The drive to Milan was quiet, each of us inside our own thoughts.
The countryside unrolled ahead, green and ordinary, signs ticking off the kilometres as if this was just another entry in the company diary. On paper, it was. Same fair, same stand, same hotel chain. The same two people are in the car.
Inside, nothing felt quite the same.
Claire sat in the passenger seat, one knee drawn up, hands loose in her lap. Her hair was pulled back in the quick knot she used when she did not have the energy for anything more. Sunglasses hid her eyes, but every now and then I caught her reflection in the side mirror: the corner of her mouth moving, her throat working on a swallow. Too many thoughts, not enough words.
I kept both hands on the wheel and my eyes firmly on the road. It felt safer. We had always been good at talking, but there are some conversations you do not have at one hundred and twenty kilometres an hour with lorries on both sides.
The hotel by the lake sat behind us in memory, like a small stone in my shoe. I could still feel Mareike’s weight against my chest. Taste the wine we never finished. Most of all, I could not shake the image of Claire leaving the restaurant with Lukas: the way she had not looked back, the way I had watched the lift doors close and known, with a clarity that went straight through bone, that she was about to offer herself to someone else.
I had thought that would tear something in me. It had, but not in the way I expected.
“Are you all right?” Claire asked suddenly, without turning her head.
I glanced at her, then back at the road. “Driving in Italy,” I said. “I am having to use all my psychic powers just to stay alive among these drivers.”
“Liar,” she said lightly.
“You are the one who is quiet,” I replied. “Usually, by this point, you have planned the entire stay, solved three crises and insulted at least one competitor.”
“Give me time,” she said. “I am pacing myself.”
Silence settled again. It lay between us like a folded piece of paper, waiting to be opened.
“I was thinking about the room,” she said at last. “In Milan.”
“Two rooms,” I said automatically.
She shook her head, just slightly. “One,” she said. “Tonight at least.”
The words slid into me like a warm blade. We had never needed to share. Part of the safety of our arrangement had been that respectable gap between room numbers. Separate beds, separate receipts on the company card, easy retreat if anyone ever knocked at the wrong time.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Hmmm.” She tilted her head, considering the horizon. “No. Not really. But I know what I want.”
“And what is that?” I asked, though I already knew.
Her mouth curved in a small, slow smile that hit me harder than any dramatic declaration.
“I want to be with you,” she said. “Properly. Not in snatched hours after dinner. Not between someone else’s sheets with someone else’s voice still in my head. I want to get to Milan, walk into one room with you and not pretend that we are more sensible than we are.”
I took a breath and held it for a second.
“We can do that,” I said.
“Good,” she replied, and sank back into her seat as if some decision had settled in her bones.
We did not speak of it again on the way down. We did not talk about Mareike. We did not talk about Lukas. The words sat in the car with us anyway, quiet passengers, watching the landscape change.
Milan arrived with its usual lack of ceremony. Concrete. Traffic. The hotel rose ahead of us, glass and pale stone, looking exactly like every other hotel we had ever stayed in and nothing like the room I knew we were about to carve out inside it.
We parked. We unloaded. We walked into reception with our cases rolling obediently behind us. To anyone watching, we were what we had always appeared to be: a woman in her forties in a neat dress; a man in his seventies with a battered satchel and too many cables. Colleagues. Friends.
At the desk, the receptionist smiled her practised smile, while handing the email confirmation.
“I have a reservation for two rooms…?” she started to say, fingers poised over the keyboard.
“Actually,” Claire said, before I could answer, “can we have one room this time? A double. We had to add something to the booking.”
Her voice did not shake. Mine almost did.
The receptionist frowned at her screen, then brightened. “Yes, we can do that. One double, four nights. High floor. Quiet side.”
“That would be perfect,” Claire said.
We took the lift up. My heart did not seem to understand that we were only changing floors. It beat as if we were stepping off something high.
The room was exactly as I expected. Generic. Neutral. White duvet, pale wood, desk, two small lamps, a bathroom that smelled faintly of lemon cleaner. No history yet. No marks. No stories.
