Eejit

I struggled to find something to say. "I've loved you since I first saw you," I whispered.

"And I fell in love with you when you were lying in hospital. So hurt and yet so strong for me. You are what I need, what my soul needs."

She kissed me, just using her lips. It was perhaps the most loving moment I have ever had. The passion was subdued, although bubbling under, but the emotion seemed raw and open, a gift that could be torn apart with the slightest wrong move.

"I want to marry you," I said -- which was exactly that slightest wrong move.

She drew back. "You can't want that. You can't! I can't do that! You don't want that!"

"But I do, with all my heart," I stated, adrenalin racing and my heart pumping two hundred a minute, as if I had just finished a mile-long sprint. I had screwed this up. I had a ring in my pocket, but my stupid mouth had gone off like an IED and fucked up everything in the moment. But now I had set off the explosion, I had to continue.

"I love you with everything I am, everything I ever will be. You are my life, my dream, my hope, my universe."

There were tears in her eyes.

"I am going to fuck it up again," she moaned. "I knew this would happen. I always fuck it up."

"I don't understand," I protested. I had thought this was about me being stupid and ruining things. So how was it her fault?

"I don't want to tell you, but you have to know!" she sobbed.

"Know what?"

"About me. About me being a whore -- a disgusting slut."

"What?" I think my mouth had dropped open. How had we gone from 'I love you too' to this?

She turned to face me and took my hand in hers. "Please don't hate me, but I was... I am... I have no moral code. I ... ah Jeez ... I don't want to..."

I'm not stupid. I could guess she was going to tell me she had slept around before we met.

"You've slept with other guys?" I prompted. I didn't like seeing the mental images, but it was before we got together. I hoped. Oh, please let it be before we met!

She nodded miserably.

"I kind of knew that. I'm not the biggest you've had, remember?"

"That's not it," she cried. "If it was just one, it would be ... not fine... but okay."

"So you've slept with more than one guy. I've slept with more than one woman."

"At the same time?" she whispered.

I thought of my two university friends-with-benefits, and nodded.

"Two," I muttered. I didn't want to come across as a player. I was asking her to marry me, after all.

"Five," she said, and buried her face in her hands.

Well, that was unexpected. I shook my head to try and clear it.

"At the same time?" I queried, and she nodded miserably. I tried to work out the mechanics of how that could happen. My puzzlement must have been obvious.

"Three holes airtight and two hands," she whispered bluntly, not looking at me. Okay -- so that was the mechanics sorted out. I blew out my breath. I didn't want to and didn't need to judge her, but that was fairly startling, coming out of the blue like that.

"Oh," I said helplessly. It seemed so important to her, so how did I say it was in the past and didn't matter to me without trivializing it? Besides, in a small way, it did matter. I was conservative enough that the idea that she had fucked five guys simultaneously did bother me. But I loved her enough to put that aside until I could take the time to process it and then bury it away in some deep bin in my mind.

"You hate me!" she cried.

"No, I don't. I love you. I will admit you took me by surprise, but it doesn't change how I feel about you."

"You have to know everything. They tag-teamed me," she continued in such a hopeless, helpless voice that I almost broke down.

"Er..." Confused again. What did that mean?

"When one finished, another guy would take his place."

"So... how many?" I queried, hating myself for wanting to know.

"I don't really know. Maybe thirty?"

"Jesus Christ!" I muttered, genuinely stunned at this information, unable to quite comprehend. "What the fuck happened that you screwed thirty guys in every orifice. I mean, how do you even get that going? Were you forced?"

She shook her head. "I don't really know what happened, but I wasn't forced. It was at a party after we were picked up by the record company. There was drink, but I wasn't drunk. I was just so ... so boosted by the whole thing. The hype was incredible -- I felt like I was high on something. There were important people there, executives, finance people, and people from other bands -- musicians whose music I loved and respected. I couldn't help it. I dragged one guy into a bedroom and practically raped him. Then another cock was in my mouth, and I felt exhilarated. My ass was filled, and then it seemed that that were naked men all around and I wanted all of them. It felt at that moment that I deserved all of them. So I took them all on -- and I loved it.

