The Bet: Part 5

Hello!

Hope you have all been enjoying "The Bet" so far!

I am going to be taking a short hiatus from this project (Likely a week) so that I can really buckle down and finish some stories I have due by the end of the month. But I hope to bring it back as soon as possible, since it has been a lot of fun.

If you like the series or have any ideas, be sure to leave a comment!

...

Claire sat back, watching with smug satisfaction as Zane flipped through her concept art. In one sense, Zane had been correct. She had been forced to step out of her regular design instincts to create a design this forceful and masculine. But her skill and artistic talent had shone through in the end. She had knocked it out of the park.

Bold, daring use of color. Sharp, blocky angles. Stone and leather, and bronze. All garish on their own maybe, but coming together to harmonize in a room that wasn’t just something a knuckle-dragging “Alpha Male” would find impressive, but also looked fucking incredible. Even Zane looked impressed as he perused the portfolio of designs. 

Claire’s ego had fully recovered from her embarrassing first meeting with Zane about a week ago.  It had really been a perfect storm of bad luck and Zane’s obnoxious ego, uniting to embarrass her and throw her off balance. That day had filled her with a burning desire to get back her dignity and show Zane who was really superior between the two of them. He had implied that she wouldn’t be able to create a compelling and masculine design, and today she had her answer. 

It helped her mood immensely that this meeting was happening in her office today rather than Zane’s home turf. She felt calm, confident, and in her element. 

Right up until Zane opened his mouth. 

“I have to say I’m pleasantly surprised,” said Zane with a wide smile, flipping the folder closed. “I really didn’t think you would be able to capture the alpha male spirit. But this is excellent work.”

“Well, it’s not my usual aesthetic,” admitted Claire, not able to help preening a little, “but a good artist can adapt to other visual styles.”

Zane chuckled, his eyes meeting Claire with a mischievous gleam. “I'm sure that’s true. But it’s not what I meant. I thought you wouldn’t have any insight into powerful, confident masculinity.”

Claire stared down the ugly little man sitting across her desk, the smile fading from her face. The correct choice was to ignore his barb and conclude the meeting… but Claire couldn’t do that. It felt too much like letting the little toad have the last word. ‘There isn’t much depth to so-called ‘alphas’,” she said icily. “Just unearned confidence and thinly-veiled aggression.” 

Zane shrugged, flipping open the folder again and avoiding her gaze as he looked at the concept drawing of his new room. “I'm not sure how you would know that…” he said mildly, “considering you avoid dominant men like the plague.”

Claire rolled her eyes, trying to keep her annoyance under control. “Trust me, Mr. Kruger, as an attractive woman, I have plenty of experience with over-confident men. More than I would like, even if I were actively avoiding them. Which I'm not.”

Zane’s eyes flashed back up to hers. “And yet you’ve only ever dated betas. Why is that?” He asked, his voice sharp. 

The stunning inappropriateness of the question took her breath away. This was a business meeting for God’s sake! Zane was wildly out of line, and she would be well within her rights to simply have him escorted off the premises and tear his contract to pieces. 

But she couldn’t let this insult go unanswered. An insult against her husband, Zane’s former friend. And an insult against her, more importantly, questioning her taste in men. 

“My husband,” she said angrily, drawing herself up in a stiff posture of rage, “Is a wonderful man. Ten times the man you will ever be. He doesn’t need all of your stupid “Alpha Male” bullshit to be secure and confident. He knows how much better he is than men like you without having to swagger around and beat his chest like a gorilla.”

“Is that why you married him?” Asked Zane in a calm, amused voice, completely unintimidated and unimpressed by Claire’s angry outburst. “Because he is soooo ‘secure”? Or is it because he’s easy to push around, and that feels safe to you?”

“Get out!” yelled Claire, red-faced with anger. “Get the fuck out of my office!”

Luckily for his own bodily safety, Zane didn’t argue. He just scooped up his folder with a smug look on his face, gave an obnoxious wave, then strolled out the door, leaving Claire shaking with volcanic anger behind him. 

That little PRICK! How dare he? To March into her office and disrespect her like that! To disrespect her husband, her marriage, and herself on a deeply personal level. How did he have the balls? 

He was wrong, obviously. Claire had married Dan because he was a wonderful man. Her other half. Not because he was somehow the easy choice. Dan could be manly and confident… at times. And besides, what was wrong with being attracted to submissive men?

And Dan wasn’t fucking submissive!

She felt scrambled and off balance once again, despite her excellent design and meeting Zane on her territory. The creep just had an uncanny knack for getting under her skin. She picked up the phone to ring Perlah and tell her to cancel Zane’s account. Then she tossed her phone to her desk and leaned back in her chair, breathing heavily. 

She would cancel Zane’s account tomorrow. But tonight, she wanted to prove him wrong. 

Tonight, she was going to explore the manly, confident side of her husband. 

