Dave peeked around the living room entranceway to peer at the front door.  When he saw the blonde hair, the eyes looking at him through the decorative glass, he stepped back out of sight.

Shit.  

“…Richelle’s argumentative and abrasive, just like her mother.  Neither have a God damn filter.  She’s going to be a horrible influence on Dawn,” his wife said over coffee that morning, just after their daughter left for school.

Dave looked down.  The bottom of his faded Broncos T-shirt brushed the top of his waist and hugged his deltoids and pecs, having shrunken in the dryer over the years.  His fraying blue flannel pajama pants were soft enough to justify freeballing.  It was his work-at-home attire, nothing he’d ever want to be caught wearing in public.

“I saw you, Dave,” Nicolette said, her voice tinny through the door.  “Does your wife tell you who you can speak to, also?”

“Great.  Here we go.  Thanks a lot, Pam,” he muttered.    

Leaving the living room doorway, he closed the last few steps to the foyer.  Unlocked the dead bolt to the front door with a thunk and pulled it open.  He squinted in the sunlight at the woman on his doorstep.

“Nicolette.  Good morning.”

She raised a thick brown eyebrow, a hand on her hip.  “Is it?  Because my daughter’s best friend told her she wasn’t ‘allowed’ to hang out with her anymore.  Since when do we forbid our kids from people who are different from us, instead of teaching them how to handle that or trust them to be the great kids we’ve raised them to be?” 

He pressed his lips together.  Dave had said the same thing to his wife that morning.  Since they hadn’t been on the same side, they’d agreed to discuss it later.  Apparently she had decided to carry on and convince him later.  Again.

“You know, Pam’s always acted like she’s better than everyone else, but I expected more from you.”  Nicolette tossed her head to the side, whipping her long blonde bangs from her eyes.  She kicked her flip flops off.  Slapped her palm against the door and pushed it open.  “If you’ll excuse me, I’m here to get Chelle’s hoodie since she’s banned from coming back.”

She stepped through the threshold, squeezing past him into the house.

“Hey!”  

She didn’t turn.  

Fuck.  Gritting his teeth, he glanced at the hulking two-story house in front of them, then down the street.  No one.  Thank fucking God.  

He let out a breath.  Swinging the door shut, he turned around.  Nicolette stood in the middle of the living room, hands on her hips.  Her low ponytail twisted in little waves down the spine of her sports bra, adding femininity to the tight, tanned little muscles of her back and shoulders.  The loosely coiled hair shook over her back as she looked around the living room.

“Jesus Christ, Nic.”  He wiped a hand down his face, trying to keep his cool.  “She’s not banned.”

“That’s not what Dawn’s saying.”  She crouched, looking under the couch and chairs.

David sighed.  “What does the sweater look like?”

“It’s an emerald green and black tie dye hoodie.  Zips up the front.”  She whirled around, narrowing her eyes at him.  “Don’t you have any balls, or does she have those in a cage too?”

He flinched.  Stress pinched his shoulders as he fought the urge to defend himself and his wife.  Or even acknowledge he’d thought the same thing.  

“That’s totally inappropriate.”

“Sure it is.  I bet Queen Pamela doesn’t even get on her knees for you anymore.”  She licked her lips.  

The tremors started in his hands.  In seconds, his blood was hot.  His balls tightened, his cock thickening at the mention of its pleasure.   

God dammit.

“What the fuck, Nicolette.”  His voice was monotone, hard.  

Eighteen years ago he’d slept with someone else.  It was nothing but slip up for his bruised ego when Pam had other things that had taken precedence.  But Pamela was all he’d ever wanted.  He’d sworn he’d never be alone with another woman again, never put himself in the position to lose control.  

The hint of a smile danced on Nicolette’s closed mouth.

He grit his teeth.  Stared at her.  “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” 

“Sure.  After I find Richelle’s sweatshirt.”  She shrugged, her head cocked to the side.  

“Fine.”  Taking a deep breath, he counted to three.  Then jacked his thumb over his shoulder toward the tiny hallway across the foyer.  “It’s probably in Dawn’s room.”  

