“You said it’s just a game to you,” I reminded her. “Nothing to worry about. If you do something I’m actually uncomfortable with... I’ll just tell you, we can take it down a notch.”
She paused, looked at me almost regretfully. Pandora about to open her box.
“It worked with Mark, didn’t it?” I told her, though she didn’t seem persuaded. “It wasn’t you that wrecked that relationship... it was him cheating on you. You have to know I’d never ever do something like that to you.”
She nodded, trusting me. Seeming relieved, heavily relieved.
I felt strangely excited, though also very nervous at the same time. I’d effectively given her the go ahead to try treating me like her previous boyfriends. To make me jealous in order to ramp up our sex life to unbelievable levels.
But with previously boyfriends it had been a slippery slope for her, descending into surefire infidelity.
Was that really what I wanted?
Chapter 9
Rick brought us the bill, and there was that awkward moment where he appeared to hand it to me to pay, because I was the man, then looked into Courtney’s eyes before thinking better of it, and asking who was going to pay.
“Here,” I said, reaching forward to hand over my card. Rick offered me his little mobile machine.
“I’ll give him the tip,” my wife said, pulling herself slowly out of the booth seat while I was typing in the PIN number for my card.
I looked up, amused that Rick found himself staring down at Courtney’s gorgeous chest, then flicked his eyes up to her face to find he was well and truly busted.
Courtney gave him a silent naughty-naughty scolding with a gentle shake of her head and a wry smile, and our waiter did seem suitably humbled.
I glanced down to see that the payment had gone through, and then when I looked up, my wife said, “So I guess I should thank you for a lovely evening, Rick...”
I almost missed it. Almost wasn’t watching. I like to make sure my bank card is safely stowed away in my wallet before I leave a place. I looked up to see Courtney step up close to our waiter friend, right into his personal space, and place a hand delicately, seductively on his chest.
I was just about shocked enough to see her press gently against him, her ample breasts touching against his chest, that I almost wasn’t looking up, where she brought her face to his, her lips closing tenderly on his.
What the—
She brought her hand up to press against the side of his neck, and she was sucking on his lips, slowly tilting her head this way and that to explore his mouth—even slipping him a little tongue.
I was stunned, to say the least. I mean, my cock was so hard it almost burst through my pants, but at the same time I felt a powerful loss of control. This was, I had to admit, part of my big age-old sexual fantasy, but to be honest I hadn’t entirely expected to feel like this on seeing Courtney actually doing something with another man.
It was hot, of course. The tenderness, the softness of the kiss, the incredible beauty of Courtney making out with this younger guy, closing her eyes and taking what she wanted, stroking the back of his head as she massaged his lips with hers. Rick was startled by her advance, naturally enough, but he didn’t object to it. After a moment or two, he was as into it as she was. She was so wicked, so naughty, and it was so very wrong that it turned me on like nothing I’d ever witnessed before.
But I felt suddenly so... emotional. It’s hard to describe, but along with the near-painful arousal, the adrenaline scorching through my blood vessels, I felt a real flood of emotions, a totally unexpected mix of feelings I never thought I’d have.
I just sat there and watched them, and felt blind panic take hold of me, raw terror gripping my heart, and an almost overwhelming sense of sorrow—I don’t know, that I’d unleashed this, that I’d taken our perfect relationship and somehow ruined it.
Rick was one of those perfect American college guys—trim, athletic, tall, square-jawed and broad-shouldered. He might have stepped straight off the pages of a Gap catalog. I watched him with her and felt envy, and more than a little insecurity. I was out of her league, no question. At least physically. He wasn’t.
Somehow I rode the wave of feelings and held fast to the breath-taking excitement inside me. Clinging to the positives, telling myself this was what I wanted, the excitement and risk of my perfect wife set free to explore her sexuality unbound by marriage. My gorgeous wife permitted to become a sexual temptress, a stunning goddess. And I told myself that by doing this, we were ensuring a stronger bond, we weren’t risking our relationship.
I just had to forget the part about all Courtney’s previous relationships ending in flames.
The two of them broke apart, and Courtney gave him a sultry little smile, looking right in his eyes. Rick went in for another kiss, and my wife obliged.
Then, “Thank you,” she said softly, patting his chest as though he were her pet. And she turned to me to smile wickedly, taunting me, teasing me, testing me.
“Uh... have a good night,” our waiter said, suddenly remembering himself and where he was, glancing across at me with fear spreading across his pale face.
“You too,” I said, acting the calm, amused—and, I suppose, magnanimous—husband who was perhaps very used to his wife’s rebellious antics.
Rick scurried away as I stepped up to Courtney, nodded lightly at her mischievous smirk, then linked my arm in hers and escorted her out of the restaurant.
“You survived?” she said quietly as we went.
“Uh-huh, just about,” I replied.
“So you still want to do this?”
As we went, I kept seeing men all around us glancing up from their tables, looking over from the bar, turning their heads as they walked by—all of them checking Courtney out, wowed by that dress, by her long legs, by the sinuous beauty of her figure.
