by Marni Mann
He grabs the robes off the back of the door and slips one on. The other, he hands to me. When I don’t budge, he slips it around my shoulders and tries to cover me up. I’m shivering, but it’s not from the air-conditioning. It’s because I’m scared of what he’s going to say back.
But he doesn’t say anything at first. All he does is sit in the chair by the window, looking at the beach.
I’m not sure how long I’m supposed to wait for a response or if he plans on giving me one at all, so I decide to ask him one more thing. This one answer will save me a lot of wasted breath. “Are we done, Cannon?”
Still staring out the window, he barely flinches when he says, “No, baby. I did this to us, but I still want you, Piper.”
If he means becoming a workaholic and losing sight of what’s important, then, yes, he absolutely did do this to us. But I don’t care about the blame game. All I care about is fixing what’s broken.
“Tell me what to do, Cannon. Do you want to go to therapy? What will make this better?”
His phone rings again, and I cover my face with my hands because I want to throw the damn thing off the balcony.
He lets it ring three more times before the call goes to voice mail. I think it’s a small victory until it starts ringing again.
“Fuck,” he says, clearly torn.
“Just answer the call. I know it’s killing you.”
He hesitates for a split second before he stands and holds the phone up to me. I see the name of the firm on the screen, proof that it’s a legit work call. That little fact doesn’t make me feel any better.
As usual, he leaves the room and handles his business. But I can’t say a word about it because, this time, I told him to take the call.
West
“West!” Tilly shouts as I suck on her clit.
I’ve been spending so much time between these legs that I’ve forgotten what food tastes like. The only scents I smell now are the fresh air that comes in through the sliding glass door and the lotion she uses on her skin.
Tilly jokes, saying I’m on a pussy diet. Doesn’t matter what she calls it; she fucking loves it.
What it really is, is a way to forget that I’m not with my boys while they’re on a four-game streak on the West Coast. Keeping my face buried prevents me from watching TV, from checking the score on my phone.
But not even my wife’s delicious cunt can stop me from thinking about hockey.
“Come,” I demand, pulling my lips away so that I can give her my tongue. I slide three fingers inside her, curving them up and toward me, reaching the spot that causes her to buck. Then, with just the tip of my tongue, I tease the very top.
“Oh God!” she screams. “Just like that.”
She grabs ahold of my hair, yanking that shit so hard that she drives my teeth into her. By the way she shouts and cranks her hips, it’s what she intended.
With just a few more of my licks, she’s shuddering, yelling my name through our living room, squeezing the leather cushions like she’s trying to tear through them.
“Holy fuck,” she groans as she looks down at me.
I stay on the floor, keeping my hands on her legs, with no intention of going anywhere besides inside her pussy again. “You’ve got two minutes.” She tries closing me out, but my fingers keep her thighs pried open. “Three then.”
“At least four. And I need a drink. My throat is killing me after all that screaming.”
Now that I’ve swallowed her, my mouth is dry as hell, and I can use one, too. So, I go into the kitchen and stand in front of the fridge. “Wine?”
“Yesss.”
I pour her a glass, grab a beer for myself, and go back to the couch. She turned on a lamp while I was gone, and now, a blanket covers her legs.
She reaches for the glass and says, “Remember that plan I mentioned the day we arrived in Florida? When we were in the ocean?”
That was the day I tried putting my cock in her ass, which is the only reason I remember the conversation.
I set the beer on the coffee table and get on my knees, feeling for her legs over the blanket and shoving them apart. “You can tell me while I lick.”
“What if I said there was someone else I wanted you to eat?”
Just as I uncover her and press my lips against the inside of her knee, our eyes connect, and I say, “You want this mouth on someone else?”
Her gaze widens, and she nods. Then, she leans toward the end table and gets her laptop. “Come here. I want to show you something.”
My wife wants my tongue on another chick’s pussy?
I’m interested in hearing more.
I don’t touch any of the women my wife has been with. The chicks suck my cock and play with Tilly while I fuck her. But my hands stay off them. That is something she asked of me before she hooked up with any of them. I have no problem with it, nor do I find it unreasonable.
But I’m shocked as hell to hear that she’s changed her mind.
I take a seat beside her and watch her log in to a website. A page comes up that shows images of threesomes, foursomes, guys sucking cocks, girls scissoring.
“Shit,” I say. “Is this where you find the girls you fuck?”
“I’ve found a few on here.”
She clicks the top of the screen, loading her inbox, and chooses one of the emails. A picture pops up of a couple. The woman is hot—long, dark hair, big brown eyes, lips that are thick enough to plump around my cock. She looks nothing like my wife.
“What do you think of her?” she asks.
“She’s sexy.”
“I’m glad you think so because I want you to devour her pussy.”
“Then, why the hell is he in the picture?”
My wife likes to do some crazy shit, but a guy getting anywhere near me is never going to happen.
“He’s going to devour me.”
