Seven Dates: A Different Kind of Hotwife (5 page)

Confront challenges. Seize the bull by the horns. Take the initiative. It is all well and good to think that, but it only works when you have some idea what to do. And I didn’t. I’d taken my best shot with Joanie and had come up snake eyes.

I let Joanie have the bed and slept on the sofa. Or at least tried to. My mind was racing with work-related thoughts. Around 4:00am, I gave up. I showered, shaved, and went back to the office.

The simplest way to fix the situation was for my firm to sign a new partnership agreement with XCOSA that would encourage them to submit a new bid. But that was complicated. The reason they weren’t part of the original deal was that they weren’t sold on our market analysis. Too much risk, too little upside.

I needed to sweeten the deal. In theory, that should have been easy. Every dollar up to $2.9 million we spent to seal the deal would come back to us indirectly through the third-party allocations clause. But it still meant dollars up front that would at best mitigate a loss. If my market analysis was wrong, it meant the worst case, throwing good money after bad. And given how pissed off Donald was, I wasn’t sure I could bring him around on this.

Worse, even if my market analysis was correct, it wouldn’t help Donald’s bottom line. The $2.9 million loss was really a missed opportunity. Invisible. The money we advanced to XCOSA, almost no matter how we did it, was a direct cost. The loss was also theoretical for the next twenty-four months. It might not even occur. Briand or XCOSA could come through on their own. Who knew? Well, I did. And so did Donald, which is why he was pissed, but no one else really needed to know. But signing a new XCOSA deal, front-loaded with incentives would make the fuck-up public, and suddenly it wouldn’t just be my fuck-up, but Donald’s as well.

As much of an asshole as Donald is, I thought he’d come around sooner or later. But I didn’t have the luxury of “later.” The money would go to whomever signed a favorable deal with Briand or XCOSA first. I might have bought a few days with Tanner by making him focus on Briand, but that was it. If I didn’t have XCOSA signed and sealed within forty-eight or at most seventy-two hours, Tanner would be on them. We’d be competing for a deal. They would try to fuck us on the negotiations and nothing would happen. Which was fine with Tanner. He won either way. I needed a deal. He could have either a deal or nothing and still come out ahead. He had the leverage.

The only way I could get the leverage back was to make XCOSA an offer they couldn’t refuse. And for that I needed Donald’s backing, so I was back to square one….

Or was I? That was the $2.9 million question. In theory
anybody
could sign Briand or XCOSA. Well, anyone but me. If I did it on my own somehow, my firm could kill me if they wanted to. Not literally, but they’d sue me. I might even be criminally at risk. It would look like I’d fucked up the contract in order to give myself the opportunity to step in with a partnership of my own.

I could tip off another firm. That would fuck Tanner, which might be worth it by itself, but that would be pure spite. I’d be violating my fiduciary duty to my own firm to help another and wouldn’t even profit. And, of course, if I did, I’d be back in the same boat of being at risk of being sued or prosecuted.

No, I needed to be above-board, and to do that, I needed to first go to Donald and pitch him the idea of sweetening the deal for XCOSA. But if that failed… and I knew it would until he at least cooled down… what would I do next?

Simple. Get Donald to allocate the rights to me legally. Raise around $1 million to sweeten the deal for XCOSA. And lock XCOSA into a deal. All in the next two to three days.

I chuckled. Maybe I should work on the
Joanie Situation
instead. I had no idea how to proceed with her, but surely it couldn’t be as absurdly complicated as trying to fix my business problems.

***

I sat down with Donald. He wasn’t happy to see me. I sat in his outer office for nearly two hours before he let me in. He was supposedly in a meeting, but when he finally left to go to the bathroom, he was alone.

“What do you want Kellen? I’m busy.”

I nodded at the campaign literature scattered across his desk. The big fundraiser he was hosting at his house the following evening was consuming all his time.

“New profit center?” I asked sarcastically.

He sneered. “Shouldn’t you be talking to TKD instead of stalking me?”

I waved that away. “That’s going nowhere. I have a better idea anyway.”

He rolled his eyes.

I plowed ahead. “Look, the way the deal is now structured, it is more attractive to bring in a third party.”

“I thought you tried that? You saying this is another thing you fucked up.”

I sighed. “I did try, but under the old terms it didn’t make sense to sweeten the deal. Now it does.”

He snorted. “So you want to throw good money after bad? How much?”

I thought I could make it work with $500,000 with enough time, but I didn’t have time. I needed to shock and awe XCOSA. “I’d like negotiating authority for a million.”

“Fuck you.”

I laughed. “Is that a no?”

“Of course, it’s a fucking no.”

“Because you don’t believe in the deal? Or you don’t believe in me?”

He shrugged.
Why not both?

“You’re desperate. And desperate is bad for business. You’re going to get taken to the cleaners.”

