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Roula found she was laughing. On a day when her life was just crumbling she felt a surge of something new and she sat there and laughed.
‘It’s back...’ Galen said as her laughter faded.
‘What?’
‘“Ha-ha, breath, ha-ha-ha, breath, ha-ha-ha-ha...”’ He repeated the actual beats of her laugh. ‘That’s the laugh I remember. I haven’t heard it in a long time.’
‘Nor have I,’ Roula said.
They looked right at each other then, and it wasn’t the look he had given her at the wedding—it was a little more questioning than intense. Yet she knew so much more, and it felt almost as if his hand was cupping her down there, as she felt a stir in her body and an ache to step forward.
‘I do want you,’ she said.
‘I’d be your first, since...?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’d be my first.’
He must never know just how true her answer actually was, because she’d never really once made love.
But it was too much baggage—Roula knew that. Especially for a man who very deliberately avoided such a thing. And there would be ground rules.
‘Roula, I won’t change.’
‘I don’t want you to.’
‘And I don’t want to hurt you—I really don’t. So I’m just making sure. What happens when I ignore you at work?’ Galen checked.
‘I shan’t notice,’ Roula said. ‘I’ll be too busy working, as well as applying for other jobs—though for the next few weeks you should do a better job of diverting your phone.’
‘Fair enough,’ Galen said. ‘But I get to state my wants too...’
‘Of course.’
‘Take your ring off here, Roula.’
He would be the first person to see her without her wedding ring.
She stood and removed it, and as she dropped it on his dresser it felt as if she was dropping a lead weight rather than a sliver of gold.
Nervous, Roula went to take a step towards him, but Galen climbed out of the bed and walked over to her, and then he took her face in his hands and gave her a kiss such as she had never had.
It was not like the one he’d given her on the steps. This kiss was more silky than before, slower, and this one was leading to other places. She was lost in the bliss of his mouth, of his hands soft on her breasts, stroking her nipples and then cupping them.
And then he was pausing and stripping off his one garment.
Roula had seen him in a towel—had seen most of him—but she did not look down yet, just felt his beautiful shoulders and pulled at the little hairs on his chest as he undid the little buttons of her pyjama top.
‘Thank God for zig-zags,’ he whispered as he exposed her breasts, and then it was Roula who shed her shabby pyjamas, desperate to be free.
She closed her eyes as he took a nipple and sucked it to an indecent peak.
His skin was incredible, it was a relief to touch it, to hold on to his torso, but also not a relief, because it was too heady to be pulled into him, to be pressed against him as his fingers stroked her.
And then he stopped, half lifted her, and it was a kiss that dizzied her as he lay her down.
Now she saw him, and she lay there with Galen standing over her, and he looked at her and gave her a smile, and she looked up at him. At his jet-black hair and the thick length of him. And she was so burning for him that she frowned as he knelt and lifted her knees.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, a little confused, a little breathless, a little awkward.
