Cheating Wives Always Slip Up

Many thanks to HMAuthor for first editing and improving this story.

Although this story made the wondrous GigglingGoblin give up on me, before doing so, this amazing editor skillfully helped shape it into something vastly better than what it was before.

Thanks to the inspired Monster_Slayer for amazing insight that brought to light errors that would never have occurred to me and to Whordinarygirl for fixing or pointing out others.

And, as always, immense gratitude to BeautifulStorm, the hardest working editor on this site, who not only applies incredible editing expertise but also tremendous effort in following through to make sure the story turns out much better than I ever thought it could be.

Something was wrong, but Maureen had no idea what it was. It seemed like a shadow had suddenly fallen over their marriage.

Herb was evasive when he spoke to her. He didn't respond to her as much as humor her, no matter what she said.

After more than a week of this, she had enough. He started to get up from the table after dinner to clear the dishes, but she held his arm and motioned for him to stay in his chair.

"What's going on, Herb?" she asked.

He looked at her as if he didn't know what she was talking about.

"Don't give me that look. You're not good at being cagey. It's like you're suspicious of me. You're watching me all the time and hanging on every word I say like you're waiting for something."

"Come on!" he said. "How could I suspect you of anything?"

His tone didn't reassure her. Her irritation showed in her reply.

"You know our lives are such an open book that it would be hard for me to hide anything from you."

He didn't say anything, so she continued.

"You're too smart for me to fool."

"Am I?"

His reply came so fast that she thought he had been waiting for his chance to say it.

"Aren't you always telling me you're smarter than me?" he continued. "That's what you say to everyone."

She exhaled loudly in exasperation and gave a short laugh.

"You're so funny. You always run circles around me. That's why I make such a big deal out of it when it turns out that I'm right about something. It amuses you and our friends. If I thought it hurt you, I'd never say that.

"I love it when you lie and tell your friends I'm smarter and better looking than you. Whenever one of them puts down his wife in front of other people, I'm thankful I married someone who doesn't need to do that to make himself feel important.

"But everybody who knows us knows you're the one with the brains, and I'm the one with the temper."

She saw that she wasn't getting anywhere, so the conversation ended there, but similar conversations continued to take place. They didn't have sex for over a week, which was unusual for them, and when they finally did, it was like animals coupling, with no tenderness or intimacy.

Afterward she was angry -- at him and at herself. She decided that she wasn't going to wait any longer to find out what was going on.

The next day she didn't have any trouble discovering what was causing his behavior. The hard part was disguising her emotions that night when he came home. She wouldn't look him in the eye and barely said a dozen words to him all evening. He noticed but continued to observe her and didn't ask her anything.

She continued avoiding him the next morning and rushed off to work. By that evening, she had gained control of herself. Though he continued to act the same way, she didn't notice because she was usually lost in thought.

She initiated sex a few days later, but again it was more like they were rutting animals rather than lovers.

Herb woke up Saturday morning, a week and a half later and saw she wasn't in bed. He went down to the kitchen and found her at the stove.

"Do I smell pancakes?"

"You sure do!"

Maureen spoke in a cheery tone, but there was a slight strain in it.

"What's the occasion?"

"Today is a special day," she said. "I'm going to tell you everything you want to know, and then we're going to start the rest of our lives. It's going to get rough later, so I thought we'd begin with a nice breakfast."

"Uh..." he said.

"Close your mouth, Herb, or a fly's going to get in. Isn't this what you've been waiting for? Don't you want to hear the truth — the whole truth?

"Yes, but —"

"No discussion until after breakfast," she interrupted. "But I'll tell you this now. You know how I'm a stickler for details. I always insist on knowing every little detail. It's a habit I got into at work.

"Most of the other sales reps are lazy. They don't bother doing the preparation I do, so they don't dee the details, or if they do, they think of them as trivial. Details are the reason I always get the biggest year-end bonus of anyone in my department.

