The red light on the router was blinking. It was a slow, rhythmic pulse that felt like a countdown to a family meltdown.

“It’s not connecting,” Robert said, tapping the plastic box aggressively, as if hitting it would summon a signal from the ether. He sighed, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead. “The host said high-speed fiber. This is ... nothing. We have nothing.”

I stood in the center of the living room, holding a bag of groceries that was already getting heavy in the humidity. The air conditioning in the rental, a sprawling, timber-framed A-frame on the edge of a private lake, was wheezing, trying and failing to combat the ninety-degree heat of mid-July.

“Check your phones,” I said, trying to keep my voice cheerful. “Maybe it’s just the wifi.”

“No service,” Josh said from the couch without looking up. He was twenty-three now, fresh out of college, and built like a linebacker. He was sprawled across the leather sofa, taking up an impossible amount of space. “Zero bars, Mom. We’re in a dead zone.”

“Same here,” Dylan added. At nineteen, he was leaner than his brother, wiry and restless. He was pacing by the window, holding his iPhone up to the glass like he was trying to catch a radio signal from Mars. “This is a disaster. What are we supposed to do for a week?”

Then there was Erin. My baby, twenty-one years old and completely addicted to TikTok. She was draped over the armchair, her legs thrown over the side. She threw her phone onto the cushion with a dramatic huff.

“I can’t believe this,” she groaned. “I was supposed to FaceTime Ben tonight. I’m going to lose my streak.”

I looked at them. My family. My beautiful, ungrateful, technology-addicted family. We had rented this place to reconnect. We had spent a fortune on the rental specifically because it was secluded. I wanted board games, swimming, and family dinners. I wanted to pretend, just for a week, that we weren’t all drifting into our separate orbits.

But right now, the silence of the house was oppressive. Without the hum of the TV or the ping of notifications, all I could hear was the aggressive buzz of cicadas outside and the heavy breathing of four annoyed people in a hot room.

“Okay,” I said, setting the groceries down on the granite island. “So we’re unplugged. That was the point, wasn’t it? Rest and relaxation. We’ll survive.”

Robert looked at me, his shirt sticking to his back. He was forty-seven, still handsome, but carrying the stress of his job in the set of his shoulders. “Jess, I have emails I need to check. I didn’t set an out-of-office.”

“Well, you can’t,” I said, a little sharper than I intended. “Go unpack. Maybe the router just needs to cool down.”

They grumbled, picking up their duffel bags like they were heading to a funeral rather than a vacation. As they dispersed toward the bedrooms, I felt a familiar pang in my chest. It was that specific mix of annoyance and insecurity that had been my constant companion lately. I wanted them to be happy. I wanted them to look at me and be excited to be here. Instead, I felt like the cruise director on a sinking ship.

I grabbed my own suitcase and headed to the master bedroom on the main floor. The room was nice, huge windows overlooking the water, a king-sized bed with white linens, but it was stifling hot.

I dropped my bag on the bed and exhaled, pulling my t-shirt away from my sticky skin. The drive had been four hours. I felt gross.

I stripped off my t-shirt and unhooked my bra, letting it fall to the floor. I shimmied out of my jeans and panties until I was standing there completely naked. The room was dim, the light filtering in through the trees, but the mirror was unforgiving.

I was forty-four. At five-foot-five and one hundred and thirty-eight pounds, I wasn’t fat, but I wasn’t the girl Robert had married twenty years ago, either. I turned to the side. My stomach had a softness to it, a little curve that no amount of yoga seemed to erase. My hips were wider now.

I cupped my breasts. They were heavy, 36DDs that obeyed gravity more than I liked. They were still full, and Robert still liked to bury his face in them, but when I looked at Erin earlier, wearing those tiny denim shorts and a crop top without a bra, I felt a spike of envy so sharp it almost hurt. She was perky. She was firm. She walked around with the terrifying confidence of someone who had never found a wrinkle.

I pinched the skin at my waist. Soft, I thought. Mom bod.

“Jesus, Jess,” I whispered to myself. “Stop it.”

I needed to cool down. I didn’t want to put the heavy jeans back on. We were in the middle of nowhere. It was just family.

I dug through my suitcase and found a pair of gray cotton sleep shorts. They were short, shorter than I usually wore out of the bedroom, but it was ninety freaking degrees. They hit just at the top of my thighs. I pulled them on, the fabric hugging my ass. I grabbed a white ribbed tank top. It was thin, intended for layering, but I pulled it on over my bare skin.

