Across That Line

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His wife craved other men even if it wrecked the marriage.
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Longhorn__07
Longhorn__07
3,203 Followers

It was an easy road to drive and Bradley Rogers, Brad to his family and friends, was relaxed and comfortable behind the wheel. The air-conditioner was flooding the vehicle's interior with cold air to keep the hot Texas afternoon at bay, the wheels were rumbling a steady rhythm on the macadam...and he was alone with his bride of only twelve months. He and Ashley were driving up to Dallas for a long awaited, and much anticipated, weekend alone.

His fingers barely touching the steering wheel, Brad guided the car through a long, sweeping curve and onto another section of impossibly straight highway. He couldn't even see where the next bend in the road might be. The horizon was hidden by a shimmering veil of rising heat waves coming off the hot pavement.

Leaving his left hand on the wheel, Brad extended his right to find and hold his wife's hands in his. They'd be hitting the big loop around the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex in another hour or so. From there, it would be a short ride into Dallas and their hotel. It was Thursday. They'd have four whole days together with no worries and no responsibilities beyond their love for each other.

"Baby?" his wife asked softly, almost plaintively. Ashley's fingers tightened on her husband's apprehensively. She forced herself to relax.

"What, hun?" Brad replied. When her hand twitched, he tensed and automatically checked ahead and behind with quick glances through the windshield and rearview mirrors for anything that might be a threat. There was nothing there.

"Sugar...the hotel called," Ashley said hesitatingly. "They...it was about our reservation."

Brad's easy going expression faded to a frown. His grip on the steering wheel tightened.

"Damn!" he exclaimed. "Sorry," he apologized as quickly as the expletive was out of his mouth. He'd been trying to watch his language ever since he'd gotten married. Sometimes he was less successful than others in avoiding four-letter words.

"They screwed up our reservations, didn't they," Brad spat out. "Shi...darn it all anyway."

"No, no," Ashley said quickly. "They've got our room for us okay...a king-size bed with a Jacuzzi...it's not that."

Brad shot her a quick questioning look. His wife avoided his eyes, preferring to stare at the road ahead instead.

"Then, what, sugar?" he asked.

"They called me..." Ashley said, wetting her lips, "...it's just that...they said there'd been a mistake. They called it an oversight. I don't think it was anybody's fault," she said, beginning to babble in her nervousness."

"Ash..." Brad said. There were some conversations he had with his wife where she neverdid get to the subject she wanted to bring up.

"Okay," Ashley replied. She took a deep breath. "They called to tell us almost the whole hotel had been reserved for a swinger's convention from tonight all the way until Monday."

Brad stared at her in shock. He didn't understand at first. Ashley refused to look at him.

"They said they could get another hotel for us if we wanted," Ashley continued. "They apologized and said they'd take care of getting another room anywhere else we wanted to go," she said. She paused before continuing. "I...honey, please don't be mad...I told them it was all right. We'd stay there."

Brad was choking very slowly but very surely on the huge lump in his throat.

"Baby...we won't have todo anything with anyone in the lifestyle, okay? It's not like any of those people would think of forcing us to do anything, you know. Everything will be all right. We just can watch everyone being sexy and stuff. It'll just be a turn on for us, okay, sugar?"

"I don't...understand," Brad said thickly. His mind was spinning. He felt like he was in the grip of a deadly whirlpool. His life was spiraling downward into the depths.

"I...what was it I did?" He searched for the words to express his confusion. "I...Ashley...you have to tell me...please...I can make it better.What did I do wrong?"

There was no answer to his despairing questions. Ashley Rogers never heard her husband.

"Brad...Brad...Brad...BRADLEY!"she screamed.

Brad snapped his eyes back to the road. With only his left hand on the steering wheel, the Chrysler had drifted slowly into the oncoming lane. The big eighteen-wheeler was coming at them fast; their combined speed was nearly 140 miles per hour. Brad could hear the air horn now. It's strident shrieking was almost overwhelming. The truck driver hauled his big rig as far to the right as he could get. Blue smoke from suddenly applied brakes began to billow out into the pristine afternoon.

Brad twisted the steering wheel hard to the right as quickly as his arms could move. When he stomped on the brakes in a panic, the cruise control automatically disconnected and the engine revs dropped off immediately.

