by Cara McKenna
He collapsed beside her on his back, chest working like a bellows, eyes clenched tight, as if he were in pain.
She gave him a minute to catch his breath, stroking his arm lightly. He opened his eyes to gaze into hers, and a delirious smile overtook his lips. A chuckle escaped him as he buried his face against her throat.
When he pulled away he asked, “That scratch your itch?”
She nodded coyly.
He reached down, watching as his fingers rubbed his cooling come into her skin. Idly she wondered, Has Mike come yet? Has he even touched himself? As much as she liked and appreciated Bern and his role in all this, she wanted him gone soon, so she could take the temperature of her marriage, check it for scrapes, and bandage any parts that may have been banged up during tonight’s charade.
“He’ll be home soon,” she said.
Bern nodded. After a final lazy moment he took the hint, leaving the bed to find his underwear. Sam followed suit, pulling on her panties and clasping her bra. She got her dress back on, thinking a stray neighbor didn’t need to see her saying good night to Bern in her underthings. Her hair was probably condemning enough. She combed it with her fingers as he buckled his belt and checked his pockets for his wallet or keys or phone.
“I’ll walk you out.” She waved her hand for him to precede her into the hall and downstairs.
Bern swung by the half bath, and then they loitered at the front door. Sam’s inclination was to kiss him good night, but she wasn’t completely confident in the gesture, so she rubbed his arm through his sleeve instead.
“Thanks so much for coming by,” she said, beaming a grateful, humble smile at him.
“Thanks for inviting me. Really.” He swept his fingers through her hair once, then seemed to think better of the familiarity, what with their audience now out of the loop. “If you guys want to keep going with everything, just know I’m down for it.”
“I know how to reach you.”
He nodded, then straightened, distancing himself from her as he flipped the dead bolt open. “Thanks again.”
“You too. Drive safe.”
He offered a wave, as good a parting message as Sam could have come up with herself. She returned it, smiling until she’d closed the door on his back. As she locked up, her heart tightened like a knot, hope weighted with fear.
Let him have loved it, she prayed as she started up the steps.
Please, God, let him have loved it.
CHAPTER NINE
S
am flipped off the lights and headed back upstairs. Mike’s name begged to burst from her lips, but she didn’t know for sure if they’d still be role-playing, if she was allowed to acknowledge that he’d been watching this entire time…
Her pulse was everywhere as she entered the bedroom – in her throat, pounding in her chest, and still thrumming between her legs, from Bern. Then as her eyes met Mike’s, her heart froze all together. He was leaning against the doorway of the bathroom, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and an intense, focused expression she couldn’t begin to read.
Say something. Please.
He didn’t. She didn’t dare flash a smile or say a word, just stood inside the door, hands clasped before her. After a long pause, he approached. He stopped in front of her, face still inscrutable, his gaze scanning her up and down.
“I wish you’d say something,” she murmured, wrecking any illusion he might be enjoying. “I need to know how you’re feeling.”
Still, he didn’t. He said nothing. Instead his hands rose, fingers tangling in her hair, and when he kissed her he felt a foot taller than the man who’d just left, his mouth driving every memory of Bern’s body and contact straight out of her head.
If she’d expected anything from her first kiss with Mike in the wake of the night’s events, it would have been neediness. Uncertainty. But there was pure, fierce possession in the stroke of his tongue and the press of his lips. She held his shoulders and welcomed it. Surrendered to it.
He ended that muscle-melting kiss after a thorough minute. Surprise had tamped down everything she’d felt, messing around with Bern, but as Mike stepped away, all the hot, antsy longing flooded back in, a fever consuming her body all over again.
He took her hand, rubbing her knuckles and glancing her wedding band. In a calm, neutral tone, he said, “Thank you.”
She couldn’t suppress a smile of relief. “You’re welcome. Did it feel how you wanted it to?”
He led her to the bed and they lay on their sides, facing each other with their knees locked. He stroked her hair and spoke to her collarbone or throat. “It felt… It felt like everything I feel when we’re just talking about it, but times a hundred.”
“But it wasn’t too much?”
“It wasn’t easy. The jealousy always hurts. And it hurt deeper than I ever would have guessed, this time.”
She frowned, a pang twisting in her chest.
“But the way the jealousy gets me hot, it did that just as deep. Jesus…” He laughed and shook his head, clearly at a loss for how to articulate it.
“Just tell me you don’t regret it.”
He shook his head again, then leaned close to kiss her, softly this time. Sweet and brief. “I don’t regret a second of it. Do you?”
“Only if you had. So no.”