I looked in the mirror again. My nipples pushed against the thin white cotton. You could see the dark circles of my areolas if you looked hard enough.

I should put a bra on, I thought. I have two grown sons out there.

But then I remembered the way Robert had barely looked at me when we walked in. He was so focused on the router, on the heat, on the lack of signal. He hadn’t touched me in three days. We were in a rut, the kind of comfortable, roommate-style rut where sex happened on Saturdays if we weren’t too tired.

I fluffed my hair, which was currently frizzy from the humidity, and decided against the bra. Let them look. Or not look. I just wanted to be cool.

I walked back out into the main living area. The house was technically an “open concept,” which meant sound carried. I could hear Dylan thumping around in the loft upstairs. I could hear Josh in the downstairs guest room, opening and closing drawers.

Robert was in the kitchen, staring into the open refrigerator like it held the answers to the universe.

“Any luck with the internet?” I asked, walking up behind him.

He turned, a beer in his hand. His eyes dropped to my chest, lingered for a fraction of a second on the outline of my nipples, and then flicked back up to my face. The reaction was subtle, but I caught it. A little flare in his eyes.

“No,” he said, taking a sip. “I think the line is dead. We’re totally cut off.”

“Good,” I lied. I leaned against the counter, arching my back slightly. I knew the pose made my tits look better. It was pathetic, fishing for attention from my own husband, but I couldn’t help it. “Maybe we can do something else.”

Erin walked into the room then. She had changed, too. She was wearing a bikini top and a sheer sarong tied around her waist. She looked incredible. Smooth skin, flat stomach, high breasts that defied physics.

“It is literally boiling in here,” she announced, opening the freezer and sticking her head inside. “I’m going to die.”

Josh wandered in from the hallway. He had taken his shirt off. My son had spent the last two years getting obsessed with CrossFit, and it showed. He was six-foot-two of rippled muscle and veins. His chest was covered in a light sheen of sweat.

I caught myself staring at his abs. Stop it, I scolded myself. That’s your son.

But the physical reality of him was undeniable. He was a man. A large, sweaty, shirtless man standing in my kitchen.

“Is there any food?” Josh asked, ignoring the tension in the room. “I’m starving.”

“I bought chips,” I said. “And salsa. We need to figure out dinner.”

“I’m too hot to eat,” Dylan said, coming down the stairs. He was shirtless too, lanking and lean, with a trail of hair disappearing into the waistband of his basketball shorts.

So here we were. The five of us, half-naked, sweating, trapped in a wooden box with absolutely nothing to distract us from each other. The air felt thick, charged with something heavy and restless.

“We need to do something,” Erin said, grabbing a bag of Tostitos. “If I have to just sit here and stare at the wall, I’m going to lose my mind.”

“There’s a game room,” Robert said. “In the listing, it said there was a den with ‘entertainment.’ Maybe they have DVDs. Or a pool table.”

“Let’s check it out,” Josh said. “Anything is better than this.”

We moved as a pack toward the door at the back of the kitchen that we hadn’t opened yet. It led down a half-flight of stairs to a sunken den that was built into the side of the hill. It was cooler down there, thank god, sheltered by the earth.

The room was dark, wood-paneled, and smelled faintly of cedar and old upholstery. There was a leather sectional, a massive fireplace that would be cozy in December but just looked oppressive now, and a bookshelf filled with paperback thrillers from the nineties.

“No TV,” Dylan noted, disappointed. “Just books.”

“Look at this,” Erin said. She was standing by a large, ornate wooden chest in the corner. It looked like something a pirate would bury, heavy oak with iron strappings. It sat squarely in the middle of the room, doubling as a coffee table.

“It’s locked,” she said, tugging on the lid.

“There was a key,” Robert said. “On the ring with the house keys. A little brass one. I wondered what it was for.”

He fished the keys out of his pocket.

I felt a weird flutter in my stomach. Curiosity. Boredom. “Open it,” I said. “Maybe it’s Monopoly.”

“Or a dead body,” Josh joked.

Robert knelt in front of the chest. The boys crowded around him. Erin sat on the arm of the sofa, leaning forward, her sarong slipping to show the high cut of her bikini bottom.

Robert slid the key into the lock. It turned with a heavy clunk.

“Here we go,” Robert said. “Prepare to be underwhelmed.”

