Chapter 2: A Desperate Blowjob
The ghost of George’s voice had taken up residence in the walls of Alyssa’s mind. For two weeks, she moved through her days in a fog, the memory of his guttural commands and the wet, rhythmic slap of flesh playing on a loop behind her eyes. She burned the toast. She forgot to pay the water bill. She stared at Brad chewing his cereal and wondered what it would feel like to be taken with that kind of ruthless, consuming hunger.
The frustration pooled in her lower belly, a constant, aching thrum. That Friday night, with the familiar sounds of a baseball game murmuring from the living room TV, she decided to act. The humiliation of fingering herself against the cold bricks while listening to a stranger fuck had curdled into a desperate resolve. She wanted that frenzy for herself. She wanted Brad to give it to her.
She found him on the couch, a beer balanced on his stomach. Without a word, she clicked off the television, the sudden silence heavy and profound. Brad blinked up at her, confused. “Hey, I was watching that.”
“I know,” Alyssa said, her voice steadier than she felt. She knelt on the carpet between his spread legs, the rough fibers scratching her knees through her thin yoga pants. Her fingers went to the buckle of his belt. Brad’s confusion shifted to a passive, pleasant surprise.
“Oh,” he grunted. “Okay.”
She took him in her mouth, something she hadn’t done in years. He was soft at first, and she worked him with a determination that felt clinical, recalling techniques from half-remembered articles. The taste of him—salt and cotton and faint detergent—was familiar, comforting, and utterly devoid of fire. He hardened slowly, a process of gradual engineering, not explosive need. He carded a hand through her hair, not gripping, just petting, like she was a cat in his lap.
When he was fully hard, she pulled back, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Come to bed,” she whispered, her own voice husky with a need he couldn’t hear.
In their bedroom, under the same lampshade that cast the same soft shadow it always did, she pushed him onto his back and straddled him. She rode him with a frantic energy, her hips pistoning, her nails digging into his chest. She pictured George’s broad, hairy hands, the way they had gripped that woman’s hips, surely leaving bruises.
“Brad,” she panted, leaning forward so her breasts brushed his chin. “Fuck me. Really fuck me. Turn me over. Hold me down.”
He opened his eyes, his expression one of mild annoyance at the interruption. “What? Alyssa, come on, this is nice.” He grabbed her hips to slow her, to settle into his own languid, upward thrusts. “Just relax.”
“No, I don’t want to relax!” The words burst out of her, sharp and strained. “I want you to… to use me. Talk dirty to me. Call me your slut. Something. Anything.”
Brad’s face froze, then soured. He actually winced, as if she’d suggested something truly distasteful. “Don’t be gross,” he muttered, his rhythm faltering. “Why would you even say that? That’s not us.” He gave a few more perfunctory thrusts, his focus clearly broken, and then his body tightened. He came with a quiet sigh, his eyes screwed shut, retreating into his own private release. He patted her flank. “See? That was good.”
It was nothing. It was less than nothing. She lay beside him afterward, staring at the ceiling, feeling the slow leak of his spend between her thighs. The hollowness in her chest was a physical void. She was a ghost in her own marriage bed.
The next morning, raw and sleepless, she shuffled out to the mailbox in her robe. The dawn air was cool, the street quiet. She was fumbling with the key when the heavy click of a latch made her jump.
George’s front door swung open.
He emerged like a force of nature, filling the doorway. He was wearing only a pair of low-slung grey sweatpants, his massive chest and torso a landscape of coarse dark hair and thick muscle. The morning sun caught the silver in his beard. He stretched, arms rising high, and the movement bunched the formidable power of his shoulders, revealing a trail of hair that disappeared into his waistband. Alyssa’s mouth went dry. Her gaze, against all will, dipped to the heavy, unmistakable bulge between his legs, the memory of its imagined size and weight from her night of voyeurism slamming into her with paralyzing force.
He saw her. Of course he did. His dark eyes, sharp and assessing, locked onto her. A slow, knowing smile touched his lips.
“Morning,” he said, his voice that same gravelly rumble that had haunted her. It vibrated in the quiet street.
“Hi,” she squeaked, clutching the mail to her chest like a shield.
He took a few steps onto his porch, nodding toward a large, professional-looking grill covered in a tarp. “Doing a bit of a barbecue this Saturday. Few friends, some drinks. You and that husband of yours should come over.”
The invitation hung in the air. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement, coated in casual grease and smoke, but underneath it pulsed with an implication that stole the breath from her lungs. He was watching her, those eyes missing nothing—the rapid flutter of the pulse in her throat, the death-grip on the mail, the way her robe had fallen open just a sliver at the collar.
Every cell in her body screamed a warning. Every other cell trembled with a blinding, shameful surge of curiosity. The image of him over that dresser, of his hand fisted in hair, of his powerful hips driving forward, eclipsed all thought.
“Yes,” she heard herself say, the word a brittle, high-pitched chip of sound. “Okay. Thank you.”
She couldn’t look at him for another second. She whirled around, the gravel of the driveway biting her bare feet as she scurried back toward her safe, quiet, desolate house. Her heart wasn’t just pounding; it was trying to break its way out of her ribs, a frantic, caged thing beating in time with a single, searing thought: Saturday.