She paused, holding him there with that most sensitive spot on the underside of his glans resting against her pouting lower lip.
“Tell me about it afterwards, darling. Tell me all about it, okay?”
§
Sites like Facebook are so innocently inviting, sometimes drawing people together without them even realizing what’s happening. But just as in any social situation, there’s always a tipping point, a line that, once crossed, everyone concerned knows that it was their choice.
Sometimes it’s hard to see exactly where that line falls, though.
Was it that point three years ago, when Christina had paused with the pointer over the ‘Unfriend’ option on Taylor’s profile and not followed through? When she had thought to herself, Well really, what’s the harm in staying friends?
Was it that sometimes she allowed herself to click through on his status as it appeared in her feed, following the story of his life as it unfolded at one remove? That sometimes she ‘Liked’ or even commented?
Or was it more recently, when he’d messaged her and she had replied? If the line hadn’t already been crossed, then maybe this was the moment.
Surely there was no harm in staying in touch, though. Taylor was a nice guy. Things just hadn’t worked for them. They’d been young and life had pulled them in different directions. In reality, Taylor had only ever been a ‘what might have been’ for Christina. Before much time had passed, they’d both been married to other people, so it clearly hadn’t been that big a thing.
And she’d checked with Adam, after all. Looking up at her husband with her hands wrapped around his dick, she’d made sure he was okay with her replying to Adam’s suggestion that they meet up, for old times’ sake.
She’d known by then, and so, too, had Adam: if she met up with Taylor again, there was every chance that one thing would lead to another.
§
“Still a skinny latte?”
They stood at the counter, uncertain whether to hug or kiss so the moment had slipped past and now they just stood an awkward distance apart and Christina let her eyes dance across the display of cakes.
Why did she feel like this, all of a sudden? Her skin was burning – everyone must be able to see – and she didn’t know what to do with herself.
Standing there in the queue at a coffee shop... seeing him, just feeling his presence at her side even though they hadn’t touched, and she knew beyond doubt that none of the old chemistry had died.
He’d barely changed. Still broad-shouldered and fit, still that strong, square jaw, flawless ebony skin and dark eyes you could lose yourself in forever. His head was shaved smooth these days, but other than that he was the same.
“You want to grab that table?”
He’d leaned in close to say that, his breath hot on her ear.
God, but she felt so schoolgirlish all of a sudden!
She nodded, ducked away, and went to sit. Wondering all the time if his eyes had followed her as she moved away, wandering down her back to her slender waist and then the spread of her ass. To the wiggle in her walk, the long legs emerging from that black pencil-skirt, slit deeply at the back.
She sat, her heart racing.
She had to get a grip. She stared out of the window, as crowds of shoppers bustled past, and concentrated on slowing her breathing. They were meeting for coffee, that was all. Old times.
She didn’t notice his approach, nothing until he reached across and put her cup before her, then lowered himself into the seat opposite.
“So how’re things?” she said.
“Much better now that I’m here with you,” he said.
“Still the cheesy lines, I see.” And yet somehow Taylor had always been able to get away with those lines: he could say something like that and she knew he really meant it. Just at this moment, at least, things really were good.
“Oh, you know,” he went on. “I’m sure you’ve picked up a lot of it on Facebook.”
His statuses never gave away much, which to Christina was the biggest giveaway of all.
Sure, some people spend all day telling the virtual world how much their life sucked, but there was a big difference between the very public complainers and those who simply stopped saying how good things were. The ones where you can see the trend if you go back through their timelines: the happy, excited statuses from some time before. The comments from a person giddy with their life. And then those statuses tailing off, becoming bland statements that gave nothing away.
That kind of thing was easy to overlook in all the social media noise, but sometimes...
“Olivia?”
He raised an eyebrow. “You cut straight to it, don’t you?” he said.
“Sorry, I just, you know, leap in.”
“You never used to be so direct.” He smiled as he said this: joking, not complaining.
She shrugged. “I guess I know what I want these days.” She dipped her head to take a sip of her coffee, peering up at him over the rim, suddenly visualizing the last time she’d peered up at a man, in very different circumstances.
“I... Yes. Olivia. Things have been better there. You know how it is.”
She took another sip. What was she doing here? She knew Taylor’s life had not been so smooth recently. Was she really going to take advantage of that, though? It had seemed so straightforward when she told her husband, but now... Now it just seemed selfish and shallow.
“You want to talk about it?”
He tipped his head on one side. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I’m not sure what I want.”
They would talk. She would do the friend thing. Anything else suddenly seemed seedy.
“If talking would help, then fire away,” she told him. “Or if just laughing together over Facebook photos of the old gang would work better, I’m equally game.”
He smiled at that. “Did you see Helena the other day? Those photos from New York?”
