“Are You Smelling Me?” he asked

Chronicle of an Open Marriage #37

The first thing I wanted to do when HoneyBear walked into the kitchen was smell him. I buried my face in his soft neck and inhaled. He has a delicious scent. Not perfume or aftershave or soap or shampoo. Just him. Just his flesh. It is sweet and pliant, like he is. It’s light and delightful, a pleasure — also like him.

“Are you smelling me?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered, and I could see that made him smile from the corner of my vision, see the skin around his eye socket crinkling up.

“I like that you like to smell me,” he said. He beamed, and his happiness washed over me.

“Mmmmmm,” I answered, still inhaling.

I was wearing my midnight blue baby doll lingerie — again. It’s my favorite. I bought it after we opened the marriage for Hubs, and then my sex drive unexpectedly exploded about six months in.

I was never much into lingerie. Hubs says that he prefers me naked. But here I was in my baby doll and black thigh-high stockings — the expensive ones, the ones that stay up — standing at the stove in the kitchen, welcoming my “new” man.

I had my moccasins on, though, so I wouldn’t get the stocking feet dirty, and a short flowered robe over the blue baby doll, because I was cooking, and I didn’t want to splatter grease on my lingerie. So I was half sex kitten and half housewife; an alluring combo?

Hubs is the cook at our house, and he usually makes a meal for the three of us when HoneyBear comes over. But that night he was feeling ill, bundled up in his robe under the covers in the bedroom. So I asked HB via text if he wanted me to cook something for him.

He said he wasn’t hungry at the moment, but he’d be glad to take something “to go” that he could bring to work for lunch the next day.

We’re operating like that now, after seven months f*cking. We’ve become an odd little family, in which we make sure every member is fed, in every sense of the words.

Hubs and HB are bisexual, and enjoy each other’s company in the bedroom, and I enjoy the two of them, both together and separately. Though I have to admit, after decades of marriage, I feel more excitement in bedding HB.

“I’m like the new puppy,” he once put it aptly. “And you both want to play with me.”

So I put on my lingerie and set out two candles in the living room before I went into the kitchen to cook. Hubs had claimed the bedroom for the night, and banished us to the couch for lovemaking. But I didn’t mind, remembering other times we gleefully frolicked there.

I pulled five bratwurst out of the refrigerator and dropped them into the hot frying pan. When they started sizzling, I added a few drops of oil. Meanwhile, I cut up the one potato I found in the veggie drawer. I pulled out the jar of my homemade red sauerkraut. When I looked back at the pan there was a crust of brown stuff on the bottom. Oh no!

Hubs likes to make fun of my ineptitude in the kitchen. And I really don’t want to ruin this simple meal. So I look up how to cook bratwurst on my phone. Then I open a bottle of beer and pour it over the sausages. I cut up a yellow onion and drop it in. Miraculously, the brown crust lifts and bubbles with the beer and the onions, creating a delicious-looking dark brown sauce. I pour over more beer and put a lid on that pan. Then I start boiling water for the potato.

That’s when I hear the front door quietly open. HB goes into the bedroom and chats with Hubs. I hear their low, manly voices and friendly laughter and my pulse quickens. Very soon now, I will have his hands on me. I force myself to remain in the kitchen and wait for him to appear.

I decide we need gravy and stir up a cup of beef bouillon. Then I make a paste of cornstarch and water. Hubs would use flour to thicken the gravy, but I find flour problematic. So I pour in the liquid cornstarch and am stirring the gravy when HB walks in. I turn to inhale him. He puts his hands around my waist and pulls me in, his mouth on my mouth, on my neck, in my hair… His body pressing against me.

I turn the stove off and lead him to the living room. We can pack the lunch box later.

“Are the candles okay? Is it too dark in here?”

“I like it this way.”

I sit him down on the green couch, the sturdy one, and straddle his lap.

We kiss and pet, suckle and hug, until eventually I place a plump pillow on the arm of the couch, shift direction, and lie my body back. That’s when he enters me, gently, with one knee on the couch and one foot on the floor. From this angle, he can drive himself deep inside me. He’s not worried that he’s crushing me. He’s not laying atop me. He holds himself up with his arms, high above me, looking at my face and my breasts, sighing with pleasure. Leaning closer to blend his ripe purple lips with mine.

Later, when we’re finished, we shifted places again. He sat up on one end of the couch and I laid across his lap looking at him, enraptured. I had one arm on his chest, the other around his neck.

“A penny for your thoughts,” he said, holding me.

“I’m thinking that you look very cute right now.”

He smiled in the candlelit darkness.

“And I’m thinking that I love you.”

Did I imagine a white flash of fear in his eyes?

Perhaps. But, “I love you too,” he answered. “I love kissing you. I love holding you. I love every inch of your body. I’ve been looking for this, for someone like you, with your sexual appetite, for…my entire life.”

Just to clarify, we don’t usually say these things to each other. I’m married. He has a long-distance girlfriend. We are supposed to be just fooling around here. Joy riding. Pleasure seeking. Having fun.

Yet I keep bringing it back here — to love. I’m like a dog with a bone. Or a kitten.

The reaction…

The following week, I had a predictable reaction —I pulled my soft heart back into my hard, safe shell. I texted less frequently, and in shorter messages; HB wasn’t sure what was happening.

“I’m glad to hear from you,” he texted after I reached out one morning. “I wasn’t sure if you cut me off.” (I’ve done that before.) He included two red lipstick kiss emojis and three pretzels.

“I did not cut you off. Maybe I pulled back a little after saying I love you? Just a little natural pendulum swing… My emotions are hard to balance sometimes. I love feeling all kinds of things, even sadness, but I don’t want to feel too much, fall overboard and drown!

“So I reach out, then pull back, like the ocean…”

You probably won’t offer a penny for my thoughts again anytime soon! Hahahahah! :p

Also, did you mean to send me pretzel emojis?

“LMBO” he answered.

He always says that.

Then came the following, in a slightly different order. As a writer, I can’t help editing things…

“No, I appreciate your thoughts,” he texted. “And emotions can be like a pendulum, swinging one way and then swinging the other. No worries.

“I am thrilled that you have allowed me into your life.

“And yes, I meant to send you the pretzels because that is us when we are laying together, our legs wrapped around each other.

“Next time I’ll offer a nickel for your thoughts.”

Coda…

This story is a wee bit out of chronological order. I started it last week, but life intervened. Then I wrote a different one, more focused on my marriage. But I had a writing date today, and when I sat down in the cafe and opened my computer, this story displayed on my screen seductively, beckoning me to finish. So I completed it.

Ahhh… That feels good!

What happened next? Read Chronicle of an Open Marriage #38. Find all of my stories about opening our marriage on the list below, or about sex in general on this one. Get an email whenever I publish. Let’s do this again!