My Husband Begs Me to Call My Lover
These nylon stockings never go on right the first time. The seam has to run straight up the center of the calf, and if I rush it, it ends up crooked and I have to start over. My grandmother used to wear stockings like these, with that same black line climbing up the back of her leg. Today I wear them for something very different.
Daniel is kneeling in front of me with my high heels in his hands. My right foot is resting on his bare chest, and I let him kiss the top of it slowly, as if he needs permission for every kiss. I nudge him away with the tip of my foot, teasing, and he comes back. He always comes back.
I am what some people call a shared wife. I prefer to simply say I have a husband who enjoys watching.
—Stay still —I tell him, pressing on his chest with my heel—. Bruno is coming in an hour and you still don’t look presentable.
Daniel has spent the whole afternoon pacing around the house naked, nervous as always whenever my lover comes over. I know him: if I let him, he’ll touch himself too soon and ruin the best part of the night. That’s why I keep an eye on him. Not out of cruelty, but because I know what he looks forward to most is exactly this: the waiting.
***
The girls went to their grandmother’s this morning, so the house has been mine since noon. I took a long bath, shaved myself carefully, painted my toenails that bright red Bruno loves so much. Daniel held the bottle for me and blew on each nail so it would dry faster. He does those things with a devotion that still surprises me after so many years.
All of this started about a year ago, on some ordinary winter night. Daniel and I had always talked about everything in bed, telling each other fantasies without shame. One of those nights he confessed his: he wanted to see me with another man. I laughed. I told him he was crazy, that that only happened in movies. But the idea kept turning over in my head more than I wanted to admit.
We kept playing with the fantasy in private for weeks. He would pretend I had just come home from a date, ask me who I had been with, what they had done to me. He would fuck me with an intensity I had never known from him while imagining the scene. And when he finished, still rattled, he would ask me for things I had a hard time believing at first.
—Let me clean you —he would say.
And I, half laughing, half nervous, would let him. I would push him between my legs and pull his hair and tell him not to leave anything behind. The more I humiliated him, the more he showed me that he adored me. I discovered that my tenderness for him grew հենց in those moments when I saw him utterly surrendered.
***
Bruno appeared soon after. I met him at a friend’s birthday party, and there was something immediate, a current neither of us tried very hard to hide. He’s tall, broad-shouldered, with that calm confidence of men who don’t need to prove anything. When I told him my husband knew and, even more, approved, he wasn’t scared. He smiled and told me then we didn’t have any problem.
Since that first time, Bruno has been the man I call when I need something Daniel can’t give me. And I don’t say that to hurt my husband; I say it because it’s the truth, and because Daniel likes it being the truth. I love him in a way that has nothing to do with sex. With Bruno, on the other hand, it’s all body, weight, strength. Both things fit in my life without getting in each other’s way.
The first night Bruno took me seriously, I asked Daniel to hold a mirror so I could watch. I wanted to see everything. Daniel obeyed with trembling hands, holding the glass at exactly the right angle, looking at me with a mix of adoration and something like pain. That expression of his is, for me, the hottest part of the entire scene.
***
Over time we set our own rules. When I go out with Bruno —to dinner, dancing, sometimes to his place— Daniel stays home with the girls. At some point in the night I call him on the phone. Not to say anything important, but so he can listen.
I usually wait for the exact moment I’m on top of Bruno to dial. Then I hold the phone to my ear and let Daniel hear my ragged breathing, the rustle of the sheets, Bruno’s deep voice whispering things in my ear. My husband holds on in silence on the other end, patient, waiting.
—Are you there, sweetheart? —he sometimes asks, in a thin voice.
—I’m still here —I answer, and that’s almost all I say.
Bruno moves me slowly while I talk, looking me in the eyes, amused by the game. He knows perfectly well who I’m speaking to and he enjoys making things harder for me: he kisses me just when I try to put together a sentence, forces me to swallow a moan. At those moments I almost drop the phone, but I hold on. Daniel, at home, listens to me coming undone.
When I come, there’s no need to pretend anything. I practically scream into the receiver, and I know my husband on the other side has his eyes shut, imagining everything. Afterward I speak to him with a calm that undoes him: I tell him I’ll be back soon, not to wait up for me, and I hang up without waiting for an answer.
There are nights when I drag it out on purpose. I send him a message from Bruno’s bathroom, a photo of my shoes next to his on the floor, nothing more. I know that’s enough to keep Daniel awake, staring at the ceiling, counting the hours until the key turns in the lock. That anticipation devours him in a way no physical encounter ever would. I learned to ration it like something precious.
***
Once I warned him not to touch himself while I was away. That night, when I came back, I could tell from his face he hadn’t listened. I wasn’t really angry, but I made him think I was. I told him he had been a bad boy for not waiting for my permission, and that he would sleep alone that night. I watched him beg as if I had taken away the only thing that mattered in the world.
I even went looking online for one of those devices that stop a man from touching himself without permission. I was close to ordering it. But in the end I ruled it out: I prefer Daniel to control himself for me, for the sake of pleasing me, not because of a lock. The real game is in his head, not his body. And as long as I have that control, no device is necessary.
***
The ride home is always the best part for him. The drive is long, almost an hour on the highway, and I do it slowly, with the window down and my skin still prickling. I go in and find him waiting by the door, dressed in the shirt he likes, as if he were receiving an honored guest. He lets me sink onto the sofa, takes off my shoes one by one, looks at me as if I were something precious and fragile at the same time. Then he lowers his head between my legs and stays there until he gives me two or three more orgasms, soft ones, almost like a farewell.
When he’s done, he still asks for more. He begs me to let him, even though he knows I’m exhausted. Sometimes I give in, more out of tenderness than desire, and let him climb on top of me for a short while. I hold him, stroke the back of his neck, tell him he’s mine. For him, that phrase is worth more than anything else.
***
The doorbell rings. Daniel is almost done fastening my second heel. I’m not going to get dressed; I’ll open the door like this, in the garter belt, the stockings with the straight seam, and nothing else. Bruno likes finding me exactly like that, and my husband likes seeing me open the door that way, knowing what’s coming.
This afternoon the two of them have a plan. Bruno brought his camera and a tripod; he wants to photograph us on the sofa while Daniel holds my hand. They set up a remote shutter so they can take the pictures without moving, and my husband will be so focused on pressing that button at exactly the right moment that he’ll almost forget to breathe. It makes me laugh to see them agreeing like two partners.
I open it. Bruno hugs me, kisses my neck, walks in as if the house were his. Daniel makes us a drink and sits on the arm of the chair to watch. Soon Bruno is pushing me gently against the sofa’s leather and everything else stops mattering.
At some point my husband takes my hand and holds my ankle, attentive to making sure I’m comfortable, like a bee tending its nest. I hear the camera click again and again. Bruno and he get along well, almost like brothers; maybe that’s why this works, because no one is competing for what isn’t theirs.
I’m going to rest my head for a while on the arm of the sofa. The night is long and Bruno is only just beginning. Daniel stays close, watchful, happy in his own way.
I’m not writing this to boast, but almost as a confession. For years I believed the only way to love someone was the way the manuals describe, and it turns out there was another one waiting for us, made to our measure. If I learned anything, it’s that the key was never hiding anything, but telling each other everything. Who would have told me that honesty would end up bringing me right here.
