The Night My Wife Wanted to Be Shared Again

That winter in Valencia, the bills piled up in a corner of the kitchen like a silent reproach. We had bought the house too soon, with the two girls still little, and every month the checking account reminded us that my salary didn’t stretch that far. Marina and I talked little about money, almost always in low voices, after putting the girls to bed, as if saying it out loud made it more real.

We were not a conventional couple, and that should be said from the start. Before the children, when life was a hotel room and a weekend with no plans, we had played. Other couples, swapping, nights when she would go into an adjoining room and I would stay behind listening, pulse in my throat, ear pressed to the wall, hearing her moan with a stranger’s cock inside her. We stopped when the first girl came along. Not because of guilt, but because of lack of time and lack of body. But desire had not gone anywhere. It was only sleeping.

That night, Marina cuddled up to me in bed. She was wearing the old T-shirt from my basketball team, the one that hangs huge on her and barely covers her thighs. Nothing underneath, as always at home. She kissed my neck slowly, once, twice, and I could feel her draw breath before she spoke.

—Do you remember Reyes? —she asked.

It took me a second to place the name. Reyes was a woman Marina had known in another life, long before me. A go-between. The one who, when we were dating, had lined her up with the occasional date that solved more than one financial pinch. I knew that. I had always known. And it had never bothered me.

—I remember —I said carefully.

—I’ve been thinking about calling her.

She said it straight out, without beating around the bush, with her chin resting on my chest so she could see my face. And what surprised me most was not the proposal. It was realizing that it didn’t surprise me at all. And worse still, that my mouth had gone dry and my cock had gone hard as stone under the sheets, betraying me.

I shouldn’t be getting turned on by this.

But I was.

—We need the money —she added, misreading my silence—. And I’m good at it. You know that. I know how to suck cock like few women do, and I know how to spread my legs when it’s time.

—It’s not about the money —I replied, and that was only half true.

Marina propped herself up on one elbow. The streetlamp’s light came through the gap in the blinds and cut across her face in a thin stripe. She had that expression I knew too well: the look of someone who has already decided and is only waiting for the other person to catch up.

—Then why is your cock like that? —she murmured, and slid her hand down over my stomach, unhurried, until she wrapped her fingers around my shaft and squeezed slowly—. Look at you. You’re dripping pre-cum just from imagining it. Don’t lie to me.

I moved her hand away because if she kept touching me I was going to cum like a kid. I asked for time to think about it. She nodded, understanding, climbed on top of me astride and planted her bare pussy right over my cock, not taking it in, just grinding against it slowly, soaking my skin with how wet she was.

—Think about it while you fuck me —she whispered, and rose just enough to grab my shaft and guide it inside in one go.

She moaned softly when she felt it go in all the way, head thrown back and mouth open. The T-shirt had ridden up to her navel and I could see her tits swaying when she started riding me, first slow, squeezing my cock with those muscles she knows how to control, then faster, with her hands on my chest and her nails digging in.

—Imagine it —she panted—, imagine me tomorrow with another man on top, another cock inside, a stranger wrecking me…

—Shut up —I asked her, but I was already feeling it rise.

—I won’t shut up. Imagine me coming home, with another man’s cum in my pussy, and opening my legs for you again, and you licking me clean, and fucking me over whatever that bastard left in me.

I gripped her hips and drove her down onto me with all my strength, thrusting from below, listening to the wet sound of our bodies crashing together. She bit the back of her hand so she wouldn’t wake the girls and looked down at me with narrowed eyes, sweaty, riding me as if her life depended on it. I came inside her with a hoarse growl, unloading shot after shot, feeling her tighten around me because she was cumming almost at the same time, her pussy clamping down on my cock in waves until the last drop.

After that came the tenderness. I lowered my mouth down her sticky belly, licked her slowly between the thighs, gathering the mixture of the two of us with my tongue, and she arched her back and let me, moaning softly, until I coaxed a second orgasm out of her with my tongue on her clit and two fingers inside. She kept me awake for a long while, staring at the ceiling, while she slept with her cheek on my shoulder and her semen mixed with mine drying on my stomach.

