I opened the screen door of her apartment and called out, “Katherine?”

She appeared before me, the woman I knew I was going to fall in love with: long legs, lithe arms, bronzed skin, and beautiful blonde hair spilling over her shoulders. I could tell she tried to look understated, but with her, it was simply not possible.

“Hey.” She smiled, but didn’t move.

“I fear if I move closer, I won’t be able to control myself,” I said, returning her enthusiastic smile.

“I think you should face that fear,” she encouraged.

“Do you?” I grinned and slowly moved forward as she stood with her feet planted.  When I reached her, I could see her chest rise and fall with her quickening breath.

“You have got to know what it does to me when you look at me like that,” she said.

“Like what?” I asked, only inches from her body.

“Your eyes go all weird and intense.”

“And how does that affect you?”

“I think if you put your hand between my legs, you’d find out,” she invited.

“Katherine,” I whispered against her neck, just below her ear, and lifted my hand to cup her breast. I found her nipple through the thin fabric of her tee and pinched it between my fingers, quick and rough, and listened as her breath caught and she gasped. “You like a rough touch?” I asked.

“So far, I like everything you do,” she breathed.

“Excellent news.” I chuckled and stepped back from her.

“Damn, it was just getting good.”

“I think…for us, perhaps…considering your recent revelations…we should probably talk more. If you recall, it wasn’t that long ago you found me irritating…to say the least.”

“Are you gonna keep throwing that in my face?” She laughed.

“No, Katherine. I will not. But with the enormity of what I’m feeling for you, I want to ensure I’m doing all I can to keep what’s happening between us…balanced.” I smiled.

“You don’t want to fuck it up,” she surmised, a sexy little grin playing at her lips.

“Correct.”

“Is your cock hard?” she asked, but instead of waiting for my response, she cupped her hand over my crotch and discovered the answer herself.

I closed my eyes and exhaled as her grip tightened.

“You like it rough, too.”

“Yes,” I confirmed as every muscle in my body tensed at her tight grip.

“Awesome.” She grinned wider and pulled me by the waistband of my jeans to her front door.

***

I took her to a wood-fired pizza place downtown. The wait was always long and the prices astronomical for dough and canned sauce, but it meant we were in a crowd, surrounded by people with time to kill.

And there was nothing boring about the company.

“So,” she asked just as appetizers of deep-fried cheese arrived. “How about twenty questions?”

“Good idea. Your suggestion, so please, ask away.” I smiled and took a drink from the beer I ordered.

“Do you want kids?”

“I was recently asked this same question. My answer was, if my partner wanted them, then I was fine with that.”

“Doesn’t sound like an answer. It sounds evasive.” She laughed.

“The answer is yes, I would like to have children. I’m just not sure I should. And you?”

“Totally didn’t think it was even in the cards for me, so I never really let myself entertain the idea.”

“And?” I asked.

She laid her hands flat on the table and stared at the heavily lacquered surface. “So, I guess I’m answering this question then.” She thought for a minute, and I gave her the time, letting her absorb all the new possibilities her future now held when she replied, “I’d like a little boy and…I’d call him Ryan,” she declared.

“Any particular reason why you chose that name?”

“The Tom Clancy books. Jack Ryan. He took on the Russian Navy, the Irish mob, and a dirty president. Ryan is the name of a baby-badass in the making.”

I couldn’t stop chuckling, but she hit me with another question, one I wasn’t expecting. “Why didn’t you ever try to make peace with your dad?”

I took a long, deep breath. Then I took a long, drawn out drink. Then I replied, “When I was eight, my mother was heavily pregnant with my sister. My father tended to get quite violent when he drank. Never with me, but always with my mom. He pushed her, and she fell on her stomach. She told me years later that when the police came, he kept shaking his head and repeated over and over again, ‘I never touched her belly, only her face. Never the baby. I would never hurt the baby.’”

“Holst,” she whispered. Her fingers threaded through mine and held on tight. “I knew there was something heavy there. That’s why I asked the way I did. I thought it would somehow be easier to tell me while we were happy and laughing. I didn’t think—”

“Baby, you didn’t know. This was one of the things I was going to tell you tonight. My sister was in distress. My mom was so badly beaten, the stress on her system…but my mother was never the same. Not until she met Alan. They’ve been together for over twelve years now.”

“Is that why you think you shouldn’t have kids? Because of your dad?”

“Not exactly…”

“Are you rescuing me, Holst?” she asked, never taking her eyes from mine.

“I’m rescuing myself,” I replied.

“From what?”

“Solitude.”

She chuckled lightly. “So, you’re afraid you’re gonna die alone?”

“No, Katherine. I’m afraid I’ll miss the opportunity to live, love, and die without regrets, all in the knowledge I had the most incredible woman with the purest heart to share my life with.”

“Damn,” she whispered, her eyes glittering. “That was a great fucking answer.” And just when the pizza slid onto the table, a familiar voice accompanied it.

“That didn’t take very long. How are you, Kath?” The unwelcomed guest pushed his way past the waiter.

She turned her eyes to her former boyfriend, Mark “Goya,” and acknowledged him with a nod. “I’m good. You?”

“I miss your mouth on my dick. Have you had your mouth on his dick yet?” he asked, clearly drunk, then turned his attention to me. “Has she done that thing where she practically swallows it whole?”

I moved out of the booth, thinking my presence would be all the warning this asshole needed to leave, but he continued.

“Amazing shit right there, Kath. You have some real talent. But with the amount of dicks you’ve sucked over the years…hell, let’s look around the room. I’m sure it’s not just me and this guy.” He laughed, and that’s when I turned to face him, but before I could open my mouth, with her hand on mine to stop me from taking action, Katherine did.

“I’ll tell you what I don’t miss,” she returned. “I don’t miss fucking a woman. I’ve had pussy, don’t get me wrong. I have no problem taking a dip in the slit for something to break up the Fiesta of Cock I’ve had all these years, but yours was the first pussy that left a bad taste in my mouth. You might want to head on down to the police station and file a missing person report on your cock and balls, Mark.”

His face was set in a smirk, and I knew he had more to say. He would do whatever it took to wound her like she’d wounded him.

That was not going to happen.

I squeezed her hand, let go, and said, “Shall we go outside, Mark?”

“Is that your way of challenging me?”

“No, that’s my way of saying I can kick the shit out of you in front of all these people, or we can talk to each other, man to man, without the audience.”

“Fuck you, man.”

The manager had now come to join us.

“Your belligerence will not win her back, Mark. She believes you to be a good man, and your behavior sullies that belief. Not only that, you have a standing in this community. Do you really want to fuck that up?”

“Sir?” the manager asked.

“Hang on,” Mark said to the man. He lowered his head to Katherine and said loud enough for myself and the manager to hear, “Puta.”

“Sir,” the man warned, and it was apparent he knew exactly what that word meant, and so did I.