31 comments/  71045 views/  1 favorites

You Are Your Problem Ch. 01

By: CeeeEsss



Special Thanks to my own private consultant. When an author has no experience with a particular emotion, it is best to seek out those who know of it first hand. Thanks again. Additionally, I thank my editor, Erik Thread, for his patience and skills, not only with the words, but for his tutelage.

*

"I guess I couldn't expect any better. After all, I am a bastard," I mumbled to myself as I lifted my glass to the photo of my parents on the mantle in front of my chair.

Because of my Dad's birth date and the draft lottery number he had, he figured he would be drafted into the Army as soon as he graduated from high school, so he joined Navy. He didn't want to march in formation. There isn't room to do that on a ship. In the early years of the war, almost every soldier or seaman spent part of their military career, long or short, in Viet Nam. He even signed up to go back there for a second year. Spending most of the war offshore on a ship, he must have felt safe because he did it a third time.

After that third tour, during his annual leave around Christmas, Dad met and married a woman he would live with for the next thirty-plus years. Well, it wasn't really the first time he'd met her. He knew her and her family, sort of like you know everyone in a little town with a population of less than 3,000. Because he was married, he really wanted to leave the military, so he agreed to go back to Viet Nam for his fourth tour because it would earn him a discharge a few months early. He got home three months before I was born.

You do the math. Mom and Dad married around the end of the year and I was born a little over a year later, the first ten months of that year, he was several thousand miles away. They never said anything and I never asked, in fact I didn't learn about it until I was grown. Hey, you don't ask your mother, "Please tell me who my real father is." They never said anything to either of my two younger brothers either, both of whom look just like Dad, over six feet, long legs, two hundred plus pounds and even at the age of 63, he still had a full head of hair. I'm the oldest son, but I'm also half-bald, skinny, and short.

Funny, not humorous, but strange, Dad was always a strong-willed, tough guy. Mom was a red-headed termagant, a temperamental shrew who was so jealous she'd question him if he were five minutes late getting home from work. He would stand beside a ringing telephone and let it ring rather than have to go through her interrogating him about who was the woman that had called, and why had she called him. I guess I grew up thinking I should be jealous, too. 

That jealousy is probably why Laurel and I had to get married. I think I was marking my territory so every other guy in school knew she belonged to me. I might have been a bold guy, something of a wheeler dealer, but I wasn't stupid. When I needed to go tell Laurel's father that she and I had to get married because she was pregnant, I took my parents with me. I figured the chief of police would be a little less likely to draw his gun and shoot me in front of his wife, daughter, and my mom and dad.

Laurel and I lived with my family for the last half of that year while we finished high school and then we just stayed there because we had the baby. About that time, Dad was pretty sick and only worked part time. My two younger brothers were still in school. Mom was helping with our baby boy, and Laurel was pregnant again. Yeah, we knew about birth control, but didn't do anything about it. Dad's half-income and my job just barely kept enough food on the table for our two families.

It was during Dad's illness that I drove him to the nearest VA hospital for some tests. I was sitting with his medical records in my lap while he was giving samples for some lab work. I was flipping through several pages and saw his service record, including leave dates and discharge date. All the blood drained from my head when I realized he wasn't home when my mother would have gotten pregnant with me. I didn't say anything to Dad, nor did I mention it to my mother. If they wanted to keep that secret, I'd let them. I'd never felt slighted or that I was treated as anything other than their son. In fact, I felt sort of special that my dad had accepted me knowing he wasn't really my father. 

When Dad got well, Laurel and I found our own place to live. I worked for a homebuilder and Laurel stayed home with the children, which pretty soon included our third child, a second son. I discovered I liked telling people what to do -- better than I liked working -- so I started my own construction company. Most of the work my company did was home improvements. About the time the baby was two years old, Laurel gave birth to our fourth child, our second daughter. It only took one suggestion from Laurel to convince me that I should have a little medical procedure performed so we wouldn't have any more children.

It's amazing to me that some women just lose all sense of themselves when they become a mother. They gain weight, feel they don't have time to wear and maintain nice clothing, and forget to wear make-up. Laurel was never like that. She had a hot body and took care of herself. She wasn't a clean freak like her mother, but our home was always neat and she was a great cook. She made sure the family went to church regularly, and my Laurel could stretch a dollar until it seemed to buy twice as much as anyone else.

About the time my oldest son was in his first year of high school, my mother was suddenly ill. She went downhill so fast she was too far gone by the time we needed to say goodbye. After the funeral, Dad took a few months before he could do anything other than a day's work and then go home. He started chatting with a few women online. A little over a year after mother died, one of his online friends asked him to come visit her for a weekend. He never really came back home. He just made a trip to quit his job, pack his clothes, and then he went back to live with her.

After he moved on, it sort of became a habit for me to stop by one of the local bars one or two days a week on the way home from work. In a small town there wasn't a lot of choice, it was either the bar I liked or the one with music so loud it would damage your hearing. I was probably copying what I'd seen my mom and dad do, although I didn't go home and get my wife as my dad always did. I'd stop by during the afternoon, or go by there for a beer or two before I went home. 

* * * *

I'm not a saint and if I'm absolutely truthful, I would probably say I'm not really a good man. Although I'd be pretty angry if my wife looked at another man, or flirted with him, I didn't think that rule applied to me. I flirted, I looked, hell -- I even touched. Dammit, I did a little more than touch. 

One of the gals I'd gone to school with was the daytime bartender at my bar. She was three years older, which might mean something when you're in high school but it doesn't matter when you're in your early thirties. She started working there about a month after she divorced her second husband. 

A couple of weeks after she started, she asked me to help her flush some of the liquid supply lines in the little closet behind the bar. I bent over to open a valve, but when I straightened up Carol was half naked. We had a mind-blowing stand-up fuck that lasted only a few minutes before we were both trembling from body-shaking climaxes. We continued our acquaintance in a hot and heavy affair that took us to her house two or three afternoons a week. As soon as her afternoon relief arrived, she would call me and I'd meet her at her back door, almost tearing my clothes off. Even though there was no emotional connection between Carol and me, we liked to fuck. She was aggressive, usually taking charge, leaving me panting. I never did kiss her the way I kissed Laurel, though. It was just sex.

Laurel and I had tried oral sex a few times, but she didn't enjoy giving me a blow job, and she didn't even like for me to give her an orgasm with my mouth, tongue, or fingers. She said intercourse gave her a much stronger orgasm. 

However, Carol taught me to eat pussy until my neck was so tired I couldn't hold it up. I learned not to be so rough and to watch for the approach of her orgasm. I got pretty good doing that in the afternoons before we fucked. During our affair, I was afraid to try oral sex again with Laurel because I didn't want her to realize I'd learned from another woman. 

I have to be honest, I'm not sure I really loved my wife with the deep soul-satisfying love I'd always heard about. We enjoyed sex, but after close to twenty years of marriage, it wasn't exciting any more. Carol was new and maybe that newness provided the excitement I wanted, but the clandestine nature of our affair helped too. The effort to park my truck in her back yard and lock her bedroom door so her sons and daughter wouldn't interrupt us when they came home from school was part of the exhilaration. 

