by Jaime Thorne
But of course, he couldn't say that.
“I've seen it before,” I said carefully, “It's a regular feature at the gallery but certainly one of my favorites.”
I wanted to tell him my truth. I wanted to extend my personal honesty to him and tell him that I knew that he wanted me and that I wanted him but I was torn. I wanted to tell him that I didn't want to risk anything with my husband but I couldn't help but want to be with him. That I didn't know how I could possibly move forward while being so mired down with the thought and memory of him.
“You should tell R.A. that,” he said to me, “Every time I tell him I like a painting he's done he immediately tells me that it's one of his inferior works. Perhaps he'll take a compliment better if it comes from the lips of a beautiful woman.”
When he called me beautiful I felt a thrill. I was giddy with it. Here I was a grown woman, over a decade older than he was, and yet still I was excited to have the attention of a handsome man. I hadn't felt like this in years, and the sensation left me nearly breathless.
“You know him?” I asked, “I've never even met R.A. and I'm on the board of this gallery.”
I turned to him for the first time since he appeared beside me and I looked at him. I saw only the profile of his face but it was enough, and when he turned to look at me I knew that I would be lost if I stared into his eyes so I turned my attention back to the painting to keep from doing something I shouldn't.
“I do,” he said calmly, his eyes boring a hole in the side of my head, “We're old friends, met at a boring party a few years back and found that we enjoyed the company of each other more than we enjoyed the party. Wound up ditching the place and drinking in a string of dive bars and talking about art all night. He's a good guy.”
I tried to keep control over myself, keeping my eyes open and drinking in the details of the painting to avoid from seeing him. I memorized each line and branch, each stroke of the brush deliberate and intentional.
“I've always thought he was a fascinating figure,” I told him, “He's got a true artist spirit.”
It was a stupid statement, it meant nothing but it was necessary to fill the quiet. I wish I could have said something better but with him being so close to me my mind was closed off to anything but the thought of the strong and handsome man standing beside me.
“He'd like to hear that,” Bruce chuckled, “If you'd like you can tell him in person. I can introduce the two of you.”
For a moment I lost myself. For a moment I lived in the moment and I forgot who I was dealing with.
Ecstatic at the opportunity to meet R.A. Sallow I turned and looked at Bruce.
“Really?” I practically exclaimed, “That would be fantastic.”
My voice trailed off at the end of the words as I looked to him. I lost myself in those eyes of his, that stern intensity melting my resolve and leaving me as his supplicant.
“Your phone,” he said, holding out his hand and taking it as I meekly offered it.
Bruce punched away at it, opening the contacts and tapping in his details and then calling his own phone to get my number. When he was done he handed my phone back to me, his fingers brushing against mine for just an instant but long enough to make me gasp.
“I'll set it up and call you with the details,” he said, “Or would you prefer a text?”
There was so much intention in that question. So much in that choice that would decide how we would move forward.
“A text,” I told him, knowing what that meant.
Because a text was discreet. A text could be temporarily ignored. A text could be hidden from prying eyes.
Bruce nodded, a wry smile on his face showing that he knew exactly what he was doing. Then he turned on his heel and left me staggered and standing alone in the gallery.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
JEREMY
Dinner was ostensibly delicious. I could taste the individual flavors and textures and knew they were paired correctly and that they worked well with each other. Of course they did, my personal chef was nothing if not skilled.
But today all food was bland to me. Today my attentions were anywhere but here.
Avril sat across me at the table, looking as beautiful as ever. Outwardly there was nothing changed between the two of us, she joined me here for dinner as she always did and our conversation was polite and contained like it always was.
Because the dinner table was not a place for deep and detailed discussions.
Since that night dinner was really the only place that I'd ever interacted with my wife. She was usually asleep by the time I came to bed and in the morning I woke well before her. Our schedules were so busy at any time that it wasn't unheard of for us to only have an hour or two in the evening together, but of late that time had been restricted down and down until it was just this time at this table that we actually interacted.
And now tonight I wasn't even here.
After I'd managed to pry the bottle from his hands and cancel the meetings for the rest of the day I'd arranged to take Jacob home myself. It was the least I could do and the most understandable thing to do considering our partnership. It certainly didn't seem odd to anyone at the office, at least outside of the fact that one of the partners was evidently having a nervous breakdown before their very eyes.
We'd gone to his home, the home of his family for generations, and as I stepped into the halls of it for the first time I was really struck by how much a home is made by the people who live in it. Without those people it's just a building, wood and brick and rigid angles. People soften those angles, they add their own touch of personality to it that make the place feel like something other than detached and removed.
Emily was not the most caring of people. Like Jacob she was a hard power, combatting and coming up against him just as much as she did the other people in her life. She did not bend and she never broke, and their whole relationship had a dynamic where they kept some things removed from each other that I could never understand.
