Secrets

Secrets

1.1

I have a secret. I love my wife. Now, that's not much of a secret and now that I've shared it here, I guess it's a secret no longer. Isn't that how secrets work? If you share them then they're not secrets anymore? I have other secrets, too. The ones I kept hidden from everyone, including my wife. I know now that we all have those. Personal things that are ours alone, even if they should not be. Then there were the hidden things that I had not planned on sharing, but when I finally did disclose them, well, that led to what I'm telling you now. It wasn't exactly the start. I did not know about that, but it is close enough to win the Showcase Showdown.

And why am I telling you? The nameless, faceless people who may one day read these words? Because I want to? Maybe? Because I need to put the words down, to keep them fresh long after they become nothing more than fragmented memories that are hard to find no matter how long you look? That's probably closer to the truth.

I just finished one of the most difficult two weeks of my life. A trying - and that word is biblically understated - two weeks where I toiled and suffered all because I shared a secret. Well, more than one.

I guess I should introduce myself. My name is Jack Tilly and my wife's name is Jill. Yes, it is every bit as horrible as it sounds. When I proposed to her, and after she said yes, she would stand at the bathroom mirror whispering "Jilly Tilly" over and over. I was never sure if she was sounding it out to digest how awful it was as a rhyme or how happy it made her. If you ever saw The Wedding Singer with Adam Sandler, when Drew Barrymore was saying her characters upcoming married name over and over, you'll know what it was like.

Jack and Jill. That's us. A greater-than-middle-aged couple, staring down the later third of their lives, still in love after twenty-six years of marriage and a three-year courtship. Long ago we went up a hill together, fell in love, had two kids - a boy and girl - not named after either of us, then started to find each other again when we became empty nesters. It was during that reintroduction that we shared our fantasies... those secrets I mentioned. The ones I had intended to keep to myself until the sun rose on my last living day.

Like most married coupled, our sex life had diminished over the years. Hot passion became diaper changes at three a.m., naps when you could find them, and the occasional romp to remind yourself that you're both still sexual creatures when the calendar begins to tell you that you're not. Near daily became twice a week, morphed into something put on a schedule, became once a month, before dwindling to birthdays, anniversaries, Father's Day, Mother's Day and Christmas. It's not like we didn't want to do it more, but when the clock is limited to a mere twenty-four hours, sometimes things get left behind to tumble down the hill after an errant bucket.

When the kids moved out, we had the house to ourselves for the first time in nearly two decades. The first day we stood side by side in the kitchen just listening to the sound of emptiness. I remember hearing the clock in the living room, counting out each diminishing second of our lives. I heard the refrigerator compressor click on, run for a moment, then switch off again. Outside I heard the neighbor's dog barking. At what I did not care.

Our son moved out first, and a year later his sister. And now, with both of our children off to start their own lives we were left alone to fend for ourselves. The clock that had been eaten by after school plays, soccer and lacrosse, baseball and ballet, play dates and sleepovers, seemed to stop munching and finally declare it was full. At least for the time being.

"Now what?"

It was like she was waiting for that question. Hearing it, Jill pulled her shirt over her head, dropped it on the kitchen island, before grabbing my hand to pull me upstairs to the bedroom. She was ravenous, devouring first my tongue and then my cock until I was hard, throbbing and needy. Smiling, revealing the depths of the ache I had not known she was feeling - a secret of her own, perhaps - she pushed my head lower as I kissed myself down her body, grazing her nipples briefly before my exploration was interrupted as Jill pushed harder, sending my mouth down her stomach to the soft, pink folds between her thighs. I noticed that she was freshly shaved, leaving nothing to interfere with my probing, happy tongue. The stubble that sometimes appeared was happily missing. I lapped at her pussy, realizing far too late how much I had missed doing so. I tasted her, then remembering the things she liked, I pressed two fingers into her snatch, before curling my fingers upward and then back, as if there was something buried within the folds of her sex, and I was trying to pull it out.

With my fingers buried, I sucked her clit into my mouth. I held it there before releasing the pressure then dove in with the flat of my tongue, pushing it against her wet lips and swiping not left or right but up, across her folds and then higher to settle firmly on her clit.

