“I want you alone.”
“Abigail’s at home,” I murmur, and this voice must be Lacey’s because it certainly does not belong to me.
His body stiffens, and I am suddenly Liz again, not Lacey, and shocked at the implications of what I’ve just said. His hands move to my shoulders and tighten there. His eyes bore into mine, searching for something.
“There’s nobody at my place.”
“Except you and me a few minutes from now,” the Lacey part of me says, brazen.
“You’re sure?” He kisses me again, and I let my body answer for me. “Damn it,” he says. “I didn’t anticipate this. No condoms.”
“I am impregnable.”
He pulls back a little and looks at me. I flush with awkwardness, rushing to explain. “Years of infertility. Onset of menopause.” I need to ask him if he’s clean, if he’s been tested, but I can’t get the words out. He’s an EMT. Surely he takes care of his health.
“Get in my truck,” he growls, breathless. “I’ll drive.”
“I’ll follow you.” I need my own vehicle, an escape route, just in case.
One more kiss, and then he opens my car door for me, waits until I’m settled before stalking away to his own truck. I watch his taillights across the parking lot and out into the street. I hear Val’s warning in my head, but it’s a distant thing, without power.
My body trembles with equal parts passion and fear.
Lance is sure to be disappointed. I know so little about pleasing a man. It’s been years since Thomas has touched me in a sexual way. And when he did, he took what he needed, expecting little from me other than submission.
I drive, torn between anxiety and desire, half expecting God to exact judgment. Maybe I’ll hit a deer. Maybe there will be a lightning strike from on high. But if the Almighty has any objection to my sexual liaison with Lance, He’s keeping it to Himself.
Lance’s truck turns into the driveway of a duplex. I park, but just sit there in the dark. Lance opens my door, his shadowed face looking down at me.
“Changed your mind?”
Mute, I shake my head, but still can’t bring myself to get out of the car.
His fingers graze my cheek. “You’re trembling. Liz. If you don’t want—”
“I want.” Before I have time to think, I get out of the car and step into him so the lengths of our bodies are touching, stretch up on tiptoes, and kiss him, my hands burrowing into his hair.
In answer, his hands go to my hips, slide down onto my buttocks, pull up and into him so I can feel the hardness of his erection between my legs.
I gasp at the molten pleasure that overrides everything, all of my doubt, my fear, the guilt I know will follow. Lance’s lips find mine, and I open to him at once, letting my own tongue explore his mouth in turn, tentative at first, then bolder.
“Unless you mean to do this on the hood of your car,” he says, “we’d better get inside.”
I’m not sure that my knees will hold me, but his strong arm around my waist supports me across the yard and through the door.
His apartment is a shock, like falling into cold water. Barren as a monk’s cell. A single table. One chair. A recliner in the living room. A TV. The walls are white and empty. No books or photographs. No pets. Something is wrong with this, but Lance starts kissing me again, and I forget about my surroundings.
In the bedroom, fear descends.
This moment, here, with this man, is something the romances I’ve read have not equipped me for. The real world, so different from the fictional world, can’t possibly be the same. I remember my wedding night, the way my new husband took my virginity and destroyed my romantic illusions.
Lance, breathing hard, takes a step back, scrutinizing my face. “If you’re unsure, please tell me now.”
I might be all kinds of unsure, but Lacey knows what to do. It’s her hands that go to the waistband of his jeans, undo the button, lower the zipper.
He’s gone commando, no underwear, and his full erection frees itself from the confines of his jeans. Bigger than Thomas. Harder. It will hurt to take that into my body, but I want it all the same.
Lance steps out of his jeans, yanks his T-shirt off over his head. He’s naked now, and I’m still fully clothed. I’ve never been naked in front of anybody, rarely even in front of a mirror.
With Thomas, I wore a long nightgown, bunched up over my hips for the crucial act, decorously lowered afterward. But I’m not wearing a nightgown, and I can’t bring myself to strip as he has done.
