Cure for a Sex-Starved Marriage

Cure for a Sex-Starved Marriage

SATURDAY

"Well this vacation is going to suck," I whispered to myself.

It was Saturday evening and I was sitting alone at a table in the Sandcastle Bistro on Hibiscus Key. My husband Drake had booked seven nights at the adjacent Sunflower Inn, a collection of small, Spanish Colonial style cottages. The getaway coincided with my 47th birthday coming up on Wednesday, and our 25th wedding anniversary on Friday. On Saturday we were going to drive home to Gainesville.

But at the last minute, Drake, a software engineer, ended up flying to Japan to handle a crisis for his biggest client. He wouldn't be able to join me for at least the first four or five days, and maybe not at all. Since the deposits were non-refundable, he had insisted I go without him. "Honey, it'll be better than sitting around at home by yourself, moping." So there I was, sitting solo in a restaurant a couple hundred miles from home, moping.

The trouble was, there really wasn't going to be much to do on Hibiscus Key, except stroll the beach, go for a swim, and read my Kindle. The little island was a quiet, off-the-tourism-path destination, with a couple dozen modest year-round homes, a few extravagant seaside mansions that were mostly vacant except in winter, and some fish camps; what the guide books called "Old Florida." The whole point in coming here was that it was where Drake and I had spent our honeymoon, a quarter-century ago, when we were in grad school and couldn't afford a romantic trip to, say, Paris. Who needs Paris when you're both 22 and in love? We fucked like minks all week long and hardly left our cottage. When we got back to university our friends joked that we hadn't even gotten a suntan. Now I'd be staying in the same charming little cottage as then---stucco walls with Moorish arches, a clay tile roof, and a balcony with decorative ironwork---but no husband. Must be how it feels to be a widow, I thought.

Our plan for this vacation had been to "return to the scene of the crime" to reignite our sex life, because over the years since our lust-enflamed honeymoon, the spark below the belt had grown dimmer. Our son and daughter were now away at college, so the joys and agonies of raising two brilliant, headstrong teen-agers---one with a full-ride scholarship for swimming, the other with the same for mathematics---could no longer be used as an excuse for why Drake and I spent most evenings with our heads buried in a book or binging Netflix, rather than pouncing on each other the way we once did whenever we could steal a moment of privacy.

We both acknowledged the staleness in our marriage and had talked about it enough over the past several years that the dialog had worn itself to silence. But the shift to more sucking and fucking rather than just talking never seemed to happen. We felt grateful for each other---true best friends---but had settled into the daily rapport of highly compatible housemates rather than lovers.

A few weeks ago, we agreed to take action, rather than going to a marriage counselor to do more talking. For erotic inspiration we would stay in the Spanish cottage where we had fucked so much that I had to apply ice-compresses to my swollen pussy. In preparation for our escapade I had gotten my long dark hair cut short in a radically new style---which was probably way too "young" for me, but which I was falling in love with---bought new lingerie, new high heels, and had packed my half-dozen sex toys---including, yes, a brand new one: Surprise, honey!

Now I was wearing one of those seductive outfits: a simple and elegant black mini-dress with a plunging neckline and a single string of faux pearls. My black patent leather shoes had 4-inch heels. Underneath my slinky evening dress I was braless and wearing black thigh-high stockings and a black lacy thong. But now the only payoff I was getting from my racy outfit was a cord of cotton riding up my butt crack, and the attention of other patrons in the restaurant.

They say if men check you out, you're probably hot; but if women check you out, you're definitely hot. I noticed the ladies giving me the once-over and twice-over, so I guess I should feel good about that. But it doesn't break my mood.

Because now the next seven long days were going to be the same old same old as at home, only without my friendly housemate cuddling with me on the couch, maybe translating for me some interesting article in Physics Today magazine.

Well, I do love the beach, I thought. Maybe I would enjoy the sea and sand for three or four days and then just head home early, forfeited money be damned.

"Do you also hate dining alone?"

I looked up into the dazzling smile of a man so handsome I made a tiny gasp.

"I was sitting over there," he said, pointing to a corner table, "and I noticed you the moment you walked in. Then I saw you had no dinner date, and also that you looked rather lonesome. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to muster the courage to ask if I could join you." He reached out his hand. "Good evening. I'm Malek."

