Heidi, Corrupted (An Ex-Wife Sharing Romance) Read online

  About the Author

  Max Sebastian is a thirty-something writer, author and occasional journalist who lives in London with his wife and two children. He has been writing erotica for more than 15 years, starting out at the website Literotica.com before joining the indie publishing revolution in late 2011.

  You can find Max online at MaxSebastian.net, on Twitter @MaxSebastian, on Facebook at facebook.com/writermax, and on GoodReads at goodreads.com/maxsebastian.

  And, you're always very welcome to contact Max by emailing [email protected].

  Also by Max Sebastian

  Available via MaxSebastian.net

  Novels

  Anarchy of the Heart

  Submitting to Her

  Madeleine Wakes

  Madeleine Plays

  Madeleine Strays

  What's Mine is Yours

  What's Yours is Mine

  She's a Star

  The Game

  Novellas

  My Wife, The Seductress

  A Calculated Affair

  Short Stories

  Wives with Benefits: Volume One

  Wives with Benefits: Volume Two

  Heidi, Corrupted

  MAX SEBASTIAN

  MaxSebastian.net

  KW

  PUBLISHING

  Copyright © 2016 Max Sebastian

  All rights reserved.

  Cover image © yromanenko | bigstockphoto.com

  First digital edition electronically published March 2016

  This is a work of fiction, any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or events, organizations or locations, is purely coincidental. Reproduction in whole or in part of this publication without written consent is strictly prohibited, other than limited quotes for purposes of review.

  The author greatly appreciates you taking the time to read this book, please do consider leaving a review wherever you bought this title, to help others find this story.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter One

  Heidi, Heidi. I wasn't really fair to Heidi — I can see that now. I should have never asked her out in the first place. I should never have stuck with the relationship. Should certainly never have married her. I should have walked away the moment I lost interest.

  Only, what happened after the relationship crumbled... I wouldn't change that for the world. So, while I could have been more fair and should have pulled the plug on things earlier, I'm glad I didn't.

  To begin at the beginning: we were graduating college. I was just getting over the break-up of my second-ever long-term girlfriend — and in my case, 'long-term' meant a relationship of nine months, which was forever for a college kid like me. The previous had been blonde, pretty, bright and athletic — with large breasts and a phenomenal sex drive. Your basic wet dream growing up. I think I spent most of those nine months in bed, or at least the equivalent of a bed, because Suzi liked to fuck in all manner of places.

  The break-up was brutal and sudden; even after just nine months we had foreseen a life together, possibly even marriage, kids.

  Heidi was a friend of a friend's friend. I don't precisely know the origins of how she came into my sphere. She hung out on the fringes of the same group whose fringes I orbited myself, and eventually my orbit passed near hers. She was the antithesis of Suzi — petite, dark-haired, flat-chested, pale. Musical rather than athletic. She played the cello in the college orchestra.

  I developed a little crush on her — I thought she was pretty, in her own way, though she was hardly the magazine cover girl Suzi might have been. She was quirky, she was interesting, she was cheerful — at least in the early days — and so I guess that drew my attention during the dark times in the wake of Suzi. But she was taken, and not really my type, so that made her less intimidating to talk to, even if I did have a little thing for her.

  Then she broke up with the guy she'd been seeing, and it seemed to devastate her to the same degree as my break-up with Suzi had me. The misery pushed my orbit into hers, and we crashed together with a certain degree of inevitability.

  And it was a crash, in every sense of the word.

  I don't even remember how I came to be alone with her in a bar a couple months before graduation. Yet there we were, bitching about those who dump people without mercy, talking as though we might even come up with a plan to change the entire rules of dating in the modern world.

  "I mean, he never even looks at me when I pass him now, it really hurts inside," she said.

  "You'd have to outlaw that."

  "Exactly. There should be a clear agreement that if things go wrong, for whatever reason, you should still be friends after you stop dating."

  "Definitely. You liked each other enough to start dating, right? So why can't you be friends after you finish?"

  "At least be on polite terms."

  Over many drinks that night, it slowly dawned on me that Heidi might be available for the taking. I didn't actively consider that I might be a strong candidate for a rebound for her — and a few months after I'd broken up with Suzi, I didn't even think that she would turn out to be a rebound for me. We were increasingly inebriated, and talking about how our next lovers would have to pledge to let us down gently if ever the time came to end a relationship — or we'd never go out with anyone again.

  I guess it evolved to me persuading her that such an approach would work, that if I were to ask her out, I wouldn't have a problem pledging to let her down lightly when it came time to move on.

