The Friend Who Thought He Could Conquer My Wife

The air in the small loft was thick with something heavier than the aroma of red wine and the spices from dinner. Carla presided over the table with that feline confidence I knew by heart, wrapped in a black silk dress that seemed designed not to fully contain her curves. I drank in silence beside her, my hands a little shakier than I would have liked to admit.

Across from us sat Rubén. An old friend from college, tall, broad-shouldered, with that habit of occupying any room the moment he walked into it. He made no effort at subtlety. He devoured my wife with his eyes without the slightest shame, deliberately ignoring every rule of courtesy a guest ought to respect.

—It’s exquisite, Diego —Rubén said, setting his glass down on the table with a dull thud—. Though we all know I didn’t come all the way here for dinner alone.

I lowered my head. I felt an involuntary blush crawling up my neck, just as we had rehearsed. Carla smiled, an expression loaded with exquisite cruelty, and slid her foot under the table, not toward me, but toward our guest’s crotch.

—Diego knows I like being adored —she purred—. And he knows perfectly well that he alone isn’t enough to contain all that I am.

***

When we finished dinner, the change was instant. Carla stood up and, with a brief gesture of her chin, told me to kneel in the middle of the rug. I obeyed without hesitation, taking on my role as spectator and servant, the role we had spent so many nights rehearsing in whispers before sleep.

Rubén rose with a predator’s slowness. He walked up to Carla and, right in front of my wide-open eyes, grabbed her hair roughly, forcing her head back. Instead of protesting, she let out a long, deep sigh of pure pleasure.

—You like watching, Diego? —he asked, while his other hand slid down my wife’s neckline—. Look how she trembles when I touch her the way you’d never dare to.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to. Rubén pulled a thin black leather crop from his belt and let it whistle through the air. The sound cut across the loft like a gunshot and raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

—Clothes off. Both of you —he ordered.

I undressed with deliberate clumsiness, feeling tiny before his figure. Carla, by contrast, shed the silk with lascivious elegance, until she was left only in garters and stiletto heels. Rubén didn’t waste a second. With a firm motion, he made her lean face down over the table, still surrounded by the remains of wine and the dinner dishes.

***

The loft filled with raw sounds. The crop fell rhythmically against Carla’s thighs, leaving pink marks she wore like jewelry. I moaned a few inches away, forced to touch myself while witnessing each blow, with no permission to look away.

Rubén positioned himself behind her and gripped her hips with a force that would leave a mark. Carla sought my gaze, her eyes bloodshot with desire and an unmistakable spark of superiority.

—Look at me, Diego —she gasped as he took her—. Watch a real man take me. Kiss his boots while he tears me apart.

In a trance, I crawled to Rubén’s boots and obeyed, hearing the echo of his thrusts against my wife’s body. The room seemed to shrink. The heat was suffocating and the air tasted of sweat and a lust that no longer belonged to either of us alone.

He showed no mercy. He increased the pace, alternating humiliating words toward me with violent caresses toward her. Carla, completely surrendered, screamed his name and ignored my existence except to use me as the pedestal for her own pleasure. When climax came, it was an explosion of sensory violence, and I collapsed onto the rug, exhausted, perfectly pretending to be mentally shattered by what I had just helped bring about.

***

After the last shudder, silence turned dense, broken only by Rubén’s heavy breathing and Carla’s broken sobs, still bent over the table. He fixed me with a cold stare while I remained on my knees, my face wet and my gaze lost on a spot on the floor.

—Come here —he ordered, in a voice that allowed no refusal.

I dragged myself until I was at his feet. Rubén took Carla by the nape of the neck and forced her to look at me from that position of absolute defeat.

—Tell him —he demanded, tightening his fingers in her hair—. Tell this piece of trash what it feels like when someone who doesn’t ask permission takes you.

—He’s the owner of this house now, Diego —she whispered, her eyes shining with cruel excitement—. You’re only the one who watches. The one who cleans up. The one who thanks us for letting him breathe in the same room.

Rubén let her go and sank into the main chair, the one I usually occupied at our quiet dinners. He spread his legs arrogantly and pointed to the floor between them.

—Ask for permission to sleep on the floor —Carla ordered, lifting my chin with the tip of her heel—. Ask for permission to keep being our toy tomorrow.

I did. I shaped every word of submission with a broken voice, while inside I was being devoured by a desire neither man in that scene —neither the one dominating nor the one humiliating himself— could fully explain.

