Faithful Wife Submits Ch. 01

My wife and I loved each other from the moment we met. Maybe not the kind of love that makes young couples drive to Myrtle Beach to elope the weekend they meet but a more playful kind of love that evolved over time.

And where we came from, there was a lot of room to evolve.

We met at a church retreat the summer before college. Melissa Carter had graduated from a high school across town from mine, a Charlotte private school known for its strict ethics and lily-white reputation.

My school, on the other hand, was known for football and little else. But unlike the rest of the players on my team, I was never the kind to chase girls or keep score, so to speak. I dated a few times my senior year without ever falling for anyone. The guys teased me for it. They knew I'd never gone all the way, and they were constantly trying to set me up with cheerleaders and easy girls known to have plenty of sexual experience.

But at 18, I was still a virgin and not ashamed of it.

My name is James Weldon, but my sophomoric friends all called me Well Done for some stupid reason. Well Done gets none, they would say, knowing I wouldn't get upset. They respected me because I could catch a football. And they knew I would never let them down. They also knew my dad was a cop and mother a teacher who had taught most of them along the way. They also knew my older sister Bette, who let's just say didn't have my willpower.

She'd somehow willed her way into the good graces of our high school guidance counselor though, and ended up at Duke, something my parents never understood and never were able to afford.

I, on the other hand, was headed to quiet little Campbell Baptist College on a partial football scholarship that relieved my parents and set me on a course toward a life I could've never dreamed of.

But first came bible camp, the youth retreat where I met the love of my life, sweet Melissa, who took me on a darkened dangerous ride.

She looked then as she looks now, fresh-faced, innocent, pure as the driven snow.

Mel is to this day a stunning woman, tall and tanned, athletic and sculpted from swimming and tennis her entire life, blue eyes to die for and a smile that mesmerizes men and keeps them from staring at her perfectly formed breasts.

And she knows it.

I was intimidated by her from the beginning, but for some reason she took a liking to me." Well Done," she would say, "You're the kind of young man every mother wants her daughter to marry."

She would go to school at the coast, just down the road from where I ended up, and the puppy-love affair we started in summer simmered through fall semester, two kids smitten yet an hour apart.

While I labored to stay afloat, riding the bench in football and studying the intricacies of the I-formation along with Algebra, English, Science and Biblical Studies, Melissa was at UNC By The Sea, as they call it, making A's while dragging her conservative boyfriend out of his shell through letters, voice mail, texts, sexts and frequent trips between colleges.

I lost my virginity in Wilmington the first week of school, driving back to school a changed man. I quit football after my freshman year and transferred to UNC-Melissa.

She came from old Charlotte money, so after living in the freshmen dorm her first year, her parents bought her a house at Wrightsville Beach. So began our idyllic journey.

We had fun in college, hosting beach parties, having safe sex and slowly turning James Weldon into a man fit for marriage, which happened a week after graduation and two weeks before joining her father's insurance business.

We stayed in Wilmington for five years before Mel's dad made me come work in Charlotte, where I was being groomed to take over the business so he and Mrs. C could retire to the beach house.

It was a good life, and I was able to provide for Mel, who worked as a dental assistant until she quit because she hated cleaning teeth. I worked 9-to-5, and she ended up a housewife, tending to her garden, shopping online and becoming quite a homemaker.

And over time, she seemed to revert to her Christian upbringing, dressing more and more conservatively, quietly going along with most anything I came up with and slowly becoming more like the young woman I met the year before college.

It was a bit troubling, and I hesitated saying anything at first. We loved each other unconditionally. There were no signs of anything unusual. Our sex life had become, I don't know, different, but I liked the new Melissa and her strangely submissive new demeanor.

She'd been making odd comments off and on, being overly apologetic, asking me if I thought she needed punishing for small mistakes, referring to me as 'Daddy' a time or two and even calling me 'Sir,' which she'd never done before.

One night, I decided to have a talk with her but it was somehow derailed by an invitation I saw under a magnet on the refrigerator door.

Charlotte Christian Academy, Class of '91,

Ten-Year Reunion.

I took it down and asked her about it.

"Honey, what is this?"

She looked away, oddly embarrassed and shook her head.

"Why didn't you tell me? This is this weekend."

Again, she kept her head down, walking slowly toward me. As she approached, she went to her knees and bowed her head, her hands behind her back.

"Spank me," she said.