I squirmed out of her grip and looked up at her. Her mouth was open and she was panting.
I undid my pants, and pulled my cock out.
I jerked her by the knees from the table and onto the chair. I found her cunt with the tip of my cock and I reached behind her to cup her ass and push her down, onto my shaft. The robe slid from her shoulders and her big, beautiful tits bounced free, in enormous, heavy arcs, as she slid down to the base of my cock.
Her pussy was so wet that I cut into like a knife in butter, and as soon as her ass touched my thighs and the weight of her pressed against my balls, I could feel her cum practically pouring over my scrotum, dripping down my balls and between my legs.
She squeezed me from the inside, and began to bounce up and down on my cock. She wiggled to get her feet on the floor, and her cunt ground against me as she did. She started to move up and down again, but I stopped her by bunching her hair in my fist and moving her sideways. She picked up on my desire quickly, and she ground her body back and forth against me. She was crushing my balls and bending my cock, but it felt incredible. I released her and she began to bounce again, quickly now, her own desires rekindled. Her great, heaving breasts slapped against her own frame, and I watched, fascinated, as a trickle of sweat carved a path down one of them, growing as it plunged between them. When I could feel my orgasm ready to burst, I pressed her against me, and let my face get absorbed in the taut flesh of her breasts.
She wasn't done, and she continued to grind against me until her pussy also seemed to burst, and I felt her hot cum, and mine, raining down my cock, and balls, puddling beneath me on the chair.
She rested on my lap, and pushed her damp hair out of her face.
She kissed me, and smiled. “Wow. I guess you like it.”
I blinked.
Liked what?
Almost instantly, the weight of this evening’s thoughts slammed down on my elation. I was still feeling warm, fucked-out, but the emptiness of mind that sex afforded me filled in like a broken vacuum.
Her bare snatch.
Her “trip to the gym.”
Her jasmine-linen perfume.
The fact that she had been sitting at the bar with a fat, old man.
The fact that all evidence pointed to my wife having an affair.
She climbed off of me, reading no change in my mood. (More evidence, I decided, that she was distracted. Thinking of someone else).
“That was fun,” she said. She kissed me again. “Glad you came home. I have to get to bed, though.”
Truth be told, I had occasionally imagined this moment. The moment when the preponderance of evidence became so overpowering that I would know, for certain, that my wife was having an affair. I had imagined it, and I had played out what I would do, in my mind, time and time again.
Jordan was beautiful. Far more beautiful than a man like me would ordinarily get his hands on. But I had knocked her up when she was still a little gangly, still an ugly duckling. Eventually, she would come into her own, realize that she was a swan, and move off to the kind of man she deserved.
Believe me, I thought about it.
It depended, I had decided long ago, on where I was in my career. If I were a judge, or if I were on the path to political candidacy, then I would cover it up. Forgive her. Avoid a scandal.
If I were, as I was then, a deputy DA, now was the time to break with her. Get a divorce. Set her free.
The kids were old enough. They would survive.
A divorce was nothing, among lawyers.
I closed my eyes.
All those ideas were just bluster. Me telling myself a lie.
The truth was, there was no way I was going to dump Jordan.
Or have a real talk with her about all of this and run the risk of her lying to me.
Or worse yet, turning to me with a callous smile, and telling me the truth.
I was going to investigate. And then, I was going to try and defend her.
And if I couldn't defend her?
You're a fucking prosecutor, Doug's voice said, in my mind.
Right now, I was too afraid of the truth to look it in the eye.
So what did Patrick Goodall do when it was clear his wife was having an affair?
I kissed her goodnight. I smiled. And I told her I would be right there.
Then, I called Doug's brother.
TALK WITH YOUR WIFE
Everything that Doug was, his oldest brother was not.
Ricky was affable, warm, and rail-thin. He spoke with a soft and calm voice, and gave the aura of a real guru or a hostage negotiator. He had an impeccably trimmed beard and his hands, even the most unobservant male could not help noticing, appeared to be manicured.
He had, the legend went, eaten enormous quantity of protein shakes to get on the Force, worked his way up to detective, and then been put undercover for his heroine-thin and boyish appearance. He was now retired to the realm of private investigations.
He had raven-black hair and steady, green eyes. He rubbed his beard while I told him my story, none of which made him flinch at all. He made a few notes on his notepad.
I told him I was certain I had seen my wife at the bar. I told him the whole story, leaving nothing out.
When I finished talking, he looked at me for a moment without blinking. He pressed his fingertips into his lips.
His face seemed to shrug.
“I can take your case, of course, Patrick. But I am going to give you the advice I give all of my clients in situations like this, which arise very frequently.” His eyes drifted upward for a moment, and he seemed to get lost before he began again: “Very frequently. And that is to go home, and have a talk with your wife. If you do that, you won't have to pay me anything, and you will be, in all likelihood, arrive in exactly the same place. Just a little earlier.” He looked at me with his unflinching gaze.
I stared back. He sounded like some kind of monk.
