Smoke and Mirrors

Looking back on it, I can tell you when – almost to the minute – when my wife first cheated on me. Once I figured out what was going on, it wasn't that hard.

Hell, I suspected something was going on the day it happened, right from get-go. Ann tried to bullshit me with a smoke-and-mirrors routine, and that immediately piqued my suspicion.

I guess that needs explaining, so I'll try my best to clue you in on the dynamics of my marriage and my life.

My dad believed in simple names for his sons, so he named me Jim, short for James O'Reilly. Most everyone calls me Jimmy. I'm the oldest of three boys, but I have a sister who is two years my senior. She's Mary, and my brothers are Bill and Bob.

My grandfather started a hardware store right off downtown in the town where I was born, raised and still live. He passed it to my father, who passed it on to me. It's always been a family operation. My mom kept the books, and all of us kids – even my sister – worked there when we weren't in school.

Mary moved on when she finished college and got her teaching degree, and my youngest brother, Bobby, chose to join the Navy. But Bill and I never wanted to do anything other than run the business, and we went to college to study business, plus I got a master's degree in architecture.

I didn't know if I might want to be a home-builder at some point in my future, but even if I didn't, I knew a knowledge of architecture and building construction would be of great benefit when we took over the store.

Sure enough, over the years it has developed into a builder's supply outlet as much as a hardware store – kind of like Lowe's or Home Depot, but on a local scale.

The arrival of those big chains in our city forced us to do change some of the ways we did business, but one reason we're still successful is because we haven't changed much.

We're still in the old location, even though the downtown area has pretty much gone to seed. The central location allows us to cater to builders in every corner of the city, traffic isn't terribly heavy and we own everything – the land and the building – outright.

More importantly, we still do business the old-fashioned way, with an emphasis on customer service, understanding our market and knowledge of the entire construction process. As a result, we're still the preferred supplier for most of the locally-owned construction companies.

At age 38, I appeared to have life dicked. Our business is quite prosperous, and it allowed me to live comfortably in a nice home located in a quiet, upscale neighborhood. Until the events of this story, I shared that home with my wife of 12 years and our two children.

I met Ann at a charity function, and we hit it off immediately. From the beginning, she was a little flirty, and as time went on, it wore on me more and more.

But at the start, I liked her sexy, sassy nature. She was funny, outspoken, occasionally headstrong, always determined. I'm pretty much the same way, although quite a bit less outspoken.

It didn't take long before we were spending a lot of nights together, and after 18 months of courtship, we were married. I was 26, she was 25 and we were crazy in love.

Her family was less taken with me. She comes from old money, although her father's a banker, since most of the original family wealth had long ago been squandered. Nevertheless, they still had an aristocratic air that grated on my middle-class Irish upbringing.

Ann was a mortgage officer for her father's bank when I met her, but she put her career aside when we finally decided to have children. Our daughter Bethany was 7 when all of this transpired, and our son Will was 6. After he was born, Ann made up her mind that two kids were all she wanted.

As you can imagine, having two forceful personalities in the house created some fireworks, but I loved her and I thought she loved me. Maybe she did, since the circumstances behind what she did to me had little to do with our relationship.

Nevertheless, she cheated on me, and I knew it almost the moment she did it. I was in denial for a few weeks as things deteriorated, largely because I was getting some of the best sex of my life, but eventually I couldn't look the other way.

For the most part, Ann was easy to get along with, as long as she got her way. I wasn't a pushover, but I learned pretty quickly that the best way to keep the peace in our house was to let Ann at least think she was getting her way.

Because when she didn't, she could be a bitch, and she wasn't above using sex as a weapon. It was a formidable tool in her emotional arsenal, because Ann was a walking wet dream, especially when she really worked at looking good, which was most of the time.

She was a little taller than average, with a narrow face and thick auburn hair that she always wore just past her shoulders. She had long legs topped by a slender body that she worked hard to maintain. Her breasts weren't large, but they weren't small, either.

Indeed, everything about her body fit just about perfectly.

