The Suggestion

It began as a whisper in the dead of the night. Why I was awake I don't recall, but in my half-sleep I heard her voice. It spoke the name of a man I didn't know. She said it in a sigh, a rich mix of longing, praise, and pleading. I looked over at her. In the silver light of a full moon, I could see she was fast asleep. Her mouth parted and round. I lay still next to her for the rest of the night, hoping to hear that voice again, speak that name again. I couldn't recall ever hearing her voice sound as it did that night. And now that I had, it was used to speak the name of a stranger.

The next day at work I was hopelessly distracted. Whether perusing paperwork or sitting in on meetings, I heard the sound of her voice and his name over and over. It may have been nothing more than an innocent "talking in her sleep", but it introduced something so disarmingly new and arousing it was all I wanted to think about.

A little background at this point might be helpful. When I first laid eyes on Shea, I found her long red hair, fair skin, and slender legs irresistible. She claims that it was my wit, promise as a lawyer, and strong hands that captured her interest. The combination of our mutual interests, in any case, was absolutely combustible. Almost dangerously so. We fucked at any opportunity -- regardless of time of day or location; in fact, the more inappropriate the hour and locale, the greater the pleasure. For the next three years, we greedily devoured one another at a rate that left our friends shaking their heads. Shea and I sated our sexual appetites with an energy and creativity that must have been inspired by Bacchus himself.

It wasn't until just after graduation from college that we committed the first conventional act in our relationship. We got married.

Our sex life roared through the first six months of marriage. But then her work and my studies started to take their toll and slowly erode the one thing we did better than anything else. After a year and a half of marriage, work, and school, our first son was born and sex became something that had to be coordinated, planned for, and penciled in. Please don't jump to conclusions. Shea and I enjoyed a very good life. Our personalities and worldviews were in perfect sync, so running a household and a family was easy. Yet the spontaneous, primal, hungry sex of our youth had become a casualty of domestic bliss.

Shea and I have recently celebrated our 25th anniversary. She is a successful graphic designer. My law practice flourishes. I'm the Peter Kline of Blumberg, Belasco and Kline. We managed to raise two boys with the minimum of missteps, and now both are away at good schools, making their own way in the world. Shea and I have lots of friends and enjoy a gratifying social life. We are fortunate to live in a beautiful home and our money worries are minimal. By all outside observations we have an enviable union.

Still I sometimes spot a young couple in public, oblivious to the world around them, and bemoan the loss of that kind of carelessness. I try to remember how when I held Shea's body in my arms, it was a prelude to another sexual adventure -- one that lay bare our desires as our bodies became offerings to the carnal feast.

Perhaps that is why hearing Shea's voice in the night tilted my world on its axis. I had guessed that the kind of desire we enjoyed at 18 was now, at forty-six, something only for the young -- all we could hope for was that they enjoyed it as much as we had. But when I heard Shea speak another man's name in her sleep, I obsessed about the men that populated her subconscious. Were they men she knew from work? Were they men with whom she shared a moment of intimate eye contact on the street? Or were they men that represented the composite of all that she still secretly desired? Frankly, the idea of Shea's secret fantasy world, one liberated from convention, expectation, and propriety thrilled me. It excited me so much, in fact, that on that first day of work, I excused myself from an important meeting so that I could masturbate in the men's room. As I stood in the locked stall, I closed my eyes and imagined Shea, flush with lust and desire, taking him in her arms and whispering his name as he entered her.

I've spent some time exploring my own fantasy life and have come to the conclusion that it's nothing out of the ordinary. My wish list is comprised of what you'd typically expect from a forty-six year old, heterosexual male. Firm-bodied twenty-somethings. Experienced and confident forty-somethings. A round ass to spank. Encounters with perfect strangers. Shaved pussies. Shaving pussies. Full, natural pussies. Pussies. Satisfying a woman's kink -- within a broad range of possibilities. Parties that turn into orgies. Public sex. Sex with pretty much every race and creed. As far as fantasies go, mine are run of the mill stuff. In the course of my self examination, however, I have come to understand that I have a strong predilection toward watching. I find it very arousing to be on the outside looking in. I love to see the pleasure in a woman's face, the longing in her eyes. I enjoy watching her draw a man's head between her legs. I get off on the way a woman invites a man to mount her, and then entwines his body with her legs, arms, and fingers. I find the vision of a man and a woman, two bodies, each eager for selfish satisfaction, yet in perfect synch with the other to achieve that end, dizzyingly erotic. Given that, I'm sure you can understand how what became a whisper in the middle of the night, soon exploded into a howl -- a primitive yelp that needed attention -- and action.