“I have faith in myself.”

“Save your faith for church. Get the fuck out of my office, Kellen, I have shit to do.”

I gave an exasperated sigh. I needed to sell what came next as a sudden inspiration.

“Please Donald, I’ll….”

“What? Seriously, man, you’re reeking with flop sweat. I wouldn’t give you negotiating authority on ordering lunch right now.”

“I… I…”
Just another few seconds.
“I… fine, look, how about I buy out the option myself?”

He chuckled. “And then what?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Get a second mortgage? Borrow from my parents? I believe in this deal.”

He laughed. “Okay, fine, what’s your offer?”

I nodded. Nodded.
Thinking. Thinking.
“Okay, I haven’t had time to run the numbers on it.”
A lie.
“But how about we split the profits fifty-fifty and you hold back fifty percent of my bonuses for the next… three… years?”

“What makes you think you’ll be around that long?”

“Oh, come on Donald. It was one fuck up.”

“My experience is, fuck ups come in threes. I’m not sure I want to be paying you for the next two.”

“It won’t happen again.”

He laughed. “Not if I fire you right away, it won’t.”

I ignored the jibe. “So, we have a deal?”

He laughed. “Fuck no. You want us to sign away our rights? You need to pay up front. $500,000. Cash on the barrelhead…. And fifty-fifty split on revenue associated with third parties, if those ever come through… which they won’t.”

You have to give it to Donald. Even without a spreadsheet in front of him, he’d made a perfect offer to a desperate man. He’d left just enough in the trough to make it tempting.

I nodded. “I’ll think about it.”

“Don’t think too long.”

“Thank you,” I said finally. I was impressed I’d managed to choke that out.

I didn’t have $500,000 to give Donald, and even if I did, I wouldn’t. He’d find a way to hold the money and fuck me with XCOSA. That would make him look good. He would be able to say he knew the deal was a dog and that he managed to get something for nothing. If I made the deal work, even though he’d squeezed me hard, he would still have left money on the table, namely my small share. Our interests were not aligned. But that was okay. I hadn’t expected a deal with Donald. The meeting was just about putting the plan to buyout the clause on the table. And in that sense, everything had worked out perfectly.

I was wrung out by the time I got home. Definitely in no state to deal with Joanie. Luckily she was out. Or not luckily… Where the fuck was she? How much longer would I have to play this idiotic game with her?

I pulled out my phone and flipped through to Trina’s number. Joanie was probably there. Or at least Trina, through a miserable process of airing of grievances would fill me in on what to do about my wife’s anger. I took a deep breath to steel myself for the call, but just before I pressed dial, I noticed movement from across the street. John Martin was pruning his shrubs.

Information is power and before dealing with either Joanie or Trina, it made sense to confirm my conviction that she’d made up all of her adventures. It should just take a couple of minutes.

I cracked open a beer, pasted a smile on my face, and stepped outside. But as I stepped into the street and began making my way across, John spotted me, and dropping his clippers on his lawn. He hurried into his house, slamming the door shut behind him. For several moments I just stared at his closed front door.

What. The. Fuck?

A car honking woke me from my shock. I had stopped in the middle of the street. I jolted and proceeded across, cautiously walking up his path, glancing in renewed confusion at the clippers impaled in his lawn.

I rang the doorbell. No answer. I chuckled uneasily. I mean, he’d seen me, which meant he knew I’d seen him. I rang again. This time I heard a faint rustling sound from the other side of the door.

“Um, I can hear you,” I said.

“Kellen, I have a gun,” he replied anxiously.

“Well, I don’t,” I said. “Let me in?”

“What do you want?”

“Oh Jesus, John, I just want to talk. What the fuck is the matter with you?”

He opened the door a crack and apparently relieved that I wasn’t actually frothing at the mouth, he invited me in.

“I figured you’d come,” he said.

“Yeah?” I replied. I was relieved to see he wasn’t actually holding a gun.

“Look, man, I swear, I thought you were cool with it. I mean that’s what she said. But it didn’t sound right. Still, you know, she’s so hot, and well….”

Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.
It was like an alarm clock going off in my head. Had she really?
Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.

“… definitely too good to be true. But then I figured, what the hell? And shit, you know…”

He was still rambling, but to me it was just a weird buzzing sound. I forced myself to think, think. How did I want to this to go down? Two options really: My wife is a cheating whore and I’m an unwilling cuckold, or….

I put my hands up. John flinched. I took a reassuring step back.

“Relax, relax. It’s… it’s a game we play,” I said.

He looked at me skeptically.

“Yeah, yeah. I know, it’s a little weird. But you know? Really spices things up.”

“Really?”

I smiled and clapped him on the shoulder.

He flinched again, but less than before.

“She says you’re a real tiger. Five times, huh?”

