I didn’t struggle. I didn’t do anything even when he stopped in my room, let my hand go and shrugged off his leather jacket, letting it drop to the floor. Then his hands came to my little corduroy jacket and he pulled it down my arms.

“Uh…” I mumbled, lifting my hands belatedly as he moved closer, “Joe –”

But my hands hit his hard chest then my arms were squashed between our bodies when one of Joe’s arms sliced low around my hips and he yanked me to him, his other hand fisted in my hair, twisting tight. I felt an illicit pain against my scalp that I shouldn’t have liked but I did. I liked it a lot. So much I felt it not only in my scalp but throughout my body. His fist in my hair positioned my head, tugging it back but tilting it to the side so when his mouth came down on mine hard I was right where he wanted me.

And I wanted to be there. There was no other thought, not to protest, to push away, to fight. I just wanted to be there, pressed against him, his arm around me, his hand in my hair and his mouth on mine.

I opened my mouth, his tongue spiked in, I liked the taste of him, the feel of his tongue and my body liquefied in his arms. My hands forced their way from between our bodies so my fingers could slide into his thick, overlong hair and I pressed deep into his big body. I gave no thought to what I was doing and who I was doing it with. I gave no thought to anything. I just felt and what I felt was unbelievably good.

His kiss wasn’t gentle. It was greedy, demanding and I liked it, so much I mewed in protest when he took his mouth away but didn’t protest when his hands went to my t-shirt and yanked it over my head, pulling it free and tossing it away. He moved into me, turning me, guiding me to the bed and I went down on it. Joe towered over me, pulling up a calf to yank off my boot then my sock then he went after the other one and did the same. Without delay, he leaned in, his hands went to my buckle and he’d undone it and my jeans and had them down my legs before I could take two breaths.

And I was breathing hard, already turned on. I came up to sitting which meant I collided with Joe when he came down on me and that’s when it really started.

I yanked his shirt out of jeans and pulled it over his head, his arms lifting to help me. I tugged it free and threw it to the floor then his hands came back to me and his mouth, his tongue, his teeth. I wanted them and all they were doing to my mouth, my neck, my ears, it was brilliant, my body was alive, vibrating, like I’d woken up from a seven hundred year sleep but what woke me was an electric shock. At the same time I wanted what he was doing to me back from him. I used my hands, my nails, my mouth and tongue everywhere I could touch, every inch I could taste.

It was wild, almost a struggle. I couldn’t get enough of him, take enough from him. No matter what I got, I wanted more, like a craving that hollowed out my insides, needing to be filled.

Joe was the same but he was stronger, keeping me on my back no matter how I tried to roll him. Along the line he disposed of my panties then he got my bra cup down and drew my nipple into his mouth sharply. My back arched, my fingers fisted in his hair as his tongue jabbed at my nipple then sucked it in fiercely and I fucking loved it.

“Yes,” I breathed and he moved to the other side, scraping my bra cup down again and repeating what he did to the first, his fingers having replaced his mouth at my other nipple, they pinched and twisted. It was rough but it felt brilliant and my hips rose in a reflexive demand.

“Joe,” I whispered, suddenly needing him inside me, my hand moving from his hair and sliding down the sleek skin of his back, to his side, his waist but his crotch was too far away.

He came back over me and his mouth took mine in another hard, bruising kiss and my hand found him, palming his groin, finding him hard, I moaned into his mouth and bucked my hips.

“Fuck me,” I pleaded, rubbing my hand against him, opening my legs.

He didn’t hesitate, his hand pushed mine aside and he undid his jeans.

“You on the pill?” he asked, his voice gruff.

“No,” I answered and felt the tip of his cock pressing against me. I wanted it inside me so badly it was an ache, my hand slid into his jeans, curling around his tight ass in an insistent demand.

“Fuck it,” he groaned and drove in deep.

I gasped then held my breath as he filled me. He was huge. So big, it was a shock to be that full.

Then I had to start breathing when he started moving, driving deep, filling me full again and again, rough, hard, almost brutal, his big hands going to my hips and lifting me to plant himself deeper. Then I wasn’t breathing, I was panting.

My nails dug into his back, my hips rising, helping him to go deeper. I wrapped a calf around his waist, digging my heel into his back to leverage my hips, my other leg wrapping around his thigh.

“You’re so big,” I whispered.

“You like it,” he pointed out the obvious and I made no response, I couldn’t, that’s how much I liked it.

“Harder,” I gasped, wanting it harder, wanting the pounding never to stop, but even demanding it, still thinking he couldn’t fuck me harder. There was no way he could fuck me harder but I was wrong, he could and he did.

It built fast, it had been a long time, I felt it coming and I wanted it. I reached for it, the nails of one hand scraping his back, the other hand fisted in his hair, begging, “Fuck me harder, Joe.”

His mouth was at mine, his breath ragged when he murmured, “You like it rough.”

“Yes,” I breathed.

“Good,” he muttered, kissed me deep and fucked me harder.

It was happening, I could feel it and when it started, I tore my mouth from his, arched my neck, my back, and announced on a throaty, breathy moan, “Joe, I’m coming.”

“Christ,” Joe bit off as it hit me, it was so huge, my body shook with it and I tightened my limbs around him, pulling him close.

I felt him thrusting as I came, suspended in the glorious moment, beautiful.

