The Hobby Job: A Romantic Wife-Watching Novel Read online

  THE HOBBY JOB

  A Romantic Wife-Watching Novel

  By Arnica Butler

  *********

  Copyright 2015 by Arnica Butler

  All rights reserved. No duplicating and no resale, but

  feel free to share with friends or family.

  Published by Thirteenth Line Publications

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, companies, organizations, products and events in this book, other than those that are clearly in the public domain, are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, companies, organizations, events, or products, is purely coincidental.

  All characters depicted in this story are 18 years or older.

  Cover characters are models. Image(s) is/are licensed from:

  g_studio / DepositPhotos

  Published by Thirteenth Line Publications

  Other Novels by Arnica Butler:

  Ela's Performance: A Romantic Wife-Watching Novel

  Not Black And White: A Hotwife Novel

  A Gamble: The Making Of A Hotwife

  The Tenant: A Very Naughty Hotwife Novel

  The Hotwife Summer

  A Dark Place: Cuckolded in Lagos

  The Hotwife Tattoo

  READERS!

  SIGN UP for our newsletter!

  We email once per week and do not spam.

  You can also follow Arnica Butler @ArnicaButler on Twitter.

  Please drop me a line! I love to hear from readers.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  To The Reader

  Prelude: Eliza

  1: Something Had To Change

  2: Pied Piper

  3: A Shift

  4: Turned On

  5: Just Longing

  6: MILF

  7: On The Side

  8: Suspicious Things

  9: Problems

  10: Confrontation

  11: Relief

  12: Only One Way To Find Out

  13: A New Thrill

  14: Watching

  15: Further

  16: Sneaking Around

  17: I Have To Go

  18: Strip Tease

  19: What Really Happened

  20: Serious Now

  21: How Things Work Out

  22: Waiting

  23: Getting There

  24: The Real Hobby

  Epilogue

  More From Arnica Butler

  T O THE READER

  I get asked a lot why I don't write my hotwife stories from the perspective of the woman. I am, after all, really a female author. I have the same answer every time: I try it out, something about it doesn't work for me, and I end up going back to the husband's voice.

  But I really wanted to challenge myself with this latest novel, so I set out writing from the perspective of Laura, a career-professional-turned-housewife who is feeling a little bit trapped in the boonies, living out her charming country dream life.

  Should be a cinch, this particular character, I thought.

  But, as usual, I felt really boxed in by something.

  So then I had an idea to alternate voices.

  I was advised, by more than one person whose opinion I value, not to write this book the way I did. When I discussed alternating from first-person male to first-person female, most people were like, “I don't like that.” Or, more sagely: “you won't be able to maintain the tension in a hotwife story, because so much of it comes from not knowing what the other person is thinking.”

  As usual, I thanked everyone, knowing they were probably right, and then did it anyway.

  I wanted to try it out and see if I could make it work, and protect the “not-knowing” through a variety of tricks and narrative omissions. Originally, it was just kind of a fun experiment. I thought it might not end well, but no harm in trying.

  However, I am really thrilled with what I have done here. I think I've made it work, and I'm very happy with the writing and the story.

  I know this story deviates a little bit from the typical Arnica Butler novel. It's a little bit more psychological than super down and dirty, and a little more realistic (because is it anchored, as you will see, in real life). I hope the change is refreshing, and the realism is exciting for you.

  This is, like The Gamble and The Hotwife Tattoo, a slower burn. But as always, I've tried to make it worth it at the end. Also, what's not to love about a great tease?

  As always, I hope you enjoy the fantasy I've created for you as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  P RELUDE

  1997 - CONRAD

  Eliza. Eliza, who is not my wife and was never my girlfriend, is the place where all of this got started, at least for me.

  “Eliza,” I repeated. I looked at the long-limbed, dark-skinned girlfriend my buddy Troy had brought to the bar, trying to place her ethnicity, and maybe steal a glimpse of her huge breasts, swimming underneath a tantalizingly loose shirt.

