Amy floated through the castle hallway past doors she knew to contain her children's bedrooms, though the shapes were unfamiliar. The hall was unfamiliar. The frock that cosseted her body was unfamiliar. Her toenails dragged on the stone as she was carried toward the flickering black light at the end of the hall, and try as she might, she could not turn around.
"There you are."
She cradled Sean's body, stroking his cheek and lifting her knee over his stomach. The sheets were tangled around him, and however much she tried to slide them away, they doubled back, wrapping his body like a silk cocoon, keeping her away from her husband.
"I've been here this whole time," she said. "Where have you been?"
He mounted her, looking away and thrusting his hips into her in short, staccato bursts. She lifted her legs, but felt nothing. She grabbed at him, pulled him closer.
"Nothing?" he asked.
She shook her head and reached between his legs, feeling for his penis and finding nothing there.
"Where have you been?" Sarah asked.
"Oh, thank God," Amy said, touching Sarah's face, feeling her long, black hair and staring into her sharp, green eyes.
"You're not Sarah?"
Amy kissed her. Her frock was gone, now, and her legs were wet. She felt warm all over as Sarah/Not-Sarah penetrated her, driving her thick cock deeper and deeper between Amy's legs. Amy clawed her back, grunting with each successive thrust, spreading her legs for her lover, soaring high above the bed, now.
"Amy!" Sean screamed in the doorway, pulling his hair. "You slut!"
Amy awoke with a gasp, her eyes fixed on the crack in the pale white curtains through which the moonlight shone. She was in her bed. Sean lay on his side beside her, lightly snoring. Her heart beat at pace, and she flipped her phone over on the nightstand. It was just before 3 o'clock in the morning.
The dream had felt so real, at least the parts of it she could remember. Sarah had been there. At least she thought it was Sarah. It hadn't looked like Sarah, she realized. It hadn't looked like anyone.
Amy closed her eyes and tried to slow her breathing. She could still get another three-and-a-half hours of good sleep if she could just drift off, now. It was Tuesday morning, and she wanted to be well-rested before the book club gathering at Melinda's house that later that morning. But sleep didn't come. She was agitated, and as the fading scenes of her dream replayed and shifted in her mind, she became too aroused to ignore.
"Sean," she whispered, nudging her husband, savoring the idea of midnight sex and comforting herself with the fact that it had only been dream Sean who had scolded her. "Sean!"
He grunted what sounded like a question, but after a moment the snoring resumed. Amy rolled onto her back and blew her breath out. She wouldn't be able to get back to sleep in this state, she knew.
In the bathroom, with the faucet running, Amy navigated to Pornhub and typed "mature amateur lesbian" into the search bar, as she had done all too often during the last week. She was amused by the porn community's understanding of maturity, as the qualifying ages seemed to range from late twenties up through the sixties and beyond. But it was the only way she knew to find videos of women who looked like her. And all she could think about lately was a woman like her fucking another woman.
Seated on the vanity with her pajama bottoms and panties around her ankles, scrolling through a mix of thumbnails, she settled upon a video featuring a blonde and a brunette who looked to be in their late thirties or early forties. They wore matching blue bikinis and sat on a large, grey sofa. An "OnlyFans" watermark in the corner undermined the amateur element she was after, but at least the video seemed amateurly-made. Amy pressed play, and put her hand between her legs as the women began to kiss and rub each other.
The camera zoomed out, showing their long legs and enormous platform heels. The brunette slipped one of the blonde's fake, spherical, nipple-pierced breasts out of her bikini top and, pointing it toward the camera, began to lick the nipple, flicking her tongue back and forth and jiggling the piercing. The blonde threw her head back in an exaggerated show of ecstasy. Amy mimicked the shape of the blonde's mouth, imagining the brunette licking her own breasts in such fashion. The women were writhing, now, and Amy followed suit, rocking her hips against her hand, watching the blonde pull down the brunette's bikini top, revealing another set of enormous, fake breasts.
Amy clicked back to the search results, scrolling again past rows and rows of similar fare: living, plastic sex dolls dressed up like strippers, feigning pleasure for their male audiences. It was no use.
