The Picture

This is, of course, a standalone story, but it slots into my other tales somewhere after "Clean Slate" and "The Girl In The Green Dress." It's only very loosely connected to either of those, though. I'm entering this in Lit's annual Nude Day Contest, which asks us all to celebrate the power that a naked body can have. I hope you enjoy it! Please read all the Nude Day entries and grace your favorites with five stars.

* * *

"It's just so weird, how he won't do any cooking at all!"

I smiled as I stirred the mess in the crock-pot. Everyone but me loved my Buffalo chicken dip, and it was so easy to make. "He says he fucks around with food all day at work. He doesn't want to do it at home."

"But he's so good!" Jenna was right: my husband could cook like Nigella Lawson, though obviously without the massive rack. And the media success. He worked at Cheeks & Co, a restaurant chain known for waitresses who dressed like whores, so it wasn't like he was at the top of the food profession. She glanced at me sideways, a little guiltily, as she'd always done whenever she said anything nice about Paul.

I knew why.

"He's great," I agreed, "which is why he works as a chef. That's the key, Jenna: works as a chef." I licked the spoon, then decided I needed a little more Tabasco. "He says once he's off the clock, he's really off the clock. It's like us," I went on, stirring thoughtfully.

"Us?"

"Everyone assumes that since we're nurses, we're happy to give people health advice." I sighed. "Fuck that. When I'm not at the hospital? Peoples' health is the last thing I want to talk about."

"Maybe." Jenna did not sound convinced, but then again I no longer really thought of her as a real nurse anyway. She'd gone into teaching now. We'd been working together for over a decade until last month, when she'd skedaddled. She smiled at my crock-pot. "Not that it matters whether he can cook or not, if you keep bringing that dip. I'd put that stuff in an IV, large-bore."

"Bit warm for that," I laughed.

"Like I'd give a shit." She reached a quick hand into the bag of chips and dredged what I thought of as a bit too much dip, ignoring my protest. "So, what, Paul comes home after a long day of inventing restaurant dishes and does... what? Stamp collecting?"

"You've known him longer than I have," I pointed out, drawing another guilty glance. I ignored it, as I had for years. "You know better. He spends his spare time locked in his man-cave, doing... you know." I giggled, making the universal arm-wag gesture women make when they mock men for yanking their dicks.

Jenna's mouth fell open in mock outrage. "Shut up!"

"I'm dead serious." I'd always told Jenna everything. It was no big deal. She'd been married as long as I had; the spark had no doubt drifted out of her bedroom, too. "He watches strippers online, I think. Don't you dare tell me your darling Timmy doesn't do the same damn thing."

Her silence stretched long enough for me to dart a glance at her, only to catch her smirking. "He ain't watching strippers online, Lauren."

"No?" I leaned back, looking past her into the living room where her guests chatted. We always tended to use Jenna and Tim's house for most of our parties. They had the biggest TV. "He's probably watching something," I snickered.

"He is, actually." The smirk returned as she studied her cutting board, the carrot slices falling neatly off her knife. "I walked in on him just yesterday."

"Shit. Really?" I talked a big game about Paul and his man-cave, but I'd never actually caught him masturbating in there. I was sure he did it. "Where?"

"On our bed. You know how it faces away from the door?" She didn't pause now that she'd leaked her secret. "He had his phone up, and I could see what was on it as he was pulling up his pants."

"Yeah?" I hoped I wasn't sounding too curious about it. I wondered whether I was blushing, though if I was I was sure Jenna wouldn't know the reason.

Well. Pretty sure.

"He had that picture open on his phone," she murmured, her smile spreading. "You know the one. From last summer, at the lake."

"Picture?"

"The nude one."

Oh holy shit. "The one with me in it?" I squeaked.

"The what?" She cocked a quizzical head. "No. The one of me, dumbass."

"Jesus. Of us," I blurted, my Buffalo dip forgotten. "You and me are both in that picture. If it's from when we were skinny-dipping."

"Oh, it's definitely from when we were skinny-dipping," she chuckled, "but it's totally a picture of me. You're barely in it."

"I'm full-fucking-frontal!" I hissed. "I can't believe you sent him that!"

"Take a chill pill, Lauren," she advised. "You're barely even in the background. You're so out of focus, you might as well be Sasquatch."

"I'm barely five feet tall," I snapped. "No way did Paul mistake me for a fucking Sasquatch."

She turned fully toward me now, her carrot forgotten for the moment. "You're not really actually pissed about this, are you?"

I thought about that. Was I? Part of me sure was. I felt violated, cheap. But on the other hand, it was only Paul. I'd known him fifteen years. And, truthfully, I knew I had nothing much to worry about: I'd kept in good shape. "I'd have preferred you cropped me out," I grumbled.

"Trust me," she gloated, "my tits are front and center in that pic. He was looking at those, not a blurry half-assed shot of you way in the back by the dock." She surveyed me coolly. "I doubt he even realized it was you."

I knew I was red now, for sure. "It's obviously either me or Jessie. And Jessie's blonde," I reminded her.

"Whatever." She had her phone out now, her eyes thoughtful as she thumbed through her photos. I watched, my hand and arm stirring my dip mechanically, then held my breath when she found the pic she sought. "Huh," she nodded as if she was seeing it for the first time, but of course she wasn't: we'd taken dozens of photos that day, because that's what good friends do when they're wasted and it's a nice day and there's a lot of privacy.

We'd all agreed to delete most of them. Jenna had kept this one because she thought her boobs looked great. "Let me see," I urged.

"No way. You'll get cheese all over my phone."

"Fuck you," I grunted. "Your husband was jerking off to that pic, and I'm in it nude. I want to remind myself how bad it is."

"It's not bad," she admitted slowly. "You look hot."

"Yeah. That's what I'm afraid of."

"No. I mean, I can say that because I know it's you. But it really does just look like an amorphous blob, really."

"Oh. Thanks. So I'm an amorphous blob now." I wiped my fingers on my pants. "Show me." Jenna obliged me, keeping a tight hold on her phone and making sure it stayed clear of my crock-pot while I leaned in and studied it.

She was possibly right, I reflected: I was indeed very indistinct, standing well back from the camera as Jenna happily presented her tanned tits to the world. But I knew it was me. And Jenna knew it was me. And her Tim, who had known me some fifteen years now?

Yeah. He'd know it was me.

I posed with my arms up high, adjusting my hat; you could tell I was white, and you could tell I was dark-haired, which was why the one thing you really could get out of the shot was the contemporary state of my genital grooming: back then, some three or four years ago now, I'd been a big believer in waxing. So you could tell I was cherub's-ass bare down there. You could make out how small my boobs were, too; not that that's any secret. But that cursed pale skin of mine made it obvious how dark my nips were too, and that? That kinda is a secret.

Fuck.

"Can't you just crop it?"

She scoffed. "You're shitting me, Lauren. Look how hot I am!" She shook the phone at me. "No offense, but nobody's looking at your blurry snatch when I'm there, smiling like that."

I gnawed my lower lip. "It really is a great shot of you."

"No shit." She sliced at the last of her carrot. "Is that dip ready? The smell is killing me. Let's go." Jenna and I could both be very willful people, but this time she was right. It was time to feed our friends.

So I obeyed.

* * *

Something strange happened about halfway through the movie: I lost track of where it was going, my mind traipsing off on its own.

Our friend group did this pretty often, meeting up to watch a movie MST3K-style, with all of us trying to outdo each other with snide comments and heckling about what showed up on Tim and Jenna's massive TV screen. We'd done this a million times, accompanied by snacks and beers and smiles, and it was always a fun evening. But this time, I found my mind wandering.

I could have blamed the beer, a particularly good stout from Krabby Patti's Beerworks that Nick and Jessie had brought along just for me; almost everyone else drank IPAs, which I couldn't understand. I could have blamed the movie, a throwaway rom-com starring that actress from that one movie and a man old enough to be her father. But it wasn't either of those things that made my mind wander, ignoring the film.

No. It was what Jenna had told me in the kitchen. And it was on my mind because I was swallowed by the overstuffed loveseat with my husband on one side and Jenna's husband on the other. He was sitting close enough that he touched me every time he shifted on the sofa, and although we'd sat like that before, many times? This time was different.

This time, I knew he'd been jerking his dick while I was nude on his phone screen.

It wasn't like he didn't have opportunities to check me out, I knew. Our group got together at least once a month, plus holidays, and he and I both worked at the same hospital anyway. Different departments, different wings of the building, but still. He and I passed in the hall or rolled eyes at each other in the cafeteria a few times a week. He'd never shown any interest other than the kind of friendliness we'd had since we'd all been in college.

Well... except that one time, at that '80s party at Theta Psi, where he'd shown a lot more than just friendliness. But I tended not to think about that.

Other than that, Tim had never been anything but a good friend to me. Even Paul liked him, and Paul doesn't like anybody; the two of them had bro'd out a time or two without us girls, and they'd had a great time.

So everything pointed to Jenna being correct: when my buddy Tim had been yanking his meat, it had been his topless wife he'd been lusting over, and not her blurry friend in the background at the end of the dock. That had to be it.

Had to be.

"Here." The second Krabby Patti's came my way, passed dripping from the cooler beside Nick's La-Z-Boy, then handed to me by Paul. His arm draped warm over my shoulder as I felt the thick, cold heaviness of the beer pushing down my gullet like drain cleaner, scouring toward my stomach and leaving nothing behind it but warmth and smiles. I was always careful at these events: three beers will put me on my ass and leave me babbling about current events and pizza toppings, so I backwashed the rest of that first, deep gulp and then shifted on the loveseat, trying to curl my legs up under me.

The can sloshed.

"You're going to drop your beer." Tim, eyes glittering in the low room light, glanced over at me. "Don't spill on me. These are nice jeans."

Paul, on my other side, was laughing with Nick. I rolled my eyes back at Tim and held out my can. "Make yourself useful, then. Hold it while I readjust myself." He took my beer wordlessly, leaving me to squirm my legs up onto the couch, sandwiched between my butt and the cushion. "Thanks."

He squinted at the can. "I've never heard of this brand."

"It's good. Better than that bitter swill you guys are drinking." I caught a black look from Jessie, over on the other side of the room: Movie Night was about movies. Side convos were tolerated, but people were supposed to keep it down unless they were ridiculing the actors. I let the stout warm my belly and then leaned toward Tim, my voice dropping theatrically. "Take a sip. I don't have cooties."

I thought about my backwash as his lips locked where mine had been, his Adam's apple bobbing once as he drew in a little swig. It shouldn't have thrilled me, but that same force that had been distracting me from the movie now made me think about him sucking my spit. "Good, huh?" I whispered.

"It's... not bad." He clearly hated it. "Tastes like coffee."

"Sorta." I took the can back with a smile and nestled into Paul's chest to watch the rest of the movie. But my mind was its own little bitch, still wandering, wondering now whether the hand that had held my beer can had perhaps been the hand which had yanked his dick. While my nude body stared from the fuzzy background of his phone.

And that's where my mind went traipsing.

* * *

I was an absolute whore for my husband that night. I mean, we'd been married a long time and he worked restaurant hours; it's not like the two of us had a whole lot of sex anymore. But that night?

Whoah.

I did things for him I hadn't done since we'd been newlyweds. I sucked and licked and rode and bent over. I lay on my back with my feet high in the air. At one point I found his balls in my mouth and his asshole gripping my adventurous finger. His moans were my reward, a measure of what I could do to him, a confirmation of my own skills; the thrill of the night buzzed in my reddened mind even more than the shocking intensity of my own orgasm. I was overwhelmed by the power I had over his body and the power I'd lost over my own. He was there, his dick plunging into me, but I fucked him for myself, not for him.

I didn't know why I was such a slut that night. Well... actually, I think I did. But I didn't want to admit it to myself, not then. So I just accepted it, my body tingling with the trembling ripples of a climax I hadn't really even known I needed, lying there in a massive gluey puddle of cummy froth, my sweaty body heaving for breath.

I chalked it up to the beer. I was wrong about that. We hadn't done that kind of stuff in years; it was a lot more than just some good stout. The next day, I hopped on SlickPetals. com, the usual retail website I used when I needed merchandise from the spicier end of the spectrum, and ordered a new vibrator. It was one I'd read about online, some Norwegian thing called the Scandistroke 9. I bought it out of my little "play money" account, the one Paul didn't know about.

* * *

Tim passed me in the halls the next day, whistling a Cure song as he meandered past Radiology. "Hey!" His smile was quick and warm, like always, but I caught myself looking for lewd undertones.

Didn't find any. "Hey yourself," I yawned. It had been a long night, restlessly stirring beside a husband who needed his sleep. I didn't want to think about how horny I'd been, not with Tim standing right there. "You're in the wrong part of the building."

"I could say the same about you." Radiology was out of the way for both of us.

I hesitated, then decided there was no reason to lie. "They have a bathroom down here that I like. Out of the way. Quiet. Nobody rushing you."

His nod was conspiratorial. "Yeah. Over by the elevator machine room?" I smiled. "I go there when I need privacy."

That took me aback. "Jesus. At work?" My mind filled immediately with thoughts of Tim hunching over in there, jacking his dick, spewing into the sink while he stared at my nude fuzzy pic... He was frowning, though. "You... you don't mean, like..." When he just kept staring, I flushed scarlet. "Like. Alone time?"

He shook his head a few more times before the cord plugged in and the signal started flowing. "Oh. Oh!" He blushed too. "No! Damn. That's not what I mean. Like... gross."

"Ew," I confirmed, though it was a lie; I'd masturbated at work more than once. "Yeah. No. Not at work, right?"

"Some things are best done in the privacy of your own home," he chuckled, talking a little too fast. "No, Lauren, I was talking about taking a dump."

"Oh. That's classy."

"Classier than what you were thinking of." His smile was back, the warm one. I wasn't quite sure how to reply; there was an elephant in the room now, and I was the one who'd let him through the door. Thoughts bombarded me suddenly, shuffled like cards in a deck: him, yanking it. Me, nude in that pic. Me, licking my husband's taint without really thinking about my husband. My vibrator, enroute. And a party, years before at Theta Psi...

I wondered how much of that he was thinking about too, standing awkwardly in the hall outside Radiology. Well. He probably wasn't thinking about Paul's taint. But was he thinking about any of the rest? "Definitely classier," I murmured, stalling a little, "but probably not as exciting."

Shit. Where had that come from?

He bailed me out by chuckling. "Not much is less exciting than taking a dump."

