Chapter Eighteen

Can I come in?" Twyla blurted the second Frank opened his front door.

"Of course." He moved aside so that she could step past him into his parlor. She wasn't accustomed to his short haircut, and aside from his suit and (briefly) his pajamas, she hadn't seen him in anything other than his work clothes for weeks. He looked softer now as he stood in the warm gaslight of his parlor, wearing a clean white undershirt and faded blue dungarees, and since he used the same laundry detergent she used, he smelled like home.

He squinted toward the street through the open doorway. "Where's your duck?"

"At Wade's house."

"You walked here?"

She nodded.

He closed the door and cocked his head at her, his hands on his hips, with his fingertips dipping into his front pockets. It was such a familiar and quintessentially Frank posture that it sent her sailing over the brink. She thought she was all cried out, but here she was, leaning on Frank's favorite chair and bawling all over it. He didn't ask her what had happened. He wrapped an arm around her and whisked her to the sofa and sat beside her and held her hand, and he waited for her to say whatever she needed to say, and it felt the way it was supposed to feel, like a friend comforting a friend.

"I talked to Hope about getting married, and we got into an argument, and she said that the last person she wants to be in this world is me-e-e." She sobbed the last word in a staccato of anguish.

Frank held tight to her hand. "Aw, darlin'."

"And she's right."

"No, she isn't. Hold on a minute." He got up and returned a moment later with a handkerchief.

"She is right," Twyla insisted as he dabbed at her cheeks with the clean linen. "I even agreed with her. I told her that the last thing I want for her to be in this world is me. I tried to tell her how hard marriage is, especially when you have kids, and she got so mad at me, and now I can't stay at Wade's house, and there's a hole in my roof, and everything is terrible, and I'm sorry for asking you if I can stay here when I know you're feeling sad about Mary Georgina, but I didn't have anywhere else to go."

"You always have a place with me. You know that."

Twyla wanted more than anything to curl up in his lap and burrow into the solid comfort of him, under his skin, all the way to the bone. The ferocity of that need nearly laid her out flat, not in its bald sensuality but in its enormity. She had the bewildering sensation that she was plummeting into a place far bigger than herself with no idea how far it went.

She buried her face in Frank's hankie and begged herself to get a grip on her life. She needed to blow her nose anyway, since she was a hideous swamp of tears and snot.

"I haven't changed the bedding in Lu's room, so it might smell a little beery after you and Duckers crashed there last night. Why don't you sleep in Annie's bed."

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak in case Frank could hear the roiling confusion of feelings in her voice.

He stroked her hair. "Poor Twy. You don't have your pack or anything? You just hoofed it on over?"

He only meant to comfort her, but his caress made her want to flop over and purr. She had to say something, but when she looked up, his face was much closer than she had realized. She could see his chest rise with an intake of air that didn't seem to come back out of his lungs. He went still, and so did she, and a long, fraught silence settled over them. Twyla's treacherous eyes drifted to Frank's mouth. She bit her lips between her teeth to stop herself from pressing a heated kiss to his. Again.

Frank turned away from her and put his hands on his knees in the universal gesture that announced, I am about to stand up.

He stood up.

"Well now, let me see if I can track down a clean toothbrush for you."

She watched him disappear into the hallway, and she heard the door of the linen closet open, followed by Frank's rustling through toilet paper and extra bottles of shampoo and deodorant.

Twyla sat up and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, the one her mom had crocheted for Frank years ago. Feeling adrift, she let her eyes wander to the house's altar to the left of the front door, a narrow shelf that should have displayed the family keys alongside a bowl of salt water. But Frank had no keys on his altar and, therefore, no reason to set out salt water every day. His estranged father kept his family's keys, and Cora had taken hers with her when she left. Of course, Frank had the care of Twyla's birth key, and she of his—a practical matter, since neither of them had had kids at the time who were old enough or mature enough to handle the responsibility. But since Twyla was alive, it didn't belong on the altar. And when she died, he would give it to her children rather than keep it for himself.

All these years, Twyla had never paid attention to that blank altar by Frank's door, but now it filled her with grief for him, this good man with his generous heart, who had made himself what he was despite, rather than because of, the family he came from.

