Chapter 4: Canceling the Table
The club on a Thursday afternoon was quiet the way Rhonda had never seen it. The morning regulars had gone, the pool lay flat and blue behind glass, and the corridor beyond reception smelled the way it always did, sandalwood oil and warm towels and polished dark wood. Jeff felt the smell in his stomach before he recognized it. That was the oil from the card in his drawer, the oil he had smelled on her skin and lied about for months.
Rhonda walked ahead of him in a slate dress with her hair down, and she had not touched him once in the car. Four days now. Four days of her mouth on his neck at night and her hand stopping at his belt, of asking permission for his fingers and finishing nothing. He could see the hunger in the set of her shoulders, the way her hips moved like a woman carrying something volatile.
At the desk, the girl on duty smiled at Rhonda. "Mrs. Miller. Not your usual day."
"I'm not here for a session. I'm here to cancel one. Tonight's table, seven o'clock, Marcus." Rhonda set both hands flat on the counter. "In person."
The girl's fingers clicked across the keyboard. "Oh, he's actually in. Room four, finishing a write-up. Do you want me to just strike it?"
"No." Rhonda glanced back at Jeff, and there was something bright and dangerous in her eyes. "We'll say it to the book itself. The old one, on the desk."
The girl hesitated, then turned the ledger around and slid it across. Rhonda found Thursday, found the seven o'clock line, and held her pen over it without writing. Her hand hovered there, steady, waiting.
Footsteps came down the corridor. Marcus came around the corner in a gray polo with his sleeves pushed up, a towel over one shoulder and a clipboard in his hand, and stopped when he saw the two of them. His eyes went from Rhonda to Jeff to the ledger, and something in his face settled, unhurried, like a man reading a room he had already measured.
"You canceled your Thursday session," Marcus said. "By walking in."
"We canceled it by standing here," Rhonda said. "Both of us. That was the point."
"Mrs. Miller." He set the clipboard down on the desk and did not come closer. "It's been four days. How are you holding?"
"Ask my husband. He's the one keeping me hungry."
Jeff felt Marcus's attention swing to him, full weight, and it landed the way a hand on the back of the neck lands. "She's holding," Jeff said. "Barely. That's the idea."
Marcus nodded slowly. Then he reached past Rhonda and turned the ledger toward himself, ran one finger down Thursday's column, and stopped at the seven o'clock line. He did not strike it. He looked up instead, over the top of the book, at Jeff.
"Before this page gets a line through it, Mr. Miller, say it to me."
"Say what?"
"Saturday. Your part. You texted it to me at midnight like a confession." Marcus's voice stayed level, professional, the voice of a man who talked people through pain thresholds for a living. "I want it spoken. Here, in my corridor, with her hand on my book. Say what you'll be doing when I look down at you."
The reception girl had gone very still at her keyboard. Rhonda did not move. Her pen hovered an inch above the page and her eyes stayed on Jeff, and Jeff understood that this was the real test, not the one on the phone, not the one in bed. This was the daylight version, clothed, in a public hallway that smelled of the oil he'd lied about, and there was no dark room to hide the words in.
He squared his feet. "Saturday," Jeff said. "Felipe takes her first, at seven thirty. You arrive at eight and you watch us for ten minutes. Then you take her, on whatever surface holds." His voice came out even and it surprised him. "Then I kneel. After you've had her once. I take you in my mouth while she watches."
"And after I finish in her?" Marcus didn't blink. "Say that part too."
"After you finish, I clean her. Both of you. With my mouth." Jeff held the look. "That's not the price. That's the part I want."
The corridor was silent. Somewhere behind the wall a pump hummed through the pool filtration, and the sandalwood hung in the air between the three of them like a third presence.
Marcus exhaled through his nose, almost a laugh, and picked up Rhonda's pen from where it lay. He handed it to her handle first, over the ledger.
"Your hand was hovering for a full minute, Mrs. Miller. You like making a man watch you decide."
