One year later

When what you’re offering is a proven female sexual enhancement medication, your marketing efforts don’t need to be anything special. The patent still had two years left in it and even before anyone had done a stitch of marketing, word of mouth made sure that the only new drug on the market to catch anyone’s attention this decade was ours. The FDA approved wonder drug Amitral was a wet dream for business, and the only problem was keeping up with the burgeoning demand.

The stars had aligned and we were producing more than ever, even being able to scale back with some of our other products since everything in the labs was being refitted for production of that coveted pink pill. It was a medical and financial breakthrough. Women everywhere swallowed one before their husbands came home and were insatiable sex kittens 15 minutes later. The only known effects of overdose were surprise bonus orgasms and deeper sleep, meaning the entire female population of America was seemingly turning into blissed out zombies, walking around looking very well rested indeed.

On good days like this one, it was easy to think that my little manufacturing plants were quickly changing the whole world, one satisfied woman at a time. Even the latest mess-up with the new contract for some remote robotics we were installing in the UK plant couldn’t dent my mood today.

“How many units has Jeffrey agreed to have installed?” I said, and thumbed through the stack of notes handed to me.

“Fourteen, Mr. Cane.”

“And this takes ten hours off the total production time?”

“Yes sir. Ten hours, four minutes and nineteen seconds.”

I quickly calculated that it would cost us at least 600 grand to halt the factory for that long, but the new machines were necessary.

“What do you want me to tell him, Mr. Cane?” my PA asked.

“Ask if we can get twenty units installed,” I said. “If we’re down, we’re down. Might as well make use of the time.’ She nodded her head, then flipped the page to the next item on our agenda. I nervously looked at my watch.

“We need to respond to that offer from BlenCorp,” she said, tilting her head like a cockatoo as she pored over the documents.

“Remind me who they are?”

“The coatings people. They’re small but they’re angling to hitch a place on the Amitral train, I suppose. They’re really undercutting our current suppliers.”

I thought carefully.

“No, turn it down,” I said, glancing at my watch again.

“Sir…? I’ve sent you their proposal and we’re looking at a huge savings with them, plus they have their vegan varieties which marketing have already told us is a good idea.”

“The answer is no” I said and closed the pile of documents. I never trusted anyone who was willing to sell themselves cheaply. If they didn’t believe their product was worth it, why would I? I was looking to make money, like everyone else. But I’d only do that by offering the highest quality product I could, end of story.

“Sir, have you got somewhere to be, or…?”

My PA gestured to the remaining documents and lifted her eyebrows at me.

“Sorry, uh, yeah, I’m a little distracted. Can the rest wait till morning?”

“Yeah, of course,” she said and straightened her glasses. “Where are you off to?”

“Meeting with the minister of the department of home affairs,” I said with a smile. “You know how it is.”

She smiled and nodded.

I liked that everyone here knew that my priority was Nora, and always would be Nora. I’d gone through so many interns and assistants, and all the female ones always tried their luck, tried to make a suggestive comment about “test-driving the merchandise” or sneakily suggesting that a man as busy as myself must surely wish he could get away from it all sometimes.

But that wasn’t me. In another world, maybe a worse version of myself could imagine taking advantage of the women who threw themselves at me like this. There was certainly no shortage. There’s a kind of woman who gets drunk on just the suggestion of wealth and power. She stops thinking, believing that she’s the first woman in the world to make a lewd suggestion to me out of earshot. But again, I never liked dealing with people who didn’t value themselves. Why would a married father be willing to be seduced by a woman low enough to seduce a married father? It didn’t make sense to me. I took my cue from Nora when she laughed at the occasional inappropriateness, and laughed it off myself.

Nora was right about so many things. Funnily enough, she had never tried the pill. She said she didn’t need to. She said that all women really want is to be heard, to be listened to and to have their needs and wants acknowledged. It wasn’t a sexy revelation or one I could sell for millions each year, but I had to agree with her. About six months ago she asked me if I wanted another woman, if I would have liked a ‘pass’ to explore any opportunities that came up, and that she didn’t mind at all, if it’s what I wanted. I considered it for all of three seconds before realizing, why would I need another woman when I had barely scratched the surface of the one I already had? Every year I knew Nora, there seemed to be two years’ worth of new things to know about her, to learn and love all over again.