  In Troy's direction, I nodded in approval: she was hot. I forgave him silently for pulling a disappearing act for nearly a month.

  I swiped the bar top with a semi-clean towel and tried to look suave, which was no easy feat in The Yard, the dump I worked in all the way through college. “What'll it be?”

  Eliza stretched her long arms across the bar and ordered a gin and tonic in a voice that was two octaves lower than I'd expected. It was sultry, slightly nasal, and felt like listening to jazz in a speakeasy. Not that I'd ever done that, but it's the first thing that popped into my mind. The words left her full lips and her mouth quivered with a smile, inviting my eyes along for a walk all over her body. Her eyes lowered and invited me for a stroll down her swan-like neck, along the collar of her loose, small shirt, and lower still, if I wanted. She had a glint in her eyes that was egging me on to do it.

  Her mocha skin faded to a milkier shade of caramel where her large breasts moved around beneath the fabric of her semi-transparent shirt. The shirt left little to the imagination, and it was clear she didn't care. She had big, dark aureole and long nipples, and they darted around beneath the stripes of metallic and the more revealing stripes of transparent black. “One for you, too.” She gave me a full smile, and her dark eyes went up and down, before she spun in her chair and sauntered off to play pool.

  Troy watched her leave and turned back to me. “Yeah. Get me a beer, good buddy,” he said. “So whadya think?”

  “Hot,” I said, but I was on guard. I set a glass on the table and started to pour her drink. She was fucking hot, but the whole interaction had seemed a little too flirtatious, given that Troy was right there.

  “Don't forget yours,” Troy told me, reminding me of Eliza's drink offer.

  I squeezed the lime and smiled. She-wasn't-serious, the smile said. Troy shrugged.

  “This girl,” Troy said, leaning over the bar and taking his own glass from the behind counter to fill it with beer from the only tap he could reach, “is fucking incredible. I mean...fucking incredible. I think I'm in love.”

  I raised my eyebrows. This was not Troy-like. Behind him, out of focus, the lithe figure of Eliza leaned over the pool table and her breasts swung dangerously forward and back, barely within the confines of her skimpy shirt. My eyes were sucked away to view them, only briefly, and then I looked down quickly at a glass of water to cover up my gawking.

  Troy gave me a grin, and nodded. I hated this kind of shit, to be honest: gawking at girls like Eliza; shared, locker-room smiles and nods.

  “She's sort of half-black,” he continued, leaning closer and lowering his voice, “so she has this tight, curly bush -”

  I set my water down and held a hand up. I shook my head to
indicate I did not want him to continue.

  Troy never took “no” for an answer when it came to this sort of thing.

  “And her pussy, man, gets so wet.”

  I was thankful that someone a few seats down held his hand up and hollered for a Molson. That doesn't mean I didn't have an image of Eliza's small, tight curls overlaying a purple, or maybe bright pink, cunt in my mind. The appeal of something so exotic, dripping wet, was winding my cock up whether I wanted the image in my head or not. I blinked slowly and fought the urge to look over at the pool tables, where, my peripheral vision was telling me Eliza was bent over the table. The round, full globes of her tight ass were displayed for the entire bar. I tried, and failed, not to superimpose over this scene the image of her pussy, planted in my mind by Troy.

  Troy changed the subject when I went back to him. Every guy in the place was angling their stool a little to have a better view of the pool tables. There was a TV with a minor-league hockey game above the table where Eliza was stooping and shimmering in her faux-alligator pants, but I knew as well as anyone else the hockey wasn't the attraction, no matter how glued everyone's eyes were to the TV. Eliza's legs, long like a colt, almost seemed to dangle from her hips. She crossed and uncrossed them as she bent over to size up her shot. Between shots she tossed her shimmering black hair over her shoulder and moved her fingers over the tip of the pool stick in nimble circles. You couldn't help imagining her doing the same thing to the tip of your own cock.