"Good point." My brain throbbed now, sending out an alarm: this was weird. The next comment would have to be flirty. I wanted it to be flirty. But he and I had been friends for a long time. I was close to his wife. Flirty was impossible with Tim. So I nodded awkwardly. "I'll leave you to it, then. Is it weird, working here without Jenna?" They'd carpooled together for years until Jenna had ditched us for teaching and consulting.

"Yeah. I'm in withdrawal," he sighed. "It's kind of nice, though. Now I can ogle my coworkers without worrying about Jenna catching me."

"You're fucking kidding me."

He glanced at my eyes, gauging whether I was really pissed, and apparently deciding I wasn't. "Relax. Everybody ogles their coworkers."

I smiled in spite of myself. Tim was always fun, light. A simple man, easy to unwind around. I elbowed him. "Okay. Maybe. But don't use the word 'ogle.' Nobody really says that."

"Good point." We considered for a moment before he tried something else. "Leers at? Everybody leers at their coworkers?"

"No." I shook my head, conscious we were once again headed toward flirty. "Too sleazy. How about... checks out." We nodded solemnly. "We check out our coworkers."

"Well shit, Lauren, that's a hell of a thing to admit," he smiled, "but I won't tell Paul."

"You suck," I laughed. His smile grew. "Go take your poop and pine for your departed Jenna."

"Later, Lauren." I watched him go, feeling a little more excited than perhaps I should have, but it wasn't like there was any harm in chatting with one of my oldest friends. Probably.

* * *

We started eating lunch together after that, tentatively, every few days or so. I was working in renal, off in the old part of the hospital, where they were still upgrading the two-prong outlets; Tim's clinic was over in the Russet Center, where the city's most loaded benefactors killed time wandering around, cutting ribbons and handing out oversized checks for clicking cameras.

So, obviously, I let him treat.

"Our cafeteria sucks ass," I sighed as we waited for tableside salads at The Bistro, which was what they called the dining area near Tim's side of the hospital. "This is swanky."

"Don't let anyone give you shit for working in East Wing," he shrugged. "Some folks think only people who work in the labs around here are allowed to eat here, but that's bullshit. As long as you have a hospital meal plan, you can eat anywhere."

"Yeah. I used to eat in Oncology, but then the locals started complaining about long lines because us unwashed masses were coming there."

"Unwashed?" He wrinkled his nose. "That's what I smell. I thought it was the stuffed cabbage."

"Shut up." I let the waiter (a fucking waiter! In a lunchroom at North Bay Medical Center! Magic!) drizzle Green Goddess on my bed of arugula, smiling at Tim. "This really is luxury," I mused.

He yawned. "It's because of the clinics here. PT. Ortho. Rheumatic. Geriatric." His eyes narrowed in that lazy, piercing way he'd always had. "Old rich people like to be in nice settings, so they donate money to build places like this. It's logic."

"It's not the logic that impresses me. It's the dessert cart," I giggled, looking over at where a smiling kid pushed around a trolley loaded with jewel-like pastries and lovely little cakes. "You've always been good at picking the best gigs," I groused.

"Jealousy will get you nowhere," he laughed. "We have some openings over here, you know."

"Fuck that. Real nurses stay on the front lines," I snarled. I'd always been proud of helping out people at their worst, spending my whole career in pediatrics and dialysis. "I'll still come over here to eat with you, though."

"Jenna used to say that."

"That she'd eat with you?"

"No, weirdo. That she'd never get away from patients."

I nodded slowly. It was no secret that she was on his mind. Almost a decade the three of us had worked in this hospital, and although it was a big place, we'd always seen a bit of each other. But I'd never seen as much of Tim as I had since she'd quit and headed back to teach. I nodded slowly. "You miss her."

"She always drove me here," he sniffed in mock sadness. "Now I have to drive myself."

"Poor baby." I thought about her phone, the pic there, the revelation in the kitchen. My mind had been wondering about that pic ever since, the nude one. "She must send you texts and shit to remember her by?"

His smile was a slow, ironic curl. "You know Jenna. Romance is not really her thing."

"I'm not talking about romance," I smiled, swallowing some salad. "She doesn't drop you reminders to pick up more paper towels on the way home? Complaints about her new coworkers? Nudes?"

He arched a calm eyebrow. "One of those shapes is not like the other, Lauren."

I'd gone too far. Fuck. I could never be subtle. "Sorry. But remember, I knew her when. I know how she can be." I thought about some of what she'd done in college, and some of the comments she'd always made here at work: even as a happily married woman, she'd never been shy about checking out guys. And I thought about my own Paul. And about how unsurprised I'd been in the kitchen, when she'd told me she'd sent Tim her boobs... and me. "Girls talk, Tim."

"Well, you know what kinds of texts and shit she's sent me, then." He smiled, and I thought I saw a little glimmer in his eye. And was he staring at my chest all of a sudden?

I shook my head slowly. "Fine, Timmy, you can keep your secrets," I murmured, "but I might know a few of them, too."

He nodded sideways around at the bustling tables around us. "What happens in the Bistro stays in the Bistro?"

I smiled. "Deal."

"Good." He speared some grilled chicken out of his salad. "Let's think about dessert."

* * *

I don't usually remember my dreams, but that night I dreamed I was stripped naked, posing for a photographer, the camera greedy for my body. Shot after shot whirred as I posed, smiling, happy to be showing myself, because within the dream I knew these nude pics were for Tim Kendall.

I woke up so soaked I thought at first that I'd pissed myself.

* * *

It was the week after he and I had started hanging out at work that I started pining for my new vibe.

The old one was fine, really, and I still had the one from before that as a backup, but that one had a tendency to eat batteries as it got older. The one I'd been using was a rechargeable, but as time had passed it stopped holding its charge. I'd been thinking about getting a new one ever since the old one had conked out in mid-masturbation after a bath about a month before. I'd run out of juice before I'd run out of juices, if that makes sense.

And now I was getting emails telling me the new one was out for delivery. Paul was covering a restaurant shift that day, meaning he was already gone and would stay gone until nearly midnight. I was working 3-11 that day, and the mail normally shows up before noon, so I was hoping I'd have a chance to throw a charge into it and give it a test run before work, since (to be honest) I'd been blisteringly horny since Jenna had told me her hubby had whacked it with me in the background.

I knew it was best not to think about the "why" there. Suffice it to say I was well aware I probably shouldn't be thinking of Tim that way. But it was hard to stop.

That's why I was looking forward to that vibe showing up. I waited by the front door through the gentle suburban morning, watching for the mailman like I'd done as a little girl waiting for a new Barbie outfit. The slow trundle of his little postal van up my street led my heart to thumping, a tension that only got worse as he came to the door with nothing but a sheaf of bills and one of Paul's car magazines.

"There's no package?" I whined, leaning out the door.

The guy blinked at me. There are two kinds of mailmen: the friendly, balding kind that makes a special trip out after hours to get that one late package into your hands, and the gruff asshole kind that used to be in the Army and is annoyed that being a letter carrier isn't as easy a gig as he thought. That's the kind we had on my street, dammit. "No," he said simply, pushing the mail out toward my disbelieving fingers.

"Um. You're sure?"

"Yes."

And that was that. Out for delivery, my ass. I didn't tell the guy "thank you," but he didn't seem to expect it as he shuffled off. And then it was time to race back to my computer, checking the shipping progress to figure out what the fuck was up. I gnawed at my lower lip until the laptop caught on that I'd woken it up, sniffed out the WiFi, and updated the postal service portal to tell me when I could expect my orgasm to start.

I blinked at the screen when it said DELIVERED.

It must have gone to the wrong address. "Oh my god." I said it aloud, sitting dumbstruck at my kitchen table, contemplating the disaster my life had suddenly become: a world in which any of my neighbors had taken possession of a vibrator with my name on the address label was a world where I'd probably need to move to a different neighborhood. I swept up from the table, my eyes darting around as I leaned toward my front window, scanning the street for a box on someone's porch and seeing nothing at all. Except a huge monstrosity down the street.

Nope. That box was big enough to hold a mini-fridge. My own box (if you know what I'm saying) was pretty small. Much too small for anything that would fit in a package that size.

In desperation I forced myself to sit back down and concentrate. I thought about running outside and grabbing shit off random porches, but in a world of doorbells with cameras that might be a mistake. Then I thought of calling the post office to see if they could clarify where it was delivered, but when I dialed their number it routed me through fifteen menu choices followed by advice to use their website.

Fuck. The website. Of course.

I punched up my address and searched for recent deliveries, only to find nothing at all: I'd not had it sent insured, or receipted, or however you do it to get proof of delivery. Frantic, I clicked on the retailer's website to look up my Order Status, in hopes that there might be something, anything there...

Holy shit. There it was. I'd entered the wrong delivery address.

"Jesus motherfucking Christ," I muttered, peering at my screen. How had this happened? Incredibly, I saw, I had sent the goddamn thing to Shipping And Receiving, North Bay Medical Center. "I sent it to the fucking hospital?"

All around me my house was still. I'd need to get into the shower, throw on some scrubs, and skedaddle within about an hour and a half. All day long I'd been looking forward to giving my new toy a test-drive, and now I felt that heaviness between my thighs that reminded me how hot and bothered I'd let myself become; the sexual tension in my life, I understood, was becoming unhealthy.

Grimly, I ducked my head into the basement stairs, rummaging past my hoarded paper towels to where Paul kept the AA batteries. I was well aware I'd need my backup, and just as well aware it would need some fresh power. My fingers scooped up three batteries and cupped them carefully as I kicked the basement door shut, checked to make sure the kitchen door was locked, and then took off up the stairs.

Our master bedroom was stuffy after a long, sunny morning, but I didn't dare open the windows; I am loud when I play, and I didn't need the neighbors knowing I was in mid-climax. My clothes slid off my body like an afterthought, leaving me to pad naked across my floor to stand for a moment in the window.

No, I don't need the neighborhood to hear me orgasm. But if they wanted to take a quick peek at just the right window during just the right moment, well, I had nothing to be ashamed of. Along the same lines, the back of my mind clung to the nagging thought of Tim, yanking it to that same nude body in the background of that nasty little picture on his wife's phone; nope.

Nothing at all to be ashamed of.

I could already feel the ticklish trickle of my own juices, making their way out of my slit and onto the insides of my thighs. Quickly, I rustled through my sock drawer and pulled out my two little friends, soon to be retired (as soon as I could get to the mailroom at work and intercept their replacement) but now to give their final effort in the dutiful cause of my orgasmic needs.

And those needs were vital.

Experience had taught me I'd need a towel if I didn't want knowing looks from Paul, and I did not want knowing looks from Paul today. I spread the towel about halfway down my comforter and hiked myself onto the mattress, legs already flopping sideways to open myself wide. I dredged a finger through my slit, just once, feeling out how wet I was; as if I needed to. I came away trailing a long, shining thread of juice linking fingertip to pussy, my eyes widening. Even by my standards, I was soaked.

Absently I wiped my hand on the towel, then jammed the fresh batteries into my backup. I shook so hard that it took me three tries to screw on the battery cap, but eventually I got it cranked down tight and flung that vibe aside, for later. My old rechargeable was in my hand not two seconds later, held in a well-practiced grip above my weepy snatch, my head craning up to stare down between my little mosquito-bite tits, past my belly, to where the wisp of hair led my vibe down, down...

"Ohhhh, fuck," I sighed, feeling my entire body relax like I'd just fallen onto a waterbed lining a hot bathtub inside a sauna. I'd never had a problem getting myself aroused, the mental images always sharp and clear, and this time it was obvious what I was going to imagine: my old buddy Tim, staring greedily at my nude pic with his erection in his hand, rubbing furiously.

The vibe began to whine as it churned against my clit.

At once I started to lose it, digging my heels into the bed as I angled my hips up to slide my slit against the soft, insistent head of my vibrator. I loved this, the sense of connection with my mind and my body, letting my mind toy with thoughts only I would ever know, thoughts that would make my pussy sing. Thoughts I most definitely should not be having, nor even close to them.

My other hand fluttered, unsure what it should do, alternating between an iron grip on my comforter and a harsh, angry pinch on my nipple. It would not have long to decide, I knew: this was going to happen fast and hard, a tidal wave of sexual need giving way to a wall of pleasure I knew I would have to break through. The vibe surged against me, my hips bucking now as I heard strangled gasps start to come tearing out of my throat. How long would this take? Two minutes? Three? Did it matter?

No. Nothing mattered. Nothing but the fire in my brain and the cauldron between my legs, now spread wide across the comforter in a shameless attempt to get the vibe's broad, eager tip pressed as hard against me as I could get it. I needed more: I needed something inside me, deep, and this was the wrong vibe. Wildly I reached for the other one, longer and narrower, my fingers fumbling it to life and then plunging it straight up me with a lewd, needy slurping noise.

And in my mind, Tim's hand sped up. His balls bounced as his eyes ignored his wife and focused on me, nude, preening by the lake...

The orgasm washed over me with a pounding force that felt sudden even though I'd been building up to it all morning, my legs frog-kicking off to the sides while the backup dildo, its brand-new batteries already protesting, slipped deep inside me with no resistance at all, slicked by a sudden gush of wet, hot joy like a dam breaking, bursting through whatever brittle inhibitions I had and filling my body with tingly heat. I know I gasped, screaming, sobbing, my tense muscles unclenching all at once in a state of sheer bliss, soundtracked by the unheard buzz of two discordant vibrators working stoutly all the way to the end.

I trembled. I wept. I could barely breathe. It felt incredible. It was not unexpected: I usually came harder for myself than I did for Paul. But... well. If I was being honest, it wasn't myself I'd been masturbating for.

Better not to think about that too much, I reminded myself. Instead I drew a massive, shaky sigh and checked the clock by my bed. Good. I had time for Round Two.

* * *

I was a shaky, pink-cheeked woman when I arrived fifteen minutes before my shift. "Do I have time to run down to the mailroom?" I asked my boss, snapping my locker closed.

"Why on earth would you need to run down to the mailroom?"

I decided she wouldn't believe a lie. "I messed up and had a vibrator sent here instead of my house."

"A what?"

I felt myself redden. "A sex toy."

She clearly didn't believe the truth, either. "Whatever. If you can make it back up here before rounds, feel free." I thought I could; it had been ages since I'd been down to the mailroom, but the bonus of working in the oldest part of the building is that that's where they put all the support people. The back of East Wing seemed like a solid wall of loading docks, the employees down there acting more like factory workers than professionals at the top rehab hospital along this part of the Shore. I found my way down the stairs two at a time, then barged through a peeling set of fire doors into the grimy maintenance spaces beyond.

