Page 42 of The Marriage Blunder

Kenneth did not move away. His knee touched mine, and neither of us made a show of noticing. He finished his wine, set the glass down, and then—very slow, very deliberate—turned toward me.

I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until he put his hand on my jaw, thumb brushing the hinge of my cheek, and leaned in.

The kiss was not fast. It was not casual. It was the kind of thing that, under different circumstances, would have come with a warning label. I felt it everywhere. I wanted to say something, but the part of my brain responsible for language had apparently gone offline.

When he pulled back, he didn’t let go. His hand lingered, palm warm against my skin, and he looked at me like he was waiting for the answer to a question he hadn’t asked.

He said, “We don’t have to.”

I shook my head, once. “I know.”

“We can stop here,” he said. “Or we can go to bed. But only if you want it.”

He held out his hand. Not a demand. Not a test. Just an offer.

I looked at it. I looked at him. I thought about eleven months of wanting, of not-wanting, of all the ways I had tried to be careful with myself and with him.

I put my hand in his.

The city kept moving outside, and the fire kept burning, and for the first time in a long time, I stopped trying to calculate the odds.

I just let myself have it.

He led me down the hall, hand still in mine, and the contact had a gravity that made it hard to do anything except follow.

Kenneth’s bedroom was about what you’d expect from a man who chose everything in his life for longevity: king-size bed, the kind of mattress that probably came with a white-glove warranty, floor-to-ceiling windows that framed the city like a particularly smug photograph. The sheets were dark, possibly black, and the walls were a color that looked like it had cost extra.

He let go only to close the door, and even that felt like a choice.

The light was low, a single lamp on the dresser giving just enough illumination to see but not enough to name anything. City glow did the rest, crawling over the foot of the bed and pooling at the corners of the room like a secret.

I heard myself laugh, a small sound, which made him smile in return.

He came to me and put his hands on my shoulders, thumbs tracing the notch at my collarbone, and said, “Are you sure?” One last out, a lifeline offered, like he couldn’t believe I would actually want this.

I said, “I’ve been sure since we came back from Las Vegas,” which was both a joke and the most honest thing I’d said all night.

He kissed me again, not tentative at all this time. It was a pressure, a statement, a thing that belonged exactly where it landed. He kissed hard, but with an intent that was almost clinical in its precision. He mapped my mouth, traced my teeth with his tongue, and when he pulled back, I heard the sound I made—half gasp, half whimper—and recognized it as my own.

He undid the top button on my shirt, then the second, and the third, each one slow enough to register as a threat. He peeled it off my shoulders, then ran his hands down my arms, all the way to my wrists, as if he was checking for hidden flaws.

I reached for his shirt. He let me. I unbuttoned it—more clumsily than I wanted to, which he seemed to enjoy—and slid it off. Kenneth was bigger than I’d realized.

The chest hair was salt-and-pepper, same as his beard, and his skin was warm under my hands. The biceps, the shoulders, the build that meant when he pulled me to him the whole shape of my body changed to fit.

He unzipped my pants and pushed them down, then paused. “Last chance,” he said, voice barely above the hum of the city.

I kicked the pants off and said, “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

He smirked and tackled the rest of the problem with ruthless efficiency: shoes, socks, underwear, all gone in one pass. I was standing in front of him, bare except for my glasses, and for a second the urge to cover up flared, habitual and sharp. But Kenneth just looked at me—really looked—and there was no derision in it, none of the judgment I’d spent half my life braced for. Just want.

He stripped the rest of the way, and the first time I saw his cock I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from reacting like a teenager. It was big, yes, but more than that, it was obvious he knew exactly what to do with it.

He pushed me back onto the bed, not hard, just insistent, and I landed on the sheets, shivering a little from the rush of cold air and the fact that every single nerve ending in my body was at a ten.

He came down over the top of me and kissed me again, deeper this time, one hand fisted in my hair, the other braced against the mattress. His beard scratched at my skin, and the sensation was new, raw, immediately addictive.

He kissed down my jaw, my throat, the hollow at the base of my neck, then farther, tongue flicking over my collarbone, teeth dragging a line down to my chest.