Chapter 11: The Cuckold's Trial
The smell of Chris’s room—stale cologne, sex, her own shame—clung to Nat’s skin as she padded back to her own space. It was a membrane she couldn’t peel off. In the hallway, the door to the room Micha shared with her was still closed, that thin blade of light beneath it now extinguished.
She slept fitfully, her body humming with a residual ache. When she woke, the analytical coldness had returned, hardened into something sharper, more surgical. The data was in. The hypothesis—that she could engage without being compromised—was falsified. She had been rewritten at a cellular level. The new question was simpler: what would she do with this power?
She found Micha in the living room the next evening, alone, staring at his laptop without seeing it. The gloom of the apartment felt charged, waiting.
“We need to talk about Erna,” Nat said, her voice cutting through the muffled bass from someone else’s music.
Micha flinched. It was a tiny, tell-tale spasm. “What about her? She’s been leaving me alone, like you wanted.”
“Has she?” Nat perched on the arm of the sagging futon, not looking at him. “Or has she just gotten better at hiding it? I see the way she looks at you. Like something she left in the fridge and can’t decide if she wants to eat or throw out.”
“That’s not fair,” he mumbled, but there was no force behind it.
“Fair?” A short, brittle laugh escaped her. “You want fair? Let’s talk about fair, Micha. I dealt with your lingering ex. I did the emotional labor. And what do I get? A boyfriend who jumps at his own shadow whenever her name comes up.” She adjusted her glasses, her gaze finally landing on him. “It’s pathetic.”
His face crumpled. It wasn’t anger; it was the look of a man who knew the ground was giving way. “You don’t understand what she’s like.”
“I understand she’s a problem. And I understand that problems need definitive solutions.” She stood up, pacing the narrow space between the coffee table and the TV. “Chris got her to back off. Temporarily. But it’s not a permanent fix. She’s like a weed. You have to pull out the root.”
“What are you saying?” Micha’s eyes were wide, frightened.
“I’m saying you’re still attached to her. Not by love. By fear. By some fucking… unresolved humiliation.” She stopped pacing, a theory crystallizing with sudden, awful clarity. “What did she do to you, Micha? When you were together. What did she actually do?”
The color drained from his face. He looked at the dog-eared Fifty Shades on the table as if it were a live wire. “Nothing. It was normal. It didn’t work out.”
“Bullshit.” The word was a slap. “You’re a terrible liar. It’s why you’re a decent programmer. You only speak in literal truths. So tell me the truth now.” She moved closer, her voice dropping to a venomous whisper. “Or I will ask Chris. And I think we both know he’ll tell me. He seems to enjoy sharing.”
It was the threat that broke him. His shoulders sagged, his head hanging. “She… she cheated. Okay? Are you happy? She cheated on me.”
A cold satisfaction seeped into Nat’s veins. “With who?”
Silence. A long, terrible silence where the only sound was the thump of bass through the floor.
“Micha. With who?”
When he spoke, it was to the stained carpet. “Chris.”
The pieces clicked into place with such violent finality that Nat felt dizzy. The history, the dynamic, Chris’s effortless control over Erna, her addicted submission. It wasn’t persuasion. It was legacy. She saw it all—Erna, in this very living room, on that futon, with Chris, while Micha… watched? Knew? Heard?
“And you knew?” Her voice was dangerously calm.
He gave a barely perceptible nod, a tear tracking down his cheek. “Sometimes… she’d make me watch. She said it was the only thing that turned her on. That I wasn’t… enough.”
The humiliation was so vast, so pathetic, it circled back around to being fascinating. Nat stared at him, at this man she’d chosen, this nice, oblivious programmer. He wasn’t oblivious. He was traumatized. And he’d brought this ghost into their relationship, let it haunt her, because he was too weak to exorcise it.
“You let me live with this,” she said, no anger left, just a deep, freezing contempt. “You let me fight your battles with a monster you helped create.”
“I’m sorry,” he whimpered.
“Sorry isn’t data.” She straightened up, her mind working at a terrifying speed. The solution was obvious now. Brutal, but elegant. A full-system reset. “You need to see it properly. One last time. Not through a keyhole. Not by listening at a door. You need to see what she is, what she chose, and you need to see me conquer it.”
He looked up, confused, terrified. “What?”
She walked to a closet by the entrance, rummaged inside, and pulled out a set of metal handcuffs—leftover from some forgotten costume party. They were cheap, shiny, and cold in her hand.
“Sit in that chair,” she said, pointing to a straight-backed wooden chair by the desk.
“Nat, no…”
“Sit. Down.”
The authority in her voice was absolute. It was the voice of his humiliation, given new form. He obeyed, shuffling to the chair and sitting, his body rigid with fear.
