Seven Dates: A Different Kind of Hotwife (2 page)

My day from hell began with a homeless man stumbling into me as I walked into my office, leaving some sort of smelly slime coating the sleeve of my suit jacket. Even after scrubbing it in the sink, there remained a greenish-white stain that smelled vaguely of vomit.

Then I got an email from Brent asking a question about clause II.C.8 in the TKD contract I’d just negotiated and signed. The lawyers had signed off on it, but they were just looking at it from a legal perspective, not a business one. And sure enough, when I examined it, I realized the language was left over from a previous, much less advantageous draft. A stupid fucking mistake and those TKD assholes hadn’t mentioned it, even though they knew we’d agreed on new language about third-party allocations.

I ran the spreadsheet. A $2.9 million mistake if I couldn’t get it fixed, and it wasn’t clear I could. Sure, TKD should just sign off on an amendment, but then again, would
my
bosses sign off on just giving away a $2.9 million windfall? No. They’d take is as a Christmas bonus and buy themselves new fucking cars.

I crunched through lunch to try to find a solution, but all the roads led back through TKD.

I reluctantly called Tanner Alden, the exec who’d done most the negotiations on their side. Tanner is an asshole. Tall but a little pudgy, blond hair, blue eyes, prep school, frat boy, arrogant, with a face you have to restrain yourself to avoid smacking. I hate to admit it, but we look a little alike, except I have dark hair and eyes, but the cleft in my chin seems to provoke a similar reaction.

“Hey, buddy,” I began. “I found a drafting error in the contract. Was hoping I could just courier over an amendment.”

“Hey, pal,” he replied. “What error?”

“Oh, just this one paragraph. You know, an older version slipped in. Some sort of track changes error. No big deal. Sending you an email version of it right now.”

“I don’t know. We reviewed it pretty closely. Language all looked good from our end.”

Yeah, I bet.

“Hmm, let me see,” he continued as he reviewed my email. “No, this is the right language. Third-party allocations, right?”

“Yeah, but remember… the deal was, twenty percent there instead of forty, in return for moving the buy-out option up to twenty-four months.”

“Buy-out option is already set at twenty-four months.”

“That’s the point. You got what you wanted –“

“Sorry, man, I think your notes are messed up. Language is right as far as I can tell.”

I managed to keep my cool.

“Fine. I’ll be in touch.”

“You do that. Nice doing business with you.”

Asshole.
And typical for TKD.

Tedder, Kleinhof, and Dean. A vulture capital firm. Not venture. These guys never invested in up-and-comers. They scrounged bankruptcies for undervalued assets and sold them for scrap. We’d done a lot of deals with them over the years. Had to. As a new management team taking over a broken and demoralized organization they needs to find value through relationships, and that’s what
we
did.

I worked for Marston.
Marston Makes Markets
. I think we had a Super Bowl ad one year. I’ve never quite understood who the ads were aimed at. We only worked enterprise to enterprise. I always got the sense that our ad buys during pro sports was more about discounted luxury boxes rather than in the hopes that some beleaguered CEO might decide they needed our services.

Still, Marston was my dream job. We didn’t make anything, we didn’t sell anything. We did deals. We connected buyers and sellers, investors and opportunities, wholesalers and retailers. And we took a piece of the pie. I loved it. The strategy, the negotiation. Figuring out what people want and how much they’re willing to pay. Squeeze, grind them, and take the leavings. A constant game. And I was good at it. No way would I have agreed to such a stupid deal.

I imagined the TKD execs picking out their new Porsches right now. It was about then that I slammed my phone down and cracked the handset, which meant a call to IT, followed by a chewing out by the office manager who informed me that the cost for a new phone would be deducted from my next paycheck.

I was just about to eat a long-delayed snack, a stale sandwich from the vending machine when I got called into Donald’s office. Donald is a small man, with a big ego. He speaks in a weird patois of management theory and profanity that would make a longshoreman blush.

Donald has been spewing some b-school bullshit recently about rewarding risk takers by not punishing failure. Apparently, this didn’t count as a failure, or something, because he spent the next two hours tearing me a new asshole, at which point he dismissed me by curtly informing me that he would be “reviewing the situation.”

I knew I wasn’t likely to get fired. Not right away at least. But I knew I could kiss goodbye the possibility of a promotion or a raise for the foreseeable future, which meant, of course that I’d have to put off Joanie for another year on her plans to have kids.
That
would surely be a fun conversation.

I texted her that I was coming home.

[Kellen]: ugh, long, long day today.

[Joanie]: Aww, sorry babe, see you soon. Pick up milk on the way home?

Why couldn’t she have picked up the milk? What the fuck was she doing all day? I metaphorically slapped myself on the wrist for even
having
that dangerous thought. It was my fault she was unemployed, as she often reminded me. We’d moved to Boston for my career, after all. The fact that her prior “job” was a “fellowship” that barely covered commuting was, apparently, beside the point. Fuck it. An unproductive line of thought. I’d pick up the milk.

