Jake didn’t raise the specter of his newfound interest in Joss-as-Voyeur again, but both times Emily had him in trance since his dream confession, she had asked about his fantasies.  For someone who was getting a surprising renaissance in his sex life, he still apparently masturbated quite a bit; she didn’t know whether it was boyishly charming or hopelessly adolescent, but she’d found it interesting to satisfy her curiosity about what went on in his hindbrain when he was alone and his sex drive was in charge.  

He was remarkably simple in his tastes... so to speak.  Most of his fantasies involved going down on her in various states of dress and undress, and usually fucking her afterward.  Now, however, he admitted he was getting off on those same situations but with the added seasoning of doing it publicly— or in private, but observed.  And usually by Jocelyn.  She smirked knowingly as he blankly detailed his latest imagination session, though it was hard to sustain the entertainment as such when the story he was laying out was kinda hot.  And she knew it was her suggestions to him that were making him think this way, and that part was kinda hotter.  And he was right there, kneeling with his cock in his hand as he demonstrated for her what he’d done in the shower this morning, and his face was near her knees, so close to... well, to fulfilling one of his favorite fantasies.  Why should she deny him that?  It was out of the kindness of her heart that she interrupted his story by claiming his mouth for other uses.

That was quite satisfactory, if Emily did say so herself.  And she did: her texts to Joss in the days up to their double-date night were not exactly bragging or teasing, but some combination of the two that danced on the edge of propriety.  Joss gave as good as she got, and apparently Timothy was reaping the benefits of their heated text exchanges, per the not-quite-details she provided, unsolicited, to Emily.  They started exchanging photos of the dresses they were planning to wear on the double date and after a day of one-upping each other in sluttiness, they’d both realized things had gone off the rails and mutually dialed it back to mere “college meat market” levels.  It was going to be an interesting night, bad cinema notwithstanding.

No, the only slightly troubling thing that week was Jake’s behaviors outside hypnosis.  She couldn’t be certain— Jake was generous by nature— but it seemed to her that he was spending more time catering to her wants and less to his own.  He was not ignoring self-pleasures entirely, as her inquisitions had made clear, but when he wasn’t spending time on various hobby room tasks he was kneeling in front of her and offering a foot rub.  Or picking up carry-out from her favorite diner.  Or pouring her glasses of Sirine.  She felt like she was being spoiled, and couldn’t help but wonder if some of the things—

she was doing to him

—they were doing together during his trance sessions were bleeding over into the rest of their life.  She wasn’t entirely sure that was a good thing.

She’d gotten used to it, though; she hadn’t realized that until Saturday, the morning before the double date.

He had said he was going to get her a refill on her tea, and then gotten caught up in whatever doomscrolling he was engaging in on his phone, and had manifestly not gotten to it yet, had perhaps forgotten... and in a brief but sharp fit of pique she had briefly imagined hypnotizing the fuck out of him to make him prioritize her goddamn tea over his whatever-it-is-you’re-doing.

She caught herself, of course,  and wondered at that mild stab of anger, at the...petty entitlement of it, and she was ashamed at what it said about her.  As she noticed him getting close to the bottom of his coffee, she went out of her way to stand up, get the carafe, and top off his mug when she put her teacup in the sink.  He may be my plaything, sometimes, in the bedroom.  But he’s not my servant.  He’s not.

She hoped he continued to know that.  It disturbed her that she wasn’t sure he would.

***

“I’m headed to the ladies’ room.  Come with me, Em?  If you can extract yourself from that octopus over there.”

“Nose-powdering emergency?” Jake inquired, removing his nose from her neck to poke at Joss.

“The worst!”

“Yeah, I’ll come with you.”  She looked at Jake fondly, letting him kiss her behind the ear.  He knew that gave her goosebumps.  “Won’t be long, sweetie.  You can eat your food while I’m gone.”

“Oh, yeah,” he responded, as if noticing his plate for the first time.  “That.”

She giggled and stood up, leading the way toward the rest room.  The dinner crowd had dispersed, but the nightlife crowd hadn’t yet manifested; a couple of the waitresses were taking advantage of the lull to have a break at one of the tables near the back of the restaurant.  Jocelyn followed close behind, heels clicking with her stride, and the employees turned to watch them walk, the expressions on their faces just this side of snide.  Catty bitches, Emily thought as she pushed the rest room door open.

