Like many of yours, my job involves travel, and most guys and women I know complain about the same thing -- we have high-energy days but at 5:00 PM, unless we have arranged a business dinner, we retreat to our hotel rooms, alone. Guys have an advantage, they can go to the hotel lounge and have a drink. A woman alone in a hotel lounge is often taken for, well, you know.

I attend PittCon, an annual technical conference and exposition, because one of the professional societies I am in has its annual meeting there. PittCon -- the Pittsburgh Conference -- was in Chicago this year (I know, Chicago is not Pittsburgh but if you’re involved in a particular branch of science, you know the story; if you’re not, it’s too long to tell here).

I was having dinner with Phil, a colleague from another university that I’ve known for years. What a relief, not having to dine alone or worse yet, having room service bring a salad up to my room. We were having a before-dinner drink in our hotel’s lounge, talking about the amenities the hotel offered in addition to being close to the convention center.

“I got down to the pool when it was still dark this morning,” I told him. “That gave me enough time to get dressed and put my face on before the sessions started.”

“I was going to go down early too,” Phil said, “but I took a penthouse suite here and the sunrise over Lake Michigan distracted me. It will probably distract me again tomorrow.”

“That sounds like it would be worth giving up a morning swim for."

“Trust me, it is. Come on up tomorrow, I’ll share it with you.”

We had a laugh, then I saw Phil suddenly look either embarrassed or surprised. He saw the questioning look on my face. “Oops,” he said, “I guess I would not be a good poker player. Look over there, do you see that woman in a black dress?”

I looked and saw a strikingly beautiful woman. “I can see why she got your attention, Phil.”

“It’s not that,” he said. “She’s a pro, an escort, and she’s probably meeting someone -- yes, there, that’s the hookup.”  I followed his glance and saw her greet another member of my society.

“He’s in for an expensive evening,” Phil said as we watched them leave.

“How do you know so much about it?” I wanted to know.

Phil was embarrassed, but he told the story. “You know I’m on the facilities  committee for Pittcon, we met here six months ago to arrange the final details for the exposition and I, uh, well I used her services,”  Phil said, his eyes a little downcast.

“Tell me about that!”

It took a while, but Phil told me the story. For $600 he had her for most of an evening. “She uses the name ‘Robin’ and I guess you’d call it a stage name. She’s a pretty good actress, she can make a guy feel like Superman,” he said, “but I saw her drop out of character a couple of times, and that reduced things to me being a John and her a whore: she was just something for me to get off in. I shouldn’t talk about things like that to you..”

“You look like you’re a little jealous of that guy though, the one who went off with her,” I said.

“No, not at all. But I won’t do anything like that again; sex with a stranger should be hot but I would rather know my partner better, know there is beauty both inside and out. Otherwise, it’s empty sex.”

“Not to sound sexist,” he added, “but I think men are more prone to get into that kind of thing than women. I mean, look at you, you seem so much above stuff like that. You look like a happily marrid woman. I see that ring, I know what it means.”

I wear a broad wedding ring and he had noticed it of course. He knew me for years as that professor who projects a ‘don’t even think about it’ aura to guys who might otherwise think about it. Most women professionals had learned to perfect that look.

“My husband says that ring is shark repellant,” I told him.

“The way you carry yourself makes it very effective,” he said. “Now let’s go have dinner.”

We did, and shared some wine too. Since we were both staying at that hotel we rode the elevator up together. The elevator rang its “I’m on the fifth floor” bell; it was time for me to get out.

As the door opened, Phil squeezed my hand, I turned to him, and we shared one of those cheek-to-cheek air kisses that are part of our friendly rituals. I guess I held that cheek kiss a second too long, or he did.  Our lips were so close -- there was just that second of hesitation and he moved his head, and I did mine. It stopped being an air kiss and it was so sweet, then his lips opened a little, and mine did too, and the friendly kiss turned into a more intimate one.

The elevator door began closing. I pushed away, stepped out, smiled and said,  “Good night, Phil.” He smiled too as the door closed.

