Holli jumped up from the table the moment she saw me.
I waved to the hostess to indicate I knew where I was going and crossed the floor. Public Kitchen’s patio was a light and airy space with cement walls, lush greenery, and the furniture of a Victorian tea room. The foliage and tin candle lanterns created a feeling of seclusion in the throw pillow accented wooden booths. Holli and I met there when we really wanted privacy to share juicy details.
“I can’t believe I didn’t talk to you for a week! I almost died!” she squealed, throwing her arms around my neck. For someone as slender as Holli was, her grip was positively crushing when she got too enthusiastic.
“I never asked you to not talk to me!” I reminded her, giving her a squeeze. As I slid into my seat, I added, “You took it upon yourself.”
“I didn’t want to interrupt the banging,” she said as she scooted across the booth.
“You could have called me at work.”
“I didn’t want to interrupt you working.” She waggled her eyebrows. “So. Give it to me. Are we talking double penetration? Double vaginal? Double anal?”
“Excuse me.”
The waitress had appeared beside our table like a ninja, and now, she stared at us like we’d just stripped down to leather bras and started slathering mayonnaise on each other right at the table. It was not difficult for me to place her white face, mousy hair, and pinched expression onto the body of a Christian summer camp counselor who’d just found a hickey on a camper.
Holli chose to ignore all of the reality around us and placed her order like she’d been saying very normal, public appropriate things all along. “Yeah, I’ll have a G and T?”
I followed her lead and smiled innocently up at the server, even though I wanted to crawl under the table until the coast was clear for me to run out the door. “Sparkling water, please.”
My brain shut up, but my mouth kept going, and I hurriedly blurted, “And no one had double—”
“I’ll put those in for you, right away,” the waitress cut me off, before high-tailing it to the kitchen.
I turned to Holli, my fake smile still frozen on my face. “Thanks, Holli.”
She half-heartedly saluted me. “Yeah, yeah. Spill.”
“Okay, well, there were more important things that happened this week than sex,” I began.
She shook her head. “No. I have something very important to tell you, but we’re not going to skip over the sex to get there.”
“Fine!” I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest. “First of all, there was no double vaginal or double anal, thank you very much.”
“You shouldn’t be thanking anyone for that,” she grumbled. “It’s a tragedy.”
I leaned forward. “But obviously, there were a lot of group shenanigans.” I added, “And some not-group ones. But that’s not the exciting part.”
“Disagree,” Holli pronounced flatly.
“Oh, just wait.” I glanced around the table to make sure the waitress wasn’t on her return trip with our beverages, then leaned in. “We’re not just sex friends, anymore. We’re a…trio? I guess that’s what you would call us?”
Holli’s eyes went wide, and her head bobbled on her neck. “Um, what?”
“We’re all in love with each other.” The fact that it sounded so natural, so normal, warmed me inside, like someone had plugged a nightlight into my heart.
Knowing that my best friend could understand made that warmth and light quadruple. She covered her mouth and nose with her hands, her eyes shining with tears above them. “Oh, my gosh, Sophie! I’m so happy for you! Are you going to all move in together or—”
That was a bucket of cold reality I did not want sloshed over my joyous moment. “We haven’t figured all of that out, yet. We’re taking it slow.”
“And it’s not like you can have him move right on in with you, with your mom just down the hill,” Holli grumbled, seeming even more disappointed than I was at the arrangement. “I love Becky, but this seems like one of those things that she is just not going to understand.”
“Not for a second,” I agreed. “But get this. Tony just told me that they’re going to move out.”
“What? When?” Holli gasped, a hand flying to her chest. “Oh, my god! What about the hot tub?”
“I own the house,” I reminded her dryly. “We can still hot tub.”
“Thank god.”
The server placed our drinks in front of us, asked if we’d had time to look over the menu, and forced herself to appear polite when we admitted that we hadn’t. As if hearing Holli practically shout, “double anal” hadn’t already sealed us as worst customers of the day. We bent our heads and focused on our menus like we were studying for the SATs, only stopping to chat, again, once we knew we’d have an answer for her when she returned.
“Where are they moving to?” Holli asked, bringing the conversation back around.
I shrugged. “I guess they’re looking for a place but haven’t found one, yet. They said they’re going to stay on Long Island so that they’re close to us, but they’re not going to be able to afford to be really close to us, so I guess that’s good.”
“You could always just tell them El-Mudad moved into the guest house,” Holli suggested. “Remember that Kato Kaelin guy?”
“Let’s maybe not model my life after a true crime story.” I fiddled with the straw in my water, pushing ice around. “And that would never work. My mom already thinks there’s something up with me and El-Mudad, from when Neil was in the hospital.”
