"That's another million dollars…" Peter tilted his head to the ringing phone.

"Which do you want more?" Alicia mused, the entitlement and expectation running like a charge through her veins. Inside, she smiled – feeling just a shell of her former self, remembering all the times that ringing phones had interrupted her, interrupted them – and how she had assumed it to be an immutable fact of the world that whenever someone else needed Peter, her needs would have to wait.

Now, wanton and self-assured, the ultimatum flew unselfconsciously from her lips and she looked at the bulge at his groin, desperate for the feel of a man.

He looked at the phone and for a fleeting second she thought he would take the call – decided that if he did, she would dress and leave, paying for her dignity with the cost of her lust. But he pulled off his shirt and slipped into bed beside her.

He kissed her – lips at first strange but growing instantly familiar after almost two years apart - and her desire growled in her throat. Peter felt for her with his fingers; finding her slick and ready turned him on so much that he shivered, and "Oh baby" fell accidentally from his mouth.

He moved his hips to line them up, but she rocked back away from him.

Wordlessly, she placed one hand on his shoulder, soft but firm, and stared challengingly into his eyes while she gently pushed him downwards.

His eyebrows raised feeling her encourage him down her body. His wife – who for fifteen years had rarely let him touch her with the lights on – was demanding oral sex from him.

He was happy to oblige. The glimmers that he had seen in the past few years of her commanding side intrigued and aroused him.

He wondered when she had become this way – with who she had become this way – and he tried to force the thought from his mind as he pushed her thighs apart.

As his lips and tongue reacquainted themselves with his wife, he felt her fingers move softly in his hair, missed how she had always done this.

"God," she cried, "Yeah…" and he felt that reliable rush of manhood throb in his chest and at his groin.

She moaned directions too, "a little higher for me… just like that… harder…" and although he loved the sounds of her breathy guidance, they bemused him too. I know how to pleasure my wife, he thought. But then he wondered Do I? Did I? While his mind whirred, his mouth moved habitually until he felt her thighs tense and tighten, until she cried out, "Fuck… oh god, oh my god…" and her legs fell back apart, limp.

Aching with lust he hurriedly moved up to her and then inside, moaning as he sunk into her receptive body.

She felt fragile, somehow, under him, birdlike, although the way she grabbed him into her told him she was not in the mood for anything gentle.

"God I missed you," he breathed…

"—Don't," she said, pasting a smile on her face to soften the sanction. "That's not what we're doing right now."

"Oh yeah?" he replied, smiling to try playfully to conceal the sting. "What are we doing right now?" he asked, pinning her arms above her head to wrestle back some power.

She growled her approval and he slammed into her, hips bucking fast with love, want, and a little anger.

His hands held her wrists and she screwed shut her eyes. God he felt good. She missed him sometimes, missed his touch, his arms, missed their life before…. No she scolded. She focused on her body, their bodies, instead. She hadn't been with Peter since before… the shooting… remembered how he'd hugged her that evening and she couldn't even lift her arms. That night she had made him leave – couldn't stand the sacrilege of another man in her bed – and as she lay numbly in the dark she raged at her husband with her grief, thought she would never touch him again. But then she had had that thought - that she would never again be intimate with this man – several times before… Enough, she insisted, trying to focus on the pleasure he was laying into her body.

But she couldn't still the tempest of her mind, so she changed tact, let it drift, welcomed into it an image of Jason, sitting back in his chair, legs apart - a provocation, an invitation. She thought of how he would fuck her, just like this, hard and deep while his weight bore down on her. She thought of how his beard would feel on her face as she pushed her tongue against his. She imagined him breathing into her neck as his thrusts made her dizzy, imagined how -

"Fuck I'm close Leesh…" Peter groaned, her warmth sublime, her body both comforting and new.

"Wait for me," she insisted, voice hoarse and needy through her wicked grin, and he gritted his teeth to hold back for this assertive, divine woman for whom his pent-up desire blazed furiously.

He moved his hands from her wrists to her hands, seeking closeness as he approached his climax.

"How do you want it baby?" he asked, unsure how much longer he could hold on.

"Don't move…" she whimpered, "don't move," and he steadied his thrusts, urgent and hungry, until he felt her climax clench around him, barely heard her gratified sighs as his ears rang with the white-hot ecstasy of his own release, and he pressed his mouth onto hers as he rode out the convulsing waves of his bliss.

"…Peter… Peter" he faintly heard her voice – alarm in her tone.

"What?"

"The door!" she said, frantic, and through his haze of ecstasy he heard the insistent knocking and "Peter… Peter, I have a call!"

"Oh my god it's Eli!" she whispered, a smile creasing her face at the absurdity.

"Be right out!" he called back. "Goddamit," he sighed, slipping out of her. He lay back and reached for her, tried to pull her to lie with him, but she stood up, scanning the floor for her clothes as he stared at her in surprise. He yearned for just a moment of intimacy, just a moment to hold her – but his pride stopped the thought from forming into words.

"Well… so you're alright with this?" He said, dressing himself. He couldn't read her brazenness, didn't know whether he liked it or not.

"Peter, I basically seduced you. You don't have to call me in the morning." Her words stung a little, so he ignored them, sending his mind back to the heat of their encounter.

"Yeah that was sexy, huh?"

"It's always sexier not to care," she said, running a nonchalant hand through her hair with an indifference that seemed to him almost practiced. What in the hell does that mean? he wondered.

"…Why is that?" he asked, the only question he could muster.

"Because sex is sexier without love." She slipped a foot into a high-heeled pump. He didn't know what she was trying to say; didn't know why she had initiated this, or whether she would again.

He frowned. Was that true? He ran his encounters through his mind – Amber and the other girls he had paid for, sure they were sexy as all hell, but sexier than that mind-numbing, forget-yourself level of fire that he and Alicia had trembled with over the years? He wasn't sure. And who was she comparing him to? he wondered, the discomfort in his chest like an ache, so he turned quickly to the door to distract himself. What the hell just happened?