LITMIR.BIZ

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So are you.

      “But I have to stop.”

      What? Ali sat up. “Oh, no, you don’t,” she insisted, leaning back to place her hands on his knees, swiveling her hips, driving him into her. “You have tormented me for weeks, teased me, flirted with me. We are not stopping. Not yet.” She was so close. “I don’t have a condom.”

      Usually those words would have ground the action to a halt. Ali didn’t take chances. Yet here she was, already at risk, so intent on keeping Jared close, on taking the sexual and emotional release she so desperately needed, she hadn’t even considered birth control. The higher her blood alcohol concentration climbed, the lower her capacity for rational decision-making plunged into the abyss of irrationality.

      “I don’t care.” She arched her back, took him deep, then relaxed. “You said you’re a real man. Don’t real men have control?” Arch. Relax.

      He expelled a huge breath as if trying to muster some of that “real man” control.

      She leaned forward, rubbed her lips over his. “Please,” she whispered then kissed him, thrust her tongue into the warm confines of his mouth.

      He turned his head. “Ali, I’m … We shouldn’t …” He tried to push her away.

      “No,” Ali cried out, throwing both arms around his neck, holding him tight. “Don’t leave me,” she begged, willing to do anything to keep him there, to not be alone. She squeezed her inner muscles, trying to hold him inside her. “Stay with me,” she whispered in his ear, slowly tipping her pelvis forward then back. “Love me. Make me forget.”

      Jared moaned in surrender and began to move beneath her, gradually increased his pace until he rocked into her with a power that matched her own.

      Ali’s head started to spin, scattering her thoughts as effectively as a centrifuge. All but one. Perfection. The ultimate satisfaction was within reach. “Do. Not. Stop.”

      “I won’t, Ali. I want to make you feel so good.” His hand slipped between her legs.

      “I do. Oh …” With a few flicks of his talented fingers a surge of ecstasy flooded her system. It was different, intense, freeing. It wiped her mind clear, and a blissful contentment spread through her. A dark, satiated calm engulfed her, until the chime of the big clock at the top of the town hall echoed through the thick haze of her mind.

      Ali counted. Twelve.

       Approximate time of death—midnight, November 23rd.

      Her tequila-soaked defenses failed, allowing the memory of that fateful day to seep into cognition.

       Sophomore year of high school.

       Ali’s mother and her married high-school principal caught doing the nasty on his desk, the act broadcast on the wall-sized movie screen in the auditorium during a full school assembly. In surround sound.

       Girls looked at her with more disdain than usual that day. The boys kept their distance. Even her teachers turned away rather than look her in the eye.

       Storming into the house after school, Ali had one purpose—to find her mother and make her feel as bad as she was feeling. How much was a fifteen-year-old girl expected to take? This time her mom had gone too far.

      Ali pounded up the stairs, down the hallways, craving confrontation, in desperate need of an outlet for the anger and frustration raging inside her. She found her mom in the last place she looked, on the back porch. She must have heard Ali calling out, slamming doors, yet she hadn’t moved from her sprawl on the cushioned wicker couch. She just stared off into the backyard, seeming oblivious to Ali’s arrival.

       “Mom,” Ali yelled.

       With awkward, sluggish movements, her mom repositioned herself, slowly turning toward Ali, getting tangled in the multicolored afghan covering her. An empty wine bottle slid off her lap, crashed onto the wood decking and rolled under the coffee table. In hindsight, Ali should have taken pity on her mom, drunk in the afternoon, her eyes droopy, her face devoid of makeup and emotion, her hair an unwashed, blond, scraggly mess in need of a dye touch-up.

       But Ali’s anger had overtaken rational thought, her adolescent angst-ridden brain focused solely on her pain and anger, and how her mother’s actions had caused both. “You have ruined my life,” she screamed at her mother. “I hate you.”

       Ali had been poised for battle. She’d needed it.

       But her mother seemed unaffected by her outburst. Calm as could be, she said, “Right back atcha, kiddo.”

       Ali stood immobile, her urge to fight replaced by a cold, empty feeling.

       “If I had to do it all again,” her mother went on, staring off into the distance, her slurred speech doing nothing to conceal the malice in her tone, “I would have given you up instead of giving up my dreams to keep you.”

       Her mother’s last words to the daughter she’d blamed for every bad thing that had happened in her life, the daughter she had never wanted or loved.

      Jared’s lungs were heaving, his skin tingling, his mind clogged by post-orgasmic fluff, following the best, albeit the only, sexual encounter he’d allowed himself in years, as he fought to make sense of what he’d just done.

      He’d had sex with Ali. Without removing a single piece of clothing. Without a condom. He felt sick. He’d pulled out just in case she wasn’t on birth control but still … He’d driven into her like an animal. On a park bench, for God’s sake. According to Bobby, who had refused to shut up about his history with Ali, Jared had treated her no better than the jerks from her high school.

      He felt like the lowest form of life, a maggot living on a rotting corpse at the bottom of a filthy dumpster.

      Jared thought about Bobby and couldn’t help but wonder how often Ali had to fend off the unwanted sexual advances of men she’d known as a teenager. If last night had been the first time one of them had used force? If the reason she’d been willing to settle for a man like Michael was for the protection being married might offer?

      Something balled up at the back of his throat, making it difficult to swallow.

      Bobby had taken pleasure in sharing his high-school nickname for Ali. And in explaining why. But Jared didn’t care about her past. Ten years ago he’d been a different person, too. Present-day Ali, the smart, sassy, thoughtful woman, the kind, compassionate, skilled practitioner, was all that mattered. And she deserved so much more than the man he’d become. Jaded. Distrustful. Unwilling to love.

      “I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair.

      She didn’t respond.

      Back before he’d gotten married, before Typhoon Cici had blown through, nearly destroying his life, when Jared had dated, he’d enjoyed making women feel special. Flowers. Candy. Dinner at fancy restaurants. He’d complimented their outfits and hair, acted the perfect gentleman, waited for them to invite him in. He’d never, ever, had unprotected sex in the middle of the woods. Never, ever felt guilty after a sexual encounter. Until now.

      And yet he couldn’t bring himself to regret one minute of it.

      Ali lay slumped against his chest, her head wedged in the nook between his neck and shoulder, the only indication she was alive the puffs of warm air on his skin when she exhaled. She’d fallen asleep. He appreciated the quiet disturbed only by the movement of water from the stream, the rustle of dried leaves, an occasional car pulling into or out of the bar parking lot.

      He had no desire to talk, or move. So he sat, with her still straddling his lap, in no hurry to leave, enjoying the feel of her in his arms, which he tightened around her, slipping his hands under the bottom of her sweater to warm them. They fit

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