  “What time you get off?” Troy asked, as though he were completely unaware of the sizzle Eliza had added to the room. “You want to hang out? Eliza has a friend at this club downtown.”

  I found some glasses to wash and busied myself with the task. “I dunno, man,” I said.

  “When you get off? Or about the club?”

  I shrugged. “I don't wanna be a third wheel,” I said. It was nearly always the case. Troy made an okay wing-man, on the rare occasions he didn't find an attractive girl and head off with her first, or didn't have an unstable girlfriend getting us kicked out of a place. The rest of the time, I was an obvious third wheel.

  “It ain't even like that,” Troy said. “Seriously.”

  I had no idea what he meant by “that.” Sometimes Troy seemed to read my mind. He was always the one with the girls flocking around him, even though he was a typical ass. Always doing stupid shit, like climbing trees to rescue cats at three am., jumping off rooftops into pools, and other idiotic nonsense that girls claimed to hate but seemed to swoon over. And it seemed to pay off, at least in the way he wanted it to: he never went home alone.

  In college I was a pretty fit guy – who wasn't? - and I didn't have a ton of trouble getting girls to flirt with me. I just wasn't into so gratuitously, as Troy put it, “closing the deal.” I liked having a girlfriend, for one thing, and most girls became annoyed by Troy after a few nights out with him. I was in a dry patch at the time, and I was starting to get annoyed by Troy as well. It didn't seem like sitting around in a club while he and the beautiful Eliza played kissy-face was going to get me any closer to having what I really wanted. A nice, friendly, fun, attractive girl I could eat pizza and play video games with.

  “I am telling you,” he continued. “This will be fun. She has some friends. Hot. I think you'd like them.”

  I poured him another beer. “But they're not for you?” My tone was sarcastic. Fifty percent of Troy's relationships had ended because he had fucked his girlfriend's best friend.

  Troy shook his head. “I'm telling you. True love. Eliza and I have it all worked out.”

  I leaned backward so I could look down my nose at him. He called this my “bifocal move.” I was aware it was pretty irritating, made me look like my dad, but it was innate. It was almost the only way to get under Troy's skin.

  Troy just grinned at me, though, instead of getting annoyed. Then he walked off to play pool with the lovely Eliza.

  This is not a story, though, about how hot Eliza was.

  I mean, she was. Hot as balls, as Troy would have said. She was also incredibly fun. She tipped her head back to laugh, and it warbled from her throat, warm and delicious. She smiled and told great, dirty jokes. But she wasn't really my type. Too big, even though she was thin – big, like she took up the whole room with her personality and her deep voice, and her mouth seemed to swallow her whole face, and her tits managed to be everywhere all the time.

  I gave in and we went to the downtown club.

  There was another thing about Eliza, too. She was sort of a slutty flirt. To get us into the club, she had slinked up to the bouncer, and thrown her arm around him. I watched, feeling awkwardly for Troy, as she placed her big lips next to the bouncer's ear and whispered some kind of spellbinding thing to him. His drawn face broke apart into the kind of smile that only comes from thinking about a humorously filthy sexual act, and he unhooked the chain and waved us through.

  But he stopped Eliza with a big arm, as we filed through, and I turned my head to see him holding her close to him. Eliza placed a long finger on his lips and they chuckled to each other wetly, like a new couple.

  When I looked back at Troy, he had summoned a toothpick from his shirt and had it between his teeth. His mouth was smiling, strangely. His eyes appeared to be right on Eliza.

  I had almost no time to think about that strange scene, though, because Eliza came at us like a cannonball, her black hair shining red beneath the lights and her mouth open like a burst black cherry. “Boys,” she yelled over the music, which started building up at that particular moment. “Let's get our dance on!”