Five sets of eyes immediately found me, belonging to five men in coveralls. I felt a little bit like a piece of meat in front of a band of wolves. A gruff mouth opened. "Yes?"

I held up my hospital ID like a talisman, hoping the bright red "RN" on the bottom would give me a little cred. "I'm Lauren Riefkohl? From upstairs? I was hoping I could pick up a package at the mailroom?"

"From today? Or yesterday?" He showed no signs of warmth. He was like that second type of mailman.

"Uh. Today?" I risked a smile. "The website said it had been signed for..." The man was already stalking silently toward a clipboard on the wall, leaving me to trail along behind him like a lapdog drifting with its owner. I felt eyes on me as I passed the other men, the endless female awareness of a male gaze on my ass, which (as I was well aware) still looked pretty good. I counted on my scrubs to mask whatever junk I had in my trunk, but I knew it would do no good.

They'd stare anyway. I wondered whether they could sense my recent orgasms.

The tall man with the gruff mouth studied the clipboard. "Laura?"

"Lauren."

"Lauren," he mused, beady eyes roving along the entries on the board. "Yeah. Came in a few hours ago. Postal service." He squinted. "It got picked up already."

"What? From here?" Jesus, Mary, Buddha, and fucking Moses. This was a catastrophe. My vibe was loose somewhere in the hospital! "You're saying someone stole my package?"

"I'm saying someone picked up your package," he explained slowly. "There's an initial."

"What letters?"

"Who knows? It's a squiggle."

I felt my voice edging toward despair. "Well... wait. Can I see?"

"Sure." He was right, I saw: it was a goddamn useless slash of ink, possibly with a K in it? Maybe? An A? "Was it important? What was it?"

I couldn't possibly tell him the truth. "It was... like, specimen cups? Sterile ones. For urine," I flailed.

"There are about five gross of those over in cold storage," one of the other men piped up from behind me. I knew he was leering at me.

"Um, no? These ones were, like, special. For dialysis patients." The lies, I could tell, were not landing, but the clock was ticking and I needed to get back upstairs. If I was late for rounds, I would probably be suspended. "Look... I really need this package. Can you possibly track down who took it?"

His eyes rolled in pain. "We're very busy, ma'am."

"Please?" I wondered, wildly, whether he'd demand a blowjob or something, and I thought I might just possibly give him one. I thought about batting my eyelashes, or at least arching my back, but what was the point? It wasn't like I had any tits, anyway. "I... it's important."

"Sure. We'll try." He was lying, of course, to get me to leave. And it would work: the clock would see to that. "You're just upstairs?"

"Renal. Yes."

"Whatever. We'll keep an eye out." He shrugged. "I can ask my guys. Anything else?"

"Oh. No. Thanks?" It occurred to me I should probably offer him a twenty, but my purse was up in my locker. "I... I really just want to find it. It's important."

"Yeah. You said." He sniffed, and I took my hint. The men in the mailroom had judged me and found me lacking, and now they wanted nothing to do with me. And I had to hustle if I wanted to make rounds.

So? I hustled.

* * *

By dinnertime I was beside myself, feeling like I'd aged ten years. Everyone in the entire hospital, I thought glumly, was potentially a person who was sitting in their employee lounge, cackling about Lauren Riefkohl and her expensive Norwegian fucktoy.

Mortifying. Absolutely fucking mortifying.

I stomped into the Bistro in a foul mood, knowing they were serving tamales that night and assuming Tim would be there if he was still working. I wasn't all that clear on his hours, and it seemed presumptuous to ask, but we seemed to sort of drift together by osmosis about three or four times each week, either lunch or dinner. The line was quick, the food delicious-looking, and I whirled away from the cashier with my tray thrust unhappily in front of me, stalking toward our usual table in the corner by the window as the evening shadows fell outside.

Tim was there already, picking doubtfully at a tamale. "I think they're frozen," he greeted me.

I sighed. "Of course they're frozen. As if they have some little mariachi band back there, making these fresh? At least they steamed them this time." Last month they'd been microwaved, and gross. My pulse lurched when I noticed a cardboard box on the chair between ours. "What's that?"

"I noticed a package for you down in the mailroom earlier, figured I'd grab it and make sure it got to you safely."

"Holy shit," I blurted. My body sagged to my chair in a state of sphincter-eased joy. "You're serious? I aged five years today, worrying about that box."

"Only five?" He was careful, I saw, to suppress a smile. "Surprised it was that few."

"What?" I was still dazed, staring at the package.

"Yeah. I was, honestly, a little shocked you sent something like that to your work." His eyes glittered, and on impulse I glanced at the tape sealing the box. He hadn't opened it...

"What do you mean?"

His smile came at last, bleak and fast. "The return address. I recognized it. Jenna gets hers from Slick Petals, too."

I felt my skin go hot, my whole body shaking. Jesus. He knew what it was, and now he'd be thinking of me using it. I took a deep breath and risked a smile. "She's got good taste."

Tim's face remained deep inside the uncanny valley. "She seems to enjoy it." That's it, a flat comment. Nothing more.

I stirred. Silence was intolerable now, and he was not helping. Mostly to fill the gap, I added, "This one's from Norway. I think I clicked on the wrong shipping address." He forked up a piece of tamale, eyes still dark. "They wear out after awhile. So. You need new ones," I went on, a little frantically.

He nodded, finally, chasing his tamale with a gulp of Pepsi. "It's fine. I don't mean to pry. I shouldn't have taken it."

"No! You were looking out for me. I really appreciate it." I did, too, realizing suddenly how embarrassed he must be. "Really," I pressed, hoping my smile was warm. Gentle. "You didn't know."

"Yeah. Other than Jenna shopping there, it's not really anything I know about."

"This one has great reviews. It's triple-action." My voice faded when he looked away, leaving me a lame, "If she needs a new one, this one's the Scandistroke 9."

He shook his head a little grimly. "And when I recommend that? And she wonders why I know what it is?" I didn't get it until he went on. "What am I supposed to say? 'Oh, honey, it's the one Lauren uses! She just loves the triple-action feature!'"

I flushed bright red. "Fuck." He was smirking now, though. "Yeah. I guess I should shut up now."

He chuckled. "Don't be embarrassed. It's just that guys... well, most of us probably don't need triple anything. We just... you know."

"Yeah. I'm married. I know." I matched his smile finally. "You just download porn, take a deep breath, and five minutes later you need a kleenex."

He shrugged. "We're simple creatures."

"We are too, sometimes." I was babbling again. "Not all of us take hours to get there." I thought about myself just that morning, humping my old vibe twice in the space of half an hour. "Sometimes it's, like, minutes. Seconds, even."

"Don't tell Jenna that." He shook his head. "She gets jealous easily."

"My lips are sealed." I saw his eyes dart over to the box at that, then back quickly to mine, my blush spreading down my chest now. Lips? Why had I said that? I had no doubt he'd be heading home after this, reading up on triple-action vibrators, thinking about me. And sealed lips. And unsealing them. And then he'd feel his own urgent twinges...

And five minutes later? He'd need a kleenex. I wondered how often he looked at the picture and thought about me, nude.

"Let's eat," I suggested, a little helplessly, and it was only when I was halfway though my first tamale that I realized that, too, was a double-entendre.

No wonder he'd done nothing but look at me.

* * *

We started something new the next week, after he learned there was an obsolete lounge room over on my side of East Wing. "Dude!" he cried when I let him in there, "this is crazy!"

I giggled. "You're overreacting. The old part of the hospital is packed with places like these. Little nooks and crannies with no real purpose anymore."

"Lounges always have a purpose," he snorted.

"Not really. This one's on the top floor, Timmy, and can you figure out why?" I watched his eyes rove around, taking in a vending machine so old it had once dispensed cigarettes. The furniture had never been top-quality, even when some purchasing agent had bought it out of a discount catalog decades ago. Everything had the sturdy aesthetic of a Soviet apartment complex. "I'll give you a hint: the bathroom has two shower stalls."

"Decontamination suite? Like, for epidemics?" he guessed, plopping down on the naugahyde refuge of one of the old couches. I shook my head. "Locker room?"

"Back in the day, before the Union came along, the shifts here lasted forever." I gestured grandly around. "This was where the interns and residents took their naps."

"And showers."

"And showers." I hesitated, then sat down on the other couch. And the next time we went up there, during the quiet hours when we were both on shift between lunch and dinner, I sat on the same couch as him. Then the next time, deep into the night with the rain battering the windows, I kicked off my Hokas and curled my legs up under me as Tim leaned his head back as far as he could. He was not used to working this late.

"I should never have agreed to cover Tate tonight," he grumbled.

"It's time and a half," I reminded him. "It's why I volunteer for the shitty shifts."

"Doesn't Paul get sick of you working late all the time?"

"Nope. His hours suck even worse than mine. He's constantly getting called in to cover in the kitchen, even though he's corporate now."

"He's still at Cheeks and Company?"

I listened for mockery, but if Tim meant any, I couldn't detect it. "Yep."

"The assiest ass-taurant of them all." I found myself smiling, and I could tell he wanted to ask. But didn't.

So I went there, instead. "Yes. He works with a bunch of young waitresses known for showing their butts while serving food. So what?" He glanced at me sideways, and I could tell he had come up with something saucy. He was wondering whether he should let it out. "Say it, dude."

"Even if it might be offensive?"

"What do you think, he's fucking the waitstaff? Spill. I've known you forever."

His smile came quickly. "He works late? You work late? No wonder you're ordering expensive Swedish vibrators from Slick Petals."

I gasped, my smile as quick as his and far more broad. "How rude!" I watched him, my heart beating fast. I felt a buzz between my ears; how I loved flirting! And how I missed it. "It's Norwegian, Timmy."

"As long as it works, I guess," he muttered, his grin fading. He slumped, relaxed, into the faded plastic, with only a narrowing of his eyes to keep me guessing.

And I wasn't done. I felt more than a little giddy, but more than a little wary too. I cleared my throat. "Do you remember the party when we were juniors? The one at Theta Psi?"

His gaze did not change, still with that same squinty laziness. "What party?"

My heart lurched. Did he not remember? Was I so forgettable? "The... like, it was at Theta Psi..."

His lips quirked into a gentle smile. "I'm teasing, Lauren. I remember." He must have seen doubt in my eyes, because he reached over and took my fingers in his just for a moment. "I do! Eighties party. You were wearing green lycra tights and a ripped t-shirt. Cyndi Lauper makeup."

I felt my face warm. "You had Flock of Seagulls hair."

He nodded, still smiling, eyes still soft. "You and I won a round of spin the bottle." He glanced aside. "I remember it all."

"I was wasted." I wanted to pay him back for his hand-holding, to pull his fingers into my lap. It was more emotion than I was quite ready for. "But I remember too."

He sighed, his eyes finding mine again. "You were a good kisser."

Yep. He remembered: the little closet off the big fraternity kitchen, eager fumbles to the minor-key clang of hanging pans... "You were, uh, excited." It came out as a near-whisper, my voice equal parts shy and titillated. We had been very careful never, ever to speak of this. "I remember you needed a paper towel. Afterward."

He looked away again, but he wasn't ashamed. This was a fifteen-year-old memory, after all, a youthful indiscretion. "You basically gave me a handjob, Lauren."

"I did not!" I stiffened, shaking my head automatically, pretty sure I was right. "No! I mean, I touched your butt, and your hips. Maybe, like, a glancing graze over your... your package." I found myself glancing down at his lap, my mind still swirling. "It was while we were dry-humping."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." I remembered it well. He'd been sucking on my tongue, our bodies writhing together under the pressure of the spun bottle, and I'd just been trying to decide whether I wanted to take things further when he'd gasped into my mouth, his body going stiff against mine. His hand had trembled where it groped my left tit; for some reason, I remembered that clearly. "It definitely was."

"Can you blame me?" His chuckle was low, knowing, the chuckle of a man with fifteen years of wisdom. "I couldn't believe I was in there with you. You were so hot."

"Stop."

"You were!" I was smiling though, because who doesn't like being told she's sexy? "No shit."

"I notice your past tense," I wheedled after a pause, still feeling that electric urge to take his hand in my lap.

His pause matched mine. "It's not like I can tell you you're hot now," he pointed out evenly, and he was right. We were very married. "Besides, now? You're a hag."

"I know." I hesitated, waiting until he looked at me. "I've never told anyone."

He nodded. "There's nothing to tell, Lauren. A party game when we were twenty. It was nothing."

"It wasn't nothing," I snorted. "And I doubt Jenna would agree with your blithe assessment." Nope. She would not. Not at all. The woman had always been vicious where her men were concerned.

"She and I weren't really even dating then," he protested.

"You know she'd still be pissy."

"Yeah. Probably."

I wondered whether he knew, whether I should tell him. "Even though she has nothing to say about this particular situation," I probed, watching his eyes. Had she ever told him?

His face told me she probably hadn't. "What do you mean?"

"Just that she doesn't really have much of a leg to stand on, being offended that you and I necked a little. Given what she was up to." He cocked his head, eyes narrowing, and I decided she'd definitely not told him.

So I shouldn't, either. Even though the cat was most of the way out of the bag.

"What was she up to?" He kept his voice low, carefully casual, both of us holding our breath in the presence of ghosts a decade and a half past.

I shrugged. "She was a hottie at a party school."

"Oh. Sure, she fucked guys before me. But that's not what you're talking about, is it Lauren?" He'd sharpened his gaze now, no longer wearing that slacker-boy look. I'd focused him.

I hesitated again, pursing my lips, aware that he was watching me as closely as I was watching him. I cleared my throat. "I'm not sure it's my story to tell, Tim."

"You know I can keep a secret." We both smiled slowly, my glance once again falling to his lap. "Especially where Jenna's concerned."

"You can never tell her I told you. Ever."

"Cross my heart and hope to die."

I licked my lips. "Paul was on the football team in college."

"I remember."

"He got laid a lot."

"Naturally."

I held his gaze. "Lots and lots of girls." I waited, willing him to make the connection, but he just looked at me until I sighed. "Jenna fucked him." He didn't say anything, but his eyebrow rose slowly. "It was before I met him, and I barely knew her at the time. She told me as soon as we started dating."

He puckered his lips and nodded. "No biggie," he said at last, softly. "She got around a lot, I think, but Paul's a good guy. It doesn't surprise me she slept with him." He thought of something. "Just once?"

