Marisol Vance

Third night. They do this every night, don't they. Do they not think they're loud?

I'm lying on my back in the dark, in my flannel pajama bottoms and a tank top, with a pillow clamped over my face and the radio murmuring on the nightstand. It doesn't help. Through the wall, the headboard is hammering in a steady rhythm, and under it, Tessa's voice, climbing, cracking, breaking into a high, helpless wail that I have not made myself since 2011.

She sounds like she's dying. Why is she making that noise? Is that a noise a person makes?

I take the pillow off my face and stare at the ceiling.

"Don't," I whisper, to myself, to Pickle, who's watching from the end of the bed. "Don't you dare. You're a grown woman. You've got a casserole in the oven. Go to sleep."

A particularly loud gasp rattles the wall, and a low male voice murmurs something I can't catch. My thighs press together. Heat spreads low in my belly, slow and insistent, and my breathing goes shallow.

Three days. Three. It's like a clock. And the last time anyone touched me was a handshake at a funeral.

I count the weeks since my husband was home. I stop counting. My hand is already in the bedside drawer, and my fingers close around something cool and smooth and very familiar.

"Oh, you traitor," I mutter, and a small, hot laugh escapes me. "Fine. Fine. One time. For science."

I slide my pajama bottoms down and my panties with them. I'm hairy down there, I know it, I've never been one for fuss, and for a moment I feel a ridiculous flicker of embarrassment in an empty room. I take a breath, shift my knees apart, and press the toy against myself.

It's slow at first. I bite my lip. Through the wall, the rhythm picks up, faster, harder, and Tessa starts to sob, I swear, actually sob, her thighs slapping and quivering against whatever he's doing to her, and I close my eyes and match it, a little at a time, and picture something I'd never tell my daughter. My own thighs start to shake.

Oh, God. Oh, that's... it's been so long.

I come once, quiet, shuddering, my teeth in the heel of my hand. I'm not done. It's still going on next door, forty minutes now, and my body won't stop. I come again, harder, and a third time, and I have to stuff my fist against my mouth so that I don't scream.

When it's finally over, the walls go quiet. I lie there, panting, drenched in sweat, the sheets sticking to my back, the toy slick in my hand. I drop it on the mattress and cover my face with both arms.

"Fuck," I whisper, to the ceiling, with a breathless laugh. "Forty-five minutes. i came three times. I wince. "Yuck. I'm so sticky."

A shower. A shower and a cup of tea, and we'll never speak of it.

I don't get up. I lie there, boneless, my pajamas around my ankles, my heart slowing. Pickle yawns. The radio hums. It's the best I've felt in years, and I'm so embarrassed I could die.

Then, down the hall, a floorboard creaks.

It's a soft sound, but I know every sound in this house. Footsteps. Bare feet, slow and unhurried, coming along the landing. They pause outside my door.

I stop breathing.

I didn't lock it. Oh, I never locked it.

The handle turns. The door creaks open, an inch at a time, and a thin stripe of hallway light falls across my bed, across my bare thighs, across the toy lying shining on the quilt. I freeze, one hand still clutching the sheet, my face going scarlet from the neck up.

I can't form a single word.

That's the thing. I'm a woman who has never once run out of conversation. I've talked my way out of parking tickets, bank charges, and one bar fight in 1998. And right now, bent over my own kitchen island in a robe that's been pushed up around my waist, with my cheek pressed against the cool marble and my fingers scrabbling for purchase, I can't say anything at all. Only noises. Wet, broken, mortifying noises, and I can't stop them.

He's behind me. Both hands locked on my hips, and he hasn't let go for a second. Not once. Phat, phat, phat, the slap of skin against skin echoes off the kitchen tiles, steady, relentless, and every stroke drives the breath out of me in a cry. The fruit bowl is rattling. Pickle is watching from the windowsill with the weary dignity of a cat who has seen too much.

The oven timer is going. The lasagne's burning. I don't care. I don't care at all.

"Ah! Ah... oh God... oh, fuck..." My voice breaks into something high and thin. "Don't... hah... don't stop... I can't... I can't think..."

My knees are shaking. My legs are tired, they might give in, I feel it, but there's an arm hooked around my waist holding me up, hard and certain, and he drives into me again, deep, and a long, ragged whimper tears out of my throat that I would never in my life have admitted to making.

Forty-two years old. Mother of one. Bent over a counter like a... like a...

I lose the thought. A hand slides up my spine, into my hair, and gathers it in a fist, not cruelly, and pulls my head back. A shudder runs through me. My nipples drag against the marble. I'm dripping. I'm so wet that I can hear it, and I'm too far gone to be ashamed.

"Please," I gasp, to nobody, to the ceiling. "Please... more... please..."

He gives me more. I can feel myself clenching around him, helpless, hungry, my whole body tightening like a fist. A sound comes out of me that's more mewl than moan, high and breathless and shameless. I don't recognize it. I don't care.

I haven't had this in so long. I forgot. How did I forget?

