Ch. 5, Retribution

Wonderful things happen when you're doing evil. That's what John thought, because Laura's body betrayed her. She began panting, which escalated to grunting, then to moving her ass up and down and crying into the pillow. It didn't take her very long to come. Her orgasm came first in fact, and she cried out beautifully, yes, making that sound in the back of her throat, and collapsed, and John collapsed on top of her.

He pulled out and turned her toward him and kissed her, and she kissed back and ran her hands through his hair and kissed him all over his face. They did that until they could finally breathe normally.

"Now," he said, his voice almost normal, "Clean me."

Laura's face collapsed more than her body had, but she went down to his dick, which was bright and shiny and spotless, and cleaned him thoroughly. It was so wonderful that Satan got still another O before he let her up. John wondered how much of the pleasure he was actually getting, and how much he was tithing to dark powers. If anyone thought about it at all, they'd conclude he was unbalanced, and they'd be right. So much for healing.

*****

Afterwards they put robes on and John held Laura close and was gentle with her. Something had passed, at least for now. She laid her head on his chest. For the moment it was almost as though they were in a slow dance, after which they went downstairs for a late snack and she made bacon and over-easy eggs, with a pot of coffee, orange juice, and toast, butter, and preserves. A full breakfast. He sat at the dinette table and she kept turning to look at him while she cooked. When she sat she squirmed because her ass was still so sore. They started eating and she put a hand on his free arm. She put it back on him whenever he wasn't using it.

"You liked it. A lot." She just nodded. "Everything?" Laura closed her eyes for a moment, then nodded again. "You don't mean that. You have to tell me the truth."

"I ... You told me ..."

"The truth. I won't abide any lies. Not even one. Now tell me what you didn't like."

"Cleaning you with my mouth. I didn't like that."

"I was clean."

"I could still taste it."

"But you did it."

"You told me to."

John was quiet. He had some more toast, dunked in the coffee and still dripping when he bit into it. He gazed at her as he swallowed.

"Okay. You don't have to do that anymore." The Devil can be magnanimous.

Laura leaned to him and wrapped her arms around him and put her head to his shoulder. He let her do it. "Thank you, John. Thank you."

"Now sit back down. And remember, I'm still going to punish you."

She looked him straight in the eyes, not a thousand-yard stare but an intimate look. "I know." She put her hand back on his arm.

*****

*****

He whipped her again two nights later. Not her ass. She could sit on it now, and some of the bruises were turning from blue and purple to yellow and green, but he wanted it to heal properly. She'd even gone to work that day and had managed to sit through her shift. It was a terrible shift. Some of the women were willing to talk with her now, though she had little to say. Some of the men, too, though it was obvious what they wanted.

About midday Laura went to see Betty Lang. She was desperate to talk with someone who could understand her situation.

"Well, you see," explained Betty, "I had an affair. About a year after we married. No one here knows about it because I moved afterwards. It was ... well ... it was with my father-in-law. It sounds like porn, but he was impossible to resist."

Laura wanted to run back to her desk. "How did your husband find out?"

"We were living with them at the time, in a guest cabin, and he walked in on us doing it." Worse and worse. "He turned right around and went straight to my mother-in-law." Betty wore an engagement ring and a wedding band and Laura wondered whether her husband had taken her back or she was divorced and remarried.

"So, they kicked your father-in-law out?"

"Yes. And me, of course. She made us both leave that same day. I didn't know what I was going to do. It was almost the worst. Almost ... my father-in-law and I moved to a sleazy motel, and no one would talk to us."

"And that was when he shot himself?"

"No. He's still alive. They even reconciled, if you can believe it. The worst thing was my husband. One night, a few weeks later, he hanged himself."

Laura could never talk with Betty after that.

*****

No, it wasn't Laura's ass this time. It was between her thighs. No pillow to muffle her cries, and two expanses of tender, white flesh. "On your back. Grab the headboard rails. Good. Now draw your legs up and spread them as wide as you can." Laura cooperated in everything. She didn't beg. She didn't hesitate. She spread her thighs and John could look straight down the soft, pale stretches of her inner thighs, to her two lower openings that had been so open to George, finally to her muff.

"Hold yourself still. Count and don't scream."

