An Erotic Collection Volume 2

Reason Enough

It wasn’t the sort of question I could answer at once, without hesitation. It took me hours to pick out which bath mats to put in our new bathroom. How on earth could I decide in one split moment if I should agree to have a baby?

“Yes? No?” Dan nudged his chin into the curve of my shoulder and neck from behind as his arms slipped around my waist. It made washing the dishes difficult, so I let the greasy pot in my hands slide back beneath the soapy water and leaned back against him. “Maybe?”

“Where did this come from?” I asked-practically, I thought.

Dan’s hands moved up and down my waist and crept below the hem of my shirt to link over my belly. “I was just thinking about it, that’s all.”

“Hmm.” I turned to face him, my hands going behind me to grip the edge of the sink. “A baby is a big responsibility.”

He grinned.

“Dan…” I had nothing to say, really. No real protest.

“Never mind, Elle.” He kissed me. “It’s just something I thought about, that’s all. When you mentioned the pills.”

I’d had a hangnail gone awry. My doctor had prescribed antibiotics to help get rid of the infection. Antibiotics can interfere with the effectiveness of birth-control pills. I’d offered to use my mouth on him instead of making love.

“I thought you’d like a blow job.” I heard the slightly cool tone of my voice and imagined the slightly cool expression on my face, to match. “I mean, you usually do.”

Against me, on the places where our bodies touched, I imagined heat growing. He pushed his hips forward a little bit to nudge a definite bulge against my stomach. He kissed me again, our mouths opening, and his hands gripped tighter on my waist.

“You know I do,” Dan murmured against my lips.

“Here? In the kitchen?” I raised a brow but kept my mouth from the smile threatening to tip it. “How shocking.”

“Shock me.”

We’d only been in the new house, our first together, for a few months. We hadn’t yet made love in every room-though not for lack of effort. I let my hand slide to his belt buckle. I tugged it open, moving his body as I did.

Dan let out a small grunt. “Use your mouth on me, right here.”

It would kill my knees, that tile floor, but I didn’t protest. I liked sucking Dan’s cock. He thought he was lucky. I was the lucky one, though. Lucky I’d found him, and that he loved me.

Luckier I loved him back.

I pushed him, not too gently, until he took a couple steps back. I unzipped his dark trousers, his work clothes, and pulled them over his hips. I went to my knees as I pushed the cloth over his thighs and down to his ankles. His cock tented the front of his soft boxer briefs, and I got rid of those, too.

I looked at him for a minute with my hand on the base of his prick. I licked my mouth to wet my lips, and Dan’s hands slid into my hair. Not pulling, not pushing. He was waiting for me to move. He could be patient if he had to be. If I made him.

I tilted my head to take him in as deep as I could. The groan of his response thrilled me. Sucking Dan was about him, but it affected me, too. My nipples tightened. My clit rubbed against my panties, and I reached with the hand not holding Dan to pull my skirt up my thighs. My knees protested the cold, hard tile without the cushion of my skirt, but I ignored the sensation. My fingers crept under the skirt to touch, just once, the silk between my legs.

* * *

“Yes,” Dan said. “Touch yourself.”

I didn’t answer, my mouth occupied with other tasks. I sucked him a little harder, my lips closing over the head of his cock and meeting. Like a kiss. A second later, the pause so brief it was hardly there, my mouth opened again and I took him down the back of my throat. Up again, this time with one hand following and the other rubbing the front of my panties.

Dan’s fingers slid deeper into my hair, and he pulled out the spring-clip I’d used to keep it up. Dark lengths tumbled around my shoulders. I smelled the shampoo I’d used that morning when I’d bound it up, still damp. He finger-combed it, careful not to pull too hard as my head moved under his hands.

His breath hitched, in and out, faster. It wouldn’t take long for him to come. The question was, how long would it take me?

I closed my eyes. The kitchen went away. So did my job, the bills I meant to pay later, the message on the answering machine from my mother. The discomfort in my knees and jaw vanished, too.

My world became the taste and smell of my husband and my hand between my legs. I rubbed faster over my panties, my clit a tight, hard bump under my fingers. I sucked Dan’s cock a little harder, a little faster, losing my rhythm once or twice when my own pleasure made me sloppy.

“I’m going to come, baby.” Dan’s regular voice was often enough to get my hormones jumping, but the way he sounded just before he came was the trigger on my cunt’s pistol. He spoke. I shot off.

I teased myself with rapid flicks of my fingertip on my silk-covered clit. A harder touch would send me over faster, but it felt so good I didn’t want it to end. Pleasure built. My muscles tightened. I couldn’t breathe. I had to breathe.

With a low moan, Dan bucked his hips forward. His taste flooded me. His hands tightened in my hair and I swallowed, hard, so I could find the breath to moan.

I pressed my palm between my legs as my body shook. I’d become a fist, closed tight, but now I opened wide. I shuddered and swallowed again. Dan pulled back.

I blinked as my orgasm subsided, and looked up at him. Sweat fell at that moment from his face onto mine, onto my lips, and I licked it away. Dan reached to help me up with a hand beneath my elbow, and I groaned at the creak of my joints.

He pulled me close and kissed me, then hugged me, my face against his chest. “You are so good at that. You know that?”

I smiled against the familiar, fresh scent of his shirt. A shirt I had washed and dried and hung in his closet. The closet in the house we shared.

“I know,” I told him, just to hear him laugh.

He hugged me tighter, and we laughed together. The phone rang. I knew who it would be, and though I didn’t really want to answer it, I knew my mother would keep calling until I did. I looked up at him.

“I love you,” I said, and meant it.

“I love you, too,” Dan answered, and didn’t talk about babies again that night.

* * *

“Hot,” my brother said in a no-nonsense tone. “Don’t touch!”

The little girl reaching for the canister of fireplace matches pulled back her hand and gave Chad a reproachful look. But she didn’t reach again, just turned her attention to the stack of magazines on the coffee table.

“Sorry,” I said. “I should’ve put those away. We’re not baby-proof, I guess.”

My younger brother laughed and shrugged. “The princess needs to learn. Don’t worry about it, Elle.”

The little girl-my niece! I had a niece? How had that happened? I was an aunt. My baby brother had fallen in love and adopted a child and had a life.

“What?” he asked as I shook my head in wonder. “No, Leah. Don’t tear Aunt Elle’s magazines. C’mere to Daddy.”

He held out his hands and the girl made her way around the coffee table to take her place on his lap. She grinned, self-satisfied, and looked every bit the princess her daddies believed her to be.

“I just almost can’t believe this,” I told him, knowing he’d understand. “You’re a daddy! Chaddie, it’s just incredible.”

He beamed. My brother looked better than I’d ever seen him. He’d gotten slimmer, and impossibly taller. He’d cut his hair, and it emphasized the leaner lines of his face. He’d gotten older.

Hell. We both had. I shouldn’t have been so surprised. I looked in the mirror often enough, after all.

Chad kissed the soft, round cheek of his daughter and stroked the length of her black curls. She settled contentedly against him and kicked her chubby legs. He let her crawl off his lap to sit on my couch.

“She’ll crash in about fifteen minutes,” he said confidently, though to my eyes Leah looked about as far away from sleep as a kid could get. “Then we’ll really catch up.”

I watched my niece gnaw on the edge of one of my expensive, dry-clean-only pillows and bit my tongue against the words that would have made me sound like my mother. “I’ll go make some coffee, okay?”

* * *

“Sure.” My brother grinned, though the force of his love was directed at his daughter now, and not so much at me.

I didn’t mind, I told myself in the kitchen as I ground beans and measured them into the brand-new, complicated coffeemaker Dan had bought when we moved in. I still wasn’t entirely sure how to work it.