I stewed through the long metro ride home. By the time I got a seat, it was almost time to get off.
Get off
. Ha. When was the last time I got off, really got off, gotten fucked to exhaustion until every last drop of jism was drained from my hot, sweaty balls?

No, Joanie and I
made love.
Always. Under the covers usually. Me on top or her. Lots of kissing, caresses, and cuddles, and the novelty had worn off. Great tits or not. It was
nice
. But I wasn’t in the mood for
nice.

I thought about the last time I’d had a day quite as miserable. Nearly ten years ago. Before I’d married Joanie, or even met her. I was still with Stacy then, applying to graduate business schools. I’d shot too high I guess, and got denied by all of the schools I applied to, which meant I’d have to spend at least another year at a job I hated before I could reapply to a new batch of schools.

I’d texted Stacy the news.
She
didn’t ask me to bring milk home.

She met me at the door of our apartment with a beer. She sat me in a ratty old armchair that we’d rescued from the curb, dropped to her knees, and she blew me, wet and sloppy, taking me balls-deep even when it made her gag. When I came, she stroked my shaft and swallowed every drop.

And then she kept working on me, sucking my balls, bathing my prick with her tongue, until I was hard again. She stripped naked and climbed into my lap and fucked me like an animal, the whole time gasping and whispering in my ear about how amazing I was, how much she loved my big cock, how I could do
anything
I wanted to her. I came a second time and she climbed off and brought me a second beer. She ordered pizza, kept me well lubricated with beers, and then took me to bed where we fucked until I passed out.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love Joanie. She’s kind and sweet. She’s funny and wicked smart… and gorgeous. Dress her up in a sun dress and she’s that heart-breakingly beautiful Latin princess you once saw drinking an espresso in a Barcelona cafe. Put her in lace bra and panties and she’s a lingerie model. She has a look that invites you to cast in your favorite fantasy – slutty cheerleader, over-sexed school teacher, trampy nurse….

But it’s an illusion. Joanie is a girl who could be a catalogue model – at 5’6” she’s not tall enough for the runway anyway – but who would never consider it. Literally never consider it because it’s not a matter of Joanie being unwilling to trade upon her sex appeal, it is more it would never occur to her. Which, in a weird way, was another thing that appealed to me. My last few girlfriends before her had been overtly sexual, but frankly crazy. I didn’t miss Stacy. Not really. There was always drama between her and her girlfriends. She was twenty-four and getting love handles and she farted in bed. She was a complete slob and had the disconcerting habit of getting wasted and then crashing over at some dude’s house.
Nothing happened, baby. You know I love you.

Though Joanie, when I met her, was a nineteen year old, innocent little Catholic girl, she was the first grown-up I’d dated and the first girl I could in good conscience bring home to mother. We bonded over discussions about the future, the stuff each of us wanted to do with our lives. That’s really how people fall in love, isn’t it? Sharing dreams and desires about what life will bring. I urged her to pursue her ambitions because I knew it would make her happy, but also because I knew I would always be there to support her.

I fell in love with Joanie in part because she was so different from Stacy. But right now, what I wanted, what I needed was for Joanie to channel Stacy for just one day…. Fuck it, one hour.

I walked in the front door of our townhouse. Joanie didn’t greet me at the door. No beer.

She called to me from the dining room, “Did you remember the milk?”

Fuck.
“Sorry honey, I forgot, it’s been a hard –“

She sighed loudly. “You walked right past the store.”

Did you even fucking leave the house today?
She was sitting at the table, papers spread out everywhere, wearing sweats, her hair in a stringy ponytail. So much for my backup hope of a nice meal and a bottle of wine.

“I guess I can go back out….”

She looked up at me. “It’s okay. We’ll do without.”

Passive-aggressive bitch
.

“What did you say?” she snapped.

Had I said that out loud or had she just read my thoughts?

“Huh? Nothing. How was
your
day?”
Could you at least ask me about mine?

“I’m crunching on a deadline.”

“Deadline?”

“I’m pitching a magazine story to
Harpers
.”

So, a self-imposed deadline for a proposal that will likely come to nothing. Got it.

“Oh….” I was literally speechless. “So, um, what’s for dinner?”

“I just need to finish up here, would you mind ordering pizza?”

Well, at least I’d get the pizza…. No blowjob, no beer, no getting fucked senseless, but I would get the pizza… as long as I ordered it myself.

“I guess I don’t have much choice,” I snarked.

“I’m working on something.”

I snorted.

“Oh, I know Kellen, it isn’t anything as important as what you do.”

I snapped. “At least my job pays, you know, actual money.”

“I had a job.”

“You had a glorified internship.”

Her eyes flashed with anger.

