An adult stories – Tainted Love by Erozetta
This was written for the “Karaoke 2023” Author Challenge. The song in play for this story is “Tainted Love” specifically a cover by Holy Wars & Nocturne.
~
I fucked up.
I let myself get caught up in an affair of the heart. Nothing physical ever happened between us at the height of our interaction, but I definitely wanted it to. We met on a forum for connoisseurs of the macabre.
Even bonded over a love of cheesy movies and not-so-loved music. We genuinely shared a deep understanding of one another. But what most connected us was his willingness to harm me. Taking it out of my hands and putting it into the hands of someone who cared about me, at least to some degree more than I cared about myself.
The late nights on the phone, the playful flirting, and a willingness to ruin what was my life at the time for a touch of excitement and a quick thrill. He was passionate in a way that my husband wasn’t. He made me feel not only wanted but actively desired. His sex drive even gave mine a run for the money.
In another life, I would have met him before my husband. However, I didn’t, so I was resigned to relegating him to the fantasy that played over and over again in my head. It always started the same way: he checked in to my hotel. I don’t recognize him at first. Then he took control with little more than a smile and caress of my hand as I handed him his keycard.
I’d seen photos, and we’d video-chatted but never did anything offline, and seeing someone in person wasn’t the same as a flat image offering the illusion of the depth of reality. Had he lived closer to me, I would have cheated on my husband without a doubt. Thankfully, he was nearly two thousand miles away, a safe enough distance for me to only stray with emotions and thoughts. He was a lost, unfulfilled want. Even years later, he was still a secret desire, but one I’d pushed to the back of my mind. Relegated to dreams and wine and sad music-fueled bubble baths.
I cut contact with him when I realized how tempted I was. It was hard. It hurt. I cried and grieved a relationship that couldn’t be and never really was. I thought he was out of my life for good.
He didn’t look exactly the same in person. He had dark wavy hair that fell past his shoulders, a bright smile, and soft blue eyes. He was taller than I thought, standing about six inches above me when I thought he was only a couple inches taller. I checked him into the hotel; he used a fake name, and I didn’t think anything of it until I handed him the key to his room. I should’ve placed it immediately but Frank is a common name and I rarely do more than glance at the last name.
He grabbed the key and stroked his thumb across my hand, “Thank-you, Kaylen.”
I looked up when I heard him say my name. I’d been so in the mode of empty check-in process that I’d barely even looked at him until then. He always said my name on the exhale, like it hurt to let it go. I had butterflies in my stomach, just like the first time he’d said it to me. I narrowed my eyes at him and tilted my head. He smiled and turned to leave, but I came from behind the counter and stopped him, “Wes? What are you doing here?”
He shrugged and looked back towards the office behind my counter, “Is he here?”
I shook my head.
My husband Wes was asking if my husband was working with me. Some nights, he did, but most days we had different schedules with only slight overlaps. He smirked, his eyes trailing slowly down my body, “Can you get away from the desk for a while?”
“No, I-I can’t. You didn’t answer me. What are you doing here?” My posture stiffened, and I took half a step back.
He looked around, “Are there any cameras?”
I shook my head again.
He leaned down, his lips just missing brushing against mine as he positioned them beside my ear. I did nothing to pull away. His thumb brushed over my lower lip as his breath warmed my cheek. I whimpered while he whispered, “You know where I’m staying.”
He turned and walked away from me, heading down to his room as I leaned back against the wall and took an unsteady breath. The rest of my night was chaotic at best. I found myself walking to the hallway that held his room half a dozen times. But I turned around before I headed down it, trying so fucking hard to not make this mistake. I was not okay in any way, shape, or form.
He’d begun my fantasy. He didn’t even know about that fantasy, and he just walked right the fuck into it like he belonged there and always had. This fantasy always ended badly for me. It ended with me getting my heart broken when he was done. Every fucking time.
My husband and I worked together; when I wasn’t here, he was. My husband would be there alone with the man I almost cheated on him with. This was insane. It would never work out the way Wes was hoping it would. I just needed to tell him that. Tell him to leave. Be assertive.
Do not fucking wilt, Kaylen.
