Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Jessica
I should have lied.
That was the first thought that came to me after Jesus rolled onto his back and the room went quiet around us.
I should have laughed it off, kissed his chest, and told him I was only talking dirty because he asked.
I should have given him something safe, something sweet, something a wife was allowed to want from the man who loved her.
Instead, I told him the truth.
A bull.
Another man.
Someone big enough, bold enough, and mean enough in the right way to walk into our bedroom and make my sweet husband understand that his wife had a filthy place inside her she had never let him see.
The word still sat on my tongue like a sin.
I stared at the ceiling and tried to breathe like a normal woman, but there was nothing normal about the way my body still buzzed beneath the blankets.
My skin felt too tight. My heart would not settle.
The confession had cracked something open, and now every secret I had kept locked away was pressing against that crack, greedy for air.
The worst part was that I had not been thinking only about the other man.
I had been thinking about Jesus.
That was the shameful little truth curled beneath all the rest of it.
The fantasy was not complete unless my husband was there to see it.
I did not want to sneak around behind his back or make a fool of him in some ugly way that would leave us broken.
I wanted his eyes on me. I wanted him close enough to hear every sound, close enough to know the difference between fear and desire, close enough to realize I was not being stolen from him.
I was letting him watch me become something dirtier than the woman who folded his laundry and kissed him goodnight.
The thought made my stomach twist hard enough that I pressed my thighs together beneath the sheet. I hated how badly I wanted it. I hated that the shame did not cool me down. It made everything worse. It made my pulse throb in places that should have gone quiet by now.
What kind of wife wanted her husband to see her like that?
What kind of wife wanted him jealous and hard and helpless with it?
I turned my head just enough to look at him.
Jesus was lying there with one arm over his stomach, his chest still rising too fast, his face turned toward the ceiling like he was trying to make sense of the same wreckage I was.
He looked stunned. Wounded, maybe. Hungry too, and that was the part that would not leave me alone.
I had felt him change while I talked.
His body had answered before his mouth could protect him.
Every filthy word had done something to him.
I had felt the proof of it in the way he moved, in the sudden roughness of his voice, in the way he called me what I had secretly wanted to be called and then seemed just as shocked as I was that it came out of him.
My husband had looked at me like I was precious for years.
Tonight, for the first time, he had looked at me like I was obscene.
God help me, I liked it.
I liked it so much I wanted to crawl out of my own skin.
There was always something gentle about Jesus. He was careful with me, sometimes too careful, like loving me meant polishing every rough edge out of his hands. He listened. He checked in. He made sure I was comfortable. That should have been enough. Most women would kill for that kind of devotion.
I did love that about him.
I loved him.
But there was a starving little part of me that wanted to be looked at like a bad idea.
I wanted to be wanted in a way that made the room feel unsafe even when it was all agreed to, all chosen, all held together by trust. I wanted a man who did not worship me first. I wanted him to hunger first. I wanted to feel the difference between being adored and being taken seriously as someone with a body that could ruin a man’s manners.
And I wanted Jesus to watch that hunger land on me.
I wanted him to see another man stare at his wife and know exactly what that stare meant.
I wanted him to feel the heat of it, the insult of it, the ugly little thrill of realizing someone else wanted what belonged to him.
I wanted his jaw tight. I wanted his hands clenched.
I wanted him fighting himself because part of him would hate it and part of him would be so turned on he would not know where to put the feeling.
That was the part that made me feel wicked.
Because I did not only want another man.
I wanted to turn my husband into the kind of man who wanted to watch.
I wanted him to ache through it. I wanted him to discover the humiliating, intoxicating place where jealousy became desire. I wanted him to look at me afterward and still want to touch me. Maybe want me more.
The room smelled like us, warm and intimate, and I pulled the sheet higher over my breasts as if that could make me decent again. It did not work. Nothing about me felt decent.
I wondered what Jesus thought of me now. Maybe he was only pretending to be fine. Maybe he would look at me over coffee and see someone less lovable than the woman he married.
That thought cut through the heat, sharp enough to make my throat tighten.
I could survive him saying no.
I did not know if I could survive him looking at me like I had ruined something.
“Jess?” he said quietly.
I closed my eyes. His voice was too soft, too careful, and for one painful second, I wanted to take every word back and shove it into the dark where it had lived for so long.
“Yeah?”
His thumb moved over my knuckles, and something in my chest went weak.
I loved him so much it frightened me. That was what made the fantasy dangerous.
It had never been about replacing him. It had never been about wanting less of my marriage.
It was about wanting more honesty inside it, even if that honesty came dressed in shame and dirty words and a kind of hunger neither of us knew how to name yet.
I squeezed his hand.
He squeezed back.
And there, in the dark beside the man I loved, I admitted the rest of it to myself.
I wanted him to make it happen.
I wanted him to choose it with me, to lead me toward it, to offer me up because he knew I would come back to him afterward.
I wanted the permission almost as much as I wanted the act.
Maybe more. There was something unbearably hot about Jesus knowing every filthy thought in my head and deciding I could have it anyway.
I was afraid of what it would make us.
But beneath all that fear, something hot and shameless stretched awake inside me and purred.
Because Jesus had asked me what I wanted.