The Voyeur

HE ONLY SPOKE ONE WORD. Leaning close, his breath warm on my skin, he whispered, "Exquisite." Three syllables that became as necessary as my need to breath.

*

"WHAT DID YOU SAY?"

Surely, my husband didn't say what I think he said.

"Babe, just think about it for a second before you say no. Okay?"

Lucas wrapped his arms around me and kissed my neck. The warmth that suffused me at his touch did nothing to quell the trepidation his words provoked.

I pulled out of his embrace and set the knife I was using to chop vegetables on the counter. Wanting to put distance between us so I could think, I sat at the kitchen table. Lucas moved behind me massaging my neck, negating my effort.

It felt good. Lucas knew exactly where to touch me to turn me to jelly. He also used it to manipulate me and I wasn't willing to play that game today.

Leaning forward, I said, "Stop, Lucas. That's not fair. Sit down please."

He flashed the grin I fell in love with, the smile that said, "I know it's not right, but I can't help myself." It made him look both sheepish and unrepentant. I had never been able to resist and he knew it.

That same smile had made me do things that my prim and proper upbringing railed against. It made me dance on the tables with him on St. Patrick's Day in college. Stone sober, no less! That smile had me tied up in the bedroom. It had even convinced me to go to a sex club where my husband made me climax as we watched the couples around us copulate freely. But this! This was something I didn't think I could do, despite the grin I loved so well.

"I'm not a whore, Lucas. How could you even suggest this?"

"Kate, who's talking about whoring? All this man wants to do is watch. The only person who'd be fucking you is me."

I flinched at the profanity, having grown up in a very proper household with an English professor for a father who thought curse words were a sign of intellectual laziness. Lucas had no such reservations. Personally, I didn't care, but it can be hard to shed a lifetime of programming.

"Do you hear yourself?" I was incredulous at Lucas' blasé attitude. "He'd be paying us. That's what you said. This man wants to pay to watch us make love."

Lucas nodded emphatically. His eyes gleamed and my heart sank. He was seeing the dollar signs already.

"Five thousand dollars, baby. Think what we could do with that. It's the answer we've been searching for."

Chills crawled across my skin at the desperation in his voice.

"Not like this, Lucas. We can find another way. We just have to be patient."

His face closed and his jaw clenched. I tensed in preparation for the outburst that was guaranteed to follow.

"Patient?" he sneered the word. "I've been patient!" He slammed his fist on the table’s scarred surface, causing it to vibrate and the candles in the center to bounce. "For an entire year, I've been patient, Kate. I've watched our bills pile up. I've watched as we went from eating steak to eating fucking Ramen noodles twice a week."

Pushing back from the table, Lucas stalked over to the counter and began rifling through the mail next to the toaster. He extracted a blood red envelope, one I'd deliberately put on the bottom of the pile. Shoving it in front of me, he said, "See this?"

It was rhetorical, but I nodded as expected. It never paid to argue when he was like this.

"What does it say?"