It took Alyssa perhaps a full thirty seconds to get the joke, and when she did, the pleasure spread out over her face slowly and sexually. She tipped her head back and gave me a wide smile.
“And you ladies? Here for the VerdeCo convention?”
One of them laughed.
“You smoke weed?” Alyssa asked me.
I was about to say no, when I realized she would probably want to drag me somewhere more private. Down at the water, for example. And if I did that, I would have a good reason to go exploring on the beach and look for Kate.
“Sometimes,” I said coyly. “Why?”
Pete raised his eyebrows. Alyssa stood up and jerked her head in the direction of the water. “Come with me, would ya? The hotel staff doesn't approve.”
Alyssa pulled a swimsuit cover over her head. It was a crocheted number that was so full of holes it was nearly pointless for her to wear it. Her small bottom moved tantalizing in front of me as she led me by the hand through the beach party. I was almost distracted from my foremost mission, but then I remembered: my wife was out here flirting with some other guy. And I was missing it.
I scanned from side to side, looking at the small groups clustered by the fires. There was another small bar set up on the beach a little way out toward the water. Alyssa kept walking. The air grew cooler and the voices faded away. I started to feel slightly panicked: I couldn't spot my wife anywhere.
Alyssa climbed up a little boulder surrounded by some brush at the far end of the beach. She did it with the easy grace of a teenager, and I was suddenly gripped by the realization that she probably wasn't a day older than eighteen. Possibly younger. I looked back at the party.
“Come on,” Alyssa coaxed. “You're not too old to climb a little rock?”
I jumped up after her, decidedly less gracefully, and found her settled against another boulder and already lighting a joint. The skunky smell slinked past me and sent a monsoon of college memories raining through my mind. She extended her hand and I took the joint.
I twisted and looked back at the party. Now that we were away from the lights, my eyes were adjusting to the darkness. We were up a little higher, and I could clearly see the groups huddled around the bonfires and near the bar.
And then I saw them.
They were away from everyone else. Not far away, but set apart. They were sitting in the sand, and Kate's skirt had ridden up her thighs and she had her legs stretched out in front of her.
Oh-so-casually. So relaxed.
She seemed to be sitting shoulder-to shoulder with the guy she had taken up with. They were talking, that much was evident – nothing more.
The sight infuriated me.
My reaction was unexpected. I had, after all, asked her to this very thing. I had begged and cajoled her. I had rejoiced inwardly when she had agreed to it. That she was now doing exactly what I had asked her to do, and it was sparking rage inside of me, made absolutely no sense. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
“Fucking no way,” I said, under my breath.
Alyssa's voice was creaky. She blew some smoke out of her mouth. I had evidently passed the joint back to her. “I know,” she concurred. “It's good shit, right?”
I ran my tongue inside of my mouth. Had I taken a hit?
I looked back at Alyssa. She was offering me the joint again.
I passed. I could already feel a little high creeping in. And I don't even like pot. It makes me fucking paranoid as hell.
I sat down and stared at the beach. Maybe that was it: the pot was making me paranoid and I wasn't seeing things clearly.
But no. The feeling I was having had been there before I could have possibly taken the hit I didn't even remember taking.
“It's heavy shit, right?” Alyssa repeated, laughing, behind me. She had the absent-minded, carefree voice of someone who was fucked out of her mind. She dribbled away into light giggles and then stared at the ocean.
I narrowed my eyes. The darkness was throbbing around us now, and it was getting harder to see my wife and her “friend.”
I don't know how long they sat there. Or how long I did, staring at them. I tried in vain to sort out my thoughts and my feelings, but I was mess when I finally decided to climb down from the rock. Alyssa didn't seem to notice me leaving.
My stomach was cold, my fingers were numb. Kathy tipped her head back and brought her fingers to her throat, laughing for this random fucking guy she'd picked up.
I was stumbling a little on the sand. I almost stepped on a couple as I marched robotically toward my wife and the guy.
Was it because she had done it so easily? Had I really, deep down inside, expected her to fail? Maybe I had wanted her to. And instead she had picked a guy up in less than a minute.
I took a sharp turn as I neared them, and went to the bar on the beach. Pete was there. “Man,” he said, and his own voice was quite adulterated, “you look really fucked.” He laughed and tipped a beer bottle toward me. “Let me order your drink man. They probably won't serve you.”
I turned back to where my wife was sitting without answering him.
Her long blonde hair was shaking with animation, or maybe laughter. She was turned playfully toward the guy, who seemed to have edged even closer to her. Their shoulders were just half an inch from each other.
The reality of what I had set in motion came at me full force: they would keep squeezing together, and then they would be touching. Her bare arm would be against his muscled bicep. She would feel the heat of his body, and he would feel the length of her silky arm along his. Probably from where he was sitting he had a great view into the dip of her dress, the huge swells of her breasts. He was probably thinking about them right now, wondering what color her nipples were, hoping to feel them between his lips before the night was over.
Somehow, Pete had planted the beer in my hand. He clapped me on the shoulder and shook his head, then walked past me and back to the campfire.