It slid closed again behind her friend with a heavy thud.  “I see being watched is still a popular pastime with Jake.”

“Oh, you noticed, did you?”  Emily went to the mirror and checked her face.  

Joss joined her there, adjusting her hair.  “The whole restaurant did, I think.  And everyone in the theater.”  

“Nonsense.  You couldn’t hear our lips smacking over the engines.  And explosions.”

“You almost could.  Don’t worry.  I think it’s hot.”

“Is that so?”  She was coy as she fished in her purse for a lipstick.  When she returned her gaze to the mirror again it was met by the other woman’s.

“It is.  I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“About Jake being overly affectionate?”

“About the reason for it.”

“My husband can’t just be... enamored?  There has to be a reason?”

“Oh, I’m sure he can be.  But you and I know why his PDAs have gone off the rails.”

Public Display of Affection was, if anything, an understated term for his behavior all night.  He’d been holding her hands, kissing her, grabbing her ass from time to time.  During the flick, he’d had his hand on her thighs nearly the entire time, teasingly moving it higher toward her hemline, and she’d not missed a few of his surreptitious glances in Jocelyn’s direction while he did so. It can be fun, being watched.  Arousing.  Don’t you think so, Jake?  A year ago—hell, two weeks ago—she would have curtailed it all with an amused, “Down boy!” admonishment, but tonight it served as blatant evidence of her influence on him.  That idea alone had her at a low-but-persistent level of excitement even without all the extra sensations his attentions delivered.  “Jocelyn, my dear, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Well, let me make it plainer for you.” Sly pretense evaporated as her friend turned from the mirror to face Emily directly, taking a step closer.  “I’m imagining what you did to get him in that state.  How you can... install new things in him.  Kinks, preferences, who knows?”

Emily glanced over at the three stalls, their doors ajar.  No one listening, a fact that Jocelyn had either already registered or been too reckless to care about.

“Sometimes,” she continued, her voice low and sultry, “when I’m watching you... do that to him... I know they’re not really there—I do—but the way you two talk about them... they’re so real for him... I feel like I can almost see the spirals myself.”

Emily swallowed hard at the admission and the things it betrayed, at the quiet awe in her best friend’s voice.  And the hunger.  The arousal that had been simmering in her all night was growing less subtle, and she felt it percolating low.

Joss took another half-step, their bodies close to touching.  “What if...?”  Her perfume floated around her, heady and musky in Emily’s nostrils.  “I keep wondering what it would be like, if you... tried it on me.  If I looked into your eyes and tried to see the spirals, too.”

Emily’s mouth went dry.  “You... you have no idea what you’re asking.”  

Jocelyn was unsmiling.  “Oh, I think I do.”

“You... Jake... he had something specific about him, something that made him—”

vulnerable

“—susceptible.  You don’t have that.  Nothing like that.”

“It may have started out that way, but you should see yourself when you’re putting him under.”  She sighed,  “Hear yourself.  You slip into this role, this seductress.  This hypnotist that he believes you are, deep down.  It’s... powerful.”

Emily’s nipples tightened against the lace of her bra.  It was powerful, there was no denying that, but this... “It wouldn’t work.” Though there was a voice inside her, a wrong and dirty voice, that refused to be silenced: But what if it did?

“C’mon, Em.  Just try.  Tell me to look into your eyes, see the spirals there.  Talk me into letting my mind sink, into letting go.  I’ll do whatever I can to try to let it happen.  To feel my mind go soft and open... for you.”

She felt the warmth and moisture flood between her thighs as she imagined Jocelyn standing right there in the cramped rest room space, eyes locked on hers, slowly glazing over with Emily’s soft, commanding words.  The same devoted expression Jake got when he was on his knees for her...  The air between them seemed electrically charged, too much for this tiny room.

The door creaked open, someone else approaching, and Emily was appalled to realize she didn’t know if she was frustrated or relieved.  She stepped back a little too quickly, her heart racing, her inner thighs slick.  “We... can’t do this here.”

“Of course not.”  Jocelyn’s dazed look dissolved into a knowing smirk as she watched the  middle-aged matron lurch toward the furthest stall.  “But you’re considering it.  I can see the temptation on your face.”

