“Except for this case. But that doesn’t mean I’m in danger.”
“Does he know that?”
“I don’t know what he knows. He won’t tell me. But I’ve seen him. John. I’ve looked in and he’s just lying there, my baby’s just lying there in the dark with his eyes wide open. It kills me.”
Becker took her hand. She allowed it but did not respond. Her hand lay in his palm as if it were dead.
“Why don’t you leave the light on?” Becker asked.
“He has a night light.”
“I mean the overhead light, the bedside light, the light in the hallway, every damned light in the house if that’s what it takes.”
“He’s got to learn to sleep in the dark sometime. He can’t grow up and keep the lights on…”
“Why not?”
”… I’m not sure.”
His thumb rode slowly back and forth across the top of her hand.
“I don’t know anything about kids,” he said. “Nothing at all. But I know something about fear. If he’s afraid of the dark, get rid of the dark. Maybe you’ll figure out eventually what he’s really afraid of-or maybe you won’t. Maybe he’ll learn to deal with it himself-or maybe he won’t. But in the meantime…”
“Turn on the lights.”
“Right.”
He took her hand in both of his and gently worked his thumbs into the muscles on each side of the palm. Karen sighed and closed her eyes. Becker worked on each of her fingers individually, lightly but insistently pulling one at a time, then insinuating his fingers between two of hers, letting them fall to the valleys, then all the way out to the tips. Karen’s lips parted and she moaned with a sound as light as her breath. When Becker finished one hand she gave him the other without opening her eyes.
“You have no idea how good that feels,” she said.
“Yes, I do.”
Her head lay all the way back on the sofa, her lips were still open and smiling now.
“Nobody just touches me anymore,” she said.
When Becker stopped massaging her hand, Karen slid all the way down on the sofa and lifted her feet into his lap.
“Please,” she said, her eyes still closed. But Becker had already started massaging her feet.
Karen abandoned any pretense at decorum and moaned aloud. Becker ran a finger between her toes and she shivered.
“How can I ever repay you,” she asked.
“It’s my payment for dinner,” he said.
“Dinner was never this good,” she said. “I feel like I’m purring.”
He pressed his thumb into the muscles of her foot and she stiffened, then relaxed.
“A lot of tension in your feet,” he said.
“Who would ever have thought there was so much pleasure down there? Ohhhhh… How did you learn how to do this?”
“I’ve had a varied life.” Becker said. He ran his fingernails lightly across the smooth skin atop her foot. Karen gasped and tensed and relaxed and gasped again.
“That feels so good it almost hurts,” she said.
“It does get confusing.”
He worked on her feet for a long time, and after a while they stopped talking. Karen simply lay back, eyes closed, and moaned openly while Becker massaged and caressed in turn, patiently and thoroughly.
Eventually he relinquished her feet and ran his hand slowly up the underside of her calf.
“I didn’t shave my legs today,” she said.
Becker didn’t bother to answer. At the tender skin under her knee joint he smoothed his fingers like feathers and she gasped with pleasure.
He ran both hands halfway up her thigh, gripped firmly, then slowly and with some pressure pulled his hands down the length of her thigh, her calf, across the foot and all the way off the toes.
“My God.” Karen said. “Do you know what that feels like?”
“Yes,” Becker said. He did the same with the other leg.
“I feel that everywhere.” she said. “It may be better than sex.”
“It is sex,” Becker said.
He repeated the procedure, this time using his fingernails instead of the palms of his hands and going even slower. Karen groaned every inch of the way and arched her back.
“All this for dinner? I didn’t even offer you dessert.”
“I’m sure you will. You’re too good a hostess not to.”
“And you are a presumptuous male swine,” she said lightly. She pressed her foot into his groin.
“You seem to be a little tense in spots yourself, John.”
“It comes upon me at times.”
“I’ll let that one pass,” she said. ‘Too easy.”
Becker slid his hands all the way up her legs until his thumbs came to rest at the top of her inner thighs. He left his hands there, resting lightly with just a hint of pressure.
She opened her eyes and looked at him for the first time in minutes.
“When did you know we were going to do this?”
“Right about when you did,” Becker said.
“I didn’t,” she said.
Becker grinned at her.
“I didn’t!.. I did not,” she insisted. Becker continued to grin. “All right, I did.”
“When?”
“Not until I saw you hanging from the mountain,” she said. “Not a moment before that, I swear.”
She slid her legs around his back and pulled him onto her. After a moment she stopped him with a touch and slipped out from under his body.
“Pray he’s asleep,” she said.
Karen tiptoed to her son’s room and peeked silently at his recumbent form. His eyes were closed and his breath came slowly and easily. She said a quick and indifferently directed prayer of thanks for small favors and returned to the living room.
Becker was not in the room, but her bedroom door was ajar. She entered expecting to find him naked under the covers, but when she saw him standing in the middle of the room with only his shoes off, she realized how much she had forgotten about the man. He was a deliciously slow and lingering lover, accomplishing in an hour what more energetic men would fail to achieve in ten minutes, and he relished every step of the process. So did she.
“He’s asleep,” she said. “We’re in luck.”
“I’m the lucky one.”
He took her in his arms and kissed her, pressing against her from foot to face as if no amount of contact could be enough. The kiss was a form of seduction in itself. His lips explored hers languidly, almost shyly, but at the same time with a certainty of purpose. They seemed to Karen to be seeking out the proper join of his flesh and hers, and when they found it, his lips rested there on hers, pressing just firmly enough. She felt herself weaken and behind her closed eyes she had the sensation of a long, slow, very safe tumble through space. She loved to kiss, and Becker was one of the few men she’d ever known who loved it as much as she did.
They seemed to kiss for hours. Karen knew that later the kisses would become hard, fierce, demanding, but not until they were both ready and could no longer restrain themselves. That was lust, this was love. Or at least it felt that way, she thought. For the moment it felt that way and for the moment that was more than enough.
Finally his hands began to move, stirring as if awakened from slumber. Slowly they traversed her back in opposite directions. One hand reached her neck, caressed her there, then moved upwards into her hair. Karen felt her whole scalp tingle with his touch. As earlier with her hands and feet, she became aware of a source of sensory pleasure she had long forgotten. She wanted it never to stop and, as if sensing her desire, Becker ran his fingertips to the top of her head, across her temples, gently down over her ears, then started back up again from the neck. Karen groaned against his lips. Once more she had the feeling that her mind was being released and tumbling languorously backwards. A swoon must feel like this, she thought.
Only when his fingers had stopped moving on her head and returned to her back did his other hand begin to explore. It slid slowly downwards, into the small of her back where it paused, as if seeking permission, before slipping onto the swell of her buttocks. It followed the curve of the buttock to where it met the leg, then came up again until it reached the hip. His fingers spread across the hipbone and stretched until they stopped just short of the pubes.