The Devil and the Sea Ch. 10

[Recap: Anya wants to learn how to top Jen so with Henry's help they've concocted Mistress X, an online domme profile, played by Anya in black latex. After arranging for Jen to meet her fantasy Mistress in the flesh, they think the game is finally over, but they have no idea until it's too late just how far Jen is willing to go.

You can read 'The Monogamists' for the backstory if you want to find out how Henry, Jen and Anya met.]

NO MORE GOOD OPTIONS

Jen was filthy with flu a few days later. Maybe she had run herself into the ground with all the excitement and exertion of the previous few days. I tucked her up in my bed with a lemon honey drink and a box of tissues. She'd tried to give me a kiss of appreciation, but I had backed right off at the attempt and retreated to the couch in the living room.

Anya was sitting half-heartedly watching a documentary on world famous athletes. She turned the sound down as I came in.

"How's the patient?" she asked.

"She tried to kiss me good night, so there's still fight left in her," I replied.

"Still frisky."

"Still. But not nearly as bad as last week."

Anya grunted. "Yeah, last week was intense. There's something deeply wrong about having to dye my pubic hair back to dark."

"It was a good disguise though," I offered.

Anya seemed to zone out for a while, watching the show. I tried to get interested in it, but it was getting late and I could feel myself fading. We lapsed into a comfortable silence.

"Y'know something?" Anya asked eventually.

"Probably not."

"I think she's turned a corner. I think she's found what she wanted to find."

I nodded. "We can hope, right?"

"There've been no messages," Anya said, "And the libido seems to be back to normal levels, thank Christ. I was bloody raw down there for days after the weekend. God, but that girl's got tongue."

We both drifted back to watching the show. After a while I stretched my neck and yawned.

"Sorry babe, but I can't really bring myself to care about the Soviet Olympic campaign. I'm done for," I said and dragged myself off the couch.

Anya clicked the remote and turned off the screen, saying, "Yeah, me too."

I gathered up the cups on the table and padded over to the kitchen to put them into the dishwasher. Anya put the little bowl of snacks back into a container. We met at the kitchen door.

"Where are you sleeping tonight?" she asked.

I made a face. "I thought I'd give her a head start and then creep into bed."

"Nah, crash with me if you want," she said, "You don't always have to take one for the team."

I crept into my bedroom to retrieve the baggy t-shirt and soft cotton shorts that I usually slept in and got changed outside in the hall. I could hear Jen snoring through the closed door.

"Yeah," I said, sliding into Anya's bed, "This is a much better call. She's snoring to wake the dead in there."

Anya had slipped into a soft cotton nightie, and despite the plainness of the fabric it conspired to show off her curves.

"Comfy," I said.

"Comfier than the latex, and a lot less sweaty. Usually," Anya replied, turning off the bedroom light. We lay side by side in the bed, looking up at the ceiling.

"You did look stunning in it."

"I know. I noticed your reaction as soon as you came in the door."

I laughed quietly. "You would have given the dead a hard-on."

I heard Anya shift in the bed, snuggling further into the sheets. We never normally shared a bed; it was always Jen that did the bed hopping between us.

"When do you want to pull the plug on Mistress X?" I asked.

"Soon. It's gotta be the right timing. I want to do a big reveal, something that will blow her away."

"Got any ideas?"

I heard her shrug, rustling the bed sheets. "Maybe. I was thinking, what about you start a session with her, and I go into the bedroom and change. I could just walk in as you had her simmering."

"She might just lose her mind."

"Yeah. She might actually shut up for once."

I laughed again, relishing the thought of having Jen tied up on my bed, edged and desperate, and then having her latex-enclosed fantasy walk through the door. Mistress X would die in a blaze of glory and Anya would rise from the ashes. It would be perfect.

"It's a really strange life we have, don't you think?" Anya asked.

"It gets pretty weird. I mean let's face it, Jen gets pretty weird."

"Oh, Henry. So do you. I'm the straightest one of all of us."

Another pause. I could tell Anya had something on her mind; I waited in the dark for her to come to the point.

