The Bet: Part 6

Hello Everyone!

Thanks for bearing with me as I enter writing crunch time at the end of the month to finish some projects that are due. I'm a decent way into Cumbunny 7, so count on seeing that before the end of the month!

Please enjoy The Bet part 6! A bit of a set-up chapter here, rather than a sex-heavy one, but I thought it was important to dip back into Dan's perspective. One programming note: there will be a special release tomorrow of a very very short part 6.5, because I wanted two votes to influence what happens next, but couldn't think of a way to do it elegantly in one poll.

I hope you enjoy! Please vote and comment! Really enjoyed seeing the spirited discussion last time!

...

Zane had to hold back a laugh as he walked into Claire’s office the next day. Bingo. Bullseye. It looked like he had scored a direct hit. 

To the untrained eye, it might look like the lovely, confident woman behind the desk had the same dismissive expression of hate and disgust she had always worn when looking at Zane. But he knew better. There was an obsessive edge in her eyes now. Claire still hated him, but after he had questioned her choice in men, she also felt like she had something to prove. An axe to grind. And that was why Zane was here today. He wanted to strengthen that reaction and mold it to his purposes. 

That was exactly why he had sent his audacious request to Claire last night. 

“Mr. Kruger,” said Claire icily, “Welcome. Before we continue, I want to address the inappropriate remarks you made about my personal life yesterday. Let me make one thing perfectly clear. In order for me to work on this project, you and I need to have a professional relationship of utmost respect.”

Zane sat heavily in the chair across from the beautiful, arrogant woman he planned to make his depraved submissive slut. She wouldn’t be making demands from him soon… just asking sweetly. Begging. But for now, it didn’t pay to be hasty. Pushing too hard too fast would spook her. 

“I’m an unfiltered guy,” said Zane in a flat voice, leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed over his flabby chest. “I say what’s on my mind. But I recognize that I run in social circles that might be a little less… polished than yours. So if you felt uncomfortable over what I said, then I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t make me uncomfortable,” said Claire sharply, leaning forward on her elbows with an intense expression. 

“Then what’s the issue?” asked Zane, raising a questioning eyebrow. 

Claire glared at him for a long moment, then blinked and shook her head, moving on quickly from the awkward exchange without even extracting a real apology from Zane. “...Anyway. I called you here today to give you some options for design elements. Let’s get right to business.”

Zane smiled and stroked his chin. “Excellent. I wanted to pick your brain on the design for my trophy case. I think that just having hooks in a glass case is a little, I don’t know… boring? I was hoping you might have some fresh visual ideas.”

Claire’s face had hardened into an angry scowl as he talked, and Zane had to repress a smirk. Claire really was too predictable. 

“I made myself quite clear in my response to your insane suggestion last night,” snapped Claire, playing with a lock of hair distractedly as she stared daggers at the infuriating man across from her. “I’m not designing anything of the sort for you. You can commission someone with looser morals to build your disgusting monument to misogyny after I’m finished. I won’t have any part in it.”

Zane’s smile was wide and toothy as a shark’s. Perfect. This was exactly what he wanted. A firmly drawn line in the sand that he could pressure Claire to cross. Submission was a state of mind, and some women had never learned that way of thinking. Claire was a prime example. She had always insulated herself from strong, dominant men, never putting herself in a position where she had to bend to someone else’s will. Zane would need to patiently teach her how to surrender. 

You couldn’t rush to sexual submission first. That would flow naturally once Claire learned to give in to Zane’s desires in other ways. This was why he had sent Claire a design request he knew she would refuse. It would be Claire’s first lesson in submitting to him when she finally gave in and accepted the request she had so firmly refused. 

“My room is supposed to reflect my style,” said Zane calmly, “and also be functional for my everyday life. This trophy case is important to me. It represents who I am. I’m not asking you to like it, but if you’re designing a bedroom for someone like me, you had to have known sex would be involved.”

