Broken

My inhibitions are loose and so’s my throat. I can take him all the way in, a skill I’m proud of. I close my lips around the base of his prick and suck, working my mouth on him a couple seconds before sliding off to add some suction to the head. He pushes forward, into my mouth. I put a hand on his cock to control it. I don’t want to gag. Drunk as I am, I might just puke all over him.

My hand also lets me stroke and suck him at the same time, so he gets twice the pleasure. In another minute, he makes that growly noise and I smile. I suck him a little bit more, getting into the rhythm the same way I did at the club. It’s just a different kind of dance.

He puts a hand in my hair and his fingers tangle, pulling. I wince and suck him a little harder. He’s thrusting hard, now. I let my mouth pop off and look at his cock. It’s wet from my saliva. I pump my fist up and down along it, looking up to watch his face. He’s not looking at me now. His eyes are closed.

A second later, he opens them. “Get up.”

I’m a little clumsy from alcohol and being on the floor for so long, but he helps me with his hands under my elbows. I laugh when he pulls me upright, but the laugh becomes a squeak of surprise when he turns me so fast my head spins. He pushes my hands flat against the table.

I’m bent over at the waist, surprised at how fast he moved. He pushes my skirt up to my hips. Cool air caresses my ass, bared by my thong panties. He runs a finger along the string at the small of my back, then pulls it out of my ass crack and takes my panties off before I can say a word. He pushes my feet apart with one of his and I bend further over the table, my hands skidding along the slick surface. I knock into the shot glass, which rolls off onto the floor but doesn’t break.

I’d protest but he’s already stroking my clit. My pussy’s as surprised as I am, but way faster at acclimating. I’m already wet, I know, because he pushes a finger inside me and then brings it up to my clit again and every motion gets smoother, coated in my slickness.

I make a noise, too. His cock nudges my ass and I spread my legs wider on my own. I lay along the table, pushing my ass into the air so he can reach my cunt. When he puts two fingers inside me, I cry out. He’s doing this thing to me that feels so good I shake, something with two fingers inside me and his other hand fingering my clit. He puts a third finger inside, stretching me as he pinches my clit. The sensation’s so startling, I jump and moan.

“Where’ve you been all my life?”

He doesn’t answer, but I don’t care because he’s finger fucking me so good. My hips rock and I push my cunt against his hand, wanting to take all of him inside me.

“Fuck me!” It’s a command and an invitation. I grope for my purse, slung over the back of the kitchen chair. I pull out the rubber and pass it back to him.

“Just a minute.”

I moan a protest but in a second he’s started up that twin fingering thing again and I’m jittering and jumping under his touch as if he’s hooked me up to a socket in the wall.

I’m so wet he fits a fourth finger inside me. He jerks my clit, up and down, rolling it every so often in a way that makes me fucking mindless.

I think I’m begging him at this point, even though I don’t really want him to stop doing what he’s doing with his hands. All at once I go from “ooh” to “hell yeah!” And there’s no way I could stop myself from coming even if I wanted to. My fingers clutch the table and I shout.

My pussy closes around his fingers. My clit spasms. He stops moving for a moment while my body shakes around him. I lay my cheek on the table and close my eyes. It’s good, so good. I’m spent, breathless.

He takes his hands away. I don’t move. I’m boneless.

He puts one hand on my hip. His cock nudges my cunt.

He pushes inside me slowly, and I make a sleepy noise. He fills me all the way. I push up on my hands a little to take the pressure off my boobs.

He sets a slow steady pace, and I’m happy to take it because I already came and I really don’t care what he does to finish himself off. My clit’s buzzing a little, but I’m not really ready for another orgasm.

“Yeah, baby, fuck me harder.” This seems like a good thing to say.

He keeps the same steady pace. I push up higher, and he unhooks the clip holding my shirt closed behind my neck. The scarves fall open. He reaches around to grab my tit, tweaking the nipple upright. That feels good, too. My clitty’s buzzing harder, oh, fuck, and I’m so wet he slides in and out of me as easy as anything. I moan and push my ass against him.

Maybe this is what he was waiting for, because he moves faster. Our bodies make a slapping sound. His thrusts move me and the table, which skids on the tile floor. I moan louder when he twists my nipple, but what I really need is a finger on my clit to get me off again.