At the end of my shift, I was still pining for him. I felt the urge to run down to his room and hand myself over to him freely, but I resisted. Which meant I also didn’t confront him as I should’ve.
I went home and kissed my husband deeply, wantonly. He pulled his lips away from mine, “I’ve got to get to work; I don’t have time for this Kay,” he looked me over, grimacing slightly as he pushed me away.
My head lowered then I went to the bathroom to shower. I heard the front door close, and the car started as I turned on the water. I sat in the bottom of the shower, my knees pulled up to my chest and arms wrapped around them as I cried. I felt like such a burden to my husband. My needs flustered him. My husband was quite a few years older than me, and while I’d always had an old soul, I had a young, needy body.
Wes was closer to my age, and his body had the same needs.
I loved my husband, but he couldn’t do what I needed to feel loved. I took a shower, washed the day from my skin and hair then went to see what I could do to distract myself. My mind kept wandering back to my former friend, almost lover. He was sitting alone in his room in the hotel my husband managed. I should’ve cared more than I did, but some part of me hoped Wes would out me. Tell my husband what a whore I’d been for him online and show him the proof, which I’d given to him almost daily.
Make it easy. Make my husband hate me, don’t give me a fucking choice. Hurt me in a way from which I can’t recover. Out me. Ease the burden I’ve been carrying on my shoulders for years. Please, Wes. Destroy me, then swoop in and pick up the pieces. I’ll do any and everything you want. Just don’t leave me alone. I can’t be alone.
On the other side, my breath caught at the thought of my husband finding out. I didn’t want to hurt him, and my being unfaithful would fucking destroy him. He loved me. Maybe not how I wanted him to, but he loved me. He cared about me.
I owed him my life. He deserved a loving and loyal wife. I tried hard to be that, but my selfish nature always filtered through.
I’m going to hurt him. I wrapped the towel around me, tucking the corner between my breasts as I sat on the side of the tub. Not I might hurt him. The thought was so clear. I am going to break my husband’s heart; I’m going to fuck Wes. And I’m going to confess to everything after the fact. Whatever happens after that is on my own shoulders.
But I was going to try to hold out. I wasn’t going to run to my lover’s arms while my husband was at the hotel’s front desk. I wasn’t going to humiliate him and rub his face in it. I simply knew it was going to happen at some point. I was too weak for it to not happen. Too lonely.
The electricity that rose the tiny hairs along my body at the narrowly avoided kiss… I needed it to connect. To feel more than the peripheral static in the air being so near a live wire. I wanted to feel it in full force.
But to do so meant I destroyed the man who saved my life nearly twenty years before. The man who gave me a safe haven away from a life of mistreatment. He’d saved me from a marriage that held the promise of a broken spirit and fearful servitude to a man whose last wrathful mark still scarred my back all these years later.
~
What had I done to deserve a lasting reminder of his presence in my life? His impending ownership of me? I said hello to his grandson, the man I’d dated before the old man made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.
Financially and socially, I would’ve been in the upper tiers of the town I grew up in. A far cry from the poverty I’d grown up in. I’d just need to master color correction to hide the bruises and learn how to walk silently on my tiptoes behind him—eyes down and voice forgotten like a good incubator. Life would be easy as long as I ceased being an individual. I was twenty and looking at that or continuing the poverty cycle as my future.
I should’ve stayed with him. He never would’ve allowed me on the internet. I never would’ve had the opportunity to stray from him. He liked to fuck me, at least. It wouldn’t have lasted long, either. Either he would’ve killed me or I would’ve killed myself.
The important thing was that I never would’ve ruined my husband’s life if I’d stayed with the abusive old man. It would’ve been better for everyone, except maybe Wes, but he would’ve found some other meek thing to sate his desires, no real loss.
But fate demanded I destroy a good man many years before I met Wes. The old man I was promised to failed to completely break me during my first week in his home. I still had a cell phone, and a man who’d shown interest in me before I agreed to the old man’s offer had fortuitous timing.
I stood on a bridge, tears streaming down my cheeks, my dress torn and bloody. My back ached, and the dress hung loosely from my shoulders, barely staying on, but I didn’t care enough to fix it. I trembled, cried, and tried to forget what the crack of a whip on my skin sounded like. It wasn’t that it hurt; pain was a secret comfort that brought a surge of bliss with the ache.
