Yet I was feeling something under my calm exterior. A guy can’t just stand by and let someone else move in on his woman.
“I guess that’s what a girl wants to hear...” Ana put her bowl down on the coffee table and stood up, approaching me, hands reaching over my shoulders, pulling me in for a reassuring kiss. “Her husband still wants her. He’d still fight for her if some brute threw down the gauntlet.”
Had she merely been testing me? Such a thing wouldn’t be out of the question for Ana. Really, the frequency with which I tried to peel off her sports bras and get into her lycra shorts on evenings like these had to answer any questions she might have. As her lips touched mine, my hands fell naturally to cup her trim behind.
“Of course I still want you,” I said. “Has there ever been any doubt?”
Ana pulled away from me and wrinkled her nose. “Okay, so how would you feel if I told you it wasn’t a guy who was hitting on me?”
Well, that knocked me out of the ballpark for a moment or two.
“Are you still angry?” she grinned, teasing me.
“That’s different,” I murmured.
“Different how?”
Ana was a professor at our fair college, and her specialist subject was math. In particular, she was big into logic. She’d always enjoyed testing my logic.
“It’s just different when it’s a woman.”
“Says the man who just came back from an equal opportunities conference in Seattle.”
I chuckled, knowing I had to avoid rising to any bait. “I don’t have to have an equal opportunities policy for people hitting on my wife.”
“So it’s okay when women hit on me?”
As she pulled out last night’s leftovers to heat up for my supper, I stopped to think about it. A woman had hit on my wife. I couldn’t help it -- the anger, the jealousy, it had all melted away. If I imagined a woman approaching Ana as she was working out in the gym, fluttering her eyelids at her, making some flattering comments subtle or unsubtle, I simply wasn’t the least bit annoyed. It was totally different to how I’d initially felt when jumping to the conclusion that a man had been coming on to my wife.
“So, you don’t feel jealous?” she said, holding on to the edge of the counter as the microwave hummed loudly beside her, somehow drawing my eyes naturally to the pleasing roundness of her breasts. “You don’t feel threatened when it’s a woman showing interest?”
I shrugged, “I told you. I don’t feel obligated to feel the same way about men and women hitting on my wife.”
But inside, it did bug me a little. It made me curious as to why I should feel so differently. After all, in our state there was nothing stopping my wife from divorcing me to marry another woman. In this day and age I should feel just as threatened by a woman trying to steal Ana away from me as a man. Yet here I was, and it was almost amusing to me that Ana had been propositioned by another woman. That annoyed me a little.
“What did she say to you?”
Ana tilted her head a touch, suddenly self-conscious. “Asked me if I’d like to get coffee some time.”
I laughed. “And you took that as hitting on you?”
“A woman can tell.”
“She’s probably just new in town, needs a few new friends to hang out with.”
“She’s been eyeing me up for days. Weeks, maybe.”
I shrugged, and Ana gave me a quizzical look, which I knew to mean that my reaction provoked some kind of interest or curiosity in her. “You’re really not bothered at all?”
“Why should I be?” I asked. “You’re not interested in her, are you?”
Ana gave me a mischievous grin. “She’s very pretty.”
I rolled my eyes.
*
Once Ana was showered and normal routine resumed up to bed time, the small matter of my wife’s new admirer quietly fell by the roadside. I didn’t even think about it until after her next visit to the gym -- but then the mere sight of her in those tight leggings, and a lycra top that left her toned midriff bare, reminded me almost instantly of the discussion we’d had the last time.
Oh, and then there was the fact that as soon as Ana looked up at me from where she’d been lounging on the couch watching HGTV, she said to me: “She was doing it again.”
Was she testing me? Trying to make me jealous? I had heard that some women do that just to get their men going, push them to show more interest in them. That didn’t seem like Ana. Was she merely trying to taunt me for feeling differently about how men and women interacted with her? I was all about equality, but I wasn’t the type to imagine men and women were simply the same. Biologically, you just couldn’t argue with the differences.
“And it affects me how?” I said, attempting some kind of nonchalance, though I felt the sharp edge of irritation jab me in the stomach at the sense that I was being pulled into some kind of trap.
She hopped up to her feet. “You’re really not at all concerned, are you?” she said.
I sighed. “You’ve never shown any hint of bisexual tendencies before. So I just don’t feel threatened like I would with a man.”
“But I’ve never shown any adulterous tendencies before,” she said, approaching me now for her usual welcome home embrace. “That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be livid if a guy started coming on to me.”
Another sigh. My wife the academic: she just liked to pry and probe and examine every aspect of an issue sometimes.
“We’re not talking about a guy coming on to you,” I said, hugging her, my hands slipping down to that shapely derriere of hers.
“In theory, though, if I had shown bisexual tendencies in the past, you’d feel differently about this?”
I paused to think -- though only for a brief moment. I’d never really thought about it before, but the idea of my wife having bisexual tendencies was actually kind of hot. If I considered that possibility, I wouldn’t be angry at another woman coming onto her, but turned on. It seemed a little embarrassing to admit to Ana, though.