  And then we seemed to cross over from the hypothetical, and I really was telling Heidi how much better we'd be together, even when it came time to split up, and she was sitting there actually considering taking our strange friendship out of the realms of the platonic.

  So along came the end of the night and she invited me back to her room to listen to classical music, sip a glass or two of red wine, and make out for what seemed like hours and hours.

  It was a rebound relationship in every sense of the word, for both of us. Only, then it kind of continued, on and on. Neither of us were brave enough to call it off — because both of us had been hurt so badly before. And, I suppose, because in the middle of our relationship we left college and went out into the world to find work, and the uncertainty in our lives kept us together for mutual support.

  In the beginning, there was the new relationship energy, and it was exciting. We saw each other every night, and things steadily moved from making out to random fumblings and fondling, to naked exploration and eventually oral sex and — once contraceptives had been arranged — the full home run.

  And I did still have that little crush on her, so even though she was a little awkward, it didn't matter so much. She was a touch skinny, didn't have much to hang onto, was a little gawky and didn't move with that innate feminine grace that Suzi had flaunted every moment. She wore plain clothes and plainer underwear. She rarely used make-up, her long near-black hair was usually a little unkempt.

  And she wasn't a great kisser, something I'd never really happened across in a woman before.

  But she was female, willing to
be friends with me, willing to get naked, willing to make out. And we had plenty to talk about when we weren't making out. We were either at her place or mine every night, it was almost as though we'd moved in together. Graduation came, and we both decided to rent a place together in London, since I had a job in the City lined up, and Heidi had the offer of a place in the City Philharmonic Orchestra among others.

  Leaving college and joining the rat race was a lot more of a strain than either of us could have predicted. My job was hard, fairly dull since it was so administrative, with fairly long hours, though it paid quite well. Heidi's job was fairly intense, too — and became quite a baptism of fire as the winter drew on and the orchestra was hit by the flu.

  I think the stress probably helped things fizzle out between us. Heidi was miserable all the time — she moped about, she spent the whole time complaining about little tiny, trivial things in her life, and no attempts to cheer her up would pull her out of it — and when she was miserable, it really poured cold water on any kind of sexual feelings.

  We were always tired when we got home. When we did have sex, it just seemed to irritate me more than stimulate me. I guess we'd never been that great together, and Heidi wasn't ever what you'd call experienced in bed — and she never progressed. Looking back, it was unfair of me to expect her to, as I had felt so awkward about it I didn't want to raise the subject. There was the way she often managed to sink her teeth into me as she went down on me, to the point where it started to feel as though I was being sucked by a meat grinder. She just got into bed and laid there on her back, letting me do what I wanted with her never mixing things up. Even the small issue of her dark pubic hair being a little too effusive, even sprouting out of her underwear.

  She never initiated anything, and when I eventually stopped initiating things, she said nothing about it. Our sex life quietly died. We re-entered the friend zone — and yet we stayed together.

  Things felt uncertain and difficult, with little in the way of a light at the end of the tunnel. Then Heidi had the idea of getting married, and while we didn't talked about it in a very romantic way, it did seem like a good idea to me at the time, even with our stalled sex life. Marriage offered stability, security, the sense that we could start building a life together and chart some course towards an improved situation for us both. And I think, even months after our painful break-ups, we still saw our relationship as preferable to being single, preferable to being alone. It was no doubt the wrong state of mind to be in.

  Our families were happy enough for us, though perhaps they were a touch disappointed by our wish for a fairly quiet ceremony, nothing special.

  On our honeymoon... well, it was restful. I felt this strange pressure that we were supposed to spend the whole time in bed, doing it like bunnies. But I looked at Heidi and just didn't feel the urge any more. We enjoyed the sunshine of our Caribbean resort, but my new wife didn't seem to push for any kind of physical consummation, either.

  After we got home, neither of us commented on the complete lack of sex on our honeymoon. We soon got back into the same routine — I was off to the City for work, Heidi was either practicing on her cello at home in our little place in Camden, or else rehearsing with the orchestra at the Philarmonic's base in Shoreditch.

  I found myself wondering if we'd made a mistake, getting married. But again, the subject seemed too difficult to bring up with Heidi. Perhaps if we hadn't married, we would have split up. I'm not sure. The thing was, it was easier not to split up: we didn't want to argue, we didn't want to have "The Talk". We didn't want the cold emptiness of singledom to return, especially with our lives changing so dramatically on entering the real world. Marriage did nothing to stir our passion for each other. Yet rather than believing we should do something about it, we simply languished in a general acceptance that in the real world, you just can't have a stable, long-term relationship that protects you from the pain of break-ups while also having really good sex. Or even just plain good sex, for that matter.

