All That We See or Seem...

PEARL'S UNIVERSE

Fucksake. Literally, for fuck's sake, when will her husband -- the so called genius -- learn that she will never orgasm this way, with him pounding her like that. He's fucking her like a pornstar cliche. What does he think she is? Some human sex toy that can wait months until he turns her on (or tries to) and then she's supposed to cum in response to what... being pumped up? Where's all this humping come from anyway? She preferred it before he started working out, when he'd cum the minute she wrapped her legs round him. At least then she could pretend he adored her.

Damn. Now the bed's squeaking and the headboard's wallopping the wall, and the kids' rooms are just downstairs. He can pay for their fucking therapy. And hers--he hasn't made her cum in years. And he can get therapy himself while he's at it, get to the bottom of why he never wants sex, and most importantly why he won't ever -- ever -- go down on her.

Husband, meet clitoris. Clitoris, husband.

She wants (aches) to close her eyes and conjure Michael, her dream man again. She did it earlier to get herself wet and got so ridiculously drippy that John curled his lip and wiped his hand on the duvet when he discovered. "Whoa, easy tiger," he remarked as if she'd embarrassed them both. "I'm flattered, but we won't feel a thing."

"We". Always "we" when he means "he".

Still, she won't call on Michael. It already feels like she's cheating, being so wet for one man while fucking another, even if the former doesnt strictly exist and the latter's a brilliant mind but a sexual dolt. Her dream man is for lonely times only, of which there's a lot, and even that's kind of messed up if she thinks about it.

So she focuses on the handsome physicist she married. The moonlight through their open window is like a spotlight on John's gym-grown, sex-swollen muscles bunching and flexing between her legs. He's holding her wide by her ankles and she can almost hear him counting his reps. He's sheened in sweat. He looks like a baby-oiled body-builder and seems to like it: he's watching his reflection in the mirrored wardrobes by the bed. She looks so petite and pale under his lumpy shoves. To think she's had this day marked in her calendar for so long there was time to lose some weight and tone up for it. Had time to wax and exfoliate until her skin glowed. She even got her habitual black bob lopped into a new pixie cut that Hannah, her hairdresser said, "Is so sexy with them big blue eyes that I'll do yer if your husband don't."

He hasn't noticed her efforts or her adoring gaze taking him in; he's too fixated on his performance. Clinical. Just another experiment. Oh how she wants Michael's dreamy, eager mouth down there. Maybe some thick dreamy fingers with it. Then a dreamy shag perhaps, if she still needs it. But fuck she just wants to be adored. Messily and in detail. More than once.

It's ironic that her husband was voted the world's sexiest scientist when he's indifferent to sex. He acts like he's too evolved for it, like it's something for stupid, unrefined people. What cruel fate is it that made her, a woman who adores sex, love a man like that? And she does love him. Everywhere but between her legs. Her pussy numbed out two hundred strokes ago. A jackhammer was not the way to her heart.

She quickly turns a frustrated sigh into a blissful moan.

He pulls a stoic smile. Rams on. He's clearly not enjoying this, why does he do it? How does he do it?

"Cum," she puffs. "C-cum."

"Not till you do." He grabs her hips and yanks her at his thrusts.

Fuck. Sake. He thinks he's doing it for her.

With the practised efficiency of ten years of marriage she throws her leg over and twists onto all fours, hips up, face pressed to the pillow. His cock doesn't stop ploughing, relentlessly digging for treasure it'll never find. He doesn't seem to notice she's turned over, let alone that she's slid a hand down to fiddle with her clit.

Her sex is so wet and her fingertip so compelling that she could easily imagine it's Michael's tongue down there. Avoiding her unfaithful thought, she takes John's hand from her hip and pulls it to her face so she can suck his thumb.

He half-laughs, half-moans. His hips shake. "Come on, darling," he says. "Cum for me. For us." Then he fucks her harder, making obscene slapping noises with his front on her buttocks. The kids can't hear that can they?

This needs to finish, now. She rubs her clit, working a tingle into a fizz. That'll do, she can fake the rest. "Hmm!" she cries out on his thumb.

Then pop. There he is, Michael, kneeling beside the bed, watching her husband fuck her from behind while she gives the fucker a thumb job.

Her dream man blinks and looks around him. "Well, this is new." He looks a bit like her husband, but less pretentious. More carpenter than quantum physicist. He has the same action hero looks and buff physique but he's a little softer all over, like he's not too bothered about his appearance. He has a kind slope to his eyes too, and a twinkle. He's twinkling a lot at the moment, his edges glittering in the dark, but otherwise he's as solid here by her bed as he ever is in her dreams.