…

Claire took off from work a little that evening to go home and prepare. Zane was wrong. In many, many ways… but most importantly, he was wrong about men. Aggression and high libido weren’t something to be proud of. They were impulses that all men had inside them. 

“Alpha” men were just guys who had less impulse control. Beneath his calm, controlled surface, Dan was just as much of a horny brute as Zane. He was just able to control himself like an actual human being. Tonight she would prove it. 

She considered just dressing up in lingerie, but decided that that would be cheating. Tonight, she wanted Dan to be bold. To take what he wanted. To be confident, with an aggressive edge. If she was just wearing a lacy bra and panties when he got home, that would be like giving him direct permission to initiate sex. And for this particular experiment, that wouldn’t do. She wanted Dan to pursue her forcefully because that’s what he wanted.

So she wore the next best thing: a skimpy and sexy, yet casual pair of pajamas. Tiny little pink shorts that showed her legs off perfectly, and a tight, tank top that her nipples practically burst out of when she wore it without a bra. In other words, she was offering herself to her husband on a platter and daring him to take a bite. And he would. She was sure of it.

When Dan came in looking tired from work, she shashayed into the kitchen with a showy, hip-swaying walk, making sure her husband got a good look at her body. “Hey, handsome,” she said, leaning over the kitchen counter and giving him a look straight down her cleavage. “How was your day?” She was gratified to see his eyes practically pop out of his head. His gaze began to crawl over her curves, and Claire was certain he would pounce on her right then and there…

But then he stopped, shaking his head and meeting her eyes instead with a clear effort to restrain himself. “It was alright. Nothing special. A little busy this time of year. People trying to get permits in. How about you?” 

Claire felt a flicker of annoyance. Here she was, looking like a sexy little minx, just begging for him to come take her, and he was… resisting? Well, it was true that most of the time, she would probably be annoyed if he came on too strong when she wasn’t interested in sex, but he should be able to read signals a little better. Well… if just the sight of his smoking hot wife in skimpy clothes wasn’t enough to get Dan to let his inner beast of the leash, maybe she needed to rile him up a little more. 

“I’ve been lonely all day, missing you,” said Claire with a smile. “C’mon, big guy, let’s spend some time together.” She took him by the arm and led him to the living room. She was half hoping that he would pull in the other direction toward the bedroom, but he followed willingly enough toward the couch. Claire sat down snuggled up to him, her annoyance growing inside her. She could have taken him to the bedroom herself. He would have gone eagerly.

But she wanted him to take the initiative tonight. And instead, he just mildly put on one of their tv shows and sat there making small talk. Claire’s frustration only grew as the night went on. She made sexy bedroom eyes at Dan, rubbed his thigh meaningfully, even pressed her tits into his arm. Everything she could think of short of directly initiating sex. She knew it was having an effect on him. He was obviously hard as a rock. Arousal wasn’t the issue. 

The issue was that he was absolutely refusing to make the first move. 

And, as frustrated as that made Claire, the worst part was that she knew that she was the one to blame. She had trained Dan over the years that they had sex when and how she wanted. She was always the one to initiate. Any time in their early relationship when Dan had tried to push for sex, exactly like she wanted him to do now, she had actively discouraged him. 

If there had been a wolf inside Dan once, Claire had domesticated it long ago. Even if she teased him and flirted shamelessly, he would obediently wait until she decided they were going to have sex. 

Claire knew, with absolute certainty, that if Zane got the same treatment she had been giving her husband, he would have already made his move. Probably as soon as he walked in the door. Of course, if he tried something like that on Claire, he would get the smug grin slapped right off his face. But that didn’t change the fact that Zane would already have pushed hard for what he wanted at this point. 

That didn’t make him an alpha, but it did make him different from Dan in a way that irritated Claire. She wanted Dan to be a manly, confident man who did what she asked because he respected her. Not a meek yesman who couldn’t think for himself. The difference might be subtle, but it felt significant to Claire. She knew it was unfair to test her husband without discussing her concerns with him first… but would it really count if she had to tell him to think more independently?

It wasn’t even that she wanted a pushy guy like Zane (Not an ‘alpha’. The term was stupid. And besides, Zane was more accurately termed ‘a jerk’). She enjoyed her sex life with Dan, and playing a leading role in her relationships had always been her style. But it bothered her that Dan couldn’t be demanding and rough and spontaneous… that that was an option she had somehow been locked out of even if she did want to experience it occasionally. 

And even worse, it bothered her that Zane might have been right about her taste in men. 

Claire stood up suddenly, pulling her shirt over her head to display her perfect tits. Dan looked up at her, his face a picture of bewildered shock. She stared down at him, hands on hips, topless, her breasts heaving with anger and strange arousal. 

‘Well?” she asked challengingly. 

“I… what are you…?” spluttered Dan. Claire could see how aroused he was… but still, with his wife half naked in front of him, he couldn’t take that extra step. 

