*** For mature readers***
First there was the man by the door.
Joanna Dessler was drying her hair that morning, late as usual, when she caught a glimpse of him on the far side of the bedroom.
“Whatcha need, Tim?” she called.
No answer. Or maybe she just couldn’t hear it over the dryer: It wouldn’t be the first time. Pulling one last section of bangs straight, she flipped the dryer off and pushed impatient fingers through her unruly hair.
“Babe?” she called, slightly louder this time. “Did you need something?”
Tim stepped around the corner into the bedroom, hands busy with his tie. The red one, Joanna noted. The power tie. Must be an important meeting this morning.
“You calling me?” he asked, yanking the tie loose and starting over.
“I thought you wanted something.”
“You know I can’t hear you when I’m in the kitchen.”
So like him to blame any communication failure on her, Joanna thought, biting back a retort. “I wasn’t talking to you in the kitchen,” she said sweetly, sure he just hadn’t been listening. It wasn’t worth an argument, but she didn’t like him making wrong assumptions.
“You sure weren’t,” he agreed, flipping the tie through its route again. “Unless you’ve learned to talk through breakfast foods now.”
“I saw you were in the bedroom, and I thought maybe you were looking for something,” she said, refusing to react to his sarcasm. Turning from the mirror, she pulled her favorite green sweatshirt over her head and shook her curls back into place against it.
“When?”
“When what?”
“When was I in the bedroom?”
“Just a minute ago, while I was drying my hair.”
“Not me,” Tim said, the tie finally straight and just the right length. “I’ve been in the dining room, eating cereal and reading the paper.”
“But I saw you.”
He grinned, in a better mood now that the tie was done, and hummed the familiar four-note melody. “He seemed like an ordinary husband,” he intoned, “until she starting noticing he was in two places at the same time. That was when Joanna Dessler knew she had crossed into – The Twilight Zone.”
“Tim!”
“You gotta quit with that crystal Tarot mumbo-jumbo.” He laughed. “Probably you just saw a reflection.”
But it hadn’t been a reflection, Joanna thought. Granted she hadn’t been paying close attention, but it had definitely been somebody. Tim. It had been Tim. Who else could it have been?
“Don’t joke, OK?” she said. Suddenly uncertain, she pulled on a windbreaker and sat on the edge of the bed to tie her sneakers. “There was somebody in the bedroom.”
“You’re seeing things.” He leaned over to plant a dispirited peck on her cheek. “And I’m late for work.” Without so much as a look back, he rushed into the hallway.
Out of the blue, Joanna remembered the dog at their old house in Buxton three years ago. He’d never believed her about the dog, either. A mangy skeletal nightmare, it had lurked in and around their backyard for weeks, growling every time she tried to go out, conveniently disappearing every time she insisted Tim get rid of it. Fighting the dog had become her private war.
She knew it was crawling under the house at night. She could hear it, scraping and thumping.
Tim heard tree limbs against windows and maybe squirrels in the attic.
She’d tripped in small holes it dug in the front yard. Tim said they were mole holes.
Joanna had been near the point of a nervous breakdown about the dog before it finally died, half under the house, growling at her with its last breath. She’d called Tim at work, insistent that he come home right away, and caught him as soon as he climbed out of the Bronco. Faced with the corpse, he’d finally had to admit that maybe she’d been right. Maybe.
The memory of her fury at that “maybe” was still surprisingly hot, even after three years. Now this.
There’d been a man. She closed her eyes and concentrated, but couldn’t remember a face. Not even really a size, except that she’d thought it was Tim. But she didn’t doubt for a minute that he’d been there, in the bedroom.
And if it hadn’t been Tim, who had it been?
She heard footsteps and opened her eyes in time to see Tim turn the hallway corner, leaving.
“I wasn’t seeing things,” she said softly to his disappearing back, then turned a speculative look at the outside door that opened into their bedroom. The one she’d warned Tim a hundred times to lock, but which he still consistently left open.
