Chapter 15

Author’s Note: Some days, you wait for the dawn but have forgotten how hard the morning can be. What lies ahead may be nothing but a painful day. After such a high, can Jess and John sustain it? Thanks for your time, most of all readers, and your feedback and votes.

The all-night orgy with Marco, Jess, and her agency girls was a high watermark for debauchery. Afterward, work for both Jess and me picked up. She pushed hard on her escort business. Over the next three months, her client base grew from six to twenty. She had added one new girl, a real estate agent who was a friend and Brittany and shared her passion for fitness and rough, kinky sex. Jess was taking appointments almost every day. Cash was piling up, but she didn’t want to give up her part-time gig at Dr. Vivianno’s office. I didn’t push her on it, though, because I was consumed with two major projects of my own. First, I was winding down my career. Next week, my last big bonus payment from the Jonathan Summers hedge fund deal would come through, and I’d retire. Second, we had narrowed our house search down to three choices.

Something larger lurked in the background. Kat had passed her third wedding anniversary with James. She was entitled to twenty percent of their community estate now. Sure, his family had walled off a great deal of their wealth to protect it, but she and James still shared fairly substantial assets. The endgame of Kat’s marriage would be messy and, likely, protracted, I assumed. She was paranoid that James was having her followed by a PI, so we had paused our usual trysts for the past two months. That coincided with Kat insisting that she and James attend marriage counseling. We confined our communication to an encrypted app, which Kat downloaded and then deleted twice a day.

On my end, I knew Kat was right to be paranoid about being followed. Because I had hired a PI to keep tabs on her and James. I wanted to know how dirty he was going to play in the divorce. What surprised me is that it appeared he genuinely didn’t see what was playing out in front of him. Neither did his family. It readily became apparent that he kept his growing marital discord secret from his parents. He worked a lot, but he disappeared from the banker happy hour scene I had cultivated before their marriage.

And the PI found out why. James had developed a decent pill habit. When the Oxycontin became harder to get, he turned to Vicodin. He was nodding off more days than not, and it really had him divorced from reality. My hope is that it would soon have him divorced from Kat, too. Maybe my assumption of a messy breakup would be wrong.

This multitude of thoughts had passed through my head as I drove home from the office and trudged back to my apartment. I had pulled what I was confident would be my last ever all-nighter at work. Instead of pushing through the day at the office, I decided to come home for a quick shower and change of clothes. Maybe even a quickie with Jess, if I could muster the energy. Our schedules had been polar opposites the past few days.

As I approached the door, I froze. I was sure I had heard something. My head was heavy and tired, so I questioned myself and looked around to see what it might have been. I held my breath but raised my key. Then I heard it again and stopped.

I knew Jess’s sexual moans by heart. And they were coming through the door loudly and distinctly. My heart pounded. I reminded myself to breathe.

Then I heard her cry out, “I’m a cheating whore!”

There was a smack of flesh.

“I’m your cheating whore, sir!” she cried.

I closed my eyes and took five long deep breaths in through my nose and out through my mouth. Maybe I had figured this was a possibility. Maybe I should have known it was inevitable. The reality was that my girlfriend was a prostitute with a coke habit. Still, it was difficult to know what to do when presented with the moment, expected or not.

Flight wasn’t an option, so the only course of action was to open the door. It was the only choice. So I did. Not in dramatic fashion. I didn’t scream, “Gotcha!” I just opened the door like I normally would, perhaps a bit more quietly. I wanted to take in as much as I could before my presence was known. It would be the only chance I’d have to see what was happening in an honest state, before excuses and lies started flowing.

Jess was kneeling on the couch, facing the wall against which it sat. She was dwarfed and almost completely obscured by a very tall, extremely muscular man whose toned ass was pistoning back and forth in a blur while he pummeled my girlfriend’s cunt. He had a hand raised above its head, and I watched it crash down against her ass with a thwack. Jess’s familiar moans were deep, betraying the pleasure gripping her body.

I saw a mirror on the coffee table with lines of cocaine, and judging by the residue left behind, they had been doing quite a bit of blow.

“Johnny! Oh god, Johnny!” Jess screamed. “I’m going to cum again! Don’t stop! Please!”

Johnny. Jesus, Jess, I thought to myself. That forced me to break their erotic bubble. I wasn’t ashamed. I did it in cliche fashion. I coughed. Her paramour didn’t flinch, but Jess turned her head. Her face went white and her body slipped forward. I heard her whisper, “Oh, shit.”