*Author's note: Trying a new story/style/category to see if my writing is better received. Open to feedback, as always, as I find my feet here*
*****
Chris didn't know exactly when things had shifted between them, but lately, silence had taken on a new weight. It wasn't that Emma had grown distant, not exactly. She still kissed him good morning. Still folded his shirts the way he liked. Still curled into his side at night. But there was something quieter in her touches now. A pause, a breath held too long, a question left unasked in the stretch between her fingers and his skin. The difference wasn't loud, but it was present. Like the hum of a light left on in another room.
Their house, a modest two-story tucked into a quiet neighborhood just outside the city, was the kind of place you built a life in. Creaky floors, sun-warmed hardwood, chipped baseboards from moving day. Chris had sold homes like it for years, but none had the soul of this one. None held the weight of shared laughter echoing off kitchen walls, or the memory of a thousand quiet mornings and loud nights. Emma's art was everywhere - framed posters, clean lettering, delicate watercolors hung in corners that might've otherwise stayed bare. It was a house that told their story. But lately, Chris wasn't sure which chapter they were in.
They'd met in college - a drunken art crawl that neither of them had really wanted to attend. Emma had been standing outside a gallery, rolling her eyes at a sculpture made of rusted bedframes, when Chris made a comment about it looking like something that might fall and kill a hipster. She'd laughed. Not politely, but deeply - and he'd felt something unlock in his chest right there on the sidewalk.
She was studying design. He was in business, with no real plan. She'd been the one with purpose, with vision. He liked how unafraid she was of her own ambition. She liked how calm he made her feel. They'd moved in together after just a year, married two after that. It wasn't impulsive and it just made sense. They fit. They always had.
In the beginning, their sex had been the kind that broke furniture. Wild, experimental, shameless. Emma had an unfiltered mouth in bed, and Chris had never minded being guided - rougher, deeper, faster, right there. He loved giving her what she wanted. Needed. Even when it was a little dark. Especially when it was dark.
But time wore things differently. Good things. Even great ones. Ten years later, they had routines, shared bank accounts, a kitchen full of clean appliances, and sex that was still warm... but no longer reckless. Chris wasn't sure when it had changed. He only knew he could feel it every time she looked past him instead of at him.
She was still his. Still chose him, every day. Lately, there was something else in her smile. A flicker. A hunger. Like she'd remembered something her body missed, and wasn't sure how to ask for it again.
That night had been unremarkable on the surface. Wine. Takeout. A half-watched movie flickering across the living room wall. They lay tangled on the couch like they always did, her legs over his lap, his hand absentmindedly tracing circles on her bare thigh. Emma wore a worn, oversized T-shirt. It was one of his, faded and soft, and a pair of black sleep shorts that barely clung to the swell of her hips. Her skin still drove him crazy. The way she shifted without thinking, the peek of her inner thigh when she tucked one leg beneath the other. Familiar. Dangerous.
Chris was no Adonis - tall, broad-shouldered, with a strength that came more from years of lifting boxes than lifting weights. His face was honest, his blue eyes too quick to give away whatever he felt. People said he looked like someone you'd trust with your secrets. Emma used to tell him she liked that about him. That he didn't try to impress her, that he just was. And still, after all this time, she could make him hard with just a look. A shift of her hips. A flicker of something wicked in her eyes.
"I read something today," she said, voice low and offhanded, like she was testing the waters.
Chris glanced at her. "Yeah?"
Emma didn't look up. Her fingers traced slow, lazy circles on his thigh. "About couples trying new things."
He smirked. "Like hiking?"
"Sexually," she said, and just like that, the air between them changed.
Chris felt his body still beneath her, breath catching. He waited, heart ticking up as if he'd been caught staring. Emma's fingers kept moving - the kind of touch that wasn't entirely innocent, not anymore.
"What kind of new things?" he asked, quieter this time.
She finally looked up. Her eyes held a spark, something mischievous laced with tension. "Watching. Being watched. Maybe... sharing."
It wasn't the word alone that made him stiffen under her. It was the calm way she said it - like it had been on her tongue for a while now. Like she'd practiced saying it out loud.
Chris swallowed, trying to keep his face neutral. "You think about that?"
Emma shrugged. "Sometimes. I don't think about falling in love with someone else, if that's what you're worried about. I think about you watching. About you being turned on by it."
Her hand drifted higher on his thigh, dangerously close now, the tips of her fingers grazing the hard ridge forming beneath his sweatpants.
Chris exhaled slowly, dragging his hand over his face. "Jesus."
Emma's smile widened. "That's not a no."
"It's not a yes either."
"No," she agreed, "but it's not the sound of you getting up and walking away, either."
He looked at her and in her eyes he saw something almost vulnerable beneath the confidence. Like she'd peeled back a layer of herself and was waiting to see if he could handle what was underneath.
Chris reached for her, tucking a curl behind her ear, fingers lingering against her cheek. "You've thought about this a lot?"
Emma nodded. "Not like I'm making plans or anything. It's just... sometimes when I touch myself, it's not just your hands I picture. It's your eyes."
Chris groaned, his cock pulsing beneath the fabric.
She leaned in, kissed his jaw, his neck, soft and slow. "You're hard right now. I haven't even told you the details yet."
He closed his eyes. "Then don't."
Emma bit his earlobe, just enough to make him suck in a breath. "Too late."
Chris wasn't sure who moved first, but the next thing he knew, Emma was swinging her leg over him, settling into his lap like she'd done it a thousand times - which, of course, she had. And yet tonight, it felt different. Her weight, the deliberate drag of her hips, the heat blooming beneath her shorts - it all felt amplified.
She cupped his face in both hands, looked at him for a long, loaded beat. "Say it."
Chris blinked. "Say what?"
Her lips brushed his, soft and dangerous. "Say you want it too. That you'd let me do it. That you'd watch."
He swallowed hard. "Emma..."
Her hips rolled forward again, slower this time, and the thick ridge of his cock pressed right against her center. She didn't need more wine, didn't need buildup. She needed this. Needed him wrecked. Needed him to say it.
Chris's hands slid up under her shirt, palming the warm, bare curve of her waist, the soft dip of her lower back. "I don't know what that says about me," he whispered.
"It says you trust me," she breathed. "And it says you're hard because you want someone else to see what I let you have."
Her voice was like syrup. Thick, smooth, a little dangerous.
