53 comments/ 82771 views/ 31 favorites If We're Not Back in Love by Monday By: jack_straw This is the fifth semi-annual Jake Rivers Invitational. The initial one was based on the Statler Brother's song, "This Bed of Rose's." The second used the Marty Robbins El Paso trilogy: "El Paso," "El Paso City," and "Faleena." The third had stories based on the various versions of, "Maggie May" or, "Maggie Mae." The fourth invitational was based on any Country and Western song. The current invitational is based on any song written or performed by Merle Haggard. This song is about a couple who have let their love go stagnant and the steps they take to try to breathe life back into their marriage. ^ ^ ^ ^ "If we're not back in love by Monday, We can't say we didn't try. Just before we bury our love, Let's make sure we've let it die." ^ ^ ^ ^ Marlene spent most of the flight to Miami silently staring out the window, trying, I guess, to glean wisdom from the cottony clouds that dotted the late summer sky. But at least she was there. I hadn't been at all confident that she'd agree to this trip when I'd first suggested it a month earlier. I really thought she'd shoot me down with some sarcastic comment, as had been her style too many times over the past couple of years, or claim she simply had too much to do at her job to take a week off. Truthfully, neither one of us could really afford to take the time off work. I own a store that sells business machines and Marlene is an attorney specializing in corporate law in the mid-sized city where we settled when she finished law school and got her first job with the firm she's still with. As busy as we were, however, we really couldn't afford not to take the time off work. To put it simply, if my wife hadn't chosen to make this trip, we were headed for divorce court. Maybe we were headed there anyway, but I'd be damned if I was going to let 20 years together -- 19 as husband and wife, with three kids, to boot -- slip away without a fight. How did it come to this? How did two people who were once crazy in love end up one step away from divorce? Therein lies the story ... or at least the backdrop for the story. My full given name is James Boswell Foster, but I have always answered to Jimbo. I'm not sure how that happened; maybe one of my younger siblings tagged me with it as a corruption of my first and middle names. The only people who call me James are my wife and my mother, and it's ironic that my formal first name has become a pet name for my wife. I come from a big, rambunctious Catholic family from a smallish town in the Mid-South. My dad was a pharmacist for a national chain and my mom was a housewife. I think the term, "domestic goddess," fit my mother, because she was no mere housewife. For one thing, she gave birth to seven children in a 10-year period, and I'm smack dab in the middle. I have three brothers and three sisters -- two brothers and a sister are older, two sisters and a brother are younger. And fie on anyone who said Mom didn't work. She was all the time cooking, cleaning, sewing and repairing stuff, plus she planted flower beds and kept a vegetable garden in the summer. Of course, that's not to even mention the job of simply shepherding seven very active kids. My dad made a decent living, but he didn't do well enough to afford too many frivolities, and all of us kids were expected to pull our weight around the house. Dad was a shrewd fellow and early on he devised a scale for our allowances, based on our grades and participation in school activities. The higher our grades and the more things we did at school, the more we got in allowances. He and Mom weren't keen on us having part-time jobs while we were in high school -- as long as we stayed busy and productive while we were there. As a result, I played all the sports I could at my high school. I wasn't a star or anything, but I wasn't a lump on the bench, either. Well, let me back up a bit. I didn't get a lot of quality minutes in basketball, seeing as how I was a little too Caucasian to hang with the brothers on what was a really good small-town team. In fact, one of the guys on our team made it to the NBA and stayed there for several years. So, needless to say, I was about the third or fourth guy off the bench, and the only time I saw any extended time on the court was during garbage time. But I hustled in practice and I could bang on the boards some and maybe hit a jump shot or two, so that got me some props from the better players. And I just enjoyed being on the team. The guys were great, the coach was cool and we won a lot of games. Baseball was really my thing, and I started in left field my junior and senior seasons. I was a good fielder and a decent hitter, especially in the clutch. I also started my senior year in football at strong safety. But even though I loved sports, I knew pretty early that they weren't going to be my ticket to college. That would come from grades and test scores, and I'm proud to say that I did well enough at both that I earned a very good scholarship to one of the state universities. And that's where I met Marlene. We had a class together my junior year and we got paired up for the big class project. I was a business major with a minor in computer