Back To U

chapter Eighteen

Keep cooking magazines on the nightstand to check out new variations of your favorites.





The bath was exactly what she needed. Well, almost exactly. If the bath held half the equity from the house, divorce papers signed by Steve, a college degree, and a road map of where the hell she was going, it would be everything she needed besides bath salt and coffee.

She reached for her cup and realized it was empty. Time to get out.

She stepped onto the bathmat she'd coordinated with the shower curtain after a week of shopping. She’d wanted to accent the exact shade of olive green that ran in a thin stripe down the curtain. Otherwise she’d felt the browns and burgundies would be too predominant. How the domestic mighty had fallen.

Dripping wet, she stared at the green mat visible around the pink of her feet. "I thought you were mine." Half hers she realized, but not half at all. When she and Steve shared their lives there wasn't a half and half division. That was for single people living together.

She reached for a tan towel and wrapped it around her body. A couple didn't think in terms of half. Half the books on the shelf are mine and half are yours. Half the dishes, sheets, food, bills, money. Being a couple was being in it together. One hundred-one hundred. Never fifty-fifty.

But it had been just one one-hundred and it was Steve’s. All she had done. All she had thought. All she had been. Gone. Wrong. And gone.

She reached for the robe she'd left on the back of the door, shook it to watch the fluff of dust move in the air. She pictured an archeologist wielding a brush and carefully removing the time that obscured the objects. An Englishman would narrate. We see how a people lived, how they arranged their shelters, the way they cared for children, what was in their diets, what killed them.

"Gwen?"

It was Max, and she wasn't sure she could answer. She wanted to crawl back in the tub, let it cool and freeze around her, another dinosaur disappearing until someone stumbled upon it and thought how foreign, how ancient, how over.

"I have breakfast."

Well, there was that. She may just live for food. She'd stop cooking it and start consuming it full-time. She'd be the size of a dinosaur and no one could overlook her when she died in the tar pit. The rumble of her mighty footsteps would ring out in the land. I was here. I was here. I was here.





Max had gotten out the red special occasion plate that actually said Special Day around the rim in white letters. Missy had loved it and then hated it at thirteen, but Steve had always tolerated it. That was one thing he'd been a sport about.

The plate sat on top of the table, and she was more inclined to dwell below, but it held

a lemony cheese Danish with coarse sugar granules. And a fresh fruit Danish with strawberry and peach slices fanned out and glazed with orange. A whole wheat cinnamon roll anchored the center with its swirl of dark pastry that smelled like tangerines. And hanging over the S, the P, and the E was an enormous square of cinnamon goodness smeared with a thick layer of sweetened cream cheese. He'd gotten them all.

She sipped her third cup of coffee, a lot of need even for her, and admired the display of thoughtfulness. It wasn’t always so visible. It wasn’t always so anything. She wore old sweats she'd tucked in the back of a drawer and felt the ends of her hair drip down the crew neck of her Bunco Babe t-shirt. No need for any shame about possessing it. If Max could wear one for Ellen, she could do it to thank her mother for sending him.

Max handed her a small plate. "Which one?"

"All, I think." She got up and went to the kitchen. Pulling out the chef’s knife, she had a flash of holding it aloft in her fit of onion crying. She felt her hand shake twice, the blade jerk in the light. That had been the storm before the storm, hadn’t it? The moment when her eyes knew what her brain wouldn’t admit. She was being kicked out of her own life.

She gripped the knife, wished she could get a grip on herself as easily, and went back in the dining room. One by one she cut the pastries in half. In half. Maybe fifty-fifty wasn’t perfect, but it was better than one-hundred/zero. She spotted the Oprah magazine, let her eyes trace the deep orange circle. She’d cut it out and wear it on her Bunco shirt. Zero.





"Do you want to see the house?" She broke the long silence of breakfast.

"Sure." Max picked up his cup and followed her, not sure what kind of mood she was in. Not mood exactly. He wondered, really, where she was. In the past, struggling with regrets or anger? He'd had plenty of both in his own life. He just wished his past was more pure, and he could really nail Steve for his a*shole treatment of Gwen. If he hadn't been guilty of it himself, he'd take that smug son-of-a-bitch and punch him good just once and straight into his smirk of a face.

