"You're an unholy fuckin' bastard. Fuck you, the horse you rode in on, the blacksmith who shod him, and the priest who baptized him."

Dan pauses the movie, comes into our bedroom and switches off the vibrating egg that he previously stuffed up my ass. Then he returns and resumes the movie and turns the volume on the home theater system up. That's the worst part about this torture session. He knows I really wanted to watch that movie with him. We are both suckers for really good suspenseful mystery thrillers and this is supposed to be a really exceptionally good one, except I'm not watching it with him. He's completely ruining it for me by playing it loud enough so I can hear it while he's out in the living room watching it on DVD.

I have to give him credit for making this part of my torture so personal without being sexual. We both love discussing movies we've just seen together, picking apart their flaws, commenting on how we might have done something differently, helping each other understand something some aspect from a different perspective, or just reveling in the satisfaction of really good plot twists or exceptional cinematography. It's a very enjoyable compatibility. It connects us intellectually in a way that is very satisfying emotionally.

I deserve this punishment. I just didn't think Dan would be so fucking good at this. I have a way out, actually two ways out, but I won't use either of them. Neither would be worse than this, but I'm enjoying this too much. I'm actually reveling in this odd combination of physical, mental, and emotional torture. But I have started this story at the wrong point.

During the week since his last experience from his courage jar, I heard from both his former mistress and his new mistress. Both said that he was different, that he had a lot on his mind, and had trouble focusing. Dee, who has known him the longest, said that he seemed 'haunted' by something. Faun said that he seemed distracted while fucking her with unusual force.

The evening started like our past Freaky Friday evenings had started, with a good meal, a lot of nervousness, and in my case, preparation in the bathroom for possible anal penetration. He phrased my attire for the evening as a request, but I took it as a demand. It was my turn to submit to his desires. I wore the same Catholic schoolgirl outfit that I had worn the week before, but he had made it naughtier by adding fishnet stockings that required a garter belt, instead of the traditional little girl kneesox. He also requested that I wear the atrociously tawdry crotchless panties that he had bought me for Valentine's Day early in our marriage. I had refused to wear them before, because they were far too sleasy. They had remained at the back of my lingerie drawer and I was surprised he had even remembered them. That made me feel kind of bad, because wearing them was a simple something that I could have done to please him during our bad years.

I had already agreed to mock bondage during the previous week, when I had Dan in mock bondage and made it difficult for him to decide to free himself, more out of personal pride than fear of the penalty. I was very cruel to him, dumping a load of his cum straight from my pussy into his mouth after ruining his orgasm. I had let my Sister Cate persona out of her cage and she had set a new limit to the humiliation he had endured.

I knew that tonight was going to be very different when he tied me up over a giant foam cushion that I had never seen before. He tied my legs first and draped me over the cushion facing the foot of the bed in the doggy position. Then, rather than binding my arms apart to separate corners with a quick release rope that I could easily escape, he bound both wrists together and when it came time to slip the release rope into my grip, he suddenly reversed it and knotted it securely. There was nothing I could do to keep mock bondage from becoming real bondage.

"Hey! That breaks the rules."

"Dear sweet, innocent little Cathy. You told me to be creative, so I changed the rules. If you want an easy way out now, all you have to do is tell me the story of where you went, who you spent your time with, and what you did with them, when you left me and came back with an army of lawyers at your back and freed us both from that awful marriage. And of course, you'll have to tell me who I can call to confirm your story and you'll have to give them permission to confirm the details.

"Now before you think that that is all I'm really interested in, I'll tell you that I'm not. I'm curious but it doesn't really matter to me, because our lives have gotten so much better since then. But I know that you don't want to tell me and don't want to face the consequences of getting the other parties to confirm your story."

"Dan, I can't tell you that. I can't betray those confidences."

"Maybe you'll change your mind when you receive the consequences of not telling me and maybe you won't. Either way, our deal is for three hours of 'retaliation' for what you did to me last week or, after telling me the story, taking the punishment."

"That doesn't seem fair. That's two punishments."

"That's true, so I'll give you one other option. Instead of three hours of active retaliation, I could just leave you completely alone here in the retaliation station for three hours, let you have a nice long timeout to think about the wisdom of playing with fire. During that time I'll just quietly let you be. I'll give you some time to think about it while I set up the video camera."

"Video camera? Dan, we can't risk having anybody see me like this. That would end my career advancement."

"Yes, Cathy. We both know that, but if you choose to tell me the story, I'll need to record the details so I can confirm them. And if you choose to have me ignore you for three hours, I'll have a monitor set up wherever I'll be, so I can verify that you're not escaping or injuring yourself. And if you choose the three hours of active retaliation, I might just destroy the recording when it's done, or I might save it to help me reminisce. You have my word, I'll be very careful with the recording."

