Selena Kitt - Coupling Two .More Filthy Erotica for Couples

I've been married twice. The first time I was very young and in the kind of dramatic sort of angsty teenage love people make fun of-think Twilight, minus the sparkly vampires. Amazingly, that marriage lasted eight years, probably because we had two children together, and it only ended because one of us grew up. (Guess which one?)

So I'm now on my second marriage, and twelve years, four houses, two living children and one tragic late-term stillbirth and a medical bankruptcy later, we are still going strong. We've obviously had our obstacles (the above, I'm afraid, is just a short list!) but we are very much in love and committed to our relationship.

Couples, when they come together, invariably create a "we," or an "us." This is a third thing in every relationship that must be honored, or it will collapse. Like a stool with two legs, without the third, nothing will balance. So while we think of couples as a twosome, there is really always an unseen third between them-the relationship itself. And of course, it’s no accident that each author here has included three stories of coupling to share!

The three tales I've chosen have one thing in common-no one is giving up on their commitment, on the "us," no matter the circumstances or desires or needs of the two. In Cat Lover, we have a brand new couple whose lives change in a sudden, drastic way, but neither of them are willing to give up on their love. In The Flintstone Experiment, a married pair discover that not paying attention to that “third,” their relationship, can have serious consequences-boredom, anger, and resentment, to name a just a few-but in the end, they come to know how easy it is to turn back toward it instead of away from it, and make it come alive again. And lastly, in The Dirty Show, those of you familiar with my Baumgartner series will recognize Janie and Josh, although now we are ten years into their marriage, and these two sexually experimental individuals have found a way to honor their desires while still maintaining their loving commitment to each other, giving a whole new meaning to the word monogamy.

In the end, the key to "Coupling," in whatever form it takes, no matter your age, culture, sexual orientation, or even your species-swans, wolves, eagles, and even the far-traveling albatross are known to mate for life-is honoring the “we” that is created on the day you say “yes” to the relationship. In a world where everything seems transient and disposable, we often treat human beings and our relationships that way, much to our species’ detriment.

If nothing else, the one thing we learn in relationship when we’re willing to open ourselves up to another and, in many ways, let our egos dissolve into a broader, expansive “we” instead of staying confined in the illusory safety of an “I,” is that life, circumstances, and pain are just temporary conditions, but love-love is forever.

And it really does conquer all.

If this didn’t work, Laura knew she was going to leave him. She sat, making herself even smaller in the narrow space of an airplane seat, looking out at the clearest water she had ever seen as they made their approach. It wasn’t anything like the small Midwestern town where she grew up. She should have been excited, but it was fear she felt curled up in a ball in the pit of her belly, and she put her hand there, as if rubbing it could make it go away.

“Are you cold?” Rick leaned over and tucked the blue blanket around her thighs. She smiled at him, not saying anything as she turned back to the window. As they neared the island, she could make out the coastline. She leaned over and started packing things back into her carry-on-her Kindle, a pair of headphones, the uneaten bag of peanuts.

“Here.” She handed their tickets to him. “We’d better start getting ready.”

Rick took the tickets and stared at them for a moment. “Maybe you should keep them? In your purse?”

Laura sighed, took them back and tucked them neatly into her handbag. “Do you even know the name of the place we’re staying?”

He shrugged, putting the Nintendo 3DS game he’d been playing into his carry-on bag. “You’re the one who planned this whole thing.”

“Yeah.” Laura sighed again, curling toward the window and watching the ground swell, as if it were rising to meet them. They were over land completely now, and she had a brief desire to be swallowed up by it. A crash wouldn’t be like that, of course, but that was the image-the plane just continuing its descent, plunging into the earth below until just its tail emerged and the passengers inside were all buried alive.

What’s the difference? I feel buried alive now.

The dry, stale air of the plane made her feel like she was suffocating.

“Are you all right?” Rick touched her shoulder.

She gave him another half-hearted smile. “I’m fine… Just fine.”

* * * *

“This guy is an asshole,” Rick reiterated, swallowing his orange juice in three huge gulps and signaling the waitress.

Laura pierced a grape in her fruit dish with her fork, watching him spread butter on his toast. Then it was on to the jelly. He ordered another orange juice, and she watched him squirt ketchup onto his ten dollar omelet. Lunch and dinner main courses were included in their retreat package, but breakfast and any extras were on their own.

“You know, orange juice is three dollars.” She crushed the grape between her teeth and made it squirt into her mouth. It was a bitter one, and she thought that was just about right. “Each.”

“So?” Rick shrugged, smiling at the waitress and thanking her when she set the juice in front of him. “We’re on vacation right? Why shouldn’t we have what we want?”

“Do you need anything else?” The waitress smiled at Rick. She was a tall girl, with short, stylish blonde hair tucked behind her ears. Laura grimaced at the girl’s clothes-a colorful blue sarong that matched her eyes, and a solid blue bikini top that barely contained the flesh spilling out of it. Clearly island-wear, and Rick was admiring it, while trying to look like he wasn’t.

“Could you possibly bring me a lemon wedge?” He held up his water glass, as if that explained his request.

“Sure.” The accommodating blonde reached for Laura’s empty plate. She had been through her egg-white omelet before Rick had even started eating and she was slowly working through her small fruit bowl.

Laura looked over the railing and down at the beach-clear water, like blue glass, with a white sandy edge that looked as if it belonged on a postcard. Probably was, somewhere downstairs in the gift shop, with the words “Welcome to Elysium!” on the front. She felt far from paradise.

“So why is he an asshole?” Laura pierced a piece of cantaloupe.

Rick, pouring syrup over his pecan pancakes, answered through a mouth full of eggs. “Because he is. I’m surprised you like him. He wants to send women back to the stone age. Is that what you want? You wanna be my Wilma? So I can be your Fred?”

She thought about the facilitator who had started the workshop last night. He wasn’t an exceptionally good-looking man-balding and rather scrawny-but there was something about him. When he looked at her, she felt like she was being seen into, seen through.

“It doesn’t have to be the Flintstones.” She sipped her water. “And yes… if men who live that way are like the guy who lectured last night… it is what I want.”