Friday, February 28, 2014

Ugh, Now I Need a Shower




via: lacigreen:
via: edonaghey:
"There is a fundamental concern that the content of such magazines normalises the treatment of women as sexual objects. We are not killjoys or prudes who think that there should be no sexual information and media for young people. But are teenage boys and young men best prepared for fulfilling love and sex when they normalise views about women that are disturbingly close to those mirrored in the language of sexual offenders?" -Dr. Peter Hegarty
Could you tell the difference?
  1. Rapist
  2. Rapist
  3. Lad Mag
  4. Lad Mag
  5. Rapist
  6. Lad Mag
  7. Rapist
  8. Lad Mag
  9. Rapist
  10. Lad Mag
  11. Rapist
  12. Lad Mag
  13. Rapist
  14. Rapist
  15. Lad Mag
  16. Lad Mag
…..wow
I just... How... I need a shower.

I mean, I'm all for dirty talk, rough sex, and Domination play. Done right, that kind of play is super fun and awesomely sexy!

But that's kinda the point: it's PLAY.

It's only sexy if you're doing it with someone who you care about and who--in-scene, out-of-scene, whatever--actually cares about you. 

If you're doing it right, role play, humiliation play, power play, sensation (pain) play, even consensual non-consent play should NEVER leave you or anyone involved feeling degraded or used or less-than once the scene ends.

If it does, please--PLEASE--stop. We so very rarely say it in kinkland, but You. Are. Doing it. Wrong.

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Don Jon and the Sexual Boogeyman

When the World Wide Web went live in 1991, there were fewer than ninety adult magazines in American circulation, of which maybe a given newsstand would carry a handful or so beneath the counter or hidden away in wrapped covers in the back. 

Only six years later, the internet had some nine-hundred porn sites. 

Today, there are more than 2.5 million adult sites available at a click of your mouse.

Porn, more than ever, is everywhere. 

The variety and ease in which you can get it is staggering. Just take a look at Porn MD, a site dedicated to the constant, never-ending, real-time stream of online searches on Porn Hub. Comedian Richard Jeni once said, "The Web brings people together because no matter what kind of twisted sexual mutant you happen to be, you've got millions of pals out there." And it seems to be true. From "Asian mouthful" to "toilet poop," the diversity of what people are looking for is amazing. 

And a little strange to think about.

And people are thinking about it.

We are obsessed with porn right now.

And, I'll admit, I'm no different. 

This week, my cubemate gave me the homework assignment to watch Joseph Gordon-Levitt's film Don Jon about a man who has a porn compulsion that impedes him from forming lasting and meaningful relationships or even enjoying sex with women--a not so uncommon phenomenon, if my years of listening to and reading Dan Savage are any indication. 

Despite the expansive, near-infinite potential for connection the internet and modern technology provides, it seems that many of us are feeling more and more isolated and disconnected. 

Don Jon does an excellent job of presenting this. The people in Jon's life are pretty interchangeable. His family talks at each other more than with each other, descending into shouting matches over meaningless things. His friends pretty much only play a never-ending game of hot-or-not at clubs. You never see his coworkers. The other drivers he shouts at and weaves through in traffic all exist outside the metallic bubble of his car. The women he sleeps with are treated like a constant stream of disposable, rather perfunctory sex toys--more a catalog of parts than a person--much like the ones he views online. Even the priests he confesses to are faceless and impersonal as he spills his sin-filled stories to whomever will listen and absolve him as easily as emptying his computer's trash.

It's no wonder that, when he tries to form a relationship with the perfect 10, "dime" Barbara, he doesn't really know how.

It isn't until he meets Esther, who challenges him to think beyond one-sided relationships, that he's able to see his life for the rather shallow, empty, lonely existence it is.

Now don't get me wrong; I like the message about isolation and connection in this film. I think it has so many moments of real insight on this social trend. Like how easy it is to be unduly harsh when you're so far removed from the people you're judging. Like how chick flicks are messing with the romance and sex narrative as much as porn is. Like how the relationship between porn and sex and religion and mortality is pretty arbitrary and logic-less.

Yes, it's hard not to relate to at least some of this. To not see bits of yourself and the people you know in these eccentricities. 

But the movie's constant stigmatization of porn...

