The Wives of Beverly Row 3: Lust Has a New Address

  The Wives of Beverly Row 3

  Abby Weeks

  Copyright © 2014 Abby Weeks

  To find more by Abby sign up for personal updates.

  This work is presented by the author.

  To get in touch please contact:

  abby@type‐writer.net

  ISBN 978‐1‐927947‐31‐9

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Quote

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Back Matter

  *

  “ALL ART IS EROTIC.”

  Gustav Klimt, 1862‐1918

  *

  “EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD IS ABOUT SEX EXCEPT SEX. SEX IS ABOUT POWER.”

  Oscar Wilde, 1854‐1900

  *

  I

  ZOLA STOOD BEHIND JAKE, LOOKING over his shoulder at the computer screen. He was busily updating his profile on the hotwifing forum, making it clear that he now had a wife to offer to the other members. As far as Zola could tell, the forum was a place where men could talk about their wives, post photos of them naked, and invite the other men on the forum to come and enjoy them. And not just enjoy the photos, but actually enjoy the wife, in person, with or without her husband present. It seemed to Zola that most of the wives were quite into it too, posing seductively in lingerie and writing messages on their bodies to specific men on the forum they wanted to meet up with.

  It had taken Zola quite a few days to get used to the idea of it. She still wasn’t fully comfortable with it, not by a long shot, but she had decided to pretend that she was. She pretended for Jake’s benefit. She wanted him to be interested in her again, she wanted to excite him, and she wanted her relationship with him to work. If this was what it took then she was prepared to go all the way.

  “Okay,” Jake said, now it’s time to take the photos.

  Zola nodded. He’d explained the procedure to her already and she’d been prepared for this. She’d tied up her hair, put on makeup and gotten dolled up in the kinkiest lingerie she owned. Because it was a website for men to show off their wives, she’d decided to wear white. She wanted to be reminiscent of a bride. White silk stockings went up to her thighs and were connected with garters to her white, satin corset.

  Jake handed her a thick, black marker.

  “What’s this for?”

  “You have to write our username and the date on your body.”

  “Why?”

  “So that they know we’re for real. Otherwise someone could just post pictures of a naked woman they found on the internet and we wouldn’t be able to tell if she was really his wife or not.”

  “Oh,” Zola said.

  She’d had no idea how serious they took this. It went far beyond casually sharing pictures of your wife. You had to verify that the pictures were real, and you had to be willing to let the other men on the forum meet up with your wife and fuck her. It still made Zola’s head spin when she thought about it.

  “What’s our username again?” she said.

  “Jakes_slut_01.”

  Zola couldn’t believe what she was doing. She took the marker and wrote Jakes_slut_01 on her stomach, right above her vagina. Underneath, she wrote the date.

  “That’s perfect,” Jake said. “Now get up on the sofa.”

  Zola did as she was told and sat on the sofa. “You’re going to be hiding my face, right?”

  “No way.”

  “What? I saw the other wives’ photos. Some of them had blurred their faces.”

  “We’re not blurring your face, Zola. You’re my wife and I want all of these guys to know you when they see you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m really committed to this, Zola, and it’s only respectful to let them see your face.”

  “But I saw lots of women hide their faces in the pictures.”

  “I want to know that if any one of them ever sees you in public, if they see you in the grocery store or wherever, they know that they can have you. They know that you’re their property too.”

  “Jake!” Zola said. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “But that’s not what they’ve done with their wives.”

  “That’s because they’re doing it wrong. I’m going to show them your face, I’m going to tell them where we live, I’m going to bring this hotwifing to a whole new level.”

  “You’re going to tell them where we live?”

  “Yes. You’re going to be the wife of every man on the forum. That’s the way I want it.”

  “Is that even safe?”

  “Jesus, Zola. Just spread your legs and show me your cunt.”

  Zola felt as if she’d been slapped in the face. She felt as if Jake was punishing her somehow, deliberately trying to humiliate her and show her how little she meant to him.

  She sat there and spread open her vagina with her hands.

  “Make sure you don’t block the verification.”

  She moved her arm so that the username and date could be seen clearly by the camera.

  “Open your mouth a little,” Jake said.

  Zola wet her lips and opened her mouth. She tried to look as sexy and alluring as she could. She felt utterly lost. She was doing something that went against every fiber of her being, and she was doing it to please a man she wasn’t even sure loved her.

  “Lift your feet. Some of the guys like feet.”

  She lifted her feet up onto the sofa in front of her.

  “Really nice,” Jake said.

  She caught his eye. He seemed to be enjoying this. For once he seemed happy with her. Despite the circumstances, despite what he was doing to her, Zola felt relief at Jake’s response. She was pleasing him.

  “Ass too,” Jake said. “They’re going to want to see your ass. Some of these guys are ass crazy.”

  “What about the verification?” she said.

