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“He was. But I’m getting drunk fast and have very little self-control under the best of circumstances. You could get Soren ten times as shit-faced as we’re getting and he’d still have the self-control of a desert father.”

“He must not be that disciplined if he made love to you at such a young age.”

“Young age? That bastard made me wait until I was twenty years old, Zach. You are sitting in the office of probably the most famous erotica writer since Ana"is Nin and she’s telling you that she didn’t lose her virginity until she was twenty,” Nora said and shook her head.

“I’m aghast. Why so long?”

“If he just wanted sex he would have taken me on day one, I have no doubt. But with D/s couples, the sex is the least of it. He wanted obedience, total submission. Keeping me a virgin waiting for him for so long proved he owned me even more than fucking me would have. He was also preparing me for everything he had planned. S&M is not for children or the faint of heart. He had to wait to make sure I was neither. My question now—how old were you?”

Zach stared at her. She reached out and he handed her his shot glass. She refilled it and handed it back.

“Younger than twenty,” he said and raised his glass to drink.

Nora cleared her throat and waved her hand in a “give it up” gesture. Zach put his glass down.

“Oh, very well, I was thirteen,” Zach said and had a sudden memory of running off into the trees behind his school with his best mate’s pretty older sister and coming out ten minutes later with a smile on his face.

“Holy shit,” Nora said, laughing. “Good thing Wes is watching those middle school kids tonight.”

“She was only fourteen and while it was a rather awkward and quick affair, it was hardly traumatizing or particularly scandalous.”

“My first time was orchestrated and took all night, and I could barely move for a week after. I guess since I put Soren back up for discussion, we can talk about your wife.”

“Not drunk enough for that.”

“Well, keep drinking and at least tell me why it’s so hard for you to talk about her.”

While they’d been talking, the sun had set. Zach sipped at his whiskey while Nora flipped on her desk lamp. Warm light suffused the dark room and cast amber shadows everywhere he looked. Turning his head, Zach saw his reflection in the window. But he didn’t see himself. He saw the door behind him and the door opened and in the doorway stood Grace who should have been anywhere in the world but standing in his doorway…

“Talking about how it ended, why it ended…it feels too much like it ended. And I don’t know if I’m ready for that, Nora. I’m sorry.”

“I understand not wanting something to be over. Can you at least tell me how it began?”

Zach tapped his knee with his half-empty shot glass.

“It began very badly. I would say we were doomed from the start.”

Nora slid off her desk and sank to the floor in front of him. He thought it looked like an excellent idea. He joined her on the floor and leaned back against the chair.

He watched Nora take down the whiskey bottle and pour another shot.

“That year after I left Soren, I became obsessed with one question—when was it, when were we, irrevocable? When did all the little tumblers fall into place and our fate was locked in and it became impossible for us to be anything other than what we became? When was the guilty moment?”

“Did you find your answer?”

Nora shook her head. “Never. I suppose doom and destiny are just two sides of the same coin.”

“I don’t have to ask or wonder. I know my guilty moment. But you left your lover and mine left me. You could go back to yours, couldn’t you?”

“Zach, Soren isn’t some boyfriend you have a fight with and then kiss and make up. He’s the invading army you surrender to before it burns your village down.”

“He sounds even more dangerous than you are.”

“He is. By far. He’s also the best man I’ve ever known. Tell me about Grace. What’s she like?”

Zach paused before answering. How could he describe his wife to anyone? To him Grace was the open arms he fell into when he crawled into bed at 2:00 a.m. after staying up reading a new manuscript. She was the laughing water thief in the shower at least one morning a week. She was the quiet comfort and the hand he’d been unable to let go of at his mother’s funeral three years ago. Unable to get the words past his throat, Grace had taken his notes from his hand and read his eulogy for him. She was every evening and every morning and every night, and during the day when they were apart he was always happy knowing evening and night and morning were coming again.

“Grace is…well-named. She’s intelligent, far smarter than I. A poet and a schoolteacher,” Zach said as the alcohol swirled around his head. “She has red hair and the most perfect freckles I’ve ever seen on a woman.” Zach closed his eyes. The first time he’d seen her completely naked when they’d made love in his bed the first time, he’d almost stopped breathing. “Even on her back all the way to her hips…the most perfect dusting of freckles.”

“Freckles? That’s just ruthless, isn’t it?”

“Merciless. No woman that beautiful should also have freckles.” Zach laughed mirthlessly. “She would lie across my lap in the evenings and read her obscure Welsh poets while I worked on a manuscript. Once she fell asleep on my lap. I used my red pen to connect all the freckles on her lower back. She was livid. We laughed for days about it.”

“You had a good marriage. What happened?”

Zach stared at Nora. She sat two feet away from him but it seemed an ocean of truth and lies and memories lay between them. He held out his shot glass. She refilled it with a shaky hand. Zach drank the whiskey and enjoyed the burn all the way down.

“This is a terrible game.” He closed his eyes and leaned back against the chair.

“I know a better one.”

Something in Nora’s voice sobered him up momentarily. He opened his eyes and Nora now sat even closer to him. She had something behind her back.

Zach reached out and brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. He raised his hand to her hair, pulled the ink pens out and watched the dark curls fall around her face.

“How long has it been?” Nora asked, her voice soft and insinuating.

“Thirteen months.” He didn’t have to ask what Nora meant by her question. He didn’t have to think before he answered it.

“How long’s it been for Grace?”

Zach took a hard breath.

“Less than thirteen months. Friday…she emailed me. Bill questions, addresses, all sorts of marital flotsam. She casually mentioned some bloke named Ian.”

Nora winced.

“How casually?”

“Not casually enough for me to not picture them in bed together. It’s my own fault. When we decided there was a chance our marriage was going to work—we made each other promise no secrets and no lies. I told her I could get over anything, even straying, as long as she didn’t lie to me about it. I hate lying more than anything.” Zach shook his head. “Here we are eight months separated and she still can’t lie to me about anything, damn that girl.”