Content Warning (includes slight spoilers): Plot-wise, this is a relatively-quick and dirty one-off seduction fantasy. It involves cheating, reluctance, manipulation and betrayal, basically giving into temptation for the "bad-girl", but I once again tried to take a raunchy premise and give the characters more depth and justifiability than you might expect, with nothing too evil or sadistic intended. Hope you enjoy.
...
Caught Green-Handed.
His eyes opened and he sat up stiffly with a gasp. Sweat pilled his bare chest and he knew it wasn't only from the hot summer night. His heart pounded and he looked around the dark room in agitation. He had a palpable, panicking certainty that his life as he knew it was about to end, though he had already lost track of why. He finally came fully back to reality, exhaled his breath and shook his head at himself. Just a bad dream.
He heard the faint clop of hooves on the cobblestones on the street outside. Only one set. He listened carefully and heard no voices on the street from pub-goers either, and he decided it must indeed be the deep dead of night on the otherwise busy downtown thoroughfare below their apartments.
He heard a noise.
His adrenaline hadn't quite come down from his nightmare and he froze with a stiff frown. It almost sounded like a creak of a board upstairs. No one could be in their residence surely?
They were meticulous with their security, knowing full well the risk of crime this close to the center of the city. Even living in their suite on the second and third floors. If there was a burglar they would have had to climb and break a window to get in. Had that been what woke him up?
He looked over at his sleeping wife next to him. Her long elven ears twitched ever so slightly as they always did when she slept. She didn't have as keen of hearing as some elves did, but still plugged them with cotton when she slept to drown out the street noise. His human ears weren't as sensitive and he simply wasn't as bothered by it. Surely something as loud as breaking glass would have woken her as well though.
He heard another small noise. More like a scratching now. He sighed. If they had rats she was going to freak. She was already almost obsessive about keeping every last crumb off the floor. Elf women were known for being particular. He was as well, he admitted, and probably more so for a human than she was for an elf. He had to be, as an accountant, if he had any hope of keeping his mounds of parchments and writing quills in any order. He sighed at the thought of going back to the office tomorrow and facing the ever-growing piles of work that his more senior colleagues kept unfairly piling on to him. He liked the work and it paid well, but his damned boss...
He put it out of his mind and slipped out of bed. He smiled at his wife's tall lithe figure under the thin sheets, knowing that he wouldn't need to light a candle to find his way out of their bedroom without tripping. Everything would be just so.
He stepped carefully around the bed, knowing by memory where all the creakiest floorboards were. She would nag him to no end tomorrow if she didn't get her sleep. It probably wouldn't have woken her with the cotton in her ears, but he could never be sure, and if there
was
a burglar that he wanted to catch... No he didn't. And, no, there wasn't. It was almost certainly nothing. Still... He smirked mischievously at his secretive skulking, then he shook his head at himself that THIS was the most mischievous thing he had done in recent memory. His wife had her husband well-trained indeed. He slipped out the bedroom door and deftly clicked the door latch.
He waited silently, but heard nothing. He carefully walked over to the kitchen and poured a glass of water, trying to decide whether to look about more thoroughly, or simply go back to bed.
There was another creak and a click. Upstairs.
Dammit
. He thought. He took a breath, worked up his courage, lit an oil-lamp and grabbed the poker from the fireplace as a weapon.
Again, he focused on stepping only on the floorboards that he knew wouldn't creak, taking long, careful steps, stretching, hopping, and contorting to reach the safe spots with athletic balance and determination. It was easy enough in his bare feet, wearing only loose trousers. For now, he was still young and fit, but he wondered if he would ever end up as fat and useless as many of his older colleagues if he continued sitting at a desk for the rest of his life. Young and fit maybe, but certainly no fighter. Was he really up for this? He still made time for games of hogskin with his friends from the college after work on Fridays. It was a good way to take out his frustrations, which seemed to pile ever higher these days. He was no soldier or knight though, and had only taken a few boxing lessons in school.
He worked his way up the stairs, hearing another few scratches and determining that whatever or whoever it was, was in the office. There was a small window there, but it had been locked... He approached the door, trying to decide if a rat, a raccoon, or a burly cut-purse that would bludgeon him to death was more likely on the other side.
He paused and worked up his courage. He needed to get angry. What infuriated him? His work? No. Dammit he loved a file well tallied and documented, and if he was that much faster with the abacus than his partners that they punted more work on to him, then he pitied them more than hated them....His mother in law. That was the ticket. The uppity bitch. His wife's whole family really. He could hear their voices either implying or stating outright - Why did their beloved elven girl have to settle for a lowly human like him? Just the other day they had heard of a tall elven barrister who'd finalized his own divorce, real generous to his ex too. Amazing the bachelors out there really if you look. Didn't you think your husband was going to go from accounting into law when you agreed to marry him? Not as many humans have the wits for it compared to elves though. How's that going so far?
He fumed and his knuckles turned white, grasping the metal poker, flexing his arms and gritting his teeth. It was working.
An accountant was a perfectly respectable job! He didn't care if some of them aimed to be lawyers instead. He didn't. Why didn't his wife ever defend him to her family? Why did she only smirk and bring it up later like it was ammunition for him to 'behave'? He would be miserable as a lawyer. The courtroom was a vipers den. Not even that much better pay. Screw the prestige! He wouldn't be caught dead in one of those stupid wigs!
He set his jaw with conviction and turned the knob slowly to keep it silent. Not silent enough. As it clicked and creaked, he possibly heard a gasp, and then he
definitely
heard a rough scrambling noise and something being knocked down. He focused his anger and felt like he didn't care what happened to him. Fuck it! If it was a raccoon or a vicious thug, either way it was going to die! He opened the door wide and burst through, holding the lamp and the fire poker in front of him with wide-eyed excitement.
Nothing.
A falling paper finished its sliding descent on to the floor off his desk. A coin spun and then settled on the table. The window was open. Not broken. How? His wife made him check the locks every night. There was no one and nothing. There had only been a couple of seconds of scrambling between him turning the latch and opening the door. Had they escaped through the window, that quickly?
Maybe a raccoon after all. He let out a sigh and walked over to shut the window, locking it again. Then he turned around and saw the chest was open. His wife's jewellery box... empty.
"Damn!" he exclaimed, spinning back to the window and then back to the empty room.
He growled in frustrated anger, nothing he could do about the thief who was probably halfway down the street by now. His wife's heirloom pearls. The ruby necklace he had bought her for their honeymoon. Most of their saved money was in the bank, but the amount of coins in the chest and the desk drawers had not been insignificant either. He flexed his arms and body wanting to attack something with the fire-poker, his veins popping on his lean muscles, but eventually, feeling impotent and useless, he decided he would only do more damage. He finally relaxed, setting it down on the desk, along with the oil lamp.
He stared distantly at the mess around him, sighed and ran his hands through his thick brown hair.
"Damn..." a barely audible whisper sounded somewhere in the room.
He frowned. Had he imagined it? It was high pitched and female, and almost sounded... admiring? He felt suddenly exposed, standing shirtless in his loose trousers, and looked around the room again in paranoia, feeling watched. He told himself he must have imagined it. There was no one here.