Part One

On the long empty road to my ex’s house, way out in the woods, I gunned my truck engine as fast and loud as the blood pressure roaring in my ears. Reckless driving didn’t make me any less pissed at my lover, but I enjoyed knowing that he would have disapproved. I imagined myself crashing, and him standing at my funeral, crippled with guilt about what he’d driven me to do. I could only entertain such maudlin, juvenile thoughts if I turned off the sense of responsibility that loved required. That was why I liked my ex, Wood. There was no love to deal with.

I turned off the secluded highway, and jostled down the long driveway to Wood’s big house. As I passed a row of high glass windows, I saw lights on, presumably for me, as his state of the art kitchen looked like he never used it. I parked next to a motorcycle shinier and faster than the one he’d had a month ago. Reckless driving was one of his hobbies.

I found the kitchen door unlocked, then saw him in a nook full of exercise gear, where he ran five miles in the mornings before he went to work. Instead of running, he was hitting a heavy bag, wearing nothing but black pajama pants. He seemed to be putting on a show.

Shaking my head, I threw my purse down on the counter. He got off on reminding me that he was bigger and brawnier than my lover, as though measurements had anything to do with why Wood and I hadn’t worked out. A big dick couldn’t replace a big heart.

Without pausing in a series of punches, Wood called out, “What’d he do this time?”

“He had video phone sex!” I threw up my hands, and didn’t bother to add a greeting. We didn’t do pleasantries, in general.

Panting, Wood stopped and blinked, seeming not to understand why that bothered me.

“It’s not the phone sex. It’s the fact that he didn’t ask if it was okay with me. I have to run everything by him,” I said of the veto power that my lover had, when it came to my kinky life. “He would have lost his fucking mind, if I’d told him that I got carried away and had phone sex with you. There’s a twenty item code of behavior that I have to adhere to, just to talk to you,” I groused. “But he can just up and do whatever the fuck he wants? No way. I call bullshit.”

He grinned, and went back to punching his bag. “So you gave him the middle finger and came to see me finally?”

“Basically.”

“He knows you’re here?”

“Yes.”

Wood looked impressed, but quickly shrugged that off. “And here I was, hoping he’d done something really unforgivable, and you came to tell me that you’re leaving him.”

I rolled my eyes. “I love him. I’m just pissed.”

“You came all the way over here to say that?”

I bristled, and made a face. “You didn’t have to let me in, if you don’t want me here.”

He shook his black head, laughing a little. “I’m trying not to say the wrong thing, and send you sprinting out the door, but I do hope that coming over here means you want to take out your frustrations on me.”

Temptation thickened the air between us, the same temptation that I had avoided by not seeing him since we’d broken up almost two years ago. I’d had a very happy year with my lover up to that point, but Wood was always in the back of my mind, in part because he made a point of checking in on me every few weeks. I allowed that because I didn’t want to forget him. He’d made me into the kinky, daring dame that I loved being in my new relationship, a badass Bonnie to my lover’s Clyde.

Wood had made me, then he’d dumped me. That thought carried me to his fridge, in search of a beer.

I hunted around the glass shelves of his fancy stainless steel appliance, and tried not to think too hard about why I wasn’t heading for the door. Perhaps he read my mind, because he was standing right behind me when I gave up looking for a drink and turned around. I wasn’t startled by his sudden closeness. He toted a gun for the government, for a living, and had always been stealthy.

“Pretend I’m him.” His expression dropped, from the nonchalant amusement he’d been showing me, to regret. “Baby, I’m sorry. I made a mistake.”

I snorted, then something shifted in his dark eyes, and he wasn’t playing a role anymore.

“I don’t know what I was thinking.” Sincerity roughened his voice. “I regret it.”

What I heard was the apology that he’d never really given me after he broke it off, because I’d never accepted anything from him, not his excuse, his regret, his phone calls, his pleas for a second chance. I certainly didn’t want to hear that shit right then, and got angry. “Fuck you.”

“Would you like to?”

“You can’t fix what you did with dick!” I shoved him, but he didn’t move an inch, and that just pissed me off. I slapped his face, and red stained both of his cheeks, perhaps from embarrassment. “What, you thought you could just dump an apology on me, and I’d accept it? No thanks. I like my anger.” I stepped on his toes with the platform of my stiletto, and he winced.

From a bowl on the counter, I grabbed an apple and threw it at him, then another. He bent to pick up the fruit from the floor, and I kicked his butt, setting him sprawling.

Wood ended up on his knees, looking like he wanted to be there. A switch, he’d been primarily dominant in our old relationship, and seeing him like that hit me hard. It hit a button that made me grab him by the hair, and yank him toward his bedroom.

Cussing a little under his breath, half stumbling and half crawling, he followed me.

I dropped him on the hardwood floor at the foot of his bed, and kicked off my shoes in the direction of his crotch. From his dresser, I grabbed his work handcuffs, and clasped one of his wrists. Wood moved quickly, after I yanked his arm toward the head of the bed. He seemed to easily accept being on his back, just as he had being on his knees.