***

Three days went by in which we never mentioned it again. Three days in which I thought of little else. Imagining her with another man should have hurt, should have set off some spring of wounded pride. Instead, the image kept coming back over and over, and each time I found myself a little more comfortable with it, a little more mine precisely because I was capable of lending it and taking it back.

On the fourth morning, before going to work, while she was still asleep with the girls, I left a note stuck to the fridge door. Two words. Call her.

I spent the whole day uselessly. I couldn’t focus on a single meeting. Every time my phone vibrated, I flinched, but she didn’t text. I was grateful for that. It was something to talk about face to face, looking at each other, not through messages that just hang there on a screen. Midafternoon I made up an excuse and left the office early, with a mix of nerves and anticipation I hadn’t felt in years.

When I got home, Marina was feeding the girls dinner. She greeted me with a wet kiss, too long to be innocent, and pulled away with a half smile before the kids saw us.

—Come on, off to bed —she told the little ones—, Dad and I have a lot to talk about.

The nightly ritual felt endless. Teeth, pajamas, a short story, two kisses on each forehead. When at last their bedroom doors were closed and the house sank into that thick silence of homes with sleeping children, we sat together on the big sofa in the living room. Marina pressed her thigh against mine and took my hand.

—I talked to her —she said—. We’re both happy. Tomorrow we’re having coffee.

—Tomorrow? —I blurted out—. We haven’t even talked yet.

—We have all night —she replied, squeezing my fingers—. And this is only coffee. If you say no, nothing happens. But first we have to set the rules. The two of us.

And so, in the dark, with a single lamp on and two glasses of wine left almost untouched, we negotiated something no couple should have to negotiate so calmly.

Marina laid out her terms first. She had thought them through, that much was obvious.

—Only on weekdays, and only in the mornings. That way I can take the girls to school and we can have lunch together almost every day. —She counted on her fingers—. Reyes assures me the clients are trustworthy, discreet people. The pay depends on the time and on what they ask for, but it’s almost always short dates. And if there’s any special request, she checks with me first, and I check with you. No exceptions.

—Special how? —I asked.

—Anal, two at once, no condom, filming, that kind of thing —she said with such natural ease it made the hair on my neck stand up—. Every extra has its price. And its permission.

I listened without interrupting. There was something hypnotic about seeing her so in control, so serene, while she spoke of selling herself and protecting us in the same sentence.

—My turn —I said at last—. And I’m going to lay out mine.

—Go ahead.

—Only in hotels or at Reyes’s place. Never in private homes, never alone somewhere we don’t control. —She nodded—. Weekends are ours, untouchable. No nights away; at most, a morning. —Another nod—. And most important: you tell me everything. Everything. The good and the uncomfortable. I don’t want this to be your secret. It’s both of ours, or it isn’t anything.

—It’s both of ours —she repeated, and her voice softened—. It always was.

—One last thing. —I looked her in the eye—. The day either one of us feels bad, truly bad, it’s over. No reproaches, no arguments. It’s over, and that’s that.

Marina set her glass down on the coffee table and turned toward me. The stripe of light fell now across her collarbone, over the neck of the huge T-shirt that had slipped off one shoulder.

—Deal —she whispered.

***

I don’t know who moved first. I think it was me, but she was already coming in. Her mouth found mine with an urgency that had nothing theatrical about it, her tongue shoved all the way in, biting my lower lip, and suddenly the negotiation, the rules, the bills in the kitchen corner, all of it dissolved in the heat of her tongue.

I slowly pushed her T-shirt up, savoring the moment when the fabric exposed her waist, her belly, her heavy tits with the nipples already hard and dark. Marina lifted her arms to help me and remained naked on the sofa, half lit, hair tousled, legs open and shaved pussy shining from how wet she already was. I looked at her as if it were the first time. And in a way, it was: because I was looking at her knowing that soon other men would look at her like that, that soon other men would see those same tits bounce, that same pussy open, and that, far from taking anything from me, made everything more intense.

—What are you thinking about? —she asked, reading my face, as always.