"Never been used, I swear."

Frank stood where the parlor and dining room met the hallway leading to the house's three bedrooms, holding up a pristine toothbrush in a slim cardboard box.

Twyla gave him a wet laugh and used his handkerchief to dry the tears she had been shedding for him rather than for herself. She walked across the room and took the proffered gift. "What would I do without you?"

"Perish. Obviously."

He was kidding, but she was not.

"It's true. I would."

"Aw, stop it." He ushered her to Annie's bedroom, where he turned up the gas sconce to a dim glow. "Here's a shirt if you want to sleep in something other than what you're wearing. I thought about giving you a pair of my pajama bottoms, but I think you'd drown in them. Need anything else? A glass of water? Something to read? A kitten?"

She decided to latch on to his humor. Humor was what had gotten them through the worst things they had faced together, from fighting the undead to worrying about their children. They'd always found reasons to laugh, and laughing with him now made everything feel normal.

"All I need is a toothbrush and the will to face another day," Twyla assured him, mustering a brave smile.

"And now you have both." He lingered on the threshold of the bedroom, fingering the doorknob. "Twyla, I ought to… uh…" His voice trailed off, but he remained in the doorframe, chewing on something he needed to say. Twyla had no idea if she wanted to hear the words clinging for dear life to his tongue, or if she wanted to run away from them.

"It's nothing," he said at last. "Get some rest. Everything will look better in the morning."

His hand twitched, as if he had nearly reached out to her but thought better of it. He grasped the doorknob once more. "Want this open or closed?"

"Closed, thanks."

Again, he seemed like he might say more, but he only nodded his good night and left the room, shutting the door behind him.

Twyla sat on the bed. As a general rule, arguments and conflict and crying left her a wrung-out sponge of a woman, but as she took the time to think over what had transpired between mother and daughter that evening, an unexpected tranquility strummed through her veins. Hope had not welcomed Twyla's concerns, and Twyla couldn't fault her for that. But speaking her truth had knocked something loose inside her. She was reminded of Rosie Fox banging her fist on the portal at the North Station and somehow, despite the improbability of it, getting it to work again. Twyla's words to Hope were equally inelegant, but they'd needed to be said for her own peace of mind, and she felt better for having spoken them.

Frank's neatly folded undershirt waited for her at the foot of the bed. How like Frank, to offer something she didn't know she needed until he held it in his capable hands. She picked it up and rubbed the soft, worn cotton between her fingers, and before she could think better of it, she held it to her nose and inhaled the familiar scent.

It's laundry detergent fragrance, Twyla reminded herself. And yet, it was also the scent that she and Frank shared, redolent of their friendship, and all the warmth and care and affection that came with it.

Twyla took off everything but her underwear and pulled on the shirt, welcoming the gentle fabric against her skin. Had she been a delicate, petite woman, the shirt would have hung off her like a limp sail. But Twyla was of average height, and her body had thickened over the years, so that Frank's undershirt hugged her breasts and hips before landing in the pale territory between the middle and top of her thighs.

She regarded her body, the one that had kept her on this earth for over half a century, the one that had carried three children and brought them into the world, the one that had worked hard her whole life, the one that had fought the undead beside Frank Ellis.

Frank was wearing a shirt exactly like this one tonight, but how differently it fit him. He had been quite fit when she first met him, when he was nothing more to her than Cora's husband. He was the same strong man he ever was, but with a layer of softness over him now. She wanted to feel the white cotton of his shirt under her fingertips again, the way she had the night they'd kissed. She wanted to let her hands rove from his shoulders to his chest to his stomach. Would he welcome her touch? Would he take pleasure in it?

Yes, she suspected that he would. Of course he would. He was a man, after all, and in her limited experience, it took next to nothing to rev up a man's motor. Doug used to cop a feel every time he happened upon her bending over to sweep dirt into a dustpan, a habit that had made her borderline murderous.

Was Frank ever tempted to touch her in that way? Not when she was bent over a dustpan, but in general?

The memory of their kiss flooded her senses. She remembered his hands on her body, his lips on her lips, his mouth tasting her skin.