“That’s because your mom is a smart lady, and she knows that having a guy who looked like El-Mudad just lounging around your house shirtless—”
“He was never shirtless in front of my mother.” I interrupted.
“—would be impossible for most women to resist. Moi included.” Holli gestured to herself boldly. “Seriously, if I wasn’t a married woman, he might be worth wrecking our friendship.”
“Oh, my god, like seventy-five percent of the time I cannot even believe I’m friends with you,” I said with a snort.
The server came back and took our orders, and when we were alone, again, I was pretty sure Holli would badger me for better sex details than just “no one did double anal”. Instead, she took a deep breath, leaned her elbows on the table, and said, “So…I have something I have to tell you.”
It was hard not to panic, hearing my best friend say those dire words. It could be something bad, like, “I’m dying.” It could be something good, like, “I got a huge part in a movie.” Or it could be a little of everything: “I got a huge part in a movie, but we have to move to India so I can really establish my sudden Bollywood career. Also, we’re all dying. Death is inevitable.”
It might have seemed foolish to tack on that last part, but it was surprising how many conversations with Holli ended on that grim note.
I forced myself to smile when I said, “Okay, tell me.”
She breathed in through her nostrils and closed her eyes then breathed out through her mouth before saying, “Don’t judge me. But Deja and I are having a baby.”
“Don’t judge you?” I shrieked automatically, almost flying up from my seat. “Holli, that’s amazing! Why would I judge you?”
“Because you don’t want kids,” she said, then amended, “except for Olivia, obviously.”
“Just because I don’t want something doesn’t mean you can’t ever want it.” I did not tack on, duh. “Is this… Are you pregnant or—”
“Oh, god, no. I’m not the one having it. Deja is. And she’s not pregnant, at least, not yet. We’re using my egg and her friend Easton’s sperm, and she’s going to carry it.”
“That is a lot of steps,” I observed.
“And let me tell you, not a single one is pleasant. I already had the eggs harvested, and it hurt like a bitch. They take this big ass needle—”
“Nope,” I warned, one hand over my mouth.
“Whatever, the point is, it’s a pain in the ass. I wanted to tell you, though, because this is a long process, and we’re finally, finally underway. It just feels like…now, it’s really going to happen. All we’re waiting on, now, is finding out if the embryo implanted.”
“I can’t believe you haven’t told me before now.” Did I have a right to feel a little hurt? That seemed kind of foolish. I didn’t clear major life decisions with Holli. And lots of people liked to keep pregnancies under wraps until things were more certain. Like, until they were pregnant, for example.
Holli shrugged. “If it had been just me, I would have definitely told you. But Deja didn’t want to announce all of our business to everyone.”
“I get that. But what changed her mind?” I hoped Holli wasn’t breaking Deja’s confidence to me, though I didn’t think she would ever do that.
“I am a total mass of raw nerves and anxiety, and she thought that talking to you would put me at ease. Because I have questions.” She opened her purse and took out her phone. “Hang on, I have a list.”
“I don’t think I’m going to be much help with your current situation,” I said cautiously.
“Not the current part, no,” she said, scrolling her finger determinedly across the screen. “But the part comes when we have a baby, and I fuck up as a parent.”
Though I couldn’t exactly imagine Holli as a parent, I couldn’t imagine her fucking it up worse than most people. And while that might not have sounded like a ringing endorsement, now that I was actually responsible for a child, I realized that it wasn’t a low bar to set at all.
“I don’t think you’re going to fuck your kid up,” I said firmly. “Take that from someone who is pretty sure she’s fucking up parenting every single day.”
“Just humor me, okay?” She squinted at her phone. “How can you tell if a baby is hungry or needs its diaper changed?”
“You check and see if its diaper is wet, and if it isn’t, you feed it.” I thought back to last year. “But it could be tired, or bored, or gassy. But always start with hungry or wet. Those are the two easiest.”
She looked at me doubtfully. “Tired, though?”
“Yeah.”
“If they’re tired, they just sleep, right? They’re babies.”
I didn’t want to laugh at her, because I didn’t want to scare her out of her mind. “Not always. For example, you know how you get when you’re out at the club and you’re drunk off your ass and I have to drag you home?”
“Hasn’t happened in a long time, but yes. Continue,” she said.
“That’s the stage Olivia is at, right now. Wasted Holli, who either wants to sleep wherever she falls or fights her roommate because she doesn’t want to go to bed. There’s nothing in between.” Just describing it, I felt like I needed a drink. “Infants are actually pretty easy, compared to toddlers.”
“Are you trying to comfort me? Because you’re not.”