Claire wheeled her case inside, let the handle drop and stood just inside the door, looking around.
“I like it,” she said.
“We have seen worse,” I agreed.
She turned to me then and something in her face shifted. The professional mask she wore for receptionists and clients slid aside. What remained was the woman who had texted me from trains, stood in the doorway of room 317 with her hair down, whispered that she did not feel as guilty as she thought she should.
“Come here,” she said.
A simple request, almost every day, but everything in it was layered.
I crossed the space between us in three steps. She reached for me without hesitation, arms around my neck, mouth lifting to mine.
The kiss was not frantic, nor careful. It was the kind of kiss you give someone you already know by map and memory, when there is no need to ask what they like. Her body fitted against mine in that now-familiar way, soft and solid and impossibly right. The day’s travel dropped off my shoulders like a coat.
“I do not want to think about him,” she said quietly when we broke apart. “Not now.”
“Him who?” I said, because some habits die hard.
She gave me a quick, complicit grin.
“Fair enough,” I said. “I do not want to think about anyone else either. Only you. That is what matters right now.”
We undressed without ceremony. There was a laziness to it, but not disinterest, more the easy, heavy laziness of people who have nothing left to prove to one another. My shirt on the chair. Her dress, folded over the back. Her bra a neat small island on the carpet.
The first time I had seen her naked, in that other room, she had been self-conscious, aware of every inch of herself. Now she moved with a different assurance. She knew I had seen her in more unflattering lighting than this and wanted her anyway.
When we lay down on the bed, it felt less like starting something new and more like returning to somewhere we had missed. Her legs twined with mine. Her hands found their familiar paths across my back and shoulders. My mouth went unerringly to the places that made her breath catch. The geography held no surprises, and yet the pleasure was new again, rising between us with almost embarrassing ease.
I did not need to reclaim her. She was not an object someone had borrowed. She was a person who had made a choice in another room, with another man. What I wanted, as I moved with her, was something else entirely: to remind both of us that whatever had happened at the lake, we were still us. That the story had not been taken from our hands.
Her body answered me with a familiarity that made my throat tight. She arched the way she always did when everything lined up just right. Her fingers dug into my shoulders in that same clumsy, earnest way that left small crescent marks. When we tipped over the edge together, it did not feel like comparison. It felt like both of us falling back into something we had built, brick by brick, bed by bed.
Afterwards, we did not move for a long time. We lay in a loose tangle, skin cooling, breathing slowly, the muted sounds of the hotel a soft hum outside the door. At some point, I realised my face was tucked into the curve of her neck, exactly as it had been on that first stolen night. The familiarity of it was almost more intimate than the sex.
“Well,” she said eventually, voice low and lazy. “That was… necessary.”
“I prefer to think of it as essential maintenance,” I said.
She laughed, a proper laugh that shook the mattress.
“We are terrible people,” she said.
“Yes,” I agreed. “And sometimes very fortunate ones.”
She rolled onto her side so she could look at me properly. Her hair had escaped its knot and fell around her face in uneven waves. There were faint lines at the corners of her eyes, and a small, satisfied slackness to her mouth that made my chest ache.
“I kept thinking about you,” she said.
“Last night?” I asked.
She nodded. “At first, when he kissed me. When he undressed me. I kept seeing your face, which was not very helpful for him.”
I smiled at that, oddly comforted.
“And then?” I asked.
“And then I stopped,” she said simply. “If I was going to do it, I decided to be present for it, not half elsewhere. That seemed only fair to everyone.”
I nodded. It was exactly the sort of pragmatism I loved in her.
“You?” she asked. “With her?”
“I thought about you when we walked into my room,” I said. “Then again, when she kissed me. Then again, when we undressed. I thought, ‘Claire will enjoy this story one day, if I ever find the courage to tell it properly.’”
Claire’s eyes darkened a little.
“I do,” she said quietly. “Enjoy it, I mean. The idea of you with her. Of you with anyone, really, so long as I know.”
“That is very modern of you,” I said.
“I am a modern girl,” she replied dryly. “You have seen to that. Besides, you have seen me with someone else now. It seems only fair that I get to picture you being appreciated properly.”
