“Why?” He moved behind me and undid the clasp at the back of my dress, pulling down the zipper.
I tried to conjure a parallel situation. “If Aaron wanted to ask out a girl, and you had had sex with her, wouldn’t you tell him that?”
“Aaron wouldn’t care.” He watched as I scrubbed at my teeth. “He wouldn’t. Seriously. Guys don’t care about stuff like that, especially if it’s just sex.”
“Well, women care. A lot. Especially in this situation, where we’re all friends. This is a secret that three out of the four of us knows about, and she’s going to be pissed when she finds out.” I know I would be royally pissed. Anxiety rose in my stomach and I leaned forward and spit into the sink.
“Okay, so tell her.” He unclipped my bra and I wiped my mouth.
“You aren’t focusing.”
“I can’t focus when your gorgeous breasts are right here in hands’ reach.” He ran his hands around my side and up the front of my body, cupping them in each hand. “There,” he whispered reverently, squeezing them gently. “Now you have my full attention.”
“It’s teeth whitening night.”
He sagged in place. “Nooooo.”
“Don’t give me that. We had sex earlier. You can cup my gorgeous breasts while I put them on, if that helps.”
“It doesn’t help.” He dropped his hands. “Nothing helps the agony of teeth whitening strips.”
I laughed. “Shut up and brush yours. Use the stiff toothbrush.”
He moved to the other sink, his steps slow and posture heavy, as if I was subjecting him to hours of manual labor and not thirty minutes with a WhiteStrip. He lifted the toothbrush and stared at it for a long moment. “This was not in our vows.”
“Yeah, well. A lot of what we do wasn’t in our vows.”
“Speaking of which… did you think about what we talked about? Doing something else?”
I huffed out a laugh, and passed him the tube of toothpaste. “You mean, since the ride to Chelsea’s? No. I haven’t thought about it.” But I had. One of the male strippers had eye-fucked me so hard I had considered pointing him out to Easton. Maybe introducing him to Easton. Leaving the two of them to discuss possibilities while I found an empty bedroom and waited for them on my knees.
Then I remembered that I was at a party with two hundred witnesses. Chelsea. Aaron. Tina from my office. I remembered that I was a semi-respectable member of society, trying to grow a business and reputation in this cutthroat town. I remembered how quickly rumors spread and how harmful they could be. I had turned away from the man and sipped on my cranberry and vodka and pushed the thought out of my head.
Now, I considered sharing the fantasy with Easton. Meeting his gaze in his mirror, I held my tongue and smiled instead. “I’ll think about it.”
“It’s fine if you don’t want to.”
No, I want to. I really want to. I nodded. “I know.”
“We never went down your pros and cons list.” He put a line of paste on the bristles and stuck it in his mouth.
I crouched before the sink and opened up the bottom cabinet, sorting through the contents until I found the blue box of whitening strips. Cracking open the lid, I pulled out two sets. “Well… the pros were that it was hot.”
I paused. There had been more pros, hadn’t there? I peeled the top sticker off the strip and pressed it along my teeth, buying some time as I tried to remember the other reasons.
Easton brushed his teeth and there was a moment of companionable silence that he did nothing to fill. I finished my top teeth.
“And, I liked thinking about it before and after. Like when we role-played about it.”
He leaned forward and spit into the sink. “Right. What else?”
“I liked that I felt different afterward. Like, sexually empowered.” I looked down and thumbed open the bottom strip. “What did you like about it?”
He wiped off his mouth and faced me, crossing his arms over his chest. “It turned me on seeing how into it you got. But also… it felt like game day again. That competitive anticipation. It was shooting through me when he walked over to you. When he touched you. It was like this enormous rush of testosterone hitting me straight in the dick. I felt”—he lifted his hands and looked around the bathroom as if there was a thesaurus handy—“I don’t know. Like a caveman. Like I was down to my most basic instincts to kill, claim, and fuck. And you were there with me in the middle of it, with your skin glowing, and your body offered up to us, and you were so fucking hot, Elle. So fucking hot and willing and eager. It was insane and addictive, and I couldn’t believe that I was married to you. That you were mine.” He looked at me and that was it.
I yanked seven dollars’ worth of Crest Whitestrips off my teeth and snatched up the hand towel, scrubbing it across my teeth. “Come on.” Grabbing his hand, I led him to the bed and said fuck it to Whitestrips night.
“We didn’t cover the cons.” I curled around his back, my fingers tracing our initials along the tan expanse of skin.
Easton sighed. “What are the cons?”
“What happens if people find out?”
He rolled onto his back and stretched his arm out, cradling me into his side. “No one will find out.”
I readjusted, moving in closer and resting my cheek on his shoulder. “You don’t know that.”
“If someone found out, we’d deal with it together.” He kissed the top of my head and I let out a soft grumble. Deal with it together. A romantic notion that didn’t touch on the massive disaster that would mean. “What was the next con?”
“Umm… STDs? Pregnancies? A massively stretched out vagina?” I smiled.
“Condoms cover the first two. Also, I’ve been slowly stretching out your vagina for some time now. It’s practically a cavern by now.”
