A Year of Love

by Anthology

  I am a spoiled brat through and through. Rotten to the core. I should get a tattoo that says Brat to the Bone. I will get what I want by any and all means necessary. It’s just how I’m built. Telling me no will only cause me to make you suffer until you eventually tell me yes, which I think is why Ken married me.

  Suffering is kind of his kink.

  So, when Ken didn’t reciprocate or even acknowledge my gentle caresses, clavicle-nuzzling, or crotch-cupping, I slid the tip of my nose up the side of his neck, wrapped my lips around his earlobe, and bit it. Hard. I even used my canines, so it would be nice and sharp.

  Ken released a quiet hiss of pain and immediately began to swell against my palm.

  Masochist.

  I smiled to myself as I slid my tongue over the intention I’d just made in his lobe. Then, I moved down to the spot just below his ear. Ken’s jugular pulsed against my lips as I opened them, ready to strike, but at the last second, I opted for a sweet, lingering kiss instead.

  Ken’s shoulders sagged in disappointment.

  Ha!

  I continued my covert teasing—biting here, licking there—until Ken was hard as a diamond. Emboldened by the darkness and lack of traffic in the back of the plane since our interruption, Ken slid his own hand under the blanket and up my thigh. I’d worn a casual jersey-knit dress in preparation for this event, but there was also something I hadn’t worn, just in case.

  Ken’s soft chuckle sent tingles down my spine.

  “You walked around the entire airport like this?” he whispered, sliding a single finger up and down over my sensitive flesh.

  “Mmhmm,” I moaned. “Went through the X-ray machine at security like this too.”

  “No wonder they let you go,” he mused, filling me to the first knuckle.

  I tilted my hips, needing more, and Ken gave it to me. He might be stubborn, but he’s no tease. Two fingers and the heel of his palm were soon working in tandem to bring me to the brink.

  I peered over the headrest and into the area just beyond the entryway behind us. There was no line for the restroom, but there were two flight attendants leaning up against the cabinets in the back, sipping coffee and chatting like besties.

  “Shit,” I hissed, turning back around.

  “What?” Ken replied almost silently, his eyes screwed shut as I worked him under the blanket.

  “Nothing. The restroom is open. Let’s go.”

  I went to let go of him, but Ken grabbed my wrist with his free hand, keeping it firmly wrapped around his dick.

  “Let’s just stay here.” He ground his palm against my clit, making small circles as he pumped his fingers in and out.

  I had to bite my lip to keep from moaning, but I wouldn’t be swayed that easily. “It’s eight feet away. Come on.”

  Ken turned to look for himself, and I braced myself for his reaction.

  “There are people back there!” he whisper-shouted.

  “So?” I cringed.

  “So?!”

  “You’re having a medical emergency, remember? It doesn’t matter if there are people back there or not.”

  Ken’s head dropped back against the seat as I wriggled my hand out of his blanketed grasp and shimmied his waistband and boxer briefs up high enough to pin his dick to his stomach.

  “Go.” I pushed on his shoulder, nudging him toward the aisle. “Go on. We’ll be in and out. And act sick.”

  “I feel sick,” he grumbled, reluctantly stumbling into the aisle.

  With a confident hand on his back, I steered my husband through the doorway and made a beeline for the restroom.

  By the time the flight attendants glanced over at us, I was already shoving Ken through a door marked Vacant.

  “My husband has extreme motion sickness,” I announced, backing into the glorified porta-potty while waving my forged note and fake syringe in the air as evidence. “If I don’t give him this shot right now, he’s gonna puke, and when he does, it’s like a firehose. I’m talking both nostrils, projectile—”

  I had barely gotten my arm inside when Ken suddenly reached past me, yanked the door shut, and locked us in.

  I blinked at the door, a mere three inches from my face, in wonder.

  Oh my God. Phase three! We made it!

  I spun around and beamed at my husband with wide, triumphant eyes, trying to ignore both the antiseptic stench and the way the walls were already closing in.

  “Now what?”

