chapter 19
Gus
The house was too quiet.
A pot of what smelled like my favorite cauliflower and potato curry was keeping warm over a low flame on the stove, so I knew she was home. But there was no trashy TV blaring to keep her company, no Siouxsie Sioux floating down from upstairs. Not even the clicks of her nails on her laptop keyboard let me know where she was.
“Decca?” I dropped my keys on the kitchen table, turned off the flame, and gave the curry a stir. Ginger and cumin mingled with the perpetual scent of Decca’s hideous perfume and a hint of that pleasantly mildewed smell of an old house. I hadn’t eaten since a bowl of dry cereal this morning, neither of us having remembered to go to the market for milk. I’d been going nonstop since, ordering candles and incense, counseling a catechumen in the sacraments, and celebrating the matins service. Then I visited Dad, and cooked tacos for him and Mom. Tacos I couldn’t eat because it was a fasting day—no meat.
Decca preferred to keep a plant-based diet, so she enjoyed the meatless fasting meals. For the past few weeks, we settled into a nice little schedule of cooking together and eating dinner as a family.
I’d come to love our chaos dinners; just the two of us finding a spot to eat amid stacks of papers and books, discussing what story I should tell to open my next sermon, or how her cases were going.
Re-covering the pot, I grabbed two bowls from the cupboard where she couldn’t reach. There was still a flat surface on the rice, so she hadn’t eaten yet. Probably waiting for me.
“Dec, you hungry?” I shouted to the seemingly vacant house.
I looked out the side window. Her truck was in the driveway. Relief flooded my body, like all the tension in my neck and shoulders melted away and my breaths deepened.
Her absence was unsettling.
Without her, a part of me was missing.
I ducked my head out the back door. The light was off. She hadn’t gone out back without me. She still hadn’t been ready to light the bonfire, but we’d taken to sitting in front of the unlit logs most nights. It was becoming our ritual.
I took the stairs two at a time, frantic to see her face.
The light was off in her room. Her door was drawn but wasn’t completely closed, so I didn’t think twice before opening it.
“Dec?”
Her head jerked up, and the laptop slammed shut.
“Gus,” she said with an unused voice. She cleared her throat and fiddled with her headphones. No wonder she hadn’t heard me come in. I’d caught her off guard while she was watching... Wait, what was she watching?
I couldn’t help but grin. “What was that?” I pointed to the computer she was so careful not to draw attention to. She sat up straighter on the bed.
“What?” She pulled off the bug-like headphones.
I closed the distance between us and flopped onto my belly on the bed, reaching for the laptop. She drew it onto her lap, hugging it.
“What were you watching?” I asked innocently, hoping to cover how desperate I was to see what turned her on when she was in the privacy of her bedroom.
“It’s nothing. Really. It’s too embarrassing.”
“You never have to be embarrassed, Dec. It’s natural. I promise I won’t tease you. It won’t leave this room.”
I should leave this room. But wild dogs couldn’t tear me away now.
She looked at me with raised eyebrows, trying to decide if she could trust me. Her fingers tightened on the edge of the silver MacBook. She didn’t need to hold back. I wasn’t going to pry it from her hands, no matter how much I wanted to force her to hand it over so we could start re-enacting whatever filthy act she’d been watching. Then she sighed and smiled nervously, passing it across the bed.
Her lips pressed together as she looked down.
Oh, Crow, there’s no need to be ashamed.
My fingers greedily pried the cover up. I could barely take the anticipation. My cock was already half hard at the thought of Decca killing time before I got home by watching porn. Had she had a hand down her leggings when I’d come in? Was she using a toy?
She clicked the spacebar to start the video. A woman in historic garb filled the screen. Okay, so…
“She’s... pretty,” I said, trying to be supportive of her predilections, whatever they ended up being.
Decca moved, kneeling so she could lean over my shoulder to watch. Were we actually watching porn together? Fuck dinner. I could feast on Decca’s juicy pussy.
This night had taken a pleasantly arousing turn. “Uh, sure, yeah. She’s gorgeous,” Decca said, sounding a bit confused.
I repositioned myself next to her on the bed, settling in. If we were doing this, then fuck, we were doing this for real.
“There’s no sound.”
“Sorry. Headphones.” She pushed the button on the headphones. Quiet whispering filled the air.
“Oh, shit. What’s she going to do with that comb?” What kind of shit was Decca into? I’d assumed it was men, since she’d never said otherwise, but it totally didn’t phase me that she might be into women, too. That comb looked angry, painful. It made me realize how long it’d been since I’d watched porn. What kind of kink was this?
Decca smiled uncomfortably, her eyes glued to the screen.
“When is she going to take her clothes off?”
“Wh—” She peeled her eyes off the screen and sucked in a breath. “What did you think I was watching?”
“I don’t know what you’re watching anymore. I thought it was porn.”
“You thought I invited you in to watch porn?”
“I thought you were cool with it. You seem like someone who would be.”
“Porn justifies misogyny, sexual assault and mistreatment, and reaffirms the idea that women are receptacles for male pleasure, rather than active seekers of their own pleasure. Not to mention it sets a ridiculous example of what sex is supposed to be.”
“I know. It’s why I don’t watch porn. I just figured you had some kind of modern, female-gaze stuff that’s actually good. Maybe Bethany’s friends—”
“You don’t watch porn?”
“No. Jacking off to a woman I don’t know getting a dick—or several dicks—rammed down her throat so far you can see it in her neck isn’t sexy to me.”
“But you... your past was—”
“Don’t get me wrong. In my youth, I wouldn’t have had a problem ramming my own dick down a living, breathing... ok maybe not breathing,” I saw her shocked expression. “uh… woman’s throat. I’m still unopposed to the experience on principle...”
