Two Wives

The two women sat close to each other so that others could not eavesdrop. The tables in the coffee house were close together, but all the rest of the coffee aficionados there were in their teens and twenties. The two women in contrast were in their early thirties, so there was not much risk of anyone there knowing them. Even if someone did overhear them, that person would be a complete stranger.

"I think John is cheating on me," the brunette with her long eyelashes and unblemished skin said to her friend. She had even features and a Roman nose and it all combined to give a pretty effect, even -- some might say -- a very pretty effect. Her diamond engagement ring, sitting next to her gold band, glistened in the light.

"What makes you think that?" her blonde friend said. Her blonde friend was a true blonde, even if last week she was a redhead. Her hair had subtle blue highlights, created at an expensive salon. The blonde was Mireille, and the brunette was Cordelia. Cordelia was born French but had lived in the States most of her life. Mireille was a native Hoosier. Both women now lived in Bethesda, MD.

"Someone sent me a video of him and a redhead doing the nasty," Cordelia said.

Cordelia's dramatic statement was met with a staggering silence. Even the three eavesdroppers were stunned. Cordelia was looking down, studying the white heart in her cappuccino that she had not yet touched. She had ordered it with a shot of CBD, to calm herself down a bit. The Xanax she had taken just wasn't doing the trick.

"Who would do such a thing?" Mireille asked, when she gathered her wits enough to speak.

"Which? Fuck my husband, or send me a video of it?" Cordelia asked.

"Either," Mireille said.

"Mike sent the video," Cordelia said.

"Mike who?" Mireille asked, and now she was quite nervous.

"You know which Mike I mean. You're married to him," Cordelia said, almost nonchalantly. Two of the eavesdroppers gasped.

"I see," Mireille said. She had feared the worst, and now she knew that it was the worst. "What did he want?"

"Revenge, I suppose. If I don't do what he wants, he'll use the video to destroy John's career," Cordelia replied.

Mireille was not about to ask what Mike wanted from her friend. She and all of the eavesdroppers were by now fairly sure they knew. It was either money or sex, or perhaps even both? Mireille had no idea Mike had installed video cameras throughout their house and gardens. He no doubt had videos of all of her dalliances; of all her indiscretions. Had he done this with other men's wives, too? Had he extorted sex from all of the wives of the men with whom she had cheated on him? Was he that disgusting of a man? Yes, in fact, he was.

"Marybeth refused him, you know. Her husband Alex is now unemployed and they've missed a few mortgage payments," Cordelia said. "Mike's threats are real."

"How much does he want?" Mireille asked.

"Ten times, over three months. According to Sarah, the sex escalates in level of outrageousness. He's into humiliation of the women," Cordelia said, sounding surprisingly calm. The CBD plus the Xanax was working.

"Of all the men in Bethesda, why did you have to fuck John? I thought we were friends," Cordelia said, and she was on the verge of tears.

Mireille felt sick. She excused herself and ran to the bathroom, and watched most of her lunch swirl around the toilet bowl. The taste in her mouth was so very ugly. The vomiting did, however, calm her down a bit. She collected herself and returned to Cordelia, who now had a cinnamon roll placed before her, a gift from a sympathetic eavesdropper.

"I'm sorry, Cordelia," Mireille said. "I'll make it up to you," she said.

"How? All is lost. I have a jackass for a husband and you have a criminal for one," Cordelia said.

"You forget about my skills. Don't worry, I'll take care of this," Mireille said. "You take care of John."

Cordelia smiled for the first time. Mireille used to work for the NSA. Nobody had better computer skills than she did, and she could probably erase everything Mike had, including the back-ups to Dropbox or the Amazon Cloud or wherever. Hell, she could probably erase Mike himself, had she wanted to.

If Mireille was determined, it would happen. Cordelia knew Mireille was determined. She was admittedly a slut whose taste to men ran to other women's husbands, but she was a loyal friend, and their friendship went way back. It went way, way back, long before Mireille became a compulsive sexual vampire.

A long time ago Mireille was a sweetheart of a girl, as too was Cordelia. They skipped through life to happy tunes in their heads. How all that has changed! Men, marriage, careers, food and lodging, buying homes, squirrels in the attic, mice in the basement, roaches everywhere, ant invasions in the Spring, roofs that leaked, leaves in the gutters, falling trees in the yard, flooded basements, fighting with the workmen, unpleasant neighbors, the stresses just went on and on. How had it all gone so wrong? Youth had been so carefree, but then Mireille got pregnant.

