Caught and Kept!

CAUGHT AND KEPT!

©2021 by 'Legio_Patria_Nostra' and 'HighLuster'.

'HighLuster', who is principally a gifted editor, is listed as co-author because his exceptional editing skills magically transformed my word salad into a royal feast! His role was so much more than simply proofreading and copy editing. HL is truly a professional-quality editor in the old school tradition. His unique abilities include showing the writer where a word, sentence or paragraph is better cut, changed or reordered, and why. HL's abilities also include top-notch rewriting and rewording. He quickly showed me that, if I trusted his judgment and let him work, the results would speak for themselves. I did, he did, and they did! We both hope that you enjoy the result of our collaboration as much as we enjoyed crafting it for you!

Please read the tags, and notice that this isn't a hard core BTB story. Life is lived in the pastels and shades of greys and not in the black and white. We've tried to capture the complexities of this couple's marriage, their relationship and how infidelity has affected them.

There is punishment and justice in this story, and we've tried for realism, avoiding as many clichés as possible. However, owning to the subject matter, a few clichés are inevitable; if we were writing about fly fishing we could probably avoid them altogether.

This is a work of fiction, and it's written solely for entertainment purposes. If you're not at least 18, close this page and go elsewhere.

She's Caught!

I've never believed in letting a problem go unaddressed, especially a bad one. I also tend to seize and hold the high ground whenever I can. Those strategies, which have served me well, apply to more than military operations. When I unexpectedly caught my wife and her supervisor in our marital bed, my first thought was, "Act. Take the high ground."

I wasn't planning on sneaking quietly away and spending the next four months devising a plan for revenge only a little less complex than Operation Overlord was. I wasn't visualizing a plan, which if flawlessly executed, would devastate the cheaters, win me the sympathy I crave, and pave the way for finding happiness with a just-divorced millionaire beauty queen who adores me.

Why not? Because my chance of winning Power Ball is better than making a plan like that one work. Besides, I couldn't live for even day with what I now knew, much less for the months needed to plan such an operation. What I saw in my bedroom demanded an immediate response, as instantly immediate as any other such catastrophic, marriage-destroying event would demand. I treated my wife's infidelity like the dire emergency it was!

My predicament was a predicament of circumstance. What placed me at the door of my bedroom at that moment in time? It wasn't suspicion. Nobody tipped me off. The cheaters weren't all that careless. Nope, it wasn't any of those. It was pure blind luck that caused my clueless ass to catch my wife and her boss in the act. That, and an impossibly fortunate turn of events.

The fate of empires, monarchs and ordinary men capriciously turn on the slightest or most improbable alignment of circumstance. In my case, a single apparently insignificant factor changed my schedule on that day. The resulting realignment of events changed several lives. Here's what happened.

First, I planned an out-of-town trip to call on two significant clients. This trip was scheduled to be a 14-hour day of meetings, dining, socializing and driving, so my wife Deanna knew I wouldn't be returning home until late in the evening. She apparently turned that knowledge to her advantage.

Second, I had an unprecedented cancellation by both clients after I was already enroute which caused me to return to my home office about 90-minutes later.

Third, on the way home, I'd stopped to greet our neighbor, Mrs. Jennings, who was walking with her two children. Her oldest, an adorable five-year-old named Molly, wanted to sing me a song. I videoed her with my phone to show Deanna, which was something she'd always liked.

Fourth, Deanna didn't set our home burglar alarm when she and her supervisor, Ed, came into our house on that day.

If any of those were different, I doubt that I'd have caught my wife in the act with the video evidence to prove it.

Here's how it all worked out. I proceeded toward my house, turned the corner onto my street, and parked my car in our driveway next to Deanna's. I thought, "Maybe she's home ill, or since it's around noon, maybe she returned on her lunch hour for a bite to eat or to get something she'd forgotten." That turned out to be wishful thinking.

When I unlocked the entry door, I noticed the burglar alarm wasn't set. That suggested Deanna planned on a quick stop, which matched with my earlier assumption, but I saw that she wasn't in the kitchen eating, nor in the family room, so I my assumption became illness. I proceeded upstairs, mildly concerned.

My concern, of course, was for my wife's health and well-being. I didn't want to startle nor otherwise disturb her, so my trip up the stairs was quiet and deliberate. No calling out to her, no thumping, no drama.

