Lies and Lullabies

by Sarina Bowen

  “Oh, John. Oh my God, I never… ohhh…” She didn’t finish the sentence. She quivered instead. I felt a surge of victory as her body trembled beneath me. She came on a moan, and I swear I’d never felt such satisfaction at making anyone happy. Ever.

  As soon as she fell back onto the pillow, relaxing again, I hiked myself up to hold her. “Kira,” I whispered into her ear. “I don’t want to hear you talk about being icky again. Because you are delicious.”

  Her eyes flickered to mine, and I saw a small flash of disbelief, followed by a smile. Her obvious pleasure made me feel like a hero.

  And wasn’t that just laughable? Some people built houses for the homeless, or raised money to cure cancer. All I’d done was give a nice girl an orgasm.

  But hey, I was the right man for the job.

  “That wasn’t part of my agenda,” she said finally.

  “No?” I gave her my best lady-killer smile. “It should be. Because you’ll be putty in my hands now. Unless that’s all you can take for one night?”

  “No sir.” Her face was grave. “It only counts if we do the deed.”

  I groaned appreciatively. My dick was hard as a board. “Please tell me you have birth control. Because I don’t have a thing.” That had been part of my chastity strategy. Even though I was quick to get naked, I never went without protection. Leaving the condoms behind in Seattle meant one more obstacle to slipping up.

  “I brought it,” Kira said.

  “Let me have it, then.”

  “It’s for me, not you.” Kira’s cheeks flushed the telltale pink of a woman who had just been satisfied. Hell, she was more beautiful now than I’d ever seen her. She got up and went to her purse. She took a package out, and I heard the tear and crinkle of paper and plastic as her naked body passed by on her way into the bathroom.

  I sat up against the headboard, trying not to get too excited. I hadn’t had sex in three months, except with my palm. Without a doubt, the dry spell was a personal record.

  But when Kira emerged with a nervous expression on her sweet face, it wasn’t too difficult to dial back my expectations. “It’s never too late to change your mind.” Though I hoped she wouldn’t. I held my arms out in what I hoped was a nonthreatening way, and she climbed into them.

  I kissed her again, testing the waters. And she pressed those gorgeous breasts to my chest and gave as good as she got. “I don’t want to change my mind,” she whispered, giving my shoulders a tug, trying to pull me down on top of her.

  But I reminded myself once again to take things very, very slowly. “Actually, let’s stay up here.” I tucked a pillow between my back and the headboard.

  “Could I, um…” She hesitated.

  “What, sweetness?”

  The way her forehead crinkled when she frowned was endearing. “It’s sort of embarrassing. I want to touch you… You know, to remind myself that it’s not an instrument of torture.”

  Jesus Christ. The things this girl had been through broke my heart. The wrongness of it might have wilted me, except for the fact that she had just asked if she could get a really close look at my dick.

  I tipped my head back. “Play all you want. I don’t embarrass.”

  Biting her lip, she reached over, brushing a hand tentatively over my cock.

  After a moment, I blew out a breath of pure desire. “Come even closer.” I tugged her elbows, drawing her over my lap to straddle me. With wide eyes, she maneuvered her bare ass onto my thighs. I cupped her hand in mine and brought it to my shaft, curling her fingers around it. Jesus. I held my breath as she stroked me. And when she brushed her thumb over my cock head, a single drop of liquid glistened there.

  She inhaled sharply. “God, you’re gorgeous. I can’t believe you’re really letting this happen.”

  Letting it? I wanted to shout with joy. Kira wanted me, and it didn’t have a fucking thing to do with Hush Note or rock and roll. Instead, I was about to get laid just for being John Smith, A Good Listener.

  There was a big fat lesson in there somewhere. But I’d have to find it later, because all the blood had left my brain and was currently pulsing in my cock. Kira’s fingertips dragged over me again. I was going to disgrace myself if she didn’t stop that soon.

  I slipped a hand onto her belly, then smoothed it down, my thumb grazing her mound. When I dipped even lower, she closed her eyes. “Okay.” Her voice was shaky. “I’m ready.”

