Human Interest: A Lead-In To Wife Watching

by Arnica Butler

  The shower – an add-on to the cramped bathroom in the Victorian they were remodeling – was barely big enough for the two of them. Josh reached behind her and turned the heat down a little. As he did, he distracted her by sliding his fingers between her legs, where her slit was damp with only water, squeaky to the touch.

  He would have his work cut out for him.

  “Josh,” she whispered, but he could tell she was, perhaps, going to give in.

  He pushed her against the wall of the shower, and she rippled with a wince at the cold of the tiles behind her, which had somehow escaped the superheated water.

  Her flesh was tight against his fingers, and he spread them apart to open her legs a little. He was pleased when she gave in to the motion, and her feet slid apart on the floor of the shower. The silken insides of her outer lips were clean and his fingers moved against them like rubber – for now. He found the teardrop of her clit and gently pulled on it to expose her most sensitive skin, which he pressed gently.

  For a moment Rachel seemed to waver. He could see that the temperature of the water had begun to annoy her, and her hair was getting damp pressed up against the wall. He moved his finger in a slow circle over her clit, and lowered his head to take the soft nipple of one of her breasts in his mouth.

  His tongue swirled over the center of her areola, and he felt her nipple pebble in his mouth. Between her legs, her own juices smeared the insides of her outer lips, and they turned from rubbery to silky smooth underneath the pads of his fingers.

  Rachel let out a small gasp.

  It was time to move down her body.

  With a deftness that impressed even himself, Josh turned off the water as he moved down to a kneel on the floor of the shower. He peppered her body with kisses on the way down, following the rivulets of water that trickled down her flesh. He placed a hand on her small thigh, and lifted her leg a little.

  Rachel's cunt was surrounded by a tiny patch of downy blonde hair, which she barely had to trim because it was so feathery and fine. In the water, it was nearly invisible, and because she had cooked her skin to a bright red with her hot water, it looked as though her snatch was shaved.

  Josh ran his tongue along the outermost edge of her outer labia, barely touching her. He felt a ripple of pleasure in her body, and so he did it again on the other lip. He repeated this tease, admiring the streams of shower water that dripped from her navel into her engorged red flesh, mixing with her own nectar. Drops of water clung to her clit, tempting him to suck them away.

  But not yet.

  He slid his tongue into the now-silky fold between her outer labia and her clit, and lapped at the honey he had drawn into the fold with his finger. He avoided her clit, saving the best for last. He made a slow circle around the semi-hard edges of her inner labia, and he felt her pushing against his hands to get his tongue inside of her.

  But he resisted.

  Slowly, savoring the quick breathing that was quaking in her abdomen, he traced his tongue up to her clit. He licked the outside, and he felt her thigh and abdomen harden with desire. Then he pulled with his thumb on the small hood that covered her bundle of raw nerves in the center, and flicked his tongue at the center.

  He looked up at her. She had forgotten about her hair, and now had her head pressed against the wall. She looked down at him and watched as he flicked his tongue at her clit, never giving her what he knew she wanted: the slow and deliberate pressure that would bring her to release.

  She placed a hand on his head. “Oh god, Josh...please...”

  Her stomach was moving in waves, and her foot slid on the floor. He pressed upward with his right hand – never mind the searing pain of holding up her weight – and held her steady with his other hand, sliding his thumb into her soaked hole.

  Then, and only then, did he allow her to sink the weight of her pussy into his mouth. She pushed herself against him so that her clit was absorbed by the heat of his mouth, and he obliged her by sucking it and rubbing it with his tongue. He teased her until she was breathing in an almost panicked way, and twisting in his hands, before he began to lap at her clit in steady waves.

  She closed her eyes and pressed her head against the wall as she came closer to coming, and he looked up to watch as her body shook with her orgasm. Her lips parted and she gave a high-pitched gasp, and then a moan. Her juices welled up and covered his mouth. He let the hot liquid of her pussy fill his mouth, tangy and sweet.