I didn’t mind that my brother was happy. I was, in fact, nearly overwhelmed with happiness on his behalf. We’d grown up in a house fairly devoid of joy, and I’d been an adult before I’d even begun to allow myself to believe I wouldn’t be pretty miserable for my entire life. Instead, he’d met Luke. I’d met Dan. We’d both managed to escape the past and make a present; I had no reason to believe we wouldn’t both create a joyful future, too.

Hell, I’d even forged a relationship, of sorts, with my mother. Chad hadn’t managed that yet, though I hoped the fact he and Luke had moved back to Pennsylvania from California with the only grandchild my mother could claim would change that.

It absolutely wasn’t that I was jealous of my brother.

“Coffee-” I bit off the words when I saw Chad put a finger to his lips. Leah, sprawled on top of the cushions and covered with her blanket, had indeed fallen asleep. Chad made a barrier with more pillows to keep her from rolling off, and gestured to me.

We broke our silence in my new kitchen, with all its new appliances and dishes and pictures on the walls. Chad took the coffee from me with a grateful gasp and drank back half his cup in a large gulp.

“God,” he said. “I swear to you I’m living on caffeine now. She’s finally starting to sleep through the night, but it’s been a hellish six months. The pediatrician says at twenty-two months she should be sleeping through with no problem, but she’s having adjustment issues.”

I liked to sleep. Really, really liked it. Was pretty unfunctional without enough sleep, as a matter of fact.

“So, has she said anything about us?” Chad didn’t waste time. He got up to pour himself more coffee and helped himself to a muffin from my fridge. Only the slope of his shoulders gave away his tension.

“Oh, Chaddie, do you want to know?”

He turned. “Yes, Ella. I want to know.”

He’d used my old name, the one my mother still insisted on using. Point taken. “She asked if I’d seen her. Meaning Leah. I said yes. She wanted to know…”

The words lodged in my throat. I shouldn’t be embarrassed to repeat them. Chad was the one who’d always called my mother The Dragon Lady, after all. He wouldn’t be surprised, but he would be hurt. I didn’t want to hurt my brother, not even by proxy.

“What?”

I sighed. “She wanted to know how dark she was.”

Chad’s expression went so carefully blank I knew he was furious. “Uh-huh. What did you tell her?”

“I told her,” I said, “to stop being so damn ridiculous.”

He smiled. “Did you?”

“I did. I can’t make excuses for her, Chad, but you know how she is.”

“It’s bad enough I’m gay, I know. But that I have a black daughter…God. What will the neighbors say?” Chad grimaced and slugged back more coffee. “And she wonders why I don’t come home.”

“At least she’s asked you to,” I pointed out, drinking my own coffee. “At least she’s not pretending you don’t exist.”

He made a derisive noise. “If she doesn’t accept Luke or Leah, then she still doesn’t really accept me. End of story. She can kiss my ass.”

I knew his partner’s name, of course, and his daughter’s, but hearing them together that way made me giggle. “Luke and Leah.”

“What about them?” He must have heard it, too, the sound of two names that paired brought to mind one of the most easily recognized film references from the past thirty years. “Very funny!”

But he was laughing, and my kitchen filled with giggles and chortles we tried to stifle so as not to wake his child. All our best efforts went to ruin in the next minute, because I heard the front door open and a booming voice carry down the hall.

“I’m hooooome!”

Leah’s thin, high wail followed a moment later. Chad was already off his chair and I went after him. We were too late, both to shush Dan and to quiet Leah.

“Hey, there, little girl,” Dan was murmuring, the child in his arms already when I came down the hall and into the living room. Leah looked up at him with wide eyes, but no more tears.

My heart melted.

That night I brushed my teeth, washed my face, smoothed cream into my skin. Every step of my bedtime ritual was the same as it had always been, steps to be counted without even thinking of them. A routine that provided some small measure of comfort in its perpetual sameness, no matter what had happened during the day. Yet when I lifted the white plastic case containing my birth-control pills, I didn’t simply pop one out of the silver foil and swallow it with a swig of water the way I always did.

I thought about punching out the pill, letting it drop into the sink and running the water to flush it away down the pipes into darkness. That one, small pill which had been my womb’s only protection since the day Dan and I had stopped using condoms. I’d trusted my life to those small white discs of compressed hormones.

In the end, I swallowed the pill. I also took the last dose of antibiotics, because even though my infected finger had cleared up days ago, the instructions on the pill bottle had said to finish the medication. I wasn’t then and doubt I ever will be the sort of woman to throw caution to the wind and ignore even something as simple as a doctor’s prescription.

I thought about it, though, as I slipped my nightgown over bare skin and pulled back the blankets to get into bed beside my husband. He’d been reading a paperback novel with a lurid cover, but now his chin had dropped to his chest. The series of small, puffing breaths that always announced his slip into sleep had begun. His glasses had slipped to the end of his nose.

He woke when I removed the narrow wire frames and set them on the nightstand. His breath gusted hot against my chest and his arms went around me.

“What a nice view,” he murmured into my cleavage.

It had been more than a week since we’d made love in any traditional fashion, if you could call whatever love we’d ever made traditional. It was the longest I’d gone without him inside me since we’d been married. For a couple who fucked more often than we exercised, this had been an eye-opener.

Dan looked pleased when I straddled him, and even more so when I undid the row of tiny pearl buttons at the front of my gown. His hands slid up my sides to cup my bare breasts and push them together. I shivered when his tongue flickered out to taste me. My pulse instantly sped up.

He nuzzled his face against my skin, then used his mouth to pull gently on my nipples. One, the other, then back to the first. Underneath me, nestled along my cunt and ass, his cock got hard. The soft flannel of his pajama bottoms rubbed my bare skin. I wanted to rock my body against it, but held still.

“Take this off.” He didn’t wait for me to comply, but lifted my nightgown over my hips as I tugged it over my head.

* * *

The tips of my breasts brushed his bare chest as I leaned forward to kiss him. His lips parted at once. Greedy. Hungry. I kissed him hard and threaded my fingers through his hair. I tipped his head back to gain access to his throat, where I nipped and sucked until he groaned and his cock pulsed beneath me.

I was naked, and Dan was still partially dressed, but I felt no disadvantage. If there was power being played, I was the one in control. If I’d had any ideas about drawing this out, they fled when his hand slipped between us and his thumb settled on my clit. It wasn’t that I hadn’t had any orgasms in the past ten days, but I hadn’t had any with Dan inside me, and I could no longer stand to wait.

He made the noise I loved when I lifted myself to grasp his cock and guide myself onto it. I was already so slick with wanting there was no resistance when I slid all the way down. His eyes closed for a second as he arched to push himself deeper.

We sat that way without moving, our breath coming faster. My heart had started to pound. His thumb pressed again on my clit and a spasm of pleasure rocked me. I moaned.

His eyes opened. “Fuck, Elle, I love that sound.”

I laughed and moved on him; the laugh stuttered into a groan as he made small circles on my clitoris. He knew just how to touch me. I sat up, my hands on his chest for support, and rocked on his prick.

We took our time. In this position he couldn’t thrust too hard, too fast or too deep. I could set the pace, but I had to do the work, too, and with my clit pressing his thumb every time I moved, I was content to go slow.

If marriage had made any sort of change in our lovemaking it was that we did it more often in the dark now. In bed, the way I imagined most “normal” couples did. I hadn’t turned off the bedside lamp, though, and I was glad for the light to show me Dan’s face. I loved the way his eyes crinkled at the corners, and the beads of sweat that formed at his hairline and turned his sandy hair the color of wet sand. I loved the way his blue-green eyes darkened as his pupils dilated with arousal.

I loved everything about this man, not just each piece but how they all fit to make the whole of him. I’d bound my life with his and never regretted it. So why, then, did I fear so much sharing one more piece of myself?

I wanted him inside me harder, faster, deeper. I leaned forward to kiss him and he pumped upward. I no longer needed the help of his hand. My clit rubbed his belly as he thrust, and I cried out into his mouth as I started to come. My cunt clenched on his erection and he grunted. His hands gripped my sides, sliding on my sweat-slick skin. I tasted salt on his mouth.

