Strangers Read Online Free Page A

good.
    The man petted him. The dog’s hindquarters swung in tail-wagging happiness. The man said, “You are a miserable old piece of shit, aren’t you? Sure you are, you useless old fucker.”
    Still stroking the dog’s back, the man turned the animal around, talking softly and reassuringly. Then the man clamped his hand around the dog’s muzzle.
    The dog didn’t like that. He tried to open his mouth and could not, tried to squirm free and could not. Then the man was twisting the dog’s head, hurting, pressing down on his neck, hurting.
    In the dog’s throat was a growl and a yipe of pain that couldn’t get out.
    When the dog’s neck broke, the sound was muffled by fur and flesh.
     
    — | — | —
     

TWO
     
     
    STEAM ROSE from the tub and their bodies. The enclosure’s fiberglass doors were clouded. In these few square feet of wet and heat, Beth felt sealed away from the starkness of a sometimes too-real world; this was better, a wispy, ethereal softness enveloping her like a good dream.
    Smiling, Michael said, “I’ll get your back for you.” She turned, dipping her head into the full force of the shower spray, rinsing out the lathered shampoo.
    Washcloth covering his fingers, Michael massaged her neck, kneading away the muscular stiffness. He rubbed her shoulders, then moved down the center of her back, tracing the ridges of her spine.
    “That’s nice,” Beth sighed, feeling as though she understood why cats purr. Then she nearly hiccupped, but managed to catch herself, changing it to a giggle.
    She was drunk—not drunk drunk but happily buoyant and wonderfully relaxed. Along with the chicken, Michael had brought home a bottle of Blue Nun. Lounging on throw pillows on the carpet in the basement rec room, they’d had an air-conditioned picnic with paper plates and plastic glasses. And all right, I ordinarily don’t drink that much but it was so good! They’d had the stereo on, violin-heavy “beautiful music,” the type she generally ignored in elevators or doctors’ waiting rooms, but that tonight had seemed sweet and lushly romantic. And when the meal was concluded, the wine bottle nearer empty than full, Michael said, “I do love you, Beth, really love you.” The way he’d said it, his hazel eyes, touched her as a spontaneous overflow of his truest feelings and her own eyes misted.
    Michael’s washcloth-gloved hand was now on her left buttock. Playfully, she smacked his wrist. “I’m not a baby. I can wash my own bottom.”
    “And deny me the pleasure?” Michael laughed.
    “Well, if you insist,” Beth felt a warm shiveriness at his touch as though there were goose bumps just beneath the surface of her skin.
    “Definitely a lovely ass, my dear,” Michael said. Beth shifted her feet apart and rose up on tip-toe , bracing herself with her palms on the tile wall. She pushed her hips back, buttocks tightening, arched toward him.
    Michael smoothed the washcloth over the outer swell of her hip. “Rub-a-dub-dub,” he said, and then he was stroking her inner thighs, his fingers a so definite touch beneath the heat-holding wetness of the cloth, moving up , touching her, higher between her legs, rubbing.
    Beth shuddered with pleasure. She floated into the totality of Now: Michael’s caresses. The water, its feel, the hissing ring of it the only sound in all the universe. The simple and magical niceness of hereandnow, being clean and naked and steamy with this clean and naked man, who touched her, who loved her, her husband, Michael…
    She lurched away from the wall, turning, to throw her arms around him. She wanted him—wanted him with an achingly intense desire that she’d not known for too long—and she knew he wanted her, felt his want, the rigidity of him that was now between them but that would unite them, make them one, BethandMichael, MichaelandBeth, a completion, much more than the sum of the parts.
    They could not make love in the shower.
    They did not delay by leaving the