Marina: a Tale of Serendipity

One of my favorite writers here on Literotica is Ohio. I find his characters incredibly interesting, and his situations fascinating. If you don't know his works, please check them out. He has graciously given me permission to pick up some of the characters he created in his work

The Surrogate

(https://www.literotica.com/s/the-surrogate-2). I have tried to stay true to his setting and the characters as I see them. I've posted this in Romance because it is a love story. But there is plenty for the Loving Wives genre, and future chapters will dive into other categories as well.

A lot of what appears here is drawn from various aspects of real life, both mine and people I know. That said, this is a work of fiction, with all of the usual disclaimers that go with it.

Please enjoy -

Chapter I - Some Enchanted Evening

You know those moments that sometimes occur, where for no reason you can discern there is a sense of anticipation? As if something of import is going to happen? You don't know how or why, but something meaningful is about to come into your life?

Well, Friday, December 7th, 2018 wasn't one of those moments. In fact, quite the opposite. The temperature up here on the shores of Lake Erie had actually crept above freezing earlier, but was headed for the low twenties, and snow was falling at an ever-increasing pace.

I was fervently wishing I had said no to Natalie's invite to be her plus one for the St. Dominick's Hospital Christmas party, and the weather just reinforced that. While I handle cold well enough, and am a practitioner of the Wim Hof method, I am not a fan. I grew up in the American southwest, where tee shirts in January are not that unusual.

It was close to 7:00 when we got out of the limo she had booked. The gathering was just getting started when we walked through the front doors, across the lobby, and made our way to the party. The Hilton had set up the large banquet hall in a typical fashion for these things, but they had included a coat check-in counter to the right of the entrance. Natalie's coat still had a light dusting of snow on the collar, so I shook it before handing it to the young man behind the counter. Natalie was halfway to the bar by the time I turned around, and the bartender had her martini in the shaker when I joined her. The bartender asked what I would like.

"Can you make a bourbon and blood?"

She thought for a moment as she finished pouring Natalie's drink, then shook her head, saying, "Sorry, no. We don't have any tarragon. But I make a mean whiskey Manhattan."

"Rye or Canadian?"

"What's your preference?"

I thought, "So there is a God," and gave her my best business smile. "Rye, please."

Once I had my drink, I moved to stand next to Natalie. She looked at me, and said, "Relax, Blofeld. Just try and blend in and be as charming as I know you can be. If you play your cards right, you just might get laid tonight. That's my plan, anyway."

I looked at her, taking in her scrumptious body poured into a classic LBD, and thought to myself, "In another life." I said, "Natalie, you are going to kill it. You could raise the dead tonight. I on the other hand, look like a Bond villain in almost every way. All I need is the eye patch to complete the picture, so even if I am at my most charming, few will feel comfortable getting too close. It is what it is, and I've made my peace with it. You need to as well."

"Jeez, even when you are in a good mood, you're pissy. No wonder she..." she trailed off, realizing where the comment was going. I felt like a stone hand was gripping my heart and squeezing, and the pain of it must have registered on my face, because she looked like someone had kicked her puppy. She said, "Shit. I'm sorry, Jack. It just came out. I'm so very sorry."

I smiled at her, but I'm sure the smile didn't touch my eyes. "Natalie, it's okay. And four years on, I'm over it."

She looked at me intently. "Bullshit."

The smile became real, but it was still a lame smile, and I shrugged. "Just a bit, but I'm good, okay? Go hunting. It appears to be a target rich environment."

She kissed me on the cheek, and then headed out to mingle. She wasn't wrong, though. I was born on the wrong side of the bed, and life has pretty much kept me waking up there. My brother Mike tells me that when I relax, I'm actually a pretty nice guy to be around. I keep telling him that I really don't know how to relax socially, and seldom have.

I certainly wasn't relaxed at the moment. Parties make me twitchy at best, even when I'm not specifically looking for potential trouble. Alcohol helps, though, and as long as I moderate my intake, it's almost as good as meditation as a tool to keep me away from the edge. So, I took my drink and worked my way into a corner, put my mind in neutral, and just started watching people. It's a neat trick that has come in handy in a lot of situations in my life, and it keeps me from getting bored. And so, I settled into observation mode, and my mind drifted as my eyes took in the room.

