Content warning: This chapter includes a sex act between two women.
This story is a fantasy. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is strictly coincidental.
Tysons Corner, Virginia, November 2007
Amanda pulled aside her living room curtain, checking to see if Michelle had arrived. It was Friday evening, following a difficult week, and Amanda needed her best friend's caring and support. It had only been a week since they'd last talked, but it seemed like longer.
In the interim, hopefully nothing had gone wrong with her friend's divorce, which Michelle had filed a couple of months earlier. Dirk, Michelle's soon-to-be ex-husband, was a physician and head of the CIA medical department. Privately, Amanda thought he was an untrustworthy, volatile, controlling man, and she couldn't wait for Michelle to be rid of him.
Michelle pulled her bright red Miata into the driveway. Amanda met her at the door.
"Thanks for coming, Michelle," said Amanda, giving her a hug. "What a horrible week. I really need to talk."
Michelle pulled her close. When she finally let go, Amanda saw she was fighting back tears. Apparently, her own issues would have to wait.
"Are you ok? Hey, what's going on?"
Michelle's lip quivered, but she clamped her jaw for a moment, then cleared her throat. "I'm fine. The divorce is off." Her smile seemed forced. "We're back together."
Amanda raised her eyebrows. "What? That's good, I guess, but --"
Michelle's faΓ§ade began to crumble again. Taking her by the hand, Amanda led her into the living room.
Michelle perched on the edge of the sofa and hugged herself. "Swear you won't tell anyone. Ever."
Amanda scoffed. "You know I won't. But now you're scaring me."
"I made a big mistake."
Amanda sat down beside her and rubbed her back.
Michelle leaned in, her shoulder pressing against Amanda's breast. "Dirk wasn't the only one who cheated. I had an affair too."
Amanda nodded, concealing her surprise. "That's understandable." Michelle's soft blonde hair tickled her nose, and she breathed in the lavender scent of her shampoo.
Her memory flashed to a Saturday evening in July. On the way to her meeting with Shane Ellison at the bar of the Shenandoah Towers Hotel in West Uniondale, she'd caught a glimpse of Michelle entering Chez Matisse, the hotel's exclusive restaurant, accompanied by Vladimir Tursunov.
Amanda knew Vladimir: He'd been on call to provide a backup escape route through Uzbekistan during her mission to Iran, which thankfully she hadn't needed. More recently, she'd provided intelligence for a black op in which Vladimir had played a leading role. The child of Uzbek immigrants, he was based in Tashkent, and they'd likely collaborate again in the future.
At the time, she'd assumed that, if it was indeed Vladimir, it was probably a business discussion, but now she recognized Chez Matisse wasn't an appropriate place to take a co-worker, given its cozy bordello-red velvet banquettes for two and flickering candlelight. Moreover, Michelle had worn a short emerald cocktail dress with matching heels. Could Vladimir be the man Michelle was seeing?
Few could claim to be Michelle's equal in attractiveness, but Vladimir was conventionally handsome, and his quiet, serious self-assurance complimented Michelle's outgoing, fun-loving personality. Then Amanda remembered her own torrid night with Vladimir, months ago, after an evening of celebratory drinking. It was probably best not to mention it, given Michelle's jealous reaction on learning Dirk had performed Amanda's medical exam.
Michelle was continuing to speak. "What should I do?" She leaned away to meet Amanda's eye.
"Oh. Sorry, I was still, um, trying to process the bit about your affair. I'm not being critical, it's just... I thought I knew you better than anyone. How long?"
"Since July. A few days after I found Dirk's collection of video clips of his medical exams. You know, the ones where he shackled his prettiest patients to his exam table and made them cum."
As Amanda picked distractedly at the sofa's silk brocade upholstery, Michelle looked down at her feet. "I'm sorry, I should have told you. But he's Agency, and he works nothing but code word ops, super sensitive stuff. He and I both should have reported our relationship, but neither of us did."
Oh, shit, it is Vladimir, thought Amanda. She felt the burden of a dangerous secret settle on her shoulders.
"Anyway, after a couple of months, Dirk became suspicious."
Amanda shuddered, remembering how manipulative Dirk could be, even in social situations. "Did he catch you?"
Michelle shook her head. "Nothing like that." She grimaced. "Dirk works late a lot, and sometimes I used to bring him Chinese takeout. After dinner, he'd bolt the door."
She brushed the hair out of her eyes, and took a deep breath. "He always liked to put his stethoscope inside my top, and touch my breasts, and pretend it was an accident. Then he'd tell me he needed to do a full exam. I know, it's super gross, don't say it."