She moved behind him, pulling his arms around the back of the chair. The cuffs snapped shut around his wrists with a definitive, metallic click. The sound echoed in the quiet room. He tested them once, a feeble rattle, then went still.
“Now,” Nat said, walking back to face him. She took out her phone, typed a quick message, and set it down. “We wait.”
They didn’t wait long.
Five minutes later, Chris sauntered in, followed by Erna. Erna’s eyes were red-rimmed, her posture defiant but brittle. She saw Micha cuffed to the chair and her lips parted in shock.
“What the fuck is this?” Erna hissed.
“An intervention,” Nat said smoothly. “A final lesson.” She looked at Chris. “You’re the curriculum.”
A slow, appreciative smile spread across Chris’s face. He understood immediately. He walked to the center of the room, his eyes gliding from Erna’s tense form to Nat’s cool determination to Micha’s prisoner pose. “Yeah,” he breathed. “Okay. I see the assignment.”
He didn’t bother with preamble. He unbuttoned his jeans, pushed them down his hips along with his boxers. His cock sprang out, already thick and heavy, swaying with his movement. Erna’s breath hitched audibly, a conditioned response.
“On your knees,” Chris said, his voice assuming that low, hypnotic murmur. “Both of you. Here.”
Erna dropped immediately, her knees hitting the floor with a submissive thud. Nat followed, slower, positioning herself opposite Erna, their faces inches apart, Chris’s cock standing like a pillar between them. The smell of him, clean skin and precum, filled the space.
“You know the drill, Erna,” Chris said, his hand settling on the back of her head. “But tonight, you’ve got competition.”
He didn’t guide her. He just pushed. Erna opened her mouth and took him in, her eyes sliding shut in a mix of agony and bliss. She began to bob, a frantic, familiar rhythm.
Nat watched for a moment, studying. Then she leaned in. Instead of taking him, she used her tongue, licking the shaft from base to tip, swirling around the head, tasting the salt of Erna’s saliva and Chris’s skin. She then took him deep, her throat working open, until her nose pressed into his pubic bone. She held it, her eyes open, locked on Erna’s over the straining ridge of his cock.
It was a brutal, intimate glare. A war fought over centimeters of flesh.
Chris groaned, his hips giving a shallow thrust. “Fuck. That’s it. Share it.”
They established a vicious, unspoken rhythm. Erna would take him deep, gagging, tears leaking. Nat would pull off, let Erna have a turn, then dive back in, taking him even deeper, her throat fluttering around the head. The sounds were obscene—wet, choking gulps, sharp gasps for air, the slick slap of skin on skin.
Micha made a small, strangled noise. Nat pulled off, a string of saliva connecting her lips to Chris’s shining shaft.
“Which one of us looks better gagging on him, baby?” Nat taunted, her voice ragged but clear. “The expert? Or the prodigy?”
Micha whimpered. His eyes were glued to the scene, horror and a sick, undeniable arousal twisting his features. The front of his jeans tented pathetically, a small, strained bulge against his zipper.
“He’s getting hard,” Chris laughed, breathless. “Look at him, Nat. Your boyfriend likes the show.”
“He’s used to it,” Nat spat, before taking Chris back into her mouth, sucking hard.
The competition escalated. Erna, desperate to prove her supremacy, tried to deepthroat him and hold it, her face turning red. Nat, smarter, used her hands, twisting them around the base, jacking him fast and tight while she sucked and licked the head. They were a single, squirming organism of need and hate, their tongues occasionally meeting on his skin, their breath mixing.
Chris’s control began to fracture. “Gonna cum,” he grunted, his fingers tangling in both their hairs. “Fuck, which one of you sluts wants it?”
Erna moaned around him, a plea.
Nat pulled off completely. “In her mouth,” she commanded, glaring at Erna. “Let the expert have it. She’s earned her consolation prize.”
The order, coming from Nat, was the final humiliation. Chris’s body tensed. With a series of rough, driving thrusts against Erna’s waiting lips, he came. Hot jets pulsed into her mouth, over her tongue. She swallowed convulsively, messily, some of it trickling down her chin.
When he was spent, he stepped back. Erna collapsed forward onto her hands, coughing, a defeated animal.
Nat stood up. Her knees were sore, her lips swollen. She walked over to Micha, who was crying silently, his pathetic erection still straining. She crouched in front of him, her face close to his.
“See?” she whispered, her voice cold and clean as a scalpel. “That’s your ghost. That’s what you were so afraid of. It’s just a flesh-and-blood girl who chokes on cock for attention.” She glanced back at the sobbing Erna, then at Chris, who was tucking himself away with a look of profound satisfaction. “It’s over now. You’re free.”
But as she said it, she knew it was a lie. He wasn’t free. He was her prisoner. And she, armed with the full, ugly truth and the taste of victory still in her mouth, had never felt more powerful