For all Jon's shortcomings, the film seems to pin all their blame on porn. As if porn is responsible for his family issues and road rage and lack of ambition and over-indulgent obsession with his over-groomed looks. You just want to scream at the movie, "For the love of Jenna Jameson, it's just porn!"

And it felt so odd that there's either overkill or nothing when it comes to porn viewing. Either Jon's visiting 46 porn sites and masturbating 11 times in a day or he's cutting it cold turkey because he's found himself the glass slipper of pussy, be it the "dime" Barbara or the salvation of old-school Esther. The movie doesn't seem to allow the possibility for normal, healthy porn habits. Doesn't seem to acknowledge that porn can have its purpose. So much of it seemed like a modern take on Mormon masturbation-ban tactics or some NoFap sales pitch.

The movie just kept asking, "What do you need porn for when you can have real sex?" 

What a ridiculous question! That's like asking why we need books and TV and movies and imagination in general when we have real life. 

Escapism isn't by nature a bad thing. In fact, a little escapism is healthy and good for you, so long as you don't use it to ignore or completely misinform your perception of real life. A person can balance both a grounding in reality and an indulgence in fantasy. Even when it comes to porn. A person can even use porn to enhance their real life sex life. Why should you ever have to choose one or the other?

After all, studies are showing that "whether or not we use porn is not nearly as significant to our relationship as whether or not we are truthful about it." So perhaps this sexual boogeyman would be less scary--feel less like a threat or a detriment or an addiction--if we all just stopped hiding it in closets or on erased browser histories and learned to live--honestly and openly--with it.

'Cause I highly doubt porn is going anywhere.

Best. Study. Ever.

Apparently, Sex Makes You Smarter!

So psychologists from the University of Maryland let mice make some happy and found that all the sexy times increased the flow of oxygen to the mice's brain cells, which led to the "creation of neurons located within the hippocampus, an area of the brain that is responsible for the formation of long-term memory." 

Woo-hoo, right?! Having more sex makes you smarter.

But it isn't a permanent process. Apparently, they also observed that "stopping the mice from having sex led to a fall-off in their intelligence."

So, not only does having more sex make you smarter, having less sex is clearly stopping you from reaching your ultimate potential.

Whelp, I just found my new favorite pick-up line!

So I Want to Try Something New

Like most writers, I have tons of stories and starts that were never meant to be officially published, but that I write mostly for my own enjoyment.

Personally, I call them "palate cleansers."

They're good stories that I'm still proud of but that—for one reason or another—aren't something that I'm seeking to sell.

But it seems such a sad fate to let them waste away in my literary closet. So I'm putting them here:

My Own Little Story Limbo.

I will still be posting my Donovan's Door erotica content here, but there are just too many stories to tell so I'll be using the other site for my more mainstream fiction stories. 

Just as I do here, I'll do my best to post a little something there every week. So I hope you all will check it out.

As always, please enjoy!

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Why The Fade-Away Is Kinda Fucked Up



I know quite a few people who don't like how pervasive sex has become in literature and movies and TV and...well, life in general. It's too in-their-face. It shows too much. Why can't it all just be left up to the imagination?

But, personally, I like it. It feels more honest this way. More and more authors and producers and creators are including this aspect in their media because you just can't not include it anymore.

Every single person on this planet owes their life to it. They're very existence is proof that sex happened. Almost everyone is going to experience it at least once in their lifetime. Most people are going to experience it a lot in their lifetime. It's an act that gives people pleasure and connection and intimacy and joy. 

It's an important part of life and, if stories tell characters' lives, how do you justify excluding or even glazing over this? Especially in stories that depict and centralize around romance and intimate relationships! It's part of the story. Why would you leave it out? 

Why is it seen as so obscene?

Saturday, February 22, 2014

The Deviant Nerd - Someone Lied to You

Someone Lied to You
The Deviant Nerd
Brought to you by The Taming School, for when you want curling up with a good book to feel like a good post-coital cuddle.

QuestionHey Pip,

I look at a lot of porn. More than anyone I know. Am I addicted to it?


– How Much Is Too Much?

———

PipHey How Much,

Easy answer: No.

