Free The Care and Feeding of Griffins by R. Lee Smith Page A

now finally began to have some meaning.  He was in the bedroom and he wasn ’t alone.
    Slowly, Taryn shut the door behind her.  She looked vaguely toward the dining room —two plates of half-eaten lasagna, two glasses half-filled with wine—and took John’s key off her key ring.  He’d want it to give to his new girlfriend.  Or maybe he wouldn’t.  But in either case, she wouldn’t need it anymore.
    The sounds from the bedroom were getting louder.  She supposed she ’d ought to leave.  It seemed very important to her that she not embarrass him.  But it was somehow just as important that John get his key back and that he hear her say goodbye.  It seemed the only decent thing to do.  He’d been a pretty good boyfriend up until now.
    The bedroom door was open.  Taryn had only to walk a dozen measured steps to stand in the doorway.  There, she could see the two figures clasped together on the bed quite plainly.  See them, hear them, even smell them.  Sex had a smell.  How ‘bout that. 
    They must have started out wrapped in a sheet, but now it and all the rest of the bedding was pulled loose and lying in drifts on the floor.  The girl had a pillow under her head, and another under her hips.  How considerate he was, seeing to her comfort like that.  Or maybe the pillow under her hips was more pragmatic.  Maybe it just wasn’t possible for her to lock her ankles around his waist like that if her hips weren’t tilted back.
    It was hard to watch this.  She didn ’t love him, she was more certain of that now than ever, but it was impossible not to feel betrayed.  She’d known sex was important to him.  From the second date, he’d been trying, but she hadn’t been ready and he’d always said he understood.  He’d always said he’d wait until it could be right and special.  Now she had to wonder, was this girl right?  Was she special?  Had it been about this all along?  Never really about intimacy and trust, but just this?  Would any body do, as long as it would lie open for John’s naked thrusting? 
    She could see everything so starkly.  His muscles were all light and shadow rolling together in that rhythm Taryn had never known and yet recognized at once.  His hips moved steadily between the thighs of his keening partner , unhurriedly, skillfully.  Taryn could see the thick length of him each time he withdrew, could watch him slowly plunge back inside his partner.  She could see light gleaming wetly along the swollen sides of his shaft, hear the greedy sucking sounds as he was received.  His hands were never still; the sound of them sliding over the skin of the girl beneath him was painfully abrading to Taryn’s ears.  He was kneading the girl’s breasts, suckling at them, teasing the nipples that stood out so erect.  And he was kissing her, covering the girl’s face with the tenderest of touches, until Taryn’s own mouth stung.  She found herself wondering detachedly if it would hurt as much to witness this if only he made love less well.
    The girl suddenly screamed.  It was not a pleasure-cry, the culmination of the ardent moans that had been building all this time.  It was a fear-cry, a caught-cry, and John twisted around in the next instant.  His eyes were blue.  Really, really blue.   She’d known that, of course, academically, but she’d never really seen how incredibly blue they were.  Taryn looked silently into those eyes as John hunched over his girl, a gesture that struck her as appealingly protective.  He was still moving, still making love, although his movements had quickened and coarsened considerably.
    Taryn turned around and went back into the living room.  She sat down on the couch, pulled a cushion onto her lap and waited.  Through the curtains, she could see part of her car.  Aisling was sleeping in the backseat.  Romany was waiting on the library steps in Redmond.  And John was naked in the bedroom with another girl.
    Frantic whispers.  The