Blurb

Chapter 1 - Leo

It was the kind of diner that morphed into a sleazy bar the longer it stayed open. The kind where, somehow, as 7pm rolls by, the waffles and burgers give way to beers and shots, the lights dim and some kids start playing around with the old juke box that has a handwritten “NO BRIAN ADAMS” sign taped to it.

In the past, places like this had always felt like home to me. But these days, I just felt like an expat returning from a long trip away and realizing that I no longer understood the local customs as well as I thought I did.

I took a sip of my beer and tried hard not to pay any mind to the pair of girls in the corner, who’d been trying to catch my eye for the last twenty minutes. They were hot, in a kind of non-threatening way. Couldn’t have been older than twenty-two or twenty-three. In the past, I would have noticed the coy giggles, the cheap Girl’s Night Out heels and tight dresses, and I would have thanked my stars and bounced over there in a heartbeat, ready with more drinks and all my best bullshit anecdotes lined up for the evening.

But now, looking at them, I just felt …tired. Besides, now there was Sophia. Sweet, kind, sane Sophia.

I checked my watch.

Flicking my eyes to the door and scanning the street outside through the windows, I wondered whether this was some elaborate joke. Did I really live in a lame action movie where the hero gets a mysterious message, summoning him to his local greasy spoon for a shady business proposal?

I took another sip.

Not likely.

I checked my watch again, downed the last foamy mouthful of beer and stood up to leave. The girls pricked their ears. I made eye contact with the prettier one, and she froze and held my gaze across the room as I fished out some cash and slammed it on the counter.

Look, I’m not vain. I don’t give a shit, actually. But I do know how to play the field.

I know that girls will talk for eons about how they want a guy who’s kind, and treats them right, and is emotionally available and loves children and all that other crap. But take it from a traditionally hot guy out in the real world: what they really want is a rock-hard chest. A square jaw. A guy who looks at them in a way that makes them feel that sex is just an inevitability. A guy who doesn’t ask. Just claims.

For old time’s sake, I toyed with the idea of traipsing over there and seeing how long it would take for them to both be begging hard for it, to be competing with each other to out-slut one another.

I thought about it, but as a conventionally hot guy who knows exactly how to play the field …let’s just say that I’ve realized that it’s not a game I want to play anymore. I gave them a flirty smile – call it charity – and turned on my heel to leave.

“Leo Bianchi?”

I spun to see a man holding out his hand to me. I looked him up and down. A greasy, balding guy in a baggy suit with a watch that clattered on his hairy wrist and a shirt that looked like it was meant to be whiter.

“You’re late,” I said, and shook his hand.

When he laughed, he threw back his head, then he slapped me hard on the shoulder.

“Yeah, kid, he said you’d be plucky!” The man eased the bulk of his middle-aged form onto one of the bar stools. “Come on, sit down. Bianchi? My mother knew some Bianchis. You know Maria and Ed? Down in Boston?”

I could hear the girls behind me pick up their conversation again. I shook my head and gingerly took a seat beside him.

“No? Pity,” he said with a kind of fatherly disappointment, then ordered a beer and took a good few minutes to adjust his gut, smooth down his slacks and pass his dark eyes over me a few times.

“You look tense, kid. Relax,” he chuckled.

“What’s this about?”

He took a long sip of his beer, sucked his top lip and then frowned at me. “So, you starting up a nice little business for yourself, huh? Imports?”

My face prickled. The longer I stared at his greasy, rubbery face the more certain I was that either he had made some terrible mistake in asking me out here. Or worse, that he hadn’t.

“Yeah, so?” I said.

I had finally generated enough momentum to launch an import operation, bringing in Fairtrade coffee beans and other produce from Costa Rica for boutique coffee merchants all along the west coast. Funny thing, though, the company had only been officially registered for a few weeks, and basically nobody knew about it yet. Except Sophia, maybe.

“Well, we’re always looking for uh, you know, enterprising personalities…” he said, staring straight ahead.

“We?”

“Let’s call it a business offer. We get a brand spanking new channel to push our product, you get to offset those nasty import duties…”

I leaned back in my seat.

“You got the wrong guy,” I said, plainly.

He frowned at me again.

“Oh you’re the right guy, buddy. Little Leo? Came up with Lucille and her kids back in Bay Ridge?”

I broke out into a cold sweat.

“Who are you? How do you know me?”

“I don’t know you pal, but Uncle Vito does, and he told me you’d be interested.”

My heart nearly stopped.

“Haven’t heard that name in a long time,” I said quietly. “Thanks, but no thanks,” I managed to say, and got up to leave. The fat man extended a hand and pulled me back down with surprising strength.

“What? You’re leaving? I haven’t even finished my beer. No manners, I swear,” he grumbled under his breath. “And you haven’t even heard Vito’s offer yet.” He took another long swig, irritatingly confident that he had caught my attention.

Vito Roselli was an evil man.

A notorious man.

I had seen his hard, scarred face in grainy photos in the papers. On the news. Vito was the guy that everyone knew was crooked, but could do nothing about. He was the big bad wolf in a fairytale I wished didn’t exist; a world I was no longer a part of. For Vito, there was no right and wrong. No good and evil. There was only power. Those who had it, those who didn’t. End of story. And just hearing his name had my hackles up and my fists clenched.

“I’m not interested in any ‘offer’, sorry. I barely knew the guy, and that was a long, long time ago. I’ve moved on now. Things are looking good for me…”

“Aw, isn’t that nice?” he laughed.

I glared at him.

“And how did you get to where you are now, anyway, huh?” he asked, gesturing to me with his beer glass.

“I worked hard, I busted my--”

“Uncle Vito helped you,” he said, cutting me off.

“Bullshit.”

“You took his help quickly enough once before, that’s what he says anyway.”

“That’s ridiculous, I was a kid…”

“You were eleven. Sounds old enough to me.”

I stood up, face hot.

“I had no choice. I had to do what I could to survive.” I wanted to hit him. I hadn’t hit a man in more than a decade, but I could sure make an exception for this asshole. He was chuckling now under his breath, shaking his head.

“And what about all those little girls, huh? What about their survival? They were just kids too, you know,” he said mysteriously, and stared blankly ahead of him again.

I felt dizzy. I sat down again.

The diner around me had emptied out. I felt like the blood in my veins had turned thin and was emptying out, too. I suddenly felt unsure of my ability to stand upright.

“Those …those are not just rumors?” I stuttered. Once I had spoken I realized how badly I didn’t really want him to answer. Again, he threw back his head and broke out into mocking laughter that made his immense gut wobble.

“Hey, pal, don’t give me that look. I’m not saying anything. I’m just saying, you’re being stupid if you think you’re innocent somehow. You know what my grandma always says? She says to be human is to be guilty. Smart woman. We all got blood on our hands, pal. Every one of us. Including you.”

“What are you getting at?”

His beer glass was drained, and he watched with boredom as the wet foam slid back down the empty sides again.

“I’m not getting at anything buddy. I’m just saying don’t play like you’re some good little citizen now or something.” He stood up, threw some coins onto the counter, burped quietly, then cast a weary gaze back out onto the street. “Uncle Vito will be in touch. My advice? Don’t be such a rude fucker when you talk to him.”

“I’m not talking to anyone,” I said.

He gave me a joking salute and smiled wryly at me.

“Oh, and by the way, happy birthday,” he said, and turned to leave.

“How do y—“, but he was already halfway out the exit. The bell on the door tinkled as it swung open and shut, and in an instant I was alone in the diner. I checked my watch. It had taken me more than two decades to run away from my past. And now, in the course of five minutes, it had all caught up with me.

Chapter 2 - Sophia

And what a happy birthday it was. The fact that we both shared the same birthday was only one of the things that made me think that my life with Leo was …fated somehow.

Leo was the only other person I had ever met with completely heterochromic eyes. And while I was blue in the left, brown in the right, he was brown in the left, blue in the right. We were similarly quiet, soulful people. We both loved cats. We shared the same favorite things and had the same pet peeves. We had only known each other for a year or so. But when that year was so cram-packed full of signs and omens, did it matter?

The stars were aligning for me. We were both turning thirty, my massage school was finally picking up steam and his business was finally taking shape. Once I lined up one part of myself with the corresponding part of Leo, it was like all the other pieces could more easily fall into place. I had spent the first six months of our relationship looking over my shoulder, wondering what freakish cosmic error had gifted me such a perfect guy, and the other six months in dumb awe at how lucky I was to get that gift.

It was really all coming together for me.

Finally.

I had a cute condo, a job I adored, two precious kitties and a smoking hot boyfriend who doted on me. And I was going to show him tonight just how thankful I was to have in my life…

The timer pinged and I sprung to action, taking the baked salmon out from the oven with gloved hands and delicately balancing the pan on the stove top.

He’d walk in, I’d waltz over in my new silk dress and hand him a glass of champagne. Then, he’d come inside, kiss me deeply with his gorgeous, pillowy lips, and I’d whisk him over to the sitting room where the starter canapes would already be laid out. I’d wish him a happy birthday; give him his gift (a cute pair of platinum cufflinks with our shared birthstone – peridot) and then he’d probably give me mine (a signed vintage copy of The Glass Forest – I had peaked so I already knew what it was) and then we’d kiss some more.

Then, we’d have our baked salmon and honey-glazed baby carrots, and after that, dessert would be ready, and then we’d snuggle on the couch and I’d tell him about the new therapist who had signed up to work at the center, and then …well, I wanted that next part to be spontaneous.

The thing about Leo is that he’s not at all what he seems. He looks like a Calvin Klein model, like a classic High School football jock, all chiseled face and smoldering eyes and pecs that strain shirts and get girls in the vicinity to lose their train of thought mid-sentence.