I wanted to close my eyes when I came, but I kept them open so I could see his face. His mouth tightened. He thrust so hard he moved my entire body. He blinked, his gaze going far away, and knowing he was so close sent another thrill of climax jittering through me.

“Elle,” Dan panted. “Is it okay?”

“It’s great, baby,” I murmured. Sex makes even the silliest sentences all right.

He shook his head a little, still thrusting. “No, baby. Is it okay?”

He hadn’t meant my orgasm. He’d meant his. I hadn’t made him use a condom, and I still had the antibiotics in my system. I loved him a hundred times more for his concern.

“It’s absolutely okay.”

It was like I gave him permission, because that’s when his body tensed and he let out a long, low groan. His cock throbbed inside me and he thrust upward once more before clutching me to him and kissing my mouth.

I couldn’t feel him spurt inside me, but I imagined I did. In my head the army of small, swimming sperm surged upward through the welcoming territory of my womb, seeking their target. Would one find its goal tonight?

Had we made a child?

And if we had, would it really be all right?

* * *

Nobody in their right mind would have ever asked me to help plan a baby shower, but Marcy’s sister Linda didn’t know me. Or maybe she wasn’t in her right mind. At any rate, as Marcy’s self-proclaimed best friend, I’d been strongly encouraged to help her sister with organizing this party.

It was supposed to be a surprise, but getting Marcy out of the house and to the restaurant where dozens of her friends and family waited was harder than I’d expected.

“I’m a whale,” she complained from her place on the couch. “A frigging whale, Elle. I’m not going out of the house like this. I can’t buy shoes. My feet are way too swollen.”

“It’s BOGO at Neiman Marcus.” I had no shame. I also had fifty people and a buffet lunch waiting for us. “C’mon. Get your lazy ass off that couch.”

“I’m not lazy,” Marcy said reprovingly. “I’m knocked up.”

“Shoes,” I said sternly.

“Fine. Bitch,” she said and held out her hand. “Help me up.”

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to run away. I most definitely did not want to be the woman sprawled on the couch with a belly so big she wouldn’t be able to see the shoes I was supposedly bullying her into buying. I tugged her to her feet. In the car I had to help her buckle her seat belt and we both laughed until I felt sick to my stomach.

I also didn’t want to be the woman weeping at the sight of her friends shouting, “surprise.” Marcy’s tears didn’t seem to embarrass her, but little did. I, however, would’ve been mortified to break down like that in public. It would have been like wetting my pants, or throwing up on myself. I never wanted to be that woman with such a precarious hold on her emotions. Not ever.

“You’re quiet.” Marcy, plate laden with cake and pasta salad, wore a hat festooned with ribbons and bows from the packages she’d spent forty minutes unwrapping. “Everything okay?”

“Absolutely.” I smiled. “You made out like a bandit.”

“I love you,” Marcy said suddenly. Tears welled in her eyes again.

I’ve never been a hugger, but there wasn’t any graceful way to avoid her embrace. “Oh, Marce. Hush.”

“This was the b-b-best…” She sniffled and then dug into her cake. “You’re the best friend ever!”

“I just helped, that’s all.”

“Thank you,” Marcy said. “I mean it, Elle. I’m so…thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I told her, because there wasn’t much else to say.

Marcy was pulled away by some other friends who wanted to take her picture, and I was left alone for a moment to look around at the heaps of baby items she’d received. Diapers, wipes, blankets, tiny little outfits in pale colors and decorated with ducks and bunnies…. Only a few months ago she and I had gone shopping for sexy lingerie, and now her entire life had changed. Her entire focus had turned toward the stranger in her belly.

She didn’t notice when I slipped out.

I drove for a while before going home, just trying to clear my head. When I pulled into my driveway and saw a familiar car parked in front of my house, I wished I’d driven a lot longer.

My mother rarely visited us, but when she did she never called first. I think she knew if I had warning I’d probably make excuses about why she couldn’t come over. Since my father’s death, her life had changed a lot and so had our relationship, but it would never be the sort to write about on a greeting card.

* * *

My mother might not view me as the perfect daughter, but she loved Dan. This brought me no end of amusement and surprise, because she’d been set on hating him at the start. I never knew what changed her mind, aside from the fact I didn’t see how anyone could not love Dan. Still, my mother wasn’t known for loving anyone, and every time I saw her smile at him I couldn’t help wondering when she was going to sink the knife in his gut.

Dan, on the other hand, had no doubts about his ability to charm my mother. I watched them through the kitchen door before I went in. He poured her coffee and offered her the creamer. He was talking about something, his hands waving, and she watched him, nodding. I might have been jealous if I really wanted her to like me as much as she liked him, but thankfully I’d managed to get past yearning for that.

“…rip out the floor and put in hardwood.”

Ah. He was telling her about his grand plans to renovate the house. Dan talked a lot about what he wanted to do. I talked a lot about how much it would cost. We usually found a compromise.

“Elle.” My mother looked up from her coffee. “You’re home.”

I bit my tongue on the sarcastic “duh” that wanted to come out. “Hi, Mom.”

Dan came to kiss and hug me. “How was the shower?”

“Fine.” I wanted some coffee and helped myself.

“Shower? What shower?”

“My friend Marcy is having a baby,” I said.

“How lucky for her mother,” my mother said. “She must be thrilled to become a grandmother.”

Dead silence filled the kitchen. I glanced at Dan, but he was getting ready to flee. My husband is a smart man.

“Mom,” I said mildly, turning with my cup in my hand. “You’re a grandma, too.”

“I’ve got some…stuff…to do…in the place….” Dan said, and exited the kitchen before my mother could reply.

“I need a cigarette,” my mother said. “Come outside with me.”

I’d learned to pick my battles. I went outside. My mother lit up at once, smoking and looking out over our small backyard. I waited for her to talk.

“He sent me a picture of her.”

“Her name is Leah, Mom. She’s adorable.”

My mother glanced at me sideways and blew twin streams of smoke from her nose. “I know you think I’m being awful. But I just can’t, Ella. I just…”

“Oh, why not?” I asked, weary of her drama. “Because she’s black? Because he’s gay? What the hell is your problem, Mother, really?”

“Because I’m not sure how to be a grandmother!” she cried in a thin, high voice nothing like her usual one. Her hand shook as she stabbed out her cigarette and lit another.

I couldn’t speak at first, not until I’d swallowed some coffee. “I thought you wanted to be a grandma. God knows you keep dropping hints about it.”

“It would be different with you.”

“How would it be different?” I demanded.

My mother looked at me. “You are my daughter. It’s different with a mother and a daughter, that’s all.”

I hardly thought our relationship qualified, but I didn’t say that. Sometimes the things we most want to say are the ones that should never be said. “She’s just a little girl, Mom. All you have to do is…all you have to do is love her.”

I was horrified at the way my throat closed on those words and at the burning of tears in my eyes. “Just love her.”

We stared at each other for what felt like a very long time while my mother’s cigarette burned to ash in her fingers, unsmoked.

“I don’t know if I can.” Her words came out low and soft and naked. “I just don’t know if I can.”

Honestly, I wasn’t sure she could, either.

“You should try.”

How had the tables turned? How had I become the one who knew what should be done and how to do it? How had my mother become the child needing to be taught?

“Maybe we could…go see them together,” she said after another long, long minute. “Would you go with me?”

She had asked, not demanded. I couldn’t remember if she’d ever asked me to do anything in my entire life. And though we never touched, I reached for my mother’s hand.

“Yes,” I told her. “I’ll go with you.”

* * *

My period had come and gone. I stared at the plastic compact in my hand. Today I was supposed to take the first of this month’s pills. I hadn’t decided if I was going to.

“Elle, are you coming?”

“Just a minute.” I punched the pill from the foil but didn’t swallow it.