Heat moved through me at the word picture.
“You looked happy,” I said. “At breakfast.”
She did not pretend to misunderstand.
“I was,” she said. “He was kind. Attentive. Good at listening. Good at… other things. I liked being the centre of that for a while.”
“And I liked seeing you that way,” I admitted. The words felt strange in my mouth, but right. “Knowing someone else had done what I always think people should do more often: look at you and think, I want that.”
Her gaze softened. “You have always thought that” she said. “Even when you pretended not to.”
“Yes,” I said. “But last night I had to face the fact that I am not just jealous. I am also… curious. It does something to me to know that you were with him. That he has seen you as I see you.”
“And it does something to me,” she said, “knowing that she had you. That you had her. That you are not just mine in theory, but also in practice. It should make me territorial. Instead, I feel strangely… proud.”
We lay with that for a moment. The air conditioning hummed. Somewhere down the corridor, a door closed.
“You know what that sounds like,” I said.
“Immaturity?” she suggested.
“Kink,” I said.
She smiled. “Ah. That.”
“We are not interested in humiliation,” I went on. “Or in being shut out. I have no desire to sit at home folding laundry while you send me pictures of someone else’s hand on your thigh.”
“No,” she agreed. “That would not do at all.”
“But there is something to be said,” I added, choosing the words carefully, “for the idea that we can be honest about what we do, and that knowing is not only bearable, but… enjoyable.”
“Soft cuckolding,” she said thoughtfully. “By mutual consent.”
“Soft is a strange word for it,” I said. “Nothing about it feels soft to me.”
She laughed again, low and wicked. “You mean you are aroused,” she said.
“Yes,” I replied. “And you?”
“I think I am,” she said, with a small, guilty smile.
We did not settle everything in that first talk. We only named the territory. The details, we both knew, would require cooler heads and perhaps less nakedness.
For the rest of the afternoon, we did very little. We ordered room service. We napped in short bursts, waking tangled together, the room slowly taking on the smell and weight of us. Once, while she slept, I lay awake and traced with my eyes the faint marks on her skin, a shallow bruise at her hip, a light scrape on her shoulder. The traces of someone else’s hands.
I had expected the sight to twist something ugly in me. Instead, I felt a quiet, bewildered pride. She was not mine to own, but she was mine to care about, and it pleased me, against my better judgment, that someone else had found her as irresistible as I did.
By evening, we were still not quite ready for the world. We showered separately, then together, because pretending otherwise seemed pointless. We dressed. Claire chose a simple dress that made her look exactly what she was pretending to be: a professional woman at a trade fair. There was a slight softness to her walk when we finally left the room that only I would ever notice.
At the door, she paused and looked back at the bed. The duvet was wrinkled, one pillow on the floor, the air still warm from us.
“I like this,” she said quietly. “Our room. Not just a room I meet you in.”
“So do I,” I said.
She pulled the door closed behind us.
As we walked down the corridor toward the lift, side by side, it occurred to me that whatever games we were playing with other people, this was still the centre. A shared room. A shared bed. Two people foolish enough to think they might bend the rules of their lives without breaking them.
The lift brought us down into the soft chaos of the lobby. Lanyards everywhere. A knot of men arguing over a roll-up banner. A woman in a bright red dress laughing into her phone. The usual pre-fair buzz, the scent of coffee and nerves.
We checked in at the organisers’ desk, collected our badges, and smiled politely at people we half recognised from other years. The rhythm of familiar tasks was almost comforting. Stand numbers. Floor plans. Where to find coffee that was not just a brown suggestion in a paper cup.
By the time we reached the hall, the place was half full. Forklifts beeped in the distance. Stands were half-dressed in posters and displays. On ours, the boxes we had shipped were stacked in a neat pyramid, waiting.
We worked. There was something soothing about it. Cutting tape. Lifting books. Shelving, stacking, checking. Claire, in her simple dress with her hair caught back, moved around the stand with the ease of someone who had done this dance many times. Watching her, I could almost forget we had woken up tangled in a hotel bed only a couple of hours before.
