Cheater

by B Jaye

  “Really?” Emily asked. “You weren’t just going to leave and let me deal with it?”

  He stared at his keyboard. He was afraid of what he might see if he looked at her. “He’s dangerous. I couldn’t just abandon you,” he said at last, his voice husky with emotion. Then the software established a connection and he was saved from further conversation.

  He clicked through to Miguel’s stash of sex videos, then by scanning the file-modified dates he found one that had been recorded on the same day that he had first seen them together. He copied that video to his own hard drive, which took less than a minute. It wasn’t until he had double-clicked on the file to launch it that his stomach clenched with anxiety. He realized that he had never before seen how Emily ended up with Miguel in the first place. The fact that she was being very silent signaled the fact that she, too, was struggling with the fact that they were about to witness that event together, sitting next to one another on their living room couch.

  When the video sputtered to life, he could see low-res versions of Emily and Miguel sitting together at the table in his room. He could see a bottle between them, and he remembered that on that day he’d seen shot glasses on the table while the two of them went at it on the floor. He reached out and hit the spacebar, pausing the video.

  “You were drinking with him?” he asked.

  Emily looked embarrassed. “I said no, at first, but he kept pushing it on me. I started to feel bad, like I wasn’t being a good friend or something. So I had a drink.”

  “What was it, tequila?”

  “I think so,” Emily said. “I didn’t like it very much, but every time I finished my glass, he filled it again.”

  He shook his head. Emily was a total lightweight, and he’d seen her get drunk on little more than a single glass of wine. He could only imagine what multiple shots of tequila would do to her.

  “He was trying to get you drunk.”

  “I know,” Emily said in a tone of voice that said: I’m fully aware that I screwed up, you don’t have to explain it to me .

  Josh didn’t push it. Instead, he watched the video. He watched Emily gradually get more and more intoxicated. He watched Miguel begin touching her, first light touches to her arm or shoulder, followed by more intimate caresses of her cheek or her hair. Finally he saw Miguel lean forward and kiss her, and he watched as the Emily on the screen stiffened but didn’t resist, until gradually the moment when she might have stopped what was happening passed by and the two of them were simply making out.

  “At first I just didn’t know what to do,” Emily said quietly at his side. “I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. I was trying to think of a way to let him down easily, but the alcohol made it hard to think, a lot of time was passing, and he kept kissing me. I never really decided I was going to do it with him. I just stopped thinking about it.”

  On the screen, Miguel reached down and gently but firmly pulled Emily’s shirt up and over her head. She lifted her arms and passively let it happen.

  “I knew it was wrong,” Emily narrated as they watched. “There was never a moment when I forgot what I was doing, and how much I was betraying you. I never dreamed that I could do that to you, not in a million years. It made me feel terrible, afterwards when it was done and I was able to think clearly about it. But when it was happening, I liked that it was bad. It turned me on.”

  Josh could hear the arousal in her voice, even now, and in answer he could feel a growing stiffness inside his pants. He liked when she was bad, too. He wasn’t quite ready to admit that fact, though, and so he let her talk.

  On the screen, Miguel already had Emily’s bra off and he was palming her breasts while they French-kissed.

  “My knee was touching the crotch of his jeans. I could feel how big he was. It scared me. I wanted to feel it inside me. I wanted him to take me and do whatever he wanted so that I could fuck him and pretend that it wasn’t my fault. And I was terrified that, if I did it, nothing would ever be the same.”

  She was crying again. Josh looked over at her, letting the video continue to play. She was still watching, but her hand was over her mouth, and tears were coursing down her cheeks. He felt love for her in that moment, and compassion, but there were uglier emotions, too, and he realized that she was right.

  “It will never be like it was,” he agreed, then put his arm around her shoulders. “It will be something new and different now. Different isn’t always bad.”

  “It’s bad,” Emily insisted. She was sobbing now. “It’s really fucking bad. I don’t know how I’m going to live without you.”

  “You can learn,” Josh said reflexively, then he realized he had arrived at a crossroads, and the next words out of his mouth would set the direction of his life. He knew what direction he wanted it to be. “You don’t have to, though.”

  Emily looked up at him through the tears. She looked like a complete mess. “What?” she asked.

  “You don’t have to live without me. I can’t forgive you, not just like that. I’m still angry, and hurt, and sad. I know now that you’re a cheater. You might never do it again, but there’s always going to be the chance that you will and I’ll have find a way to live with that. But despite everything I still love you. I’m probably an idiot for saying it, but I still want you.”