§
That was all it took to move past the initial awkwardness. They talked about old friends. They found photos on their phones and talked and laughed some more. It seemed odd to think of their shared past as some kind of neutral territory, but looking at those old photos there were no undercurrents, no flirting. College days, old friends, that first year in the city when everyone had stayed on and been even closer than when they were at college.
Although she’d hate to admit it, this was a different kind of friendship to the one she shared with her husband. Adam had shown Christina the world, and introduced her to so many fine and beautiful things. He was intellectual and articulate, the perfect, most attentive, companion. But he was never the kind of man to spend his time flicking through embarrassing photos online, the kind of man content with teasing, witty banter and innocent digs.
Christina went for more coffee and when she came back Taylor was staring at another photo, distracted for a moment.
“What’s that one?” she said, slipping back into her chair, and he looked up guiltily.
“I... Oh, just skipping through some old pics,” he said dismissively, but she had seen it by then, and suddenly there were undercurrents again, very different ones.
“Let me see,” she said. “It’s fine.”
He turned his phone and there was a smiling selfie of him cheek to cheek with a beautiful young woman with latte skin and sleek, straight hair.
Olivia.
“She’s beautiful,” said Christina, handing the phone back and smiling.
Taylor nodded. “She is,” he said.
That look on his face was what finally cut through the pretence.
It was what forced her to acknowledge that she had come here to seduce him, or to give herself up to his seduction, depending on how things played out. It was what she’d talked about with Adam, what Adam wanted to hear.
But that picture... That look on Taylor’s face.
“You have to work things out,” she said now. “You can’t give up yet, babe.”
She stood
, smoothed her skirt down, and then finally met those smoldering dark eyes. “It’s been lovely,” she said. “But this was a mistake. I don’t want to be the person who makes things worse. I don’t want to be that woman.”
She turned, walked away from the table and out into the street.
§
It was the right thing, walking away.
From the moment she’d seen him stepping into that coffee shop she’d known the chemistry was still there. She’d seen the look in his eye, too – a look to match the flirty comments. She wasn’t the only one who had more than just a catch-up in mind. If she’d stayed a moment longer, it might have been too late.
She’d agreed with her husband that she was going to explore her sexual desires, but she had no wish to explore being the woman who finally ended Taylor’s marriage.
The post-work rush had eased a little now, and finally she paused, took a breath, made herself relax.
She was good. Everything was fine.
She would just get a cab and head for home.
She spotted one almost straight away, raised a hand to hail it, and immediately it swung over for her.
She leaned down to the window and said, “I just need to get to...” and then her words tailed away.
He was there, in the back, looking out at her. “Get in,” he said. “Please?”
§
“Let’s just go for a drink,” he said, twisting in his seat to face her as the cab pulled out into the traffic. “I couldn’t just leave things like that. A drink for old times, okay?”
She opened her mouth to speak, then paused, and finally she said, “Okay. A drink. There’s no harm in a drink, is there?”
Minutes later, Christina sat at a table by a window that overlooked the river while Taylor went to the bar for drinks. He came back with a beer for himself, and a gin and tonic for her.
“That picture,” he said, with no preamble. “I took it two years ago. We hadn’t been married a year yet. We had some good times.” A pause, then: “Do you think it was a mistake to get married so quickly? Olivia and I had only been together for four months. We knew each other before that, but, you know...”
“Adam and I were only together for a couple of months before we upped and got wed. It just seemed right.”
“And are you happy?”
“Totally.”
He looked down, away. Disappointed?
“He couldn’t make me happier,” she went on. “He trusts me totally. I tell him everything that I do.”
Eye contact. Did he understand what she was saying? For all that he often talked in cheesy one-liners, Taylor had always had a sharp eye for subtext.
“‘Everything’?”
The conversation wasn’t supposed to be going in this direction. This was supposed to be a drink for old times’ sake and yet it was back to the question of whether he was seducing her or vice versa. This was wrong. She shouldn’t be doing this.
“And does he like it when you do that?”
She nodded, head tipped down so that she was peering up at him through her lashes. Adam always said that was her perfect hooker look: a combination of shy innocence and very adult seductress.
Taylor shifted position in his seat, then, and his shin came to brush against hers, then stay there, pressing.
“That’s the first time we’ve touched in three years,” she said, then moved her leg away.
“Sorry, I...”
“I’ll have to tell Adam.” Again: that double meaning. Tell Adam that their shins had briefly pressed under a table in a public place? Or something else, something more?
“Do you play around?” she asked now. “With things being shaky at home, I mean.” She’d always thought he must be a player. A guy with such immediate charm, who looked as if he’d just stepped out of the pages of a fashion shoot in a glossy magazine. It would hardly be difficult for a guy like Taylor.
“No,” he said. “Not once. I never have. Until...”
It was Christina’s turn to raise an eyebrow.
He met her look, held it, then glanced away.