When she turned and stalked toward his daughter’s room, he caught sight of her taut, trim ass.  Her toned legs in those tight black leggings.  He felt his cock harden even more, the soft flannel hugging his crotch.  

Shit.  

He dragged behind, giving her more room and himself more time to will away his erection.  But when he reached the doorway to his daughter’s room, Nicolette was bent over, pawing through Dawn’s chest of drawers, and he couldn’t remember ever being harder.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, grasping the doorway.  Didn’t trust himself to close the distance between them.

“Looking for the sweatshirt.”

“Nicolette.”  He raked his top teeth over his lower lip and exhaled.  Let go of the doorway.  “Look.  You can’t just go through my daughter’s things.  I’ll give it to Dawn to give to Richelle if we find it.  But it’s time for you to go.”

She stood.  Tugged down the hem of her blousy tank and looked around the room as if he’d said nothing.  His gaze dropped to her arms, moved up to her shoulders and collarbones.  Her neck and face. 

Nic had barely aged.  Never let herself go.  Never settled, never got too comfortable, never lost the fire of youth.  Took part in protests, knew all the artists in town, all the leaders.  Lived on the edge of everything.

But sometimes… maybe… in reach.

He curled his fingers into fists, his blood raging with lust.

Don’t.

Nic glided over to the doorway of the open closet.  She reached up to the shelves above the rack, upper arm and back muscles flexing as she moved.  Shadows popped and disappeared under her shoulder blades.  Her hair swept her back with the movements of her face.

“Your wife is always talking about her daughter.”

He froze at the topic change.

“How she’s in the National Junior Honor Society and she almost went to the Junior Olympics for swimming, all this crap.  When that runs out, she brags about her own practice and how many surgeries she does every day.  Or the remodeling she wants to do on your giant house and the new fancy car she wants to get.”

“Okay.”

She made it sound so fake.  Shallow.  Something he’d come to feel about their lives but couldn’t figure out why.  They’d worked hard to have a happy life.  Why not enjoy it?  

Nic rifled through the clothes on hangers.  “She doesn’t talk about how Dawn has been wanting to surf all her life and Pamela won’t let her even get lessons.  She doesn’t talk about the girl’s interest in criminal justice and that she wants to be a cop.  I don’t know if she doesn’t approve or if she just doesn’t even know her own fucking daughter.”

He blinked.  Stared. 

It’d been a conversation of contempt with Pam.  Something he couldn’t get a straight thought or answer out of her for.  So much so, that he’d been thinking of helping his daughter reach for her dreams behind her mother’s back.  

And yet, here was the mother of Dawn’s best friend, advocating for his daughter like she was her own.  

A hanger squeaked as Nicolette shoved it to the side.  She glanced over her shoulder at him and something rippled through him that shook him to the core.

“Does she even know you?  Or…”  She gave a sad scoff.  “Do you even know yourself anymore?”

The question snatched the air from his throat.  She turned back to the closet, shrugging.  Her tight little body stretched as she reached up to the hangers again.

“No.”  His voice was flat and in that second he couldn’t feel his vows.  Couldn’t feel his marriage, his wife, or the thin balloon of a future that was supposed to appease them.  

Nicolette glanced back at him.  Her thick brown brows raised, then her gaze traveled down his body.  “Huh.”

Huh.  HUH?  

He was on a razor’s edge.  Ready for everything, for nothing.

She shrugged.  “Not my problem.”

“No?”  Dave almost laughed.   

In two strides he seized her upper arms, yanked her to him, and pinned her taut little body against his.  They gasped in unison, her soft blonde hair tickling his collarbone.  

He focused on a white cockeyed plastic hanger in front of them, taking in the heat of her body against his through the fissures of his erratic, boiling pulse.

A breath.

Two.

She moaned.  That tight ass pressed his cock through his pants as if stroking him.  

“Fuck,” he whispered, asserting his thick rod into her cleft.

“Mmm.  Still life in you after all.”  Her head tilted back, resting on his chest.  She bit her lip, wriggling against him.  Then opened her hooded blue eyes to look into his.  “Fuck me.”

Stepping back, he let go of one of her arms and yanked the other, whirling her around to face him.  He grabbed her wrists, gathered them in front of her and pushed her back until she hit the wall with a thud.  

