"Dean!" I instinctively jerk forward against the suddenness of the impact and the tight, full sensation of his shaft.

"Don't move." Dean clutches my hips to keep me still, his breath rasping outward as he waits for me to adjust to his entry. He shifts, his sac pressed against my pussy, the hair of his legs abrading my inner thighs.

I part my lips to draw in air. Sweat breaks out on my forehead. Dean lowers his full weight on top of my back, curling his hands around my wrists. He pins my arms to the bed. His flat belly presses against my ass, his legs tight against mine.

The muscular weight of him is overwhelming, pushing me into the bed, his cock throbbing inside me. I bury my face against the mattress. My legs already ache from being spread so wide apart. He tightens his grip on my wrists.

"Christ." He shifts, rubbing his stomach against my bottom. "So hot..."

He eases back and pushes forward again, entering me so deep my blood burns. I shift, trying to match his rhythm, but through my lust-drenched mind I realize there is no rhythm, not this time.

He pulls out of me and thrusts in at his own pace, surprising me with every move, every shift. His hands are steel bands around my wrists, his breath rasping against my shoulder, his chest a heavy weight against my back. I wiggle a little to rub my nipples on the sheet, easing some of the tingling ache, but I can hardly move beneath him. I'm overpowered, impaled, conquered.

Only when I stop trying to move does Dean settle into a rhythmic thrusting, his cock sliding in and out of me hard and fast. I struggle to take all of him, moans streaming from my throat as the air drenches with fire.

He fills me over and over, his stomach tight against my bottom and his groans hot on my skin. My whole body trembles, and before I can think past the fog of sensation, my arousal builds like a storm front.

I bite down on a corner of a pillow and squeeze my eyes shut as urgency spins like a whirlpool through me. Again and again, he pumps into me, the friction driving me to the edge, his thick, smooth shaft stretching me beyond what I've ever felt before.

"Dean." My voice almost breaks with strain.

He lifts his head, closing his teeth around my earlobe. "Tell me."

"I'm so close," I gasp.

"No." Still gripping my wrists, he eases his cock out of me. "I want dirty words coming from your pretty mouth."

"Dean, I..."

"Dirty." He trails his mouth from my ear to my shoulder and bites down gently on my skin. "Lewd. Raw."

I moan and turn my face against the bed again.

"Put your cock in me," I whisper. "Fuck me, please... I need to feel you again... need to feel you throbbing inside my pussy, need you to make me come, Dean, please..."

He eases partway into me again, slick and hot. I tighten my inner flesh around him. Explosions flare through my blood. I try to shift, rubbing my ass against his stomach. His breath rasps against my shoulder.

"I... I feel it." I can hardly speak past the heat in my throat. "I want... my clit aches, Dean... touch it, please, and I'll come all over your cock, I can't stand it anymore, fuck me and I'll do anything... anything..."

"I know you will," he whispers, scraping his teeth over my shoulder.

I strain against the pressure of his hands, but his grip on my wrists is inexorable. He fucks me again and again, so hard I lose all coherent thought as sensations overtake me. My body bounces against the bed, the sound of his flesh hitting mine filling my ears, the slick plunge of his cock driving me to the edge.

I rock my hips, aching to rub my clit, before he pushes his hand beneath me and splays his fingers over my core. Bliss shatters me at his first touch, and I convulse around his cock with a shriek.

When the sensations ebb, he pulls his hand away and eases back, clutching my ass as he pounds into me. My unending moans clash with his grunts, his thrusts so deep and fierce the earth seems to tremble.

I grab the sheets and press backward, my body aflame, as he pumps three times in succession and pulls out with a groan. Shivers rain through me as his warm seed spurts over my ass, and I look over my shoulder to watch him stroke his big cock, his sweaty chest heaving and his eyes half-closed with pleasure.

"Oh, fuck, Liv..." With another groan, he collapses on the bed beside me, reaching out to run his hand over my damp back. "I don't want to leave you again."

