I Asked My Husband to Find Me a Stranger

James sat in the armchair with his legs crossed, the lamp behind him catching on the gray threading through his hair. He looked up from the page, smiled at her without speaking, and returned to the novel. The small sound of paper turning was the loudest thing in the room. Eleanor’s needle moved through the hem she was mending, each stitch precise, the cotton warm from her fingers. She loved this hour: the hush, the shared breath of two people who had done this for twelve years and still wanted to be in the same square of lamplight.

Then the needle snagged. While she eased it free, a picture opened behind her eyes: a stranger’s chest slick with sweat, shoulders blocking out the light, a thick ridge of flesh shoving into her so hard her feet left the sheets. The image arrived complete—salt smell, the grunt that wasn’t James’s polite cough, the raw stretch she had never actually felt. Her stomach hollowed. She looked at her husband’s familiar hands, the wedding band glinting as he turned another page, and felt the first needle-prick of guilt, sharp as the one in her thumb.

She pushed the thread through again, tighter, as if the small pain could cancel the other. It didn’t. The fantasy man grew clearer: cropped dark hair she could grip, weight pinning her wrists, a cock she could taste in the back of her throat. She shifted on the couch; the seam of her jeans pressed exactly where she suddenly needed pressure. Stop, she told herself. She had baked scones that morning, had kissed James goodbye at the exact angle that avoided lipstick on his collar. Good wives did not inventory the veins along imaginary forearms while their husbands read Booker long-listed novels within arm’s reach.

Yet the want kept swelling, stupid and bright. She pictured herself on all fours, breasts swinging, James’s startled face in the doorway while someone else drove into her again and again, balls slapping her clit until the sound filled the house. She bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted iron. When James looked up, she smiled the same mild smile she gave the neighbor’s children. He nodded, satisfied, and kept reading.

Eleanor set the needle down. The room smelled of bergamot and laundry detergent, the small empire they had built together. She imagined striking a match, letting the curtains catch, and watching the tidy flames race across the carpet. She could love the life she had—did love it—and still feel the draft of something wild rattling the windows, asking to be let in.

The glass was slick with soap, and when it slipped, it seemed to fall in slow motion. The sound when it hit the porcelain was explosive, a bright shattering that made Eleanor jump back, her hands flying to her chest. Shards scattered across the sink, some skittering into the drain, others catching the overhead light like tiny knives.

"Shit," she whispered, her heart hammering. She hadn't meant to let it go. Her fingers trembled as she reached to turn off the tap, water still running over the broken pieces.

James appeared in the doorway, his book closed against his chest. "You alright?"

She nodded too quickly, not looking at him. "Just being clumsy."

But when he stepped closer, she felt something

The sheets were cool against her calves, but her chest burned. James had turned off his bedside lamp; the only light came from the streetlamp outside, striping the wall in thin gold. She listened to his breathing level into sleep-rhythm and felt the same restlessness claw. The glass had been swept up, the cut on her thumb plastered, but the inside ache had widened all evening.

She rolled onto her side. “James?”

A soft grunt.

“Are you awake?”

“Mm.” He shifted, hand groping for her hip. “Everything okay?”

She swallowed. “I keep thinking about…the glass. And why it broke.”

He waited. He was good at waiting.

“I wasn’t thinking about dishes,” she said. “I was thinking about being…taken. Like, really taken. By someone who wouldn’t ask first.” The words felt obscene, hanging there in the ordinary dark. Her pulse thudded in her ears.

His fingers tightened, not comforting now, more like anchoring. “Taken how?”

“Pinned. Hard. No room to decide.” She forced a laugh that cracked. “I know it’s awful.”

“It isn’t awful.” His voice was low, steady. “Tell me what he looks like.”

She hadn’t expected that. “Taller than you. Bigger. Shoulders that—” She stopped, ashamed of the comparison.

“Keep going.”

“He pushes me against a wall. My feet barely touch. I can feel him…everywhere. And I’m scared, but it’s the kind of scared that feels like being alive.” She was breathing through her mouth, as if she’d run upstairs. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He drew her hand under the covers, laid it flat over the fly of his pajamas. He was erect, heat pulsing through the cotton. “Feel that?”

Her fingers curled instinctively. “You’re—”

“Because of you. Because you’re telling me.” He kissed her temple, lingered. “Does he finish inside you?”

The question shot straight between her legs. “Yes. No protection. Just…spills.” She heard herself moan, small, mortified.

James pushed her palm harder against him. “And me? Where am I?”

“Watching.” The word tore out. “Tied, maybe. Or told to be still.”

He exhaled, shaky. “Christ, Ellie.”

She slid her hand inside his waistband, found the slick tip, spread it with her thumb. “I don’t want to lose us.”

