Consequences
By H. Jekyll
CHAPTER 5: Retribution
Here there be sex. And rough stuff. You've been warned. It gets very dark.
*****
Here is where one might expect events to become sweeter and lighter. John and Laura will move past her cheating and, oh, one could almost fill in the blanks. But things don't work just that way. Didn't Laura's little speech at the therapist's move John oh-so-close to reconciliation? Sure, she pled guilty, even
massively
guilty, and she took full responsibility. But in the end, it was just words. Words, words, words. And sure, John figured he'd played some role. The betrayed spouse almost always plays
some
role, though Laura's ex-friends probably wouldn't accept that argument. But even if so--even if--it was so minor in comparison to six long months of her getting naked and screwing George Mathis and deceiving John. And it had taken her this long just to really accept it.
Where did that put John, Mr. Nice Guy, in all his brooding time since he'd stumbled onto Laura's trysts? His entire experience. Myra was right that what Laura had done was
so
much worse than what Amos had done. How had John survived it? After all that, a reconciliation? Really? What actually came of their 'reconciliation'? It wasn't pretty. It wasn't pretty at all.
What had become of John? What
had
happened to him? Ernest Hemingway--yes, the same Hemingway--wrote that the world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places, and having been broken so often, he probably knew. But sometimes the broken places don't heal straight. How crookedly had John healed after Laura had well and fully broken him? How straight would
anyone
heal? Or there's this to consider: had he healed at all?
That afternoon they took the kids over to Myra's house and explained the new situation, the defined period part. Laura kept trying to touch John, his arm, a shoulder, anywhere, because he still hadn't accepted a hug. Myra, though, was over the moon. There was a late cold spell that year. There was even a late snow. But for Myra it was a lovely summer's day. She'd happily keep the kids until dinnertime. John and Laura would have some time alone.
Maybe? Maybe they can work things out?
That's what Myra asked herself.
When it was time to go, John called Laura but she tarried a bit to talk with Myra and hug the children.
"Laura! We're
going
! Now!"
That got
everyone's
attention. He was furious with her. The slightest thing she did set him off now that he was out from under the therapist's control. Laura thought he was like a different person, and it scared her. He didn't say anything at all on the way home and she leaned against her window and looked over at him with worry until they entered the garage. "I'm sorry, John. I didn't mean to do that."
"So did you
already
forget, about doing what I say or leaving?"
"John. Please. Don't even threaten. I'll do anything. I mean it."
"Then take off your clothes."
"What? Please John. Don't."
It was cold in the garage. It seemed almost as cold as it was outside. He grabbed a wrist and dragged her to a floormat that he kept in front of his work bench.
"Your clothes! Off! Hand them to me."
"John!"
"Then go pack. Anything means
anything
!"
So, she shut up and stripped. Everything. Her coat. Her shoes. Her socks. Her flannel slacks. Her wool sweater. Her blouse. Her bra. Her panties. She handed everything to John, and he tossed it all onto the work bench. At each step she showed him more of that womanly body: her lovely breasts, the nipples, her pubic hair, dark and curled and trimmed to a little triangle. Not just those parts but the rest of her too: her slender hips, her trim thighs, even her scars, the faint appendicitis scar and the larger one from her Caesarian section. He'd been with her for the birth and he'd nursed her afterward. Laura's body. The body he'd loved--loved so much because it was hers. Not hers anymore but someone else's. The body that was shivering even before she was completely naked. She was begging him to let her stop, begging with her eyes.
"Kneel."
Laura knelt, hugging herself against the cold, and John unfastened his pants. He pushed them and his underwear down in a single motion.
"Now suck me."
He wasn't erect, not when she began, but as she sucked him into her mouth and began swirling her tongue beneath his foreskin, it grew nice and hard. She tucked one hand under John's balls and held the other along the shaft. She moved her head up and down and sucked and tasted her husband, using the sweet, hot, wet mouth that she'd used on George Mathis' cock from--what?--September to March, but as she did it she shivered ever more. She was covered with chill bumps. She leaned up against him to get what warmth she could from his body while she sucked on him. Shivering, quaking, and sucking. Poor Laura. John grabbed her head and held her tightly so he could move into and out of her mouth. He grunted and started to come, pushing into her, to the back of her mouth, making her gag before she dutifully swallowed.
Drink it, you slut!
