Under My Skin

This is the second story in my series Under My Skin.

A note to the reader:

This is a slow-burn story about longing, emotional intimacy, desire, and the complicated space between love and betrayal. It follows two fundamentally decent people slowly blurring and eventually crossing lines neither of them expected to.

The strange thing about falling in love slowly is that, for a while, your life still looks exactly the same from the outside.

I still woke up too early most mornings. Still rushed around trying to stay one step ahead of the day before it properly began. Still answered questions before people had finished asking them.

Nothing dramatic changed at first. And yet internally, everything felt different. Because somewhere between ordinary life and voice notes and late-night honesty, William had quietly become part of my everyday world.

The first message I looked for in the morning.

The person I instinctively wanted to tell things to.

The small pocket of calm inside otherwise relentless days.

At first, the messages stayed light enough that I could still pretend to myself this was harmless.

Questions. Stories. Teasing. Fragments of conversation fitted carefully into the gaps in our lives.

Sometimes hours would pass between replies because we were busy and, I think, still trying to behave like people whose emotional worlds had not become dangerously entangled with each other's.

I would answer while waiting for meetings to start or sitting in the car before going shopping or picking up a child from somewhere or other.

William messaged from airports, trains and anonymous hotel rooms in cities that all sounded vaguely grey and interchangeable whenever he described them to me.

And always, underneath everything else, was this growing intimacy neither of us seemed capable of resisting.

Not forced intimacy either. Natural intimacy. The kind that arrives so gradually you only realise afterwards how much of yourself you've already handed over.

One evening we were talking on the phone while I wandered around the kitchen absentmindedly wiping already-clean counters.

"I think people assume marriages fall apart loudly," I said quietly, more to myself than him. "But sometimes they just... go quiet."

There was silence for a moment on the other end of the line.

Not awkward silence.

Recognition.

Then William exhaled softly.

"Yes," he said. "Exactly that."

Something about the way he answered made me stop moving completely.

Not because he sounded upset. William rarely sounded overtly emotional about anything. But there was something heavy underneath his voice suddenly. Something tired.

"You okay?" I asked gently.

Another pause.

Then:

"I miss affection more than I ever thought I would."

I leaned back slowly against the kitchen counter. Outside, rain pressed softly against the windows while the dishwasher hummed quietly beside me. Somewhere upstairs one of the children laughed in their sleep before settling again.

And for some reason, hearing that ache in William's voice affected me immediately.

Not sexually. Humanly.

"How long has it been?" I asked carefully.

I remember hearing him shift slightly before answering.

"Five years."

I actually closed my eyes.

Five years.

No touch.

No intimacy.

No warmth beside him in bed.

The loneliness of it suddenly became painfully tangible to me.

"God, William..."

He laughed softly then, but there was no humour in it.

"Men aren't really supposed to admit how much that gets to them, I don't think."

I didn't answer immediately because suddenly I understood something important about him.

This wasn't just about sex.

It was about tenderness.

Connection.

Being wanted.

Being reached for.

"I miss stupid things," he admitted quietly. "A hand on my back walking past. Someone touching my arm while they're talking to me. Kissing someone absentmindedly in the kitchen." A small pause. "I think after long enough you stop feeling like a man at all."

The honesty of it sat heavily inside my chest.

And because honesty had become the language we spoke best, I found myself asking softly:

"Does your wife know you feel like that?"

Another quiet pause.

"I think she'd be upset that I'm unhappy," he admitted eventually. "But I don't think she misses it the way I do."

I nodded even though he couldn't see me. And somehow, from there, the conversation drifted naturally towards intimacy itself. Marriage. Desire. The things people stop saying out loud after long enough together.

Then William asked, almost in a whisper,

"Can I ask you something personal?"

"You usually do."

A soft chucke

.

"Are you unhappy with James physically?"

The question should probably have shocked me more than it did. Instead, I found myself staring out into the dark garden beyond the kitchen window while thinking carefully about my answer.

Because the truthful answer surprised even me slightly.

"No," I admitted quietly. "That's never really been our problem."

