Heart In A Cage

48

Andreas

Andreas was going to give his wife a gift.

He had let her bind his body to the bed, have his wrists separated and locked at the top corners of their headboard as she seductively sauntered away, hips alternating from side to side, red hair flowing.

He calmed himself, even as he noticed she was aiming for the door. It had been ajar. He hadn't noticed that it slipped open. He thought she had closed it.

He expected her to gracefully nudge it shut, then return to him to get the most out of the gift she'd been given. But he hadn't expected her to offer her hand to a male figure that emerged from within their corridor. He hadn't expected him, their employee, to take her fingers and be led to the foot of the bed where they both stood, vicious grins plaguing their faces.

Most of all, he hadn't expected his wife to kneel before the man. Obeying his orders as she was naked at his feet.

Andreas' heart quaked and begged, cried out below his heaving chest as belts were unbuckled and clothes were stripped before him. Dalia looked at him before the peak of her scheme begun, and, even bared at order of another man, ready to pleasure him, was bold enough to say, "Forgive me. I still want you, but I have my reasons."

He never found out the reasons.

Because after five minutes of shedding tears, wrenching his eyes shut, and hearing his wife gag and her counterpart groan, he was no longer attached to the headboard.

The wood on either side fractured as his wrists charged forward, and the sound of that breakage had separated his wife and the employee. They stood frightened, and the wife rose from the floor, panicking beside the man.

But Andreas didn't pounce on him or cleave his neck with his bare hands like he wanted to. He looked at his wife, and he hoped that in that moment of concentrating on her, brittle and near destroyed, that she'd know what she tore apart.

So he left the room. He shut the door behind him and waited there to hear the remainder of the harrowing scenario unravel—just to make sure his wife was enjoying it. Just to make sure that there wouldn't be a call for help, a refusal made to what the man was doing with her, or any hesitance to continue.

The words and intimate sighs that were exchanged told him that she wanted it.

He dropped to the floor. He cried behind the door. She was the reason he promised himself he wouldn't love anymore.

He didn't think he'd be capable of it anyway.

⚘

Hundred-pound dumbbells.

Squats under iron bars.

A torn boxing bag.

Limitless numbers of push ups.

A four-mile hike.

I slump by the base of the stairs, legs shaking with an ache. My arms vibrate beneath my soaked long-sleeved top. And my hair—so wet, dripping with sweat that beads on my forehead, drenched in water from the sputtering rain that had showered me the entire agonizing jog.

Thoughts of Bella are weighing me down, making moving so hard that now, I'm dragging myself up the stairs, slogging to my room where I drop to my knees.

"I'm..." My head is in a turmoil, vision shrinking as the throbbing in my muscles begins to kick in after a day dedicated to torturing myself in and out the gym. "I'm a fucking idiot."