Reunited

"Hey! Hey! Two can play at that game!" Terence laughed as Lisa smeared the icing on the slice of wedding cake on Terence's face. He managed to steal a bit from her hand and smear it on her lips, except that she licked it up.

They laughed and smiled as one of Lisa's friends snapped a picture of Terence with icing smeared across his cheek, as he smiled and held a laughing Lisa close by.

Terence turned to face her and took in her ravishing beauty. She usually dressed very conservatively, and didn't show much cleavage, but the stiff corset of her wedding dress held her breasts up as if to present them, and it just barely came up from under her breasts to cover her nipples. It looked like one could just reach in to her dress and scoop out her massive tits.

"I love you," Terence said in a moment of heartfelt sincerity, and the few friends and family around said, "awww." Lisa smiled a big, bright smile, and kissed him passionately on the mouth, even licking a little of the icing as she did. It was a little bit intense for a kiss in public, but no one minded as they were all taken in by the glowing love between the groom and the bride.

It was a small wedding, as Terence and Lisa couldn't afford anything too elaborate. Most of the money came from Lisa's side of the family, as Terence didn't have many friends, and had lost touch with most of his family. Lisa was a regular member of the congregation, and popular because of all her good work, so the church helped pitch in to make the wedding a special one.

Lisa positively glowed that day. Terence couldn't help but want to see her just before the wedding, as she was his rock, the person he turned to whenever he got nervous. He was having pre-wedding jitters so he knocked on her dressing room door. She yelled at him to stay out, that it was bad luck to see the bride before the ceremony. He relented, but when he saw her emerge at the doors at the top of the aisle, she looked like an angel stepping down from heaven, and he understood why it was important to wait.

When they sealed their marriage with a kiss, Terence teared up a bit, he was so happy. After his previous disastrous relationships, he didn't think he could ever love or trust again, let alone get married. Now he understood that he was only lost before because he didn't have a higher power to guide him. Now he had faith, which he didn't just turn on one day but worked hard to earn, and with it he built a foundation on which he could learn to love again.

It was a hard journey to this point, but worth every agonizing step to get to this point, looking into the sparkling blue eyes of his new wife, Lisa.

They had met while Terence was sitting in a church, on a rainy night when the rest of the church was empty and Terence had come because he had nowhere else to go except to ask God what to do. Lisa was beautiful, though she made a point of keeping her natural good looks muted with conservative clothes and simple make up. However, It didn't matter to Terence at the time, though. When they first met, if he had even noticed her beauty he would have hated her for it as he came to think that any woman who was even a little attractive was a lying, cheating, betraying whore.

It wasn't love at first sight, and it wasn't even attraction that brought them together. When they met, Terence was on the verge of suicide, so romance or relationships had nothing to do with it.

Terence didn't know how to pray or anything, he just sat there, hoping that if there was any guidance to be had, God would somehow let him know.

Lisa had been helping the pastor set up an email account. She wasn't a computer expert by any means, but she was merely familiar with computers as anyone is these days. The pastor, however, was from a different time and didn't catch on quite as quickly. The two of them stumbled through it, and then the pastor, who was a little brain tired, retired to his little living space in the back of the church, grateful for Lisa's offer to just look around the church in his place, to make sure all the doors were locked and everything was alright.

It wasn't unusual to find someone sitting or praying among the benches, but there was a dark cloud above Terence that one could feel just by looking at him. She knew that the homeless in the area could be a little mentally unstable, so she sat in the aisle in front of the aisle Terence was sitting in, just for safety. She just sat there for a while, not asking if Terence needed anything, just being there so he wasn't alone.

Eventually, he looked up, saw that she was probably some other Christian do-gooder who would sell him on the Bible, and he looked down again.

"I'm here to listen," Lisa said softly. "If you want."

Terence still said nothing, and Lisa just sat there. They sat in silence for forty minutes. As time went on, some part of Terence registered that she wasn't pushing anything, she was, by the simple action of being by his side, letting him know that he was not alone in his time of need. That softened him. He began to cry softly.