  “Come here,” I rasped, tugging her hips closer. “I want you to ride me. Can you do that?”

  For a second she looked startled. But then she nodded. She rose up on her knees, and I held my breath again. She leaned forward, trapping my cock underneath her body. Slowly, she sank down on me, and this time I couldn’t help myself. I let out a monstrous groan. “You feel so fucking good.”

  She was tight and hot, a wet heaven. Without a condom, I could feel every delicious particle of her body against mine.

  Hold back, I reminded myself for the hundredth time. Wayyy back.

  With her hands on my shoulders and her face pensive, she rose up, sinking slowly down on me the same way again. God in heaven, I was panting already. No moment in my life had ever required so much restraint. I wanted to jack my hips off the bed. But I allowed myself only the slightest roll of my pelvis to meet her. Instead of grabbing her hips like I wanted to, I rested my fingertips lightly on her waist, my hands barely skimming the velvet swell of her ass.

  Slowly she moved against me as the cool lake breeze blew through the curtains, bringing the scent of late summer with it. I took a deep breath of that perfect air and focused on Kira’s serious face. I had never paid so much attention to a lover during sex, to the blush of her cheeks and the set of her mouth. For the first time, I knew what it was like to really give myself to someone, like a gift. And holy hell. The result was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.

  And I’d seen some pretty crazy shit.

  As she rode me, Kira shifted around, unconsciously seeking her pleasure. And when she found it, something exquisite seemed to bloom across her face. Squeezing my shoulders, her movements quickened. Her eyes opened wide, her gaze locking onto mine.

  Usually during sex I shut off my brain. Because wasn’t that the point? But not this time. I was witnessing something beautiful, and I didn’t want to miss a second of it. Carefully, I slid down the sheet, laying us both down, giving Kira more room to maneuver. Her soft tits rubbed my chest as she moved, making me groan.

  Suddenly, I had to have my mouth on hers. Craning my neck, I reached up, kissing her hungrily while she fucked me. Still, I listened carefully to every breathy exhalation, to every noise she made. But there were no signs of trouble, just the sounds of a woman rediscovering all the joy that two bodies could bring one another.

  Her breathy moans increased in pitch, her hair sliding over my nipples like silk.

  “That’s it, baby,” I gasped, my own voice cracking. And then she groaned in ecstasy, throwing her head back. The erotic look on her face nearly did me in. “Sweet Jesus,” I hissed.

  And finally—wrenching my hips off the bed for relief—I came in three long, hard bursts. It was the best fucking orgasm of my life, with Kira’s sweet body milking mine.

  Afterward, I flopped onto the pillow, feeling as if I’d just run a marathon. Who knew that holding back would be twice as potent as lunging for it?

  When I opened my eyes again, there were tears running down Kira’s face.

  “Don’t cry now,” I whispered, reaching up to wipe them away. “That was perfect.”

  “I’m just so happy. For a long time I thought…” She gulped in air, and then leaned her cheek against my palm. “He took something from me, and now I feel as though it’s possible to get it back. Thank you.”

  Fuck, my own eyes began to feel misty. Kira laid her head in my chest, and I stroked her hair until her tears stopped. Even as I wiped them away, her body was still hugging my cock, torturing me with the small aftershocks of her climax.

  E
verything about the moment was perfect.

  Five years later, I hadn’t forgotten a second of it. No night had ever topped it, nor even come close. If I was a smarter man, I would have realized how much it all meant before it was too late.

  I hadn’t, and I’d always regretted it.

  Today, though, Kira had kissed me again. She’d kissed me like our night together was as fresh in her memory as it was in mine. That had really happened.

  If she was happily married now, would she have done that?

  The weird thing was that I’d always wanted a happy ending for her. These past few years I’d been picturing her with a husband and a couple of cute little kids. In my head, that’s how things ended up, and I had been okay with it.

  Until today. All of a sudden it wasn’t okay. Because seeing Kira again made me wish for things that an asshole like me wouldn’t know what to do with. I wanted to hold her in my arms and kiss her again. And never stop.

