The Other Mrs Enwright Pt. 02

This is part 2 of the Mrs Enright series. Thanks for the comments, I like hearing what people think, good or bad. I plan one more part to conclude this story before going back and finishing off the other two open threads I have going. Look forward to the feedback.

Part 2

Chapter 8

Dinner was quiet. We sat at the table with the good wine and the food I had made and the candles I had lit out of habit and discussed nothing of consequence. Charles was careful. He watched me across the table and said little.

I was perfectly pleasant.

We cleared the plates. We moved to the sitting room for a while. At ten I said I was going up.

Charles came to bed twenty minutes later.

I was already on my back with my side lamp burning, holding a book.

He got into bed and lay on his side facing me.

"Martha," he said.

I turned a page.

"Tonight," he said. "Watching you." He stopped. "I can't stop thinking about it."

I said nothing.

"The way you looked," he said. "When he was inside you."

I set the book down on my chest.

"No," I said.

A pause. "No?"

"No, Charles."

He moved closer under the sheet. I felt the press of him against my hip. Four and a half inches, firm against the fabric of his pyjamas.

I looked at the ceiling.

"It's been over a year," he said.

"I know," I said.

"I was wondering whether tonight you might--"

"No," I said.

"Because--"

"Because your cock can't satisfy me," I said. "Max reached places inside me that you couldn't locate in twenty-seven years. I'm not saying it to wound you. It's a physical fact."

He said nothing.

"Will I ever be allowed to--"

"I'll think about it," I said.

"Martha--"

"I said I'll think about it." I picked up my book. "I understand you want the feeling of another body against yours. I'll give it some thought and let you know."

He lay there.

"You can take care of yourself," I said. "If you need to."

He lay there for a moment. Then, "Could I -- could I look at you."

I looked at the ceiling, took a breath and I rolled my eyes.

"If it helps," I said.

I lifted my nightgown to my waist and lay still.

He pushed the sheet back and moved down the bed until his face was level with me. I opened my legs. I reached down and spread myself apart with two fingers so he could see properly.

"Come close," I said.

He moved closer. His face was inches away.

"Can you still smell him on me," I said.

He drew a long breath in through his nose. His jaw moved.

"Mmmm, I love it, you smell like cum," he said. His voice had thickened.

He didn't wait. His tongue found me immediately and he pushed it deep and I felt him searching for what Michael had left and his hands gripped my thighs and I stared at the ceiling.

"Pull it," I said. "Go on. Pull your little dick while you do that."

I heard his hand working.

"Your dick, Charles," I said. "You have the dick of a thirteen year old boy. Pull it. Make it cum."

He groaned against me. His hand worked faster and then he shuddered and I felt the warmth hit the inside of my knee as his whole body went rigid.

Ninety seconds. Perhaps less.

He looked up at my face.

I could not help it. I shook my head slowly. I rolled my eyes and pushed his face away from between my legs and pulled my nightgown back down.

I reached over and turned off the lamp.

"Goodnight Charles," I said.

I slept as soundly that night as I ever had.

When I lifted my head and glanced at the clock it was half past eight. Charles would have left for work an hour ago. I let my head fall back against the pillow and looked at the ceiling.

I lay there for a while and thought about how I had arrived here.

Six weeks ago I was a woman who could not say the word orgasm aloud. A woman who sat at a birthday lunch and went red because Dianne mentioned a waiter's trousers. A woman who had assumed, for fifty-five years, that her restrained and orderly life was simply her nature.

It was not this woman's nature.

I was in charge of my sexuality now. I had taken control of it and I liked it considerably. More than liked it. I had discovered, rather late in the piece, that I was very good at it.

I had also, I noted, taken control of Charles's sexuality. And Charles -- careful, composed, professional Charles, partner at Harwick and Associates -- seemed to like that too. More than he had liked anything in our marriage for some time, if the evidence of recent evenings was anything to go by.

Which brought me to a problem I had been putting off.

He had needs. He had told me plainly that he wanted penetrative sex and I had told him I would think about it and I had been thinking about it and the thinking had not resolved itself into anything useful. That was simply true and I was not without sympathy.

My body was no longer available to him in that way. Those days were gone and they were gone completely and I felt no ambivalence about it. What Max had shown me -- what eight inches of girth and reach had demonstrated -- had closed that door with a finality that four and a half inches simply could not reopen. It was not personal. It was geometry.

But he had needs.

I stared at the ceiling.

The honest question was who would want such a -- I searched for the right word and landed where I always landed now -- such a dick. Not a cock. It would never be a cock. It is a perfectly functional piece of equipment for a very specific and limited application.

The application being, I supposed, a woman for whom less was considerably more. A woman built on a smaller scale in that particular regard. I thought about this with the methodical practicality I brought to difficult committee problems and arrived at a medical reality I had read about somewhere -- Vaginal Hypoplasia. A condition of narrow or underdeveloped anatomy. A woman for whom Charles's dimensions might represent not an inadequacy but a precise fit.

I lay with this thought.

It was not an unattractive solution in theory.

In practice it presented obvious difficulties. Such a woman was unlikely to advertise. She was equally unlikely to be found through any of the channels I could realistically access without considerable awkwardness. And the conversation required to establish the relevant parameters was not one I could imagine having over cocktails.

I would have to think about it further.

I sat up, pushed the covers back, and put my feet on the floor.

One problem at a time.

I went downstairs to make coffee.

I took my coffee to the garden room and opened my laptop.

I typed: penetrative sex for men with small penises.

The results were various. Forums, advice columns, a Reddit thread I clicked on and then closed. I found an article on a relationship advice site that seemed measured and opened it.

It was formatted as a series of case studies with photographs. I scrolled past the first two and stopped at the third.

The header read: *Pegging My Husband.*

I looked at that for a moment.

*What is pegging,* I thought.

I scrolled down.

The first photograph showed a man in a suit. Mid-fifties, soft face, comfortable build. He looked like someone Charles might have lunch with. The next showed him in his underwear. A modest belly. Pale legs. The next -- I enlarged the screen slightly -- showed him without the underwear.

I sat back in my chair.

Three inches. At full mast, by any reasonable estimate, three inches. Pointing upward with the determination of something that did not understand its own situation.

"Oh," I thought. "that poor woman."

I scrolled forward.

The wife appeared in the next frame. A comfortable looking woman, modesty overweight, in her fifties with a pleasant face. The kind of woman I might have sat next to at the school concerts. Then the husband was bending forward over the edge of the bed. Then there was a photograph -- I leaned toward the screen -- of his exposed backside and his wife's hand. Two of her fingers were pressed inside him to the knuckle. His back was arched away from them. In the next frame there were three fingers and his knuckles were white on the bedsheet.

Then she was wearing something.

I leaned back slightly to truly take it in.

