Chapter 6

The kiss is familiar, affectionate, and entirely welcome. You return it, drawing her closer beneath the covers. She smiles against your cheek, and for a little while the evening's conversation gives way to the comfortable intimacy of two people who know each other well. Yet something about tonight feels different.

Perhaps it is the laughter, or the peculiar intimacy of discussing things that would ordinarily make both of you uncomfortable. Perhaps it is the way your wife has been looking at you all evening, with a mischievous little smile that you haven't seen in years. Whatever the explanation, something has changed.

The familiar, comfortable rhythm of your marriage has been interrupted by an excitement neither of you knows quite how to handle. When she kisses you again, there is none of the sleepy affection that usually precedes bedtime. She catches the front of your shirt, pulls you toward her, and kisses you with such a sudden determination that you nearly knock your elbow against the headboard.

You laugh in surprise, but she doesn't laugh with you. Instead, she tells you to stop talking and kiss her properly. You oblige, spooning her from behind and wrapping her in your arms. Your awkwardness only seems to encourage her. Your phone ends up somewhere among the pillows, the blankets become hopelessly tangled, and your wife accidentally knocks a paperback off the nightstand. Neither of you bothers to retrieve it.

Under the blanket, your hands slowly reach for her bare skin. You slowly strip her bra straps down from her shoulders and massage them gently. You start kissing the back of her neck and she laughs breathlessly when you nearly roll off the edge of the mattress, then grabs your shoulders and pulls you back toward her.

As the heat grows, your hands move down her back and unhook her bra. The moan she makes intensifies your longing for her. There is something wonderfully reckless about the whole business, something that reminds you of the early years of your marriage, when you occasionally forgot the time, ignored the telephone, and behaved as though the rest of the world could wait until morning.

You rid her of her bra and your hands cup her breasts, massaging them in a round-and-round motion. You cannot remember the last time she seemed so impatient for your attention, and the realization makes you hold her more tightly. Then, without warning, you remember Grudge.

You see him as your wife described him, enormous and tattooed, standing in front of that exercise machine with his battered face twisted into an arrogant grin. You remember the vulgar proposition he made and the furious embarrassment with which she repeated it. You imagine the confidence it must have taken to say something so outrageous to a complete stranger.

The image sends another bewildering rush of shame and arousal through you. Then your wife catches your face between her hands and demands your attention with another impatient kiss. Her hand reaches between your legs, to find you erect and wanting. She strokes you gently, running her hand up your length.

You discover that the thoughts of Grudge have made you more eager to be close to her rather than less. You slowly turn you over, facing her. Your bodies align perfectly, and with that momentum, you fall into a deep passionate kiss. What you cannot know is that your wife is experiencing much the same confusion.

She has not forgotten Grudge's insulting remarks, and she certainly has not forgiven them. Yet something about the memory of being insulted by that enormous stranger has left her feeling unusually horny. You move towards herr hard nipples, your tongue working around the tender bud, sucking it, making it harder.

With your fingers, you gently twist and pull at her other nipple in a circular motion, giving it a soft pinch now and then. As you do, she remembers Grudge's contemptuous laughter and the sheer outrageousness of his proposition. She finds herself wondering what it would be fucked by his horse cock. The thought makes her abandon some of her usual self-consciousness.

While your tongue is occupied with her nipple, your hand slowly moves down in between her thighs. You find her all wet need. She cannot resist the sensation of your touch and she moans. The moment intensifies. She says she wants you inside of her. You slide your along her soft outer folds, up and down as her cunt becomes even more wet and greedy.

She becomes desperate to feel you inside of her. She grabs your hips and pull you towards you her, until your cock is buried in her warm, wet fuck hole. The feeling of the first thrust makes you both gasp loudly. She pulls you closer and laughs at the startled expression on your face. She tells you that she doesn't want another quiet, predictable evening.

She wants you to forget the television, the laundry, tomorrow's errands, and every other tedious responsibility that has gradually crowded its way into your bedroom. You have no intention of arguing. The two of you are suddenly behaving like newlyweds who have had too much champagne, fumbling with the bedside lamp, laughing at your own clumsiness, and exchanging kisses that become increasingly difficult to interrupt.

Your skin touches, the warmth arouses you even further, unlocking your wilder side. At one point, your wife catches sight of your astonished expression and asks whether you've forgotten how to keep up with her. You begin to thrust into her with reckless abandon, feeling the friction as her tight cunt grips your cock.

The room grows warm, the pillows end up on the floor, and the neat bed you made that morning becomes an absolute disaster. There is nothing graceful or carefully choreographed about the evening, and that seems to be precisely what makes it so memorable. Your thrusts gain intensity, like a wave cresting and ready to crash down over you.

The bed is rattling as you both find release together. Much later, you lie on your back staring at the ceiling, breathing slowly while your wife rests beside you. The blankets are twisted around the foot of the bed, one pillow has disappeared entirely, and the overturned paperback remains on the floor.

Your wife begins laughing for no apparent reason, and when you ask what's so funny, she tells you that she cannot remember the last time the two of you made such a ridiculous mess. You admit that you can't either. She reaches for your hand beneath the covers and squeezes it, and for several minutes you enjoy the pleasant exhaustion of an evening that neither of you could have anticipated.

You are happy, genuinely happy, although somewhere beneath that satisfaction lies the uncomfortable knowledge that your imagination was not entirely occupied by the woman beside you. Your wife has a secret of her own. As she settles against your chest, she remembers the afternoon's conversation and the extraordinary collection of rumors surrounding Grudge.

She is embarrassed to realize how often his image returned to her thoughts, even while she was enjoying her closeness with you. She wonders whether the excitement of doing something unexpected has simply reminded her how much she misses the spontaneity of your early marriage. That explanation is comforting, and she would very much like to believe it.

Yet she cannot entirely dismiss the possibility that Grudge's outrageous behavior has awakened a lust that she had never known that she possessed. She tells herself that she has no desire to encounter him again, but the thought of tomorrow's workout makes her strangely restless.

You gently brush her damp hair away from her face and kiss her forehead. She smiles, closes her eyes, and tells you that tonight was wonderful. You agree, adding that perhaps the two of you ought to make a habit of being less predictable. She laughs softly and says she wouldn't object.

Neither of you mentions Grudge, although his name has been hovering at the edges of your thoughts for much of the evening. You assume your wife would be horrified to discover the strange direction your imagination occasionally wandered. She assumes much the same about you. The irony is that both of you have enjoyed one of the most unexpectedly passionate evenings of your marriage while privately concealing the very same source of fascination.

Eventually, your wife's breathing becomes slow and regular, and you lie awake listening to the quiet sounds of the house. You think about the laughter, the awkwardness, the surprising intensity of the evening, and the unfamiliar sense that something dormant has stirred between you.

You would like to believe that the explanation is simple. You and your wife have rediscovered a little of the excitement that first brought you together. Perhaps that is even true. But as you close your eyes, the image of a heavily tattooed stranger standing in a gym returns with such clarity that you cannot entirely convince yourself.

Beside you, your wife drifts toward sleep wondering whether Grudge will be there tomorrow, and whether he will remember her. Neither of you understands what has happened, but both of you recognize that something has changed. For the second night in a row, Grudge has occupied a place in your marriage without ever setting foot inside your home, and neither of you has yet considered how easily a shared secret can become a shared temptation.