My dreamy haze persisted despite the allure of full consciousness made more prominent by the familiar but always exciting sensation of a soft hand resting lovingly on my crotch.
“Mmm,” I’m able to muster, torn between the bliss of deep, verge-of-waking sleep and the ever-present desire to reciprocate a sexual advance. I keep my eyes closed and take some restful breaths, slowly mulling over my options.
With two kids, both under the age of 5, there were simply times when sleep forced itself to the top of each of our lists of priorities. We’ve both skipped a wide variety of activities, including meals, to scrounge an extra bit of shut eye. Sex often took a backseat, sometimes by mutual ascent and other times not. But I know how it feels to be on the other end of even the most mild of sexual rejections so I make a point to second guess my impulse to say no, when it presents itself.
I slowly pried one eye open and saw, from my position on my left side, my wife, wide awake, grinning from ear to ear, head planted in her palm, waiting to see whether her now soft caresses would be enough to get me up.
“Hey,” she said, “I had a dirty dream. Super turned on.”
“Oh, yeah?” the words oozed out, slow but now genuinely curious. “What kind of dirty dream?”
“Can’t say… too dirty,” she replied, teasingly but firm.
“That good, huh?” I smirked through once again comfortably closed eyes. “Maybe I’ll try to guess later.”
I reached my hand out, grasping around for her hip, first resting my half-asleep palm upon it before slowly letting it fall toward her inner thighs, disrupting the fabric of the extra large men’s t-shirt (mine) she’d grown accustomed to wearing to bed.
I had no idea the time but the way the light peaked around the drapes suggested late enough that our boys could be expected up any time. Almost in unison with my thought, as my hand pressed two layers of soft cotton against the softness of my wife’s groin, the familiar sound of our 4-year old’s door seized our attention, abruptly ending our heavy petting session.
Disappointed but not tragically so, I smiled and rolled back on to my back to listen for his next move- likely a casual stroll in to our room for a quick good morning. To my surprise, my wife sprung in to action with more urgency and decisiveness than usual.
Throwing her legs over the side of the bed and lifting herself upright, she strode over to our bedroom door and opened it, greeting our son softly but excitedly.
“Good morning, sweetie!” she stage whispered, putting a hand on his back and guiding him lovingly toward our living room.
Normally I would follow them in to the other room but the speed with which I watched her turn on the TV and find our son’s favorite show on Netflix triggered a pause within me. As I watched her scurry back through the hall, clearly attempting to make as little noise as possible, I knew what was up.
With the same haste, she closed the door, knob turned to avoid the loud clicking in to place of the latch, which would certainly arouse suspicion in our son of being left out of something important. As serious as if she were disarming a bomb, she slowly, silently turned the lock before cautiously turning her ear and listening for signs of sudden movement.
“We probably have about 5 minutes, max,” she said breathlessly as she glided around to her side of the bed and slid under the covers.
Her earnestness as she reached down to pull her garments down to her ankles was at once hilarious and provocative. She was on a mission and would not be deterred.
From her back, she reached out, moving her hand from the top of my left thigh to my semi-erect penis. She began to gently squeeze the shaft while tugging and scrunching my foreskin up and down over it’s length, her speed bordering on but not quite being insensitive. I was fully rigid in no time.
Slowly, so as not to disrupt her stroking, I rolled slightly on to my side again to place my own right hand on her open thigh, intending to return the favor in kind. It was here that things took an interesting turn, and opened up a whole new world of possibility for the two of us.
“Not enough time,” she whispered urgently, gently grabbing my outstretched hand and guiding it carefully to my own penis. She placed my palm on the underside of my shaft and forced my fingers around it as she delicately withdrew her own grip. She then sunk down in the bed, burrowing the back of her head in to the crease of my arm, and said, “You do you and I’ll do me this time, okay?”
“Sure,” was what I said. Inside though, my mind was racing and trying to take in the pure erotic charge that was now coursing through my body.
In the years we’d been married, we’d never done this. We’d touched each other and even ourselves in the context of sex but never intended to bring ourselves to orgasm in the presence of the other. We were now going to masturbate right next to each other?