A harness of some kind. Around her hips and thighs. And attached to it -- I enlarged the image further -- a silicone extension anatomically shaped. It looked longer than Max, perhaps by an inch, but narrower.

I sat with that for a moment.

Then she was behind him and he was taking all of it. His face was turned sideways toward the camera. His mouth was open. His eyes were shut. There were tears on his cheek but he was grinning.

*Charles wants penetrative sex.*

I looked at the photograph for quite some time.

I opened a new tab and typed: pegging videos.

The results were extensive.

I watched the first one. Then the second. Then I stopped clicking and simply watched -- a woman in a harness taking complete control of a man who was entirely surrendered beneath her -- and I became aware that my hand had moved to my lap and was pressing with some purpose against the fabric of my trousers.

I lifted my hand back to the keyboard.

I sat back and looked at the ceiling.

*Charles wants penetrative sex.*

I looked at the screen. Then at the ceiling. Then back at the screen.

I sat with the screen for a moment.

I needed one of these... things. That much was clear. What was not clear was how a woman in my position acquired such a thing without anyone who knew her finding out.

Online was immediately impossible. Packages arrived at the door. The housekeeper signed for packages. I had no reason to believe she examined the contents of deliveries and no intention of finding out. And beyond the housekeeper there were credit card statements that Charles's bookkeeper reviewed quarterly and a browser history on the home computer that I shared with a household of four people.

A shop then. Cash.

I looked at the garden.

I had no idea where such a shop was. I could not ask anyone I knew. Dianne would know -- Dianne knew everything of this nature and would tell me without blinking and probably offer to come with me -- but Dianne was absolutely out of the question. Susan would be worse. The women from church did not bear thinking about.

I could search on my phone. A private browser, presumably. But searching for what exactly, and finding a shop in which neighbourhood, and walking into it as myself, as Martha Enwright, in a suburb where I might be recognised by someone who sat on the same committees as I did.

I sat at the kitchen table and looked at my phone.

Chanelle had bought me a spa bath that was, in point of fact -- well... we both knew what it was. She had done this deliberately and with full knowledge and had presented it with a pleasant smile and said "you need to relax, Mom." A girl who could do that without blinking knew more about the world than she had ever let on at the dinner table.

Chanelle knew things.

I picked up my phone and typed: "Lunch this week? Just us. Mom x"

I put the phone on the table and looked at the garden.

Three minutes later: "Tuesday? I know a place. C x"

I replied: "Perfect."

I finished my coffee and stood at the kitchen window and thought about how to begin a conversation with my daughter that I had no language for yet.

I would think of something by Tuesday.

I was also aware, standing at the kitchen window in the late morning light, that thinking about Charles bent over the edge of the bed while I stood behind him had produced a warmth between my legs that was becoming difficult to ignore.

I pressed my thighs together.

My motor, as it turned out, did not require much to get it running these days.

I went upstairs to change my underwear.

Chapter 9

Chanelle had chosen a place I hadn't been -- newer, quieter than the restaurant we usually went to, the kind of room where tables were far enough apart that conversations stayed where they were meant to stay.

She was already seated when I arrived. She stood and kissed me on both cheeks and we sat and opened our menus and the waiter came and we ordered and the usual pleasantries moved through their paces. Chanelle's thesis. A friend's recent engagement. The garden, which I said was coming along.

Then Chanelle put her menu down.

"How's the bath," she said.

I looked at my menu. "Very nice," I said. "Thank you again. It was very generous."

"You're using it."

"When I have time," I said. "Yes."

"And you're finding it -- good."

"It's a well-made bath," I said. "Excellent workmanship."

Chanelle picked up her wine glass.

"The jets," she said.

"Very powerful," I said. "Yes."

She looked at me. I looked at the menu. I had read the menu. I read it again.

"The settings," she said. "You've had a chance to try them."

"Several," I said.

"And."

"And they're all very well designed," I said. "Thorough."

Chanelle said nothing. She turned her wine glass by the stem and waited.

I reached for my water.

"It's been -- " I stopped.

Chanelle waited.

"Useful," I said.

She waited.

"In terms of -- relaxation," I said. "As you suggested."

She took a sip of wine and did not fill the silence.

I looked at the window. A woman walked past on the street outside with a pushchair. A perfectly ordinary Tuesday.

"There were configurations that I didn't expect," I said.

The heat arrived in my face with considerable speed. I reached for my water glass and took a sip and set it back with great precision.

Chanelle nodded slowly, as though I had confirmed something specific, which I supposed I had.

"Mom," Chanelle said.

I looked at her.

"The bath," she said. She held my gaze across the white tablecloth. "Did you cum?"

I looked at her for a moment.

I smoothed my napkin in my lap.

I reached for my wine and took a small, careful sip and set the glass back on the table.

"Yes," I said. "Actually." I picked up my fork. "Very satisfactory, really."

Chanelle's shoulders moved once. She looked at her plate.

"Good," she said. "I'm glad."

Our first courses arrived. I attended to mine with more focus than the salad strictly required. Chanelle ate with the unhurried ease of someone who understood that silences were also a form of conversation.

Halfway through the first course she said, "You look well, Mom. There's something different about you."

"I've been sleeping better," I said.

"Good," she said.

I put my fork down. I picked it up. I looked at the window.

"I may have done some reading," I said.

Chanelle looked up.

"Online," I said. "In the evenings. Various -- " I reached for something that would do -- "articles."

"About."

"Health," I said. "Wellbeing. That sort of thing."

Chanelle looked at her plate.

"Specifically," she said.

I pressed my lips together.

"There are forums," I said. "Where people discuss -- various topics. I came across one that was -- " I stopped.

Chanelle waited.

"Informative," I said.

She waited.

"About intimacy," I said. "Between couples. The -- the various -- " I reached for my wine -- "the various aspects of a -- of an intimate relationship between -- between two--"

"Mom," Chanelle said gently.

"Yes," I said.

"Take your time."

I pressed my knees together. I looked at the tablecloth. Then the window. Then my wine glass. Then, briefly, at Chanelle.

"I wasn't aware," I said, "that certain things were -- that people -- that it was common for couples to -- " I stopped entirely.

Chanelle waited.

Our main courses arrived. The waiter asked if everything was all right and I said wonderful, thank you, and he left, and Chanelle looked at me and waited.

"There was an article," I said. "About couples. Where the -- where one of the partners -- where the woman -- " I pressed my thighs together under the table. The conversation had been doing something to me since the bread arrived. "Where the woman takes a more -- active role."

"Active," Chanelle said.

"In the -- physical sense," I said. "Of the relationship."

Chanelle cut a piece of chicken.

"There were photographs," I said.

Chanelle put her fork down.

"A series of them," I said. "Of a couple. And the woman was -- she was wearing -- there was a -- " I looked at the window. "A harness of some kind."

Chanelle was very still.