I backed down, “I’m sorry. I just had a really bad day, and I could use a little affection.”

She nodded. “We’re both under pressure.”

She rose. She kissed my cheek and rubbed my shoulder. “I’ll call the pizza, okay?”

“Um, okay,” I replied blankly.

“What?”

“Oh, forget the pizza. I don’t care about the pizza. I had a fucking terrible day.”

“What happened?”

Finally
. I explained about the botched contract language.

She groaned. “I always tell you how important it is to proofread everything.”

“Yes, you do.”
You fucking bitch.

“Well, maybe if you check the revision history of the document, you can find a version with the right language –“

“Joanie, I know how to do my job,” I interrupted coldly.

Well apparently not
, her expression suggested. “I was just trying to be helpful.”

“You could be more helpful by acting like a supportive wife.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You know what it means.”

“No, I really don’t. What would you expect from a supportive wife?”

I sighed. “Never mind.”

“No, tell me, I want to know. What were you expecting?”

“Expecting?” I chuckled. “Nothing I guess. Hoping for…?”

“What?”

“Joanie, just forget about it. If you understood men a little better –“

“Men, huh? So what’s that mean?”

“Seriously, Joanie, let’s just drop this.”

“No, Kellen, let’s not. I want to hear what you, what
men
, are expecting.”

“No you don’t.” I could feel my heart pounding. I should have controlled myself, but it just spilled out. “Okay, fine, you know what? Fine. I had a fucking miserable day and you know what would make it better? Getting my cock sucked.”

She shook her head. “That would fix things? That would get the $2.9 million back?”

“Like I say, you don’t understand men. I’m the only –“

“I had boyfriends before you.”

“One, Joanie. One. And he was a high school kid and…”

“And what?”

“Um, Joanie, you know Bradley was gay right?”

“He and I had sex!”

“Like twice. If you’d been my high school girlfriend, I’d have been banging you three times a day. Any man would have.”

She shook her head. “So the reason I didn’t give you what you expected was my lack of experience? If I’d dated more men –“

“It wouldn’t have hurt.”

“I was nineteen when we met, how many men should I have been with before you?”

“You’re missing the point. I’m just saying… “

What was I saying? Who the fuck knew? At this point, I didn’t even want a blowjob anymore. Or a pizza. I wanted to pound a beer or two, take a hot shower, and climb into bed.

“What?” she insisted.

“I’m just saying that being with a few women before you was, I think, useful.”

“A few?” she gasped.

Okay, so it was closer to fifty, though I’d only copped to twenty when we talked about it.

“A little experience is a good thing.”

“Oh, of course, Mr. Perfect. So what’s the ideal number? How many men should I have had sex with before I met you.”

“You’re missing the point.”

“I want a number.”

“Fuck Joanie, how the hell do I know? Two? Four? Eight?”

“And you think if only I’d been with eight men before you instead of one –“

I cut her off with a laugh. “Like I say, Brad only counts as a half, maybe a quarter –“

Her eyes flashed dangerously, “I would have known enough to get on my knees and give you oral when you got home.”

“Something like that.”

She fumed. “You know what, Kel? You’re an immature prick sometimes. Just because you dated sluts –“

“Don’t say that!”

“What? Most of them were. Stacy?”

“What about her?”

“Oh God, Kel, I still can’t believe you invited her to our wedding. She’d screwed half of your groomsmen.”

All of them actually.

“Big deal. She was a friend.”

“Yeah, big deal. My wedding and I have to walk in on the group of you talking about what a good lay she was, and she’s there laughing along.”

“You could learn a few things from Stacy,” I retorted, thinking of her being easy going and fun.

“Like what? Like how to swallow? How to get screwed in a bar bathroom?”

“What’s wrong with swallowing once in a while?”

She screwed up her face. “So that’s it? You’re upset because I’m not enough of a whore? I don’t live up to your sluts? You want me to be more like the girls you see in that disgusting porn you watch?”

I was startled.

“Oh, what, Kel, you don’t I know what you’re up to when you get up in the middle of the night and lock yourself with your iPad in the bathroom?”

“You’re sick, Joanie. Get that stick out of your ass.”

“No, you’re the sick one, Kellen. You’d probably like to see me with a stick in my ass.”

“Joanie, seriously, fuck you. There is nothing wrong with learning how to please a man, even if it means swallowing a little come or trying, just trying, anal.”

“I guess I just need more experience.”

“Yeah, you know what? You do.”

“Maybe I should date other men then, you know to learn what they like.”

I snorted. So fucking transparent. “Whatever, Joanie. I had a shitty day. I’m going to bed. Do whatever the fuck you want.”

“Where are you going?” she shrieked as I turned and walked away.

But I wasn’t interested in fighting anymore… or eating… or drinking… or fucking. I walked into the bedroom, threw my clothes into a pile in the corner of the room, and buried myself under the covers.