Gwen was pointing out the front windows, telling neighbor stories. He smiled. It was so Gwen to connect anywhere, everywhere, with anybody and everybody.

"Olga lived to ninety-three. She left at about eighty-five, needed to live with some care, and moved across town to senior living and then the attached nursing home."

He studied the house she'd pointed to, a small gray square no one would have noticed. She had. And paid attention to the woman in it.

"She and Missy would sit on the front porch when Missy was little and talk. I'd walk Missy across the street when Olga waved her over. I don't know what they talked about. So animated, you should have seen them. Both of them. Eighty-some years apart and not apart at all."

She indicated the three houses south. "That was all flowers at one point. Long before we moved here. The woman who originally lived in Olga's house grew roses and bridal wreath spirea and iris for the local florists." She sighed. "I would have liked to have seen that."

He would have liked to have seen her seeing it. To watch her take in something beautiful that she enjoyed was enjoyable for him. Maybe it had been like that always with Gwen. It didn’t mean anything. He just liked seeing how into things she got. He wasn't sure he'd felt that much in his life or had that much consideration for anyone but himself. If he ever doubted his self-absorbed tendencies, all he had to do was ask Nicola. Or any woman he'd spent more than thirty minutes with.

"So," Gwen turned back to her house. "You've seen the living room."

He had. Comfortable and perfectly coordinated. That was a balance hard to come by. Maybe it was where the real gender divide lay. A man wanted his chair to feel good. A woman wanted his chair, her chair, the entertainment center, the coffee table, the fanned display of magazines, the pictures, even the coasters to look good. But Gwen had done both. There was ease and aesthetics.

She headed up the staircase, not grand, but grounded with its risers painted white and warm pine on the steps.

On the second floor, the wood turned to the same carpeting they'd slept on the night before. The hallway opened to three rooms, and Gwen waved into the bathroom with a shower curtain, towels, and bathmat all matching in shades he couldn't name. Brown was all brown to him, blue was blue. He'd never understood Nicola's distinctions between the taupe shoes that wouldn't go with the buff slacks or the bone shoes that would. Taupe shouldn’t even be a word. Brown always went with brown and blue should never be called, what was it? He tried to remember as Gwen opened the door to Missy's room.

He knew it was Missy’s immediately. There was a sweet girlness shocked with teen additions of collaged magazine clippings and black accents. Cerulean. That was it. They'd been in some store in Paris, and Nicola tried to get him to try on a dress shirt that wasn’t white. Cerulean blue. A not guy blue, he'd said. Sophisticated cerulean, she'd said.

Then they'd probably had a fight. Well, she'd fought. He tried to avoid everything as much as possible. Had he walked? Probably he'd just left the store, found her back at the apartment later and apologized or not, depending on what was required. God, he was as big of an a*shole as Steve ever thought of being.

"Master suite."

He wasn't going to go in there. Hell no. He may have left her free to date, marry, have a child, live twenty years of her life. But he wasn't going into their goddamn bedroom.

He glanced, didn't want to, but did. It looked tidy. Too tidy. If he were with Gwen he'd make sure the bed was always messed up. And not just with sex. With newspapers and coffee cups and those pastries she liked.

He'd have a camera or two on the dresser, give the place some character. And there'd be a pile of cookbooks she could read at night. And when she said, hmmm this is different with the glazing first, he'd never ignore her, never mumble something auto-pilot back. He'd look right at her and ask questions because he'd really want to know what she meant and thought about and wanted. She deserved that every day for the rest of her life.

"You okay?" She studied him as if he'd missed responding to something.

"Yeah, great."

She shrugged and headed back down the stairs, and he stood for a moment in the hallway. He'd managed to ignore her while he was daydreaming about how he wouldn't ignore her. He'd failed before he ever started.

