A Young Wife Plays Her Husband’s Game and is Picked up by a Man in a Hotel Bar

Nick wants to watch his wife being chatted up by a stranger. But when an older man takes an interest in her, she gets much more than they bargained for

Sitting in a bar alone for the first time in my life — to say I felt awkward would be an understatement.

Despite instructions not to look in his direction, I couldn’t resist glancing at my husband Nick to reassure myself he was keeping an eye on me.

My new dress did not help. The paucity of its fabric. Too much flesh exposed, shoulders, arms and thighs. As I sat there, I thought about what it said about me. Even after Nick’s reassurances, I could not help feeling I’d made a mistake letting him talk me into living out his fantasy.

It was as if the dress sensed I wanted to be rid of it, clinging to my torso like an infatuated lover.

“A lure to draw the eyes of men,” Nick had labelled it when we were out shopping for “something special” that afternoon.

And I thought, what if a man approached me tonight who did not play by Nick’s rules, a man who might want me like Nick had wanted me when he fucked me as I was trying on the dress in the changing room earlier that afternoon.

When I ordered my first drink and noticed the barman studying my ring finger, the pale indentation that gold and diamonds usually filled.

I paid for my chardonnay with my card and resented the expense. We had a perfectly serviceable bottle of Merlot standing on the windowsill back in our room.

As per Nick’s instructions, I sat with my right leg crossed over my left. But I was unable to stop the hem of my dress from sliding up my thigh to reveal far too much flesh, making me wish he’d allowed me to wear my sheer tights.

As well as my body, I was supposed to use my eyes to draw the attention of any man who I might find attractive.

Just then two young men came to the bar and stood beside me. By the look of them, they were here for the conference the hotel was hosting that weekend. As they waited for their drinks to be poured, the one standing beside me let his gaze linger too long on my legs.

When he sensed me looking at him, his attention moved to my face, momentarily holding my gaze. But there was something about him that dissuaded me from taking it further. A grin that was not quite a grin but was there all the same, his eyes almost mocking, knowing I would be too easy, that I was already a done deal.

The thought of spending a night with such a conceited man deflated me. I smiled a polite smile and he almost returned it before he saw my disdain.

When they had moved away from the bar, I thought: Dressed like this, Lisa, you’re lucky he didn’t ask your hourly rate.

By nine-thirty, the bar was humming, overdressed wedding guests emerging from the function to mingle with the locals. A sprinkling of couples, intimate at their tables. Delegates attending a symposium hosted in the conference room, their voices rising and falling, a bedlam of chatter and laughter.

Eventually, a young man saw how I had picked him out, his eyes suddenly alert to the possibilities my come-to-bed glances suggested. But my courage deserted me, and I lowered my gaze just as he was considering me. I swung around on my stool and faced the bar, quickly draining my glass and ordering another.

Twenty more minutes alone, the last ten spent scrolling the net on my phone. Eventually, Nick came and stood beside me and ordered another drink. While he waited for the barman to pull his pint, he spoke to me without looking at me like a ventriloquist, his jaw set in stone, lips fluttering as he talked to me through gritted teeth.

“What are you playing at, Lisa?”

I lifted my glass, shielding my lips. “What do you mean?”

“You’re hardly entering into the spirit of things, are you?”

The barman brought him his pint, and Nick paid him. Then, with his back to the bar and looking directly ahead as if watching the room, Nick talked between taking sips of his beer.

“Show willing, Lisa. Try using those beautiful baby-blues of yours.”

He did not give me a chance to protest, to tell him I had tried my best. He took his Guinness back to his seat and resumed the role of gaurdian-cum-voyeur, in his alcove.

I was tempted to drain my drink and order a third glass of wine but thought better of it. I needed to keep a clear head, so I nursed what remained in my glass, swilling the contents around while surveying the room for someone I could half-convince myself might like to join me.

Nick had reassured me; all he wanted out of this set-up was the thrill of watching a stranger chat me up, to see his “beautiful wife” become the object of another man’s desire. This he’d told me as we were planning our trip all those weeks ago. His voice had strained with what I now realise was excitement. Just proposing the scenario we were now enacting had aroused him to the edge of frenzy.

I had entered quite willingly into what I thought was merely a fantasy that would remain firmly between the sheets of our marital bed. I had no idea he was serious, that he wanted to enact it in the everyday world where actual, embodied, sexually driven men prowled in search of their prey.

The bar was dimly lit. An unhurried jazz piano played, hardly audible beneath the chatter and laughter. Even in my dress, the skimpiest of garments, I was growing hotter by the minute, as was my anxiety. I kicked caution into touch and ordered myself another drink.

Soon I began to imagine myself as the alluring woman I now realise, all these years later, that I actually was. I no longer had to psyche myself into a role I was playing for Nick; I was becoming it, making it mine, bringing my flesh and blood to it.

I looked down at my dress and thought it was actually rather lovely. And the shoes were a dream. At least one good thing had come out of today.

Suddenly I was filled with a renewed determination to make this work for Nick — work for us both. I scanned the room, searching for a man who appealed to me.

