by Ben Boswell
“Then one day I was wearing a sheer skirt, and he was like, ‘There’s no way you can be wearing underwear under that.’
“I assured him I was. He didn’t believe me. He asked if I was wearing a thong. I told him it was normal panties. You know, it was just silly talk. Then he said, ‘I still don’t believe you. Prove it.’”
“You didn’t?” I said in shock.
“Not at first, but he kept working on me. He kept saying that he couldn’t concentrate on work knowing I was sitting out there bare assed. Then he threatened to ask for other opinions. You know, ask what other people in the office thought. And I thought, he’s just crazy enough to do it.”
She paused and took a deep breath.
“So I flashed him. Just pulled up my skirt real quick so he could see I was wearing panties. It was so silly. But then it became like a thing. You know, every day he’d come in and be like, ‘panty check’ and I’d go into his office and give him a quick peek.”
I gaped at her, open-mouthed. Who was this woman? Had she lost her mind?
“So, wait, you’re telling me that you just went along with it?”
She nodded. “I don’t know what to say. It didn’t seem like a big deal. It was just silly, a dumb in-joke, you know?”
“No, I guess I don’t.”
“It... shit... I dunno. You’re right, it seems crazy now that I think about it. But at the time, I got, I guess, a kick out of it.”
“Did you start wearing sexier panties for him?”
She blushed. “Yes. I’m sorry Max, but I did.”
“And?”
“It turned him on. He started getting more graphic. The peeks were getting longer, and he’d tell me how he’d like to peel them off and do... things... to me. Then one day he started rubbing himself through his pants while he talked.
“I couldn’t believe it. I was like, ‘Stop it. Are you crazy?’ And he was like, ‘you make me crazy.’ I told him I was leaving, he told me to stay. ‘Just a minute,’ he sighed. And then he came, I guess. I don’t know. When he started moaning real loud, I ran out.
“But after, he came out and apologized. Said he was sorry that things had gotten out of hand. That he hoped it wouldn’t affect our working relationship. I told him it couldn’t happen again.”
“But it did,” I interjected.
She nodded. “Yeah. And then one day he didn’t just rub himself through his pants. He actually pulled it out, you know?”
I couldn’t believe it. “Your boss just exposed himself to you, and you didn’t run?”
“Max, please. How many times can I say I was wrong?”
“I know, sweetie. I’m sorry, but this is all just crazy.”
She nodded. “Can we stop now?”
I shook my head. “No. I’m sorry, but I need to know.”
She sighed in frustration. “God this is so hard. I don’t even recognize myself when I talk about it.”
“We all make mistakes.”
She blew her nose again and looked up at me, red-eyed. She swallowed hard.
“I’m worried. Worried that when I tell you the rest, you won’t be able to forgive me.”
“You didn’t have sex with him,” I said. “How bad can it be?”
“Bad. Bad because it’s, I dunno, it’s creepy.”
“Rachel, please. You’re just making it worse. Just say it.”
She sighed. Then, “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
She began sobbing, quietly, staring down at the table. She knew better than to ask me to feel sorry for her.
There was nothing else I could say. It was on her whether she wanted to come clean, to try to rebuild our relationship. I knew I could never trust her if she didn’t, but I also didn’t know if I could trust her even if she did. I knew she wanted more reassurance before proceeding. But that wasn’t something I could give. Not in good conscience.
She blew her nose again. She took a deep breath and composed herself.
Finally, she continued. “He played it cool for a while. You know, acting contrite. It was all a fucking act.”
For the first time she seemed really angry with him. In a weird way, that was what I most needed to hear. That she felt used, resented him. Until now, she’d been letting him off the hook, and that suggested a residual affection I knew I couldn’t live with.
“At first he acted like he felt guilty. He backed off. But then when he read my... my weakness... he went back at me hard. He said it was my fault he couldn’t control himself. That I was teasing him. He made me actually feel guilty for having led him on. He said I owed him.”
