How Badly We Want You

(This is a story about a sapphic woman who is invited to have sex with her beautiful best friend, on the condition that her best friend's husband can watch. Contains graphic f/f sexual descriptions, including cunnilingus, fisting, and use of a strap-on. Also contains themes of voyeurism, exhibitionism, and cuckolding. There's a bit of bondage toward the end. Emotions run high, but all participants in the sex acts depicted are enthusiastically consenting and, of course, over 18.)

***

We'd all had a few drinks when the subject first came up.

Kendra might have had one or two more than Wes or me.

"Top celebrity crush this month," Wes prompted us. "I'll go first. Charlize Theron. We rewatched Atomic Blonde last week, and I still can't get her out of my head."

"Good one," I said. "I guess I'd have to say... wait, no. Can I do a top five this time? Or like, a top man and a top woman, like at the Oscars? Only it'd have to be top man, top woman, and top other...."

By this point, Wes was chuckling at me. "You know no one's going to audit you if you accidentally say your second favorite crush, right? Just say a name. Whoever comes to mind."

"But, see, like fifty names have already come to mind," I explained, "and now I have to sort them."

"You want to stall for her?" Wes asked Kendra, rubbing her neck affectionately with one hand.

Kendra always had a new name at the tip of her tongue whenever her husband felt like instigating this game, and she never seemed to share my need to give caveats for accuracy.

She grinned and wobbled a little on her barstool.

"Brooke," she said, leaning forward to look past Wes at me.

"Brooke... Shields?" I asked, following a defensive twitch in my stomach, and guessing the first other Brooke I could think of.

"Nope, Brooke Alamilla!" Kendra said my full name. "And yes, you officially count as a celebrity crush, ever since you put out that cooking podcast. You have a sexy as hell voice, by the way. Smoky."

"...Thanks," I said, feeling my face heat up. "It's... it's all in the editing."

"Nah, it's even better in person," said Kendra. "In a world where everyone was cool with it, I would so have a threesome with you two."

I looked to Wes, trying to gauge how this turn in the conversation was sitting with him, how severe the necessary damage control might be.

Wes was smiling self-consciously, maybe squeezing the back of Kendra's neck a little harder, but not looking upset. He looked more embarrassed than anything, but for whom, I wasn't sure.

I laughed noncommittally.

Kendra and I had been best friends since long before Wes was in the picture. And of course I'd had a few stabs of feeling toward her over the years that weren't strictly friendship -- every single person who'd ever met Kendra, and wasn't either related to her or completely immune to the attractiveness of women, had crushed on her at one point or another.

She had that manic pixie dream girl thing about her. She was an expert at finding harmless things you weren't supposed to do, and doing them. A side effect of growing up with hyper-conformist Chinese parents, she always liked to joke. She wore corsets and peasant skirts with sneakers and sunglasses. She slipped encouraging notes into people's pockets when they weren't paying attention. She stole the extra armrests off of anti-homeless benches. She had once baked me a cake flavored with wild sage she'd gathered herself, which I'd never even known you could cook with, let alone put in a dessert. It was weirdly but genuinely delicious.

She exuded the kind of interest in being alive that most people had only felt a handful of times during their adulthood, and sometimes it felt like, just by being near her, you might be able to learn the secrets of happiness.

And it didn't hurt that she'd been a competitive acrobat in college and still had the body for it, along with some exceptionally nice, shiny hair.

But I wasn't the kind of person to assume that a flutter of attraction had to be either a sign of destiny or a problem.

I felt those flutters all the time, for a lot of people.

Kendra and Wes were married and in love, and I was her friend, now their friend. We were still close when so many other old friends would have drifted apart. And there was nothing wrong or tragic or untenable about any of that.

I wasn't someone who was going to make a move on someone else's partner.

I just wasn't.

So, I let the moment pass, kept my "smoky" voice to myself as much as I could get away with while I finished my last drink, and muttered something about an early morning.

#

Three weeks later, Kendra called me with an extra ticket to an edible art show.

I said yes, of course. At least eight out of ten of the most interesting days of my life had involved going to something Kendra had picked out that would never have been on my radar otherwise.

