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[zigi]

----- Mirrorland, I --------

Jeffrey trying to keep it together: driving around pretty much at random, looking at stuff, finding new shortcuts, pretty much anything to keep from thinking about Kaitlin and what she’s doing right now. And meanwhile the awkward stiffness in his pants. A loose, easy throbbing down there reminding him of his shame. I can’t believe I agreed to this, he keeps saying to himself, and yet he is helplessly erect. All because of this.
His perfect, high-bred prepschool-and-country-club wife, back there in the hotel with that guitar player.
They’d veered close to this a number of times, always at her instigation. The first time, months ago, at a pretty wild party at some friend of a friend’s loft in Soho. The first time in their four years of marriage that he’d really seen this other side of her. They’d gotten talked into going club hopping for the first time since their marriage. Marina, a friend of hers from the ad agency had teased them into it. It was something they used to do a lot of, but had moved away from in recent times, thanks to jobs, marriage. His own taste for that sort of thing was fading now that he had reached his thirties. But Kaitlin, still in her twenties but feeling the approach of thirty, had been all for it. Hearing the hint of bored frustration in Kaitlin’s voice, he had let himself be dragged along.
It was fun enough, but after the fourth or fifth club they’d been to he was ready to go home. Instead, they’d piled into a cab and headed back to Marina’s loft. Marina’s crowd was a mix of industry people, a couple of models and musicians and god knew what. Jeffrey recognized a couple of names from write-ups in the Voice, a face or two from magazine covers. Less impressed by that kind of thing than he used to be.
But Kaitlin was really flying. Music on in the huge loft, and she was out there dancing with this guy she’d been sitting next to back at the bar. Pretty-boy male model-he’d done some work for Abercrombie, Jeffrey had gathered.
There’d been a definite flirtation going on there. Jeffrey was more amused than nervous about that. At first. Then things got a little weird about it.
“He’s so hot,” she whispered at one point, by the drinks table in Marina’s loft. “He’s coming onto me. He wants us to go outside together.”
“Really? Who does he think he…” he began, then caught the look on her face. “Jesus, Kay, you’re not really thinking of….”
“It’s just fun. We’re not going to really do anything.”
“But I mean… I’m not so sure if that’s something I….”
“Just for fun.” She leaned in, gave him a slightly inebriated kiss. “For us,” she said.
Oh this, he thought, a little dismayed, sensing a familiar subject.
“It’s hot. Things have gotten a little tame, you know?” A whiff of vodka from her screwdriver as she kissed his cheek. And here it was-she’d said a few things, recently, after they’d been intimate. Always with the utmost consideration, but still, not what a man wanted to hear. Mentioning that sex was nice but maybe a little predictable. A dissatisfaction that worried him, but he hadn’t known what to do about it.
“It’s just for a little thrill,” she cajoled, and he couldn’t think what to say. “Don’t be a buzz-kill.”
Later, he thought about what a weird thing it was to have agreed to. He told himself it was because he wanted her to be happy, satisfied with things. And because she didn’t hide it from him. In the moment, though, it just kind of happened. And the thing was, he had to admit, there was something about it….
There was an open deck attached to the loft. Patio furniture and big potted plants out there. Jeffrey was standing, listening to the political talk of some other guests when he saw the guy get up from the couch and announce he was going out for a cigarette. Kaitlin, sitting next to him, got up too. “I could use some air.”
Pretending to listen to what the people he was with were saying, he watched as his wife and this guy she said was “hot” headed over to the glass doors. The guy opening the door for her and Kaitlin passing under his arm. The arm descending toward her as he pulled the door closed behind them. Through the obscuring reflections of the room in the glass, Jeffrey was pretty sure he saw the arm continue its arc, circling his wife’s waist as they moved out into the black.
Back at home after the party, despite the lateness of the hour, she’d been playfully lustful with him and they’d fucked like they hadn’t done since their first year together. They’d left the loft shortly after her little episode out on the deck, and the man’s scent was still on her-smoke in her hair and some unfamiliar cologne on her stretchy little top. She kept it on the whole time they made . A tease. Jeffrey had said he could smell the guy on her, and she insisted on keeping it on. “Are you jealous? So hot. Come on. Show me how it makes you feel. I like you like this.”

---Mirrorland II----
He figured it as a one-time thing, but it wasn’t. There started being little comments about guys she thought were attractive or hot. Partly, it was her keeping up a little bit of the tease, this new thing she’d introduced into their life the other night. Keeping him on that edge that had made him so hot that night. Partly, though, it was like she just thought it was cool to share this with him. A previously hidden dimension of herself she wanted him to and appreciate. A turn-on for her should be a turn-on for them both.
As a sign of greater intimacy, greater openness in their relationship it was a good thing, surely. But there was something a little disturbing about it, too, the way she just came out with these things. Casually, very matter-of-factly-like it was something she assumed they were both into-remarking on guys she liked, guys she might like to flirt with.
“Look at that bod, Jeffrey” A guy they saw in the health-club pool.
“What a show off, “ he said.
“Yeah, but um, look what he’s got to show off. That little suit-he knows it, too. Don’t tell me you don’t notice. Look at the size of that thing.” Grabbing his fingers under the water, one of her little tricks. Squeezing, mimicking what she would do to his penis. “Makes me hot. Are you hot?” Squeezing, sliding the ring of her fingers teasingly, obscenely along his stiff index and middle finger. “Do you want m to do that? I’ll do this, when we get home. Makes me hot, looking at him. Better hope he doesn’t come on to me, god knows what a girl might do, you know?”
Where to draw the line, that was the thing. This anarchic streak in her, what were the limits? Trust, that was the key. It was for them. But things kept teetering giddily farther than he expected.