With reassurances tendered, Sam relaxed. She didn’t have the emotional stamina to launch back into role-playing, and she sensed Mike didn’t, either. She wanted him to ease the ache Bern had left in her body, but only on an authentic Sam-to-Mike level – no games.
“So what was the hottest thing about it?” she asked, tracing the seam where his arm lay against his ribs.
“The stuff you guys said. And just seeing another man touching you. All the weird stuff that gets me off. Watching you enjoying another guy, more than me. Or pretending you do.”
“So we did a good job?”
Another laugh, candid with over-the-top disbelief. “Oh, you did a great job. And I’ll never tell him to his face, but he’s fucking good at this. I felt like we ought to be paying him or something.”
“Yeah, I was pretty impressed, myself.”
Mike smiled slyly. “What else about him impressed you?” He stroked the side of her breast, bringing a tight, tingling heat to her skin. He wanted a little taste of their game, but luckily nothing that demanded she pretend.
“I think he’s really attractive,” she said.
“He a good kisser?”
“Yeah. Different than you, but nice. It was strange, being with someone new after five years.” God forbid if Mike ever wanted a similar chance – she’d be loath to grant him one, hypocrisy be damned. “He doesn’t know me anywhere near as well as you do, obviously, but it was kind of sexy that he didn’t. And that I didn’t know what he likes.”
Mike scooted lower on the bed and brought his mouth to her cleavage, his words steaming her skin between glancing kisses. “What about when he went down on you?”
“Way different, but it felt really good. Can I be honest with you?”
“Of course.”
“I faked it.”
His lazy kisses paused for a few thoughtful seconds. “Did you?”
“Yeah. It felt great, but he doesn’t know my body the way you do, and it didn’t seem like the scenario called for me to be giving him pointers, you know? I thought it’d be hotter to pretend he was utterly blowing my mind. I thought your fantasy would have him be just… perfect.”
“So he didn’t get you off?”
“No. But it was really hot. I wasn’t faking enjoying it.”
He’d gone quiet and still, and she stroked his hair, waiting as he examined his thoughts. She knew him well, and perhaps three times a week she watched this process – watched his expression go blank while he considered a choice that needed making or a piece of news that demanded digestion, turned a development around in his mind and decided how he felt about it.
After a minute’s silence, her curiosity elbowed her p
atience aside. “Is that disappointing, or a relief, or…?”
“I guess relief is the right sort of word. Or, I dunno… pride. I like that, knowing he can’t actually please you the way I can. Not right out of the gate.”
“Of course he can’t. You’ve been perfecting that art for years.”
“As long as it was still hot for you.”
“Incredibly hot. And in no small part because I felt you watching.” She traced his ear, then his jaw. “I was dying to know if you were touching yourself or not.”
“Not really. I had my hand clamped over my dick most of the time, and I really wanted to, but I was afraid I’d come after three strokes and then the watching wouldn’t feel good anymore.”
She smiled to herself and raked his scalp with her nails. “So you’ve really been suffering this whole time.”
“So bad it hurt. Like, fucking physically hurt.”
She slid her hand between them to palm him through his jeans, finding him stiff, making him stiffer with a couple of soft squeezes. Her own sex roused in response, pleasure gathering in her body like an angry fist. She was right back where Bern had gotten her, and here with her was the man who knew how to bring her home as no other ever had. “Did you want to watch him fuck me?”
“Yeah.” He was distracted, voice breathy. “But I’m glad you didn’t. Not tonight. But yeah, I wanted to see it.”
“Did you like watching me go down on him?”
He shifted and swallowed, exhaled heavily against her neck. “Yeah. That was as hot as the talking.”
“He was as big as we’d hoped.”
“I know. I liked watching you touch him. And suck him. Did you want him? Want him to fuck you?” He was speaking more quickly now, his breath growing short.
“I did, but not yet, like you said. But I loved his voice when I was turning him on. I think that was the hottest part for me.”
It was a relief to be speaking frankly about the experience, to be able to talk dirty about it with complete honesty, no cruel part to play. It told her maybe this kink really was a gift she could give to Mike, without it feeling like a burden to bestow. Steadily, she was coming to see that there was more in this for her than the simple granting of his darkest wishes.
She kissed his chin, then whispered, “I loved making him moan and knowing you were watching.” And it’d be a thousand times sexier the next time, knowing for sure Mike was enjoying himself. The next time…
“I kind of hope I get to fuck him,” she admitted, a sheepish smile probably audible in her voice.
“I kind of hope the same thing.”
“So does he. Or so he said when I walked him out.” She slid Mike’s zipper down and freed his button, stroking his erection through his underwear until he was panting. “You think you’ll be in the same room next time?”