The sun was still shining when I left the office and rushed over to the appointment I had really been waiting for all day. This morning I had already picked up a second hand, beat up old piece of luggage from Craigslist, an outfit consisting of leather pants, a torn biker jacket and some costume piercings, and a bottle of red nail polish. They had posted my custom fake ‘passport’ the day before and now everything was ready – everything except these fake tattoos, which had to be just right.

I pulled up at the building and double checked the address. The man inside recognized me, welcomed me in to his back studio and rummaged through his drawers to find my order. I had paid through the nose for these transfers – they weren’t your ordinary temporary tattoos. Oh no, these were handmade, long lasting silicone transfers that would look exactly like real tattoos, complete with detailed snakes, red roses and a twisting black python with a knife in its jaws. Living in California certainly means you’re spoilt for choice when it comes to custom special effects people working in the film industry.

“Now, you swear this will last a whole week?” I said.

“If you apply it properly,” he said.

He was just a kid, surrounded in his workshop by monster molds and horror prosthetics and a tree of wigs. I thanked him and left, pleased that everything was coming together now. I briefly considered stopping by the mall on the way home to pick up a tacky piece of lingerie as a joke gift but thought better of it. She was still a bit touchy about the subject, even though I found it hilarious.

I raced home and was relieved to find that I had arrived before she had. I found Angelica downstairs, finger painting. Nora had really ramped up her painting lately, and Angelica always wanted to do what her big little sister was doing, and consequently the entire house always smelt vaguely of oil paint these days.

“Hey girl. Your sister already left?” I said and quickly tried to sneak the brown bag into the house without being seen.

“Out!” she cried, not lifting her gaze from the green and white creation she was working on.

“Ah well. You OK?”

“I’m OK!” she said and waved me away. Just like her sister then.

I ran upstairs to wrap all the items in a big box I had hidden under the bed, topped it with a giant metallic bow and raced back downstairs again. Our dinner appointment was in just ten minutes.

“Where’s Maeve and the baby?” I said. Angelika pointed to the other end of the house, then put her cheek to her hand to mime sleeping.

“Ok good. You be a good girl, OK? Nora and I will be back home later tonight.”

She nodded vigorously and I left, parcel under my arm.

One month on, one week off. That was the perfect rhythm we had found. The golden ratio. One month of proper, ‘normal’ life, me at the business, Nora at Rainbow Foundation, and then one week …well, it’s harder to explain what went on in our lives in that one week.

The best way I can describe it to you is that it was our ultimate role play. Once we started to look at our lives like they were just one of the many, many games we could play, all the challenges seemed so much easier. Believe me, you can put up with unimaginable stress if you know that in a few weeks, you’ll get to go away and reset all of it so hard that when you return to it again, your entire perspective will have changed.

We never really told anyone where we were going whenever we went on a ‘trip’. We usually told people it was a vacation, and in a way it was. A vacation from ourselves, from our relationship, from life. Isn’t that what people go on vacations for anyway, to get a taste of a different world, and get a break from the same old world they have day in and day out?

Some couples have engrossing hobbies away from one another. Some have affairs. Some have ‘open relationships’ when the spark flickers away. Nora and I played our games. And every year, the games got bigger and more elaborate, until they weren’t games at all but whole separate realities, parallel lives that we constructed with as much care as we did our ‘real’ lives. She was an expert at the costume design, and could immerse in a character so quickly it was frightening. I had a flair for the dialogue sometimes, and liked weaving a narrative for us to play with over the course of that week.

And a week is all you need, to live another life. Trust me. Driving over to the restaurant, I glanced over at the box on the passenger seat. I couldn’t wait to see her face. I couldn’t wait to see her, and what outfit she’d picked out for this evening. I arrived, the valet took the car and I went inside. Charlotte’s was one of my favorite restaurants, a hidden gem and one of the only places in the city where you could find a bona fide, totally un-ironic chanteuse draped in sequins over the piano who would warble while guests ate stubbornly unfashionable food on the kind of crockery your parents had in the 60s. It was awesome.

She was already seated, but sprang to her feet as I moved towards her, giving me a full view of a long, beaded white gown – classic Nora.

I took her hand and spun her round.

“You look beautiful,” I said and nodded my approval, to which she gave a coy little bow and sat down again, eyeing the box with interest. I sat, plonked the box aside and straightened my tie, then teasingly pretended to look at the menu, knowing she was more than a little curious.

“Oh, I’m sorry, was there…?” I said and smiled at her. “Ah I see, you’ve been admiring my enormous package over here, haven’t you?” I said and gave it a thoughtful pat. She giggled.

