Zoe's Flame

Playing with Fire

by Arnica Butler

Zoe meant to become a hotwife, but things didn't quite turn out as she planned. In the second installment of Zoe's Flame, it isn't clear who's in control - and who isn't - as Zoe and Josh play with their marriage. Because it turns out, playing with an older man like Randy is like playing with fire. It's hot, and unpredictable, and it may consume them all.

CHAPTER 1

"You aren't dead."
Alicia sounded almost disappointed, but that was the default tone of her voice.
Zoe, still partly asleep, connections to the real world severed or seeking a place to anchor, rubbed her eyes. For a moment, she didn't know what time of day it was, what day of the week, or why Alicia might be calling her. And for a blissful few moments, she was also free of the memory of the preceding night.
She looked over at the clock, and for a moment it confounded her: it read 10:17, but it was light outside the gauzy curtains, and Alicia was not the type to -
Everything hit her all at once.
Randy, her ex-boyfriend's fifty-two-year-old father, huge cock sawing in and out of her, fingers curled up against her tailbone from inside her ass, while she lied to her husband on the phone and told him she was out with friends. Waking up to the realization that she had fallen asleep at Randy's house, that it was past four in the morning and she had not gone home, her pussy still full of another man's cum.
Finding Josh gone, thankfully, and evidently unaware of what had happened, or the late hour at which she had arrived.
And then, the realization that she had fallen asleep again, and was now an hour and a half late for work.
She was frozen by the horror of it all: the irresponsibility, the betrayal, the very badness of everything she had done.
"So, where are you?" Alicia said impatiently to her silence. "Car trouble or something like that?" This last question was delivered as biting sarcasm, Alicia's voice like an eye roll turned to sound.
Zoe cleared her throat. "I... no, I just... I can't understand how this happened. I overslept." Alicia was quiet on the other end of the line, and Zoe wondered what she was doing. This might be something that Alicia didn't care about, and she was scrolling through her Instagram account.
Or she might have her on mute and be telling the whole office that Zoe was a crazy slut. You never knew with Alicia.
"Well," Alicia said. "You must have needed the sleep, but if I were you I wouldn't tell nobody that. You better call in sick and come up with something good because Neil is starting to, you know, fidget, and ask about you whenever he walks by your cubicle."
Zoe sighed. "Okay... okay."
"You coming in?"
Zoe looked around her. The temptation to call in sick was strong, but she didn't really want to spend the day here, alone, thinking about what to do when Josh came home. She would have to face him, and look him in the eye, and she still didn't know what she was going to do.
She wouldn't get much done at work, but at least she'd be distracted from her big problem.
"I, uh... yeah. I'm coming in, can you go tell him I called you and I have car trouble or something?" "Yeah," Alicia said, as if Zoe were repeating something for the third time. "Listen, can you drive through a Wendy's on your way? I want one of those square hamburgers." Alicia dismissed herself with one of her Latin tsks. "Ssh."
Zoe stared at the wall. Was she serious?
"Yeah, fine, whatever. But go tell Neil I'm on my way and I just called you because... you're in my phone. Or something."
"Neil is in your phone -"
"Please, Alicia. God."
Zoe hung up with a swipe that failed to cut the connection in time to miss Alicia's cackle. Because the swipe was unsatisfying, she tossed her phone violently onto the bed.
She picked it up. Why in the hell had her alarm not worked?
But before she was able to unravel that mystery, she saw the messages from Randy.
She had entered his name in her phone as Dr. McIntyre, almost unthinkingly. She still thought of him as "Dr. McIntyre" much of the time. Dr. McIntyre was Derek's dad, and the man she met for drinks and from whom she had solicited advice about Josh's fantasies. Dr. McIntyre was the person she had thought would be a good choice for enacting Josh's fantasies.
But the messages were not from "Dr. McIntyre." They were from Randy.
Randy was the man Dr. McIntyre had turned out to be, and she wasn't sure what to think about him.

What time did you leave? Get home okay?

It was an innocuous message. Zoe wasn't sure what she had wanted it to be. She hated his brazen references to their sexual encounters, but she also felt disappointed that he hadn't even alluded to them.
Just thinking about Randy, even this convoluted mix of thoughts, had activated the raw pulse in her sore pussy. She let herself fall on her back on the bed, phone in hand. She closed her eyes. Maybe she could just lie here and let everyone else act. Whatever happened would be what happened, and she could just let it all happen however it would.
Her eyes flew open. She was late for work, and if there was one thing she knew for sure, it was that oversleeping was irresponsible. There wasn't any gray area there.
She jumped out of the bed, took a look at herself in the mirror, and decided a second shower was warranted.
She turned on the water and stripped out of her clothes. She remembered the dirty clothes from her night with Randy, which she had stuffed in the hamper hurriedly as she crept about the house, trying to deceive Josh, who she had assumed was sleeping, into believing she had arrived home earlier and been in bed all night while he slept. Her heart skipped another beat. Josh.
Josh's message:

Okay... well, I tried calling you and I guess you lost track of time. So text me when you get this so I know you're okay. I'm having a hard time sleeping, thinking, Pete's giving me nightmares. I'm going to try to get some work done at Reggie's.

She couldn't have really gotten away with it, could she have?