She sucked her teeth. "I would have to lie on the table, perfectly still, and tell him about my day while he put his hand up my skirt and tried to make me lose my train of thought. It always ended with him doing me, um, in the stirrups."
She cleared her throat. "Pretty twisted, but nobody chooses their kinks, right? I played along. But once I found those videos, I couldn't stomach it anymore. Eventually, we fought about it. I stopped bringing him dinner, and he worked late more, or so he claimed."
She took Amanda's hand and looked at her with shining eyes. "I felt so lonely, and undesirable, and needy, and at this point, I knew Dirk had been cheating constantly since before we were even married, so I looked for a boyfriend. Fair is fair, right?"
Amanda nodded.
"About that time, I went to this meeting, and I sat beside this hot guy I didn't know. He was polite, and he tried not to be obvious, but I kept catching him looking at me. I'd just served Dirk with the divorce papers, so I told myself I was single again. I slipped my rings off, and casually put my hand beside his notebook.
"He saw my hand, but I could just tell he was too well-mannered to make a move. The end of the meeting was approaching, so I touched his wrist under the table, and smiled at him.
"Everybody else got up to leave, but he stayed in his chair, and... oh, my god, this is terrible to say. We'd barely said three words to each other, but I just had to bone him. My boss was on vacation, and I asked his admin to borrow his office. I pulled the guy in there, and raised my skirt, and put his hand on my crotch, and he fucked me, right there on my bosses' desk.
"The very next day, he caught a black op. He was gone for weeks, and I started to think it was just a one-off. I felt bereft. Meanwhile, Dirk would occasionally come home. He was distant, he wasn't affectionate anymore, and he had nothing to say, but he still wanted to fuck. Then he'd leave.
"For a while, I thought there was a chance we might reconcile, so I still let him fuck me whenever he wanted, but then my new guy returned, and we started hooking up. After two weeks, I fell in love with him. But when I started saying no to Dirk, he became upset. He didn't understand. I considered saying I saw the videos, but I didn't want to admit I'd used a keylogger to hack his home computer. That's when he became suspicious. He wanted to know where I was all the time. A few --" She looked away.
"Go ahead."
"A few times, I said I was meeting you for drinks when I was really seeing my boyfriend, and after a while, Dirk thought I was having an affair with you." She blushed, looking away. "I mean, crazier things have happened, right?"
Amanda pinked as well. She'd never imagined anyone would think she and Michelle were anything more than best friends. The idea that someone as powerful as Dirk would suspect them of having a lesbian workplace affair was unsettling.
"Anyway, he knows a director in Counterintelligence, who had one of his agents surveil me. Instead of finding you, he brought back pictures of my boyfriend."
"Shit. What happened?"
"That was two weeks ago. Since then, Dirk has become insanely jealous. He's threatening to have my friend assigned to some awful long-term op that keeps him overseas permanently."
Her voice cracked. "I love my boyfriend, Amanda. If I was never going to see him again, I couldn't bear it."
"I'm so sorry." As Amanda squeezed Michelle's shoulder, she heard a rumble of distant thunder.
"I didn't tell you the worst part yet." She took a shaky breath. "Dirk said I had to withdraw the divorce, but I refused. The next morning, he had Security bring me to Medical. When we got to the exam room, he blindfolded me.
"I felt him tugging at the hem of my top. He told me to raise my arms over my head. I was frightened, but I obeyed him, and of course he pulled it off. Then he unzipped my skirt, and suddenly I'm standing there, in front of those two gorillas, in just my bra and panties. I tried to pretend we were alone, but I couldn't stop thinking about those guys looking at me."
Amanda felt nauseous. They were both 23, and had completed the same training, yet Michelle's bubbly, flirtatious style and appearance reminded her of a young woman of 19 or 20, and Amanda still thought of her as an innocent. The thought of her being so crassly exploited was sickening.
"You can guess what happened. He unhooked my bra, and pulled down my panties, and there I was, naked. Even though I couldn't see their faces, I felt so embarrassed. I badly wanted to cover myself, but I remembered how much he hates other men looking at me, even fully clothed, so just to spite him I made myself clasp my hands behind me, letting them look.
"Someone grabbed my waist and boosted me onto the exam table. They strapped me down and shackled my hands above my head. They put my feet in those locking stirrups, and I thought, this is just like in the videos. I knew he was about to fuck me, but I could tell both guys were still in the room. Surely, he would send them away first.
"But he didn't. He let them watch."
"How humiliating."
"It was. But that's how he used to do me when I brought him dinner."