She just felt unhappy.
She’d had an orgasm, but there had been nothing attached to it. No feelings at all. In the beginning, when they’d started this life, she’d felt so much! The love she’d shared with Pete, the adventure, the happiness when everyone was fulfilled, it brought her the highest of highs.
Now there was nothing. There was a void with no feelings attached.
The hot water rushed over her body.
It felt good to cleanse the day away. She’d forgotten to grab the soap and shampoo, but it didn’t matter.
A few minutes later, Emma heard Pete come in.
Emma didn’t open her eyes. She just continued to let the water course over her, trying to figure out what the right words would be to explain to Pete how she felt.
There was a tap at the shower door.
Emma’s eyes popped open. Pete was holding two small bottles, one shampoo, one conditioner, and a bar of soap in his hands. “I saw you didn’t take these in there. Would you like them?” he asked.
She opened the glass door and took the proffered items. “Yes, thank you. I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Take your time,” he told her. “I’m going to go rinse off in the outdoor shower. We’ll talk when you get out.” There was concern in his voice, but he wasn’t going to push it.
She appreciated that.
Emma feared she wouldn’t be able to make him understand—or even worse, maybe he wouldn’t want the same things she wanted.
Not a great way to start their vacation.
She made a decision as she turned off the water that if he didn’t see her point of view—when she figured out what it was—she wasn’t going to turn it into a huge fight. This resort was amazing, and Emma was a very positive person by nature. She refused to spend the entire trip upset or fighting.
They had their whole lives to figure out the next phase of their marriage.
She would explain to Pete as best she could. After that, she’d let it go until they got home. She opened the shower door. Pete had laid a towel out for her on a hook. He wasn’t back inside yet, so after she dried off, she padded over to the closet. She opened the door to get to her luggage, her stomach rumbling loudly. “The food!” she cried.
She’d forgotten all about it!
Emma hadn’t spotted anything by the door when she’d come back. She turned from the closet and rushed into the living area, but there was no cart sitting there.
The phone was blinking, which was easy to see in the darkened room.
She walked over and picked it up and held it to her ear. “You have one new message,” a prerecorded voice said. “Press pound and the number two to hear your message.”
She did as asked.
A smooth male voice sounded on the other end. “Mr. and Mrs. Slater, this is Matteo in the kitchen. Your food was delivered, but when we found you were not in, we brought it back to the kitchen. Please give us a call, and we will happily make you fresh dishes and send them right over. Thank you.”
Emma hung up and punched the button marked Room Service. A woman answered on the first ring. “Hello,” Emma said. “This is villa number seven. We’re back now and would love to have our room-service order delivered now.”
“Of course. We were waiting on your call. It will arrive in ten minutes.”
“That’s wonderful. Thank you!” She hung up right as Pete walked in.
He stood in the living room with a towel cinched around his waist. He moved toward her, kissing her on the temple and said, “We need to talk.”
12
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Their food came exactly ten minutes later. Pete was starving. Both he and Emma were dressed in PJs, deciding to wait to have their discussion until after they’d eaten. Pete had on a pair of light cotton pajama pants, and Emma wore a sleeveless nightgown in a buttery yellow. She looked radiant. Pete watched her as she ate. Even when she was distressed, she looked beautiful.
“This food is amazing,” Emma said around her last bite of crab cake. “How are we going to afford to come back here every year? We’re going to be so spoiled rotten by the time we leave, we won’t want to go anyplace else.”
“The food is definitely good,” Pete agreed, finishing up his lobster roll. “From what we’ve seen so far, they do everything right.” He picked up a glass of water and took a swallow. They’d decided not to open up a bottle of wine, since they were both too exhausted to enjoy it. They were going to save it for another night. Pete hoped there would be something to celebrate on this trip.
He stood up and walked his empty plate back to the cart they’d wheeled in. He set it down, grabbed the tray of chocolate-covered fruit, and brought it back to the table in front of the couch. There was a nice array of strawberries, kiwi, and pineapple covered in chocolate and fanned out with a chocolate-covered cherry in the middle.
He set it in front of his wife and sat back down, leaning forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. “Okay,” he started, “now we need to talk about what happened back at the pool. We’ve always upheld the rule of if we both say yes there is no guilt or jealousy afterward. I don’t understand why you’re upset.”
Emma set her fork down on her empty plate and sat back, giving him a long appraising look before she answered. “I’m not angry.”
“Then what are you? I’m having a hard time understanding and trying to decipher what’s going on with you these last few weeks. I know what we just did with Mallory was unexpected, and maybe we should’ve talked about it more before we jumped in, but this is what the island is all about. And it’s not like we’re strangers to the lifestyle. We’ve done what happened back there more than a hundred times before with zero issues. We love pleasure, excitement, and adventure in our bedroom, and I can’t figure out why you’re unhappy. This is what our marriage is all about.”
Emma picked up a piece of kiwi artfully half-dipped in chocolate. She took a bite. “I think that’s exactly the problem for me. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to articulate this very well, because what I’m feeling hasn’t been easy to pin down in my mind, but what you just said is the main issue for me. Sex with others is what our marriage has become, in totality.” She held her hand up before he could interject. “But that’s not how it started. When we decided to invite others into our bedroom, we were deeply in love and we wanted to explore ultimate pleasure together. The joy we both felt after an episode gave us an emotional high and a connection. It bound us together. That fed into our everyday life, and it made us full. Now, sex, at least for me, has become solely about the act, getting off, and then finding the next episode to feed the machine. It’s not about raw emotions anymore, and it doesn’t enrich our everyday life. It’s become this separate entity to feed a craving, void of any emotion, nothing more.”
Pete took it all in, trying to understand what his wife was telling him. “I’m not following everything you’re saying, though I’m trying,” he said. “Are you ultimately telling me you don’t want to be in the lifestyle anymore?”
“I’m not sure,” Emma said. “I told you what I’m feeling is complicated. Ultimately, I’m fine with continuing to invite others into our bedroom, but only if we can find the emotional connection that went missing first.” She moved her hand in the space between them. “We’re the part that’s broken. You and me.”
“I hear you, but I have to admit I’m at a loss, because I don’t feel like there’s anything missing between us,” Pete said. “What happened to make you feel this way? Was there a big change? Or did I do something specific?”
“No,” Emma said, rubbing her forehead. “You didn’t do anything specific. I think it’s just been an erosion of our relationship over time. It’s like we”—she gestured between them again—“have lost the connection between love and sex somewhere along the way. We have sex, but there’s no love attached. I want to feel that love again. I need to feel it. I crave that connection with you.”