Emily faced her reflection again, pursed her lips for the forgotten lipstick application.  “I’m tempted by a lot of things.  All the time.  That doesn’t mean I’m going to do them.”

“For now.”  Joss’s lips were curled into a knowing smile, and Emily was caught between wanting to kiss her and wanting to kill her.  Both options seemed equally attractive right now.  She finished with her lips, blotted with a tissue, and walked out, not bothering to wait for Joss.

Emily knew she would follow.

The tittering waitresses were back at work, the place starting to fill up once more.  They headed back to the table.  Jake’s plate was picked at but still mostly untouched; his beer was gone, and he looked vaguely unsettled; Timothy was grumpy at their return.  Jake’s palm returned to her knee as soon as she sat back down, but in an absent-minded way that contrasted starkly with his earlier ardor.  Clearly something had been discussed while they’d been away.  The women, both a bit flushed from their own conversation, tried to probe at what was going on, but with no success.  

With an exchange of glances, the ladies silently decided to make their excuses and call for the checks.  Once credit cards and tips had been properly distributed, they made their way to the parking lot. The women hugged, perhaps a little tighter and longer than friends do—though Emily had to admit to herself that it might have been her imagination—and then the men each politely embraced each other’s lady in farewell.  As they parted, Emily saw Jocelyn whisper something in Jake’s ear that almost made him smile.  However, it ebbed away as the men shook hands awkwardly, a look exchanged between them that clearly had meaning and just as clearly wasn’t going to be shared with wives.

It was not for lack of trying, of course; Emily pestered Jake subtly, then blatantly.  “If you guys are going to make us need to end our evening out early you should at least tell me what deep conversation you were having.”

“Guy talk.”

“That is an entirely stupid cop out.”

“One you’ve used thousands of times on me.”

“I’ve never claimed ‘guy talk’.”

“It’s the same thing as ‘girl talk’, hypocrite.”

“It is not.”

“Oh?”

“There’s sugar and spice involved, not snails and... whatever else was in that stupid rhyme.”

“Yeah, no.”

She tried a different tack.  “Well, at least tell me what Joss said to you that made you smile so hard.”

“She just said...”

“Yeah?”

“She said she could see from the way I was touching you all night that someone was going to get laid tonight.”

“I see.  That was all of it?”

“Then she—” He suddenly looked less amused.  “She said, ‘Give her a couple orgasms for me!’”

“Ha.  What a card she is.”  She brooded on several creative punishments for her bestie that didn’t involve hypnotism.  Mostly didn’t.

“Yeah, it was... it was funny.”

And that was all she got out of him until they got home where, fortunately for her, she wasn’t limited to using her womanly wiles to extract information while he drove. 

She had an inside guy. 

“Jake,” she commanded with elaborate sweetness, “look into my eyes.”

She wasn’t sure how much he would resist something he definitively didn’t want to do, so she spent some time softening him with—

the spirals even Joss was starting to see

—a few deepening suggestions, then sat him down on the couch so they could... discuss the matter.

“Jake, honey, what did you and Timothy say to each other while we were in the bathroom?”

Jake surprised her by responding in Timothy’s New England cadences.  “Dude, I’ve never seen you so all over her as I have tonight.”

Emily stifled a laugh at the accurate mimicry.  Jake was not known for his acting ability; she had gently mocked him for a video she’d seen of his high school play that his mother had retained and replayed for her one Thanksgiving.  He was stilted and awkward, and terrible with accents.  Now, however... she didn’t know if the trance state had unlocked some hidden performative talent in him or if he was just so open right now that the exact tones from his memory were coming out unfiltered.  It was fascinating, and as she listened she wondered idly how well she could get him to role-play in this state.  Could his French accent be improved?  Or maybe Italian?  Because that could be... She shook herself free of her fantasies and paid closer attention to what Jake was saying.

“Sorrynotsorry. I like my wife.  And she’s dressed ridiculously hot.  I mean, they both are, right?”

“Yeah, they are, aren’t they?  They have been a lot, lately, haven’t they?”

“I guess.”

“For wine night?”

“Yeah.  I mean, they always dress up to go out.”

“Not like this.”

“I dunno.  They’re both crossing the thirty-five line, soon. Maybe... trying to reclaim something?  Before they get... you know, old?  You know how chicks are.”