“I flirted with a guy at work, today.” That one had rocked him back a bit: doing stuff when he wasn’t even there? “This guy down in shipping said something about my legs, and I’m afraid I led him on a bit. You’re not angry are you?” Teasing lead-in to a kiss. His tie half done, standing at the morning mirror.
“We don’t have time…”
“He kept staring at me. I felt naked, stripping me with his eyes. Pretty bedroom eyes.” She was dressed for work, one of the new suits she’d bought. Short skirt. Kissing his ear, her hand sliding down his suit pants toward his crotch.
“What did you do…” Her hand discovering him, his reflexive response. No time for this now, jesus.
“I was up on the step stool, trying to find my package, and I looked down and caught him staring at my legs. ’Like what you see?’ I asked him. He looked so funny. Guys look so funny when they’re turned on. ‘I don’t fool around at work,’ I said.” She laughed.
“What?”
“He said ’When do you fool around, then?’ Little smartass.”
“What did you tell him.”
“I said, ‘That depends.’ Are you hot? Feel how hard you are.”
“Did you… I mean, what.. was that all?”
“It’s all I’m telling you.”
“But jesus, Kait.”
“Now now. A girl doesn’t necessarily want to share all her secrets. You just think about it, and we’ll take care of this later.” Final squeeze, then off to finish her makeup for work.
All very hot, very fun, except it was becoming the predominant thing between them, the standard way of getting started. Not but what it was effective. But this sliding feeling….
How much was real, how much was made up? Her hand on Jeffrey’s cock, so there’d be no disguising his reaction. “Did you fool around?” “Depends on what you mean.” “Tell me.” “No. Show me what you want first.” Things she said when they were in the midst of lovemaking, to keep him hard, hot and angry. Did you kiss? Only a little. Where did he touch you? Nowhere. My tits. My legs. It was risky-we had to stop.
She was initiating sex more and more, which was nice, but always with this little disturbing edge.

---Mirrorland III---
It was just meant to be flirting, that was his understanding and he clung to it. Whatever she seemed to be implying, it was just flirting, right? It made her hot to do these things, and in the bedroom she was sharing it with him, the fun she was having. So he shouldn’t complain.
One moment marked a shift to some other level, though. Maybe it was something new, maybe it wasn’t, but it marked the period after which he felt like he’d skidded out onto some very slick, very thin surface with god knew what underneath.
He caught her in an embrace with another man. Coming around the corner in some cavernous loft they were partying at. He’d taken a wrong turn heading for the bathroom, and there they were, down the other end of a long dark hallway. She was locked together with the guy. A little drunken naughty kiss. Her giggles intermingling with the tongue-slithering fun they were sharing. Noise and dark, with irregular light flashing in from the dancing in the main room, but he could see them.
He felt a sick heat in his belly, ears ringing, a cold sensation all over. Also a tingling. Like he’d stepped through an elevator door and there was no car there-falling. And the truly strange thing: his immobility. Some weak part of his forebrain was informing him that, yes, this is where the husband, the man, strides over there and breaks them apart. Nuff’s enough, come on guys. All that off in the distance somewhere. But here, present, throbbing in the midst of his blurred feelings, the dark, mysterious and powerful impulse to let it happen.
To stand here. To watch and do nothing.
Weird, fascinating. Deeply wrong and deeply alluring, like a drug.
He felt weak. He knew he was going to do this. The floating sensation in his groin intensified.
The guy’s hands were sliding up the back of her short skirt. He could see her soften, yield to it. Encouraged, the guy eased her against the wall, pressing with his whole body. They were both grinning into their kiss, giddy, like a game: how-far-will-we-go. More? his hands moving to her hips, then up along her sides, next to her breasts. She held his head, kissed him harder. His hands slid down to her hips again, then further, her thighs switching, a dancing movement, an impatient filly. His hands on her thighs, making her little skirt slide up, fingers tracing along her bare skin. Oohh, she giggled, then back into the kiss, eyes closing, fading into this.
Jeffrey’s breath short, almost choking. Hard to breathe. Was this what she meant by “flirtation”? The guy’s hands slowly moving as they kissed, sliding around to her rear. Kaitlin lifting on tiptoes. The guy growling, leaning harder into her. Hands rising to her rear, squeezing it, possessing it. Kaitlin’s head going back, lips apart, then kissing fiercely. Rising on her toes, then down again as the guy held her, controlled her motion with his hans on her ass. Guiding her, guiding them both, into a dry-humping motion. He was showing what he wanted and she was letting him, lifting and pressing herself back against him, her motion eager, voluntary.
The weak idea of going over there right now and making them stop. A little cartoon in Jeffrey’s brain. He could make it a face-saving joke: Come on guys, break it up. Or he could just… let it happen. This was so interesting.
Her hand began to move, now. Jeffrey’s throat dry, head thundering. Her hand had been cupping the guy’s face as they kissed. Now it slid down to his neck. Paused for a moment, then down again. Onto his chest, delicately as if considering pushing away, then relenting, sliding down to his waist. Pausing there for another moment. Then moving again.
There was a little lifting, gasping movement from both of them as her hand slid down between them. The guy reflexively lurching forward with his hips. Her reaction: a kind of Aha! laugh parting her lips around their slithering tongues, laughing slyly into the kiss. Then closing with his again, eyes closing too. Eyebrow lifted in dreamy wonder at this, the magic moment of touching him, her hand squeezing, possessive. Mine. My nice thing. For me.
Jeffrey thought he might be sick, or have some kind of episode. His heart hammering. She held his cock. She had no intention of releasing it. Fingertips became delicate, tickled, then cupped and squeezed. The image searing into Jeffry’s brain.
He was breathless, scared, hurt.
Erect.
He wasn’t even fully aware of it until a door opened further down the hall and he had to move or be caught here staring at his wife in the arms of another man. Reflexively withdrawing, abandoning the scene, leaving her to what she was doing. And as he moved at last, he felt the awkward stiffness down there. Found himself automatically adjusting it so it wouldn’t show as he retreated to the more populous areas of the party.
