Chapter 2

I woke up the next morning feeling like I’d been pulled from a shipwreck. The world felt sharper, the colors more vivid. Lying next to me, Chloe was still asleep, her face peaceful in the soft morning light. Her honey-blonde hair was a tangled halo on the pillow, and her lips were slightly parted, a soft breath escaping with each rise and fall of her chest. Looking at her, so serene and beautiful, it was hard to believe the raw, almost violent passion we had shared just hours before. But the evidence was there, in the faint, pleasurable ache in my muscles and the new, electric current that hummed in the air between us.

The taboo was no longer a shameful secret scrawled in an old journal. It was real. It was a shared memory, a line we had crossed together.

When she finally woke, her green eyes found mine immediately. There was no shame in them, no regret. Just a quiet, searching look.

“Are you okay?” she whispered, her voice husky with sleep.

“I think so,” I answered honestly. “Are you?”

She nodded slowly, a small, thoughtful smile playing on her lips. “It was ... a lot. He was disgusting, Mark. The way he looked at me.” She shivered slightly, but then her eyes met mine again, and I saw that familiar, wild spark. “But you ... the way you looked at me when I came back. The way you touched me ... I’ve never felt anything like that.”

That conversation set the tone for the week. We didn’t talk about the journal again. We didn’t need to. It was like we had a new, unspoken language. A shared glance across the dinner table, a lingering touch as we passed in the hallway—it was all freighted with the memory of what had happened. Our sex life, which had become a comfortable, loving routine, was now charged with a desperate, almost feral energy. Every time we touched, it was with the memory of Henderson’s grimy hand on her perfect ass, and the knowledge that this transgression, this shared secret, had uncorked something primal in both of us.

But we weren’t the only ones who had changed. Henderson had, too.

He was bolder now. The subtle, creepy leering was replaced with an open, possessive gaze. When he saw Chloe in the hallway, he’d let his eyes crawl over her body, from her feet all the way up, a slow, deliberate inventory that ended with a smug, knowing smirk. He started calling me “buddy” and “pal,” his voice dripping with a condescending familiarity that made my skin crawl. He knew he had touched her. He knew he had gotten away with it. And he knew, somehow, that it had affected us. He was a dog that had tasted blood, and now he was circling, waiting for another opportunity.

His constant, irritating presence was a low-grade fever in our lives. He’d find excuses to knock on our door—a noise complaint from a nonexistent neighbor, a question about the building’s ancient plumbing. Each time, his eyes would flick past me to find Chloe, and he’d make some inane comment, his words aimed at me but his gaze fixed on her. He was marking his territory, reminding me of his power, of the fact that he could intrude upon our sanctuary whenever he pleased.

And every time he did, every time I saw that leering smirk, I felt that same toxic cocktail of rage and arousal bubble up inside me. I hated him. I hated his wheezing laugh, the way his stained shirt pulled tight across his paunch, the proprietary way he looked at my wife. But God help me, a dark, shameful part of me was thrilled by it. The fantasy was no longer confined to the pages of a book or the shadows of a dream. It was walking our halls. It was knocking on our door. And it was just getting started.

The email arrived on a Thursday afternoon, a single, sterile paragraph that felt like a death sentence. The big freelance project I’d been banking on, the one that was supposed to cover our rent for the next three months, had been unceremoniously killed. Budget cuts, corporate restructuring—the excuses were just noise. The floor didn’t just drop out from under me; it evaporated.

Panic, cold and sharp, seized me. I stared at the screen, the words blurring together. Rent was due in a week. We didn’t have it. My mind raced through the humiliating options. I could call my parents, hat in hand, and endure my father’s disappointed sighs and “I-told-you-so” lecture about the instability of a creative career. I could hit up my best friend, Dave, but he had his own family, his own mortgage. The thought of admitting this failure, of asking for a handout, made me feel about two inches tall.

I walked out of my office and found Chloe in the living room, bathed in the afternoon sun, stretching on her yoga mat. She was in the middle of a graceful pose, one leg extended high, her body a perfect, elegant line. She looked so peaceful, so centered, completely unaware that our carefully constructed world was about to crumble.

“Hey,” I said, my voice sounding hollow and strange in my own ears.

She flowed out of the pose and turned to me, her face breaking into a warm smile. “Done for the day?” But the smile faltered as she saw my expression. “Mark? What is it? What’s wrong?”

I told her. I laid it all out—the cancelled project, the missing money, the impending rent deadline. As I spoke, I watched the light drain from her face, replaced by the same worry that was clawing at my own insides. I felt a fresh wave of shame. This was my fault. I was the one who was supposed to protect her from this kind of stress.

“I’ll call my dad,” I finished, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. “I’ll figure it out. We’ll be okay.”