As I slowly pulled my foreskin up and down my shaft, I felt the soft, smooth skin of her thighs press against mine as she parted her legs, concealed by a sheet and comforter. Above the bedding I could see nothing but her upper shoulder beginning to move slightly and the outline of the rest of her arm crossing over her torso and resting between her legs. I let out a distinctively sexual sigh as I began to see the rapid movement of her hand disrupting the fabric above.
In that moment, and throughout the rest of that day, it dawned on me that I had not ever been sure if masturbating was something she’d ever done. When we were engaged I confessed once that it was something I struggled with growing up but to ask her if she had done it herself never even crossed my mind. I guess I assumed girls in the church mostly didn’t. A presumption I have since discovered was plenty naive.
Masturbation, for so much of my own life, represented a consistent intensity of sexual desire and arousal that felt like far more a curse than a blessing. A shameful reminder of my fallen, sinful nature. Something that separated me from the women and girls in my world- especially the kind, spiritually sensitive girls I had hoped to one day marry, and did.
Closed eyes, she pressed her head more firmly in to me, clearly increasing the speed and pressure she was applying to herself. I continued to stroke slowly, with nowhere near the clarity of purpose I was witnessing to my left. If it had not felt so magically carnal, it might have looked almost comical- our hands causing our shared blanket to shake and jump, as if a couple of small animals were dancing around underneath.
The speed of her hand continued to quicken and two realizations struck me nearly simultaneously: she was going to cum in less than two minutes and this was NOT her first time doing this to herself.
I continued to slowly manage my erection while staying mentally fixated on my wife’s every move and sound, transfixed by how surprisingly profound this moment had become.
Did this mean that my sweet, innocent wife- the former single’s ward Relief Society President- used to play with herself? That she too knew what it meant to be so intensely aroused by the normal goings-on of life as to be overcome by the temptation to give herself an orgasm? That she likely experienced the sorts of sexual thoughts that would provide the necessary excitation to summit that peak?
In the future, the balance in these moments between sexy and comforting would tip much more toward the former, but as she neared an almost perfectly silent but intense orgasm I was overcome by a sense that I had just been granted access to a secret place- an exclusive, hidden sanctuary within the secure walls of her inner world. I was witnessing the evidence of a private part of her life that mirrored my own, but for which I had previously felt so alone and so ashamed. This woman, whom I KNEW to be an exceptional soul, embodying so fully the virtues of our faith, had, like me, experienced sexual longing and temptation. That she too felt the need to touch herself in order to manage those feelings in the years prior to marriage (and perhaps in the years since).
When her eyes squeezed tightly shut, her chin raised toward the ceiling as if pulled by a string, her core contracted, and her mouth gaped open ever so slightly, I was nowhere close to any sort of release. I was mesmerized.
In the brief moments before the first downward plunge of her orgasmic contractions, I managed to get an arm around her shoulders and hooked underneath a hamstring, pulling her in to me as she began to shudder, my cheek resting firmly against the top of her head.
I sighed deeply in to her hair as her breathing came back to baseline, kissing her on the forehead and then on the lips.
“You are so sexy,” I half-whispered, putting what might’ve been perceived as a suspicious amount of emphasis on the adjective.
“Thanks,” she quietly sighed in response, “So are you.”
As the realization hit her, she stared at me knowingly, eyes-wide, brows up.
“Did you finish?”
“Not yet,” I responded calmly, “You were way too distracting.”
“I’m sorry,” she pouted sympathetically, “I just woke up so close already. Want me to finish you?”
And, because of course it would, the familiar sound of a jiggling doorknob made my reply for me.
“Looks like not quite enough time,” I grinned, trying to make clear I was more amused by the interruption than disappointed or annoyed.
“I’ll take care of him. You finish up, okay?” she offered, nodding her head to reassure me.
“Sure,” I replied, “Thanks.”
“No problem,” she smiled, after a firm, several seconds long kiss.
She slid out of the bed, ensured her nightshirt was pulled down all the way, since she was not planning on fishing for her garment bottoms under the sheets, and quickly exited the room with our son in tow.
My mind both raced and relaxed in the minutes that followed, contributing to one of the best orgasms I have still ever had.