Learning By Doing

Oh God, not here.

She resisted the urge to turn, hoping he'd conclude she was someone else.

It didn't work. Doug closed on her at once. He was as nattily attired as always, as perfect the ladies' man in a Quik-Stop as in a trendy disco. He leered down into her face from his imposing height as if they were back in the singles' club where they'd met. Where she wished she'd never gone. Reflexively, her hand went to Ron's arm and squeezed. Doug noted the gesture, and his lip curled in contempt.

"Found yourself another sugar daddy so fast, babe?"

Holding down panic with an effort, she turned to Ron, smiled, and said, "Ron, this is Doug Davis. He's a...friend I haven't seen in a while."

Ron's eyes narrowed. He extended his hand uncertainly. Doug ignored it.

"Did he buy the whole package, or are you holding out on him the way you did on me?" He ran a finger along the side of Melissa's face, as if she were still his private plaything. The other customers murmured uneasily.

"Excuse me." Ron's voice rang with truculence, the trumpet call of an alpha male preparing to defend his turf. "Miss Harland is with me. If the two of you have issues, this is not the place to air them."

"Can it, prettyboy. This doesn't have anything to do with you." Doug's six foot, eight inch height and his weightlifter's build made his glower near to unendurable for most men. Incredibly, Ron met him glare for glare.

"I disagree, musclebrain." The note of challenge in Ron's voice intensified. A mousy woman with an armload of baked goods backed away and knocked over a stand of potato chips. "Lay off now unless you want more trouble than you can afford."

Doug's eyes flared wide with fury. Melissa squealed her fright as he drew back his hand to strike.

He never got the chance. Ron shoved Melissa to the side, surged forward, and buried his left hand knuckle deep in Doug's solar plexus. The bigger man whoofed all the air from his lungs and doubled over his pain. Ron thrust an open palm straight up into his chin with knockout force, so quickly that Melissa wasn't sure she actually saw the blow.

Doug Davis flipped backward and measured his full length crashingly upon the floor.

The rest of the store's customers drew back in alarm, as if a robbery were in progress. The clerk groped beneath the countertop for something, probably a bludgeon.

Ron took no heed. He knelt next to his defeated opponent and spoke to him gently, pedantically, a teacher making a simple point to a tragically slow student.

"I told you, asshole, she's with me. I don't give a shit where she was before this, whether it was with you or anyone else. If you ever so much as look at her again, I'll seal your fucking eyes shut for good." He took Doug's chin in a rough, contemptuous grip. "Do you understand me, dick breath?"

Doug was still re-learning the fine art of breathing normally. He nodded.

Ron released him, threw a twenty onto the counter before the terrified clerk, and pulled Melissa out of the store.

Melissa sat frozen in the passenger seat all the way home, unable to utter the least of sounds.

When Ron had pulled the car into the garage and killed the ignition, he turned to her and said, "What was that about 'holding out'?"

She said nothing.

"Mel," he said softly. "I really need to know."

His mildness struck through her paralysis as no elevation of volume or asperity of tone could have done. She turned to meet his eyes, found nothing there but curiosity and affection.

"I left the girls with a friend for a few days while I worked on him." Her voice tried to betray her, but she kept it steady. "I thought I could get him hooked before he knew there was a string to the package."

He waited to hear if there was anything more. When she failed to continue, he said, "That's all?"

She nodded.

He grinned. "Well, I guess you learned not to do that again." He fished the groceries out of the back seat, got out and headed for the kitchen. He was at the door when he noticed that she'd remained in the car.

"Mel? Coming?"

She got out hesitantly. He waited for her at the door. When she reached him, he put one gentle hand to her cheek.

"It's okay. That was then. Let's get on with now."

He opened the door and ushered her into their home.

She went to him that night. She could wait no longer.

As she eased open the door to his bedroom, he sat up hesitantly in the dark. Bjorn, camped at the foot of the bed, raised his head, then lowered it again when he recognized her.

"Mel? What's the matter?"

"Shhh," she said. "Nothing." She urged him a little way back, tossed her robe aside and slipped under his covers without further speech. He flinched as she took him in her arms, then slowly extended his own to embrace her. She tried to still his trembling with caresses and soft murmurs.

"Mel," he said, agony ringing through the syllable, "I can't."

"Yes you can, Ron. Just relax. I'll help."

"You can't help." The words were forged from the coldest iron.

She pulled back a little way and peered through the darkness at his face.

"Ron," she said in her calmest, most soothing tone, "I haven't held out on you in any way. I showed you the whole package right up front. Now it's time for you to come clean with me."

"But I haven't asked for this," he whispered.

"Because you don't want it?"