I was sitting close enough to Decca that I could see her eyes darken as her pupils expanded. Her lips parted.
Was she was turned on? Or afraid of me?
Neither mattered, because I wouldn’t be ramming my dick down her throat until her mascara steamed down her face and snot bubbles blew out of her nose. Oh, God, why was I letting myself picture that image of her?
“Let me be clear, if it’s consensual, there’s nothing wrong with kink, but there’s something very wrong with men getting off on violent and degrading images of non-consenting, underpaid women and thinking they can get away with that in real life.”
She was quiet for a minute, staring at me with those big innocent eyes in the soft light of the room. Her mouth opened, closed, an opened again. Until she looked away and spoke quietly.
“I wouldn’t mind if you rammed your dick down my throat.”
I was instantly and painfully hard. I could practically hear my blood rushing into my cock. My brain going softer in the process. But not so soft that I couldn’t visualize those big red lips and hollowed cheeks taking me all the way down her throat and sucking me dry.
“Dec,” I groaned. “I can’t let you do that.”
“Is it a sin in your religion?”
“No.”
“Then why—”
“Because I can’t see you like that. You’re my wife, not a... it wouldn’t be fair to do that to you.”
“Do that to me? You just said if it’s consensual there’s nothing wrong!”
“I’m not going to treat you like a slut.”
“Ugh, Gus…” She inhaled, started to say something before thinking better of it. “I don’t even know what I want to respond to first.”
“I’d rather you didn’t respond to any of it, if you didn’t mind.” I cleared my throat and turned back to the laptop. “Okay, so we’re not watching porn. What is this, then? What’s she going to do to that mannequin’s hair?”
She sighed and smiled. “Promise you won’t laugh?”
“No,” I smiled back, relieved she let me derail our awkward blow job conversation.
She restarted the video once more.
Forty-five minutes later, we were still huddled together, leaning back against the pillows on Decca’s bed and mesmerized now by a different woman whispering fake high school gossip into a camera while brushing, combing, and braiding fake hair. Once I discovered that the meaning of these ASMR videos wasn’t the actual content, but the sounds of the shit they were doing, I was oddly rapt. I especially liked the ones where the creators made reservations for high-tea at a forest hotel for mice on a very clicky keyboard.
I’d never felt so serene and blissed out. I also hadn’t had a proper orgasm in a very long time.
Decca’s arms hugged her knees as she leaned into me, watching the screen balanced on my lap. At first, her little accidental touches were like electricity, jolting through her body into mine, but the more it happened, the less she cared until, at some point, her legs rested fully against my side, her head on my shoulder.
We’d never done this. Cuddling. Our platonic friendship (not that it was ever just platonic on my side) had never been physical. I was too afraid if I touched her, all my feelings would pour out of me and scare her away.
I relished the warmth of her body against my arm and my thigh, my nerves zinging with her every inhale. I wanted to do more. Mentally, I calculated the actions I’d take if I had more confidence in this. It would feel so right to raise my arm and burrow her deeper into my side, play with those tendrils of black hair that escaped from her ponytail. The sweet, milky, almond cake scent she was wearing today—so much nicer than her burning-at-the-stake cocktail she normally wore—practically curled into my nostrils. It was intoxicating. I wanted to kiss that tender spot below her ear and get even more drunk on her.
She seemed to read my thoughts. She dropped her chin, giving me a coy smile while trying to hide it at the same time. An invitation.
It was now or never. I could accept it or let this moment pass.
“Sit in front of me?” I asked.
She said nothing. I spread my legs, putting one of the extra pillows in my lap and patting it.
“Come on. Get your brush,” I encouraged. She hesitated for a moment, then jumped up, her eyes aflame. She handed me her hairbrush. It looked like it’d never been used. Not a single stray hair lay twisted between its bristles.
My chest tightened when she gripped my knees, positioning herself between my legs and leaning comfortably against my chest as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Thank God for my foresight on the pillow. This was supposed to be a treat for her, and an experiment for me, not foreplay.
I pulled the scrunchie out of her hair and put it on my wrist. The warmth that had been hers singed my skin. I ran my hands through her thick black strands, still a little wet from a recent shower. The rosemary scent of her shampoo competed with her perfume, but the herbal notes were better suited to her than the sweet cloying scent, no matter how much I liked it. I raked my hands through again, gently finger-combing out small tangles.
She arched her back and moaned. “They never mention how the mannequin feels in those videos, but this is pure hedonism.”
I closed my eyes and tried to think about anything besides how she ground the pillow harder into my lap. “Keep going,” she ordered.
“Yes, ma’am. Should I whisper, too?”
“I’m not really in the mood to hear your church fathers’ philosophies tonight.”
I laughed. “How do know that’s what I’d whisper?”
“I know you better than you think. It would be either that or prayers, written by some monk in the ninth century.”
I stroked, and Decca settled in deeper, her back against my hard cock. I sucked in a breath as the pressure deepened.
“I could whisper about how pretty your hair is.”
“Mm. I just want to feel,“ she moaned.
Oh, God that moan.One day I wanted to hear it while my cock was buried deep inside her.
She stiffened. “Gus, wait.”
Oh, shit. What did I do?
“Dinner!” She jumped up on her knees, her freshly brushed hair forming a sheet around her bare shoulders and black tank. “The burner’s on. It’s probably burnt to the bottom of the pot by now. And I made your favorite fasting meal.” She hopped off the bed.
Easy for her to do without a steel rod between her legs sucking all the blood out of her brain.