Natalie set the white stick on the bathroom counter where she had set similar sticks each of the two months before that.
She hadn't told Jason that she had discovered his relationship Gavin. They'd dutifully been having sex (only when she ovulated) in an attempt to conceive the baby she wanted so desperately. Natalie was afraid that if he knew that she knew, the procreation sex would stop; she still needed his sperm. He'd used her enough for his campaign, so wasn't it only fair to return the favor? Besides, his genes were good. The people in his family were smart, attractive, and had good hair.
Her heart was torn between loving Jason and hating him. They'd been together since college, and all she'd known since then was loving him. Supporting him had become central to her life. Ever since he had gotten into law school (when she had been waitlisted, then rejected), she'd been his cheerleader, from city council to state senate and every campaign in between. It was hard to turn her emotions off when thinking about all of those years together – years of Christmases, birthdays, anniversaries and vacations. She wondered at what point it had become a lie.
(Had it always been a lie?)
Natalie probably should have realized he was gay (or maybe bisexual – she wasn't sure) sooner, but her job had distracted her. She'd been at Litchfield so long that most people didn't remember how she had started there – full of good intentions and believing she could change things for the better.
Boy, had those feelings not lasted long.
The final straw had been when an inmate named Amanda had lied about being raped by a guard and almost cost Natalie her job. Now only the lifers – inmates like Frieda, Carol, and Barb – could maybe recall what she used to be like, though she'd done her best to obliterate their memories of the kinder, gentler Natalie Figueroa with the hardened, no-nonsense bitch "Fig."
With a sigh, she picked up the pregnancy test and looked at it, though she already knew what it was going to say.
Negative. Again.
Failed marriage. Lost job. No baby.
At least she had wine. She slammed the stick into the trash can and trudged to the kitchen. Flinging the fridge door open, she quickly located a bottle of chardonnay. As she popped the cork, the doorbell rang.
Natalie answered the door, still holding the bottle of chardonnay by its neck and a wine glass. "Ugh. What the fuck do you want?"
"Hello to you, too." Joe greeted her.
Natalie was suddenly aware that she was wearing yoga pants and a leftover t-shirt from the campaign with no underwear under them, her damp hair hanging around her face.
"One of the best parts of leaving Litchfield was being free of hearing from your whiny ass every day, but you just keep popping back up."
"You're lucky they didn't put you in there with the inmates for good." Joe quipped.
"Like they would have ever put me in Litchfield." Natalie scoffed. "I know that place like you know the palms of your hands."
Joe cleared his throat. "I know. That's why I need your help."
Natalie smirked. "Oh?"
"There are some questions in this paperwork for MCC that I don't know how to answer."
"And I'm still dealing with your incompetence." Natalie sighed and stepped out of the doorway, gesturing for him to come in. "You just left the prison in the middle of the morning on a weekday to drive to Albany?"
"Well, if I don't get this paperwork done, there isn't going to be a prison." Joe walked in, his eyes wandering around her house as she led him to a couch in the living room.
"You want a glass?" Natalie pointed the wine bottle she was still holding in his direction as they sat down.
"Uh, no thanks. I gave up drinking before noon in my twenties."
Natalie shrugged. "Suit yourself." She poured a glass of wine for herself, downed it in a few gulps, then moved to pour another.
Joe's hand reached out and stopped the bottle. "Whoa. Easy there, tiger."
"What do you care?" Natalie asked, reluctantly putting the bottle back on the coffee table.
"I need you sober for the paperwork." Joe pointed out, handing her a manila envelope. "Also, if you drink yourself to death, it'd be a bit of a damper on the joy I've had in taking your job from you."
Natalie rolled her eyes and took the paperwork out of the envelope. Joe handed her a pen from his pocket. She flipped through the flagged pages and began effortlessly scribbling answers in the fields that he had left blank; she knew them without thinking.
"So, what have you been up to in Albany?" Joe asked, making idle conversation while she worked.
"Just living the life of luxury over here, being a state politician's beard." Natalie mumbled, her eyes not leaving the paperwork she was writing all over.
"Does he know that you know?"
"Nope." Natalie pressed the pen down harder on the paper as she responded.
"How long do you plan to keep that up?"
"As long as I can stand it."
"But why?"
"I have my reasons that I don't care to discuss with you." Natalie finished writing and capped the pen, handing it back to Joe.
"That has to be… Lonely." Joe said with a hint of empathy in his voice.
"Thanks. I'm drinking wine at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday, you know." Natalie sighed and curled her long legs up around her on the couch. "Did you think I needed to be more depressed?"
"So just go out and get your own fuckboy. It's only fair. You're a bitch, but still, a sexy woman." Joe eyed her up and down casually. "Surely you could find someone, as long as you don't open your mouth."
"Yes, going on the prowl is easy when you're a senator's wife." Natalie rolled her eyes.
Joe shrugged. "What if it were someone you already know?"
"You volunteering?" Natalie snickered.
"You could do worse." Joe said defensively.
"I could do better. Besides, you already said I suck at blowjobs."
"Your blowjob didn't really suck like I said it did." Joe admitted. "But it's obvious you don't get on your knees much."
