Chapter 3: The Quiz
The afternoon sun slanted through the sheer curtains of the home office, cutting the room into slabs of gold and shadow. Tom’s work space. It smelled of him here more than anywhere else—the faint, clean bite of his aftershave, the mineral scent of his laptop humming on the desk, the subtle musk of the leather chair. Clara loved it. She loved the chaotic order of it: the stacked reports, the half-empty coffee mug from this morning, the familiar dent in the seat cushion from his weight.
She sat in his chair now, the leather cool against her bare skin. She’d shed her clothes in the hallway, letting them fall where they stood. Here, she wore only the thin silver chain around her neck and Tom’s oversized, black-framed reading glasses, which she’d perched on the end of her nose. They made the world slightly blurry at the edges, a soft-focus version of reality. Her laptop was open on the desk, bathing her face in a pale, electronic glow.
An absurd quiz headline glowed on the screen: “What Type of Man Did You Marry? (It’s Not What You Think!).” She’d seen it shared by an old college friend, a snippet of digital junk food. Normally, she’d have scrolled past with a snort. Today, it felt like a challenge. A dare.
To her left, on the soft carpet beside the chair, stood her favorite dildo. Not the thick violet one from the window—that was for grand, theatrical statements. This one was a realistic shade of tan, veined and shaped with an obsessive, artistic attention to detail. It was weighty, solid silicone, and it currently sat suctioned to a small, ornate porcelain tile she’d taken from the bathroom. Her ‘travel base,’ she called it.
She took a slow sip from Tom’s forgotten coffee. Lukewarm, bitter. Perfect.
With her free hand, she clicked ‘Start Quiz.’
Question 1: He brings you flowers…
A) Every Friday without fail.
B) Only after a big fight.
C) When he’s done something he thinks is stupid, like forgetting to take the trash out.
D) He once brought you a single, slightly-crushed dandelion from the sidewalk. He looked so proud you framed it.
A soft laugh escaped her. She pictured Tom’s face, that mixture of hope and anxiety, holding out a grubby weed like it was a rare orchid. She clicked D.
As she did, she reached down, her fingers wrapping around the familiar, firm silicone. She lifted it, guiding the blunt, flared head between her legs. She was already wet, had been since she’d smelled his cologne in here. The first touch was a cool shock, then a slow, surrendering give as her body opened for it. She leaned back in the chair, letting it take her weight, and sank down onto the toy in one slow, deliberate motion. A low, satisfied sigh hissed through her teeth. The stretch was profound, filling, a deep anchor in her core.
Question 2: His idea of a perfect night is…
A) A fancy dinner and the theater.
B) Poker with the boys.
C) Catching up on his favorite shows.
D) You falling asleep on his chest while he reads aloud, even after you’re snoring.
She rocked her hips forward, then back, a shallow, testing motion. The desk chair creaked softly in rhythm. Her eyes fluttered closed for a second. D. Obviously D. She clicked it.
Question 3: When you’re angry, he…
A) Buys you jewelry.
B) Gives you space.
C) Tries to logically explain why you shouldn’t be.
D) Makes you a perfect grilled cheese sandwich and sits silently nearby, looking like a kicked puppy until you can’t help but forgive him.
“Grilled cheese,” she muttered aloud, her voice already breathy. She began to move in earnest now, rising up until just the tip remained inside, then dropping back down with a soft, wet slap of flesh against silicone. The sensation was a sharp, delicious bite of fullness that radiated outwards. She braced her feet on the carpet, pushing the chair back slightly to give herself more room to work. “With the cheap, sliced American. And he cuts it diagonally.”
Click. D.
Her breaths came quicker. She increased her pace, the chair rolling an inch back and forth with her momentum. The focus needed to read the screen, to think through the ludicrous questions, merged with the purely physical concentration on the pleasure building inside her. It created a strange, hyper-focused trance.
Question 4: He is most confident when…
A) Closing a big deal.
B) Talking about his hobbies.
C) Giving you advice.
D) You’re coming on his cock and calling his name.
