Chapter 4

The drive home was a unique and exquisite form of torment. I kept a careful distance, letting three car lengths of dark, empty asphalt separate my bumper from hers. Her tail lights were two small, angry red eyes in the oppressive blackness of the night, glowing and then dimming as she navigated the city streets. They were the only constant in a world that had suddenly become fluid and uncertain. My hands were slick with sweat on the leather of the steering wheel.

What happened in there? Why did it take so long?

The question was a relentless, looping soundtrack to the blur of streetlights passing by my window. I hadn’t seen anything. After she’d followed him into the garage, I’d lost my nerve, pulling my car around to a different exit where I could only see her leave. The not-knowing was a white-hot poker twisting in my gut.

Scenario A: The Rejection. My rational mind tried to cling to the most plausible, least damaging outcome. She went to her car, he tried to kiss her, she shut him down completely, and he spent the next ten minutes pleading with her like the pathetic dog he was. It was a clean, simple explanation. But it didn’t account for the sick, coiling feeling in the pit of my stomach, the feeling that some irrevocable line had been crossed in my absence.

Scenario B: The Humiliation. My darker imagination took over. I pictured her on her knees on that gritty concrete floor, her beautiful face a mask of disgust and determination. I pictured his hands in her hair, his foul whispers in her ear. The image was so vivid, so intensely real, that a jolt of pure, shameful arousal shot through me. I felt my cock stir, a hard, insistent pressure against the denim of my jeans.

The light ahead turned red, and I brought the car to a smooth stop, my knuckles white on the wheel. I watched her car idle a few lengths ahead of me, a small, self-contained world of mystery. What if it was more? The thought was a venomous whisper. What if he did more than just talk?

The light turned green. Her car pulled away. I followed, a reluctant shadow tethered to her by a bond of love and a shared, sick secret. As we made the final turn onto our quiet, tree-lined street, it felt like I was approaching a verdict. The familiar sight of our house, with its warm, welcoming lights, felt alien and undeserved. The two of us got out of our cars, the synchronized clicks of our doors closing the only sound in the still night air.

Inside, Maya walked past me without a word, her movements stiff and robotic. She went to the center of the living room and just stood there, her back to me, her arms wrapped tightly around her waist as if she were holding herself together. Her dark jeans and simple black top, the outfit she had chosen to look so poised and powerful just a few hours ago, now seemed to cling to a frame that was brittle with a new, sharp-edged tension.

I approached her cautiously, my footsteps feeling unnaturally loud on the hardwood floor. My heart hammered against my ribs. I expected tears. I expected anger. I expected her to turn and scream at me, to tell me I was a sick, manipulative bastard who had broken something beautiful between us. I braced myself for the impact.

“Maya...” I began, my voice hesitant, fragile. “What happened? Are you okay?”

She turned to face me, and the look on her face stopped my breath. Her skin was pale, her lips were trembling slightly, but her eyes ... her eyes were not filled with fear. There were no tears. They were blazing with a cold, hard fire I had never seen before.

Her voice, when she spoke, was low and brittle, each word a carefully chipped piece of ice. “He thought I was pathetic.”

I stared at her, stunned into silence. Of all the things I had braced myself for, this was not one of them. “What?” I finally managed, my voice a croak. “Maya, he ... he didn’t hurt you, did he? He assaulted you—”

“No, Leo, you’re not listening,” she cut me off, her voice sharp, impatient. She took a step closer, her gaze pinning me in place. “He didn’t just use me. He critiqued me. He judged me. And he found me lacking.”

She began to recount the events, her narrative a torrent of humiliating details that she seemed compelled to share, as if purging a poison from her system. She told me about the clumsy kiss, her rejection, his manipulative words. She described sinking to her knees on the gritty concrete, the sour, overwhelming smell of him. And then she delivered the core wound, her voice trembling with a rage that was far more terrifying than tears.

“He stopped me,” she said, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “He pulled out of my mouth and he looked at me like I was ... like I was a broken toy. And he said, ‘Jesus, is that the best you can do? He really hasn’t taught you a damn thing, has he?’”

She told me the rest, the story spilling out of her in a rush of shame and fury. She described being pushed against the car, the feeling of his body grinding against her, his hands on her, his final, selfish climax on the dirty floor. I listened, horrified, aroused, my mind reeling. The details were a thousand times more potent coming from her lips than anything my own sick imagination could have concocted.

When she was finally done, the silence rushed back in to fill the void. She stood before me, trembling, not with fear, but with a humiliation. I finally moved, closing the distance between us and pulling her into a fierce, desperate hug. I held her tight, my face buried in her hair, my mind a chaotic ruin. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, the words feeling utterly, laughably inadequate.

I held her in my arms, expecting her to crumble, to finally let the tears come. But she didn’t. Her body was stiff, a coiled spring of rage and shame. After a long moment, she pushed back from my embrace, not with tenderness, but with a fierce, desperate energy. Her hands came up to grab the front of my shirt, her grip surprisingly strong, and she pulled my mouth down to hers.

The kiss was not a kiss of comfort or reunion. It was a frantic, searching thing, a desperate act of reclamation. It was a raw, open-mouthed expression of all the chaos swirling inside her, a way to erase the foul taste of Gary from her memory and replace it with me. I responded in kind, my own guilt and arousal and confusion pouring into the kiss.

Our frantic energy propelled us from the living room, a clumsy, stumbling journey down the hall to the sanctuary of our bedroom. There was no slow undressing, no seductive foreplay. It was a desperate shedding of the night’s skin. She tore at my shirt, a button popping off and skittering across the hardwood floor. I fumbled with the zipper of her jeans, my hands clumsy and eager. We fell onto the bed in a tangle of limbs, the cool, clean sheets a stark contrast to the grimy backdrop of the parking garage.

She pushed me onto my back and climbed on top of me, straddling my hips. It was a position of dominance, a clear, instinctual need to be the one in control, to reclaim the power that had been so brutally stripped from her. Her dark hair was a wild halo around her face, her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes ... her eyes were blazing with an intensity that took my breath away.

But as she lowered herself onto me, her whispers were not the confident, dirty talk of our previous encounters.

“Is this good?” she breathed, her hips beginning to move in a slow, uncertain rhythm. Her eyes searched mine, pleading. “Tell me this is good. Tell me I’m good for you. Better than I was for him.”

The intrusion of him into our bed, into this most intimate act, was a jarring, electric shock. I was fucking my wife, but in her mind, we were not alone. Gary was there, a ghostly, judgmental spectator. “Maya, you’re perfect,” I gasped, my hands coming up to grip her hips, to still her frantic questioning. “There is no comparison.”

But she wouldn’t be still. She was replaying the scene, trying to correct her perceived failure, using my body as a stand-in, a practice dummy. “No, wait,” she said, her voice tight with a strange, focused concentration. She pulled back slightly, changing the angle of her hips, a subtle, experimental adjustment. “If I did this ... would he like this? Am I doing it right? Show me how he would want it. I need to know.”

“Maya, stop,” I pleaded, my voice a ragged groan. The request was so twisted, so far beyond the bounds of our game, that my mind reeled. But my body, that traitorous, honest part of me, responded with a surge of pure, undiluted lust. The thought of her trying to please that disgusting man, of her being so consumed by his critique that she was re-enacting it with me, was the most depraved, intoxicating thing I had ever experienced.