18 comments/ 21304 views/ 18 favorites The Misadventures of Mrs. Taken By: msnomer68 Jack and Janie Janie Ah, middle age, that wide, flat expanse of no man's land between young and dumb enough to do it and too damn old to care if you do it or not. The salad days, as this fragile time between old and young is sometimes called or might be called if it weren't for the simple fact that the salad aint' as fresh as it used to be. At forty-eight, older and wiser, the kids grown and out of the house, and said house paid off. You'd think I'd be having the time of my life...right? No kids. No mortgage. Nothing much to do but sit on my laurels and wait to collect my retirement...fun times and that they might be if it weren't for everything else that comes riding on the heels of the hell that is middle age. I used to love horror movies when I was a kid. Cue the creepy music and screaming virgins. Munching fistfuls of popcorn and slurping on a bladder buster sized coke I'd sit mesmerized in front of the TV for hours just waiting for the next dumb bimbo to bite it. I haven't watched a horror movie in years. I don't need to. Now days, if I want to be scared out of my wits, I simply review my 401K statements. The whole idea of wiling away my golden years on some beach sipping martinis and ogling sun bronzed gods in barely there Speedos over the rim of my bifocal sunglasses. Completely overrated. I have to admit. All things considered. I've got it pretty good. There's the Old Man...Jack, my devoted husband and the kids, Janie and Jack Junior. Ok, so we weren't very original when we named the fruits of our loins. But hey, after nine months of sharing real estate, I was just glad to have by own body back. The Old Man could have named them Tweedle-Dee and Tweele Dumb and I wouldn't have cared at the time. I have a house on a corner lot in the surreal wonderland that is suburbia. It isn't the best house in the neighborhood, but it certainly isn't the worst. My car isn't brand new, but what the hell, it's paid for. I married the man of my dreams although, sometimes if you asked I'd say, in the way people do, jokingly truthful, that some of those dreams were nightmares. All in all, I think my life is pretty full. I have my career, my husband, the kids, and most of my mind. There's the bowling league on Friday evenings, the book club every other Tuesday at seven P.M. sharp, and of course, just to keep things from getting too dull, there's my Old Man, Jack. Jack isn't a bad guy, quite the contrary really. He's great. Ok, sure he's grown a little soft around the middle and there's more gray than brown in his hair and just a little less of it these days. Back in the day though, he was something. Well, he still is something. But, beyond being the love of my life, I'm just not so sure what. We've changed over the years as people so often do. I think we've finally reached that sweet spot simply called comfortably content. You know the place I'm talking about. The comfortable place where you no longer close the bathroom door for privacy or worry about what you look like twenty-four/seven, and when you run around naked in the house, it isn't necessarily in the hopes of getting laid, but rather, because you forgot to take the clothes out of the dryer. Yeah, that kind of comfortable, that's Jack and I. Oh, there's still passion and plenty of it. It's just that sometimes, though the spirit is willing, the flesh, this middle aged flesh can't quite manage to get with the program. I used to think E and D were just letters in the alphabet and that menopause was a get out of jail free card. Think about it, no more tampons, cramps, or vicious PMS attacks? What woman wouldn't want that, right? Ha! I'd rather have periods for life than the bonus round Mother Nature threw in just for giggles. Sitting at the middle of my life, I realize that though it hasn't all been a bed of roses, but it hasn't been all bad either. Jack and I, we've come a long way from where we started out. From the studio apartment over his mom's garage and the beater car I worked all summer at the ice cream shop to buy and from the lean days of Raman noodles and bologna to these, the salad days of our middle age. The both of us were so young back then, fresh out of high school, eighteen, pregnant, and in love. In so many ways we've grown up together, Jack and I. We've evolved from the kids we were into the adults we are. Sure, there were plenty of bumps in the road to marital bliss. Working and going to college with a brand new baby at home and another on the way. It wasn't easy, but we did it. Scrimping and saving to buy our first house, the house where we raised our family and still live in, wasn't any picnic. Getting two kids through college at the same time. Somehow, we managed to pull it off. Looking back, I suppose I could have had a very different life. But, I don't regret the choices that I made. How could I when every choice I ever made kept leading me to the same place? To the place of comfortable contentment, to my family, and to him. Honestly, I wouldn't have had it any other way. Jack My wife is hot. What can I say? After thirty years of marriage and two kids she is still the sexiest woman on earth, or maybe, it's because of the thirty years of marriage and two kids that she's the sexiest woman earth. At least to me, she is. If another guy said that about my wife...well, it's not that I wouldn't necessarily disagree with him, but I'd probably beat his ass for looking at her in any other way but platonic. My Janie, she is the force that keeps the wheels on this train called life moving. Yeah, it's true. She's certainly got her fair share of quirks. But hey, she kept us fed, clothed, and the house operating as a mostly functional unit for thirty years and if that doesn't entitle a person to a certain amount of weirdness, I don't now what does. So, if she wants to bitch at me about something so insignificant as leaving one egg in the carton, forgetting to pick my dirty underwear up off the bathroom floor, or not putting down the toilet seat. That's ok. I'm good with it. And truth be told, sometimes I do all those little things that drive her bat shit nuts just because I can. I love my wife. There, I said it and I'll say it again. I love my wife. My buddies, source of inspiration and irritation that they are, chalk up the reason I don't ogle other women with the same veracity that they do to middle age. But, it simply isn't true. I don't look at other women because I'd rather look at my wife. Sure, she isn't the most beautiful woman in the world. She's a little worn around the edges and softer in places than she used to be. But, let's face it. Any woman who would voluntarily spend thirty years with a slouch of a guy like me deserves no small measure of devotion. Who am I kidding? I'm the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet to land a woman like Janie. I knew it from the first time I laid eyes on Janie she was going to be my wife someday. At eighteen and full of piss and vinegar, I sure as hell didn't expect it to happen as soon as it did though. What's a guy to do? With two sets of pissed off parents and a baby on the way, I married her and I haven't regretted one day of it since. I was a total gear head in high school. You know, one of those guys that barely skated through the three R's with passing grades but got straight A's in auto shop. Yeah, that was me. The stud in the faded Levis denim jacket, ripped up t-shirt, and a layer of grease under his fingernails. On that particular morning, I couldn't tell you what had forced me into the last place on earth I'd ever voluntarily go, the school library. There she was, looking so prim and proper with her nose buried in a book...my Janie. That was another lifetime ago and we were both very different people, back then. Janie never ended her love affair with books and as for me, I'm hardly the stud I used to be, lank and lean and so fucking cocky and arrogant. These days, the grease under my fingernails is more than just a hobby. I got a job changing oil at one of those ten-minute oil change joints to put Janie through college first. Seemed like a sure bet, and it was. Janie was always the smarter of the two of us. Although, sometimes, I question her intelligence in sticking with a guy like me. After she graduated and landed a job that paid more than minimum wage. I, by some miracle earned a degree from technical school and went into business for myself. The garage isn't much. But, it's mine. Pride in ownership and all that, yeah right. The garage pays the bills and keeps us from living in a cardboard box. It's amazing how many friends a guy who knows anything about auto mechanics mysteriously has when the engine light comes on. Let's face it. I run a business, not a charity. Anyone that pulls, pushes, or drags a car into my garage can expect a bill. That is anyone, except for my wife. For her, I'm willing to bend the rules a bit and take out my payment in trade for services rendered. Janie makes the best apple pie I've ever tasted. The arrangement works out nicely for the both of us. I get a pie and she gets her oil changed. And if she's not in the mood to bake her hard working man a pie. There's other ways she can convince me to top off her fluids, if you know what I mean. Life is good, so much better than when the two of us started out. I've got my easy chair and a big screen TV. Poker games with the guys on Wednesday nights and praise the lord, Monday night football. Together, by the grace of God, we raised two kids and managed to get them through college, paid off a mortgage, and squirreled back a little mad money for the just in case in life. I've got a beautiful wife and a reasonably decent career. I am, for the most part, captain of my own destiny, until Janie decides to steer the boat in a different direction. Janie doesn't nag. Sometimes, she gets a little hot under the collar, but that's when I think she's the most beautiful of all. When her cheeks get all flushed and she starts muttering curse words with all the fierceness a five foot-two woman can. Make love, not war that's my philosophy. And when the hurricane that is my wife's temper has passed, that's what we do. We make love, sweet, sweet love...or at least these days, we try to. Sex...not as easy as it was back in the day. Oh, the equipment is still there, but sometimes, it takes a lot of yanking on the crank to get the engine to turn over. Janie is still beautiful and looking at her gets me there every damn time. It's just that my middle-aged body sometimes needs a bit of priming to get with the program. Janine never complains. I'd like to think necessity is the mother of invention. And maybe, that's true. Because, I can sure as hell tell you, we've gotten pretty creative over the years of our marital bliss. Sometimes, I don't get my wife. I'm a guy. I wouldn't dare ask her what's going on in that pretty little head of hers when she stands in front of the full-length mirror in our bedroom and sighs as if she's lost her best friend. She blames everything on menopause. Menopause? I looked it up on the computer once...once. After twenty-eight years of running for cover once a month, what guy wouldn't thank their lucky stars for menopause? You would think women would be delirious that the PMS, cramps, and bloating, whatever that is, were over for good. BUT. NO. Sure, the girls aren't as perky as they once were, but hey, I'm not exactly the poster child for aging gracefully either. She has more bottles and tubes of goop and stuff for her face than any woman should legally own. If you were to ask me, she doesn't need a damn thing to make her look more beautiful than she already is. Like I said, I'm a guy. When she gets in those moods. Guys, you know the mood I'm talking about. When your woman counts every wrinkle and strand of gray hair and God help us, asks if we still think she's pretty. Of course, our wives are pretty, beautiful even. But, every guy knows there is no right answer to that question. Discretion is the better part of valor and like any sensible male with even the most remote sense of self-preservation. When she asks me, not that she would ever believe me even if I did answer the question, if I'm still attracted to her. I run like hell for the only place a man is safe. The garage. The kids are grown with lives of their own. That two people like use managed to raise two children into adulthood and have them grow up being reasonably sane is beyond me, but nonetheless we did. Janie and I are at the quiet place in our lives. It's a nice place, that place of comfortable companionship and occasional saucy nights between the sheets. When someone asks me if I love my wife my answer is yes. Not only yes, but hell yeah, I love my wife. We have an ordinary, happy life, and what more could anyone ask than that? . You've Got Me Tied in Knots, Babe After a long day at work it's nice to settle in for a quiet evening at home and relax. Janie was in the kitchen finishing up the dishes as I retreated to my usual after work perch on the sofa. After the last spoon was put away and the typical chatter of a long time married couple out of the way, Janie did as she always does and plopped down into her self-assigned spot on the couch. With her feet propped up on the no man's land of the empty cushion between us, the place in the center of the family unit that belongs solely to the dog, Farts, she opens up a book and starts to read. We do this every evening after work. A quick microwave supper of leftovers pulled from the freezer, a little polite conversation, and then the retreat to our corners of the sofa. Her with her nose stuck in a book and me reading CNN on the Internet. Sometimes, if Farts can muster the energy and is bored with doing his impersonation of a throw rug, he'll waddle his way onto the couch and join us. "Whadda you know, GM is going to release another electric car next year. Affordable? Yeah, right." Dead. Silence. Shrugging my shoulders, I skim through the headlines. Stopping now and then to read a particularly interesting snippet aloud, just to make sure Janie is properly caught up on current events. She flicks her eyes up from her book, pins me with a pained expression, nods as if her entire world hinges on every word I've said, and then returns to the page she was reading before I interrupted her. The Old Man, I love him but sometimes, he is so annoying. I've waded hip deep in assholes all day all the while smiling until my jaws ache. Such is the life of a customer service rep. I'm tired and I just need to retreat to recharge my batteries for a few minutes before bed. My books are my only source of relief from the drudge that is everyday life. Or, at least they would be, if Jack would stop reading the news to me. Obviously, I can read and if I wanted to know what was going on in the world, I'd read it for myself. I can't be irritated though, at least, not too much. This is just the Old Man's way of making conversation. I just wish...well, to someone who didn't know us better, from the outside looking in, we must seem pretty pathetic. There is a reason I keep the blinds closed in the daytime. My Old Man is it. He's sitting there on the couch reading CNN in his underwear as if it's the most ordinary thing in the world. And to us, it is. I try to be pleasant and understanding, as if my world hinges on the most recent fiasco to hit the headlines. Fortunately, my fantasy world is so much more interesting than anything ever posted on CNN. So, all I have to do is pretend to listen, skim the pages of whatever romance novel I happen to be reading at the time till I get to a juicy part, and nod my head as if I'm actually listening to him. Sometimes, I'd like to share something I've found in one of my books. But, there is no way I would ever, ever read one sentence to my Old Man. I've branched out recently from my usual faire of bodice ripping studs into a darker, somewhat more clandestine fantasy world. Intrigued, I picked up a copy of a book I found online. I had no idea. Hell, I had to look up some of the words used to describe some of the things the couple does in the dictionary. Blinking and trying so desperately to force my eyes up from the pages and the incredibly hot, steamy scene depicted in print, I completely ignore the Jack and keep reading. Caning and floggers? Do