I respond at once, my back arching a little. It presses me onto my fingers, and the pressure stirs me even further.
I move my hand with greater urgency, not wanting to draw it out, wanting to get quickly to the release, but my body has other plans. Instead of a direct ascent, the pleasure comes like a rising tide, swelling in waves. A flush of heat warms my skin, and I begin to twist my body atop the increasingly rumpled bed.
Once, a thought goes through my head and I almost lose my momentum, but then I recover and am climbing again, up and up. Finally, a starburst of ecstasy blooms, beginning deep inside and radiating outwards through my entire body.
I fall back against the comforter, breathing hard, spent. I have heard about angry sex and how intense it is supposed to be but have never experienced it myself. Or maybe now I have.
I lie back and close my eyes again, taking stock of how I feel—shaky yet relaxed, agitated yet soothed. Calm yet still irritated? Yes to all, especially that last one, but why?
I realize it’s because of that one thought that bubbled up from somewhere in the back of my brain there near the end. A face had materialized in my mind’s eye after all, a face that, while handsome and intriguing, had been worn by someone who had caused me a great deal of stress. Trent Stone.
Now, why would he pop up at a time like this? Because he had been so much on my mind leading up to the very thing that was meant to make me forget about him?
“That’s twisted,” I tell myself. Suddenly, I’m tired, too tired for self-psychoanalysis. It takes everything I have to get up, run myself through the shower, and fall into bed, this time to sleep.
“Hey, wake up!”
I flinch, my head tapping against the passenger-side window of Tira’s car. I had been seriously drifting there for what could have been miles.
“You back with me now?” Tira asks, unoffended.
I nod. I had been seriously daydreaming and don’t even recognize the part of town through which we’re currently moving.
Tira is unoffended, not just because she’s my best friend, but because she’s also on a sympathy mission to cheer me up following my debacle of the day before. I had been sitting at the kitchen table, alternately grateful that my business insurance would likely cover the damages to Stone’s home and sure that the whole rotten episode was going to be a stake in the heart that ended my career. Burning down a client’s home, or nearly so, was not going to do wonders for my reputation.
And so Tira had swooped in, scooped me up, bundled me into her car, and now we were on our way to meet up with a few friends for golf, of all things.
“I feel like I’ve been kidnapped,” I tell her as she pulls into the lot of the club. She’s a member. I’m not. The only thing I seem to be a member of is the destroying-your-future club.
“You have been,” she confirms. “I had to do it. Otherwise, you would have just moped around your apartment until it was time to go to work.”
“I knew there was a reason I wanted to be open earlier on Sundays,” I grouse.
I have always been and continue to be a terrible golfer, but the activity actually helps. Besides the sunshine and fresh air, there is nothing like trying not to embarrass yourself in front of your girlfriends to focus the mind wonderfully.
All right, I’ll admit it, a few gin and tonics did nothing at all to discourage my lifting spirits. The sky is an unbroken blue, the breeze is refreshing, and the grass blazes an emerald green. It’s about as perfect a Sunday afternoon as you could want.
I don’t know much about golf, but I know that a low score is good and a high score is bad. I won’t shame myself by revealing how high into the triple digits my own score is today. It doesn’t dampen my still-improving mood, though.
“There’s the Steph I was looking for,” Tira says at last, smiling widely and nudging me with the handle of her driver. “I knew you were in there somewhere.”
Not one word has been said about my previous day’s misfortunes. Tira, bless her, must have told Amanda and Jordan to skirt around that one particular elephant in the room. I’m grateful to have it skirted. I’ll have to deal with it soon enough, and today feels like such a welcome break from anger and woe.
We play through the eighteen holes at our leisure, having fun and enjoying each other’s company.
“Thanks, Tira,” I say to her as we finish putting on the final green. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been out with the girls.”
Work, work, work…this had been the litany I tried to use to beg off the outing with Tira when she had shown up at my apartment late this morning.
“I have a mountain of things to do to get ready for the upcoming work week,” I’d said. “Plus, I already slept in anyway.”
“No more of that grumbling talk,” she had commanded. “You’re going to enjoy yourself, whether you like it or not. Get your shoes on; we have places to go and things to do!”
“Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise,” she had declared. “All you need to know is that it involves fresh air, sunshine and a few rounds of drinks.”
Now here I am, actually relaxing a bit. I can almost be said to be feeling
