Turning him back around, I push lightly on his chest. “Go sit on the couch. It’s time for questions.”

“I’m a little nervous,” he admits with a tiny wink, but walks confidently over and carefully lowers himself to the seat, hands trapped behind him.

“Men are always nervous about this part,” I say, following him and straddling his thighs. I reach forward and draw a circle around the head of his cock with my index finger. “No one likes to admit all of the terrible things they’ve done.”

“And how many men have you done this with?” This time, his voice catches on something—jealousy, maybe. Or maybe the dark thrill that comes from imagining me doing this to someone else.

These are the things I need to learn about the man I’ve married.

“Thousands,” I whisper, relishing the way his eyes grow hard. Jealousy, then. “I’m the best negotiator out there. If you want me to remember tonight, you should probably impress me later.”

I rest my ass on his thighs and then slide forward, giving his cock the briefest bit of friction against me before I slide away again. Beneath my palms, his shoulders bunch as he pulls against the bind around his wrists.

“Does it make you wet to take control, Cerise?” he whispers, looking torn. He’s broken role, but it seems like he can’t help himself. “I wish I could tell you what seeing you like this does to me.”

He doesn’t need to tell me; I can see what it does to him. But in the length of a heartbeat, I know what he’s asking for. It’s the same as our first night playing maid and master: feed it to me.

He’s just doing it differently.

I reach between my legs, slip my fingers under the satin, and decide to give him a little show: I close my eyes, moan quietly as I stroke myself, rolling my hips. But when I pull my hand back, instead of putting my fingers in his mouth, I capture his chin with my free hand and paint a wet line on his upper lip, just below his nose.

He groans, and it’s an amazing, gravelly, pained sound I want to record and play on a loop while I slide down over him and ride him. He’s so hard, his cock arches up to his navel, the thick ridge nearly pressing to his belly button. A slick bead of moisture forms at the opening and slides, glistening, down his length.

My mouth waters, my chest tightens. I don’t imagine my game is going to be fast. I never know if it’s true, but he looks hard enough for it to be uncomfortable. “Do you want me to put my mouth on you before the questions?” I whisper, briefly breaking role. The corded tension in his neck and the vulnerable expression on his face make me want to take care of him.

“Non,” he says quickly, more quickly than I expected. His eyes are wide, lips wet where he’s just licked them, trying to clean his skin of my taste. “Tease me.”

Pushing off his lap, I stand, giving a crisp “Very well then,” and bend over the coffee table to retrieve the clipboard and pen. I give him a long view of my backside, my thighs, and the red silk thong. Behind me, he exhales a deep, shaking breath.

I return to him, looking over my short list. I’ve written a few things just to remind myself what I want to ask him because in the heat of the moment, over his lap with him naked and looking at me like he’s barely keeping his hands tied up, I’m prone to forget.

Settling back down, I run my pen down the smooth skin of his chest and rock slightly over the tight bunching muscles of his thighs. “We can start with an easy one.”

He nods, staring openly at my breasts. “D’accord.” Okay.

“If you’ve ever killed anyone, you’re really not worth very much to me because we’ll be getting your soul eventually anyway.”

He smiles, relaxing a little as the game reveals itself. “I’ve never killed anyone.”

“Tortured?”

He laughs. “I fear I’m on the receiving end at the moment, but no.”

Blinking back down to my list, I say, “We can reel through the cardinal sins pretty quickly.” I look up at him and lick my lips. “This is where men usually lose the most value.”

He nods, staring intently at me, as if I really do hold the power to change his fate tonight.

“Greed?” I ask.

Ansel lets out a quiet laugh. “I’m an attorney.”

Nodding, I pretend to make note of this. “For a firm you hate, but who pays you ridiculous sums of money to represent one huge corporation suing another. I suppose that means I can also put you down for a bit of gluttony, too?”

His dimple flashes suggestively as he laughs. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Pride?”

“Me?” he says with a winning smile. “I’m as humble as they come.”

“Right.” Fighting my own smile, I look back down at my list. “Lust?”

He pushes his hips up, his cock a heavy presence between us as I gaze at his face, waiting for him to speak. But he doesn’t answer aloud.

