by Unknown
A cool shiver went through him, as he let himself hold the thought he dreaded most for only a moment. He dropped it quickly, as though it were burning him, which it very nearly was.
There was no way Adria was cheating on him.
Was there?
He rubbed his eyes.
No, it was probably the first hing he had thought of. And he would have to deal with it.
He felt a twinge of disappointment.
He went to the sink to brush his teeth.
“You okay?” he called, when Adria didn't emerge for what seemed like an eternity.
Her voice was sweet, and made him think he was imagining everything, when she responded.
“I think maybe I'm coming down with something,” she said. “I just feel out-of-sorts.”
Sick.
Simple enough.
He went into the shower and pulled the door open to kiss her. She offered him her cheek. There was nothing unusual about that: Adria was a stickler for germ theory and not transmitting colds.
“I'll make you some hot tea,” he said.
He thought he saw a look a devastation cross her face, but hen she smiled. “Thank you,” she said.
“You sound froggy,” he told her. She did. “I'll add lemon.”
But by the time he got back, she was in bed with a pillow over head, and appeared to be sound asleep.
18 MORE ADVICE
Adria almost didn't go to work out with Lily on Wednesday.
Like her feelings about whether she should tell John, she went back and forth on whether she needed desperately to talk to Lily, or would bury the whole thing deep in soul for all of eternity.
After all: no one need ever know it had happened, except for her.
She was headed home, in fact, when she turned around and went to the gym.
Lily was furiously punching a bag, nearly knocking over the woman who was holding it with each violent thrust, but she stopped immediately when she saw Adria.
“Whoa hoa,” she called, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her mitt. “I thought you'd ditched me.”
Adria kept walking, and she jerked her head in the direction of the locker rooms. “I need to talk to you,” she said. “I'll be in the sauna.”
Lily already had her teeth on the tape around her mitt.
She took talking very seriously.
“Okay,” Lily said, leaning back against the dripping wall. Almost like an omen, the sauna was extra-hot today.
Or maybe that's just how Adria felt, she mused, because she was so riddled with guilt.
Adria opened her mouth to speak, and realized she wasn't really sure how to tell this story. She hesitated, and Lily blinked at her. Then she plunged in.
“I called the number,” she began. She looked to Lily for help, but her friend was looking at her almost expressionlessly.
“I called the number and I met someone,” Adria elaborated.
Lily became suddenly animated. “Oh!” She poked an elbow toward Adria. “O-kay. And was it good?”
“No,” Adria said quickly, wanting to steer Lily from the wrong conversation, and then corrected herself when she realized Lily would think she was answering her question. “Yes. I mean...look, that isn't what I want to talk about.” Adria waved her hands around, almost as if she wanted to erase the conversation.
Picking up on this Lily waved at her. “Oh you have to tell me now. This conversation is already started.”
But at that moment, a much older woman came into the sauna and sat down directly in front of them. She smiled warmly and leaned back against the wall, adjusting her towel and closing her eyes.
Adria looked at Lily helplessly.
Lily rolled her eyes and leaned back against the wall, appearing for a moment like she was going to go to sleep. Adria's stomach was in knots: she was so close to confessing what she had done, and now she would have to wait for this woman to leave.
Lily had other plans, though. She stood up, unwrapping the towel as she did. She stretched her arms out and took the towel with them, and rubbed it on her back. Then she tossed the towel on the bench and sat down on it, fully naked. Adria stared at her. She leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes again.
Adria could sense that the woman was getting a little uncomfortable, but she couldn't see her expression from the corner of her eye and didn't want to turn her head to see what she was doing.
“Did I ever show you my clit ring?” Lily said suddenly, in a very loud voice.
Adria's mouth hung open and she stared at Lily. Her friend opened her eyes and winked at her as she slid her finger down her stomach, and her legs fell open slightly.
The woman coughed, stood up, and left, waving awkwardly as she did. “It's too hot in here,” she mumbled.
Adria was staring at Lily's fingers. Lily laughed and pulled her towel around herself. “Okay. Now spill the dirt.”
Adria wanted to know if Lily really had a clit ring, and a variety of other questions plagued her as well. She closed and opened her eyes very slowly. “That was rude,” she said, finally.
Lily slapped her on the knee. “Come on,” she whined. “I want to know what is going on. You called. You had someone come over. And then what?”
Adria looked down at her feet. Her voice was a low whisper when she spoke. “I went through with it.”
There was a long pause.
“And? Was it good?” Lily's voice was lighthearted. Adria suddenly felt annoyed. How could she be like this? How was everything a game to her?
“Okay, okay, I think I get it,” Lily said, when Adria didn't answer. “What's wrong? You didn't tell John? You did? I thought you had an arrangement.”
Adria paused. She could feel her stomach twisting again. “It's not..we don't have this arrangement.”
Lily rubbed one eye. “So you feel what? Guilty? Did you tell him?”
“No.”
Lily opened her eyes again. “Do you think he's gonna find out?”
Adria sucked in her breath. “Not unless...”