I could see it. He’d sucked her in. Made her feel like part of the team. Then suddenly made her feel like a traitor. He was good at this. Rachel was, I was sure, just the latest woman he’d work in this way. He was a predator.
“Rachel,” I said softly. “What happened?”
“He said I owed him. That he wanted to see me without panties. He called me into his office, and said it was time. Said I’d teased him enough. That it was time for more.
“God, Max, I’m so sorry... but I did it. I stood in front of him, and I lifted up my skirt. And then I pulled down my panties.”
“But it didn’t stop there, did it?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“No. He touched me... there. I told him to stop. He called me a tease. He said I wanted it. And fuck, maybe I did. I didn’t stop him, didn’t push him away. I let him touch me. I let him, God... I let him put his fingers inside me. And while he did that, he pulled out his prick. He rubbed himself. And I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I just watched, watching as his fist pumped up and down his shaft while he... he molested me with the other hand.
“Then he took my hand. He put it on his prick and covered it with his own hand. I told myself, you know, that I wasn’t doing it. He was. It was him moving my hand. I dunno. I can’t explain it, Max. It was like an out-of-body experience. Like I was watching it all. Watching this slut, with her skirt bunched around her waist, a strange man’s fingers inside her, jerking off a cock.
“Up and down, up and down. He was so hard. Leaking on me. He was moaning. And then suddenly he came, you know, all over my hand and his...”
She stopped and gave me a surprised look as if she were suddenly realizing how much she confessed.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly.
“Sorry? Sorry?! What the fuck, Rachel? Have you lost your mind?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I didn’t mean it to happen. It just did.”
“But that still isn’t all, is it?”
She shook her head sadly. “No, we did it again.”
“How many times?”
“Please Max, why does it matter?”
“How many times?” I repeated coldly.
“Five or six? Maybe more.”
“And what, always the same thing?”
“Yeah, I guess. More or less.”
“More or less? What does that mean?”
She grunted in frustration. “More or less. One time he dragged me into a storeroom and dropped his pants. He told me he wouldn’t let me leave until I took care of him. What choice did I have? I was worried someone would walk in on us. Another time he bent me over his desk and played with himself while he molested me from behind. One time we did it while we were both on a conference call. Okay, Max? Enough details? Or did I need to tell you how many fingers he used? Where his come went?”
I snorted.
“You’re mad at me now?” I snapped incredulously.
She started to answer, but stopped herself. She took a deep breath. “No. But I wish you were not making me relive it. It was a mistake. I’m sorry.”
I looked away, thinking. It seemed like a nightmare. I couldn’t process any of it. Not really. My wife bent over her boss’s desk, her skirt bunched up around her waist, his fingers in her cunt, as he jerked off onto her ass? It was unimaginable. And yet, I knew it was true. I could hear it in her voice. And anyway I had suspected somet
hing like this for a while.
“Did he make you come?” I asked finally.
“Max...”
“Did he make you come, Rachel? When he was fingering you, did he give you an orgasm?
She hesitated. I waited her out.
“Yes.”
“Is that why you went away with him?”
“It was for work.”
“Oh, and you weren’t thinking it would lead to more?”
“I knew,” she admitted.
I flushed with anger at her casual admission.
“So Rachel, tell me, why aren’t you on your back right now with his dick in your twat?”
“Would you have liked that better? It would let you feel even more superior, wouldn’t it?”
I shrugged. “Sure. Make this about me.”
“I came back here. I drove all night to get back here. To confess and apologize and make things right. And all you seem to want to do it make me crawl through the mud.”
I almost felt sorry for her. Almost. “You didn’t answer my question. What happened in San Diego? Why did you decide to come back?”
“I... I don’t know. Jesus Max. It just hit me, you know. We got to the hotel. He’d gotten just one room with a king bed. Not even any pretense. And once the bellhop left, he was immediately all over me. He pushed me to my knees and pulled it out. I was in shock. I dunno. I didn’t stop him. And then he was in my mouth, just going back and forth.