Mouth suddenly dry, she cast a nervous glance around the bedroom, seeing nothing out of place. Slowly she rose and crossed the three steps to the door.
It was unlocked. She turned and looked across the room, straight into the bathroom door. Straight into the mirror.
Much later, in the bread aisle at Kroger, it occurred to her that she hadn’t screamed. And she wondered if it would have mattered.
She did scream the second time, but no one heard.
Her Monday night writers’ class had run late and she’d hurried out to the Escort in the nearly-deserted parking lot, strangely convinced that someone, or something, was lying in wait for her, out there in the darkness. But she made it to the locked car uneventfully and breathed a small sigh of relief when the door was locked back behind her.
Just past the corner of Madison and Swinney something scraped in the back seat. She glanced in the rearview mirror and there he was, relaxed, smiling.
Joanna screamed.
He pointed past her to the windshield and she jerked her attention back to the road just in time to see another car pull out of the blind turn at Jefferson. She slammed on the brakes and the Escort slewed sideways, tires and brakes screaming louder than Joanna. The Escort shuddered to a halt mere inches from the other car and Joanna slumped over the wheel, shaking, her heart in her throat, staring at the other driver, a middle-aged woman with poufy hair purpled by the headlights and a tiny red mouth hanging open like some sort of mutant fish gasping for air on a creekbank.
When Joanna managed to raise enough nerve to look in the back seat, he was gone. Trembling, she leaned over the seat to make sure he wasn’t in the floorboard, but the car was empty.
The back door was unlocked.
She closed her eyes and thought hard. Yes, he’d been there. She forced herself to remember what she’d seen in the dim back seat and came up with an image of plaid, a plaid shirt maybe, and a flash of hair, long reddish hair, straight, swinging into the light. And that smile.
Half-smile.
Joanna put the car in gear and drove shakily away, ignoring the purple-haired woman’s angry shouts. All the way home she wondered, if a crazy woman screams in her car all alone, does she make a sound?
She didn’t tell Tim about the man in the car, though she wasn’t quite sure why. Maybe it was the memory of the black dog, or the fact that the car wasn’t damaged. Maybe it was because she couldn’t be positive she’d seen the man.
She’d searched the back seat of the car thoroughly when she got home, safe in the locked garage. With a flashlight from the glove compartment she examined the seat, the floor mats, even the door panels.
Nothing.
So she didn’t tell Tim. He would only have laughed anyway, and looked at her with that tired, forbearing expression that accused her of being crazy. Again.
Three nights later a small sound woke Joanna from a restless, dream-plagued sleep. It was a click, she thought in the dark. Like a door opening. Or a gun.
Someone was in the room.
Heart pounding, she lay still while her eyes adjusted to the dim bands of streetlight oozing through the closed window shades. She hardly dared to breathe; was afraid to look and afraid not to.
Other small sounds – a metallic scrape, the shush of fabric on fabric – drew her attention to the corner near the outside door. Were the shadows deeper there? Was that a movement?
She crawled her hand under the covers to Tim’s back, nudged him. He moved away. She nudged again, her gaze riveted on that dark corner. Tim grunted and the prowler stepped out into the pool of soft striped light. His eyes were lost in a band of shadow, but his mouth curled in a smile.
“Who are you?” Joanna whispered, heart pounding.
His mouth moved, white teeth behind the tip of a tongue wetting his lips. Joanna made a small involuntary sound and pulled the sheet further up her shoulders. “Who are you?” she repeated, pleading, no longer bothering to whisper.
“What?” Tim asked, voice muffled by his pillow.
She shook him this time. “There’s someone in the room!”
“What! Where?” He rolled to the side of the bed and grabbed his glasses from the nightstand, sitting up. The man in the bars of light shook his head with an amused smile and stepped back into the shadows as Tim yanked open the shallow drawer and pulled out his precious handgun.
