He smiled at her and dipped his lips to hers. He kissed her again and she relaxed into his mouth. His lips moved to her neck and up to her ear.
“I love you, too.”
Still buried deep inside her, he began to thrust into her once again. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back as he wrapped his hand around her neck. Her collar bit into her throat.
She swallowed hard against his hand and breathed and breathed.
He’d only just begun to hurt her tonight.
“Hey, Nor, I’m home. Want some dinner?”
Nora blinked and rubbed her eyes, which had gone dry from staring at her computer screen for so long.
Wesley stood just inside her office and at first she could barely focus on him. She saw him but saw through him and past him at the same time.
“Sounds good.” She glanced at the words on her screen. “I’m starving.”
“Pasta?”
“Too many carbs.”
Wesley rolled his eyes. “Fine. Salad and fish?”
“Fish? But it’s not Friday.”
“You’re the Catholic. I’m Methodist. We eat fish whenever we want. Give me twenty minutes.”
Wesley left her alone again. She printed out the pages she’d been typing and read through them.
The phone rang at seven and the call itself consisted of only seven words…
She read to the end and pressed the pages, still warm from the printer, briefly to her chest. Reluctantly, she slid the pages under her desk and fed them one by one through the shredder. She highlighted the text on her computer screen and hit Delete, flinching as the text disappeared. She closed the document and let the words disappear into the ether. She hated to do it. But she knew The Rule. She obeyed the Ruler.
Nora stood up for the first time in an hour and left her office. When she saw Wesley standing at the kitchen counter she actually could see him now. He smiled at her. She smiled back.
“So what did you write today?” he asked as he expertly sliced through the skin of a ripe red tomato.
“A really hot sex scene with a lot of S&M between a girl and her true love,” she said and Wesley rolled his eyes at her, his usual response to her wickeder scenes. “But don’t worry, I deleted it.”
“How come?” he asked, popping a chunk of tomato into his mouth.
Nora leaned against Wesley, taking temporary comfort in his warm, strong chest. He wrapped his arm around her and rested his chin on top of her head.
“It wasn’t fiction.”
“Not a traditional one, of course. Your protagonists don’t end up together, but it is a love story.”
“A love story is not the same as a romance novel. A romance novel is the story of two people falling in love against their will. This is a story of two people who leave each other against their will. It starts to end the minute they meet.”
“Why does it end? You seem like an optimist to me, but the end is heartrending. The last thing she wants to do is leave him, and yet in the end she goes.”
Nora left her chair and went to the kitchen cabinet by the refrigerator.
“I’m no optimist,” she said as she opened the cabinet door. “I’m just a realist who smiles too much. And the reason William and Caroline don’t stay together is that while he really is in the lifestyle, she’s not. She’s only in the relationship for him. It’s their sexuality that’s the problem, not the love. It’s like a g*y man being married to a straight woman. No matter how much he loves her, it’s a sacrifice every moment they’re together. The sex is secondary to the sacrifice.”