When I turned to Anna, still not knowing if I was going to talk to her about it or not, her eyes were closed. I never knew if she was really sleeping when she did this, but she slept so little I decided it was a bad idea to wake her up. Rain began to tap again at the windows. I closed my eyes. We took a nap there, on the floor, listening to the rain, naked.
A few hours later, Anna woke me when she rose and walked to the stairs.
It was definitely too late then, to bring up my burning question: was she just pretending? Or did she want to go back to how things were before we got married?
Or, as I deeply hoped, did she want to go beyond it?
8: TRVIA NIGHT
(SEVEN YEARS EARLIER)
“'Ow the fook should I know?” Dave said, in what was supposed to be a Cockney accent, but combined with the pitcher of beer he had slammed, sounded more like he was having a stroke. Our “team” was doing surprisingly well at Beefy Thom's Pub Quiz Night, by having hidden stashes of useless information in each man's head, but this one had us stumped.
“Those little twats aren't going to know the answer to this one,” Reggie assured him. He leaned back on the booth with his arms over the back of it and surveyed the room.
'Those little twats' referred to the unseen team Brainy Bitches, who were quickly beating us, which was unacceptable. Because they were girls. They were also mysteriously impossible to pick out of the crowd. Reggie wanted to get sight of them, because he had a ready opening in this trivia game. He was hoping they were all hot.
“What do I put?” Dave demanded.
“Winston Churchill.”
“Thames Weekly.”
“All right,” Dave declared, scribbling on the paper. “Fish. And. Chips.”
The quizmaster tapped on the microphone. “Times up in ten,” he warned.
“Don't put fish and chips,” I moaned.
Dave pointed the index card at my nose. “Better to go down makin' 'em laugh, than to look like an idiot with no sense of 'umor, mate.”
Probably true. I looked around the room. It was a crowded Friday night, and the trivia game had begun with twenty groups. There were three or four clusters of all women, but none of them seemed as excited as Brainy Bitches should have been, considering that if they kept going, they were going to win unlimited free beer for the night.
“Uh....'fish and chips.' No,” the announcer, our buddy Chance, gave a fake laugh. “No, the name of the British military newspaper published in Germany is...the Sixth Sense. Ten points for this obscure piece of trivia to Brainy Bitches, who are now twenty points ahead.”
“They're cheating,” Dave proclaimed, still using his terrible accent. “'ow in the fuck would a bunch of girls know that one?”
Reggie tossed his quiz cards dramatically onto the table, as though he had lost at poker.
“How would anyone know that? Hey Chance?” he yelled. “You know that this is not actually fucking Britain, right?”
Someone piped up from the back of the room. “Yeah. Give us a question about baseball or something, you fucker!”
In truth, most of the questions had been about American sports, which was making our defeat at the hands of Brainy Bitches even more humiliating.
Chance turned the music up. “Ten minute break,” he shouted.
I checked my phone again, and my heart twisted as I saw there was nothing from Anna.
We were in that strange, twilight stage of our relationship, where both of us, we would later confide, had feared the other was still dating a lot of other people.
For Anna, this was a realistic idea, but when she told me she had worried about the same thing, it made me laugh for almost ten minutes. I am an average-looking guy, but I don't turn anyone's head. Not even in college, when I was trim and almost athletic from a lot of biking (almost, because I tended to balance the biking out with a lot of beer). I have sandy hair, and I am 6 feet tall, and neither thin nor fat, ripped nor flabby, handsome nor ugly. A friend who had ended up in the FBI told me I would make a good spy if I were smarter. No one could remember my face.
“Fish and Chips, huh? You guys are fucking idiots.”
I looked up. I had known already that it was Anna's voice. Low. Clear. Lacking, unlike so many girls from Southern California, the upspeak that made girls sound like a bimbo from an eighties movie.
I could feel Reggie puffing up next to me. Reggie was the guy who got all the girls, and if any one of us was in this girl's league, it was him. His pride was swelling as much as cock probably was for Anna, who was looking particularly unearthly in a sea-green dress that matched her eyes and set off her tanned skin, with a dip between her breasts that revealed the swell of each perfect mound but cut off abruptly at her bra line in a shape that almost looked like a sly smile. She had a drink in her hand and was twisting the straw.
“Don't tell me you're Brainy Bitches,” I said, smiling to see her. I didn't want to admit it to myself, let alone Anna, but she had me twisted around her finger by then. She was the sexiest, hottest, most incredible woman I had ever fucked. And something about the way she was so above my league, and the way that other men wanted her, made her even more appealing to me. It was a strange sensation, one I hadn't really felt before.
“Not just me,” Anna cooed, and I could see Reggie's head twisting back and forth from Anna to me, flabbergasted that the hottest woman in the bar was not only talking to me and ignoring him, but seemed to be flirting with me.
You and me both, Reggie, I thought.
“You didn't call,” she said.
Reggie was getting whiplash now, and Dave was openly staring at Anna.
She set her drink down on the table and leaned closer to me. “That...was a mistake. Because now, I am going to win all this free beer, and I'm not going to share it with you.”
My heart was still climbing up from the abysmal low it had fallen to when she said that was a mistake, because I had worried that she was going to dump me right here and now.
