Jasleen Malhotra was 25 and a virgin. She was also married.

At university, she had known plenty of Indian American girls with secret boyfriends. Their parents believed they were studying, going out with friends, and concentrating on their prospective careers. Meanwhile, they dated men their families knew nothing about, sometimes for years.

Then came the phone call; there was a young-ish man, with a solid family and career, and the parents all wanted them to meet.

Thus summoned, the boyfriend was dumped. What boyfriend? Nobody told the parents. Nobody told the fresh, naive groom.

Jasleen had always considered the informal everybody-does-it practice dishonest. She had, with her own lips, once called it “cheating on your future husband,” and believed it. She had said that to her older sister, Navneet. Nav shrugged it off; she had been through several boys of all human colors before settling down with a nice Gujarati civil engineer.

With that mindset, Jasleen had remained a virgin, earned two STEM degrees, opened a math academy in nearby Schaumburg, Illinois, and eventually agreed to marry a 29-year-old her aunt had materialized: Vikram Anand, a software engineer with a career and a respectable family of… more engineers of various kinds.

Then came their wedding night, like it was supposed to. But the groom was not like he was supposed to be. Vikram avoided touching her, then touched her too madly. At first, Jasleen guessed he was nervous and felt it was endearing. To be fair, she thought, so was she. But despite her nerves, she had undressed and waited under the blanket. Vikram had only gotten his shirt off and was being impossible about removing his pants.

She sighed, “Let me see.” She didn’t then know what she was asking him to do.

Vikram hesitated before showing her, but standing there shivering like he had shell shock, he slowly lowered his pants and briefs.

Jasleen had never seen a penis and testicles in person. She had seen pictures, but one needed no experience in dicks to recognize that her husband’s anatomy was malformed.

The ugly words birth defect entered her mind. Involuntarily, she gagged. She hated herself for it. “I’m sorry!”

Vikram covered himself immediately, yanking his pants back up so fast he gave himself half a wedgie. “No, don’t say sorry.”

They spent the night talking on the sofa. He admitted much: that he should have told her, how he had rehearsed how he would explain it before they married, but “I was cowardly.”

He related how he could become aroused, but intercourse was, for practical purposes, impossible. “B-but w-we can h-have children,” he quickly reassured her. “There are options now. We can see a doctor. IVF, whatever they recommend. We can still raise a family.”

Jasleen stared at him; she bit her tongue not to object; she locked the words up inside: “Juice without the squeeze.”

The next morning, alone in the bathroom, she cringed at, scowled at, and scolded the stupid woman in the mirror.

“This is your karma for judging those girls who didn’t wait.”

The thought was cruel, superstitious, and followed from her model of the world too naturally.

Then came the guilt. “He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s the one who’s truly suffering, not me.”

She thought how horrible it must have been for her new husband, spending all those years knowing the dreaded night would surely come, and that then he would have to reveal his emasculating condition to his wife and put himself at the mercy of her reaction. Would she be disappointed? Would she mock? Would she tell everyone? She felt boundless depths of pity for him.

But more boundless than that, she became silently, immeasurably furious.

“Why did it have to be a deformity to his genitals? A deformity to his face would have been better.”

She protested against fate. “I waited! I was good!”

Her voice cracked. “I don’t want to learn to accept it! I want to be fucked! I deserve to be fucked!”

She went on like this for weeks, at war in her head. “Is this who I really am? I built this self-righteous tower so I could look down on everybody else, and I’m just a selfish, carnal, sex-craving person like anybody else?” She cried harder.

One night, she dreamed that she and Vikram had sex. His privates were ordinary in the dream. Nothing was malformed. His function and appearance down there had magically been corrected. Jasleen was overjoyed; she buried her face in his warm meat and began mouthing him, hairy soft balls on her chin, swollen glans to the back of her throat. It was insanely hot.

She woke to the crushing sensation of hard reality. Vikram slept beside her while she turned toward the edge of the bed and sobbed into her pillow, shuddering and whimpering.