The car swerved violently. Brad had turned too abruptly and too sharply, but it was probably the couple's only chance. The offside tires lifted a full inch off the road surface...then settled back. Brad eased the turn with a snap of his wrist...straightened out for a split second...and pulled the wheel firmly back to the left to bring the car back into his lane from the edge of the right shoulder. A short series of more gentle corrections brought the vehicle back on course down the blacktop. The sound of the truck's loud horn drifted back to them. Brad heard the derisive note still hanging in the air long after the truck disappeared in the rearview mirror.

A mile further on, Brad pulled into the empty roadside park. Neither he nor his wife had said a word to each other since the near disaster. He turned off the engine and listened to the popping noises as the motor cooled for a long moment.

"I'm sorry," he finally told her. His voice was low and rasping. The near accident, along with the news she'd given him before, still held a steely grip over his emotions.

"I...it's all right," she said at last, her voice faint and shaky.

"I should have told you earlier...before we started out," Ashley said slowly. "I should have, I know. I'm sorry too, Brad, honey." The couple sat quietly for a time, steadying their nerves and mulling over the best thing to do next, each in their separate world.

"Darling, I know I should have said something before we came, but there just didn't seem to be a good time, you know? I wanted to, but before I knew it, we were in the car and..."

"Okay..." Brad said neutrally. "But why do we need to go to a hotel where all those...swingers...are going to be? I can't understand..."

"Brad, honey...it's not like you think. Couples in the lifestyle aren't mean and vicious. They won't think anything about it if we don't...participate...in the convention or the parties or stuff. It'll be all right, don't you think, baby? We'll just watch them...like it was a show or something, okay? I promised you, honey, and I'm not going to break my promise...you know that, right?"

Somewhere in the explanation, Ashley had turned to her husband to look earnestly at him. Her eyes were swimming with unshed tears. He just had to understand.

"Ash..." Brad said. He stopped to clear an aching throat. "Ash...we talked about this before we got married. You said you didn't want to get back into that...thatlifestyle thing or whatever you call it...never again...you said I was all you wanted for the rest of your life...whathappened, honey? I...is it something I..."

"No, honey," Ash replied, cutting him off. "You didn't do anything...and neither did I, sweetie. All I thought was that we've been needing this time to ourselves forso long and...when they called me...I figured all those...people would be like a sexy...floorshow or something, baby...that's all."

Brad listened quietly. He believed his wife was sincere. She seemed so. She'd almost broken into tears twice as she explained. In the end, her obvious distress moved him to accept her explanations, hard as they were to choke down.

He started the car again and carefully pulled back onto the road. He kept both his hands on the steering wheel for the rest of the trip and he drove ten miles an hour below the speed limit all the way

# #

They'd met a little more than two years ago at a party given by mutual friends. Brad's first thought was the short young woman with the dazzling smile and lush figure was the most entrancing young woman he'd ever met. They were both born of families with a strong flavor of the Irish in their ancestry. In Ashley, it was expressed in her dark red hair, green eyes, and high cheekbones. Brad's first impression was that she favored the Celtic singer Enya to a remarkable degree. He was drawn to her across the room at their first meeting, like a moth is drawn to the flame.

Brad's coal black hair had glints of red in it too, a gift from his Scot and Irish grandfathers his brother had once tracked back more than three hundred years. He was a little more than average in height, near six feet or so, and heavyset. A heavy upper body was a legacy bequeathed to him by too many generations of coal miners who labored in cold and dangerous coalmines in the Pennsylvania hills. Brad had his father's heavy forearms and native strength, though the thought of going underground made him physically ill.

Brad's blue eyes, gentle strength, and genial disposition had attracted any number of women over the years and Ashley couldn't ignore his charm any more than they could. The pair met by accident but everyone said they were the perfect couple before they'd gone on their second date. It was inevitable, their friends told each other. They were perfect for each other, they said.

The thing was, Brad was still a bachelor when he celebrated his twenty-fifth birthday the month after he and Ashley met. Ashley though...two years younger than Brad...had been married and divorced twice. In fact, she had a child from each marriage to prove it. The half-sisters were cute little copies of their mother, except they still had the blond hair of the very young.