Claire stared him dead in the eye across her desk, her gaze blazing with contempt. “Zane, read my lips. I am not going to design a special case for you to display the underwear of women you tricked into having sex with you. It’s not going to happen.”

Zane stared back at her, sparks flashing between them in a battle of wills. Zane could see that there was no way Claire would give in today. He hadn’t expected her to, and honestly, he would have been a little disappointed if she had. He always had enjoyed a good chase. 

“We can table the question for now,” said Zane decisively. Claire opened her mouth angrily to say that tabling the discussion wasn’t necessary, but Zane raised a finger and cut her off… a victory in and of itself. “Ah! We won’t get any further with this discussion today, I think. Let’s sleep on it. In the meantime, I would like you to keep a space open for the trophy case in your design, even if you don’t end up designing it.”

Claire took in a deep breath, then let it out in a frustrated sigh. “Ok. Fine. We can talk about it at our next meeting, where I’ll tell you again that I won’t do it. Now… as I mentioned, I have some options for design elements that I would like your opinion on. Alright?”

Zane enjoyed the fact that Claire was now asking his permission rather than pushing forward confidently. The cracks were already starting to show. 

“That sounds lovely,” he said with a little smirk, settling back into his chair once again. 

…

When Dan got home that evening, Claire didn’t come to the door to greet him. She wasn’t in the bedroom either.  It was a little strange. No matter how busy she was, Claire usually made a point to connect with him after he got home, at least for a few minutes. 

He found her in the next most likely place: she was at her desk in her home office, muttering irritably to herself as she sketched on her tablet. 

Last night had been a little strange, and Dan had to admit he was getting concerned. When he got home, Claire had been dressed in a tight, slutty little outfit, which was unusual all by itself. She had flirted with him aggressively in a way that left him equally bewildered and aroused. And then, for reasons that Dan still didn’t quite understand, she had got… annoyed? And despite that annoyance, she had demanded a kind of rough sex she normally didn’t like. 

It didn’t add up. And Dan was a little worried about what might be driving these sudden shifts in behavior. He approached his wife silently from behind and laid a hand on her shoulder. 

She jumped with a gasp and closed the tablet, but not before Dan saw the project label in the top corner: Zane Kruger, Bedroom. Dan felt a prickle of anxiety. It was just a bedroom design, right? Why was she acting almost guilty for working on it? 

“God! Don’t scare me like that!” said Claire huffily. She sighed and raked her fingers through her lovely, dark hair, losing a little of the tension from her body. “...Sorry. I guess I’m all over the place today. I didn’t hear you come in.” She wrapped one arm around him and pressed her head into his side in a half-hug. 

“You’ve been working too hard lately,” said Dan, rubbing a hand over his wife’s tense shoulders. “What you need right now is a glass of wine and some mindless TV, not more work.” 

“Honey, I…” she began reluctantly, staring sidelong at her tablet with an odd expression of annoyance mixed with longing. She let out an explosive breath. “You know what? You’re right. A glass of wine sounds perfect. I’ll meet you at the couch.”

As Dan uncorked the wine, his mind was racing. Zane. It had to be. Whatever plans Zane was trying in order to seduce Claire were having some sort of effect on her. It still seemed impossible that Zane could succeed, but even the fact that he was influencing Claire’s behavior at all was disturbing. Dan had worried in the past that Zane might succeed at his perverse bet, but it had felt like a terrifying, but impossible fantasy. Like imagining that a meteor would randomly fall and kill you dead. Or wondering what would happen if the bridge beneath you were to randomly collapse while driving. A horrible thought, but not something you actually expected to happen. 

Dan had avoided bringing Zane up to his wife the past few weeks, even though he knew she had begun work on his project. He thought it would be better not to call more attention to the sleazy pornographer than was necessary. Besides, he assumed that no news was good news. 

But now, it felt important to dig a little into what was going on with that situation. If only for his peace of mind. 

As they curled up into their usual positions on the couch and Claire took a big sip of wine, Dan casually asked, “So… how is that project for Zane going?”