I screwed up my face. “Fair. Next question.”
“How much puke is involved?” she asked without hesitation.
“I don’t know. Any puking Olivia did, like normal infant puking, was mostly over by the time she came to live with us.” I wouldn’t tell her about the spaghetti incident.
“Poop.”
“So much poop. Sorry, I can’t soften that up. And even if you have a nanny, you’re not going to escape it. They do not wait for the nanny to show up.” I fixed her with a grave stare. “Promise me, promise me, you will not become one of those moms who talks about poop all the time on Facebook.”
She blanched. “Or one who’s like, ‘I know you just got your degree in nuclear psychology or whatever, but wait until you have a kid, that’s so much more fulfilling.’”
“I. Hate. That.” I punctuated each word with a slap on the table. “I posted a picture of Olivia on Facebook and wrote ‘love this little girl’. One of my friends from high school comments that she’s happy for me now that I ‘really’ know what love means, and she always knew I would change my mind.”
“Change your mind?” Holli frowned. “You didn’t choose to take care of Olivia.”
“I know!”
“People are ridiculous,” Holli said, taking a sip of her drink. “I really hope you don’t mind, though, if I ask you for advice all the time. I promise that’s not all our friendship is going to become.”
“I’m not worried about that at all.” The impact of our conversation finally hit me. “Oh, my god. You’re going to be a mom.”
Her face lit up. “I’m going to be a mom. I never in a million years thought I would say that.”
“I can’t wait to see what you dress her in.” There was no doubt in my mind that Holli would go absolutely berserk in the baby clothes store.
“Deja wants to find a little baby leather jacket.” Holli laughed then turned serious. “Don’t tell anybody, okay? Not even Neil. We don’t know if this is even going to work, and we don’t want to have to explain if…”
“If it doesn’t.” Our old office assistant—who’d married one of Neil’s friends and wormed her sunny, adorable way into our inner circle—had been pregnant and lost her baby, and it had been heartbreaking for her to tell us after it had happened. I could see why Holli wouldn’t want that same experience.
“Your secret is fully safe with me.” I crossed my heart. Then, I perked up. “Can you imagine how great Deja is going to be at maternity fashion?”
Holli laughed. “Leave it to you to focus on the really important stuff.”
****
That night, after Mariposa had put Olivia to bed and turned in, herself, Neil and I settled in on the sofa in the den and turned on the television.
“We are not watching that stupid vampire show.” He cradled my bare feet in his lap, holding them together in one big hand. Probably waiting for the perfect moment to hold me hostage with the promise of a foot rub. “Or any other show with a mildly paternal British father figure in it.”
“Okay, one, it’s not ‘that stupid vampire show’. Two, you will show Buffy the Vampire Slayer respect in this house. And three, you wish you could be as hot as Giles.” I sighed. “If you’re going to be Mr. Picky, you find something. Something that won’t threaten you as a man.”
“I am not threatened by men in tweed.” He lifted my feet out of his way to stand. “But you reminded me. I did find something.”
“Oh?” I put my feet flat on the couch cushion he’d just vacated. “Interest piqued. What is it?”
“I’ll show you.” He left me alone, and since I didn’t know how long he would be gone, I flipped through channels until he returned.
In his hand, he held something like a miniature rake, with very wobbly wire tines. There were long ones and short ones, all sprouting from a thin wooden handle. White plastic drops coated the tips, like the kind I loved to pull off hairbrushes.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” I said, hitting the power button on the television.
Neil beamed proudly at his weird find. “It’s a ‘massage tingler’. I found it at the health food store, and I thought it looked interesting.”
“So, it’s a massage tool?” I perked up at that. “Are you going to give me a massage?”
He sat beside me and said, “Give me your arm,” while he took hold of my wrist, anyway. He turned it palm-side up and trailed the metal tines over my skin.
“Holy—” I jerked my arm away, laughing. It was like being tickled. If tickling made you feel like you just had a strangely located orgasm.
“Isn’t it bizarre?” He did it again. “I thought you might like it.”
“I think I do?” I watched as he dragged it from my wrist to my inner elbow then lifted it and started all over. “I can’t tell if it’s tickling me, or…”
“Shall we test it, then?” he suggested, leaning forward to brush my ponytail away from my neck. He leaned in to kiss my neck and said low, “Stand up.”
My nipples tightened, making dark, obvious points against my pale pink T-shirt. I straightened it as I stood and turned to face him.
“Undress for me.”
I pulled my shirt over my head, baring my breasts. Sometimes, I wowed him with racy lingerie. Most of the time, it was just this. But even in my after-work “fuck it” clothes, he made me feel sexy. When I pushed my yoga pants down, my underwear went with them.