According to some of the guys, Carol had been the hottest fuck in high school and then she'd learned a lot during her marriages. She did this thing when she gave me a blow job that always made me last a lot longer. She'd clamp her fingers around the base of my cock and not let me cum, and then we'd fuck until I just couldn't hold it anymore. 

Carol and I tried to be careful, but in a small town word soon got out. Laurel later admitted she probably learned I was having an affair within the first week. She would know I was at Carol's house before I got home that evening. Man, I didn't understand how much I hurt her, but when I finally confessed, she forgave me and I felt like I'd be able to repair the damage I'd done if I could just stay away from Carol. 

Well, it didn't work. Carol decided to go visit her sister for Easter weekend, and she invited me to go with her. I didn't do that, but I did go visit my dad and his girlfriend because they lived about twenty minutes away from Carol's sister. Truthfully, I didn't see much of Dad, I spent most of that long weekend with Carol, fucking like there was no tomorrow. We used a condom about half of the time, but I knew I couldn't make her pregnant. She assured me she didn't have any other sexual partners.

After that weekend, Carol and I started to cool it, or maybe we were finally getting enough of each other. One of the other married guys in the bar started flirting with her. She was trying to keep both of us happy and it wasn't working very well. I didn't really object to her seeing someone else. Hell, I was married and still having sex with my wife. 

Just when I decided I'd have to call it off with Carol, she surprised us both and left town. She'd been worried about the teenage boys her two sons had chosen for their pals. One of them was paying an awful lot of attention to Carol's fifteen-year-old daughter. Her sister's marriage was ending and the two women figured they could make a go of things, without husbands, if they combined their efforts. 

Her sister had a big house, but I wondered if it was large enough for six teens and two women with pretty large sexual appetites. I never had sex with Carol's sister, but not because it wasn't offered. I thought I was being careful. Cheating on my wife was bad enough. Cheating with several women was more than I could rationalize. 

Not long after Carol left, I was sitting at the bar one day, when one of my pals made a remark about his pretty wife. The rest of the guys and I often teased him that he should be watching her a little closer or someone would take her away from him. He explained that he wasn't jealous because he knew his wife loved him almost as much as he loved her and he never failed to tell her, every single day, that she was the most important person in his life.

As I was driving home later, I started thinking about what the guy said. I realized my wife really loved me and I had no reason to be jealous of her. She wasn't going to take up with another man. She had forgiven me for having the affair and she'd learned about the Easter weekend, too. She was mine, she knew it, and was happy about it, too. 

Almost like a revelation, I realized that as I'd watched the way my jealous mother treated my dad I thought that was the way I was supposed to treat my wife. It wasn't a sudden transformation, but I stopped being jealous. I began to see the times I questioned Laurel about where she went, or who she talked to and I saw how dumb it was to mistrust her loyalty. I'd catch myself before I said something and felt a lot better that Laurel seemed more relaxed when she talked to a friend or came home from the grocery store. 

I can't tell you how much happier our home life was after that. It was amazing. It seemed I finally fell deeply in love with Laurel. I'm not sure I truly loved her before that. I think our marriage had been a habit for me.

It was during that time that my dad brought his girlfriend to meet the rest of his family. He had lived with her for two years and had come home for couple of week-end visits, but it was the first time he'd brought her to meet everyone. From what I saw, it looked like they had a close relationship. In fact, Dad seemed more relaxed than I had ever known him to be. 

I'm not sure which one of us mentioned my mother's jealousy, but sometime during that conversation, I told Dad my brothers and I had often wondered why he'd stayed with her. She was a difficult person to live with. Dad said he'd noticed Laurel and I were a lot happier, too. He said he loved my mother and when you really love someone, you love them despite their faults. After all, they're doing the same for you.

Dad and I spent part of one day taking my two sons to a nearby lake for an afternoon of fishing, something I'd never been interested in doing before. I was always too busy, but now I was spending more time with my children. 

My daytime and after-work visits to the bar stopped. I started going to church with my family and my business was growing large enough that I could keep my work crew busy every day. I took me almost a year to build us a larger house, partly because I used my work crew when we weren't working on a paying job. 

Laurel and the kids and I had a lot of fun, too. At least one evening a week we went to the new house. All six of us would work two or three hours doing the small chores around the construction site that the carpenters, plumbers, and electricians never seem to do. I figured that if the kids helped build the house, they would be more interested in taking care of it. 

Laurel and I weren't even forty years old yet and before I knew it, our first child had graduated from high school. The second would be a senior when school resumed after the summer break and the other two were growing up fast. I couldn't get my head around the fact that in a few years Laurel and I would be empty nesters. Those were the happiest years of my life.

That's when my world exploded.

The pastor of our church was a widower. His wife passed away about the same time my mother died. Although he was about ten years older than Laurel and me, his three children were about the same ages as our three youngest. Occasionally, one of the women in the church would go over to his house to help him. It wasn't a daily thing and probably not even weekly. Their help was fixing an extra nice meal or baking a birthday cake and then helping with the party. The next Sunday he would thank her at the beginning of the service. 

Laurel, in particular, would help him with activities for his children. Me, or one of my work crew, even helped with things that needed to be done around the house. I built some shelves inside his laundry room. In fact, my oldest son, who started working for me as soon as he got out of school, helped me with those shelves. The neighbor lady was so impressed she wanted the same kind of shelves put in her laundry room, but we had to reinforce the wall before we could hang her shelves. 

"Drive down the driveway, Jason," I told my son. "They have a wide drive in back where we can park to unload."

I was inside the house talking to Mrs. Turner when Jason walked inside with the first handful of tools. "Mom just drove up to Brother Hebert's house."

"Yeah," I told him. "She's taking all the kids to the swimming pool in Anson."

Our small public swimming pool was closed for a couple of weeks to make repairs and upgrade the circulating pump. Laurel had promised all the kids a swim day and decided that by driving thirty minutes to the nearby town she could still keep that promise. The day was so hot I was almost wishing I could go with them instead of building shelves. 

I walked outside to cut the first piece of wood and looked between the Turner home and the one next door. I saw my wife's car going down the street with my older daughter driving her younger brother and sister plus all three Hebert children. My first thought was to cross my fingers that all six teens were wearing their seatbelts. My second thought was to wonder why Laurel wasn't in the car.

After I had measured and cut the three other boards, I decided I'd go next door to see if Laurel and Brother Hebert needed some help. I didn't recall if my wife had mentioned any particular chore the pastor needed help with. I left Jason nailing the four boards to the long wall. As I walked between the Hebert and Turner homes, I took the bandana from my hip pocket to wipe the sweat off my face and neck. 

I hadn't looked at a thermometer, but it felt like it was already over ninety degrees and it wasn't even noon yet. Mrs. Turner had all her windows open, as did Brother Hebert. I got about halfway between the two houses when I heard a voice I recognized. It was my wife, and I knew exactly what was happening.

Laurel has this funny little squeak in her voice when we have sex. Every time I slam into her, she squeaks, "Eek." When I hit that sweet spot that is going to cause her orgasm, it changes to "Eek, eek, yes."

That is exactly what I heard. Laurel was squeaking and encouraging Brother Hebert, "Eek, eek, yes, o-o-oh. Eek, eek, yes, o-o-oh." I knew she was on the verge of an orgasm. 

My head was roaring, my chest hurt, and all I saw was red rage. 

