For the next two days, life is as perfect as it’s been in years. Maybe ever.

We eat. We sleep in Bram’s bed. We take showers together. I work on my cock-sucking technique and practice having orgasms on Bram’s tongue. For the first time in my life, I straddle a man’s face. I hold his hands to my tits and ride his mouth until I see stars.

He gives me an afternoon dirty talk lesson, and I giggle all the way through it. “Say it like you mean it,” he says, a devilish smile on his face. “Fuck me. Pound my wet pussy. Make me your bitch.”

I bite my lip to keep from laughing. “Fuck me,” I say, blushing. “Pound my wet pussy.”

“You forgot the last one,” he says. “Do it again. Take it from the top.”

Later, when I’m lying next to him wet and panting, I ask him to fuck me. He strokes my face and says, “Not yet, baby girl. You’ll know when it’s time.”

I almost like his denial. Even though I’m not in my room anymore, he lets me know he’s still in control.

When we aren’t coming and eating, we’re talking about business. He knows everything there is to know, and I want to learn. I ask him a hundred questions. How did he start out? Who was his first employee? How did Phantom expand?

For the first time, he talks about the merger and what it means to him. His company is still a young upstart in the industry, even though it made him rich. Signet will give him what he’s always dreamed of. Influence. A name as old as Sears and GE.

“Nine years in this business and I don’t feel like I’ve made it,” he says, holding me in bed one night. “If we merge with Signet, I will.”

I take in every word he says, every lesson and bad experience. My dreams feel small compared to his, but he won’t let me minimize them.

“Someone taught you to underestimate your gifts,” he says, stroking my hair. “Those days are over.”

“I just…don’t know how to go from who I was to who I want to be.”

“The key is to depend on yourself,” he says. “Not on me or your memories, on yourself. You’re strong. No one else can fulfill you. Only you can do that.”

“How do you know I’m strong?” I ask.

“Because all you’ve ever shown me is a spine of steel.”

By the time he goes back to work on Monday, I feel different. I feel free. Truly, blissfully free.

After he leaves, I stand in the upstairs hallway and listen. I hear nothing but the wind gusting through the trees. It isn’t the solitude I relish as much as the trust. Bram left me with a new phone, the keys to his other car, and the run of the house. No room is locked or off-limits. His world is my world. It spoke volumes when he walked down the steps and drove away.

All of his other reasons for keeping me – pity, guilt, concern for his company – are in the past. Now I’m here because he wants me.

There are no secrets between us. Nothing I haven’t told him.

I’m on the brink of a strange place called forgiveness. It’s a state I never thought I’d reach. I didn’t want to. But since he brought me here, that’s changed. I’ve changed.

I spend the morning making a Pinterest board for the party. It’s the most fun I’ve had in…I can’t remember how long. I pin pictures of sparkly gold masks, lavish flower arrangements, and gorgeous platters of food that make my mouth water. I keep reminding myself that I have no limits. Everything is unlimited – my creativity, my budget, my life.

After a lunch of leftovers, I drift upstairs to Bram’s room and look at his rumpled bed. That’s where I spent the last three nights, in his arms. Joy swells up inside me so fast I almost can’t contain it. I’m not supposed to feel this way. I’m supposed to be a walking memorial to James.

But then Bram started showing me how to live again, and now I don’t want to give that up. I don’t want to go back to self-destruction and misery.

I throw off my white robe and flop blissfully onto the bed. Is it normal to be this happy, even for ten seconds? I’ve never felt this way before. I’ve felt the depths of hatred and now the heights of adoration. And I’ve felt them both for the same person.

I throw back the sheet and fur blanket and pad naked across the room. Bram said I should enjoy being a good girl today, and watching a movie sounds like the perfect way to do it. The last time I watched a movie, I was in my parents’ apartment by myself, drinking cheap wine and feeling lonely. Now I don’t need wine. I just need the scent of Bram on the sheets and the knowledge that he’ll be home soon to kiss me again.

Squatting down in front of the media center, I start opening drawers. The first one is filled with books. Tucked in the side next to a crime novel is a leather case filled with discs. They’re labeled by date, going back a few years. Maybe movies Bram recorded.

I grab one and stick it in the slot. Standing in front of the TV, I press the play button. A slightly blurry black and white picture comes up.

It’s not a movie. It’s the yard behind Bram’s house.

I watch it for a minute before realizing what it is. Surveillance video.

My heart drops. I don’t want to see this. I don’t want to dig up bad memories on a perfect day.

I eject the disc and stick it back in the case. In the drawer underneath I find movies. Dozens of them. Anything I could ever want to watch.

I pick out The Notebook and am about to put it on, but my hand feels paralyzed. Get control of yourself. Don’t do this. He trusts you.

I open the top drawer again and stare at the leather case. I shouldn’t have opened it. Shit.

With trembling fingers, I tab through the discs until I find the ones from two years ago. It won’t be there. Bram isn’t a liar. He swore an oath to tell the truth. The whole trial hinged on this one detail. His word against James’s.

From the labels, it looks like each disc holds a week of recordings. When I find the one from the week James died, my body goes numb.