  He dropped her leg and rose up to her. She was panting against the wall.

  He kissed her, and then he smiled. She wiped a strand of wet hair away from her face.

  They both knew, from past experience: there was no such thing as stand-up, penetration-sex in the shower.

  “Don't worry,” Josh said. “I know you have to go. You can get me back later.”

  He wanted her to turn down this offer, and invite him for a quick romp in the bed.

  Rachel looked confused for a moment, then wiped her face again.

  Then a cloud of worry came over her face. “Shit. Shit, shit! I'm so late!”

  Josh reached behind her and turned on the shower, and then he stepped out.

  His boxers were soaked, and hard to peel off his aching cock. Rachel was frantic as she showered, got dressed, and kissed him goodbye. He waited for her to leave, sitting on the toilet seat, wrapped from the waist down in a towel.

  And then he went into the shower, and pressed one hand against the wall while he stroked his cock to get some relief.

  What he thought about, though, was not the scene that he had just played out in the shower, as delightful as it was.

  He tried to think about the shower, and real events in his real life, but his mind kept wandering to something else. A different image. An image of Rachel in the shower, holding onto one man's thick, snake-like cock, while another man licked her from head to toe like an ice cream cone. And Rachel herself gasped and moaned, the same way she had in the shower, but not because her husband was making her come.

  No, instead she was gasping because another man was slamming his enormous cock into her, from behind.

  Josh gave a light yell as he came.

  The fantasy seemed suddenly ridiculous (how would three people even fit in the shower?). He stood directly beneath the shower stream.

  As if maybe it would wash the thoughts from his head.

  2: SQUIRREL ATTACK

  “What did it say?”

  Rachel looked at Xavier, leaning her head on her hand so that she could bite on her pinky fingernail. A bad habit, one she had never been able to shake. She did it when she was annoyed.

  She could tell Xavier was amused by her internet “problems,” but it was a different kind of amusement than she felt from Josh. Josh seemed to be amused at her expense, and Xavier somehow managed to convey friendly complicity in his amusement. Without saying as much.

  This disparity kicked up a storm of fury in Rachel's chest. Why couldn't her husband just be more sympathetic, like Xavier, instead of trying to get in her pants?

  The memory of the shower came back to her, though, and she softened. That had been fun. Josh had been experiencing some kind of renewed libido lately, and while she had a vague worry that it was somehow related to her internet escapades, she also wasn't complaining.

  She looked out the window.

  The fury died down and she felt a familiar rush of attraction spread through her chest. It ended, as it always did, pooling deep in her abdomen.

  And deeper still.

  She shifted in her seat.

  The problem was, the feeling began with Josh, but ended with the man sitting next to her.

  “Well? Not that bad, I hope?” Xavier continued. He jerked the jeep too late to avoid a pothole and Rachel's arm jumped from where she was resting it against the window. Loose papers slid from the dash and scattered around the car. Rachel half-heartedly scooped them together.

  “Damn, sorry. You okay?” Xavier said. But he kept right on talking. “Don'
t listen to any of that dumb-ass shit on the internet. Just keep playin' it cool and you'll get where you want to be.”

  His voice was low, almost too low to hear. Smooth like a caress. Exactly the kind of voice that a man like Xavier would have. Dark. Strong.

  Stop it, Rachel.

  Rachel tried to keep her eyes glued to the window, and the scenes outside the vehicle. If she kept her eyes on the outside of the car, she wouldn't let her eyes wander to places inside the car. Places where her eyes shouldn't wander.

  It had already happened, earlier. She had found her eyes drifting, on more than one occasion, almost as if they were not her own eyes and she didn't control them. Drifting over the jeans that Xavier wore, and the way the material folded right where his cock was nestled -

  Stop it, Rachel.

