“High school was a long time ago, Ken.”

He turns and crosses the few steps to me with long strides that take me by surprise. His arms go around me too tight, his hands moving down to squeeze my butt. He presses me against his crotch, grinding against me. His mouth finds mine. He pries open my lips.

“Ken—”

He pushes me back onto the kitchen table before I have a chance to say another word. Ken looks into my eyes, but whatever he’s seeing is not my face. His gaze is hot, but distant. He’s between my legs in a minute, fumbling with the drawstring of my lounge pants, stripping them down to my thighs. My calves. My ankles. He yanks off one leg, leaving the other dangling on my foot.

I gasp. He covers my mouth, even though we’re alone in the house. He likes that, I think. Forcing me to be quiet. And this, too, is new and strange and it could be, should be exciting. Maybe it would be, with someone else.

Over Ken’s shoulder, I see a figure moving on the deck. It stands in front of the sliding glass doors. Watching.

Christian’s eyes meet mine as my husband thrusts inside me. Ken mutters words of lust or love, passionate sounds I don’t want to decipher in case they’re another woman’s name. The table rocks. He moves faster. He’s lost in this. I’m not.

Christian is still standing there.

It’s not the first time I’ve ever pretended to be turned on when I wasn’t. Not my first faked orgasm. I give this one my all, a performance worthy of an award, and all the while I’m watching Christian watch us. His expression is blank. His hands hang at his sides, but the fingers curl into fists.

Then, to my astonishment, what I was faking becomes real. In the last few moments before Ken finishes, so do I. The pleasure forces a cry out of my mouth. My eyes close as my body tenses and releases. I open them when Ken collapses on top of me, but I’m not looking at him.

Christian is gone, not even a shadow falling on the deck to show me he’s still near the door. As Ken gets off me and I take the few steps to the sink to grab a paper towel, I look out through the window to see Christian crossing the yard. It takes a few minutes for him to get to the carriage house. That means it took him a few minutes to get from there to the deck.

And that, I think with a sudden shiver that is half revulsion and half something I can’t name, means that Ken saw him coming before he pushed me onto the table.

He did it on purpose, to make sure Christian would see.

CHAPTER
15

KEN HAS TAKEN Eli hiking for the day so that I can be free to cook and clean in preparation for erev Rosh Hashanah, which starts tonight. They won’t be back until this afternoon. Plenty of time for me to make the rounds of estate sales this morning … but I’m proud of myself, because although I got the email listings for at least four, I haven’t left the house.