"I don't need to." Natalie tossed her head back haughtily. "I have other strengths."
"Such as?"
"I guess you'll have to fuck me to find out."
Joe chuckled nervously. "Is that an invitation?"
"Do you want it to be?" Natalie leaned forward on the couch and locked eyes with him.
"Wait. What?" Joe asked, quite similarly to how he had before she'd given him the blowjob.
Natalie trailed a finger down his thigh. "It's a one-time offer before I regain my sanity."
What the fuck was she thinking?
She wasn't. But her self-esteem had been shot to hell, painfully reminding her of when she was the bullied fat kid in middle school. Natalie craved the touch of another person and the satisfaction of feeling attractive and seducing someone. Joe wasn't a difficult target. He was always horny; she knew he jerked off in his office. (What self-respecting man kept a pump bottle of lotion in his office otherwise?) She felt certain that he wouldn't reject her, and that was what she needed.
Joe was skeptical. "How much have you had to drink?"
"You're so chivalrous. Only the glass you watched me drink." She waited for a moment while he sat there, stunned. "Well?"
"Are you really sure you want to do this?" He inhaled sharply as she moved her hand over his crotch in response. "You're a succubus."
In response, she yanked at his belt buckle and quickly got his pants and boxers off while he unbuttoned his shirt. Natalie paused once she had him naked; she'd seen the "beer can" before, but she was impressed again. (She'd be lying if she said she hadn't thought about where it would feel somewhere else while she was blowing him.) She wrapped her hand around his length and began pumping up and down, occasionally flicking her thumb over the tip. Joe inhaled sharply after a couple of minutes.
"Slow down, Fig." Joe warned.
"You're going to orgasm over a handjob?" Natalie clicked her tongue. "That is disappointing."
In response, he pulled back from her and yanked her shirt over her head, thinking of the irony of ridding her of a shirt with her husband's name emblazoned across the front. Joe smiled when he realized she wasn't wearing a bra and dragged his lips over her breasts as he hooked his thumbs into her yoga pants to pull them down.
"You are beautiful." Joe said as she stood before him nude.
Natalie blushed despite herself. She wanted to believe it was true.
Joe wasted no time in brushing his thumb against her. He smirked when he found she was already wet. Natalie moaned softly as he slipped one finger, then another inside of her, probing and curling inside her while his thumb continued to work. Had his fingers always been this long? Her head fell back in pleasure, and he skimmed her neck with his teeth. She could feel that he was bringing her to the edge (and so could he).
"Now who's going to orgasm over a 'handjob?'" Joe smirked, pulling his fingers out of her.
"I fucking hate you." Natalie breathed in disappointment.
Joe fisted her hair in his hand and backed her into the wall, which had been painted "Grecian Ivory" only the week prior. Somewhere along the way, he fumbled in his pants on the floor and found a condom in his wallet, which he hastily rolled on.
"I hate you, too." Joe announced, gripping her ass to lift her up against the wall.
Natalie wrapped her legs around his waist, gasping as he entered her slowly, giving her time to adjust to his size. Before long, she was bucking her hips against him, silently begging him to go faster.
With her face buried in his shoulder, Natalie was biting back screams (figuratively and literally) as he moved inside her, filling places that hadn't been touched before. She'd been having sex with the same man for almost two decades (and even that was scarce as of late); she'd forgotten what it was like to have sex with anyone else.
They dueled and teased in power-fueled sex battle. (Or was it a sex-fueled power battle?) They fought to withhold their own releases while trying to push each other over the edge. Natalie worked her muscles around him teasingly as Joe drove harder into her. She tasted metal as her teeth drew blood from his shoulder.
When they weren't looking at each other, they could almost forget they were fucking the enemy.
It wasn't long before every fight they'd ever had, every resentment they'd ever felt, every bit of pent-up aggression they had toward each other exploded in their powerful, shared release. After, Joe slowly set Natalie back on trembling legs, and she pressed herself against the wall to hold herself up.
"Damn." Joe wiped the sweat from his forehead as he pulled on his boxers. "That felt like fucking a 22-year-old."
"You fuck a lot of 22-year-olds?" Natalie quirked an amused brow as he kindly threw her pants to her.
"Well, not since I was 22 myself…"
"What can I say? I told you I have tricks. I'm religious with my Kegels." Natalie shrugged. "I wouldn't think it'd matter for you though, Beer Can."
"You'd be surprised." Joe replied, tugging his pants on and shrugging his shirt back onto his shoulders.
"It figures." Natalie had settled back down into the couch with a new glass of wine.
Joe snagged the glass from her hand and took a gulp, then returned it to her. "What?"
"That I'd end up fucking you."
Joe sat down beside her, pushing his feet back into his shoes and tying them. "Well, like you said. One-time thing." He glanced over at her.
Natalie shrugged, her eyes staring into her glass of wine. The sex had been quick with their frustration toward each other boiling over, but it had been amazing. She felt a little less depressed after such a powerful orgasm, and while she hated that it was Joe Caputo, of all people, who had gotten her body to do that… She was willing to overlook it to feel like that again.
"Maybe it could be a two-time thing."
(It took them hooking up five more times for her to stop pretending like their "hate sex" wasn't a thing.)