Her little lapdog… loyal and obedient and utterly safe. Claire turned away toward the bedroom so Dan couldn’t see her face, calling over her shoulder, “Clothes off. You’re going to fuck me.”

She didn’t look back to see if he was following her, but she knew he would be. She stalked into the bedroom and removed her shorts and panties in one smooth motion, tossing them aside and tossing herself back onto the bed. She was a little surprised by the powerful wet heat between her legs. She was filled with a strange blend of anger and lust. An annoying itch that needed to be scratched. 

Her husband appeared in the doorway, his cock rock hard, but his face troubled. “Honey, is everything ok?” he asked cautiously as he entered the dim room, taking in the sight of his lovely wife lying back on the bed, her pussy flushed and dripping, but her eyes flashing with dangerous heat. 

“No talking,” she growled, spreading her legs wide and beckoning him forward impatiently, “only sex.”

Normally, they had foreplay first. Normally, Claire preferred cowgirl. Normally, she made Dan wear a condom. None of that mattered to her right now. She needed to feel a cock inside her, hot and hard and powerful. When Dan joined her on the bed, she pulled him down into a fierce, bruising kiss, her fingers tangled tight in his hair, desperately trying to spark the same desperate, fiery passion in him that she felt. 

Dan tried his best to rise to the occasion, finally sensing what his wife had wanted all evening. He thrust forward into her pussy, raw inside her for the first time in months, feeling her wet, clinging heat directly against his skin. He pumped his hips, thrusting into her with slow, languid strokes. 

Claire groaned in frustration against her husband’s lips. “Harder!” she urged, lowering a hand to grip and pull his hip demandingly. “Fuck me! Fuck me like you mean it!”  And he did speed up, pressing her against the bed with powerful strokes. He didn’t lack the strength, and his cock was a good size…

…but he was only fucking her hard because she told him to. In that moment, Claire didn’t picture Zane. She wasn’t that far gone. But she did picture a strong, cocky man… pulling her into the bedroom himself. Stripping off her clothes. Fucking her hard and fast because that was what he wanted, not what she instructed him to do. And for a moment, Claire found herself unexpectedly on the edge of orgasm. She never came from penetration, yet there she was… almost there.

“Is this ok?” asked Dan above her in a panting voice. “Is it too hard?

She lost it. Her orgasm seemed as distant as the moon now. She swallowed her disappointment and purred, “Mmmmm, perfect, honey. I want you to cum for me…”

“Already?” asked Dan, confused, “But babe, we just…” 

Claire shut him up with a deep kiss, working her hips against his frantically while gripping his cock tight inside her. He finished up within a minute, but Claire couldn’t blame him for that. She was doing everything she could to get him off as quickly as possible so she could exit this awkward, failed sexual experiment and have time to think. He came inside her, a rare treat for him, and Claire assured him immediately that she didn’t need his regular oral service tonight. 

Finally, Dan went off to take a quick shower, and Claire was left to her own devices. 

She wasn’t proud of herself. She had let Zane get into her head tonight and played a game with her beloved husband. A game where she hadn’t even explained the rules or warned him that they were about to play. She had no right to be frustrated with Dan. She had married him because he wasn’t a pushy asshole like Zane. It was a good trait. And the reason why he didn’t aggressively push for sex was because he knew that she didn’t like that. 

She had to stop thinking so much about what Zane thought. It wasn’t good for her. 

Claire’s phone buzzed, and she picked it up to find a work email. Oh God, speak of the devil… It was Zane, with a request for an element to add to the design of his bedroom. As she read, Claire’s eyes narrowed, and that sense of frustration and annoyance she had been feeling all week flared up inside her. This request was ridiculous! He couldn’t really expect that Claire would be willing to work something obscene like this into her designs, could he?

Option A: The little pervert was requesting that she include furniture specifically designed for BDSM. A bed with tie-off points for ropes and restraints, and a sex swing. Who did he think she was exactly? There was no way that Claire would ever design a room that harmoniously included obscene furniture designed only for sex!

Option B: The creep explained in the email that he had a collection of panties from the women that he had conquered, and wanted a way to display his “trophies” in his room. That was actually the way he phrased it, “Trophies.” It made Claire want to roll her eyes and shudder in disgust at the same time. He should feel bad for even typing that out, let alone requesting it in his design!

Option C: The slimy asshole wanted Claire to help install a camera above the bed, and also review the sight-lines on the room to make sure he would have good positions to set up cameras for filming. The idea that the bedroom she designed would be used as a set for Zane’s filthy pornography turned Claire’s stomach. She would obviously refuse to consider that in her design in any way… He would have to get someone else to make his new bedroom porn-ready after she was done. 

As she began to draft a heated reply to Zane’s unacceptable request, Claire didn’t even realize that her idea from earlier in the day of cancelling Zane’s contract had completely slipped her mind…