Yes, Mireille's pregnancy was beginning of the end. She and Mike married and Mireille gave birth to a wonderful little boy. He was now three. He was as cute as the dickens, but Mike was just not ready to be a husband, let alone a father. He felt that he had more women to explore, more women to conquer, and now -- thanks to Mireille and John getting it on, Mike had his sights set on Cordelia. Cordelia knew that if she didn't comply, John would lose his job, almost for sure. He'd lose his security clearance first, and close on its heels he'd lose his job.

Well, maybe it wouldn't be all bad? They could move into a cheap apartment, and say goodbye to the squirrels in the attic, the mice in the basement, the leaking roof, the broken garbage disposal, the dishwasher that never seemed to work that well, the cleaning of the gutters, the falling trees, the whole lot of it, except of course for the roaches and the neighbors. The roaches would follow them everywhere.

Who is she kidding? It would be horrible. Mike wanted his first dalliance with her in only two days. Two days! Could Mireille work that fast? Probably not. Could she, Cordelia, do it with Mike? He was handsome, after all, but he was a creep, and that undid whatever plus his looks might have given him. Mireille said he was well endowed, perhaps a nice change from John, who was most definitely not, but she loved John and now she hated Mike. No, sex with Mike was quite simply not a possibility. It was not in the cards. Nope. No chance. Forget about it.

Then of course there's John. She'd have to speak with her cheating husband John. She knew that Mireille could seduce any man, anywhere, anytime. She had practiced, and she had seductive powers galore, plus a body that made men drool. If Mireille was his only infidelity, she could forgive him this one time; especially because it was Mireille, and she knew John had never had a chance. Men were just weak that way. It's biology: propagation of the species and all that. Give them some free sex with a sexpot who's determined to get them, and, well, it's an old story, isn't it?

If she could forgive Mireille, and she guessed she had already done that, couldn't she also forgive John? Just how much of a Christian was she, anyway?

John was penitent in the extreme. He begged forgiveness. When Cordelia told him her period was late and she might be carrying his baby, he begged her to keep the child and to give him a second chance. He was destroyed, and so very penitent, that she did not have the heart to tell him about Mike's video and attempt at sexual extortion. She would leave that to Mireille to tell him, if Mireille's efforts failed to save her.

Cordelia knew she was indeed pregnant. A trip to CVS and a pregnancy stick had told her that much. Somehow, and she didn't know why, she couldn't bring herself to tell John everything. Pregnancy was a joyous occasion and the whole situation removed that joy. She would wait until the Mike problem was handled. Then she would give John the good news.

That night she texted Mireille.

Cordelia: How's it going? Any progress on our little project?

Cordelia knew she had to be a bit cryptic. Mike might be able to spy on her texts. Mike was CIA, and Mireille was NSA. What a couple! John in contrast worked at the FBI, but not in the digital sector, and Cordelia worked for a powerful senator.

Mireille: I'm making progress, but it's slow. I'm sorry but I'll need at least another week to crack some of the passwords. Fourteen-digit stuff, you see, and not many tries are allowed. It's tough going. The Russians are easier!

C: The first deadline is tomorrow

M: I won't make it by then, I'm so sorry

C: Any advice about telling John?

M: That's up to you. In my opinion, the less he knows the better

Huh! Thought Cordelia. Well, such an attitude might be right, but it sure serves Mireille's purposes. But how can I cheat on John? And how can I not do it? What to do? What to do?

Cordelia thought from whom she might seek advice. She would have asked her sister if only she were to have had one. She did have a brother, but there was no way, no way on earth, she could ask him! Her Mom had never approved of John in the first place, so there was no way she would ask her Mom for advice. Mireille was her best and closest friend, and this was all her fault, anyway!

Bottom line: There was nobody from whom she could seek advice. She was on her own.

What if it weren't sex? What if Mike had just wanted good old-fashioned blackmail? That is, what if he had just wanted money? Cordelia had seen enough TV shows to know that blackmail never ends. She would have gone to the police, to her own FBI for that matter, and John would have lost his security clearance and probably his job at the Bureau. Maybe it's a blessing Mike just wants sex? Maybe giving him a little bit would make this horror all go away?