He took his time again, one minute between strokes, and Laura worked--Lord how she worked!--to be good. Of course, she wasn't able to hold herself completely still, but she tried and she pulled herself back into position after each stroke, crying, but only into her tightly-closed mouth, so that each one sounded like a long grunt. She gasped right after each cry and then panted until the next one. John began just up--or is it down?--from her knees, first one side, then the other, and he worked his way toward her body. Only twenty strokes this time, eight on each side and the last four applied directly to Laura's middle. Her body jumped with each of the last four, but even at the end she was still trying.

As soon as he was finished John pushed her flat and jammed his prick into her puss and did her. Laura's body didn't betray her this time, so she just lay beneath him, panting and moaning. John couldn't decide if this was better or worse. Whatever, he thought, as he lay on her, It's good either way.

*****

*****

One of the twins was crying. Kyle. Laura turned to get up, to go to him, but John wouldn't let her.

"Stay here. You're in no shape to do anything." He pulled on his underwear and got his robe.

Little Kyle had upchucked and was crying. He had a fever. John took him to the changing table, cleaned and changed him and the bed and got him some medicine. He held Kyle tenderly. Then he rocked him until he fell asleep. Oh, my little guy. He wondered if Kayla would get whatever Kyle had.

He drifted into a light sleep, and once when he opened his eyes he saw Laura in the doorway. She came in, but she duckwalked. I did a good job on her, didn't I?

"Go back to bed. I've got this."

She leaned over to kiss Kyle, and she put a hand ever so lightly on John's shoulder. "You need some sleep, John."

"I'll put him down in a bit. He's completely out and I can feel his fever going down. Go back to bed."

Toward morning, a child's crying woke him from a deep sleep, but when he staggered into the kids' room that time, Laura was already there, holding Kyle and rocking him. John draped a blanket over them and went back out the door, but he didn't go straight to bed. He stood outside the doorway and watched Laura rock their child.

*****

Both children were throwing up the next morning. There would be no pre-school today, and Laura would stay home to care for them. But something happened at work and John was home by noon.

"What's wrong, John? Are you alright?"

"Actually, I'm fine. I'm suspended for the next week for hitting Jerry Weeks."

"What? Why? What happened?"

"He kept calling me a cuck and I'd had enough."

"Because you let me come home?" It's my fault! She wanted to comfort him, but he held her off. He didn't need comforting. He was, in fact, happy.

"No. Because he's a son of a bitch."

*****

He'd hit Jerry Weeks?

None of them actually called him a cuck, not anymore, not since he'd called Jerry out a while back, but three of them would still sometimes make those little chicken sounds behind their hands. Cuck! Cuck! Today he stalked over to them. "Cut it out, you assholes. I've had enough of that!"

Jerry hadn't gotten the message. He was a big guy, a bully in a shirt and tie and a gut that was starting to bulge over his belt. A lot of offices have a Jerry. "Oh, did we hurt your widdle feewings?"

"Yeah? Maybe we should check out who your wife is fucking!"

"You asshole!"

He came at John, just like that. A short fuse, no? But he didn't expect John to step up and hit him in the face, the palm of his fist across the bridge of Jerry's nose. It's not clear--no one could afterward agree--whether it was a knockdown or a fall, but Jerry was down and holding his face, then staring down into the blood on his hand until his two compadres came to help him up.

"You're going to pay for that!"

Here they came, and John prepared to be beaten, but he'd go down swinging.

It wasn't going to happen. A little guy, name of Guy Swenson, a short, skinny, balding, dapper mustached, bow-tied, numbers nerd, the whole little package, stepped between them. "Stop right there!"

"Oh? And you're gonna stop me?"

"What are you gonna do? Kick the shit out of me? Then get ready to tell the police why you assaulted a pipsqueak."

Another guy stepped up beside Guy. Andy Hirsch. He turned his head toward John and apologized. "I'm sorry, John, that I ever took part at all. Never again."

There they stood, the six of them, everyone else just gaping, until Bill Ballard, the office manager, shouted at them.

"All six of you! Into my office! Now!"

In they shuffled, two groups of middle management professionals, lined up on opposite walls. Ballard slammed the door.

