Carol's Story
If you’ve read the story so far you probably have very mixed feelings about me, I put Chris through a lot and there are days when I still feel guilty. It's taken a while to
get to a place where I can write this. I haven't had sex with anyone other than Chris in six months but some things I did still play on my mind at dark moments. I’ve told Chris everything— sometimes with tears and sometimes with laughter. There isn’t a man or a woman, a flower or a painting that I’ve lusted after that he doesn’t know about.
Chris and me go back a long way; way, way back, like before, before— at school and university we were almost side by side except he was a year older. He got his degree a year before me, and started working for a company, doing all that nine to five stuff while I kept house while I studied. Chris would come home every evening and I’d have food on the table. The days when I had classes we sometimes ate out and Chris did housework when I had to study for exams. That was us; domestic bliss like they show you on the TV.
My mom and dad were like that too and so were Chris’s parents. Our university was miles away from our folks, so it was kind of convenient for one of us to get the home together while the other earned the money.
What nobody tells you about is the way the grind can get to you. Chris worked too many hours and did too much overtime because there was never quite as much money as we hoped. We got by with a little help from our folks, which I guess is what a lot of newly-weds do.
We celebrated my degree and then everything went wrong— like if it could go wrong then it did. I had a miscarriage, which was shit because I, well we, never meant to get pregnant. It was one of those pill failures where you get a stomach upset and the pills don’t work on crucial days.
We spent a few weeks trying to decide what to do and exactly when we’d made up our minds to be pleased we lost it. It made me feel like shit. Chris had his work but all I had was an empty house and feeling worthless. I put off job hunting when the pregnancy test arrived and then when I lost It I felt so bad that all I could do was stay home and cry.
If it had happened a few weeks earlier we'd have been relieved, but bad luck or bad timing or fate, or whatever it was gave us all the angst and then kicked us in the teeth as soon as we felt good.
Chris could see me falling apart. He’d come home and... well you can guess, no supper or boring food or worse than that; ready meals— the things that cost more, taste worse, and make you fat.
Chris announced after a few weeks of my tears that he planned to quit work and go freelance.
“That way I can be around for you. I’ve got lots of contacts already, I can build a business, you can help, it’ll get you out of yourself.”
He said a lot of stuff like that and kept at it for weeks until I gave in. It kind of worked too. Over the next six months his work gradually took off but I can’t say I was a lot of help. My degree was in marketing and he didn’t need much of that. I built the web site and answered the phone— it was better than nothing and it gradually got me looking outwards again. Time probably helped but Chris made all the difference, he was so solid. He’d probably say it’s what anyone would do, but that’s what he’s like.
I've never understood why my confidence was so shot. Objectively it makes no sense, what do hormones and uteruses have to do with keeping house or getting a job? Something in me shifted, something that said if your body can't look after an embryo, what good is it for anything else. It's like post natal depression only without the natal part. Chris did his best, and his best is good. Maybe he should have been mad at me... Who knows, I guess there are no right answers.
I decided that I needed to get out of the house, even though Chris was there and being so kind. I managed to persuade Chris that I ought to work, even if it was only part time. I hunted around and found a job and gradually we ground our way out of trouble. Work made a difference, gave me something that I could actually do and my fragile confidence picked up a little.
Three months later Chris’s dad died and my parents broke up, so the bank of mom and dad dried up. It threw us together even more. Chris became my safe place. I felt in some crazy way that I didn't deserve Chris, I'd done nothing to earn what he was doing for me, I couldn't even make a baby.
As I began to get better and he was still there as steady as ever, I think that was when I started to take him for granted. He was so solid, so unselfish; he became my rock and what do you do with a rock— you stand on it.
We struggled along and made ends meet; Chris got more contracts and I did better than I expected. The firm asked me to go full time, which gave me another little boost and with me being out of the house Chris got much better at cooking.
Six months into that arrangement the company I worked for got taken over and there was a whole flurry of reorganising and competing for jobs. Chris coached me through all that, helping me practice at presenting myself.
Chris has to pitch his ideas to get contracts, so he’s made himself good at that. He convinced me that I was better than I thought, got me through the imposter syndrome and I ended up on this team with Dean and Jay.
I was over-promoted; really I never should have gotten that job, I can see that now. I think Dean was eyeing me up at the interview. I didn’t see it then, obviously. I don’t know too much about the other people that were interviewed— most of them were men— obviously Dean didn’t fancy any of them.