  I felt sure that if I went out looking for another Suzi, I might have a chance of meeting someone who really got me going, and sex would be amazing again. I was also certain that any relationship like that would likely flame out after a matter of weeks, leaving me feeling broken again.

  Things stretched out for eight, maybe nine months, and we didn't even talk about the fact that we never had sex any more. Heidi moped about and generally I probably did as well, but neither of us really seemed to know how to address the elephant in the room. I focused on my yawn-inducing work at the investment bank PJP while she focused on her music. We almost seemed to be living separate lives, coming together only to eat supper together and watch TV on the couch before retiring to bed to lie chastely on the same mattress as we slept.

  It was probably a flaw in our relationship that we never argued. It wasn't that there were no disagreements, but both of us were the kind of people who simply repressed them. It simmered below the surface, festered. Every time I felt like that toward her, it seemed to push me further away from her.

  By then, it would have been embarrassing to even suggest making out, let alone actual sex. Heidi spent all the time we were together moaning about everything — but never about the state of our relationship. To begin with I commiserated with her, tried to cheer her up, but then gradually cared less and less until her constant misery really began to irritate and annoy. She almost seemed to revel in it, enjoying her constant complaints at the world around us.

  Until at last the tension broke. We did have a blazing argument. I can't even remember what it was about — something trivial, perhaps. Perhaps not. After a stable relationship tinged with passive aggressive resentment, it all came down to a big shouting match in the middle of the street, and finally I said something along the lines of...

  "Maybe we just shouldn't see each other any more."

  And she said, "Fine. Maybe we shouldn't."

  I walked away.

  She walked after me a few steps. "Is that it? Is that really it?"

  I think she was expecting me to maybe apologize — that the whole state of desperation that faced me, having no relationship any more, would be so horrific that it would keep me back from the brink of walking away from her. Only, it seemed I came to my senses, I saw that walking away from her was the most healthy thing to do — the most healthy thing for both of us.

  We shouldn't have been together.

  I said, "That's really it."

  In our argument, I'd got to the stage where I didn't care in the slightest whether I won or lost the argument: the important thing was, I couldn't be with her any more, it had to end.

  So I walked away, not even turning back. She was silent, but I never looked to see what she did. I got myself a room in a half-decent hotel on Liverpool Street, close to work, with the intention of finding a new apartment.

  I assume she went back to our place in Camden.

  God, we hadn't even explicitly said we should get a divorce, but that was what I was assuming.

  I actually felt relief, I felt as though I was breathing fresh air for the first time in months. I felt a little sorry for Heidi, from what our relationship had started out. I felt hugely guilty that we'd had that long, deep conversation about changing the dating rules so that a break-up was never hard for either party — and here I was walking away from Heidi just months into a fairly rapidly-arranged marriage, not intending to see her again.

  I think she probably expected me to call her that evening; apologize, suggest dinner, suggest that we let it go, whatever had been bothering us. Or she thought I'd take a day or two to calm down, then come back to her and maybe even initiate something we hadn't done for so many months to reinvigorate our relationship.

  But I didn't. I felt free. For the first time since I'd started becoming aware of the desirability of women, it actually felt good to be single. Jesus. Divorced and we were only 23.

  I wasn't a very nice guy. I wasn't very nice to Heidi. I knew that, even at the
time. I was a coward from the start. I was a coward not to end things when it fizzled between us. I was a coward in how I did finally pull the plug, walking away from her without any plan at all to communicate with her ever again. At the same time, I thought the best thing for Heidi would be for her to move on, perhaps find someone else who would be better for her. She was damaged goods, I was damaged goods. It wasn't good for the two of us to console each other. It was the blind leading the blind.

  I consulted a lawyer, and after discussing the options, discovered that we didn't even need a divorce. We hadn't had sex since the wedding. Not even once. Our marriage could be annulled on the grounds that it was defective or "voidable" — simple, straightforward, and we didn't even have to wait a year as we would have with a divorce.

  I found myself a new flat out in the Limehouse area of East London, overlooking the docks with an easy commute from my job in the City. As for our apartment in Camden... well, my lawyer wrote to Heidi to let her know that I would continue to pay my share of the rent until the end of the current lease, which was only a few months. Not unbearable considering the salary from my finance job. Then she'd be free to find another roommate or roommates, since it was a three-bedroom apartment, or move on to wherever she chose.

  Jesus, it was a brutal end to our relationship. I assumed that Heidi must hate me with a passion for how things had ended. But she never tried to get in touch with me — other than providing the required consent for the annulment process, and agreeing via my lawyer to stay in the apartment in Camden until the lease ran out.

  She didn't call me, she didn't email me, she didn't text me. She was gone.