Paul and Paula - Her Story 03

"Here's something else you need to put in the grave lockbox," I said, hesitating if I should continue. "Men don't just hit on me verbally at parties."

"Excuse me," Marisol replied. "No man would do more unless the woman gave him the opportunity to."

I didn't have to say it. Marisol saw the figure it out expression on my face and knew.

"You let them? You encourage them!"

"Not at first, I didn't."

"At first? What..."

"Just shut up and let me tell it, OK?" I cut her off.

Marisol was not receptive to what I had revealed, but she gave me a chance to expound as a friend would.

"We were at Paul's last job's Christmas Party, and one of Paul's coworkers asked me to dance. So Paul said 'go-ahead,' since it was a fast dance. Only the fast music switched to slow, and the guy was a good dancer. So I stayed out there. We didn't dance too close, but his hand roamed to my thigh, and I glanced to see if Paul saw."

"Did he?"

"Yes, he did. And did nothing."

Marisol raised an eyebrow but refrained from smirking.

"I wondered why Paul didn't do anything and decided to leave the hand there and see if he would stop it. But Paul didn't. He just turned and started talking to some guy and his wife."

"Was the grope blatant?" Marisol asked. "I mean, maybe Paul didn't see it?"

"Oh no! He saw it alright. I saw the reaction on his face before he turned away."

"What kind of reaction?"

"Surprise at first, some obvious disapproval."

"What happened then?" Marisol waved me on.

"The guy got a good feel of my ass before the slow tune was over. Something others saw even though I stopped him."

"Not the kind of advertising you want to do at your husband's job."

"Not if the husband gives a crap," I said in anger. "Paul fuckin let another man grope me and did nothing. What kind of husband does that?"

"Well, Paula. I think we know the kind. Some men get off on watching their wives flirt and get groped by other men. Some even take it further."

"I know, Marisol. I asked Paul on the way home why he let it happen. I asked him if he was turning into a cuckold?"

"What did he say?"

"Well, he denied the cuckold part. So I asked 'What then?' and he... get this. He said 'I just don't like confrontations.' Can you believe that shit?"

"He doesn't like..." she hesitated, "confrontations?"

"Yeah, that," I confirmed, nodding. "What kind of man sees his wife be groped and does nothing if he is not a cuckold?"

"It was just once, right?" Marisol asked.

"No."

"There were more! How?"

"Next time we were in a public setting, I tested Paul. This time I flirted with a man at the mall and touched his arm as I stared at his eyes. The poor guy didn't know Paul was my husband, but he responded by flirting back and asking me if I was available by leaning in close to my ear."

"And Paul? Did he see?"

"Oh yeah. He had the kids with him, but his eyes were right on me."

"Strange," was all Marisol said, "Paula, he may be a cuckold wannabee and doesn't know it."

"I thought so too. I read stuff on the topic. So that night, I ambushed him in bed, and as we made out, I taunted him."

"How?"

"I said things like 'did you like that man touching me?' or 'did you want him to do more?' but Paul just recoiled and said 'come on Paula, stop. I told you I'm not into that.' And to be certain, his dick went soft. When I tried to get him back on track, he said that he was no longer in the mood."

"What did you do next?"

"I asked him how he let other men touch me twice and did nothing. To which he said the same...."

"That he doesn't like confrontations?" Marisol asked, finishing my sentence.

I nodded.

"Marisol, it's not just that. We never fight. A few times that he and I came close to it, he gave in and just walked away. And that happened again at a garden party at these neighbor's house."

"More flirting?"

"More than that. This time I let the man feel me up, and all Paul did was leave the room."

"Did you stop the man?"

"No. We were alone in the playroom inside with everyone outside," I replied as Marisol covered her mouth in surprise. "What? It felt good, and Paul didn't give a shit."

"You hussy!" Marisol laughed.

"I let the guy feel my tits and even my ass. Just a cheap thrill."

"You just teased him?"

"Well, I rubbed his dick over his shorts until he came in them. I wasn't going to blow or fuck him in a strange house. Anyway, I wasn't ready for that."

"Of course not," Marisol laughed.

