Page 11 of Opening It Up
“How are you feeling?” he asked me, a little frown line between his eyebrows. “It’s not too late to back out and decide to go back to what’s safe and comfortable. I only want you to do this if youreallywant to. I don’t want you to feel pressured into it.”
But what will you do if I don’t?my brain screamed fearfully at me.
You have made it abundantly clear that you think monogamy is a recipe for stagnation.
Wouldn’t I lose you?
I could have said no. But I just didn’t want to lose him, even though it made me feel sick.
“No,” I said. “I haven’t changed my mind. I agree to do this.”
“You won’t regret opening up our marriage,” Harley said with a wink. “I promise you, nothing essential will change. We will both come back to each other feeling revitalized and refreshed.”
“All right,” I said unenthusiastically.
God, how many moms in my mom group were going to be trying to sleep with my husband now?
“I am hoping to eventually transition into kitchen-table polyamory,” Harley went on in his eager way. “Where the two of us and all of our partners can have a good enough relationship that we can all have dinner together sometimes.”
The idea of sitting at the kitchen table with the other women Harley was fucking sounded absolutely nauseating to me.
Fat bloody likely I’d ever be down for that.
Even the idea of multiple partners was so foreign to me. I hadn’t thought of another man since I met Harley in college.
“I don’t know about that.”
“New people and experiences are everywhere,” Harley said. “If you only open yourself up to them. I know you can do this, Lily-Mae.”
“I’m not sure how easy this is going to be for me,” I warned him.
“Remember, it isn’t a competition. And youcan’tbe discouraged because it takes you a little bit to get back into the dating scene,” Harley said encouragingly.
But I was not encouraged.
Maybe it would be easy forhim.
But I was a frazzled, frumpy 38-year-old mom of two.
Who was even going to want to date me?
I was just going to have to grin and bear it until Harley got this out of his system.
CHAPTER 5
Harley
“Ican’t believe it’s finally happening,” Makayla breathed as she slid in the passenger seat of my car.
She had legs for days, and the way her skirt rode up to her lovely thighs, well, it was just mouth-watering.
I felt a little stab of guilt at the lie I had told Lily-Mae.
Well, it waspartiallytrue, wasn’t it?
It wasn’tjustabout having sex with Makayla.
Would I have asked for an open marriage if she hadn’t been in and out of my office every day with her intoxicating eyes and those high heels and the way her ass looked so perfect and perky in the pencil skirts. . .probably not.
