by Jade London
..
Charlie is across the bedroom, fingers laced together on top of his head, shoulders rising and falling rapidly, raggedly. His ass is bare and pale in the moonlight, hips trim and back rippling with muscle. He’s staring out the window. I can’t see in the gloom and shadow of our bedroom at three in the morning, but I know his jaw is clenching and releasing, clenching and releasing.
A long moment passes in silence. Not even the ticking of a clock breaks the fragile quiet between us. Not even the sound of our breathing, his or mine or ours.
“Charlie, I’m sorry. I don’t know—”
“Save it, Hannah. I don’t want to hear it again.” He doesn’t turn around. “You’re sorry. You don’t know why it keeps happening. You can’t control it. It’s nothing I’m doing, or not doing. We’ve gone in circles a million times about this.”
And we have, too. So many times. No resolution, no change. Just the same old problem, over and over and over.
“Well I don’t know what else to say. What to do.”
“Neither do I,” he says, still facing away from me, still staring out the window.
I know what he sees, beyond that window: A lake, the far shore nearly out of sight, rimmed in pine trees. The water will be silvered by the moon, gentle ripples distorting the reflection of the waxing half-moon. A thick curtain of pine trees lines the shoreline near our house, framing the one hundred feet of beachfront just off our back deck.
Out in the lake a quarter mile or so is a tiny island. No more than bump in the water, but there’s a gazebo on it, white-painted wood. After so many years, and so many generations of people, along with constant exposure to the elements, the paint is fading and shredding off the hand-planed wood. There’s a bench in the gazebo, just right for two people to sit on. An iron spike is driven into the big rock at the water’s edge, used for tying off a rowboat. Sit out there at night, the sky is a black endless bowl sprinkled with a million, billion stars.
He turns back to me, eventually. He’s still hard, rock hard, achingly hard. His cock sways as he walks back to the bed.
“I just wish I could—” He groans as he throws himself onto the bed beside me, on his back, cock jutting away from his body at a shallow angle. “I wish I was better. I wish I knew how to—”
I roll toward him, feel my breast drape against his ribs. “It’s not you, Charlie. I’ve said it—I don’t even know how many times. I love the way you touch me, honey. You make me feel good.” I touch his chest, let my palm linger, drift lower. “I love our lovemaking. I really do.”
“I know, Hannah. You say all that, but I just—it’s never enough. You never come. I do, and you say it’s okay and it felt great, but you just…never come. And no matter what you say, I can’t help feeling like it’s my fault somehow. My shortcoming.”
“But it’s not, Charlie.”
“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.” He eyes me as I let my hand drift lower yet. “It’s what you always say.”
“Because it’s always the truth.”
Sort of. Mostly.
I think.
I don’t say that, though, because those doubts are harbored in the very pit of my belly, under a layer of fear and hope and desperation and heartache. I just want him to…fuck, I don’t know. I want to be able to come. I want to be able to come with him. I want to be able to lose myself in him. But, in truth, a thousand little things all piled up over the years, making an orgasm ever more elusive.
Even alone, it’s hard to get there.
But fucking hell, I don’t want to think about any of that. I just want not to be in this moment again with Charlie. I wish I could just…change it. Make it not…this.
I want to forget it all.
I want this stupid endless fucking argument to be over.
And I hate the hurt on his face. The frustration.
God, frustration. That’s the refrain of my life. It’s everything. I am frustration. We kiss, and it’s beautiful; the man knows how to kiss. He’s so gorgeous, my Charlie is. My husband is fucking hot, and I love that. Fine perfect blond hair, Brad Pitt hair. Pale blue eyes, a sculpted jawline. Muscular, but lean and sharp. Hands that love to roam my body. He kisses me, and he touches me, and I drown in it. He undresses me, and I revel in it. I kiss him and I feel him respond. I yank his clothes off, touch him, caress him, feel him hard and ready for me.
He kisses me and when we’re both naked he levers over me and stares down at me with that soft tender affection in his eyes and he fits his hips between my thighs and he’s there and it’s perfect and he feels so good. My belly twists with anticipation and I sigh in happiness as he pushes into me and it’s beautiful—it’s us.
