Snow Job (10 page)

“Nobody else,” she acquiesced in a voice she hardly recognized as her own. She wanted so badly for him to go on, wanted to beg him, which she had never done before.

Keeping herself from pleading aloud was an act of monumental wil but she couldn’t keep herself from thinking it, over and over.
Please, please, kiss me there, flick your
tongue just there, do it until I don’t care if there are kids
asleep next door, it’s been so long…

Karl knew how to play her, and he did. Either sensing that a great deal of foreplay would be moot or simply not caring whether she needed it or not, he set about achieving his goal by the most direct means possible, first laving at her already-tingling nether lips with a practiced tongue, and then teasing around her stiffly peaked clitoris with kisses as he worked a finger inside her.

Thrusting deeper, finding she was already slick and hot and ready, Karl slid a second finger alongside the first and started to pump them in and out of her cunt until she picked up his rhythm and her hips began to counter each thrust.

When he final y latched onto her clit, suckling hard and fluttering his tongue against the sensitized bud, Elyce gasped and almost jerked away, overcome by the strength of the sensation.

She might have pul ed back, had her impending climax left her more time to consider. As it was, she had no time for thought before the orgasm built swiftly and sharply to a keen edge over which she found herself hurled within mere moments.

Panting, almost weeping, Elyce opened her eyes as the wave of pleasure abated, staring unseeing at the shadowed corners of the coved ceiling until Karl lifted his head and began to work his way up her body once more.

Taken by storm
, Elyce thought, and wondered vaguely when he had removed his pants, and then he was there, primed to enter her, and she blinked in confusion when he didn’t.

“What?”

“Are you stil on the Pil ?”

“I…yes…”

And then it was done. In one swift motion, he had joined them together again.

Stil holding her puzzled, angry eyes with his own, he shifted his weight and pushed deeper, forcing a whispered cry from Elyce despite how wet she already was. Nearly a year, with nobody else in the meantime, and if he wanted the proof it was there in the way she opened slowly, so slowly, adjusting to his girth as if for the first time. The tightness made him groan, thrust harder, as if her discomfort was spurring him on. Perhaps it was, Elyce thought, feeling strangely detached. Perhaps Karl was taking out his frustration with her in this way since words had failed him. Failed them both. Surely he couldn’t think to win her back this way, through this barely consensual sex, forced upon them both by the close quarters, the tension, the long months of doing without?

Karl had dipped his head into the spot he’d always favored, lips grazing the skin at the side of her neck, and Elyce could feel the muscles playing along his back as he fucked her before she even realized she had lifted her hands to hold him closer. So familiar. And when Karl worked a hand between them to find her clit, stroking in time with his hips, her body found that familiar too, and responded as it always had.

She felt the second climax building and tried to wil it from happening, but it was too late. Al of it too late. Karl raised himself on one elbow and looked her in the eyes as he brought her to orgasm again, until she had to close her eyes with the force of it, with her own climax and then with feeling Karl spasm and shudder and final y come to a trembling and breathless halt inside her.

After a moment she felt his lips on hers, and kissed back because it seemed the easiest thing to do. But then, rejecting the easy path as she so often did, Elyce pul ed away in disgust, more with herself than with Karl.

“Just…get off.”

Without a word, but with another smirk Elyce wanted to smack from his mouth, Karl rol ed away to lie on his back in evident satiation.

After a moment of lying silently at his side, Elyce pushed herself to a sitting position and swung her shaky legs off the side of the bed. Her first effort to stand was not successful, and she cursed under her breath as she regrouped and final y rose to walk to the bathroom.

Karl said nothing, just snorted in sardonic amusement then shielded his eyes with a wince as she deliberately flicked the light on with the door stil open.

“Oh
sorry
, ” Elyce said snidely before closing the door and turning the lock as loudly as she could.

She was able to clean the surface evidence off with a damp washcloth, but knew that she would stil be carrying the results of their activity wel into the next day. The inevitable drip would be unpleasant and uncomfortable on the ski slope.

Looking at herself in the mirror, Elyce saw the tousled hair and reddened lips of a woman who had just been thoroughly fucked. It pained her physical y. She had to bite at the inside of her cheek to keep tears from wel ing up as she recal ed how she used to look at herself in the mirror after sex and think of herself as a woman who had been thoroughly
loved
. Karl used to join her then in the bathroom, they would take a warm bath afterward and talk about nothing important, just another excuse to touch and hold one another. He used to get out first, dry off and then hold a clean towel out to wrap her in when she stood up.

Elyce sighed with impatience at her sentimental wandering and splashed icy water on her face until the feeling of impending tears subsided. Flicking her ponytail back over her shoulder, she squared off defiantly at her reflection with a firm nod. Thus prepared, she slapped the light off and opened the door to confront Karl.

He was asleep already, which only infuriated her further. How dare
he fal asleep after what had just happened?

Stalking over to the bedside, she snatched the blankets back, searching for and finding her discarded nightgown and underwear near the foot of the bed. Stil naked, stil half asleep, Karl mumbled a protest at the cold.

“It’s no more than you deserve,” Elyce hissed. “I should make you sleep on the floor. What the hel was that?”

Karl sat up, wearing an expression much colder than the room. “That was what we’ve been missing out on the last eleven months. You seemed to enjoy it as much as I did,
Wife
, so I find it pretty rich that you’re acting offended about it now. You certainly weren’t protesting at the time so it’s a little late to pul an attitude, don’t you think?”

“What was I going to do, pitch a fit with a room ful of kids next door? I don’t think so. Yes, I could have refused.

But frankly it’s been a while for me too, and I admit I wasn’t thinking straight because of that. So I was horny. That doesn’t mean it was a smart thing to do or that I was thril ed about doing it.”

