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My husband was sleeping with my best friend behind my back for six months. So I wrapped my legs around the waist of her husband. "An affair,"I whispered against his lips."Real. Raw. Dirty. No strings. No limits. We give them exactly what they deserve." His eyes darkened. A second later, his thrusts were hard and deep, hitting a spot Julian had never found in two years of marriage... "Your husband is having an affair with my wife." The water in my mouth splashed out before I could stop it. I stared at Dominic Ford across the table, certain I had heard him wrong. I had to have heard him wrong. Because what he just said was impossible. Julian would never cheat on me. "Mr. Ford." I set my glass down carefully, the way you do when your hands are shaking and you don't want anyone to notice. "Is this a joke? Because it's not funny." "Do I look like I'm joking?" He didn't. Dominic Ford never looked like anything except serious. But that didn't mean he was right. "Julian loves me," I said firmly. "He would never do something like this." "I know." His voice was quiet and tired. "I said the same thing about Sera three months ago." Sera. Just her name made my chest do something strange. Seraphine Ford. My best friend since forever. The woman who cried at my wedding. The woman who called me every single day and told me how lucky I was to have a man like Julian. We were practically sisters. "This isn't possible," I said again, but my voice came out smaller this time. Dominic looked at me the way people look at someone they feel sorry for. I hated it. "Did you never see the signs?" he asked. "There were no signs." "Six months, Celeste." I flinched at the number. "No." "Six months and you never once suspected anything?" "I said no." I got to my feet, my chair scraping back loudly. "I trust my husband completely. Whatever you think you know, you're wrong." "Sit down." "I'm leaving." "Sit. Down." Something in his voice stopped me. Not loud. Not aggressive. Just absolute. I sat down. He leaned forward, resting his arms on the table. "Six months ago, did anything change between you and Julian?" I opened my mouth to speak, but closed it. Six months. The memories came without permission. The way Sera had suddenly started visiting more. Two, three, four times a week, always when Julian was home. I had been so happy about it. I thought our friendship was growing deeper. I thought she just missed me. And Julian. Still loving. Still perfect. Still sending flowers every morning and texting me love notes throughout the day and kissing me like I was something precious each time he walked through the door. But our sex life. Three months since he had last touched me. Three long months of 'I'm exhausted baby' and 'once this project is done, I'll make it up to you" and 'just one more year and we'll have everything we've ever wanted.' I had believed every word. Stop it. I shook the thoughts away. You're doing exactly what he wants you to do. "Even if things changed between me and Julian," I said carefully, "that doesn't prove anything." Dominic pulled out his phone without a word. He turned the screen toward me. It took me three full seconds to understand what I was seeing. A luxury club. A private booth. Dark, expensive, intimate. Julian and Sera. Together. My stomach dropped so fast I thought I was going to be sick right there at the table. "That was taken last week," Dominic said flatly. "No." I pushed the phone away. "No, that's not possible. Julian was out of the country last week. He was on a business trip. He video called me every single night until I fell asleep." Dominic didn't argue. He just looked at me. "He called me," I repeated, my voice cracking slightly. "Every night." "I know." He took his phone back. "He's very thorough." The word 'thorough' hit me somewhere tender. Like a bruise being pressed. "You can see the truth for yourself if you still have doubts," he said. I wiped the corner of my eye quickly, angry at myself. "What do you mean?" "Julian probably told you this morning that he's traveling tomorrow. Four days. Business trip, right?" I went very still. "How do you know that?" "Because my wife already told me she's visiting her mother for four days." A dry smile crossed his face. It didn't reach his eyes. "They're not going anywhere, Celeste. He booked the entire East Wing of Rosewood Resort. Four days, just the two of them." The room tilted slightly. Julian had told me that morning. Before he left for work, still warm from sleep, kissing my forehead. 