So yes, clearly, on some level, he desired her. And now she was grappling with the fact that she desired him in return. But it was more than simply scratching an itch. If that was all there was to it, Twyla could have crawled into Quill's pup tent, and Frank could have taken Liz Brimsby up on her seductive baking.

The problem was that there was no halfway when it came to Frank. With Quill, she could walk away. With Frank, that wasn't an option. Either they were friends or they were lovers, with all the capital-L Love and commitment the word implied. And committing herself to another man, even one as wonderful as Frank, was the last thing Twyla wanted in the time she had left in this world.

Except.

Wasn't there already love between them? Wasn't there already commitment? Hadn't they both demonstrated a hundred times over that they would take a pistol crossbow arrow for each other? Hadn't they been there for each other, time and again, for any and all of life's challenges, large and small?

Hadn't they already crossed the line anyway?

Yes, in fact, they had, so what was the point in trying to go back to how they had been?

Of course, Twyla had no idea to what extent Frank might want her, but she did know that she wanted him. And pretending that she didn't was a lie. How could she lie to her best friend?

Salt Sea, she wanted him, and Twyla, who hadn't expected much from anyone since the day she exchanged birth keys with Doug Banneker, thought that maybe, this once, she could ask for something she wanted.

She opened the door and crossed the narrow hall to Frank's bedroom. His door was open, and he sat up in bed, reading a book by the light of his bedside gas lamp. He wore a pair of black half-moon readers, the sight of which inspired a yearning pang of affection inside Twyla's rib cage.

He looked at her over the top of those sexy, adorable reading glasses. "Everything all right?"

She hovered in the doorway, floundering to answer a perfectly simple question. "I don't know."

"Need to talk?"

"No. Can I sit here?" She took a tentative step forward and patted the end of his mattress, next to his blanketed feet.

"Sure."

She knelt at the foot of the bed, facing him.

"Not to be contrary, but it looks like you plan to do some talking," he said.

They'd been this close before at night, on cots in the barracks, but Twyla had rarely entered his bedroom. Now they occupied the same bed, and to her, it was steamier than a sauna.

"That night after the wedding…," she began.

He closed his book. "I think it'll take a bit before it stops feeling awkward, but we'll get there."

"You don't understand. That was the best sex of my life, and we didn't even have sex."

There. She'd said it. The truth was a boulder, and she'd sent it rolling down a hill with no idea of where it would end up. But that boulder had also been sitting on her chest, and she was glad to have wriggled out from under the crushing weight of it at last.

Frank set the book on his bedside table. He took off his glasses and set them on top of the book. Out of things to do with his hands, he spoke without making eye contact. "We didn't exactly not have sex either."

The deeper they dove into this conversation, the more certain Twyla was that they needed to have it.

"I'm fifty-three years old, and it's never felt like that. It's never been that good."

Frank stared at his hands on the bedspread, but he was listening and thinking. He hadn't flat out refused her yet, so she worked up her courage to say her piece.

"I've spent my whole life worrying about what everyone else needs, and I've put myself last every day of my adult life. And whenever I do want something, it feels selfish, and I go without. Well, I want this. For once in my life I want something, and I'm going to ask for it."

Frank's fingers gripped his thighs hidden beneath the coverlet. "Are you asking me to make love to you?"

"Yes." A wave of misgivings crashed inside her, and panicked words flew out of her mouth before Frank could get a word in edgewise. "Ugh, what am I doing? But yes! Fine! Yes, that's what I'm asking!" She slapped the mattress with flattened hands on yes and fine and yes.

She'd rendered Frank speechless. He went on staring at his hands.

"But only if you're willing, obviously," she went on, breathless and dizzy with her own temerity. "I wouldn't force you to do it."

Frank let loose a strained, gusty laugh. "Woman, I couldn't say no to you if I tried. And I have no intention of trying."

He finally looked at her, his eyes smoldering with honest heat, and every inch of Twyla's skin warmed under his burning, truthful gaze. They were friends—good friends, the best of friends—and there would be no more pretending between them.

Frank threw off the bedspread and top sheet and crawled across the mattress to her, stopping only when his face was inches from hers. "If someone's going to put a stop to this, it's going to have to be you. Are you sure this is what you want?"

