Bluebeard’s wife

My chest burned. He wasn’t sharing his fantasies with me, but he was apparently sharing them with some sex phone operator who was probably some three-hundred pound housewife eating Doritos and Ho-Ho’s and watching the soaps with the volume off while she fake-orgasmed for him!

I sat there for a long time with the bill in my hand, thinking about what to do. I knew John. If I confronted him, he would either deny it, or he would simply clam up and not talk about it at all. I couldn’t see how that would be helpful. I realized that I wasn’t really offended by it-not in the way I would be if I found him cheating on me with another woman. He was just exploring his fantasies in a place where he felt safe.

Yeah, ok, it hurt that he didn’t feel safe enough with me, but I already knew that, right? Getting him to share that part of himself with me was like pulling teeth, and I didn’t understand why, but now I knew, at least, that he actually had a part of him that fantasized, that he actually did masturbate. He was a flesh-and-blood man after all. So why did I feel so empty, sitting with the knowledge that I thought I had wanted to know?

Because I still didn’t know what he fantasized about, I realized. That was the secret that I really wanted revealed.

I looked at the open envelope, which meant that now John would know I had seen it. The minute he saw the open telephone bill, he would know. I folded the bill exactly as I had found it and put it back into the envelope. Then I went to the kitchen to dig through the junk-drawer and found a glue stick to rub along the flap of the envelope.

Pressing my fingers along the edge, I made sure it was closed. It was a little wrinkled and torn, and that might stop him for a moment, but I doubted it. He usually tore through bills pretty fast.

I put the telephone bill onto his desk with the rest of that day’s mail and left it.

When he came home from work that night, I kissed him hello and asked him about his day, and we had a good dinner and snuggled on the couch for a while. The only thing I did differently that night was drinking an entire pot of black tea. When we climbed into bed, I rolled over and feigned sleep, but I stayed wide awake. Between the caffeine tea and the adrenaline, I couldn’t possibly drift off, and I didn’t.

I heard John fade in and out, something I normally don’t get to hear. I was the one who always fell asleep first, usually within the first five minutes of my head hitting the pillow, and he always joked with me that I could sleep through a terrorist attack.

John, however, took longer to settle in, pulling the covers, rolling around.

I watched the light shadows play on the closet and waited. John fell asleep. I could hear the deep, even sound of his breathing. The clock read 1:39 a.m. In spite of the tea, my eyes were growing heavy. I realized, disappointed, that he wasn’t going to make any calls tonight. I closed my eyes and started to drift, when I felt a small vibration on the bed. I held still, listening.

There was a strange sound accompanying the vibration, a kind of shuffle or hiss that repeated itself in a pattern. Then it stopped. John shifted, and his breath was different. He wasn’t sleeping anymore. The vibration started again, the mattress shaking a little more, and I heard John whisper something, his breath coming faster. My eyes widened and I felt a jolt of excitement run straight down my spine and right between my legs. John was masturbating!

I listened to the sound of his hand on his cock, the motion of the bed rocking me slightly. Did I sleep through this every night, I wondered? Listening to him made me wet.

He would stop for a moment, breathing hard, and then start again. I wondered what he was imagining. Once in a while I heard him whisper something and I strained to hear him.

“Yeah, spread your pussy,” I heard him say. “Good girl.” I bit my lip, squeezing my legs together. My clit throbbed, and I wanted to touch myself, but I didn’t want to let him know I was awake. My hand was curled near my breast as I lay on my side, and I touched my nipple, grazing it lightly as I listened to him.

He pumped his cock hard now, the whole bed bouncing with his movements. He clearly wasn’t worried that I might wake up-as I obviously never had before.

“Suck it,” he whispered. “Take that cock, you dirty little whore.” My face flushed and my clit throbbed in response to his words. Oh my God, John was imagining having his cock sucked by a dirty little whore! He had never said those words to me. I wondered if it was me he was thinking about, or if it was some woman he had seen, someone at work, some girl behind the counter who had caught his eye for a moment? Maybe the phone sex operator? The thought was darkly exciting.