Taking Gwen

The lamp on Gwen's side of the bed had a shade that had gone the color of weak tea years ago, and it threw a low amber light across the pillows, the pothos on the nightstand, and the long pale stretch of his wife underneath him. Down the hall the furnace kicked on with its usual rattle. The floorboard by the closet creaked under nothing at all. Three years in this house and Rick still half believed it was haunted by a very bored ghost.

"Don't tease me tonight," Gwen said.

She said it against his mouth, her hips already lifting off the mattress to find him, her thighs tight around his waist. Her hair had come down out of its twist and spread across the pillow, blonde gone gold in the lamplight, a few damp curls stuck to her temple. She smelled like the coconut lotion she kept by the sink and faintly of the red wine they'd split over dinner.

Rick pulled back far enough to look at her.

Three years married, and she could still do that to him. Four words, and his whole night rearranged itself around them.

When he'd met her, she'd been the girl in the cardigan at the edge of a friend's birthday party, holding a cup of punch like it might be a test. She'd grown up in a small church town where girls wore skirts below the knee and did not say the word sex out loud, let alone ask for it. Her mother still texted her a devotional every Sunday morning. Gwen still answered every one of them with a heart. She still dressed the way she'd been taught, soft cardigans over simple blouses, little gold studs in her ears, and when she got flustered her eyes still dropped to the floor like somebody had caught her skimming from the collection plate.

Then she'd come home with him, and it turned out the girl in the cardigan had been waiting her whole life for somebody to give her permission.

He'd led, at first. Lights on. Telling her she was beautiful until she quit arguing about it. Teaching her that wanting things wasn't a sin, or if it was, it was a very good one. But somewhere in the last year she'd stopped following and started pushing. She was the one who asked for the filthy words now. She was the one who whispered in the dark, tell me how good I look on my knees, and then went red all the way down to her collarbone the second it was out of her mouth.

He loved that blush. He'd learned a long time ago that it was never a no.

"No teasing," he said. "Got it. So what do you want instead?"

She groaned. "Rick."

"Use your words, sweetheart."

"You're doing it right now. This is teasing."

"This is a clarifying question."

"I'm going to kill you."

"After, though. Right?"

She glared up at him. It would have been more effective if her nipples weren't hard against his chest and her hips weren't rolling up into him in slow, needy circles. Then she shut her eyes, and the blush came up her throat, and she said it in a rush, like she was getting it over with.

"I want your cock. I want you inside me. I want you to fuck me hard."

*There she is.*

He ran his hand down her body, over the soft give of her stomach and the curve of her hip, and slid it between her thighs. She was soaked. Slick and swollen, wet enough that his fingers slid through her with no resistance at all.

"Jesus, Gwen. You're already dripping."

"I know." Her eyes stayed shut. "I've been thinking about it since dinner."

"Since dinner?" He pressed his thumb against her clit, just enough to make her jump. "Such a greedy little slut for me."

Her breath caught, and her whole body arched up off the bed into his hand, and that was all the answer he needed. He took his cock in his fist and dragged the head of it through her, up over her clit and back down to her entrance, and held it there.

"This what you want?"

"Yes. Please. Rick, please, just fuck me."

He gave it to her in one hard thrust, all the way in, and Gwen's back bowed off the mattress. The sound she made was low and broken, and her nails went into his shoulders hard enough to sting. She was tight and soaking and hot around him, and for a second he couldn't do anything but hold still and breathe.

"Oh, fuck," she sobbed. "More. Harder."

He pulled almost all the way out and slammed back into her. Then again. He found a rhythm that was rough and fast and punishing, his hips snapping against hers, the headboard tapping the wall, and she met every thrust with her own, her heels digging into the backs of his thighs.

"You take me so well," he said against her neck. "This perfect pussy. Made for my cock."

"Yes. Yes, yes, yes..."

She came fast the first time. He felt it before she made a sound: her pussy clamping down on him in one hard grip and then fluttering, quick and frantic, while her mouth fell open and nothing came out of it. Then the sound came, high and desperate, and her thighs locked around him and shook.

He didn't stop, but he didn't let go either. He kept his pace steady and deep, letting her ride it out underneath him, his weight on his forearms, his chest against hers. He wanted her to feel every second of it. He wanted her to know he was right there.

When her eyes finally fluttered open, cheeks flushed, breath coming in shaky little gasps, he slowed down and stayed buried in her. He brushed the hair back off her forehead.

And there it was again. The thing he'd been sitting on for six months.

*Say it. You've been rehearsing this in the shower like a lunatic. Just say it.*

"You want to know what I think about," he said quietly, "when I'm inside you like this?"

She swallowed. "Tell me."

"I think about watching you come." He made himself keep his eyes on hers. "Not for me. For somebody else. Another man's hands on you. His mouth between your thighs. His cock in you, while I sit there and watch."

She went completely still.

*Oh no. Oh, no, no. Abort. Abort the mission. Pretend it was a bit.*

Then her pussy clenched around him, hard, and her breath came out of her in a long shudder, and her nails dragged down his back.

*Okay. Okay. That's not a no. That is very much not a no.*

"You think about that?" she whispered.

"I do." He traced her lower lip with his thumb. "I think about how you'd sound for him. Whether you'd be shy about it, try to hide your face. Or whether you'd let go. Get loud and greedy like the good girl I know you are."

A small, broken noise came out of her. Her hips started rolling up against him again, chasing him.

"You can't say things like that," she breathed.

"Why not?"

"Because there's definitely a Bible verse about it."

"Which one?"

"I don't know. I skipped most of Leviticus." Her voice cracked on a laugh and then on a moan as he rocked into her. "Rick."

"Because it makes you wet," he said in her ear. "That's why. Because you want it."

She shut her eyes. The blush had gone all the way down to her breasts.

"Tell me the truth," he said. "If there was another man here. If I told him to touch you, to taste you, to fuck you. What would you do?"

He slid a hand down between them and found her clit with two fingers, slow lazy circles, and watched her try to think through it.

"I'd want to know what it felt like," she said finally. Her voice was shaking. "I'd want to see what you see when I lose control. I'd want him to use me." Her eyes opened and found his. "And I'd want you to watch."

"Good girl."

He kissed her hard and worked her clit faster, and she moaned into his mouth and ground up against his hand. When he pulled back, he was breathing like he'd run a mile.

"And if I asked you right then how it felt," he said, "with his cock in you? If I made you tell me every second of it?"

"I'd tell you. I'd tell you everything."

"Then tell me now." He got a hand in her hair and tipped her head back, gently, so she had to look at him. "Every dirty word. I want to hear it."