"I know my habit spills over into our private life, and our friends wish I'd stop pumping them for every little detail when they bring something up. I see your exasperation when I tell a story and have to spell everything out. Like you say, I'm beating a dead horse.

"So I'm warning you now, that I'm going to tell you everything in detail. At least after I'm done, I don't think you'll have any questions.

"But breakfast will be silent. I'll be looking at you and thinking about our six years together, our plans to start a family next year and the reason I married you. Can you remember why you married me? I married you because I love you more than anyone else in the world. I still do."

He began to say something, but she put up a hand.

"Not now, Herb. After breakfast, you'll hear all the details. All of it will be the truth. I won't hold anything back. After that, you can say and do whatever you want."

They ate in silence. Both looked at each other nervously. They cleared the dishes together, and then she took his hand and led him up the stairs to their bedroom.

She let go of his hand and took off her robe and her nightie. He stood staring at her, but she ignored him until she got onto bed and sat in the middle of it cross-legged and looked at him.

"Take off your pajamas, Herb," she ordered.

"Why?"

"I've been thinking about this for the last week and a half," she said, "and I've decided that this is the best way to do it. The two of us — alone and naked.

"I'm not going to pressure you to do this. No arguments. Today it's not about me trying to force you to see things my way and do what I want. Today I don't want you to do anything you don't want to do. No reluctance either. If you're reluctant, I'll stop. You have to totally consent. Absolutely no non-consent and no reluctance.

"If you'd rather not hear the truth, I'll stop now. But if we don't air this out, I don't think there's much of a chance we can go on together. So it's up to you. Should I get dressed and forget it, or will you take your clothes off and join me on the bed?"

For a moment, Herb stood immobile, staring at her. Then he slowly took off his pajamas and got on the bed facing her.

"May I begin?" she asked, and he nodded.

"I know this is putting the cart before the horse," she said, "but before I talk about what could tear us apart, I want to propose a solution to keep us together. I want you to have this solution in your mind while you hear the truth. But like I said before, the solution is just a suggestion. If you don't like it, we won't do it.

"You'll think my solution is extreme because you're not a hothead like me. The last few weeks have proven how much patience you have. You've been waiting and watching and listening to every word I say. If you were boiling inside, you never once showed it."

Maureen stopped, and he saw there were tears in her eyes. Her breasts rose and fell as she took a few deep breaths and continued.

"Whenever the subject of cheating has come up, even before we were married, you and I were of one mind. We both agreed it's disgusting and unforgivable, no matter what the circumstances might be. Both of us believe fidelity must be absolute if love means anything at all. Am I right?"

"Yes," he said quietly. He looked at the tortured expression on her face.

"Since our feelings about cheating are extreme, the punishment for cheating should be extreme," she said, as she moved up the bed to the headboard and took hold of the long pillow.

She loved her long pillow. It was almost two-thirds of the width of the bed. There was barely room for his smaller pillow next to hers. She used the pillow in all sorts of ways, besides just sleeping on it. Some of her ideas made for amazing sex.

She pulled the long pillow down to the middle of the bed and centered it, so there was only a little space on each side of it.

"Move over, please," she said.

After he did, she draped herself over the pillow. Her head and arms were on the bed, and so were her knees. Her butt was over the pillow.

He stared at her beautiful, round, naked ass and was so absorbed that he didn't hear her speaking. She had to repeat herself.

"Please go to my dresser and pull open the top left drawer and take out what you find inside."

He got up from the bed and followed her instructions. He looked at the pieces of leather and cloth in his hands.

"What's this?" he asked.

"Bring the restraints over here, and I'll show you what to do."

When he walked over to the bed, she stretched her arms out and showed him how to close the restraints over her wrists using the heavy Velcro fasteners and then how to attach them to the bedposts. She had him do the same thing to her ankles.

When he finished, she was spread eagle on her stomach on the bed with her arms and legs wide apart and her butt in the air. He saw her body trembling, but he was behind her and couldn't see her face.

She took two deep breaths and before she spoke again.