"I think so. But there's something a little weird about it: Jenna and I aren't sure Paul remembers her." That surprised him, his eyes snapping open. "She says he fucked like three girls that night, and she was number two."

"Awkward."

"Right?"

"Jesus." He sighed, head resting against the back of the couch. "I'm surprised you and she are such good friends."

"We're extremely careful never, ever to talk about it." I thought again about Jenna's many veiled glances at me over the years, almost always when the topic of Paul came up. "That's how we manage: by pretending it never happened."

"Yeah." He shook his head. "Just like you and me never made out in the kitchen closet at Theta Psi." I couldn't stop a smile. "I don't think I ever thanked you. For finding the paper towels."

I giggled despite myself. "I had to. You were a fucking mess." This time I didn't realize it when my eyes went to his crotch, not until I had to drag them upward. "It was a lot. In your pants."

"Yeah." Again, there it was: that lack of shame, that honesty. I decided to offer him some of my own, a bit more honesty from that time before.

"I felt bad."

"What did you have to feel bad about?" He seemed shocked.

I felt a smirk plucking at my lips. I'd never admitted this to anyone, never even come close to thinking I'd ever admit it to Tim. But this was it, the conversation I'd assumed I'd never have with him, the one I still assumed I'd never have again. So if I didn't tell him now, I never would. I leaned closer to him. "It's embarrassing that I was with a guy and he came in his pants."

"Embarrassing?" He laughed. "For you? Not even. I'm the one who came out of it looking like an eighteen-year-old virgin."

I joined him in his laugh. "That's not what I mean." I took a breath. "Okay. I'll just come out and say it: it bugged me that I didn't, you know, cause it."

He shook his head, totally confused. "Oh, you definitely caused it."

"No. I mean, actively?" He still looked perplexed, so I jumped in with both feet. "I should have given you a hand job, Tim. At least."

His eyes cleared. "Ah."

"Like. If you were that, uh, ready? I've always felt like I should have noticed and, you know, helped you out. Done it properly. Instead of ruining your boxers."

"I was wearing briefs back then."

"Oh. Well, same difference."

He shrugged, that laziness returning. It was an odd conversation: every word was more and more dangerous, but every word felt more and more comfortable. "I have to say that at that point? Back then? I would not have said 'no' to a handjob."

"Well, no shit," I giggled, "you're a guy. You'd never say 'no' to a handjob." We smiled, the danger growing. "Should we be having this conversation?" I said it softly, even a bit shyly. I think I was looking for a limit, somewhere, but I knew that a part of me didn't want to find it.

"Maybe not?" It was like he was melting into the couch, he was so calm. "We're just reminiscing, though."

"Yeah." I felt a little thrill, dark and secret, the kind I used to get stealing money from my mom's purse. "Just reminiscing." It occurred to me, way too late, that Tim was probably hard at that very moment. And that it was because of me. Oh, you definitely caused it; he'd sounded confident, even a little proud. I wondered, suddenly, what he was thinking. "About a handjob. That's maybe something we shouldn't be talking about."

"No," he corrected me, quiet but quick, "we're not talking about a handjob. We're talking about not a handjob." I giggled again, despite myself. "You said it yourself, Lauren: you should have done it. Helped me out, you said."

"Yeah," I sighed, "that probably would have been the polite thing to do."

"I should have, too," he added after another long pause, this one somehow thick. I found I had to work to keep my eyes out of his lap now.

I had to clear my throat, deciding to misunderstand him. "Should have what? Given yourself a handjob?"

"No." The squint was back, somehow penetrating. "That's not what I mean."

I felt a shudder run through me. I started to feel a little scared, because this had already gone a bit too far. But I still hadn't found the limit I'd been looking for. The limit I was still looking for. I understood I'd need to make it go farther if I wanted to find it, and I knew I shouldn't.

But I didn't want to stop.

So I let the shudder subside, then thought about what I should say. "Tim, it was a game of spin-the-bottle," I said at last. "Those aren't meant to lead to a magically transcendent experience." When he simply stared at me, I felt my mind falter a little bit. There was a seriousness in his eyes then, and that's when I realized that, for nineteen or twenty-year-old Tim Kendall, his furtive orgasm in that kitchen closet had been exactly that: a transcendent experience.

And I'd caused it.

"Still," he said at length, "like you were saying about being polite? It occurred to me that maybe I should have been polite, too."

My reply surprised me. "I think I would have liked that."

He shook his head, smiling a little sadly. "Bad timing, I guess."

"Missed opportunity." I thought about what Jenna had told me, about the pic on her phone, his dick hard in his hand as he'd studied it. "Um. Do you still think about it?"

"About you? Causing it?" He arched an eyebrow. "Sometimes. Like, now."

"Well, no shit you're thinking about it now. I am too." I took a deep breath. "What about, uh, other times?"

"Like when?"

"Like when you were looking at the picture on Jenna's phone?" It came out in a rush, the words on my mind since she'd said them to me.

His eyes, at long last, went wide. "She told you about that?"

"She's my best friend. We tell each other all kinds of stuff." I waited, my breath held. "You're dodging the question, Tim."

To his credit, he didn't mess around pretending like he didn't know what I was talking about. "The pic with her boobs in it?" he reminded me. "My wife's boobs? My wife, who I love very much? My wife, who has a great rack?"

"She really does," I nodded, my voice sharp with the eternal bitterness of a small-titted bitch talking about a big-titted bitch. "But you know I'm in that picture too, Tim."

His face went serious again. "In the background? I thought that was some optical illusion. Like the Loch Ness monster."

"It's not, idiot," I murmured, elbowing him. "It's me. Stark raving naked."

"Of course it is. That's what skinny-dipping is." He paused, studying me gravely. "What exactly are you asking, Lauren?"

"I'm not sure. But it's been on my mind," I admitted, still shy. "I tried to ignore it, but I couldn't."

"Ignore what?"

"You know."

"No. What?"

I took a deep breath once more, knowing this, too, would have to come out in a single rush. "Ignore the knowledge that you were jerking off with a nude picture of me."

He nodded, slow and sober, then sat a moment in thought before he stirred. "We need to get back to work, Lauren." He said it softly, almost sadly.

I shook my head, feeling a little empty. "Now I feel like a whiny, insecure little bitch," I muttered, "so. Thanks for that."

"Don't mention it." He chose to take it as a joke, so I smiled along with him. Because it was better than curling up in a little ball. It's hard to bare your soul, but it's even harder when you have to go back to work before you really get a chance to bare the important parts.

I wondered if he felt that, too.

* * *

Once again that night after midnight, in the tiny hours after Paul walked in smelling like fryer oil, I rocked my husband's world.

The sex was eager, even desperate, a silent grappling squirm of arms and legs, our bare bodies sliding together in an urgency that felt almost painful in its needy, selfish intensity. Afterward we lay there sweaty, my pussy swollen with his load, staring wild-eyed at each other.

I could tell Paul was more than a little confused: we'd been married more than a decade, and great sex more than once a month or so was rare. I could see in his eyes that he was wondering what had gotten into me, and so was I. I think it was the simple, feral pleasure I felt that a man wanted me.

And not Paul. I mean, he wanted me too: his dick had been an iron bar inside me. He obviously craved what I had. But no, as I lay there, it definitely wasn't Paul I was thinking about. I hadn't gotten closure about what Tim thought of me nude in that picture, but at least I knew he'd wanted to fuck me back in that closet at Theta Psi. And I knew, after our conversation in the deserted lounge at the top of East Wing, that he was still thinking about that.

If that was all I could glean from him so far, that was enough. For now, anyway, because my mind would not stop racing, imagining him spurting all over his belly as he stared at my blurred body.

* * *

I didn't see Tim the next time we both had a shift, and the time after that? It was nods in the hall. I think we both felt pretty awkward about what we'd talked about. I knew why, on my end: I was breaking out the Scandistroke every day at that point, just before my shower (or during it, once), and I was shaking in a quivery orgasm while picturing Tim. Work was a jittery mixture of getting my job done and daydreaming about how my limbs had spasmed on my bed, and how they would again... and again. While picturing Tim. And his phone, with my picture on it. Because one thing was certain, in my febrile brain: if he hadn't been looking at my nudity before? He damn sure was now.

I think I knew that immediately, but in case there was any doubt? He blew it out of the water on the fourth day after we'd had our heart-to-heart in that abandoned residents' lounge.

He sent me a simple text, the shortest sentence possible: "You're right."

"About what?" But that was it, and no amount of prompting from me made him expand on that. I thought about actually calling him, on the phone, and talking to him, but those two words were all he'd send to me. Until I finally sent him a scowly emoji. "Fine. Dinner at The Bistro?"

His reply was a long time coming, before he finally sent back four digits. "My break's at 1830."

So I made my way back to the Russet Center, the bland hospital corridors becoming more and more chic with every step I took through the McKittrick Atrium, then along the marble corridors of the Barbara and Lucius Swentik Cardiac Plaza, until at last my breathless self arrived at the Bistro at 6:25, my mind swirling with him.

I'm sure my agitation was obvious, since I didn't bother ordering any food. All my stomach could handle was a glass of sweet tea, tinkling with too much ice, which I stirred moodily as the big red digits on the wall clock by the door hit 1831. Then 1832. Then he came, lips pursed, his eyes creeping from side to side like a periscope wondering which way the torpedoes were coming from. He nodded at me without smiling. "Fucking patients."

"You should be meaner to them," I advised, and I meant it. This was why Jenna, not I, had gone into teaching. "At the end of the day, you're not their servant. Send them home when the appointment's over."

"Yeah. This one wasn't even my patient." He studied the empty table. "I'm going to get you a cheesecake. Want a cheesecake?"

Suddenly I did, and desperately. "I want a cheesecake."

"Then I'll get you a fucking cheesecake," he announced, marching off toward the dessert cart.

A thought came to me, my belly growling where it had been gnawing at itself just a minute before. "Caramel," I called after him, "not berry."

"Got it." I didn't realize I was smiling until he came back with my dessert and asked me about it. "What's got you so happy?"

"Cheesecake," I said simply. Amazing, how my mood depended on him all of a sudden. It was scary, if I stopped to think about it, so I didn't stop to think about it. "Thanks, Timmy. I owe you." I watched as he set the cake down in the middle of the table, then I noticed there were two forks. "Indian giver."

"Fuck off. I paid," he pointed out, handing me a fork.

"Fair." The first bite was silky and fatty and sweet and perfect, bringing energy that I could almost feel making its way into my whole body. "Fuck, that's good."

"Should be illegal." He was starting from the back, his fork a mass of graham cracker crumbs. I felt a smile make its way to my lips, all my apprehension flushed away.

"So." I waited until he raised his eyes to mine. "What am I right about?"

He chewed pretty deliberately, then swallowed with his eyes on mine. "Okay. Promise not to let this out to anyone?"

"Cross my heart," I parroted back at him, "and hope to die."

He hesitated. "This is a bigger deal than what you told me. About Jenna and Paul."

My heart lurched, then thumped, but my voice was a steady, hissing lash. I was dying with curiosity, and the day had left me in no mood to play games. "Tell me or don't tell me, Tim. But don't fuck around."

He nodded. "Okay," he said again, with a bit of a sigh, "but it's big. Here's the thing: you were right about the pic on Jenna's phone."

I wondered whether he could see my chest shake, my heart was drumming so much by now. I felt like I couldn't draw a full breath. "The pic of her tits?" I pressed. I made myself fork up another chunk of cheesecake, my hand trembling just slightly as I forced it past my lips.

"Nope." The laziness was back in his eyes, that caution. "The pic of you."

"Ahhh." I had to make myself chew, make myself keep my eyes on his, make myself set the fork down carefully against the plate. "The pic of me nude."

"Yes." He shook his head. "I wasn't looking at Jenna's boobs. When I was... you know."

"I see." It was all I thought I could say in that moment, all I trusted my throat to squeak out. I didn't know what to feel. I wanted to pump my fist in the air, to celebrate, to cry, and to flee. I wanted to talk some more, and I wanted to be silent. I wanted to force him to tell me more, but I was afraid of what he'd say.

I wanted to lean across the table and kiss him. Which shocked me.

In the end, he was the one who broke the silence. "So. There's that."

The laugh came out of my mouth without a conscious thought, a red wildness creeping up in my mind. "Dude," I managed at last, watching as his fork hovered over his end of the cheesecake, "this is not a 'there's that' moment, and you know it." His eyebrows rose, and so did the hum in my brain. "Think about what you just admitted, Tim."

He had the audacity to shrug. "It's not much more than I admitted the other night, in that lounge upstairs."

My mind raced, but it had a hard time crossing the finish line. "About handjobs a dozen or so years ago?" I was shaking my head, still feeling my sense of control slipping far away. I swung my head from side to side, making sure I could go down this particular canyon without anyone overhearing. No heads were turning. "That is not anywhere close to you jerking off over my nude picture, like, two or three weeks ago." I saw the line hit, his eyes twitching, but felt duty-bound to add some clarity. "And not even a very good picture."

"Well. That's true," he muttered, "it's really blurry."

"Gee," I snorted, "so glad you noticed." I saw him draw back slightly, the cheesecake forgotten now. He was actually starting to blush. I glanced aside again. "How many times, Tim?" I asked, hushed and urgent, hoping I didn't sound like a crazy woman.

"Times?"

"Times. Have you done that?"

He sat slowly back in his chair. "Remember what you said the other night? All that stuff about the Theta Psi party? How spin the bottle isn't supposed to be a big deal?" He pursed his lips and nodded while my heart soared. I'd known it; I'd felt it. "I mean, maybe it was kind of a big deal. For me."

"Jesus," I whispered, my eyes wide. I suspected I was scarlet again. "All this time... Fuck." The implications suddenly crashed into me. "I was in your wedding, Tim. We've gone on vacations together. We..." I sighed. "Wow."

"Wow." He was watching me closely now. "See? A bigger deal than Paul and Jenna. Unless they're still fucking."

"Jesus," I marveled, quiet as I crossed my arms. Paul and Jenna were not still fucking, I was sure. And this was huge from Tim. "All this time you've been thinking about me."

His eyebrow rose again. "This is probably the last time we should hang out together." I could tell he was forcing an even tone, his mind clearly as much a whirlpool as mine was. "So. Might as well finish the cheesecake."

I laughed, and this time? Heads turned.

* * *

Probably, he'd said. That was probably the last time we should hang out together. Obviously, we didn't stop. I invited him back up to the abandoned top-floor lounge just two nights later, after I'd started a punishing 11-7 but while he was supposed to be in his car. "I was just about to go home," he sighed as he walked through the squeaky double doors.