I’d just finished my nightly shower and as usual the mirror had steamed over. My hair hung in wet tendrils on my cheeks. The towel I’d tucked around my chest hit me only at midthigh and wasn’t much in favor of staying on. When Dan poked his head into the bathroom and I turned to face him, it fell down.

“Nice view.” He grinned.

I grabbed it with the hand not clutching the pill. “Ha ha.”

He came in, naked and unconcerned with his nudity. He reached for the towel and yanked it with a grin. We tussled over it. I didn’t fight too hard. I was naked in a minute.

Dan put his hand between my legs as he looked into my eyes. “Hello.”

“You,” I said, “are a perv.”

His brows raised. “Why? Because all I can think about right now is eating that sweet pussy until you scream?”

His dirty talk made me giggle even though it turned me on, too. “I hear you talking, but I don’t see you on your knees.”

He dropped at once, so fast I let out a startled cry. He kissed me, hot breath stealing over my flesh and parting my legs. I took a step back until my rear hit the countertop.

“Is this better?” he murmured against my flesh.

Whatever witty comment I’d planned got lost as his tongue came out to taste me. I put a hand on his head, my fingers threading through his hair. It had grown long, needed a cutting, but it was perfect for grabbing.

He opened my thighs with his hands and found my clit with his lips and tongue. I could see his cock in his fist if I tilted my head just right, but I found it hard to concentrate on anything but the pleasure sweeping through me. I settled for putting my other hand on his shoulder and letting the smooth rise and fall tell me how fast and hard he was stroking.

My head tipped back as I lost myself in the sensation of his hot, wet mouth on my hot, wet cunt. When he added a finger, then two, inside me, I cried out. It sometimes took me too long to come this way, and sometimes I didn’t like it at all, but not tonight. Tonight it was all I could do not to ride his face and hand…well, I’ll admit it. I did.

His soft moans and the steady, slick sound of his cock pumping in his fist encouraged me. He licked me and I rocked my hips to press my clit closer on his tongue.

I was going to come. He was going to come. Best of all, there was absolutely, positively no way I was going to get pregnant this way.

He got there before I did. He let out that certain groan-moan-sigh I knew so well. I smelled him, that familiar scent. My orgasm ripped through me and the world spun. I took a breath, then another, gasping.

When I opened my eyes, Dan was looking up at me with a cat-got-the-cream grin. He got to his feet and kissed me. I put my arms around him, hugging him tight.

“I love you,” he said and kissed my mouth again before turning on the shower. I heard him whistling, jaunty, when he got under the spray, and I envied him the nature that made everything so swiftly eased.

I turned to the mirror again and saw my face, flushed, before the steam once again covered the glass. I’d had my fingers closed tight and the sting in my palm made me open my hand. The pill still lay within, half-dissolved, and I stared at it before I brought my hand to my mouth and licked it clean.

* * *

When my father was alive, my mother had thrown a gala Christmas party every year. We children had been banished upstairs while the grown-ups ate and drank and smoked and played cards. It was a party for adults, never us. I remembered peeking through the banister to watch my mother, dressed as always in a perfectly matching outfit, her hair and makeup immaculate. The perfect hostess. I had grown up thinking that was what a woman should be. What a mother should be.

I wasn’t anything like my mother.

This party, too, was nothing like the parties my mother had organized with such precision. As Dan pulled into my brother’s driveway, a cluster of children in party hats stampeded around the house. My mother let out a distinctive, sniffing sigh. Whatever caustic comment had risen to her lips stayed locked behind them, though. She said nothing as she got out of the car and stood, staring at the house.

My former neighbor Mrs. Pease had given me the heavy crockery bowl on my lap before she moved in with her son, but though she’d tried to teach me her best recipes, Dan had been the one to fill it with his Macaroni Salad a la Dan. He took the bowl so I could get out of the car, too, and he stole a kiss while he was at it.

“Relax,” he murmured in my ear. “It will be fine.”

From the backyard came the noise of chatter and music. I smelled burgers grilling, and my stomach rumbled. My mother clutched a small tray of cookies with both hands. She’d baked them herself, but if I knew my mother it had been out of a sense of social propriety rather than any sort of ooey-gooey, fuzzy feelings. She’d no more have shown up at a party empty-handed than she would have spit on the sidewalk. Yet now she clutched that tray so hard her knuckles turned white.

“Mom?”

She turned to look at me. Her lips had pressed into the thin, grim line I’d seen so often. “Let’s get this over with.”

* * *

I wanted to shake her then, I really did. Dan’s touch on my arm turned me toward him. His smile made me forget I had an evil side.

Dan looked at her. “Let’s go around back, okay?”

She nodded just once and moved forward with a series of jerky steps unlike her usual graceful ones. He shot me a glance over his shoulder as I followed. Dan touched my mother’s shoulder gently.

“Why don’t you let me take the tray?”

I thought she’d say no, but after a second she nodded. “Yes. I think…Ella, would you show me the restroom, please. I think I’d like to freshen up.”

Another look from Dan stayed my retort. “Sure. We’ll go in the front.”

Again, she nodded. Dan took the cookies and headed around the back while I took my mother through the front door and into the kitchen, where I dropped off the bowl of macaroni salad and showed her the powder room.

My brother’s house was newer than mine, and in a suburban neighborhood rather than in the heart of Harrisburg. The previous owner had been a big fan of country decor. The apple-and-rooster border on the walls of the kitchen and attached den didn’t quite match the modern leather and wood furniture Chad and Luke had brought from California. Toys had been tossed into a series of brightly colored plastic bins along the far wall, and those didn’t match, either.

Through the sliding glass doors I could see the deck where my brother’s partner reigned in his chef’s hat and apron over the grill. Dan was shaking Chad’s hand and taking a beer. A few women mingled, but mostly men chased after the hordes of children swarming the jungle gym and trampoline and wreaking havoc on the grass.

“Ella, my God,” my mother said as she came out of the bathroom. She’d refreshed her lipstick and powder and brushed her hair. I even caught the fresh scent of perfume. Any earlier hesitation had vanished beneath the cosmetics she wore as a shield. “Did you know there are…kittens…in that bathroom?”

She said it as though they’d decorated the bathroom with photographs of severed limbs. I’d seen that bathroom. Severed limbs would have been less disturbing. “Yes.”

“Kittens in a washtub!” Clearly, she was appalled.

“It came with the house, Mom.”

“Well,” she said with a familiar sniff, “I know your brother has better taste than that.”

The sliding glass door opened and Chad stepped through, blinking as he came from bright into dim. “Hey.”

Her chin lifted a bit. “Chad.”

Their embrace was so stiff I felt awkward just watching it. The hug he gave me was much more natural. I felt my mother watching us, but when I looked at her I couldn’t tell what she was thinking about the fact her children were more comfortable with each other than either of us was with her. Maybe she wasn’t thinking anything. Maybe I was the one who always thought too much.

The door slid open again, letting in the smell of grilling meat and the cries of children. Luke came in bearing a platter of burgers that he set on the counter. Dan followed on his heels, Leah a squirming bundle in his arms.

“Mrs. Kavanagh.” Luke, who stood over six feet tall and had arms the size of my thighs, made no move to hug her. “Glad you could come.”

The kitchen was suddenly much smaller than it had been five minutes before as we all eyed each other. Dan put Leah down and took a second to straighten her frilly white dress. She wore lacy socks, too, and white patent-leather shoes. Her daddies thought she was their princess and had dressed her as one.

My mother didn’t move. Didn’t look. Her expression remained rigid. Tension strangled us all into silence.

Leah toddled over to my mother and grabbed her around the knees. She tilted her little face up and up. She grinned. “Gammy.”

Nobody gasped, not physically, but I heard the sound of surprise echo through the kitchen just the same.

My mother looked down at the small girl clutching her legs and wrinkling her skirt.

“Gammy,” Leah said again. “Up, Gammy.”