A group of men was laughing and sharing drinks at a table across the room, delegates here for the Startup Incubator and Accelerator symposium. Nick had told me it was why the hotel was so busy.

I picked out an older man, a handsome man, the most distinguished-looking man in the room. His eyes appealed to me; they beamed with the delight of someone who still finds people infinitely fascinating. And more importantly, he struck me as capable of weathering any storm a secret might bring to his door. I reasoned that him being older, he would be articulate and considerate. A gentleman, I hoped.

I took a deep breath and gathered my courage, fixing him with a look that I hoped suggested my uncomplicated availability.

When he noticed my interest, he disengaged from those around him, looking at his watch and draining his glass. Before standing up, he checked me out again, and a broad smile momentarily transformed his face into that of a younger man.

Watching him approach threw my mind into a whirlwind of what-ifs. This was no longer a fantasy. Then it struck me how the handsome and well-groomed individual heading my way was a living, breathing male, not some nebulous fantasy construct of Nick’s. I knew all about males, their desires, and the lengths they might go to with a woman to satisfy them. And even if he proved to be precisely what I wanted, he would likely be far more real than I needed him to be.

As soon as he left the table where he had been sitting, I knew he was coming over to me. I swung around to face the bar, lifted my glass and drained the contents. Almost instantly, the barman was ready to take my order.

“Another?”

“I’ll have a martini this time. I told him. And as an afterthought, I added, “With extra olives.”

He eased himself onto the stool beside me, saying, “Even from where I was sitting, I couldn’t help but notice them.”

“Notice what?” I asked.

“Your best feature.”

He studied me, and I knew my eyes were the focus of his interest but I still asked again, “What are?” I waited, watched him, wanted him to say it.

“Your eyes. How could I refuse their summons?”

“I’m glad my efforts weren’t in vain,” I told him.

I turned more towards him, swinging my legs around so that my bare thighs became an expanse of pale flesh between us.

“Another?” he asked, nodding at the glass I still nursed.

“I’m good.” I replied. “He’s fixing me a martini.” I glanced at the barman preparing my drink, and he gave me a sly grin.

When the barman brought it over, the man on the next stool asked him for a scotch on the rocks while I sucked an olive from its toothpick.

“I got the distinct impression you need some company,” he said. “And I’m always ready to help a beautiful woman in need.”

“I only have an hour; my husband will be back at eleven.”

He reached for my ring hand, saying, “Now, what have we here? When the cat is away, eh?”

I felt myself blushing. “When I have a little me-time, there are games I like to play.”

“And am I part of the game now?”

“You can be . . . My rules, though.”

His posture shifted slightly, and new interest flared in his eyes.

“Perhaps later. For now, its enough to know you’re willing to abide by them.”

He turned and picked up his drink, drained it in one gulp and then rattled the remaining ice, and I wondered if I’d put him off with all that talk about rules.

“What a monster of a man to leave you all alone like this,” he said when he faced me again.

“My husband has his redeeming qualities.”

“If I had a wife as gorgeous as you, I’d keep you at home under lock and key.”

I thought of Bluebeard and said, “And forbid me to open that one door, I suppose.”

“And then I would be the monster, right?”

“But I would be the kind and lovely princess who would tame you.”

“I think you’re confusing your fairy stories. Doesn’t old Blue Beard murder his inquisitive young wife?”

“You’re not the killing type, are you?” I asked — and then felt silly for saying it and had to suppress a giggle by taking another sip from my martini.

I hardly knew where the words were coming from. The alcohol had loosened my tongue, disarranged my thoughts. And then I remembered how he was an older man and probably had two decades on me. He might very well have three — which meant a history, perhaps had dismembered wives behind a secret door.

But when I looked into his eyes and saw the warm humour and gentleness of the man who peered at the world through them, my silly imaginings were sent packing.

I wondered if my Nick wanted to up the stakes, take this adventure up to a new level.

“Do you have a room here?” I asked.

He leaned closer to me and whispered, “Room 501.”

I turned around, checking to see if Nick was still watching us. I was hoping he’d seen enough and that perhaps soon he’d be on his way to lift me out of the hole I was digging myself deeper into.

I might have thought Nick a stranger if he had not been sitting where I last saw him. His face looked stranger than I had ever known, his legs already to the side of the table, looking as if he might leap up and come to us and create the most horrible of scenes.

I turned back to the older man. He looked at his watch. “What about your husband? Won’t he be back soon?”

“Let me worry about him, I said. “Tell me again. What number are you in?”

Five. Zero. One” he said slowly, emphatically, over-articulating each digit.

“You go up. I need to call my husband. I’ll follow in five,”

When he’d gone, I got out my phone and texted Nick:

LISA: He wants me to go to his room.

Nick: And do you want to?

LISA: Do you want me to?

Nick: Only if I get a blow-by-blow report. Thinking about you with him makes me so fucking hard.

I had to think for a moment. Shit! He really wants me to go through with this. I thought some more. Then I decided. Your funeral, mate.

LISA: How long should I stay?

Nick: Until you’ve had enough.

Neither of us knew then what a long night it would turn out to be.

………………….

Continued here:

https://readmedium.com/a-married-woman-in-a-strangers-hotel-room-af883219685f