people really do that? Disgruntled with Janie, I stop reading CNN aloud and flip over to You tube. There's some funny shit out there in Cyber land, not that my wife could pry her eyes out of that book long enough to find out. Oh yes, this is just another part of our nightly routine. I watch you tube and she turns the pages of her book. Sure, I have ear buds, but instead of putting them on, I turn up the volume and wait for it...wait for it...annnnndddddd there it is, her annoyed stare over the rim of her glasses and the crinkle of a page turned in annoyance. I wonder what could be so interesting in those books that she reads. Judging by the cover, the book is another lame romance, just like the bazillion other books she has occupying every available inch of space in the house. I bought Janie a Kindle last year for Christmas in the hopes of preventing my man cave in the basement from becoming a library. It didn't happen. The Kindle...epic fail. Janie thanked me for the gift in that kind, polite way of hers, but stubbornly refused to so much as turn the damn thing on. She says she likes paper. Well, I like my pool table. But, the piles of books keep growing and growing and I haven't uncovered my pool table in months. I tried to bring myself to read one of her books. ONCE. I couldn't make it through the first paragraph without gagging. All that bodice ripping and the like...Hell, I don't even know what a bodice is. Besides, let's face it, not every guy can be hung like a Shetland pony and hard at the drop of a hat. I prefer reality to fiction. I just wish I knew what was in those books that were so much more interesting than CNN. Isn't real life better? I glance down at my potbelly and current wardrobe of underpants and tube socks and I think maybe it isn't. I blinked and reread the paragraph. The horizons of my meager little world were certainly getting broadened today. Not only were there things like floggers, canes, spreader bars, and handcuffs. There were people that actually liked them. Ok. I certainly hope this book wasn't based on reality. Surely, there are some things that shouldn't be put in some places or used in any context other than the use they were originally intended for. Trying desperately to curb my curiosity, the question was out of my mouth before I could stop it. "Baby, would you ever consider spanking me with a kitchen spatula...you know, for fun?" What. The. Hell? I blinked at my wife in disbelief, noticing the crimson flush spreading across her cheeks. Since when did kitchen spatulas serve any other purpose other than flipping pancakes on Saturday mornings? More importantly, how could I answer her question without getting into trouble and where in the hell did she come up with the idea of spankings with spatulas in the first place? "Um, no, the thought never crossed my mind. Why?" Janie quickly retreated behind the cover of her book and avoided my answer. She mumbled something unintelligible and turned the page in her book. I shrugged and tried to put the mental image of a kitchen spatula being used as anything other than a kitchen spatula out of my head, but it was too late. The image was firmly embedded. She continued reading and I, playing on the computer till the witching hour finally struck. Nine P.M on the dot. On the heels of a yawn and stretch, Janie announced she was going to bed. Just the same as she did every work night, bed at nine P.M. sharp. I was never one to settle in quite as quickly as Janie. Unwinding from the day simply takes me longer than it does her. Farts sauntered out of the living room on her heels. I heard the creak of the bedsprings and lumbered off the couch to complete this last ritual of our daily routine. The Misadventures of Mrs. Taken Ch. 02 The Second Story: Give It Up For Me, Babe Claire: I love my husband. There isn't anything I wouldn't do for him. Not one single thing in the world. But, with that being said. There is something I haven't quite been able to manage to do yet. Quit smoking. Yes, I admit it. I'm a smoker. I've tried everything. The patches, the gum, the pills, quitting cold turkey, hypnosis, those little e-cigarette thingies, all of it, and nothing works. The truth of it is. At the tender age of sixteen I lit up my first cigarette on a dare and I've been smoking ever since. I love smoking. To me, there is nothing better than lighting up in celebration of the end of another long, tedious day. Hell, who am I kidding? Even before my morning coffee, I'm puffing on a cigarette and impatiently waiting for my Keurig to spew out the first cup of the day. I could blame my smoking habit on big tobacco, stress, my job, on my parents, or hell, even on Foster himself, but I don't. I'm a smoker. It's my fault and my problem, and I know it. Some people view smoking as a character flaw. I wouldn't necessarily say that. I do everything a civically minded, loving wife of nineteen years, and life long member of the community should do. I bake cookies for the annual little league fund-raiser. I volunteer at the humane society. I pay my taxes, go to work everyday, and as for Foster. He has clean clothes in the dresser, a tidy well-kept house, and in my humble opinion, the best wife in the whole damn universe, or at least I would be, if it weren't for one thing, one teeny-tiny thing, I am a smoker. At forty-two years old, I've worked at the same job since I graduated from Bradley's Beauty Academy the year after high school. I've made love to one man in my entire life. And I live in the same house that I've lived in since the day I said, "I do." I guess that makes me pretty consistent in all things. There's only been one promise I've made to my husband that I've ever broken. And well, I'm even consistent about that. Everyday I promise him today is going to be the day that I'll quit smoking and it never is. Foster isn't one of those people who is an ex-smoker turned smoking Nazi. He takes my habit in stride. Of course, I've gotten banned to smoker's exile when I light up. But, even at that he wasn't mean about kicking me out of the house to indulge my habit. I've made myself a nice little smoking niche on our enclosed back porch. Even with all the deluxe accommodations of the smoking section of Woodley Avenue, that doesn't mean I don't sneak a few puffs now and then in the luxury of central heating and air conditioning when he isn't around. Foster doesn't join me in the paradise that is smoker's exile and he scowls at me when he smells it in the house, but I don't blame him. If I had suffered the hell that is quitting smoking, I wouldn't want to be around someone smoking a cigarette and thoroughly enjoying it either. Foster is two years older than me. I figure that gives me two years grace until I finally have to kick the habit. After all, he started smoking at the same age as I did and he didn't quit until last year. I can rationalize that our age difference does, anyway. The truth is that I have been planning to put the smokes down for good and to never pick them back up. Exactly the same way that he did when he came home from work one day, took the cigarette I was smoking at the kitchen table out of my fingers, crunched it out in the ashtray, and declared the house a smoke-free zone. I feel a little guilty that I don't have my husband's convictions or ironclad strength of will. The spirit is willing, especially at almost sixty dollars a carton, but the flesh is weak. I still wonder how he did it. Just put the damn things down and never picked them back up again. Oh, I've tried putting down the cigarettes about five million times. I do great at the putting them down thing. I just haven't done so well at the never picking them up again aspect of quitting. Someday though, I will quit for good and Foster agrees. It's one of the biggest guilt trips he has in his anti-smoking arsenal. One way or another, eventually, everyone quits smoking. And let's face it. The odds for a smoker to live a very, very long life are not exactly in their favor. My husband isn't a control freak, but I think that end eventuality to all smokers is why he quit. He wanted the choice of how and when. I hate the old ball and chain and no, I don't mean my husband. I mean cigarettes. I despise smelling like an ashtray and I hate the looks. Anyone who smokes knows the look I'm talking about. The glare non-smokers and ex-smokers give smokers. The look of horror and disgust, as if just because you've got a Marlboro red clutched between your fingers and you're puffing away like a dragon, that you're public enemy number one. I have about a bazillion reasons for wanting to quit smoking, but only one with enough power behind the punch to actually get me to do it. I love my husband. I love him enough to do anything for him and that includes quitting smoking and maybe tomorrow, I will. Foster My wife is the greatest. She is all that and a bag of chips, except for one small flaw. She is a smoker. Sure, I'm not one to cast stones. I lit my first cigarette as a teenager and up until last year, never looked back. Young, dumb, and full of come like all teenage boys, I operated under the mistaken belief that I was immortal. Then, I turned the big four-o, as in forty. After that, it became apparent that not only was I mortal, but that I was going to die someday. In the Never Land of equal days behind and, hopefully, ahead that is middle age, reality hit home. I was potbellied with the beginnings of a middle-aged spread and a little less hair on my head than I'd had in the glory days of my youth. I was settled down and happily married and in the rut of routine. I was getting old. Forty came and went, and then forty-one and forty-two. Life was busy then. Hell, it still is. I had been listening to the guys in the shop yuck it up all day about the joys of prostate checks and I figured maybe, I was due the gloved finger routine or something. The last time I had actually been in a doctor's office was, well, I couldn't remember how long ago it had been. Needless to say though, it had been a damn long time ago. I was never sick, so I never went. Claire is my wife, not my mom. I didn't ask her to make the appointment for me. I don't like doctors. Never have and never will. Good old Doctor Adams took one whiff of me, smelled the lingering traces of cigarette smoke on my clothes, and the lectures began. Was I a smoker? Yes. How long had I smoked? Since I was seventeen. How many packs a day did I smoke? Like every smoker, I glossed over the truth on that answer. I answered one pack a day, but it was probably more like a pack and a half or maybe, two. Then he started throwing out the facts. Did I know smoking causes cancer? You'd have to live under a rock not to know smoking causes lung cancer. Did I know smoking causes heart disease? Well, yeah, I did. But, that wasn't going to happen to me. Then he went into all the other things smoking cigarettes can cause. He ticked off a list as long as my arm, but out of that mile long list and thirty-minute, though well-meant lecture. One thing he mentioned caught my attention. Did I know smoking could cause impotence? Uh, no, I did not. I blamed my lack of stamina in the bedroom on middle age. I could get it up. Not with the same eager voracity that I had at seventeen, but wasn't that just a case of nature playing hell with me? I could keep it up once I got it going and as for long as was required, provided we didn't go at it too long. But, just like my hair, I missed the glory days of my youth in regards to my cock. I had eight inches of thick, hard as steel, one hundred percent American cock, or at least I had, back in the day. Smoking versus my pride and joy? Well, that really wasn't a contest. I pitched the damn cigarettes out of the window on the drive home and I haven't smoked one since. Claire was supportive. "Oh no, I want you to keep smoking because it's good for you," said nobody ever. I had a clean bill of health from the doctor and the determination to never smoke another cigarette as long as I lived. And without the cigarettes I was going to live a hell of a lot longer. I didn't guilt my wife into jumping on the bandwagon. I figured once I quit she'd kind of do it on her own. It hasn't quite worked out that way though. The early days weren't easy. I didn't bother with the patches and whatnot. I knew if I was going to do it and make it stick. It had to be me versus the cigarettes and I was going to win. The entire house smelled like cigarette smoke. My truck smelled like cigarette smoke. Claire smelled like cigarette smoke. If those three things combined aren't enough to make a man on the non-smoking wagon twitchy, I don't know what is. It took every bit of will I possessed not to stop off at the gas station and buy a pack. I wasn't going to do it and I didn't. I didn't give in. Instead, I did the only thing a person determined to quit smoking could. I banned Claire from the house when she lit up. She complied, begrudgingly. I tried not to be too hard on her. After all, she was a smoker and I knew exactly what that was like. I have a medicine chest full of patches and nicotine gum. The junk drawer in the kitchen has every conceivable piece and part for every e-cigarette ever made. The bank account was a hundred dollars emptier to pay for the hypnosis sessions Claire swore would break the habit. So far, nothing has worked. I love my wife. I don't hound Claire about her smoking. I just wish she would quit. I want us to grow old together and sometimes, I don't think, unless she quits smoking, it will happen. I feel better than I've felt in years. I'm proud of myself. I even took up jogging again and I've dusted off the old weight set in the garage. I'm still a little soft around the middle, but I'm getting there. I'll be the first to admit, I still, even a year later, want a cigarette. Sometimes, the urge to smoke just blindsides me. But, I have the strength and a good reason to say no. I love my wife. Maybe, it's harder for Claire than it was for me. My parents didn't smoke. Hers did. Maybe, it was because it was one hundred percent my decision to quit that made it easier for me. After all, let's be honest. I had a hell of a lot to gain by quitting smoking. Maybe, Claire simply hasn't found a good enough reason to quit yet. I know she loves me. I'd like to say that in itself is reason enough for her to drop the habit, but maybe, it isn't. I don't want her to quit smoking because she's doing it for me anyway. I want her to quit smoking because she's doing it for herself. I don't badger. I don't beg. I don't threaten or complain because Claire hasn't quit yet. I do give her the hairy eyeball when she sneaks a puff or two in the house. I spent months repainting the walls and ceilings, and fumigating every square inch of the place so that it didn't smell like a huge ashtray. I don't want my work to be for nothing. And the truth of it is. Cigarettes reek. I don't tell her how bad she smells or how awful she tastes after smoking. I figure she already knows. I want us to do things together. She tried, once, to jog with me. She made it down to the end of the road before she was hacking and wheezing. We tried taking a trip to Wisconsin. She was twitchy and grouchy the entire time because the hotel room was non-smoking and I wasn't about to let her smoke in my truck. We don't have kids and that gives us a little wiggle room with the family budget. I took all the money I had saved by not smoking and used it to buy her a leather coat for Christmas. Within a week, the coat stank like cigarettes. I want to help my wife, not hurt her feelings. I keep my thoughts about her smoking to myself for the most part. Lately, I've been doing a little research though. How can I get my wife to quit smoking? I want her to quit for her, but I also, well, I need her to quit for my own selfish reasons. I want to keep her around for a very long time and I think I've come up with a plan to help her do it. Give It Up For Me, Babe Claire: I've thought for years about opening my own hair salon. Today was one of those days when I'm glad the idea was just a thought and not something I never actually did. Mondays are slow. Actually, the whole week crawls by at a snail's pace until Friday afternoon and then it's like everyone who put of getting a haircut, perm, color job, or brow wax decides to come into the shop at the same damn