They had their whole lives to figure out the next phase of their marriage.

She would explain to Pete as best she could. After that, she’d let it go until they got home. She opened the shower door. Pete had laid a towel out for her on a hook. He wasn’t back inside yet, so after she dried off, she padded over to the closet. She opened the door to get to her luggage, her stomach rumbling loudly. “The food!” she cried.

She’d forgotten all about it!

Emma hadn’t spotted anything by the door when she’d come back. She turned from the closet and rushed into the living area, but there was no cart sitting there.

The phone was blinking, which was easy to see in the darkened room.

She walked over and picked it up and held it to her ear. “You have one new message,” a prerecorded voice said. “Press pound and the number two to hear your message.”

She did as asked.

A smooth male voice sounded on the other end. “Mr. and Mrs. Slater, this is Matteo in the kitchen. Your food was delivered, but when we found you were not in, we brought it back to the kitchen. Please give us a call, and we will happily make you fresh dishes and send them right over. Thank you.”

Emma hung up and punched the button marked Room Service. A woman answered on the first ring. “Hello,” Emma said. “This is villa number seven. We’re back now and would love to have our room-service order delivered now.”

“Of course. We were waiting on your call. It will arrive in ten minutes.”

“That’s wonderful. Thank you!” She hung up right as Pete walked in.

He stood in the living room with a towel cinched around his waist. He moved toward her, kissing her on the temple and said, “We need to talk.”

12

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Their food came exactly ten minutes later. Pete was starving. Both he and Emma were dressed in PJs, deciding to wait to have their discussion until after they’d eaten. Pete had on a pair of light cotton pajama pants, and Emma wore a sleeveless nightgown in a buttery yellow. She looked radiant. Pete watched her as she ate. Even when she was distressed, she looked beautiful.

“This food is amazing,” Emma said around her last bite of crab cake. “How are we going to afford to come back here every year? We’re going to be so spoiled rotten by the time we leave, we won’t want to go anyplace else.”

“The food is definitely good,” Pete agreed, finishing up his lobster roll. “From what we’ve seen so far, they do everything right.” He picked up a glass of water and took a swallow. They’d decided not to open up a bottle of wine, since they were both too exhausted to enjoy it. They were going to save it for another night. Pete hoped there would be something to celebrate on this trip.

He stood up and walked his empty plate back to the cart they’d wheeled in. He set it down, grabbed the tray of chocolate-covered fruit, and brought it back to the table in front of the couch. There was a nice array of strawberries, kiwi, and pineapple covered in chocolate and fanned out with a chocolate-covered cherry in the middle.

He set it in front of his wife and sat back down, leaning forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. “Okay,” he started, “now we need to talk about what happened back at the pool. We’ve always upheld the rule of if we both say yes there is no guilt or jealousy afterward. I don’t understand why you’re upset.”

Emma set her fork down on her empty plate and sat back, giving him a long appraising look before she answered. “I’m not angry.”

“Then what are you? I’m having a hard time understanding and trying to decipher what’s going on with you these last few weeks. I know what we just did with Mallory was unexpected, and maybe we should’ve talked about it more before we jumped in, but this is what the island is all about. And it’s not like we’re strangers to the lifestyle. We’ve done what happened back there more than a hundred times before with zero issues. We love pleasure, excitement, and adventure in our bedroom, and I can’t figure out why you’re unhappy. This is what our marriage is all about.”

Emma picked up a piece of kiwi artfully half-dipped in chocolate. She took a bite. “I think that’s exactly the problem for me. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to articulate this very well, because what I’m feeling hasn’t been easy to pin down in my mind, but what you just said is the main issue for me. Sex with others is what our marriage has become, in totality.” She held her hand up before he could interject. “But that’s not how it started. When we decided to invite others into our bedroom, we were deeply in love and we wanted to explore ultimate pleasure together. The joy we both felt after an episode gave us an emotional high and a connection. It bound us together. That fed into our everyday life, and it made us full. Now, sex, at least for me, has become solely about the act, getting off, and then finding the next episode to feed the machine. It’s not about raw emotions anymore, and it doesn’t enrich our everyday life. It’s become this separate entity to feed a craving, void of any emotion, nothing more.”

Pete took it all in, trying to understand what his wife was telling him. “I’m not following everything you’re saying, though I’m trying,” he said. “Are you ultimately telling me you don’t want to be in the lifestyle anymore?”

“I’m not sure,” Emma said. “I told you what I’m feeling is complicated. Ultimately, I’m fine with continuing to invite others into our bedroom, but only if we can find the emotional connection that went missing first.” She moved her hand in the space between them. “We’re the part that’s broken. You and me.”

“I hear you, but I have to admit I’m at a loss, because I don’t feel like there’s anything missing between us,” Pete said. “What happened to make you feel this way? Was there a big change? Or did I do something specific?”

“No,” Emma said, rubbing her forehead. “You didn’t do anything specific. I think it’s just been an erosion of our relationship over time. It’s like we”—she gestured between them again—“have lost the connection between love and sex somewhere along the way. We have sex, but there’s no love attached. I want to feel that love again. I need to feel it. I crave that connection with you.”

“I love you, Emma. I always have,” he said emphatically. “I’m not sure how I can prove that to you any differently than I have been, and that worries me.” The things Emma was saying weren’t things that could be fixed with roses or a night out on the town. Plus, Pete didn’t feel like their emotional connection had eroded.

To him, nothing had changed between them.

“I know you love me. That’s not the issue,” Emma said. “And I love you. Like I said, it’s the connection we lost, that strong bond that makes us crazy for each other. That’s what’s missing. Like with Mallory just now. We both got off, but afterward, it felt hollow. You were in your own little world when you came. You didn’t even look over to meet my gaze, and I was in mine. There was no spark between us.”

“But you aren’t mad we did it, right?” Pete said. “That’s not what this is about.”

“No, I’m not mad we did it. I’m just tired of it. Technically, at the moment I orgasmed, I was elated. I enjoy pleasure. I always have. But what I didn’t like was that you didn’t seem to notice me once we got going, and that’s because you were wrapped up in the act of your own singular pleasure. Sex used to be about us, and I want that back.”

“Okay.” Pete rose and started to pace. “I kind of understand what you’re saying, but I still don’t feel the same. To me, sex has always been the same. We have fun, and we both end the night with orgasms. I don’t see how what we did with Mallory was any different, other than it being spontaneous from what we normally do.”