by Clara James
His Adam’s apple jumped as he swallowed. “All I’ve been thinking about over the last hour is getting you back here and ripping your clothes off,” he said, the fingers of his free hand suddenly snaking over my hip.
“That’s because you’re drunk,” I informed him, allowing him to tug my lower half to him. My hips met his with a slight bump and I felt the warm swell of his groin pressed against my belly. The evening had been far from romantic. I didn’t particularly want to make love with him right then. It was clear to all but the blind that alcohol had made him horny. Nothing else seemed to matter to him, not the fact that we’d been fighting, nor the fact that it had been almost two months since the last time we’d had sex.
“So what?” he replied darkly, as he moved his body against mine resulting in a surge of blood to his penis.
He was rock hard, his erection straining at the tented front of his pants. I wanted to stay mad; I was still mad. And yet, two long months without physical intimacy had taken its toll on me. My fingers trembled as an all too familiar warmth began to pool in my stomach and spread slowly southward. “Maybe,” I mumbled, realizing my mouth had gone suddenly dry. “Maybe we should talk about this in the morning.” As I tried to grapple some control over my desire, he continued to drive me to the edge.
Drawing his face close to mine, he teased my lips with his. Close enough to kiss me, he simply brushed his mouth against mine and pulled back as I instinctively leaned toward his lips. “I don’t want to talk,” he breathed, “now or in the morning.” His fingers stroked their way over my hip and grasped my buttock forcefully.
I gasped as he tugged me closer, grinding his lower half against mine. My hands automatically shot up to his shoulders, regaining my balance. “Kiss me,” I pleaded, my fingers twisting in the soft cotton of his shirt.
Paul’s hand slipped quickly from the bathroom door and snaked around my waist. He turned me hurriedly, panting with need as he pressed his open mouth to mine. His tongue dove between my lips, exploring with deep thrusts and little finesse. He pushed me rapidly and I followed his direction, my bare feet sliding backwards on the smooth carpet until my legs met the bedstead. His momentum didn’t stop, and the force of his weight sent me flopping onto my back.
I bounced on the soft mattress, releasing a muffled groan as his weight landed carelessly on top of me. “Mmm,” I mumbled into his mouth. “Hey,” I panted, jerking my head to one side and tearing my lips away from his. “Let’s slow down a little, huh?” I suggested, my hands stroking over the broad, sinewy muscles in his back. “There’s no rush,” I whispered into his ear.
Either unable or unwilling to listen, Paul grunted as his hands slid down my thighs. Hooking the fingers of one hand beneath my left knee, he coaxed my legs apart. His other hand was busy with the hem of my dress, pushing it haphazardly up. “Oh, God. I need you,” he groaned, nestling his hips between my legs and pushing his still clothed groin to my underwear-covered sex.
It had been a long time since Paul had been that frenzied and impetuous. It was flattering to know, even after all those years, he wanted me so desperately. So, I felt torn. On one hand, grateful for being made to feel sexy and desired. On the other, a sense that this was little more than a mad dash to sheath himself within me.
“Paul,” I moaned, the weight of his chest pressing the air out of my lungs.
“That’s right,” he panted heavily, uncoordinated hands fumbling awkwardly with the clasp and zipper of his pants. “Say my name.” Muttering curses under his breath, he edged his pants and underwear off his hips, stopping as soon as they’d reached his upper thighs. His erection now free, the soft flesh of its head rubbed along my inner thigh.
“Babe,” I muttered, the open zipper of his pants digging uncomfortably into my leg. “Please.”
Misinterpreting my plea or perhaps just too engrossed in his own mission, Paul’s sloppy, drunken hands gripped the edges of my panties. “Ugh,” he grunted, yanking at the fabric. The rip of white lace met his growl of aggression and the backs of his fingers briefly brushed my outer lips.
Unconsciously, my hips jerked in response, craving more of the same. But his hand was cruelly ripped away as quickly as it had been placed there. I was aroused, I did want him, but I wasn’t ready for what came next.