“Over there,” Joanna said, pointing a trembling finger into the corner. Tim flicked on the lamp to reveal a chair in the corner, piled high with unfolded laundry. He blinked, and turned slowly to scan the room, which looked exactly as it had when they turned out the light four hours earlier.
“Nothing here,” he said, and she could hear the aggravation in his voice, the unspoken rebuke. While she was fumbling for a response, a small sound from the hallway fell into the silence. A squeak, a floorboard squeak, just like the one in the door to the dining room, the one she’d been after Tim to fix for six months. She shot him a quick “I told you so” glance, and he eased out of bed. With the gun held steady in the two-handed position they’d taught him at the firing range, Tim crept around the bed and into the dark hallway.
Joanna sat up, pulling the sheet and comforter around her shoulders. She started to get up, to put on her robe, but she knew suddenly, without a doubt, that Tim would find nothing. That there would be no prowler in the house. That it would just be piled-up clothes in the corner and the random squeaks of an old, settling house. And that Tim would give her hell about it in the morning, and maybe try to talk her back into therapy. Maybe he’d even make a joke about that dog all those years ago.
If he did, she’d remind him that the dog had been real. He’d said it was her imagination, but the dog had been real. She’d seen him. So had Tim. Finally. Even if he half-believed the neighbor’s crazy story about seeing Jo bring the dog home in her car. Couldn’t believe that nosy old man anyway, him and his ice freezer wife.
“Nothing,” Tim said, coming back into the room with a look of exasperation punctuated by a huge yawn. “What did you think you saw?”
“I didn’t think it,” she said, knowing it was useless. “I saw it. A person. A man. Right over there by the window.” She pointed.
“It’s laundry in a chair, Jo,” Tim said, slipping the gun back into the drawer. “If you’d fold it and put it away, maybe it wouldn’t haunt you in the night.” He tried to make it a joke. Trying to lighten the mood.
“It was a man.” Joanna’s voice was flat, unconvincing even to herself.
“Hmph. Well, then, I wonder what he wanted?” Tim was humoring her.
“I don’t know.” She couldn’t tear her gaze away from the corner. That’s where he was, right there, she wanted to say. Right on that spot. In a red plaid shirt, with his hair swinging next to his face. Next to his mouth. To his lips. His smile.
He could have killed us, she thought.
“Maybe he was just hungry and got lost on the way to the kitchen,” Tim said. “Maybe you could ask your crystal ball about it, eh?” He pulled her down on the bed, slid a possessive hand onto one breast. “Want to take your mind off things, since we’re awake anyway?” He kneaded the soft breast like a handful of bread dough, a casual baker ready to make the day’s rolls. Rolls in the hay.
“Tim, there was a man in this room, in that corner, watching us,” she said in a small voice, one last try. He didn’t believe her. She wasn’t sure she believed herself.
“Umm.” Tim kissed her neck. “Let’s give him something to watch, then.”
When Tim plunged himself between her legs, she watched the chair in the corner and thought about white teeth behind a flirting tongue and almost came. Almost.
Joanna slept late the next morning, mumbling goodbye to Tim from underneath the covers. When he left, whistling, she pulled on her robe and went straight to the basement door.
And wasn’t at all surprised to find it unlocked.
He was in the bedroom when she got home from the Neighborhood Watch meeting Tuesday night. She’d gone alone because Tim was working late, as usual. Besides, Tim thought the Neighborhood Watch was a waste of time.
“Cops keep a good enough watch around here,” he said, dismissing her concerns. “High-priced neighborhood like this? They’ll keep us covered, or John’ll give ‘em hell.”
John was John Peterson, the mayor. He lived one street over and two houses down from the Dessler’s renovated Victorian. John had admired the work Tim’s design firm did for the new city-county jail. He’d even come to the housewarming when the Desslers moved into his neighborhood. Nice man, John, and he’ll keep the neighborhood safe. Him and the ever-watchful police.
Except now there was a man in Joanna’s bedroom, and she didn’t know whether to scream or cry.