"Okay, Reynolds! You're suspended for a week for fighting. Weeks, you're suspended for instigating this! And you can swear out an assault complaint against Reynolds if you want, but if you do I'm going to fire your ass for creating a hostile work environment with this 'cuck' shit! You're on notice. Each of you go home and think long and hard about what you did. Not what the other guy did.

"The rest of you! You go down to the cafeteria right now and sit together, and you figure out how to fix this. Don't leave until you figure it out. I want you to be able to be friendly, and I mean really friendly. I won't have this sort of gang behavior in my office! If you people can't do that, I'm fucking willing to fucking fire all of you and have you replaced. And I don't mean maybe!"

Out they shuffled.

Ballard's admin came into his office to talk about the suspensions. He told her to close the door. His hands were shaking. "Give me a few minutes. Don't worry. I'll be okay."

As they were waiting for the elevator, one of Weeks' guys turned to Guy Swenson and said "I'll give you this, Swenson. You've got cajónes." Swenson smiled. That, in fact, became his nickname.

*****

*****

When Andy Hirsch got home, Melissa was peeling carrots for a roast.

"There was almost a fight at work today,"

"What happened?"

"John Reynolds' wife had an affair."

Melissa Hirsch dropped the carrots in the sink and became completely still. Finally, "Oh?"

"Some guys have been bullying John a little, calling him a cuck, and he hit Jerry Weeks over it."

"Oh, that poor man."

"He's tough."

"But he needs support right now, not bullying." She wiped her hands on a dish towel and walked over to Jerry.

"Well, I supported him."

"Good. I knew you would. He needs his friends to rally around him. He must feel so alone."

He kissed her. ""I'm just glad I don't have to face anything like that."

She hugged him, "Never. But if it happened to you, you'd want that support."

"But I don't have to worry, right?"

"Of course not. But I mean, what if in an alternate reality you had a different wife who did cheat? You'd need your friends' support." She hugged him again. "Was her lover the guy who shot himself?"

"Yeah. I think I'd shoot them both myself, the wife and the guy."

"You'd shoot me?"

"Not you. The bitch in the alternate reality."

"Even in an alternate reality I wouldn't want you to be a murderer. Just divorce her and take custody of the kids. That will kill her soul. And maybe give the guy a good beat-down."

"You're just a softy."

"I'm a softy for my real husband in this reality."

After Andy left the room, Melissa went back to the sink. She checked to make sure he was gone, then sighed and lowered her face into a hand and shook her head. "Please, no," she said in a very quiet voice. Finally, she looked up, wiped her eyes, and went back to peeling carrots.

*****

*****

"Take off your clothes." It was a couple of days later, the children were back in pre-school, and they were alone. John took his own clothes off and had Laura suck him until he was fully erect. "Stand in front of the mirror." The full-length mirror on the closet door. She stood there, about three feet from it, her hands at her sides, wondering, and John came up behind her. He caressed her ass and her thighs, her vulva. Very softly. "You bruise awfully easily."

"I'm sorry."

"It doesn't need an apology." He stood behind her, his cock hot against her lower back, his eyes traveling up and down her front. His hands followed his eyes, over her breasts which he cupped, raising them up from below and letting them drop so her nipples slid against his palms. Then he went down over her belly, his fingers spread so they reached completely across her, then down to her fuzz and back up, but he stopped only part way up. He stared down at Laura's belly for the longest time. He stared some more, stared at her C-section scar, and when he said it, it caught her completely by surprise. "I'm not going to punish you anymore."

Laura didn't react the way you might expect, certainly not the way John expected. She twisted around and fell to her knees, all the way down. "No!" She wrapped her arms around his legs. "Please, don't! Don't make me leave! Please! Let me stay!" She was screaming against his ankles.

John had never seen anything like that, not even in a movie, but she didn't seem to be faking anything. It was real, her falling apart. Real and unreal. Maybe he'd seen something like that in a silent movie marathon, maybe somewhere else, but he couldn't remember ever seeing it. There was just Laura, on her belly now, holding his feet and begging him not to release her, and he had to do something. His original plan had been to do her breasts next. That's what she had expected, and she'd been trying to steel herself for it, but something had stopped him cold. More than one thing. And now there was this.