She moaned at that causing me to grin. I had always enjoyed the sounds she made that I was responsible for. I did that, I recalled thinking the first time she screamed an orgasm, and each one thereafter I would have a similar thought. Jill, lying on her back, with her legs parted and my face buried in her pussy was making those same animalistic sounds. Groans and gasps turning into hitching, grunting moans.

I continued to finger her pussy while devouring her clit until she came. Her fingers were buried in my hair. She held my head, not letting me pull away. Her hips bucked slightly, rising off the bed before falling back and with my head sandwiched between her thighs and her hands holding my head captive, I went along for the ride. I kept waggling the two fingers buried within her and kept toying with her pussy, licking it with a fervent, almost angry assault and it was an attack. I was ravenous, eating her pussy, driving her towards not only her second orgasm, but her third.

I felt alive with a wantonness that had begun to dwindle with our first child and had dropped even lower once our daughter came into the world. Jack and Jill had been replaced. We had transitioned from a couple to a family and now, in just a brief flash of time, the passion that had settled into a pile of heated coal had not only been rekindled but enflamed, reminding me of what we had been missing and how much the couple that we had been should come back.

We did not make love that night. We fucked. It was full of passion and intensity, like that of a cat staring at a mouse just waiting for the right moment to attack. We were wanton teenagers finding pleasure in another for the first time and we were lovers that knew each other well enough to understand what worked and what did not. We were animals rutting and when we came up for air the bedsheets were on the ground, the iPhone charger was lying unplugged on the floor and the water on Jill's side of the bed had toppled leaving a puddle on the nightstand.

We showered together after that. As she washed me, I responded anew which led to a gentler but just as satisfying conclusion for the both of us beneath the heated stream of water spilling from above our naked bodies.

"I needed that," Jill admitted afterwards as we were eating dinner in the breakfast nook attached to the kitchen. Jill had prepared a simple meal of chicken and yellow rice - one of my favorites.

"Me too," I admitted. "It had been a while."

If I were a younger man, we might have gone for the hat trick, but I was pushing fifty and twice in one day was pretty damned good. Still, there was always tomorrow, and I said as much.

Jill smiled at that. It wasn't a smile I was used to. There was a bit of happiness in it, but there was something else, too. Sadness perhaps. Or maybe regret. It had been a while since we had had a romp like that. Or any romp at all, if the truth were to be known. Did she think that it was her fault, or did she see it as mine? There are two sides to every story with the truth being somewhere in the middle. If Jill held any blame, then I did as well.

"And the day after that," I said, taking her hand in mine.

That smile faltered then faded. "And the day after," Jill whispered, staring, not at me but through me, suddenly lost somewhere else.

Long ago I had said those same words during our wedding. We had each written our own vows. Now, I'm not much of a writer, as you can guess reading what I'm putting down, each letter chasing a blinking cursor one key press at a time, but the vows I had penned before Claire and Daniel were mere ideas that would become reality years after our wedding day, had flown from me. I had written from the heart, telling Jill that I would love her every day of our lives and I had ended it with "I loved you yesterday. I love you today. I will love you tomorrow." And I had ended my vows with "And the day after that." With those vows I had set us up for a future full of love and while there had been storms in our lives, those words still felt true. I love Jill and I will tomorrow when the sun comes out.

And the day after that.

After dinner, lying naked in bed, spent and tired, with the house clean and shut up tight, Jill was lying against me, running her fingers through my chest hair, when she raised her head, "Jack?"

I opened my eyes, not asleep, but not quite awake either. I was in the place where the television set was on, though you could no longer hear what was happening, but you were aware that something was taking place. I hummed something to let her know I was listening.

"What's your biggest fantasy? The one you've never told me."

Tell me a secret.

"You're all the fantasy I need, honey," I said, not really deflecting. I wasn't there enough to understand what she was asking. I wouldn't truly understand what she was asking until much later. Or what prompted the question in the first place.

She continued to toy with my chest and soon enough I was asleep, her question never answered.

1.2

"So," Jill began over breakfast the next day. "You never did answer my question from last night."

I swallowed a bit of grits seasoned with warm egg yolk. "What question?"