Instead, she froze. She hadn’t seen him until she pulled open the closet door and caught a glimpse of movement in the corner she’d just passed. One hand holding her jacket together, the other clutching the purse she’d been about to throw on the bed, she turned slowly to face him.
“What do you want?” she whispered.
No answer, just that same look. That same crooked half-smile and slightly quirked eyebrow.
Lounging against the doorframe, blocking her way from the bedroom, looking her up and down with detached amusement.
“Are you here to rob us?” She held out her purse, hands trembling. “Here, here’s all the money I have.” She tossed the purse onto the bed, close to him. He ignored it, but changed position in the doorway, flipping his hair back, giving her a clearer view of his face. A handsome face. Rugged, clean-featured, nose slightly bent, lips full and moist like a model in some cologne commercial. Looking at his girlfriend. His wife. His woman. Wanting her, knowing –
Mesmerized by his stillness, terrified by her helplessness, Joanna backed toward the closet. If he lunged for her, she could duck in, pull the door closed, hold him off. If he moved.
But he didn’t lunge. He didn’t move at all except to stretch one arm out across the doorway and smile. The kind of smile Tim used to have, years ago, just before he’d say, “God, you’re beautiful.” Years ago, when he still saw her as a beautiful woman and not just a handy wife.
“What do you want?” she repeated, louder this time, holding her jacket tight across her chest, all too aware of the low-necklined blouse underneath. “Is it… me?”
No. No. She wasn’t the type who would attract a psychopath, a crazed maniac. Not average Joanna. Tim said “Plain Jo.” Just plain …
But still he smiled, and it grew wider. White teeth flashed. He didn’t look crazed. He looked friendly. Friendly and –
Say it, Jo. He looked interested. Like maybe he did want her. Maybe– “Say something,” she begged.
Nothing.
“Say something!” she screamed, unable to bear his silence and longer. And she lunged, toward the nightstand, across the room, fear suddenly overpowered by frustration. One booted foot caught on a pair of Tim’s sneakers, left out in the middle of the room as usual, and she lost her balance and crashed into the side of the bed. As she fumbled for the nightstand, for the drawer, the gun, sure that any moment she’d feel his hands on her throat, she heard a hard click and knew, suddenly and without a doubt, that he was gone.
She wheeled with the gun anyway, feeling foolish already, and faced the empty room. Was that a faint sound of laughter, outside, under the window?
She scrambled to look, but no one was there. Not a prowler. Not a psycho sex maniac. Not even a black dog.
And the outside door was unlocked.
When Tim got home, she was standing naked in front of the full-length mirror next to the bathroom door.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he said with a sudden smile that made him look eighteen again. “I like it.”
“Do you really?” Joanna frowned at her image, at the small sags and extra curves that hadn’t been there a decade ago. “Do you really think I’m attractive?”
“Sure.” He tugged his tie loose and tossed it onto the bed, stepped up behind her and slid his hands around her waist.
“Do you think anyone else could find me attractive?”
“What am I, some kind of mutant? Of course they would.” He kissed her shoulder, murmured into her ear. “Why? Thinking about throwing me over?”
“No,” she said, but he heard the odd tone. Their gaze met in the mirror. “No,” Joanna repeated, firmly this time. “Of course not.” She smiled. She turned into his arms, turned her face up for a kiss.
“Then why the questions?”
She sighed, turned away. “Just curious, I guess. Maybe I’m feeling a little threatened by age.”
Tim let it go. She’d known he would. He followed her one step into emotion sometimes, but he’d never been curious enough to follow further than that. “You can work this out better on your own,” he’d always say, making it sound like a compliment. But she knew he was just uncomfortable with uncertainties. He didn’t like anything that left ripples in his calm, steady world.
His world would surely be rippled if he could read her thoughts. She wondered if the stranger found her attractive. And what could she offer to make him leave her alone.
