The Formula for Sexiness

Part 1: His Achy Breaking Heart

It was a bright and sunny day. The birds were singing, the flowers were blooming, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. And Brian Reed couldn't be more miserable. Well... that's not entirely true. I suppose if you shoved a flaming hot poker into his eye, it would make his day significantly worse. But the fact was that Brian was extremely miserable as is.

From an outside perspective, Brain was sitting pretty. He had a huge two story house, an in ground pool, three different sport cars and one of the hottest looking wife's on the west coast. But therein lies the rub, dear reader. For while Brian's wife, Amber, looked like a girl from the cover of playboy, the amount of sex he had in the last few months had been about... zero.

Now, you could say it's incredibly shallow of Brian to predicate his happiness on just how much his wife put out, and you would be right, but the truth was that it was more than just that. For you see, aught but 6 months ago, things were very different in the Reed household. At just 35, Brian had been incredibly happy with his life and his wife. Oh she wasn't much to look at back then, not bad mind you but a bit frumpy, the love and support he felt from his wife was enormous. They had met back in college, Brian studying business and Amber majoring in education. Their relationship had been hot and heavy from the get go and barely a year after they graduated were the wedding bells ringing. 10 years had passed from that day to this, but things were no longer as happy as they once were.

Brian sipped on a beer as he stared absently across his backyard, turning thoughts over in head like playing cards being dealt, one at a time. Six month ago... That's when all this started. That's when she got this job and started... changing.

"You're crazy Brian, that's what I think."

Brian's co-works Rob South smirked at him over his morning cup of coffee in the break room. The pair were the only one's there at this hour because they were always the first two in the building. These early risers always shared a cup of joe first thing in the morning and shot the bull together for a bit, though usually their topics of conversation were about ball games and who was screwing who in the office.

Today however, Brian needed to bound some disturbing thoughts off someone with an outside perspective. However, he had hoped for more words of reassurance then just a dig at his sanity. Brain frowned and put on what he hoped was a serious expression.

"I'm not joking Rob. She's changed since she started that job at Z Inc! And not just physically either." Rob's grin only widened at that, which pissed off Brian even more, but he plowed on undeterred. "She's so cold to me now! She barely says two words to me all day when she gets home and then she takes off on the weekends to 'run errands'. I know my wife! The only errands she likes to run is when there's a sale at the mall."

Rob cocked an eyebrow, his smile diminished but didn't entirely fade off his face. "But you say she's gotten... how do I put this nicely... hotter?"

Brian gritted his teeth at that comment. "Yes, damn it, she looks entirely different now. Like... Like a damn swimsuit model!" Brian felt himself blushing furiously as he thought of his wife's new tanned and toned body. He hadn't mentioned this to anyone else yet, but he was 100% positive that Amber's boobs and ass had also gotten bigger. And perkier. Age was only just beginning to show on his wife these last couple of years, her breast had started to sag a little and she had picked up a little pot belly. But now...

"Call me crazy, but I don't see the problem here." Rob said, turning away to add a bit more coffee to his drained mug.

Brian felt his temper rising, annoyed that all his co-worker wanted to focus on was his wife's apparent physical transformation. While it was impressive and in some ways startling, it was not what he was worried about. "The problem is she won't talk to me anymore! Hell, she barely looks at me, and we sleep in the same damn bed for Christ's sake. She used to give me a damn blow job every morning when we..." Brian cut off his tirade, realizing that he had shared just a bit too much.

Rob's eyes lit up like it was Christmas. "Oh you can't stop there. Tell me more, you sexy beast!"

Brian groaned loudly in response. "You know what, forget it. Forget everything I said, clearly this was a mistake." And with that Brian turned to walk out of the kitchen. He was stopped by Rob's hand on his shoulder and a real sound of understanding in his next words.

"Whoa, hey, ok. I'm sorry man. It's just... damn this all sounds like something out of a bad porno or something." Rob was still smiling slyly but Brian turned back to face him anyways. Rob then said the words that Brian had been dreading. "Look, have you actually talked to your wife about any of this?"

