Surprise Me...

Skirt next, pulled off in a slow shimmy, then underpants, sliding over hips, gliding down thighs, dropping past calves to her feet, then kicked away.

Naked. Ready.

No, not yet. Condoms in her purse—always have them, always use them, her mother had counseled over and over, way before Melanie and Alana knew what she was talking about.

Now. Ready.

Melanie moved, floated, wafted across the floorboards until she was next to the dark shape that would give her body so much pleasure so soon. For a minute she stood by the bed, imagining, fantasizing, until her desire rose so impatiently she could no longer wait to touch him.

As slowly and gently as possible, she slid the condom under his second pillow, then slipped into the bed, displacing the mattress and covers as imperceptibly as she could. She lay next to him and he stirred, not yet aware of what disturbed his sleep.

He would be soon.

She reached and encountered a muscular bare back, skin smooth and warm. She wanted to purr. This was going to be wonderful.

“Mmm.”

Melanie smiled. “Hello there.”

“Ungh.” He lifted and replaced his head on the pillow, drawing up his legs.

“Are you even awake yet?” She stroked the length of his back, following the bumps of his spine, the contours of his shoulder blades, up to—

He started. “Whah th—”

“Shhh.” She curled around him. “It’s Melanie, you dope.”

“Melanie.” His hoarse whisper nearly made her giggle. Poor guy must have been in a seriously deep sleep.

“What—How—”

“Don’t talk, sleepy man….” She put her lips to his skin, followed the taut muscle across the top of his shoulder. Desire urged her up to straddle him. Rolling him flat on his back, she discovered he slept in the nude, and that one part of him was waking up faster than the rest. She stroked the nicely developed planes of his chest through curling hair, wishing she could see his face, but enjoying the mysterious darkness around them too much to turn on a light. “Just lie back…and enjoy.”

“Oh, my—”

“Shhh.” She leaned down, planted kisses collarbone to throat, throat to chin, orienting herself on the landscape of his fine physique so she wouldn’t aim and miss that sexy mouth when she went for their first kiss.

Found it. She lingered, lips hovering millimeters above his, making hers tingle and tremble with anticipation. Nothing beat this moment, making him wait, making herself wait, too, her body going nuts with hormones and—

Strong arms came around her; his body heaved, and he was on top so fast she barely had time to react.

“Melanie.” The whisper again, this time softer, sweeter, more tender. She suddenly felt oddly disjointed, almost panicky. Something wasn’t right. Something was—

His lips found hers dead on target, as if he could see in the dark. She lay still from shock—one, two, three—then her brain registered that she was being kissed as if she were his last hope of ever being kissed again, that his lips were warm and firm and that they matched hers absolutely perfectly.

She made a tiny whimpering sound of surrender that surprised her. Her arms came up and around his neck and she hung on as if she’d otherwise drown.

The man could kiss.

But it wasn’t just his technique, the kissing was…different, somehow. Nothing like she’d experienced in recent memory. It was.

It was.

It was as if he loved her.

Stoner was kissing her as if she was the greatest thing that had ever happened or that ever could happen to him. And she was kissing him back that way because within a very short time it seemed that had become entirely true.

He lifted off her; she protested with an inarticulate sound, feeling the loss keenly…until those magic lips began exploring, circling her breasts in a slow inward spiral, making her nearly weep with gratitude when they finally found her nipple.

His hands had started a journey of their own, covering her thighs with warm sweeps that made her lift her hips from the bed, going closer and closer to her thighs’ juncture, then retreating, closer, then retreating.

She was crazy hot already for the release of his touch between her legs, and they’d barely even begun. He was nothing like she expected, not selfish, not impatient, not insensitive, absolutely the opposite of all those things.

Stoner.

Her heart started a pointless yearning; she told it to stop immediately, as she had told it so many times. This was sex with a stranger, no different than all the other sex she’d had with all the other strangers.

His fingers reached the starved place between her legs; breath hissed between her teeth. Touched, withdrew, probed farther, withdrew.

It was totally different.

She moaned as he dipped again, circled slowly, retreated, circled again, then his torso moved down and he replaced his fingers with his mouth.