  Jake nodded. He got up and wrote the username and date on one of her butt cheeks. Zola almost felt as if they were working as a team. She arched her back and stretched out her butt for the camera.

  “Spread the cheeks,” Jake said.

  “Really?”

  “Do it,” Jake said, firmly. “They want to see the asshole.”

  Zola had no idea what was going to happen to her. She had no idea what her life was going to become once she allowed Jake to post these photos. She reached back behind her and spread her butt cheeks as widely as she could, letting Jake get nice, clear shots of her pink anus. As the camera clicked she wondered what she was getting herself into. Why wasn’t Jake letting her blur out her face? Why did he want his friends to be able to recognize her at the grocery store? Why did he want them to feel like they all owned her? Shouldn’t he be the one who owned her? He was her husband after all. It was scary to think about it all. Would she be raped? She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything. She didn’t even know how many members there were on the forum.

  “That’s beautiful,” Jake said.

  And there it was. It was as simple as Jake telling her she was beautiful. That was why she was doing this. That was why she was making herself vulnerable to all these men. She was trying to please Jake. When had she become so weak?

  II

  ARIEL GOT OUT OF THE car and entered the restaurant. She was a lit
tle early. Gabe had said to meet him at seven but she wanted to be there first to gather her thoughts. She really wasn’t sure what she was getting herself into. She wasn’t sure if she was even going to get involved in this project with him. All she knew was that he wanted her to forge a painting. Straight off the bat it sounded like a terrible scheme. People went to prison all the time for trying things like this. She’d heard more than her fair share of stories about greedy art dealers getting caught with fakes. It was a big problem in the art world and everyone was on to it. The chances of getting away with a forgery were slim to none.

  Added to that was the fact that she couldn’t trust Gabe. She’d been married to him for her entire adult life and he’d stolen from her, lied to her and cheated on her. How could she even consider getting involved in some harebrained scheme with him? It was bound to end badly.

  “Ariel,” Gabe said as he came toward the table, “you look more beautiful every time I see you.”

  “Gabe,” Ariel said. She knew he was just flattering her. Gabe was a shameless and incorrigible flirt, he always had been, but it was nice to get a complement. He looked pretty dapper himself in a shirt and business suit, holding an expensive briefcase.

  He took a seat close to her. Ariel was already sipping a glass of Chardonnay and he ordered a bottle.

  “I mean it, Ariel,” he said. “Every time I see you I think to myself, I can’t believe I was married to that woman. She’s just stunning.”

  “You didn’t seem to notice much when we were married.”

  “What can I say? After sixteen years of marriage, people sort of become blind to what’s right in front of them. It was like I got so used to looking at you that it was like looking at myself. I couldn’t see your beauty after being together that long.”

  “Maybe it’s my new clothes and hair and makeup,” Ariel said. “It’s amazing what you can do when you have a little extra money.”

  Gabe nodded. She knew he felt bad about stealing from her and Becky but she couldn’t help bringing it up. The waitress came and took their orders. Gabe ordered steak. Ariel asked for the salmon. They looked at each other across the table. It was strange. Ariel had been married to Gabe for so many years, she’d gone through so much pain and difficulty to get away from him, and now here she was sitting across from him and she felt as if she was on a date. It was as if the entire sixteen years of their marriage had never even happened.

  “So tell me about the deal,” she said.

  “Okay,” Gabe said, clearing his throat. “Storm on the Sea of Galilee.”

  Ariel looked at him. He had to be kidding. He’d finally lost his marbles. “You’re kidding,” she said, flatly.

  “Just hear me out,” Gabe said.

  Ariel didn’t even want to hear him out. It was a waste of time. There was no way on God’s earth she was going to try and forge a Rembrandt. That painting had to be worth over a hundred-million dollars. Every art expert in the world would be on it.

  “So, you remember that painting was stolen?”

  “Of course I remember,” Ariel said. It was one of the most famous art thefts in history. “The Isabella Stewart Gardner theft. It was taken along with a Vermeer and eleven other pieces. Total value estimated at what? Three-hundred million?”

  “And do you know what the reward is for information leading to their recovery?”

  Ariel looked up at him. He was insane. “I don’t have a clue, Gabe. A million dollars?”

  “Five million, Ariel. Five million dollars.” He held up his hand, five fingers spread out to illustrate.

  “And what do you propose? That I paint the Rembrandt and we just walk into the museum with it? Hey, we’ve got your painting. Now can we have our check?”

  Gabe lifted his eyebrows. “Something like that,” he said.

  Ariel shook her head. “Gabe, you’re crazier than I thought.”

  “You look so sexy when you argue,” Gabe said.

  Ariel took a sip of her wine. She rolled her eyes. What did he think? That he could flatter her into going to jail for him? Their food arrived and it looked delicious. Ariel tasted the salmon and it melted like butter in her mouth.

  “Fifty-fifty partners after my expenses,” Gabe said. “That’s almost two-and-a-half-million apiece.”