"Then why are you up here instead?" I thought I knew, but I wanted to hear him say it. My mind was abuzz that night, my legs still trembling from the orgasm I'd given myself just before I'd hopped into my car to head to work. I'd spent the evening sprawled on my bed, exploring the Scandistroke's attachments.

He glanced at me, sitting sideways on the institutional sofa with my shoes forgotten on the floor. I hadn't made a special effort to look hot that night, never intending to meet him; in fact, I'd been a little surprised that he'd still been in the building. When he'd said he'd come meet me, I'd felt my palms start to sweat. "Some chick said she was bored and asked me if I was still here."

"Yes." My heart felt a little surge at that. He was supposed to be on his way home to my best friend. He was choosing to be with me instead. The power in that made me very nervous. "I often get bored." I smiled up at him as he made his way across the dusty floor. "Life in the dialysis ward is not all that exciting."

"Clearly they don't need you downstairs, if you can spend all your time up here," he nodded. He sat at the other end of the couch, just beyond the reach of my outstretched socks.

"I know, right? And yet they still pay me." I snickered. I'd actually been thinking about transferring back to Neonatal. I yawned extravagantly. "I won't keep you long. My boss does tend to get mad if I'm gone all night." The lingering orgasm still curled behind my twitchy pussy. I'm sure my voice was huskier than usual, and I wondered whether he noticed. "I've still got almost my whole shift ahead of me and there are only six renal inpatients. That's a long, quiet night."

"What do you do to kill the time?" He wasn't a nurse, and his clinic didn't have beds. If he ever had to stay late, usually for admissions, he was home by ten.

I waited in silence until he looked over at me, our eyes locking. And then I smiled, still reckless from what the Scandistroke 9 had done to me. "You can figure it out, if you think about it hard enough. Some nurses read books, some drink, some do drugs." I let him think about it. "Me? I usually forget to bring a book, I don't really drink, and I'm too lazy to figure out how to beat the piss tests. So I usually use my privacy a little... differently."

"No way." He was smiling, though, the lech. If I'd actually stopped and thought about what we were doing at that point, it would have blown me away to realize just how far we'd come in such a little time. "Here?" He glanced around the room theatrically, and I decided to shock him.

"On this very couch," I grinned. "Right where you're sitting, Timmy." He shook his head, still smiling. "I do wipe it off afterward, usually."

"Yuck." He thought back to our meeting, weeks ago, down by the radiology bathroom. "I thought you were kidding about getting off at work."

"I wasn't."

"Perv."

"I'm not the one who uses blurry pictures of my spouse's naked friends as spank material," I pointed out, laughing.

"Good point," he confessed, going slightly red. He didn't deny it, though; not anymore. And goddamn, if it didn't make me feel like a whore, knowing he did that. The good kind of whore. The kind of whore I'd sometimes been for Paul, and others. The kind of whore who goes into tiny closets off fraternity kitchens and gets boys off even before I get the chance to grab their junk. As Tim knew well. "Can I admit something?" he said after a moment, and I could tell he was keeping an iron grip on his voice.

I loved that he had to do that, that he was losing control. Because I sure as shit was. "Of course," I said; it was the only reply possible.

"It's, uh, really good," he muttered, almost too quiet for me to hear. He was looking at me, but I could tell he had to force himself.

"Good?"

"Yeah." He licked his lips, fast like a lizard. "You know how not all, uh, sessions are created equal? How the, ah, the finish sometimes feels better than other times?"

The sudden wave of confident delight that washed over me was something I wasn't ready for. I'd always been fairly successful with men, but back when I'd been dating I'd always felt a little bashful of my tiny tits and my inability to deep-throat. So it had always felt like a pleasant surprise when I realized a guy liked me. I'd seldom really had a chance to feel all that confident, but this? This conversation? With one of my oldest friends?

I shuddered a little when I realized this man would fuck me. Probably. If I asked. I cleared a husky throat. "Yes. It's the same for women."

"Well then." He shrugged, once again forcing that nonchalance, that sense that nothing was going on here except a normal conversation. "Since Jenna sent me that picture? It's felt really good."

I flushed crimson while I groped for words. "Isn't that what she intended when she sent it?"

"Yes," he sighed, "but not for the reason she would want." He fixed my eyes again, not smiling. "If you know what I'm saying."

"I think I do." I pushed the words out with difficulty. Wildness waited for me, hiding just on the other side of the next sentence, like the unknowable thrill of getting thrown into the air during my cheerleading days. "Too bad it's such a shitty picture." His eyebrows rose, so I dumped more words into the silence. "Think how much better it would be if, you know, the pic was better. Like, in focus."

I didn't realize I was holding my breath until I let it out several seconds later, with Tim. His eyes glinted again like they had the other night, when we'd discussed handjobs. "Yeah," he said flatly, "that'd be awesome." I caught it then, a quick flicker of his eyes down over my scrubs, to where my feet nestled beside his thigh, the glance giving me a strange hot feeling deep inside. He cleared his throat. "Well. I should get going."

"Don't let me keep you, Timmy," I managed, still all throaty, my smile growing as he checked me out again. I knew he was thinking about that night at Theta Psi, about his hand on my breast, about my tongue in his mouth... "Tell Jenna hi," I added a little distantly, and when his smirk matched mine I felt a definite tingle down below. "You working tomorrow?"

"Yes. But not through dinner. I have a PD in the afternoon."

"I'll catch you. Maybe," I shrugged, and then he was moving toward the door. We never really knew what to say when we parted, I'd noticed. Nothing really felt right. It was never a goodbye, and nothing else really seemed to fit.

"Later," he nodded from the door, and then he was retreating down the old, dusty stairs, his feet steady on the linoleum, leaving me still brimming with that weird heady hotness, that little itchy burn down in my crotch.

But my brain was clear. Wild, but clear. It had known what I was going to do from the moment I'd vaulted over that sentence, the one suggesting a better picture.

What I did next seems impetuous, but it wasn't really. For almost a month now I'd been thinking about my picture in Tim's mind as he came. I'd been seeing him almost every day. I'd been sharing meals with him, relaxing with him, remembering our one minor sexual dalliance with him. I'd been giving myself countless orgasms in between bouncing on my husband's dick, all while thinking of Tim.

So. Not really all that impetuous at all.

I wiggled my feet once inside my socks, then used my toes to push them off to lie forgotten on the cushion where he'd just sat. I needed to hurry; I did have a patient who needed his vitals checked hourly, and I was already late for that. Not by much, but still; I had to do this fast, while my nerve held. I pulled my scrub top over my head and rolled the bottoms down over my hips as I stood, kicking the comfy cotton garment to the floor as if it didn't matter. Then I looked down at myself.

I was no longer a sophomore in college, that was for sure: the cheerleader-honed six pack was more of a one-pack now, but other than that I didn't look bad at all. The underwear was a freakshow, typical workwear: the Casual Basics line from Secret Whispers, the bottom-level durable shit they marketed to... well. To nurses. Full coverage, no frills, comfortable, and with zero chance of showing nips or pubes through the solid fabric.

Well. I was going to show both right now.

I shucked off the underwear, my naked body already goosebumped in the deserted old lounge. Working fast, I scanned the room and tried to figure out where to prop the phone; I am not someone used to sending nudes to men, so I was playing this by ear. My hands shook as I messed with the unfamiliar photo delay, then propped the phone against the back of the couch so that it framed the defunct vending machine across the way: if I leaned on its right side, I knew, I'd be centered in the shot. I blinked and took a deep breath.

Now or never. I thumbed the button to start the countdown.

My bare feet flapped in the dust as I raced across, my mind whirling, crazed, almost shut off until I had my elbow propped high on the vending machine. The phone waited far across the room now, its unblinking lens watching me with about four or five seconds left before it would trip. I trembled, then realized I had no idea what to do with my other hand. Reflexively I slipped it down over my slit, blocking it, my mind still working...

The other pic, the blurry one, had both arms high up in my hair, tweaking my hat. It showed everything I had, or at least it would have if I'd been in focus rather than Jenna's lively rack.

Fuck. Did I dare?

The phone would be gearing up to take the pic now. I needed to decide at once. The instinct was strong now, both hands shooting up into my hair, my body arched tensely until the phone gave its little chirp, recording my nudity forever. For Tim.

Swiftly, I threw my clothes back on. I didn't even look at the pic, hauling my drawstring tight before I jammed my feet into my shoes and scampered back to my patients. The die was not cast, not yet; it wouldn't be until I sent the pic to Tim, and I had a little bit of thinking to do before I pulled that particular trigger. I wondered whether I'd sneak a peek next time I went on break, how critical I'd be, whether I'd feel like applying a filter.

Whether I'd send it at all.

My work consumed me for the next few hours, so my mind didn't dwell on my nude pic. Nor its intended target. It was not until I took a snack break around three in the morning that I finally let myself look at it, think about it, see if I could decide.

The pic made its way to Tim at nine minutes past three. No filters. I let out a huge sigh and put my phone away.

* * *

Never before had I sent a nude to anyone. Not even Paul, who could just take my clothes off if he wanted to. So I didn't know whether there was any etiquette. Was I supposed to send a follow-up? Should he praise me immediately? What did it mean, as the hours lengthened with nothing from Tim? And, too late, the idea that I'd been very stupid: I had put myself out there in the most vulnerable and undeniable way, and in doing so I was trusting him with... well, with everything.

He could get me divorced. He could probably get me fired, too, I thought belatedly: I was pretty sure that getting nude during my shift would be frowned on. He had power over me. Worse, so might Jenna: all she had to do was pick up his phone and notice what I'd sent. And though they'd never shown any wish to screw me over, it rocked me that I hadn't even thought about that before I'd hit SEND.

And? Every minute that passed since I'd done so, sinking into ominous silence from Tim, just made me more and more nervous.

I was in my car, heading home, by 7:20. He still hadn't replied, but I told myself he was probably still asleep; he'd worked late. Nothing by the time I got home at 7:45. Nothing by the time I'd taken a piss and made myself some tea.

Nothing by 8:00, when my bathwater hit the tub and I slipped out of my clothes, the same clothes I'd ditched when thinking about the same guy, but in a very different way. Still nothing by 8:10, as I lowered my naked body deep into the steamy water with my tea mug perched on the side of the bathtub.

Nothing until I'd sunk my head into the water, staring up at the ceiling, trying hard to relax as the antiseptic grime from a long night at the hospital melted into the water, and that's when my phone gave a tentative little peep. A moment later I was sitting up, sprinkling water on the tile floor as I leaned across the bathmat and went for my phone up by the sink.

Paul would be mad about the floor. He was still asleep, probably; we'd do a tag-team switch under our covers as he headed out to work in a few hours and I collapsed into my usual four or five hours of sleep. I'd need to mop first, though.

My phone screen was still lit up as I scrabbled for it, but by the time my wet fingers had knocked it off the counter it had faded out again. It clattered on the floor as, cursing, I swept it up. It was getting wet, which would ordinarily have pissed me off, but I didn't even realize it was happening in that moment as I picked it up, eager to find out what Tim thought about my pic.

Eager? No. More like desperate.

Trembling, my fingers woke up the phone and stabbed at the icon for my message app, the screen winking open to show a waiting message from Tim. I gasped, not sure what or how to feel, then jabbed the message open. My pic flashed on the screen, the last thing I'd sent, then drifted up as the thread downloaded, showing... a reply.

A picture. From Tim.

I know my eyes went wide. I know my heart raced. I know my nipples started aching as they went taut. Because I was looking at a pic of Tim's boxers, grossly stained, the lump underneath long and eager like a mountain ridge. It had been taken from above, looking down along his hairy belly, his flesh foreshortened and out of focus with a pair of legs poking up along the sides of the image.

Jesus. That stain. That naughty, massive stain.

A brief caption materialized just below, his explanation: "You made me do it again, dammit."

I nearly dropped my phone into the bathwater, my laugh a trilling, breathy burst. It had been the perfect reply, naturally, wiping my mind back almost fifteen years, to that closet where the two of us had shared the same secret we were now sharing again, far less innocently. My brain flashed an answer, and I wasted no time in thumbing it out through the dampness of my fingertips. "I'll bring you more paper towels next time I see you."

And then I laughed again, because I knew there would be a next time. He wasn't going to tell Jenna, and I wasn't going to get fired.

* * *

I wondered whether he was on pins and needles afterward, because I certainly was.

How do you interact naturally, at work, with someone you've just traded racy pics with? It was something I did not have any concept about, but just ignoring Tim was not going to happen. We'd have to meet sometime, knowing we'd both seen what we'd seen. So I sat waiting in the Bistro during lunch a couple days later, once more picking at my food while I waited for Tim.

We'd had no communication at all since my joke about the paper towels.

He made his way to our table, steering his hips among the other diners, and then took his seat next to me. He hadn't even planted his butt down when he was glancing over at me. "Sorry," he said at once.

I'd already had my mouth open, but the hi I'd been planning on had to morph into something else. "Wait. What?" I blinked. "What are you sorry about?"

"I feel like the picture I sent was... like, too much." He said it softly but clearly, his eyes darting around to make sure nobody could hear us. "You know. Inappropriate."

I sighed, my mind calmer at once. I was glad he was nervous, because I sure as hell was. I reached out again as I had on the couch so many nights ago, my instincts telling me to pat his hand. He watched our fingers meet. "It was definitely inappropriate, Timmy, but I'm not sure it was as inappropriate as the one I sent." I let myself smile. "Besides, it's nothing I haven't seen before."

"That's right," he nodded, "you're a nurse."

"That's not what I mean. I mean you, having an accident on your clothes." I waited for his rueful smile to match mine. "We're just doing a throwback, I think."

"A throwback," he mused, forking up some peas. "Yeah. That makes sense."

"Makes perfect sense." My hand barely shook as I picked up my sweet tea. "Nothing all that unusual at all."

"So, should we find a closet and throw back some more?" The question came out with that usual flat sense of sarcasm from him, and I found myself giggling.

I should not have hoped he was serious, but I kind of did anyway. "Careful, Tim," I murmured, "or we'll get ourselves in even worse trouble than we already have."

He chewed quietly, then slid his hand out from under mine. "Have we?"

I stared at him. "I'm sending you nudes, Tim."

His mouth quirked up in a half-smirk. "It was nothing I hadn't seen before," he said with heavy irony.

"Yeah. Blurry. You could barely see anything."

"Still." He kept watching me thoughtfully. "You knew why you were sending it."

