“So can you?  Come to the shore Labor Day weekend?”
.        Mercy licked the barbecue sauce from her fingers, then wiped them with her napkin.  She took a long sip of water, much to Bernadette Andresi’s agitation, who was waiting on an answer.
.        “Ummmm–”
.        “Ummmm, what?” Bernadette cut in.  “Like, what the fuck, Merce?  It’s bad enough we haven’t done anything all summer, but everytime I ask you to do something or go somewhere, it’s all like, “ummmm.”  What’s going on?”
.        “We’re doing something now, aren’t we?”  Mercy spread her arms out, referring to the Outback restaurant where they now sat, eating dinner.  “Look at this,” she said, gesturing towards the shopping bags overflowing the two unoccupied chairs at their table.  “A day spent doing.”
.        “Yeah,” Bernadette said, reaching into Mercy’s Victoria’s Secret bag and pulling out a clump of thong panties.  “Look at this.”  She tossed them back inside, then reached back in to produce a nightie.  “And this.  Who’s this for, Mercy?  The person you’ve been neglecting me to be with?”
.        “Bern,” Mercy said with a sigh.  She wished she could deny her friend’s accusatory words, but there was a ring of truth to them.  She had been neglecting her friendship with Bernadette since meeting Keene, along with every other thing in her life that didn’t involve rocking back and forth on his dick or swallowing it whole.
.        “Worse than being tossed aside for a guy is never even having met the competition.   What’s the big secret, Merce?  Are you ashamed?”
.        “No,” Mercy quickly defended her relationship.
.        “So you have been choosing back bend over best friend,” Bernadette smirked.
.        “Oh, Bern,” Mercy said, slumping against the back of her chair, shoulders hunched in defeat.  “I always detested those shallow, needy bitches who dropped their girlfriends the minute a guy came along.  And now I’m one of them.”
.        “God damn it, Mercy.”
.        “I know.  I’m such a cunt.”
.        “It’s not just that.  How could you have a boyfriend and not even tell me about him?”
.        Mercy shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I guess it all just . . . got away from me somehow.”
.        And indeed it had.  Ever since their week together spent at Maggy’s house, Mercy and Keene had been literally joined at the hips.  Any time that wasn’t spent in some sexual position was time spent apart.  Her summer activities consisted of work and fucking Keene in hotel rooms up and down the eastern coastline.  She’d been accompanying him to various cities where he was scheduled to be a speaker at writing seminars and workshops.  So far she’d been to Myrtle Beach, Virginia Beach, Mystic, Ocean City, up and down the Jersey shore, tanning and shopping by day, having dinner and sex with Keene after the sun set.
.        Not that she was complaining, or dissatisfied with any of it.  She was living a life most women only held in their fantasies.  To spend a summer touring seaside resorts with the man she loved, a man who was intelligent, good-looking, charismatic, attentive, scholarly and successful, not to mention made her come every single night, was akin to a plot ripped right from the pages of a Jayne Ann Krentz novel.  She hadn’t meant to neglect Bernadette, or even keep Keene a secret from her, but there just wasn’t enough time to keep anything else going.  On the rare occasion she was home, she was either working or packing for a her next getaway.  Even her own mother knew little about Keene, only that he was a published author and that her daughter was traveling with him.  They’d never met.  But Mercy was beginning to feel it was time to introduce him to the other people in her life.
.        “Does that Labor Day invitation include Keene?” she asked her friend over dessert, the bulk of the meal having been spent filling Bernadette in on her whirlwind summer love affair.
.        “After everything you’ve told me, I wouldn’t have you without him,” Bernadette said, a devilish gleam in her eye.

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

Two days after her outing with Bernadette, Mercy attended a reading circle at the house of one of Keene’s writing colleagues in Cherry Hill.  Asher Plattington was a fifty-six-year-old sociology professor at La Salle University who had recently completed a science fiction  novel that he was currently querying to New York agencies.
.        “If they’re not from New York, they don’t exist,” he boomingly declared to anyone tolerant enough to hold a one-on-one conversation with him.  Like Keene, he’d been published in various literary journals and fiction magazines.  Unlike Keene, as of yet he’d failed to secure himself a publishing deal.  The two men had met at La Salle two years ago, where Keene periodically taught a course on how to construct professional query letters and synopses.
.        “That’s not true,” Keene later said to Mercy, overhearing Asher’s latest denouncing of non-New York representation.  “There are plenty of good agencies right here in Pennsylvania, not to mention D.C., Florida, California.”
.        “Isn’t your agent in New York?”
