4. What Should Have Stayed White
What Should Have Stayed White
Nadja stood rigid in her husband’s tight embrace.
On the outside, she played the gentle wife soothing Markus after a nightmare.
Inside, panic was closing around her throat.
His arms wrapped firmly around her waist, pressing their bodies close together.
Beneath the thin silk shorts, her sex was still throbbing from the old man’s hard thrusts.
She could feel Karl’s semen slowly drying, sticky against her inner thighs.
If Markus let his hand slide just a little lower or noticed how unnaturally tense her body was, the entire structure of lies she had built would collapse.
Markus buried his face against her neck. This was the moment Nadja feared most. His warm breath brushed over skin that still carried the sour sweat and stale cigarette smoke of the neighbor.
“You’re here…”
His voice broke with relief. Nadja had no idea what he had seen in his dream, but the way he clung to her as though he had nearly lost her forever sent a painful stab through her chest.
She swallowed hard and tried to sound completely normal.
“Did you have a nightmare?”
Markus slowly loosened his hold on her a little. He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead while his chest continued to rise and fall too quickly. His gaze rested on her, remnants of confusion and naked terror still flickering in his eyes. For a moment, Nadja saw his lips move.
As though he wanted to say something. She held her breath.
But Markus turned his head away and took a deep breath, trying to collect himself. When he looked at her again, he only nodded.
“Yeah… a nightmare.”
“What did you dream about?” she asked softly.
Markus opened his mouth, then fell silent again, as though he couldn’t find the words. He remained quiet for several seconds. His gaze dropped, avoiding hers. Then he said hoarsely:
“The contract in Frankfurt fell through. Everything collapsed again.”
Nadja exhaled so quietly it was almost inaudible.
Relief and pain washed over her at the same time.
Relief because he had no idea about the truth.
Pain because her husband was still being crushed beneath the massive financial burden hanging over their family.
He carried all of it on his own shoulders and didn’t want her to suffer with him.
And she…
“Don’t put so much pressure on yourself,” she whispered, gently stroking his back. “You’ve done everything you could.”
Markus gradually calmed down. His breathing became steadier. But as his mind fully returned, his gaze suddenly settled on her face and her rumpled clothes.
“Where were you just now?” he asked, frowning. “I texted you, but you didn’t answer.”
Nadja’s entire body tightened instantly.
“I couldn’t sleep well this morning,” she said, forcing her voice to sound soft and natural. “I got up early and walked around the block to get some fresh air. My phone was on silent in the bedroom, so I didn’t see your messages.”
She spoke a little too quickly. That only made her heart pound harder.
Markus looked at her for another moment. That brief, probing silence felt as though he were staring straight beneath her skin. Then he wrinkled his nose slightly.
“Why do you smell like cigarettes?”
The question froze the blood in Nadja’s veins. Karl’s smoke-yellowed mouth flashed through her mind immediately, his panting breath against her neck, his old hands digging relentlessly into her hips.
Nadja bit hard into the inside of her lip and forced down the panic rising inside her. She lowered her gaze and made a face as though she herself were annoyed.
“There were a few men downstairs in the courtyard smoking right by the entrance. The smell probably got into my cardigan.”
Markus looked at the dark cardigan hanging loosely over her shoulders, then nodded as though it made sense. He exhaled.
“Yeah. You’re pretty sweaty too. You should take a shower.”
The words were salvation.
Nadja was so unbelievably relieved that her knees went weak, but burning shame followed immediately. She quickly smiled.
“I was just about to.”
She was already turning toward the bathroom when her gaze involuntarily fell on the glass table in the middle of the living room. The deep red roses and the small velvet box were lying there.
She stopped.
Markus followed her gaze and suddenly seemed to remember the most important thing. The exhaustion vanished from his face. His eyes lit up. He walked to the table, carefully picked up the red box, and held it out to her.
“A gift.”
Nadja hesitated for a fraction of a second before taking it.
Don’t shake, she told herself.
She repeated it over and over in her head, but the harder she tried to stay calm, the colder and stiffer her fingers became.
She tugged gently at the ribbon. The lid sprang open.