Brian sighed as he emptied his beer can rose to go get another from his fridge, his co-workers words still rattling around his head. He hadn't made up his mind to go confront Amber about his suspicions, mostly because he still wasn't convinced that this was all just paranoia on his part. After all, what proof did he have that his wife was cheating? That she wasn't putting out as much anymore? That she was making herself more physically fit and giving a damn about her appearance? I can't confront her until I know something for sure and all I've got is a bunch of bullshit.

Brian considered the fact that maybe he was jealous of how good his wife was looking recently. While he wasn't a fat slob by a long shot, it's true that he wasn't exactly getting any thinner either. He had never been in great shape and while he did make an effort to swim three times a week, a steady diet of cheeseburgers and tacos had softened his middle a bit. And there was the gray hairs that he found a little while ago. A small clump of five but they were there now.

I need to find something out and know one way or the other, or I'm going to start going crazy! As he cracked another beer, he heard the rattling of the garage door. This caught his attention as it meant Amber was home, and much earlier than she usually was. She's been staying late the last few weeks, I wonder...

A few seconds later, the door to the kitchen opened and in strode Brian's wife. Even in her plain work attire, Amber looked stunning, or so Brian felt. Her hair was a soft golden color and its perfect curls bounced with every step. Her breasts pushed the limits of what her blouse could contain and left nothing to the imagination. Her tight pencil skirt perfectly highlighted her round hips and heart shaped ass. And her face, with her soft features and plump lips... it was to die for.

Brian felt himself get an instant boner just looking at his wife as she tossed her purse on the counter and kicked the door shut behind her. But when she turned around, she looked at him like he was an annoying child rather than her husband of over a decade. He felt all the lust drain out of him in an instant. Still he decided to plow on and actually try to engage her in some conversation. Maybe I can get her to at least tell me what I'm doing wrong that's annoying her so much.

Brian's mind tried to think of something interesting to say to get her engaged right away, but all he could think of in the moment was, "So how was work honey?"

"It was work Brian." Amber said without so much as glancing at him. She was pulling her heels off at the moment, and when she straightened up, she walked right past him like he wasn't even there. But Brian wasn't giving this up without a fight.

"So anything interesting happened today?" He pressed on, wishing desperately he could think of something funny or intelligent to say.

Amber didn't even slow down as she strode her way to the staircase. "Nothing out of the ordinary."

"Not even a chemical spill that resulted in a freakish mutation?" Brian quipped, beginning to feel annoyed himself that this was going nowhere fast.

Amber stopped in her tracks, turned and fixed Brian with an icy stare. "That's not funny Brian. I take safety very seriously at my job." Her tone was like the breeze of a glacier.

"I-I-I didn't mean..." Brain stumbled over his words as he tried to back pedal, but Amber didn't give him a chance. She merely turned back around and whisked herself up the stairs without so much as a backwards glance for him. Well that went well. Still, I think that's the longest conversation we've had in ten day.

Brian didn't move from the spot he was standing in. He just stared up at the spot where his wife had disappeared from his sight line, wishing she'd come back and say something, anything, to him. He wanted her to come back and apologize or yell at him or... well, something damn it all! He deserved to at least know what he did to deserve such cold treatment from the woman he loved. Slowly his determination grew and a plan of action finally started forming in his mind. He was going to go up there and no matter what it took, Brian was going to get her to talk to him. And so, with trembling but determined legs, Brian started the arduous task of climbing the stairs and confronting his formidable wife.

The climb up the stairs seemed to take hours and the effort required was equivalent to climbing the summit of Everest. And yet before he knew it, Brian found himself standing atop the staircase, staring at the closed door of the bedroom he shared with his wife. Amber was always asleep by the time he went to bed anymore, or at least pretending to be, so Brian didn't spend a lot of time in there anymore. Still he approached the door and was preparing to open the door and step though when he heard his wife's voice on the other side.

She was talking to someone, thought her voice was faint and muffled through the door. Brian had a quick mental battle over the morals of listening to his wife's private conversations then quietly pressed his ear to the door and strained to hear what she was saying.