I forced myself to look straight at him. "Yes. I did."

"I was glad you sent it," he told me after a pause. More peas. I was amazed at that; I could not eat, suddenly.

I felt my ears redden. "I could tell you were glad." It came out awkwardly, but we both smiled and I started to feel better. There was still a damn big elephant in the room, but I was starting to realize that was nothing to be afraid of... though maybe it should have been. "I kinda figured you would be. If you were glad with a fuzzy pic at the end of a dock, you were bound to be even happier with something a little more obvious."

"Yeah." He took a deep breath. "Definitely obvious. I might have looked more than once."

My smile grew warm. "I feel like that's a compliment."

"It's definitely a compliment." He glanced around again. "It took me no time at all, honestly."

"No?"

"No. I was about two minutes, start to finish." We both giggled. "It's usually longer."

I thought about that, then decided there was no harm in telling him. "Remember that package you signed for from the mailroom?" He nodded. "I used it after I sent you the pic. In bed, once Paul went to work in the morning." I knew I shouldn't be admitting this, but I couldn't stop myself. Just as I hadn't been able to stop myself that morning, my hair still wadded up in a towel after that bath; no sooner had the door closed behind my husband than I'd been staring at Tim's pic and digging the Scandistroke into my pussy. "Might have been looking at your pic when I did it," I added.

His eyes had that glint once again. "Did it... feel different?" He seemed unsure whether he should ask, but I knew why he had. So I didn't lie.

"It felt amazing."

He nodded at that, still carefully neutral, then finished his peas. "I think you're right, Lauren," he sighed, "we've gotten ourselves into some trouble here. Like... I probably shouldn't tell you how much I liked your pic."

"You definitely shouldn't show me how much you liked my pic," I nodded, flushing a bit more. "And I shouldn't send you any more, obviously."

"Nope." He looked away. "Not that I'd object, you know. If you did."

"I bet you wouldn't." I hesitated, still fidgeting with my food. "I liked sending that first one," I confessed.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Because I figured you'd like it." I was speaking so very quietly! "I was nervous until you wrote back."

"I was trying to decide whether to send you my pic," he admitted, "and which pic to send."

"Really?" My eyebrows shot high. "There was more than one?"

"Yeah." He sounded bashful now. "One with my clothes totaled, the other without the totaled clothes."

"Oh. Shit," I blurted, now quite red.

"Yeah. That one was a bit graphic." He was still watching me, very carefully. I knew my reactions were important to him, and critical to whatever would happen next. And I still didn't know what I wanted that to be.

I bought time with another sip of my tea. "I usually like graphic things," I muttered finally.

He nodded. "So if I sent something like that, you wouldn't mind?"

There it was. A chance to stop this, whatever it was. And like a woman buying a new car, who doesn't really want the "special window treatment" but feels she can't say no because she's already been there three hours and knows that she'd have wasted her time if she leaves empty-handed, I didn't feel like I could do anything but agree. "I'd love it."

I saw Tim's Adam's apple bob, once, and reminded myself this was just as exciting for him as it was for me. That gave me a warm, tingly feeling. "Okay," he muttered.

I was already down the rabbit hole. Why stop? "Do you have it on your phone now?"

His eyebrow rose. "Are you kidding? I deleted it as soon as I could. The last thing I need is a picture of my own wet junk all over my phone."

I shivered, and wondered whether he saw it. Wet junk... "Makes sense. Never mind."

His smile was a slow, crafty grin, whatever nerves he'd been feeling now fluttering away. "Why? Would you want me to send it to you right now?" He searched my face, his grin spreading. "Jesus. You are a perv, Lauren."

"You're the one offering to send dick pics, Tim." I leaned in to say it, my voice going lower. Huskier.

He looked away a moment. "You didn't see it? Back at Theta Psi?"

"No. I felt it, but not, you know, with my hand." He'd been hard as a rock, humping my leg as ferociously as any dog, but it hadn't occurred to me to put my hand on it. "I was shy. You touched me a lot more than I touched you."

"I was kind of excited."

"Understatement of the year." I ignored the warning light flashing in my brain; I'd been doing a lot of that lately, with Tim. All around us the Bistro bustled, our hundreds of coworkers milling around with their chili bowls and tortellini platters and chicken breasts, and here we were chatting about masturbation. I hesitated a bit longer, but I wanted to say it. So I did. "I wonder if you'd do any better these days."

"I bet I would," he nodded seriously. "You would, too. You'd probably touch me."

"Probably." We'd drawn closer and closer between our chairs, both of us starry-eyed and smirking. "I'd probably give you that handjob nowadays."

Tim licked his lips at that, but not in any kind of calculated flirty way: it was the flicker a lizard does when he's testing the air, sampling the vibe, trying to figure out whether he's in any danger. He played it cool, though whether he was playing or not was left up to me to try to figure out. "We talked about this. Up in the lounge." He stared hard at me. "I'd probably help you out, too."

I nodded quietly. I could play it cool, too. "I scratch your back, you scratch mine."

"Except not really scratching. And not really backs."

I trembled. I knew he could see it, and I didn't care. "We shouldn't be talking about this."

"But we are."

"Yes." I surveyed the Bistro quickly, as he'd been doing, and leaned in. "Can I ask you something, Timmy?" The wildness was on me again, and I was sliding deeper.

"Of course."

"Are you hard?"

He cocked his head, eyes looking away. "What, right now?" I nodded seriously, and he finally sighed. "As a rock."

"Yeah. I'm soaked." I drew my own deep breath. "That's why we shouldn't be talking about this."

He kept his silence for a moment or two, and when he spoke his voice sounded strange. Choked, almost. "What should we be doing, then?"

I felt my lips curl, my excitement at a high pitch. I feared the puddle I was leaving on the Bistro chair. "Here? In the restaurant? Nothing." I took one more sip of my tea, a balm to my dry throat. "If we were upstairs in East Wing? Alone?"

"Where you got nude for me?"

I gasped, grinning. "Yes. There." I shook my head. "If we were up there, do you think we'd be talking about this? Be honest."

His head still tipped sideways, he pursed his lips. "I see what you mean. Why we shouldn't be doing this kind of thing."

I pressed on, daring. "Does that mean you won't send me the kind of pic we talked about?"

He swallowed again. "Let's just eat our lunch and see what happens," he dodged.

And I? I sat back in my chair, still smiling, like a lawyer who's just won an objection. The buzz in my brain was all I could focus on now, a mix of excitement and worry and more than a little fear.

I already knew I'd need to head over to the scrub locker and grab some new bottoms. These would look like I'd pissed myself slightly, I knew. I'd need to hurry up getting out of here. And the longer Tim's smile stayed on his face, the hungrier I got until I, too, started to eat my peas.

We'd see what would happen, just like he said. I realized I'd need to start being careful with my phone. Paul better not see what I figured Tim would be sending.

* * *

The dick pic did not take long; it came that very night. And so, copiously, did Tim.

I was worried I'd need to make myself avoid looking at it until after I was off work, but that wasn't all that difficult; it was a busy evening, with two patients coding elsewhere on the Wing. By the time I reached my car it was almost midnight, with two texts waiting for me. With what sense of duty I had left, I opened my husband's first.

Paul was telling me he'd need to close the South Shore location that night, something about two line chefs calling out. So he'd need to stay on until at least two am, probably a little later. It probably should have given me a faint sense of unease to know that my husband was going to be at a restaurant most of the night with waitresses famous for how much bare ass they could get away with showing, but I was able to put that off to one side because the other text was Tim's.

"Holy fuck," I whispered to myself in the car, crouching over my phone screen like a kid with his dad's Playboy. But Playboy had never shown an image like this one, a long, thick, post-orgasmic penis lying across Tim's belly, glistening with slathered semen that now oozed off its veiny length to glue itself to his pubic hair, tightly coiled and matted with even more cum. He'd included his hand in the pic, one finger helpfully extended down into the shadows beyond his dick, between his thighs, where that finger propped up his balls into the camera's invasive flash.

Fuck, it looked... fuck. Raw. Powerful. Brutal. I wanted it.

My thumbs flashed over my screen at once. "Someone had a good evening." I thought about including a heart emoji, but decided that might be too much. Only after I smacked SEND did I realize I should have kept my cool and let it rest overnight.

But I wasn't feeling cool, and I didn't mind that he knew it.

Neither did he, it seemed; at once I saw the little digital dots indicating he was replying, his words flashing onto my screen a few moments later. "Too much?"

I thought about that, sitting in my car with the windows already starting to fog. Honesty, or levity? I could do both, I decided. "It IS a lot," I replied, smiling giddily, "but too much? No."

He took a bit longer this time, opting for levity too. "It was a very big load. It shot all the way up to my face."

I hadn't seen a man masturbate before, so I couldn't really relate, but he seemed to think that was impressive. For the second time that day, I was ruining my panties. "Motivated, were you?"

His reply thrilled me. "Might have been looking at your pic again."

I nodded to myself. "Might have to send another." Holy shit, I needed to get the fuck home!

And I did send another, later, sprawled across my bed in the aftermath of my own crazed orgasm, my Scandistroke 9 smeared with lube and my own cream, the vibe draped artfully along my nude thigh with my reddened pussy wide open and soaked. You could see my smile in the background as I held my phone angled brutally, my whole body contorted to get Tim's money shot. "Goodnight," I thumbed, once I'd cleaned up.

Oh. I had sent a text to Paul, too, but it was a lot tamer. "Be safe, honey."

* * *

I was a little more comfortable next time Tim and I met. Before, after I'd shown him my naked body, after he'd replied with his cummy boxers, I'd been nervous because I hadn't known how to manage this kind of thing. There's no manual for swapping nudes with one of your oldest friends. But this time, I was a lot more comfortable.

And, hell, a lot more horny.

After all, things had worked themselves out last time: we were still having our fun, and I could still tell myself this was all harmless. I was sure they'd work themselves out this time, too. His text reached me at midafternoon. "When's your break?"

"Whenever yours is," I replied at once; we had a new nursing intern, and I was sure she'd be fine with the five or six patients we had in that day. All I really had was paperwork. "Lounge? Or Bistro?"

He picked the lounge, so it was with a light step that I bounced up the unused stairs at the back of East Wing. The excitement was back to stay. Nothing was faked now, no more "playing it cool." This was real, an actual thing we were doing, the sight of his glistening fat dick moving this to another level.

He must have loved seeing my pussy.

I grinned my way into the lounge, but he was already there with his butt on my cushion. I stopped short as I made sure to latch the door behind me. "You're on my side of the couch, Timmy. Scoot over."

When he looked up, I could see he had the same excitement that I did: yes. He'd loved seeing my pussy. "Make me."

Instantly I went red. I'm sure my vag started leaking, too. "Move, or no more nudes."

"No more nude pics from you means no more nude pics from me, Lauren."

The wildness came faster and faster with each meeting now, and I had no more hesitation with him. "I don't mean pics, dude." Well, I had meant pics, but I didn't anymore. This was a surrender so rapid I wasn't even aware I should fight it, and it wasn't a surrender to him. It was a surrender to my own tension, my own want. I swept my loose scrub top off my body with a flourish and tossed it at him, standing there before him in my bra. I felt a swirl in my brain when his eyes widened, stapling themselves to my chest. "Move your ass."

He was still trying, I could see, clinging to that same old laziness he'd shown so many times. "Or?"

I dived again into the deep end. "Or I don't keep going."

"Wow." He shook his head, eyebrow slowly rising. "I never knew you were quite this adventurous, Lauren."

I waved a hand at myself. "It's a bra and panties. You've seen me in a two-piece before. So how adventurous is it, really?" This was, of course, a lie: there's a huge difference between underwear and a swimsuit, after all, but the flirtation was just too much fun.

"It's not a bra and panties," he pointed out, waving a hand at my legs. "You're still wearing your scrub bottoms."

The swirl was a tingle now, and not just in my brain. My mind was full of that picture he'd sent... swollen dick, swamp of cum, propped balls... I yanked at my drawstrings and felt the quick tightness of the waistband over my hips, where they swelled out from my waist, still smooth because I denied myself ice cream; I had not thought to match my underwear when I'd gotten dressed, but he wouldn't care.

Under the circumstances, even simple white Casual Basics would get him going. I knew that as I stepped out of my scrubs, somehow managing to get the things off over my Hokas without falling flat on my face. "Move. Your. Ass."

"Jeez," he sighed, "you really like this seat." He went to get up, but suddenly froze all hunched over. His eyes met mine as he sat back down. "I'd move, but it'll be embarrassing," he informed me quietly, his own face flushing now.

I chuckled then, the laugh of a woman who knows she's got a man on the hook. I felt power, much more power than I would ever have thought, more than I would have looked for... especially over my best friend's husband. My mind flashed back to college. "I always seem to have an effect on you. Just like at Theta Psi." I cleared my throat, feeling my nipples press against the inside of the bra. "Has it always been that way? All these years?"

"We see each other, what, eight or ten times a year?" He shrugged. "Every single time, I think about that time in the closet with you."

"About kissing me?" I was throwing fuel on my own fire, as well as his. "About touching me?"

"Groping, Lauren, not touching."

"Yeah." I took a step toward him, my ears ringing. "Groping. You couldn't get enough of me."

"I told you," he sighed, reaching down to adjust himself, "it was a big deal for me, being in that closet with you."

"Big," I nodded, "and long?" His eyes glittered. I was on fire. "You going to move? Or should I just sit in your lap?"

"Fuck," he groaned, leaning his head back on the cheap vinyl. "You're killing me, Lauren."

I was killing myself, too. I'd stepped to within just a few feet of the couch, close enough that he could smell me. Almost close enough that he could feel the heat off my skin. I stared down at him, hot and horny, knowing exactly what I was doing to his body. "Yeah," I muttered, "I guess I am."

Tim's Adam's apple bobbed again, his face a little fearful as he stared up at me. A little fearful, but a lot aroused. "What are we doing here, Lauren?" It was a rasp, coming out from somewhere past his throat, past his reason, and I felt my lip curl lewdly upward.

"I'm trying to get you to move out of my spot, Tim." The power was growing, solidifying, becoming its own thing: the idea that my body could do this to him gave me a feeling stronger than drunkenness, stronger than drugs. It was sweeping me along with him, pushing both of us hard. I was soaked, and I knew he was stiff. "I'm threatening to stop getting nude for you unless you move. Did you not hear me the first time?"

He cleared his throat. "And yet, there you are. Nude."

