5

      HOLY.

      Fucking.

      Shit.

      What the hell was he doing?

      This was not the plan. Why wasn’t it the plan? This was a much better plan than the original plan.

      Chris leaned back against the door in the master bedroom—the only part of the room without fresh paint on it—and closed his eyes. He breathed, breathed again.

      The plan was to be here when Joey arrived so he could talk to Joey.

      He wasn’t talking to Joey. He was having sex with Joey.

      Joey.

      Joey Silvia. Joey Silvia, who he’d been in love with in high school and pined for even after he graduated, even after he’d heard she’d gone to the University of Hawaii instead of somewhere he could actually hope to see her every now and then like the University of Oregon. She could have been a Duck. And there was always OSU. Why hadn’t she gone to Oregon State? She could have been a Beaver. What girl didn’t want to be a Beaver?

      He peeled his body off the door and rummaged through his toolbox for the condom he kept in a box in the bottom. Shortly after opening his own contracting business, he’d discovered that lots of his clients were women—single and divorced—who’d never been taught anything about home repair. More than once he’d been propositioned by a beautiful newly divorced lady on the rebound. More than once he’d succumbed to the temptation. Three times precisely, with three different divorced women who were setting up their new homes and needed a handyman to be, well, handy. And he’d been handy. Very, very handy.

      But being with Joey felt nothing like that.

      Those few late-afternoon assignations had been nothing but sex. Good sex, more or less. But still just sex. Only his body had been there, not him. Not the real him that you only showed to someone after a few weeks together, a few months. With Joey, he’d shown up right then and there, right out of the gate. He’d ordered her around, talked dirty, “made her” lie on her back and suck him off. Usually he never did that sort of thing until he was in a relationship with someone and felt comfortable enough to talk about that side of him. Never had he been this himself with a girl the first time. Never had he felt that safe, that comfortable, to do it when he was with a stranger. Because Joey wasn’t a stranger. Because he’d known her for years, since he and Dillon were freshman in high school together and sixth-grader Joey tagged along when they’d gone to movies or the skate park. He didn’t care. She was less annoying than Dillon, anyway. Then by the time she started high school, it was a whole different game. On the first day of school she showed up in Dillon’s car. She wore tight jeans, a low-cut shirt, a scarf draped around her neck, and instead of her usual ponytail, she wore her long straight dark hair down and over her shoulder. And she smelled like vanilla, like cookies out of the oven, and he wanted to devour her, which—as a teenage boy—just meant making out with her for a few years until she warmed up to the idea of sex and then having sex for a few more years until his cock broke off from all the sex they’d had and they were forced to be just friends. Friends who made out. It sounded like a good plan to him. He even told it to Dillon while they were getting high in the garage one night their senior year.

      It was a pipe dream. Literally. He could only talk about how crazy he was about Joey when he was smoking weed. But he didn’t have any drugs to blame or thank for this trip. It was real. He had Joey in the bedroom waiting for him to fuck her. What was he waiting for?

      “Dillon is going to kill me.” He sighed to himself as he opened the bedroom door, the condom in his hand. He stood in the doorway to the second bedroom. Joey lay on her stomach, her feet in the air, her head on a pillow. She stared out the window into the deep wet green forest outside the house.

      “Isn’t it beautiful here?” she asked. “I’d almost forgotten how beautiful it is out here. Like Narnia. I love the moss. That’s my favorite part. Did you ever notice how the tree branches look like giant green tarantulas when they’re all bunched together and covered in moss?”

      Chris couldn’t speak at first. She looked so comfortable on the bed he’d made, so lovely with her black hair lying over her soft brown skin, the lamplight turning it golden.

      Yeah, okay, so Dillon might kill him for having a one-night stand with his sister. So what? That woman on that bed was worth dying for. His cock told him so.

      “I hadn’t noticed that,” he said as he slid onto the bed next to her and threw his leg over her lower back. “But now that you mention it...”

      The moss-covered trees outside the window did look a little like furry spider legs.

      “You have beautiful eyes,” he said, rubbing her shoulders.

      “They’re just brown.”

      “No, I mean, the way you see things.”

      She rolled over onto her back. “I see you.”

      “What do you see?”

      “Someone with a lot going on in here...” She tapped his forehead. “Even when there’s not much coming out of here.” She caressed his lips.

      “Are you accusing me of being a thinker? That’s a new one.”

      “I’m accusing you of having more to you than meets the eye. You say I have good eyes. How did I not see you had this person inside you?”

      “We were in high school. What did we know?”

      “You liked me. I should have liked you.”

      “I didn’t give you a lot to like. And I would have been an idiot to not want you. And I might have been a stoner and a slacker—to quote Dad—but I wasn’t an idiot.”

      “No, definitely not that. Not then, not now.”

      “I’m in bed with you. I’m definitely the smartest man alive.”

      “I am also clearly a genius.” She leaned into him, wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Her skin was so soft and smooth and warm to the touch. He could stay in this bed forever as long as she stayed with him.

      He kissed her because he had to, because he wanted to so much that if he didn’t he’d never forgive himself. He had enough on his conscience. He didn’t need more.

      Chris pushed her onto her back and kissed her neck, her chest... Joey arched her back and he knew she wanted her nipples sucked again and he was more than happy to do it. Ecstatic even. Really, she was the one doing him the favor here. But first...he had to tease. It was his favorite thing to do in bed—taunt, tease, torment, even torture a little tiny bit. He knelt over her on his hands and knees and kissed her right breast under her nipple. Just under it. As lightly as he could he kissed that soft, soft patch of skin, licked it. Then he kissed and licked around her nipple carefully, tenderly, lightly.

      “You’re driving me crazy,” she said.

      “I know.”

      “I know you know. I just wanted you to know I know you know.”

      “Tell me what you want.”

      “I have to say it?”

      “Yes...” He breathed the word onto her breast and her nipple hardened.

      “I want you to suck my nipples.”

      “Is that so?”

      “It is so and you said—”

      He covered her nipple with his mouth