Something Forbidden (3 page)

My first thought was about my own wedding and a younger Katie. She was just twenty-one at the time, beautiful in a cuter way, her intellect more book-oriented than worldly. I remember watching her walk down the aisle, resplendent in her long, white gown. I remember wondering how in the hell had I convinced a woman like that to marry me, and our convoluted history flashed before my eyes.

I’d met her for the first time when she was just 16. Even then, I’d figured she was way out of my league, and not just because she had a boyfriend who looked like a Ken doll. I’d been invited by a friend to his neighborhood picnic on the 4th of July, and having nothing to do, I went along. I remember striking up a conversation with her as we waited on the second batch of hot dogs, and being surprised that I could talk to her like an adult. We talked about bands we both liked (that I didn’t think girls her age listened to), about politics and foreign affairs. I had to claim ignorance on a few pieces of subject matter I didn’t know a thing about. We even talked about relationships, and how I was beginning to suspect there wasn’t a girl I could hold on to. I still remember her saying to me, “You’re all right, Max Callahan. I hope you find someone as cool as you.”

I didn’t see her again for three more years, although I thought about her all the time. She showed up in my advanced statistics class, a course I had to take for my MBA, and one Katie was taking because she was looking for a challenge. It was like fate; before, she’d been 16 and I was 21, but now, 19 and 24 didn’t seem all that implausible. When I asked her out and she said yes, it turned out she’d been thinking the same thing.

I looked over at her now, studying the more mature Katie. Her cheeks were more pronounced than that girl I’d first met, the cuteness of youth falling away to chiseled beauty. She had her head cocked to one side, her focus on the couple on the dais who were exchanging their nuptials. She’d always liked weddings, even if she didn’t particularly like the bride for this one...

Which led my thoughts down a more lurid path. Nadia looked like a fucking model up there in her strapless white gown. Her lustrous black hair had been curled and constructed up and off her long neck and round-faced beauty. Despite her Indian roots, her parents had grown up in Canada and this wedding was a hundred percent Western. A few bright saris dotted the audience, but most wore black suits and formal dresses, like Katie.

I was attracted to Nadia. It was pointless to deny that. Even Katie knew it. But there was a difference between attraction and temptation. With Katie by my side, it was pretty easy to have one without the other.

“Do you, Nadia Bhatti, take John Mitchell to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

“I do.”

The love in Nadia’s words was almost tactile. I reached over and squeezed Katie’s hand. She glanced at me, smiling back. Then returned to the exchange of vows.

My mind returned to its wandering path. To one night, back at the original Callahan, when Nadia had just been a shift manager with a lot of promise. I’d been working the bar along with her, but it was quiet so I’d decided to take off early. Only when I got half-way home, I remembered I’d forgotten something back in the office—so I turned around.

To this day, my ears still get hot at the memory of what I saw next. By the time I got back, she’d already closed down the bar and most of the lights were off. I entered the bar from the back, where the office was, and was about to call out a
hello
when I heard the unmistakable timbre of a woman’s moan. I should have left at that moment. I knew all about Nadia’s
liberated
spirit and she’d been flirting mercilessly with a patron all night. I couldn’t not look.

Creeping down the hall, I saw them as clear as day. Nadia was splayed across the bar on her back, one leg looped over the bartender as his hips rose and fell, the other dangling off the polished edge. I drank it all in: her black hair spilling around her, her smooth, dusky skin, the way her breasts bounced with each thrust.

Fuck me, fuck me!
She was moaning, her cries high and ragged like his thrusts were tearing them out of her throat. She arched up into him, her dark brown nipples hard.

“I now pronounce you Husband and Wife.”

The groan of the organs broke me out of my revelry. Katie squeezed my hand, and when I looked over at her, my face flooded with guilt. It had been almost four years since that incident—Mya had been nothing but a bump in Katie’s belly—and I’d never told her about it. She’d always been jealous of Nadia. Finding out that I’d watched my young employee climax on my bar wouldn’t be productive.

The triumphant chords of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March washed most of my guilt away. I decided to wash the rest of it away at the reception’s open bar.

Some guys love dancing with their women. Something about showing them off, maybe. I don’t know. I don’t like dancing and it was never something the two of us did very much. Truth be told, I can probably count the number of dances we’ve shared since our wedding on one hand.

Katie, on the other hand, loved dancing. She’d taken lessons when she was a teenager for her cotillion ceremony (to give you an idea of what kind of family she came from) and honed her skills further in college at her sorority formals. I’d watched her plenty of times being whisked about the floor by random guys. I’d always just figured that these guys were getting a taste of what I had, nothing more.

Now, that simple thought was more complicated. I couldn’t have it without thinking of the couple I’d met at the Starlight and the game they’d played.

From the bar, I watched Katie dance with single men eager to take her for a spin across the parquet floor. One man in particular seemed to keep coming back for more. He was tall and (in my opinion) generically handsome, closer to Katie’s age than mine with the dark hairstyle of a Wall Street exec.

A pit formed in my stomach as I watched. It was a familiar sensation—you couldn’t be married to someone like Katie and not feel jealous from time to time, no matter how secure our relationship was. Only this time, despite that metallic bite of anxiety, my pants tightened as my cock came to life. I watched her smile as the guy spun her around the dance floor and grew so aroused that I had to take a seat before someone noticed my excitement.

When she finally left the dance floor and joined me at our table, her arms and chest glistened with a layer of sweat.

“Having fun?” I asked.

“Never been better! Nadia now has a man to distract her from you, and she even threw us a party to celebrate it!”

