by Jaime Thorne
I watched her body react, the tension and the waves of pleasure that washed over her. The way her whole body responded to him, bucking against him and trembling and shaking while he worked on her.
And I watched as she let his cock fall out of her mouth, as she buried her head in his pelvis and screamed out her pleasure to him. As she shook and cried out with it and with the need for more from him.
The need for everything from him.
She pressed up off of him, pushing herself on his thighs until she was teetering above him. Her hands went to her body and she held herself while she bucked against him, while she ground herself into him and was on fire with her need.
My wife. My stunning wife.
I couldn't help but love her in that moment. Couldn't help but feel for her the way that I always had. I couldn't help but admire the sight of her and feel more than a little lucky to have her in my life.
To have had her in my life I guess.
Avril was cheating on me, the evidence was right here in front of me. She was fucking Bruce behind my back and while I had no problem with her fucking Bruce for obvious reasons doing so behind my back was a betrayal.
And that hurt.
But it hurt in a confusing way. It hurt in a way that comingled with the pleasure of my witnessing it and made it all difficult to discern. So difficult that I had a hard time realizing what I wanted to have happen.
Appetites and hunger. I wasn't sure which one kept me hidden behind that door.
Don't get me wrong on a real level I knew that this was wrong. I knew that I shouldn't be letting this happen, that I should be saying something or doing something to change that but I wasn't and I couldn't.
I was paralyzed by my own tastes, by the fact that the meal in front of me was my dream come true.
I couldn't move because on some level I didn't want to move. Because even if the betrayal was happening that didn't mean that I didn't want it.
So I watched from my hiding place. I watched as she lifted herself off of him and spun, as she took him deep inside of her just like she had when I had been there with them. As my beautiful wife rode this handsome stranger without my permission or knowledge.
Their bodies came together, looking perfectly made for each other. They looked like perfection, like art personified. They looked for all the world like they belonged with each other and I don't think anyone could have denied that.
Her grace with his bluntness. Her softness with his hard. Her beauty with his handsomeness, perfectly complimenting each other.
They looked right. They looked intentional.
And I watched them build to something beautiful.
Avril fucked Bruce hard and fast. She fucked him like it was a sprint and she was racing to the finish line. She fucked him with all of the effort she could muster, her hair and her body bouncing in graceful swirls with each and every thrust of her body.
Bruce held onto her like she was bound to buck him off. His whole body tense and taut and intense. Muscles hard and corded and thickly defined, standing out beneath his skin as his whole body was tense with it.
“Yes Bruce,” she told him, “So fucking perfect baby. God, I love your cock in me. God, it feels fantastic.”
“Is it true?” he asked her, “That I'm better than your husband?”
She looked down at him with a bit of shock, her body slowing but not stopping, “Bruce?”
“Tell me,” he demanded, a flash of hardness in his eyes, “Tell me the truth.”
Avril seemed to contemplate this for a moment as if she was trying to determine what exactly his plan was here. As if she was trying to suss out what Bruce could possibly want from her and then realizing it all along.
He wanted the truth, the whole and complete truth.
“Of course you are,” she confessed to him, “Better at fucking by far. He's never made me feel the way that you make me feel. He's never satisfied me like you have. I didn't know it then but I think it's true now. I don't think he could ever satisfy me again.”
Her words were an honest truth, there was no need for her to lie. They were the truth that I had wanted to hear, the truth that had played into the fantasy that I desired.
So how did I feel about her secret confession? How did I like the truth now that I was forced to contend with it?
I couldn't honestly tell you. I couldn't think of anything but the sight in front of me and the pulsing need between my legs. The desire to see more and the desire to leave them uninterrupted taking precedence over everything else.
Bruce grinned and spun her, pinning her below him. They both paused for a moment, only the slow movement of her legs as she wrapped them around his middle making this anything less than a still image.
He began to fuck her, no not fucking her. He began to thrust into her, almost slow and secure. He pressed on her with a pace that must have been familiar to each other. A pace that was far from animalistic need.
My hands gripped the door, leaning in as I watched this happen. I had seen another man fuck my wife, but I'd never seen another man make love to her.
I witnessed this, saw their bodies come together time and again and again. Saw her reach up to caress and kiss him with gentleness. Saw her shudder and quiver and beg him.
“Please Bruce I know you're close. I want to feel it inside of me. I need to feel it inside of me.”
And he gave that to her, his speed rising as he pressed over the edge and buried himself deep in her. He spilled himself inside of her and she melted with it, pulling him to her and pressing her lips against his, wrapping herself around him and tensing with her own climax as she broke over the edge and found her own shuddering pleasure.
I felt the wetness and warmth on my cheeks. I felt the world going dim and shakey. I felt the whole place spinning around me and I stumbled and fell forward, catching myself at the last moment but catching myself far too late to stop it.
