The Kiss that Changed my Marriage

I arched my hips, lifted my pelvis to her hand. She gripped my shaft with her thumb and index finger stroking it up and down. We lay on our queen size bed she complained was too small.

"Let me cum!" I said.

My wife, Elise, was silent, slightly grim, the impulse of a smile at the corner of her lips. She concentrated. She didn't look at me. She watched my penis.

A few more strokes and she stopped, as if she'd been fanning a fire and the flames were high enough. She left her hand at the base, squeezing in a pulsing fashion, staring at the opening, waiting, feeling, I knew, for a sign that I was right on the edge. I wasn't on the edge but the edge wasn't far.

"Let me inside you." I said, not pleading, but affirming, a touch of command in my voice that I thought might appeal to her own submissive streak.

I thrust up, displaying the full length of my stiffness. I was obvious and self absorbed. Usually this kind display ended well.

We'd had our first cuckold experience a week before. She went out on a date with Robert. For the past two years we'd had regular discussions about actually doing it before deciding to actually do it. She'd contacted Robert who she'd met in a writing class three years before. He'd proposed an affair back then but my wife had said no at the time. They exchanged several emails. They talked on the phone for almost an hour and agreed to meet.

Their date went well. After a couple of drinks he invited her to his condo but she said no. Instead they kissed in the parking lot beside her car. "It's always good to make a guy wait," she said, "If a guy can wait. There's a better chance he's a keeper."

That night I woke her twice more to fuck after we'd already had a ravishing tear-your-clothes-off fuck when she first arrived home. But both times she refused. She pushed my hand away and said no. She wanted to sleep. "Hold me," she said. "Snuggle with me." Our small bed made snuggling natural.

I'd fantasized about being submissive to a woman for years. Elise was leery when I told her I'd like us to have a female led relationship where I submitted.

"I don't think I'd like that. I like strong men," she said.

For years the subject came up regularly. We talked about ways she might enjoy playing the role of dominant. When I told her about cuckolding she said,"you know I might like that especially with a dominant man."

Now she'd done it. She'd left me at home and gone off to a date with another man and kissed him.

It had been a week since that night. The memory still buzzed in me, unsettled, a mix of anxiety and excitement, that couldn't be relieved without her touch. I was sure of that and she hadn't touched me since that night. At least until now. But her hand had stopped. She was just squeezing at the base of my shaft.

She held on and began talking,

"I haven't told you how much I enjoyed Robert's kiss. He kissed me just they way I like it. Not too forceful, not too light, slow but easy, meeting halfway but enough so that I had no doubt how much he wanted me. But I knew that from...and I haven't told you this; he was hard. He rubbed it against my thigh right there in the parking lot as we kissed. I couldn't ignore it. I reached down and wrapped my hand around it through his jeans as we kissed. We broke our kiss as I squeezed him. 'You're a very, very big boy,' I told him. He liked that."

I stewed. My cock bobbed around in a small semi circle as she spoke, her hand still gripping just the base. I made little upward thrusts but caught nothing but air.

"Say something," I said.

She ignored me and started stroking again, concentrating on my penis with an unusual focus, quickly bringing me to the edge. I lifted, humping upwards in little jerks, getting there. Finally the fire bell went off. My semen came rushing out. A quick spasm and one long spurt arched up and out and onto my belly.

But Elise had let go. She laughed, delighted. She watched my penis spurt once more then gurgle up a milky white fluid as she leaned back on her heels.

I groaned. My orgasm, launched, but deprived of the fuel of her touch, immediately crashed, muted, in a false start, a failure.

She folded her hands in her lap with veneration. I gripped her thigh. I reached for her smooth cleft which she had waxed the day before her date with Robert. She pushed my hand away.

More cool distance. But it wasn't distance. She'd been distant with me in the past, early in our marriage. We'd fight and not speak for a day, maybe two. I held my ground. She did the same. But this wasn't the same.

Still, I needed her to complete the hand job.

"Please," I said. "It's been almost a week."

"And it's going to be at least another week," she said.

"Why?" I said.

"Because Robert's asked me out on a date next Friday night and you need to wait," she said.

"You liked his kiss?" I said.

"I told you I did. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would," she said.

"He's a good kisser. He took me to the edge but I stopped him."