She tilted her head, giving me a look that said she wasn't unhappy, but she wasn't amused either. "You know," she said, straightening to give me a steady stare. "What's your biggest fantasy? If you tell me yours, I'll tell you mine. And," she paused to take a sip of coffee, only continuing after setting her cup across from mine, "I think you'll like mine." Her lips turned up into a smile. "I think we can even make it happen."

Tickling my thoughts, I could almost hear Jill asking me that same question the night before. The answer I had given moved towards my tongue, but I swallowed it. There was something in Jill's gaze that stopped me. It was steady, like she was studying me. It felt like my answer truly mattered. That the question was not as simple as it seemed but held some much deeper meaning that I did not understand. I would in time, but right then, eating the breakfast Jill had cooked, that question seemed like a continuation of the night before. The type of honest query a couple reigniting their dormant passions would ask. That question held more meaning than I could fathom, I just did not know it then.

"I've not really thought about it," I said, not quite lying. I had fantasies, secrets if you will, but they had dwindled away with the passing of life. I had settled into being the happiest me I could be and those strange thoughts that had fueled my adolescent masturbatory sessions seemed like distant memories. Dreams to recall fondly, yes, but if they disappeared with the coming of a new day, well, that was okay.

"Come on," she said, her breakfast forgotten. "It'll be fun."

If it was supposed to be fun, then why did she sound so serious? "Fun?"

"Yeah. I'll tell you mine if you promise to tell me yours."

We've been together for nearly twenty-five years and in that time, I have never broken a promise to Jill. True, I give them very rarely. In a marriage that's lasted as long as ours every day is a promise as were the vows we uttered standing in the front of our church with warm light spilling through the stained-glass windows to decorate Jill's dress in a rainbow of joyous color. On those rare occasions when I did make a promise, I always kept it.

I still could not understand the looks she was giving me, but I could tell that this was important. "I promise."

That was good enough for Jill. "Goody!" She got up then, breakfast forgotten. She grabbed my hand and yanked, pulling me from the chair. She was wearing a pair of yellow bikini panties and a T-shirt and somehow, without releasing her grip on my hand she was able to pull the shirt over her head where it settled on our joined wrists. She shimmied out of her panties barely missing a stride. Naked, her panties falling away behind us, she pulled me into the living room where she dropped onto the couch, spread her legs, and fed me my second breakfast.

"It started with Tracy," Jill began, draping her calves on my back. Tracy and Jill went way back. They met in college when they were assigned to be roommates during their sophomore year. They became tight friends, so much so that Tracy served as Jill's maid-of-honor when Jill and I wed.

I paused long enough for Jill to scold me, wanting to ask about Tracy. To see how she was doing. "Don't talk. Just listen." She pointed at her crotch, causing me to lick her pussy, gingerly to start, unsure of how long this story would take. She was wet already. Decidedly so. Was this fantasy that powerful? I would regret not knowing this sooner if that were the case.

"Well, Tracy was bossy, with a capital B. A lot of people called her a bitch," she laughed when she said, "Also with a capital B. Oh, right there," she said, her hands dropping to the top of my head.

I devoured her cunt, savoring the sight of it before me and the lingering tanginess on my tongue, but it was the sounds most of all that I adored, the way she gasped and moaned when my fingers pierced her sex, and my tongue probed her delicate folds. Her hips bucked when I hit the right spot with just the right amount of pressure and when that happened her story paused, interrupted by the carnal attention I worshipped upon Jill's pussy.

"She was the first girl I, oh, God, kissed. There is a lot of experimentation in college, and with Tracy, I did more than experiment. She really was bossy; she liked to be in charge. Of everything. After that first kiss, when she pulled away, I pouted a little bit. She laughed at that, telling me not to worry. That she had more than kissing in mind.

"She had pulled away to lock the door. She didn't always do that. She liked keeping the door unlocked and," her back arched, causing her to swallow her words to exhale out a languid, hitching gasp. Her hips rose and fell, driving her pussy against my face, before slipping back to the couch. "Keep going," she said before continuing herself, "where was I, oh, she locked the door that first time. Tracy turned back to me and kissed me again. This time it wasn't coy or tender. No, it was something else. Stronger. Angry is what I thought at the time, but it wasn't anger. It was lust. I was nineteen at the time; what did I know about that?

