Notes from the Desk

The hotel room had a desk. That was the only reason they had booked it. The bed was large and faced the window. The windows looked onto the parking lot and a line of identical rooms across the way. The desk faced the bed at a slight angle so that anyone sitting in the chair could see the entire mattress without turning their head. Mark sat in the chair. He had a notebook open in front of him and a pen in his hand. The notebook was the cheap kind from the hotel shop, lined, already half full from previous nights. He was not allowed to touch himself. He was not allowed to speak unless spoken to. He was allowed to write. Claire had made the rules. He had agreed to them. It reminded him of the rules of an invited third. It reminded him of the uneasy pleasure of watching.

Claire was already on the bed when the other man arrived. She wore the black dress Mark had bought her for this and nothing underneath. The dress was short. When she sat on the edge of the mattress it rode up high enough that Mark could see she was bare. The man—David, he had introduced himself in the lobby with a handshake that lasted one second too long—closed the door, locked it, and looked at Mark once. Mark nodded. David looked at Claire.

“On your back,” David said. “Legs open. I want him to see everything.”

She did. The dress bunched around her waist. David undressed without rushing. He folded his clothes and set them on the chair by the window. When he was naked he knelt between her thighs and pushed two fingers into her. She was wet. Mark wrote that down. The time. The fact that she was already soaked. David fucked her with his fingers until she was gasping, three fingers now, thumb on her clit, the wet sounds loud in the quiet room. Then he replaced them with his cock. He pushed in slowly. Claire’s mouth opened. Her eyes stayed on Mark. Mark wrote the time, the angle, the sound she made when David bottomed out—a low, broken moan she tried to swallow.

David fucked her in long, measured strokes. He told her to keep her eyes on Mark. She did. Mark wrote that she came the first time with David’s thumb on her clit and his cock buried deep, that her legs shook, that she said Mark’s name once and then stopped saying it and started saying David’s instead. David did not pull out. He kept fucking her through the aftershocks, slower, then harder again when she asked for it. Mark’s handwriting got worse. He wrote anyway. His cock was hard against the seam of his jeans. He did not adjust it.

They changed positions. Claire on her hands and knees. David behind her. Mark could see the way her tits swung under the dress and the way David’s cock disappeared into her and the way her fingers gripped the sheets hard enough to pull them loose. David reached forward, grabbed a handful of her hair, and pulled her head up so she was looking at Mark again. Her makeup was already smudged. Her mouth was open.

“Tell him what it feels like,” David said.

“Big,” she said. Her voice was unsteady. “Deeper than—fuck—deeper than you. He’s stretching me.”

Mark wrote it down. Word for word. David fucked her harder. The headboard knocked the wall in a steady rhythm. Claire came again, louder this time, a sharp cry she didn’t try to hide, and David followed her, buried, hips jerking, a low groan in his throat. He stayed inside her until he softened, then pulled out. Come leaked onto the sheets in a thick white pool. Mark wrote the amount, the color, the way it ran down the inside of her thigh and onto the hotel comforter. He wrote that she reached back and pushed two fingers into herself and then held them up so he could see.

David sat on the edge of the bed and lit a cigarette even though the room was non-smoking. Claire stayed on her stomach, legs still parted, dress rucked up. Mark’s pen moved across the page. The smoke drifted toward the ceiling.

“Read the last three lines,” David said.

Mark read them. His voice was hoarse. David nodded, stubbed the cigarette out in a water glass, and told Claire to clean his cock with her mouth. She did. She took him deep, messy, spit running down her chin and onto the sheets. Mark wrote that too. When David was hard again he fucked her a second time, slower, on her back, her legs over his shoulders, while Mark filled two more pages. At the end David pulled out and came on her face—thick stripes across her cheek and lips and chin—and told Mark to describe it in detail. Mark did. His hand cramped. He kept writing. He wrote the way she licked her lips and the way some of it dripped onto the pillow and the way she looked at him while she did it.

When David left, Claire stayed on the bed. Mark closed the notebook. His cock was still hard. She looked at him, come drying on her skin, legs still open.

“You can touch yourself now,” she said. “But you have to read me what you wrote while you do it. Start from the beginning. Don’t skip anything.”

He opened the notebook again. His voice shook. She listened with her legs still open and David’s come on her face and one hand between her own thighs, and told him, when he finished the first page, to keep going until he came. He did. He came in his hand while he read the part about her saying David was deeper. She watched him do it and smiled. Later, after he had cleaned up and she had showered, she made him read the whole notebook out loud again while she sat on the edge of the bed in a robe and touched herself. She came when he reached the part about David coming on her face. Mark’s cock got hard again. She told him he could jerk off but he had to keep reading. He did. The pages were already starting to stick together in places from earlier nights. She said they would need a new notebook soon. He wrote that down too.