His whole life, he hadn't wanted to be the kind of man who over-estimated himself. Guys like that were a*sholes of the first degree. He was only willing to sink as low as a B-level a*shole. He'd better stop imagining he could be anything better than that.

Heading down the stairs, he joined Gwen to get the tour of the Tool's home office. If it had ever been used, it didn’t show. The pencils weren't lined up in a row or anything and to be fair the guy was moved out, but he'd left everything behind near as Max could tell.

His guess was Gwen had made the place an office, put everything she thought the guy could need or want. And the guy didn't give a rat's ass.

"The basement," Gwen pointed to a door at the opposite end of the stairwell. "We finished off a family room. There's a TV and a little exercise area. Missy and her friends used it a lot when they were younger. Not so much in high school. Everybody gets so busy. I guess they start leaving a long time before they actually leave."

She walked into the kitchen, which he'd seen, but not with her. With Gwen standing there, the sun lighting up the place, she looked more relaxed than in the rest of the house. It was like the house was what she thought it should be, but the kitchen, while it had plenty of that, also possessed some of Gwen.

He noticed the few magnets on the refrigerator. They matched the colors of the kitchen, blues that may or may not be cerulean. But one magnet had a fifty’s woman on it with a crazed face, and it said, where am I going, and why am I in this hand basket? That was Gwen. Insight with a bite, but still sweet as a post WWII homemaker.

He studied the room for more things that were clearly not part of the general decorating scheme. She'd made labels for the spices. Half were typed, but the others, interspersed, were handwritten with the occasional little sketch. She’d doodled a pepper on the cayenne, a pink star on the star anise, three exclamation marks on one the curries, and on the jar of cumin, a tiny sombrero.

There were marks of Gwen on the place, few and far between, but the kitchen and only the kitchen, held them.

It looked like, and he wouldn't have said it to her under torture because he didn't even want to think it, but it looked like she'd worked for twenty years to make the kind of family that had need of things like a family room, but had settled for perfecting the rooms themselves.

It didn't seem like Steve had ever lived there. It wasn't as if there were huge blanks from where he'd moved out. And Missy claimed a few spots in her room, but even then, her leaving didn't seem to make a dent in the home Gwen had made.

It felt a little like a Smithsonian exhibit of how a family lived in the twenty-first century. And exhibits never had the actual family.

"And we’re back in the dining room." She tilted her head to look beneath the underside of the table. "Hello." She smiled but not at him. "Missy went through a fort stage that lasted one whole winter. She'd dig out a sheet, always the best one she could find because she is my child after all. I'd put it back and get the oldest sheet I could find and drape it over the table. It was big enough to hang down, and she'd make a whole new world under there."

"That's why you were under the table."

"What?"

"You made a fort."

"I made a..." her brow wrinkled. "I made a fort." She shook her head. "God, what is wrong with me?"

"Nothing."

"Oh, everything."

"If everything were wrong with you, you'd be too far gone to make a new world."

"What if I'm too far gone to make anything?"

"When you left Belmar, the first time, you made a life for yourself and the Tool and Missy. I know how hard that was, Gwen. I know because I didn't."

"You traveled and--"

"I drifted. Moving around can be a life when your life moves with you. I left mine at Belmar, and I never came back." He reached for the keys in his pocket. He had to go. "You okay?"

"Uh, yeah."

But before he could make a clean getaway, she kissed him on the cheek, and he was selfish enough to want to stay. "Bye, Gwen."





She was glad to be alone for the drive back to Belmar. The prospect of sitting in a car a foot away from Max for two hours was too stressful. They'd managed, and well, the evening's friendship. She'd been glad for the company under the table. And the full fat ice cream. Especially for the full fat ice cream. But in the morning, the sweet, and she meant that both ways, pastry run and then the tour... It was confusing to have Max in her house. Well, Steve's family's house incorporated. Still, when she was there it was her home. She'd made it. She'd lived it. She'd been kicked out of it.

