Chapter 8: Digital Cuckolding
The dust motes swam in the slanted light coming through the home office’s blinds, glowing as they passed over the stacks of technical manuals and the silent, blinking LED lights of Norman’s server rack. The room usually smelled of ozone and old paper. Now it smelled of her.
Norman knelt on the hard floor, the wool of his trousers scraping his knees. His world had narrowed to the space between Jennifer’s thighs, to the taste of her, to the overwhelming, salt-sweet evidence of her arousal. His jaw ached. He focused on the rhythm, on the technique he’d read about in articles he’d never admit to studying, a pathetic attempt to be competent at this one thing.
Jennifer was stretched back in his own ergonomic desk chair, one leg hooked over the arm. Her phone cast a bluish glow on her face. She scrolled with her thumb, her other hand buried in his hair, not guiding, just resting there, a reminder of ownership.
“Mmm, that’s good,” she murmured, but the praise felt absent, directed at the screen. She shifted her hips, a slight tilt that forced him to adjust. He did, instantly.
She let out a soft sigh, part pleasure, part appraisal. “Christ. Look at this one.” Her fingers tightened briefly in his hair. “Former collegiate swimmer. Shoulders for days.”
Norman kept his eyes shut tight. The images in his mind were worse than anything on her phone: broad, tanned backs, condescending smiles, the casual ease of men for whom this was just a Tuesday.
“This one says he’s a ‘gentleman adventurer.’ What the fuck does that even mean?” She laughed, a low, husky sound that vibrated through her body and into his. “Probably means he owns a expensive jacket and is mediocre in bed.”
Her commentary was casual, conversational, as if they were discussing potential hires for a boring department. The banality of it was its own unique torture. He tried to lose himself in the act, to find some shred of purpose, but her running commentary pulled him back to the surface every time.
Then she went quiet. The only sounds were his own strained breathing and the wet, intimate sounds of his effort. Her stillness was different. He sensed a shift. The hand in his hair went from resting to holding.
“Oh,” she said, the single syllable packed with genuine interest. “Well, hello.”
She arched her back, a smooth, feline stretch that pressed her harder against his mouth. A soft moan escaped her, this one uninterrupted by speech. He could feel her muscles tense, her focus shifting entirely from the digital catalog to the physical sensation he was providing. For a few seconds, he was enough. He redoubled his efforts, a spark of desperate pride flaring.
The moment broke. She let out a long, shuddering breath, her body relaxing into the chair. Her thumb resumed its scrolling.
“This one,” she said, her voice a mix of awe and clinical assessment. “His profile is… remarkably direct. No gentleman adventurer bullshit. Just… statistics. And the pictures aren’t artsy. They’re proof.”
She shifted, sitting up a little. She pushed his head back gently but firmly, breaking the contact. He knelt there, breathless, lips slick, looking up at her. She was staring at the phone, a faint, intrigued smile on her face. She held the screen toward him, not for his opinion, but for his comprehension.
The man was grinning at the camera, shirtless, in what looked like a generic hotel room. He was all dense muscle and tribal tattoos. The caption below the photo was just a measurement.
“Nine inches,” Jennifer read aloud, as if confirming the specs of a high-performance vehicle. She looked from the screen to Norman’s face, studying his reaction. “He says he’s patient. Likes to… take his time.”
Norman felt the floor solidify beneath him into something colder. The number was a physical abstraction his mind couldn’t truly picture, but the promise behind it—patient, take his time—landed with the force of a shovel to the chest. It was the antonym of his own desperate, fumbling two-minute anxieties.
“What do you think?” she asked, tilting her head.
He had no air. “I… you’re the one who…”
“I am,” she cut him off, her smile widening. She swiped to another photo, then another, a slow gallery of confidence. “I’m just thinking out loud. Saturday’s coming up. We need a first draft pick, so to speak.”
We. The word was a lie. There was no we. There was her, and there was him, and soon there would be a third, defined by a number and a smirk.
She tapped the screen, a decisive final click. “I’m messaging him.” She began typing, her thumbs flying. “Discreet, of course. Married woman, understanding husband, seeking a mutually satisfying arrangement.” She let out a short laugh. “God, it sounds like a corporate merger. Which I guess it is.”
The phone chimed a sent message notification. The deed was in motion. The abstraction had a face, a number, and now an open line of communication.
She set the phone face down on his desk, atop a schematic for a circuit board he’d been debugging. She looked at him, really looked at him, seeing the dampness around his mouth, the utter deflation in his posture.
“You did well,” she said, and this time the praise felt specific, earned. It burned worse than her contempt. She stood up, smoothing her skirt. She walked to the door, pausing with her hand on the frame.
“Oh,” she said, glancing back. “He’s local. He can do Saturday evenings. So. Clear your calendar. I"m so excited!"
She left, heading back toward the heart of the penthouse. Norman remained on his knees, surrounded by the silent judges of his obsolete technology. The digital signature on the contract in the cloud felt suddenly present, a phantom weight in the room. The appointment was made. The countdown, in earnest, had begun.