'I'll miss you every second, baby.' Those were his exact words. "Come with me tomorrow evening," Dominic said. "If I'm wrong, you'll know. And if I'm right..." He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to. I didn't remember agreeing. But somehow I nodded. And somehow, I drove myself home. --- I don't know how I managed it. The whole drive back, my chest felt like something was sitting on it. Heavy and immovable. I kept telling myself it wasn't real. The video was fabricated. Dominic was jealous of what Julian and I had. People did crazy things out of jealousy. Julian loves me. When he came home that evening, flowers in hand, eyes soft and warm the way they always were when he looked at me, something in my chest cracked. See? Look at him. This man is not cheating on you. He kissed me slow and deep in the kitchen and I kissed him back just as hard, searching for something. A lie. A tell. Anything that would make Dominic's words make sense. I found nothing. He asked about my day and I lied through my teeth, smiling up at him like my world hadn't shifted on its axis that afternoon. That night, I tried again. I pressed myself against him in bed, my fingers trailing across his chest, and he caught my hand gently. "Baby." His voice sounded soft, exhausted and genuine. "I'm so tired. The moment this contract is done, every single night is yours. I promise." "Okay," I whispered. "I love you so much, baby." "I know." I replied. He kissed my forehead and rolled over. I lay in the dark and listened to him breathe and wondered how a man could lie so beautifully. Maybe he wasn't lying. Maybe Dominic was. I held onto that thought like a lifeline and waited for morning. --- Julian kissed my cheek in the morning, while I pretended to sleep. "I'll miss you every second. I love you." I kept my eyes closed until the front door clicked shut behind him. I didn't move until noon. Chapter 2 Dominic picked me up at five. We didn't talk much in the car. What was there to say? We were either about to prove he was wrong, or we were about to have our entire lives rearranged. Rosewood Resort sat at the edge of the city, all glass and warm light and the kind of quiet money that didn't need to announce itself. According to Dominic's words, Julian had rented the entire East wing and so it wasn't open to other people. But Dominic had already arranged everything. Two employees met us at the back entrance and for a folded stack of bills, led us through a service corridor and out into the resort's private garden in the East wing. The sky had been rumbling for the past hour. Dark clouds rolling in fast. I could smell the rain coming. "We have to be quick," Dominic said quietly. We moved along the tree line and I told myself for the hundredth time that we were going to find nothing. An empty garden. A misunderstanding. Something I could take home and hold up like proof that I hadn't been a fool. Then I saw him. Julian. My husband stood between two palm trees in the resort garden, dressed casually in a way I had never seen him dress for a business trip. Linen shirt, sleeves rolled up, a drink in one hand. And Sera tucked under his other arm like she belonged there. They were laughing. Laughing like the world was a beautiful private joke that only the two of them understood. I stopped walking. I couldn't feel my legs. No. My mind was screaming it. No, no, no. Dominic stopped beside me. But I felt him look at me, just once, quickly, the way you look at someone when you think they can't see you. Like he was checking if I was still standing. I was. Barely. My hands were shaking when I pulled out my phone and called Julian's number. Across the garden, Julian glanced at his screen. He said something to Sera. I saw her roll her eyes. Then he answered. "Baby." His voice was warm. Happy. Completely normal. "I was just thinking about you. I miss you so much already." My throat had closed, but I forced the words out. "Where are you right now?" "At my desk." He lied so easily and effortlessly. "Swamped with work but I can't stop thinking about you. Did you sleep okay? You were so deep asleep when I left, you looked so beautiful. Do you miss me?" "I do," I said. "I miss you more." He laughed softly. "I'll call you before bed, okay? Don't stay up too late." Then the call ended. Across the garden, Julian slipped his phone back into his pocket and turned back to Sera. She reached up and pulled his face down to hers and he kissed her. He kissed her the way he used to kiss me. The sky broke open. Rain came down hard and fast, soaking through my clothes in seconds. I just stood there and let it. I stood in the rain and watched them in each other's arms while tears ran down my face and mixed with the rainwater, and I couldn't even tell the difference anymore. Then Sera laughed at something he said and turned, leaning back against a tree. And Julian didn't hesitate. His hands found her like they knew exactly where to go. Like they had done this a hundred times before. Because they had. My breath left my body. He lifted her thigh like she weighed nothing. Like I had never existed. What happened next broke something in me that I already knew would never heal. I watched my husband take my best friend in the rain and I couldn't look away. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't do anything except stand there completely hollow and feel my entire world burn down around me. Suddenly, Dominic's hand closed around my arm. "Come on," he said quietly. "You've seen enough." I let him pull me away from the rain, away from Julian and Sera and the ruins of everything I thought was mine. He was right. I had seen enough. Enough to know that every flower he ever sent me meant nothing. Every phone call, every whispered I love you, every morning kiss and every promise of forever meant absolutely nothing. Two years of my life. Gone. I didn't scream or fall to my knees, the way they do in movies, I just walked through the rain beside a man I barely knew, soaking wet, completely hollow, with one question running over and over through my mind like a broken record. What was wrong with me? What did I do wrong? Chapter 3 Dominic didn't take me home. I didn't argue. I couldn't. The rain was coming down so hard it was impossible to see three feet in front of you, and I was soaking wet and shaking so badly I could barely hold myself upright. He spoke quietly to one of the resort staff, handed over a card, and within minutes we were being led to a suite in the West Wing. The suite was warm and expensive and too beautiful for the kind of night I was having. I walked straight to the couch, sat down, and stayed there. I didn't take off my wet clothes. I didn't move. I just sat there and stared at the wall while the rain hammered the windows and something inside me kept breaking over and over in the same place. Dominic moved around quietly. I heard him adjusting the heater. Heard the clink of mugs in the kitchenette. He didn't talk and I was grateful for that because I had nothing to say. He set a mug of coffee on the table in front of me. I stared at it. "Drink it," he said. Not unkindly. I picked it up with both hands because one hand wasn't steady enough. The warmth seeped into my palms and I held onto it like it was the only solid thing left in the world. I cried quietly for a long time. Not the loud, dramatic kind. Just tears that kept coming no matter how many times I wiped them away. The kind of crying that doesn't ask permission and doesn't stop when you want it to. Dominic sat beside me. Not too close. Just present. At some point I started shivering again, even with the heater on. My clothes were still damp and the cold had settled into my bones somewhere between the garden and this suite and refused to leave. "Come here," Dominic said. It wasn't a question. But it wasn't forceful either. Just calm and certain the way everything he said seemed to be. I leaned into him without thinking about it and his arm came around me and pulled me close. He was warm, solid, and smelled like rain and something clean underneath it. I cried a little more. He didn't tell me to stop. He didn't tell me it was going to be okay. He just held me and let me fall apart and somehow that was exactly what I needed. I don't remember falling asleep. --- Morning came grey and quiet. I opened my eyes slowly and the first thing I registered was that I was alone on the couch, a blanket tucked around me that hadn't been there last night. The heater was still running. The rain had slowed to a steady drizzle against the windows. I sat up and looked around. No Dominic. He must have gone back home. I remembered falling asleep against his shoulder. Remembered the warmth of his arm around me and the steady rise and fall of his chest. I pushed the memory away quickly and reached for my phone. I would call a cab. Get home. Figure out what came next. I was still staring at the screen trying to make my brain work when the suite door opened and Dominic walked in carrying two bags. I stared at him. He set the bags on the counter without making a big deal of it. "There's a pharmacy and a small shop about ten minutes from here. Go freshen up. I've ordered breakfast. I'll drive you home after I shower." I opened my mouth. Closed it. "You didn't have to do that." "I know." He said it simply, without looking for gratitude, and something about that made my throat tighten in a way I wasn't ready for. "Thank you," I managed. He nodded toward the bags. "Go ahead." ___ The toiletries were exactly what I needed. I stood under the hot shower for a long time and let the water run over me and tried very hard not to think about anything at all. I failed completely. Julian's face kept coming back to me. The way he had looked at Sera. The way he had reached for her like she was his and had always been his. The way he had laughed while I stood in the rain, about twenty feet away and watched everything I thought I had turn to nothing. I pressed my forehead against the cold tile and breathed through it. When I finally got out, I reached for the clothes Dominic had bought. I held them