She shuddered. "It would feel wrong," she said. "Dirty. Like I was being used. Like I was just there for him to fuck." Her pussy squeezed down on him at her own words, and she gasped at it. "It would be so exciting, though. And I'd be so wet for him. And I'd still be yours."

*I'd still be yours.*

That one landed somewhere under his ribs and stayed there.

"Fuck, Gwen." He pulled out of her and flipped her onto her stomach in one rough pull, and dragged her hips up so her ass was in the air and her cheek was pressed into the pillow. She cried out. Her pussy was glistening and swollen and open for him, and he brought his hand down on her ass with a sharp crack that echoed off the walls.

She jolted. Then she pushed back toward him, arching, asking for more without a word.

He spanked her again, harder, and watched the pink bloom across her skin.

"You'd love it," he said. "Wouldn't you? Being our little slut. Taking both of us. Letting us use you however we wanted."

"Yes." It came out muffled against the sheets. "God, yes, I'd love it. I'd love being yours and being his and letting you both do whatever you want to me. Please. Please, Rick, I'm so empty, put it back."

He drove back into her from behind and she screamed into the pillow. He gripped her hips and fucked her hard and deep, and leaned down over her back so his mouth was by her ear.

"Then come for me," he said. "Right now. Picture his hands on your hips. His cock stretching you open. Me telling him exactly how to fuck you."

"Oh God. I'm so close. I'm so close..."

"Do it. Come for me like the good little slut you are. Show me how much you want to be shared."

She came apart. Her fingers twisted in the sheets and her whole body bucked under him, and she screamed his name, hoarse and raw, and her pussy pulsed around his cock in long, hard pulls that made his vision blur.

He kept going. He drove into her through all of it, deep, steady, relentless, until she was gasping and shaking with aftershocks and pushing back against him for more.

"You're soaking," he groaned. "You love this. The idea of somebody else."

"I love it. I want it. I want it."

She came a second time, tighter and more desperate than the first, and this time it took him with her. He buried himself as deep as he could get and came with a groan that started somewhere in his chest, pumping into her in hot, heavy pulses while she shook underneath him.

For a while neither of them did anything but breathe.

Gwen's cheek was still mashed into the pillow, her hair everywhere. "More," she said, very small and very certain. "I want everything."

He laughed, low, and kissed the back of her neck. "Greedy girl. You'll get it. One day I'm going to watch you take another man while you beg for me."

She shivered all over. Then she laughed too, soft and almost shy, the laugh of somebody who'd just said a lot of things out loud and was only now catching up to them.

---

They were still half tangled in the sheets when the furnace clicked off. The house went quiet. Gwen lay on her stomach with her cheek on the pillow, and Rick ran one finger down the line of her spine and watched the goosebumps chase it.

"Your hands feel smug," she murmured.

"You were loud," he said. "I think the pothos needs therapy."

She laughed and hid her face in the pillow. When she turned back, her expression had changed. She walked her fingers across his chest like she was counting something.

"Can I ask you something without you overthinking it?"

He rolled onto his back and laced his hands behind his head. "No. But try anyway."

"That thing we keep circling." She looked at him properly now, wide awake. "If it ever stopped being just talk. What do you actually want from it?"

He let out a long breath at the ceiling. There was a water stain up there shaped vaguely like Ohio. He'd been meaning to paint over it for three years.

"I want you safe," he said. "And turned on. And glowing. I want to see how strong we are, watching you take more. I want to run it. Not to own you. To take care of you while you get what you want." He paused. "And I want to hear you ask me."

Color came up along her cheekbones. "You like when I ask."

"I love when you ask."

"Then tell me to."

"Ask me, Gwen."

Her voice dropped almost to nothing. "Will you share me?"

He let the shiver go through him and didn't hide it, so she could see it. "Yes."

"With who?" she whispered. "Hypothetically. So I can picture it."

He rolled onto his side and brushed the hair off her face. "Somebody who listens. Somebody who'd look at me before he touched you. Somebody who kisses the way you like, slow and a little messy at the end." He smiled. "Somebody you smiled at at Jamie's barbecue and then pretended you hadn't."

She hid her mouth in her forearm. "Marcus."

"Yeah."

"You saw that."

"I see everything you give, sweetheart."

He lay there a second. Then he told her the rest of it.

"Part of me's scared," he said. "Not of you. Of me. What if I watch somebody touch you and something ugly climbs up my throat. What if I hate it."

She searched his face. "And the other part?"

"The other part can't stop thinking about you. Glowing, while you take him. Putting on a show for me. You asking and me saying yes, and both of us finding out that what we've got doesn't break when we add more." He ran his thumb along her lower lip. "That part's loud."

She was quiet for a while. "Mine's different," she said. "What if I want it too much? What if I want more than you do, and you look at me different after?"

"I'm not going to look at you different for wanting things," he said. "I'm going to look closer. If you want more than I can handle, we talk about it. If you want something I can't give, we figure out together how far we go. We don't pretend. We don't punish. We adjust. It stays ours."

Her eyes were wet and shining. "Then I want to try. Not everything. But more."

"Then we try."

She pulled him down to her. The kiss started slow and got deeper, and then she was whispering it against his lips.

"Text him."

"Now?"

"Now. Before I chicken out. I'm warm and brave and I want to be shared, and in about ten hours I'm going to be a woman in a cardigan again. Text him."

He reached for his phone on the nightstand. Her fingers trailed down his chest while he typed.

Hey Marcus, it's Rick. Weird hour, I know. Coffee tomorrow? Gwen and I wanted to talk to you about something. No pressure. Just a conversation.

His thumb hovered over the button.

*Last chance. You could delete this. You could make a joke and go to sleep and never bring it up again.*

Gwen was watching his face. "Send it," she said.

He sent it. The little whoosh sounded very loud in the quiet room.

---

The café on the corner of Ninth was busy enough to give them cover and quiet enough to hear each other. The espresso machine shrieked every two minutes. The whole place smelled like burnt sugar and cinnamon, and a toddler two tables over was methodically destroying a blueberry muffin.

Gwen had dressed for it carefully, which for Gwen meant she'd changed three times and ended up in soft jeans and a loose blue top that said approachable, not on a mission. She'd pinned her hair back. She'd also, on the drive over, asked him twice if this was insane.

"It's a little insane," he'd said.

"Okay. Good. I just wanted to know we're on the same page."

Marcus was already there, leaning back in a chair by the window with a mug in both hands. He stood up when he saw them. He was tall, taller than Rick by a couple of inches, with warm brown skin and close-cropped hair and a neat beard, and the easy, unbothered smile of a man who'd never once worried about how he came across at a barbecue.