Lance holds my gaze as he lifts the hem of my T-shirt, peeling it up over my head. I breathe a little deeper, expanding. Lance kisses me just below my ear, down the side of my neck, the space between my collarbones. His hands go to my back, unfasten my bra, then he cups my breasts in his hands.
When he releases them, I mourn the sensation of his touch, but only for an instant as those hands smooth down over my ribs, my belly, my hips.
He moves us backward across the room, holding me against him, until the backs of my knees are against the bed. A gentle shove and I’m sitting on the mattress. He presses me back, swings my legs up. He undoes the button on my jeans, works them down over my hips, and then strips off my underwear.
I’m completely naked now, under his eyes. He’s not touching me, just looking, and I feel vulnerable and on fire.
“So beautiful,” he says, and then his weight dips the mattress beside me, and I close my eyes and spread my legs to make it easy for him, expecting a hard thrust and a few grunts and this will all be over. He straddles my body; I can feel his erection pressed against me as he kisses me.
But then his lips are on my throat again, sensation overriding fear, my body responding in ways that surprise me.
When his lips find the nipple of my right breast, I gasp, my hands knotted in his hair, desire becoming a pressure, a demand.
“Please,” I whisper, only I have no idea what I’m asking for.
My body melts into submission, until his lips move from my breasts to my belly. By the time I guess what he is going to do, an act I have only read about but certainly never dreamed of committing, his tongue is between my legs.
My hands tighten in his hair, meaning to push his head away, surely this is a thing that I shouldn’t let him do, but I’ve become incapable of speech, of movement. A sound forces its way from my throat, and then another, and a wave rolls over me of utter pleasure, shakes me to my deepest places, comes again.
He brings himself back up with his weight covering the length of mine. Again, I brace for him to enter me, but he doesn’t, not yet. He finds my mouth again, tasting, kissing. Moves to my throat, my breasts, until that pressure is rising once more, and I beg, “Please, Lance.”
When he enters me, it’s not a sudden thrust. There is no pain. He presses into me slowly, so that I feel my body stretching, widening, until every nerve ending is awake and wanting, and then, only then, does he slide all the way in. There is no taking. His body is a gift. He finds a slow rhythm, and I’m awed by the way I respond, my movements mirroring his, rocking up to meet him and then away.
The pressure and the pleasure meld and grow.
“Open your eyes,” he says. “Please.”
My eyes meet his, his pupils so large they almost blot out the blue, the tension in his face almost pain. He drives deeper into me, and I feel all of my defenses give way in a rush as a cry bursts from my throat. My hips thrust upward to bring him even deeper, my hands pressing into his buttocks, and then he cries out, a prayer or a plea, an “Oh my God” on a breath that tears something loose inside me.
A long moment later, I feel the tension go out of him as he lets himself collapse on top of me, both of our bodies sweat slicked, and then he withdraws and rolls beside me, one hand over my chest, his face pressed into my shoulder. I feel the wetness between my legs, the damp spot growing into the sheets, and think maybe I will be embarrassed in a minute. Guilty. Full of regret.
But not now, not yet.
&nbs
p; Mostly what I feel is wonder. We lie like that for a long while, drowsing, limbs draped languorously over each other while I breathe in the man smell of him, the smell of sex. Gradually I begin to come back into myself, to draw inward. I reach for the sheet and pull it up to cover my body, start thinking about how to get from the bed to my clothes.
“Regrets?” he asks, caressing my hair.
“I don’t know yet.”
His hand slides onto my cheek, traces the line of my jaw, and just that simple touch ignites the spark of passion again.
Wanton. Earlene is right. Without a husband to tame me, I have become a wanton widow, and what’s more, I like it.
“I should go.” But I make no move, can’t seem to exert the will to get up off the bed. “What about you, with the regrets?”
“Only this, the thing I should have said in the beginning. I like you, Liz.”
“I should hope so.”
“But I’m not looking for—”
“Stop.” I put a finger over his lips. “Don’t ruin it.”