up and blinked. The shorts were tiny. The top was fitted and small across the chest. I tried both on and looked down at myself and almost laughed, which surprised me because I hadn't thought I had any laughter left in me. My legs went on forever. The shorts barely covered my thighs and the top sat snug in ways it clearly wasn't designed to sit on my frame. I walked out anyway. I was going straight home. It didn't matter. Dominic was at the counter pouring water when I came out. He turned and his eyes moved over me once, quickly, the way you do when you're trying not to be obvious about it. He looked away. "They were the only options available," he said, his voice perfectly even. "It's fine," I said. "I'm going home anyway." A dry look crossed his face, almost amused but not quite. "I bought them based on Sera's size." The name landed between us like a stone dropping into still water. We both felt it. "Of course you did," I said quietly. He cleared his throat and gestured toward the table where breakfast was laid out. "Eat. I already had mine. I'll be quick." He disappeared into the bedroom and I sat down at the table. --- I pushed the food around my plate more than I ate it. My mind kept dragging me back to the resort garden. Julian's hands. Sera's laugh. The rain. The way she had leaned against that tree like she owned the world and everything in it, including my husband. I put my fork down and stared at the window. They were still there right now. In this same resort. Two wings away. Warm and together and completely unbothered while I sat here in borrowed clothes that were two sizes too small trying to figure out how to breathe. The bedroom door opened. I turned and immediately wished I hadn't. Dominic walked out in nothing but a white towel slung low around his waist. He had clearly forgotten his shirt. He crossed toward the couch where it was draped over the armrest, completely unselfconscious, water still on his skin from the shower. I had not planned to look. I looked. Eight. I counted without meaning to. Eight defined ridges of muscle across his abdomen, the kind that didn't come from a gym membership but from actual discipline. His shoulders were broad and his chest was the kind of chest that made you understand immediately why a woman would make terrible decisions. A thought moved through my mind before I could stop it. Seraphine Ford, what on earth is wrong with you? This man was standing in your home every day and you went looking elsewhere. Dominic picked up his shirt and turned to head back to the bedroom and I looked away quickly, picking up my fork again and pretending to be very interested in my eggs. "Seraphine," I said before I could think better of it. He stopped. I kept my eyes on my plate. "What do you think they're doing right now?" There was a short silence. Then I heard him move, and when I looked up he was leaning against the doorframe, shirt still in his hand, watching me with an unreadable expression. "Probably keeping each other warm," he said. "Seeing as the weather is still miserable." I nodded slowly. "We were good to them." "Yes." "We were really good to them." My voice came out steadier than I expected. "And they did this to us anyway." He let out a long breath. "I know." We looked at each other across the room for a moment. Outside the window the rain continued its slow, grey persistence. I forced a short laugh and looked away. "Maybe we should just cheat on them too." Silence passed between us. I could feel him looking at me. I kept my eyes on the window. "You're joking," he said. I turned and met his eyes. "Am I?" He studied me for a long moment. Something shifted in his expression. Not surprise exactly. More like he was turning the idea over carefully, looking at it from every angle. "What if we did?" he said quietly. Chapter 4 I pushed my chair back and stood up. My heart was beating faster than it had any right to. "This might be the pain talking. I know that. But tell me you wouldn't want to see the look on their faces if they found out we were having an affair." Dominic pushed off the doorframe and moved toward me slowly. "An affair." "Yes." I held his gaze. "An affair. No strings. No feelings. Just two people who got dealt the same hand giving their partners exactly what they deserve." He stopped in front of me. Close enough that I had to tilt my chin up slightly to keep his eyes. "And how exactly does this work?" he asked. The shirt was still in his hand. He still hadn't put it on. I smiled and it felt nothing like a smile. "If they can play this game, so can we." I paused. "If you're willing." My heart was racing. This was all new territory for me. Something I would have sworn on my life I wasn't capable of twenty four hours ago. He looked at me for a long time. Long enough that I started to think he was going to be the reasonable one. Long enough that I started to think he