I don’t touch her. Not yet.
Instead, I reach around her and turn on the faucet. Warm water. Soap. My hands move purposefully.
The ritual I began with my wife—cleanliness before sin—on our wedding night. I want to still honor that.
She watches me in the mirror. I watch her right back. Her eyes burn. Her jaw’s tight. She’s seething—and beautiful in that furious, trembling way that comes before she breaks.
“What do you think this will accomplish?” she snaps.
I don’t answer. She always talks more when she’s nervous.
When she wants me.
My hand slides around her waist, past the band of those soft, sinfully thin leggings she always wears that torture me. She tries to spin out of my hold, but I press her against the counter, body to body, so close it’s war.
Her eyes roll to the back of her head and she nearly moans in pleasure but she stops herself.
She’s still fighting.
“What’s that,la signoraAgassi? Or do you like it when I call you my Americana, instead?”
“Fuck you,” she spits, voice cracking.
I smile, dark and unrepentant. “La signoraAgassi, it is.”
“You’re insane.”
“And you’re my remedy,” I growl, my tongue brushing her ear. “The sickness, the cure, the entire fucking reason I breathe. Come back to me, Americana.”
“Declan—”
“I’m going to make you come now, my beautiful wife. That okay for you?”
Her silence is permission. Permission born from need so deep, it chokes out words. So I don’t stop. I continue sliding my hand down the front of her leggings into her panties. I am eager for what I will find.
My wife is wet for me. Waiting.
“You can’t be serious!” She hisses.
“Shhhh,” I whisper as I slide a finger inside her. “This will be so much more enjoyable if you just give in to me.”
My fingers work slow, relentless circles over her center, until her hips are moving with mine, her breath falling apart in shaky little bursts.
“Look at yourself,” I murmur. “This is what you run from. What you pretend you don’t want.”
“Fuck you,” she breathes again.
“So pushy with the demands,” I tease. “I promise, I’m trying, Americana. But if you’re still cursing at one finger…” My hand moves deeper. Slower. Rougher. “Maybe you need two.”
“Shit,” she gasps, hips jerking as I work her. Filling her, breaking her, giving her exactly what she won’t ask for but needs like air.
She shatters then. Her body bowing, her mouth parting in a soundless cry. Her knuckles go white on the porcelain. Her thighs tremble.
I don’t stop until she’s done. Until the last twitch, the last moan, the last broken breath.
When I finally pull my hand free, she jerks away like I burned her.
Her eyes meet mine in the mirror, glassy with aftershock. But then something shifts. I see it click—the change from sated to shame.