Inside was a pristine white set. A plunging bra of the finest lace, slender ties at the hips, whisper-thin fabric that was nearly transparent, along with white thigh-high stockings.
The set looked innocent and extremely provocative at the same time.
Nadja froze. Her breath caught.
“Do you remember a set like this?” he asked, his voice noticeably lower.
Markus’s gaze had grown warmer now. Hotter.
In that moment, he was no longer the broken man exhausted by debt and endless trips to Frankfurt. He was once again the proud husband who had once held Nadja in his arms with open admiration.
Nadja parted her lips but couldn’t make a sound.
Markus stepped closer. The last bit of space between them disappeared. His voice dropped, roughened by rising desire.
“On our wedding night… when your dress slipped off your shoulders, you were wearing something almost exactly like this.”
Every word cut deep into Nadja’s flesh.
Their wedding night, in Markus’s memory, was something pure. Sacred. Something that belonged only to the two of them.
And at that exact moment, she still hadn’t even washed Karl’s sticky semen from her body.
“I missed you like crazy these last few days in Frankfurt,” he said, gently running a hand over her tense shoulder. “All I wanted was to get everything done as fast as possible, put the worries behind me, and come back to my Venus.”
My Venus.
The words struck Nadja without warning and shattered the last of her control. Her nose stung. Her vision began to blur.
She lowered her head and touched the white lace in the box with trembling fingers. The fabric was soft, flawlessly clean, cool against her skin.
A crushing wave of shame broke over her.
She felt as though she had no right even to touch something so pure. Her body was still marked by the filthy traces of the neighbor Markus believed was a kind, harmless old man.
A tear gathered in her eye.
Markus lifted his hand and gently brushed a still-damp strand of hair away from her face.
That tender gesture nearly broke Nadja completely.
She wanted to sink to her knees, wanted to confess everything, wanted to scream into his face that she had just been lying spread-legged in the filthy apartment next door. Wanted to tell him she was no longer the spotless woman from their wedding photograph, the woman he adored so much.
But the image of Markus earlier—panicked in his nightmare, utterly crushed by his fear of failure—made her clench her teeth.
If he found out now that the woman he loved more than anything had just been moaning beneath the disgusting old neighbor, it would finally break him.
Nadja forced the corners of her mouth upward. It was a beautiful smile, but inside she was completely knotted with tension.
“Thank you… I really like it.”
Her voice trembled. To Markus, it sounded like genuine emotion.
Nadja didn’t dare stay another second. She pressed the red box against her chest as though she could use it to cover her stained body.
“Wait for me. I’m just going to take a quick shower,” she said hastily.
Then she turned and walked quickly toward the bathroom. Behind that white door was, for the moment, the only place that could protect her from her husband’s loving, blind gaze.
Before closing the door behind her, she looked back one last time.
Markus was still standing in the middle of the sunlit living room. His loving gaze followed her, his chest rising and falling slightly with the desire and longing he had suppressed for days.
He suspected absolutely nothing.
Her husband probably truly believed in that moment that she was simply embarrassed by the provocative gift and was rushing into the bathroom so she could come back out wearing the white lace lingerie for him.
Click.
Nadja closed the bathroom door.
The bolt clicked dryly into place. Inside, she was still clutching the red box tightly to her chest as she slid down the door and sank onto the cold tile floor.
The clean lavender scent from the living room remained on the other side of the door, and she was alone in the cramped room. Alone with Karl Seifert’s pungent smell, still clinging to her skin.
Tears ran silently down her cheeks.
Outside the bathroom, Markus stood alone in the clean apartment.
He looked at the red roses on the table and then back at the closed bathroom door. A deeply satisfied smile appeared on his face. He bent down and straightened his shirt collar.
His body grew hot at the thought of Nadja stepping out in the white lace lingerie any moment now. He breathed in the lavender scent deeply and, for the first time in a long while, felt truly happy.
Despite the financial abyss waiting outside, he believed with absolute certainty that he and his wife could finally start over. That they would love each other again the way they had on the very first day.
And the filthy nightmare from earlier had, after all, only been a nightmare.