Within weeks, the agony manifested in her at Math Masters. Jasleen forgot what she was explaining halfway through lessons. A mother asked about her son’s progress twice; Jasleen was zoned the fuck out. She mixed up appointment times. She screwed up tuition. She graded slowly and incorrectly.

Finally, she called her older sister, Navneet, who also taught math, but in the school district. “I need you to take some classes for me.”

“Jas, this academy thing is yours,” she said thoughtfully. “Let me think if I can make time for it.”

But Navneet heard something wrong in her little sister’s voice. Later that night, she called back. “Alright. I can do a couple hours per night. But Jas, be truthful. What’s going on with you lately?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.” Jasleen tried to sound OK and to express that she was grateful Nav would pick up a few classes. “Thank you, I’ll remember this.”

“No, no, no. Whatever it is, it seems to be handling you. You have this distance in your eyes, like you are staring off into space. And you look so tired. And you…”

Jasleen snapped. “Do you and your husband fuck?”

“What?!” Nav guffawed into the phone. “Do my husband and I what?”

“Do you and your husband fuck?” Jasleen repeated, slow and clear.

“Yes, we have sex. Of course.” Nav snickered.

“Lucky you!” Jasleen hung up.

Five minutes later, Navneet called again.

She whispered, “Is Vikram homosexual?”

“No,” Jasleen answered.

There was a pause as Nav tried to think of other possibilities. “Then what is it?”

“He can’t… or he can, but not… not really,” Jasleen murmured. How embarrassing it all was.

Nav whispered lower, “What does that mean? Does he have ED?”

Jasleen lowered her voice despite being alone in her academy office. “Don’t tell anybody. I mean it, Nav. Nobody. Vikram has a deformity.”

“A deformity?”

“To his genitals. He can’t. He physically can’t.”

Silence. But then, “Jasleen. Annul the marriage.”

“No. We can still have children.” Jasleen was firm.

Nav spoke with insistence in her voice. “Forget children. Annul it. His family didn’t disclose this before the wedding. How can they not disclose something like this? They’re in breach.”

“I won’t do that to him.” She held tight to her man.

But the sister looked out for her sister first. “Jas.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“No.” She meant it. “Vikram might have deceived me through omission, but if you had seen his face that first night. I can’t become the person who confirms his lifelong fear that no woman would keep him once she knew. He is more than his genitals. He is a sweet, sweet, hardworking, intelligent, and even handsome man. Nav. I do love him.”

Enter Adam Dabrowski.

His ten-year-old daughter, Natalie, was one of Jasleen’s students. Adam was a commercial electrician, a single father who arrived from work, waited in the academy lobby, and usually stayed a minute to ask how Natalie was doing. “Much better than last month, Mr. Dabrowski. Her weakness remains checking her work before turning it in, however.”

“Natalie, are you listening to your teacher? Double-check everything, come on now.” He was easy to talk to. Too easy. Jasleen prolonged her conversations with him. And unconsciously, first gradually but then at a rapid rate, she flirted. He flirted back.

Natalie once gave her dad some rude rebellious backtalk: “I don’t need you to come inside to pick me up; I can walk to your ugly car.”

Jasleen grimaced with a mother’s fury. “Natalie, how impolite to your father. Apologize to him.”

Natalie had already flown out the door. Adam grinned. “That’s nothing, don’t worry about it.”

Jasleen shook her head and smiled. “I’ll teach her familial manners with her next math lesson, no extra tuition, Adam.”

“Good thing you haven’t met my ex-wife,” he told Jasleen. “She trashes me to everyone she crosses paths with, from the dentist to the cashier.”

“One woman’s trash is another woman’s treasure.” The words escaped before Jasleen could catch them.

Adam looked at her. Jasleen looked at Adam.

Across the academy, Navneet slowly raised her eyes from a worksheet.

There were several incidents like this.

Nav noticed Jasleen just so happened to be in the front lobby whenever Adam arrived, while Natalie was still in class, so that she could have more time with him. She noticed Jasleen’s progress reports for Natalie somehow produced more discussion than progress reports for other students. Nav noticed Adam lingering after he had obtained whatever information he supposedly needed.

Nav noticed her sister brighten around Adam and remain high off those short interactions hours afterward.