There is something strange about us humans. No matter how much we know something is going to disgust us or frighten us, we will still look at it. I took two more steps and glanced into the open window of Brother Hebert's bedroom. All I saw was his white ass and my wife's legs in the air as her hips bounced on his bed when she finally let out the sounds of her climax, "Oh, oh, oh, oh." It didn't last long, but I couldn't move.

I'm not sure if I made a sound or simply fell to my knees. My legs wouldn't support me. I fell face forward onto the grass between the two houses and held my hands over my ears. I could not drown out the sound of my unfaithful wife and the pastor of our church. It didn't occur to me at the time that his chant, "God bless, God bless, God bless," was just a little blasphemous.

I'm not sure how I got myself up off the ground or walked to the truck. I just recall sitting behind the steering wheel looking at the grass stains on the knees of my jeans. Jason came outside and asked me if I was all right. I think I said something about getting too hot, so I was just resting for a few minutes. I finally got my head together and helped Jason finish the shelves. Mrs. Turner said she'd paint them herself, knowing it would save a little on the cost of the job.

After we cleaned up our trash and loaded the tools, I told Jason to take me home and he could go by the shop to unload the tools and then take the rest of the day off. He wanted to borrow my truck so he and a couple friends could take their girls on a campout at the lake. They planned to do a little fishing plus whatever it was twenty-year-olds did for fun. I suspected they would spend most of their time drinking beer and lying on top of their sleeping bags under the stars on that warm summer night.


You Are Your Problem Ch. 01



* * * *

"I guess I couldn't expect any better. After all, I am a bastard," I mumbled to myself as I lifted my glass to the photo of my parents on the mantle in front of my chair.

I had been home a couple of hours before Laurel and the children returned. Besides the admission I was a bastard and toasting my parents, I'd also had some time to do some pretty tough soul searching. Although I needed to talk to Laurel about what I'd discovered, I couldn't do that until a lot later in the day, and maybe not until bedtime.

All three of the kids were mildly sunburned and Laurel was beautiful. I always like it when she wore her hair down, instead of in a pony tail. She didn't look that much older than our seventeen-year-old daughter. Both of them were wearing shorts, but Laurel's were a little longer. The little tee shirts they wore had thin shoulder straps and some kind of internal cloth shelf that was like a soft bra. Our daughter might not need that kind of support, but Laurel's breasts were quite a bit larger and that shelf sort of held them up some and allowed them to sway or bounce with each step she took. 

I imagined Brother Hebert's reaction when he saw Laurel in that tee shirt. I wanted to think my wife hadn't dressed to tantalize our church pastor, but as I watched her moving around the kitchen, I was uncertain. I was trying so hard to convince myself that I was on some kind of high moral ground because a married woman should not flaunt herself or attract other men to look at her or have sexual reactions to the way she was dressed. 

After spending a few hours in a pool and using so much energy, the kids were hungry. Anticipating their appetites, Laurel had sandwiches already made. All the chips and other snacks were set out, ready to put on the table when they got home. 

In between "Do you want more chips?" and "That's pimento cheese," I asked Laurel, "You didn't get sunburned? I thought you were going swimming."

"No," she answered. "I let Dana drive."

Sometime during our meal and in between the children's comments, Laurel asked me what I'd done that day. 

"Jason and I built shelves in Mrs. Turner's laundry room. She really liked the shelves we did for Brother Hebert."

Laurel took a deep breath as her face paled, "You were there ... I mean, right next door? I didn't see the truck."

"We parked in back of the house. I saw Dana drive off with all the kids. I didn't see you in the car."

Laurel looked away from me when she said, "Doug wanted to see if he could move his son into the small parlor to give the girls separate rooms. The parsonage is such a small house, especially the children's bedrooms." 

"You shouldn't be moving heavy furniture, Laurel. You could have called me. I'd send a couple of guys to do the heavy work."

"Oh, we didn't move anything, Robert. We just sort of talked about it and did some measuring. You know, Doug. He's a planner. He doesn't do anything until his plans are made."

I hadn't noticed, until that moment, that Laurel was no longer saying "Brother Hebert," not even to his face. For some time, she had been calling him by his first name, which I remembered only hearing from two other women, and from none of the men in the congregation.

I looked at our children and then back at Laurel. It was one of those looks parents know very well, as if I was telling her, 'I'm saying this in front of our children because it's a lesson they should be taught without making it sound like a command.' 

She sat up just a little straighter when I emphasized the first two words, "Brother Hebert might consider turning his single car garage into his study or the fourth bedroom. I could do that work for him."

As Laurel was nodding and thinking about my suggestion for the garage, I offered, "Why don't you call him and we can go over there to take a look at a way to create a fourth bedroom."

"Oh ... ah ... all right, but ... ah ... why don't I call and you can just go. I don't need to be there."

I bit my tongue to avoid questioning Laurel about why she didn't want to go to the pastor's house. A moment later, I had to know. "If you didn't go swimming, you're not that tired. Why don't you want to go over there with me?"

"You don't need me to help measure."

"Yeah, but maybe I'd just like you to go with me. Jason has my truck so I need to take the car."

"Robert, I need to clean up the kitchen and start some laundry. It's been so hot today, I can't go anywhere without a shower."

"But I thought you liked Brother Hebert."

The exasperation in her voice caused all three of our children to look at her. "Why are you questioning me like this? I thought I'd shown you there is no cause for your jealousy."

"I'm not jealous," I countered a little louder than I should have. I justified to myself that I was only trying to get her to tell me the truth. "I just thought you'd like to spend a little time with me, get away from the house."

"Well, I can't tonight. I have too much to do."

"Okay, okay, just call him and tell him I'm on my way." If the children hadn't been around at that moment, I might have questioned her further.

* * * *

I greeted the pastor of our church when he answered the doorbell. "Brother Hebert, how are you this evening?"

His voice sounded a little strained, "Come in, Robert." He stepped back quickly, giving me more room than I needed to get inside the house. He may have reacted to the look on my face, but I was also trying to appear pleasant. I didn't want him to feel threatened, but I did intend to get some answers. He was taller and larger than me. It was doubtful I could come out on top in a physical contest with the man. Besides, neither fists nor harsh words would give me the answers I was seeking. 

Looking behind him at his three teenage children relaxing around the living room, he told his oldest daughter, "Bedtime in fifteen minutes, Ruth." 

He turned to me and suggested, "Let's go ...," waving his arm toward the back of the house. I followed him through the kitchen and out the back door. 

Although Brother Hebert's children were no longer small, in the backyard was the large wooden swing set I'd help dismantle at another church member's home and reassemble for his children's use. Not far from the swing set were two picnic tables I'd seen spread with a variety of foods when a summer potluck supper was held at the parsonage instead of a church member's home.

I looked around for a moment, startled by the sudden thought that the church owned the house. It was provided for Brother Hebert's use, part of his compensation, as long as he was pastor of the church.

"Brother Hebert, I thought I was going to measure your study and the garage to see how much work it would take to make a fourth bedroom." I reminded him of the reason Laurel had given for my late evening visit.

Already halfway across the back yard, Brother Hebert requested, "Why don't you use my given name, Douglas, or Doug if you prefer. I think we know each other well enough for that familiarity." 

He paused for a moment and the tone of his voice changed, when he said. "I don't think measuring the garage is the real reason you're here. Is it?" He sat down on one side of the first picnic table and offered, "Have a seat, Robert."

