The music from the barn is a dull thump behind us, muffled through the warped siding, close enough that if I laughed too loud someone would come looking. David's got my wrist in his hand and he's pulling me around the corner into the dark, the good dark, the kind nobody wanders into because the floodlights don't reach it and the hay's stacked too high.

He's been touching my ass all night. Not sneaky about it either. Fourth time was when I was refilling my cup at the cooler and he came up behind me and just palmed it, both cheeks, like he was checking the weight of something he planned to buy. I didn't pull away. I leaned back into his chest and let him feel how warm I was through the cotton, and he made this low sound in my ear and walked off to talk to somebody about football.

What he doesn't know. What he doesn't know is that I stood in the bathroom before we left with a pair of scissors and cut the liner out of these shorts. Little white liner, the kind that makes short shorts decent. Gone. Tossed in the trash with the cotton balls and the floss. And I've been walking around this barn all night with nothing between my pussy and the night air but a single layer of red nylon, and I've been so wet since the beer mile that I can feel it on the inside of my thighs, that slick drag when I walk.

He thinks he's the one with the secret. He's got a hard-on in those little shorts and he thinks that's the surprise of the evening.

The wood's gritty under my shoulder blades. Cobwebs catch at the sleeve of my tank top and I don't even care. It smells like damp hay and old animals back here, horses mostly, that warm musky thing that gets into the boards of a barn and never leaves. His hand comes up my bare thigh, slow, the way he does when he's got all night.

His fingers walk up the inside of my thigh, unhurried, and I let my head fall back against the boards. The wood's cold through the tank top. His knuckles drag past the hem of the shorts and he makes a low sound, that satisfied one, because there's supposed to be a wall of nylon there. A seam. A little bit of decency holding me in.

There isn't.

His hand goes still. Not the pause of a man being careful. The pause of a man whose brain just hit a wall at forty miles an hour. His fingertips are pressed flat to me, right at the crease of my thigh, and I feel the exact moment the information reaches him — that it's skin, that it's wet, that my whole pussy is bare and slick and hotter than the night air.

"Jodi."

Just my name. Low, like it got scraped out of him.

I don't say anything. I let him have it, the whole fact of it, and I can hear his breathing change in the dark — in through the nose, slow, like he's trying not to be loud.

His fingers move again. Careful now, in a way he wasn't a second ago. He slides them up through the wet and I feel the drag of every one of them, the little catches where I'm so slick it almost doesn't grab, and then he finds the source of it, the folds, the heat, and he groans right against my ear.

"You cut it out."

"Mm."

"You cut the—" He stops. His forehead comes down against my temple. "You walked around all night like this."

"All night." I turn my head so my mouth's at his jaw. "Since the beer mile. Thought you were the only one with a surprise."

He laughs, but it's not really a laugh, it's air coming out of him wrong. "Jesus Christ, woman."

Two fingers. He doesn't ask. He just pushes them in, slow, and my whole body arches off the boards — my heels come up off the dirt, my hand grabs a fistful of his tank top at the shoulder, and he holds me there against the wall while his fingers sink to the knuckle. The sound it makes is obscene. Wet, that thick squelch of a pussy that's been waiting too long, and he pulls them out an inch just to hear it again, pushes back in, and I feel every ridge of him inside me, the rough pad of his fingertip dragging along the front wall.

"Fuck," I breathe. "David—"

"Tell me how long." His mouth's at my ear, his voice gone rough. "How long you been walking around with this pussy out, letting me grab your ass like an idiot."

"Since—" He curls his fingers and my voice goes up and breaks. "Since we left the house. Since before we left the house. I cut it out in the bathroom and I put the shorts on—"

"And nothing else."

He makes a sound like he's been punched. His thumb finds my clit and presses, not gentle, and I bite down on the meat of my own lip to keep from being loud, because the music's still thumping back there and somebody could wander around the corner and all they'd see is a shadow with its leg hiked up.