To stop from thrusting open the door and stumbling in. To stop from falling to my knees on the floor of our bedroom and startling them enough that I heard a gasp of shock.
I couldn't deal with this. Couldn't face it.
But I couldn't resist giving one last look at my wife before rushing out the door.
That image will stay with me forever, not the sight of the two of them together but the look on her face and that look alone. The look of shock and shame. The look of loss.
The look of understanding as she realized what had happened.
That look haunted me, staying with me as I stumbled out of the house and tried to regain a sense of balance in a world that was crumbling to dust around me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
AVRIL
I watched him go, staring at the empty doorway as the emptiness grew inside of me. It gnawed at me from the inside, pushing outward until it was pressing at me and making me feel distended and out of sorts.
For as long as I live I don't know that I'll ever forget the look in his eyes.
It wasn't just the look of betrayal or the palpable hurt that he was feeling. It was so much more than that, it was the sense of loss and the sense of longing. His look told me in an instant how much pain he was in.
And I felt like a fool for not having seen it before. For not connecting the mechanics of his fantasy with the reality of his desire. I felt like a fool for never realizing that he hated his need as much as he craved it.
That he was so much closer to me in that way. That this was something we could have used to forge a connection, a deeper bond to grow our relationship.
Our relationship that was ruined and our life that was ruined, that was absolutely destroyed in one blinding instant but that had been building for so long.
Once when I was young and dumb and drunk I had decided it would be a good idea to walk along a frozen lake in the late winter. I was up at a cottage with some friends and the lake outside the door was beautiful and frozen and expansive and late at night when most of the other people were already asleep I'd fou
nd myself with a shocking amount of energy and had gone out to sort of seize and burn some of it off.
I'd bundled up tight and without telling anyone what I was doing I'd run out the door and out onto the lake, feet pounding on the ice cover with reckless abandon.
Like I said I was young and dumb and the warmth of the alcohol flowing through my veins was enough to blanket me in a feeling of immortality, to feel like nothing for a million miles around could bring any harm to me.
The thing about frozen lakes in the late winter is that they can thaw surprisingly quickly. If I'd gone out there even a week earlier I probably would have been fine. A week later and there probably wouldn't be any ice at all or at least it would have been incredibly obvious from the first step on there that this was not going to go well for me.
But no I had to choose that perfect moment when everything could go wrong in a perfect confluence of fuckedness. I had to choose that moment to run out there.
The crack sounded out my problem, but it was when I felt the water rush up to greet me that I really realized what a mistake I'd made. In an instant, I was underneath it, the water over my head as I scrambled for some way out.
Lucky for me there was a friend who wasn't quite asleep. Who had seen me and known how impulsive I was and was there for me in an instant to pull me out and drag me back to the cabin and warm me up before anything happened to me.
But this isn't about how lucky I was.
Instead it's about the moment that water closed over my head, because that moment was instantaneous and in that moment I got a shocking sense of clarity. It was like all the alcohol was wiped out of my system. And the shock to my system slowed everything down so that for the instant I spent underwater without really realizing knowing that I was about to be saved I had an eternity to contemplate how stupid I was to put myself in this position.
I had been the one who chose to get that drunk. I had been the one to come up with the bright idea to run out onto the lake. I had been the one to cause this to happen to myself.
This was all my fault.
And this time there would be no one to pull me out of the water.
Seeing Jeremy standing in the doorway was a shock to my system. Just as surely as descending under the water it made me face the reality of what I had done with the sort of startling clarity that can only really come when you realize that your whole world is coming to an end.
I had betrayed the one person in this world that had never done anything to deserve it. I had ruined him.
Not myself. I deserved to have my life ruined. I was a miserable person who had selfishly pursued my own pleasure knowing full well that it would end up this way. I'd chased that high time and again and again, knowing all the while that I was going to bring ruin upon myself, but I could choose to bring ruin upon myself.
That was my choice to make.
I couldn't choose that for another. I couldn't give that over to Jeremy without his permission. By single-mindedly pursuing this I had taken away his ability to choose for himself.
And I could never be forgiven for that.
He was tortured, ruined. And that was my fault.
I felt a hand on my back and I stiffened at the touch of it, turning to one side and seeing Bruce there in the bed with me. I looked at his bare chest and I looked at his hard body. I looked up his thick arm to his face and the eyes that he was looking at me with now.
There was sympathy in them. There was regret. There was understanding and the softness of the man that I'd seen in those quiet moments we had shared together.
This was the real Bruce, the Bruce that I could have fallen in love with.
Not anymore.
I heard the front door slam and it woke something in me, recoiling from him I pulled away and he pulled back as well. Looking at me like I was something to be pitied, instead of reviled.
“Get out,” I told him quietly, my voice low with anger.
Bruce didn't move, he just sat there in bed staring at me with his big stupid eyes.