I hesitated for a moment and he repeated himself, "Have a seat, Robert." As soon as I was sitting across for him, he looked at me, cocked his head to one side, and then nodded a couple of times.

Before I could say anything, Doug said, "You know, I'm not really in the God business. I'm in the people business."

"So you think part of your ministry is giving a cheating husband's wife a good revenge fuck?" 

Doug's face turned pale, "Listen to yourself, Robert. How can you insult your wife like that?" 

I wasn't going to let him make me the bad guy. "Laurel's not the first woman of the church you've seduced, is she?"

"Seduced? Now, now, where would you get the idea that I seduced Laurel?"

"I saw you, you damn predator. This afternoon you fucked my wife. There's at least two other women in the church who call you "Doug." How many of the women of our church have you fucked?"

His condescending tone tried to bluff his way into the appearance of innocence. "What do you think you saw?"

"I was outside your bedroom window. I saw your white ass as you fucked my wife." I leaned forward and stared at the man in front of me. "You asshole, you listen. To me, you are less of a godly man than I am. I cheated on my wife, but I did so with a single woman. I did not seduce another man's wife."

Doug leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. "Now, Robert, take it easy. Some women can only forgive their husband if they haven't lost the belief they are still sexually attractive to a man. I'm able to help them regain their confidence. Maybe you should thank me."

"Thank you?" I screamed and startled Brother Hebert. He leaned back as far as he could. I guess he thought I was going to take a swing at him. I almost did it, too.

The asshole had the gall to tell me, "Laurel is a grown woman, capable of making her own choices about fidelity, just as you made the same choice for yourself. Why should you care? She forgave you, now it's your turn to forgive her."

"Forgive her?" I asked him. "Do you think the members of our church will forgive you? Can anyone believe you when you teach Christian principles?"

My voice was getting louder, which I did not want to happen. I had planned to confront this man, tell him I knew what he had done, and walk away from him. I had a problem in my marriage. Laurel and I might need professional help, but not from a man who had made the problem worse.

He was going to keep twisting what I said, turning my unfaithfulness into his reason for helping my wife with her payback. Laurel had never acted as if she wanted anything more than for me to be faithful to her. She didn't question me about where I went or whom I saw. I hurt her, I apologized, and I'd tried to do everything I could to change the kind of person I was. 

I could not let this man escape. Without another word, I stood and walked away. Halfway across the back yard, I stopped and turned back to tell the man, "Sixty days. You have sixty days to leave this town. After that, I'll speak to the congregation, confess my sin, and tell them about yours, too. I don't think you'll be welcome after that."

* * * *

 . . . to be continued



You Are Your Problem Ch. 02



Special Thanks to my own private consultant. When an author has no experience with a particular emotion, it is best to seek out those who know of it first hand. Thanks again. Additionally, I thank my editor, Erik Thread, for his patience and skills, not only with the words, but for his tutelage.

*

The most difficult part of my road back was to speak to my wife. However, I wanted something from her, too.

I don't suppose I was surprised when I got home, to find Laurel sitting on the couch. I sat down beside my wife and took her hand in mine. She had been crying, probably ever since the children went to bed. 

"You're going to have to help me, Laurel. I've lied to you. I've cheated, and I've broken the most important vows I made when we married." 

"I'm sorry, Robert." It was difficult for her to talk and sob at the same time. 

I looked at Laurel for a moment and said, "I think both of us have forgotten about our promise of forsaking all others."

She made a long low guttural sound that you'd expect from a mortally wounded animal. Then she took a deep breath and did it again. I cannot describe how much that hurt me. She finally stopped and shook her head, took a few deep breaths and admitted, "I don't know how I let this happen." 

I hadn't begun to cry, but I felt the tears forming. "I don't think I can stand to hear the details, but I need to know if you love him and I need to know why."

"Love?" She asked, as if she didn't really understand what that was. "I always thought I loved you and that you loved me."

"I've always loved you, Laurel. I didn't always appreciate you, or what we had together, but I loved you. I don't think we can have this conversation without saying some names both of us would probably like to forget. I used Carol to make me feel like I was still some kind of young stud. She started it, but I didn't back away."

"Maybe that's what I did," Laurel was still shaking her head. "I was certain I'd forgiven you and then one Friday afternoon I was vacuuming the carpet in the sanctuary and I just collapsed. I was crying, sobbing, pounding the floor with my fists, and I couldn't stop. Doug found me. He held me for a long time while I told him about what you'd done."

"You didn't ... not there ... I mean, not in the church."

"Oh no, no," Laurel shuddered. "After that day, Doug would give me an extra hug after church or when I went to pick up the children. He got more physical every time I went over to his house." 

"And he made you feel good, which was something I'd stopped doing."

Laurel looked at me and tried to smile. "Maybe so, but I wasn't aware that's what he was doing. He listened when I described how badly I was hurt when you were seeing Carol. He always told me it wasn't my fault."

"It wasn't your fault. It was my stupidity."

"Almost every week, Doug would ask me how things were at home. He wanted to know if you and I were having sex more frequently. Each time his questions were a little easier to answer. It was like he took little tiny bites out of my resistance to talk about something so private."

I shook my head at my own stupidity. "I watched it happening. I can't believe I trusted that man. I thought he was helping me gain my wife's forgiveness." 

"Carol's older than me and she was attracting men. I was just a plain housewife. I didn't have anything to show a man to make him want me. You sort of stopped, I mean, you didn't kiss me much anymore. You didn't want to make love to me as often. We lived in that little house and were always trying to be quiet so the children wouldn't hear us."

"He took both of us in, we were his victims. I hate him. I want to hurt him so bad, it makes me shake with the need to do something violent."

"Robert, he may be a bad person, but don't forget he has three children. They don't deserve to suffer for what their father did." 

That night was the first time Laurel and I were brutally honest with each other. We were soon holding each other, crying about how badly we'd hurt each other. She tried to get me to go to bed, but I couldn't. I told her I still had the vision inside my head, of Doug Hebert's bare ass and his cock pounding into her. 

When I built the house, we added a study, which was really my company office. I moved a couple of things in the study and pulled down the Murphy bed. Laurel helped me put sheets on the bed because we agreed we needed some time apart, but neither of us wanted to be very far from the other. We knew we had some healing to do. We also knew the kids would quickly learn something was wrong. We both wanted to be there to let them know things would get better.

* * * *

The next morning, when we had both had a chance to calm down. We waited until the kids were involved in doing other things, and Laurel and I went out to sit on the back patio. I told her I wanted to talk, but I wanted it to be a real discussion. I didn't want either one of us to get so upset that we started arguing or placing blame for anything either of us had done.

"Laurel. I love you. I don't think I've ever thought about how much I love you. I'm not even sure I even understood what love is."

"I love you, too, Robert." She looked down at her fingers that were twisting around each other on her lap. "When Mother heard about what ... about Carol, she asked me if I married you because I had to, or if I really did love you. I told her that of course I loved you, but I just said it to get her to quit talking about it."

She stopped for a moment, and then said, "Maybe that's when I started to question myself. That day ... in the church ... when Doug found me ... that's when I understood how much I had lost. Robert, I thought you were gone, that if you didn't follow Carol, you would find someone else and we would never be together again."