"With an attachment," I said. "A -- a -- " I picked up my wine glass and put it down. "I didn't know what to call it. I've never -- I wasn't familiar with--"

"A strap-on," Chanelle said. Quietly. Matter of factly.

The word sat on the table between us. The two businessmen at the next table continued their conversation. The woman by the window turned a page of her book.

"Is that," I said, "what it's called."

"Yes," Chanelle said.

I nodded. Once. Very slightly.

"And in the photographs," Chanelle said carefully, "what was the woman doing with it."

I looked at the tablecloth.

"She was -- " I pressed my thighs together firmly -- "using it. On her husband."

"I see," Chanelle said.

"He seemed," I said, "to be -- to find it -- the expression on his face was -- " I picked up my fork and put it down again -- "he seemed to find it agreeable."

"Many men do," Chanelle said.

"Yes," I said. "I gathered that from the -- from the further reading I did."

Chanelle looked at me. "Further reading."

"There were other articles," I said.

She waited.

"And some -- " I looked at the window -- "some video material. That I came across. Inadvertently."

Chanelle pressed her lips together very firmly.

"I see," she said.

"I found it -- " I reached for the right word and could not find one I was prepared to use in a restaurant -- "I found it interesting," I said. "From a -- from an academic perspective."

"Of course," Chanelle said.

I looked at my main course. I had barely touched it.

"If someone were -- " I said. "If a person were interested in -- if they wanted to -- if one were looking to -- " I stopped.

"Acquire one," Chanelle said.

"For example," I said.

"For academic purposes," Chanelle said.

"If one were," I said. "Hypothetically. Where would one -- how would one go about--"

"I could take you," Chanelle said. "There's a place. Very discreet. Good staff. You could -- " she chose her words -- "browse. Get a sense of what's available."

I looked at her.

She looked at me.

"Or online," she said. "If you preferred. Plain packaging. Discreet card statement."

I picked up my wine glass.

"I'll think about it," I said.

Chanelle nodded and returned to her chicken.

We ate in silence for a while. The room hummed quietly around us. I reached for my water and drank and set the glass down and looked at the middle distance and thought about the video I had watched that morning and what it had done to my hand and my thighs and pressed my knees together again under the table.

She picked up her fork.

I picked up mine.

We finished our lunch.

Chanelle signalled for the bill.

"There's a place on Meridian Street," she said. "Between the dry cleaner and the travel agent. Plain frontage. You'd walk past it without noticing."

"You've been there," I said.

"Yes," she said.

I looked at her.

"Several times," she said.

I picked up my wine glass and found it empty and set it back down.

"To buy things," I said.

"Yes," she said.

The waiter brought the bill. I reached for it automatically. Chanelle let me take it.

"What kind of things," I said.

She looked at the window briefly. Then back at me. "Various things," she said.

"Chanelle."

She turned her wine glass in both hands. "A vibrator," she said. "A couple of them actually. Some other items." She paused. "Dylan and I have a particular -- dynamic. That requires certain -- equipment."

I looked at my daughter across the table.

"What kind of dynamic," I said.

She met my eyes. "I'm the dominant one," she said. "In the relationship. I like to be in control." She said it the way she might say she preferred red wine to white. A simple statement of preference requiring no particular defence. "Dylan likes that too. It works for us."

"Dylan," I said. "How did he -- how did the two of you arrive at that arrangement."

Chanelle was pulling on her coat. She paused.

"He saw something," she said. "At home. When he was younger." She straightened her collar. "His mother using one on his father."

I looked at her.

"He walked in on them," she said. "By accident. He was about nineteen." She picked up her bag. "It stayed with him. He thought about it for a long time before he said anything to me."

"He told you," I said.

"Eventually," she said. "It took him a while to find the words." She smiled slightly. "Once he did we went to the shop and we haven't looked back."

I signed the receipt and we gathered our coats and walked out into the afternoon. On the pavement we kissed on both cheeks and Chanelle squeezed my hand once, briefly, which was not something she usually did.

I stood on the pavement and thought about a nineteen year old boy walking past an open door and what he saw through it and how it had stayed with him and what it had eventually become.

I thought about doors left open in corridors.

I thought about what things, once seen, do to a person.

"Right," I said.

Chanelle kissed me on the cheek.

"Meridian Street," she said. "You can't miss it."

She walked to her car.

I stood on the pavement for a moment longer than necessary and then I found my keys and walked to mine.

Meridian Street. Between the dry cleaner and the travel agent.

I checked my watch. It was half past one. Charles would not be home until seven.

I drove past it twice before I found parking.

The frontage was plain. A small sign. Painted windows. I stood on the pavement and looked at the dry cleaner on one side and the travel agent on the other and then I pushed the door open.

The shop was well lit. DVDs along the left wall, their covers displaying content that required no explanation. Display cases running down the centre -- vibrators in graduated sizes, some the length of a finger, some considerably longer, packaged and labelled. A rack of leather items whose function I worked out after a moment. Harnesses on hooks along the back wall. Lubricants in every conceivable size arranged on a shelf like condiments.

A young woman behind the counter said good afternoon without looking up from her screen.

I said good afternoon and moved into the shop.

I walked past a wall of dildos -- silicone, glass, steel, all in different colours -- and stopped at a shelf of items labelled anal. Plugs in ascending sizes, the largest of which I looked at for a moment before moving on.

I had not, until recently, given any thought to this particular region of my own anatomy. It had simply not occurred to me as a site of interest. And then the spa bath's seventh configuration had occurred to me, and I had revised that position substantially.

I picked up a mid-sized plug and turned it over in my hand. Tapered at the tip, flaring to a width that seemed -- manageable. Possibly. The base was flat and T-shaped, designed to keep it in place.

In place, I thought. While one went about one's day.

I turned it over again.

The thought of walking around with something like this inside me, going about the ordinary business of a Tuesday -- making coffee, answering correspondence, perhaps attending a committee meeting -- produced a warmth between my legs that I was becoming quite accustomed to and no longer found entirely unwelcome.

I put it back on the shelf.

Then I picked it up again.

I put it in my basket.

I moved on. Then I turned the corner and stopped.

She was positioned on a low platform at the end of the aisle. Life-sized. On her knees, head tilted back, mouth open, eyes closed. The material was pale and the detail was -- I leaned slightly closer -- the detail was considerable. She had fingernails. Eyelashes.

I reached out and touched her cheek.

It was warm and yielding. I pressed slightly and the material gave in a way that made me withdraw my hand and then reach out again.

Then my hand moved lower, along her throat, her chest, her nipples had a different texture- so lifelike. Thenlower still, and I pressed two fingers against her core and the material parted and I pushed slightly further. Then I was 2 knuckles deep.

"She's very popular."

A young woman in a staff shirt stood at the end of the aisle.

"The material," I said. "It's remarkable. I was simply curious what it felt like."

"All the ladies do that," she said pleasantly. "Every single one. Without exception."

