Paula leaned closer to the mirror and touched up her lipstick, then stood back and examined the results, a couple of flyaway hairs were stroked back into place and she was happy. "Not bad for a woman my age." Then as a tiny lack of confidence began to creep into her mind she undid a second button on her tight fitting cotton blouse, revealing just a hint of the pink bra cupping her impressive cleavage. "Every little helps." She thought and exited the ladies, wending her way back to the table that Gavin was sitting at. Unknowingly she gathered several admiring looks from other customers in the bar.
Gavin smiled at her as she resumed her seat next to him. He immediately noticed the extra flesh on display. "Christ Paula, you don't know what you do to me."
Paula leaned forward and provocatively sucked on the straw of her cocktail, "I'm sure I don't know what you mean." She said with a wicked smile.
"This was supposed to be a proper working lunch."
"Well I'm ready to get down to business." She laughed.
"Fuck! I could do you right here and now."
"Could I a least finish my drink?"
Gavin sat back with a sigh, "Well to be fair we have covered most of the sales projections."
"I think you have your mind on some other projections right now." Paula replied glancing her eyes down to her cleavage.
"True. I fucking love your tits." He replied bluntly.
"Paula laughed and sat back. "Good. I'm glad you like them."
"I suppose we should be getting back to the office." He suggested.
Paula felt the lead weight return to her stomach. She had hoped they would be able to talk about things and she would have been able to find the right moment to bring something up that she had been putting off. "Couldn't we get another drink?" She suggested hoping to buy some time.
"I did tell Irene we'd only be an hour."
"She can manage another half hour surely."
"I suppose." He looked doubtful. "To be honest I don't particularly want another drink. Lunch time drinking just sends me to sleep. But if you want one we can stay. I'll get a coffee or something."
Paula took a deep breath and bit the bullet. "Gavin, we need to talk."
The four words that Gavin least wanted to hear from any woman made his heart sink. "We need to talk?" He repeated back to her. Those words were never followed by good news. Was he about to be dumped? Was she pregnant? Was he going to be asked to leave his wife? He slumped back in his seat. "What do we need to talk about?" He said with a look of resignation.
Paula shuffled a little closer to him and grasped his hands in hers. She had practiced this a hundred times in her head but that counted for nothing now that it came to it. She raised her eyes to his. She hesitated before finally saying "You know me don't you?"
"Of course I know you." He replied a little confused.
"I mean, you really know me, you know what I'm like."
"I think so." He was suspicious of where this was going. He had no clue of the direction the 'talk' was taking.
"I think we're what people call soul mates." She continued.
Gavin thought for a second. It was certainly true that he felt more comfortable with Paula than anyone else he had ever met and that included his wife. He felt he could tell her more or less anything and that there were never any awkward silences, silences yes, awkward no, not that they had ever really ran out of things to talk about. He found her endlessly interesting and amusing.
"I guess we are?" He was still not at all sure where this was going, but guessed he was not about to be dumped.
"What I'm getting at is that you know what I'm like. How I think, how I react, what I like in and out of bed. You trust me."
"I think we've established that I know you."
"I need you to remember it."
"What?" Now he was thinking he had done something wrong.
"I need you to remember what I'm really like and believe that I love you."
"OK?" He said uncertainly.
"I'm going to ask you to do something for me that's going to surprise you, probably shock you. But you must not think it's the real me. Remember how I truly feel about you. I said I love you and I meant it."
"OK." He said thoughtfully with a heavy hint of suspicion.
"Remember us talking about fantasies? How You agreed to help me with mine after we had sex with Rachael?"
Gavin felt a wave of relief. She just wanted a sex favour not a life changing event. "Well I recall you saying that I owed you one but I don't remember agreeing." He was teasing her but her face did not get the joke.
"You asked me to seduce your wife! We talked about it then as well." Gavin could not deny the conversation had taken place.
"True, but you never went into any detail. You never told me what your fantasy is. I do remember you saying it was a 'dark' one."
"I think it is. But it's been in my head for as long as I can remember. I've never told anyone about it, but I know it wont leave me until I act it out."