At first my options seemed limited. I could be direct and tell Shea that it was my fantasy to share her with another man, and though the idea might appeal to her at some deep level, my confession might stir up questions in her mind as to the "health" of our relationship. I certainly couldn't pay a man to seduce Shea, for she was as loyal as she was discriminating. I'm embarrassed to admit that I briefly flirted with the idea of recording her sleeping in the hopes of capturing more nocturnal revelations that I might facilitate in the wakeful hours, but that idea even wierded me out. So, with a mind both aroused with possibility and frustrated by inaction, I ground through one day after another.

It wasn't until a day that Shea was in the city and decided that to surprise me with a visit, that the seeds of a realistic plan were sown. Shea is beloved among my staff. She is funny, smart, and a wonderful listener. And, for a woman at any age, Shea is beautiful. Let me be more specific. At twenty, Shea was a classic Irish beauty. She was so classically Gaelic, in fact, she was exotic. She used to joke that the characteristics in her youth that were the objects of teasing, at some point became the objects of desire. Shea is still fit and slender. Her breasts, though average in size, possess a sexual current that still makes my fingertips tingle. Her long creamy legs disappear beneath the hems of her dress and leave any man, of any age, imagining the deliciousness of their union. Her red hair is the envy of every woman she knows. Her emerald eyes are intense and, even, distracting. But now at forty-six, Shea possesses a strong self-confidence that self-confident men, find irresistibly erotic.

I watched Shea work the office, but this time I was particularly focused on the way she interacted with the men. Shea is a skilled flirt. Men love her attention, and she loves theirs. I was taken by her conversation with Marco, a young attorney who's been with the firm for a couple of years. Shea lingered at his side longer than the others, which wasn't an unusual occurrence as Marco is tall and powerfully built. Marco has a Cuban mother and inherited her coloring. His father was Italian, and it was from him that Marco inherited his charm and flawless sense of style. Women, including my Shea, always lingered longer at Marco's side.

As I watched Shea and Marco chat comfortably, I recalled the number of times his name had come up around the house. Is Marco in a relationship? Is Marco turning out to be a good choice for the firm? We should have some of the younger staff over for barbecue. You know Jane, Henry, Marco? Don't you think they'd like that?

I wondered if Marco had ever made an appearance in Shea's secret dream world.

It took me a few days, but I eventually came up with a plan. It came to me when I overheard the tail end of a conversation that a young couple were having while waiting for an elevator.

"Send me and email, Phillip, and we can talk about it", she said as she hurried to the open elevator.

Send me an email and we'll talk about it. I wondered what things were discussed in the secret correspondence. What things were revealed? Explored?

To get the ball rolling, I had a few things I needed to put in place. The easy part was to create a fake email address for each Marco and Shea. I went with Gmail for each. Yahoo doesn't seem adult enough. And I consider Hotmail sleazy. The next step was the trickier one. I would need to initiate a conversation that seemed natural. The topic needed to be something innocuous and mundane. Once I'd established a friendly dialogue between Marco and Shea, I'd need to expand the conversation, feeding the two of them with enough information to keep them on the same page. All of their correspondence would come through me. I'd play editor and middleman, tweaking their own emails just enough to keep them headed in the right direction before sending them off to their final destination. Then, when I felt some trust had been established, I would inject a suggestion into one of the emails, an invitation to share something intimate. (Assuming one of them didn't take the initiative to do the same thing on his or her own). If the idea took hold, I would sit back and play the voyeur, listening in on their seductions.

