Crosstown Crush

by Cara McKenna

  “You have no idea how much that scares me.”

  “If he can accept that he and I can only be together within the bounds of the three-ways, why can’t this go on?”

  Mike didn’t answer, paralyzed, too afraid to entertain logic.

  “Why does the fact that I have feelings for him have to equal failure, Mike? Why does that have to be a bad thing? It’s been so much hotter for me since those feelings developed, so much deeper. I went into this willing to do those things as a gift to you, but now I’ve found things in it that I want for myself, too. Because I value him, and what he’s brought into our sex life, and because I feel valued in return.”

  Of course, when she put it like that, he felt like an ass.

  “My body and my heart are a package deal,” she said softly. “I don’t want a man touching just one or the other. And I think if we’d tried those things with some guy I felt apathetic toward, we’d have found that out the hard way, and maybe turned me off the idea permanently. But instead we kind of hit the jackpot, Mike. Can you see that? Just a little?”

  He kept his gaze on their hands, no words coming, just echoing uncertainty. Everything she said made perfect sense, but logic wasn’t any comfort to his mangled ego.

  “We could change the rules,” Sam said at length. “There’s no reason this needs to end, not for good. We can take a break, get some perspective, figure out what it might take so everyone’s getting their needs met and everything feels balanced again, but then… Jesus, Mike. It seems wrong to throw this all away, after everything we’ve done, the three of us. I know how hot it’s gotten you since it started. And it’s done the same for me, and for him. What are the chances we’d meet someone out of the gate that we clicked with the way we did with him?”

  “I know that, but —”

  “All three of us have found a place in this arrangement – something about it that sets us on fire. And I’ve never known sex could do this to me.”

  The sting must have shown on his face; she hurried on. “Not just because of him – because of both of you, or just the taboo of it. I didn’t know I could feel that way, like sex has gone from two dimensions to three. It’s not something either of you could do on your own. It’s not something he has that you don’t. And I can only be honest and say I don’t think I want to give that up forever.”

  Fucking Pandora’s box, then, was it?

  “Can I give it up for now to prove to you that you come first?” she asked. “Absolutely. Eagerly. But eventually, I think I’d want to get back there. I’ll want to feel that fire again someday, when we’re ready. Just like you should fight to keep what lights you on fire in your life. We can fix this, Mike. I’m sure of it.”

  He let her hands go to rub his face. “All I’m sure of is that I’m scared to fucking death.”

  “I’m just not willing to believe that we’ve wrecked this – not with one night of too-emotional sex, and not with one punch.”

  “He cares about you. More than I’m comfortable with.”

  “And he’s also a thirty-six-year-old man. He can control his expectations and his emotions, if the payoff is worth it to him – if what the three of us can be for each other is worth it to him, and I believe it is. We need a little space and some time off, and some firm rules, if we all decide this is worth working on.” She rubbed his forearm. “And, Mike, I really think it is.”

  He stared at her, long and hard, and took a deep breath. “I don’t know yet. I just don’t. Can you really promise that you won’t… fall in love with this guy?”

  She frowned, said nothing for a long breath, then broke his heart. “No, I can’t promise that.”

  He buried his face in his hands, feeling he had his answer, right there. “I know it makes me a big fucking coward, and a hypocrite, yeah, but I can’t deal with that. Pretending you want him more than me – even imagining maybe you do, for real… That, I can handle. That gets me hot – I’ll admit it. But love…? I can’t risk that much. I can’t share that much, Samira.”

  She spoke calmly, plainly. “I can’t promise I won’t fall in love with him. But I can promise he’ll never take your place. I’m never going to leave you for him. We’ve built a life together. We’ve been testing and strengthening what we’ve got for years. Whatever Bern and I are, it’s new. In some alternate world, it might last a month or forever – we’ll never know, though, because this is reality. You and me. We’re the constant in all this. I think maybe I trust that more than you do.”

  “After watching that tape… Yeah, you probably do.”

  She winced, and he knew it had been a low blow.

  “I can’t ask this of you now,” she said. “But in time… unless it’ll tear you apart, in time I want to try it again. I want to crawl up inside your kink and take it as deep as it goes – with him. Let me be with a man I feel for. Not more than you. Different from how I feel for you. Trust that it’ll always come back to you and me. Let’s try, and I’ll prove to you it’ll always come back to you and me.”

  He turned that around in his mind, feeling blindsided by it all. Shocked by her insistence, when this morning she’d been so mired in remorse. Remorse, or fear? Fear that she’d hurt him – he knew that to be true – but perhaps also fear of losing what they’d found with Bern.

  “You really care about this,” he said.

  She nodded. “I do. I think I want it as badly as you want the cuckolding.”

  Something she’d said earlier nagged at him…

  “I never fought for my kink,” he said. “Not like this.” What he had fought for, though, was to keep Sam, back when his jealousy and dishonesty had nearly driven her away. He was struck now by the tone of her voice, its strains of both neediness and insistence. So like how he’d sounded himself, begging for a second chance, a chance to explain. A chance to prove he could control his emotions and articulate his wants.

