from his words.

“Let me get on top.”

He hammers me hard for a final minute and pulls out. He lies on his back and I swing my leg over his hips, angle my body so I can slide him in and find the right depth.

“Wow,” I mumble. I close my eyes and lean back on my knees, getting him exactly where I want him. I start to rock, rubbing my clit along the base of his shaft as my pussy fucks the remaining length. The thing about this that’s so wonderful is Patrick himself, but I have to admit, his size is a massive turn-on. A shiver, warm and chaotic, trickles from the crown of my head down my back. “Wow. You’re so fucking big.”

My eyes open, finding Patrick’s glued to my chest. He licks his lips and put his hands on my waist. I grab his wrists and lead his palms to my breasts, where I know they want to be. I groan as his rough fingers tweak and tease and I ride him rougher. He sits up and I lean back a little so he can bring his mouth to my nipple. I drag my fingers through his wavy hair and listen to the hungry noises as he suckles.

“You feel so amazing,” I tell him again.

He meets my eyes as his mouth breaks away. “Fuck me,” he says. “Use me.”

I push at his chest until he lies back down. “Bring your knees up a little,” I say.

He does. It makes a seat for me, cradling my butt as I ride him. The pressure’s mounting, spurred by the blazing-hot, wet friction between my clit and his dick. I fan my fingers over his stomach and put my weight on him, knowing he can take it. My hips speed up, pussy aching for him.

“Fuck me, Robin. Use me. Use my cock.”

“Patrick…” The heat builds in my body, tightening my cunt and making my motions messy and greedy.

“Come on my cock, Robin. Please.”

“You are—so—fucking—thick.” I slide my damp palms up his body and over his shoulders until they sink into the pillows. My nipples brush his chest, the teasing exquisite. I feel the pleasure tipping, spilling me into my climax.

“Yes,” he hisses. “Good girl. Come on me.”

The pleasure deepens and holds and crescendos until I collapse on him, limp.

“Oh fuck.”

He lets me lie against his slippery chest and catch my breath for a couple minutes. I feel his dick, stiff and pulsing, ticking like an impatient clock. His fingers whisper over my damp back with fond, light caresses.

I get a hand on either side of his ribs and prop myself up. “Hoo… Okay. Now you. Whatever you want.”

He reaches up to tuck my hair behind my ears and stroke my sweaty face. He licks his swollen lips and smiles at me, eyes darting between mine. Strong hands turn me onto my side, roll me onto my back. Patrick gets between my weak legs, stroking his slick cock. He guides himself back inside, slow and controlled. I groan my happy approval.

“Gimme your fist, sweetheart.”

I ponder my new pet name as I wrap my fingers around him at my entrance. His force picks up, thrusts turning selfish. He moans and grunts in time with the impact, beautiful, disbelieving sounds.

“Patrick…”

“You feel so fucking good. You’re so warm.” His hips pump me deep, muscled arms flanking my soft ones. I wrap my legs around his waist and memorize his body. I touch his chest and neck with my free hand, feeling the fever humming in his damp skin.

“Fuck me,” I say. “Show me everything you’ve been wanting.”

He leans back and takes hold of each of my legs behind the knee. “You can let your hand go,” he says. He closes my legs and hugs them against his chest, my ankles at his shoulder, feet by his ear. His cock slides between my inner thighs, testing the depth and finding its rhythm. I’ve never felt so controlled and possessed, so used in the most wonderful sense of the word.

“God, Patrick. You feel so good.”

He speaks through gritted teeth. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I can’t wait for you to come.”

He moans, eyes closing a moment.

“I’ve wanted to be with you for so long,” I say.

His arms lock tighter around my legs as the fucking intensifies.

“I love your body, Patrick. I love your big cock.”

“Yeah…”

“Let me see it when you come.”

His voice rises an octave, reduced to shallow gasps. For another glorious minute Patrick Whelan fucks the sense out of me, until his hold turns shaky. He pulls my legs apart, reaches between us as he slides out to strip the condom and jerk himself with a frantic fist.