Neither Jacob nor Emily were honest with each other. Like they had both independently acknowledged that they would have secrets for themselves, and had agreed independently never to press for something the other didn't want to hand over.
I didn't understand it, and I certainly couldn't live like that, but at the same time I didn't really want to judge them. I figured what made them happy was what made them happy, and if that was enough for them so be it.
But I saw now that my misunderstanding ran deeper than I could have imagined.
Jacob loved Emily, in a different way than I loved Avril but still, he loved her. He cared for her so deeply and having her leave him like this had torn a hole in the heart of him that I didn't know would ever really mend.
And even more just than the connection that he had with her was the impact that she had on the world around her.
Emily had always seemed to be a cold person to me. I'd never felt an abundance of warmth or affection from her, and outside of scripted necessity, I'd never seen that warmth reflected on Jacob or on the world that he made with her.
But I could feel the loss of it in this house in subtle ways. The small pieces that were missing that she had taken with her. The too quiet of the halls. The absence of smells and the absence of any sort of connection to this place that was her doing.
She had been the one to make this house a home.
I'd brought Jacob into that home and I'd settled him down. I'd stayed with him because without me he didn't have anyone else left. I stayed with him and I waited until he slept even though that took the better part of the day and when he was asleep I crept out of the house and was almost home free when I saw it.
She had left him a note before she departed, and I shouldn't have read it but I did. It was long and it was detailed, and it was not short on blame.
It told him that it was his fault that she had left, and it told him that it was her fault as well. That she didn't stop loving him, but that she wanted more than he cou
ld give her. She mentioned Roger as well, telling Jacob that the feelings she had for Roger were complicated and difficult but they were exciting and new as well.
Emily told Jacob that she was sorry but she needed to do this. That she needed to find her own happiness even if that meant losing happiness with him.
That thought weighed on me, and the words and the looks that I had seen on Avril's face were all tangled up and confused with the words that I had seen on that page. I didn't know how to move forward, didn't know how to get past the glaring problem in front of me.
My desire never lessened. To my great shame not once did I stop thinking of Avril in the throes of pleasure with Bruce and see it as anything other than beautiful. It was troubling, but that trouble was a seasoning on my desire, and by no means did it ruin the dish.
I knew that I was being obvious, as I cut my meat and mechanically chewed and swallowed it I know that I kept my end of the conversation up but that it was all formalities. I knew that my wife wasn't buying it for a single moment.
After dinner I took my leave in my study, pacing and trying to figure this out. Trying to rationalize my way out of an irrational situation and knowing it was impossible all along. And when I went to bed that night it was with the knowledge that I hadn't solved a single thing and the expectation of troubled sleep.
But it seems that I wasn't the only one who would be having trouble sleeping that night.
“Oh,” I said, stopping in the doorway as I stepped through the threshold of the bedroom, “I didn't expect you to be up.”
Avril looked up from her book and over to me, she smiled politely but there was an emptiness behind it, “Figured I would read for a bit. Didn't expect you to bed for a while longer. Thought you would be pacing in your office for at least another hour.”
When you have been married for twenty years conversations can exist between the words, implications taking the place of statements as you play through the patterns you both know. Not that it was my intention but I hadn't hidden anything but the truth of what was troubling me from her, she could sense it. Of course she could.
I walked in and sat on the edge of the bed, looking at her. Avril was so beautiful, just as beautiful as she always was. I was so lucky to be with a woman like her, one that was so stunningly out of my league.
“Emily left Jacob,” I told her simply, “Spent the day with him today trying to keep him together. He's taking it really hard.”
Her mouth dropped open and I could see her processing it. I knew that Avril wasn't especially fond of either of them but I knew that at the same time she wouldn't want harm to either of them.
“Divorce?” she asked, “But why after twenty years.”
“A guy,” I said, almost chuckling at it, “A younger man. One who makes her feel alive and gives her... gives her what Jacob cannot.”
“But,” she said, “I mean why now. What is it about this new man? What is it that makes him better than the others?”
Her words honestly shocked me a bit. They shook my resolve, if only for just a moment.
I never thought that Avril was anything but intelligent, but I never really truly realized that she knew that Emily was cheating on Jacob and had been for years. I guess I never really put it all together.
And I knew that Avril deserved a truth, deserved a clear answer but I hesitated. Even knowing that the answer wasn't difficult to discern that didn't mean that it wasn't difficult to say. So instead I told her something else.
“I didn't speak to her,” I said to her, “And Jacob was too drunk to really say. Even he didn't speak to her. She left him a note.”
It was a lie of omission, but that didn't make it any easier for me. I felt heavy guilt weigh on me but I couldn't put to words the fear that I had at that moment, knowing the parallels between their story and mine and knowing that if I told her what Jacob and Emily had been up to all these past months it would throw my choices into question.
It was the first time I'd ever lied to her, and it made me feel miserable. Even worse was the fact that Avril bought it entirely.