Tim held her body in all the old, familiar ways. Little hug precisely here. Two or three kisses under her right ear. A hand on each breast, squeeze squeeze, slide one hand down her abdomen, turn her into his arms, pull her toward the bed. Lie down, kiss, open your legs, thrust thrust thrust. Then, “You’re great, Jo.” And good night.
But for one brief moment, just one flash, Jo imagined the stranger in Tim’s place. Imagined those hands, those lips, that tongue. Imagined he might be willing to try things Tim dismissed as crude. She shook the thought away, disturbed, and sat up in bed.
“Anything wrong?” Tim asked drowsily.
“Just thirsty. Go to sleep.”
On the way back from the bathroom, she noticed that the bedroom door was unlocked. She looked at it for a long moment, then slipped back into bed.
That night he was back.
Jo woke from a dream so erotic she was sheened with sweat, her crotch throbbing almost painfully, and found him sitting on the edge of the bed. Not threatening. Just looking. Scared but still sleep-hazed, she whispered, “What do you want?”
He smiled. Not a frightening smile, but a slow, sexy one.
“Is it me?”
He ran one hand through his thick hair, held a finger to his lips. A calloused finger, she noticed in the clarity of terror. Nail-bitten. The mattress dipped under his weight as he leaned slightly toward her.
Jo clamped her eyes shut, both afraid to look and not wanting to look away. She realized her hand was on her chest. Of its own volition, it slid across to one breast, cupped it, thumbed the suddenly hard nipple and opened her eyes. His smile widened and he reached toward her.
Frightened at what she was doing, what she was feeling, Jo closed her eyes and felt his hand on her thin gown. Felt it snag a bit, as if his palm were rough. His hand was large, warm. It slid it around one breast almost worshipfully, moved to the other. A fingertip, hot, slightly scratchy, circled one nipple and she gasped.
The touch vanished, leaving Jo afraid to open her eyes. Afraid she’d find him still there. Afraid she wouldn’t.
She squinted her eyes open, tried to sneak a glance. He was still there, but the smile was replaced by a playfully stern look. He nodded toward Tim, asleep on his side, back toward her, and again placed one finger on his lips.
His lips. Suddenly Joanna found that she wanted to feel his lips, feel the lips of a man who apparently found her sexy enough to break into her house and risk being caught by her husband. The thought sent a throb through her entire body and she risked a tiny smile at the stranger. He smiled back and slowly closed his eyes. She closed hers.
Then the hands were back. Patient. Stroking, caressing, teasing her to the point of ecstasy.
Then the lips. Surprisingly soft. Wet. Hot. Here and here and there, oh there.
As she convulsed with the power of the orgasm, she couldn’t help crying out. In the distance she felt a change in the room but couldn’t respond, helpless in the rush of sensation.
“Jo?” Tim said, sleep-dazed. “Are you all right?”
My god, she thought, collapsing sweat-drenched on the bed. My god.
But he was gone.
The rules were simple, once she figured them out. If she left the door unlocked and started touching herself, eyes closed, he would come. He would come with his magic and bring magic to her body. Sensations she’d never dreamed of, ideas she’d never imagined. He was willing, eager, to do anything. To try anything. No matter how exotic. She never had to ask. It was as if his magic gave him her mind, full and exposed and as open as her body. He would do anything, could do anything.
He never made jokes about her, or slyly suggested she go back into therapy. He listened when she talked, about her writing, her dreams, her life before Tim. Listened, and didn’t interrupt.
He was the perfect lover.
Always with her eyes closed.
Always with the door unlocked.
Joanna luxuriated in a state of heightened awareness. She laid aside her usual baggy sweats in favor of tight shirts, snug jeans and plunging necklines. Tim responded with smiles in private, tightened lips in public. Nothing changed between them in bed. Tim still thought a few quick squeezes were adequate as foreplay, that two sweaty minutes of thrusting was the epitome of sexual fulfillment for her. He was glad to get it more often, but saw no reason to change a pattern that had worked fine for seven years.