"Like you took me just now."

"Yes. I stopped him because I wanted more. I want the whole thing from him," she said.

"What's the 'whole thing,' you want?"

"I don't know. Not just a fuck. I don't know. It's something I want," she said.

Her hand fell away from my penis. She stood up. I started to sulk. I stopped though because I could have flung myself into self pity. She walked to her sink and began washing her face. My penis softened and laid down on its side, the little slit still wet with the cum of my ruined orgasm. I got out of bed and went to the kitchen and took the hamburger from the freezer and put it in the refrigerator to thaw.

As I watched her rinse her face I realized I'd missed her feelings. Had she not worried Robert might reject her? Or worried he'd hate her short hair or the bit of weight she'd put on since he last pursued her?

She'd had the courage to walk out the front door.

"You're my whole world," I said.

"I know," she said drying her face by dabbing it with a towel. "And you're not going to cum,"

I laughed, relieved. "Okay. I love your confidence. Should I address you as 'Mistress?'"

"No thank you," she said.

I got up and closed the bedroom door, and used the bathroom. When I came back, she laid in bed, her head resting on her folded hands. I put my arm around her and she adjusted slightly so our bodies fit together snuggly. I reached behind me and turned out the light.

I lay awake for hours. Images of her kiss with Robert pelted me from a thousand different angles. Maybe tomorrow night, at dinner, when the waiter poured us each a glass of water and we heard the ice cubes tinkle everything would return to normal.

The next morning I awoke with a headache; hating my possessiveness, hating myself, hating this submissive desire which seemed as perverse as it had for many years when I never told anyone about it except a phone sex Mistress I called when Elise was out.

Elise wasn't in bed. She was in her office writing. She wrote every morning for an hour often waking at 5am. She wrote about her childhood. She'd been a serious yet effusive little girl. I'd seen pictures and listened when she'd told me stories about her childhood. She liked stomping puddles, hanging upside down on the school monkey bars, and disciplining her younger siblings when they upset her mother. Her mother, a matriarch, smoked Virginia Slims, was a nightclub singer, had a minor role in a Jungle film, was addicted to martinis and men. She'd had a series of affairs right up until she divorced Elise's father because he had an affair.

Elise poked her head in the bedroom door to see if I was awake and asked, "Do you want coffee?"

"Please. I haven't slept much," I said.

She disappeared, returned and set a full cup of black coffee on my mahogany nightstand.

She stood at the edge of the bed.

"I need you to get the leaves raked and bagged up in the back yard today and put them out front for Wednesday pickup."

She put her hand on my chest and gave me a quick kiss on the lips and whispered in my ear, "Be a good boy."

We returned to our day-to-day life. Its ordinariness became shinier. Our trip to Home Depot Monday night felt like early love when we kissed in the checkout line. Our dinner at Marlins on Tuesday night was full of a spring-like effervescence. We held hands across our small table before our Halibut arrived.

On Tuesday evening, after dinner, she was in her office with the door closed, writing, I thought, which was unusual because she didn't like to write late. She came out and into our bedroom where I laid on our new blue and gold fleece blanket reading. The light in our room was low, a deep yellow. She had her phone to her ear. She was half naked, bottomless. She'd taken off her jeans and panties and was just wearing a top, an orange turtle neck with a light brown thick cardigan overtop. She flushed, grinning and purposeful, she bent to her low drawer, pushing her naked bottom out at me, and, lifting a stack of her sweatshirts, picked out her vibrator from its hiding place. Without looking at me she turned and left, walking back to her office, the phone still pasted to her left cheek. I heard the door close.

This wasn't a scene we had agreed to do together. It was the first time I'd seen her bald pubis since the day she came home with it waxed and yanked her jeans and panties down to her thigh to show me. "That's for Robert," she'd told me before pulling them up quickly. I laid in bed, flat on my back, looking at the ceiling, my left hand on my cock feeling it stiffen. I imagined her bringing her vibrator between her legs carefully, positioning it the way she likes it (never direct pressure) while awaiting his next sentence.

I got up and crept close to her closed office door. Her vibrator hummed.

She was quiet. She said yes and yes again and yes one more time before I heard the quiet song of orgasm that rises and falls from her when she cums.