Anya cleared her throat. "How do you cope with it?"

"With what?" I asked.

"Everything. I mean, look here." Anya held up her left hand, silhouetted against the city lights through the window, her thumb brushing her wedding ring. "That must be hard, surely."

I felt a pang and reached out to her hand, closing my fingers around the hard metal band.

"Yeah, that was the hardest. But she told me the reasons why and I guess I can live with it. Can't marry everyone."

"Can't have a harem you mean."

"Pretty much," I replied. "It must be hard on you too though, right?"

"Uh huh, it's easier for you. It's boy meets girl, meets girl. Imagine if I was a man instead. Would you still be laid next to me?"

Her tone struck me. I knew that I had to answer with the truth.

"No," I said, at last, "I wouldn't. If Jen had wanted two guys, I would have been sayonara. Hell, if you had been some other woman this probably wouldn't have worked. It's complicated."

Silence again, but I had to finish my thoughts.

"Ring or not, like Jen said to me that day at the lookout, I'm in this for good," I continued. "We both are, right?"

I became conscious of still holding her hand. I let go and rolled onto my side so I could see her, outlined against the light from the window.

"I guess we both just found the same someone for ever after," I finished.

"I guess we did," Anya replied, and I could feel that her mood had begun to lighten.

"I spent a lot of time getting fucked around by pricks," she said. "Boyfriends first. Then bimbo girlfriends who couldn't keep their legs shut. But I'm not like Jen. I'm not enticed by the thought of some guy inside me. I never really was."

"So, it's gotta be pretty wild finding yourself here?"

"I never thought I'd be happily sharing a bed with the man who's fucking my wife, if that's what you mean," Anya replied.

"Yeah, it's pretty far out," I conceded.

"The worst part is those people who know about us. At least, they think they know about us. The looks we get."

I pondered this. "I hadn't really seen any looks."

"Sure you haven't. That's because you're bloody oblivious. They look at you and wonder how the hell you ended up with a harem."

I smiled.

"What's so bloody funny?" Anya asked.

"If only they knew," I said.

"Knew what?"

"That really we're both in Jen's harem."

I heard her laugh in the dark.

"Jen's trying to work out how you're gonna knock me up, by the way," Anya said.

I was utterly blindsided by the casual way she threw the comment out.

"Really?" I managed to reply.

"Yeah, so maybe we should work out a banging schedule to give me babies."

"Uh, and you've both been discussing this?"

"Yeah. It's a lot bloody cheaper than IVF."

With that, Anya leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek.

She said, "Goodnight baby-daddy," and rolled over, leaving me stranded, wide awake in the dark.

---

The next day, Anya messaged me mid-morning out of the blue.

A: Can you come here now?

I was in a meeting that was just wrapping up. I messaged back.

H: Sure. What's up?

A: Just come now

I stared at the words. They made me uneasy.

I made my excuses in the meeting and heading straight up to the tenth floor. From the elevator doors, I could see where Anya sat, all the way across the floor. She was looking right at me.

I saw her collect her phone and make her way towards me through the open plan desks, moving quickly and calmly in a way that told me something awful had happened. I waited by the elevators for her.

"Meeting room," she said when she reached me and nodded at a door behind me. We ducked into the private space.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

Anya didn't answer, she just handed me her phone. I saw that her hand was shaking.

The message hit me hard:

J: Mistress, I very much enjoyed our time together and I want to have the opportunity of serving you on a regular basis. I feel I have much more to learn and explore. I have waited all my life to submit to someone like you. My husband is in complete agreement.

I looked from the phone to Anya, "Oh babe...," I said.

"All my life," she echoed, and the tears began to roll down her face.

"I just saw Jen half an hour ago," I said, "She came and visited me at my desk. She looked perfectly fine."

"There's more," Anya croaked. "Other message."

I looked back at Anya's phone and froze. The other chat, the one between Mistress X and myself was also updated. I tapped the icon and read:

H: I have had a long talk with my wife. We both feel that she needs to explore this side of her further, and I am happy to support her. Do you think you would allow her to continue to serve you?