I handcuffed him to the headboard, looked down the length of his long body, and saw how hard he was beneath the thin black drawstring pants he was wearing. I stripped off the pants, and used them to blindfold him. Then I reached under my dress, took off my panties, and shoved them in his mouth.

“Don’t say a motherfucking word. Not a sound,” I threatened while I climbed astride him. His dick stood up like a flashlight between my thighs. I grabbed it and squeezed. It was as thick as ever. “If you come, I’ll make you eat it out of my pussy.”

I mounted him, and rode hard. Pleasure came in big electric jolts, while I imagined my lover coming in, and me giving him the middle finger. “You should know better than to mess with a woman like me,” I told them both. “The beauty part of this is that I won’t feel guilty. I’m not going to regret it like you. I think, and ask, before I act.” I imagined my lover’s face, a mixture of guilt and fury and powerlessness, and I giggled. I always had been sadistic.

Wood began to thrust up from the bed in earnest, trying to please me. His free hand reached for me, but I slapped him away. I didn’t want him to think he was giving me something; I was taking. I grabbed his hair, and touched myself just the right way. I came in an instant, but that wasn’t enough. I wanted another one.

I slipped off of his still hard dick, and climbed up to his head. “You want some pussy?” I yanked the panties out of his mouth, and sat on his face. “Stick your tongue in there and clean up all that juice. Yeah, that’s right.”

By the time he finished, I was revved up, and mounted him again. When he moaned, surely half from pleasure and half from pain, I smacked the taste out of his mouth. “Didn’t I tell you to shut the fuck up?” I reached down and slapped his balls. Beneath me, his whole body tensed, and he bit his lip. “Now move your hips, bitch. You know how I like it. You better make me come so hard, that I almost blackout.”

I kept a grip on his balls while I rode him, and dug my nails in whenever he moved too fast because he was feeling good. I made him go slow, so that he was just enduring it, while I slipped up and down in a tight little rhythm that soon got me off again. My clenches were powerful, and he couldn’t seem to stop himself from thrusting. I crushed his nuts in my fist, and he cried out. I slapped him again.

“There’s nothing in this for you. Accept it. You’ll be going to bed with blue balls. Black and blue balls, maybe.”

Sloppy wet, I climbed back up to his face for another cleaning. My legs were tired, so I smothered him, then let him lick me until a third long and lingering orgasm flooded my bones like warm honey, and chased out the last of my angst.

I took the pants from his eyes, and used them to wipe myself clean. Then I grabbed my panties and stood up.

Wood didn’t say anything, until he saw me stepping into my shoes. “You’re leaving?”

I shot him a look, since I’d told him not to speak.

“Don’t. Seriously. I need to talk, or something. I didn’t think I would feel this…used.”

He looked used. His face was a blotchy red mess. Rumpled white bed covers framed his long body, which lay awkwardly. He looked like he’d been roughed up and thrown across the bed. I smiled at my work, and he had proven to be great anger management, but I didn’t say a word of thanks. Instead, I grabbed his key ring, including his handcuff key, and tossed it to him, on my way out of the bedroom.

I heard Wood following me, while I strode across the kitchen to grab my purse. He came up behind me, as I grasped the backdoor knob.

“Please stay. I think we should talk.” He grabbed my hand.

“I don’t care what you think.” I wrenched free. “I’m not asking men for their opinion or approval anymore.”

A metal handcuff snicked around my wrist. “I’m not asking either.”


                                                                                *****


Part Two

After I came through baggage claim at Schiphol airport, I saw my lover standing in a traffic jam of people that were waiting for their loved ones to arrive. He smiled when he saw me, and I waved a little as I approached him. He looked good in a fitted black dress shirt that was one of my favorites. His dark blond hair was long, because he’d grown it out so that I would have something to grab.

His whiskey colored eyes grew enormous, after I came close, and he could see that I wasn’t smiling back. His expression dropped, and his face suddenly looked so sharp, like a model brooding in a magazine photo. He had lost weight.

“I’m distraught,” he’d told me weeks ago, explaining why he hadn’t been eating very well. Distraught was a word that he’d learned from her, the woman that he’d cheated with. I smiled a little at the memory. I loved her dramatic way with words. I loved her.

His brooding handsome face looked exactly like the kind of man that she usually found attractive. I hugged him half-heartedly, so I wouldn’t have to see that.

We took the train home to South Holland. I sat in the aisle seat and stared out the window, leaning into his shoulder joint. He held onto me, while I fought jet lag, and a desire to punch through his chest and wrap my fist around his heart, to see if it was still mine. I kept avoiding looking him in the eye because I didn’t want to see what was written on his forehead.

Cheater. Not a word that he had learned from her. She hadn’t cheated on me. He was the one who hadn’t asked.

When we got home, he carried my bag upstairs to our bedroom, and I followed him. I knew better than to indulge jet lag, but I flopped on the bed anyway and shut my eyes. I was so tired. We all were, in the aftermath of feeling like it was every woman for herself, because our boy had taken first and asked questions later, questions that he had failed to answer to either of our satisfaction.