"I like knowing a man will wait while I do it." She took the pen and drew one clean line through the seven o'clock entry, and the sound of the nib on the paper was the loudest thing in the room. Then she signed it, dated it, and turned the book back toward the desk. "Six days. You'll have me starving and sober."
"I know. I've been counting too." Marcus took the towel off his shoulder and refolded it, a small ritual motion, hands busy while his eyes stayed sharp. "Water tonight. No alcohol tomorrow, both of you. Mr. Miller, eat something substantial Saturday afternoon. You'll need your legs."
"My legs?"
"You'll be on your knees a long time, if you meant what you said." Marcus picked up his clipboard and backed a step toward the corridor, toward room four and the sandalwood. "I've had her two years on that table. You've had her two years in that house. Saturday we find out what she's like when nobody holds back."
Rhonda's breath left her slowly. She put her hand flat on the counter, over the closed ledger, as if to keep the line from lifting off the page.
"One thing before you go," she said.
Marcus stopped.
"At the door, Saturday. Before anyone says hello. You remember what I asked for."
"I remember." He looked at her the way he must have looked at an injury on his table, reading it whole. "The weight of it in your hand first. Two years you've wanted that."
"Two years."
"Then two more days, Mrs. Miller." He turned down the corridor, and his voice carried back without him turning around. "Keep her hungry, Mr. Miller. You're doing good work."
The footsteps faded into room four and the door clicked. Rhonda stayed with her hand on the ledger a moment longer, then lifted it and looked at the fresh ink drying through the seven o'clock line.
"Walk me out," she said. "Before I change my mind about something."
Jeff fell into step beside her, past the locked storeroom, past the rack of folded towels, and she stopped him halfway down the corridor with a hand flat on his chest.
"The something I might change my mind about," she said. "It's not what you think. I'm not asking to break the deal."
"No?"
"I want a preview." Her eyes went to room four, to the light under the door. "Saturday I get all of him. But I've been starving four days, Jeff, and I just watched him turn my pen around handle first like a man who owns every room he stands in. I want to know what's coming. If you could pull it off."
"You want me to ask him."
"I want you to want to ask him." She touched the chain at her throat. "Say no and I walk out and wait. Say yes and I get through two more days on something real instead of imagination."
Jeff looked at the door, then at his wife, at the hunger he had been rationing all week. "You said the hand at the door was the oldest fantasy. If he gives it now, what's Saturday got?"
"Saturday has everything else." Her voice dropped. "The preview is the trailer, Jeff. The film is still intact. Ask him."
He knocked twice on room four before he could talk himself out of it. The door opened and Marcus filled it, still in the gray polo, the smell of sandalwood rolling out over them both.
"Mr. Miller. That was a fast walk out."
"She stopped me in your corridor with a request. It's outside the deal, so it's mine to make." Jeff kept his voice level. "She's asking for a preview of Saturday. Not everything. Something."
Marcus leaned a shoulder against the doorframe and looked past him to Rhonda. "You just spent four days building to a door. Now you want it early."
"I want to survive two more days." Rhonda stepped closer. "You told me to keep my hand on the book while I decided. I decided. I'm asking for the weight of it in my hand. Tonight. Here. Then I walk out and I don't touch anyone until eight o'clock Saturday."
Marcus was quiet long enough that the pool pump filled the corridor. Then he pushed the door open wider.
"Come in. You too, Mr. Miller. I don't handle clients alone in a closed room without a witness, and your husband counts double."
The room was small and warm, a treatment table under soft light, shelves of oils, the sandalwood thick enough to taste. Rhonda stood in the middle of it and Marcus shut the door behind them.
"Rules of the preview," he said. "Your hand, my terms. Two minutes. Nothing past your wrist. And when I call it, it's called." He looked at Jeff. "Husband?"
"Those are fair terms."
"Then ask me properly, Mrs. Miller."
Rhonda looked up at him. "Show me what I've been waiting two years for. Put it in my hand."