“Oh, god,” Clara breathed, a jolt of pure lust tightening her stomach. She remembered him last night, his shyness burned away in the fire she’d lit, his hands possessive on her hips, his voice rough in her ear. That was his confidence. The kind she unlocked. The kind that belonged only to her, in the dark, between their sheets. Her rhythm became faster, less controlled. She slammed down onto the dildo, again and again, the base of it hitting her clit with each descent. The wet, rhythmic sound filled the quiet office.
With a trembling hand, she clicked D.
The quiz was a blur now. Questions about his fashion sense (disastrous), his driving (overly cautious), his relationship with his mother (reverent and slightly terrified). Each answer was a pixel in a portrait she knew by heart. The man who brought her tea without asking when she had a headache. The man who still, after all these years, got a shy, proud look when he took the garbage out. The man whose voice on the phone from his office, lonely and hungry for her, was a better aphrodisiac than any fantasy.
She was close. So close. Her thighs were trembling. The screen wavered in her vision. She was moaning with each thrust now, little punched-out sounds that echoed in the sunlit room. She didn’t care. The neighbors could think she was being murdered.
One final question filled the screen: Based on your answers, your man’s primary love language is…
She didn’t even read the options. Her finger stabbed the trackpad, clicking ‘See Results!’
The page loaded with a ridiculous fanfare of glittering graphics.
YOU MARRIED: A PATHETIC LOVABLE LOSER!
Clara’s body clenched violently around the dildo, a shockwave of pleasure so intense it was almost painful. A ragged cry tore from her throat.
Congrats! Your man is adorably, hopelessly dependent on YOUR love and affection! He might forget to put the milk away, but he’ll never forget the way you laugh. He’s a mess—but he’s YOUR beautiful mess. Treasure him!
The words swam before her eyes as the orgasm ripped through her, wave after wave of blinding, white-hot release. Her back arched off the chair, her head thrown back, her red hair a wild cascade down her back. “Tom!” she screamed, his name a prayer and a curse on her lips. “Fuck! My fuck… my loser… my Tom…” The words were guttural, torn from some primal place where love and obscenity were the same raw, screaming thing. She ground down onto the toy, milking every last drop of sensation, her body convulsing in the leather chair until she was spent, collapsed forward onto the desk, forearms resting on the cool wood, her forehead pressed against Tom’s mousepad.
She breathed in the scent of him, the coffee, her own sweat. The screen glowed inches from her face.
Pathetic Lovable Loser.
A slow, wobbly smile spread across her lips. It was true. It was so perfectly, beautifully true. He was pathetic in the way that made her chest ache. He was a loser in a world that would never understand the quiet, devastating strength of his loyalty. And he was hers.
Her phone buzzed on the desk, rattling against the wood. She lifted a heavy, sated arm to look at it. A text from Tom.
Running 15 min late. Andersen wants to ‘circle back’ on the Q3 projections. Kill me now.
She laughed, a hoarse, happy sound. She typed back with one finger, her other hand still between her legs, idly tracing slick, sensitive circles.
Don’t die. I have a research project to present to you. Results are… conclusive.
She sent it. Then, slowly, she pushed herself up. The dildo slipped from her body with a soft, wet sound. She left it there on the tile on the floor, a blatant, shocking artifact in the middle of his tidy office. She stood on shaky legs and padded to the small ensuite bathroom connected to the office. She ran a washcloth under warm water, cleaning herself with a gentle, tender practicality.
When she returned, she didn’t dress. She simply sat back down in his chair, the leather now warm from her skin. She minimized the quiz window. On the screen, the last thing she’d been working on was visible: a recipe for his favorite beef stew, a list of groceries needed. She adjusted his glasses on her nose and began to type, adding a note at the bottom.
Pick up a dandelion for me. A pretty one.
The front door opened downstairs twenty minutes later.
She heard his footsteps in the hallway, slower than usual, weighted with the dull fatigue of a pointless meeting. He paused. He’d seen her clothes discarded on the floor. She imagined him standing there, briefcase in hand, his tired brain trying to process the trail of fabric leading to his office.
His footsteps approached, careful, tentative. He appeared in the doorway.
He was still in his work clothes, tie loosened, top button undone. He looked exhausted, his shoulders slumped. Then he saw her. Naked in his chair. Wearing his glasses. The screen glowing with a recipe. And on the floor, next to her bare foot, the clear, gleaming evidence of her afternoon.