He sat down next to me, and I got up to carry my coat to the closet. I hung it up neatly and took off my shoes, distancing myself not from him, but from the thought of going downstairs and taking a taxi to a hotel. I wasn’t that petty. I was just pissed.

He was standing up, and near the door, when I stepped out of the walk-in closet. “Do you want to be alone?”

If I said yes, that would be the beginning of us avoiding each other. “No. I guess we should talk.” About what, I didn’t know. There was only one word between us, still on his forehead.

He stepped up to me and kissed my forehead, then my mouth. The September air coming in through a window was as cool as my lack of response, but his lips were warm and insistent against mine, as though asking me to kiss him back. I pushed him away, then I slapped him.

He didn’t look surprised, didn’t flinch. I was a dominant, fond of hitting. Maybe he’d been expecting it.

I hit him again, reminding him who he was dealing with, just as I’d been doing for weeks. I was over what he’d done. It hadn’t even been physical. However, my pride couldn’t stomach being the kind of woman who got cheated on, like my mother who had lived with a bad man and a bad marriage for almost twenty years. My life had been a study in being nothing like her. I had chosen much better for myself, took better care of myself. I had earned more from him than sloppy disrespectful gestures, and thought he should have known that I was worth his very best.

Maybe he did know what I was worth, and that was why he hadn’t been eating. Maybe it had been just a hasty mistake between people who, in general, had my blessing. Maybe I was just desperate not to end up like my mother.

Fear welled up and turned into anger, since all I knew to do was fight against such a fate. “I’m not that bitch to steal on,” I told him curtly. “If you ever—”

“I know, sweetie. I know.”

He did. I’d been threatening him for weeks, not with revenge but with the emptiness of losing me, because that would hurt him the most. He loved me a little too madly for his own good. Before cheating had made him distraught, missing me had made him lose weight. I’d tried to use that to justify what he’d done, tried to find a way out of me being a woman who was cheated on, but there wasn’t one. It was written on my forehead, just like his.

Maybe that was why I kissed him back, when he tried again. Maybe I was just tired, and wanted to end up in bed, after he backed me up and pushed me down. His kisses became urgent, and all the right chemicals tried to chase the pride out of my veins. I wore a dress without panties, as usual, and could feel his bulge between my legs, prodding me with an urge to make it right.

I stopped kissing him. Dick couldn’t fix what he’d done, just like I’d told Wood.

“I think we should,” he whispered in my ear. “It’ll help. I need you.”

I tried to squirm away, but he was too heavy on top of me. I bucked, trying to get leverage with my strong thighs, but my stocking feet slipped off his legs. He held my wrists with one hand, and undid his pants with the other. Then he pushed inside me, hot, familiar, and comforting. There was no fighting the chemical rush that came with him filling me up. I was a penetration slut.

“I love you,” he said.

“So what? That doesn’t change anything.”

He looked angry. “Don’t say that to me.” He released me just long enough to hoist up my thighs, and fuck me deeper. I got in an awkward smack, before he pinned my wrists again. “You said you were going to let it go, so do it.”

My eyes flared. “Don’t tell me what the fuck to do! She’s submissive to you, not me. I’m dominant,” but so was he, literally at that moment. Sin had left a stain on him, not as dark as my streak, but we had become equals, a matched pair. That’s why I was there. He was more to me than just a cheater.

“Let go,” he said, turning the need for forgiveness into a need for release. He hiked my knees up on his arms, and went deeper.
It was shockingly intense, exactly the way I liked it, almost too much. We were having conflict sex, my favorite fetish. I thought I had given that up with my ex, because there hadn’t been any angst between me and my lover before. He fucked me differently that time, with a purpose beyond pleasure. He seemed to be proving a point.

I fucked him back, harder, thinking he was trying to prove that his dick had some power over me. My pussy had a fan club, and he hated that. Trying to keep me to himself, after what he’d done, had been the worst part of the whole ugly business.

His eyes rolled back, then he bit his lip and let my legs go. He tried to kiss me, but I turned my head. “Don’t,” he said. “Look at me.”

He grabbed my chin and made me look, so I could see that we were making love. He wasn’t going to accept me getting off on being angry with him, like I’d done with Wood. I had to want to believe that it was love between us.

I guess I did when I came, and made that sound that only he has ever gotten out of me.

He pulled out, and took off his clothes, then mine. He pulled back the sheets, and I began to move to my side of the bed, but he dragged me back to the middle. He started all over again, fucking me slowly. He kissed my forehead. He seemed to be trying to rock me to sleep.

I looked at his forehead, and it was still there, but he was more to me than a cheater. He was my lover, my partner in crime. It would be my turn to fuck up one day, and he would know how to forgive, if I let it go because nothing had been harmed. Nothing had been taken that I wouldn’t have given up willingly, if he’d only asked first. Like Wood, he wasn’t asking anymore, but I also wasn’t answering to him. I answered to the love between us.

Then I let it go, again, and again, and again.




-The End-