Then he pulled out and yanked me to my feet.

I was looking to the side and down at the floor but I wobbled, my knees weak from my orgasm and his big hands spanned my h*ps to steady me. There was something about this, something tender, something so un-Joe that I couldn’t hack it. I yanked free, stepping away, pulling my hair out of my face, beyond humiliated. So far beyond it, I didn’t know what that was. At the same time I felt f**king great, I felt electrified, alive and I hated myself for that but I hated him more.

I leaned down and snatched my panties from the floor, clearing my mind, thinking of nothing but getting the f**k out of there. I yanked them on, shimmied my skirt down and, without looking at him, walked swiftly to the side door.

I didn’t make it. His arm hooked at my belly, his other one wrapped around my chest and he yanked me back into his body.

His lips at my ear, he murmured, “I want you in my bed tonight, buddy.”

I shook my head once, a terse, angry shake even as his words slid through me like a different kind of burn, hardening my ni**les, tickling between my legs, bringing back that feeling I had last night, that hollow feeling, that hunger, even though I’d just had him not five minutes before.

I pulled out of his arms, reached out, yanked open the door and ran straight to my house.

* * * * *

I lay on my side, curled into a ball which was my seven hundred and fifty-fifth position of the night.

The room was dark, it was the dead of night and even though I barely slept the night before, I was wide awake.

Not comfortable, I turned and looked at the clock.

One forty-seven in the morning.

I closed my eyes and whispered, “Fuck.”

Joe was next door in his bed, maybe waiting for me.

This was all I could think of from ten o’clock, when I slid into bed with a book I couldn’t focus on, to now.

I shouldn’t go, couldn’t go, I shouldn’t even want to go.

Even knowing this, I threw back the covers and went to my closet. I pulled out a long cardigan, my brain battling itself as I shrugged on the sweater and walked out of the room.

I headed to Keira’s room first. She was a heavy sleeper, like me. Nothing woke her and nothing used to wake me, at least when Tim was in the house, now I woke at the barest sound.

I pushed open her door and whispered, “Keira?”

I looked at her bed, no movement.

I walked in. She had the room at the front of the house, Kate’s room sandwiched between the hall and mine. Keira’s room was girlie, not frilly but full of pinks, purples, daisies and posters of boy bands and teenage vampires. Her clothes were strewn on the floor, her desk a mess. Her curtains were drawn but I could see the darkness of her hair against her pillow. Tim’s hair. Both of them got Tim’s hair, Tim’s eyes, Tim’s lean frame. They’d lucked out.

I stifled the urge to touch her hair, kiss her cheek, left the room and crossed the hall to Kate’s room.

Kate was like Tim, she slept light. She was a worrier, like Tim and now, like me.

When Tim was alive, I didn’t worry, not ever. I felt, if we were all together, nothing could harm us. We’d take our knocks but we’d survive them. This feeling had a lot to do with Tim taking care of most everything. This feeling was now gone because he was gone, not taking care of most everything and because we’d never be all together again.

I pushed open her door. Kate’s room couldn’t have been more different than her sister’s. Champagne colored walls, black accents, sophisticated except for the posters on the walls. They were for bands I’d never heard of but whoever they were they actually wrote their own music and played their own instruments. Her floor was clear, her stuff organized.

I only whispered her name when I was close to her bed.

“Kate.”

I saw her dark hair on her pillow and she didn’t move either.

I wanted her to move, to roll to her back and say, “Mom, stop acting like a slut.”

She didn’t, she slept and I left her to it.

I walked to the side kitchen door and slid on some Crocs. Then I unarmed the alarm. Then with my hand to the door handle, the sane, good Mom, good person part of my brain won out. I dropped the handle and walked toward my room but my feet took me right by my bedroom door to the sliding glass door at the back of the study. My fingers unlocked it, slid it to the side and I stepped out into the chill night air. I closed the door and walked to the steps of the deck, down them and into the grass.

I turned to Joe’s house.

Through the dark, I hurried to his house knowing this was wrong, it was stupid, he was probably asleep by now anyway.

But my feet kept moving.

His deck was deeper than mine, jutting out further, but it didn’t travel the length of his house like mine did. Mine was rectangular, his was square. The steps on mine were at the front, his at the side and I ran up them, counting them as I went, four steps, then I found myself standing at his sliding glass door.

There was no light on. If he was waiting for me, wouldn’t he turn on the light?

He would, anyone would. No one who shoveled a woman’s snow from her drive would make her meet him for a clandestine sexual assignation at his unlit dark deck. In fact, his whole house was dark.

It was clandestine but he wouldn’t want me to sprain my ankle, would he?

No, he was sleeping. Time to go.

I turned and headed toward the stairs and my heart skipped when I heard the sliding door open but my feet kept moving toward escape. I was almost at the stairs when I was caught with an arm around my waist and pulled back into the heat of his long, hard body.

His rumbly voice sounded in my ear. “Where you goin’, buddy?”

“Joe,” I whispered, my voice trembling and I could say no more.

He let my waist go but grabbed my hand and yanked me into the house. Sliding the door to, he turned to me and bent, lifting me at the knees and waist, he carried me through his living room, down the hall and turned right. Then he carried me to his bed and threw me on it. I bounced only once because, if there was going to be a second time, this was thwarted when his body came down on mine.

His hand was in my cardigan at the shoulder, pulling it down.

“I –” I began.

“Shut up,” he cut me off.

“Okay,” I whispered.

Then his mouth came down on mine.

* * * * *

I was on my knees, Joe underneath me, his hands at my hips, pulling them down to his face.

I had been bent over him, using my mouth and hand on his beautiful shaft at the same time his mouth was on me but what he was doing between my legs with his mouth took my full concentration so I’d given up and when I did Joe had turned me around and settled me back down.