【A-Lan · Wife】
This time, when Lao Song got back from the construction site, he didn’t touch me the first night. The second night, at one in the morning, he shook me awake and said he had an idea.
I’m thirty-two, he’s thirty-five, and we’ve been married ten years. I can recite his “ideas” with my eyes closed: either he wants to film me again, or he wants to call A-Kai again.
“This time is different.” He switched off his phone screen, and the only light left in the bedroom was the green dot on the Gree air conditioner. “You’re asleep. He comes in. You don’t know which night.”
I didn’t answer. Both times with A-Kai had been in the afternoon, lights on, where I could see his face, and Lao Song’s face too. In the dark, I’d never tried.
“You’re scared,” he said. “I’m thinking,” I said.
What I was thinking was this: being scared and wanting it are two different things. At thirty-two you can tell them apart. I was scared of someone pressing down on me in the dark, but I also wanted to know whether, in the dark, I’d moan sluttier than I did under the lights. The last two times A-Kai fucked me, half my mind had been on watching Lao Song’s face. In the dark there would be nothing to watch. There would only be me.
I rolled over, sat up, and twisted on the little lamp on the nightstand. He squinted. “Fine,” I said. “But I set the rules.”
“Go on.”
“One. I don’t want to know which night. You arrange it, I pretend to sleep.” He nodded, too fast. “Don’t nod. Listen. I pretend to sleep. Pretend. I won’t actually fall asleep and let you two do whatever. I want to feel the moment you come in.”
“Two.” I stared at him. “It doesn’t matter how far it’s gone. If I say ‘lights on,’ the lights go on and both of you stop. After you stop, you go on only when I say go on. If I don’t say it, he gets dressed and leaves.”
“But what if you—” “No what-ifs.” I cut him off. “I say lights on, everybody stops. Send him that word for word, and have him send me back a ‘yes.’”
He actually sent it right in front of me. At 1:14 a.m. the WeChat reply popped up: Yes. Ms. Lan sets the rules, I follow Ms. Lan. Lao Song turned the screen toward me. I read it twice and pushed the phone back. “Okay. Sleep.”
A-Kai is thirty, a gym trainer, lean, not an ounce of spare flesh on his waist. Both times before, he’d put the condom on himself without my having to bring it up. I gave him credit for that.
“Three,” I said. “He wears a condom. I don’t care whether you do. He has to.” Lao Song sent that one too. The reply came even faster: Always have. Ms. Lan can rest easy.
I turned off the lamp, lay back down with my back to Lao Song. His hand came around from behind. I didn’t brush it off. “You’re hard,” I said. “Obviously.”
What I didn’t say was that my thighs had clamped shut too. The thought of someone crawling onto my bed in the dark made the tops of my thighs go tight in waves, and inside my panties it was sticky. I wasn’t planning to tell him that. If he knew I was thinking like this, next time he wouldn’t even let me set the rules.
【Lao Song · Husband】
That Thursday she worked late. Month-end closing in finance. At five-thirty she messaged that she couldn’t leave, and I wrote back: I’ll wait.
At 9:07 she came out of the office tower, makeup mostly gone, and the first word out of her mouth when she got in the car was “hungry.” I bought her two jianbing, double egg, extra pork loin. She finished them in the passenger seat, wiped her mouth, and only then asked, “Where tonight.”
“The Ji Hotel. The Jiangbei one.”
She chewed the last bite and said nothing. The Ji had been our regular spot for years; the girl with the ponytail at the front desk knew us and always gave us a room at the back. She’s thirty-two, her tits are as firm as when we were dating, her waist is even slimmer than back then, and I’ve counted the heads that turn when she walks through the office tower in a skirt. All of that is mine. Tonight I was going to give half of it away.
What she didn’t know was that at three that afternoon I’d booked 1207, and 1210 diagonally across the hall too, under A-Kai’s name.
We got into the room at 10:20. Standard twin, two beds a meter twenty wide, one by the door, one by the window, a nightstand between them with a black electric kettle, a round alarm clock, and a paper key-card sleeve. She tossed her bag on the bed by the door, walked to the window, and lifted the curtain.
“The curtains here still don’t close all the way,” she said. “That’s what makes it good for filming,” I said. She glared at me and went into the bathroom.
I took out my phone, a Huawei Mate 60. Pinned at the top of WeChat was A-Kai. “1207. She’s in the shower. When you get here, wait in 1210. Don’t come up.”
