Rosália remained on her hands and knees for a long, agonizing moment, the cool air of the room chilling the sweat and shower water on her skin. Her body throbbed with unfulfilled, tight tension, but it was the silence of the room that felt completely unbearable.
Eventually, she pushed herself up. Her hands were shaking. She pulled her thick robe from the end of the bed, wrapping it tightly around her shivering frame, and walked back into the bathroom.
The harsh, fluorescent vanity lights flickered on, nearly blinding her. She walked to the toilet, mechanically going through the routine to clean herself and pee to avoid an infection. It was a grounded, unglamorous necessity, but right now, the cold porcelain was the only thing tethering her to reality.
She walked over to the marble sink, turning on the cold tap. She cupped the icy water in her hands and splashed her face, staring at her own pale, shaken reflection in the massive mirror.
A cold droplet of water rolled down her cheek, cutting through the steam. And suddenly, the realization hit her with the force of a physical blow to the stomach.
Hot.
She gripped the edges of the marble vanity, the blood rushing out of her head until a high-pitched, faint ringing started in her ears.
In ten years of marriage, David had called her beautiful. He had called her gorgeous, stunning, elegant, his love, his muse. He was a man of sophisticated, deliberate words, even in the throes of passion.
He had never, not once in a decade, called herhot.
She couldn’t quite explain why, but her chest tightened, a bitter taste lingering on her tongue. It was as though the man who had just made love to her was a complete stranger.
Except, it wasn’t love. He had just fucked her. He’d fucked her without a single thought about making her climax first.
And that was what left her feeling so filthy. It was what pushed her to step into the shower, crank the water as hot as she could stand, and desperately scrub the feeling from her skin.
Chapter 5
Rosália
The drive home from the gallery was a blur of brake lights and creeping dread. The crushing realization from the night before—the lingering, filthy echo of that cheap word bouncing off the pristine tile of her bathroom—sat like a lead weight at the bottom of Rosália’s stomach. She had spent her entire day at Lumen burying herself in exhibition schedules, aggressively highlighting budgets, desperate to outrun the terrifying whisper in her mind that said her marriage was unraveling.
When she finally pulled her SUV into the sweeping, manicured driveway, the sky was bruised with the heavy, purple shadows of twilight. David’s sleek Audi was already parked in the garage.
Rosália sat in the driver’s seat for a long moment, gripping the leather steering wheel until her knuckles turned white. She closed her eyes, forcing oxygen into her tight lungs.It was just a word,she told herself firmly, a desperate mantra to hold her reality together.He was just trying to spice things up. You’re overthinking it. You’re exhausted.
She grabbed her leather tote, locked her car, and walked up the front steps. She pushed her key into the lock, expecting the heavy oak door to open into the usual, suffocatingly immaculate silence of their adult home.
Instead, as the door swung open, a sound drifted down the long, shadowed hallway.
A bright, melodic, distinctly feminine giggle.
Rosália froze.
Her foot hovered an inch above the Persian runner in the foyer. The sound was so jarring, so violently out of place in the carefully curated quiet of their house, that her brain simply refused to process it. Then, a second later, she heard the low, rumbling hum of David’s voice in response.
A sharp, visceral squeeze seized her heart, so painful it stole her breath. It wasn’t just surprise; it was a primitive alarm bell ringing directly in her bloodstream. The fine hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Her stomach dropped, plunging into a sickening free-fall, and her mouth suddenly went entirely dry.
Moving with the slow, terrifying caution of a woman stepping into a minefield, she set her keys onto the ceramic console bowl without making a single sound. She didn’t drop her bag. She held it tight against her ribs as she walked down the hallway toward the open-concept kitchen.
When she rounded the corner, the world stopped spinning.
David and Katherine were sitting side-by-side at the massive marble kitchen island. They were entirely too close. The physical distance between them was practically nonexistent. David was leaning over a sleek silver laptop, his broad shoulder brushing intimately against Katherine’s bare, tanned arm. Katherine was leaning into his space, her blonde hair falling in bright, bouncy waves over her shoulder. She was throwing herhead back, a wide, dazzling smile lighting up her face as she looked at him, completely captivated.
For a terrifying, suspended eternity, Rosália couldn’t move. Seeing them like that—the wealthy, sophisticated, tightly wound executive and the vibrant, gorgeous twenty-nine-year-old—squeezed the remaining oxygen out of the room. They didn’t look like neighbors. They looked intimate.
Then, David lifted his head.
His dark eyes locked onto Rosália standing frozen in the threshold. The reaction was instantaneous, absolute, and utterly damning.
He froze completely. Every muscle in his large body locked up, the blood draining from his face so fast he looked practically gray. For two agonizing seconds, the polished veneer of the senior partner vanished. He looked like a man staring down the barrel of a loaded gun.
