Manuevers

"Are you going to watch?" he asked.

I looked over at my wife Melanie, at a momentary loss for words. "No, I just..."

"He's just here," Melanie said, picking up my slack, putting a smile on it, "because it's our first time together. We don't know you yet." A few people aside, who would have ever guessed that Melanie, with her angelic face, sweet temperament and inherent kindness; that Melanie, a thoroughly modern woman so active in the women's movement, an ardent feminist, someone so patient and giving of her time to others but also very much her military dad's daughter, a woman who worked out at the gym three times a week and took shit from no one, me included; who could have guessed that my lovely wife of eleven years had an almost insatiable appetite for sex? Preferably the kinky kind.

Our latest "bull" returned Melanie's smile. "So he'll just be listening outside the door, jerking off?"

"If he's not in the room with us what difference does it make what he does?" Melanie shot back, albeit softly, a mere beanbag in her arsenal.

"I just want to know the score, that's all."

This one's name was Don and he'd arrived with an attitude, his manner hyperbolically aggressive, a near smirk on his face, chest puffed out. Like Melanie's dad he was ex-Army, though half his age and much, much lower in rank. He'd come off far differently in his emails, and over the phone. He seemed to be intent on impressing Melanie—both of us—with his manliness. A strategy that could not be wider from the mark when it came to my wife. It was not that she minded an iron fist; she just wanted it disguised, muted, sublimated in a velvet glove. Besides, she was an Army brat. She'd seen this macho type a thousand times before, on a half-dozen different military bases around the globe. I wondered if he was on something. High?

"He's just here to make me feel safe," Melanie added.

The sneer blossomed further as Don looked me up and down. Compared to him I felt skinny, slight. He had a linebacker's build. And a cock, he claimed, that required magnum-sized condoms. He'd sent a cock pic in his second email that tentatively confirmed this. But you never know with people you meet on the internet. The genitals in the photo just might have been wishful thinking on his part; more bravado. You wouldn't know for sure until you got him in the bedroom. In your mouth, to start.

"Oh tough guy, huh?" he said of me, while looking at my wife.

"You don't have to be rude about it."

"I'm not being rude, honey. It was a joke."

Melanie forced another smile. She was giving this her best, her most patient shot. "I could also do without the 'honey' part. Name's Melanie. He'll just be in the house," she added, "that's all."

"Well I'll be in your pussy," Don grinned.

Melanie shot me a look. It wasn't panic or even concern. It spoke volumes, however. We really made a misjudgment with this one, it said. Can't we just find a halfway normal guy with a decent-sized cock who can give me an orgasm, preferably multiple ones, once or twice a week? Should it be this difficult? What's wrong with people!

After absorbing Melanie's glance, and while our visitor still grinned, I hung my head. I felt guilty. Was I to blame? I'd pushed pretty hard for this guy, among all the ad responses we'd received. But for me it was mainly about his—manly, yes—his cock and ball size. GOD he was well-hung! On the other hand it was Melanie who'd talked to him over the phone. She was the one who'd made the final decision.

"I think he's OK," she said, after ending the call.

All I did was reply, supportively, "Whatever you think, my love."

"That's another word we don't use in this house," my wife, sounding very much like her father, told Don. Who shrugged.

"Politically correct are we?"

"It's called being respectful."

I thought Melanie was about to throw his ass out. Instead her tolerant smile refreshed itself and she held out a delicate, if lethal, hand. To Don. Who took it in his meaty claw.

"Let's go fuck, Melanie," he said. "Can I say fuck in this house?"

Melanie's pretty face caved—in near laughter. "You can say fuck, yeah."

Don bumped shoulders with me as they passed by. Intentionally, I felt.

As Melanie and her new lover undressed, presumably, in our bedroom, I made myself a drink. A whiskey on the rocks, a double. The bottle of Single Malt had been a gift from Melanie's dad. I'd always been a beer and wine guy myself but Melanie—and Chuck, as the retired general liked to be called—had gradually turned me on to the well-aged distilled libations from Scotland, the Isle of Islay in particular.

Meanwhile the constricted hard-on beneath my slacks needed relief, in more ways than one. So I was quite relieved, once behind closed door in the guest bedroom, to drop my pants and give the thing, aslant inside my panties, a pair of Melanie's lace bikini briefs, some air. Freedom to breathe! Wearing them and now nothing more, I climbed onto the bed, my familiar spot, and eagerly pressed the button on the small bedside speaker.

It instantly emitted moans, baritone moans, male. Moans and muted words, hard to discern. I guessed that my wife was already hard at work sucking Don's cock. Was it as big as advertised? A real mouthful? It had always seemed a little odd to me that my feminist wife enjoyed getting down on her knees and sucking cock so much. Which afterall, let's face it, was very much a submissive gesture. A submissive posture. I should know.

