He found out! It can't be. How? Fear sliced through me like a hot flash of lightning. How'd he find out about Mike?
"How could you say such a thing?" I asked, feigning outrage and innocence.
Before answering Ron scrutinized me for a reaction. "I have my sources," he said quietly.
To continue to deny would have been hopeless. He was too confident. Had he hired a private detective?
He smiled, and I detected a strange twinkle in his eyes. Did my reaction amuse him? Or was he trying to mask his intent to hurt me?
"I've had you followed. The only question now, is what are we going to do about it?"
His face took on a strange, chilling look. I began to tremble, but before the retribution he had in mind might have been revealed in his gaze, his face went blank and a grey film seemed to slip across his eyes. Did he intend to exact the kind of punishment he'd described to me in one of his sadistic sexual fantasies? One that turned him on the most?
Did he intend his fantasy to become reality for Mike and me?
Weak with shame and trembling with fear, I averted my gaze. I knew the man I married had his quirky—maybe even kinky ways, but the threat I saw now was much more real and terrible than mere fantasy.
From the very beginning of our time together, Mike Hamblin and I had been extremely guarded about our meetings. Above all, we agreed that we could not let ourselves fall in love. Our liaison would continue only for the joy of sex. If either of us felt it was becoming anything more serious, it would have to end immediately.
How much Ron actually knew about Mike and me I could only guess, but it was clear he'd discovered I was involved with another man. What he might do about it I didn't know, and I didn't want to find out. Maybe I should try to placate him.
"Ron, I'm sorry. I didn't want to hurt you, and I sure don't want us to divorce, I..."
"And I don't want to divorce you, Ronda. At first I wanted to kill you, cut you up and dump you in the river, but although slicing and dicing you might give me a cheap thrill, it would be very messy and I would probably end up getting the needle or spending the rest of my life in jail. So I decided there was another way."
As terrible and scary as it was, that cutting me up thing didn't really surprise me. He told me a year or two after we were married, in more detail than I wanted to hear, how he would like to dissect a women's body. He claimed he knew a gay mortician that he had confided his sick fantasy to, and had asked him if there might be a way he could let him cut on some young woman before she was to be cremated. It was the only time since our wedding night that an erection had raised its mushroom head from his crotch. Is this the kind of fantasy he intends to include Mike and me in? A chill crawled down my spine.
"What is this other way?" I asked, curious, yet afraid to learn what he had in mind.
"I'm going to let you and lover boy have your affair. The only condition is, whenever I feel the need, I want to watch you two fuck each other."
My jaw dropped. My legs suddenly turned to rubber. "What in the world would that do for you?" I asked with a tremulous quaver in my voice.
"It's one of the things that really turns me on, watching a man and woman screw, and I want to take pictures while you're doing it. You must know by now that watching turns me on. But of course, there are lots of other things that make me horny too." he emphasized, and sneered as his gaze lingered on my breasts.
"I don't know, this all sounds pretty weird. I'm not sure he'll go along with it."
Ron's face suddenly twisted into a scowl and his hands balled into fists. "You tell lover boy that's the deal. Either, you and he go along with it or I'll kill you both and cut up your bodies, paying special attention to the parts that got you into this."
He glared at me as he waited for my answer. My tremors began again. "Okay, but give me chance to talk with him first."
"Just don't take too long to get back to me."
I nodded slowly.
"Oh, one more thing. Tell him I know this gay mortician friend who might also want to join our little parties, although it probably wouldn't be you he would be interested in."
Through a blur of tears I said, "God, Ron, this is just too sick. In good conscience I could never get involved in something like this."
"Now, Ronda, you know that's not true," he sneered and said in a patronizing of voice. "Don't you remember that time right after we got married, when you got drunk and I invited that black guy to our motel room and let him have his way with you—while I watched."
"You mentioned that once before, and I told you then I didn't believe you. If it had happened I would surely have remembered it. Anyway, I would never have allowed it happen."
"Unless you were slipped a ruffee. You know, passed out drunk—and you were. This must be what they call denial," he said, "because I remember it, and you should too. That guy was a big basketball player, and he had the longest, thickest pecker I've ever seen. In fact, I got a little worried when he spread your legs and rammed it in you. I thought he was gonna to split you in two."