My leg's hiked up. When did that happen. His other hand's under my knee, holding me open, and I'm up on the ball of one foot with the other leg wrapped around his hip, and the nylon of the shorts has ridden up so far it's nothing, it's a waistband and a wish.

"You feel that," he says, and it's not a question. "You feel how tight you are right now."

"I feel it."

"That's all for me." He pushes deeper, three fingers now, and I feel the stretch of it, the good burn, and my hips do a thing I didn't tell them to do, a slow grind down onto his hand. "Say it."

"It's for you." My voice comes out wrecked. "It's all—David, it's all for you, I've been wet since the first time you grabbed me at the cooler—"

"I know." I can hear him smiling. The bastard. "I could smell it on you."

He pulls his fingers out and I make a noise I'm not proud of, that empty clench, and then he's got them up between us and I hear him suck them into his mouth. My knees go weak. The taste of me, in his mouth, in the dark, with the party thumping away twenty feet from us.

"Sweet," he says, muffled. "Sweet as the beer."

"You're disgusting."

"You cut the liner out of your shorts."

"That's different."

"How."

"That's—" I laugh, and it comes out breathless. "That's planning, David. That's not disgusting. That's strategy."

He laughs too, low, and then his hand's back between my legs, two fingers pushing in again like he never left, and the laugh turns into a sound I've never made in my life. He's got his thumb on my clit and his fingers deep and he's working them in this slow curl that's going to undo me if he keeps it up, and I can feel it building already, low and tight, faster than it should.

"Not yet," I gasp. "David—not yet, I don't want to come on your hand out here—"

"Why not."

"Because—" He curls again and my eyes roll back. "Because I want—"

"What do you want."

I get my hand between us. Find the waistband of those little shorts and get my fingers in and there he is, hot and thick and already leaking, and I wrap my hand around his cock and he stops moving entirely, his fingers going still inside me.

"That's what I want," I say.

"Yeah." His voice is thin. "Okay. Yeah."

He pulls his fingers out slow, and I feel the drag of them, the way my body doesn't want to let go, and I hear the wet sound of him wiping them on the cotton of my shorts, and then both his hands are on my hips, turning me, and the boards scrape my cheek and my palms slap flat against the wood and my ass is out and up and the shorts are yanked down to my knees.

Cold air on my bare pussy. Then not cold. Then his cock, sliding up through the wet from behind, the head dragging over my clit on the way past, once, twice, and I'm pushing back against him before he's even lined up.

"Look at that," he says, quiet, almost to himself. "Look at you."

"David."

"I'm looking at it. Give me a second. I'm looking at my wife's pussy in the dark."

I laugh, and then I don't, because he pushes in.

The head of him goes in slow, and I feel every inch of the stretch, that first thick moment where the whole world narrows down to the one place he's entering me, and my fingers claw at the boards and my mouth comes open against the wood and I don't make a sound at all, just breathe, just take it, and he keeps going, keeps feeding it into me until I feel his hips flush up against my ass and his whole cock is buried in me and his hands are white-knuckled on my hips.

"Fuck," he says. Just that. Drawn out, shaky.

I'm so full I can't think. That's the whole of it. My pussy's clenching around him in these little pulses I can't control, and every one of them drags a sound out of him, and he's holding still, trying to be a gentleman, and I don't want a gentleman.

"Move," I say.

He moves.

The first thrust pulls all the way out to the tip and slams back in, and the sound of it is loud in the dark, that wet slap, and I bite the inside of my cheek to keep quiet and he does it again, harder, and the whole stack of hay beside us shifts and settles. He's got a rhythm going now, long hard strokes, and every one of them shoves me up against the boards and my tits are scraping the wood through the tank top and my ponytail's coming loose and I don't care about any of it.

"How's that," he says, breathless. "That what you had in mind when you cut the liner out."

"Close." I get my feet under me and push back to meet him and we find the rhythm together, that slap of skin on skin, and he groans like I've hurt him. "I had a little more in mind."

"Like what."