time. Today, business was slower than slow, even for a Monday. I hadn't done a thing, except for polishing my nails, all day. I had already swept, mopped, and scrubbed every inch of the shop and I had three hours to go until quitting time. I don't mind making money for my boss. In fact, my boss is great. Some days, I don't even see her at all. But, I'm worried. She is retiring soon and I don't know what is going to happen to the shop or to me when she does. I don't blame her for thinking about hanging it up. She has been styling hair since the Carol Brady shag haircut was all the rave. She has frosted more hair than a bakery has cakes and maybe, it's time for her to relax and enjoy life. This is a small town. Except for the barbershop down the road, the salon is the only place where a guy can get a high and tight for the bargain price of seven dollars plus tip within a twenty-mile radius. We have a well-established clientele. I've been styling the same people's hair for the last twenty years and let's face it. None of us are getting any younger. Sometimes, I do a little business on walk in customers, but for the most part I see the same people week after week for the same damn thing. Our customer base is gradually dwindling down to a trickle and that's just depressing. Some of my weekly shampoo and sets I don't see in the shop. I have to go to the nursing home to do the usual weekly routine or what's worse, the funeral parlor for one final hairdo. I hate those calls. Hate them. I suppose, it is an honor to be requested to perform such a service. But, it's just damn creepy to slip into the backroom of Jackson's funeral parlor with my tackle box of beauty to give someone one last updo for the trip into the great beyond. Then, of course, there's Mr. Jackson. He's creepier than the idea of hot rolling a corpse's hair by a long shot. He usually weasels a free trim out of me while I'm in his backroom and doesn't bother offering a tip. Not only that, but the way he smiles and says "I'll see you soon" has me wondering in what context he means it. Is he meaning me? That he'll see me soon on that metal table in his workroom or is he just being nice and it's something he says to everybody? I told Foster under no uncertain terms to spark me up like a Texas barbecue when I die. There is no way in hell I'm letting that creepy Mr. Jackson or his even creepier son lay a finger on me. Over my dead body, and yeah, it probably will be. Considering if I want anybody besides Foster to show up for my funeral. Jackson's is the only place in town to hold such an auspicious occasion. Of course, I'll be dead, so it probably really won't matter which creepy undertaker fondles my shriveled up goods. I don't imagine I'll care. We inherited some money about a year ago and what better thing to do with an unexpected inheritance from a great aunt Foster didn't even know he had than to preplan our funerals. The whole thing is paid for right down to the last chrysanthemum. I won't be cremated. Foster couldn't stand the idea of it. But, it is kind of ironic. I can go out to the cemetery and visit my own grave, hell even tap dance on it, anytime I feel like it. I'm not afraid of death, just of creepy undertakers. It's funny that as a kid nobody ever gives a thought to death. At twenty, you're simply too busy to care, but by forty, something changes within you and you start to realize that someday, yes, you're going to die. I don't know if it'll be better to go first or if it'd be better to be left behind. I hate the idea of leaving Foster, but I hate the idea of being alone even worse. If I had a choice, I'd rather we both die at the same time, but really, who gets that lucky? The sad truth of it is that we were both born in this little town and we're going to die here. We could have left for the bright lights of the big city, like so many other people have. But, there was always something keeping us rooted to the spot. Our families. Our jobs. Money or lack of. Perhaps it was just that as much as we dreamed of leaving, neither one of us actually had the heart to pack our bags and go. We have a history here in this little nowhere town in the middle of God's country. Foster and I weren't one of those legendary 'love at first sight' couples. He was a senior and I, a sophomore when we first met. I mean, really met, in high school. Of course, we had been going to school together our entire lives, but our paths didn't cross until that one summer. I was a cute little thing and I mean cute. I had big brown eyes and strawberry blonde curls and my God, my waist was so tiny. These days, I couldn't fit my big toe into my color guard skirt. Believe me, I pulled my old marching band uniform out of the box of high school mementos stashed in the basement and tried. I bawled like a baby and swore off bonbons for the rest of my natural life. At the time, not really realizing how much my body had changed. I thought it would be fun to pull my old band uniform out of the mothballs and wear it to my twentieth high school reunion. It wasn't happening. There was no way my size sixteen butt was going to squeeze into a size six skirt. I tried. I really tried, but spanx could only do so much to hold the bounty that is me in place. I tried not to get too depressed about it. Foster sure as hell wasn't squeezing his thirty-eight inch waist into his size twenty-nine, thirty-four marching band pants either. Foster was a sight in the day though. Back then everyone called him Foster Grant. You know, like the sunglasses. Damn, did the boy have the sunglasses back then or what? Foster never went anywhere without a pair of shades. Even at night, he would wear a pair of those huge gold-framed sunglasses with the super dark lenses tucked into the open top buttonhole of his polo shirt. I hated him. All the girls hated him. Well, we didn't hate him. We all wanted to be his one and only and therefore, out of a sense of spurned teenaged girl loyalty we had to rally up and hate him on a united front. Foster was one of those aloof guys with plenty of attitude and way too cool to consider dating a high school girl, let alone a meager sophomore like me. I don't know how I finally caught his eye. Well, I do know, but the story is too humiliating. Even now, twenty-two years later, it still embarrasses me. It was the summer before his senior year. I'd like to say by then he had mellowed out a bit, but he hadn't. He was still just as cocky and arrogant as ever, maybe more so since he was graduating that year. God, he was so beautiful though. Tall, lanky, and lean with his feathered brown hair faded a soft golden blond from the sun. He was one of the boys that actually had to shave and that summer he had sprouted the beginnings of a scraggily goatee. All I had to do was look at him and my mouth would get dry and my knees started to knock. Foster, like all the other boys, had gotten a summer job detasseling corn. Corn detasseling is an awful job just this side of hell consisting of spending all day roasting in the heat in the middle of a cornfield cutting tassels off corn stalks. And the only way a boy in a rural town could earn a little extra spending money. Not even the host of the show Dirty Jobs would be crazy enough to spend just one afternoon detassling corn in the middle of an Indiana summer. The Misadventures of Mrs. Taken Ch. 02 I didn't have it much better than Foster for my first summer job. I graded eggs for the local chicken farm. It paid, well, chicken shit, but at the time earning two bucks an hour was big money. His skin was tanned a perfect golden brown from being in the sun all day. Foster had great biceps and the arms of the brand new polo shirts he had bought with his summer earnings strained from the bulk. Foster played the bass drum. Every member of the band sweated, a lot, in the late summer heat as we practiced our routines over and over again. Everyone sweated except for Foster, looking so cool with that big monster of a bass drum strapped to his chest as he glared at the sweating lot of the marching band and flag corps from behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses. I was a flag girl and content to strut my stuff in a cute little short outfit. Daisy Dukes and belly shirts weren't allowed on school grounds, but it didn't matter. As flag toting members of the color guard it was our civic duty to push the envelope of the dress code as far as we could. It was at least nine thousand degrees and humid as the inside of a clothes dryer that summer day. The big competition, THE COMPETITION of the season was just around the corner. The flag corps had peddled candy bars, washed cars, and practically sold our souls to earn the money for our little Podunk town high school band to enter the contest. We were going to do it, compete against the big city bands with their fancy light up signs and sequined costumes, and we were going to kick ass. Being in the color guard isn't all glitz and glam. It's dangerous and hard work. Everyone thinks all a flag girl has to do is look pretty and twirl a flag. Miss your mark and see what kind of hell you get from your dance coach. Drop a flag or worse, one of those wooden rifles you're supposed to toss into the air and hopefully catch, and someone could end up with a concussion. Each and every one of us had at least one or two splinted fingers from getting thwacked with the practice rifles. We were bruised from getting thumped with the flags, sunburned from the hours of practicing on the football field all day, and chewed up with mosquito bites from staying out there till after dark. The day before the big competition I was so focused on learning a sudden change to my dance routine that I didn't notice the crater in the football field. I think I was too worried about bonking the clarinet section in the head with my flag to care about some silly hole. Trust comes hard for teenagers and the woodwind section trusted us with their lives, or at least it seemed that way at the time. The idea was a good one. The flutes, clarinets, and saxophones would duck and we would throw our flags over their heads in time with the music. It wouldn't have mattered if I had been positioned at the twenty or the thirty-yard line, catching the flag was the important thing. But, I was at the fifty-yard line, dead center in the middle of the action, and my dance partner, Shawna, was a bit slow on the uptake. The band director had chosen a tribute to Scotland as the theme and I was also worried about my short little kilt riding up to flash the world my butt. We were in full dress rehearsal and even Foster had lost the sunglasses and donned a red and black plaid tam with a fuzzy ball on the top. The band was performing for the town. Proving that all those candy bars and car washes they had bought had gone for a good cause. I was clan Campbell and there wasn't even a drop of Scottish blood in my ancestry, or so my parents claimed. I would have rather have worn some other colors, but, the dance coach thought the tartan, the red and black, looked good on me. Shaking in my white knee high drum majorette boots, I was nervous enough without the entire town watching me. I was worried about giving the freshman clarinet player staring at me wide eyed and terrified a concussion with my flag. The drummers were on the fifty-yard line and Foster was standing right in front of me, smirking at me like he knew, he just knew, I was going to brain that clarinet player with my flag. As it turned out, I didn't brain the clarinet player and my partner, for once, was right on her mark. I caught my flag and with the band playing Red is the Rose and me stepping higher and twirling faster, and beaming with pride at the applause from the crowd that I didn't see the hole in the field and well, you can guess what happened. I tripped and fell flat on my face at Foster's feet. Foster was a trooper and dedicated to the cause. I'd like to think he was marching backwards and didn't see me and that was why he stepped on me with his huge size thirteen shoe. But, I don't, even though he claims he really didn't see me, think that was the case. He smashed my hand flat as a pancake and kept right on marching off the field with the rest of the band. Afterwards, he didn't even bother to ask if I was ok. I was humiliated. I had fallen flat on my face with the entire town watching me roll around like a cockroach stuck on its back on the fifty-yard line. I didn't even worry about flashing my butt to God and everybody. I was too busy trying not to bawl like a baby. My life as a teenager at Washington County Consolidated Schools was over. Luckily, nothing was broken with exception of my fragile teenage ego, which had been shattered to dust. My hand was swollen huge as a balloon and I wasn't going to the competition. The heck I wasn't. I had badgered everyone on the block for weeks selling those candy bars. I had spent every Saturday for the past month standing on the corner of Main Street flashing neon signs advertising the car wash. Damn it, I had earned the right to go and I was going no matter what. My dance coach could duct tape the flag to my hand for all I cared. I had to be there. I was a chesty girl. At sixteen, I boasted a DD-cup. You would think being so well endowed would have made me popular with the boys. It didn't. I think they were a little intimidated by the size of my boobs. I know I certainly was. The band director caved to my badgering found something for me to do. It was more of an excuse for me to go to the competition than something that needed done and a handy way to get me out of his face. He handed me a pair of cymbals and ushered me to Foster for a little last minute instruction before we boarded the busses for the long ride into the city. I hadn't gotten over the fact that Foster had smashed my hand to smithereens and he was supposed to teach me my new routine? I wanted to shout at the unfairness of it, but if I wanted to go to the competition, crashing those cymbals together was how I was going to do it. The wool band uniform was hot and itchy. I wanted my cute plaid kilt and knee high white boots. The tam was too big for my head and kept sliding down over my eyes. Foster glared at me over the top of his sunglasses and dared me to complain. I sucked it up and kept my mouth shut all the while wondering when he was going to apologize for basically ruining my life. He didn't bother with an apology. He wasn't even nice to me. He tapped out a rhythm on a snare drum and toed me in the shin with the tip of his sneaker when it was time for me to crash the cymbals together. I was so nervous. Here I was standing within five feet of one of the coolest boys in school. He was, begrudgingly, paying attention to me. All I had to do was bang those cymbals together when the beat sped up and I couldn't even get that right. Determined to wow him with my discerning ear and tapping off the beat with my toe, I crashed the cymbals together. The only problem was that I didn't realize my boobs were in the way. There my DD-cups were smashed between two cymbals and I had no way out of my humiliation. I had embarrassed myself in front of the coolest guy in the entire history of marching bands. His jaw dropped and I could see it. Foster trying to hold back a fit of laughter over my embarrassment. Sniffling and red faced, I started tearing up. I wanted to disappear into a crack in the sidewalk and never see the light of day again. Seeing how shamed I was, Foster showed his other side. The side of himself he certainly had never showed the drum line or any teenaged girl. He took the cymbals out of my trembling hands and mopped up my damp cheeks with the hem of his polo shirt. Then he did something that completely shocked me. In front of the entire marching band, drum line included, he kissed me and ever since that first kiss, my very first kiss from a boy, through all the thousand times we broke up and made up again. We were an item. Foster: In high school I was an ass. I wore these big ridiculous sunglasses and earned myself the nickname Foster Grant. I was arrogant and completely way off base about so many things. Not that anyone could have told me that at the time. I was simply too full of myself to hear anything anybody had to say that was slightly less than flattering. I was popular with the girls at school. The problem was, at seventeen, I