Paul quickly adjusted himself, bracing his hands on the mattress either side of my waist before driving his hips forwards with a masculine bark of release.
I sucked in a breath, my fingernails digging into his back, as my body was quickly and ruthlessly speared. “Ahh,” I wailed, my sex seeming to fight against the invasion. I tried to force myself to relax, to breathe slowly and allow my body to accept him, but it was all happening much too quickly. Any sensual and erotic thoughts I tried to conjure were immediately chased away when he began to pump fiercely. “Ouch,” I yelped. “Paul, you’re hurting me.”
His lower half was soon slapping against mine in a rapid tattoo. He groaned and muttered, the friction of my unprepared channel apparently proving uncomfortable for him. “You’re pussy is so...tight,” he grunted haltingly, only a syllable being uttered on each thrust.
I was barely able to hear him. Everything around me was a blur. The only thing that had any clarity was the pain of each callous drive of his pelvis, which caused me to bite down hard on my lower lip to keep from screaming.
Amid the discomfort and the grateful awareness that at least it wouldn’t last long, I remember wondering what the hell was going on. Sex with Paul had never been like this, even when he’d had a few too many drinks. Even when he was a teenager and orgasm was all he ever thought about, he’d never used my body like he did that night. It was as though I was with a stranger.
Forcing my gaze upward, I stared at his face. His eyes were squeezed shut, but if they’d been open he would have been staring at the wall straight in front of him. His features were tight with pained concentration. I’ll never know exactly what he was concentrating on, but it definitely wasn’t me. Sweat was beading on his forehead as he continued to lurch forwards, slamming his erection to the hilt with each viscous thrust. “Oh, yeah,” he grunted. “You like that.”
I drew in a deep breath, holding it while his movements lost their rhythmic pattern. The speed and depth started to grow erratic, until finally with a groan of, “Oh, shit!” he flopped forward and collapsed on top of me. His hips jerked and one leg spasmed as I felt his seed pulse into me in strong, hot bursts. That sensation, which had always been indicative of love, pleasure and the sharing of something primal suddenly made me feel sullied. I instantly felt guilty for feeling that way. After all, this was my husband, the man I loved with all my heart. Maybe the encounter had been lacking in romance and foreplay, but I’d still given him something special, which meant, by default, that what we’d done was special. At least, that’s what I tried to tell myself, as my eyes flooded with scorching tears.
“Oh, God,” Paul gasped, his breathing coming hard against my chest, as he leisurely lifted himself from me. “Ugh, fuck,” he muttered, rolling to one side. As his flaccid penis slipped from me, some of his semen dripped onto my inner thigh and, within seconds, created a chill that quickly spread throughout my entire body.
As soon as his bulk was off me, I reached down and pulled my dress back to my knees. My trembling fingers remained there, clinging to the hem. Paul’s left arm was lazily flopped over my waist and his foot, which was still in his black loafer, was draped clumsily across my calf. The rest of him was pressed face down into the mattress by my side.
“Paul,” I said with a quiet, shaky voice.
The only response I received was the low rumble of a snore. Laying under what felt like an incredibly bright glare from our bedroom light, my eyes fixed wide on the clean, white ceiling above. Shell-shocked, the events of the previous few minutes played on a continuous loop. Everything about him, from the way he’d behaved to the way he’d spoken, seemed alien to me. How could the man I’d been sleeping with since I was eighteen hav
e changed so dramatically? Was it the result of two months of abstinence; a build up of frustration coupled with the effects of alcohol?
Those questions rolled unanswered around my brain, but it was another that took center stage. What the hell had just happened? It beat at my head over and over, as I laid stunned into motionlessness. I couldn’t even define what had passed between us. It hadn’t been anything resembling love making, not by my interpretation of the phrase. The way he’d cruelly taken what he wanted regardless of my discomfort bordered on rape, but then again, I’d never said, “no” or asked him to stop. I may not have been particularly happy with what was going on, but I’d passively allowed it to happen. And that brought with it another uncomfortable realization: it wasn’t just Paul who had acted out of character that night.