Born only fourteen months apart, the half-sisters thought the sun rose and set with Brad. The oldest had no memory of her father and only a vague recollection of her sister's. The younger sister thought her father was no more than a good friend of mommy's. Inside a month, both girls had bonded so deeply with Brad, it was clear they would suffer if Ashley and Brad didn't make a go of this. The girls, Cathy and Cindy, were ecstatic the day Brad moved in for good.

The big problem was Ashley's second marriage. She and her second ex-husband had married primarily because Ashley got pregnant. They really didn't have much in common and were quickly bored with each other. They thought they could solve their problem by partying more and being married less.

A few months after delivering Cindy, Ashley and her ex went to their first swingers club and they never looked back. The arrangement, and the marriage, lasted until the day Ashley caught her husband screwing one of their partners from the club in Ashley's bed.

Still, they managed to get an amicable divorce. Ashley had so emotionally detached from him, she found it difficult to be angry with him. The divorce was only a formality that signaled the end of the marriage.

Ashley seldom mentioned either of her ex-husbands but they stood a silent vigil wherever Brad went anyway. Her husbands had never actually been in the house Brad and Ashley called home, but Brad noted their presence every time Ashley and he argued. He knew they chuckled at his consternation every time she grew irritated with...anything. Bradknew he was compared with them when Ashley came to bed, smiling at him tenderly.

More than that, he could sense an impending judgment on how well he made love to his new wife. The jury, composed of all the faceless men she'd met and had sex with in those swinger clubs, would render a verdict sooner or later on his worth as a male animal...and he feared the indictment would be upheld. No matter what he did, he was certain he could never measure up in Ashley's eyes.

But...she'd promised. Brad repeated the catechism to himself over and over as he drove, clutching at the words as a drowning man does a life preserver. She'dpromised him all that was behind her. She didn't want other men...she wanted only him. She would never cheat on him, she said. She knew too well the agony it would cause. She wanted only him, now and forever. She promised.

# #

When they got to the hotel, Brad was surprised at its unthreatening exterior and air of normality. Subconsciously, he'd expected erotically dressed parade marchers, strobe lights, and crowds of semi-naked partygoers copulating in the parking lot.

From outside, the hotel was no different than any other three or four-star hotel in the metroplex. There were no naked people fucking, no bands playing...nothing.

He and Ashley wrestled their luggage out of the trunk. Ashley took a moment to check hers, remembering she'd packed two small bottles of the most expensive perfume she could afford. She wanted to make sure Brad's violent maneuvers on the road hadn't broken them.

They proved to be undamaged, but the verification coaxed another apology from Brad. It was what he thought she wanted, but it appeared to irritate her. He didn't know why.

Perhaps because of her annoyance, she looked around more than she normally did...so she could ignore him? It was strange. To Brad, she seemed to be aware of everyone they passed in route to the entrance...she looked closely into each man or woman's face.

They looked back too. All of them seemed to mark her in their memory. There was a promise in all their eyes. Brad's discomfort increased with each step as they made their way into the hotel.

The clerk at the check-in desk found their reservation without difficulty. He looked closely at the annotations in the remarks field. Their reservation had been upgraded, he told them, compliments of the manager. The slender young man in a jacket whose color almost matched the hotel's décor wet his lips and hesitated before leaning close and making sure Brad and Ashley understood. The entire hotel, except for a small block of rooms that had been left out by mistake, was reserved by an association promoting, and practicing, sex...outside the marriage, as he put it delicately.

Ashley answered for them both. Her sharp reply sent the young man to the opposite end of the counter to silently rip the reservation off the printer.

"ASHLEY...HONEY!" The shrill voice behind Brad and Ashley startled them both. They turned quickly to find an older couple standing just behind them. Their attention was all upon Ashley; their welcoming arms were for her.

"Ann...Floyd!" Ashley trilled. "Ohmigod!"

The trio swept together, their arms around each other. Ashley accepted kisses from both "Ann" and then "Floyd." Brad's eyes narrowed perceptibly. Kisses were routine in greeting old friends, deep kisses where tongues dueled with each other were not. He stood back as his wife and the two others moved about in a tight clinch, almost bumping him out of the way. When his back touched the counter behind him, he could retreat no further.