Marcus reached down and untied the drawstring of his scrub pants. He pulled himself out over the waistband, soft, heavy, and it was already more than Felipe ever was, thick and swinging, the skin darker than the rest of him. Rhonda made a sound low in her throat.
"Reach out."
She lifted her hand and he laid it on himself, and her fingers closed around the shaft and couldn't meet. She stood there holding his cock like something measured in pounds, and her whole arm trembled.
"Oh my God." Her voice cracked on it. "Jeff, it's like holding a forearm."
"Two minutes," Marcus said. "Start the clock whenever you like."
She started by just feeling it, running her thumb along the underside, tracing the thick root of it, the heavy vein that ran the length of him. Then she stroked, slow, and it stiffened in her grip, swelling against her fingers until her hand looked small around it, until it stood out from his body thick and flushed and hard, ten full inches of it jutting over his waistband.
"That's what's coming Saturday," Marcus said, watching her face. "You feel the thickness. That's what you'll take."
"I've taken eight." She kept stroking, mesmerized, her wrist working, the wet sound of her palm slicking over him filling the little room. "Nothing like this. Nothing even close."
"It's not just length, Mrs. Miller. It's stretch. Saturday you'll feel it open you inch by inch and you'll be begging before the base."
She moaned at that, actually moaned, and stroked him faster, both hands now, one stacked over the other, and still there was shaft left bare at the top. Jeff stood by the door with his breath gone ragged, watching his wife worship another man's cock with her hands and her eyes, and his own strain against his fly, aching.
"He's watching you hold it," Marcus said to her. "Tell him what you're thinking."
"That Saturday I'm going to be split open on this while he holds my hand." She looked over at Jeff, her cheeks flushed, her lips parted. "That I can't fit both hands around it and I'm going to try to fit it inside me anyway."
Jeff stepped forward without deciding to. Marcus glanced at him and angled his hips, an offer, not a command.
"Your husband wants in on the preview. Two minutes covers him too."
Jeff sank partway toward his knees and Rhonda caught his arm. "Not your mouth. Not Saturday's whole payoff on a Thursday." She pulled Jeff's hand instead and wrapped his fingers around the base of Marcus's cock, below hers, so their hands were stacked together on it, man and wife holding another man's dick between them.
"That's the preview I actually wanted," Rhonda whispered. "Feeling what's coming. Together."
"Time," Marcus said.
She let go. Jeff let go. Marcus tucked himself away and tied the drawstring in one motion, easy, as though he hadn't just stood hard as iron in a married couple's four hands.
"That's it. Done. Nothing else until Saturday." He washed his hands at the small sink, unhurried, and looked at them in the mirror. "Now she's had the weight. She'll count hours instead of days. Better or worse?"
"Worse," Rhonda said, laughing unsteadily, pressing her palm flat over her dress at her stomach. "Infinitely worse. Perfect."
"You'll be able to walk out of here upright?" Marcus asked Jeff.
"Barely."
Marcus opened the door and the corridor air came in cool over all of them. "Seven thirty Saturday, Lopez. Eight for me." His eyes moved from Rhonda to Jeff and stayed there. "Mr. Miller. You kept her hungry four days and then handed her exactly what she asked for and nothing more. You're learning."
They walked the length of the corridor toward the glass doors, Rhonda's hand still open at her side, flexing, and at the threshold she stopped.
"He let go the second you called time," she said quietly. "He called it at the exact moment you'd have begged him not to."
"He was watching for it."
"He was watching you, Jeff. Not me." She pushed the door open into the evening air. "Saturday he's going to run us both like a table, and I think you're going to love what that turns you into."
In the car she put her hand on his thigh, above the knee, and left it there the whole way home. "Saturday," she said, once, at the front door. "Starting now."
Inside, she didn't head for the stairs. She went to the study, still in the slate dress, and stood over the drawer where the cream card lay squared to the marriage license. She didn't open it. She took her phone from her clutch instead.