  “Sit down,” I whispered, gesturing behind him at the narrow toilet seat.

  “On that?!”

  Taking a paper towel out of the dispenser, I gingerly pinched the raised toilet lid with it and lowered it to cover the seat.

  “There.”

  A knock rattled the flimsy door behind me.

  “Everything okay?” one of the flight attendants asked.

  Ken sat as I crinkled the plastic-wrapped syringe in my hand for effect. “Just a minute! I have to focus. If I don’t inject him in just the right spot, he could be paralyzed from the waist down!”

  Ken raised an eyebrow at me as I shoved the props back into my jacket pocket and gestured toward his crotch, using the universal sign for whip your dick out.

  Ken obliged, and much to my relief, he was still one hundred percent ready to go. My mouth watered at the sight of his taut abs and thick, perfect cock, but I couldn’t have licked him if I’d wanted to. There simply wasn’t enough room in that broom-closet-sized tin can.

  Turning around to face the door, I straddled his knees, gathered my dress around my waist, and sank down onto the lap of the man who never fails to make my wildest dreams come true.

  After a little suffering, of course.

  Inch by inch, I felt the stress of the day melt away as a euphoric cocktail of victory and love and pure, uncut lust flooded my bloodstream. Originally, I’d thought we’d get in, achieve just enough penetration to join the club on a technicality, and get the hell out. But now that we were in, all my carefully researched reconnaissance went right out the window.

  At thirty-six thousand feet above sea level.

  And Ken felt it too. Clutching my hips, he set a punishing pace. I braced one forearm on the wall and the other on the counter to absorb the force of his thrusts. He didn’t enter me fully though. His advances were fast and shallow to avoid making noise, and the resulting friction on my G-spot drove me insane.

  “Ken,” I whispered, my voice a breathless plea, which he mistook to mean that I needed more.

  Reaching between my legs, Ken matched the rhythm of his hips with his fingers, and I had to bite my lip to keep from moaning. I don’t know if it was the altitude or the thrill or the position or the champagne, but the sensation was physically overwhelming. The next thing I knew, I had lost all restraint and was riding him with complete abandon.

  From somewhere far away, I registered the slap, slap, slap that our bodies were making, but I was powerless to stop it. The best I could do was throw my hand out and turn on the faucet to muffle the noise as I writhed on my husband’s lap, possessed by the immaculate pleasure of it all.

  “Fuck,” Ken hissed, his cock swelling and stiffening inside of me.

  The sound of him so close to coming was like the twig snap that set off an avalanche. A cascade of rippling bliss engulfed me as Ken suddenly reared up into a standing position and plastered me against the back of the door. Wave after wave of pleasure racked my body as Ken filled me to my limit, his fingers prolonging my orgasm and his breath hot on my neck as he followed me over the edge.

  Suddenly, the thin metal door that my cheek was smooshed against began to rattle violently as a fist connected with the other side of it.

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  But to me, it might as well have been a million miles away. My knees buckled, and my face slid down the cool, smooth surface as I waited for my consciousness—and cartilage—to recover from that pounding.

  Ken gave my ass a little squeeze and reached over to jiggle the latch beside my
head. “Door’s stuck, man.”

  I peeked over my shoulder at Ken as he tucked himself back inside his shorts. He then handed me a wad of toilet paper before turning to wash his hands. I watched him in the mirror above the sink as I cleaned myself up, bumping the door with my hip every few seconds to make it seem like we were at least trying to get out. When Ken finally glanced up at my reflection and gave me that self-satisfied smolder, I was tempted to pretend like the door was stuck a little longer just so that I could kiss that smirk right off his infuriatingly handsome face.

  “Ready?” he whispered as I jostled the door one last time.

  I gave him a two-fingered salute and dropped back into character just before the door swung open.

  “Oh, thank God!” I clutched my chest in dramatic relief. “I was about to have a panic attack!”

  Ken breezed past both flight attendants without a second glance, but I stayed behind to really sell them on it.