Recent studies are showing that porn addiction isn’t real. In fact, it seems our whole concept of porn addiction has less to do with health or science than it does philosophy and beliefs. If a person thinks that consuming porn at all is a moral ill, chances are higher that they’ll view their own viewing habits—no matter how much or how little they actually stack up when compared to statistical averages—as signs of addition.

So, again, the easy answer to your question is no, you are not and clinically cannot be addicted to porn.

However (isn’t there always a “however”), while porn addiction, as a medical diagnosis, may not be a real thing, porn—just like alcohol, caffeine, shopping, food, internet-surfing, and exercise—can be done in excess. If it interferes with you living your life—if it makes it so you can’t hold down a job or you use it as replacement for human contact or you have a hard time separating porn from realistic, real life expectations, interactions, relationships, and sex—than you may have unhealthy porn habits.

Don’t get me wrong; porn is great! I love porn! Under normal circumstances, it’s good and healthy and fun. Experts are finding that there are “no sign that use of pornography is connected to erectile dysfunction, or that it causes any changes to the brains of users. Also, despite great furor over the effects of childhood exposure to pornography, the use of sexually explicit material explains very little of the variance in adolescents’ behaviors.” In fact, it’s been found that porn just may “improve attitudes towards sexuality, increase the quality of life and variety of sexual behaviors and increase pleasure in long-term relationships.”

But it—like alcohol, caffeine, shopping, food, internet-surfing, and exercise—should be a part of your life, not consume the whole of it. If you can maintain a healthy balance with it, if it brings you pleasure and release and satisfaction, then enjoy it! And stop worrying how much porn everyone else is watching.

Chances are, they’re probably lying anyway.


– Pip, Your Resident Deviant Nerd



* If you have a sex, kink, love, or life question for The Deviant Nerd, email Pip at PipJones.DeviantNerd@gmail.com

And read more about Pips story in Brought to You By.



Thursday, February 20, 2014

How Long Does Your Sex Last?


2:19?! REALLY, MN?!

That had better not include foreplay or we are going to have words.

Though, if it doesn't--Damn, New Mexico!--7:01 minutes of solid thrusting?! That had better been proceeded by lots of lube and/or a lot of foreplay or we are going to have words.

See where your state ranks!

Sunday, February 16, 2014

The Alchemy of Authors

Last month, I talked about some of my favorite stories that transform our world into someplace new. But, like I'd said, I also really respect authors who create their own unique worlds. There's so much thought and work that goes into creating entire worlds out of nothing more than thought. What rules dictate the world? What does it look like? Who lives in it? What are its marvels? Its troubles? It is the closest mortal man has to becoming a god. It is the purest, most imaginative form of magic we know.


While he rides the line between these two types of storytellers, I think Neil Gaiman belongs more to this group than the other. While many of his stories begin in our reality, they tend to take cliff-dives off into marvelous worlds completely unlike ours. Whether it's graveyards filled with ghosts or the gap between worlds throughout London or the background of the universe where only gods may play, Gaiman’s stories may share space with our reality but they are definitely not our world. They exists with their own sets of rules and norms that are at once strange and yet make perfect sense. With a whimsical sense of humor, that balances an oft disturbing darkness, he makes you think, no matter how strange his world is, your own may be just as arbitrary and odd. Perhaps more so.


J.K. Rowling did this too in her Harry Potter series; essentially taking the most ordinary of us and thrusting him into a world of magic. Say whatever you want about the popular children's series, but you simply cannot fault the world Rowling built. From paintings that move to letters that talk, from Quidditch to Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans, everything in her wizarding world is fascinating and wonderful to look at. She created a place that entire generations of readers never wanted to leave. Still don't.


But, of all the worlds I've been to traveling through the pages of a book, Phillip Pullman's Golden Compass series, His Dark Materials, pulled me in the deepest, I think. My friend had turned me onto the series, lending me the full-cast audiobook recording. After the first few chapters, I bought a paperback copy as well, not wanting to miss a single word. By the end of the book, without giving away any spoilers, I must say, The Amber Spyglass left me earbuds plugged in, book pulled up to my face, and eyes uninhibitedly crying on a public city bus on my way home from work, not even caring who was watching because, at the time, Pullman’s world, full of soul-touching magic and multi-dimensional intrigue, felt more real and more impactful than my own. It is the highest compliment I can pay an author and one I hope to one day live up to as well.

