Body Of Research: An Experiment In Hotwifing

by Arnica Butler

  After all, every married man I knew had a similar experience.

  But the morning after our foray into my fantasy, Jen greeted me in an oversized shirt and stood on her tiptoes to kiss me on the cheek, before she even found a mug for her coffee. “Hey,” she said, and her voice was deep with sleep and what seemed to be a hangover. She moved to the other side of me, dragging her hand over my shoulder blades as she did.

  “What time do you get up?” she said, ending her sentence with a yawn.

  There was something fun about the way she was saying this. Almost like we were new lovers, and it was a question she didn't know the answer to. I felt the hum of nostalgia inside of me, a resuscitation of the feeling we had between us right after the first night we slept together and realized we were very serious about each other. The hum of attraction and newness and uncertainty, the cool feeling of it in my chest.

  As she leaned against the counter and reached up to grab a coffee mug from a tall shelf where they were kept, her shirt pressed tight against her figure and her hard nipples showed through the thin white fabric. The back of the shirt rode halfway up her rear, and it appeared that she was wearing no panties.

  Compulsively, I reached out and put a hand on her ass. I ran my palm up and over the firm round shape of her buttocks, and discovered that my assumption about the panties had been correct. Her skin was smooth and firm, and fit into my cupped palm nicely.

  Instead of becoming annoyed, which is what I would have told a bookie to put the odds on if I had been describing this scene just ten hours before, Jen just dropped onto her heels and left her bottom in my hand. I let my pinkie finger slide along the valley between her asscheeks, and when it nearly reached her pussy, I felt a slick moisture.

  I was already dressed for leaving the house – that was, after all, the reason for Jen's question. It was only 6:30 and I had clearly been up for a while. I liked to leave early and beat traffic, so I should have been out the door already.

  Jen turned around, and my fingers fell to my side. She brought the mug to her lips and sipped her coffee. Her eyes smiled over the rim of the mug at me. “So,” she said.

  “So,” I answered.

  We laughed lightly.

  “You want to catch dinner tonight, maybe go out?” I said, caught up in the new flirtatiousness between us.

  Jen's face brightened. “Yeah!” she said, very quickly. “That sounds great. I even have a new dress.”

  She twisted from side to side as she said this, and grinned coquettishly at me as she did. She looked very cute: her eyelashes were floppy and straight, giving her a juvenile and sleepy appearance, and her brightness was infectious.

  “Okay,” I said, happily, imagining Jen in a sexy black dress and the two of us on a date like the ones we used to go on, excited and interested, dressed up, and circling the real reason for going out – to have sex.

  It wasn't until after I kissed her, and closed the door of the car behind me, the smug grin still plastered to my face, that a dark but obvious thought crept into my mind. As I backed out of the driveway it began to dig into my psyche. By the time I was accelerating onto the freeway I felt good and disturbed.

  New dress.

  Jen's new dress.

  Jen who was the queen of jeans and sweatshirts.

  What in the fuck would she have already bought a new dress for?

  Or a dress at all, for that matter?

  When you added it to the sexy panties, the trimmed bush, the excited sex, the late nights, the dating apps, the way she had thrown herself into talking about another man's cock and swallowing my cum after she did...

  Another shiver went through me, and I felt like I cracked in two again.

  It was horrible, the only conclusion I could logically come to.

  And it was fucking insanely hot.

  C hapter 7

  BROWNHOUSE

  There was nothing to do, really, but go along with it. I made a reservation at La Terrasse, a classic French restaurant that was cozy, but somehow still very sexy. It was situated on a hilled part of town overlooking the city, with an enclosed patio replete with all of the typical romantic date trappings: hanging lights, small tables, a view of the glittering city. We had gone there a few times when we dated, then less after we married, and not at all for years now. She had always gushed about it.

  I sent Jen a text, and she sent back a message:

  [Jen]: Perfect. So excited

  And then I tried very hard to dive into my work, and keep my mind on the meetings and the pitches that were coming my way, and not the various suspicions and facts, ideas and fantasies and nightmares that I was having about my wife.

  I was putting things away into my briefcase, envisioning the evening’s date, Jen's dress, the great sex we almost certainly have, when I got her text.

  [Jen]: I'm going to be late. Im so sorry. I dont think theres any way to get out of here and up there before 7...I forgot abt office hours

  I squinted at her message.

  [Me]: Office hours? At night?

  There was a long pause, while my mind went to dark and paranoid places. It seemed like an eternity while I waited for Jen's text. I stared out the window of my office.

  Was I being a fool? It seemed so. Most of the evidence pointed to my wife, Jen, playing me for some kind of fool.

  I mean, what kind of guy finds dating apps on his wife's phone, and then accepts that she's just doing research?

  She is a postdoc fellow in a sociology department.

  There were all the other things.

  All the other little things.

  And here I was, inviting her out on a date.

  And here she was, canceling on me. With a pretty lame excuse.