"That was nice. Thank you. Can't wait to see you Friday night," she said.

I hurried back to our bed and laid down thinking she'd come running out to tell me what had happened. But she didn't. She returned to our bedroom after a good amount of time, and returned quietly, as if she had been writing. Nothing to see. Nothing to tell.

"The moon's full tonight. I bet there are lovers out there kissing in the back seats of their cars," she said and giggled. She had her jeans on. I watched her put her vibrator away in the bottom drawer and quietly dress for bed.

She laid down next to me and exhaled as if a long day's work was finished and she needed rest.

"You can hold me. I need affection," she said.

Her request had a familiarity I needed. My wife was not one to want to talk about her day when she arrived home from work or describe how her book club meetup went or how dinner with her sister was. What was past was past. And more than a few sentence recap burdened her. She had no desire to carry on the scene that had taken place a few minutes ago or in this case stroke my penis and help me to an orgasm by recalling the heat Robert inspired in her just minutes ago. Instead she slipped into a quiet sleep that induced in me a pleasant paternal spell, that felt weightier, as if more vigilance were needed because there was, figuratively anyways, another man in bed with us. The doors to our marriage had all been unlocked and left opened.

I put my arm around her, feeling the rise and fall of her breathing. I wondered if she'd orgasmed with Robert more than once. "The second one is always better," she'd often reminded me.

In bed, the next evening, I put her hand on my penis and asked her to get me off. I told her to close her eyes and pretend I was Robert and pretend that Robert had just kissed her. She said no. She said she wouldn't do that because she'd already done it many times before he'd kissed her in the parking garage and now that she'd had a real kiss she no longer wanted to pretend.

We talked about her date tomorrow with Robert. I asked if I could be there, at whatever place they were going to meet.

"I could meet him," I said. "So he would know I was okay with your date."

I could tell my request intruded. A veil of anger bunched up on her forehead. She was running out of patience with my requests.

"You know. I don't want to do this." She said. She turned away from me in bed and looked out the window.

"Why?" I said, "what's wrong?"

"Because you're turning my date into a performance."

"I'm not. I want you to enjoy it," I said.

"No you want to be there watching like an audience. And I don't want you there. It's not for you."

"But it might help you feel more secure if I was there." I said.

"It won't. This is for me," she said.

"It's for us," I said. "I need to see you with him. I'm not a spectator. I'm in this with you. I need to see you. To make contact with you just like I need your hand to get me off. I'm asking for a way to be with you while you're with another man."

"No. No. No. It's for me. I live with you. I'll come home to you. You'll get me then but not tomorrow night, not when I'm with Robert. That's between him and me. Tomorrow is for me. You stay home."

"Okay. Okay. I won't go," I said.

"You sure?"

"Yes," I said, "I'm sure."

"Thank you."

On Friday afternoon Elise called me at work and left a message about her date.

Her message was simple:

"We're meeting at Gershwin's, in the Hilton, at 7 tonight. I'm not coming home from work."

I arrived home from work restless. I couldn't sit. I couldn't read, or write. I took the thawed hamburger from the refrigerator, made a meatloaf and put it in the oven. I moved my washed darks to the dryer. The rhythmic thumping helped for a couple of minutes- made the house feel as if Elise were home. I took a long walk in the woods nearby. The dome of trees eased my mind when I started an imaginary conversation. Don't you love this? Your wife is doing exactly what you wish.

No, I didn't love this. I loved what was coming. I loved being on the edge like I loved her hand at the base of my cock teasing me towards fulfillment. I'll love the text she'll send; "You've been cuckolded. Felt great. Love you."

I want to be a cuckold husband. I yearned to submit, to kneel at my wife's feet, for her to cage my penis in a metal contraption that prevented it from becoming hard, to keep me in chastity, to parade her desire for another man in my face, humiliating me. I craved that. I had no idea what it would mean to me the next day, no idea if it'd be a win for our marriage. I had no idea how it would be to know she carried another man's semen in her vagina when she arrived home and kissed me in the doorway. What if she didn't come home? But spent the night at his condo? What if in some flash of insight she realized how ridiculous I was and decided she had had enough and moved in with Robert next Saturday?

You'll never be satisfied. This will go on and on and on. It will never be about my pleasure.