The timestamp was half an hour ago.

"My phone was on my desk," I said. "l got her a drink of water."

In my hand, the screen flashed. Jen had sent another message. I quickly put the device down on the table, as if it had burned me. We stared at each other. Anya looked utterly lost.

"She's gone," Anya said at last, in a tiny voice, barely above a whisper.

The message icon blinked. I tapped it and read:

J: I can fly down to you, or if your business brings you up here, I will meet you wherever and whenever. I want this so much.

Jen's eagerness was unmistakeable. I could picture her, wherever she was in the building, writing these messages. She would be gripping the phone tightly, dimpled cheeks flushed from excitement. I wrapped my arms around Anya and she began sobbing in earnest.

"I did this," she sniffed. "I should never ever have started this stupid game. I just lost my wife." She looked up at me, and corrected herself, "Our wife."

The messages were soul destroying. My mind was racing, trying to calculate ways to save our relationship but every avenue seemed to lead to a dead end. Jen needed this so very badly, that much was obvious now. If Mistress X refused to take Jen on then I was absolutely sure Jen would start hunting for someone else online, someone who we couldn't control.

Alternatively, Anya's grand reveal was out of the question now, placed beyond our reach by Jen's request to cheat. Instead of welcoming Jen into a new phase of her relationship with us, we would have to address the fact that she was willing to go behind our backs to find what she needed somewhere else. If we confronted her, we would be backing her into a corner, trapping her in a position from which she would never back down. Then Jen would have to leave and even if she wanted to, she would never ask to come back. Jen had too much pride for that. It would be the end.

We were now way past the point of a just playing a harmless game. Every scenario I played out in my head led to a catastrophic failure.

"I'm getting fucked all over again," said Anya. "I opened my fucking heart to you both because I thought that would never happen to me again, but it has. I don't know what to do." Her hands were bunched in front of her and she was staring at the band of gold around her finger.

Anya's face screwed up in disgust. "How could she fucking do this?"

Anya rummaged around in her handbag and brought out a little package. She handed it to me.

"I was going to give it to Jen," she said.

When I unwrapped it, I understood: it was a collar. I ran the fine, black leather through my fingers. It had a single steel ring set into the front and looked very expensive.

"It's beautiful," I said as I handed it back to her. "When were you planning the big reveal?"

"This weekend," she replied in a small, broken voice. "I was going to tell her to go into the bedroom and strip, then I was going to get dressed up and walk in, let her see I was Mistress X. It was going to be such a great way to close off the adventure and I would have proved to her that I could be her missing piece, that she didn't need some fucking stranger in another city to take control of her. But now it's too late. She wants to cheat."

Anya's head slumped and she said, "Fuck, Henry. It's all in tatters."

We sat together on the edge of the meeting room table looking out through the window across the city. My phone pinged with a meeting reminder. I ignored it and we sat there, arms around each other for a long time, watching the traffic wordlessly.

In hindsight, our timing couldn't have been worse. Jen had spent an intense period at end of year steering her team, managing all the aspects of the project, hitting impossible deadlines, and then we had given her a release, a chance to step away from the pressures of command, to become powerless. Jen had taken what we had intended to be a reward after weeks of getting flogged at work and transmuted it into an escape.

But beyond that, this game had sparked something fundamental within Jen, as if Mistress X could provide something that her lovers couldn't. Something that built on the years she had spent with the constant pressure of needing to decide who she really was. Maybe Mistress X offered a chance to leave the everyday everything behind and surrender completely, an impersonal interaction without expectations or the safety blanket of knowing that it was really all just a game with the people she loved.

In the end, I knew Jen would need to choose between love and oblivion, and it was a choice that she could only make on her own.

"Anya," I said at last.

She looked up at me, eyes glazed and tears spent.

"Jen's caught in a spiral, and we're getting dragged along with her. If it goes on like this, she'll drown all of us."

"So, are we at the point of self-preservation?" Anya asked, unhappily. "There must be something else we can do."

I was quiet for a long time, by stomach churning. "I can only see one way out of this," I began. "And it's really fucking unlikely to work."