  We’ve been here before, haven’t we?

  “There’s so much in this for you, for both of us,” she said. “Where we are now, it grew out of your desires. I found my own along the way. Just tell me you’ll think about it, and we can all maybe still have exactly what we want. Just with rules, so we don’t end up back here again.”

  He breathed slowly, feeling lost and scared and exhausted and utterly uncertain. What if back when he’d fucked up, acted like an ass, and almost wrecked their relationship… What if she’d denied him a chance to fix things? To prove himself rational, just as she was pleading for a chance to prove herself trustworthy. What if she’d refused and simply ended it all, shot what they had between the eyes and walked away? He’d be years into missing her, years into wondering what might have happened, if he’d had a chance to fight to keep them together. Years into treading water, trying not to drown in all that regret.

  A long breath hissed through her nose. “Say you’ll think about it, Mike. Please.”

  He held her gaze and took her hands. “I’ll think about it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Six months later

  S

  amira looked up at the sound of two men groaning in unison. It wasn’t a sordid noise – not yet, anyhow – but enough to pause her hands in the midst of spooning guacamole into a wooden bowl.

  “What?” she called over the breakfast bar.

  Mike was on the couch, Bern kitty-corner on the easy chair, both their sets of eyes on the TV.

  “They just scored,” Mike said, reaching for his beer.

  “Field goal,” Bern added. “Not that it’ll save them.” He was wearing a yellow-and-black-striped beanie with a pom-pom on its peak, and Mike was in his supposedly lucky Steelers sweatshirt. It appeared to be working today.

  “I’d sympathize, but I don’t have a dog in this fight.” Sam carried the snacks over and took her seat beside Mike, swinging her thighs over his.

  “I’ll convert you yet,” he told her.

  “No chance. I’ll die a Giants girl.”

  Mike hooked a thumb toward Bern
. “He switched, like a respectable citizen.”

  “I rooted for the Titans when I was a kid,” Bern said, “but Kentucky doesn’t have any real allegiances. It was nice to move to a city where people get rabid over this shit. Though on the flip side, around here it’s like, convert or get lynched.”

  “Sam’s not even from New York,” Mike said. “I don’t get where the loyalty comes from.”

  “Newark is, like, three feet from New York. Plus I lived there for twelve years.”

  “You marry me, you marry the Steelers.”

  “I took your name,” Sam said, rooting through the chips for a folded-over one. “But I’ll never take your colors. Everyone looks terrible in yellow, anyway.”

  “Blasphemy.”

  “Have we ever been in the Super Bowl against each other?” she asked Mike. She might own a Giants jersey, but she couldn’t claim any sort of superfan status.

  “Never. And we’ll need marriage counseling if it ever happens.”

  Bern laughed and tipped his beer bottle to his lips.

  Sam smiled, zoning out as the game came back from a commercial. She wanted to pinch herself, to be sure this was all real once more.

  How had they gotten here, to this moment, on this lazy Sunday afternoon? Outside it was dark and snowy, with a bitter, biting wind, but here, by the glow of their little Christmas tree and the flashing television, all was so cozy, almost innocent.

  It hadn’t been easy, that much she knew.

  Sam had pled her case with Mike, firmly, and repeatedly, and he’d listened, if not immediately agreed. She didn’t speak to Bern for six weeks after the Incident – as she’d come to name that out-of-bounds night, and Mike’s thuggish rebuttal – while she and Mike worked toward healing the scrapes she’d put on his trust. His anger and hurt had faded with time, thanks in no small part to Sam’s willing abstinence from contact with Bern, and the fact that the man had respected their marriage and not reached out to her, either. Then in early September, Mike had come around. What had he said to her, late that night, after a long day of contemplative quiet and a near-silent, slow, intense bout of sex?

  I think maybe I’m ready to try it again. If he’s still interested, and if we can get the rules exactly right.

  For all her optimism, Sam had been surprised.

  Bern had been interested. Cautious but intrigued, and still single.

  The cardinal rule was that all three of them needed to be present for any encounters that might happen, going forward. Sam had no issue with that, since the thing that excited her most was having both of their bodies there with her.

  At first, the bulk of the control had been ceded to Mike – the tone of their encounters had been his to dictate, since he’d been the one violated by Sam and Bern’s missteps. The reprised weekly meet-ups had felt much like their initial dates, to start – cuckolding was the driving dynamic once more, though Mike didn’t pretend to catch them, the way he had at the start. He mostly watched, sometimes masturbated, always reclaimed Sam after Bern left, but didn’t join in at first. He was stronger in his role than he had been before – less humiliated and helpless, and far more openly excited by watching them. Bossier, too – probably a touch eager to keep his alpha status clear this time around. Sam loved the change, loved this gruff new version of Mike more than the pathetic one he used to favor. He seemed like the conductor of his desires now, not merely a passive audience.