  And here I was, trying to make excuses for her, because when I thought of her, I felt warm and fuzzy like I used to. Because I had liked it so much when she placed her hand on my back this morning.

  And the way she had sucked my cock the night before.

  And the way she had talked to me about holding another man's cock in her hand.

  My phone rumbled on the desk.

  [Jen]: No...the office hrs were earlier and people actually came so I didnt get papers graded and I need 2 hand some stuff off to my TA by tom. am... can u change reservation?

  She knew, as well as I did, that La Terrasse was adorable but no longer the kind of trendy, crowded restaurant where a reservation couldn't be easily changed on a Thursday night. I probably hadn't even needed a reservation to begin with. The temptation to say it couldn't be changed was strong, but I didn't want to come off like the jackass that I was, in the event that my paranoia really was just paranoia.

  [Me]: K let me check

  I tossed the phone onto the table and collapsed in the chair. I spun myself around a few times for good measure.

  Without actually calling La Terrasse, I typed to Jen:

  [Me]: They can do 730. Ill come and pick you up?

  And then another terrible minute as I waited for her to respond.

  The idea made no sense. It would take far more time for me to fetch her than for her to take the subway. I felt a flush of embarrassment at my poorly-hatched ploy. She would see right through it, see that all I wanted to do was have an excuse to come and park in the university parking lot and wait for her like a vulture, catch her with someone. Or perhaps ruin her plans of going out somewhere and not working at the university at all.

  Two messages came in quick succession.

  [Jen]: OK perfect

  [Jen]: wait that will prob be slower right? U go for 730 and ill just hop over on train gives me more time to work

  Defeated, I typed:

  [Me]: Duh. OK, see you there.

  I tapped the phone against my lips.

  Fuck.

  Was I getting played, here?

  No, really?

  I mean... there was nothing about what Jen had just sent me that should arouse suspicion.

  She was right: my coming to get her saved no o
ne any time at all. I would have to go across the city, and we would have to leave the university much earlier than if she took the train. That's why we started going to that place to begin with.

  There was nothing suspicious about her pointing out the obvious.

  And how was she going to go on a date between 4 and 730?

  Why was I being like this?

  *

  In what was a scene of almost unbearable predictability, I arrived at the restaurant early, and the minutes ticked away. Jen was late.

  I resolved not to send her any kind of message until 7:45. The willpower required to refrain from doing this made me break out in a sweat under my collar. I scratched the back of my neck and looked compulsively at my phone about 100 times. It felt like time had pretty much stopped.

  Somehow I managed to hold off until 7:46. Then I pressed “send” on my already typed message.

  [Me]: you running late?

  You running late? Just a casual question. Not the question of slightly-obsessed husband who couldn't help but freak out if his wife was 15 minutes late.

  Ten minutes went by. I downed a glass of wine.

  It's hard to look cool if you are a well-dressed man sitting alone at a restaurant, obviously waiting for someone. When I see women in the same situation, I feel sorry for them, or I feel like the guy who stood them up is an idiot.

  When I see men like me, my first thought is that they must be a fucking twat.

  [Jen]: sorry. Lost track of time. Just got dressed

  I looked blankly at her message.

  What the hell did that mean?

  Then she sent me a picture.

  I stared at it.

  It was Jen, all right. Her straight dark chocolate hair. Her pretty eyes. Her mocha skin. She was making a duck-face, though, and doing so very deliberately and in a satirical way: she hated that shit.

  It wasn't all that making me stare.

  She had taken the photo holding the phone up, so she had captured most of her body.

  Most of her dress.

  The new dress.

  The new dress that had been purchased for no apparent reason.

  And what, I wondered, would the reason be, when I confronted her about it? She certainly couldn't claim that this low-scooped black cocktail dress, that barely covered the edges of her nipples, and which clung to her lithe figure, was for some kind of official function.

  It was a very, very... non-academic dress.

  And she looked very, very hot in it.

  I typed:

  [Me]: oh good i was beginning to wonder if youd run off with dave

  My heart felt like it went plummeting through my feet when I opened the attachment she'd sent me as a reply. The kind of good plummet, like a roller-coaster. Nausea-inducing but exciting. The kind of thing you wouldn't mind doing over and over again.

  She had taken another photo of herself, but this time, she had aimed the camera at her face.

  She was winking.

  Smiling.

  For a moment I was amused.

  Of course that was a joke.

  [Me]: okay sneaky see you soon

  Jen sent the same photo to me again.

  I set the phone on the table and clasped my hands together. I made a big show, for anyone who might be watching, of smiling smugly. The woman I was waiting for, my smile was meant to say, will be here soon. I am not a twat.

  But then a cold feeling came over me, and with it a frown I could not contain. I tilted the phone toward me.

  I opened my messages and looked at the picture again.

  The background.

  The background.

  In the background was what looked like a restaurant. Not an office.

  And what's more, there was the blurry form of a man in the background. A masculine shape.

  Definitely another man.