science, while she was a pre-law major with a minor in business. Even then, she knew what she wanted to do with her life. She wanted to go to law school and become a corporate attorney. She was odd that way. Criminal law -- the glamorous aspect of the profession -- had little appeal to her. But contracts, torts and other behind-the-scenes details of legality lit the fire of her ambition. For me, it was love at first sight. I thought Marlene was the most beautiful woman in the world, and when I'd tell friends that, they'd look puzzled and ask what drugs I was on. You see, to the outside world, Marlene presents a very brusque, very business-like persona. She's always kept her brown hair short in an easy-to-maintain style, she's always gone easy on the makeup and she dresses very conservatively. Guys at college thought of her as an ice queen, but it didn't take me long to learn that behind that wall was a caring, warm and very sexy woman. One thing I have always been able to do is sell things, especially myself. Some people have it, most people don't. I do. No brag, just fact. I'm not a pushy person, just someone who can read people, knows the product he's selling and can convince people to buy that product, whatever it may be. Honestly, the trick is ... well, honesty. I don't bullshit people into buying something they don't want. And I'm here to say the best sales job I ever did was selling myself to Marlene Fisher. Yeah, Fisher. That's how we got thrown together in the business school class. Our last names were next to each other on the class roll, and that's how the professor paired us off. It took about half the semester for her to see me as anything but her project partner. She was a little hesitant about getting into a relationship, because she was a little shy, she was really, really serious about her school work, and she'd been burned by a high school boyfriend. But, little by little, I drew her out. When we were together working on the project, we talked about ourselves, and I listened to her and paid attention to her. I would come to find out that hadn't usually been the case with the men in her life. Eventually, we started dating, and the night after we turned in our final portfolio -- and earned the highest grade in the class on it -- we made love for the very first time. I was quite a bit more experienced than Marlene was. In fact, I was only the third guy she'd had sex with, and it quickly became apparent that I was light-years better than the other two. Again, I'm not bragging, but I'd been around. I lost my virginity when I was 16 to one of my mother's best friends, who caught me on the rebound from a demoralizing divorce. I was doing some yard work for her that summer, one thing led to another and we ended up in her bed. There was no pretense that we were in love. We used each other, but in a good way. She showed me how to please a woman, and I showed her that she was still desirable. After that, I was a pretty heavy horndog through the rest of high school. Ironically, I got far less pussy once I went to college, but only because I became a lot more choosy about where I put my dick. In high school, I'd fuck any girl that would let me, and that resulted in a nice little dose of the clap not long after I graduated. Fortunately, it wasn't anything serious, and medication cleared it up. Still, that was the single most embarrassing moment of my life to have to ask my dad, the pharmacist, to fill a prescription of antibiotics after my visit to the county health clinic. So I was careful about sex in college. But once we took the plunge, Marlene and I were insatiable. We loved each other, and we loved making love with each other. We both stayed at college through that summer, getting a few more credit hours in, plus I had a part-time job at an electronics mart that I liked. So we spent as much of our free time as possible together, a lot of it in bed. Unless you see Marlene up close and nearly naked, and not many people have, you really don't appreciate what she offers as a sexual enticement. She's slightly taller than average, about 5-foot-8, and slender, with a narrow waist, a tight little butt and a perky set of B-cups on her chest. Her best feature, by far, are a pair of gorgeous legs that just go on and on and on. She's not a classic beauty, but she's cute, and she has the kind of complexion that can take a generous amount of sun. We started talking about a future together pretty early in our relationship, and we were married a month or so after we graduated. By then, Marlene had been accepted into law school and I had my first job, as an IT manager for a mid-sized corporation located in the city where the law school was located. Like I said, Marlene was a meticulous planner, and as soon as she graduated from law school -- with honors, I might add -- we set about starting a family. In short order we had our three children, each evenly spaced two years apart. Kyle, our oldest, was born exactly on our fourth anniversary, then we had a daughter, Lisa, and another son, Jacob. After Jacob was born, Marlene announced that she was done having babies. She got her tubes tied and strongly encouraged me to have a vasectomy, which I did. I'm not sure when the rot started to set in our