Chapter 1: The Slow Burn of Friday evening
The show plays on low volume, some detective drama neither of us is really following. Marta is tucked against my side under the blanket, her head on my shoulder, and every few minutes her laugh comes out through her nose, soft and warm, and I feel it in my chest before I hear it. Her feet are cold. They're always cold, and she wedges them under my thigh without asking, the way she's done for a year.
She shifts. It's small, barely anything, but I catch it. She tugs the blanket down over her hips again, the second time in ten minutes, arranging the fabric so it drapes flat over her stomach and thighs. She does it the way people smooth a tablecloth. Casual. Too casual.
"You cold?" I ask.
"No." A beat. "Blanket felt weird."
"Mm." I let it go. Out loud, anyway.
On screen, the detective says something about a missing key, and Marta's attention drifts back to it. She smells like vanilla and the cocoa butter she puts on after her shower, and the TV light moves blue and pale across her face, catching the curve of her cheek, the soft line of her jaw. Her rings glint when her hand rests on my chest.
I reach down slowly and slide my hand under the blanket.
My palm settles on her thigh, right where the pajama pants ride up, fingers curling around the warm flesh there. She goes still. Not stiff, exactly. Still the way an animal is still when it hears something in the grass. I stroke my thumb along the inside of her leg, slow, and the contrast hits me the way it always does, the softness of her skin under my rough hand.
"You're watching the show," I murmur, like it's a compliment.
"I am watching the show."
I drag my thumb higher, an inch, two, and her breathing changes pitch before she can stop it. Then her hand comes down to cover mine, not pulling it away, just resting on it, and she tries to guide the blanket over her hip with the other. She gets halfway. Her fingers close over the edge of it and I catch her wrist and pin it flat against the cushion.
"Hey," she says, half a laugh in it.
"Leave the blanket."
"It's fine where it is."
"Marta." I lift her wrist up out of the blanket, slow, and set her hand on the arm of the couch behind her. My fingers stay wrapped around it. "The blanket stays down. I want your legs out."
She turns her head and looks at me, and the TV light shows the flush already climbing her neck. "Why?"
"Because I said so."
I put my hand back on her thigh, and this time I don't pretend it's innocent. I push the pajama fabric up until my palm is on bare skin, the full soft weight of her thigh filling my hand, and I grip it. Not hard enough to mark. Hard enough to say something. Her breath goes out of her in a thin stream through her nose.
"I've been thinking about you all day," I tell her, and my mouth is at her ear now, close enough that she can feel every word land. "Since those pictures this afternoon. Do you know what you did to me, sending me those?"
"That was the point," she says. Her voice has already gone lower. Thicker.
"I know. That's why we're doing this."
I slide my hand around the back of her thigh, to the outer curve of it, and I squeeze the flesh there, kneading it slow, feeling the give of her. Her hip shifts toward my hand before she can catch herself.
"You've been hiding this from me," I say, against the shell of her ear. "Under the blanket. All night. Like I don't already know every inch of you by heart."
"It's not..."
"Look at me."
She doesn't, not right away, so I turn her chin with two fingers until her brown eyes meet mine. There's something uncertain swimming in them, that little doubt she's been carrying around lately, and I want it gone.
"You know what I think about when I can't sleep?" I keep my hand on her thigh, still moving, up and over the swell of her hip. "I think about the weight of you. This." I grip her hip hard enough that she gasps, just barely. "This ass that I get to hold when you sit on my lap. These thighs that wrap around me and squeeze the air out of me. I think about how soft you are right here." I flatten my palm over her stomach through the silk, over the curve she tried to hide, and I feel her abs clench under it. "And you've spent a week frowning at the mirror over it. Like it's not the exact thing I dream about."
Her eyes are shining now. Her lips are parted.
"You're full everywhere I want you full," I say. "You're perfect, and tonight you're going to sit there and let me prove it to you."
"That's not fair," she whispers.
"No. It isn't."
I bring my mouth to her neck. I kiss the pulse point, once, and her head tips back against the cushion and her throat opens up for me like a flower, all of her offering herself before her mind has even voted on it. I breathe her in. Cocoa butter and Marta and the faint salt of the warmth rising off her skin.
"Baby," she says, and her free hand comes up to fist in my t-shirt.
"I've got you."
"No, you don't. You have me on a leash, and it's..." She swallows. Her hips tilt, a small shameless roll that she doesn't even seem aware she's doing. "It's so early."
"It's not early. We have all night."
"Then do something."
"I am doing something." I drag my teeth along the tendon of her neck, feather light, and her whole body shivers under the blanket. "I'm taking my time. That's the something."
I move my hand down her thigh again, slower this time, letting my fingertips trace the inner seam of her pajama pants until I'm close. Not touching. Close. I can feel the heat coming off her through the silk, and she whimpers, actually whimpers, and pushes her hips up toward my hand.
"Please," she says.
"Please what?"
"Touch me."
"I am touching you." I pull my hand back to the safe middle of her thigh and rest it there, warm and heavy and nowhere near enough. "I'm going to be touching you all night, Marta. Right here. Right on the edge. And you're going to be so wet for me by the time I finally take you that you're going to leave a mark on this couch."
Her hand tightens in my shirt. On screen, the detective finds his key. Neither of us sees it.
"You're so mean," she breathes, and there's no complaint in it at all. There's a smile in it, and a dare, and her eyes flick down to my lap.
She starts reaching for the tie of my jeans.
Her fingers find the button of my jeans and I catch her hand in mine, wrap my whole hand around it, and lift it away.
"No."
"But you're..."
