What Caroline Wants

by Amanda Abbott

  Caroline readjusted, scooting up so her back rested against the headboard, and took a sip of the coffee, letting herself enjoy it for a moment. Her head still pounded from the wine, but the caffeine helped. “I don’t know how I’m going to face Piper again. I mean, she confessed all this extremely personal stuff about her sexual journey, the one she’s been on for the past nine years, and I jump in the first moment I can. I acted like a total slutty whore harlot. I don’t care if ‘harlot’ isn’t in vogue, it totally describes my actions last night.” She leaned back and closed her eyes.

  “Care, she was as drunk as you were, and you’re not even close to being a whore.” He sat on the edge of the bed again, resting his hand on her thigh through the covers. “I’m surprised that’s where your brain is at. There won’t be any issues between the two of you once you work it out. And you can’t forget that she’s done this kind of thing on a semiregular basis for a long time. You showed one breast for about thirty seconds. Then she was gone.”

  “Are you sure she left…for the rest of it?”

  “I’m positive or I wouldn’t have continued.”

  Caroline opened her eyes and sighed, taking another drink of her coffee before she set the cup on her bedside table and snuggled back down under the covers. “That’s a huge relief. I wasn’t sure when she left. I sort of…lost track of everything. Especially after that orgasm. Holy crap, Jason. That was intense.” She grinned up at her handsome husband. “It was so good, it was almost painful. Your cock was amazing. The rest of the night was hazier, but that…that was crystal clear.”

  “It was ridiculously good.” Jace nodded. “You gripped me hard and made me lose control of myself instantly.” He cleared his throat and moved his hand to his pants to readjust himself. “Now I’m going to have to take my leave while I still can and try to get some work done, which will be incredibly difficult because of the large erection you just gave me by saying the word cock.”

  “Have fun with that.” Caroline chuckled as her husband rose from the bed. “I’m going to stay here and try to recover from my shame. My mother would be so very proud of me right now.”

  “Babe, you’re twenty-six-years old,” Jace said as he made his way to the door. “We’ve been happily married for five years. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed about. What we did was good, consensual fun.”

  “That’s what she said,” Caroline grumbled. “And I’m almost twenty-seven! Oh, and can you please bring me my phone when you get a chance?” she called to his retreating back. “I left it in my office last night. I’ve got to check in with the maintenance people for the website.” She rolled over. “I can’t believe I slept so late.”

  * * *

  I’M FINE, REALLY. I PROMISE. JUST TIRED. WINE HEADACHES ARE TREACHEROUS.

  Caroline hit send. Her phone had been blown up with texts from Piper asking if they were still friends and if Caroline was okay.

  I DON’T BELIEVE U. I’M COMING OVER TONIGHT TO TALK.

  Caroline groaned as she began to text back.

  NOT TONIGHT. I’M NOT MAKING IT OUT OF BED TODAY AND JACE IS HOME.

  Piper replied.

  FINE, THEN TOMORROW.

  Caroline bit her lip.

  OKAY. LET’S DO LUNCH AGAIN. BUT NO WINE THIS TIME.

  It took a few seconds for her to hit send, but there was no way she was going to avoid her best friend for long. She might as well get it over with.

  I’LL BRING ICE CREAM. XO

  Caroline tossed her phone on top of the covers and rolled onto her side. She’d showered, but then crawled right back into bed. The ibuprofen and caffeine had been lifesavers, but they had only taken the edge off.

  “You can’t hide in here all day,” Jace said, entering the room a few minutes later. “You’re going to have to reenter society at some point.”

  Jace wore a dark T-shirt and jeans. He stopped just inside the doorway, crossing his arms, grinning at her like he thought her recoup day in bed was hysterical. His dark hair was in need of a trim, curling close to the collar, but he still took her breath away, as usual. He went to the gym regularly, even though he hadn’t played football in years, and it showed. He looked amazing. They’d gotten married straight out of college, and she hadn’t regretted a single day since.

  Not even last night.