marriage. Certainly, with three small children and each of us with our own careers, our sex life took a nosedive. But for a long time we still took time for each other. I guess the first thing that happened was I got restless in my job. I was with a good, thriving company, and I was moving up the ladder, but it wasn't what I wanted to do with my life. When you're a born salesman like me, you want to sell. It's in your blood, a part of your nature. And I wasn't selling anything in my job. So, when an acquaintance put his business machine store up for sale not long after our 10th anniversary, I jumped on it. With Marlene's encouragement -- and legal guidance -- I put together a business plan, secured a loan and become the proud owner of Standard Office Machines. I think at that point, I was on top of the world. Marlene and I had just come back from a romantic second honeymoon to Sanibel Island in Florida, where we walked the sugar-white sands of the Gulf of Mexico and made love during the day, and prowled the clubs and cafes and made love every night. And I was about to live out my dream as a business owner, selling a product I knew like the back of my hand. Really, it was a fool-proof enterprise. The store came with a built-in clientele, good name recognition -- both for the store and the lines we carried -- and a knowledgeable staff. I did make a few changes. For one thing, I was much more public than the previous owner had been. He figured the products would sell themselves, and they did, up to a point. But I knew it wouldn't hurt to get out and drum up business, which I did. Another thing I did, soon after I bought the store, was move the location to a part of town that was seeing much more growth and into a larger, newer facility. That allowed me to pursue the other major change I implemented, which was to introduce computers and computer-related products to complement the copiers and fax machines that had previously been the store's bread-and-butter. The most important thing, which was something I continued, was to uphold the store's reputation for service. I knew going in that we wouldn't be able to beat the big chains in terms of price and volume, but we could damn sure beat them with quick, reliable service. My thinking was that if your computer froze up and you didn't know what to do about it, you didn't want to wait two weeks for the Nerd Patrol to fit you into their schedule. And that's where we came in. If you called us and needed a technician to come look at your computer or copy machine, we'd have someone there no later than the next business day. Guaranteed. That was the way the previous owner had done business and that's how I did it, too. Needless to say, the business was a success, but it was a success because I put in the extra time to make it a success, and that was time that I wasn't spending with my wife. And, to be fair, that was around the time when Marlene started working in earnest toward making partner at her firm, taking on the hardest jobs, the most demanding cases, which often required out-of-town travel. So she didn't have as much time to spend with me, either. To compound the situation, I decided at that time that one way to maximize my time with the kids was to serve as a coach. Kyle was expressing an interest in baseball, and I'd been dissatisfied with his first coach in T-ball. Since I no longer had the constraints of a 9-to-5 job, I could devote time to his team. And when Lisa got to be 6-years-old and wanted to play soccer, I volunteered to coach that as well. In that vein, things slowly went into a steady decline over the next eight years or so. It was so slow that I really didn't notice until about a year earlier, when I stopped to think about when Marlene and I had last had sex and couldn't remember the exact date. I realized then that a sex life that had been three or four times a week -- and sometimes more -- had dwindled to about once every six weeks or so. And when we did, it was fairly perfunctory, as if we were just fulfilling an obligation. Something else I noticed, too, was that we were arguing more, and trading snippy comments with each other over trivial stuff. Little habits and quirks that we once shrugged off now became bones of contention. And as I worked out the changes we were going through in my mind, suspicion began to grow that perhaps Marlene wasn't sleeping alone on those business trips she was taking, or that maybe it wasn't just work that was being done when she stayed late at the office. I felt in my mind that she had changed when she made partner, as she done two years before that. She'd become less tolerant of me, spent less time with the kids and had much less patience with everyone she encountered. For her part, she thought I was spending too much time involved with sports, which was true. If I wasn't coaching one or other of the kids, I was making weekend trips to ball games or watching games on TV. It all came to a head on the night of our 19th anniversary, in June. By this time, I'd sent Kyle on to other coaches and was helping with Jacob's teams, and his team had a game that night. I didn't forget our anniversary, and sent Marlene a card and a floral arrangement. But I thought it was understood that any night out