All In

As the weeks passed our sexual activity dropped to once a night and then to four or five times a week. I really didn't mind that, but I worried about the reduced intensity. One night after sex I said, "I don't think you've come in the last month."

I had hoped she'd reply with some rational explanation and the promise that things would soon get better. Instead, she stared up at the cracks in the ceiling.

I rolled onto my side with my head up, resting on my palm supported by my arm. "Is everything all right?"

"I don't know."

I didn't like the sound of that, "How do we find out?"

"You knew the game when you started sleeping with me. Pretty soon we're going to find out if you really want to play."

"Try me, we'll find out."

"I'm afraid to find out."

I didn't quite know how this was going to play out, but I said, "It will be all right, I promise."

She gave me a sweet kiss and held me close.

A few weeks after that I came home to find her getting dolled up. "Are we going out?"

"Oh, did I forget to tell you? I've got a date tonight."

"What do you mean a date?"

"I met a nice guy at work yesterday. He's taking me to dinner, a movie and who knows what after that. Maybe you'll get to hear the mattress beat against the wall if you're a good boy."

"Are you serious?"

"Maybe you could make us breakfast in the morning. If you're working, we could meet you at the diner. I could introduce you. His name's Brad. He's very nice, I think you'll like him."

"You can't be serious." As much as I thought I was ready for anything she might throw at me, I wasn't ready for this.

"Oh, silly, you know, it's like I told you. Now that you're my wuss, I need to see that pain in your eyes." She gently stroked the side of my face as she said it. "It makes me so hot."

"Fuck that. If you go out on a date you won't see these sad eyes again. Oh, maybe you'll see them one last time from the street as I'm throwing your shit out the window."

"Don't be like that. You know I need to hurt you."

At about this point my hands were shaking and the words were coming out with more venom than I care to repeat. I called her a cunt, a whore and a slut. I called her skanky, selfish and a bitch. I busted a couple of worthless knickknacks and slammed some doors. I'm sure the neighbors got an earful.

Looking back I marvel at how she manipulated me. She'd put me on edge and then evoked painful images from the past. I could almost hear the mattress thumping against the wall, and I actually felt the humiliation and envy of listening to her being fucked in the next room. I was in as much pain as if she had actually gone out on her date.

And then the conversation turned on a dime. "Oh silly, if it means that much to you, I'll stay home." Like any great force of nature, Trudy's actions were balanced by reactions. The deep emotional cuts were offset by the high that she derived from the situation, and it all pivoted on the pain she saw in my eyes.

"Let's see it," she said as she grabbed the crotch of my pants and pinned my shoulder to the kitchen wall with her other hand.

I knew what she wanted, but instead of cooperating I pulled her head in by the nape of her neck and drew her cheek to mine while I gnawed seductively at her neck.

"Oh, no you don't. I want to see it." She pulled her head away and tried to look at my face.

She wanted to see the pain in my eyes, but I wanted her to fight for it. I wrapped my arms around her, lifted her up and carried her to the bed. We flopped down together, with my weight holding her down. She screamed "Stop it! I want to see it!" as she writhed beneath me, desperately trying to separate her cheek from mine. Her nails clawed at my back and her legs flailed wildly as she struggled to get away.

Any physical prowess that she exercised was only by my concession. I wanted her struggle, so I ceded a little strength to her. After a short struggle, I collected her wrists in my hands, pinned her hands at her shoulders and lifted myself up, exposing my face to her view. The rise of elation in her face was all I needed to see. Her breath hitched and her cheeks flushed. I knew that her pussy was flooded. There was nothing known to man that could have aroused her as much.

"You had better fuck me."

"All in due time."

"No, no, no. Please don't make me wait." Her hand slipped from mine and deftly stroked my cock.

It was impossible for me to conceal my arousal, but that didn't mean I was a slave to my cock or to her touch. I broke her lock on my eyes to suck on her beautiful breasts.

"Please look at me," she pleaded in vain. After a few moments of pressing her case, she yielded and rested her hands on my head. She held me close, while she patiently waited for me to satisfy my thirst.

Her heart jumped when my eyes finally engaged hers. "Please," she started, then held herself in check, muting her reaction in fear of a further delay. She smiled as I took off her panties and slid off my pants.

