He knelt down by her hips. She felt his breath on her skin, and then she felt the points of his stubble.
They both had orgasms as though they’d been having orgasms together for many years. But the feeling of normalcy was spiked with understanding that they were still behaving illicitly. Sloane felt high and happy. After they dressed, she turned to her phone. She told her husband how it had gone. Richard wrote back that it was very difficult to have such a hard-on and be out to dinner with the kids. She smiled and then she and Wes spoke about life in general, children, the restaurant, what so-and-so did at family meal. Nothing had ever been so organic.
That encounter was followed by several months of the most comfortable and blissful sex of Sloane’s life. Richard’s, too. It had never been easy to find the right type of third party. The right type of man. Interesting, good-looking, quality men of their age were married, or otherwise not interested in the type of setup that Richard was looking for. Beyond that, Sloane had been often put off by fucking strangers. By their grunts and idiosyncrasies. The way that, when a man was behind her, he might hold her hip with one commandeering hand while the other would be daintily moving his dress shirt behind his rear, pinning it there. Things like that turned her off. The measure of violence in some men, the stink of some others.
But with Wes none of those issues were present. There were no complications. It was hedonistic and also caring. They both fucked Sloane a lot, together and separately. The kissing was sensual. It was wonderful to kiss her husband while a stunningly attractive man was down between her legs. Or the other way around. It was nice to fuck another man while her husband watched approvingly. She never felt unclean. She felt loved. She felt that her and Richard’s desires had finally dovetailed in a way she hadn’t thought was possible. Most of all, she felt present.
Sometimes the sex lasted as little as thirty minutes. It wasn’t a marathon affair with silk sheets and candles. It would last as long as it had to for each party to come. Usually it took Sloane the longest, because even though she might have been fantasizing about this very thing for days, when it was actually happening, her nerves would get in the way. So she would call it. She would say, Okay guys, I’m good. After Wes left she would then bring herself to orgasm, perhaps with Richard, or by herself, thinking about what had just happened on their bed. After every interlude, if they had the time, the three of them would dress and have a cup of coffee. It was the same if it were just Sloane and Wes. They would engage as though they were at a dinner party.
Since they’d started this new relationship, Wes did not speak much of his partner, Jenny. Sloane was used to that in men. They erased their women around her. But she imagined that Jenny knew. She assumed, because Wes was a kind man, that he was making the right decisions for her.
Sloane was afraid of anything upsetting what they had. Wes had brought an unforeseen joy to her marriage and to Sloane’s sense of self. She had two heterosexual men waiting for her, wanting her all the time. She felt mighty.
One evening Sloane said to Wes, Have you asked Jenny if she might like to join us? They’d been having a great time when she made the suggestion. Laughing about something a friend of theirs had done. But by the way Wes reacted, Sloane could tell that Jenny didn’t know exactly where Wes was on this evening, or on any of the afternoons and nights preceding it.
Later, when it was just the two of them, Sloane said to Richard, I don’t think she knows.
She must, he said.
I don’t think she does.
Richard didn’t want to ruin what they had. Sloane didn’t want to either. But a switch had been flipped and she couldn’t flip it back. It was like the lighthouses she could see through her window—they were never turned off. She felt uneasy. She felt it in her gut. For a long time she lived in a sort of stabilized fear of finding out that Jenny didn’t know. That Jenny was at home, baking cookies with the children, weeding her garden, worrying about money, and not knowing