I straightened.

"Medical grade silicone," she said. "Fully internally structured. Three entry points. The mouth has an adjustable tension setting." She demonstrated briefly. "Very easy to clean. Designed for average girth. Most men find it very comfortable." She tilted her head. "Or is it for you?"

I turned red from the collar up.

"No," I said. "Ah -- no. It's for my... it's a man I'm thinking of."

"Of course," she said. "Your husband?"

"Ye... No," I said. Then I looked at the doll. At her open mouth. At the adjustable tension setting. I thought about his four inches."

"Actually," I said. "Would there be a -- a tighter model. For a man who is perhaps -- on the more modest side."

The assistant considered this. "The material adapts to some degree," she said. "But for someone significantly below average it might not provide enough -- " she paused -- "resistance. He might not get a great deal out of it."

I thought about what Charles's was working with and what this doll would think of the arrangement.

"Never mind, it was just a thought" I said.

I thanked her and moved on.

I was making my way toward the harness wall when I saw her.

My stomach dropped.

Margaret Forsythe. White hair. Wool coat. The same woman who had sat three seats away from me at the Wednesday morning prayer group for thirty years and who had organised the Christmas flower arranging for twenty of them and who had once given a short and heartfelt address on the virtue of temperance.

My first instinct was to turn around and walk directly back through the front door and get into my car and drive home and never come back.

My second instinct was that she had already looked up.

We looked at each other across eight feet of retail floor.

She was holding a dildo.

Black. At least twelve inches. Possibly more. Thick in a way I could not reconcile with the woman holding it, who weighed perhaps 40 kilos and whose thighs were the circumference of a coffee cup.

She turned it over in both hands with the assessing it's weight. She looked like someone who had handled one before.

I stood completely still with my basket over my arm.

She looked at me.

I looked at her.

The silence lasted perhaps three seconds and felt considerably longer.

I arranged my face into the smile I used when I encountered people unexpectedly at events where everyone understood that what was happening was not being acknowledged. The smile of mutual recognition and mutual discretion. The smile that said: I see you, you see me, and we will never speak of this.

Margaret's face produced the same smile back at me with the precision of a woman who had been navigating polite society for eighty years and had not survived it by being careless.

She placed the dildo in her basket.

I turned back to the harness wall.

I stood at the harness wall and looked at the buckle mechanism of the nearest one without seeing it at all.

Margaret Forsythe who taught Sunday school for fifteen years. The girth of a man's forearm. Twelve inches.

She must be seventy-five I thought, a small woman, fine-boned. I had sat next to her at enough committee lunches to know that she ate like a bird and weighed nothing. Her hands when she passed the collection plate were the hands of a woman half her size.

The image arrived uninvited and I could not shift it -- Margaret on her knees, or her back, or however Margaret managed such an undertaking, working that thing inside herself inch by inch while the Sunday school certificates hung on the wall in the hallway outside her bedroom.

I pressed my thighs together.

I would genuinely pay money, I thought, to see that.

I picked up a harnesses.

It was more substantial than I had imagined from the photographs online. I held it against my hips with both hands and looked down at it. In the centre was a circular ring. A picture shower how the phallus fitted through it and was held in place by the tightened ring around its base.

I thought about what it would feel like to wear it. To stand behind Charles with this around my hips and something substantial fitted through the ring and Charles bent over in front of me.

I pressed the buckle with my thumb. It released cleanly. I fastened it again.

"That's a good one. It'd one of the best sellers and I've never heard a complaint."

The assistant had materialised beside me.

"Have you chosen an attachment yet."

"Not yet," I said.

"She moved toward the wall of attachments.

I followed her, harness still in my hands.

"The range goes from about four inches up to twelve," she said. "For vaginal use, women tend to find eight inches with a 6 inch girth hits the right spot. Enough length, enough stretch." She moved along slightly. "For anal, a little less -- around six inches with a smaller girth. The angle is different and the receiver needs time to adjust."

She paused.

"Men tend to prefer the smaller end. Four or five inches. Maybe a touch of girth but nothing dramatic." She turned to me. "It depends on the recipient. Their experience. Whether they've tried anything similar before."

I looked at the wall.

I looked at the attachments. I thought about Charles on his knees and what I intended and I made a decision.

One should not lie to one's lawyer. One should not lie to one's doctor. And apparently, I thought, one should not lie to one's sex toy provider if one wanted a satisfactory outcome.

"He's a beginner," I said. "No experience. In that particular -- in that area."

"Right," she said. She lifted a modest option from the display. Five inches, slim, pale silicone. "Something like this. Manageable. Not so threatening."

I looked at it.

I looked along the wall.

My eye settled on a model. Eight inches. The circumference listed on the tag was five inches. It had a pronounced head and a slight upward curve. It was not the largest thing on the wall. But it was not modest either.

I took it from the hook.

"This one," I said.

The assistant looked at it. Then at me. "That's -- that's ambitious for a beginner," she said carefully.

"He should know who is in charge," I said.

The assistant looked at me for a moment.

"Yes," she said. "Fair enough." She took it from me and turned it over. "The curve will hit his prostate consistently at this length.

"Good," I said.

The assistant led me back toward the counter.

Margaret was there ahead of me. She was tucking her card back into her purse, her plain bag already sitting on the counter beside her. She had a black 12 inch dildo in that bag I thought. She looked up as I approached.

Our eyes met.

"Martha," she said.

"Margaret," I said.

A beat.

"Are you busy?" she said. "I was thinking of getting a coffee. There's a place just around the corner."

I stood with my basket and looked at Margaret Forsythe standing in a sex shop on a Tuesday afternoon with her handbag over her arm and her white hair neatly set and felt the heat arrive in my face before I had said a single word.

"Yes," I said. "That -- yes. That would be -- yes. Lovely."

Margaret picked up her bag and stepped to one side.

I set my items on the counter. One at a time. The harness. The attachment, which rolled slightly before settling, its eight inches and pronounced head. The assistant picked them up and began ringing them through.

"Did you need lubricant?" she asked.

I was aware of Margaret behind me.

"I -- " I said. "Yes. Probably. A small -- "

"For this size," the assistant said, placing a large bottle on the counter, "you're going to need plenty." She looked up at me directly. "Especially for a first-time recipient. I'd go through the whole bottle before you're done with breaking him in."

My face was burning.

She placed a second bottle beside the first.

I looked at the two large bottles of lubricant sitting beside the eight inch silicone phallus and the harness on the counter.

"Two," I said. "Yes. Fine. Two."

I tapped my card without looking at Margaret. The assistant put everything in a plain bag and said have a lovely afternoon.

I picked up the bag.

I turned around.

My face was still red. I could feel it.

Margaret was by the door with her own bag, her coat buttoned, her chin up, her expression giving nothing away whatsoever.

"Shall we?" she said.