Ouch.  Even though that was decidedly not why she and Joss had started dressing more provocatively lately, it was annoying to think that was Jake’s take on it.  

But though that stung a tad, Timothy’s reply was a bucket of water to the the face:

“Uh huh.  You think they’re sleeping together?”

“What?!”

“You heard me.”

“The fuck did that come from?”

“You haven’t noticed?”

“Noticed what?”

“No, you clearly haven’t.  I thought you were the smart one.”

“What?”

“What’s Emily like after wine night?”

“I mean, a little tipsy, I guess.”

“Not horny as fuck?”

“Excuse me?  Man, no offense, but that’s a little personal.”

“Is it?”

“You clearly have a theory.  Let’s hear it.”

“They go out for wine night once a week or so.  Dressed hot.  They come home... she comes home, immediately raring to go.  Like a force of nature.  Like a switch has flipped in her head.  Or in her pussy.  At first I thought she was sleeping with another guy; they say that can make them overcompensate with their husband.  But I followed her once and she’s only hanging with Emily before she comes home a randy little whore.”

Emily’s amusement and mild annoyance at boy talk had gone suddenly cold.  

Jake, her white knight, didn’t let it go unanswered.  “Followed—!  Seriously?  Um... no offense, Timothy, but this... I mean, did you ever stop to think she just wants you?  Because you’re her husband, and she’s relaxed from having a glass of wine...?”

“So nothing like that for Emily?  She isn’t hornier after wine night?  Or maybe...”

“Maybe...?”

“Maybe she’s completely drained.  Like she’s had her muffin buttered.  Exhausted.”

“Dude, are you hearing yourself?  You sound like you’re like seventeen.”

“That’s the other sign of an affair, you know. Too horny, not horny enough. Look, I don’t expect you to believe me.  Just: tell me honestly that you haven’t noticed anything.”

“I don’t correlate my sex life with whether Emily’s had a drink with friends.”

Emily breathed a sigh of relief.  Good, Jake.  Thank God for you.

“What about last Tuesday?”

“Sorry?”

“Snowstorm.  They went out to Vanities.”

“No, they stayed home.  They didn’t want to drive in the storm.”

“Wait, what?  I thought they went out.”

“No, they were at our place.”

“In the bedroom, probably.”

“No, in the living room.  I came back at like eight-thirty and they were sipping wine and eating bonbons or some shit.  I offered to drive Joss home because she’d been drinking.  And then...”  

“Then?”

“Then I went to bed and when I woke up the next morning, Emily told me she’d left at like nine.  Same as last time.”

“Last time?”

“Yeah, the last couple of times wine night’s been at our place.”

“Okay, one: Jocelyn never told me this...”

Uh oh.

“... two: you don’t think that’s weird?  Why go to your house instead of the bar?”

“Because we have perfectly good wine in our cellar?”

“Dressed like they do?”

“Dude, I don’t know!  But look: I was at home for a couple of wine nights, and I came home in the middle of the last one.  If anything was going on, I’d know it.”

“I would think so.  But I feel like you’re oblivious.”

You don’t know the half of it, Tim-Tim.  Fuck!  

“Gee, thanks a lot.”

“Jocelyn came home at ten that last time.  She smelled like a whore and fucked me like one on the living room couch.  And that’s not the first time.”

“Too much information, my friend.”

“Jake, open your eyes!  They’re sleeping together.  You went to bed and they got dirty.  We’re seven blocks away from you.  It doesn’t take an hour to drive that far, even in the snow.”

“So Emily got the time wrong.  They were buzzed as hell when I came in.  But I see the look on your face: you’ve already decided what’s going on and nothing I say will convince you.  So what are you gonna do about this?”

“I dunno... Shit. I thought you’d have ideas.”

“I might, if I believed you were on to something.  I don’t.”

“You suspect nothing?”

“I do not believe for an instant our wives are carrying on an illicit lesbian affair.  Though it’s a hot idea, I’ll give you that.”

Oh, Jake.  Don’t—

“Yeah, screw you.  This isn’t a softcore porn flick, Jake.  This is our marriages they’re fucking with.”

“Have you asked Jocelyn about this?”

“No, I wanted to gather intel first.”

“‘Gather intel’?  Are you in Special Ops, now, Timothy?”

“Look, I wanted to come to you to see if you knew something was going on.  I guess that was a mistake.”

