Nessa and I never used condoms. Okay, what I mean is we never used condoms together. Whether she used condoms with lovers previous to me (or other lovers since we’ve been together) I don’t know. (And I don’t know if she’s had other lovers in the almost five years we’ve been together. I don’t think so.)

So we’ve visiting her mom for the weekend, and somehow the discussion turns to her dad’s military service, and some medals Nessa remembers him showing her when she was a little girl.

“I think he kept them up in his night table,” Nessa’s mom says.

“Do you know what happened to them?” Nessa asks.

Her mom says they should still be in the night table drawer; she hasn’t touched his night table since he died five years ago. “Why don’t you have a look while I go out and water the garden?” she suggests.

So Nessa and I go up to her parents’ bedroom—her mom’s bedroom—and Nessa opens the top drawer of her dad’s night table. The box of condoms is right there in the front. Nessa takes it out. “Hmm,” she says, shaking it. She opens the box. She pulls out four strips of packets. She frowns. “Hmm, one seems to be missing.”

I start to say her parents were pretty old to be having sex, but I think better of it. I mean her dad probably wasn’t sixty when he died. Instead I say, “When do you think the last time...”

“How the fuck would I know,” Nessa blurts, obviously angry. Nessa almost never says fuck that way.

I touch her shoulders trying to comfort her. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I was only ... I don’t know what I was only.”

“1984,” Nessa says.

“What about 1984?”

“That’s the last time my mom and dad fucked. It says on the box best used by 1984. My dad would never use an expired product.”

“But he still...”

“My dad would never throw anything away. You never know when something might come in handy.” She shakes her head and then she laughs. “Want to try one out?”

“You mean now?”

“No time like the present.”

“But your mom...”

Nessa peeks out the window overlooking the backyard. “She’ll be watering those tomatoes for another hour at least.”

We undress, and she rips open the packet and fits me with the condom.

“A little snug,” I say.

“It’s supposed to be,” she says. She turns and bending over the bed she braces herself. “Now put it in.”

“Are you...?”

“Put it in.”

We almost never make love this way. In fact, this might be the first time. There is more friction than usual, and Nessa growls, but then she thrusts her hips back, and I am fully inside her. I stay still, getting used to the feeling. Nessa thrusts her hips back again, and now I’m even more fully in her, if that’s possible. Again and again she rams herself against me. “Fuck me, Daddy,” she growls.

Shocked, I don’t know what to do. “Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,” Nessa barks.

I fuck her.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck fuck fuck!” she chants. Then she comes. The seize of her cunt, the grip of it, is so strong I’m not sure I could pull out even if I wanted to. That’s how it feels, anyway. Again and again she clenches.