by Selena Kitt
“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “Trying to come up with something.” And just like that, she admitted it to him, that there was a problem.
“Yes, I’m sure you have. And please, don’t take this as a criticism. But have you been open to even your own ideas?”
The anger crept back in. This wasn’t going in the direction Melissa expected. Was he going to blame her? “What do you mean? I’ve suggested lots of things.”
“I’m sorry, I told you it wasn’t a criticism.” Richard’s voice was gentle. “Just one example. I suggested you go to your reunion. You didn’t seem to give it serious consideration.”
The reunion? Is that all Richard could come up with after thinking about their problem all week?
She sighed. “I told you, it wouldn’t be fun without you.”
“How do you know? You’ve done other things without me. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“It’s not the same as going to the gym or something.” Melissa felt his gaze on her.
“You don’t mean you are embarrassed to go to a reunion without a man? That’s not like you.”
“No, I don’t care about that.” She let out a little laugh. “Okay, maybe just a bit. And I want to show you off. Let some of my college girlfriends see how good I made out.”
“Thanks. I think.” But she heard the smile in his voice.
They lay there for a while. Melissa was trying to be open minded, considering what a reunion trip would be like. She could talk Julie into going. And there were a few classmates she hadn’t seen that would be fun to catch up with. . .
“Maybe Marcus will be there.” Richard’s voice, casual, coming out of the darkness.
“What? What makes you ask that?” Melissa was stunned, why of all people would he bring up Marcus?
“Oh, I don’t know. You always talked about him in a special way.”
“What are you talking about? I’ve hardly mentioned him, and it was only when you were probing me about my past boyfriends.” Melissa was frantically trying to remember what she had told Richard about Marcus. They had never even met.
“You know that always interested me. Not just the boyfriends, but, well, your experiences.”
“I don’t like to talk about that. Just as I don’t want to know about your experiences, as you put it. That was before. Before us.”
“I know. But—you’ve said it yourself, different things for different people, especially when it comes to what is—exciting.”
“I was talking about us trying new things, together.”
“I know, I do listen. I’m just saying that I find it exciting, that’s all.”
Melissa bit her lip. He was back to that again. She found it incomprehensible that Richard didn’t get excited when she had him in her mouth, but would be excited by her talking about her past sexual experiences. He had asked her about them more than once, but she never thought it was arousing for him, she thought he was just teasing, asking for details, what she had done, how often.
She wanted to say, “I don’t think about Marcus anymore,” but she was afraid if she did her voice would crack, and Richard would know the truth for sure. “You know I dated a few guys in college. Why did you pick Marcus to ask about?”
Richard rolled over to his side, his arm on her thigh. “You always got this—sound in your voice when you talked about him. And actually, when you didn’t. You told me less about him than anyone, but for some reason I thought it was because he meant more to you, not less.”
“He didn’t mean—.” She was going to say, “He didn’t mean anything,” but of course that wasn’t true. Instead she said, “He just isn’t important to me now, you are.” But though it was Richard’s hand on her leg, her mind was now filled with Marcus. “Besides,” she said, not really thinking about what she was leading up to, “he probably won’t be there anyway, he hates those things as much as you do.”
“Aha! So you have thought about him!” Richard’s voice was hard to read; she wasn’t sure if he was reproving.
Melissa pushed his hand away. “Stop it.” She wasn’t mad, but she hoped he wouldn’t ask any more questions about what she had been thinking. How on earth could she honestly answer that?
Luckily he didn’t go there, because she would have froze up. “Have you seen him since graduation?” Richard asked, his voice even, making it clear to her that he was not accusing her of anything.
She was relieved, she didn’t know why, she had nothing to hide, but what if Richard had asked her—what if he was going to ask her—exactly how she thought about Marcus? Would he even think to ask her if she fantasized about him? It would be so unlike Richard, and yet, so was his interest in her past love affairs. And his new infatuation with the idea of her with another man.
It was one thing to admit generally to having a fantasy. It was something totally different to share the specifics, especially if the fantasies were about a real person. That would be even harder than telling him about her other fantasies, the more outlandish ones. Or at least the ones Richard would certainly think of as outlandish.
“I haven’t seen Marcus since graduation. We exchanged a few emails soon after that.” She didn’t mention that she suspected Marcus had wanted to hook up. He hadn’t come right out and wrote that, he was too cool for that, but she knew what he was after. But that was years ago. He’d probably forgotten all about Melissa by now.
Richard didn’t say anything, and mostly to break the silence she added, “He did call me once, right after he heard we got engaged. To congratulate me.”
“Was that awkward?”
“Why should it have been? Our relationship was in the past.”
“Well, it hadn’t been that long, just a few years.” Richard paused. “Why didn’t you end up with him?”
