Unhappily Ever After Bk. 01 Ch. 04

"The only thing I didn't consider was how far they'd be willing to go to keep me out of their game. That's not a mistake I will make again."

We were just starting on our second beer when Charlie walked in through the door. Having both been brought up as gentlemen, we stood to welcome her as she approached our table.

After getting her a drink - a virgin martini - the conversation centred around the police raid on my business premises and Todd's knowledge of the laws relating to the confiscation of property that avoided what could have turned out to be a disaster. I didn't mention anything about my earlier advice to him to keep an eye on my car.

"He sounds like a good man to have on your side," Brad said. "It appears you pick your people well." He looked over at Charlie as he said that.

"Yes," I responded. "I've been fairly lucky. Although I have made one or two bad decisions over the years. In fact, I'm currently trying to work out how to remedy the problems created by making one such decision. It turns out that poor judgement on my part could result in the destruction of everything I've worked hard to achieve.

"I guess my problem is that I trust people too easily. I trusted Sam. And you can see where that has got me. I also trusted another couple of people who, it appears, are preparing to betray me. Hopefully, it will only be a figurative backstabbing. But with everything else going on, one can never be certain.

"Anyway, enough of the negative stuff. Charlie and I are going over to Antonio's for dinner. Would you like to join us?"

"I'd love to," Brad said. "But I can't. Lisa is roasting a leg of lamb tonight, and it would be worth my life to be late for that. She knows it's my favourite dinner, so I assume she has something important to discuss with me afterwards. I can only pray that it's not one of those 'Honey, we have to talk' things you read about.

"You know the ones. "Honey, I had lunch with an old school chum today, and he's asked me to spend the weekend with him. I've decided to take him up on his offer. It won't affect our relationship because I know you love me enough to let me rip your heart out. It'll just be this one time, and besides, it's just sex". That kind of thing."

Charlie sat there with her eyes and mouth wide open. She was aghast.

"You lucky devil," I said. "Sam didn't say anything like that to me. She probably didn't feel it was necessary because she had been doing it since before we were married. She probably thought that if I was too dumb to see what was going on, I deserved to be kept in the dark."

We were all still laughing as we finished our drinks and packed our gear. Charlie excused herself and went to visit the ladies' room.

"Find me a good - and I mean really, really good - criminal lawyer, please, My Brother. I've got a feeling I'm going to need one before this situation plays itself out."

"Consider it done," Brad responded. "I've got just the man you need on my speed dial. And truth be told, he will love what you are trying to do. He hates corruption of any kind. Rumour has it that he has been instrumental in the destruction of one or two corrupt professional firms. But that's just a rumour, of course. I couldn't say how much truth might be attached to it. If there was any truth to it, he'd probably already be dead."

We were both still laughing when Charlie rejoined us.

---oooBJSooo---

"I'm sorry I left you waiting as long as I did," I said to Charlie after we had been seated in a private corner of Antonio's. "Every time I went to leave, I got caught up in another round of phone calls."

"No apologies necessary," Charlie said. "I spent my time wandering around your grounds and trying to figure out what you are doing with your Mustang. I can see the general picture, but I don't know how you will achieve it. Everything is so different in the later models."

"One of the advantages of being a builder is that you learn to always think well ahead of your current position," I said. "That's a trick I learned from playing chess when I was at school. Whether it is building a house, rebuilding a classic car or developing a battle plan, you've got to be thinking about where you want to end up, what you have to do to get there and how to overcome any obstacles that might jump up at you.

"Designing and building a house is not too hard because everything is static. Rebuilding my Mustang is a little more difficult because it's not something I do every day. That means I've got to think things through a bit more carefully.

"Developing a battle plan is difficult because the situation is dynamic. It's not just you. You have to get to know your enemy and try to anticipate what they are going to do. You also have to know the strengths and weaknesses of your own people.

"You were an officer in the army, so you will be familiar with the quote attributed to the Prussian, Moltke the Elder, which said words to the effect that, "No plan survives first contact with the enemy".

