It's 6.30 am and I am wide awake, as I usually am at this time. I have always been a lark, and these days because of my insomnia I wake up earlier than ever. I am sitting up in bed beside my husband, drinking the one coffee that I allow myself before switching to decaffeinated tea for the rest of the day, not that cutting back on the jitter liquid seems to have helped the sleeplessness much, but the regime has become a habit, now. While we drink our coffee, husband and I are scrolling on our smartphones.
Taking care to angle my phone so he can't see the screen, I log in to Lush. No one about as far as I can tell. Not really surprising, as it's still too early for most of my British friends, and will be the middle of the night for the couple of Americans I chat with regularly. Damn, I fancied a flirt with someone. Instead, I start to scroll through the latest stories to see if anything catches my eye to read.
Just then though, a message notification appears. It's from my buddy located a couple of hundred miles away. We often chat - well sext, mostly - first thing in the morning. Like me, he has trouble sleeping and is a bit frustrated in his marriage. We're just a pair of insomniac nymphomaniacs, getting each other horny at dawn. True to form, he's not just up in the sense of being out of bed. The message is an aubergine emoji, the standard euphemism for an erect penis. "Woke up with this," says a second message.
"Tell me something new," I type, adding a tongue-out-winking emoji. He always seems to be horny.
"Could really do with a fuck right now."
"Mmm, maybe I walk into your room." I glance at the dressing gown hanging on the back of my bedroom door, a summer one in thin fabric that conceals, yet reveals, the body beneath it. "I'm wearing a robe, in a satiny material. It's just loosely fastened with a belt tied at the waist. You can see the shape of my nipples through the fabric."
"Love the shape of your tits," he replies. He has seen a picture of them that I sent him, so this is perhaps his considered opinion, not just speculation. "I love how hard your nipples are."
"I walk over and sit on your lap, straddling you. I can feel your hard cock pressing into my leg."
"Are you wearing knickers?"
"No knickers. I'm running my fingers through your chest hair." I know he has chest hair, as he's mentioned it. Yum. I like a bit of fur on a man. "I start grinding myself against you." I move my hips in a tiny circle, imagining the larger motion I would use to stimulate myself and him, in the situation I'm describing.
The little dots indicating that he is typing bounce up and down. While waiting for his reply, I open Wordle on another tab. A little mental stimulation to go with the sexual frisson from his messages. Thinking of my hip rotations, I put in GRIND for the puzzle. All grey, so none of those letters are in the answer.
"I'm loosening your robe, I want those tits in my mouth. I'm sucking and biting your nipples."
"Mmm, that's making me so horny. I'm rubbing myself against your cock. Rubbing you with my thighs and bum against the satin fabric."
"That feels good, slut."
I suppose I am a bit of a slut for sexting someone while my husband is sitting in bed next to me, totally oblivious. But no real harm in it, what he doesn't know won't hurt him, I reassure myself. I put a slut-related word, WHORE, into the puzzle and hit enter. The H comes up green, meaning it is in the right place, and the E is yellow, so it's there but in a different place.
"Are you wet?" he adds.
"Always, for you."
"I really want to fuck that hot, wet pussy," he texts. It's understood between us that he absolutely would be able to, were we to ever meet, and why not, he's cute and apparently relentlessly randy, but we are well aware that what with the physical distance and our respective spouses, it's unlikely to ever happen in reality. Pretending it could and will is all part of the game, though. The thought crosses my mind that two hundred miles isn't actually all that far away, not if we met halfway.