As I've said before, these fictional and author-built worlds, that are often so very different from our own, shine insightful lights on our own world. They make us throw a mirror up against our world and forces us to look at it differently. See what's right about it. What's not. There's an admirable and contagious magic in that. These types of stories challenges us; if these authors can create whole worlds out of nothing--arrange a chaos of words built phrase by well-crafted phrase into places and people that endear and enchant, that question and conquer--couldn't we, as ordinary and grounded in the reality of our world as we are, change and transform our world into something marvelous too?

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

New Female Sex Drive Slapped By FDA




So I have a high sex drive, but—not going to lie—one of my big fears is that one day I won’t (illness and age do strange things sometimes). And I have friends who’ve either lost their libidos and want them back or never had much of one ever and would very much like to, so I am pro-research and testing to find a safe and reliable female Viagra equivalent. 

That said, I do understand that these types of drugs carry heavy burdens. The one you hear most often is the consent issue. Many people are worried that these will be just another date rape drug like roofies. Which, I can see how you got there, but don’t see that being the real consent problem. The consent issue with a drug like this is less likely that it’ll be used as a roofies type drug—rapists who would use a drug to bypass consent really don’t care whether the victim is into what they’re doing. 

The issue is more that, while there are many, many, many women out there who suffer from lowered libidos and very much want a female Viagra-type product, there are many, many, many women out there who have lowered libidos and are perfectly happy with that. When people talk about consent and female sexual stimulants, they’re worried that women who are happy with their current libidos will feel pressured into taking these drugs to appease partners who may have higher sexual drives than they have.

Just look at the comments section of this video; the black-and-white, rape-or-not ideas on consent blasted on there are…disheartening. There are even more than a few comments about how men with female partners with low libidos are going benefit from these drugs so much, which is an ass-backward way of looking at this. 

Ass-backward.

Why? Because you would never hear someone say that chemotherapy is going to benefit partners of people with cancer so much. Or that inhalers benefit partners of people with asthma so much. Do they benefit those partners? Sure. But that isn’t the point of the drug. The point is to help the person with the medical issue. And that’s how the issue should be framed. Where the focus of the discussion should lie.

The fact that it too often doesn’t is proof of my point.

And the women who don’t want it aren’t the only ones who will suffer. Especially after reading “Why Do Men Fake It”—a really good book by Abraham Morgentaler, I think both sides of this issue are going to have their own set of issues. 

I definitely think that most medications should only be prescribed after having a good talk with a reputable doctor. And should only be prescribed if and when appropriate. And I do think that we are an overly medicated country that reaches for pills far too often. But, too often too, completely physical problems are treated as emotional ones and, particularly for women, we’re encouraged to talk about it and/or learn to live with it when taking a pill could solve it.

After all, a lot of anti-depressants also lower libidos. As an avid listener of Dan Savage, I’ve heard so many calls from women who took SSRIs to help with their depression but are now depressed because they can’t have sex.

And what I see happening with this drug is that there will be some women who are given it like it’s candy without another thought, whether or not they need it or would even benefit from it, and some women who would benefit from it will be forced to undergo a lot of unnecessary psychological analysis before getting a hold of this drug. All depending on their doctor’s perception of female sexuality. Which makes it less a medical decision as philosophical one. Which isn’t how decisions about anyone’s health should be decided.

Look at how contraceptives and Plan B are distributed in this country. With some people, they’re in and out without a whole lot of understanding about what exactly they’re doing to their body and the side effects and some people have to jump through insane hoops to get a hold of something they really, really, really want and need.

There just has to be a better way.

So much about the way we, as a culture, deal with sexuality—particularly female sexuality—needs a good tune-up, if not and out-and-out overhaul.

What we need is more research and testing for drugs like this, as well as more comprehensive and practical sex education, where people learn how to talk openly and frankly about and stand up for their own personal sexual desires.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Who's Running This Fuck Anyway?

In an interesting New York Times article by Lori Gottlieb, “Does a More Equal Marriage Mean Less Sex,” she wonders if healthy and happy sex lives have unfortunately become the sacrifice for—gratefully and very rightly—forming more gender-equal relationships. If, “in an attempt to be gender-neutral, we may have a become gender-neutered.”

