Corrupt.

Part One.

'Coffee?'

The grey bubble of his text blurs behind the lids of your eyes even as you try to block it out. Coffee. Since when did you do fucking coffee? Childhood sweethearts, it's a biannual tradition to split a bottle or three of gin in a pub where nobody knows your name – a hotel where you pretend to be Mr and Mrs Wilson – but never meet-ups between or texts that consist of anything other than booking information. This is wrong. Its three months until you're due to meet again, your husband still in town and preoccupied with some new gang that has his station run ragged as they lock more of these thugs up. You know it's something to do with home - ironically all to do with John and his wrongens of a family – dragging the man you're trying to share your life with away from you at all hours of the day.

It's three in the morning and you're still thinking of a reply hoping he can't see the dots appear and disappear every time you tap on the backspace. It's nothing sexual or it would be alcohol he's inviting you for, pure innocence if it's during daylight hours. You're not giving consent to anything that could threaten his marriage or yours if you just say yes. Old school friends talking about children and careers that is all. Reminiscing about the past not stuck in the present with each other's bodies.

'Where and at what time?'

He replies back with an address thirty minutes across town, a bunch of new builds you'd actively campaigned against and a small commercial centre with more Starbucks than local businesses. Twelve hours' time you realise after counting them out. Public and on display, exactly where you would be forced to behave. The snore of your husband reminds you of how your life is nothing more than that; behaving. You need John, the excitement of your six monthly liaisons and the danger that comes with them. You need him more than you've ever needed any other man in your whole life.

Your hands slip between your legs thinking of the static that comes with his beard as he helps you out of your thigh highs, the way its roughness draws down your ankles as he hooks each one over his shoulders making you bend your knees as he crawls up the mattress. The way you gasp as he flicks the bands of your suspender belt whilst biting at the apex of your thighs each side in turn. He treats your body like it's made of marble, appreciating each and every variation of marks as he kisses your skin. His tongue is always warm and wet, as comforting between your legs as his lips wrapped around your clit. The first man you'd ever been with and the only one to understand your body.

You let your fingers try and mimic his mouth, the other hand trying to block out the heaviness of your breathing as the man you're married to sleeps with his back to your arching form. Even when he pays you attention he can't get you in that state of your Birmingham boy, one word however mundane more effective than years of what he would call dirty talk. All you have to do is think about how loud John had made you, the way the headboard hit the wall with every thrust of his hips and you're tightening around your knuckles and trying hard not to cry out for him.

Coffee. What harm could one cup do?

---

You're not sure how long you sit in the car for, the text from your husband telling you that he won't be home for dinner more infuriating than you could ever expect it to be. You're about to meet another man, albeit innocently, but still you understand that you hardly have the moral authority to be so outraged by him working late again. The second week of thirteen-hour shifts is starting to frustrate not just your marriage but your sex life too, however stagnant it might be. Your hands beat the steering wheel and the lights of the parking garage make the platinum of your wedding band look orange as it clings to the leather stitching and your head falls against the horn without even intending too as you debate just taking it off.