“Oh no. Oh no. Don't you even think about it. Listen, chiquita, let me tell you something. If he's not gon' find out, then you leave it and you don' tell him. No. If you feel guilty, that's...” she waved her hand frantically in the air. “That will go away. That's means you shouldn't tell him. Oh no.”
Adria frowned. “But I -”
“No. Nope.” Lily spun on to face her, her legs crossed. She waved her slender, manicured finger violently in Adria's face. “Look. You did something, you did it for you, you feel bad. You make him feel bad, then you feel worse, then you sit around for like six months talking about your marriage, it's always hanging over your head...no, no, no, cabrona, fijate lo que I am telling you. Uh-uh.” Lily spun back to lean against the wall and folded her arms.
“But what if he finds out later?” Adria said weakly. “Isn't that-”
“The biggest lies are the most believable. Didn't someone say that?”
“Hitler.”
Lily frowned. And then she laughed. “Well. It's still good advice. Look, if he finds out you have the same mess on your hands, and that will be a big mess. But how's he gon' find out? You cover this up with a lot of what he wants, you know...do that other thing...what's your other thing you do?”
Adria stared at her blankly.
“Oh,” Lily said, grinning. “Yeah, the other men. Do that. You cover it up with a lot of good stuff. Like social media mistakes.” She laughed.
There was a silence. Adria realized she had come to Lily for advice because she would say what she really wanted to hear: that it was okay to cover up what she had done. Deep down inside, she knew that she wasn't actually confused about what to do: she knew the right thing would be to tell John. She just didn't want to face it.
“What else?” Lily said. Her eyes were closed again but she had an expression on her face as though she were looking right at, and through, Adria. “Something else is bothering you.”
Adria bit h
er lower lip.
“Come on,” Lily said.
“The thing is...oh God, never mind.” Adria pushed beads of sweat and a stray hair from her forehead. Then she felt a sudden urge to confess. “The thing is...I liked it. The...you know, the guy. The...”
Lily had a knowing smile on her face now. “The aventura. Yeah, I know.” There was another pause. “So what, you want to do it again?”
Adria could feel something twist inside of her at the thought. A rising lust made her pussy well up, just imagining “Andy's” fingers losing around her throat just before she came...the potential for so much more. So much more the way she liked it.
“So do it again,” Lily said, without waiting for her answer. She shrugged. “What's the problem?”
Adria sniffed. “John.”
Lily scraped her forehead with her thumb and shook her hair. Droplets of hot water flecked Adria's skin. She squirmed in her towel, unable to believe how turned on she was by just the thought of another “aventura” with Andy, one in which she might go even further, check even more boxes…
“I don see why you can't just combine your fantasies,” Lily said suddenly. “You like it rough, he likes to watch, why you can't just kill two birds with one shot? Hmm? You call your guy, you hide Yone in the curtains or something, and then ev-ery-body happy.” She sang the last part and opened her eyes.
Adria widened her eyes.
Lily smiled again and waved a finger at her, standing up. “You know it's the right idea. Ay, carajo it's hot in here, I have to get out.” She glided toward the exit. “See you out there.”
A small puff of air announced her exit. Adria was alone in the steam room.
And rather than contemplating her marriage, and what she should do about it, she found her mind wandering back to the night with Andy...and then to other things she wanted, other things she craved, other things she knew John wouldn't be able to do for her. Not the same way…
She pulled up her towel and slid her pointer finger along her thigh and into the soaked folds of her pussy. She was incredibly wet, and inside of her there was an aching throb. She rubbed her fingertip over the smooth face of her clit, while she imagined Andy's cock making slow circles around her anus. She imagined his fingers working their intricate magic while he filled her ass, and she submitted entirely to him.
She shuddered to a climax just as she imagined opening her eyes, her face pressed to the sheets, and seeing in front of her: John. Watching.
John: feeling…
what?
19 BOOZE CRUISE
It was a beautiful night on the harbor. The city sparkled against a cloudless sky, the wind off the lake was light and just enough to choke out the unusually hot late summer day. The water was like glass, and the city reflected almost perfectly in it. Traces of bright yellow were sinking into the western sky.
But John Querte had his eyes on none of this. He was leaning against the balcony as though he wanted to be alone and contemplate the water, but what he was in fact watching was his wife.
Adria had purchased a new dress for this cruise, and it was so stunning it was almost obscene. She had approached him while he was in the shower and asked if he wanted to see her new dress. She was naked at the time, and he had run his eyes over her body while he answered. The dress was small enough that she had it folded up in her hand, and so she shook it out and held it up for him to see that almost all of the dress was completely see-through. He had laughed, almost as though it were a joke. And then she had slipped it over her head. “I can't wear any underwear, or a bra,” she had explained, sliding the material into place. By then he had let the showerhead fall to his side with a clatter, and given a soft laugh, thinking she couldn’t possibly be serious.
That was two nights before. He had assumed it was part of an act, and that there was something more to the dress – a slip, something she hadn't shown him. But when she had stepped onto the boat – she had met him there, because they were each coming from work on opposite sides of the city – all heads had turned.