“Bring me your panties,” he said, nodding toward the puddle of clothes at my feet. I reached down slowly to retrieve them and handed them to him.
He tucked them into the pocket of his jeans. “All right. What should we put on the telly?”
I frowned. “Sir?”
He pointed the remote at the television and changed the source. He had quite a collection of adult entertainment saved to a local server in the basement. I didn’t know what that meant, aside from being able to access it from any television in the house, but not over the internet. That was my number one main concern, and he’d allayed all my fears.
I wasn’t afraid someone would find out we had dirty movies.
I was afraid someone would find out we had dirty movies of us.
He selected that folder and scrolled through the several—okay, many—videos available.
“What do you think?” he mused, pausing on one. “Very rough, or…” He flicked to the next one. “No, something a bit more gentle.”
He clicked the button, and the screen filled with an image of me, stretched out on the creme-and-gold bed in the Pavillon. The lighting was warm, and I’d had a fantastic tan; my naked profile was burnished and glowing. A white sash covered my eyes.
Oh, I remembered that night.
That was my birthday last year.
“Are you excited to find out what your present is?” my Sir asked from the television.
“Yes, Sir,” I responded from the bed.
“This video was more a present to myself than to you,” Neil observed beside me. He tugged at my ponytail. “Take this down.”
I reached up and pulled my hair free. He took the hair tie from me and pocketed that, too.
“Now, hold very still and watch.” His hands slid into my hair, fingers splayed to cup the back of my head and rub circles over my scalp as he talked. “What do you see in the video, Sophie?”
“Myself,” I answered, and when he cleared his throat, I tacked on, “Sir.”
“That isn’t a very thorough answer. Describe yourself.” He combed through my hair with his fingers, gently loosening the places where it tangled, until the long, dark locks cascaded over my shoulders, breasts, and back.
I studied my image on the screen. “My hair looks good. And I look good naked.”
“Not the kind of description I had in mind,” he admonished. “Look closer. Tell me what you see.”
I swallowed, my mouth dry. “I see a woman who wants to be fucked.”
He touched the tips of the massager against my back, and I jumped. Somehow, the electric tingles made me feel more exposed than my nudity.
He leisurely traced the implement down my back. “How can you tell she wants to be fucked?”
“S-she’s waiting. Like she’s been told.” The intense tickles made my knees weak. “Her legs are spread, so she can be ready for whatever he wants.”
“He?”
“You, Sir. She’s ready for you.”
The massager moved in a steady trail around my waist as Neil circled me. “What does she want?”
“To please him.” I licked my lips and quickly corrected myself. “To please you.” God, the electric tingles the device raised on my skin were like a feather on steroids.
“And what do you want, now?” He drew the instrument up my side, around the outer curve of my breast, and I had to will myself not to move.
“I want you to touch me.” I squeezed my thighs together.
“Where?” He used the massager to tickle up the center of my body, between my breasts.
“Everywhere, Sir.”
“Sit down. Lean back and spread your legs,” he ordered. “As wide as you would with the bar. Expose yourself for me.”
The cool air hit my parted flesh, and a rush of heat flooded my cunt. The thought of how those metal tines would feel skittering over my spread vulva made me break out in shivers. Every nerve in my skin sent signals of anticipation to my clit, promising new and bewildering sensation.
Instead of doing it himself, Neil handed me the implement. “Now, Sophie, you’re going to use it on yourself.”
I made a noise of disappointment.
“What, you thought I would do all the work?” He clucked his tongue. “Sophie, I merely want you to pick up where I left off.”
In the video, my Sir brought out a long glass dildo. Ridges twisted up the sides, and it ended in an angled glass head, flat like the tip of a thumb but wider. He’d touched the surface to the skin between my breasts, and my body had bucked. Seeing it happen on the video brought back the physical sensation.
“Sophie,” Neil reminded me in the present. “I gave you an order.”
I placed the cool plastic tips at my collarbones and drew them down, between my breasts and over my stomach, closer and closer to where all my thoughts centered, where need lay heavy in my flesh.
“What are you doing?” Neil asked, and my eyes opened. He still stood beside me, gazing down with a disapproving expression.
“I was using it on myself, Sir.”
“Not there, you won’t.” He took it from my hand and placed it on the inside of my knee. “You may use it here…” He dragged it up my thigh slowly, but stopped short of brushing against my labia. He changed direction and trailed it over my hip then along the border where my panties would usually fall. “This is fine. But this…”
My body tensed as he placed the tines below my belly button and began to pull them downward. The prongs skated over my mound, through the neat strip of my pubic hair, so, so close…
“But not here.”
