Was My Wife the Woman in Those Photos?

It was Friday night and I was home alone. Daniela had gone out to one of her girls’ dinners, one of those they organized every month and a half: women only, no husbands or partners. She always came back happy, upbeat, and a little tipsy, and that seemed fine to me. I went out with my own friends from time to time too.

We had a three-year-old boy, a trusted babysitter, two good salaries, and a comfortable life. Daniela came from a wealthy family and it showed: she always wore expensive clothes, took care of herself, went to beauty clinics that cost a fortune. We had been together for eight years.

That night I ate something quick, watched half a movie, and got into bed with a novel. I fell asleep without realizing it, with the book open on my chest.

The sound of a notification on my phone woke me. Some nonsense, I thought, but I looked at it just in case it was her, just in case something had happened.

It was an email from Daniela. No subject. That was already strange, because she almost never used email; she preferred messaging. I opened it. And the floor fell out from under me.

In the body of the message there was a black-and-white photo. A young woman, naked, lying on her back on a bed. Her arms stretched out, wrists tied to the sides. Her legs were also tied at the ankles, spread wide open. She was wearing a blindfold that covered her eyes, and her head rested on a pillow. The picture had been taken from one side. I admit it was tremendously sensual.

Below it, a text:

—“Even with the blindfold on, you have to recognize her. I’m sure you’ve seen her naked many times, but not like this, I don’t think. Look closely: this beauty is your wife. We have her in my bed, relaxed, willing, and available. Now I’ll tell you how we got here and what plans we have.”

I couldn’t believe it. It couldn’t be. My hands and knees started to shake. I connected the phone to the computer to see it on the big screen, and the image filled everything.

God. Yes, she did look like Daniela. But I had never seen her like that. I studied that body: long legs, smooth stomach, proportionate breasts. It could be her, she took such good care of herself… but it could also not be. The guy was right about one thing: I had never seen her in such an obscenely surrendered pose.

I enlarged the image, looking for certainty that never came. And then I realized something that hurt more than the photo: in eight years, I didn’t know the body of my own wife. Thirty-three years old, a beauty, and I had taken it all for granted. No, it can’t be her. It’s some bastard lying to me.

Another email arrived. Same sender, no subject.

—“As I promised, I’ll tell you. An exclusive music club, one of those places rich people go. Your wife and two other friends, in their thirties, pretty, elegant, classy. And pretty drunk: laughing at nothing, euphoric. They didn’t even look at us, of course, with that air of superiority they have.”

—“I don’t know if you’ve recognized her completely. To help you, I took a close-up. You’ll recognize your wife’s sex.”

The image filled the screen, taken almost head-on. I stared at it for a long time. Yes, it could be. I had never seen it that close, with so much detail, and that thought alone churned me inside.

—“I’m fascinated by it. Look at the clitoris, prominent, I’ve never seen one like that on anyone. That’s what confirms it for you. It had swelled like that after I licked it for a long time, without her being able to close her legs. Delicious. As you can see, she responded. My friend says she gets off on a stranger taking care of her.”

I was hypnotized. It can’t be Daniela, I kept telling myself, she doesn’t have… But the truth was I didn’t know for sure either. I had never gone down on her; it seemed awkward to me, and now I regretted it with a new kind of shame. I recognized, with a bitter stab, that this stranger was enjoying her more than I ever had.

I decided to settle the matter and called her. It rang and rang, no answer. The doubt grew bigger: if it was her, she couldn’t answer. And if the guy had her phone, neither could she. A stupid thought on my part.

Another notification.

—“Now that you know for sure, I’ll explain how she ended up in my bed. At the club they were drinking, dancing, having fun, aware of how pretty they were. Short skirts, bodies moving without any restraint. Yours was the most sensual of the three. Nothing unusual: three women having a good time.”

—“At one point I lost sight of them. We went out to smoke and heard a scream in the parking lot.”