Melanie lay helplessly, not sure what had happened, how she’d lost control of the show to this extent. She struggled to sit up. “You should let me… I want to…”

His turn to shush her. His strong hand planted on her sternum pushed her back down. His lips closed over her clitoris and his tongue began to play in earnest.

She gasped, lifted her head, let it drop, eyes squeezed tight, fighting the pleasure. “No. Too soon.”

He showed no mercy, thrust two fingers inside her and shoved her over the edge within seconds, a deep, satisfying orgasm that went on and on until she was nearly in tears, racked by the contractions and the emotion. Too soon. She only dimly understood the certainty she felt that when they joined bodies, they would also join something much more profound. Now she wouldn’t get the chance anytime soon to see if that level of intimacy could happen between them. It took her hours to recharge for orgasm number two.

“I wanted to come with you.”

“You will, Melanie,” he whispered. Again she had the feeling something wasn’t right. An odd instinct. Disconcerting. She shouldn’t have had that last drink, so she could analyze her reaction more clearly.

He stretched beside her on his side, a dark shape in the darkened room, no longer serving her but an equal partner. She slid her hand down his lean abdomen; he was hard, which pleased her. It meant the work of making her come hadn’t been work.

A sweep down his granite length with an open palm, a light caress of his compacted balls and she fisted his erection, stroked up and down, then paused, thumbing his penis head’s magical softness, encountering moisture she gently spread.

He was perfect.

She bent to take him in her mouth, but he chuckled faintly and she found herself again on her back, wrists pinned over her head.

“I won’t last, Mel—”

“Shh.” She brought his head down to kiss her. She didn’t want him to talk. Every time he did she got that funny feeling, and since everything else about this night had far exceeded her expectations, hell, it had exceeded even her fantasies, she couldn’t bear for anything to be less than ideal.

Luckily, she had a surefire way to stop him wanting to talk. She retrieved the condom from under his pillow and managed to close his hand around it. She wasn’t sure even with all her experience that she could manage in the dark, and she didn’t want to spoil anything by fumbling.

She lay back, listening to the tearing foil, smiling, relaxed, ready. This was all deliciously familiar now. She loved sex. Even when she couldn’t come, she loved the sensations, the joining, the broad expanse of a man’s back above her, the working of his butt muscles as he pushed inside her. She loved doggy style, missionary, her on top, or both of them in—

He would want to see her again, wouldn’t he?

Melanie blew out a silent breath of frustration. Not now. Plenty of time later for doubts and worries and—

He was back, hands exploring her more firmly this time, more insistently. His mouth on her breasts involved teeth as well as tongue. He was rougher in his touch, though patient, seeming to read her reactions and needs as if they were a map in front of him.

Incredibly, she responded, desire building again, breath stuttering, hands wandering over his broad masculine shape.

His thighs nudged hers farther apart; she felt the hard head of his erection at her opening and inhaled sharply. Did she say the moment before the first kiss was her favorite? She was changing her mind. This was her favorite, when the real fun was about to begin.

He breathed her name once more, with reverence that cut through her carnal anticipation and made her again uneasy. Only briefly, because he pushed inside her, dug his arms under and around her, and began to make love to her in a way that showed her the phrase wasn’t just a euphemism but a literal description, an experience she hadn’t known was possible.

Making love.

Afterward—yes, she could come twice within an hour—she lay in his arms, listening to their breathing return to normal, savoring the contact between them, the delicious skin-on-skin, muscle-pressed-to-muscle afterglow, his hands caressing her hair, her cheek, her shoulder.

“Melanie.”

“Not now.” She put a finger in the general vicinity of his lips, repositioned it when she hit his chin instead. She was so enveloped in the glow of this moment, so vulnerable to this man and what they’d just shared, that she couldn’t handle hearing anything discussed. Not that the sex was good, not that it was bad, not that she should leave now, not what he’d had for dinner, nothing. Because every second spent in conversation would bring them closer to the world of reality, and each word would bring them one word closer to when he let her know it was over. “Later. We’ll talk later. Please.”

