Page 21 of Woman on the Verge

“I have a question,” she says, turning to him on the couch.

“I hope I have an answer.”

She leans in toward him. “Can I kiss you?”

He smiles, possibly the widest smile she’s seen from him tonight. His teeth are bright white in the dim lighting. He sets his glass on the coffee table next to hers.

“You’re in luck,” he says. “I do have an answer.”

She tries to appear seductive even though she feels completely terrified. That voice inside is pestering her:What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?

“And?”

“You may kiss me,” he says. “In fact, I would very much enjoy that.”

She wills her face to move closer to his, and just as their lips are about to touch, she closes her eyes. She is dizzy, from the drinks or from the exhilaration, she isn’t sure which.

His lips are even better to kiss than she’d imagined. They are, dare she say,pillowy. She has never kissed pillowy lips before. In college, she and her roommate Jessie kissed once, just for shits and giggles, and Jessie’s lips were somewhat pillowy, but nothing like Elijah’s.

Their tongues touch and then slip inside each other’s mouths. Suddenly, everythingdown therecomes alive. She has long mistaken dormancy for death.

Soon, she is on top of him on the couch, straddling his middle. His hands slip under her shirt, touch her bare skin. There are instantaneous goose bumps. When was the last time she got instantaneous goose bumps?

“Do you want to go to the bedroom?” he asks.

She knows if they go to the bedroom, they will sleep together. She will officially be an adulteress. She will have this secret to keep from her husband. She will have to live with the guilt. Will there be guilt? In this moment, after two whiskeys and a glass of wine, she does not anticipate any guilt.

“Yes,” she says.

They do that thing that lovers do in movies—they stumble to the bedroom, he walking backward, she falling into his front, their feet tripping over each other. They attempt to keep their mouths attached as they go, their teeth bumping. They laugh. When they get to his bed, they fall back. The room is small, with just space for his bed—a queen—and a dresser and nightstand (with a candle).

She unbuttons her own pants and then his. Soon they are naked except for their underwear, these thin layers of clothing all that remain between her and someone she never thought she’d be. He is hard against her, and large. Well, larger than her husband, who she’s always assumed is about average. She’s only slept with three men in her whole life. Her sample size is small.

She shimmies out of her completely unsexy cotton underwear and tugs on the waistband of his boxers. Soon his boxers are on the floor next to her unsexy cotton panties, and she is staring at him in all his naked glory. If she were to tell a friend about him, she would use the word Adonis. She would say he looked like he was carved from clay.But she won’t tell friends about him because she absolutely cannot tell anyone about this.

She finds herself kissing his chest and then moving downward. She can remember the last time she gave a blow job—on her husband’s birthday, terribly cliché—but she can’t remember the last time shewantedto. She wants to now. She wants. Now.

He moans, and she feels more successful than she has in ages. When his body starts to twitch, she knows he’s close. He pushes her off him and says, “Your turn.” Then he moves his lips down her body and starts licking her there. It feels so good shegiggles. She’s always thought she isn’t an oral sex type of person. With her husband, it has always felt like he let a goldfish loose in her labia. For a few moments, she is so consumed with pleasure that she forgets that this part of her body was made for any other function besides this. She forgets that children have come from this vagina.Her children!She has temporarily forgotten their existence, a glorious but horrifying amnesia. Thought of them threatens to take her out of this unprecedented moment, but then Elijah does something with his tongue, and she is right back where she wants to be.

“Oh my god,” she says, because she is truly astonished.

She pulls on the curls of his hair, and he lifts his face, a dopey smile on it.

“Can you get inside me already?” she says.

He laughs and reaches into his nightstand. She’d forgotten about this step—the condom!They still make those things?she thinks irrationally.

He is inside her no more than three seconds before she decides this is, by far, the best sex of her life. She wraps her legs around him as he rocks into her. She comes once, then twice. He flips over so she is on top, and then she comes athirdtime. He comes with her that third time—simultaneous orgasms, something she previously thought mythical. When anyone mentioned having them, she always thought they were lying.

She rolls off him, and they are lying side by side, sweaty, breathing heavily.

“That was good,” he says, removing the condom.

“Um, yes,” she says. “It was.”

“Really good.”

She pushes up onto an elbow, looks at him. “It was, right? I mean, is it always that good? For you, I mean?”