“Nice that he doesn’t take you for granted, I guess.”

“No, definitely not.”

“And he’s watching us right now, right?” She could tell from Bern’s tone, the idea excited him. His voice had the nervous, giddy edge of a kid hoping they were getting away with something.

“He is. But I’m not supposed to ‘spot’ him. Though if he weren’t liking what he saw, he’d have let me know by now.”

“Well.” Bern was dying to crane his neck and find out who the mystery voyeur was, she could sense it.

“Don’t look,” she warned. “We’re doing such a convincing job so far.”

He leaned a little closer and there was that smell again – that personal scent more alluring than any clandestine cologne sample. He might only be coming so close to be compliant, following her and Mike’s script, but she felt a selfish thrill from his mere proximity. She reveled in the heat coming off his big body, could practically feel his weight on top of her.

“So what’s in it for you?” he asked.

She sipped her drink, stumped by the question. She’d never bothered posing it to herself. “Well, it’s his kink more than mine. So the first reason is to treat him. But he’s never pressured me to take it this far – I was the one who proposed all this. I guess what I get out of it is the pleasure of blowing his mind.”

“Wow.”

“It took a while for us to wind up here, believe me. Took a long time to trust that it really was something my husband wanted, that he wouldn’t regret it and end up resenting me, or that I’d end up feeling guilty, worried I’d done something I could never take back. Or resenting him for getting me to do something I never really wanted for myself.”

“But now you think maybe you might want it? For yourself?”

She studied him openly, her gaze skimming from his eyes to his throat, down his torso, and back up his gorgeous arms. Her logical brain didn’t have a ready answer to that question, but her body chimed in. “Yes, I think I just might.”

Mike’s head was so flooded with conflicting chemicals, he feared he might actually pass out.

Adrenaline, as his possessive instincts begged him to cross the floor and staple the guy’s throat to the wall with his hand. It blended with some secretion from his kink gland to create the most violent, maddening testosterone, the stuff snaking like lava through his veins, sending blood to his cock and heat to his chest. All the primal male switches inside him were flipped on, all the valves open. Made him want to fight and fuck and scream and come, all at once.

His brain and body were on fire, and it felt fucking phenomenal.

He sipped his beer, breathing deeply, trying to get used to the scene. It was what he’d been wanting in theory for months, and the pleasure was brutal. The jealousy was different with an actual, real man triggering it, and with his wife allowing the kind of contact he’d only ever fantasized about. Because he’d always trusted her implicitly.

He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t angry at her, standing so close to this other man, smiling and laughing, acting as though she weren’t married. His rational brain reminded his primitive one that she was doing this for him, and after ten minutes or more, the truth of it solidified and he felt the aggression disperse, eaten up by the excitement.

The reality of this situation turned him on more than he’d even hoped it might, and that frightened him.

It was his kink, not Sam’s, so if he felt this conflicted, how must this feel to her?

She didn’t look conflicted. If her piqued reception to that man’s flirting was merely an act, she’d sweep the Oscars.

Jealousy stirred his cock, to see her looking at another man that way. Those wry smiles had been his for the past five years, only his. That lip bite. That focused attention. The instincts kept flip-flopping in his head, but one thing was constant – the pounding erection between his thighs.

The guy was perfect. Tall, handsome, easygoing. His hair was dark, his face unshaven. Anything that created a contrast between him and Mike was a plus. Though the sentiment caught like a splinter in his heart, Mike hoped the attraction Sam was exhibiting was a hundred percent real.

But Jesus, he was in over his head, treading water to keep from drowning in all these feelings. Jealousy, rage, fear.

But no, don’t focus on the bad stuff. Surrender to the physical sensations, and never mind labeling them. She was doing all this for him, and it’d be a waste to everyone involved if he held himself back from enjoying it.

So when the waitress came around, Mike ordered a whiskey on the rocks and settled into the warmth it opened in him, settled into the buzz of the bar. Settled into the fire pumping through his veins at the sight of his wife laughing at another man’s joke, the casual touch of familiar fingers on a stranger’s arm.

I want to kill that cocksucker, Mike thought.

But I want to watch him fuck Sam about ten times worse.

CHAPTER FIVE

Samira couldn’t say which was more drunk-making – the wine or Bern.

Or the fact that Mike hadn’t given her the signal, implying that he must be cool with what was happening.

Sam was cool with it. Hell, she was hot from it.

She hadn’t expected that. She’d come here hoping for a signal that she could do this, for Mike, expecting the pleasure she might take from the experiment would come mainly from blowing his mind. Before finding herself at this moment, she’d been hoping to maybe feel intrigued by Bern, or at least receptive to the idea of sleeping with him. She’d been hoping for a lack of misgiving. Never had she thought she’d get this turned on. Yet here she was, a little weak and a little warm from this new man.

They were still standing by the wall, and no one was near enough to overhear what they said. Still Bern leaned close, speaking in private tones that made even mundane facts sound like seduction. He told her about his dog; his work-in-progress Colonial in Carrick that he was fixing up; how he liked to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity a couple of times a year, wiring new and repurposed homes for low-income families. Between that hushed, deep voice, that sweet-dirty accent, and those penetrating eyes, the words streamed into Sam’s ears and her overheated brain translated them through the filter of his body language.

I can’t wait to fuck you.

You won’t believe how thick my cock is.

I’m gonna make you scream my name in your husband’s bed.

“But it could be worse,” he was saying, and Sam had completely lost the thread of the conversation. Her gaze had dropped to his arm, flexed from holding his beer. This must be the inverted version of the hazard men ran into all the time, trying to speak to women with deep cleavage.

She nodded, hauling her attention a couple of feet higher, to his face.

He laughed. “I’m totally boring you, aren’t I?”

“No, no. Sorry.”

“Tired?”

She smiled. “I was thinking about sex, actually. Wine does that to me.” So do tall strangers with pleasantly shaped shoulders, it would seem.

Was that a blush behind his stubble? “Well.”

She sipped her drink, trying to hide her persistent smile.

“Does that mean I stand a chance?” he asked.

The question had her standing up straighter, the knowledge that he must be as into this as she was flooding her equally with pride and nerves. “I wasn’t sure what to expect when I met you. I didn’t know if I’d be a little attracted to you and maybe willing to round it up for the sake of the mission… but even if I’d gotten my hopes way up, you’d have surpassed them.”

His expression brightened. “Really?”

She nodded. “I think you’re very handsome. Even handsomer than the picture you sent. And I spent a lot of time looking at that picture and warning myself not to get my hopes up too high that you’d look like that in person.”