“You weren’t thril ed? Funny, you
seemed
pretty fucking thril ed. Twice, if I’m not mistaken. But I’l take your word for it.” He began rooting under the displaced covers, searching for his pajamas. “If you don’t want to sleep with me, fine.

You’re more than welcome to the floor. But it’s pretty damn cold down there and since we’ve already had sex, it seems like a lot of trouble to go to, to make a gesture that’s pointless in the first place.”

“You are such a bastard.”

“You weren’t saying that a few minutes ago when you were coming your brains out, my love.” Having located his pants and t-shirt, Karl put them back on with brisk, efficient motions before pul ing the covers over himself once more.

“As enjoyable as this discussion is, however, we have an early morning and a heavy day of skiing tomorrow, so my recommendation would be that you just get over yourself and get into bed where it’s warm. I’m planning to sleep now, so whatever’s left of your virtue wil be safe from me tonight.”

“Screw you, Karl,” Elyce said, wishing she had something better to say. Her lawyer’s ability to think on her feet and snap out a comeback always seemed to desert her where Karl was concerned.

“Nice. But like I just said, we already did that. So now I’m going to sleep.” He rol ed over, pointedly ignoring her as she climbed into bed with a resigned sigh and jerked considerably more than her fair share of the blankets over her shoulders.

Although she expected her simmering resentment to keep her awake, Elyce was exhausted and fel asleep almost instantly, not even rousing when Karl’s soft snores began to fil the room a few hours later.

Elyce woke to find Karl already out of bed and out of the room. The sun was only just rising and sending reflections of pink and gold light into the room, hints of warmth that Elyce knew would not be borne out by the actual temperature outside. She considered briefly the merits of simply remaining in bed, perhaps claiming a migraine, altitude sickness or just “not feeling wel ”, but the thought of the skiing enticed her up at last.

She threw a robe on over her nightgown and traipsed down the broad wood-slat stairs to find that Karl, his brother-in-law and his mother were the only other grownups downstairs. Young Charles was sprawled on the giant fleece in front of the cold fireplace, with a fringed woolen throw patterned in green Christmas trees tossed over him.

He had evidently gotten up early to watch cartoons—they were stil playing on the flat-screen television—but had fal en back to sleep snuggled into the rug and blanket.

Alice was already hard at work scrambling eggs, flipping pancakes neatly from the griddle into a stack and marshaling the proper crisping of row after row of bacon.

Scott and Karl sat at the outer rim of the kitchen island, heads bent together in solemn concentration on a digital camera that lay before them in a state of moderate disassembly.

“See, I think it’s this little thingy here, this little lever dealie. Hey, Elyce.” Scott pul ed the camera closer and peered into its miniaturized recesses, poking inside occasional y with a tiny screwdriver.

“Good morning,” Elyce said, neatly dodging Karl’s attempt to goose her and gaining the relative safety of the other side of the island where coffee was to be had.

“Good morning to you too,” Karl said, frowning a little but not too sternly at her evasion. “I wondered if you were going to give in to temptation and just stay in bed al day.”

“I thought about it,” Elyce admitted, opening the refrigerator to look for the milk. “But the snow looks real y good to me. It looks worth getting out of bed for.”

Karl nodded, his attention turned once more to the camera. Alice rol ed her eyes and shook her head fondly at the sight of the men’s absorption in their task, and grateful y accepted Elyce’s offer to help mind the bacon. “Since the boys are too preoccupied with their gadget to help out.”

Scott snorted. “You’l be the first one nagging me to email you these pictures as soon as we get back.”

“Assuming we can fix it,” Karl added.

Elyce watched the easy interaction between the Nash family members and suffered a momentary pang of homesickness. Her own family, though smal er, was not so different. Her younger brother Riley would be on Christmas vacation now, and was probably sleeping in. Her mother would already be awake, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper, possibly having a good-natured mock squabble with Dad over who got the comics or the crossword first. It would end as it always did, with a kiss and an agreement. It real y didn’t matter who got which section first and they actual y both favored the op-ed page anyway. The sun would just be peeking over the neighbor’s house and hitting the Anderson’s breakfast room window, there on Nob Hil , just as it would be sliding into view here once it cleared the greater hurdle of the mountains.

The perspective, she realized, made a difference—

some places, you just had to wait a bit longer if you wanted to see the sun rise.

Elyce sniffed back a tear and avoided Karl’s questioning glance. She didn’t want to talk about it, about missing her family this Christmas when she was usual y happy to spend alternate holidays here with the Nashes. It would have been a Nash Christmas this year anyway, Elyce recal ed bitterly. No need to ask herself why this year, unlike al the others, the separation from her own family was harder to take.

For the first time since her very earliest few visits here she felt like an outsider, and the feeling only clarified a nagging sense she’d been avoiding that she was losing more than just Karl with this divorce. She would miss these people, Elyce admitted to herself. They were family now.

Even Karl stil felt like family, just as he always had.

Unsure what to do with that set of emotions, Elyce busied herself by helping Alice with setting the table and transferring food to serving dishes. Slowly, the family trickled down into the cheerful, steadily brightening kitchen, eating in shifts that were roughly the same each year. First Karl’s grandparents, already long awake and arriving at the table having showered and dressed. Then his father and brother, nearly always at the same time and looking like an age-advancing trick photograph come to life, as they resembled one another so strongly. They would stil be in sleep garb, and even their drowsy, slow-to-wake mannerisms were so identical as to be amusing—the same scratch of the right leg, the same quick rub of the tousled head and then an owlish blink, as if the brisk motion had been startling to the system.