I felt her body tremble beneath me as my cock effortlessly slid into her. In a handful of thrusts she was at the threshold of orgasm. I stopped moving.

"Oh, fuck. Please don't stop." She countered my lack of motion by accentuating thrusts of her own.

I let her thrust away for a moment, then I began to slowly slide my cock in and out. I brought my cock all the way out, so that I slowly passed the full extent of her vagina. I watched the intensity build on her face and then finished her off with the flourish. Once again, she let out a loud cry of satisfaction, which brought me to climax deep inside of her.

"Well, was it worth it? Was the ecstasy worth the pain?" she asked.

"In hindsight, I guess so."

"Do you think it would have been worth it if I'd actually gone on the date?" She held my cock in her hand, softly stroking it to encourage me to give the answer she needed to hear.

"Do you really need to hurt me that badly?"

"Not yet, but soon I will."

"Why can't we keep faking it?"

"Haven't you noticed? It's like heroin. The time between fixes is shorter and shorter. Every dose has to be higher. One night we can get by with talking about it. A week later I'll need to dress up, pretty soon I'll need you to catch me in bed."

"I don't think I could handle that."

She rolled away from me in the bed, "Yea, I know."

I felt like I was failing her, but I knew that it was much more complicated than that. The person she cheated with could be anyone, but the pain had to be mine. We both knew she was asking for a lot from me and we both knew that I wasn't ready.

Soon after that Trudy's mom was released from jail. Neither of us wanted her around, but the alternatives were nil, and Trudy felt obliged to put her up. I moved my personal stuff out of my room and completed my transition to Trudy's bed.

She stood close behind me as I arranged the last of my possessions on the dresser. She said, "We're no longer just roommates," as her hand followed the form of my ass.

It was a commitment that I hadn't intended to make. I knew that it was significant, and it seemed right at the time, but it wasn't something I'd planned on. I turned and kissed her, "Are you sure this is what you want?" I asked.

She ground her pelvis against mine, "We've been on the path to this moment for a long time."

Her words carried weighty implications about our future, but I chose to ignore them. Even though I knew that Trudy would eventually ask me to carry a heavy burden, I was letting my life proceed without consciously choosing a path. I don't know if I was afraid to face the inevitable, or if I'd already made up my mind to accept whatever came, but my fate was sealed.

I changed the subject, "Now it's your mother's turn to listen to the sexy rhythm of the mattress against the wall."

Trudy laughed, "Payback is a bitch, isn't it?" as she pulled me down on top of her.

Her mother had aged ten years during her short incarceration. Heavy lines were set in her face, she'd lost a couple of teeth and the smoke of too many cigarettes had settled deep in her voice. She didn't have much stuff, so she just took over in my room where I'd left off.

She was more abrasive than I remembered, so I avoided her as much as possible and made sure to thump the mattress against the wall as often and hard as I could. But the folly of my plans for revenge was proven the first time she brought a guy home from a bar. They were loud, foul and obnoxious. They slammed my mattress against the wall with a vengeance. They left mess in the kitchen a trail of vomit down the hall and into the bathroom.

After a couple of weeks she took Trudy's absence as an opportunity to give me shit. "I told you to stay away from my daughter. She's way too good for you. You're too much of a wuss and you know it."

I grabbed her by the hair and pushed her against the wall.

She snarled at me, "Go ahead, beat up the defenseless old woman. Getting rid of you is going to be easier than I thought."

"You're moving out." I said in a low and serious voice.

She cackled, "Fuck that. My daughter says I can live here, so I'm staying."

"No, you're not. The next time you get blackout drunk I'm going to drive you to the smallest motel in the smallest town in the most distant hell hole I can find and I'll check you in for one night. You'll have the clothes on your back, your winning personality and your good looks to get you by."

"You wouldn't."

"Try me."

When Trudy got home her mother tried to play us against one another, but Trudy would have none of it. She asked me, "Which motel where you thinking? I'll want to make sure to block calls from that number." Not long after that her mother hooked up with some lifer at the factory and moved out.

