Confession - Judgement Day

My buttock suddenly screamed with pain. The paddle. The leather paddle. This time the punishment was real. He was not playing my dom. He was rightly hurt and angry. No game. Betrayed, he inflicted real castigating pain.

The other side screamed just as loudly as the first. Searing pain. My butt ablaze with it. Deserved, but agonising. Tears in my eyes. Tears in my heart, for the injury and pain that I was causing him.

You only hurt the ones you love. The others do not care. They do not know you. You have not made promises to them. No vows made. The vows are made to those you love, and those are the people you betray.

My wonderful, darling Peter was in pain, had been in pain for three weeks since it happened, and yet had held it in, behaving like the loving husband he had been for all the time since we had married. No sign of inner hurt or torment, not until now. Held back until this time. And now released.

My butt throbbed with those two strokes of the paddle. My heart throbbed too. My brain had already shut down completely. Nowhere to go. No escaping the humiliation of my guilt. No excuses I could offer. No plea for understanding. No mitigation. Nothing.

"How many times?" he asked me. "Before that night?"

Once, my brain said. Just once. Just the gardener. The man who pruned our tree. That was the only other time. That was inside my head. Somehow I had to find something to say out loud, to Peter, to my husband. Tell him the truth. But how to say it?

"Only one," I finally said.

"You expect me to believe that?"

"No," I said. "I know that you've no reason to believe anything."

"The same hotel?" he asked.

"No," I answered.

"A different one?"

"Not a hotel," I said.

"So where?"

How do you tell your husband that you allowed someone to fuck you at home, in the kitchen, on the table, the same table he has since fucked you on and tied you to, as part of normal married sex, and the same table that you are tied to now?

There was only one word that could be said without adding to my betrayal of our marriage by engaging in yet more lies.

"Here," I said.

"Here?" he repeated, seeking confirmation, clarification, explanation, everything.

"The,..." I stuttered. "The guy,... who came,... to,... to prune,... the apple tree."

Said. Admitted. Could not be unsaid.

"Fuck!"

It was my husband swearing. Not loud. Gasped, rather than said. There was despondency, dejection, grief, such sadness in that single word.

"I'm,... I'm,... I'm so,... so,... sorry."

I have never been so scared, of two things, both expected.

One, of yet more pain. Of that unforgiving paddle, which inevitably he would use again. Take out his inward hurt against the flesh that so deserved it. Inflict more pain, and more, but never enough to equal the pain that I had caused him.

The second, that he would ask yet more. Would want for me to tell him all that had happened on that day, how I had come to let a gardener take me, and I would have to tell him that this, our kitchen, was despoiled, not just our marriage and my cunt, that our family table where we laughed and joked and shared our days together, was where I had bent over, where the man that had had paid to work for him, had fucked me, where my marriage vows had been pummelled into dust.

Neither happened.

"You slut!" he said instead.

Not shouting. Not using the four letters as a swear word at me. Just confirming, sadly, what he had found out.

His hand brushed my butt cheeks as he switched the dildo on, and then he left me.

"Enjoy it," he said, from somewhere near the door.

Duracell, just like that advert, can go on and on and on.

**********

Life, too, goes on. Children have to be collected from their Gran's. You have to joke and laugh. You have to shower them, and read them bedtime stories. You have to get them up for school. Make breakfast for the family.

Kiss the husband who is now so cool when you are just the two of you. Wish him a good day at work. Do the school drop off. Come back to the now so very empty home and try to work. Write something meaningful. Submit for publication. Make dinner in the evening. Repeat each dead and soulless day.

But keep up face. For the children. Force yourself to smile. Be upbeat on the outside. Sing supercalifragilistic, while inside your heart and head are monotone, there is no rhythm, no joy, just empty vacuum. They do not deserve this. Nor does your husband.

Friday comes around. Date night nightmare. Of course, I took the boys as always to my mother's. Behave as usual. Nothing has changed. Not on the surface. Not the face we show to others. Just deep inside, where there is nothing except pain.

Only one aspect of my pain had faded. My butt. Those two strokes that Peter had used on me had left me written on both cheeks, the slut that I was, and am. Capital letters that were no longer a source for teasing in our bedroom. Nothing to joke about. Faded by now. But the truth that they spelled out was in no way dimmed.