"You can't even imagine what I've been through," Terence said.

"I know," Lisa said. "Even if you tell me, I won't pretend I could ever know how it feels."

That made a strong impression on Terence. The last thing he wanted was someone's sympathy, even if it was well meaning. The thing he hated most in the world was dishonesty, even the kind where people are trying to be nice. No one could feel what he felt, and if someone tried to pretend they did, he would just resent it.

"I used to be successful," Terence said. Lisa said nothing, she just leaned forward and listened. Terence went on to tell his story.

Terence had spent a year being literally homeless after his last encounter with Todd. Not only had Todd destroyed or stolen all of Terence's wealth, Todd turned out to be right about Terence's house as well. It was over valued and he couldn't sell it. What little he had left was taken eventually taken by the bank. He applied for various programs to help get him on his feet, but there was little sympathy for someone who by all appearances had lost their money in playing risky games in stocks and investments.

Terence had to stay in shelters after the bank had quickly foreclosed his house. He went to soup kitchens and did odd jobs to make a little cash under the table. Not only was he broken down, but the economy was in bad shape. Sometimes he slept on the streets, sometimes he slept in shelters.

Mostly what kept Terence homeless, though, was the rage. Inside he burned with a rage that could power the sun itself. Todd had made Terence drink Todd's cum! How could any man walk away from such utter humiliation and not feel hatred in every cell of his being? Hatred, jealousy, envy, depression, desire, anger... Every night and every day Terence was fueled by raw, fiery passions. His rage was palpable to anyone within sight of him, and that made a lot of people keep their distance. He was hard to employ because of his rage. He didn't make any friends. He was completely alone.

Along the way, though, Terence kept meeting good people, who worked to help others. Terence was so shaped by his anger that he couldn't even believe people who tried to be nice and charitable to him. He immediately suspected they were trying to take something from him.

Most of all, he hated the Christian missionary types who wanted to help. A lot of the charitable food organizations he frequented to stay fed had connections to various churches, so he ran into a lot more Christians actively doing good work than he ever had before. They would want to read from the bible and from tell him that God had a plan for him. One time Terence literally spat on the Bible in a pastor's hand.

"If God has been planning my life so far," Terence shouted, "then God is a sadistic, evil cock!"

It came to the point where Terence wanted to die, except that he felt it was the ultimate loss to Todd. To just end his own life was an admission that people like Todd are the winners and people like Terence are the losers. At the same time, Terence just couldn't imagine building himself back up again. Even if he worked hard, even if he became successful, it would come crashing down when Todd inevitably stole whatever woman Terence fell in love with. What was the point of life without love?

Which brought Terence to that night at the church. He didn't see the point of going on. At the same time, he couldn't just give up. He was incapable of making his own decision, and even though he wasn't a church going type, he was desperate for some kind of guidance.

Lisa listened, and waited in silence for a long time to make sure that Terence had every opportunity to really let it all out. Then she told Terence the story of Job. How Job had everything taken and was tested by God more than any other man. She said an interesting thing which was that she could just point Terence to the story, and tell him about it, but she couldn't tell him what it meant. The girl said that most people hear the story and just think it's evidence of a cruel God, but that only someone who had Terence's experience could really feel it, and get to what it means. Only by feeling the pain could Terence see what it meant, more than anyone else who could only read the surface details of the story.

Terence thought deeply. It made sense. How could such misfortune have befallen him if it weren't to cure him. When he thought about it, wasn't it pride that made him want to have such beautiful women in his life? He was living his whole life trying to "win" some kind of master game. Really, though, was it all about winning? Even if Todd was the devil himself, maybe God was using him to show Terence that trying to win at games of pride was never going to work.

The real "win" was to lead a good life, one that no one could take away, because it wasn't built on showing people how well you had done but by being a good person that people respected.