He took up a pen, and his demeanor changed suddenly. “Of course, this is the business I'm in and so I won't give you too much time to mull that over. Here is the estimate for my services...”
He scribbled on a paper. Then he looked up suddenly.
“You say she works for a PI?”
“Arest Greene.”
Ricky's eyes quivered slightly. He seemed to be restraining an eye roll. “Yes.”
He started writing more. He tore the paper off and handed it to me.
The figure meant nothing to me. Too low to be total, too high to be...
“This is per..?” I prompted.
“Per day.”
Jesus.
Ricky had the tips of his fingers back together again, and his calm smile on. “Go home, and try to have that talk with your wife.”
The problem with being an attorney, and more importantly, an attorney with his sights set on being a judge, is that there is no “going home and talking to your wife.” There is a slew of meetings and courtroom appearances, piles of files and motions. There is Doug, your companion in misery. There is Catherine Gates, the DA, swooping in like a hawk to rain shit all over your parades. There are perps and cops and dingy rooms at the county jail. A lot of hours with a Blackberry in your hand on a wooden bench in a marble hall, waiting for the slow-motion circus of justice to eek its way through the great colon of the courthouse like the big, fat log of shit that it is.
But there is no going home to talk to your wife, not really.
So my mind was taken off Jordan, in a manner of speaking. I couldn't afford to turn myself over to the thoughts about last night. Images, certainly. I spent the whole day with images of her red hair, first straightened and flowing, then tied up in a smooth bun. Images of her ankles in her expensive shoes (when did she buy those shoes?), and then images of her shaved pussy, just before my face.
I didn't have time to indulge in the fantasies that were unraveling from those images. The possibilities, the inconsistencies. I had too much shit to do.
But on the driv
e home I was finally left with my thoughts. Free to go wherever I wanted with them.
Go home and talk with your wife.
Ricky's advice was solid, and there was one thing I'd learned after seven years in the DAs office: just take advice from the people who know. Homicide cops know the husband did it, and PIs know the story is going to end in marriage counseling and/or divorce. Happy to take your money, but I'll tell you honestly: skip to the end and save it for the divorce attorney you already seem to need.
The idea of getting divorced from Jordan, though, just really didn't flicker in my mind as a real possibility. I loved Jordan too much. Even if she was cheating on me.
My heart felt like a cold stone every time I had that thought.
I knew, also, even as I walked out of Ricky's office, even: I wasn't going to talk to Jordan about this. Not yet.
There were the inconsistencies in the story, all of which pointed to reasonable doubt that Jordan was in fact the woman in the bar-
I think you'd know your own wife, Paddy.
But would I? How much time did I spend with “my own wife?” Just me and my wife? Almost none. How much time did I spend looking at her, anymore? I had no idea how long her hair was. I had no idea when she shaved her bush. I had no idea she had been working out so hard at the gym that her ass and thighs had gotten incredibly firm.
So would I recognize my own wife in a bar?
Which argument is this supporting?
Good question.
There was also the matter of her clothes. Jordan didn't buy expensive, ultra-expensive clothes like that. She was a paralegal. She worked for a PI who worked for ambulance chasers. He probably smoked in the office. She wore jeans to work. She hated spending money on clothes because she wanted to spend it all on the kids' extra activities. To make sure, improbably, that they didn't end up throwing half their lives away like we had.
Like she had. You went ahead with yours.
I pushed this thought out of my mind with practiced ease.
A darker one came in to fill the void.
If she had been cheating, wouldn't she have tasted different? She took a shower, sure. But part of my eagerness last night had been investigative, and she seemed...well, fresh as a daisy.
There are condoms.
A knife twisted in my stomach again. Oddly, though, my cock was rock hard thinking about our spontaneous sex the night before, the taste of her cunt in my mouth.
Imagining Jordan with another man.
That fat man?
That was the other thing. Jordan was hot. Really, really hot. Something I'd sort of forgotten and was now seeing again. That guy had been...well, a disaster. And I was no underwear model, but I had a certain amount of charm, as the ladies say. No one would kick me out of bed. That guy would never make it through most women's front door.
Unless there's something else she wants.
This was a stumper. Money?
She did want to send the kids to France or something for a semester.
But we had that money all saved up.
Here my mind took a detour from reality, completely. What if Jordan was actually a nymphomaniac? What is...she was, like Olivia, prone to mischief for mischief’s sake? What if she just enjoyed going out and whoring herself around, not because she needed or wanted the money but just because it was fun to her?
She certainly looked the part, in that get-up, of high-class hooker.
You still don't know it was her, Paddy.
I couldn't tell if my inner voice was working for me or against me.
My mind started wandering, away from my imminent problems, to the sexier side of this problem. I had to admit, those escorts had a certain appeal to them. Classy, dressy, string-less, and professional. I would never take one out, but I could see why other men did...
And so, as opposed to thinking about how to talk to my wife about an issue that concerned our marriage, I instead spent the drive home fantasizing about her being an escort. An escort who had secret, insatiable nymphomaniac tendencies. An escort who was an escort because she was into some kind of terribly lewd and filthy sex act that she didn't want to share with me.
