Marcus did not take her home after the restaurant.

He drove past the turn for their street and kept going, north along the edge of the park that ran beside the river. Elena sat in the passenger seat with the thick residual heat of the under-table orgasm and the previous day’s loads still warm between her legs, the lower marks aching under her sweater, and the streak of wetness he had left on her inner thigh cooling against her skin. She did not ask where they were going. The new shape of the dynamic had made the question unnecessary days ago.

He pulled into a small gravel lot at the...