He was, to put it simply, hot. And yet …deep down he was a different creature all together.

Leo had a mind like a sword. He was a sharp thinker, a quick joker and had a personality that felt like a coiled spring – always straining a little with energy, always waiting to burst.

He was a good man. He was kind. He treated people well. He was emotionally available. He loved children. It was almost too good to be true.

I paced around the living room.

He was a little late this evening, which was weird. I felt a few thin prickles of sweat under my arms. I cursed and hurried to the bathroom, added a triple layer of antiperspirant and checked my reflection for the millionth time that evening.

We’d have sex, of course. Of course we would. It was his birthday. It was my birthday. That’s what a young, healthy, happy young couple like us does on their birthdays.

We hadn’t, though. Not for a while. In fact, it had been more than two weeks already. It’s not that I was bored. Not at all. I mean, getting a little older in life, and given the fact that we had known each other for as long as we had, and the fact that both of us were really focusing on our careers …actually, a few times a month was perfectly normal.

I went into the bedroom.

Scented candles, freshly laundered sheets, flower petals, massage oil. Perfect. I smiled and closed the door again. I was satisfied. If all of this didn’t make me the perfect girlfriend, I don’t know what would.

I had never admitted to Leo – had never told anyone before, actually – about how important it was for me to ‘fix’ my issues with sex. That’s why those scented candles meant a lot. The rose petals meant a lot.

For a long time, sex was something unhealthy for me. A kind of drug, in fact. Just something dirty I was compelled to do, and shame-filled, because I was desperate and needed my fix. My therapist had called it ‘risk-taking behavior’. My foster mother had called it my ‘death wish’. I had simply called it ‘hunger’. I had always indulged like someone starving at a banquet. I won’t say I didn’t enjoy myself. But at the end of the day, it never satisfied me. Not really.

But today, on my thirtieth birthday, things were different for me. I had wrestled my demons, built a life I was proud of and learnt to marry sex and love together, like it’s supposed to be. I had convinced a gorgeous, well put together man to love me and now I would never go hungry again.

I went to the kitchen to check on the salmon. It was getting cold.

“Baby…?”

I heard the front door unlock, then spun around when I realized Leo was home, then bound into the living room to line up the champagne glasses and then into the hall to throw my arms around his neck and greet him with a big, sloppy kiss.

“Happy birthday!” I yelled, and he smiled warmly, unwinding his scarf and kicking off his shoes.

“Come inside, come inside!” I said and pulled him into the living room, handed him a glass of champagne and toasting him with a grin.

“To us!” I said, and he laughed and took a nervous sip.

“Wow …you didn’t have to get us champagne.”

“That’s not all I got,” I said, and quickly revealed his gift with a flourish. He took it, unwrapped it, and looked at it with a smile that was polite, but not overwhelmed with joy or anything. Fine, it was a bit of a practical gift; I’d give him that.

“You know, for your meetings and stuff. When you meet up with investors and things like that.”

He set them to one side.

“Just kiss me” he said, and soon my head was cradled in his strong hands. I giggled and he kissed my smiling mouth.

“You taste like beer,” I said.

“No, that’s talking, baby, I want you to be kissing…” He pulled me in for another kiss. I giggled and kissed him. His lips were sweet and soft and silky and delicious.

“But the salmon is getting cold!” I said, pulling out of his grasp to dash off into the kitchen.

He followed me slowly to the oven and watched me with a quizzical expression, then came up behind me and laced his arms around my waist, nuzzling his warm breath into the crook of neck.

“The salmon can wait,” he purred.

I laughed and slapped him away.

“No, it can’t, it’s already icy cold. I’ve also made these special honey-glazed carrots, too, they have cognac in the sauce, isn’t that fancy?”

“Baby,” he laughed, “step away from the spoon. The salmon can wait.” He took both of my hands in his.

A lump gathered in my throat to see him do it. It wasn’t what I thought it was, I knew it, it was too soon to expect that, of course. I knew not to get too excited and all, but I did, I admit it did make me think of him, you know, proposing.

I smiled at him. He smiled back. God, did he know how to smile at a girl.

He leaned in for a kiss and then he reached one of his oversized hands to rest on the fold of my hip. Still holding the dripping spoon, I kissed back and then realized: he was hard. He pressed his hipbones into mine and groaned softly as he sucked my lower lip, then squeezed my waist.

I sighed. “Ah, so that’s what you want…”

He started to kiss up and down my neck, warm breath and cool, wet kisses, pinning me against the kitchen cupboards with his broad, strong frame.

“No, no, please, tell me about these carrots,” he laughed. “This beautiful woman standing right in front of me is just a distraction, you know, what I really want is a piece of those damn carrots…”

I slapped his arm. I tried to put the spoon on the counter without making any mess.

“I love you, Sophia,” he breathed, and collapsed warm onto me. He seldom said those words. Not like that anyway.

He dragged me off to the bedroom.

“The salmon…”

“Fuck the salmon.”

He turned on the bedroom light, looked momentarily surprised by the strewn rose petals, but instantly grabbed me and laid me roughly down on top of them.

His touch felt warm. Familiar. Safe. I let my head fall back a little and closed my eyes as his heavy hands pawed over me. To be honest, I wasn’t terribly in the mood. It was late, I was tired from work, and I just wanted us to have a nice time together. But it was his birthday. I pulled him down and planted a big kiss on his lips and soon he had wriggled out of his shirt, and then began to peel mine off, too.

“Ouch,” I said, and moved his leg to stop it from pinching at the skin of my knee.

“Oops, sorry. You OK?”

I smiled at him. We kissed again, this time more gently. We had a smooth, happy rhythm, an old routine that we both knew well by now. It worked for us.

He turned me over onto my back and in one smooth movement had gently pulled apart my legs. He got to work, doing just what he knew I liked. Slow, unrushed. Respectful. Communicative.

“A little harder,” I said. He went a little harder. I tried to close my eyes and sink deeper into the moment, and soon I found it: that delicious, hot sensation welling up juicy and wet inside me. I ground my hips and smiled to myself. Here we go. I buried my fingers in his thick, sandy hair and ground my now-swollen clit against his generous tongue. He moaned and lifted my hips up to him, working over my body with smooth, syrupy motions, slowly licking me into a frenzy. I could feel his thick cock brush against my naked leg. I squeezed my eyes shut and let myself get carried away.

“Baby I want you inside me,” I said at last, which is our usual cue for him to flip me over onto my belly, tilt up my ass cheeks and kneel over me so he can slide his cock in and down into me, pinning me into the bed and pouring his body weight down into me as I cradle the pillows.

He did exactly this. I could no longer see the toned V of his torso or the thick interlocking muscles of his biceps as they flow into the veins of his forearms and wrists, but I could now feel them.

Splaying my legs wide to let him in deeper, he plunged down and in, down and in, each time sinking to the hilt into me and lifting my body slightly off the bed with each upward thrust, grinding against some deep, sweet spot inside me that always, without fail, made me come hard and long.

Something about the pressure of his cock inside me, something about how I was effectively pinned by him, held firm under his body, something about feeling the muscled flat of his abs against my upturned ass …it always did things to me.

But not today.

He slid in deep and pulled out slow again, in deep and then out slow, and I knew he was relishing the sight of me, relishing watching his dick melt into my body and emerge again, slick. I knew he liked that. I knew he liked grabbing a handful of ass and pulling back to reveal that sweet, naughty place where we connected. It felt good. Of course it felt good. But …not that good.

I felt myself staring at the unlit candle on the bedside table, and feeling …not bored, exactly. No, I wasn’t bored, that wasn’t how I was at all. But I wasn’t anything.

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to focus on the sweet words he was now breathing into my ear, as he folded forward and rested his heavy chest all along the length of my back. Ordinarily, I’d have come already. I’d have clenched down hard against his thrusting cock and waited helplessly as the waves of my orgasm pumped through my hips and shook me, and he’d wedge in deeper, growl with satisfaction, squirt inside and then collapse on me, sweat slicking our bodies together.

But not today.

I turned my head to the side and caught his eye. My long brown hair draped over my blue eye as I peered up at him. Mouth open, sideways smile on his face, he gazed down lovingly at me, and all at once, without losing eye contact, his face twisted and contorted.

“Fuck …baby, I’m…”

I thrust up my hips to meet him and quicken the pace.

“Come baby,” I mumbled into the pillow.

He gripped my ass cheeks hard and clenched his jaw, and I watched as his pecs and ab muscles rippled and tightened as he lost control. He ploughed deeper into me, roared out loud and rammed one, then two, and finally three hot spurts of cum into me, pulling out with a shudder on the last thrust and collapsing into relived giggles on my back.

“Fuck yes… I’ve been waiting all day to do that…” he cooed into my ear.

I twisted over and embraced him, and we held each other a little as his breath became regular and the red flush disappeared from his chest.

“But you…?”

“I’m fine,” I said quickly.

“You didn’t…”

“Nah, it’s OK, I’m just tired,” I said, and tried to avoid his gaze. Sure, I was a little annoyed that he had blustered in, used to me to get off and only now was considering what I wanted out of the deal. But that was silly. I had nothing to be unhappy about. Nothing at all.

“You don’t want…” he said and started to trace his fingers back to the inside of my thigh.

“Baby, no, I’m fine” I said and sat up quickly. I needed to clean up.

“Ok, well, do you wanna have some salmon and carrots?” he said and gave me a goofy, lopsided grin. I laughed, leaned forward and gave him a big, loud kiss on his forehead.

“Yeah, there’s dessert, too,” I said and we got up and scrambled for our clothes.