Sudden wetness on my back startles me. He’s stroked the lemon wedge across my shoulder blade. He takes the sugar. Grains tickle my back. The next moment his tongue follows it and he licks me clean.

Wow. I’m really getting closer now. He’s fucking me so hard and fast I have to clutch the table edge to keep from moving. He’s making small, sexy grunts that are driving me crazy with lust.

I’m getting closer but I need a little more. Just a little more something. Then, he gives it to me. His fingers trace the cleft of my ass, probing. His thumb presses against me back there, right on my pucker. My moan catches in my throat and I jump. My hips buck forward. Fuck, fuck, oh fuck, that’s not what I was expecting, but damn, it’s so good…

In another second I’m coming for the second time. My breath stutters out. I try to gasp in another but my orgasm has stolen my breath and the best I can do is sip at the air.

He thrusts into me once more and cries out, voice hoarse. We pant together after that, coming down. My legs tremble and my belly hurts from where it’s rubbed on the table edge, but don’t really care too much because I’m so utterly, totally sated.

He pulls out. By the time I turn around and tug my skirt back down over my thighs, he’s already tossed the rubber in the trash and pulled up his pants. He washes his hands at the sink while I watch.

I’m bleary and tired and still mostly drunk, but I give him a big, smug smile. “Wow.”

He looks at me over his shoulder. Like an afterthought. He smiles. “Yeah, thanks.”

I move closer to him, lazy and cuddly the way really good sex makes me feel. I reach for him, and he lets me hug him but even though I tilt my face up to his, he doesn’t kiss me.

“Hey,” I say, soft and purring. “Be nice to me.”

He bends and kisses my cheek, then gently but firmly pushes me from him and leaves the kitchen. I stare after him, pissed off. I follow him.

“Hey!”

He’s put on his coat. He turns, hand on the doorknob.

“You’re leaving?” I put my hands on my hips, indignant. “Just like that?”

Joe nods once, so solemn I feel like I can’t really rage at him. I mean…it was a hookup, yeah, I get it. But it was really, really great sex, the kind that’s worth breakfast, at least.

“But…”

He shakes his head, stopping me. Then he opens the door and leaves. Only when it’s closed behind him do I realize he never bothered to ask my name.

Joe twirled a straw paper in his fingers, knotting it. He didn’t look at me. He hadn’t looked at me since he sat down.

“Why didn’t you ask her name?” I hadn’t eaten anything. I hadn’t even opened my lunch bag. Though I was only a few inches away from Joe on the bench, it might as well have been miles.

He turned, slowly. Our eyes met. I drew in a breath and held it. The look he gave me was a challenge of some sort.

“Because it didn’t matter.”

Maybe her name didn’t matter, but his reason for not asking did. His story comforted me. This was the Joe I knew, the teller of tales and splitter of peaches. Not the man who last month had threatened to upset the balance of our relationship by wanting to change.

“About last month,” I said finally. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “You were right.”

I nodded, as if he’d made a longer explanation. Not even when we first met had our silence been so uncomfortable. I had to look away, at last, afraid my face showed too much of what I couldn’t say.

“I wasn’t even planning on going home with her,” he said after a minute. “Or with anyone.”

“So…why did you?” I couldn’t help the fascination.

“C’mon, Sadie. You know how it is.”

“No, actually. I don’t.”

Joe let a puff of air seep from his lips, not quite a whistle. “You’ve never?”

“No. Never.” I shook my head to further emphasize my point.

“You’ve never been with someone only once.” His tone sounded disbelieving or envious, I wasn’t sure which.

“I’ve only been with one man.” The admission wasn’t shameful, just…the truth. It seemed to shock Joe, who probably couldn’t comprehend my experience any more than I could his.

“Only one.”

“Yes.”

He shook his head a bit. “Good for you.”

I laughed a little. “You’re avoiding the question. If you weren’t planning on going home with someone, why did you?”

“Because I could. Because she asked. Because…I always do.”

I made a small noise, shaking my head as I unwrapped my lunch. Joe looked over at me as he unscrewed the cap on his bottle of soda. He took a long, slow drink. I imagined him tasting like lemon and vodka and kept my eyes carefully on my sandwich.