Almost.
Now and then, she would straighten from a box, stretch, and catch me looking. There would be a brief pause, just long enough for the memory of her bare body under my hands to pass between us, then she would go back to business.
The fair opened at noon. The first wave was the usual mix: keen young faces with tote bags, older readers, buyers with lists, librarians in sensible shoes. We talked. We listened. We smiled. The day was filled with the ordinary work of selling and explaining.
It was late afternoon, when the air felt thicker, and the noise had settled into a steady hum, that Claire nudged my elbow.
“Look,” she murmured.
I followed her gaze.
Down the aisle, moving at an easy pace, came a young man with an armful of catalogues and a messenger bag slung across his chest. Italian in that unfair way: dark hair that did not need a comb, a jaw that looked as though it had been drawn by someone who cared about symmetry. White shirt with sleeves rolled to show slim wrists and a battered watch. Not polished in the Swiss way, but looser, warmer. A hint of stubble. A small tattoo on the inside of his forearm, half hidden when he turned.
He slowed near our stand to let a group of students pass. His eyes drifted over our shelves without really seeing them. He looked tired, a little amused, as if the whole fair were a play he had seen before.
Claire leaned in just enough that her shoulder brushed mine.
“Italians,” she said under her breath, the word drawn out with a smile. “Dangerous creatures.”
My mouth went a little dry.
“You speak as if you have extensive field research,” I murmured.
“Sadly, no,” she replied. “Just observation. Gesture. Attitude.”
As if summoned, the young man glanced our way. His eyes were a clear, dark brown. They flicked over me and came to rest on Claire—for a second too long. Nothing dramatic, just a moment of quiet appreciation before he smiled, small and automatic, and looked at our banner.
“Buon pomeriggio,” he said. “May I?”
His badge read Matteo and the name of a mid-sized Italian publisher beneath it.
“Of course,” Claire said, slipping into her professional warmth. “Please, have a look.”
He stepped closer, balancing his catalogues in one arm and taking one of ours with the other. His fingers were long, nails short and clean. He flicked through the pages with the quick eye of someone who had seen too many catalogues and still cared enough to check.
“You are from London?” he asked.
“Just outside, actually,” I said.
He smiled. It changed his face, tipping him from handsome into something more dangerous.
“I studied in London for a year,” he said. “I learned your people are very serious about tea and cakes, and very unserious about sunshine.”
“Both true,” Claire said. “Where did you study?”
As they talked, I watched. The way his body angled instinctively toward her. The slight tip of her head when he spoke, just a fraction, not quite flirtatious, not neutral either. Her voice softened. She was working, yes, and she was good at it, but there was more interest there than professional curiosity.
It should have nettled me. Instead, I felt a small, sudden spark at the base of my spine.
Matteo asked all the right questions about print runs and rights territories. Claire answered, sometimes deferring to me for details, but mostly holding the thread. He laughed at her jokes. She laughed at his. The faint scent of his cologne drifted across to me now and then—light, citrus, with something darker underneath.
When he smiled straight at her, I saw something flicker in her face: appreciation, and maybe, just maybe, the same thought she had voiced in the room earlier: I like that someone looks at you and wants you.
Only now the roles were reversed.
He left after ten minutes, promising to return with a colleague later. When he walked away down the aisle, Claire watched him a moment longer than strictly necessary.
“Well,” she said.
“And,” I agreed with a slight grin.
She turned to me slowly, a small, wicked smile beginning at the corner of her mouth.
“You saw that,” she said.
“I am not blind,” I replied.
“And?” she asked lightly.
“And he is young enough to be someone’s terrible decision,” I said. “Possibly yours.”
She laughed, warm and low.
“Do you mind?” she asked, straightening a stack of catalogues that did not need straightening.
“Ask me a better question,” I said.
She glanced up. “Does it interest you?” she asked, more quietly.
There it was the change. The game that had been theoretical in the room was suddenly standing at the edge of the stand, straightening its tie.
“Yes,” I said, before I could talk myself out of it. “It does.”
Something in her eyes darkened, then brightened. She stepped closer, close enough that she could pretend to reach past me for a pen if anyone looked our way.
