Confession

Okay. I need to do this. To write. I need to tell someone, but not anyone I know. I can't tell Peter. It would devastate him. Not my sister. She would judge me. Not any of my friends. Some of them would judge me too. The bigger risk is their not keeping it a secret. One drink too many, something said in what they think is fun, or maybe shared with a husband, who then says it somewhere else. Not worth the risk. So there is no one.

Not even a priest, either. Not that I am Catholic. But the idea of confessing makes me think of sitting in the confessional that I have seen in films, whispering to a man in black, telling him my sins, receiving absolution, and the admonition, not to sin again. That is not what I need. I cannot make that promise. I know that now. What I need is just to tell someone.

My laptop is where I write, so that will have to do, for now, at least. It doesn't judge me. It does not tell other people anything. Password protected, my confession will be safe here. Besides, this is where I write. My job. The articles for magazines that I get published. Most of them, at least. So this is what they call my 'safe space'. Digital therapy, when you cannot tell another human being.

The irony is that it was an apple tree. That was where Eve sinned. Tempted by that snake in Eden. Biting the apple. Betraying Adam. My apple tree was not in season. It was still summer. The blossom had fallen, but the fruit were not yet ripe. The wrong time of year for pruning, but we had put it off too long, and Peter had arranged it. Had he known, he would have waited even longer. But he must never know.

Any other guy, and it would not have happened. Would not? Might not? What I've learned is that it's not a man's looks that turns me on, or how he speaks, or what he says, or what kind of job he's in, or anything like that. It is just instinctive, some kind of chemical response to the vibe that they either have, or don't have.

With most men, it doesn't happen. It did with Peter. It did with other men before him. And with some since, although I never went there. Not before I opened the door to the guy who came to prune the tree. I felt it then. It even phased me. I don't know if it showed. But I felt a tingling. I sensed my nipples stiffening. I felt the wetness lower down. It just happened.

He was tanned, black hair, short sides, unkempt on top, what might have been designer stubble except I doubt if he gave it enough thought to design it. Just unshaven. Sleeveless tee-shirt, gray, with khaki shorts, the kind with pockets everywhere, a belt with holsters for his tools, well used workman's boots. Tattoos. All down his arms. His calves. Even on his neck, right side, below his ear. Maori style. Patterns, not pictures.

"Hi."

"Hi."

Then nothing. Just looking at each other. Maybe he had felt it, the way I had. That vibe. But we just stood there, saying nothing, for that bit longer than we should. Before he broke the silence.

"Your husband said you have an apple tree needs pruning?"

I forced myself to think and answer.

"Yes," I said. "Sorry. I'm not sure where I was. But, yes. It's in the back garden. I can let you in around the side."

His flat-back truck was parked in the street, not on our driveway. Green, with a yellow logo, contact number and address. Well worn. Battered might be the best description.

Another moment's silence.

"I'll get my gear," he finally said.

"Okay," I said. "I'll go through the back. I'll meet you at the gate."

Closing the door on him seemed strange. Losing the connection. But leaving it open would have seemed stranger. I went back through the hall, into the kitchen, out the back door, round to the narrow alley that runs beside the house, undid the double bolts on the side gate, more a door that a gate, opened it, used the hook to hold it.

I should have worn more beneath my dress. I knew that, standing there, waiting for him, as he unloaded a ladder and a barrow, and wheeled them expertly, somehow managing both of them together, into the driveway and lining up to bring them down the side.

I should have worn something, anything, a thong, panties, not nothing, even though I love the feel of air around me in the summer months, the sense of freedom. Not that he could tell. The dress was just a cotton day dress, button fronted, knee length, and buttoned to the hem, so not threatening to open, but I knew that where I was feeling wetness for him, there was nothing there. All he would have to do was lift the dress to find me naked there.

The side access was to narrow for him to get the barrow past me. I had to go back to the patio to let him through. The barrow trundled noisily. Well worn, unpainted steel that had been knocked around more than a bit. The ladder was wood. Just as well used. It might have been painted at one time, or it might not. The kind that opens to stand on its own.

He wheeled them both across our lawn. The tree was obvious. Right in the middle of our family's private Eden. He stopped before he got there. Set up the ladder below the tree. Then turned to me.