He’d never suspected, till then, how scary and open-ended this thing was. How some dark, unsuspected part of him could override all his daylight feelings, weightlessly lifting his cock erect and forcing him to stand there watching.
His own cock, treachorously erect and excited-that was the most sickening part. Fully aware that this was something deeply, primally humiliating, yet part of him was so eager to stand here all stiff and excited and doing nothing to stop them. Like that scene in old horror movies where the guy gets taken by the beast, eaten alive, looking down at it in fascination, the horrible awareness in his eyes, knowing exactly what’s happening to him and powerless to stop it. Did the directors know there was something weirdly erotic about it? The sickening exhilaration of letting go, letting it happen.
She came back to the party after not too long. What had happened, he asked, and surely the sick knowledge was there in his eyes. But she wouldn’t say much; she didn’t always tell him. “We flirted, I told you.” Just that, and it was fun and made her hot and Take me home, let’s fuck fuck fuck, baby, come on. And he had, god help him, knowing all the while it was a surrender, and this new dark part of him thrilling at the fact, a face-reddening, dick-stiffening excitement.
How could this be?

---Mirrorland IV---
After that time seeing her in the hall, the in-between period. The not-quite-sure period. Was she reading it in his eyes--his confusion, his fear and his need? They were veering toward it, all unspoken. The comments getting more explicit after her episodes: “He had a big cock. I could feel it. I could feel how big it was. Does that make you hot? I can feel you going all stiff in me. You like it, don’t you. Think about it while you do me. That big cock. Much bigger than yours.“
Trying to put all this kind of thing aside in the daylight. Keep it bottled up in the special zone of midnight heat and sex where it was okay to be a little crazy.
But it was a gathering, accelerating slide. And then-what, two days ago?- “He asked me out. He wants to go out with me.”
“That same guy?”
“Jim, yeah. I put him off again last night, but he called me on my cell today. Marina gave it to him, he said.”
“How are we going to handle this? You just have to tell him, no. Right? I mean, we can’t just… I mean, it’s no, right?”
“Well… I don’t know if it’s that simple. We talked. It was nice. Hot. He really makes me hot, you know. I told you that.” And then the words that made him feel weak inside, made something inside teeter and fall, cracks opening across the slippery thin surface.
“I mean… if it was just sex,” she said. “If it wasn’t about anything but that.”
Jeffrey’s heart hammering, trying to think this through. Because she was right, it wasn’t simple, not at all. Easy enough for the sane part of him to insist on a big unequivocal refusal. But what then? How would it be, after? The complaints that had long been shelved coming back. His inability to please her without the flirting, all of this-it would be there, just under the surface, all the time. Or not under it. There would be what she wanted, and there’d be him, standing in the way. Is that really what he wanted for them? How long could he keep it up? And even if he did, wouldn’t she still want this? Wouldn’t she be tempted to do it anyway, secretly? Wouldn’t it drive them apart, ultimately? To lose her over this, my god.
On the other hand, to acquiesce, to say Yes-what could that mean? It terrified him. To actually know she was taking a lover, was with him right now--what would that be like? How could he stand it? The obscene humiliation of agreeing to it-all the worse if she didn’t even see it in those terms. For her, it was just a nice thing, a solution to their "problem." But where would it end?
Maybe it would be just once and she’d get it out of her system, the cajoling voice in his head said, and part of him knew it was a lie, just a ruse to get him to open up to the darkness, relax and accept it. The easy, weightless lifting of his cock, insisting that this was the answer. The dark current, the strange allure: tingling, open-ended, sickening, exciting. It just wasn’t fair to her, the voice said, to stand in the way of this. If he loved her, how could he deny her what she needed? How could they go on as a couple if he did that?
Meanwhile, she was throwing out life preservers, things he could use to disguise from himself the raw fact of what she was asking him to agree to.
Other couples did it, too, she was saying, that was another thing. Marina had told her-she’d been talking to Marina about, well, a lot of things. Marina said she knew a number of couples who…. It just wasn’t all that unusual. For the husband to be okay with it, even. If he really loved her. If they were a strong, loving couple. If they let it be what it was. It could be just part of how it was with them, in their lives together. No one else’s business. Just go with it, Marina had said. You can’t fight this and it’s wrong to try. It does more harm than good. What you really need to do is come to terms with it. With what's in your own interest as a couple. Be honest with Jeffrey, Marina had advised, help him make his own adjustments.
Jeffrey looking at her across this gulf: Kaitlin over there, safe on some lovely fantasy luxury yacht and him out here kicking and sinking, drowning in the surprisingly sweet, narcotic liquid. Just let go, were her loving words for her drowning husband. Let go, darling, let it take you, let it happen.
“How-how will we--I mean, would we--do this?”
Just hypothetically, he meant. But it was a mistake: as soon as they were into the details the discussion assumed his agreement. It was locked in and no way to stop and back up to the real question of was it okay or not.
“I had some ideas about that.”
--Mirrorland V--

Sitting here in the ticking car-he’d pulled into a parking space, having just had a near-miss in his distraction-he was experiencing the weirdest sensations of his life. It had been an hour now. She was supposed to call his cell. “If it feels like I don’t need you,” she’d said. “I should be able to tell fairly early on. I’ll call, so you don’t have to wait.”
The idea, the concept, the fig-leaf was that he would bring her so she’d feel safe. In case the guy turned out to be not so nice, which could sometimes happen with a guy you thought was okay. Suddenly, in the bedroom, he’s…. Anyway, it would be comforting to have Jeffrey bring her, at least this first time.
Was it a secret, did she know how much this shamefully, secretly excited him? It was horrible, how it excited him. So easy for her: this assumption it was not really that much, not really all that different from the flirting, that he should not just agree but help, assist, participate. So it was something they were both involved in, as a couple.