He said nothing. Presently she felt his hand close over her fingers and guide them to his thigh. She did not resist.

What he pressed to her fingertips felt nothing like what she'd expected. It was rough and granular, a lump of cicatrice that protruded from his leg like a cancerous growth. It was the fleshly incarnation of pain.

"How?" she whispered.

"A gunshot wound. Just missed the femoral artery. The surgeon said I was lucky to live, but it took out a nerve trunk he couldn't re-splice. I was fifteen."

It took her a moment to grasp his implication. "So you can't...?"

He clutched her and said nothing.

Wait a minute.

"Ron, what do you do when you go downstairs?" She trailed her fingers over his flesh, found the scar again and caressed it. "Does it have anything to do with this?"

He didn't respond at once. Then, with no preliminary, he pulled away, slid out of bed, muttered "Put your robe on," and headed for the door.

She was behind him in an instant.

His basement room had little in it. From the bright lighting, the large workbenches and the vises attached to them, she inferred that it had once been used as a general-purpose workshop, but there were no tools or raw materials to suggest that he used it that way now. In the corner stood a plastic trash bucket with nothing in it. The sole window was covered with a sheet of dark cloth.

He pulled open a drawer, drew forth an oblong pinkish object, handed it to her and turned away.

It was an irregular cylinder of supple rubber. It was about six inches long, with a rounded tip, a flared base, and a bulge at the middle about an inch and a half in diameter. She knew what it was for. She peered into the drawer from which it had come and saw a tube of lubricant, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and a mass of cotton balls.

"You use this --"

"When I can't hold out any longer. There's a second nerve track that...well, you know." The words were hoarse with strain. He would not look at her.

She contemplated the plug for a long while. He stood unmoving and unspeaking.

It's a prosthetic. A medical appliance. It's just like my Dilantin. Just as right, and just as necessary.

If I can cope with epilepsy, he can cope with this.

She plucked the lubricant from the drawer and took his hand.

"Ron," she said, "come with me."

He turned hesitantly, face red from shame and twisted by confusion.

"We're going back to bed," she said. "Your bed."

"But --"

"No nonsense, Ron." She yanked him toward the door and pressed him forward, one hand on his shoulder. "Get up those stairs."

They went.

When she'd closed his bedroom door behind them, she snapped on the light. He flinched, still confused.

"Off with the robe and shorts," she said. He complied. She shed her own robe.

"Face down on the bed." When he was prone, she straddled him on her knees, urged his rump a little way upward, and squirted a generous amount of the lubricant on his exposed anus. His hands balled into fists as she worked it into the orifice with her fingers. The muscles of his back and neck became rigidly tight.

When she probed him, he gasped and started almost hard enough to buck her off his legs. She said, "Shhh, it's all right," and continued her ministrations. Gradually his tension subsided. He began to rock to the rhythm of her hands.

At last she lubricated the plug, put the tip to his anus, and ran her free hand caressingly down his back to the base of his spine. "Now push against me." He did. The plug slid smoothly into him and seated itself naturally.

She turned him over with a gentle tug. His eyes were as wide as a startled deer's. His chest trembled visibly. He'd developed a respectably large, very hard erection. She teased it with her fingertips, and he gasped and surged again.

"Happy birthday," she whispered.

"It's not my birthday."

"Oh yes it is," she said, and impaled herself upon him.

"Why did you want the light on?" he said.

She grinned. "I didn't want you hiding from me any more."

"May I turn it off now?"

"Okay."

He slid out of bed, hit the wall switch, and was immediately back under the covers, his arms around her. Bjorn emitted a single thunderous snore, then fell silent.

"Happy?" she said.

He squeezed her in the darkness. "Very. But I don't understand why --"

"Because I had to learn."

"Hm?"

"I waited this long," she said slowly, "because I had to learn to love you."

"Oh. But --"

"What I don't understand," she said, "is how you've loved me and the kids all this time, right from the day we met, with no warm-up at all."

His chest rose and fell against her.

"I knew how it was supposed to be done," he said. "So I just did it. The three of you are lovable. That made it easy."

Learning by doing. On-the-job training.

"Suppose we hadn't been lovable?"

His shoulders lifted in a shrug. "Why think about it? So tell me, Miss Harland, are you satisfied with the results of your ad?"

Her arms tightened around him. "I don't think," she murmured against his cheek, "there's a luckier woman in the whole world. I can't imagine how the rest of them let you get away."

She felt his mouth curve into a grin. "Money well spent, then?"

"Very. How many places can you buy a first-rate husband for thirty bucks?"

Something blossomed in the warmth between them. Something new, and surprising, and yet inevitable. He pressed her close.

"I love you, Melissa," he whispered. "My wife."