I hugged both her and Wes hello as normal, and we spent a pleasant morning oohing and aahing over marzipan pigs, cake sculptures, and tofu castles surrounded by broccoli forests. The drunk talk of our last hangout seemed behind us and gone.

But after we'd made a full circuit of the show floor, when we stopped at a bench to rest and eat some unsettlingly lifelike gingerbread people, the subject returned, soberly, this time.

"So, uh," Wes started, obviously excited. "There was something we were hoping to get a chance to talk to you about...."

He bumped his shoulder playfully against Kendra's, and she bumped him back, wrapped up together in the thrill of their shared secret.

"Yeah, uh, we've been doing some thinking," said Kendra. "You know how I never really got the chance to... to physically explore my sapphic side? Marrying young, coming out late, and all that."

"Right..." I said.

"Well, I fantasize about it a lot," she said, scratching at the engraved muscle definition on her cookie. "And it turns out, Wes, well...."

"It turns out I'm not totally turned off by the idea of an extra woman in our bedroom," Wes admitted, in an almost shameless tone. Like, ninety-eight percent shameless, two percent shame. "Sue me, I'm a man of basic fantasies."

"So, we were thinking," Kendra went on, "I mean, I'm bi, and you're bi. And I think you're really hot, and I know you think I'm hot, even if I was too oblivious to catch your signals back when I was single. And we're all good and close and comfortable with each other, so...."

"It didn't seem like rocket science to at least ask you," Wes finished. "You don't have to answer right away. But if you'd maybe want to think about it, or talk about it...."

I took an extra big bite of my cookie's arm, and worked my way slowly through swallowing little bits of spicy, buttery crispness.

In spite of Wes's assurances, I felt an immense pressure to say something right away.

When my mouth was clear again, I started with, "Being bi doesn't mean I'm attracted to every single person."

"Right, just most of them," Wes joked, then realized I was being serious, and said, "Sorry. Go on."

"And you, Wes, you're..." I braced myself for the unspeakable horror of hurt feelings. "You're great, and obviously you're handsome, but in, like, a guy who probably fixes his own car kind of way, which... is one of the many types I'm not really into."

My list of male crushes was long but narrow. They were always the soft, delicate types without a macho bone in their bodies.

Wes didn't give predatory macho vibes or anything, but he didn't belong in the same sentence with "delicate." In the most innocent way, he was exactly what would come to mind if someone told me to "picture a straight guy."

"I can't even change my own tires," Wes laughed.

"I know," I said. "It's still your vibe."

"All right, all right, I get you, no problem," he said, scooting a little farther away down the bench, holding Kendra's hand with his arm extended.

He probably thought he was doing a world-class job of buffing out the scratches on his pride.

Kendra stayed where she was between us.

"We thought that might be a possibility," she said. "And we completely respect it. In that case, we just wanted to mention one more thing, and then we'll shut up. We...."

She glanced at Wes, who took over.

"Not every scenario we talked about involves me and you doing anything with each other," he said. "I'd be incredibly stoked just to watch the two of you go at it, and then maybe tag in for a turn with Kendra after you're finished. But until then, I'll be so quiet, you won't even believe I'm there."

Kendra put her other hand on mine.

"What do you say?" she asked, ever so gently. "Do you want to give me my first real sapphic experience?"

She was searching my face.

I didn't need to search hers. It was clear at a glance what she wanted.

And I never could keep from rooting for Kendra to get what she wanted.

I brushed her hair behind her ear and leaned in.

Kissing Kendra was just the way I'd always imagined it would be. She threw herself into it, somehow moving her lips while keeping them as soft all the way through as they were at rest.

The flutters of desire for her, which I'd always let flutter on by, swarmed back into my chest and spread through me, covering everything in their path, finding a sudden abundance of footholds to perch on.

At some point in there, I said yes.

At a slightly later point, Wes started whooping.

At a slightly later point than that, he got up to stand between us and a sudden traffic jam of onlookers, and suggested we might want to get a move on.

#

We all went back to Kendra and Wes's apartment, where Kendra made coffee, and we sat around the table for a while, trying to think of practical preliminary questions, asking each other if we wanted to get some dinner or watch a movie first, and generally playing coy.

There was no way any of us were actually going to be able to focus on anything else with this anticipation hanging over us.