His eyes traveled from her face, down her body, to the toy on the tile, and back to her face. His own face was a masterpiece of bewilderment, exhaustion, and dawning, overwhelming arousal.
“You’re early,” Clara said, her voice a low, smoky smile.
“Andersen got food poisoning,” Tom said, his voice rough. He didn’t move from the doorway. “From the cafeteria tuna salad.”
Clara leaned back in the chair, letting him look his fill. “Interesting.”
He swallowed, his throat working. “What… what research project?”
She took off his glasses, folded them slowly, and placed them on the desk. Then she spread her legs slightly, just a hint, a reminder of the wet, open ache his presence was already rekindling. She nodded toward her laptop.
“I took a quiz,” she said simply. “About you.”
He took a step into the room. Then another. His briefcase hit the floor with a soft thud. “And?”
“It says you’re a pathetic, lovable loser.” She said it plainly, a clinical report. “Hopelessly dependent on my love and affection.”
He was standing over her now. The tiredness was gone, burned away by a hot, focused intensity. He placed a hand on the back of the chair, caging her in. He smelled of stale office air and his own clean sweat. “Is it wrong?”
She reached up, her fingers curling around his loosened tie. She pulled him down, slowly, until his lips were a breath from hers. “Not even a little bit,” she whispered. Then she kissed him, pouring all the afternoon’s lonely, dirty, loving thoughts into it. He groaned into her mouth, his hands coming up to frame her face, his thumbs stroking her cheeks.
When they broke apart, both breathing hard, he looked at the dildo on the floor, then back at her, a question in his eyes.
“That was the control group,” Clara murmured, her hands going to his belt buckle. “For scientific rigor.” She undid the clasp, the sound loud in the quiet room. “Now,” she said, her fingers pulling his zipper down, the rasp of it shockingly intimate, “I need the experimental subject.”
His belt buckle clattered to the floor between their feet, a dull metal sound swallowed by the thick office rug. She didn’t pause. Her hands were inside his trousers now, pushing them over his hips, her fingers curling around the waistband of his briefs. He was already hard, a thick, promising heat against her knuckles. He let out a shaky breath, a mix of awe and surrender, as she freed him.
The sight of him, standing there with his trousers around his thighs, his shirt still buttoned, his tie askew, and his cock jutting out flushed and eager, was almost too much. It was vulnerable. It was ridiculous. It was him. Her pathetic, lovable loser.
“Scientific method,” she whispered, leaning forward and taking him into her mouth without another second’s hesitation.
The taste of him, salt and skin and clean cotton, flooded her senses. He gasped, his hands flying to the back of her chair, his knuckles whitening. She didn’t start fast. She took him slow, her lips forming a tight, wet seal around the head, her tongue swirling lazily over the slick tip. She reveled in the subtle jerk of his hips, the choked-off curse that died in his throat. She drew back, her eyes locked on his, her lips glistening.
“Hypothesis,” she said, her voice a rough scrape. “You taste like coming home.” She swallowed him again, deeper this time, letting him hit the back of her throat. He moaned, a deep, broken sound that vibrated through her. She set a rhythm then, slow and deliberate, her head bobbing in the quiet room, the only sounds the wet, rhythmic pulls of her mouth and his increasingly ragged breath.
She used her hands, one cupping the heavy weight of his balls, rolling them gently, the other stroking what her mouth couldn’t take. She lost herself in the mechanics of it, in the feeling of him swelling further against her tongue, in the way his control was crumbling above her. His fingers threaded into her hair, not guiding, just holding on, trembling.
“Clara,” he pleaded, his voice strained. “I’m not… I can’t last like this.”
She released him with a soft, wet pop. “Observation,” she breathed, looking up at his wrecked expression. “The subject is highly responsive.” She stood then, her body flush against his, pushing his trousers the rest of the way down. “Now, we need a controlled environment. The lab is contaminated.” She gestured vaguely at the dildo on the floor.
He nodded, dazed, stepping clumsily out of his pants. She took his hand, leading him from the office, down the dim hallway to their bedroom. The fading afternoon light painted the room in deep blues and purples. She pushed him backwards onto the bed. He landed with a soft bounce, propped on his elbows, watching her with a hunger that had shed all its shyness.
