Saturday 6th April 2019
It was Saturday morning and I was groggy and tired, looking forward to forgetting all about that bastard Luther and my marital difficulties, looking forward to seeing Veronica. The only slight fly in the ointment being that Luther was her boss – but working out that tricky knot could wait for another day. The fact Luther seemed so intent on screwing up my marriage meant he’d not been interested in screwing up things between me and Veronica – at least not for now.
But when I woke up and reached out to turn off my phone alarm, the message I read knocked all my plans to dust. There on my phone was a message from Jill, the first message I’d received from my wife in nearly three weeks.
‘I’ve done a lot of thinking, like you asked. I love you and want our marriage to work. Let’s meet at home and talk. Love Jill xxx’
I was confused and disoriented. Despite what Charlotte had told me, the lack of contact from Jill combined and the damage done by Luther’s videos meant I’d been at the point of virtually giving up all hope.
But then, after nothing for three weeks, totally out of the blue, this message arrived. A message that was clear and to the point. In the last few weeks, my spirits had become so low that I immediately suspected another trick from Luther – maybe another turning of the screw to try and break my spirit.
Staring at the terse words of the message purportedly from Jill, I knew I had to call her before I set off home – only hearing her say the words would make me believe this wasn’t some trick.
“Hi, honey” she answered nervously. “Did you get my message?”
“Yeah, I got the message. Just thought I better ring and check, make sure it wasn’t that bastard you work for, playing a sick joke again.”
“Don’t be like that, honey,” Jill shot back, smart enough not to offer a longer defense.
“It’s definitely from me,” she giggled nervously. “And I meant every word, honey. How soon can you be home, so we can talk?”
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Ten minutes later, I was parking in our driveway, happiness skipping in my heart, but somehow not really trusting myself to feel happy lest life, and Luther had another nasty surprise waiting just around the quarter.
As I entered the lounge, Jill and I looked at each other with a nervous shyness that seemed really weird for a couple who’d been married so long and raised three children. But that was the reality – no contact for three weeks and two people who were nervous about whether the next step would be a reconciliation or towards a lawyer’s office. Two people who knew they loved each other but who wondered if that was still enough.
“Honey,” was her single word of greeting, anything more too difficult as there was no social etiquette or small talk for a situation such as ours.
‘How was the motel, darling? As soulless and plasticky as normal?’ …. ‘Yes, it was fine, thanks for asking. And you? How were the guys you were screwing, you know, when you should have been calling me? Were they good lays? I do hope so ….’
You see our problem.
But after a painfully long silence, it was me who managed to move things forward.
“Jill, you said in your text that you want our marriage to work. Could you tell me a bit more?” I tried to make my voice not sound too hard and too business-like. But I knew I only half achieved this, and I felt bad (as I always did) when Jill winced.
“Sorry,” I said as I sat down next to Jill, for the first time smiling at the woman I loved but who had hurt me and made me doubt so much. “Why don’t you start, if that’s okay, and then we can take it from there, okay?”
“Okay?” she smiled back, seeing less of the hard-faced inquisitor and more the man who loved her and with whom she’d raised three children.
Still full of nerves, she locked her eyes onto mine and started explaining.
“Dave, honey, I’ve done a lot of thinking the last three weeks. Just because it’s taken me three weeks to work things out, I wouldn’t want you to think I don’t love you, or that I’m some callous bitch who’s not aware of how you’re hurting and how hard it’s been for you to wait.”
She smiled a nervous smile at me, pleased that she could see my love for her in my face. “And yes, in case you’re wondering, of course, Charlotte told me every question you asked and all the things the two of you talked about. She’s been a good friend to both of us, through all of this. And that’s how I know just how hard this thing has been for you. I’d have known it anyway, but what Charlotte told me just made me realize just how hard it was for you”
Another nervous smile. “And I’m sorry for that, truly sorry, Dave. I love you and always will and hate it whenever I cause you pain. But I had to find out what I truly wanted. To be totally sure, because I knew if I screwed up and went back on my word, then it would break your heart and we’d be finished. Be finished forever.”