  Her forearm was against my neck, and floating over the tones of canned smoke and body odor and sour beer I could smell her soap. Something unflowered, and not fruity. She smelled, almost paradoxically, like clean laundry.

  Eliza's friends were, as promised, hot. Squealing, shaking, glittering, blonde-and-bright red hot. A platinum-haired girl with wide-set eyes and tight, pretty features squeaked at me over the music and laughed at everything I said for about five minutes. But after a few drinks her smile started to seem crazy, sort of the way Cameron Diaz's does, and so I declined an invitation to join her dancing.

  I mean, I wasn't headed out there anyway. The cliche is true, and I could be convinced to dance by a pretty girl if the floor was full and there was no chance of me being fully seen doing whatever it was I did out there.

  I knew what it looked like.

  Eliza began with Troy, and then her black hair was swirling everywhere. In flashes of strobe I saw her leaning forward, her mouth open, her pressed up against a shadowy figure behind her.

  Not Troy.

  My eyes flickered around the scene. Eliza disappeared and another part of the dance floor was lit up. When I saw her again she had her forearms resting on the shoulders of another guy.

  Not Troy.

  Jesus, I remember thinking. I remember feeling bad for Troy, who really seemed deep into Eliza.

  I looked down at my drink and then at one of Eliza's friends, who had collapsed in the booth about three feet from me and had over-dilated eyes. She gave me a hollow drug-smile, and I looked into my beer again.

  My mind was giving some brief thoughts – very brief, mind you, because Troy and I didn't have all that close of a friendship – about whether or not I should say something to Troy about his girlfriend, when Troy peeled Eliza's stoned friend away from the booth to climb behind her and plop next to me.

  I looked up at the dance floor. Eliza had squeezed her way back toward where we sitting, and she was dancing very close to a black man. My eyes darted over the scene. The guy had his hands on her hips and was moving them down...down to her ass.

  I looked at Troy.

  Since his body wasn't reacting to the scene, I expected to see him preoccupied with something else. Instead, he was just picking his teeth with his toothpick and watching.

  I looked back and forth from Eliza to Troy, making sure the line of sight was, in fact, lined up.


  I looked back at Troy's face. His eyes were lit up, like he was watching a boxing match come in big for him.

  “Dude,” I said. Or rather, yelled. “What the fuck is going on?”

  Troy rubbed his chin, where an unsightly goatee was growing into some weird triangle, and he just smiled.

  I looked back at Eliza. She had turned to snuggle up against the man she was dancing with. Her back was pressed against his chest, and her ass was nestled in his crotch. She raised her hands and exposed her whole stomach – a very nice view – and I watched in horror as the man's hands slid under her loose shirt...under, and up.

  I snapped back to Troy. He was still just watching.

  Back to Eliza. The man's hands were very clearly on her tits now. The image of her dark aureole peeking out of her shirt at my bar filled me head, and my palms itched with the desire to have my hands where this guy's hands were.

  And then Eliza, who had been dancing with her eyes closed, lifted her eyelashes, and her big brown eyes locked.

  On Troy.

  Their shared look burned through the room. At the time, I was so shocked, so I didn't appreciate it. Who knows how to act in a situation like this? But later that night, when I had time to think about it, the look these two exchanged would be the most lasting image of the day.

  “We have it sorted out,” Troy said, for me, even though he didn't move his eyes or take them off of Eliza. “I'm gonna have to go soon, buddy.”

  He never looked back at me. Eliza's dance partner turned her around and leaned close to her ear, his mouth nibbling at her skin as he told her whatever he told her. Eliza's eyes left Troy's briefly, but they were back on him again soon enough. She gave him a wink.

  It was like she wanted him to be jealous.

  I looked at Troy. He was enjoying the whole scene.

  The man pushed Eliza into the bouncing mass of the dance floor, toward the exit. Troy absent-mindedly slid a fifty toward me, and said something I couldn't hear. His eyes were locked on the place where Eliza had gone, and he didn't look back.