I was coming down when his thrusts became even more powerful then his hand left my hip, his fingers sunk into my hair, fisting and twisting again, his mouth slammed down on mine and he groaned, his hips driving into mine once, twice, three times then, on the fourth, he planted himself to the root and stopped.

His lips slid from mine, down my cheek, my neck, where he buried his face and he stayed fixed deep. I lay under him, bearing his heavy weight, feeling full of his cock, immune to anything but his body, his heat, his weight, his prick. There was nothing in the world but me and Joe Callahan and I liked it like that.

Then suddenly he slid out and his weight was gone, his heat, his body, all vanished and it was just me in the bed.

I blinked at the suddenness of it then closed my legs, rolling to my side, curling up, my eyes moving to him in the dark. He was standing at the foot of the bed doing up his jeans. Nothing entered my mind. I could still feel him between my legs, my brain fuzzy with drink and sex, my body sated. He bent to the floor then straightened, pulling on his t-shirt.

Mindlessly, I watched as his hand went to his back pocket, he yanked out his wallet, flipped it open, pulled something out, he returned his wallet to his pocket. My brain still not having kicked into gear, I didn’t move as he bent over the bed, putting a hand in it by my belly, the fingers of his other hand sliding up the inside of my forearm which was lying on the bed. When he reached my open palm, I felt the edges of a card against my skin as he curled my fingers around it.

Then he trailed his fingertips down my hip and outer thigh as he said, “Call me, buddy, anytime you need a ride home.”

My body locked at his insinuation but I had no chance to ask a question or make a retort, he disappeared and, seconds later, I heard the outer door closing.

I laid there a long time, curled mostly naked on my bed, the air in my room chill as the knowledge seeped into me that I just let me next door neighbor, Joe Callahan, a man I disliked, fuck me so hard I ached. I’d even begged him to do it.

And it seeped into me that, after thirty-five years, I’d just taken my second lover and I’d done this like a slutty, drunken barfly, letting a guy I barely knew and didn’t even like pick me up, take me home and fuck me so hard I ached. Hell, he didn’t even need to work at it, he just dragged me out of the bar, I followed him to my house and then he dragged me to my room.

And it seeped into me that this guy, Joe Callahan, thought he could do that to me whenever it struck my fancy to let him, calling him to service me and then he’d pull out, leave me mostly naked and alone and not even kiss me before he left. And I couldn’t fucking blame him.

And this knowledge seeped into my bones, bitter and humiliating.

I heard the front door open and I froze.

Kate was home.

I whirled into motion, jumping off the bed, pawing through my clothes on the floor, I found and yanked on my underwear. Then I ran to the bathroom, pulled Tim’s robe off the hook on the door and shrugged it on, feeling for the first time the soft, warm flannel against my skin like a burn.

I tied the belt tight and walked into the living room, pulling my hair out of my face, hoping to God my daughter couldn’t read the heinous deed I’d done in my expression or the line of my body. I looked to the DVD clock under the TV in the living room and saw it was two after midnight. My responsible Kate was home on time and her boyfriend, who I didn’t want to like or trust, had brought her home by curfew.

I headed to her room, the light coming through the door which was opened a crack.

I stopped at the door and knocked softly.

“Yeah, Mom,” she called and I pushed the door open and stood in its frame, my arms wrapped around my belly.

“Hey baby, have a good time?”

She was texting someone and I knew it was Dane even though he just dropped her off. Her head came up from her phone and she grinned at me.

“Yeah,” she said softly, her face just as soft.

Oh fuck.

“Dane have fun?” I asked.

She nodded and looked back down at her phone. She hit send, slid it shut and tossed it on her nightstand.

“I like him, Kate, he’s a good kid,” I told her, her head twisted to me and she studied me a second before she dealt a blow she didn’t know she was dealing and, if she did, it would cut her to the quick. Kate felt. She felt everything but she felt other people’s pain far more than her own, one of the few things she got from me.

“You think Dad would have liked him?”

I hid my flinch at her question and I did it by thinking about her question.

I’d made a pact with Tim early on that we’d always be open and honest with our girls. A pact that he regularly broke as they grew older and he found he had trouble with the facts of life and relaying them to his daughters, seeing as they were female. A pact, since I was female, I was able to keep.

“No,” I told her, her face fell and I went on. “But only because you’re his little girl and you always will be. He wouldn’t like him, not now, but he’d come around because Dane’s a good kid.”

Her face brightened, just slightly, and she asked, “You think?”

I walked in, got close to her, wrapped my hand around her head and pulled her temple to my mouth.

“I know,” I whispered and kissed her before finishing. “Get some sleep, honey.”

Her body had leaned into mine with my embrace but she pulled away when she replied, “All right, Mom.”

“Sleep tight.”

“You too.”

I walked to the side kitchen door, locked it, armed the alarm and then moved back to my room and got in bed wearing Tim’s robe, thinking that sleeping tight was an impossibility with what happened that night.

I was right.

* * *

“Home for dinner!” I shouted my order to my girls from my room as I heard them preparing to go to the mall and I finished preparing to go into work.

It was late morning after the Joe Incident. Bobbie had called and asked me to put in a few hours. She might have gotten a good full-time worker when Sabrina quit but that still meant she was down a part-time worker and hadn’t found anyone she liked to replace me and since Bobbie didn’t like many people that would probably take awhile. Overtime was beginning to be a regular thing but I wasn’t complaining.

“When are you done?” Keira shouted back.