base of the bedside table. Freeing a paper cup from the stack lying on its side in the drawer, she set it down and straddled his chest, facing his toes and the TV.
Her long strands of hair tickled his belly. He stared at the mole that swelled off her right shoulder as she ground her vulva against him. Attending for a moment the furnace’s hum and the gurgle of the soapstone waterfall, he reached around her ribcage for breasts veined like the back of her knees, and shuddered as her fingers began to knead his testicles.
“Once my tits were good, weren’t they, Big Shit? Remember how you used to suck to make the bud pop out?”
“Unh,” he groaned, and his middle finger pushed into the hollow where her nipple hid. He saw the infant they never talked of, saw Lila press his tiny ears and re-guide the tiny lips to her right breast.
“They’re loading Tomahawks under the wings of a Super Hornet on the Abraham Lincoln, Ron.” One arm stiff against his thigh, she stopped grinding and began to milk his penis, spitting on her palm and sliding it up, releasing and beginning again near the loosening scrotum.
“It’s workin’, hon.” He crimped his eyes, concentrating on the building heat.
“Little Prince is growing fast.”
“Huh, huh, keep your promise, babe, do it.”
“A flatbed’s bringing a missile up I’ve never seen.”
“Do it, Lile!”
His thighs twitched and his testicles ached as she released him and clambered onto her side, scrambling to bunch the edge of the towel into the hollow between her hip and the sheet. She lifted her head to take his glans into her mouth.
“Don’t forget the jewels,” he panted, arms flung from the fat spreading from his rib cage.
She freed her lips. “Stop telling me.”
Sweat massed in the folds of his eyelids as he felt her fingers massage his testicles and stroke his inner thighs. She lowered her face to mouth his erection. Lucky Max’s husband when she needs his money to add a cubicle to her office or remodel the office kitchen—no paper cup, Ron thought.
“Slow down,” he gasped.
She licked the nerve as he’d taught her—the nerve Max teased to drive him berserk—and resumed squeezing his shaft, pressing the glans with her lips.
“Now!” he cried, releasing his own breasts, heavy as water balloons, and raising his right arm in salute.
Palming his testicles, she plunged down on the shaft, back up, down and back, until his semen massed for eruption. The ends of the hair she shampooed twice daily felt like feathers swishing across the tops of his thighs.
“Oh Jesus Christ and Paul Apostle, suck, don’t stop, suck, suck, oh Judas Christ, oh.” The wrinkles in his neck were soaked. “Uhhhhhhhh.”
He arched his back, vising her head as the vasectomized liquid spurted toward her throat. When she strained to free her head, he relaxed his grip. She rolled over, grabbed the cup, spat into it, and clapped it on the table.
“I’m good?” she asked, chest heaving, voice throaty, turning her face toward him. The capillaries in her cheeks flamed. She pulled an edge of the towel around to wipe his forehead and neck.
“Oh yeah.” He began to wheeze. His right hand squeezed his testicles.
“Do me now.”
“Gimme a breather, Lile.”
“You big shit.” She reached for a pillow and plopped it against the headboard. She stroked her clitoris—longer than most (but be glad, a gynecologist had told her before marriage; she’d thought it deformed)—and stared at the catapult slinging an F-18 from the end of the carrier’s deck. Between her other thumb and forefinger she rolled her nipple. Her chest stilled.
“Lie back,” Ron growled, scooting off the bed to his knees.
She settled herself on the American flag’s cotton nubs, legs dangling off either side of him. “Play with my tits,” she murmured.
“I need balance to do this right. You play with ‘em.” Pushing his palms against the sheet and tucking his thumbs under her shoulder blades, he lowered his face to her gray nest of hair and found her clitoris. He drew his tongue’s tip back and forth along the organ, so much longer than Max’s; fussed with it like a cat, nipping, flicking; felt her hand slip under his forehead to join him.
“Good-O. Don’t stop, Ronnie, please?”
He had trouble keeping his tongue connected because she had started revolving her pelvis. The ligature on the underside of his tongue smarted as if nicked with scissors.
“I’ve got to use my finger, babe.” He rested his cheekbone on her thigh, gazing at his silver wedding band and its bits of turquoise.
“Come back, I’m almost there. Please, Ronnie?”
A few more swipes with his middle finger and he returned to licking and flicking the clit slick with fluid until the gaps between her moans shortened, as they had before Jonathan’s birth. Her pelvis began to thrash. He bore down with his tongue until she screamed.
As awed now as he had been at their son’s birth, he watched her fling her head. How was he going to dump Max? Christ Amighty, listen to those screams, look at Prince stretch. We’ll start over, Lila, I swear it. Max can never have an orgasm anyhoo.
He bent to lick perspiration from the navel of this wife of thirty-eight years, massaging her nest with his palm until she quieted, her jaw hanging.
“Thank you, honeybunch, oh Lord.”
“Lile, babe?” He pushed his testicles against his penis, wincing at how his heart galloped as he stood. “Let’s do doggy.”
“Your doctor didn’t say only one spurt a night till you lose weight?” She rested a moment. “Another fib? You do it twice with that whore? And I put up with it.” Her voice dropped to a murmur.
“There’s no Max Morgan and me that way, Lile. I told you! I learned my lesson after Cowtown. Yes, the sawbones said one orgasm. But tonight I thought, Lila and I deserve more. Okay, we shouldn’t.”
“Right. Though I don’t believe anything you say anymore. Good trophy wife.” Leaning on her elbow, she swung her legs up and, knees squashing her breasts, rolled off the towel toward the headboard. “Come on up here.”
His own breasts and belly jiggling, he climbed onto the mattress and lay on his back parallel to the stripes now warm and damp with lovemaking.
From the Fox newscaster she turned to face Ron on her knees, straight-arming the mattress with her fists on either side of his shoulders. Saliva wet her teeth and gold fillings—she’d cracked two molars after Jonathan’s death at Fort Ord.
“Rise up, Lile, you’re hurtin’ me.”
“Too bad. You ready?”
“I guess.”
Raising