  Emily took it all in, not denying any of his charges, accepting everything he had said. Her eyes were wide and as serious as he had ever seen her. Finally, when he was done, she spoke what was in her heart.

  “I don’t think I can ever tell you how sorry I am. What I did was so selfish, but the worst of it was that there was no love in it. I want to spend the rest of my life making it up to you. I love you so much, and I want to get so much better at showing it.”

  Josh hugged her. He didn’t believe everything she’d said. It was over the top; no one ever could be dedicated to one thing like that, no matter how much they might want to be. He knew that, if they stayed together, at first it would be different between them, but sooner or later they’d slip back into their old habits and get on each other’s nerves in all the old and familiar ways. Even so, it still felt better than anything else he could imagine.

  “It wasn’t all bad,” he murmured into her hair. “I got to see you with another woman.”

  She stiffened in his arms. “You saw that?”

  “I saw everything.”

  “Oh, my God. Then you know that—”

  “Miguel fucked you in the ass? Yeah. Twice.”

  She pulled out of his arms so that she could see his face. “What was it like, seeing those things? Seeing me?”

  “Hard sometimes. Sometimes it was hot. I like Tiffany.”

  She smiled at him for the first time. “Oh yeah? What part of her did you like? Was it her big breasts?”

  “I liked when you were sucking on them.”

  “Did you like her long legs?”

  “I liked when they were wrapped around you.”

  “I wish I’d known you were watching,” she said, her face a little flushed. “That would have made it even hotter. I could have put on a show for you.”

  Josh was getting hard. He liked that she was making him a part of the fantasy. He liked this new game they were playing. “Would you have done what I told you to do?”

  “Everything,” she breathed. Her big brown eyes were wide with excitement.

  “You owe me,” he said, stroking her hair as if she were his pet.

  “I do.”

  “You have a lot to make up for.”

  “A lot.”

  He put his hand on the top of her head, like he’d seen Miguel do, and began pressing firmly down. “You can start by sucking me off.”

  Emily gave him a hint of a smile before her face descended between his legs and her fingers began fumbling with his belt. Josh relaxed and let her do her work. Part of her fantasy was to lose control. He knew that now. He still had a lot to learn about playing his part in this new world they were living in, but as her warm mou
th closed over his rapidly-stiffening shaft he began to realize how much pleasure it might hold.

  19

  LATER he woke in bed to find her gone. He slipped on his briefs and walked into the living room, where he found Emily sitting in front of his computer and poking at his keyboard. He looked over her shoulder to see Miguel’s screen displayed inside the browser window.

  “Did you find anything interesting?” he asked.

  She sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “He kept videos of thirteen different women. Can you believe that? I hate that I let him fuck me.”

  He sat down beside her. “You knew what he was like. That has to be one of the things that you like about him. He’s a nasty piece of work, and that’s what you wanted.”

  She shook her head silently and went back to clicking with his mouse, navigating through Miguel’s computer. “You weren’t lying about the porn. If I had known what he’s into, I would never have agreed to be alone with him. But did you know he downloaded so much of it? He has thousands of videos here.”

  “Wow,” Josh said. “That’s weird.”

  “What’s so weird about it? I thought every guy has a porn collection.”

  “Not everyone,” Josh said carefully. He wasn’t sure whether Emily had found his own stash, and he didn’t want to tip his hand. “But that’s not what I meant. I’ve been watching his every move lately, and I haven’t seen him jacking off even once. If he’s such a porn hound, how come he never watches it?” Then an unsettling thought struck him. “Wait a minute, where is Miguel, anyway? He’s not down there watching us sort through his files, is he?”

  Emily shook her head. “He’s at that bar he likes so much. He texted me a while ago, telling me to meet him there. I said I’d come, so we have an hour or so before he gives up on me.”

  “He going to be pissed that you stood him up twice in one day.”

  “And so we should probably try really hard to find something we can use against him.”

  Her tone of voice had a joking quality, but Josh didn’t miss the sound of tension that was there, too. He was uncomfortably aware that there was very real danger in what they were doing. When Miguel got home, he was going to come looking for her, and he would want an explanation for why she hadn’t done what she said she was going to do. He might not even care whether her husband was home when he got there. He had already promised to “take care” of Josh, and maybe this would get him angry enough to make good on that promise.

  Still, it felt good to be sitting next to his wife and talking about these things. It felt like they were a team again.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “His porn collection,” she said as casually as if she was reading the newspaper. “I want to make sure there isn’t anything else of me in there. After our first time, I fell asleep for a bit. Who knows what he might have done while I was out.”

