The Mammoth Book of International Erotica

for home. He hadn’t said anything about leaving early when I’d spoken to him in the morning. I asked his secretary if he was feeling sick, and she told me he’d seemed fine. I wondered if he was having an affair.

I doubted it, but the idea had made me angry and afraid and excited at the same time. I’d really done no work at all in the hour since I’d hung up the phone. I wanted to make myself come again. I thought about Brian discovering me in the middle of making myself come, and the thought only made me hotter.

If he’d really left from home when he’d told his secretary he was leaving, he’d be home at any minute. If not – if not, it didn’t matter.

I wandered through our ridiculously large apartment, on my way back to our bedroom.

Of course, I knew Brian jerked off regularly. Ninety per cent of men admit it, another nine per cent lie about it, and there’s something wrong with the other one per cent. Brian was a reluctant member of the ninety per cent. Whenever I teased him about it, he seemed embarrassed. Sometimes when I walked in on him in the bathroom without knocking, I found him suddenly careful to keep the towel around his waist, which he normally never was. He subscribed to a high-class girlie magazine, although he claimed to be interested in the articles. But he had never gotten rid of the collection of porno videos he’d accumulated before I met him, and from time to time I’d notice that the carton he kept them in had changed position on the shelf in the closet in the den. Sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night to find his side of the bed empty and the sound of the television coming from the den. I might have assumed that he was just watching late-night TV or a real movie, but you don’t watch a real movie going back and forth between fast forward and normal speed.

I had reached the doorway to the den. I suddenly realized that I wanted to let him find me watching one of his porno tapes – that is, if he was really coming home. If he was off having an affair, then the hell with him. I’d just watch without him.

As I went to the closet, I felt frightened and excited. It reminded me of once when I was a child and I entered a toystore to shoplift a doll my mother wouldn’t get for me. I’d been too afraid to do it, and I rushed out to the street sure that everyone in the store knew what I’d been planning to do.

Now I had the courage to carry my plans through, at least as far as taking the cardboard carton down from the shelf and opening it up. There seemed to be a lot more tapes than when I’d first seen it, two years before we got married. Was I misremembering? I picked up the one on top and looked for the copyright notice. The tape was from the previous year: he’d gotten it recently. So he’s still buying these things, I thought, unsure what to feel. At least, I supposed, it was better than him having an affair. As if, I contradicted myself, he couldn’t do both.

I looked at the pictures on the box. There were two pictures each of four different threesomes, each consisting of a man and two women. Almost every man’s favorite fantasy, for reasons I’ve never really understood, and apparently Brian was no exception.

The setting was the same in each of the pictures: a bedroom. The decor was modern American motel.

The men all looked more or less alike: in their late twenties or early thirties; reasonably slim and fit; not particularly handsome; and endowed with a large cock. I wondered why the men in porno videos always had enormous cocks. I’d thought men were always worried about the size of their cocks. Wouldn’t the sight of such large ones make them worry more? I realized that the men watching were supposed to identify with the performers in the videos, rather than compare themselves with them, but it seemed unlikely. Whenever I saw a beautiful woman in a movie, it sure didn’t make me feel more beautiful. How, I wondered, did Brian feel about seeing such large cocks? And how would he feel if he saw me making myself come as I watched these men with cocks so much larger than his own?

The women were a lot more varied: the first threesome included a redhead with enormous breasts and a blonde with breasts I considered normal – no larger than my own; the second threesome, two brunettes, one large-breasted, one small-breasted; the third, two blondes, one large-breasted, one with average breasts, both without hair on their pussies; and the fourth, a blonde and a brunette, both large-breasted.

The pictures showed the threesomes having sex, and they were completely explicit. I had never found pictures like that exciting. I’d rather look at a photograph of a beautifully prepared meal than a close-up of someone’s open mouth while they’re chewing. Like most women, I suppose, I don’t usually find pictures of cocks and pussies very exciting. But the thought that Brian watched these things made the pictures enticing.

Still feeling somewhat like the child who’d resolved to shoplift a doll, I turned on the TV and the VCR and put the cassette in the machine. Taking the VCR remote control with me, I sat down on the couch and started the tape rolling.

After I fast-forwarded through the credits, the first episode began. It starred the threesome featuring the redhead and the blonde.

As the sequence began, the three of them were still dressed, and I used the remote control to pause the tape. I felt a little ridiculous. Why did I want to make myself come watching Brian’s porno video? What if he did walk in on me while I was doing it? I sat and wondered whether I really wanted to go through with this, or whether I should just put everything away and wait to see if Brian was coming home or not.

I stared at the threesome on the screen, caught in the middle of an uncomfortable-looking embrace, and could not decide what to do.

Just then, I heard a faint sound from the front of the apartment. It was Brian unlocking the door. I sighed in relief, realizing that my fears of his having an affair had been ridiculous.

He closed the door. It seemed he was being unusually quiet, as if he was trying to surprise me. I smiled to myself. One way or another, he was the one who was going to be surprised.

The situation I’d put myself in was even more ridiculous. I had no time to put everything away. I listened to Brian’s footsteps grow softer as he seemed to walk down the hall to my office, and then grow louder again as, I guessed, he returned to the front hall. Not finding me in my office, he’d explore the rest of the apartment. Without question, he’d find me within a few seconds.

I looked at the screen again. The performers were still frozen, and so was I.

But I’d be damned if I’d be caught in the middle of putting the tapes away – it would look like I’d just finished watching, rather than just begun, and if I was to be found guilty of the crime, so to speak – and what else would he possibly think? – I might as well enjoy the fruit of it.

So I pressed the play button. The performers continued their insipid conversation. It seemed that they were improvising the dialogue. They were terrible actors, but I wasn’t paying too much attention to them because I was trying to figure out what Brian was doing.

His footsteps grew a little louder. He seemed to have reached the main hallway, which leads toward the bedroom and the room we use as our den. His footsteps stopped, and then, after a moment, resumed, but much more quietly. He had taken off his shoes! He really was trying to sneak up on me!

I felt indignant, although this situation was what had made me so hot to imagine. I still didn’t know what to do. I had the dangerous sense that I was no longer in control. I was watching myself as if watching someone else, and I had no idea what I would do next.

The tape played on. The three performers had, mercifully, stopped talking, and bad music was playing as they kissed and fondled each other with all their clothes still on.

Keeping as still as I could, I listened to Brian sneak up the hall in his stockinged feet. It made me furious, and it made me hot.

I could no longer hear any movement from the hall. In the television screen, I could see a small reflection of part of the doorway. I could only see a little of one leg. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew that he was watching me. He wasn’t trying to subtly let me know he was there, and he wasn’t boldly walking into the room, either. He wanted to watch me. He wanted to watch me watch his porno tape. He wanted to see what would happen. He wanted to watch me make myself come.

In an instant, the entire scene unfolded in my mind. I saw myself already naked on the couch, using both hands on my pussy, watching the porno, as Brian stood in the doorway, his pants at his knees, his fist around his hard cock. Imagining all that, I think I was unable to suppress a sigh.

If that’s what he wants, I thought, that’s what he’ll get. But I was still frozen, unable to move.

I had always thought of making myself come as something very private and special, my little secret. When, at