St. Charles, Illinois, February 13th, 2026

Fae hadn’t told her husband, Dylan, if she had cheated on him on her first girls’ night out with her slutty friends just over a month ago. She told him she wouldn’t confirm or deny, and, like such a cruel bitch, she’d added, “Baby, if I did, then it was only one time. Would you leave me over one tipsy time with a mister nobody I’d never see again?”

He didn’t answer that question. She must’ve known the answer was no. He wouldn’t leave Fae for having sex with another man, not if it was once and once was it. But he feared saying that aloud would give her the freedom to spread her legs for a stranger if she hadn’t already. Still, he couldn’t man up enough to tell her directly, “I would leave you if you did that,” mostly because he was sure she wouldn’t believe him. He was also sure she would test it; she would dare him; she would call his bluff by riding another man’s cock and delivering the fait accompli.

He’d tried bringing it up several times in those weeks, and a few of those times he thought he was close to getting a denial. Then, a couple of other times, he thought with dread in his heart and his balls retracting that she was about to admit she had absolutely cheated. Close, but no cigar. Her lips were locked tight.

Dylan was lost as to what point she was trying to make, if any. Was it that he should be able to trust her and that an explicit denial would somehow lessen that trust? As if a denial would itself prove that a denial was necessary, and the necessity of a denial would prove he didn’t trust her? Or was it that she had really cheated on him, that she thought it was none of his business, or that his ignorance would protect him, and so it was a favor to him to keep him in the dark? Perhaps it was because “it didn’t mean anything” to her, so it shouldn’t mean anything to him, or that cheating in itself wasn’t wrong so long as she didn’t lie, and refusal to confirm or deny was her only way not to lie. Or was she trying to acclimate him to accepting that she would have her own secrets, even sexual flings, on the sheer principle of her autonomy? He didn’t understand, and not being able to understand generated simmering resentment for her.

In bed for the night, he wouldn’t face her but curled toward their doorway as she lightly massaged his back and tucked her legs behind his, her toes finding his. She pressed him to answer, “Really? Would you leave me if it happened just like that, one and only one time?”

He winced. “Is this hypothetical?”

She squeezed his shoulder. “Pretend it isn’t hypothetical. Pretend I’m telling you I did it. What would you do?”

He clenched his fists. “No, I won’t pretend it isn’t pretend, whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

Fae cleared her throat and spoke in a comically overdone Transatlantic dialect, as if she were a radio announcer from the 1930s. “Reports indicate that I might’ve fucked someone, indeed, sir. It may have been, if you will, terribly splendid, and to be perfectly clear, I might quite like being a dirty whore. I say, we bring you now to Mr. Dylan for his comment. Mr. Dylan, what say you of this news?”

What bullshit! His stomach sank. Angry curses filled his head, but his erection sprang up, and she reached for it, swiping it under her fingers. He pushed her hand away and yanked more cover over himself. Was it possible to turn the tables on Fae? “What if I cheated on you, huh, Fae?”

She sighed, then snickered. “Oh? Do you think you can?”

Dylan rolled over to face her, and her hand dove downward under their blanket as she stubbornly insisted on taking hold of his dick. She rubbed his glans under her thumb as he answered, “Obviously, I can.”

Fae kissed him quickly on the lips. “Obviously? Now that’s the kind of confidence I like to see in you. You’re sexy when you’re confident. Let’s see.”

Dylan was bewildered. “Let’s see what? If I could have sex with another woman, is that it? Is that in question? Do you think you’re the only woman who would do me? I would never do it, but hey… if I decided to, then it wouldn’t be too difficult. How would you like it, then, Fae?”

She pulled out her phone from under her pillow, and her face lit up in the dark as she turned it on. She was quiet, as was he, for a lengthy pause, and then, with announcement in her tone, she said, “In 16 minutes it will be Valentine’s Day. It’s once a year. Let’s have fun with it.”

Dylan agreed, but deep down was worried. “We will have fun. It’s going to be a loving Valentine’s Day for us.” However, he could see the wheels turning in Fae’s amber eyes, so he asked, “Don’t you think so, honey?”