There was a brief silence on the line.

Not judgement.

Not discomfort.

Surprise.

I could almost feel him recalibrating his understanding of me in real time.

"We still..." I hesitated slightly, suddenly aware of how intimate this conversation had become. "We still have a very good sex life."

William stayed quiet, listening carefully.

And because it was him, because it had become so strangely easy to tell him the truth, I kept talking.

"James desires me," I said softly. "Very much. He always has." I laughed quietly under my breath then. "Honestly, our sex life is probably better than most people would assume after this long together."

"How so?" William asked gently.

There was no voyeurism in the question. No crude curiosity.

Just him trying to understand me.

I tucked my hair behind my ear and leaned my hip against the counter.

"We're adventurous, I suppose," I admitted. "Connected physically. There's trust there. Exploration. We talk openly. Share and fulfil fantasies. We..." I paused trying to find the right words. "We know each other's bodies very well."

And all of that was true.

James had never stopped wanting me.

Never stopped touching me like I was beautiful.

Never stopped making me feel desired physically.

That was what made all of this so difficult to explain, even to myself.

"So what's missing?" William asked quietly.

The question landed somewhere deep inside me because I realised almost immediately that nobody had ever asked me that so directly before.

What was missing? I stood there for a long moment trying to find words for something I'd only ever felt.

Finally I said, perhaps too curtly,

"Everything else."

The silence afterwards felt unbearably intimate.

"He touches my body beautifully," I admitted eventually, my voice quieter now. "But sometimes I feel like he stopped really seeing me years ago."

I swallowed hard.

"I think somewhere along the way I became... needed, in the sense of making life easier as opposed to being wanted in the sense of desire."

William stayed quiet.

Then said,

"I don't think I've ever wanted to hold someone more than I do right now."

And God help me, in that moment, that was all I wanted too.

The conversation stayed with me long after we hung up that night.

Not just because of what William had told me, but because of how honest he had been while telling me.

There was no performance to him. No self-pity. He never tried to make himself sound tragic or deprived in some manipulative way. If anything, he seemed slightly uncomfortable being as vulnerable as he had been.

But I couldn't stop thinking about him afterwards. And not just about him. About her as well.

Five years.

I kept trying to imagine what that kind of loneliness must feel like inside a marriage. Sleeping beside someone every night while slowly learning (or deciding) not to reach for them anymore.

It broke my heart, if I'm honest.

A few nights later, after everyone else had gone to bed, I found myself sitting curled into the corner of the sofa with a blanket over my legs while William talked quietly through my headphones.

The house was dark except for the soft yellow lamp beside me.

"I still can't quite get my head around your marriage," he admitted softly.

I smiled, wondering where this was going. "In what sense?"

"You sound lonely," he said carefully. "But not neglected."

That word settled strangely inside me.

Neglected.

"No," I admitted after a moment. "Not neglected."

There was a pause.

"Can I ask you something else personal?"

I laughed quietly. "At this point I think that's basically all we do."

His laugh rumbled softly through the headphones.

Then:

"Do you still... have a strong appetite for sex?"

The honesty of the question should probably have embarrassed me.

Instead, I found myself running my hand through my hair and smiling to myself.

"Yes," I answered truthfully. "Very much."

Another pause.

"I'm glad," he said quietly.

"Why?"

"Because I think there's something very sad about people disconnecting from that part of themselves completely."

I thought about that for a second.

Then I asked,

"Do you?"

He exhaled a slow sigh.

"Yes."

The answer came without hesitation.

And somehow that honesty between us had become so normal by then that neither of us rushed to soften the conversation or steer away from it.

"I think about sex all the time," he admitted eventually, his voice quieter now. "Probably more now than I did when I was younger, strangely."

I smiled to myself. And to my surprise, felt relieved.

"There's probably a psychology book somewhere explaining that."

He chuckled.

"Maybe." His voice darkened. "Or maybe it's just five years without being touched."

The sadness underneath that sentence sat heavily inside my chest.

