It was wrong. Every bone in my body -- save for the one between my legs -- told me so.
Ginny was so close now, her gaze soft but unrelenting, her lips parted slightly as if inviting a confession. She touched my face and I felt the electricity zip through my body. When she leaned in, her breath warm against my cheek, I hesitated, the image of my wife flashing behind my closed eyes like a final warning: last exit before toll.
But the pull was undeniable, magnetic, primal.
Our lips met, and the world fell away. At first, it was tentative, an almost fragile collision, but then her mouth moved against mine, drawing me in, coaxing me past the point of no return, our tongues entwining.
Every nerve in my body seemed to wake at once, alive to the sensation of her -- her lips soft and pliant, her taste a blend of wine and something uniquely her own.
My mind raced, a cacophony of guilt and exhilaration clashing in my head. I wasn't supposed to feel this, I wasn't supposed to want this. And yet, with every second our mouths stayed fused, the vows I'd taken, the rules I had built my life around, felt further and further away.
Ginny tilted her head, and I followed, the kiss growing deeper, hungrier, as if we were consuming each other. A shiver ran through me as her nails grazed the back of my neck, sending a jolt of heat down my spine. The kiss was electric and terrifyingly good.
When we finally pulled apart, both of us hyperventilating, replenishing our lungs before our next dive into the guilty abyss, my lips tingled, swollen from the intensity, and my hands cradled her sweet face, reluctant to let go. We stared at each other, as shame and desire collided in a storm I could no longer contain.
"You are an amazing kisser," she purred. "Your wife is a very lucky woman."
I closed my eyes, sucker punched by those two words. Your wife.
I opened them. "Ginny...she can never know."
From below the sheet we heard the growl of a disembodied voice that might have had its mouth full. With my cock.
"Hey, I am literally two feet away from the both of you!"
I pulled back the sheet to find my bride with a tightening grip on my johnson while her other fingers teased Ginny's pussy.
I dropped the sheet and turned to my forbidden lover. "Oh god, I think she knows."
I'm going to have to back the truck up here, now that I have your attention. This isn't just another story about a threesome and the ride we took on a unicorn. It begins in a gentler, more innocent time and becomes a story of innocence lost.
It was the early 1990s, the end of a very long era when it was still possible to disappear and be missed -- or not -- as the world went on without you. You might leave the name and number of your Caribbean hotel with the boss' admin (still called secretaries then), but unless the place burned to the ground or they found a stack of uncashed cheques at the back of your desk drawer, you could leave your cares behind, get away from it all, and create a whole new world of problems.
It was Maeve's idea to adopt our problem.
She was the one who spotted Virginia by the pool. Maeve thought she looked "wistful." I promptly lost my place in the horror novel I was reading and peeked over the top of my Raybans.
"She's looking at the ocean, for chrissakes," I said. "You're supposed to be wistful when you do that." Well, you are.
Actually, that wasn't the first time Maeve mentioned her. She thought the woman looked a little lost in the waiting area back at Pearson Airport in Toronto, all alone in her flowered blouse and ill-fitting jeans. She
thought it was sad, what, with us going off to St. Lucia for our 10-year anniversary, so happy together.
And then, during our first evening on the island, we saw her across the dining room at the resort hotel, eating alone. What could be worse? I told Maeve that I used to travel alone all the time.
"But you couldn't have been happy all by yourself," Maeve said.
"The idea," I told her, "was NOT to be alone for long. Maybe that's what this chick has in mind. Don't cramp her style."
I said that, knowing full well that Maeve was going to go over and strike up a conversation. At parties, she's the one who searches out the lonely guy in the corner, talking to the plant, and gives the poor slob a moment of cheer in an otherwise disastrous evening. She picked dying pigeons off the street and allowed them to die with dignity in our bathtub.
Maeve was like that -- it may even be the reason I married her.
But we were on our anniversary trip, for crying out loud. I had just given her an imaginative gift -- forget the traditional tin or aluminum or diamond jewelry. Nothing says, "I love you, and you alone" more than a vasectomy.
"Aw, Pete. I didn't get you anything!" she cried when she tore open the envelope containing the results of my post-op fertility test. 0.0 swimmers.
