Looking a bit unsure, Michelle nonetheless took his invitation at face value and squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and began laying it all out. She started strong, he had to give her that.
“Dom’s… I have it on good authority that he’s better at sex than you.”
Immediately, Ed threw up his hands and went for the door. “Fuck this.”
“No, wait!” Michelle cried out as she lurched towards him. She grabbed him by the shoulders and began trying to pull him back. “Sweetest… shit, I didn’t mean… shit, shit… please, please just let me…”
They must have been a sight; him trying to keep his balance, her jerking back and forth like she was trying to lead a particularly stubborn mule. Finally, after too long at the farce, and after hearing her grow increasingly desperate and tearful with her pleas, Ed relented and let her pull him back to the living room. When she sat back on the sofa, though, he made sure to take a chair. He didn’t want to be any closer than he had to. Michelle clearly wasn’t pleased by that–she’d made sure to leave room for him next to her–but she swallowed and started again with her presentation.
“Okay, wow, absolutely none if this is…” She wiped her eyes and took a breath. “First and foremost, I now owe you so much more than…” She saw the thunderhead that was his face and reevaluated. “Right. Explanations. Um… yeah. Dom’s… better.” Michelle plowed right through. “And Kat’s better than me!” She locked eyes with her husband, desperate for him to understand. “That’s the point! This was your gift!”
“You’re insane.” Ed shook his head, not lying in the slightest. “Seriously, did you have some kind of head injury that you didn’t tell me about? How the hell is the supposed fact that our neighbors are better at sex a gift for me? How does that excuse you giving yourself to another man? What, ever, gave you the idea that I would want this?”
Michelle got a determined look in her eye then and set her jaw. “All right, I’ll cut straight to the point. Here’s what we had planned for that evening; once Dom and I left you and Kat alone in the living room for a bit, we were going to come back to find that fucking goddess in human flesh giving you an experience like you could only dream of. It was going to be the introduction to a brief period of learning for both of us. A kind of… training. A sex seminar, I guess.” She actually smiled then. “We each get a teacher, and we bring all kinds of new skills to our marriage.” She tried to reach out to him to take his hands in hers. The earnest look in her eyes was honest, he could tell. “It was going to make us goddamned perfect.”
Ed pulled away from her questing reach, and was able to hold himself in check. Barely. Despite himself, he was… fascinated. Infuriated, no doubt, but he truly never expected this to be the explanation of her betrayal. “So your little romp with Dom in the kitchen…”
His wife’s cheeks became cherries. “I am so sorry about that, sweetest. I got… excited. I had built up the night in my head as the biggest adventure we’d ever have to that point, and was so eager to get it started.” She gave a guilty little shrug. “The three of us had planned it all out, but Dom was impatient…” She looked away. “We jumped the gun.” When she glanced back, it was with tiny little twitch of her lips. “Trust me, you are far, far ahead now, and I’ll be making it all up to you in ways that’ll blow your mind.”
Her and her fucking balance sheets. Ed had nothing to say. His head was swirling with every thought under the sun, every word from the mouth of the woman he loved careening into each other… and every word she didn’t say as well. It was those un-words that were birthing some dark, dark suspicions in him. When he finally chose to speak, to his wife’s visible relief, it was stilted. “Katja?”
Michelle looked annoyed then. “Kat… I don’t know. Chickened out, I guess.” She frowned, clearly grappling with the disappointment her friend had given her. “Which really sucks.” She sighed, then looked earnestly at her husband. “But she wants to do this, I swear on my life! On our marriage! She’s super into you, and honestly gushes about you all the time.” She looked thoughtful. “Huh. I think, maybe, that’s the problem. Kat’s built you up, and now she thinks she’s not good enough for you.”
“A sex goddess… but not good enough to give me a few lessons on better sex.” Ed’s voice was flat.
Michelle didn’t pick up on the sarcasm. “Right. But she’ll come around. I’ll talk to her. We’re close, and I know I can convince her to get back with the program.” She sounded like it was a foregone conclusion that said program was going to go ahead.
To be fair, she had a reason for that sense of assurance because, without warning, she doffed the robe she’d been wearing to reveal the skimpiest, sexiest little teddy she owned, popped her luscious body up off the couch, and settled herself into in Ed’s lap before he could even twitch. Angry as he was, physiology and the weight of years had their say, and he found himself reflexively growing hard as his wife wriggled on top of him. Goddamn it, no part of this makes sense! Little head clobbered the hell out of big head, though, and he found his hands coming up to grab her hard by her firm, round ass. Possessively.