Shea and I were failures when it came to keeping secrets from one another. We could read one another far too well. So it was probably a matter of a few days after Shea dreamed up the idea of a surprise birthday party on my behalf that I had caught wind of the scheme. This was the kind of clandestine information, however, that would work nicely as an opening. My initial email read something like the following.

Dear Shea, I hope I'm not being too presumptuous, but I understand you are throwing Peter a surprise birthday party. I'd love to help in any way I can. Please, give me a task. I'm talented and willing. Write back as soon as you can. Marco

The email was sent in the evening; by morning Shea's response had arrived at my fake Marco address. She chided Marco for assuming presumption, expressed her delight at his offering, and promised that within a few days she would assign him a task equal to his talents and enthusiasm. Naturally, I had to doctor the letter just a bit, considering no request by Marco had ever been made, but with little difficulty I massaged Shea's email into an invitation to the party and a polite request for Marco's help. Marco, being ever the gentleman, responded promptly, to which Shea wrote back the same day. With each incoming email I needed to make fewer and fewer revisions. Before long a genuine correspondence of surprising frequency was developing.

At first the emails between the two were polite and platonic. Slowly, however, I could sense an undercurrent of intimacy. Shea asked if Marco would bring a date to the surprise party. Please tell me about her, she asked. Marco was not one to "kiss and tell", but he did lavish the superlatives on his date, a woman he called Marissa. This I could tell was Marco's way of conveying to Shea that he was a man who enjoyed women, and that he took in every detail of a woman as an art lover might study brush strokes. Shea was almost demure in her responses; nevertheless, I could read in the way she complimented Marco's gallantry, that his tack was effective.

By the third week the emails between Shea and Marco had become chatty and comfortable. Each spent some time describing his or her day -- no matter if it involved reading an article in Vanity Fair, taking a friend to the airport, lounging poolside, or getting ready for an evening out. With each email, though, I could sense them inching toward intimacy. Marco complemented the pale green dress Shea wore when she visited the office and expressed how much he liked it when she wore her off her shoulders. A lovely slender neck is something a woman should show off, he told her. Shea asked Marco to describe his evenings out with Marissa. Where they went. What she wore. Though the questions were always asked in the most innocent fashion, it was becoming clear that Shea was dying for a glimpse into Marco's love life.

Shea visited the office more frequently, wearing her hair up most of the time. Shea would always stop by my office first. We chatted briefly before she kissed me and left my office to say hello the rest of the gang -- to leave me to my work, she claimed. When she and Marco finally engaged, the energy of their conversation filled the hallway. They laughed at inside jokes. Shea touched Marco's arm when he complimented her on the shoes she wore. Marco placed his hand on the small of her back when he escorted her to the elevator. Everything was working out just as planned. The time had come for me to force the issue.

Shea couldn't have been home for more than a half hour when an email from her arrived in Marco's fake In Box. She just wanted to say how nice it was to see him and thank him for all he'd done for Peter's party. He must promise to tell her first thing Monday about his weekend with Marissa. She's a lucky girl, Marco.

It was at the end of this email that I attached my question.

She's a lucky girl, Marco. I only hope that she appreciates her good fortune. Does she make you happy Marco? Does she touch your arm when you talk? Does she wear her hair the way you like it? Is she a good lover Marco? Now I'm the one at risk of being presumptuous. I hope you'll forgive my prying, but I know you well enough now to confess that these things cross my mind.

Even at the time I knew my insertion sounded forced and kind of corny. But when the seeds of desire have germinated even an awkward kiss is the rain and sunshine to bring on a bloom. Besides, I couldn't wait another day to take my Shea and Marco to a higher level.