As I neared the bedroom, I heard Deanna and recognized the sounds I knew so well. At that moment, I knew that my treacherous wife was getting fucked in our bed by someone who wasn't me!

If you've been there and done that, you know that the subconscious mind understands such situations instantly. Then the conscious mind kicks in, shifts gears, catches up and recognizes that your life has just been inalterably transformed. In the vernacular, "Shit just got real;" you realize that your ability to control the events is precarious and getting even more so.

That moment is the moment when you don't know whether to kill, cry or wind your watch!

Your heart rate soars. Your senses leap to full alert. Your insides turn to jelly. Adrenaline-fueled, highly intense shakes hit you like the blast of a point-blank shotgun.

Rage, anger, jealousy, hurt, and all of the primal darkness wired into our collective unconscious explodes inside the lizard part of our brain. Then the instincts for self-preservation that sit dormant in all of us until we need them surge to the surface.

Almost without thinking I grabbed my phone, which was in video mode (thanks Molly), and slowly opened the already cracked door a few inches.

I slowly followed the camera into the room. The scene was worse than I'd imagined. An adrenaline-flood nearly overwhelmed me. I fought to control my breathing, which was shallow and rapid and I fought to retain focus.

Ed and my wife were locked in classic missionary. His head rested against the right side of hers. She had her face turned away from me. He was gripping her ass and going to town, humping and grunting away. She moaned in synchrony. It wasn't pretty.

There were no declarations of love nor any demeaning insults against the cuckolded spouses. There was no tenderness nor affection. There was none of that, just the down and dirty, the doing-the-nasty in our marital bed.

As distracted as they were, I probably could have remained there unnoticed until they finished. That wasn't gonna happen. I was rapidly accelerating away from surprised, toward WTF and then on to full-blown Texas Chainsaw Massacre LXIV, Waco Edition! Alarm bells were ringing and my Rage Monster (imagine a zombie Randall 'Tex' Cobb) busted down the cage door!

Their shit also just got real!

I left the phone recording and propped it against a jewelry box on the dresser. I quietly approached the bed, grabbed old Ed's right ear and pulled like I was starting a lawnmower full of last year's gasoline.

The human ear is delicate and easily abused, with a number of associated nerves and minor muscles. So, as I pulled on his right ear, Ed was naturally quite eager to follow along. That forced him to pull out of my wife and roll onto his back to comply.

As a typical dude in a fit of jealous rage, I checked his wedding tackle as he rolled over. After all, size is the first thing that comes to mind when we're asking the usual postmortem questions, isn't it?

I was pleased to see his average size. And a condom, which eliminated another painful element from the inevitable Shit-show Deluxe Edition, soon to debut, here at Hartung's!

In those interminable seconds, preserved for posterity in digital clarity, Ed screamed something unintelligible. Deanna's surprised scream followed and it turned into my name followed by the words, "No! Noo! Nooo! Kevvvvvvvvin, don't hurrrrrrrt him!"

Some functioning and attentive part of my brain heard and understood. Maybe, just maybe, Deanna saved both Ed's life and my own freedom. She ensured that no jury would need to get involved, thus tipping the odds in my favor. Yes, Texas juries are the most empowered juries on earth. Yes, they will often nullify the law or go easy on sentencing for crimes of passion where the reaction isn't too far out of proportion to the provocation. But sometimes they don't. Deanna made sure that I wouldn't be subject to a jury that didn't.

I still don't know what damage I would've ultimately visited upon Ed's cowering presence, but whatever that might have been, Deanna forced me to pause and reconsider. I owed her for that one.

Now that I was redirected, I dragged a stumbling, screaming Ed out of the bedroom. He grabbed at me helplessly as I brutally towed him along by his reluctant ear. Once we were on the landing at the top of the stairs, I shoved him hard.

No, Ed didn't tumble down the stairs in homage to a formulaic Hollywood movie. Instead, he only tumbled part way. He broke his fall by grabbing one of the handrails. The few stairs he did skid down weren't gentle. Ed left some of his pasty skin on the carpet during his descent. When I considered his scuffed-up, doughy ass, I knew Deanna never told him that his was as cute as mine is.