Dean played me, I guess that’s no surprise if you’ve read the story as told by Chris. So how was I taken in? Dean was clever. He congratulated me on getting the job and somehow managed to make it sound as though that was a surprise to everyone. He put me on the back foot, made it clear that I needed to prove myself.
That spooked me. Maybe I shouldn’t have let Chris coach me, he was brilliant but as soon as Dean gave me doubts and Chris wasn’t there my confidence wobbled. Looking back I'm sure that was what Dean had in mind. We were away all week, every week; there was no escape from him and he could take his time, watch how things went and make it all seem natural.
To begin with I hunkered down in my room in the evenings. That was awful. I phoned Chris every night and he was so supportive and encouraging I couldn’t bring myself to tell him how bad I felt.
I started going to the gym in whatever hotel we were in. I read somewhere that getting fit and burning off calories boosted endorphins. That was supposed to be like a sort of superpower. The way I was feeling it had to be worth a shot.
At the weekends I tried to tell Chris but Chris did what he’s so good at— made great meals, pampered me and told me it was always tough at the start. I guess for most folk in a new job that’s good advice and I can’t blame Chris for telling me that, I mean he loved me, right, and he wanted to help.
It made a difference, at least for the weekends but come Monday I had to go back to another week of being put in my place and working out in the gym. Now and then I'd miss calls from Chris— sometimes I was so depressed I forgot to put my phone on charge and sometimes I was in the gym when Chris called my room. I'd realise at bedtime that it was too late to phone and went to bed feeling worse.
We went on like that for a few months and then one weekend I was exhausted and maybe had a virus so I slept most of the time. Chris wanted me to stay home the next week but my pride made me keep going. Dumb really, a week off would have done me good and I might have talked to Chris.
Dean knew when to strike. He was clever, he let me spend the day in bed and organised our rooms next to each other— the notorious 401 and 403 with the connecting door. The first day he let me skip work, gave me stuff to read up about customers. Come the evening he organised room service and gently quizzed me about what I’d been reading. You can imagine what that meant, him sitting on my bed asking questions, then gradually going further, giving me this whisky with ginger and some other herbs that he said was his special restorative mixture.
From there it went to joking around and laughing about one thing or another but he didn’t make a move. He didn’t make a move on Tuesday or Wednesday either but we did laugh a lot. By Thursday I trusted him enough to leave the connecting door open.
That night he complained that looking after me meant he didn’t get the chance to indulge in his usual entertainment. I never realised that he thought being away from home was a chance to seduce local women.
He was clever, very smooth. Of course now I know he’d played that game before. I fell for the line, asked him what he usually did and he kind of allowed me to drag it out of him. He played modest, didn’t like to brag, all that kind of stuff. He got me a bit more drunk than the other nights and some time close to midnight I gave him a blowjob.
I know shouldn’t have done it, but I was in bed in my too revealing nightdress. He told me I was tempting him too much, making him hard and that night he wore pyjamas so it was easy to see he was telling the truth. Catching glimpses of his big hard cock made it exciting and somehow it seemed like the least I could do after he’d looked after me all week. I didn't let him fuck me, though he obviously wanted to. By settling for a blowjob he somehow made himself seem like a gentleman, and made me feel as though I was in control. Ha, ha, what a sucker I was.
I insisted on going into work on Friday. I felt guilty as hell. I thought being around Dean might be awkward, but I was determined to tough it out. He was cool; no hidden innuendo, all business, technical, professional, giving me nothing to complain about. He did everything he needed to do to seem like a good guy.
Back home I couldn’t tell Chris I’d been in bed all week. He'd told me to stay home and I didn’t. I had to make stuff up; inventing a story about how boring the week had been so there was nothing to talk about. I gave Chris a blowjob out of guilt. That surprised him.
It didn’t help, I couldn’t help comparing Dean and Chris and that made me feel more guilty. Truthfully Dean is only a little bigger than Chris, but Dean had spent the evening teasing and getting harder and harder, whereas I caught Chris by surprise and that exaggerated the difference. Hindsight is so accurate isn't it, I can see it now, but I didn't then.
After that Dean reeled me in. I tried to stop it the next week, said I felt guilty, told him over and over that I was married.
“So am I,” he said. “Look Carol don’t let it get to you, we’re all grown ups, work is stressful, we all need a bit of relief. What happens at work stays at work— it’s like commercial in confidence, trade secrets, all that sort of stuff. Your secret’s safe with me and mine's safe with you, right?”