An open smile spread across her face.  

Dave raised her arms over her head, pinned her wrists to the wall.  Met her wide blue eyes for a heartbeat, took in her pale skin, the light smatter of freckles on her cheeks, then sealed his mouth to hers.  Her soft lips moved against his, drawing him forward and opening to massage his tongue with hers.  

Air felt endangered, heat enraged.

Shoving her pants to her knees, he hitched her legs astride him.  Her pants webbed against his stomach.

“Wait, wait,” Nicolette gasped, wiggling in his grasp.

David set her down, every muscle in his body flexing as he kissed her throat.  His hands roamed over her neck, her shoulders, her small breasts and arms.  

Nic ripped a pant leg off her ankle and threw her arms around his neck.

Gripping her hips, he lifted her again.  He backed her against the wall, her legs wrapped tight around him, and shoved the front of his pants down.  Nestled his face in the curve of her neck.  Then grasped his thick, throbbing cock and fit between her thighs.

She was soft and slick.  Her heat begged him forward.  He felt her head tip backward, her exhale in his ear as his cock parted her pussy lips and nudged inside.

Her low, feminine moan was like flint to spark.  He inched further, battling the need to bury himself within her clutching channel.  Her hands clawed his scalp, hips writhing in his hands, her breath a staccato rhythm cradled in soft, moaning chords.

“God, Jesus Christ,” he murmured, his voice fractured.

Nicolette raised her head, pushed his shoulders back until her blue eyes met his with a ferocity that made him feral. “Fuck me,” she whispered.

He drove into her.  Her head fell back and just as it began to raise, he pulled out and rammed into her again.  Over and over, he buried himself in her wet friction, heat and surrender.  Her legs dangled from his elbows, his forearms under her flexing quads.  She moaned higher and louder with every thrust, her hands clawing the walls, his arms, his face, his head.  

Balls boiling, he pulled back.  Strained to see through the bewildering haze of lust.  Nic’s eyes glazed, her head dropped, and he adjusted his grip on her thick ass.  He pulled out, the tip of his cock waiting inside her, until her eyes met his again.

Heat built in his gut, scoured his veins in fire as he surged inside her.  Harder.  Deeper.  Faster.  More.  He pounded into her, grunting with exertion, sweat slicking his chest as her pussy milked his needy cock.  

“Yes.  Yes!  Give it to me!”  She gasped, her hands clutching his shoulders.

All his muscles clenched.  He rammed hard inside her, balls contracting against her heat.  Scorching, raging cum blasted down his cock, firing deep inside her hot, honeyed pussy.

He sagged, forehead to her shoulder, catching his breath at her heaving chest.  Her nails raked through his hair.  His balls were soaked.

Jesus Christ.

“Well…. that was unexpected,” she murmured.  “Guess we both needed that.”

Tilting his hips, he pulled his expended cock from her drenched cavern.  A feminine grunt protested in his ear, but he lowered her feet to the ground, unable to meet her eyes.

“I see.”  Unwinding her arms from his neck, she stood.  Then bent over.  He peeked up, watching the bones and muscles move in her back as she turned her pant leg right side out.  Leaning back against the wall, she pulled the legging up her leg and shimmied the waistband over her hips.  

He yanked his pants over his cock.  The wetness made the soft fabric stick to his dick.  

“So your balls do still work.  Good to know.”  Her voice was stronger, but still out of breath.  “How about not letting your wife keep your daughters from being friends.”

Staring at the creme colored carpet, he flinched.  Hated himself even more.  “I’ll talk to her.”

“Good.”  She stepped closer.  

He stared at her white polished toenails, the tanned feet.  

Nic’s lips pressed against his cheek for the span of a moment, replaced by the stream of her fingers down side of his face.  “I don’t need you.  I never asked you for anything.  But do this for them.”

When she pulled away, he shut his eyes.  Tried to preserve the feeling of her mouth on him, the strength he felt in her presence.  Tried to push away the feeling that he’d chosen wrong, that the bond of his marriage was as strong as a house of cards.  

The front door clicked shut.