“You won’t.” He kissed her, open-mouthed, tasting of toothpaste and urgency. “Tell me the rest. Every bit.”

So she did, whispering how the stranger would flip her onto her stomach, fist her hair, drive into her so deep she felt the thud in her throat. How James would be made to see every thrust, every gleam of wet on her inner thighs. How she would come screaming a name neither of them knew yet. While she spoke, James rocked into her grip, breathing hard through his nose, until he shuddered and spilled over her fingers, silent except for a cracked sigh.

After, he cleaned her hand with his T-shirt, pulled her close. “Thank you,” he said into her neck.

She waited for shame to crash, but it didn’t come. The room smelled of sex and laundry, the same as always, yet the air felt newly porous, like anything might pass through.

The silence after felt like a held breath. Eleanor lay rigid beside him, her palm still damp from him, the sheets twisted around their knees. James’s heartbeat thudded against her shoulder blade. She waited for him to speak, to laugh, to recoil—anything. Instead he traced idle circles on her wrist, as if mapping a route he hadn’t decided to take.

Gratitude surged first, hot and helpless; then came the darker swell, the same throb that had pulsed while she described being slammed against plaster. Without planning, she rolled to her knees, swung one leg across his torso, and settled her weight above his chest. The cotton of her nightshirt bunched at her hips. She felt the cool air hit the bare skin of her thighs, then the warmer gust of his exhale against the seam of her panties.

James’s hands found her immediately—palms sliding under the elastic, fingers spreading her wider until the damp panel of cotton stuck to her folds. He didn’t ask; he simply tugged the fabric aside, exposing her completely. The first lap of his tongue was slow, deliberate, from entrance to clit, gathering the slick that had already gathered while she talked. She jerked, knees clamping his ears. He answered by pulling her down harder, nose pressing the hood of her clit, tongue stiffening to push inside.

Her mind split. Part of her registered the familiar scratch of his evening beard, the way he always started gentle and waited for her cue. Another part shoved that knowledge aside and inserted the stranger: thick neck, calloused thumbs digging bruises, a mouth that took because it could. She pictured those phantom hands yanking her hair, forcing her to look back at James tied to the chair, forced to watch her cunt being devoured by someone bigger, meaner, louder.

She rocked forward, grinding shamelessly, smearing herself across his chin. A wet sound filled the room—tongue, lips, her own dripping arousal dripping down to the sheet. James groaned, vibration buzzing through her core. She braced one hand on the headboard, the other slipping under her shirt to pinch her nipple hard, the way the stranger would, without courtesy. Her thighs trembled; the coil wound tighter.

Was this betrayal if he welcomed it? Was it still faithfulness when she stared at the dark ceiling and saw another man’s shoulders blocking the light? She didn’t know, and the questions only spiked her higher. She rolled her hips faster, fucking his face in short, jerky strokes, feeling her climax build at the base of her spine, hot, filthy, unstoppable.

When it hit, she clamped his head between her knees, a strangled cry escaping as pulses of pleasure throbbed against his relentless tongue. He kept licking through the aftershocks, gentle now, cleaning her, owning her, until she sagged sideways, lungs heaving, nightshirt stuck to her sweat-damp skin.

James wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes glittering in the low light. Neither spoke. The room smelled of her, of them, of a door cracked open. She knew, with terrifying clarity, that walking back through it was no longer an option.

The spasms kept rolling, each one smaller, meaner, until she felt hollowed out and refilled at the same time. James’s breath cooled the wetness he’d left on her skin; his fingertips stroked the crease where thigh met hip, the way he always did when he thought she might drift off. She didn’t drift. She counted heartbeats—hers, his—while the ceiling fan chopped the silence into pieces.

He kissed her knee, murmured, “Okay?”

She nodded because words felt dangerous. Inside, the stranger still loomed, shoulders blocking every exit. She could almost smell him—motor oil, cheap cologne, the sweat of a man who owed nothing to anyone. Her pulse quickened again, a second wave building before the first had fully receded. Was this how addiction began, one hit and the body rewired?

James shifted, easing her down so she lay half across his chest. His skin was familiar, the scatter of hair, the small scar from the chicken-pox vaccine. She traced it, pretending that anchor could hold her. He tucked her hair behind her ear. “Where’d you go?”

The question cracked her open. She swallowed the taste of herself on his lips. “Nowhere.”

“Liar,” he said, soft, almost proud.

A tear slipped, hot and ridiculous. She wiped it fast, but he caught the motion, folded her hand inside his. “Tell me the rest.”

She shook her head. Speaking it would make it real, make it required. Instead she pictured the alley again—brick scraping her shoulder blades, the stranger’s belt clinking open, the blunt head of him shoving inside with no ceremony. Her thighs flexed involuntarily; James felt it, pressed a calming palm to them. Calm wasn’t what she wanted.