“Italians,” she murmured again, almost inaudible. “They have a reputation, you know.”
“So I have been told,” I said in a low whisper.
“Would you like to see whether it is deserved?” she asked.
My mouth went dry again.
“You mean me,” I said slowly, “or you?”
“Both,” she said. “Eventually, perhaps. But I was thinking of a very small, very controlled experiment. For us.”
“Experiment,” I repeated.
“Do not look so academic,” she teased. “I am not suggesting a thesis. Just… an observation. Under supervision.”
The word supervision landed in my chest, heavy and bright.
“You want me to be there,” I said, to be sure.
“Yes,” she said simply. “If anything ever happens. I would want you there. Not shut out. Not kept in the dark. With me.”
We were standing in a trade fair, surrounded by cardboard and lanyards, and no one would have known that we were discussing the terms under which one of us might end up in bed with a young Italian while the other watched.
“You are serious,” I said quietly.
Her gaze was calm, steady. “Partially,” she said. “I am… curious. And I know you are too, even if you are too well-brought-up to admit it without prompting.”
I thought of our bed that afternoon, of her saying she would have wanted to watch me with someone else, if it ever happened. I thought of my own reaction to the idea. Of waking that morning, imagining her with Lukas, jealousy and heat so tightly wrapped around each other I could barely tease them apart.
“Yes,” I said again. “I am curious.”
“Good,” she said. “Then we can talk about it properly later. Not here. Not now. I do not intend to drag some poor young man into our labyrinth without at least offering him a drink.”
“How kind of you,” I said.
She smiled, patted my arm and stepped away as someone approached the stand with a question. Just like that, we were back in our roles. The conversation folded itself neatly between us, waiting for a quieter room.
The rest of the day blurred into meetings. Now and then, I saw Matteo in the distance, moving along an aisle with his catalogues, talking at another stand. Each time, my eyes tracked him automatically. Each time I wondered what it would feel like to sit in a corner of a room and watch that easy smile turned entirely on Claire.
By the time the fair closed, my feet hurt and my head was full. We locked the stand, covered the books, and joined the small river of exhibitors heading for the exits. Back at the hotel, the bar was buzzing. Banners for the fair hung everywhere. People clustered around tables, talking too loudly, laughing the way people do when they are exhausted and grateful for a drink.
We found a small table near the back. Claire kicked off her shoes beneath it with a soft sigh and leaned back.
“Wine?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “White. Cold. Very large.”
When I returned with two glasses, she was looking around the room with the attentive gaze of a cat on a windowsill. Not hunting. Just aware.
“There are a lot of people here we know,” she said, taking her glass. “And a few we do not.”
I followed her gaze. A stand neighbour from last year. A librarian we had once rescued from a dreadful dinner. A cluster of young editors. And at the far side of the room, talking to a small group near the bar, was Matteo.
His badge was gone, and he wore a different shirt now, dark blue instead of white, sleeves still rolled. He held his glass loosely, laughing at something. Even in a crowded room, he drew the eye. Now and then, even while talking to others, his gaze drifted in our direction and lingered when it found Claire.
Claire sipped her wine and watched him for a moment. Then she leaned forward, bringing her mouth closer to my ear.
“Do you trust me?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, without hesitation. “You know I do.”
“Good,” she said. “Then perhaps you would not mind if I spoke to him later. Casually. About rights. About sunshine. About whether Italians do, in fact, live up to the stereotype.”
“You need my permission?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “But I like having it.”
I imagined her walking across the room, joining his small circle, tilting her head to listen, letting him charm her. I imagined her coming back to me and telling me exactly what he had said. How he had looked at her.
“I do not mind,” I said. “On one condition.”
“Which is?” she asked.
“You do not promise him anything that involves hotel bedding without speaking to me first.”
Her smile was slow and genuine.
“Agreed,” she said. “You will be the first to know if any such promises are even under consideration.”
We sat for a while, watching the room and talking about safer things, book covers, last year’s disastrous panel, how much busier the fair felt now that people were determined to be in the same space again.