She didn't speak, but I saw that my words had reached her through her daze.

"It's really shit," I continued. "But we need to know, we need to see who she really is. We have to let her do it."

Anya's eyes were wide and watery as she regarded me, not saying a word.

"We give her enough rope," I continued, "She's either going to decide that it's not really what she wants and she comes back to us, or," I shrugged, "Well, I guess she runs out of rope."

"And if she does?"

I looked back out at the city streets. "And if she does, then I guess that's it. We're not what she wants. We've lost her."

Anya folded up into herself up and the tears came back. I held her. It was the only thing I could do, until she finally drew in a long, shuddering breath and straightened up again.

I stood up and wiped the tear tracks from Anya's lovely face. "I'll send the message if you like," I said.

I picked up Anya's phone and composed a reply, feeling a curious emptiness inside. It would need to be merciless:

X: I don't do regular. I do permanent. You would become my willing, obedient toy. Do not reply to this message. Your husband needs to message me that he consents to transferring you to me, permanently. If he loves you, he will do this for you because you will convince him this is truly what you want.

I sent the message and then typed a follow-up message. I had to make the stakes as high as possible. I had to give Jen every incentive to bail out.

X: If he consents, you will belong to me. You will need to give up your life with your husband because I don't do part-time and I don't do sharing. You will be permitted to still maintain aspects of your life such as work and family commitments, but I will take physical possession of you. This will of course mean providing you with a place to live and, if you prove worthy enough, finally permitting you to live with me. Your own needs will be met only in the rare circumstances that I deem you have earned a reward and only at my absolute discretion. You will be nothing more than a piece of my property. Think very carefully before you respond

I hit send and gave the phone back to Anya.

"Now what?" she asked.

"Now we clean up our faces and get on with the day like none of this ever happened," I replied.

---

I was cooking dinner in the kitchen for the three of us. Anya was helping me while Jen watched a show in the lounge. I had left my phone on the coffee table, on purpose. I could see that Anya was not coping very well with the situation, but when Jen had asked, she had managed to pass it off as period pains.

I brought the lasagne out of the oven. It smelled delicious, but I had very little appetite for it. Anya jumped and her hand flew to the back pocket of her jeans. She brought out the phone and looked at the screen. Her face collapsed. I took it from her and read the message.

H: I give my wife my consent to follow her relationship with you. My wife has said that from this point, I am to consider it a private matter between you both and that I shouldn't contact you again

It was straight to the point, and tied up all the loose ends neatly. That was what upset me. Jen had really thought this through.

I switched chats and typed again:

X: I need to test your commitment to becoming my property. You will need to fully understand what it means to be owned by me and live up to my high expectations. I have a business trip booked in your city next week and will be staying overnight Friday at a hotel in the CBD. I will be seeing some friends for drinks after work but will meet you afterwards. 8.00pm. I will give you the address when I have finalised my accommodation

I pressed send and called Jen to the table to eat.

Anya shook her head and said, "I can't eat." Instead, she went to her bedroom.

"What's up with Anya?" asked Jen, sliding into a chair.

"I guess she's feeling sick," I said as I dished the lasagne onto two plates. "Looks like you're in my bed tonight."

Jen took her plate enthusiastically and flashed a dimpled smile at me.

"This smells yum!" she exclaimed excitedly.

I sat down to eat, facing Jen across the table.

"Did you have a good day?" I asked causally as I took a bite. "You look like you did."

"Yes," Jen replied, and smiled at me again. "I had a really good day, thanks. How about you?"

I cut up another piece of lasagne and skewered it with my fork as I looked across at the woman I had loved now for years, who seemed to have not a care in the world. My intelligent, beautiful, sexy, vivacious partner who had just begged to become a stranger's toy. I forced my mouth into a smile.

"Same shit, different depth," I said.

[Author's note: Follow me for updates to this and my other stories. If you like what you read, please leave a comment or a star rating. Constructive feedback is always welcome. If you want further adventures, or to check out the previous book, The Monogamists, my story page is here: https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=6234350&page=submissions]