Behind His Back (12 page)

Maybe I’ll fuck him again. Maybe next time will be better. But right now, with his cum melting into my sweaty chest, all I can think about is Hunter punishing me for being such a bad girl.

“Thank you,” Chad says, interrupting my fantasy.

“What?” I say.

“I just said thank you.”

How fucking annoying is that? “You don’t need to thank me,” I say. “This is fucking, not charity.”

“Right,” he says, and he runs to grab me a towel so I can clean him off of me.

I wipe my sticky lips on my forearm, and I reach over to my gym bag beside the platform to retrieve my phone. Then, before I clean up and head home, with the pictures of Hunter’s perfect ass models blinking in my mind, I take a picture of Chad’s cum on my tits. I do this automatically, unthinkingly, and with no sense of how much trouble I’m getting myself into.

D
avid’s sitting
at our kitchen island, enthralled by whatever tech site he’s reading on his iPad and sipping from a tiny white cup of homemade espresso. He bought the machine—a gaudy red countertop job that looks as out of place in our pristine white kitchen as a sharkskin suit at a wedding in the Hamptons—from a dealer in San Francisco, who had it shipped here from Italy. It’s become his morning obsession. All of the grinding and tamping and frothing and agonizing over the timing of the perfect shot seems a little ridiculous, but I have to admit: my husband makes a damn good latte.

“You want a shot?” he asks without looking up as I pass through the kitchen.

“I’m okay,” I say. “I’ll just grab a coffee on my way to work.” I’d be a half hour late if I stuck around for him to grind another batch of his fancy beans.

“Cool,” he says, and he bows his head back to the glow of his tablet.

I brush past him and kiss him on the temple before leaving, and he smiles indifferently and tells me to have a good day.

Once I’m at my desk, cradling my black coffee and picking off emails about our next issue, my thoughts turn to the fact that David and I have fucked exactly once since he got home a week ago, and it was totally by accident. I was trying to masturbate while he was out for a run, and he came home with a cramp and caught me in our giant ensuite tub, holding the shower wand beneath the surface and moaning under its influence. I hadn’t planned to get off, but shortly after he laced up his shoes and left, I went upstairs to spray a little of my Fräulein perfume on my wrist and ruminate on my little dressing room adventure, and the intoxicating scent—full of saffron and magnolia mixed with hints of jasmine—got me so worked up that I had no choice.

Normally I’d try to jump David’s bones in a situation like that, but it’s tough to fantasize about hot sex with Hunter when I’m struggling to keep my husband’s cock hard.

When David returned, I was moaning so loudly that he must have known what I was doing as soon as he opened our front door. He could have ignored me and busied himself downstairs. But to his credit, he came upstairs, got undressed in our bedroom and walked into the bathroom with a half-mast hard-on and a helpful attitude.

Don’t a lot of pornos start that way?

I was mortified at first, not just because he’d caught me red handed, but because I was thinking about Hunter while doing it. As far as I know, it was the closest he’s come to catching me cheating.

To make it up to him, I altered my plan and told him to bring me his cock. He obeyed, sitting calmly at the edge of the sunken tub with his shins in the hot water while I kneeled in the suds and sucked him off, all the while imagining how Hunter would have handled the situation differently. He wouldn’t have sheepishly offered to lend a hand—he would have barked orders, commanding me to touch myself until the tub was brimming with my juices. And he certainly wouldn’t have undressed himself and slinked into the bathroom brandishing a shy semi—he’d have dragged me out of the tub by my ponytail and made me kneel on the cold tiles, naked and wet, while he commanded me to unpackage his proud cock and feast on it. Then he’d pour oil down my back while I sucked, working it into my ass and pussy, and he’d fuck my slippery body on the hard floor.

Thinking of all the dirty things Hunter would do made me want to be filled, so I let David’s sizeable but struggling cock fall from my hands while I moved to the other side of the tub and leaned over the edge. Facing away from him with my ass in the air, I instructed him to fuck me.

Again he obeyed, kneeling behind me and fucking me slowly and gently while I sprayed the wand against my clit. There’s nothing wrong with a little assistance now and then, but I felt bad for David—and for our marriage—because every shiver and moan I let out was for the titillating bursts of water and not for him. Twice I had to increase the pressure to make up for his disinterested thrusts.