It had already been part of their getting-ready ritual, part of the flirting game. That she teasingly asked his advice, his input. “How about these? Is this too revealing? Think they’ll like me in this?” That generic ‘they,’ the whole conspiracy the two of them were engaging him in against himself, all in that little word. “How about something hot, for underneath?” But no one’s going to see, are they babe? “You will, after. Anyway, it’s just for me, to feel sexy. And besides”-the tease-“you never know…” It was all just a fun little tease, right, so it was okay, play along.
Only tonight, so different.
“What do you think he’d like to see me in?”
Did she know, his little secret? Poking up in his jockeys? The dark moment, her look: “Pick something out for me.” The special-underthings drawer. “You pick. Something you gave me. Something hot.”
This was the fun, the experiment. What did this mean, this new thing? What were its possibilities, its contours? Clearly it was a dangerous, risky mirror-land they were entering, but she was brave, she meant to explore it.
This was one new thing, one new aspect: Both of them knowing it. That she was asking him to prepare her for another man. And to do one thing always seemed to imply another, the irrevocable logic unfolding itself. Go slow, explore it a little. What might be fun, what might be hot? “Kiss me there. Kiss before you put them on me.”
By the time they were in the car together, driving her to meet the man who’d asked her out-her first “date” as she called it-the pretence of Jeffrey accompanying her as her protector had been overlayed with the fact that it was exciting, part of the thrill for her. To have him there, to have him drive her to the guy she was going to “flirt” with.
She’d kept the word. Offering it to him as something to hold on to, to use as a shield, if he needed, against what he was actually letting her do. Still just “flirting,” that’s all. It was just that “flirting” now included, well, a little more than it used to.
And now he was here in the ticking car, waiting for the phone to ring.
After a while, it became a matter of choosing to just go home, or to stay here long after the time when she was supposed to have called one way or the other.
He awoke to the distinctive chirruping sound some hours later. The care cool in the early-autumn night air. The clock on the phone said 3 am as he flipped it open.
“Kaitlin?”
“Hey! Are you home? Sorry I didn’t call.”
“Are you… Okay?”
“God, there’s a question. Listen, I’m ready to go now. Can you come get me?”
“I’m… yes. I mean, I’m here. I didn’t go.”
“Really? God that’s so sweet. I’ll be down in a few minutes. Want to pull up to the front entry?”
She didn’t really want to talk about it. She was sweet, happy. Excited. But not specific. Just assuming he shared her view. It had been great. She was thrilled at this. It was all new, liberating. It was the best thing. They’d had this little problem as a couple, and they’d dealt with it. They’d found an answer. Problem solved.

--Mirrorland VI--
After her first time with another man, things started settling into a new pattern. It was like there was a kind of split in their life together. On one side, all was normal. Jeffrey and Kaitlin, that cute happy pair everyone envied. How great they were together, a fun couple! In this mode, the fact that she had started sleeping with other guys took on several different cloaks or guises, all of them basically matter-of-fact or innocent. It was not something they needed to discuss, was one. The pure, casual brush-off: “We don’t really want to talk about this now, do we? Things are nice. Let’s just leave it at that, Jeffrey.” In this mode, the fact that he sometimes… helped, that this was what she wanted of him… was just a practical thing. To help her feel safe, if he drove her. To advise her on what to put on, because after all a guy would know what was sexy and anyway why shouldn’t he want her to look nice, why shouldn’t this be part of what they did together, as a couple. To reassure her that he supported her, that he was okay with this.
In the other mode, though, this surface normality stretched and broke, spilling them through into the other side, where it was all a tease, where she liked the sense of violating a taboo, of doing something dark and delicious and rubbing his nose in it.
Part of him clung to the normality of things, however false and artificial. But part of him began to crave the falling through feeling, the wrong-side-of-the-mirror experiences that she initiated at her whim. Part of him fed on that, needed it. It was intolerable. It was sweet and delicious. To surrender to it. To her. To surrender himself, his very manhood. Who knew there could be such feelings, that they could be teased out of hiding, fed, watered, grown to strange and twisted vitality. He could feel this happening to him, and couldn’t seem to stop it. Increasingly, didn’t want to stop it.
Jeffrey and Kaitlin, that cute happy couple everyone envied. How great they were together, a fun couple! And underneath, this new world opening up for them.
“Beg me,” she whispered, not long after this new way of life started. “Beg me to tell you.” This was how it could be now: sudden, not a lot of build-up. Staying late at work, no explanation, then coming home all teasing and hot and his worries and hurt just rolled over by her imperious mood.
“I did something with Mark, that guy down in shipping. Want me to tell you about it? If you do, you’re going to have to beg me.” She laughed. “Come on. It’s just a game. Play. Beg me.”
They were working on his new persona, this new self that she wanted him to have, wanted to be able to invoke whenever she wanted.
“I like you like this,” she said, “You like it. You know you like it.”
He was on his knees. He’d been upset when she got home, but she’d kissed him and he’d smelled the strange cologne on her. “I’ve been bad,” she told him. “Want to hear about it?”
“But Kaitlin, I was worried—you should at least ca—oh!”
Silencing him with a kiss, and her hand sliding down between them like she had with that guy in the hall, weeks ago now. She knew it got to him, and knew why too. He’d told her about what he’d seen that time—she’d dragged it out of him at some point. Now she was doing it to him. The two of them conspiring against him: her, and the stiff enemy down between his legs.
“Kneel to me. Kneel and lift up my skirt. Okay? No questions. Just do it.”
“Ohh god,” he moaned, knowing that the old, resistant part of him, weak as it was, needed this lesson, repeatedly. She laughed at his sound, knowing it meant surrender.