"...of this. I know what we agreed on but..." She paused. Brian felt his heart beating a mile a minute, paranoid that she somehow knew he was there. But he held his ground and after a moment she continued. "Yeah... Yeah I know. Don't worry. He doesn't suspect a thing. He's a spineless worm anyways." She paused again, then laughed lightly. "Yeah that'll be the day. Alright but we're going to talk about this some more when I get to work tomorrow... Uh huh... yeah, right. See ya Tom."

Brian pulled himself away from the door and retreated back downstairs, shook to his core. It was as if all his worse nightmares were coming true at once. Not knowing what else to do. He returned to his chair on the deck outside, sitting like a broken man, observing everything that nature laid before him and seeing nothing in front of him. And slowly, his mind began to turn.

Things came to a head on Friday. Everything was going smoothly for his plan in the beginning. After Brian retreated back downstairs, he planted himself in front of the TV and turned on a movie. He really wasn't interested in the action and adventure being displayed before him, but he needed something normal to do while he waited for Amber to fall asleep. Amber, for her part, only came down stairs once, to grab something to eat from the fridge. Brian made no further attempts to engage her in conversation, he didn't trust himself to keep his temper in check. Amber of course made no effort to talk to Brian either and for once he was glad for that.

After his movie finished he switched over to regular TV, sitting and waiting. Periodically he would peak up the stairs to see if she had gone to bed yet. Eventually the bedroom light went off. Brian waited another two hours before he ascended the staircase, going out of his way to be as quiet as possible. Every creak of the stairs and shuffle of his feet on the carpet sounded like a gunshot to his anxious ears, but no sound of alertness came from Amber's room, so Brain soldered on. When he came to the door, he slowly turned the knob and then, as gently as he could, eased the door open. Brian had put the usual hours before his wife's arrival home to good work that evening, spraying and lubing up all the hinges so that they'd be as quiet as possible.

With the stealth of a ninja, Brian crept into their shared bedroom and tiptoed towards his wife's bedside night stand. As usual, Amber has plugged her phone in to charge before going to bed. Brian crept his way over to it and then cautiously unplugged the device. As soon as he pulled the plug out of the device, a beeping sound emanated from the phone. Brian froze, daring not to move a muscle, but Amber slept on undisturbed in her sleep. Crisis averted, Brian slunk his way back out of the bedroom and quietly made his way back down stairs. Only once he was safely tucked away in his man cave did he finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Lord, I thought I was going to have a heart attack twenty times over. I am not cut out for this James Bond shit. His heart rate slowed slightly as he got to the task at hand but still hovered in the prehypertension range. Luckily for him, Amber hadn't changed her lock code. Within seconds, he discovered a long list of phone calls to a contact named only 'Tom- Work'. The two had been communicating for over a year it seemed but the frequency of the calls were only once a month... until six months ago. Right when she started that new job. I knew it... Brian stewed for several minutes. This new information was not unexpected but still extremely upsetting. But before he could come up with a course of action, fate intervened and thrust him down a different path.

"What the hell are you doing with my phone Brian?!"

The shrill sound of Amber's voice cut through his thoughts like a knife to the heart. Panic gripped his soul as he shot out of his chair and clutched the phone to his chest as he faced off with his enraged wife. Amber's hair was disheveled and her eye's were wild with hate. Shocked as he was, Brian quickly recovered his composure.

"I could ask you the same damn thing Amber!" he shot back, allowing his temper to rise and letting his anger take over. A red rage had been building inside him and now it was boiling over. "Who the fuck is Tom? And how long have you two be fucking behind my back?!"

Amber's cold look returned but this time she smiled cruelly. It was a very unnerving smile to Brian. "Took you long enough." she said, her voice filled with a contempt Brian never even dreamed she could have towards him. She raised an eyebrow as she continued. "I was starting to wonder if you'd ever catch on. Not that I cared." She scoffed, her voice dripping with venom. "You want to know who Tom is? He's everything you're not, Brain. Fun, sexual, knows what a woman wants." She was smiling now, seeming to enjoy the hurt look on Brian's face, the tears welling up in his eyes. "He is a real man. One who knows how to give a woman everything she wants and more." She cupped her breasts in her hands and squeezed them together. "You like these? He gave them to me. He's done things to me I'd never thought possible... at least, not possible from a sad sack of shit like you."

