CHAPTER ELEVEN

Sherri didn’t recognize how much she’d missed Arthur until they were together in the enclosed space of his car, and she was still a little high. Judging by the bulge in his jeans, he missed her, too. Before, they’d been feeling each other out, getting to know each other. She’d been more guarded. Now, because of their brief time apart, she practically climbed into his seat while he drove. What could be sexier than watching him shift gears?

She tried to kiss him while he kept his eyes on the road, one hand rubbing her shoulder under the collar. As soon as he pulled into his driveway and parked, they were out of the car, grabbing on to each other, animalistic. They couldn’t even make it to the house. Arthur leaned Sherri against the potting shed and tore her shorts down. His tongue darted more aggressively in her mouth. She slipped her hands under his shirt and felt the soft warmth of his back, pulling him closer, closer—she couldn’t get close enough.

There, under the canopy of trees, she allowed herself to stop worrying whether she looked OK to him, or whether she was doing what she was supposed to do. She closed her eyes and abandoned her thoughts, not escaping the moment but living inside of it the way she did sometimes when she’d get lost playing music she knew by heart. In that moment, she and Arthur were the only two people in the world, and nothing was more urgent than the desire she felt.

And then something happened. Her back arched, and her toes curled. She felt a blossoming, an explosion, a crescendo, a physical quake of warmth and pleasure unlike anything she’d experienced—what a revelation that her body could feel that way. She didn’t have to make the sex face, she became it. She’d had sex before, yes, and she’d enjoyed it, but now she understood in a new way what drove people to the resort, and what made them read the magazine. Everyone was chasing the experience she’d just had, that feeling that seemed too big for her body. She began to cry—not because she was sad, but because it was too much.

“Hey, what’s wrong? Are you OK?”

“Yes,” Sherri said. She’d never felt anything better, and yet … She pulled away from him. “No!”

“Did I hurt you? Tell me I didn’t hurt you.” He stroked her hair. “What happened?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Let’s sit down.” He threw his shirt on the ground for Sherri to sit on and wrapped her in his arms. “Talk to me.”

She was still sweating and stunned. “Why’d you do that?” she asked.

“Do what? What did I do?”

She shook her head, frustrated. She knew the word for what had happened to her, but it had been off-limits for so long that she was too embarrassed to say it out loud—even in this most intimate of moments, and even to Arthur. “You made me feel something. In my body. Something big.”