I suppose it was, but that idea made a sort of cocoon around us and inside that we could do what we liked. That was the way he sold it and whatever else he was, he was a salesman.
The more I gave into him on the sex front the less he exposed my ignorance at work. He stopped calling out my inexperience. He stopped humiliating me. There was a side effect to all that, though I didn’t see it at first, when he stopped keeping me out of decisions I saw how the business worked, realised that he had an overvalued idea of his own brilliance. I saw ways we could have done more business and that gave me confidence, made me strong enough to think I could manage Dean each week and not tell Chis at the weekends. I didn't think it was serious, Dean was married, so surely that had to mean my marriage was safe. Looking back I'm sure that idea was planted in my head by Dean.
I have to admit that I enjoyed it. Getting a lot of attention does that for you. I stopped being depressed about going to work and that made Chris think I was doing better. Dean traded off that confidence and brought Jay into the game. We were working together, he said, and I was so sexy it wasn't fair to keep Jay out, it was good for the team.
When Chris began to suspect that there might be more than just a new job giving me a buzz, I shrugged off his questions. Why didn't I own up right then? For the first time in a year I felt I was on top of things. Two men thought I was great in bed, well three if you include Chris, and I was doing so much better at work.
I knew Chris wanted to believe me when he had his suspicions. Somewhere inside my head I convinced myself that I was flying and being up there justified Chris's faith in me.
Did I imagine ditching Dean— no I didn't think that far ahead. I excused myself by thinking I was using Dean, not the other way around because fucking Dean was getting me into the job. I began to think I could fake it and make Chris think the job was the buzz. It was, partly at least, because Dean getting off my back made it easier to see how the business worked, even if it did mean that I was spending more time on my back under Dean while Jay filmed and had a few turns himself. No doubt Dean was accumulating material to blackmail me into continuing the arrangement but I didn't see it that way. I was beginning to nudge ideas into the business and my ideas worked. I thought I was in control and had a good thing going, if Dean wanted to blackmail me then I could blackmail him.
I think that made me overconfident and that's why I stupidly I happened to mention to Dean about Chris needing to be away some weeks. That gave Dean ideas and he started to pressure me. Looking back it's obvious that he wanted to add fucking a wife in their marital bed to the notches on his belt. I didn't see it and we hatched this crazy plan that the safe cocoon that was only supposed to be at work could be temporarily installed at our house, where unbeknown to any of us Chris was ready to record the whole thing.
When Dean invited Chris and I to his barbecue I had no idea what game he was playing. I still don't know for sure. One possibility is that he thought flaunting his mistress in front of his wife made him a totally big guy. Another possibility is that Dean wanted to size up Chris to see if he was a threat. What neither Dean nor I knew was that Chris had already read my laptop and made his plans. Talking to Chris since then I know he was on his guard the whole time while we were at Dean's.
Why did I write everything in my laptop? To some extent it was reflex; life was getting complicated so I needed some way to keep track. I wrote business stuff in there for the same reason. Keeping records on my old laptop became a reflex until the company gave me a new laptop, another Dean reward for being a good girl. I didn't dare put my sex life on the work machine, so I used both until one week I packed in too much hurry and left the old one at home.
Maybe there was something freudian as well, maybe I wanted to be found out.
Dean and I had no idea at the barbecue that Chris was onto us and Chris gave no hint. At the barbecue I wore the anklet that Chris bought me, I'd picked it out as a dare to myself, I had no idea that Chris knew what it symbolised. Wearing it was a mistake, I was worried the whole time. Every person I saw at the party might have known what was going on and might have blown my cover. By the time we drove home I was glad to have gotten out unscathed. I guess that hotwife anklet thing is good if you're playing the game with your husband in the know, it sure adds something, but it doesn't work if you're cheating.
There ought to be a rule somewhere that says those things are only allowed if you're a signed up member of the hotwife union, with your husband fully on board. Of course if anyone had asked I'd have said that Chris bought it for me. I've asked Chris since if he was setting me up, but he says no, the anklet was my idea, he'd have bought a ring or a brooch if I'd asked.
Chris picked the heart symbol for my anklet and I should have cottoned on right away that he knew more than he was letting on. That was the only clue that Chris had already found me out and I missed it. The stupid thing was that I already had my eye on that heart, so when Chris picked it it felt like mind reading, I loved it and I never thought for a second why he might have picked it. No genuine hotwife could afford to be so stupid?