I went to my room, closed the door, and thought about the evening, that woman in the black dress, Phil’s story about hiring an escort, a wonderful dinner and then that kiss.

That kiss.

I undressed, reached for my pajamas, then let them fall to the bathroom floor, got into bed, totally nude,  the light from the window offering just a warm sensation, and I wondered what it would be like, well, Robin,  and having a man pay for the privilege of the seeing me like this. Well, it would be more than looking. The word ‘using’ came to mind.

I wondered if Phil arranged for Robin, or someone else,  to come to his room tonight?

And I thought about Phil’s kiss, and my body tingled with the memory. I stretched out, feeling sexy, feeling naughty.

I fell asleep with a smile.

I awoke well before dawn -- Chicago’s time zone is an hour behind North Carolina’s -- and getting up early back home was my routine. I stretched out and realized I had gone to sleep without my pajamas on! I smiled at how silly I was being, sleeping nude because a guy kissed me. It was time to get real; the hotel’s pool was beckoning. Another day at PittCon -- morning exercise, a shower, a day of not very important meetings and lecturers, then that common end of a conference's day, a lonely evening, and do the same thing again tomorrow.  Well, maybe another dinner with Phil, and maybe another good night kiss? That would be nice, but I remembered how he looked at that escort, that “Robin”, and in spite of what he said I thought he might very well be ‘otherwise occupied’ these evenings.

My in-room phone rang. Who uses hotel phones anymore?  That’s why God invented cell phones.

It was Phil.  “Hey, wake up. Come on up here, it’s going to be another glorious sunrise. You’ll just be a little late for the pool but the reward for being late is great hot coffee. Room service just brought up a pot. It’s an offer you can’t refuse. Then we can go to the gym together.”

I couldn’t help laugh. “Hey, Phil, I just woke up, I’m a wreck, my hair, my face...”

“Throw on some sweats, you’re not going out anywhere, you don’t have to be your usual perfect self. It will be worth it. This coffee is better than Starbucks.”

Panties, bra, sweats, flip-flops, with my bathing suit pushed into my purse, and I was on my way.

The smile on his face when he opened the door was wonderful. “Tina, I’ve never seen you like this, so casual, you look wonderful!”

He was dressed in a tee shirt and sweatpants too, also ready for the gym.

“I wasn’t sure you would recognize me,” I told him as I went in and accepted the cup of coffee he offered. I admit to looking around the suite to see if there was any evidence Robin was there. There was none I could see, and the bed, visible thru the doorway, looked as if it was slept in and not used as a playground.

Probably there was no Robin in his life last night.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” he said, “I guess I was a little too bold in the elevator last night. I should apologize for that. Anyhow,” he went on, not giving me time to respond, “I Googled sunrise and, taking into account how high this room is, we have fifteen minutes. Come to the window, look at how beautiful the sky is, and how it’s getting brighter.”

“About the elevator,” I said, “there is no need to apologize, okay?”

He smiled.  “Okay."

We stood side by side, enjoying watching the sky brighten, Lake Michigan waking up, enjoying the moment and honestly, for me, it was something of a forbidden pleasure, being in this place with him.

He must have had the same sense. “I noticed you’re not wearing your shark-repellant wedding ring.”

“I don’t expect there to be sharks in the pool,” I said, “and I don’t wear it all of the time.”

“Just when you think you’re in danger?”

That brought a smile to my lips. “Should I think I am in danger?

He stood behind me, looking out the window over my shoulder. “Tina, can I say you’re beautiful, that I really like looking at you like this even more than watching the sunrise?”

My smile continued: “You know, hearing something like that really works on this older woman’s ego.”

“You deserve compliments. I know,” he said as we stood there, “back on campus you have a load of responsibilities. Even here, you have to attend meetings and be in charge a lot of the time. Why not take the opportunity now to just relax?  Like those old Greyhound bus ads used to say, ‘leave the driving to me.’”

He was right about the tension and responsibilities. “You’re perceptive,” I told him. “It would be nice to simply let go for a while.”