A heartbeat later, I recalled my own name and how to shake hands. "Hi. I'm Lana."

I remembered something I'd once read in an interview with Richard Burton, how when he first met Elizabeth Taylor sunbathing by a pool, she was so beautiful that he burst out laughing. I felt that kind of bodily shock---electrified by his beauty. His eyes were emerald in a face of rich, dark caramel. His hair was black wool and close-cut.

He gestured at the empty chairs at my table and asked again, "May I?"

"Oh," I said, collecting my wits. "Oh, yes, of course! Please do join me!"

He sat in a chair next to mine, rather than across the table. I hadn't expected that. He was wearing pale green chino slacks and a darker green cotton polo shirt, colors that accentuated his eyes, which never looked away from mine. "Have you already ordered?" he asked.

Have I? I stole my eyes away to glance down at the menu. "Uh, no. No, I don't think so." I hadn't felt this flustered since I was in high school and my year-long crush, Drake Lawrence---the most popular boy in school---asked me to the senior prom.

"Would you care for some wine?" he said. "Should I order us a bottle?"

I dumbly nodded yes. Speak, Lana. "Yes. Please do. A bottle."

"What would you like?" He smiled. "You look like a pinot grigio gal to me."

"Ha. That's my favorite wine!"

"Perfect." He signalled the sommelier and in a few minutes we had a bottle of excellent wine at our table. We'd already begun our first glass when the waiter arrived, and we had to send him away while we studied our menus for the first time.

I can't remember what I ate. Seafood, I think. It probably was excellent; the bistro was highly rated and the steep prices reflected its reputation. But the whole while, I was feasting on gemlike eyes set in a gorgeous masculine face. Those angular cheekbones and jawline, those full lips! His strikingly large nose perfectly fit his large eyes and all his other features; a smaller nose would have been overwhelmed. Harmoniously composed structures---the word "symphony" came to mind; music made flesh.

Malek seemed content to sit quietly and gaze at me, which I could only handle for half a minute, so I opened a conversation.

"Tell me about yourself, Malek."

"I'm a professional actor."

"Oh." That was unexpected. It fit with the movie-star good looks.

"I direct an acting troupe called The Starving Artists. We do a bit of Shakespeare---short excerpts of his plays---also ad lib musicals, comedy and drama, dinner theater, mystery theater, that kind of thing. And customized shows for various private clients."

I set down my wine glass and he refilled it. "Customized shows?"

He nodded. "Let's say you're throwing a birthday party for someone, say your 70-year-old dad, and you hire us to create a play celebrating his life. We collect information from you about your father through interviews, photos, videos, and so forth. Then we perform the story of his life, according to what the client wants to see. Sometimes it's all comedy---like a celebrity roast---and we're reenacting funny and embarrassing and crazy scenes. Others want to see the full theater of life, its most dramatic highs and lows: births and deaths and big changes."

Someone in the kitchen dropped a dish and it shattered loudly and I startled and glanced in that direction. Malek was calm as a mountain and he didn't take his eyes off me. If they were lamps, I'd be bathed in gem light. Basking is the word: I was basking in his attention.

"That's just one type of customized show we do," he said. "We also get hired by therapists to work with men returning from war zones with PTSD. Probably about a quarter of our gigs. We reenact the trauma to aid in healing."

"My god. So you reenact tragic scenes from some fucking war." Language! I was getting a bit tipsy.

He took a sip of his wine and his expression turned sad. "I can't tell you how many times I've held a buddy in my arms as he bled out in a rice paddy, or in some forgotten desert town in the Mideast. So, yeah. Tragedy."

"That's fascinating," I said, and meant it. Your eyes are fascinating, your full lips are fascinating and this theatrical stuff you do for a living is fascinating.

He emptied the wine bottle into my glass and signalled the sommelier for a second bottle. I was drinking a bit faster than him, maybe because I was nervous. Guess you better slow your Mustang down, I thought, because I was definitely starting to feel a buzz.

I found out he was 28. I know I didn't ask him directly, but figured it out from something he said. My son Derek is 24. I was coming up on my 47th birthday and this 28-year-old Adonis---this Black Orpheus---was flirting with me.