“Haven’t you ever done something just because it’s easier to do it than not?”

I didn’t have to think long before answering. “Of course.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s not as exciting as your story, Joe.”

He smiled, leaning forward. “No? That’s too bad. Tell me, anyway.”

I was used to giving people what they wanted. Joe was used to getting it. I told him.

“When I was growing up, my sister and I fell into these…stereotypes, I guess you could say. I was the smart one. She was the pretty one. We kept it up through college, and I guess even now. It’s stupid, but you know how families are.”

“Try being the disappointing one.”

I leaned back on the bench to study him. He was impeccably dressed, as always. Today his shirt was blue, his favorite color. It made his eyes seem greener than usual. He was the epitome of a clean-cut businessman. Whatever he did, he did it too well to be a disappointment.

I laughed. “Oh, you aren’t. You can’t be. Look at you, Mr. Successful.”

He shrugged, smiling. “My parents aren’t impressed with fancy suits and expensive ties.”

I knew he had a sister who was married with children and a brother who’d died. This was the first time I’d heard him talk about his parents.

“As far as ties go, it’s a very nice one,” I told him. “Even if they don’t like it, I do.”

He gave me a one-eyed, squinting grin that made me laugh. “Yeah? You’re impressed by this tie?”

“Keep in mind my knowledge of men’s haute couture is pretty limited.”

He stroked the fabric. “I like this one, too.”

The silence between us wasn’t awkward this time.

“Sometimes,” Joe said after a bit, “it’s just easier to keep being what everyone expects you to be. Even if that’s what you’re not, anymore.”

I nodded, agreeing, and he got up to toss his trash into the pail. “I wasn’t sure you’d be back, after what I said.”

“I couldn’t stay away. I thought about it all month. Just not showing up.”

“So…why did you?”

A slow, hot smile spread across his mouth. “Because I always do.”

I was trying to decide between two mugs of the same shade but different shapes, my concentration entirely focused on my choices, when the distinct sensation of a foreign gaze on the back of my neck prickled my skin. I glanced up, but the man across the aisle appeared as engrossed in his shopping as I was. A look to either side showed us as the only two customers in housewares. Convinced I was imagining it, I bent back to my decision.

Again, I sensed someone staring. This time, instead of looking up, I let my eyes shift from side to side. Nothing. A gradual turn of my head revealed my fellow mug aficionado had moved a bit closer. He picked up a flowered coffee mug, turning it to and fro, then set it back on the shelf.

I turned back to the selection in front of me, but couldn’t concentrate. I wanted something new for my bathroom. It wasn’t brain surgery. I needed to pick one, just one, and yet my every sense now strained toward the man standing behind me. I grabbed up one of the mugs, finally, and stuck it in my cart. I looked over my shoulder.

He was looking at me.

“Excuse me,” he began.

Time slowed as I turned, expectant of something benign. A question. “What’s the time?” or “Do you work here?”

“Are you available for dating?”

My face must have shown my shock. “What?”

Details registered. He had long hair, more than a bit unkempt. He wore a shapeless fatigue jacket and matching, slightly ragged pants. Oh, lord. He was probably part of some outpatient program at the V.A. Hospital.

“Well, I didn’t see a wedding ring…”

I looked automatically to my left hand, where I was, indeed, wearing my wedding ring. I was so stunned by this, the first outright proposition I’d had in as long as I could remember, that I couldn’t even speak. I could only stare.

He moved closer, looking hopeful. “So? Are you?”

“I’m…no, I’m not.”

The man took off running down the aisle. I looked after him, the absurdity of the situation giving the entire experience a surreal flavor. I paid for my purchases, fumbling with my change and laughing too hard at the cashier’s unfunny jokes.

I’d carried myself as a married woman for such a long time, I’d considered myself under the radar of outright flirtation. Either men didn’t notice me, or I didn’t notice them noticing. After the ineloquent come-on, though, I kept my eyes open a little wider. Was the man in the next car checking me out? Was the guy holding the elevator door for me doing it to be polite or was he giving me a once-over when I reached to push the button for my floor? Even if they weren’t, the possibility that they might be preparing to accost me with the offer of a night on the town kept me smiling.

Adam didn’t find it so amusing. “What did he say to you?”