Eventually, the group around Matteo thinned. One person left, then another. He found himself alone at the bar for a moment, swirling the last of his drink.
Claire glanced at me.
“I am going to speak to him,” she said.
“All right,” I said. My voice came out steady; I was absurdly proud of that.
She slipped her shoes back on, smoothed her dress, and stood. For a moment, she rested her hand on my shoulder, a small anchoring touch. Then she crossed the room.
Of course, I watched her go. The sway of her hips was small, more habit than display, but the dress was kind to her. She moved with the easy confidence she wore at fairs, the one that said she belonged there.
At the bar, she eased into a space near him, not quite touching, her empty glass held loosely in her hand as if she were simply waiting for a refill. After a moment, she tipped it slightly in his direction with a small, apologetic smile and said something that made him laugh and reach for the bottle. His face lit in recognition as he realised who he was topping up, and the two of them slipped into easy conversation.
I could not hear a word. Watching them was its own intoxication.
He leaned in slightly to catch her over the noise. She laughed at something he said. I could see it in the movement of her shoulders. She touched his forearm once, briefly, in a friendly way. He gestured with his glass, talking with his hands. She watched those hands with interest.
My stomach tightened. My pulse picked up. I took a sip of wine and found my mouth dry. The sensation was close to jealousy, but not quite: no bitterness, no feeling that something was being stolen. Instead, there was a strange, illicit pride. That woman over there, the one making the young Italian laugh, had woken up tangled with me that morning. Would likely do so again tonight. And yet there she was, generating possibilities in the world that I could watch unfold.
After a few minutes, she glanced back towards our table. Our eyes met. It was a long, clear look: no apology, no guilt. I am just here. You see me. You know.
She said something to Matteo, inclining her head my way. He turned, following her gaze, and when he saw me, he lifted his glass in a small salute, polite, non-intrusive, a simple gesture of inclusion.
I lifted my glass back.
All at once, the shape of our game sharpened. Claire was not sneaking. I was not spying. Whatever happened next would be something we had walked into together.
A few minutes later, she returned to the table. She sank into her chair with a small, secret smile and took a sip of her wine.
“Well?” I asked.
“He is delightful,” she said. “Rights manager. Lives near here. Loves London. Thinks my Italian is charmingly awful. I think his English is unfairly good.”
“And?” I asked.
“And he may come by the stand tomorrow with some colleagues,” she said. “Which gives us plenty of time tonight to decide how stupid we wish to be.”
“You are set on being stupid?” I asked.
“Not necessarily tonight,” she said. “But I find the idea of having the option… interesting.”
She looked at me over the rim of her glass, eyes dark and open.
“I meant what I said earlier,” she added quietly. “If anything does happen, I want you involved. I want you there. Not as a confessor afterwards, but as a participant. In whatever way we agree works.”
I nodded slowly.
“I believe you,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “Then perhaps, when we go back upstairs, we can talk about what that might actually look like. In detail. So that if an opportunity does present itself, we are not inventing rules on the hoof.”
Her hand found my knee under the table, fingers warm through the fabric. Not overtly sexual; just grounding.
Somewhere at the bar, Matteo laughed at something. Claire’s eyes flicked in his direction, then back to me.
“Whatever happens,” she said so softly I almost missed it, “you are still the person I go to bed with. That is not up for negotiation. The rest we can figure out.”
The rest. A small phrase for everything we were about to risk. It contained the first proper crack in the wall of our old rules. It also contained the possibility of something that did not feel entirely like loss.
“Let us go upstairs,” I said. “Before we drink enough to make very bad plans.”
She smiled. “Too late,” she said, standing. “We are already making them.”
We left the bar together. In the lift, it was quiet. Claire stood close beside me, one hand light on my forearm. The buzz of conversation from the bar faded as the doors closed and the car began to rise.
“You watched,” she said at last, eyes on the floor numbers.
“Yes,” I said. “Of course I did.”
“And?” she asked.
“And you looked very good holding an empty glass,” I said. “You have a talent for pretending you just happened to be in the right place.”
She smiled, a small sideways thing.