"Hey," he said, and shook Rick's hand first. Then his eyes went to Gwen, briefly, and back to Rick. "Thanks for the invite. I'll be honest, the text was a little mysterious for eleven thirty at night."

"Yeah," Rick said. "Sorry about that."

"No, it's fine. I just assumed somebody died or you were selling me a timeshare."

Gwen laughed, too loud and too fast, and then put her hand over her mouth.

They ordered. For a few minutes it was nothing. The weather. Jamie's new fence, which all three of them agreed was a crime against the neighborhood. Marcus's sister's wedding. Rick drank half his coffee without tasting any of it. Under the table, Gwen's knee was bouncing against his.

Finally Marcus set his mug down. "So," he said. "What's the mysterious conversation?"

Rick and Gwen looked at each other. Rick reached over and took her hand on the tabletop, and her fingers locked around his like a vise.

"This is going to sound out of left field," he said.

"Okay."

"Gwen and I have been... exploring. In our marriage. Some new things." He could hear himself, and he sounded like a man reading a brochure. He pushed through it anyway. "We've been talking for a while about inviting somebody into the bedroom. Somebody we both like. Somebody we trust."

Marcus didn't say anything. His eyebrows went up, slowly. Then they stayed up.

"We'd like that to be you," Gwen said quietly. "If you want. And if you don't, that's completely okay, and this never happened, and we'll still see you at the next barbecue and be totally normal about it."

"We will not be totally normal about it," Rick said.

"We'll be mostly normal about it."

Marcus looked between them for a long moment. Then down at his coffee. He turned the mug a quarter turn on the table, then another.

"Okay," he said finally. "That's... not what I expected. At all." He let out a breath that was almost a laugh. "But I'm listening."

"That's all we're asking," Rick said.

"Can I ask what it is? For you two?" Marcus looked at Rick when he said it. "I don't want to walk into the middle of something I don't understand."

Rick had thought about how to answer that. He'd thought about it most of the night, lying next to Gwen while she slept with her face mashed into his shoulder.

"It's ours," he said. "That's the main thing. You'd be a guest. One night. Maybe more down the road if it's good for everybody, but nobody's promising anything. Nobody's replacing anybody." He glanced at Gwen. "This is about her getting something she wants. And me getting to give it to her."

Marcus nodded slowly. "And me?"

"You get a very good night," Gwen said, "and our eternal gratitude, and you have to keep your mouth shut about it at Jamie's."

That time Marcus actually laughed. "Can I ask why me?"

Gwen went pink. She looked at the table.

"She smiled at you," Rick said. "At the barbecue. When you told Jamie his potato salad was aggressively fine."

"It was aggressively fine."

"It was," Gwen said to the table. "It was so fine."

Marcus looked at her for a long moment. He wasn't smiling now. Then he turned his hand palm up on the tabletop, between their coffees, and looked at Rick.

"May I?"

Rick felt it then. A cold little twist low in his stomach, small but real.

*Here it is. Here's the ugly thing. You knew it was coming.*

But Gwen's knee had stopped bouncing against his. She'd gone very still beside him. He could see the color climbing her throat.

*And there's the other thing. The loud one.*

Rick nodded once.

Gwen let go of his hand and put hers in Marcus's. Just that. Marcus didn't squeeze, didn't pull. He just held it, warm and steady, his thumb resting over her knuckles. Gwen's lips parted. She breathed out through them, slow and shaky.

The espresso machine shrieked. The toddler two tables over threw the last of the muffin on the floor.

After a long moment Rick tipped his head, and Marcus let go.

"Well," Gwen said. Her voice wobbled. "That was a lot. For a hand."

"It's supposed to be," Marcus said quietly.

He sat back and looked at both of them. Whatever he saw seemed to settle it.

"I'm in," he said. "When?"

Rick looked at Gwen. She didn't look away from him.

"Tonight," she said.

Marcus blinked. "Tonight. Okay." He picked up his coffee, realized it was empty, and put it down again. "Then I'm going to go home and have an extremely normal afternoon."

---

In the car, Gwen sat with her hands flat on her thighs and stared through the windshield at the parking lot.

"Oh my God," she said. "Oh my God, Rick. I want this. I feel like I can't breathe."

"Breathe anyway."

"I'm trying." She turned to him. Her eyes were huge. "We picked right. Didn't we? He asked you first. Before he touched me. Did you see that?"

"I saw it."

"That was so hot. I don't know why that was so hot."

He reached over and brushed her cheek with his thumb. "Because he asked."

She caught his wrist and held his hand against her face. Then she smiled, slow, a little wicked, a smile he didn't see on her very often in daylight.

"I need to figure out what to wear," she said. "I don't think I want to be completely myself tonight. I want to be more. For you. For him. For us."

---

At home, she went straight into the bathroom and shut the door.

Rick heard the shower start, and under it the faint sound of her humming, and then, after a while, the slow, steady scrape of a razor.

He paced.

The living room was not built for pacing. It was twelve steps from the bookshelf to the front window, and the floorboard by the couch groaned every time he hit it, and by the fifth lap he'd started stepping around it like it might tell on him.

*Okay. Okay. So this is happening. This is a thing that's actually happening tonight, in this house, on that couch, the couch we got on sale at Crate and Barrel because she liked the color, and in about six hours another man is going to be sitting on it. Touching her. Seeing her. Seeing the freckle on her hip that I'm pretty sure nobody but me and her dermatologist has ever seen. And you asked for this. You asked for this out loud, you lunatic, and she said yes, and then you texted him, and now you're walking in circles around a squeaky floorboard like it's a crime scene. What if you hate it? What if you watch his hands on her and you just lose it? What if she likes him better? What if he's better? What if...*

He stopped at the window and looked out at the street. The neighbor's kid was riding a bike in slow wobbling circles in the driveway across the street.

*What if she glows.*

He stood there a while with that one.

*Yeah. Okay. That one wins.*

The shower shut off. A minute later the bathroom door cracked open, and steam rolled out into the hall.

"Rick?" Gwen called. "Can you come here?"

---

The bathroom mirror had fogged at the edges and cleared in the middle where she'd wiped it with her hand. Gwen stood in front of it with a towel around her hair and nothing else, her skin flushed pink from the heat of the water, the jar of coconut oil open on the counter beside the sink. The whole room smelled like it. Sweet and warm and a little like vacation.