He blushed a little and shuffled his feet, but I could tell he was proud of himself.

“Haven’t done that in over thirty years,” he admitted. “But it was all her. Man, that’s a sexy woman you’ve got. And you like to share her?”

I shrugged.
You know how things are.

“And she was really okay with how it all went down?” he asked.

“How so?”

His nervousness returned for a moment. “I swear, Kellen, it was her idea. All the rough stuff, you know. Well, not her idea, but you know, she kept asking for more. All that,
show me what you really want.”

I remembered what she’d said about the gagging, swallowing his come.

He was still going on,
“
Truth is, I’d have been just as happy to get her naked, show her a good time. But she said that was all off limits. Just her mouth. You know? Well, you do know, it is your game, right?”

I nodded. “Look, sorry to have dragged you into all of this. We usually, um, play further from home.”

He looked crestfallen. “Oh, so, that was it?”

I shrugged.
Maybe, maybe not, who can say?
“At least you had a good time.”

“Yeah, I did,” he replied, but he was shaking his head sadly. “You let Joanie know I’d like to return the favor some day. Okay?”

“Sure,” I replied as I slowly backed toward the door.

I let myself out, and in a daze, stumbled back across the street to my own home.

***

I popped open a second beer and dropped hard into the armchair by the TV. I was actually tempted to turn it on for a minute, try to lose myself in whatever I happened upon, but I knew that was a hopeless wish. Sort of like the idea that I’d ever be able to put my life back together.

It occurred to me that Joanie might have conspired with John to create the story. That it might all be a put-on. Even if she hadn’t sucked him off, she was pretty enough that he might be willing to cooperate with some zany scheme just to please her. But that just felt unlikely. He’d really been scared at first and desolate at the end when I suggested it was likely a one-time thing.

No, I just had to accept it. My wife, angrier with me that I could have imagined, had gone across the street and blown our neighbor. She’d gagged on his cock, swallowed his come, and taken a load to the chest.

Even worse, if the story about John was true, then so too was probably the one about Cody. On one hand, that one wasn’t as bad. I didn’t like Cody, but I never really gave him much thought ordinarily. On the other hand, it was worse. He
was
my half-brother after all, and she’d actually
fucked
him.

Okay, so what did I think about it? And what was I going to do about it? The first question was actually, weirdly, as hard as the second.

I was angry. Furious even. I mean, my professional life was falling apart… our professional life, actually, since I was the only one with a salary, and instead of being supportive, my wife had decided to throw the hissy-fit of all hissy-fits. No matter how much of a jerk I’d been, and I was a big enough man to admit I had been one, it didn’t justify her global-thermonuclear-war level of massive retaliation.

But I was also sad, and frankly concerned. Sad that I’d driven her to this, if indeed I had. And concerned because, well, this wasn’t like Joanie. That was the whole fucking point. I could easily see Stacy doing something like this, although Joanie’s response seemed a bit extreme even for my sex-crazed, queen of bad judgments ex-. Could this be some sort of mental illness? PMS on steroids? A bi-polar episode? The onset of schizophrenia? It didn’t seem that way. She was too calm and collected, too in control when I’d seen her. Too deliberate in her taunts. And yet, this was so out of character to be baffling.

And that out-of-characterness of it was also, weirdly, and I do mean weirdly, sort of, I don’t know, hot? Talk about being careful what you ask for. I’d asked for her to behave like a slut, and bam, that’s exactly what she was doing. I presume that was exactly the point of her little demonstration, but if she expected me to recoil in horror, she’d miscalculated as well. While I didn’t particularly like the idea of her being with other men, the idea of her being suddenly so over-the-top sexually was, weirdly, and I do mean weirdly, appealing.

If she actually enjoyed herself, and if she and I managed to reconcile, then this might all work out. Of course, that was a lot of “ifs,” and right now, I didn’t even know where she was or what she was doing.

Again as if on cue, I heard her keys rattling in the lock of the front door. I reached up and turned on the light behind me to avoid startling her. I’d been sitting in the dark.

When she walked into the living room, I was oddly disappointed. No party dress, no smudged lipstick, just Joanie in yoga pants and a tee shirt.

“Coming back from the gym?” I asked.

“I guess you could say that,” she said with a smirk.

And then I knew. I had another story coming my way. I managed to bite back a smile. I hadn’t yet decided what to do about all of this, so best maintain the
status quo
.

“Had another date?” I asked neutrally.

She regarded me closely, trying to see if I still doubted her story. I noticed that her eyes were drawn and tired. All of this messing around was taking a toll.

“Something like that.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“Hmmm, do you want to know?”

I shrugged. “Why else would I ask?”

“So you believe me now?”

“Of course. Why would I doubt you?”

“I would have expected you to be more upset,” she challenged.

