All but one. All but that first night, when he’d been too new, too novel to truly let go with. “It’s real.”

“Oh…” His heavy breathing left her skin slick where his lips teased her jaw. “This is his fantasy you’re realizing. Him watching us, and you taping me – that’s mine. What’s yours, Sam?”

“I… I get to sleep with you.”

“That’s still his. What’s yours?”

Her fantasies… They were so simple, so blah compared to Mike’s and Bern’s. Sometimes when she made love to Mike, she imagined he was someone else: a celebrity, or a character from a movie or TV show or book. Someone not unlike Bern – an exemplification of exquisite maleness. Like any woman, she fantasized about the lovers she had assumed she’d passed up forever in exchange for the security of monogamy. She’d explored that variety from the safety of her imagination. And now, in reality. On her couch.

“This is his and mine,” she told Bern, fingers tangling in his hair.

He held her stare, and something in that look said he didn’t believe her. But all he said was, “Then I better give it to you good.”

And he did. The sex grew rougher, quicker, needier. Lit by the glow of the computer, Bern’s face was set in stark concentration, his teeth nearly clenched and his breaths coming in low grunts to punctuate each thrust. Sam felt every ounce of that aggression. It echoed through her, but she felt her own ferocity mirroring his. She wanted him. She loved the way he wanted her.

She wrapped her arms tight around him, hugging his strong, long body close, urging his hips with the greedy motions of her own. Messy sex, with the most obvious views blocked from the camera’s watching eye. Not porno-hot or choreographed to incite. Just two people who wanted each other in the homeliest and most urgent ways, two bodies giving and taking and sweating and aching together.

“What do you need, Sam?” He practically breathed the question, surely just a groan to the microphone.

“This.”

“What else? Tell me how to get you there. Because I can’t last forever.”

“Make your angle sharper, so – yeah. Just like that.” He’d raised his hips a little higher, so the base of his cock brushed her clit with every stroke. “God yeah. Exactly like that.” She threaded her fingers through his hair and held on tight, eyes shutting. She let the room become a concept, a dark, warm space populated by their mingled breath and heat and noises. She felt release inching closer with every push of his body, like he was forcing her to the edge, stroke by stroke by stroke.

“Make me come,” she whispered.

He gave it to her faster, strokes shorter and rougher.

“Yeah. Like that.”

“Come for me, honey.”

“I will. Don’t stop.”

All it took was a half dozen more pushes, and she was there. And so was Bern. He didn’t slow when her moan announced her orgasm – he raced home beside her, his own groan turned staccato by the frantic hammering of his hips. And with no chance to come down, Sam felt an aftershock rising up.

“Don’t stop,” she begged when his release had his hips locking. “Don’t stop, don’t stop.”

With a pained gasp he obeyed, thrusts hard and uneven. Sam held his neck and arm, nails digging, and rode a second shorter, sharper orgasm. As it crested she released her grip, and Bern stilled. He was softening inside her, and his body loosened to match.

“Holy shit.”

Sam nodded, lost for words. She stroked his damp back and he caught his breath, racing exhalations steadily deepening against her throat. But as the fog of the orgasms lifted, so did the relief they’d offered.

Sam felt sober instantly – backhanded by reality.

She glanced to the side, to the digital green light that said her computer was recording.

Mike can’t watch this.

Good God, what had she been thinking? She hadn’t been thinking. She’d let her attraction mute her good sense and set Mike’s rights and feelings aside to meet her own momentary, impulsive needs.

If he watched, he’d see that the sex had been different. No doubt of it.

He’d notice how Bern hadn’t once looked at the camera. He’d notice there was no dirty talk… not the cocky kind, meant for his ears. He’d notice that Sam hadn’t even bothered to take her shirt and bra off – that the show hadn’t been on her mind, but the sex certainly had. He’d notice that Bern the exhibitionist had been almost completely absent, and that Sam had just slept with someone entirely new.

“Fuck.”

Bern raised himself up on straight arms, expression darkening from bliss to worry. “You okay?”

She sat up, forcing him to his knees. There was a naked man on her and Mike’s couch. She stood and clamped a hand between her legs, fingers met by the spoils of everything they’d just done. “No, I’m not sure I am.”

“You thinking about your cousin?”

“No. I’m thinking about Mike.” She hurried to hit STOP on the computer, feeling ridiculous – shirt, no pants, hand making a dam between her thighs. “I can’t let him watch this. That was way too…” She turned, finding Bern holding out the toilet paper roll. Dignity abandoned, she dabbed between her legs, then pulled on her underwear and pants.

Bern stood, and she hated the hungry way her gaze sought his chest and belly as he hiked up his shorts and jeans.

He tugged on his tee, and as the collar fell into place to reveal his face, Sam found his brow gathered in worry. “That was… It was intense, yeah. And probably not what he’s expecting to see.”

She shook her head, panic rising.

“Sit,” he said gently.

She did, feeling that wetness along her sex and a pang of shame.

Bern crouched before her. “It’ll be okay.”

“Will it?”

“I know, that wasn’t… that wasn’t right, was it?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

“We’ve been making porn for him before,” Bern said, attention on Sam’s fidgeting hands. He took them, but she slithered her fingers free.

“Don’t.”

“Sorry.”

“That was… like lovemaking, wasn’t it?” she asked, body flashing hot, then ice-cold.

He nodded.

“I mean, not that we’re in love,” she added, unwilling to even entertain that idea. “But you know what I mean. That was intense, and emotional, and just way too different. That…” She met his eyes, fear tightening her chest. “That was just for us, wasn’t it? There was no room in that for Mike at all.”

Bern wore an expression she’d never seen on that handsome face, and it dunked her in ice water. He agreed. And she had to wonder, had he known as she had in the back of her mind, that what they’d done was wrong? Had he suppressed that glaring fact for the sake of lust? Or had he known all along that he’d let things get as intimate and private as he had, and chosen to go there regardless? She wasn’t sure she could handle knowing which was the truth, and focused instead on the crisis at hand, the unerasable mistake they’d just made.

“I can’t show Mike that.”

“Will you tell him it happened?”

“I have no idea. I feel like… I feel like I just cheated on him. For real.”

Bern’s gaze retreated, moving around the room. “I don’t really know what to say. I’m sorry, I guess —”

“Don’t. Don’t be sorry. Neither of us meant for that to happen the way it did. Right?”

“No, not like that.”

She chose to believe him. “We got carried away. We were doing exactly what we had his permission to, just sort of…”

“Doing it all wrong,” Bern offered, with a hint of a sheepish smile.

“Pretty much.” She wished she could mirror even a sliver of his levity, but she didn’t feel it. Who had he just betrayed, after all? A man he’d known for a couple of months, while the solidity of Sam’s entire marriage felt damaged.

Bern touched Sam’s feet, and she let him. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. Honestly. This isn’t what I stayed for tonight. I only wanted to be what you needed.”