“You’re the only one,” he said, looking up again. “The only one who could ever make me feel like this. I’m a confident guy. Not uncertain. Not fearful of what people might think. But you... you make me feel that way.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“It’s a dangerous thing.”
“So it’s a good thing, then?”
His leg pressed again, and now she pressed back. Side by side, the soft flesh of her calf pressing against his.
She pulled away.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” She stared out of the window at the river. “So when did you decide you were going to talk me into bed? When you suggested we meet up? Before that, even? Or was this really an innocent idea and it’s only occurred to you while we’ve been talking?”
“Does it make any difference?”
He wasn’t going to deny it, then.
“I don’t want to do anything stupid,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt anybody or cause any damage.”
“So when did you decide you were going to seduce me?”
She looked at him, those big dark eyes, still trying to deny the inevitability of this.
“Oh,” she said, “on and off for the past three years, I’d say.”
§
“If we’re going to do this we need some rules.”
“What kind of rules?” he asked.
“Ground rules.”
“Sounds very formal.”
“Take it or leave it.”
“I was suckered as soon as I laid eyes on you a little over an hour ago. You had me from the start. So what are the rules?”
She sat back in her chair, and his eyes automatically fell to the swell of her breasts. She’d come to meet him straight from work, and was wearing a light jacket and a prim white blouse, a couple of buttons undone. She sat forward, and his eyes remained on her cleavage for a moment before flitting upwards.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” she said. “I don’t want to end up being used as an argument in any divorce proceedings if it comes to that. I’m not looking for romance or love, and anything we do tonight has to be a no commitments thing. A one-off. I like you, Taylor, but I’m not your answer, okay?”
“So what next?”
“We could get another drink,” she said. “Carry on chatting about old times, and maybe talk about some of the shit in your life if that would be a good thing.”
“Or?”
“Or I know a place we could go and get a room and you could fuck my brains out. All night. You can have me any way you like, do anything you want, have me do anything you want. I’d be yours to use and abuse. All on one condition.”
He was sold already. Right then he would have agreed to anything, and the realization of that sent a surge through her body... excitement? Power? Anticipation? All of those and more.
“The condition is that after tonight you go back to Olivia and work things out. Think about what you want and whether the two of you want it together or not. Think about what she wants. Fuck me rigid and then go home and get your shit together, that’s the deal.”
§
They took another cab out to Selena’s place.
In the back seat it was a return to that awkwardness. Should they hold hands? Should their thighs press? Should it be no-holds-barred by now, hands everywhere and more...?
And so they sat, a polite space between them.
“Are you going to tell me what you’d like to do?” Christina asked, in an easy conversational tone.
The cab driver glanced up at his mirror and she held his eye contact.
“Are you going to fuck me as soon as the door is closed?” Still that eye contact with the driver, even as she addressed Taylor. “Are you going to do that thing you do where you take me from behind? Where I’m pressed up against a wall and your arm is round my waist, your hand cupping me, and every tim
e you thrust that movement and the cupping hand lift me off the floor a little?”
The driver coughed, looked away, looked back, and Christina winked.
Taylor was just gazing at her. “You were never like this before,” he said.
“You don’t like it?”
“I love it. I’d always thought there was something like this clamped down inside you.”
“Like what? Are you saying I’ve released my inner whore?” As she spoke, she reached across and dragged a fingernail up his thigh. He pushed up, sucking air in sharply.
He was right. She’d always been like this, but it had taken Adam to free her up to be who she wanted to be, who she really was.
It must be a bit of a shock to Taylor now. He’d thought he’d known her, back then, but he’d only ever scratched at the surface. He could only ever have guessed at what she was really like.
She leaned across, and her knuckles brushed against his hardness, lingered. “You want me to suck your dick right now?” She turned her hand so that her palm was against the straining fabric of his pants.
And in the mirror: the driver’s eyes.
She started to rock her hand back and forth.
The cab slowed, then, and pulled in to the side of the road. The driver turned, taking in the view of Christina leaning across, and rubbing Taylor’s dick through his pants. “You want me to go around the block a few more times?” the driver said. “We’ve already made a few circuits – a few more wouldn’t do any harm.”
§
They paid the driver and climbed out, Taylor struggling to adjust the hang of his clothes.
“Relax, babe,” said Christina. “We’re there now.”
They stood looking up the length of a lawned garden to a town house, a big pine tree by the door.
Christina had only been here a few times before, but the owners, Selena and Martin, had become good friends in no time. She’d texted ahead and got the okay before they got the cab.
“What place is this?” asked Taylor. He must have expected a hotel, she thought, not a nondescript house like this.
“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s a friend’s place. They’re expecting us. They’re very discreet.”
The Swingers' Club Boxed Set: All eight cuckoldry and swinging stories in one volume Page 9