That’s not where my question was headed, but now that we were on it…

“Give her a break, Katie. Nadia’s a good person.” I glanced across the floor, where Nadia and John were huddled in the corner, sharing a moment. “And she’s in love with John.”

Katie followed my eyes and sighed. “I know. I’m not being fair.”

I pulled her into my lap and wrapped my arms around her. “You have nothing to worry about. You know that, right? You’re my one and only. Forever.”

She shifted, swiveling to face me. “Ditto to that. Want to get out of here early? You know how dancing gets me worked up...”

It was like a lance had struck me in the chest. What she said was true. The nights after she went dancing were always explosive in the bedroom. Now I was beginning to wonder if that had something to do with the guys she danced with. I thought of that couple at Starlight again, and the man’s statement:
You have what other men want... this is the next step.

“Let’s stay a little longer. I haven’t had a chance to make my rounds yet.” I don’t know what possessed me to say those words; they just came out.
Delay
, an insidious voice whispered. My body felt warm from the fire I knew I was playing with, but I pushed on. “Why don’t you dance a few more rounds and I’ll find you.”

Katie studied me carefully, sensing something was different, but decided now wasn’t the time to question it. “Okay, but if you don’t come find me soon, you may be
sorry
!”

It was both exactly the wrong thing and exactly the right thing for her to say. I watched her float away and felt like I was floating, too. The confusing cocktail of emotions was so heady I thought that if I could bottle it up and serve it at the bar, I’d never have to work again. It was my first taste of that drug, and while I didn’t know it at the time, I was hooked.

I found Nadia taking a breather by herself at one of the outer tables. It was so weird seeing her outside of the bar. Weird, but good. She looked good.

“Hey, kiddo,” I said. I took a load off as I leaned on the table beside her. “Tired?”

Nadia looked up at me. A couple coiled strands of dark hair had escaped the high twist. One kept catching in the glossy sheen of her lips. I thought of Freida Pinto from
Slumdog Millionaire
—not for the first time.

She blew air at the errant coil, causing it to flip away momentarily before it settled against her slender nose.

“You know all of this is your fault. You and Katie.” She said it with a smile.

“We’re hopeless romantics who believe in love. What can I say?”

“You know, I never,
ever
thought that I’d get married. Being single’s just too much fun.”

She found John in the crowd, talking to some of her relatives.

“Now I’m part of the club.” She held up her hand, showing off the platinum wedding band that matched the diamond ring she’d been sporting for the past few months. “Do we get a secret manual?”

I laughed. She was ten years my junior, but she was so capable of her job that I sometimes forgot about that. “That would be too easy,” I said.

“Any advice for me?” she asked.

“Communicate.”

Nadia snorted. “I’ve heard that one before. Cliché much?”

I shrugged. That answer
was
kind of a throwaway.

The crowd on the dance floor had thinned out considerably, but true to her word, Katie was back out there, fox-trotting across the floor to Sinatra with Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Handsome. Something squirmy started doing flips in my stomach.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

Nadia followed my gaze. “Oh, that’s one of John’s brothers, Henry. Great dancer, isn’t he? And cute!” She glanced over at me out of the corner of her eyes and added quickly, “But not as cute as John, of course.”

I shook my head. Rings or not, she was still the same old Nadia Bhatti.

“I’m terrible, I know,” she said miserably.

I gave her a smile and got to my feet again. “You always will be, I think.” It almost felt fatherly. 

Nadia laughed. I loved that laugh, and I was secretly happy that marriage wasn’t going to change her, either.

“Nobody’s perfect, Max. Remember that.”

I nodded. “But we can all try?”

“Now where’s the fun in that?”

“Have fun on your honeymoon!”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. We will,” she said, and for a moment, my head was filled with the memory of her getting fucked on the bar. “Thanks again for introducing us, Max. I better go make some more rounds.”

Nadia stood, took a deep breath, and put on a wide smile. She didn’t make it five steps before she was engaged in a conversation.

The foxtrot wound down. I found Katie on the floor, whispering something into her dance partner’s ear. He nodded, smiled, and mouthed
thanks
. The first chords of Dream a Little Dream of Me began as he stepped away, leaving my wife on the dance floor alone. I took a step to join her when the groom, John, approached Katie first. He offered his hand to her. Her smile widened, she nodded, and he took it. My gratitude was two-fold: she wasn’t dancing with Henry anymore, and I didn’t need to be the one to take his place.

John was a couple years older than Henry, a little shorter and a little less dashing, but he possessed a quiet charm that must have drawn Nadia to him. Despite their differences, he was good for her. Being an accountant—an accountant on Katie’s team—he grounded Nadia. Judging from the way he took charge and led Katie—his mentor and boss—across the floor, he was more than up to the challenge.

The song ended and at last, Katie emerged from the floor, her arm linked in John’s. Oddly, unlike the display she’d put on with Henry, I didn’t feel any jealousy. Maybe because John just wasn’t a threat. It made me wish Katie could feel the same way about me and Nadia.

“Congratulations, John.” We shook hands as Katie moved from him to me. “The ceremony was great.”

He was too humble to call me on my bald-faced lie. “Thanks. It was all Nadia. Your wife has kept me too busy to even think about wedding planning.”

“Hey now,” Katie said with a laugh. “I granted you that long weekend that one time.”

“Seriously, thank you both,” he went on. “I never would have met Nadia if it weren’t for you guys. And you two are an inspiration.”

Katie squeezed up next to me. I suppressed the urge to kiss her, instead turning to John in thanks. “We’ve got a lot of practice. Just remember that it’s a partnership and you’ll do alright.”