Chapter 12: Forbidden Attraction
The echo of that biological betrayal still hummed in my veins, a low-frequency tremor beneath my skin. Andrea’s arms were a lax cage around me, her chin resting on my shoulder as she gazed out at the city. The girls had lapsed into a tipsy conversation about a mutual friend’s disastrous wedding, their voices blending with the hum of the pool filter.
I was trying to parse the incomprehensible data from my own nervous system when I saw him again.
The muscular man re-emerged from the stairwell, this time holding two bottled waters. He wasn’t leaving. He was settling in. He chose a lounger maybe twenty feet from our group, his movements economical and sure. He took a long drink, his throat working. Then his gaze swept across the rooftop, passed over Chloe and Mara, and stopped.
On me.
Or rather, on Sabrina, curled in another woman’s lap.
His eyes were a dark, unreadable color in the ambient light. They didn’t glance away quickly, politely. They held. A direct, assessing look that traveled from my short, pink hair down the exposed line of my neck, over the precarious swell of my chest held by blue fabric, across my bare midriff where Andrea’s hand still lay, and down the length of my legs.
It was a look that bypassed Justin entirely and spoke directly to Sabrina’s form.
And her form answered.
It wasn’t a subtle pull this time. It was a sudden, unilateral declaration from a territory I did not govern. A flush of warmth bloomed deep in my pelvis, a distinct, unsettling dampness that announced itself against the thin, restrictive padding of the bikini bottom. It was accompanied by a heavy, almost aching sensation, a fullness that seemed to center everything low in my torso. My nipples, already peaked from the cool air, tightened into points that felt sharply distinct, rubbing against the inside of the bikini top with every shallow breath I took. The reaction was so immediate, so divorced from my own conscious will, that it felt like a hostage situation inside my own skin.
Andrea felt the new tension in my body. Her head shifted, her cheek against mine. She followed my line of sight to the man, who was now looking out at the view, a faint, unselfconscious smile on his face.
“Oh,” Andrea breathed, the sound a cocktail of surprise and something else. Amusement. Intrigue. “He’s looking at you.”
“He’s not,” I whispered, the denial automatic and weak.
“He totally is.” Her voice dropped, becoming a hot, private murmur in my ear. I could smell the sharp, vegetal edge of tequila on her breath, cutting through her perfume. “Look at him. He’s perfect. All that… strength.” Her fingers, still splayed on my stomach, dug in slightly. Not painfully. Possessively. “You should go talk to him.”
The words didn’t compute. They bounced off the bone of my skull. “What?”
“Go on. Talk to him. It’s just fun.” Her whisper was a challenge, laced with the alcohol and the thrill of the performance. She was the director, and I was her star, my discomfort just another part of the scene. “You’re single, Sabrina. Live a little. Let’s see what happens.”
A torrent of protest rose in my throat. I’m your husband. That’s a strange man. This is insane. But the script was written, and my role was clear. Sabrina, the bold one. The adventurous one. The one who would.
Chloe caught the tail end of it. “Oooh, is Sabrina going on a mission?” she stage-whispered.
“Do it!” Mara giggled, lifting her phone again. “For the content!”
The pressure was a physical weight. Andrea’s expectation, the girls’ drunken encouragement, the stranger’s palpable presence, and beneath it all, the humiliating, liquid warmth of Sabrina’s traitorous response. I was bifurcated: a mind screaming in silent, churning protest, and a body primed and reacting to a stimulus it was designed to find compelling.
Andrea gave me a small, final push from her lap. “Go.”
It was a command.
My movements were clumsy as I stood. The world tilted slightly—dizziness from the vertical shift, from the disorientation. I felt incredibly exposed. The night air kissed the sweat starting to prickle at the small of my back. The bikini bottom felt insubstantial, a flimsy barrier against the new, disquieting sensitivity between my legs. Every step was an exercise in alien physics: the shift of weight through narrower hips, the unfamiliar sway that seemed to originate from a lower center of gravity, the jiggle of flesh on my chest and thighs that was both heavy and disturbingly mobile. The tattoo on my ribcage stretched with the movement.
I walked toward him. The distance felt vast. Each click of Sabrina’s sandals on the wet deck was a timer counting down to an unknown detonation.
He watched me approach. His expression was neutral, but his eyes were alert. Up close, he was older than I’d first thought, maybe early forties, with laugh lines at his eyes and a steadiness in his gaze.
“Hi,” I said. Sabrina’s voice. Higher, softer than mine. It sounded breathless, nervous.
“Hey,” he said. His voice was a low rumble. He gestured with his water bottle to the empty lounger beside his. “Have a seat. I don’t bite.”
I lowered myself awkwardly onto the edge of the cushion, hyper-aware of how the position made the bikini bottoms dig into the crease of my thigh. I could feel the damp spot, a secret, shameful clue. I crossed my legs, then uncrossed them, realizing the pose might seem deliberately provocative.
“I’m Mateo,” he said.
“Sabrina.” The name was ash in my mouth.
“You’re here with your friends?” He nodded toward our group. Andrea was watching us openly, a small, unreadable smile on her face. The other two were pretending not to.
“Yeah. Girls’ trip.” I forced the words out.
“Nice.” He took another sip of water. His forearm was ridged with tendon and vein. “You from the city?”
A normal question. A banal question. My mind scrabbled for Justin’s biography, came up empty, and defaulted to the lies I’d prepared. “No, just visiting. From out west.” The inane small talk was a surreal overlay to the internal chaos. My body was still humming, a live wire in proximity to his casual, masculine energy. The scent of his soap—clean, cedary—mixed with the chlorine. It was a good smell. A smell Sabrina’s senses appreciated intensely.
He asked about what I did for work. I fumbled through Sabrina’s vague, freelance graphic designer cover story. All the while, a part of me was screaming, Look over there! That’s my wife! I love her! But another, deeper, more terrified part was cataloging the precise way his stubble shaded his jaw, the breadth of his shoulders, and how my own body softened in response, a reflexive, ancient programming.
“You seem a little tense,” Mateo observed, his head tilting. “Everything okay?”
The simple concern almost undid me. It was a human question in the middle of this inhuman farce. I opened my mouth, a confession poised on the wrong tongue.
A peal of laughter cut across the pool deck. Andrea’s laugh. I turned my head.
She had stood up. She was stretching, arms overhead, her body a long, elegant line in the black one-piece. She looked directly at me, at us. Then she turned and dove into the pool, her entrance clean and silent, barely a splash.
She surfaced, slicking her hair back, and floated on her back, looking up at the sky. A deliberate display of nonchalance. A reminder.
She’d sent me here. She was watching.
I was on a stage, and every move I made was for an audience of one.
I looked back at Mateo, at his kind, questioning face. The warmth between my legs was a constant, pathetic reminder of Sabrina’s reality, a reality that was rapidly becoming my cage.
“It’s… it’s a strange night,” I finally said, and the understatement was so vast it threatened to swallow me whole.