“Okay,” he whispered, squeezing her tight, nuzzling a kiss into the sensitive side of her neck.

She sighed, peace spreading through her body, instead of that familiar urge to move on to the next thing, the next activity, the next anything. She was content just to be, in this bed with this man on this perfect, perfect night.

Which, like every other night of her crazy life’s adventure, was doomed shortly to end.

2

TRICIA HAWTHORNE SAT in the kitchen she grew up in. Even remodeled, it retained the flavor of her parents, Edith and Edwin Hawthorne. She could remember her mother baking cookies, her father hovering around, eagerly waiting for them to cool. She could remember family dinners around the old table. And she could remember tiptoeing out at midnight on her way to getting drunk. Tiptoeing home drunk at four in the morning, praying neither of her parents would hear her. Sneaking here, sneaking there, doing this, doing that, nothing they ever approved of, behavior that had bewildered and hurt them. Yet they’d loved her, supported her, picked up after her, believing she’d grow out of her wild behavior and settle down.

That only took her until the age of fifty. Good thing her parents were both alive to know their long wait was at an end.

The coffeemaker sputtered out its final drops. Four in the morning… She’d slept only a few hours, finally giving in and resignedly getting up. Tricia had never been a good sleeper, but too many nights were like this now. She’d tried herbal remedies, hypnosis, hot baths, meditation, tapes, relaxation exercises, and finally decided that insomnia was her punishment for a life poorly lived, and that it was just going to be that way until she settled her emotional debts and found inner peace.

She poured her coffee and added skim milk, wishing her waistline and cholesterol count would allow her the luxury of cream. Or one of the enormous bakery blueberry muffins in a plastic container on the counter. She and Melanie were supposed to have breakfast this morning before Melanie went to work, but she hadn’t come home last night. Now it was Tricia’s turn to worry about her daughter, as her parents and Melanie’s older sister, Alana, had been doing for far too long.

Coffee ready, muffins successfully avoided, she sat down on a stool and leaned her elbows on the fancy cream tile counter.

Breakfast with Melanie this morning seemed unlikely to happen now, but Tricia could visit Alana later on, maybe help her unpack boxes. Alana had moved out of this house and in with her boyfriend, Sawyer, the day after they committed to each other—which was also, not coincidentally, Tricia suspected, the day after Tricia had shown up unannounced in Milwaukee. Not that she blamed Alana for holding a grudge. The burden of Tricia’s squandered responsibility had fallen on Alana’s shoulders until age ten, when Edith and Edwin had taken the girls in, giving up on Tricia’s ability to mother them.

Pretty much from the second Alana was born, Tricia had been overwhelmed by what she now understood was practically nonexistent self-esteem due to years of rejecting everything sensible her parents stood for, and instead embracing users and idiots. She’d also been wallowing in the gradual dissolution of her unhealthy relationship with the girls’ father, Tom, who had left for good when she was pregnant with Melanie. Reeling from the pain, Tricia had continued to drown herself in alcohol, drugs and other men, telling herself the girls were okay, or, even worse, not considering them at all. She had wanted her next fix, her next sexual high, always the next thing. Any good that had developed in either daughter was thanks to their grandparents. All Tricia had contributed was damage.

Last year, after she’d been living in California more or less permanently with her men and her art, the death of a close friend’s daughter due to a drug overdose on the day Tricia turned fifty had shot home the obvious truth that she wasn’t going to have forever to get to know her own kids.

Depression followed, then therapy, various withdrawals, more depression, in the process driving away the latest man she’d shacked up with. Tricia had moved in with a friend—Dahlia, who deserved sainthood for putting up with her—and slowly and surely she’d pulled herself out of the muck of clueless oblivion, limb by limb washed herself with honesty, put on clean dry clothes of self-acceptance, sold everything she couldn’t fit in a suitcase except her art supplies, and bought a one-way ticket to Milwaukee.

Now she’d vowed, however long it took, to make amends, to be worthy of forgiveness. She was sober, drug-free, dateless, and determined for the first time in her adult life to be an adult. To live a life she and her daughters and her parents could be proud of. A huge and often terrifying goal.

One step at a time. One day at a time.