The musky scent down there as he kissed his way up her thighs. Her bare thighs. Hadn’t she been wearing pantyhose this morning? Hadn’t she invited him to admire the sleekness of her legs? She wasn’t wearing them now.
“I’m wet down there, see? Can you feel how wet I am?”
“Mmm hmm,” he agreed, nodding under her skirt, her hands guiding his mouth to where she wanted it.
It was a game they played. It wasn’t really him, it was a role he was playing. He could choose to think of it that way, and so he did, obediently kissing the smooth, stretchy material that clasped slickly to her sex. He moaned, letting the feeling take over.
“I like you like this,” she whispered, gasping, excited, her knees trembling a little. “Kiss me there. I like you like this.”
He pulled the stretchy material down, planting kisses on the smooth bare skin of her mons. She had started keeping herself shaved here. “Guys like that,” she had said.
“You like me like this, don’t you? Kiss me there. Feel how I am? So hot, baby. No fingers, just tongue, my clit. That’s… yeah….”Gasping, with a giddy little laughing edge in her words, she said “It was Mark, down in shipping. He was rough. Fast. Want me to tell you?”
“Mmmmm,” he moaned into her slick heat. She lifted her leg slightly to the side, helpfully.
Jeffrey heard himself making pleading sounds. They’d toyed with this sort of thing, this teasing and his—whatever you called it. His acceptance, whatever. They’d toyed with it a bit. But this was going farther. He wanted it to go farther. God help him. He moaned again into her wet cunt.
“He fucked me,” she gasped, a marveling tone in her voice—whether at what she’d done, or what she was saying was unclear. “Such a good fuck. In the manager’s office. He had a key. Know how we did it? Lick me nice and I’ll tell you.”
“Ohhh….”
“Beg me, darling, and I’ll tell you.”
“Oh god,” he whispered. “Please.” A tiny whisper, just to try it. She couldn’t hear it… Yes she could.
“Say it again.”
“Please. Please Kay.”
“’Please,’” she mimicked. “God. I like you like this.” Her voice hardened, angry. “He did me fast and hard. I said ‘where can we do it’ and he took me into the manager’s. He had a key. When we got in there, he pushed me down. Over the edge of the desk. I wanted to see him, touch him, his thing. But he pulled up my skirt. His hand on my back, holding me down. And then I just wanted it like that. Like I was some slut for him. No foreplay. Just fucking. I heard him unzip. Then his hot thing pushing between my legs. I spread for him. He knew I was married and he was just going to fuck me like that.”
All the while Jeffrey moaning and kissing her. Never seen her so wet. Slick cunt. He licked delicately, rapidly, the way she liked, and he heard her breath catch, felt her little spasm. Then she sighed. A nice climax.
Gentle, after. Fingers in his hair, his lips kissing gently down there. So sensitive right after coming. Still that marveling tone in her voice.
“His cock in there, darling. Right there. Can you tell? I went to the ladies’ after. To clean up a little. But I was wet, all the way home. I kept thinking about you. I wanted to tell you what a bad girl I’d been. I wanted you down between my legs like this. I like you like this. I really like you like this, honey. So sweet. So nice to me.”
Curling fingers, gentle in his hair.
“Touch yourself,” she said. “I want you to. I want to watch you do it.”

--Mirrorland, VII--
“Play, Jeffrey, be nice, come on. You know what I want.”
And so he’d done it, stroked himself like a hormone addled adolescent, letting her watch that heretofore secret and rather shameful private act. His cock stiff with the thrill of it, the letting go of self-image and inhibition. Feeling the sick thrill of yet another piece of himself being snipped off, the shards of passage taking their toll.
He had tried to say Can we talk: he had tried to say Jeez, Kay, I’m just not sure I can handle this. But she wouldn’t take him seriously. And he knew why.
It was a simple, devastating fact: this was the one way in which he could please her at the level she enjoyed when going with a lover. For him to accept these little “involvements” as she’d begun calling them. The helping, the kissing, worshipping her before she went out.
They both sensed it: to refuse it, to try to pull back from this brink would be to in some essential way abandon her, abandon them.
So he had begun to tinker and toy, in his own mind, with this curious little bauble of a thought. To stop clinging to the idea that it was just an experiment, a land in which they were tourists and from which they would someday return to the familiar furniture and streets of ordinary life. That he could really and truly devote himself to pleasing her in this special way. That this was the one gift he could give her that she truly wanted; nothing else would please her as much.
It was all of a part: the taking of lovers, the imposing of that fact upon him, her husband. Each contributing in its unique way to her happiness.
She seemed to sense the shift in his attitude, and the terms of the game subtly changed. What might she suggest, or hint would please her, that would press hardest against that resistant place in him?
She liked him on his knees, she liked telling him things. She liked using the word “fuck” to describe what she’d done. The many ways it could be used. Caramel sweetness as she kissed his ear and stroked him between his legs. Or blurting it out to catch him by surprise and gauging his reaction with birdlike curiosity.
Increasingly insisting that she should be allowed to go out alone to play. The many excuses why Jeffrey couldn’t make it tonight, when she was out with Marina’s crowd. The meaning of those excuses becoming an understood thing among the group on some understated level. Part of the amusement, the fun they were all having. Not to be overstressed. Marina knew. Marina might let on to the appropriate new guest she thought would be pleased. There were interesting guys. Up and coming actors, musicians traveling through. Kaitlin was discreet, choosy. But approachable? Yes. Absolutely. For the right guy, the right moment.
Over the course of six or eight months he felt the pressure building in himself—some breakthrough moment was coming. Either of utter rejection, the experiment failed, the fantasy ship grounding and sinking on some irreducible reef of resistance in him. Or of radical, abject acceptance.
It came in the dark, in their own bedroom, the third or fourth time she’d brought a lover home with her.
