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could still surprise each other. Their lovemaking ranged from very sweet to wildly athletic humping. From tiny, subtle movements, just the right word, the right tone of voice, to something wild that felt like sex with a stranger. Yet what Michelle loved was that it was always, in the end, safe with Frank.
    There was the night he had come home with a Gap box. He wouldn’t let her touch it until the children were asleep. “Later,” he said raising his dark brows. From his leer she’d been afraid it might be a sex toy or a porno tape, but when she opened the box it was just a blue dress. She’d looked at him blankly. “Now,” he’d said, “go get me a tie.”
    “Why?” she’d asked.
    “Because we’re going to play Oval Office,” he told her. “I’m Mr. President and you’re Monica.” She’d laughed and laughed, until he convinced her to become his Secretary of the Interior.
    Tonight, though, Frank was playing no more games. He was his most tender self. Without preliminaries, he rolled over and onto her, holding his weight off of her by placing his elbows on either side of her chest. Then he lifted her two hands with his and, holding her wrists, placed their hands on her hair. “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?” he asked in a whisper.
    She shook her head, though their hands held her hair so she couldn’t move it very much. “Tell me,” she whispered.
    “Only if I can be inside you while I do,” he whispered back.
    “You drive a hard bargain,” she told him, and shifted her weight to one hip. He still held her hands, but now with only one of his own. With the other he pulled up her nightgown, the satin bunching deliciously around their thighs. She was already wet as he pressed his flesh into her.
    “You’re like silk,” he whispered. “All over. All over,” he repeated. “I look at you sometimes and I’m amazed. You’re so beautiful. And every place I touch you is so soft.” He was inside her—still and hard—but he moved his hips just once so she would remember where she ended and he began. He looked into her eyes. “Is that enough?” he asked.
    She shook her head no.
    “You want more?” he whispered. “More?”
    She nodded.
    “You’re greedy,” he told her, moving his eyes from hers. She watched him look at her. “Your mouth,” he murmured. “Men would kill just to touch your mouth, just once, with the tip of their finger.”
    She smiled. A little shiver ran through her. “What do you want to touch it with?” she whispered.
    “With my palm,” he said, covering her mouth, but only for a moment. “With my tongue,” he added, and he licked the very corner of her lips. “With my teeth,” he whispered, and pulled her bottom lip into his own mouth, biting her gently but firmly. He knew the line just between ultimate pleasure and the slightest bit of pain and judged it perfectly. Frank changed the balance of his hips then and pushed deeper inside her. He kissed her at the same time, his tongue aping the intrusive, wet slide of his penis.
    “Your mouth is so beautiful,” he said, and it was almost a groan, “but it’s not the most beautiful part of you. Not even close.” And then he let go of her hands so she could pull him tightly to her. And she did.
    Later, when Michelle lay in the dark her nightgown a ruin, her body loved and relinquished, she savored her happiness. She reached her hand out to Frank’s back, so dark, so broad. He wasn’t big, but he was beautifully, compactly built. She rested her hand on his shoulder. He was already gone, spent, but she didn’t feel alone. Their union was a lasting one, and the thousand times that he’d entered her, the thousand times she’d given herself to her husband, had built up a kind of bank balance, a kind of bonus of connection between them, even when they weren’t joined as one flesh. Lying beside his sleeping form, she didn’t feel alone.
    It was cold, and Frank shivered for a moment in his sleep. Michelle