Dear sweet Henry. Dear sweet dutiful Henry. He had no idea what he’d done.

I slumped down in my seat and my stranger stopped, almost stepping out into the aisle and still testing my limits before I gestured him back into his seat.

“He’s sleeping,” I said, and then still played the game of reluctantly amenable married woman because that was what both of us needed, “I guess the sharing the first bit of this trip with you isn’t the worst choice.”

My seatmate didn’t move, so I reached out and made him move. I wrapped my hands around his wrist and tugged, pulling him back down into the seat next to me and holding him long enough to make sure that he wasn’t going anywhere. And then I held him a little longer.

Beneath my touch he tensed, the tight muscles of his forearm flexing. I felt his heartbeat start to pulse a little faster the longer I held him and I swallowed a little harder, this strange sort of intimacy coming over me as I held fast to that position well aware of what it was doing to him.

My arms were pressed together forming a V with my wrists at the bottom point. The position had my breasts pressed up, the slightly low cut on the neckline of my top emphasized by my body bending forward to reach for him. My brow was furrowed with worry, with concern. My lips pursed in a slight pout as a lifetime’s worth of talk passed between us.

I don’t know if I need to tell you why I did it. I don’t know if I even fully understood in the moment why I did it. I do know, though, that in the singular instant between waiting and moving I did think about Henry.

Henry is a good man. Henry is a good provider and in spite of his faults and flaws I do love him. To throw that all away for a single instant with a stranger, it was a significant choice and one that I was more than aware of.

But the thing of it is that as much as I love Henry, which is as much as you can love any one person, I did understand that he was just one person. I understood that even if he could satisfy nearly all of me there would still be some part of me that was left wanting.

I am dominant in so many parts of my life. I wrest control and hold it at my job, in my family life, and even in social situations I often find myself holding all the cards. I have that ability, the ability to seize it and control it and god I know what it’s like to give that up.

No, not to give it up. To have it taken away from me.

I’ve always been dominant and I’ve always been in control, in every way except for relationships. Henry is the only man that I’ve ever been with who didn’t try to seize control of me and maybe that’s why he’s the one that I fell for and the one that I married and maybe that makes him a good man, better than most. But I miss it. Oh fuck I miss having a man like this instead.

Deliberate, making sure that there was no mistaking it, I let the grip of one of my hand’s release and I slipped it forward onto his knee and then up onto his upper thigh. Eye to eye, not even blinking, I slid it inward until it came to rest on a bulge that I felt was reassuringly just as big and dominant as he was.

I smiled, letting my stranger know that I liked what I felt, and I pulled back to put my hands demurely in my lap.

“Oops,” I said, “That was very rude of me. So rude that I think it counts for more than you stealing my seat and certainly more than waking you. The scales are definitely uneven now. I guess I owe you. So how are you going to take your payment?”

With my knee I kicked up the armrest between us, then sat back against the seat back, shifting a little and pressing my breasts out while parting my thighs just a little. I felt the rush, the thrill of anticipation as his eyes roamed over my body like it was a table laid out with delicious delights for him to devour. I saw him twitch a little in anticipation. The man was practically drooling as he eagerly contemplated where to start.

His hand snapped out and pressed onto my thigh. His body moved a little closer to me and my bottom lip shuddered as his hand slid up and in. His lips curled close to my ear, breath warm against my skin as he whispered for me once more.

“I thought you were married,” he said, “I thought you hated me.”

“I do,” I said truthfully, “And I do. But a debt is a debt, isn’t it?”

He pushed on with his hand and my thighs parted so easily for him. He slipped up, dodging around my jean clad mound and I felt the sensation of the button popping open, the zipper playing down and his hand slipping all the way down inside. He felt me and I felt his lips curl in a smile.

“You’re wet for me,” he said, an accusation and a truth, “You’re wet waiting for me.”

“Oh god,” I moaned, the hand closer to the window clenching the armrest as I felt him feel me and tease at my entrance.

“You want me,” he mused, “Don’t you?”

“I hate you,” I told him and while it was true it was also what he wanted to hear, “And I’m married.”

“But none of that was a no.”