The Infidelity My Wife Hid from Me for a Year and a Half

Sofía pushed the apartment door open with her hip and set the grocery bags down on the hall console. She had been thinking about a long-pending conversation with Marcos about the electricity bill and a stew half-thawed. The keys slipped from her fingers before she even stepped into the living room.

On the leather sofa, tied with zip ties and in his underwear, was Don Octavio. The gag flattened his lips against his teeth, and a streak of dried blood stuck to his temple. Marcos, her husband, was standing three steps from the old man. He held a shotgun resting on his forearm and wore a face she had never seen in fifteen years of marriage.

—Come in —Marcos said without raising his voice—. Close the door. And sit down, because you’re going to need it.

—Marcos, for God’s sake, what did you do?

—What I should have done a year and a half ago. Come here.

She obeyed. Her legs were shaking so hard she had to brace herself on the back of the sofa. Don Octavio groaned behind the gag and Marcos silenced him with a sharp blow to the shin.

—Sofía, I have one question and you’re going to answer it looking me in the eyes. When this man had you for twenty-four hours in his office, was it you who offered, or did you lie to me too?

The air in the living room turned heavy. She opened her mouth and closed it three times. When she finally spoke, her voice did not sound like her own.

—It was me. I asked him. I asked him to fuck me, Marcos. I asked him to fuck me and let other men fuck me too.

***

Eighteen months earlier, the sausage factory Marcos had inherited from his father was on the verge of closing. Three banks had shown him the door. Don Octavio Belmonte, a neighborhood loan shark since before Marcos was born, granted him thirty thousand euros a month against the promise of paying it back over four years. Marcos signed without reading the fine print. That night he slept through until morning for the first time in months.

A week later, Sofía found an envelope in the lender’s office safe. She had gone to drop off some papers her husband had forgotten, and Octavio left her alone for two minutes while he took a call. Curiosity betrayed her. On the envelope it said “Lourdes — 2019.” Inside was a disc with no cover. Sofía slipped it into her purse without thinking.

That night, with Marcos asleep on the other side of the hall, she put it on the laptop with headphones. A blond woman, tied hand and foot, was being used by four men in an industrial warehouse. One was fucking her cunt while another drove his cock into her mouth until she gagged. A third opened her ass with his thumbs and spat inside before pushing in. The fourth came on her tits and smeared the semen over her nipples with the head of his cock. The woman begged for more. She cried and begged for more. She begged for more cock, more semen, more hands. She begged to be opened, split apart, not allowed to close her legs.

She spent the following week locked in the guest room, door shut and breathing shallow. She watched the video forty times. Forty times she shoved her fingers into her cunt to the knuckle, forty times she rubbed her clit raw until the skin went sore and tender. She bought a thick dildo at a shop downtown and used it while staring at the screen, imagining it was her tied up, her begging for more. She came so many times the mattress smelled like sex three days later. And on Friday, when Marcos left on a trip to a trade fair in Valencia, she put on the black set he had given her for their tenth anniversary and showed up at the lender’s office.

—I know about the envelope —she said, and set it on the desk—. I know what kind of man you are. And I’ve come to offer you a deal.

Don Octavio leaned back in his armchair. He didn’t smile.

—I’m listening, girl.

—My husband never finds out. Ever. We stage it. You kidnap me, you play the villain, you cry with panic when you return me. For twenty-four hours I do whatever you want, with whoever you want. And you forgive Marcos two months of payments. Nothing more.

Don Octavio stood up, walked around the desk, and stopped in front of her. He lifted her chin with one finger, slowly, like someone inspecting livestock. With the other hand he yanked her blouse open in two hard pulls, freed one breast from the bra, and pinched it until she gasped. He shoved three fingers into her mouth and made her suck them while his other hand lifted her skirt and checked, over her panties, that she was already soaked.

—Deal —he said—. And we start now, so you know where you’ve stepped into, girl.

He shoved her backward against the desk, ripped off her panties, and buried his face in her cunt. Sofía grabbed the edge of the table and spread her legs as far as she could. The old man licked with the technique of a man who had been doing it to other men’s women for forty years, and in less than five minutes she came in a way she had never come in Marcos’s bed, screaming with her hand on the back of Octavio’s neck to keep him from stopping. Then Don Octavio pulled down his trousers, showed her his cock—long, thick, curved—and drove it all the way in with a single thrust. He fucked her against the desk for twenty minutes, pulling her hair, spitting in her mouth, calling her a whore. Sofía had three orgasms in a row before he came inside. When it was over, she lay face down on the papers, the old man’s cum running down her thighs, trembling.

—Next Saturday —Octavio told her, zipping up—. They’ll come get you at nine. And bring an empty mouth, because there’s going to be a queue.

***

The old man kept his word. He called Inés, a woman from the neighborhood he had worked with before, to pose as the accomplice in the fake kidnapping. Marcos got an anonymous call, an electronic voice, instructions not to call the police, and a bank account number. He paid. He paid forty thousand more to get his wife back. They found her dumped in a ditch outside the city, blindfolded, crying, untouched on the outside.