“Not a mistake.  I very much appreciate you thinking this would be important to me.  It would.  If I believed it.”

“For what it’s worth, Jake, I hope I’m wrong.  I really do.  But this isn’t a ‘hot bi-wife’ fantasy.  This is deception, and adultery, and betrayal.  I don’t want to be right about this, but I know I am.”

“Well, I don’t know that.  But I’ll keep an eye out, now that I know it bothers you.  Just because I think you’re wrong doesn’t mean I won’t ‘gather intel’ for you.”

“Yeah, thanks, I guess.  They’re coming back now.  Be casual.”

Jake trailed off, as that was apparently when the women had returned to the table.  

They both sat silently for several moments, her husband calm and placid while she stewed in her own emotions.  Joss had been remarkably careless., and Timothy was more insightful than she’d given him credit for.  He was wrong, of course, about the actual source of his wife’s elevated... affections... and that rankled her a bit... But not so wrong.  Certainly not wrong enough that correction with the truth would make it any better.  

Fuck, she repeated internally.  And now Jake had this to add to his worries: he would be watching every little interaction with her best friend now, from texting late at night to offhand comments and jokes and... “Give her a couple orgasms for me!”  Oh, Jocelyn, you absolute dumbfuck. This was the last thing they needed.  The last thing he needed.  Her fault, hers and Jocelyn’s, and he didn’t deserve to have to bear that weight.  

“Oh, Jake...”  She put her hand on his cheek, tenderly, smoothed his hair in a caress.  “... you don’t have to worry about what Timothy said.  You know it’s not true.  In fact... there’s no reason to think about it, no reason to even remember it.”

“Don’t think about it.  Don’t remember it.”

That’s not exactly what I said, she thought.  But that will work, too.  “Uh huh.  Don’t remember it.  For now, at least.”  Once she and Joss got all this back in some semblance of order, reduced Timothy’s suspicions... a couple of wine nights in very public places, maybe tone down the outfits a little... certainly no more rendezvous here in the living room... Then she could let Jake have that conversation back, when Timothy would no longer be pestering him for information, and they could laugh together about it.  “Do you remember that time that Timothy suspected me and Joss of being lesbian lovers?”  “Funny, I’d forgotten all about that, but now that you mention it...”

She could see already that the lines of concern on his forehead and at the edges of his eyes were relaxing, and she felt certain she’d done the right thing.  The warmth that filled her and nestled between her legs had little to do with good deeds, though; it was sourced from the blankness of his gaze, and the quiet eagerness with which he accepted her—

commands

—suggestions.  Irrational, as all lust was, but real nevertheless: the urgency she’d suppressed earlier in the restaurant washroom was returning with a vengeance, now, and her annoyance with her friend’s carelessness was quietly being transformed into something else.  “Jake, my love,” she said almost absently, “I need you.”  Her hand cradled the back of his head as she kissed his lips, gazing into the absence of volition his pupils betrayed, imagining a set of brown eyes instead of his beautiful baby blues.  Inflamed, she gently but firmly lowered him to his back on the carpet between the coffee table and the love seat.  “I need your tongue, now.”

Flush with an almost violent desire, she yanked up the hemline he’d been toying with all evening, straddling his body, pressing down against his cock to tease.  While she still wore panties sometimes, date night was not among those, and she left a trail of her arousal on his dress shirt as she used her knees to drag her way up his body.  She affixed her cunt to his mouth and let him feed.

At first, she simply let it be what it was, what it always was: Jake’s devotion, all of him, focused though his mouth, focused on pleasing her in ways that still managed to surprise and thrill her.  Then she closed her eyes and relished the feeling of being eaten... worshipped... of his hands gripping her hips, so strong... and her mind, which had never been great at staying focused in these moments, drifted back.  

Drifted back to those brown eyes again, closer to her than friends had a need to be.  Jocelyn’s perfume hovering, doing things to the air between them.  Just try.  Tell me to look into your eyes...  That quality of hunger there, years of friendship inadequate to concealing it.

Her hips moved against her husband's tongue and he responded excitedly, and she knew she shouldn’t be thinking about Joss now, while she was with Jake... while she was using Jake... She knew it, and the knowing did nothing useful to calm the storm between her thighs.  Look into my eyes, Joss, imaginary-her whispered, a bad wife and a bad friend and omigod the orgasm was so close in violation of any of that ethical nonsense.  You can see the spirals, now, can't you?

