Fuck.
“Don’t you?” she asked. “Oh, Wyle. Why didn’t you tell me?”
I sat down beside her, too afraid to touch her and face rejection but too damned scared not to be close to her. “God, Melissa. I was so stupid. I never meant for you to know.”
To my horror, a tear trickled down her cheek, reflecting the dim light peeking form under the blinds. “I wish you would have told me. If there was something I could have done…”
“No, baby, don’t say that. You’re perfect. It was me, just something I had to go through. But it’s over now, I swear. I’m completely with you now.” I was more than that, I belonged to her. Body, mind and soul, I was hers.
She stared at me for a long moment, then wiped her tears away with a jerky motion. “Look, Wyle,” she said, clearly striving for composure, though I could hear her voice shaking. “I love the games we play. I know you were nervous about it, at first, but this isn’t just for you. You know by now how much I love it too, don’t you?”
I thought about our time together, the way she had fallen so easily into her role as mistress. I had been so sure she’d done it just to please me, but would it have worked that quickly and continued for so long?
She always had a new idea to implement, a new way to tease. That kind of imagination didn’t match someone who was ultimately disinterested. And no one knew better than I how many orgasms she’d had on my dick or my tongue.
Could it really have been so simple, to find the woman that matched me in every way? That was another thing I had mistaken; to think that something quickly won was transient.
She sat up straighter. “But I just don’t know how I can do this. It would have been one thing if you had talked to me about it or wanted to do a threesome, but cheating? That’s not kinky, Wyle. That’s just douchebag.”
“Cheating? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Language,” she reminded mildly.
I subsided back onto the couch. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Your secretary, that’s what I’m talking about. I had to find out from Elaine, by the way. Jim’s wife from the Tennis Club. I think she was getting a manicure when she told me, and she sounded way too smug. Wyle, if you needed something different…someone different—”
“I don’t!” Oh God, I really didn’t. I took a deep breath so I could speak coherently. Then I told her everything, how the agency had sent over the secretary who dressed like that and walked like that and I didn’t want her. But then she saw my hard-on for Melissa, and I turned her down. And then the phone call.
To my utter shock and relief, she seemed to believe me. But then, I never could lie to her.
“What I don’t understand,” she said, “is what you were talking about before, when you thought I didn’t know about Babette.”
Ah right, this was exactly why I didn’t lie to her. Because I did it so incredibly poorly. So I told her all about my weird little melancholy and how I had determined it to be a natural progression of our relationship after all.
I finally couldn’t hold back any longer, took her hand in both of mine. “So what I’m really trying to say is, please don’t leave me. I know I’ve been stupid. So unforgivably stupid.”
“But you didn’t cheat on me?” She knew the answer.
“It’s you. Only you.”
“You’ve been obedient?” Jerking off, she meant.
Where before I had spoken as her husband, now I gave her the deference of a lover. “Yes, ma’am.”
“No.” She abruptly stood and went to face the wall. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this right now.”
Fear stabbed my stomach, deflating my burgeoning erection. “Can’t do what, baby?”
“I believe you. I do. I just spent the whole flight thinking you had done it, and freaking out and crying on the shoulder of Jed from Wyoming, and I can’t turn it off that quickly.”
She sagged against the wall, and I was there in a minute, holding her. My arms surrounded her, but they weren’t a cage—never that—but bracing her against my own weakness.
Then she whispered, “I was so afraid.”
I wanted to laugh. She was afraid? Of what, that as soon as my wife left me, I’d fall into bed with some young woman I didn’t even know… oh. Okay, fair enough.
It was how I’d met Melissa, technically, but that was different. Then my wife had left me permanently, not over the weekend. Then I had been devoid of hope and so damn lonely. Now all I had was hope; hope that I actually had an ounce of the charm that Melissa apparently thought I had.