to celebrate would have to wait until the weekend. But apparently, she didn't see it that way. I knew something was wrong when she failed to show up for the game. Even when she worked late, Marlene tried to get to the park for at least the late innings, but she never showed this time. When we got home, she was almost halfway through a bottle of wine that I'd been planning to have that weekend, when we had our little anniversary dinner, and the sour look on her face told me she wasn't happy. And I wasn't happy either, but not for that reason. Our team had lost to a team we should have beaten easily and Jacob had made a critical mistake that resulted in three runs. Usually I let those things slide, because I realize that kids that age are going to make mistakes. But it had been a mistake he'd made because of laziness, and that was the one thing I didn't tolerate from my players -- my son included. After I'd sent Jacob up to get his shower and get ready for bed, Marlene had huffed and puffed about my attitude, and I'd called her out on it. I forget exactly what she said, but it was some smartass comment about how she'd spent our anniversary. It escalated from there. She said I was spending too much time at ball games; I said she was spending too much time at work; she accused me of flirting with the single moms on the team and that's when I stepped in it big time, and I remember that exchange vividly. "You think I'm screwing around on you?" I said heatedly. "What about you? How do I know you're not fucking your clients when you're on the road? Or maybe you're getting bent over the desk when you're 'working late.'" I'd finally given voice to the paranoid suspicions that had been eating away at me for months, and I knew as soon as I said it that it was a mistake. As I said, I've always been able to read people, and I knew as soon as I saw Marlene's face that my suspicions were wrong. There was not one hint of guilt on her face, no "oh, shit, he knows" look in her eyes, and she didn't go pale with fear. On the contrary. Her face immediately turned a deep crimson and righteous anger blazed in her eyes. "How dare you," she hissed. "You think I've gotten where I am because I slept my way into my job? You fucking bastard." Then she turned on her heel, drained the remaining wine from her glass and stormed outside to the back deck, slamming the door on her way out. But not before she turned and gave me a parting shot. "Maybe I should go out and have an affair," she said coldly. "It would be better than what I've gotten from you lately." The truth is, if I'd really thought about it, I'd have known Marlene wasn't playing around at work. I'd gotten to know all of her associates over the years, and they were good people who respected my wife and were friendly toward me. At any rate, I spent the next six weeks trying every way to Sunday to apologize and make it up to her. We sort of reached an uneasy truce, and even had sex after a Fourth of July barbeque where Marlene got a little drunk and let me have my way with her. But I knew we were just going through the motions, treading water in our relationship. It wasn't just that we weren't having much sex. It was the little things -- the lack of intimacy, the lack of meaningful conversation, the lack of laughter -- that told me our marriage was in deep trouble. It was like neither one of us cared any more, and I think we were ready to just let it peter out. Then something happened that made me determined to make one last effort. I'd already been thinking about cutting back on my coaching duties, when Lisa came to me one night in early August, right before school started. Marlene had already gone to bed and I was just sitting up watching television. My 13-year-old daughter was turning into a fine young lady, with her mother's looks and brains, and her father's personality. "Daddy?" she said as she sat down next to me on the sofa in our den. "Why don't you and Mom talk any more? Why don't you laugh any more?" If We're Not Back in Love by Monday I couldn't answer her, so I just mumbled something about how couples sometimes get in a rut. "Daddy, please don't get a divorce," she said suddenly, then she buried her face in my chest and cried. "I love you both and I want to see you guys happy again. You're both miserable and I hate it. Please? At least try?" I got her calmed down, then she told me that she wasn't going to play soccer that fall, that she was going to go out for the cross country team at her school. That decision gave me something to think about as far as my time was concerned. Kyle was going to be playing football for the high school varsity that fall, and Jacob was playing Midget football, which I'd never gotten involved with because I'd always spent the fall season coaching Lisa in soccer, a game I'd come to enjoy. What that all meant was that for the first time in a long time, I wouldn't be coaching any of the kids in the fall, and, as a result, I'd have a lot more free time than I'd had in the past. Long after Lisa went to bed that night, I sat up pondering things, and went to bed determined to take action. The next day, I made some phone calls. I called about hotel reservations for a week back in Sanibel, which I'd come to look back on as