She'd done it before. Long ago back in her college days she had even given pity fucks to guys. Remember when she let those two guys pressure her into showing them her boobs? Then they flattered her to the point where she ended up showing more, and more, and then she had let them touch her, and then ... well, that was pretty wild. It's a great memory when she's alone and horny and her fingers are restless.

Why, if he wanted sex with her, had he not tried simply to seduce her? That wouldn't have worked, but she might have enjoyed the attempt, and he couldn't have known a priori that it wouldn't have worked, now could he have? Even if she had been tempted, she could not have done that to John, nor to Mireille. How ironic!

Maybe he didn't want sex? Maybe what he wanted was a conquest, her submission to him, her humiliation, even her total humiliation? That's what he got from Amy, Sarah, and Olivia already, and maybe others she doesn't even know about?

The three women tried to keep it secret, and they did for the most part, but at the end, part of the payment was a more pubic kind of humiliation, so Cordelia and most of her friends ended up knowing everything. By now, everyone knew. That was to be her fate, too. She shuddered at the thought.

It was all so ironic. Cordelia's one hope was Mireille, and she had also been the cause of her troubles, by seducing her husband John in the first place! Damn it all!

The next night she told John a little bit of the truth. She told him that she was meeting Mike and he was taking her out to dinner. Mireille had been working frantically to erase all of Mike's files and all of his backups, but she still had a long way to go. Now Mireille was secretly going to drop in on John to keep him busy while Cordelia went to pay the first installment to Mike. The whole situation stank to the high heavens.

Cordelia later learned there had been a silver lining. Mireille and John spent a lovely evening together, but John refused to be seduced again. He was probably the first man in history to successfully resist Mireille. Cordelia was so proud of him, assuming John and Mireille were telling her the truth. That was the good part. There is also the other part, the part with Mike and Cordelia.

Cordelia was a bundle of nerves. Her hands shook as she raised her glass of wine to her lips at the elegant restaurant Mike had taken her to. Cordelia had done her research, and she knew that Mike had also taken Amy, Sarah, and Olivia to this very same restaurant. She saw the way the wait staff looked at her. They seemed to know Cordelia was to be Mike's next victim.

She felt as if they all knew she was the new raw meat dinner for the alpha predator known as Mike. It was as if everyone knew at the end of the evening Mike would have intimate carnal knowledge of her. She made no attempt to hide her diamond engagement ring and her wedding ring as she sat there. The diamond would have made Harry Winston himself take notice. Everyone knew she was married, and that Mike was seducing a married woman into adultery. She also knew Mike got off on humiliating her, as well as Amy, Sarah, Olivia, and perhaps others, too, that way.

The two made inane conversation during dinner, discussing the politics of the day, good movies they had seen, and good books they had recently read. Between dinner and dessert Mike began his plan. The first thing he did was to ask Cordelia to sit catty corner rather than across from him. She dutifully complied.

Cordelia had traces of her French origin in her speech. In Mike's eyes there was something especially sexy about a French woman speaking English. He loved listening to her talk, but she was sulking and being mostly quiet, answering his direct questions monosyllabically. Well, he'd take what he could get. He'd never had a French woman before and that would be a nice little triumph to add to his trophy wall of pictures of naked women he had laid.

Mike ran his hand along her thigh, under the table. Their waiter won $5 in the betting pool when he did that. It was an easy bet, since Mike had done it with Amy, Sarah, and Olivia before her. The only question was, would Cordelia be as easy a mark as the other three had been? The waiter had bet on yes; he had already won the first round. Smiling, he filled their water glasses. He was looking forward to stage two.

The waiter too had noticed Cordelia's slight accent. Her French accent, combined with her beautiful face and burning hot body got the waiter aroused, since he could almost smell the sex that seemed to him to be inevitable later. As a waiter he always enjoyed seeing couples dine together.

The waiter made a habit of enjoying reading the body language of the woman, the way she looked at her date, flipped her hair sexily, smiled incessantly and doted on every word of the man. When that happened, he would have bet heavily on the man getting lucky later that very same evening.

