Crosstown Crush

by Cara McKenna

  “I’ll head over, if it’s not too early,” Bern said.

  “If you’ve got nothing better to do, go for it.” Sam liked when they had time to chat before the sex took over. It helped her ease into her role, loosened her up. And over the course of the past few weeks, she’d come to see Bern as a true friend, not merely a purpose-made playmate.

  “Be there in thirty, then. Need anything?”

  “Whatever you feel like drinking.”

  “Cool. See you in a bit.”

  “Bye.”

  Nice. The camera was due to begin rolling at five forty-five – Mike was planning to drive home, then watch from his parked car before coming in. Sam smiled, imagining him shielding any visible excitement from the neighbors with a strategically positioned briefcase.

  She was already groomed and ready to go, and once Bern arrived the two of them would have a half hour or more to hang out before the performance began. Maybe that made her hopelessly female, but Sam felt foreplay began well before any touching did. She wanted her lover’s warm, easy smile, and to be asked how her day had been in that disarming Kentucky accent. Wanted their glasses to clink before their lips ever met.

  She tidied the living room, feeling happy and relaxed when the bell eventually rang.

  As always, Bern just about filled the door – six feet-plus of tall, sturdy man, his handsome face always such a knock to the senses.

  “Why, hello,” she said, feeling flirtatious, leaning in the jamb and blocking his way.

  “Hello yourself.”

  She could see on his face, he wanted to kiss her. Passersby wrecked that option, of course.

  “Invite me in?”

  “I dunno. What have you got there?” She nodded to the paper-bagged package in his big hand.

  He unwrapped it, holding up a bottle of Malbec. Guileless man that he was, the price tag was still on it.

  “Eighteen bucks? You may absolutely come in, then.” She stepped aside and he brushed past, bare arm glancing hers.

  “Hope that wasn’t sarcasm.”

  “I usually buy the big utility jugs that cost half that much, so no, not at all.” She took the bottle.

  “You look great.”

  “Thanks.” She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt dressed up with a long, funky necklace. “Nothing too fancy today. I’m in a three-day-weekend state of mind.”

  “Doesn’t stop you from looking hot,” he said, toeing off his shoes. “No work for you today, then?”

  “Nope. I put in forty hours, easy, by midweek. I earned it.” And maybe a couple of months previous, before the force of nature known as Bern Davies had entered their lives, the old Samira would’ve worked the full week anyhow. Her erstwhile priorities looked awfully boring, in light of these new extracurriculars.

  “What about you?” she asked. “You get off early?”

  “Not strictly speaking, but my schedule’s seven to three on this new project. Fine by me, even if my dog’s not impressed with the whole six-o’clock-walk situation.”

  Sam led him to the living room and poured them each a glass, the scene feeling familiar and easy as the arrival of summer itself.

  “So,” Bern said with a poorly stifled smile. “No condoms tonight.” Not a question.

  “Looks that way.” She set her glass aside and put her hand on his forearm – just a little taste of flirtation. As much as she felt comfortable with, with Mike not yet watching. “But you get a say, of course.”

  She knew Bern’s answer already. They’d had a delightfully filthy exchange when Sam wrote to confirm their tests had come back with a big thumbs-up, same as his. What had that e-mail from Bern said, the one that’d had Mike yanking Sam’s top off before they’d even staggered from the computer to the bedroom? I’m gonna fuck you so good, I’ll have you begging me to shoot you full of my come. Bet your husband will like that – tasting just you and me when he eats you out after.

  Her pussy heated all over again just remembering those words.

  “Can’t wait.” Bern nodded to her glass and Sam picked it up so he could clink them. “Cheers to that, huh?”

  “And how.” They drank.

  “How long have we got?” he asked.

  “Before we kick off the fun?” She eyed the DVD player’s clock. “Almost a half hour.”

  “Good. That gives me plenty of time to grill you before we get down to business.”

  Sam’s smile surely only expressed half the pleasure that was warming her body. She’d come to find this man no less than fascinating in the two months she’d known him, and she’d stopped overthinking the crush and given herself permission to revel in it.

  “Grill me?” she asked, flattered to imagine he might find her even half as intriguing. “About what?”

  “Anything.” He laid his arm along the back of the couch and crossed his legs. “I have no doubt you’re just as interesting as your fucked-up husband, but precisely how, I’m not yet sure. But I want to find out.”

  Sam blushed. “What’s brought that on?”

  He smiled, the gesture a touch guilty. “A few of my coworkers have started asking questions. Apparently I must look like a guy who’s been getting some.”

  She laughed. “Busted, huh?”

  “Guess so. Anyhow, they asked who the girl is, and I kept it real vague. But the more they rib me, the more I can’t help but realize I don’t know all that much about you. I mean, we know each other real well in some ways, but not the basics.”