A key jiggled the back-door lock. The familiar sound catapulted Tricia back to memories of guilty predawn homecomings. The handle turning with a slight rattle. The door opening… Careful! The hinges squeaked if pushed too fast.

Soft footsteps, a hand carrying shoes, door closing, shh, don’t let Mom and Dad hear….

Except in this case, there was only Mom, no Dad; the mom was Tricia, while the child sneaking in was her twenty-six-year-old daughter. “Hi, Melanie.”

Melanie gasped; her hand flew to her chest, luckily not the one holding her strappy black high-heeled sandals or they would have flown up and smacked her in the head. “Mom. Oh, my gosh, you scared me. What are you doing up at this hour?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“Oh.” She arranged her features into Cautious Liar Mode. Tricia nearly chuckled. Nothing Melanie could pull would be new to her. “I was out late with a girlfriend and—”

“How about the truth?” Tricia sipped her coffee, apparently unconcerned, inside probably ten times more nervous than Melanie. She was never comfortable with authority, and it had been years since she’d had to be a parent. “Saves time for both of us.”

Melanie blinked. Frowned. Thumped her shoes onto the floor and sidled up to the counter. “Any more coffee?’

Tricia jerked her head back toward the machine. “Help yourself.”

She did, this amazing beautiful woman Tricia knew so little about. Melanie had been a remarkably peaceful baby, a relief after Alana, who had screamed at anything and everything. Tricia had been living with their father for three years before he’d announced he was too young for a family. Instead of marrying her, he was going off to find himself in India.

Lose himself, more likely. She’d never heard from him again.

“Well.” Melanie perched on the stool opposite her mother at the counter. Her lips were swollen, chin pink from stubble burn, hair messed, eyes glowing. She could say whatever she wanted, but Tricia knew where she’d been. “Actually, I was with a guy.”

“No kidding.”

“What?” She touched her face. “How can you tell?”

“A mother always knows.” She got through the words with the appropriate deadpan expression, then couldn’t help it, let out a snort of laughter.

Melanie’s eyes grew rounder, if that were possible. “You do that just like Alana.”

“What?”

“That funny laugh.”

“Yeah?” She wouldn’t let on how it touched her, tortured her, too. How many of their shared family traits had she missed out on discovering? At least it wasn’t too late for that. “Is this a guy you’ve…been with before?”

“First time. He’s…amazing.” She sighed; her eyes softened. She might as well have had hearts popping out the top of her head.

Tricia’s chest ached. Oh, Melanie. The pain she’d continue to go through if she didn’t stop making men the keepers of her happiness. The latest entry on the long list of ways Tricia had let her daughters down, a list that would inevitably lengthen as she caught up on the years she hadn’t been around.

But she was ready. Primed. Strong. Focused. She’d do whatever it took. “If he was that amazing, why did you leave? You could have rescheduled breakfast with me. You know I would have understood.”

“Oh.” Melanie blushed, looked down at her bright pink mug, decorated with angels and hearts. A Valentine’s Day present? From whom? Tricia had missed so much. “I didn’t want to skip breakfast with you.”

Not entirely true. “And.?”

Her daughter’s head jerked up. “And?”

“Melanie. You can’t shock me. You have no reason to hide anything from me. There’s some other reason you’re not telling the truth.”

Melanie met her eyes, hers blue like her father’s, only gentler. It had been a lot of years since Tricia had looked into them with a clear head. “Mom, are you psychic? Seriously?”

Tricia shrugged. She was, sort of, but enough people had made fun of her that she didn’t bother claiming the title anymore. “Call it women’s intuition. Now tell me. Why did you leave an amazing guy in the middle of a wonderful night?”

Melanie twisted her mouth, the same way she had when she was small and something confused her. Amazing how little had changed—and how much. “I went to sleep next to him completely blissed out, then I woke up and realized I had to meet you for breakfast, but also…that in the morning, it would be, uh…”

“Morning.” Tricia spoke without sarcasm. She understood. “Everything that was safe and mysterious and beautiful in the dark, blurred by alcohol, would be stark and over-lit and real. And hard. And I’m not talking about the guy’s you-know-what.”