"Yes, I'm s—"

He pressed his lips to hers, but this kiss was not the desperate passion that flamed up after Twyla had thrown a bomb into his front yard. This was not the lip-bruising, teeth-clashing kiss that had burned itself into her memory. This kiss was deep and slow and savoring. If the kiss after the wedding had set her on fire, this one melted her to candle wax.

He cupped her face in his hands. No one had ever touched her face when kissing her, and the tenderness of the gesture made her whimper.

Frank pulled away suddenly and talked a million times faster than he usually did. "I should have put that better. I meant that we can stop at any time. Just say the word."

"Understood."

"Because I'll stop if you want."

She huffed in exasperation and took the reassuring familiarity of his face into her hands. "Don't stop," she said, echoing her words from the night of the wedding and the bombs. "Do not stop." And she kissed him with a raw, open-mouthed desire. He growled, a sound that rumbled straight to her core, and wow, did he stop talking. The pressure of his kiss was exactly what she wanted, the firmness of his lips, the delicate movement of his tongue. Frank's was not the sloppy, tongue-lolling embrace of a teenaged boy; Frank kissed like a man who knew what he wanted and what it took to get it.

Twyla touched him the way she had imagined touching him, starting at his shoulders and stroking her way down his chest and stomach, the thin white cotton of his undershirt stretched taut over his torso, his body hot and solid beneath the fabric. He hummed his throaty approval into her mouth.

Frank's hands followed a similar path along her back, from her shoulder blades, down her ribs, over her hips, all the way to the curve of her derriere. Everywhere he touched her, Twyla felt the loveliness of her own curves.

Until Frank's fingertips brushed the leg opening of her underwear.

Because she was wearing her giant cotton granny panties. Of course she was.

She buried her face in his neck, laughing her embarrassment, even as she took in a fortifying breath of the spicy aftershave lingering on his skin. "I am wearing the least sexy underwear under the altar of the sky."

"You could be wearing a paper bag, for all I care. All I want to do is take off whatever you're wearing."

To prove his point, he ran his hands beneath the waistband of her underwear, seizing her hind end.

"Ope!" she cried in surprise.

"Are we good?"

"We're good."

He smoothed his hands over the skin of her backside, making her feel soft and pretty and feminine. But when he kissed her neck, she shrank away from him in a knee-jerk spasm.

"Ticklish?" he asked with a grin.

"Very."

"I won't kiss you there."

"No, I like it. I just need it softer, I think."

She grasped him by the shoulders, massaging a rhythm into the round strength that matched the slow movement of his hands up her rib cage.

"Like this?" He leaned in again slowly and pressed a gentle kiss against her throat. Incredible how the barest brush of his lips on her skin made the ache building between her legs pulse a hundred times more frantically than if he'd plowed into her, tongue blazing.

"Exactly like that," she whispered.

"You're calling the shots tonight, darlin'," he told her as he kissed a delicate trail along the length of her throat. "I'm doing what you want. Anything you want."

"I definitely want what you're doing right now."

He rewarded her with a husky laugh. She threaded her fingers into his hair as he kissed the hollow behind her earlobe, sending a shiver through her as he swirled the tip of his tongue against the sensitive skin there. He smoothed his hands from back to front, then up and up, under her breasts, then over them and on them, firm without honking her like an old-fashioned Klaxon.

"Still good?"

"So good."

She mirrored his actions, snaking her hands inside his undershirt, his flesh a delicious combination of soft and hard beneath her touch. The desire to burrow into him overwhelmed her. She pulled him against her and captured his mouth in a hot, breathless kiss. He rose to his knees and took her with him, holding her against him with a desperation that matched her own, their bodies flush, his arousal throbbing against her thigh. She brought her kiss to his neck, lightly sucking his gorgeously scented skin.

"Fuck," he gasped, his voice full of hot pleasure, and he moaned when she bit his earlobe. "You're over here worrying over your underwear, when all I want is you, naked in my bed." He tugged at the hem of her shirt. "I'm taking this off you now, and then I'm taking off your underwear so you won't have to worry about it anymore."