She scooped some into her palm and started working it into her shoulders. Slowly. Down over her breasts, over the soft curve of her stomach, her hips, her thighs. It made her skin shine under the vanity lights. She'd shaved everywhere. She was smooth and slick and gleaming, and she was looking at herself in the mirror like she was actually seeing it.

Rick leaned in the doorway and didn't say anything for a while. He didn't trust his voice.

"You know what's funny?" she said, still looking at the mirror.

"What?"

"At church camp, when I was fifteen, I used to get changed in the closet of the cabin. With the door shut. In the dark. So none of the other girls would see me." She rubbed oil into the inside of her thigh, slow. "Mrs. Patterson told us our bodies were temples. I thought that meant you weren't supposed to go in."

He laughed before he could help it. So did she.

"And now?" he said.

She turned sideways and looked at herself. The full curve of her breasts. Her smooth, bare pussy. The long line of her thigh, shining. She didn't reach for the towel. She didn't fold her arms over herself the way she used to, even with him, for the first year.

"Now I want him to see," she said. "And I want you to watch him see." Her eyes met his in the mirror. "You did that. You turned the lights on and kept them on until I stopped hiding. Do you know that?"

He didn't trust himself to answer that one either. He just nodded.

She smiled at him in the glass. Then she capped the oil and said, "Okay. Get out. I have to do my face, and you're going to distract me."

---

When she came into the bedroom an hour later, he was sitting on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees, and he forgot what he'd been thinking about.

She'd laid it all out earlier while he wasn't looking. Black lace trimmed in gold, thin straps, a bra that barely did its job. Matching garters. Sheer black stockings. A robe so thin it caught the lamplight like smoke and didn't hide a thing. She'd done her eyes dark and her lashes heavy, and her mouth was red. Not her church red, the pale pink she wore to her mother's on Easter. Red red. Sin red.

She'd put on the heels too. The impossibly high black ones that had never once left this room. They made her taller and longer, pushed her hips out and her breasts up.

"How do I look?" she said.

He stood up. His throat was dry. "Like sin wrapped in silk."

She turned in a slow circle so he could see all of her. "That's the idea. I want him to see me and know exactly what I'm here for."

He crossed the room and touched her arm. The oil made her skin warm and slick under his fingers. His hand wasn't quite steady.

"You sure you're ready?"

Her face softened. "I've never been more ready. You gave me permission to want things. Now I'm going to show you how much I want."

He kissed her bare shoulder. She tasted like coconut.

Then she turned to face him, and her expression changed. Steadier. Very serious.

"Tell me I'm your whore tonight," she said.

The words stuck in his throat for a second. He'd said it before, in bed, in the dark, in the middle of things. Not like this. Not standing up, with the lights on, her looking right at him.

"You want that?" he said.

"I want it. Say it. So I don't forget who I'm doing this for."

He said it quietly. "You're my whore tonight."

She shut her eyes and her breath hitched. "Good." She kissed him hard and bit his lower lip. "Now help me pick a perfume."

She held up two bottles. He smelled them both on her wrists and picked the one that smelled faintly of vanilla and woodsmoke. She dabbed it at her throat, between her breasts, on the insides of her thighs above the stockings, holding his eyes in the mirror the whole time.

"I want to be every fantasy you ever had," she said.

"Tonight we find out how far fantasy goes."

"As far as we can," she said. "Together."

Her phone buzzed on the dresser. She picked it up and read it, and he watched her stomach jump under the lace.

On my way.

She set it down very carefully, face down, like it might go off.

Rick came up behind her and rested his hands on her hips. The lace was rough under his palms and her skin was slick and warm over it.

"Still what you want?" he said.

She nodded at him in the mirror. "You?"

"Yeah." He breathed out. "Scares me a little. In a good way. Like standing at the edge of something we've been talking about for years."

"Feels different now that it's real, huh?"

"Yeah." He kissed her shoulder again. "You don't have to play a part tonight. Just be you. That's what I want to see."

She tipped her head back against his chest. "What if I like the part?"

"Then own it. You're allowed."

They stood there a little longer, the two of them in the mirror, his hands on her hips and her red mouth and her bare shoulders shining. Like a picture of somebody else's life.

Then the doorbell rang.

Gwen let out a nervous laugh. "Guess that's our cue."

He brushed his thumb along her jaw. "Go answer it, sweetheart."

Her eyes went wide. "Me?"

"You." He kept his voice calm. He was not calm. "Go welcome him in."

---

Rick stayed in the hallway, just out of sight of the door, and listened to her heels click across the floor. She paused with her hand on the knob. He heard her take one breath, long and steady.

Then she opened it.

Marcus was standing on the porch in a dark button-down with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, and for a second he didn't say anything at all. Rick watched it happen from the shadows of the hall. Marcus's eyes went over her once, top to bottom, the red mouth and the smoke-thin robe and the black lace and the stockings and the heels, and his breath caught audibly, and he forgot to hide it.

*Yeah, buddy,* Rick thought. *I know. Me too.*

"Gwen," Marcus said finally. His voice came out lower than it had at the café. "You look... incredible."

She smiled at him, slow, a smile Rick had never once seen her use on anybody but him. "Come in, Marcus. We've been waiting for you."

She stepped aside and let him in. He brought a little cedar and spice in with him on the cold air, and the door shut softly behind him, and he stood in the entryway looking at the living room like he wasn't sure where to put himself.

Rick walked out of the hall. "Hey. Glad you made it."

"Hey." Marcus shook his hand. His grip was firm and a little damp, which made Rick feel better about his own. "Nice place."

"Thanks. The floorboard by the couch squeaks. Just so you're not alarmed."

"Noted."

"Can I get you a drink?"

"Yeah. Whiskey, if you have it."

Rick looked at Gwen. She was standing by the couch with her hands folded in front of her, in the lamplight, in almost nothing.

"Gwen," he said. Quiet, but he let the weight sit on it. "Get us two whiskeys."

She looked at him. Then at Marcus. And Rick watched it land in her, watched her shoulders drop and her chin lower and her breath go slow and deep.

"Yes, Sir," she said.

*Sir?*

He'd never asked her to call him that. Not once. Not in three years.

*Since when is Sir a thing? Since right now, apparently. Okay. Okay. Don't make a face. Roll with it.*

Marcus's eyebrows went up. He glanced at Rick, and Rick kept his face perfectly neutral, like his wife called him Sir every day of the week, like it came standard with the house.

Gwen went to the bar cart in the corner. She took her time. She bent to get the good glasses off the bottom shelf, and the robe slid off one shoulder, and her hair fell forward over her breast. She reached past the Jim Beam for the Blanton's he saved for birthdays and poured two fingers into each glass. Her hands shook a little. She steadied them before she turned around.