"And yes," he continued after a moment, sounding faintly amused now. "Before you ask, I masturbate regularly."

Something about the straightforwardness of it made me laugh under my breath.

"Thank God," I murmured.

Now it was his turn to laugh properly.

"What?"

"I don't know," I admitted, tucking the blanket closer around myself. "I think part of me was worried you were going to tell me you'd transcended physical desire entirely and become some emotionally evolved monk."

His laughter warmed right through me.

"Absolutely not," he said. "I'm still very much a man, Rue."

The way he said my name at the end of that sentence gave me butterflies in my stomach. And I could feel arousal starting to pulse through my body... in a split second I imagined this man, this kind, gentle, caring man, whom I was falling more and more in love with, removing my panties as I lay on a bed in front of him encouraging him to ravage me. I pushed the thoughts aside. And instead, I found myself saying quietly:

"I masturbate regularly too."

The silence afterwards felt different somehow.

Not uncomfortable.

Charged.

"I know this probably sounds strange," William admitted softly, "but I'm oddly relieved to hear that."

"Why?"

"Because you're so nurturing all the time," he said carefully. "I think sometimes I forget there's this whole other side of you underneath it. And I have to admit, I'm very interested in getting to know that other side of you."

I swallowed hard.

"And what side is that?"

"The woman side," he said simply.

God.

Nobody had separated those parts of me in years.

Mother.

Wife.

Organiser.

Reliable person.

Caretaker.

But woman?

That felt different somehow.

Dangerously different.

"I think," William continued carefully, "that people assume women stop needing desire once they become mothers. As though sexuality and nurturing can't exist in the same person."

I sat quietly absorbing that for a moment because he was right.

So much of my life revolved around being needed in practical ways that sometimes even I forgot I was still a deeply sexual person underneath all of it.

"I love sex," I admitted softly into the darkness. "I really do. I always have."

William was quiet for a second.

"Tell me."

There was no pressure in it. No demand.

Just curiosity.

And somehow that made answering him feel far more intimate than anything explicit ever could have.

I hesitated for a moment, suddenly aware of how vulnerable the conversation had become.

Then quietly, before I could overthink it, I said,

"I think for me it's never just been about the physical side of it."

William stayed silent. Listening.

"I like feeling wanted," I admitted. "Not just desired. Wanted." I smiled to myself as I thought about who I really wanted to want me. "I like when somebody is paying attention properly. When they're focused on me instead of themselves."

Heat had already started building through me just from saying it out loud. My mouth slightly drier than before. I was suddenly aware of my nipples and the soft fabric of my satin pyjamas rubbing against them as I inhaled and exhaled.

"I think anticipation is a huge part of it for me too," I continued quietly. "Knowing somebody's been thinking about touching you all day, then finally getting to." I laughed under my breath. "I sound ridiculous."

"No," William said firmly, his voice lower now somehow. "You sound honest."

The tone of his voice as he said no made my stomach tighten.

"I think the best sex feels emotional first," I continued. "Like somebody wants all of you there with them. Not just your body... And patience, patience is unbelievably attractive."

There was silence for a second.

Not empty silence.

Heavy silence.

The kind where you suddenly become acutely aware of your own breathing.

Then William exhaled softly.

"I think the best lovers pay attention," he said quietly.

Every nerve ending in my body seemed to tingle all at once.

"They notice things."

His voice had changed again. Still calm. Still restrained. But roughened slightly around the edges in a way I had never heard before.

"The places that make you shiver unexpectedly." A pause. "The kisses that change your breathing." I heard him swallow before he continued. "The touches that make your body react before you've even consciously realised why and The caresses that evoke an involuntary moan."

My pulse quickened and my breathing turned shallow. William was making me feel things I hadn't felt in a very long time. I shifted slightly in my seat without meaning to, and my breath caught in my throat as I became aware of the wetness between my legs.

"I think most people rush sex because they're focused on the ending instead of the person in front of them," he continued softly. "But the best, and do me, most interesting part is learning everything I can about somebody."

I closed my eyes briefly. I was incredibly attracted to this man.