.        “Yes,” he admitted, and she nudged him playfully.
.        “So modest.”
.        Mercy just knew this book of Keene’s, his debut novel,  was going to be a bestseller.  It took her just three days to read and critique the manuscript, offering little suggestion on how it could be improved.  It was engaging, crisp, hip, suspenseful, chock full of sexual longing and teenaged angst; it had all the elements of any successful Young Adult series.  Mercy wouldn’t be surprised if after a few volumes the CW didn’t snatch it up and turn it into a television series, a’la The Vampire Diaries or Gossip Girl.
.        Asher’s book, by contrast, was a plodding, self-indulgent journey, full of pretentious prose, inane sub-plots, and juvenile dialogue.  The excerpt he’d read aloud tonight,  a scene in which our heroic gang of space travelers is abducted, chained up and subsequently raped by a raven-haired, big-busted alien with five vaginas, was as offensive as it was pointless.
.        “He basically wrote a novel about his eleven-year-old wet dream fantasies,” Mercy griped in the car on the ride home.  “It’s one thing to write that misogynistic crap–super-intelligent men being repeatedly forced to fuck an insatiable dumb-as-shit big-boobed alien in her six devouring vaginas–but to then speak it aloud to a room full of women?”  she huffed.  “What a douchebag.”
.        “Well, I wouldn’t exactly call that misogynistic–”
.        “Well, it is crap,” she snapped, whipping her head to look at him.  “You do agree it’s crap.  And degrading.  And juvenile.”
.        He was facing ahead, keeping his eyes on traffic, but she saw a small smile pulling at the corner of his lips.  She slapped his thigh.
.        “Ow!” he said, jerking his leg.
.        “Ow?  Like that hurt.  Pussy.”
.        “Oh-ho-ho, so I’m a pussy, am I?”
.        “Mm-hmm, so that got your attention, huh?” she asked, smiling devilishly.  She leaned over the middle gear shift panel, tucking her face into his neck.  “Pussy,” she whispered.
.        He laughed, a silent one, deep in his throat, and she slipped a hand over his thigh.
.        “Is this where it hurts?” she purred, nibbling at his ear.  She moved her hand up towards his crotch.  “Or is it somewhere up here?”
.        “You’re getting closer,” he said, breaking out into a wide grin.
.        “You want me to kiss it–” she undid the button of his gray Dockers, sliding the zipper down, “–make it all better?”
.        “Maybe.  Maybe in a few min–”
.        His voice ended in a gasp as she reached her hand inside, nails lightly grazing his flesh.
.        “Wait, wait, wait,” he said, shifting his legs, his attempt at shrugging her away not very forceful.
.        “Why don’t we drive to your place?”
.        Suggesting such was a gamble, she knew; for some inexplicable reason she had yet to see where he lived.  She didn’t even have his address.  All she knew was he lived fifteen minutes away from her in neighboring town Shillington.
.        “Why can’t I know where you live?” she’d asked him one day last month when their most recent conversation on the topic grew heated.  “I don’t even know if it’s a house, a condo, an apartment.  Under a bridge somewhere.  Are you married or something?  Have a girlfriend?  Little boys’ bodies in the crawlspace?  Or, worst of all, still live with mommy?”
.        “I don’t want you stalking me,” had been his flippant answer.  Then he’d crawled out of her bed–it was more than fine to screw at her house–and left, not bothering to call or show up at the café for over a week.  She’d actually been the one to call and apologize, and hadn’t brought up the topic since.  But now that she had him in this vulnerable state, perhaps he’d cave a little.
.        No such luck.  He shook her off, successfully this time, composing himself at the next red light.
.        The rest of the ride to her house was spent in silence.  He pulled into the vacant driveway, Trixie being out for the evening.  He put the car in park, staring straight ahead through the windshield, waiting for her to exit.
.        “Keene.”
.        “Good night, Mercy.”
.        “Seriously?” she sighed, exasperated.  “This is getting ridiculous, Keene.  What’s the big fucking deal?”
.        “What is the big fucking deal, Mercy?  Why are you so obsessed with going to my place?”
.        “Because you’re so obsessed with keeping it secret.”
.        “It’s not a secret,” he said, raising his voice.  “I just haven’t taken you there.  I’m not married, I don’t have a girlfriend.  I live alone.  No dead bodies, no Star Wars dolls on every shelf, no women’s panties in the drawers.  Sorry if that answer isn’t good enough for you.  But you’re not going to trick, guilt, manipulate or blow your way into my apartment.”
.        “Whoa.  An apartment.  You let that one slip.”