  I groaned aloud, flipping onto my stomach, pressing my erection into the quilt on my lonely bed.

  We have to talk, she’d said. What the hell did that even mean?

  Four

  Kira

  “Let’s play with all the old toys,” Vivi demanded. “And then I want to catch fireflies. Where is my jar?”

  “One thing at a time, toots,” I told my daughter. “And I don’t think we’ll spot fireflies this early in the season.”

  “But maybe,” she argued.

  I gave her a vague nod, but my mind was elsewhere. Somehow, I was going to have to stumble through the next eighteen hours with my family, even though I was consumed with fear. Telling John—no, Jonas—that he was the father of my child?

  Terrifying.

  I wished I’d just blurted it out today on the dock. Then it would at least be over with. But that hadn’t happened, because I’d been blindsided. Escaping from him had seemed like a fine idea at the time.

  It didn’t anymore. Until tomorrow at noon, I would have a clenched stomach and a bad case of the shakes.

  For once, my brother wasn’t much help. Adam had withdrawn to the porch with a beer and a magazine. He didn’t emerge until suppertime when our father came home. The heavy sound of his feet on the porch steps was as familiar as breathing.

  “How’s my princess?” he boomed as the screen door slammed shut.

  Vivi came running, leaping into my dad’s arms.

  I watched my gray-haired father swing my daughter around with the same surprise I always felt when the two of them were together. Because he’d never once called me “his princess.” Becoming a grandpa had softened this man.

  And thank goodness. My whole life, he’d been pretty hard to take.

  We’d never had an easy relationship, and on the day I’d told him I’d been raped, it became even more strained. Maybe he was just worried, or maybe he blamed me. I’ll never know. But he became even more silent and brittle than usual.

  It didn’t help that we were trapped in this house together for months afterward, the cold Maine winter keeping me in sight of his grim expression for weeks at a time. And with Adam away at law school, I’d been lonely. It was the longest winter of my life.

  When summer finally arrived, everything got easier. My father and I were both busy at the store, since summer was our high season.

  And then John had turned up to distract me. He’d been a charming diversion with enormous consequences. I’d gone back to college right on schedule after Labor Day, thinking that my life was back on track, but six weeks into the semester, I began to feel utterly exhausted and caught a cold that wouldn’t go away. Eventually, I wandered into the student health building and asked if maybe mono was going around.

  A very astute doctor asked me a whole battery of questions. The final one was, “When did you last have a menstrual period?”

  That’s when I understood just how badly I’d messed up.

  The first person I’d told about my pregnancy was Adam. He’d held me while we both cried on each other. Then I’d summoned the nerve to tell my father over Thanksgiving, when Adam was around to back me up.

  My father had turned white, and then red. “You’re moving home immediately,” he’d said, slamming a fist onto the table.

  “She’s going to finish the semester,” Adam had argued. “Obviously.”

  “You’re out of control. Both of you,” he’d raged. The ranting went on for hours, until I ended up in my bedroom sobbing, while my brother handed me tissues, one after another.

  As it happened, I did not move back to Maine at all. I couldn’t spend another winter with my father’s constant reminders of his disappointment.

  “Honestly,” I’d told Adam, “I don’t think I can do it.”

  “You’ll move in with me,” he’d offered without hesitating. “In Boston.”

  I’d cried some more after that, but they’d been tears of gratitude.

  Now, four years later, my father had a completely different attitude. Vivi was his favorite person in the world. And the minute he came home from the store, Vivi began to pepper him with her demands. “I didn’t get to go in the rowboat yet,” she complained to her grandfather, climbing into his lap.

  He stood up, lifting her with him. “Is that so? I think it’s time to light the grill right now. Come outside with me.” He gave me and Adam barely a nod of greeting before taking his princess outside.

  Luckily, Adam’s mood rallied. Setting aside his magazine, he opened a bottle of white wine, pouring three glasses. Humming to himself, he cooked up the sausages, grilling onions and peppers on the side.

  At some point he noticed my long silences and began shooting worried glances in my direction. And when that failed to lighten me up, he tried another tactic—making cracks about how much he lurved sausages.