didn't want a high school girl. I was gunning for the college girl scene and so far out of my league chasing after post-adolescent skirts that I truly was an embarrassment to high school boys everywhere. To my friends, I was a god. I had the looks. I was on the drum line. I was fit and trim and completely unflappable. I was genuinely my own biggest fan and master of my little corner of the high school universe. I was going to be a drummer for some big time rock band by the time I was twenty-one. I just knew it. High school was just some sort of purgatory where I wasted my time until the opportunity that would spring me out of the nowhere town in which I grew up came my way. High school girls were a pain in the ass. Always worried about this or that and all the drama...what guy in his right mind wanted to deal with it? I sure as hell didn't. I was a senior and the underclassmen, or should I say underclass girls, flocked around me like hens around a bantam rooster. I didn't bother with them and graciously allowed the poor things be contented with basking in my glory. I knew all the girls simply as a side effect of growing up in a small town. All of our parents grew up together, and so had all of us and, with the exception of me and my upcoming escape from the pits of Nowhere' Ville hell, our kids were doomed to follow. I had to admit. Some of the girls were a little difficult to ignore. For example, the rare few that didn't seem to notice I was even alive. Claire and her posse of flag waving color guard groupies were on my radar simply because of the fact that I wasn't on theirs. I'd shoot them a smile, my sexiest, rock star smile and Claire and her gaggle of followers would giggle under their breath, snub their noses at me, and walk away. I had been paling around with the kids in town since I could peddle a bicycle and I had never noticed Claire before. She was a girl and I was a boy and during that tender time of innocence before the hormones kick in what could we possibly have had in common? Then one summer at the start of my senior year of high school, I noticed her. Boy, did I notice her. My future wife was hot back in the day. She had all this hair, huge hair, shining red-gold like a halo in the sunlight. Her eyes were big and round, brown, like chocolate drops. She was curvy and cute, so damned cute and she would not give me the time of day. All the guys talked about her when there wasn't a girl within earshot to overhear the things teenage boys say about girls when they're not around. Claire was one of the rare few girls with boobs and I don't mean the kind of boobs that come from pushup bras. I mean boobs, real boobs. Band practice was one of those things I tolerated simply because there wasn't anything better to do between the end of corn detassling season and when the school year began. I wanted a letter jacket and not really being a jock, marching band was one of the only ways to earn one. I didn't make the time to talk to girls. Girls were supposed to talk to me. Yeah, right like that ever happened in the social boundaries of high school. The whole thing was an act, a brave front, my cool aloofness around the fairer sex, and a way to hide the truth about my shyness. Girls were a mystery. The college girls I tried to hang with treated me like I was a lost puppy. I was cute and I had earned many a pat on the head and a tender peck on the cheek. But, they figured I'd wander off eventually and leave them alone. The high school girls, girls like Claire, treated me like I was a rabid dog and just as likely to bite them as to lick their hand. The marching band had been practicing their routine most of the summer. Spending the hottest days of late July roasting in a cornfield detassling corn and earning a whole seven dollars an hour for my trouble, I was used to the heat. Looking back, I was an idiot and a fool and I really wasn't all that good at playing the drums. It was more to the fact that nobody else wanted to traipse around with a bass drum strapped to their chest in the middle of summer that earned me a spot on the drum line. But, what did I care? I had my sunglasses and my coveted place in the percussion session. I was going to get my high school letter, and well, to be quite honest, Claire had the cutest ass I had ever seen. Her shorts were so tiny and short, and I got a bird's eye view of that fine, curvy butt every damn day. I used to pray she would drop her practice flag. That way I'd get to watch her bend over and pick the thing up off the ground. I hadn't seen the outfits the dance coach had picked out for the color guard until the afternoon before the big contest. The band was strutting their stuff and the whole town had come out to watch. There she was, wearing the shortest skirt I had ever had the privilege of seeing. I didn't know shit about women's clothing and I still don't. I wouldn't know a pleat from a wrinkle or plaid from paisley, but that skirt looked damned fine on Claire. If I hadn't already been praying for her to drop her flag. I sure as hell was now. I was pounding my heart out on the bass drum. Concentrating on keeping in step with the rest of the band and out of the way of the clarinet section as the flags were tossed over their heads. Claire nailed it and the crowd went nuts. Sure, it was just a simple toss of a flag over some poor potentially hapless victim's head, but for Nowhere' Ville, Indiana it was big time entertainment. I was focused and jazzed by the crowd. I didn't notice when Claire tripped and fell on the fifty-yard line and I certainly didn't hear her screeches over the noise from the trumpet section when I stepped on her hand and smashed her fingers underneath the heel of my size thirteen Converse. I swear. I didn't. She was out of the competition, or would have been if I hadn't convinced the band director to come up with some way to include her. After all, it was my fault she couldn't go. Well, it wasn't my fault, but I felt guilty anyway. I hadn't planned on being the one to teach her when to crash the cymbals. I certainly hadn't warned Claire that her boobs might get caught in the crossfire and I really, really didn't intend to laugh when they had. I had never seen a girl cry before. I was helpless in the downpour of her tears. Speechless and tongue tied, I didn't know what to say so I did the only thing I could. I kissed her. Sure, we've had our fair share of fights over the years. Everybody does. We've broken up and made up at least a dozen times. Once, the D word nobody wants to say or hear even came up, but by some miracle we worked it out. We've changed a lot since the heyday of our youth. My parents, my brothers and sisters, her parents, and hell, even our best friends back in the day predicted that we wouldn't survive the first five years of married life. We were too young to get married and looking back now, at the fresh out of high school eighteen year old she was and the associate degreed college graduate of twenty I was, we were. We matured together. Through all the ups and downs we always knew that at the end of the day we were going to climb into the bed and kiss each other goodnight. I think that, the simple act of a goodnight kiss night after night has been the one thing that kept us together. Claire knew no matter how mad I was at her, and God knows I've been plenty mad at her from time to time, that I was going to kiss he goodnight. I'm no angel either. Just like the old married couple we are. We still spat at one another. But, there's always bedtime to look forward to when we kiss and make up. College pre-requisite classes are a blessing in disguise. Psychology 101 was required for my associate degree in heating and air conditioning. At the time, I hated the class. But, now, on the verge of putting my plan into action, I'm damn glad I actually paid attention. My idea is a simple one. Operant conditioning. Maybe, B.F. Skinner was onto something. Instead of demanding that Claire quit smoking, I'm going to apply a little psychology. Positive reinforcement for good behavior and negative reinforcement for bad, it just might work. Claire is a die-hard smoker. Even if I still smoked there is no way I'd go out on the back porch in my robe and slippers on a frosty winter's morning to light up. Claire doesn't like it, but she complies with my demands. She tries to sneak a puff or two in the house now and then. Sometimes, the house smells like smoke because she brings the smell in with her on her clothes. The smell of stale cigarette smoke drives me nuts. I'm not her daddy and turning my wife over my knee for a spanking doesn't really hold any appeal for me. Likewise, I'd never skip the goodnight kisses that have kept us together for almost twenty years. I don't yell when I smell cigarette smoke in the bathroom. I don't scold her like she's a child. I simply remind her that we have an agreement and she broke it. Usually, that's enough to send her blushing and scuffling for the air freshener. I'm going to give Claire an incentive to quit smoking. One she can't refuse. It might kill me in the process or at the very least give me a hell of a case of blue balls. If the house smells like smoke, if I smell it on her clothes or hair, she gets no loving from me. I can hold out. Whether or not I can hold out as long as Claire can, I'm not sure. Does she love me more than she loves smoking? Surely, I can give her more pleasure than a cigarette. I'm damn sure willing to try to at any rate. As a reformed smoker I can assure you the first day is the worst. If I can get her to give up the cigarettes for one whole day, just one twenty-four hour period. I'm pretty sure I can prove to her that she can put them down for good. Some people might call my plan cruel. I'm not being cruel or selfish. I'm trying to save her life. I don't want my wife to die. We made our prepaid funeral arrangements last year, but I'm not in that big of a hurry to use the plots we picked out, a nice spot at the base of a huge old oak tree on top of a hill, anytime soon. We don't have any kids. Soon, my parents and Claire's parents will be buried in the older section of the cemetery. My brothers and sisters and their kids are scattered across the country. Claire and I, we've got friends here and there's definitely a sense of home and community to this place we wouldn't find anywhere else on earth. But, I don't want to hang around too long after she's gone. I could die first, I suppose. But, I wouldn't want to do that to her either. Leave her behind alone. I think the best thing we could do for each other is to milk every last second out of our lives together that we can. And yeah, maybe that makes me a selfish bastard, because I want as many days as I can get with her. The Misadventures of Mrs. Taken Ch. 02 It's Monday. Winter is a pretty busy time for the shop. Most of the people in this town patch things together until they can't any longer. They will suffer through the summer without air conditioning, but when winter hits. The calls start coming in. The Sunday at two A.M. emergency calls are the worst. I hate charging double, but it's company policy. This morning I headed out to work at five to relight a pilot light in a furnace older than God. I didn't charge the family double. I was just glad they had the sense to call me instead of blowing themselves to kingdom come by trying to relight the pilot light. Today, since I came in early, I'll get home before Claire and I have no doubt. Considering it's colder than a witch's tit in a brass bra outside. The house will smell like cigarette smoke. Oh, she'll try to cover the smell up with air freshener. It won't work. Being an ex-smoker, I've got a nose for such things. I've been plotting for weeks. Trying to come up with plenty of fun activities to divert my wife while she suffers through that first horrible day of quitting smoking. We like our sex like we like our steaks, hot, juicy, and with absolutely no frills. Nothing is better than a steak hot off the grill. Meat, just plain meat without all the crap people pile on to ruin a perfectly good cut of beef. I tried a twenty-dollar t-bone from a fancy restaurant once and ended up taking it home to feed the neighbor's dog. Blue cheese crumbles and sautéed onions and mushrooms, what a waste of my hard earned money that was. I prefer my Claire naked and having sex with her without the spice of all those bells and whistles. I would never get jealous over a piece of latex and an AA battery. With that being said, my master plan for diversion isn't really going to go over well without a little help. There's only so much sex I can have with my wife before I'm down for the count. I know Claire's body, as well as I know my own. I know what it's like to quit smoking. And I know if I'm going to get her through those first twenty-four hours as an ex-smoker. I'm going to have to get pretty creative. I'm going to tell her tonight over supper and let her decide where to take it. I hope she decides to quit smoking then and there. Sure, we have to work in the morning, but I don't mind losing a little sleep to see my wife happy, healthy, and very satisfied. I figure I'm good for about a week, maybe two, if she refuses to quit. The longest we've ever gone without sex in our entire marriage was three weeks. I certainly hope it doesn't take her that long to make up her mind to give up cigarettes for good. Claire: Finally, it's six o'clock and time to close the shop for the night. Today, I ended up with one customer, two bucks in the tip pocket of my smock, and a big fat zero on my commission sales. Not surprising for a Monday. Tuesday might faire better, but I doubt it. I could get a better job, but I cringe at the idea of working in one of those quickie haircutting salons. Foster and I do ok. We're not rich, but we make a decent living. I took a couple of college classes in photography, but plans and life sometimes are what they are. I ended up going to beauty school instead of finishing college. Occasionally, I freelance photos for weddings and such. The truth is I make more money styling hair than snapping pretty pictures. I wasted no time flipping the closed sign on the door and turning out the lights. Sometimes, I'll hang around for a five or ten minutes, just to make sure I don't get a last minute customer. But, not tonight, it's snowing and I want to get home. Nobody would brave the cold for a haircut in this kind of weather and the people who would are people I really don't want to be trapped in the shop with alone. I've been craving a cigarette since lunch. I think it's because I'm so bored. But, hey, I got a lot of reading done today. I read romance novels with the voracity that my nieces and nephews gobble up candy. I have my own collection on the bookshelves at home. But in the winter with business being slower, to curb expenses, I pop by the library and pick up a stack now and then. I'm halfway though a well dog-eared novel by one of the Bronte sisters and, damn, do the classics get me turned on. Monday nights aren't usually a night for love at home, but I think I can convince Foster to get in the mood. The car is freezing and while I wait for the windshield to defrost, I take advantage and light up. Today was the day I was going to quit smoking for good. Yeah, right. Once Foster was gone and I had the house to myself for a couple of hours I smoked two cigarettes in a row all nice and toasty warm in the comfort of my own kitchen just because I could. No doubt, Foster will smell the cigarettes I smoked beneath the exhaust fan over the stove. The man has a nose like a bloodhound. He won't gripe at me about it. He never does. I sprayed some air freshener, but he says it never covers up the smell. I think it's just him. I never smell a thing, cigarettes or otherwise. With the heaters finally blowing out something besides cold air, I smoke one more cigarette on the drive home and pop a breath mint before going into the house. The house doesn't smell like cigarette smoke to me. I don't smell like cigarette smoke either, although as Foster dips down and plants a kiss on my cheek, he tells me that I do. Tonight is leftover spaghetti night. Tomorrow might be too, if we don't eat it all. He asks me how my day went and I tell him it was the same old same old, which it was. I ask him how his day was and he tells me the same. Foster has