Just 4750 words this one, a twenty minute read, so a very short story for me. But then, it's not really a story.
This morning, our anniversary morning, I didn't get a gift from my wife. Not even a card. I wasn't surprised because we hadn't talked for a week. Not since Beatrice walked in on me masturbating. She said she thought we shared that, why didn't I wait so she could watch or do herself too? I reminded her she hadn't been in the mood for months and how else was I supposed to survive? (My story "Beatrice, Moana and Sgt Sparkles" describes the three different women Beatrice has crammed into her petite French frame.) She pressed me for details, like what was I thinking about while I wanked? I showed her my phone, and the porn I'd been watching. She was annoyed, then got a bit fruity watching the porn with me and we fucked, like one of those maintenance shags a marriage needs now and then. But afterwards, she got moody and sullen. I mean, even worse than when I post my erotic stories.
Beatrice prefers me to write to satisfy myself during our sexual droughts, because she knows that my female characters are always just different versions of her. She likes to "check" them before I post or publish anywhere. If a story makes her cum I'm allowed to share it. If not, then I rewrite according to her notes. Either is exciting for me. She reads them naked in bed and while we can't touch during this time, she likes me to lie between her spread knees, watching her "reaction." Stories quickly get her wet -- just the situation of reading something dirty while I lie between her legs apparently. Occasionally a story makes her touch herself. Sometimes she even wants me to lick her while she reads and this is a uniquely gratifying way to please a lover top to tail, inside and out. Sometimes she tells me to junk the story, other times to rewrite with more or less of this or that, or to stop holding back, or to think of the emotional context of the sex. She loves messy oral, especially cunnilingus, so I always have to squeeze in as much of that as I can.
It's an odd ritual, I'll admit, and while it works because we do end up having great sex after, I always feel like my story has presented some kind of ultimatum. As if -- after a prolonged bout of sexlessness -- I've said, "Look what you made me do. What're you going to do about it?"
Beatrice is her own person, though, and if she didn't want to play she didn't have to. The best times are when I'm horny and she isn't and she tells me to write her a story to get her going. That's my favourite. It gives her a week or two's reprieve from my lascivious pestering while I craft something, then gives us an afternoon delight when I show it to her.
However there's this awkward period after, when she's cum over the story, and so given me her seal of approval to publish it. She refers to this tangential sharing of our sex life as "sublimated dogging" and enjoys watching the reader numbers tot up for a published story, but she's impatient with my worries over whether readers like it or not. "What does it matter?" she says. "We enjoyed it. Who cares if anyone else does?"
"They care," I say. "I want them to enjoy it as much as you did."
"You want them to cum too? Why? Are you married to them?"
She's right of course, and that's when she gets moody with me for "wanting to get strangers off."
But recently I've not been writing for her. When she's not in the mood I just sort myself out instead. That's what got her annoyed when she caught me with my dick in my hand I think. It was clear I was excluding her.
When I tried to talk about it, she just said, "Darling, we are arguing. When I win this argument, then we can talk again, oui?"
"How can you win an argument if we don't talk?"
She smiled and shook her head as if to say, "If you don't know that, then I can't tell you."
So I wasn't surprised when I didn't get a card for our anniversary. Instead, as we stirred from sleep she kissed me softly. "I am sorry I've not been in a sexy mood," she said, her croaky french accent, as ever, getting me instantly erect. I kissed her harder as if to say, no problem, then gave her the card I made. I was proud of it, it was a heart with a QR code in the middle that linked to a playlist of songs that meant stuff to us. You know, like an old fashioned mixtape. I even called it that: Mixtape For My Love.
"I have nothing for you," Beatrice said. "Sorry. I have only this." Then, pink-cheeked and not able to meet my eye, she presented me with this letter:
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My Love,
My friends moan and moan of husbands who have sex just for their own gratification, and leave their partners unsatisfied. Worse, my friends, they don't have any expectation for satisfaction at all. They are just happy with whatever they get, even just the brief passion of having their men cum in them or on them. I've had lovers like this too, before you. I used to think, why do men feel they can act this way, so selfishly, and why have we women put up with it so long?