Something Forbidden (4 page)

“Now stop talking to a couple of old folks and go mingle with your friends,” Katie added.

“Thanks again for coming. I’ll see you in a couple weeks, Katie.”

He left us with a lingering smile. Katie hugged me close, her voice husky in my ear. “Now can we go home?”

This time, I didn’t stall.

****

In the quiet of our car, as Katie pulled us out onto the highway, I realized how much I’d had to drink. The world spun around me, and that was more than just the speed of Katie’s BMW. The disorientation was fitting—or so my slushy brain figured. It fit with the turmoil I’d been feeling all night long, that jealous arousal I kept going back for. Communication was key to a healthy marriage, I’d told Nadia, but good communication didn’t mean divulging every thought and feeling to your partner. It meant being strategic about it, and whatever weird kink that that couple had stirred up half a year ago was not ready to be shared.

But I was drunk, so I started down that path anyway.

“You seemed pretty popular out on the dance floor.” Acknowledging it out loud was even more thrilling than thinking it. “Particularly with a certain brother-of-the-groom.”

I felt Katie’s eyes slide over to me before returning to the road. “Henry. Yeah, he was a great dancer, wasn’t he?”

“He was pretty good looking, too.”

Now there was a smile with that quick look. “How drunk are you, Max?”

My answer was as knee-jerk as it was false. “I’m not drunk.”

“Oh, my mistake then.” She giggled. “Yes, Henry was a cutie.”

My jealousy started to surpass the inexplicable excitement I was feeling, but she went on before I could say anything.

“Did that bother you? Watching me dance with him?”

Somehow, I was able to rein it in and actually think about my answer. It was a complicated question—more complicated that Katie realized. The quick answer was that yes, it bothered me. Made me feel jealous and insecure. The rational answer was that it shouldn’t have, that I’d always trusted Katie and her judgments. But it was the licentious answer that gave me pause, the one I didn’t want to acknowledge. The one that said: it bothered me in all the right ways.

“It did. It’s silly, I know.”

I was surprised to see that we were already pulling into our driveway. Funny how space and time work when you’ve had too much to drink.

Katie cut the engine and looked over at me. Shadows played across her face in the darkness. She looked supernatural in her beauty: queen of the night. She was smiling—just barely, but it was there, an amused look that was more embarrassment for me than for her.

“What?” I asked dumbly.

Katie shook her head, but it only made it worse. The smile widened until I could see the whiteness of her teeth. She started to say something, but it was lost as she began to laugh.

“What is it?” I was agitated, but her mirth was finding its way through the cracks in my armor.

“Max,” she said, “Henry is gay!” After that, her laughter was hysterical.

Henry was gay? I was jealous of a gay man dancing with my wife? Finally, her laughter caught on and I joined her. That felt good. Really good. I laughed until my stomach muscles hurt.

When it was over, Katie reached over and touched my cheek. “You’re a silly man, you know that?”

“A silly man who loves you, Katie.”

“I know.”

“And you know that Nadia and I are just friends, right? I don’t like her like I like you.”

“I know,” she said. “It’s just fun to be jealous sometimes.”

Well, that line certainly rang true for me.

“Come on, let me show you how much I love you!”

Before we even made it into the bedroom, we were all over each other. Like I said, when Katie dances, she gets horny. Couple that with the romance of a wedding and things got intense.

As for me, while the mixed emotions of tonight were confused, I knew for certain that something left me turned on. Katie noticed it, too.

“God, I haven’t felt you this hard in a while,” she whispered as she pushed her hand down the front of my suit trousers.

I rolled the cowl neck off her shoulders, baring the straps of black bra that had been keeping her tits on display all night long. I kissed her hard, my passion for her taking off. Aggression built in my wake.

“Do you know how many stares you got tonight?” The question emerged from my throat as a growl.

“I hope that some of those were yours.” She turned, pulling me into the bedroom.

My eyes had been lingering on her ass all night. I finally got to reach out and run my hand across it, confirming that she was wearing panties, just really tiny ones. In response, she pushed the dress the rest of the way off her shoulders. The other discovery was that her stockings were lace-topped stay-ups.

“God, that’s hot,” I said.

She pulled me close and kissed as she worked off my own clothes. “I need to feel you inside me.” Her voice was edged in desperation. She pulled at my belt, yanking my pants down even as she jammed her tongue down my throat. “I need it right now.”

She shoved me back onto the bed and straddled me. Her bra and thong were gone, but her thigh highs remained. She sank over me, her pussy wetter than I’d felt in a long time. Something about tonight had worked her up. Whatever it was, I was benefitting from it and my alcohol-saturated brain was fine with that.

I gripped her hips, helping her rise and fall on my cock. Her full breasts shook with each bounce until she reached up and cupped them. Her fingers found her nipples, twisting harder than I ever dared to do.

Each full-bodied moan brought me closer to the edge. I looked up at her, her buxom nudity shoving me along. Her eyes were closed, her face screwed up like she was in pain. What was she thinking about? What was she imagining? Henry was gay, but had another of her dance partners crept into her imagination tonight?

She crested, bowing over me as she heaved out her orgasm. I came with her, exploding inside at the thought that maybe, just maybe, she was thinking of someone else.

How fucked up is that?

When she was done, she collapsed on top of me, her body on fire. She ran her fingers through her damp red hair and gave a quick laugh. “That was fun.”

Curling up next to me as the sweat began to cool on our bodies, and whispered, “I love you so much, honey. I’m sorry I get jealous sometimes.”

“I’m sorry I do things that make you jealous.” I hugged her close as I pulled a sheet over us.