And I love the way he moves, the sinuous undulation of his back and the slow stroking of his shaft in and out of me. I cling to him and memorize the way his hair falls over his eyes and the way dots of sweat bead on his forehead and upper lip, and it’s such beautiful connection, our physicality, his hands caressing my breasts and twisting my nipples and he’s kissing me now and again and thrusting so powerfully and I feel things shift and pulse inside me and I move with him, move with him, push against him—
And then he’s groaning, face buried between my breasts, his sweat smearing on my skin, and he’s filling me and moving raggedly, blissfully, and that ache inside me is thunder and wildfire and I’m close to some kind of edge and if only he’d move a bit more and touch me and kiss me and turn that thunder and wildfire into—into something more—
But he doesn’t.
I experimented a little, I learned to touch myself, to bring myself there. But I don’t want to bring myself there, I want him to do it.
And he wants that same thing.
But we never get it.
I never get it.
And the ache never leaves. It’s a quiescent but fierce tension low and deep inside me, a quiet desperation, and a need, a yearning for something.
And he notices. He sees the ache building, the frustration mounting.
And then, like tonight, he throws himself off me before release, angst-ridden and full of self-deprecation and self-doubt, and he’s hurting and confused, and I’m a complicated tumult of chaotic emotions, too many to name or sort or understand even with myself. The only thing I feel for sure is the frustration, the yawning hunger down deep inside me, so deep it’s the very maw of my soul opening and crying out for that thing, that immaterial impossible something that I just need down in my bones, in my heart, throughout every fiber of me, and I’m not getting it and he can’t give it to me.
But fucking hell, I love Charlie.
And I hate the hurt on his features, and I hate the obvious frustration he feels. I can’t relieve mine, but maybe I can relieve his.
I cup his erection. “Let me help you, Charlie.”
He groans. “Goddammit, Hannah.”
“No reason for both of us to be frustrated.”
“But—”
“I love you, Charlie. I hate seeing you upset.”
“I hate seeing you upset. And I just—it’s not fair to you—”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“Will we?”
I quiet him by stroking him slowly, root to tip. One hand. I take my time. Just the one hand, slowly, until he’s thrusting into my hand and groaning.
“Be still, Charlie. Just let me do it.”
He throws an arm over his eyes and stills, hips ceasing their movement. Curious, I watch my hand slide up and down his cock—almost idly, curiously, almost outside of myself—and see my small hand around his long thick shaft. Slow strokes, my fist burying at his root and then gliding up to the head, squeezing, and sliding down.
“Oh god.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He tenses, his fists knotting in the flannel sheets.
His hips lift off the bed, ass flexing. I stroke in the same slow measured gliding movements as he groans through clenched teeth, and then, when I feel him begin to thrust helple
ssly into my fist, I give him what he needs, the short hard fast jerks, and he hisses and curses under his breath. Cum spurts out of him and stripes across his belly in a thick white line, pooling in his navel. I keep stroking until cum is dripping from him and he’s gasping for breath.
He lays there a moment or two, then gets out of bed on unsteady legs, and goes into the bathroom just outside our bedroom. I hear water running, then silence.
I roll over, close my eyes, one hand on the pillow next to my face. I feel Charlie get into bed beside me, but he doesn’t cradle in close. He’s on his back, arm across his eyes. He’s clean, breathing slowly, asleep already.
I know this without having to roll over and look at him; this is what happened last night and the night before that. It’s what happened last week, last month.
I stare at my hand. There’s a little sticky dot of his cum on the knuckle of my index finger, just enough to maybe cover my fingernail. I watch it, stare at it. I’m curious. It looks like a droplet of pearl in the moonlight. Almost…beautiful, against my skin. Warm, wet. I like it there. I touch my tongue to it, taste it, and I’m shocked by the flavor, the musk and salt and tang.
My mind twirls and whirls and wonders as I drift to sleep, and when I go under, I know there’ll be dreams half-remembered, dark erotic things dredged from the deep unexplored recesses of my soul, the dirty filthy places I know nothing about.
