It’s hot. Way too hot. A heatwave like we’d almost never lived through.

For three weeks the house hasn’t cooled down once. We sleep on top of the sheets, windows open, with that fan pushing warm air around and buzzing like a giant mosquito. The kitchen tile is the only cool surface left in the place, and Lucie puts her bare feet on it every morning with a sigh of relief, like she’s stepping into a pool.

Lucie and I have been married almost nine years, and if you count the time we were together before that, it comes to twelve. Which is longer than most couples manage.

There are a few years between us. As I write this, I’m thirty-five, and she’s forty-three. Our marriage is a good one. We’ve had our problems, like everyone else on this earth, but love plus communication solves ninety-nine percent of them.

One small problem is left: we don’t have the same sex drive. She’s a good woman, loving, faithful, in love with me and nobody else. That’s enough for me. But lately, a year now, if I’m honest with myself, things have dropped off badly. Down to maybe once every three months.

I don’t hold it against her. I just count. It’s stupid, but I count.

We live in a small house in the suburbs of Bordeaux. It’s not a big development, but it’s new, so we see moving trucks come down the street fairly often. Which is where this story starts.

That Saturday, Lucie is walking around half-dressed: a yellow pair of shorts that hugs her ass, a light blue tank top with nothing underneath. She’s twisted her blonde hair up with a pencil, and there’s this damp strand stuck to the back of her neck that I’ve been staring at for ten minutes without saying anything.

“We should get weather like this more often, my love,” I say, taking her by the waist.

She smiles, sighs, rolls her eyes in a way that means is that all you ever think about. Yes. Fair.

She doesn’t pull away, though. She stays against me one second longer than she needs to before going back to her tomatoes, and I hold onto that second like an idiot.

We’re having drinks on the terrace. It’s six in the evening and still ninety-three degrees when the doorbell rings.

“Were you expecting someone?” she asks.

“No. Not at all. I’ll go see.”

I open the door and find two people standing there.

The man is in his thirties, like me. Reddish brown hair, shoulder length, stuck to his temples with sweat, a few freckles across his cheekbones. My height, six foot three, but in considerably better shape. His grey t-shirt is soaked through and clinging to a chest that makes it very clear he spends real time under a barbell. Blue eyes. Long lashes.

The woman must be pushing thirty. Dark hair, small, a gorgeous smile, and a figure that is doing extremely well for itself. She has a smear of grease on her forearm and is fanning herself with a supermarket flyer.

Basically, absurdly attractive people. Annoying.

“Hi. Can I help you?”

“Hi, sorry to bother you. I’m Marc, this is my partner Morgane. We’re your new neighbours, actually.” He points at the house on the corner, twenty yards down. “We wanted to introduce ourselves, obviously, but also…” He hesitates, glances at Morgane, commits. “To ask if you’d let us use your bathroom. The water company hasn’t switched our account on yet, and we’ve been carrying boxes all day in this.” He gestures at the blue sky. “We know you don’t ask that on day one.”

“We stood outside your gate for twenty minutes,” Morgane adds.

“Twenty-five,” Marc corrects.

“Twenty-five.”

I hear Lucie come up quietly behind me. The question throws me for a second.

“Oh, well, welcome, nice to meet you! This is my wife Lucie, I’m Adrien.” I push my glasses back up my nose, a little nervously, then turn to her. “The shower thing, uh… yes? That’s fine, right?”

Lucie is already past me.

“Of course, no problem at all. Go ahead, make yourselves at home; it’s the door at the end of the hall. I’ll get you clean towels.”

She’s always been like that. It’s one of the things I love about her.

“That is so kind, thank you,” Morgane says. “We’ll be quick, promise.”

They are not quick.

I notice because I’ve stayed out on the terrace with my drink, and from where I’m sitting you can hear the water. The bathroom looks out onto the garden, and the window is cracked open because of the heat. I hear the curtain being pulled, the sound of the spray changing when someone steps under it, a cabinet door.