Don had been right about one thing. I would be listening to them. Just not in the primitive way he envisioned it. The spy-grade eavesdropping system had been a gift from Chuck back when Melanie was pregnant but before her unfortunate miscarriage. It was not enough that the retired general just get us one of those baby-monitoring systems through Amazon or wherever. No, he had to go CIA on our asses. After the tragedy (possibly brought on by rough sex with an acquaintance who'd tied Melanie to the headboard, brandishing a whip), we'd reversed poles, in a manner of speaking. Now the discreet but very sensitive audio broadcasting bug was in the bedroom, while the more obvious aforementioned receiver was in the spare bedroom; the nursery-never-to-be. I myself had engineered the reversal, with my wife's approval. The whole thing was wireless, battery-powered. It was not rocket science, as they say. Though I felt quite proud of myself the first time I listened in to my wife's insatiable sexual liaisons.

"Oh! You're so big!" I now heard Melanie clearly say. Meaning, I guessed, as I sat there sipping my Scotch, panties down, the pic Don had sent to us, the one of his "equipment," had indeed been accurate: His. Truly his.

It sounded like (ambient sound) they were moving back on the bed, into position. Him on top. "Oh! Put your big cock in me, darling! Fuck me!"

Darling? My wife was already up to calling him 'darling'? This seemed special indeed. The first guy we'd invited over had been "bull-like" in size but...premature in performance. No better than me aside from the size of his "equipment." Afterwards he apologized to Melanie and pleaded for her—us—to invite him back. But Melanie demurred. It was her call, her body; her needs. We eventually blocked his emails, his persistent calls.

The second Bull had proved too rough. Melanie was, as you can imagine, psychologically scarred. Rough is one thing, but...Their first time together he flipped her body over ("like a fish," Melanie told me afterwards) and tried to fuck her anally. Without lube.

Now Melanie didn't mind anal sex; she liked it under certain, familiar, prescribed situations. But on a first "date"? No way! I almost left the confines of the former nursery and intervened. Melanie by then had taken charge, however. Number two, though he'd spanked her ass cherry-red, never even got to penetrate my sweet wife. He was shown the door, with me riding "shotgun" in the rear. I felt bad for Melanie and, that same afternoon, an hour later or so, drove up to Whole Paycheck and bought her, for dinner, fresh lobster tails and a fine, unoaked chardonnay. No, a French Chablis (well, same thing).

Dinner that night cost me nearly $150. Fuck! But...it was worth it. Melanie was smiling again by the time she raised to her well-worn lips, our of drawn butter, the first shreds of Maine lobster. White as sperm but red-streaked.

"Thank you, darling."

"No, you deserve it."

"Why?" lobster fork raised high again, dripping, her mouth poised.

"You were strong. Army strong. You deserve a better man."

"But I have you," she sweetly said.

"No I mean in bed. Fuck it. We'll run another ad."

"I feel bad for you. Eating while you watch."

"I'm a Jew, darling. We don't eat bottom-feeders."

"But you're not religious."

"My grandparents..."

"I know the story, sweetheart," my darling wife frowned. "You don't have to repeat it. It's sad, that's all. The Holocaust. Can I have some more of this wonderful wine you bought?"

The bottle was in a bucket of ice. I'd thought of everything. I reached for it. Felt like a waiter at a fine restaurant. Loved it. Anything Melanie wanted. I was her feminist husband. Submissive, attentive to her needs. I aimed to please...

Now, weeks later, lying against the headboard, whiskey drunk, pastel microfiber panties down my thighs, below my smallish balls, leaning, listening in...a thought occurred to me: no mention of condoms. Just... "Put it in me!" My wife was going to let him, a first-timer, cum in her? I wondered: Had I fallen down on the job again? Condoms in the bedside drawer; plenty of lube. But...magnums? I could hear my put-upon, sweet wife now:

"I had to let him cum in me. I hope it's safe. He...There were no condoms in the drawer."

"Darling, there were plenty of—"

"Not his size! OK?" And sounding once again like her dad, "Let's get organized here. This is serious business..."

"I...?"

What could I do? Say? Aside from apologize for the oversight?

Don fucked my wife early in the afternoon, a Saturday. She was radiant, afterwards. I changed the sheets. She said he might have "torn" her, a little, he was so goddamned big. I ran her a healing jacuzzi. I changed the soiled sheets. Picked up her panties, wet and sticky in the narrow crotch (mine were wider). I tried to suck out what jiz was left in them, just like the sheets. But they tasted, frankly, both of them, of scented fabric softener. A pine forest.

About four hours later I carried in from the deck, the charcoal grill, rather triumphantly, three thick T-bones. Don was long gone but Chuck had come over, for dinner. The steaks (another fortune) were as father and daughter liked them: medium rare. Me? Personally? I abhorred blood. Blood in a platter, the meat swimming in it. But as with the Single Malts I'd learned to live with them, appreciate them. Speaking of which, my father-and-law was nursing a Scotch, no ice. He was a REAL man, the general.

When I arrived in the kitchen, bloody platter in proud display, "Chuck" withdrew his left hand from my wife's ass, her right cheek. His daughter's.

On many but not all Saturdays, the General had dinner with us. Got drunk on Scotch. Stayed over. Slept with Melanie in our bed. Oblivious that some stranger, or virtual stranger, had preceded him a few hours before, on older stained sheets: fucking his daughter, my wife, while I in the "nursery" listened in on every moan, every cry, every bullshit tidbit proclamation of love and obedience. And the decadence of it all...

The General liked new red potatoes tossed in truffle oil. And creamed spinach on the side. He was a traditionalist.