"This isn't nude." The ringing in my ears made it hard to hear myself, and I could feel my face freeze into a broad smirk. I desperately wanted to strip. Even more than that, I wanted him to want me to strip. "Move your ass and I'll show you nude."

His head shook once, slowly, his face showing disbelief; a moment more we stood there, staring at each other and smouldering, before he gathered his feet under him and rose slowly. I struggled to hold his eyes in mine, even as he reached a hand deliberately down and pulled an obvious hard-on into some semblance of control; he was not wearing scrubs, or it would have been impossible.

You can always see a hard dick through scrubs.

He kept staring as he shuffled sideways, down to his end of the couch, and plunked is butt down where it belonged. His throat bobbed one more time, the nervy excitement in control of him as much as it was me, and then he gave a strange little smile. "I moved my ass."

"Okay." He wanted this, and I wanted this, so I didn't hesitate. It was time for me to become the picture he'd been masturbating over for all these weeks. Smoothly my hands crept up my back, elbows wide, my eyes still on his as I worked the bra hooks back there. One, then two, then the elastic prison eased across my ribs and my tits stood proud in the dusty room as I shrugged the thing off me and onto the floor. It had barely landed before my fingers curled inside the plain, sturdy waistband of the Secret Whispers panties and I slid them down my legs.

I hadn't trimmed in a few days and I was flushing scarlet all the way down to my nipples. I knew that neither would matter a bit.

"Fuck." His voice was a throaty, sighing whimper as he feasted his eyes on my naked body, eyes wide and roaming. I didn't mind. It had been so long since I'd been an object of this kind of desire, this kind of worship... maybe it had been since that buzzed night in the closet at Theta Psi? Perhaps?

The eyes on me then were the same as the eyes on me now. I straightened, striking a pose, saying nothing at all. My body was doing all the talking. I was well past hiding anything, well past being ashamed: my nudity was his now, his to drink in and think about and enjoy. His to remember when he pulled his dick out later. Or, hell, now...

"Take it out." The voice that came out of me was a hushed, grating breeze, heavy with lust.

He was nodding before I'd even finished talking, his hands fumbling with his belt, his snap, his fly. I felt myself panting, drawing great deep gusts of breath, excited like a college freshman in the backseat of her first car with an older guy, thinking I was ready for anything while really being ready for nothing. But the thing was in motion now, its momentum unstoppable, and he was about to take his meaty dick out for me.

I had a hard time believing this was happening. But it had been weeks in the building, the waiting, the expecting. So how could it not happen? And if it had to happen, why not here? Now?

He glanced down at himself, one final moment of fake modesty before he took that last irrevocable step, the same one I'd just gladly taken. Nothing but a hot red flash was going through my mind as I watched him shimmy his khakis down his hips, hiking his butt off the couch to get everything down to his knees, and all of a sudden it was there, tall and straight and throbbing in the hushed, supercharged bubble that my own naked body had created. I heard myself gasp, taking it in, and at last I got some small idea of what Tim had just discovered:

There's a difference between seeing something in a picture and having it appear before you for real.

It was probably just a pretty normal penis, really, but in that time and place? It looked mammoth and tempting and glorious, jutting high and hard from among a wild thicket of pubes, pointing straight at me with a glimmering diamond of precum nestling in his piss-hole like a shining, unblinking eye. I could feel myself awaken as I watched Tim curl his fingers around his shaft. I cleared my throat hard. "More."

"More?" He sounded as raspy as I did, but when I just nodded he seemed to understand. His department made them wear polos, and he spent a couple of seconds fucking around with the buttons before he got the shirt over his head. I wanted him as nude as me, hiding nothing.

And so I knelt, not even thinking straight, sinking to the cold gritty floor so that I could take his shoes off. Mine were still on, but that wasn't important: what mattered was getting his khakis off, and I was determined to help. When I looked up, the second shoe wedging slowly off over his heel, all I saw was that dick, his hand, his hairy body.

I don't think I'd ever wanted anyone like I wanted Tim in that moment.

"Just... just stay there," he croaked, his eyes wild; he kicked his pants off as soon as his shoes got clear. "I want to cum."

"Yes." I stayed on the ground, suddenly uncertain. Did he want a blowjob? Did he want me to fuck him? I'd have tried to do either, but before I could make up my mind I saw his eyes burning into my body and I knew what he wanted: he wanted to jerk it, and he wanted to stare at my naked body while he did it. The awareness brought my power back, flooding it through my mind, making me feel like a goddess as I straightened once more to my feet and struck a pose, hip thrust out and arms up in my hair, feeling cheerleader-sexy.

Just like the blurry form in the picture he'd been craving.

I was his picture then, but living and breathing and smiling, no longer blurry from just a few feet away. I watched him as he masturbated, unexpectedly turned on, trying to take it all in. Because I was in the moment, just this one moment, with no thought I'd ever see this again.

No thought I'd ever feel this again.

His eyes on my body were a drug, like the roar of the crowds in college, as I'd cheered, like Paul fucking me on my wedding night. But this was different, so much closer and more intimate, a secret dirty and shameful that felt fresh. New. Sublime. Daring. Selfless, even, my heart leaping because I was letting Tim use me as his muse, his inspiration, with no thought to relieving my own needs even with my juices seeping down my inner thighs. This was about him, his desires, his pleasure.

Just as it had been in that closet years ago. And yet much, much stronger.

So I watched him, my body hot and tingly, staring at that hard, ready hard-on, at his hand gripping himself hard, at the balls cradled in his other hand. I heard him, the strong eager slicking noise as his thumb swiped precum around his head, then down his fat, stiff staff; he breathed deep and slow, and I heard that too. I smelled him, the strong sweat of a man in heat, the smell of clean male skin tickling at my own body, turning me on.

He pulled hard, brutally, pummelling himself. I could see his knuckles whiten rhythmically, clutching harder every time his circled thumb and forefinger reached the angry purple flare of his head, squeezing himself just there. The sight intoxicated me, for I'd never before wondered just how it was that a man would give himself pleasure.

I wondered now. I deeply, even desperately wanted to know. I longed to see him cum.

He was breathing more deeply now, more raggedly. I held my pose, arms and legs taut, wondering whether I should shuffle a step forward and give his hands something to reach for, my body to grope... but it felt wrong. This was already a plunge into a depth neither of us had really expected, and I could see in his eyes that I was already what he wanted, what he needed. And so I stayed put.

He started holding his breath then, deep gulps of air, his hand a blur along his slippery shaft, and suddenly his other hand was lightening its grasp: I remember noticing his balls bounce freely on his palm, a separate percussive slap, soft as an undertone to the frantic sliding noises his dick made. His legs curled under the couch, then shot straight out with his toes tightly curled. His motions slowed suddenly, his hand pulling only on that last, eager inch below his head, gripping impossibly tight as his eyes found my pussy and stayed there, locked in place, his breath sucked silently in now...

The room grew to a tense, wild pitch. And then he came for me.

I knew it was going to happen just before it did, the same way I knew Paul or any other man was about to burst: I saw it in his eyes. I heard it in his breath. I didn't feel it in his body, because he was three feet away from me, but I felt like he was pressed against me, close, the two of us in synch. He let out a gasp, or maybe it was me; most likely, we both did it at the same time as a tentative gush of white semen made its way out onto his clutching hand.

It did not go far. So I was not prepared for the force and power of the second spurt.

That one flew hard and thick from the head of his dick, spewing far up to his nipples before it landed with a wet slap. I felt my lips curve into a senseless, ecstatic grin before he went for the third time, helplessly pumping his load all over his belly, his chest, up to his neck.

He was lost now, stuck in his orgasm, letting it take him and hold him right before my eyes, and his gaze on my bare mound reminded me that I was the one causing it. Finally I lowered my sore arms, covering my grinning mouth, staring as his dick kept driving shot after shot up to paint his hairy body, his hand still now as the two of us slowly, deliciously, let ourselves relax.

Time passed, but not much; we stared at each other, the gravity of all this sinking in slow but deep, our shared bond growing with every dribble from the head of that exhausted penis of his. I stirred at last, uncovering my smile, my body and mind radiant as I stood before him and made myself his fantasy.

That was something we both wanted.

My voice was gravel as I spoke to my panting friend. "Hang on," I managed, "and I'll get you a paper towel."

"Is it weird," he wondered later, as he swept semen out of his belly button, "that you've seen your best friend's husband's cock?"

I smiled, still nude, still horny. "My best friend has seen my husband's cock," I pointed out, my mind thrilling as I used such a dirty word. "Done more than see it, too."

His smile was greedy. Everything was different now. And neither of us wanted to go back.

* * *

Paul didn't understand why I asked him about his own masturbation habits the next day, but he was a good sport: he whipped it out and tried, while I watched from the chair across the bedroom. It felt forced, manufactured, a self-conscious thing for him, and as the moments stretched I could feel him get more and more tense. There was no problem with his hard-on (there never was), but I could tell this wasn't really doing anything for him.

So I got undressed. That, too, felt forced.

In the end he got tired of jerking it, took me into bed, and fucked the shit out of me. And that was pleasant in its way, as it always was, but at that that point I was honest enough with myself to admit that I was craving something better.

Or, at least, something different. I still wasn't ready to go back.

* * *

"Can I ask you a personal question?"

I eyed Tim in disbelief from across the cheesecake we were sharing... peanut butter this time, because it was what the staff had left unsold on the dessert cart when they'd gone home. It was that, or some unwanted dishes of flan.

Stars shone through the tall windows of the Bistro, empty but for the relics on the dessert cart and the one janitor buffing the Atrium nearby. Tim had asked his question coolly, almost quietly, and my smile was devious in reply. "You whacked your dick to my nude body a couple days ago," I pointed out, nearly whispering. "Under the circumstances, we're way past asking whether you can ask me a personal question."

He nodded, but a small smirk appeared on his lips to match mine. We'd been trading a lot of those kinds of smiles lately. It felt good, but also bad. "Whacked my dick? I haven't heard that expression since I was in, like, high school."

I giggled. I'd been giggling a lot since I'd seen him that afternoon, the first time since he'd cum for me. Things had been hurried right after that, awkward, but now I was feeling giddy as I remembered how I'd felt getting nude for him. "You'd prefer something else? Jacking off always sounds so crude." I took a lump of cheesecake from the fork, then passed it to him; we'd decided to share, so we wouldn't get yelled at for making extra dishes after hours. "What's your question, Timmy?"

As if sharing a fork mattered between us now, anyway.

He paused. "How's your sex life? Like, with Paul?"

I reddened, but it was a fair question. So I gave him a fair answer. "A lot better lately. Mysteriously. Unexpectedly." I cleared my throat. "I've been feeling... different. Lately."

"Different?"

"Sexier." I was scarlet now, an quickly. Funny how fast that had happened, the buzz in my head pressing on the inside of my skull. "I wonder why."

The smirk was still on his face. "I was just curious. Because Jenna and I have been, you know, getting it on more. Just recently."

I burned now. I probably shouldn't draw the obvious conclusion, but my mouth said it before I could even think not to. "You're thinking about me when you fuck her." It wasn't a question, really.

He drew back, slowly, the fork poised over the cheesecake. "You sound pretty certain."

"Guess why?"

He nodded, then carved into the cake. "Because that's what you're doing."

I shrugged. The cat was out of the bag, since the other night, the latest of many cats that had leapt out of many bags. "We're going to have to stop, at some point."

"Yeah." He sighed. "Just... I mean, it felt good. Really good."

"I'm glad." I was, and I punctuated it by taking his hand. Only after making sure the janitor was out of sight. "Really. I liked... doing that. For you."

"I feel like I owe you." It came out quickly, seriously, something that had been on his mind. Since Theta Psi, I knew, and my thumb started stroking the back of his hand.

"It's not about owing me."

"Twice you've made me cum, Lauren."

I giggled again. "More than twice, Timmy, and I've got photographic proof."

He laughed with me, ruefully. "No. In person."

I waited, my heart pounding, until his words faded away. "Why, Timmy Kendall," I murmured, still flushed, "if I didn't know any better, I'd think you were offering to fuck me."

"No!" He flushed now, too, the fork halfway to his mouth. "I mean. Not particularly."

"Because that would be completely wrong. Totally wrong."

"Absolutely wrong," he nodded, and our smirks matched again. This was bad. We both knew it was bad, but it had been bad for a month already. Hell, in a way, it had been bad for almost 15 years! "I... well, sure, I'd fuck you. But that's not really what I meant."

"You meant just making me, like, orgasm." I was enjoying this, like a child enjoys moving her hand too close to a candleflame on Christmas Eve. The buffer in the Atrium grew quieter as the janitor moved away, leaving us even more alone.

"In person," he nodded, serious again. "Because you keep doing it for me. Not because I want to, necessarily, although I do. You know."

"You should stop talking."

"I should." He turned his hand over, underneath mine, and held me gently. I wondered whether he could see my pulse. "I just want to."

"To repay a debt?" I squeezed. "I didn't do that the other day because I expect something, Tim. I did it because I knew it would make you feel good."

"Yes." He sighed. "Is it so weird to think I might want to make you feel good, too?"

I sat back. This was difficult. I had been far from passive in whatever it was we were doing, far from innocent. But somehow it felt like a big step, admitting that I might want something more. I cocked my head for a good thirty seconds, silent, staring at this man who was holding my hand, this man who made me feel so good already. And who wanted to make me feel even better. My voice sounded distant when I opened my mouth, as though someone else was saying it. "How?"

"How?" His eyes, glittery again, narrowed.

"How. Do you want to make me, uh, feel good?" The buzz was threatening to blow my head apart. Distantly I was aware that I was ruining yet another set of panties, that I'd need to wipe down yet another cushion of hospital vinyl. He'd be hard as a rock once more, I knew. I had a sudden flashing image of myself, on my knees under the table, sucking that dick. It made me shake.

"What?"

"What what?"

"What made you shake?"

"Nothing," I lied, blinking rapidly. "Don't change the subject. How?" I mastered myself slowly, my palm sweaty against his. "What do you want to do to me?"

He took a deep breath, and I could tell his own heart was pounding, too. "I think I'd pick up where I wanted to have left off in that closet at the party."

My grin grew. "Naughty."

He shrugged. "I mean, you said you should have given me a handjob."

"I did say that. And I should have."

He squeezed my fingers. "So. I guess I'd reciprocate."

There was a burr in my voice now. "You guess?" I prodded.

His eyes took on that hard glint again. "I'd finger you until you cried."

I clung to his hand as if it were a lifeline, my mind whirling. "Fuck."