Regardless of whether she was being a bitch about it, sex between us was always determined on her terms. Curiously, however, she was always reluctant to initiate sex.

She would signal her availability on a particular night or, on rare occasions, an afternoon. But it was up to me to make the first move, and it was up to me to get her motor running.

It never varied. We'd get in bed naked, we'd stroke each other with our hands and fingers to get each other hot, then I'd climb on and go at it. I have a pretty nice cock – nothing massive, but nice enough – and I feel like I know what I'm doing with it.

I learned at a pretty early stage how to hold back and control my climax, and once I got going, Ann would usually respond enthusiastically.

This pattern held until a Wednesday night in early September, when my marriage began its breathtakingly-swift downfall.

I should point out here that there was one dark cloud on our marriage. About three years after we married, I happened to be looking in Ann's purse for a checkbook when I came across a small plastic packet. It was empty, but it looked like it had once contained a white, powdery substance.

I was stunned. I mean, we both grew up in the 1980s, and we'd both fooled around a little with pot. Nothing major, but if we were at a party and someone lit up a joint, we'd take a few hits.

But this had all the earmarks of cocaine, something I had always been able to avoid, and had no wish to have anywhere in my life, or my family's life.

I confronted Ann about it, and she admitted that she'd become something of a user. It was just casual, she said, but that didn't matter. I gave her an ultimatum: she could quit using altogether, or I would quit her.

It was one of the few times that I adamantly insisted on getting my way, and I probably wouldn't have succeeded except that I asked a friend of mine who is a doctor specializing in substance addiction to take us for a tour of a nearby rehab facility.

The friend introduced Ann and me to about a half-dozen women from her social class – young, rich and bored – and the experience left her shaken. These women had all been sent to rehab after numerous arrests for possession and prostitution.

Ann willingly gave up her dalliance with cocaine, and saw a counselor about why she had started using. She never tried it again, to my knowledge, but it left a small seed that would bear bitter fruit.

Besides my doctor friend and the psychologist, only one other person that I know of learned about Ann's drug use, and that was my brother Bill, my partner and closest friend.

Less than two years separates us in age, and we've been best friends our whole lives. Oh, we could get into some knock-down, drag-outs when we were kids, and we went to separate colleges when we went to get our education.

But we went to work full-time for Dad when we finished college the same year, we paid our dues, and when Dad retired – sort of – we took over the business together.

Dad still comes around a lot, when he and Mom aren't off traveling, usually to shoot the shit with long-time customers and others who come by to do business. He's a natural salesman and has friends in every strata of our town's society.

Bill and I compliment each other in many ways. I'm more outgoing, more impetuous, like my father, while he's quieter, more introspective, like my mother. When I need serious advice, he's the one I turn to.

I should say here that he and Ann never really saw eye-to-eye. I guess he saw things about her that I was blind to because I loved her, but he accepted her because she was my wife and we all had to get along. He's married to a wonderful woman named Gretchen and they have three kids.

By the time of that fateful month of September, our lives had settled into a routine. Ann had gone back to work when our son started school, and had been with her company a little over a year.

Her workday began at 8 a.m., so she would get up, get dressed and head for work, while I got the kids ready for school, then I would head for the store, usually arriving around 9 o'clock. I would work until the store closed at 6 p.m., and I was usually home by 6:30 or so.

Ann would get off work about 4:45 in the afternoon, then she would drive over to a health club for an hour-long workout, pick up the kids at the daycare a couple of blocks away, and she would be home usually around 6 o'clock, when she would start preparing dinner.

We would have dinner around 7:15, then after finishing cleaning up, I'd usually retire with a beer to watch whatever sports event happened to be on television and Ann would fool around on the computer. We'd head for bed around 10 o'clock, and if there was any sex, we'd do it then.

On the Wednesday in question, I came home to find Ann dressed in a very tight pair of shorts with a tight T-shirt on that showed off her braless breasts. And the nipples on those breasts were stiff as nails.