Melissa tried to change the subject, she had to get the conversation off of Marcus, afraid of where it still might lead. It was hard just saying his name out loud in front of Richard. “Probably for the same reason you didn’t end up with any of your past girlfriends. It just wasn’t the right match.”
“Girlfriends? I didn’t have any girlfriends before you.” Richard’s voice was serious, but she knew that tone, his dry sense of humor, the one she had come to appreciate.
“Yeah, right. You had lots.”
“How would you know if you never ask about them?”
“I’m just not interested. Even if I wanted to talk about it, do you really want to hear about the details of my past sex life?” Melissa leaned up on her elbow, her eyes more accustomed to the dark, staring at him, more in challenge than interest. “A fantasy about me with some stranger is one thing. Do you want to hear me talk about how I fucked someone else?”
The silence grew, and Melissa felt she had gone too far. She had said fucked just to shock him. She was about to apologize, he was being a bit of a jerk, but maybe it was the only way he knew of trying to help.
He stunned her when he whispered, “Yes, I would.”
Melissa thought she had misheard. “What did you say?”
“Remember that time I asked you about whether you had ever had a one night stand? And you said something like, ‘Who hasn’t?’ And then you told me about a few of the times you had hooked up with guys in college.”
Melissa grimaced. “I never should have told you that. I’m not proud of some of the things I did. And not much happened. I was drunk, they were drunk, we mostly just passed out together.”
“I know. But I think that is what started it all, it’s what planted the seed in my mind about you with someone else. I’ve been trying so hard to figure it out. Just because it is a common male fantasy, why is it my fantasy? I think that maybe it is because that glimpse you gave me, about your life before me, seems to me to be so—unlike you. At least the you I know now. I just can’t imagine it, you meeting a guy at a bar, bringing him home, having sex that same night.”
“It’s not like they were strangers. Most were guys I knew around campus.” Melissa was
suddenly close to crying. She’d experienced more mood swings in the past few weeks than she had in God knows how long. Shit, she hadn’t cried in years, and now she seemed on the verge of tears every few days. “Is that how you think of me? As some kind of college slut?”
Richard pulled her closer, his arm around her back, comforting. “No, no, nothing like that. It’s just the—incongruity of it all. I don’t know that Melissa.”
“Is that the kind of woman you wanted? Someone you would pick up in a bar?”
“Just the opposite. I married you, didn’t I? I told you, I never picked up anyone in my life. I never had a one night stand.”
“I still find that hard to believe.”
“It’s not like I didn’t think about it, or try. I just, I don’t know, I don’t have that kind of personality. I did sleep with a few women just a few times, but I had known them a long time, we were friends. Well, we might have been more than that, become something else, but we were in different cities.”
“You just never got drunk often enough. That’s how a lot of one nighters happen.”
“Maybe. I didn’t go to a big university like you did. And I was pretty focused on school work.”
“Which is why you have been so successful. College was one big party for me.”
“Maybe you were just bored, too smart for your school.”
Melissa thought about it, still perplexed. The conversation had shifted into slightly less dangerous territory, but her curiosity got the better of her. Carefully, trying to sound as casual as possible, she asked, “And that’s what got you onto this, what you think about? My drunken college escapades?”
“I do, sometimes,” he said.
“But I never gave you any details,” she protested. “I don’t like to talk about it, and I was just joking around, thinking you had similar experiences when I told you mine. I can’t even remember what I said exactly.”
Richard laughed. “I do. And what you didn’t tell me, I just make up the rest.”
What had she told him? It could not have been much. Making out in the bars, that couldn’t be a big deal. Stumbling home with a guy, maybe she had admitted that. Julie’s dare list, had she mentioned that? She hoped not.
Almost against her will, Melissa asked, “Like what? What do you make up?”
“Well—do you really want to hear this?” Richard pulled back so she could see his face, intent. He was focused on her, more than he had been in months.
“I’m not sure. I haven’t completely got my head wrapped around this yet.” She cringed at his immediate look of disappointment. “Okay. Let’s give it a try. What do you think about?”
He turned her away from him, spooning, his hand slipping around her leg. He kissed her gently on the back of her head, his mouth near her ear, whispering. “It usually starts with you in a bar. You’ve had a few drinks but aren’t drunk. You start kissing some guy in the corner, just a peck at first, maybe on a dare.”
Melissa froze. Kissing a guy on a dare. She had done that. A few times too. That stupid dare list. Did Richard know?