"You'll lose some fruit," he said. "I can't help that now. But I can get it back into shape, if that's what you want."

My cunt was telling me that it would love to have his fruit. It wanted him. I knew that. Pure sexual instinct. Hormonal. Pheromones. I just hoped he did not realise how I felt, and answered.

"That's fine," I said. "It always has too many apples anyway, and they just go to waste."

"You've been here long?" he asked.

"Eight years," I said. "We moved here after we had our first."

I wanted him to know. I am a wife and mother to two children. The clues of, course, were there. The swing with two seats. The slide. The trampoline. A garden that had children, even if right then, they were at school, and I was there alone. I have a husband and two children. He should know that I was taken.

"Nice place," he said. "Do you mind?"

He was lifting the hem of his tee-shirt as he asked me if I minded, already taking it off, not waiting for an answer, baring his torso. Muscular, of course. More Maori tattooing, the left side of his chest, down to his waist. Continuing below his belt line, out of sight, of course, but leaving me curious. Just how close to, him, did that that tattoo go? He draped the tee-shirt on a barrow handle. Then looked at me.

He might just have preferred to work without the cotton, in the summer temperature, but right then it seemed something more than that. Peacocks spread their feathers to display themselves. This seemed like a display, disguised as innocuous preparation for the work he was about to undertake. Flaunting himself to me. This is the body that he has to offer.

"It's fine," I said, then realised the ambiguity.

It was fine for him to take off the tee-shirt, was all that I had meant. It was a fine torso, tanned brown, well defined pectorals, a scattering of black curls at their centre, narrow waist, almost a wash-board stomach, muscular back, was what I could have been saying to him. He was a fine specimen of masculinity. I hadn't meant that. Thought it, yes, but that was all.

I couldn't help wondering what he would look like naked. Had he removed his shorts as well, I would have just felt that that was part of his displaying what he had to offer me. He would be naked beneath them. I was, beneath my dress. He would be tanned. Not there. Just white. His natural colour. Black copse of hair, I guessed. A snake, to tempt me. To persuade me to devour him. To eat that apple.

Was that what really happened, way back then, in Eden? Was the apple tree just metaphor? The apple not a fruit? A cock head. Not bitten. Licked and sucked instead. The first real deviation. God created Eve for Adam to make love to her, vaginally. By going oral, giving head, she sinned. Lust won the day, and ever since the world has been depraved.

I went back to my laptop while he worked. An article I had started earlier that morning. Nothing significant. In the spare bedroom that Peter fitted out for me, my workspace, with a rear view onto the garden. Watching him as much as writing. Climbing, using secateurs, re-shaping, moving the ladder, cutting more, picking up the cuttings, tidying them into the barrow.

He moved so fluently, his muscles rippled beneath the tanned and tattooed skin. His back was covered with more curves and scythes, a Maori face staring, challenging, eyes on the lower edges of his shoulder blades, mouth smiling eerily, wide nose. I should not be looking. I have work to do.

I should have gone to the bedroom, the master bedroom, where Peter and I make love, and sleep together, side by side, gone to the ward-robe, pulled out the drawer in which I keep my lingerie, found something drab, and slipped them on, but something held me back from doing that, and then I was back outside and asking him if he would like a drink of something, and hoping he would realise that I was so wet for him.

"Water would be fine," he said.

"Still, or sparking?"

"Sparkling's good."

"Ice?"

"Please."

I still don't know what had made me undo those two buttons, the ones nearest to the hem, that held the front of my dress together, or had done. It was not just because it let me sit more comfortably upstairs at my laptop, although that was when I opened them. But I had left them open, and he had noticed.

I might as well have taken off the dress completely. It meant the same. Two simple, coin sized, pure white buttons. That was all it took to tell him. Not consciously, of course. I had not decided anything. I had just done it, and then gone outside, and let him notice. Bare thigh. Not high. Not close to where my cunt was just as bare. But just enough to be my own peacock display. So tame and trivial. Yet so full of unspoken meaning.

I went inside. Filled the bottle for the sodastream. We like to think that we are environmentally conscious, so no Perrier bottles, or any other brand. Tap water, clicked into place and then streamed with gas to make it sparkle. Our middle class conscience salvaged.