I don’t know why I let myself get my hopes up every time.
Still torturing myself with the massager, I watched the screen, fascinated at the reaction that rippled through me as he pushed the dildo slowly inside me. I watched my toes curl, my calves clench, my thighs tighten, and I could almost feel the shocking cold of the glass inside me. The stretch of my muscles flowed with the movement of his arm; shuddering stomach, arching back, rising breasts. My hands had flown above my head, my fingers had kneaded the duvet, and my mouth had frozen wide open in a guttural exclamation of shocked pleasure.
“I will never cease to be amazed at how fucking gorgeous you are on camera,” Neil said, a little breathless. I turned my head slightly. He sat in the armchair, positioned perfectly so he could split his attention between me and the television with minimal effort. He’d unzipped his jeans, and he stroked his huge cock in his fist as he watched the screen.
I agreed with him, totally. The first time we’d made a video, it had been my idea to film it, so it hadn’t made me too nervous at the time. Watching it, though, had been decidedly different. I’d been painfully shy and embarrassed, until I’d seen what I assumed Neil saw, too: a being of pure sex and lust contained in a body made for limitless pleasure.
That’s what he did to me, what he turned me into. Even now, sitting feet away from me with his cock in his hand, he controlled my desire, stoked it hotter with a stern glance. “You aren’t supposed to be looking at me. You’re supposed to be looking at the screen.”
“Yes, Sir.” I turned my attention back to the television.
“You’re supposed to be remembering how that felt,” he went on. “Do you remember how good it was? How it filled you up?”
I moaned. It was a really big toy; I wished I had it, right now. The feathery touches of the massager weren’t enough. “I remember, Sir.”
“How do you feel, now?”
“Frustrated,” I whined.
“Because you want to come?” he asked?
“Because I want you to touch me, Sir,” I told him, not caring if my honesty would earn me a smack on the ass or not. Either way was fine, just as long as he put his hands on me.
“You’ll get what I see fit to give you,” he said, but he rose from where he sat and came to the couch. “Lie back.”
Couch sex wasn’t always the most comfortable, but I was desperate for him and far from complaining.
It seemed to take him forever to undress. I reached up for him as he lowered himself over me. The video on the screen no longer held my attention once his skin met mine, and his cock brushed against my labia. He sank into my cunt so slow and sweet, a ripple of pleasure moved through my body, contracting my muscles in a steady progression.
We moved together at a leisurely pace, feeling every inch of each other. There was no need to rush, no urge to fulfill that couldn’t be met in its own time. I wriggled my hand between us to stroke my clit, bringing myself to a gentle climax that suffused me with warm, loving energy. Neil shuddered above me, riding the last waves of my orgasm to his own release.
Held above me on his elbows, he kissed me, still moving inside me until he couldn’t take any more.
“Oh! The couch!” I gasped as he pulled out, but he scooped up his T-shirt from the floor and slid it under my butt, saving our upholstery from any potential wet spot. He pulled on his jeans and sat at the end of the sofa.
“What was that for?” I stretched happily and put my feet back in his lap.
“Do I need an excuse to fuck my gorgeous wife?” He picked up one of my feet and gently worked his thumbs into the arch.
“Not an excuse, no.” I moaned as he increased the pressure. “I just thought you might not want to, right now. Because…you know.”
He turned off the television with a frown. “Why? Because El-Mudad isn’t here?”
I shrugged. “I feel a little guilty, being intimate with you when we can’t be with him. I mean, don’t get me wrong. We’re still going to have sex. I’m not willing to give that up. But now…”
“Someone feels like they’re missing.” Neil nodded in understanding. “I never thought that would be possible. I thought you were the only person I would ever need.”
“Me, too.” I chewed my bottom lip as I thought. “But, like, what if it doesn’t work out? The three of us, all together? Would you still feel like something was missing between us?”
“Absolutely not,” he stated without hesitation. “I’ve never felt as though anything was missing between us. And with everything… Well, I feel as though we’re stronger than we’ve ever been. I would be heartbroken if we lost El-Mudad. But I would never find you and me lacking.”
Maybe that was what I’d needed to hear, without realizing it.
“I feel exactly the same,” I promised. “You’re my true love. And he is, too. I think we can do this.”
“I think we can, as well,” he said, glancing up my still-nude body. “Aren’t you cold?”
An email notification chimed on my phone. I reached for it and slid my finger across the lock screen. “No. And it’s kind of nice, actually, to—”
His hands paused in their work, and he looked up. “Something wrong?”
I wasn’t sure. Because the email was from Susan, and the very first sentence my eyes skated over was, She’d like to meet you.