  “Someone needs to fix that latch!” I declared, stumbling over to the doorway between us and the main cabin, gasping for air as if I’d just been rescued from a shipwreck. “I … I’m so dizzy. I couldn’t breathe in there!”

  As I shuffled out into the sleepy aisle beyond and waited for Ken to get up so that I could reclaim the window seat, I swear I heard the snarkier of the two flight attendants mutter under his breath, “Couldn’t breathe? They could probably hear her breathing all the way up in the cockpit.”

  Thankfully, it was dark in the cabin because my cheeks had to be scarlet as I scooted over to my seat. But my mortification quickly melted away when I realized what had just happened. After months of careful planning, a few game-day surprises, and the added challenge of having to convince Ken I’ve-Never-Even-Gotten-A-Speeding-Ticket Easton to break the law with me, I had just joined the elite ranks of the MHC—a group consisting of only the most sexually adventurous, brazenly reckless, delightfully deviant (and usually dangerously intoxicated) members of our society.

  Operation: Mile High Club was a success!

  I glanced over at Ken, expecting to see a similar look of triumph and joy in his dazzling blue eyes, but I couldn’t see his eyes at all. They were hidden under an eye mask with the Delta Air Lines logo splashed across the front. He was curled up sideways in his seat, his head propped up on a little disposable Delta Air Lines pillow, and the blanket we’d been snuggling under was pulled up to his chin.

  “Ken?”

  “Hmm?” He reached up to his ear and removed a complimentary Delta Air Lines earplug.

  “You asleep?”

  “Mmhmm.”

  His hand emerged from under the blanket, closed in a fist. “Take this now, so it’ll wear off by the time we land. I heard if you wake up before your Ambien wears off, you’ll be out of your mind.” The corner of his mouth curled up ever so slightly as I accepted the pill.

  “What’s so funny, Ken?”

  His smirk widened as he popped that earplug back into his ear and snuggled down into the scratchy blue blanket. I thought he was going to ignore my question, but just before he drifted off to some candy-colored, chemically-induced dreamland, he replied, “Maybe if you get woken up on Ambien, you’ll be in your right mind.”

  * * *

  So, that’s the story I hoped I would be telling people when they asked how our flight to Rome was. I would regale them with the tale of my sexual adventure. Delight them with every humorous, heartwarming detail. Inspire them with my refusal to go quietly into the eternal night of parenthood and wifedom and soul-crushing middle age.

  I did not get to tell that story.

  And all because of one little discrepancy in the series of events.

  In reality, the argument Ken and I’d had on the plane went something like this:

  “You know …” Ken reached into his pocket and produced two white, oval-shaped pills. “Your mom gave me some Ambien on our way out the door to help us sleep on the flight. We could take them now and wake up in Rome.”

  “First of all, you don’t even drink caffeine. What are you doing, accepting unsolicited drugs from my mother?” I went to snatch the contraband out of Ken’s hand, but he closed his fist around the pills before I could grab them. “And second of all, I didn’t come this far to only come this far.”

  “I’m gonna take one.”

  “The hell you are! Ken, you can’t go to sleep. You have a job to do.”

  “It’s ten o’clock. Bedtime.”

  “What about my plan?!” I looked around and lowered my voice to a whisper. “What about my plan?”

  “Brooke, I am not—”

  “How about this?” I blurted, cutting him off. “What if we do my part of the plan first, as soon as they turn off the Fasten Seat Belt sign, and then we’ll do your part of the plan?”

  Ken shook his head. “That’ll take too long. It’s only a nine-hour flight. It takes thirty minutes to kick in and lasts up to eight hours, so we need to take it now so that we’ll be able to function when we land. I heard that if you wake up before it wears off, you’re, like, completely out of your mind.”

  “Ugh. You really love your sleep, huh?” I pressed the spot between my eyes, where I could feel a Ken-induced headache coming on. “Okay, how about this? We’ll take it in a few minutes when they turn the Fasten Seat Belt sign off, then we’ll run to the bathroom because of your medical emergency, bang one out, and when we get back to our seats, we’ll fall asleep in time to get a full eight hours.”