He’d awoken to their sounds. She’d done it before but it was still a shock. The muffled laughter from out there in the main room, the clinking of ice in glasses, the chill of ice in his own heart melting under careful attention: this was good. This was new and it pleased her to do it, knowing he was here, knowing he was a secret witness to her adultery.
The sudden silence.
Then the other sounds. The small sounds, his ears keening for them in the dark, sifting them out from the other night noises. At first not sure what was real, what imagined, and then there would be a sharp cry, a gasping giggle. Maybe back to muffled voices again, and then longer silence, followed by sharper noises. The sofa creaking. Sharp cries and gasps of oh god. Abandoned gurgles and moans—that special sound she made back in her throat when it was really good in her.
All this he’d experienced a couple of times before, now. The second—or was it the third—time she’d come in to him, after. The guy had gone; she’d lain with him quiet for some time after they’d fucked and then finally he left and she came to bed. Silent but aware, intense, knowing he was awake, that he’d heard everything. Wrapped in the afghan from the couch, which she dropped as she knelt onto the big bed, crawled over to him.
Kissed him, deeply.
Sweet hot slippery tongue kiss. The unfamiliar cologne and man-smells on her, enveloping him.
“Like this,” she whispered. “Do me like this. Okay?” Rolling over off of him, parting her thighs. “Like you do. Like you do for me. Do it now. Like this.”
Her fingers delicately tracing curls in his hair, then tickling its way down between his legs as he crouched to service her. His tongue trailing down her flat, smooth belly, scared at what he was doing, and excited too. Desperately excited by it, the symbolism of it, both of them. “Yes!” she gasped as his tongue slid over her mons, and she lifted herself. “God--do it!” Making a little show of his reluctance, so she’d know, so they’d both be focused on their awareness of the meaning of it. Not to mention that he was genuinely apprehensive about what it would be like to do this, knowingly, so soon after she’d been with someone. There’d been other times, previous gestures toward this, but none so blatant.
And so god help him, he had let his tongue slide down into the slippery slick smoothness of her and busied himself there and she had laughed and gasped her excitement, writhing her head and shoulders—so sensitive after orgasming two or three times already—and it warmed him that he could please her so, it was worth it, he told himself, losing himself in it, worth it for this, for her and excitement.
But even though that should perhaps in some way have prepared him, he was still rather stunned at what he'd done on that recent, ultimate night, the one that left him tremblingly excited, scared, free-falling, confused, and oh dear, permanently marooned it seemed, here on the other side of the mirror.

---Mirrorland, VIII---
Sitting at his desk, the images came unbidden. He tried to push them away, focus on what he was doing. With some success. But they kept ambushing him. The feeling first, the excited tingle down below, unprompted by anything seemingly. The moment of just enjoying that weightless feeling for its own sake, the reminder of how it felt to let go, and here it was, offered, the gift that kept on giving.
Then the images themselves, and his face flushing the way it had the other night and no, oh god he couldn’t have done that.
But she’d been so aroused, so teasing-sweet and insistent,
They’d been out there in the main room for maybe half an hour, giggling and fooling around like teenagers while he dozed in and out here in the bedroom. They were a little drunk, a little silly. Then whispers, the sound of approaching footsteps on the carpet, and the door had opened. The guy had seemed a little hesitant. She was leading him by the hand. She was wearing the button-down shirt she’d worn to work that morning, but the tails hung down over her bare thighs—the skirt had already disappeared. The guy youngish, curly haired, barefoot, his shirt all unbuttoned.
“You awake, Jeffie?”
“Uh?”
“We want to use the bed.” She giggled. Made it light. “We’re kicking you out so we can use the bed. It’s too awkward out there. Be nice.”
The feelings no less sharp for being increasingly familiar: The opportunity offered—you can surrender to this, too, darling—and the giddy, helpless knowledge that he’d already let things go too far to say no, and she knew it. That smile of hers, the desire to push past every barrier, discover new boundaries she could break to excite them both.
“This is Dennis,” she said. “We want to use the bed.”
He sat up. The guy made a sound, somewhere between a scoff and surprise.
“It’s okay, he doesn’t mind. Do you babe.”
Turning over various responses in his head, none of them adequate. Wondering what it would be like to let himself do this.
“We’ll be nice and comfy in here,” she told Dennis, pulling him close as Jeffrey gathered a pillow or two to take with him. She sat on the bed as he began rising off it, pulling her lover of the evening toward her. He still seemed a little disbelieving, shooting Jeffrey a questioning look that quickly resolved toward “better you than me, pal,” and let himself be pulled down next to her. His jeans were undone, and she slipped her hand down under the waistband in back as he moved over her, began kissing her. She loved a nice firm butt on a guy.
Jeffrey standing at the door, now, fascinated. Her thighs moving gently as they kissed, her hand sliding deeper. The guy's hand down on her hip, sliding up under the shirttail there, her thigh lifting.
Jeffrey standing with his pillow. An erection tenting the front of his jockeys. The door was open next to him, but he didn’t move through it. Her eyes lifted to his, past the guy’s head as they kissed. She broke the kiss, clawed down along her lover’s back as his hand went up under her shirt. Staring into Jeffrey’s eyes as the guy began doing things between her thighs.
“Look at him,” he heard her say. The guy looked back over his shoulder, the motion of his hand pausing. Jeffrey went hot all over. Flushed. Erection tingling. “I want him to stay,” she said. “Mind if I tell him to stay?”
“I don’t care. Whatever.” Turning his head back to kiss her neck, his gentle, caressing motion between her legs resuming.
“God you’re hot,” she whispered. He chuckled against her throat.
It excited them both, having him watch. The novelty of it, the knowledge that their every caress, every gasping and excited response was being observed. A more radical form of adultery, this. It gave every sensation an extra charge of voltage. To revel in it, in the perversity of what they were doing became the game.
