Joey in the Pouch
The flowers were still wrapped in their plastic sleeve when Hector set them on the kitchen counter, a bouquet of something pink and white that I didn't know the name of. He'd stopped at the shop on his way home from the clinic, the fertility specialist's office where we'd spent forty-five minutes looking at charts and percentages and the slow decline of my ovarian reserve.
Thirty-three wasn't supposed to feel like this. Thirty-three was supposed to be the responsible age, the planned age, the age where you stopped worrying about accidents and started worrying about timing.
I pulled the plastic down from the stems and ran water in the sink, filling the vase I'd bought three years ago when we first started trying. Back then I'd thought it would be for nursery flowers, for the bright chaos of a baby's room. Now it held supermarket blooms brought home by a husband who didn't know what else to do with his hands.
"There's chocolate too," Hector said from behind me, his voice carrying that particular gentleness he'd developed over the past eight months. The kind that made me want to scream sometimes, though I never did.
"The kind with the salted caramel. From that place on Fourth."
I turned to look at him. He was still in his work clothes, the blue shirt with the small stain on the cuff that wouldn't come out, his tie loosened but not removed. Hector always forgot to take off his tie when he got home. It was one of the things I'd catalogued about him over seven years of marriage, one of the small domestic facts that had become precious without my noticing.
The way he hummed when he shaved. The way he always bought the wrong milk but the right chocolate.
"Thank you," I said, and meant it, though the words felt thin in my mouth.
He stepped closer, and his hands found my shoulders, thumbs pressing into the muscles above my shoulder blades where I carried everything. The disappointment. The waiting. The way my body had become a spreadsheet of temperatures and timings, a project that wouldn't cooperate.
His fingers dug in with the perfect pressure, the pressure that came from seven years of learning exactly where I held my tension.
"You're knotted up," he said.
"Mm."
"Here?"
His thumb found a particular point that made my breath catch, not quite pain but its neighbour.
"Yeah."
We stood in the kitchen like that, the flowers dripping on the counter, the chocolate still in its bag on the table. Hector worked his way up my neck, his palms warm through my hair, and I let my eyes close because it was easier than looking at the hope in his face.
The hope that hadn't dimmed despite everything. That maybe this month, maybe next month, maybe the specialist with the kind eyes and the disappointing graphs would have something new to offer.
"I'll shower," he said finally, his hands sliding down to rest at my waist. "Then we can order something. Or I could cook."
"Whatever you want," I said, and heard how empty it sounded.
He kissed my temple and went, his footsteps soft on the stairs. I stayed in the kitchen and arranged the flowers badly in their vase, the stems too long, the whole thing leaning slightly to the left.
The chocolate I left in its bag. I wasn't hungry for sweetness.
The lounge was dim when I settled into it, the late afternoon light filtering through curtains I'd meant to replace for two years.
I pulled a throw over my legs and stared at nothing, at the wall where we'd once talked about hanging family photos. The wall that was still bare because what was there to photograph?
Two people waiting for a life that wouldn't start.
My body felt heavy with the particular exhaustion that had become familiar. Not the tiredness of work or exercise, but something deeper, a fatigue that lived in my bones and whispered statistics. Thirty-three. Diminishing returns. Unexplained infertility. The words the specialist used, delivered with practised sympathy that made me want to punch something.
I shifted on the couch and felt the pull of my own arousal, sudden and unwelcome. It had been happening more often lately, this inconvenient hunger. As if my body, denied its intended purpose, had decided to remind me of its other capacities.
The fertility tracking had made sex into something scheduled and monitored, but underneath that structure, my skin still remembered pleasure.
My pussy still ached to be filled.
The unpredictable, unexpected, spur of the moment, fuck.
The frenzy of copulation.
A dirty shag on the stairs or my butt cheeks over the lounge arm.
Like where we first started with condoms and IUDs as the barrier against the then unwanted.
I thought of Hector upstairs, the water running now, imagined him standing under the spray with his eyes closed. The water sluicing down his back, his chest, the dark hair that trailed down his stomach to his cock.
We'd stopped fucking for fun, stopped fucking for desire, somewhere around month four of trying.
Now it was all ovulation strips and optimal on the bed positions and the grim determination to make it work.
But my body didn't care about optimal. My body wanted his hands on me, his mouth, his cock driving into me until I couldn't remember my own name.
The throw slipped from my lap as I stood. I climbed the stairs slowly, listening to the water, to the sound of Hector humming something I couldn't identify. Our bathroom door was closed but not locked. I pushed it open.
Steam filled the small space, turning the mirror opaque, softening every edge. Through the frosted shower door, I could see him, the shape of his shoulders, his head tilted back into the spray. The glass was beaded with water, each droplet catching the light, and I watched them run down in slow tracks before I reached for the handle.
Hector turned when the door opened, surprise widening his eyes before he smiled.
"Jan?"
"Move over," I said, and stepped in.
