Free Ellen in Pieces by Caroline Adderson Page A

where the khaki fabric was bunched up. Another gush. She was turning to liquid, the milk collecting in her readying breasts, the crotch of her panties dampening even more.
    “Oh God!” she cried, and finally, Larry looked at her. Coldly. A warning. She struggled to get up, but couldn’t with the love seat swaying.
    Charles sprang to his feet and offered his hand.
    Ellen passed Moira as she stumbled through the kitchen. “Charles, did you light the briquettes?” Moira asked.
    In the bedroom, Ellen shut the door and, leaning against it, tried not to scream.
    On the other side, Moira said, “Go in and talk to her. Go. Are the briquettes lit?”
    Charles knocked. Ellen felt it in her back, his timid tapping sending out ripples of lust, and this combination—lust and fury—propelled her to the middle of the room. “Yes?”
    Pink with embarrassment, or sunburn, Charles entered.
    “Close the door,” Ellen said, and he closed the door.
    “Come here.”
    He came over. Why didn’t I fall for this kind of man, Ellen thought, the kind who does everything you ask?
    “I dreamed about you,” she said.
    “You did?”
    She seized his ears and drew him angrily to her mouth. Naughty, naughty tongue. And Charles, in his astonishment, kissed her back.
    Ellen snatched his hand, like she would snatch Mimi’s away from something dangerous. But Charles was allowed and sheemployed him, used his hand the way she’d been forced these last months to use her own. He let her, then took over, kneading her breasts, stroking her round belly, a fortune teller fondling the future. He touched her wet cunt through her clothes and said her name.
    She unbuttoned his shorts.
    “Ellen?”
    “Shh.” She yanked the shorts down hard, like she did with Mimi when trying to get at a soggy diaper. An erection bulged in the briefs, singularly, and as Ellen freed it from the elastic waistband, she used her other hand to wriggle out of her shorts, urgently, like in the dream. Like she was in the grip of a furious maenadic ritual, Charles backing away, she moving forward until she trapped him against the dresser.
    “I can’t, Ellen, I can’t.”
    She ground against him. He was panting, she was panting, Ellen naked below the waist except for her underwear ringing one ankle, pulling on his ordinary cock like it was an elastic she was stretching out long, long, and bringing back. Between them, Yolanda floated upside down.
    “I can’t,” Charles groaned. “Your stomach. You’re too big.”
    Ellen sank to all fours, tugged his leg. He whimpered as he knelt. “I want to. But we shouldn’t.”
    Ellen shoved him onto his back and, straddling him, pushed down once, hard, hating Larry.
    “Oh, Ellen,” Charles whispered. “
Vroom. Vroom
.”
    On the third or fourth push, Ellen realized he had withered and was already out of gas. He scrambled out from under her, sat there glistening and limp in his remorse. Ellen had not experienced a release of any kind, but Charles was crying.
    “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You’re pregnant and everything.”
    “Don’t tell Moira,” she said, though she had every intention of telling Larry.
    W HILE Jack McGinty was still in hospital, Ellen called Brad Wheeler-Dealer. December wasn’t the best month to put a house on the market, what could they do?
    Ellen hadn’t actually met Brad in person, had only seen him smiling boyishly out of bus shelters. (She’d picked him for his name, because he sounded like he would rake in the biggest bucks.)
    He showed up the next day to do the walk-through. “This lino, Ellen? If you replace it with cork or ceramic, you’ll recoup the expense tenfold, I guarantee it. Same for the cabinets.”
    “I should redo my kitchen for a stranger? I don’t know, Brad.”
    He’d already fixed sticky notes to half the furniture, little yellow flags that meant
get rid of it.
    She felt angry. Why? If, over the years, she’d learned a thing or two about herself, one of them was just to stop.