"That only happened once. After that when I got over-hyped after something like a concert or award ceremony, it was only ever just with two guys, three at the most."

"Oh," I said quietly, after a long moment of silence.

"You had to know. I couldn't pretend that I'm not a filthy whore."

"They paid you?"

"No!" she said fiercely, looking at me for the first time since she started her little tale.

"So not really a whore then," I said reasonably. Despite my words, I felt desperately miserable, both at her story and how it was affecting us.

She shook her head as if I wasn't making any sense.

"How could I ever satisfy you after that?" I asked very quietly.

"But you do," she stated. "When I'm with you, it's like the whole universe suddenly makes sense and I'm where I should be."

Thirty guys. How did I even start to get my head around that? Raven started to say something, but I shook my head and she broke off.

The silence drew out longer and longer until she suddenly made a soft, whimpering sound, rose to her feet and started to walk away. For a moment I felt the urge to just let her go -- her and her over-fucking-used, well-fucked, fucking body. It felt as if she had taken something away from me and I wanted to scream at her for the loss of that innocence within me. And there had been an innocence in my love for her, in my stupid, juvenile worship of her, and her confession had burned it to ash and ground it into the dirt. But...

"No!" I suddenly yelled at her back. I sprinted after her, grabbed her arm and twisted her round to face me. I stared into those eyes, so red with all the tears. Her expression was almost fearful, as if I was going to hit her.

"No! You do not have the right to decide how I feel about you! You do not get to say that I do not love you! You do not get to tell me you love me and then just walk away! I decide who I love, and why. And only I get to decide when I no longer love someone. And I still love you!"

"But..." she began, not fighting my hold. I didn't let her finish.

"I'm not going to pretend that your ... orgy or fuck-scrum or crowd-screw or ... or whatever it was, didn't shock me. It did. I hate that you did that. I hate that you felt that need. But it's gone. It's in the past -- a past that didn't and doesn't include me."

I was panting with emotion -- love and anger, despair and need churning together in my gut -- and struggling to get my thoughts into a semblance of order. I hated not being able to think logically. But this was love and heartbreak -- not logic.

"Look, I didn't fall in love with that girl. I probably would have run away screaming in panic from that girl. I fell in love with this girl here with me now. That was then, this is now. So I need to know about the now girl -- the girl I'm holding and want to spend the rest of my life with. I need to know the truth.

"These last weeks have been the best weeks of my life, despite the way it started, and I wouldn't trade it for anything in or out of this world. I fell in love with the girl of my dreams, and somehow, for some strange, wonderful, crazy, magical, nonsensical reason, she fell in love with me. We made love so often and I never felt anything but love from that girl.

"Was I wrong to feel that?"

She seemed so limp, so passive within my grasp, as if all the energy had drained from her body. Then she placed her hand against my cheek, so gently that it felt as if my cheek had been kissed by a cloud.

"No, you weren't wrong. At first I guess I hero-worshipped you. Before you stormed into that bathroom like a thunder-god, I had just about decided to give in and let the fuckheads have what they wanted. After all, it definitely wouldn't have been the first time I had slutted around with a group of random pricks. But then you were there, and you were fighting to defend me. Nobody has ever done that for me before.

"But then that hero-worship shifted, changed into something bigger and so much better. When you woke up I discovered a wonderful, caring, intelligent, funny, sensitive man within that hero. And I wanted to be with you so much -- so, so much that I couldn't bear the thought of not being with you. When you were discharged from hospital I decided to simply stick to you like glue. I knew you cared for me. I think everything you said and did, even the way you sat or moved, or the way you looked at me showed you loved me. I revelled in that. So I moved in with you, never asking whether that's what you wanted. I bulldozed my way in, and spent the next weeks fearing every minute that that would be the moment you would come to your senses and throw me out on my sluttish arse."

I shook my head in protest. I had been the one feeling that fear. She cut me off.