  She concentrated on what she was seeing out the window. They were in a bad part of town now. Not bad-bad: this wasn't really that kind of city. She remembered the advice given to her, at unrelated times and for unrelated incidents, by both a cop and a real estate agent: the cars tell you what kind of neighborhood you're really in. On their way out of the downtown core, the cars had moved from parking structures to streets, the hallmark of creative-class, loft-dwelling millennials. The cars migrated back onto driveways for the blue-collar neighborhoods. They multiplied in number and grew dents and rusted bellies: lower-rung blue collar. Cars became more than five years old: creditless blue collar.

  When they began to disintegrate on the front lawns, the advice was unanimous: watch your shit.

  But they were not here to cover anything of importance that happened in this neighborhood of decaying cars.

  They were here to cover a “gang of squirrels,” who were making it hard for kids to walk to school and reportedly threw objects at people.

  “Is this where you want to be?” she said, without even really thinking about the question before it came out of her mouth.

  She already knew the answer, anyway. Xavier was one of those guys who seemed only to do whatever the hell he wanted, nothing more and nothing less.

  Thinking about something like that almost inevitably led her to think about other things. Bam, bam, bam, in a chain: her mind was right back on his cock, and whether the stereotypes about black men were true. If she reached over and felt the shape of him in her hand, would she be surprised by the size of it?

  “Jesus,” she muttered, cutting off her own thoughts. Xavier threw her a look but ignored her. She hoped he assumed this was uttered as part of her melancholy.

  “I like where I am,” Xavier declared, answering her question about a minute later. He often did this, thinking long and hard about something she asked him.

  He was always so damn spiritual and upbeat. He really meant something like that when he said it. “Thing you gotta do, Ray, is stop giving a shit.”

  Rachel sighed. Partly a sigh of annoyance with herself. Partly a sigh for the way he said her name. She liked that he gave her a nickname. Another palpitation rattled in her chest.

  “Okay, okay. Tell me what they said,” Xavier prodded.

  She looked out the window again, and gave a small shake of her head. She found, though, that she was smiling in spite of herself. For some reason she kind of wanted to tell him.

  “Rachel Elliot has sweet headlights,” he offered.

  She tried not to smile bigger.

  “Rachel Elliot is one fine-ass bitch.” He swooped into an exaggerated black dialect, which he ordinarily had no traces of at all. “Whoo-hee, Rachel Elliot has them thick thighs and I'd eat them up like a bucketful of chicken!”

  Rachel tried to keep from laughing but ended up snorting into her hand and messing up her make-up.

  “All right, all right, I admit it: that was me posting. The chicken one.” He looked over and leaned a little toward her. He lowered his voice to a gravelly rumble. “You know I love me some fried chicken.”

  “Stop it.”

  He smiled and gave it a moment. “Tell me.”

  Rachel snapped the mirror down to check her makeup. Her face, in spite of her bad mood, pleased her when she saw it. She was quite pretty. She liked her dark eyes and her light hair. A natural, if uncommon, combination. She had always secretly liked when her lovers found the same white-blonde hair they had believed to be dyed further down her body, covering her snatch, silky and downy-thin.

  She wrinkled her nose. She took a breath, and then she dove in:

  “Rachel Elliot can lick my ice cream, Rachel Elliot can come see my snake,” she recited. A small hot patch of anger formed on her cheekbone.

  She could see Xavier's mouth open wide next to her, his perfectly white teeth showing. “Lick my ice cream? Pet my snake?” He shook his head. “That was definitely white people. Damn. That's some stupid shit.”

  Rachel couldn't help but smile. Xavier always managed to make her feel better. She tamped down on the rising feelings inside of her.

  Why wasn't Josh any better at consoling her?

  That isn't fair, Rachel, she told herself.

  “Maybe it was, 'I'd lick her ice cream,'” she said, dotting some lip gloss on her lips and trying to distract herself from her own thoughts..

  “Oh that...that's some black folk right there. That's clever. See, that makes sense. Because of your pointy feet, and how your hair is all white so it kinda looks like you're bald. You know?”

  Rachel laughed in spite of herself.

  “Okay. Cut out the Will Smith act.”

  “What do you have against that man?”

  Rachel shook her head, smiling, and started looking over her notes. It was an old joke between them.