Small comfort. I was still seething. I grabbed Ed's clothes and threw them haphazardly down the stairs, followed by his pathetic wingtips. I was laughing manically because it felt like I was playing a game of naked dodgeball. The first shoe missed, but after a couple of quick, fake throws, I nailed him right in the stomach with the other one.

I told Ed to get dressed and to get out of my house, because if he was still there in two minutes the next thing down the stairs was going to be a .45 caliber slug. My wife screamed that Ed didn't have a car here. My response was, "Call a cab." I saw the condom on the stairs and told him to take his scumbag with him, or I would feed it to him gleefully.

Ed responded by possessively growling, "Leave her alone, Kevin." They were words with nothing behind them.

I turned to reenter our bedroom, where my naked wife was sitting in the middle of the bed bawling.

I tend use humor at terribly inappropriate moments, and something in my head was so wild and so fuck it that I winked and blew Deanna a kiss. I didn't remember that until I watched the phone video later. I was so far out of control that my face was almost unrecognizable.

I called a short time-out on myself, shoved the Rage Monster back into his crate, and forced myself to calm down. I checked my watch, then looked back at Ed and spat, "You're down to a minute, thirty-three and counting."

Ed screamed, "You don't scare me, you fucking pussy!" as he was sliding into his trousers. His eyes were furious, even burning. Pink and red abrasions striped his back. His right ear was bright red and starting to swell. "I'll file charges on your ass, you lousy fuck," he yelled, accompanied by Deanna wailing in the background, "No, Kevin! Stop it, Ed! Noooooo..."

I pointed a finger at Ed and said in a voice so calm that it even surprised me, "Oh really? All I saw was a man raping my dear, faithful wife. I reacted to protect her.

I continued, "Once you're out of here, you need to buy a dozen roses and a nice card for your wife! If she swallows whatever bullshit story you come up with for your soon-to-be cauliflower ear, she'll probably start wondering about the scrapes on your back and on your Pillsbury Doughboy ass!

"Finally, update your resume because you're my wife's damn boss, and you took advantage of her, you piece of maggot-infested shit! You're gonna need another job real soon."

"You ain't threatening me, you fuck!" he screamed.

Just before I closed the bedroom door I said, "You're right Ed. I'm finished threatening you. I'm about to take action! Your time is almost up."

I faced Deanna, who was still sobbing. Menacingly I hissed, "Go fucking clean up..." my inappropriately timed humor returned as I added merrily, "...because Honey, we need to talk!"

She stepped toward me, still naked, and I held up my hand. "No. Clean up. I'll strip and make up our... marriage bed... and then we will talk."

Deanna retreated into the bathroom, weeping. I stopped the video recording on my phone and stripped the sheets, the pillowcases and even the duvet. Instead of putting them in the laundry, I put them into two industrial-sized garbage bags. The filth on them couldn't ever be washed away.

Some Images Can't Be Unseen

Deanna sat across from me. Her walnut-colored hair was damp and her make-up was removed. Her slight frame was wrapped in my big terry-cloth robe.

Deanna held a cup of strong coffee in both shaky hands. I had one also, but mine had healthy shot of Jameson in it. Like Deanna, I was trembling, but my trembling was the result of a post-adrenaline let-down, not embarrassment nor fear.

"Start talking to me, Deanna," I said, trying to be civil even though I was clearly hurt and angry. "Before you say anything, imagine every cheater's cliché you can think of and put them all aside. Don't even try to insult my intelligence nor further destroy your remaining credibility with any of that bullshit. You crossed an inviolable line, and we both know it. What do you have to say for yourself?"

Deanna looked away. Her eyes filled anew with tears. She reached for my hand and I withdrew it, which earned me one of her looks.

After a few minutes of pregnant and awkward silence, Deanna looked straight at me and said "First of all, I love you more than anyone on Earth, even more than our precious daughter, Brandy, and even more than my parents. I want to grow old with you. I know that sounds like a cheap lie right now, but it is the truth. What I did was beyond wrong. There's no excuse for my betrayal of our marriage. I take full responsibility for that."

Deanna looked me squarely in the eye and then added, "I just want to fix this Kevin, and I'll do anything you want me to do."