It seems counterintuitive—since American couples who economically earn and domestically contribute to the home equally are less likely to divorce—but those same egalitarian relationships report lower levels of sexual satisfaction. It seems that, the modern advice that urged men to take on softer, more sensitive, more traditionally feminine qualities and for women to become more aggressive and assertive in order to compete in this male-driven world, hasn’t worked as well in the bedroom as it has in all the other aspects of life. 

And, incongruously, it seems that “the values that make for good social relationships are not necessarily the same ones that drive lust […It, in fact, seems that] most of us get turned on at night by the very things that we’ll demonstrate against during the day.” It’s the modern Madonna/whore problem. We may know that, as partners within a relationship, we ought to be equals, ought to be considerate and respectful of each other. We should be able to trust and rely on each other completely. We ought to be able to see each other as more than just sexual objects and a means to get off. But, so often, we work so hard to see each other as more than sexual, that we then no longer find each other particularly sexy. It appears that, for many couples, they “know what a 50-50 marriage should be like. But what is 50-50 sex supposed to be like?”

It sounds like an odd question but, once stated, something about it resonates for a lot of us. Like many of life’s great pleasures—like humor and storytelling and fashion and, hell, even food and drink—sexual desire is inherently base. It isn’t polite or PC. No matter how we try to—and even succeed in—taming it, reigning it in, forcing it to fit societal standards, sexual desire will out. Like the heart, the libido wants what the libido wants. Even if we know that the things we want in the bedroom go against everything we want outside of it—being thoroughly dominated or having someone submit completely to us—we can’t not want it. We can’t want—no matter how much we know we ought to—what we don’t want. As Dan Savage says, “We don’t so much have sex as sex has us.” Sanitized and conformed to fit the rules and norms for what’s fair and just, sex just stops being sexy. 

Forget Fifty Shades; I wonder if that’s the reason why kink has become popular lately. If it isn’t the answer to this problem. Most kinksters find that within every relationship—within every scene—there tends to be a top and a bottom. There’s always someone who, as Mistress Matisse put it, “runs the fuck” and someone who’s following the lead. Someone who’s stepping on the sexual gas pedal and someone whose foot is on the break. 

And the thing is, for me, that is 50-50 sex. Because it’s two people who want the same thing—awesome sex—working together to get it. And the thing I think this article forgets is that gender has less to do with this kind of sex than they think it does. Sure, statistically, male tops and female bottoms vastly outnumber their switched up counterparts, but that doesn’t mean that they have to be the only option. I think the dominant male and the submissive female have less to do with the sexual problem of modern equality than just, for the love of O, someone taking the initiative and running the fuck already. About letting sex have its way—its time and place—both within and outside that equality.

Kink allows that leeway. Kinksters know that “Sometimes sex is an expression of anger or a struggle for power and dominance. They work in concert. People need to learn how to harness those impulses playfully in ways that are acceptable in equal relationships.” It allows you to be that good and upstanding egalitarian couple during the day, considerate helpmates who share financial responsibilities and household chores, while also allowing you to then slip on a mask, to lace-up a darker, baser costume that strips away—without erasing or undoing—all that consideration, later. That lets you explore all those oh-so-unacceptable things, like dominance and submission—like power and control—in a safe space built upon and grounded in all that good, upstanding trust you’ve established during the day. It allows you to build good, solid relationships while still giving you specific times and contextual space to indulge in all the things you can’t and wouldn’t want to otherwise. Almost alchemically, it allows the Madonna and the whore to exist, if not at the same time, within the same person. 

Because—as strange and counterintuitive as it sounds—think about it; if you’re going to be used or use another person, don’t you really want it to be with, done safely and sanely with, someone you love and who loves you?

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Off-Hour Office Sex: A Valentines' Short Story - Part Two


Overtime: 
A Valentines' Day 
Short Story – 
Part Two
Read Part One Here

To read the rest of this story, please check out this great anthology from SinCyr Publishing.

Everybody’s working it, grinding away at the nine to five, when all we really want to do is escape to take a hot tumble on the boss’s desk. Let this sexy collection whisk you away from the office and into sixteen stories that explore sex in the working world. Wink at that sexy security guard, get revved up for a conference tryst and let love break down the language barrier with a new co-worker. Will you succumb to the casual charm of your new client, tip over the edge for your warehouse trainee, or get a long-thought of revenge on the supervisor making your life hell? White collar. Blue collar. It doesn’t matter what collar you’re wearing once the shirts come off. Leave the office behind with Working It.