The dress was held up by two thin straps, and in shape it was not exceedingly unusual: it was even long, almost to the floor. A simple dress, a simple, figure-hugging shape.
But the material was semi-transparent, all the way through, with nothing more that a delicate embroidered flower pattern, very precisely placed, to cover her snatch, the crack of her ass, and her nipples. It was an elegant dress, an expensive dress, and the flimsy flowers never failed to be in the right place, covering what they were supposed to. But as she walked along and they shifted with her gait, every man on the boat was hoping they would fail. The curve of her ass, and the swell of her breasts were visible in the right light, as though she were naked. Her hair was down and she had straightened it. She looked stunning.
And, as she had promised two days ago, she was in fact not wearing any underwear.
He had never seen her in anything quite so risque, and obviously no one else had either. No one could disguise the fact that they were watching her every move.
The party was a mingler by BantaCorp, trying to butter up the engineering firms and encourage interpersonal communication, or whatever corporate jargon they had come up with for the invite. There were a lot of men like himself: not bad-looking, trim, mid-thirties, engineers. A lot of trim, pretty wives. And then a lot of guys from the upper rings of the construction ladder. Fitter. Better-looking. Not always with wives.
And then, floating above all of them, was his own wife in her see-through dress.
What John couldn't figure out is if she was on the prowl for another man, for another way to make his fantasy come true. The mere thought of it seized him by the balls. He had no idea if he wanted her to do it or not, especially here, where their colleagues abounded. The thought of his hot, lewdly-dressed wife getting a reputation as a woman who fucked construction workers on a cruise made him feel like he was going to throw up, but the thought of watching her do it had his cock ratcheted up to its most ready.
Adria seemed to know that he was thinking of her, and she tossed her hair and winked in his direction. She was talking to Mike Sternum, and she was making no effort to hide her flirtatiousness. She laughed and placed her hand on his arm.
John felt his cock throb, and he wished there were a way to watch his wife with Mike and hide his erection.
Adria approached him. Even her walk seemed changed. Now it went with the dress: slinky, oversexed, unusually provocative.
“You're having quite the time with Mike,” he said.
She brought a glass of wine to her lips. “I am,” she purred. But here eyes seemed...dull. Or distracted. Or both.
John couldn't quite put his finger on Adria and what she was doing or thinking. Everything she was doing seemed to be part of a seduction, and she seemed to be doing it with her sights set on another man. She seemed to be following through on his fantasy again.
But something was off, and it had been for days. Ever since he had come home. He couldn't quite put his finger on it. John by nature was an analytical man, and he didn't like confrontation unless he had things thoroughly analyzed. But even as Adria slinked around in a transparent dress, reeling in men like fish from a barrel, he sensed that her heart was either not in it.
Or maybe in it too much?
His own heart felt like it was being squeezed in a vice.
“So...”
“So...”
“Nice dress, by the way. I didn't think you were serious,” he said.
She smiled. “I was.”
He sipped his own wine. “And are you serious now?”
Adria gave him a weak grin, and there it was again: something wrong, something changed from the way she had been at the wedding. “About?”
“What you're doing,” he said.
“And what am I doing?” She was coy again, and she batted her eyes.
Maybe he was misreading things. Maybe what he was seeing in Adria was his own paranoia. Maybe there was nothing “off” about Ad
ria at all.
“I think you know what you're doing,” he said.
She turned and waved at Mike. Then she turned back to John. She raised her eyebrows.
It was a question. Did he want her to fuck Mike?
But she really didn't wait for his answer, however he might have conveyed it. She knew what it was anyway. That however much he might be torn between the two choices, his cock was overpowering his rational mind. Sure, it was a bad idea. Especially since they all worked together. Sure, he could think of the consequences, of the humiliating future with Mike grinning in his presence, knowing that he had banged John's wife full of cum. But his near-bursting cock couldn't tell a lie. It was overriding his common sense.
So when Adria slinked away, he didn't try to stop her. He just stood there watching the moving lines and shadows of the curve of her ass through the transparent dress. It was a spectacular sight.
She made her move quickly. John felt a knife of humiliation and anger through him when Adria leaned to whisper to Mike and made the man look over in John's direction and smile wickedly. He watched Mike's big lips whisper in Adria's ear, and then she smiled, and slinked away. Toward the bow, the indoor part of the ship.
Mike looked around, a self-satisfied grin on his face, and John made sure to appear to be looking out at the water when his eyes came to him. Then Mike, too, headed off in the same direction as Adria.
John realized he had had more to drink than he thought, as he stumbled through the narrow hallways in the cabin of the ship. They seemed to break off into labyrinthine forks and hidden passages, though he knew it was probably his fervor and the booze that made him think that way.
He couldn't see Mike or his wife in the passages. He heard a throaty laugh from a room, but when he peeked through the crack, he was mortified to see another woman, whose face became instantly annoyed. She shut the door in his face.
But then he heard Mike's voice. A murmur that could only have been Adria.
There was a room labeled as a conference room, and the door was open. John could see the silhouette of Adria's body, but Mike was in the shadows. He looked quickly around. There was no place to really hide, or even stand inconspicuously.
