A Woman's Wrath Ch. 02

Peter was home by 3:15AM, alone in an empty house.

Stripping his clothes off he took a quick shower, climbed into some old boxers to lounge in, then went downstairs and pulled a beer out of the refrigerator. Sitting down with his first drink since dinner he reviewed the evening. What a disaster!

After ignoring him all day, Susan called him upstairs then hustled him into a suit to go out to the dinner he had promised her the day before. She also cancelled the dinner reservations at their favorite upscale restaurant, and made reservations at the most haute mode place in the city. While he was getting dressed she made a point to show him she was dressing to titillate her date, for when and if he got her in the sack.

Then she hadn't say a word to him 'til they were in the restaurant. On finishing the meal, his wife insisted on going to the dance club connected with the restaurant. The gift he had spent a small fortune on and on had been anticipating her reaction for three weeks, one she had been mooning over for a couple months, had bombed, generating a bored ho-hum.

While Susan went to the Ladies to "freshen up" the cashier made a string of asinine and ridiculous screw-ups, which kept him from meeting her in the cabaret for at least twenty minutes. After the rest of the evening he was wondering about the cashier's performance.

Once at the entrance to the dance he had waited for her in the foyer, as they had agreed. After a quarter hour a waiter was sent to direct him to the table Susan and a strange man were sharing.

From that point she made a point of embarrassing and humiliating him in front of the man she had clearly picked up; or had she? He ended buying drinks for the two of them for four hours, while his wife spent almost the entire four hours on the dance floor with the bozo. Half the time she was on the floor he had wondered if she was dancing with him or making out.

And then, when he knew he had to push and shove, she made it clear she was not coming home with him.

By the time he had carefully gone over the sequence his beer was drunk. Pete got up and locked the house for the night, chaining the door and finally climbing into bed after 4:30 PM. As he turned out the light he seriously wondered if he had a marriage.

Pete got out of bed at 8:00 having slept less than an hour and not likely to get more under his belt. After making coffee and downing a couple cups to get him awake he settled down, alone with the Sunday paper.

It was after 1:00 PM when someone tried to open the front door, then rang the doorbell.

Susan had finally made it home.

He let her in, perturbed that she hadn't even been aware of the chain on the door. Somehow she had lost her keys. She looked like the poster girl for hangovers. Truth of the matter, she was still under the influence. Pete was used to seeing her without makeup, but this was the first time he wished she would go put some on.

"Boy, that was some night!" she slurred, holding a hand to her head. Pete nodded wordlessly.

"You should have stayed around and gone home with us, Pete," Susan said. "You would have loved it."

"How do you figure that, Susan? From where I sat last night, you had no plans for me to be included in anything that happened."

"Hey, Pete. That's just not true! That was my night to show you how it felt to be cheated on. But ol' Dev explained it to me. I understand why you didn't want to come with us and get embarrassed. Dev told me you were probably really turned on. Sorry I'm so late getting home to help you with it."

Pete looked at her like she had gone crazy. "What exactly did Pete explain to you, Susan?"

"Well, you know how. In all the cheat'n wife stories on the Internet, the husbands get turned on watching their wives get screwed. Then they get embarrassed. You didn't want to get embarrassed, that's all."

"What stories on the Internet?"

"Well, he took me home and showed me all these sexy stories on his computer. So now I understand how you probably wanted me to screw somebody else, and that was probably why you did what you did."

Pete looked at her like she was crazy. "When have I ever suggested I wanted you to fuck around on me?" he asked.

"Aw, that's a nasty word. It's really just cheatin'!" Susan answered. She took the aspirin out of the medicine cabinet and tapped out four.

Pete looked at her with pity. "Sounds to me like the marriage is over, Susan."

"What do you mean! Dev explained it all to me! 'bout what husbands really want. He said he could tell that was you 'cause you stuck around so long after we hooked up."

"Susan, I stayed around because I expected you to come to your senses. You told me you wanted to save our marriage. Instead, you spent a drunken night telling some raunchy yo-yo trying to get laid all our troubles. You have yet to hear my side of what happened, but it's pretty obvious you spent the night fucking this sidewalk psychiatrist shit-for-brains."

While Susan was choking down the aspirin Peter wandered downstairs. Susan followed him after stripping off her badly soiled clothes and slipping on her terrycloth robe.

Seeing her come into the room, Peter asked her to sit down, which she was more than grateful to do.

"Susan, I'm going to take tomorrow off. I'd appreciate you staying home, also. We should have talked Friday night, certainly no later than Saturday afternoon. Since you refused to talk to me even at dinner last night before you went off on what I'm beginning to suspect was a prearranged date, now is certainly not the time to talk. I want to sit down and talk tomorrow before I file for divorce. Please stay around tomorrow, Susan."