She brought his glass first. She held it out to him with her eyes lowered, not shy, just deliberate. "Your drink. Sir."

Then, a beat later, to Marcus: "And for you."

Rick took a slow sip. He didn't take his eyes off her. "Good girl."

The color came up her throat. She dipped her head. "Thank you, Sir."

Marcus sat down on the couch with his glass and took a long swallow. The floorboard groaned under his foot. He jumped a little, and then laughed at himself.

"Told you," Rick said.

"You did." Marcus set the glass on his knee. He looked at Rick, then at Gwen, then back at Rick. "So how does this go? I want to do this right."

Rick sat down in the armchair across from him. He leaned back. He made himself look relaxed.

"Tonight you're a guest in my house," he said. "You follow my lead. I'll tell you when you can touch her and how. She tells you if it's ever too much, and if she does, it stops, right then." He took another sip. "Other than that, you treat her like what she is."

Marcus's jaw tightened. "And what is she tonight?"

Rick smiled. "She's mine. But she's here for both of us."

Gwen was standing between them in the middle of the room, her hands at her sides. She shivered. Very quietly, almost to herself, she said, "Yes, Sir."

Marcus looked at her. Really looked, now that he'd been told he could. The black lace and the gold edging, the sheer cups barely holding her up, the garter straps pulling tight against her thighs, the long legs in the stockings, the heels. His knuckles had gone pale around the glass.

"Jesus," he said. "She looks..."

"Like what?" Rick said.

Marcus swallowed. "Like she got dressed for exactly one thing."

Rick set his glass down. He got up and crossed to Gwen and slid an arm around her waist from behind, and pulled her back against his chest so they were both facing Marcus.

"So tell me," he said. "If she were yours tonight. Dressed like this. My wife." He felt Gwen's breath stutter against his forearm. "What would you do?"

Marcus let out a slow breath. "Honestly? I've never been with a married woman before." He shook his head. "God. I want to grab that ass. I want to feel her tits pressed up against my chest while I kiss her. Hard." His voice had gotten rough. "Then I'd get down on my knees. Run my hands up those stockings. Feel how smooth her skin is. And then I'd..."

He stopped himself.

Rick squeezed Gwen's hip, and kept his eyes on Marcus, and gave him a small nod. *Keep going.*

"I'd pull that lace off her with my teeth," Marcus said. He was looking at Gwen now, not at Rick. "Make her arch into me. Make her beg for my mouth. And when she was shaking, when she was so wet she couldn't stand up..." His jaw clenched. "I'd fuck her until she screamed."

Rick's fingers found the edge of her garter strap. He traced it slowly. "And what do you think about that, Gwen? Him talking about you like that. Does it make you wet?"

She was trembling against him. He could feel it all down the front of his body.

"Yes, Sir," she whispered.

"Tell him."

"I... I like it." Her fingers curled into her palms. "Hearing him say those things. It makes me feel wanted. Owned."

"Wanted," Rick said in her ear, "or owned?"

She didn't look away from Marcus. "Owned," she said, louder. "Like I'm yours to give. Yours to share."

Marcus let out a rough breath.

"Good girl," Rick murmured. "Now tell Marcus what you want him to do to you first."

She lifted her chin. Her voice shook, but every word was clear. "I want his hands on me. Everywhere. His mouth on mine. On my neck. My tits. My nipples." A tiny pause. "And then I want his mouth on my pussy. On my clit. I want him to make me come." She leaned her head back against Rick's shoulder. "For me. And for you."

*Holy shit.*

That was his wife. That was the girl who used to get changed in a dark closet at church camp.

Rick kept his arm around her a second longer. He put his mouth by her ear, low enough that only she could hear.

"Last chance, sweetheart. We can stop right here. I'll put on a movie and Marcus can go home and tell nobody we have very nice whiskey."

She turned her head and looked up at him. Her pupils were huge.

"If you stop this now," she said, "I'm going to have to pray for your soul."

He laughed. He couldn't help it. Then he let go of her and stepped back.

"Marcus," he said. "You can kiss her."

Marcus set his glass down on the side table, very carefully, as if it might break. He stood up. He crossed the room. Up close, Rick could see that his hands weren't steady either.

Marcus stopped in front of her and looked at her face. Not her body. Her face.

"Tell me if anything's too much," he said quietly.

"I'll tell you," Gwen said. "Or he will. Kiss me."

He did.

His hands found her waist and pulled her into him, and his mouth came down on hers, hungry and deep. She made a small sound against him and went up on her toes, and his hands slid down to her ass and squeezed, exactly like he'd said he would, and she pressed herself against his chest.

And there it was again. Cold and sudden, right under Rick's breastbone.

*That's my wife. That's my wife, and his hands are on her ass, and she's kissing him back. She's really kissing him back. What are you doing? What did you do?*

He almost said something. His hand actually came up, like he was going to reach for her.

Then Gwen opened her eyes.

She found him over Marcus's shoulder. Her mouth was still on Marcus's. And there was no shame in her face. No apology. She was looking right at him, like she was making sure he was watching. Like she was doing this for him and wanted him to see it.

Then she pulled her mouth free, just for a second, and said it without making a sound. He read it on her red lips.

*Still yours.*

The cold went out of his chest all at once. What came in after it was so sharp it almost hurt. Pride. Pure, stupid, ridiculous pride.

*Look at her. Look at what she is.*

He let his hand drop. He sat back down in the armchair and picked up his whiskey, and his hand was perfectly steady now.

Marcus was kissing her neck. He worked his way down her throat to her collarbone, and pulled the robe off her shoulders so it slid to the floor in a whisper. Then he bent his head and closed his mouth over her nipple right through the lace, and she cried out and grabbed his head with both hands.

"God, you're gorgeous," Marcus said against her. "I'm going to taste every inch of you."

He sank to his knees in front of her. He ran his hands up the backs of her stockings, slow, all the way up to the bare skin above them, and she shivered so hard Rick could see it from across the room.

Marcus looked up at Rick.

*He's asking. Good man.*

"Go ahead," Rick said. "On the couch."

Marcus took her by the hips and walked her backward until the backs of her legs hit the cushions. She sat down hard. He knelt between her knees and spread her thighs wide with both hands, and hooked his fingers in the lace at her crotch and pulled it to one side.

The sound she made when his tongue touched her was one Rick had heard a thousand times. It was the first time he'd ever heard it from across a room.