“He is charming,” she said. “In a very obvious way. I like that he does not hide it.”
“You like that he looked at you,” I said.
“Yes,” she replied without hesitation. “And I like that you saw him looking at me.”
My throat felt dry. A bell sounded, and the doors opened on our floor. We stepped out into the quiet corridor, the carpet muffling our steps.
“You are enjoying this,” I said as we walked towards our room.
“Of course,” she said lightly. “Are you not?”
“I am trying to work out which part of me is,” I said.
“More than one part?” she asked.
“Unfortunately,” I said.
She laughed softly and unlocked the room. When the door clicked shut behind us, the air felt different. Thicker. Hotel rooms do that in the evening, as if they are waiting to see what people will do inside them.
Claire put her glass on the desk and turned to face me, leaning back against the wood. Her cheeks were flushed from the wine, her eyes sharp.
“Sit,” she said, nodding at the chair by the window.
I obeyed. Age has taught me that some instructions are worth following quickly.
She watched me for a moment, then spoke.
“All right,” she said. “Let us talk about this before it runs away from us. I do not want to stumble into something and then pretend we did not mean it. I want to know what turns you on about this. And I want you to know what turns me on.”
She crossed to the bed and sat on the edge, facing me. Not touching, but near enough that I could feel her warmth.
“Start with you,” she said. “You watched me with him. What did that do in your head?”
I considered pretending ignorance. It seemed pointless.
“It made me a little jealous,” I said. “But not as I expected. I did not feel replaced. I felt… aware that you have this effect on other people, not just on me. Proud, in a ridiculous way. And there was a sharpness when I imagined how far you could take it, if you wanted to.”
Her gaze deepened.
“How far did you imagine?” she asked.
“To his place,” I said. “Or here. You in that dress. His hands where mine have been mine. His mouth on your skin. You’re letting him, with that same focus you gave Lukas. Maybe more. And me not being shut out of it. Me seeing it, instead of filling in the gaps later.”
Her pupils widened a little. She drew in a slow breath.
“So it is not just the idea that I might do it,” she said. “It is that you are allowed to see.”
“Yes,” I said. “If we do this, I do not want to hear a sanitised version over coffee a week later. I do not want to find out by accident. I want to be in the room. You said you would want that if I were with someone. It seems only fair it works both ways.”
She nodded slowly, the corners of her mouth curling.
“Good,” she said. “Because I have discovered that I like the idea of you being in the room. Very much.”
She shifted on the bed, folding one leg under her.
“When I was talking to him,” she went on, “I knew you were watching. I could feel it. It made me stand a little taller. Laugh a little more freely. Not to taunt you, but because I liked knowing you were part of it. That if he did something as simple as refill my glass, you would see his hand near mine and know what that looked like from where you sat.”
She paused.
“At the lake, with Lukas,” she said, “you were not there. You knew the outline. You imagined the rest. That was exciting in its way, but I also knew I had gone somewhere you could not follow. Tonight was different. Talking to Matteo with you in the room, knowing you could see exactly how close or far I stood, that felt right in a way I did not expect.”
“You want that again,” I said.
“Yes,” she said simply. “I want you to see me being wanted. And I want to see you seeing it.”
It was absurd how much that moved me.
“You?” she said. “When you looked at him, what did you think?”
“That he is younger than I am, and better looking,” I said.
She smiled. “About thirty-five, I would guess. But that was not the question.”
“I wondered how his hands would feel on you,” I said. “Whether he would be careful or something else. Whether you would make different sounds with him. If some animal part of you came out. And I wondered how I would cope if I were in the corner with a glass in my hand, watching you undress for someone who has not spent years learning your buttons.”
“And?” she asked quietly.
“And I am not sure,” I said. “Which is part of why I am curious. Not knowing is dangerous. But I cannot pretend it does not excite me.”
She studied my face for a long moment.
“I do not want to hurt you,” she said.
“I know,” I replied. “I do not want to hurt you either. Which is why we need to be very clear about what we are and are not doing.”
She nodded.
“So,” she said, and there was a new briskness in her tone, like a meeting agenda, only more interesting. “Ground rules.”