"What makes planning for the current situation difficult is that I'm actually facing two enemies, each of which has a different agenda. The one advantage I have is that only one of those two knows about the other.

"It's not as bad as it appears, however. One of my enemies is made up of professionals. That makes them a little more predictable. It's the amateurs that worry me, so they're going to have to be the first to be sorted. Once I've got them out of the way, I can take my time with the barbarians at the other gate.

"If my intelligence gatherers come up with the information I think they will, the first group should be under fire by tomorrow afternoon; Thursday at the latest. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the bulk of them - along with a few of their corrupt mates - aren't spending Thursday night at Her Majesty's pleasure."

Of course, I wasn't telling her the whole story. The events of Thursday would only be the beginning of their pain. I know they'll probably all manage to make bail and spend the weekend at home with their loved ones.

That reminded me to ask Tommy to find out where Sam was spending her nights. It also reminded me that I hadn't looked at any of the videos of her antics while on her cruises and while attending her anniversary court case and mystery seminars. Mind you, I didn't need to. Helen Wheeler had left me in no doubt about my wife's intentions when we spoke last Friday night. And I knew it would merely be an extension of her other get-togethers with her work colleagues.

"So, who is attacking you from the other front?" Charlie asked, intruding on my thoughts.

"I'd like to keep that to myself for the moment if you don't mind, My Dear," I answered. "I prefer not to talk about the things that are still rolling around in my head. I find that talking about them tends to jumble things up rather than making them clearer. Not to mention that once my thoughts have been vocalised, someone steps in and stuffs everything up.

"I think it was Woody Allen who coined the phrase: "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans"."

As the name implies, Antonio's is an Italian restaurant, with its menu based on the area around Tuscany. We both enjoyed his signature dish: Tuscan Lobster with a simple Mediterranean salad. Neither of us was a sweet eater, so we backed away from the desserts. We did enjoy a nice eight-year-old Australian King-Valley Shiraz with our meal, however, and finished off with a short espresso.

Over dinner, I learned a bit about Charlie's background. She told me she had grown up on a large western-Queensland cattle property. At the age of twelve, she had been sent off to an all-girls boarding school - the same school her mother had attended - where she received her high school education.

Having two older brothers, one of whom was studying agricultural science so he could take over the running of the cattle station (or 'ranch', to my American friends), she had no desire to go back to the bush.

"I effectively left home when I was twelve," she explained. "I was always an adventurous child and loved the independence that boarding school life afforded me. Knowing I would never become a rocket scientist, I decided to pursue a career in an occupation that gave me the adventure I craved. I applied for a place at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

"After obtaining my business and computer science degrees and graduating from the Academy, I was passed on to the military police as a freshly-minted Second Lieutenant. Rather than throwing me straight into an intelligence position, the higher-ups decided I needed to know why that role would be so important. After a year of training, I received my second pip and became a 'real' Lieutenant. I was then sent off to Iraq.

"I'd committed to a six-year enlistment after graduating from the Academy, so I did a second overseas tour. That deployment was to Afghanistan. And that was where I met Todd Manyweather.

"After returning to Australia, I was posted to the Military Intelligence Directorate, where I finished my time. I decided not to re-up because of two things. My involvement with Todd had put a black mark against my name, which meant I was passed over when it came time for me to be promoted to Captain. The other thing was that I could see we were fighting a political war in two countries where our presence was only tolerated for as long as it suited those running the country."

She told me that soon after resigning her commission, she was approached by Tommy, who offered her a job as an analyst. It appeared that many of her other acquired skills had come in handy during the time she'd been working for him, and she'd been sent into a few operations as an undercover operative.

Despite her intelligence training and undercover work, it seemed she hadn't received much tradecraft training. That was evidenced by a couple of the mistakes she'd made earlier that day; the prime one being that knowing we were being followed, she had been prepared to jump into the first cab that came along after we'd stopped for lunch.