*****

Trudy told me that she was pregnant over dinner. I don't know whether she got pregnant on purpose or it was truly an accident, but I wasn't as responsible as I should have been, so I really couldn't blame her. She offered to get an abortion, but said that she would rather get married. I might have felt trapped if abortion wasn't such an easy option, so rather than forcing us to get married, the pregnancy really just accelerated the question.

"I don't want an open marriage and I don't want to be a cuckold."

She nodded to indicate that she understood me, but said, "I can't promise that I won't hurt you."

"What does that mean?"

"I think you know what it means. We don't live in a Disney movie, where everything is happy for ever after. We live in the real world, where people fall in and out of love and have their hearts broken."

"Yea, but shouldn't we at least start out believing we live in a Disney movie?"

"I don't think so. If we keep our expectations in check maybe we can be happy."

I shook my head, "So, you want me to marry you knowing that you are going to hurt me. No, that's too mild, knowing that you are going to fuck other guys. That's it isn't it? You know what you're going to do, and you want me to bless it."

"I want to you to marry me with your eyes wide open. You should see that I love you and that I want to be with you. You should see that I want us both to be happy, and you should accept me for who I am." She gently stroked my face as she concluded. "You've always been special to me, and I don't want to lose you, and I need you to do this for me."

"I don't think I'll ever be ready for you to cheat on me."

"It's not cheating. It's between you and me, but it involves another person."

"It sounds okay when you say it like that, but it won't appear that way when it's actually happening."

"I'm sorry that you see it like that, but it's all I'll ever have to offer you. If you can't accept it then we should quit wasting each other's time."

"So that's it? We're done?."

"Well, not yet. You've got a couple weeks to make up your mind."

At first I was upset. I didn't want to lose Trudy and I didn't want to lose my self-respect either. I wanted to find a way to have both. She seemed to believe that all I had to do was accept a role as her cuckold and we would all be happy, but I didn't see how that could work. The thought of her lying under some faceless sweaty stranger, who was rutting her with his shaft while I sat in the next room minding the baby formed a void in the pit of my stomach and was as far from happiness as I could imagine.

She'd told me that she needed to inflict pain, but I didn't really understand what that meant. Was it enough for her to fuck someone while I watched, or would her high require more and more as time went on? The more I thought about it, the less I liked the idea.

"Have you made up your mind?" she asked, one night as we lay in bed.

Instead of answering directly, I played for more time. "What would it be like if I stayed?"

"It would be a lot like it is now."

"No, I mean what would you do that you're not doing now."

"I thought we talked about this. I would do things with other men that would hurt you, emotionally."

"Walk me through it."

"Well, maybe we would go to a bar. You would sit in a table at the back while I picked someone up. You know, something like that."

"I want you to talk me all the way through it. Start with what happens before we get to the bar."

I could see her confidence ebb ever so slightly. "I suppose you would get two adjacent rooms in a motel. Maybe we'd have a few drinks and talk about what we're going to do before we go out. We'd talk about what kind of guy we were looking for, I'd tell you where I wanted you to sit and stuff like that."

"When it got late enough, we'd walk over to the bar. We'd go in separately, so that no one would think I was with you. You'd sit in the shadows at the back, and I would go to the bar and get a guy to buy me a drink. Maybe we'd dance a little bit, then we'd sit not too far from you so that you could watch him touch me. I'd never look at you, but I would know that you were looking at us. I'd be as sensual as possible. I would stroke his face, feel his arms and slide my hand up his legs.

"Of course we'd kiss. At first they'd be short friendly kisses, but soon they would be long and lustful, with his tongue deep in my mouth. I would make sure that you could see all of it happen while you sat alone in the shadows. Your gaze would make each kiss meaningful."

"We'd close the bar, then I'd take him up to my room, and you would go up to your room. Of course, you would listen to our sex. Once he'd shot his wad I would creep into your room and softly stroke your cock while I told you about what had just happened."

She stroked my cock as she continued, "I would tell you how wonderful it was, and how happy I am to have a cuckold who lets me fuck anyone I want. Just as your cock is ready to blow I would softly kiss your lips and gaze deeply into the pain in your eyes."

"Would you make him wear a condom?" I asked.

"Of course," she said.