—That tomorrow someone’s going to want you —I said, and my voice came out rough—. And that afterward you’re going to come back here with me and tell me everything he did to you, what cock he fucked you with, how he made you cum and where.

Something flashed in her eyes. She grabbed the back of my neck and pulled me to her tits. I sucked one nipple, then the other, bit them carefully until she moaned, and she arched her back and guided my head downward with both hands, eager. I kissed her slowly, tracing her skin with my lips, feeling her whole body bristle beneath my mouth. I worked my way down over her belly, over the curve of her hip, while she tangled her fingers in my hair and arched her back against the cushions.

When I reached between her legs, her pussy was already soaked through, shiny, with swollen lips and her clit peeking out. I ran my tongue all the way from bottom to top, tasting her, and she took it with a restrained moan, careful of the silence in the house, biting the back of her hand so as not to wake the girls. I parted her lips with two fingers and worked her clit with the tip of my tongue, slow circles, then faster, then sucking it whole between my lips. I slid two fingers inside and curved them, searching for that spot deep inside that drives her crazy, without stopping licking her. I could hear her breathing breaking into little gasps, hear her hips moving to seek more, hear her pussy clench around my fingers when she was close. I know her. I know exactly when she’s on the edge, and I left her hanging there longer than she would have liked, pulling my tongue away just before, drawing out my wet fingers and licking them off in front of her.

—Please —she begged, and that word in her mouth was worth more than any glass of wine—. Fuck me now, please, I can’t take it anymore.

—Tell me how you want it.

—Hard. Like you’re one of them. Like you’re paying me.

Hearing that made me even harder. I turned her over, put her on her knees on the sofa, hands on the backrest and ass lifted, offered. I slammed my cock all the way in with one thrust and she had to bury her face in a cushion so she wouldn’t scream. I fucked her like that, holding her by the hips, pulling almost all the way out and driving in to the hilt each time, listening to my balls slap against her clit with every push. I ran my thumb over her asshole and wet it with the saliva dripping from her pussy.

—There too —she gasped—, put it in, a finger, please.

I slid it in slowly to the knuckle and felt her tighten inside on both sides. She started trembling and talking dirty into the cushion, things I won’t repeat, promises, half-formed fantasies about what she’d say when she came back, about how many cocks she was going to suck for me, about how she’d come home with her ass full of someone else’s cream and beg me to clean her with my tongue.

I lifted her, turned her, laid her on her back and put her legs over my shoulders. I pushed my cock back in and stayed still for a second, with her pinned there, looking at her.

—Tell me everything when you come back —I asked between deeper and deeper thrusts—, I don’t want you keeping anything from me. Every cock, every moan, every load.

—Everything —she panted—, I promise you, everything, every detail, every centimeter they put in me, all of it for you.

I rubbed her clit with my thumb while I fucked her to pieces and she came first, clenching my cock in spasms and stifling her cry against my shoulder when I hugged her to muffle it. I held out until the last moment, pulled out just before, and came over her tits and belly, shot after shot, marking her with my cum the night before another man would mark her with his. She ran her fingers through it, collecting it, and brought them to her mouth without taking her eyes off me.

We stayed tangled up on the sofa, sweaty, laughing softly like two teenagers who’ve pulled off a prank, with the lamp still on and the wine untouched on the table.

—Sealed —Marina said, giving me a kiss on the chin and another on my still-wet cock.

—Sealed —I repeated.

***

The next morning I watched her get dressed for coffee with Reyes. She chose jeans and a simple blouse, nothing provocative; she was only going to meet an old acquaintance, she told me, to remember old times and hear what she had to offer. I walked her to the door after taking the girls to school. I kissed her and brushed a strand of hair from her face.

—If at any point you don’t want to, turn around and come home —I told her—. You don’t have to prove anything.

—I know —she replied, and winked—. But I want to.

I watched her walk away down the street, with that stride of hers, the stride of a woman who knows what she’s worth, and went back inside with my heart racing. I was useless all day at work. At noon I slipped out early to have lunch with her, so she could tell me, word for word, gesture by gesture, how the reunion with Reyes had gone and what awaited us from then on.

But that lunch, and what came after it, is another story altogether.