Even as I drift into sleep, I ache. I throb. I am deeply unsatisfied.
…
“Hannah.”
“Mmmmm. Not yet.”
“Hannah, babe. Wake up.”
“No.”
“God, you’re cute when you’re cranky. You need to get up, Hannah.”
“Do not. And I’m not cranky, I’m sleeping.”
“It’s after midnight. We’ve been out here all night. You need to go home.”
“You’re my home.”
“I wish I was, honey. I wish I was.”
The sadness in his voice is what brings me around. I blink, and see the sky over my head is silver and scintillant with stars, and there’s a tiny crescent of the silvery-white moon.
The steady sound of the waves against the big rock—clup…clup…clup lull me to the edge of sleep again.
Just as I’m drifting off I hear the thumpthump…thumpthump…thumpthump…
of Conrad’s heart beating under my ear.
He’s there, beneath me. His arms are around me and his hands are on my bare ass, possessively. His nose is pressed against my ear, and his voice is a near-inaudible murmur. I feel it rumbling as much as I hear it.
He stirs, and I sit up. We’re on a fleece blanket, something I found at a second-hand shop for cheap. It’s big enough that we can both lie on it together and have enough leftover material to pull over us if it gets chilly.
We’re on the island, the tiny little bump of rock in the middle of the lake behind Charlie’s and my house. The gazebo is behind us, and the house can be seen from the other side of the island. Conrad and I always come to this side of the island, out of habit, or superstition, or caution, or all three. It’s a private lake—well, not truly private, as in we don’t own it, but we’re the only house with beach frontage, the rest being owned by the state so, in effect, it is private. Meaning, we don’t have to worry about neighbors with telescopes. Probably a good thing, since Conrad and I aren’t exactly…discreet about our meetings out here. There’s no point in discretion in our case, though, since Charlie is always gone, either working or indulging in his own indiscretions.
Indulging in his own indiscretions... god, what a mess. What a fucking mess.
“I hate this,” I say, apropos of nothing.
Conrad hauls me against his chest. “I know, babe. I want better for you. For me. For us.”
“For us?”
He nods. “I want an us. I want you in a bed—a bed that is ours. I don’t want to hide or be your secret anymore.”
“I want that, too.”
“Only you can give that to us, Hannah.” His voice is sad, hesitant, as if he’s wary of expressing that thought.
And indeed my heart twists at his words. “It’s not that simple.”
“I think it could be. You don’t love him. He doesn’t love you… I love you. I don’t know what’s so fucking complicated about it.”
I sigh, deeply, and shift away from him, tug my shirt on over my bare breasts, slide on my yoga pants and wiggle my feet into my favorite pair of Toms.
“It’s because you’re not married, and you never have been,” I tell him. “I’ve been with Charlie for ten fucking years, Conrad. Since I was sixteen and a virgin. I’ve never known anyone else, never dated anyone else, never…been with anyone else—except you, now. And, I’m sorry, but you’re wrong about me not loving him. I did. I still do in some weird way. I just—it’s complicated.”
He stands up, naked. He looks at me and his expression is, as usual, unreadable. He’s a hard man to read, Conrad Killian. He lets out a slow, soft, tense breath. Almost a growl.
“It’s not really all that complicated, honey—you’re making it complicated. And I get it, I do. But it’s pretty damn simple from where I’m sitting. He doesn’t love you. Maybe he did, I don’t know. But he doesn’t anymore, because if he did, he’d give a shit that he’s never made you come. He’d give a shit that he’s never made you scream the way I make you scream. He’d give a shit that he doesn’t know how wild and crazy you are. It’s pretty fucking obvious he doesn’t care about any of that. Why? Because he doesn’t love you. I’m sorry, honey, I hate being blunt about it, but it’s gotta be said.”
He moves behind me, puts his big hands on my hips. “You’ve given him too much, Hannah. He doesn’t deserve to get any more of you. He hasn’t earned you. Maybe you did love him, maybe part of you still does but, honey…you gotta let that go and take what’s in front of you, what’s good for you, what makes you happy.”
He spins me around, tugs me against him, flush, chest to chest, hips to hips, nose to nose.