“I still wouldn’t be angry about it,” I said. “It’s just how I’d feel.”
She kissed me, her lips sweet, warm, soft. “Because you think sex between a woman and a woman is not as valid as sex between a woman and a man?” she had a glint in her eye, the one she always had when she teased me.
“No, I did not say that.”
“But you feel it. Deep down. If I said yes to coffee with Ellie -- “
“Ellie?”
“I didn’t tell you she told me her name?” she grinned. “But in your heart you wouldn’t consider our date to be any kind of threat to you. But if I’d agreed to go out with a man -- “
“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” I said, pulling away from her to head for the kitchen area of our open plan bottom floor. My turn to cook. I was a little confused about my feelings, deep down. Ana was right in suggesting that I felt differently about the idea of her sleeping with a woman compared to the idea of her sleeping with another man. I just wasn’t comfortable with putting those feelings into some kind of a coherent argument. And my logic professor of a wife knew that full well.
“You did hear about the Supreme Court ruling?” she joked. “Women can marry each other now, in every state.”
I rolled my eyes again.
“She tell you anything else apart from her name?” I asked, ignoring her sleight on my support for marriage equality — going on the offensive in this damn conversation now, while I started pulling things out from the refrigerator that I might turn into some kind of meal.
Ana leaned on the granite counter of the kitchen island. “She’s a visiting professor here for six months,” she said.
“Visiting from?”
“France. Her specialty’s economics - she’s writing some kind of paper, asked if I might take a look at the calculations some time.”
“Well, there you go,” I said, planting an onion down on the chopping board between us to emphasize my point. “She’s just another colleague looking
for a little assistance with her research.”
Ana laughed, “Ever heard of the word ‘pretext’, sweetie?”
“Pretty sure I have.”
“She might want help on her paper, but there was no mistaking her signals. You don’t check someone out for ages in the gym just because you might want to pick their brains.”
Now I laughed, “You want her to hit on you, don’t you? You love it.”
I swear my wife blushed a little. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that she might actively find another woman attractive, but it was amusing that I’d exposed her little flash of ego.
“I told you, she’s very pretty. She’d have any man groveling at her feet.”
“And she likes you,” I nodded. “Well, you do look stunning in your gym clothes.”
Ana beamed, my flattery smoothing over her grazed pride.
“So are you going to help her?” I asked.
“Would it bother you?”
“Of course not.”
“Even if she hopes to seduce me?”
I laughed, but my wife’s repeated suggestion that such a thing might happen was beginning to give me food for thought. And I still couldn’t get away from the fact that the idea of her actually being seduced by a woman was something of a turn-on.
“If you want her to seduce you, it’s okay by me,” I said. It felt good to have something to tease her about.
“Good, because I’m having coffee with her tomorrow.”
2
Honestly, I didn’t think much of my wife going for coffee with a woman she said had been hitting on her. From what she’d said, I really did believe that the reportedly attractive visiting professor was simply looking to collaborate or even just consult Ana in a purely academic context.
Deep down, I even believed that Ana had made up the whole bisexuality angle simply to get me riled up.
Only, the next morning I happened to be passing my wife’s favorite coffee shop at a particular time of the day I knew she’d just be getting out from her morning lecture, and I did happen to see her sitting at a table opposite a rather beautiful brunette. And the way this beautiful brunette was looking at Ana, there was no doubting her flirtatiousness.
There was the full-on eye contact, the smiles, the touching of her hair. The arching of her back to casually push out her breasts. Signals I’d probably miss if they were being tried on me, except that when I met my wife she made a point of ridiculing my inability to pick up on signals from a woman, before coaching me on what I’d been missing.
I had to admit that Ana had been right to say this particular visiting professor was pretty. Just to look at her made my heart feel as though it was being squeezed in a vice. The high cheek bones, the full lips, the large, alluring dark eyes. I would have put her age at perhaps five years less than Ana - young, though hardly naive. Naturally, having heard all about how she’d met Ana, I was inspired to wonder what Ellie would look like in her workout clothes. But I couldn’t stalk her at the gym - that would have been too much.
Ana was all smiles as well, and appeared to be attempting to meet Ellie’s eye contact as much as possible as though to appear polite -- but there was a distinct uncertainty about her demeanor. As though she’d agreed to this coffee with the belief that it really would turn into just another academic discussion, and had stumbled into a full date scenario.
Pleased with my wife’s ability to attract such an angel, and mildly amused by her apparent resolution to see this young woman socially perhaps only to tease her husband, I sauntered off to continue my day.
Even now, I couldn’t see Ellie as any kind of threat to my relationship with Ana -- I couldn’t feel troubled by my wife dealing with her. But walking away from that coffee shop, feeling my pulse quicken and my cock thicken at the thought of my wife somehow giving in to the charms of her young admirer, I felt the absolution that came with accepting that some biological urges just could not be challenged by rational thought. I could be as liberal and open-minded as possible, but I’d always find the thought of my wife fooling around with someone like that arousing. It didn’t make me a secret or unconscious homophobe just because I would have felt differently about my wife having coffee with an adoring young man.