And he's right, this is new; she's never hallucinated him before. Christ she really does need a shrink.

Not yet though. Michael's mere presence sparks fairy lights all over her body. He regards her with amusement as she's tossed both and forth on the bed, hips tipped to her husband's insane pummelling. "You look fucking gorgeous. I love your hair." He kisses her bottom. "You enjoying that?"

She shrugs. But actually, she is enjoying herself now. Seeing herself fucked through his dreamy eyes seems to turn the volume up between her legs. Her husband's plunges feel great in the presence of this man. That's not fucked-up at all. Then Michael strokes her back, kisses her neck and whispers into her ear. "I need to eat you."

She casts a lascivious glance toward his hidden lap as if to say, "How much do you need it?"

Of course he reads her mind. He smiles and stands up, presenting his thick erection. That her husband can't see it is both hilarious and darkly, shamefully horny. But most horny of all is that Michael is so hard just from looking at her. From wanting--no he said needing--to eat her. Heat blooms in her hips. She screws shut her eyes and whimpers. "Oh God."

Her husband grunts and slams quicker.

Her orgasm swells, balls, and swells again. When she opens her eyes Michael's lying beside her top-to-tail, and sliding his head under her, between her legs. She cocks a leg to give him more room--John even holds it up for her. Well, for Michael, so her dream man can settle under her cunt. Michael's so single-mindedly focussed on her, he seems unbothered by her husband's testicles swinging through his forehead. They're ghosts to each other. In almost every way, these men are from different worlds.

Not Pearl though. A sexless relationship has caught her between worlds. Or rather the best of both. As if to prove it, Michael presses his mouth to her, and the slippiest, most exquisite warmth envelops her clit. Instantly her hubby's brutal thrusts become the good kind, the loving kind that turns her inside out. And fuck what a delicious sensation it is being thoroughly seen to, both inside and out. Her joints unhook, her muscles jellify, her skin melts. Michael moans into her cunt. Beside her, his cock bucks and pre-cum drips onto his belly, but he ignores it, utterly attentive to her. She leans over his hips and laps along his length. Fuck, he's rigid against her tongue. No, she can't help herself. Wrong or not, she'll suck Michael off while her husband fucks her. Just the thought sends a jolt down her spine, from dirty mind to clamouring cunt, raising a shivery sigh. She opens her mouth to Michael's taut bulb. This was going to be an epic--

"Fuck!" Her husband yanks out of her. "Sorry!"

Fuck it. She'd forgotten she'd promised to finish him in her mouth--an earlier attempt to get him to cum quicker. He leaps beside her head and presents his varnished cock. "Now! Now!"

But Michael's already nestled on her tongue and she's sucking him and she's momentarily confused. Too late. Her husband's hot cum splatters her cheek and lips. She quickly takes him in and sucks him too. Two penises become one lovely organ against her palette, jetting her mouth full of silky heat but also clenched and quivering as Michael holds back.

Yes, her husband's a selfish lover, but she doesn't care. She loves it. Any pleasure will do. She loves that he's swearing and cackling and enjoying her mouth as she draws on him. She's doing this, nobody else. She's overwhelming him, and it oddly makes her love him more. But mostly she loves it now, in this perfect superimposed--ultra-imposed!--moment, because her dream man is still underneath her, eating her with all the relish she shows her husband.

A deep moan pours right from her belly. She slides her knees wide, squirms, and judders into ecstasy, swallowing her husband's cum, cumming on her lover's tongue.

PEARL AND MICHAEL'S UNIVERSE

While Pearl sinks into a blissful, post orgasmic sleep, Michael waits for her in their dream house--a kind of oceanside modernist cottage, all glass and oak and sculptural concrete. He's preparing to hang a huge canvas. He's not wearing a shirt of course, and as Pearl strolls into the dream she's barefoot and pantieless in a loose, white dress. It seems they dress each other in this strange, liminal world.

"Thanks." Pearl pats his hard ass. "I needed that."

He winks and pounds a picture hook into the concrete with one wham of his hammer.

"Hmm." Pearl traces a lump in the front of his jeans, swelling and hardening it. "I owe you one." She kisses his pec, then his abs, and settles on her knees.

Michael tilts her face to his and kisses her. "Could you help me out later too? Jen is a bit frisky today. She's sent the kids to her mums and said I can do her if I need to."