Now she was gazing into Jeffrey’s eyes as Dennis caressed her between her legs. Sometimes difficult to keep her gaze fixed on his—her eyes squinting at the sparks of sensation. Tiny wet sounds from down there. Her hand deep down his pants behind, squeezing his butt encouragingly. Slow thrusting movements the guy was making as he played with her. Movements that reminded her: he needed attention too. There was something she could do for him. How exciting that would be, with her husband watching.
If being caressed between her legs in front of her husband was a kinky thrill, think how much greater a thrill to reciprocate those caresses. Keeping her gaze fixed on Jeffrey as she lifted her hand out and slowly brought it around in front. Gazing into his eyes as her hand slipped down in between herself and Dennis where Jeffrey couldn’t see. Couldn’t see, but he saw how she bit her lip as she discovered something nice in there, and heard how her lover grunted at the contact.
All of this was searingly fresh and new for all of them. Not the physical behaviors themselves of course, but the fact of Jeffrey being there, watching these adulterous acts as they unfolded. A whole new mental dimension. A certain lingering self-consciousness, to be sure, but that only made it more vivid and exciting. Kaitlin’s slightly abashed titter as she took the thing out (“I can’t believe I’m doing this!”); Dennis rolling back, the shock of his bare cock coming into view, rising up obscenely from the open vee of his zipper, and Dennis looking down, looking away as if the fact of being observed like this was just too much at that moment. And again, that giddy nervous edge in her giggle as she curled down and brought her face close. Glancing over to Jeffrey, and planting the first little kiss on it. Staring into his eyes, as she kissed, kissed, then licked. Then moaned and let herself be pulled into it and began doing him with her mouth. Getting lost in it, letting the knowledge that her husband was watching inflame her. Not just kissing the cock, licking it, but acting it out. Each moan of lust and appreciation was heard by her husband as well as her lover, and this amplified the effect—her very excitement was itself a source of excitement.
This novel sensation. Her own excitement reflected back and amplified by the fact of her husband being in the room, witnessing all of this. She began growling and sucking. Licking obscenely along the shaft while staring into Jeffrey’s eyes. Giddy laughter erupting, then muffled as she plunged down over the head. Looking into Jeffrey’s eyes and sucking the cock, slow up and down sucking.
Growing in confidence as the act went on, so that it became a kind of spell they were all falling into.
And then the awareness that they were going to fuck began to intrude. The cock long and stiff and arching into the air, gleaming wetly from her kissing and licking and sucking. She leaned back from it, holding it by the base, admiring it. The next thing was to fuck it. To be fucked by another man in front of Jeffrey. She looked up to meet his eyes. There was something primal, something mythic here. Some kind of rite resurrected from a deep, lost history. For the cock to penetrate her, for her to claim that pleasure in front of him was to seal something, to make it permanent. Her eyes were dark with this pagan, hedonistic knowledge. You’re going to watch me do this. A throbbing, like dark drums in his head. The cock bold and ready for his wife.
Slowly she swung around, shifting her grip so that it never left the cock. But now held it between her thighs as she poised herself over it. This deliberate thing: to fuck in front of Jeffrey. Important work here for a moment: the mechanics of position and alignment. Breaking her gaze with him, focusing on this complicated little job her hand was doing with the cock down between her legs. From where he sat, he could only see the base of the thing disappearing up between her ass cheeks. Her fingertips briefly flicking into view along the shaft as she adjusted its position.
Then there was a little sigh from both of them. Her hand came out from between her legs, and she braced her arms on either side of his shoulders. Looking down at him, now; wanting to see her lover's reaction, not Jeffrey's. Dennis lightly holding her hips, staring up into her eyes. A little gasp as she adjusted her knees slightly. Suddenly silent in the room as if thundering drums had ceased and it was just the sound of their breath, panting with this difficult, pleasurable exertion.
She began pushing down.

--Mirrorland, Finale et Coda--
To have watched her fuck, to have sat there and surrendered to the imperatives of his own erection and watched her fuck—it changed things. It changed everything.
The way she’d looked at him, after Dennis had finished in her. The lazy look as she broke the kiss they’d been locked into at mutual climax, her ankles crossed over the small of his back, urging him on, her jockey, her rampant rider. Now her legs slowly relaxed apart, and her eyes, half-lidded with residual pleasure, turned to look over at Jeffrey in his chair. His erection sticking up in his jockeys.
“Go,” she’d said. “Leave us alone for a while.”
He’d felt it himself, that was the thing. Felt himself changing. This part of him coming alive, a kind of savage glee at the violence being done to his former identity. He dared not touch himself—actually, it was a bit of a quandary. To do it, as a response to what he’d seen, would be yet another step on this path, an exciting feeding of the monster. Yet he was afraid of breaking the spell. He knew it would be hard to see things so… so clearly in the aftermath of self-induced climax.
These puzzles occupying him as he dozed on the couch. A while later there had been sounds again, but he sensed they didn’t want him and he remained where he was. Listening. Her sharp cries, the deep triumphant grunts of her lover as he completed his pleasure in her. Then quiet, murmurs, and Jeffrey dozed again.
And then some time later he’d awoken again out of a solid sleep, and… Well. Sitting here at his office desk in the broad daylight, part of him still shied away from it In spite of the warm feeling, the new awareness of what he was and was becoming. Pushing away the images, the sensations—hopeless. Her words popping into his head, just one of the things she’d said.
“You little perv. You like this, don’t you. God, that is hot.”
At first he’d not known what had awakened him, then he became aware of them standing there by the couch.
“I want you to do something, honey. I want you to do something for us.”
Blearily coming out of some dream remnant. The enchanted mood still there. The darkness, the depth of night, the shameless thing they’d all been participating in. Perhaps there was yet one more thing. Something that would be shocking and exciting and irrevocable, marking them all.
“I want you to do something.”