What could it be? Bondage? Sex toys? Spanking?
Images filled my mind, and I drove past my exit. Well past my exit. My balls were starting to ache by the time I turned around and made it home.
DOUBT
I was partially relieved, when I pulled into the driveway, to see my headlights roll over the dark silver of Jordan's vehicle.
But my heart was thumping with excitement, still, and I also felt uneasy.
Was I disappointed, somehow, that she was home? That with every passing moment it seemed like the woman at the bar had been a figment of my imagination?
It was a relief, I told myself. It was a relief that most things pointed at my wife not having an affair. Most things pointed to her not being a high-class hooker, or a nymphomaniac, or any of the things I had just spent the better part of half an hour playing over and over in my mind. Savoring the sweet pain of the idea. Making my fantasies as vivid and detailed as possible.
I opened the garage door.
It seemed odd, actually, now that I thought about it, that Jordan's car was in the driveway, and not the garage.
I needed to stop. What was I doing? Why was I trying to make my wife guilty of something?
It wasn't like I wanted my wife to be cheating on me.
I resolved to stop making myself crazy.
I resolved to do this, and I was thinking about how I was not going to do this.
But we can tell ourselves all kinds of things, and still do something that doesn't align with our best intentions. We can, for example, say to ourselves: stop suspecting your wife, and trying to catch her in compromising situations.
When can say that, and then immediately afterward, park the car outside and enter the garage from the side door. So that no one hears the garage door open.
The entrance to the house from the garage passes, like almost every expensive suburban home, through a laundry room and into the kitchen.
And this is what I saw.
Or this is what I thought I saw, though I can't be sure, because they scene seemed to transform so rapidly after I entered the room that I couldn't trust my own judgment.
Jordan had a cup of coffee to her lips. She had a hand up, waving it toward Olivia, who I could not see. She was slurping the drink, and talking at the same time.
Hurried.
“Here,” I thought she said, though it's hard to be sure. “Give me that. I have to go.”
Olivia's arm appeared and handed a phone to Jordan. I saw Jordan drop it into her purse.
It would only be later, replaying this scene in my mind, that I would see the color of that phone, take note of the fact that it was white and not black.
But a witness's memory is never to be trusted 100%. Everyone sees what they want to see, what they think someone else wants them to see. The phone was probably black, I would tell myself later, when I wanted her to not be guilty.
Jordan was dressed in a suit. A very nice suit, a very expensive suit. It was cream-colored, and tailored to cling to her shapely figure. Her shirt was black, a satin-like material, and deeply, deeply cut in the center of her breasts. A pendant drew my eyes right to the soft, mirrored curves between her two full tits.
I have to go, her voice repeated in my head, over and over.
I stepped into the room. There really was no way to stand there and lurk, which was an impulse I had. “Go where?” I said,
I watched Jordan. I watched Jordan the way I watched a witness on the stand. The way I had watched videos of confessions and interrogations with investigators. The eyes have it. Then the mouth.
Jordan looked surprised. Real surprise contorted her mouth.
Her eyes, though, stayed dull. Not a big enough surprise to dilate her pupils. The phone dropped into her purse.
“Honey!” she exclaimed. “Jesus. You scared me. I didn't hear th
e garage.”
Was it strange that she looked to Olivia then? Wildly, almost accusatorially? With a look that seemed to say, Olivia, you little shit, why didn't you hear the garage door?
“Did you?” Jordan said to Olivia.
The garage door was notoriously loud.
“The battery is out on my opener,” I said calmly, surprising even myself with the intelligence of the lie. I set it up, she started to feel at ease.
Get them comfortable, guard down, and then whack them again. I let only half a second pass before I started in. “Where are you going so late?”
I turned on a light. The kitchen was mysteriously dark.
“Going?” Jordan said.
Her face was the picture of confusion. It seemed so legitimate.
You did hear her, don't lose your nerve now. She did say “give me that. I have to go.”
Did she, Paddy? Is that what she said? Was it possible I had heard her wrong?
“I thought you were saying you were going somewhere,” I said. I was less convinced now that I said it aloud.
I watched Jordan's face and she looked confused. “What?”
She's buying time. It's not like she doesn't know this stuff. It's not like she never listens to you, it's not like she doesn't work in a PI's office. Cover up your lie, buy yourself time being utterly confused. Most people have their counter-explanation all ready. Too soon. It's a dead giveaway. You have to act confused, mishear the other person, clarify the question several times. Tell yourself another story while you do. Then, the other person looks as confused as you do, and pretty soon it's all just a big misunderstanding...
“When I came in,” I said. “Weren't you saying you were going somewhere?”
Two things, here. Jordan, if she was lying, was a very good liar. She had already started taking off her suit jacket and hanging it on the chair. Pretending to still be sorting out what I was saying to her.
But Olivia. Olivia was stiff. Olivia was looking back and forth from Jordan to me.
A Well-Laid Trap: The Story Of A Professional Hotwife Page 3