Zach stared after the car and felt Nora take a shard of himself away with her. It was his rule, his proclamation that they wouldn’t become lovers until the book was finished. But for a few moments he’d felt no guilt, and the world hadn’t ended.

Zach entered his building and took the elevator up to his flat. He was out of his coat by the time he got to his door. He pulled off his shirt, yanked down his jeans and kicked his clothes into the corner of the room before crawling with the reluctance of a weary soldier into the bitter trench of his bed.

Closing his weary eyes, Zach couldn’t stop himself from picturing Grace. Some nights she would stop his hands, desperate to undress him herself. Her brief flirtation with aggression over, she would turn timid as her fingers, earnest and nervous, unbuttoned his cuffs, his collar, slipping the shirt off his shoulders so slowly he would shiver. And she would look at him with such wonder, such desire that he, a married man, a graduate of dozens of beds, and so accustomed to the appreciative stares of women that they no longer registered as flattery, would find himself feeling suddenly shy. She looked at him as if she’d never seen his bare chest before, his uncovered arms, his naked stomach and back until he felt he had never been seen like that before and knew, likely, he never had. The next day he would yawn and stretch and stumble through the hours grateful he’d gotten a better offer than a mere good night’s sleep.

Zach came hard on his hand and rolled over onto his stomach. God, he missed his wife.

* * *

Nora stood at the foot of her bed and stared at the black silk abyss before her. Like many of her characters she slept on black sheets. But unlike them, she did so for reasons more practical than seductive. She wrote in bed and often fell asleep with her pens uncapped and dripping. Wesley’s moving in over a year ago put a stop to any overnight guests. These days the only stains on these sheets were from ink.

Nora pulled on her pajamas, grateful to be in comfortable clothes again. What a night…she’d been so stupid to take Zach with her to the Circle. It was a miracle they’d made it out without anyone telling Zach she wasn’t just a Domme, but a Dominatrix and that the Circle wasn’t where she played but where she worked. He’d stomached the Circle but just barely. Wesley loathed what she did. Zach wouldn’t be any more understanding than the kid was.

The kid… The ghost of guilt passed through the room as she remembered Michael. But still…he had been so eager and ready and so desperate to know that he wasn’t alone in his strange desires. And if it hadn’t been her, it would have been some girl, vapid and foolish and completely unaware of the rare creature she fumbled about with awkwardly. Michael deserved better. He deserved the ceremony and the story.

After they’d finished and she had untied him, he had curled into her arms and cried. She’d rocked him and let him talk. “I always thought there was something wrong with me,” he’d confessed. “I thought I was wrong to want this.” And she knew he wasn’t weeping because of sadness or shock, but because all babies cry when they’re born.

Nora glanced around. The ghost was gone. But there was no way she could sleep in her own bed tonight, not with the memory of Søren’s taunts still echoing in her ears.

She padded down the hall in her sock feet pausing outside a half-open door. Wesley lay on his side, his back to her, the sheet draped over his hip.

“I’m awake, Nor,” Wesley said without turning over.

Nora tiptoed into his room and sat on the edge of his bed. He rolled onto his back and looked up at her.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked.

“There’s a monster in my room,” Nora whispered unnecessarily.

“Big baby.” He threw back the covers. “Get in.”

Nora dived in with juvenile glee and wriggled next to him flipping and flopping over like a fish on land until Wesley grabbed her by the arms and pinned her down.

“Why, Wesley. I never knew you cared.” She batted her eyelashes at him.

“If you’re gonna sleep with me, woman, you have to behave yourself.”

Nora tried to ignore how good it felt lying beneath Wesley with his hands on her upper arms and his naked chest in front of her face. She wanted to raise her head, kiss his shoulders, his strong neck.

“Yes, sir,” she said meekly.

Wesley raised a hand and brushed her hair off her face.

“Your hair’s damp,” he said. “You took another shower.”

Nora heard the worry in his voice.

“I didn’t have sex with Zach. Or Søren. Sometimes a shower’s just a shower, Wes,” she said, conveniently omitting Michael.

“Was he there?” Wesley asked, letting her go and stretching out next to her. Nora lay on her side to face him. It was funny how much more comfortable she felt in Wesley’s far smaller full-size bed than her huge luxurious king-size.

“He was. We talked some. We didn’t play. He wanted to but I stopped him.”

“You actually told him no?”

Nora sat up and switched on the lamp on the bedside table. She turned her back to Wesley and unbuttoned her pajama top.

“Nora, you don’t—”

But Nora didn’t stop. She let her shirt fall off her arms. She lifted her hair and showed him her naked back.

“See?” she asked. “Not a mark on me. You can check the rest of me if you want.”

She waited for Wesley to speak but instead he grazed her bare back with his fingertips. His touch was so tenuous that it almost tickled.