We still shared our bedroom. Our bed. No outward signal to the boys. Except we no longer slept naked. Peter in shorts and teeshirt. Myself in top and knickers. Legs touched sometimes. Each time, he pulled away.

Since it was supposed to be our date night, I made an effort, of some kind. Peter's favourite. Duck breasts. Orange and honey sauce. New potatoes. Carrots. Garden peas. That word on the can reminded me that gardeners can be the cause of so much havok and destruction in a marriage. Except, in fairness, it also takes the wife to tango. As I had, with him.

We sat on opposite sides of the glass kitchen table where it had first happened. Where I had been fucked. Where a week before Peter had tied me, had told me that he knew, had used the paddle hard enough to make me cry, or were those tears for what was ripped apart and torn to shreds? The place settings, the wine, the floral arrangement I had prepared, the candles, none of it disguised that this was where I had betrayed the man I loved.

We sliced the duck breast with our serrated steak knives. Peter, like me, cutting smaller forkfuls than normally we would, knowing that swallowing would be difficult. At least the Bordeaux would help. Except swallowing just the first slice of the breast, Peter stopped, putting down his knife and fork.

"I just can't stomach this," he said.

He might have meant the food, but I knew that what he meant was us, being like this.

"You know I loved you, more than the whole world," he said. "What really gets me, is I still do."

His eyes were moist as he was speaking.

I set down my own utensils.

"I know," I said. "I'm sorry. I know it sounds crass, but I loved you. I still do. So much. I'm just so sorry that I hurt you."

"So, is that what this BDSM thing was all about?" he asked. "Me punishing you, for something that I didn't even know had happened?"

"In a way," I said.

"And the paddle you provided?" he said. "That was part of it. You wanted to be a slut? Or what?"

"I didn't want to be," I said. "I didn't want him. Neither of them. It was just,... I can't explain,... I just needed,... so, yes,... it seemed the right word to choose."

"I don't want this," he said.

This time he was looking down at his plate. This time he meant the food.

"It doesn't matter," I said. "I'll,... I'll do anything,... to make it right,... anything you want."

"Really?" he said, his tone blending sarcasm with disbelief.

"Really," I said, trying to sound as reassuring as I could.

"So if I said I wanted every date night from now on, to be a BDSM night," he said. "So that I get to punish you for what you've done, how would that be?"

I did not need any time to think how to reply.

"Then I'd let you punish me, as much, and as often, as you want."

"I loved the way we were," he said. "Our family. Us. Being with you. Making love to you. All the tenderness we had. Before,... this!"

"So did I," I said.

"Then why?" he asked.

I gave him the only honest answer that I could.

"I don't know," I said.

**********

Good duck should never go to waste. That would be a sin against the poor bird who had been slaughtered in the interests of our sustenance and nutrition.

I warmed it later, gently in the microwave, a travesty of good cuisine but the only way to minimise the chance of overcooking it.

By then we had been upstairs, had made tender love, had held each other, had showered, and had slipped on our robes. We had talked some more, of course, about our marriage, and our family, about sex, and the sex drive, and what makes us human, and not just biped mammals fucking from the need to procreate and for the pleasure that fucking one another gives.

We had agreed my punishment, suggested in jest, laughed about, and then it had become serious, and Peter had said he thought that actually, it was appropriate, and that was what he wanted, and I had agreed, nervously of course, but accepting that if it meant in some way Peter could still love me, then that was how it would have to be.

It took less time than I expected. It is a slightly smaller font than the paddle's raised lettering. Permanent, of course. Positioned where it will be covered by a decent pair of panties, or a bikini bottom, but not by a thong, and I have worn a thong since then.

The salon was in central London. The need to avoid anyone we might know. Unisex. Clients and staff. I lay face down, apprehensive, not just about the pain. About the permanency too. About who might see it, when and how. Not family, of course. Nor friends. No spa days any more. No sharing changing rooms with anyone I knew. But when I next paid a visit to my doctor, or a gynae specialist, they would see. And of course, no daring beachwear, or not with anyone we knew.