I poked him with my longest and sharpest nail and he jerked away from me. “Please take this seriously.”
“Okay, you have my full and serious attention. What else?”
“What if we start to need it? What if we get bored with sex with just each other?”
He rolled onto his side, so he was facing me. “I’m figuring this out, just like you are. But what we did has only made me more attracted and aroused by you. I can’t imagine a scenario where I’d ever need anything more than just you.” He frowned and a cute new wrinkle appeared in between his brows. “Has it made you less interested in sex with me? Or bored with our—”
I shook my head. “No. Not at all.” He was right. It had only poured gasoline on the chemistry between us. Still, a tense coil of nerves flexed in my stomach at the idea of doing it again. It had been three weeks. Was it too early to be discussing it again? Were we being greedy to consider diving back into it already?
He kissed me. “I think we should try it again.”
“You do?”
“Yeah.” He studied me. “And see how we like it—if you enjoy it as much.”
I nodded without daring to speak, my heart beating faster at the thought of what I was agreeing to.
“While I’m in LA, why don’t you look into it? See if there’s a website or process that you feel comfortable with.”
I inhaled. “Okay.”
Our gaze met in the dim bedroom light and he smiled. “Stop stressing.”
“I’m not stressing,” I sighed and settled deeper into the pillow. “But now I’m thinking about my cavernous vagina.”
He chuckled and pulled me closer. “You know I was joking.”
“Maybe,” I amended. “Or maybe you weren’t.”
He gathered me against his chest and I tried not to think about threesomes or Chelsea and Aaron or my vagina or the sticky residue of the un-brushed-off WhiteStrips. I closed my eyes and focused on his heartbeat and, after a few minutes, didn’t think about anything at all.
15
Another Monday loomed, and brought with it my period. I normally got emotional when it arrived, the initial bloodstain a giant F on my pregnancy report card. This month, giv
en my extra sexual activity with Aaron, I almost welcomed it. It retaliated, coming at me with fists that hammered my stomach and twisted my ovaries into painful knots.
I made it through fourteen emails and a half-hearted series of cold calls before I took two Midols and started slacking off, focusing my attention off real estate and onto research on how to have a threesome. I was engrossed in a Buzzfeed article about a woman who was banging her boss and his wife when someone gently rapped on my office door.
I hissed out a curse and began minimizing browser windows. I was still busy, closing pop-up ads for penis enlargement and horny local MILFs when Maria Bott stuck her head in. I closed the lid of my laptop and spun to face her. “Hey. What’s up?”
Her eyes darted over the tight office, one that was barely larger than the supply closet at the end of the hall. She stepped inside. “Not much. You busy?”
“I’ve got a minute.”
“I saw that OLT listing hit the board.” She raised her brows. “Sweet score.”
I shrugged as if it was nothing. “I got lucky.”
“No joke. I interned at Clarke, De Luca & Broward in college. Brad De Luca is fucking cake to look at. And alpha male as hell. It was super scandalous when he started banging Julia.”
I snapped my gaze up from her pale pink Tieks. “You knew Mrs. De Luca?”
“Well, she wasn’t Mrs. De Luca then.” She leaned against the doorframe and giggled. “She was like the rest of us. A broke college student.”
I could see a little of it still in her. Even in the big house, leaning on the arm of the powerful attorney, she still had an innocence about her. An easy relatability that had put me at ease, despite all the reasons I should have been intimidated.
“But yeah,” she continued. “I knew Julia. Wish I’d kept up with her after school. That’d be my name on the board next to their address.” She grinned at me, but I could feel the competitive barb behind her words.
She could keep dreaming of the listing. It was mine, a fact that still surprised and thrilled me. “I’m actually setting up showing appointments now for it. I better get back to them.”
“Sure.” She straightened and turned back to the hall. “Tell Julia I said hi.”
“Absolutely. And if you have any buyers that might be interested, let me know.”
She flashed me a thumbs up. “I’ll let you get back to work. There are donuts in the break room.”
I waited until she pulled the door tight, then reopened up the laptop. I finished the Buzzfeed article, then switched tabs, returning to an in-process profile application. The site I’d chosen held a database of kinky participants I could filter by race, gender, age, and kink. It seemed like the cleanest and most respectful of the sites I had found. It also had a lengthy profile questionnaire, which had been entertaining at the beginning but now, eighteen questions down, was starting to get tedious. Maybe tedious was a good thing—something to weed out the crowd.
I took a sip of water and tabbed down to question 19.
Please use the following scale to indicate the level that best matches your sexuality levels.
There was a twin set of scales, one for me and one for Easton. The scales went from straight to bi-curious to bisexual to gay, with halfway points between each classification. For my scale, I initially clicked on straight and then hesitated, moving the pointer a little to the right, in a pale yellow area that would qualify as mildly bi-curious.
I scrolled down to Easton’s scale and stared at the screen. On first impulse, I’d say Easton was straight with a capital S. But what if he wasn’t? I’d had a thousand conversations with my husband but had never thought to ask him his sexual orientation, not when he spent his first three years at Florida State wading through a sexual pool of women.
I called him. He didn’t answer, and I tapped out a quick text instead of leaving a voicemail.