Of course, he hasn't really left me a choice. He knows that I'm not going to tell him the story and take the standard punishment. The secret of how I joined the sisterhood is precious to me, but the fifteen barehanded spanks on a buttplugged ass and then anal sex isn't really much of a penalty. Both of us would do that just for the naughtiness of it. Neither of us would want to wimp out of the real challenge. He could have played fair and renegotiated the penalty before I let him tie me up, but I wanted him to be creative and to show me his dark side.

I think that I can easily take the three hours of quiet solitary confinement. The position that I'm in is not terribly uncomfortable. It would be pretty uncomfortable after three hours, but a little discomfort is to be expected. He knows that I wouldn't choose that option because I had told him that I was interested in learning about him from the retaliation he chose. I still don't know what that retaliation would involve, but I know that binding my arms for real was just a way of increasing the mindfuck. He intends to 'test my mettle' the way I tested his. He finishes with the camera setup and sits in a chair in front of me, so I can read his eyes.

"Well, what's your choice?"

"I'll take the active retaliation. How bad could it be?"

He smiles slightly at my false bravado. Sister Twisted had told me that he can be a cold and calculating man. I think that I'm about to see how cold.

"Excellent. This should be very revealing for both of us. I'm so glad you took this option rather than the standard punishment. I wasn't looking forward to how much my hand would hurt after fifteen hard spanks. Six will be a lot easier on me."

He clears the field of my ass by squeezing the two sides of the panties together and wedging them into my ass crack, holding them there with one hand while I wait for pain from the other. I tense when I hear the wind whistling as his hand swings for the first one. "OW!" I can't believe how hard he has hit me.

"That didn't sound like a number to me."

"ONE!"

By the end of five more hits, I'm crying from the pain. The final one was not as bad as the first five and I can tell that he has really hurt his hand, but I think I now know what happens when he doesn't hold back. I think my ass will be feeling sore for at least a full day.

"That was the first part of the retaliation. Just a warm up for what's to come. Some of the things you've done to me have been targeted at my masculinity. You could even call them assaults on my manhood, last week especially. I don't know what you thought you could learn from that, or what I should have learned about you from your choice to do that, but you had me at a disadvantage. When a woman insults a man's masculinity, there's really no socially acceptable response to that. I can't ignore it and I can't use my superior physical strength to make you regret it. Both of those would diminish me as a man. But I felt that a demonstration of how much worse I could be was called for. That will be the only lesson in physical strength and pain.

"From here on it will be a demonstration of another kind of strength. A man can't insult a woman's femininity without seeming like he's just a bully trodding on a member of a disadvantaged underclass. I won't accept the blame for every time that any man has bullied any woman or even every time that any other man has bullied you, but you can expect a little bullying soon. I don't want to be like my father. I get shit from the older generation men in my family for not being firm enough with you. To them, I'm pussy whipped. I have the urges to be more like them, to dominate and control your life. How can I not? It's part of my culture.

"I have to control these old school urges because I don't want our sons to learn from me how to be like my father. I don't want our daughter to learn from my example that some men and some women think it's fine for men to keep their women down and trapped like I'm doing to you now. I don't know why you did what it took to deserve this, but I'm kind of glad it happened, because you obviously need this. I just worry that the line between role play and lifestyle might blur, but I promise that I won't worry about it tonight. Tonight, the barriers are down.

"And now we get to the issue of sexual performance and 'adequacy'. For some reason, a modern so-called 'real man' has to perform sexually and satisfy a woman no matter how difficult she decides to be, whereas the requirements for being a real woman are what? Maybe that's a discussion we should have sometime, but it seems futile because I don't think I'll ever understand it. So where does this leave me? You want to find out how I'll react to this cruel thing you did to me. I can think of only two things that really seem to bother you, cruelties that I can use as retaliation without risking too much. One is to use you without concern for how that makes you feel. The other is to ignore you without concern for how that makes you feel.

"Both of those once defined what it meant to be a woman in a man's world, back in the so-called 'good old days' for men. Last week, you showed me what it's like to be a man in a world where the woman calls the shots. I think I'm kind of tough, and I think that I can take a lot of abuse, but I also think that I shouldn't have to, because I don't think I did what it took to deserve that. I've been taught that I should bottle up my emotions and 'be a man', but I've also been taught that I shouldn't be uncaring, insensitive, or afraid to show my emotions.

I'm somehow supposed to magically resolve the conflict in that."