“It was another one of those out-of-body sensations. And I was looking around. I saw the bed. And the TV. And the flyer for Papa Johns. And mini-bar. And I dunno. It just hit me. What the fuck was I doing? I didn’t even like this guy. Why was I blowing him in a hotel room?
“So I stopped. I told him I couldn’t do it. His voice got real low. He called me ‘baby.’ Told me how much he liked me, how special I was, trying to romance me now. But suddenly the very sound of his voice was repulsive. I told him that I quit. I grabbed my bag and went back to the airport. And when I couldn’t get a flight, I rented a car and drove back, through the night.”
I was too angry to engage. All I wanted to do was hurt her. “God, you’re pathetic.”
She didn’t dignify that with a response. I could feel her eyes on me, but I refused to look at her.
For a long time, neither one of us spoke.
Then finally, she said, “So, Max, can you forgive me? Can you ever forgive me?”
I continued to look away. I couldn’t bring myself to make eye contact.
“I don’t know, Rachel. I really don’t know.”
She sobbed, swallowed, and then let out a small laugh. “Well, at least that isn’t a no.”
Part of me wanted to hug her. Let her off the hook. But I was too angry. I just turned and walked out of the kitchen.
CHAPTER FIVE
We went to marriage counseling. I didn’t quite know what to expect. But we both knew we’d need help to work through the situation.
Finding a counselor was a bit of a challenge. I didn’t feel comfortable with a man. It just felt too emasculating to have to discuss it with a guy. We ended up with a youngish woman, Michelle Martin. She was plump, with long, stringy brown hair and thick glasses. She had a kind voice, listened well.
Initially, we didn’t even address the infidelity. Instead, Michelle began by asking us why we were together.
That’s actually a hard question to answer. Or at least it is hard to answer honestly in front of your significant other.
“We love each other?” I offered tentatively.
Michelle suppressed a smile. I’d given the clichéd, easy answer. And I’d added a question mark to it. It wasn’t an honest answer. It was my attempt to give the “right” answer. A lot of marriage therapy, it turns out, is about overcoming the impulse to provide pleasing answers rather than honest ones.
“What does that mean to you?” she pressed.
“That we like being together?”
She nodded to show she’d heard me, but her lack of response otherwise made clear that I was still not getting it.
“I guess, that doesn’t help, does it? You asked why we are together and I replied that we like being together.”
She tilted her head. “Go on.”
“I guess I don’t know how to answer,” I replied after another few moments.
“Well, that is something we need to work on,” she said gently.
-----
Being the victim of an affair by your spouse is a complicated thing. The word, victim, hints at it. You’re hurt. But in a weird way, having been victimized gives power. For weeks after her confession, Rachel was walking on eggshells with me. She was always kind, solicitous.
I wish I could say the same, but instead I got perverse pleasure from picking at the wound, forcing from her additional displays of guilt and contrition. She’d hurt me and I was hurting her back.
After a while, the victim becomes the abuser, the cheater the new victim. I think it is that tit-for-tat cycle that destroys the marriage as much as, or more than, the original illicit sex.
Counseling helped me recognize that pattern, recognize the destructiveness of it. If you want to rebuild the relationship, you need to stop adding toxins to the mix. That’s one of the weird paradoxes of this sort of thing. The way out requires more restraint on the part of the victim than of the cheater.
But nothing is easy. Even as I recognized that and learned to bite my tongue, learned not to go for the cheap jibe at every turn, it triggered a response from Rachel. She felt guilty. My anger in a weird way let her off the hook. My quiet disappointment ate at her more deeply.
It was very, very fucked up.
-----
It was three weeks before we had sex again. When the man cheats, it is, I guess, pretty common for the wife to withhold sex for months, or more, as punishment. But I didn’t want to go without sex. Even though things were very, very raw, that was something I wasn’t willing to give up.