"The thing is, I got all hot and bothered and couldn't get Paul home fast enough."

"You had sex with Paul after that?"

"I was horny, and Paul was available. I'm mean, we're still married and all."

"And he performed? After what he saw?"

"He lay on his back as I rode him and stared into his eyes. After I came fast, I asked him directly. 'Did that turn you on with that guy?' and his dick went soft. He gently pushed me off him, and he got dressed to go downstairs."

"Has that happened again?"

"Quite a few times," I replied defiantly. "I was so pissed at him. I became inventive with the habit. I started flirting at parties and events, letting men take liberties, even at Paul's new job. If he has no respect for himself, I won't either."

"Holy hell!"

"I even asked him if he was planning to divorce me and was letting me do this to set me up. To which he said he was not and that he loved me. But wished I didn't do what I did with other men."

"And what did you say to that?"

"I looked him in the eye and challenged him. 'If you want me to stop, you will have to stop me when it happens.'

"And what did he say? Did he stop you?"

"Fuck no. The next time we were at a 4th of July fireworks event, I flirted and made out with a man away from the kids. But Paul knew what I was doing. It was dark, and the man was standing next to me where Paul could see. So I took his dick out and jerked him off. Paul just looked away and made sure the kids didn't turn around."

"Have you ever caught Paul jerking off after one of these situations? After he sees you with a man?"

"No. I go out of my way to check and be there for Paul sexually. When I bring up what happened, he leaves the room, but he stays dressed. I spy on him to make sure he doesn't go off to spank his monkey. But nothing. Later on, he comes to bed. But I never find any evidence he came in anything."

"Do you and him still have normal sex after?"

"If I left it up to Paul, it would be once a week or less. But I need it at least three times, so I demand more. He eats me out, I blow him, and we fuck. If I ask for it because sometimes he can go without. I learned not to bring up other men, so he doesn't lose his shit and walk off. But I have to ask for sex.

"There is nothing wrong with me, Marisol," I continued. "Other men would do me if I just said yes. But my own husband doesn't even care if other men feel me up? What happened to my husband?"

Marisol kept her mouth shut. But I could see it in her face. Her assessment of my husband was the same as mine. Then, she said it.

"No. Your man is not a cuck. But I think you probably wished he was considering the alternative."

"I know, Marisol," I replied sadly. "I never thought Paul could be that. But now... I think he is a... a coward."

I had known for some time, but that was the first time I had said it aloud.

Neither one of us said anything else after that. Not about Paul anyway. Instead, we talked about other meaningless things. Not the elephant in the room. Anything but that.

For the rest of my time at mom and dad's, I did some swimming at their pool, went with the kids to see the town, and hung out with Marisol and Garry for a bit. Unlike my younger day homecomings, I refrained from having sex with my neighbors.

Not that they didn't offer, or that I wasn't tempted. But I wanted to clear my head and decide where I was going in life, not creating new problems. And I still believed that if my husband and I opened our marriage, we would do so together.

Paul and I spoke on the phone a few times while the kids and I were with my parents. After I filled him in on mom and dad being fine, it was typical catching up stuff, saying I love you, and good night.

***

It's off to work I go

No, Paul did not know about my parent's and neighbors' lifestyle. There had been a time that I not only wanted to tell him about it but to include him. But as time passed in our marriage, Paul showed me that the 'lifestyle' was something he would never partake in.

It had been subtle comments or snipes at 'morally loose' people. Anyone who was not monogamous and chaste, that is. But it all came to a head when an incident involving a swinger couple was in the news.

Someone had broken into their home. The burglars killed the husband and the wife of a couple they had been swapping with that night. They then shot the other husband dead and raped the homeowner wife repeatedly. It had been an ugly scene, and of course, it attracted news coverage.

The two thugs had taken the poor woman along and passed her between them in their van until the police cornered them in Georgia. In the resulting shootout, the two killers were taken out by the police, but the poor woman took a shot to the head. A projectile that rendered her comatose until she passed a month later. A tragic end for four people full of life, snuffed out by the actions of two selfish criminals.

