Leigh seemed to be genuinely interested in the answer now.
He lifted her hand and played with her fingers. “I think,” he said solemnly, after considering his reply. “The only thing that matters is if we’re okay with what we’re doing. It seems like you are. And I am. And I like this… I don’t know. Different thing. It’s kind of like how traveling puts things in perspective, and you see what you like about home.”
Leigh looked up at the ceiling.
“I just always thought, you know…”She was having a very tough time with whatever she wanted to say. “I just never thought I’d… I’d… want to do anything like this.”
Jeremy’s eyes went wide. “Want to, huh?” he said.
Leigh blushed and looked down. “I don’t know.”
“Hey,” Jeremy said. “No, I didn’t mean it like I’m teasing you or something. I meant it like… well, you know what I meant. Like I said, I’d be into it. If you are.”
“And what if I am?” Leigh said. “How do we… you know?”
Jeremy finished the thought for her. “Get it going?” he said. He laughed and leaned down to kiss her. “Honestly, I don’t know.”
It was true Craig had told him at the barbecue, but he still didn’t feel exactly right about that kind of… straightforwardness. Not yet. Not for Leigh.
Leigh grinned bashfully and turned back to the wall. She pushed herself back against her husband. “I can’t believe we’re thinking about this.”
Jeremy kissed her shoulder again.
“I wouldn’t want to start something with our neighbors that gets out of control,” she added.
“No,” Jeremy said. “That’s true.”
“I think we’d better sleep on it,” Leigh said.
Jeremy knew better than to argue with Leigh as she started to retreat from an idea. She needed time to come around to it, look at it from more than one angle. But he also knew that she was coming the right way around. He just needed to be patient, and wait.
Little did he know, Leigh would be more impatient than he was.
6: A DIFFERENT KIND OF LEIGH
Leigh felt like she was discovering a new side of herself when she picked up her phone and called Billie the next day. She had classes to teach in the morning, and a lot of work to do grading and prepping, but she found herself asking Billie to meet her downtown for a coffee instead.
“I don’t drink coffee after twelve,” Billie complained, in her sultriest voice. “It keeps me awake all night. So let’s get a margarita.”
And Leigh found herself agreeing, not even putting up her usual show of a fight.
Even if she did calculate how many calories that would be.
They decided to meet near the downtown campus, in a side street of bars and cafes and no car traffic.
Leigh never went there: something about all the time scrimping and saving with Jeremy had left her reticent to spend money on coffee or lunch in the trendy area. Now, even though it was warm and sunny, and she was wearing a white sundress of her usual style (conservative), she felt a little twinge of guilt as she walked to El Toro, like she was doing something far more illicit than she was.
She found that she liked it.
Billie was already there, and a college-aged guy was already hitting on her. She was sitting at one of the wrought-iron patio tables, a short, sporty pink dress and sandals on, her chin in her hand and an amused smile on her face.
Walking toward her, Leigh couldn’t believe Billie’s audacity – flirting with a guy so much younger than her, kicking her feet around in little circles under the table.
She also felt jealous.
A little thrilled.
Billie didn’t care what she did, and she seemed to be having fun.
When Leigh reached the table, Billie looked over at her and collapsed on the table, stretching her arms out. “This guy is telling me the margaritas are no good here,” she moaned. “How do you feel about daiquiris?”
The “guy” looked over at Leigh, and she could almost feel him appraising her in relationship to Billie. She watched his face: would he know she was an adjunct instructor, in her thirties, or would he mistake her for a student, as he obviously had with Billie? And what kind of student?
He smiled at her. “You guys should come over here,” he said, hooking his thumb over his shoulder at the bar next door.
Leigh glanced over and saw a crowd of young guys – probably seniors in bachelor’s programs, for chrissake, who were looking in their direction. One of them waved.
Billie smiled at him. “We have to talk business,” she said. “Then we’ll come over.”
The two exchanged a very blatant look between them, Leigh felt a little flushed, and then the guy disappeared to go report on his moderate success with the hot chick at El Toro.
“I already ordered margaritas,” Billie said, watching him go. “I just thought I would throw him a bone.” She moved her eyes back to Leigh. “In case I want him to throw me a bone later.”
Leigh’s mouth fell open again, and she made a conscious effort not to let her jaw hang open all afternoon.
Billie laughed and leaned back in her chair, picking up her feet and bringing her knees close to her chest. Her skirt was short enough that she was giving the boys at the patio next door a nice view of her panties.
If she was wearing any.
Leigh kept her eyes up. She felt that same mix of admiration and scandal wash over her.
A waiter brought them their drinks, and Billie flirted with him as well.
After he left, she leaned over and placed the tip of her straw seductively in her mouth. It was a show for the boys on the patio, and she knew it, but she did it as if it were second nature. “So,” she said, and then sucked the tip of the straw. Her lips closed around it and she popped it from her mouth, tailing it with her tongue when it departed her lips. “Did you want to know if Craig saw your picture?”
