The Hotwife Key Party: Willow (Chapter 4)

She stepped away from Dragan, turning around, her eyes alive and all-seeing. This surprise had energized her. This whole day she’d worried how tonight would go; how weird she would feel alone in a room with a strange man. Sure, Dragan was a stranger to her, but they’d shared an amazing evening together in the most vulnerable time of her life. She said to him, “Look at you, all grown up.”

“I could say the same thing about you.”

She held her arms out, liking this hot and famous man seeing her in this current outfit, all black, leather, crystals, and steel studs, totally hardcore and sexy. The outfit Adrian bought her delivered an unexpected measure of confidence. “Yeah,” she agreed, “but I was a teeny bopper back then. I sure hope I wouldn’t look the same. But you, you’ve matured.”

“Sounds to me as though you like it.”

“Huh, that you’ve matured? Hell, yeah. I’m the same age now as you were that night, and now you’re, like, a man.”

“I was a man back then, too, Willow,” he said, smiling, his luminous eyes peeking out from narrowed slits filtered through long lashes. Her stomach did a funny whoops-y-daisy: she just remembered again why she was here. To have sex with him. Oh, wow.

“I like this suit,” she said, this flirtatious version of her character rising up out of nowhere, touching the lapels of his fine jacket.

“I wore a suit back then, didn’t I?”

“A tux,” she said. “Which, given the circumstances, didn’t elevate you to this level of…” Oof, she was starting to sound dumb.

He chuckled. “Masculinity?” His huge hand took hers and held it over the lapel she couldn’t stop feeling. His hand dwarfed hers, and talk about masculine: big knuckles, muscular but groomed, veins, and the edges of his tattoo peeking out from under his shirt cuffs. When she was a teen, she’d had a photo of him in his Minnesota uniform, arms all sweaty and muscled, and she knew all the lines of his full sleeve tattoos. She was sure he had new ones, and she kind of couldn’t wait to explore them. Holy shit: this was real. This was really real.

Now he said, “Come, have a seat with me,” and took her hand and led her to the bed, turning to sit. She sat next to him, crossing a leg over the other, liking the look of her foot in these amazing shoes. She adjusted her clinging dress, fixed her hair, then looked at him.

He said, “You can’t stop smiling.”

“This is a big surprise,” she said. “How are you here? How did you end up in my room? Did Adrian do this?—no, he doesn’t even know about you.”

He shook his head. “No, no. I’m friends with W. We’ve been friends a long time.”

“Oh yeah,” she said, picturing W sitting court side after Minnesota traded Dragan to Los Angeles. That had been a heartbreaking trade, losing him from her home city—and she didn’t even watch that much basketball. And by then she’d moved out and was at college. “Wait, are you a member of this club?”

“I was. For a time.”

“W pulled you out of retirement?”

“One last game,” he said, his eyes sly and sexy, and she wanted him to touch her in this moment—and he did, like he couldn’t help himself, tracing the cushion of his huge thumb across her jaw line, from behind her chin, right under her ear. She shivered and her skin tightened goosebumps and her nipples hardened. She couldn’t help a childish giggle, and then crossed her arms over her hurting nipples.

“Ticklish?”

“I guess,” she said. “So, you retired from basketball, and you retired from this club. What are you doing now?”

“Sitting with an old friend, reconnecting. How about you? What has your decade been like?”

“Oh, uh. Yeah, I guess a lot’s happened.”

“Tell me.”

“I, uh, I went to college in Pennsylvania, then I went into the workforce—”

“What do you do?”

“Finance,” she said.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Pretty crazy. Didn’t think that’s where I would end up, but that’s where college took me. I worked at Jane Street, then I met Adrian, we got married, and I came to L.A. for him, and now I work for a boutique fund. Some celebrity clients.”

“Wow. Gone are the braces and the glasses, and gone is that stick figure. You’ve become a woman. And who’s Adrian?”

“He, uh, he’s a writer. A showrunner. He does the TV show ‘Precinct K’ on network.”

“Willow McKay. Right. Adrian McKay,” he said, head doing a slow comprehending nod. “I don’t know him, but I know the name. ‘Precinct K.’ Wow, I watch that show. This is crazy.”

“Oh, he’ll be chuffed,” she said, glancing at the camera, knowing Adrian was watching, winking, wiggling her fingers in a funny hello to the man watching her from behind the camera.

“Willow Sparks,” Dragan said, almost wistful, “all grown up and finding herself in my world. Finding herself in my bedroom.”

“Talk about crazy,” she said, still giddy, looking way up into his aqua gaze.

“I want to know everything, but”—he looked around the sparse bedroom—“we’re here. We’re here for a reason.”

“Yeah,” she said, agreeing, and now a little overwhelmed by the implication. She squished her mouth to one side and raised her eyebrows, a silent question being asked: are we going to do this, or what?

He chuckled as an answer, an agreement that, yes, they were going to do this thing they came here for. But he added, “I’d love to catch up more. I don’t want to wreck the vibe. Like how’s Klara? And, you look great, it looks like you recovered. I mean full recovery, no signs of anything, and I hate to to put it bluntly: you look absolutely fit as fucking hell. Those legs. Fuck. And that ass. I can’t believe it’s you.”