One night he came home from a late meeting to find her in a filmy red teddy, sheened with sweat, sprawled wide-limbed on the bed. She looked up at him with her best, most devastatingly sexy expression and he laughed.
Laughed.
Laughed and said she sure looked ridiculous, sweating like a pig all by herself. Couldn’t she wait another half-hour for him to come home?
Tim did not have sex that night, unless he had it alone in the shower. Nor the next night. Nor the next.
But finally she relented to his apologies and forgave him. That night, in a fit of repentance, he agreed to go down on her. Hesitant, half-hearted kisses and licks. A few haphazard thigh strokes. Nothing like the real thing. Nothing at all. And when she said, after a while, “Just stop,” he apologized again. Rushing for the bathroom to wash his face. Coming back to the bedroom with all traces of her sluiced away, reeking of Ivory soap and saying, “That queer stuff makes me feel funny. Glad you didn’t want to do it after all.”
He had no idea.
“What the hell is this?” Tim threw a handful of papers at her as she lay across the bed, reading.
Joanna watched one page settle to the floor, saw upside-down words of the story she’d been working on for the last two weeks. Looked back at her magazine.
“When did you start writing this…. this pornography again?”
She heard the fury in his voice and chose to ignore it entirely. He slapped the table beside her head and she jumped.
“You quit this! You said you wouldn’t do this any more. You said you’d write stuff that’s acceptable for a woman in your position!”
Heart pounding, Joanna rolled onto her back. “And what position is that, Tim? This one?” She yanked the blanket over her, raised her spread knees and closed her eyes.
He slapped her, hard. “Don’t tell me. There’s a big black dog following you around again, right? I won’t go through this again, Joanna. I won’t!”
She opened her eyes and stared up at his silhouette against the overhead light. “No,” she agreed quietly. “You probably won’t.”
“I want you,” she said to her silent lover the next day while Tim was at work. “Do you want me?” He answered with his body, pressed her hand to his swollen crotch. She shivered. “I mean all the time,” she said. “No Tim.” He throbbed in her hand, an agreeable nod.
“I’ll divorce him,” she said. And in a breath he was gone, vanished from under her touch. She opened her eyes and found him sitting on the edge of the bed with an odd, excited expression.
“Do you want me to divorce him?” she asked, and he shook his head slowly side to side. No.
“But I want you!” she cried. “Only you. Not him and his business. Not him and his screwed-up disgust. I want you!”
He smiled and nodded.
“But you don’t want me to divorce him?”
He shook his head again. She loved to watch his silky hair swing against his face, so unlike Tim’s close-clipped conservative cut. She wanted to touch it, but knew if she tried with her eyes open, he’d pull away. He’d leave. She couldn’t stand the thought of his leaving. But neither did she always want to sneak around like this. She wanted to be with him openly, and forever.
“What then?” she begged. “You don’t want me to divorce him. What do you want?”
His gaze went suddenly intense and he stared at her, then turned his head slightly to stare at the nightstand on Tim’s side of the bed. At the drawer. Confused for a moment, she wondered what he meant and then it came clear. The drawer. The one with Tim’s gun. Tim’s gun.
“You want me to–?” Heart suddenly pounding, she squeezed her eyes tight and his hands answered, followed by his lips, followed by the rest of him. He stroked her with infinite patience, knowing just where to put a cool finger, a warm tongue. Feeding on her breasts with reverence and passion, a hungry man with a gourmet meal. Feeding on her lips, all her lips, tongue darting and plunging, fingers everywhere fingers would fit. Then his hard erection following where the fingers had cleared the way, filling her, pressing against her until she exploded in a frenzied orgasm, then flipping her over and finding his own fulfillment in her flirtation with pain.
Afterward, sweating and gasping, she watched him dress. So erotic, a reverse strip-tease, first covering his tight ass then trapping his still partial erection in a prison of faded denim.
Hypnotized, she watched the muscles of his smooth golden brown chest flex and relax as he pulled on the soft plaid shirt, watched his wonderful fingers work their way up the buttons. When he ran those fingers through his hair and smiled, she knew she would do what he asked.
