Too Great a Temptation Ch. 05

I was real edgy when I flew back to New York. Something was nagging at me, but I didn't know what. When I finally arrived at the house, I just stopped and gazed for a moment. It was the same old house, but somehow it felt different, more secure. I realized that I had taken a lot of things for granted, and had I risked an awful lot, and for what? Some fleeting sexual gratification?

Howard was already home, with take-out Chinese waiting on the table and a bottle of wine. He seemed to be in good spirits, maybe a little nervous, but I really didn't suspect anything right away.

But he was quite a bit more amorous than usual, and I kind of liked it. He came up behind me as I was rinsing off plates, encircled my chest, with his hands on my tits, and licked and nibbled the back of my neck and up to my ears.

I growled in approval, but I was also a little taken aback. Howard hadn't been that aggressive in years.

"Why don't we forget about the dishes," he said softly, almost urgently.

I wasn't going to argue with him, so I accompanied my husband up the stairs to our bedroom. He turned off the overhead light and left just the bedside lamp on, giving the room a soft glow. He pulled me to him and we kissed, hard and fast. I realized then that his cock was throbbing hard in his jeans.

He took the time to get my dress off, and suddenly I was frantic with desire, my pulse racing and my mind awhirl. I wasn't sure yet what was happening, but I was eager for it. Howard quickly stripped, and his cock stood up straight and hard, with a ball of pre-cum already welling from the tip.

"My goodness, I think someone wants to play," I said.

Howard just looked at me kind of funny and simply bent his head to my chest and began to lick and kiss my tits. His eyes were closed, almost like he was in a dream world, as he feasted on my breasts.

I could feel my arousal starting to spike like it did with Louis or Darrell or Alicia, and quite frankly, I loved it. Remember, I've never stopped loving Howard, and right then I wanted him more than I had in years.

Howard seemed oblivious as he pushed me back onto the bed, knelt in front of me, spread my legs and attacked my pussy with his mouth. He swiped his tongue up my furrow, darted it around my clit and rolled it back down to my now-gushing hole.

"Ummmmm, God, baby, come on and fuck me," I panted.

I was hoping and praying that this wouldn't be like the other times, where he'd get going good then run out of steam. I so wanted this to work, for him to be my true lover.

I slid to the middle of the bed, as Howard took up his position between my legs. He's always been pretty much a missionary position guy, but there's a reason why it's still the most popular position. Face-to-face, chest-to-chest, we locked ourselves together as he slid his iron-hard cock into my pussy.

I pulled him to me and we kissed, like we had that wonderful night back in '72 when he took my virginity and showed me what lust was all about. Yes, at one time Howard had been a real tiger, and I lost myself in the memory of that blessed event.

Howard was fucking me like a madman, with an animal passion I hadn't seen in many, many moons. He was panting and grunting, almost like he was in a state of dementia. I was starting to soar toward a truly wonderful orgasm, hoping, hoping, hoping that Howard could hang on long enough to get me there.

I was just about there when I heard him gasp, and I felt his cock swell as he exploded in a sharp, intense fountain of cum. I could actually feel myself being so profoundly disappointed. I had so much wanted him to come with me.

But my disappointment only lasted a couple of seconds. The moment he finally quit squeezing out secondary bolts of cum deep in my pussy, he did something that completely shocked me. He pulled his cock from me roughly, slid down the bed and buried his face in my overflowing cunt.

My conservative husband sucked and licked up all of his cum from my twitching pussy, something none of my other lovers had ever done for me, for some reason. And it only took about 10 seconds before I was writhing on the bed as a white-hot orgasm burst from my body.

I gasped and moaned, cooed and sighed as Howard brought me to a finish with his lips and his tongue. When I finally couldn't stand any more stimulation on my overheated pussy, I pulled his face from my crotch, and he looked up at me with a wet ring around his mouth and an odd look on his face.

"Wow," I whispered as I pulled him up to me and we snuggled together. "Where did that come from?"

"Oh, here and there," he said softly as he began to drift into sleep.

I was so content to lie there with him that I didn't want to check what I was starting to suspect.