"Lucky boy. Don't worry. I'll happily sort you out if your wife doesn't." Pearl plays with the animal cavorting in his jeans. "Has Jen ever sucked you off?"

He laughs dryly. "She kissed my cock while I wanked once. It was... nice."

"But?"

"But she made me cum into a Kleenex."

They laugh. And how great that was, that they could laugh about these things now. It was hard to believe that only a few months ago they were both weeping into their pillows. Rejected, frustrated, unloved, and with zero self-esteem, they'd begged the universe for help. And the universe really stepped up this time. Why, out of all the desperate souls in love with spouses uninterested in sex, were Michael and Pearl chosen to be together in dreams? They'd clearly won some cosmic sexual lottery.

Pearl drags Michael's waistband down to kiss the dip between his hip and abs. "You know, my husband planned our sex tonight as well. You think that's our doing, somehow? Are we training them to be better lovers?"

Michael lines up another nail. "Maybe. Jen has been demonstrative lately too. She said I was behaving with uncharacteristic maturity around sex recently, not chasing her or squeezing her bum all the time. She even joked that I must be having an affair."

"That's right, she thinks sex is immature doesn't she?"

They snigger. But the word "affair" still flaps around the room like a trapped pigeon.

Michael strokes her hair. "Is it wrong that I found it sexy tonight, watching your husband fuck you?"

"Very." Pearl grips his bum and presses her face to his hard lump. "But I know what you mean. It was fucking hot. Wrong, but hot."

He flexes against her soft cheek. "Has he ever gone down on you?"

Pearl scoffs. "When I asked him to lick me tonight, he reminded me that he wasn't into femdom."

"Ugh." Michael drives another nail into the wall.

Pearl decides it feels like Michael has a sun-baked scaffold pole between his legs. She wants it between hers. "Your wife still likes your tongue, though I bet. Even though she won't suck you."

"Of course. Once a quarter. Lick and a shag." He hangs a Klimt-style painting, a portrait of them both, all gold leaf and radiant oils, enjoying a sixty-nine. "What do you think?"

"Gorgeous." Of course it is. Michael and Pearl share the same taste in everything. She sighs, hops into the sunken seating area and flops onto the leather sofa. She pours two glasses of wine from a sudden bottle. "We need this. Us. Or we'd go nuts." She drains her glass, pours herself another, belching lightly. "Since we've been seeing each other I've got all my confidence back. I get so much done now. I feel... worthy again. Know what I mean?"

He joins her, sitting in the crook of the seating to face her. "Totally. I'm the same, I don't feel pointless anymore. Or a victim."

"To self-esteem!" Pearl raises her glass, they clink and glug, gazing at the luminous couple on the wall, spinning in golden space, lost in each other. Michael's pent up cock has got Pearl needing to sixty-nine. Now. Michael thinks the same, and tries not to let the tremble in his fingers show. He needs to burst on his tongue Pearl again and has needed to cum since he saw--felt--her suck off her husband. Pearl knows how much he wants her, and it's making her tremble with horn too. Round and round, the need to receive and the need to give.

"John's a lucky man," Michael says into the trembling silence. "Being sucked like that after fucking. I've never had that."

Pearl pats his knee and winks. He assumes this means she'll treat him sometime, and his assumption is right, and neither can think of a sexier thing than that indecent mutual understanding.

He clears his throat. "Does he do that to you often though? I mean he didn't even wait for you to cum, just leapt up and burst over your mouth."

Pearl smirks and her ears ignite. It's both embarrassing and sexy that he saw them do that. Her blush seems to melt him and he cups her soft cheek in a cool, leathery hand. He smells deliciously of soap and wood. She still has the bleachy taste of her husband on her tongue and wants to taste Michael. Again. The explicit, unfaithful truth stings her. She takes a big sip of wine and shrugs. "I love making him happy. What can I say? I'm a feeder."

Michael nods. "We're both feeders." He can still taste her slick, salty-sweet musk, and wants more. He snorts. "Feeders who feed by eating."

His gaze wanders unabashed over her lightly covered body. Her nipples stiffen and her belly flips. "You're hungry again."

He smiles apologetically and even that's horny; that he feels sorry for desiring her so much. That's the thing with dream lovers, when you find your ultimate fantasy, and find that you're also their ultimate, you can't ever get enough. Also when you share an uninhibited love of each other's most intimate parts and needs, you can relax in a way you rarely can with anyone else. They are as comfortable with each other's bodies as with her own. This is how Pearl knows that, when she plonks a bare foot just then on Michael's lap, that he won't grimace like her husband does. He beams like she's given him a kitten.