“You poor thing,” she told me, setting aside her book and crawling down the bed to take me in her arms and comfort me, “God this must have been terrible for you to have to be there for. Don't worry Jacob will be fine and everything will work out in the end. He's a strong man, just like you.”
I leaned into her affection, using the closeness of her body to push away the chill of my dishonesty. It was the first moment we'd been close since the night of my fantasy. The first time I'd touched her really and she had touched me.
I wanted just this, even just for a moment. I wanted just a moment of normalcy.
Turning my head I kissed her, pressing my lips into hers with a present immediacy. She froze up for a moment in surprise and then melted in me and rebounded against me and I felt her respond back in kind with a passionate hunger driven by a deep and resounding need.
There was something inside of her, something powerful pushing her onward. I could feel it vibrating deep inside of her, making her do what happened next.
Everything that happened next.
In the years that I'd been with Avril, we'd obviously made love many times. As married couples did our lovemaking ran the gamut over the years, and up until now I'd figured we'd touched on virtually every single variety of the spectrum in our journey of pleasure.
But I'd never seen her like this. I'd never seen her this forceful and unrestrained. I'd never seen her this needy.
She pushed me down to the bed, pinning me to it onto my back and moving on me quickly. Her hands were nimble and fast, her fingers slipping my pants down and tugging at my cock with an insistent force that took my breath away from me just as quickly as it turned my hardening cock into a raging hardness that was begging for her.
She gave herself to me, slipping down and straddling me. Avril didn't even bother to remove her panties, content to slip them to one side as she bore down on me and slipped me inside of her with a guttural grunt of pleasurable need.
I felt her around me, hot and tight and wet, squeezing me more powerfully than I'd ever felt before. More intense than I'd ever felt before.
She didn't wait for me to adjust to it, she didn't wait for anything as she began to ride me up and down and back and forth, grinding out her pleasure on me. Using me for her needs.
It was sudden and ferocious. It was intense and immediate. Her fingers dug into my chest, making streaks and lines of pain run through my body and making me clench and tighten and force up into her while my eyes locked with hers.
And she wasn't my wife. I don't know who she was at that moment but she wasn't my wife. There was a wildness behind those eyes, a ferocity that I'd never seen before. One that bordered on anger, that stunned me into silence and frozen stillness that she did not respond well to.
“Fuck me,” she demanded through clenched teeth, “Fuck me.”
I didn't hesitate, I gave in to her needs. Pressing myself up into her to meet her as she fell shudderingly down on me. I gave her my cock, feeling it slip into her tightness again and again as she groaned and squeezed herself tight around me.
“Fuck me,” she continued to demand, “Fucking grab me and fuck me. Grip me and pull me. Oh god, keep going. Oh god fucking fuck me!”
There was a desperation in her voice, a desperation that made it clear that it wasn't enough for her. That I wasn't enough for her.
Flashes ran through my mind. Muscular arms holding feminine limbs. Fingers that were tight and strong gripping and pulling. A body that was firm and unequivocally male pounding in with every last iota of its strength to give her the pleasure that she needed, that she was craving right now.
Flashes ran through my mind, memories of her night with Bruce.
And that was enough for me, enough for me to lose control so quickly I didn't even realize until it was over. Until I was spilling myself deep inside of her with a groan and a blush of shame, staring at that space where our bodies m
et while my cock pulsed in her and her body found it's stillness.
My eyes looked upwards, meeting hers. My eyes connected with her and couldn't bear the sight of her looking back at me with disdain. My eyes turned away, as the heat of my shame prickled at my cheeks.
CHAPTER TWELVE
BRUCE
I felt nervous, which in itself is a very odd sensation for me. It's not one that I'm overly familiar with because I go out of my way to avoid it.
There is a philosophy I have that nerves are only applicable if you're unprepared. They're a symptom and they're unnecessary. They can be avoided if you're not a complete and utter moron about things.
Two simple rules will help even the most anxiety-ridden individual avoid ever being nervous.
One, make sure you always have an objective. In every situation you need a goal, something to strive for and to work towards. This gives you something to focus on, and if you're focused you're too busy to be nervous.
Two, never put yourself in a place where you don't know what is going to happen. Because it's all too easy to walk into a situation thinking that you'll just wing it and that almost always means that you're going to either fail miserably or get through by the skin of your teeth.
If you're walking into a room you should always know how to get out of it. If you're walking into a situation you should know as many variables as you possibly can and how to use them to your advantage to get the outcome you want.
There are no excuses for that, except apparently when it comes to women like Avril.
I had texted her a time and a location and she had agreed. I'd set up everything without any real sort of idea of what would happen once we passed through the doors and, most importantly, without knowing what I wanted from this.
Asking Avril had been an impulse. Her accepting had put me off balance. I'd leaned into confidence because that was the default that I leaned into, but the truth was that I didn't feel confident around this woman anymore.