From that moment on, Terence resolved to make a life that no one could take away from him.

Lisa recognized immediately that some kind of spark had been ignited in Terence, so she made some calls to help him out. She was most certainly not in love with Terence. When she saw him in that church, she saw him as one of many homeless people who needed a helping hand. He looked unclean and unkempt as they usually did, not at all the kind of man that a woman looks for. All that had changed after Terence had told his story is that she recognized that he was a man with potential who had been broken down, not just another person with mental issues who had been abandoned by society.

It was hard at first for Terence to earn people's trust. He had snapped and shouted at a lot of people during his difficult year of being homeless. A lot of people didn't want to deal with him, but only did so because Lisa vouched for him. Terence didn't see Lisa that much, she would just be in the church during Sunday mass, and often she was too busy to talk to other people to talk with Terence. Terence didn't mind, though, because even though he was trying to start over, he still didn't feel he was ready for any kind of romance.

In fact, at night, when he masturbated, he still had lingering thoughts of Amy and Angela, which bothered him. He just couldn't shake the memory of the visceral feeling of their smooth soft skin and the sight of their incredible bodies pressed against him. He would feel guilty and pathetic after he came, though. While the less rational part of him couldn't shake his lusts, his more rational part that took over when he wasn't horny would keep reminding him that he had to reach higher than lust as a foundation for a relationship.

Terence felt embarrassed at first that his first steady job was a paper route, but he bumped into Lisa one time and she said it was great. Real respect, she said, wasn't in what he did, but that he was trying so hard and willing to do what it takes to get where he was going.

He did that for a little while, and then the young man who distributed the papers recommended Terence for a job at a paper recycling plant. It was gritty work, and at the end of every day Terence had ink stains all over his hands, but it paid reasonably well, and he was able to get a really small apartment of his own. It had cockroaches and the fridge was literally beside his small cot, but at least he could say he wasn't homeless anymore.

It was nine months after his conversation with Lisa that Terence had a chance to really talk to her again. Lisa had been out of town for a while, finishing her graduate degree in a university out of town, and had been gone for the last half year, so she didn't see his gradual change. He was now clean, with new clothes, and somewhat fit again from all the manual labor. When she first saw him, he was thin as a rail, had a scraggly beard, and smelled terrible. She didn't recognize Terence at all when he came up and spoke to her.

"Terence? Is that really you?" She said, and she hugged him. That hug, pressing her body against his, ignited in Terence a feeling of attraction. An attraction he had assumed was futile, though. He looked at her with new eyes, and saw her for the beautiful girl she was. She had wavy light brown hair, blue eyes, and the face of an angel. She didn't show off her body, wearing clothes that fill well but were never so tight as to inspire too much attention or lust. No man who really looked at her, though, would have missed that underneath her clothes was the body of a hot young woman. Her breasts weren't huge like a porn star, but they were a lot bigger than most women, making them hard to ignore.

Terence figured that a woman like that would never be interested in a guy that she knew was homeless not even a year ago.

She was, however, willing to be friends at first, and so she and Terence started hanging out. She would invite him along to when she and her friends went out to see a movie, or if they were going to have a picnic in the park. She had an active social life and was willing to include him. Her friends were all good natured church members who didn't seem to judge him, even though there was clearly a slightly different atmosphere about him.

It was only after one of her friends, a guy named Robert, told Terence that he should ask Lisa out that Terence even considered it. Robert said that Lisa talked about Terence all the time, how she was so impressed that he was working to make something of himself, and that she had such respect for that. It was obvious to Robert that she was interested. It was so outside of Terence's experience to think that a woman might like him for who he was inside and not for what he had accomplished, that he didn't even believe Robert when he heard it.

However, there was no denying that Terence was attracted to Lisa, so despite his disbelief, he really wanted to try. After he heard from Robert, he asked Lisa out that very night, and she agreed. They then started dating regularly.

