by Sadie Rabbit
“We were just talking about how we’re going to seduce some superheroes tonight,” Charlotte said, beaming.
∞
Charlotte and Kenneth squealed off in their SUV, and Olivia was scarcely inside before Mike had his hands on her. He pressed her back against the door, kissing her hard.
Olivia felt like it was wrong, like she needed to tell him something about Thomas. What would she say, though?
The doubts and worries faded quickly as she succumbed to Mike’s exploring hands. It had been several days since they’d had sex, and some of the lines from Thomas’s latest whisper were echoing in her mind. Rather than force the thoughts out, she embraced them. She broke away from husband, grabbed his hand and led him into the smaller guest bathroom by the front door.
“What are we doing in here?” Mike asked.
“Hush,” Olivia said. She reached down and grabbed him roughly through his leather pants. She could feel the beginning of a hard-on there. Mike reached around and grabbed her ass through her leather pants. He slid one hand to the front of her body and squeezed her sex. The sound of hands on leather filled the small room as he massaged her.
That was enough. Olivia grabbed Mike’s pants and pulled them down to his knees. Then, she turned around, and bent forward so he could see her as she worked her way out of her leathers. She put a hand on the sink and reached back with the other to pull him into her.
Mike didn’t need an invitation. He was fully hard now, and he slipped inside her quickly, grabbing her by the hips to position himself. She felt his balls press against her sex.
Then, there was the sound of creaking leather and the swooshing of Mike’s cape. It might have been comical to an onlooker, but Olivia liked looking at her masked face in the mirror; Mike behind her in his mask, too.
He was tearing at her top now. He yanked it off over her head and she could see that his eyes were on her breasts in the mirror’s reflection. Mike started moving faster, harder now, and Olivia had trouble keeping her balance. Still, she managed to reach one hand between her legs to grab his balls. As always, they were smooth and shaven. Olivia liked the weight and heft of them. She let them bounce at first, then grabbed them and held them in place, even as Mike pumped into her harder and harder. He seemed to like where her hand was as he was moaning — softly at first, then louder and louder until it was all she could hear.
His moaning made her focus even more on her own pleasure. She clamped down harder on him and began using her arms on the counter to push herself into his thrusts. Olivia felt the finish coming. It started in her legs. First, her knees weakened. Then, a ticklish wave of warmth spread up through her thighs into her stomach.
She was moaning now, louder than she ever had before. The small bathroom amplified the noise, and Olivia squeezed her husband’s balls harder with her hand, harder perhaps than she should. She worried for a moment that she’d hurt him, that he’d pull away.
Instead, he grunted, grabbed her by the hips and pulled himself as deep as he could into her. She could feel his manhood pulsing as he finished, and that was enough to put her over the top, too.
Panting, Mike withdrew himself from her, and laid his chest on her back.
“Jesus,” he said, “I don’t think we’ve finished that quickly since our wedding night.”
Satisfied, Olivia stood up, grabbed Mike’s arms and wrapped them tightly around her body. His cock dangled between her legs. It was the perfect reenactment of Thomas’s story. Crazy or not, she owed yet another debt to the mysterious sex whisperer.
“You can go to Hawaii,” Mike said quietly.
“What?” Olivia said, turning to look him in the eyes. Excitement welled up in her stomach. “Don’t you dare tell me you’re joking.”
“Does Bruce Wayne tell jokes?” he asked. “I think you should go and have fun. We’ll take a trip, just the two of us, later this fall.”
Without a word, Olivia kissed her husband, and she felt — for the first time in a long while — like it meant something.
Chapter VI: An Innocent Correspondence
Olivia held out for three days. She couldn’t take it any longer. She wouldn’t email Thomas again — she promised herself that — but she could at least see if Thomas had emailed her. She logged into her Hotmail account, and sure enough, a single message sat waiting to be opened. It had been sent earlier that morning.