We went back into the kitchen and chatted and kissed and started to heat up the food again. For some reason, I no longer had much of an appetite, though.

Chapter 3 - Leo

“Leo! Oh my god, Leo, thank you so much!”

Groggy, I peeled my eyes open and rubbed them, trying to find the source of the sound. Sophia’s shrill voice came from somewhere else in the house. I sat up in bed, the morning light streaming onto the crumpled pillows beside me, and looked down the hall. The two cats, rolled up in the duvet with me, each blinked one eye at the noise and then went back to sleep.

“Sophia?”

It had been a strange night. Confused, I got up, went down the hall and saw her stooping at the front door, bending over to fuss with something on the floor.

She turned around, a giant bowl of extravagant flowers in her arms, and a huge smile plastered on her face.

“You got me flowers! Leo, they’re beautiful!”

She waddled up to me, leaned in close so that the lilies pressed a bit of yellow powder onto my bare chest, and gave me a chaste peck on the cheek.

But I hadn’t sent her any flowers.

I sat, staring at her for a while, eyebrows kinked.

“I’ll go and put these in some water” she said, and made her way to the kitchen.

Just as I started to wonder if they had delivered flowers to the wrong girl, my phone buzzed from inside the room. I went to get it.

Wish your girl a happy birthday from me

I stared in horror at the message from a number I didn’t recognize. I heard Sophia opening and closing cabinet doors in the kitchen. I swiftly closed the bedroom door behind me and stood with my back to it. Then I hit “dial” and held the phone to my ear, fingers shaking with rage.

“Hello?”

“Who the hell is this?” I hissed. I could almost hear a smile through the phone line.

“What? You don’t recognize me? It’s your old friend,” the voice said, so casual it seemed sinister.

“Uncle Vito?”

“What, you think it’s the Easter bunny?” he laughed drily.

I swallowed so hard it was nearly painful.

“I’m not interested in any deal or any arrangement or anything. I haven’t seen you in years.”

“So? Family’s family.”

“You’re not family. Jesus,” I mumbled.

I couldn’t shake the images I had seen of him in the media, the snapshots of bloody murder scenes, the laundering accusations, the corruption. And now he was here, in my shaking hands. In my bedroom.

“In any case, I’m down a few men. What can I say, loyalty is thin on the ground these days. I need some new blood. Good men. I need someone without any history. Someone I can trust.”

Had he always had that ridiculous TV gangster accent? For some reason, it sounded so much thicker now than I remembered it, all those years ago. Those years when I was so desperate I had clung to anything that looked like a solution. Even if that thing was none other than Vito Roselli.

“No,” I said, and did nothing to fill up the silence after it. He grumbled into the line.

“OK, kiddo, look. You’re a businessman, right? I know you understand money. So I’m going to put this in terms you’ll understand. How much do you want?”

I heard a cupboard door slam again as Sophia rummaged around in the kitchen, completely unawares. I had to end this call.

“I don’t care about money,” I said, looking at Sophia’s crumpled underwear lying on the floor. “I said no. The past is the past. I’ve moved on.” I couldn’t even imagine what a guy like him could want from someone like me.

“Ah …it’s the girl?”

My fingers tightened around the phone.

“You leave her alone.”

Silence.

I knew what Vito had done. Everyone knew. And I knew what he was capable of doing. But I didn’t give a shit.

“And if you ever come around to my house again I’ll personally come after you myself and so help me y--”

I was cut short by his amused laughter.

“Kid! Kid, relax! Ha, you always were like that, weren’t you? So feisty. Man, I remember now,” he said, still laughing. My face burnt.

“Baby?” Sophia yelled from the kitchen. “Baby, do you know where that vase is? Not the round one but the long, tall one?”

“I don’t know! Just a second!” I yelled, covering up the phone for a moment, then leaning in to speak again.

“Don’t fucking go near her.”

“Listen, Leo. I’m not gonna do anything to your girl. Fuck. In any case, if she really knew who you were, she’d leave on her own, right?”

I could hear the smile in his voice again.

“I’m a different person now,” I whispered.

“She doesn’t know about you, does she?”

“Doesn’t know what? I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You know what the trouble with the younger generation is, Leo? It’s that you guys only know how to take. Only ever on the lookout for what you can get out of people. But when it comes to making a contribution? Well…”

I was stunned. Vito Roselli was lecturing me about contribution. And more stunning than that, I wondered if he could possibly be right.

“I was just a kid.”

“And now you’re a man. You got a girl, I get that. But I’m not asking for favors here, Leo. I don’t like saying it, you know I don’t, but you would have been dead in the streets were it not for me, and don’t you forget it.”

I didn’t know what to say. Was I really going to be bullied and blackmailed for something I did more than twenty years ago, as a child? My head spun.

“But baby, did you move it or something?” Sophia yelled again, but this time I could hear her voice getting louder as she approached the bedroom.

“Baby…?”

“Fine, I’ll do whatever you want, just don’t ever fucking call me again, I’ll call you,” I spat and hung up, then tossed the phone onto the bed.

I stepped back from the door and she opened it.

“Who …who were you talking to?” she asked, cocking her head to one side.

“Nobody,” I said and gave her a kiss. “The cats. I was talking to the cats. I saw that vase under the sink, it’s right at the back,” I said, and walked off to the kitchen before she could see how shaken I was.

Chapter 4 - Sophia

I lit some incense, blew at the band of fragrant smoke a little till it wobbled in the air, and then gently placed the burner off to the side. I shook my hands, and cracked my neck. I walked over to the stereo and adjusted the volume of the music - or “space whale music”, as Leo liked to call it - and took a deep, cleansing breath, feeling my ribcage open slowly and then knot back closed.

Good.

The body is a temple, you see. An arena where we play out the dramas of our existence, an altar where all the magic unfolds. For the first half of my life, my body had been nothing but a dumping ground. A trash can. And it never stops seeming like a miracle to me how it still works today, even after all the damage I’ve inflicted on it.

I slid open the Japanese paper doors and poked my head into the waiting room.

“Emily?”

A pert girl with a blonde ponytail looked up at me and smiled. It’s important to make sure the first client of the day is one you really enjoy. I waved her in and she came into the massage room. She had a strong, lean body, but she was riddled with pain and had been since the first day I met her.

She would come in some days and tell me that she finally understood that the crunchy knots she felt in her neck were the crystalized words of criticism from her mother when she was growing up. Or she’d tell me about a dream she had while I worked on the pressure points all up and down her outer leg. Or sometimes we’d work on opening up her breathing a bit more, making sure that she was sending oxygen to her legs, which were now healing and functional even after dozens of doctors told her she’d never walk again.

Emily settled onto the table and I began to work on the muscles around her flanks and spine.

“You’re feeling really fluid today,” I said, and marveled at how she seemed to be melting under my very fingertips, a far cry from the usual ten minutes we’d have to spend to get her to loosen up.

She giggled. “Well, let’s just say I’ve met another ‘bodyworker’ recently.”

My hands paused on her skin.

“You’ve…?”

“I know, it’s a bit sudden, and I’m feeling really giddy about the whole thing, but remember that guy I mentioned? Andrew?”

“The programmer guy?”

“Yeah, him! Well, it’s going really well, actually…” she giggled again. I could almost feel her blushing.

“Emily, that’s amazing.”

“I know …he’s just so …so…”

It was like her body actually shivered and pulsed underneath my fingertips as she struggled to find the right words.

“He just …touches me, you know? I can’t really describe it. It’s so much more than sexy. He just …he has this way of setting me completely on fire.”

I smiled and continued rolling and stroking my hands over her body, working more deeply into her tissues.

“Well, it sounds like it’s working for you, you have almost no tension back here!”

She laughed.

“Honestly, at the rate we’re going he’s going to paralyze me again or something, I swear… Maybe I should forget about appointments with you and just make sure he’s regularly working the tension out, if you know what I mean.”

I winced.

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m just joking. I’ll always keep coming back to you. You’re the expert on these things, after all. But you said it once before, sensuality is important in life…”

I tried to pretend that she hadn’t hurt my feelings. I rolled and kneaded further, letting the conversation drop.

“Ouch!”

I pulled my hands back.

“You’re …you’re being a little rough,” she said and laughed nervously.

She was right.

I was relieved when our session was over and I waved her goodbye. I blew out the incense, turned off those godawful screeching whales and tried to gather myself for a second. I had never hurt a client before. Ever. Not in my training, not in the few years I had run this center. Never. I was the girl with the golden hands, the little lost waif who took a vicious past of addiction and poverty and turned it all around with nothing but patchouli massage oil and a clear mind.

So what the hell was going on with me?

I exhaled loudly and checked my watch. I was probably just tired. Leo had been acting weird, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was exactly. And why was I jealous of some girl who was in the throes of new lust …didn’t I already have the jackpot with Leo? Still, it nagged at me as I stripped the bed and started to prepare for the next client. Sure, Leo made me feel good. But did he make me feel that good? Like, so good I wanted to giggle and gush to strangers about it?

That was the real problem right there.

The last time we had sex, it was just weird. Not boring exactly but …I tossed the sheets aside and took another deep breath. No, no I had to be honest. Sex with my six foot two, insanely muscled, intelligent, emotionally aware and devoted boyfriend was boring.

I absentmindedly changed the music – or ‘hippie forest jams’, according to Leo - and chewed my nails a bit.

I would never admit it to a soul, but years ago I actually had felt that crazy sexual energy, that touch from another human that seemed to almost literally set me on fire. Too bad it was from the long-forgotten string of abusive boyfriends that carouselled in and out of my life when I was at my absolute lowest.

I shook the thought out of my mind and went to look at my phone.

Huh. A message from him.