  I set the phone down and tried very hard, and very unsuccessfully, not to think about it, or open the picture over and over again, fantasizing about all the sick things that guy could have done to my wife before she put on that dress.

  Or after.

  *

  When Jen arrived, the restaurant had only ten or so people scattered among the tables. Still, she stirred them with her presence.

  It had been a long, long time since I had seen Jen in anything but her baggy pants, or an occasional suit – usually something sort of dated that didn't fit very well or accentuate any of her great features. The cocktail dress elevated her appearance to the one that I had always known about and kept as a secret. But I have to say, I didn't mind the way she sent a palpable shiver through the room. Her lean legs looked even longer, a trick of the swishing, short cut of the skirt. A shadow, hardly ever seen in the light of day, outlined the curve of her breasts. Her hair was down, shiny and mahogany-colored in the hanging lights of La Terrasse.

  “Hey,” she said, collapsing into the chair a waiter hurried behind her to pull out. She had crossed the room after smiling at me, and he had barely made it to her in time. “I made it.”

  I shrugged. “Sort of.” I was pretty bitter, having imagined our romantic date, after making that connection with Jen the night before. And even though I had spent a good long time with my chin in my hand, contemplating the spectacular view of the city and ruminating on how it didn't make much sense to connect with my wife via a fantasy that involved her fucking another guy, and then get mad that she wasn't following up on that connection the way I wanted her to, because she seemed to be fucking another guy... I still felt angry.

  Common sense was not my priority at this point.

  But I quickly changed my tune, because I knew if there was one thing Jen hated, it was a guy who pouted. “You look stunning,” I said.

  I could hear an undertone of suspicion, or jealousy, or something similar to those, in my own voice, and I wondered if Jen could hear it, too. I mean: why did she have this dress? One couldn't help but let suspicion linger. It was the kind of dress that someone bought to tease, to flirt, to seduce.

  And Jen claimed to be doing none of those things.

  She was looking out of the window. To my compliment she only smiled. Her face seemed flushed, and she had a distant look in her eyes. It's a cliched description, but that's how it looked. She seemed miles away all of the sudden. Her fingers drifted over her skin, down the curve of her collarbone, and toward the swell of her breasts, before they fluttered open and she looked back at me.

  She interlaced her fingers and stretched them across the table. Her mind seemed drawn back into the room very suddenly. “Remember when we used to come here all the time?” she said. Her fingers nearly made it to my elbow, and my skin was burning for the feel of her nails through my shirtsleeves. The waiter appeared, though, with a wine list, and shattered the moment.

  We ordered a bottle, and then we started to talk. Pleasant chit-chat, nothing of substance. Jen avoided her whole day – what she had done, where she had been, how she had gotten caught up in this grading mess.

  And I burned with suspicion across the table.

  Was that normal, after all? If she had been suddenly inundated with work, as she claimed, wouldn't she have complained about it ordinarily? Instead, she was talking in abstracts, talking about plans for the future...

  “So, what ended up happening again, with the grading?” I said, abruptly.

  I must have cut her off in mid-sentence. Jen's mouth dropped open. “I told you,” she said. Her tone was a mixture between annoyance and amusement.

  She jutted her chin, just ever-so-slightly, and placed her fingertips beneath it. Almost like she was going to give me some Jersey-mafia flip-off, but her fingers stayed where they were, fluttering a little next to the creamy brown of her throat. “Why? Did you think I was doing something else?”

  These weren't fighting words. They were an invitation.

  I leaned back in my chair. Something I would never admit to her, not ever, is that I felt a little relieved as she seemed to wink at me, her fingers rubbing he
r own skin lightly, her mouth turned up in the tiniest smile. Relief that she wasn't just abandoning the whole game. Relief that she wasn't calling me out on being the slightly crazy person I was being.

  Relief that she (probably) wasn't actually cheating on me.

  “The thought occurred to me,” I said, taking a sip of my wine.

  I'd had, quite a bit, I realized, as the warmth of the alcohol seemed to bounce from my throat back up to my head, wrapping me up in a light fog. I was high now, happy. Sure, something nagged at me a little bit (the dress, the annoying fact that I could be made so happy with just one word from my wife, pulled from my despairing paranoia to this new happy high) but I no longer felt like indulging that side of my thinking. Jen looked stunning, her fingers were playing on her flushed skin in the dim light, the city was starting to sparkle...

  “I have been a little naughty,” Jen said, and for a moment I was so stunned I felt sure it was a hallucination.

  She was smiling. She looked down, as though maybe she wanted to check on something in her purse. But instead her hands went across the table, toward me.

  I took them, and brought her fingers to my lips. “Oh yeah?”

  I liked the way the contact of my mouth seemed to ripple through her.

  And what could her secret be? It seemed like an eternity while she made me wait for it. The word “naughty” was sizzling through me, cutting right down through my body, igniting my spine, spreading through my chest, drilling down into my core. My cock twitched. What kind of “naughty” had Jen been?