Melissa's Regret

I'm back after a break. This is my first attempt in a long time at writing a request, and also writing from a woman's POV. I don't know if she will like it or not. She told me to publish it without her seeing it first.

***

"Wear something that will show the semen stains."

Melissa stared at the message on her phone for the hundredth time. It still gave her a little tingle between her legs every time she read it.

She had never done what she was getting ready to do tonight -- even though she had not committed to anything more indecent than meeting a man for drinks in a hotel lounge during an out-of-town professional conference.

Except that it was a man she had met on the internet, a man who wrote erotica, a man who she had taken the breathtakingly audacious step of sending a note through the site's messaging system. A man with whom she had subsequently traded multiple messages, allowed to probe her for her most secret and illicit fantasies. A man who lived safely several states away, but also happened to live in the city where her specialty's annual conference was being held this year. A man she had agreed to meet in person, despite having shared all of that.

A man who had texted her to wear something that will show the semen stains.

*The* semen stains. She was obsessive about parsing his words. She was sure that the "the" was intentional. He could have just said "show semen stains," and it would have been generic... as in, fabric that *would* show hypothetical semen stains, were there to be any. The insertion of the article gave the sentence a disquieting certainty. There Will Be Semen.

She stood in front of the mirror in her hotel room, naked except for her subtle ivory-colored lace bra and panties, sampling different shades of lipstick. What color befits an adulteress, she wondered? She tried on a dark red shade that she had picked up just for this trip, but it just didn't seem to fit. So she dabbed that off and tried a wine color. It was still more daring than she was comfortable with, but she didn't want to settle for her normal, professional, everyday shade of pink.

She looked despairingly at the selection of earrings she had brought. Small hoops, simple studs, a variety of dangly pieces, all on the discreet side. Nothing screamed "siren," let alone "slut." Did she *want* to look like a slut? She just knew she didn't want to settle for "middle-aged married professional woman at a business conference." She decided to wait to choose those last. Then she took a deep breath and pulled the lace garter belt around her trim waist.

She so rarely had the opportunity to present herself and admire herself as a sexual being. It was one of the many regrets that had been consuming more and more of her consciousness recently.

As a doctor, she had seen enough naked bodies of 40-something women to know that hers was well above average. She was slender and fit; she still wore her wavy brown hair past her shoulders as she had in her twenties. It didn't hurt that her breasts were small and pert, although she had always liked the way they had looked before birth control and later pregnancy even better. She liked imagining herself as a gymnast or a dancer. She had the toned bottom of a much younger woman; frankly, she preferred the way that wearing heels made it more pronounced.

She had felt awkward and conspicuous, packing for this business trip, sneaking so much jewelry and lingerie into her suitcase beneath the sweaters and casual slacks. But her husband hadn't noticed; hadn't really paid attention. She probably could have flaunted it, made sure he had noticed the silk stockings and garter belt. Teased him with the idea that she was going to be hours away, in an upscale hotel room, pulling these items over her naked flesh before going out to meet with another man... not that he would have been genuinely threatened; but just to make him gasp a bit.

She had tried to push his buttons before, but he didn't seem to have any. It frustrated her that she couldn't make him jealous. It wasn't that he had no interest in her; it was just that he took her fidelity for granted.

Like everyone had always taken her for granted. Her fidelity, her integrity, her professionalism, her good grades and good behavior. Her chastity. Well, tonight she was going to do something about that. She was going to at the very least have a drink in a hotel bar with another man.

And, more than that, a man to whom she had confessed her secret desires. Confessed, indeed, that she even *had* secret desires. Desires, and regrets.

She started to pull her taupe stockings on, but then remembered that the suspenders needed to go under her panties, not over them. It wasn't intuitive; and she hadn't worn stockings and garters since her wedding. That's when her maid of honor had explained the rationale to her. Of course, it simplified going to the bathroom, her friend had said. It also made it possible for her eager groom to consummate the marriage with her wedding trousseau bunched up around her waist...

Yeah, right, she had thought at the time. Even then, she knew that sex with her gentle and respectful husband would never be that wild and thrilling.