The next day at work, I had to write up a report on what had happened in California, and I chose my words with care.

I said that personal relations between me and the representatives from their company, meaning Sid, had long been tenuous, and that events had conspired that weekend to bring us to the point where it was better if we took our business elsewhere.

When I got home, it was a repeat of the previous night, only not quite as intense. Once again, Howard couldn't quite hold off his orgasm, but again he made up for it by going down on me and getting me off.

Now I knew something was up, and I had this feeling of dread come over me. Suddenly, I knew.

I waited until I thought I heard Howard snoring rhythmically, then I slipped out of bed and tiptoed to the basement, where I kept my logbooks.

At first everything looked like they had when I'd put the 2004 book away at the first of the year. Then, with growing horror, I realized that things had been moved and an attempt had been made to put them back the way they had been.

I fished out the box, and I felt sick to my stomach, because there was no doubt that the books had been pulled out of the box and replaced. I'd kept a little marker between the 2003 and 2004 book so I'd know if they'd been disturbed.

Just then I heard something behind me, and I saw Howard just looking at me, and the look on his face tore me up inside. It was a look of sadness, hurt, anger, pity, disgust, any number of emotions. But not lust. Whatever lust had been fueling him the previous two nights was gone.

I just burst into tears at the implication, and my husband made no move to comfort me. I was on my own. I began to realize then that he hadn't been fucking me the past two nights so much as he'd been fucking some pornographic image of me, the one he'd been reading about.

But when he turned around silently and walked back up the steps, I was galvanized.

"Howard, please, don't push me away," I cried, as I raced up the steps behind him.

I found him sitting at the kitchen table, crying. Men aren't supposed to cry, but Howard had his head buried in his hands and he was sobbing.

I guess he'd held his emotions in check for so long while he read about my exploits, while he'd gone to work acting normal, while fucked me twice in two nights, that when he saw me in the basement like that something cracked.

God! He broke my heart that night, to realize what I had done to this kind, caring man who had only wanted to love me. I stumbled into a chair, and we both sat there and cried, not willing to look at each other.

But finally he got a grip on himself, but not before he stood up and slapped a cabinet door hard, in a rare show of anger.

"Why, Shelley? Why?" he said suddenly, turning to face me for the first time. "Didn't you know I'd do anything in the world for you? Why couldn't you tell me you weren't satisfied?"

I just buried my face in my hands and sobbed some more, and that's when the true Howard came through.

"Come on, it's all right," he said softly, as he pulled me up and held me.

He finally guided me to a sofa in the den, and I laid my head on his shoulder while I told him, as much as I could, why I had cheated on him.

I didn't lie, and I didn't sugarcoat anything. I told him he hadn't been doing it for me sexually for a long time, and that I somehow couldn't bring myself to tell him, because I didn't want to hurt his feelings. I know that sounds lame, but it was all I could think of at the moment.

"You know, if you'd fucked me the way you did last night, the way you did tonight, it's likely none of this would have happened," I said.

I don't know if that was true or not, but I needed something to hang my hat on.

Finally, I stood up and walked unsteadily toward the picture window that overlooks our backyard. It was time to ask him the question I had been rolling over in my mind ever since Howard had seen me hunched over the box containing my logs; the one I'd been dreading.

"Howard?" I said softly as I stared into the darkness. "Do you want a divorce?"

"No, no I really don't," he said, and relief flooded over me. "But we can't go on like we have been, like nothing has happened. And I am prepared to file for a divorce, if nothing changes."

That's when he told me about his conditions, and, honestly, I kind of balked, at least in my mind. At that point, I wasn't sure I wanted to give up the kind of sex I'd come to enjoy with Louis, Darrell and Alicia, and I sure as hell didn't intend to give up my career.

I did make a plea on that front.

"Howard, honey, please don't make me choose," I begged. "Please don't make me. You know how hard I've worked to get where I am. Please?"

He didn't insist, at least not then. In fact, he never insisted that I quit at all. He basically told me that I had some decisions to make about how important our marriage was to me. I did agree to meet with the counselor. I thought that was an excellent idea, and I actually saw him smile at that.