Then the baring of my buttocks to the tattooed and pierced, tattoo and piercing artist whose shoulders, back and arms testified to her commitment to her art, and who would do the work on me. Strangely well spoken, along with nose ring, pierced cheeks, multiple ear piercings, barbells outlined beneath her braless tee-shirt, where her nipple stubs pushed outwards on the thin, black cotton.

"You'd be surprised what people have tattooed on them," she said, pressing the tracing to my butt, positioning the outline she would follow.

It hurt, of course it hurt. Not as much as repeated strokes of a paddle, but the insistent needle piercing tender butt flesh stung, as it inked my true nature where it was most apt.

**********

That was all some years ago. Our boys have grown. I like to think that one of the reasons that both of them appear to be so confident and so mature, even though our youngest is still in the final year of his teens, is because we were a happy, loving family, other than the purgatory of that awful, nightmare week. They go their own way, now, university, girlfriends, holidays. We go ours.

My swimwear, as with much of what I wear on date nights or on holiday, is Peter's choice. No one in Greece knows who we are, although quite a few know what I am, or was. You can sunbathe topless on some beaches on Greek islands. Monokinis can be worn. Some are mere tokens of false modesty. Pubis concealing triangles, with spaghetti ties around the sides and down between the buttock globes.

So, once that we could holiday again, not as a family, but just as the loving couple that we had become again, it was a monokini that I wore. Brits, Germans, Dutch and local Greeks all saw the word. The 'SLUT' word, tattooed on my butt. Right globe. Angled upwards. Discernable at twenty yards or more. Branding me with truth. The truth that I once was a slut. Twice, to be more accurate. A gardener and a businessman from Ghana.

Yet, in the intervening years, I have somehow managed not to go behind my husband's back again, although my cunt would like to. There have been men whose cocks it would have welcomed, would have embraced with all its moist and palpitating inner flesh. My clit has wakened to the smell of hormones given off by men I meet, and it has sorely tempted me to stray.

Two things have stopped me. My husband's dominance, for one. His insistence that we keep the kitchen table, to remind me, and to remind him too, and that we keep our date nights, especially the one time each month when my punishment is due.

A different paddle. The raised lettering in leather, no longer needed. The word is inked beneath my skin. Plain wood. Light oak, the colour, not the weight. Heavy and hard enough to hurt. Holes through the surface of it, the theory being that without them, air resistance to the downward stroke would constrain the final smacking blow. My butt is reddened just as frequently as ever.

He gives no quarter, not even when we had booked for Santorini, and our monthly date night fell halfway through our trip. My butt cheeks glowed the morning after, when we strolled along the beach, and when we lazed beside the pool to get more sun, my monokini string hiding absolutely nothing.

It was appropriate humiliation, long overdue. I knew that those who saw me, even in the days that followed as the redness faded, knew I had been punished for some kind of sin. Knew also that my husband held the whip hand over me. Knew why I was tattooed. I saw respect reflected in the eyes that saw me, for my husband, not for me. My shame was open, public, and complete.

Yet what most men will fail to understand, but many women will, is that along with that outward humiliation, inside, I still retain my self esteem. I have dared to do what so many other women fear to. I have been a slut, and I wear that word with pride.

**********

I said that two things have prevented me from betraying my husband yet again. My husband's dominance of me is one. The other is that I love him. Slut shamed, yes, but this slut still loves the man she married. I always have and always will.

**********

If you have read all of my four pieces here, all called Confession, then you will know that I write professionally. Life styles, social commentary, not sexual material. When I came across Literotica, I thought it might be interesting to try erotic writing. I even wondered what kind of scores and comments my submissions would receive.

I am not looking for approval, so even the harshest comments that some men have left for me, they have been deserved. What does disappoint, though, is the way these men then score my writing with just a '1*', as if they want to punish me for my behaviour, not give me any credit for the way I write.

Maybe I got it wrong, I thought the scores were supposed to be about the quality of the writing, not a punishment for being a slut, or bitch, or whore, or all the other things that I have been called. Kick me to the kerb, or beat up on this bitch, but was this written well enough to be called erotica? Can this slut write with style? I hope so. I have certainly given it my best shot.

Thank you for reading to the bitter end.