It was the anger behind his strikes that hurt me. The drive to show me how small and weak I was. The need for him to show me I was at his mercy. He was not a dominant man. He was an abusive man who wielded genuine power in the community. Power that gave him the freedom to openly abuse people without so much as a harsh word directed his way.
No one would believe my version of events. I already had the reputation of being the slut who left his grandson for him. The old man could’ve strangled me in front of a crowd, and they would’ve found a way to fault me. Skin and dress torn open from a whip? That’s just kinky and the price of an otherwise easy life for a whore.
The truth of the situation was more complicated. The old man wanted me and threatened to harm my boyfriend to get me. A hunting accident is what he’d suggested. And I absolutely believed he would kill his grandson, so I fucked him.
He recorded it. He held it over my head. But in the end, jealousy of me still being with his grandson got to him, and he showed my boyfriend the video. After that, it seemed pointless to try and fight him. He’d get what he wanted anyway, so why not go along for the ride and not have to wonder what I’d have to do to survive another night?
Still, on the bridge that night, I’d reached my limit. I prayed as I looked into the churning water, tears clouding my vision. My phone rang, and a familiar voice was on the line, “I don’t know why you stopped talking to me, but I’m worried about you. Please hear me out before…”
He’d talked to me about life, dreams, and hopes. Nothing illicit ever came up between us; he was just nice and had been a friend for years.
I sobbed into the phone. He took his time, getting the whole story out of me before he made me walk away from the bridge. He flew out mere hours later and collected me from the riverbank, where I’d retreated as he continued to talk to me from his house to the airport then again from the airport to the riverbank. He brought me home with him, and he took care of me.
When I tried to repay my debt to him, he wouldn’t take my offer.
Or, rather, he wouldn’t take me. He covered me up held me to him, and I felt rejected. That should’ve been my first clue that our interests in sex weren’t compatible. Any other guy would’ve seen a naked girl in their bed and jumped at the chance to cash in those “nice” tokens for sex. But he still saw someone who needed help. Saw someone he wouldn’t take advantage of.
~
How did we get from there to here?
I was lonely all the time. My husband was there physically. Not emotionally, not sexually, just physically. He just didn’t have much of a sex drive and never had. I was kind of desperate to prove my worth, and the only value I ever felt I had was in being fucked. If that wasn’t happening, then what was the point of being alive?
At first, he seemed to want to give me what I wanted. Whatever I wanted. He was passionate once he felt I wasn’t just trying to repay some fucked up obligation to him for getting me out of a bad situation. After a few years, he started losing interest. I wore lingerie, worked out, and did everything I could to keep his interest in me from waning, but it still waned. I wondered if late twenties simply weren’t as appealing to him as early twenties.
I became lonely.
So when an internet friend showed interest in getting to know me in a very personal way, I felt useful. I suddenly had value again. It felt good to be wanted. Wes gave me a sense of purpose.
We talked for over a year before he asked to see what I looked like, but it was only days after that I sent him any photo he asked of me. By the end of the year, either I was watching him masturbate, or he was watching me.
It all came crashing down when he started talking about meeting. I wasn’t open to that. He kept pushing, and I began to withdraw from him. I wasn’t willing to cross that line, so I ghosted him. Disappeared without a word.
He was still on my mind for quite some time, and for the past couple of years, I’d questioned if I’d made a mistake. What if he was better for me? What if he could’ve made me happy? What if I didn’t have to stay in a marriage I entered into out of a sense of obligation?
Wes could force my hand with ease. Just the same as the old man. Full circle, right?
I often checked various amateur porn sites, expecting the photos I’d sent to be posted in anger, calling me a teasing cunt or something. He didn’t, though. Or, at least if he did, I hadn’t found them yet.
Then in an unfortunately well timed endeavor, he was thirty minutes away in the hotel where my husband and I worked. All I could think of was how his skin smelled slightly of cardamom with a peppery musk that I found intoxicating. All I had to do was go to work and knock on his door. I could fuck him with my husband just down the hall. My husband could hear us, and he’d never know it was me on the other side of that door.
