Rude Awakenings: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 2)

Chapter Twenty-Six: Lauren, Monday

It was a terrible time to be looking at Joe's phone. The Witching Hour, didn't they call it? The time when dark deeds were done. The time when dark thoughts entered your head. She couldn't have taken the time to do this earlier, though; not in the van with Al, because she didn't want to alert him after seeing the first images; definitely not at home while the kids were running around, because this stuff was not for their eyes.

Amazons.

That was a thing, apparently.

Two things, actually. And neither of those two things was the online retail site. Joe had not been shopping for an anniversary gift for her with that search term. Their anniversary had already passed by, anyway.

In porn parlance, it could refer to a tall, usually big-boned woman, evocative of the Amazons of Greek myth. Such women tended to dominate the men in the videos she viewed from Joe's browser history. The men were usually smaller than the women in these videos, too, but not all the time.

The other reference was to an actual sexual position, the Amazon. The man lay back with his legs in the air, and the woman mounted with her legs behind the man's. When the woman began thrusting her hips, the appearance was slightly unnerving; the woman appeared to be fucking the man, especially when she held the man's legs with her hands. It was like the missionary position, with the woman on top.

In some of the videos, both definitions featured at the same time; a larger woman had the man in that position. In some, a much smaller woman had the man in that position, and the juxtaposition was both comical and slightly arousing. Lauren was usually on top when they weren't trying other, more creative positions, but they'd never tried this before, and she didn't know if she wanted to. To be completely honest, she didn't, and she hoped he never asked her, because it was the complete opposite of what she wanted, which was to feel him on top of her, pressing her into the mattress. She couldn't imagine Joe with his legs in the air like that; she could only associate it with the image of a bull rolled onto its back. They'd probably collapse into giggles before they could even get a good rhythm going if they tried it.

The common theme of both iterations of Amazon, though, was that the men got off on being submissive, but not too submissive. It was actually a refreshing opposite to most of the porn out there, where the humiliation and near rape of women was the main event. She'd watched some seriously deranged shit in her years investigating cheaters, and as a genre this was pretty innocent.

Was this what Joe fantasized about? She could only conclude that it was, if it was in his search history. It wasn't just videos, but images too. Tall, broad, muscular women, scantily clad, posing provocatively. She had to admit some of them were very attractive, appreciating the effort it took to maintain bodies like that. She thought she had a nice body herself, with good genes that did most of the work, requiring little effort in the realm of diet and exercise to maintain it. She was lithe and taut, but definitely not tall or broad, so it looked like Joe had his own itch.

She knew that no marriage featured complete sexual devotion between partners; it was only natural to find other people attractive and fantasize every now and then. She couldn't judge. What troubled her, though, was that this new fantasy appeared to be the complete opposite of her own body type, and it made her wonder if this was a new obsession, and if it was, what had inspired it, or had she misread Joe since the very beginning. Yes, she'd claimed him at a relatively young age, and had commanded his attention to the exclusion of others. Was this what his parents meant when they said he should have played the field? Had Lauren prevented him from exploring his likes and dislikes by being so all-consuming so early? Was this the result?

She might have been able to put this away, to just accept this as a quirk and live with it along with the feeling of inadequacy it generated, if it didn't exist alongside the text exchange.