Or was I just imagining it? Okay, his warm thigh was now resting very lightly against mine under the table. That's not my imagination, I told myself. Then when he refilled my wine---I think it was my fourth glass and I said, "Last one"---his fingers grazed the inside of my wrist. That was a maneuver, I thought, right? My pussy wasn't so analytical; it simply got wet. I may be "middle-aged"---if I live to be 92---but I was responding to the man like a horny teen-ager.

I told him about my early career as a speech therapist, how I'd gone back to school at 35 to get my Ph.D. in linguistics and now I taught at UF.

"You're older than 35!" he looked amazed. Yep, a good actor. Anyone who studies my face, as he seems to be enjoying doing, will know I'm no longer in my 30s. My body---now that's a different story. I'm athletic---always have been---and my toned body can trick people into thinking I'm much younger.

"I'll be 47 on Wednesday."

"No way." He shook his head. "I don't believe you!"

"Thanks for the compliment." I think I glowed with pleasure. "It's in the genes. My mom was the same way; that's who I get it from. When she was 35, she would routinely get carded---same here---and when she turned 45, people thought she was 30. But here's the thing: it doesn't last. All of a sudden, her age caught up to her and at 50 she looked every minute of 50 years old. I know that'll happen to me, but maybe it'll take a bit longer, because I'm an exercise freak."

"Well, it shows." He gazed right at my cleavage as he said it, the first time his eyes had strayed from mine. "You're so...fit!" I think I sat up a bit straighter and pushed my breasts out; you know: subtle.

"That's from swimming five days a week, since I was ten," I said. "My daughter, Sara, by the way, is on a path to the Olympics for breaststroke."

Breaststroke. An unintentional word-play, considering that his eyes kept drifting down to my breasts. I imagined he was stroking them, and I projected that he was imagining stroking them, and I felt a little flood of warm wetness between my thighs. "And I also teach yoga twice a week and try to make it to other yoga classes."

"Well, it shows, Lana. Your body is so lovely!" His admiring eyes gave me a slow and overt appraisal, and my internal thermostat warmed a few more degrees. "Okay, he is unmistakingly coming on to me, I thought. He's buttering me up. And sure enough, I felt my pussy getting all buttery soft and slippery. I loved that his gaze was bold and direct, just like when he held my eyes in his. He wasn't behaving like one of my college students, furtively sneaking peeks at my large tits.

If you knew me, you'd know I'm a woman who loves her womanhood and owns it, and I know my breasts are beautiful. They round out---pun intended---my slender waist and curvy ass. It's a balanced package that shouts "WOMAN!" from across a room. And I know I'm simply fortunate. I didn't choose to be voluptuous; nature gave me this gift. So I don't flaunt it, like a braggart, but I recognize it as a fact. And the fact was, Malek's face now wore the open look of desire.

It struck me as so masculine that he didn't hide his need; struck me in my cunt, to be precise. I, on the other hand, did my best to conceal my hunger. Not sure how well that was working, because I could feel my face flush as he drank me in.

We kept on talking long after the waiter cleared our table. Mostly small talk, I don't remember half of it, partly because we had finished off the second bottle of wine and I was pretty drunk. Not blind drunk, but feeling no pain. We found out we had similar tastes in cinema and music, and we both loved word-play of all kinds and were big fans of New York Times crossword puzzles.

"Favorite day of the week?" he said. The puzzles increase in level of difficulty throughout the week, with the easiest on Monday and the most challenging on Saturday.

"Thursdays."

He just smiled.

"Go ahead. You can tell me," I said. "You won't wound my ego."

"Saturdays. I do them in ink."

"Show off!" I said. "But honestly, I'm impressed."

We talked about Shakespeare's use of puns and he gave some examples with snippets of soliloquies. A busboy began hovering nearby, waiting to clear our table.

"Hey," Malek said, suddenly standing up from his chair. "Want to go down to the beach and walk? The moon is only two days from full."

Without waiting for my answer, he came around to my chair and took my hand and raised me to my feet.

Somehow, the five-minute walk to the beach in the warm seabreeze sobered me up considerably and I began to think, What the fuck am I doing? I'm married. I don't know where this flirtation---on both our parts---is leading, but it's sure not going to lead to Malek getting into my pants. I can't do that. I touched my thumb to my wedding ring and said under my breath, "I'm married to Drake."