Ice from the refrigerator. Clinked into two glasses. Water poured on top, fizzing with bubbles, ice crackling. I turned, and he was in the doorway. Then he was inside the kitchen. Accepting the glass that I was holding for him. I knew then that it was not just the water that I was offering to him. He knew it too.

Yet, he was so wrong, so out of keeping with the kitchen that I kept immaculate. Still in those work boots, on the tiled floor that I kept religiously clean, so clean that you could eat off it. Tree dust on his torso. Despoiling the spotlessness in which I took such pride.

"I'm married," I told him.

He sipped the water.

"I know," he said.

"I have two children."

"I saw the swings."

"I've never,..."

He reached with his free hand. To the top button of my dress. I could not have backed away, even had I wanted to. My back was right against the work-top. But then I did not want to back away from him. I let him finger the white button open. Dusty fingers. Grey debris on the cotton of my dress. Then the button just below. The next one. All of them. One at a time. All the way down the front, right to where I had already opened the last two, to let him see my thighs outside.

I just let him do it. I wanted it. I'm ashamed to say that, but it's true. I'm not unhappy in my marriage. Sex with Peter is as good as it has been with anyone. I still love him. He's a good husband, and a great father of our children, and he does not deserve what happened, but I wanted it. I know that.

My body was just aching for him. My cunt was almost pulsing with desire. My breasts were longing to be touched. Not just touched, but stroked and played with, and mauled and pawed and squeezed and kneaded, and he was opening my dress, and I still had on my bra, because I always wear one, even on a summer's day, because otherwise my breasts are unconstrained and it is just too obvious that they are free and naked underneath whatever dress or blouse or top that I am wearing, even if my cunt is bare.

Pure, white, part solid fabric, part mesh, the solid fabric there to take the weight, the mesh to tease with pink areolas showing through, my teats left visible. His hand cupping my breast. Straight from outside. Still dusty, like his torso, from his pruning. Apple tree bark dust. Grey on the whiteness of my bra. His hand strong, but squeezing gently, feeling the fullness of the fruit that was now his.

Then on my flesh. A workman's hand, rough, not calloused but not office smooth, on the flesh above the bra mesh, rising to my shoulder, underneath my dress, easing the fabric to one side, off my shoulder, down my arm.

The other side as well.

My dress just fell away, behind me, caught itself on the work-top, then down to the floor, and I was exposed, my cunt at least, bare, devoid even of my one time copse of hair, the way that Peter likes it, no trace of stubble, lasered smooth even before we had our children.

I do not remember ever feeling quite so naked. Not even when I was more naked. It is not as if I have lived a cloistered life. Skinny dipping as a student. Beaches in Greece and France where tans can be all over. Mixed saunas in Germany and Sweden. I am comfortable naked, even after giving birth the two times that I have. Good genes have helped me keep my figure.

But standing in my kitchen, still wearing my once white bra, now tarnished with streaks of tree bark grey, I felt more naked than ever I had before. Lewdly naked. Obscenely naked. Profanely naked. My cunt bare, exposed, flaunted, displayed, screaming for attention.

I wanted him to do the rest. To reach behind me, find the bra clasp, finger it undone, slip the straps down my arms and off, release my breasts, bare me totally, uncover me, my lust for him, my thirst for what lay beneath those workman's shorts of his, my yearning for the hardness that would be there, but no. He did not remove that last covering, but left me feeling so much more naked than I would have done without my bra, because my cunt was so very, very, bare.

Instead, he traced from my left shoulder down over my breast, the mesh, the throbbing nipple stub, onto my rib-cage, down across my stomach, to my mons, and there he turned his hand to cup it, fingers between my legs, palm covering my hairless slit, then moved back up the inch he needed to, to let two fingers slide into the wetness that was waiting there for him.

Apple tree fingers. Bark dust. Inside me. Despoiling that inner sanctum. Stroking me with a firmness that was so wonderful. The pad of a finger pressing against my aching clit. Moving so masterfully over it, claiming it.

I pressed my palm against his chest. Not to push him from me. To touch him. To feel his heartbeat, beneath the tattooed skin. Thick curves of black centred on the nipple, the muscle hard beneath. I would have kissed that nipple, but there was tree dust on the surface of his skin, and I could feel its sandy texture on my fingertips.