"Sir...?" Brad turned to find the counter clerk offering him a pen and the just-printed agreement. "Can you sign on the highlighted line, please, sir?" he asked Brad politely. Brad nodded and bent to his assigned task. Brad accepted the two plastic cards the clerk offered him in a nice envelope.

"The stairs are right over there," the clerk said and pointed.

Brad turned around to see his wife and the old couple skirting a bank of elevators and walking down a hallway beyond.

"Ash?" he called quietly. "Ashley..."

She apparently couldn't hear him over the bustle in the lobby. She didn't pause even an instant and certainly didn't turn around to rejoin him and their luggage. Her purse was still on the counter.

Brad grabbed his wife's purse and started after his wife. Red-faced and embarrassed, he increased his speed when the three ahead far ahead of him turned down a side passageway. When he turned the corner, he stopped in shock. Both of the oldsters were stroking his wife's back as they walked down the hall. They were all chattering happily. He couldn't make out the words; he was too far behind them.

An instant later, the older man settled his hand on Ashley's ass and industriously kneaded her right butt cheek for a long moment. Brad was astounded to see the older woman follow suit. They both fondled Ashley for several steps, stopping when they got to a set of wide double doors. Turning inside, they let the heavy doors slam shut behind them. Ashley hadn't protested any of their caresses.

Just before the door closed, Brad saw a stout, middle-aged woman in there undo her wrap-around top to allow the ends to hang down either side of her rotund body. Brad's last sight of the woman was of her lifting her breasts in both hands and offering them to someone just inside the door.

Brad didn't know what to do. He pushed himself into a fast walk down to the closed doors. He was soon jogging along the hallway, his heavy footfalls echoing down the corridor. He was in a panic and didn't know why.

The only thing that got through the fog in his mind was that this was allwrong. Ashley should be out here with him, not with those old people...and their groping hands. He didn't know where his wife was going, but...

When he got there, the door was locked tight. He heard loud music playing in there somewhere. He shook the handle with increasing force...but the door was too solid. It didn't give an inch. He knocked on it, trying to get someone's attention on the other side. He needed to talk to his wife. This wasn't fair. He hadn't done anything to deserve this. She'd promised, dammit!

Pounding on the door with heavy fists gained him nothing but a series of contemptuous looks from hotel employees and a couple of people passing through this wing of the hotel. They were on their way somewhere safe. He wished he could go with them. He wished hehad someplace safe to go.

There was no answer; the music continued to play as loudly as it had when he first tried to open the doors. He was locked out, and his wife had barricaded herself inside...away from him.

Dazed and uncertain, Brad turned away from the door and walked slowly back out to the front desk. Brad couldn't look the young clerk in the eyes when he picked up the envelope with the keys in it. He stood for a moment, not really understanding when the clerk offered the services of a bellhop to carry the luggage up.

Brad finally nodded and watched the uniformed man load his and Ashley's bags on a fancy cart. Brad carried his wife's purse, though the bellhop courteously offered to take it with the suitcases. They walked to the elevators and went up to the sixth floor.

From the opened door of the elevator, there were only a mercifully few steps to the room. Brad thanked the bellhop in a distracted way, tipped him too much so he'd go away quicker, and closed the door behind the guy. He stumbled into the bathroom and bent over to lean his head on crossed forearms on the vanity between the two sinks.

Without warning, he was sick and vomited a thin stream of disgusting fluid into the right hand sink. A second surge surprised him worse than the initial one. He almost let it dribble down his best dress shirt and pants. He couldn't allow that. He desperately fought for control.

When he was sure the attack was over, he washed the mess down the drain. There was soon no sign of his weakness. He was glad of that. There was no evidence here of this disgrace anyway. No one would know except him.

He looked around the room and sat on the edge of the big king-sized bed. Right now, Ashley should be over by the dresser, unpacking the luggage they'd bought for this trip. Instead, she was having a party down in that room...probably with that ugly old couple she'd let play with her ass...but he knew there would be men in there too. Lots of them, probably hung like horses and...

Longhorn__07
Longhorn__07
3,203 Followers