Marcus didn't ease into it. He licked her in one long, flat stroke from her entrance to her clit, and then did it again, and then buried his face in her. His hands slid up to her breasts and squeezed them through the lace, his thumbs rolling and pinching her nipples until she arched off the cushions. Her fingers went into his short hair. Her head fell back against the couch.

Rick watched. It was filthy and it was gorgeous and he could hear everything. The wet sounds of Marcus's mouth on her. Her breath, ragged and broken. The leather creak of the couch as she ground her hips up against his face. His cock was so hard it hurt. He rubbed it through his jeans without thinking about it, and when Gwen rolled her head and looked at him and saw what he was doing, her mouth fell open and she moaned, loud.

"Fuck, you taste good," Marcus said into her.

"Gwen," Rick said. His voice came out lower than he meant it to. "Tell me how it feels. His mouth on you while I watch."

"Amazing, Sir." Her voice was shaking. "It's so good. It's so dirty." She bit her lip. "I love it."

"Good." Rick looked at Marcus. "She likes her clit sucked while you finger her. Two fingers. Curl them up toward you. Don't hold back."

Marcus didn't need to be told twice. He slid two fingers into her and curled them, and sealed his mouth over her clit and sucked, hard.

Gwen's back came straight up off the couch. Her hands fisted in his hair. Rick watched her stomach clench under the lace, watched her thighs start to shake on either side of Marcus's head, watched her mouth open and stay open.

"Oh God," she gasped. "Oh God, oh God, I'm..."

She came screaming. Her hips bucked up against Marcus's face and her thighs clamped down on his head and her whole body shuddered, again and again, and Marcus held on to her and kept going through every second of it, his fingers pumping into her, until she collapsed back against the cushions, trembling and limp.

Rick let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. "Perfect."

Gwen lay there a second with her chest heaving. Then she opened her eyes, and they weren't satisfied. They were hungry.

She grabbed Marcus by the collar and hauled him up and kissed him, deep and messy, tasting herself on his mouth. When she let go, her voice came out low and rough and totally unlike her.

"Get your cock out. I'm dying to suck it."

*Jesus Christ,* Rick thought. *Who are you? I love you. Who are you?*

Marcus fumbled with his belt. Gwen slid off the couch onto her knees on the rug in front of him and helped, impatient, and when his cock sprang free she wrapped her fingers around the base of it and licked the head, once, slow, watching his face while she did it. Marcus shuddered all over.

Then she looked across the room at Rick.

He'd gotten his own cock out at some point. He didn't remember deciding to. He was stroking it slowly in the armchair, and she saw that, and smiled a wicked red smile at him.

"Are you excited to watch me suck his cock, Sir?" she said. "To watch your dirty slut take him in her mouth?"

His grip tightened. "Fuck, yes. Show me how good you are with that mouth."

She didn't wait to be told twice. She took Marcus deep, lips sealing tight around him, cheeks hollowing, her hand pumping the base in time with her mouth. The wet sounds of it filled the room. Marcus's head fell back. His hands found her hair.

"How does she feel?" Rick said.

"Like fucking heaven," Marcus said hoarsely.

"She can take more than you think." Rick kept stroking himself, slow. "She's not afraid of a little rough."

Gwen pulled off long enough to look up at Marcus. Then she took both of his hands and put them on the back of her head and pressed them down, hard.

"Harder," she said, and took him back in.

She grabbed his ass and pulled him into her, and took him all the way down her throat. She gagged on it, loud and wet, and didn't stop. Marcus swore. His hips jerked forward and she let them, her eyes streaming, her throat working around him, her nails digging into the backs of his thighs.

"That's it," Rick growled. He was going faster now. "Use her just like that. Like the slut she loves to be."

The room was full of the sound of it, wet and choking and obscene. Tears ran down Gwen's cheeks and took her mascara with them. Her red lipstick was smeared halfway to her chin. She looked completely wrecked, and completely happy, and she didn't stop for a second.

Marcus pulled out of her mouth with a groan, a string of spit stretching between his cock and her swollen lips. "Fuck. Fuck, I'm going to come if you keep doing that."

He hauled her up off the rug and kissed her, hard, open-mouthed and sloppy, like he'd forgotten anybody else was in the room.

Then Gwen put her hands flat on his chest and shoved. He fell back onto the couch and she climbed on top of him, straddling his lap, the lace at her crotch still pulled aside, her knees sinking into the cushions on either side of his hips.

She stopped there. Hovering over him. She looked over her shoulder at Rick.

*She's asking. She's asking me.*

"Go ahead, baby," he said.

She reached down between them and wrapped her hand around Marcus's cock, and Rick saw it then, properly, in the lamplight, wrapped in her small pale hand.

He was bigger. Thicker. Not by a little.

*Oh. Great. Fantastic. Of course he is. Of course he's bigger. Love that for me.*

Gwen guided the head of Marcus's cock to her entrance and pressed down. Her mouth fell open. She sank onto him an inch, and Rick watched her pussy stretch around him, watched it take him, and she let out a long, shaking moan.

"Oh God," she breathed. "He's so big."

Rick's stomach dropped right through the floor.

And then, without even looking, Gwen reached back toward him with one hand.

"Rick," she said. "Come here. I need you. I need to see your face."

He was out of the chair before he'd thought about it. He knelt on the rug beside the couch, beside her, and she grabbed his hand and held it so hard his knuckles ground together, and she looked right into his eyes while she sank down another inch on Marcus's cock. Then another.

"Still yours," she whispered. Out loud this time. "I'm still yours. Look at me."

He looked at her.

*Okay. Okay. There it is. There she is.*

The drop in his stomach turned into pride all over again, deeper this time. She wasn't slipping away from him. She was holding his hand while she did this. She'd needed him there to do it.

"That's it," he said, and his voice was rough. "Take him all the way, baby. Let him feel how tight that married pussy is."

She whimpered and kept going. Her thighs shook. He watched her face, and he watched her take Marcus inch by inch, her body resisting and then yielding, until finally she sank all the way down and her ass was resting on Marcus's thighs and he was buried in her to the hilt.

She stayed there, frozen, panting. Her nails dug into Rick's hand.

"Oh my God," she said. "I'm so full. I'm so full, Rick, I can feel him everywhere."

"I know. I can see it. You look so good like this."

She started to ride him.

It was slow at first, a roll of her hips, and the sound she made at the first drag of his cock inside her made Rick's own cock jump in his hand. She lifted herself up, and he could see Marcus's cock come out of her shining wet, and then she sank back down with a gasp. Then again. Each time a little easier, a little faster, her arousal slicking the way, until the sound of it was filling the room, skin on skin, her breathless moans and Marcus's rough groans underneath them.