Dear Hawaii Girl,
I rarely reach out to my clients uninvited, but I’ve been going crazy over the fact that we were at the same ball without knowing one another’s identities. The worst part is you could have identified me by my voice, but I wouldn’t have had any way of identifying you. Maybe we talked. Maybe you overheard me talking?
It was actually a bizarre experience. I studied every costumed woman there, wondering if it was you. I even have a confession to make: I waited outside the ball after it ended to get a look at the women leaving. Hopefully that doesn’t creep you out! I was just too curious not to. In the end, it didn’t matter, though. I have no idea if I saw you.
All that said, you could have identified me (or at least what I look like in a costume), and I’m guessing you did, as I tried to talk to most of the women there. If you did identify me, I propose we even the score with a game. You know one thing about me, so it’s my turn to learn something about you. Every time we email one another, we get to ask each other one question. What do you think? That’s my question for this message :) Please feel free to disregard this message and request. Otherwise, I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Your Faithful Servant,
Thomas
∞
To reply or not to reply? Olivia thought about calling Charlotte for advice, but she didn’t want her best friend knowing she was thinking about continuing her correspondence with Thomas.
Thomas. She wasn’t even sure that was his real name. Too many unknowns. The human mind, Olivia decided, doesn’t like unknowns. We’re driven to figure things out. Why else would she want to learn more about Thomas? Was her life really that devoid of pleasure that she needed to have a perverted stranger as her secret pen pal and sex whisperer? What did that say about her?
I suppose I have been bored, Olivia thought. Staying at home without kids just doesn’t give a woman enough to do to keep her mind from wandering. She sighed and sat back down at her computer. As long as I don’t let our relationship move beyond email, there’s no harm in it.
Dear Thomas,
My answer is yes. I think learning a bit more about each other
would be nice. After all, you know all my deepest, darkest sexual fantasies. I would like to lay some ground rules, though:
1) We don’t disclose anything that could give away our identities.
2) Answering questions is polite but not mandatory.
If you agree to the terms above, here’s my question of the day: Where did you get your ring?
xoxo,
Hawaii Girl
P.S. Please let me know when I can expect my next sex whisper and how I can pay you for the last one. I think you deserve some compensation.
∞
Dear Hawaii Girl,
So you did identify me if you saw my ring! Now, I’m even more curious about whether or not I talked to you at the ball.
My ring was a gift from my grandfather. To be honest, I don’t know much about it — only that it’s old. My grandfather said I’d need it one day and made me promise never to take it off. I haven’t needed it yet, but I suppose I might someday. My question of the day: what costume were you wearing at the ball?
Your Faithful Servant,
Thomas
P.S. Regarding Sex Whisper No. 3, I’ll get started right away. We can talk about payment later. I’ve never had a client as intriguing as you, so that’s payment enough!
∞
Dear Thomas,
I’m sorry, but I have to decline that question... You studied every woman at the ball, after all. Who knows what you could figure out about
me if I told you my costume!
What does your resume look like? I’m looking forward to No. 3!
xoxo,
Hawaii Girl
P.S. I absolutely insist you accept payment. As soon as I’m done with this email, I’m going to login to PayPal and send you money at this email address.
∞
Dear Hawaii Girl,
Thank you for the money, although I don’t have a PayPal account tied to this email address, so I’m not going to claim it! Consider the sex whispers gifts. And curse you for not telling me your costume. You’re no fun :)
My resume? In a word, I’m a writer. I worked for several years as a reporter at the Dayton Daily News. Now, I do freelance, mostly for magazines and websites. I write some erotica (outside of sex whispers), but usually I work on non-fiction, Q&As with other writers, how-to articles and travel stories. It’s about the only thing I could do with an English degree! And, it’s perfect for my lifestyle. I set my own hours. I can work from anywhere, and occasionally I get paid to ask famous people deep and probing questions that their friends would never dare to ask.
Your turn. What’s your resume look like?