Jasleen was smiling and laughing again, like a little dose of Adam now and then was all the medicine she needed.

Jasleen returned to form, teaching her lessons with enthusiasm and detailed instructions. She stopped appearing like a ghost haunting her own academy.

One evening, like usual, Adam and Natalie left together. Jasleen watched through the wide parking lot-facing window until they had pulled away and out of sight.

She turned around and saw that Navneet was staring at her.

“So what? Say it.”

Navneet gave her a sad, understanding frown. “You need him.”

Jasleen blinked.

Nav continued, “And he needs you. It isn’t complicated.”

Jasleen sighed loudly. “I’m married.”

Nav pointed her red pen. "That! That's what's complicated."

If there should have been a transition or segue into what came next, there hardly seemed to be. Adam and Jasleen had coffee at the ice cream cafe adjacent to the academy, walking there together through the crosswalk. Then, in the same week, they were having lunch. Then they were sending texts back and forth on a discreet app for just that, like they were mutual first loves. She didn’t tell him Vikram’s issue; it wasn’t about her husband, she thought. It was about her and Adam. Adam’s kiss made that undeniable, no debate. Not the nervous, hesitant kisses her husband gave. No apologies. No asking. Just a fully masculine, self-assured, passionate kind of kiss, again and again.

Jasleen only needed to tell Vikram, while he was at work, that she was walking the trail through the forest preserve for exercise. Adam picked her up there and took her back to his apartment.

Jasleen had expected Adam’s apartment to be, well, divorced dad. It was spacious, tidy, well-lit. She thought if she were single she’d look forward to moving in with him. But that was in another life. In this life, she was having an affair.

Adam embraced her before she had a chance to sit down, and his stubble tickled her neck, and he went open-mouthed, kissing her from the nape to under her earlobe to her throat and down to her collarbone. One word filled her mind: yes!

She felt his bulge pressing into her side as he pulled her in tighter. Without warning, he lifted her off her feet, something her husband had never attempted and she doubted he had the strength to do, and carried her into his bedroom. On the way, she ran her hand over his chest, up under his necklace and along his neck, feeling his prominent Adam’s apple, and then landed a kiss under his chin before he dropped her onto his bed, onto her butt, with a bounce.

She watched as he came out of his shirt in one inside-out pulling motion. He stood bedside and invited her. “Get me undone.”

“What?” she asked, unsure.

“Belt, button, and zipper.” He angled his hips forward.

She got to it. And it occurred to her that this, not any time previous, she would regard as her true first. Whatever she’d seen before was not a real man’s cock. Whatever she had seen before was not a real man’s nuts. This was the man, this was the moment, here and now. And so she treasured it in the moment, marking it in her memory, making video camera lenses of her eyes to keep what she was about to see forever.

She got his pants down. He was even kind enough to pull the back down over his ass buns. She saw his boxers tented. Whatever he had in there could fill his shorts so marvelously, she thought. And then she pulled them down also.

Glorious, perfect, formed by nature as intended, devoid of ugliness or the mark of misfortune. He was blessed to have a normal penis and normal testicles. Blessed! Erect and functioning, and ready to fuck her!

Tears shot silently from her eyes and nostrils. Adam’s face went straight to pure terror, and his heart just about burst from his chest. He yanked his boxers back up to conceal his privates. “No-no-no-no-no. Jasleen, sorry. We don’t have to do anything. I thought we were both ready. It’s completely cool.”

She shook her head. “You misunderstand. I do want to. I want to more than anything.”

He sat beside her on the bed, careful not to touch her. “Yeah? What is it? Do you want to tell me?”

“I’m happy, I guess.” She smiled and rubbed her face dry.

He handed her a tissue from the box on his nightstand. “Happy? Oh. Me too.”