To have Max there had been odd, not interesting odd so much as not right odd. The whole time, showing him the physical life she'd made with Steve, the family spaces, the bedrooms, thank god he hadn't gone into theirs. She'd thought, not wanted to, but thought, what if? She'd tried not to and hadn't under the table or even first thing in the morning, but once she took him upstairs she had a flash of the two of them, like a real couple in a real home just going up the stairs to their bedroom.

What would that life have looked like? She and Max together for twenty years, a daughter or maybe a few, maybe even an ill-behaved boy who looked like his father. And the bedroom, not just a bed messed up from sex, she wasn't even going to go there in her head. That fantasy was for sleep when she couldn't control what ran through her brain. But their life in the room itself.

She'd seen the bedroom at his place before her mother had taken it over. He’d throw a couple of cameras around. There'd be lenses and photos and magazines. He'd have half a dozen coffee cups on the nightstand. She bet he read in bed every night. Maybe he wore glasses, not nerdy guy glasses but the sexy smart ones. Bare-chested and be-speckled. Yow. Also not going there.

And she'd have to read in bed if he did. The light would be on, so there'd be no sleeping until they were both ready. She'd leaf through a magazine, something with recipes. She'd keep a pair of scissors in the nightstand drawer to cut out anything she wanted to try.

She shook herself, concentrated on the street, and what would happen back at Belmar with no place of her own, or money of her own for that matter. What would become of her? What had become of her? If she attended a high school reunion no one there would have predicted this failure. She'd been on track back then.

The derailment, the true derailment, had occurred when she'd fallen in love with Max. It wasn't his leaving that had done it. It was the falling for him she should have stopped. The leaving was inevitable, and she wouldn't make that mistake again. She'd managed to go on the first time, but she didn't have the time or the energy and optimism of youth on her side anymore.

She just had to avoid him. She pulled up to the curb, looked out at Max’s front door. Avoid him. Live with him, of course, because she was homeless and penniless and, oh yeah, her mother lived there. Maybe she wasn’t going to Max’s house so much as going home to mother’s. Her mother just happened to live with the man who had derailed her whole life. Steve had only put the finishing touches on it.

When she walked in, the crowd in the living room surprised her. She set her bag down and saw the boys on the couch that was her bed. Annie sat on the arm next to Guy. Her mom sat on the smaller couch beside Missy, and Max stood in the kitchen doorway with his hands palm out, indicating his complete innocence in the intervention.

She glared at him anyway. "Do you furnish crab puffs for all gatherings or just Bunco night?"

Max hooked a thumb toward the back of the house. "I could grill something."

"You are hilarious. Why didn’t you just tell them everything and then they’d all be off my bed?" She waved the length of the couch.

"I don’t kiss and tell."

Gwen looked at her mother. "There was no kissing."

"Well, that’s a shame." Ellen sounded so disappointed Gwen rolled her eyes at her.

Max straightened in the doorway. "You were the one with the rules. Now you’re saying there weren’t any?"

Ellen sighed. "Where there’s a will…"

"Alright." Gwen sat heavily in the nearest chair. "Max brought me ice cream and pastries. And I showed him around the house, and we drove separately back here."

Jason turned to Max. "You lookin’ to make her one of those big gals?"

Bryan seemed to consider that image. "Some guys like the extra poundage on a woman."

"A little," Jason curved his hands like an hour glass shape in front of him.

Guy laughed and mimicked Jason’s hour glass. "Curvy kvinne." His sly, if guttural addition made Annie blush and drove Jason to give him a fist bump.

Bryan offered a fist to Max. "You old guys got some mad skill. I never thought about just finding a skinny one and then giving her ice cream until she got the right size."

Max bypassed the fist bump. "I am a fountain of wisdom." He took Bryan’s hat off. "I just stop feeding them when they reach harvest weight." He whacked him with the hat and pointed at the women in the room, and Bryan mouthed a sorry.

"What happened when you saw Dad?" Missy looked so stressed, Gwen wanted to reach over and smooth the lines on her drawn face. She certainly didn’t want to add any.

"You know, there were some things about the house I didn’t know. I just did not know. So, it’s not going to work out quite like I thought. But it'll be fine."

"What’s not? What’s not going to work out?"

