Having read the comments on my Confession and Confession - Atonement, and thank you to all of you who wrote, I know that this description of what happened some time afterwards, as this piece does, will not go down well with some readers here. Some of your comments were pretty venomous. Writing as a wife who strayed, I have now experienced the disgust and hatred of a certain group of men.
I was never looking for praise. Just possibly some understanding. Or just acknowledgement, of a woman's honesty, in sharing how it was for me. As I said in the intro to my first piece, I just felt the need to write, instead of keeping everything bottled up inside me. For me, this is a kind of therapy. Putting it out there, to whoever wants to read it, is me baring my soul. So please take care of it. Be kind, is all I mean, or just say nothing.
There is an ending to what happened, which I have not quite finished writing, but it does end happily ever after, in a way. Give me a few more days, and it should be ready.
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The Heathrow Hilton at Terminal 4, safe, respectable, anonymous, with international guests who would not know me, and little chance of meeting someone there who would. Modern, the reception area itself is four or five storeys tall, glass from floor to ceiling, light and open. The hotel was worth a try, I thought.
"A gin and tonic, please," I asked the barman. "Ice, no lemon."
"Yes, ma'am," he said.
White marble counter. Back-lit red shelving with the bottles and dispensers and the racks of glassware. Red leather stools to sit on, although these stools had backs, which I prefer.
Seated, diagonally, because architects so often forget to build in legroom when they design a bar, and the marble ran straight down the bar front, not just on top. Cross legged, because a woman in a skirt always sits that way, not just because above the stockings I was wearing, my flesh was bare, thighs, butt, pubis, from the dense black, self-supporting tops right to my waist.
I tried to remember her name. The actress. In that film. With Michael Douglas. The interrogation scene. Crossing and uncrossing her legs, to put him off his stride. I could do that. Flash my hairless slit at someone. It felt good to know that I was brave enough to risk the possibility.
I wore a business suit. Not that I was on business, unless you count the oldest business in the world. Not that I would charge. I guess I could have pretended that I was some kind of high class call girl, but I really just wanted to blend in. To be just another solo business woman with nothing better to do on a Friday evening than while away my time, people-watching at the hotel bar.
Dark grey. Jacket and skirt. The jacket now over the back of the bar stool. Another reason I prefer stools with backs. My blouse pure white. My bra jet black. Which meant that it showed through. My cleavage bare, the top buttons of the blouse left open. More than enough to attract a stranger's eye.
The barman set the drink down on a black, circular, paper mat embossed in silver with the hotel's name.
"Gin and tonic," he said. "Ice, no lemon."
Repeating my order back to me to confirm that he had got it right.
"Thank you," I said.
"Card or tab?" he asked.
It seems that no one uses cash. Pay now with card, or later, after several more.
"Card, thanks," I said. Maybe I was already thinking that if I had a second drink, someone else would pay the bill.
He checked out my cleavage as I paid.
"Waiting for someone," he asked, more conversationally than because he really wanted to know.
"Maybe," I said, subconsciously sharing with him my indecision. Right then, my head was full of uncertainties, vacillation.
When I submitted my Confession, some of the comments suggested that exactly this would happen. Having compromised my marriage with one man, I would be tempted to do it again, if not with him, then with someone else. If not at a hotel bar, then somewhere else.
I had thought that it would just be that one time. Not that I would never feel the sense of attraction or desire again, but that there would be no need to act on it. That I could resist desire for something new, someone, not my husband.
My simple assumption, 'been there, done that, no need to do it ever in my life, again", seemed so trite. Just that once, I had, to my shame, been there with the gardener hired by my husband to prune our apple tree, who took me in the kitchen of our family home. Did it once. No need to ever go there again. Or so I thought.
And of course, my sex life with Peter was still, is still, good. Not just good. Amazing. Compared to most of my friends, that is. Most nights, a quickie, just before we sleep, and sometimes not so quick.
Date night every Friday now, our boys enjoying sleepovers with my mother. Even looking forward to them. Her cooking. Healthy meals for tea-time. Cakes and biscuits in the evening. Her cats, all three of them, which they just love to stroke while watching shows together. The boys, that is, watching television. The cats pay no attention to the screen. Breakfast in the morning, full English, not just the cereal and toast they usually get at home.
