Page 76 of What Happens in Amsterdam

Twenty

We’re already a slippery messas we stumble down the hall to the shower. His hands are on me before we make it there, pinning me up against the wall, lifting my legs up around his hips so he can kiss my neck, my collarbone, my chest over my see-through shirt. I’m addicted to how greedy he is—because I feel it too, the electricity pulsing between us as I grab his hair, moan into his ear.

The ride home was still mildly treacherous. Water and mud splashed up my legs, and every inch of me is soaked, but I don’t care. We locked our bikes and sloshed up the stairs, laughing, kicking off our shoes outside the front door. A moment to give George some pets and a treat.

Once we get to the bathroom, Wouter flicks the knob of the shower and takes his time undressing me in front of the mirror while we wait for it to heat up, wet clothes clinging to wet skin.

Fuck my wife. Fuck my wife. Fuck my wife.

The words are stuck in my head on filthy repeat.

He stands behind me, pulling my hair away from my neck whilehe kisses me there, sweetly at first and then hard enough to leave a mark. One hand is spread across my waist while his thumb strokes the sunflower petals on my hip, and I press against him when his erection nudges the middle of my back.

“I love the way you look like this,” he murmurs. He drags a finger up my jaw, toward my cheek. He doesn’t shy away from touching my birthmark, and I realize that without even meaning to, I’ve been tilting my head slightly to the left.

“Naked?” I ask with a laugh, and the dimple appears when he smiles.

“Yes, but—specifically right now. All flushed and beautiful. I can see the anticipation on your face.”

I reach a hand backward to circle his cock. “And I can feel yours right here.”

I watch us in the mirror, the way that smile morphs to a groan, eyes shut while I stroke him. In retaliation, he cups my breast, teases my nipple like he knows this is the quickest way to turn me liquid.

Maybe this is how we reestablish a boundary. Sex is casual. Sex doesn’t have to be emotional.

And once I have an employment contract, we won’t need to be anything to each other anymore.

He spins me around and we tumble into the shower, our mouths fused together. For a moment I’m unsure whether he actually intends for us to get clean—until he reaches for a bar of soap.

He drags it along my skin and I let myself turn off my brain, focusing only on the way he lathers my arms, my neck, my stomach. Warm water pounds against my back. Washes away the grime. I catch plenty of it in my mouth—that’s how much I’m grinning as he soaps up my breasts.

When he passes me the bar of soap, I start with his ankles. Move up to his calves. His knees. His cock is at perfect attention,and I can’t resist giving him a few tugs again.God, he’s so expressive when we’re like this, and it might be my favorite thing about him—how every touch sparks a reaction. This time, it’s his hand coming up to give the wall a wet smack.

I inch up his stomach, learning where he’s ticklish, which turns out to be everywhere. Wouter fights back laughter as I run soapy water along his abs, then catches me around the waist and bends down for a kiss, as though he thinks it’ll distract me.

And it does, because of course it does.

“Be shorter,” I whine, as he dutifully crouches down for me to get his arms and shoulders. It’s criminal how hot he looks like this, wild hair and suds dripping down his body.

He throws me a smirk. “And yet you never hear me asking you to get taller.”

He doesn’t just have the one tattoo, I realize. There’s another, a swirl of roman numerals on the back of his calf—a date. And then the one I caught only a glimpse of last time, rendered in delicate black ink just above his shoulder blade. Small leaves and wide, flat petals, with a dark center.

A poppy.

The California state flower.

I swallow around a lump in my throat. It has to be a coincidence, or even likelier, I don’t know anything about flowers. There must be some other symbolism there.

Before I can linger on it, Wouter is opening my bottle of shampoo. He beckons me closer and I shut my eyes, letting him swirl his fingers through my hair and along my scalp in these soothing, tender circles—

Too tender.

My eyes fly open and I have to blink shampoo out of them, wiping it away even as they’re stinging.

“What you said in the park,” I say, eager to turn this casual again. “Right before we left. I like—when you talk to me that way.”

A slow, wicked smile spreads across his face. “That I wanted to fuck my wife?”

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