“Oh, Robin.” The first spurt arrives, lashing my belly. I rub his come into my skin as he milks himself, gives me more, until his voice fades to panting and his stroking hand stills. His half-lidded eyes close and at that moment, staring at his face, I know I’m in love with him—that I have been since the second his arms wrapped around me when we sat on the hood of my car that horrible night six years ago.

I feel high for a long time. The room and the world hang surreal around me as Patrick gets up, finds me a towel, brings us a glass of water to share. We burrow under his covers. He lies on his back and I curl against him, a palm plastered to his chest above his slowing heart.

I love you, I tell him telepathically. I won’t say it out loud yet. The only language I care about right now is his breathing, his heartbeat, the gentle clench of his fingers in my sweaty hair. There’ll be time enough for words some other night. Right now, everything’s exactly how it’s supposed to be.

* * * * *

I wake when Patrick’s alarm clock blares and I’m so sleep-addled it doesn’t startle me at all. He reaches over me to click it off, rolls out of bed and disappears into the bathroom. I squint at the red digits—six fifteen. I turn onto my back, feeling his flannel sheets against my bare body, looking up into the rafters that crisscross his bedroom ceiling.

I smile at all the new things I know about him now that I’ve spent the night.

Patrick sleeps like a hibernating creature. The steady rhythm of his quiet snoring never faltered, not even when I rolled myself into new positions or tossed an arm or leg over him. He’s a bit of a covers hog, but I guess he’s out of practice at sharing and anyhow I didn’t wake him with any of my blanket-yanking.

I don’t feel any morning-after anxiety with Patrick. I smile at him when he returns from the bathroom, not caring if my face is greasy or my mascara’s smeared. He smiles back and I see leftover shaving cream by his ear.

“I hate to rush you, but I need to head out in a half-hour,” he says. “I’d let you lock up, but I don’t have a spare key.”

“That’s fine.” I fight my way out from under his heavy comforter and the cold fuses all my joints and muscles. We get dressed together, me in yesterday’s clothes, him in fresh ones. Luckily I changed and showered when I went home for dinner, so Carrie won’t be able to draw any conclusions from a fashion encore. I have plenty of time to go home again this morning, but I think I’ll head into the shop super-early instead, maybe do all the Friday inventory before we open. Honestly, I don’t want to go back to the house this morning and get my brain all muddied, pondering evidence of Jay, evidence of Jay-and-Robin.

“What do you want for breakfast?” Patrick pulls a sweater over his head. “I’ve got cornflakes and toast and oatmeal.”

“Oatmeal,” I say, rubbing my stiff hands together.

I get myself cleaned up in the bathroom, thinking I better pack an overnight bag if Patrick lets this become a regular thing. The only moisturizer I find is a tube of heavy-duty hand lotion, the kind fishermen endorse. I pat a thin layer over my face. He’s left a new toothbrush out for me on the sink, still in its box. It’s way too big, a freebie from the dentist’s office, but I treasure it more than a dozen roses. I arrange it just so in the cup next to Patrick’s and smile as I flip the light off.

I’m relieved to feel the heat coming from the woodstove when I join Patrick in his kitchen. He pours steaming water into two bowls of quick oats and stands a bottle of maple syrup on the table between them.

He sits down opposite me, offering snatches of eye contact. “Did you sleep okay?”

“Yeah, wonderful.”

“Good.”

I stir my oatmeal and clear my throat. Patrick seems cagey.

“I’m really happy about last night,” I say, before I can chicken out.

“Me too.” Not cagey—shy. He measures a spoonful of syrup and mixes it into his bowl.

“I used some of your industrial-strength hand cream. I hope my face doesn’t look all shiny.”

He glances up at me. “Your face looks fine. You look pretty.”

“Oh. Good.”

“You can bring stuff over, though, if that’s what you’re getting at. I know I’m kind of…” He looks around the room, as though the right adjective might be sitting on one of his half-empty shelves. “You know.”

“Tidy?”

He nods. “I wouldn’t mind if you kept stuff here though.” I catch him swallow and blush just the tiniest bit.

“Thanks. Maybe I will.”

He nods again.

We eat in silence for a couple minutes then Patrick speaks.

“Sorry. I’m not great at knowing what to say. You know, after last night. I don’t take people home very often.”

