I move down her body, heating the silk with warm breath. I kiss the taut skin on her stomach, I lick the soft flesh at her inner thigh. Then I look up at her—watching her watch me.

And when I speak, there’s a desperate edge to my soft voice.

“What if I told you I had to have you again? Feel you clamping down around me so hard I see heaven. That I can’t stand the thought of not fucking those hot, breathy sounds out of you, until you scream my name? Would you let us do that one more time, even if it’s the last?”

Before I finish, her fingers are running through my hair. Tenderly pushing it back, on the brink of pulling me up to her. “Yes, Stanton, I want that too.”

I smile. “Good. ’Cause we’re not even close to home yet—so we’ve got lots of time.”

Sofia’s smile turns into a relieved giggle. She crooks her finger at me—beckoning. “Get up here and kiss me.”

• • •

Hours later, my hands grasp Sofia’s hips, my fingertips dig into her ass, helping her ride me. I suck on her tits, ’cause they’re beautiful and because they’re in such close proximity to my mouth.

“That’s it, baby . . . ride my cock,” I tell her, loving how it makes her gasp. I slide my hand down the tight crevice between us, to her clit—swollen and slick. I rub it slow, with just enough pressure to keep her teetering on that edge, to make her hotter, wetter all around me. Her breath hitches, and her hips thrust against my hand.

“Harder,” I order with smooth authority that doesn’t leave room for argument—even if she’d want to. I raise my hips, meeting her more than halfway. “Fuck me harder . . .”

My head presses back into the mattress as Sofia does what she’s told. For a woman who likes to be top dog at the office, she takes directions amazingly fucking well.

With her fingers in my hair, she pulls my lips up to meet hers. Then, looking into my eyes, she asks, “Is it like this with her?”

“What?” I ask, mindless, as she squeezes around my dick.

But then she stops, stills, seems more serious, tracing my jaw with her fingertip. “Is it like this with Jenny? Do you look like this?”

She places her palm on my chest, where my heartbeat goes wild.

“Do you feel like this when you’re with her?”

There’s something about the dark that makes honesty easier. And something about being surrounded by a woman, filling her, lost in her—that makes lying impossible.

“No. Not like this.”

She waits a second. The corners of her mouth pull up ever so slightly.

“Good.”

Then she starts moving her hips again, and everything else fades to black.

10

Sofia

“I really have to go.” I wiggle in my seat like a child who . . . well, who has to pee.

Stanton grumbles. “We’ll be at the house soon.”

“Soon’s too long—stop at the next Starbucks.”

He looks at me like I suggested going for a dip in the ocean—on the moon.

“We don’t have a Starbucks here.”

I look from left to right, suspecting he’s messing with me. “What kind of godforsaken place is this?”

Over the course of our two-day cross-country trek, the strip malls and tall buildings have come fewer and farther between, replaced with cornfields and lonely houses set back from the road. A few miles back, Stanton pointed out the Welcome to Sunshine sign, but all that I’ve seen since are trees and empty fields. Soon I’ll be desperate enough to use one of the trees.

We pull onto a quiet street, sparse with cars. “A restaurant then,” I plead, trying to think of anything besides the incessant pressure on my bladder. “When we pass through the business district.”

That has him laughing, but I don’t get the joke.

“Ah¸ Soph? We’re in the business district.”

I look around. There’s only a few two-story buildings. The rest are small, one-story structures—a post office, a pharmacy, a barber shop, a bookstore—each with quaint awnings, not a chain name in sight.

“How can you tell?’

Stanton points to the red stoplight we’re waiting in front of. “The stoplight.”

“The stoplight?”

He smiles broader. “Yep . . . just the one.”

We drive down the street and I’m struck by how empty it seems, especially on a Saturday morning. I shiver as I think of Children of the Corn, an eighties flick that scared the shit out of me when I was ten years old.

I didn’t eat corn again for months.

Stanton pulls into a parking spot and motions to the door in front of us. “Diner. You can piss here.”

I get out of the car before he makes it around to open my door. “I’ll wait out here,” he tells me. “If I go in with you, we’ll get stuck in a dozen different conversations and it’ll be fucking ages before we get to my house.”

I rush through the door, a bell above my head chiming a welcome. And the eyes of every patron stare. At me.

There are a few middle-aged men in trucker caps, a few in cowboy hats, two little old ladies in floral dresses with thick glasses, and one young brown-haired woman—struggling with two toddlers bouncing in a booth.

I arch my hand in a wave. “Howdy, y’all.”

Most greet me with a nod, and I ask the short-haired brunette behind the counter where the restroom is. She directs me to the one unisex bathroom in the back.

Feeling the sweet relief of being five pounds lighter, I wash my hands, pull off a sheet from the paper towel roll to dry them, and toss it into the coverless garbage can. I exit the bathroom door and run smack into the person waiting to enter.