It was brand new, Laura doing him, but it wasn't new in his fantasies. Those began when he'd first learned about her and George. He'd thought about it, oh, all the time. One night he'd even tried to calculate the total volume of George's semen that Laura had drunk. He was
that
obsessed. Depending on the number of times she had done it, and the average volume of ejaculate per orgasm, he estimated maybe a half cup to a cup. It didn't seem all that much when converted to defined units, but in any event, now, in the garage, he thought
I have a ways to go to catch up.
He didn't turn Laura loose even when he was finished. His first blow job from Laura. How skilled she was. What was he thinking during it? It was mostly,
You fucking asshole, George! You fucking asshole!
"Keep sucking." Laura was whimpering into his erection because of the cold. Finally, he just pushed her aside. "Get dressed and come inside when you're decent. We'll talk." He pulled up his pants and fastened them and went into the house. He was shivering.
Fuck! I'm a monster. Shit, it was good. God damn it, I'm a monster.
The therapist had screwed up. She'd given him the idea, and a monster was just what he'd be. John, Mr. Nice Guy, might be somewhere but he wasn't here anymore.
*****
And Laura. Laura! Why didn't she just call John's bluff? That's an easy one. It's because the world breaks
everyone
, indiscriminately. Life had been wonderful for Laura and George. They were in the clear and getting exactly what they wanted, the two of them, until John confronted Laura and had the evidence.
Can Laura remember the exact moment she began cracking from the shock and the despair of knowing her little, deceitful world was ending? Does she remember how the cracks spread across her like a spider's web as event piled on event? Didn't it almost kill her to have to help John tell George to confess? Crack. Did she break all the way through when George put a bullet through his head from the shock and despair of knowing
his
little, deceitful world was ending? Or did that wait for Marge to out her to the assembled mourners?
There wasn't much holding her together by then--was there?--only her faint hope for some kind of rapprochement with John. But last night she'd learned a fairly minor thing--just how calculating and soulless John actually found her--and that was that. Considering the bigger picture it was truly a small thing, as light and gentle as butterfly wings flapping over the Amazon jungle, but it had shattered her into a thousand jagged little shards. Laura should remember last night. After that there was nothing whole of her left, nothing to knit back together. Perhaps she should have followed George's lead, having followed him in so much else.
*****
And perhaps she intended to. That thought swirled around upstairs as much as anything else, but John offered this one lifeline, and he was all she had in the entire world. So, here she was.
Inside the house, John started the gas log fireplace and warmed himself. Laura staggered through the door a few minutes later, dressed but shaking, shuddering. She swayed with the shaking as she walked, enough to bump into the door frame. "Come on in," said the spider to the fly. The man by the fire was someone she didn't know, and she was afraid to come near him.
"Come here."
She stopped six feet away and stood there quaking.
"Come
here
!"
She walked up to him with hesitating, baby steps, and finally he made a sound of exasperation, hooked an arm around her waist, and pulled her to him. "Warm yourself." He held her by her waist and moved her in front of himself, toward the fire, so she could do that, and after several minutes she stopped shivering. He wrapped one arm around her waist, the other right over her breasts, and pulled her into him. He nuzzled her hair. She shivered, not from the cold. He smelled her hair and blew a warm breath back through her hair to her scalp. If you'd seen it you'd have thought the scene was sweet and romantic. He said, "I like you afraid. I like you submissive. They make you so very sexy, my sweetheart."
He turned her around. "Look at me." She didn't want to look up. "
Look
at me!" Yeah, it was so much better being a monster. When she raised her face he told her how it was going to be.
"I'm going to punish you and hurt you." She was motionless in his arms. They may have been all that kept her from falling. "When I'm ready, I'll hurt you, different parts of you, in different ways, at different times. I'll come up with new punishments, so they don't get too repetitive. I'll tell you what I'm going to do, and you ... you're going to cooperate. Whatever I decide. You have a choice. If you cooperate, you can stay. If not, you leave and can't ever come back. Do you understand?" Laura didn't say anything. She stared up at him and had trouble breathing. "Tell me you understand!" She nodded. "Tell me in words. In whole sentences." That's when she began to cry again. He'd have her crying a lot.
"I'll cooperate. When you want to hurt me. Please John. Don't make me."
"I'll make you. Now kiss me. No. A real kiss."