  “Everybody likes Will Smith,” he went on.

  Rachel looked up. They were almost there. “Okay so...171 Montenegro Avenue, you got this?” Xavier was a die-hard non-user of GPS, so it was turned off and they were relying, as they always did, on old-fashioned maps.

  Xavier opened his mouth to make a joke, and then thought better of it and laughed instead. He shook his head. “Pet my snake, huh?”

  Rachel groaned.

  As if he were going to a friend's house and drove there all the time, Xavier slowed halfway down the block and parked the car in front of a ramshackle bungalow with a 17 dangling from the chipped brick on the front porch. He put the van in park and turned it off.

  “Look,” he said, and Rachel felt something twist inside of her as his voice changed to a more serious tone. She closed her eyes briefly to remind herself of her husband. She found her wedding band with the tip of her thumb and gave it a twist.

  “You gotta just blow all that shit off, for real. It sucks, but it isn't like you're the first pretty girl on the news everybody's been getting...more than the news out of.”

  There was something about Xavier's pragmatism and sensitivity, balanced very carefully, that Rachel really liked. She felt a pang, both of longing and guilt, as she compared Xavier to her husband again. She wished Josh had this...undefinable charisma.

  Maybe because Xavier wasn't trying to get in her pants.

  The thought disappointed her a little.

  Or maybe he was, and this was all part of the ploy.

  She flushed a little.

  She looked over at him. He was unwrapping a piece of gum.

  He held it out to her. Always the same joke, offering her a stick of gum right before she went on camera. She shook her head.

  He popped it in his mouth. Rachel let her eyes linger on his lips. Dark, big, very soft and yet with a certain kind of hardness in them. His neatly trimmed beard, that would be rough like sandpaper against her inner thigh while he -

  She cut herself off again, opened the door, and hopped out.

  The neighborhood was Hispanic, so neither one of them fit in very well. Cold glares began to gravitate toward them from the porches where quite a few people were sitting.

  “You got my back right?” Xavier joked, as he came around the front of the car.

  He was at least six and a half feet
tall, and his physique was lean but imposing. Underneath his plain shirts and jeans, an athlete's build rippled. Rachel definitely felt better having Xavier as a cameraman in a neighborhood like this one, than say, Harry, who was a full foot shorter, one hundred pounds lighter, and more nervous than a lab rat.

  Xavier leaned on the hood of the van and turned his head around a full 180 degrees. He seemed to be broadcasting a message. Sort of a “don't-fuck-with-me” glower.

  Rachel turned away and closed her eyes. She knew she shouldn't be feeling...what was she feeling? Hotted up? She shouldn't be feeling hotted up by such an apelike display of macho behavior.

  But low in her torso, something was stirred up by it.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let's talk squirrels.”

  Xavier's message to the neighborhood was complete. When his gaze fell on Rachel it transformed completely, softening back to his natural, friendly demeanor.

  He shook his head. “This is gonna be a good one. I can feel it.” He winked.

  Rachel savored the half-second that Xavier's eyes walked down her body. She knew he wasn't doing anything unusually lewd.

  He was married, she reminded herself.

  And his wife was, apparently, gorgeous.

  And I am married, she emphasized, with another current of guilt in her veins for thinking of that second, rather than first. And I love my husband.

  But these gentle reminders to herself didn't stop her heart from beating faster, or her skin from tingling.

  His eyes stopped on her shoes. “Ell-i-ot,” he said, in a sing-song voice. “That is more like it. Gonna have an easy day today. Helpin' an old man out.”

  Because Xavier was so tall, she had chosen her highest heels. That way, he didn't have to crouch the whole time he was filming her.

  Or not as much, anyway.

  Rachel wrinkled her nose. She wasn't even aware that she did this, most of the time. Or aware that it had the unfortunate effect of exacerbating her cuteness. It was an admonition for herself, and a way to cover the wave of embarrassment that was passing through her at that moment, for thinking the thoughts she was thinking.