I don't know why it took me so long to get it. The pieces were all there. You provided me clues for years, through our entire marriage actually. It just took me forever to put those pieces together. For example, there was the day I walked in the bedroom and caught you twiddling yourself on our bed; eyes squeezed shut, panties pushed down around your knees, two fingers moving in quick, efficient circles around your swollen clit. Your embarrassment at being caught was way out of proportion to the circumstances; after all, we'd mutually masturbated many times.
And I remember the morning you stepped out of our hotel room to get the newspaper by the door. You were just out of the shower, wrapped in a thick, blue towel. Somehow the door closed behind you, locked, stranding you in a hallway teeming with executives en route to their morning meeting. When I pulled on a pair of shorts and rescued you your pretty face was flushed with what I thought was embarrassment. You were tightly clutching the towel, but it was too small and revealed a good portion of your shapely backside. I didn't mention it because I didn't want to make you more upset.
Then there was the time you dove into the pool at the club and neglected to notice that your bikini top had abandoned your nipples. The scarlet-faced lifeguard, all of 20 years old, had to let you know, discreetly motioning to you from the side of the pool. You turned a deep shade of scarlet yourself and disappeared underwater for the better part of a minute. And you also had that odd habit of wandering nude through the house at night, oblivious to the frequent presence of our (married) neighbor at his kitchen window, no more than ten feet from ours. You gasped in disbelief when I alerted you that he often spent an hour at that window, washing and rewashing his dishes at 11:30.
I should have figured it out. But the clues were often subtle, sometimes not present at all and maybe not even offered consciously. For ten years I didn't know there was a neglected aspect of your sexuality. The veil was finally lifted from my eyes at a Starbucks drive-through, of all places, early one evening on our way to a friend's wedding. You were in the passenger seat, looking quite fetching in the quintessential little black dress, cut-to-there and showing lots of well-turned leg. I placed the order at the window, paid the distracted barista for the drinks, and then turned to hand them to you. I was stunned to see that your dress had ridden up your thighs–-way up your thighs--to clearly reveal an absence of panties. The pale pink folds of your smooth, bare pussy were in full view. I nearly spilled the coffee. You hastily adjusted your dress, exclaiming, "Oh my god, I'm so embarrassed! I didn't notice...how did that happen?"
Feeling rattled, I looked sheepishly at the now-understandably distracted barista and pulled away from the window. Right about then, as you regained your composure and I steered the car back into the flow of traffic, that's when I got it. For the next few hours, at the wedding ceremony and well into the reception, I quietly fit the pieces together. I realized that our sex life was actually enhanced by these recurring episodes of exhibition and humiliation. They turned you on, sometimes made you beg me for sex. You wanted to get soundly fucked after "accidentally" flashing some bare flesh at an unwitting guy. In fact, at that moment you were sitting quietly in your assigned seat across from me at the dinner table, intently chewing your lower lip and sliding a bare foot up and down my calf. I could tell where your mind was. Not on your food, which sat untouched on your plate. You were silently smoldering with arousal as you replayed the Starbucks incident in your head. You were thinking how humiliating it was for that barista to catch an eyeful of your pinky goodness while you waited innocently for your latté.
I knew what I needed to do. I politely excused myself from the table and asked you to join me. I grabbed your hand and led you out of the reception hall into the lobby. The reception was taking place in a grand, old private men's club. The lobby was huge, richly and elaborately furnished. I didn't know where we were going but I was getting an erection thinking where we might end up. The first big, heavy door I tried was locked, and the only other doors I saw were for the public restrooms, which might have excited you but wasn't going to work for me. I was pulling you toward a staircase when I spotted a half-door, the top half of which was open--the coat check room. And because the night was warm, there was no attendant on duty. We slipped in unnoticed, but when I reached through the dark to close the upper half of the door I realized there wasn't one. And you were already pulling me to the back of the small space, navigating the narrow aisle between two rows of old coats, which smelled of mothballs and wool.