Mike and Cordelia presented a bit of an enigma to the waiter. Cordelia was not sending out any signals, any signals at all, that she wanted to seduce Mike. Yet her submissive nature, his sense that she had acquiesced to the inevitability of the situation, meant somehow, that the two them having sex was indeed inevitable that very same night. He had noticed similar phenomena with previous dates of this man Mike. All of them had been married women, too. He couldn't help but be curious.

Ten minutes later, just before the half-baked chocolate cake was served, Cordelia went to the ladies' room. She returned to the table without her hose and without her bra, having put both in her purse. The waiter smiled. He had won another $5, and he refilled their wine glasses, getting a nice look at Cordelia's tits, down her blouse. He didn't get to see her nipples, but it was still loads of fun.

Wow, this woman was one hell of a submissive, the waiter thought. She didn't even look to be into it, and yet look at how she was acting? Mike sure was able to find some strange, cheating wives. He surely was.

Mike went to town with Cordelia's bare legs under the table. He stroked her thighs, going right up to the expensive real estate of her inner thighs only an inch or two from her panties covered pussy. Mike's technique was working magic on Cordelia, since she had a well suppressed fetish for exhibitionism, totally unlike Amy, Sarah and Olivia before her, all of whom were shy, modest, private people.

Cordelia knew the waiter was watching Mike's under-the-tablecloth molestation of her thighs. She knew the waiter had looked down her blouse. She was unbuttoning more buttons at Mike's command. The waiter came over to ask about the dessert, but Cordelia knew it was really just to look down her blouse. This time he saw her nipples. Cordelia blushed, and got wet, both. She was publicly humiliated, and it was turning her on. It was also making her angry, her anger intensified by being forced to act like a hussy. Inexplicably, she looked curiously up at the waiter as he looked down her blouse. The waiter, she noticed, blushed.

In a very strange moment, Cordelia checked the waiter's crotch and saw that he had an erection. Cordelia smiled for the first time that evening, a genuine smile. The smile was at the waiter, not at Mike. Just at that moment Mike's hand found her pussy under the table. She jumped an infinitesimal amount in surprise, but then she gave Mike a broad smile.

Cordelia's first smiles surprised both the waiter and Mike. In particular, Mike smiled right back, and a connection was made, for the first time, between the two spouses, both married, just not to each other.

Mike paid the bill, treating Cordelia to the dinner. He helped her up, playing the gentleman. Cordelia, trying to appear proper, thanked him for the delicious meal. It was a warm summer night, so no coats were worn and they walked out of the restaurant, Mike with his arm about Cordelia's shoulders.

Mike and Cordelia were the last customers to leave the restaurant that evening. They had arrived late and lingered over their meal. Mostly it was Cordelia who was lingering, since she was scared of what would happen when they were finally to leave the restaurant.

Mike stopped at the door, pulling Cordelia flush against him, and he kissed her for the first time. She had known this was coming; Olivia had told her. Unlike Olivia before her, however, Cordelia found the kiss sexy. As they kissed Mike's hands went to Cordelia's ass, showing off to the wait staff his ability to molest her at will. Cordelia made no protest, since she knew she had to comply, and the waiter won yet another $5.

Mike and Cordelia walked to the parking garage, Mike with his arm around Cordelia's shoulders. What? Is he afraid I'll escape? Cordelia thought. She giggled at her thought. Mike heard Cordelia's giggle.

"I like your attitude," Mike said.

"I like the way your arm feels. It's protective, and I feel vulnerable without my bra on," Cordelia said. Her breasts were gently jiggling as they walked. Any careful observer could tell she was braless, even in the dim light of the evening. She figured with the cool evening air, her nipples probably poked at her blouse, which was still seriously unbuttoned.

Mike smiled. Cordelia seemed nicer than his previous victims. "What's my next task, or are we done for the night?" she asked.

"Let's surprise you," Mike said, and he squeezed Cordelia affectionately. Cordelia squealed appreciatively. She was pulling out all the stops. She figured if she acted nicely to Mike, maybe his tendency to misogyny might be replaced with affection? Well, it was worth a try.

She couldn't fully admit it to herself, but she was enjoying the evening. The food had been excellent, Mike was easy to look at, and most of all she enjoyed teasing the waiter. She thought for a minute about proposing a threesome with the waiter. Why not? She had done that in college, hadn't she? If she's going to cheat, why not cheat in style?