In the car, in the driveway, with the engine still running, Greg took her hand and turned it over and kissed the inside of her wrist.
“You don’t have to,” he said. “I mean it. We can go in, drink Nina’s terrible punch, and come home.”
Lauren looked at him. Thirty-eight, sandy hair going silver at the temples, a black tuxedo he’d rented that made him look like a spy who did taxes. A silver half-mask sat in his lap. They had been married eleven years. And for one of those years, starting with a bottle of wine and a confession he’d been terrified to make, they had talked about this. About her, with a Black man. About Greg watching. They had talked about it in bed, in the car, once in a hushed fight at a restaurant that had ended with both of them laughing. They had made rules. They had made more rules.
“Ask me again,” she said.
“Do you want to?”
“Yes.” She put on her mask, gold filigree that curled up from her cheekbones like flames. “Do you?”
His breath went out of him. “More than anything.”
Rules, one more time, because that was how they did it: condoms, Greg in the room, either of them could say pumpkin—Nina’s idea of a joke—and it all stopped. Nobody would be talked into anything. If nobody caught her eye, they’d go home and still have a nice night.
“Okay,” Lauren said, and opened her door.
Nina and Paul’s Victorian on Linden Street had been transformed. Candles in every window, black taffeta over the banisters, a string quartet in the old front parlor playing slow, minor-key Radiohead covers. A hundred people in masks. Lauren’s black lace dress hit just above the knee and she felt every eye that slid over her bare shoulders.
She saw him by the fireplace in the second parlor.
He was tall, broad, in a midnight-blue suit that fit like it had been built on him, a plain black half-mask covering the top of his face. His skin was a deep, rich brown, his beard short and precise. He was laughing at something Paul had said, and when he laughed he tipped his head back, and Lauren felt it low in her stomach like a dropped stone.
She glanced back at Greg. Greg had seen him too. He gave her a tiny nod, his eyes bright behind the silver mask.
“Dance with me,” she said, when she reached the fireplace. Her voice only shook a little.
The man looked down at her. His eyes behind the mask were dark brown and amused. “I’m Isaiah,” he said. “And I’d love to.”
They danced in the front parlor while the quartet played. His hand was enormous at the small of her back, the warmth of it bleeding through the lace. He was thirty-seven, he told her, an architect, a friend of Paul’s from grad school. He smelled like cedar and something warmer underneath. Halfway through the second song she told him the truth, all of it, quietly, with her cheek near his lapel: the year of talking, the rules, her husband in the silver mask by the archway.
Isaiah didn’t laugh, and he didn’t look smug. He looked over her head at Greg for a long moment.
“I’d want to hear it from him,” he said.
So she brought him over. And Greg, her careful, nervous, beautiful husband, shook Isaiah’s hand and said in a perfectly steady voice, “I want you to take my wife upstairs. And I want to watch. If that’s okay with you.”
Isaiah looked at Lauren. “Is it okay with you?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “God, yes.”
Paul’s library was on the third floor, dark wood and old books and a small fire someone had lit in the grate. Greg sat in the wingback chair by the window. Isaiah closed the door, came up behind Lauren, and slowly drew the zipper of her dress down her spine.
“Still yes?” he murmured against her neck.
“Still yes.”
The dress pooled at her feet. She left the mask on. So did he. There was something about it—his face half hidden, hers too, the fire throwing gold over her pale skin—that made her feel like someone braver. He turned her around and kissed her, and his kiss was deep and unhurried, his big dark hands roaming down her back, cupping her ass, pulling her up against him. She felt him through his trousers, hard and thick against her stomach, and her knees actually went weak.
She dropped to them on the old Persian rug. Her fingers trembled on his belt. When she drew him out she heard Greg, behind her, make a low, helpless sound.
He was huge. Long and heavy and thick as her wrist, dark brown and veined, the head swollen and smooth. She wrapped both hands around him, one above the other, and there was still more. She looked back over her shoulder at her husband.
“Greg,” she breathed. “Look at him.”
“I’m looking,” Greg said hoarsely. “Baby, I’m looking.”
She took him in her mouth, as much as she could, which wasn’t much, her lips stretched wide, her hands working what she couldn’t reach. Isaiah groaned and slid his fingers into her hair. After a minute he drew her up, laid her back on the leather chesterfield, and knelt between her thighs.
He went down on her slowly, his tongue flat and patient, then circling, until her hips were lifting off the leather and her toes were curling and she was clawing at the cushions. Two thick fingers slid inside her, curling, and she came with a cry, her thighs clamping and shaking around his head.
He rolled on a condom. It looked tight on him. He settled over her, the swollen head pressing against her, and she looked past his shoulder and found Greg’s eyes.
“Tell me,” she said to her husband.
“Do it,” Greg whispered. “I want to see.”
Isaiah pushed in. The stretch was unreal, a burning, overwhelming fullness that made her gasp and arch and dig her nails into his shoulders. He went slow. An inch, and wait. Another, and wait. Lauren’s mouth fell open and stayed open. She could feel every ridge of him spreading her wider than she’d ever been.
“Oh my God,” she moaned. “Oh my God, he’s so big, Greg, he’s so deep—”
When he was finally all the way in she was shaking. Then Isaiah began to move, long, heavy strokes, pulling almost all the way out and sinking back to the hilt, the chesterfield creaking under them. Pale thighs wrapped around dark hips. Every thrust drove a moan out of her. Her heels dug into the backs of his legs, pulling him deeper.
He turned her over onto her knees, her hands braced on the arm of the couch, facing Greg. He slid back into her from behind and Lauren cried out, her back arching, her mask slipping crooked. Isaiah gripped her hips and fucked her slow and deep, then faster, harder, his dark hands spread wide on her pale skin, the wet slap of it filling the room. She stared into her husband’s eyes the whole time. Greg had his hand pressed hard against himself, his face flushed, his lips parted, and the look on his face was pure wonder.
“Come for him,” Greg said. “Come for him, baby.”
She did. It tore through her, her whole body locking, her thighs trembling so hard she nearly collapsed, her inner muscles clenching around Isaiah in long pulsing waves. She screamed into the leather. Isaiah held her up by the hips and kept stroking straight through it until he drove deep one last time and came with a low groan, his fingers digging into her waist, his big body shuddering against her back.
Isaiah left them with a kiss on her knuckles and a soft “thank you” to Greg that sounded like he meant it. They drove home in silence, her hand in Greg’s on the gearshift, her gold mask in her lap.
In bed, with the porch light still glowing orange through the curtains, Greg held her face in both hands and looked at her for a long time.
“Was it okay?” she asked. “Are we okay?”
“Lauren.” His voice cracked. “You were the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
He made love to her slowly, carefully, kissing every place Isaiah had touched, like he was learning her again. She cried a little and he did too, and afterward they lay tangled under the quilt, his heartbeat under her cheek, talking in whispers about everything until the sky went gray.
In the morning her mask sat on the nightstand, catching the light. Greg brought her coffee, kissed her forehead, and said, “Same time next year?”
Lauren laughed and pulled him back into bed. “Next year’s a long way off.”
