4. Work Wife
four
Work Wife
For two weeks I asked. Had anyone flirted. Had Steve wanted another night. He lived three hours away—far enough to be inconvenient, close enough to ruin me the moment she decided to get in a car.
She deflected with a list of facts. “He’s married.
” “He has kids.” “He lives three hours away, Doug.” Each one was a door shutting.
I backed off before I turned it into homework, before I made the thing she’d named in our bed feel like a chore she had to perform for a man who couldn’t shut up.
I still thought about it every time she came home late.
I still checked her face for something that hadn’t happened yet.
Then one morning, coffee in her hand, already dressed for the office, she mentioned an overnight later in the week. Out-of-town clients. Two nights.
“You going to entertain them?”
“Ew. Bloated. Sweaty. No.”
She sipped. Casual, like the next sentence wasn’t going to land somewhere behind my sternum. “Steve’s going too.”
Something shifted in my chest, soft and embarrassing, like a door I’d meant to keep shut swinging open on its own. I heard myself ask if they were sharing a room, a bed, and I hated how eager it sounded even while I was saying it.
“I told him last time was once.”
“You think he believes that?”
“I think he realizes the risks. He is married. I am married. He is the regional VP, and I work under him.” She saw my smirk and chose to ignore it. “He’s got more important things to do than figure out how to fuck me again.”
“So he hasn’t asked to share a room, or go out after client meetings? You think he’s just letting it go?”
“He hasn’t brought it up. So yes.” She lifted a finger before I could push. “Stop. You pester and this stops being fun. I know what you are now. I don’t need a reminder every morning.”
She left. I sat in the kitchen with the word she’d put on me in bed and a hard-on I was supposed to take to work, and the next move wasn’t mine. She had the assignment. I had the waiting.
* * *
I spent lunch buying bridal lingerie in her size because I couldn’t sit still, because the waiting was an energy that had to go somewhere.
Open-cup bra. Crotchless panties. Garter.
Stockings. The kind of set you put on a woman you are about to ruin, not a woman you are taking to dinner. The clerk didn’t ask. I didn’t offer.
That night her bag was open on the bed, the usual geometry of chargers and shoes. I laid the set across the top and put her diaphragm case next to it like a punchline I was done being subtle about.
She came back from the bathroom and saw the lingerie. She touched the lace, a flicker of something that wasn’t reluctance in her expression. Then she saw the case. Her hand froze.
“What is all this?”
“Prompting. You promised to be a slut.”
Her gaze locked on the case, a muscle ticking in her jaw, before it drifted back to the panties. She ran her palm over the open crotch. “I did.”
She packed the lingerie. The case. The jelly from the drawer. She snapped the lid and looked at me with something new in her face — not shy. Interested. Like she had found the edge of the job and wanted to see how far it went.
“If something happens, I’m going to be worse than last time. You asked to be number two. I’m not going to do that halfway.”
She kissed me. “Perv.”
It didn’t sound like an insult anymore. It sounded like a job title. I wore it to bed and stared at the ceiling until dawn.
* * *
Afternoon I texted any luck? because I am who I am. She sent back just business. My stomach clenched—the hollow ache of disappointment, not the thrill of the chase. I spent the rest of the day pretending I had wanted her to keep the once-promise.
Eight o’clock the phone lit. A bathroom selfie. Bridal set. Nipples out of the open cups. Cunt visible through the panties I’d bought, so another man could have the show. #slutmode
I blew it up on the TV because I wanted it the size of our living room. Hard nipples. Flushed chest. And on the vanity behind her, if you looked: open diaphragm case, a man’s shaving kit, two toothbrushes in one glass.
She’d moved in to his room again.
I came looking at that glass. Not even at her tits first. The two brushes. Proof I was the husband at home while she played bride for somebody else. No call after. Morning I poked: lingerie a hit?
#slut #honeymoon #nosleep
Those three words were my entire workday. I stared at spreadsheets and saw hashtags. Nothing else got done.
* * *
Dinner. The phone rang. Ice run. Two minutes. I could hear the rumble of an ice machine and the muffled sound of a TV through a thin hotel wall—the cheap soundtrack to a work trip.
“Hey,” I said. “Are you with him now? Are you taking care of your work husband?”
“Yes.” Flat. Busy. Then: “Listen. I’m not going to do the sweet version with you tonight. You wanted extreme. You’re getting it.”
“Okay.”
“We are sharing a room. The lingerie did more than you think. In the hall he said if we kept shacking up we were work husband and work wife. I came out of the bathroom in the bridal set and told him if we were married we should have a honeymoon.”
A choked sound escaped my throat. She talked right over it.
“He stood me in front of the mirror and made us say vows. Till retirement or firing do us part. I promised him this pussy on work trips. I promised him I wouldn’t waste a night in a separate bed. He promised to stretch me and fill me and not ask about you.”
“Wendy—”
“Then he fucked me in the lingerie you bought. Open cups so he could chew on my tits. Crotchless so he didn’t have to take anything off. I came on the first stroke. I just pictured you at home, looking at that photo, knowing he was with me.”
I was shaking. She could hear it, and she liked it; I heard it in her voice.
“He’s bigger, Doug. I made it a vow, just like ours. I told him you’ve never wrecked me like this. He didn’t say anything, just kept going, and I forgot what I was going to say next. Your ring was on the nightstand. I’d put it there before he arrived.”
“You took the ring off.”
