DITW 11-8: Dark Desires

Josh’s heart needed tender care. The hurt radiated from his eyes. Her husband was lost again. He’d folded himself over and over in the sticky dough of his own strange desires. She thumbed the soft skin of his cheekbones, just under his eyes.

“I’ll tell you, if you want to know.”

Josh struggled against her calm demeanor, challenging it. “That’s why I asked you.”

“I’ll tell you, but we have to stop.”

Josh looked befuddled for a moment, understanding her words in different facets. Her hands smoothed from his cheeks down to his neck and collar, her fingertips rippling the flesh on his chest. She squirmed away from him and he understood now what she meant. They separated their union and she sat up, awakened from her sensual reverie and now feeling more naked and vulnerable than before. The sounds of the room swelled louder than their breathing and the beat of her heart. Josh moved aside, and they sat hip to hip at the foot of the bed, very close but not looking at each other.

She said toward the bedding, “I don’t want to do that anymore. Our game.”

Josh was silent, soaking in what she said. Then he touched her neck, and her eyes moved up to meet his. He said, “I’m sorry I ever introduced it. I’m sorry I ever made you—”

She touched his neck, and her thumb stroked his chin, up to his lip and silencing his untrue words. “Don’t,” she said. “We’re both grown up, we both know what we’re doing. We can’t blame things on each other or on the past or...”

“Or on him?”

Her eyes had wandered away, but now she regarded him again. “I’ll tell you if you want to know what happened today, but I don’t want it to be...” She shrugged a shoulder. “Erotic” was the word she wanted to say, but was afraid it would insult him, denigrate her husband’s sexuality. This turned him on, though she didn’t understand it. And it turned her on as well. And Devlin, too. And it might be the one thing that could save her marriage. At least, she’d thought that at one time. But at the first tingling fear, she’d retreated like a scalded cat. The shame from Josh’s discovery—from Josh’s wounding at that discovery—had done awful things to her heart. Josh was kind and tender. Josh was love. Devlin was none of those things. Devlin was a stark landscape; barren steppes, rocky crags and foggy horizons. There would never be love with Devlin Stone. There was no life to be had in Devlin’s landscape; it was insupportable.

She said, “We don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to know and I don’t have to tell you.”

Josh’s eyes narrowed, his face jutting forward, and his voice tightened.“You don’t think I have to know?” Not spoken in anger, but in disbelief. Or maybe something else. Like hope. Like maybe she would understand if her husband didn’t want to know. But how could a man not want to know?

She said, “He doesn’t want me for who I am, Josh. He doesn’t like Kimmy Waters.”

“He calls you Chang,” Josh said in disgust.

“That’s who he wants. Like a trophy or something.”

“You say he wants to boil me like a frog.”

“You know he does.”

Josh nodded, his lips slimming. When his chin dipped, and he showed a look of almost pure innocence, she asked him the thing that had frightened her the most: “Has he... Has Devlin talked to you?”

Josh’s brow creased, but he didn’t look up. He shook his head no. But she didn’t know what to believe. He’d mumbled a statement about a shipping yard in Hamilton. She could confront him on what he meant, but she had engaged with Devlin in a shipyard in Hamilton, and a woman who hadn’t done what she’d done wouldn’t be ignited by such specifics. An innocent woman would pass it over and stick to the vagaries of her husband’s renewed game of dirty talk.

Josh knew she wasn’t innocent. He knew it, but he didn’t know where. Devlin knew where.

She thumbed Josh’s jawline. “He hasn’t contacted you?”

Josh shook his head no again. She chewed her cheek, seeking a way to get through to him.

She said, “It’s been hard with Devlin, Josh. Really hard. He’s a difficult man, and I know the games he plays with me. . . . If he played with them with you...” Her eyes flicked to his, but Josh stayed sullen, somber eyes downturned.

Then he looked up. “If he’s so terrible, why are you there? Why are you still there?”

Her face moved closer to his, pleadingly. “You know why, Josh. Maybe you don’t believe it anymore, maybe I have to try to convince you again, but I know in my heart”—she jabbed a thumb between her naked breasts—“I’m doing it for you and for me. We can start our lives, jump ahead five, maybe ten years for every one year with Devlin. Don’t you want that?”

“It costs so much, Kimmy.”

“Josh, you need to see it. You need to see it the way I see it.”

“How can I?” He looked forlorn again, his eyes roaming the room. His penis had deflated to a slick, misshapen bulb between his legs.

She lamented the loss of their innocence. The loss of what they had before the summer. But she had to maintain it. Preserve what was left. There was nothing else for her.

Josh said, “I want you to tell me. I want you to tell me what happened today.”

Her features slackened, and dread gripped her heart. “Then look at me,” she said.But Josh wouldn’t, his eyes and the corners of his mouth downturned.

She didn’t want him inside her when she told him. When she did that, allowed him inside her, it was to control him, take advantage of his weakness. But if anything would keep them together, it would be preserving Josh’s spirit; his ego.