something on his mind. I can see the wheels turning. Maybe, he is going to grouch at me for smoking in the house. But, hey, I pay half the bills. Doesn't that give me the right to smoke now and then in the comforts of my own home? "Honey," he says. He's giving me that look he gives me when I'm in trouble and I have no doubt that I am indeed in for something. I sit there with a loaded forkful of spaghetti. Cold sauce is dripping off the soggy noodles as he lays it on me. He loves me. I know that. He wants me to quit smoking. I know that too. I tell him I'm trying to quit and he pins me with a look that says he knows better. He wants to help me quit. I'm good with that, anything to join the ranks of the smoke free. But, his plan for giving me the incentive I need to quit is absurd. No sex until I quit smoking? Well, we'll have to see about that. At this point it's a contest of wills. Which one of us will cave first? Foster: I watch Claire go out onto the back porch. She is smoking and I don't mean in a smoking hot kind of way. It's more like she's fuming in a fit of outrage and the cigarette smoke circling her head in a hazy halo is secondary to her fury. She is glaring at me through the backdoor glass. She's pissed and I don't care. Well, I do care. Tonight might be the first night in almost twenty years that I spend on the couch or in that big bed sleeping alone. The expression on her face was priceless. No smoking equals sex, smoking equals no sex, and that was exactly how I phrased it to her. I could see the wheels turning. I had her cornered. Claire was so angry with me she didn't even bother with finishing her supper. I guess we're having leftover spaghetti tomorrow night too. She claimed she wanted help quitting smoking. Well, that's what I'm doing, helping her. She puts out the cigarette in an old ashtray on the ledge of the windowsill and marches into the house like a woman with hell's fury on her heels. I duck her glare of absolute outrage and get busy clearing away the supper dishes. "Fine," she hisses in my general direction. Claire pulls off her coat and drapes it over the back of a kitchen chair. Then she kicks off her shoes. She peels off her clothes in the middle of the kitchen and thrusts out her breasts, her big, beautiful breasts, to show off exactly what I won't be getting if I don't back down. It isn't going to work. I'm not going to give in. Apparently, she isn't going to either. I hear the shower kick on and wonder how big of a mistake I've made in forcing her hand. Claire loves me and I'm certain I can get back in her good graces. Eventually. Just seeing her naked is enough to have my groin kicking into action. I'd love to pull back the glass shower door and do what we do best after a fight, but I don't think I'd be welcome. Right now, I'm pretty sure she'd rather take her tweezers to my pubic hair and pluck them out one by one than admit how right I am in demanding that she quit smoking. I could have tried a softer approach, but I've already done that. I've dropped plenty of hints that fell on deaf ears. It was time to draw a line in the sand and choose a side. If Claire wouldn't willingly make the choice, I would do it for her. I would never leave my wife. Never. Not over one cigarette or a million of the damned cancer sticks. But, I how was I going to feel twenty years from now when her habit, the habit I had enabled and indulged in for so long myself, finally kills her? I went back to doing the dishes and tried to put the upcoming trials of the next few weeks out of my head. One of two things was going to happen. Either Claire was going to quit smoking or we were both going to become very horny and desperate people. I had my limits to how much I was willing to put myself through. I would never cheat on Claire. Hell, I didn't even use my palm in the privacy of the shower. I saved every bit of my loving for her. But, the two of us had the makings of a long drawn out war and even though I hadn't visited Rosie Palmer and her five sisters in years. I just might have to start. Claire: I blinked back tears of hot rage. How could Foster do this to me? He had essentially backed me into a corner and forced my hand. It was fine to plan to quit smoking soon. But, my prolonged stay of grace had worn thin and Foster had pulled out all the stops in his desperation to get me to kick the habit. I wouldn't have thought he had it in him. Apparently, I was wrong. Wiggle his cock under my nose like a carrot? I think not. Foster knew me pretty well, but he didn't know everything about me. And I was almost certain he didn't remember the toy I had hidden in the very back corner of my sock drawer. He wanted to try to put sexual sanctions on me. Well, bring it on. I had the energizer bunny on my side. I don't know why I was fighting this. Quitting smoking, it had to happen. I wanted it to happen. And if I was honest with myself, it wasn't the idea of dropping the habit for good that had me foaming at the mouth. It was more to the point that Foster had wounded my pride. I felt like that bumbling, awkward teenager falling on her ass in front of the entire town all over again. I understood what he was trying to do, but I didn't necessarily agree with my husband's tactics. Sex or cigarettes? Was there really any contest? I loved making love to Foster. He was fun, gentle, and caring in bed. Toys were ok, but there was nothing like the warm sensation of my husband inside of me. No sex toy was ever going to compare. I needed to get over myself and go apologize, but I wasn't the only one who owed an apology. Stubbornly, I cranked on the hot water and climbed under the scalding spray. So, when was I going to quit? Soon. I figured I could hold out for a little while. Right now, I was mad at Foster so the idea of never welcoming him into my bed again sounded pretty good. In the long run though, I'd never make it. The longest dry spell we had ever endured in our almost twenty years of marital bliss lasted three long and terrible weeks. We made time for each other and a romp in the sheets at least once a week. We weren't the stuff of porno movies. Our sex was pretty straightforward sex...good, but hardly entertaining from an outsider's point of view, I was certain. We weren't into the whips and handcuffs or the lotions, potions, and gadgets. We didn't need any fancy parlor tricks to get where we needed to go. We were already there and still hot for each other after all these years. How was I going to get Foster to drop this sudden sexual deep freeze? The most obvious answer was to quit smoking. There were patches in the medicine chest and an assortment of gums and lozenges. I could charge up my e-cigarette and he'd never know I was still indulging in the habit. A part of me resented that Foster had put me in this awful position. He loved me. I got that. But, he wasn't my dad and I sure as hell didn't need him pushing me into making any decisions about what I was going to do with my life. The sad truth of it was though. Whatever decisions I made directly affected him. He had every right to demand me to quit smoking because in the end it wouldn't be only me that suffered. I scrubbed my body from head to toe. I stayed in the shower letting the deep conditioning treatment on my hair soak into my scalp. When the water started to cool, I rinsed and climbed out of the shower. My skin was glowing bright red from the heat of the spray. I brushed my teeth like I was minus five minutes from going to the dentist for a checkup and even toyed with the floss. Flinging open the medicine chest and glaring at the patches, I made me decision. I could do this. I loved my husband and his hot, well, hot for a middle-aged man, body. The patches itched, which was the main reason I didn't have any luck with them. I hadn't managed to keep one on for more than ten minutes before my skin was crawling. The gum and lozenges tasted terrible and they burned the inside of my cheek. Maybe, I was a weak woman, but I didn't think I could quit smoking without a little help. I could go cold turkey. Foster had. Yeah, that was what I was going to do. Show him what I was made of and do it the hard way. I was putting the cigarettes down and never picking them up again. Determined to show him his little plan worked, I emerged from the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel. "I'm not smoking," I said. "I just gave it up." I still had the aftereffects from reading the novel running through my head. Foster was exactly what I needed. I just had to convince him to follow me into the bedroom. I cracked the edge of the towel open and let him take a peek. "Do you want to play?" Foster: I glanced up from the TV screen. The little vixen was giving me a good show of what she had underneath that teeny tiny towel. My wife's figure had changed a bit throughout the years. She was just as curvy and that butt, still a thing of beauty. I loved every damn inch of her and the thought of denying her so much as five minutes worth of pleasure had me grinding my molars in frustration. She wasn't one of those women plagued by 'headaches' to get out of loving her man. Sometimes, it took a little coaxing to get her in the mood, but I had always, well, almost always, managed to make a very convincing argument. Most of the time, she didn't even have to bother with any amount of seduction to get me hopping onto my feet and into the sack. I could be a corpse and I'd still rise to the occasion for my pretty little Claire. She was not a reformed smoker. She was a smoker on a temporary hiatus. Claire hadn't even made it an hour yet and I doubted in her current frame of mind she'd last till morning without a drag or two off a cigarette. I didn't see a patch on her arm or shoulder. I could tell she wasn't sucking on a lozenge or chewing the nicotine gum. She probably just wasn't feeling the effects of doing without yet. I wasn't going to fall for it no matter how much I wanted to drag my wife into the bedroom. Was. Not. Happening. "Maybe, tomorrow morning, Claire." "Tomorrow morning?" she asked. As determined as I was not to look at Eve standing in front of me holding the apple in her palm. I flicked my stare away from her and back to the TV. "It's only been forty minutes, Claire." She huffed, grumbling something about how it felt like forever. I heard the slamming of a dresser drawer, the rustle of the covers, and the groan of the springs as she climbed into bed. I ambled into the bedroom to kiss her goodnight. That was, if she allowed me to. She cocked her head and offered me her cheek. I considered the act as progress. Claire wasn't as mad at me as she pretended to be and my place on the right side of the bed was secure, for now. That might change in a couple of days. One thing was for certain though. It was going to be a long time before my wife thanked me for what I was trying to do for her. I pecked her on the cheek and chucked her under the chin with a forefinger, forcing her face up to meet my eyes. "I love you, Claire." Her eyes softened and her mouth curved up in a vague smile in the corners. "I love you too, babe," she said as she had said every night since we stared this ritual twenty years ago. But, I knew just as I had known on that first night and every night thereafter. She meant it. Claire I tossed and turned in the bed. I really wasn't tired and had a hard time settling down to go to sleep. I usually slipped out onto the back porch to smoke a cigarette before turning in for the night. It seemed that without a goodnight cigarette my body had missed some critical signal that it was time to call it a night. I was still sore at Foster. It wasn't that I didn't appreciate what he was trying to do. Yes, I needed to quit smoking and I had every plan to do so. He had simply pushed the illusive quit date I couldn't quite manage to determine up a bit. Foster had my best interests at heart. I know he did. But, I couldn't figure out why after him being an ex-smoker for a year and still tolerating my smoking all the while. He had decided to press the issue now. I had complied with not smoking in the house, for the most part. I actually enjoyed the fact that my house didn't smell like cigarettes. When he had repainted the ceilings and walls, I had been appreciative of his hard work. We hadn't painted since the Nineties and the mauve and country blue color scheme had grown a bit old. In the spring and fall I didn't mind my little smoking nook on our enclosed back porch at all. I enjoyed snuggling up in the old papasan chair we had rescued from the basement and reading a book while the world passed me by. In the summer, when it was hot and humid, or worse, in the winter, when I was freezing my ass off to support my habit, I resented the smoker's exile I had set up on the back porch. So, why was I fighting this? Foster was trying to make sure I lived to a ripe old age. I couldn't be angry with him for that. I should be more pissed off at myself for resisting his efforts. Maybe, in a way, I was. More often than not, I wished I had never lit that first cigarette. My parents, smokers themselves, were so disappointed in me. But, I had a companion in my little teenage rebellion. Foster. It was just the two of us against the world back then. Sneaking around stealing kisses and lighting up. Thinking we were just so damn cool and untouchable. Things were different now. Foster was an ex-smoker and he was being the heavy to garner my compliance. And it didn't help at all that he was using the one thing I enjoyed more than a cigarette against me. Sex. I'd like to say the first time Foster and I had sex it was one of those magical experiences of moonlight and violins. It wasn't. I had just turned eighteen and was embroiled in the freedom of my sudden release into the adult world. Foster was twenty and he had waited so long for me to catch up. By that time we had been dating for two years and there had been a lot of heavy petting and heated make out sessions in the backseat of his car. We had done everything, well, almost everything except for consummate our undying love for each other. I was pretty sure he was the one. Plenty of other boys had asked me to go out, but I always turned them down flat. Foster was the only boy I ever had eyes for. The head trumpet player could probably do amazing things with his lips, but he didn't hold a candle to Foster. Nobody did. Foster had already tossed out the M word here and there. To me having sex with Foster and getting married to him was something inevitable. I was young and in love and when he slipped the promise ring he had scrimped and saved forever to buy onto my finger. That night, on a blanket in the middle of a cornfield with the crickets chirping instead of violins playing, we did the deed and set the date. The Misadventures of Mrs. Taken Ch. 02 It was awful. The both of us were nervous and a little scared. Foster's hands were shaking so badly he couldn't tear open the condom's foil wrapper. We were in the middle of make out central. All the kids came out here under the cover of darkness to swap sloppy kisses. The county sheriff made random patrols up and down the gravel roads scouting for horny teenagers doing what we were about to do. We were terrified that, if the sheriff didn't catch us with our literal pants down around our ankles, our friends would. Foster was sweating like a pig and I had never, ever seen him sweat before. It was one of those muggy nights in late July where the corn is high as the sky and the humidity is so thick it creeps close to the ground. We both stank like mosquito repellant and our skin was sticky with the stuff. But, there was no way either one of us would risk our tender bits to an onslaught of mosquitoes. We didn't bother completely undressing. We didn't want to take the risk of giving the sheriff or some dopey high school kid a peep show. I was fresh out of high school and Foster was about to graduate from the HVAC program at the local vo-tech. The world was our oyster, although the pearl was a bit small. We both were still living with our parents, but Foster had big plans after he graduated. I had plenty of plans for myself too. I was going to start college in the fall. My parents wanted me to be a nurse, but I wanted to make the world a prettier place. I was going to be a photographer and live in some big city as far away from this place as I