the high-water mark of our marriage. We'd gone back a couple of times, and while it wasn't as magical as that 10th anniversary, it had still been fun. I also called some airlines to get some price quotes, called my mother to see if she and Dad could come down and sit with the kids for the Labor Day weekend, and finally called an old sitter we'd used when the kids were younger to see if she could and stay for a day or two. By now, our children were old enough that they didn't need a baby sitter when Marlene and I went out at night, rare as those occasions had become. But they still weren't old enough to stay by themselves overnight for an extended period of time, especially during school. That night, I loaded a small cooler with a six pack of beer, put on my swim suit and went out to the deck. I swam several laps, then sat back with a beer and watched the sun set over the horizon. Marlene was working late, I guess, although she'd quit calling to let us know. One more sign of a failing relationship, I thought. It was just about dark when I heard her car pull in, and several minutes later I heard the back door open and her voice calling out to me. "James?" she said hesitantly. She was holding the note in her hand that had directed her outside, telling her we needed to talk. "Have you eaten?" I asked, trying to keep my voice pleasant. "No, but I'm not very hungry," she replied as she walked slowly out to where I was seated. "I fixed you a plate and left it in the fridge, if you want it later," I said. "Maybe later," she said. "I will have a beer, if you don't mind." "That's what it's there for," I said. She reached in and got a beer, twisted the cap off, then sat on the lawn chair opposite the little table we had sitting out there. We sat in silence for a minute or two before Marlene mustered up her curiosity. "You said we needed to talk," she said, waving the note I'd left. "This isn't what I think it is, is it?" "I don't know what you're thinking," I began. "Marlene, it is no secret that our marriage is in trouble. You know it, I know it and the kids know it." "James, I ..." she started to say, but I cut her off. "Please, hear me out," I said. "Please?" "OK, I'm listening," she said. "Marlene, regardless of what you may think, I am not ready to give up on us," I said. "I don't know how you feel, but I still love you, as much, really, as I did the day we met, but our marriage is dying. We've let too many things pull us apart, too many things that are killing our love." "I know," she sighed. "It seems like we've put everything else -- jobs, kids, games -- ahead of each other. It's almost like we're strangers to each other." "I agree, but I have an idea on how we can at least try to fix that," I said, sounding a lot more confident than I really felt. "Here's what I want to do," I continued. "Let's take the week before Labor Day and fly down to Florida, get a room on Sanibel Island and just spend the time together, you and me. Nobody else but us. Before we bury our love, let's be sure it's dead. I've talked to Helen Johnson about coming in to stay with the kids for a couple of days, talked to my folks about coming for the weekend. We can just be together, make love like we used to, go to that crazy little café where we danced all night that one time, talk to each other -- I mean, really talk -- and if we're not back in love by that Monday, then at least we can't say we didn't try." "That sounds nice, but I don't know if I can take off work like that," Marlene said. "And what about the store?" "I don't care about the store," I said. "I don't think we can afford not to do this, Mar. We're teetering on the brink, and if we're serious about saving our marriage, we need to do this. Talk to Prichard and see what he thinks. I'll bet he gives you the time off." Miles Prichard was the senior associate at Marlene's firm, and she didn't know that he and I had talked several times in the previous weeks about the state of our marriage. He was concerned that Marlene was working too hard, wasn't eating right, and wasn't getting enough rest. "Sounds like you've already made the decision," she said, with an air of resignation. "We need it," I said softly. "If we not back in love and recommitted to each other by the time we get back, then maybe we can go our separate ways with a clear conscience. I'd hate it because I do still love you, but if that's the way it goes, then that's the way it goes." "OK, James, we'll go," Marlene said finally, as she drained the last of her bottle of beer. Then she got up and walked inside without a single look back. I was wondering about the wisdom of this trip, as we passed the flight and the drive across the Everglades to Sanibel mostly in silence. Little had changed in the ensuing few weeks, except that Marlene did try to spend a little more time with the kids. She took Lisa shopping for clothes a couple of times, and I think they did some girl talk while they shopped, and maybe our daughter got through to her the way she did with me. I'm not sure, because I wasn't made privy to whatever they talked about. We left bright and early on Monday, landed in Miami without incident and rented a car, a convertible, as we had done on our 10th anniversary. It was still fairly early