Claire almost choked and came up coughing from the swallow. She gave her husband a sidelong glare, then ,when she finally got herself back under control, she said guardedly, “He’s exactly what I thought he was. A rude, arrogant, misogynistic pig. So, I suppose just about as badly as I expected.”

Dan was relieved to hear that, but also a little confused. It was clear that Zane had done nothing to endear himself to Claire over the past couple of weeks. She still hated the slimy little jerk as much as ever… so why did she seem frustrated and distracted lately? What was up with her strange sexual outburst last night? Coincidence?

“Well, if he’s bothering you, you could always just decline the job. We’re doing fine with money right now,” he said casually. That would actually be the ideal solution. It would frustrate whatever plan Zane had, and more importantly, it would do so without requiring Dan to admit the perverse bet he had been pressured into.

Unfortunately, Dan could tell instantly that he had said the exact wrong thing. Claire stiffened beside him, her lips drawing into a thin, angry line. “He’s not bothering me, Dan,” she snapped. “A little worm like him doesn’t have the ability to bother me. I don’t need to run away the first time a man acts like an asshole. I'm a big girl, and I can deal with a slimeball like Zane no problem.” 

‘Oh, I know you can,” said Dan hurriedly, squeezing his wife’s thigh reassuringly, “I was just saying that if Zane is…”

“I don’t want to talk about Zane anymore,” said Claire firmly. ‘Let’s watch some TV like you said.”

After a few minutes of watching TV silently, Claire unwound a little, but she still had that same air of prickly annoyance all evening, and when Dan tried to kiss her that night on the way to bed, she turned so that his lips contacted her cheek instead of her lips. 

“I need to catch up on some work,” she said coolly. “You should get some rest. I might get to bed late, so don’t wait up.” 

Dan watched her head back to her home office with worried eyes. There was definitely something going on with her, and Dan was just now realizing he didn’t know enough about Zane’s methods to understand what his plan even was. 

…

About an hour later, Dan lay in bed, doing a little research. 

Now that it was becoming clear that Zane’s plans were having an effect on Claire, it was important that Dan understand his enemy. And luckily for him, Zane had published a sort of online playbook that Dan could sneak a peek at. 

“Freaks in the Sheets” looked just as trashy as the name implied. Zane’s porn site had an aesthetic of lurid neon lights against velvety blackness. The premise of the site was simple: Zane’s performers weren’t porn stars, allegedly at least. They were normal, average women who had been tempted away from their everyday life by the lure of sexual debauchery. 

It was an interesting concept, although Dan assumed that it had to be bullshit. Zane probably just hired amateur porn stars who weren’t widely recognizable and sold them to the public as girls-next-door to increase the taboo appeal. But even if it was all fake, the sorts of things that Zane wrote about the performers on the website would hopefully tell Dan a lot about how Zane thought these types of seductions should work in theory. 

It wasn’t necessary for Dan to pay for an account to browse through the performer profiles, which were part of the “free tour’. Which was lucky, because Claire monitored their bank statements closely. There was a high chance she would notice if he paid for a porn subscription. 

Dan scrolled through the profiles. Each had a gorgeous woman staring at the camera with a smile, wearing either lingerie, a skimpy bikini, or nothing, with an arm strategically covering their breasts. 

Clicking into a few of the profiles, Dan found that many of the women were married, and a good number of them had been highly-paid professionals like Claire before entering the world of porn. Or so Zane claimed at least. But it was harder than he thought to find useful information in the small blurbs about the various women. It usually just briefly commented that Zane had “taught them how to be a slut”, or “put them in their place”, or other degrading language, before encouraging the reader to “watch their videos to find out more!”.

Dan couldn’t help feeling a little aroused by the content of the website, even as it made him uncomfortable.  It was a compelling fantasy, even if it was dark and twisted. That an ugly, crass man like Zane had some sort of irresistible sexual magnetism. That something about him could turn proud women into sluts, desperate for his cock. 

