Something Forbidden (17 page)

“Someone took a detour on the way home from work.”

“I took off after lunch to take care of a few things.” She smelled like an Aveda spa, which suggested something else.

“A few things?” I asked.

“No, not that,” she said, touching my nose. “I had my waxing appointment yesterday. Don’t want to be too sensitive for tonight.”

Katie’s laugh was delightful.

Watching her prepare for her night out with another man turned me inside out. She applied her makeup wearing nothing but the lingerie she’d planned to wear, explaining that she didn’t want to get her dress messy (although I was pretty sure she was just doing it to tease me).

Her luxuriously soft lace lingerie was predominantly black, with red scrolls and fringing to give it a classic feel. The bra was a push-up, something that she rarely wears on account of the size of her breasts. They do such a good job that her freckled cleavage looks practically store bought, something she’d always called trampy. Not tonight, apparently. She even added a multi-string diamond necklace that drew my eyes down into her mouth-watering bust.

A matching garter belt held her black, patterned stockings high on her thighs, and a thong completed the look. She ran a pencil along her dark, trimmed brows, then met my eyes in the mirror. “Honey, could you get the shoes out of the Bloomingdale’s bag?”

Uncomfortably hard, I did as I was told, retreating from the doorway where I was probably leering a little too much. I found the mess of bags at the foot of the bed and a shoebox emblazoned with Jimmy Choo’s name—she really had gone all out for this evening. I let that thought steep for a moment as I picked through her other bags. Hidden inside the Bloomingdale bag was a plastic CVS bag.

Seeing it was like uncovering a hissing snake, coiled and ready to strike. I sucked in breath so fast I felt dizzy. I knew what was in there, but looked anyway. I hadn’t seen a box of Trojans since before I’d met Katie; she’d always been on the pill and we never worried about any further protection. There’d been no reason to buy them...until now.

The reality of the night hit home. This was no longer some kind of game. My wife was going to have sex with someone else. After the initial shock, my pulse calmed down to comfortable levels. I didn’t feel the sting of jealousy I’d been expecting. It was there, of course—I’d thought about it enough to realize that the jealousy was a healthy indicator of my feelings—but it didn’t cripple my thoughts.

Katie called from the bathroom and I jumped, slipping the CVS bag back into the other.

“You find them, honey?” she said.

“Um, yeah.” I pulled the Jimmy Choos out, gawking at their height. “Wow, are you going to be able to walk in them?”

Katie laughed. “Tell me about it. The woman helping me out convinced me
I had to have them
. I’ll make sure to send her my medical bill when I break my ankle.”

It seemed so weird, chatting with her like this. Like this was any normal day. Like she was getting ready for a date with me. I watched her line her lips with deep, ruby red. Would she be wrapping those same lips around Greg later tonight?

She stood and blew me a kiss. She looked as nervous as she was excited. “How do I look?”

“Like a pin-up model.”

Katie went back to her bags, her tits spilling out of her bra as she leaned over. I could almost see her nipples at the edge of the cups of the bra. “I went little and black,” she said, holding up a scrap of black cloth that looked much too small to be a dress.

In front of the mirror, she shimmied into the slinky black material, tugging it here and there until it was in place.

“Zip me up?” She gave me her back. The dress ended about mid-thigh, but a slit up the back was high enough that it could show the tops of her stockings if you looked closely enough.

“Wow, this is tight.” I ran my hand along the curves that the dress accentuated more than hid. My jaw dropped when she turned around. With her push-up bra and the low plunge of the scooped front, her chest was completely on display.

“You think it’s too much?” Reading her smile, she knew the answer to her question.

“It’s perfect.”

Katie spun, demonstrating that she could maneuver in her heels after all. She looked neither slutty nor trashy, and she was far from cheap, despite the display of décolletage. She looked like arm-candy.

“Think Greg will approve?” she teased.

“I think he’s going to have a hard time keeping his hands off you.”

Katie’s eyes flared. “I hope so.”

“You’re killing me.”

She stepped close. In her heels, she was practically my height. “You love it,” she said.

“I do. And I love you.”

She toyed with my collar. “You sure about this? Last chance to back out.”

“I am. I want you to have a good time.” Color touched her cheeks, which were already touched up with blush. She’d done a good job with makeup, applying it naturally, even when she applied a lot. She looked good enough to go to the Oscars. “But Katie, anything that happens tonight...I want you to tell me after, okay?”

“Then maybe nothing will happen.” She kissed my nose, careful not to smear her lipstick. “Or maybe I won’t see you until the morning.”

I didn’t know what jumped more, my cock or my heart rate.

“Now go and call me a cab,” Katie said. “I think I’m ready.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

When she was gone, I crept back into the bedroom. My face was on fire as I returned to the CVS bag. The box of condoms was still there, but it was open and half-empty.

I released a long breath in the hope that it would calm my galloping heart. That was wishful thinking. I set the bag back where it was and backed away, my mind flying a mile a minute. What had she felt when she’d stepped up to the CVS counter with that box in her hand? Probably something similar to the way I was feeling now.

“Okay,” I said aloud to the empty room. “This is happening. This is
happening.
”
She’s out there, on her way to meet up with another man—a man we’d watched have sex right in front of our eyes—without a curfew, and with half a dozen latex reasons not to come home.

This is
happening!

I floated into the office, my head clogged and confused, and booted up the computer. I didn’t even know what I was doing until my fingers started typing.

It was an easy thing to find: directions to the gallery opening. I could have texted Chloe, but I was done with that flirtation with danger. The Internet was safer, and more anonymous.