Authors AJ Fyler, CM Peters, Jean Roberta, KP, Sonni de Soto, Cyn Heaven, M. Marie, Annabeth Leong, Harley Easton, Sienna Saint-Cyr, Cela Winter, Terri Ley, Rebecca Chase, Heather Day, James S. Davie, Jordan Monroe.

Edited by Harley Easton and CM Peters.





LEARNING A NEW WORLD
Please check out my novel The Taming School from Sizzler Editions that explores discovering kink!
Available Now On

LOVE EROTICA? LOVE CONSENT?
Please check out my story in The New Smut Project's anthology and see how consent makes everything sexier!

MAKE-UP SEX MAKES EVERYTHING BETTER!
See what happens after Kat & Peter's happy ending in my story from Deep Desire Press!
And Listen to an Excerpt

REBEL WITH US!
See how Kat & Peter will face our uncertain future in Coming Together's defiant, charity anthology that celebrates diversity and equality!
And Listen to an Excerpt
THINK YOU OWN ME?
Please check out my novel Show Me, Sir from Sinful Press that celebrates feminist kink!

Find even more great reads and Put Your Money Where Your Orgasm Is!




Also, find out how you can support me and collaborate with me on my Patreon Page!

Off-Hour Office Sex: A Valentines' Short Story - Part One

Overtime: 
A Valentines' Day 
Short Story – 
Part One

Peter Richards pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose and stared at his computer. With his computer open to SyncKink.com, the kinky social media website he maintained, he stared at Kat’s page. His wife’s page. Ever since her novel was published, she’d been so busy doing this and that for promotion and publicity. From blog posts to free stories, she’d been dedicated to using every non-working hour into putting herself out there.

Peter sighed and raised his eyebrows. Putting a lot of herself way out there.

He stared at the latest set of photos she’d released and gritted his teeth. He rolled his shoulders and tried to relax his suddenly tense muscles.

So she was naked in the photos.

It wasn’t a big deal.

Or it really shouldn’t have been.

He didn’t want it to be.

But he just couldn’t stop staring at the pictures of Kat laid out bare, imagining the hundreds—thousands—hell, maybe millions—of men out there on the internet who were staring at her too. At his wife. His Katherina.

His jaw clenched as he rubbed a hand over an inexplicable ache in his chest.

He didn’t know why he cared so much. It wasn’t as if he were one of those men who thought he owned her just because they were married. And, sure, they played power exchange games. He was her Dom and she was his sub. But he would never presume to think he owned her. Not for real.

It was her body and her decision of how she presented it to the world. She had every right to celebrate it, to showcase her beauty and share it with the world.

And it wasn’t even like she was naked naked. She was…strategically nude. Seated at very deliberate angles. Hidden behind precisely placed props. Her long, thick, dark hair draped over her beautiful, saison-shaded skin, offering the slightest peeks at her pretty, petite body. The pictures were erotically tantalizing without actually showing anything. 

They were beautiful, those photos. Tasteful, really. More about the hooded look in her tilted, lotus-shaped eyes, the slant of her slyly smiling lips, the blush sweetly coloring her soft, round cheeks, than her nudity anyway. Living on the sun-loving coast, he saw more scandalous wear walking down the beach every day.

But, goddamn it, he couldn’t get the idea of some random, horny man stroking himself to her image out of his head. His greedy gaze tracing the soft swell of her small, but firm breasts. Trailing along the subtle sweep of her waist and hips, the skin there taut and tan and sweet. Hungrily caressing the full curve of her absolutely perfect ass. 

Peter’s throat constricted. That faceless man’s hand would grip his mouse hard, even as his other hand’s grasp tightened on his straining cock. That stranger’s heart would race and his mouth water as he wondered at Kat’s feel and touch and taste. Peter’s mind swam with the myriad of moves and acts all those random, faceless, strange, horny men would imagine doing to his wife.

Peter closed the site.

He just couldn’t look at it anymore. Not without going insane. It felt too much like sharing her—sharing the innermost intimacy of her few beyond him ever got to see—with unknowably countless viewers. As if that intangible, grabby gaze were taking something from her. From him.