“When?” she whispered.
He shrugged and smiled, tongue flicking out to wet his lips. A shiver ran through her and she touched her crotch, slipping a finger down to stroke herself. Her eyes closed involuntarily, and when she opened them again moments later, he was gone.
But Joanna felt a wonderful sense of peace. At least now she knew what he wanted.
That night? The next? Joanna was uncertain. Time passed in jerky segments, like a movie spinning loose from a broken projector. She was suffused with erotic passion. Each night she sank into an orgy of incredibly passionate dreams, each morning she woke horny and desperate. Sometimes Tim shared her passion; more often he just gave her a strange, worried look.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked one morning.
“Wrong?” she repeated, stroking his hairy chest.
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” he said. “I thought we were past this. Have you been watching those women’s shows on TV?”
“What?” she asked, confused. “Women’s shows?”
“You know, the ones about sex and men and stuff?”
Suddenly angry, she slid her hand over to one nipple and pinched it hard.
“Hey!” he yelped. “What’re you doing? That hurt!”
With a grin, she pinched the other one.
“Jo! Dammit!” He threw the covers back and jumped out of bed. His limp member dangled against its bed of matted curls. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I don’t like it!” He stomped off into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.
Joanna lay back on the bed and smiled. When she pinched her lover’s nipples, he jumped, standing up straighter and taller, ready for her to take it with her fingers, her mouth, any way at all. It wanted her all the time.
She’d given Tim all the chances her patience would allow. It was time to leave him.
That night she lay awake for hours, Tim snoring softly beside her. She thought over the events of the last few months, remembering the passionate high points. They all involved her dream lover, not Tim. Sometime after midnight, she slipped out of bed and into the bathroom, where she studied herself in the mirror by the dim glow of the nightlight.
She looked younger, stronger, more alive. The sags and lumps that had bothered her weeks ago were lost in a body dedicated to passion. Even her hair seemed longer, fuller, curled and twined as if painted, as if arranged precisely for most perfect effect. She was beautiful, dammit. Glowing and horny and Tim couldn’t see it. Couldn’t see it at all.
A tiny sound, and he was there in the bedroom, almost exactly the way she’d first seen him. But this time she knew who he was and turned to him without hesitation. When she was close enough to feel the heat, she closed her eyes and slid into his arms.
Then they were on the bed and she didn’t care if Tim heard. She moaned and gasped and rocked against him.
“Jo?” Tim’s voice was strange.
“Jesus,” he said. “Do you fuck yourself all night, too?”
A hand was between Joanna’s thighs and she arched up against it, feeling it cup the swollen lips, press hard against her.
“Here,” Tim said. “I can take care of that.” The hand was shoved away and she opened her eyes to see Tim yanking his briefs down and stroking himself, pulling it into an erection.
“I’m gonna fuck you silly,” he said, and she knew he meant it. But she also knew all it meant was two, maybe three minutes of uninspired in and out, then him asleep and her still wanting.
He pulled her over to his side of the bed and pressed her thighs farther apart. As he slid himself in, she looked over his shoulder at her lover. He ran his middle finger over his lips, slid it in and out briefly, and smiled. She smiled back.
“Like that, do you?” Tim asked, voice husky. “Try this.” And he slammed against her even harder.
Her lover looked at the nightstand, within reach, the drawer slightly open. Tim squeezed his eyes shut with the effort of his violent anger and Joanna stretched out her arm, fumbled for the gun.
He grunted rhythmically and she flipped the safety off and raised it toward his head, jarring with the impacts. He plunged deep one final time and groaned. As she felt him twitch inside her, she forced the gun against his temple and pulled the trigger.
“I hope it was good for you,” she whispered as his body fell. “Asshole.” She squirmed out from under him and looked up at her lover in triumph.
“I want you,” she said, and closed her eyes.
—–end—–
