Chapter 6

We sit like that for a while, bathed in the pins and needles of the jets, tension billowing far thicker than steam in the air. Every so often, his glance flits down to take in my breasts—dangled provocatively, so that the nipples hover right at the waterline—before ascending back up to my face. Gingerly, I stretch out a foot, and begin massaging his erection with my toes. So hard. The man is aching for me.

Scooting toward him along the polished surface of the tub, I turn and position myself between his thighs, so that the smoothness of my back presses seamlessly against the swell of his chest. This leaves his phallus jammed up hard on my tailbone. I feel it throb with the giddy thrill of contacting my bare skin.

I finish off my drink ... then allow my eyelids to drift closed, the heat of the bath leaching decadently into my bones. I could have done this with Bryan any time in the last year. Why hadn’t I?

Slowly, in a manner at once proprietary and exploratory, he lets his hands begin asserting mastery over my body. Light fingertips graze the line of my leg, the curve of my waist, the arc of my collarbone. Next, gradually, deliberately, he takes greater liberties, encroaching on ever more private parts of me. Tracing the slight overhang beneath my teats, and the sensitive skin of my cleavage ... the jut of my hipbones, and the tingling flesh of my inner thighs...

I’m breathing hard, chest rising and falling. Enjoying being teased; enjoying being wanted. There’s an unspoken truth hanging over us, which has me feeling both exhilarated and mortified. The truth that soon enough, he’s going to take me. And I’m going to let him.

For a while he works my breasts, digging his hands gently into their substance, rubbing the areolae, rolling and kneading the nipples. The delectable pressure and stimulation of it is accented by the soft slipperiness of the water. Ripples of delight flow from my tits, through my torso, into my brain and arms and legs. My vulva shivers with anticipation.

At last, he slips both hands in between my thighs, pulling my legs apart and my labia open. Deftly he fondles the tender softness inside—drawing my clit out from beneath my hood, plumping it up with the frothiness of his touch. Then, more assertively, he lays into stroking me. His steady, rhythmic cadence is bewitching, kindling a fire instantly in my gut, and banking it steadily higher. He doesn’t enter me; but instead drives inexorably down the length of my slit with each caress, rimming my hole, and tantalizing me with the frustrated desire to be penetrated.

He’s better with his hands than Mike. My husband gets excited and starts going too fast, losing his tempo. But Bryan is different: confident, controlled, patient. The drumbeat he summons in my pussy is immersive and hypnotic, and I find myself in thrall to it, helpless against the primitive sensations he’s stirring up in me.

No part of this is relaxing. Even amidst my bliss, I remain keenly aware that I’ve never allowed the fingers of any man besides Mike to trespass me this way. The experience is foreign, unaccustomed, unsettling. Marital foreplay tends to adhere to a comfortable routine—but Bryan’s touch is different, in a million ways both obvious and subtle. The contrast leaves me teetering on-edge, tumbling off-balance, in spite of all the alcohol I’ve knocked back.

And nor is there anything soothing about the lurid sizzle of stimulation that Bryan keeps pumping into my nerve fibers. Quite the contrary. With every stroke and caress of his fingertips, the knotted coil in my abdomen constricts a little further. I bite my lower lip. My hips rock. My fists clench. My lungs gasp for oxygen until my tits are heaving lustily up out of the water with every breath.

The man has got me revved up very high, and I know I’m close to losing it. There’s a rosy haze flickering behind my eyelids; and it seems that every ounce of my being has been drawn down and concentrated into the silky folds at my crotch. And then, at last, it happens. With a quiet gasp, the coil is sprung, and my entire body goes rigid—jaw clenched, back arching slightly, pelvis juddering—as profound, spasmodic waves go surging through my womb.

My sense of personhood begins to melt away, swallowed up in the carnal oblivion of release. But even caught within its grasp, I’m aware that it’s not the most powerful climax I’ve ever had. Not earth-shattering, not mind-blowing, not the kind that would allow me to escape myself as completely as I’d wish. Instead, it’s a weird, mixed-up, confusing orgasm. Compelling and captivating, yes. But fraught and sinful as well.

At the core of my body, I’m suffused by a cathartic sort of rapture. The closeness of this man, his attractiveness, his attentiveness—all of it feeds the frantic buzzing in my chest, filling me with its warmth, and decadence, and insatiability.

And yet at the same time, outwardly, reflexively, I find myself laboring to hide the physical signs of it. I’m not sure Bryan can even tell he’s made me come—and in a vague way, I truly hope he can’t. I guess it’s a kind of protective instinct, trying to avoid making myself too vulnerable, or too legible. Maybe seeking to obscure the extent of my indiscretion.

I push myself to reject the guilt. To simply feast on the marrow of pleasure, riding the luscious, resounding echoes of orgasm for as long as they’ll carry me. Bryan is supplying me with plenty of fuel to keep the bonfire stoked hot. He’s continued massaging my clit steadily—and with every touch, a fresh bolt of lightning goes hurtling down my spine.

Careening along in this silent fugue of ecstasy, however, I keep finding myself sucked back into the undertow. Pulled down into the messy roil of my emotions. Feeling ... God, I don’t know what. Joy and affirmation. Justification and payback. Shame and betrayal.

Fuck, this is so screwed up.

Fuck, it feels good...

Eventually, we hit the point where I’m becoming twitchy and over-sensitized, and it’s time to draw Bryan’s hands away.

After taking a moment to center myself, I rise unsteadily—water streaming down my bare flanks. Turns out I’m more shaken-up by the mélange of afterglow and liquor than I’d expected, though, and I end up having to grab the towel bar to steady myself. Barely avoiding a nasty tumble, I succeed in extricating myself from the tub. It’s a relief to find purchase on the matte smoothness of the floor, and I pause there, dazed and swaying slightly, while I get my bearings.

Bryan is right behind me, primed, hungry, insistent. Spinning me around, he draws me into a fervent kiss. I’m so confused. Bryan is clearly an experienced kisser, vigorous and responsive, and I find myself wanting him even more urgently than before. But at the same time, the orgasm has left me a little melancholy—as sometimes happens—and self-reproach over what I’m doing has begun to nag at me hard.

I pull away, muddled and adrift, intellect swallowed up by the dense fog that fills my head. “Bryan, I don’t ... I mean, what I want is...”

He stares at me, breathing hard, unblinking, the force of his eyes burning a hole through my skull.

Oh fuck, what do I want?

What I want is for Mike to never have cheated on me. To go back to being the stupid, oblivious, naïve, trusting woman I was this morning.