An Erotic Collection Volume 2 Read online

  My mother didn’t move. Didn’t look. Her expression remained rigid. Tension strangled us all into silence.

  Leah toddled over to my mother and grabbed her around the knees. She tilted her little face up and up. She grinned. “Gammy.”

  Nobody gasped, not physically, but I heard the sound of surprise echo through the kitchen just the same.

  My mother looked down at the small girl clutching her legs and wrinkling her skirt.

  “Gammy,” Leah said again. “Up, Gammy.”

  She lifted her arms as if it were the most natural thing in the world to ask for and receive. And my mother, who hadn’t even yet told her friends about the child her son had adopted, bent and lifted her up as though she had no other choice. She had held all of us that way, I thought. My brothers and I. When we were small.

  “She knows me?” my mother said.

  “We’ve shown her your picture,” Chad said as though he were challenging her. “She’s very bright.”

  For another instant we all hung there. Luke and Dan might have imagined they knew what they were waiting for, but they would never know my mother the way Chad and I did. I don’t know what my brother waited for, but I waited for her to ruin this.

  “Well,” my mother said to Leah. “Aren’t you just the smartest girl? Aren’t you, just?”

  If relief washed over me in a wave it must have been a veritable tsunami for my brother. After that, there were guests to feed, children to chase. Chad and Luke knew how to throw a party, and if it didn’t have the glitter of those long-ago Christmas galas, there was one major improvement in that I’d been invited to attend.

  Later, Dan found me sitting in a lawn chair on a patch of grass as yet undiscovered by children. I had a plate overloaded with food but I’d already eaten myself full. He took it from me and sat in the empty chair next to mine to dig in.

  “Great party, huh?” He waved his fork toward the house.

  “Yes.” I watched him eat with the fondness women have for men whose manners on a stranger would have earned scorn. “You have schmutz all over your mouth.”

  He leaned forward as though he meant to kiss me and laughed, withdrawing, when I wrinkled my nose. He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “Better?”

  “Yes.” I looked toward the deck, where my mother sat with Leah sleeping on her lap.

  Dan watched me looking. “Nice, huh?”

  “Unexpected.”

  He put the plate on the grass and leaned back in his chair with a contented sigh, hands laced over his belly. “You don’t give her enough credit.”

  I raised a brow at him. We’d had this discussion before. He was lucky that he couldn’t really imagine what it was like not to have a doting, affectionate mother. His own would have been a parody of sit-com moms if she hadn’t been so utterly sincere in her motherhood.

  “Babies change people, Elle.”

  “Uh-huh.” I swirled some ice in my plastic cup.

  I watched my mother stare into the face of the sleeping child. Had she ever looked at me that way? Yes, I thought. Long ago, she had. No matter what had come between us, and it had been a lot of very awful things, she had looked at me like that. My mother had loved me.

  “You ready to get out of here?” Dan stood and gathered up the garbage.

  I was. As much as I loved my brother, the cacophony of the party had given me a headache. I hugged and kissed him and Luke goodbye. We said nothing about my mother with our voices, but our eyes said enough.

  When I went to kiss my niece goodbye, she barely stirred.

  “She’s worn out.” My mother stroked the soft black curls. “Too much party for a little girl.”

  “We’re leaving, Mom.”

  She looked up at me. Her face was softer than I’d ever seen it. “Your brother will drive me home. You go on ahead.”

  “You’re sure?”

  * * *

  She looked again at Leah, whose small pink lips had pursed in sleep. “I can’t wake this baby, can I?”

  It would have been too weird to hug or kiss her goodbye, so I didn’t. I left her holding the grandchild she’d been so sure she couldn’t love. In the car, I let out a laugh.

  “Strange, strange, strange,” I said.

  “You knew she’d be okay, Elle.” Dan had more faith in me than I had in myself, but that was only one of the many reasons I loved him.

  At home, I groaned when he came up behind me to slip his arms around my waist as I stood in front of the full-length mirror in our bedroom. “I’m going to explode.”

  He rubbed the taut curve of my too-full belly. “I can help you work it off.”

  “Oh, sure. Just roll me onto the bed like that girl from the Willy Wonka movie.”

  “Veruca Salt?”

  I laughed. “No. The one who ate the pill that turned her into a blueberry.”

  Dan turned me sideways to look at us both in the mirror. “You’re not blue.”

  “But I am round. God, why did I eat so much?”

  “You were making sure you had enough sustenance to get you through the night?” He waggled his brows.

  I rolled my eyes. “Riiiiight.”

  His hands, though, were working their usual magic. He moved them up and down my sides, over my hips. Over my belly, which most definitely could benefit from a few hundred sit-ups. Between my legs.

  “I like you curvier.” Dan’s fingers played along my inner thigh and a little higher.

  “You haven’t ever known me as anything but curvy!” The light, tantalizing touch forced my voice into a seductive breathiness. “You have no basis of comparison.”

  “You’ve been thinner.” Dan’s other hand ran up my side to cup my breast. “When I met you. Just before we got married. Last year when you were deciding whether or not to quit your job.”

  My feminine sensibility demanded I be affronted, even though I knew he was right. “Gee, thanks for reminding me.”

  Dan pulled me closer, so our naked bodies touched. He looked deep into my eyes. “I like you better with a few extra pounds on you. It’s not bullshit.”

  I was only slightly mollified. “Why on earth do you like me better when I’m fatter?”

  “Curvier,” he corrected. He dipped his head to kiss the swell of my breasts, then to suckle each nipple.

  My breath quickened. His hand moved between my legs, finding my heat and slickness. He suckled a little harder, and my pulse skipped in all my secret places.

  Dan kissed his way up to my shoulder, then my neck, then at last to my mouth. His cock got hard between us. Even with a few extra pounds on my belly I had no trouble feeling that. When he pulled me toward the bed, I didn’t protest.

  We lay on soft, smooth sheets that warmed quickly beneath us. He kissed me endlessly while his hand moved between my legs. He dipped a finger inside me and drew it up to slide along my clitoris. He knew just how to touch me, over and over, until I went boneless under him.

  “Get on your hands and knees,” he told me. He had a knack for knowing just what I wanted without me ever having to say it.

  I did, and clutched the pillow as he moved behind me. Dan stroked his cock along the edge of my cunt, wetting himself before he pushed inside me. He did it slowly, half an inch at a time, until I pushed back to force him inside me all the way.

  We both moaned. His hands gripped my hips. I imagined how I must look in front of him, how the line and knobs of my spine would stand out as my back curved. I buried my face in the pillow and lifted my ass in the air, changing the angle so he could go deeper.

  Dan went deeper. There were times when I felt he’d never fill me entirely, times when I counted my empty spaces and knew they’d always stay that way. There were times when this mattered to me, very much, and times I secretly despaired…but there were more times like this, when those small and secret empty places became insignificant.

  He stroked deep inside me, and I opened my body to take him all the way. His thrusts got faster. He leaned forward, the heat of