Gavin was intrigued, what could she want that was so dark and secret. "Who do you want me to kill?" He hoped he was cracking a joke.
"Nobody, but you might want to kill me when I tell you."
Now he was worried. "Just tell me what you want."
"You'll do it?"
Gavin could see the look of slight desperation in her eyes, he could hardly refuse, they definitely did have an agreement and if he was to have any chance of getting Paula and his wife in the same bed he would have to go along with her. He had often wondered what his fuck buddy's 'dark fantasy' was, he was pretty sure his idea of dark was a lot blacker than anything she would come up with. "Yes, I'll do it." He eventually agreed. "Anything to do with you and sex is a no brainer for me."
Paula's face visibly relaxed even though this was the bit she was dreading most. "I want to have sex with a stranger."
Gavin was a little taken aback, he had always assumed her fantasy would involve some sort of dressing up or maybe even a bit of bondage, he thought for a moment. "I have to wear a mask? Make up? How does that work exactly?"
"No. You don't have to do anything. I mean I want to have sex with a real stranger. Someone I don't know. Ideally someone I don't even see."
"You want to shag another man?" He was having difficulty understanding.
"No. Well yes, but I don't even want to know who. It's not like having sex with someone else. It's not like there's someone I particularly want to fuck", then she quickly added, "apart from you of course."
"So it's me you want to fuck?"
"I do. But I also want to be fucked by a stranger. Just once" She thought the last bit might help.
"Who is this stranger?"
She looked at him a little exasperatedly. "If I knew that, they wouldn't be a stranger."
Gavin was beginning to feel a little sick. He knew he was being a complete hypocrite but the thought of Paula with another man truly made his stomach churn. She did have a husband and whilst she had assured him that nothing ever went on between them he had assumed that no man could live in the same house as her and never... he did not like to think of it. His thoughts raced.
"Well?"
Gavin became aware that she expected him to respond in some way. "I... I don't..." He trailed off, shaking his head, he had nothing.
"I've upset you." She looked crestfallen. She had not expected him to be overjoyed at the idea but emotionally this was a lot harder than she had imagined. She was pretty sure that Gavin had not understood that this had nothing to do with him as a man or a partner or lover, it was simply a burning need, she had a curiosity that had to be answered. "It's not about my feelings for you."
She offered.
"You just want to fuck someone else, that isn't me." The sarcasm was hard to hide.
"You're not understanding. I don't want to be fucked by someone else in particular, that's the whole point."
Gavin was feeling almost tearful. "Just not me?"
She grasped his hands across the table and squeezed them. "Yes by you, always by you." Then she realised the logic and backtracked, "Just one time by a stranger."
"So what? You go to a bar and pick someone up for a quicky or is this a weekend in a hotel?"
Paula looked a little baffled. "Pick someone up? No. If I did that they wouldn't be a stranger any more and it would be because I chose them."
Gavin was confused. The logistical side of his brain was taking control. "So let me get this straight. You want to be fucked by..." He hated that term in relation to Paula and anther man, "You want to have sex with..." He stopped again, that was no better, he spent a few moments wondering which was worse 'fucked by or having sex with' "You want to meet up with someone you never met before and". He was stopped by her finger being pressed to his lips.
"Let me explain. I have always had, and I think this goes back to when I was a teenager, a desire to be made love to by a complete and utter stranger. Ideally I never even see them, before during or after, I don't want to know who it is, was, or is going to be. Bluntly, me on a bed in a dark room, man comes in does the deed and leaves not even a hello or goodbye."
"You want to be raped."
"No. I want this to happen."
Gavin was baffled, he had his fair share of fantasies, many of which had been ticked off his list recently, but he just could not get his head around this. "Why?" he asked.
Paula chose not to mention the fact that she was getting wet just thinking about being used and abused by a complete stranger. "It's not so much the act itself, it's afterwards. It's the not knowing who it was. Being in a room full of people and potentially they could be there and I wouldn't know, it's like having sex with all of them."