"Like—" He hits something and my voice goes to pieces. "Oh. Oh, right there, don't you dare stop—"

"That it?" He does it again, harder, and again, and my legs are shaking. "That the spot?"

"Yes—"

"Say it."

"That's the spot, David, right there, keep—" My words come out in pieces between the thrusts. "Keep doing that and I'm going to—"

"Do it." His hand comes around and his fingers find my clit and he's rubbing it in time with his cock and I'm done, I'm gone, I feel it coming up through me like the whole night's worth of wanting finally breaking loose—

"I'm going to come," I gasp. "David, I'm—"

"Come on my cock." His voice is right at my ear, rough and wrecked. "Come on it, Jodi, let me feel it—"

And I do. It hits me and I clench down so hard I hear him swear, and my whole body shakes with it, my forehead pressed to the boards and my mouth open and this sound coming out of me that's half his name and half nothing at all, and he fucks me through it, slow deep pushes that keep it going, keep rolling through me, until I'm limp against the wall and my legs won't hold and he's got both arms around my waist holding me up.

"Jesus," he says. "Jesus, Jodi."

I can't answer. I'm still clenching around him, little aftershocks, and he's still hard inside me, and I can feel him, the throb of him, how close he is.

"Your turn," I manage. "Don't you dare pull out."

He doesn't.

He doesn't pull out. He pushes deeper instead, one last grinding shove that seats him all the way, and I feel the wet slap of his hips against my ass and the way the boards take the weight of us both. His arms are still wrapped around my waist, holding me up off the dirt, and his breath is hot and ragged against the back of my neck.

"You feel what you do to me," he says. "Feel how hard I am. That's what you did, walking around all night with no liner in your shorts."

"You're welcome."

He laughs, and it shakes through me, through where we're joined. Then he starts moving again — not the fast hard strokes from before, something slower, something that drags. All the way out until just the head of him sits at my opening and I can feel the cool night air on the wet of me, then back in, inch by inch, so I feel every part of him filling me up again. My forehead's still against the boards. My hands are flat on the wood and my nails are digging in and I can hear myself making these small sounds that I couldn't stop if I tried.

"I want to feel it," he says. "When you come again. I want to feel that pussy squeeze me."

"I already—" I can barely get it out. "David, I already came—"

"I know. Do it again."

His hand slides around my hip, down over my stomach, and his fingers find my clit again. He doesn't rub it. He just holds it, the flat of his thumb pressed to it, and lets the movement of his cock do the work from the inside — that slow drag in and out, and every time he pushes in, his thumb presses, and every time he pulls out, it eases, and it's the most patient thing anyone's ever done to me and I want to scream.

"That's not fair," I manage.

"What isn't."

"You know what isn't."

He hums, low, and keeps the rhythm. "You want me to go faster?"

"I want you to—" I push my hips back against him and he lets me, doesn't fight it, just lets me take what I want from the slow slide of him. "I want you to stop being a gentleman about it."

"I'm not being a gentleman." His mouth's at my shoulder, on the strap of the tank top, teeth grazing the skin. "I'm being thorough. There's a difference."

The music from the party changes — something with a heavy bass line, the kind that gets in your chest — and it covers the sounds we're making, the wet slap of him sliding in and out of me, the little catch in my throat every time his thumb presses down. Somebody's laughing back there, a woman's laugh, high and drunk, and I think about all of them standing around the cooler with their plastic cups, and me out here in the dark with my shorts around my knees and my husband's cock buried in me, and something about it makes me clench down hard.

"Oh," David says, surprised. "Oh, you liked that. Thinking about them out there?"

"No."

"Liar." He presses his thumb harder and I feel it start to build again, that low tight thing, faster than last time. "You're thinking about it. All those people twenty feet away and you out here getting fucked against a wall."

"David—"

"I'm not judging." His voice is right at my ear, low and rough. "I'm just saying. If you were thinking about it, I'd understand. Because I'm thinking about it too."

