Caring

She said nothing through all of this, she kept looking down, defeated.

I took my time and finished my beer then got up and turned off the lights. She followed me up the stairs. At the top I got a shock. My bedroom was nearly empty, the dresser was gone, the closet door was open showing nothing inside. My first instinct was that we had been robbed but that didn't make any sense, nothing was out of place downstairs. Then I knew what had happened, confirmed by the drooping banner of toilet paper hanging in her room: 'The family that lays together, stays together.'

She was looking sad and perplexed and a bit lost.

"Get me one of your lipsticks," I said, making a snap decision.

She looked at me curiously but went to her dresser and got me one.

There was now a mirror behind her dresser where before there had been nothing. I reached up and wrote today's date in the corner of it. "Leave this there... the date we had this conversation. I want to see changes. I'm not going to forget about this, do you understand?"

"Yes."

I pointed to the red date on the mirror. "You're in charge of this relationship... I'll help as much as I can but you're in charge. Get me a scarf."

"A scarf?"

Helen told me to do it, I argued but she said it would work. "A scarf."

She went into her closet and came out with one, handing it to me uncertainly. I took it and went round behind her, carefully folding it, putting it around her and lifting it to her eyes. She was docile, completely compliant like Helen thought she would be — I thought she would protest, Helen said no, she wouldn't, she would want it.

I sat on the bed, positioned her in front of me and slowly started to take off her clothes, the first time I've ever attempted it. My argument with Helen was that this was a form of assault like what I'd done in the bed — that was on my mind now: the first hint of protest and the blindfold would be off and I would be out of there. But there wasn't one, only resignation and stoicism.

She has a nice body, compact, almost athletic but it's wasted on her. When she admitted to me that she masturbates it shocked me because I've always thought of her as sexless, and I've always thought that she must think of herself as sexless. She's never acted sexy, dressed sexy, talked sexy — showed even a hint of sexiness. I had always taken it that just as she didn't turn me on, I did nothing to her.

There are a lot of women out there who think they are sexy who just aren't, but because for some reason they think they are, well, they are. Same thing with smarts. When my employees think they are good at their job I tend to agree. When they don't, I agree with that, too. You often become what you want to project and if the girls intended tonight to project a sexlessness in her, they were entirely succeeding with me.

Helen is a great example. She's not great looking — kind of spacey-looking really, but she thinks she is big-time sexy and as a result everyone else thinks she is, too... well 40 women for sure, 41 including Nancy, a once sexless, mousy girl who has blossomed into an amazingly confident, sexy woman.

What would it take to get Gloria to have the same metamorphosis as Nancy? Was it even possible? I was about to pull down her panties when I felt a kind of disgust for her. She has wasted her life away: she doesn't work, doesn't achieve; she isn't imaginative, creative; she uses her body for nothing — she's just marking time and ageing in the process. Pretty soon she wouldn't be able to change even if she wanted to.

Helen was right, her underwear is kind of plain... I never knew it was my job to buy her sexy things, especially as she had told me, things I wanted her to wear... and take off. I left them on and got her nightie from behind her closet door and slipped it over her. This wasn't going to work but I promised Helen I'd give it a try.

They had moved all my stuff into the second closet in the room so I had a bit of a hard time finding my ties, but I did, I took four of them and led her to the bed where she lay down compliantly with her nightie riding up so I could just see the tip of her panties.

When I took her hand she knew what I was going to do and held it out sacrificially. I tied the tie around her wrist. "We've never been very good for each other have we?" I said, thinking that I'd probably never said that before, but always thought it.

"You wouldn't touch me once I got pregnant... you basically haven't touched me since."

I let her words hang in the air as I tied up her foot — that kind of startled me, I would have said the same about her.

When I got on the other side of the bed she held up her other hand without me asking.

"You've never let me touch you — I'm tying you up so I can."

"No, you're tying me up so you can control me. If you touched me you know I would want to touch you."

No, actually, I'm tying you up because Helen told me to. And she told me to touch, not talk, talking would just create complications — the whole point was to try to connect by touch.

"You treat me like I disgust you," she said.

