Boris hasn’t called. But then he didn’t say he would. Until he does, I live in tense limbo.

I stole some makeup in Liberty’s today. First I talked to an assistant at the counter about moisturizers and toners. And while she was bending down to get some samples out of a drawer, I stole a box of eyeshadows. As luck would have it, they were grey and sand colours, just the shades that flatter my blue eyes.

I didn’t get as much of a thrill this time. But my fingers still ache to steal things, however small.

If I am caught I will stop.

This evening while I was in bed with Dan, he was between my legs, giving me head, when he looked up and said, “You seem distracted. What is it?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Of course, I knew. I was thinking about Boris.

He moved up the bed and kissed me. I tasted myself on him. Mmm, like honeydew melon. I sucked all the juice off his tongue. I was trying to distract him, in a way, to distract myself. I didn’t want to talk about Boris. But Dan knew all right.

“It’s that man you met, isn’t it?”

I put my cheek on Dan’s chest. “Yeah.”

“What is it about him?”

“I suppose,” I said, “I never really knew what it was to want to be completely dominated by someone. With us, when we play those roles, it’s just fun, but with him…”

“Oh sweetie,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “You know I can’t ever really bear to hurt you.” In the past, the only time I’ve been properly dominated it’s been by other men, and Dan likes to watch me being used and made to feel pain, and pushed to my limits. And I remember loving it, and catching Dan’s eye while it was happening and this thrill going through me. And yet, I know I don’t want him there when I’m having sex with Boris.

I sit up and prop myself up on my arm, my bare breasts grazing his chest. “Honey, I don’t want you to hurt me. I want him to hurt me.”

“You’re sure you’re not getting a bit too emotionally involved in all this?”

“I can handle it.” My hand moves down my stomach and starts to rub my clit. “Now, why don’t you finish off what you started?”

He shrugs, moves down my body and parts my legs. Then he slides his tongue deep into my pussy, in and out, snakelike, until my pelvis is bucking against his stubbly chin. He looks up at me, my juices smeared over his lips. He looks unkempt, his lips sore. I can see I’ve been taking a long time to finish, not that Dan cares, but still, I care. Every time I think I’m going to come, something holds me back.

“I’m so close,” I murmur, rubbing my fingers over my breasts and pinching the nipples. “Just a little more, please.”

He gets back to work, licking my clit softly while he shoves two fingers into me, deeply, roughly. I grab his hair and start to moan. My orgasm comes up in little tingles, radiating up my thighs and shooting out of my clit in a searing peak of firey pleasure that almost feels like pain.

And as the orgasm continues to pulse I wrap his head in legs and he lies against my wet open pussy. We loll together in the darkness and I think, this is intimacy. This is a union of love and pleasure and wanting to please each other. And even with the open marriage and the perfect sex, I still feel the stirrings of something.

It was good. It was great. And yet.

It suddenly occurs to me that this is no longer enough.