She had experienced no little trepidation when Quill had seen her naked for the first time, but here with Frank, whom she trusted more than anyone, she had no qualms. Of course he didn't judge her body harshly as he relieved her of the shirt, revealing her middle-aged breasts and too-soft stomach. Of course he would accept her as she was when he helped her step out of her underwear. She'd gotten off the bed to accomplish the last part, and she was now standing before him as the Three Mothers had made her, while Frank remained kneeling at the foot of the bed, drinking her in with his eyes. When he reached out to caress her breasts and her waist and her hips, his hands told her she was precious to him, and he'd be careful with her.

"I want to see you, too," she told him shyly.

Twyla had no idea that a human being could whip off a shirt that fast, but there was Frank, naked from the waist up, his feet already on the ground opposite hers so that he could wrap her in his arms and hold her skin against his skin, her breasts against his chest. They both sighed with the pleasure of it.

Twyla reached between them to pull on the drawstring waistband of his pajama bottoms. "All of it, Frankie."

"So demanding." His eyes glinted with orneriness, and Twyla wondered how she'd failed to succumb to the sheer sexiness of that glint all these years.

"You said I was calling the shots tonight."

"That's right."

He dropped his pants and boxers in one go and pulled her down with him onto the bed. They twined together, exploring each other in a bubble of timelessness, until Frank put his hand over hers and stuttered, "Stop, stop, stop!"

"Was that bad?"

"No, that was good, way too good. Give me a minute."

He held her hand away from him and closed his eyes and breathed. When he had control over himself, he opened his eyes to burning slits, and he told her, "You don't need to worry about me tonight. This is about you, what you like, what you want. Let me do this for you."

He stretched out beside her and kissed her and held her, his body pulsing with hers as they moved together. She moaned when he suckled her breast, arching against his mouth to bring him closer.

"Aw, you like that," he said, his voice made so husky with hunger that Twyla wanted to bottle every word.

"Like is putting it mildly."

"That's good, because I could stay here all night." And stay there he did, lavishing attention on both breasts with hands and lips and tongue until Twyla's feet were twisted in the sheets. When he slid his hand lower and pressed his palm into her growing desire, she writhed against his touch.

"What do you need?" he asked her in a hoarse whisper.

She pushed herself against his hand. "Nothing. This is fine."

"Fine's not good enough. Tell me what you need. Do you want me to taste you here?" He moved his fingers against her, making her ache with the frustration of being close, but not close enough.

"Don't worry about it. I've always struggled with this. I don't have to… you know. I'm enjoying it. Trust me."

He stopped. He propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at her.

"What?"

"Darlin', I'm not going anywhere without you."

"It takes me a while, especially since the whole menopause thing."

"I've got all the time in the world." He fanned his fingers over her stomach and let them drift southward. "All you have to do is tell me what you want."

There was something that would help, but Twyla wasn't sure she could admit to it, not even to Frank. She bit her bottom lip. "It's embarrassing."

"Tell me," he said, convincing her with his soft, delicious kisses and the hypnotic pressure of his hand.

"Um, I usually need, um… mechanical assistance to, you know… get there."

"You mean a vibrator?"

She nodded.

"You use a vibrator?"

She cringed and nodded again.

A slow smile spread across his face. "Twyla Josephine, you minx."

"Stop laughing at me!"

"This is not laughter. This is pure, unadulterated joy. Where is it?"

She grabbed the coverlet and pulled it up to her nose.

"Come on. Fess up. Where do you keep it?"

She tugged the quilt higher so that she was visible only from the eyes up. "Them."

Frank's face lit up.

"Shut up!"

"I'm telling you, I am not laughing. Where?"

"In the drawer of my bedside table, but who knows if they're intact after the explosion."

"Only one way to find out. Don't move."

He rolled out of bed and got into his pajama bottoms.

Twyla bolted upright, clutching the bedspread to her chin, as if Frank hadn't already seen all her business. "You are not going to go into my destroyed bedroom to get a vibrator."

"Vibrators. Plural. And yes, I am." By now, he was fully dressed and hopping on one foot to put on his second shoe.

"You don't have to."