The woman who’d hurt me so much, the woman who was my soul mate and best friend reached across and grasped my hand. “That’s why I needed to be sure, that’s why it took so long. But now I’m sure. After all the ups and downs, all the games, all the distractions, I’m sure I know what I really want, honey. And what I want is you, darling. What I want is you, you and me, and our family and marriage.”
There were tears in her eyes as she laid it out for me, her words delivered between sniffles of emotion, my own eyes starting to get watery just like Jill’s.
“Dave, honey. I’ll not pretend that I’ll not miss some of the things I love with Malcolm and Callan. I’ll not pretend that I don’t love them – I love you and respect you too much to pretend or hide these things. But after the last three weeks, I’m totally certain in my heart and soul that I want you, Dave. And if that means I have to give up two other men and the feelings I have for them, and that I have to give up all the things I enjoy with them, then so be it. That’s a price that’s worth paying. I’ll miss it, miss them. But it’s a decision that I know I want to take – because if these three weeks have taught me one thing, it’s that I can’t and don’t want to live without you.”
By the time Jill got to the end of her heartfelt sharing of all the thoughts and emotions she’d been through and the decisions, she’d made I was a nervous wreck. Blubbing away like a baby, aware that my own reactions and tears were just making Jill’s tears and sobbing ten times worse.
In the end, we gave up with words, just wanting to hold each other and cry. Two people re-united, when they’d both wondered if this would ever happen again, now experiencing the most intense of emotional releases. The equivalent of a deathbed miracle cure, something not expected, and something that was making us as euphoric as it’s possible for a person to be.
Talking about it later, neither Jill nor I had the faintest idea of how long we just clung to each other and cried. It could have been five minutes, it could have been an hour. We had no idea. But when it was finally over, we pulled back from our tight embrace and just gazed into each other’s tear-stained faces. Each hardly able to believe we’d come through the storm, come through the night, and were still intact as a couple, rather than heading onto the rocks that would have smashed and wrecked our marriage.
Any couple who’ve been through anything like that will tell you that you don’t go from the emotional intensive care ward and jump straight into bed. Life just isn’t like that – you can’t go straight from life-support to a lust-fueled frenzy.
Instead, we just gazed at each other, occasionally one of us wanting a hug, as if we couldn’t quite believe it wasn’t all just a dream. With the hugs slowly having soft kisses and spurts of conversation as companions. With maybe an hour or two of this slow relationship triage being needed before the nature of our touches and kisses told us both that we were ready for more. The ready for more being a wonderful explosion of emotions and physical pleasures as I was the one who led Jill by the hand upstairs to a bedroom that for once felt it belonged just to us, with no shadows or spirits of past events to intimidate or poison the experience.
As Jill and I slowly removed each other’s clothes, even after twenty-plus years together as a couple, there was an excitement and newness about us as a couple, together again as lovers for what seemed like the first time in forever. I’m not an overly religious man, but the word that kept bubbling into my head was ‘born-again’ – it was like our marriage and physical union was rising pure and clean from one of those Bible-belt full-body baptistries. And with this freshness, newness, and purity the physical experience between Jill and me was bound to be overpowering and beyond anything, we’d known before. What would my literature-loving wife have called it – Paradise Regained, when we’d both maybe thought Paradise Lost was the more likely engraving on our wedding stone.
The physical mechanics of what happened between Jill and me over the next few hours are hardly important. What was important was the joy and closeness we felt between us. Our excitement as if we were lovestruck and fresh-faced Romeo and Juliet, fired up by the barriers overcome and only with eyes for each other. Other partners, other lovers a foreign land that didn’t interest us.
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For the next few hours, we lost ourselves in the pleasures of being husband and wife, boyfriend and girlfriend, transported fully back a quarter-century when we’d spend whole days in bed – mixing spiritual and physical love in a ying-yang mix that swirled and never seemed to end.