That lasted for about thirty seconds. It appeared as if Natalie wasn't the only woman trolling tonight. After the third one approached and had a brief conversation, I concluded that the light wasn't bright enough where I was standing, which is probably why they had come over. Once they were close though, I could feel them tense up a bit, and all three had quickly made excuses and left within a few minutes. The last, however, a spectacular looking woman who was probably a decade older than my forty-nine years and sporting a substantial wedding ring had looked back over her shoulder at me as she walked away, an invitation in her smile. I smiled back but had no intention of following that anywhere. Wedding rings are a deal-killer for me. Besides, I just wasn't in the mood, and hadn't been for almost three years.

My first wife, Gina Montoya, married me at nineteen, just after I finished my first few rounds of training in the Marines. We were divorced a few years later when I learned she was shacking up with her old boyfriend from high school while I was helping defend Kuwait for President George H. W.

I married again more than a decade later, this time to a midwestern girl from Ohio I met between tours while fighting Bush two's war. Her name was Madeleine Maitland, 'Maddy' to her friends, and she was Natalie's sister. There weren't fireworks, but we enjoyed each other's company, and eventually loved each other. I thought it was enough, but apparently it wasn't. The sex was good, and there was plenty of it when I wasn't deployed. She didn't want children, but because of the surgical differences between her going under the knife and me, I was the one who got snipped, and truthfully, I was fine with that.

I had left the Corps and was working civil service when I discovered she was cheating on me with her big-dicked boss and that she was one of the party favors of choice at all of the firm's get-togethers. Very long story short, I discovered this when she stumbled home one night after a business dinner.

She claimed to not be feeling well and walked, somewhat gingerly, up the stairs to the shower, and then into bed. When I came to bed two hours later, she was sound asleep, but her nightgown was up and the covers were down, and both her asshole and cunt were red, bruised, gaping open, and despite the shower, still leaking cum that wasn't mine.

I decided I wanted more information before I burned the world down, so three weekends later, while I was supposedly out of town, I walked into a pool party where my wife and three of her work friends were entertaining thirty or so male co-workers and clients. I mean, unless you are into that kind of thing (I'm not), it's disconcerting as hell to see your wife being filled out like an application by three guys who are stretching each hole to cartoonish dimensions. I really didn't know a human jaw could open that wide.

They even shot some of their own video, the highlight of which was the girls each placing their wedding ring sets on a plate, where a number of big dicks poured cum all over them, orally coaxed out by the girls themselves. Then the girls, including my loving wife, each delivered an individual, heartfelt message of love and respect to their husbands while slurping cum from the plate. Finally, they scooped up the cum-covered rings into their mouths, sucked them clean, and then spit the rings out onto the ground like sunflower husks after extracting the seed.

That actually arrived on my phone from the firm's primary e-mail account (what idiot thought that was a good idea?) as I was pulling up to the party. Later, Maddy retrieved her wedding ring, but to the best of my knowledge never got her engagement ring back.

I got angry, and I wanted to kill them all. Seriously, I actually had my MP7A2 cocked, locked, and loaded, with spare mags in my suit jacket and pants pockets when I came to my senses. Lucky for me, my hot-angry phase is usually very short-lived. Unlucky for them, it is always followed by a cold-angry phase that can last for a very, very long time.

So instead of life without parole, I got really good video and photographs, and sued the firm and the individuals involved into the dirt, got sixteen of them fired, and burned down thirteen marriages other than my own. I know, kind of an asshole thing to do, but as I said, I was angry. Nice goes on vacation when I'm angry.

My wife of course said all of the inane, stupid things cheaters say, particularly slut cheaters. She insisted that it hadn't meant anything, and that she didn't want a divorce. However, my mother, and a few other people I've admired over the years all had a similar saying that I've always taken to heart: Watch what they do, not what they say. Madelaine's actions were clear and asking her where her engagement ring was usually shut her up.