"Hard? Yeah. That's your fault, and you're going to live with it."
I press her hand back down into the cushion beside her hip and hold it there. My other hand stays on her thigh, thumb drawing lazy circles on the inside of it, close enough that her muscles jump every time I drift toward the heat between her legs and then pull away.
"That's not fair," she says again, but her voice is wrecked now, barely a whisper.
"You sent me a picture of yourself in the fitting room mirror at two in the afternoon. While I was on the phone with my mother. You don't get to talk to me about fair."
Her mouth opens. Closes. She turns her face toward the TV, jaw tight, and I watch the flush spread from her neck down under the collar of her silk shirt.
I take the hand I've pinned and move it. Slowly. I bring it up and lay it flat over her own stomach, under mine, so she's feeling herself through the silk while I press down from above.
"That," I say. "You feel that? That softness? That's what my hands look for when you're not in the room. That's what I was thinking about today while you were out being cruel to me on purpose."
"You liked it."
"I loved it. And now you don't get to touch me until I say."
I slide her hand lower, down over the waistband of her pajama pants, and stop it there. Just resting. Her fingers curl against her own skin and I feel her breath stutter.
"Do you want to move it?"
She nods, fast, hips already tilting.
"No. Keep it there. Keep it right there and hold still, or I stop everything and we watch the rest of the show."
"Baby."
"Watch the show, Marta."
She makes a sound low in her throat, half growl, half plea, but her hand stays where I put it. I reward her. My fingers dip under the hem of her pants, just the fingertips, tracing the crease where her thigh meets her body, and she's soaked. Through the cotton of her underwear I can feel it, hot and slick, and I haven't even touched her yet.
"Oh," I breathe. "You're dripping."
"That's what you do to me," she says, and her voice cracks on the last word.
"I know. And it's only the first hour."
I pull my hand back out. All the way out, to her knee, and rest it there. She actually whines, a real sound, and her whole body arcs off the cushion toward me.
"You're evil. You're actually evil."
"Mm. Watch the show. The detective just found his key."
"I don't care about the key."
"Neither do I."
On screen the case closes. The credits start to roll. I reach for the remote without looking and kill the volume, and the room goes quiet except for the fridge humming in the kitchen and Marta's breathing, quick and shallow, under the blanket.
I turn back to her. She's watching me now, eyes dark, chest rising fast under the silk, her nipples standing up against the fabric the way they always do, pointy and obvious, and she knows it. She knows exactly what the lack of a bra does.
"You're doing that on purpose," I say, nodding at her chest.
"You're the one who keeps looking."
"Then take the shirt off."
Her free hand flies to the buttons. She gets two undone before I put my hand over hers again.
"Slowly. And stop after the third. I want to look at you first."
She unhooks the third button and stops, breathing hard, the silk parted in a V down to her sternum, the soft inner curves of her breasts showing on both sides. Her hand shakes.
"Look at you," I say, and I mean everything. The flushed skin. The shaking hands. The wetness she's sitting in. "A year married and I still can't look away from you."
"You're the only one who..."
"Don't." I put my hand on her jaw and turn her face fully toward mine. "Don't start that. There is nothing about you to fix. You hear me? Nothing. Every pound, every curve, every soft place on you, I put it there with my cooking and my love and I want every ounce of it."
Her eyes fill. Actual tears, sitting on her lower lashes, and she blinks them back and laughs at herself, wet and shaky.
"God, why does that hit so hard right now?"
"Because you needed it. And because you're worked up, and everything's closer to the surface." I kiss her forehead. "Both things are true. You're perfect, and you're desperate."
"I'm desperate," she agrees, and her hips roll again, shameless now, grinding up against nothing.
I pull the blanket off her entirely. She gasps at the cool air on her legs, at being suddenly, fully exposed from the waist down in the middle of our living room, and her thighs try to press together.
"Open."
She hesitates one second. Then her knees fall apart, slow, and her pajama pants ride up her thighs, and she lies there in the dim TV light with her legs open and her hand still pinned on her own stomach, looking at me like I'm the last glass of water in a desert.
"Good girl."
I run my palm up her inner thigh, all the way, and this time I cup her through the soaked cotton. The heat of her hits my hand like a stove. She's dripping through the fabric, and I press the heel of my palm against her and just hold it there, no motion, and her head tips back and her mouth falls open.
"Oh my God. Please move."
"I am moving." I press a fraction harder. "There. Feel that?"
"That's not moving, that's... that's nothing, that's torture, you..."
I slide one finger along the edge of the fabric, tracing where her lips start, and she moans, loud, unguarded, and her hand flies off her stomach to grab my wrist and press me harder against her.
I let her. Just for a moment. I let her use my hand, grinding against my palm, hips working, her breath coming in little punched-out sounds, and I feel the moment when she starts to climb, when her thighs start to shake on either side of my hand.
Then I pull away.
She nearly screams. "No. No, no, why, I was..."
"I know where you were." I bring my wet fingers up between us and look at them, glistening in the TV light, then put them in my mouth and taste her while she watches. "Right there. That's where you were. And that's where you're staying for a while."
"You are the meanest man alive."
"And you married me." I hold up my hand so my ring catches the light. "You stood in front of everyone and signed up for exactly this."
She stares at the ring. Her eyes go darker. She always likes that, the proof of what she owns and what owns her, and I watch the dare come back into her face even as her body trembles.
"Fine," she says. Her voice is pure smoke. "Then I'll just have to be very, very convincing."
She shifts on the couch and slides slowly off it, down onto her knees on the carpet in front of me, and looks up through her lashes with her shirt hanging open and her mouth already parted.