"Should I leave the room for this?" Jeff asked.
"No. You're the reason for it." She unlocked the screen and typed with both thumbs, unhurried, the way she wrote checks. "He gave me two minutes of him and called it on his terms. That was him running the room. So I'm going to answer it."
"Answer it with what?"
"A command." She glanced up at him, and the look had the same bright danger as the desk at the club. "Every fantasy I've had about him for two years, I've had on my back or on my knees. Tonight I want one where I'm standing."
Jeff read over her shoulder as she typed. Two years I've wanted your hands on me, Marcus. Saturday you get them. But Saturday runs both directions. Friday night you don't touch yourself either. No hands, no mouth, nothing. You starve with me. Confirm.
He heard himself breathe out. "You're telling a man who set the whole order of Saturday that he can't touch himself for one night."
"I'm telling him he'll arrive the way I will." She held the phone a little further from her eye, reading her own words back. "Hungry and unfinished. He told us no alcohol and light meals. That was him preparing our bodies. This is me preparing his."
"And if he says no?"
She didn't answer. The send arrow pulsed and the message went, and she set the phone face up on the desk beside the closed drawer, next to the license she couldn't see through the wood.
They waited. Jeff leaned against the study doorframe and watched his wife stand over a phone the way she'd stood over the booking book, pen hovering. Four days of rationing had put a fine tremor in everything she did, and he could see it now in the fingers she laced behind her back. His own cock had stayed hard since the corridor and it ached against his zip with every heartbeat.
The phone buzzed at eleven minutes.
He's already confirming, she said, no wait. She picked it up and turned the screen to him.
Understood, Mrs. Miller. Friday I work, I eat, I sleep. Nothing else. Two years of Thursdays and you never once gave me an order. What changed?
She typed without sitting down. My husband handed me exactly what I asked for tonight and nothing more. He's teaching me how that feels from the other side. I'm giving you a taste of it before you give me ten inches.
Send. Eleven minutes again, less. The reply came in three parts.
First: Your husband is better at this than you know.
Second: I'll be hard all Friday, Rhonda. At the club, on clients, in my car outside your building. Every stroke I don't take Saturday belongs to you.
Third: One condition of my own. Ask me.
Rhonda looked at Jeff, and Jeff felt the floor tilt a little, because Marcus didn't ask. Marcus set terms. She typed, What condition?
The reply was one line. Say my name in it.
"In what?" Jeff said.
She understood first. He saw it cross her face, the flush starting at her throat and climbing. "The command," she said. "He wants me to say his name when I give it. Not Mr. Marcus, not the therapist voice. His name."
"You've never used it."
"Not once in two years. On the table I call him Marcus and it sounds like a doctor's name." She stood very still over the phone. "He's been waiting for that longer than he's been waiting for the booking."
"How do you know?"
"Because he's never asked." She typed, slowly now, and Jeff read it as it formed under her thumbs. Marcus. Friday night you don't touch yourself. Nothing past your waistband until you're standing at my door Saturday with my hand on you. That's the order. Rhonda.
She sent it with his name first, and the difference was absurd and total, three letters earlier than she'd ever put them, and she made a small sound when the arrow went gray and then blue.
"God," she said. "Two years. I just wrote his name like it was mine to use."
"It always was."
"No." She shook her head, still watching the screen. "It was his to give. And he just gave it."
The reply came fast this time, under a minute. Yes, ma'am. Friday I'm yours from a distance. Saturday you're mine from eight o'clock. Lopez gets what's left of you at seven thirty and he'll feel the difference.
She laughed, low and unsteady, and put the phone down on the desk with the card and the license behind the wood. Then she turned and looked at Jeff, and her hand came off the desk and found the front of his jeans, flat over the ache, no grip, just the heat of her palm through the denim.
"You understand what you did tonight?" she said.
"I asked for a preview."