Something very important I want to discuss with you tonight. Come home early if you can. I’m making us dinner.

I must have been crazy to doubt him. How the hell could I have an issue with the best partner I’d ever had, with the first guy in my world who offered to treat me like more than just something to take advantage of? I felt a pang of guilt for reminiscing about a past I had sworn to never go back to.

I was lucky to have Leo. And I would do whatever it took to make sure that he never understood quite how broken I was before I met him. I replied to the message and started to unfold another sheet for the bed.

Growing up in foster homes, getting lost in the system, I was surrounded on all sides by people addicted to one drug or other. But as far as I can see, the most dangerous drugs are those that are a little harder to see, hard to even think about clearly. The truth? It wasn’t all that difficult to drop my raging heroin addiction. And sure, it was tricky to find work and get back on my feet, but not impossible. The greatest challenge of my life wasn’t cutting my addiction to helplessness or the junk food I funneled in every day or the booze or the painkillers. Relatively speaking, that was all easy to shirk off, when I wanted to.

The difficult addiction, the really evil drug, was invisible for the most part. My caseworker wrinkled her top lip and called it a ‘sex addiction’. And maybe it was. But it was something else. Things I could swallow, and smoke tweaked the molecules in my brain and body till I felt good. Alcohol numbed, cigarettes soothed. Four big macs in a row was my equivalent of a warm hug from someone who gave a shit about me. But sex? I never really understood why I was as drawn to it as I was.

Sex was the one addiction I had never truly triumphed over because, frankly, I was never really sure what it did to me. On a molecular level. On a spiritual level. I never understood its hold on me. Taking drugs is one thing. I know how to take them, and I know how to quit them – after all, I’ve done it often enough! But sex? The things I’ve done? They’re a different kettle of fish.

I’ve been out of control on this substance or that pill. I’ve blacked out. I’ve forgotten things, and I’ve been desperate and made every poor decision you could dream of. But with sex …well, sex was the one demon I still hadn’t completely exorcized. It still hovered around the edges of my nightmares. Still clung all sticky and seductive in my daydreams sometimes, and now it was threatening to take the first real relationship I had and tear it to pieces.

But I wouldn’t let it. Leo was far too important to me. I hadn’t come all this way to gripe about a slightly less than ecstatic sex life. This was the real world, and I wasn’t done pulling myself up my bootstraps just yet.

I carried on down the appointment list. Luckily, my last client for the day cancelled at the last minute, leaving me to head home early and see about this ‘very important’ something that Leo wanted to discuss. When you’re a couple, you have to have ‘chats’. You have to get in touch with your feelings, to express them. For someone like me, you can’t overdo this kind of thing, obviously. So, fine.

But on the drive back home a strange memory popped into my mind. I thought of Rhonda, a woman I had met the very first time I went to rehab. She had been clean for more than five years and fancied herself something of a cheerleader, playing mother hen to all the wayward kids in the center who couldn’t make it to next Friday, nevermind five years.

I remembered her kind yet grizzled face, and the way she pursed her lips tight and stared right at you, right through you. And I’ll never forget what she said to the group one afternoon. She sighed and said, “Nobody else will tell you this, but you need to hear it. Addictive substances are good. Real good. If they weren’t, would any of you be here now? The world after drug addiction is safer. It’s more sane. It’s stable. But it’ll never be as good as being high, not even close. That’s the truth. The sooner you can mourn that and let it go, the better. If you don’t, you’ll always keep coming back to it.”

Chapter 5 - Leo

I didn’t know it at the time – I couldn’t have known it at the time – but it was the turning point of my life. The day on which my whole being swiveled and changed direction, forever. That day, the day I ran so hard I felt my whole world would burst open, was the skinny, malnourished line between one era of my life and another…

The longest up until that time had been three days. Three and a half depending on how you count it. The sun rose like a little ball of syrup freeing itself from the horizon and I thought calmly: today will be the day that I die.

I felt that kind of cold you get after you’ve been really cold for a long time already. The kind of cold that happens when you think something awful’s definitely starting to happen to your body, and all you can think of is meat in a freezer, and how you’re finished, you’re really done for …well, I felt the kind of cold that happens to you three hours after that feeling.

I walked up and down the backstreets for a bit, found nothing there. So I decided, I had to do it. There was no other way. I kicked a can up and down the tarmac for a while to get my nerve up and then found a house that looked broke enough that I knew there wouldn’t be too much security going on inside. I wiped my nose on my sleeve and double checked that nobody was around.

I busted into a rundown apartment that opened back onto a dim alleyway. It was cold enough that I didn’t feel the broken glass scratch me as I slunk inside.

I could feel my heart in my ears, and thought how funny it was to have my heart there, and not in my chest, like normal. It was an old lady’s house, kind of nasty, but I was surprised to find a ton of jewelry and shit in her dresser drawers. I ripped it all out, stuffed it in my pockets, and hauled some food from the kitchen and got out of there.

I turned to run and that’s when I heard it: kind of like an animal. Someone breathing hard. My eye catched a weird shape in the shadows a few yards into the alley. Two shapes. Some guy and a …woman. I stopped and stared. She was twisted all strange, folded over and kind of huffing and puffing, and the guy was behind her, slapping his hips against hers. It made me feel strange, watching them like that.

The guy turned and saw me standing there, stolen old lady jewels dangling out my pockets, and two hands full of stolen bread. Shit. And then I saw who it was.

Vito Roselli.

I knew the face instantly. Everyone knew Vito. That face that you can’t be sure if it’s laughing or angry or crazy or just nothing. I knew some kids who knew some kids who worked for him. I heard people say things. ‘Uncle Vito’ was a well-known name around here. But well-known like a disease is well-known, or a famous war is well-known. His was the kind of name that grown-ups hated having to say, hated having to pretend they recognized.

“What you looking at? Huh?” he yelled at me, and I felt like my legs had turned to jelly and I couldn’t move. He stopped making those gross movements. Now the woman was looking at me, too.

“What you got there? Give it to me. You a thief? Huh? You stealing shit?”

He took a step back, zipped up and pushed the woman aside. I knew I should run but I couldn’t.

“Give me what you got or I’ll call the police, huh, how about that?” He gave me this sneer like he’s disgusted by his own words, but also kind of foiund it all funny.

The woman started laughing and pulled down her skirt. I felt a rush of hate in me. I can’t explain it, but suddenly, the cold inside me was getting very, very warm. The cold that had been in me for four days suddenly felt icy hot. The heartbeat in my ears became louder.

“You dumb or something? I said give it to me,” he said and took a step toward me, holding his hand out to my loot.

“No.” I said.

The cold was thawing. He laughed and looked behind him at the woman and then back at me. My mind raced. Throat dry. He lunged at me and grabbed my arm, twisting it hard so I couldn’t get away. He was twice my size. My feet nearly come off the ground.

“Little shit. You thieving round here? Give me what you got or I’m calling the police.”

“No,” I said again, almost biting down on the word to get it out.

He wasn’t laughing anymore.

“I won’t give you anything,” I said. “And if you don’t let me go, I’m going to tell everyone what I saw you doing.” The words felt like they came from somewhere else. Not from me, but from a stronger, better boy that somehow existed just a few inches in front of me, like a photo negative. A stronger, braver photo negative.

“I know you’re supposed to be married soon,” I continued. “I’ll tell your girl. I’ll tell her everything.”

He flung me aside like it burned his hands to hold me, and sneered that sneer at me again. Then he laughed.

“Little fucker. What’s your name anyway, kid?”

“Leo.”

“Leo what?”

“Leo Bianchi.”

He looked me over. This time his face is different, like he was thinking of something.

“You got some nerve talking to me like that, you know that?”

“I know.”

“Bianchi, huh?”

I nodded.

“All right, kid. We have a deal, you keep your mouth shut and I keep my mouth shut, OK?”

I took a long look at him and then nodded.

“Now beat it,” he said, and turned to the woman, who was laughing again.

I ran so hard it was like my feet were on fireLike I had firecrackers under my heels. I ran so hard the old grandma’s trinkets went mad in my pocket. I didn’t even care about the food anymore. I didn’t care about the cold. I had just spoken to Vito Roselli. In person. And I had told him “no”. I didn’t know how, I didn’t know why, but I had said “no”, and at that moment, a little flame took hold and started burning inside me, and I ran and ran as fast as I could, till my lungs burnt and I gulped for air so hard it stung my nostrils.

I might have been some loser orphan nobody. I might have been seventy pounds soaking wet and good for nothing, but I had told Vito Roselli himself to stick it, and he did, because we had made a deal, me and him.

I snapped back to attention and noticed my hands were shaking.

That was the past.

This was now.

Today, I was a man who could not only afford to buy my own trinkets and jewelry, but I had a beautiful woman to give them all to. And today, today I was going to give her something truly special.

I ran the pad of my thumb over the stubby velvet of the ring box I held in my hand. Stroking it over and over, my mind wandered. I had already lied to her about the stupid flowers that came that morning. I had lied to her about what had happened with Vito after that fateful day in the alleyway, years ago. And I was busy lying to her right now about allowing myself to be a pawn in a game played by the region’s most brutal mob family since the 1900s.

But no more.

I had met with a shady looking kid at the Westgate parking lot a day earlier and arranged to hold a sealed, 48-foot intermodal container in my freshly built warehouse for two nights. No documents, no questions, no nothing. I didn’t want to do it. But I also didn’t want them to even mention Sophia to me again. I didn’t even want her name dragged into a sentence these boneheads would ever utter. Hell, I didn’t want them to even think about her. And the fucking flowers? Creepy. Already a step too far.