She climbed over him, straddling his thighs, but didn’t take him inside. Instead, she leaned down, her red hair falling around them like a curtain, and kissed him. He could taste himself on her lips, and he groaned into her mouth, his hands coming up to grasp her hips. She ground herself against his hard length, the damp, swollen folds of her sliding along him, coating him in her wetness.
“Data analysis,” she murmured against his mouth. “You’re my perfect, dependent variable.” She reached between them, guiding him to her entrance. “And I’m your confounding, uncontrollable one.” She sank down onto him in one slow, continuous, breathtaking motion.
They both cried out. The feeling was profound, a fullness that was more than physical. It was possession. It was belonging. She braced her hands on his chest, feeling the frantic thud of his heart beneath her palms. For a moment, she just sat there, impaled, letting them both feel the absolute truth of their connection.
Then she began to move. She started a slow, rolling grind, angling her hips so his cock rubbed perfectly inside her. Her eyes never left his. He watched her, mesmerized, his lips parted, his breathing shallow. She saw the exact moment his intellectual surrender became something else, something raw and desperate.
“Clara,” he whispered, his hands sliding up to grasp her breasts, his thumbs flicking over her nipples. “You feel… god, you feel impossible.”
She increased her pace, rising and falling with a growing urgency. The bedsprings creaked a gentle, rhythmic complaint. “Tell me,” she demanded, her own breath coming in short gasps. “Tell me what you are.”
He blinked, sweat beading on his temples. “What?”
“The quiz,” she grunted, slamming down onto him, feeling him hit her deepest point. “What did it say?”
Understanding dawned in his eyes, mixed with a pained, exquisite embarrassment. “No.”
“Yes.” She leaned forward, her hair brushing his face, and bit his earlobe gently. “Say it.”
He turned his head, hiding his face in the crook of her neck. His thrusts became more frantic, his hips lifting off the bed to meet her. “Pathetic,” he breathed into her skin, the word a hot, shameful confession.
She rode him harder, chasing her own peak now, feeling it coil tight in her core. “And?”
“Lovable,” he gasped, his hands clutching at her back, pulling her tighter against him.
“And?” she screamed, her rhythm breaking into a frantic, slapping tempo of pure need.
“Your loser!” he shouted, the words tearing from him as his own control shattered. “I’m your fucking loser, Clara!”
The admission broke them both. Her orgasm erupted, a silent, seizing convulsion that clenched around him like a vise. A second later, with a guttural sob, he came, pumping into her, his body arching off the bed. She collapsed onto him, a mess of shaking limbs and shared sweat, their hearts hammering against each other in a syncopated, fading rhythm.
The room settled into a heavy, satisfied silence. The blue light deepened towards night.
Later, in the thick dark of early morning, Clara awoke. The digital clock read 4:17 AM. Tom slept on his back beside her, his breathing deep and even, one arm thrown above his head. In the faint glow from the window, he looked younger, unburdened. Her beautiful mess.
A new idea, tender and devious, bloomed in her sleep-fogged mind. She remembered the promise she’d whispered to herself as he’d drifted off. Carefully, she slipped down under the duvet, the space warm and scented with their sleep. The darkness beneath was absolute, a silent world of cotton and heat and his scent.
She found him with her lips first, soft and flaccid against her cheek. She nuzzled him, breathing him in, her mouth a gentle, worshipping presence. He stirred slightly, a soft sigh escaping him. She took him slowly, entirely, into the warm cave of her mouth. He was soft, pliant, a vulnerable piece of him trusted completely to her care.
She worked with a sleepy, devoted patience. Her tongue flat against the underside of his shaft, she licked from root to tip, a slow, endless stripe. She swirled around the head, suckling gently, her hand cradling his balls. He began to swell incrementally, a gradual, unconscious filling of her mouth. His sleep-breathing hitched, becoming deeper, more aware.
When he was half-hard, she whispered into the dark, pressed against his flesh. “My sweet, pathetic husband.” Her words were a muffled vibration against his cock.
He murmured something indistinct, his hips giving a tiny, involuntary jerk.
She took him deeper, feeling him harden to full, throbbing stiffness against her tongue. He was fully awake now. She could feel the tension in his thighs, the quiet, held breath in his abdomen.