I drew on the energy, the raw envy being broadcast in my direction, and took strength from it. I even teased her, “You think you can make me jealous by giving some waiter a little kiss?”
She grinned, but like me, was attempting to maintain an outward cool, to mask the real whirl of emotions churning around inside.
“I don’t know... you looked kind of shocked by it,” she said.
“Maybe at first,” I conceded. “I just wasn’t expecting such a sudden move.”
“You think this is just gonna be me putting on sexy clothes from time to time?” she said.
We reached the cloakroom, retrieved our coats, and as Courtney put hers on, I once again saw just how hard her nipples were, straining against the dress. The slight flush over her cheeks, her upper chest. She might be acting out all cool and collected, but this was really getting her going. The tension in the air, the sense of risk and danger and raw uncut excitement was tangible.
Out the door, I said, “You think you can shock me? You’re going to have to try harder than that.”
She laughed. “I don’t know... I think you’re worried already. I think we might have to cool it a little.”
In the darkness outside the restaurant, I pulled her to me, turned her, pressed her up against the wall and kissed her, hard. I breathed her in, I smothered her face with mine, I sucked on her devilish lips, amazed that they’d locked on another man’s mouth mere moments before.
My wife, who hadn’t kissed a soul in seven years other than me.
She was smiling as I kissed her, horny but also somewhat relieved, it seemed, that what she’d done hadn’t revolted me, hadn’t turned me off. She kissed me back as passionately as she had ever kissed me, one hand pulling me into her, the other clinching the back of my head.
Had her lips ever been so sweet? Her body so tempting against mine?
She lifted a leg to wrap around me, and I felt her pulling me against her so she couldn’t fail to feel how unbelievably hard I was for her. “Oh God...” she said, breaking our kiss to look me full in the eyes and share her wonder at how turned on I was, at how much I wanted her and she wante
d me.
My hands slipped up her dress, taking in the sensational smoothness of her thighs, the lower slopes of her behind, with the full intention of determining once and for all whether she was actually wearing panties tonight.
Then came the disrupting voice behind us: “Taxi for Courtney Haute? Uber?”
And we had to break apart before I could determine anything at all.
I looked at Courtney, and knew that she had plans to go dancing, to see out my birthday in real style. But right now my whole essence was crying out for the opportunity to bed her, given what she’d just gone and done. Stone cold sober, I was never going to enjoy dancing myself.
My wife stepped out from my clutches, her chest heaving with her heavy breaths. “That’s me,” she said.
The driver smiled, nodded, stepped back to point the way to his anonymous Ford minivan. “Where to?” he asked.
“Home?” Courtney said, looking at me to gauge my reaction.
I nodded. “Home.”
She led the way into the taxi. It seemed like a very short journey home, but I certainly found out long before we got there exactly what my wife was wearing under that dress.
Chapter 10
“Hey, honey...” Courtney’s whisper drew me from my dream. Half-opening my eyes, I found her right over me, her soft hair tickling my chest. “I don’t need a ride after work. I’ve got an open clinic today. You know how those things go.”
I did, and while they were long, they’d never been so long that I couldn’t wait around and pick her up a little late. But there was a twinkle in her eye this time, and after she kissed me and crawled off the bed, my sleepy head started to put a few things together.
For one, she was wearing that perfume again—the sweet, exotic perfume, the one I associated with adultery. The other was her lingerie, a bra and panty set constructed on sensual, bright red lace. The panties were a thong—wide banded at the hips before disappearing into her tight, little butt, and while she kept her back to me as she dressed, I got the impression that the bra did wondrous things to her tits.
On top of that went her usual, doctorly clothes—a tight pair of black leggings, a cami, a loose sweater. But the impression of the red bra and panties lingered like a sunspot, long after she’d kissed me goodbye and left for the day.
A week had passed since my birthday and the kiss she’d shared right in front of me with the waiter. We’d gone home and made furious love after that, and while I wanted to ask her if she was thinking about him behind her closed eyes, I was too caught up in the fury of my own passion to give voice to it.
The thing I came back to when the sober light of the following days finally found me was Courtney’s confession about her past. She had cheated on every single one of her boyfriends. This was my worst nightmare. I was already insecure about having such a beautiful wife. To hear that she not only had a tendency to stray, but got off on the thrill of it, was devastating—and thrilling—all at the same time. It was like a trap door had opened beneath me, I’d fallen through the floor, and found that I loved the descent.
The situation was different now than back when we were dating, back during the whole Jason incident. Back then, I was so certain I was going to lose her that I nearly lost my mind and did it for her. Now, I was pretty certain that I wasn’t. When she said that she’d put that life behind her, I believed her. Even now, as she teased me and played this game—even kissed a man in front of me—I didn’t think these were symptoms of her finding me lacking. It was more like a thrilling bad habit, like a former smoker sneaking a cigarette.
Then again, maybe that’s what I wanted to believe. It was safer to assume that I was safe than to think she’d grown bored of me and was looking to move on. Charlie would know, and almost out of the blue, Charlie called me up that very day.
“Hey, sorry I’m so late telling you happy birthday,” he said. “Let me make it up to you. You free for dinner tonight?”