.        He shook his head, a smirk on his face.  “Just go, Mercy.”
.        When she didn’t move he said, “Would you like me to open the door for you?”
.        “Are you going to be a big baby and avoid me for a week again?”
.        Finally he turned to face her.  “Why are you giving me a hard time?”
.        She stared at him.  Is that what she was doing?  Had she started this argument?  The night had been fine.  She and Keene mingling with the guests at Asher’s house, getting frisky in the car afterwards.  Why had she gone and ruined all that?  Before she opened her bitch mouth the night had been heading towards an orgasm.  Now it seemed she’d be spending it alone in her bed, asking the empty room what went wrong.
.        “I’m sorry,” she said softly, reaching out to touch his face.  He tilted his head down and kissed her hand.
.        “It’s okay,” he whispered.  She leaned in for a kiss.  Soft, loving, no tongue.
.        “Please come in.”
.        “I can’t,” he said.
.        “Can’t?”  She gently cupped the bulge between his legs.  “Why not?”
.        He took her by the wrist, moving her hand back over to her side of the car.  “I just can’t.”
.        She nodded, backing away.  She wanted to get in the house, suddenly feeling a desperate urge to cry.  Her hand fumbled with the handle, and before she stepped out, his hand was on her arm.
.        “Hey.”
.        She paused, halfway out the door.  She did not turn back to look at him.  “Yes?”
.        “There’s nothing wrong here, okay?  I just don’t think it’s a good idea tonight.”
.        She nodded again.  “Yep.  I know.”
.        Up in her room, she threw her body across the bed and dissolved into tears.  She cried through changing into her pajamas, brushing her teeth, and two episodes of Dance Moms.
.        She hadn’t even asked him about Labor Day weekend.

At Brody’s request, and because it made her pussy feel as red, plump and juicy as a sweet, ripe strawberry floating in champagne, along with the no underwear edict, Trixie wore nothing but sundresses on the days he came to mow the lawn or clean the pool.  Knee length sundresses; minis; calf length; long and constrictively straight so that she could barely walk, let alone spread her legs; long and billowing so that they swept the floor, almost tripping her.  Strapless, spaghetti, halter.  Solids, polka dots, flowers, random patterns.  Only sundresses, with nothing underneath.  Nothing but his hands, his mouth, his cock.  Those were the things she wore on her pussy.
.        She was cutting up a variety of fruits she’d purchased at the farmer’s market earlier that day to toss into a fruit salad when she heard the lawnmower kick on.  Like Pavlov’s dog, her mouth–and her gash–began salivating at the sound.  Knowing it was his scheduled day to tend to the landscaping, she was already outfitted in today’s dress, a blue and purple multi with spaghetti straps that fell mid-thigh.  The following twenty minutes were excruciating as she completed making the salad, anticipating the silencing of the mower.  She was sitting on the couch, watching The Haves and The Have Nots when she noticed the quiet.  The doorbell rang, and she ran to answer it.
.        She’d been doing this the entire summer, throwing her door open to find Brody on the other side of it, sweaty and half-dressed, sun-tanned and gorgeous, smelling of the earth and eager perspiration.  He wore his pants low on his hips and her eyes went directly to the area where his abdomen met his groin, that delicious vee carved in muscle and vein, the arrow that pointed to the promise of hard, fat cock.  The moment she saw him she wanted him with such an intense hunger that if she had a dick it would be so erect it would be pointing at her forehead.
.        She grabbed his shirt, pulling him inside.  She immediately went for his pants, undoing the zipper.
.        “Wait wait wait,” he said, grasping her wrists just as she’d reached inside his underwear to wrap her hands around his prick.  The heat radiating from it almost sent her into a frenzy.
.        “I need a drink first,” he said, lifting his shirt and using it to wipe the sweat from his face.  “It’s hot as a bitch out there.”
.        She stared at his exposed six-pack, which she knew from experience felt as good as it looked.  Sometimes in the middle of fucking she’d ask him to stop and just lay on top of her, mashing their chests together.  The weight of his pecs mashing her breasts, the feel of his abs on her belly always made for an explosive orgasm once he got going again.
.        “You got any lemonade?”
.        Of course she did, freshly squeezed with lime and sugar, just the way he liked it.
