Control
I stood off to the side, watching a he took the zipper of my wife's dress and slowly pulled it down to her waist, exposing her breasts. "God, Mark," she said as slid one finger down the bare skin of her back.
Her eyes found me in the mirror. Her husband, her best friend, standing there naked. I saw her eyes glance down, between my legs, settle on the small, pink cage locked on me. I knew what she was thinking, the contrast between me and her date. A strong, assertive man in a well-tailored black suit undressing her while I stood there vulnerable, exposed, locked, controlled.
"You were right," she said, looking over her shoulder at her date. "About the cage."
"I told you, it focuses the mind. The longer it's on, the easier it is for him to acclimate to roles, to a different kind of intimacy with you."
"I just...sometimes I feel guilty...it's been months since he...he's been out of it."
"It's a natural feeling," he assured her, reaching around, taking her breasts in his hands as the dress fell to the floor. "But as counterintuitive as it may seem to an outsider, it's not a bad thing. Someone like him is more settled when caged. He thinks he wants to be unlocked, but deep down inside it’s the opposite. He can give up the things he was bad at to focus on the things he's good at. Unlocking him would only confuse him."
"You...you're never taking it off, are you?"
"No," he said. "Never."
The dress pooled at her ankles. She stepped out of it without looking down, still watching me in the mirror while Mark’s hands stayed on her.
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“Look at him,” he said quietly.
She did. Her eyes dropped again to the cage. Pink. Tight. Ridiculous against the rest of me. I felt my face heat even though I was already flushed.
“He’s hard,” she whispered.
“He’s always hard in there,” Mark said. “That’s the point. He can want it. He just can’t do anything with it.”
She made a small sound. Not quite a moan. Guilt and something else mixed together.
Mark kissed the side of her neck. “Tell him.”
She hesitated.
“Tell him what you decided.”
Her eyes found mine in the glass. “We’re not taking it off.”
I swallowed.
“Not tonight,” she added, softer. “Not… for a long time.”
Mark’s mouth curved against her skin. “Not ever.”
She closed her eyes when he said it. Her nipples were tight under his palms. One of his hands slid down her stomach, under the waistband of her underwear, and she rocked forward into it like she’d been waiting for that exact permission.
“Watch,” he told me.
I did. I couldn’t not.
He worked her with two fingers, unhurried, talking to her in a low voice I was meant to hear.
“He used to think this was his. The body. The nights. The way you sound when you come. He was wrong about the assignment.”
She gasped.
“He’s better at this,” Mark said. “Standing there. Keeping it locked. Letting you have what you actually want.”
Her hips moved. The underwear came down. She stepped out of those too.
Naked now except for her stockings and the heels she hadn’t taken off.
Mark turned her slightly so I could see everything: his hand between her legs, her wetness on his fingers, the way she looked at me while another man touched her like he owned the right.
“Come here,” he said to me.
I took a step.
“Kneel.”
The carpet was rough under my knees. From this angle the cage looked even smaller. My cock strained uselessly against the bars, leaking a little, humiliatingly obvious.
Mark didn’t look at it. He looked at her.
“Do you still feel guilty?”
She was breathing hard. “Yes.”
“Good. Feel it. Then let it go.” He withdrew his hand and held his fingers in front of my face. “Clean them.”
I did. She tasted like her and like the evening and like the months I’d already spent locked.
When I finished, Mark kissed her properly for the first time since the zipper. Deep. Possessive. She kissed him back with her eyes open, watching me over his shoulder.
When they broke apart she was shaking.
“He’s never coming out of it,” she said, testing the words.
“No,” Mark said.
She looked down at me one more time. At the cage. At the man who used to be her husband in the old sense of the word.
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“Stay there,” she told me. “Watch. Don’t touch yourself. You can’t anyway.”
I stayed on my knees.
The mattress dipped. She climbed on first. Mark followed, still in the suit, only the jacket gone now, belt undone, the contrast sharp: clothed man, naked wife, locked husband on the floor.
She reached back, found my eyes again, and held them while he pushed into her.
The sound she made wasn’t guilty anymore.
It was relief.