Her eyes never left Rick's face. She ground down hard and rubbed her clit against Marcus's pelvis, and her breasts bounced in the lace with every stroke.

"You take him so well," Rick said. "Look at you. Look at how greedy your pussy is for his cock."

She moaned. Her rhythm stuttered and caught again, faster now, frantic. Marcus's hands were gripping her hips hard enough to dent the skin, pulling her down onto him every time she dropped.

"He's hitting... oh God, he's hitting it, Rick, right there, right there..."

"Then come on him. Go ahead. I'm right here."

She came with her eyes locked on his. Her whole body seized and arched back, her pussy clenching down on Marcus so hard that Marcus swore through his teeth, and she screamed, sharp and broken, and her free hand clawed at Marcus's chest.

"Fuck! Yes! Just like that!"

She shook through it for a long time. When it finally let go of her, she didn't stop riding him. She slowed down, but she kept grinding, deep and deliberate, and she turned her head and looked at Rick with her mascara streaked down her face and her lipstick everywhere.

"Rick," she panted. "Get the lube. Now."

He stared at her.

"I want you in my ass," she said. "I want both of you. I want both of you inside me at the same time."

*Holy shit.*

"You're sure?" he said.

"Rick."

"Getting the lube."

He got up and went down the hall to the bedroom, half running, his jeans still open. The bottle was in the nightstand drawer. The pothos was right there, sitting in the lamplight, and he would have sworn it was looking at him.

*Don't. Don't look at me like that. You've seen worse.*

When he came back, she'd leaned forward over Marcus, her breasts crushed against his chest, kissing him deep and slow. Her ass was up and spread and shining with sweat and oil. She was still grinding on Marcus's cock.

Rick stripped the rest of the way. He knelt on the couch behind her. He snapped the cap on the lube and coated his fingers and pressed one against her ass, cool and slick.

She tensed.

Marcus's hands came up to her back and stroked down along her spine. "Relax," he murmured against her lips. "Let him in."

She breathed out, long and shaky, and Rick felt her open for him. He slid one finger in, slow, to the knuckle. She gasped. Then she pushed back against his hand. He worked it in and out, gently, and then added a second finger and scissored them, stretching her, and she whimpered into Marcus's mouth and pushed back for more.

*She's okay. She wants this. Go slow anyway.*

"You good?" he said.

"So good. More. Please."

He took his fingers out and slicked his cock, and pressed the head of it against her.

"Oh fuck," she breathed.

"Breathe, Gwen. Just breathe for me."

She did. She bore down, and he pushed, slow, and she was so tight it was almost impossible. A hot, clenching ring that resisted him and resisted him and then suddenly gave, and the head of his cock slipped inside her, and she cried out against Marcus's chest.

"Fuck, you're tight," Rick groaned.

She couldn't answer. She was shaking all over. He could feel Marcus's cock in her through the thin wall between them, hard and thick, and every time Gwen breathed it shifted against him.

"You've got this," Marcus said into her hair. His hands were on her breasts now, his thumbs stroking her nipples. "Take him. Take both of us."

Rick pushed deeper. Inch by inch. Her ass gripping him so hard his vision went white at the edges, and her whimpering, and her nails digging into Marcus's shoulders, and her body opening for him, slowly, slowly, until his hips finally pressed against her ass.

"Oh God," she sobbed. "Oh God, you're both in me. You're both in me."

He stayed still. He rubbed slow circles on her hips with his thumbs and let her get used to it.

He could feel everything. The clench of her around him. Marcus's cock right there on the other side of her. Her heart pounding so hard he could feel it in her back under his palm. She was trembling from her shoulders to her knees.

"Talk to me," he said. "You okay?"

"I'm so full." Her voice was barely there. "I've never been this full. Don't stop. Don't you dare stop."

He started to thrust.

Short and shallow at first, testing, and she gasped at every one. He could feel his cock drag against Marcus's through her, and Gwen felt it too, he could tell from the noise she made. After a minute she started rocking back between them. Small and careful, then braver. Every time she sank down onto Marcus, Rick slid deeper into her ass, and every time she pushed back on Rick, Marcus's cock dragged almost out of her.

"Fuck, you feel amazing," Rick said through his teeth.

"Harder," she begged. "Please. Fuck me harder."

He gripped her hips and gave it to her. Marcus matched him from below, driving up into her pussy every time Rick pulled back, and it took them a few strokes and then they found it, a rhythm, one in while the other one pulled out, and Gwen was caught between them and taking every bit of it.

The sounds she was making weren't words anymore. Her hair was stuck to her face. The couch creaked under all three of them, and the floorboard groaned on every thrust, and the lamp flickered, and Rick didn't care about any of it.

"You're taking us so well," he growled. "Look at you, Gwen. Look how good you are for us."

She came again, and this one was different. He felt it all the way through her. Her ass clamped down on his cock and her whole body went rigid between them, and she screamed into Marcus's neck, and her pussy squeezed down on Marcus so hard Rick could feel that too, a hard rippling grip through the thin wall between them, over and over.

He was right at the edge. He reached forward and got a handful of her hair and pulled her head back, so she arched up between them, and the arch made her clench on him even harder.

"Tell me what you're doing," he said in her ear. "Tell me."

"I'm your slut," she gasped. "I'm taking both of you. Marcus's cock in my pussy. Yours in my ass. I'm so full. I'm so stretched." Marcus drove up into her and she cried out. "I feel like I'm going to break and I don't want you to stop. I need it."

"Where do you want us to come?" His thrusts had gone uneven. He couldn't help it. "Tell us."

"Inside me." She was sobbing it. "I want Marcus to come in my pussy. I want to feel his cum dripping out of me when you two are done with me. And you..." She gasped as he hit deep. "I want you to come in my ass, Rick. Mark me there. So I'm yours even while he's inside me."

Marcus groaned like he'd been punched.

"Say it," Rick said. "Whose are you?"

"Yours. I'm yours, Rick. Please. I need it. I need to feel you come inside me."

That was what finished him.

He drove in deep one last time and held there and came, hard, his cock pulsing in her ass in thick, hot spurts, his hand still knotted in her hair. Gwen felt it and went over with him, screaming, her whole body convulsing between them, and her clench pulled Marcus over a second later. Marcus groaned and bucked up into her and held her down on him, and Rick could feel him coming through her, pulse after pulse, while she shook and sobbed and took all of it.

She went limp on Marcus's chest.

For a long time nobody did anything. The three of them lay there in a sweaty, sticky tangle on the couch. Rick could hear all of them breathing. He could feel their cum leaking out of her, hot and slick, running down her thighs onto the cushions. The room smelled like sex and sweat and coconut and vanilla smoke.