She did, however, allow herself to picture the same scene with her husband's best man. Secretly, shamefully. But repeatedly. All weekend.

For a moment she began to just thread the garter straps through her panties rather than removing them, then she smiled wryly at herself. Even in the privacy of her hotel room, she always instinctively made the prim and proper choice. Well... tonight she would break that pattern.

She stepped out of her panties to allow the garter straps to fall naturally, and then attached the stays to her hosiery in the proper places. She turned and looked at herself over her shoulder in the mirror, pushing herself up on her tiptoes to simulate wearing heels. She was pleased with what she saw. The way the hosiery and lingerie framed and focused on her derriere. No, she corrected herself; her *ass.*

Presenting it for the viewing pleasure and sexual gratification of a man she hadn't met yet.

She smiled wryly at her reflection, and then shook her head with resignation as she started to step back into the silk panties. "Who are you kidding, Melissa?" asked the voice in the left side of her head. "You know good and well you're never going through with this."

"Fine," replied the right-brain voice. "If all you're going to do for the next hour is tease yourself, might as well play it to the max." And with that, she left the panties on the dresser and stepped into her skirt.

***

The bar in the hotel restaurant was packed, but Melissa passed through it, oblivious to the appreciative glances from the men around her, until she entered the quieter, less busy restaurant. She scanned the room and quickly found the man she was looking for, seated at a booth along the far wall. They had, in fact, finally exchanged pictures, just at the very end, after weeks of written correspondence.

He wasn't what she had expected. She wasn't sure what she *had* expected; she knew it wasn't likely that she had been corresponding with Ryan Gosling's twin brother; and she also had feared that she had been revealing her darkest desires to some grossly obese or hideously deformed loser. But it turned out that her penpal, Warren, was a sixty-ish academic type, of medium height and build, who would have looked distinguished if his salt-and-pepper hair hadn't been shoulder-length. An artiste, perhaps. She could work with that.

He recognized her and rose to greet her, reaching for her hand, which she hadn't even realized she was extending, taking it as if in a simple handshake, but then turning it palm down so he could pat it with his left hand. "Melissa," he said. "It's so nice to meet you in person."

"Yes, you too, Warren," she responded automatically, noting that his blue eyes were more friendly than menacing, and that he appeared much more at ease than she felt. This was the man who had told her to wear something that would show semen stains?

He gestured for her to take a seat, and waited until she had slipped into the booth to sit back down again himself. There was a glass of brown liquor on the table in front of him. "I hope you don't mind," he apologized, seeing that she had eyed it. "I went ahead and ordered for myself."

"Not at all," she replied. Then she ventured, "I suppose you weren't certain I would show up."

He shrugged, and waved to get a server's attention. "Well, I wouldn't have been totally surprised. And that would have been okay. But I'm glad you're here."

The waitress approached and Melissa ordered a glass of Pinot Grigio. Then she looked into the gray-blue eyes of the man across the table... calm, reserved, but knowing eyes.

He reminded her of the graduate student who had lived across the hall from her when she was in medical school. Philosophy or humanities or something. Lean and long-haired, dark and mysterious; part poet, part privateer.

She had just met and begun dating her future husband at that point, and at any rate her studies kept her far too busy for any illicit dalliances. But he had helped her set up her TV and her stereo when she had first moved in, and had become someone with whom she would occasionally share a glass of wine and a casual conversation about something, anything other than medicine. As the semester passed, she began to wonder, and to wish... why didn't he make a move? If he had just leaned over to kiss her... no, she realized, she would have demurred in that scenario. What she had needed, what she had wanted, was for him to come up behind her in the kitchen as she cleared the dishes, to bend her over the countertop, to hold her down with his long fingers splayed across her back while his other hand lifted her skirt and pulled her panties to the side, to wordlessly enter her with his unseen cock, before she had even allowed her boyfriend that privilege.

But he never did.

And now, she was sitting across the table from the one man to whom she had confessed those illicit fantasies. Or at least, confessed the *nature* of her fantasies, if not the specifics. The specifics were his contributions to their correspondence. Like the image of semen staining her silk blouse tonight.

