The Revelation by Lauren Rowe

wants
to watch me with another woman.
    There’s a long beat as I try to figure out how best
to clarify my question.
    Josh takes a long sip of his drink. “But only if you
were totally comfortable with it,” he adds, his eyes burning.
    “Is that a martini?” I ask.
    “Yeah, you want one?”
    “Maybe just a sip of yours.”
    I’m expecting him to slide his drink toward me, but,
instead, he takes a long gulp of his drink, grabs my face, leans
into me, and kisses me deeply, letting the delicious fluid in his
mouth gush into mine.
    “Holy shitballs,” I say when he pulls away from my
lips. “That was so freakin’ hot.” I laugh.
    He licks his lips. “So do you think you’d be up for
letting me watch you with a woman? I’d really enjoy it.”
    I pause. “I’m not bisexual.”
    He shrugs. “You don’t need to be. You wouldn’t have
to do much to make me very happy. You could do as little or as much
as you’d want. What you do isn’t really the point of it for
me.”
    He slides his martini to me, reading my mind, and I
take a long sip.
    “You wouldn’t have to do anything that makes you
even remotely uncomfortable. You’d be surprised how little it takes
to make me a very happy boy.”
    My pulse is pounding in my ears. “I think it would
depend,” I say. I put down the drink.
    “On what?”
    “On who the other woman was.”
    He smiles broadly.
    “In college, my friend and I were both totally
weirded out afterwards and we never got back to normal,” I say.
“The experience pretty much ruined our friendship.”
    He leans forward, his eyes locked onto mine, and
cups my jawline in his palm. “What if you could pick the woman? And
do as little or as much as you pleased with her?”
    I swallow hard. My heart is beating wildly. “It...
would... be totally up to me?” I stammer.
    He leans back and drops his hand from my face, his
eyes ablaze. “The question wouldn’t be whether the woman turns me on—the only question would be whether she turns you on. If so, that would do wonders for me.”
    My head is spinning. “Would you ultimately join in
and have sex with both of us—or just with me?”
    “What would you prefer?”
    “Just with me.”
    “Then that’s what I’d do.”
    “You’d have to swear not to lose control and start
fucking the other woman.”
    He scoffs. “Kat, I’m not an animal. I don’t ‘lose
control’ and start fucking people like a dog humping a leg. I’m not
some sort of sex offender.”
    I think my heart is medically palpitating. “Because
if you started having any kind of sexual contact with the other
woman, then I’d get crazy-jealous.”
    Josh shoots me a look that says “no shit” but he
doesn’t say anything.
    “If we did it, it wouldn’t be all about making me
jealous, right? It’d be about turning me on—and, therefore,
you?”
    “Correct.”
    “Making me jealous wouldn’t be some sort of secret,
ulterior motive?” I feel like my heart’s gonna hurtle right out of
my chest. “You wouldn’t tell me one thing beforehand, just to get
me to do it, and then blindside me later, right?”
    His face melts into total sincerity. He puts both
hands on my cheeks this time and leans his forehead against mine.
“Kat, I’d never blindside you, in any context. Sexual or
otherwise.”
    My heart is racing so fast, I’m practically yelping
for air. “Because I’d only do it if the other woman was gonna be
the third wheel, not me.” I can’t believe I’m negotiating the terms
of this. How did this conversation go from hypotheticals to actual
negotiation so quickly?
    “I’d respect that,” he says. “One hundred percent.
It’d be all about you. I wouldn’t lay a finger on the other woman
if you didn’t want me to. Not even a pinky.”
    I’m having a hard time pushing air into my lungs.
“That’s what I’d want,” I say. “Not a finger. Absolutely no contact
between you and the other woman. It’d be all about me and you.”
    “Done.” His eyes