Jasleen placed her hand on his bare chest and felt this and that, his body hair a pet beneath her palm, and she pressed him to lie back. With him on his back, she took off her top, and he hooked her bra strap in his finger, helping it to drop down into her lap. He regarded her tits, and he almost came back up to plant his face in them, but she poked him by his sternum to make him lie back and stay there. She stood and dropped her jeans, then shimmied out of her panties. She pulled his boxers off, this time all the way down and off his ankles. She climbed back into the bed and returned to eyeing her favorite piece of man, his manhood itself. She grinned from ear to ear, looked at his standing meat, then looked to his eyes, and back again several times.

“What?” Adam chuckled.

“You have no idea.” She exhaled, nigh reverent.

“Yeah?” He cocked an eyebrow, becoming a bit smug. “He’s all yours.”

“Who is all mine?” she snapped, but almost instantly recomposed herself. “Oh! Yes. Yes, all mine.”

She took his shaft in hand, positioned her face hovering over it, and then awkwardly, mechanically, tentatively lowered her open mouth onto his cock. He filled his lungs and flexed his ass in a brief upward thrust. Her hair spread around his lap, obstructing the view of her face, as she sucked and sucked.

He couldn’t take too much more of that without blowing his load, so he gently tapped her. “Sit on me. Sit on it.”

She didn’t need to be told twice. She threw a leg over him. He linked his fingers together behind her head and pulled her in close, her breasts hanging in his face, and she reached down and between them to guide his dick head into her hole. He slipped in, and she rocked back and forth, grinding her clit against him while his dick inched deeper and deeper with each galloping stride.

“Adam! Call me like you called your wife, before she was your ex-wife! Call me honey or whatever you called her. Please?” she trembled.

Adam gave it about 3 seconds of thought and obliged her. “Honey, I missed you from clock-in to clock-out. I work a lot, but it's made worthwhile coming home to you.”

“Was work hard today? I’m moved that you can look forward to seeing me at the end of the day.” She moved on him with such force his bed was practically a symphony of creaks. The headboard tapped the wall. The sheet came off the corners.

“You’re the best wife in the world, babe. You really are.” Adam planted his hands on her hips. She was riding him so hard he almost worried she’d go flying off backward.

“Mmrmph! Mmrmph! Uuh! Urmf! Urgh!” Jasleen whipped her hair, tossing her head to and fro. Adam circled his thumbs around her nipples. She forgot Vikram. Her memory rushed well past him to her years of turning down boys just to go home and hump her pillows, to giving slutty party girls the side-eye only to daydream about their boyfriends, to when she used to sit in college courses and draw what her future husband should look like, and feel that tingle in her ovaries.

She curled forward, French-kissed Adam, and gave in to her orgasm. He too thrust hard and tight, pulsing, emptying himself into her as their tongues frantically invaded one another’s mouths.

Later that night, when she lay in bed beside Vikram, he suspected nothing. “Good night.”

“Yes, good night.” Jasleen wasn’t surprised by that. Her math-brain told her that exposure was the product of x and y. Neither x nor y had been supplied, and so Vikram could not see the answer that he had been cheated on that very day for the very first time in his life and his wife’s. And that’s just how Jasleen wanted it.

An appallingly delicious thought occurred to her. Maybe she was fortunate. Jasleen recoiled from the idea even as her mind constructed its argument. Vikram’s deformity had tormented him, yet it might also make him uniquely capable of understanding what she needed.

Of all husbands, wouldn’t Vikram understand? She made Vikram a loving, warm breakfast.

Perhaps, someday, he would see evidence and deliberately ignore it. Maybe he would know what she was doing without forcing her to admit it. She would never humiliate him by demanding permission, and he would never humiliate her by demanding a confession. She kissed Vikram as he went off to work.

They could simply remain husband and wife. She answered Adam’s texts once he was out of the garage and driving away.

They could have children, she and Vikram; they could visit relatives on holidays, build his career and her business, pay a ridiculous mortgage and property taxes, and grow old together. She pulled their laundry out of the dryer and hung Vikram’s clothes.

And occasionally, discreetly, Jasleen could satisfy the hunger she had spent twenty-five years pretending was beneath her.

Adam did not have to be her last lover.

That realization excited her most.

There were other Adams in the world, except that they would not be Adam. They would be different, new, interesting men she had not met.

Men waiting to be discovered, yet.

The thought made her wet.