She smiled, feeling a little sheepish now, and a tinge of that embarrassment she’d endured. Yes, she’d spent a night with Dragan Kursar, but she’d hated it. Hated that she had to go, hated that she went, hated the night, hated the pictures of herself that night. But that was a long time ago. A different Willow. And here she was tonight, in Dragan’s room, a whole complete woman, just like Dragan had said.

She said, “I’m in the city. You’re here?”

“L.A.’s my home. I spend the winter in Yugoslavia sometimes.”

She said, “We could have a drink sometime. Catch up.”

“I’d really like that, Willow Sparks,” he said, voice low and honest.

She waggled her wedding ring finger again. “Willow McKay.”

* * *

With W looming still, those twisting antlers swaying overhead, he dropped the tablet to his lap. The headphones were askew on his head, one side cupped over an ear, the other turned outward so the party host could hear Willow and this guy talking.

He said, “You did this.”

“I did,” W said, not denying it, smiling, proud of himself. “But it was J who thought of it.”

He presented the screen to W. “Your guy’s making a date with my wife. He’s a friend of yours.”

“She’s a friend of his, too. And she made the date. Your wife really never told you about it?”

“About her night with a famous athlete when she was seventeen? No, she did not.”

W said to himself, “That’s what J said.”

“Oh, congratulations. You and your wife can now proudly display your amateur psychoanalyst certificates on your office wall.”

W did his long, inhaling donkey laugh, patting Adrian’s shoulder. “You seriously didn’t google your wife?”

“Google my wife? No. Why would I do that?”

“Maybe you’d know about her and Dragan. Google her now.” He nodded his chin to the tablet.

He shrugged. “She was just a woman who worked at Jane Street.”

“You googled her,” W said, smiling, seeing he was lying.

“Yeah, okay, I did, but it was just articles about her achievements in finance and stuff.”

“You didn’t read them?”

“They were boring.”

“One of them mentions her night with Dragan. And she didn’t want to talk about it with the interviewer.”

“Then why would you put this guy in her room?”

“It wasn’t Dragan who was the problem. J says it was Willow and who Willow was back then. How she saw herself. That’s why she doesn’t like to think about it or talk about it. J said Willow would love a second chance.”

“A second chance at what?”

“A second chance with a man she was crushing on. A man who saw her how she hated she was. A man who would love to see who she’d become.”

He regarded the screen. “She did become great.”

“And she’s yours, Adrian. All yours.”

“Yeah, she is,” he said. “And she’s doing this for me.”

Now he worked the headphones off his head and dropped them on the couch, tossing the tablet as long as well. He looked around the room, at the big screen on the wall, the top-down view of all the bedrooms, of other men’s wives engaging in hardcore sex, at some of those wives’ husband’s gathered in the room with him, as anxious as he was. Did W and J have any tricks planned for them as well?

He buttoned his suit jacket, W rising to stand, those antlers about seven feet in the air.

W adjusted the bow tie on his all black tux. “What’s your plan, Adrian?”

He said, “I’m going to get my wife.”

* * *

This was it. The moment was undeniable. Here she was, reunited with the man of her teenage dreams, and they were definitely about to kiss. Dragan looked sultry in this light. Hotter than hot, his face chiseled, sharp cheekbones, angular jaw; he smelled like woodsmoke and lavender and her heart galloped in her chest. They’d run out of words. They’d run out of the casual reminiscences they would explore in this room. There was nothing left for them to do but what she’d come here for.

Their faces drew closer, his eyes lowered, hers closed, her lips parted.

Then, on the bedroom door, a melodious rapping.

She closed her mouth and their potential kiss dissipated. She rolled her eyes up and to the side. “I know that knock,” she said.

Dragan wasn’t dumb. “Adrian?”

“The one and only,” she said. “Would you give me a moment.”

“Take your time,” he said, tugging on the crotch of his suit pants. Good lord, they had been so close. Damn it, Adrian.

She stepped on wobbly legs perched on high heels, trying to stay graceful as she made it to the door. She said through the closed door, head getting close, “Who is it?”

Her husband said, “It’s me,” voice muffled, tight with tension.

Now she worried he was going to call it off because it was Dragan fucking Kursar, or call it off because Dragan’s a famous man, or call it off because Dragan is like seven-foot-one and even a proportional sized penis on a man that big would be huge.

She said, “Me who?”

“Me, Adrian,” he said.

She put a fist to her mouth to stifle a laugh for a second, then said, “Adrian who?” Even Dragan laughed.

“Quit screwing around, Willow.”

She stood straighter and looked to Dragan, sitting on the bed, a giant, one hand out in the center of the bed to support his weight. She said to him, “He’s no fun.”

Dragan said, “He can come in if he wants.”

She said, “He doesn’t want.”

Then she opened the door, and poked her head through. “What is it?”

But Adrian wasn’t fun Adrian. Adrian was serious Adrian. His back turned to her, standing like he was worried, his hand on his brow. He turned. “Can you come out here?”

She was going to pretend she couldn’t because she was naked, but her husband’s reaction squashed her playtime. She said, “Yeah, okay,” came out into the hall and closed the door behind her.

Adrian, almost like he was out of breath, and stressed to the high heavens, said, “Willow, what the fuck is going on in there?”