After a few minutes of him fucking me, the wand began to work its magic, and I felt the muscles of my thighs involuntarily twitch. But before the electric tremors reached their full force, I felt him cum inside of me. He quickly pulled out and then sat back in the water, leaving me once again masturbating in front of him.

I could have finished. I could have spitefully carried on with my ass in the air, rubbing his face in the fact that a stupid shower wand was doing a job that he couldn’t. But what was the point? Would he even care?

I shut off the water and sat back down in the now tepid water. For a second I considered cozying up against him, just to test our capacity for intimacy beyond sex. But before I could, he was out of the water, towelling off and thanking me.

I hate being thanked for sex. That should be one of the rules in the feature article that I’m currently putting together: never say
thank you
.

The piece is on the rules of sexting. Intern Sophie suggested it at our last pitch meeting, and though it sounded a little more risqué than our usual fare, Angela approved the topic and I jumped right on it. It’s something I didn’t know much about before a few weeks ago, but given the excitement I felt the last time Hunter texted me, I was happy to research the etiquette and polish my texting game. Maybe with the right carrot, I could convince him to text me a little more often.

One clear rule that everyone seems to agree on is that if you’re going to send a naked pic of yourself, don’t do it until you have a clear indication that the other party is interested. The second rule is to always make sure your face is out of the frame. Sure, the tits or dick in the shot could be attached to anyone other than you, but opening the gates to a little dishonesty is better than smiling stupidly in a naughty pic that will live forever on the Internet.

I pick up my phone and scan through my recent photos until I find the evidence of my unsatisfying tryst with Chad, and I chuckle when I realize that, if I were to send it to Hunter, I wouldn’t have to crop it. The picture is poorly lit, and the unnecessary flash makes my tits look ghastly pale and slathered in radioactive semen, but at least my face is cut out. Teens who text each other their privates every day probably spend hours color-correcting their skin with Photoshop, but my tits, despite looking a little pale, are perfectly passable. The picture is actually kind of hot—just a pair of tits that Hunter will probably recognize as mine, and semen that he’ll definitely know isn’t his.

I wonder whether it would piss Hunter off to see another man’s cum on my chest. Would he seethe the way I have about the prints of perfect asses that he made me stare at while he fucked me? Sure, it was hot as hell, but the jealousy was what made it so hot. I know it’s crazy, but I can’t help wondering how hard he’d revenge-fuck me if I could ever make him that envious.

As I steam over the memory of all of those amazing black-and-white asses, I watch in horror as my thumb presses the share button above the dirty photo. I beg it to stop as it scrolls down my contact list to find Hunter’s number. I’m already full of regret when my thumbs, as if possessed by some devious demon that wants a strange man to fuck the life out of me, type the message “My tits. Not your cum.”

And then I hold my breath and expect the worst as I watch myself press send.

A few hours ago David boarded another plane for a two-day trip, so I’m sitting across from Cassie at an insufferable bar called Tool and Die. We’re sipping pints of a gross, wheaty microbrew in an attempt to embrace the old-timey vibe, and there are no coasters in sight because any additional watermarks would only add to the weathered patina of the table’s reclaimed timber. The whole bar’s like this. It’s a blue-collar pub for trust-fund hipster kids who’ll never have to work blue-collar jobs. Not that their grad degrees are keeping them from wearing actual blue collars. About half the guys in here are dressed in faded blue chambray work shirts paired with disturbingly skinny black jeans that I can only hope have a hint of spandex. The other half are wearing fitted flannel shirts, the sleeves of which are rolled up to reveal expensive, intricate ink. Miss Sassy Pants from Fräulein would fit in just fine here, though she’d probably make an unsatisfying snack of any of these weaklings.

Nicole reviewed this place favorably in our last issue, though I have no idea why. It’s all exposed brick and bare pipes, and I feel like I’m drinking in an abandoned factory in Detroit. Which makes me way overdressed in my expensive fuck-me jeans and black halter top. I figured that since I’m taking the initiative of fucking random guys, I can man up and suggest a bar for my girls’ night with Cassie instead of always letting her take the lead. But given the sour look on her face, I think I might have fucked up. College bars are always iffy, and now that we’re past that phase, they can easily be a disaster. Cassie’s main source of satisfaction in life comes from being a sexual being who drinks and dines and flirts and fucks—the last thing a woman like her wants is to be surrounded by fresher faces and skinnier bodies wearing fashion that’s forbidden to our generation. Not that anyone here is scandalously dressed. If anything, it’s the opposite—that’s what feels so weird. It’s a bar, but no one, except for maybe Cassie in her skimpy skirt and backless top, is dressed provocatively. The girls are actually outfitted pretty similar to the guys, if you could call them guys. They’re in skinny jeans and baggy sweaters, and their long, straight hair is hidden beneath wool hats that don’t suit the mild weather outside. They’re drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon and Red Stripe beer, and none of them are dancing. A few of the girls are in little cut-off shorts, but their legs are so thin and gangly that I don’t feel threatened. There isn’t a decently firm ass in the entire crowd.