Now I had managed to rid myself of the irritating doubts about how I perceived this little logical puzzle thrown my way by my better half, I felt at peace for the rest of the afternoon -- and actively looked forward to seeing Ana that evening, to find out how her meeting had gone from her point of view.
I got home before Ana that evening, though it wasn’t a gym night. It being her turn to cook, I traipsed upstairs to put on some old clothes and get back into the painting of our master bedroom.
I hated redecorating, and so did Ana for the most part -- it had been a year since we’d bought our little house just off campus, getting a good deal since so much work was needed. It had been a project intended to distract us from our disappointment at failing to conceive after two years of trying. The theory was to get the house in shape, and then we’d try again with the help of doctors if we needed to. So far, though, our attempts to get the house decorated had stalled. We’d managed to paint the spare bedroom and half of the master bedroom over the course of a whole year. My guess was that both of us were merely putting it off because we had doubts we’d ever be able to have a baby.
The last time either of us had picked up a paintbrush had been months back. Normally, simply laying eyes on that room -- empty but for our lovely big bed covered in a dust sheet -- made me feel all gloomy. This time, though, getting in there and starting on the walls again with a roller, helped me to zone out while I waited for Ana.
By the time I heard the front door close as she came home, I snapped out of my daze to find a whole wall done.
“Hey, you did some more painting!” she cried jubilantly as she burst through into the room and flung her arms around me.
“Well, if you can be tempted into the arms of a beautiful young woman, I thought I might see if I could manage a little more decorating,” I joked.
“It was only coffee,” she said, smiling, but her tone seemed to downplay things when I was fully expecting her to continue teasing me about my little gender inequality issue regarding her flirting with someone else.
“Should I grab a paint brush as well?”
I shrugged, “We might actually make some progress -- you want to order pizza?”
“Sure.”
She came back after ordering our supper wearing a baggy red t-shirt and old jeans that still had the paint stains from her last attempt at decorating, some months before.
“So how did it go?” I asked her, and she knew to what I was referring, though my question played it relatively safe.
She tilted her head, “It was fine.”
“You had fun?” I touched her cheeks, then cradled her head in my hands and delicately kissed her mouth.
“Sure,” she said, her tone almost exactly as though she were responding to a question from me about a recent conference she’d attended, which she knew full well I’d have no real interest in specifics. As though to suggest her coffee with the alluring Ellie had been nothing more than a mere professional situation.
I think I might have been disappointed that Ana took this attitude toward her coffee with her new friend -- except that I’d seen the two of them at that coffee shop, I knew it hadn’t been simply a professional meeting. The way Ellie had flirted with Ana, the way Ana perceived it, and didn’t quite know how to respond -- it hadn’t been merely two academics putting their heads together.
I was curious why Ana should seek to downplay that coffee shop rendezvous now.
I also found myself strangely hopeful that it meant Ana was being somehow affected by the exquisite young French woman -- enchanted, beguiled, seduced. Did I seriously want something to happen between the two of them? It seemed so. The way my pulse picked up while thinking about it, the way my manhood thickened slightly inside my old jeans. I had to concede that
my reaction would have been completely different had it been a man my wife had been having an intimate coffee with -- but now I accepted my innate response to it, I could accept that I felt attracted to the idea of Ana being drawn to her new friend.
“You talk about her paper?” I asked her, again not wanting to scare her off topic.
“A little,” she said. “It wasn’t really the right place for that, too busy, too noisy.”
“But you are going to help her with it?”
“Sure, I don’t see why not.”
Why was she so down about it all? So flat, so lukewarm? Having witnessed a few moments of their meeting, I fully expected Ana to languish great tales of how this young woman had attempted to flirt with her, about how obviously interested she was in something beyond the platonic, and how that might make yours truly feel somehow insecure after all. Her unexpected response made me think something was up.
“You do like her, then?”
She shrugged. “She’s nice. I told you.”
“Nice. That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh.”
I kissed her again, and the way she took control of it, eagerly sucking on my lips, easing her tongue inside my mouth -- it made me suddenly think she was trying to prove herself, prove her commitment to me.
“So when are you seeing her next?” I asked my wife, I think surprising her a little that I was dragging her back to the analysis of today’s coffee shop meeting.
“Next?”
“Well, presumably you are if you agreed to help her with her paper.”
“I don’t know. Wednesday, I guess. After work.”
I nodded, my eyebrows raised suggestively, unable to keep from a little teasing after all this. I said, “Wednesday evening -- sounds like a good second date.”
She jabbed me with her paintbrush, “It’s not a date,” she insisted. “I told you, I just agreed to help with her paper.”
Wives with Benefits: Volume Two Page 9