I watched her face when I said, "I had that same kind of feeling when I saw you with Doug Hebert. He's good looking, suave, and women seem to fall all over themselves to do things for him."

"Yeah," Laurel agreed. "I think part of that is because he has a position of power, which he uses to attract women."

"God damn!" I exclaimed, and then apologized to Laurel. "Sorry." I took a deep breath. "I can't blame all of it on him. It's my fault too. I can lie to myself and say what Carol and I had was just sex. I can even let myself believe that Doug seduced you, but I know both of those reasons won't hold water. What I did was wrong. What you did was wrong. Now, we need to do something that's right, for us, only for us." 

"Can we ... I mean, can we fix it, repair the damage ... make us like we used to be."

"I want to repair the damage, but I'd like to make us better than we used to be." 

Laurel smiled, but looked a little frightened when I said, "I'm going to sleep in the study for a few nights, and then I gotta go see my dad." 

"Your dad?"

It was a little difficult for me to tell Laurel that my dad wasn't my father. She gasped when I admitted that I'd known for a long time. She asked why I hadn't told her about it, but I just couldn't do that to him. I explained that if he could live with my mother, and continue to love her for more than thirty years after his discovery that she had cheated, and live every day with the impact of that cheating, me, I needed his advice. He was a good man and I needed some of his goodness, not the artificial religious tripe of a man I felt was responsible for trying to separate Laurel from me.

* * * *

I called Dad and told him I needed to come see him. I know he was curious, but he just said, "Come on." The Easter weekend I'd spent with him wasn't the best shining example of the man he had raised me to be. He told me that weekend that he wouldn't tell Laurel, but he wouldn't lie to her if she asked.

Dad was always a fun drunk. The solemn, tough guy, would turn into a tender-hearted, affectionate man, full of laughter and story-telling. He could drink a beer or two then go to bed and sleep like a log. On rare occasions, he could drink enough beer to entertain a roomful of other boisterous drunks and continue to drink until most of them had passed out. However, there was also a point in his evening of drinking when he would usually turn philosophical. I'd heard more real truths from him and comments on his observations of his fellow man during those evenings, than I'd ever heard from the pulpit of a church.

In the six hours it took me to drive to see Dad, I did a lot of thinking. I've always had some pride in being a silver-tongued devil. I might not be a big guy, physically, but I could pretty easily talk my way out of, or into, trouble. The closer I got to my destination, the more I realized I had to be absolutely truthful with Dad. I had to let it all hang out and not hold anything back. He'd know if I did and he would gauge his responses to what I told him. 

Dad's girlfriend didn't drink and he seldom had more than two or three beers. But I drove up to his house that afternoon with an ice chest in the back of my truck. It was filled with two cases of cold beer.

"Hey Dad, you want a beer?" I asked after I'd hugged him and greeted the woman who had finally made him into a happy man.

"Hell, yeah," he said. 

I watched Betty grin and walk back in the house. She might appear with a snack or two over the next few hours, but otherwise, she left us in the back yard, under the shade of a tree, with the ice chest between us.

As we drank the first few beers, we talked about my new house and a few things he was doing around Betty's house. The next few beers lasted as long as it took me to tell him all the news from home, things my children were doing, and some of the small town gossip. It was probably about the time we got to beer number nine when I admitted I'd seen his service record and knew he wasn't my real father.

"I gotta know what you thought when you learned she was pregnant and you weren't the father."

"Well-l-l," He drawled. "Your mamma wrote me a letter and said she'd avoided telling me she was pregnant 'cause she didn't want me to worry."

I think I spit a mouthful of beer into the grass when he said, "Just like Laurel, she was a virgin, ya know."

Oh shit, I wasn't aware he knew that about Laurel and me.

"We only had about a week together before I had to go back to Nam. She'd been protected, didn't know nothing about men, and just let some guy tease her 'til it was too late."

"Did you ask her who it was?"

"Nope, didn't care. She was mine, and whatever she did, I'd accept. 'Course ya know, we was doing all this by letters, which took a while."

"You never found out?"

"Nope. When I got home, she had a great big belly and wouldn't hardly let me touch her. Then it was the last six weeks of her pregnancy when we couldn't have sex. And then after you were born it was another six weeks before we could have sex."

"You're talking about almost four months?"

"'Bout that, yeah. But ya know, we sort of learned to like each other during that time."

"I may need to do that," I wondered.

"Did you tell her, or did some asshole spill the beans." Dad didn't pull any punches when he asked about my affair with Carol.

"I told her, but she already knew."

"She's something special, Robert. If Laurel can accept what you did, don't you ever let her think you aren't grateful as hell."

"That's the problem I have, now. I'm afraid I didn't let her know how much she meant to me."

"Ah son, I'm sorry," Dad sounded so hurt. Just hearing him call me his son made my chest hurt.

I told him about Brother Hebert and he made a few choice comments, some of which were things I'd thought and may have uttered to myself more than once.

"Ya know, that asshole ain't your problem. You are your problem."

"I am so angry." I'd felt it, but hadn't admitted it to myself in so many words.

"Good," Dad nodded. "Go kill him and turn his kids into orphans. You'll go to prison and put your wife and children on welfare."

"I wouldn't go that far."

"Okay, so beat him up. He ain't so tough. Show people you protect your own. Is he going to fight back and leave you a cripple?"

"I look like a wimp if I don't do something."

"Well, you're a smart man. You might be a little bit of an asshole yourself, sometimes. Why don't you forget about you and take care of those who are important, Laurel, and your children."

I thought about what he said and then I leaned back in my chair when he suggested, "Instead of just being a married man, why don't you be a husband? You think about what that means."

"I don't want to leave her."

"Okay, don't leave her. Stay there and learn to like her. Somewhere along the way that liking will become a nice comfortable love. Maybe she needs to know you want more from her than a weekly fuck."

I don't think I'd ever heard my father say that word. But he didn't stop there. He laughed at me as he teased, "Betcha cain't do it. You couldn't keep your pecker in your pocket when you was sixteen. You couldn't keep it in your pocket when Carol teased you. Betcha cain't do it now either."

"Four months, you think?"

"Nah, make it a challenge. Take that stiff dick you got between your legs and put it away for six months. That's when you'll know you're a man, not just a randy goat looking for a wet pussy."

He had some more advice for me, but the more beer he drank he started telling stories of when my brothers and I were young. He eventually told about some things he and his brother had done when they were young. Dad's tolerance for beer was a lot better than mine was. I sort of stopped listening or expecting any more pearls of wisdom. 

Eventually we helped each other to bed, or at least that's where I was the next morning. Dad and I had a few more discussions that weekend, but they were short, good suggestions, but short. He used his gruff voice in a take it or leave it attitude, letting me know it was my turn to do the thinking. I had what I came for, a reason to stay with my wife and a way to do it that would make what we had stronger than it had been before.

In those same six hours it took me to drive home, I had an epiphany. I'd always heard about seeing the truth and how it can come to you so suddenly it takes your breath away. It is a clearness of thought in your mind, so dramatic that it startles you. I had one of those moments. It hit me so hard I had to pull over to the side of the highway. Then I started crying, not simply tears running down my cheeks, I was sobbing, sobbing so hard my shoulders shook, and my chest hurt.

