Cheating

He offered me double the salary of anyone else. What wasn’t in the contract was everything his hand on my shoulder was demanding from me.

I was three months into guarding that job like gold. That morning, alone with him before opening, I discovered how much I liked being told what to do.

I was never attracted to him, but every message he sent left me hotter than the last. And that night, with my husband only a few feet away, I stopped resisting.

When I sat down in front of him with the list in my hand, I already knew I hadn’t gone to check materials. My boss had sent me to get the discount, and I was the currency.

He left me alone in his living room, still trembling, and I walked out of his house without saying goodbye. That same week I understood that something inside me had ignited and I would no longer be able to turn it off.

“We’re not doing anything, it’s a piece of silicone,” she told me. But the way she looked at me while opening the box said exactly the opposite.

Eight years had passed since that coach trip, but the moment I saw him standing in front of the terminal I knew I wouldn’t be coming home for dinner that night.

When he pinned the man who had been harassing her, Mariela felt something she shouldn’t: the certainty that that boy could do anything he wanted with her.

Marcela looked at me through the rearview mirror with a smile that was nothing like a calm mother’s. I didn’t know that afternoon would change everything between us.

The store was closed and she had the whole morning free. The driver noticed before she did, and that smile in the mirror made her think things she shouldn’t.

He was in his twenties, had a thin wife swimming below, and hungry eyes that begged me without knowing it. That afternoon I taught him who was in charge.

I thought I was going to beg her to keep my secret. I never imagined that when she came back into the living room, she’d be holding a crop and wearing high heels.

I had worn the belt for months and she promised to take it off that night. She didn’t tell me what I’d have to do first to deserve it.

I sent him two photos hidden in the bathroom to provoke him. His answer wasn’t praise: it was an order to open the drawer I always kept locked.

I was the serious guy in the suit and SUV. All it took was for a woman to challenge me with her eyes for the animal inside me to wake up, and that village fair set him loose for good.

I met her in adolescence and never stopped wanting her. She told me about every kiss, every lover, never knowing I kept all her words for lonely nights.

I got out of the car on a deserted street, my heart racing. I didn’t know what the woman I’d been writing to for months looked like—only that tonight, at last, she would be mine.

We kept crossing glances by the pool all afternoon. When I went up to get water and he came in behind me, I knew there was no turning back.

I had spent thirty years closing projects for the company. On my farewell trip, I never imagined the woman traveling beside me would be the one to say goodbye to me in a different way.

I’d been unsatisfied all night when the phone rang. It was him, and what he suggested made me say yes before I finished my coffee.