A taint in the blood by Dana Stabenow

little worn, the blue flannel caressing her ass. Her hair was damp and finger-combed, the ends drying in slight curls against her neck.
     
    He halted in the center of the room and stood, dumbstruck, as she stripped leisurely out of her clothes, keeping her eyes on his face as a slight smile played around the corners of her mouth. She reached for his belt, and he might have made some kind of protest, one last plea for leniency, but by then she had swung him around and pushed him so that he landed on his back on the bed, and she was over him, and on him, and in him, and he gave himself up to the woman and to the night.
     
    He woke up alone, splayed out like a starfish and about the same temperature. He was back on the bed, thank God, although the mattress had slid partway off the box springs. The pillows were gone. He turned his head and saw them piled in front of a chair, and remembered how they'd gotten there. The blanket was jammed between the edge of the mattress and the bed frame, the fitted sheet had popped its corners and clumped up into a ball, and all he had covering him was the top sheet, which appeared to be tangled around his left leg. He didn't have the energy to reach for it, so he lay there, goose-pimpled and numb, mostly because he wasn't sure he could move and he was afraid to find out.
     
    He knew he must have slept at some point during the night, but for the life of him he couldn't remember when he'd had the time. Kate had been like a force of nature, overwhelming, relentless, inexorable. "Here," she'd said, and dutifully he'd gone there. "Harder," she'd said, and obediently he had stroked or sucked or thrust harder. "Again," she had said, and the good soldier had done as he was told. There had been no escape, even if he'd been inclined toward it, which parts of him most definitely weren't. He looked down to see if anything remained between his legs. He was immensely relieved to find that there was, although he wasn't certain there was any fluid left in his body.
     
    He'd done it. He'd spent the night with Kate Shugak, the one thing he had been avoiding all summer long. He stared at the ceiling and watched the storm clouds gather.
     
    Kate Shugak was a serial monogamist. That worked for some people, and she was one of them, but that group didn't include him. It was the one thing he knew absolutely. A relationship to him meant sex and a lot of it, along with a lesser amount of lazy affection, which he was more than willing to provide so long as it didn't take a lot of emotional work on his part. He didn't want anything to do with love. Love, Jesus, there was a word to frighten the living hell out of you. Love led to things like marriage and children and growing old together, not to mention spousal abuse and infanticide and murder. He'd responded to his share of domestic disturbances, he knew all he needed to know about love and marriage. He'd never told a woman he loved her, and he never would, and he sure as hell wasn't starting with the woman who had shared this bed with him, no way, no how. The very thought of it sent a chill right down his spine. Even if he couldn't feel his spine at the moment.
     
    It wasn't like he couldn't have walked out at any moment last night. There were a couple of times at least that he'd been pretty sure she was asleep. Plus, he was fourteen inches taller than she was and outweighed her by at least eighty pounds. She couldn't have made him stay even if she'd been awake. He had stayed because he wanted to, and he had made love to her because he wanted it, but it was what it was, one night, and that's all it was. Any attempt on her part to make more of it would be rebuffed, kindly, yes—he didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings—but firmly. He was still his own man, he still had ownership of his own soul, and his heart was not now, nor ever had been, in danger.
     
    The rich aroma of fresh coffee drifted into the room. It was more than mortal man could resist. Groaning, he