There had been so many instances when I had been self-delusional. I told my self that I'd finally fallen in love with my wife. That was bullshit. I'd always loved her. I was just selfish enough to want to play around on her without accepting that there were consequences to my actions. I'd tried to convince myself that Brother Hebert and Laurel were the ones at fault for what they did. That was just another load of bullshit. All the changes I'd been congratulating myself for making in my life were window dressing. It was time for me to grow up.

If I had been paying attention to my wife and my family, she would never have been susceptible to that asshole, and I'd never have looked at another woman. I knew that in the months to come I'd see other instances when I had not been the man I wanted people to see. I had some growing to do and I just hoped Laurel would stay with me long enough to become the man I wanted her to love.

* * * *

"A month?" Laurel was interested in my visit with my dad. She'd always liked him. He was gruff sometimes, but much easier to talk to than her father.

"That's what I suggested, but he said maybe it should be longer."

"Longer?"

"Yeah, until we feel good about being with each other and better about being us." I laughed and shrugged my shoulders. I didn't know how to explain it, but it felt like that's what we needed to do.

"But at least you aren't going to leave?"

"No, I want to be here, with you, and with the kids. I love you, I'm in love with you, but maybe we need to learn a few things. This is the best way I can think of doing it."

"Oh, good. So, how long did your dad suggest we take before we sleep in the same bed?" She blushed when she asked the question. Talking about sex, in the daytime, was embarrassing for her, but that was part of what we were going to do for the next six months.

"Six months!" Laurel's eyes got big and she swallowed hard.

"Yeah, we're going to have a long courtship."

* * * *

For the first month I slept in the office, I vacillated between just letting Doug Hebert go and gathering the other husbands who'd been cuckolded by him, into some kind of group that would pay him back. I tossed and turned and then slept and had a few violent nightmares. At work, I barked at my crew, and then apologized and went back to work. 

When I couldn't take it any more, I asked two of the other husbands to meet with me. We wanted Douglas Hebert gone, but we wanted him to hurt, too. We talked about what we could do that wouldn't harm his children, but didn't like any of the suggestions for revenge, although some were pretty wild. 

One of the other men told me about another couple who had left the church and then divorced. The husband had left town, but the wife was attending another church. She was still in love with Brother Hebert and claimed she didn't know where her husband was. 

By the end of the month, Doug Hebert had given notice that he felt a calling to move to another church. The Search Committee had a different pastor come for a tryout each week at the same time Brother Hebert was trying out at a new church. My time for revenge was growing short. 

Then I got lucky. I did a bathroom remodel job at the home of the church secretary. She was quite a bit older than I was, and sort of like a Sunday School teacher to me, always trying to pass along a lesson. We began talking about my life and my family and she led me into a conversation where I admitted I'd had an affair and been caught. I hinted that Laurel had been badly hurt, but I wasn't completely convinced she had truly forgiven me. 

"Sometimes a person needs to learn why they acted in a particular way," Hilda said. "It's helpful if they have someone they trust to talk to."

"Yeah, I guess," I intentionally put myself into her trap. "But Doug Hebert is the last person Laurel or I need to ask for help. He's not much better than a fox in a henhouse."

"Oh," Hilda looked at me with her eyebrows raised as far as they would go. "I wasn't sure you knew about him and Laurel."

"HA!" I exclaimed. "If I wasn't in such a hurry to get rid of him, I'd call every church where he's been in the last month and tell them what he did to my marriage."

"He's done it before, ya know."

I guess Hilda's disclosure didn't really surprise me, but I was very curious. I continued smoothing the grout on the bathroom floor as I listened to Hilda. 

"That's part of the problem with an independent church not having an affiliation with a much larger brotherhood," she explained. "We hire and fire our own pastors. My husband was on the search committee that invited him as the pastor."

"You mean like the church is doing now?"

"Exactly," Hilda smiled that I understood. "He had a small reputation for ... let me see ... I think the expression I heard was 'dipping his wick.' It was just rumor, no proof, but the elders talked to him and watched him pretty closely for the first couple of years. His wife was still alive then."

"Then after his wife died ..." I gave Hilda an opening to fill in the blank.

"Well, he was a widower then, single, and no one heard any complaints. You know, men look for easy sex and women look for love." She giggled, and then tried to put on a straight face. "Women don't usually share themselves unless they really care for the man. Men don't have to be in love to have sex."




You Are Your Problem Ch. 02



"That's a little different from the message we hear from the pulpit. You know, the idea that people have sex only after marriage. God made it enjoyable, to encourage reproduction and the continuation of the species. But it was for marriage only and anything else was sinful. He's preached about that, you know, that there are strumpets, but they are bad, evil, sinful."

It didn't feel strange to be having this kind of a discussion with a woman who was at least thirty years older than I was. In fact, it felt good, reinforcing something I really believed, and to my regret, I had not practiced.

"So what happens if there is a complaint?" I honestly did not know why I asked that question. Perhaps it was the attitude Hilda had that she was teaching and I was the student asking for a clarification of that day's lesson.

"Oh, we'd be pretty much obligated to pass that information along to any church that inquired."

"How is that done? I mean, how would the church want someone to give that information so it could be a complaint?"

"A letter is best, but some people don't want to write about something they feel is a lapse of morals. You never know who could get hold of a letter. So two elders will listen to whatever someone wants to say, and they always suggest the person bring someone with them, you know, just to make sure everything is on the up and up."

By this time, I'd stopped spreading the grout and was sitting on the floor listening to everything Hilda said. She grinned at me, letting me know she understood I might be asking for myself, but was still treating the subject as general information.

"Let's see, I think the last time I heard of someone needing to do something like that, they called an elder and made an appointment. My Jacob called another elder and had the meeting here in the house. I left the house for a while to give everyone privacy and Jacob never discussed it with me. I never even learned who came here that night. I do know he wrote a report and asked the other elder to sign and date it. That's all I ever knew. I never knew if he mailed the report or just called someone to deliver the message."

"Hilda," I smiled at her. "If the subject ever comes up, will you please remind me that I don't ever want to be an elder."

Hilda patted me on the shoulder, "Robert, you would make a wonderful elder. Only a man who understands sin and forgiveness can teach another person how much it helps them to confess and ask to be forgiven, and then appreciate when that forgiveness is granted." 

* * * *

Laurel listened to my explanation of the lesson I'd learned from Hilda. She winced when I said, "Those stupid elders that invited him to be the pastor of our church should have known better. They knew he'd been accused of the same thing at both of the churches he'd been at before he moved here."

I couldn't help being pissed off at their lack of diligence, either. However, as much as I wanted to do something physical, I kept remembering what my dad had said. I wanted revenge. I wanted him gone and I wanted him to know I'd done it to him. However, I also wanted some kind of revenge that would make a difference, rather than leave me with a few bruised knuckles.

At first, Laurel was resistant to any kind of disclosure. I asked her how she would feel if she learned Doug Hebert had hurt another woman after he left our church. I assured her that if she agreed, I would do most of the talking and no one but the two elders would listen to what I had to say. They might want to ask her a few questions, but she didn't have to answer any that made her feel uncomfortable. I was going to confess and tell what I knew and what I saw.

