“Hang on there and I’ll come down and let you in.”

Things got better once they were inside. Genevieve hadn’t been in the apartment before, though she’d visited the shop downstairs hundreds of times. It was cozy—a single bed in the corner, an armchair, a table and two wooden dining chairs, and then a little kitchenette. There were two doors off the kitchen area.

“Perfect for me,” said Monteray. “Everything a man could need, and enough books downstairs to last me a lifetime.” He produced a little flask from his jacket pocket, then started searching about in cupboards for a couple of glasses.

“Here you go.” He poured. She sipped, enjoying the burning in her throat, welcoming the return of the giddiness. She was staring at the single bed when he came up behind her and started kissing her neck. She allowed him to run his hands down her body, her legs. As he brought his hands up under her dress, she gasped.

What was she doing?

“You like that, don’t you,” he whispered. “You’re going to like this even more.”

She could hear Lulu’s teasing voice: “It was very exciting in that marital bed, eh?”

Even as she considered leaving, she was already bending forward for him, holding on to the edge of the table to keep her balance.

She thought about Robert’s habitual knock on her bedroom door. The rituals—before, during and after.

She was pushing herself against him. Letting it happen.

“Trouble is, you’ve never been in love, have you? And it shows, honey.”

She was practically in a frenzy for it to happen. And so, it seemed, was he. He was inside her before she even got a proper look at him. She had to brace herself against the table, which inched forward, grinding over the wooden floorboards. In fact it was the table, rather than Genevieve, that groaned as they did it. Not that she wasn’t excited. She relished the illicit nature of what they were doing. Her wickedness. And the more it hurt, the more she liked it.

When it was over, he started pulling at her clothes, fumbling with buttons.

“Haven’t you got this the wrong way round?” she said. “Isn’t it more usual to undress first?”

“You think we’re done?” he said.

This time it was their two naked bodies entwined in the bed. Fingers running over skin. Eyes locked on eyes. Tongues finding secret places. A long, slow, sensual kind of sex.

Afterward, as they sat crammed together in the tiny bed, she started to shiver uncontrollably.

“You’re something else, you know that?” He had a dazed, dizzy look in his eyes.

“Am I?” That second time had gotten to her. The first time—well, that had just been lust. But that ‘lovemaking-without-the-love.’ What was that?

“Hey. You’re cold.” He splashed some whiskey in her glass. “This’ll warm you up.”