"When we made love for the first time, it was as if I was a completely new woman -- a virgin. You took me and you shook every foundation within me, smashed it to the ground to rebuild me and left me feeling so wonderful. And I realized that the only way I could feel that way was because I loved you completely. Every moment after that simply reinforced that certainty.

"I've never told anyone else about that stupid, selfish, self-deluding episode. I was always afraid they would see me as I really am. When you told me you loved me, I became afraid that you might discover that part of me. But when you said you wanted to marry me, I could no longer hide it. Not from you. Loving you like this, I have this overwhelming urge to be honest, completely honest. Otherwise we could never be happy together.

"And now I've done it again. I fucked it all up. I've broken us and I don't think I will ever be happy."

She started to cry again -- quietly now, in a hopeless, unending weeping of complete misery. I pulled her into my arms and held her tight as her body quaked and shuddered.

It felt like hours before I felt the storm of her sobbing finally calm, all the while holding her tight, stroking her shining golden hair, and whispering nonsensical comfort into her ear.

"Raven, look at me," I said softly. She lifted her head. Her expression was almost blank, without expectation.

"I love you for who you are now, as I said. But I need to know, if we are together and making love, should I be looking over my shoulder for a queue of guys waiting their turn? Should I be waiting for you to get that urge to celebrate once again? To put it bluntly, are there thirty guys somewhere out there who are going to be fucking you while you're supposed to be with me?"

She shook her head and looked down. "No. It was an idiotic, imbecilic thing. I made some really bad decisions. If you were beside me to help me, that wouldn't happen again. You make me too happy."

After a few moments of desperate thought, I drew the ring box from my pocket, opened it and offered it towards her. "Then, I'll ask you again. Will you marry me?"

I thought that she had cried every tear available, but she was weeping once more as she slowly dropped to her knees on the grass and put her arms around my thighs to hold me tight.

"Yes please,"

PART 7

Which brings up back to the present, eight years after that emotional day, during which time we were married in a small, intimate ceremony surrounded by our closest friends, and Raven soon fell pregnant and gave birth to the spawn of the devil -- who we christened Elizabeth Hayley -- forcing me to fall hopelessly in love with the second woman in my life.

The paparazzi had moved on by the time we returned from our Asian sojourn, only a single hard-nosed bastard staying to haunt us, whom we defeated simply by always smiling at his camera. I guess it's hard to raise interest in a near-rape story and the subsequent retreat from music of a rock-goddess, when she always looks delighted with life. Happiness doesn't sell.

I started work at the oil company Karien had chosen for me, and surprised myself by really enjoying the work. They apparently enjoyed me too, especially when I started designing upgrades for a lot of their costly equipment, which boosted their profits and in turn provided a little succour to my bank account by way of bonuses they gave me in return. In the end I basically chose when and where to work, most often working from home so I could spend more time with my women.

And then came that fateful day when Raven told me she was going to dance her way back to fame.

That evening, to show my acceptance of her apology for making an unwise decision, I lovingly used a lot of lube on the two of us, forced my cock into the ass of my impatiently encouraging wife, and ploughed her long and hard, much to our mutual pleasure and satisfaction if the volume of Raven's squeals and moans of bliss was anything to go by. But, even as I rediscovered the pleasures of the tightness of her ass squeezing rhythmically around my cock, I found myself distracted, considering the overall problem and trying to decide on the best course of action.

As I lay in the darkness afterwards, enjoying the afterglow of cumming like a train inside her delightful body -- which had remained wonderfully intact and pristine despite the Hellspawn's corporeal manifestation -- I realized I had made my decision, planned as much as possible and now settled down to wait. Raven knew what was at stake. I wouldn't accept her fucking any other men. She knew that absolutely. So now I had to wait and see.

Two weeks before the first episode of the show aired, Raven started rehearsals, and for that fortnight there was no sex at all, bar once on her Sunday off, when we shared an almost somnambulant missionary fuck. Every other day was just exhaustion, blisters and pain. I helped as much as possible with massages, blister plasters and ice packs, and resorted to jerking off in the bathroom on several occasions to spare her from forcing herself into a duty fuck. Hey, she loved me and would have done that for me, but it wasn't what I wanted.