I became aware that I had somehow opened a floodgate of gripes that Dan had nursed for a long time. I was glad that they weren't all directed at me. In the more than two decades that I've been with him, Dan had never shared thoughts like these with me. As a man and a woman raised in the Catholic culture, we were exposed to attitudes and conventions that conflict with modern egalitarian culture. I've thought much about the impact that has on me, but very little about the impact that it has on him. So hearing these thoughts was like discovering a scene in a favorite old move that simply wasn't there before. This is Dan, the director's cut.

"So, on behalf of me and my gender, you are going to spend the next three hours. or until I decide you've had enough, living in a man's world."

"Okay. I guess that sounds fair."

"Fair doesn't really matter. That's the way it's going to be."

I got it. The clock started the moment he said it. Even my 'Okay' didn't matter. He didn't waste any time. He went around behind me and I heard his zipper go down. He rubbed my pussy roughly and stuck a finger in.

"Dry hole."

That surprised me. I didn't feel like I would be dry. That spanking really got me feeling horny. I think he exaggerated so he could treat me like a piece of meat as part of the lesson. I heard a splat sound and then something very cold and wet got pressed between my pussy lips on the tips of his fingers. I shivered from the shock of it. He let me warm up the lubricant and it felt as if he had chilled it intentionally. I felt his cock rub up and down between my pussy lips. It wasn't even hard yet, but it got hard as he rubbed and it felt surprisingly large as he slid it in. He really didn't do anything to please me. He just held my hips and fucked me until he came. He pulled out unceremoniously, pushed some kind of lubed object into my ass, turned it on, taped my butt cheeks together so I couldn't poop it out, slapped my ass and said, "Good girl." Then he left the room and turned on the movie. It took me a minute to feel the tiny wires that trailed out of my ass. That's when I realized it is a vibrating egg, something new.

Even more surprisingly to me, I was starting to feel an orgasm approach just before Dan came in me. It was a warm pleasant feeling that I suppose would have been good enough to make me feel grateful for his attention, if I had no expectation of better. The egg was amplifying that feeling, so I took heart from the fact that he had given me that much. It took about five minutes before I realized what movie he was watching and how cruel he was being.

"You are an unholy fuckin' bastard. Fuck you, the horse you rode in on, the blacksmith who shod him, and the priest who baptized him."

It wasn't so fun after Dan turned the vibration down. He's supposed to do as he pleases during this time, but he has made it possible for him to hear me, so maybe I can influence him with a contrite apology.

"I'm very sorry, Sir. Please turn the volume back down and um, rock my world again."

He pauses the movie. "Will there be any more interruptions or obscene overtures toward my horse?"

"No, Sir. I've learned my lesson."

He comes back into the bedroom and turns the vibration back up.

"Thank you, Sir."

He steps up onto the bed behind me and I suddenly feel something bumping into my stinging ass. He steps down, switches it on, and leaves the room. It's the big powerful wand vibrator suspended by its cord from the ceiling light fixture. The vibrating egg is both maddening and entertaining. This additional machine is a new level of frustration and enjoyment.

The only real control that I have is the positioning of my ass. If I push forward far enough, I can avoid the wand entirely, but that's no fun and it removes the support that the foam cushion is providing for my head. My neck is already feeling a little strained.

If I back right into it, its vigorous gyrations cause it to bounce all over the place. And I mean all over, from one cheek to the other, spending very little time in the optimum pleasure zone, and sending little jolts of pain through me as it contacts my spanked cheeks.

If I hold myself right in the sweetest spot, I'm arching my back to push my pussy out and up at the vibrator. That's where the stimulation is steady, but the cord is about three inches too short. It's pleasant, but not strong enough to get me where I want to go. If I try to raise up further, to get my clit closer, my legs and arms can't take the strain for long enough.

Dan has left me in a fine predicament, and the camera is right behind me, so I imagine that he's monitoring my attempts to get some satisfaction. In fact, I'm pretty sure that he is, and that makes me feel good. I'm glad that after two decades with me, he still likes looking at my ass. And I can use that.

For about twenty minutes, I just leave myself in the sweet spot. I feel his cum run down my legs and I imagine I'm about to be fucked by Gabriel's big cock. It's been a while since I've seen Gabe. His relationship with his new wife has become less of a marriage of convenience and more of an idyllic romance. I'm glad that I had such a big part in helping him find happiness. Remembering the beauty of his cock is working. I don't know how much of it is conscious and how much of it is instinct, but I begin moving my ass around carefully, and my nipples feel hard, and I feel as if my pussy has become puffy with lust. After another 10 minutes of that, I hear the door open and Dan is standing in front of me with his hard cock pointing right at my face.

"You did something new and interesting last week. You touched your nose to my belly."

"Yes, when I was sucking your cock. I deep-throated it. The angle wasn't quite right, but I got it all in."