My first instinct was to lash out at her with the standard angry husband insults, but I didn't because I felt strangely calm after the awful rage I'd just gotten under control. Was I angry? Of course. But I was relaxed as well.

"Okay, let's get to the 'why' of all this? Please explain what went wrong. Why did you cross the line and cheat? How long, Deanna?"

"For about six months, but this is only the fourth time we've had sex. And yes, I made him wear a condom each time."

Trying not to be sarcastic but failing, I asked, "Four times in six months? What were you doing? Did I walk in on your performance review?" Deanna's beautiful, expressive, brown eyes reflected the sting of those words, but she otherwise let it pass.

"We had trouble finding a time to get away, mainly because I was afraid of getting caught and because we knew what we were doing was wrong." She stared down at her cup and added, "Ed was chasing me, but I was the one that let him catch me. I could've stopped it. I should have."

"But you didn't. Why, Deanna? Why?" The exasperation in my voice was evident.

Deanna was pensive. "I've thought about that, even before today. There were several factors. After looking at them in the cold light of day, I realize that they're just bullshit. They're worn-out clichés, just like you said they were. I can't honestly tell you what the real reason is."

"Was the sex better? Am I not doing something right?"

She shook her head. "No, not at all. Just the opposite. Ed thinks he's a great lover, but he's nothing like you are. He doesn't like to give me oral sex. He's not particularly imaginative. He's somewhat selfish. He doesn't care about my satisfaction. No, Kevin, the only thing I can imagine is I was indulging in a forbidden fruit fantasy."

"There has to be more to it than that, Deanna. I just can't believe you'd fuck another man because of that."

Maybe it's because I just turned forty. Maybe it's because my little Brandy is a nearly grown woman. I do know that a younger man—my boss—started treating me like a valued colleague and the center of his attention. He consulted with me on everything, almost like he was grooming me to be his replacement. It was exciting. Maybe that all contributed to why I was unfaithful too."

Deanna can't lie for shit, so when she looked me in the eye and said she didn't know why, I believed her.

She chewed on a manicured nail pensively. "But as you said, Kevin, I made a choice and I acted on it."

I asked, "Why here, and why today?"

"We went to meet with two companies we do business with. They're both near here, out along Highway 83, and we met with their accounting departments this morning. Ed asked me to drive because his Tahoe is in for service. When we were done, he suggested that instead of lunch, we could have a nooner before going back to work."

"Ed knows I work out of my home office, so you must've told him I was gone," I said.

"It came up in casual conversation. Ed and I've been friendly and we share things like that. In fact, Ed helped me get my promotion to analyst. He told me that Mr. Gerston wanted to promote Sherri, but he went to bat for me. He never initiated our rendezvous as payback or anything of the sort. It's not why I had sex with him."

I refilled my cup and topped hers off. "I have my doubts about that, but then I can't stand the guy."

Deanna raised her eyebrows questioningly. "You never said anything about Ed before today."

"No," I said, shaking my head, "I didn't. It was personal. I figured he was your boss and I needed to stay quiet, but that didn't mean I didn't like him. Whenever I'd met him at company events, he treated his wife like she wasn't there and he acted like a prick towards me. Both aren't acceptable behaviors"

"I'm not defending him, Kevin, but I'm curious. How did he treat you?"

"You know, snide innuendo, compliments about you that were kind of borderline, a remark about me not working for a major company. Just chickenshit stuff like that. Individually, none of his remarks was a big deal, but when taken together they became a pattern. You know me, I have a thick skin, and it takes a lot to piss me off, but Ed managed to do that."

Deanna nodded. "Unless you know him well, Ed comes off as kind of strong. He tries to be alpha, but he has mostly beta skills," she chuckled, "but you're wondering if I felt anything for him, right?" I nodded.

"I didn't," she continued. "No love. Friendship, maybe a crush, but certainly not love.

Ed is a handsome man, almost 8-years younger than I am. He's my boss two levels up. A boss who started treating me like his equal, like his peer, almost as if he were mentoring me for some reason. He put me on high-profile projects and took a real interest in my career. All that kind of, well, got to me I suppose but it wasn't more than lust. I see what he was doing now."

"I can almost understand your feelings, but I can't understand how you let them get so out of hand. Let's get back to your affair. Where did we go wrong? You and me? Us?"