Margaret led me around the corner to a coffee shop I had walked past any number of times without going into. She chose a table in the alfresco section, sat down, settled her bag under her chair and picked up the menu.

I sat across from her and put my own bag at my feet and held my handbag in my lap.

The waiter came and Margaret ordered a flat white without consulting the menu and I ordered the same because I needed something to do with my hands.

"I've known you for what must be thirty years, Martha," Margaret said, setting her menu down. "And I feel I've hardly got to know you at all."

I looked at her across the table.

"I feel the same," I said. And found, to my mild surprise, that I meant it.

She smiled. "It's funny how much we might have in common after all."

"Yes," I said. "Quite."

The coffees arrived. Margaret wrapped both hands around her cup and looked at me with the directness of a woman who had decided that indirection was for people with more time left than she had.

"Relax, Martha," she said. "Call me Marg." She picked up her cup. "What happens in Lovehoney stays in Lovehoney." She smiled and gave a small deliberate wink.

I felt the corners of my mouth move despite myself.

"I think every woman in our church group is either frustrated," Marg said, "or has found more -- reliable alternatives." She set her cup down. "I mean John was a good lover once. He really was. But he's seventy-eight now. The mind is willing." She tilted her head slightly. "The body, however, has its own views on the matter." She picked up her cup again. "A lady has to make her own arrangements."

I looked at her.

Thirty years of flower arranging and committee meetings and sitting three seats away from each other on Sunday mornings. Thirty years of pleasant nods and brief conversations about the catering and the readings.

"Yes," I said. "She does."

Marg looked at me over her cup with the expression of a woman who had a great deal more to say and had decided that she liked me enough to say it.

"Now," she said. "Tell me about yourself, Martha. The real version. Not the one you bring to church."

I looked at my coffee.

I opened my mouth.

I closed it.

I picked up my cup and took a sip and looked at Margaret Forsythe -- Marg -- across the small table and felt the heat arrive in my face and decided that it was going to arrive whether I spoke or not.

"Well," I said. "It's been rather an interesting few weeks. And I must say, I find it both a relief and absolutely horrifying to be able to talk to someone about it."

Marg said nothing. She held her cup in both hands and listened with the focused attention of a woman who understood that what was coming next required space.

"I've only recently discovered," I said, "that sex can be -- " I looked at the table -- "enjoyable. More than enjoyable." I pressed my lips together. "Exhilarating, actually. If one -- if the circumstances are -- " I stopped. Started again. "I've been married twenty-seven years, Marg."

"Yes," she said.

"Twenty-seven years," I said. "And only now--" I looked at the street, at a perfectly ordinary Tuesday afternoon going about its business, at people walking past who had no idea they were passing a woman in the middle of the most startling conversation of her life -- "only now do I know what I've been missing."

Marg set her cup down.

"Twenty-seven years," she said.

"Twenty-seven," I said.

She was quiet for a moment. Then, "And Charles."

"Charles," I said, "is a good man." I reached for my coffee. "He is a good lawyer and a good father and an excellent provider. He loves me." I took a sip. "He is not, it turns out, a good lover. He never has been. I simply didn't know that until recently because I had nothing to compare him to."

"And now you do," Marg said.

"And now I do," I said.

She nodded slowly.

"What changed," she said.

I looked at my cup. At the table. At the plain bag under my chair.

"The children gave me a birthday gift," I said. "A spa bath." I felt the colour arrive in my face and held Marg's gaze anyway. "It was not, as it turned out, a conventional spa bath."

Marg raised both eyebrows by a fraction.

"No," I said. "Quite."

She picked up her cup. Something moved at the corners of her mouth.

"Go on," she said.

"The jets," I said. "They are directed at -- at -- " I looked at the table. I looked at the street. I picked up my coffee cup and put it down. "Damn it."

Marg waited.

I leaned forward slightly and dropped my voice to just above a whisper.

"At my clitoris," I said. "And -- " I dropped it further still -- "and my anus."

Marg's face broke into a wide, warm smile.

"Oh, honey," she said.

I sat back and pressed my lips together and felt the colour in my face reach a temperature I had not previously recorded.

"I am so happy for you," Marg said. She reached across the table and patted my hand once. "You may be late to the party, Martha, but at least you arrived."

I laughed. A short, surprised sound that came out before I could manage it.

"Better late than never," I said.

"Much better," she said. She picked up her cup. "You know the first time I let John do it to me -- ", she lowered her voice by one degree, which for Marg appeared to constitute discretion, "back there. I thought I would die of embarrassment." She shook her head. "Who knew it would become a three or four times a week arrangement."

I looked at her.

"John in his prime," she said, with a particular quality of reminiscence in her voice, "was -- " she paused, selecting the word -- "intimidating. Ten inches. And very wide. And I was only a slip of a girl." She held my gaze without a flicker. "But once I'd had it, I had to have it again. You understand."

"Yes," I said. "I'm beginning to."

"I wish he still could," she said. "I really do. We've had a wonderful life." She looked at her cup. "Now I have to resort to -- " she glanced at the bag under her chair -- "well, you know what." She looked back up at me. "But he still likes to help."

"Help how," I said.

She smiled.

"He can work the toys perfectly well," she said. "And his mouth." She tilted her head. "A man doesn't need to be twenty-five to use his mouth, Martha."

I thought about Charles on his knees in the dark.

"No," I said. "He doesn't."

Marg looked at me with the expression of a woman who had just heard more in two words than I had intended to say.

"Well," she said. "We really should have had coffee years ago."

"We really should have, let's not wait that long again," I said.

We smiled at each other across the small table warmly.

We split the bill. Marg pulled on her coat and picked up her bag and leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek.

"Do let me know how you go, Martha," she said.

I picked up my own bag -- both bags -- and straightened.

"You know," I said. "I will."

She walked one way and I walked the other and I did not look back.

Chapter 10

It was after three by the time I got home.

The house was quiet. I put the bag from Lovehoney in the wardrobe and hung my coat and stood in the bedroom for a moment.

My phone showed a message from Chanelle -- dinner with friends, not back until late. One from Max -- staying at Dylan's, don't wait up.

I put the phone on the nightstand.

The house was mine. Charles would be home at seven.

I went downstairs and took the lamb out of the fridge for dinner and put the kettle on and stood at the kitchen window and looked at the garden in the afternoon light.

I thought about Marg and John. She was lucky I thought, all those good years, age catches everyone eventually.

I thought about Charles coming through the front and his complete ignorance of what was waiting for him upstairs in the wardrobe.

I smiled to myself.

He would be surprised.

I put the Lovehoney bag in the wardrobe and changed into something comfortable and went downstairs and stood in the kitchen and tried to think about dinner.

I could not think about dinner.

All I could think about was tonight. Charles coming through the door. The bag in the wardrobe. The look on his face when he understood what was happening.