If anything bothers me, it’s the ubiquity of sleeve tattoos. Ink can be sexy—Miss Sassy Pants being a prime example—but why would a man slather his forearms in designs that distract from his potential hotness? Then again, none of these sissies are sporting forearms worth noticing. They’d get chewed to pieces among the warriors I ogle at Rev.

“How old do you think these girls are?” Cassie says.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Twenty-one? Maybe twenty-three?”

“Jesus Christ. Twenty-fucking-one. Do you remember what we were doing when we were that age?”

“College wasn’t that long ago for us,” I say. “And when I wasn’t studying, I think I was drinking with you in bars pretty similar to this one. Maybe with a little less reclaimed wood on the walls.”

“Yeah, except we made an effort to look hot,” she says. “What the fuck are these toddlers even wearing? Do they not want to get hit on?”

Cassie makes a valid point. It’s an incontrovertible fact that young people in every culture are perpetually horny and eager to act on their impulses—though maybe not as compulsively as me lately. But the kids here aren’t all right. No one’s canoodling in the corners, and no obnoxious young men are sidling up to drunken girls, annoying them with their clumsy advances. I think back to the article I’m prepping. Maybe flirting is now something that happens purely through smartphones, and it doesn’t spill over into the real world.

“Look at her,” Cassie says, gesturing to a could-be-pretty girl in skinny, faded jeans and a loose flannel shirt. Her brown hair is cropped short and has no coloring, and she’s wearing hardly any makeup besides a little mascara and foundation. “How many guys do you think she’s fucked?”

The girl in question is chatting and laughing with two guys in a booth across the bar from us. Both of the guys are skinny and have those weird pomaded haircuts from the twenties. The sides of their heads are cropped so close that you can see their scalps, and they’d look like extras from
Boardwalk Empire
if it weren’t for their thick-rimmed glasses and their fitted flannel shirts.

“I don’t know,” I say. “It doesn’t look like she’s fucked those guys. I can’t even tell if she’s into guys. Or if they’re into girls.”

“What the fuck is going on with the world?” Cassie says. “Do college kids not fuck each other anymore? Are elderly people in Cialis commercials the only people having sex these days?”

“Them and us,” I say.

“Gross.”

Cassie’s getting seriously worked up, so I decide this would be a good segue to reward her with some heavy gossip. I figure I owe her after dragging her to this too-cool-for-sex hipster pub.

“I’ve actually been having more sex than usual lately,” I say.

Cassie’s eyes light up like brandy-flooded flambés at a French restaurant. This is exactly the distraction she needs.

“So Mr. Perfect’s found his mojo, has he?” she says.

It takes me a second to realize that
Mr. Perfect
is a reference to my husband. “Not exactly,” I say. I pause and let her savour that juicy morsel. Her eyes widen as she adds two and two.

“Wait—you mean that hot Australian guy from the last time we got plastered?” she says.

I smile and leave her hanging just a little bit longer. Fucking with her is the next best thing to fucking Hunter.

“Yup,” I say. I swig my opaque yellow beer and peek at Cassie over the rim of the glass. She’s gripping the table.

“Shut the fucking front door,” she says.

“I think the whole
front door
thing is to avoid the
fucking
,” I say.

“And what would you know about avoiding fucking, you late-blooming slut?”

If Cassie and I weren’t already best friends, we would be now.

“Okay, okay,” she says. “I want details. Describe every last drop of bodily fluid you exchanged that night.”

“First,
eew
. And second, it wasn’t just that night,” I say.

“Oh my fucking God. How many times have you fucked him?” There’s a good chance Cassie’s going to flip out and throw our table clear across the room.

“Just three times so far,” I say. “And a blow job in a dressing room at Holt Renfrew. But I plan to do it as often as possible.”

“You perfect, beautiful slut,” she says.

“Thanks,” I say. “I think.” I knew I could count on Cassie to see my side of things.