Does Honesty Pay The Aftermath

Does Honesty Pay? Of Course Not. The Aftermath.

[This is a continuation, at the author's open invitation, of hansbwl's story entitled "Does Honesty Pay? Of Course Not", which appeared on 3/4/06. You should read that story first.]

*

When Susan came back into the room she had the oddest look on her face. I don't know what she was expecting to see, but I certainly did not have a "boner" for her to "take care of", as she'd promised to do on the video.

I just sat on the bed, naked and angry, my wrists still wrapped around the bedpost, and looked at her coldly. She blushed, and said, "I'm sorry I had to put you through that, honey. But I'm not about to put up with your cheating on me. Now you know how it feels to be on the other side."

I still said nothing, and she began to look uneasy. Without looking at me, she moved around the room, taking off her jewelry and her shoes; then she went into the bathroom and emerged in her nightgown and robe.

She came to me with a tentative smile and said, "let me get you loose, and then we can make this up to each other." She took the handcuff keys and released me. As I rubbed my sore and swollen wrists she came into my arms and attempted to kiss me.

I pushed her away angrily and said, "get your fucking hands off me, you bitch!"

She looked at me in wounded shock, but before she could speak I went on.

"I was completely honest with you about my mistake. I drank too much, and I flirted with Judy. I wound up in bed with her the next morning. If we even had sex—which I don't remember!—it was only because I was too drunk to say no. The next morning, when I was sober again, she wanted to have sex and I jumped up and got the hell out of there."

"So I made a mistake, and I hurt you. OK, I know that. And I did everything I could to express to you how sorry I was. But this—this 'revenge' of yours, went way beyond anything reasonable. You fucked three men—three of our friends! Three guys I'll have to see again, and face their smirking looks and condescending jokes! And you made me sit here and watch it, you rubbed your adultery in my face!

"I hurt you by mistake, Susan. Then I came home and told you the truth, and I apologized to you from the bottom of my heart. And you repay me by humiliating me, by hurting me deliberately and cruelly, far beyond what I accidentally did to you.

"So I hope you're feeling good about what you did, and I hope you had a 'lovely evening'! If our marriage doesn't survive this, I hope you wind up thinking it was worth it!"

As she stared at me, her mouth open in shock, I quickly grabbed my pajamas, my toothbrush and toothpaste from the bathroom, and walked out of the bedroom. I used the toilet and brushed my teeth in the hallway bathroom, then went into the guest bedroom and locked the door behind me.

I was climbing into bed, still fuming, when I heard Susan try the doorknob; then a moment later her soft voice. "Keith, can we talk? Please? I realize I maybe went too far..."

"No Susan," I shouted back through the door. The time for talking is over, at least for tonight. Just go back into our bed, the bed where you fucked our friends, and think some more about what you've done."

She tried twice more to speak with me but I refused to answer, and after a few minutes there was silence. I'd like to say that I fell into a sound slumber, but that would be a lie.

The next day was Saturday. I'd hardly slept, so it wasn't difficult to get out of bed early. I quietly made coffee, had a little breakfast, and was out of the house before 7 am, so I avoided seeing my wife. I knew we had a lot of talking to do, but I wasn't ready yet. For one thing, I was still so angry I was afraid I'd hit her, as abhorrent as the idea was to me.

The one advantage of a sleepless night was that I'd had a lot of time to think and plan. I headed first for John and Karen's house. They were in the kitchen in their robes when I knocked on the door, and John's face turned pale when he saw me.

"John!" I said cordially, a fake smile on my face. "How are you? How about you offer me a cup of coffee, I have the funniest story to tell you and Karen!"

He grabbed my arm and pulled me out onto the front steps. "Are you crazy?" he hissed at me. "Karen doesn't know anything about ... about you and Susan, and that ... whole situation!"

I liked Karen, and had no desire to cause her pain. I wasn't going to spill the story to her, but John didn't know that. "Well, buddy," I said, sarcastically underlining the last word, "if you don't want her to find out you're going to do just what I say, aren't you? Now make an excuse not to invite me in. Then be at the Wayside Diner in 30 minutes and not a moment longer, or your marriage will be getting a major dose of trouble."

It was a frightened, unhappy man who slid into the booth across from me at the Diner a half-hour later. John didn't look so happy and confident now as he had on that fucking videotape!

