Lightning

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Beth told him not to be so gentle. Which surprised Carver as he made love to her in the beach cottage with the surf whispering outside in the night.

It was cool for a summer evening, and a soft breeze was pressing through the screened window along with bright moonlight. Laura, Carver’s former wife and the mother of his children, had during the early months of both of her pregnancies reassured him that he wasn’t going to injure her or the fetus during sex. In passion she’d urged him not to be tentative; she was pregnant, not breakable. Still, Carver had been careful.

Beth was careful, too.

She’d been pregnant once before and it hadn’t turned out well. The baby had been stillborn after strangling on the umbilical cord.

Since her pregnancy their lovemaking had been unlike its usual desperate pleasure driven by lust as well as love. Love had become ascendant.

Carver felt her long body become rigid and arc beneath him. Her stomach muscles tensed and rippled, and he became still for a moment. Then, propped on knees and elbows so his weight wasn’t bearing down so heavily, his bad leg slightly to the side, he resumed thrusting into her. Her moans merged with the sighs of the surf and were like the low keening of powerful breakers turning deep water as they rolled toward shore.

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