He returned to the bed, bent over, and kissed her so thoroughly that she relinquished the quilt to grab hold of his shirt. He pulled away long enough to say "Be right back" before hustling out of the room with his pajama pants scandalously tented.

Twyla sat against the headboard in stunned silence. And then she burst out laughing. "What in the name of the Unknown God am I doing?" she cackled. This was a disaster. She knew it was. And yet Frank was going to return to this room, armed with her vibrators, and she could not bring herself to put a stop to it. She had wanted something. She had asked for it. And now she was getting it. And if she was being honest with herself—which she was, since honesty was the theme of the evening—she found that she did not have it in her to regret it. Not yet, at any rate.

Frank returned with one of Twyla's pillowcases, her humble collection of vibrators clacking about the bottom. "Your bedside table has seen better days, but these appear to be in functioning order."

Already mildly hysterical, Twyla started laughing again. "This is mortifying."

"Nah, it ain't." He knelt on the bed beside her and opened the pillowcase to reveal its contents to her. "Which one's your favorite?"

"I don't have a favorite."

He gave her a smirk that was both irritating and sexy as all get-out. "It's the glow-in-the-dark green one, isn't it?"

"Yes," she admitted sheepishly.

"Mm-hmm."

He took up the fluorescent vibrator and set the pillowcase full of the rest on the lamp table. After he stared helplessly at the phallic green mechanism in his hand for several seconds, Twyla said, "You have no idea how it works, do you?"

"I've never used one before."

"Mm-hmm."

"Don't you laugh at me, woman."

"This is not laughter. This is pure, unadulterated joy."

He chucked the vibrator to the side and tackled her, tickling her without mercy.

"See?" he cried. "You are laughing at me."

"Because you're tickling me, you jerk," she wheezed. And then one of them kissed the other—difficult to say who—and they were off to the races once more, only more passionate and more frenetic than before.

"Still good?" he asked her when he came up for air.

"Still good."

It occurred to Twyla that in addition to the sex itself feeling phenomenal, she was having fun. She'd had no idea that making love could be as full of laughter and joy as it was of naked bits and passion.

Frank reached across her to retrieve the vibrator. "Can we use this?"

She shrank into the mattress. "Okay."

"We can stop at any time."

"I know. Here." She took the vibrator from him and showed him the tiny key attached to the side, which she inserted into the bottom to crank the internal spring. "Once you pull out the key, it lasts for a good fifteen minutes."

"As long as it doesn't outlast me."

She bit back a snicker, unnecessary since he was kissing her again—languid, heady, drunken kisses that made her feel like she was floating outside of herself. His lips brushed along her jaw and down her throat, soft and sensuous, exactly the way she wanted to be touched there.

"Do you know what I think you like, darlin'?" he asked against the sensitive skin of her neck, his voice low and throaty, his fingers touching her most intimate place. "I think you like a little tenderness with your heat. A little soft with your hard. A little sweet with your salty."

"You're right. You are so right." Twyla felt like she had a spring inside of her, and each movement of Frank's hand and every word that came out of his mouth wound her tighter and tighter. "What about you? What do you like?" she asked him.

He lifted his head and said, simply, "You."

The ridiculous urge to cry swelled in her throat. She didn't know what to do with the notion that someone would want her for her own sake and not for the many services she could render.

Frank picked up the vibrator once more and pulled the key. He took Twyla's hand and wrapped it around the buzzing base.

Her eyes widened. "You want me to use it on myself?"

"You know best where to put it. Go to town." He rushed to add, "If you want to."

Raw vulnerability already rode in the passenger seat of this entire experience; the notion of pleasing herself in anyone's presence but her own nearly shut her down.

Frank must have sensed her hesitation, because he said, "You don't have to, darlin'. It's only that I want you to enjoy what we're doing together, the two of us—"

"I am."

"—and, selfishly, I want to watch you have the mind-blowing, life-altering release you deserve."

His words made her blush, head to toe, as the vibrator buzzed loudly in her grasp. "Oh," she breathed.

He nuzzled her collarbone. "Just saying."

He wasn't wrong. What else was she doing here? What was the point of making herself this vulnerable to Frank if she wasn't going to let him in all the way, if she wasn't going to open all the doors and windows of the house that was Twyla Banneker?