would say something sensible and talk us both down from this ledge. Then his hand came up slowly and his fingers curled around my jaw, tilting my face up toward his. My heart stopped. His mouth came down on mine and every single thought I had left went completely quiet. My eyes closed as I welcomed his lips, hot and certain against mine. Then without warning he lifted me clean off the ground and I yelped, grabbing onto his shoulders as my legs wrapped around his waist. He carried me toward the bedroom like I weighed nothing. Like Sera weighed nothing yesterday too. I pushed that thought away before it could take root. He threw me onto the bed and I bounced once against the soft mattress and sat up immediately, my pulse hammering everywhere at once. Scared. Hurt. Wanting this so badly it frightened me. His towel dropped and I forgot how to breathe. He was hard. His c0ck thick and girthy and veiny, a bead of moisture already at the tip, and the sight of him hit me somewhere low and immediate and I had to press my thighs together just to manage it. His eyes were completely focused on me like a predator. I reached into my small pocket, pulled out my phone and set it on the nightstand without looking away from him. My hands were shaking slightly. He noticed. He didn't comment. He wrapped both hands around my ankles and drew me slowly toward the edge of the bed, toward him, holding my eyes the entire time like I was the only thing in the room worth looking at. His fingers found the hook of my shorts and undid it easily. One pull and they were gone. Then my top. And the moment it came off, Julian's face appeared in my mind, uninvited and unwelcome. Our wedding day. His voice, low and sincere, swearing to love only me for the rest of his life. Then I remembered Sera's head falling back in the rain. I shook Julian loose and let him go. I hadn't been touched in three months. Three long months of exhaustion excuses and forehead kisses and promises of later. And maybe that was part of why every nerve ending in my body was already on fire before Dominic even touched me properly. Or maybe it was the revenge of it. The wrongness of it. The fact that for the first time since yesterday I was doing something that was purely, selfishly mine. Dominic climbed onto the bed and settled between my legs and my entire body tightened with anticipation. His hand wrapped around my throat, not squeezing, just holding, warm and firm and commanding, and then his mouth found mine again, deeper this time, hungrier, like he had been patient long enough and was done pretending otherwise. His lips moved to my neck and found that spot, that specific spot that I didn't even know existed until his mouth landed on it and I gasped so loud it embarrassed me. I threw my head back and stopped being embarrassed. Both his hands found my breasts and he gripped them, his thumbs rolling over my n1pples until they hardened and a sound escaped me that I couldn't have held back if I tried. He squeezed and I arched into his hands like my body had already decided it belonged to him and was just waiting for the rest of me to catch up. His mouth followed. Hot and wet, his tongue circling one n1pple and then the other while I panted against the top of his head and gripped his hair and tried desperately to remember what self control felt like. I couldn't. He kissed down my stomach. My belly button. My hip bones. Each kiss deliberate and slow, like he had all the time in the world and intended to use every second of it. His lips reached my inner thighs and I was already shaking. He took his time there too. Kissing and grazing and deliberately avoiding where I needed him most until I was trembling and making sounds I hadn't made in a very long time. "Please," I heard myself say. He pressed one soft kiss directly to my cl1t and I nearly came off the bed. Then two fingers pushed inside my p^ssy and I did come off the bed, my elbows catching my weight as I stared down at him with my mouth open and my mind completely blank. He looked up at me and smiled. Actually smiled. Slow and knowing and absolutely devastating. Then his fingers began to move. "You are so wet," he said, his voice rough and low, and the words alone sent another rush of heat through me. His tongue joined his fingers, his lips wrapping around my cl1t and svcking while his fingers curled deep inside my p^ssy and found something that made my entire body seize up with pleasure so sharp it was almost painful. My legs were shaking. My thighs trembled against his shoulders. I was making sounds I would never be able to explain to anyone and I did not care even slightly. He kept going. Relentless and focused and impossibly patient, reading every sound I made and adjusting until I had nowhere left to go, no way to hold on, nothing left to do except fall. And I fell. Hard. The org@sm hit me like something breaking loose, rolling