Seduction

I arrived at the party determined to misbehave. I never imagined my lover’s older brother would be waiting—or that he knew exactly what I was hiding.

All it took was seeing him appear in the sun, his skin gleaming, for me to know that the man in the bungalow next door wouldn’t let me sleep peacefully that summer.

I had never felt anyone look at me that way from a parade float, as if among all those people he had chosen me alone for the longest night of the year.

I watched her move through yoga class with a grace that undid me. I never imagined that a chance encounter on the platform would end in her bedroom.

He expected a voluptuous, experienced lady; instead, he got a petite, quiet wife. That night, she decided to show him how badly he had misjudged her.

I hadn’t seen him in five years. All it took was him shouting my name among the shop windows for the thrill of that afternoon to come rushing back intact.

I was twenty-four and thought I knew what I liked, until that mature man looked at me from across the kitchen and everything fell apart.

I was thirty-four, carrying two breakups and the certainty that if I didn’t leave, I would burn out in an office. So I left.

I knew what we were getting into before we even got in the car, but I let myself be carried along anyway. The secluded chalet, the empty pool, and two men who couldn’t take their eyes off me.

I invented a university assignment to get a soccer player alone, in shorts, and find out whether his legs were as incredible up close as they were on TV.

Fifteen years ago, we shared more than shifts and photocopies. When she took my arm on the way out, I knew the night wouldn’t end at the hall’s door.

She was sixty-two, had a shameless smile and two beers in the fridge. I’d only gone to reorder her TV channels.

When I went upstairs to hang the laundry, I wasn’t always hanging laundry. It began with a hand on my waist on the rooftop and ended with my keys in your mailbox and this letter on the table.

I’m fascinated by watching and being watched. That night on the sand, as Ingrid undressed before me beneath the moon, I finally understood it completely.

I met her at the hotel bar: elegant, short blond hair, and a smile that had already decided what would happen to me. I never imagined why she had chosen me.

He was tall, funny, and not my type at all. But that morning I got into his car knowing I was heading straight for trouble—and I didn’t regret it.

Standing before the mirror in red lace, I knew that night I would stop hiding. All that remained was for him to open the door and truly see me.

I pressed myself against the hallway wall, holding my breath. On the other side of the door, the two voices I least expected to hear together sought each other in the darkness.

I’d gone three months without writing a decent line. What I never imagined was that my writer’s block would be cured from the most unexpected side of my own body.

My boss had kept me aroused throughout the flight. When I got up to use the bathroom, I never expected someone else to follow me in.