The pressure coils tighter. My thighs tremble. I try to say his name, and I say something else instead, something that isn't a word at all, and then it breaks over me, a wave so big that my vision goes white and my whole body arches off the counter.

He doesn't stop. He fucks me through it, and a second wave builds before the first has ended, and my fingers claw at the marble.

"Oh... oh, I can't... hah... I can't..." My voice is wrecked. "I can't take... any... more..."

He told me to watch. I shouldn't.

I stand in the hallway in the dark, in my dressing gown, with my bare toes curled against the carpet, and I tell myself I'm only on my way to the bathroom. Tessa's door is slightly ajar. Lamplight spills across the landing. And a voice, low and even, came through it a moment ago, his, saying something naughty to Tessa.

He knows I'm here. He knows I'll obey.

My heart is going so hard that I feel it in my throat. I should go back to my room. I'm a married woman. I'm forty-two. I'm her landlady, yet I am spying on a girl getting fucked. I should go back to my room and lock the door and put the radio on.

I put my eye to the gap.

Oh.

He's on his back on the bed. And Tessa is on top of him, tiny, flushed, her hair stuck to her cheeks, jumping on him with abandon, bouncing so hard the bed frame bangs the wall. Her head's thrown back. Her little hands are braced on his chest. Every time she comes down, he fills her entirely, and she wails, a high, delighted, shameless sound, and I can see all of it, all of her, in the lamplight.

How is she taking him? She's so tiny. He's so...

I clap a hand over my mouth.

I wish that was me.

The thought arrives out of nowhere, hot and clear and awful. My hand has crept inside the front of my dressing gown. I don't remember putting it there. Beneath the silk my fingers find my panties, soaked through, and I make a tiny, strangled sound, and press.

I can't stop. I watch her ride him, I watch his hands grip her hips, I watch her throw her head back and sob his name, and my fingers move faster, a slow, desperate circle. My thighs press together. My breath comes in shallow, silent gasps.

Then he turns his head.

His eyes find the gap in the door, and me behind it. He doesn't look surprised. He doesn't look away. He holds my gaze, steady and unhurried, and I know with perfect certainty that he's known all along.

Oh, God. Oh, he's looking at me.

My knees nearly give out. I should run. I don't. I stand there with my hand in my panties, scarlet, trembling, caught.

And he tightens his hands on Tessa's hips, and pulls her down harder, and watches me while he does it.

Poor Tessa, she doesn't know how cruel he is.

I watch his flip Tessa off him and on all fours, her face towards the door, his hand in her hair and he enters her, no, forces into her while grinning. Poor Tessa's eyes roll back and my fingers, they sped up.

I'm not sure I'm wearing clothes.

I stand in the doorway of Tessa's room at midnight, with my bare toes curled into the carpet, and look down at myself. It's a black lace thing Tessa left on my bed with a note, "wear this, I'll explain." There are holes. Where there ought to be fabric, there are holes. I tug at the hem and it does nothing.

_Should I even be here?

But last week, when I was making toast, Tessa cornered me by the fridge. At first, she was angry, about.... us (me and him), but then... She's tiny, but she's fearless. She put both hands on my face, stood on her toes, and kissed me, soft and slow, and told me: Friday, my room, midnight. Please.

I said I'd think about it. I thought about it every minute of the week.

The room is warm, lit by a single amber lamp. The bed is huge and rumpled. He's lying on it, relaxed, propped on the pillows with one arm behind his head, and Tessa is between his legs, bent over, hair spilling across his thigh, her mouth struggling to take him. I can hear it. Wet. Hungry. And the low sound he makes, and my knees go weak.

I stand there with my arms crossed over my chest, breathing too fast, and watch.

I haven't done this in years. I might not remember how. I'm forty-two.

Tessa comes up for air. She's slick, flushed, her lips swollen, and she holds the bedpost to steady herself. She looks at me and grins, wide and delighted.

"You came," she whispers. "You actually came."

"I... I'm only watching," I say, very quietly. "Just to start."

She tilts her head, crooks a finger, and pats the mattress. "Your turn, Mari. Come here."

I stand there with my heart in my throat and every nerve screaming.

"Okay," I say, and I'm shocked at my own voice.

I cross the room on shaking legs. I climb onto the bed, kneel between his thighs where Tessa was, and look at him, thick and flushed and waiting. I take a deep, trembling breath. I lower my head, and I take him into my mouth.

It's been years. My tongue remembers before I do. I work slowly, carefully, my eyes closed, and he groans, low and deep, and something inside me goes liquid. A hand slides into my hair. I moan around him, a small, helpless sound, and the room swims.

A weight shifts on the mattress behind me. I'm so lost in what I'm doing that I almost miss it. Then a small, warm hand strokes down my spine.

I open my eyes and glance back over my shoulder.

Tessa is kneeling behind me, grinning, with a black harness slung low on her hips. She's spreading lube over a thick, silicone strap-on that is almost as big as he is, her fingers slick and glistening. She meets my eyes, and she grins.

"It's payback time Mrs. Vance" she whispers.