Chapter 1

I wasn’t entirely comfortable deceiving Jessica, but Heather reminded me that I seemed to rather enjoy being deceived myself once everything was all said and done.

“Besides,” Heather said, “you’re a guy. If the sex isn’t good, I don’t care how much you love Jess, you’ll eventually cheat on her. You can protest all you want right now, but the fact is that all guys are dogs.” I thought that seemed rather harsh, but I let her continue.

“Can you honestly say that even now you haven’t fantasized about me or my friends while you were banging Jessica?”

I had. I said nothing and my silence was her answer.

“That’s what I thought. Well, 5 years from now, you’re going to go from fantasizing to wanting the real thing whether you are in love still or not. Unless, that is, Jessica opens up and fulfills those desires. So, really, I’ll be doing a public service by preventing one more divorce from clogging up our legal system.” How very noble of her, I thought dryly.

Of course, I was nervous that coming clean about Heather was going to jeopardize our relationship, but Heather insisted she would take all the blame for blackmailing me and convince Jessica that I was an unwilling participant.

“Jessica, I need to tell you something,” is how I began.

We sat down on the couch and I held her hands in my lap.

“There’s something that happened to me that I need to tell you about. I tried to keep it a secret to protect you, but I can’t marry you without telling you the truth.”

Jessica was clearly worried about where this conversation was headed, so I decided to just go full speed. Rip it off like a band-aid.

“About a year and a half ago, I had sex with a girl that I met on AOL,” I began.

“Ok,” she said. She was well aware that I’d had previous relationships, but no idea of what I was about to drop on her.

“Well, she told me at the time that she was nineteen. She revealed to me later that she was only sixteen. She had taken a sample of my sperm and photos of me and threatened to accuse me of rape if I didn’t comply with her wishes.”

“Oh my God!” Jessica exclaimed. She raised one hand to her mouth in astonishment.

“She told me that if I did as she said for one week, she would let me go back home without telling anyone. I knew no one would believe me, so I did as she said.”

“Do what?” Jessica asked, still in shock.

“Chores around her house mostly, but she also forced me to pleasure her for the week as well as humiliating me sexually. “ Heather had warned that I should probably not go into too much detail. If Jessica wasn’t adventurous in bed, I could possibly freak her out and send her running no matter how much she loved me.

“You’re kidding me!” Jessica said.

“I wish I was. She was true to her word and did let me go and nothing happened to me. Until now that is,” I said, and left the sentence hanging.

“What do you mean?” Jessica prompted.

“Well, apparently Heather saw our wedding announcement in the paper. She called me last week.”

“Ok,” Jessica said, hesitantly.