I knew the gallery name—it was in a warehouse-turned-gallery on the east side, in this new artist’s hamlet. The artist was a woman by the name of Adrienne Ormond who specialized in nude, black and white photography. Apparently, the opening was a big one—biggest to date for that neighborhood.

Sending Mya to the grandparents was probably a mistake, I thought as I maneuvered my car onto the interstate without much of a plan. Then I shoved those doubts down and made my way to the opening.

Turns out, the
biggest opening ever
was both a blessing and a curse. I almost didn’t get in, having to talk my way past the door attendant. Once in, though, it was crowded enough that I could blend in and observe without fear of being spotted. The gallery space was expansive and filled to capacity. The ceilings were high and the white walls bare to accommodate the blown up prints of males and females in various states of undress. Many were abstract enough that I didn’t realize what I was looking at until I stepped back. Then everything came into focus. Funny how that works.

I didn’t spend my time looking at art, though. I was here with a purpose, and I spent the first ten minutes searching for it. When I didn’t find them, I started to worry. Had I missed them? Was I going to run into them rounding a corner. I moved from room to room, always making a wide berth through each door. I sipped the white wine being served on the trays, ate the passed hors d’oeuvres, and nodded at people that I made eye contact with. But everyone seemed to recognize that I was on my way
somewhere.

I found Greg and Katie in one of the largest rooms of the gallery and, thankfully, also one of the most crowded. They were standing close, hips touching, heads tilted into one another as they discussed the scandalous photo in front of them. The contrast was low and the lighting fuzzy, but it still very clearly depicted the bare and slightly engorged labia of a woman, catching the crook of her thigh and the subtle V of her hipbone. Contributing to the clean look of all the photographs, the model had no pubic hair, making this piece even more striking.

It was thrilling to watch Katie so uninhibited with another man. It made me jealous, sure, but my feelings were so much more complex than just that. Katie reached out and touched Greg’s elbow to emphasize a point. When she listened, she nodded attentively, smiled up at him, touched her hair. She only touched her hair when she was nervous. Or horny.

Greg led her to the next photo, his hand brushing dangerously low on his back. Did he feel her garter belt there? Had he felt lower?

Around and around the room they went. I did my best to watch without watching. I even got close enough to hear them speaking at one point at a particularly crowded intersection.

“So you and Max are okay with this?”

“We’ve talked a lot about it, but are we
okay
with this? I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to answer that one.”

Greg smiled. “You will. Chloe and I were once like that. Now…”

Katie’s laugh was something in between a sigh and a titter. “We saw what you’re like now last week.”

“Hope we didn’t offend,” Greg said.

“You didn’t. Shocked, absolutely. Intrigued? Maybe. But offend, no.”

Had Katie just admitted that Greg’s lifestyle intrigued her? To Greg?

“You could be up on these walls, you know,” he said, changing subjects. “Have you ever posed?”

“Naked? Never!” Katie laughed.

He whispered something else, but they were lost to me as they filtered out of this room. I gave them a few minutes before following, realizing that I was in the foyer where the main bar had been set up. Tall cocktail tables dotted the room, all of them filled.

Again, my heart skipped a beat when I spotted them on the far side of the room. Greg had my wife backed up in an alcove, their profiles to me through the dense filter of people. No one paid more than a glance. No one but me.

He was standing close, his knee pushed up between her thighs and his hand cradling her face. She was looking at him like he as the only thing that existed. I knew the look, but had never seen it directed at another man. He leaned forward, resting one hand on her hips as he whispered into her ear. Katie swallowed a red lip into her mouth and nodded.

He kissed her then, slow and smoldering. Even across the room, I could see their mouths open and their tongue unite. As public as this was, I still had to consciously will myself not to touch my throbbing manhood.

“I’m glad someone’s getting into the mood with my work,” a woman’s voice said over my shoulder. I broke free of my trance, turning to find a tall, alluring woman before me. Her dark hair hung in glossy waves around her pale beauty. “I’m Adrienne. I don’t think we’ve met.”

“Um...I’m Max,” I said woodenly, too slow to make up a name.

“Hi, Max. Are you enjoying the show?”

I started to feel more comfortable, so I asked, “Which one?”

“Touché.” She glanced back at Katie and Greg, who were still kissing. “She’s in for the night of her life.”

“I’m sorry?”

“That man she’s with? Let’s just say he and his wife have been inspirational to this work.”

“Oh?”

“Oh.”

I looked around the gallery, wondering if any of the blown-up photos were of Chloe. They were too abstract to tell.

Adrienne sipped her wine, spotted someone else she knew, and moved on.

Katie and Greg were on the move, too. He was helping Katie into her coat and I suddenly realized this was it. No more following. No more watching. After this moment, my Katie was on her own. Last chance to stop it all. Last chance while I was still a player in this game.

I just stood there and watched them leave. Stiffly, I had another drink and then went home to my empty house.

****

I could barely sleep that night, although I certainly tried. This time, I didn’t wait up for her on the living room couch. For some reason, I decided to pretend like this was any other night when she was away traveling. I did my routine, brushing my teeth and washing my face. I ended up laughing at how absurd the whole night had turned out.

Every time I let my eyes close, I wondered where Katie was and what she was doing. Did they go dancing after they left? Or did they just go back to his place and fuck?

A new feeling crept in. A bad feeling. Was this right? Had I made a big mistake? Was that
hope
that I felt when I considered that maybe nothing had happened?