“Guilty as charged. You know I like shiny things, and that looks so shiny I think it could only be a present for me,” she said, her eyes glowing in the dim light.

God, she was beautiful. No matter how many times I looked at her face, I was always slightly surprised by it. Always caught off guard by how strikingly lovely her cheekbones were, how perfectly black her eyes were, always a little darker than I remembered.

“It looks like a present, you say?”

“It does. What’s inside?” she said playfully.

“Only one way to find out, I guess,” I said nonchalantly, and pretended to look at the menu again.

She laughed and grabbed the parcel, but I stopped her and stared into her eyes. She returned my gaze easily, studying my face for any hints of a challenge or a dare.

“It’s for our upcoming trip,” I said, suddenly being serious. Her smile was instant and contagious. She grabbed the box, tore at the bow and began examining the contents inside. As she turned over the passport and the clothing in her hands, I began to explain.

“You’re Megan. Megan Reynolds. You’re 28, although you’re streetwise and a bit of an old soul. Born in Liverpool, breadline family, rough upbringing, daddy left when you were little… you know the story. You’re a tattoo artist and struggling to better yourself, but your dirty secret is that you also suck men off in bathrooms for cash on the side when rent is late. And you like it. This is how you meet me.”

I watched her rummage through the items carefully, then open a small book containing my character notes, printed and leather bound, the paper etched in gold as though the sordid story inside was some kind of high literature. She cracked the spine and began reading from a passage in the middle of the book.

“You’re… Connor Taylor. An investigative journalist. Thirty-six years old, practicing catholic and sexually repressed as hell….”

She flipped through the rest of the pages and skimmed.

“You meet me under the pretext of doing a story about the rise of cocaine use in the 18 – 35 age bracket, except soon you’re drawn in…”

“By your charms, yes. Basically, we fall in love,” I interrupted.

“Nice,” she muttered under her breath, but then she paused on one particular page.

“You want to do this?” she said and raised her eyebrow at me. I cleared my throat and tried to keep a straight face.

“Oh yes. I will eventually. After you convince me to,” I said and met her gaze. Her face was glowing.

“I see,” was all she said and carried on examining the items. “Seems I like leather.”

“You do. You’re kind of scruffy. You have an edge to you. But deep down… well, you can read the notes.”

The waiter came and I ordered us some wine while she read.

“You sound kind of pervy to start with,” she said, and placed the book aside.

“Oh I am. I start that way at least. It’s my intention to prey on you, really. I have no idea what I’m getting myself into, clearly,” I said, and took a small sip of wine. She slapped the book closed, returned it to the box and put everything aside again.

“I like it. I like the props. Let’s do more of that.”

I nodded and clinked her glass as she took a sip of her own.

“I’m younger though.”

“You are?”

“Oh yes. Maybe twenty-three.”

“That’s quite the age gap.”

“I know. Kind of seedy, isn’t it?”

Her smile was electric.

“Are you sure about… you know. We’ve never tried that before.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” I said quickly.

We exchanged smoldering looks, then she nodded and tried to force her attention to the menu.

“I love this place. Shrimp cocktail? It’s like they don’t give a single fuck,” she said with a big grin. I was surprised to feel the point of her shoe against my ankle. I looked at her but she was engrossed in the menu. Her foot slid upwards, stroking my calf a little, up and down. I looked at the menu too.

“You know what we’ve also never done? Fucked in a bathroom,” she said, with the same casual voice she’d use to order food.

“True.”

She flipped a menu page and scanned it, looking a little bored.

“But then again, if you were going to do that, why bother with the bathroom part at all, you know?”

The foot stroked higher up my leg. I casually glanced to the other tables to confirm that the tablecloths, though horribly outdated, did indeed reach down to the floor.

I cleared my throat, set the menu aside and gave her a burning look.

“So, what do you feel like?” I asked and gestured to the menu. She beamed.

“Oh I think I’ll go for the sirloin. But you can be my appetizer,” she said, and the foot travelled higher up. It took only the slightest strokes of the rounded toe of her shoe to get me rock hard. Trying to look as cool and collected as possible, I snuck my hands under the table cloth and carefully unzipped, the thrill of knowing that I was nearly exposed in this very public place only making me stiffer. Her eyes narrowed with pleasure, and the next time she touched me, her foot was bare.

