Thank goodness for the trace of warmth emanating from the computer screen on her cheeks because the rest of Kay Kellerher's body was growing clammy and numb. Even though it was late Summer and the humidity that plagued the Florida panhandle hadn't shown the slightest hint of letting up, the 47 year old woman might as well have been sitting on a chair of chisled ice as she stared, eyes agape, at the computer in front of her.
"Please... nobody come upstairs," Kay mumbled under her breath, keeping her ears raised for any hint of interruption as she sat alone in the family's study.
Safe her Husband was still lost in whatever he was watching on TV several rooms away and both her kids were safely scattered about, Kay continued to stare at the screen with a mixture of curiosity, dread, excitement, lust and disgust.
"Just hit the back button... or delete... or just cut the damn thing off," Kay's conscience pleaded," the crisp white light from the screen bathing her face like an oncoming train in the darkened room.
"This can't be real... just the product of someone's bored, sick imagination," she tried to rationalize, knowing most anything you found on the internet, you had to take with a grain of salt, especially when it came to offers of sex.
Yet the concise and matter of fact words on the screen continued to stare back at her with a bluntness she couldn't quite ignore.
None of the faces in the family portrait resting on the desk beside the computer would have fathomed the content on the screen either. Not her Husband of 26 years, Jerry. Not her Son, Brad or her Daughter, Stacy, much less the smiling, modern day June Cleaver who sat in the middle of the photo, surrounded by her loving and devoted family.
Middle age had been relatively easy on Kay. Just a hint of gray had crept into her otherwise thick and wavy red hair and Even though she had put on a few pounds over the years, she'd stemmed the tide at around 150. At 5'4", she'd always been the epitome of a ball of boundless energy by her family and friends and perhaps it was that constant running around and keeping herself occupied over the years that kept much of the sexual tension that was now so ceaselessly haunting her, submerged.
"And you know you can't blame your Husband for any of this... He still shows you all the attention and affection in the world," she often had to remind herself when she instinctually looked for a scapegoat for her unearthed feelings.
Somehow she knew those emotions and urges had long been there but it wasn't until she came across that ad online, and the opportunity it presented, that Kay was left with no choice but to confront it. Lost in her half-trance, Kay bristled and jumped in her seat when she heard her Husband's voice growing louder as he came down the hall. She managed to switch the power off just as he poked his head through the door.
"I'm going to bed... how long are you gonna be?" he asked.
"Not long... I'll be up in a minute," Kay gulped, trying desperately to feign composure.
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A little over two hours after her Husband had interrupted her from the computer, wondering when she was coming to bed, Kay laid there awake, glaring at the ceiling as Jerry snored lightly beside her.
Thinking that sex with him before bed would have quelled her hormones enough to help her fall asleep, Kay rolled her tongue across her teeth knowing it had almost worked before the dog barking several times outside stirred her just as she was about to nod off.
Fully awake, the tide of Kay's libidinal urges had gradually returned.
"You could just take care of things right here under the sheet... he'd never know," the crudest reaches of her psyche suggested.
"No... I'll just go downstairs and get a glass of warm milk," she said to herself, knowing full well there would be one extra stop on the way back upstairs.
Just as she'd done at least a dozen times since discovering the online ad, Kay returned to the computer when she was sure no one else was around, milk in hand, and clicked it on. As it warmed, the glow from the screen again bathed her upper body in an ethereal glow as she pecked in her password and opened the saved file with the ad.
"There it is... as real as life," she whispered out loud.
Only this time Kay found her fingers twitching above the keyboard until, as if she'd momentarily lost motor control of them, watched her fingertips gently tap down on several keys until a short email message had been typed out. Before she'd even given herself a breath to stop the madness, she felt her thumb press down on send.
All Kay was left to do was watch helplessly as the words... "This is crazy but... I'm interested," disappeared off into cyber space.
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Eighty miles from home, alone in a second floor room at a Holiday Inn, Kay Kallerher sat on the edge of the crisply made bed, trying to take it all in. While it had dawned on her during the drive down that it would be the first night since her youngest child was born, 18 years earlier, that her and her Husband would be spending the night apart, Kay purposefully shoved any of those feelings that would illicit a debilitating amount of guilt far from her consciousness, until she could adequately make some sense of the ungodly path she had chosen to pursue.
"Maybe they just wont show up," a detached but reasonable voice in her head offered. "You can at least go away knowing you were strong enough to keep your end of the bargain and they were the ones that chickened out. "
"But you've come this far Kay, opening up this locked place in your soul... to have it come this far only not to have it happen would leave you even emptier and more desperate than you feel now," that voice of reason was countered with a much more haunting and primal plea for her visitors to arrive.