Melanie interrupted her shocked look with a giggle. “Yes. Yes, that’s it. How did you know?”

Tricia answered by lifting her eyebrow. Think, Melanie.

Her face fell. “Oh, right. You’re the expert.”

“Was. I’m not proud of it.”

Melanie lifted her chin, again a stubborn three-year-old. “I’m not ashamed of what I do.”

“I’m not asking you to be. I wish I’d lived my life differently. That has nothing to do with you or how you live yours.”

“True.” She took another sip of coffee.

“What’s his name?”

“Stoner.” Said defensively. “He’s the brother of…a good friend and coworker. Edgar. Edgar Raymond.”

“Stoner, huh?” Tricia watched her daughter curiously. No problem talking about Stoner. But Edgar… “You seeing him again?”

Melanie shrugged, eyes on the counter. “He was asleep when I left.”

“I’m sure he knows how to find you.” Tricia finished her coffee in silence. She had a lot more to say about all this, but she wasn’t good at motherhood yet, maybe she never would be, and she wanted to think things over before stumbling into any blunders when her reconciliation with her daughters was still so raw and new. “I’m going to shower. Then we can go out later on.”

“How about Ted’s on Sixty-second Street? It’s a great greasy spoon.”

“Hey, I’m a native, too.” Tricia smiled, slighted even though she didn’t blame her daughter for forgetting. “I know Ted’s.”

“Right.” Melanie nodded, looking embarrassed and so beautiful Tricia wanted to hug her and kiss her smooth cheek, so different from the plump baby one she’d kissed so often—there were some redeeming memories. But she didn’t know how Melanie would react, and she wasn’t going to risk affection this early into their reunion.

“See you soon.” She put her cup in the sink, went down the narrow hallway and climbed the stairs, thinking that after her shower she’d take a few minutes to meditate over the problem with Melanie, see if the collective unconscious had any advice to offer.

Alana’s path through life didn’t worry her too much. But Melanie’s…Melanie needed maternal intervention.

And though it was ironic, given that Tricia was exactly the type of mother who’d caused Melanie to have this problem in the first place, she was also exactly the type of mother who could help her daughter change her life for the better.

EDGAR WOKE UP KNOWING something was wrong. No, not wrong, something had happened. Something huge, something—

Melanie.

He opened his eyes. The space next to him in bed was empty. No Melanie.

Damn it. He’d dreamed about spending a night with her many times—plenty while he was awake. This time he’d swear their being together had really happened. Hadn’t it?

He rubbed his forehead, trying to clear his fuzzy brain. On the one hand nothing could be less likely. He’d known Melanie two years and been in love with her for both of them. In all that time she’d never given him more than a sisterly glance. So for her to jump into his bed out of the blue and seduce him made about as much sense as conservatives voting for huge tax hikes.

Except…last week sitting with Melanie on the couch in this apartment, right before Stoner had walked in and made Melanie’s jaw go slack, just before that, she’d been saying something about wanting to date a different type of guy, giving Edgar real hope for the first time.

Maybe he wasn’t crazy?

He had to be crazy.

He blinked, struggled up, then on impulse leaned down to inhale over the pillow she’d used to see if traces of her scent lingered.

Yes. Oh, my God, yes. He was instantly hard again. She’d really been here. His most potent sexual fantasy and his deepest emotional fantasy—both came true in one mind-blowing unexpected night.

But how? Why?

Maybe she was still here? Eating breakfast? Using the bathroom? Watching TV? He got out of bed, stepped into a pair of gray boxers and walked through the apartment. Stoner hadn’t come home. What a gratifying non-surprise. Last night Edgar had dutifully been getting ready to bunk down in the sofa bed when he’d realized that if Stoner followed his usual pattern after a night out with his band, he wouldn’t be back until morning. Damned if Edgar would spend another lumpy, restless night while his comfortable queen-size bed lay empty.

He finished his rounds. No Melanie, not that he really expected she’d still be here. But also no note. No messages. No “Thanks for last night, it was the best time of my entire life. Call me ASAP. I love you. Melanie.”