Lucie comes back and sits down across from me. She’s been listening too. I can tell by the way she sets her glass down without taking her eyes off it.

“It’s weird, isn’t it?” I say, quietly.

“What is?”

“Having people we don’t know naked in our bathroom.”

She lifts one shoulder. Very casual. Far too casual.

“It’s a shower, Adrien.”

The word stays in my ear while she goes back to slicing sausage.

Marc comes out first, in shorts, shirtless, wet hair down the back of his neck, his t-shirt balled up in one hand. He apologises three times for being shirtless. Nobody asks him to put it back on.

Morgane comes out ten minutes later in a light dress, barefoot, hair loose and soaking the fabric between her shoulder blades.

“You are lifesavers,” she says, dropping into a chair. “Actual lifesavers.”

So obviously we open a second bottle.

Marc is a firefighter. Which explains the physique. Morgane is a freelance graphic designer, and in ten minutes I learn more about her job than my wife has retained in twelve years of listening to me talk about music.

We have a great evening. Two normal couples.

Except that I can see my wife.

I see her laugh half a second too long at a joke of Marc’s that isn’t that funny. I see her tuck the same strand of hair behind her ear for the fourth time. And above all I see her blush, barely, just enough that I’m probably the only person alive who’d catch it, a warmth climbing from her throat into her cheeks, every time those blue eyes hold hers a beat too long.

At some point he tells us about a call. A family brought out of a burning apartment, a six-year-old he carried down the stairs. He tells it very plainly, without making himself the hero, turning his glass between his fingers. Lucie listens with her chin in her hand, completely still.

“And was he all right? The little boy?”

“He was all right.”

She lets out a breath, and her eyes are shining.

Strangely, it doesn’t bother me. I think it’s sweet, because I know she has a thing for redheads, and because it’s been months since I’ve seen her light up like that about anything.

Sweet. That’s the word I give myself at the time. I’d find out later there was another one, and that I just didn’t feel like saying it.

Around midnight, Morgane stretches and announces they have thirty boxes to open tomorrow. Marc stands, shakes my hand, kisses Lucie on the cheek. She puts two fingers on his arm as she returns it.

“Thank you, really. For everything.”

“Come back any time,” my wife says.

And they cross the street.

Lucie and I are alone again. It’s late, and we go over the evening while we put the glasses away and get ready for bed. I tease her a little about Marc; she teases me about Morgane, the way a solid couple does.

“So. Marc. A redhead, a firefighter, blue eyes. You okay? How many gods did you pray to for a neighbour like that?” I’m laughing.

“Oh please! Did you see his wife? Not exactly a hardship either.” She digs her fingers into my ribs.

“I’m not arguing.”

“Ha! See!”

“I never denied anything.”

She turns off the hall light, and in the dark she adds, in a tone I’m not sure I’ve heard from her before:

“He smelled good, too. That’s just unfair.”

She says it laughing. She still says it.

Still. Something got lit that night, because she more or less jumps me, and we don’t get to sleep for a while.

Her kisses are slow and deep, her tongue soft as silk against mine. And like every time, completely automatically, I go hard. I slide my hand under her tank top and take her breast, squeezing.

Tonight’s going to be intense. I can feel it.

She unbuttons my jeans and doesn’t even wait for me to get them off before she takes hold of me. I push my hand into her shorts. No underwear, and she’s wet.

No. Soaked.

We stretch out naked, her hands still working me, hard. I slide one finger into her, then two, then three, working her clit with my thumb. We’re both getting louder.

She turns onto her left side, back to me, arching so I can reach her more easily. Quietly, I grab her toy: pink, thick, vibrating.

“Someone’s being sneaky…” she breathes.

I push it into her, slowly. It slides straight in; that’s how wet she is.