Having Jill’s pussy enveloping my cock felt wonderful, and although thoughts of her other partners and of Veronica tried to intrude, I easily kept them at bay as I luxuriated in the feel of the soft flesh of Jill’s inner thighs on my flanks and own legs. I gazed into her face as if I was back in the tiny bedroom we first shared, not seeing the mother and grandmother, instead, seeing the woman. The woman from then, the woman from now who had returned to me having resisted the most extreme of temptations. Temptations that, if I were honest, would have dragged away a woman who loved me less – although I’d not thought so charitably about Jill these last few days.
I loved being able to reach out, stroke, and squeeze my woman’s big boobs. Breasts that had been so full with milk for our three hungry infants, breasts whose nipples had so often been sore and painful as she suffered the discomfort to give our three the best of starts in life. Breasts that since that day had both aroused and comforted me, but breasts I’d encouraged Jill to use to titillate, to share with other men – so nearly paying the ultimate price.
I loved how they wobbled or bounced, swung in time with thrusts, or softly cushioned my chest – each unique and wonderful, each different depending on how we’d arranged our bodies.
But best of all was gazing into her face or seeing her eyes screwed shut as she made those moans and groans that told me she was close. Our deep love expressed as I lapped at her unfaithful but returned pussy, or expressed in the unique act of cumming together as I gave and she took my essence. Even both knowing the little swimmers were absent, it was still a magical moment for both of us. A moment we enjoyed three times before we finally decided to own up to our age – or at least when one of us did, no longer to stiffen and pump iron any more today.
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It had been a truly wonderful day, the only person I felt sorry for was Veronica, about whom I occasionally felt guilty thoughts sweep into my mind. But apart from this, it had been a day made in heaven. The day made to restore my faith in life, in justice, in Jill and me and our marriage.
But as an exhausted husband and a satisfied and replete wife lay there cuddling, something else started seeping back into our lives and my heart. Inevitably sparked by some half-formed thoughts and questions Jill shared.
“Dave, honey, I really want our marriage to work.”
Even before Jill had finished her nine words, my hackles were up, my antenna alert to danger. It was nothing Jill had said – it was the intonation of her voice, a voice just a little too on edge and taut to be about to say something normal.
“But, honey, I was just wondering what’s a sensible speed for me to try and go cold turkey. What’s the best balance between making more room for me and you and making sure I don’t go cold turkey too quickly?”
She’d used the most roundabout wording, Jill’s favored language, but she’d only edged the pain down a tiny bit. I just looked wide-eyed at her, as if I couldn’t believe her words. As if I was looking at a double-headed beast or a talking horse – my look totally disbelieving at what I’d just heard.
Jill knew she had to do some fast-talking. “I was just thinking, honey, that for both of us it would make sense if we both changed things gradually, like in a phased way, to be fair to Veronica and the guys.”
I just looked at her – angry that she’d used Veronica as cover for her own desires. My five-second sullen stare delivered the right message, the embarrassed look on Jill’s face told me she got it.
“Try again, Jill. Only this time, leave Veronica out of it and just be honest with and straight with me. If we’re going to try and make a go of things, we both need to be totally honest with each other.”
Jill’s look of embarrassment didn’t diminish any, but with blushing cheeks at least she started being a bit more honest. “Sorry, honey. And sorry to have brought Veronica in it – she didn’t deserve that. It’s just I’m embarrassed to admit it, and I’m scared stiff that I’ll lose you again. What I meant was that I hoped you let me gradually wind things down with Malcolm and Callan. Partly for me, and partly for them.”
The silence returned, me staring sternly, Jill staring with a look of shame. At least after her false start, she’d finally started being more open and honest.
I was about to speak, but Jill overcame her nerves and beat me to the punch.
“Look, cards on the table, honey. If you ask me to go cold turkey a one hundred percent on day one, I’ll try my best, because I’m scared witless of losing you. What I’m trying to say is that I think it would be better and more realistic to slowly ease back, bit by bit.”