I would take care of it myself. Sophia had endured enough in life already. She could live to a hundred and five, perfect days every day, and still have had more than her fair share of shit in life. So I was no way in hell going to be responsible for giving her any more.

I reluctantly shook the parking lot kid’s dirty hand and told him to scram. I’d hold the container for a few nights, but that was it. And then on my way home I stopped at a ring store.

I heard the front door open.

“Leo? Baby?” she said. Her voice was like a miracle. I ran over to her, swooped her up in my arms before she could close the door and spun her round quickly, getting lost in the curtain of long brown hair.

She squealed and clung to my neck.

“Leo! Oh my god, what’s gotten into you?” she laughed, as I deposited her on the couch and got to work unlacing her boots and yanking off her various bags and scarves.

“I’m just glad you’re home, that’s all.”

She smelt like heaven. It was always a wonder to me, how she always, always smelt good. Her eyes had those fine little crinkles in the corner as she looked down at me with amusement.

“Getting the royal treatment, I see?” she said.

I smiled back up at her and gave her a naughty wink.

“Oh, something like that…” I said, and she squealed again. I embraced her and kissed her hard and deep, lacing my fingers through her locks, kissing her like I had forgotten how good it could be. She pulled back and looked at me with questioning eyes.

“So what did you want to talk about…?”

I averted my eyes.

Marriage was never something we had sat down and had a big fat serious discussion over. I knew she wanted it, sure, but I had never seen the point if we were both just going through the motions. I wanted it to feel right. And these days …I don’t know, something about dredging up the past just made the present seem that much more real to me. I wanted her. And I wanted her for always.

“We’ll get to that, just kiss me now,” I said, and her deep eyes, one brown and one blue, just like mine, twinkled at me. I leaned down to crouch on the floor in front of her, angling down slow and coy like she could tell how crazy it was making me, and she planted the sweetest, fairy light little kiss along my parted lips.

“You seem different this evening,” I breathed, as she teased the tips of my lips with hers.

“Oh?”

“Yeah.”

“You like it?”

“Of course.”

She smiled and dipped her tongue in for another slow, delicious kiss.

“Baby I’ve been thinking about you all day,” I whispered, and I slid two eager hands down the length of her voluptuous waist and onto her round hips.

“Have you really?” she said teasingly, and giggled. “And what have you been thinking about exactly?”

I so seldom saw her all flirty like this.

“Well, I was thinking about …this,” I said and rested my hand on the swell of her perfect hips. “And I was thinking about …this,” I said, slowly sliding my fingertips down and in, so they hovered close to the deep cleft at the fold where her thighs met her belly.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. And I was thinking about how much it turns me on, everything that’s underneath… this…” Here I traced delicate circles over the fabric of her simple shift dress, feeling the silky material glaze against her skin. The air in the room went heavy and I could hear her breathing as she looked down and watched me.

“And I’ve been thinking about those sounds you make when you’re really excited …when you’re so turned on it looks like you could scream it feels so good, only you can’t catch your breath long enough to scream,” I said softly, and carried on tracing those circles.

She moaned and smiled.

“And I was thinking, what would I have to do to her to get her to make those sounds again?”

“Oh I can think of a few things…” she giggled.

By now my circles had found their way to teasing up the hem of her dress to reveal her firm, tanned thighs underneath. She had flopped back on the sofa and I was now on the floor below, between her legs and peering up at her from underneath heavy eyelids. With her head tossed to one side and her long hair raining down onto her shoulders on the other, she looked so beautiful. So perfect.

She grabbed one of my hands and, trembling, placed it higher up, to the warm, sweet mound right at the top of her thighs.

“I’ve been thinking about you too…” she purred, and, while still holding my eyes with hers, she began to slowly trace my hand over herself in the same small, tentative circles. I could hear her breath coming in excited rasps. I kissed her knee, gazing up at her with worshipful eyes.

“You like it like that?”

She gave me a mischievous nod.

With my other hand I slid the rest of the dress high up her hips and pressed her legs wider open still. When she peeled off her underwear, the warm, wet scent of her body underneath bloomed out and hit me, driving me wild.

“Fuck, you’re beautiful,” I growled, and got to my knees to kiss her inner thighs, to bury my head into that sweet lap. My tongue slipped easily between the slick folds of her body, then slid the full length of her wet pussy, ending in a little swirl at her plump pink clit. My hands felt her thighs quiver in response to this and spread wider, perching her ass off the edge of the sofa and tilting higher up for more. So I did it again. And again.

I looked up to see her head flop to the other side. Each of her hands were pulling at me, clenching and unclenching her little fists in my hair and grinding desperately up against me. The sight of her thrashing and moaning like that was all I needed: in a few moments I was rock hard and wanting her so bad it ached.

And just at that moment, I had a thought. It was a dumb thought, but I had it anyway. I didn’t want anyone giving her flowers ever again. Not Vito. Not one of his goons. Nobody. Nobody except me. I wanted to be the cause of that beautiful smile on her face, always. I wanted to be the reason her whole face lit up and her eyes went wide. Why the fuck hadn’t I bought her flowers every single day?

“That feels amazing…” she mumbled with half-closed eyes.

“Marry me,” I blurted.

She yanked my head up and looked me square in the eyes, shocked.

“What did you say?”

“I said marry me. Say yes. I love you Sophia. Let’s just do it, let’s not waste any more time.”

“Woah woah woah,” she cried and quickly scooted her butt back so the hem of her dress flopped down again to cover her.

“Are you serious?”

I must have looked really goofy, grinning up at her, face wet, dick hard. But she stared back at me with something like suspicion.

“You’re proposing to me …now?”

“What better time to do it, right?” I laughed. Proposing while buried face full in the sweet lap of the woman I loved, completely venerating that most secret, most delicious part of her body …what made more sense in the world?

She looked pissed, though.

“Marriage isn’t a joke, Leo,” she said, looking confused. I got up quickly and sat next to her on the sofa.

“But I’m not joking.”

The mood in the room had gone from plasma hot to sputtering in a few seconds. I didn’t understand. I quickly scrambled to reach for the side table, then handed her the velvet box. She looked at it.

“Is it a ring?”

“Of course it’s a ring!” The dawning realization that I was fucking something up, maybe profoundly, hit me like a ton of bricks.

“You didn’t want a ring…?”

“No, I …it’s not that Leo…” she said quietly. She opened the box and put the ring on, then fanned out her fingers and took a long, cryptic look at it.

“It’s nice. It’s a beautiful ring, really. It’s just that …I guess I didn’t expect this moment to feel quite like this.”

“Baby…” I sat at her feet again, took the ring box from her, tossed it aside and grasped both her hands.

“Baby, I know this is important to you, and I know I’ve been a pain in the ass about the whole idea, but you’re right, and I want to, and I think we’re ready.”

She looked down at me with a faint smile playing on her lips and a few sparkly tears clinging to her lower lashes.

“You’re a big idiot, you know that Leo?” she said and stroked my chin with her fingertips.

“You said you liked the ring!” I said and laughed.

“Uh huh. And how am I going to tell people you proposed to me, hm?”

“Well, just tell them the truth,” I said with a sheepish grin. “Tell them I was eating you out and was so overcome by the amazingness of your perfect pussy that I basically had a religious experience and I couldn’t help but propose, right there and then.”

She burst out laughing. I reached up and grabbed her, and the laughter stopped for a moment as we stared into one another’s eyes, the reality of the moment really hitting.

“You didn’t give me your answer yet,” I whispered up close. She blinked hard and the tears rolled quickly down her round cheeks.

“Leo, I would marry you a dozen times over, you know that. I love you.”

I kissed her again, deeply, and was soon hard again. She laughed, tears still flowing, and looked down at me.

“Well that’s very romantic,” she said, eyeing the massive bulge in my trousers.

I gave her a completely serious look.

“Isn’t it?” I said. “The thought of committing to loving you for the rest of our lives gives me a raging hard on …sounds pretty romantic to me.”

The ring sparkled vaguely on her finger as her hands clasped around my neck and shoulders, and she lowered into a passionate kiss.

“Now where were we…?” I said as I guided her body back to its old position and my hands found their way back up her dress again. She giggled as I gently pried open her thighs and found that familiar, juicy spot I loved.

“Not that, I want your cock.”

I lifted my eyebrow at her. She never, and I mean never said that to me. Sophia was always demure. Always the classy girl who nudged and smiled and hinted, but never, and I really mean never, used anything remotely like a dirty word. She didn’t have to tell me twice. I sprung up, tore off my clothing and soon had her dress bunched high up just under her armpits.

Fumbling wildly, I lay her down on the sofa and tried to balance carefully over her, all the while she had that naughty fuck me look in her eyes.

To my delight, she pulled her legs apart and up high towards her shoulders, completely exposing her gorgeous pink cunt to me. I couldn’t help myself. When I brought my hips down hard onto her and sunk the full length of my cock into her greedy little body, it felt so mind-splittingly good I had to stop breathing for a moment. She gasped and twitched against me, but I couldn’t hold back. It was as though I was falling off a steep cliff and now that I had taken the first step, I couldn’t stop myself from accelerating further and further down, chasing that sweet ecstasy she had tucked away inside her…

In an instant I was fucking her hard and mercilessly, pulling up my hips and bringing them swiftly down again into her upturned hips, ploughing every last inch of my cock deep into her, stroke after stroke after stroke. To my surprise, she opened up further and took it all in without skipping a beat. She put her knees to her chest, folded up small, and squeezed her eyes tightly against every thrust. I scarcely recognized her, as though she was in a trance. But she wouldn’t look at me. Her eyes were closed, and soon, I realized something was wrong. Very wrong.

“Sophia? Hey, where did you go?” I said, and she blinked her eyes open and stared up at me.