I gave her a sloppy kiss and looked deeply into her eyes. "Those three little words are the only gift I want."
She smiled. "I love you!"
I shook my head. "No. More. Condoms."
When we booked the trip, I made her promise not to enlist new friends during our 14-day idyll of sand, surf and sex. She reluctantly agreed.
You have to come up for air sometime. We were by the pool, overlooking the splendor of Anse Chastenet, soaking in a deadly dose of UVs. By then I was of no use to any woman. Before I knew it, she wandered over and introduced herself to Virginia. I swore under my breath and pretended to be engrossed in my book, stealing sideglances and hoping we might have established that telepathic communication I'm told spouses develop.
It didn't work. Five minutes later, the two of them strolled up. Maeve introduced us and said the two of them were going shopping for bathing suits. It was an obvious mission of mercy. Virginia, a pleasant-looking 30-year-old, was buried under a shapeless T-shirt and an unflattering pair of shorts.
Maeve had herself a fashion emergency, and the two of them vanished into the hotel. Guys can only shake their heads when they see stuff like that. If I walked up to a fellow, told him he looked like crap but offered to help, I could fairly expect a kick in the nuts or an invitation to a stall in the men's room.
Later Maeve couldn't wait to show off her latest creation. "Pete, what do you think?" she squealed as she tugged Virginia to my chaise lounge. As I recall I was engrossed in Stephen Kings' latest Needful Things. I looked up.
"Oh my gawd, those are amazing tits!" I said. In my mind. By 35, my impulse to blurt the truth like I was bound by Wonder Woman's golden lasso had been worn down by a decade of domesticity. "Hey Virginia, look at you all... pretty like that." You judge which statement is better.
Our intimate candlelight dinner for two in the rustic village of Soufriere that night turned into a threesome. Virginia was all dolled up in a strapless summer dress I recognized from Maeve's wardrobe and a crocus in her hair. Virginia wasn't the type to use makeup, but the color and contrast Maeve applied did wonders.
She told us she worked for the province, cutting cheques and answering phones deep inside one of those granite blocks around Queen's Park. No, there was no one in her life right now, a painful breakup of a year ago still preying on her. Maeve kept it light and happy.
Later on, we went to a club called The Studio and got a table beside the dance floor -- strobe lights, colorful flashing floor panels, island deejays mumbling through half the music. If I was tired when I got to this place, I was exhausted by the time we left at midnight -- first I'd dance with my wife, then with Virginia, then Maeve would recognize a piece, and the three of us would get up and shake our parts off.
Once, after returning from the men's room, I returned to find that local guys had absconded with the both of them. I waved at my harem and got the gentlemen a little nervous.
"Hey man, which one is yours?" one of them asked at the bar. I flexed an eyebrow and said, "I don't know, man. I haven't made my mind up yet."
I thought the evening was going to be a bust, but it didn't turn out that way. I thought Maeve was swell to stage Virginia's coming out, and I thought that was that.
The next morning, though, Maeve was at her door, inviting Virginia to join us on a sailing trip up the coast that we'd signed up for. Out on the high seas, Maeve coaxed her out of her beach cover, to show off the nifty bathing suit she bought the day before, and the nifty body she was inexplicably hiding for so long.
"She's a babe!" I chuckled to Maeve in a rare private moment. "Look at those guys gawking at her. Look at ME gawking at her." A few of them strolled over and pitched their best lines, and it was hard not to wince. But Virginia would have none of them and stuck to us like goopy sun screen.
"I'm not really interested in getting involved right now," she said shyly over lunch in Marigot Bay. "Or that other stuff."
I played dumb. It comes naturally for some of us. "What other stuff?"
Maeve slugged me. "You know -- what guys are always after."
"What," I said, "a goalie for a Sunday morning hockey league?"
Virginia blushed. "It's hard, for me. I guess it's hard for a lot of women, especially in a place like Toronto, to find a nice... interesting... handsome guy."
Maeve put an arm around me. "Tell me about it," she said. "I had to fish this one out of the gutter and hose him down for a couple of hours."
"You're very lucky, Maeve," Virginia said with a shy grin. And Maeve could only agree, after I shot daggers her way.