  “I’m afraid my sex life’s easily the most scandalous thing about me, but by all means, grill away.”

  “Does your family live close?”

  She shook her head. “Newark.”

  “Oh. You a Jersey girl?”

  “Born and raised.”

  “Hence the Springsteen fetish?”

  “You got it. I moved to New York City for college and started my career there.”

  “How did you wind up in Pittsburgh?”

  She smiled at the memory. “Mike. We met totally randomly, when I was here visiting friends. I fell for him in, like, one night. Packed up my life and moved in with him less than a year later.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know. Very fast, especially for me. It was the first serious relationship I just leapt into without analyzing it to death. None of my friends and family could believe I hadn’t even made a spreadsheet with the pros and cons of moving away.”

  “How’d you guys stay plugged into each other, while you were long-distance?”

  “Lots of phone calls and e-mails, and one of us would travel to see the other, every other weekend. The distance never really registered, we were so into each other.”

  He smiled, eyes crinkling. “That’s awesome. And did you know right away what he’s into? Kinkiness-wise, I mean.”

  “No, not at all. He didn’t tell me until…” She paused and took a deep breath, thinking she’d shared her body with this man, so these little bits of her past weren’t so precious, surely. They were secrets, in a way – aspects of her marriage she’d not shared with anyone before, but Bern was different. And it was nice to talk about these things with a friend. There was no one else she could confess them to.

  “If I’m being too nosy, just say.”

  She shook her head. “He told me after we’d been living together a year or more. It almost drove us apart, actually.”

  “Really?”

  “In a way. He already knew that got him hot – the thought of getting cheated on – but I had no idea. He went through this intensely jealous phase after we got engaged, and I threatened to break it off if it didn’t stop, and he came out with it. The sexual stuff.”

  “And you were okay with it?”

  “Not right away, no. At first I was incredibly hurt. And just… confused. I’d never heard of cuckolding before, or known much about kinkiness at all. I was a tiny bit relieved, too. I mean, at least he didn’t really think I was capable of cheating on him.”

  “Sure.”

&
nbsp; “Once the shock wore off, I wanted to be all open-minded and rational about it. I knew in my brain, he can’t help what turns him on. But I didn’t like it at first – not at all. It still felt terrible, having been the focus of all that suspicion, getting viewed as someone who’d actually done something wrong, you know? I definitely wasn’t ready to act it out with him.”

  “But eventually you did.”

  She nodded and sipped her wine. “Eventually. When I told him I wasn’t sure I could stay with him, he immediately knocked off the jealousy crap. We spent a lot of time talking about the cuckolding – as a kink, not an actual thing we ever planned to do – again and again over the next year or so. It stopped stinging, and as I read more about it, I started to find little parts of it where I thought, Oh, okay, I can see how that’s kinda hot.”

  “So how did we wind up here?” Bern asked, nodding down at their legs.

  “Mike and I started playing around with it about two years ago. Once or twice a month I’d indulge him, pretend I was cheating on him. I’d stay late after work, like I told you, and send him suspicious texts, and come home smelling like men’s cologne samples.”

  Bern laughed, that noise that lit her up like nothing else.

  “And other things. I’d let him catch me wearing needlessly sexy underwear. And I keep a box of condoms around, and sometimes I’d open one up and rub it between my legs. So he tastes it.”

  Bern swallowed, eyes going a touch glassy. “Clever.”

  Sam nodded. “It’s been fun, and I’ve gotten more and more comfortable with it. It’s always been something I do for him, like a treat, but over time I started finding something in it for myself, too. It’s like… It’s almost like I found out he was secretly into guns, right? And I was horrified at first, then started thinking about why he enjoys them; then I start going to the shooting range with him to try to understand. Then I catch myself looking forward to it, and even having fun. It’s his thing, but now it’s mine, too. It’s not just a favor or a treat anymore – not the way it was at first.”

  “No?”

  “I caught myself thinking up scenarios of my own, not just asking what his fantasies looked like and trying to replicate them. And the more I imagined being attracted enough to other men to cheat, the more I could admit to myself, hey, I am attracted to men other than the one I married. I don’t think women always like admitting that to themselves. We get so beaten over the head with the Mr. Right fairy tale, like true love can override biology. Which is bull, of course.”

  “Huh. I never thought about it that way.”

  “For the sake of getting into my role, I spent a lot of time making up these fantasy men I was sleeping with, and in time, I started to wonder what it would be like to sleep with somebody else, for real. Could I ever actually go there?”

  Bern smirked. “Bet I can guess the answer.”

  “Still, it took a marathon’s worth of baby steps to get here.”

  He leaned back in his seat and took a deep drink. “That’s really cool.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it is.”

  “Hope I meet somebody as open-minded as you someday, when I’m ready to settle down again. You guys seem to have it all figured out.”