Through the haze of lingering desire, my chest constricts at the thought of him leaving again. Surely once was enough.

I shift to curl up against his side as our breathing calms. I'm painfully aware that today is Tuesday. I need to work. And tomorrow Dean needs to attend the Office of Judicial Affairs' mediation meeting.

I press a kiss to his shoulder and push myself to a sitting position. My body aches in a deliciously sore, pulsing way that I hope will last for a while. I want to be reminded of my husband every time I move.

We both get up and take our time showering and eating breakfast, as the cloud of reality sets in.

"I have to go," I say reluctantly, when I notice that it's almost eight. "I'm meeting Allie and Brent at the cafe to start remodeling."

Dean smiles, his eyes warming as he tugs at a lock of my hair. "Proud of you, lady."

I return his smile, pleased by his pride and my own ambition. We linger as long as we can, before I finally pull on my coat.

"What are you doing today?" I ask.

"Working from here, then meeting with Frances Hunter. We're going over to Rainwood this afternoon to deal with some conference stuff, but I'll be back before dinner."

"Can you come over then?"

"Of course." He winks at me. "That was my plan."

He slides his hands to my lower back and pulls me against him, settling our bodies together. I gaze at him, my beautiful knight, struck by how invincible he has always been, how powerful, how certain of his place in the world. Nothing and no one has ever defeated him.

That thought gives me a burst of courage and hope as I press a hand to his chest to feel his heartbeat.

"I'll come over around seven." He gives me a gentle kiss and turns me toward the door. "Call me when you're done at the cafe. I love you."

After I leave, still practically floating after the beauty of a weekend alone with my husband, I stop at our apartment to change into jeans and a T-shirt before going to the cafe.

The windows are partly open, a radio is blaring, and the whole place is in disarray. Brent has recruited some of his friends to help with the remodeling, and the floor is covered with drop cloths and torn wallpaper.

After greeting everyone, I grab a bottle of remover solution and start pulling off the old wallpaper. Later, Allie and I go to the hardware store to arrange for deliveries of paint, window trim, and flooring. In the afternoon, we meet with Rita Johnson, the magazine reporter who wants to write an article about the cafe.

It's a good feeling, even if it's still scary, this working toward something both new and risky.

The sky is starting to darken by the time I head home. I can't wait to see Dean again and tell him about the magazine article and our plans. Maybe he'll have a few more plans of his own too.

Anticipation fills me as I hurry across Avalon Street. I pull open the door of our building.

And stop.

A woman is sitting on the stairs, dressed in a leather jacket and jeans. Long, wheat-colored hair spills around her shoulders. Her blue eyes meet mine.

"Hello, Liv," my mother says.

CHAPTER TEN.

Olivia have only one picture of me and my mother, and one of me and my father. I keep both photos in an envelope tucked between the pages of a tattered paperback copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I bought the book for a quarter at a used bookstore when my mother and I were living outside Seattle. The name Lillian Weatherford is written on the inside cover in large, looped penmanship. I've always liked her name.

Lillian Weatherford, whoever she was, has guarded my photos for the past twenty years.

The picture of my father was taken at Christmas when I was five. He and I are sitting next to the tree-a small fir covered with lights and artificial snow. He looks handsome, young, a smile on his face. His arm is around me, and I'm holding a white stuffed bear with a red ribbon around its neck. I look happy.

In the picture of me and my mother, we're in California. I'm thirteen years old. My mother and I are sitting beside a campfire, both of us smiling, our faces shiny and lit by the glow of the flames. We look alike, our hair pulled back in ponytails, our smiles almost identical. We look like mother and daughter.

I remember everything about this photo. I've shown it to Dean, of course, told him the story of where it was taken and who took it.

The man's name was North.

"North?" I repeated after he'd introduced himself.

"Short for Northern Star," he explained. "Parents thought I'd have a good, steady life with a name like that."

"Do you?" I asked.