*Well,* Rick thought. *That couch is ruined.*

He found he didn't care at all.

---

Marcus left about twenty minutes later.

Gwen had wrapped herself in a throw blanket and curled up at one end of the couch, and she was so boneless she didn't even try to get up. Rick pulled his jeans back on and walked Marcus to the door.

Marcus was dressed again, mostly. His shirt was buttoned wrong. He stood in the entryway and looked back at Gwen, and then at Rick, and he seemed to be trying to think of something to say.

"Thank you," he said finally. "Genuinely. Both of you."

"Thanks for coming," Rick said, and then heard it. "I mean. You know what I mean."

Marcus's dimple showed for the first time all night. "I know what you mean."

"Drive safe," Gwen called from under the blanket.

"I will." Marcus paused with his hand on the door. "Also, that was a really good whiskey."

"It was the Blanton's," Rick said. "I save it for birthdays."

"Well," Marcus said. "Happy birthday."

He left. Rick locked the door behind him and stood there a second with his hand on the deadbolt, listening to the car start in the driveway and pull away.

Then he went back to the couch and picked up his wife, blanket and all, and carried her down the hall to the shower.

---

Afterward, steam clung to the bathroom mirror again. Gwen leaned against the counter with her hair damp on her shoulders, in one of his old T-shirts that hung just low enough to cover nothing important. Her face was scrubbed clean, pink from the hot water. The red lipstick was gone. She looked like herself. She also looked like she'd been hit by a very happy truck.

Rick came up behind her with a towel around his waist and kissed the back of her neck. "You okay?"

She smiled at him in the mirror. "More than okay."

"Sore?"

"So sore." She said it like it was good news. "I'm going to walk funny at work on Monday, and if anybody asks I'm going to tell them it was Pilates."

"You don't do Pilates."

"I do now. Apparently I do very advanced Pilates."

In the kitchen, the fridge hummed and the clock over the stove said 1:14. Rick opened the freezer and looked back at her over the door. "Ice cream?"

She laughed, light and easy. "After all that? Yes. Obviously."

He scooped two bowls of the Tillamook mudslide they weren't supposed to have in the house, and they sat across from each other at the little kitchen table with their bare feet tangled together underneath it. Her spoon clinked against the bowl. Neither of them said anything for a while, and it was the good kind of quiet.

"You're quiet," she said finally.

"I'm thinking."

"About tonight?"

"About tonight."

She watched him carefully over her spoon. "Do you regret it?"

"No." He didn't have to think about it. "Not even a little. You were incredible. I was so proud of you I could barely see straight."

"But," she said.

"There's no but."

"There's a face. You're making a face."

He laughed and put his spoon down. "Okay. There was one second."

She sat up. "When?"

"When you sat down on him and said 'oh God, he's so big.'"

Gwen put both hands over her face. Her shoulders started to shake. "Oh no."

"Mm hm."

"Oh, no. I said that. I said that out loud, in front of you."

"You did."

"I'm so sorry." She was laughing too hard to sound sorry. "Rick, I'm so sorry."

"Don't be. It was very informative." He grinned at her. "It was a real character-building moment for me."

"Was it bad?"

He thought about it honestly. "For about two seconds it was the worst thing that ever happened to me. And then you reached for my hand." He looked at her across the table. "And it wasn't bad anymore. It was the best thing I've ever seen."

She lowered her hands. She wasn't laughing now.

"I thought I'd be jealous," he said. "And I was, a little, right at the start, when he first kissed you. But then you looked at me. And all I could feel was... pride. Like I was watching you turn into who you actually are."

Her eyes had gone soft. "You mean that?"

"I mean it." He reached across the table and ran his thumb over her knuckles. "You seem different."

"Different how?"

He took his time with it. "Sure of yourself. In a way I've never seen. Like you finally see what I see when I look at you."

She was quiet for a long moment.

"Maybe I do," she said. "Maybe that's what tonight was. Not the sex. Not the risk. Seeing myself the way you see me, and believing it for once."

"Then it was worth it." He kept his thumb moving over her knuckles. "What about you? You want to talk about it?"

"Yeah. I do." She set her spoon down. "I loved it. Not just what we did. How we did it. You made it safe. He was so respectful. He kept looking at you. Every single time." She searched for the words. "It wasn't about replacing you. It was about feeling wanted. Every way there is."

"You were glowing," he said.

"I felt alive." She took a breath. "I don't need to do it again soon. I mean it. I'm going to need about a month and a heating pad. But it was amazing. And knowing you wanted it too, knowing it was for both of us, made it so much better. I wasn't hiding anything. I wasn't holding back. I was just me. All of me."

"All of you called me Sir," he said.

She went red. All the way down into the collar of his T-shirt.

"That just came out."

"I noticed."

"Was it weird?"

"It was very, very not weird." He picked his spoon back up. "Feel free to keep doing that."

She laughed and kicked him under the table.

Her phone buzzed on the counter. They both looked at it. She got up and went to check it, and stood there reading it in the light from the stove, and then she started to laugh so hard she had to hold on to the counter.

"What?"

"It's my mom." She held up the phone so he could see it. "She's early. It's her Sunday devotional. Proverbs 31." Gwen wiped her eyes. "'Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies.'"

Rick stared at her. Then he started laughing too.

"What are you going to send back?" he managed.

"A heart," Gwen said. "Obviously."

She sent it. Then she put the phone face down on the counter and came back and climbed into his lap in the kitchen chair, and tucked her head under his chin.

"So," she said into his neck. "What now?"

"Now we finish the ice cream," he said. "Then we go to bed. Then we sleep for maybe twelve hours."

"That sounds perfect."

"Gwen?"

"Mm?"

He held her a little tighter. "Thank you. For trusting me."

"Always," she said. "I always will."

---

They lay down together in the dark with the lamp off and the furnace rattling down the hall. She curled into him, her back against his chest, his arm over her waist. Her hair still smelled faintly of coconut. The floorboard by the closet creaked under nobody at all.

She was almost asleep when she said it.

"Still yours."

He kissed the back of her head. She was breathing slow and even within a minute.

Rick lay awake a while longer and looked at the ceiling. At the water stain shaped like Ohio. At the outline of the pothos on the nightstand, which had seen things tonight and would be keeping them to itself.

He'd been afraid he'd lose a piece of her tonight. He'd been sure of it, pacing that living room.

Instead he'd gotten to watch her find the rest of herself, and turn around, and hold out her hand to him.

*Worth it,* he thought. *Every single second of it.*