I’m filling this out for a website. How should I answer for you?
I took a picture of the screen, careful not to include my own selection, and sent it.
I skipped on to the next question.
What are you looking for?
- A single man
- A single female
- A couple
- A group of men
- A group of women
I clicked on the checkbox next to a single man. I paused before continuing on, studying each of the other options. Prior to meeting with Aaron, I would have said that I was vehemently against doing anything with Easton and another woman. But I had a different view of it now. I wouldn’t say that I was ready for it yet, but I was more accepting of a threesome with a girl as an eventual possibility. For now, I skipped over the single female option and scanned over the rest of the bullet points, dismissing them all as something too advanced for us at this point.
My phone rang, Easton’s name on the display. “Hey.”
“Straight,” he said without preamble. “One hundred percent.”
“You don’t have to say that,” I offered. “I mean, there are a lot of steps on that scale. In case—”
“I’m not anywhere else on that scale. And if I ever thought I was, that was diminished when I saw Aaron pull out his dick. I can say with absolute certainty that I had no interest in touching anything in that bedroom other than you.”
“Okayyy,” I drawled. “I’m clicking on extremely straight. Happy?”
He paused. “What did you click for you?”
“Ummm…” I was suddenly embarrassed with my choice. “The pale yellow area in between straight and bi-curious.”
“Really? Have you ever done anything with a girl?”
“No.”
“No drunk kisses in a bar?”
I laughed. “No.”
“Boring Elle.” He clicked his tongue in disapproval and I was instantly transported back to high school English, and the ravenous crush I’d had on Mr. Boles.
“You can’t really talk,” I countered. “I’m a bar and a half more adventurous than you.”
“Good point. And speaking of my boring self, I’ve got to get on a call. Keep filling out your sex questionnaire and I’ll try to concentrate on quarterly projections without thinking about you scrolling through cock profiles.”
“I know you’re joking, but for real, there are a lot of penis pictures,” I informed him. “Like everywhere. For like, ninety-five percent of guys, it’s their main profile pic.”
He laughed. “Just don’t get too impressed. The angle can make a huge difference in how big it looks.”
“Thanks for the tip,” I said dryly. “Now, get to your call. I love you.”
He returned the sentiment and I ended the connection, scrolling down to the bottom of the application, where there was a large MAKE PROFILE ACTIVE green button.
Taking a deep breath, I clicked on the button.
Done. Submitted into cyberspace without a profile pic and with a fairly scant description that wouldn’t stand out for any reason whatsoever. We might not get a single message, but the act still felt powerful. What might this trigger? Who might we find, and how would they affect our relationship?
I closed the browser window and stood, stretching my back until it popped. Tomorrow, I could start to search through profiles. I’d look through my camera roll and see if I could find a profile pic for us, something that would give a hint as to our looks without exposing our identity.
For now, this baby step felt massive enough. I drained the rest of my water and chucked the bottle into the trash. Glancing at the clock, I grabbed my laptop and hurriedly stuck it in my bag. Donuts didn’t last long in the break room and with my shiny new OLT listing, I actually had something to shut up any teasing from the senior agents. Opening the door, I paused as a painful cramp rolled through my midsection, then pushed on.
Donuts. Donuts could solve anything and I deserved a keto-cheat day.
16
As Easton settled into a first-class seat next to Nicole Fagnani, my email inbox filled with notificatio
ns from the sex site. Our non-photo profile generated over fifty messages by the time I got home from work the following day. I changed into pajamas and settled into Easton’s recliner, clicking through the messages with increasing frequency. Fifty-odd messages, but all surprisingly similar. It appeared that online sex partners fell into one of three categories.
The first was an overly sweet, drown you in compliments, unattractive older man. Pass.
The second, an I’ll bang you till your tits fall off misogynistic who liked to attach dick pics like it was an Olympic sport. Gag me now. Not literally, of course.
The third was more bearable, but still unsettling. A cautiously friendly and respectful intro that had clearly been cut and pasted who knew how many times. Thanks, but no thanks.
I lasted a half-hour of reading messages and then logged out of the site, prepared to never ever have a threesome again. As if to combat the move, my phone dinged.
I clicked on the email notification on my way to the fridge. It was another message, this one from OrlandoC11.
I saw that you’re new to the site, so you’re probably being hounded by messages. If you ever have any questions for someone who’s been around the block a few times—I’m here. It can be a sketchy place, especially for couples.
Welcome to the lifestyle.
Kurt
The lifestyle. Was that the term for it? I clicked on the link to his profile and clicked through his photos. Mid-thirties and clean-cut. Not bad looking. A nice smile. He had a picture of himself at the beach, a dog leash in hand. A nice body. I looked for a dick pic and was surprised and pleased when he didn’t have one.
I set my phone on the counter and took a bottle of wine from the fridge, twisting off the lid and pouring the cheap moscato into a glass.
I could respond. Out of the fifty-four messages I’d received so far, I hadn’t responded to any. But this one I could handle. He was offering his help and I did have a lot of questions. I picked my phone back up and leaned against the counter.
Twisted Marriage (Filthy Vows Book 2) Page 9