“I just don’t want you to—”
“Lacey and Darcy,” I reassure him. “Not Lance and Liz.” It’s as close as I can get to saying what I mean, but light comes into his eyes. His lips curve into a smile that I want, immediately, to kiss.
“For the good of the play?” he asks, an undertow of laughter in his voice.
“Getting into our roles. Method acting.”
“I could do more research.” His hand strays from where it rests on my hip, sliding over my belly, then downward.
A trail of heat follows his fingertips. I shiver, deliciously, but then shove his hand away. “I need to go.”
“Is this it, then?”
I caress his face with my eyes, run exploratory fingers through the hair at his temple. “I imagine I’ll need more research. To make sure I get Lacey right. I just—need to sleep in my own bed. Before my daughter calls for a welfare check.”
Neither of us moves, though, and Lance’s eyes crinkle with quiet laughter. “Shall we both get up at once so nobody has to be the first?”
“And a pact not to look at each other,” I add. “Keep your eyes on your own clothes.”
“Fair enough. Ready?”
“One,” I say, “two, three, go.” I cheat, lagging behind him a little, just enough to let myself look at him. A little softer in the belly than I’d expected, a little saggier in the glutes. Which isn’t fair, at all, because I know my own flaws all too well. Every varicose vein, every bit of cellulite. His eyes meet mine, and I know I’m not the only one cheating. Gathering up my clothes, breathless and laughing like a child, I flee across the room and lock myself into the bathroom to get dressed.
Chapter Sixteen
Before I’m fully awake, I begin my usual slow, careful slide out of bed, careful not to disturb Thomas. It’s not until my feet touch the cold floor that I remember he’s well beyond being disturbed.
The bed looks like he still lives here, though. His pillow is still in its assigned place. The sheets and the comforter on his side of the bed are smooth and unrumpled. Despite having the bed all to myself, I never cross the line into his inviolate, sacrosanct space.
Last night comes rushing back to me, Lance’s warm body and the way he focused on my pleasure before his own. Something violent and bitter rises from the core of me. I hate this bed. It is an indecency that fills me with a rage that goes beyond words or reason.
Break. Burn. Tear.
I drag the sheets and comforter off the bed and throw them onto the floor in a heap. I grab Thomas’s pillow in both hands and beat it against the bare mattress. Whomp. Whomp. Whomp. Such a small, unsatisfying sound.
How many hours have I lain wakeful in this bed, careful not to move too much, holding a position long past the point of comfort in order to avoid a rebuke?
“You woke me, Elizabeth. I love you, but sometimes you are so thoughtless.”
How many times did I lie beneath him, enduring his conquest of my body, waiting for him to finish? How could I get to be forty-nine years old and have no idea of the kind of pleasure that can arise from a simple touch and a little consideration?
A flashback to my wedding night grabs me by the throat.
I stand, shivering with uncertainty, just inside the door of a house I have never entered before this night, a house that Thomas has bought and furnished, a house where I feel like a guest.
“Come, Elizabeth.” He takes my cold hand and leads me down the hall to the bedroom. I’m suddenly frightened of him and what is to come. This is so different from explorations of passion in the back seat of a car with clumsy boys. I don’t know what is expected of me, and I wait for him to make a move, to show me what to do, but he busies himself taking off his shoes, setting them neatly side by side in the closet. Unknotting his tie. Unbuttoning his shirt.
He glances over at me and smiles. “The dress is lovely, but you may want to remove it. Or at least your underwear.”
“Just like that?” I’m shy about the idea of his eyes on me, of standing naked in front of him.
“We’re married now,” he says, reaching for his belt.
“That’s not what I mean. Couldn’t we . . . could you kiss me? Touch me . . .”
“What for?”
“Because we love each other. Because it feels good. It would make me feel more . . . married.”
He sighs dramatically. “This isn’t one of those romance novels. It doesn’t work that way. Married people have sex for the purpose of procreation.”
“Pretty sure some people enjoy it,” I retort, my rebellious self awakening from a long slumber.
“Elizabeth,” he says sadly, patiently. “Why are you picking a fight on our wedding night?”
