Rendezvous With a Stranger (9 page)

      
“I assure you, you’ll recover, Ellen Laurey,” he whispers as he grabs for the Army olive drab that goes around his shoulders.
 
His look is far more full than the first one he cast me the night before. I’m hardly heartened, but I guess this simple affection is all I really need right now.
 
I suspect there are few men that would have the courage to do what he did to me and then protect my new flaws with such delicacy all night long.

      
The room where I lay is fundamental—so much so, I could stay here all day long and be content.
 
There are no pictures or fancy linens to take my attention, just faded walls, aging chenille, a dresser and chair.
 
I could make this my home.
 
My black coat lays over the back of the chair, my red high heels sit primly on the seat.
 
I remain naked inside the sheets for a long while, not wanting to know the time—once I do, I’m sure I’ll swiftly decide that I have commitments to keep and I’ll be quick to leave this dreamy vacuum for something much more complicated and bustling, like my life.
 
I vow I’ll not bolt this place, or let fear sweep back inside me remembering what the stranger did to me, or start to second- guess my sanity.
 
I’ll just stay here and accept my depravity for what it is and wish that it hadn’t been over so soon.
 

      
I have four days with Robby, an extended weekend that I asked for the day after I’d been whipped by the stranger.
 
This isn’t a spontaneous move, but something well thought out.
 
If Robby wants to claim me again, we’ll have to find some common ground. And that will never happen with him screwing Chelsea, while I’m the willing prey of an anonymous assailant.
 

      
Arranging the time off, I wait long enough for the marks of the lash to heal.
 
At the very least there should be no overt signs of my ravagement when I meet with my husband next.
 
As the days go by, I’m initially anxious that I’ve been too optimistic for this healing.
 
It takes over a week for the bruises to fade into an indistinguishable yellow.
 
The rawness takes even longer to die away.
 
While that happens I enjoy the look of my body.
 
My back was hardly wounded, though at least for the first few days there are several gashes where he whipped me especially hard near my shoulders.
 
I can touch the places and bring back the sensation of pain.
 
The first time I feel that rush, I have my one hand on my shoulder, the other in my panties, feeling my hand become wet.
 
I can’t stop rubbing myself as I reflect on the meaning of this beating.
 
I’m so overcome by remembrance, I imagine his lash and more: a scourge and cane, the crop that he’d left on my bed, and a firm, thick paddle of leather.
 
I think of how meek I’d be, how utterly tiny in spirit, and yet, how that smallness looms like a giant on the plains of wisdom where this master strides so boldly.
 

      
When I gaze at my ass, something in my mood changes.
 
I feel that guilt again.
 
My mind instantly recreates pictures of Robby—not Robby and Chelsea—but Robby, my lover, my husband, and the vows he holds over me.
 
I think of chastisement, the judgment of an angry man punishing me as righteously as he can, driving home the necessity for this reprisal.
 
The stranger was not easy on me.
 
The lash was laid on so devilishly and so long there are deeper bruises, places where the burning leather turned the skin into scabbed places.
 
Having cut with the harder edges of the lash, lines like small razor wounds remain.
 

      
With that very first look, the hand toying with my pussy recoils for a second.
 
But then, it’s compelled to remember the feel, re-experience the idea of the stranger’s arm going down, over and over, to bring me to this state.
 
I’m forced to face a cruel picture of the complete woe I was reduced to.
 
All that, and I’m more physically aroused than I can ever remember.
 
I cum, still sensing the metal driving into my cheek, into my breasts and belly and tied limbs. I cum with my mental imaging rising above the scene as though I’d traveled out of my body and took pictures.
 
I cum sharply, as brutally as he beat me.

      
When this first
“memory-cum”
happened in the hotel bathroom, I became certain that my only wise move is to backtrack.
 
I can’t let this happen again and again.
 
I can’t let myself be defaced by a stranger.
 
I certainly can’t allow myself to be possessed by this sex.
 
It has no purpose but pleasure, no fulfillment but what the body feels.
 
And though this last time there was some gentleness at the end, there were no words, no shared passion, no intimacies of the heart.
 
I’d die without them, just as my marriage dies a little more every day Robby and I ignore what intimacies once made us fast friends and torrid lovers.

      
I only hope that I can rebuild a dozen washed-out bridges in one long weekend.

g

      
I don’t arrive home until late on a Thursday evening.
 
I see immediately that he didn’t wait up for me.
 
There’s food in the fridge with a note attached.
 

      
“Sorry, this was really good when it was fresh.
 
I figured you got caught in traffic.
 
Or maybe you had to have one last goodbye with your ‘lover’”.
 

      
I sense the sarcasm behind the word ‘
lover.
’
 
I hear him saying the word, twisting the meaning.
 
Ah, bitterness too.
 
I guess that’s okay.
 
I’ve got mine.
 
He hasn’t had anything but one simple hint that there is someone else in my life.
 
But he’s inferred the worst.
 
I imagine his anxiety building.
 
He regrets Chelsea, tries to ignore her—which he can’t do very successfully when he’s horny. I suppose he regrets that he ever let me know about her and so slip through his fingers the way I have.
 
He used to be so proud of me.
 
I don’t suppose there’s much of that feeling left.
 
What he’s looking for is some way to resolve the messiness so the end looks pretty.
 
He hasn’t got it figured out yet, or maybe he has, and I’ll hear his ideas after our first fight. But I’m really hoping it won’t come to that.