She lifted her arms as if it were the most natural thing in the world to ask for and receive. And my mother, who hadn’t even yet told her friends about the child her son had adopted, bent and lifted her up as though she had no other choice. She had held all of us that way, I thought. My brothers and I. When we were small.

“She knows me?” my mother said.

“We’ve shown her your picture,” Chad said as though he were challenging her. “She’s very bright.”

For another instant we all hung there. Luke and Dan might have imagined they knew what they were waiting for, but they would never know my mother the way Chad and I did. I don’t know what my brother waited for, but I waited for her to ruin this.

“Well,” my mother said to Leah. “Aren’t you just the smartest girl? Aren’t you, just?”

If relief washed over me in a wave it must have been a veritable tsunami for my brother. After that, there were guests to feed, children to chase. Chad and Luke knew how to throw a party, and if it didn’t have the glitter of those long-ago Christmas galas, there was one major improvement in that I’d been invited to attend.

Later, Dan found me sitting in a lawn chair on a patch of grass as yet undiscovered by children. I had a plate overloaded with food but I’d already eaten myself full. He took it from me and sat in the empty chair next to mine to dig in.

“Great party, huh?” He waved his fork toward the house.

“Yes.” I watched him eat with the fondness women have for men whose manners on a stranger would have earned scorn. “You have schmutz all over your mouth.”

He leaned forward as though he meant to kiss me and laughed, withdrawing, when I wrinkled my nose. He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “Better?”

“Yes.” I looked toward the deck, where my mother sat with Leah sleeping on her lap.

Dan watched me looking. “Nice, huh?”

“Unexpected.”

He put the plate on the grass and leaned back in his chair with a contented sigh, hands laced over his belly. “You don’t give her enough credit.”

I raised a brow at him. We’d had this discussion before. He was lucky that he couldn’t really imagine what it was like not to have a doting, affectionate mother. His own would have been a parody of sit-com moms if she hadn’t been so utterly sincere in her motherhood.

“Babies change people, Elle.”

“Uh-huh.” I swirled some ice in my plastic cup.

I watched my mother stare into the face of the sleeping child. Had she ever looked at me that way? Yes, I thought. Long ago, she had. No matter what had come between us, and it had been a lot of very awful things, she had looked at me like that. My mother had loved me.

“You ready to get out of here?” Dan stood and gathered up the garbage.

I was. As much as I loved my brother, the cacophony of the party had given me a headache. I hugged and kissed him and Luke goodbye. We said nothing about my mother with our voices, but our eyes said enough.

When I went to kiss my niece goodbye, she barely stirred.

“She’s worn out.” My mother stroked the soft black curls. “Too much party for a little girl.”

“We’re leaving, Mom.”

She looked up at me. Her face was softer than I’d ever seen it. “Your brother will drive me home. You go on ahead.”

“You’re sure?”

* * *

She looked again at Leah, whose small pink lips had pursed in sleep. “I can’t wake this baby, can I?”

It would have been too weird to hug or kiss her goodbye, so I didn’t. I left her holding the grandchild she’d been so sure she couldn’t love. In the car, I let out a laugh.

“Strange, strange, strange,” I said.

“You knew she’d be okay, Elle.” Dan had more faith in me than I had in myself, but that was only one of the many reasons I loved him.

At home, I groaned when he came up behind me to slip his arms around my waist as I stood in front of the full-length mirror in our bedroom. “I’m going to explode.”

He rubbed the taut curve of my too-full belly. “I can help you work it off.”

“Oh, sure. Just roll me onto the bed like that girl from the Willy Wonka movie.”

“Veruca Salt?”

I laughed. “No. The one who ate the pill that turned her into a blueberry.”

Dan turned me sideways to look at us both in the mirror. “You’re not blue.”

“But I am round. God, why did I eat so much?”

“You were making sure you had enough sustenance to get you through the night?” He waggled his brows.

I rolled my eyes. “Riiiiight.”

His hands, though, were working their usual magic. He moved them up and down my sides, over my hips. Over my belly, which most definitely could benefit from a few hundred sit-ups. Between my legs.

“I like you curvier.” Dan’s fingers played along my inner thigh and a little higher.

“You haven’t ever known me as anything but curvy!” The light, tantalizing touch forced my voice into a seductive breathiness. “You have no basis of comparison.”

“You’ve been thinner.” Dan’s other hand ran up my side to cup my breast. “When I met you. Just before we got married. Last year when you were deciding whether or not to quit your job.”

My feminine sensibility demanded I be affronted, even though I knew he was right. “Gee, thanks for reminding me.”

Dan pulled me closer, so our naked bodies touched. He looked deep into my eyes. “I like you better with a few extra pounds on you. It’s not bullshit.”

I was only slightly mollified. “Why on earth do you like me better when I’m fatter?”

“Curvier,” he corrected. He dipped his head to kiss the swell of my breasts, then to suckle each nipple.

My breath quickened. His hand moved between my legs, finding my heat and slickness. He suckled a little harder, and my pulse skipped in all my secret places.

Dan kissed his way up to my shoulder, then my neck, then at last to my mouth. His cock got hard between us. Even with a few extra pounds on my belly I had no trouble feeling that. When he pulled me toward the bed, I didn’t protest.

We lay on soft, smooth sheets that warmed quickly beneath us. He kissed me endlessly while his hand moved between my legs. He dipped a finger inside me and drew it up to slide along my clitoris. He knew just how to touch me, over and over, until I went boneless under him.

“Get on your hands and knees,” he told me. He had a knack for knowing just what I wanted without me ever having to say it.

I did, and clutched the pillow as he moved behind me. Dan stroked his cock along the edge of my cunt, wetting himself before he pushed inside me. He did it slowly, half an inch at a time, until I pushed back to force him inside me all the way.

We both moaned. His hands gripped my hips. I imagined how I must look in front of him, how the line and knobs of my spine would stand out as my back curved. I buried my face in the pillow and lifted my ass in the air, changing the angle so he could go deeper.

Dan went deeper. There were times when I felt he’d never fill me entirely, times when I counted my empty spaces and knew they’d always stay that way. There were times when this mattered to me, very much, and times I secretly despaired…but there were more times like this, when those small and secret empty places became insignificant.

He stroked deep inside me, and I opened my body to take him all the way. His thrusts got faster. He leaned forward, the heat of him all along my back, and reached around to press his hand to my clit.

I was close enough that he didn’t need to do much stroking. The force of each thrust moved my body against his hand. Pleasure built bit by bit as he fucked into me. It lasted forever.

Sometimes I came fast and hard, but now I rode on waves of slow, steady climax. My orgasm built, receded and built again. My body tightened as we moved together, as Dan thrust faster. Heat flooded me and I bit down on the pillow to hold back my cries.

Our bodies slapped. I was so wet I felt slick heat sliding down my thighs. I breathed in the soft scent of fabric softener and the linen spray I used on the pillows; when I turned my head the heavy, familiar musk aroma of our fucking surrounded and overwhelmed me. I gulped in air saturated with our lovemaking. I wanted to drink it, eat it. I wanted to survive solely on the touch and taste and smell of the man behind me, and the pleasure sending me whirling into mindlessness.

“Count them.” Dan’s voice, thick with desire, trailed off into a groan. “Count them for me.”

My longtime habit of counting in my head had diminished over the months we’d been married, but when he told me to now, I didn’t hesitate. “One,” I gasped as my first orgasm burst over me. “Two,” I groaned a minute later as the second burst inside me.

And later, not much later, “Three!”

Three was the most I could manage. I shuddered with the last climax. My fingers dug furrows in the sheets. Dan thrust once more inside me and came with a shout that made me smile.

He paused for a minute before moving in and out of me a couple more times, then withdrew and collapsed beside me on the bed. A gush of hot fluid surged down my thighs, and I let out a cry as I clamped my legs together.

He laughed. “Sorry.”