“Work wife doesn’t wear the other man’s ring on her honeymoon. I’ll put it back when I land. Right now I have to go. Door. I have to service my husband.”
She hung up.
I sat in our kitchen and came in my pants like a teenager. No dignity. That was the point. She had taken my ring off for him, kept the picture clean. I was the man at home with a wet spot, waiting for a flight I wasn’t on.
* * *
She walked in the next night looking well-fucked and serene, her movements fluid and unhurried. The kiss lingered, tasting of hotel coffee and another man’s toothpaste. Different. Off. I hunted for him in it and found more this time than I had at baggage claim.
“Mmm. You two are so different. He gets to open me up, and you get to hear all about it.”
“How was the honeymoon.”
Her eyes were bright. Mean. Happy.
“We fucked the entire time. I thought we were going to rip the diaphragm. He came in it so many times I had to rinse the disc in the sink and put it back. I’m still walking like I’m trying not to spill something.”
“Too bad you used it.”
“Oh. You’d want a souvenir.” She put my hand on her stomach, over the blouse, over the joke that wasn’t only a joke anymore. “Not this trip. The disc stays in. He’s a lot. I still used it, even when it was uncomfortable. No accidents. Yet.”
Yet hung between us, unfinished.
She pulled me toward the bedroom. “Come on. I want to cheat on my work husband. I’ll wear the honeymoon set while you fuck Steve’s slut. That’s what you bought it for. So you could have sloppy seconds in the costume he already came on.”
She wore it. Strap down. Open cups. Crotchless, shiny. She stood in our doorway like she was still under the harsh bathroom light of his hotel, like our bedroom was a cheap rental, and I was the man who wasn’t supposed to be there.
“Work wife reporting in. My husband spent two nights stretching this cunt. You’re the other man. Say it.”
“I’m the other man.”
“Say the whole thing.”
“I’m fucking Steve’s wife. I’m number two. I get what’s left.”
“Good boy.”
She climbed into my lap and put my mouth on a nipple the bra didn’t bother to cover. When I reached between her legs there was nothing to push aside. Heat. Slick. Used. The scent of the flight and of whatever she hadn’t wiped off.
“That’s him,” she said. “I didn’t wash. I sat on the plane with his mess in the disc and thought about you waiting. You wanted leftovers. Eat it.”
I did. She held my head there and talked, and the talking was the rest of the fuck.
This morning, he’d had her on all fours, hand on her neck.
Work wives don’t get to be shy. She’d come thinking of me, the clueless husband Steve liked fucking over.
She liked that she had to sneak the disc in before he got back from ice.
She told me all of it with my mouth on her, and I made a broken sound against her that she took as payment.
“There it is,” she said. “That’s the face. He doesn’t get to know what you are. I do. I get to come home and make you wear it. That’s the part I kept for myself.”
I nodded, my throat too tight for words. He stayed blind—that was the rule and the extra humiliation. He got the body, the vows, and the empty ring finger. She got to come home and name me.
She pulled me up by the hair and put me on my back and sat on my cock through the open panties. The diaphragm was in. I felt it. Plastic between me and the part of her he’d already claimed, a thin wall she’d rinsed in a hotel sink and put back so I would die on the near side of it.
“Don’t come yet. You don’t get to finish like he does. You get to hear it first.” She rode slow, cruel, watching my face. “He filled the disc. I emptied it. He filled it again. I am still his work wife until I put your ring back on, and I’m not putting it on until you come admitting it.”
“I’m a cuckold.”
“Louder.”
“I’m a cuckold. He’s your work husband. I wait.”
She came on that, sharp, nails in my chest, and only then let me follow. I finished second, trapped under her, into the plastic barrier he’d already used as a bucket. I held her hips and shook, and she looked down at me like she was filing a report she was proud of.
When I could breathe again, I saw she’d left the lingerie on the chair instead of putting it away.
“Keep it out. Next trip, it goes back in the bag. If you want a souvenir, take the picture now. I want it in the same album as our wedding photos.”
I took it. One strap down. Open crotch wet. Bride already used. She looked at the screen over my shoulder and nodded, satisfied.
“That’s the version you asked for,” she said. “Not conservative tops. This. High mileage. Still booked. And I’m going to keep going until you tell me to stop—which you won’t.”
She slid my ring back onto her finger, kissed it, and smiled at me like the shift was over.
“Work trip’s over, baby. Your wife is home. Until the next one.”
***
“Oh yeah,” she said into the dark. “I ran into Jerry at the airport. Your friend from the club—the one that flirts.”
“Yeah?”
I could hear her smile in the dark. “He bought me a drink. When I reached for it, he caught my hand. Asked where my ring was. I told him I don’t wear it on trips.
” I heard rustling—she was touching herself.
“He asked if he took me on a trip, if I’d leave the ring off for him. He wasn’t just talking about the ring.”
“Oh.” My stomach seethed. Steve was an unknown - Jerry was a friend. We had a rule: no friends.
“Yeah. How would you feel about Jerry? His wife finding out would be his problem. Want me to cuckold you with your friend? Ride Jerry’s dick?”
My hands had gone cold and my face hot, all at once. I didn’t honestly know what to say. The silence provided my answer.
“Good. I hope he has a big cock. I’ll let you know.”
I lay there staring at the darkness, imagining Wendy on her back, Jerry pounding away as Wendy’s ring sat on the nightstand while Jerry unloaded into her. Her breathing evened out beside me, but I just stared into the dark, picturing my friend where I was supposed to be.