The Cutting

Lucas got up and opened a pair of louvered doors, revealing a tiny kitchen a few feet from the bed. Really more of a closet than a kitchen. The small sink was piled high with dirty dishes. He pulled out a bottle of vodka and a glass from a cupboard and handed them to the boy, who poured some and lay down on the bed and began drinking. Then Lucas began taking off his own clothes.

Hattie thought she should leave. Instead, she stood, her back to the door, watching Lucas until he, too, was naked. She glanced over at Philip. He was sitting in the vinyl easy chair, watching her watching Lucas. She felt both nervous and exposed. Lucas opened a drawer in the bedside table and took a joint from a small plastic bag. He lit it, took a long drag, got up, and walked to where Hattie was standing and handed it to her. She took a drag, held the smoke in her lungs, and handed it back. Then Lucas took her hand and put it on his cock. She began stroking it and it got hard. She exhaled the smoke. ‘I didn’t know you still liked it with girls, Lucas,’ she said.

‘With you, Hattie, I think I could like it very much.’ She felt a tremor rather like electricity. ‘Besides, Philip and I share everything.’

Lucas was staring at her with those extraordinary eyes. He was tall, like Philip, but with a more intense face and a harder body. ‘Including me?’

‘Especially you.’

‘Have you ever fucked Philip?’ she asked.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Many times – and will again. You and I have that in common.’

She looked again at Philip. He was enjoying this. Getting off on it. The bastard. ‘Are you going to take your clothes off, too?’ she asked him.

‘No. I’m going to watch you take yours off.’

The boy on the bed pouted. ‘Oh, Lucas, you are such a bore. Don’t you have anything more interesting than pot? And why are you fooling with that girl? Don’t you love me?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Lucas said, ‘of course I love you, and I have something much better than pot for you. I got these specially from the hospital.’

‘What are they?’

‘Something special.’

‘Well, let me have them.’

He handed the boy some white pills from a gunmetal pillbox on the bedside table. Eduardo or Carlos swallowed a couple, washing them down with vodka.

‘Philip?’ Hattie said. ‘Don’t you think you should take me home?’ She was still leaning against the door, still wearing her red goose-down ski parka, making no move to leave.

‘Oh, I don’t think so, Hattie.’

‘But I’m your wife.’

‘Yes, I know – and a good upright New England girl you are. But, don’t you see? That’s what makes all of this so interesting. I get to share you with my dearest friend. I get to see you in a whole new light.’

A new light? Yes. Why not a new light? Then, as much from the pent-up anger she felt toward Philip as from the attraction she’d always felt for Lucas, Hattie pulled down the zipper on her jacket.

Both Philip and Lucas watched Hattie as she stripped. Eduardo or Carlos was merely bored. She didn’t try to make it sexy. She simply took off her clothes and folded them neatly, laying them on the floor in the corner. When she, too, was naked, she walked to the side of the bed, dropped to her knees, and took Lucas’s cock in her mouth. She licked it until it was hard again. She could hear Philip breathing heavily behind her.

She looked up at Lucas. ‘Do you have any condoms?’ she asked. ‘There’s no way this happens without a condom. Not with your history.’

Silently he pulled a condom from the same gunmetal box that held the pills. ‘Lucas’s magic box,’ she smiled.

She slipped the condom over him, and then he pulled her up onto the bed and put his head between her legs. His tongue flicked delicately in and out, like a snake’s. Her breathing quickened. ‘Lucas’s magic tongue,’ she moaned softly.

After that she took him deep inside. Even as she approached orgasm, she remained aware of Philip’s eyes, watching, probing, never looking away. His hips seemed to be rocking as if he, too, were on the receiving end of Lucas’s thrusts, he, too, rising and falling, then rising again toward orgasm.

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