“I suppose Dereham’s not exactly a teaming hotbed of sexy single ladies,” I offer.

He smiles into his bowl.

“Well, if you’re worried about what to say, you can just let me be an obnoxious, pushy girl and I’ll get way ahead of myself and start theorizing about our future together.” I grin at him.

“Oh. Okay.”

“Well,” I say, “I’ll start by trying to figure out a really emotionally charged Christmas present to get you. One that’ll make you feel really uncomfortable and pressured. Like a piece of man jewelry. With a way-too-earnest engraving.”

“You’re cute, Robin, but I’m already in love with you. I know you’re kidding, but you can’t scare me off, even with jewelry.”

“Cleavage tattoo?” I scrawl my finger across my décolletage, tracing his name in invisible script.

He smiles and scrapes the edges of his bowl clean.

“I guess if the last few weeks haven’t been enough to strike terror in your heart, there’s not much else I can do,” I say.

He shakes his head.

“Then I’ll go ahead and theorize for real… For starters, I’d miss you, when you’re away in New Hampshire,” I say. “Four months is a long time for a lady to go without her own personal lumberjack.”

“It doesn’t have to be that long,” Patrick says. “I only do it for the money…” He trails off, some heavy thought weighing down the corners of his mouth.

“What?”

“My mom,” he says. “I do it mainly because my mom’s off her nut, and someday I’m going to have to move her into a home or something. A decent one.”

I nod and reach across the table to touch his wrist under the cuff of his scratchy sweater.

“But I have plenty of savings,” he says. “I don’t have to do as much logging as I do.”

“I wouldn’t mind driving up to visit on weekends,” I say.

“Maybe. Maybe we could throw a cap on the truck and go camping.”

I laugh. “Wow, listen to us getting all ahead of ourselves. We’re good at this.”

He smiles, staring at the table before his brown eyes dart to the microwave clock. “We should get going.”

I’m not ready to say goodbye to him. “Can I buy you a coffee, before you head to work?”

“Sure.”

We get our shoes on and I follow Patrick into town. I park in the employee lot and jog gingerly down the icy sidewalk to meet him at the Dunkin’ Donuts a half block from my shop. We get in line together, not talking, and order our coffees. We head outside and stand by a mailbox, warming our bare hands on our hot takeout cups. I toy with the little plastic latch on the lip, unsure of what I want to be saying to him.

“Maybe…” I begin.

He raises his dark eyebrows and takes a sip.

“Maybe you’d like to come by the shop this afternoon, during your lunch hour?” I ask. “We could grab something to eat at the place next door.” I hold my breath, as if I’d asked him to the junior high school prom. Funny how it’s so tough, even after all that nonsense over breakfast.

He nods, casual. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

“And maybe some night next week I could bring over some food again, and we could watch a movie or something at your place.”

“Sure.”

Warmth forms in my middle, a little spark that swells to a permeating glow, spreading out until I feel flushed. This is everything that should have happened between us after he was released—frantic sex followed by a cautious courtship. I stare up at Patrick Whelan’s face and I think, This is my man. My body’s known it for years, screaming itself hoarse trying to get my idiot brain to accept it.

A million things won’t be simple or easy in the next few weeks, but this, right now, feels the way it should. This, right now, is effortless. It’s as easy to be with Patrick as it was impossible to stay away from him.

He clears his throat and looks at our feet. “I better head over there.”

I nod and I tap my cup against his. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”

Patrick pauses a second then leans in and kisses my cheek. His own cheeks are pink when he straightens back up. “I’ll see you.”

I give him a little wave and watch him cross the street. I watch my man get into his truck and slam its door, and I watch him glance at me and raise a hand before he drives off. I watch my man until he turns down Brewster Street and disappears from sight and I think, There goes my man.

About the Author

Cara McKenna writes smart erotica: a little dark, a little funny, definitely sexy and always emotional. She lives north of Boston with her extremely good-natured and permissive husband. When she’s not trapped inside her own head, Cara can usually be found in the kitchen, the coffee shop or the nearest duck-filled pond.

Cara welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.

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Also by Cara McKenna

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