Jake pressed his tongue into her depths, momentarily abandoning her clitoris in the way she’d cultivated in him over the years, even before she'd held the reins to his mind.  “Deeper,” she urged, and his tongue went deeper, her skirt falling down to drape over his face.

But Deeper, Joss was saying, as if it was her own idea, and Emily saw her best friend’s expression glazing-over, dancing white spirals reflected in those eyes.  Spirals that were there/not there in Emily’s own, whorls Jocelyn desperately wanted to see and be drawn into.  She watched the mind behind Joss's gaze unlock, letting her in, stepping aside, welcoming... The darker woman’s expression became needy as she was told to kneel.  

Jocelyn had never evinced a desire for women before; neither women in general nor her best friend, in particular. And something told Emily that hadn't changed, that this was not about female bodies or lesbianism or anything like that: this was about power, control.  The heat of it and the loss of it. 

Emily would change that.  Jake’s obsession with her pussy had made his mind vulnerable to her hypnosis; Emily would use her friend’s obsession with hypnotism to make Joss desperate for pussy.  Her pussy.  Could, not would, she corrected, with some pretense at self-restraint, but as she imagined those brown eyes between her legs, lips curled in the smile she knew so well, approaching her cunt with that same reverence Jake had... she knew it was a matter of when, not if.

Her clitoris was sucked into that mouth, that lovely mouth that did something exquisite to it she couldn’t describe, and her eyelids flickered open to see the outline of a face moving under her skirt.  For the barest instant she didn’t know whose face it was; that ambiguity, of all things, pushed her over the edge and she was coming, coming hard and long and wrong-but-so-fucking-good.  Grinding into that face with her own desperation, her skirt riding up to reveal blue eyes, the eyes of her husband, her beloved.  She was making noises she wouldn’t have chosen to make as her orgasm crested, receded.  When she was finally sated, Emily rolled off Jake’s face and lay panting at the foot of the love seat.  Joss’s love seat, her treacherous brain tried to call it, but she shut it down with the resolve granted her by newly dissipated hormones.

She scanned the room guiltily, but no one was watching.  Jake was here, but not here, his defocused gaze directed at the ceiling.  No one else in the room but me and my conscience, she thought, though in retrospect she wasn’t sure about the latter.  

She crawled over to him, kissed his musk-dampened cheek, and slowly drew him back up out of trance, steadfastly refusing to examine what had just occurred.

She was getting quite good at that, as tended to happen with something one practiced every day.

***

She lost no time in messaging Jocelyn (if you disregarded her detour into hypnosex, that is).

Timothy suspects something.

WTF?!?

Tonight.  That awkward bullshit at the dinner table between the guys.  Timothy told Jake he thinks we’re sleeping together.

It was five minutes before the response came: But we’re not.

No, she texted with elaborate slowness.  We’re not.

There was another long pause.

What did Jake say?

He told Timothy the truth, of course.  That Jake didn’t know what he was talking about.  Timothy is imagining things.

Of course he is.  Thank God for Jake.  And his amazing memory.

Yeah.  He’s something else.

Maybe you should thank him for me.

Maybe I already did.

Ha.  I’m sure he appreciated that.

What will you do?

Don’t know.  Will keep in touch.

And that was all she heard for a few days.  Life returned to the settled pattern of work, eat, shamelessly use her husband sexually, sleep; repeat.  Sometimes some variation in the ordering, and in whether she mesmerized him before or during the cunnilingus (depending on her whim of the moment) but still: routine.

Jake was wonderful, as always, but given her history of frequent intrusions into his psyche she was constantly questioning whether this unsolicited cup of tea was something he would have done before she’d been in his mind, telling him to obey; whether that spontaneous neck massage came from a normal desire to touch her or from some subliminal need to make her body feel good.  It bothered her that she wasn’t sure, and it bothered her that it bothered her.