He pulls out of me all at once — that sudden empty clench — and I gasp and turn my head, and he's already turning me, both hands on my hips, guiding me around so my back's against the boards and my shorts are still hooked around one ankle and he's crouched down in front of me, his face level with my pussy, and I don't have time to ask what he's doing before his mouth is on me.

His tongue. Flat and hot, dragging up through the wet from my opening to my clit, and I grab a fistful of his hair and my head goes back against the wood and the sound that comes out of me is not a sound I've ever made at a party. He licks me like he's been thinking about it all night. Like the taste of me is the whole point. His tongue finds my clit and circles it, and his hands are on my thighs holding me open, and I'm already so close from the fucking that it takes almost nothing — a few passes of his tongue and I'm right there, right on the edge, my hips twitching against his mouth.

"Don't stop," I gasp. "David, don't you dare—"

He doesn't stop. He pushes two fingers into me — the same two fingers, the ones that found the missing liner, and I feel them slide in easy, no resistance at all, and he curls them up and finds that spot and his tongue keeps working my clit and I come apart against his mouth. My legs give out completely. If he wasn't holding me up with the hand under my thigh, I'd be on the ground. I come and come and he just keeps at it, lapping at me through it, and I'm pulling his hair and saying his name and the boards are scraping my shoulders and I don't care about anything on this earth but the heat of his mouth.

When I finally go still, when the last of it rolls through me, he pulls his face back. In the dark I can see the shine of me on his chin and his mouth. He wipes it with the back of his wrist, and he's grinning, that crooked grin he gets when he's done something he's proud of.

"Now," he says, standing up, and his cock is right there, thick and dark and slick with me. "Now I'm going to finish. And you're going to feel every drop of it."

His hands find my hips and turn me again, and this time I don't fight it. My palms hit the boards, my cheek follows, and the wood is rough and warm now where my body's been against it. The shorts are still hooked on my ankle, flapping against my calf every time I move. He kicks my feet wider with the side of his boot and I go, spread out in the dark with my ass up and the night air cold across my wet pussy, and I hear him take himself in his hand behind me, that slick sound, the wet drag of his fist.

"Bend a little more," he says. "There. Christ, look at that."

"David."

"I'm looking." The head of him presses against me, finds the opening, slides up and down through the slick a few times like he's painting me with it. "You're so fucking wet I could just—" He pushes, and the head goes in, and we both stop breathing. "There it is. There."

He feeds it in slow, all the way, and I feel the whole length of him split me open, that deep stretch that makes my toes curl in the dirt. When his hips come flush against my ass he holds there, balls pressed to me, and I feel the throb of him inside — that kick, that pulse, like his cock has its own heartbeat and it's beating for me.

"Move," I say. "Please—"

He moves.

First thrust pulls out to the head and drives back in hard enough to knock the breath out of me, and the hay stack beside us shifts with a dry rustle, and I hear myself make a sound like I've been hit. He does it again. Again. A rhythm of long hard strokes, and every one of them shoves me up the boards and I push back into him to meet it, and the slap of his hips on my ass is loud enough that I'm glad for the bass line thumping through the barn wall.

"That's it," he says, breathless. "That's what I wanted all night. This. Right here."

"Harder—"

He gives me harder. His hand comes down on my ass cheek, not a slap, a grab, fingers digging in and pulling me back onto him, and he's got this low growl going in his chest that I can feel through his grip. The angle's different now — he's got one hand on the small of my back pressing me down and the other on my hip and he's hitting something deep, something that makes my whole pussy clench around him every time he bottoms out.

"You feel that," he says. "You feel how you're gripping me. Fuck, Jodi, you're milking my cock."

"Because you're—" I gasp. "You're hitting—"

"I know what I'm hitting." He grins it into the back of my neck, his mouth right there. "I can feel it. Every time I get deep you squeeze me like a fist."

My hands slide on the boards, no grip left in them, and my ponytail's fallen loose and I've got hair in my mouth. The dirt's cool under my bare feet and the wood's rough on my cheek and he's fucking me like he's got something to prove, like he's been waiting all night for exactly this and he's not going to waste it being polite.