She stashed her phone back under her pillow, put her finger to her lip, still gently tugging his rod below, and answered, “Hmm. I’m thinking.”

Fae bargained in a lilt of joy, “If you can find a date or fling and cheat on me tomorrow, then I’ll honestly and clearly answer everything you want to know about my girls’ night out, or if I ever cheated on you, and whatever else you want to ask about that.”

Dylan’s mouth fell open, and he sat up in bed beside her. “What the fuck? What do you mean?”

She reached under her pillow, pulled out her phone, and started working away on the touchscreen, typing who knows what. “It has to be a legit date, though, no escort, and you have to have sex with her. Once you’ve had sex with her, whoever she is, text me, and I’ll take your word for it. I’ll stop and come home.”

Dylan felt the room spinning. “Stop what and come home? We’ve got a whole evening planned tomorrow.”

She showed him her phone screen. His eyes took a second to adjust, but then he could see hundreds of private messages from men, an army of men, as she scrolled up and down too fast for him to make out what they had sent her. “Dylan, I’ve got other plans. I’ll go out with one of these boys, and if you don’t notify me you’ve gotten laid by midnight tomorrow, then I’ll be out extra late.”

“Holy shit! Fae? This is crazy!” he shouted, their baby waking and crying in the bedroom across the hall.

“Shhh. Now look, you woke her.” Fae flipped out of their bed and briskly flew to their bedroom door. With her hair bouncing, she turned to say, “I’ll get her back to nap-nap. Honey bunny, I believe in you. You’ll find a girl for you, I’m sure.” Then she turned and continued out into their hallway.

Dylan sat in shock. His heart thundered. Was she teasing? Now what? If she was really going to do something, he’d have to do something. But what? Was his wife going to fuck some man if he couldn’t back up his big mouth and fuck some woman first?

Dylan sat frozen for a moment longer, and then a moment more. He recalled all those private messages, all those men. If she had a mind to, she would do it and have no trouble doing it. And then it hit him: he would have to do it first, before she did, if he could.

When Fae returned to bed, Dylan confronted her. “What are all of those messages?”

Fae entwined her legs with his. “Interested men. Interested in me.”

“What’re you doing talking to those guys?” He pulled away from her in bed, but she clung to him, squeezing his thigh, his butt, his abs, caressing him, and pulling on his boxers. “Fae? Answer me. I want an answer.”

She had crawled on top of him and had begun teasing his glans at her entrance.

She slid it in, just the tip, and rubbed her clit into his pubic area. “It’s only chatting. I didn’t give them any inappropriate pics.”

Dylan breathed deeper at the pleasure of her riding him cowgirl. She took his hands and planted them on her hips. “But you’re talking to them? Why are you talking to them? And… and did they send you any pictures?”

Fae leaned in to kiss him. Then, raising back up and beginning to bounce on his cock, she placed her hand over her mouth as if to silence herself. “No comment. No comment.” Then she blushed with a suppressed laugh that turned into a moan.

Dylan grabbed her wrists and pulled her down close. “Did they send you pictures?”

Fae shrugged, her eyebrows raised. “They all send pictures.”

Dylan squeezed her wrists tighter. “What kind of pictures?”

Fae yanked her wrists from his grip, still riding him, and flashed a scowl. “What do you think? Please. Like you can’t guess what kind of pictures horny men send me.”

Dylan covered his face with his palms, grunting. “Whatever site or app or fucking thing that is, delete it. You shouldn’t be using it. I don’t have accounts on hookup platforms, Fae!”

Fae ran her fingers along his chest, then over his shoulders and down his arms. “But if I delete it, then I can’t look at their pics. Don’t you look at women’s nude pics? Since you value mutual fidelity, right? Mm-hmm.”

He knew exactly what she was referring to. Ages ago, when borrowing his desktop, she had seen his search results auto-populate on his browser. She saw that he had looked up porn and precisely the ENF itch he was scratching. “That’s not the same. I never messaged anybody. And I don’t search for that kind of stuff anymore.”

Fae shook her head gently. “It wouldn’t bother me if you did. I like it that you have an appetite, actually. Don’t you like it that I have an appetite, too?”