"You gave me a man's cock in my hand and then stopped me at the wrist. Exactly what I asked, nothing more." Her hand pressed, and his knees wanted to go. "So now I know what it does to me, wanting something and being made to wait for it. And I've just done it to him. All three of us are going to walk into Saturday half-mad, and you built it, Jeff. Out of a corridor and two minutes on a clock."
"Six days was your idea."
"My idea was starving. This is worse." She took her hand away and stepped back, breathing through it, and Jeff watched her put herself away the way Marcus had tucked himself in, one clean motion, discipline over want. "Upstairs. You sleep next to me and you keep your hands where I can see them, because I'm not strong enough tonight to say stop twice."
At the landing she stopped, phone already back in her hand.
"One more," she said, typing, and Jeff read it over her shoulder before the arrow sent it. And Marcus. When my hand is on you at the door Saturday, say my name back.
She hit send before he could watch her hesitate, and they climbed the rest of the stairs with the phone face down in her clutch, buzzing once, unanswered, both of them pretending not to count the seconds.
The bedroom lamp came on low, and Rhonda sat on the edge of the bed still in the slate dress, shoes off, phone on the nightstand face down. Jeff stood in the doorway and watched her not undress.
"Sit," she said.
He sat. She turned toward him, cross-legged, and looked at him the way she'd looked at the ledger.
"Another secret," she said. "You've heard my worst ones already. The oil. The towel. Eleven months."
"There's a worse one?"
"There's a different one. Not worse. Bigger." Her fingers worked at the chain at her throat, turning it. "The night I asked you to guide Felipe into me. Your hand on him, putting another man inside your wife. You thought you were doing it for me."
"I was doing it for me too."
"I know. That's the part I've never said out loud." She leaned back on one hand. "I loved it, Jeff. Not the sex. The power. Watching a straight man put another man's cock in me because I asked. Watching you kneel a week later with my hand in your hair. Every time one of you does something he never planned to do, because it pleases me, something in me lights up like a struck match."
"That's not a confession. That's Tuesday."
"That's the start of it." She slid off the bed and stood over him, and her hand came to his jaw, tipped his face up. "I love seeing how far a man will go to make me happy. That's the truest thing about me and I've told nobody, not even you. Marcus tonight, calling time at the exact second. Felipe leaving wet and early and thanking me. You, standing in a club corridor saying out loud that you'll take a man in your mouth while I watch." Her thumb moved along his jaw. "Each one goes a little further, and I want to know where the edge is, and I want to be the one holding the map."
Jeff's pulse was in his ears. "You're not describing a fantasy."
"No. I'm describing what makes me wet." She said the word flat, unashamed. "Power does it. Not the ten inches, though God, the ten inches. The power. A straight man on his knees for me. Two men in me on the same night because I scheduled them like appointments. That's what I touch myself to, Jeff, and it's not the cocks. It's the yes."
"And me?"
"You're the best one." She sat beside him, her thigh along his. "You could have any kind of marriage. You chose one where you hold me while another man finishes inside me, and then you clean us both, and you asked for it. When you kneel for Felipe, you're kneeling for me. You know that. I know you know that."
"I do."
"Then hear the rest." She took his hand and put it on her knee, under her palm. "I've been thinking about Saturday. You, after Marcus has had me. My husband, on his knees, taking a cock that just fucked his wife. And I realized something and it scared me a little."
"Say it."
"I think one day I'll want to watch you and a man. Not you serving him. You with him. Because it would wreck me to see it, and I think you'd do it, and I think part of you would want it." Her voice stayed level, but her knee pressed against his. "That's how far the map goes that I can see tonight. I'm not asking. I'm telling you what I love, which is pushing until the thing that seemed impossible on Monday is the thing we did on Saturday."
Jeff was silent a moment. The lamp hummed. His cock ached untouched against his zip and she hadn't let him touch her in four days and here she was, handing him the biggest secret of her life in a navy-dark bedroom.
"You're pretty sure of yourself," he said.