Instead of waiting for a response, she places the computer on the table and straddles my lap. Her hands go to my face, and she kisses me. I know she can taste herself, especially when she rubs her lips over the side of my beard and giggles.
“I want to swing, West.” She shifts over my legs, her pussy rubbing against my cock that’s getting harder the more I think about this. “As soon as I saw that couple, I knew they would be perfect for us. I’ve been planning it for weeks. Now that we’ve moved and things are a little calmer, I figure it’s the perfect time to shake things up.”
She doesn’t have to convince me.
“You’re all right with me touching another woman?”
“You’re all right with me touching another man?”
I’m fine with it. Deep down, I’m sure she knows that. We don’t have a traditional marriage, and things probably wouldn’t have worked for this long if I hadn’t spent so much time on the road. But what we have is a hell of a sex life, and it keeps me satisfied.
The minute the sex dies, it’ll be the end of us.
I’m sure she knows that, too.
But that doesn’t mean I’m a dick. So, instead of giving her a yes, I say, “If this is what you want, you know I’ll do it.”
She bounces on my lap, grinning, giving my cheek the softest kisses. “I’m going to email her right now and tell her we’ll pick a hotel to meet at next week.”
Tilly’s going to watch me fuck another woman.
And I’m going to watch her fuck another man.
Will she like his cock more than mine? That should be what I’m most worried about.
But the thought that fills my head is, What if I like this woman’s pussy more than my wife’s?
Piper
Cannon comes inside after his call and sits on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands. I wait for him to say something, anything, but he just sits there.
He looks at me.
I stare back.
But nobody says another word about the phone calls or my outburst. I’m still afraid of his answers, and he looks too scared to tell me the truth, so I let it
go. Again.
I mess around on my laptop, and he’s engrossed in something on TV, sending text messages every so often. Eventually, he dozes off, and I give all my attention to the screen in front of me.
I’ve spent my fair share of late nights reading articles and digging for information that might help us reconnect. This trip was step one, but since that hasn’t been going as planned or worked as I’ve hoped, I have no choice but to try something else. Something that might get us communicating instead of tiptoeing around the divide between us.
A couple of weeks ago, one click led to another, and before I knew what was happening, I’d joined a forum online. It’s moderated by a marriage expert who answers any and every question, no matter how off the wall or mundane it is.
I would take my time browsing through each of the responses, hoping that one of them would relate to my own marriage, leading me toward some much-needed answers. Some of the posts I came across were helpful; others were completely ridiculous. But, when one particular response hit a little too close to home, I realized there were other couples in the same boat as we were and that this forum was right where I belonged.
That one helpful response had me so hopeful that I was devouring every stitch of information I could get my hands on. I was even curious enough to explore the questions that didn’t have anything to do with my situation. The advice was fascinating, and some of the methods were so completely unconventional that I had to dig deeper.
Swinging for instance.
How sleeping with other people fixed couples, I had no idea. This one story held me captive though, but I wasn’t convinced it was the right move for our marriage. How would sleeping with another person strengthen your bond with your husband? It seemed like it would create new problems. But that didn’t matter. I couldn’t stop reading. I even ended up on the website this couple had used to connect with other swingers. Praying it was legit and that my computer wouldn’t be infected with a nasty virus, I clicked from link to link until I was creating a profile just so I could browse more of the other profiles and follow people from the forum.
At times, it felt wrong to be there, like I was an outsider gawking at strangers who were trying to keep their heads above water during tough times. Still, I had to keep looking.
Just like all those other nights, that’s where I’ve ended up again. When I’m all alone and desperate for help, the swinger website is my source of comfort.
I check on a few couples I’ve been following, the ones who’ve been deemed success stories by the moderator of the forum. And I realize how badly I want that kind of validation. To know that I’m not a failure, that I’m capable of making my marriage work. That I’m capable of giving my husband what he needs even though I’m not sure I know what that is anymore.
All I know is that these people have triumphed. They all look so happy in their pictures and updates.
Hours go by, and when my temples start to throb from reading in the dark, I close the laptop and climb into bed next to Cannon, careful not to wake him. For a few seconds, I don’t move. I just close my eyes and listen to the sound of him breathing, wishing he would wake up and tell me we were okay.
The next time I open my eyes, it’s morning, and the air is still crackling with tension from the night before. Cannon’s not in bed with me. He’s not even in the room.
When I climb out, I catch his profile on the balcony and see my laptop open on the kitchen table. His must have needed charging, but I figure there have been more calls to go along with the work and that nothing has changed.
Standing in the doorway, I’m torn. Do I go to him, hoping to finally talk? Or do I stay inside, waiting for him to come to me when he’s ready?
He answers the question for me, and steps inside. “Hey,” he says.
No, Good morning. No, How did you sleep?
He already knows I was awake half the night, and judging from his tired eyes, he didn’t do much better.
I want to give him a hug or ask him to get back in bed and cuddle, but I can’t even open my mouth. All I do is stand there, needing to pee, wanting to brush my teeth, and hoping for our problems to be magically solved.