I deeply inhaled the salty gulf air to further clear my lust-fogged brain. When we reached the sand I could taste the ocean on the gentle onshore wind. I slipped off my high heels, then I reached under the hem of my mini-dress and tugged off my thigh-highs. Malek took off his shoes and rolled up the cuffs of his chino slacks. We looked for a place to hide our shoes, but in the end opted to carry them with us.

Malek behaved as a perfect gentleman. We walked and talked and that's all we did. Well, he did lavish me with frequent compliments. "I love your haircut," he said, and touched my hair. His long fingers grazed my neck and gave me goosebumps. "Looks so pretty, like a raven's wing reflecting the moonlight." Later, he told me that, as an actor, he'd developed an aesthetic for the human voice, and that my voice was "musical." Then, in his own melodious baritone, in a British accent, he quoted William Congreve: "Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast. To soften rocks, or bend the knotted oak."

God! Was this guy over the top! Yet I had to admit, right then I ached to bend the knotted oak and feel it shoved up deep inside me. To soothe my savage breast. My soaked thong felt squishy as I walked.

But Malek never officially came on to me with anything obvious like, "Wanna go back to your place and drink more wine?" or "When we get back, would you like a foot massage?" or "I'm researching for a role as a gynecologist, may I examine your vagina?" Okay, that last one was a stretch, but you get the idea.

It was good conversation and at one point he had me laughing so hard with his impression of Donald Trump grabbing Queen Elizabeth's pussy that I just about peed myself. The problem was, with all that wine I had imbibed I now had to pee pee pee. I looked around in growing desperation and saw a sand dune covered with clumps of tall sea oats.

"I'm going to step over to that dune to use the lady's room," I said. "You're going to turn your face to the moon and count all the craters you can find."

"I promise."

I climbed to the top of the dune. I hiked up my mini-dress, squatted behind a screen of sea oats, pulled my thong to one side and emptied my aching bladder. My thong was slimed with my pussy's lubricant, which smelled like the ocean's sister. Maybe I should bury my thong in the sand and go commando. But I worried my slickness would leak down my thighs, so I left it on. Squish. Squish.

When I rejoined Malek, he was still studying the moon. We continued our stroll. Repeatedly the back of his hand brushed the side of my hip through my dress; it was supposed to be an accident; just the natural swing of his arm. My goosebumps got goosebumps. Then his open palm grazed my ass cheek, and I shivered.

"Cold?" he said.

"A bit," I lied, not wanting him to know how much his touch aroused me. "Let's go back."

When we turned around to head back to the inn, he took hold of my hand. My first reaction was to pull my hand away. But I didn't. His hand felt strong and surprisingly warm. And his heat seemed to travel up my arm and down through the center of my torso to a secret place deep in my belly where something that had lately been asleep stirred awake. The sensuality of holding hands quieted us both and we walked without words for more than a mile.

Moonlight painted a brilliant lane upon the sussurating sea. On the horizon the lights of a shrimp boat twinkled. Seagulls cried and sandpipers darted to and fro in the surf, which we were now wading in, up to our ankles. Wet sand sucked at my toes. A surprise wave splashed up almost to my knees, and Malek's pant legs got wet.

So many things were going through my mind and body. Tingles and emotions and thoughts were keeping pace with my quickened breath and heartbeat. I could faintly smell my pussy: a lust-bouquet. Could he smell me, too?

I finally said softly, "Look, Malek, I was feeling sad that my husband couldn't make it and it made me feel lonely and maybe like a widow, so when you asked to sit at my table it was a delight, and you're such a doll and you've made me feel good, and now I'm enjoying walking with you and...and...I can't shut up."

He laughed and gave my hand a strong squeeze, which only made me wetter. I stopped walking and turned him with my hand to face me.

"What I'm struggling to say is, we can't make love. I'm a married woman. My husband's in Japan, but he'll know. All the way from Tokyo, he'll know it, like radar. And he's a good man, a good person. He's my best friend; I would never hurt him." I felt tears forming. "This was supposed to be our second honeymoon. Seven days at the inn."

He said nothing for a moment. Then his smile reflected the moonlight. "Lana, do you remember being in middle school," he said, "maybe before you'd even had your first kiss? Remember when you had a crush on someone and then, after weeks or maybe months, you found yourself holding hands with them? Just holding hands? Remember how that felt? How holding hands was fully enough?"