“I’m right here,” she smiled, but there was something hollow in it.

I looked down at her, gently grazing my knuckles against her cheekbones as I kept that same deep, smooth rhythm in and out of gorgeous body. But something was wrong. In a few moments, I could hold out no more. I growled and clenched my jaw, lost control and came inside her. Her face was blank as she steadied my arms and watched my face twisting and contorting.

I was sweating like a pig and probably just as pink as one, too, but she lay underneath me, looking disconcertingly unruffled.

“You didn’t…”

“Not everything in the world is about having an orgasm you know,” she snapped.

I was stunned.

I disentangled my limbs from hers, tried to gather myself and watched as she quickly shimmied her dress back down again and started to hunt around for her underwear.

I wanted to say something. But I stood there mute, wondering what the hell had just happened.

“I’m sorry…” she said eventually, when she had smoothed back her hair and stood up from the sofa. “It’s just …all of this is quite overwhelming.”

She came over and gave me a sweet, lingering hug. But something was still wrong. I realized with a dull ache somewhere inside my chest: she could have secrets from me, too.

Chapter 6 - Sophia

I took a peek over my shoulder, pushed the heavy doors open and quietly let myself inside.

I had been attending this salsa class for a few months now, but no matter how many times I skulked up to the non-descript entrance, I still had to double and triple check that the coast was clear before slinking inside. The group itself knew to hide, too.

The room inside was identified only by a paper sign printed with “Melissa’s Salsa Club” and nothing more. But if anybody had seen me creeping into this room, it would instantly be clear that there was no salsa going on here at all.

Inside was a wide ring of budget plastic chairs, arranged on a linoleum floor, and a steel foldout table laden with supermarket cookies and a few bottles of Coke Zero. Somehow, the spread of snacks always seemed to fill me with as much shame as the real reason I was here.

I settled down, clutching my handbag close to my body and nodding curt smiles to some of the faces I recognized and had seen in previous sessions.

More people drifted in through the big doors, some looking a little nervous and unsure, most just milling over to a chair or helping themselves to a cookie. Lizzy, our coordinator, came swanning through the doors in her usual wooden bead necklace and long skirt get-up, and smiled warmly as she settled down.

“Right! If that’s everyone, we’ll get started,” she chirped, and opened up a folder.

When you come to a sex addicts support group, the first part is always to put the newbies through the ringer. Everyone listens with blank expressions but I know, deep down, that they’re all taking notes, all measuring them up, mentally peeling off their clothing, mentally chastising themselves and then mentally placing it all back on again. It’s awful. It’s sordid, I know it is. But I can’t help but keep coming back here.

“Right, so we have some new faces with us this time, Erin, would you like to go first and tell us what’s brought you here today?”

I leaned back in my seat and looked at the frightened teenaged girl in front of me. Before she opened her purple-lipsticked mouth I already knew the story she’d tell. Because it was my story.

Shitty parents (or in my case, no parents at all), shady boyfriends, outrageous nights out, and then the juicy bits that everyone wanted to know – the drugs (sometimes it was alcohol), the poor choices, the vivid descriptions of wanton, empty sex that everyone shook their head at but deep down relished …I knew about it all.

“…and that’s when I realized I had a problem” she said, little tears in her eyes. “I always told myself I’d never do that. I’d never sink that low…”

I knew every man in here was mentally fucking her brains out as they all nodded and smiled politely.

“Yes, well, it’s a place we’ve all been, so you’re not alone,” the coordinator said. “Thank you for sharing, Erin.”

I knew it was ridiculous. I couldn’t even imagine what Leo would say if he knew I was here. I had told him more about my past than I had told anyone. And he had accepted everything without a second thought. But this was a part of me that I couldn’t tell even him. What was I going to say? That even though he was perfect, that he adored me, that I felt more myself and more in love with him than I ever had for anyone in my life, somehow part of me kept returning to …this. To these seedy meetings. These cringe-inducing confessions. I kept coming back week after week. I figured, at least going to a sex addicts support group was better than actually being a full-blown sex addict, right?

It was time for the next newbie to spill his guts. What would his story be? Four women in one night? Addicted to porn? Or was it something nasty like cheating on his wife?

I scanned him over and tried to guess. Worn cowboy jeans but pristine shoes. Too-long hair and a kind of shifty look about him. But he was hot; I’d give him that. I worked all day with people, and with people’s bodies, and I had a knack for reading the way they carried themselves. This guy was all in the hips, all swagger, and when he opened his mouth you could tell right away that he was going to indulge plenty in what Lizzy liked to call ‘little backslides’.

I felt bad, staring at him, listening to him speak. Thinking the things I was thinking. But it was my secret. I had it safely locked away on Wednesday evenings at six, and I had it all under control, and basically, it was like a release valve. I knew these meetings weren’t quenching my unhealthy obsessions, but in a way, they were a fixed, controlled dose of bad that allowed all the good that followed the rest of the week. I felt bad that I had kept all of this from Leo. But on the other hand, it was also in his best interests to conceal from him just how fucked up I really was.

The guy and I locked eyes and I didn’t look away. He started to rattle on about his past. About how he felt like an addict, felt out of control. He said he felt crazy without a woman every night, but that he felt predatory going out to pick up someone solely for that purpose. He mouthed the word ‘vampire’ with a little too much sexiness and I couldn’t help but smile.

He locked eyes with me again.

I would have fallen over myself to get to a guy like him in the past. I knew I could read him, and maybe, he could read me too. We were ex members of a cult but we could still recognize the markings, the secret handshakes and gestures. The top half of his body said “I repent”, but the bottom half said “I’m not done sinning just yet.” His lips told a story of hopelessness, but his eyes slid over the room like a hunter, looking for the most vulnerable person.

And just like a little mouse that escaped from my grasp, my mind went scampering away and soon I was imagining naughty scenarios …scenarios that had this particularly unsuitable man starring in the center role. He droned on and on but I wasn’t listening to his words. I was noticing that his body language had quietly angled toward me. Aha. So that meant I was the chosen vulnerable one.

I would never cheat on Leo. Not for anything in the world. But some old, sick, bitter part of me needed this sleazy guy to look at me. Needed him to want me, even if just so I could act surprised and turn him down. We locked eyes again and he finished his story. The truth was that the sex was just a byproduct. I wanted all those weird, fuzzy feelings that came along with the sex. I couldn’t describe it.

“Well, perhaps you can chat to Sophia about that, I know she’s certainly struggled with some of the same issues you’ve brought up here,” Lizzy said and spun her gaze towards me.

I smiled politely.

I knew that on the surface I seemed cool and calm. Put together. A sensible girl who had already had her come-to-Jesus moment and took up holistic healing and prayer beads instead to heal the hole in her heart. A nice girl. The same girl who had stood before this very group and claimed that she now saw her body as a temple.

But that wasn’t quite the whole truth. My upright posture, Buddha-smile and sensible shoes hid the fact that every Wednesday at six, I came here to fantasize. And now I was fantasizing about him. I told myself it was OK. I did it mentally so I didn’t have to do it for real.

What harm did it do to picture myself suddenly standing up, right now in the middle of the next person’s little speech, and just stripping right down to nothing? Did it matter that I wasn’t listening to them at all, but imagining how deliciously shocked they’d be to see me exhibiting myself, shameless, then picking out the man I wanted and fucking him right here, on this dirty linoleum, while everyone watched?

If I didn’t really intend to ever do any of that, why not push the fantasies a little further and imagine …all of them? Piling on top of me and overpowering me completely? Why not indulge in the image of me, the reformed, the once-was-found-but-now-am-lost-again girl, spreading her legs wide and inviting anyone to come and help themselves?

The group chat turned out to be rather uneventful. We discussed boundaries, we shared some ‘triumphs’ from the past week, plus our goals for the week ahead. After some affirmations the group split up and people wandered off to nibble the cookies or head home. The guy cornered me, cookie in hand, and cocked his hip my direction.

“So,” he said, smiling, “I hope this doesn’t come across as rude or anything, but you really don’t look like the kind of girl who should be at a meeting like this.”

I smiled back. A pickup line at a sex addicts’ meetup was certainly gutsy, I’d give him that. I loathed him already. So why didn’t I just walk away?

“Well,” I said, “don’t take this the wrong way, but you totally look like you should.”

He burst out laughing.

“I deserved that,” he said, and then extended his hand. “Trevor.”

I didn’t offer my own hand. “Yeah, I know. You already introduced yourself in the group,” I said, good-girl smile still on my face.

“Do you uh… do you not find all this stuff really awkward? I mean, is it normal for the group to share, you know, such crazy personal information?” he said, trying another tack.

I wondered what his cock looked like. I wondered whether he said ‘shit’ or ‘fuck’ when he came, or even ‘oh god’.

“Yeah, well, being honest is all part of the recovery process,” I said breezily. But I could tell that he had noticed that although my tone of voice was saying “back off, creep”, my eyes were saying, “keep going”. I picked up a cookie and bit down hard into it.

“Ok, well, be honest with me then. How long has it been since you’ve …you know …had a backslide?” he said with an impish grin, putting scare quotes around Lizzy’s favorite word. This was all strictly against the spirit of the group. Completely bad for his ‘recovery’, and mine. But it was also the most fun I’d had all week.

I looked up to the right and pretended I was completely unaware of the fact that he was trying to come onto me. There was no chance in hell. In fact, it was only because I knew how impossible it was that anything could happen here that I allowed myself to indulge in a little banter.

“Um… well let’s see …I’ve been on a really good stretch lately. I’m being very productive at work these days, and, oh, I’ve just gotten engaged!” I said cheerfully, and flashed my new ring at him. He looked at my hand, a sour smile spreading across his face.