"I'm pretty sure of you." She turned to face him fully. "Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me you'd hate it and I'll close the map there and never open it again. I mean that."
"I don't know if I'd hate it." He heard himself say it and kept going. "I didn't know if I'd hate kneeling either. You were watching. That was the whole reason and it turned into something else."
Her breath left her slowly, and he saw it land on her, the words going into her like the two minutes in room four had. Her nipples stood hard under the silk. She pressed her thighs together.
"God," she said. "Look what you just did to me, saying that. I'm soaked and you haven't touched me." She caught his wrist. "This is why. This is exactly why I love it. I say a true thing and a good man makes it real."
"So Saturday first."
"Saturday first. Always Saturday first, that's the rule I keep for you." She pushed him back onto the bed and knelt over him, her hands on his belt, opening it slow. "No penetration. Those are still the rules, and I keep the rules I make. But my mouth is mine to spend."
She drew him out and took him in her mouth without ceremony, deep, her throat opening around him on the second stroke, and Jeff's back came off the mattress. Four days had made him a live wire. She worked him with her lips and her fist, wet and relentless, and pulled off only to talk.
"This is what I love," she said against him, her breath on the head of his cock. "You, shaking, because I decided you get to come tonight. That's mine. That's my power and I love it."
"Rhonda."
"No. Say my name like you meant it. I just told you I run men for the pleasure of it and you're about to finish down my throat because I allowed it. Own that with me."
"It makes me crazy," Jeff said, and his voice broke on it. "Watching you discover this about yourself. I'll give you every yes you want. That's the truth, whatever the map says."
She moaned around him and took him deep, and he came in minutes, hard, his hands fisting the sheet, and she swallowed all of it and held him in her mouth until he was done, then kissed her way up his body and lay against his chest with her own hunger rolling off her in waves he could feel.
"Four more days," she murmured. "And I just spent my own mouth on you and got nothing, and I loved that too. You understand what I am yet?"
"I'm starting to."
Jeff explains, I mean you were honest with me early on about previous experiences with more than one man, you may have downplayed your enjoyment and glossed over the control element but even early on those stories turned me on and horrified me at the same time. I am sure that Steve felt compelled by your controll to give you sexual satisfaction in whatever way possible. I felt that there was tension from you toward Steve for some of these situations however I believe that you have always had ultimate control and that you love controlling your lovers with your body and mind. I know I’m not the first strait guy to suck a cock for you. But I may soon be the first one to suck a 10inch one.
Rhonda went still against his chest. Her fingers stopped their slow circuit on his sternum, and Jeff felt the pause before she spoke, the same pause he had felt over the ledger, pen hovering.
"Steve." She said the name like she was checking an old bruise. "You've been carrying that one for a while."
"Since the beginning. You told me three stories in the first month we were dating and I jerked off to all of them and never told you."
"I know." Her mouth curved against his skin. "You think I didn't notice how you listened? You sat forward. Your hands went quiet. Men don't listen like that unless something's lit up."
"So you knew."
"I knew you were interested in the shape of it. Not that you'd clocked the control. Nobody clocks the control." She lifted her head. The lamp caught the sweat at her temple. "Steve did what I wanted because I never once asked. That's the trick, Jeff. I don't give orders, not really. I make the room so a man wants to give me the order himself. Felipe thinks he left early by choice. Marcus called time like it was his idea. You knelt and told me it was something you wanted."
"It was."
"Exactly." She sat up, the sheet falling from her shoulders, and looked down at him. "And that's why the thing I'm about to say is the deepest one. Deeper than the oil, deeper than the towel, deeper than the hand at the door. Are you steady?"
"No. Say it anyway."
"I want to watch you want it." Her voice stayed level but her hand found his thigh and gripped. "Not you serving. Not you enduring. I want the moment where you're on your knees for a man and you lean in before anyone tells you to. The yes that comes from inside you, not from me. That's the fantasy. That's the one I've never told anyone, because it's not about a cock at all. It's about watching you choose."