The saddest part was that they had two children that had been with their grandparents for the night. The kids never saw their mom or dad alive again. The grandparents had to move and take the kids out of state to escape the press zoo outside their home.

Paul and I, along with many in the country, watched the spectacle in our living rooms. Typical of such sensational drama. After the original story of the killings, the van chase by the police and subsequent shootout was the only aspect that qualified as salacious. But the media and talk radio circus was atrocious.

Needless to say, the press just could not help themselves in trashing the swinger lifestyle. As if the poor people had invited the killers over for an orgy. But by the time some talk radio moralizing jocks got through with the story, one would have thought the victims had killed themselves and the murderers were but a footnote in the narrative.

The mainstream media was no better, doing an exposé of the swinger lifestyle going out of their way to be sensational, judgmental, and mostly wrong. It was all about the ratings.

Paul showed some compassion for the victims, but our neighbor Gil was on the side of the anti-swingers and did not hold back. Up until then, I had felt sorry for Gil in a way. But his behavior toward his wife's child had me on the fence as far as he was concerned.

"The fuckers deserved it," he said as we had just watched the news after the kids went to sleep.

"Lower your voice, Gil," Paul reprimanded him. "The kids can hear you."

"Sorry," he said and continued. "I mean, who brings people in their home where their kids live to cheat."

"They were not cheating, Gil," I piped up. "And what the two couples were doing was consensual."

"Anything not monogamous is cheating in my book," Gil replied.

"And the kids were not in the house," I corrected him further.

"Why are you standing up for those perverts?" Gil shot back.

"What they were doing was not immoral, Gil. What if they had been playing cards. Would you be calling that immoral?"

"It's not the same, and you know it," he grumbled back.

"Gil, I understand that you are still upset that Lynn cheated on you and left you. But you need to get past that," I snapped back.

Gil bristled, but I stood my ground, staring back at him and not flinching.

"Hey guys, let's settle down," Paul did his typical fence-mending routine. "You'll wake the kids."

"The killing was done by those two assholes, Gil," I continued, by this point pissed off. "The burglars broke into the home and killed three people. They abducted the wife and raped her repeatedly. Their actions made the children parentless. How does their lifestyle make them responsible? What is wrong with you?"

"I don't take the side of social perverts, why do you?" Gill snapped back, staring at me directly.

More than once, he stared at my tits.

"My face is up here, Gil," I reminded him.

I had never gotten upset at a man staring at my boobs. And it never bothered me in the days before Gil and Lynn had split up. But the way Gil had changed made me dislike him. And no woman cares to be stared at by an asshole.

"Guys, please!" Paul tried to intervene.

"Your friend is staring at my tits, and you say nothing, Paul."

"I thought we were all friends," Paul replied, trying to calm me down. "Come on, Paula. These people were not like us."

"Like us? What is this us and them Paul? Don't the victims here, and they ARE victims," I reiterated, "don't they deserve compassion for how they suffered?"

Gil scoffed at that, but it was Paul's smirk when he and our neighbor made eye contact that pissed me off.

"I'm going to bed," I replied, staring at Paul in the eye. "Show him out."

From then on, Gil and I were on strained terms at best. But I wasn't married to him and put him in a class of people to avoid from then on. On the other hand, Paul was the father of our children and my mate in life. The conversation after Gil left was terse between us.

"Paula, I think you..." he started as I sensed a chastizement coming on from my husband.

"I did what?" I hissed as I dragged him into the master bathroom so the kids would not hear us bickering.

"You were rude to Gil."

"I was?" I asked in shock. "Your friend has written the book on rude in the last year.

"He has been through a lot."

"That's no excuse, Paul. And you see him staring at my tits all the time and never tell him to stop."

"Why cause an issue over something minor?"

"Right, I forgot. You don't like confrontations."

Paul looked away from me then. And in that instant, all his cowardness resurfaced in my mind.

"You know Paul," I said, waiting to make sure I had his attention. "If those killers came in this house, would you stand up to them or let them take turns on me so you can... avoid confrontation?"

In a brief second, I thought I had gone too far as Paul stared back at me with a cold stare. Yet my first thought was 'finally, some passion and resolve' at his brief reaction.