I had expected her to fail. To be a little more awkward than she was. I had expected her to break with her character, overcome by her inability to lie, or flirt with another man. That's what I had really expected.
My stomach lurched again.
Add to this terrible melange of feelings that my cock was rock-solid. I was so turned on my balls were aching like they had in college. My head was spinning from the weed, the drinks, the shock of my wife edging closer to this guy on the beach with every passing second.
And then, almost as if she was able to read my thoughts, she turned her head slightly, and lifted her eyes to look back at me.
She turned away almost instantly, and the pain of her casually ignoring me was almost too much to bear for a moment. She leaned closer to her guy, and then she was standing up. She rose, and I watched her like a hawk as she came directly toward me.
She gave me a look that instantly soothed my raging feelings, though. She raised her eyebrows, gave a slight shrug, and smiled. Can you believe it? her look said. And there she was: Kathy. Big, silly Kathy, who did not flirt successfully with men. Her expression soothed me like a balm. I took a sip of my beer.
Kathy hooked right, pointing with her finger in front of her so I could see. “Bathroom,” she mouthed. “Be right back.”
I turned back to the bar.
God, I was a fucking ass.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror behind the drinks. My eyes were red-rimmed, which could just as easily have been my own insane rage as the weed. But even as I looked at myself, I could see my face softening. All it had taken is for Kathy to look as taken aback by her success as I had felt.
She emerged from the bathroom, and I saw her figure in the corner of my eye. It took all of my willpower to keep from turning toward her, grabbing her in my arms and kissing her.
Maybe it's what I should have done, in retrospect.
But below the lean-up bar, I was being influenced by another part of me. There was no deny
ing that I was turned on as fuck. That a part of me wanted her to go right back to where she had been on the beach. To sit down and slide right back into conversation with that guy.
She slid along the bar, her hand on the bartop, playfully walking her fingers toward me. When she was about two feet away she turned around to face the bar.
The bartender, who was white and seemed to be from Texas and yet had fully adopted the Caribbean sense of time, snapped to attention and hurried over to my wife.
“What can I get for you darlin'?”
“I need,” Kathy said, leaning playfully onto the bartop, and at the same time giving the bartender an even more intimate view down her dress, “a...make it two, actually...two martinis.”
“A martini on the beach,” he said, with a coy smile. “That's a bold move. And do you want vodka or gin, sweet thing?”
She didn't know, I growled inwardly. Kathy had never ordered a martini in her life. She drank things like strawberry daiquiris and honestly, she preferred it without the booze.
“Hmm...” she purred, and I raised my eyebrows in surprise. Was this my wife? Using a sex kitten growl to talk to a stranger? “He didn't say. What do you think?”
“Usually vodka,” the amused bartender said, making no effort to hide his wandering eyes. “You like it dirty?”
There was no mistaking the sexual innuendo.
I fully expected it all to fall apart right there. This was way too much for Kathy.
But she pushed her hair from her face, and fanned herself with a napkin instead. “I'll give it a try,” she said. “Make it as dirty as you can.”
My eyes, rigidly trained on the bottles of rum in front of me, almost popped out of my head.
When the bartender turned to get her martini together, I looked over at her.
A wind picked up her hair, and she didn't look at me. She looked down at the napkin in her fingers, and smiled. “What do you think?” she said.
“I'm...” I said. I was speechless for a moment. “Uh...blown away.”
“It's kind of fun, huh?”
Here was the voice of Kathy again. A little shy. Just trying something out. The flare-up of rage that the conversation with the bartender had set off in me fizzled away.
“You're putting on quite a show,” I said.
Kathy smiled. I saw a little stain of red creep across her cheeks. “I know, I can-”
At that moment, two voices interrupted us. Alyssa, her throat dry and her voice half-asleep, drawling: “Oh there you are;”
And the grating nasal twang of the cowboy bartender, talking to Kathy: “Here you are little darlin.' Though I have to say, I'm a little sad you're takin' this drink to another man.”
At this point Kathy flashed her eyes to Alyssa, who was sort of slinking over to me.
I saw a quick flash of confusion on her face.
It wasn't, after all, part of the deal that I flirt with other women. And I hadn't wanted to. I cursed Alyssa silently as she touched my arm and said: “Hey, please buy me a drink, huh? My throat is parched.”
A flash of anger over my wife's face. Like lightening in the distance.
And then she turned to the bartender. His eyes were on her tits. “Well,” she said. “You never know what'll happen before the end of the night.”
She turned with the two martinis, and glared at me briefly, before walking back to her friend in the sand.
The bartender expelled air between his teeth and looked over at me, shaking his head. It was one of those silent masculine exchanges. Did-you-see-the-tits-on-that-woman?
But the look was for my wife.
This cut through me both delightfully and awfully. I clutched my stomach.
“You want that beer?” the bartender said to both Alyssa and me at the same time. Apparently he was a multi-tasker. I nodded, and Alyssa took out a cigarette. “Thanks, man.” She turned and rested her elbows on the bar. “This is some fucking night.”