He threw the heavy lid back.

Silence. absolute silence fell over the room.

It wasn’t Monopoly.

The chest was lined with red velvet, pristine and clean. And inside, organized with surprising neatness, was a collection that made my breath catch in my throat.

It was a sex chest. But not just a couple of vibrators thrown in a bag. It was high-end. Expensive.

Right on top sat a massive black dildo. It had to be ten inches long, thick as a cucumber, with throbbing veins molded into the silicone. Next to it was a clear Fleshlight case. There was a sleek, futuristic-looking prostate massager. There were cock rings. There were glass wands. There was a Hitachi Magic Wand, the plug-in kind that rattled your teeth. And tucked in the corner was a gallon-sized pump bottle of premium lubricant.

I stared. We all stared.

My face went hot. I should have slammed the lid shut. I should have been the mother. I should have said, Oh my god, close that, it’s disgusting.

But I didn’t. I couldn’t take my eyes off the black dildo. It looked ... aggressive. It looked like it would hurt.

“Whoa,” Dylan breathed. It was the only sound in the room.

“What kind of rental is this?” Josh asked, his voice sounding a little tight. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the Fleshlight.

“Swingers,” Erin said. Her voice wasn’t shocked. It was amused. She hopped off the couch and walked right up to the chest. “This place must be a swingers’ retreat.”

“Don’t touch it,” Robert said, but his voice lacked conviction. He was looking at the dildo, too.

“It looks clean,” Erin said. “Like, boiled and sanitized. Look, they’re still in the plastic wrappers.”

She reached in and picked up the Hitachi wand.

“I’ve always wanted one of these,” she said casually. “My friend says they make you see God.”

“Erin!” I scolded, finally finding my voice. “Put that back.”

“Why?” she challenged, looking at me. Her eyes were dark, mischievous. “We don’t have internet, Mom. We don’t have TV. What else are we supposed to do?”

She dropped the wand back in, but she didn’t step away.

The tension in the room shifted. It wasn’t just hot anymore. It was predatory. We were all looking at the hoard. And we were all thinking the same thing. We were all bored. We were all horny. And here was a literal box of release.

“We should ... go to bed,” Robert said, standing up abruptly. His bulge was visible in his shorts. He tried to adjust it, but I saw it. “We can figure out the internet tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Josh said. He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m gonna crash.”

“Me too,” Dylan said.

Everyone started to shuffle toward the stairs.

I hung back. I pretended to straighten a pillow on the sofa.

“Coming, Jess?” Robert asked from the top of the stairs.

“In a minute,” I said. “I just want to close this up.”

“Okay.”

He disappeared. I listened to their footsteps retreat. I heard the door to Erin’s room close. I heard the boys go into their room.

I was alone with the box.

I looked at the black dildo again. I imagined the weight of it. I imagined how full I would feel. It had been years since I felt full like that. Robert was average, perfectly fine, but this? This was a monster.

I reached out. My hand trembled. I touched the silicone. It was smooth, cool to the touch.

I shouldn’t, I thought. This isn’t ours. It’s perverted.

But my hand closed around the shaft. It was heavy. Substantial.

I bit my lip. I could feel moisture gathering between my legs, soaking the thin cotton of my shorts. I was wet just holding it.

I glanced at the stairs. No one was coming back.

Quickly, feeling like a thief, I grabbed the black dildo. I grabbed the pump bottle of lube.

Then I paused. The Hitachi wand was gone.

I blinked. I looked closer. The Fleshlight was gone, too.

My heart stopped. Erin had taken the wand. And one of the boys (Josh? Dylan?) had taken the sleeve.

A shock went through me. It wasn’t disgust. It was electricity. My children, my husband, me ... we were all retreating to our rooms with stolen toys to get off. The walls in this house were thin. Timber and drywall.

Useable.

I shoved the dildo and the lube under my arm, turned off the light, and hurried up the stairs to the master bedroom. I felt dirty. I felt anxious.

And I was wet.

I closed the bedroom door and leaned back against the solid wood, clutching the stolen goods to my chest like a shoplifter. My heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs, thump, thump, thump, that had nothing to do with the stairs I’d just climbed.

The master bedroom was sweltering. The air conditioner was trying its best, pushing a faint, cool breeze from the vent, but it was losing the war against the trapped heat of the day. The humidity clung to everything. My tank top was already damp at the small of my back, and the cotton sleep shorts felt heavy against my thighs.