“Just parked. Does Ms. Lan know it’s today?” “Going by the rules. She said she doesn’t want to know which night.” “Got it. I’ll wait for your message.” I added one more: “If she says lights on, you stop. No hesitating.” He sent back a “yes,” then a few seconds later: “Song-ge, you don’t hesitate either.”
The water in the bathroom shut off. I put the phone face down on the nightstand; it took two tries to set it down steady. She came out wrapped in a towel, wet hair stuck to her collarbone, and gave me a look. “Why is your face so red.” “It’s hot,” I said. The air conditioner was set to twenty-two.
【A-Lan · Wife】
When I came out from drying my hair, he already had the black set laid out on the bed. Sports bra, black with white lettering, matching panties. He’d bought them last Singles’ Day, said, “Wearing it you look like you’re headed to the gym. It looks best half taken off.”
“Just a couple of shots.” He held up his phone. “Shots my ass. I worked overtime all day.”
That’s what my mouth said, but I put them on anyway. The bra straps cut a line into my shoulders, the waistband of the panties sat on my hip bones. He had me kneel on the bed by the door with my back to him. I did, and the moment my ass lifted I saw the curve of it myself, in the black screen of the TV.
“Pull them down a little,” he said. “You pull them.”
He didn’t. He stood at the foot of the bed shooting, the shutter clicking and clicking, and only after the tenth-something shot did he toss the phone onto the pillow and come down on top of me.
He was in an absurd hurry tonight. Didn’t take the panties off, just yanked them aside and shoved in. I wasn’t wet through yet, and the first couple of thrusts stung. “Slower. It hurts.”
He actually slowed down. Pulled out, rubbed the head around and around my opening until I was lifting my hips into it myself, then went back in. This time it slid, one stroke all the way, and I heard myself go “mm,” pressed down.
“Why so horny today.” He bit my ear. “Isn’t this exactly what you wanted.”
He grunted and fucked me hard, twenty or thirty strokes. Flesh slapped flesh, the headboard knocked the wall again and again. I got shoved up toward the head of the bed, both hands gripping the corners of the pillow, and only then did the juice come, slicker with every stroke; every time he pulled back I heard a wet squelch. The bra was still on, my tits cupped in it, bouncing inside the cups with each slam, nipples rubbing the fabric, going hard. My brow was knotted, my mouth hung open and wouldn’t close, and every “ah” came out longer than the one before.
He came fast, faster than usual. Hips jerked, buried to the root, and a hot spurt after spurt poured in. I clenched on him and wouldn’t let him pull out, my pussy sucking at him in pulses. He lay on me panting: “It used to be once a month. Now it’s three times a week. How am I supposed to keep up.”
“Then don’t call anybody tonight,” I said.
He froze for a second and didn’t answer.
So I knew. It was tonight. My heart went fast all at once, and I turned my face toward the strip of light in the curtain gap so he wouldn’t see. The strange part was that my pussy started pulsing again, right after he’d just filled it.
“This bed’s wet.” I pushed him. “Go sleep on the other one.” I unhooked the bra and threw it on the carpet along with the soaked panties. He carried me over to the bed by the window, flipped the covers back and over us; his stuff was still running out between my legs, and I pressed my thighs together.
【Lao Song · Husband】
At 11:50 I turned off the main light. I pressed off the warm yellow strip above the headboard too, and all that was left in the room was one line of streetlight leaking through the curtain gap, slanting across the foot of the bed by the window.
She was in my arms, her breathing slowly evening out. She hadn’t put panties back on; what I’d shot into her had to still be in there, and I didn’t dare reach down and touch it.
I counted her breaths. At a hundred and twenty she hadn’t moved. At two hundred it was still the same rhythm. The second hand of the alarm clock ticked on the nightstand; someone dragged a suitcase down the hall and was gone. I was hard, pressed against her ass, and she didn’t react. I didn’t know whether I was hoping she’d wake or hoping she’d sleep. I wanted both and I was afraid of both.
The phone buzzed once on the nightstand, the screen lit up for a second: “At the door.”
I eased my arm out. She went “mm,” rolled over with her back to me, and the covers slid down to her waist.
“Bathroom,” I said. She didn’t answer.
I got off the bed without slippers; the carpet made no sound. I passed the bed by the door, the wet patch in the middle of the sheet not yet dry. At the door I flipped the deadbolt back, pressed the handle down, and halfway down I stopped for two seconds.
I was thinking of what she’d said: I say lights on, everybody stops.
I pressed the rest of the way down. The door opened a crack, the hall light cut in, and in the light stood a lean black shape, barefoot, shoes in his hand, pants draped over his arm.
He said nothing. Neither did I.
I lifted my hand and pointed at the bed by the window.