What Marcos did not know until that afternoon in the living room was that within those twenty-four hours Sofía had done what the video promised. And more. They had taken her to a country house, stripped her in the entryway, and tied her with jute ropes to a wooden frame in the middle of the living room, legs spread and hands above her head. Seven men. Don Octavio and six others. They put a ball gag in her mouth only for the first hour, so she would get used to the idea. Then they took it off because they wanted to hear her beg.

They took turns with her. One ate her pussy while another fucked her mouth. Another opened her ass with his fingers, lubed it with spit and cold lubricant, and worked it open with two, then three fingers, until he could push his cock in all the way. They bent her in half and fucked her through all three holes at once, with two men underneath and one on top, while a fourth shoved his cock into her mouth from the side. Sofía came so many times she lost count and lost track of where anything was. She felt her cunt open, burning, spilling other men’s cum; her ass throbbing, stretched; her mouth full of the taste of cock and semen. She begged. She begged for more. She begged them not to stop. She begged them to fill all three holes at once, to give her no respite. She begged the way the blond woman in the video begged, and when she heard herself begging she knew she was never going to come back entirely.

Don Octavio fucked her last, without a condom, looking her in the eyes when she was already wrecked. He came inside her for the second time and told her in her ear that she was the best whore who had ever come through that house in twenty years. Sofía came in answer, eyes shut and a tear sliding down her temple. Before they returned her, they hosed her down in the courtyard, dressed her in the same clothes she had arrived in, and blindfolded her.

—I know you, Sofía —Marcos said, still holding the shotgun—. I’ve slept with you for fifteen years. I know exactly the look on your face when you’re hot. And when I saw the recording the old man carelessly left in a shared folder, I saw that face. I watched it for four hours straight. I saw you beg. I saw you swallow. I saw you come with three cocks inside you. It wasn’t fear. It was the other thing.

Sofía fell to her knees on the tiles. She tried to speak and only a dry sound came out.

—Forgive me.

—I’m not finished yet.

Marcos took a folder folded in four from his pants pocket. He opened it on the coffee table, calmly, as if he were showing a child their homework.

—Carmen Belmonte, his first wife, didn’t run off with an Argentine the way your friend says. She fled to Cali to get away from him because he broke her ribs every time he drank. She’s alive. I found her through a contact I have in Bogotá. She arrives tomorrow at noon. Her daughter Helena is coming with her.

Don Octavio jerked against the zip ties.

—I’ll list them for you, old man, so Sofía hears it: Inmaculada, the woman who cleaned your floor. Pilar, your partner’s wife. Adela, your secretary from the nineties. Rosa, the woman from the corner bank. Patricia, the neighbor from the second floor. All with the same formula. Loan and wife.

***

Helena arrived the next morning, just as Marcos had promised. She was a broad-shouldered woman in her forties, with a calm that admitted no theatrics. Carmen came in behind her, bent over and old before her time, and stopped in the living-room doorway, looking at the man tied up with a mixture of pity and disgust.

—Dad —Helena said—. It’s over.

In less than a week, Helena took charge of her father’s office. She canceled Marcos’s debt with a stroke of a pen. She forbade Don Octavio from coming within five hundred meters of any home where there was a married woman. She moved him into a room in her own house, locked from the outside, and took his cards away. Carmen, after forty years in exile, slept for the first time in a bed without fear.

Marcos kept paying the thirty thousand euros a month. Helena sent it back to his account every month. He insisted. He was a man of his word.

***

Inside the house, things were different.

Marcos threw Sofía out of the bedroom that same night. He didn’t hit her. He didn’t raise his voice. He pointed to the guest room and told her to sleep there until further notice. Lucas, the youngest, found out three days later during dinner. The boy left the spoon in the soup, looked at his parents one by one, and asked if they were going to separate.

—No —Marcos said, looking Sofía in the eyes for the first time since that afternoon—. We’re not separating.

Sofía cried silently over her plate.

Four months passed. She left notes under the bedroom door. Long handwritten letters, asking nothing. She told him about her day. She told him about the children. She told him what she thought about while ironing his shirts. Marcos read them all and answered none.

One night in February, he entered the guest room without warning. Sofía was asleep with the light on and a book open on her chest. Marcos sat on the edge of the bed and stroked her hair. She woke up crying before opening her eyes.

—I have two tickets to Mallorca —he said—. For Saturday. If you want to come.

***

The hotel overlooked the harbor. Sofía didn’t even wait to unpack. She kicked the door shut, shoved him against the wall, and lowered his zipper with her teeth. She pulled out his cock, already hard, and looked at it for a second as if it were the first time she had ever seen it. Marcos wanted to say something and she covered his mouth with her hand.

—Shut up. Please. Shut up. Let me remember how you were.

She licked the head slowly, her tongue flat, and then took it into her mouth all the way to the throat. She gagged on purpose, tears filling her eyes, and swallowed it down again and again until her makeup was smeared. When she had him soaked in saliva, she stood up, lifted her skirt, shoved her panties aside, and speared herself against the wall. Marcos grabbed her under the thighs and lifted her off the floor. He fucked her against the tiles with short, furious thrusts, growling in her ear, pulling her hair until she was forced to look at him.