Dan scrolled a little further down, then his eyes went wide. It felt like he had been dunked in ice water. He couldn’t believe what he was looking at. 

It was Leah. Unmistakably. Staring at the camera with her usually confident, toothy grin, and dressed in angelic white lacy lingerie, her signature honey-blonde braid trailing down over one shoulder. There wasn’t even a fake pornstar name; “Leah” was printed right there next to the erotic picture.  

It wasn’t possible. Dan’s mouth was suddenly dry, and perversely, his cock was suddenly throbbing, tenting up the sheets. Leah had been a friend of his in college. And also the subject of a desperate, embarrassing crush for him from freshman year up through graduation. It wasn’t until he met and began dating an amazing woman like Claire after college that Dan was able to fully get over her. Despite being utterly in love with his wife, Dan still kind of kicked himself for not making a move on Leah during freshman year. By the time he finally got up his courage, Leah was already dating an older guy. The man she eventually married. 

Right. Leah was fucking married. And had a kid. Dan had fallen out of touch with her after her wedding, but he still saw updates from her occasionally on social media. 

And, most importantly, Leah had always hated Zane. They had both been members of the same loose friend group, but Leah had made frequent complaints to Dan about how obnoxious Zane was during college, and it may have been because of Zane that Leah eventually drifted away to hang out more often with her boyfriend’s social circle during senior year. 

Dan clicked into the page for Leah on the porn site, feeling both oddly numb and pulsing with arousal at the same time. He scanned the short blurb with uncomprehending eyes. 

“This one is close to my heart… an old friend from college! Little Leah never used to be able to stand yours truly when we hung out on campus, and I’ve got to admit it hurt my feelings. So when I happened to run into this hot little married slut years later, I couldn’t resist turning her into my personal whore. Leah started out wanting nothing to do with me, but by the time I got done with her… well, you’ll just have to watch her videos to find out!”

Dan unconsciously pressed the “Watch Here” button, but was taken immediately to a payment screen. With a grunt of annoyance, he exited the page and tossed his phone onto his nightstand. He lay back in bed, staring up at the ceiling with a new sense of panic rising in his heart. 

Maybe it was a trick, or Photoshop, or something. The Leah Dan had known was a smart and snarky woman who didn’t take shit from anyone (he had always had a thing for strong-willed women). If Zane had somehow managed to lure or trick her into a sexual relationship, even though she hated him… Well, the parallels with Claire were troubling. 

Dan decided to put Leah out of his mind for now. Maybe he could try to snoop on social media and see if there were any hints that she had actually been corrupted by Zane. Right now, he needed to focus closer to home: working on a way to fight back against whatever influence Zane was having on his wife. 

When the idea came to him, it felt obvious. Whatever plans Zane was working on, it clearly involved frustrating Claire and getting her mentally wrapped up in the project he had hired her to work on. The best way to counteract Zane’s plan would be to take Claire’s mind off work and reconnect with her. Break the focus on Zane that his former friend was trying to foster. 

That was an excellent plan: a date. A chance for Claire to unwind and unplug. The question was, what kind of date would be best?

Option A) Why not go with something tried and true? Claire was a classy woman who loved to be treated like a queen. Dan could take her out for a meal at a fancy restaurant. An evening of being wined and dined might soothe her frayed nerves from dealing with Zane’s crude flirtation. 

Option B) The weather had been great lately, and Dan and Claire had been so busy this summer, they hadn’t really had a chance to take the boat out. It was a bit of luxury for their income level, but Claire had always loved the sun on her skin and the sea breeze in her hair. Going out on the water for a day might be the perfect way to help Claire forget the stress of her job. 

Option C) Claire was so tense tonight, Dan could feel it in her shoulders. He knew that Claire’s favorite spa had couples’ packages. They had gone for the day a few years ago for Valentine’s, and although it wasn’t Dan’s favorite thing in the world, he knew Claire had loved it. A day of couples’ massages and skin treatments might be a great way to soothe Claire's annoyance and frustrations.