They were chaste dates, very innocent, but that's exactly what Terence wanted. Terence had all sorts of complicated feelings about sex that left him without the confidence that he would be able to perform. He had too many hurtful memories and images in his brain. However, it turned out that Lisa planned to save herself for marriage, so she was actually happy that he was not interested in sex. She confided that even though many of the men she went out with either were abstinent themselves or respected her wishes, she could tell that ultimately they wanted to marry her so that they could have sex with her, as if it were the prize at the end of a long journey. She wanted to get married for other reasons, and sex was something she didn't want at the center of the relationship.

The two of them were brought together that much more with their shared attitude about sex, and their relationship deepened. People around them started talking like they might get married even before they did.

When they started talking about possibly getting married themselves, that's when Lisa dropped a bombshell that shook Terence to his core.

"Before we could get married," Lisa said one time as they were sitting on a park bench, "you would have to go face Todd."

"What? Why?" Terence blurted out.

"Because he still has power over you." Lisa continued. "You've come so far, and you're your own man now, but deep down, there's a part of you that still doesn't believe in yourself. Partly you're on the path you're on because you're still running from what he did to you. You need to look him in the eye and know in your heart that he can't hurt you anymore."

Terence looked down. He knew she was right, but just wasn't sure he was strong enough.

"It's not just for you," Lisa said. "It's for me. I need to know that you're not just agreeing to no sex with me because you're afraid of it because of him. I need to know it's because you respect me, and nothing to do with him. I also need to know that you want to marry me because it's the life you really want, not the life you think you can have because it's what he allows you to have."

"I love you!" Terence said frantically. "It's got nothing to do with anything else. You know what you mean to me, how I can only trust and love again because of you."

"I know," Lisa said calmly. "But you need to be a complete man, a man who isn't afraid of anyone, before you can really live up to those words. You know it. If you really do trust in God, then you know he'll be beside you the whole way. Todd can't do anything to you if you have God on your side."

Terence knew there was no way he could argue without revealing that his faith in God in this matter wasn't as strong as Lisa's. However, she was right. There was still a part of Terence that burned with rage and jealousy when it came to Todd, and he would need to extinguish that part before he could really claim his life was his own and not just a reaction to what happened before.

"What would I even say to him?" Terence asked.

"You would say the most strong thing you could say," Lisa said with a smile. "The thing that would show him you really are the stronger one now."

Weeks later they found themselves at the door to Todd's large mansion. There were expensive cars parked in the long driveway, there was a vast garden. It was palatial, well kept, and beautiful.

They were greeted at the door by Angela, who smiled a wide, delighted smile when she saw Terence. The last time Terence saw her, she was on her knees, lapping up cum from Todd's cock as the two of them laughed and indulged their sadism at having ruined Todd's life. Terence tensed up, but Lisa squeezed his hand as a gentle reminder that he was not alone, and didn't need to be afraid. Terence looked at Lisa with a moment of panic. By seeing Angela's face, he suddenly had this paranoid feeling that this time, maybe like last time, was some kind of set up. Maybe he would see Lisa laughing at him too, as some kind of horror unfolded.

However, Lisa had a look of firm determination just under a smile that was nothing except polite. Terence didn't feel at ease, but so far Lisa was still on his side, and he felt confident enough to keep going forward.

"Terence?" Angela said as if they were old friends and she hadn't tortured, betrayed, and ruined him merely for her own sexual gratification. Terence was struck by how these people could treat such evil behavior so casually. It made it that much more agonizing to see that they were so completely free of any hint of guilt or sympathy. "Todd said you were coming over and I didn't believe him." Angela looked at Lisa and looked her up and down. "Seems you've been doing well. That's great." Her tone was so sincere that it made it that much more frustrating for Terence. If there was even a hint of the evil that he knew was in her, he could say something back, something accusatory or cutting. However, since Angela was so oblivious, it only made it so that if Terence were to say anything, it would be him who looked confrontational.