"Tell me," he says. "Tell me what it feels like."

"Full." The word comes out wrecked. "You feel—David, you're so deep, I can feel you in my stomach—"

"Yeah?" He drives in harder, grinding at the bottom. "Right there?"

"Right there—"

He reaches around and finds my clit and doesn't rub it, just presses, holds it flat under his thumb while he fucks me, and the pressure builds up behind it fast, too fast, that tight hot knot again. I've come twice tonight and my body's still greedy for it, still climbing, and I can hear how wet I am, that obscene squelch every time he pulls out, the wet catching on the night air.

"You going to come again?" he says. "On my cock, this time. Not my hand, not my mouth. My cock."

"I'm—"

"Say it."

"I'm going to come on your cock."

"Good girl."

That does it. That stupid, simple thing, and I'm clenching down around him and coming, my forehead grinding into the boards, and I hear myself say his name over and over like a broken thing. He fucks me through it, hard and steady, and I feel every stroke inside the clench, feel the way he's got to push through it, and it keeps rolling, keeps going, until I'm shaking and spent and hanging off the wall.

And he doesn't stop.

"My turn," he says, and his voice has gone strange, thin and rough. "Jodi—fuck, Jodi, I'm close—"

"In me." I get it out between breaths. "Come in me, David. Every drop, you said—"

He groans and his rhythm goes ragged, that last stretch where a man stops being careful. His fingers dig into my hips hard enough to bruise and he drives in deep and stays, grinding, and then I feel it — the first hot pulse of him emptying into me, and another, and another, each one a throb against my walls, and he's saying my name into the back of my neck like it's the only word he's got.

"Oh—" His voice breaks. "Oh, fuck—"

He holds himself buried while it goes through him, hips twitching, and I feel the heat of it spreading inside me, that flood, more than I expected, filling me up. His arms come around my waist and he leans his weight against my back, his chest heaving against me, his mouth open on my shoulder.

Then he pulls out.

Slow, but not slow enough, and I feel the drag of him the whole way and the sudden empty clench when he's gone. And then it comes — the hot run of it, his cum, sliding down the inside of my thigh, thick and warm in the cold night air. I feel it start at my pussy and track down, a slow trickle, and I don't move to stop it. I just stand there with my cheek on the boards and my shorts on one ankle and let it run.

"Jesus," David says, quiet. He's looking down at me. I can feel him looking.

"Don't." My voice is wrecked. "Don't say anything clever."

"I wasn't going to." A pause. "I was going to say thank you."

I laugh, and it hurts, and I turn my head enough to see him in the dark — his shorts around his thighs, his chest still moving, that grin coming back up slow.

"You're welcome," I say. "Now help me find my shorts."

I get my hand under me and push off the boards, and my knees want to fold, so I go down on them instead — bare knees in the soft dirt at the base of the wall, the shorts still hooked on my ankle, my ass in the cold air with his cum going tacky on my thigh. The hay stack settles behind me with a dry sigh, like it's been holding its breath too.

David's hand lands flat between my shoulder blades. Not pushing. Just there, warm and heavy, the way you'd steady a ladder.

"You good?"

"I'm in the dirt behind a barn with my shorts on one foot. Define good."

He laughs, low, and bends to get them. I watch his hands — the same hands that were just bruising my hips, now hooking a thumb into the hem of my shorts and working them down over my ankle, careful as a man untangling a knot in a shoelace. The shorts come free. He holds them up and the liner's gone, that ragged cut edge pale in the dark, and he turns them over once like he's checking the evidence.

"You did this before the party," he says.

"Before we left the house."

"Hours ago."

"Hours ago." I sit back on my heels and hold up a hand for them. "You going to make a thing of it?"

He doesn't hand them over. He crouches down to my level instead, elbows on his knees, and the crouch puts his face close to mine, close enough that I can see the sweat at his hairline and the way his mouth keeps wanting to grin and keeps deciding not to.

"I'm going to make a thing of it," he says. "All night. Every time I looked at you I was looking at a woman in running shorts. Turns out I was looking at a woman in nothing."