I know this sounds crass, but had Paul taken me over his knee and spanked me just then, I would have let him and sucked his dick to say thank you after. That was how starved I was for him to be a man and stand up for something.

But that was not to be.

"We should get to bed," my husband replied in his standard 'non confrontational' tone.

I lost it then and started crying, realizing that the man I married was gone. Paul reached for me, but I stepped around him and went to my side of the bed. Taking a pillow, I left the bedroom and went to sleep on the couch. Then I cried myself to sleep.

***

The following morning, I got up to find that Paul was already gone for work. It was summer break, so the kids were sleeping late. And that gave me time to think. I thought about my life, my family, our children, and most of all, my husband. Divorce for me was not an option until the children were out of the house and in college. That was nine years away when Ben would be eighteen. Unless something drastic happened, that was the earliest I would entertain the dissolution of our marriage.

Unlike other children of divorce, I was not divorce friendly, accepting it was just something parents did. No. I would not put my children through that. While I had spent only three years in a single-parent household, it had left its scars. During that time, I missed my father to no end. Before I turned fifteen and he moved out, his presence in the house had been a rock of stability and comfort. After he left, my life seemed to have an empty space that could not be filled.

Sure, Dad lived near, so we visited him often. But it was not the same as him being in the house at the dinner table, at his corner of the sectional couch, his workbench in the garage, or the bedroom that he used to share with mom. We no longer had get-togethers as a family.

Even after he and mom reconciled, their respective families were not happy with my parents for how they had handled their life. There was always a frost when my grandparents met us. And deep inside, I felt that a part of our family had died the day dad moved out.

But unlike my parents, who reconciled, most divorced couples do not get back together again. And their children felt the punch of having to choose between mom or dad. So, no. There would be no divorce as far as I was concerned. If Paul filed papers, I would deal with it the best I could, but I would not initiate proceedings.

So what then? How did we handle this broken marriage of ours? After much more thinking, I decided that the kids needed a stable home environment. That meant no arguing and no conflict. If that was what Paul wanted, that was what he would get. An not to appease him. Until the kids left home, I truly believed that I should go out of my way to make our home and family function as best as possible. They deserved that. Once they were both in college, I would rethink my marriage.

So I became Paul's Stepford wife, acting as if nothing had changed in the first ten years of our life. And as expected, Paul fell right in line. We had family dinner, went to the movies with the kids, soccer and track practice, as well as vacations. I settled for sex twice a week and gave Paul oral and anything else he asked. Although it was I that was often doing the asking and he the going along.

But so long as I got on his cock and got off, I was sated. Paul would eat me out on a good night after I blew him, then we would fuck. At times it seemed mechanical, but I tried to introduce variety to our sex life. And again, I tried to push Paul's boundaries.

We did it on the beach under the stars on our anniversary, but Paul spent more time looking out for other people than enjoying himself. I came twice riding him while Paul waited until we were back home and the sitter was gone to get his. Hey, sex twice in one day. I didn't pass it up.

***

During the day, after the kids were in school or summer day camp, I worked as a real estate agent. Learning more and becoming better at the craft became my goal. Soon, I realized that how I dressed affected my success. The tighter the dress, the more likely a male client would buy at my asking price. I would be very polite and business-like around their wives. But when I managed to get the husband alone, I would flirt and give him a little show of flesh.

Some women would think less of me for resorting to feminine tactics, but I was getting better commissions. Every woman uses what she has to get to what she wants. Those that don't play this game, only refrain because they don't have the assets. None of these women stop smiling or open a button of their shirt when a cop stops them for speeding after all.

I was beginning to love my work and be good at it. To be honest, my intellect, speed reading, and photographic memory came in handy. I could remember all the listings in our area and all the pricing. Housing statistics and regulations were imprinted in my mind as all I had to do was read them once. Those abilities and my enthusiasm to finally put them to good use helped me become more successful by the day.

And in the world of real estate, I found an escape from the issues Paul and I had. Still, my life seemed lacking in some respects. I would not come to terms with that until I had an unexpected visitor.