It’s okay. Bram never said the whole week was unrecorded. Only that camera, only that day.

When I put it in, I’ll see nothing but images of his property, and maybe Bram coming and going.

I pull it from its sleeve and slide it in. I feel frozen inside. I used to think that nothing else could happen to me that would equal losing James. There was no one that important left to lose. But now I know there is.

The video starts. It’s silent. The picture is a little fuzzy, but clear enough. For ten minutes, nothing happens. I’m about to fast forward when a figure comes up the front steps. Bram. Followed by a girl.

The time stamp in the corner says 12:32 am.

She’s wearing a tight mini-dress and heels so high I can’t believe she doesn’t trip. She’s pretty, with huge, heavily-lined eyes and puffy lips. She’s almost as young as I am. My heart clenches as I watch her. Arm slung through his, she stands beside him as he punches the combination into the door lock. As if aware she’s on camera, she swings her blond hair forward so it cascades in a sexy sheet over her shoulder.

“What did you expect?” I mutter. “That he’d be a virgin, too?”

Queasy with jealousy, I watch him stand aside and let her go in first. What a gentleman. I wonder where he fucked her. And how many times. And if he fucked her the same way he’s going to fuck me.

This is what I get for snooping. A kick in the stomach, but not the one I feared.

Ejecting the disc, I put in one from the following month. At first I see nothing but Bram coming home and leaving. Fritz and Coral visit. Just when I think the girl on the disc was a fluke, there’s another one. She’s even prettier, with waist-length dark hair and tight leather pants that show off her perfect legs.

She and Bram are so hot for each other, they can’t wait to get inside. They kiss under the bright porch light. He shoves his hands under her tiny tank top. I sit with my palms pressed to stomach, watching Bram lust after someone else.

“Fuck,” I say. “This sucks.”

It’s my fault for watching. And my fault for not being able to stop.

If I watched the whole tray of discs, God knows how many girls I’d see. Fuckbuddies, girlfriends, exes, sluts of all shapes and sizes. Maybe that’s why Bram kept all these discs. He’s proud of them. They’re his sex tape collection, showing every girl he fucked over three years.

The dark-haired one doesn’t leave until two days later. Two whole days of Bram’s cock slamming into her pussy. His eyes burning into hers the way they burn into mine when I suck his big, beautiful dick.

I try to force the image of from my mind, but I can’t. I keep seeing her lithe body under Bram until I groan out loud with jealousy.

The disc keeps playing. A week after Dark-haired Girl, Bram comes home with two women at the same time. They leave after four hours.

Three days later he has a party. The first girl arrives at 8 pm, and by 9 I’ve lost count of how many have walked under the camera. The men are dressed in black tie. The women are dressed like high-class hookers, in corsets, stockings, and sheer bodysuits that show the outlines of their breasts and pussies. Fritz and Coral come late, just before midnight.

I hate myself for being fascinated. Not just fascinated, aroused. I can only imagine what so many beautiful people were doing to each other inside. What Bram was doing to the women.

The men are gorgeous, but none can compare to Bram. He’s the king. I’d bet a lot of men would give anything to hold his massive cock in their hands, or to suck its thickness in their mouths. Just to experience it. To worship someone so superior, they can’t help but show their admiration.

I’m not the only one who wants him. I knew that before, but now I know it.

And I wish I didn’t.

Why did I look? Why do I always have to know everything?

Pausing the disc, I sit on the end of the bed. My thoughts are tormented, while my body is desperately aroused. Slipping my hand between my legs, I feel a rush of shame. How can I be so wet? To think of his potent cock fucking a dozen girls in one night makes me sick. It’s also going to make me cum.

I slide my index finger over my slick clit. I imagine walking into one of his parties dressed in the lingerie Coral brought, looking pretty and ready to be fucked. But I’d belong only to Bram.

All of the craziness between us would go away. There’d be no history, no confusion, no pain. He wouldn’t even know my name.

He’d see me across the ballroom and his cock would get hard. He’d want me for my body, and the mysterious connection when we look at each other. Nothing else. All he’d want is to stick his dick in my mouth and fuck me.

And I’d want that, too.

I push a finger into my pussy the way he did, turning it like a corkscrew and slowly working it in. My sore cunt resists, but I push harder. I have to get used to it if I’m going to take his cock. That’s what I want more than anything in the world.

Fingers of my other hand racing across my clit, I imagine him leaving his party guests to follow me. I get lost in his huge house and end up in a dark hallway. I don’t see Bram until he grabs me from behind and shoves his cock into me without so much as a hello. It feels big, and it hurts, and I love it. I beg him for more and more.

“Please fuck me,” I whisper.

My pussy starts to squeeze. When Bram takes my virginity, his cock will feel like that. He’ll know how much I want him. I won’t be able to hide it.

Suddenly I hear the front door open and shut. “Grace? I’m home early.”

I jump out of bed with a gasp and run to the media center. The TV screen is frozen on a slutty, over made-up face. Fuck – where’s the remote?

I crawl naked across the bed, feeling through the sheets with my hands. There it is – under a pillow. It slips out of my fingers. I grab it again and flip around.

Just as I aim it at the television, Bram walks into the room.