"OK, you fucking asshole, please give me three reasons why I shouldn't shit all over your marriage the same way you shat all over mine!"

He had trouble meeting my eye. "I'm sorry, Keith, honestly I am. It wasn't my idea, you must know that—Susan came to me, said you'd cheated on her with Judy that night at Tim and Jane's party, and that she was going to have her revenge—with me or without me. Your wife is gorgeous, you know that. You think you could have resisted if the tables were turned?"

I looked at him coldly. "You know she taped it, don't you?" His jaw dropped open in shock. "Holy shit," he said slowly after a moment.

"And now I own you, you motherfucker," I went on. "Number one is, you don't breathe a word about any of it to any person, man or woman, for the rest of your life. If you speak about it to ANYONE, Karen gets her own private copy of that tape with my compliments."

He nodded his head, looking truly terrified.

"Number two," I continued, "is you tell me what happened that night at the party. I got very drunk, as I'm sure you remember, but I know I didn't climb into bed with Judy on my own."

After making me repeat my promise not to show the videotape to Karen if he cooperated, John told me the whole story. I passed out in Tim's living room, and Tim thought it would be a funny gag to put me into bed with Judy, who was sleeping alone in their guestroom. So the three of them carried me in there, undressed me and put me in bed next to her. Then John and Robert went home.

I just looked at him. I didn't know whether I was more shocked or more furious. "And then when Susan came to you, said I'd cheated on her and she wanted revenge, you didn't tell her the truth?! You went ahead and fucked her, in my bed, instead of getting me out from under your practical joke?"

He looked away from me, but had nothing to say.

I closed my eyes and clenched my fists, trying to calm myself. John was a little taller than I was, but I was still ready to climb over the table and beat the living shit out of him. After a few deep breaths I stood up.

"You and I are finished. We will no longer be seeing you and Karen. Make up any fucking excuse you like. And just remember that I've got a videotape she would love to see, if you give me ANY crap."

Before I left I picked up the coffee pot the waitress had bought, and slowly poured the contents of it right into his lap. He started to howl, then caught himself, trying not to draw any attention.

"Did I burn your dick at all there, John? Oops, I'm sorry." I turned and walked out of the diner.

I had a similar conversation with Robert, after knocking on his door just as I'd done with John. He confirmed the whole sorry truth: that he and John and Tim had put me in bed with Judy; and that he'd taken advantage of Susan's "revenge" offer rather than tell her the truth.

Since there was no coffee pot in his backyard, which was where we were talking, I settled for breaking his nose with a solid punch. I left him to explain that to Claire.

By the time I got home it was nearly lunchtime, and Susan had gone out. She had left me a note but I didn't even bother looking at it. I ate a quick sandwich, then found the infamous videotape and cued it up to the start of her sex scene with Tim. Then I put it in my pocket and headed over to Tim and Jane's house—time to settle up.

When I got there an obviously anxious Tim tried to head me off outside the house—clearly John or Roger had given him the heads-up. But I walked right around him, straight into the house, and found Jane in the kitchen.

"Hi Jane," I said. "Sorry to barge in, but there's something you really need to see." She looked at me curiously, and I pulled out the videotape and led her into the living room.

Tim, who had followed me in, tried in a panic to stop me, but I grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back. "I don't want to hurt you, Tim, but Jane needs to see this."

He started to yell at her to call the police, and Jane looked at me in confusion and alarm. "Keith, what is this all about? Why are you hurting Tim?"

"Please, Jane, just start the tape—everything will be clear in a moment."

Reluctantly, and ignoring Tim's desperate howls of protest, she put the tape in the VCR. In no time Tim and Susan appeared onscreen in my bedroom, undressing one another. Jane froze, and said, "what the fuck?"

Now that it was too late to stop me Tim ceased his struggles, and I pulled him over to an armchair. As the tape played, Jane saw her husband and my wife lying on the bed naked, touching and caressing each other. She watched as they fucked vigorously, and as Tim pulled out and spurted his cum all over my wife's body.

When the scene was finally over I stopped and ejected the tape. There was a long silence. Jane was still standing frozen in the middle of the room.

Tim started to speak, hesitantly. "Honey, it was ... I can explain. Susan came to me and asked me to do it! She ..."

