by C. C. Morian
Richard rolled over to his side, his arm on her thigh. “You always got this—sound in your voice when you talked about him. And actually, when you didn’t. You told me less about him than anyone, but for some reason I thought it was because he meant more to you, not less.”
“He didn’t mean—.” She was going to say, “He didn’t mean anything,” but of course that wasn’t true. Instead she said, “He just isn’t important to me now, you are.” But though it was Richard’s hand on her leg, her mind was now filled with Marcus. “Besides,” she said, not really thinking about what she was leading up to, “he probably won’t be there anyway, he hates those things as much as you do.”
“Aha! So you have thought about him!” Richard’s voice was hard to read; she wasn’t sure if he was reproving.
Melissa pushed his hand away. “Stop it.” She wasn’t mad, but she hoped he wouldn’t ask any more questions about what she had been thinking. How on earth could she honestly answer that?
Luckily he didn’t go there, because she would have froze up. “Have you seen him since graduation?” Richard asked, his voice even, making it clear to her that he was not accusing her of anything.
She was relieved, she didn’t know why, she had nothing to hide, but what if Richard had asked her—what if he was going to ask her—exactly how she thought about Marcus? Would he even think to ask her if she fantasized about him? It would be so unlike Richard, and yet, so was his interest in her past love affairs. And his new infatuation with the idea of her with another man.
It was one thing to admit generally to having a fantasy. It was something totally different to share the specifics, especially if the fantasies were about a real person. That would be even harder than telling him about her other fantasies, the more outlandish ones. Or at least the ones Richard would certainly think of as outlandish.
“I haven’t seen Marcus since graduation. We exchanged a few emails soon after that.” She didn’t mention that she suspected Marcus had wanted to hook up. He hadn’t come right out and wrote that, he was too cool for that, but she knew what he was after. But that was years ago. He’d probably forgotten all about Melissa by now.
Richard didn’t say anything, and mostly to break the silence she added, “He did call me once, right after he heard we got engaged. To congratulate me.”
“Was that awkward?”
“Why should it have been? Our relationship was in the past.”
“Well, it hadn’t been that long, just a few years.” Richard paused. “Why didn’t you end up with him?”
Melissa tried to change the subject, she had to get the conversation off of Marcus, afraid of where it still might lead. It was hard just saying his name out loud in front of Richard. “Probably for the same reason you didn’t end up with any of your past girlfriends. It just wasn’t the right match.”
“Girlfriends? I didn’t have any girlfriends before you.” Richard’s voice was serious, but she knew that tone, his dry sense of humor, the one she had come to appreciate.
“Yeah, right. You had lots.”
“How would you know if you never ask about them?”
“I’m just not interested. Even if I wanted to talk about it, do you really want to hear about the details of my past sex life?” Melissa leaned up on her elbow, her eyes more accustomed to the dark, staring at him, more in challenge than interest. “A fantasy about me with some stranger is one thing. Do you want to hear me talk about how I fucked someone else?”
The silence grew, and Melissa felt she had gone too far. She had said fucked just to shock him. She was about to apologize, he was being a bit of a jerk, but maybe it was the only way he knew of trying to help.
He stunned her when he whispered, “Yes, I would.”
Melissa thought she had misheard. “What did you say?”
“Remember that time I asked you about whether you had ever had a one night stand? And you said something like, ‘Who hasn’t?’ And then you told me about a few of the times you had hooked up with guys in college.”
Melissa grimaced. “I never should have told you that. I’m not proud of some of the things I did. And not much happened. I was drunk, they were drunk, we mostly just passed out together.”
“I know. But I think that is what started it all, it’s what planted the seed in my mind about you with someone else. I’ve been trying so hard to figure it out. Just because it is a common male fantasy, why is it my fantasy? I think that maybe it is because that glimpse you gave me, about your life before me, seems to me to be so—unlike you. At least the you I know now. I just can’t imagine it, you meeting a guy at a bar, bringing him home, having sex that same night.”
“It’s not like they were strangers. Most were guys I knew around campus.” Melissa was suddenly close to crying. She’d experienced more mood swings in the past few weeks than she had in God knows how long. Shit, she hadn’t cried in years, and now she seemed on the verge of tears every few days. “Is that how you think of me? As some kind of college slut?”
Richard pulled her closer, his arm around her back, comforting. “No, no, nothing like that. It’s just the—incongruity of it all. I don’t know that Melissa.”
“Is that the kind of woman you wanted? Someone you would pick up in a bar?”
“Just the opposite. I married you, didn’t I? I told you, I never picked up anyone in my life. I never had a one night stand.”
“I still find that hard to believe.”
“It’s not like I didn’t think about it, or try. I just, I don’t know, I don’t have that kind of personality. I did sleep with a few women just a few times, but I had known them a long time, we were friends. Well, we might have been more than that, become something else, but we were in different cities.”
“You just never got drunk often enough. That’s how a lot of one nighters happen.”
“Maybe. I didn’t go to a big university like you did. And I was pretty focused on school work.”
“Which is why you have been so successful. College was one big party for me.”