  But for them to go further than that would be crazy. Last night had played out like a bad episode of reality TV. Doing anything more would ruin the best thing she’d ever done—marry the man who was now gazing at her curiously from the doorway because she hadn’t answered him yet.

  She yawned. “I’ll come out…eventually. But I want to tell you that I made a mistake.” She directed the confession more into the covers than to her husband, but it still counted. “I promise it won’t happen again. I’ve been thinking about nothing else all day, and I’m not going to sit here and blame the wine, but I can tell you that after a four-hour wine-fueled chat with Piper about adventurous sex, I felt quite fearless. The alcohol played its role facilitating everything nicely, but I’m not planning on a repeat performance.”

  “There’s no need for an apology. And for the record, I prefer you fearless.” Jace came to the edge of the bed. “I mean it. I know you’re deep in the wallowing phase of your guilt now, but what we did last night was no big deal to me.” He sat on the bed. “Plus, it led to some of the best orgasms either of us has had in years. I don’t regret any of it. I’ve said this a million times, but you know how I feel about sex. It should be celebrated and carnal. Sex does not make a relationship. Love does. What we do for fun doesn’t define who we are as a couple.”

  “I agree,” she said. “Those were unbelievable orgasms. But why do you think these last few times have been the best sex we’ve had in years? We both enjoy making love. We do it enough. We’re open to experimentation. I’ve always considered us happy and content. Why did suddenly finding out about our friends’ sex lives tip the scales so much?”

  Jace shrugged. “I have no idea. It’s exciting? Different? I think most married couples fall into a routine, and we’re no different. We might use a different toy or watch a different movie, but it’s essentially the same formula. It’s fun, make no mistake, but still more of the same.” He grinned. “But Michael and Piper gave us a tantalizing sneak peek into something new. That’s titillating, at least for me.”

  “That’s true, it’s new all right,” she conceded, “but if we allow ourselves to fall into the trap of needing more and more outside stimulation, we could slip down a rabbit hole and never recover. That’s what scares me. I don’t want to lose us.” Caroline gestured between them. “You are much too important to me. I love us and what we’ve built together.”

  “Agreed.” Jace drew Caroline up into his arms, and she slid her arms around his neck. “Let’s use what we just went through as a stepping stone. Now we know we like more spice. I’ll head to the specialty store.” He drew back and winked. “I’ll treat it like a treasure hunt and try to find something that sparks us just as much as discovering our neighbors have a deep, dark, sexy secret.”

  Caroline laughed, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder. “You do that. But please remember, no whips or chains.” They’d had one foray into that venue. It had been awful and ended in a huge fight.

  Jace placed a kiss on her forehead. “I won’t forget. Maybe Michael will have some good suggestions.”

  “Why in the world would you ask Michael for suggestions?” Caroline pulled out of Jace’s arms completely, alarmed.

  Her husband reached into his back pocket for his phone. “Because he invited me to have lunch with him tomorrow.” He chuckled at her stunned expression, so she clocked him in the arm. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to share any details about our sex life with him. This is what he said.” Jace read from his phone: “‘Piper is freaking out. Told her I’d help. Can you do lunch tomorrow at noon?’” Jace put the phone down. “I’ll just sit there and listen to what he has to say, and then I’ll bring home all
the gory details. My guess is we’ll be having tantric sex five minutes after I walk through the back door.”

  He stood up, still chuckling at her expression as he pocketed his phone.

  “I don’t care if they are our best friends, I don’t want you to share anything personal with him,” Caroline insisted. “I’ve already crossed those lines with Piper, and it landed me in bed with a massive hangover.”

  “I promise I’ll only share the juiciest tidbits.” Jace grinned. “Ones that will be sure to make Michael hot under the collar.”

  “You’re awful, Jason Stratton!” Caroline called to her husband as he exited the bedroom. “I’m telling you right now, I’m not having sex with you tomorrow! And maybe not even the next day! And if you say one, thin word about us to Michael, I won’t sleep with you for a month!”