Kissing Dennis’s shoulder as she moved behind him, Sliding to her knees behind him—Jeffrey remembered that, now, the image not to be resisted. How she’d slowly knelt and stripped her lover—black shorts in some tight, elastic material. Stretching them out and down.
Mostly unspoken, what was required, there in the deep secret pocket of night. They all sensed it: the ritual aspect of it, an act of complete surrender. Moonbeams slanting across the room.
The mysterious moon goddess, nude and unreal in the moonlight, and her lover likewise, all unreal. Her hands on the guy’s hips, directing him, moving him toward the couch. One step forward; two. One of her hands sliding around to circle the thing at its base. Lifting it. Lifting it toward the poor sacrificial victim reclining before them. “See?” Her eyes looking out at him from where she knelt behind Dennis, dark and unreadable. “See? Nice. Yes?”
All unspoken, the expectation, yet no less powerful for that. More so really. That he understood. That he would sense her desire and comply unbidden was her hope, and he could gratify it. She offered it to him like an opportunity. A form of worship.
Yielding to the spell. Moon goddess guiding them both, moving around so she could watch, ever so closely. One hand holding the thing at its base, the other moving to the back of his head, gently urging. The tingling, weightless sensation, a magic spell he was under, his wife’s gentle, loving hand urging him forward. Here, darling, a cliff for you to step off of. See? Go ahead. I’ll help.
“Here, darling.”
In a sane world, he would not have leaned forward. It was all a dream, until the shock of contact made it sickeningly real. Most sickening and yet wonderful of all: this need to surrender, to agree to be altered in this strange and fundamental way. Knowing what to do, what would please her.
“God,” she had whispered. “You are so good at that. Look at you.”
Dennis was rather nervous too, at first. A shaky laugh at the first contact. The laugh getting all breathy though. And then just moaning.
His own moans beginning. His head rising and falling, this obscene act. And all the while, Kaitlin sharing it with him. Kaitlin holding it while cupping her hand encouragingly on the back of his head. Kaitlin whispering, “Look at you. My god. So sweet. So nice to my lover. Is that nice? Do you like that? So hot, baby. You make me so hot. Do it nice for him. So nice for him.”
Her hand on the cock, helping. Her other hand sliding down now, going down to hold him between his legs. He tried to pull away, not wanting her to feel what this was doing to him, but then it was too late. “I’ll help you,” she said. “I’ll make it nice for you.” Her fingers confirming her intent. “If you do it nice. If you make it nice for him. I’ll make it nice for you too.” The little squealing sound he made, overcome. Letting go utterly, letting the euphoria take him. The shock of the thing when it happened, and then feeling his own release spill over, the thrill of utter abandon and her soft cry of delight.
And then the strange dream that wasn’t a dream was over, and the two of them departed, left him to sag back into the couch, back into narcotic sleep.
All so unreal to think about, here in the cold light of day. Made him sick, almost, but then the warm feeling came on.
He’d had a pretty rough morning. Awakening on the couch, the initial disorientation, a sense of tingling strangeness—something about to be revealed. What was it? Then: Oh. And with the images a wave of anxiety crashing in. It was all different now, wasn’t it. How could there be any going back to “normal” after… after he’d….
And worst of all was how it would surely change her, change the way he appeared in her eyes. That she had instigated it all was no comfort in the cold dawn. He curled up, facing the back of the couch as the images refused to release him. How could she look at him now, without contempt, subtle or obvious? What feelings could she have for him after he’d allowed himself to be debased in this way?
Such a tizzy he’d gotten himself into there on the couch, listening as the other two shifted about. Clunk of shoes, the lover dressing in there. Murmurs and warm goodbye. A last kiss that went on too long, until the guy finally said, “Gotta go, babe. Drag my ass into work somehow. Give me a call later.” Jeffrey unable to look at him in the light of day. The guy paused by the couch but Jeffrey kept an elbow crooked over his eyes—I’m Sill Sleeping—and so the guy made his way across the room and out the door.
Then he was alone in the apartment with his wife, of his life but for how much longer? Would it start immediately—would he see the new coldness in her eyes, the look that said he was no longer the object of but now one of abstract curiosity, this strange specimen that used to be her man?
No longer a man at all, some would say.
Somehow he got himself up, went to the bathroom, then the kitchen. Pulling things out of cabinets, grinding the beans for coffee. These thoughts overwhelming him. Yet at the same time, a building sense of anticipation as he fixed a mug to bring her. The mystery of how it would be, now, going in to see Her, after last night. The other side of this terrible anxiety being a terrible lifting excitement. A trembling sense of immanence, that it was all there for him if he would just accept it. A life transformed, etched in strangeness and euphoria. His erection lifting in his shorts, ever obeying its own imperatives.
Surely she would reject him, now, part of him insisted as he moved toward the bedroom, mug in hand. But now it was like a hope—a last, clinging fingernail on the cliff-edge: that it was his old self she really wanted, not this new one she’d been making him over into—that there might still be some way back to there from here.
He could look back at all those feelings now with distance, see them for what they were: a last attempt to stave off the magical reality. That this new thing was what she needed from him, what she wanted for him. This ongoing transformation, this slow and inexorable diminishment.
All in that sweet kiss as she’d sat up in bed, reaching to accept the warm mug from his hands. All in that sweet kiss and the words that came after. The warm feeling flowing in, washing away all his doubts, like a warm current that left him gazing back at that far lost country, sealed in by her kiss.
“You were perfect last night. So perfect for me,” she had said, and the warmth that had suffused him filled him now, allowing him to view his earlier anxieties with the contempt they deserved. “I you so much. The best husband I could ever have.”
Coda:
As loud as hell a
Ringing bell
Behind my smile
It shakes my teeth
And all the while
As vampires feed…
I bleed. I bleed.
--Frank Black