He laughed softly, a warm, airy chuckle that raised the bar’s temperature by five degrees. “Whatever gave me away? But you’re right – I’m from Kentucky. Raised in a tiny little farm town about halfway between Louisville and Nashville.”

“That must’ve been a culture shock, when you moved.”

“At first, but I love it here. I’ve always been a city boy at heart.”

“I bet I wouldn’t last an hour out in the country… Thanks for coming out of your way,” she added.

He waved the thought aside as he took a taste of his beer. “Drive took me ten minutes. And I’ll say this – you’re the most interesting date I’ve had in ages.”

“I’ll bet. Have you not met anyone for what you’d gone on that site for, originally?” she asked, meaning his exhibitionist streak.

“I quit looking, after you and I started talking. It was getting discouraging. There’s so few women on there, looking for that kind of thing. And I didn’t even really know how to roll it out without sounding like a perv. I think it’s sort of a lost cause. I got a hundred and one replies from so-called women, wanting to watch me… you know. On a webcam. But I wasn’t born yesterday.”

She frowned her sympathy. “You’d probably have better luck finding an open-minded steady girlfriend.”

“I know. But I ended a long-term thing this past winter. Not really ready for anything serious yet.”

Another point for Bern, that he’d had a grown-up, normal-person relationship. More proof that he was just as new to all this kinky stuff as they were.

Still, the topic wasn’t spurring their chemistry, and she knew there was a man sitting ten yards away, who was itching to see some physical boundaries bent. And they were hers to bend, as Bern couldn’t be expected to make the first move, not with somebody’s husband watching him.

So Sam uncrossed her legs, letting the instep of her high heel brush his calf.

He took the hint and stepped closer, his knees just breaching the V of her thighs.

Intruder, she beamed to Mike. Intruder between your wife’s legs. However barely.

Bern stooped a little to say, “I’m not nervous at all anymore.” His tone was dark, not particularly innocent. The shadow of a smile played just behind his lips, and Sam imagined kissing him. She could now, if she wanted to. He wanted it, she thought, and her body did as well. It was only her brain that needed a push. She took a deep swallow of her wine.

“I’m still a little nervous,” she admitted. “But it’s nice.”

“Tell me about yourself.” He spoke the words as though they were far more scandalous ones. Ones like, I can’t wait to get you home and bury my cock inside you. He was doing just as she’d asked: making this look as tawdry as possible for their one-man audience.

Boldly, she put her fingertips on his side, as though he’d just suggested something sinful. Ooh, firm. “What would you like to know?”

“Job?” he asked, switching his beer to the other hand so he could settle his cold fingers over her warm ones and press her palm flat against him. She rubbed him with her thumb, and something about the soft cotton or the hard muscle shot straight to her sex.

She cleared her throat. “I’m an actuary.”

“That’s something to do with insurance, right?” The slow, easy way he said it… God help her. He could probably read her the obituaries and she’d still get all itchy with want.

“Something, yeah. It’s exceedingly dull to anyone who doesn’t like numbers and statistics.” She bit her lip coyly, hoping the move didn’t look cheesy.

“But you do?” he prompted. “Like numbers and statistics?”

“I do. I like finding patterns and interpreting data. I was also captain of my high school math team. Are you turned on yet?”

He grinned, and it transformed his face. He smiled with one side of his mouth more than the other, making him seem at once friendly and unsavory, like a con man. “I think I just came.”

Sam laughed, then took a sip of her wine, savoring the taste, watching the garnet liquid swirl in her glass before she raised her chin to look him in the eyes. “What about you? What do you do, Bern Davies?”

“I’m an electrician.”

She blinked. “Really?”

He nodded. “Large-scale commercial stuff. I work for a contracting outfit that does office and retail renovations and refurbs.”

“Well, you’re in the right city for that. And I guess that means I can’t ask you to come over to fix how the lights go dim in my apartment when the microwave’s on high.”

He licked his lower lip. “I’d prefer to be asked over to tend to more interesting tasks. Though while I’m there, I guess I could take a look.”

Just then, the man seated next to Sam was greeted by a friend or date. “Here,” Sam said, and offered her stool. It was a perfect opportunity to move their talk a bit farther from the crowd at the bar. To remind herself how tall Bern was, and to give Mike a better view of that fact.

They relocated, and she leaned against the wall beside the jukebox. She forced her eyes not to seek Mike, though her peripheral vision told her exactly where he was and how perfect a vantage point he had. Bern took her cue, standing close enough for the toes of their shoes to touch, his black leather ones flirting with her pointy-toed heels. She imagined the items jumbled together on the bedroom carpet, her and Bern jumbled together across the comforter.

“You know, you never answered my question from the first e-mail,” he murmured.

She dredged the memory but came up short. “Which question was that?”

“About what your husband gets out of this whole… arrangement.”

“Oh, right.”

Again, that mischievous smile curled his lips. His head dipped only a few centimeters, yet the move seemed to cast her in a shadow, a similar darkness passing over his expression. “So what’s in it for him?”

“Well, I honestly can’t explain it much better than he could. He’s not a weak man at all, and he’s really assertive in every other aspect of his life. But he’s got an incredibly high-pressure job, and for some reason, the fantasies seem to take him out of all that. I think deep down, his worst fear is that he’s going to fail, that he’s not man enough. He’s going to find out he’s not the alpha dog and then he’ll get torn apart by the rest of the pack. So when we pretend he’s not capable of keeping me faithful or pleasing me in bed, that’s him confronting his deepest fear. But also living through it, so it loses its power over him. And for whatever reason, it turns his crank.”

“Wow.” Bern blinked, staring at the wall above her shoulder. “That’s fucking interesting.”

She smiled. “Isn’t it? Took me ages to feel like I understood it. And he doesn’t really feel like he understands it at all. But it resets something in him when he’s feeling really stressed from work, and it turns him on like nothing else does. Like it opens up some vein of naturally occurring Ecstasy in his brain.”

“Can’t argue with that. That’s what the idea of having someone watch does to me.”

“And I think… I dunno, I think there’s another side to it. A way different side, where he’s actually really smug and full of himself.”

“Oh?”

Sam felt herself blushing, unsure about sharing the thought, as she had no clue how attracted to her Bern might really be. But she decided to trust all the cues his body was offering hers. “Yeah. He thinks I’m… He thinks I’m really sexy, so there’s some part of him that likes the idea of another guy getting to enjoy me for an evening, all the while knowing that he’s the one who gets to keep me.”

After a thoughtful pause, Bern grinned. “That may be the sweetest, filthiest, most fucked-up thing I’ve ever heard.”

Sam laughed. “That’s my husband. Sweet and filthy. I think also… You know when you first meet a girl, but she’s not your girlfriend yet? There’s some kind of competitive drive, keeping you on edge. Whatever chemical’s happening there, I think that’s part of it, too. If he pretends other men still have a chance with me, or could take me away, he gets a hit of some aggressive male hormone.”