could get. Foster, of course, would be there with me. He had his degree to fall back on until he made it big in some rock band. The two of us were going to have the life of our dreams. My parents simply shook their heads when I told them what my plans were. His parents were a little more vocal and his dad landed him a job working for the heating and air conditioning repair shop in town. They all had known what we were too young and dumb at the time to realize. Just like them and their parents before them, we weren't going anywhere. We were young and in love. Our first time was awkward and embarrassing. I had worn a cute polka dotted sundress. When I had dressed for our date, I really didn't know if that night would be the night or not. But, I wanted something easy on and off, just in case it was. All Foster had to do was untie the spaghetti straps, lift up the skirt, pull off my underwear, and he had access to my important parts. My mom didn't buy me sexy panties. I guess it was too much for her to think about her only child, her baby girl, as a full-fledged woman. But, I had a summer job at the local hair salon as a shampoo girl and all around gofer. Hey, it was a step up from grading eggs for a lousy two bucks an hour so, I couldn't complain. I had taken my meager minimum wage earnings plus pocketful of tips and was wearing the sexiest nylon panties the dime store had in stock. The ground was hard beneath my back. The mosquito repellant made a great marinade for every insect in a tri-county area and I was covered in itchy welts. Foster fumbled his way underneath my bra and over the waistband of my pretty panties, covering me in sloppy kisses and panting in my face out of desperation. I was squirmy and nervous. I was fumbling too and the more I fumbled with him the more awkward he got. His body was heavy and hot, and he was squishing me beneath him. I don't imagine either one of us was very good at doing IT. He was probably not having any better of a time than I was. This was hardly the romantic stuff I read in books and nothing at all like my girlfriends said it was. At the time, with Foster dripping sweat onto my cheeks off the ends of his hair and gritting his teeth like he was in pain, I wasn't sure I ever wanted to do IT again. Sex didn't seem like it was worth all the fuss. It hurt and Foster's muttered apologies between frantic thrusts of his hips really didn't help matters much. The whole thing probably didn't last five minutes. I certainly didn't enjoy it. Not like I thought I would. Given the shocked expression on Foster's face. I didn't think he did either. He collapsed on top of me and stayed there, panting and shivering and bathing me in his sweat. I was going to spend the rest of my life celibate. I didn't ever want to do IT again and I was certain Foster would agree with me. We would get married and live our dream lives, but sex just wouldn't be part of the equation. Then, cupping my cheeks with his big palms and long fingers, his thumbs tracing a pattern from the bridge of my nose to the tips of my ears, the diamond chip in my promise ring glittering in the moonlight, and his hot, trembling lips pressed against mine. He said the words every girl needs to hear after her first time. "I love ya', babe." After getting married and settling into a daily routine, a couple looses a certain amount of shyness. I didn't bother with shutting the bathroom door when I did my business and neither did Foster. These days, I didn't raise an eyebrow when he hiked his butt off the couch and farted or reached into his boxers to readjust the boys. I no longer got embarrassed or troubled myself with the usual platitudes after belching. Sometimes, Foster would even clap me on the back and congratulate me for the sound effects. I didn't run for the bathroom to brush my teeth before he woke up and he didn't rush to put on deodorant first thing in the morning either. We took each other as we came, farts, belches, bad breath, B.O., creaking joints and all. And as for the sex, part of losing that awkward initial newly married couple's shyness made the sex better. We didn't end up celibate and I was glad for it. I won't say we hadn't had our fair share of fumbling and bumbling our way through things though. It takes a while for a couple to learn what their partner likes or doesn't like. But, after nineteen years of married life, I think we finally had figured things out. Damn, I was going to miss sex with my husband. No, I wasn't. I was going to quit smoking. I couldn't imagine not making love to Foster. I certainly didn't want anyone else in my bed. For me, it had always been him and it was always going to be him and nobody else. I didn't want to believe what my parents and everyone else over sixty had always told me. That there would come a day when our sex drives would fizzle out and the well would run dry. It couldn't be true. I wouldn't let it happen to us. I knew middle age, menopause, and erectile dysfunction wouldn't be any picnic. But, for Foster and I, we'd figure out a way around it. We were going to be fucking like bunnies until they put our wrinkled corpses into the ground and even probably after that. We were going to be wearing our wings and halos and screwing on some fluffy white cloud in heaven, if I had my way about it. Sure, sex was all about procreation. That was the basic nuts and bolts about the whole thing. But, I figure that if God had furthering the human race as his only intent behind such a wonderful thing as sex. He wouldn't have made it so much fun. If God wanted us to rut like animals, he wouldn't have given us the ability to form attachments. We wouldn't make love. We'd have sex. And well, with that being said. I was going to take full advantage of making love to my husband for as long as I could. The truth of it is. Foster is a middle-aged man and I'm hanging on to forty with both fists. Wasn't it just yesterday we were out in the middle of that cornfield making love for the very first time? It certainly seems like it was anyway. We've had plenty of false starts in the bedroom. These days, it took a little more priming of the pump to get the water flowing. But, we had always managed to get there and sometimes, the fun was in getting there. I had been thinking about making an appointment with Doc. Adams to get a prescription for viagra. Poor Foster, you'd think he had lost his best friend and I suppose in a way he had. Then the day Foster came home and announced not only had he been to the doctor, but had quit smoking, everything changed. As it turned out, Foster really didn't need the viagra. He simply needed to quit smoking to recover his spunk and past enthusiasm between the sheets. I was a happy woman and an exiled smoker, but with my man in my bed, I couldn't bring myself to regret giving up the post-coital cigarette in the comforts of my bedroom. I wondered what would happen when I gave up smokes. Would I be just as enthusiastic as Foster? Did smoking affect women as it did men and I had lost my spunk between the sheets? It was true. I didn't have the stamina for riding on top like I once had. I thought it was my weight and my reluctance to do anything remotely resembling exercise that had caused the huffing and puffing I experienced with exertion. Maybe, and yes, I didn't want to admit it, but it was more the cigarettes than my extra pounds that were responsible for my lack of endurance. I fell asleep ticking off all the possibilities that would come to life on the heels of my new smoke free lifestyle. I could ride my husband like a bucking bronco at the county fair again. I wouldn't reek like an ashtray anymore. I'd have a ton of extra cash at the end of the week. I wouldn't have to worry about forgetting my cigarettes or not being able to find a lighter. There was nothing worse than having a cigarette and no lighter or a lighter and no cigarette. But, I had a niggling kernel of doubt in the back of my mind and the thought stuck. Would I have the same conviction and determination of purpose in the morning when the withdrawals hit that I did right now? Foster I was almost proud of Claire, almost. She was curled up on her side asleep. Her face was bathed in the silvery, grayish-purple glow of pre-dawn and I could see on her face remnants of the young girl I had fallen in love with. Her features were softer now. Claire was getting the first faint traces of laugh lines around her eyes and in the corners of her mouth. I was glad I had traveled this journey called life with her and had helped to put them there. Her brow wrinkled in a frown as she dreamed. She hated the deep creases between her brows and wore her bangs long to hide them. Claire saw her wrinkles as a sign of getting old. She thought the wrinkling of her skin was ugly and unattractive. I didn't see them as such. I thought the lines, both the deep and the thin, spidery ones, added character to her face. To me, wrinkles and gray hair was a badge of courage of sorts. I didn't relish the thought of becoming an old man. But, I didn't mind it so very much with her getting old by my side. I thought she had earned each and every wrinkle on her face and she should be proud of them all. Though I did regret that I had added more than one of the worry lines creasing her forehead and the narrow space between her eyebrows. My Claire was a worrier. I didn't need to worry about one damn thing. Claire did enough of it for the both of us. I admit our futures aren't as secure as I'd like them to be. We had almost nothing in savings. Our 401K was practically non existent. The truth of it was that I didn't have a retirement plan because I didn't plan on retiring. I loved my work and I'd have to be dead not to show up day after day. We had the house and our beater cars. Sure, maybe it wasn't the life we had dreamed of in our youth. But, it was a good one. We got by ok. I didn't stay awake at night worrying about our future. I didn't want some retirement villa in Florida. I wasn't about to waste my golden years sitting on the front porch watching the world pass me by. I was going to keep right on working and living till the day I didn't and I wanted Claire right here with me through it all. I had no regrets about my life or the life I had built with Claire. Gently pressing my hand to her soft belly I let myself think about all the things that could have been instead of how they had turned out. We didn't have children. Maybe, my sperm weren't good enough swimmers or her eggs didn't do what they were supposed to do. Who knows? We didn't try to have kids, but we didn't try not to either. We figured it'd happen when it happened, or not. We hadn't even had a close call. Claire had never had a missed period. We had both agreed that neither one of us wanted to be middle-aged parents of a newborn baby. Mother Nature could sure as hell play a joke or two on people and we weren't willing to take the chance. Not at thirty-seven years old. I put the boys on the chopping block to make sure nothing like that could happen. Claire rarely mentioned it, but I knew the future worried her. Who was going to take care of us when we got old? We were going to take care of ourselves. That was my plan. I know the odds weren't in our favor. I was kind of hoping when the time came to have the good graces to simply fall over dead. I didn't want to linger on and on and on. Nobody does. But, the truth of it is very few people get that damn lucky. I didn't care if we ended up in the nursing home as long as we ended up there together and I could still crawl, hobble, or creep into her bed at night. Did I have regrets about not having kids? Sometimes. I have to admit it would have been nice to have a carbon copy of Claire or myself running around. I could imagine a little girl with her mother's strawberry blonde curls and big brown eyes or a little boy with my long feet and knobby knees. My siblings had children and by this stage in the game their children had children. If any regret I had hit home, a family visit quickly fixed the problem. After spending an afternoon with a bunch of rowdy kids I could honestly say I had not one regret about not having my own. My branch of the family tree would go on and on thanks to the dubious efforts of my brothers and sisters and that was A-ok with me. Claire had no regrets either. On that, I was pretty sure we were a united front. She liked kids. But, after being bombarded with curling irons, bows, and ribbons to transform her little nieces into princesses every time we visited them or they visited us. By the end of the day, she was over it. Both sides of our families were fertile as the Nile Valley and why the trait had skipped us was a mystery. But, it was fine by us. Kids were fun, but after borrowing a niece or nephew for an afternoon. We were damn glad to send the little tykes home and have some peace and quiet and the house to ourselves again. I thought at first Claire had slept through the night. I dipped my head to kiss her awake and realized my mistake. Her hair smelled like cigarette smoke and I knew at some point while I was asleep she had snuck out to the back porch and lit up. We had a relationship built on honesty. I didn't think she'd lie to me about smoking. It wouldn't do her any good if she did. My nose was never wrong. As an ex-smoker, I could smell cigarette smoke a mile away. The alarm was set to go off in another five minutes. Sometimes, five minutes made all the difference in the world. A man could do a lot for and to his wife in five minutes and she could put a smile on my face that would last all day. I wanted to send her off to work in a good mood and I'd like that for myself too. But, I was a man of my word and I had meant what I had said. I gritted my teeth and willed my semi-erect cock to go back to sleep. There would be no loving today. I kissed her forehead, planting my lips against all the worry lines I had unfortunately put there and said my usual, "Good morning, babe," as I nudged her awake. Claire's hand went straight to my boxers. God, how I loved the mornings she woke up amorous. But, it wasn't happening. I captured her wrist with my fingers and guided her hand away. She practically growled at me in discontent. Well, I wasn't very happy about it either. But, I was a man of principle. I had spent the first two years of our relationship taking cold showers and I could suffer through them again. I was an adult by law and I had to be careful. Claire's parents had the authority to forbid us from seeing each other. We probably would have snuck around behind their backs anyway, but I wasn't about to rock the boat. So, I did the only thing a guy with a raging case of hormones and head over heels for a girl two years younger and well under her father's thumb could do. I took a lot of cold showers and got to know my right palm very, very well. I had been too awkward and shy to do anything more than cop a feel and explore Claire's body with my fingers back in the day. We dated for two years before I finally got up the nerve to take things farther. She had finally turned eighteen and legal. I was terrified that if we did the deed and her father caught wind of it. If he found out I had defiled his teenage daughter, he would have probably come after me with his shotgun. But on her eighteenth birthday I was more than ready to seal the deal and risk a backside full of buckshot. To this day I still get that fluttery feeling in the pit of my stomach and my heart skips a beat just thinking about it. I wasn't a Romeo. I was an awkward post-teenage guy in love with the girl of my dreams. I would have crawled across broken glass on my hands and knees just for the chance to kiss her. Hell, I still would. I had it all planned out, just her and I, and a blanket under the stars. Plans don't always work out the way you want though. It was a muggy night in late July and Claire was sitting so prim and proper dressed in this little orange and white polka dotted sundress in the passenger side seat of my beat up '76 Chevy Nova. She was blushing bright red as if she knew tonight was going to be the night. Claire was a virgin and yes, I was sure about that. We had done almost every act conceivable by this point except for the deed. Most nights she left me hot and bothered. That night was no exception to the rule. We started out our date doing what couples teetering on the