“Yeah.” Another nuzzle, and she held her breath at the sensation. His tongue traced her lightly, drawing a sigh from her lungs. She lay back against the mattress, letting her arms trail above her head as she surrendered to whatever he was going to do to her.

The head he gave was nothing like Mike’s. Her husband’s tongue was fast and ingenious, mastered at teasing her clit with rapid, fluttering flicks, and he knew how much pressure she liked from years of getting her off.

Bern was the opposite. He gave her folds deep, firm, languid kisses, punctuating every few laps with a nip at her clit. He was as slow and decadent as caramel, and though the contact didn’t stimulate her in the expert, efficient way Mike could, the sheer dirtiness of those penetrating strokes of his tongue had her toes curling.

“Wow,” she murmured. He wasn’t better or worse than Mike, only different, but that wasn’t the message she was supposed to be conveying. “You’re so good.”

His mouth left her so he could speak. “Better than your husband?”

“I never knew how good this could feel.”

She felt him penetrating – his fingers, not his tongue this time. He moaned. “You taste so sweet. When we fuck I want to eat you for an hour, until you’re screaming for my dick. Begging.”

“I’m close to begging now.”

“That’s what you think.” He added a third finger, filling her with a hot, curious ache, a need to know how his cock would feel, how fast or rough he might fuck. “You have no idea how bad I’ll make you want it.”

She made a little noise, a cross between a sigh and a laugh. “I love your threats.”

“Not threats. Promises.”

“Even better.”

He lowered his mouth once more as his fourth finger slid inside, offering the first taste of that pleasurable, stretching pressure. He closed his lips over her clit, the contact hot and hungry. Sam snaked a hand over her belly and ribs to cup her breast, letting her wedding band scrape across the tightening peak of her nipple through the satin. She teased herself as Bern pleasured her between her legs, hoping maybe she could come. Everything felt good, but it was so different as well, too distracting in its newness. She had a noisy, analytical brain, and she couldn’t get off unless she was truly relaxed, so she couldn’t say if it was in the cards for tonight. But Mike needn’t know that.

She let Bern spoil her for another five minutes or more, let his muffled moans and grunts fill her ears and tried to let fantasies about him fill her head. She tried to relax enough to climax, but it wasn’t to be. Her orgasm would have to be as manufactured as her contempt for her supposedly inept husband.

“Yeah,” she muttered, threading her fingers through Bern’s messy hair. She let her leg muscles flutter, rubbed his back and shoulders with her feet, curled her spine, mewled and whimpered. “Keep going.” She said it again and again, then his name. The latter fell strangely from her lips, feeling like a shoe slipped on the wrong foot, but she repeated it over and over for both sets of eager ears. “Bern. Bern.”

It was a finely faked orgasm, complete with clenching and writhing and twitching and a homely, authentic guttural moan at the crescendo. An award-winning performance, she thought as she pretended to unfurl from her release, chest rising and falling with hitching breaths. Bern gave her clit a final lap, and she bucked, no need to feign oversensitivity. She’d never thought any time was an appropriate one to fake an orgasm, but this circumstance seemed a legit exception to the rule.

Bern slid his fingers from her, and a hot pang shot through her as he licked them clean.

“Good?” he asked.

She grinned. “I think you could have guessed that for yourself.”

“What’s my reward?” He climbed onto the bed, pushing her legs together and straddling them as he scooted closer, finally kneeling astride her thighs. She watched his fingers curl around his cock, clit pounding with frustration.

“Just about anything you want,” she said.

As his fist tightened and began to stroke, his gaze jumped all over her body. “Take your bra off.”

She did as instructed.

“Nice. Lemme watch you play with them.”

Sam ignored a pang of self-consciousness, focusing on the show he was offering her as she kneaded her breasts for him. The tendons in his forearm stood out as he masturbated, and she imagined him doing this every lonely night since Saturday, thinking about her, or merely thinking about being seen.

“You look good,” she murmured.

“Yeah. You like watching me?”

“I do.” She couldn’t decide which she liked more – watching or listening. His voice and body were tied when it came to rousing her. “I can’t wait to watch you fuck.” And hear it. Maybe she had a kink of her own, after all. She wanted to listen, as surely as Bern wanted to be watched, it would seem. Wanted to know what he’d say as he got close, or as he took her, and how he’d say it. Wanted that voice right at her ear as she got there herself, next time.

And she could admit, she wanted a next time.

Her words did something unmistakable to him, sinking him into a deeper level of arousal. His hand sped alongside his racing breaths.

“Let me see your hips move,” she said.

He knew what she was asking for, keeping his fist still and thrusting his cock into the grip. Sam wished she had Mike’s view, wanting to see the flex of his side and back and ass. She suddenly adopted Bern’s mirror fetish.

Before her eyes, he reached the end of his rope. Wild moans spilled from his throat and she imagined those sounds even closer, right by her ear as he came apart, inside her.

“Where do you want it?” he panted, his meaning clear.

She pondered her options, fevered from the change in his voice – that smooth, sugary accent had gone from sultry to filthy. His body only seemed stronger, the more turned on he got, but his voice… She sensed weakness there, surrender, and felt powerful in turn.

As for his question, Mike was a hips-and-legs man, so let Bern desanctify that territory. “Right here,” she said, stroking her upper thigh, just below the crease.

He edged back a few inches. His hand sped and she admired his face, his expression reckless, cheeks flushed. A desperate man is the most fascinating creature in the world, she decided, watching this strong alpha male torn to pieces from wanting.

“I wish my husband could see this,” she said. “Show him exactly what I’m missing.”

“This,” Bern mumbled, strokes harsh and graceless.

“Yeah. That cock.”

“Oh…” He dropped forward, bracing his weight on one arm as his hand pumped. His release arrived with a strangled sound, hot come lashing her skin, slipping down her hip. Three spasms, four, and he was gone, a strong man all at once limp and reeling. Marvelous.

He collapsed beside her on his back, chest working like a bellows, eyes clenched tight, as if he were in pain.

She gave him a minute to catch his breath, stroking his arm lightly. He opened his eyes to gaze into hers, and a delirious smile overtook his lips. A chuckle escaped him as he buried his face against her throat.

When he pulled away he asked, “That scratch your itch?”

She nodded coyly.

He reached down, watching as his fingers rubbed his cooling come into her skin. Idly she wondered, Has Mike come yet? Has he even touched himself? As much as she liked and appreciated Bern and his role in all this, she wanted him gone soon, so she could take the temperature of her marriage, check it for scrapes, and bandage any parts that may have been banged up during tonight’s charade.

“He’ll be home soon,” she said.

Bern nodded. After a final lazy moment he took the hint, leaving the bed to find his underwear. Sam followed suit, pulling on her panties and clasping her bra. She got her dress back on, thinking a stray neighbor didn’t need to see her saying good night to Bern in her underthings. Her hair was probably condemning enough. She combed it with her fingers as he buckled his belt and checked his pockets for his wallet or keys or phone.