Brian was trembling with emotions. He was furious and sad and hurting. But words had failed him entirely. He envisioned himself changing at her, doing horrible things that he knows a man should never do to his wife. But in the end, all he really did was sag his shoulders. "What the fuck do you want from me Amber?" he asked, his voice the epitome of despair. Amber's contempt of him only seemed to grow with each passing moment. "Nothing Brian. That's what you always do, absolutely nothing." And with that Amber turned on her heel and went back upstairs.

Part 2: When Push Comes to Sex

Brian spent a long night on the couch considering his life's failing. Where did I go so wrong with her? Wasn't I a good husband? Why does she hate me so much? What am I going to do now? Shortly after their confrontation, Amber had come back down fully dressed and carrying a suitcase. The only thing she said to him was "Expect a call from my lawyer." And then she was gone. She hadn't even asked for her phone back, she simply left it with him.

Brian didn't need three guesses to figure out where she was going. Tom. The name rattled around his brain like a broken record. He couldn't think of anything else. Just that name. Tom, Tom, Tom...

He didn't sleep that night, nor did he get dressed or go to work. At some point he did manage to feed himself, a whole jar of peanut butter right out of the jar. He just sat in a chair and stared at the wall. And he thought about things. Eventually, exhaustion carried him off to sleep, but it was not restful. But in the morning, Brian knew what he was going to do. It was stupid and oblivious, but he really didn't care anymore about those things. His mind was set. He was going to meet this Tom. And then he was going to kill him.

Brian had a busy few days after that. A quick internet search gave him a complete list of employees at Z Incorporated. There were only 2 Tom's that worked there, a Reynolds and a Krugger. Reynolds worked in their 'Netscape Division' while Krugger worked in 'Research and Development'. Amber's job is working with R&D so it's gotta be Krugger. Brian reasoned. To be sure, he staked out the place an hour before closing time, watching as the employees came out. When Amber finally emerged, she was hanging on the arm of a tall, fit looking man with short cut black hair. The pair were laughing as they walked down the parking lot and looked quite cozy with each other. Brian wished he could make their heads explode with pure thought but kept his cool and let them drive off in Tom's fancy mustang.

He then tailed Tom all the way home. Which wasn't easy. The pair stopped at a fast food line and Brian had to park and wait for them to get their order. He tapped the wheel impatiently as he waited for their car to reemerge and thought for a moment that he had missed them leaving. But then he spotted Amber in the passenger seat as they drove off and he pulled back out and continued following. Twenty minutes later, Tom's car pulled into a fancy looking house out in the suburbs. The large two story house looked practically brand new and the lawn looked immaculate.

Brian watched from across the street as they got out and strolled their way inside. The pair stopped for only a moment to share a passionate kiss before disappearing into the garage. Brian later discovered that he had been gripping the steering wheel so hard he had bent it. But, despite his rage, Brian was patient. He was waiting for just the right moment to strike. He didn't want Amber to be there when he blew Tom away. It's not that he was particularly worried about getting caught or anything, he was already convinced he was going to jail for the rest of his life, just that he didn't want her to jump him when the moment came. Bitch isn't going to spoil this for me. Oh no. Vengeance will be mine.

On Sunday night everything was finally ready. The .44 magnum handgun he ordered had arrived, he had a lured Amber out of the house with a phony divorce legal meeting and he had his affairs in order. Brian hadn't shaved since Amber left and he looked rather scraggly. Days of beard growth covered his face, his eyes had bags under them for the lack of sleep he was getting and his hair was a mess. Still, it was now or never. His hands were shaking as he traversed the highway but by the time he got to Tom's place, he had steadied his nerves.

His plan was simple; confront Tom, get him to confess seducing his wife, make him quake with fear then blow the top of his head off. He was smiling as he envisioned Tom trembling in fear and begging for his life. It was the only thing keeping him going these days. He shifted the gun in its shoulder holster and made sure it wasn't showing from under his jacket.