“I think maybe we could pretend I walked in on you guys. Maybe he could be a cocky dick about it, and you could make me watch, like he was going to show me how you needed to get fucked.”
Her body jolted at the notion, Mike’s kink sinking another barb into her sexuality, reminding her it was steadily becoming her kink, too.
“He’d like that. He wants to be watched.”
“Wants to be watched while he fucks another man’s wife.”
“Lucky us.”
Mike laughed at that. “True. How about you and me, right now? You up for it?”
Sam’s turn to laugh. “I thought you’d never ask. I’m dying over here.”
He left the bed to strip naked and Sam slipped out of her dress and underwear once more. She felt another hot jolt, knowing Mike was about to find her soaking wet, and that this time it really was from thoughts of another man, just as he loved to pretend it was.
He sank inside her from above with an easy, deep push, both his body and voice shuddering from the contact.
“He did all that,” she said.
“I know. And with his mouth.”
True. She was slick with her own desire, and with Bern’s spit. Mike had never given her reason to think he wanted direct contact with the man they might find to fill the role of their bull, but he did seem to fixate on all that damning evidence.
“If he and I fuck, do you think you’d want to do what we talked about? Using a female condom so he can, you know… leave his mark in me.”
“In theory, yeah.”
She’d read plenty about the rituals cuckolding practitioners favored during the reclaiming process. Once the humiliation was done, the husband would be overcome by competitive urges and want to cleanse his woman of the other man, replace the intruder’s come with his own. Even clean it away with his mouth, in some cases. She didn’t know what Mike might want to do, but none of the popular options turned her off. And even the things she didn’t think Mike or Bern were up for – the ultimate humiliation of the defeated, outmanned male going down on his rival, tasting his wife on another man’s cock or being made to swallow his come – actually turned her crank a little.
But that stuff was the big leagues. Let them get some practice playing this game as amateurs before they tried going pro.
Still, she imagined those things as Mike took her. She studied his mouth and theorized about selfish things, about watching him service another man. About him being made to lap another man’s trespass from between her legs.
Not so selfish, considering what I’m doing for him.
Just as Mike’s jealousy warped under the heat of his arousal, the taboo, too-far aspects warped for Sam, becoming her most potent triggers. After all, Mike was never more worked up than when he was fantasizing about being demeaned by a competitor. Maybe one day she’d watch him slide his lips down a man’s cock, see another’s release glistening on those lips. The idea made her pussy clench and heat, a change not lost on Mike.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Just about all the stuff that might happen, if we took things further. When we take things further.”
“Tell me.” He leaned back so he could tease her clit, also giving her a gorgeous view of his body working.
She wouldn’t tell him exactly what she’d been imagining. Baby steps were always the best practice. “Just about what you might do, after he was done. To reassert yourself.”
“There’s stuff I want to do, but I think I might have to get drunk the first time.”
“Like going down on me, after?”
“Yeah. Exactly. I want it, in my head, but it might take a couple of shots of bourbon to actually get my brain to shut up long enough for me to actually do it.”
“That’s what alcohol’s for.”
“That wouldn’t be too nasty for you?”
She shook her head. “No, I think it’d be sexy.”
His thrusts sped at her proclamation. For minutes on end they simply fucked, Mike’s taunting fingers teasing her in time with his driving hips. Eventually he broke their silence.
“Did you…”
“Did I what?”
“Did you clean yourself up, where he… you know.”
“No.” Bern was still there, basted into her skin. Mike’s territory.
He said nothing at first, just took her with a slowing, pensive intensity. Surely pondering how his thighs were pressed to the spot where another man had soiled her.
She stroked his short, soft hair, dying of curiosity. “What are you thinking?”
He grunted a wordless sound, looking overwhelmed.
“You can tell me anything.”
“I was wondering… what he’d taste like.”
So exactly the answer she’d been hoping for. “He’d probably taste like another man, violating your wife.”
He muttered a “Yeah,” body slowing ever more with distraction.
“You can find out, if you want. I wouldn’t be grossed out.”
“No?”
“No. I’d like it if you would, actually.”
He didn’t accept the invitation right away. For another minute he made steady, p
ensive love to her, both of them surely tangled up in the idea that had been broached. Eventually he slid from her without a word, moving not down the mattress, but to the floor, where he knelt facing the bed.
“Come here,” he said softly.
She scooted to dangle her legs over the edge, and for a long moment he stroked her calves and thighs, unfocused gaze seeming to hover at the spot where Bern had branded her. She could sense him needing a nudge of permission, so she put her hand to his ear, stroking, coaxing, inviting. Still he didn’t take the leap, so she brought them back to the fantasy.