The water hit my clothes first, soaking through my blouse in seconds, cold against my skin before it warmed. I didn't care. I was already pulling at the fabric, peeling it from my body while Hector watched, his expression shifting from confusion to something sharper, hungrier.
My blouse came off heavy with water, my bra following, the fabric dark and clinging. My skirt was harder, the waistband sticking, and I laughed when Hector reached to help me, his fingers fumbling with the wet zipper.
"You're crazy," he said, but he was smiling, really smiling, the first I'd seen since the appointment.
"Shut up," I said, and kissed him.
French. Lustful. Slutty like a college girl on heat.
The water ran between our faces, warm and insistent, and I tasted chlorine and Hector's mouth, the familiar shape of his tongue against mine.
His hands were on my hips now, my skirt finally gone, my underwear the last thing between us. I pushed it down and kicked it away, felt the water hit my smooth coochie, the sensation tingly and arousing.
"Jan," Hector breathed against my mouth, and I heard the question in it.
The are you sure, the what about the timing, the careful husband who'd learned to treat my body like a delicate instrument.
I wanted torrid. I wanted wild.
I craved being shagged like a college tart.
I reached down and found his cock, already half-hard and growing in my grip.
Yep, I yanked and tugged his member.
That hard, inflexible grip, like it was my first time in a car at the lookout.
"Fuck me," I said, the words bumpy in my throat.
"Just fuck me, Hector. No thinking. No planning. Just fuck me."
His groan vibrated against my chest as I stroked him, feeling him thicken in my palm, the familiar weight and heat of him.
Seven years and I still loved the way he felt in my hand, the way his hips pushed forward instinctively, seeking more pressure, more friction.
I gave my man friction. It was the tug job for the ages.
He turned me then, pressing my palms against the tile, and the cold surface made me gasp even as the water continued its warm assault on my back.
Hector's hands spread my thighs, thumbs tracing the crease where leg met hip, and I pushed back against him, demanding, impatient.
The wanton, whorish push like a remembered quickie in an alley after a rock concert at Uni.
"God, you're soaking," he said, and I laughed, a sharp sound that echoed in the small space.
"That's the shower," I said, but then his fingers found my cunt, and I felt him discover the truth, the slickness that had nothing to do with water.
I'd been building to this since the couch, since the kitchen, since the moment his hands touched my shoulders and I remembered what his body could do to mine.
My juices had doubled, trebled from pure slutty scorching anticipation.
"Fuck," he breathed, and I felt him press closer, his cock sliding against my ass, seeking entrance.
I gave him my opening, and gave it deep, as I lifted my leg.
Exposed and ready.
He entered me in one urgent stroke, and I cried out at the sensation, at the sudden rightness of it.
"Oohh! Fuck! Yeah! Fuck! Aahh!"
Hector's cock buried in my slit, his hips flush against my ass, his breath hot on my wet shoulder.
I got the poke. I got the prod.
He delivered the awesome probing.
My muscles doing their clench.
The fem-clutch that drives my man wild.
"Jesus, Jan," he gasped, and I felt him shaking.
"Fuck me, Hector. Hard. I want to feel it tomorrow."
I got the rapid stiff drilling.
His cock gouging, scooping my flesh into maximum ecstasy.
It wasn't going to last.
It was happening super quick.
But fuck, it was bliss.
His rhythm built quickly, each thrust driving me against the tile, my palms sliding on the wet surface.
The water poured over us both, running down my spine, pooling where we joined, making every movement slick and desperate.
I could hear the sounds we were making, sloppy and pucky, the slap of flesh and the broken guttural noises in Hector's throat.
His hand found my breast, kneading roughly, thumb brushing my nipple until I arched into his touch.
I reached down with one hand and touched my clit, the pressure exactly right, my fingers sliding through the friction of arousal and water, and I could feel his straining hardness in every punishing stroke.
I worked my clit, feeling the pressure build, the familiar tightening in my belly that meant I was close. Hector's thrusts were uneven now, desperate, his grip on my hips wayward.
"Fuck, I'm close," he warned, and I felt him swell inside me, the pulse of his orgasm approaching.
"Come in my cunt, Hector. Fill me up."
He cried out, a sound I'd never heard from him, and then he was coming, thick and hot, flooding me with pulse after pulse of his release.
The sensation of it, the warmth spreading inside me where I'd trained myself to expect nothing, pushed me over the edge.
"Aaahhh!"
I came with his cock still jerking in me, my pussy enveloping his release, my fingers working my clit through the aftershocks until I was too sensitive, until I had to pull away, gasping.
Hector collapsed against my back, his weight pressing me into the tile, his breath ragged in my ear.
The water was starting to cool, but I didn't care. I could feel him softening inside me, feel the gorgeous gooey mess we'd made beginning to slip down my thighs.
"Jan," he said, my name and held me in his arms.
I turned and kissed him, slow and deep, tasting the chlorine and something else, something that was just us.
And six weeks later, it was confirmed: I had a joey in my pouch.
Fuck, did I develop a chocolate craving.