I tied her remaining ankle and looked down on her spread-eagled in the middle of the bed.

"You've always been cold to me."

"Because that's the way you want me. You never look at me, you never touch me, you don't even talk to me, you treat me like... it's worse than hate. It's like you're just indifferent to me."

I sat down on the bed and pulled her nightie down to cover her. "I resented you, why wouldn't I? You took my life away from me, you've admitted that."

Her face was taunt, I could imagine her eye flaring. "I chose you, I wanted you, I went after you, I don't apologize for that. So I tricked you, that was wrong but I've paid for that, Shawn was taken from me."

"So it's case closed, is it? You tricked me, you were made to pay for it so it's case close? We just move on?"

"Why didn't you leave me? I always thought you would."

Suddenly, I didn't know what to do: she was here, on the bed, tied up — I knew what I was supposed to do, touch her, touch her slowly, touch her everywhere, send her a message that I wanted to — those were my instructions but she didn't tell me how to do it.

"Why don't you let me touch you?" Her words pierced the silence and my indecision.

"I don't know."

"I always thought it was your work — you worked so hard, so much, you didn't have time for me. That's what I hoped anyway, I didn't want to think that you hated me. I thought that once you got some time, once you could relax a little then we could... find each other."

"I don't hate you."

"You don't like me. I do nothing for you... my body. You let me cook and clean but that's all. You won't let me be a part of your life... you say you want all those things, the dinners, the plays, all of that, but you don't. I've tried in the past but you've never agreed to anything, not when it gets to the time to actually do them. You were always too busy."

"I'm not now... I have more time." And I do, even a lot more time, the business can now be run on idle.

"You didn't tell them to move your things in here, did you?"

"No."

"You've talked to them about me."

"They've talked to me about you; they've lectured me about you. They think I could be getting a lot more out of you."

"They think I'm a bitch, a selfish bitch who's just using you."

"I don't know what they think."

"That's what they said, isn't it: tie the bitch up, touch her, tease her, see if you like it. What they should have said is that I should tie you up — let the bitch touch you, she's wanted to for all these years, you wouldn't let her."

"Did you like it when I pulled your hair that night?"

"Of course I liked it, it was the first time you've touched me in years. You could punch me and I'd probably like it."

I touched her shin, lightly, just dragged my finger along it, up to the knee then back down to the ankle.

She seemed to weaken. "What did they tell you to do?"

"It was Helen. She didn't call you a bitch, she called me an asshole. She said tie you up and touch you, don't talk, she thought I'd screw it up if I talked, just touch, get to know your body. She thought you'd want me to."

"You don't need to tie me up — you should know that."

"Don't stop until she orgasms, that's what she said. Suck her tits, eat her pussy," she included 'lick her ass' but I left that out. "I'm supposed to give her a full report tomorrow. I said I would — I'm chickening out."

"Don't, Mike. I dream of this. That's why I masturbate... imaging you caring about me, caring enough to touch me. Do what she said... you don't have to do it all... "

"Can you have an orgasm?"

"Yes, sure, easily. She's right, Mike, Helen's right. I want it. Pull my nightie up and suck on my breasts first."

I was teetering. She was the enemy, she had always been the enemy, ever since that grin and that tiny piece of paper she so proudly held up, the one with the bright pink strip. My fingers were travelling up to her knee; I felt like reversing them, moving them down to undo her ankle but they kept going, up, along the inside of her thigh, slowly, barely touching the soft, white flesh.

It might have been her sigh, it sounded so real, so needy, my fingers kept going up, slowly, wisping along her soft skin. I pulled up her nightie, high and when I did I saw it and immediately forgot about her, forgot about everything, nothing mattered, not the elastic pinching her waist, not the slope of the soft white nylon covering her mound, not the elegant shape of her hips, the lithe shape of her thighs — it was none of those, it was the little pale red hair sticking out the side of her panties — I thought of the girl who said she wanted to sleep with me, her words came floating back and assaulted me, the daughter wanted to sleep with the dad, and I immediately dropped down, pressing my face into her panties, pressing hard and I bit gently, I pressed and bit and licked and imagined she was her, imagined it was her crease, her encouragement, her moans, her cries and when I stroked my cock, I imagined it was her thrashing on the bed, that it was her leg with the trail of my cum up the inside of it.