I couldn’t help but laugh at the goofy look she gave me. This was fucking perfect. We were in this old-fashioned diner doing the old-fashioned ‘shenanigans under the table’ routine and it was absolutely brilliant. I tried not to grin like an idiot. Her little toes were cool against my cock, and caressed vaguely over me as she tried to look relaxed and unconcerned on her side of the table. It was the perfect metaphor for our entire relationship. A normal, uninteresting couple on the surface… but a whole world of mischief going on just out of sight.

“Hm, the sirloin does look good,” I said, and tried hard to hide the fact that my breath had almost caught in my throat. She tried in turn not to smile too smugly when she noticed my response.

“Medium?” she said, pairing the question with a stroke from the base of my cock to the swollen tip.

“Rare,” I said, and I clenched my jaw.

She stifled a giggle.

“Good. Now. Before the waiter comes to get our order, I want to put in my order, ok?” Stroke. Stroke. Stroke…

I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again to see her sweet, teasing face. It was hard to focus on anything in the restaurant when all I could think of was how fucking good it felt under the table… it was almost criminal that she seemed to know precisely what she was doing and enjoying how quickly she could rile me up.

“What I want, is for you to sit there and let me do exactly what I please with you, and when you’re really close, I mean when you feel like you can’t handle a single second more, then…”

“Then what?” I breathed.

“Then I’m going to drop my fork under the table. And when I get down there, down on my hands and knees, if you know what’s good for you, you’d better make sure there’s something worth my while down there…”

“You want me to come in your mouth?” I said, and it was hard to conceal the edge of desperation in my voice. At this point, anyone looking might have guessed what was happening, just by the naughty look on her face alone.

“No, not my mouth. My throat. Now, so as we don’t offend all these lovely people, I’ll only be down there for a very, very brief moment. Do you understand? A very brief moment. Now, if you don’t give me what I want at that moment, I guess I’ll just have to come back up again,” she said, and pouted.

I suppressed a groan. Fuck, she was good at this. Lately, she was her old, cheeky self again, the Nora as I first met her – one moment vulnerable and delicate, the next a complete sex monster with a wicked streak who thought nothing of a little well-placed torture when she thought it might amuse her.

“I thought it might be nice for you to fuck me in the bathrooms, but then again, I’m not in the mood for too much mess, you know? Better you put all of it straight into my mouth and be done with it, don’t you think?”

She was enjoying the fact that I wasn’t finding it easy to speak at that point. I loved the way she said ‘fuck’. The way she savored it like something juicy and heavy, biting into her lip and almost spitting the word out. Dirty words became poetry on her lips. Wonderful, nasty poetry.

“What do you think all of these people would think if we just did it right here, though?” she said. I could feel myself twitch achingly against her caress. I was at her mercy. “Can you imagine it? You would throw all this stuff off the table, and I would lay down, spread my legs wide for you and you could fuck me in front of everyone, right here. We’d just go for it, like they weren’t even here. Like animals. Actually, just thinking about it is making me a little horny… maybe I was too hasty to rule out the bathroom idea after all,” she said, and writhed in her seat a little. I knew she was doing it to taunt me. And it was fucking working.

“Are you wet?” was all I could say. Her smile was devilish.

“Probably.”

“I’m… I’m almost there,” I said, petrified that we were being too obvious and that we’d be discovered any second now, but enjoying it too much to stop now.

“Good. I can’t wait to swallow down every …single …drop,” she whispered, and I felt myself tighten and throb in response. I realized I was clenching my fists. I glanced around the restaurant, thankful to see that our cover didn’t appear to be blown just yet. She was cool as a cucumber, giving no indication of what her wicked little feet were doing to me under the table. The corner of her mouth lifted a little as she noticed my breath coming in tiny gasps.

“Close?”

“Yes.”

“Oops! Looks like I dropped my fork,” she said and made a big show of looking down to the floor.

“Shall I go and pick it up?” her face suddenly serious.

I wondered if I had visibly broken a sweat. I sure as hell felt like I was ready to burst into flames.

“Yes,” I whimpered. She slid so slowly and easily off her seat it was almost serpentine. She disappeared under the tablecloth and I felt a flutter of alarm pulse through me, but almost before I could think twice about it, warm lips formed a tight, hot seal around the girth of my cock. I bit down on my jaw to try and stop my vision from swirling. I felt myself bounce against her wet tongue as she swirled it over my shaft, and she wasted no time pressing me in all the way, till my head pressed against the back of her throat and her lips kissed the very base of my cock. I couldn’t believe it. Here, in a crowded restaurant, with people only a few feet away on all sides, my delightful little whore of a wife, my greedy little cum-hungry Nora was under the table right that instant, swallowing every inch of me and I was mere seconds away from exploding.