Dylan bit his tongue, but in his own mind the answer blared: yes, he did like that she had an appetite, a blazing, bright libido. She wouldn’t be Fae if she didn’t. He wouldn’t want a frigid wife with no craving for men or sex. But that missed the point. The messages and pictures men sent her crossed a line, and he couldn’t get her to acknowledge that much. “I do like it, but…”

She reached for her phone and turned it on, showing it to him. His eyes adjusted, and her finger scrolled through photo after photo that different men had sent her: a bald-bearded guy nude in a lawn chair on a beach, a jar-head taking a mirror selfie with his swollen, veiny dick in his hand, another of a roided gym rat in a locker room flexing his incredibly muscular bare body, and another and another and another.

He pressed her phone away, out of his face, but she swiped his hand away and made him look at more. “No, Dylan, look how popular I am. Look. You need to look.” On her screen, she scrolled through a young thug in a durag resting his ebony erection on a table next to a hundred-dollar bill for scale reference, then a tattooed biker in a leather vest and black boots posing pants-less on his chopper in the sunny Grand Canyon, then a tall, athletically built swimmer standing on a diving board with all his bloated pink male meat hanging out of his tight blue competition briefs.

The rhythmic up-and-down, a weighty slapping each time she dropped, the sensation of her dropping harder and harder, the clap of her ass cheeks on his thighs, he couldn’t last much longer. She pulled off her nightshirt and gave him sight of her breasts moving, that subtle, heavy motion of medium-small mammaries freed and subjected to gravity with each bounce. He couldn’t take it, and he burst inside of her, grunt-hissing and squeezing her thighs.

She then lay beside him, letting his sperm-filled ooze out of her warm, hairy little cream pie onto their bed-sheet. She turned her back to him with a sigh and, with her head on her pillow, continued scrolling through the messages and pics. Dylan watched and read over her shoulder, silent, unable to speak, too curious. A man had sent her details about a meeting, and Fae had simply stopped replying. In another example, she told the man she was married, and the messages stopped. Through all of those she opened, none featured Fae agreeing to meet. Rather, some of them were such benign conversations about movies, novels, current events, daily life, food, and the kinds of things friends might talk about. When the men in those conversations got around to wanting to meet, Fae simply didn’t.

Dylan almost thought to ask if she was just lonely and using these men to burn time chatting; he almost thought to ask if he and she weren’t talking enough about the topics Fae wanted to. He almost felt guilty that he suspected her of cheating when all she wanted was friends.

But then she opened a photo of a total stud, a Viking-looking aesthetic specimen, and went swiping through his whole album. In a moment, she began exhaling and breathing deeply, and Dylan could feel that the bed was moving beneath her. Her free hand between her thighs, Dylan realized she was masturbating to this blond demigod’s photos.

Dylan huffed and turned over aggressively, back-to-back with her. He could feel the light motion emanating into the mattress as she rubbed herself. Then he felt her body tense up against his back; she had orgasmed. She set her phone on the nightstand.

St. Charles, Illinois, February 14th, 2026

The next morning felt to Dylan as if the previous night hadn’t happened. Brushing his teeth in the bathroom mirror, he recalled what Fae had said, but brushed it off and spit it out down the sink drain with the minty foam. Showering, he regretted that Fae hadn’t come before he did, and he scolded himself for not being a better lover. He would try better next time, he told himself.

Coming down the stairs, dressed and ready for the day, he saw that she had made breakfast, and they ate together. Their baby had already been fed, she explained, and she was in the baby pen making baby noises.

Dylan tried making small talk with Fae. He recalled that she had chatted with one of those men online about tariffs of all things, the trade war, the president, and he brought it up. “South Korea is, um, investing in a new auto plant in the Rust Belt to try and, um, defer penalties.”

He waited for Fae to comment copiously as she had for the stranger online, but all he got was, “Yeah?”

And she said no more. Dylan tried again. “Do you think tariffs work, or do they just hurt the consumer?”

Fae put her finger to her lip. “I guess it hurts the consumer. I don’t know.”

It occurred to Dylan that she had engaged in that topic so extensively with the stranger because it was what the stranger wanted to talk about, not because of any genuine interest of hers. “Whatever, forget about it.”

