Chapter 10

By the third week it was no longer a special occasion.

They used the harness when the week had been heavy. They also used it on ordinary nights, when neither of them needed rescuing from anything except the wish to fuck. Lena got more precise. She learned which angle made him go quiet, which depth made his cock jump, when to put his hand on himself and when to tell him to leave it alone. Daniel learned how to ask without circling the request for twenty minutes. Sometimes he just said, “I want you in me,” and that was the whole conversation.

Outside the bedroom nothing flipped. He still ran meetings. She still ran her studio. He still had late nights. The difference was that the late nights mostly stayed at the office. He came through the door tired, not still working. The pegging had started as an off switch. It had also become one of the ways they liked to have sex.

Friday afternoon an unexpected box arrived.

Lena opened it at the kitchen table and went still. A six-inch dildo, thicker than the first, shaped more like a real cock. She knew at once she had not ordered it. Daniel had. She turned it over in her hands, felt the weight of it, and felt the plan for the evening settle into place.

Dinner first. Then the bedroom.

They ate at the table like any other Friday. Afterward she sent him to the shower and stayed with him through the usual prep, unhurried, her hand on his back. When they were clean she took him to the bedroom. The new dildo was already seated in the harness on the chair.

“You ordered this,” she said.

Colour rose in his face. “I thought if we were going to keep doing it, the other one might start feeling like a starter kit.”