When the messages from Jocelyn did resume they seemed... guarded.  Basic discussions of how they were doing, reports of daily events dripping with innocence.  Topics were avoided, and her friend’s textual equivalents of eyebrow waggling were markedly absent.  Timothy’s watching her texts, was the conclusion Emily drew, or at least she thinks he might be.  A little on the creepy, oppressive side for her—Jake would never violate her privacy like that—but she supposed it wasn’t surprising, given the circumstances.  Joss’s messages on their work account could be a bit less circumspect, though there they had professionalism and “NSFW” boundaries to contend with.  Emily was an IT professional and knew the risks and boundaries, as well as having a pretty good idea that the logs were monitored at least theoretically, and probably sampled in audits; most of her historical conversations with her friend had been on personal accounts precisely because of her desire to be uncensored coupled with her refusal to cross that workplace line and endanger her job.

Now, however, despite the limitations it was a door cracked open on Jocelyn’s candor:  I’m being careful.  I went through a bunch of our texts and deleted stuff that was... borderline.

That seems... extreme.  You okay?

Yeah, no big.  I miss our talks.  The really good ones.  And I miss wine night, too.  And not just for the reason you think.

No comment.

Ha.  But definitely need a break to alleviate suspicion, right?

Jesus, yes.

How’s Jake?

Great.  He might be edging toward constant obedience from being programmed in trance so often, but I legitimately can’t tell because he’s just a nice fucking guy.  Couldn’t be better!

Good.  Take care of that one, babe.  He’s one of the good ones.  Even ignoring the less obvious fringe benefits.

You don’t have to tell me twice.  Talk to you later.

Emily sat with that exchange a while before returning to work; in fact, a dizzying array of client issues that week served to distract her from the issues in her personal life.  She was almost grateful.  When Jake asked with elaborate faux-formality if she would accompany him to a new Indian restaurant they’d both expressed an interest in trying, she almost refused out of sheer workplace exasperation, but she hearkened back to her earlier messaging with her bestie and decide she was going to make the time, even if it was a Wednesday.  She got away from her last meeting a bit later than either of them wanted, but she still made sure she spent the time to brighten up a bit before they left.

“Wow.  How do I rate?”  He’d been puttering around the kitchen while she dressed, and he reacted to the clack-clack-clack of her heels by looking up from the Tupperware he was drying and widening his eyes at her outfit.

“You’re not looking too bad yourself.”  He was in nice jeans and a button-down shirt, but she’d upped the ante with a dress that was both brief and form-hugging, and a pair of heels that she knew made her fun to watch.  She smiled and stepped into his space, rocking forward onto the ball of her foot to get the extra inch needed to meet his lips.

“I’m outta my league.”

“Maybe.”  She slid her hand around his waist and rested it on his ass.  “If you play well tonight you might get drafted into the majors.”

“Are we talking about baseball?”

“There are balls involved.  And maybe I’ll have my hands on something long and hard.”

“Do you think I will make it to third base?”

“I’m almost certain of it.”

“Home run?”

“There’s a distinct possibility.”

“Well, what are we waiting for?  We can just skip the restaurant and go straight to the game.”

“... aaaaaaaaand you’re back to first base.  If you’re lucky.”

“Damn.  I step into that one every fucking time.”

“Yep.”  She grabbed her purse.  “Shall we go?”

He grinned and took her arm.  “We shall.”

The place was very good, though the reviews had puffed it up a bit much; she’d had better, but not often.  Jake devoured something called “Chicken 65”, but when she attempted it her mouth caught on fire.   She gulped down icewater while he started in on the biryani, and he only giggled a little at her plight.  “Not even first base,” she muttered.

“What wuv ‘at?” he asked around a mouthful of rice and goat.

“Nothing,” she said through tears.  

She recovered, eventually, managing to suck down enough fluid to get her through to the tikka masala, and they touched ankles under the table as they talked about work.  There was no mention of Timothy or Joss or even the goddamned hobby room, just the two of them flirting, enjoying each other in a way that she was sure casual observers must find disgustingly sweet.  They finished the food, and once Jake’s credit card had spat encrypted transaction information into the internet void they departed for home, hand in hand.

They retired immediately to the bedroom, and if their lovemaking that night was comfortable and mundane rather than of kinky and drenched in weird power-dynamics... well, orgasms were still a delight of shared pleasure, even if the source was affection and not raw lust.

She’d lain peacefully in his arms that night, and all had seemed right with the world.