“I thought you would be busy,” I stammered. And it was really true.
Anna shook her head, a light smile on her lips. “Well, now I am. Winning.” Then she leaned over to me, and whispered in my ear. “Let's make it a personal wager, shall we?”
This was the kind of thing that Anna did that made me fucking crazy.
“Okay,” I agreed, because I would have agreed to anything she said.
But she smiled, and stood up. She picked up her drink and turned to leave. “Okay,” she agreed.
I watched her for a full few steps before I recovered. Dave was already expelling a low whistle from between his clenched teeth, and Reggie was turning to me in disbelief.
“Wait. Anna. What do I get?” I said to her.
She threw her head back and smiled, her wide, perfect smile. “Whatever you want. You won't win.”
“And if I lose?”
She tapped her teeth, turned, and disappeared among the bodies who were now out on the prowl.
“What in the fuck.” Reggie turned to me. “That. Is Anna?”
I was still watching her.
“That girl? That girl right there? Anna? The girl you are dating? That, is Anna?”
“That girl fucked you, and you didn't fucking call her?” Dave said slowly. “Man fuck you. Fuck. You. You are too fucking stupid to be my friend.”
Reggie hit me on the shoulder, because I was still staring after Anna.
“Psshht,” Dave said. “Brian has left the goddam building.”
Reggie hit me on the shoulder again. “Dude. Brian. Hey. What did she fucking say to you?”
I snapped out of my reverie. “We have to win this game, gents.”
They were both looking at me with expressions of disbelief still. And this was, and continues to be, one of the things I enjoy most about being miraculously married to Anna: guys looking at me and wondering what in the hell I had managed to do to get a woman that hot to even talk to me.
“When that girl,” Reggie said, “figures
out what a fucking loser you are, give her my number, okay?”
Dave shook his head.
“I mean it,” I said, pretending I wasn't enjoying this little salute to my manhood. “I have to win that game.”
“Blowjob?” Dave said.
“What?”
“Blowjob. Is that what she promised you?”
I shook my head. Better than that.
Anna was sitting on a barstool, her long legs almost dripping down the length of it. They were crossed, and I noticed the high heels she was wearing for the first time. She had an answer card in her hand, and was pulling it in lazy circles against the table with her forefinger. Her eyes locked on mine as I approached.
“Looks like you lost,” I said.
She smiled, and it was such a sexy smile, like she didn't mind having lost at all. Like she was hoping that whatever I came up with was positively filthy.
The thing about Anna was that she seemed to want to really be submissive, to get roughed around during sex. Not one thing about her subscribed to that fantasy in everyday life: if you told her to do anything in the middle of the day and outside of the bedroom she was likely to pour boiling water on you. Or at least cut you down with an arched look and a shake of her pretty hair.
“Looks like,” she slurred. She brought the card to her lips. “So. It looks like I owe you one.”
“Anything I want,” I said, pulling the barstool opposite her out from under the table.
A mischievous look glinted in her eyes. “Anything you want,” she repeated, punctuating the you with her full lips. She waved the card.
Okay, so here: don't judge me. I was, and to an extent I remain, way out of my league. I was an ordinary guy, with an ultra-hot woman paying attention to me, and so even though I had plenty – plenty – of dirty thoughts going through my head at the moment, I didn't want to overstep my bounds. I was still convinced that Anna might have suffered from a head injury, and would snap out of it any moment and realize she wanted nothing to do with me.
I looked around.
“Where are your girlfriends?” I said.
“Why? Do you need them for what you want me to do?”
I shook my head and, I'm afraid, almost blushed.
It may be, at the end of the day, that this was the right tack to take with Anna. After all, we ended up married. But I balked, and I reached out and took her hand. “All I want,” I said, and I was genuine in this desire, “is for you to come home with me tonight.”
Anna maintains, today, that she loved that. That she really had been up for almost anything, and that so far with our relationship she hadn't really decided if I would be a fling, or something serious. She says I melted her heart.
I remember it slightly differently: that a little, brief flicker of disappointment crossed her face, just before she smiled, and gave me a heart-melting look.
I mean, we did go home and have wild sex. Don't get me wrong.
Anna let her skirt rise up to the top part of her thigh in the car. We didn't talk, she just walked her fingers over my neck and looked beautiful whenever I turned to her and smiled.
But when we closed the door to my apartment, we smashed into each other. Anna reached into my pants and grasped my cock, her fingers clamping down on it hard as her other hand fumbled with my pants and pulled down my boxers.
I had been hard the entire car drive, so it felt good to be let free. I slid the straps of her teal dress away from her shoulders and down to her waist, so that I could take in a nice view of her perfect breasts. The effect of her light skin contrasting with her coffee-dark nipples was intensified in the dim light.
I pushed her toward my bedroom, and we stumbled and knocked things over in the heat of our passion. I pushed her onto the bed, disregarding the picture she had knocked from the wall. She was still clothed, but her breasts and legs were exposed. I began to move down her body with my mouth.
Anna's skin tasted sweet, and the color of her nipples and skin created the illusion of eating a fine piece of candy. I sucked her left nipple into my mouth, and her body rose up to meet me.