He wasn’t, but I didn’t care. “Feh. Hazards of the sport.”

I rolled onto my back, making sure to position myself on his side of the bed with a grin he didn’t notice at first. When he did, he rolled onto his side to put his hand on my belly. He nuzzled into my shoulder.

“You’re going to make me sleep on the wet spot?”

“Absolutely,” I said with a sigh of utter satisfaction. Already my eyes were trying to flutter closed, and I stifled a yawn with the back of my hand.

Dan snorted softly. “Nice.”

His hand made hypnotic circles on my stomach. I would have to get up in a minute to use the bathroom, to brush my teeth. Take a shower. But for now it was too nice, lying here with him, for me to move.

I put my hand over his to stop it from moving. I thought about Marcy, the swell of her giant belly in front of her like something belonging to another person. It was another person. She’d complained vociferously about getting fat, but I’d never really believed she meant it. She’d always said it with a hint of smug satisfaction, her hands on the mound of her stomach, holding it as though it were a prize.

“Do you really like me curvier?”

I’d been ready to fall into sleep, but Dan was almost there. “Mmm,” he muttered.

“Why?” I whispered as I threaded my hands through his hair. I didn’t really expect or need an answer. No matter what Dan said, I was going to love and hate my body in equal turns.

* * *

“It means you’re happier,” he mumbled against my skin, and fell silent.

It wasn’t what I’d expected him to say, but I knew he was right. I waited until he started snoring before I slipped from under his grasp and went to the bathroom to run the shower. I washed away the evidence of our lovemaking, but slowly, letting the hot shower soothe aching muscles and relax me even more.

I did some of my best thinking in the shower, and the day had given me much to think about. What Dan had said was true. I had been thinner before, with hollowed cheeks and hip bones jutting from my skin, mountains on either side of the valley of my belly. I’d been able to count my ribs and see the delicate bones of my wrists. Now my flesh curved smoothly, without wrinkles, over all of me, and though I was nowhere near overweight, there was also no way to deny the difference. And I was happier-that was also true.

I was happy with Dan, our marriage, our life. Our house. My job, which had been precariously balanced a few months ago, had worked out in favor. With my brother back in the area and my relationship with my mother on steadier ground, I had a glimmer of a family life, not to mention that Dan’s mom and dad had embraced me as the daughter they’d never had. I had friends, health, success.

And I cried, thinking of all of it, and how easy it would be to lose it all, and of how terrified I was of that happening.

Tears disturb and confuse men, but women know the relief they can bring. I didn’t cry because I couldn’t deal with my life, but because I could. The hot water hid the sound of my sobs and washed the tears from my cheeks before I could even taste them. I cried for a solid ten or fifteen minutes, and when I was done, I turned the water to icy-cold needles that stabbed me but refreshed me at the same time.

Stepping out onto the bath mat, I didn’t criticize my flesh, or obsess over the jiggle of my thighs. I scrubbed my face and combed the tangles from my hair and I slathered cream on every inch of bare skin I could reach, but I didn’t worry if there was more bare skin to cover than had been available a few months ago.

I turned sideways to look at my stomach in the mirror. It curved, but nowhere nearly as much as it would if I were pregnant. I put my hands on it, imagining the bulge. Thinking of how my breasts would weigh so heavily. What on earth would that feel like?

Dan hadn’t been bugging me about the baby decision, but he hadn’t forgotten it, either. I’d seen him with Leah. I knew he wanted our child-children! I knew he believed we would be good parents. That we would love a baby.

He knew he could do it. He believed I could. I was the one uncertain of that.

My mother hadn’t been sure she could love the offspring of a stranger, even though Leah had become her son’s daughter as fully as if he’d created her. I wasn’t so foolish as to think one afternoon could change everything overnight, but I also couldn’t forget the look on my mother’s face as she looked down at my niece.

My mother had loved her children. If I wanted to be entirely charitable, I could postulate that she still did, no matter how difficult it was to see that love. And if my mother had been able to do it, if she could do it now with my brother’s child, well…maybe I could do it, too.

* * *

It wasn’t until the next night that I realized I’d forgotten to take my pill the night before. I stared at the small foil package and the extra pill with some befuddlement. I couldn’t recall ever forgetting a pill before, not in all the years I’d taken them.

I knew the importance of taking them both, doubling up to prevent them from failing, but when my fingers made to punch out both pills, they hesitated. What if I didn’t take the one I’d missed, but just kept on with the week as though I’d taken it?

I could have calculated the risk easily enough, if I’d had the statistics in front of me. I was very good with numbers. All I did instead was to pop the regular pill in my mouth and toss the other down the drain.

“Everything okay?” Dan looked at me from over the edge of his book. He’d started another garishly covered paperback, but he put it aside with his finger marking his place when I crossed to sit on his side of the bed.

“Yes.” I took the book from him and settled it on his nightstand.

“Ah.” Dan took off his glasses and put his hands behind his head. “You’ve come to ravish me.”

“I have.” We smiled. I ran a finger down his chest to where the sheets covered him. When I pulled them aside, I shook my head in mock scolding. “This doesn’t help.”

He looked at the soft cotton pajama bottoms. “Take them off.”

I stood. “You take them off.”

He grinned and hooked his thumbs in the sides, but I held up my hand. “No. Not like that.”

I took a seat in the rocking chair and gestured at him to stand up. “I want to watch you.”

The pajamas were already tenting when he got out of bed. “Do you want me to put on some music?”

“No.” I kept my face stern even though I wanted to giggle. I didn’t want to laugh; it would ruin the mood.

Dan stood in front of me, thumbs hooked in his waistband. “You want me to just strip ‚Aoem off, or what?”

“Surprise me.” I parted my legs so the hem of my short nightgown rode up. I was naked beneath.

I loved the way his eyes gleamed and the way his tongue snuck out to swipe across his lips. Dan didn’t have to worry about extra curves. He had been blessed with good genes. Now he eyed me, one hip cocked.

I inched my hem higher and ran a hand over the soft patch of hair between my legs. I wasn’t stroking myself. Not yet. But there was definitely the promise I might start.

He had such a playful side. It was sexy. Now, watching me, Dan ran his hands over his chest. Up and down, then over his belly. He traced the lines of muscle in his abs and the indentations of his ribs. He licked the fingertips on both hands and circled his nipples. It should have been silly, but my throat tightened.

He didn’t do a bump and grind. It was more like a slow, easy exploration of his body. He kept his gaze locked on mine the whole time, too. My hand slid again, and this time found my clit. I moved my finger in small circles as I watched him touch himself the way I wanted to be touching him.

He turned around to slide the waist of his pajamas down just far enough for me to see the small patch of hair at the base of his spine. I loved to lick that spot. He loved me to lick it. He eased the elastic a little lower, then lower again, to reveal the crack of his ass. He tossed me a look over his shoulder and turned, pulling the waistband up again.

“Tease,” I murmured.

He laughed softly and pushed the cloth down in front until the first fluff of his pubic hair showed. He’d offered once to shave down there, but I’d protested. Now he just kept himself trimmed. I held my breath as he pushed the pants lower, lower…

“You are a tease!” I told him when he let go and the elastic snapped back up around his hips.

“You told me to surprise you.” He hooked his thumbs into the fabric but didn’t pull it off.

I couldn’t deny it. Instead, I parted my legs wider and gave him a full glimpse of my body. I slipped my fingers down low enough to find slippery fluid. He licked his mouth again.

“I love to watch you touch yourself,” he said.

“Let me see you do the same,” I breathed.

Dan put a hand over the bulge in his pants. He stroked himself a few times through the cloth. Then he reached inside and stroked again. His face tightened and he bit his lower lip a little.

“No fair!” I said.

Dan’s laugh came out a little strangled. “Fine.”

He pushed his pajamas down, finally, and stepped out of them. He gripped his erection as he kicked away the bottoms. When he stroked down, slowly, I couldn’t decide where to look: at his face, taut with desire, or at his cock, so deliciously hard.