We went to bed again, but it was different. Something had changed. There was a distance between Howard and I, and it was going to take some time for us to get back what we'd had just hours earlier.

I was pretty unproductive the next two days at work, and eventually Bill asked me point blank if I was all right. I was honest; I said things weren't going well at home right then, and I was under a lot of stress.

I was pleasantly surprised when I learned that the counselor Howard had set us up with was a woman. He said he didn't want me to think that the men were ganging up on me.

But Jessica Newton, the counselor, was probably harder on me than a man would have been. If Howard didn't insist that I quit my job for the sake of our marriage, she certainly did.

She told me in brutally honest terms that I should consider myself unbelievably lucky that Howard was even considering keeping me, that most men who'd been treated as he had wouldn't have even bothered with counseling.

"It shows me how much he still loves you," she said. "The question is, do you still love him enough to do what you know in your heart you have to do?"

And she said that if there was any hope of saving our marriage I HAD to put it ahead of my job, and that probably meant finding work that didn't involve travel.

I still wasn't ready to accept that, but I knew I had to consider it. The truth is, I was so confused, so muddled. My life was falling apart, and I honestly did not know what I wanted.

This was something new for me. I've always known where I wanted to go in life, what I wanted to do. When I was a teenager, it was to spend the rest of my life with Howard. After college, it was to make a career as a businesswoman.

And when I became dissatisfied with my sex life, I knew that I wanted to find that sexual nirvana with whomever could get me there. It was that simple.

But now I was like a juggler who has too many balls in the air, or in my case, too many swords. I was about to get diced and sliced unless I stepped back and took the time to really find myself, so I could make the decision that was best for me, for Howard and for our marriage.

At that point, I wasn't sure whether staying married was the right thing, regardless of how much I loved Howard. I still wanted my nuclear strength sex life, still wanted the security of house and husband, still wanted the career, still wanted family.

It was too much. I knew what I had to do.

The next day, Tuesday, I went to work and the first thing I did was to contact Human Resources and asked about my sick leave. Then I called a friend who was a travel agent and told him what I was looking for, and he called back an hour later with the information I'd requested. I called Howard at the bank and I told him what I had decided to do, then called and made some final arrangements.

When I was finished, I went up to my boss's office and shut the door.

"Bill, things have not been going well for Howard and me," I said. "We're going through a rough stretch, I'm going through an emotional wringer, and I simply can't do this job justice at the moment."

What I had decided was to take the four weeks of vacation I usually took in August, and add it to the five weeks of sick leave I had coming. I wanted to go off by myself for a couple of months to come to some decisions about where I wanted the rest of my life to go.

I had booked a cabin in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, some place where I could have solitude, away from the job, away from Howard, away from the house, away from the boys and the grandchildren, and away from my lovers.

The rest of that week was funny. I spent my time at work tying up loose ends, handing off some of my accounts to colleagues and preparing for an extended time away from the office, and it was like some of my friends there suspected what was going on.

At home, Howard and I seemed to be circling each other. There was a distance growing between us that I didn't like one bit, but I hoped that my time away would rekindle the spark we'd always carried for each other. And if it didn't, then maybe it was time for us to go our separate ways.

At one point, as we lay in bed trying to sleep one night, I looked over at Howard and commented, "We're not going to make it, are we."

"I wouldn't assume that just yet," Howard replied. "It is possible that we won't. I would hate it, because I do love you, and I think you still love me. But we have an awful lot of work to do if we're to survive together. Right now, I don't trust you, and a marriage that doesn't have trust isn't worth 10 cents."

That hurt, but he was right. Hell, I didn't trust myself at that point. One reason I had chosen to go to New Hampshire was that it was far removed from any of my lovers. I didn't want to be close enough to Chicago or Washington or Miami that I was tempted to hop in the car and go visit Louis, Darrell or Alicia.

We finally did talk very candidly the night before I left, after our second meeting with Jessica. Howard asked me directly what I wanted from sex in general and from him in particular.