Your Faithful Servant,
Thomas
P.S. The next time you hear from me, I’ll have your whisper finished.
∞
Dear Thomas,
I know I’m no fun, but you still know some of my most intimate sexual fantasies. Shouldn’t that entitle me to reject a question or two? :)
My resume is a work in progress. I’m a photographer. I shoot freelance photos for catalog companies, but mainly I take my own photographs, works that I hope to show in galleries. I went to college for photography. Back then, everything was film. People couldn’t just point their iPhones at the Grand Canyon and accidentally take a great photograph. You developed, exposed, lit and cropped your photos by hand. There was an art to it that I’m still learning. Even with digital, I haven’t mastered the art of photography. I suppose that’s why I still do it. If it were easy, what point would there be?
No question today — just a girl waiting on a whisper.
xoxo,
Hawaii Girl
∞
Olivia and Charlotte ate yogurt at Books and Company while they flipped through travel guides on Hawaii. Yoga had exhausted them, and they were dressed hyper-casual: pastel zip-up hoodies with their hair in ponytails.
“I don’t like having regrets when I get back from vacation,” Charlotte said. “We need to figure out what we want to see. I’ll write all the destinations down and put them in a spreadsheet.”
“I didn’t realize you were such a planner,” Olivia said.
“Only when it comes to having fun,” Charlotte said, smiling wickedly.
Full-page photos showed glowing volcanoes, 30-foot waterfalls, beaches and bars. There were animals, plantations, luaus, sunsets and beautiful men and women. But Olivia couldn’t concentrate on Hawaii. When she tried, her mind just drifted back to Thomas.
“So I emailed him back,” she said.
Charlotte slapped her book back on the table. “The sex whisperer? I knew you would!”
“I shouldn’t have,” Olivia said. “He emailed me after the ball, though. He said he was going crazy because he didn’t know if he’d talked to me or not. I felt sorry for him.”
“That’s not a reason to write him again!” Charlotte said. “That’s like giving a stalker your appointment book.”
“I broke down,” Olivia said. “I’m weak. He’s like my Kryptonite or chocolate or something. Besides, I need more sex whispers if Mike and I are going to keep our sex life going.”
“Not going so well?” Charlotte asked.
Olivia shrugged.
“That night after the costume ball was incredible,” she said. “It’s been downhill since then. Mike’s working late, and I feel like he resents the fact that he said I could go to Hawaii. After work, he’s been going out with the guys — or at least that’s what he says. He hasn’t been going out this much for more than a year.”
“He’s pouting,” Charlotte said. “Let him pout. You’re going to Hawaii, end of story. Just look at these pictures!”
They turned back to the books, putting Post-It notes on the pages with places they wanted to see. Charlotte copied down the destination names on a sheet of paper. Beside the list, she drew three columns and put their names at the top of each column: Charlotte, Kenneth and Olivia.
“We’ll give each tourist attraction a point value, 1 through 100, that indicates how much we want to see it,” Charlotte said. “I’ll have Kenneth do it, too. Then, we can tally up the points, and the Top 10 sites with the most points win. How’s that sound?”
“You’re brilliant,” Olivia said, smiling.
Charlotte raised her eyebrows.
“So…” she said, “is Thomas making you another recording, or is my bestie just having an illicit email love affair?”
Olivia groaned. “He’s making me another one.”
“The first one was Author with Fan Girl, then Superhero Sex,” Charlotte said. “What’s next?”
Olivia shrugged. “He hasn’t given me any hints.”
“You know what you should do?” Charlotte asked. “You should tell him to do one that has all his secret fantasies in it. You might learn quite a bit about him.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” she said.
“It could give us some clues to figuring out who he is,” Charlotte said.
“That’s the last thing I need,” Olivia said. “We have to keep this anonymous.”
“It can’t stay that way forever,” Charlotte said. “I’m just saying...”
Olivia ran her hand through her ponytail. “How about we think about Hawaii?” she said, and the women turned back to their books, their minds filling with daiquiris and hunky men carrying surfboards across the beach.