“I need—” she started, then stopped. What did she need? Forgiveness? Permission? Another body slamming her into tomorrow so she could forget the woman who baked scones and labeled spice jars in neat cursive?

He waited. He was good at waiting.

She drew a breath that tasted of sex and panic. “I need it to happen. Not just here.” She tapped her temple. “Out there. Flesh. Risk.” The confession hung, ugly and alive.

James’s eyes closed for a count of three. When they opened, the hurt was there, but underneath it something steelier: resolve, maybe, or resignation. He brushed his thumb across her swollen lower lip, still tasting of both of them. “Then we’ll plan,” he said, voice steady. “Concrete. Safe words. Limits.”

She stared. He was offering to build a bridge to the place that might destroy them. Was that love or insanity? Did the distinction even matter anymore?

He kissed her forehead, then reached for his phone on the nightstand, thumb hovering. “Industrial district. There’s a bar—warehouse converted. Rough crowd. Friday nights.” He glanced at her, seeking consent she hadn’t yet voiced.

Her stomach lurched, but her nipples tightened, traitorous. She pictured neon reflecting off sweat-slick skin, music loud enough to drown second thoughts. One nod and the fantasy would step into the world; there would be no reeling it back. She nodded.

James set the phone down, exhaled like a man who’d just signed a treaty with an enemy he couldn’t name. He pulled her close, spooning her, lips at her nape. “We’ll sleep first,” he whispered. “Then we hunt.”

She lay awake long after his breathing evened out, the room spinning slowly around the axis of her thudding heart. Tomorrow, she would wear a dress she didn’t own yet. Tomorrow, a stranger might grip her hips hard enough to leave fingerprints she’d still see in the mirror next week. The thought should have terrified her. Instead it felt like the first honest thing she’d touched in years.

Morning light flattened everything. Eleanor sat across from James in the small kitchen, toast between them growing cold. The butter knife lay untouched, its edge catching the sun like a threat. She couldn’t lift her gaze past his collarbone; anything higher might demand words neither had rehearsed.

The coffee maker hissed, finished, and still neither moved. She listened to the refrigerator cycle on, then off. How long could two people who’d shared every secret keep pretending breakfast was ordinary? She spread jam anyway, red sliding across bread the way her mind slid toward tonight—toward brick walls, toward a stranger’s belt buckle clinking free.

James cleared his throat. “We should talk logistics.”

Her pulse stuttered. Logistics sounded like shipping containers, not sex. She nodded, mouth full of sweetness that tasted metallic.

He folded his hands, knuckles white. “Industrial district. Bar’s called The Iron Spur. No sign, just a red bulb.” His voice stayed flat, as if reading inventory. “I’ll drive. You pick the outfit. Something you can walk away in.”

Walk away. The phrase thudded. Was that the goal—an exit she could survive? She set the toast down, appetite gone. “And you?” she managed. “Where will you be?”

“Close enough to see. Far enough to give you space.” His eyes finally met hers, bloodshot yet steady. “Unless you want me closer.”

The question floated, dangerous. Did she want her husband watching while another man pushed inside her? Would his presence anchor or burn? She pictured James leaning against a steel pillar, face unreadable under neon, and felt an unexpected jolt—part protection, part performance. Her thighs pressed together involuntarily.

He noticed, of course; he always did. Color touched his cheeks, shame or excitement indistinguishable. “We set a word,” he continued. “You say it, everything stops. No discussion.”

“Red,” she whispered, the first word that surfaced.

“Red,” he repeated, testing its weight. “And after—however it ends—we come home together. That part isn’t optional.”

Home. The syllable sounded fragile, like glass she’d already dropped. Could they really return to this kitchen, these chairs, after she’d been marked by someone else’s teeth? She swallowed. “What if I can’t look at you?”

“Then we’ll close our eyes and keep talking until we can.” He reached across, brushed a crumb from her lip, touch trembling yet tender. “We built twenty years on words, Ellie. We’ll find new ones.”

Tears pricked, unexpected. She blinked them back, focusing on the practical: dress, panties, shoes she could run in if running became necessary. Her stomach flipped again, half terror, half fierce, bright hunger.

James stood, carried plates to the sink. Water ran, soap foamed. Over the spray he said, almost casual, “We leave at nine. Don’t shave. Let him feel what’s real.”

The directive struck low, a throb between bone and blood. She nodded, though he wasn’t looking. When he turned off the tap the silence returned, thicker, now shaped like a door opening onto night air, music, strangers’ hands. She pushed back her chair, heart hammering Morse code against her ribs: yes, yes, yes.