Fae calmly continued eating, sipping her orange juice, and looking at Dylan. She was beautiful, and the light of morning shone through the kitchen window on her in a yellow-orange ray, as if a movie director had set her up meticulously for a romantic scene.

Dylan began to rehash their plan for the day. “I’ll be home by 4:00 or 4:30. We can take an hour to freshen up and then head out, sashimi and a movie, then the river ferry.”

Fae corrected him, chewing sweet ham as she spoke. “I won’t be back until after midnight, Dylan. We discussed this, didn’t we?”

Dylan stopped mid-chew, his knife and fork gently lowered onto his plate. “Fae?”

She put her hand on her hips with authority. “I said I won’t be back until after midnight. OK?”

Dylan’s mouth dropped open in frustration. “We have plans. I mean, we have plans, Fae.”

She cut off a piece of ham and looked up at him, her golden eyes brooding from under her brow. “Dylan?”

He leaned back in his chair. “I’m not playing this game with you. I don’t like it. It’s not fun. It’s beginning to hurt emotionally.”

Fae made a mock pouting face. “Hurt? Today, you get a pass. If you don’t take it before the hand strikes the final hour, I’ll take your pass and use it on myself.”

Dylan forgot his breakfast and scrambled to say something to stop her. “Fae, I said no. I don’t want to have a pass or whatever you call it, and I won’t accept you doing that either. I repeat, no.”

Fae furrowed her brow, knit her nose, and her voice deepened sternly. “Dylan. If you don’t even try to get lucky today, not only will I take another man inside me, but I’ll never, never, never tell you anything.”

Dylan felt dizzy with despair; his hands went numb on the table. “Babe? Please.”

Her tone softened. She said sweetly but with some command behind it, “If you do fail, but you really tried, then I’ll still have my fun, but I’ll answer anything you ask about it. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

Dylan pleaded, “Fae baby, it’s not funny. Don’t say things like that.”

She wasn’t moved. In fact, the meek tone of voice he mustered, as if serious but polite and pleading, only gave her encouragement to press him harder. “Dyl-Dylly… I truly want you to have fun. I’m rooting for you to make it with a woman of your dreams, so I don’t have to do you-know-what. Please try your best. There must be a woman who will give her body to you if you take her out for sashimi, a movie, and the river ferry.”

He clasped his hands over his face. “Stop. I mean it. You are going to do damage to us and…”

She paused and looked at her phone as if Dylan weren’t there. “Oh my God, the time. Dylan, I have to rush now. Take our tiny pookie darling to Grandma’s. I made her bag up; it’s sitting next to her playpen. You don’t need to take anything else.”

Dylan sat frozen. “Wait. Fae. Are you seriously doing this?”

She flew about the kitchen, rinsing off her plate and gathering up her purse and keys. “You can risk that I’m not serious and find out. It’s up to you.”

Dylan caught himself submitting. He was checking that the baby bag was by the playpen, and he was checking that Fae looked good to go out; and he was checking the time to figure out how many hours and minutes remained until midnight, to determine how much time he had. He was already accepting her terms even as he objected to them. With fret, he blurted, his voice cracking, “You don’t need to stop for gas. I filled it up for you yesterday.”

She stopped, turned, smiled sweetly, and came around the table to him. Bending onto his shoulder, her chest into his face, brushing his cheek with her breasts, she kissed the top of his head. “You saved me a lot of time by thinking about me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She lifted his gaze with a fingertip under his chin, kissed him deeply on the lips, and then parted from their embrace.

She opened the cleaning supplies cabinet and pulled from it a red card envelope and a tiny black box with a red bow on it. Placing them on the table before Dylan, she kept her hands on them as she said, “Don’t open until I’m gone. Swear.”

Dylan nodded.

Fae kissed him once more, brushed his hair with her fingers, and then turned to go. “Bye-bye.”

Dylan sat stunned, watching her ass cheeks rise and fall in her jeans, and her hips sway right-left-right. “But where are you going right now?” he called to her.

“Out. Happy Valentine’s Day, honey,” she called back to him as she headed out the front door to the driveway, the door shutting with a wispy final clunk-click seal.