There was a month to go before the divorce was final when she was diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer. To say I was conflicted would have been an understatement. But as I've said, being an asshole comes easy to me, and I do work hard at trying not to be one all the time, even when angry. So, I stopped the divorce and stayed with her for almost a year, through all of the treatments and sickness and sadness.

She would occasionally bring up what had happened and try and tell me how much she was sorry, and how it had never happened before that time, yaada yaada yaada. I listened and didn't argue. I didn't say much of anything. There was no point. I didn't believe her, at least most of the time, and she knew it. But it didn't matter. We both knew where we were headed.

Her sister Natalie and I got close during this period, at least as close as I let anyone get that isn't my brother. She loved her sister, but hated what she had done, and she tried to be the voice of reason in the situation. Sometimes she would really piss me off, but she never backed down, and she never blamed me for any of it. I came to love and appreciate her. Sometimes I wished she was the one I had met and married.

At the end, I moved Maddy home into our bed, because why not. We had a nurse with us who took care of her medical needs and helped me with the other stuff. It was better for her, and that was better for me. We kept her doped up for the pain, but she had lucid periods.

During one of these, she told me that she didn't want my forgiveness. She said that she didn't deserve it, to which I agreed but didn't say. The only thing she regretted about her life she said was what she had done to our marriage, and to me, and she felt the need to carry that shame with her into death.

I kissed her and told her I loved her, and that I forgave her anyway. She cried, more than she had after it had happened. She was skeleton-thin and weak, but we made love, gently and carefully, because she was insistent that she wanted to be mine one last time. Two weeks later, she was dead, and I can honestly say that the entire ordeal probably did more to fuck up my head than over twenty-five years of combat operations in some of the shittiest shitholes the world can offer.

My brother Mike said I needed to "cleanse my palate," so, two months later he and I tore up Vegas for three weeks, and in a state of almost permanent inebriation I fucked myself into oblivion every day and night. And I was damn lucky because I wasn't particularly safe or smart about any of it.

I violated every one of my own rules about not messing with married people. Hell, I violated pretty much every rule I had about almost everything. I know I skirted the Nevada age limits. I spent quite a few nights in swingers' clubs. I was invited to crash a few bachelorette parties, and I know I spent at least four hours giving one bride-to-be a hell of a night she wouldn't forget. I had my first, second, third, and last trans experiences, and even hit for the other team a few times. And, somehow, I ended up in a few amateur porn videos, although I've since gotten all of the copies I could find destroyed or scrubbed from the net, but you never know. Professionally, this was not a good thing. Luckily, I had moved into the private sector by then, and it didn't ding my security clearance too badly. Still, not my finest hour.

I dated a few women after that in the following year, and slept with a couple of them, but I wasn't all that interested, so I just stopped. For almost three years now, I have been keeping company with that wonderful toy known as the Fleshlight when I felt the need, which unfortunately is usually once or twice a day. Bless that company and the porn stars that license their private parts to it.

The truth is that the world had lost what color it had for me. There was nothing that brought me joy, not really. I moved forward. I got on with my life. I focused on work and a few hobbies, which provided my only distractions from the dismal, daily existence that was living.

And that was where I was when I found myself at the Christmas party, all to appease Natalie. Natalie was an administrator or some such for Cleveland's teaching hospitals, and she worked in behavioral health. She had a very good friend named Marina, a therapist who worked with an associated clinic concentrated on sexual and relationship health, and she had been trying to set me up with Marina for over six months. She thought we would be a good fit somehow. I got the impression that her friend was ducking her invitations. I know that I had been.

This time, though, she'd caught me at a distracted moment, and I had agreed to come to the hospital's big Christmas shindig. And now that I was here, I just tried to blend in while I pondered what I would do if Marina actually showed up.

And then, of course, she did.

I have never been a romantic. Sure, I enjoy a well-crafted rom com as much as the next guy, and I know when it's appropriate to send flowers. I'm not completely clueless, particularly since I started reading women's magazines (it's a work thing; get over it).

