We left the twins with the sitter (boy and girl, seven, finally asleep after three stories and two glasses of water). The masks were already on when we came downstairs, black lace for me, obsidian for Lucas. The sitter barely glanced up from her phone, just waved with a sleepy “Have fun, text if you need me.” We slipped out before she could notice the lace or the void.

The Uber smelled of pine air freshener and someone else’s cigarettes. We sat in the back holding hands the way we did on our first date, except now our fingers knew every scar and callus by heart. Streetlights strobed across the masks, turning the lace into spiderwebs, the obsidian into voids. Neither of us spoke. Third Friday belonged to the Abyss, and the Abyss had never asked for words.

The steel door behind the dumpster opened like it had been waiting. The bouncer lifted the velvet rope without checking names. Inside, the air hit like a fever: bass low enough to rattle teeth, red LEDs bleeding across bodies that moved like they’d forgotten gravity existed. We paused on the threshold, letting the room scan us, allowing it to decide if we still belonged. It decided yes. Barry, the bartender, had our drinks waiting for us before we reached the oak. Martini, two olives speared like tiny green hearts. Whiskey, two fingers, no ice. He didn’t smile; he never did. Just slid the glasses forward and turned to the next shadow. Lucas lifted his drink in a small salute, but only I saw. I answered with mine. The brine cut through the smoke, sharp and perfect.

We moved.

The corridor swallowed us in pulses of scarlet light. Each step echoed like a heartbeat on concrete. Behind the last curtain, the private alcove waited: one long mirror, no cracks, no mercy. The door sealed behind us with a soft hiss that sounded like the city exhaling. I set my martini on the narrow ledge and sank to my knees on the cold floor. Lucas’s belt buckle was warm from his skin. The zipper rasped like a secret finally told. He rose heavy into my palm, flushed dark, a bead of wet trembling at the crown. I took him slow, lips sliding down until my tongue pressed flat against the underside and my throat closed around him like a confession. His hands threaded my hair, steady, guiding without forcing, while I worked him with tongue and teeth and the kind of hunger that doesn’t ask permission.

Halfway down, I reached blindly for his glass, tipped it just enough. Amber spilled over the head, ran in thin rivers down the shaft. I chased every drop, licked him clean, swallowed him again until the taste of whiskey and skin blurred into one perfect note. He groaned, hips jerking. I pinned them to the wall and took him deeper, until mascara streaked and the mirror showed me a woman who owned every inch of this moment.

He hauled me up, spun me, pressed my front to the glass. My breath fogged the silver; my nipples peaked hard against the chill of the mirror. Black skirt rucked to my waist, lace shredded in one clean tear. He spread me open, groaned at the slick heat waiting for him, then entered me in one slow, devastating thrust. I watched us in the reflection: my mouth open, tits bouncing, his jaw clenched in raw hunger. He pulled out slowly, slammed in again, setting a rhythm that cracked my spine against the glass with every stroke.

The curtain parted. Red silk dress. Midnight leather mask. They froze in the doorway, two silhouettes carved out of crimson light. We froze with them, Lucas buried deep, my palms flat on the mirror, breath caught somewhere between a moan and a prayer. Four heartbeats. Five.

Then the woman in red stepped inside, let the curtain fall, and simply watched. Her partner followed, hand resting lightly on her lower back. No words. No masks lifted. Just the weight of their gaze on our skin like another set of hands.

Lucas didn’t stop. He met the stranger’s gaze through the slits and fucked me harder, hips snapping, my palms squeaking against the glass with every thrust. I came staring at the woman in red, walls clamping down so hard Lucas groaned and spilled deep, heat flooding me in thick pulses that dripped down my thighs the instant he pulled free.

We stayed bent over, trembling, catching breath that tasted like smoke and sin. The woman in red moved first. Her hand slipped beneath the slit of her dress, fingers circling slowly, deliberate, the red silk shifting with every stroke. Her partner leaned against the wall, freed himself, stroked in perfect time with Lucas’s aftershocks still pulsing inside me. Lucas stepped back, picked up his whiskey, took a slow sip, eyes never leaving them. I stayed pressed to the mirror, thighs trembling, watching them watch us.

Then the woman in red crossed the room, sank to her knees in front of Lucas, and took him into her mouth, still slick with me. I turned, dropped beside her, wrapped both hands around the midnight-leather man’s cock in a slow, twisting pull, then took him deep, tongue swirling, cheeks hollowed, devouring every inch while my eyes stayed locked on Lucas and the woman in red.

I watched my husband’s hips rock forward, watched red lips stretch around him, watched her throat work as she swallowed him to the root. My hands twisted in opposite directions on the stranger’s shaft, slick with spit, pumping him in a rhythm that matched Lucas’s thrusts into her mouth.

I pulled off just long enough to spit on the head, then retook him, deeper, until my nose pressed against him and tears streaked the lace mask. Lucas hauled the woman up first, bent her over the mirror right beside where I’d just been. The man behind me rose and pressed me down beside her. Side by side now, red silk and black skirt both rucked high.