Heat ripples along my skin and his gaze is so penetrating, I finally have to look away from his face. “Envy?”

It takes him long enough to answer that I look back up at him, searching his expression. He’s grown oddly contemplative, as if this is a serious exercise. And for the first time I realize maybe it is. I couldn’t simply ask him these things as Mia, sitting across the dining room table from Ansel, though I’d want to. No one can be as perfect as he seems, and part of me needs to understand where he’s damaged, where he’s ugliest. Somehow it’s easier to dress up as a servant of Satan to find out.

“I feel envy, yes,” he says quietly.

“I need you to give me more than that.” I lean forward, kiss his jaw. “Envious of what.”

“I never used to. If anything, I tend to see the positive everywhere. Finn and Oliver . . . they will grow exasperated with me sometimes, telling me I’m impulsive, or I’m fickle.” He tears his eyes from mine, looking past my shoulder at the room behind me. “But now I look at my best friends and see a certain freedom they have . . . I want that. I think that must be envy.”

This one stings. The sting turns into a burn and it crawls up my throat, coating my windpipe. I swallow a few times before I’m able to manage, “I see.”

Immediately, Ansel realizes what he’s said, and ducks his head so I’ll look at him. “Not because I’m married and they aren’t,” he says quickly. His eyes move back and forth, searching mine for understanding. “This isn’t about the annulment; I didn’t want it, either. It wasn’t just that I promised you.”

“Okay.”

“I envy their situation in a different way from what you’re thinking.” Pausing, he seems to wait for my expression to soften before he quietly admits, “I didn’t want to move back to Paris. Not for this job.”

My eyes narrow. “You didn’t?”

“I love the city—it’s the center of my heart—but I didn’t want to return the way I did. Finn loves his hometown; he never wants to leave. Oliver is opening a store in San Diego. I envy how happy they are being exactly where they want to be.”

Too many questions perch on my tongue, fighting to come out. Finally, I ask the same one I asked last night: “Then why did you come back here?”

He watches me, eyes assessing. Finally he says only, “I suppose I felt obligated.”

I assume he’s talking about the obligation of the job he would have been insane to turn down. I can tell even if he hates it that it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “Where would you rather be?”

His tongue slips out, wets his lips. “I would at least like to have the option to follow my wife when she leaves.”

My heart stutters. I decide to skip over sloth and wrath, far more interested in pursuing this subject. “You’re married?”

He nods, but his expression isn’t playful. Not even a little. “Yes, I’m married.”

“And where is your wife right now while I’m sitting on your naked lap, wearing this tiny scrap of lingerie?”

“She’s not here,” he whispers conspiratorially.

“Do you make a habit of this?” I ask, wearing a teasing smile. I want to lift the serious cloud that’s descending. “Letting in women while your wife is gone? It’s good you brought her up, since infidelity is next on my list.”

His face drops and oh shit. I’ve hit a nerve. I close my eyes, remembering what he told me about his father, how he was never faithful to Ansel’s mother, how the parade of women through the house was finally enough to drive his mother to the States when Ansel was only a teenager.

I start to apologize but his words come out faster than mine. “I have been unfaithful.”

An enormous black hole opens up inside me, swallowing my organs in the most painful order: lungs, then heart, and then, when I’m sure I’m suffocating, my stomach drops out.

“Never to my wife,” he says slowly and after a long pause, apparently oblivious to my panic. I close my eyes, dizzy with relief. Still, my heart feels like it returns to my body slightly withered, beating weakly at the realization that he’s more like his father than his mother when it comes to cheating. “I’m trying to do better this time.”

It’s several long seconds before I can speak, but when I do, my words come out reedy, a little breathless. “Well, this certainly tilts the negotiation in my favor.”

“I’m sure it does,” he whispers.

My voice wobbles a little. “I’ll need the details, of course.”

Finally, a tiny, unsure smile pulls at one corner of his mouth. “Of course.” He leans his head back against the couch, watching me with wary eyes. “I met a woman from here,” he says, adding, “or, rather, near here. From Orléans.” He takes a small break, closing his eyes. I can see the way his pulse is fluttering in his throat. Even though his explanation is so factual, so detached, he seems amped up.