With twenty, twenty hindsight I can see that it was a pity I didn't talk to Chris back then. I could have blagged that guys were hitting on me at work and said I wanted to show them that I needed the anklet to prove that my husband was number one in my life. I was so naive that I wasted that chance.
If you've read Chris's story I guess by now you'll be waiting with bated breath to hear my side of the great display. Before I get into that I have to own up about the night before. Chris had me 'bang to rights' as they used to say in British crime dramas. I'd had more sex than you can count over the two days and I knew that if I did anything with Chris I'd end up wincing or reacting some way that blew things up.
If I had any idea what my clever husband already knew and what he was planning I wouldn't have worried— well no, I would have worried, but differently and twelve hours earlier.
If I'd fucked Chris that night and said it hurt... well who knows— I didn't because I was feeling guilty and defensive, Chris plied me with wine and I slept like a log and woke with a hangover. Oversleeping and waking up groggy suited Chris’s plan, so thinking I was being smart I played into his hands.
You know from Chris's story that when I showered that morning I saw a hickey on my breast. That threw me a little. Back then my home life and my fun cocoon at work were supposed to be totally separate. Carrying marks from one to the other wasn't part of the plan. I felt some distinct irritation with whoever it was— Dean or Jay— marking me was taking liberties. I smeared concealer on it and resigned myself to making sure that I kept myself covered up for the day.
It made me a little tense, especially as Chris said he had a surprise and I had no idea what it was. As I opened the living room door I know I was on edge, like Chris said in his version of the story. Maybe I was being haughty — he's right that I often don't like surprises and maybe I was feeling guilty too, that little reminder on my breast had made sure of that.
Even now I can't put into words what happened next but it's only fair to try.
I saw the walls were covered in pictures. I had a hangover and although I'd showered I hadn't put my contacts in. I don't really need them around the house and I was a little hung over so my first glance at the pictures was a little blurred.
New pictures, I thought and first off I was annoyed at Chris— we've always worked together on our decor. This wasn't one new picture, it was a room full— what the hell was he thinking?
I spun around to face back to the door, I think because I expected Chris to be standing there ready to see what I made of the new pictures and I was confronted by my own words.
Fuck me
Fuck me
Fuck me right now.
The words were in a giant speech bubble coming out of a picture of my face, printed about twice normal size with huge letters that no one could mistake.
I reeled back, I knew exactly when I said those words and two steps back from the door was where I was when I said them.
After that it was a while before I saw anything clearly. My heart was beating off the clock, my eyes were full of tears and I could hardly breathe. I staggered back to the sofa and there was a picture right in my face of me sucking Dean's cock. Huge, actually larger than life, right in front of me. I almost threw up— I could taste Dean again. I could feel his cock stuffing into my throat, feel myself gagging.
I cried; God knows how long I cried, it felt like forever. I could barely breath.
At some point I staggered into the kitchen and sat at the counter. Chris says that I walked around the other pictures on the wall as if it was an art gallery. I have no recollection of that, though I know it’s true, I've seen the movie. I actually picked up my spare glasses that I use for watching the TV at night and studied each picture.
Was it cruel of Chris to record my agony as I looked at the pictures, preserving my visceral reaction to his display? I think he was right— it might have been the last he ever saw of me— imagine if I hadn't cared, or if I'd laughed in his face, told him that Dean was a better lover and there was all the proof he needed. It would have torn Chris apart but if ever he had doubts he could look back and know what a horrible woman he'd been married to. I think his overkill was exactly right.
I don't think he worked it out exactly like that, as far as I can tell he was recording so that he could see that I was safe while he was in the other room. He knew he had to blow everything apart if we were to have a fresh start and being Chris he needed to be sure that while he was out of the room that I hadn't thrown myself on the floor, slashed my wrists or had a fit.
When I made it to the kitchen counter and that infamous life sized picture of Dean fucking me right there on that counter I found Chris's message,
"I still love you."
I think it was about then that I uttered my immortally dumb line.
"I think I may have underestimated you."
Chris completely stunned me. One time or another, when guilt overtook me some night in a hotel, I had vaguely considered the possibility of being found out; any cheater would wouldn’t they, but in my imagination I thought I'd still have some leeway. The way I saw it playing out would be Chris asking me about some incident, I don’t know what it might have been, but I thought for sure it would be something I could own up to, say it was a one off, make up to Chris and tell Dean it had to stop.