“Get out,” I said a bit louder, and he moved but moved towards me instead of away.
“GET OUT!” I screamed, striking out and slamming my fists against his chest. I beat my hands against them, pounding against his body with all my might, “GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!”
And then I lost myself and let his arms close around me. I felt the heaving sobs come to me and I wet his chest with my tears.
But this didn't help me. Having this man comfort me didn't make me feel any less terrible. He was that shocking frozen lake closing over me. He was dragging me down into the depths of something dark and unyielding and I couldn't give in to it.
Just this once I had to have the strength.
I craved it but I didn't want it. I wanted him to leave me too. I wanted to be alone.
“Please,” I begged him quietly, “Please leave me.”
I looked up at him, eyes wet with my tears and he saw in my face that I was serious.
“I need you to leave,” I told him one more time, and he nodded and gave me the small mercy of doing so in silence.
While Bruce dressed I stayed in bed. I hugged my knees to my chest and I stared at the sheets in front of me. I covered myself with them so that he couldn't see any of me and I didn't look at him once as he walked out of the room.
But I didn't have to look to know that he stopped in the door. I didn't have to look to know that he tried to speak but knew there was nothing to say. I didn't have to look to see how he saw me and how he saw all of this.
To see his regret.
And when the door closed behind him he was gone too. When the door closed behind him it was just me alone.
The tears came then, flowing easily from my eyes and dampening the sheets. They came without end, as I curled into a ball and let them form a puddle that grew into a lake. I drowned in them, exhaustion keeping me stuck into the middle ground between waking and sleep.
Was there a way back to what we had? Was there any way to regain the life that I had loved? Was there any way to make things up to my husband?
I didn't know, and I knew the questions would haunt me until I found their answers.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
JEREMY
For such a long time I kept it together. All the way down and out of my house. Down and into a cab that I flagged down. All the way over to the first hotel I could think of. Up to the reception to get a room and all the way up to that room I managed to keep it together.
No shaking. No panic. No outward sign of any sort that my whole life was falling apart.
I don't have any idea how I managed any of that.
Because ordinarily when faced with this sort of realization that my whole world was in tatters I would react in the predictable sort of ways. I'd panic and collapse to the ground. Let the emotion overwhelm me as I cried and begged and pleaded for another response. I always sort of figured that my natural veneer of calm would shatter and I would become a complete mess.
Not retreat inwards, into a sort of calm that held me so tight it threatened to crush the very air out of me. That sort of calm that made it impossible for me to do anything but put one front of the other towards a destination that even I didn't know was approaching with any sort of certainty.
Knowing all the while that if I didn't reach that destination I would lose myself. My panic would choke me out and I'd stumble and fail and fall. I would die on my journey unless I reached my destination.
As soon as the door to my room closed behind me I lost control. I fell back, slamming into the door behind me and sliding down to the ground. I curled up into a ball right there by the door to my room and I let my emotions overwhelm me.
I'm not a stoic person by nature, but I couldn't remember the last time I cried. I don't know when the last time I lost complete control over myself was, and I was caught in this sort of bizarre pull and tug of it. Knowing that this was how I should be feeling but only oh too surprised to be actually feeling it at last.
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br /> And I think that was because more than anything I blamed myself for this.
Lying there on that ground letting the sobs rock over my body I had plenty of time for frank and honest self-analysis. I had plenty of time to step back and really think about what was happening and why it was happening, to think about who had done what and why they had done it.
And with that level of reflection, I didn't know if I could fully blame Avril for what was happening here.
Don't get me wrong, Avril was still the one who cheated. On paper, she had broken the vows of our marriage by sleeping with Bruce without me there. Because while I had consented and pushed for them to be together, the fact that they were doing this by sneaking behind my back made it so that there was no argument they could make that they were not at fault.
If they weren't at fault they wouldn't have hidden. If they weren't at fault they would have been open with me.
But at the same time, the lines were not black and white. There was no real way to tell whether or not they'd crossed those lines to do what they'd done. There was no real way to say this was the place where it had gone too far.
And worst of all when you looked back to the chain of events it was clear who initiated all of this. It was clear to me that I had sparked this off by pushing for my own fantasy, and that in doing so I had made it possible for her to make the decisions that she had made.
Without me, Avril and Bruce would never have met. Even if they had met without me she would have never seen him as anything more than a stranger and him the same for her. An affair was low on her mind, I knew enough about her to know that much.
But how much more did I know about my wife? How much did I know about Bruce? How much did I know about why they had done this to me?
It took me over an hour to uncurl from the ground. I pushed myself to my feet and stepped into the bathroom, staring at myself in the mirror.
I looked like hell, I really did. I looked like I'd been dragged behind a horse for a hundred miles, my suit wrinkled and my face deep with lines of worry. And drained of every last drop of everything that I had left. Drained of all of my emotion.