Even though I know it pained him, I told him I needed someone that could rattle my bones when he fucked me. I needed someone who could make me come and come again. I needed someone who didn't peter out in the middle of a fuck and someone who didn't just roll over and go to sleep after he came – if he came.

I needed passion, adventure, spontaneity, and I hadn't gotten that from him until those last two times after I got back from California, when he fucked me – or some picture image of me – better than he had in years. That told me that he had it in him to give me what I needed, if he would just work at it.

I left the next day, and I confess to shedding some tears as I drove into the mountains. I was on the cusp of something momentous in my life, where I either redevoted myself to Howard and spent the rest of my life with him, or I forged a new life on my own. And I was, quite frankly, terrified and a little depressed.

Once I got up there, however, the clean air seemed to revitalize me, and honestly, it was the best thing I could have done for myself. Alone, with no one to depend on – and no one depending on me – I had time to think clearly and rationally.

I spent the two months doing a lot of hiking in the country and enjoying nature. I walked every day somewhere and I took drives in the country, just rambling. Howard and I did talk on the phone periodically, and as time went on, I really began to miss him.

I made two trips back to New York, one in late July and the other in mid-August, for meeting with the counselor, and we had some very candid sessions. I did not see Howard then. Jessica wanted to meet with us each alone without the other spouse present.

In my case, she had done a psychological work-up trying to get some insights on what caused the kind of behavior I'd been exhibiting, and it was utterly fascinating.

I learned that I was possibly mildly schizophrenic, with a personality that was able to be a dedicated wife, mother and worker in one setting, and a raving nymphomaniac and uninhibited party girl in another setting.

One thing, too, that came out loud and clear, she said, was that I had this deep-seated desire to be dominated sexually. That made sense, because I knew I had come to love being fucked hard, forcefully. That was one reason why I found myself attracted to powerful, commanding personalities.

Finally, she told me that there was nothing wrong with freeing my sexual beast, but if I was going to stay married, it could only come out with Howard.

As a result, I spent a lot of time walking around the cabin naked, just reveling in the freedom. The place was secluded enough, with a fenced-in back deck, and I did a lot of sunning naked, getting a nice all-over tan. Of course, I continued to exercise, and I did a lot of it nude.

As a result, I got very turned on, quite often. And the longer I was up there, the less I thought about Louis, about Darrell, about Alicia, even about Jim and his crowd – and, yes, they still preyed on my mind at times – and the more I thought about Howard. At night, when I lay alone in my bed, it was Howard I thought of, and it was Howard's cock, not the others, that I imagined when I stroked my steaming pussy to some very nice climaxes.

And I did think carefully about things. I knew in my heart what I had to do, and as time went on, I found that it was easier and easier to consider it. I realized how lucky I had been to have a man like Howard, to have two wonderful children and three beautiful grandchildren.

I talked to my folks a lot, too. I didn't tell them why I had decided to go off by myself, but I think they knew, and it was my dad who finally cinched it for me.

"Shell," he said, in his rough, now-quaking voice. "No one who ever gets to be my age looks back on their life and says, 'I should have spent more time at the office.' You can always find another job with less stress, something that will keep you home. But you may not find another man like Howard. In fact, it's quite likely that you won't."

It was approaching Labor Day weekend, a little over a week before I had to return home, when I called Howard. I told him that I'd come to some decisions, but that I wanted him to come up and spend some time with me in the mountains so I could tell him to his face.

I heard a catch in his voice like I think he thought I had decided to leave him, and I devilishly chose to leave him in the dark.

To say I was stunned when Howard climbed out of his car that Friday afternoon would be an understatement. He had let his hair grow a little bit, he'd shed the starched shirt and slacks of the banker in favor of a denim shirt and blue jeans, and he had lost a considerable amount of weight. He looked great.

We hugged deeply and tightly, and kissed with hot passion, all of the weeks apart spurring us onward. I think just my body language told him what he needed to know.

"I decided that it was time to get back in shape, so I went to the club and talked to Rudy (the club's fitness director) about a workout regimen," Howard said when I complimented him on his new look. "I did that about an hour after you left. Gotta say, I've never felt better. I've done some other things, too."