  “Oh God, not remotely. This experiment’s just gone shockingly well. We’ve been lucky. But if you want some awesome, kinky marriage someday… I dunno. When you meet someone you really like, just be honest about what turns you on. And let your partner see how much it turns you on. Mike’s kink didn’t do anything for me on paper, but when I started humoring him, playing along, and saw the way it set him on fire? That was a power I wanted to have, once I got a taste.”

  “If you and I were together in some alternate world, how would you indulge my kink?”

  She sipped her wine, considering it. “It’d be easy in some ways – buy a load of mirrors, abuse Skype now and then. If you needed more, like you decided you really wanted to put videos out there into the larger world, even just of yourself… that would be trickier to get on board with.”

  “Really?”

  “I think so. It sounds ridiculous, given the way Mike’s been sharing me with you, and the way jealousy’s all wrapped up in his kink, but I’m more possessive than he is. It would take some major effort for me to get comfortable with the idea of other people being allowed to watch my partner being sexual. I guess I’m greedy that way.”

  “I could see that.”

  “You ever think about doing that?” Sam asked. “Putting yourself out there for strangers? I know confidentiality’s important to you, but there’s plenty of ways you could disguise your face, or just keep it out of the shot.”

  “Sure, I’ve thought about it. And not only when I’m single and don’t have my own partner to watch me. There’s something about it being taped and viewed… something risky, maybe. That excites me.”

  Sam nodded, the notion resonating. She’d only been playing at getting caught, but the adrenaline did have something to recommend it.

  “It sounds super fucking vain,” he went on, “but the idea of maybe being out there, in video form, and imagining someone saying to their friend, You have to watch this guy, or of doing it live, and letting the person on the other end of it tell me what to do… I’ve got loads of fantasies about it, but I’ve never taken that leap. I almost did, right after I ended my last relationship, but I couldn’t pull the trigger for some reason. It felt too sleazy at the time. Like, So this is what I broke us up over? So I can jack off for some stranger on the Internet? When I saw your ad, it didn’t feel so selfish anymore. I mean, look what you were willing to do for him.”

  “You’ve still got time to try those other things, online. I can understand how it felt cheap at the time, but if it does for you what our games do for Mike, you’d be crazy not to. Plus, I’m sure you’d earn yourself a heck of a following.”

  “Especially if I’m comfortable telling myself all my viewers are women. And pretending to believe it.”

  She laughed. “Oh, true. It might take some suspension of disbelief. And for now, I’m happy to continue making the massive sacrifice it requires to indulge you, and be the sole audience for your one-man shows.”

  “What a saint you are,” Bern teased, his smile sharp and hot.

  “What a saint you are, so selflessly stepping in to be the gasoline squirted all over Mike’s and my sex life.” She bit her lip, feeling just a touch off base as she gave voice to her next thought. “Is it almost as good as knowing you’re being watched, knowing there’s some couple across town, talking about you while they’re having sex?”

  His cheeks pinkened, if she wasn’t mistaken, his gaze darting away for a second before pinning hers again. “I’d say it’s a tie.”

  A laugh fizzled in Sam’s throat. There was something in his eyes… something loaded, and a little hazy. A look she knew well from any number of first kisses, first dates. That muted hunger of attraction. It should come as no surprise, given everything they’d done to each other, and everything he was here to do with her tonight, and yet…

  He wants to kiss me. And she wanted to kiss him – she felt the tug as she might with a man she’d never even touched before. Curiosity and magnetism. She wondered if it shone in her eyes, too. Bern’s lids looked heavy, and his lips were parted.

  Don’t you dare.

  But she should’ve known he wasn’t the kind of man you dared.

  Those lips came down to hers, and they were hot. Full. Their noses brushed, and this could have been a stranger, for all the uncertainty she felt. Her hands rose, fingertips met by his stubble, the heat of his skin and the firm shape of his jaw filling her palms.

  When they kissed for Mike, it was a cocky, aggressive act. This was far softer, slower. Intimate. Wrong – and not in the good way.

  Kill it now. But in her few seconds’ hesitation, he intensified the kiss, and instead of stopping him, Sam angled her head and invited him deeper. This tasted like so much more than Malbec.

  He was mak
ing her all warm and foggy, winding her up.

  She put her hand firmly on his chest. “We should stop.” Christ, her voice was all husky and low. She cleared her throat. Bern covered her hand with his, pressing it tight – but only for a breath. Then he seemed to catch himself, and let her go. She linked her fingers carefully atop her thigh and willed her heart to slow.

  “Yeah.” He nodded, gaze on her hands. “We should.”

  “If it’s not for his eyes or his ears, it’s… I don’t know exactly why, but it doesn’t feel right.”

  Another nod, yet she didn’t sense much conviction when he said, “Of course.”