That was why she was here. Leigh wouldn’t have been able to articulate to herself, but that was what she wanted to hear.
She blurted out: “I told Jeremy about it,” instead.
Billie adjusted herself in her chair, smiling, and scooted closer to her. “Well,” she said, “that is interesting. And?”
Leigh demurred.
Billie dipped her straw into her margarita again and tipped her head as she brought it to her mouth, curling her tongue out to lick the sweet drink from the shaft of the straw. There was no mistaking her intent, especially when she flashed the boys to their left a sultry look before she closed her mouth around it.
It was obscene, but she somehow did it without being overly obscene.
“I bet he liked it,” Billie declared, tucking the straw into the drink and taking a long draw of the margarita.
Leigh held her straw between her fingertips and delicately sucked on the end of the straw.
She knew they were watching her. Probably talking about how she was holding her straw, thinking about how she did it like such a priss…
“Well?” Billie said. She leaned back again. “I know Craig liked it,” she said.
Leigh looked up at her.
“I sucked his cock while he looked at your picture.”
Leigh almost choked on her margarita. She hit herself on the chest with her hand, not that that ever helped, but more out of instinct.
Did she actually just say that?
Billie laughed out loud, more of little cackle, that ended with a sing-songy “eeeuh.”
She met Leigh’s eyes again. “He did like it didn’t he?”
Leigh waved her hand like she was still choking on her margarita.
“Question is,” Billie mused. “Did you?”
Leigh put her hands up to her face, cupping them over her mouth. She coughed a little.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Billie snorted. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
Leigh shrugged.
“Did you have an orgasm, or not?”
Leigh nodded.
Leigh lifted her eyes and stared at Billie, who had an impish look on her face. “We need to think of a way to step it up a little. Right?”
Leigh shook her head. “I couldn’t,” she said into her cupped hands. Then she let them drop to the table. She stared at them as she smiled and blushed a little. “I mean… I don’t think I could, you know… do anything else.”
“Why not?”
Billie’s voice was matter-of-fact.
Leigh shrugged. “I don’t know. I told you… it just isn’t...”
Billie sighed. “You know, what you need to do is do something like an icebreaker.”
Leigh raised her eyebrows in confusion.
“Maybe this isn’t the word. Like, something not so big. Maybe you just need to go a little further, do something a little more.”
Leigh was silent for a moment.
Billie waited patiently, her eyes wandering over to her fan club of boys.
“Like?” Leigh said, giving in.
Billie’s eyes came back to meet hers, and she played with the straw in her margarita. “Like… maybe you let him just see them. Or put them in his mouth.”
She let Leigh squirm for a bit.
“Or,” she said, her eyes glinting. “I can tell you what he wants to do.”
Leigh sensed that she was at the edge of a decision that would change things forever, so in her conscious mind she wanted to take it very seriously. She felt her mouth and her eyes making expressions that reflective pensiveness, and guilt, and uncertainty.
Deep down inside, though, she knew that she was just play-acting. While she hesitated and said she really shouldn’t be talking about this, she knew she would eventually say:
“I guess you could just tell me.”
And that’s what she eventually did.
“Well,” Billie said, leaning forward, her fingers still playing with her margarita straw in a way that was driving the boys in the adjacent patio wild. “What if you just let him put his cock in your tits?”
Leigh took this in.
She had never actually let a guy do anything like that, even though she had imagined it a few times. When Billie’s words went though her mind, she pictured it so vividly she could almost feel it. Her nipples got hard imagining the hot strength of Craig's cock rubbing between them. She pictured him looking down at her, that expression on his face, the one all men have just before they come: a look of complete absorption and obsession.
And Jeremy watching.
Leigh gave a little laugh and put her hand to her lips. “Oh God. No, this is crazy. I couldn’t.”
Billie leaned back in her chair. ‘Why not? Jeremy could watch.”
Leigh gave her the side-eye and shook her head into her hand.
But really, she was thinking about it.
“It’s a good way to do something without really doing anything,” Billy said, tapping her straw on the edge of her margarita and bringing another lump of cold, icy liquid to her lips. “And you know how wild it drove Jeremy just thinking about you sending your picture to another man?”
Leigh shook her head again. “This is what I don’t get.”
Billie’s eyes went wide. “What? What’s there to get? That men like watching women have sex?”
Leigh dropped her hand and twisted back to face Billie. She twisted her hands under the table. “Not that, just… I don’t really understand how that’s appealing. Me cheating on him.”
Billie shrugged. “It’s dangerous,” she said. Then she looked plainly at Leigh, as if to say: what’s there to understand?
Leigh frowned. “How long have you two been doing this.”
“Long enough,” Billie said. “It’s really been good for our relationship.”
Leigh brought a hand to her mouth and chewed lightly on her thumbnail.
Billie didn’t say anything else. She turned to the boys who were watching her, transfixed, and grinned at them.
She turned back to Leigh, intending to tell her to think about it, but she was going to join her new friends. Leigh surprised her by dropping her hand and leaning closer to Billie on the table.
“So what would I… how do I make this work?”