Jane never let him finish. She grabbed one of his tennis shoes that was lying near the sofa and whacked him in the head with all her strength. "You BASTARD! You motherfucking son-of-a-bitch BASTARD!"

She went on pummeling him with the shoe, yelling and crying, while he cowered and tried to protect himself with his arms. Finally I went to Jane, took the shoe from her, and gently led her to a chair on the other side of the room. She was still crying, trembling with fury.

Under my relentless questioning, Tim told her the whole story: my supposed cheating, Susan's desire for revenge, and even that I'd never had sex with Judy—it had been Tim's idea of a joke.

Through it all Jane listened with a look of icy rage on her face. Nothing gave me more satisfaction than imagining the way she would take this out of my former friend Tim's hide. Whether their marriage survived or not, I didn't really give a shit—although I felt bad for Jane's sake. She was a kind and goodhearted person, and I valued her friendship. But Tim had been the ringleader in destroying my own marriage. What goes around, comes around.

When Tim's story was finished, Jane left the room without another word. Tim looked at me, defeated. He didn't even have the energy to be mad at me. I went into the bedroom and found Jane, sitting on her bed and staring into space.

I apologized sincerely for hurting her, but she told me to forget it. "I'm not the kind of wife who thinks 'what she doesn't know won't hurt her,' Keith. What he did to me—and what he did to YOU above all—is despicable. The fault is Tim's, not yours."

"Well, Jane, it's also Susan's. She apparently did this without a moment's thought for your and Tim's marriage. Even as mad as she was at me, there's just no excuse for that."

"Jesus, Keith—what are you going to do? I guess Susan really went crazy, didn't she?"

"Actually, Jane, I was going to ask you a big favor, especially considering the circumstances. Would you come talk to Susan and tell her that nothing really happened between Judy and me? There's no way she would believe it from me."

Susan was home and she must have heard my car, because she came running eagerly to the door to meet me, a hopeful smile on her face. But when she saw Jane come in behind me, she stopped short, and a big blush spread across her face.

Jane walked right over to Susan, stopping just inches away. "I thought you were my friend, Susan. But you got angry at your husband and decided that whatever you wanted to do for a little revenge was fine—never mind who else it might hurt."

Susan blanched at Jane's words, which were delivered in a tone of cold anger. She started to make an apology, but Jane went right on.

"Can it, Susan—I don't want to hear it. You're sorry now, and that's great. But you and my asshole husband may just have ended our marriage as well as yours. Congratulations!"

Susan could take no more; she burst into tears, and I led her to the couch. Jane went on, with a relentlessness that I was enjoying.

"There's more, you stupid bitch. You did it FOR NOTHING! Keith never had sex with Judy at all! He passed out on our couch, and my husband Tim thought it would be funny to put him in bed with Judy and see what happened."

I was watching Susan's face, expecting to see an expression of total shock and horror. To my own amazement, she nodded sadly but didn't look the least bit surprised. "I know, Jane. That's the worst part—I know now."

As we both stared at her, Susan recounted the conversation she'd overheard the previous night, when Tim bragged to his friends about fucking her and told of the practical joke.

We sat in silence for a moment, all of us overwhelmed. Then I sat up.

"Wait a minute, Susan. Are you telling me that when you came home last night to uncuff me you KNEW I hadn't cheated on you?!"

She looked even more miserable. "Yes, Keith," she said in a tiny voice. "I nearly threw up when I overheard Tim's story. When I came home I didn't know what to do. I was afraid you'd already be furious with me—which you were—and I just couldn't face telling you the truth right then. I guess ... I guess I was going to wait a few days, until things were better between us."

She sat looking down at her shoes, while I glared at her with a newly-revived fury. How could the woman I loved, the woman I thought I'd been happily married to, be such a stupid, unthinking, irrational, vindictive bitch?

I stood up. "I'm taking Jane home; then I'm coming back to pack up some things. I'm moving out."

Susan looked up with a cry of protest. "I don't want to hear another word," I said. "I don't know if there's any chance of our marriage surviving, but there's no way I want to be anywhere near you right now.