He licked his lower lip, gathered the strength he needed and looked up at her at last. “Tell me,” he said, his voice soft but grave.

She nodded once, and now her toes curled a cliff edge, a high diver with a watching audience; a daredevil who was going to fall from a seventy-five foot ladder into a pool ten feet across and ten feet deep.

Her mind fought this final moment, looking for a way out, thinking again to control Josh, grab that little bulb and work it into a handle, get her husband on his back and get him to utter the terrible things that flitted around in his dark attic. Get his hands as dirty as hers. But she didn’t touch him. Didn’t reach between his legs to take control of his joystick. She said, “He wants me to be Kimmy Chang. I’m playing a role. I don’t want to play that role for him.”

“It looks like you do.”

“I don’t want to do it for him, Josh. I don’t want to be his toy. His conjured succubus, some summoned demon who appears at his side to strike legal fear in his business partners. I don’t want to be used. But that’s what Devlin wants from me. Why he hired me. He bought me those clothes so I would look the part. He tricked me by cancelling the meeting, and then he showed me what he wanted.”

“He took your clothes off?”

She nodded. “But I... I let him. I want to be what he wants, but I hate being it for him. I’m better than he is, Josh. . . . But Devlin is right. If I’m going to stay there and, Josh, I’m telling you I want to stay there; not for him, but for me and for you”—she cupped his cheek—“I need to do it. . . . But not for him, so I walked away.”

Josh’s soft eyes flicked over hers, studying her. “Where were you?”

“In the bathroom. You know, in front of the mirror. He wanted me to look at myself, look at what I could be. What I should be.”

She didn’t want Josh to see the shame she felt but was too afraid to look away. If she looked away she might lose him. She implored him: “I need you to understand it’s nothing to do with Devlin. It’s all me. And it’s you I care about.”

Josh grimaced and pulled back, his eyes closed. “You told him to jerk off.”

She withdrew her hand from his cheek and touched her own face. “He wanted more than that, Josh. He wants me.”

Josh’s cheeks puffed out and his eyes widened. It was like a man winded, but instead of exhausted eyes, Josh’s were throbbing with pain. Another man wanted his wife, and that other man was his bully and that other man had everything Josh didn’t.

She said, “I don’t want him. Josh, do you think I want him?”

Josh scratched his head, his movements becoming more erratic, jittery, like this was all getting to be too much, and she said to him, “I don’t have to tell you, Josh. If you trust me, I don’t have to tell you.”

Josh looked at her, confused, like a man with no comprehension how he would trust a woman who’d betrayed him the way he’d only thought she did.

He said, “No, Kimmy. You are going to tell me. Tell me why Devlin is comfortable taking your clothes off. And why you let him do it.”

The glimmering ember of anger that flared in his eyes scared her. It brought back all the fear and anxiety that had prompted her scramble to Rome, desperately seeking the man she loved. Sadness squeezed her stomach now, and the cold resolve she’d found today in the hotel room with Devlin crumbled. She could be strong with Devlin, but she couldn’t be strong with Josh. She loved him too much. Love and honor were two different things.

A moment ago she’d been a stubborn puzzle piece that refused to sit in place, that resisted the shape meant for her to take. But now she acquiesced, turned what would harm her husband into what would soothe him. Her hand moved to his thigh and he flinched and held his breath. Right before her eyes, the hair on his arms bristled with goosebumps. Regret washed away the sadness, but it was a more comfortable place to exist. Her fingertips fondled the head of his penis and it responded right away. Josh’s breaths returned, but were soft and shaky. His head lolled on his neck and his penis grew with her provocation. She swallowed and bowed her head, feeling his penis harden until she could grip it. Then she whispered, “He told me to undress and I did.”

“How could you do that?” Josh voice was as faint and weak as hers.

“I didn’t want to, but I didn’t want to back down. And I want to be myself sometimes even when who I am is cold and calculating.”

Josh’s mouth fell open and his cock went to stone. She hoisted a leg over his lap and guided him to lie back, pushing fingers on his chest. Over top of him now, their faces close, one hand on the bed above his head, the other down low at their crotches, caressing his erection in slow and meaningful strokes.

“I like that, t-too,” he stuttered, his teeth almost chattering like he was cold. His hands came to her sides, smoothing her ribs and headed to her breasts but she stopped him. “Keep your hands down, Josh. Let me tell you what happened today. Lay your hands on the bed.”

“O-okay,” he said, eyes still closed, maybe afraid who he’d see if he opened them. He lay on his back with his hands down by his thighs, knees bent, feet on the floor. She stroked his cock and watched his face. Seeing how he loved this dreadful treatment soothed the spiky parts of their weld. Made her feel less guilty, made her sins softer and easier to swallow.

“Do you want to hear it or do you want me to stop?” Her grip slowed right up as she squeezed his cock head.

Josh trembled and sighed, his body shuddering between her knees. “Oh god, ah, p-please, tell me. . . .”