“It’s okay,” she whispered, finally.

He let go of her, stepped back. “Show me, then.”

She shot a puzzled look over her shoulder. “Show you what?”

“That it’s okay,” he said. And waited.

It worked again, as it had before. She thought about it for a moment, her full, rosy lip caught seductively between her teeth.

Then she straightened her spine, tossed her hair back, and sauntered over to his bed. Taking her time. She climbed on, positioning herself on her hands and knees, presenting her perfect ass. She looked back, with that secret smile, and parted her thighs, undulating. “Convinced?” she purred.

He didn’t bother to reply. Seconds later, he was in position, condom in place. His fingers rejoiced at her flawless skin, her lithe muscles, her sweet curves. He teased the secret shadows of her pussy while he kissed the mandala tattoo, playing her quivering clit.

She squirmed and moaned, wet and hot, but he took his time easing inside. The tight, hot clutch of her was sweet torture on his cock. She clung to him, her pussy flushed and full, like a juicy, suckling kiss. He let her rock back to take him in, a little more each time, until he was buried deep. Then some gasping, panting minutes of stroking and petting, licking her back, working her clit, and she started to make catlike sounds, pressing back. Demanding that he move.

Yes. Now she was ready to ride.

He thrust, hypnotized by the sight of the shiny pink lips of her sex clinging to his shaft. He withdrew, gleaming. Drove in again, again, seeking the strokes that made her soften and yield, using that subtle, inner awareness he’d never known existed until he’d made love to her. Now that he’d discovered it, he was strung out on it. Life was going to be so flat, so flavorless, without her.

That realization stabbed in like a blade. His hands tightened on her hips. And something in him cracked wide open.

He lost control. Rammed into her with the energy of a lifetime of unsatisfied need, seeking that blinding moment where he wouldn’t have to think, or feel. Or fear.

It hit. He exploded into nothingness.

When he finally surfaced, she was wiggling beneath him on the quilt, kicking at his ankles. “Roll over,” she said tartly. “I can’t breathe.”

He rolled over, and she pulled away, sitting up. Her eyes were wide. “That was, um, intense,” she said, her voice small.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Did I hurt you?”

“A little. It was exciting. I came, of course. You always make me come. But you weren’t with me anymore. At the end. I felt…alone.”

He didn’t know what to say. He felt her withdrawal like a cold wind. He reached out, but she shrank back, and he let his hand drop.

“I’m sorry,” he said, feeling helpless. “Get in bed,” he pleaded. “Wait for me while I go take this thing off.”

“Okay.” She didn’t move. He waited, until she rolled her eyes, wiggled across the bed, and slid between the sheets.

“You won’t go?” he demanded. “Promise?”

“No,” she said softly. “I promise.”

He smoothed the quilt over her, his face reddening. He was afraid she would disappear. He was a goner.

“The sooner you go, the sooner you’ll come back,” she said.

He stared at himself in the bathroom mirror, clutching the sink. He turned on the cold water, splashed his face, tried to think clearly. Abandoned the effort, after about five seconds. Useless.

All he wanted in the world was to fuck her again. Hold her again. Wrap himself around her in a grip that she could not break.

He wiped off his face and grabbed the little wastebasket from under the sink. Stupid to run back and forth every time.

She was still there when he got back. Holding the covers open for him. He slid into bed and grabbed her.

Her face softened into a smile. Something tight in his chest uncoiled. He resisted the sensation, automatically, and then yielded to it, with a shudder of backed-up emotion.

He arranged her so that her head was cradled on his shoulder, her arm resting on his chest, her leg flung over his. He stroked her back, and felt her heart beating under his hand, until she fell asleep.

So soft. He stared at the swirls of red hair tickling his nose, his chin. Her slender shoulder. He loved her scent, the soft moist bloom of warmth of her breath against his shoulder. He memorized the curve of her spine. If he concentrated on these details, and thought of nothing, he could cling to this emotion that was vibrating inside him, like a tightly strung instrument. Part of him wanted to shove it back into the darkness, but the feeling sang on, a fragile, stubborn thread. He clung to it, counting the rise and fall of her breath. Keeping the rest at bay.

Late afternoon eased with the smoothness of a sigh into twilight. He barely noticed. He could lie there forever, feeling her ribs rise and fall. Letting that strange feeling vibrate inside him.

Contentment? No. He rejected the word. He was familiar with contentment. He was contented with his house, his work. Lucky, to spend his days with the smell of the earth and rain, the sun, the flowers. That was contentment. This feeling was new. It was a long, quiet hour before he dared to put a name to it. It felt like happiness.

Behind that word were doors in his mind that had been locked for years. Like when Randy left, when he was eight. Deborah, who always insisted that he call her Deborah instead of Mom, told him that Randy had to go and find himself. “I gotta have space,” Jack remembered him saying, very loudly. Jack remembered thinking that was dumb. It was the Oregon desert. There was so much space, it gave him the willies.

But Randy needed more. He took down his teepee, threw it in his truck, and drove away. Jack remembered standing there, bewildered, while Randy’s truck got smaller. Jack wondered sometimes if Randy was his father, but Deborah was somewhat vague on that point.

Then they’d stayed with Jim and Consuela, in the Yakima Valley, until Deborah met Manuel. They moved into Manuel’s trailer in the peach orchards. Manuel taught him Spanish, how to fight, how to change the oil in a car. Then Manuel got in trouble because he didn’t have a green card, and had to go back to Mexico. After a while, Deborah decided she had to follow her heart and go to Mexico, too.

“You’ll stay with Tavia,” she told the totally freaked-out Jack.

“But why can’t I come?”

“Oh, it’s complicated, baby. But I’ll write you letters, and I’ll send for you real soon. You’ll love it with Aunt Tavia. Her commune has lots of kids, and a swimming hole, and a tree house and everything.”

Off he went, to Tavia’s commune, near Olympia. He got letters, but they came less and less frequently. He was just getting used to it when Tavia fell in love with Mick, a guy from Oakland, and decided to move to California with him. Mick didn’t want Jack to come. “The family thing is just not my scene,” Mick said firmly.

So he went to Uncle Freddy’s place in southern Oregon. In the meantime, Deborah broke up with Manuel, who was “too enmeshed in his culture,” the letter said. She decided to go to India to study yoga with a guru, “to get her head straightened out and recover her sense of self.” Shortly after that, Tavia broke up with Mick, left Oakland, and moved to Los Angeles with a guy named Mike.

Jack had trouble keeping it all straight. But he liked the mellow, benevolent Uncle Freddy. He liked the garden, the farm, the mountains. He had almost begun to allow himself to think of the place as home when the bust happened. The time he most hated to remember. He hadn’t thought of it in years. He stared at the barbed-wire tattoo around Vivi’s slender wrist. Tracing it. And realized that her eyes were open. Studying him.

She scrambled on top of him, folding her arms over his chest. Questions in her eyes. She wanted to talk. It terrified him. Too much reality would chase away that feeling. But even so, he wanted to know her. Her history, her dreams, her hopes, her plans.