"Nothing. It’s just that there are some legal complications, that’s all. Some I didn’t foresee."

"He doesn’t want to sign the papers. That’s it, isn’t it, Mom? He won’t give you a divorce because he wants to take you back."

"It’s not Victorian England, Missy. Of course he’ll sign eventually. And, hey! He’s the one who left. I would take him back. Not he taking me back, but no, nobody’s going back to anybody. He’s just, you know, getting the paperwork, in all kinds of colors, together."

"Then what’s going on?"

Ellen shifted and everyone turned toward her. She’d take charge of the interrogation. "Gwennie, we’ll all find out eventually. What has the Tool done?"

"Mom." Gwen tipped her head toward Missy. "Steve."

"Mom." Missy tipped her head toward her grandmother, "Grandma’s always thought he was a tool. What’s he done?"

"Not done anything so much as, you know, protected his family home."

"We are his family."

"His family of origin."

"He was protecting his family of origin, and what, screwing us over?"

"He will always be there for you, Missy. Your college fund is absolutely yours for education." Gwen tried to laugh. "I’m the only one who ever spent a dime of it. Watch out for me!"

Missy dipped her chin to stare dead on as if she’d lowered a pair of half glasses and wanted to make a library patron confess an overdue book. Gwen wondered if she’d taught her that. It was very disconcerting. By the time Missy reached full adulthood, sometime after fifty near as Gwen could tell based on her own life, Missy would be quite a force. "Not us so much as, well, not screwing over you as much as..."

"He owns everything." Max’s voice was so straight forward, so matter of fact and calm that Gwen wanted to kill him. Like that was it. No big deal. She was just out of a home and money and her life and her mind and ta-da, that’s the punch line, kids, how about some snacks?

"He what?" Ellen started to rise and then winced at her foot or at the idea of Steve having it all, Gwen wasn’t sure.

"He owns the house. His family corporation owns the house, not me. The money, everything, it's protected. It’s his. And I will probably get alimony in a couple of years, so that'll be good." She shrugged. "I didn’t pay enough attention, and this is what happens. Nothing to be done about it now. The yellow folder was very unfriendly but legal."

"Gwennie, you saw an attorney? Tell me you saw an attorney."

"I didn’t because it’s already done, Mom. Done a long time ago."

"It’s not done." Missy got to her feet, and Gwen stood, wanting to stop her from taking even a step toward the door that upset.

"Hey," Max moved into the room, "how about I order up some pizzas? What does everyone think, huh? Pepperoni’s a given..." He headed for the phone.

Missy pointed at him, narrowed her eyes. "Knock it off. Don’t let her weasel out of this."

"Your mother is not a weasel." Ellen gave Missy the disapproving eye with a lifetime more skill. You could always count on your mother to defend you even against your own daughter. "She’s just very weak-willed when it comes to men."

"The disease to please." Hayden joined the conversation.

He really did read the Oprah magazine.

Jason moved further away from him on the couch, but Hayden just shrugged. "My mother spent years in therapy, and some of it has naturally made its way into my awareness. Hasn’t anyone studied the Trickle-down theory of economics?"

Bryan snorted. "Way to make yourself sound cool again. Right. You don’t know woman therapy stuff, you know about econ. Oooh, way better."

"I didn’t have the disease to please, but thank you for trying to help, Hayden. And for the magazine. Very thoughtful."

"Did and do, Gwennie. At least with the Tool."

Missy took a visible breath, and Gwen wanted to stop her from saying whatever she planned to say next. She looked to Max for help, wanting him to interrupt again with anything, but he just looked sad and shook his head, and Missy said it. "I took off to Washington chasing a guy, a dumb guy, but mostly wanting to be a singer. It didn’t work out, but I get now a better way to get there. The point is that I did something because I knew what I really needed, for me, to be happy. I can’t respect you if you won’t fight for what you want."

Gwen rose, "Missy," but she was already to the door and out and Gwen found herself just standing beside her chair. She hadn’t even gone after her own daughter.