My body responded. My breath came faster, my pulse sped up, my clit grew harder beneath my fingertips. The curved wood beneath my bare ass had warmed to my skin, smooth, and I slid on it as I set the chair to rocking.

We’d fucked on this chair, more than once, and I thought of that now. Of how Dan’s prick felt inside me as we rocked, of how good it felt when my clitoris rubbed his stomach. How easy it was to thrust and move with the chair helping us.

* * *

Dan’s hand moved up and down on his erection. I did love watching him. There was something singular in him jerking himself and in watching how he moved his hand to bring himself the most pleasure. He added a twist to his wrist as he stroked the head of his cock. I caught a glimpse of pre-come glistening as he stroked. He stood with his feet spread apart to anchor himself, and it was easy to imagine myself on my knees in front of him.

I knew how he’d taste and the sound he’d make when I closed my lips over his penis. I didn’t, though. I watched him stroke himself, instead, as I brought myself closer and closer to climax.

We could have finished that way, watching each other. But when my cunt gave its first spasm, hovering on the edge of coming, I pulled my hand away. I wanted to squirm on the chair. I wanted to push my cunt against the air, or squeeze my thighs together, keeping myself from tipping into orgasm, but only barely.

“Dan,” I said.

That was all it took. He crossed to me in two strides. I almost came when he pulled me to my feet. The world tipped a little as pleasure swooped over me, but I breathed deep and managed to hold it off. Dan took my place on the chair and pulled me onto his lap. I slid onto his prick, my clit against his belly, our mouths locked. I cried out, the sound lost against his lips. He fucked upward as his hands cupped my ass.

I was already coming. My body jerked. My fingers dug into his shoulders. He thrust harder as the chair rocked. The floor squeaked. He said my name. My orgasm became all-encompassing, immense, enormous. The world. The universe. Pleasure overtook me.

Dan yelled when he came. His final thrust lifted me up, and when we settled the chair kept rocking, though we’d stopped. He put his arms around me, tight. I felt him throb inside me as my cunt fluttered in climax. I couldn’t always feel it, and tonight it seemed especially appropriate that I could.

I thought of him spurting inside me. Dan’s body had made sperm, small, wriggling and invisible, that even now were swimming mightily up the convulsing corridor of my vagina to seek the cavern of my womb. Would it welcome them? Had my body created an egg, waiting, even now, to be conquered? It wasn’t likely, but neither was it impossible. Many women who’d counted themselves “safe” had ended up getting pregnant.

Dan had buried his face against my chest with a happy sigh. His hair tickled my nose. Our bodies glued together, sticky from sweat, as the chair rocked to a stop. I didn’t move, too content to bother.

We didn’t have secrets anymore, and I was glad for that. Even so, I didn’t tell him I’d forgotten and then deliberately not taken my pill. I wasn’t sure there’d be a point in telling him we may or may not have made a baby.

“I love you.” Dan kissed my collarbone.

“I love you too.” So easy to say it, now.

Easier to mean it, too.

* * *

“Fuck me with a barbed-wire dildo!” Marcy’s voice echoed through the tiled hall, and nobody blinked an eye. “Where the fuck is Wayne?”

“I’ve left a message with his secretary, on his voice mail and on his cell,” I told her. “He’ll be here.”

Marcy let out a low, guttural groan. Sweat had plastered her hair to her forehead. Dark circles shadowed her eyes, and the corners of her mouth had cracked a little. She gripped my arm with fingers like talons, but I didn’t dare show a wince. I wasn’t the one getting ready to push a bowling ball out of my body.

We’d been walking for an hour as she labored. Marcy had called me when her efforts to get in touch with her husband had failed. She’d driven herself to Harrisburg Hospital and I’d met her there, not because I had any burning desire to watch my friend give birth, but because she’d had nobody else.

Funny how Marcy hadn’t considered me her last resort, though. She’d hugged me fiercely when I got there and chattered on and on in a bright, happy voice as we got her settled in. It took me twenty minutes of listening to her babble for me to realize Marcy was terrified.

Her water hadn’t broken yet, so she’d been encouraged to walk up and down the halls to help with her labor. The first half an hour had been fine. She’d been upbeat, if still a little manic, but as time wore on and the contractions got harder and Wayne was nowhere to be found, Marcy had ceased with the little Susie Sunshine act.

“God damn him,” she said. “I fucking told him to keep his motherfucking phone charged…. Fuck!” She clutched her belly and stopped, hunching. She breathed in a series of rapid, whistling breaths while I stood by, helpless to do anything but watch.

“He’ll be here,” I repeated. Please God, I prayed. Let him get here. Soon.

When the contraction stopped, the tears started. Marcy turned to me with a desperate look. “Thank you for being with me, Elle. Thank you.”

Guilt stabbed me. “Of course I’d be here for you, Marcy. You know that.”

She gripped my hand as another contraction rolled over her. Her lips thinned to pale lines in her face. “Fucking hell!”

Marcy wasn’t the only woman in labor. I could hear the burble of television sets in some of the labor and delivery rooms, and an occasional grunt or cry. There were women giving birth all over the place here. The air was thick with the odor of blood and fear and joy; my stomach kept trying to turn and I wouldn’t let it.

“I’m so glad you’re here.” Marcy gripped the wooden handrail along the wall. “You’re always so together, Elle. You’re always so calm.”

I was anything but calm, but hell, Marcy was expecting me to be something for her and I could give her that, at least. “It’s all going to be okay.”

She nodded and then looked up at me, her face a mask of surprise. I didn’t know why until a second later when the rapid patter of liquid hitting the tile floor caught my attention. We both looked down, though I doubted Marcy could see past her belly.

“My water just broke!”

“It’s okay.” I gripped her hand. “Let’s get you into your room.”

It all happened very fast after that. Nurses and midwives showed up to do their jobs. Wayne, tie askew and hair windblown, arrived with a story about traffic and dead cell batteries. Marcy forgave him at once. The looks on their faces when he held her hand and kissed it was like something from a movie.

Wayne’s eyes rolling up in the back of his head and him hitting the tile floor with the sound of a pumpkin breaking open was somewhat less glamorous.

I’d been edging my way out of the room at that point, preferring to leave them to their privacy, but when Wayne hit the ground Marcy shrieked my name, and I found myself at her side in a second.

“He’s okay,” I told her. Two orderlies got him to his feet and into a chair, where he promptly put his head between his knees.

“Get ready to push,” the midwife said. “Elle, can you hold her leg for her?”

Did I have a choice? I positioned myself at the foot of the table with Marcy’s knee lodged firmly in the stirrup of my hands as I kept it pulled back to help her push. She screamed. Wayne looked up, face pale but determined, and got to his feet. They slapped a gown and gloves on him as fast as a pit crew changing the tires on a race car. The midwife cooed soothing phrases I didn’t hear.

And Marcy’s baby was born.

I saw the head, crowning, the sleek dark hair wet and the skull pulsing. She pushed again, in silence this time. The baby slid forth in a gush of blood and liquid, the smell of it ripe and indescribable. Wayne held out his hands and his son slid into the welcoming cradle of his arms. He was crying. So was the baby, and Marcy.

So was I.

Ten minutes later she held him, dried and buffed and wrapped in a blanket, to her breast. She didn’t care who saw her nakedness, or that strangers were wiping her body clean, or that she needed three stitches to repair a tear.

“Look, oh, look,” she said in a voice full of wonder. “How beautiful he is.”

And he was.

* * *

My phone buzzed in my pocket as I washed my hands at the sink of the main restroom on the labor-and-delivery floor. I’d left Marcy and Wayne to share their son without witness. They hadn’t even noticed me leaving.

“Elle?” Dan’s voice sounded strained. “Where are you?”

“I’m at Harrisburg Hospital.” Elation made my voice shake. “Marcy just had her baby. Where are you?”

