“Hang on.” Sam got up to grab a dish towel and wrapped the corn in it for him. “Where did you hit him?”

“Jaw.”

“Tell me you didn’t break it.”

“Guy never seemed to shut up, so I’d say no.”

She shook her head. “He didn’t say anything nasty, did he?”

“Not exactly.”

“He didn’t call me a slut, or threaten to tell everyone what we’ve been doing?”

“No.”

“Then he didn’t deserve that. You’d never punch me in the face, and I’m more responsible for what happened last night than he was.”

Mike sighed, eyes shutting for a moment. “Until your wife develops feelings for another man, I won’t ask you to understand.”

“I guess this answers all those questions I had, about how far into reality your kink could actually cross before the threat stopped being sexy and just started being threatening.”

“My kink is about sex. Sex isn’t sacred to me, apparently. But feelings are.”

“He can touch my body but not my heart. Is that it?”

Mike nodded once.

Sam heaved a sad breath. “Wish I could separate the two as tidily as you can.”

He met her eyes at that. “He basically told me the same.”

“And is it really so hard to understand?”

He looked to the floor, thinking about it for a minute or more before glancing up. “For me? Maybe it is. I can’t imagine looking at another woman and feeling anything more than the smallest flicker of curiosity.”

She touched his knee. “You’re different, though, Mike. You’re so hardwired for loyalty – it’s right at the heart of your sexuality.”

He frowned, like he’d never thought about it like that.

“You’re almost pathologically a one-woman man,” she went on. “I’ve always found that attractive about you. But most people aren’t like that, I don’t think. Loving one person doesn’t stop us from finding others attractive, or even having crushes – harmless ones, usually. Ones we have no interest in acting on. But me and Bern… We acted first, and then the feelings followed. We fucked up, believe me, but we never meant to. He’s never asked me if I’d leave you to be with him. Not even close.”

A pause. “You swear that’s true?”

“Absolutely. Never once has he made me feel like he wanted that – to replace you. Why? Did he say something to you?”

“He did.”

Her heart stopped. “What, exactly?”

“That if things were different, he’d want to date you.”

She frowned. “And was that all of it? That he’d date me if you weren’t in the picture somehow?”

“You don’t find that inappropriate?”

She shook her head. “No. Not at all. My feelings would be a little hurt if he didn’t think that, frankly. Maybe I never spelled it out, before we started all this, but I want for the man we mess around with to like and respect me. I mean, don’t you?”

Mike set the corn aside and scrubbed at his face. Through his fingers he said, “I don’t even fucking know anymore.”

She rubbed his thigh for a moment, then stood and grabbed her purse from the easy chair.

He looked up. “Where are you off to?”

She shrugged. “I dunno. I need to be doing stuff. I’ll pick up some groceries or something. I’m not going to see him,” she added, meeting his eyes over her shoulder.

“I didn’t think you were.”

“I’ll be back. Hour or less.” She couldn’t quite make out what she was feeling, and staying so close to Mike’s jumble of emotions wasn’t helping. They both needed space, and a little time to process.

“Okay,” he said softly. “Drive safe.”

Sam shut the door quietly behind her and headed for her car. She didn’t start it, just sat there holding the wheel and feeling her wedding band rubbing against its seam. She’d gone three years barely aware of that ring, it had become such a part of her body. As invisible as her knuckle or fingernail. Then last year, it had become something so much more loaded when she began removing it for their games. And a couple of months before, when she’d first seen Bern Davies’s gaze catch on it. And last night, when she’d felt it click against his empty wineglass after she told him to leave. She almost wanted a new one now. This one had seen too much. Seen the rise and now the fall of their sex life 2.0 – a glorious, thrilling ascent; a stumble, a fall, a punch.

Could be way worse. This could have wrecked her and Mike, and it didn’t feel as though it would. Her regrets wouldn’t fade quickly, but she wouldn’t have the blood of their ruined marriage on her hands.

Still, this wasn’t how it was supposed to end – their experiment with Mike’s sexuality. They’d turned that contentious, thorny kink of his from something that upset him into something that took sex to a completely new reality. They’d let the beast free, and it hadn’t ripped them to shreds. Instead Sam had poisoned the poor creature, and she didn’t know if that thing that had fueled Mike’s body like nothing else would ever recover.

He wanted me to cheat on him. In a way. With her body, in their games – in their imaginations. Then with her body, for real.

She’d always known the experiment would end, just not the way it had. In all her planning, she’d never thought to worry about this. Call yourself an actuary, do you? Hell of a job she’d done gaming the dangers, spending all her time getting spun up about privacy and discretion, about blood tests and leaked sex tapes.

Then again, her red flags always waved from amid the fields of cold, hard figures. She’d been out of her depth, up to her neck in a system whose dynamics she’d known nothing about, and with her marriage at stake. No numbers to go by, only gut feelings. Intuition. Good intentions.

And when have intentions ever guaranteed a given outcome?

Human error was always on her radar… yet falling in love had never entered the equation. If that’s what this had been.

She looked to the house, and saw Mike’s face framed in one of the small windows that flanked the front door. Her shoulders dropped… then squared as she realized what she needed to be doing.

Mike got his chance to end this thing that I started. And by all accounts, he’d fucked it up. His trust was a lot to demand after last night, but she swung the car door open and headed for the house. Mike let her in and she faced him in the entryway.

“I’m going to say good-bye to him.” Even just saying those words aloud, something grated inside her. Saying good-bye to him… it felt wrong. As wrong as her actions of the previous night.

Mike’s own reaction was instantaneous – a wince of surprise and disgust. “I don’t want you to.”

“I appreciate that. But this is complicated for me. I don’t think you know what it’s like to let someone into your life in such an intimate way, then to suddenly not be able to say good-bye. To end it for yourself. I won’t touch him – not in any way. But I’ll say good-bye to him, face-to-face. For maybe three hours now, he’s been somebody you wanted to punch – and now you have. But for the past couple of months he’s been as much a part of realizing your fantasies as I have. I’m going to tell him thank you for that, and apologize that it’s all had to end the way it has. And then I’ll never see him again.”

“I think it’s simpler, just letting it be done with —”

“I wasn’t asking for your opinion, or your permission.”

His expression hardened, then surrender smoothed his brow. “Fine. If that’s what you need.”

“It is. I’ll be back in an hour and a half. If he’s even home.”

Mike nodded, and she turned back around and walked out the door.

She found Bern’s address in her e-mail. The drive took less than twenty-five minutes in actuality, yet it also took three days, thanks to her impatience, and three seconds, according to her nerves. In a blink, in an ice age, she was taking her cue from the other vehicles on Newett Street and parking her car half on the sidewalk.