I was wet through my underwear already and it was not yet four o'clock.

I thought about the spa. A brief session, take the edge off, come back to myself.

Then I thought about Charles coming home early and going upstairs and finding me in the bath and what he would do and what I would lose, and I decided against it.

Then I remembered the plug.

I went upstairs.

The box was at the bottom of the Lovehoney bag, under the harness and the lube. I lifted it out. It was substantial packaging for a small item -- thick cardboard, well made, the kind of box that suggested the contents were worth presenting properly. I opened it.

The plug sat in a moulded plastic cradle. Four inches long, tapered to a modest point, flaring out to a pronounced girth before narrowing again to a flat, smooth handle. Midnight blue. It had a small button set flush into the base that I had not noticed in the shop.

I turned it over.

There was a folded instruction sheet underneath the cradle. I opened it.

*Long press to power on and off. Short press cycles through vibration modes.*

I looked at the plug.

I had not realised it did anything beyond the obvious.

I read on.

Modes one through four were constant vibrations in ascending intensity. Modes five through seven were pulse patterns -- slow, medium, rapid. Mode eight was described as follows:

*Surprise Me: The device enters a dormant state and activates randomly, delivering an intense sequence before returning to dormancy. Interval between activations varies between twenty and ninety minutes. Ideal for wearing discreetly in social settings. Perfect for boring dinner parties.*

I read that last line twice.

I set the instruction sheet on the bed and picked up bottle of lube and went to the bathroom mirror.

I uncapped the lube and worked it onto my middle finger and reached behind myself and pressed against my anus and pushed slowly to the second knuckle.

*Mmmpf.*

I stood at the mirror and waited for my breathing to settle.

That was good. That was -- yes. Good.

I withdrew my finger and applied lube along the full length of the plug, working it into every contour of the flared section. Then I reached behind myself and pressed the tapered tip against me.

The first inch and a half went in without particular resistance. Then the flare began.

I stalled.

I stood at the mirror with the plug half inserted and my hand shaking slightly and breathed.

I withdrew it slowly and pressed it back in, deeper this time. The stretch of the flare was -- I exhaled through my nose -- considerable. Demanding to be noticed. I withdrew again and pressed forward again and felt my body opening around it and held it there and breathed.

I was full in a way I had never been full before. Not uncomfortable. The opposite of uncomfortable.

I worked it slowly. In and out. Each time a little deeper. Each time the flare stretched me further and each time my grip on the edge of the basin tightened.

Then the widest point of the flare cleared my tight ring and the plug was simply -- in. Drawn in completely, the flat handle sitting flush and smooth against me, everything else inside.

I stood still for a moment.

Then I took the hand mirror from the drawer and reached behind myself and looked.

I stood at the mirror with the handle sitting flat and smooth against me and tried to angle the hand mirror to see properly.

It was not possible from standing. I could see the handle and nothing else. I turned slightly. Still nothing useful. I bent forward. The plug shifted inside me and I grabbed the basin and forgot entirely what I had been trying to do for a moment.

I moved to the bed.

I lay back and drew my knees up and spread myself open with two fingers and held the hand mirror between my legs and looked.

The handle sat flush and flat against my skin. Around it, my body was stretched tight -- not uncomfortably, but visibly, the skin pulled taut around the base of the flare that was entirely inside me. I pressed two fingers either side of the handle and felt the plug move fractionally deeper and my stomach contracted.

I tilted the mirror.

I had done this. I had stood in my bathroom and worked this inside myself and it was in me and only the flat handle was visible and under clothing nothing would show at all.

I straightened and looked at my face in the mirror.

My colour was up. My lips were parted. Between my legs I was producing an amount of moisture that was, frankly, becoming a practical concern.

I pressed my thighs together and felt the plug shift again.

I could wear this, I thought. Under my clothes. To the committee meeting. To the supermarket. My God - To church.

The thought alone produced a fresh flood.

I reached for the plug's base and found the button and long pressed it.

The vibration that moved through me was immediate and total and nothing like what I had been prepared for. It went from zero to an intensity that found every nerve ending simultaneously and I said something I will not repeat and grabbed the edge of the duvet with both hands and my knees bent involuntarily.

I flailed for the button.

I pressed it.

The mode changed. A rapid pulse now, deeper and more concentrated than the first, and I pressed the button again and it changed again, slower, rolling waves that were somehow worse because I could anticipate each one and my body had decided to anticipate each one by clenching around the plug which only intensified --

I pressed the button again.

And again.

I was on my back on the bed still reaching behind myself, still pressing the button at random, and an orgasm arrived without warning or preamble -- not building, like a door opening -- and I arched off the mattress and three streams of fluid left my body in rapid succession, landing on my stomach and thighs, and then the rest came in a long warm rush and I lay in it and shook.

It was too much, I kept trying to turn it off, somehow the device went quiet.

I lay on my back on the bed and stared at the ceiling and breathed.

After a moment I started laughing.

I lay in the wreckage of my own making and laughed at the ceiling with a toy in my ass and my thighs soaked and my hair disordered and I thought - Fuck me.

The words arrived plainly and without apology.

That is good. I have been missing this my entire life. Never again.

I wiped my eyes.

Best money I have ever spent.

I lay there for a while longer.

Then I drew myself up and looked at the bed.

The bed cover beneath me held the evidence of what had happened in three distinct pale streaks and a wider damp patch spreading outward from the centre. I had seen this before -- in the bath, that first time -- but not like this. Not this much. Not this visible.

I bent forward and smelled it.

Warm. Intimate. Entirely mine.

I straightened.

I went to the drawer and found clean underwear and stepped into it and smoothed it into place. The plug shifted as I dressed and I stood still for a moment with my hand on the dresser and breathed through it.

I left the bed as it was.

I thought about Charles. Face down on this bed later tonight. His face down, his knees spread, waiting for what was coming. His nose two inches from the evidence of what his wife had been doing to herself this afternoon while he was in the office billing by the hour.

I went to the mirror and combed my hair and reapplied lipstick and looked at myself for a moment.

Same face. Same woman.

Not the same woman at all.

I went downstairs to make dinner with my plug still in my ass.

I served dinner at seven thirty.

Charles came through the door at seven with his briefcase and a story about the Hendricks matter that had developed unexpectedly. I said that sounded frustrating and put his plate in front of him and picked up the wine bottle to fill his glass.

The butt plug fired.

Six short pulses in rapid succession, each one distinct, the vibration travelling upward through my body and arriving in my face as a flush I had no time to manage. Most of the wine went into Charles's glass. I set the bottle down and looked at the spreading puddle of Pinot Noir on the white tablecloth.

"How clumsy of me," I said, and went to get a cloth.

"Long day?" Charles said.

"Mm hmm," I said.

I blotted the tablecloth and returned to my seat and I picked up my fork and cut a piece of lamb and the dinner proceeded in an entirely ordinary fashion.

