We’ve been married five years, together for seven. Long enough to know how he takes his coffee, how he likes his shirts folded, how he’ll groan when I leave my bra on the bathroom door. Long enough that sometimes we need something more than the same bed, the same routine, the same safe goodnight kiss.
So last month we booked a weekend away — a fancy hotel an hour from home. No kids, no house chores, no neighbors to overhear. Just us, and the promise that tonight, we wouldn’t be us. Not exactly.
We’d talked about it for weeks: What if we pretended? What if I walked into the hotel bar and he wasn’t my husband but a stranger who’d been watching me all night?
It sounded stupid in the daylight. But when I slipped into that little black dress — the one he bought for our anniversary but I’d never dared to wear out — my heart was hammering so hard it made me dizzy.
He texted first: I’m at the bar. Come find me.
The hotel lobby was soft gold light and clinking glass. I found him leaning against the marble counter, nursing a whiskey like he belonged there. His tie was loose, shirt sleeves rolled up — the man I knew, but sharper, darker. His eyes flicked up when he saw me, and for a second I almost laughed at how silly it was.
Then he didn’t smile. Didn’t say my name. Just let his gaze drag from my legs to my mouth like he’d never tasted it before.
“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked, voice low, steady.
I could feel the bartender watching, maybe wondering if he needed to intervene. I loved that. The risk, the thrill that maybe someone believed it.
“Gin and tonic,” I said, crossing my legs so the hem of my dress slipped higher.
He leaned in, close enough that his breath brushed my ear when he said, “You here alone?”
“Not anymore.”
His hand brushed my thigh under the bar. Just enough to make my skin spark. Just enough to make me shift in the stool so my knee bumped his leg, testing, inviting. He leaned back like he’d decided. Like he’d decided exactly how the night would go.
I followed him up to our room in silence, heels clicking on the carpet, heart rattling in my chest like a locked door begging to be kicked open.
Inside, he pinned me against the wall the second it shut behind us. His mouth was rough, claiming — none of the soft kisses I got when he was my husband. This was different. This was hungry.
He spun me around, my palms flat on the cool wallpaper, dress hitched up around my hips before I could even gasp. His hand slid between my thighs, fingers finding me already wet through my panties. He chuckled — dark, mean — like a stranger might.
“Didn’t take long, did it?” he murmured against my neck.
I wanted to sass him, tease back. But when he slipped my panties aside and sank his fingers deep, the words died on my tongue. He pressed a hand over my mouth to muffle the moan he knew was coming.
It didn’t last long — the pretending made it too much, too fast. When he bent me over the edge of the bed and pushed inside, I bit the pillow to keep from screaming. He fucked me like he didn’t care if the people in the next room heard. Like he wanted them to.
When I came, it was messy, raw, too real for the game we’d made up. He didn’t stop until he was spent too, breathing hard against my shoulder, still half a stranger inside me.
After, we lay tangled in the sheets. He brushed my hair back, kissed my shoulder, the soft sweet man I married peeking through again.
“Next time,” I whispered, lips against his ear, “I’m the stranger who picks you up.”
He laughed. Kissed me slow. And just like that, I knew we’d do it all again.