"I'm married," I said again.

The why, the reason that I said it then, escapes me. By then, I knew that it would happen. I wanted it. He wanted me. I was too far gone into this other world, the one that lies outside the norms of marriage, having children, being a good and faithful wife and loving mother. I had stepped into another realm, of immorality, corruption, vice, depravity. Of lust and longing. Of not caring. Not thinking. Not deciding, but just obeying every instinct of my body, of my cunt.

An attempt at absolution. Telling him that I was married removed responsibility from my shoulders, passed it onto him. It eased my sense of guilt. I was compliant, yes. I let him do to me exactly what my body wanted, but it was his doing. I was the victim, of his lust, and of my own desire.

He knew that. Whether I was or was not married did not matter, not to him. All that mattered was where his hand was cupping pubic flesh, and the wetness that was there, the tightness of my grip around those fingers, the pulsing of the muscles that would soon open to another part of him.

The next few moments are a blur of movement as he guided me from leaning back against the worktop, to the glass table where as a family we ate breakfast, cereal and toast and jam or honey, and eggs and bacon at the weekend, sausages and beans and mushrooms too, with coffee from the cafetiere, and orange juice and apple juice, and family talk and smiles and Peter making jokes, and children laughing, and I was turned around and leaning over it, my breasts pressed on the glass, the coldness and the hardness felt by my throbbing nipple stubs through the fine mesh fabric of my bra.

Then the sheer bliss of being entered. Of hard male flesh opening and pressing in. Of being stretched to take the girth of it. My cunt, welcoming the apple of temptation, his cock head. The joy of sensing when the flange had entered, the slight give, as that extra thickness made its way within, it sliding deeper, then the thrill of being filled so wonderfully full with invasive head and solid shaft.

Khaki cloth rough against the bare skin of my buttocks and my thighs. Hard leather too. His tool belt. Pressed against my flesh. Hands on my back. Holding me, keeping me in place, or steadying himself, or both. His cock head deep. So beautifully deep. So magnificently, ecstatically deep. The shaft so thick and strong and hard and unforgiving.

Do not ease out of me. I wanted just to enjoy the feeling of that shaft, to luxuriate in it, but like any man, he wanted movement, the thrusting and sliding of his cock inside vaginal flesh, its warmth and wetness, and so he did ease out, slowly but surely, right until it was just the head itself still there, inside me, then just as slowly re-entering and plundering again, as deep as deep can be.

"I'm married," I said one last time, my head turned sideways on the table, mouthing the words against the glass, as if saying it while he was fucking me would give me absolution for this transgression.

No answer. Just his cock withdrawn again, and thrust again, a little harder, faster, than before. Hard enough and fast enough to draw a groan from somewhere deep within my throat. And again. And again. And again. And it was now rhythmic, steady thrusting and withdrawal, and he was fucking, ravaging, my married, cunt, the cunt that I had promised would be Peter's, only his, and to my shame I was enjoying every moment, loving each and every movement, and I could hear the soft groans and gasps of pleasure emanating from my own lips.

Just one hand on my back now.

The other hand is reaching round my pelvis, squeezing between my body and the table top, fingers searching for the tender stub of my clitoris, the same fingers that had held twigs and branches, that had been dusty with dry tree bark, that still were, that just as his work-boots had despoiled my kitchen floor, had been inside me, despoiling my until then, uncontaminated cunt.

He found it. He strummed me there. My sweet clit played with by firm fingertip, unclean, I knew that, grimy, but drawing sensations so heavenly that dust, sweat and grime were too trifling, too insignificant, too unimportant to deter me from thrilling to the joy that that finger engendered on my clit.

Strumming while fucking and fucking while strumming, his cock moving blissfully, his fingertip playing as if I were a lute or a sitar or a harp, drawing from that mere nub of flesh such sensual music while his cock beat a rhythm much deeper and stronger, but together they made for an orchestral crescendo that left me shuddering and squirming and writhing and needing it to stop, because it was too, too much, and I could hear myself screaming and gasping and pleading with him but his finger kept playing and his cock kept up its rhythmic thrusting and that was when it all went blank.