  “So plump and juicy,” Adam deadpanned, rolling the food on the grill with a set of tongs. “They’re my favorite.”

  Our father gave him a dark look after the third or fourth sausage joke. Then he slunk around the corner of the house to smoke a cigarette away from Vivi. After all these years, he was still dismayed by Adam’s sexual orientation. I’d never understood it. Adam was a successful lawyer who took good care of his friends and family. What more could a father want?

  My contribution to dinner was a salad, which I served with forced cheer at the appointed time. But I didn’t fool anyone. During dinner, my brother’s concern radiated across the table.

  Later, after the glacial movement of the mantel clock finally brought about Vivi’s bedtime, we three adults spent a polite half hour in the living room. After enduring thirty minutes of Dad’s baseball game on TV, Adam popped off the sofa. “Kira, take a walk with me? You’ll listen for the little skeeter, won’t you, Pop?”

  He gave us a stoic nod. “Could you wheel Mrs. Wetzle’s groceries over to her door? She didn’t answer when I rang earlier. I parked them behind your car.”

  “Sure thing,” Adam said, pulling me off the sofa.

  Together, we went outside, where the last of the day’s light was just a stripe in the western sky. My father had left an old red wagon in the driveway, with three bags of groceries tucked inside. Wordlessly, Adam caught the handle and pulled it down the drive.

  A minute later we approached Mrs. Wetzle’s place, and I tried not to stare at the room in the back. He wasn’t there, of course, but the ghosts from five years ago were all around me. They always swarmed when I came to Maine for a summertime visit.

  Adam stopped beside the kitchen entrance, knocking twice on the old metal door.

  Mrs. Wetzle appeared a minute later. “Could you carry those inside?” she asked.

  Adam met my eyes, and we exchanged a moment of silent irritation that the old lady did not even say please.

  While Mrs. Wetzle held the door open, I grabbed a bag filled with hamburger buns and condiments and ran it into the house, leaving it on the first available kitchen surface I could find. Then I turned tail and got the heck out, then waited for Adam a
few yards away under a big pine tree.

  The winter I’d been pregnant, and totally starting to show, the whispers about me grew loud in town. Even though I’d been mortified to ask, I had knocked on Mrs. Wetzle’s door one afternoon to inquire as to whether she might have a phone number for John Smith who had spent the summer there.

  I didn’t tell Mrs. Wetzle why I’d wanted it, but the old lady had known. A long and terrible moment of silence had passed between us, while I’d squirmed under her dismayed gaze. “I never should have rented to a musician,” she’d said, while I’d wished that the frozen earth would open up and swallow me.

  “Did you save his number?” I’d had to ask a second time.

  Mrs. Wetzle shook her head. “He pre-paid. I didn’t need to even ask for it.”

  “Thank you anyway,” I’d mumbled, making my escape.

  I’d been avoiding Mrs. Wetzle’s gaze ever since. And when the Christmas popcorn balls arrived each year, I gave mine to Adam.

  Adam abandoned the wagon under the tree, because nobody would bother stealing it. “Come on,” he said, grabbing my hand. “Spill it, sis. You look destroyed. Like Sarah Conner at the end of Terminator 2.”

  “That’s an apt comparison. Because the crud is about to hit the fan,” I said.

  Adam giggled. “Just say ‘shit,’ Kira, like everyone else does. Or pick a different metaphor. Flying bits of crud just aren’t scary.”

  “In this case they really are.” Before we could reach Main Street, I steered my brother toward the lonely dock, instead of the ice cream place.

  “Damn. If we’re not even going for soft serve, this must be really serious.”

  Oh, you have no idea. I dragged Adam out to the end of the dock and sat down cross-legged. He flopped down next to me. And then I blurted it out. “He’s back in town.”

  My brother was silent for a long moment. “No shit?” he said, finally. “I assume we’re talking about Vivi’s daddy.”

  “Right after you guys got out of the car, I saw him. And we spoke for a minute.” I edited out the kissing, not because Adam would disapprove, but because I wasn’t quite sure how it had happened, or what to think about it. “We’re having lunch tomorrow.”