Charles was telling me about a junior associate. I watched the candle flame and moved a piece of lamb to the other side of my plate and back again and said mm at what I judged to be the right interval.

Then the device activated properly.

Not six short pulses. Something sustained that went from nothing to considerable between one breath and the next. I set my fork down and picked it back up and pressed my lips together and gripped the fork and nodded at what Charles was saying.

"Are you all right?" Charles said.

"Perfectly," I croaked, cleared my throat, "this lamb is a little pink. Is yours pink?"

He looked at his plate. "Seems fine to me."

"Good," I said.

I reached for my wine glass and the mode shifted to something rolling and deep and I took a careful sip and set the glass back down and smiled at him.

Then it stopped.

I let my shoulders come down a fraction and picked up my fork and breathed.

"She sounds like she'll improve," I said. "These things take time."

"That's what I told the partner," Charles said.

I ate a piece of lamb. I drank some wine. Then it activated again.

This time the mode was different. Concentrated and rhythmic and not stopping. I put both hands flat on the table and felt my thighs press together and felt the complete futility of pressing my thighs together and picked up my wine glass because I needed something in my hands.

Charles was talking.

I was nodding.

The device cycled to something else -- a rapid pulse that climbed with each beat and I gripped the stem of the wine glass and felt warmth spreading through my lower body and looked at Charles across the candlelight and nodded at something he was saying and felt everything clench and release and clench again and the warmth spread beneath me into the chair in a way that was not going to stop.

"Martha," Charles said.

"Yes," I said. My voice was level.

"You've gone quite red."

"It's warm in here," I said.

He looked toward the window. "I can open--"

"No," I said. "Carry on."

He carried on.

The device delivered one final concentrated pulse that arrived everywhere simultaneously and I set my wine glass down with both hands and picked up my fork and cut a piece of lamb and put it in my mouth and chewed and swallowed.

The device went quiet.

I sat in the wreckage of my dining room chair and breathed through my nose and waited for Charles to finish his sentence.

"So the ruling should come through by Thursday," he said.

"That's good news," I said.

Under me, the chair was warm and wet and entirely beyond rescue.

I uncrossed and recrossed my ankles and sat up straight and smiled at my husband across the candlelight.

"More lamb?" I said.

Charles finished his lamb and pushed his plate back and poured the last of the wine into his glass and sat back in his chair.

I set my cutlery together on my plate.

The plug had been quiet for eleven minutes.

I folded my napkin and placed it beside my plate and looked at Charles across the candlelight.

"Charles," I said. "I've been thinking about the need you mentioned."

He looked at me over his glass.

"Your need," I said. "For penetration."

Charles swallowed. He set his glass down on the tablecloth and gave me his complete attention.

"I think I can accommodate you," I said. "If you are prepared to do precisely as I say."

"Oh, Martha." His voice had already changed. "Thank you, I know it's not -- I know you don't -- "

"Good," I said.

He closed his mouth.

"Go upstairs," I said. "Strip off. I want you on the bed. Face down."

He was out of his chair before I had finished the sentence.

I sat at the table and listened to his footsteps on the stairs and picked up my wine glass and finished what was in it.

The plug fired.

Three long rolling pulses that pressed against my spine and I gripped the stem of the glass and breathed through it and set the glass down carefully on the placemat.

When it stopped I stood up and smoothed my skirt and began clearing the plates.

I was not going to rush.

He could wait.

I cleared the plates and stacked them beside the sink and turned off the kitchen light and walked upstairs without hurrying.

Charles was on the bed face down, naked, his arms at his sides, his head turned toward the door. He watched me come in.

I didn't acknowledge him and walked past him into the wardrobe and closed the door behind me.

I undressed. I took the harness from the shelf where I had put it that afternoon and stepped into it and buckled both hips and fitted the phallus through the O-ring and tightened it in place.

I put on my dressing gown. Tied the belt. Picked up the larger bottle of lube from the shelf.

I went back into the bedroom.

Charles was still face down. He turned his head when I came in and looked at the bottle in my hand.

"I have something for you," I said. I held up the lube. "I thought you'd appreciate this."

He looked at the bottle. "Lube?" He lifted his head slightly. "Martha, I'm so small you won't feel a thing. There's no need for--"

"It's not for me," I said.

I untied the belt and let the dressing gown drop.

The phallus stood out from my hips, eight inches, the pronounced head catching the light.

Charles stared at it.

He looked at my face. At the harness. At the phallus. Back at my face.

"Martha." His voice had gone very quiet. "That's -- what is that."

"This is for you." I said." I moved to the bed and sat beside him. "I'm going to use it on you."

"I didn't -- " he said. "When you said you could accommodate my need -- I thought you meant--"

"I know what you thought," I said.

"Martha, I don't think I can--"

"It's the only penetrative sex you are ever going to get," I said. "I think you might enjoy it." I looked at him steadily. "Many men do. Most, actually."

He looked at the phallus again.

"It's rather -- " he said.

"Yes," I said. "It is."

A long pause.

"I didn't think this was what you were offering," he said.

"I know," I said.

He lay back face down and said nothing further, which I took as consent.

"On your knees and spread yourself open."

Charles did as he was told despite his nervousness.

I opened the lube and worked a generous amount onto my fingers and pressed them against him. He was tense, his muscles tight, and I worked slowly, one finger first, then another, feeling the warmth of him, the smoothness, pressing deeper.

"Relax," I said.

I pressed deeper and found the firm bump of his prostate and worked two fingers against it in slow circles and felt him shift on the bed.

"Do you like that," I said.

He said nothing.

I pressed again, more firmly. "Well? Shall I stop."

"No," he said into the pillow. "Don't stop."

"I asked if you liked it Charles, answer me truthfully."

"Yes, I do," he responded.

I smiled to myself, withdrew my fingers and took my time lubricating the phallus. Every inch of it. Slowly and thoroughly while Charles remained prone and waited.

I positioned myself behind him and pressed the head against him.

He tensed immediately.

I held the position and waited for him to relax, then I pressed forward again.

"It hurts, but keep going" he groaned.

"Good boy," I said.

He gripped the sheet.

I felt the ring of muscle relax and the phallus head slipped inside him. He groaned. I took hold of his hips and slowly worked the phallus in and out in shallow thrusts.

I caught my reflection in the mirror.

I stopped thinking about Charles entirely for a moment.

The woman in the mirror had her hands on a man's hips and her hips moving in a slow, deliberate rhythm and her chin up and her shoulders back and an expression on her face that I had never seen there before.

I watched myself push forward and withdraw and push again.

With each inward stroke the harness pressed the base of the phallus against me and the strap caught my clitoris -- a brief, concentrated pressure, a small precise reward for each thrust. I had not expected that. I received it each time with a tightening of my jaw and pressed forward again to receive the next one.