  Ariel was still shaking her head. “Let’s just assume for one minute that I actually could forge that painting.”

  “I know you can.”

  “It’s one of the most complex pieces of art you could have come up with, Gabe. The sky tones in that painting. The detail in the waves.”

  “I know you can do it, Ariel.”

  “That painting has been archived. They’ve got high resolution imagery of every square inch of the canvas, including what’s behind the frame. There’s no way you could reproduce it. There’s no way of even knowing the hidden markings on the original.”

  “What if I told you there was.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve got the archival imagery.”

  “Front and back?”

  Gabe pulled a laptop from his briefcase and opened it on the table. The restaurant was pretty expensive, not the kind of place you could usually pull out a computer, but Gabe never cared about things like that. He opened an image file. It was a high resolution archival image of the entire canvas of Storm on the Sea of Galilee, including the markings on the edge of the canvas, the part that was usually covered by the frame. Those parts of the canvas were kept secret precisely to prevent forgers from reproducing them.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “I’ve been working on this for a while,” Gabe said.

  “And do you have the back too?”

  Gabe opened another file. It was the back of the canvas in the same high resolution format. Ariel could see the place on the back that Rembrandt himself had signed the canvas. She could also see various other markings in Dutch and Italian and French, probably written by the owners and dealers who’d handled the painting during its four-hundred year history.

  She was impressed. Getting a file like that was no easy feat. It was almost as difficult as getting the painting itself.

  “I’ve also got the authentication reports.” He proceeded to open a forty page text document prepared by the museum’s staff outlining every single identifying feature of the canvas.

  “Where did you get all this?”

  “I’ve got a contact at the insurance company.”

  “They held all of this on file?”

  “Yes they did.”

  “Are they the ones offering the reward?”

  “No. The museum is offering the reward.”

  “And are they good for it?”

  “They are,” Gabe said. “I checked their corporate filings. They’ve got the five million in a special trust account, earmarked for the very purpose.”

  “They’ve had the money in a special account all this time?”

  “Yes they have. It’s been sitting in the account for fourteen years.”

  “How long are they planning on leaving it there?”

  “Fifteen years,” Gabe said. “Which is all the more reason to act quickly.”

  Ariel was still shaking her head. She had to admit though, she was intrigued. The information Gabe had given her contained everything she needed to create an exact replica of the original painting, right down to details of the canvas grain, the framing material, the chemical composition of the paint, carbon analysis of the canvas and frame, everything.

  “So what do you think?”

  “I think you’re a fool, that’s what I think. I think you want to go to jail.”

  “Come on,” Gabe said. “Look at this, you’ve got to admit, it’s a good start, isn’t it.”

  Ariel had to give him that much. “It’s a start, Gabe. I’ll give you that. But that’s all it is.”

  “I’ve got more,” Gabe said.

  “What more do you have.”

  “I’ve got a canvas.”

&n
bsp; Ariel looked up at him. The number one reason forgeries got discovered was because of the canvas. For a talented forger, recreating the artwork wasn’t the hardest part of passing off a forgery. Reproducing an exact painting was what they did and they were very good at it. The hard part was finding a canvas that would pass a chemical analysis. The flax used in creating the canvas was a natural material and had a unique signature that could be detected using laboratory processes.

  “What do you mean, you’ve got a canvas?”

  “I’ve got the same canvas as the one used for the original painting. The same exact batch.”

  “You’re crazy, Gabe. How could you even know they’re a match?”

  Gabe just smiled. “They’re a match,” he said. “The same batch of canvases, imported through the port of Antwerp in 1631 by the Dutch East India Company.”

  “You got a hold of a canvas from the same batch?” Ariel couldn’t believe it. That was the holy grail of forgery. Not only was the canvas from the same era, but it was from the same roll, made of the same crop of flax. It would match perfectly.

  “So what do you say, sweetheart?” Gabe said. He reached across the table and put his hand on hers. Ariel was flustered. She was used to Gabe’s flirting, she’d been married to him for virtually all of her adult life, but something about the situation was making her heart race. She took a deep breath.

  Gabe got up from his seat and came around the table. He took Ariel’s hands in his and looked into her eyes. She didn’t know why but she stood up to meet him.

  He put his arms around her and leaned in and kissed her gently on the mouth. She was in a daze. It happened before she could even think clearly. His lips touched hers and pressed against them. She knew he had a girlfriend, that receptionist at the gallery, what had her name been? Lucy. Ariel pictured her. She imagined what Lucy would be feeling if she saw Gabe there, making out with his ex-wife.

  “Let me walk you out to your car,” Gabe said.

  Ariel hadn’t finished her meal yet but she didn’t care. She was feeling reckless. Something about making out with Gabe now that he was no longer her husband, gave her a thrill. It was weird because there had never been a thrill like this when they were married. She tried to pinpoint exactly what it was that was excited her so much now but hadn’t excited her before.