I'm back after a break. This is my first attempt in a long time at writing a request, and also writing from a woman's POV. I don't know if she will like it or not. She told me to publish it without her seeing it first.
***
"Wear something that will show the semen stains."
Melissa stared at the message on her phone for the hundredth time. It still gave her a little tingle between her legs every time she read it.
She had never done what she was getting ready to do tonight -- even though she had not committed to anything more indecent than meeting a man for drinks in a hotel lounge during an out-of-town professional conference.
Except that it was a man she had met on the internet, a man who wrote erotica, a man who she had taken the breathtakingly audacious step of sending a note through the site's messaging system. A man with whom she had subsequently traded multiple messages, allowed to probe her for her most secret and illicit fantasies. A man who lived safely several states away, but also happened to live in the city where her specialty's annual conference was being held this year. A man she had agreed to meet in person, despite having shared all of that.
A man who had texted her to wear something that will show the semen stains.
*The* semen stains. She was obsessive about parsing his words. She was sure that the "the" was intentional. He could have just said "show semen stains," and it would have been generic... as in, fabric that *would* show hypothetical semen stains, were there to be any. The insertion of the article gave the sentence a disquieting certainty. There Will Be Semen.
She stood in front of the mirror in her hotel room, naked except for her subtle ivory-colored lace bra and panties, sampling different shades of lipstick. What color befits an adulteress, she wondered? She tried on a dark red shade that she had picked up just for this trip, but it just didn't seem to fit. So she dabbed that off and tried a wine color. It was still more daring than she was comfortable with, but she didn't want to settle for her normal, professional, everyday shade of pink.
She looked despairingly at the selection of earrings she had brought. Small hoops, simple studs, a variety of dangly pieces, all on the discreet side. Nothing screamed "siren," let alone "slut." Did she *want* to look like a slut? She just knew she didn't want to settle for "middle-aged married professional woman at a business conference." She decided to wait to choose those last. Then she took a deep breath and pulled the lace garter belt around her trim waist.
She so rarely had the opportunity to present herself and admire herself as a sexual being. It was one of the many regrets that had been consuming more and more of her consciousness recently.
As a doctor, she had seen enough naked bodies of 40-something women to know that hers was well above average. She was slender and fit; she still wore her wavy brown hair past her shoulders as she had in her twenties. It didn't hurt that her breasts were small and pert, although she had always liked the way they had looked before birth control and later pregnancy even better. She liked imagining herself as a gymnast or a dancer. She had the toned bottom of a much younger woman; frankly, she preferred the way that wearing heels made it more pronounced.
She had felt awkward and conspicuous, packing for this business trip, sneaking so much jewelry and lingerie into her suitcase beneath the sweaters and casual slacks. But her husband hadn't noticed; hadn't really paid attention. She probably could have flaunted it, made sure he had noticed the silk stockings and garter belt. Teased him with the idea that she was going to be hours away, in an upscale hotel room, pulling these items over her naked flesh before going out to meet with another man... not that he would have been genuinely threatened; but just to make him gasp a bit.
She had tried to push his buttons before, but he didn't seem to have any. It frustrated her that she couldn't make him jealous. It wasn't that he had no interest in her; it was just that he took her fidelity for granted.
Like everyone had always taken her for granted. Her fidelity, her integrity, her professionalism, her good grades and good behavior. Her chastity. Well, tonight she was going to do something about that. She was going to at the very least have a drink in a hotel bar with another man.
And, more than that, a man to whom she had confessed her secret desires. Confessed, indeed, that she even *had* secret desires. Desires, and regrets.
She started to pull her taupe stockings on, but then remembered that the suspenders needed to go under her panties, not over them. It wasn't intuitive; and she hadn't worn stockings and garters since her wedding. That's when her maid of honor had explained the rationale to her. Of course, it simplified going to the bathroom, her friend had said. It also made it possible for her eager groom to consummate the marriage with her wedding trousseau bunched up around her waist...
Yeah, right, she had thought at the time. Even then, she knew that sex with her gentle and respectful husband would never be that wild and thrilling.