“And I wouldn’t have expected you to be doing any of this.”

She nodded thoughtfully. I wondered if I’d struck the right chord. I wanted to keep her a little off-balance, unsure of what I really thought. I could see that she remained skeptical that I believed her, but I could also tell that she really wanted the opportunity to torment me with her latest misdeeds. Probing further whether or not I was convinced would conflict with that goal.

She smiled. “Well, this one wasn’t really a date.”

“Neither were the first two.”

“True,” she acknowledged. “But at least I got dressed up, went over to their places. This was more an appointment. I, um, paid for it.”

“You paid someone for sex?”

After this was all over I was going to need to teach her some serious negotiation skills.

“Well, not for sex. For his time. I needed a certain expertise.”

“Expertise?”

“Well, it was a little scary for me. I’d never done it. And it was something you specifically said I should learn about.”

I replayed our fight in my mind. What had I said? Then it struck me.

“You found an anal expert? What, a proctologist?”

She scowled. “Don’t be fatuous, Kellen. It was really a scary thought. A big, hard dick entering me there.”

“I’m sorry. I admit, it does seem daunting. So what did you do?”

She hesitated, again trying to gauge my seriousness.

“Well, I knew it would require relaxation. Deep breathing. Stretching.”

I looked her over again. “Your yoga instructor?”

She smiled. “Yes. I scheduled a private session with Raj. And when he asked if there was anything I particularly wanted to work on, I told him.”

“That must have made his day.”

She shook her head. “No. He said it would be inappropriate. But I managed to convince him otherwise. I told him I’d be a good pupil. That I’d do anything, everything he said. See, I am learning what men want, aren’t I?”

I nodded, suddenly dry mouthed. She seemed pleased to get that reaction out of me.

She continued, “Raj said he didn’t have a lot of experience either, but he really seemed to know what he was doing. He took me into the hot yoga studio. Do you know what that is?”

I nodded again. The idea of doing exercise in a hot, humid environment had always struck me as a little crazy. Like courting a heart attack. But I could see the attraction for this sort of activity. Hot, sweaty, relaxing.

“We stripped off our clothes. I think he wasn’t sure I was serious until I got completely naked for him. He has an amazing body.”

“Is he bigger than me too?”

She laughed. “No, actually not…”

I shuddered slightly. That answer, actually did more to confirm the truth of her story than anything else. Surely a fable would have involved yet another enormous phallus to taunt me.

“…thankfully for what we were doing. But he doesn’t have an ounce of fat on him. Just, long, lean muscle. Everywhere.

“We laid out some towels and he led me through a bunch of stretching and breathing. I know I was supposed to be focused on my respiration, but I couldn’t help looking over at him. At his sexy body. At his cock, slowly swelling, thinking of it being inside me.”

“He seems to have been distracted too.”

She smiled. “He did seem, um, interested. He asked me if I wanted to go on, and when I told him I did, he rolled me onto my stomach. He had brought some oils. He gave me a massage. My shoulders, my back, my bum. Then he had me stretch again. Cobra. Then Downward Dog.”

I shuddered at the image of it. Joanie, naked, sweating, oil covered, her ass high in the air. Watching sexy women doing yoga is an instant boner for me, even clothed. So many of the positions are inherently sexual. The rest invite one to imagine those long, flexible limbs twisted, wrapped…. I took a deep breath. There was a limit to the satisfaction I was going to give her.

Still, she’d seen. Her grin widened as she continued, “He slid his hand between my legs and started playing with my pussy. I shifted into Cow and then Cat. The heat, his body, the anticipation. I was so wet even without his oil coated fingers. That seemed to finally convince him I really, really wanted it.”

My surprise led me to exclaim, “You did? You really, really wanted to try anal?”

“Yes. I never did before. But yes, I did. Part of it was just to spite you. But part of it was that I sort of knew it would be good… with him.”

She looked up at me to make sure I’d noticed. Whatever else was going on, this was still about tormenting me as well.

“
Was
it good?” I asked.

She smiled.
Patience. All in due time
. “He laid me back on my stomach and placed a rolled-up towel under my waist. Sort of a modified Caterpillar pose. He told me to, um, play with my clit.” There was a hint of embarrassment in her voice. “He went really slowly. Lots of oil. Just his fingertip at first, but it felt so good, so dirty.”

“See, I told you,” I said.

She didn’t want to give me even that. No acknowledgement. Instead, she continued, “I couldn’t help myself. He was by my side. I could see his hard cock bouncing as he played with me, and I couldn’t help it. I took him in my mouth. Deep. Like John taught me. God, he was so hard, so, so hard. And his finger was going deeper, deeper, and then a second finger.”

She shuddered as she recalled the scene. “I came hard. Can you believe it? I came while he fingered my butt.”