I had half a mind to stake out in front of Courtney’s clinic just to see why she’d be so late. This was safer. “Sure. Actually it’s the perfect night. Court’s working late.”
We planned on meeting at a steak place downtown and I spent the rest of the day trying not to think about Courtney and her red lingerie. I was semi-successful, catching myself thinking about her standing in front of Harry only a few times—every time accompanied by an embarrassingly stubborn erection.
Then I got the message, close to the end of the day.
[Courtney]: Going to grab a drink with a friend. I’ll be home a little later.
A friend. Could have been anyone, a follow doctor, a neighbor, her college roommate in town for the weekend. Or it could be Harry, and the more I thought about it, the more certain I was.
[Me]: Have fun.
My heart raced. My cock was up.
[Courtney]: Yes, sir!
*
“Hey, John. You look like shit.”
“Thanks, buddy. Ditto.”
“Hey, why you have to be like that?” Charlie said, spreading his arms. A moment later, he pulled me in for a bear hug. “Come on, let’s eat some steak.”
I was pretty good until the steaks arrived and Charlie finally put me on the spot. “Something’s bothering you. Did you talk to her?”
“Yeah. Sort of. We...talked.”
“You’re going to have to work with me a little more, John.”
I cut into the steak, but suddenly lost my appetite for the juicy meat. Adrenaline rushed through me as I stared up at Charlie and realized that I was about to tell him everything. “She told me that she likes...cheating. That she cheated with all her previous boyfriends. She even told me that she stayed with one guy because of the cheating more than for him.”
Charlie weathered the confession with a maddeningly unreadable expression. He was back in clinical mode. He said, “And now you’re worried that she’s like that with you?”
“No, ‘worried’ isn’t the right word.” I thought of the kiss, the lingerie, her so-called game. “She’s still like that. I think... I think she’s out with someone right now, Charlie.”
“And how does that—” He stopped himself, realizing that he was slipping back into his role as shrink, not friend. “How do you know?”
“I don’t. Not really. But I’m pretty sure. She’s been playing this...game, I guess.” I told him about the black lingerie during the board meeting and all the things she’d told me over my birthday dinner. I even told him about the kiss with the waiter—which he could hardly believe—and the lingerie this morning. Finally, I showed him the last set of texts.
“Okay, this is going to sound like Dr. Charlie, but I promise you, it’s your friend asking.” He took a quick breath. “Why didn’t you go over there and stop her?”
My instant response was to go with humor: Because I didn’t want to pass up a steak dinner. I stopped myself short, though. He asked me an honest question, and I needed to give him—and myself—an honest answer. “Because I didn’t want to. Because I want her to go out for a drink with another man.”
“Because—”
“Because it turns me on,” I interrupted.
“And if she went out with someone and ended up sleeping with him tonight?”
I was even expecting it, and the question still hit me right between the eyes. But I knew the answer. I’d known it for a long time now. “I’d be even more turned on.”
“Does she know that?” he asked softly.
I shook my head. “I haven’t been able to tell her, and...” An epiphany took shape. I looked at Charlie, wondering if this was what he wanted me to figure out for myself. “I don’t want her to know. Part of the thrill for her is that she’s doing something she shouldn’t be doing. If she had my permission, it would take some of the excitement away.”
Charlie was nodding before I even finished. He did add, though, “You realize that’s super fucked up, right? I also happen to know Courtney almost as well as I know you, and I can tell you that she lo
ves you, man. You mean so much to her, and losing you would be devastating.”
I knew all of that, but it was nice to hear it validated by someone else. Warmth spread through me. “I feel the same way about her. Which is probably why I’m okay with her doing this. In a fucked up way, it’s one of those, ‘I’m happy if she’s happy’ situations.”
“You know what I have to tell you, right? Both as a friend and as a doctor?”
“That this isn’t going to work?” I offered.
“Not exactly. But you do need to talk to her about this. Sometime. Directly, I mean. Because both of you are operating in the dark right now, and so far that’s pretty exciting. But one day, one of you is going to do something that the other didn’t want, and that’s going to lead to a problem.”
“So talk. I get it.” I did, but I filed it away for now.
“Happy birthday, man.”
“Thanks for talking. And thanks for the steak!”
*
When I got home, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would Courtney be home, or still out on her date? Would I walk in and find her in our bed with another man? As I turned the key in our apartment door, I did so quietly, my heart pounding between my ears.
I opened the door to the sound of soft music playing in the background. My chest tightened. My face burned. The lights in the living room were down low, filtering romantically through the room. I half expected to see some candles on the coffee table, right next to a pair of empty wine glasses.
Instead, I saw Courtney, curled up on the sofa, reading her Kindle beneath a blanket. She was wearing the same sweater she’d had on when she’d left this morning. Looking up at me, she smiled. “Hey, you’re home,” she said. “No text?”
I hadn’t texted because that twisted side of me wanted to walk in on her, and judging from the knowing smile she gave me, she knew my reasoning, too. “I thought you might still be out,” I said instead. “Didn’t want to disturb that.”
Out of His League: A Hotwife Novel Page 8