And then I felt an over-powering disgust. The moment the orgasm passed through me and onto her I got up, got the lipstick from her dresser and wrote with a heavy hand and in block, pissed-off characters on her belly: YOU OWE ME. Then I undid one wrist and fled.

She was at the stove when I came down the next morning. I had waited as long as I could so my coffee was on the table, cooling. She turned around when I sat down and leaned back against the counter. "I love you, you know. I know it's been a struggle but I do, I always have." I could feel her eye boring into the top of my head. I could hear her turn around. "Tell Helen I thought you were a star, I loved every minute of it." I got up and left.

I've never been the type to beat myself up. Ya, it was sick, my niece, now almost my daughter — it disgusted me that I would react the way I did. But big deal. I did it; I know what to expect now; it won't happen again. And it won't: I'm not a scuzzebag.

I committed myself to my work with everything I had for the next few days. Nancy called a few times, Helen called, I didn't take them: I kept my head down and my pen moving — I got as much done in those three days as I'd normally get done in a week.

So I was tired when I got home that third night, just as I had been tired the two nights before. They were in the living room when I came in. Gloria jumped up the moment I walked in and she introduced us — Angela someone, an old friend I had never met. Gloria had invited her to dinner.

Great. She could have told me. Fuck. I quickly showered, changed and accepted the glass of wine, and needed it to stay awake. And I needed the next one and the one after that. The meal was bordering on excellent — interesting, delicate, spicy. The quality was so totally unexpected that half way into it put me in a good mood and, thanks to the booze, I became alert enough to realize that Gloria was showing a lot of cleavage and a lot of teeth; she was in an unusual good mood — ebullient, not a word I've ever associated with her.

And Angela was a bit of a star, too. She didn't look up to much, kind of dumpy and plain, with an enormous breasts behind a frumpy blouse. She worked for some kind of women's organization and while she appeared quite shy, she obviously had a good mind: their conversation, which they tried and failed to engage me in, was smart, lively and entertaining, not what I would have expected.

We moved to the living room right after dinner where Gloria poured me, quite unexpectedly, a liqueur which I sipped appreciatively as they continued their conversation. This was what it was supposed to be all about: people, getting together, talking, eating great food and sipping good booze — it seemed totally civilized, which made my typical night in this house seem all the more impoverished.

I wasn't paying much attention when Gloria poured me a second liqueur. "I've asked Angela to stay with us tonight. She said she'd like to." She said this in such a casual way it didn't register at first, and when it did, I just assumed I'd got it wrong.

But the body language suggested otherwise. There was excitement in the air and a levity that, apart from Helen's occasional visits, never entered this house. And then, suddenly, Gloria left us to clear the dining room table and Angela came over and sat down beside me on the couch, so close beside me that she actually pinched my hip when she sat down.

Look, I was a bit drunk, right? Then add in the sexual tension, the innuendo, and her ass landing next to mine; then add in the implied permission and the huge breasts. Then throw in her frumpy fuck-me look. I turned on her, my hand going to her wondrous right breast, my face pressing into her naked neck. I expected submission from her and I was getting it; I didn't give a thought about anything else, not Gloria's motives, not her morality, not even why my wife left us together — I just didn't care.

Then Gloria was pulling at Angela's arm. "Come on upstairs."

I got up when Angela did — I didn't know what was going on and I didn't care. This was the second time in my life I was actually doing what I had been warned as a kid never to do: I was following my prick. The first time ended disastrously, of course — I had to marry her. I didn't give a shit about this one, I just wanted it to happen; wanted the disaster to see me shove my cock into someone else. As we headed out of the room I was so up for it I had no intention of letting the disaster get between my prick and the ass I was following up the stairs — the ass that was nearly twice the size of her's.