—“A guy had a woman up against a car, trying to take advantage of her. She was sitting on the ground, unable to defend herself. We went over, the guy got scared, snatched her bag, and ran off. My friend caught him, gave him a couple of blows back, and got the bag back. And we kept her.”

—“It was your wife. She could barely stand. We gave her bag back, straightened her clothes, and she only managed to murmur a ‘thank you.’ We couldn’t see her friends anywhere. So we took her home; we weren’t going to leave her lying there.”

***

I got up and poured myself a generous whisky, almost in one swallow. It did me good. I was looking at the screen from a distance, like a caged cat. I couldn’t go looking for her —I didn’t know where to go and the boy was there— but I couldn’t stop looking either. I was trapped by those messages, impatient for the next one.

—“She relaxed on the sofa. Look at the photos.”

Two close-ups. Her, face turned, kissing the lips of a blurred man with a two-day beard. In the other one, their mouths already parted. So close that, against all logic, I felt an uncomfortable heat rising up my neck. I had never seen her from that angle, but the shape of her chin was familiar. I focused on the earring peeking out. Daniela had some similar ones, though I couldn’t say whether they were the ones she wore that night. I cursed myself again for not paying attention to her.

—“Your wife kisses so well. Our tongues got tangled and I couldn’t stop. I don’t think it was just because of what she’d drunk. I want to think she liked it.”

Now the earring could be seen better. With every photo I became more convinced it was Daniela. Holy shit, was she really kissing a man whose name she didn’t even know like that?

I was in a kind of shock. My wife wasn’t like that. It had to be someone else. And yet —it was hard for me to admit— I also felt a возбуждение that disgusted me with myself. I couldn’t look away from the enlarged images. My stomach clenched, my heart pounding, my hands shaking. Would there be more?

I poured myself another whisky. I was already starting to feel the effects.

—“She loosened up soon enough. I couldn’t take it anymore. I laid her on the sofa, lifted her skirt, she wasn’t wearing underwear. I went in slowly, savoring the moment. She gave herself up easily, very easily, as if it were what she expected: she kissed me hard as soon as she felt me inside. Here’s the photo. As you can see, no one forced her.”

The screen filled with an explicit image. A man over a woman with bent knees, open, mouths joined. The clothes weren’t clearly visible, but the naked legs and a pair of suede boots up to mid-calf were. Daniela had ones exactly like them. I had given them to her. That stab hit me again, cold, in the stomach. No, no, no.

—“She moaned a lot. I don’t know what turned me on more, possessing her or hearing her. And she didn’t stop kissing me the whole time. Your wife fucks amazingly, though you probably already know that. I had to pull away because my friend wanted his turn.”

I didn’t even know how to name what I felt. Anger, rage, jealousy, a dull pain in my chest. And yet I couldn’t stop looking. I noticed that the guy was bigger than me. For some reason, that agitated me too. A tear escaped when I saw her parted mouth giving him tongue. That was what hurt most: not the act, but the eagerness.

***

I needed another whisky to wait for the next message. The wait felt endless.

—“Don’t worry about her, I should have told you before: we’ll give her back to you in one piece, along with everything she had in her bag. Even this expensive phone I’m writing to you from, where I had you saved as ‘husband.’”

—“My friend found a lipstick and painted her mouth, outrageously. He’s a bit rough. He sat her on the sofa. Look at the photos.”

A close-up of a woman’s face in profile, her lips painted an outrageous red. You could see the earring well —I was more and more sure it was Daniela’s— and the line of her nose, so familiar. My Daniela, so neat, so demanding about everything, in a scene like this.

—“Without protesting, she opened her mouth. And she was damn good at it, I assure you. For such a lady, she knows what she’s doing.”

I was stunned. Knows what she’s doing? Daniela never wanted to do that to me. She said it seemed disgusting to her. Only at the beginning, once in a while, and always with the warning that she didn’t like it. When had that changed? Or had it never been true with me?