I took Beth, who put aside her demonic tendencies for the occasion, to the first performance and we both admired the swift, deft management of what was a live televised event, although with plenty of AV cutaways to allow the scene shifters, camera operators and lighting staff to prepare for the next dance. Raven danced seventh, her partner cleverly steering her through a waltz and making her look even better than she was, and she was pretty damned good to start with. Beth was ecstatic at seeing her mother in a long rose-coloured dress glide so beautifully across the floor, although she did glance at me a little nervously now and again to see my reaction as Raven's partner pulled her right up close against him through their dips, turns and glides.

The judges were jerks, but fair, placing her fourth overall behind a girl-group singer, a soap actress and a footballer with surprisingly good moves.

The moment we left the studio, Raven was all over me, holding the Demon Spawn in one arm and me with the other. She was hyped to the gills as if someone had dropped her some MDMA, and couldn't stop talking about the evening, pointing out all her errors, but graciously allowing me to highlight all the really good things she had done and giggling at my imitations of the judges as they unfairly gave her lower marks than she deserved. I got some good loving that night.

Beth and I were there on the following evening as well, when the elimination sent home an old comedian after a dance off between him and a news reporter with two left feet. Once again Raven was all over the place with excitement, as she had been third last to be put through to the following week and the long wait had almost wrecked her.

The following weekend saw the Hellspawn and I in a hotel in Edinburgh as I had to work through the weekend at a nearby installation, and we watched the television as Raven and her partner tangoed their way into a disappointing eighth place, although picking up some decent encouragement from the judges, the pretty female judge talking up her performance especially.

Beth, who had again been nervous about my reactions to her mother dancing so closely to a stranger, was long asleep by the time Raven called, still hyped up and ready to dance all night, missing us and wishing dearly that we were there for her. I congratulated her again and finally said goodnight and settled down to sleep, forced to wonder what was happening behind the scenes.

We were at the studio for the Sunday elimination show, but couldn't stay too long afterwards as Beth had school the next day. Raven was going to take a taxi, and must have had a problem getting hold of one, as she turned up around midnight, just as I was settling down in bed with a book. It turned out that there had been a little celebratory party and goodbye affair for the departing bass player of some band that had broken up years before, and she had lost track of time -- so not a taxi problem then. I must admit to being annoyed, although I restrained my impulse to either sulk and/or moan at her for coming in at that hour, and listened attentively as she detailed what so-and-so had said to the male gymnast, and what that bitch from the soaps had said about the judges, and so on and so forth.

As expected, Raven breezed through the next three weeks eliminations, before the first 'event' dance of the series in week six, where the theme was the circus. She and her partner clowned their way through a samba, which they did really well, although -- as usual now -- Beth got up and left the lounge before the show started each week, telling me she needed the bathroom and not returning until the show was finished. This was affecting her more and more.

It was affecting me too, as the little after dance hugs from earlier weeks became squeezes and caresses and kisses by week six. Rehearsals were going on later and later into the evening, as were the farewell after parties.

By the Sunday of week six, which by now was seven weeks without sex, I was going slightly crazy. Neither the Hellspawn nor I watched the show much anymore, the two of us curling up together on the sofa and watching Disney movies instead. After the Saturday show, Raven had come in late again, smelling strongly of alcohol, and simply collapsed into bed. The after-show non-stop talking about how she had done had dried up before week four, and Sundays were now spent with her trying to get her strength back for the next week.

That Sunday morning she dragged herself out of bed, had a tantrum and screamed at me for not having bought the special brand of coffee she liked during those days when I was working for our daily bread and she was playing around and having fun, and stormed out of the house to go and buy some.

Twenty minutes later the phone rang.

It was Raven and the call wasn't unexpected.

"Baby?" she said in a cracked, almost breathless voice. "I just wanted to say how much I love you."

"I love you too. You know I do."

"I know... You don't have the newspaper, do you?"