“Why not do it here? Just let yourself go, just feel like you have no responsibilities here except to relax and enjoy the sunrise...”

His voice was soothing, almost hypnotic.

“That sounds nice,” I said, “letting go does sound nice…”

There was an electricity in the air, a tension. Why was I here, anyway? Was it the sunrise? Or was it because of that kiss?  A moment later I felt his arms encircle my waist. It was a careful, gentle touch but more than just a friendly gesture. It was a body-language question.

It would have been so easy to turn around and make it a friendly hug. Instead, I put my hands on his. He was, I am sure, ready to feel me pull his arms away, but after a moment I leaned back into him, accepting his embrace, an answer to that unasked question.

“Yes, like that, relax…” I felt his head over my shoulder and tilted my own head aside a  little, away from his. It was a flirty thing to do, an invitation, exposing my neck a little more, just beside and below his lips.

I was a married woman in his arms, would he…?

With a small movement, he decreased the distance between his lips and my neck to zero.

The hug from the back was one thing, a light thing, something that can happen between friends, it’s just a gesture.

A kiss on the neck is way past that.

I love having my neck kissed…..and my ear.

He held my waist with one hand, with the other he pulled at at my top’s neckline to expose a little of my shoulder and when his lips touched me there my reaction told him I liked having my shoulder kissed, too. It told him, more importantly, that I was not objecting. It was more than simply not objecting. He was being bold, assertive. I wanted that, wanted to be led, not to have the responsibility of leading.

Is this really why I came up here? Maybe, on some unconscious level, but I was feeling -- would euphoric be the right word? Sexy? Naughty? So alive, so aware of every sensation, so aware of every implication too.  He was holding me tight against him, his presumptions validated by my lack of resistance. Lack of resistance is too weak a phrase, it was my acceptance of what he was doing. I could feel that he was starting to get an erection, too, it was pressing against my lower back.

I didn’t come up here for this, did I?

Or maybe I did. I remembered spraying a little perfume on my neck before I left the room.

Perfume before a swim…?

His lips had moved back up to my neck, and his hands were back around me, but this time one of his hands was over my left hand, not under it. He was caressing my hand and whispered, “I’m glad the shark-repellant ring is still in your room,’ and held me even tighter. I may have sighed but I do know my knees were feeling weak.

He held my left hand and moved it back until it was on his hip and then, not really forcing me, guided it between us until I could feel his hardness under his sweatpants. I may have whimpered a little as my fingers, not resisting, remained there, feeling that shaft, maybe gently exploring its length.

His lips on my shoulders were not enough for him. He turned me so I was facing him and our lips met in that kiss you all know, the one where a man is telling a woman this is going to end with a lot more than a kiss. HIs was a hungry kiss, full of passion.

“I want you,” he grunted into the kiss. I didn’t answer with a word, just submitted to his hug and his mouth and his tongue, being kissed. He took my wrist, moved my hand to his belly again, and then lower. I could feel his his penis growing beneath his sweats, that was delicious!

He still had his hand over mine, but during that long kiss took my wrist, lifted it up over the waistband of his sweats, under his tee shirt, onto his hip.

The kiss ended. I opened my eyes to find him focused on my face as he pushed my fingertips under the waistband of his workout pants and said, “I want you to touch me.”

I felt his hip as my hand moved under his pants, then under a second elastic band -- his briefs? --and then felt the start of a mat of pubic hair, felt a shaft, its length, its head, wrapped my fingers around it.

“Yes. Kiss me while you’re doing that..”

There was no holding back, no pretense, no false protestations. I wanted to be doing this, pleasing myself by pleasing him, giving myself to him.

“The sun is going to break the horizon in a minute,” he said. “I want the first sunbeam of the day to be on you.”

He began lifting my sweat’s top, I raised my hands to allow that. It was gone.

He pushed down at my pants until they puddled around my ankles. I felt his fingers working on my bra’s clasp and then its tightness relaxed -- it was unhooked.