Richard went on. “The kisses get a little hotter. There is music on, the two of you start to dance, close, not on the dance floor, but in the corner of the room. He’s a big guy, well built. As you dance he slides his hand down your back, onto your ass. Like this.” Richard ran his hand down, cupping her ass cheek. “You laugh, and tell him not to get any ideas, but you don’t seem to mean it. He kisses you on the neck, and this time in the middle of the kiss he slips his hand farther down. You have this short loose dress on, he grabs it and starts to bunch it up, now his hand is back on your ass, but under your dress. You push his hand away, but you don’t break away from him. He tries it again, and this time he has his hand there much longer before you push it away.”
My god, Melissa thought. Did someone tell Richard this? That had happened to her too. More than once.
“Then he kisses you, hard.” Richard pressed his mouth over her, more forceful than she ever remembered, his tongue driving into her mouth. She responded instinctively, getting excited despite herself, not wanting to be aroused by this story but feeling his heat.
Richard freed his lips just enough to say, “And when you kiss him back just like that he knows you want him, and he lifts your dress even higher as he runs his hand over your body, and you know that anyone looking can see you, but you don’t care, you want him.” Richard kissed her again, his hand on her ass just as she imagined he saw it, lingering, then squeezing her again.
“So that’s how I fill in the details,” he said. “Now it’s your turn. Why don’t you tell me about one of your real experiences, right now? About the first time you got picked up in a bar?”
Infected by the mood so much she didn’t stop to think of where it might lead, Melissa said, “Who said it was me getting picked up? Maybe I was the one doing it.”
“That’s even better,” Richard said, his hands tightening on her.
Melissa immediately thought of something, not exactly sure why this memory came to her just then. She had met a guy at a party, not in a bar, but with a bunch of friends, friends of friends. The kind of party with a lot of drinking, some hooking up going on, not a place you brought a date. She kept bumping into him, just by accident, the crowd pretty big. He was a little boisterous, assured, really cute, and he knew it. After a few drinks Melissa finally had the nerve to sidle up to him. He ignored her. Worse, he wasn’t talking to someone else, he just pretended Melissa wasn’t there. She said something to try to get him interested, she forgot what, but she had had a few, and who cared? He totally blew her off, and she remembered thinking what an asshole, less hurt than she would have been if totally sober.
Then she had seen him again, months later, this time by the bar at a nice restaurant, not a dive. He was as cute as before, but now she was looking at him differently, remembering how he had treated her. She wasn’t drinking, not yet, she had just arrived with her girlfriends, all dressed in their ‘buy me a drink’ outfits, their usual weekend fun, looking good, feeling good, knowing they would have their way with a few men tonight, at least get a lot of free drinks, maybe a little action if they wanted it. Melissa didn’t approach him this time, she still didn’t know his name, she just made sure he could see her, see how a few guys were buying her drinks. She caught him looking at her, a long look, she could tell he didn’t remember, maybe she was suddenly more attractive because of the attention she was drawing from other guys. Melissa had this sudden urge to teach him a lesson, let him buy her a few drinks, flirt, give him a little something to think about, then going back to his place, he was cute after all. She’d sit on his face, let him get her off, then she’d leave him high and dry.
She hadn’t done it. But she could have, back then. Where was that Melissa now?
She wasn’t sure that was the story Richard wanted to hear.
“I told you, I can’t remember a lot of that,” she said instead.
“How about the first time you did pick someone up?” he asked.
Melissa did remember that, the first time she had chosen a guy instead of feeling she was being chosen, the power it gave her, a change in her life, just knowing she could do it. It was an awakening, a totally different kind of sexual freedom.
“I can’t talk about it,” she said. “I’m just not comfortable.”
Melissa thought Richard would be upset, but instead he said, “Shall I fill in some details?”
This was getting to her more than she expected. She just wasn’t sure yet if it was good. But it was obviously doing something for Richard. It wouldn’t hurt to go on a little more. “Yes,” she said. “If it excites you.”
“It does.” Richard reached for her hand and pulled it toward him, guiding it down between his legs. He was rock hard already. She wrapped her fingers around him, stroking him, feeling him tremble.
“That’s what I think of next,” he said. “Your hands, on him, stroking him. You are out of the bar, on a bed, you are kissing,
your hand is on him.”
Okay. This she could deal with. She twisted on the bed, one hand on him. “Like this?” she whispered, and her mouth was on his lips, open, her tongue reaching. He groaned, pulling her head down. She continued to stroke him, getting more excited herself, a reflection of his reaction.
Now she was totally caught up in it, thinking more of Richard than the fantasy he was having. “Then what happens?”
Richard reached for her shoulders, giving her just a bit of pressure, pushing her down. “Then you—.”
Melissa slid down his chest, kissing him over and over along the way. He spread his legs and she got on her knees between them, and hovered over his cock.
“I what?”
“You take him in your mouth.” His voice, coming from the dark.