  Josh thought that was pretty unlikely, but he could understand that she was feeling insecure, even violated, now that she knew there were two men in her life who had been secretly filming her. He watched as she double-clicked on a video file.

  “It’s going to be pretty choppy, playing it over a remote connection. Do you want me to show you how to transfer files to my computer?”

  “I’m not watching the videos, Josh,” she said in a scolding voice. “I just need to make sure I’m not in any of the ones from the last few days.”

  He felt a flush of embarrassment. “You’re right, I’m—”

  “Oh, my God!”

  Emily’s exclamation cut him off. He looked closer at the choppy footage that was streaming from Miguel’s computer. It showed footage of an old man using his fingers to penetrate a young girl. A very, very young girl.

  Emily slammed the laptop shut so hard that he was afraid the screen might have cracked.

  “That was a child! He has videos of children!”

  “Emily,” Josh said in his most soothing voice. The memory of the little girl’s traumatized face still roiled in his mind, but he was feeling strangely calm at the same time.

  “That bastard! That monster! I can’t believe I ever let him touch me. Oh, my God, that poor little girl!”

  “Emily,” he tried again, “this is—”

  “I’m going to kill him. I was only going to scare him with the gun, but now I’m actually going to kill him.”

  “Emily!” Josh shouted, and took her by the shoulders. He waited until she made eye contact with him before he continued. “It’s horrible, I agree. It’s maybe the worst thing that a person can do. And it’s also completely, 100% illegal.”

  She blinked at him in incomprehension. “So what?” she asked, and he could see the fires of indignation begin to kindle in her eyes once again.

  “Miguel is on probation,” he said, slowly and carefully. “And now we know that he has something very, very bad on his computer. This is it! This is the big score he was telling you about, the ‘thing that’s not a thing.’ He’s collecting child pornography so he can sell it somewhere online.”

  Emily had stopped shouting, but her brown eyes were still a little confused.

  He made it perfectly clear for her. “We can turn him in, Emily. We can call the police and tell them that he has contraband on his computer, and then we’ll never need to worry about him again.”

  Josh had never realized how comforting the blue flash of a police cruiser could be, but as he stood at the window with his arm over Emily’s shoulders and they watched the police lead Miguel out in handcuffs, he was feeling more hopeful than he had in a very long time.

  “They don’t know you’re the one who phoned in the tip?” Emily asked for the third time.

  He shook his head. “I used Skype for the call, and I created an account for this one use and then deleted it. I placed the call from a library computer, and I was spoofing my IP address just to be careful. If they can trace that back to me, we really do live in a surveillance state. I like our chances.”

  “It’s hard to believe that it can all just go away like it never happened.”

  He gave her a squeeze. “Oh, it happened. It most definitely happened. But now that it’s over, new things can happen. Better things.”

  She turned towards him and melted into his arms, her face against his chest. He heard her sigh contentedly.

  “I have an idea about that,” she said quietly.

  20

  THE thump of the bass was loud enough to recalibrate the pace of Josh’s heart, but that wasn’t what set his pulse racing. He had always thought that Tiffany was a spectacularly sexy woman, but he had never seen her in her element. Now, dressed only in a lacy bra and matching G-string, she danced sensuously in front of him, and Josh saw for the first time what pure sex looked like.

  “Isn’t she amazing?” Emily shouted in his ear.

  He looked over at his wife. She was as delectable as ever, and somehow she managed a girl-next-door vibe even in the sexy little black dress she had worn for the occasion. Her face was flushed, only partly from the alcohol, and her brown eyes were wide with excitement.

  “I want to see you together,” he shouted over the top of the music. Even in the back room where Tiffany had taken them for a private lap dance, the music was nearly overpowering.

  “Oh, you will,” Emily shouted back with a naughty smile. She had set the evening up. This trip to the strip club, the first time either one of them had ever set foot inside such an establishment, was just the beginning. They timed it to coincide with the end of Tiffany’s shift, and then the three of them would be going home together to, as Emily put it, “get better acquainted.”

  “I know,” he shouted, and his cock stiffened in anticipation, “but I meant now. I want to see you dance with her.”

  Emily’s eyes widened in surprise for just a moment, then she smiled in delight and put her drink down. She stepped forward to join Tiffany and the two gorgeous women put their arms around one another, their hips settling into a gently, swaying rhythm and thei
r lips coming together in a soft kiss.

  Josh leaned back in his chair and marveled at how quickly life can change. He had no idea where he and Emily were headed, but as he saw her slow-dancing in the arms of another woman, he couldn’t wait to find out.

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