She counted on her fingers.
“One: nothing happens with anyone else unless we have talked about the possibility beforehand. No surprises.”
“Agreed,” I said.
“Two,” she went on, “we both have veto power. If you look at him and something in you says no, we stop. If I look at her and something in me says no, we stop. No persuasion. No sulking.”
“Agreed,” I said.
“Three: wherever possible, you are in the room if I take things further with someone. I am not interested in hiding. That is not what this is about for me.”
“And you are in the room if I am ever in a bed with someone else,” I said.
“Yes,” she replied. “If I am going to live with the image, I would prefer the correct version.”
We both laughed, which took some of the sharpness out of the air.
“Four,” she said, “if at any point this stops feeling enjoyable and starts feeling like knives, we say so. No being noble.”
“Agreed,” I said.
“And five,” I added, more seriously. “We use protection. You cannot conceive, and I am hardly a hazard on that front anymore, but if we open this up, our health matters more than anything.”
She nodded at that, firmly.
“And one more,” she said. “We do not drag anyone from the centre of our lives into this. No games with my husband. No games with my mother-in-law. They live in a different room entirely.”
“Agreed,” I said.
She looked satisfied.
“Do you imagine him?” she asked after a moment. “Matteo. In specific terms.”
“Yes,” I said. “Unfortunately, my imagination is still in good working order.”
“Mine too,” she said softly.
She rose from the bed and crossed the short space between us, coming to stand between my knees. Her hands settled on my shoulders.
“Tell me something,” she said. “When you watched me just now, what did you want to do?”
“Take you upstairs and fuck you,” I said. “Possibly right there in the bar, which would have been unwise.”
“And what did you think he wanted to do?” she asked.
“Fuck you as well,” I said. “Again, possibly against the bar, which probably would have made many people’s evening.”
She smiled, pleased.
“Would you let him?” she asked. “If we were all in a room. If he leaned in to kiss me, would you let him?”
My hands moved to her waist almost of their own accord.
I simply said. “If you wanted it. Yes.”
She leaned down, lips almost brushing mine.
“And if I sat on a bed with someone in my arms,” she murmured, “a girl, perhaps, soft, shy, and I held her while you undressed, would you let me keep holding her while you showed her what you like? Would you let me be there while she learned you, knowing I was watching both of you?”
The image arrived so fast it stole my breath: Claire sitting on a bed, another woman between her legs, wrapped in her arms, my hands on that stranger’s skin, both of them watching me.
“Yes,” I said, the word low. “God help me, yes.”
“Good,” she whispered. “Then we are equally compromised.”
She kissed me then. This time, there was nothing lazy in it. Her mouth took mine with an urgency that had been building since the lake, sharpened now by every confession we had just made. We did not need anyone else in the room; the idea of them was enough, threading through every familiar touch and adding a new heat to what we already knew how to do.
Later, when we lay spent and tangled, her head on my chest and my hand tracing slow patterns on her shoulder, she spoke again.
“I do not know if anything will happen,” she said. “With him. Or anyone. We may talk ourselves back into caution and go home with nothing more than a few stolen glances between us.”
“That would not be the worst outcome,” I said.
“No,” she agreed. “But if it does happen, I want us to remember this. This room. This bed. This conversation. That we chose it. That it was ours before anyone else set foot in it.”
“We will remember,” I said.
She was quiet for a while. Her breathing slowed against my skin. Just as I thought she had slipped into sleep, she added, very softly, “And tomorrow, if he comes by the stand and smiles at me, you have my permission to enjoy watching.”
My body, traitorous as ever, reacted even in its tired state. She felt it and smiled against my chest.
“See,” she murmured. “Kink.”
I closed my eyes and let the rhythm of her breathing pull me toward sleep, knowing Milan had shifted. It was less about the fair now, more about the careful, dangerous game we had begun. No one else had touched either of us since the lake. So far, the path was only words and images. But it lay between us now, clear and deliberate.
The next move, I knew, would not be mine. It would be hers.
And, to my own surprise, I wanted it that way.
*** End of Part Uno ***