∞
When Mike got home that night, Armando had Hungarian goulash, homemade bread and steamed broccoli on the table. Olivia sat idly in the dim light, flipping through a photography magazine. Mike took off his tie and slung it over one of the barstools in the kitchen. He looked tired. Olivia wasn’t sure if that meant he got the promotion he’d been hinting at or not.
“Did you find out?” Olivia asked.
“The ball’s in my court,” Mike said. “My boss offered me the Iams account.”
“You’re kidding,” Olivia said. “That’s the overpriced dog food, right?”
“It used to be,” Mike said. “It’s everywhere now: Meijer’s, Walmart, Safeway. It’s getting a reputation as middle-of-the-road — cheap even — and my boss seems to think I can breathe some life into it.”
“Wow, honey,” Olivia said. “Everyone’s heard of Iams. That’s the opportunity of a lifetime.”
“I guess,” Mike said. “I haven’t told him if I’m going to do it, though. It’d be a decent raise, but it’d ratchet up the pressure a lot.”
“You excel under pressure,” Olivia said.
“Sure,” Mike said. “But pressure every day for six years in a row gets old.”
“Listen,” Olivia said, walking around the counter to lay a hand on his shoulder. “We don’t need any more money if it’s not something you want to do.”
Mike nodded. “I just can’t tell if its fear that’s holding me back,” he said. “I’d get control over a $10 million marketing budget, but I’d only have a year to start improving sales. That’s not a lot of time considering the fact that I don’t know a damn thing about dog food.”
“What did you know about shampoo before you started marketing that?” Olivia asked.
“Not a lot,” Mike said. “But at least I used it.”
“I don’t think your boss would be offering you the job if he didn’t think you could manage it,” Olivia said.
“Right,” Mike said, “but maybe this job’s when I run into the Peter Principle.”
“What’s that?” Olivia asked.
“A busin
ess theory,” Mike said. “It says people climb the corporate ladder until they reach the spot where they’re incompetent. Then, they don’t get demoted. They just languish there and cripple the company because no one has the guts to fire them.”
“That’s pretty depressing,” Olivia said. She studied her husband. He’d never doubted himself like this before — or, he’d never told her about it if he did.
“Yeah, but it makes sense,” he said.
“Lots of things make sense, but we don’t need to dwell on them,” Olivia said. “What kind of pay raise would you get?”
“Not a lot up front,” Mike said, “an extra $125,000 a year, but … if I can lift sales seven percent in a year, they’re promising a $1 million dollar bonus.”
“Oh my God,” Olivia said. “That’s incredible, honey.”
“I know.”
“You’re going to hate yourself if you don’t at least try it.”
“I’m worried I’m going to hate myself if I do try it,” Mike said. “Dangle a million bucks in front of someone, and you’re expecting them to give up their personal life.”
“With that sort of money, you could hire an assistant who looks exactly like you to go to all the meetings and make all the decisions,” Olivia said. “Then, you could sneak off to Hawaii with me.”
Mike gave her a half-hearted smile, and Olivia kicked herself for mentioning Hawaii.
“Listen,” she said. “Don’t take the job if it’s going to stress you out. They’re happy with what you’re doing right now, or they wouldn’t be offering it to you.”
“Maybe,” Mike said. “There’s been politicking over this job, though.”
“What’s that mean?” Olivia asked.
“I don’t know for sure,” Mike said. “Jude at the office — I’ve gotten to know him. I have some hunches about what he’s been doing … using me maybe?” His voice trailed off, and Olivia could tell he was thinking thoughts he wasn’t going to share. Mike didn’t talk about money a lot, but she knew it dominated his thoughts. He kept meticulous spreadsheets on all of their accounts, and he employed one of Dayton’s most well-known tax lawyers — the kind of lawyer who would write 40- to 50-page statements detailing custom exemptions when he filed your taxes.