CHAPTER THREE
VISITOR
I didn’t get any sleep, and eventually crawled off of the bed at around five while the sun was just beginning to create an amber glow on the carpet. I slipped out from under Paul, not needing to worry about waking him, as he continued to snore loudly.
Leaving the room, I went down the hall to use the main bathroom, not because I was particularly worried about disturbing my husband’s sleep, but I needed some time to compose myself before actually confronting what had gone on the night before. At that moment, I didn’t know what to say to him. I even wondered whether the hours spent stewing over it had made me lose all perspective.
Climbing into the shower, I quickly soaped my body noting a graze on my inner left thigh and freshly pinkish bruises on both hip bones. The bruises were obviously caused by the force of his own pelvis knocking against me, it took me a little longer to realize that the tiny teeth of his open zipper had cut into the delicate flesh of my thigh. None of those injuries was particularly sore though, and with the exception of a slight tenderness between my legs, I had no other physical reminders of the evening. Still, try as I might, I simply couldn’t shake the sense that something had gone very wrong in my relationship with Paul.
It took me no more than ten minutes to wash my body and hair. I spent a further hour standing beneath the hot jets, trying to figure out how to broach the subject.
Wrapped only in a towel and with hair loose and dripping wet, I returned to the bedroom. Still face down on the bed, Paul didn’t stir. As I stepped into a pair of jeans and threw on a T-shirt, I watched him breathing heavily. With his dark hair tussled, dress shirt creased and pants hanging disheveled at his hips, he was a mess. It became clear that he was drunker than I’d realized the night before. Would he even remember what had happened? If he did, I was sure he’d feel guilty.
Taking a glance at the time, I wondered whether I should wake him. After just two days at home, he was about to head out of town again. A car was coming to pick him up at nine, so I tried to calculate how much time we’d have for a heart to heart before he left.
“Paul,”I whispered gently from the foot of the bed.
He didn’t move, even the pattern of his breathing remained the same.
“Paul,” I repeated, a little louder this time. “It’s-”
“Mom!”
Spinning at the sound of the wail that interrupted me, I sighed. I hesitated momentarily, but when it became obvious that even the shouts of our children would not wake him, I decided to leave Paul alone for the time being.
Leaving the bedroom and shutting the door quietly behind me, I was met with the distressed face of my little boy. He wasn’t crying, but I could see he was only seconds away from doing so; his big brown eyes watery and lip wobbly. Seeing me, he ran down the hall.
“Mom,” he whimpered, his arms spread wide.
Crouching so that I was on his eye level, I placed my finger to my lips. “Daddy’s still sleeping,” I hushed.
He flung his chubby little fingers around my neck and I automatically wrapped one arm around his legs. With his butt resting on my forearm, I groaned as I scooped him off the floor. “You’re getting big,” I told him in a whisper. “I’m not going to be able to do this much longer.”
He paid no attention, his legs quickly fastening around my waist and his face disappearing in my shoulder. I only managed to take him the few feet to his own room, before he was slipping down my hip. Carefully, I lowered him to the floor, sinking to his height as I did so.
“Now,” I sighed, still in a hushed voice. “What’s the matter?”
“Lizzie,” he sniveled, pointing into his room.
When it became clear that was all I was going to get from my son, I stood up and stepped inside the room. All seemed normal, until I caught sight of an armless bear at the bottom of his bed. Stepping forwards, I scooped up the injured toy and turned to Dylan. “Did she do this?” I demanded.
With a trembling bottom lip, he nodded.
Glancing to the ceiling for inspiration and patience, I took a couple of quick breaths. “Elizabeth,” I called clearly, realizing too late that I had just told my young son to be quiet.
Almost instantly, her pink door creaked open and she stood staring at me with an innocent smile. “Yes, Mom,” she beamed. Her sandy hair, with roots that were turning the same warm hazel color of my own, was already scooped into a neat ponytail and she was dressed for school.