Michelle hummed with contentment and pressed her forehead to his. Her soft, black hair slid across his neck delectably. “God yes. You know it’s yours, sweetest. Always has been, always will be.” She began undulating her hips as she ran her fingers through his slightly-shaggy hair that she loved so much, then stroked his bearded cheek with pure adoration. “I flubbed this whole thing, but I know I’m right. You’ll see.” She ran her tongue along his jawline, then nibbled on his earlobe. It actually was a new move, and it worked.
In a tragically used move, she reached down then and unzipped him, letting his dick jump free while pushing her panties out of the way. When she hilted him within, her groan was genuine. Fulfilled. Enough, at least. “Lovemaking is only with you… forever you…” She huffed and grunted as she rocked in his lap. When he wasn’t as into it as she wanted, she took his hands and slid them up under the negligee’s top, even going so far as to force his fingers to squeeze the soft, pliant mounds beneath. “I love you so much… I know… hnnng…” she bit her lip, then picked up the pace. “I know you’re having a hard time with… oh fuck… with this…” She pressed herself into his hands, and Ed squeezed even harder. “I under… understa… Oh!” She tensed then as her climax hit. “Fill me! Mark me, sweetest!”
Michelle trembled on top of him for a few seconds, then sighed with contentment. Ed… Ed wilted. He went soft in his wife without even coming close to his own fulfillment for the first time ever, and she didn’t notice. After a nice, loving kiss and a pat on the cheek, she swung her leg up and over and stood, looking around for her discarded robe.
With a look of complete satisfaction, she blew him a kiss. “I am so glad I married the greatest, most patient, most understanding man in the universe. I love you more than anything, and by this time next month, you’re going to really see just how much.”
Mercifully, she didn’t feel the need to explain the finer points of that statement. Ed felt low enough as it was. Fifteen years. Those two words kept repeating in his head. How could he turn off a decade and a half of utter bliss? Nearly half a life of cherishing every single instance with this woman? All the big moments they shared, the countless little moments that were drops of gold… it was an avalanche of emotion. Under all the shit, he had to admit that he believed her. That she truly thought she was doing something good for them. Her naivety was both breathtaking and heartbreaking.
Still lost in himself, still grappling with all of it, he followed her to the kitchen to take a seat at the nearby bar they’d had installed. Watching her go about making a meal for the two of them while humming happily, Ed took a page from Michelle’s book and made a tally. She’d never lied to him during their life together, technically not even on his birthday three days before… but she was lying now. It was obvious that she had jumped the gun with Dominik before that night; maybe not full sex–a gigantic maybe–but they’d undoubtedly done something. Despite her eagerly becoming a stranger to him, he still knew that his wife wouldn’t go from zero to riding a dick with no in-between.
Secondary, and oddly nearly as depressingly, he had no doubt that she and Dom were more into the plan than Katja. That, in fact, Katja may not have wanted to go along with it at all, and was being pressured. Her tearful phone call still claimed a large place in his thoughts.
The real twist of the knife, though, was that it was also clear that Michelle wasn’t lying. Not about loving him. Not about believing that her ludicrous plan would pan out just as she wanted. The looks she was shooting him over her shoulder were just as gushing as they’d been the first time she’d confessed how head-over-heels she was for him, back when they’d been so young.
So now he had a choice to make. Burn down his life in the desperate hope that he’d be happier starting over completely… or stay, endure, and adapt. He laughed bitterly to himself. Do I call time of death, or make one more try to suture the bleeding artery?
“Two days a week with Dom. Monday morning and Friday morning. He doesn’t work then, and you do, so you won’t even know I’m not around. One month.” Michelle filled him in on the proposed schedule with a hopeful look. At least she made it sound like she was negotiating. “A mere four weeks, and then the magic starts. That’s not too bad… right? Like back in college when we had morning classes. It’ll be a blink, then done.”
Ed stared back at those worried, hopeful, delusional, pleading, love-filled green eyes, then sighed. Suture it is, god help me. Feeling like a damned fool, he nodded, then raised his chin. “Alright, but I have conditions.” Michelle, grinning ear-to-ear, nodded back eagerly. “One; you don’t mention his name to me or relate what you’re doing. Not even a hint. Not even once. Two; you erase any thought of anything approaching sloppy seconds. I don’t want even a black light to show a trace of him on you when you’re anywhere close to my vicinity.”