I paused in showing off the new mug. “I told you. He asked me if I was available for dating.”

“He asked you on a date? In the middle of the store?”

“Well, to be honest, I think he was a little off, Adam.” I put the mug back in the bag.

Adam maneuvered his chair away from the computer desk so we were face-to-face. “What did you say?”

“I said I wasn’t.” Even now, the memory made me laugh. “And really, if you’d seen him—”

“What about him?”

I described the man, exaggerating a little to make the story better, but not too much. “I think he was probably on outpatient leave from a mental program. He had that look. Poor guy, his therapist probably told him to go out and take a chance, ask a woman out, and I shot him down. I probably set him back months in his progress.”

Adam didn’t laugh. “Right.”

“Adam,” I said with a sigh. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

“Some guy comes on to my wife and it’s not a big deal?” Agitated, he swung the chair around. It was big and heavy, and though he could operate it with agile grace, it still needed room to move. He nudged the edge of the desk and let out a curse when his papers fell down.

I bent to gather them up. A few lines of text caught my eye, phrasing from his lectures. I put them back in the folder.

“Honey, he wasn’t even cute!”

The look he gave me was long familiar, sardonic, verging on mean. “What does that mean? If he had been cute, you’d have taken him up on it?”

A snappish response teetered on my tongue but managed to cling to the inside of my mouth without spitting itself out. “Don’t be silly,” I said instead.

Adam grunted. His version of pacing was to rock the chair back and forth in small arcs. The room wasn’t big enough for him to move more than that, the chair too bulky to allow for the tight turns he’d need to crisscross the space.

“Adam, it was a funny story. I thought you’d like it. I’m sorry I told you.”

His eyes flashed. “What does that mean, Sadie? You won’t tell me about it again?”

“I’m sure it won’t happen again,” I replied with a sigh. “C’mon. It was just a fluke.”

He grunted again and stopped the pacing. “Were you wearing that outfit?”

I looked down at my clothes. “I was, yes.”

He’d always been a master of expression, with words or without. His snort made his feelings very clear. “Well, no wonder he hit on you.”

That made me laugh out loud. “Oh, really? Because this outfit is so sexy?”

My work clothes were the farthest thing from sexy I could ever imagine, most of the time. Then again, so was I. The Beatles might have written about Sexy Sadie, but that wasn’t me.

“I don’t like men hitting on you, that’s all.” Adam sounded less fierce, more what Mrs. Lapp called grexy.

I went to him and kissed his cheek. “You have nothing to worry about.”

He wasn’t so easily appeased. “Weren’t you wearing your wedding ring?”

That was it. I crossed my arms over my chest. “Yes. I was! You act as if I was out trolling for business! Stop it!”

Maybe I shouldn’t have told him the story, which had been amusing and a bit of an ego boost to me. Adam was moody on the best of days. It wasn’t difficult to figure out why, but once he’d had a much better sense of humor. It was hard to remember he wasn’t the same man I’d seduced with a red ribbon stuck in a book of poetry.

He stopped talking. He went back to his computer and ignored me. I took my mug and left the room.

If he’d been cute, would I have taken him up on the offer? Gone out with a stranger I met while buying a mug? Maybe gone home with him, to his bed, or to a hotel room, to a car, to a back alley where he’d push me against a wall and merge his flesh with mine in anonymous passion?

According to Joe, things like that happened all the time, to him. But Joe never came on to me. I only listened to him talk about it, month after month, and wondered what it would be like to be asked and answer, “yes.”

Chapter 04

“Valentine’s Day is the pimple on the ass of the year.”

My patient’s blunt statement made me laugh. I know her well enough to understand she was using humor to cover up insecurity, but that didn’t matter. What she said was funny, anyway.

“Why do you say that, Elle?” I poured us both another cup of tea.

“It’s a martyr’s holiday.” She added sugar and cream to her cup.

Sometimes, patients are ashamed of me, or rather, their need to see me. Sometimes they embrace me so fully it compromises our working relationship. Elle, whom I found to be bright, funny and compassionate, had managed to strike the perfect medium. We were friendly but not quite friends—with friends the sharing of trouble goes both ways and with us it was necessarily one-sided. Still, our sessions had taken on the tone of two girlfriends chatting, rather than of a doctor counseling a patient. It showed me she was comfortable with me. It had taken her a long time.