"Is the angle better now?"

"Yes. It's perfect, but I can't move much. You would have to fuck my face. You can if you want. If I need air I'll shake my head."

His cock passes through my lips and I can taste our juices from the earlier fuck. He pushes slowly into me and right at the point where I would gag, I swallow and rock forward as his engorged cockhead slips in. In and out. In and out...

"This is good. Very good, Cathy."

I think that he may pump his cum down my throat, but he withdraws his now very hard cock and comes around behind me.

"But this is better."

He switches off the vibrating egg, but leaves it inside me. He switches off the big wand and sets it up on my back. He pushes his cock into me and I immediately start to come, but he ruins my orgasm by snapping my garters onto my inflamed ass cheeks, sending shooting pains through me as he holds his cock still and all the way in, not stimulating my clit or anything else. I try thrusting, but his hips ride with me, denying me any sensation other than the smacking of the straps. When my weak, unsatisfying, frustrating orgasm subsides, he starts stroking into me, careful not to stimulate my clit. I feel another orgasm start to build just as he comes. I think the feel of his cum splashing into me and the sound of his release might be enough to get me over, but he finishes and pulls out just before my tipping point. My cunt wants, but there is nothing there to fulfill that want. He waits, perhaps to see if I will say anything emasculating or otherwise insulting, or perhaps if I will beg for forgiveness and tell the story.

But I understand the lesson. I don't like living in a man's world. I like it so much better when he's considerate. I say nothing and wait only for him to decide what to do next. He turns the vibrating egg back on and then turns the big wand on and places it behind me again. Then he leaves the room.

There is one important difference now. The cord is longer and the vibrator can work directly on the hood of my clit. I feel his second load of cum as it spills from me onto the pulsating dome and then runs down my legs. The vibrations are now more than enough. I come. I writhe. I shudder. I fill the air with cuntsong. I even cry big wracking sobs of joy. It seems that a prior ruined orgasm can result in something special for a woman, also.

I'm finally all wiped out, unable to tolerate the wand's stimulation. I rock myself forward, out of the range of the wicked machine, where my neck muscles must support my head. About a minute passes and then Dan comes in and turns the wand and the egg off. He unties my ankles and then my wrists and gently pull the tape off my ass.

"How are you feeling?"

"Physically? Satisfied."

"I meant emotionally."

"Used and manipulated and... humiliated because I got what I deserved. I felt so... powerless. And I'm embarrassed that I responded so positively to it."

"Clearly we both have a love-hate relationship with humiliation. We're both switches."

"Yes. You know more about this than I suspected. My shrink says we're both complex."

"I'm as Catholic as you are, Cathy. We keep our dark thoughts hidden, even when it hurts us. This re-nup thing makes it even more risky to let them out. The more we gain from it, the more we stand to lose."

"What do you mean?"

"I like where this is taking us. Our sex life certainly isn't getting stale. But I'm afraid of where we could end up. I don't think tonight is a good time to discuss that, but let's try having a conversation about our future tomorrow night. I want to hear your long term plans for this sisterhood, including your exit strategy for when our kids have left the nest. I don't want us under their thumb for longer than we have to be."

Exit strategy? Shit! That's the last thing on my mind. I don't understand why he feels we are under their thumb. "I think a good heart-to-heart might be a good idea. I look forward to that."

He smiles. "I couldn't enjoy watching the movie without you. You were too damned distracting."

I take a lesson that I learned from Chelsea. "Thank you, Sir. I'll take that as a compliment."

"I've set it back to start over. I could use a drink. How about you?"

I know that I don't have to continue being submissive. The bonds are off and I can refuse. I can throw a hissy fit about the way he treated me, but I got what I really wanted, some serious insight into his dark side, plus an unexpected bonus, a commitment to have a real heart-to-heart about where we're heading. "I'll get right on that, Sir."

"No need. I've poured them already. I'll meet you at the couch."

I love his presumption. We're both dealing with weird post-kinky-sex emotional effects and he's retaining control of my time for the next few hours. It's not movie night, but it seems like a good idea to wipe the cum off my legs, get undressed, expel the egg, pull on a bathrobe, join him on the couch, and postpone thinking about my exit strategy. We kiss and sip and watch the movie, and we really enjoy it.

I lie awake that night, thinking about the men who've had bad reactions to the sisterhood. Claire's husband, Mick, and William Fuscia are the extremes, but now even Dan, whom I've tried to make very happy within the re-nup, wants out. I've done something to convince him that we are not as benevolent as I perceive us, and I don't know what that something is. I love him, and it scares me that I might have to set him free from the sisterhood's control, and from mine.