Like the headboard, the cheap flat screen was screwed into the table on which it rested. Securing the television made sense to her, but she wondered whether headboards were a popular target for petty thieves. On reflection, she thought it was probably to keep the headboard from banging off the wall as wives fucked their secret lovers, and bosses fucked their secretaries, and young men from the downtown skyscrapers fucked each other on the down-low on the seedy side of town where no one would know them or care.

She hadn’t really looked at the place when she’d first arrived, so focused was her desire and so eager were the two of them to be with each other. As he’d kissed his way down her body she’d marveled at his skill and proficiency, and the thought that he must have practiced this a thousand times before with other women crossed her mind only briefly before the waves of physical pleasure chased all intelligible thought out of her mind. Her body succumbed fully to his ministrations three times in the hour they kissed and touched and gave themselves to each other; the last time was an explosion brought on by the furiousness of his rhythm as he climaxed and his muscles tightened, his entire body spasming in and around her.

He had drifted off to sleep shortly thereafter with his muscular arm draped over her, and she lay on her back, stroking his hair. Lying there, sated and warm, she wondered whether a normal life was too much to hope for. A small, clean apartment with a nice kitchen. A good-looking man who loved her and made love to her the way she wanted—with a passion that was based on his own need and desire, at the same time both selfish and giving.

It was probably too much to hope for, she knew, particularly with a man like Buddy. He was not a man who would be easily domesticated, and she suspected that if he was, she wouldn’t find him attractive anymore. As she lay there, she imagined the cries of a baby from a nursery, and the babbling of a toddler amusing himself in the living room. By the time she conjured the playful patter of little feet on the floor in the kitchen, she could also hear his heavy work boots heading toward the door, and the finality with which that door would inevitably close.

He stirred and she kissed the back of his head. She let her fingers trail down through his hair and across his shoulders. They lingered there, enjoying the firmness of his muscles, before they continued down his back, touching his skin lightly … playfully. She could tell that he was awake now, though he hadn’t moved or made a sound. There was something in his body that had changed. She could feel his muscles tighten without motion, ever so slightly, reacting with anticipation to her touch.