Hotwife Hotel: A Wifewatching Romance (11 page)

"Rebecca, I don't want you to fuck anyone else. I don't want that." The seriousness with which I said it took even me by surprise. It got her sober attention too.

"John," she said, her brow furrowing, clouds before a storm.

"I just...this is just a game, right?"

Her whole expression changed, like I'd hit exactly the wrong note, said exactly the wrong thing, betrayed her trust and left her out in the cold.

"John how could you...I was just trying to...I thought you liked it when I talked like that."

I thought I saw the flicker of a tear form in the corner of her eye, right before she turned and curled the other way, her back to me.

"Beck," I started, softer now that I knew I'd fucked up. "I just wanted to make sure."

She turned around and now there was only a cold, hard stare where before there had been nothing but playful warmth. "Of course I'm not going to fuck your fisherman friends you asshole. But thanks for thinking I'm that much of a slut."

She rolled back around and pulled the covers up and over her ears.

My heart sank. What in the
fuck
was wrong with me? She'd been having fun. We'd been having fun. What had I done? What in the fuck had I done?

Chapter 15

The wind was bitterly cold for mid-May the next morning. Rebecca was still sleeping when the alarm sounded at four thirty and I smashed it quiet with my palm, getting out of bed as softly as I could.

Our two guests were already in the kitchen making coffee as I stumbled down bleary-eyed and only nodded a "Good morning" as I set about preparing eggs. They ate in silence, forks and knives scraping along plates and the sound of toast crunching the only sound pushing back against the wind outside.

When Sam got there he didn't bother knocking, knowing one or the other of us would probably still be asleep. "Surf's up boys," he whispered as the men got ready with their gear. "You keep these two good an' sober last night?" he said, one eye cocked.

I breathed a long, deep sigh and that was all the answer he needed.

"An hour on the waves out der should cure dat!" he grinned, as the three of them shuffled through the door. I was left with a pile of dirty plates and nothing to do but wait until Rebecca woke up. Crawling under a blanket on the couch I tried to sleep but the gnawing, nagging feeling of what was going to come wouldn't let me close my eyes. I had just started to drift when I heard her footsteps coming down the stairs.

"Hey," I greeted from the couch, watching her rub her sleepy eyes open.

"Hey," she answered, her voice sounding way too nonchalant for what had happened last night. "Thanks for getting up. I didn't even hear the alarm."

A felt a hope unfurl inside my chest. I had expected her to be much more upset. Had she forgotten? Had she been that drunk?

"How did you sleep," I probed, wondering if maybe I'd just made a mistake.

"Great actually," she said with a funny little smile. "But John..."

Uh oh. Okay, this was going to be it. "Yeah?"

"We should probably stop drinking so much."

One very deep sigh.

"Yeah..."

As she shuffled towards the coffee, I sat there weighing options. I could just leave it, right? If she really didn't remember, I could just leave it and not say anything, start fresh, pretend like it never happened and play my cards a little smarter this time?

I almost managed to convince myself. Almost.

"Beck," I threw the blanket off and walked over to where she was standing, steaming mug in hand. "Do you remember last night?"

The giggle she emitted made me realize that she only remembered part of it.

"Of course I do silly. It was nice."

Well, maybe there was no reason to remind her of
exactly
what happened.

"Can we talk?"

She narrowed her eyes and looked at the clock, obviously realizing it was serious. "Now?"

"Now. Please? It's important."

She nodded. A serious, earnest nod, then sat down at the table, ready to hear what I had to say.

It was time to come clean.

"I just want to say this because..." I drifted off, part of my resolve flagging, my mind not wanting to dig out the words. But I knew if we were going to do this, this was the only way. "I want to say this because I feel like things might get complicated if I don't."

She was really listening. She reached a hand across the table and put it on my arm.

"How do you actually feel? About this thing?" I asked.

She looked into her mug, as if there were answers there, and sighed. When she looked back up, I could tell it was no longer just a game.

"I don't want this to break things. To break us."

"God Beck, neither do I. That's the last thing I want."

She eyed me with a cautious look, like she was scared of what she was about to say. "If I tell you something, will you..." she paused, thinking. "That's not fair," she said finally.

"What's not?"

"I was going to make you promise that things wouldn't change if I said what I'm about to say. That's not fair. Sometimes things change. We just have to be good at changing with them, right?"

That made a whole lot of sense.

"Right."

"So here's the thing. You seem to love this. You seem to be really into it as a fantasy, right?"

"Right."

"But sometimes fantasies are just better left inside your head. Sometimes if you get to have them in real life they change, they're not what you thought they would be, they're bigger, weirder, scarier, right?"

"Right, I guess but..."

"What I'm saying, John, is that I don't want what happened last night to happen in real life. I don't want to do something we can't take back to come between us. We have too good of a life, too much love to let that happen. I don't want to fall asleep again, feeling the way I did last night."

Oh. So she did know.

"You remember that?" I asked. She rolled her eyes. And smiled.

"John, of course I remember. I don't just pass out and forget things like you. I'm not man."

"You're not pissed?"

"I was. I was last night. When I woke up this morning, I realized how lucky we were that it happened that way. That it happened between just the two of us and not with someone else involved. We can take it back, pretend it never happened and move on with our lives. I don't think it would be that easy if...you know. If it had been for real?"

Damn. She was smart.

There was something else though. Something gnawing at the back of my mind.

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"I mean, don't you want this too?"

She thought for a moment. "Not as bad as you, it seems. I could go without."

I wasn't sure if that hurt or helped. But I wasn't sure about much anymore.

"But it turns you on?"

"Sure it does," she shrugged and sipped her coffee.

As soon as she'd said it, I got all revved up again. In a good way.

"Why?"