But she had no patience for foreplay: she rarely engaged in much of it, and that would be true throughout our relationship. Her hands reached for my cock and pulled it toward the place between her legs where she was ready and waiting: and had no underwear on.
The idea of Anna flouncing around in Beefy Thom's in that dress with no underwear to cover her neatly shaved snatch sent a shudder through me.
She pulled me into her, and I was encased by her sweet flesh. She grabbed the back of my neck and we slammed together, hard, for several minutes. It was all I could do to hold until I felt Anna tensing up, squeezing my cock with her pussy, and then tossing her head backward, hanging from my neck as her muscles spasmed with her first climax of the night.
She dropped onto the floor, releasing my neck, and I pumped myself into her.
Then we lay there, panting, as we always did. The sex was just that hot, for no other real reason than that I loved Anna, and I liked to believe she loved me. Even way back then.
“Did you want me to ask you to do something else?”
Anna was holding her hands up toward the ceiling and looking at them. It's a habit of hers.
“Like what?” she said, coyly.
She turned to me. She was smiling.
“Like...” I stopped myself, She was completely disarming, even after having sex. “I don't know, like...something sexy.”
She propped herself up on her elbow. She extended her arm to sweep over the disheveled sheets, the broken picture frame. “This wasn't sexy?” she demanded, but her tone was light-hearted.
“No, I mean...”
“Something with a zucchini,” she quipped. “No, I only do that on the tenth date. And only on the tenth date. Just once.”
I smiled. It was not entirely possible to determine if Anna was joking or not.
She twisted her head and slid down slightly on the pillow. She looked up at me, and blinked innocently. “Not zucchini?”
“No,” I laughed.
“Then what?”
I sucked in my breath.
“Oh, just tell me, sailor. I'm not shy.”
It was definitely true. She was not shy. On the first date we had had sex, she had walked through the house I shared with five other people completely naked, to get a glass of water. I had been relieved and disappointed at the same time that no one had seen her.
“I don't know, some kind of sexy dare.”
“A sexy dare,”she mused. “Like?...”
She was walking her fingers up my chest.
“I think I know what you're thinking of,” she declared suddenly.
Did she? Because I didn't, not exactly.
“Kiss a girl?”
“Maybe,” I said. “That does sound good.”
“But that's not it, is it?”
I squinted. “I...I don't know.”
“Hmm. Well, I can't help you if you don't know what you want and it isn't a tenth-date zucchini.”
She flopped back onto the bed.
A few moments passed, while I tried to think of a way to formulate what I wanted, and then Anna suggested it.
“Is what you want,” she asked coyly, but sincerely, “for me to flirt with some other guy?”
My eyes widened.
“Uh...no. No. God no.” Yes. “What would...why would you think that?”
She grinned and bit her lip. “Really? Really you don't want that?”
She turned again to look at me.
I was unable to speak. The truth was, I did want that, exactly that, but I didn't want to say it.
“It's okay if that's something you want. I think I get it. I had a boyfriend who was like that.”
My cock twitched.
“I didn't get at at first,” she continued, “But then I took this Cog-sci class and I asked the professor about -”
“You take Cog-sci in marketing?”
“Of course, dum
my, we're in it to manipulate your mind...anyway the prof said it was a really common fantasy.”
“Was this some kind of sexual psychology course?” I was playing the funny dumb guy, because for some reason, I didn't want to really admit to what Anna was already getting at: I had a common fantasy and I wanted to see her with another man.
Maybe, at the time, the fantasy wasn't so strong. Maybe I just wanted to see her flirting, teasing, or exciting another man. Perhaps the reason I didn't want to just delve into it had to do with the fact that it was a newly awakening fantasy in my own mind.
And the things it said about myself, since I'm inclined to over-think that sort of thing, were not things that I really wanted to hear. It said that I needed something from seeing other men with Anna, and although I didn't know what that could be, it lurked around in the back of my mind as a kind of stale smell I didn't want to get too close to or disturb. It had to do with validation, it had to do with darker animal desires, it had to do with control.
All things I didn't particularly feel like exploring at the time, especially if it meant putting Anna off our relationship. Because Anna was the most amazing woman I had ever met in my life. She was more than beautiful, she was that rare mix of hot and beautiful, and she was a little dirty-minded, and she was smart as hell, and she was funny. And for whatever reason, she liked me.
“Nope,” Anna said, and I had derailed myself so much I barely knew what she was talking about. “Just a regular psychology course.” She turned on her elbow again, and moved her hand down my chest. “But,” she whispered, and her voice took on a very sexual tone, “the professor really, really liked my question. He liked it so much he kept asking me more about it, like why I was asking, if I had a boyfriend who was into that kind of thing, and then what I thought about it...if I would do it...” her hands were moving down, down to just above my cock, which was already coming back to life even though we'd just had sex.
“I knew it!” she shouted triumphantly, when she found my hard cock and wrapped her hand around it. She leaned in close to me. “You like the idea. You're imagining the Cog-sci professor, staring right up my skirt, because I'm sitting in the front row...”
The Tenant: A Very Naughty Hotwife Novel Page 7