So, before we'd even drunk half of the coffee Kendra had made, we proceeded to the bedroom, where Wes scooped some clothes off of a chair for himself and preemptively unzipped his pants.

He shushed his zipper theatrically, and then mimed zipping up his lips.

Kendra and I climbed onto the bed, kneeling opposite each other.

"So..." I said. "How did you see this going?"

"Well, I was kind of hoping you'd want to show me the ropes," said Kendra. "You know, walk me through everything and be like, this works exactly the same as with a guy, and this doesn't, and this one I've never seen before, because you're freak, Kendra, what is this rope even doing here?" she chuckled nervously to herself. "But if I had to improvise a beginning, I'd say... we take our clothes off?"

"Yeah," I laughed with her, reaching for the front of her corset. "We could start with that."

The corset was a steampunk design, held together by huge metal hooks that released with an easy turn of a knob. She had no bra underneath, so as soon as it fell away, I could see her nipples stretching the cotton fabric of her tie-dye tank top.

I lifted the tank top up over her head, and then slowly brought my hands up to cup both of her breasts.

There was a brief flicker of a vocalization from Wes's chair. It sounded like the beginning of a "Woo!" that was quickly stifled and turned into a cough.

Kendra put a hand to my cheek, stopping me before I could turn my head, and I refocused.

I was in bed with Kendra, and regardless of the circumstances, there was really no excuse for my attention to be anywhere else.

I kissed each of her nipples in turn and then nuzzled my face between her breasts.

She took her turn helping me out of my flannel shirt, my own tank top, and my bra, so that she could trail some of those mystically soft-yet-forceful kisses of hers over my breasts, too.

Every hair on my body stood on end during the few seconds of waiting, between when she was done with the first breast and moved on to the second.

We wriggled our way through the less graceful lower half of the undressing phase, and I spread my legs apart and motioned for her to sit between them, with her back against me.

She followed along, spreading her more flexible legs even wider, draping them over the tops of mine.

"Don't be afraid to direct me," I told her, reaching down brush my fingers lightly over her splayed pussy.

"Mmm," she sighed. "Could we...?"

"Could we what?"

"Could we actually move, like, forty degrees that way?" She made a rotation motion with her hands. "Better observation angle."

"Oh... right."

I shuffled us around, displaying her a little more directly for Wes.

He gave us a grateful wave with his left hand, the one that wasn't down his unzipped pants.

I kept my eyes down, kissing Kendra's neck, and gave her pussy another stroke. Satisfied with the staging, she seemed able to relax into me a little better.

I stroked her again, and again, brushing a little harder and more directly over her clit each time.

"Right there!" she shouted, just as I brushed it the fourth time, like it was an invisible itch that no one else could detect.

"Oh, right here?" I teased, shifting to concentrate directly on her clit with two fingers. "You're ready for it right here?"

"Yes!" she gasped, reaching back to grasp me by the hair. "Fuck, yes, just like that. Show him how it's done!"

Wes took in a half-jokingly scandalized gulp of air.

I'll admit, that definitely wasn't my worst moment of being reminded that he was still in the room.

I went on touching her, direct and steady, enjoying the rapturously restless way she shifted around in my arms, and stretched her legs even farther over the tops of mine.

"Oh my god," she murmured. "Oh my god, you've got me so fucking ready!"

"Still just 'ready'?" I laughed. "You say that like this isn't the main event."

"Oh. Huh," said Kendra. "Fuck, was that homophobic of me? I'm sorry, I--"

"Shh," I said. "Just enjoy."

"I just meant," Kendra sighed, definitely at least partly following my instructions. "I meant I feel like I could take..." she silently inventoried my anatomy, "I could take your whole hand right now, and it wouldn't even hurt."

"Not hurting doesn't have to be a challenge," I said, brushing the fingers of my free hand over her breasts with a feather light touch. "Nothing hurts here, unless you want it to. Nothing's hard unless you want it to be."

"Okay," she said. "That... that does sound nice."

Her voice was mostly sincere.

Like, ninety-eight percent sincere, two percent disappointed.

I brought my other hand down to her pussy, and gathered the tips of all my fingers together at her opening, letting the middle one poke just a fraction of an inch inside.