“Me too.” She giggled quietly. “No more dancing with gay guys.”

I squeezed her close and shared a chuckle.

“You know, you had me going for a second there,” I said, pausing. I was quiet, but my heart wasn’t. It seemed to anticipate what I was about to say. “Have you ever thought about it? You know, another guy?”

“Of course not!” She lifted a little off me and I could feel her gaze boring down. I kept mine focused on the ceiling, not daring to look her in the eyes.

“You must have some fantasies...” I realized in that moment that despite the orgasm, I was still running downhill—faster than ever. Stopping wasn’t an option.

“Oh, I see.” Her tone changed to a flatter one. She asked her follow-up question blithely. “Do you?”

“No, no! It’s not that. It’s just...it’s that...I mean, a fantasy’s just a fantasy, right?” The faster I ran, the deeper I found myself. “Sometimes, I wonder that maybe I’m not enough...for you...you know?”

“No, I don’t know. Tell me about that.” Deeper and deeper.

“Um...” I felt like all the heat in my body was trying to force its way out through the follicles in the top of my head at that moment.

“Why would you ever think you’re not enough for me?” she asked incredulously, settling back down on my side. Curling her hand around my chin, she forced me to look at her. Her green eyes shimmered with earnest. “You’re all I need. Ever. Am I enough for you?”

“Of course!”

“Then what’s this all about?” She kissed me softly.

Suddenly, I wanted to tell her all about my odd conversation last July with the man at Starlight. I wanted to talk to her about the subsequent confusion. The uncertain arousal. But fear stopped me. Fear of being judged. Of letting her see a part of myself that even I didn’t understand.

When I’d watched her on the dance floor with Henry, I felt like someone had hooked me up to a live wire.

“Just a stupid fantasy,” I said at last.

Katie’s eyes bored hard into mine. She knew me well enough to know there was more, but also that she wasn’t going to get it now. She stared at me quietly for a final few seconds as she worked that out in her head.

“When you’re ready to tell me, Max, I’m ready to listen. Okay?”

Chapter
2

As time passed, I began to wonder if I could ever talk about my illicit fantasy with Katie. Her family, a wealthy WASP clan from Connecticut, had raised her with a strict set of morals and I wasn’t sure how she’d handle it. In a sense, she was too perfect.

Nobody’s perfect, Max. Remember that.
Nadia’s words of wisdom; her way of preying on my insecurity, even when she had no stake in it anymore.

I’d thought about them often in the months since the wedding. No one was perfect. Certainly not me. And not my wife, either, although she certainly made her case. Nadia’s words returned again and again, eating away at me.

I felt myself withdrawing from Katie as the season changed from summer to fall. Our nanny quit abruptly to go back to school (something she’d known she’d be doing but neglected to tell us) and we had to scramble to take care of Mya. I ended up working nights and watching her during the day, then switching off. When Katie traveled—something she was doing more and more of as her team took on clients of greater importance—I worked from home. We became passing ships, catching up only on the weekends.

Starlight was doing so well that I was beginning to plan for another lounge-type restaurant. Following the expansion plans of Callahan’s, the second would be a little more upscale. I began polling the patrons at all my locations and talking it over with my friends.

It was Katie’s idea to open a speakeasy style bar: minimal signage out front, dress code, doorman. It would serve fancy, organic cocktails and expensive micro-brews, and require reservations for tables. It was genius. Only, even as she explained this completely slam dunk idea to me, all I could think of was Nadia’s statement that no one was perfect...

“Everyone likes the taste of something illicit,” Katie explained. She was talking about the bar idea, but I couldn’t help attaching a lot more meaning than that. “Absinthe is legal now, but it still feels pretty bad to be drinking it at an underground bar, you know?”

“It does...”

“When I was in New York a couple weeks ago, we visited one. It’s brilliant, actually, from a business perspective. You wouldn’t have to spend money on being flashy or any of that. This place was dingy, didn’t even have a sign out front, and yet it was packed with a two hour long wait list for a table. The more subdued, the more authentic.”

I’d always figured her company spent more time in boardrooms with laptops and spreadsheets than inside bars. My perception of her trips shifted a little.

“You already have experience with how to run a hip lounge,” she went on, relentless with her idea. Katie always got like this when she was excited about something. “This would be perfect! Just what this city needs. And it wouldn’t compete with your other bars. You could even put it next to Callahan 2.”

Now that was a great idea. When it came to huge decisions like this, though, I didn’t like rushing into anything. “I’ll need to think about it, but you may have something there.”

Took another two months before I had my business plan together and was ready to begin looking around for an ideal location. In the meantime, Katie’s
everyone likes a taste of something illicit
comment ate away at me. I turned it over and over again, heaping on meaning after meaning until I was more confused than when I began.

Just as I was about to explode,
she
walked back into the Starlight Lounge: the wife of the man who liked to watch her get hit on. The blonde.

It was mid-October and the fashions had begun to cover more than they revealed. Still, the woman managed to look sexy. She wore skinny jeans that were tucked into heeled suede boots and a loose-fitting tunic that hung off of one shoulder. Her blonde hair was a little shorter than I remembered, razor straight but for a soft, inward curl that ended around her sharp chin. Purse in hand and confidence in stride, she could have just walked off a runway.

I looked around, searching the bar for her husband. I didn’t see him. It was a little later than the last time they’d come in and the lounge was more crowded. He could have been here, but I got the feeling that she was flying solo tonight.

“Gin and tonic?” I asked as she settled into the same seat she’d been at before.

She had very well groomed eyebrows, which rose slightly in surprise. “Sounds perfect.” She cocked her head to one side and added, “Do I know you?”