***

Twelve hours later her intuition called a warning to her as she heard the garage door opening at... a quarter to twelve?   It wasn’t impossible for Jake to come home for lunch, wasn’t even out of character, but something pressed the panic button on her synapses even before the inner door slammed open.  She rushed to the kitchen to confront it.

Jake was in a fury; his face wasn’t red, but his ears were, in that idiosyncratic way she secretly giggled about with Joss but wouldn’t dare call out when he was as upset enough to display the effect.  As he was now.

“Jake, what’s wr—?”

“Motherfucker.”

“Uh...”

“That motherfucker.  Calling me a liar.”

“Baby, what’s going on?”

He took a deep breath and uncurled his fists.  He gripped the countertop instead.  “Timothy came to visit me today at work.”  Oh, fuck.  “He came to the front desk, asked to meet with me, and as I got him a guest pass and got him into a conference room, he had the gall to accuse me of...”  He looked in her direction. “Well, he accused me of being complicit in an affair he insists you are having with his wife.”

“What...?”  What triggered this?  We were being so cautious.  “Why did he...?”

“... come to me at work?” he replied, not finishing her thoughts as well as he suspected.  “I have no fucking clue.  He asked me if I’d seen anything new since the double date, and then I looked at him like... I dunno, like he’d grown another head... I said I didn’t know what he was talking about, and he says to me... ‘Don’t try to gaslight me, you bastard.  You either know what’s going on between them and are covering it up for them, or you’re fucking my wife, too’.”

Shit.  Jake didn’t remember the original conversation, had responded with honest curiosity, and Timothy had read it as deceit.  Which it was, if you were being technical... just not Jake’s.  “Surely he knows that’s not...”

“Nope.  He ‘knows’ that it’s true.  He knows.  What an asshole.  In front of God and everybody; those rooms are sound-deadening, they’re not soundproofed.  I told him that no one gets to talk to me that way— let alone about my wife— and that he needed to leave now or I’d call security.  I came this close to punching him in the nose, but it would have been my job.  I’ve half a mind to go over to their house right now and...”

“No, don’t... don’t do that.  It’s...”  Was it justified to call someone a liar if they didn’t know they were lying?  “It’s not worth it.”

Jake continued to rant; there was more.  Timothy had apparently noticed Joss and Emily’s interactions wavering and had decided that Jake must had tipped them off.  Fucker is wrong but also too close to right.  Given what she’d extracted from Jake after the restaurant debacle it was likely Timothy would have taken any behavior as reinforcement of his own theories, but when he’d noticed them texting less, he’d stewed about it for days before finally deciding today that he wanted to confront Jake man-to-man about what role he was playing in the “affair”.  

There was no affair, her rationalizing inner voice insisted.  Technically, the database administrator within agreed, with the same dry tone she would use with a client who was trying to hold her company to something they both knew wasn’t in the contract but was kinda understood as best practices.  Usually right before she’d comp them some of her hours to correct the mistake; a tacit admission of fault, or guilt, but nothing said out loud.  It was the right thing to do, but those clients didn’t generally last long after that.

Timothy was going to be an exceptionally troublesome client, and Jake was suffering the consequences.  She saw him hurting, upset, and knew it was her fault.  She needed to fix this.

The first thing that sprang to mind was calming him down with a sinking into her eyes; she’d bring him under, tell him to forget all about...  But that was all wrong.  That was what had gotten him into this mess in the first place; lies of forgetfulness laid atop lies of oblivion laid atop yet more memory tampering.  Was she going to add yet one more layer to this farce?  “Forget about Timothy yelling at you about forgetting about Timothy yelling at you?”  

She could; she could close the gap to him right now, turn his head and tell him to look deep, to obey the spirals.  To sink into peace and obedience and get the latest installment of shit to not remember (for now).  It shocked her how much she wanted to do just that, even if just to quiet him down for a bit, make him copacetic so she could figure out what to do next.  What to make him do next.

Because that’s what this was, and as hot as that phraseology could be when the stakes were a slick pussy and powerful orgasms and maybe some exhibitionism... this was something different.  And it sickened her that she was still tempted, that despite knowing this wasn’t working, couldn’t work... that it was too easy a possible fix to ignore entirely. 

“Jake...” she interrupted as the impossibility of the situation crashed down on her with near-physical force.  She swallowed and forced herself to continue.  The only way out is through.  

“Jake, honey... we need to talk...”