in the afternoon when we arrived at the hotel where we were staying. I could afford to book a room at the best hotel on the island, and that's where we stayed. It was on the beach and on the main strip, not far from the best clubs and restaurants. After we got settled in, I suggested that we go hang out by the pool for awhile and that's when I got my first indication that maybe, just maybe, things were going to move in a positive direction. Marlene emerged from the bedroom of our suite dressed in a new bikini that was, for her, pretty revealing. The top was quite skimpy, showing off her perfect breasts, and the bottom, while not quite a thong, was also fairly slight. She also had a matching wrap that she wore with it. She smiled slightly as she saw my reaction, the first real sign of warmth I'd seen from her that day. We swam a bit, had a couple of drinks, then we went to our suite and took a nap. We were both a little bushed from the trip, and I was going to be very patient. We ended up snuggled together, which I took as another good sign that a possible thaw was in progress. It was the next day, on the beach that things took a real turn for the better. Once again, Marlene wore her new bikini, and I made it a point to tell her how good she looked in it. I was rewarded with a smile and a quick kiss, then we gathered up our stuff and headed out for some sun, sand and surf. I could feel myself stiffening as Marlene rubbed the sunblock on my back, and I was downright uncomfortable when she untied the strings to the back of her top and asked me to oil her back. My wife purred as I rubbed the oil into her skin. She hadn't indulged herself in a good tanning session this particular summer, because she's been working too hard. She read for awhile, then laid on her stomach and dozed. I cavorted in the warm waters of the Gulf, did a little body surfing in the very modest waves, then came back and sat in the beach chair, sipping cold water, eating some fruit we'd packed and watching the passing parade of beach enthusiasts. It was after one of my excursions into the water that Marlene stood up, put the wrap around her waist and she said she wanted to take a walk along the beach, alone. She said she had a lot of things she wanted to think about. She was gone the better part of an hour, and when she got back I could tell she'd shed some tears. Her eyes were red-rimmed and I could see the wet tracks on her cheeks. She sat down next to me, took my hands in hers and addressed me earnestly. "James, I wanted to hold my cards close to my vest, so to speak, until we got out here and I could relax," she said. "We can talk more later, but I want you to know here and now that I want this week to work for us. I know we've drifted apart and we're both equally to blame for it, but the thought of my life without you in it just isn't very appealing to me. James, I still love you and I still want to be your wife. If ... you'll ... have me." And by the time she finished, she was crying and I was holding her. I wasn't sure what had brought it on, because she hadn't displayed this much emotion in years, but I wasn't going to argue with her. "Let's go upstairs," I said softly. "I think we need to do something and we can't do it here." We quickly gathered up our things and headed back to the hotel. We kissed, hard and insistent, on the elevator to our room. We smelled of salt water, suntan oil and sweat, and as far as I was concerned, it was the most intoxicating aroma ever The window to the bedroom opened to the west and the early afternoon sun bathed the room in bright light as we headed for the bed. I quickly untied Marlene's top and tossed it aside, and I couldn't help but notice that her nipples were stiff as nails. I bent down and captured each one between my lips. She hissed in lust as I licked and sucked her little nips. As I worked on my wife's tits, I slid a hand down her oil-slick back, to her butt. I untied the wrap and let it fall to the floor, then inserted a couple of fingers in the bikini bottoms to find her hot, wet pussy. Marlene groaned as I slid my finger down her slit and stroked her throbbing clit. One of her hands held me to her while the other delved into my swim trunks to my rock-hard cock. She softly stroked me up to full hardness. "I think somebody's ready to play," she said in a sultry tone of voice that sent a shiver down my spine. It had been so long since I'd heard that tone that I really thought she'd forgotten what it did to me. At that point, we were both goners. All we cared about then was shedding our few remaining clothes and getting down to business. My cock bounced up and down like it was spring-loaded as I shucked by shorts. We both tumbled back on the bed, not even bothering to pull the covers down. Our mouths were working hard and fast as Marlene spread her legs and welcomed me home. "Oh, Jesus, James," she panted. "Please, love me. Love me like you used to do." "I'm gonna do just that," I growled. I took just enough time to aim the head of my dick at my wife's juicy opening, then pushed it in to the hilt in one smooth stroke. Marlene gasped as I filled her depths with more passion than I'd felt in a long time. It was like we were on the precipice and our whole future hung in