He touches my shoulder, brushing the skin so softly that his fingernails feel like feather vanes. The whispered caress moves down my back, deliberately stroking every column of vertebrae until his hand stops at the top of my ass. He gently probes my seam and applies just a breath of delicate pressure at my puckered place before moving down to the wet, hot swell just below.

I wish I had the nerve to tell him not to stop. To go back to that little slice of exile and make it his. To rip me open and make me cry and scream with the pain of intense pleasure. But alas, I stay quiet. Because there is nothing decent or romantic about wanting a man to fuck your ass so good and deep that you can’t sit the next day. And Tucker is a champion of decency and romance.

He slips a finger inside me and it goes in easily. He fills me with another and I take it with an encouraging moan.

“You’re wet, baby,” he whispers.

“I was dreaming of you.”

“Yeah? Well, let me make your dream a reality.”

Tucker removes his fingers and flips me over onto my back. I find that he’s already naked too, as if he had been anticipating this moment since before he found me sleeping in the nude. His hot mouth finds my pebbled nipples, and he licks and sucks his way down to my navel, all the while positioning himself between my legs. When I feel the first stroke of his tongue against my clit, I reflexively grasp a handful of his hair and pull him in closer, grinding my sex into his mouth, seeking teeth, rigid tongue, and the roughness of stubble. Yet, before he bestows me with the insanity I crave, he crawls up my body and aligns himself with my entrance.

“You want this, don’t you, baby?” he asks, looming over me.

“Yes.”

“Already so wet and hot.” He wraps a hand around his hard cock and guides the head up and down my slick folds. “Tell me how bad you want me inside you.”

“So bad, Tuck. It hurts. The emptiness aches so much,” I cry.

He relieves just the surface of my suffering by pushing in an inch, just enough for my body to suck in his swollen head. I know he wants to go deeper but he is a master of restraint and order. He’s never lost to passion or imprisoned by lust. He never wants me so badly that he can’t control himself.

“Please,” I beg. But I know it falls on deaf ears. He thinks this is what I seek—the chase. But what I’m begging for has nothing to do with his dick inside me. I want his madness. I want his rage and hysteria. I just don’t think he’s capable of giving it to me. Not when it doesn’t exist.

He watches me as I pant and whine and paw at his chest before giving in to my plea, and filling me to the root. I cry with glee at the first initial jolt of pain. The first stretch of my flesh around his rock-solid cock and the invasion of it stabbing my womb. He pulls out to the tip and thrusts in again, this time even harder.

“Yes,” I moan. “Yes, again. Harder.”

And after a marriage—a life—of order, routine, and restraint, my husband fucks me.

Finally. He’s finally heard me. Maybe last weekend didn’t hurt us like I initially thought. Maybe he just needed to see what I needed. See what I want with him.

I moan louder than I ever have. I tell him how good he’s fucking me, how big he feels inside me, how badly I want to taste his seed all over my tongue and tits. He’s silent, for the most part, with the occasional grunt. He looks as if he’s concentrating, like he’s focused on not coming too soon and ending the moment. I don’t question it. I just want him to keep pounding me into the headboard and keep squeezing my tits hard enough to bruise.

When the feeling goes beyond splendid to the place where ecstasy can’t be defined, I take his hand and wrap his fingers around my throat.

“What are you doing?” He’s still stroking but his rhythm has slowed.

“I want you to choke me when I come for you. I want you to squeeze my neck so hard I see stars. Then fuck me until I black out.”

He stops.

He pulls out of me like my body is fueled by scorpion venom.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, sitting up.

“You want me to . . . ?” He can’t even say it. A grown fucking man pushing forty and he can’t even speak candidly about sex with his wife.

“It’s no big deal, Tuck. Lots of couples enjoy erotic asphyxiation. It heightens the orgasm.” I reach out to pull him back to me, but he retreats even farther.

“Heidi . . . that’s sick. That’s wrong. How can someone like you . . . ?”

“Someone like me?” I scoff. “Someone who has been raped and beaten?”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not? It’s true! That’s what you think of me, isn’t it? That I’m sick and fucked in the head.”

I climb out of bed, the delicious soreness between my legs forgotten and make my way to the bathroom. Tucker is right on my heels, his penis looking just as sad and pathetic as he does.

“Heidi, that’s not what I’m saying. This . . . thing . . . it’s not healthy. You’re acting out sexually because you refuse to confront what’s really troubling you. And knowing what I know . . . seeing what he had done to you . . . I can’t perpetuate some violent fantasy that you need to reenact in a quest for control. I can’t do that to you, baby. I love you, don’t you see that? I love you so much, Bunny. I’d rather die than hurt you. Just the thought of inflicting pain on you makes me sick.”

I cross my arms over my bare breasts. “That’s all you think this is. Residual effects from my attack? Is it inflicting pain that makes you sick or the fact that I want it?”

Ignoring my questions, Tucker offers his hand, and musters up a reassuring smile. I ignore both. “Come on, let’s go back to bed. It’s been a long week for both of us. We’re probably just both exhausted and on edge.”

“You’re right. I will. But first, I need you to leave.”

He frowns, dropping his hand. “Leave?”

“Yes. You refuse to fuck me, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to fuck myself. In private.”

Shock slaps him in the face so hard that it turns bright red. I step forward so that he has to step back and don’t stop until his bare feet hit the carpet of the bedroom. Then I slam the door, locking it behind me, before sliding down against it.

I sit on the bathroom floor for forty-five minutes, the sounds of my sobs muffled by the running faucet. By the time I climb into bed, Tucker is already fast asleep, blissfully ignorant to my discontent. Some things never change.

Chapter Fifteen

It’s late when I wake up, but I feel like I haven’t slept in days. My head is weighted with lead, my mouth is lined with wool, and my eyelids have been fused together with Krazy Glue. Still, I know I’m alone without even having to reach out and touch Tucker’s pillow, his body merely a faint, warm memory on the palm of my hand. However, there’s a white notecard, ink-stained with his messy chicken scratch.

Heidi,

Got called in early and didn’t want to wake you.

About last night . . .

I think we should talk.

Dinner tonight?

Just the words last night nearly cause me to break into hives. I can’t forget the look of sheer disgust and horror on Tuck’s face when I asked him to squeeze my throat as I climaxed. He had been so accommodating to what I wanted—thrusting deeper, harder. Touching me in a way that he had never done before. I thought maybe . . . maybe last weekend had changed him. I mean, to let another man sleep with your wife while you watch and pleasure yourself is pretty damn progressive. And it’s not like he just let it happen. He wanted it. Just as much as I did. Maybe even more.

And the things he was saying to Ransom . . . the way he was instructing him . . .