Lucas entered her in one brutal thrust. I kept my mouth on the midnight leather man, sucking hard, hands twisting, eyes never leaving Lucas as he disappeared into red silk again and again. The man’s fingers tangled in my hair, guiding me faster, deeper, until my jaw ached and spit dripped down my chin.

Then he pulled me off his cock, spun me, and pressed me down beside his wife. He entered me from behind (thick, unfamiliar, stretching me open while I watched my husband fuck another woman). Lucas’s eyes locked on mine, dark and feral, as he drove into her harder, faster, the mirror showing every filthy detail: her tits bouncing under red silk, my mouth open in a silent scream as the stranger filled me.

I came watching Lucas fuck her, came so hard, tears streaked the lace mask, walls clamping down around a cock that wasn’t my husband’s. The rhythm broke me open; every thrust pushed me closer to the edge of something I’d never come back from. Lucas followed seconds later, burying himself in the woman in red, pulsing thick ropes that leaked out around him the moment he pulled free.

The man behind me withdrew instantly, crossed to his wife, pushed into her dripping, Lucas-slick heat, and fucked her in short, savage strokes. Lucas leaned back against the wall, whiskey glass dangling from his fingers, watching like a king who’d just claimed new territory.

I slid down to the floor, legs spread wide, fingers plunging into myself, eyes locked on the mirror as the man used Lucas’s cum as lube to fuck his wife harder, faster, until he added his own load with a broken sound that echoed in my bones. She stayed bent over the mirror, trembling, red dress rucked high, two men’s spend leaking down her thighs in slow, obscene rivers that caught the red light like liquid rubies.

I crawled to her on shaking knees. Spread her open with trembling fingers. Licked every drop of all four of us from her swollen folds (Lucas’s heat, her husband’s salt, her sweetness, my own ghost still clinging to her skin) until the concrete gleamed clean.

My tongue circled her clit, plunged inside, curled, and sucked. She came against my mouth with a silent scream, hips bucking, fingers tangled in my hair. I kept going, fingers buried in myself, riding my own hand until I followed her over the edge, thighs shaking, pussy clenching around nothing but the taste of them all.

Only then did she reach up, slow, and lift her mask.

Mom.

The man lifted his.

Dad.

The room tilted. Sound vanished. The bass outside became a heartbeat in my ears that wasn’t mine—four heartbeats of pure, airless horror. Masks hit the floor like gunshots.

Mom’s lipstick was smeared across her mouth like a wound. Dad’s tie hung loose, collar open, the same navy shirt he’d worn to the twins’ school play last spring. My thighs were still slick with the man who wasn’t my husband. Lucas’s whiskey glass slipped from his fingers, shattered on the concrete, amber spreading like blood.

No one screamed.

No one spoke.

Lucas grabbed my hand so hard the bones ground together.

We bolted left. They bolted right.

The corridor stretched into a tunnel of red light and distant moans that sounded like laughter. We burst through the steel door into the alley, cold air slapping skin, masks left behind like sloughed-off skins.

The Uber was still there, hazard lights blinking. We fell into the back seat, slammed the door, and told the driver, “Go,” in voices that cracked like teenagers.

He drove. We didn’t look at each other. Streetlights strobed across our bare faces, turning us into strangers every three seconds. Home appeared too soon. The rocket-ship night-light glowed over the twins’ doors like nothing had changed.

The sitter had left the porch light on and a note: Hope you had fun! Lasagna tomorrow? We paid her triple through the app, adding a tip that would confuse her for weeks.

Upstairs, we shut the bedroom door with the soft click we use when the kids are asleep. Moonlight striped the bed in silver bars sharp enough to cut. We undressed in silence, clothes falling in one shared pile that smelled like smoke and sex and the ghost of red silk.

I crawled in first. Lucas followed, pulled me against his chest so tight I could feel his heart trying to hammer its way out of his ribs and into mine. His arms locked around me, palms spread wide across my back like he could hold every shattered piece in place if he just never let go. I buried my face in his neck, tasted smoke and sweat and the salt of tears neither of us would admit to shedding.

We didn’t speak. We just held each other in the dark, breathing the same stunned air, two parents who had sung lullabies to twins and packed lunches with dinosaur sandwiches and now carried a secret that would rot us from the inside out.

The fan turned slowly above us, pushing warm air that did nothing to dispel the chill under our skin. The clock flipped to 3:00 a.m. in silent red numbers that looked like fresh blood.

Outside, the first bird called, thin and uncertain, like it wasn’t sure the world still deserved morning. Inside, we stayed wrapped together, counting heartbeats that no longer felt like ours, waiting for a dawn that would come whether we wanted it to or not.

It would.

We would let it.

We would smile at breakfast.

We would kiss the twins goodbye.

We would go to work.

And we would never tell.