The Bone Bed

feel Benton’s warm slender wrist and tapered fingers, and I go hollow inside as I feel what I was feeling in my dream. It was Luke I was with.
    A dream so vivid, sensations linger where his hands and mouth had been, nerves alive and wanting, and I slide close to Benton and stroke the lean muscles of his bare chest and belly, and when I have roused him we do what we want and we don’t talk.
    When nothing is left we shower and start again, hot water coming down hard, and he is hard, almost angry, our lust the way it was when we cheated and lied, desperate to satisfy what raged beneath our outward calm, and relief never lasted long. We could not stay away from each other and could not get enough, and I want it back.
    “Where have you been?” I say into his mouth, and he moves me against the wet tile wall, and water is loud, and I ask him again.
    He tells me he’s here without saying it, and I’m here and belong to him and there can be no denying it. We make love the way we did when it was wrong, when he had a wife he was unhappy with and daughters who had little use for him, and then for a long time he was gone.
    He was nowhere and back, with me but not, and Marino made it worse, and touching felt different after that. Nothing was the same until betrayal and jealousy reset us like a bone mending badly that needed to be broken again. We had to hurt.
    “Stay this time,” I say into his mouth, steamy water pouring over us. “Stay this time, Benton.”
    When we are dressing he asks me what I was dreaming.
    “What makes you think I dreamed anything?” I go through suits hanging in my closet, and it reminds me of looking through Peggy Stanton’s clothes.
    “Doesn’t matter.” He stands in front of the full-length mirror, tying his tie.
    “It matters or you wouldn’t ask.”
    “Dreams are dreams unless they become something else.” He watches my reflection as I decide on unstylish pants and a sweater and practical ankle boots that are warm.
    It will be a long day, hopefully not as long as yesterday, but I’m going to be comfortable in corduroys and a cable-knit cardigan, and it’s very cold, the temperature below freezing.
    Ice has formed on bare trees and evergreens, as if they’ve been varnished or glazed with sugar, and as I move the shade to see the street below and imagine what driving might be like, Benton walks across hardwood and the rug and puts his arms around me and kisses my neck.
    His hands rediscover what was all his moments ago, and he pushes under everything I’ve just put on.
    “Don’t forget,” he says.
    “I’ve never forgotten.”
    “Lately you’ve forgotten. Yesterday you did.”
    “Go ahead and say it.” I want him to say what he saw, to just go ahead and say it.
    His hands are where he wants them.
    “Did you?” he asks.
    “Did I what?” I’m not going to make it easy for him. “You need to ask me what you want to know.”
    “Did you tell him you would? Did you let him think you would?”
    “I told him I wouldn’t.”
    “He was touching you,” Benton says, as he touches me. “He thought you would. That you wanted it.”
    “I told him I wouldn’t, and that’s the end of it,” I reply, and he moves me back to the bed.
    “Is it really all there is? Has there been anything more?”
    “There is nothing more than that.” I unbuckle his belt.
    “Because if there’s more, I might kill him. I will, in fact, and get away with it.”
    “You won’t.” I unzip his pants. “And you can’t get away with it.”
    “I wanted to kill him in Vienna because I knew it then.”
    “There’s nothing to know. There’s nothing more than you already know,” I reply, and I ask about her. “You’re going to wrinkle your shirt.” I ask about Douglas Burke. “I’m going to wrinkle it. I’m going to ruin it.”
    White cotton and dark silk are smooth against my bare skin, and I ask him again, and then I don’t ask him anything else until we are in the kitchen and I’m feeding the dog and the cat.
    “Shaw certainly seems to have made herself at home.” I spoon her food on a plate and set it on a mat near the pantry door. “It’s as if she’s always lived here, but I think it’s a good idea to shut her in the guest room, in a confined space, until she’s really familiar with the house. Although I have a feeling Bryce is going to want her. He’ll take one look at her and that will be that.”
    “She should be checked by the vet.” Benton pours coffee, and he’s