"Maybe the first time and the second time, but soon you would need to up the intensity. You'd need a bit more thrill, a bit more pain in my eyes. You'd quit using a condom, and you'd make sure that I knew it. You'd dip your finger into the pool of his come between your legs and feed it to me by the tip of your finger. You would place a drop at a time in my mouth and with each drop you would tell me how great he was, how big his cock was and how long he lasted. You'd do it just to see how miserable it made me. And then there'd be a next time and a time after that. Soon you'd be gone for days at a time, with me stuck at home raising someone else's kids."

"No, I would never do that."

"Oh, really? Then tell me, when does it stop? When would you have you seen enough pain?"

She wasn't ready for the question. I could see her mind reeling, searching for an answer. Of course, there was no answer. Her addiction would consume her, and it would consume me if I let it.

She put her hand up to my face with her fingers gently resting on my cheek and said, "You're going to leave me aren't you?"

I didn't need to answer. I don't think she had considered the possibility until that instant.

She silently considered her options, but all she could think to say was, "Please don't leave me."

"It was you that said we should quit wasting each other's time."

"Yes, but I also said that you are special to me."

We laid in bed quietly for a several minutes before she said, "You're my only chance. Please stay."

All she did was beg me to stay, but, in that, I felt I'd scored a major victory. I'd convinced her that her needs were insatiable and that their pursuit assured the destruction of our relationship.

I probably don't need to tell you that I stayed. Josh and Xander served as our witnesses. We celebrated our modest honeymoon with a nice dinner, an expensive bottle of wine and a night at the nicest hotel in the city.

In the morning she had her leg draped over mine while she played with the features of my face. Mid-morning sunlight beamed through the sheer drapes to illuminate her beautiful face. She said, "We didn't say 'obey'."

"Did you want to say obey?"

Her hand had migrated to my erect cock. She lightly stroked it as we spoke. "No, but I wanted to hear you say it."

I laughed, "Don't you get enough from me?"

She swung her leg across my body and guided her wet vagina down my throbbing cock. I could see the ecstasy on her face each time her hips descended. After a dozen strokes she slowed to a very deliberate slide as the first orgasm washed over her. Her shoulders shuddered and her head dipped. She let out a deep sigh and then her eyes returned to mine.

I gazed up at her spectacular tits, her beautiful smile and lusty eyes. She said, "It doesn't matter how much you give me. I will always want more."

There was no escaping the truth in her words. I felt the muscles in her vagina pull tight around my cock. It felt like she would draw me, cock first, into her gaping cunt. The thought of losing myself inside of her thrilled me.

I said, "Tell me that you are mine forever."

She leaned so that her lips were close to my ear, "I have always been yours forever."

Her words were intoxicating. Warmth washed over me as I plunged my cock deep into her. "Say the you will never leave me."

Her lips repeated, "I will never leave you."

"Say that you will never hurt me."

Her motion hitched on my cock. Her face froze over mine as she studied my eyes. Eventually she said, "You know I can't promise that."

"But we're married now." Didn't she understand the destruction that would follow her unbridled hunger? Had she forgotten about my big victory, or had I misread her response?

"I'm still me. Nothing's ever going to change that." She could see the disappointment in my face and tried to recover our mood by gliding down my cock yet again, this time with a bit of aggression.

I let her bring my mood back into the honeymoon moment. I wished I'd never brought it up, but at the same time I clung to the hope that she would transform into a kinder, gentler version of herself. A warm rush began to build as my cock racked up more transits through her hot wetness. She pulled tightly at the flesh on my back, bringing the intensity that only pain can bring to sex. My orgasm soon followed.

*******

In the months before the baby was born I took a new job as the assistant manager at the major family restaurant in town. It was the restaurant where business happened over lunch, where the civic groups had their monthly meetings, and where the politicians stopped to address likely voters. My job was to make sure that none of the conversations were about the service or the food.

Our baby girl weighed 7lbs 6ozs. She was 19.5" long, had a shock of black hair and hazel eyes. We named her Cindy.

My mom and Hector arrived about a week after Cindy was born. Mom took to being a grandmother in a way that she was too tired to do as a mother. She sat primed, ready to leap into action whenever the baby stirred and then she would carry her through the house on her hip swinging from side to side and she sang lullabies.