“Me, Hannah,” he murmurs. “I make you happy. I make you scream in pleasure. You sleep in my arms better than you sleep anywhere else. Fuck, Hannah, everything about us is perfect. You’re just scared because it’s different, and leaving him will be hard. It’ll hurt. But it’ll be worth it.”
I rest my forehead on his chest. “Will it?”
He nods. “Yeah, babe. It will be.”
“You promise?”
“I swear on everything I am. I’ll spend every single moment of every single damn day making you happy.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll leave him. Just…give me time to work it all out. To…I don’t know. Do it right. I can’t just pack a bag and vanish.”
“Sure you could. I know a lawyer. It’s simple—we get papers drawn up, sign ‘em, leave ‘em where he’ll find ‘em, pack a bag, and we just leave. Why not?”
I step back, flush with anger. “Because I’m not that kind of person, Conrad! I’m not going to just…just vanish on him! Like I’m ashamed or embarrassed, running off in the dead of night. If I’m going to leave my husband, I’m going to do it my way. I’m going to confront him. I’m going to tell him what’s happening and work through the consequences like a goddamn adult.”
He sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. “All right, all right. You have to do this your way, on your time. I’m sorry I’m pressuring you.”
I step up against him, palms on his chest. “I wish things could be different, Conrad, I really do. But this is what we have, for now. It won’t be this way forever.”
“It’s already been forever,” he murmurs.
“I know. For me too.” I rest my head on his chest again. “I hate this whole situation. I hate feeling like this. I just want to be with you, but…I already feel guilty and dirty because of this. I hate feeling like a liar and a cheat.”
“How do you think I feel, being your lie, being your secret?”
“It’s shitty,” I agree. “And honestly
, I’d be leaving him for making me feel this way even I didn’t have you. I’d leave him for pushing me aside like he has. For…discarding me, and not even having the balls to own up to it.”
“As well you should.”
I push away from him and head toward the rowboat. “I have to go.”
He growls. “Tomorrow, babe. Be here.”
“I will if I can.”
I step from the rock into the rowboat and sit facing the island. I reach forward and untie the bowline, dip the oars into the water and begin pulling. Conrad stands where I left him, still naked, watching me. After a few moments, he folds the blanket and hides it under the gazebo bench. I pull at one oar to turn away from the island and point toward the house, and the dock. Conrad is out of sight and, as always, I have no idea where he lives—he’s always just there when I show up. I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Not knowing where he comes from or where he goes is part of the mystery, part of what feels so…daring, so thrilling.
It takes me ten minutes or so of rowing to reach the dock alongside our property. I tie up, make my way unhurriedly to the house. Charlie’s car isn’t in the driveway, so he’s still gone. Honestly, he may not even come home tonight. There’ve been nights when he hasn’t come back. “Working late” is always the excuse. He pulled all-nighters fairly frequently before we got married, but had mostly stopped staying all night at the office until recently. Until her. Now…he stays out all night, calls it work, and hopes I don’t know the difference.
I do. Of course I do: I smell her on him, I see her in his eyes, in the distance between us, how he’s stopped trying to touch me pretty much altogether. I just…feel her. I don’t know her name, don’t know what she looks like, or how they met. I don’t want to know, either.
Or…maybe I do. Maybe I do wonder, deep down, why I wasn’t enough for him.
But it’s not me, is it? I gave him everything. Always. And still it wasn’t enough. But...why not?
The screen door on the back porch creaks and squeals as I pull it open, slams as I let go and step through. The house is dark and silent, heavy with emptiness. I flick on the lights, illuminating the kitchen. Pale yellow walls, a laminate floor that is old and peeling and warped. Deep, double farm sink. Old, dented, scratched butcher-block countertops. White cabinets, tarnished brass pulls. The refrigerator rattles as it hums. Ice clatters from the icemaker in the freezer. The faucet drips, as it has for years—dripdripdripdripdripdrip—each droplet plunking noisily. Two steps in from the door and the floor groans as I step on it. If I was trying to be quiet, to hide my steps, I’d skirt around the slight depression where the floor creaks, but I don’t care.