.        Two minutes later they were in her kitchen, Brody drinking a glass of lemonade with Trixie on her knees in front of him, dipping his dick in another.  She lifted it out, lemonade dribbling down her chin as she sucked the liquid off his prick.  He put his empty glass on the counter, pressing his hands on her back, bringing her onto his shaft.  He slid down her throat and she bobbed on his cock, sucking and slurping.  He bent over slightly, bunching her dress up in his hands to reveal her bare ass.  He rubbed it, slapped it playfully, running his fingers in the crack.  When one of them slid down to her gash, she moaned, tilting her pelvis to encourage him further.  He stroked her a moment, slipped his finger in and pumped a few times before straightening up and pulling back.  He placed his hands on her arms and brought her to her feet, steering her into the family room and guiding her over to the couch.
.        Because he was still sweaty and smudged with grass and dirt Trixie paused a moment to retrieve an oversized beach towel and spread it over the sofa before they collapsed on it.  On her back, she spread her legs wide to accommodate his positioning and focused her gaze on his dick, slick with her saliva, fat and stiff as a baseball bat.
.        “Go slow,” she said, watching until the tip was no longer visible as it moved closer to her slit.  She kept her eyes fixed as inch after inch of him disappeared, gliding with aching slowness into her box.  When he was fully entrenched within her, he remained still as she tilted her torso up and down, back and forth, massaging her walls with the length of him.  She slid all the way back, until only the tip remained inside, then slammed into him until her velvety lips were touching his skin, their pubic hair mingling, feeling him as deep as he could possibly go.  She sat up, wrapping her legs around him, lifting herself up and down on his dick, mashing her clitty against him as she came, her plump breasts rasping against his sculpted pecs.  She would have screamed out for him to fuck her harder, but in actuality she was fucking herself, using him as something with which to impale herself, a rippled surface to grind against, and it felt so completely delicious.  Empowering and so incredibly erotic.
.        When her orgasm subsided, she wiggled on his lap for a moment, coming down from the intensity of her climax.  They kissed, and he tugged at her nipples with his teeth, sending ripples of electricity through her.  Finally she lay back, being careful to not un-join from him.  She gestured to the cell phone on the coffee table with her chin.
.        “Take a picture of your dick inside me.”
.        He laughed.  “Seriously?”
.        She smiled languidly, beyond satiated.  “Seriously.”
.        When he began to lift from the sofa, she held her arms out.  “Don’t pull out.”
.        Somehow he managed to stretch to the iPhone without breaking contact and she luxuriated in his subtle movements, purring like a cat.
.        “It just looks like a pussy with hair on it,” he said, looking through the camera.
.        “Take it anyway.  Then pull out a little so I can see your bare skin.”
.        He obliged, taking a few more at her request, in various stages of entering, the final being his head resting just inside her lips.
.        “Mmmm,” she cooed when he’d replaced the phone on the table and stretched his body atop hers.  His penis rested flaccid against her thigh.  “Thank you, baby.”
.        They ate the fruit salad and halved a mozzarella and heirloom tomato sandwich drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  Afterwards she walked him to the door, kissing him deeply before releasing him to the outside.
.        “See you next week,” she said.  She almost leaned in for another kiss, or a grab at his crotch, but just then she noticed the elder Broderick Daniels coming down his driveway on the way to his mailbox.  He noticed her at the same time and lifted his hand in greeting.  She waved back, prompting Brody to turn around.  He also waved at his father, then turned back to Trixie with a guilty–but devilish–smile.
.        She went back inside and watched from the bay window as Brody walked the mower back over to his house and his father, who remained on the lawn, waiting for him.  When Ricky put his arm around his son and pulled him in for a half hug that ended in a playful hair rumple, Trixie wondered if he could smell the sex on him.  Had he noticed a change in his son’s behavior?  Was there a change?  Trixie thought there must be a change in her; she felt it.  If indeed there was, no one seemed to be noticing it.  Even Maggy, who could sniff out when the squirrels in her backyard had just mated, seemed oblivious to her older sister’s mattress workouts with a teenaged jackhammer.
.        To think at one time not so long ago she had actually thought of Brody as a possible love interest for Mercy!  Now that she had had him herself, she thought he was much too fast for her daughter.  She couldn’t imagine Mercy doing with Brody all the dirty things she herself had done with him.  Her young body being pummeled relentlessly, her sweet little mouth swallowing that fat prick.  Trixie had no idea whether or not her daughter was a virgin.  She knew it was naïve of her to think so, but then again Mercy had never brought anyone significant home to meet her.  There were high school prom dates and study partners and a boy or two she had introduced as “friends,” but she’d never dated anyone longer than two or three dates.  If she’d ever had sex it would have been a one night stand, or with someone she kept secret from Trixie.  She sincerely hoped that wasn’t the case.
.        Trixie liked to think she and Mercy were the kind of mother and daughter who held no secrets between them.