Date nights meaning restaurants, theatre, concerts, or just eating in, but always followed by loving, leisurely sex, no need to do things quietly, or keep things in our bedroom, not with the boys staying over with their Gran. The kitchen table several times already, reminding me of bending over it for someone else that time. Our lounge. Our patio, in summer months, unseen by neighbours.
Then, once a month, atonement. The paddle. Leather cuffs and silk rope ties. A blindfold. No longer just across our bed. Bent over an armchair in our lounge. The rattan table on the patio as well. That time he left me there, tied to it, while a barbeque went on next door. At least our garden is secluded. I heard them. But no one knew or saw.
The same paddle used each time. The same raised letters. The same effect. My white flesh reddened, the word emblazoned on my butt. Not that he knew the reason I had chosen it. Telling him about that time would have risked our marriage, our family. Not worth the risk.
He alternated. The first time he had punished my left butt, repeatedly, with one final stroke on the right, missing the first letter, so that for the next week I had been a gradually fading "L-U-T". The next time it had been my right check that had received the brunt of the punishment. A final stroke on the left had been perfectly inflicted. All four letters. "S-L-U-T".
Each morning and each night, dressing or preparing for bed, showering, cleaning teeth, naked, because once our bedroom door was closed, and the small knob on the handle turned so that our boys could not surprise us, that was how we were together. Naked and comfortable and not bothering with nightdresses or pyjamas or tee-shirts or robes, but exactly as we were.
And one buttock would be a general splodge of red. The other said the word. My husband's slut. He had become my dom. Punishing me for having let another fuck me, although that was the one thing Peter did not, could not, know. The real reason that I accepted what he meted out to me. To me it was my punishment, whereas to him, our monthly dom-sub play was just a game.
My punishment was not just that. It served as a reminder. Of a day when I had let another man open my dress, remove it, turn me around and bend me forwards onto the glass table that was in our kitchen, claim my cunt as if it were his own, fuck me, and come in me, and leave me leaking semen, the trickles running slowly down my inner leg. A gardener. That was all he was to me. But what I let him do was way too much.
Reminding me as well that there are other men who given half a chance would fuck me just as casually. That the world is full of them. That forty years of age leave me still desirable. One of those married women. A 'milf', I read. A mother that those guys would love to fuck.
If only life were black and white. Good and evil. Right and wrong. If only inner thoughts were all one way. Love and trust and honour and loyalty and faithfulness. Without the other instinct. Without desires that leads you to betray.
I had found that I could love my husband, adore him, want his happiness and more, be the best mother to our children that I knew how to be, and yet feel the instinctive urge to find another man to fuck me, relive those sensations in my cunt, of hard male flesh inside me, thrusting deep, long, hard thrusts that went on for ever, ending only with an explosion of semen filling me, finally satiating that prohibited desire.
That same desire had made me take advantage of my husband's absence overnight. In Wales, for golf, with friends. It had made me wear the business suit that had been retired before we had our children. That same desire had made me drive my car the forty minutes from our home to London's premier airport. That same desire had drawn me to this bar, this stool, this drink, this waiting game,, still undecided, in inner turmoil, cunt and heart and brain at war.
Slim, tanned, good-looking, silver fox, in light grey flannel, neat white shirt, pink and purple tie, asking me before he took the stool beside me.
"Is this seat taken?"
"No." I said. "Please,..."
He sat. Turned towards me while he waited to be served.
"Flying in, or out," he asked.
"Out," I lied. "Just to Edinburgh. Morning flight tomorrow."
"Hong Kong," he said. "Just in. I thought I'd stay over before heading back to Manchester."
"Okay," I said.
His eyes gave me a once over. Face, breasts, hovering a moment at my cleavage, down to my legs, sheer nylon. Then my hand. My rings.
"You're married?" he asked. He might as well have asked the real question that was on his mind. Did I sleep with strangers? Or more precisely, might I sleep with him?
"Yes," I said, answering only the spoken question. I was as yet unsure how I would answer the other questions that I knew were forefront on his mind.
"Family?" he asked.
"Two boys," I said.
He nodded.
"It must be difficult. Travelling, I mean,... when you're a mother."
"It can be," I said.