"Turns out."

"You let me grope you through a party and never said."

"Where's the fun in saying?" I reach out and take the shorts out of his hand. He lets them go. "You want a woman to tell you everything, David, or you want her to let you find out?"

He's quiet a second. Then he rocks back on his heels and rubs a hand down his face and I can see him filing that one away for later, the way he does.

I get one leg in. The other. I pull them up over my hips and the fabric's cold and stiff where the night's been in it, and I stand up and get my feet under me and wobble, and his hand shoots out and catches my elbow.

"Whoa."

"I'm fine. Dirt's uneven."

"Sure it is."

It isn't the dirt. My legs are still soft from coming, that post-climax looseness in the thighs where they've gone all rubber and stupid, and there's a wet spot spreading slow through the front of my shorts already, warm against me, and I know exactly what it is and I don't do a thing about it. Let him look. Let him see his own work.

He's not looking at my shorts. He's looking at my face, that half-frown he gets when he's working something out.

"What," I say.

"Nothing. You've got hay in your hair."

He reaches up and picks it out — one strand, then another, his fingers slow about it, and I hold still while he does it, and the music through the barn wall changes to something with a faster beat and somebody in there whoops and a dozen people laugh, and out here it's just the crickets and his fingers in my hair.

"There," he says. "Presentable."

"Liar."

"Completely presentable. Nobody'll know a thing."

I reach down and swipe two fingers through the mess on my thigh and hold them up where the sliver of light from the barn finds them, and they come away shining. "Except this."

He looks at my fingers. Then he takes my wrist and pulls my hand to his mouth and licks them clean, one finger, then the other, unhurried, his eyes on mine the whole time, and I feel my stomach drop like the first hill of a roller coaster.

"Now nobody'll know a thing," he says.

"You're disgusting."

"I'm thorough."

He lets go of my wrist and stands up properly, and I watch him sort himself out — shorts up, waistband snapped, tank top tugged down where it's ridden up over his stomach, and there's a dark wet patch on the front of his shorts that he doesn't bother to hide. He looks like a man who's been rolled in the hay and had the time of his life doing it.

"We should get back," he says. "They'll have noticed."

"They'll have noticed you've been gone."

"They'll have noticed we've been gone. Two of us, missing, same time." He shrugs. "I don't care."

"Neither do I."

We stand there a second, the two of us, and the music thumps and the crickets saw away and the hay stack lets out another dry creak, and I realize my heart's still going like I ran the mile all over again. I put my hand on his chest to steady myself, or to feel his, and his hand comes up over mine and holds it there.

"You know what I keep thinking about," he says.

"Tell me."

"Tomorrow morning." He says it slow, like he's tasting it. "You in that bed, and me waking up next to you, and knowing what I know now."

"What do you know now?"

He looks at me. "That you cut the liner out of your shorts before we left the house and didn't tell me."

I laugh and push off his chest and go around the corner of the barn, and he follows, and the light from the open barn door hits me in the face all at once and I squint and somebody yells my name and holds up a beer, and it's like the last twenty minutes never happened, except my thighs are slick and my hair's a mess and David's behind me with his hand on the small of my back, steering me in.

"Jodi!" It's Karen from the beer mile, cheeks red, a half-empty cup in each hand. "Where'd you get off to? We're doing another round."

I take one of the cups out of her hand. "Getting some air."

"Some air." She looks past me at David, and then at me, and something flickers across her face and she decides to be a good sport about it. "Must have been some air."

"It was." I drink. The beer's warm and flat and it's the best thing I've ever tasted. "You have no idea."

David's hand doesn't leave my back. His fingers find the waistband of my shorts and hook in, casual as a man resting his hand on a porch rail, and he leans past me to take the other cup out of Karen's hand and drain half of it in one go.

"Thanks," he says. "I needed that."

Karen looks at the cup, then at him, then at me, and her mouth opens and shuts. "You're both a menace," she says, and goes back to the keg.