He’s sound asleep when I finally finish his Shepherd’s pie—it
was
really good. In the morning, even though I went to bed much later than he did, I’m up early, making orange juice and coffee. I hope the aroma from the kitchen will drift upwards to the loft in the A-frame. I think of it as a nurturing, healing move. I’m not sure we can heal this rift in a few days, but I’ll certainly make my plans quickly known.

      
For good measure, I dress in a baby doll nightie.
 
I’ve always thought these too cute, but Robby loves gazing through black nylon lace to see if he can spot my pink nipples as they bob underneath the surface of the fabric.
 
He’s easily wooed by visual pictures of me.
 

      
I think for a while he’ll mosey down the staircase, scratching his head in wonder.
 
But when he doesn’t, I prepare a tray for him: juice, fresh bagels and strawberry cream cheese, a carafe of mocha almond coffee.

      
“Are you trying to ply me with food?” he asks as I enter the room. He has one eye open. “Feeling guilty, perhaps?”
 
He’s only half sarcastic.
 
That’s a good sign.

      
“Are you?” I ask back.

      
He smiles and sits up in bed, letting me fluff the pillow like he’s king.
 
He’s a prince at best.
 
The stranger could be kingly, but I have to forget him.
 
I set the tray on his waiting lap and then sit back in a chair to watch him eat.

      
I find it sweet the way he smiles at me, the way he relishes his bagel.
 
Crumbs spill off his lips falling on the hairs of his naked chest.
 
I giggle when he spills his juice, thinking I might just lap it off his skin.

      
“Not awake yet?” I ask.

      
“Not used to having you stare at me.”

      
“Oh, here I thought we were having fun.”

      
“Are we?”

      
I can sense that agitation I’ve noticed every time we’ve talked in the last several weeks.
 
Choosing to ignore it, I put on cat-like airs and move from my chair to the bed, crawling up on him.
 

      
“Hey, how am I suppose to eat?” he objects.

      
“You’re not,” I purr, tearing away the covers with my teeth to find his penis.
 
It takes some time to burrow between the sheets.
 
All the while Robby’s protesting, though there’s little out-and-out complaint.
 
He knows I’m going for his dick.
 
I trust he sees my tits beneath the baby doll, swinging full, in unison with my body movements.
 
He’s setting the tray aside, so I have better access to his groin, but I insist on using my teeth to uncover what I discover to be a rising erection.

      
“My, I do still maintain my charms.”

      
“Ahhhh, you always will,” he purrs in return.
 
I look up to see his head reclining back, though his hand is in my hair at the back of my head pushing me deeper on his thickening organ.
 
My tongue twirls about the head, licks the rim, fluttering over smooth skin so delicately that he’s almost annoyed by the tease.
 
He pushes hard against my head, but I resist the effort.
 
Taking the erection in my hand, I jack him off while my tongue still skims the silky surfaces of skin.
 

      
“Ahhhh, yeeessss,” he hisses, goading me further.
 
I’m so vicious making him wait.
 
I love seeing how his body sweats this out.
 
His hips buck toward my face, and for an instant, I go down deep on him, letting the whole thing inside my mouth.
 
His turn to be vile, he doesn’t let me retreat, but forces himself way inside to stay.
 
It’s a hearty fuck from there, more forceful than I imagined it would be, but he’s taken over and I have little choice but to be his orifice and nothing more.
 

      
I sense him cumming—the way his body gyrates, his breath, his sounds—more rich and resonant—and the feel of something outside all these things, a stream of energy moving through him rapidly to the pointed end.
 
Then, he lets my mouth back off.
 
He’s hardly a visionary when cumming, the kind of man who’s been schooled on sex with XXX movies where the final scene remains immutably fixed.
 
He spews over my face, on my lips so the thick stuff dribbles on my chin.
 
If he could add some to my breasts, he would, but at the moment they are buried in the sheets between his open thighs.
 

      
“Ah, I am too good for you,” I say—wishing the instant the words hit the air I could take them back.
 
Too much bite, when I’m trying so hard not to be biting.
 
I want something so badly for my breaking heart.

      
“No one’s better at a blowjob, darling,” he says sweetly.

      
That kind of comment, I wonder if he heard my sarcasm, I can hope he didn’t. “I’m so glad you feel that way.”

      
We lay for a while, silently stroking each other.
 
My head is on his belly, moving with his breath.
 
I feel his squishy, flaccid spent organ under me.
 
His hand fondles my hair, while my hand caresses his thigh.
 

      
“We have things to discuss,” he says.

      
“Yes, I suppose we do,” I return.
 
“But do we need to now?”

      
“When would be a better time?” he asks.

      
“Do you want a divorce?” I get to the point quickly.

      
My head pops up because he’s pulled my hair.
 
He wants to see my face but I’m not sure I want to see him with his expression so dark.

      
“I want to know who he is,” Robby says.

      
“Why’s that?”

      
“You know who I’ve been with.”

      
“But I’m not asking you for details.”

      
“Don’t I have a right? I’m still your husband.”

      
“No,” I tell him, looking him straight in the eye.
 
I’ve already decided I’ll tell him nothing about the stranger.
 
Isaac’s reaction was enough to keep me silent about my affair.

      
“I am breaking things off with Chelsea,” he says.
 

      
“Really,” I muse, quietly.
 
I like his firm thighs.
 
Lying so close inside them I remember this kind of closeness before we were married.
 
Then, we discussed being in love and being together the rest of our lives—dreams, aspirations and silly secrets about our past.
 
I believe that there was no one closer to me in all the universe.
 
But he’s sharing those things with someone else now, and I share mine with no one.
 
“When do you suppose that will be finished?”

      
“It’s not exactly like that,” he says.

      
“And how’s that?”