He was silent so long I thought we’d lost the connection. When he spoke again, he didn’t sound like my Dan, the man who always made everything all right for me.

“I’m at the hospital, too,” he said. “My dad just had a stroke.”

* * *

Dotty Stewart wrung her handkerchief in her hands over and over until the fabric twisted. Then she’d let it unwind, only to twist it again. She didn’t hold herself the way my mother would have. Dotty didn’t care how she looked to anyone else just then.

“Have you called your brother?” she asked. “Did you call Sam?”

“I tried. I left a message.” Dan’s voice was still strained, but he’d pulled himself together for his mom.

“Oh, I wish Sam were here,” his mother said before she went to sit again by her husband’s side.

I don’t think she meant it to be hurtful. If Dotty had favorites I’d never seen evidence of it. Then again, I’d only met his brother very briefly at our wedding. Dan and his brother got along fine with distance between them. Though they’d never said it, I got the impression Sam’s moving to New York hadn’t exactly made him the favorite son.

Dan paced in the waiting room and drank cup after cup of black coffee. His mother kept up her vigil by Morty’s side. I would have held Dan’s hand, if he’d wanted, but instead I sat and watched him traverse the linoleum floor. I’d have gone in his father’s room with him, too, when they came to get him, but he shook his head a little.

“You don’t have to come.”

“If you need me, Dan, I’ll be there.” He’d been there for me when my father had died. I’d needed him to be. I reached for him and pulled him close for a kiss, both of us ignoring the nurse sent to fetch him.

“It might be uncomfortable for you.” He spoke in a low voice against the side of my neck. His arms tightened.

I thought what he meant was that it might be uncomfortable for him to have me there. To see him upset, maybe even crying. I held him a little closer.

“If you need me, I’m here.”

He nodded and gripped my hands. He looked into my eyes. “I know you are.”

I’d never had to be strong for him before. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it might be. Together we went to listen to what the doctors had to say.

It wasn’t entirely good, but it wasn’t all bad. His dad had suffered a stroke, but a mild one. He was expected to regain consciousness within a few hours, and they didn’t think there’d been much damage to his brain. It meant another few hours of waiting, though, in which we visited the cafeteria and Dan tried calling his brother again. We waited another hour in the small hospital room before Morty opened his eyes. Dotty had stepped out to use the bathroom. Dan had heard from his brother and was even now out in the corridor talking to him.

“Heya,” Morty said and licked his lips. He gestured at me to come closer. “Heya, girlie.”

“Hi, Morty.” I took his hand. The skin felt like onionskin. “How are you feeling?”

“Not so good, not so good.” He coughed a little, but the monitors didn’t beep erratically and I didn’t think I needed to holler for a nurse. “How’re you?”

I hadn’t known Morty that long, really. A couple years. But he’d been more of a father to me than my own had been for a long time. My throat closed as I squeezed his hand ever so gently. I didn’t want to lose him, and yet my grief would be so much less than Dan’s.

“I’m okay, Morty. I should go get Dotty.”

He shook his head a bit. I’d always seen a lot of Morty in Dan, but now I saw a bit of Dan in Morty. “Not yet. Sit here with me for a minute.”

I did, without letting go of his hand. We didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Morty looked as though he wanted to say something important, and my heart beat faster as I anticipated some sort of last words. It wasn’t my place to hear them, if this were his final speech.

“You’re good for my boy.”

“He’s good for me.”

Morty smiled. His fingers twitched in mine, not quite a squeeze but a valiant effort. “Me and Dot, we always wanted a girl. She couldn’t have another, you know. After Sam. We tried, but she lost ‚Aoem. Finally, the doctor just said, no more. You’ll kill yourself. So that was that.”

I hadn’t known. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Morty shook his head a little again. His grin was a ghost of its normal brightness, but still there. I could so easily see how Dan would look in another thirty years. “We got our daughter, didn’t we?”

I smiled. “Thanks.”

“Our Sam, now, he might not ever settle down. But Danny, he’s a smart one.” Morty shifted in the bed and looked a little pained. Alarmed, I made to move, but he shook his head again. “Now, it’s not my way to push.”

Not compared to my mother, that was for sure.

“But it surely would make me happy…me and Dotty both, you know…”

“If we had a baby?” I said quietly, leaning forward though there was nobody to overhear us.

“Yes.” Morty’s eyes gleamed.

I leaned even closer, conspiring. “I think we’re working on it.”

He laughed, and the laugh trailed away into a weak cough. “Good. Does Danny know that?”

“He was there,” I said, which wasn’t quite the right answer but made him laugh again. I’d never have said such a ribald thing to my mother, but Dan’s dad was different.

“Good,” he said again and closed his eyes for so long I was afraid he wouldn’t open them. Then, “Good.”

* * *

“C’mon. You’ve had a very long day.” I bent over the bath and turned on the faucets. We had a nice, big bathtub put in by the previous owners. They’d obviously been obsessed with the bathroom, since it was the only room in the house to have been completely renovated. I added some lavender-scented oil. “You need this.”

“I need to get to bed….” But he was only protesting for show as I unbuckled his belt and helped him out of his clothes.

I put him into the bath and scrubbed him with some body wash and a loofah. Water splashed over the edges of the tub and wet my clothes, but I kept at it, washing and kneading him until he closed his eyes and gave himself up to my ministrations. When I was done, I helped him out, dried him off and took him to bed.

I slid in, naked, beside him. He was warm from the hot water and my skin was a little cool, but he didn’t object when I put my arm over his chest and my leg over his thighs. I kissed his shoulder.

Sometimes we said more with silence than with all our words.

When I kissed my way down his arm and across to his belly, he sighed. When I kissed lower, Dan’s belly vibrated under my lips. My hand found his cock and I stroked him erect in a minute. He put his hand on top of my head, though, when I went to move lower.

“Elle.”

I looked up at him. “Shh. I love you. Let me do this.”

He smiled a little. “I need this, too?”

I nodded. “You want me to do this.”

He’d said those same words to me, in the past, and he’d been right. The way I was right now. Sex has many uses I would never pretend to know or want to know, but I did know the comfort losing oneself in pleasure could bring.

I made love to him with my hands and tongue for a while until he shivered. Then I climbed on top of him. He groaned as he slid inside me; that simple sound sent a pulse of arousal through me. I always got turned on at the sounds he made.

I’d meant to do this for him, not for me, but he slid a hand between us and I wasn’t going to complain. We moved together, slow at first then faster. I thought he might come right away, and that would have been fine, but Dan looked at me, watching my face as he used his thumb to provide steady pressure on my clit. When I gasped, he smiled.

“I want to watch you come,” he whispered. “Let me see it.”

I did a minute after that.

He thrust inside me a few more times before his face tightened and he gasped out my name. Then he gathered me to him and held me tight. He kissed me.

“I love you,” he said. “God, I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” I whispered, holding him as hard as I could. I didn’t want to let go, not when he needed me to hold on.

I thought he might cry, but he didn’t. His breathing slowed. Our bodies cooled. I pulled the blankets over us and snuggled into his side. I didn’t sleep, but I listened to him sleeping.

I knew I should get up, take a shower. Brush my teeth.

Take my pill.

Instead I lay there listening to the sound of my husband breathing, and I held on to him with all I had inside me. I’d worried I didn’t have enough for him, but time had shown me I was wrong.

I didn’t get out of bed.

It wasn’t my conversation with Morty that had changed my mind about having a child, or watching my mother with my niece, or my niece herself. It wasn’t watching the miracle of Marcy’s son being born, either.

All of those were reasons. Good reasons. But it was the man beside me who’d proven to me that love was worth everything. That my life, my heart, had room in it for more love than I ever thought possible.

There were dozens of reasons to agree to have a child, but as far as I was concerned, just then, with his breath on my face and the warmth of his skin on mine, there was only one that mattered. Love.

That was reason enough.

* * * * *