through me in waves that wouldn't stop, and just when I thought it was over, he pushed his fingers deeper inside me and curled them and something else happened entirely, something I had never experienced before, a rush so intense and overwhelming that I cried out and gripped the sheets and felt myself squirt, warm and uncontrollable, soaking his hand and the sheets beneath me while I shook from head to toe with shock and pleasure. I lay there for a moment, chest heaving, completely undone and deeply embarrassed. Dominic looked up at me from between my thighs with an expression that was equal parts satisfaction and raw hunger. That, I thought distantly, is why Seraphine Ford you are the biggest fool alive. He pulled me to the edge of the bed again, lifting me easily so my legs bracketed his waist and my arms found his neck on instinct. One hand gripped my @ss firmly. The other guided his c0ck to my p^ssy. He pushed in slowly. I stopped breathing entirely. Because nothing in my entire life had ever felt like that. Not once. The stretch of his c0ck filling my p^ssy so completely, the way we fit together like something designed rather than accidental. Like my body recognized him even though my brain was still catching up. My mouth fell open. "Oh God," I whispered. He said nothing. He just watched my face with those dark eyes and pushed deeper until there was nowhere left to go and I felt him everywhere, his c0ck buried so deep inside me I could feel it in my stomach. Then he fvcked me. His thrusts were hard and deep and hit something inside me that I genuinely had not known existed before this moment. I wasn't sure if I was crying or moaning. My eyes were wet and my throat was raw and I could not tell the difference and did not care. Julian had never fvcked me like this. Not once in our entire marriage had I felt anything close to this. The thought appeared and disappeared in an instant because Dominic shifted his angle and everything went white. He gripped my @ss with both hands and controlled the rhythm entirely, pulling me forward to meet each thrust, fvcking me so thoroughly that the sound of it filled the entire room and I stopped caring about anything except the next thrust and the one after that. The second org@sm built faster than the first. Deeper. It started somewhere in my spine and radiated outward and I buried my face in his neck and held on for my life while my whole body shuddered through it, my p^ssy clenching around his c0ck so hard that he groaned out loud against my ear. His pace increased. His breathing roughened. He fvcked me harder, deeper, rougher, his grip on my @ss tightening to the point of almost pain and I loved every single second of it. Then he stilled with a rough groan and I felt his c0ck throb and release deep inside my p^ssy, hot and overwhelming, his entire body shaking while his arms held me so tightly I could feel his heartbeat slamming against my chest. We stayed like that for a long moment. Both breathing hard. Both completely wrecked. Then slowly, carefully, he carried me back to the bed and laid me down and sat quietly beside me. I stared at the ceiling. Wow. I kept that entirely to myself. There was no need to say it out loud. Some things didn't require commentary. I turned my back to him, suddenly aware of everything. What I had proposed. What I had done. How much I had enjoyed it when enjoyment had never been part of the plan. The shame came quietly. Not because of him. But because of how completely and willingly I had come undone in the arms of a man who was not my husband, and how little I regretted it. How was I supposed to face him now? "I'm sorry." His voice came from behind me, low and careful. I felt his hand move lightly across my back. "I shouldn't have released inside you. I lost control and..." "It's okay," I cut him off. "I'm on the pill." There was a pause. "Why?" I turned to face him, wondering how to answer that, when my phone on the nightstand lit up. He was closer. He picked it up and held it out to me, glancing at the screen. "Your world is calling," he said quietly. I looked at the name and felt the warmth drain out of me completely. Julian. I took the phone. I looked at Dominic once. Then I answered it and put it on speaker and set it on the bed between us. "Good morning to the love of my life." Julian's voice filled the room. Warm. Tender. Completely convincing. I opened my mouth to respond. And then Dominic's lips landed on that sensitive spot on my neck. I hadn't expected it. Not even slightly. The warmth of his mouth against my skin sent a shock straight through me and my head fell back before I could stop it and a sound left my throat that was completely and unmistakably a moan. There was dead silence on the line. Then Julian's voice returned. Every trace of warmth completely gone. "Celeste." His voice sounded flat. Hard. Dangerous. "Are you with a man?"