"Do you want a challenge?" I asked her.

"Yes, please!"

Still working her clit with my right hand, I pressed my left middle finger all the way into her.

Kendra's shallow little breaths hardly changed rhythm.

I pulled back out and tried again with my first two fingers.

When that produced the same lack of effect, I took it as confirmation, and pulled back to line up all five fingertips again.

Kendra lifted her hips upward and moaned happily as I inched and stretched my way in, moving slowly from the narrow meeting of fingertips up to the full thickness of my knuckles.

"Is that it?" she asked.

"You want more?" I asked.

"I can take a little bit more."

"Do you want more?"

"...Yes."

I opened my hand inside her, stretching outward in all directions.

Kendra shrieked with pleasure. "Oh god, there are so many moving parts! That's awesome!"

"You think that's awesome?" I laughed. "Check this out."

I fluttered all my fingers forward against her G-region in a wave.

"Oh," Kendra yelped. "Oh god, oh fuck..."

The words stopped, leaving only building moans. I kept up the flutter going, an unending, cycling tickle, one finger picking up before another one had quite left off.

With my other hand, I kept on circling her clit at that same steady pace. It was a bit like rubbing my stomach and patting my head, but I seemed to be doing okay.

More than okay.

Wes was leaning forward at the edge of his chair, hand jerking wetly back and forth, eyes wide and fixed with tense awe when I happened to glance his way.

Kendra's moans quickened and culminated in that one telling cry, and she twisted around in my arms, kissing and biting at my bare shoulder, like she was suddenly starving for some new form of contact.

I narrowed my hand as much as possible to slide it out, and wrapped my arms all the way around her.

"Can I," she panted for breath, bringing her legs together, "can I give you one now?"

"Uh, I would a hundred percent love that," I said.

She turned around to face me and nudged me onto my back, making sure to turn me enough that I ended up lying sideways across the bed.

"No challenges, though, please," I specified quickly.

"No worries," she said. "All ease and softness for you. I've got it."

She kissed me once on the lips and then worked her way down my body, weaving back and forth across my breasts again, giving a little tongue to my navel along the way.

"I've always wanted to try this," she said, close enough for her breath to ruffle my pubic hair, before kissing my clit.

Ordinarily, I would have preferred some more leadup before this much direct contact, but the nerve-wracking newness of being with Kendra like this had me pretty excited, and her kisses were never too rough, not for any stage of things.

Even when she brought out her tongue and started swirling it around in a methodical circle, the pressure was only about half of what I would have given myself when I really got going.

It was like a teasing warmup dance and a full eating-out all blended into one consistent, unrelenting sensation. My clit seemed to want to harden beyond even its usual capacities, just to press itself deeper her soft tongue.

I lost myself for a while to that balance, that knife's edge right between enough and too little, my whole body resonating under Kendra like a glass when someone sings the perfect note.

The result was shattering.

The first few seconds of the orgasm were fine, good, great, but from there it only escalated, stretching onward for what felt like fifty times its natural duration, each contraction topping the one before it, trying to meet that softness with strength.

Through it all, Kendra kept on swirling her tongue with unwavering endurance, until I was gasping harder for breath than if I'd just run a mile.

Eventually, I had to grab her by the hair and pull her away, not because I was done and oversensitive, but because I just couldn't take any more.

"Good?" she asked, sitting up and grinning with pride, already fully aware of the answer.

I nodded.

"I just tried to do it the way I'd want it," she said.

"We... have a lot in common that way," I somehow found enough air to say.

I put my hand on her leg, wanting to pull her against me to cuddle, but only finding the strength and purchase to clumsily stroke her kneecap.

"Tag in!" Wes cheered, dropping his pants the rest of the way and jumping over the footboard, with a jarring amount of energy for my blissed-out state.

I'd genuinely come close to forgetting him, for a moment.

He held up a hand -- thankfully his left -- to high-five me.

I smacked clumsily at it and then used it to drag myself out of his place in the bed.

"Miss me?" he asked, as he slipped immediately inside of Kendra with a wet-on-wet sound.

"Hmm, maybe," said Kendra. "But maybe you should remind me what I'm missing, just to be sure."