I watched the muscles of my backside tense and release in the mirror with each movement. The flex and gather of them. My body working.

This, I thought. This is what it is to be in charge.

Not watching. Not performing for someone else's pleasure. In charge. Charles's hips in my hands, his body accepting what I gave it at the pace I chose, his sounds into the pillow arriving on my schedule and no one else's.

I pushed deeper.

He groaned and his hands pulled at the sheet and I watched his back muscles shift and held his hips and gave him another inch and felt the strap press my clitoris again and held it there for a moment before withdrawing.

He was adjusting. I could feel it -- the resistance of him diminishing with each stroke, his body opening to the length and girth of it, beginning to move fractionally back to meet me.

I picked up the pace.

Not fast. A steady, purposeful rhythm that I watched in the mirror and felt in my thighs and received at my clitoris with each forward stroke. The small bright pleasure of it accumulated with every thrust and I pressed forward again and held his hips harder and watched my own face in the mirror.

My fuck toy, I thought. My good, obedient, well-fucked husband.

I worked harder.

Charles was making sounds he had never made in twenty-seven years of marriage -- low, unguarded, arriving without permission, muffled in the pillow and unmistakable. His hips moved back to meet mine. His knuckles were white on the sheet.

A flash of movement in the mirror caught my eye.

I looked at the doorway.

Max and Chanelle stood in the open door. Side by side. Neither of them moved. Neither of them spoke. Their eyes were fixed on the bed -- on Charles face down in the sheets, on the harness, on the phallus buried inside their father, on their mother's hands gripping his hips and her hips still moving, still maintaining the rhythm, watching them watching her in the mirror.

I held their gaze in the reflection.

I did not stop.

I knew I was being watched now.

I wanted to be watched.

I held Max and Chanelle's eyes in the mirror and felt something move across my. My top lip curled. My hands tightened on Charles's hips. I pulled him back onto me and drove forward and felt the strap press hard against my clitoris and held the eye contact and did it again.

I was performing.

I had always been performing. The difference was that now I was performing for myself.

I plunged deeper. Charles took it -- almost all eight inches, his body giving way around the girth of it, his face in the pillow -- and groaned in a way that came from somewhere he had never gone before.

I watched Max and Chanelle in the mirror. Max's mouth was open. Chanelle had both hands pressed flat against the doorframe.

"Do you like that," I said.

They looked at me.

It was Charles who answered.

"Yes," he said into the pillow.

"I didn't hear you," I said. "Tell me."

I picked up the pace. Pulled his hips back to meet each thrust. The strap hit my clitoris on every stroke and I stopped trying to moderate my expression and let my face do what it wanted to do.

"Yes," Charles said. Louder.

"Yes what," I said. "Yes you like being ass fucked? Yes you want more? Deeper? Harder?"

Charles went still for one moment.

Then he gave in completely. I felt it happen -- the last of whatever he had been holding onto releasing all at once.

"Yes," he said. "Yes to all of it. Yes, fuck my ass. Fuck it any way you want." His hands released the sheet and lay flat on the mattress. "Tell me what you want. I'll do it. Anything."

I looked at Max and Chanelle in the mirror.

Max had his hand pressed flat against his chest. Chanelle had not moved from the doorframe.

I drove forward slowly and held it there.

"Anything?" I said.

"Yes," Charles said. "Anything."

"I mean it, Charles." I withdrew slowly and pressed forward again. "If you make that promise you had better keep it. Things are going to change here. Everything is going to change."

"God, Martha." His voice was wrecked. Unrecognisable. "I mean it. I'll be anything you want. Do anything you want. I swear it."

I looked at my own face in the mirror.

My top lip curled again.

"Good boy," I said.

I drove forward and felt the strap press hard against my clitoris and kept my eyes on the doorway and began to move in earnest.

The itch in my clitoris built with each stroke.

I pressed harder. Deeper. The strap catching me precisely with each thrust, each one a little more insistent than the last, each one demanding the next. I was losing the careful measured rhythm I had started with and I did not care. My hips found their own pace and I let them and the phallus drove forward and the strap pressed and the pleasure climbed and I gripped Charles's hips and pulled him back to meet me.

Charles was groaning into the pillow. Long, continuous sounds that he had stopped trying to muffle. His hands were flat on the mattress and his whole body moved with each thrust, forward and back, forward and back, no longer gripping the sheet, no longer bracing against what was happening but meeting it.

Then he shifted.

He drew his knees up beneath him and found his balance and rose up and spread himself wide, his back arching down, his backside raised and fully presented, opening himself completely to what I was doing to him.

The access it gave me was immediate and total.

I drove forward and buried the phallus to the hilt.

Charles cried out. Not in pain.

I pulled back and drove forward again and his cry came again and his hands pressed flat against the headboard, bracing, pushing back against me as I pushed forward, the two of us finding the same rhythm from opposite ends of it.

The strap ground against my clitoris with each thrust and I felt my legs begin to shake and did not slow down and did not stop and watched in the mirror as Martha Enwright -- altar guild, charity committee, ladies' lunches, twenty-seven years of composure -- fucked her husband on his knees with eight inches of silicone and her chin up and her eyes open and her face wearing an expression she had been keeping to herself her entire life.

In the doorway Max and Chanelle had not moved.

I held their gaze in the mirror.

Then Charles groaned -- a long, guttural sound that came from somewhere below language -- and his whole body shuddered and three long stripes of cum painted the sheet beneath him, one after another, his hips bucking forward with each pulse.

The warmth of it hit my thighs.

That was all it took.

I drove forward one final time and felt the strap deliver a pressure against my clitoris that was not a small bright reward but something vast and unavoidable and I gripped his hips with both hands and came with a sound that I did not attempt to contain and that the house received without judgment.

I stood still for a moment, breathing.

Then I dismounted.

The phallus withdrew and I straightened and stood at the edge of the bed and looked at Charles. He was still on his knees, his head dropped forward, his weight on his forearms, breathing hard.

He lifted his head.

He looked at the doorway.

Max and Chanelle stood exactly where they had been. Neither of them had moved. Neither of them spoke.

I looked at Charles. I looked at them.

I unclipped the harness and let it drop to the floor.

"Change the sheets, Charles," I said. "And be a dear and wash that."

I walked to the door, fully naked, and closed it in their faces.

I went to the bathroom and turned the shower on and stood under it for a long time and washed my hair and used the good soap and did not hurry.

When I came out Charles had remade the bed with fresh sheets. The harness and the phallus sat clean and coiled on the nightstand. He had dressed for bed -- pyjamas, buttoned to the collar, as always.

I dried my hair and put on my nightgown. No underwear. If I woke in the night and wanted his mouth I preferred not to have to think about it.

I pulled back the fresh sheet and got in and turned off the lamp.

Charles got in beside me.

The house was quiet.

I closed my eyes.

I was asleep before I had finished the thought I had started.