“Did you do this?” I asked her, holding up the bear that Dylan had named Frank.
She paused for a moment, perhaps resisting a child’s knee-jerk compulsion to lie. “Well...” she mumbled, the smile slipping from her face and her almond eyes no longer able to meet mine.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” I finished for her, moving to her door and placing my hand firmly around her wrist.
“It wasn’t all my fault,” she insisted, trying to snatch her hand back. “He started it!”
Rolling my eyes, my face moved back to Dylan who was suddenly also looking as guilty as sin. “What did you do to her?” I demanded, my patience wearing very thin.
“He pulled the head off Barbie,” Lizzie whined.
My first instinct was to smile. Barbie had been a bone of contention. I hadn’t wanted Lizzie to have one. In my opinion, Barbie promoted an unhealthy and unattainable body image, not to mention the distinctly materialistic and shallow nature of her ‘lifestyle’. When Paul’s parents learned of my disapproval, they promptly bought Lizzie a Barbie, complete with dream house, for Christmas. Her beheading didn’t stress me in the slightest, but in the interests of being fair to the kids, I had to treat both crimes equally. So, I quickly quashed the tiny grin that played at the corners of my mouth.
“Dylan,” I said firmly, crooking my finger at him in a ‘come here’ motion. Once I had the pair of them in front of me, I couched before them both. “I don’t want to tell either of you this again,” I began. “Dylan, you leave your sister’s things alone, do you understand?”
I waited patiently for him to reluctantly nod. “Yes, Mommy,” he mumbled, softly.
“And Lizzie,” I added. “If your brother does something to upset you, don’t retaliate, just come and tell me or your dad and we’ll deal with it, okay?”
She was less willing to agree, but eventually did so. “Yes, Mom.”
“I want you to apologize to each other,” I concluded, wrapping my hand around my four-year-old son’s waist and turning him to face his older sister.
“But Mom, I didn’t-” Lizzie began.
I interrupted her with a lift of my index finger. “I don’t want to hear any more about it, Elizabeth,” I warned her. “You both did something wrong and I’m not in the mood to play who did something worse. Just apologize,” I urged.
The pair mumbled a ‘sorry’ to each other and almost instantly turned their backs. With no energy to demand that they repeat it sincerely, I pushed myself back to my feet. “I’ll get you some breakfast,” I told them, making my way down the hall. When I reached the top of the stairs, I snapped my head back. “Oh and Lizzie, find Frank’s arm. I’ll try to reattach it.”
“What about Barbie?” she quick
ly countered.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I promised with a wink. “But I don’t know whether she’ll pull through,” I warned gravely.
She giggled, before rushing back into her room to find the various body parts.
It was an hour and a half before Paul made his way downstairs, and I was in the middle of clearing away the kids’ plates and bowls. All three of them sat at the breakfast counter, Dylan swinging his legs wildly, with jelly all over his face; Lizzie studying a book; and little Kate strapped into her booster seat.
“Daddy,” Dylan squealed, jumping down from his stool and sprinting across the tiles. He leaped into Paul’s waiting arms and laughed hysterically as he was spun around rapidly.
“Hey champ,” Paul smiled, setting our son back down before ruffling his hair. “You got a busy day ahead?” he asked. Dressed in a fresh suit, his open necked shirt neatly tucked into his dress pants, hair washed and combed, he looked very different from the way I’d left him on our bed.
“Very,” our little boy confirmed with a nod. “I’ve got a meeting at eleven,” he announced, clinging to his father’s right leg as Paul heaved his way across the floor.
“Is that so?” Paul mumbled, only half listening, as he bent to kiss Kate on the top of the head. “Morning Liz,” he added, looping an arm around her shoulders. “You okay, kiddo?”
She ignored his question in favor of one of her own. “Dad why do you have to go away again?”
“Sorry sweetie,” he stated, with a tough luck tilt of his chin. “It’s just the way it is, Daddy’s a very busy man.”
“But we never get to spend any time with you,” she whined.