“Aw, shit, I’m sorry …I didn’t …”

“Sorry for what?” I said, staring at him blankly.

He took another cookie, mumbled something and wandered off. I felt a little nauseous. It was time to go home.

I didn’t know why I kept coming to these things. I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with me. But I walked out, said goodbye to the last few stragglers and walked home in the cool night air. It was just a temporary thing. My life was looking up. I had nothing to be unhappy about. So what if I still had some weird sexual hangups left over from a weird time in my life? I’d stop attending these meetups just as soon as Leo and I married. Obviously. I loved him. More than anything. And he’d run screaming if he knew …well, any of this.

The walk home was quiet. My head squirmed with thoughts that I shouldn’t be having. I pictured a dirty, alterative reality unfolding, parallel to my own. As I walked home, alone, chaste and reasonable, another version of myself was busy living out a different story. This Sophia stayed behind and flirted with the too-long-hair guy, and asked him to come home with her. This Sophia was reckless. Horny. So desperate that she couldn’t even wait to get indoors and instead pulled the guy into a dim alley on the way there and fucked him right on the street.

I picked up my pace. Leo would be waiting at home for me. The thoughts, however, still followed. When I walked past a dark, empty alleyway I took a quick detour and found myself instantly cloaked in darkness and cold. I threw my back against the chill brick wall and squeezed my eyes shut. Before I could stop myself, one hand freed itself from my pocket and I thrust it between my legs, rubbing desperately at the ache there, hidden from view.

My fingers worked furiously over my clit as I succumbed to the images rushing through my mind. Bad things. Forbidden, filthy thoughts.

I saw the guy from the meetup in front of me. “I knew this is what you’d like, you dirty girl…” I imagined his worn jeans in a bunch. His too long hair.

The hunger inside me reached fever pitch as that Sophia collided with this one. My fingers worked furiously and soon I choked and gasped as I came thundering to a secret orgasm, sweet relief flooding all through me. Heart still pounding and a thin sheen of sweat prickling at my brow, I hurriedly straightened my clothes and raced out of the alleyway, towards home.

I hated myself then.

I was going to be better.

Starting tomorrow, I was going to be better, I swore to myself.

Chapter 7 - Leo

“The trouble with being the kind of free agent you’re trying to be is that it often feels like you’re playing broken telephone. The Costa Ricans aren’t exactly known for their savvy business practices, you know?”

I was paying this lawyer a disgusting amount of money per hour, and it unsettled me that even a tiny bit of that hour was going towards casual wisecracking. I led him to the back office and set him up at the makeshift desk, where he started to offload his briefcase of documents.

I had a million things on my agenda today. The problem with setting up the whole export operation was that everything needed to be ready all at once, but every step required the previous step to be in place first. It was a house of cards built out of catch-22s.

I hated walking around this empty warehouse; so empty it felt like an aircraft hangar. I walked around doing casual calculations in my head about how much money was being bled away every day with every square foot that went unoccupied.

This business would be a tight, money-making ship once it got off the ground, but it was eating ungodly amounts of cash to get it there in the first place.

“Want some coffee?” I said with a little flourish. The place was certainly brimming with the stuff since my most recent trip had seen me coming back with a giant bag of ‘samples’. Beautiful, polished brown-black beans from Tarrazu, it was luxury coffee with a superstar profile: the body of a supermodel, low acidity and an aroma so deep and strong you could feel it at the back of your throat.

My distributors were chomping at the bit – in fact a coffee house in San Francisco was currently being built that wanted to stock my beans exclusively and were hoping to open in a month – and I had a few reps coming over this afternoon to discuss pushing a few loads to blenders up north who had just had a falling out with their main supplier and were looking for something that could give them a Fairtrade stamp on their menus.

It was a tremendous amount of responsibility. A massive undertaking in which I personally shouldered most of the risk. A lot was riding on me pulling all of this off. But I loved it.

I sat down at the desk, handed the lawyer his coffee and tried to make sense of some of the documents he had pushed over to my end of the table.

“Oh, wait a second. When were the inspectors here?” he said, eyes zooming in on one particular paper in a folder I had handed him.

“Uh, I don’t know. Months ago. It was one of the first things I did, to get it out the way.”

He shook his head and put the document down again.

“Yeah, no, you’re going to have to get an updated check I’m afraid. See, you’ve since installed the washrooms and plumbing to the rear of the premises, correct?”

“Correct…”

“In that case, they’ll need to go ahead and do another inspection before we can move on with the next step...”

I could feel my nostrils flaring.

“But this certificate is good for a year…”

“It is good for a year, but you’ve altered the property, you see, so in the eyes of the law it counts as a whole new property. I’m sorry, we can’t move forward unless I have this clearance.”

Fuck, I hated this shit. The endless list of stamped and signed documents, the endless mountains of regulation I had to wade through, all at great expense. I rankled at the thought of having this guy in my office again. He saw me rubbing my face and smiled apologetically, then handed my folder back. I knew the asshole would charge me for a full hour even though he’d scarcely been here long enough to take two sips of his coffee.

“Do I have to pay again for a whole new inspection?”

He stood up and gathered his things in his briefcase.

“You’ll have to take that up with your individual providers,” he said formally, and extended his hand for me to shake. I shook it, grumbled something or other and saw him out.

It was a bad start to the morning.

I checked my watch – at least I’d have a little time now before the circus of reps started for the afternoon. I sat down at my desk, undid the top button of my shirt and threw my feet on the desk. I grabbed the remote and turned the TV on to catch an interesting looking news segment.

Some footage of a pair of sniffer dogs walking in the airport followed by a professorial type talking into the camera. I turned the volume up.

“The problem with substances like this is that even when what’s being sold is correctly labelled, the consumer often vastly underestimates the potency or simply doesn’t know what they’re doing, so they overdose…” the man said, waving his hands.

I had been vaguely been following this story in the papers for the last few days, but was surprised to see how alarmed people still were. They were saying it was worse than anything the country had seen before. A new, scary compound called ‘PK’ was coming out of Eastern Europe, people were dying, the police had yet to get a handle on any of it.

I took a sip of my piping-hot coffee.

At least my soon-to-be drug empire was legal, I thought, cynically. But it got me thinking about Vito. He wasn’t featured in this segment, but everyone knew that at some point, the mob had to be involved. That was the way it worked around here – if there was a big enough pie out there, you could be sure these guys had their fingers in it, no question. In fact, with how big this whole PK thing was, it was basically a given that Vito and his guys were at the heart of it.

I wondered about the inspectors. About all these hurdles the lawyer was throwing my way. It grated on me that an honest businessman like myself was wasting time with useless legislature while parasites like Vito ran around unchecked for literally decades. It made me feel like a chump just knowing that he had never had to deal with building inspectors, never had to pay to apply to have a fucking toilet installed at his workshop, for crying out loud…

I slammed my feet back down on the floor and marched over to get some more coffee.

Maybe, though …maybe there was a middle ground between getting involved with Vito outright and merely taking the best of what he had to offer. Maybe I could use him, too. I knew that if I was one of Vito’s cronies, I’d be done with a month’s worth of bureaucratic bullshit by lunchtime today.

As a thin stream of chocolate colored liquid drizzled out the coffee machine, I chewed down on my lips and tried to think. Maybe it wasn’t all or nothing. Maybe I was making life hard for myself by not taking the golden opportunity right in front of me. Would it be the end of the world to take a little help from Vito Roselli? It wouldn’t be forever, just till I got a leg up on my own, till I could run the whole outfit more legitimately.

I had always complained to Sophia that the crap part about growing up without a family is that it’s so hard to make new connections – personal connections, business connections … but wasn’t Vito my one, original family connection? Look, part of me hated the guy, but he had money, he had clout, and he could make a lot of my problems go away overnight, I knew that much for sure. And now with Sophia and the wedding …well, a little extra certainly wouldn’t go amiss right now.

I took the cup and pressed the hot liquid to my lips.

No way.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t continue down that thought process …that was how bad men got to be as powerful as they were – good men let them. I didn’t care if I had to fill out forms for the next year, I would do this on my own steam, and Vito and his clowns could fuck off. I was decided.

My phoned pinged and I pulled it out of my pocket, catching an email from the lawyer. He found another document that wasn’t correctly signed and would need to see me again once I could procure another properly authorized copy. I cursed loudly under my breath and went back to my office.

I stared at the giant painting of Costa Rica on the wall. Sophia had been so happy when we visited a year ago. I could see her beaming, nearly-sunburnt face under her big straw hat as she paraded around in her bikini in the hotel room, dancing to salsa music and slightly tipsy. It was a good look on her. She loved to dance. And I loved to watch her dance.

We had gone out late every night to the salsa clubs and laughed and drank till the sun came up. On our last night there she had gotten that naughty look in her eyes and accosted me in the elevator up to the room. I had kissed her so hard it was as though my life depended on it.

I swallowed the last of my coffee and woke up the laptop. I had work to do. There was no point daydreaming about any of that. That Sophia was in the past now.

Chapter 8 - Sophia

When I was younger, I thought that farmers’ markets like these only existed in the movies.

Cute little tents with shiny, happy vegetables lined up in rows, and people milling around with golden Labradors and shiny, happy faces as they bought their organic vine tomatoes or their beeswax candles or their eggs from chickens that had lived a nicer life than many humans… it was all too pretty. Too perfect.

Of course, I loved coming out here with Leo early every Sunday morning to pick through the offerings, but deep down, it was becoming clear to me that what I loved best about these outings was the fact that I could avoid The Great Standoff.

I don’t know when The Great Standoff started happening to us. Maybe it crept up on us both slowly at first, but it was a full-blown, weekly phenomenon now.