"So cute!" he rumbles, and strokes her instep and toes.

Pearl bites the inside of her cheek. Her clit thrums. Was that from her body in the real world, humming after its orgasm, or because of these dream thumbs expertly probing all her zones?

For his part, Michael is simply delighting in the boneless squishiness of Pearl's foot, relishing every sigh he squeezes from her.

She lolls into the sofa. "Is this OK, Michael? I mean, morally?"

"I don't know," he says to her impossible little toe. "Sometimes it feels like an affair."

"It does, doesn't it? But how can it be?"

"It's just a shared, lucid dream."

"Exactly."

They know this for a fact. Both had been so frustrated by their sexless marriages they'd indulged in the quackery of "manifesting"--where one can supposedly use a "law of attraction" to dream one's heart's desire into being. They carefully detailed their ideal imaginary lover, not to meet in flesh--neither wanted to end their marriages--but just to travel to and enjoy in a guilt free dream space of their own. It took less than a month before they started popping up in each other's blinks. Vivid, unexpected flashes in bed or in the shower: doting on each other's nakedness, cheekily revealing themselves, begging for each other's orgasms. These were more than fantasies too, more like memories of events that hadn't happened yet. Then one morning they shared the same dream of visiting a beautiful house by the sea. Pearl found Michael in bed, naked and hard, and gave him a very rude awakening indeed.

Fearing psychosis, they independently asked their brainiac spouses if manifesting really worked. John and Jen whittered something about multiversal physics and Jung's theory of the collective unconscious. They both gave the same explanation, so it was probably true, but Pearl and Michael took it as a fuck off anyway.

Michael's massage roams from Pearl's foot to her ankle. She shifts in her seat, her thigh tops illicitly slippy. "Why do we feel so guilty then?"

He growls. Agreeing or just enjoying her she can't tell. Neither can he. His cock flexes against her curling toes.

"Because we love our spouses I guess," he says.

She raises a knee to slip her skirt up. She can't wait for him to discover she's not wearing knickers. "Do you love me?"

He peers at her, then smiles. "Honestly? I don't know what the word for this is. But it's not love. Sorry."

"Oh fuck off with your sorry. You know I feel the same as you. Lust then?"

He strokes up her calf and the back of her knee and marvels at her dimples for kneecaps. There isn't a knobbly bone in her body. "More than lust, but not love..." He searches her eyes for answers and is momentarily lost in her startling paleness of her irises, the clear black circles about them. "You know that feeling when you're about to cum on your own, and your body just wants, just needs... itself? I feel like that about you, that unstoppable, intimate... grrr." He grabs his cock and balls.

"Are you saying you love me... like you love your cock? You cock-love me?"

He booms a laugh. Pearl pulls her feet to her bum, waves her knees. She wants to shout, "Look up my skirt you sexy fuck!"

Michael knows where she wants him to look, but he leans between her knees to kiss the big, soft lips on her face instead. It might not be love but their kisses still burst little fireworks in their skulls. He wanders off her lips, to her neck, to exactly the right spot under her ear.

"Well, I cunt-love you back, so there," she says.

"And I... love... your... cunt," he kisses back.

Pearl shivers and he pulls away and -- finally! -- he lifts her skirt.

Pearl sags open in the most un-ladylike way imaginable, in a way she'd never do for anyone except maybe the mirror on a bored Saturday afternoon. Michael gasps. He bites his knuckle, eyes nailed between her thighs, to the slow petaling of her folds. He takes in the arousal treacling between her bum cheeks and she loves him looking. His lips part, and he goes suddenly serious, ferocious even. He gulps, and drops his head.

She catches him. "Nope. My turn, remember?"

His eyebrows plead. "Now?"

She clicks at his jeans, her head spinning, a little drunk on the fact that she can so rely on his love of devouring her that she can even tease herself, tease them both, with it. He kneels upright between her feet, and she scrabbles at his jeans. She yanks them down with his underwear, relishing the sprung whap of his great club against her cheek. She nuzzles underneath, to pluck a pillowy kiss to his hot, hard head. Her mouth waters. It takes all her strength to not gobble him up.

Michael breathes feverishly. His cock looks veiny and brutish against Pearl's soft, flawless features. She takes him lightly in both hands, and swings up a cheeky, wide-eyed gaze. "Got your Kleenex ready?"