"Please go to my closet and push aside the blouses on the left side. You'll see something in the corner behind them. Please bring it here and put it in my hand."

He couldn't see what was behind her clothes and fumbled around until he grasped something that felt like wire and pulled it out. As the light shone on it, he saw it was long, straight and so thin it was barely visible. It was flexible and bowed and snapped back as he freed it. There was a handle on one end.

Herb stared at the implement and then looked at Maureen. Lying on the bed, she was facing away from him. She turned her head around.

"That's it," she said.

There were tears in her eyes.

"What is it?" he asked, looking down at it. The thing looked evil.

"It's a crop," she said. "Please bring it to me."

He walked around the bed to her upper body. She raised herself up and moved her left hand a little toward him. It only moved a couple of inches because of the restraints, but he understood and put the crop in her hand. She moved the crop until it was in front of her.

"You can't take it out of my hands until I'm finished talking," she said loudly, grasping the crop tightly with both hands, as if he might try to pry it away from her. "Understand!"

It began to dawn on him what punishment she had in mind for cheating. He was horrified and had trouble getting words out of his mouth.

"I'm not going to --"

"Never mind," she interrupted. "Come closer to me so I don't have to twist my head around so much to talk to you.

"The cropping will be done three ways. To prevent injury, all the strokes will be below the waist, from the ass down to above the back of the knees. The first way will be across from the left side of the bed, and the second way will be across from the right side. The strokes will be administered straight down with full force to make them more painful.

"The spring steel in the crop is so thin it cuts through the air with incredible speed. Because of the speed, it bends back and then snaps forward as it comes down. That multiplies the power of each stroke."

She sounded like she had memorized a sales pitch for the thing.

"The effect is not like a spanking, where the pain comes from bruising. Although the steel is coated for safety, it's almost like being whipped with a long razor blade.

"First there will be thin lines where the crop bites into the butt and thighs. Then large purple welts will rise as it strikes close to some of the previous lines or on top of them. Some of the flesh will become so traumatized that cuts will open and begin to bleed.

"The strokes across the butt from each side will be bad, but the third way will be even worse."

She lifted her head and turned it up to look at him.

"Please move back behind my legs and look at me. The third way strokes will be given is from behind and down the body. The crop will add vertical lines on the butt and thighs that intersect with the horizontal lines. What do you see where my legs come together?"

"Your bush?"

"Yes," she said. "Now look at the end of the crop. Those few inches of twine attached to the steel are called the popper. The twine rips into the flesh at the end of each stroke. When the strokes comes from behind, sometimes the crop comes down between the butt cheeks. It rips right through pubic hair and strikes the most sensitive part of the body -- the asshole and --."

She stopped and took a few deep breaths.

"That kind of pain can drive people temporarily insane, and their uncontrollable hysteria makes the other strokes even more painful, and then, of course, there could be another horrible stroke between the butt cheeks.

"Please move back to my side again. My neck is starting to hurt from twisting it around. Come lie next to me. Being in this position does strange things to your mind. Can you feel how nervous I am?"

"I, I."

He stopped because his mouth was so dry he was almost choking.

"Lie down next to me over the pillow and stretch your arms and legs out next to mine, and you'll get an idea of what I'm feeling."

Herb did as Maureen asked. Their naked bodies touched, and he felt her trembling. Since her arms and legs were spread wide, he was almost over the edge of the bed.

She turned her head and looked at him for a few seconds, took a deep breath and spoke again.

"There's not enough room for you to stretch out. Unhook my wrists for a second, so I can move over a little. There."

With her freed hands, she pulled his arms in front of him until they were stretched straight out like hers had been.

"Now you're in the same position I was. Can you feel the frightening vulnerability?"

As she spoke, he listened and watched her in a trance. It was as if he were watching a bizarre movie and couldn't take his eyes off the screen. He watched her twist around and remove her leg restraints with the hands he had just freed. In seconds, she was back lying next to him, but she didn't stop moving.