The Great Standoff was all about sex – or the lack of it. All week it felt like Leo and I dodged one another when it came to fulfilling our ‘quota’. The opportunity to make love was always there on the table, always in the back of both of our minds, but the game was to see how distracted we could both pretend to be so that the opportunity floated away and we could both breathe a sigh of relief and claim that our schedules were busy, and we’d just have to wait till next time.

But on Sundays, there were no distractions. And we had all the time in the world. Leo liked morning sex. A lot. He was a deeply sexual man, and the only man I’d ever known who could come three times in one session …and be ready to go again in an hour.

Sometimes he’d poke me in the back with his hard-on and smile and say nothing, but I’d pretend I hadn’t noticed. He’d stroke and tease my neck, and wrap his warm hands around my waist and grind his hips against mine as I slept. Sometimes he’d ask outright, and I’d laugh and tell him sure, but if we do then we’ll get to the farmer’s market too late and then it’ll be so busy we won’t get parking…

And so these days we just went to the farmer’s market instead. An ‘alternative’ famer’s market, and the double meaning in the name wasn’t lost on me. I wasn’t an idiot. I could tell it irked him when weeks went by and the fire between us died right down to cold ashes. Sometimes there was no way to avoid it, and we’d steel ourselves and have a little morning romp together. That way, I felt like at least could ‘reset’ things and could buy myself some time. But these encounters were awkward enough that he’d back off for a few days afterwards.

It was a problem.

I hated how things were. But I didn’t know how to fix them. I was good at impulsive, here-and-now decision-making. I don’t know why my body had stopped responding to him. But it had. This whole long-term relationship deal was completely alien to me. And wasn’t it normal for people to lose interest in one another over time? I had no idea. Nobody had ever stuck around with me long enough.

For the time being, though, things were holding up. Barely. I think. Leo seemed a little distant, a little preoccupied, but I chalked it up to all the new developments at work.

He held my hand tightly as we strolled through the market, bonding a little over the fact that this week’s Great Standoff had been successfully avoided and now we could just buy some zucchinis for dinner in peace.

“Hey, these are cool,” he said and drifted over to a tent. I followed to see him holding up a giant string of dried red chilies, arranged in a tight whorl so that they made a cute-looking garland.

“But baby, what would we do with so many chilies?”

He put it back down again.

“I was just saying. I didn’t want to get it or anything,” he said, and we kept walking.

I’m sure all the women that walked past us wondered how such an amazing guy had ended up with a tramp like me. I’m being serious – Leo was distractingly good looking. His two-tone eyes weren’t even the most noticeable thing about him. He was built so solidly. Even when he wasn’t weight-training, he had a natural heaviness to his frame, and at nearly six and a half feet, that solidness gave him a sort of gravitational pull that seemed to catch the eye of every passing girl in a three-yard radius.

He had chestnut brown hair, tanned, freckled cheeks and lips that I had only ever seen once elsewhere: on a marble bust of the Roman Emperor Augustus we saw together in a museum the year before. They were the most insanely sexy lips. Shapely, curved on the top and bottom, suggesting some kind of perpetual kiss. He was completely unaware of how hot they made him look, though, and was always absentmindedly chewing or sucking on them.

Even though we were in a pretty serious sexual lull, it didn’t mean I couldn’t see how gorgeous he still was. Or, for that matter, how gorgeous strangers in the street thought he was, too.

It didn’t matter though.

He had proposed.

For the time being, I had ‘banked’ him, and as long as I kept my slate clean and quit my stupid obsession with my Wednesday night ‘salsa classes’, I’d be fine. The sex would pick up again, I was sure of it.

“Oh my god, look at this!” he said and guided my arm away again. I was steered towards a community notice board that Leo was excitedly pointing at. He read it out loud.

“Everyday Tantra – Workshop for Couples. Intimacy, Balance, Connection. It’s a weekend retreat …” he said and scanned the details of the poster.

“This is your kind of thing, isn’t it baby? Hippie sex stuff. I’m down it with. We should totally go,” he said and flashed me a goofy grin.

I laughed.

“Baby, do you even know what tantric sex is?”

“Uh …sure I do. It’s like meditation, only sexier,” he said, and shrugged. I raised a teasing eyebrow at him. He continued. “Yeah, I’m keen. It’s been a while since my third eye’s been, you know, opened.” He held his hands in a silly prayer posture as he eagerly read the fine print. I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Oh, my god, you’re actually serious.”

“Of course I am.” He had taken his phone out and was snapping a picture of the poster.

“But baby, you don’t’ even know what it is, though…”

“Isn’t that all part of the fun?” he said and took my hand again. “Fine, bossy boots, tell me what it’s all about then. Unweave the rainbow for me, go on I’m listening.”

“It’s actually a very serious spiritual practice, it’s a very ancient set of techniques and rituals that…” He had on his goofy face again, pretending to listen to me intently. I laughed and slapped his arm. “Stop it!”

“Stop what? I hear you. Very serious. Very spiritual, got it. I have just one question, though.”

“Yes…?”

“How much actual boning do you think there’ll be?” he said, hands in Namaste and eyes twinkling. I couldn’t help laugh again. I loved when he got into this playful mood of his, even though the topic was a little too close to home this time.

“How much? Oh, it’s loads. I mean, see all these people drinking their matcha smoothies? It’s not for their health. Oh no. It’s so they can keep up their stamina for what goes on in those classes, believe me. That’s how baby hippies are made, didn’t you know?”

“Let’s do it!

“You wouldn’t last two minutes,” I scoffed.

He gave me a hurt look. “What? That’s not true. I’d win so hard, those sex hippies wouldn’t know what hit them.”

I chuckled. “I don’t think it’s a competition baby…”

“Sure it is. I’ll win first place for hottest girlfriend and then I’ll win again when they see my mighty throbbing kundalini,” he said, nuzzling in for a kiss.

“Kundalini? Ooh, nice use of the lingo, I’m impressed.”

“Eh, I just saw it on the poster,” he grinned.

“So help us all, once your mighty throbbing kundalini’s out, I don’t know what we’ll do,” I giggled.

He smiled wide at me and we walked off. Our conversation fizzled as we walked on and he looked at this and that. It was all just a light-hearted joke. Just something cute and silly. But at the same time, something about it all aggravated me. I pushed everything out of my mind.

We picked up some veggies, chatted about this and that and soon found we had seen everything we wanted to get. It was time to go home. Time to face The Great Standoff, Part Two – which was easier to manage since I could always claim I was too tired.

When did my life get like this? Did I really go through years of therapy, a million stints in rehab and a mountain of self-help literature only to create a life so full of obligation I felt the only thing to save me from it was to dawdle a little longer at the honey stall on the way out?

Leo was awesome. He had a rough past, but he had overcome it. I clearly didn’t deserve him.

We climbed into the car and set off. The day was light, clean and easy, but my head was a mess. As he started the engine and began to drive us home, it occurred to me plain as day: I had a Madonna/whore complex. And now that I had so thoroughly stomped out the whore part of the equation, all I could do was be a better and better Madonna. And being a Madonna was boring as hell.

“Sorry for being a bit grumpy back there,” I said, and leaned over to squeeze his strong thigh. He turned to give me a warm, easy smile.

“Grumpy? You? On a Sunday morning? That’s almost unheard of!” he laughed, but he squeezed my knee back in silent acknowledgment.

“Yeah, well, I’ve just been kind of busy at work and stuff… lost a few clients lately and you know how it is, I’m always worried I’ll never find new ones…”

“Completely understood, baby,” he said, smiling and keeping his eyes on the road. “We’re building our lives together, we’re making a future, these things do take time.”

I looked down at the glittering rock on my finger, pretty but so alien. How could I have sex with a guy who was so sweet, gentle and considerate? I was like a baby duckling who had imprinted on all the bad boys in her formative years, and now she couldn’t even recognize a regular, normal guy as a potential mate. The more patient and understanding he was, the more turned off I felt.

It was tragic, when you thought about it.

So I didn’t think about it.

Lizzy at the group always said “don’t get rid of old behavior patterns, replace them”. So, for the time being, sexual frustration and a dead bedroom were the replacement on what honestly used to be a lot worse. I could just chalk it up to progress and hope like hell that I’d come around again.

‘Speaking of buildings,” I said, and changed the topic.

“Well, the inspectors came over the other day. I swear to god the red tape makes me want to scream. But, they line up the rings and I gotta jump through ‘em, right?”

I smiled and started to stroke his inner thigh a little, since my hand was already there.

In the early days of our relationship, he turned me on so much I had once made him pull over so I could suck him right there and then, because I couldn’t wait till we got home. I remembered days when just sliding a single finger up and down the inside of his leg would have him hard and speeding to get home as fast as possible. Today, though, it was more like a consolatory gesture – a friendly caress to apologize for the fact that we didn’t do that kind of thing anymore.

“I guess so. Busy week ahead?” I asked, pulling my hand away and staring out the window.

“Always. You?”

“Same. In fact, I might need to sort out some invoices and things this evening, my paperwork is looking like a hurricane went through it.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. I think I’ll have an early night, too.”

And then I saw it. His broad jaw clenched a little, something moved over those perfect, arched lips of his and his hands tightened on the steering wheel.

“You OK?” I said.

He flashed me a tight smile.

“Sure, of course. Maybe I’ll squeeze some work in this evening too.”

And so it was. We drove on in silence, The Great Standoff descended on us like an invisible blanket. I loved Leo. More than anything in the world. And that was why the stakes felt so high. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, why I couldn’t just clean up my act and let go of my stupid past already.

But I would be the perfect girlfriend for him.

I had to.