I wanted to turn and look at my wife again. I wanted to press “pause” on this whole thing, so I could over and explain to her that she had misunderstood Alyssa. That Alyssa was far too thin, far too stoned, and far too young to be of any interest to me. That she was cover, that she had just been there, that it was all Pete's fault.
That she shouldn't get so mad about Alyssa that she did something...more than flirt.
Although...
My cock throbbed. My stomach wrenched around in my gut. Cold-hot, hot-cold.
“You okay?” Alyssa said. She turned back to the ocean. “I told you that shit was strong.”
I ignored her, and her misrepresentation of actual facts: I wasn't stoned, I was high on something else entirely. I rubbed my palms together. They were wet.
The bartender set two beers in front of us. Then he was gone, attending to the other side of the bar.
I turned around, sweating.
Now, I'll never know for sure what happened. But my wife had either accidentally or deliberately poured some of her martini on her breasts, and she was laughing and wiping her chest. I was transfixed by the hand that was swiping at her cleavage for a moment, so it took me awhile to notice that she and her beau of were leaning back in the sand, one arm each outstretched behind them. And that their fingers were...entangled.
My cock responded to this by pulsing hard against the confines of my boxers and pants. Alyssa was talking...blathering, actually, but she was so stoned she didn't seem to notice that my mind was elsewhere.
I drank my beer, not even tasting the liquid on my mouth. I was grateful that I had Alyssa jabbering away next to me, and that I could position myself just slightly in her direction, while looking just to to the right of her and taking in the view of my wife with ease.
My blood pressure shot through the roof a the man she was with leaned forward and put his hand on her cheek. They leaned closer to each other.
And then, there it was. Right in front of me.
My wife, kissing another man on the beach.
They kissed for two endless seconds. Not long to anyone in the world but me. For me the moment seemed to drag on for an eternity, and the image seared itself into my mind. I went completely cold. I felt like I had jumped into an icy lake for a second. When feeling returned to my body I was buzzing.
Then my wife turned her face away slightly.
My stomach twisted.
She was talking now.
It was the classic turn-down; I could see it from there. She was telling him she was married, or that she wanted to take things slow. He was crumpling a little, I could see that too.
But he wasn't going to give up that easily. He leaned closer to her and put his hand on her cheek again.
Now I could see his mouth forming words. Seducing her, making promises. Maybe telling her that just one night wouldn't mean anything, that he promised not to tell anyone.
Or was he worse than that? Was he trying to tell her she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and he couldn't bear to let her go?
Just like that it hit me: it was entirely possible that jackass was saying something like that.
And then it hit me, even harder than the first thought: he could be telling the truth, if that's what he was saying. She could be the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
After all, I had thought that, hadn't I? Hadn't I seen her for what she was, when no one else had really noticed? Isn't that why I felt so lucky?
But now, she was in a stunning red dress, and there was no hiding that she was hot as hell.
They were still talking, but Casanova hadn't gone in for another kiss. I wondered what his play was. He really seemed to have Kathy all twisted up, longing to kiss him again, having to tell him lies or maybe the truth to convince him she wouldn't be a naughty little slut and cheat on her husband.
I felt another sharp twist in my stomach. Or what if...she was just playing hard-to-get? What if she was just teasing him, and me, and trying to make it sweeter in the end?
“...and I was like,
'no way man, that's Jamaican and you want nothing to do with it.' You know. I fuckin' swear, people are crazy,” Alyssa was still talking. Her voice was so slow and syrupy it took her almost a minute to get one sentence out. She was leaning toward me and laughing as though I were paying utter attention to her, so she was good cover for what I was actually doing.
This went on for bit, and then Casanova stood up, and came walking toward the bar, leaving Kathy sitting on the sand. She didn't get up. She turned a little toward the ocean and appeared to be looking out at it wistfully.
This – this wistful look out to sea – actually burned me up more than her kissing that guy. I watched him with venom coursing through my veins as he approached the bar. Maybe I was drunk, but he seemed to have gotten better-looking since I had seen him before. He was tall, younger than me, and he seemed quite a bit more fit.
“Hey man,” he said to the bartender when he leaned against the bar. “You think you can make me a martini in a different glass?”
The bartender looked over his shoulder and smiled, letting out a little huff of air. “I knew that was gonna go a little wrong.” He started making the martini and smiled at the guy.
The look these two exchanged. So lecherous.
“It wasn't too bad, she poured it all over her dress,” the guy said. His voice was thick with lechery when he added: “I got to dab it up.”
The bartender nodded smugly and knowingly as he started to shake the martini. “Let me know if there's something you can't handle.”
Was this a serious fucking conversation? Did guys actually talk to each other like this?
I could feel a stain of hot jealousy and revulsion creeping from the back of my neck to my temples.
“You just meet that chick tonight?” the bartender said.
The guy nodded and tasted the martini he set down for him. “I can't fucking believe it. I was on my way outta here, heading over to Jenny's, and these tits just walk down the fucking stairs.”
It dawned on me, then, that the two knew each other somehow.
“Well,” the bartender said, swiping the bar. “Like I said, if you need any help with anything...spill any more drinks...I'm here for you man.” He leaned in closer. “You gonna hit that?”
A Conventional Hotwife Page 6