And as soon as I said it, I realized that
this
had been what I'd wanted to know all along. Not just about myself. About her.

I watched her staring back into that coffee for a while, until she looked at me again. "Because of your attention. Because you look at me differently than every day. You...need me more, or something? I want to say it better than that, but it's kind of hard to say."

"I need you all the time," I offered, only to try and help her explain.

She smiled, a knowing smile at my mind trick. "Yeah. I know. But these last few times...it's like, something about your jealousy makes it more real. Stronger."

Adrenaline travelled through my body again as I heard her say the word.

"Don't get upset, John, please?"

"I'm not," I answered, too quickly for it to be true.

"Come on. I know you. I know you're stewing in the tiny head of yours. No games right now, right?"

She was right. She was right to call me out about it too.

"Okay. No games."

"You
do
get jealous, right?"

I nodded, not sure of what to say.

"But it's not angry jealous, is it?"

"It's not only that," I said, looking out the window.

"What is it?" she asked, her voice gentle.

"It's...it's just...there's something about other men, seeing you in that way. The way they look at you, their eyes make you into sex."

She smiled a little smile.

"You know what I think?" she asked.

"What?"

"I think we should just leave this. For now, I mean. Let's just leave it for now and if it comes back or we're thinking about it more we can talk it through again?"

I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to leave this new found heat behind. But I knew that she was right. The best thing to do was wait. We could always have more fun. Once we'd had it though, we couldn't take it back.

Chapter 16

That was not that, though. Because a few weeks later, after Mason and Tyler had left and our next guests had arrived a message came. Just a gentle reminder that things were not the way we'd left them.

I'm not quite sure why I decided to revisit the page where I'd put up the ad. For the few days, even after our talk, I'd felt good about everything, like we'd made the right decision and could move on, at least for the time being.

But soon enough that same old voice began to whisper in my mind, poking me as I tried to go about my day.

Come on, John. Just a peek?

I tried to wrestle with it. I tried to silence it with exercise, then booze, we even had mediocre sex a few times, but it just wouldn't go away. As I worked, as I ate, it would quietly harass me, willing me to bend. Finally, realizing this would probably always be a thing for me, this obsession, no matter whether we indulged it or not, I slipped back into an old habit and went back to the site where I'd left the ad.

My pulse quickened as soon as the page popped up. I hadn't been staring as intently this time, not expecting anything there, but the little red icon in the top right corner caught my eye right away.

It was strange because I hadn't logged onto the page in weeks. I'd taken the ad down so no one else would respond. Had someone seen my profile and just decided to message me? With fresh adrenaline coursing through me, I clicked the little envelope, staring hard at the screen. The subject of the message made me shake a little.

Lookin' good. When are we doing this?

Looking good. Who looked good? With a trembling hand I clicked and opened up the body of the message and what I saw there took my breath away.

The familiar shape of Rebecca's body, positioned in such a way that all her curves were on display was attached to the previous sent message. For a moment, I panicked. Had I sent this in a drunken stupor? But I had never seen this picture of my wife! The realization of what must have happened began to dawn on me slowly.

She
had
seen the ad. She'd seen it that day I left myself logged in. Not only had she seen it, she'd replied. My mind raced backwards frantically, trying to piece together where we'd been on our journey then. Had we talked about any of this yet? Had she known what I was thinking yet? Or had she just put it together from seeing the ad?

Suddenly it didn't matter. What mattered was that this proved, in my mind at least, that without a shadow of a doubt she wanted this. She wanted this as much as I did. The excitement of that was something I could barely control.

I switched the screen to our booking calendar and looked a few weeks ahead. There was plenty of time in the middle of the week but should I do this? Should I do it now, without even asking her? The question tugged and tore at my insides. I knew what I wanted, or I thought I did, but what would she say? How would Rebecca react to all of this?

We all do things we feel like we might regret later sometimes. I suppose I felt that way about this. There was definitely a voice in my head saying, "You know John, you really should think this through." At that moment thought, I didn't care. I didn't care to think about where this would lead us or what the future would bring. I cared only about the surge of excitement I got at thinking about her with a stranger between her thighs.

Picking a date, I typed it into the reply box below the message and still shaking slightly, clicked "Send."

Another deep breath. I'd been taking a lot of those. I wondered for a second whether I should leave the window with the message open and quickly realized I had no choice. After what we'd talked about, I had to make sure Rebecca knew. I had to make sure it was as obvious as possible that this was what I wanted, that this was what I craved. I turned off the monitor, leaving myself logged in and slightly terrified.

As soon as I went downstairs and saw her cooking, I was assaulted by the same visceral craving for her I'd felt when I saw her with Andre, or when I'd imagined her with Sam's fishing friends. I wanted her, needed her more than ever and I could barely contain the desire. Coming up behind her, I nuzzled into her neck, trying not to touch my stiffness to her ass.

"Hey!" she giggled and squealed, dropping the wooden spoon she'd been stirring with onto the floor. "What's up with you?"

I backed away, leaned against the counter and eyed her shapely form. "Just want to make sure you know I love you," I said, smiling.

"Okay," she replied, looking a little puzzled at the sudden affection.

I was overcome by a warmth, a loving feeling for her and I just wanted to hold her there in the kitchen, close to me and tell her what I'd done. At that moment our guests walked in the front door, followed by Sam. Rebecca looked at them and waved.

"How was it?"

"Spectacular!" Edna Simpson replied. "We saw three whales! This is the loveliest vacation we've taken in a long time! We're going to recommend it to all our friends! I
must
go to the bathroom!" Removing her shoes, she flapped her way up the stairs followed by her decidedly more sullen husband who grumbled a greeting before they both disappeared in the stairwell.

Sam walked up and took a seat at the counter. "How's she goin' buddy?"