“Maybe you were just bored, too smart for your school.”
Melissa thought about it, still perplexed. The conversation had shifted into slightly less dangerous territory, but her curiosity got the better of her. Carefully, trying to sound as casual as possible, she asked, “And that’s what got you onto this, what you think about? My drunken college escapades?”
“I do, sometimes,” he said.
“But I never gave you any details,” she protested. “I don’t like to talk about it, and I was just joking around, thinking you had similar experiences when I told you mine. I can’t even remember what I said exactly.”
Richard laughed. “I do. And what you didn’t tell me, I just make up the rest.”
What had she told him? It could not have been much. Making out in the bars, that couldn’t be a big deal. Stumbling home with a guy, maybe she had admitted that. Julie’s dare list, had she mentioned that? She hoped not.
Almost against her will, Melissa asked, “Like what? What do you make up?”
“Well—do you really want to hear this?” Richard pulled back so she could see his face, intent. He was focused on her, more than he had been in months.
“I’m not sure. I haven’t completely got my head wrapped around this yet.” She cringed at his immediate look of disappointment. “Okay. Let’s give it a try. What do you think about?”
He turned her away from him, spooning, his hand slipping around her leg. He kissed her gently on the back of her head, his mouth near her ear, whispering. “It usually starts with you in a bar. You’ve had a few drinks but aren’t drunk. You start kissing some guy in the corner, just a peck at first, maybe on a dare.”
Melissa froze. Kissing a guy on a dare. She had done that. A few times too. That stupid dare list. Did Richard know?
Richard went on. “The kisses get a little hotter. There is music on, the two of you start to dance, close, not on the dance floor, but in the corner of the room. He
’s a big guy, well built. As you dance he slides his hand down your back, onto your ass. Like this.” Richard ran his hand down, cupping her ass cheek. “You laugh, and tell him not to get any ideas, but you don’t seem to mean it. He kisses you on the neck, and this time in the middle of the kiss he slips his hand farther down. You have this short loose dress on, he grabs it and starts to bunch it up, now his hand is back on your ass, but under your dress. You push his hand away, but you don’t break away from him. He tries it again, and this time he has his hand there much longer before you push it away.”
My god, Melissa thought. Did someone tell Richard this? That had happened to her too. More than once.
“Then he kisses you, hard.” Richard pressed his mouth over her, more forceful than she ever remembered, his tongue driving into her mouth. She responded instinctively, getting excited despite herself, not wanting to be aroused by this story but feeling his heat.
Richard freed his lips just enough to say, “And when you kiss him back just like that he knows you want him, and he lifts your dress even higher as he runs his hand over your body, and you know that anyone looking can see you, but you don’t care, you want him.” Richard kissed her again, his hand on her ass just as she imagined he saw it, lingering, then squeezing her again.
“So that’s how I fill in the details,” he said. “Now it’s your turn. Why don’t you tell me about one of your real experiences, right now? About the first time you got picked up in a bar?”
Infected by the mood so much she didn’t stop to think of where it might lead, Melissa said, “Who said it was me getting picked up? Maybe I was the one doing it.”
“That’s even better,” Richard said, his hands tightening on her.
Melissa immediately thought of something, not exactly sure why this memory came to her just then. She had met a guy at a party, not in a bar, but with a bunch of friends, friends of friends. The kind of party with a lot of drinking, some hooking up going on, not a place you brought a date. She kept bumping into him, just by accident, the crowd pretty big. He was a little boisterous, assured, really cute, and he knew it. After a few drinks Melissa finally had the nerve to sidle up to him. He ignored her. Worse, he wasn’t talking to someone else, he just pretended Melissa wasn’t there. She said something to try to get him interested, she forgot what, but she had had a few, and who cared? He totally blew her off, and she remembered thinking what an asshole, less hurt than she would have been if totally sober.
Then she had seen him again, months later, this time by the bar at a nice restaurant, not a dive. He was as cute as before, but now she was looking at him differently, remembering how he had treated her. She wasn’t drinking, not yet, she had just arrived with her girlfriends, all dressed in their ‘buy me a drink’ outfits, their usual weekend fun, looking good, feeling good, knowing they would have their way with a few men tonight, at least get a lot of free drinks, maybe a little action if they wanted it. Melissa didn’t approach him this time, she still didn’t know his name, she just made sure he could see her, see how a few guys were buying her drinks. She caught him looking at her, a long look, she could tell he didn’t remember, maybe she was suddenly more attractive because of the attention she was drawing from other guys. Melissa had this sudden urge to teach him a lesson, let him buy her a few drinks, flirt, give him a little something to think about, then going back to his place, he was cute after all. She’d sit on his face, let him get her off, then she’d leave him high and dry.
She hadn’t done it. But she could have, back then. Where was that Melissa now?
She wasn’t sure that was the story Richard wanted to hear.
“I told you, I can’t remember a lot of that,” she said instead.
“How about the first time you did pick someone up?” he asked.
Melissa did remember that, the first time she had chosen a guy instead of feeling she was being chosen, the power it gave her, a change in her life, just knowing she could do it. It was an awakening, a totally different kind of sexual freedom.
