I’d gotten complacent. I let myself think I’d won him back. That our separation was over and we were about to open a new chapter in our marriage. I’d let the idea of a future with him get real when I took the pregnancy test, and he was so perfect, so comforting in his dominance, I let the hope solidify.

Because who could be so intimate and still walk away?

What kind of person played a woman’s body like a well-loved instrument without caring about the woman inside it?

I had him. He wasn’t going to say good-bye. I couldn’t imagine being without him, and in my little cocoon of self-reflection, he felt the same way.

Complacency is the prologue to calamity.

I was going to be diligent. Stay on task. This wasn’t the time to get distracted by a pregnancy test that changed nothing.

The strategy was to make sure he understood that he loved me. The tactic was to submit. To show him that even in submission, I was still the woman he loved.

Buck up, buttercup. There’s work to do.

* * *

Him: Trousers open. Shirt buttoned. Tie draped, not knotted. Socks. Watch big as a dinner plate.

Me: Wet hair. Stockings. Garter. Bra. He’d taken away my panties. I wasn’t clothed in much more than his stare.

“Where’s the box?” he asked, doing up his cuff. I’d seen him do it a hundred times, and it was never as sexy as it was that night.

“In my bag, sir.”

“Get it and present it to me.”

I padded out to my bag in my bare feet. As soon I was out of his sphere, I remembered the single pink line. What it meant. The years I’d have to wait to start a family. As soon as I was back in the bedroom with the box, those years fell off me. He didn’t make me forget, but his presence protected me from myself. Even saying nothing, he gave me permission to not worry. I needed that or I was going to cry again.

I got on my knees, looked down, and held it up to him. The corners were blunted and the tape had curled at the edges, but I hadn’t opened it. I was proud of myself.

He plucked it out of my hands. “You did good with this.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You all right, huntress?”

“Yes, sir.”

Seeing outside myself, I was saying sir more than usual. I was more compliant in attitude as well as action. If I kept this up, he would realize something was wrong before I had the empty, clear feeling I got from making his will my own. That would be a lot of wasted sirs.

He took a small knife from his pocket and slashed the paper and tape off an edge, then down at a right angle.

“You conquered your curiosity.” He handed me the slashed box. “Go on.”

I opened it to find a small velvet box with the top on a hinge. I creaked that open. The shiny chrome object inside was a four-inch-long bulb with a ring on the end. I took it out, hooking my finger in the circle.

“Is this what I think it is?” I asked.

“What do you think it is?”

“A Christmas ornament.”

He looped his finger inside the ring and took the toy from me. “Exactly right.” He put the end against my lips, running the curve of the object along them. “Lick it.” His voice was so soft and so stern at the same time.

I put out my tongue and tasted the hard metal.

“Open your mouth.” When I did, he slid it in and out along the flat of my tongue until it went all the way in without gagging me. “Close it.”

I sealed my lips around the base, leaving the ring outside my lips.

“The way it’s in your mouth is exactly the way it’s going to fit in your ass. You’ll want to lubricate it with your spit. Be generous.”

I tried to swallow my fear, but the plug kept my throat from closing. Adam took my hand and led me to the bed, guiding me onto my back. He opened my legs and pushed my knees back, squeezing the flesh of my thighs to expose me to his eyes.

My throat hummed, but I kept my lips locked and my tongue curled around the bulb. I eased into submission, and sexual pleasure merged with a rightness that washed away pain.

Adam bent down and licked the length of my seam. He sucked and kissed me without reservation or pause. He used his fingers to move the lubrication to my ass and back again. I groaned, eighty percent of the way to orgasm.

He stood and slid his finger in the metal ring. “Open.”

I opened my mouth, and a thick line of spit tethered the plug to my tongue.

“Hands and knees.” He slapped my bottom as I complied. “I’m putting this inside your ass.”

“Then what?”

He couldn’t fuck me if there was a plug in me. Right? I didn’t know how it was supposed to fit in the first place.

“Then we’re going out.”

“With it in me?”

“Yes. Trust me.”

He slid it across my ass, back and forth. There was plenty of lubrication on it, and the twenty percent of an orgasm I had left pounded at the gate.

“I’m going to take this slow,” he said. “If there’s more than a little pain, you need to speak up. It shouldn’t hurt. Just breathe.”

“Okay.”

He slid it in my ass so slowly it felt as if it wasn’t moving at all. I pushed against it. It went in a little, stretching me.

“Breathe,” he whispered, putting his hand on my lower back and guiding me toward him. I stretched farther. “Does it hurt?”

“No. It’s definitely something. But no pain.”

“That’s the widest part,” he said, and with one last push, he got it all the way inside. My body closed around the base. “It’s in.”

I twisted around, looking at him over my shoulder. He had his cock in his hand.

“Make it hurt,” I whispered.

He drew his hand down my back, considering it.

“Later,” he said, sliding into me.

He fucked me hard from behind. I’d never felt anything like it. The weight. The stretch. The way his cock rubbed it through a membrane wall. I was completely full and fully complete, reaching orgasm with my whole body. He bent around me, his hand on my throat, gentle and firm as he came inside me.

His hoarse whisper seemed involuntary, straight from the gut, bypassing heart and brain. One word.

“You.”

I closed my eyes and let him kiss my neck and whisper in my ear. I was perfect. I was beautiful. I was so very good.

One pink line perfect.

One lonely line beautiful.

One single line good.

I didn’t feel inadequate for not being pregnant.

I felt inadequate for not creating a marriage worth being born into.