"Life is always good," he replied with a shrug. "But rarely steady. Waves are always on the horizon."

He was a medium-height, bulky man with long, graying hair, a bushy beard, and an open, kind face. He wore old T-shirts, torn jeans, and ratty sandals, when he bothered with shoes at all. A few strands of his beard were tied into a braid and held with a tiny, red ribbon.

North lived and worked on a Northern California commune called Twelve Oaks, a fifty-acre farm near Santa Cruz that my mother had heard about through an LA acquaintance. We stopped there en route to Oregon-hoping for a free meal and bed for the night-and ended up staying for seven months.

It was a weird place, but I liked it. About fifty people and their children lived there, and they made their own soaps and grew organic herbs and vegetables-all of which they sold at farmer's markets and to local groceries.

"Heard you have rooms for visitors," my mother told North when we arrived, her car keys dangling from her slender fingers, wide sunglasses concealing half her face.

North nodded, glancing from her to me. I stayed by the car, my arms around my middle. We'd just come from the urban sprawl of Los Angeles with its brown-smudged air and clogged freeways, but I was trying hard not to hope that we'd stay for a while in this farmland right by the ocean.

"Visitors have to earn their stay," North told my mother.

"How?"

"Work in the kitchens or gardens. Help with laundry. Clean. Asha keeps the work schedule, so we can talk to her about it."

My mother crossed her arms. She was wearing a yellow skirt and a purple tank top studded with yellow flowers. Her long, wheat-colored hair fell in waves to her tanned, freckled shoulders.

"All right," she finally said, snapping her fingers at me. "Come on, Liv. Let's get settled. I need some rest after all that driving."

I dragged a suitcase from the trunk of the old car that had taken us so many hundreds of miles. North showed us a bedroom in the main house, then brought us to the kitchen where an older woman with frizzy, blond hair explained the work schedule.

"Liv can do that." My mother pointed at the column for gardening. "And cleaning in the kitchen, right?"

I nodded.

Asha wrote my name in the column. North looked at my mother.

"And you?" he asked.

"I'd prefer not to be outdoors."

"What are you good at?" North asked.

"She makes pretty jewelry," I put in.

"Well, maybe you can help out in the workshop." North nodded at Asha, who wrote my mother's name on the chart.

"We won't be here very long," my mother said.

"Doesn't mean you can't work," North replied.

North had been at Twelve Oaks for over a decade. He played the guitar, did macrame and woodwork, and was in charge of the commune's website. The day after we arrived, he took Crystal to his workshop and taught her how to use different tools and materials. He sold wooden bowls, signs, and decorations at art fairs and the farmer's market, so he was well-equipped to help Crystal with her jewelry making.

"He's nice," I ventured one morning when my mother and I were getting dressed. "Seems to know a lot."

Crystal shrugged, looking at herself in the mirror as she tied a purple scarf around her hair and applied lipstick.

"He's no different from the rest of them, Liv."

But he was. He was one of the few men who didn't seem interested in my mother sexually, and she didn't set out to try and seduce him. Maybe it was the environment of Twelve Oaks or the fact that she didn't have to sleep with him in order to stay... Whatever it was, I welcomed the change.

One afternoon when I was picking basil, North stopped by the garden and tossed me a flat, metal medallion, the size of a half-dollar, attached to a silver chain.

"What's this?" I caught it with both hands.

He squinted his eyes against the sun. "Read it."

The medallion had an inscription-Fortes fortuna iuvat.

"What does it mean?" I asked.

"Fortune favors the brave." North tilted his head. "Like it?"

Wariness coiled tight in my chest. I took a step away from him. Despite the fact that he was different, I'd had a shield up for a few years now, ever since a couple of perverts, my mother's so-called boyfriends, had messed with me.

"Uh, thanks," I said to North.

He studied me for a second. "You're like a turtle, you know?"

"A turtle?"

North thumped his chest. "Hard shell. Hiding. You been on the road long with your mama?"