Delicia looked at her laptop. It sat on her small PC desk, a kit desk her husband bought her at a discount warehouse. He assembled the desk. She bought the laptop.
It was 10 p.m. and she had just put her two daughters to bed. Young girls, innocents.
They were boisterous, but they had quieted down. Galeez, only 5, and Beatriz, 8. They shared a room down the hall, which was across the kitchen and living room from the master bedroom.
Her son, Noel, 15, was hard at work, struggling to finish his math assignment in the living room.
Delicia's husband, working a second shift, wouldn't be home until 2:30 a.m. at the earliest.
Delicia spent her evenings without her husband. She fell asleep alone, five nights a week. She hated it, but it was a dull hate that she was resigned to live with.
She loved her husband of 17 years, but they had drifted apart.
She had fond memories of their dating years, their honeymoon phase. He was young and fit and physically well-endowed where it counted. He had a quiet and sweet temperament and was playful in bed.
But he was undisciplined in her personal habits. He ate too much. He drank too much. He was lazy. He grew fat. He became a drunkard.
Time wasn't kind to him. He became obese and short of breath and the lovemaking changed for the worse. She did all the work in bed. Sometimes, she faked orgasms. She didn't used to have to do that.
She encouraged him, would plead with him to take care of himself. But he didn't put in the effort and as time passed, she became disappointed with him, with what she felt she was missing.
But he was a nice man, a good provider, a good father. She wanted to stick it out. But what once was something she thought was forever changed into something that made her think: "Stick it out ... for how long?"
And that thought, it was like a dagger of doubt in her heart. It frightened her. She felt vulnerable to temptation.
Then there was the affair. That one slip-up that turned into a torrid two-year, heart-pounding, gut-wrenching race into obsession and insanity.
It was behind her now. She was grateful on most days that she wasn't so out of control. But the fear of a relapse was ever-present.
She had changed. She had broken once, treated like a slut by her lover. She came away from that shattered and it had taken her years to put the pieces of her psyche back together. And something dark festered in her, always under the surface, this nagging dread of the proximity of her dark side.
So she would go to her laptop, and log into adult chat rooms. She never intended to meet any of the men she had chats with. She was careful to hide her identity.
It was just her guilty pleasure. A naughty chat, some role-play. She would masturbate. She would stay with it until she came and then, no matter where the conversation was, she would log off. She would escape back into her safe world. Her real world.
Delicia knew the difference. She knew that good women who protect their reputation wonder what it would be like to go to the dark side, to be the temptress, to be that sensuous slut.
She had a taste of that side. But it was like a mighty octopus that wrapped its tentacles around her and dragged her deeper in. It filled her with fear and self-loathing. It made her sick to hide her sins from her family, her neighbors and co-workers and her church.
She had escaped it once. She didn't want to go back down that path, but something in her kept her stuck at the crossroads of good and bad, and she was always looking at what might wait for her down the other road.
And it certainly didn't help her powers of restraint that she was beautiful.
Even at 38 years of age, she was a breathtaking vision of sexual vitality.
The daughter of a tall, athletic Puerto Rican father and a curvy Mexican mother, Delicia was a cinnamon-colored woman with thick shoulder-length dark brown hair.
She had olive-brown eyes, a broad nose on a handsome face. She carefully kept her eyebrows sleek and narrow. She had full lips that she liked to paint a dark plum.
She stood 5 feet, 8 inches tall. She weighed 165 pounds. She had a 42D-32-44 figure and she was meticulous about her wardrobe. She like her clothes to fit tight without being slutty. She wore size 16 or 18 dresses.
She was a curvy, voluptuous, athletic mama who power-walked in the park, and fastidiously kept up with her pilates exercises.
But she didn't do it all for her husband. She did it for herself. And she did it because she enjoyed the looks and compliments she got from other men.
She wasn't a flirt, but she could be coy and gracious when complimented on her body. She was as vain as any woman.
And she had a killer body. She just didn't know what to do with it.
"If I was a slut. What if I was a slut? A dirty cum bucket whore?"
This is what she asked herself, every time she turned on the laptop. This is what haunted her, the way her one affair haunted her, the way her sexual appetite tormented her.
And she would tell herself, "I can't. I can't be that. I would disappoint my parents, shock my friends, be a horrible example to my children. I would break my husband's heart. I would be so ashamed, my reputation would be shredded. I've worked so hard, tried so hard to behave, to preserve a normal family environment."
But she could be a virtual slut. She could do that. It felt safe.
So she turned on the laptop and searched for her favorite adult chat room and signed on under her username: SlutWife.
Her profile exaggerated her sexual depravity. 'Curvy latina MILF, cheating slut who fucks the men in the neighborhood when hubby is away. Here for chat, roleplay.'
And that was all she wanted. She would have been content with that guilty pleasure. But the men invariably wanted more. And as time passed she found it difficult to maintain a contact that was good at keeping her horny unless she shared more of herself.
Her first concession was to start emailing provocative photographs of herself. Darkened images of her backside naked, crotch shots of her black bush pussy. Profile pics of her pulling at her nipples.
It was naughty but it seemed safe.
But they always wanted more of her. Another pic, a nastier pic. And there were constant requests for phone sex.
That was her next concession. She gave in and had voice conversations through online messenger accounts.