More photos arrived, a sequence. I looked at them feeling defeated and, at the same time, aroused in a way I didn’t understand. The woman on the screen wasn’t my wife. She was someone else. A stranger with her face.

—“Then we stripped her completely. What a body, seriously. My friend got on top of her and went in. You should have heard the moan she let out.”

Another photo, from the side. Daniela, naked, lying there, half open, the man halfway inside her and both of them with their mouths joined. I looked at her breasts: if they weren’t my wife’s, they were far too similar. I assumed that stranger had fucked her. And worse: that she kissed him back, that she accepted it, that she seemed to like it. I drank. And again I felt, with horror, that I was aroused. My God, what’s wrong with me?

—“I assure you she was enjoying it. She moaned with every thrust, the two of them kissing with a lot of hunger.”

A very close close-up of the open mouths, the tongues playing. I don’t know my own wife.

—“I asked my friend for my turn. I was inside again in no time. She accepted the change with the greatest naturalness. ‘What a great fuck this lady gives,’ he told me, ‘one of those who don’t care who it is, as long as it’s hard.’ I don’t know if your wife is one of those. But it’s been one of the best fucks of my life.”

Another photo. The man from before, this time eating her mouth while he penetrated her. Two men taking turns with my wife. I was shattered. More whisky. I was already drunk, and even so it excited me. My Daniela, eight years together, and two strangers are fucking her… and she lets them. It must be the alcohol. It has to be.

I heard the boy whining. He had nightmares sometimes. I went to give him water and stayed with him a while, stroking his hair until he fell asleep again, peaceful. That little while gave me back some sanity. Not all of it, but some.

I was afraid to go back to the screen. I knew more pain was waiting for me. I thought about stopping, turning everything off, and waiting for Daniela to come back and explain it to me. But I couldn’t. I admitted to myself, with disgust and desire, that I wanted to keep seeing those obscene images of my wife.

***

Another email arrived. I opened it with a trembling pulse.

—“We’ve been taking turns enjoying your wife’s body. You’ll never have had her so well looked after, and no one has forced her, quite the opposite: she liked alternating and kissing whoever had her on top. In the end she came with my friend. What a scandal, what a turn-on. I’m attaching the audio, I recorded it.”

A photo of my wife with that man inside her, one hand on her breast, her mouth open, unmistakably screaming. I opened the audio. Moans, broken cries, gasps. More than a minute without stopping. I was looking at the photo and hearing the screams, and I understood that Daniela was coming with a stranger whose face I didn’t even know. Whisky. She had never had such a long orgasm with me. And I got hard imagining her between the two of them.

—“She was left a wreck, limp, spent. My friend wasn’t done, so he sat her up again. ‘Now that you’ve been properly serviced, finish the job.’ And she didn’t need to be asked twice.”

Another photo: my wife industriously at the task, his hand on her breast. This was too much. I thought that would be where I stopped, that I couldn’t take any more. But I kept going.

—“When she finished, she didn’t even flinch. The next time you kiss her, remember this image.”

A final photo of Daniela’s face, her lips painted, her chin wet, satisfied in a way I had never seen before.

I felt defeated, overwhelmed, resigned. And even so, that image excited me. It wasn’t my Daniela, the delicate one, the haughty one, the one who’d send a plate back if there was a speck on it. It was another woman, one I didn’t know and whom, to my terror, I realized I desired more than the one I thought I had.

I poured myself another whisky. For an instant I thought about calling the police, but I understood how absurd that was: no one, seeing those photos and hearing that audio, would believe it hadn’t been consensual. I didn’t even believe it anymore myself.

I couldn’t do anything. Only wait for them to get tired of her and give her back to me, as they had promised. And meanwhile, watch, helpless, as they possessed my wife over and over again. The image from the beginning tormented me: Daniela tied to that bed, resting, they had told me. Now I understood it. But one question was still nailed into my chest, worse than all the others.

What did they still plan to do with her?