He pushed at my bra’s straps, they slid down as I lowered my arms, then it fell free, and as the sun began shining into the room it shone on me too, revealing that my own nipples had tightened telling Phil and the sun and the sky I was aroused.

His hands took both of mine and guided them until they were at the elastic waistband of my panties.

“Those too,” he said as he guided my fingers inside that elastic and began pushing my hands down, and with them, my panties.

I was doing “those too”, feeling the elastic move over my belly, and then the back slid over my buttocks. I could feel that so clearly. Then it snapped lower, the last barrier removed. I knew what I was supposed to do and bent a little, pushing them past my knees, letting them fall to the floor. I stepped out of them and my flip-flops. The sun’s light found me nude in the arms of a man, kissing him, a man who was not my husband.  A part of me wondered, would the sun tell anyone what it saw? Would Phil? Would I?

“You are so much sexier and so much more real than that woman, that Robin, could ever be,” he said as his hands moved from high on my back to over my buttocks and back again, both exploring and claiming me as his own.

It was more a whimper than a question. “Did you kiss Robin too?”

“No, I didn’t want to kiss her lips. but I want to kiss your lips and all of you. I want you completely. But now I want you to make a fantasy I have had come true. I want you to do what she did. I want you to be like her, but I am not going to call you Tina, or Robin. To me, your name is ‘Dawn’.”

He pushed down at my shoulders. My breasts moved over his body and he put one hand on the back of my head, holding it against his tee shirt as I sank lower... until I was on my knees. It wasn’t me, it was Dawn who was on her knees.

He pulled off his tee shirt and pulled me forward until my lips were on his belly.

“Dawn, do what Robin did!” was a command, not a request.

I kissed at his belly, my hands on his hips. He pushed my head lower and my lips moved his sweatpants and his briefs until my lips were on that mat of pubic hair I felt earlier.

“I want you to go down on me now. I want to own you. I want my cock in your mouth.”

I pulled at his sweats, or Dawn did, until they and his briefs were around his ankles. His erection was in front of me, its head touching my cheek. “I feel slutty,” I said as I turned so my lips could caress the side of his shaft.

He moved back a little until its tip was pressing against my lips.

“You are. Do me!”

I did. I opened my mouth, letting him in, being in that most subservient position: on my knees in front of a man, tasting his heat, his salt, worshiping his cock.

“Yes, like that,” he said, and in a moment muttered, “so much better than Robin…”

It wasn’t long before he pulled me into the bedroom, onto his bed, positioned me on my back on it, ordered me to stretch tall, and I did.

A sunbeam crossed the bed, crossed my body. I could feel its heat, or was it Phil’s heat?

Or mine?

His lips met mine --- he kissed me after I went down on him, have you any idea how much having a man kiss you after you’ve gone down on him proves to a woman?

Then he kissed my neck, my left breast, my belly.

“I would never do this to Robin but I am going to do it to you,” he whispered, as I felt his lips and tongue more lower, until...

Until he reached up and moved my hands down so that one was on either side of that most intimate part of me, then pressed my fingers down and away from my center. “Yes, Dawn, open yourself for me, spread those lips,” he said, and then I felt mouth and lips and tongue push in on me. I was completely his, completely -- is slutified a word?

There was that little shiver, an orgasm!

“I felt that, good,” he said, and moved up, his mouth glistening with his juices and mine. He straddled me, positioning himself between my legs. “I am not going to put on a condom, I want you, skin on skin.”

Was he safe, healthy? Too late, we were past the point of no return. He wasn’t asking, he was demanding..

He bent down, pressing his lips against mine.  A final surrender, my mouth opened and I was tasting his juices and mine, and while that was happening he reached between us. “Spread your legs more.”’ Another command. His penis, his erection, his cock, had been between my legs and I could feel its head move as he guided it up along my inner thigh, then to my vagina.

I tipped my hips a little, he moved a little, and...

,,,and it was no longer a fantasy. Another man, not my husband, was in me.

Moving in me.

Fucking me.

Somehow he had gotten my arms above my head and was holding them there. I was stretched out tall on the bed, being taken.