I had heard about sexual power before but I had never actually experienced it. But I was feeling it now. When we made it to the bedroom she had enthusiastically jumped onto the bed and was leaning back on her arms with a childish grin studying me. My prick was ram-rod hard and sticking straight up as I pushed my pants and underwear off. When I stood up stark naked she glanced up at Gloria who was standing on the other side of the bed. Gloria smiled in approval, it was a smile I had never seen before — kind, warm, encouraging, the kind of smile a mother gives her child when she hands him an ice cream cone.

Her breasts looked like two great gift wrapped presents, her short blue skirt had risen up revealing bright red panties that were clearly wet. It was only then, the moment before I got on the bed, that I put the evening together. When I sat down with them at the table it had been one long polite conversation... leading to the couch. Now, I suddenly realized why. I flashed backed to the red lipsticked block capitals I had printed on Gloria's belly and knew that this was a payment. She owed me and she knew it; this was a payment.

I looked over at her for confirmation. Her serious face gave nothing away. It was as if this whole scene was perfectly normal to her, that we had often stood beside this bed, me entirely naked, looking down on a big-bosomed sacrifice. I could feel a disorientation rising within me, a confusion that might well have trumped my lust if she hadn't said, "She's lonely, Mike."

Yes, she appeared lonely and vulnerable and willing and the whole thing suddenly made sense: this present wasn't just for me, it was for Angela, too.

But when I crawled onto the bed I wasn't there to share, I was there to take. And I was in a hurry. She helped with the buttons, her fingers flying as fast as mine and when the blouse fell away it was like curtains opening on a porn movie, the deep damp cleavage between the two over-flowing cups beckoned and I went in.

I'm anything but an experienced lover, but experience wasn't required here. As she fell back she was pulling on my head as I was pressing my face between her breasts and my hand plunged between her legs. The first thought, piercing through my delirium, was how lewdly willing she was: her hands were so insistent, her grasping fingers so eager and her legs opened so wide, stretched so tight. And her panties were so wet. She must have been building all night, her talk only masking her desires — this had been a put-up job from the get-go; she knew there was a good chance she was going to get laid. When my fingers slid under her panties I got an immediate shock. She was bald, completely smooth. As my fingers slid across her slick skin I imagined her sitting on the edge of the bathtub shaving just before she left to come over.

I was imaging that as she was tugging a breast from its cup, then things got really confusing. Angela was rubbing a rubbery nipple tauntingly across my lips as I pressed deeper into her surprisingly tight, amazingly anxious cunt — she was bucking at my fingers like it was a desperately needed cock. That's when the bed sagged with her weight and I knew my wife had joined us and any guilt I was feeling disappeared.

I have only given in to lust that once but I didn't think about that now, I thought only about all the miraculous sensations — the sights, sounds, tastes and smell of her wonderfully willing body and how I had to last, how I had to let myself get to that moment but not go beyond; how I had to pull back, hold it, pace myself, explore, give, take, wallow but not succumb.

When she came on the bed I never saw her, not once, not while it was happening. She was always behind me, her fingers on me, her lips, her tongue, her tits, her body pressing against mine. Sometimes it was irritating, sometimes annoying but that was at first when I didn't understand. When I did, I felt a sudden flash of anger but that was fleeting, too because there was no place for anger here, here in Angela's soft hot flesh.

But it was weird. I managed to undo her bra allowing the great mounds of flesh to spill out — she was pressing them against my face as she bucked at my fingers, loudly, insistently then her hands were pushing at my shoulders and I was going down, rising up on my knees, going down and down and down, across her slick wet skin until I was there, her scent told me I had arrived before my tongue snuck between her swollen lips and she started to cry out.

I could feel Angela's orgasm building, I could hear it in her cries, amazingly melodious as they reverberated throughout her body, as they took hold, assaulted her and she erupted, once, twice, three times, great volcanic eruptions that sent shock waves through every fibre of her and then the little after-shocks with her moans of appreciation.

My wife's had that had been caressing my back went down and fondled my balls, she did it gently and as Angela subsided, spent, I slipped out of her and into Gloria's hand and she gently stroked she easily coaxed from me so blissful and overpowering an orgasm that it all but exhausted me and I sank onto the bed completely without thought, without energy.