“That’s all, huh?”

“Sure.”

Considering the size of his hands, Mike had deft fingers. They slipped free the clasp of her skirt and lowered the tiny zipper, thumbs sliding under the band of her tights before the skirt even hit the floor.

“Tell me about him,” Mike said again, and his voice had gone gruff. The time for play denials was over. His kink was loose, pacing the room, and it wanted feeding.

“He’s tall,” she said. “Tall and handsome and built. With this smile… I wanted to tell him no, but I just couldn’t, not the way he smiled at me.” A couple of years ago this performance would’ve made Sam feel silly and self-conscious, but practice made perfect. She could teach a class on improvisational dirty talk now. It was all about commitment – better to say something cheesy and over-the-top and to own it than to clam up or hold back, afraid of sounding dumb.

“What else?” he demanded.

“Strong hands.” She felt Mike’s fingers at her bra clasp. She imagined her mystery man having freed those little hooks an hour or two earlier, imagined his palms as Mike slipped the straps from her shoulders and cupped her breasts. Electricity crackled through her body, a sharp, hot bloom snaking from her belly out to her fingertips and feet.

“You fuck him?”

“No.” She sighed and paused for a beat. “He fucked me.”

She heard the click of Mike’s belt and finished her own undressing, dropping her panties and stepping free of them and her tights. Their bodies met at the bed. His touch was needy now, and unsure. He pushed her onto her back and knelt between her legs, sliding two fingers along her sex, slick from the lube.

“Christ, you did fuck somebody.”

She smiled. “Like I said, he fucked me.” She kept a stash of condoms in their bathroom, too, and sometimes she’d rub one along her labia, then make Mike taste the latex – the so-called evidence of her infidelity. The realism deepened the fantasy for him, and his pleasure spurred hers in this kink she couldn’t quite call her own.

He was already hard, ready to go. A generous lover with a more than adequate cock, he was the best she’d ever had, whether their sex was tender or rough or desperate or any other flavor she might crave on a given night. But she wasn’t allowed to say so, now. In this game Mike was poorly endowed, borderline impotent, hopeless at pleasing her. He was a weak, pathetic husband who drove his wife into the beds of superior males – and for whatever reason, that thought turned him utterly feral.

Even after two years of this play and a virtual dissertation’s worth of research on cuckolding kink, Sam still didn’t entirely get it. And she’d come to accept that she didn’t need to. She didn’t know precisely what caused a thunderstorm, either, but that didn’t make the lightning any less exciting.

If she had to guess, she suspected it was something to do with letting go. Something to do with Mike surrendering to the pressure he felt to be in control, to be fearless, commanding, the leader with all the answers. His greatest fear, professionally, was that he wouldn’t be good enough, that he’d let his partner down, that he’d fail his team, lose their respect, maybe even cost someone his life. But his job was dangerous and left no room for self-doubt. So it was here, in their bed and in their games, that he got to relieve himself of all that stress – not only to admit that he wasn’t perfect and strong and capable, but to wallow in the idea. Wallow in whatever sensation it gave him to feel like a lesser man – some great gulp of air when the pressure of his job felt thick enough to drown in.

Sam stroked his cock. “I need more than you can give me, Mike.” She felt his flesh twitch and tighten at her words, but she kept her touch lazy, fingers flaccid to help them pretend he wasn’t as hard or big as he was.

“Tell me what happened.”

She coaxed him to lie next to her and their legs tangled. She traced his collarbone with her fingertips and spoke against his throat. “He took me back to his place. A beautiful loft, with a view that overlooks the river. He rows on the weekends. And he’s an EMT during the week. If we’d had the time, I bet he could have fucked me all night.”

Mike’s hand slid between them to hold his erection. She was meant to ignore it, scorn it, reject it.

“What else?” he asked, that deep voice sounding strained in her ear.

“He was a great kisser. His kisses got me wetter than fucking you ever has.”

“How old is he?”

“Thirty. I’d almost forgotten how much energy younger guys have.” No matter that Mike had completed a triathlon the previous summer. This other man was younger, fitter, hotter, better in every way. “And Jesus, what a body.”

“And his dick?”

“Big. Thick. Long. I worried that maybe I wouldn’t be able to handle him at first. But it didn’t matter,” she said with a mean smile. “He handled me just fine.”

Mike shifted, getting to his knees, between her thighs, taking her quick and smooth. He’d be pretending she was wet from some stranger – wet with arousal or the other man’s come. But even without the lube, she was wet for Mike, for her hot, fascinating, wonderfully warped husband. Though she ought to get the stars out of her eyes and focus on Nick if this was going to be an A-plus performance.

“Where’d you fuck him?”

“On his couch,” she riffed, hatching the fantasy in her head. “I could see the park. On my hands and knees, and he took me from behind, right there in the window. The entire North Shore was watching. It was so hot.”

It was Mike who truly wanted to see, though.

He had never come out and asked her about it, but she knew he was up for taking the past couple of years’ play to a new level. A level that involved her actually sleeping with another man, and telling him all about it, perhaps taping it or having him watch from a crack in the door or listening from the next room. Having it rubbed in his face.

And after several months’ deliberation, the idea had gone from an impossibility to something quite different. Something quite intriguing. At first Sam had dismissed it without any consideration – they could play out these scenarios, but nothing more, of course. Monogamy had always been implied, and anything beyond that was cheating. And she could never cheat on anyone, least of all Mike.

Then she’d asked herself – what made an affair cheating? Answers came back to her in time.

Deception. Secrecy. Selfishness.

Cheating was a greedy decision made by one partner, resulting in pleasure that the other got no part in. If Samira and Mike invited another man in together, though, it would be none of those things. It would be the precise opposite. A mutual decision, and far from a greedy deception – it would be her gift to him, in fact. Maybe even a gift to her.

Before, the idea of being with another man had stirred nothing in Sam. Not at first. Though the past couple of months, when Sam would be out, scouting those bars for fantasy men… and then back at home, in bed with Mike, remembering them…

Maybe I could.For me, as much as for him. Touch a new man, for the first time in five years. Kiss one. More. If that didn’t threaten their marriage, was she really so saintly that she couldn’t admit the idea excited her?

She held Mike’s strong, pumping body tight, stroked his hair.

She could nearly see it happening, now. She wanted it… if the circumstances were exactly right. She was a levelheaded woman, a planner, a risk minimizer. Her marriage was the most precious thing in her life, and it couldn’t be treated as some petri dish and experimented in – not impulsively. Plus she’d invented so many perfect strangers in her head, how could she possibly find a real one who’d measure up?

Mike drew her from her thoughts. “What else?”

“He was rough. And so strong.” She pictured imaginary Nick’s strained face and taut muscles. “I begged him to take me face-to-face just so I could watch his body.”