I’ve said that even bad sex is good. Our experience after Rachel’s admission put that adage to the test.
We were in bed talking, as had become usual, about our day, vomiting out details, minutiae, irrelevant shit that created the illusion of conversation without requiring any real involvement.
She was wearing a long tee shirt. Nothing else. I had noticed. I was sick of jerking off. I reached over and cupped her breast. She startled, but didn’t push me away.
I leaned over and kissed her. She kissed back, following my lead. This was new for us, and awkward. She’d initiated sex for the most part. I wasn’t feeling very romantic. It was more instrumental.
I continued to cup her breasts, circling her nipples with my thumb, feeling them harden at my touch. I began to pull up her tee shirt. She finished the process and lay back on the bed naked. I continued to fondle her.
She reached into my pajamas and began stroking me. It was oddly mechanical, but effective nonetheless. I stiffened. She ducked beneath the covers and pulled down my bottoms. She took me in her mouth, her tongue circling my shaft.
I couldn’t help it. I pictured her on her knees in that hotel room, bobbing up and down on Jack’s cock. In my mind’s eye it wasn’t the quick scene she’d described. I imagined her making love to his prick, slobbering over it, her tongue circling the head, her hands fondling his balls.
The image sickened me, and yet it didn’t. I was still erect. Rachel was working hard. That was most of it... maybe.
I reached down and pulled her up toward me. I moistened my fingertips, explored her pussy. She moaned loudly. It felt forced. She wasn’t wet enough to match that level of excitement, but she was ready enough at least.
I rolled on top of her. She spread her legs wide. I entered her slowly. She moaned again, even louder than before. I knew now that she was definitely faking. At that moment, I didn’t really care. I just wanted to take my pleasure.
I thrust into her harder, faster.
“Oh God,” she cried out after a few minutes.
> She grabbed my ass hard and shuddered. I felt her pussy squeezing my cock, though not the rapid, spasming I was used to, but rather three firm contractions. She sighed and lay back on the bed. A passable performance if I’d been a stranger, but I knew Rachel too well to be fooled.
Her faked orgasm made me wonder what else she’d lied to me about. Was I really supposed to believe she accompanied him to a hotel out of town without having fucked him already?
I imagined her on his desk, naked, her legs over his shoulder. I could see him hammering his fat cock into her pussy. Imagined her boobs jiggling violently. I could see her head swinging back and forth in passion. Screaming in ecstasy as she pinched her nipples.
The image encouraged me to thrust harder. Rachel was urging me on, a weird forced cheeriness to her tone.
“That’s so good, honey, so good.”
I wished she’d just shut up. I hated that the Rachel in my bed was obviously less excited than the Rachel in my imagination, though I knew that my imagination was a projection of my own anger.
Fuck, I couldn’t get out of my own head long enough to enjoy it. I just wanted it to be over. I thrust into her hard, kept my cock inside her and pretend to come as well.
I pulled out and lay beside Rachel. She gripped my hand.
“Mmmm, that was nice,” she sighed.
“Yeah,” I replied. No, it fucking wasn’t.
Her affair hung heavily over us for weeks after. We seemed to be trying to avoid anything that would be a reminder of her time with Jack. That didn’t leave much. No flirting, no sexy lingerie. Their affair had been very heavy on manual manipulation, and that felt weird. I didn’t want to eat her out. That felt too submissive for the moment. She relied on me to initiate sex, which was never comfortable to me. I was actually longing to get back into our old rut.
-----
I was pretty sure Rachel was as dissatisfied as I was, even if she was pretending otherwise. Then one night she essentially confirmed it.
I woke up to find her side of the bed empty. That wasn’t like her. She usually slept like a log. Despite the tensions between us, I still worried about her. I wondered if she might be sick or if maybe the kids had woken her.