He came out of his daze as he saw her attaching his right wrist to one of the restraints connected to the bed. She had already trapped his left wrist without him noticing.

"Hey!" he yelled.

He saw the crop in front of him and quickly grabbed it with his left hand and held it tight as he felt her jump off the bed and heard her bare feet running out of the room. He tried to pull one hand over to the other to unfasten one of the restraints so he could free himself, but the bedposts were sturdy and immovable.

She hadn't restrained his legs, so he began kicking them as he continued yelling.

He heard her come back, and a second later he heard a humming, whistling sound in the air behind him, like the wings of a large bird, and then a lightning bolt burned into his left butt cheek. He imagined he could hear the sizzling of his burning flesh as pain surged through his body. It couldn't be a lightning bolt. It must have been a branding iron. She had branded his flesh!

"Oops! Sorry."

She said it quickly, without any emotion. A moment later, he heard the same disturbance in the air, followed by another lightning bolt. It struck his right butt cheek this time.

"I'm really sorry."

This time she sounded more upset as she spoke.

The sound of bird wings whirred through the air a third time. This time it was different. It was like two knives slashing into his flesh and opening two huge wounds. Or, rather, it was like someone with an icepick in each hand was plunging both into him at the same time -- one into his ass and the other into his balls.

The pain from the ice picks made him lose any control he had left. He was screaming, crying, coughing and choking on his saliva. His nose was running, and his legs were thrashing in all directions. The pain welled up, and he began to get short of breath and feel nauseous. He passed out.

He woke with a start and looked around. Maureen was sitting next to him on the bed. She bent over him and spoke in a matter-of-fact voice.

"You're back."

For a moment, he was confused, and then the pain engulfed him again and he remembered what she'd done. He screamed and began thrashing his legs, trying to move away from her.

To his surprise, he wasn't restrained anymore. He jumped off the bed with a cry and backed away from her, watching to see what she would do. He saw she was still naked, like he was.

Maureen got off the bed and pulled one of the easy chairs closer to the bed.

"Please sit on the chair," she said, "and I'll sit on the bed so we can finish."

"I'm leaving," he said, looking frantically around the room to see if there was anyone there to stop him. "You're insane."

"I won't say you're wrong," she said, "but please listen to me for at least a couple of minutes before you leave. As you can see, you are free to do anything you like. You can even hurt me if you want to."

"What rubbish!" he yelled. "I don't want to hear any more of this crazy stuff."

"Just a few minutes is all I ask. Please."

Her voice was full of emotion now, not the matter-of-fact voice he heard when she was attacking him or telling him he had passed out. She was crying.

"Okay, if you stop with the crocodile tears," he said. "That's not going to make me forgive you. I don't have much patience left, so make it quick."

"Thank you, Herb," she said with a sniffle. "I'm sorry. I've been practicing, and I thought I would be more accurate. But when I came back with the second crop, I was so nervous about getting this over with that I hurried. I missed the first two times. You were only supposed to get one stroke -- the one between your butt cheeks.

"I didn't want to do that one either, but it was necessary because I think you'll agree that you could never imagine pain like that. You had to experience it before you could make a good decision. My consultant gave me the same stroke a few days ago so I would have some idea how it would feel. That's how I could describe it to you so accurately.

"The reason you had to feel it was because I want to give you more like it this morning. Like I said, most of the strokes will be from the left or the right, but some will be from behind, and a few of those are sure to land on your asshole and balls.

"I checked your balls, and the stroke didn't make them bleed, but there's a big purple mark that must be causing you a lot of pain right now. The mark on your asshole looks bad, too."

Herb jumped up and began looking frantically around the bedroom. He saw the door was closed and stared at it.

"There's nobody here, Herb," she said. Her voice was calm and steely now. She was no longer crying.

"And I don't have a gun. I just needed to make sure you could make an informed decision. I promised you nothing would be non-consensual, nothing reluctant. I guess I lied a little, but I'm going to give you credit for those three strokes. Everything else that will happen to you this morning will be because you want it to."