I could not have asked for two more understanding men than Hilda's husband, Jacob, and the other elder, Gerald. They listened to me and never frowned about a single thing I told them. I know they shed a few tears when I described my promise to Laurel that I'd never see Carol again. They didn't say a word when I talked about how I broke that promise by spending the Easter weekend with her.

Gerald muttered something unintelligible when I told about specific times I had noticed Brother Hebert paying particular attention to Laurel, complimenting her on her clothing, and how he asked her to come over to his house to help him with his children. Both men's eyes got large and very angry and Gerald muttered, "Bastard," when I told about the afternoon that I saw Doug Hebert and my wife having sex in his bedroom. I know Laurel heard what Gerald said, but she held her head up and looked straight at both men. By that time, they understood how she had been seduced.

After I'd talked, confessed, and laid my heart at the feet of those two men, they asked Laurel if she wanted to add anything or correct anything I'd said. She shook her head and said, "I just want him stopped so he won't do it again."

* * * *

Because he had already given notice, Douglas Hebert's position as pastor of our church was terminated at the end of two months. The church had a new pastor, a young man fresh out of divinity school. He and his young wife were expecting their first child. She had a degree in music with a skill that brought young people into the church at a surprising rate. The older church members even liked his down-to-earth sermons.

Sometime around the fifth month after I moved out of our bedroom, Hilda stopped me one Sunday morning as I was leaving church. "Robert, I'm not sure who to tell, so maybe you can deliver a message for me. I think there are a couple of men who might like to know that Douglas Hebert is working as a clerk and traveling salesman for a religious publishing company."

"Really?" I was surprised. "I thought he was looking for a position as a church pastor."

"Yes, for some reason, none of the churches that invited him for a tryout ever offered to hire him. I think my husband returned about twenty telephone calls over the last few months."

I thanked Hilda, and told her that Laurel and I would miss the next Sunday's services. We had spent a few evenings talking to our new pastor and his wife, both of whom had some experience with counseling. At their suggestion, Laurel and I were going on a honeymoon. 

As high school students, we never got the chance to have a first honeymoon. I hadn't moved back to the master bedroom, but I was really looking forward to sleeping in a hotel bed with my wife. I'd teased her until she blushed and wiggled with excitement about what I was going to do to her. Although we hadn't resumed sexual relations, we had enjoyed some pretty heavy petting sessions. I could almost bring her to an orgasm by kissing her and playing with her breasts. 

Almost every week, Laurel and I had a date night. Sometimes it was just a movie, and other times it was a nice dinner. She would wear her prettiest dress and I'd marvel at the woman who was the mother of our four children. She was a pretty teen when I married her, but she was now a beautiful woman, mature, confident, and she could get my motor running by walking by me and blowing me a kiss. 

However, it was the other six nights of the week, when we did not touch, that were the most difficult. I might give her a quick kiss before I left the house in the morning or when I got home in the evening. We might occasionally hold hands, but only in public when we didn't dare go any farther. We learned to talk to each other and complain without getting angry. I learned my jealousy was my fear that I didn't have all of Laurel's attention. As soon as I understood I did have her undivided attention, I even became comfortable with her teasing other men; but there, she was careful, too. Her way of teasing was being friendly with people we had known all our lives. Just as she understood that women who stopped to talk to me were people my parents knew, or someone for whom I'd done work around their home or business.

* * * *

Now, after driving a couple of hours while I teased Laurel that she was going to enjoy what I had planned, we were finally in our hotel room. I hadn't told her any details, just that there were some things I wanted to do to give her pleasure, but I kept saying we were going to have fun. I'd treat her like a queen, wait on her hand and foot, and take her to any restaurant she wanted. She had even agreed not to wear a bra or panties in the car, but only after I assured her we were going straight to the hotel. I wasn't going to touch her in the car. I just wanted her to feel sexy. 

I gave her a few minutes to look around the room and then I started undressing. 

"Laurel," I called as she was walking out of the bathroom, taking off the short jacket she wore over her dress. It might be the middle of winter, but the top of her dress was more like a sundress with small straps going over her shoulders. "I want a blow job."

"Robert." Her voice had a little uncertainty in it. 

She wasn't comfortable with my cock in her mouth and she just couldn't bring herself to swallow, but she would play with me when she was in that kind of a mood, stroking me, or tickling my balls. However, I could not recall ever simply asking her to give me a blow job.

I wasn't going to relent, "Right now. I want a blow job and then I'm going to do the same to you."

"Why ... you've never asked ..." Laurel was still turned on from the way I had been playing with her as we rode the elevator up to our room. Luckily, we were alone in the small box as it went up to the tenth floor. I stood behind her, nuzzling her neck and squeezing her bottom while she pushed back against me. I wrapped my arms around her, squeezed her breasts, and then gently pinched her nipples. 

My cock was so hard it pointed right at her, leaning just a little to the right. It bobbed with each step I took to meet her between the wall of the bathroom and the corner of the bed. 

She started to pull her dress over her head and I caught her hands. 

"Leave it on. I want to take it off of you like I'm unwrapping a present you are giving me."

It was the middle of the day, not quite noon. That I could recall, we had seldom made love in the daytime. I could probably count those occurrences on one hand. For the first few years we were married we'd lived with my family. The small house offered very little privacy. If we could hear my parents having sex, they and my brothers had heard Laurel and me doing the same. 

By the time we moved, we were expecting our third child, and the children's bedroom was only a thin wall away from our bed. Like most young couples with small children, our days were busy with earning a livelihood and being domestic. Sex seemed to take a third place behind jobs and family.

Laurel smiled, kissed me quickly and then dropped to her knees. She put one hand around the base of my cock and grinned up at me, "This is mine, you know."

I sort of jerked, but didn't pull my cock away from her. She giggled and stroked me once. 

"When it's like this, it's mine. The rest of the time I let you piss through it, but when it's hard, it's mine." 

Her face turned very serious as she looked up at me.

"I did nothing to prevent you from taking him to visit other women, but I won't make that mistake again."

Laurel parted her lips and sucked the head of my cock inside her hot wet mouth. My knees buckled and I felt her chuckle. She pulled her head back very slowly and wiggled her tongue on the underside. My hips jiggled from the intense feeling. For what seemed like hours, I'd been so aroused that I knew I wasn't going to last long, but I didn't care. 

My beautiful wife and I seemed to finally understand that sex was just exactly what I'd told Hilda. God made sex to encourage reproduction and the continuation of the species, but the primary thing most people thought about when they imagined sex with someone they loved was that it was enjoyable, the greatest pleasure a person could imagine. 

Laurel put her hands on my ass and pushed against me, but she couldn't take more than a couple of inches of my cock inside her mouth. I didn't care. If she ever learned to take more, it would be me she learned from, which was part of joy of marriage that I'd forgotten, what we did in our private moments was done because we wanted to share something that was pleasurable. 

I warned Laurel that I was getting close and she nodded but didn't take my cock out of her mouth, she just kept moving back and forth. It was all I could do not to put my hands on her head and push my cock down her throat. I was shaking with the intensity of the feeling. She was doing this because I asked her to, rather than because it was what she wanted to do. The first blast of my semen caused her cheeks to bulge. She squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed. She quickly swallowed the final few dribbles of cum and held my cock in her mouth for a long time. 