She would have stayed in bed forever, but she didn't have a bed. She didn't even have a couch that was hers. She had a borrowed couch in the middle of Max's living room, and if she stayed in couch all day, people would notice. Her mother had already gotten coffee and headed back to her room to get ready for her day. She had the final check on her ankle, but Missy would take her. The girl, who as a senior couldn't remember to wear a coat, suddenly exploded in wisdom and grandmother caretaking. Gwen didn't want to be annoyed by that.

She pulled the comforter all the way over her head. She had to get to class. She needed to get up right away. Right away. But easing out was impossible. There was no ease. She felt nothing resembling ease that would allow her to slowly rise and begin her day centered and whole. The only thing to do was leap out of bed. Leap before you look. That was good advice for a life stage like hers.

She swung her feet to the floor, threw the comforter back on the couch and fired into the bathroom. The steam hit her as soon as the door swung, but her momentum was too great to stop.

Max stood on the bathmat, naked and not surprised. Both things surprised her. As well as his very fit body, she'd seen the man eat. And the speed of his erection, that surprised her. His face, when she finally looked up, seemed so calm and at obvious odds with his body.

The only defense was a good offense. She motioned toward the towel bar. "Grab a towel."

He pulled one off the bar and held it in his hand.

"Put it on."

He looped it around the back of his neck and smiled like he was in some freakin' ad for men's shower gel. The porn version.

She turned her eyes to the ceiling. "Well, honestly."

"Are you going to be?"

"Be naked? No."

"Be honest?"

She tried to keep her mind distracted by noticing a hairline crack in the paint, but his strong reaction to her was kind of amazing. She really had that kind of power over him? He was always so calm, so in control and, her eyes dipped again, so not in control. She put her hand about chest level to visually block her eyes from the sexual offer, like a black box used to cut out the inappropriate parts of a photo.

Max grinned. "I just had my shower, but I'd be more than willing to help you with yours."

"Let me know when you're done."

"Let me know when you're ready."





She'd burned her tongue on a cup of coffee, stubbed her toe, ripped a nail on the door to the arts building, and tripped coming into the kitchen. If Max had been an ad for suggestive male bath products, she felt like an ad for a bad hair day.

Deb gave her the lack of a look that indicated an overt ignoring. It wasn't the I'm busy and distracted and missed you coming in, but the deliberate no eye contact, study her notes move.

In the drama of the weekend with Steve and Missy and Max and reverting to comfort under the table, she'd completely forgotten that her friend Deb was burning mad at her for something she didn't know anything about. Deb would never believe she was innocent of inside information about Nicola if she knew she was shacked up with Nicola’s man.

She sat next to Ty, who smiled so nicely she wished it were all that simple. It wouldn't be complicated finding him naked in a bathroom. No history, no marriage, no Nicola, nothing between them but some shared culinary interest and a dinner. How easy would that be?

"Okay. We've got the week blocked off for review, but since we spent so much time making lamb," Deb made eye contact with her, "we're going to have to catch up a little this week. And when I say a little I'm being sarcastic. It’s our last full week before Thanksgiving vacation, and we have to cover the eight chapters we didn’t get to but should have."

Ty looked at his textbook like it was a jack in the box and jack wouldn’t be coming out of it.

Deb tapped on the cover. "You don’t even want to know what we have to get to in the two weeks after Thanksgiving, ‘cause that’s all that’s left of the semester." She walked over to rifle through a stack of handouts that probably were designed to supplement the book or cause brain seizures.

Ty leaned closer, and she felt his warm whisper against her cheek. "When this is over, I’m taking you out for dinner."

"Oh." She sat back, smiled at him. That was the best offered she’d had since, well, an hour before when Max had offered to help her in the shower. She would dislodge that naked, wet meeting as soon as she could.

"Hey," Ty gave her that big, killer, melt-you-into-an-American-woman-puddle smile. "Can you meet me here tomorrow morning before class?"

"Sure. Yeah, sure I can."

Deb started her lecture, and Gwen opened the textbook. Eight chapters in a week. She looked sideways at Ty, who grimaced back at her. And she’d thought only finals week was supposed to be bad.