Chloe was silent for a long moment, her brow furrowed in thought. She walked over to the window, looking down at the street below. I expected tears, or panic, or maybe even anger. I got none of it. When she finally turned back to me, her expression was calm, her green eyes clear and focused with an intensity that startled me.

“Don’t call your parents,” she said, her voice quiet but firm.

I stared at her, confused. “Chloe, what else are we going to do? We don’t have the money.”

“Let me handle it,” she said. The words hung in the air between us, heavy with an unspoken meaning that made the hair on my arms stand up. “I’ll ... talk to Henderson. I’ll ask him for a payment plan. An extension.”

My heart stopped. A payment plan. An extension. We both knew those were just words. We both knew the kind of currency a man like Henderson dealt in. The fantasy, which had been a low, thrilling hum in the background of our lives for the past week, suddenly roared to the forefront of my mind.

My mind screamed ‘no.’ It was one thing for her to endure a few lewd comments, a misplaced hand. That was a line. This ... this was a chasm. A point of no return. I should have forbidden it. I should have grabbed the phone and called my father, swallowed my pride, and protected my wife.

But I didn’t.

Because as the wave of protective rage washed over me, it was followed by a powerful, dark undertow of pure lust. The thought of it, the raw, humiliating, transgressive idea of it, sent a jolt of heat straight to my groin. My stomach twisted with self-loathing, but my body was already betraying me. My cock was stirring, hardening with a shameful, insistent life of its own.

I looked at Chloe, at her calm, determined face. She knew what she was suggesting. And she knew, from the look in my eyes, that I wasn’t going to stop her. I was surrendering. I was handing control over to her, to him. The thought was terrifying. And it was the hottest thing I had ever imagined.

“Okay,” I whispered, the single word feeling like both a betrayal and a prayer. “Okay, Chloe. You handle it.”

The plan was a masterpiece of self-deception. We spent the next hour constructing a plausible lie, not for Henderson, but for ourselves. It made the whole sordid affair feel less like what it was—a deliberate, terrifying step into a shared abyss—and more like a strategic maneuver.

“I’ll go for a run,” I said, the words feeling foreign and absurd. “A long one. To clear my head.”

Chloe nodded, her expression serious, as if we were planning a corporate takeover instead of her submission. “Good. That gives me time to catch him before he settles in for the night. I’ll tell him you’re out, that you’re too stressed to even talk about it.” It was a perfect excuse, painting me as the weak, anxious husband, incapable of handling his own affairs. The thought was both humiliating and intensely arousing.

The real plan, the one that made my heart hammer against my ribs, was much simpler. I would leave the apartment, make a great show of jogging down the front steps, and then, once I was out of sight, I would circle the block. I would slip back into the building’s side entrance, the one that led to the musty, dimly lit service hallway. And I would wait. I would stand in the shadows outside his apartment door, a silent, unseen sentinel, and I would just ... listen.

The idea of not being able to see was a new, terrifying twist. My imagination, already a fertile ground for this kind of filth, would be forced to paint the picture based on sound alone. It felt more dangerous, more intimate, and infinitely more degrading.

As the time approached, Chloe began to prepare. This time, there was no discussion about what she would wear. She moved with a quiet purpose that unnerved me. She disappeared into the bedroom and emerged a few minutes later. She hadn’t chosen the yoga outfit. Instead, she wore a simple, cream-colored V-neck sweater that clung to her full breasts, and a pair of dark, tight-fitting jeans that did incredible things for her ass. It was a deceptively casual outfit, the kind of thing she’d wear to meet a friend for coffee, but on her body, it was a weapon. It was the uniform of the approachable, beautiful girl-next-door, which somehow made what she was about to do feel even more profane.

She walked up to me where I stood by the door, my running shoes already on. She didn’t say a word. She just reached up, her hands cupping my face, and pulled me down for a kiss. It was long and deep and desperate, a kiss that tasted of love and fear and a dark, shared excitement. It was a promise and a goodbye, all at once.

“Be safe,” I whispered against her lips when we finally broke apart.

“I will,” she said, her green eyes holding mine. “Don’t worry.”

Then she turned and walked away. I watched her go, my gaze fixed on the gentle sway of her hips, the perfect curve of her ass in those jeans. She knocked on his door, a firm, confident sound that echoed in the quiet hallway. I heard his gravelly voice from the other side, then the click of the lock. The door opened, and she disappeared inside.

The moment the door closed, leaving me alone in our apartment, the reality of what I had done crashed down on me. I had just sent my wife, the love of my life, into the lair of a man I despised, to trade her body for our security. I was a pimp. A coward. A monster.

And I had never been more ready for a run in my life.