I fell to my knees in front of her. I was crying, not huge body-shaking sobs, more like tears of joy. I held Laurel and she held me. After about a minute, I realized she was stroking my head, her hands going down the back of my head and rubbing my neck. I'd seen her do that so many times to one of our sons, when they were upset or had been hurt. It felt good to know that the last six months of self-imposed celibacy were over, but more than that, we had a deeper understanding of how important sex was, to both of us, for what we could give to the other.

I sat back on my haunches, for a moment, and then reached up to pull the straps of her sundress off her shoulders. At first, she was going to take her dress off, but I asked her to let me. 

I had to be very careful and take my time. I wanted this to last so long that Laurel would be aroused enough to lose her prim and proper attitude and beg me to fuck her. I wasn't interested in making love to my wife this first afternoon. We both needed lots of raw, uninhibited, dirty, nasty sex and I knew I had to get Laurel's level of arousal much higher than it was now.

I cupped her breasts in my hands, sliding my thumbs across her rubbery nipples. 

"These are mine, you know." I looked up at her, repeating the same thing she'd said about my hard cock. 

"You don't need them to feed our babies, so they're mine to play with."

I leaned forward and sucked a nipple into my mouth, increasing the pressure and then sucking even harder. Switching to the other nipple, I did the same. Laurel's head leaned back while she was pushing her breast into my mouth, holding the back of my head to make the stimulation even greater.

Pulling Laurel to her feet, I turned her around and lowered the zipper on her dress as I kissed my way down her back. The dress fell around her ankles and I was on my knees kissing the cheeks of her ass. She tried to move, but I wouldn't let her. I kissed down the back of one leg until I reached her knee and then started back up the other thigh, while my thumbs slid back and forth in the crease where her cheeks joined her legs. I was pushing my thumbs between her legs, getting closer and closer to the moisture I could see beginning to collect on the flushed lips right in front of my eyes. As if she knew what I wanted, Laurel moved one foot to the side and leaned forward, resting her hands on her knees, giving me access to her pussy.

The first time my tongue brushed across her clit, Laurel jerked, so I did it again. After a few times of brushing my tongue between her labia, I turned her and pushed her down onto the bed. My mouth was between her thighs before she stopped bouncing. Now I was going to feast myself as I had never done before. I had learned a lot from Carol but had never demonstrated my skills to Laurel for fear she would have known I'd learned it from another woman. 

I can be a calculating asshole when needed, and this was one of those times. I'd planned this for weeks and I was determined. There was no way for me to know if Laurel was aware of how I was positioning her body, but that wasn't my concern at the moment. My mouth and tongue were busy driving her wild. I managed to get both of her legs slung over my shoulders. I slid my hands under her thighs then up and over the tops of her legs and had my hands between her thighs, holding her pussy open for me to plunder. 

Her clit grew a little longer and harder every time I sucked on it. Then I would go back to brushing the tip of my tongue between the two lips on either side of the opening to her vagina. My tongue went in and out of her vagina a few times; then I'd suck on her clit again and flick it with the tip of my tongue. By this time, Laurel was squirming. She raised her head and shoulders to look at what I was doing and then her head slammed back on to bed as she exhaled with a whoosh of air.

Her labia were so engorged they remained separated. I took one hand and brought it down under her until I could push a finger inside her going in and out a few times then adding a second finger. Her juices were flowing, running down onto my hand, and dripping off my chin. Laurel had never been so wet. I turned my hand palm up and wiggled my fingers inside her until I found the little nubby spot. 

She started making her little sounds, "Eek, eek, yes, o-o-oh. Eek, eek, yes, o-o-oh." 

Using the tip of my finger, I brushed across that spot as I gently bit down on her clit. Laurel exploded, moisture shot out of her vagina. She wailed with a long drawn out, "E-e-e-k". Her hips bounced on the bed. She put her hands under her legs and pulled her thighs up until her knees were almost touching her shoulders. Her interior muscles clamped on my fingers and held them for a moment before the contractions began to lessen. I wiggled my fingers, sucked on her clit, and flicked it with my tongue until Laurel had another orgasm, even a little stronger than the one before. 

By the fourth orgasm, I could no longer hold her. She was wiggling all over the bed and I was trying to keep up with her movements. I finally got up on the bed on my knees and grabbed her ankles, held her legs up in the air as far apart as I dared, and slammed my cock into her. I fucked my wife. 

I slammed into her as hard as I could and felt my balls slap her with each stroke. Laurel had another orgasm where her ejaculate hit my belly, dripped off my balls, and ran down my legs. I had to move with her to stay inside. I didn't slow down. I fucked her until suddenly all my energy was gone. I slammed into her and held still as I felt the deep pain in my lower belly, then a pinch at the base of by cock as my cum jetted into her. I may have roared like the wild animal I felt at that moment. 

Laurel grabbed my shoulders and pulled me down to her chest. Both of us were panting so hard we couldn't say a word. Sweat was pouring off me. Our bodies were drenched in perspiration. Laurel's ejaculate was all over my face, my chest, and both of my thighs. When I finally had the energy to roll off her, Laurel turned her back to me and curled into a ball, pulling my arm across her. We slept, or maybe we passed out in each other's arms. A short time later, as I was waking up, I felt Laurel moving beside me. I tightened my arms around her and kissed the back of her neck.

"I need a shower, Robert," she mumbled.

I do not know why, but it seemed funny that all the years we'd been married we usually took our showers before we had sex. Today, we had sex first. "Me too. Can I take a shower with you?"

"Really?" Laurel sat up, both of her breasts bouncing as she turned to me. I couldn't resist. I leaned up, captured one nipple between my teeth and looked up at her.

"Later, tiger," Laurel joked and pushed against my forehead. 

While Laurel got the shower started, I pulled the wet bedspread off the bed and tossed it to the corner. Then I stepped into the shower behind her and pulled her against me. "You know, there are four big wet spots on that bedspread."




You Are Your Problem Ch. 02



"How did you know ... did Carol ... is that where you learned?"

"Yeah, but she wasn't like you. She only let out a little trickle. She liked being in charge, telling a man exactly what to do. Then she wanted him to get lost."

"If I ever see her, I'm going to thank her."

I was shocked. I mean, truthfully, how should a man feel, when his wife wants to thank the woman with whom her husband had an affair. 

"Are you serious?" 

"Yes," Laurel nodded. "Then I'll tell her if she ever touches you again, I'll scratch her eyes out."

Laurel and I took a long nap after our shower and then we made love. We didn't go as fast and weren't as rough as we had been earlier, but it was better. We tried to tell each other what felt good and then we'd get lost in the wonder of how good it felt to touch each other. After so many months of being careful not to touch, we were enjoying the rediscovery of a special spot that caused Laurel to break out in chills, or the little nerve Laurel found that that caused me to jerk. 

We spent that night and two more in the hotel. Several times, we left our room to find a quiet restaurant, did a little window shopping, and we went to a movie one afternoon. We called the kids a couple of times, but Dana was old enough to handle almost anything that happened around the house and Laurel's parents were only ten minutes away. For the most part, we just held each other while we slept and watched television, and we made love. Neither of us was terribly anxious for a climax, although there were certainly several of those every day. Often it was a lot of kissing, stroking, and being together. 

We were learning to be one together in our marriage. There might be a few bumps in the road ahead, but we would keep going. I knew I could be a real husband because I had a truly loving wife.

THE END