Control. Kayla Perrin

when I heard his deep, steady breaths—and realized he was sleeping.

      Still, I ran my hand over his hip and stroked him through his silk pajamas, hoping to wake him. Robert didn’t react.

      I was defeated. I lay back on my pillow, sighing. It wasn’t just that I wanted to make a baby. I was sexually frustrated, needed sexual release.

      As I lay in the dimly lit room listening to my husband’s steady breathing, I rested my right hand on the lower edge of my belly. I ran my fingertips over my skin. It was my own touch, yet my vagina thrummed in response. It needed to be stroked.

      My hand went lower, over my pubic hair and to my center. I spread my folds. Lazily let my finger stroke my clitoris.

      Angling my head slightly, I glanced at Robert. He hadn’t moved. He was still asleep. But even if he woke up and found me touching myself, I wouldn’t stop.

      If he saw me, hopefully he would become aroused and make love to me.

      I circled my finger around my clit, each stroke making me hotter. Raising my left hand to my breast, I tweaked my nipple. It hardened instantly.

      I played with my nipple. Played with my clit. Looked toward Robert and saw that his back was still to me. He was clueless.

      Closing my eyes, I started to imagine my husband’s hands on my pussy. But the fact that he was sleeping beside me, that he’d turned me down…It left me cold.

      So I began to imagine someone else’s hand playing with my pussy. A man who, if I climbed into bed naked beside him, would wake up. He would wake up, lower his head over my chest and lick my nipples with his tongue. He would lick and suck, pull at them with his teeth…

      My clit flinched in response to the image playing out in my mind. I moved my finger more quickly over my sweet spot, then dipped it into the soft folds. I was wet.

      I used two fingers to play with my pussy now, but in my mind it was a tongue. A wet and hungry tongue that couldn’t get enough of me.

      The tongue belonged to the man with the hazel eyes. And he was merciless with it. He circled it around my clit, over and over and over. Oh, God, I needed this. And he needed it, too, this lover of mine. He was young and virile and would fuck me all night long…eat my pussy all night long, if he knew I wanted that.

      I spread my legs wider and arched my hips upward, giving him more of me. He buried his fingers inside of me and drew my engorged clitoris into his mouth and suckled me so damn sweetly…

      An orgasm shuddered through my entire body. I arched my back, pushed my fingers deep into my pussy as I rode the wave. The pleasure was so intense and overdue that I couldn’t suppress my moan. I let myself enjoy every last bit of my orgasm.

      As it subsided, I glanced to my right again. Robert’s back was still to me. He was still asleep, unaware that I’d brought myself to climax.

      And for just a moment, I wished the man with the hazel eyes was beside me in this bed. That I could climb on him right now and slide onto a hard penis. One that could stay hard for a very long time.

      Just as quickly as I thought it, I pushed the idea away. Guilt ate at me immediately. It wasn’t the first time I had fantasized about him—but I hoped it would be the last.

      It was wrong, I knew. Wrong to have such an explicit fantasy about someone other than Robert.

      I got up and went to the bathroom, where I started the shower. I stayed in there for a good long time, letting the cool water splash over my body.

      Letting the memory of my fantasy wash away, like the soapsuds disappearing down the drain.

      Chapter Four

      All the next week, Robert was preoccupied by business. There was some complication with a company out of Germany that Kolstad Systems wanted to buy—a software firm with some sort of graphics technology that would aid in the computer systems Robert’s company created. The German owner was suddenly stalling, and Robert believed he was trying to solicit other bids. If this acquisition didn’t go through as planned, Robert feared that Kolstad Systems’ stock would fall.

      With all of this weighing on his mind, he wasn’t interested in sex—not in the least. But I was able to coax him to erection one morning with a blow job. Excited that he was hard—and without the aid of Viagra, at that—I had straddled him, then moved slowly and steadily over his penis until I made him come.

      I hadn’t come, but that didn’t matter. My husband’s sperm was inside me, and I was elated.

      “What are you doing?” Robert had asked when he came out of the bathroom and saw me lying on my back on the bed, my legs bent at the knee. What he couldn’t see was the pillow beneath my hips, positioned to angle my pelvis on a downward slope—something I hoped would give Robert’s sperm the advantage of gravity.

      “I read somewhere that lying on your back for thirty minutes increases the chance of conception,” I told him. “I’ve got fifteen minutes to go.”

      “Oh.” He raised his eyebrows. “All right. I’ll be downstairs, having breakfast.”

      “If I don’t see you, I hope all goes well at the office.”

      When I was sure Robert was downstairs, I closed my eyes and began to stroke my clit. A couple minutes later, my body was shuddering with an orgasm.

      What I didn’t tell Robert was something else I’d read—that a woman’s orgasm also aided her chances of conceiving.

      I didn’t know if that was true, but I wanted to give myself every advantage in getting pregnant.

      Nothing else had worked thus far.

      I didn’t typically masturbate, yet I did twice more that week. Both times when Robert wasn’t home. My body had needed release—release I wasn’t getting from my husband. And as I touched my pussy I found myself thinking about the man with the hazel eyes, not Robert. Each fantasy was becoming longer and more vivid.

      On Thursday morning, as another earth-shattering orgasm ripped through my body, I gazed at Robert’s side of the bed. It was empty. And I realized why I was consumed with this phantom lover: I was lonely.

      Or was there more to it than that?

      Even though Robert had retired from his position as CEO of Kolstad Systems, he was still involved in the company’s operations as a board member. He had been in the office every day this week, dealing with one problem after another regarding this German acquisition.

      His absence reminded me of the early days of our marriage, after we’d returned from our honeymoon and Robert had gone back to work. I’d had fantasies of the wonderful life I would share with my distinguished and successful and charming husband. But it hadn’t quite played out the way I had dreamed.

      After Robert proposed, I’d quit my job as a waitress, so I wasn’t working when we got married. He, of course, had his business to run. Robert would be at the office sometimes twelve or fourteen hours a day. Even longer on some occasions. I had missed him terribly, and didn’t like being in my new, oversize home with the housekeeper as my only company. Especially when he went out of town.

      I’d occasionally accompanied Robert on his longer business trips to Europe. He promised we’d steal some romantic time to see the sights when his work was done. But on more occasions than not, I would sit alone in my hotel room in London or Paris, longing for my husband’s touch, but having to settle for a glass of wine as I watched a movie in our lavish suite.

      Convincing Robert to fund my own business venture had been not only the fruition of a dream, but a godsend in terms of my mental sanity. I needed something constructive to do—much more than shopping and lunching with other wealthy men’s wives.

      Before Robert and I married, he’d promised to make my dream of opening a floral shop a reality. Ask any of my friends from childhood and they’ll tell you how I would always pick dandelions and wildflowers and