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“I want you to guess correctly.”
He laughs, and it is the real one. “That’s not a real thing, Nilsson.”
“I am aware.”
I look at him. The suit fits him too well for me to go on pretending I am thinking about his conversational habits. Dark jacket. White shirt open at the throat since the tie came off. The ring on his left hand catching the lamp.
My husband. The word is still borrowed. The want is not.
I could pick up my shoes and my bag and go home. He would drive me if I asked. He would be unhappy about it and he would still open the door.
“Kiss me.”
He stops smiling. “Here?”
“Yes.”
He crosses the room. The first kiss is careful enough to irritate me, one hand at my waist and the other low on my back, nowhere near anywhere I spent weeks telling him not to compensate. I take the front of his shirt and pull him in.
That fixes careful. His mouth opens against mine and I feel the sound he makes before I hear it. My back meets the wall beside the stairs. He catches himself before his weight follows, shifting onto the left arm.
I get my palm flat on his chest and leave it there while he keeps going.
His mouth moves along my jaw. I turn my face and give him room, then take it back when I want his mouth again. There is no clinic down the hall. No appointment after this one. No unfinished note, and no rule I am breaking by wanting him.
Here there is only the answer I give him.
Colt lifts his head. “Still good?”
“Yes.”
“Say my name.”
I say it.
Something goes through his whole chest under my hand, and he does not make a joke about it, which is how I know what it cost him.
His jacket comes off first. I push it from his shoulders and he catches it before it reaches the floor, because of course he does, and drops it over the stair rail instead. I get two buttons of his shirt open before his right arm lifts.
“Not there.”
He stops immediately. I catch his wrist and move the hand lower, around my waist.
“I said not there. I did not say stop touching me.”
His fingers tighten.
“Useful distinction.”
“You have had months to learn it.”
“I was distracted.”
“By what?”
He looks down the front of my dress and back up at me.
He gets the zipper halfway down before it catches. I reach behind myself.