—Look at me —he told her—. Look at me while I put it in you. Me. Look at me.

—At you —she panted—. I’m looking at you, my love, only you, fuck me, fuck me harder, break me, please.

Sofía came in under a minute, biting his shoulder so she wouldn’t scream, and a hot rush of wetness spilled down her thighs to her stockings. They fell to the floor tangled together, sweating. She tore off her clothes, ended up naked on the carpet, dropped to her knees, and took him to the back of her throat with both hands gripping his thighs. It was the first time in fifteen years she had done it like that, without decency, without asking permission, choking herself on purpose. She sucked his balls one by one, ran her tongue underneath them, climbed back up to the head and swallowed him whole again. She worked his cock with her mouth and throat until she felt Marcos trembling in his legs. She swallowed when he came, without moving away, without blinking, feeling the spurts strike the roof of her mouth, and then stayed with her forehead on his thigh, breathing hard, his semen still at the corner of her lips.

—You’d never done that with me before.

—I know.

—You did it with him.

—Yes. With him and six others. And I learned. And I learned for you. Even if you didn’t know it. I learned for you.

Marcos lifted her from the floor, carried her to the bed, and laid her on her back with a tenderness that made her cry again. He opened her legs and lowered his mouth between her thighs. He ate her pussy for half an hour, unhurried, alternating his tongue with two fingers, searching for the spot inside and pressing it until she began to arch and say his name. He sucked her clit with tight lips while sliding his fingers in and out, and Sofía came screaming, her thighs clamped against his ears, soaking his chin. Before the tremors had even passed, Marcos climbed on top and slid inside her slowly, all the way, and stayed there, still, looking at her.

—You’re mine —he said.

—I’m yours.

—Say it again.

—I’m yours, Marcos. All of this is yours. This cunt is yours. This mouth is yours. This ass is yours. Everything.

He fucked her for two hours, changing positions whenever he got close to the end so he wouldn’t come. He laid her on her side, lifted one leg, and entered her slowly, kissing the nape of her neck. He put her on all fours and fucked her from behind, grabbing her tits with both hands, biting her back. He turned her onto her back again, put her ankles on his shoulders, and penetrated her so deeply she swore she felt him in her stomach. Sofía came twice more, gripping the headboard with both hands, her voice broken. When he finally came, he came inside her with a long groan, and stayed on top of her, heavy and sweaty, until his arm went numb.

In the morning, Sofía woke before him and took him in her mouth until she woke him with his cock hard. When Marcos opened his eyes, she pulled back, ran her tongue over her lips, and asked for him.

—From behind. Now. Slowly. I want to remember you that way too.

Marcos laid her face down with a pillow under her hips. He spread her cheeks with his thumbs, spat, and ran his tongue around her, up and down, until she started pushing against his mouth. Then he coated his cock with saliva, set the tip at her entrance, and went in little by little, stopping every time she took a deep breath. When he was all the way in, he stayed still, kissing the nape of her neck, until Sofía pushed her hips back asking for more. Then he fucked her ass slowly, with long, deep thrusts, while running one hand over the front of her and working her clit with two fingers. She came with her face buried in the pillow and her fingers dug into his thigh, biting the pillowcase so she wouldn’t wake the hotel. Marcos came right after, pressing himself against her, and they stayed that way, impaled and still, for a long time.

They spent the week like that. Walks along the harbor at sunset, long lunches with white wine, sex every afternoon and every night. They did it in the shower, with Sofía pressed against the glass and hot water running down their backs. They did it on the terrace after midnight, with her straddling him, looking him in the eyes and moving her hips in circles until they both came at once. They did it one afternoon with the window open to the street, her face down biting the sheet while he nailed her from behind, not caring who heard. On Thursday she got her period. On Friday, on the terrace, they finally talked.

—If you want —Marcos said—, we can buy the things he made you use. The ropes. The toys. If you need them to feel that again.

Sofía shook her head slowly, without taking her eyes off the sea.

—No. That was an illness that’s already cured. I want you as you are. Sweet. Calm. Mine. And with what I learned there, I’m going to fuck you until you forget I learned it in another bed.

***

Back home, Marcos slept in their bed again. The children didn’t ask anything, but Lucas climbed into his lap for a whole week, as if he knew. The factory finally ran without any setbacks. Helena called now and then to report on her father, who aged fast behind four walls and ate without appetite.

One night, late, Sofía asked Marcos whether the shotgun from that afternoon had been loaded.

—No —he said—. Not a single shell. I thought about it a lot. And in the end I knew I couldn’t. Not for him. For you. For the children. For us.

She stayed silent for a while. Then she laid her hand on his chest and left it there, feeling his heart. With her other hand she found his cock over the pajama pants and started stroking it slowly, without hurry, as she spoke.

—From ashes —she said—, sometimes something burns better.