Book I: The Master Cuckolded

Chapter One: What's a Paingasm?

 

"Oh, fuck you!" Benny said, smile a little sideways. "That's not even a word!"

One of those situations where I knew-as I said it-that I was saying something I shouldn't have been saying, in a place I shouldn't be saying it, likely to the wrong person, to boot.

Three beers in-as a habitual, and fairly diligent, gin drinker, why beer should have messed me up deeper and faster made no sense but-maybe I was a little cloudier than I normally would have been.

Still: Word said.

No calling it back.

"Paingasm," Benny muttered, looking down at his knees, shaking his head; he snorted.

The bartender, just a few feet away, kept her head down-tending the dirty glasses, shunting them to one side; picking out the lemons, the limes, the napkins, and the swizzle sticks, tossing them into the trash, without having to look-but she cut her eyes quickly from Benny to me, face impassive.

That's interesting, I thought.

"We're all . . . wired a little different," I said, trying for a neutral tone, dial things down a notch, get back to casual.

I shrugged, gave my best half-smile.

He was three-in too, Benny, but he'd been drinking boilermakers; wasn't just his smile that was sideways.

And I knew that he and my wife Jill . . .

Well.

Jill was an open book-one of my basic requirements; she wasn't permitted secrets.

Benny had been over to the house a few times: a company barbecue or two; drinks with a handful of friends and colleagues; once in a while he stopped by to help me out with something: paint the garage, repair the deck, that kind of thing.

She liked him; that was obvious.

And the fact that there was some depth to that like was made clear by her reticence when I asked her about him: she was just the tiniest bit too neutral in her response.

Mostly, when he came by to help, it was outside work; mostly it was on warm days; any excuse he had: he took off his shirt.

Maybe ten years younger than us-early 30s to our early 40s?

Clearly, he worked out, his torso cut, muscles well-defined.

And Jill did just slightly too much asking-if-we-needed-beverages, touched her hair, licked her lips; I was attuned to her breathing, as well. Not quite disordered? But it was obvious that she was doing a little work to . . . maintain.

She didn't blush or hesitate when I asked, but she was studiously casual.

"He is attractive," she agreed, nodding as though I had made an interesting observation that had not really occurred to her.

But: I'd started making it a practice to fuck her when Benny left; she was always impressively wet, just . . . impressively.

That was interesting.

And Benny, on the other side of the equation, his capacity for subtlety was rather less well-developed-maybe a function of age.

At work I was senior to him, but in a parallel unit; he wasn't officially subordinate to me.

Not really a generational difference, ten years, but we so clearly came from different places, different experiences, and perspectives, it sometimes felt that way to me.

He was open in a way that I've never been, never wanted to be, that I could never-given the life that I've chosen to live-afford to be.

I needed-I needed to provide for Jill-a measure of privacy and discretion that, to the degree that he saw or understood it, Benny maybe found a little odd or archaic.

Not a way in which he felt constrained.

No.

"Your wife's hot, man!" he'd said to me, on more than one occasion, watching her saunter off, having left us lemonade or cold beer, sandwiches or chips.

"Gotta feed the troops!" she'd say brightly.

Sometimes I'd take a belt to her ass for that later, an impertinence real or conjured: didn't matter; that was my right.

Maybe that was what made her so wet.

Certainly, it was often enough to make her cum.

Just that sting and heat, the shame and contrition, the clenching of her buttocks and the tensing of her thighs, the utter surrender.

Paingasm.

It was a gorgeous thing to behold.

Deeply satisfying.

To both of us.

And-having said the word to Benny?

I had to more-than-consider the possibility that I was projecting forward-paging Dr. Freud?-that I was something between imagining and . . . beginning to set up a scene.

 

Chapter Two: The Glide Path

 

"That would be a little different," Jill said carefully, appropriately respectful, clearly thinking about the possibility seriously-a little tang of her excitement, however well-tethered, in the air.

I had shared her before.

But that was really quite rare.

I was ambivalent; I thought she had been as well.

And then there were those issues of . . . discretion; we'd always walked the line.

She had absolutely and unconditionally surrendered herself to me.

I had not the faintest doubt that, if I were to give the order, she would walk the length of the local shopping mall nude, save a spiked, black leather, dog collar.

Entirely possible, however, that this would not have been the best career move for a high school guidance counselor.

And-humiliating her?-it will make sense or it won't but: that was, above all else, personal, private, not a matter of public display, not a show.

No.

That was for in-the-house.

No tattoos; I wasn't a fan of ink anyway.

No visible piercings.

I had, however, availed myself of the prerogative to decorate her in more intimate places.

And if-as I most certainly did-I pinked or even reddened her on a regular schedule, that was always and only on her back, her buttocks, or her thighs.

Again: discrete.

I had never caned her until she bled-which I considered barbaric.

I had never bruised her-beyond the day or two it might take her to "un-redden."

I had never scarred her.

Which is not to say that I had never felt called in that direction-those calls, to be clear, pretty much always coming from her.

Down there in Sub-Space, I knew-I had been trained to understand-it was all too easy to spin out, to let the siren song of submission just completely drown the more rational voices, like: self-preservation.

And then, of course-in addition to In and Out-there was Home and there was Away.

Not quite like sports teams, but . . .

Playing on vacation, on-the Greek island-Mikonos, for example?

Yes.

Around town?

No.

Just . . . too much at stake.

She was strapped to our bed: on her back, limbs pulled taut to the corners.

She was nude: sheened in sweat, inner thighs pinked, her breathing almost meditative.

She was so close to cumming that she was beginning to whine-not voluntary, rather a kind of music that I was wringing from her body, a wonderfully sweet sound.

I was stroking her belly, my fingers skipping a little in the sticky perspiration.

I understand: not necessarily where people tend to think most important spousal conversations take place.

I . . . understand; we're not . . . most couples.

"Would that bring you pleasure?" I asked. "Me giving you to Benny?"

Her buttocks came, ever-so-slightly, off the mattress, as though her pelvis were reaching heavenward, toward some imagined pleasure or paradise-which was its own answer even before she'd said a word.

Her simultaneous moan was piteous and intense-as much with confusion as with either passion or pain.

I kept her shaved, as well as pierced-just the hood, not the clit itself, which I thought potentially dangerous.

Of all the things you would not want to damage . . .

The lips of her cunt were a deep, blood-engorged, red, swollen and parted, a greedy, hungry, little mouth.

I gave her the barest of caresses: just my fingertips on one lip, my thumb on the other.

She groaned.