The packet from my mom contained a necktie, a plastic comb, and a pair of cufflinks with my initials. Her note read: I thought you might like these—your first tie! You were such a cutie in your stiff white shirt and gray suit.

“Whatever happened to that gray suit?” Emma asked.

I smiled. “Moths, probably. I can barely remember wearing it. I might have been ten.”

“Bet even then you were a cutie,” Emma said. “Let’s go to bed.”

Coming out of the bathroom I saw Emma at the mirror of her dressing table. She was wearing the tie and nothing else. “What do you think?” she asked.

I was impressed that she’d knotted it expertly. “Where did you learn to tie ties?” I asked.

Briefly her eyes met mine in the mirror. “Did I get it wrong?”

I stood behind her and pretended to make an adjustment. My hand strayed to her breast. To her nipple. My thumb stroked it erect.

Meanwhile Emma had moved a hand behind her back and around the shaft of my penis. She was squeezing in time to my strokes. I was soon hugely erect. “I need it in me now,” she said. She led me back to the bed, pushed me onto it, and mounted me. The tie dangled and jounced and swayed through the fuck. With Emma’s first come still underway, I took a hold of the tie and pulled her down for a luscious, gasping kiss. “Now you’re going to get it,” Emma sang out, and she fucked me with such voracious passion there was nothing I could do but come.

Back in bed after our shower, Emma said, “I love your first tie almost as much as I love you. Next time we make love I might let you wear it.”

I decided not to tell her that I’d never seen that tie before. It must have been my father’s or one of my brother’s. My actual first tie was not the slinky red silk but something wool and plaid and thoroughly annoying in every way possible.