She did, however, allow herself to picture the same scene with her husband's best man. Secretly, shamefully. But repeatedly. All weekend.
For a moment she began to just thread the garter straps through her panties rather than removing them, then she smiled wryly at herself. Even in the privacy of her hotel room, she always instinctively made the prim and proper choice. Well... tonight she would break that pattern.
She stepped out of her panties to allow the garter straps to fall naturally, and then attached the stays to her hosiery in the proper places. She turned and looked at herself over her shoulder in the mirror, pushing herself up on her tiptoes to simulate wearing heels. She was pleased with what she saw. The way the hosiery and lingerie framed and focused on her derriere. No, she corrected herself; her *ass.*
Presenting it for the viewing pleasure and sexual gratification of a man she hadn't met yet.
She smiled wryly at her reflection, and then shook her head with resignation as she started to step back into the silk panties. "Who are you kidding, Melissa?" asked the voice in the left side of her head. "You know good and well you're never going through with this."
"Fine," replied the right-brain voice. "If all you're going to do for the next hour is tease yourself, might as well play it to the max." And with that, she left the panties on the dresser and stepped into her skirt.
***
The bar in the hotel restaurant was packed, but Melissa passed through it, oblivious to the appreciative glances from the men around her, until she entered the quieter, less busy restaurant. She scanned the room and quickly found the man she was looking for, seated at a booth along the far wall. They had, in fact, finally exchanged pictures, just at the very end, after weeks of written correspondence.
He wasn't what she had expected. She wasn't sure what she *had* expected; she knew it wasn't likely that she had been corresponding with Ryan Gosling's twin brother; and she also had feared that she had been revealing her darkest desires to some grossly obese or hideously deformed loser. But it turned out that her penpal, Warren, was a sixty-ish academic type, of medium height and build, who would have looked distinguished if his salt-and-pepper hair hadn't been shoulder-length. An artiste, perhaps. She could work with that.
He recognized her and rose to greet her, reaching for her hand, which she hadn't even realized she was extending, taking it as if in a simple handshake, but then turning it palm down so he could pat it with his left hand. "Melissa," he said. "It's so nice to meet you in person."
"Yes, you too, Warren," she responded automatically, noting that his blue eyes were more friendly than menacing, and that he appeared much more at ease than she felt. This was the man who had told her to wear something that would show semen stains?
He gestured for her to take a seat, and waited until she had slipped into the booth to sit back down again himself. There was a glass of brown liquor on the table in front of him. "I hope you don't mind," he apologized, seeing that she had eyed it. "I went ahead and ordered for myself."
"Not at all," she replied. Then she ventured, "I suppose you weren't certain I would show up."
He shrugged, and waved to get a server's attention. "Well, I wouldn't have been totally surprised. And that would have been okay. But I'm glad you're here."
The waitress approached and Melissa ordered a glass of Pinot Grigio. Then she looked into the gray-blue eyes of the man across the table... calm, reserved, but knowing eyes.
He reminded her of the graduate student who had lived across the hall from her when she was in medical school. Philosophy or humanities or something. Lean and long-haired, dark and mysterious; part poet, part privateer.
She had just met and begun dating her future husband at that point, and at any rate her studies kept her far too busy for any illicit dalliances. But he had helped her set up her TV and her stereo when she had first moved in, and had become someone with whom she would occasionally share a glass of wine and a casual conversation about something, anything other than medicine. As the semester passed, she began to wonder, and to wish... why didn't he make a move? If he had just leaned over to kiss her... no, she realized, she would have demurred in that scenario. What she had needed, what she had wanted, was for him to come up behind her in the kitchen as she cleared the dishes, to bend her over the countertop, to hold her down with his long fingers splayed across her back while his other hand lifted her skirt and pulled her panties to the side, to wordlessly enter her with his unseen cock, before she had even allowed her boyfriend that privilege.
But he never did.
And now, she was sitting across the table from the one man to whom she had confessed those illicit fantasies. Or at least, confessed the *nature* of her fantasies, if not the specifics. The specifics were his contributions to their correspondence. Like the image of semen staining her silk blouse tonight.