But two things that I've never believed in is fate, and love at first sight. Sometimes, though, the universe forces us to challenge our beliefs.

I finished my drink, and decided I needed another, so I headed back to the bar. I had closed about a quarter of the distance when I saw her. She was turning away from the bar when our eyes met, and Thor's hammer hit me right between said eyes.

I stumbled. Seriously, for a second my body forgot how to walk. I caught myself and kept walking, but it was all autonomics. My mind and eyes were riveted to the gaze that held them.

Maybe it was the electricity that comes with Mjölnir, to keep the analogy alive, but I felt as if an electric charge was running down my spine, then blasting every cell in my body with potential. I tingled as every hair follicle on my body responded and shifted, raising the hairs slightly in response to the very real charge that was moving through me. My heart rate must have jumped by fifteen or twenty beats per minute, and my mind was mush. All I could think was "Wow!"

She seemed to be feeling something as well, for she had frozen in place, and her eyes had not left mine. Finally, as if by some mutually agreed-upon prompt, we both looked away. I slowed my approach, if only to give myself a few more moments to compose myself, and I noticed that she wasn't moving away from the bar either. We both seemed to be trying to look anywhere but at the other, but I caught her glancing at me several times, as I did the same to her.

I was both amazed and a little embarrassed with my reaction. I mean, I'm forty-nine, not sixteen. What the fuck was happening?

Trying to understand what I was feeling, I did a quick assessment of her, attempting to be as objective as possible. She appeared to be in her late twenties or early thirties and was maybe five-five, but she looked taller, probably because of her heels and her dancer's posture. Her skin tone was what I would call light olive, and much like myself, she probably had a relative in the recent woodpile that was either Mediterranean, Southwest Asian, Hispanic, or any combination thereof.

She had an oval face that ended in an angular jaw which sharply angled down to a small, rounded chin. Her wide-set eyes appeared to be light green from this distance. And oh, those eyes. There was power in them. Every time our gazes met, there was more electricity.

Her cheek bones weren't overly pronounced until she smiled, then they were well defined, and for all of the hard sharpness of her jaw, her face gave an impression of softness. Her nose was long and gently roman, with just the slightest curve at the center before falling straight down to a rounded tip. The bridge of the nose was wide, and the nostrils were long, but narrow and did not spread wide from the base of the nose. Her lips weren't overly full or particularly thin, but something about them enchanted me, and they appeared the most kissable lips I could remember seeing outside of a movie screen or magazine cover and remained so even when they stretched wide with her dazzling smile.

Her hair was very dark, probably a brunette, although in the dim light of the room it looked raven black and it fell in lustrous waves down to the bottom of her shoulder blades. She was shapely, but not bombshell-brick-house shapely. Her breasts looked to be somewhere in the large B or small C range, but push-ups or padding make that tough to judge. Her waist wasn't terribly narrow, and her hips and shoulders weren't overly wide, but her hips were rounded and flowed down into muscular thighs and held what looked to be a tight heart-shaped bubble ass that filled the emerald-green gown she was wearing to perfection. She had a slight, soft bulge at her lower belly that every woman I had lusted over in my childhood possessed, and a round firmness to her toned body that showed me she exercised a lot, but wasn't a fanatic about it like...well, like I was. Overall, then, she was lovely, but objectively, she was hardly the most beautiful woman in the room.

Yet, there was something primal about my reaction to her. She was real, and exciting, and I could feel her in my core. This was visceral, and I felt more alive than I had in years. And honestly, she WAS beautiful. The whole was definitely greater than the sum of the parts.

As I approached, she gave up the pretense of looking away and just watched me, her lips in a slight smile. I knew what she was seeing. I was 6'1", and I try to keep centered around 180 pounds, although I tend to creep up a little in the fall, and drop it again in the spring, so I was probably in the 185 to 190 range at the moment.

As I said, I was from Mediterranean stock. My father was of Greek and Spanish extraction, with my grandfather growing up in Ithaca, and my grandmother being from Almería, in Spain. My mother was third generation Italian. I was definitely what they call 'swarthy', and Maddy always said that I was the darkest white man she'd ever seen.