My assignment was her first bodyguarding role. But I believe Tommy had something other than providing me with a back-watcher in mind when he'd sent her to me. And that might have worked out had Todd Manyweather not appeared on the scene.

---oooBJSooo---

Our lovemaking that night was more subdued than the explosive sex we'd shared the previous night. I'd had an internal battle with myself over the rights and wrongs of continuing our relationship, but my good angel lost. I figured that I had gone without for so long that, irrespective of whether Charlie and I were going to be together for the long haul or she was only going to be a short-time girl, I would simply ride the pleasure to the end of the road.

Charlie noticed the change.

"You seem to be holding something back," she said during one of our breaks. "Is something wrong?"

"Wrong?" I said. "No. Not at all. Last night was all about lust and obtaining sexual satisfaction. But that was last night. Tonight, I wanted to make love to you. I wanted to give rather than take. One of the curses I have to carry is that I was brought up to be a gentleman. My mother taught me to be a giving lover...."

"Your mother taught you how to make love?" Charlie exclaimed.

"She did," I answered. "But not in the way you might be thinking. Dad wasn't around much when I was growing up and had died before he could talk to me about women and how I should treat them. Sure, we'd had the sex talk when I'd reached puberty, and I'd gained a bit of experience while in high school, but when it came time for the more mature stuff, I had no one to talk to.

"Mum had been a nurse and was as broad-minded as they come. She stepped up when the time was right for each of us - my sister, my brother and me - and instructed us about such matters.

"Because she and I had a particularly close bond, she probably went a bit further in sharing her knowledge of women's needs than she might normally have done. Among the things she taught me was to ensure that my partner was satisfied at least once - preferably more than once - before I satisfied myself. Another was that there was a huge difference between making love and fucking. The first, she told me, was an expression of my emotional connection to my partner. The second, she explained, was an animalistic expression of a sexual attraction between two people. There was no real emotional connection.

"Last night, our connection was one of pure, unadulterated lust. Tonight, I guess, I'm trying to tell you that at some point during the past twenty-four hours, my feelings for you have developed into something more enduring than lust. It might not be full-blown love - despite what we may have said while in the heat of passion, I don't believe either of us is ready for that level of emotional commitment yet - but it's certainly headed in that direction.

"If I'm holding something back, it's probably because I'm not sure my feelings are reciprocated."

Charlie threw herself at me and kissed me passionately.

"I have to admit to having felt something for you as soon as I saw you up the gate last night," she whispered into my ear. "My God! Was it only last night?

"I believe we both expressed our feelings for each other from when we first kissed. I know I eventually fell asleep fully satisfied for the first time in I don't know how long.

"While I enjoy the feeling of love I receive from making love the way we've been doing it tonight, please don't forget that I also enjoy a bit of lust-filled fucking from time to time. Your mother might have taught you to treat your partner as a lady, but she obviously neglected to tell you that even ladies sometimes like to be treated like sluts. That may not have been true for her, but it's certainly true of me."

"Okay, so what ratio are we looking at?" I asked. "Seventy per cent lover and thirty per cent slut? Or vice versa?"

"How about we go with the vice versa," Charlie responded with a smile.

"Okay," I said. "I can probably handle that. But our relationship is conditional. One: Your sluttish behaviour is confined to the privacy of our home; and only when we're alone. And, two: You understand that I am a one-woman man and that I expect you to be a one-man woman.

"Should we decide to commit to each other, I expect that you will dress and behave appropriately at all times while in public. I also expect that we will have an exclusive relationship.

"If I am not living up to your expectations, you will need to tell me about it. I'm not Mandrake the Magical Mind Reader.

"Should I not be able to meet those expectations, we'll talk about it and, if necessary, we'll part amicably. If I'm not providing what you need and you go looking elsewhere to get the satisfaction you need - in other words, if you cheat on me - you will find yourself out on the street, and you will suffer the consequences."