The table clunked once as she pulled her lips away and, just as quickly as she had gone down, she was up again, discreetly wiping the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. I stared at her in wide-eyed disbelief. She shrugged.

“I said it would be a brief moment, didn’t I?” she said with a naughty look.

The shudder that pumped through me as she held my gaze was so intense it took all my strength to hold off from bursting right there and then.

“Dean… Dean, are you listening? Don’t you dare come yet. Don’t waste all that hot cum, I want it. All of it.”

I nearly groaned out loud when her toes found their way to my cock again.

“Now, let’s try that again,” she said. “I know it can be hard to pay attention, my love, but I repeat: unless you come in my mouth at precisely the right time, then you just don’t get to come at all,” she said, sounding like she sincerely regretted that this was the case.

“I mean, I could leave you here right now, if I wanted to. I could stand up and leave you and that monster of yours, but that would be quite awkward for you. And worst of all, I wouldn’t get to taste that delicious cum of yours…”

Stroke. Stroke. Stroke.

This time she got me so close I had to jerk back to stop myself from coming. A cold rash of goosebumps washed over me as I tried to compose myself.

“There we go. That’s how close I want you,” she said, looking satisfied.

Clink.

“Will you just look at that? My stupid spoon has fallen on the floor as well…” she said, playing the perfect ditz and rolling her eyes.

“Pick it up,” I mumbled.

Again with her slow, perfectly naughty smile.

“Are you sure though? I don’t like getting on the floor for nothing you know.”

I began to wonder if the people at the next table were wondering about us. At this point I didn’t care though. I felt like a loaded gun, ready to fucking explode if that’s what she fucking wanted.

“Get on the floor, Nora. I’m going to…”

Down she went again, even more swiftly this time, but by now I was more than ready, and the very instant she closed her hot little mouth around me my entire body detonated. Above the waist I held on for dear life, trying to play cool and give no indication of the earthshattering orgasm I was having a few inches below. I kept a stoic face as a deep, rolling orgasm ripped through me and soon I was firing squirt after squirt down into the void of her mouth, hidden from my view but completely enveloping me. Each gush she swallowed down expertly, sucking hard to draw out each delicious little thump of pleasure. Before I had realized what had happened, she had scrambled up to her seat again and was smiling sweetly, the spoon in her hand.

“Got it!” she said and this time I saw it, the couple beside us really were casting occasional curious glances over at us. I didn’t care one bit. The waves of dazed pleasure rippling through me nearly had me laughing out loud. I couldn’t help but pant a little under my breath, as I considered that that was likely the fastest I had ever come in my life. I looked at her in awe. Somewhere, down that sweet, perfect, pale little throat of hers, our secret was swallowed away, leaving nothing but her mischievous smile. The thought of what we had just pulled off here in broad daylight, out here in public just like that, was breathtaking. I clumsily reached under the table to zip up again and gather myself, but when I glanced over the table again at her she was still smiling to herself, looking pleased as punch.

“You’re really good at that,” I said at last.

“At what?” she said and smiled innocently at me.

“Dropping spoons on the floor. Picking them up again,” I said and returned her smile.

When the waiter came over to take our orders, I was almost certain that he had watched the whole thing unfold and put two and two together. I was still so flustered I could barely make eye contact. But Nora, little vixen she was, batted her eyelashes and simply ordered for the both of us, handed the menus over and then gave me a secret wink as the waiter walked off again.

“He totally knows,” I said when he left.

She shrugged.

“So?”

“I love your tongue.”

“I love your cock.”

“Yeah?”

“Mm. I love the way it tastes. I love how I can feel you get bigger right before you come.”

“Nora?”

“Yes?”

“Let’s finish up here quickly. I want to get you home.”

“Home? But I just ordered for us.”

“Sirloin steak can go to hell.”

“Sirloin? Oh no I didn’t order us that in the end. I told the guy we’d have the buffet instead.”

It was a fitting choice. Why have just one meal? How good could one meal ever be, when the world was full to bursting of delicious things? Nora and I weren’t doing that anymore. We were going for the buffet of life. We didn’t want to choose one thing and stick to it, we wanted a little bit of everything. And I do mean everything.