When my brain connects with my lips, I manage to part them. “Are you working?”
He shakes his head. “I found something a little more interesting. When were you going to tell me about it?”
I have no idea what he’s talking about. I’m not the one hiding anything. “What do you mean?” I question as I move closer to the open laptop and glance at the screen. “How did you find this, Cannon?” But I know how.
Last night, when I went to bed, I didn’t close out of the website or the forum. All I did was shut the laptop. Everything I did in those late hours has been exposed, and he’s seen it all.
“Is there something you want to tell me, Piper?”
I laugh. A crazy, manic kind of response that is so full of irony that I can’t hide it. “Something that I want to tell you? You’re kidding, right? I’m the one who’s been begging for answers, Cannon. Don’t twist this around on me.”
“I’m not twisting anything,” he says. “I just find it really strange—opening my wife’s laptop and finding her on a swinger website, looking at couples to have sex with.”
“That’s not what I was doing,” I say. “That forum has kept me sane for the past couple of weeks while I was trying to figure us out. I don’t try to hook up with other people.”
“You’ve viewed this one couple a ton of times, Piper. The screen name for that profile matches the only message in your inbox. So, maybe you haven’t made plans to hook up, but you’ve reached out.”
He’s right. I don’t know what it is about them, but I haven’t been able to take my eyes off the pictures the wife sent me of her husband—his scruffy beard, dark eyes, and full lips. Where Cannon is tan, smooth, and perfectly styled, this guy is the complete opposite—rough around the edges. The kind of rough I’d feel when he ran the pad of his thumb across my bottom lip.
Every time I glance at their pictures, I imagine what he’d do to me. Would he be as gentle as Cannon, taking it slow? Or would he throw me on the bed like I think he would, offering no apologies as we tasted each other for the first time?
My gut tells me he likes it dirty and delicious.
And, the woman, she’s someone who posts a lot in the forum, and though she has never been listed as one, there’s a good chance she is a success story. Or at least a success in the making. She must have noticed me in the forum, too, because she reached out to me and introduced herself. We haven’t sent many messages back and forth, but she did ask to see a photo of us. And I sent one back.
All of that is beside the point. Maybe I should have told Cannon what I was doing, but I wouldn’t have been on this website if Cannon hadn’t changed. I wouldn’t be driving myself crazy, looking at every possibility to explain what had been going on and how to fix it, if things were different, if they were how they used to be.
But the truth of the matter is, I’ve snooped on his phone and laptop, making me just as guilty as he is for being on mine. He hasn’t done anything I haven’t. At least I don’t think he has until I sit down in front of the laptop and notice a typed message that is waiting to be sent.
“What are you doing?” I yell. “God, Cannon. What were you thinking, trying to message them? You weren’t even going to pretend to me be.”
“I read some of the other messages, Piper. Isn’t this what you want? To set something up?”
“No,” I tell him as I erase the text from the message and then close out of the program. “We’re not swingers. What I’ve been doing…it isn’t what you’re thinking—at all.”
“Then, what is it? Because it looks like you’re trying to set us up with another couple.” Cannon pulls out the chair opposite mine and sits down, crossing his arms over his chest.
It’s the first time we’ve sat at the same table to have a conversation in forever. Usually, all we have is a strained meal, an
d then we get up and go to different rooms.
My voice cracks when I say, “I was just trying to help us out.”
He laughs and stares at the table. “And by help us out, you mean, find someone new?”
Instead of dignifying his question with a response, I ignore him. I pull up a message I was planning on sending to this couple but never had the courage. It’s basically asking them how things have changed and if they think something like swinging would help me and Cannon get back on track. Against my better judgment, I flip the screen around and show it to my husband.
He pulls the laptop closer, so he can read the message. His eyes roam over every syllable, and by the time he’s finished, they’re so wide that I beg him to blink. But every word on that screen came from a place of love—for him. For what we had.
I expect an earful, but all he does is shut down the laptop and pushes it back to me. And then he says, “We need to shower and pack. Our flight leaves in a couple of hours.”
Every bone in my body wants to get up and run after him before he locks himself in the bathroom and shuts me out again. Instead, I stay in the chair at the table, realizing that, in my efforts to fix our broken pieces, I managed to create more.
More tension.
More questions.
More pain.
But what hurts the most is that my husband said nothing and that he might not want to repair our relationship.
I’d never purposely hurt him. I’d never go behind his back and make arrangements to have sex. That’s not who I am.
What scares me is that I can’t say the same for him. There was a time I believed he’d never cheat on me, but now, I’m not so sure. For all I know, he’s already been sleeping with someone else, and he’s just been hiding the proof so well that I can’t find any.
Bringing another couple into our marriage wouldn’t fix that. My heart tells me it would be nearly impossible for no-strings-attached sex to really exist, but my brain has seen the success stories in the forum.