"Yeah. Maybe not fuck. But... well." When he shrugged again, I thumbed my phone beside the forgotten cheesecake and began tapping furiously. He watched, his eyes hooding. "What are you doing?"

"My boss usually lets me go over on my break as long as I agree to do two of her dialysis reports for every ten minutes I stay away." I could hear the shake in my voice. "I'm in the mood to do some of her dialysis reports, I think."

Those hooded eyes took on a wariness. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying I feel like crying." Her reply came fast:

"It's quiet. I won't need you until at least 0200."

My eyes rose to his. "That is... if you're serious."

Tim let out a shaky breath. "This... this is a lot."

"This is just more of what we've been doing," I pushed.

"It's a lot more."

I felt a rush, like I was high. "It's a lot more," I agreed, "but come on. You said yourself you wanted to do it to me?" I felt like a whore, like I'd felt for Paul this past month, but this time it was for Tim. He had me hotter than I could remember feeling in a long time. "So?" My voice cracked a little. "Do it to me."

He stared at me a moment, then his hand tightened around mine. "Come on." He hopped up out of the chair, nearly dislocating my arm behind him. The buffer hummed far off, done with the atrium and now way down the Colonnade. This part of the hospital was deserted but for shaded lights at the nursing stations by the windows overlooking the Atrium, and the two or three residents who cared enough to do rounds this far after midnight. And most of the dozens of patients would be asleep.

We were surrounded by people in the night, but we were alone. Just as we'd been all those years ago at Theta Psi.

He seemed to know where he was going, and any hint of tentativeness was gone now as he swept me in his wake toward the corner where the bathrooms were. Three doors waited, all of them with orange cones before them to show they'd been cleaned; he shouldered open the middle one, the family one designed for changing kids' diapers. The one with the deadbolt.

Which snicked behind me, gunshot-loud.

He dropped my hand at last and turned to face me under the buzz of the fluorescent light, our world now bounded by tile and the piny smell of floor cleanser. He cleared his throat, looking as raggedly wild-eyed as I felt. "You sure about this?"

"Sure about what?" It took a couple of tries to get it out through my dammed throat, but the smile I wore was not hesitant at all. "About what we both want?"

He paused, then nodded. "Yeah. That." He leaned against the baby-changing table with his usual forced nonchalance. "So. Where do we start, Lauren?"

I studied him through window-shade lashes. I had seldom been so horny. "Why don't we just, you know, do what we did last time?"

"Last time?" His brow crinkled. "You mean, in the lounge? You want to watch me jerk off again?"

I felt another spark of lust, a pulse straight to my pussy. "No. Last time. In the closet at Theta Psi." I watched as he nodded slowly, the realization dawning. "You've just spun the bottle. It landed on me," I prompted, breathing deep.

He smiled with me, his eyes far away now. "I was already getting hard," he confessed, "just to think about being able to make out with you."

"Make out," I mused, taking a step toward him. "Such a fun term. So innocent, in a way." I stopped a few feet away. "You're hard now," I whispered, "just like before. That's what I mean by doing what we did last time."

"But, like, the way it should have gone." We nodded together. "I like that," he sighed, his voice as strained as mine. I have no idea how we held back.

"We can, like, reenact it." I shuffled a step closer. "Only this time, with a more positive outcome."

"Yeah. Since we've apparently matured so much in the meantime," he smiled. We laughed as I stepped right up to him. "I was perched on a counter, I think."

"There's a counter right there," I whispered, nodding at the sinks. He nodded and slid along the wall to perch his butt up there. "Perfect," I giggled. "We started by kissing, right?"

He drew a deep, shaky breath. "I think so."

"I know so," I husked, and just like that I was turning off my brain and stepping between his perched legs, craning my neck up to search for his mouth. Because this was happening, and it was now or never, and he wanted to make me squirm. I remembered the sense of power I'd felt, watching his hand on his dick, knowing I was doing that for him; I wanted to give him that same sense of power.

He'd know he'd made me orgasm. It was all he wanted, I knew, but I wanted a kiss first. And so I leaned in and offered my lips to his, and we met.

Almost a decade and a half it had been, and to be honest I hadn't remembered what kind of a kisser he was. I needn't have worried. Tim was firm, but gentle; restrained, but clearly passionate, and we took our time getting used to each other's lips before we went any deeper.

Somewhere in my mind was the awareness that I'd not kissed a man like this, other than Paul, since long before I'd married him. And of course that reminded me this this was very, very wrong. But Tim wanted this, and I wanted to give it to him, and so I let my mouth fall open to invite his tongue inside. He pulled me to him at the same moment, and I had time to be amazed and pleased that my own arms were already around him as I closed my eyes and gave him my mouth.

The first one was intense, awed, then the second was hungry; after that we drifted into soft, gentle, rhythmic kisses, both of us running our hands all over each others' backs and necks. I sighed into his mouth when he touched my ass, gently at first but then with a firm, eager squeeze, my foot sliding shyly along the ground to straddle one of his legs.

So then his knee was pressing hard against my pussy. And that meant I could feel his hard-on, strong and sure, pressing against my hip and belly, and that reminded me: we were reenacting. But better.

Well. Naughtier.

My tongue licked once more at his lips as I drew back a few inches, my chin shining with his spit. "I think you were grabbing my tit..."

"I was when I came," he laughed, breathless, the two of us murmuring like the lovers we were, but he accepted the invitation anyway. His fingers traced up under my scrub top, groping at my bra. "No reason not to go a little earlier now."

"Nope," I smiled, playful, once again feeling that buzz of power... for it was time. "And now's about the time I should have started giving you that handjob, hmm?" He opened his mouth, but nothing came out and I wasn't waiting for an answer. I stared into his eyes, both of us silent, as my hand clasped the front of his khakis. I could feel him inside, the heat of his body concentrating there between his thighs, against my palm, his erection immense. "You don't seem to mind."

"You said it yourself," he managed, collecting himself, "no man says no to a handjob."

I smiled, a knowing womanly smile, then kissed him once more as my fingers trembled around his fly. I eased it down as smoothly as I could, rolling my head backward on my neck as Tim's mouth strayed to my neck, my collarbone, licking and nibbling even as his fingers tried to maneuver inside my bra. I wanted them there, badly, but before I could even think about getting my own hands involved in giving him more access, my own fiery brain took over because I was all finished ignoring his penis.

Besides, I figured, he could figure out how to ditch a bra his damn self. Any man could.

Quickly, my hands tingly, I steered my fingernails past his fly, gripping the zipper. His lips sucked hard at my collarbone, far down near my brastrap, and I heard myself moan like a slut. His zipper seemed to take forever to get started, but once I got it going it fell apart like a chain of dominoes. Grinning, laughing, I dug my crazed hand into his pants and groped wildly, searching out the erection I was proud to give him.

It was not difficult to find.

I could feel its damp heat all around my hand before my fingers closed on it, gripping it through Tim's boxers. Already he'd started working at my bra clasp, freeing the first hook just as I got my other hand under his waistband, digging, hungry, needing him naked for me. I could smell his breath, shrieking past his clenched teeth, the warmth of his body reaching out for mine as I got his boxers off his hips and shoved it past his erection.

His clothes were still above his knees when, with a long ragged sigh, I finally locked my fingers around the solid, trembling heat of his firmly erect penis. It had been awhile since I'd felt a hard-on quite that strong, the spongy give of its skin stopping abruptly against a steel-hard core when I squeezed it, needing to feel it in my palm. We both gasped, two rounded eyes staring wide at each other, both of us heaving jagged breaths into each others' open mouths as we felt me explore him, my nails skating over his veins, my other hand soon reaching low to cup his taut balls.

I'd be smelling his scent on my hands all night, I knew. The thought shook me.

My bra released me like a bird flung up into the air, and then we were struggling to get my stiff scrub top up and over my mussed hair. For a moment everything was breath and sweat and limbs tangling because they were too close and trying to do the same things, but eventually everything fell into place and my top hit the tile floor as his dick drew my hands back down to it like a magnet.

He felt so good in my hands. So wonderfully good, so vital, so eager. I smiled against his lips when he kissed them again, then watched with shining eyes as he trailed his tongue back down my neck once more. I knew where it was going, his hand pushing my tit upward so that my tight nipple could meet his teeth. And when he nipped, I groaned in an ecstasy I hoped he could feel in the light, happy corkscrew my hands were making along his shaft.

I arched against him, driving my flesh against his when he sucked my nipple hard into his mouth. We were nothing now except skin and moans and lust, all wrapped up together and pressed into a sweaty mess. I felt him groan, his breath warm on my bare chest, his own nakedness driving me crazy while I tugged hard on a dick gone hopelessly and irrevocably hard... for me.

That dick wanted to fuck me. That man wanted to make me feel good.

Impatiently I swept one hand from his balls to his hand, grappling it away from my ass and around to the front, where I pushed his fingers behind the drawstring of my scrub bottoms. Even if I hadn't been sucking his tongue into my mouth, I wasn't sure I trusted myself to speak, even just to squeal out the damning words I'd need to find if I wanted to tell him my needs; I'd just have to count on him to figure out what I wanted, what he wanted, and with his dick in my eager hand it wasn't that difficult for him.

He jerked roughly at my scrubs, forcing them cruelly down past too much hips, too much ass. I wasn't in the mood to help him, though, my senses too obsessed with that thing in my hand. I rolled my eyes, staring down our heaving bodies, past where he'd forced my scrubs down, to see the precum once more glittering at the deep-red tip of his velvet dick, and the thrill of seeing my own hand wrapped around him sent another squirt into my panties.

Not that that mattered now. Tim had those down far enough, finally, that my pussy was out in the open, ready for... what? For anything. In that moment I knew I would not deny him anything at all. He could stick whatever he wanted to in me, and I'd be powerless. Paul was as far away from my mind as Jenna so clearly was from his, the two of us existing in a lewd little bubble we'd found again after so many years away from the Theta Psi closet.

He could lick me. He could fuck me. What he decided to do was finger me.

I heard my own voice, guttural and strange, moaning helplessly when I felt him spear me. He had two fingers in there from the start, driving them in me and up me, plunging far inside my overheated vagina like he wanted to reach in and pull my soul out. I paused a moment, unable to keep jerking him, my knees trembling with the hot red wave of lust that swept me from head to toe, lighting fires I didn't even know I'd spread the kindling for... but of course I had.

I'd teased him as much as he'd teased me. This result was only natural.

His thumb on my clit woke me back up, jarring me back to my duty: he had a hard dick and he needed to get off, and I'd taken responsibility for it. I cradled him once more, lovingly now, our foreheads pressed together with our panting mouths open and groaning as we shared this impossibly intense dream, this fearfully hoped-for moment of surrender. Recklessly I thought back to that night in the deserted third-floor lounge, the sight of his fingers gripping tightly just under his head, and without even thinking my own fingers sought out the little ridge where I'd seen him hold himself so firmly.

I squeezed.

His body replied powerfully, hunching against mine, his breath hanging back as it had in that lounge. Vaguely I was aware that my own body was answering his, my orgasm not all that strong, but incredibly quick because, at every level, I wanted to match his pleasure. I wanted us to share this together, at the same moment, so I kept squeezing hard as I tried to let myself go, to allow his churning fingers to do their work at lips and clit and hole, and when I was sure I could see my own orgasm moving toward me, I stared into his eyes and pulled hard on his head.

Magic.

Our bodies tightened together, trembled together, and then found joy together. I felt it as a warmth, a dull itching delight, spreading from his illicit fingers all through my core, along my arms and legs, tingling as it went: nowhere near as powerful as what I could do to myself with the Scandistroke 9, but a secret special pleasure I was taking from him alone, the two of us sharing this right now, our bodies finally in synch after so many years.

Tim blew out a long, shaky breath, and I felt him flex in my fingers. For an instant everything was cotton-ball silence, a tension thick enough to chew, and then he twitched unmistakably in my hand. Sudden milky warmth slapped against my arm and my belly, the burning thickness of his semen finding my skin, dripping down my ticklish ribcage even as the next rope shot out of him, his cum flying between the two of us because I wanted it to. Because I'd made it happen.

"Fuck." His voice was a quivery whisper, awed like a pilgrim in a church, and filled with the same sense of mystical excitement; his load was still pumping sturdily out as we smiled together, sweaty and gentle, and shared one more kiss to the trembling quiver of our racing hearts. I knew he had painted me all the way up to my neck. I knew his sperm would be leaking down to soak into my bunched scrub bottoms, to flow tempting across the swollen redness of my own needy pussy.

I didn't care. In that moment we were naked in more than just our bodies. I felt my tears roll down my face and meet his, then closed my eyes so the moment wouldn't go away.

* * *

I gave him a wad of paper towels from the dispenser by the sink, the two of us doing our best to clean up. When I went back to my shift I wondered whether my boss could pick up the sweet-bleach scent of semen, then realized I didn't care all that much. And then? I finished my shift, got into my car, and drove home tired.

But exhilarated.

He texted me a couple of days later, just before we were both supposed to show up for a 7-11 shift, a few spare words: "We should talk." I knew what that meant: if we "talked," we'd stop. But of course he was right. And so we talked, over early-morning cinnamon rolls, and we smiled. And we talked some more.

And we stopped.

Two weekends later Jenna was hosting once again, another Movie Night with our college friends, and once more I found myself in her kitchen, now slicing vegetables for a dip: nothing as spicy as my Buffalo chicken, mind you. Just a creamy ranch. We talked lightly, she and I, and I'd be lying if I didn't remember her husband's load on my skin as we chatted. But at least now there was a different tingle behind the awkwardness whenever Paul came up.

Now, it went both ways. We both had something to hide about each others' husbands.

She sent me back from the living room as we trundled the appetizers in there, the comforting glow of our friends' chitchat surrounding us. "Oh. Shit. I forgot the fondue forks. Can you grab them?"

I nodded, because she was busy trying to light the burner. "No problem. Where are they at?"

"Kitchen closet, up on the top shelf." She frowned suddenly, remembering I'm fucking short as hell. "Oh. Damn. Well, I'll send Tim to help you. He's got the height."

"Sure."

"Honey!" she called out toward the grill, and he came in as I reached the closet door. The kitchen was a quiet oasis after the bustle of the living room, and Tim smiled at me.

"Well. We meet again."

I took a deep breath. "We sure do." We stood a moment, the silence pooling, and then I nodded toward the door. "After you."

We smiled at each other, an old and secret smile, and then together we stepped into the kitchen closet, alone.

* * *

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