“Okay.” He sighed. “Let me see if I can explain this to you.” When I didn’t respond, he said, “Are you there?”

“I’m listening.”

“I could have held out for much longer,” he said. “Like in high school … I didn’t touch you until you came to me.”

“That’s irrelevant. Why didn’t you stop?”

He exhaled. “Addicts have on-off switches. Once we started, the switch turned on.” A pause. “I got really aroused. Then I got mad at myself for being so aroused, that you had that kind of power over me still, because I was furious at you. I’ve been nursing this anger for a very long time. You understand that, right?”

“I know who you are.”

“Right. The madder I got, the more aroused I got, because, in a lot of male brains, arousal and anger feed on each other.” He kissed my neck. “Like sexual psychopaths … which I am not.”

I was silent.

“I do have control. Even at my angriest this morning, I didn’t do what I really wanted. Because if I did, I knew it would be the point of no return.”

I sat up. “What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean?”

My heart was pounding. “I don’t know.”

“Take a guess.”

“That you wanted to kill me.”

“I just got you back.” He laughed. “I love you. Why would I want to kill you?”

The relief was overwhelming, but I was still confused. “Well, then what do you mean?”

“If you can’t figure it out, I’m not going to tell you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He laughed again. “Forget it. Let’s go to bed.”

I lay down on the pillow and closed my eyes. Then they sprang open. I sat up. “No!”

He started kissing my neck again. “No, not tonight, or no, not ever?”

“Just no.”

He ran his hands across my breasts. “I should have done it when you were sixteen and madly in love with me. You would have done anything I asked back then.”

It was true. I said nothing.

“Then I should have done it when you came back to me. What were you? Twenty-one?”

“Twenty.”

“You were so desperate that again you would have done anything I asked.”

Also true. “Then why didn’t you?”

“Because I was a moron. Back then I thought there were things that you didn’t do to your wife. Now you’re not madly in love with me and you’re not desperate. Once you heal up, you’re an independent woman—much to my irritation. I know you can’t stay here. You can’t raise your kids in a brothel.”