“I’m not—”
“Lie down.”
I stare at him from across the room. Home is a long way from here. I have no money and don’t know a single person. Slowly, cold and shaking and a little sick, I climb up onto the bed and lie down, still fully clothed. He slides my dress up under my hips, pulls down my underwear.
“Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands, for this is right,” he quotes, pinning me between his thighs.
That was the first time he brought the apostle Paul as a third party into our marriage bed, but it was certainly not the last. An ugly croak tears free from my chest, and I pound the pillow with my fists, accentuating each movement with words. “You. Never. Loved. Me. You. Didn’t. Even. Like. Me.”
I want to rend the pillow apart with my hands, to scatter the feathers everywhere, but the fabric is strong and refuses to give. I carry it to the bathroom and stuff it into the trash can. A fierce hatred for the bed itself turns the edges of my vision black. It has to go. I will not sleep on it another night.
The mattress is unwieldy. My hands keep slipping and I can’t get a proper grip, but I tug on one side, then shove from the other, until I get it up on edge and then drag it across the room and into the hallway. It catches against the edge of a picture frame—a wedding photograph, me in white dress and veil, Thomas in a black tuxedo, both of us looking at the camera with expressions that speak more of getting a driver’s license than enthusiasm about a wedding.
I yank, hard. The picture swings wildly, then crashes to the floor.
“Damn it,” I shout at the mattress. “Do you have to be so freaking obstinate?”
“Mom?”
Abigail’s shocked face appears in her bedroom door.
I scrub the hair out of my face with my shoulder. “This piece-of-shit mattress is going out of this house!” I shout at her. “Don’t just stand there, help me.”
“What exactly are we doing?” I know the tone. Don’t antagonize the crazy woman, whatever you do. She grabs the other end of the mattress and holds on to it.
“We are taking this fucking mattress outside.” I say the forbidden word carefully, testing it, tasting it. It feels good in my mouth, strong and vivid and right. “Watch your feet, there’s broken gla
ss.”
Clearly she thinks I’ve totally lost it, and I expect her to resist. But she decides to humor me, and between the two of us, we drag and tug the flopping, infuriating thing all the way down the hallway and to the front door, where Abigail makes a stand.
“Mom.” She grips her end of the mattress and holds me back. “Let’s think about this.”
“There’s nothing to think about.”
“What are we going to do? Just throw it out on the front lawn? Like we’re having a mattress sale or something? We are in our pajamas. There are stains on this mattress. People will see.”
“I don’t care.”
“Mom. Listen to reason. We can buy a new mattress, if that’s so important. But where is this one going to go? The trash guys aren’t going to pick it up. What about the box spring? Is that coming out on the lawn, too? Maybe we can donate it or something. Be reasonable. Let’s put it back—”
“I am sick and tired of being reasonable!”
My whole life, I’ve been reasonable. Compliant. Subservient. And where did that get me? Maybe I’ll spend the rest of my life being irrational, pissed off, and batshit crazy.
“If you’re not going to help, just let go and let me do it myself.” I jerk at the mattress with all my strength, and Abigail starts moving with me. I wrestle the door open with one hand, sucking in a breath of the cool morning air. The birds are singing. The world is green and fresh and vividly alive.
The mattress sticks on the doorjamb, and I stagger when it comes free. If not for Abigail on the other end, I would lose my balance, fall backward, and probably be found dead later in the morning with the suffocating mattress on top of me.
But her weight serves as ballast, and I catch my footing.
In silence, we wrestle my enemy down the stairs and across the lawn to the curb, where I release my grip, Abigail releases hers, and the mattress settles down into the grass like it belongs there.
I scrub my hands on my pants, stretch out my shoulders and lower back, catch my breath.
Abigail’s expression, somewhere between fear and horror, sparks another memory.
I’ve climbed into bed, exhausted after a particularly long day. All I want is to close my eyes and sleep. Thomas has other ideas. When he presses up against me from behind, grabbing my breast and squeezing, I can barely suppress a groan of dismay.
A Borrowed Life Page 13