He grumbled and swiveled in his chair before looking at the clock. This line of thought was stupid—he did know that—and it was late. After 8:00. 

Huh, Kat should have been home hours ago.

Where was she? 

His jaw jutted and fought the urge to sulk. It was just that he never saw her anymore. She was always at work these days or off doing book stuff or promotion stuff. Or taking more pictures. And, even when she was home, she was either sleeping or snapping at him. He just felt so distant from her. Like she was slipping away from him. Bit by bit everyday. It made everything—the pictures, the time she spend on her book, hell, the time she spent sleeping—feel worse. Like one more thing keeping them apart.

Frustrated, Peter stood up and strode away from his computer. Moving to lean against his bookshelves, he glared at his desktop. He hated that he felt like just another guy jerking it to her pictures; it felt as if those digital images were the only time he got to really see his wife now too.

And, God, how bitterly insecure did that make him sound? Sighing, he shook his head and ran his hands through his hair. 

This was why he hadn’t said anything to Kat. He just couldn’t tell her how he felt. It was just so stupid. And his problem, not hers. It was something he had to work out. On his own. Because she didn’t need to be burdened with his fucked-up issues. Especially when she had enough things stressing her out without adding in his lame insecurities.

He looked at the clock and frowned, worry creeping in uneasily. It really was late. Even with her recent habit of late night hours, Kat should have been home by now. Digging in his pocket for his cell phone, he dialed her number. He thought about her stuck in traffic, tired and stressed. Or, God forbid, still trapped at her office, still drowning in work. He sighed and ran his other hand through his hair, tugging at the strands, as he stared out his office window at the dark night falling over the ocean.

He held his breath as the line rang, waiting for her to pick up. He just wanted to talk to her. To hear her voice. To feel some kind of connection with her again. He just wanted to know when she’d be home again. 

Because, God, he missed her.

———

Kat Valdez-Richards sat hunched over at her desk, her tired eyes watering as she stared unblinking at her computer. Groaning, she pushed her long, dark hair out of her eyes and looked at the time in the corner of her screen. 

9:48. 

Almost ten at night and she was still here in the empty office—even the cleaning staff had left her by now—not even close to finishing the massive amount of work her boss had dumped on her desk this morning. Right on top of the ever-growing mountain of work that he’d been steadily forming for more than a week already.

She closed her burning eyes and sighed. She’d been staring at columns and rows and pages upon pages of numbers for more than thirteen hours now.

It was punishment. She knew it. Administrative limbo. A wild goose chase that her boss, Stan, was torturing her with until either he could think of a fireable offense to go to HR with or Kat quit. It was the only explanation.

Her job, even under normal circumstances, wasn’t glamorous or exciting or even all that satisfying. It was a paycheck. A job that she was qualified for and could do pretty effortlessly and without much taxing thought.

Until Stan decided to send her on impossible searches for needle-in-a-haystack invoices and correspondences that no one cared about and didn’t really matter. Decided to bury her in multi-yearly reports and novels of hand-scribbled notes from nearly a decade ago. Decided to drive her insane with hunts for missing, misfiled affidavits and games of outdated contact tag. 

She hadn’t even had time to take lunch in forever, since Stan was constantly pulling her into meetings and conference calls that she had nothing to do with right around her lunch hour all week. More often than not, she dashed to work more than an hour early, coffee still in hand after a very forgettable breakfast, only to work eleven, twelve, sometimes fourteen hours a day, coming home to a cold dinner and an already asleep husband.

She sighed and grabbed her mouse. Peter. God, she missed Peter. She barely saw her husband these days. If he wasn’t already sleeping by the time she got home, she was too tired to do more than shovel barely re-heated leftovers into her mouth and fall into bed unconscious. The few times when he’d tried to talk to her, to offer comfort and support, she’d grumbled almost unintelligible, aggravated English at him while shoving him away.

She didn’t mean to. God knew, she didn’t want to push him away. But she was just so tired. Tired and stressed out. To the point where comfort and support were too much to deal with. Where her husband—the love of her life—was just one too many things on her plate.

And she hated the fact that was true. Kat shut her eyes and laid her head on her desk for a moment. 

She should just quit.

Read Part Two Here