"Laura, stop it. Stop it! You don't understand. Stand up." He helped her rise and held her. It was hard, getting her to let go, because her grip was so strong. He spoke softly. "You don't have to leave. Listen. You can stay." He put his hands on both sides of her head and looked into her eyes, dead on. "I'm not going to whip you. And you can stay."

She leaned into him, sniffling and hiccupping. Finally, "I'm sorry. What do I have to do?"

"Right now, just stand still." He held her to him and caressed her hair, her shoulders, then her back, down to her ass, caressing her until she grew calmer. "It's okay. It's okay," he whispered. Then he turned her back around so she was leaning against him and he could see her whole front, especially her scar, to see it and touch it. Oh, he touched her all over again, this time as softly as a cat's tail--her breasts, her belly, her sex, her thighs, but always back to the long, C-section scar. That was what had finally done it. Her scar. The other night had started him thinking differently. Not the whipping itself, and not doing her. It was when he watched Laura holding Kyle, her tenderness. It had bothered the demon.

But he'd forgotten the scar, a thin, curved line that could almost have been the mouth on a smiley face. A symbol of their happiness. Maybe the symbol. He saw it and it changed things for him, radically and all at once, like a lightening flash, and the demon slunk away, leaving only pieces of itself behind. The scar was just below her bikini line, maybe six inches wide, maybe a bit wider. Slightly raised and barely pink. It wasn't disfiguring. People would hardly notice it, but it embarrassed her, enough that she wore one-piece bathing suits to completely hide it.

I was there when they cut you, when you gave up your body up for us. She couldn't birth the twins vaginally so they did the section, with an epidural so she could be awake, and they had let John be there. Not all hospitals do that, especially in complicated cases like with twins. She was breathing oxygen through a nasal cannula, and there was an IV tube in one arm, and more, a mask over her mouth, a blue paper head covering, and one of those terrible hospital gowns. She'd looked a mess. I loved you more then than ever before. They'd held hands tightly through the whole thing, squeezing each other.

There had been a cloth screen across Laura's midriff to mask the actual work. There was lore, probably true, about husbands who saw the operation and fainted dead away, falling completely across their wives' bodies. It could ruin the procedure. But the screen had drooped to one side and John had kept peeking over it, to see when they cut her open and when they were pulling first one baby, then the other, out of her. When he'd looked back down at Laura he could tell she was smiling up at him every time. She was happy and scared. He could tell it through her mask. Remembering that, he caressed her scar. My Laura. You sacrificed your body.

He loved her again. Some people wouldn't think it could happen like that, but they weren't there. He didn't know if her forgave her.

Today, Laura just leaned her head back against his shoulder. "I'll be good. I promise. Anything."

He couldn't figure her out. She isn't the same Laura Helmholtz I married and loved, who carried our children and sacrificed her body for us and was faithful. She can't be that woman again. But she isn't the Laura who fucked George Mathis for so long. Not that one either. Just who the hell is she?

And who the hell am I?

"Anything? Okay. We're going back on the therapist's regimen."

"I don't understand."

"We'll do the intimacy exercises. You can hug me. And we can touch in bed, not just when I'm doing something to you. And we'll have date nights."

She was silent but turned directly to him and wrapped her arms around his waist as hard as she could, pushing her face unto his chest, and said "Oh!" Nothing else. Just "oh!" twice. He held her as well, then loosened her arms and turned her back around again, toward the mirror, so he could see her scar again.

"Tell me what you're thinking."

"Do we have to go out?"

That?

"We have to go out. You have to get past that." His hands were up on Laura's breasts again and he caressed them both, running his palms round and round her nipples.

"But you'll be with me?"

"I'll be with you the whole time." Her nipples bulged under his palms.

"What if someone insults us? Someone like Jerry Weeks calls you a cuck?" She was panting a little.

"Or calls you a slut? Maybe I'll hit them. I kind of enjoyed it at the office. Yeah, I'm sure I'd hit them." Her breasts. I was going to whip them.

"What if it's a woman?" She was trying to control her panting.

"She should watch her mouth. She can't call you a slut in front of me. Maybe I'd just slap her. Not Martha Brisbane. She's as big as me. I'd definitely have to hit her." How could I whip you? I'd like to do it. I still would. But I won't.

"She'd never say something like that."