"Susan, even if I HAD cheated on you, your revenge was so excessive, so cruel, and so hurtful to other people, like Jane (I deliberately didn't mention Karen and Claire, since Jane didn't know Susan had also fucked their husbands), that I don't know if we ever could have gotten over it. But now that we know it was all for nothing...."

I left the sentence unfinished, and Jane and I headed out the door.

Six weeks later, I sat with Jane over lunch at the Cobalt Brasserie. We'd gotten into the habit of having lunch once or twice a week, just enjoying each other's company. I'd moved into an apartment near work; Jane was still at home, but Tim was sleeping in their guest room, and she wasn't speaking to him much.

Both our spouses had spent six weeks falling all over themselves with apologies and promises, trying to win us back. Susan called me all the time, sent me cards and love notes, wrote several long serious letters in which she forthrightly owned up to her irrational and idiotic behavior. She offered to go to counseling with me, to quit her job, to move somewhere else—anything, if I would give her another chance.

Jane and I talked regularly about our options. Surprisingly, both of us still had strong feelings about our spouses—we were furious, but as the anger cooled the affection became a little bit easier to remember.

"I know Tim can be a jerk sometimes, Keith, but he's MY jerk, if you know what I mean." Jane grinned at me. "And I know he's sorry as hell—I would really bet that he wouldn't cheat on me again if a naked Playboy model jumped all over him."

I confessed to feeling some of the same things for Susan. Jane went on, musingly. "The thing is, I'm not ready just to 'let bygones be bygones'. What they did is awful—especially Tim, letting Susan believe that you'd been cheating just so he could have a free fuck! At least Susan had a motive, as wrong as it turned out to be. If I make up with him now, I'll always feel like he got away with something, something absolutely unacceptable."

I felt a wide grin slowly develop on my face. "What if we told them that making up again came with a price?" I asked her.

We talked for a while, and I enjoyed watching the play of emotions on her face. When we were finished she leaned back and said thoughtfully, "yeah, that might work." And she gave me a big smile.

It was a Saturday afternoon around 2 pm in my bedroom. There were two chairs about four feet apart, facing the big bed. Tim and Susan sat in them, looking deeply unhappy and uncomfortable. Jane and I smiled as we fastened them to the chairs with handcuffs around their wrists.

"Now, do I have to go over this again?" I said. "Susan and Tim, you want us back in our marriages again. This is the price, and you've agreed to pay it. Jane and I had to watch the two of you fuck—in this bed—when we had done nothing to deserve it!

"Now the tables are turned. For the next three hours Jane and I get to play, and you get to sit and watch. You can't touch, you can't protest, and you can't leave. When six o'clock arrives the cuffs come off, Tim and Jane go home, and each couple tries to put their marriage back together again.

"And if either of you ever complains about this—EVER—then the deal is off. Neither Jane nor myself is going to listen to any bitching about this. You played, now you pay. Understood?"

I waited, looking at them, and finally each of them nodded. Susan had tears in her eyes; Tim just looked resigned and depressed.

I grinned at Jane. "Ready, good-lookin'?" She smiled back at me, nodding, and we gently began undressing one another. Jane had a lovely slim body, not quite as busty as Susan but absolutely beautiful, and it was a great pleasure as it gradually came into view.

Once we were naked I looked at my wife and quoted her words to me on that goddam videotape as she prepared to fuck Tim: "Susan honey, please remember what you see is not for my gratification but your punishment, enjoy!"

Then Jane and I lay together, kissing and stroking one another, murmuring happily. It was surprisingly easy to ignore our audience, we found. We took our time, probably twenty minutes or more before we were ready to fuck for the first time.

We did it missionary-style, turned sideways on the bed with our feet to our spouses. That way we didn't have to see them, and they could enjoy the sight of my ass going up and down as I drove into Jane. She was delicious and responsive. We went slowly at first, and then after awhile I could tell her orgasm was coming and I sped up, so that she came with a shout just before I emptied myself into her. It was fantastic!

We lay together for awhile, happily relaxing; then I went to the bathroom and returned with a couple of warm washcloths. We cleaned each other (I've never been a big fan of cream-pies), and then began our second round with some oral sex. I ate Jane first, to her evident delight; then she sucked and licked on me for a while, and then I swung her around on top of me for a 69. She tried to get me to come first, but I kept distracting her by flicking her clit and she had at least two orgasms before I spouted into her mouth.