  Ken gave me one hell of a side-eye, but eventually caved. “Fine.”

  “Fine.”

  It was not fine. It was not even a little bit fine, you guys.

  One minute, I was popping a pill while waiting for the perfect moment to pounce on the restroom, and the next, I was being woken from a dead sleep by my own violent vomiting.

  I had no idea where I was or what I was doing. I could hardly see in the darkness of the cabin. But I had definitely just puked all over myself. That much was apparent.

  I stared down at my clothes—soaked in something that shone in the ambient emergency exit lights and smelled like stomach acid and rancid champagne—and waited for my brain to produce a solution to this problem. But a solution never came. It was as if every brain cell I’d ever possessed was still tranquilized, except for the five that we must have inherited from the very first lifeforms to ever emerge from the primordial sea. I was a mindless, spineless lump with eyes. And evidently, a stomach that did not appreciate being filled with carbonated alcohol and Ambien while aboard a giant, rocking air ship.

  I blinked down at the mess and blinked again.

  Nope. No words. No thoughts. Still just eyeballs.

  But then I remembered that I could point my eyeballs at different things! And maybe one of the things that I pointed them at would also have eyeballs, and it would see that I needed help!

  So, I looked around the cabin, silently pleading for assistance, but there was no one to be seen. No one awake at least. Just rows and rows of unconscious bodies.

  Including the one next to me.

  “Ken!” His name was the first successful word my brain could produce.

  I shook the person whose name was Ken until his eyeballs opened and looked at my eyeballs.

  They didn’t look like his eyeballs though. They were wide and crazed and unfocused, like a flesh-eating zombie’s.

  “Ken,” I said the word again.

  Ken blinked and cocked his head to one side in an uncharacteristically reptilian manner.

  “I … threw up.”

  Three more words! I was doing it! I was wrestling my brain back from the clutches of Big Pharma!

  Ken, on the other hand, could only grunt and stare at me like he was considering taking a bite out of my face.

  “I need you to get me some clothes.”

  At least, that was what I thought I’d said. In reality, it might have sounded like, Ah ee ah oo et ee um oooooooh.

  Whatever language I was speaking, Ken seemed to understand.
Or maybe he just understood that whatever I’d said required action on his part. He stood up—or tried to before the seat belt caught and yanked him back down. That was a whole new challenge we had to overcome. Making our drug-soaked brains cough up the instructions for how to unbuckle an airplane seat belt.

  Through pure dumb luck, we got it open, and Ken immediately bolted into the aisle, standing at attention like a perfect soldier.

  “My suitcase.” I pointed to the compartment above my head. “Suuuuuitcase.”

  With a single nod, Ken began patting and pushing and banging on the compartment doors. Then, suddenly, he turned around and opened one behind him, as if he’d done it a thousand times. I hadn’t been paying attention when he put my bag away, so I just assumed that was the right storage area … until Ken pulled down a suitcase that was definitely not mine and began unzipping it in the middle of the aisle.

  “No!” I whisper-shouted, shaking my head to violently compensate for my lack of verbal communication skills. “No!”

  That finally caught the attention of a flight attendant, who emerged from the back, looking confused.

  “Everything okay?”

  “I threw up.” Those three syllables took all of the concentration I could muster to produce and enunciate clearly.

  “Oh. Okay. Hang on …” The gentleman disappeared into the back, and my shoulders sagged in relief.

  Thank God. Help is—

  “Here.”

  The next thing I knew, a hand was being thrust in my face, containing a wad of shiny black material. I accepted it hesitantly.

  The object’s distinctive plastic-like smell triggered the more primitive part of my memory, which immediately produced an image of five-year-old me standing on a playground in a homemade witch costume while my kindergarten classmates teased me mercilessly. They’d called me the “trash lady” because my mom had made the frock out of a shiny black …

  “Trash bag?”

  “That’s the best I can do, sweetheart,” he said with a shrug. “We don’t deal with”—his eyes flicked down to the front of my ruined dress—“that.”