It wasn't difficult to pinpoint the moment it started to go wrong, at least not in Sam's mind. He'd been dating Ellie for a good while and things were getting serious between them, very serious indeed. There was talk of marriage, mostly from her side to be fair, but still -- the question was out there. Which would have been fine, they were both coming up to the big 3-0 after all, what better time to settle down and move onto the next stage in their lives?
But then the doubts started, and Sam came to the conclusion that if he was going to marry Ellie, then he needed to come clean about his... unconventional desires. And so one day he sat her down and poured his heart out, he told her how much he loved her and how he wanted to be with her, but he had to come clean about his fantasies.
Ellie listened as he told her how he fantasised about being dominated by her, how he thought about her making him lick her pussy when he'd cum inside her, how he wanted to be teased and denied... even how he dreamed about watching her with someone else. It didn't go well. She didn't say much, it just kind of hung in the air like a bad smell... thereafter they both acted like it had never happened, hoping it would fade away, never to be mentioned again. But that never works, does it? Sam felt stupid, he wished he'd never said anything, sex became infrequent, awkward and unrewarding as they both tried to act as if everything was normal, but it was impossible.
Clearly the damage was done, Ellie became distant and the marriage talk stopped. It was clear she was disconnecting gradually and then one night they both just realised they needed to move on. They behaved impeccably, no arguments or recriminations, just a measured acceptance that this wasn't going to work out. Sam moved his stuff into the spare room and they co-existed as friends, he was looking for somewhere to go but was slowly coming to realise that his only real option was home to his parents. The thought of it sent chills down his spine, how could he have fucked all this up so badly and so quickly?
Three weeks down the line it was clearly time to move on, Sam got home to find Ellie ready to go out. She looked stunning and he felt like the biggest idiot on God's Earth. She moved around the flat in her 4" heels, her toned legs taunting him from under her little black dress. Someone was going to be hitting that tonight and it wasn't going to be him, he told himself. Ellie heard the taxi beep outside and walked past Sam towards the door, she looked over her shoulder at him, her gorgeous, long blond hair cascading down her back.
"I'll see you... later, maybe..." she said, with a hint of sadness in her voice.
"Yeah, okay... have a good time," he said, struggling to force the words out of his throat.
Ellie turned and Sam listened as her heels clacked down the stairs to the waiting taxi, he'd never felt so alone in his life. He slumped on the sofa for the first two hours of the evening, unable to think about anything but Ellie. It dawned on him slowly that this was what it felt like to be cuckolded, waiting alone while another man fucks your wife... he snapped himself out of it, Ellie wasn't his wife, she was a free agent and so was he, except... she was the only one who was out there looking. Besides, she was beautiful, but that didn't mean she was going to let just anyone fuck her... would she?
He turned to drink, it seemed the obvious answer and by midnight he was in bed, a half empty bottle of vodka on the bedside table. Everything would look better in the morning, he told himself. Beating himself up wasn't the answer, just accept it and move on, that's the spirit. Eventually he found peace in sleep.
--- --- --- --- --- ---
It was nearly 3am when he woke up, there was someone in the flat... he looked to the door and saw the light underneath. It took him a minute and then he remembered, it was Ellie coming home. He gave a huge sigh and turned over, the light went out and there was silence for a while. It must have been about ten minutes later when he heard his door creaking open, he had almost got back to sleep but the spare room door was notoriously squeaky and Ellie wasn't the quietest of drunks.