"You've really never done this before, have you?" he was asking.

She shook her head. "I take it you have?"

He shrugged unapologetically.

"I'm actually something of a late bloomer myself. Which is why I understand your eagerness to make up for lost time. But, yes, over the past... fifteen years or so, I've become pretty good at... playing a variety of roles."

The waitress returned with her wine and they sat quietly until they were alone again.

"So," she picked up the conversation. "Role-playing?"

"Sometimes," he acknowledged. "Sometimes we all play roles. Sometimes we're looking for the opportunity to reveal our true selves."

Melissa nodded. She wondered whether she was role-playing right now, or preparing to be her true self.

"And what is *your* true self, Warren?" she pushed.

He appeared to be surprised that she was holding on to the initiative.

"Well, I suppose I'm a switch. But I'm naturally submissive."

She took that in, still watching his earnest eyes. I suppose that's why of all the writers on that website, she thought to herself, he was the one I reached out to. He wrote well; but mostly she was fascinated with his ability to plumb the psychological depths of his submissive characters.

"So I understand what a submissive craves," he was confirming. "Tonight... well, I've been hoping to give you what you've been longing for your whole life."

She took a deep breath, still holding on to her familiar control, challenging him. "Oh? Tell me about that."

"Well, you're an accomplished professional woman. Beautiful, obviously intelligent, apparently in control, in command at all times... or at least, disciplined." He sipped his whiskey. "I imagine you've always been that way, haven't you Melissa?"

She nodded in agreement. "Even when you were a little girl," he continued. "Especially in high school. Always the good girl."

"Yes," she acknowledged.

"Of course you were always as interested in sex as the other girls. The adventurous girls who had reputations, who went out with upperclassmen and gave blowjobs in backseats and seduced the boys you liked."

She nodded.

"But you only dated the nice boys, the boys your parents approved of, the respectful boys who never went past second base. And then you went home and masturbated to the thought of the bad boys, the arrogant jerks who just did what they wanted. Isn't that about right, Melissa?"

She nodded.

"Because good girls don't seduce boys, don't take the lead. Good girls don't even think about those things. And so in order to... orgasm... you had to imagine that you were being taken advantage of by one of those arrogant, bad boys. Taken advantage of, or just... taken. Used. Debased."

Melissa kept nodding. She heard herself thinking in agreement, "Defiled."

"And it stayed that way all through college and med school and marriage and... motherhood... didn't it, Melissa?"

Melissa glanced away. "Well..."

"'Well,' indeed," Warren finished for her. "It stayed that way, only more so. You've wanted a man to force you to your knees in front of him, to gather up your lovely long hair in his fist and fish out his wicked, foreign cock and press it to your face."

Yes, she thought. Go on.

"You've wanted men to push you up against the wall and take you from behind. Feel their hot breath on your neck and your cheek pressed against the glass of your hotel window, on display for the whole city, as they fill you up with their thick penises and their potent semen. It's become your obsession, your ideal. The forbidden fruit you've never tasted.

"It's been your greatest regret, hasn't it?"

"Yes," she admitted, lowering her eyes. He smiled.

"But look how far you've come, Melissa. You're alone in a strange city with a man who to whom you've confessed your shameful desires." He paused and took a sip.

"So what next? Hmmm." He pretended to be considering the options. "You could go with me to my car. Once we're in the parking garage, you could allow me to... blindfold you."

Melissa twitched.

"I could take you to some dark corner of this strange city, a private club in an unmarked warehouse, and present you to a roomful of men. Naked, eager men, who were amused by your... elegant attire. And your wedding ring."

Melissa took another sip of her wine and noted how dry her throat had become.

"Or perhaps to a dimly-lit room in the back of a run-down adult bookstore, a room with multiple glory holes..." She realized she had closed her eyes and was biting her lower lip.

"It's nothing you haven't fantasized about before, is it?"

"You know I have," she said softly. Then it occurred to her to to wonder, is that what he had in mind when he told me to wear a blouse like this? To be splattered and marked and sullied by the ejaculate of multiple anonymous men?