  4

  __________________________

  ____________

  Jason sat back in his chair. He needed another scotch. His lowball was empty, so he swirled the ice around, listening to it clink against the glass as he checked his watch. It was only ten minutes later than the last time he’d checked, which had been one o’clock. It was too early in the day for more than one scotch, but damn, this conversation needed more alcohol. “So you’re telling me your wife likes to watch you with other women?” he asked Michael for the second time, sitting forward in his chair to make sure he heard the answer correctly.

  “You don’t have to look so stunned. It’s not that crazy.” Michael grinned, his second Jack and Coke in hand. “Every person has their ‘thing’—and I know you know what I’m talking about. That thing that turns them on the most, presses their buttons, makes them tick, or whatever. Piper loves me and I love her, there’s no doubt about it. We’re in a committed relationship. She just happens to get excited watching me have sex with someone else. It’s taken us a while, but we’ve both come to accept it for what it is.” He leaned over the table, his voice low. “And that’s the reason we ended up on the road we’re on in the first place—her not me.”

  “How do you even start something like that? How in the hell did she approach you with the news she wanted to swing?” Jace set his glass on the table. It came down a little harder than he’d anticipated.

  “I told you, we don’t swing. It’s not like that. We follow rules. Everything is out in the open, no sneaking around. No separate bedrooms. No random keys. There are no expectations, no pressure to perform. We can get up and leave anytime we want to, and we have. If we’re not feeling it, we don’t push it.” He shrugged and took another sip of his drink.

  “Does she, you know”—Jace kept his voice to a whisper—“do it with other guys in front of you?” He tried to keep the astonishment out of his voice. Michael hadn’t covered this part in his backyard confessional the other night. Jace didn’t know if he could watch Caroline do something like that.

  “Piper’s only done it once, but she didn’t like it, and it didn’t do anything for me either. So there hasn’t been a repeat.”

  “How did she handle the aftereffects of having sex with someone else if she didn’t like it? There had to be consequences.” His wife suffered guilt in some form almost daily. It was the way she was wired. She was a worrier. If she were to do something like this, she might not be able to recover from it.

  “It was hard,” Michael told him. “I’m not going to lie. After she did it, we didn’t have any extracurricular activity for an entire year. I told her almost every single day that I loved her and that I was fine with what happened. But it took her that long to forgive herself.”

  Jace blew out a breath. “Man, I’m not sure we’re cut out for that kind of playtime. Caroline carries a lot of inhibitions around with her. She was indoctrinated at a young age to feel guilty about breaking any rule, and as much as I try to convince her otherwise, it always seems to surface at some point.”

  “You don’t have to go all-out extracurricular,” Michael said. “If you want to have great sex with your wife, my advice is to figure out what makes her tick the most and do it. Even if it’s something kinkier than shit. After Piper and I go on one of our outside dates, we have explosive sex for months afterward just thinking and talking about it.” He leaned in until he was only a foot away from Jace, his voice so low Jace had to move forward to hear it. “Listen, it’s not about doing it with another woman or cheating on my wife. It’s about bringing it home for us. If it was only about me wanting to fuck someone outside my marriage, I wouldn’t bring Piper along. It’s as simple as that.”

  Nothing they’d talked about thus far sounded simple.

  “Can I ask you how Piper discovered that her thing was watching you with another woman?” Jace asked. “That can’t be an easy thing to find out.”

  Michael shrugged. “It evolved over a period of time. We’d been married about a year, and our sex life started to lag. It was still fun, but it’d lost some of its spark. Around Christmastime, we were at a party and a pretty blonde started chatting me up, rubbing her tits against my arm every chance she got. I didn’t pay much attention to her. In fact, I thought it was kind of amusing in a hard-up sort of way.”