I walked in the door, and she greeted me like I was the Second Coming. I mean, she was all over me, kissing me deeply with lots of tongue and molding her tasty body to mine.

I was confused, but my cock wasn't. It sprang to attention immediately. I finally managed to pry her away from me long enough to have dinner, but even that was disconcerting.

She was unusually solicitous toward me, far more than ever before. She went into the refrigerator, got me a beer and told me to make myself comfortable in the den while she finished fixing dinner. Usually, if I didn't step lively in the kitchen and help out, I'd hear about it.

But not this time, and during dinner, she seemed unusually interested in what my day was like, rather than going on about what was happening in hers, as was the norm.

Right then, a little warning bell went off in my head. Her change in attitude was so abrupt that I was immediately on guard.

But that didn't stop me from enjoying Ann's hot body after we put the kids to bed. She practically dragged me to the bed, and she was almost frantic to get at me.

We were naked in no time, and when I lay back on the bed, Ann slid between my legs and sucked my cock almost to the root.

I knew at some level that something was wrong, because she really didn't much like fellatio. In fact, she wasn't crazy about any sort of oral play.

But here she was sucking my cock enthusiastically, and without my even mentioning anything about it. I tamped down my concerns and freed my mind of everything except the sensate pleasure I was receiving from Ann's mouth.

I could feel the cum starting to boil in my scrotum, and I think she sensed it as well, because she pulled her mouth off my cock and rolled onto her back.

"Fuck me, Jimmy," she panted, and again I wondered who this alien was in my bed. Ann never talked like that, ever.

But by then, the little head was doing all the talking, and he was telling me to forget my concerns and don't look a gift horse in the mouth. I had always been at Ann to open up sexually, and it seemed I was finally getting what I'd always wanted.

I got up on my knees, fit the head of my cock to her very wet hole and plunged in balls deep.

Ann must have been sitting on the edge, because I hadn't been fucking her for more than two or three seconds when her body went rigid for just a moment, then she trembled hard from her head to her toes, and she spewed forth a barrage of gibberish.

"Oh shit, oh fuck, oh damn, oh, oh, ahhhhhh!" she wailed.

It had been a long time since I'd made my wife come like that, and she'd never been that vocal. But she was in heat in a way I hadn't seen her in years, and I just happily plowed my way right past her orgasm and fucked her with relentless power.

I leaned over and took Ann in my arms, kissed her wildly as I hurtled toward the finish line, and she was already climbing to another peak. She was responding more than enthusiastically to the thrusts of my cock, the power of my hold and the passion in my kisses.

My usual control was in tatters as I felt the rusty tingle of my climax reach critical mass, and with a roar I fucked her deep about three or four really hard thrusts then exploded in one of the most intense orgasms I could remember having.

"Oh baby, oh baby," Ann was panting as I filled her pussy with one hard cumshot after another. "Finish me, please?"

I kept rotating my spastic cock as long as I could before it was finally drained and it slid out of her dilated hole, followed by a silver river of cum.

I rolled over on my side and began to use my fingers on her, but she stopped me and begged me to use my mouth.

I had never done that before – she'd never asked for it – but there was such a plaintive quality to her voice that I did what she wanted.

I crawled between her legs, which she spread wide for me, and plunged my face into her gooey pie. I licked up every bit of the flowing discharge from Ann's pussy, then sucked her labia between my lips and tongued her clit until she stiffened again and went into the now-familiar convulsions that signaled her climax.

When she finally pulled my head away from her crotch, Ann pulled me up to her, and just for a second there was this look of longing and just a trace of sadness. It quickly passed, and we crawled under the sheet together snuggling in the afterglow of the best sex we'd had in a long time.

This was always the best time for us, the time when we had satisfied each other, given ourselves over to the other's pleasure and were basking in the flow of union.

And yet, in the back of my mind I was troubled. Something profound had triggered this response in my wife, something way out of the norm. I didn't know yet what it was, but as I drifted off to sleep, I resolved to be extra vigilant to see what would happen.

My brother was of the same mind when I told him about it the next day.