An uncomfortable interlude of four days passed before an email from Marco finally arrived at Shea's fake email address. While clicking the mouse to open it, my hand trembled with anticipation. The email went on to describe his weekend with Marissa -- two nights in San Francisco. Marco described their time together in some detail. He described what they saw, what they ate, what she wore, what he wore, and, even, what the weather was like. The email went on for nearly a page before he wrote this:

Marissa treats me well, Shea. She is fun to be with. Of course she is beautiful. I think I am the envy of nearly every man we pass on the street. She is, however, young, and is preoccupied with things that I have long since abandoned. Thankfully in bed I can forget all of that and enjoy things greedily. I'm sure she does the same. Is she a good lover? She is. But as I said she is young. Her lovemaking races to climax. I have thought about this a lot since your last email. What do I most enjoy about making love to Marissa? When she comes, she arches her back as if she might rise from the bed. It's as if the arm of some carnal deity is lifting her to him to feel her quake.

I didn't make any changes to Marco's email. I sent it straight to Shea.

Once the subject of sex was broached, the walls of restraint came tumbling down. Each email explored a new topic. Starting with topics as relatively pedestrian as tattoos and piercings, within a few days Shea and Marco had advanced to discussions of oral sex and masturbation; fantasy and fetish; dominance and submission; interracial sex; group sex; exhibitionism. The array of sensual subject matter was endless,and I was cumming two and three times a day as a result.

Shea was sharing the kind of graphic intimacies and erotic images with Marco that we used to share with one another in the early years of our relationship. The communications were more frequent and powerful. Not only was I gaining insight into Shea's rather powerful fantasy life, but also into her sexual frustrations.

"I've played the part of the boss' wife flawlessly," she wrote. "And frankly, I'm ready to scream. I'm tired of being the perfect hostess, well-mannered and gracious. I don't think I can work another room of my husband's clients. Clustered there with the clucking wives, I'm the picture of decorum, while all I really want is to grab that man who has been staring at me all evening from across the room, drag him to the poolside, strip him, and fuck like I did when I was twenty. Am I horrible, Marco?"

I masturbated to this passage three times the first day I received it. Once in my office. I was almost caught by my secretary.

Shea's erotic communications with Marco were having their effect, and Shea required sexual release. Lucky me, for I became the benefactor of all this pent up desire. The when and where were the only matters in question. Standing in line, waiting to buy tickets to a Spanish film, Shea stood in front of me and pressed her ass against me. When I tried to pull away for fear someone might be watching Shea reached back and grabbed my pant leg, keeping me in my place, against her. She wanted to feel me grow hard against her lovely round and (as I was to find out later) panty-less ass. During the same movie, Shea took my hand during a wonderfully erotic scene and pressed it between her legs. I heard her throaty groan as my fingers danced in her soaking nakedness. Our love-making became fucking. Hard fucking. Greedy fucking. On any given night, I might be awakened by the feel of Shea's warm arm snaking around me. Her hand trailing teasingly down her abdomen. A leg draped over mine, Shea would press her pussy against me. The soft red bush already soaking with need. Her nipples stiff and excited pressed against my back. A soft purr in my ear was laced with the message that she needed to be fucked. She needed a man inside of her. She felt me grow hard in her hand and begin to slide her slender fingers up and down my shaft, her whimpers growing pregnant with a primal desire. Often she would pin my shoulders back and straddle my loins. She would use my cock like a toy, teasing the head against her clit. Her nectar running in rivulets down my prick. The lips of her cunt were swollen and heavy. They kissed the flared head of my cock, before swallowing it whole into the wet velvet of her sex. I watched her ride me. Her head thrown back. Her fingers digging in to my chest. I knew Shea had become the possession of a powerful sexual beast, the exorcism from which she sought in the hard, fleshy phallus of man.

During these days, Shea's Blackberry was constantly beckoning. When I complained about the endless ringing --the theme song from Mad Men -- Shea would put it on vibrate. Whether on ringtone or vibrate, however, Shea was quick to respond. Shea said the increased calls were strictly business, which had been picking up recently. Shea said that new inspiration had been breathed into her work, and the result was a buzz among clients and the friends of clients. I, nevertheless, couldn't help but wonder how many of the calls were from Marco, a suspicion that frankly both unsettled me and excited me.

Shea and I were driving home from an event. It was a warm September night and I decided that a drive down a quiet road through the desert might be a nice conclusion to the evening. Shea read a text message on her Blackberry. In the screen's light, I saw the smile on Shea's face as she immediately wrote back.