doing just that “—and throw it on the ground … like this … and now …” He cupped my face, leaning right in, and I felt my eyelids closing, felt his thigh brush mine. The smell of him filled me—a strong, herbal heat—and I parted my lips, ready for his.
“Just a stage kiss,” I whispered.
“Sure.” He opened his mouth on mine.
“So let me get this straight,” I’d said, the night Dan offered me the part. “I have to screw this guy in front of—what?—a hundred people?”
Dan groaned across the phone line. “Sweetness, it’s an act. Besides, the boy’s hot. If he liked men, I’d be in there like swimwear.”
“Do we have to do the sex?”
“Darling, it’s amateur theater. Who’s gonna come if there’s no serious action?” Dan, who was training as a drama teacher, was required, as part of his course, to stage a play for adults. “Besides,” he added, “they’ll be generous on the feedback forms if we make ‘em hot ‘n horny.” He went on to tell me what Kiss the Bride was about. Two marriages—one that starts well and one that doesn’t. “Two brides, two grooms,” he said.
“So you wrote a play that has no gay characters?”
Dan gave a snort. “I’m obsessed with weddings, dollface. And it’s not as if I’m ever gonna wear a veil myself.”
I asked him how explicit the sex was going to be.
“Think steamy.”
“Keith’ll kill me,” I said.
“Well, if he won’t give you mouth-to-mouth the bastard can’t complain.”
Dan was right. Since the arguments had started, Keith and I had hardly kissed. We’d fight, get hot and bothered, then he’d turn me to the wall, enter me briskly and take me. It wasn’t bad sex, but it was all about the fight, and he gave me no passion, no warmth. And the kissing rarely happened—even when I begged. Oh, many times, when we weren’t fighting, I’d fall to my knees as if I was joking, pleading for a kiss.
“Me first,” he’d say, pulling my head toward his groin. I’d feel his fingers running through my hair—and this, at least, was a kind of affection. Then I’d quickly unbutton him and take him in my mouth. His long groans of pleasure made me feel like I was wanted, and he’d slam his head back so it thumped against the wall, crying, “Terri, oh baby, go harder …” When he came, he’d ram against my throat, and though I’d gag, I felt like I was his.
But afterward, he’d laugh and take me in his arms, just for a minute before he drew away. “I should shower,” he’d say, blue eyes crinkling. And I’d watch him walk off, buttocks perfect in those jeans, my lips tingling, an ache between my thighs.
Dan always said, “If ‘wham, bam, thank you, ma’am’ is his idea of tender, the guy isn’t worth it. Let him go.”
But I’d stand up for Keith. A medical student, he worked most nights, and I’d find him in the early hours, sighing over his books. Sometimes, in those moments, I’d come and kiss his head, and startled, he’d reach up and squeeze my hand.
“Dan, he’s training to save lives,” I’d say. “I have to give him some slack.”
“Dollface,” said Dan, who knew me too well. “No man who treats you badly is getting slack from me.”
Jake, who was to play my onstage groom, really wasn’t my type. For starters, he was fair, and I’d always liked them dark, plus he thought he was God’s gift. Once, when he caught Dan eyeing his arse, Jake sauntered up, tipping him a wink. Dan laughed it off. “You’re a prick-tease, love. You know I’d eat those buttocks!” And Jake grinned sexily, enjoying the attention.
Still, onstage the boy was sublime. He occupied the space with a pantherlike grace, touched my body easily without a single prompt. The first time we practiced the proposal scene, he fell to his knees and kissed my hand; the feel of his lips, so warm against my skin, and his breath on my wrist made me flush. For the first time, he gave me The Look—twisting his head, he glanced at me sideways, blue eyes glinting, smile half-cocked. I’d never been regarded with such absolute flirtation. As Dan directed from the seats below the stage “—Jake, hon, turn or we can’t see your face—” Jake remained kneeling beneath me, my hand still in his. While he talked with Dan, he stroked my fingers, and I imagined those hands sliding down my body. A few inches closer and he’d be against my groin, unbuttoning my jeans with his teeth. I let go of his hand. He cast me a grin. Then, still replying to Dan down below, he idly touched my thigh. As he slowly caressed, I felt my breath give, and I arched against him, imagining his mouth.
“And Terri, love?” called Dan, from the row below us, his sandy-colored faux-hawk soft beneath the lights. “A touch more romance! He’s inviting you to marry him, not ride him like a mule.”
Blushing, I asked what he meant.
Dan flapped a pale hand. “More Audrey Hepburn, less Joan Jett. You’re eyeing him up like he’s sex-on-a-stick.” And I’d notice, in that moment, Dan’s wandering gaze, as he himself inspected Jake’s superhot bod.
But Jake was now feeling up the back of my thigh, leaving a trail of heat. “Okay,” I gasped. “Hepburn. I’ll give it a try.”
I liked Dan’s idea for the sex scene. While Lee and Tina staged a fight to our left, Jake and I, to use Dan’s phrase, would be “at it like bunnies.” The sex was meant as the ultimate contrast—though our marriage started well, Lee and Tina’s was doomed. As Jake and I stage-fucked, the classical music would build, and both scenes would come to a climax.
“Listen, cupcakes,” said Dan one night. “Before we rehearse the sex scene, you two should prep it yourselves. Bring me something you’ve worked out already. I’ll add my thoughts. Okay?”
“I forbid it,” Keith had announced the week before. “No sex scenes. He so much as touches you, and you and I are through.” This seemed unfair. After all, I’d recently caught him with Ella Rogers in the beer garden at the Stony Swan. It was December, and the garden was empty, the wooden tables slick with ice, but there was Ella on the edge of one, thighs parted, spine arched, knee-high boots jerking as Keith pounded into her. She’d dropped back her head, eyelids closed, scarlet lips glossed with saliva, and Keith was grunting like a dog in heat, his hips thrusting, his hand on her breast. As he grew wilder, Ella’s eyelids fluttered and she cried, “Oh, do it, do it …” and the table jolted beneath them, as her fingers gripped the wood. But I’d soon forgiven him, knowing it was for kicks. Besides, Ella Rogers went with anyone who asked.
Yet now he was jealous of a sex scene? I felt my anger spark.
In our bedroom, as he was pulling on his socks, I told him he couldn’t stop me. “After the thing with Ella …”
“Sex is different for men,” he said. “We don’t attach like you do.”
“Tell me about it!”
He rose and grabbed my shoulders. “You wanna do your sex scene? Fine. But I’ll be there, so you’d better behave.”
I blinked at him. “You mean I can get you a ticket?” He’d never come to a play of mine before.
Softening, he smiled. “I’ll be there, Terri, baby.”
“To check on me? Or what?”
“I just want to see you shine.”
But I knew the sex scene was still an issue, so backstage, I told Jake we couldn’t meet at my place. “My partner wouldn’t like it,” I said.
Jake gave a boyish shrug. “Let’s do it at mine.”
We agreed to the following evening. He winked as he walked away.
That night, in bed, I dreamed of screwing Jake, his body hard on top of me, his hands on my