My stomach tightened, and my hands slid over my body before I realized it. Not masturbating, I was on the way there, though. When my phone rang and an unknown number popped up, I shut off the water for my shower and answered it while trying to steady my breathing; I simply knew. “Hello?” I said, wiping the tears from my eyes.
His voice was like stepping much too near that live wire while wet, and I nearly fell as I stepped out of the tub, “Your husband is a nice guy. I thought I should meet the man you were so scared of losing. I can see why you made the choice you did. He’s a pure gentleman, and handsome as well. I’ll be gone by morning. I just wanted to move forward and I couldn’t do that until I learned what I’d lost and why,” he said.
“I-I…” I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. He’s offering to leave. Let him. “I don’t want you…”
He interrupted me, “I know. I’ll be out of your hair at check-out in the morning. Don’t worry.”
“To go?” I finished with a sigh. My voice wavered as I twirled a wet lock of hair around my finger, “My shift starts at 10 PM. I have some paperwork I have to do first, but he’ll be gone and I can get caught up in helping a guest for a little while. If you want…”
“Oh, I definitely want,” he said with a slight chuckle, “but you don’t have to appease me you know?”
“I’m not. I just… I want to know too. I want to talk to you. Learn what I gave up, I mean. Not… Not sex, just talking,” I added with a messy catch in my voice.
He drew in a deep breath and made a noise that sounded like a stifled laugh behind a smile. I could just picture his eyebrows lifted questioningly at my clarification. “Okay. Tonight then?”
“Yes.”
I slept fitfully. Anxiously waking and checking the time every little bit. My husband got home at 8 PM, just as I got up to get ready. He tried to kiss my neck, and I pulled away, still hurt from that morning’s rejection. He looked disappointed, but I kept getting ready. “I have to get ready and head in for work,” I said, softer than he had.
He nodded, his head lowered, seemingly understanding my sudden coldness.
“Anything I should know before I go?” I asked as I was putting on my shoes.
He looked at me sadly, “I’m sorry I snapped at you this morning. I love you, you know?”
I nodded and forced a smile, “I know. It’s fine. I’m fine. Anything about work I should know?”
“There’s a storm coming through. If the power goes out, call Donny to set up the sup gennie,” he headed into the bathroom to get ready for bed as I headed out the door.
I had butterflies in my stomach the entire ride to work. Butterflies and uncomfortable jolts from memories of electric nights I’d shoved aside. All the while, I worried about my husband coming down to help with the storm. He hadn’t done that in a few years, though. He knew I could handle it.
Some part of me hoped the power went out. Most of my job was done on a computer, and when the power goes out, I could crash in an empty room and sleep until it came back on. I had something else on my mind, though. Spending the night in an occupied room seemed more appealing than being alone. Even if it only included talking.
I was soaked when I got in as my co-worker stood by the front door with a towel waiting for me, “Is Lisa here yet?” I asked.
He shook his head, “She called in, her power’s out at home and her babysitter can’t get to her place because of a downed tree between them. You and I are it tonight and our power has already flickered twice.” He barely got the word out before the entire room flashed then went dark and stayed that way. He flipped on a flashlight, “Never mind, power’s out.”
I nodded, “So much for getting work done. Do you want to go home? The main gennie is going so our lights will be up in a minute, supp is easy enough to start on my own.”
He shook his head, “Nah, I’ll take the desk, you field the guests and keep them from bothering me,” he laughed as he motioned me away from the lobby. I stopped at a storage closet and gathered a box of flashlights
“Still just A-hall?”
“Yup, no new check-ins. Surprising with the storm.”
I nodded and started down the hall, assuring the few heads poking out of darkened rooms that all was well and the storm was doing its thing while offering them flashlights. Only a few took them. I got to Wes’s room and knocked. He answered and smiled when he saw me, “Power’s out,” he said.
I nodded, and he opened the door wider, inviting me inside. I hesitated and looked down the hall. We had one hall with six customers. Three of the six had already been assured all was good, Wes was the fourth, and the other two, I was hoping, were sound asleep and unaware.