A Woman's Wrath Ch. 03

What was incredible now was that she had believed what he was telling her! Believed it of Pete, a man she had lived with and loved for so many years!

Her drunken self must have been snatching at any little crumb that proved that what she was doing wasn't really hurting the man she loved.

"Sweet Jesus help me!" she thought. "I believed what that man was feeding me! I must have been insane besides being too drunk to think."

Sitting on that top step she wept, sobbing loudly. Never had she expected something like that could happen. She knew Pete would never be able to completely forgive me. Pete had been a shit to do what he did, but I understood now how this could take place without a persons consent or expectation. She had done so much more! How could she forgive herself!

- - - - -

Susan was still sitting on the top step of the stairs, crying, when Pete came home hours later. He heard her now quiet sobs and climbed the stairs to stand looking down at his wife, her face buried in her hands. She couldn't bring herself to look at him.

Gently pulling her to her feet he helped her to the bedroom. He didn't hug, but just his touch was calming. As she stood beside their big bed she saw it was dark outside and time for sleep, if that could ever come.

Pete tossed her cotton nightgown on the bed in front, then went into the bathroom, returning with a warm wash cloth. His hands were wonderfully Gentle as he cleansed the tear tracks from her face. "Susan, I think what I did drove you a little mad, a little crazy. Get undressed and ready for bed. We don't know if we can get over this but I'd like to try. You obviously still love me or you wouldn't have reacted like you have today. I love you. We can only let our friendship for one another work and see if we can get to the other side of this. Now, let's try to get some sleep. Sleep won't come easy but we have to try."

Susan turned into his arms and burrowed against him. With her face buried in his chest she began telling him what she remembered. It took a long time.

"Pete honey, I didn't plan on Saturday going the way it did. It wasn't a date with Devon, but I did tell him Friday when he made his weekly pass at me that we would be dancing at the Top of the Town Saturday night. I had already made reservations there for us to have dinner. I did tell him if he was there he could have a dance. But that was all! He is fun to flirt with, but never did I expect things would get so out of hand."

"I don't know how I let myself get so drunk."

"When I came out of the Ladies Room you weren't there and I waited for what seemed like an hour. Then Devon came over and told me he had a table, why didn't I come in with him. He told me he wasn't planning to stay long, and we could have his table when he left."

"We ordered drinks and waited a few minutes for you and had finished our drinks when he asked me if he could have that dance. We were just going onto the floor when you came in. I guess it hadn't been that long a wait, but I'd had a lot to drink at dinner and time was kind of jumbled up for me."

There was a long pause, as Pete stroked her back. Then he told her to get ready for bed, they could talk there. Twenty minutes later they were together in the big bed, lying on their sides so they could look at one another, close but not touching.

Pete went into work the next morning, Tuesday, but Susan called in sick. She couldn't pull herself together enough to get to work until Thursday. As she was going out to lunch, Devon caught up with her, pulling her away from the crowd she usually ate with.

That sickening smirk was back on his face, "Susan, I'm busy tomorrow night, but why don't you come by Saturday afternoon."

"What!" she just stared at him. It seemed incomprehensible that he could be serious.

"Be there about 2:00, we can look at your new picture album. You gave me some really fine shots Saturday! See you then!" with that he turned and walked off.

Susan looked around but the crowd she was lunching with had already disappeared inside the restaurant. The thought of food now made her gag, so she went back to the office. She didn't get much work done, but thought a lot for the rest of the day.

When she got home, Susan made a nice dinner, then waited for Pete to come home. After sitting him down to dinner, making sure he was fed, she led him into the living room. There she sat him down and told him what Devon had said.

Peter thought for a time, then looked up at her. "We have two choices, Susan. We can ignore what he asked. Then he will either forget the matter or get mad and try to force you to have sex with him. He'll probably threaten to show me the pictures he took; pictures I already know about so they can't hurt me any more. If you ignore the threat and he sends me the pictures, we will just ignore them and go on with our life."

"However, he may decide to make an example of you, thinking you are insulting his manhood. He could threaten to put them on the web, or even send them to your family or your boss. We have assumed your seduction was a one-time thing, sort of a crime of opportunity. Problem is, it may be just one of many. I've read of men acquiring "harems" doing that sort of thing. If that's the case, he won't let you go. If he did it could get back to his other women. We might say it could start a sort of "run on the market".

"That leads to our other choice. We can fight him.

"If this wasn't a one time thing he can't let you go without punishing you. I have to assume that's the case, a worse case scenario. That scares me. A man that would do that is unbalanced. Which gives us the problem of deciding how far we can push him before he explodes and does something that we can't reverse."

"There's another angle here too, love. I'm usually a forgiving man, but what happened Saturday night is festering inside me. I can understand what was going through your head and, while it hurts me I see now how it is hurting you also. I didn't intend to hurt you, it just happened. You were out to hurt me, but like spanking the baby you just wanted to get my attention; make sure it never happened again. Watching you suffer the way you are proves to me you didn't want things to be carried as far as they were."

"But ol' Dev' went out of his way to humiliate me. He did a good job of it, too. Susan, I want to get back at the son of a bitch."

"You're going to agree to meet him Saturday, but it will be morning not afternoon... No, don't get your back up, I'm not giving you away."

"I have a plan that will get him off our backs permanently. It's going to be a really nasty thing to do to poor Devon, the "man's man" that he thinks he is. However it will sure as hell make him careful when dealing with someone else's wife. We'll get him off our backs and won't have to worry about it happening again."

"What we're going to do Susan, is..."

Continued in Chapter Four