verge of adulthood and trapped in a small town did. We cruised the main drag and hung out with our friends at the drive through ice cream stand. After a little bit of snuggling and kissing on the hood of my car and shooting the shit with our friends, we took a drive out past the edge of town and onto the maze of gravel roads that led to the heart of make out central. I had spent every summer in these cornfields since the age of fifteen when I finally turned old enough to land a summer job detassling corn. The haze of heat and muggy fog rolling off the fields didn't faze me in the least. I had been out here at least a million times with my friends. We hung out, sat on the hoods of our cars, smoked cigarettes, drank stolen beers, and contemplated the important things in our teenage lives, which, looking back really amounted to a whole lot of nothing. Guys took girls here to make out. It was simple. You just pulled off to the side of the road and found a spot either in the woods or the middle of a cornfield. Sure, you had to be careful of the county sheriff. But, even if he did catch you, as long as you didn't smell like a brewery and your cock wasn't hanging out of your fly, I don't think he really cared. Old Mack sure as hell wasn't going to get out of his car to walk through the miles and miles of cornfields and woods to catch you in the act anyway. Mack was a good old boy and well, back in his day he had probably been out here and done the same thing himself. I had the perfect place picked out, smack dab in the middle of the field. We were going to have to walk to get to it, but that was more than fine by me. I was twenty, and adult. I could have rented a hotel room, if I had actually had more than two nickels to rub together, which I didn't. But, Claire deserved better than the backseat of my car for her first time. In the essence of being the smooth operator I thought outside under the stars was more romantic anyway. We hadn't talked about doing IT. I wasn't sure tonight was the night, but I was prepared, just in case. The Misadventures of Mrs. Taken Ch. 02 The sun had gone down and the night sky was decked out with stars and silvery moonlight, but it was still nine million degrees outside. The air was close and still, almost stifling and every bug had honed in on our spot beneath the trees. I had thought ahead and doused Claire and myself, covering every inch of us, with mosquito repellant. Claire was a good sport about the whole thing and possibly, just as eager as I was. I beat a path through the field, suffering scrapes from the sharp points of the cornstalks against my forearms. Claire was on my heels, toting the blanket I had snatched off my bed with her index finger hooked through my belt loops as she stumbled in the dark behind me. I was beginning to think she had put her faith in the wrong guy and I had gotten us lost in the cornfield when I all but fell into the clearing. I didn't dare use a flashlight to guide our path out of fear someone would see it and come to investigate. The last thing I wanted was to get caught with my bare ass in the air by the sheriff or worse, by my buddies. Mack would probably have sent us home, shamed and embarrassed, with a stern warning. I doubt he would have taken the time to arrest us for public indecency, too much paperwork. My buddies, however, would have never let us live it down and word would've eventually gotten back to Claire's dad. Even if we were consenting adults or not, I didn't think dear old dad would have minded shooting my ass full of buckshot. Sometimes, I still didn't think he'd mind it all that much. We had both explored each other before, timid touches and brushes of fingertips, and embarrassed peeks at one another. She was shy. I was shy. I had never seen her naked before, but I was quite the connoisseur of Playboy magazine, interesting articles...fine literature...yeah, right. I liked to look, end of story. But, I had never seen a real naked woman before in my life. I knew what I was supposed to do. Insert tab A into slot B and shake things up a bit, but I'd never done IT before. I had a vivid imagination and I was going to do all those things to her that I had imagined in my mind's eye. Well, all those imaginings and carefully thought out plans didn't quite work out as well in practice as they had in theory. I was a hot mess and I do mean hot. Sweat was dripping off the ends of my hair and into my eyes. Claire's skin was clammy and damp from the humidity. Our bodies stuck together. The ground was hard and the mosquitoes were relentless. I was nervous and excited all at the same time. I didn't dare take all my clothes off. I didn't try to get Claire out of that sundress either. Just in case we did get caught and had to make a run for it. I really wondered how much planning she had put into things. She wore sleek little panties underneath her dress and between lifting up her skirt and untying the spaghetti straps, I made pretty short and awkward work of getting to all her important parts. I had no idea what I was doing, absolutely no idea. Like every other teenager I had suffered the indignities of ninth grade sex-ed class. I had a rubber. I swear it took me twenty minutes to get the slippery thing out of the wrapper and another ten minutes to get it on. My hands were trembling and my heart, pounding. I was on the brink of becoming a man. I was about to have sex with the girl I loved. I was almost there and we hadn't even started yet. I tried to be careful with Claire. I knew her first time would hurt. All the guys said so. I didn't hold much stock in the things my friends had to say about anything, but I believed them about that. That was the only downside I could see to all of this. I would hurt her, but I was going to take care of my girl. I had a pocketful of napkins I had swiped from the Tastee-Freeze so things didn't get too messy. If her dad found out what we had been doing. If there was one shred of evidence. We were dead. Well, I was dead. Claire would probably be on her way to a convent or to her aunt's house in Paris, as in Paris, Illinois, not Paris, France. I cupped her cheeks and fumbled my way into the sweet center of her. Claire tensed and gasped beneath me and I was torn between my guilt over hurting her and the shock of it feeling so good, so much better than I ever imagined in my wildest dreams. I tried all the tricks I had heard about from my wiser, more experienced friends. I thought about dead puppies and old women in spandex bikinis. Nothing worked. This locomotive was rolling downhill off the tracks and there was absolutely no stopping it. With a grunt and a shout and on the wings of about a thousand whispered urgent apologies for hurting her, a whole five minutes or less after it had began, I had my very first orgasm with anyone other than myself. The whole thing seemed to take hours. Claire stared up at me with a bewildered expression on her face. I'd seen her with that same mix of confusion splayed on her features before. As if she were trying to hide her disappointment and biting back the one question no guy ever wants to hear after his first time. Ok, so it wasn't violins and roses, like all girls think it should be. We were dripping sweat and mosquito repellant, covered in bug bites, and damn close to curfew. But, I was on cloud nine and my feet weren't touching the ground anytime soon. I'd make it up to her next time and I really, really wanted there to be a next time. I'd never tell a girl I loved her if I didn't mean it no matter if it meant I was going to spend the rest of my life masturbating in the shower alone or not. I cupped her cheeks between my sweating palms and planted a big sloppy kiss on her lips and the words came tumbling out. "I love ya', babe," I'd said and I meant it. Claire surprised me. She smiled up at me and said, "I love you too." Right then and there I knew I was a gone man and I was determined to make her mine forever. At first, there were a lot of fumbling awkward couplings, in the cornfield, in the backseat of my car, and anywhere else we could find to be alone for a few minutes. We were voracious and went at it like bunnies. I'm proud to say. It did get better with practice. The first time Claire came, I was beaming with pride and practically pounding my chest like Tarzan. I love to watch my wife come. I can count the changing expressions flittering across her face as her orgasm builds. When she gets close, she nibbles her bottom lip. Her cheeks flush bright red and she purses her lips into a tight little O right before the big moment hits. Her walls clench tightly and spasm, squeezing me harder and harder, until she falls apart. The noises she makes when she comes are music to a deaf man's ears. The sighs and gasps, the throaty groans of pleasure, and the rapid intake of breaths are a symphony that only I have the honor of hearing. I love the way she tastes, the slickness of her juices coating my fingers, and her soft skin bare, warm, and naked against my body. I love her beneath me, on top of me, eye to eye with me, splayed out so ready and willing for me. I love to watch her take me into her mouth. I love to spread her wide and kiss her so deeply. I love marking her with my scent and my come. And I love the calm after the storm, the holding her and the lazy drifting off to sleep arm in arm. But, I can't give in. Even if it kills me, I can't go back on my word now. If I kiss her on the lips, I'm done. My convictions will fade to dust. Any sex is good sex, but morning sex is the best. There is no better way to face the day than to enjoy a frantic coupling and racing against the clock to get each other off before the start of the daily grind. I look forward to Sundays. Sundays are the only day of the week we don't have to rush. We can lounge around in the bed all morning and take our time going about reacquainting ourselves with each other's bodies. A random toss in the sheets during the week is nice, but Sundays are something special. We're both early risers, even on our day off together. I usually wake up first with Claire not that far behind me. My job on Sunday mornings is to get the coffee made and the cinnamon rolls in the oven while she showers and has her first cigarette of the day. After breakfast I take my shower and she cleans up the mess I made of her kitchen. And then it's love fest time. It's not all sex on Sunday mornings, although sex is a big part of what we do. We also talk and cuddle and most importantly, block out the world at least for a few hours. We've had this same routine for years. Coffee. Cinnamon rolls. Sex. The week is still young. It's only Tuesday. I'm already aching for my wife. This weekend seems like a long way off. I'd love nothing more than to roll over and bury myself deep inside of Claire this morning, just a little quickie to take the edge off and hold us over till Sunday. I can feel my convictions start to waver with the twitching of my too eager cock. But, I can't give in. Not if I want her to take me seriously. The first step of modifying bad behavior is not to reward it. Realistically, one slip up, one cigarette is not the end of the world. It's not my fault Claire started smoking. When we met, she was already sneaking a puff or two. We were young and dumb and we indulged our habit, that one common ground between the both of us, together. My only part to play in her smoking was my own smoking and that it took me so long to realize the truth. Back then smoking was the cool thing to do. Oh sure, everyone knew smoking would kill you...eventually. It was the eventually I never worried about until a year ago. Back then a sixteen year old could legally buy a pack of cigarettes and smoking was a way of making your way into the bigger, broader world of adulthood. Now days, I'm sure kids still smoke. But, it's no longer cool and that is something I'm glad for. I give Claire a peck on the lips and pat her on the ass to rouse her. She spreads her legs wide to welcome me into that sweet spot I so long to be. She knows I know that she snuck out to smoke last night. This is a test. She's testing me to see if I'm as good as my word. My body adamantly says 'no' I'm not, but my mind is made up. I grit my teeth against my burgeoning erection and steel my resolve. I remind her of the conversation we had last night and toss back the covers to get out of bed before my mind falls under the influence of my cock and all is lost. With a heavy sigh I try like hell not to notice the way Claire's nightgown has gotten twisted around her waist as she tossed and turned in her sleep. She may not be meaning to, but she's flashing me the only place on earth I want to be. Damn, do I want to be between her thighs, but I can't, no, I won't. Claire is an evil temptress, stretching and yawning herself awake. Her breasts are full and the tips ripe beneath the sheer fabric of her nightgown. Seeing those erect nipples is almost enough to make me forget my vow. It was just one cigarette. Watching her legs part to reveal her pretty pussy has me swallowing hard and my sex drive rearing up like a stallion. I want her. I want her badly. She wants me too. I can tell by the signals her body sends me. Little nuances she probably isn't even aware of. Like the way she's looking at me beneath the veil of her lashes, the way her back arches and her hips tilt toward me as if I'm a magnet and she is drawn toward me, the way she runs the tip of her tongue across her bottom lip, her pert nipples pressing against her nightgown, and the way her thighs part, subtly and somewhat covertly to welcome me home. My own body responds in kind, my cock twitching and balls tightening against my groin, my heart speeding, and my determination dwindling. I mumble something intelligible that sort of sounds like 'good morning' and shuffle off to the kitchen to get the coffee started. I don't mention the cigarette. I'm testing her too. I don't need her to confess. The deal is twenty-four hours. Even if she hadn't smoked last night, she would only be twelve hours into it. I don't know what time she snuck out, but I'm giving her benefit of the doubt. I'm starting the clock at midnight. It's a little after six. Any smoker will tell you the first cigarette of the day is the most crucial. It's the first hit of nicotine in your lungs that gets you going and sets the world to rights. I'm wondering what she'll do. If she'll march past me and head out onto the back porch or if she'll try to pull a fast one over on me and wait until I've left for work before she lights up. Maybe, she'll put on a patch and start the awful task of quitting for good. I know it won't be easy for her. It wasn't easy for me and this won't be either. I'll be right there suffering with her. I know I'm being an ass about the whole smoking thing. I feel guilty about it, but not guilty enough to give in. Claire is an adult and has every right to do whatever she wants. But, I wouldn't let her jump off a plane without a parachute. And in my way of thinking that's what her continuing to smoke is, jumping without a parachute and never knowing when she's going to hit the ground. There is nothing I wouldn't do for Claire. Nothing. And if my demanding her to quit will save her life, which it will, that's what I'm going to do. We never part ways for the day without an 'I love you' and a goodbye kiss. Claire is clutching her coffee cup like her life depends on it. I plant a kiss on her cheek and head out the door. But, before I go, I give her praise for not stepping out on the back porch for a cigarette this morning and ask her if she's going to try it today. Begrudgingly she glances toward the backdoor and nods. Maybe, she means it. Maybe, she doesn't. But, I have a feeling it's going to be a very long rest of the week and the days till Sunday are too many to count. I wonder if this Sunday will be the first one in years that we won't be snuggling under the covers. We may be making war instead of love and the thought of that leaves me cold. Claire: Foster is an ass. I am absolutely convinced my loving husband of nineteen years is the biggest asshole I have ever met. I skipped my morning cigarette and tried to content myself with just coffee instead. It was hard, almost bordering on hell. It was now noon and the shop was dead. I hadn't given in to my urge to smoke yet. I had snuck onto the back