Billie gave the boys a disappointed smile. Too bad.
“Okay,” she said enthusiastically to Leigh. “Let’s just make a plan.”
*
Jeremy got a text from Leigh on Friday that read, simply:
[Leigh]: I have a surprise for you. Don't be late
By then, they were three days out from their conversation in the aftermath of the breasts picture, and while Jeremy thought about it constantly, Leigh hadn’t said anything further about it. They’d had hot sex every night, though, so he wasn’t complaining. But they never had an explicit conversation about it again.
Leigh seemed to be acting a little strange. She had a light smile on her lips. She had come home pretty lit after teaching on Wednesday, saying she had run into Billie downtown. But she didn’t divulge any secrets: she just smiled her secretive smile and left Jeremy to wonder what she was thinking about.
So when he got the text, he was thrilled, and shocked. What kind of surprise was Leigh planning?
After getting worked up about the possibility of it being another illicit picture, or maybe even something more, Jeremy stomped all over his own desires and decided that in all likelihood it was just a special dinner or something. He didn’t want to get his hopes up too high. In any event, if they just had some more exciting, passionate sex like they’d been having, he could live with that.
He typed back:
Okay. I’ll try to be there on time
Fridays were terrible for escaping the city, so he had to hustle to try and leave by four if he wanted to make it home anywhere near six. His hard work didn’t help: the expressway was crammed full of city-dwellers headed for cottage destinations and an escape into the sprawling suburbscape that people took for “the country” these days.
When he pulled up to the house, nothing looked unusual. He had called Leigh halfway on his way home and left a message apologizing about the traffic. She never called back, which was strange for her, but no matter.
Jeremy alternated between wild fantasies and putting a damper on them all the way home. By the time he was in the garage, turning the doorknob to the house, he had settled on being thrilled with whatever dinner she had made him and hopefully some wine.
No one was in the kitchen. The lights were out, and it didn’t smell like food.
“Leigh?” he called out.
It was then that he heard her footsteps. She hurried into the kitchen. The first thing that he noticed was that she looked a little flustered. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here before...” her voice trailed off.
“I’m sorry,” Jeremy began, meaning to talk about the traffic. But he cut himself off when he saw what Leigh was wearing. “Oh,” he said. “So this is the surprise.”
Leigh was in the black velvet dress, and she had gone all-out to fix her hair and put on make-up. She looked a lot like she had in the photo from the erotica cover.
“I love it,” Jeremy said. He wasn’t 100% sure what he was saying he loved, because there was a strange energy surrounding Leigh. She was nervous, even if she wasn’t showing it in any specific way.
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She seemed to not know where to put her hands, or where to look.
Jeremy was uncertain of what to do.
“Wine,” Leigh said. “I have some chilling. I wanted white so I don’t get a headache. Here.”
Her words were running together in a rush. She opened the cupboard that stored the glasses and then left it open to open the refrigerator.
“What’s up with you?” Jeremy said, stepping in to get the wine glasses before she smashed them to bits with her nervous energy.
�
��Uh… I just… well, I need to tell you about the rest of -”
The doorbell rang.
“The surprise.”
Leigh’s voice was like a dagger through Jeremy’s heart. A good-feeling one, and an ominous one.
She set down the wine. “Open that, and… I guess...” she waved her hands and headed to the front door. “Three glasses,” she called out, halfway to the door.
Then she came back in, in a rush. “I’ve only agreed to one thing. And it’s not sex.”
She looked at him, as though she honestly expected him to react that quickly to what she said. So he nodded, still trying to get his head around what was happening.
Jeremy stood with two wine glasses in his hands, his mouth open, his brow furrowed.
He heard the sound of the door.
And then a deep and masculine voice.
Abandoning the wine glasses, he walked out to the hallway and then stopped again, unsure of what he was seeing.
There, in the entryway, stood Craig.
The surprise.
They had a glass of wine in the living room, but there was a lot of tension in the air. Leigh set her glass down, half-finished, and declared. “Okay. I kind of just want to… jump in. Before I lose my nerve.”
She sat down on the edge of the couch. The very edge, as though she didn’t want to commit to being there. She looked over at Jeremy nervously, and he offered her a look of what he hoped she recognized as encouragement.
Slowly, Leigh unrolled the velvet black dress from the swell of her breasts. She watched her hand on the fabric, a little flushed. The solid, creamy curve of her skin seemed to go on forever before the fabric rolled over the caramel pool of her areola, her long brown nipples erect in the center.
All the way down, until the shape of her breasts was framed only by the black dress on her torso.
Jeremy sucked in his breath. Her tits really were glorious, and now that someone else was watching them, with the intention of touching them...
Craig stared at Leigh for a moment, until she lifted her eyes to meet his gaze. She still seemed uncertain, and Jeremy wondered if she wanted to back out of the deal. But as they had discussed, she had only to say the word, and everything would come to a halt. Her lips were parted but they did not move to stop what was happening.
Leigh Uncovered: A Wife Sharing Novel Page 13