I loved it.

You’d probably call it missionary-position, plain-vanilla sex but it was magic and the fierce expression on his face as he grew larger and then erupted in me is something I will never forget.

Later, as we held each other, me holding him more than him me, all thoughts of the gym gone now, he said something that I had wondered about.

“You know, don’t you, that a lot of this goes on at these conventions.”

I did not know that.

“It’s the PittCon Rule: what happens here stays here, in the pit of PittCon.”

He sat up, pulled away the sheet. “I am going to look at you, look at your body. I want to possess you with my eyes as well as with my body, I want to memorize every detail.”

“Stretch out, show off, show me everything.”

I didn’t object but closed my eyes, stretched out tall and felt my body blush as he looked. It’s silly but it seemed as though I could feel his eyes caressing me.

“Beautiful,” he said, but a moment or two later I felt his hand on my thigh. “Your legs are too close together, you’re not fully exposed, spread them. Don’t hide. I want to see your cunt.”

I could feel my face redden, but I did.

“Your husband is a lucky man,” he said, “because he can look at you and have you whenever he wants. But for now, for this week, you’re Dawn, you’re mine, to look at and do with what I want.”

I have been married a long time, and although my husband has excellent endurance once he has cum, it’s cuddling time for us. Phil had grown hard again, he had things other than cuddling in mind.

“There’s another part of the PittCon Rule,” he said as he got off the bed and pulled at my ankles until I was at the edge of the bed.

“And that is,” he continued, “there are no rules.”

What I remember most clearly after that is him standing on the floor with my legs on his shoulders and leaning on me until I was almost folded in half.  

It was not making love or even making lust. It was being used, being dominated, being a toy, a fuck toy.

I loved it!

He finally collapsed beside me, at last empty of immediate physical lust.

“I didn’t plan this,” I said, as we lay there recovering.

“Be true to yourself, it is what you wanted,” Phil said as he turned to me. “I saw it in your eyes when you were asking me about Robin last night. You wanted to be her, or like her, and now you’re Dawn, and better than she can ever hope to be.”

I held him a little tighter, not wanting him to be able to read my face because it might have revealed my realization he was right.

“It was what I wanted too, and it’s proof that under that veneer of sophisticated professor, of 'I am married, don’t even think about sex with me’, there’s a real woman with real human needs. I will make this a PittCon you will never forget," he said. “You are mine this week. Mine!”

I was silent.

“Did you hear me?”

He must have felt me nod my head.

“Nodding your head is not good enough.”

“Yes, I am yours.” It was more a whimper than a statement, but true anyhow.

Later I pushed my bra and panties into my purse, realizing I was acting out some of those “being controlled by a stranger” fantasies that live in a dark corner of my mind. There was no undoing what was being done. Many women have some kind of fantasy about being loose, free, easy. I just made a reality of my own fantasies about that.

I got back to my room eighty minutes after leaving it. Only eighty minutes? All of that happened in that short a time?

It was an hour later back home so it was no surprise that at 7:30 my cell phone gave its Unchained Melody ringtone that told me my husband was calling. “Hi, babe,” he said, “how’s the conference going? Were you able to have dinner with that guy you mentioned?”

I didn’t lie but offered than the whole truth. I told him dinner with Phil was a lot better than having room service or dining alone in the hotel restaurant and that I missed my morning swim.

“There’s always tomorrow for that,” he reminded me, and we chatted for a few minutes longer, a typical husband and wife phone conversation. I must be good at keeping my voice controlled, he never said anything about extracurricular adventures.

I hung up but of course my mind was more on what happened during the sunrise and what I had done, or permitted to be done, than on the day’s professional content.

I had -- what? a lover? a luster? a one-night stand? Or, maybe -- a truth whispered to me -- ‘you always wondered what it would be like to be like an escort, a Robin’. But no, not Robin. Not this week. At the conference, I am Professor B,  but after hours, I think Phil is going to keep me as Dawn.

It was only Tuesday. Only? And I would be here until Thursday.