  Jason knew Michael had been a player before he’d met Piper. The man still attracted attention everywhere he went. Their waitress today had even been flustered around him. Michael could’ve been a male model, he was that good-looking. But instead of modeling, he’d worked his ass off and paid his own way through law school after growing up in a small town in Iowa. Michael had confessed to Jace a long time ago that the moment Piper had walked into his office, his life had changed. Piper was everything he’d wanted in a woman for reasons even he didn’t understand, and it seemed their bond was still strong.

  Michael set his drink down. “So this chick gets a little ballsier, and she sets her hand on my thigh, and I look up and spot Piper staring at us from across the room. I immediately make a move to break away from the blonde so I can explain that nothing was going on. But as I start to move away, I catch Piper’s eye, and she slowly shakes her head no. And her face…” Michael closed his eyes for a moment. “Her face was full of hot lust, her eyes hooded. I went from zero to hard in a second flat—like, rock hard, as in I’ve never been more primed to fuck my wife senseless. I followed Piper’s lead and let this girl continue to rub up against me, pretending I was into it, while maintaining eye contact with Piper the entire time. It was public foreplay at its best. I was hard for hours. By the time Piper and I left, we were both so wound up we fucked like we never had before. It was animalistic. After that, we did the same thing at all the parties we attended. Each time, we let it go a little further. We’d plot out what we were in the mood to do on the way over. It started with another woman touching me, but then I started reciprocating. Just small caresses here and there, a hand lingering on an arm, or a brush of my knuckles against a breast, and that got Piper even more jazzed up.” He picked up his drink and finished it off. Jason waited for him to continue, his mind racing with all the information. “Then the game changed. We attended a work event, and another couple noticed what we were doing, likely because Piper and I always maintain eye contact and small gestures during the interactions. They invited us over for dinner, and there you have it. Our extracurricular sex life was born.”

  Jace scrubbed a hand over his face.

  He wasn’t going to tell Michael that he and Caroline had fucked like rabbits the other night after Michael had revealed their sex secrets, revved up even more because they’d witnessed Michael kiss Piper roughly against the side of the garage. It was the same kind of thing. “How long was it from the first blonde to the dinner invite?”

  “About a year and a half.”

  “So you’d been fondling women at parties for over a year before you decided to take it to the next level?” Jace pondered ordering another drink to get him through the rest of lunch.

  “Pretty much. Each time we went to a party, we’d up the ante. This was the natural progression, if you ask me. But going to E
mma and Pete’s is a much safer choice, however.”

  “Safer?”

  “Yeah, we know them. Everyone is checked out. No diseases, no freak-outs, and no risk of reenacting Fatal Attraction. If we’d gone to the next level on our own, and I screwed some random woman in a bedroom at a party, it could’ve led to major drama. This is controlled chaos. And I get that you’re curious, Jace”—Michael placed an arm on the table—“and I don’t mind sharing. Piper and I are not ashamed of what we do. But your interest sounds like it’s more than just a casual curiosity. Piper told me about what happened in the kitchen the other day, and by the way, thanks for that.” He winked. “She was hot and ready to go when I came home. But she thinks Caroline might have some hidden fetishes that you might need to help her uncover.”

  “Fetishes? I wouldn’t go that far.” Jace chuckled at the thought of his proper wife having strange fetishes. “But she was extremely turned on by what Piper told her, which did surprise me. We’ve been married for five years, together for nine, and that’s longer than when you told me your sex life went stale. I’m not saying that Care and I are stale, but having you spill your story at the barbecue made us realize we could start to think about sex differently. So we’ve been talking about it. The fact that Piper and you seem to have everything sorted out proves that different is possible. It makes me think we could venture into experimentation down the road—but, then again, we may never go there. It would take a lot to get Caroline ready to take such a big plunge, so it’s likely a moot point.”

  Michael raised an eyebrow. “If your wife likes watching others or having them watch her, there’s nothing wrong with that, you know. And if that’s the case, going back to a rote sex life after learning what’s out there might be impossible. Trust me, your wife is going to crave the next level, and then the next. If you try to go back to ‘normal’ in the bedroom, your sex life could shrink to nothing, and she’ll become resentful and she won’t even know why.”