She lowered the vibrator until the tip hovered an inch over where she needed it.

Frank noticed. He stopped his exquisite exploration of her collarbone. "You sure?"

"I think I'd like to have a mind-blowing, life-altering release for once in my life."

She pressed the vibrator against her most sensitive place. The pleasure of it made her close her eyes and press her head into the pillow, inspiring a deeply appreciative huff from Frank. She was stunned to realize that what she was doing wasn't selfish; he wanted this as much as she did. He worked around her, touching her, caressing her, kissing her with the pressure and gentleness and precision she craved. She wasn't on her own; he was with her every step of the way. The spring inside her wound tight before, she came uncoiled at last, spinning and spinning until she was limp.

She opened her eyes, and there was Frank, grinning at her, looking awfully pleased with himself.

"This is the part where you tell me I was right," he informed her.

"I'm calling the shots, so I vote no on that."

He picked up her hand and kissed her knuckles one at a time. I think you like a little tenderness with your heat, he had told her, and he was right. Tenderness was exactly what she liked.

Frank is exactly what I like. The words came unbidden to her mind, something she would have to examine more closely later. For now, she turned on her side and reached for him.

"Fuck," he groaned as she took him in hand.

"I think you like a little heat with your tenderness," she told him, wearing the same self-satisfied smile he'd been doling out moments ago.

"You got that right," he agreed, his words cranking through the constricted mangle of his throat.

Tonight, Twyla was calling the shots, not simply asking for what she wanted but receiving it. And she had one more thing she wanted.

"Frank?"

"Yeah?" he whimpered as her touch incapacitated him.

"I want you, all of you." Her hand was more specific than her words.

He swallowed. "You sure?"

"Very sure."

"Thank gods," he sighed, taking himself out of her grasp. "Whew. Give me a minute."

"I've got all the time in the world."

He gave her an I see what you did there moue. This was fun, repeating everything he said in a new context. She lay against the pillow with her arms crossed smugly behind her head.

Franks eyes narrowed to smoldering slits. "I wish you could see yourself now, pleased as a kitten with a saucer of milk, lying on that bed like you own it." He opened the drawer of his bedside table and pulled out a box of condoms. "Shit, do these things expire?"

"I hope not," said Twyla, although a part of her was secretly pleased that it had been so long since Frank had cracked open this box that the contents were at risk of expiring.

He took out a foil square and squinted at it, and when he couldn't read the tiny expiration date, he put on his cheaters. As he stood there beside the bed, holding the condom packet up to the lamp, wearing nothing but his blocky reading glasses, an even deeper affection for this man than Twyla had thought possible took hold of her, and she knew it would not be letting go anytime soon.

"We're in business," he declared in triumph, and it was only a matter of seconds before he was in bed beside her again, his body snaking with hers.

"How do you want to do this?" he asked.

"The regular way, I guess."

"The regular way? You mean with me on top?"

"If that's okay with you?"

He cupped her face and stroked her cheekbone with his thumb. "The more important question here is, What's okay with you? Because it's my understanding that ladies sometimes have a better experience when they're on top."

She grimaced. "I was never good at that."

"Was it that you weren't good at it or that you've never been with someone who let you make it good for yourself?"

That question was a revelation. Now that she thought about it, Doug had usually grown impatient when she had been on top. He would always take control of the position and the tempo to suit himself.

"Both, probably."

He rolled onto his back, taking her with him so that she was lying flat on top of him. "Try it. Do it for yourself. See what you think."

"Are you sure?"

"You have no idea how sure I am."

So she tried it.

And she was doing it for herself.

And she liked it.

Frank didn't try to take over. He barely moved, save for the clamping of his hands on her thighs and the heaving of his lungs. The only time he adjusted his position was when she asked him to prop himself higher with an extra pillow. That had worked miracles.

"You take what you need from me, darlin'," he growled through bared teeth. "You take anything you need."

Twyla, who always struggled to take anything for herself, took what Frank freely offered, and gladly, her core winding tight once more and blissfully uncoiling around him. And when he grasped her by the hips and went rigid beneath her, she was gratified to know that she'd given back as much as she had taken.