She'd seen a light in his eyes. She'd been waiting for a light. That's why she was making him wait, for the light.

I didn't love this any more than a pianist loves arpeggios or a writer loves redoing a sentence. I'd never play Chopin or write Moby Dick.

There were still leaves in the yard that needed to be raked up, a broken sink in the basement in need of a facet handle, clothes in the dryer, and my meatloaf. There was meatloaf we'd share tomorrow night. Should I call her and say,"Red?"

No. She wouldn't listen. She'd tell me this wasn't a scene.

I had to go. I needed to be close. I'd never told Elise I drove past the parking garage where she and Robert kissed. I'd grown desperate that night like I was now. I needed to see something real. So I found her car in the parking garage where she would kiss Robert and drove slowly passed it and then went home.

I drove to the Hilton where she was meeting Robert and parked in the garage on the top floor. My car was one of three at that level. Lonely car. I hurried down the stairs knowing the restaurant was in the back of the spacious dark first floor. It was partitioned off from the hotel by large floor to ceiling glass panes making it possible to see inside the whole restaurant.

The bar was dark. a single strand of white Christmas lights hung in loops above the low lit bottles of liquor.

Elise was there, sitting with her legs crossed in a low cut black dress, that emphasized a modest though apparent bit of cleavage. An almost finished martini sat on the black marble top in front of her. She looked enchanting, so much so she seemed slightly out of place. She'd worn the dress on several occasions. I knew that. To the theater? To the Nutcracker at the symphony hall when we went with her aunt? And her hair was up in a bun. She wore it to bed like that I thought. No? She never wore her hair in a bun to bed. Yes she did.

I didn't know.

Robert arrived. Tall, broad shouldered, thick dark-haired Robert wearing a tailored suit that suggested he was fit. His square jaw and hooked nose, from my distance had a rugged look, as if he'd played hockey. He put his hand on Elise's back, as a friend might. He leaned in, she leaned in and their lips met in a kiss.

There's no need to describe the riot of feelings I felt.

He picked up the gift bag that I hadn't noticed sitting in front of Elise; peeked inside and broke into a smile that filled his eyes with light. He pushed the bag to the edge of the bar, dropped a napkin on the floor and as he raised himself slowly from his bent position Elise turned to him and opened herself. As he stood he nodded with assent, flushed. The bartender delivered two martinis, one in front of Elise and one in front of Robert.

I watched from a distance over the next hour as they sat talking laughing leaning towards one another, laughing, gazing at one another, laughing, touching each other gently on the arm and laughing or putting a hand to their shoulder, laughing, and laughing and laughing. I couldn't detect a single strained or awkward moment until the end when Robert stood first and then Elise did. The slightest of slight hesitation by one of them. I sensed it. He extended his arm, a gesture that she should go first, a gesture suggesting a path she should take which I knew was out of the bar to an elevator and to a room where they'd kiss and the event I'd waited a lifetime to occur would occur.

They disappeared. I exhaled and felt surprisingly calm. The storm had passed. I'd connected as I'd needed to even though I hadn't been invited.

Elise texted me.

"Saw you. Bad boy! Left you a present on the bar."

I looked up. There on the bar, sitting alone, unclaimed, and lonely was the little silver gift bag Robert had peered into. I hurried to the bar, retrieved it and opened it at my table. Inside were my wife's lacy black panties.

She'd flashed him right there at the bar.

I went home. I never got the text that I expected would forever alter my life.

I didn't hear from her again until she opened the door from the garage at 3am. I greeted her in our mud room. She sighed and gave me a peck on the lips and a light hug.

"How was your night?" She asked as if we'd both had equally interesting engagements to report and I should go first.

"How was yours?" I said.

"Fine. It was fun," she said. "But I'm tired."

"I bet you are." I said.

I followed her as if that's all I'd ever do. She lay down in bed with a sigh and I lay down beside her.

"I don't want to tell you about it. I want to put my pajamas on, get in bed with you and fall asleep in your arms," she said. "I need you to be my affection tonight. Just hold me. Tomorrow we'll fix the basement sink and replace the lightbulb on the front porch. I'm tired. Did you make the meatloaf you were going to make? We'll go to Home Depot. Okay? Home Depot tomorrow."