Last October

Last October I met my boss in a bar to discuss whether and how we might have an affair. I make it sound businesslike, but it wasn't. We'd arrived in that bar after circling each other for a year.

The weekend before, on business in another city, in the wee hours of the morning I'd found him in the hall outside my hotel room. I'd left him only minutes before--we'd spent the last hour in a colleague's room, having an inappropriate conversation about our sexual preferences and marital frustrations. (He likes a hairless pussy; my husband goes down on me but lacks skill.) It had been a bourbon-fueled group discussion where I'd announced that I would cheat, but only with someone who had as much to lose as I do. 'Someone married,' I'd said. He knew who I was talking to.

He was locked out, but I told him I was sure they'd have another key for him at the front desk. We laughed, and I opened my door as he passed. I paused, and he glanced back at me, smiling. I inclined my head toward my open door, and he turned and stepped inside. I closed the door behind us.

We looked at each other. The reality of that moment: I am in my pajamas in a hotel room alone with the managing director of my company--lasted for a full beat before he took hold of my hips and pulled me to him. 'Are we gonna do 'dis?' he said. He is from New York. I am not.

'Can you handle it?' I asked him. He said he could. My hands on his chest as if I might push him away. We babbled to each other about how we loved our spouses, about how we both needed something, and could we give it to each other, without jeopardising all we cared about? We sought reassurance, proposed rules, confessed desires. 'I've wanted you from the moment we first argued, in that car, on the way to that party,' he said. 'Do you remember?'

'You were annoying that night.'

He grinned. 'I don't remember what we argued about. But you were wrong. And I've wanted you ever since.'

I told him I remembered it differently, although I didn't. His eyes, dark brown and shining, searched mine. This is what I've always liked about him. Feeling seen. Exposed. A brutal intelligence I can't hide from. Outside the sun was coming up. 'We can't do this tonight,' I said.

'When?' he asked, leaning close. My arms went round him and he breathed me in, his whiskers tickling beneath my ear. My head fell back as he inhaled, his hands slipping inside the waist of my silky trousers, his mouth at my collarbone, his tongue, his teeth, grazing my skin for the briefest moment, stopping everything--my breath, my heart, the noise in my head. A jolt of heat straight to my cunt, my pulse thudding in my ears. An intensity of feeling I hadn't known for years. I pushed him away. 'You have to go.' I reached for the door handle. 'Discretion,' I said, and he smiled as I shoved him out in the hall. The door shut and I turned and faced the mirror next to the closet doors. My face flushed, my heart kicking like a rabbit trapped inside my chest. 'Jesus,' I said, looking hard at my reflection, studying my eyes. I had set something in motion. Something was beginning.