She closed the tab and then the browser app, navigating instead to her text message from Melinda. Amy continued to rub her clit while she scrolled up to last week's picture exchange, enlarging the selfie Melinda had sent while wearing her new, black teddy. She exhaled as her eyes found Melinda's nipples, and she flicked her tongue in the air as she'd seen the blonde do on video, pretending that Melinda's breasts were in front of her, that Melinda's fingers were circling her clit. She squeezed her thighs together as she came, grateful for the sound-dampening effect of the running water as she hyperventilated into her arm.
#
Eggs were on the table at 7 a.m. sharp later that morning. Amy called up the stairs and summoned her boys to breakfast.
"Brian," she said to her eldest, setting glasses of orange juice by their plates, "no phones at the table."
Brian rolled his eyes and put his phone back in his pocket. Amy let the slight go by without comment. She had long since learned not to make a federal case out of every minor transgression. Amy and Sean thought a little rebellion was healthy in a growing boy. Let them roll their eyes, she thought, so long as they obey.
Amy greeted Melinda at the bus stop, and shooed her children toward Melinda's so the women could talk.
"I'm excited for the book club!" Amy said, trying hard not to think of Melinda's part in her late-night exercise in self-care. Amy wondered if she had spent the same amount of time in Melinda's own imagination since they'd exchanged pictures last week. Their bus stop conversations had been comparatively chaste after that, and if Melinda had been wanting to see any more of Amy, she had given no indication.
"You get through the reading?" Melinda asked. "I'm curious to hear what you thought."
Amy hesitated.
"I... may have some notes," she said.
"Uh oh," Melinda said, laughing. "It was my choice, so please be kind! I'm suddenly remembering you were an English major, right?"
"English and Comparative Literature, yeah," Amy said, nodding. "Not that I use it a whole lot."
Amy didn't need to call upon her undergraduate work in literature to criticize Where Silk Meets Soil. As she listened to the novel over the past week, her initial impressions proved accurate. The writing was thin, the characters were cliched. But it was steamy, she granted, and she supposed that was arguably the whole point. The book's heroine, Guela, ended up with the prince of the realm, of course. But not before the Lord of the Manor had had his way with her, to say nothing of the errant knight who rescued Guela and the Lord's comically wicked daughter Lilibet from Lord What's-His-Face's entourage. The novel was as heavy on penetration as it was on exposition, and Amy had a lot to say about it. In particular, she planned to point out how the only pairing the novel had actually earned, in her opinion, was between Guela and Lilibet. She wondered how in depth these discussions would get, or if it would just be an excuse to drink wine in the middle of the day.
"I did Marketing," Melinda said. "Other than the weekly visit to Stop and Shop, I don't do a whole lot of marketing, either."
They laughed as the bus pulled up, and waved goodbye to the kids.
"Speaking of Stop and Shop," Melinda said as they began the walk back up Hilltop Road, "I'm going to head over in a few to pick up some snacks. Any requests?"
Amy shook her head.
"Nothing in particular," she said. "Salty things, maybe. And I'm not much for dairy."
"The best part of hosting these things is when it's your turn, you get to pick the snacks. But it's always, like, a cheese and crackers arms race. Who wants to eat a hundred dollars' worth of cheese?"
They laughed again. Amy wondered if Melinda had given any more thought to the idea she had suggested in Ravir's dressing room, of proposing the ladies wear lingerie during their discussion sections. Like the picture exchange, they hadn't discussed it since, and Amy considered whether it might have just been a case of Melinda getting swept up in the spirit of the afternoon. Ravir could have that effect on people, she thought. The more Amy thought about it, the crazier the idea seemed. Even proposing such a thing could get Melinda shunned in a town like Oyster Bay. But then again, she didn't know these women. Surely, Melinda wouldn't have suggested something like that in front of Amy if she thought it was totally dead in the water.
"Well, I'll see you at eleven," Melinda said, stopping at the top of Amy's walkway. "Feel free to come a little early, if you want. You can help me set up."
"Or get my first pick of the snacks," Amy said.
"That too," Melinda said, waggling her fingers in the air as she continued down the street.