the balance. I knew which way I wanted it to go, and I was becoming convinced that Marlene wanted it to go the same way. I pulled back and began working at a brisk, but measured pace, letting the feelings wash over me, and from me to my wife. We stared into each other's eyes as we gave ourselves to each other, just like we had the first time we'd made love, way back in college. I focused on her face to keep from losing my load before she was ready, wanting to prolong the delicious agony of our coupling. This was the kind of passion that had slowly seeped from our marriage and my spirit was soaring at the thought that we might be getting it back. It didn't take long before I could feel Marlene's body giving me the telltale signs that she was getting close to a climax. Her body was shaking and she was emitting little mewling sounds as I increased the pace of my thrusts. "Oh, oh, oh! G-g-g-g-god!" Marlene exclaimed. "F-f-fuuuuuck me! Jaaaaaaammmmes-bo!" That was my signal that she was right on the edge. I thrust up hard on successive strokes, so that I was brushing her clit and that did the trick. She shuddered hard and squealed as the climax rushed through her body and that was the end of any control I had left. I fucked my wife wildly for maybe a half-dozen thrusts then let loose with a king-sized cumshot. I bucked and shivered as I gave Marlene everything I had to give, just like I had with everything else in my life, if the truth be known. We clutched at each other like drowning sailors in a life boat, letting the emotions run rampant through our hearts and through our souls. I knew in that moment that whatever problems we had in our marriage weren't as significant as the love we still had for each other, and that I could no more walk away from this woman than I could quit breathing. As I came down from my high, I sensed, rather than saw, Marlene giving me an inscrutable look. When I looked up into her eyes, there was something pensive in them, and maybe a trace of amusement. "Penny for your thoughts," I said. "I was just thinking that we need to do this more often," she said. "What, make love or take more trips without the kids?" I said. "Both," she said. We got up then and showered, cleaning the funk from a day at the beach and our lovemaking from our oily bodies. I spent a lot of time in the shower playing with Marlene's body, and when we got out, we simply pulled the covers off the bed and crawled in for another round. I won't lie. Our relationship didn't just magically repair itself just because we spent an afternoon fucking like bunnies. But it sure helped. We spent most of the night loving each other, then called room service for breakfast the next morning. Later, we took a long walk together on the beach and talked -- I mean really talked -- for the first time in a long time. Even after some 20 years together there were things I really didn't know about my wife, like the fact that she'd always felt slightly intimidated by the men in her life. I had suspected that there was some baggage from her relationship with her father, who is a demanding sort not given to displays of affection. And I had always felt that he'd pushed Marlene hard into the law, and that she'd complied in her eagerness to please her daddy. A lot of her attitude toward me and other men was in a reaction to that. She had consciously fought to overcome her fears and it had caused her to develop a hardness to her personality that was at odds with the caring person I knew she could be when she wanted to be. For my part, I think she began to understand how much I needed to see that person come out to play more often. Having grown up in such a large family where bitchy attitudes weren't allowed, I realized that I was often frustrated at my wife's reserved nature. Moreover, her inability to express her feelings openly clashed with my personality and my upbringing. In my house, everything had been hashed out in front of the family, and I think Marlene was surprised to learn that I missed that in my own home. We spent the rest of the week talking, loving and enjoying each other's company in a way we hadn't been able to do in quite a long time. On Saturday, we found the little café where we'd had such an enjoyable time on earlier visits, and when the little country band took the stage, with the ever-smiling Cajun fiddler, we spent the night dancing, holding each other and just letting all of our troubles fade away. Toward the end of the night, I did something I'd been thinking about doing through the week. I took my wife's hands in mine and presented her with a new ring, with rubies and several small diamonds. It set me back a couple of grand, but it was worth it to see the look in Marlene's eyes when I slipped it on her finger and told her I wanted her to wear it as a token of our renewed passion and the love that had always been there, but was burning bright again. Dawn was breaking as we strolled leisurely back to our hotel. We made love once again then slept most of the day. Marlene's countenance was far different on our flight back home. She smiled and held my hand the whole time, and when we walked into the house, I think our kids all three noticed the difference. It was Monday, and we were back in love again.