if it’s safe.”
Glen released a hard, allaying breath. He noticed now that her eyes were fixed on his crotch, and that her robe had come unsashed . It seemed her breasts were keeping the robe open, luring his gaze to her exposed flesh. She wore her nakedness obscenely and without a thought. One foot parted; he thought again of that sadistic streak.
They embraced immediately. Kissing, he reached into the gap of the robe, sliding his hand to her shoulder blades, then slowly down the length of her back. His palms pressed against her rump, squeezing their hips together. Her head lolled back at a soft angle; he tracked a damp, warm line along her throat in kisses.
“Charles went to the library in Bethesda,” she said. She closed her eyes. Around his waist her arms tightened, drawing slack. “He won’t be home for hours.”
“Good,” he managed to say, and his kisses went back to her mouth, long, hot, penetrating kisses. He breathed in the soapy fragrance of her hair; it roused him, made him feel light in the head. His hands continued feeling her beneath the robe.
“I thought about you…” he whispered, “…all night. I couldn’t wait to see you, couldn’t stop thinking about how much I love you.”
“Show me,” she said back. “Show me how much.”
“I’ll show you. I’ll…” His hands were already out from behind her, his fingers delicately touching her breasts. Then he watched her eyes and touched her lower.
She gave a little hiss, his touch sending up a spike of pleasure. Her words grew heavy with heat and love. “Not here, darling. Oh. We have lots of time. We can go upstairs.”
“Here,” he said. He could feel a warm current moving in his gut, and he could feel her heat. Urgency pulled them slowly and carefully to the floor like a sudden swell of gravity. Now she lay before him on her back, soft and spraddled and legs trustingly open. Shadows emphasized her shape; her skin shone darkly in the downreaching light. Their eyes locked—he was looking at her. Searching. Kneeling up between her white, open legs. He loved her so much, another man’s wife. Her abdomen seemed to be quivering, her flesh tense in wait, and he was kissing circles lightly around her navel, while his hands smoothed over her breasts and down to her warm, bare hips. She breathed jaggedly through her teeth, as if exerted. His kisses roamed harder, lower, more direct. So close now, he began kissing the inside of her thighs, inching up, and was at last working on the vital spot. Her mouth opened. Her eyes reduced to slits. She stared off into dim space, sighing her bliss.
She tasted sharp and lovely. Glen felt her body under him squirm. Though the room was deadened with silence, he could hear her sounds as though they had been excessively amplified. He could hear her lungs working, her heart, her pulse. He could hear the tiny whimpers that came with every breath she let out. He could hear her lips part, her hands in his hair, and the wet sounds of her throat as she swallowed. But he was so lost in his love for her that he didn’t hear the strange, faint shuffling from the cellar.
««—»»
The voice rocketed through his sleep.
“Kurt! Kurt! There’s something awful in the backyard! Kurt! Wake up, wake up!”
Small hands attached to his shoulders and shook him around, roughly, violently, lifting his head off the bed, shaking shaking shaking .
“Oh, wake up, you poop!”
Kurt thought he was being shocked out of a coma. His eyes peeled open, and they took a long time focusing on Melissa’s terrified face, which seemed to hover over him like a demon spirit. She continued shaking him, continued shouting in his ear.
His eyes bored into her. “Damn it, Melissa. If you weren’t a girl, I’d punch the stuffing out of you. Now just what the f— What are you doing waking me up at—” a hard glance to the clock—“at eight-thirty in the morning when you know I didn’t get to bed till after four?”
She
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