"Could be nothing, or it could be everything," he said. "She could have decided to open up a bit. But I agree; you'd better keep a close watch on her, see what she does."

"That's the bitch of it, Billy," I said, glumly. "It was some of the best sex of our marriage, and I should be ecstatic. Instead, I'm suspicious."

That night was a repeat of the previous night, although I did get called in to help with dinner. But after we put the kids to bed, she was all over me again, except she didn't suck my cock.

Friday, she was back closer to her usual self, and that night's sex was pretty much the way it had been. I had to get her in the mood, but once I lit her fuse, she was a real firecracker, and still very vocal.

The next day, Saturday, was game day. For years, we have tailgated at the local university's football games with a small group of close friends. It's a fun time, and we hoist a few beers, do some barbecue then go watch football.

After the game, we usually come back and socialize for awhile before going home. Ann and I alternate as the driver, and whoever isn't driving home usually has a couple of more post-game drinks before the party breaks up.

Ann was unusually subdued the whole day, and offered to drive home, which allowed me free reign to have as many beers as I wanted. And I found I wanted a few more than usual. My wife's behavior had planted a deep root of trouble in my soul, and I tried to wash it away with beer.

Needless to say, we did not have sex that night, or the night after that.

On Tuesday, I noticed Ann was very nervous when she got home, and had three glasses of wine before dinner, which was highly unusual. That night in bed, all she wanted to do was hold me, and it seemed like she was hanging onto me for dear life.

But the next night, I was greeted at the door by my wife holding an open beer in her hand, dressed in a pair of her exercise tights and a T-shirt that was a size or two too small. Once again, she was overly solicitous, ushering me to the sofa, where the TV was already tuned to ESPN.

"I've got a surprise for you, lover," she purred, then flitted back to the kitchen to finish preparing dinner.

I watched the baseball game and played with the kids, who wanted to show me their schoolwork.

After dinner, Ann shooed me back to the den while she cleaned the kitchen, got the kids bathed and in bed, then she did something she almost never does. She sat down with me and watched the rest of the game.

You have to understand. Baseball is like Sanskrit to Ann. She's not a big sports fan anyway, although she grew to like football all right. But she thinks baseball is the most boring game on earth.

For me, however, it was my game. Dad coached all of us boys from T-ball until high school, passing on his love of the game. All three of us were good enough to start for our high school team, although that was as far as it went.

But I still love baseball with a passion, and my favorite team has always been the Cardinals, who happened to be playing on TV that night. It was late in the season, and they were in first place, so it was a big game.

Ann usually rolled her eyes and vanished into our home office to fool around on the computer while I watched the game. But on this night she sat with me, and spent most of the time softly kneading my cock through my jeans.

There was almost a surreal quality to what was going on. Here was my wife, who hated baseball, watching a baseball game with me, and here she was, my conservative wife who needed a lot of stimulation before she got at all sexual, actively massaging my cock right out in the open.

But she was doing a damn good job of it, because I was hard as a rock, and not as interested in the game as I usually was. And that was especially true when the Cards gave up four runs in the top of the ninth and lost by three.

If I thought I was flummoxed by all of that, I was completely dumbfounded by what Ann did when we got to the bedroom. She came out of the bathroom naked and strutting her stuff with a brazen quality that was completely alien to the Ann I'd known all this time.

And it had me iron-hard and throbbing. She turned out the lights, except for the bedside lamp, climbed on the bed like a cat and knelt between my legs.

"You're overdressed, dear," she said in a voice that was all honey.

She reached up and pulled my shorts off and my cock sprang up locked and loaded. She just hefted it in her hands, softly caressing the shaft. She brought her face down real close to it and rubbed my leaking head over her cheek, almost reverentially.

Then she slowly opened her mouth and licked her way up and down the shaft, taking her sweet time at it. She did that several times then softly slid the head of my cock past her lips and enveloped me.

She drew me into her mouth, taking about two-thirds of it, then slowly worked her head up and down, swirling her tongue around the ultra-sensitive area under the crown.