I sighed deeply – unsure whether what I was hearing was Jill just being realistic or Jill going back on the spirit of her text and on the spirit of the reconciliation we’d enjoyed the last few hours. Looking into her blushing face, and for the sake of all our years and our family, I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.
“Okay, Jill. I have to say I’m more than a little surprised by what you’re saying. It’s not exactly what I expected when you texted me earlier. And I’m not for a moment saying I agree, but help me out here, what exactly are you suggesting here? How gradual is gradually? Do you have something in mind?”
The tension and stress in Jill’s face slackened off a little.
“Honey, like I said, if you ask me to go totally cold turkey, I’ll try my best. But if you’re okay with it, I was thinking to ease back gradually. Maybe start with just changing around the Saturday nights, so that we’re both home Saturday early afternoon and have most of the weekend together. And then after that, when everyone’s ready, make the Friday nights normal, so I’d just be with Malcolm and Callan on the two nights you’re in L.A. anyway. And then we can stop that as well – either when we move to L.A. or if we’re still here in Miami, when we feel it’s right.”
Jill looked at me – she’d laid out what she wanted, and now she was trying to work out my reaction.
And, knowing Jill as I did, although I had my suspicions, I knew in my heart she wasn’t playing me. Because the reasons my suspicions were wagging their antennae, was that Jill’s suggestion had put the faintest glimmer of life into my cuckold glans. I’d thought this little demon was dead and buried – six foot under, killed by the craziness our life had become and the harrowing pains of Luther’s overreaching.
But Jill’s words, and the life she described, showed the little pixie who had ruined my life had the faintest of pulses beating in his poisonous little chest.
I honestly wanted him gone from my life – but the little bastard had thrown down roots deep into my psyche, and as I looked at Jill from the change in her expression, I knew she was seeing a change in my own face. I knew she was seeing what I was frightened to admit, that after some complaining and negotiation, I’d agree to what Jill was suggesting.
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It was only early on Sunday morning that I reflected back on what we’d agreed the previous night – before enjoying another pleasurable round of make-up sex.
Jill was still asleep, and as was my habit, I was looking out on the back yard, enjoying the relative cool and quiet of the early morning when I could think without distraction. As I thought through what we’d agreed, I had really mixed feelings.
The largest was a huge nervousness that Jill would never manage to move past step one in her disengagement plan. And that may be even worse, not only would she fail to reduce and finally disengage, her continued weekly enjoyment of Callan and Malcolm would act like a double vodka to an alcoholic and just encourage a flare-up that might finally cost us our marriage.
The fear was so great that the only reason I still planned to go along with Jill’s suggested withdrawal plan was that I knew how much she loved me and that I knew how much I’d still like to see Veronica – even just a little. With the third and most shameful reasons, I went along with that faint but still beating pulse of the little demon cuckold spirit in my soul. The spirit that told me just a little of what had hurt me so much would be okay. That Jill and I could control it between us.
As I considered all these warring thoughts and emotions, I felt philosophical – pretty sure that the road Jill was describing would be a bumpy and rocky one which we’d have to revisit if things turned in a direction we didn’t expect.
But the situation with Luther was one about which I felt decidedly unphilosophical.
I’d not had the emotional energy the previous night to raise the huge unresolved issue of Luther. But I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was going to demand she stop working for Luther, as in so many ways he was the maggot at the core of many of our recent troubles.
When Jill finally joined me later, I was surprised how smoothly the conversation about Luther went. In fact, it went so smoothly that I was worried that it was the military equivalent of a rapid withdrawal to merely enable a terrible double pincer counter-attack later. But there was nothing I could do as Jill had agreed with my demand on this – and Luther hadn’t put up any obstacles when Jill had rung him and rather nervously told him that she needed to give her notice. He even agreed to Jill shortening her notice from three months to one month. My hyperactive paranoia reckoning this was why we had so easily agreed – reckoning that a month was plenty enough time to cause any further and maybe terminal mayhem.