"What!"

"You're drunk on your ass, Susan. There's no sense talking to you now, you wouldn't understand a word I was saying." With that, Pete strolled out of the house and sat on a lounger on the back patio.

"What? Wha'da you mean divorce?" she called after him. She tried to stand up, but was so dizzy she just sat back down.

A half hour later Susan followed him outside, showered and dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. Her eyes were bloodshot, her complexion still a sickly yellow. When she sat next to him he caught a whiff of the vomit she had left in some toilet. She started to sit down, then got up, staggering back into the house, returning a moment later wearing sunglasses.

Leaning her head back, she put both hands to her forehead to cup her head like she was afraid it was coming apart.

"Margaritas getting you down, Susan?" Pete asked in a very quiet voice. "You must have chugged down nearly twenty. Tends to give one a real reminder the nest morning, doesn't it?"

Susan gave no hint that she had heard him, just held her head, groaned and tried not to move her body.

After a few minutes, Pete got up and moved back inside. The sight of his wife after she had humiliated him the night before, then seeming to want his sympathy for the way she felt after her behavior was more than he could stand.

He went upstairs to straighten out the bed. There he discovered Susan had stripped off her clothes where she stood, then left them where they fell. After making the bed he picked up her clothes. What he found made him sit back down on the edge of the bed. He had picked up her dress, but found nothing else on the floor but her shoes. He checked the dirty clothes hamper, but found it empty; no pantyhose, the bra and panty set was missing. The one she had been saving for a 'special occasion,' the set he had never seen her in. So much for his wife planning on seducing him with the new lingerie he had gifted to her.

When he had himself back together he searched the top of her dresser. He found the necklace and one of the earrings he had given her at dinner for their anniversary. The second earring was missing.

Pete spent the rest of the day doing chores, finally taking the car and going out for a hamburger for his evening meal. It surprised him, but a McDonald's burger wasn't as bad as he remembered. He toddled around town for a couple hours afterwards, driving aimlessly, before heading home.

It was late when he pulled into the driveway, and the living room lights were on, but his wife had gone to bed. She was dead to the world, and he made no effort to wake her. He checked the bedside table, turning off the alarm. He hoped his wife would stay and talk to him in the morning, if she didn't that would be a message in itself. He was very depressed as he climbed into bed beside her.

Pete was up, whipped up a waffle batter, and had the odor of fresh coffee wafting through the house before sitting down to read the morning paper. He was just finishing the crossword puzzle when Susan came into the kitchen. She looked more rested but worried. When she looked at him he could tell she was trying to work up a good mad at him. At that point a "good mad" was the last thing they needed if there was any chance at all of working anything out.

Before he left the bedroom he had looked in Susan's purse and discovered a business card for Devon Dalrumple, Attorney at Law. He had it sitting on the table by Susan's usual place.

As she walked in, he poured waffle mix into the waffle iron, then poured her a cup of fresh coffee. She sat down at her place, pulling her chair up to the table but then went very still when she saw the business care beside her fork.

"What's this, Pete?" she asked.

"You tell me, Susan. Did you know this guy before Saturday night?" was Pete's laconic answer. "And Susan, don't fib because I'm going to check this out. If that was a pre-arranged date, I want to know."

"No! No it wasn't'," she denied. Then after a pause, "Well, I had met him before, he works in my building."

"And you just happened to see him there, and this successful lawyer just happened to be at the dance at Top of the Town without a date? You hooked up with him inside of thirty minutes. I wonder what the odds of that being a casual meeting would be?" was Pete's soft answer.

"Are you happy now, Susan? Did the evening go as you expected? Do you feel exonerated after "getting even" with me?"

Susan leaned back, holding the business card by the edges. "Pete, I still don't feel real good after all I drank Saturday night. I'm not sure Devon didn't give me some kind of pills at his house. No, I don't feel like we're even and everything is OK. We have to talk, Pete. But I didn't go out to cheat on you!"

Pete sat and looked at her for many long minutes.

"Well, I wasn't going to cheat, not if you acted right!" burst out of her.

"So, now your fucking around on me was all my fault?" Pete shot back! "I made a major screw up, let me tell you how it happened..." then he told Susan of the three day, all day meeting, the woman vamping him, and how they had plied him with drinks all Thursday afternoon and evening. He speculated that the men he was negotiating with had paid to have his drinks made 'doubles'. To their dismay it hadn't impaired his negotiating skills to any perceptible manner. Pete did think they might hold that night over his head in future negotiations. As he was aware of what had happened, and because that behavior was so out of the ordinary for him, it was not going to be a lever for them in the future. Instead he would go into talks with that group, not with the idea of arriving at a fair bargain for both parties, but to drive them to the wall. They needed the product he sold, there was no easy substitute, so they would have to deal with him.