“I can’t talk about it,” she said. “I’m just not comfortable.”
Melissa thought Richard would be upset, but instead he said, “Shall I fill in some details?”
This was getting to her more than she expected. She just wasn’t sure yet if it was good. But it was obviously doing something for Richard. It wouldn’t hurt to go on a little more. “Yes,” she said. “If it excites you.”
“It does.” Richard reached for her hand and pulled it toward him, guiding it down between his legs. He was rock hard already. She wrapped her fingers around him, stroking him, feeling him tremble.
“That’s what I think of next,” he said. “Your hands, on him, stroking him. You are out of the bar, on a bed, you are kissing, your hand is on him.”
Okay. This she could deal with. She twisted on the bed, one hand on him. “Like this?” she whispered, and her mouth was on his lips, open, her tongue reaching. He groaned, pulling her head down. She continued to stroke him, getting more excited herself, a reflection of his reaction.
Now she was totally caught up in it, thinking more of Richard than the fantasy he was having. “Then what happens?”
Richard reached for her shoulders, giving her just a bit of pressure, pushing her down. “Then you—.”
Melissa slid down his chest, kissing him over and over along the way. He spread his legs and she got on her knees between them, and hovered over his cock.
“I what?”
“You take him in your mouth.” His voice, coming from the dark.
“Just like that?”
“Yes, you—”
Melissa didn’t wait, but opened her mouth wide, taking as much of him as she could, her hands moving up and down his shaft, wanting it, his excitement contagious. She was wired, listening to him share this, responding to him. She stroked him and he groaned again, her mouth never breaking free. She reached between her legs with her other hand and rubbed herself until she swelled.
She lifted her head ever so slightly, her hand tight around him. “And then what happens?”
Richard put his hand on her head, pushing her down, so unlike him, almost forceful. “And then he comes in your mouth. . .”
Melissa stroked him faster, hungry for it now, rubbing her clit in time with the strokes, her tongue working on him in her mouth, and suddenly she had a vision, it wasn’t him she was sucking but someone else, and Richard was watching, he was stroking himself, breathing hard as she sucked another guy’s cock, and she felt so good, knowing she was turning him on, she was turning both of them on. . .
“I’m going to come,” he groaned, and for just a second she wasn’t sure if it was Richard or the nameless guy of his fantasy, of her fantasy, and then he said, “Swallow it!” Words Richard had never uttered to her, and as she tasted the first spurt she started to quiver, coming hard as he shot into her mouth, and she did what he told her to, she swallowed it, all of it, moaning with him, her body jerking, her orgasm matching his spurts, and continuing on well after he was finished.
She collapsed, his cock still in her mouth, her legs shaking, wondering what had just changed.
Chapter 10
The next morning Melissa waited until she heard Richard drive away, and then she dove for the phone next to the bed. She hesitated when she saw the time, it was barely 8 o’clock, she couldn’t call now. She didn’t think Julie would be sleeping, but her husband was probably still at home.
Melissa jumped in the shower, got dressed, and waited until she had a cup of coffee before picking up the phone again. She’d be a little late for her morning meeting, but this couldn’t wait.
She caught Julie in her car, music blasting in the background. “Can you talk?” Melissa asked.
“It’s fine. I’m in traffic, and you’re on speaker.” The music dropped away.
“Listen. I have to ask you something.” The question that had nagged Melissa half the night now suddenly seemed less important, especially being broadcast over a
car speakerphone. “Uh, are you alone?”
Julie laughed. “No, I’ve got a football team in here with me, we are going to an orgy. At 8:30 in the morning. Of course I’m alone.”
“Funny. Are you always thinking about sex?”
“Isn’t everyone?” There was the eerie silence on the line, the unmistakable blankness of a cell connection. “I’m sorry,” said Julie. “I didn’t mean—.”
Melissa knew she didn’t. Julie wouldn’t throw that up to her, teasing her about Richard not wanting sex. “Actually, that’s what I’m calling you about.”
“More of the same? I mean, more of nothing happening?”
“Just the opposite. Something changed.”
“What?”
“It’s complicated. I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. But I had a question. Remember when we were in college, we had that crazy list? You know, the one with the names on it, guys we thought were cute?”
“Sure. We talked about it at lunch, remember? We’d put our initials and a check next to their names if we kissed them, and a star if anything went past that, and a lot of stars if—”
Melissa cut her off. “Right. That list.”
Julie laughed. “After a while we’d put each other’s initials on some guys names, adding a few specific things to do, daring each other. Ah, the joys of youth. Shit!” Melissa heard a horn. “Sorry,” said Julie. “Some jerk cut me off. Youth is gone, but the assholes are still here. Why are you asking me about the list?”
“It was something Richard said.”
“Richard? You told him about the list? Sorry, I didn’t think that was something he would understand.”
“I didn’t tell him. But he said something that made me think he knew about it. I was wondering if you had told him.”
“Me? Why would I do that? Can you even imagine me having that conversation with Richard?”
Melissa shook her head. “I guess not.”
“He specifically mentioned the list? How would that have come up?”