  Sam and Bern kept their chemistry overtly physical these days, and their text and e-mail exchanges relegated to planning purposes only. For now. She imagined that might change, with time and trust, but the loss of those fun, dirty messages was a tiny price to pay to have him back in their lives, and their bed. Her crush was still there, but that summer’s scare had been so painful, she felt no temptation to lose track of her heart that way again.

  In time, as the cuckolding games went on and Mike’s confidence grew, he’d proposed a change. They ought to switch who called the shots from week to week, he’d suggested, and Sam and Bern agreed.

  Bern’s nights to direct looked much like Mike’s, though he favored the presence of the camera or a mirror, naturally. He liked sometimes for Sam and Mike to watch him masturbate while they had sex with each other. He liked to watch them, she thought. He seemed to find it fascinating in some way, if not as electric as being the show, himself. Ever eager to please, he often got caught up in Sam’s fantasies by the end of his evenings and made sure she got to feel the both of them against her in the finale.

  Of the three of them, it was Sam who pushed the most boundaries this time around.

  Back in the spring, when this had all begun, she’d always imagined the arrangement was a gift she’d be giving her husband – orchestrated with enthusiasm, but ultimately for him. She’d never have guessed she’d find appetites of her own inside it. Never have imagined she’d fight to keep this in their lives, or guessed she’d feel the power she did, holding sway over them.

  She eyed Mike, who was transfixed by the game. She eyed Bern, also distracted, though in time his gaze swiveled to catch hers. She smiled, and he returned it. A glance at the screen told her it was nearly the end of the fourth quarter, and that the Steelers were up by thirteen, their victory a foregone conclusion. It was time to shift this easy, platonic afternoon into a racier gear.

  She curled her finger at Bern, and his eyebrows rose, smile turning mischievous. Sam patted the couch cushion beside her and he got up, skirting the coffee table to take a seat. She loved the way his weight dipped her cushion, and how she could already feel his heat. Feel the heat of both their strong bodies, and her own temperature rising.

  Mike had lost interest in the game, studying her now.

  “It’s your night,” Bern murmured, scooting closer. Sam’s back was half to him, her legs still draped over Mike’s lap, and he ran a slow palm down her arm, raising goose bumps even through her thick sweater. “What are you in the mood for?”

  She craned her neck to regard his face and eased the hat from his hair. She knew every strand, it seemed, black and silver alike. “What a very good question.” And one she had answers for. She wanted lots of things tonight. Wanted their two laboring bodies, first and foremost, but more. Since that punch had been thrown, since this affair had been destroyed and then resurrected, Mike and Bern had reeled back their physical contact. So much of it had been tied into Mike’s desire for humiliation, and that had taken a backseat in their reimagined games, as his role had become more assertive, dominant, even.

  “There’s something I’ve been missing,” Sam said, looking at each of them in turn. “And maybe its time has passed, or maybe it’d have to be worked up to gradually, but I miss when you two… touch each other. In any way, really,” she added quickly. “It doesn’t have to be hard-core, like it was, but just a little something.” She’d not have come out and asked for this back in the spring and summer, even though she herself had been happy to exit her comfort zone for both their desires – her shyness about being filmed, for Bern, and the entire experiment to begin with, for her husband. But she had distinct wants of her own now, and the balls to name them.

  “Like what?” Mike asked, his voice soft and receptive.

  “Just about anything.” She gave the scene some thought. She wanted lots of things she didn’t think they’d be ready for – to watch them kiss, and more – but less intense stuff as well. “If one of you is taking me, and the other’s watching, or lying on my other side, it’d be hot to see your hands on the other guy’s hip or back, sort of urging him, maybe. Just your hands on each other, in any way you’re okay with. If you’re okay with it,” she added, glancing at each of them.

  “It’s your night,” Bern said again with a smile. “Whatever gets you hot.”

  Mike was slower to reply, but she could tell from his tone that he knew his boundaries and was game to push them. “I’d be okay with it. With anything we’ve done in the past, but not much further.”

  Her heart leapt, and in th
e background the football fans roared their approval – surely of a game-clinching play, but to Sam it felt like she’d just triumphed, herself. How many times had she replayed those memories of Mike taking Bern in his mouth, these past months? Too many to count.

  Sam looked to Mike, leaned in to kiss him. He accepted it hungrily and tugged her closer. She straddled his lap and got lost in this mouth she knew so well, excited and proud to feel her other lover’s eyes on them – and then his hand. Bern’s heavy palm stroked her back and neck, and she felt the elastic slide free from her ponytail. Soon she’d feel more – the bare, hot skin of both of these men against her, the flex of their needy bodies, the smell of their sweat as the sex turned the December chill into a figment of their imaginations.

  As hot as Mike’s mouth or Bern’s hand was the tantalizing unknown of whatever might come after they went upstairs, when Sam let her desires direct these two men – everything in store for her tonight. They hadn’t ruined it back in July. Not through Sam and Bern’s fuckup, not by Mike’s hand when he’d thrown that punch. They’d knocked it down, but in the end, all the bricks had remained, and a foundation of symbiotic need and desire, and they’d built something familiar, something similar but also entirely new, in its place.