"Wow," she said into my chest as we snuggled into each other in preparation for sleep, "that bitch really did a job on you."

---oooBJSooo---

The first thing I felt when I woke on Wednesday morning was Charlie's hand and mouth working my rigid shaft. Her other hand was gently massaging my testicles. I could only assume she had felt my usual morning erection and had decided to bring it to maximum hardness.

My moan of pleasure was all she needed to know I was sufficiently awake to take things to the next level. She lifted her head off me and threw her right leg over my body. Fully seated, she slid her well-lubricated slit along my rod, preparing it for stage three.

Once she had it sufficiently greased, she raised herself up, fitted the helmeted head of my penis between her vaginal lips and slowly lowered herself down onto the ebony-hard shaft. It took every ounce of my 'won't' power to stop myself from coming as she used her pelvic muscles to massage my rod as it penetrated her velvet tunnel. She seemed to have this maneuver down to a fine art.

She was tight to start with, but with her muscles in action, it felt like she was masturbating me with her whole body. She let out a squeal as I bottomed out with the head of my cock sitting in the mouth of her cervix like an egg in a cup. She then leaned forward and kissed me. It was as intense as our first one, a day and a half ago.

Charlie pulled herself upright and began to lift herself off me.

I followed her upwards as she started to rise, my cock's head tightly buried in her cervix. Not until she was at the halfway point did I let myself slip out of the entrance to her womb and drop back onto the bed. She screamed and began to shudder in what, to her, was an unexpected orgasm.

Throwing herself forward, she locked her lips onto mine and screamed into my mouth. It almost blew the top of my head off.

Her orgasm continued when, in the throws of her climactic fit, she dropped back down along my shaft. With her whole weight behind her, she buried the head of my penis almost all the way into her womb. This time her scream was like that of a wounded animal. Only I heard it, however, as I had thrust a pillow over her mouth.

It was too much for me. Her pulsating on my cock brought me to my own eruptive climax. I roared as I pumped my sperm all the way up into her uterus.

Charlie eventually collapsed back down onto my chest, and we lay there in post-coital bliss Until she felt me starting to deflate. She then started working me with her kegel muscles again. The problem with that was that I was still partially buried in her cervix.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," I whispered.

"Why?" she asked. "It seems to be working." And she was right. It was having its desired effect. My penis was beginning to firm up again.

But one thing I'd learned very early in my masturbatory career was that if I played with the head of my cock immediately after having ejaculated, I developed an uncontrollable urge to urinate; and I mean uncontrollable.

I started to pull out of her, but she sat upright and pushed down on my groin. I could have flipped her off me, but I didn't want to hurt her. I did everything I could to stop myself from releasing my urine, but I failed. I suddenly exploded, sending a high-pressure stream of fluid up into her womb.

I saw a look of shocked surprise cross her face as she felt the warm uric-acid douche fill her to overflowing. The look of surprise turned to one of pleasure as she closed her eyes and started shuddering in another orgasm. She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out.

I don't know whether the warmth I felt on my groin was my own fluid leaking out of her, if she had squirted or if she had joined me in emptying our bladders. I do know, however, that her orgasm seemed to go on and on... and on. I also know that she had managed to achieve her goal of bringing me back to a full erection and that as soon as I stopped pissing, I started coming.

Between the two of us, we kept going for what must have been five minutes. My pulsating would set her off, and her spasms would set me off again. In the end, I believe it was exhaustion that brought us undone. That and the fact that both of us were too sensitive to continue. Charlie eventually rolled off me and passed out.

I looked down at the bed as I pulled the covers over her. It was a mess. I knew I was going to have to replace the mattress. After rolling her onto her side and checking to ensure she was breathing properly. I went into the bathroom to perform my morning ablutions.

---oooBJSooo---

The sun was only lifting over the trees that lined the river when I took my coffee and my phones out onto the deck.

"Morning, Stoney," a voice said from the shrubbery beside me. "You're up early."