"The tiny reactions." His voice dropped quieter still. "The sounds they try not to make, the sounds they do make. The places they instinctively lean into your mouth or your hands without even realising they're doing it."

My grip tightened involuntarily around my phone..

"And once you've taken the time to learn someone properly..." he paused and I instinctively knew that someone was me in this conversation. "You know exactly how to unravel them."

Neither of us said anything for a moment.

I could hear him breathing softly through the phone, and somehow the silence between us felt thicker now. Warmer.

Like we had both drifted somewhere neither of us had fully intended to go.

My pulse thudded heavily in my ears. Because suddenly I could picture him with terrifying clarity.

The patience in his hands.

The softness in his mouth before it became something hungrier.

The way he'd pay attention to every reaction like he was learning me piece by piece.

And somehow I knew William was picturing me too.

Not abstractly.

Me.

Then, quieter now, almost thoughtful, he murmured,

"I think you'd respond very beautifully to my attention, Rue."

The sentence hit me so hard I physically stopped breathing for a second.

Not because it was explicit.

Because it felt like he already knew exactly how I'd sound beneath his hands.

"Rue," he murmured carefully, "if I keep talking to you tonight, I'm going to start saying things I shouldn't."

The restraint in his voice affected me more than if he'd actually said them.

I swallowed hard.

"Maybe we should sleep then," I whispered.

A soft laugh.

"Probably."

Neither of us hung up immediately.

God.

Eventually William said quietly,

"Goodnight, beautiful."

And that word stayed with me long after the call ended.

Later that night, lying beside James in the dark, I stared up at the ceiling listening to his steady breathing while my own body refused to settle.

I could still hear William's voice in my head.

The places that make you shiver unexpectedly.

My eyes closed briefly.

God.

Beside me, James shifted slightly in his sleep.

And for one fleeting moment, I actually considered waking him.

Not because I suddenly wanted my husband specifically.

Because I needed release.

The realisation unsettled me instantly.

Because James would have touched me if I'd asked.

Immediately.

Willingly.

Without question.

But lying there in the dark, I understood with sudden painful clarity that it wasn't just physical satisfaction I wanted.

It was William.

His attention.

His patience.

The unbearable intimacy of being observed by him so carefully.

And somehow that felt far more dangerous than desire alone.

Carefully, so carefully, I slipped out of bed.

I padded to the bathroom. I stood in our family bathroom for a good few minutes. Not thinking. Feeling. Feeling the silence of my home.

Real silence.

Not somebody asking where their football socks were from the other side of the house. Not the television murmuring downstairs. Not another notification or reminder or question pulling something else from me.

Just quiet.

I lit candles, and started to run a bath. Poured too much expensive bath oil into the water. Put music on softly through my phone and lowered myself slowly beneath the heat with a long exhale, letting it loosen the constant tension that seemed to live permanently inside my body these days.

For a while I simply lay there staring at the ceiling.

And then I allowed my mind to drift to William.

His voice earlier that evening.

The softness in it when he admitted what he liked most.

The quiet ache underneath his restraint.

I miss making a woman feel beautiful. Those words replayed in my head.

I closed my eyes.

The thing was, he already made me feel beautiful.

Not performatively.

Not selfishly.

Not like somebody trying to prove something.

I think William would touch a woman the same way he listened to her -- attentively. Patiently. Like every reaction mattered.

And somehow that thought affected me more powerfully than anything overtly sexual ever could have.

The bathwater shifted softly around me as I turned my attention to my body. Now, recalling the feelings of arousal he'd ignited with me earlier. Feeling them slowly spread through my body, deeper now. More insistent.

I thought about his hands first.

Not even on intimate places initially. Just the idea of them on me at all. And then, him moving his hands over my body.

His palm against the back of my neck.

Fingers brushing slowly along my arm.

His hand low against my waist while he looked at me with those impossibly kind eyes.

I let out a shaky breath.

Because suddenly the wanting felt almost unbearable.

Not rushed hunger.

Anticipation.

The kind William had talked about.