Jeff lay there and let it land. Four days of hunger had stripped everything down to bare wire, and the words went straight through.
"You've been engineering that all month."
"I know." She didn't flinch. "Felipe first. Then the swallowing. Then the second time, when you went back voluntarily and I didn't ask. Did you notice I didn't ask?"
"I noticed."
"That was the whole point. Every step I set it up so the choice would be yours. And Saturday, Marcus in your mouth, you already texted him before I said a word." Her breath shivered out. "You have no idea what that did to me, watching you type it. I came apart in the kitchen and you were just looking at a phone."
"You're wet right now."
"Drenched. Your mouth said ten inches and my whole body heard choose, choose, choose." She swung over him, knees bracketing his hips, not touching him anywhere, hovering. "And here's the edge of the map, the part that scares me like you said. One night, not Saturday, some night after, I want to be in the room and give you nothing. No instructions. No hand in your hair. Just watch what you do when it's only yours to want."
"And if what I want surprises you?"
"Then I'll come so hard I see colors, and we'll both find out who's really running this marriage." She laughed, low, and finally lowered herself, her soaked slit dragging along his softening cock, and his hips jerked up at the contact even though he'd just spent himself down her throat. "God, listen to you. Spent five minutes ago and already pushing."
"You're sitting on me. That's not fair."
"Nothing this week is fair. That's the design." She rocked once, slow, her clit catching on him, and her eyes closed. Then she opened them and looked at something over his shoulder, at the nightstand, and her whole face changed.
The phone screen had lit. Face up. One message.
She reached for it without getting off him and read it, and her lips parted.
"It's him." She turned it toward Jeff. Marcus, replying to her demand that he say her name at the door Saturday. The text read: Rhonda. I'll say it loud enough that Lopez hears whose door he's standing in. And one more thing. Tell your husband I've been on my knees before too, years ago, before I ever touched a table. He won't be the first for me either. That should make Saturday easier on him.
Jeff read it twice. "He's telling me he's been where I'll be."
"He's telling you he knows what it tastes like, the wanting of it." Rhonda set the phone down and looked at her husband, and something in her had gone bright and wide open, hunger and power fused into one steady flame. "Two years of Thursdays and he gives me that on a Thursday night, unprompted. You're all giving me things I never asked for. Do you understand what week this has been for me?"
"The best of your life?"
"The evidence for my whole theory." She bent and kissed him, deep, tasting herself and him on his mouth, and when she pulled back her voice had dropped to the register she saved for the truest things. "So here's the deepest fantasy, stated plain, since we're all confessing tonight. Someday, a room, three men. You, Felipe, Marcus. All of you mine, all of you knowing it, and me on a chair watching you arrange yourselves around each other without one word from me. That's the summit, Jeff. Everything from here to there is just the climb."
"Three men who all want you."
"Three men who all want to please me, and the fastest way to please me is each other." Her hips rolled again and she moaned at herself. "And you just heard the summit and your cock twitched against me. Dead five minutes and it twitched. Don't tell me you're horrified."
"I'm not horrified. I'm taking notes."
She laughed and collapsed onto him, her weight full and warm, her mouth at his ear. "Six days. Nobody touches me, nobody touches you, and Marcus starves with us. Saturday we're three animals and a schedule."
"Four animals. Felipe eats too."
"Four." She bit his earlobe, gentle. "Sleep, Mr. Miller. Tomorrow I water, I eat lettuce, I pace this house like a tiger, and you watch me do it. That's your department."
"Keeping you hungry."
"Keeping me certain." She reached over and killed the lamp, and in the dark her hand found his and pressed the card's shape into his memory one more time, squared away somewhere in the study below, two days from turning into a night. "You may be the first to take ten inches, but I intend to be the first to watch a man do it because he wanted to. We're both collecting firsts this week."
The rain had started again somewhere past midnight, soft on the glass, and neither of them counted it.