She'd been in a book all afternoon. The light slanted in the library windows and drew longer and longer shadows on the floor. It probably wouldn't help to change venues, but it couldn't hurt to at least try another chair, another window, another angle of evening sun going down.

Gathering her bag, she headed home, correcting herself on the walk to Max's that it wasn't her home at all.

She'd gotten there in time to see Missy driving off with grandma and tried not to feel hurt that they'd not called her about dinner. And they were going to dinner. At five o'clock her mother's inner dinner bell would be in full chime. It had been six when Gwen had been a kid, but the older Ellen got, the earlier the bell rang. Gwen understood how the Florida early bird specials were dinners that overlapped the lunch hour. Well, she didn't want to be invited to dinner at all. She didn't need relatives. She didn't need anybody. She would just go eat worms.

She hefted the bag over her shoulder, grunted, and reached the door. She didn't have time to even eat worms. She still had three chapters to cover before bed. "Damn lamb."

She knocked on the front door then opened it with the key she'd reluctantly taken from Max. All the females in her family had keys, so it wasn't like it meant anything. If she had any sisters or maiden aunts, Max probably would have had to pony up keys for them as well. The man was cursed.

"Hello." She called out and hoped he wasn't home. The silence reassured her, and she set her bag beside a dining room chair and sat down. She pulled the book out and cracked it open. If she put it off, she might fall on the couch and never get up. Ever. But water wouldn't hurt. Water and caffeine. She shook her head. That would be coffee, wouldn't it? Or tea. Cola probably fell into that category. She rose from the table and heard the back door open.

She stayed where she was, felt herself bracing, for what, she didn't know.

He came into the dining room and stopped, just looked at her. But wasn't she doing the same back? Just eyes and a couple of yards of distance, no sound, no movement.

She heard the swoosh of her own heartbeat against her ear drums, felt the slightest sway of motion in her body and watched him take a step closer.

And then their bodies crashed together, his arms a vise around her waist, her hands grabbing at his shoulders. Their mouths were open and warm and there was a wild mix of lips and tongues and the begging sounds of desire and domination from both of them.

She pulled his shirt open, didn't notice the buttons popping, just felt her palms fan out against the hard plane of his chest, the warmth of his skin, the pebble of each nipple.

His hands shot around from her back to cup her breasts, and clothing was so unnecessary she couldn't imagine why she ever put it on.

She reached for her sweater and yanked it half way over her head, the both of them working together like a pair of EMT's to get her shirt off. He flung her bra on the table, dragged her pants to her ankles before he tackled her down to the floor, bracing his hand against the back of her head before she hit, not that she noticed or would have felt anything but her heartbeat and him.

He was crawling out of his own pants, caught by his shoes just as hers were, and they reached for each other’s feet, but it only managed to slow them down in the tangle of arms.

With only eye signals, they broke and yanked off their own shoes, meeting in a bruising kiss she already felt her lips swelling from. But naked together, it was electric and amazing and then his mouth was on her breast, and she was flat on her back. She arched up with the delicious shock of her nipple taken into his warm, wet mouth.

She begged in a language she didn't know she spoke but he seemed to understand, and he moved down her body, his breath warm, his tongue licking a path of torture that had to end in bliss or she knew she'd scream.

He reached up with one hand and held onto hers while he played her to the edge of release.

She had to get her hands on him. One hand gripping hers and the tip of his tongue weren’t nearly enough contact for her. She rose up and tried to get him on his back, but he popped up instead, gave her a one minute sign and took off.

She sat naked on the floor. What in the hell had just--

He skidded out of the bedroom with a condom in his hand and a smile on his face and nearly threw himself on the floor, ripping open the condom, putting it on, and pulling her close.

She kissed him long and hard and her thigh slid across his body until she sat astride him and it took nothing to reach behind her and guide him in. Slickly and so slowly she lifted herself, lowered onto him, did it again and again until she couldn’t pace herself anymore and in the wild kisses and feel of his chest brushing against her nipples and Max inside her, she came, and as always, he followed.