***

The sun came in shyly through the windows the next morning, casting long shadows over Carla and Rubén’s tangled bodies in the bed. I woke on the floor at the foot of the bed, with the echo of the crop still burning across my back and the smell of sex invading every corner of the loft.

Rubén stretched lazily. When his eyes met mine, a predator’s smile crossed his face.

—Get up —he ordered—. It’s time for your morning duties.

I sat up with difficulty, feeling every muscle ache. He sat on the edge of the bed, his solid body outlined against the light. Carla ran a hand along Rubén’s thigh and smiled at me with poisoned sweetness.

—Our friend needs a good breakfast, and you’re the one in charge of serving it —she said—. But first I think he has something else in mind for you.

Rubén stood and came closer. He took me by the hair and forced me to raise my eyes.

—On your knees —he said, his voice hoarse—. And this time, not to watch. I want you to show me how much you value the pleasure I gave your wife.

I obeyed. I felt a knot in my stomach, that mix of revulsion and perverse excitement I no longer knew how to control. I closed my eyes for a second and then complied, my tongue trembling, while he groaned with satisfaction and guided my movements with calculated brutality. From the bed, Carla watched the scene with cold fascination, stroking herself, laughing under her breath at her husband’s complete humiliation.

—Slower —growled Rubén—. Savor it. Today you learn your place with your mouth, not with your eyes.

At that moment I was no longer a husband. I was an extension of their pleasure, an instrument. Or at least that was what he needed to believe.

***

When he was done, he ordered me to get dressed and serve breakfast. I made the coffee with trembling hands, and every time I passed near the table Rubén tripped me with his foot or brushed my marked skin just to remind me of his power. Carla, seated on his lap, never missed a chance to sink me a little lower.

—Look how pathetic he looks —she commented, sipping the coffee I had just served with my head bowed—. He can’t even look you in the face.

Rubén burst out laughing, grabbed me by the collar of my shirt, and forced me to bend down beside her.

—Remember this well —he said.

And he masturbated in front of me, shamelessly, demanding that I cup my hands underneath so not a single drop of “what your wife earned” would be wasted. When he finished, with a guttural groan, I had to bring my hands to Carla’s mouth. She consumed the trace of his victory directly from my fingers, looking at me with a contempt that seemed endless.

—You can go stand in the corner, Diego —she whispered, wiping her lips—. The loft gets too small for three. You’re surplus now.

Rubén got dressed shortly after. The slam of the door as he left echoed off the walls and left behind a silence thick with sweat and submission. For a few seconds I didn’t move from the floor, my hands still stained and the marks still burning on my back.

***

Then everything changed.

The cruel tension radiating from Carla vanished all at once. Her shoulders relaxed, the mask of contempt dissolved into a smile of complicity, and instead of a kick she held out her hand to help me up.

—It was perfect —she murmured, with a genuine tenderness that hadn’t appeared all night.

I got to my feet, and my eyes were no longer those of a broken man, but of someone deeply satisfied. We melted into a long embrace, breaking with a single gesture the hierarchy we had so precisely pretended to create.

—Rubén has no idea, does he? —I asked, while she began wiping the marks from my face with a damp cloth—. He thinks he owns the situation. The macho who conquered us both.

—He’s the perfect actor for our play —Carla replied, kissing one of the red lines on my shoulder with devotion—. He thinks he owns me, but he’s only the tool that turns us on. Watching him believe himself superior while you and I share this secret… that’s the real perversion.

I nodded, feeling my desire for my wife renewed, untouched by the game. Every lash, every order, every humiliation had been agreed between us weeks earlier, in the privacy of our bed. The supposed infidelity was not a betrayal: it was the stage we had built to remind ourselves, over and over, that nothing could break what we had.

—Did it hurt much? —she asked, tracing the marks with her fingertips.

—Just enough to know you’re mine —I answered, taking her by the waist and pulling her toward me with a force Rubén would never suspect—. I love that you make me watch you with other men. I love that we use a friend as an excuse to choose each other all over again.

Carla laughed, a clear, triumphant laugh. The loft had stopped being the stage for a tragedy of humiliation and become the sanctuary of a private, dark pact. We went into the shower together to wash Rubén’s trace from our skin, preparing for the real climax of the morning: the one we would live through alone, celebrating once more the success of our most perverse performance.