Finally, "I'm not going to ask what I should have done to satisfy you. I was as understanding and non-threatening as I am capable of being. I considered breaking a chair over precious Devon's head, but we both know that would have sent you over the moon."

"So we have a husband who was pulled astray. His wife discovers his peccadillo in a one-in-ten-thousand chance. The husband is guilt ridden for his infidelity and appalled at her discovering it, trying to save her from that heartbreak. Balancing that is a wife going out of her way to vamp a strange man, then insulting and embarrassing her husband very, very publicly. To cap all that off she refuses to come home with the husband. Her obvious alternative was going home with the man she had picked up for a night of illicit sex."

Pete poured himself a fresh coffee, heating up Susan's cup. "Today we have to balance these actions and see how each of us feels. Does the wife want to continue with a monogamous marriage? Does the husband want to continue with the marriage at all after what she put him through?"

Silence in the room except for the softly ticking clock on the yellow kitchen wall. Susan sat stone-faced listening to her husband. "I don't know, Susan. What does the wife want? And if you start with an attack on me, it's over."

"You're making it sound like you're a saint in this, Pete. You came home from a night with some bimbo and my best friend called to tell me about it. Am I supposed to forget that?"

"Nice, Susan, I just warned you about attacking me and that's the first thing you do! But I'll answer you anyway... Hell no, Susan. I was terribly wrong, and was going through all kinds of hell before I got home. I'd decided confessing my sin wouldn't help you. It was a one-time thing and while it might cure me of the guilts if I told you it would just upset you. Since it was never going to happen again I figured it was best that I was the only one that suffered." Pete sat slouched forward on the edge of the couch, elbows on his knees with his hands dangling down between them. "I was hoping you would never find out about it, but if you did I knew you would rake me through the coals. You aren't a screamer but I expected you to break that habit if you found out. Truthfully, I was sure you wouldn't find out. I was planning to spend the rest of my life making it up to you. I was right about you not being a screamer. You never said another word about what I had done after telling me you knew about it."

"Damn it, Pete! Devon told me how men feel about their wives going with another man. Don't tell me it isn't true! I read story after story on Literotica, in each of them the men explained how they really felt. Quit trying to make me feel bad about something you could have stopped by just sticking around."

"Susan, there are a ton of stories out there describing what Devon showed you. Very few men really want that to happen. And contrary to what is described in most of those stories, most men don't get hardons when they see something like that. In our specific case, me, the idea of what you so obviously did last night won't let my soldier stand up to attention. If we try to stay married it may be problem every time I go to make love to you." Looking sharply at her, Pete continued, "You read a bunch of those stories, obviously. Did they turn you on, Susan? Is that the kind of sex you want now?"

"No Pete, I just wanted you to feel what I felt! Is that too much to understand? We're even now, we can go on with our lives like nothing happened."

"Sorry, Susan. It's not going to work that way. Two wrongs don't make it right. And I feel what you did was worlds worse than what I did. You made your adultery as public as you could. Your shame was private. You made sure everyone at that dance Saturday was aware you giving me horns. And what it this nonsense about my being able to stop you. Did you want me to pick you up, throw you over my shoulder and carry you out of the building? You made it very clear you weren't coming home with me voluntarily."

"I actually considered doing just that, but decided you would probably be madder at my doing that than you were at my infidelity. You wouldn't have wanted a public scene and would have blamed me for reacting to your actions. I told you I was leaving but you weren't interested in your husband. By the way, Susan, I enjoyed the quick view you gave me of the lingerie you received from me as a gift. Where is it now? Did you give it away as a souvenir?"

Susan's face blanched, then she leaned and took a swing at him. She connected with a closed fist, as hard as she was capable of hitting him. It was unexpected, almost knocking him off the couch.

As she surged to her feet and stormed out of the room Pete called after her, "What happened to the second earring from that set I gave you Saturday?"

She froze for a moment before swinging back to face him. "What do you mean, the second earring?"

"There's only one on the dresser, Susan. Where's the other?"

"I... I don't know. I'll have to look for it. And speaking of earrings, did you think you could buy my forgiveness with the necklace and earrings? It won't happen, buster."

"Susan, I bought that set for you weeks ago. Didn't you recognize it? You raved over it when we saw it in the Swank's window. I was back the next day to buy it for you. It was an anniversary gift woman, not a bribe. If our marriage needs bribes, it isn't worth keeping."

That said, Pete got up, grabbed his coat and headed out the door for a long walk. Just before the door shut he leaned back in and called to his wife's back as she was disappearing up the stairs, "Susan, I need to know if you used a condom on your date Saturday night."

Susan stopped for a moment, then whipped around, a panicky look on her face. Pete had already shut the door and didn't see her reaction.

To be continued

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