"She came at me, swallowing my lips, my tongue, my soul. I could smell her perfume. I could hear some music playing outside the window two floors below, I could feel goosebumps on both my arms and legs; they were everywhere. I could feel the way her tongue pushed into my mouth like it would not be denied. Her hands were all over me, stripping off my clothes, leaving me exposed and panting while she was fully dressed.

"She broke off the kiss and looked at me as I stood there nearly naked. My jeans were at my ankles, my panties pulled down with them. She had unbuttoned my blouse and removed my bra all while her mouth was taking ownership of my own. Looking at me, smiling in a celebratory grin, Tracy said, 'Now that's a good look.' She nodded after that, 'Yes, Jilly, that's a very good look. In fact, I think this'll be your dress code in our room. Your first rule.'

"'Dress Code?' I remember saying. What was she talking about? And why did the idea make me tingle?"

I paused long enough to look up, past Jill's pussy, over her small stomach, through the valley that marked her cleavage to her face. She was looking towards the ceiling, lost in the memory that was somehow the beginning of the fantasy she was sharing with me. She was there with me, her hands in my hair and the way her hips were undulating, like a gentle current moving in with the tides, proved that, but she was far away, too, back in that third-floor dorm room she shared with her college roommate Tracy.

I knew about Tracy. How Jill had met her the day they moved in together - a good year before I met Jill - and how they'd been best friends from that day forward. Tracy had been the maid of honor at our wedding and while Tracy had never married, "never found the right one, Jack," she had told me once when I'd asked her when she herself would settle down. "Jill had that luck. Not me. Maybe one day." She had sounded a little sad, like she was missing something, but whenever Tracy would come and visit, once, sometimes twice a year, she would always have a story to tell. Some new adventure she had just finished, talking about the time she went diving with sharks in Australia, or how she had once mooned the whole of Vatican City on a too-drunk-to-know-better dare.

I knew that Jill's first girl-girl kiss was with Tracy but now it seemed I was going to learn much more. Jill's hands tightened into fists as she returned from the land of long ago to the land of right-this-minute. "Keep going," Jill breathed, as she herself did the same. "'Strip off,' Tracy told me. Unsure of what to do, I did what I was told. There was something in the room. Lightning sounds stupid, but it was like that, a heavy energy that was scary and thrilling and maybe a little dangerous. I fell onto my bed as my jeans bunched at my ankles tripped me. I screamed just a little bit before kicking off my shoes and then both my pants and panties. My socks followed, leaving me naked on the bed. 'Stand up. Let me see you.'

"I stood there, naked, one hand cupping my crotch and the other folded across my breasts. She didn't say anything, but she gave me a look. It was serious and amused and, I don't," she gasped at what I was doing before continuing "I don't know, commanding. I dropped my hands. I was just as naked but now I was exposed. Those are two very different things; did you know that?"

I shook my head with my tongue extended, lapping at her pussy.

Jill paused in the story as she came. She held onto my head with her hands while her thighs locked my head in place. I kept licking as she twitched and spasmed. I felt like a bull rider going the full eight seconds. When she settled down, her breathing slowly settling, Jill continued, this time beckoning me to go slower as she had more she wanted to tell.

"Naked and exposed are different. You're naked in the shower. You're exposed when others are looking. Tracy stood there, taking me in. 'Whenever you and I are here you'll be naked for me.' It wasn't a question or a suggestion. It was a command, and I knew I was going to obey it. I wanted to. Just hearing her tell me what to do was enough to make me wet. I've always been submissive. You know that." I nodded, though at the time I wasn't sure Jill noticed. "Well, Tracy with a capital B was bossy alright. She made me do so many things and I loved it. She locked the door that first time, but after the first week or so she wouldn't lock it. I was always so scared that someone would come over while we were alone in our room. From that day on I was naked as Tracy had told me to be. After the second week she would text her friends to come over, making some excuse. Later, she'd have me text my friends. God, that first time, sending a message for a friend to come over knowing that they would see me naked. Knowing that I'd be exposed.