Tonight?

His smile was, for the first time, lascivious.

"Well, let's save that for a future time. I think for tonight you can have a more than adequate introduction to debauchery in the comfort of your own hotel room." He sipped his drink. She didn't know whether she was relieved, or disappointed.

"When you checked in, you asked for two keys, didn't you?"

Melissa nodded, as Warren smiled. "Was it a bit of a thrill, Melissa? Did the clerk smirk at you, knowing that you wanted a second key so you could give it to a man... who was not your husband?"

She stifled a bit of a chuckle. Yes, in fact, that's exactly how she had felt.

"Just put it down on the table between us. Slide it into the middle of the table. With your left hand. So the waitress can see your wedding ring." Melissa blushed as she followed his instructions, and even let her hand linger there, her diamond catching the light like a beacon. A searchlight, sweeping around the room, sending out a signal to all the mariners in the area: "Warning! Danger!"

He could taunt her with pornographic visions of gloryholes and gangbangs, she realized; but what was more exciting was the way he was focusing her on the erotic details of each tiny action of what was really happening.

She finally pulled her hand back. He left the keycard sitting in the middle of the table between them for passersby to see. It looked as big as a billboard to her. A billboard, advertising her wantonness.

"Now, why don't you go to the women's room, and take off your panties, and bring them to me."

"I can't do that, Warren," she whispered.

"Oh, I'm sure you can," he smiled, encouragingly.

"No, I can't," she replied. "Because I'm not wearing any."

Warren arched his eyebrows and leaned back in his seat, regarding her with pleased approval. "Good girl."

"Well then," he continued. "I do insist on a couple of rules. You will need a safeword."

She nodded. That thought had occurred to her earlier today as she let her mind wander during a session on stroke prevention. "Potassium," she said, with a slight grin.

Warren laughed. "That's good. That's not one that might slip out by accident."

She waited. "You said a couple of rules?" she finally prompted.

"Oh, yes, well... I'll want you to leave your wedding ring on."

She felt herself releasing a deep breath that she had been holding in to too long. She realized that she had been expecting him to say he was going to insist on using a condom, and that she was glad he hadn't said those words, at least yet.

He was quiet for a long moment.

"You are so lovely, Melissa," he said. She looked into his face and was struck again by how his eyes appeared... kind. So opposite from his wicked words.

"I've been thinking about this ever since you agreed to meet. I want you to have everything you really desire. I don't want you to have any regrets."

He took a breath and continued. "I can role-play a dom, but... I think what you really want is to be totally used... by someone who doesn't give a shit what you want."

Holy shit, she thought. Was *he* getting cold feet? He had admitted that he would only be role-playing. "Jesus, Warren," she blurted out. "Are you really just all talk?"

"Well, not exactly. But I really do want you to have the experience you've been dreaming about tonight. That's why I've asked Derek to join us."

With that, he turned in his seat toward the booth behind him. Melissa had been so focused on the intimate and illicit conversation at her own booth that she hadn't even noticed the man sitting behind Warren. But now that man was turning, and rising from his seat.

He was tall, well built. Casually dressed, with a simple polo shirt stretching across his imposing pectorals. Closer to her own age, maybe younger. Not necessarily handsome, but definitely masculine, with short-cropped hair, deep-set dark eyes beneath a heavy brow, a boxer's nose, and colorless lips that were twisted into a smirk.

"Derek, say hello to Melissa," Warren said.

Derek raised his chin to increase the angle at which he was looking down at her.

"Hello..." he paused. She waited for him to say her name. Or perhaps to say, "Slut." But he stopped with the one word.

God, she thought. Did he think he had her at hello?

"So," Warren continued, still addressing the larger man. "Did you hear everything?"

"I did," the man replied. Then, without invitation, he took a seat in the booth beside her. Melissa scooted over to... accommodate him.

His name was Derek. Of course it was, Melissa thought. A hard name, with hard sounds, to match his hard eyes and hard hands and, undoubtedly, very very hard cock.

"Derek is... well, I suppose I can say a friend, can't I?"