The Lonely Besieged City

Author: Riley Hale

Chapter 1: Accidental Discovery

Words : 2021 Updated : Aug 21st, 2025

After her shower, Lana Hayde stepped out of the bathroom with only a towel wrapped around her. The towel covered so little that her proud, sculpted figure lay almost entirely bare. In the old days, the sight would have brought her husband to his feet. He would have crossed the room and claimed her, a lion staking its territory. Now, seated on the couch and scrolling his phone, Taylor Rathbone gave her a faint smile, then dropped his eyes and kept scrolling. A small, dull ache opened in her chest. She turned away, went into the master bedroom, and pulled the door shut behind her. She flung the towel onto the bed and moved in front of the full-length mirror. She never doubted her face or her body. What she could not fathom was how, in the last few months, Taylor had grown so cool in that one particular regard. It was not that he treated her coldly; it was that his appetite in bed had dwindled, and when it did happen, he did it without any real interest. Right after they got married, he wanted it nearly twice a day. Lately it had dropped to once a week. Once a week was not the issue. What hurt was how he treated it like a chore. What on earth had gone wrong? Had he lost interest in her? Or did he have someone else? It was probably the first, she told herself. He had not been coming home late, nor had he been guarding his phone like a secret vault. She sighed and lifted her breasts lightly with both hands, as if to reassure herself. Then she turned her back to the mirror and craned her neck so she could take in the perky curve of her butt. Married just over a year, and he'd already lost interest in a woman with a body like this? The door eased open. She looked up. Taylor stood there, and a small spark of gladness leapt in her. Maybe he wanted her after all. "A few colleagues asked me out for a get-together," he said. "I'll try to be back before eleven." The words hit like a bucket of cold water. She did not want him to go, but there was no ground to refuse. "Mm-hmm," she murmured. "You're beautiful." With that, Taylor stepped out and closed the door gently behind him. Only when she heard the front door click and knew he had left the apartment did she come back to her senses. She drifted to the foot of the bed and sat. In the mirror, her own blank face stared back. Unease gathered, dense as fog. She was not the kind of woman who demanded endlessly; she simply believed intimacy was an indispensable part of a marriage. She parted her thighs slowly and glanced down at herself, then let out a soft sigh. She stood, took a clean camisole-style nightgown from the closet, and slipped it on. Only then did she realize she hadn't put on panties. But a bone-deep weariness washed over her, and she could not be bothered to open the closet again. She lay on her back, eyes fixed on the dingy fluorescent light on the ceiling. Her thoughts tangled and snarled. She could not understand why Taylor had grown so sexually distant. She did not know how long she lay there before she pushed herself upright. At the computer desk, she opened his laptop. When the desktop appeared, she clicked into the D drive and opened a folder labeled "Wedding Photos." Chin cupped in her palm, she scrolled through image after image. In every shot they looked deeply in love, which warmed her for a breath or two. Then the present crept back and she sighed. After a few minutes, she closed the D drive. She was about to shut the laptop when, just to kill time, she opened the F drive and double-clicked Inception. They both loved that movie, and she had wanted to revisit a few scenes. Because the player wasn't full screen, the playlist was visible on the side. Several video titles stood out with a strange glare: "Real-Life Partner Swapping," "Two Couples in Serton Go Wild," "My Wife and a Guy She Met Online-So Bold," and more. Her eyes flew wide. She had never imagined her husband watched stuff that, to her, crossed lines she thought everyone respected. He sometimes carried the laptop into the living room after she fell asleep. Had he been watching videos like these? Frowning, her heart trembling, she clicked one with a shaking finger. On screen, two men and two women in a hotel room traded partners, laughing and chatting as if it were a party game. The scene upended her sense of right and wrong. As a husband, wasn't a man supposed to protect his wife? How could he let her do that with someone else? As a wife, wasn't she supposed to stay faithful? How could she get intimate with another man in front of her husband? Lana was not prudish, but this she could not stomach. With her moral compass already reeling, she opened two more. All three revolved around partner swapping. When she finished, her thoughts would not settle. She navigated to the folder itself. There were more than thirty files, all with the same theme. Seeing that felt like a kick to the gut-like being dropped into a pit. Only then did she understand why Taylor had lost interest in her. He wanted something that flew in the face of basic morals. She was not old-fashioned, but she would never behave like those women. She loved her husband. How could she fool around with other men, let alone do it while he watched? But what if that was exactly what he wanted? The thought drained the strength from her limbs. She remembered those first few months when he couldn't get enough of her, then the perfunctory encounters of recent months. She felt like a skiff in a storm, battered by breakers, ready to splinter at any moment. Another thought hit her. Had he ever done something like this? For instance, with an ex-girlfriend? She hurriedly opened one of the many videos and studied the men on-screen. She fast-forwarded, skimming, only checking whether any of them might be Taylor. In one clip, a man asked his wife how it felt. The woman replied that doing it with another man while her own husband watched was especially thrilling. Hearing that, Lana felt a wash of sadness and bitter disgust. How could there be such shameless women? Then again, perhaps not all the blame was hers. Her husband had permitted it. It took her a full hour to fast-forward through them all. She didn't spot Taylor in any of them, but in one clip the videographer's voice sounded unnervingly like his. She played it again and again. It still sounded like him, so she saved that file to her phone. After a long, heavy sigh, she closed the laptop and stood. As she turned toward the bed, she noticed a few small wet spots on the chair.

The Lonely Besieged City

Chapter 1: Accidental Discovery

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