My right hand still trapped between her thighs, I bring my cock up against the small of her back, then work it down. She guides it with her hand. My mouth is against her neck, right by her ear, where I let out low, heavy sounds in that deep voice of mine that always gives her chills.

With the pink thing filling her completely, she parks my cock in the queue, pressed against her ass.

And that’s when it comes to me. The idea. The thing we’ve never done.

Deliberately, I start moving in small strokes, working the head of my cock against her tight little asshole. My movements sync up: I draw the toy out, I push in very slightly; I ease off, I push the toy back in.

“Wh… ah… what are you doing?”

She moans it, not quite understanding what’s happening, feeling something entirely new.

“Shh… Imagine… that it’s another cock going into you… He’s inside you, while I’m trying to get in from behind, to fill you completely…”

My voice shakes. From how turned on I am, first.

And from fear that she’ll take it badly. Her, who isn’t like this normally.

Three seconds. Three seconds where I’m certain I’ve just broken everything.

Then her moaning turns into a cry, and I understand that something is working.

“Yeah… another big cock, hard just for you, while I take you from behind.”

“Nnh… nnh…” Her hips pick up the rhythm I’ve set. She wants more.

“Imagine… that it’s the neighbour. Marc. All that muscle. Hung.”

“Ahh! I… ah!” She cries out. Her hand grips my cock hard against her ass to keep control of it. It still won’t quite go in, but I can feel her opening up, little by little.

“That good?”

“Yes… yes… yes…”

“You like that, don’t you. A second cock.” I bite her ear.

“Yes… ah…”

She starts to shake. I’ve never seen that before. Almost convulsing. Her breathing cuts out for a few seconds, then releases in a heavy cry that is unbearably hot.

I’m barely an inch inside her. But the idea, and whatever pictures she’s building in her head, is driving her out of her mind.

I speed up. I want to drive all the way in, and I hold myself back so I don’t hurt her. She lets go of her control to grab my hip, telling me without words to go harder. I do. My right arm working the toy in long strokes, my cock forcing its way in maybe halfway, but going by the noise she’s making, that’s more than enough for a first time.

And now I’m gone. The images in my head multiply. The head of my cock inside her, so tight. I can’t hold on. Her cries, my words, all of it.

She comes at least three times, grinding back against me. The third time I can’t hold it, and I let go inside her, harder than I have in a very long time.

“Oh, my God! Ahhh!”

We lie there afterward without moving. Shocked by what we did, by what we said. And completely in step with each other.

I don’t dare speak. I’m waiting for her to say something, anything, and every second of silence feels an hour long. Here it comes. This is where she rolls over, looks at me differently, and I have to explain myself.

She takes my hand and pulls it against her stomach.

“You know there’s something wrong with you, right?”

Her voice is smiling. I finally breathe.

We fall asleep like that, without adding anything, the back of her neck against my mouth. It’s the first time in months I fall asleep without that small knot of frustration low in my gut.

The next morning she makes coffee, humming. She doesn’t mention the night. Neither do I. And for four days absolutely nothing happens, except that I think about that one sentence roughly every twenty minutes.

It’s Friday evening, coming in from work, when she calls out from the kitchen without turning around:

“Oh, by the way. I ran into Marc and Morgane at lunch. I’ve invited them for dinner tomorrow.”

A pause.

“That okay with you?”

My heart goes straight into my throat, and all I can think about is the other night. Is it possible she has that in her head too? Or is it just me, and she’s inviting the neighbours to be polite?

“Yeah, great. Sounds good.”

My own voice sounds false to me.

She gives nothing away. She keeps chopping her vegetables, back to me, and I have no way of knowing. I go upstairs to shower so I’ll stop thinking about it.

Just as I start up the stairs, she asks, still without turning around:

“Adrien?”

“Yes?”

“What should I wear on Saturday?”

The most ordinary question in the world. A woman asking her husband what to put on for dinner with the neighbours.

I stay on the stairs, one hand on the rail, looking at her back.

I didn’t answer right away.