I added lemon to my cup. “Ah, yes. Poor St. Valentine. But it’s not that anymore.”

She sipped and gave me a familiar raised eyebrow. “Sure it is. The search for the perfect gift? The despair if you don’t get just the right thing? The depression of not having someone to buy for, or having someone to buy for but not the person you want.”

“I’m sensing some anxiety over Valentine’s Day.” How easily I put on the doctor’s cap. Girlfriends or not, Elle was there to talk, and I to listen. She didn’t always take my advice but then, not all of it was good.

The way she tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair meant what I’d said was true, but I didn’t push. Some of my colleagues favor a more antagonistic approach, call my methods the “soft and fuzzy” school of psychology. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I can only do my best.

“I do love him.” She spoke low, but not hesitant. “It’s not that I don’t.”

A year before she wouldn’t have admitted that much. I offered a smile. “So then, what is it? You’re afraid to buy him something?”

“It’s so much pressure.” Elle shrugged and spun her spoon around in the cup. “And I think…I think he’s going to make this a big one.”

“More than flowers and candy, you mean.”

She nodded, her face shadowed. “Yeah. I think so.”

“We’ve talked about this.” I sipped my tea, watching her. “How relationships grow. It’s part of change.”

She laughed, ruefully. “I know. Dr. Danning, I know that.”

I knew she did. Elle had been with her boyfriend for over a year. She danced around the idea of marrying him and having children, of making what she called a real life. She had other issues, bigger ones, but it all came back to that in the end. Marriage and children, whether she could take what he offered her or not, whether the past had any right to influence her future any longer. She’d come a long way in the year she’d been seeing me, but sometimes it’s the sunshine that frightens us more than the big black shadows.

“It’s just hard.” She sounded ashamed. “It shouldn’t be. He makes it so easy. But it’s hard, anyway. Even when I fight with him, he just comes back with something so perfect I can’t chase him away.”

“Do you really want to?”

She sighed. “No. But do you know how hard it is to be with someone who’s perfect?”

“Nobody’s perfect, Elle.”

She gave me a look. “Some are more perfect than others, Dr. Danning.”

I laughed a bit. “Yes, that’s true.”

She stirred her cup as if she could dissolve her troubles the way she dissolved the sugar in the tea. “I keep thinking…”

“Yes?” I asked, when waiting for her to continue failed to prompt her into speaking.

“What if he’s the last man I’ll ever sleep with for the rest of my life?”

I fussed with my own tea to create distance from a question that hit too close to home. “Would that be so awful?”

Elle put her cup on the edge of my desk and rubbed the arms of her chair, her face angled away from mine. “No?”

“You don’t sound so sure.”

The look she gave me was pure, vintage Elle Kavanagh, stubborn and self-effacing with a hint of snark. “I anticipate the rest of my life being a very long time.”

“From your mouth to God’s ears,” I told her, and we both laughed.

“I don’t want to cheat on Dan. But I’m afraid I might. Just because.”

“Those things don’t happen by accident.”

She seemed chastened by my sterner than usual tone. “I know.”

I studied her before saying, “The offer still stands, if you want it.”

She looked up. “See both of us. I know.”

“Dan’s a wonderful man and he’s been good for you. You know putting the onus of your happiness on someone else isn’t healthy. But neither is refusing to allow someone to help you gain it.”

“I know, I know, I know!” She groaned, tipping back her head. She grimaced. “Bleah! I know! Stupid fucking Valentine’s Day!”

“Maybe you’re getting yourself too worked up. What are you doing for him?”

She straightened in her chair. “Heart-shaped meatloaf. With asparagus. And some sex.”

I meant to answer right away, but sudden immobility stifled my words. I filled my cup with tea. I didn’t want to cover the fact I couldn’t speak. The teapot rattled against the cup and I had to force my hands to steady.

I envied her. Fiercely. Suddenly. Horribly. I envied Elle for her meatloaf and plans for lovemaking to celebrate a holiday she hated. I envied her fear that she had something to lose.

“Dr. Danning?”

I put on the doctor mask. I owed her that. We might laugh and drink tea, and I might be privy to her deepest, darkest secrets, but we were not friends.