porch about two in the morning and lit up. I couldn't sleep and the tossing, turning, and counting sheep routine was getting a bit old. I thought a middle of the night cigarette would relax me enough to fall asleep. It did, till Foster woke me up at sixish hard, horny, and ready for a little quick loving. I love it when Foster wakes up like that. I enjoy foreplay as much as the next girl, but sometimes there is nothing like skipping the preamble and having your man drive it home hard and fast. Maybe, it's the thrill of racing against the clock that does it for me. Even though sometimes, I don't get to the finish line in those mad dashes against time. Morning sex is the perfect way to start the day. I love sending Foster to work with a grin on his face and knowing not only did I make his entire damn day, but I rocked his whole world. I didn't think he'd notice I had slipped out for a cigarette in the middle of the night. I was so careful, sucking on a breath mint afterwards and spritzing my nightgown down with perfume. I even sprayed some air freshener around the house before returning to bed. I should have saved myself the trouble. Foster smelled the stale smoke on me and declared the bedroom a love free zone much as he had deemed the house smoke free the year before. What was I going to do? The urge to smoke is killing me. I'm twitchy, grouchy, and nothing else is working to take my mind off of the cigarettes buried in the bottom of my massive handbag. Thankfully, in the interest of public safety, the shop is empty today. I'd hate to bite some poor customer's head off because of my bad mood. I stuck a pack of nicotine gum in my pocket before heading out the door this morning. The stuff tastes terrible and it really isn't working. I'm on my millionth piece already and I still want a cigarette. Right now, I'm tempted to say I hate Foster. I understand what he's trying to do, but I resent being treated like a child. I'm an adult and I can make up my mind about what's right or not right for me. Our relationship has always been based on honesty. Sure, I've told a few white lies along the way. Sometimes fibbing or stretching the truth a bit is a necessity for a happy home. We aren't rich and on occasion I've had to rob Peter to pay Paul. That's just the way it goes. Sometimes a wife sacrifices for her husband and we could and did live without the new winter coat I had wanted, but had told him I didn't really want to get him the hunting rifle he had wanted instead. It was worth it to see him happy. Foster has made plenty of sacrifices over the years for me too. My husband is sometimes just too good for his own good. He had quit smoking. He could have pocketed the extra cash for himself, but instead, he had bought me that coat. I think he even lied and said it was on discount. I knew better. Good leather never goes on sale and the coat set him back a pretty penny. I couldn't lie to him about quitting smoking. First of all, he'd smell it on me. Secondly, it's hard to hide that big of a chunk of change missing from the checking account every week. Thirdly and my biggest reason of all, it's immoral to lie about a thing like that. I would not lie to trick him into bed. In fact, I admired his tenacity on the subject. And in a twisted kind of way that probably only made sense to Foster. He believed he was sacrificing for me yet again. Standing here at the counter, watching the world pass me by and craving a cigarette so damn bad, I wished I had Foster's strength of will. Unfortunately, I don't. I want to smoke a cigarette, put this day behind me, and go home and fuck my husband into next week. I can't focus on anything. Not even the brain candy contemporary romance I traded in for the Bronte sisters can keep my attention today. The clock is dragging and the minute hand seems frozen in place. Today, the shop will close at six in the evening. I might call my boss and see if she'll let me close down at five instead. I swept up every loose piece of hair on the floor I can reach with the broom. Dusted and straightened the shampoo bottles and hair products on display. Folded all the bills in the till into little dress shirts out of absolute boredom. And still nothing diverts me from wanting a cigarette. Cigarette or sex, damn that's a hard choice to make right now. Any smoker will tell you when the craving hits there's almost nothing that puts it out of mind except for giving in and lighting up. A smoker will rationalize, sneak around, pout, and get down right testy if that particular itch remains unscratched for too long. I'm getting desperate. It's been hours, twelve to be exact, since I've smoked a cigarette. I've only got twelve more hours to go until I'm in the clear and released from the sexual sanctions Foster placed on me. Just twelve hours to go and I will have made it a whole day without smoking. Twelve hours isn't so very long. The hell it isn't. Right now Foster can stuff my bic and my pack of Marlboro reds where the sun doesn't shine. And I'd be more than happy to tell him that to his face if he were here. I've got four hours to go till closing time and I'm not going to survive them without at least a puff or two off a cigarette. It's only one cigarette. One. Foster won't know. I'll perfume myself up good with some of the stinky cheap stuff my boss keeps in the display case. I'll douse my hair with hairspray and brush my teeth to oblivion to hide the smell. He won't know. I won't offer to tell him, if he doesn't ask and if he does ask, I won't deny it, but I don't have to necessarily admit to it either. I'll be cool and noncommittal. Yeah, that's it, exactly what I'll do. The Misadventures of Mrs. Taken For as long as I could remember, we had done this, me, climbing under the covers and waiting patiently for the Old Man to pant a kiss goodnight on my lips to mark the end of another long, laborious day. Four more days to go till the weekend, just four more days, I could do it. Some nights, I begged to wake up and find myself fast-forwarded into the blissful days of retirement. But, then I remembered that with retirement came old age and I suddenly wasn't in such a hurry to put the next twenty years behind me. To me, it simply isn't fathomable that there might be a night when my husband wouldn't tuck me into bed. Ever since our first night together, before we were officially husband and wife, no matter what, there had always been these five minutes or so of the day that belonged solely to us. Sometimes, I read a few paragraphs in whatever book I happen to be reading before finally calling it a night. Tonight was not one of those nights. I was exhausted, embarrassed by my thoughts of the more nefarious uses for kitchen utensils, and simply ready to put out the lights and go to bed. Janie was tucked under the covers with nothing but the top of her head visible in the mountain of pillows and blankets. Sure, it was chilly outside, but she was bundled up for the Alaskan tundra instead of a typical mid-western spring night. I rolled my eyes and when she wasn't looking unplugged the electric blanket she had preset to nuclear fusion. Some men considered having sex with their wives their husbandly duty, but for me making love to my wife was a privilege. Kissing her goodnight was, although comforting and somewhat pleasant, more of a duty and simply a habit of routine and normalcy. Thirty years from now, we'd probably be doing the same thing, me tucking her in and planting a kiss on her lips before bed. It was simply, as silly as it might seem, what we did. "Goodnight, babe." I lifted my face for my kiss and received a gentle, well-meaning peck on the lips for my trouble. That was ok. My Old Man certainly didn't come close resembling the leading man in my book and as for the kitchen spatula. It was going to stay in the kitchen where it belonged. I smiled at him and I meant that smile. Getting that kiss goodnight was the highlight of my day and today I had definitely earned it. "Love you." "Love you too, babe." I closed my wife in and the dog out. Farts was a restless spirit torn between his loyalty to my wife and the refrigerator. There was no way the bulldog with his potbelly dragging the floor was ever going to choose my wife over his stomach. I would be worried an on my way to the vet if he did. Bored with nothing better to do and a little curious, I picked the book Janie had been reading up off the coffee table and skimmed a few paragraphs. I thought I would read a few sentences, just to see if I could figure out what had her so engrossed in the book. Her birthday was right around the corner and as to what to get her. I hadn't one damn clue. I was hoping the book would inspire me to come up with something monumental to give her for her birthday. I wanted something better than a dinner out and a gift card stuck in a birthday card. Jewelry was out of the question. Janie was never one of those diamonds are a girl's best friend type. I had gone the jewelry route before and spent a small fortune on a pair of earrings she wouldn't wear because she was too afraid she'd lose them. Flowers were too cliché. I supposed I could paint the living room like she had asked me to, but nah. That was a little too much like work and birthdays were supposed to be fun. I rolled my eyes and read a paragraph. So far, I didn't see what all the fuss was about. This was, as I suspected, just another sappy romance book. But, I kept reading anyway and quickly found myself lost in the pages of hardcore smut. Kitchen spatulas were only the beginning. I had never imagined such a creative use for zip ties or clothespins before. And as for a Saint Andrew's cross, I had no idea what that was before I started reading. But, I knew what one was now and in some small way wished I didn't. I scratched my head and wondered how well I really knew the woman I had been married to for the last thirty years. Was she suffering from the bored housewife syndrome or did she really think this...the things the main characters did in the book...was something she was missing out on? I really, really had every intention of going to bed before midnight. Morning was going to come awfully early and I had a brake job waiting for me at eight A.M. sharp. But, I couldn't stop reading or block out the ideas bombarding my mind. My wife. My Janie was going to get one hell of a good birthday present this year. A few taps on the keyboard and thanks to the magic of Master Card I had everything I needed. Now, I just had to figure out what to do with it. A few weeks later "What did you get me for my birthday?" I asked. We played this game every year. I'd ask Jack what he got me for my birthday and he'd pretend not to have a clue. I have to admit though there was some years when the whole thing seemed so pieced together that I didn't think he really had any idea until the day actually came. I was going to be forty-nine. This year was my last romance with my forties. I hoped like hell Jack had something special planned. He'd never, as hodge-podgy as my gifts sometimes seemed to be, disappointed me on my birthday. It was just that sometimes, a girl needed something more than a trip to the local burger joint, a kiss on the cheek, and a gift card to the Super Center make her feel special. I was having lunch with the kids today. At thirty years old, almost thirty-one, I expected the announcement from my oldest any day now. Janie had been married for five years and it was time, as much as I hated the thought of it, for me to become a grandmother. Jack was tagging along for the ride. Nothing got a son close to his mother like family obligation. He was a grad student now. More like a professional student at this point. He claimed he was still trying to find himself. I thought he needed to find a job and do something constructive with the minor fortune his father and I had shelled out for tuition. I didn't have plans to strap the kids for anything fancy for lunch. I just wanted something other than the usual burger and fries I was certain to get for supper from their dad. As a matter of fact, Jack had begged out of this little family outing. He claimed my lunch outing was more of a mother and kid thing than a husband and wife kind of thing. Maybe, he was right and I did need to spend some time alone with the kids. With Janie out of the way and the shop closed for the rest of the day, I got down to business. I had been researching the Internet for weeks to make sure I had everything just right. Now, the question was. Could I pull it off? I had two hours, thanks to the kids and the creative diversion of a lunch outing, to prepare. I had already stopped by the barbershop and gotten a quick haircut. I had showered, trimmed my beard, and even took the time to scrub the remnants of motor oil and grease out from underneath my fingernails. I got out my electric shaver, did a little man-scaping, and glared at the leather pants I had hidden way, way back in the back of the closet along with the funeral suit I hadn't been, luckily, forced to wear in years. My jeans were a size thirty-eight, but the leather pants should have been a size forty. Sucking in a breath and praying I didn't pop the button or burst the zipper, I zipped up and hoped oxygen was optional. The little pooch of my belly over the beltline really didn't scream sexy, but I hoped to keep Janie occupied enough by other things that she wouldn't notice. Janie claimed the bedroom was uninspiring. Looking at it now, dressed in skintight black leather pants and carting a box of sex paraphernalia I'd hid in the garage. I could see what she meant. The brown walls and striped curtains were nothing short of a nightmare. The bed was covered in dog hair from Farts. With no time and no clue of how to turn this room into a sex palace, I got to work. Off came the flannel sheets and the cheap comforter and on went black satin sheets and dozens of little throw pillows in every conceivable color the Super Center had to offer. I stashed away the trinkets on the nightstand and laid out a length of black satin. I was so nervous that my hands were sweating and I could barley manage to rip open the boxes containing my various and sundry implements of sex. The Internet was a well of knowledge and the best I could hope for was that I got a few things right. I had sex toys, a soft leather flogger, a fuzzy hand mitt, sweet smelling incense, a bowl of ice, candles, and of course, a brand new kitchen spatula with a bow tied to the handle. I was as ready as I was going to be. Flipping through the pages of the book for a little last minute inspiration, I counted down the minutes till Janie came home. I didn't have to worry about the kids barging in. They were old enough to put two and two together and got the gist of it when I told them under no uncertain terms that this was mom and dad's afternoon alone. I palmed the blue pill in my hand and wondered when I should take it. I wasn't sure if I'd need a Viagra, but I wanted it for backup just in case. I was forty-eight and I was having my first BDSM encounter with my wife. I considered taking a nip off the whisky bottle. I might need something stronger than a blue pill to give me courage. Along with researching the Internet, I also did a little research on my wife. Janie had more than one erotic romance in her book stacks. If she was embarrassed about reading them, she'd made no attempt to hide them. Maybe, she figured at forty-nine and holding. It wasn't anybody's business what she read. I was certain I was on the right track with this idea of mine. Absolutely certain. I set the box wrapped with a red ribbon in the center of the black satin sheets and waited, my heart pounding with nervousness and my intestines quivering, for the sound of the car ambling up the drive. I pulled in the driveway and marched up the front porch steps. It wasn't like the Old Man to be home in the middle of the day whether it was my birthday or not. Reluctant to call him my Old Man to his face, although sometimes, I slipped up and did. I called out for him. Something was definitely wrong. The house smelled like a mix between a French whore's underpants and a head shop. There was slow, sexy, bump and grind music playing over the speakers on the stereo. "Jack?" I stood there between the hallway and the kitchen with my mouth hanging open. At first I thought I must have been having a stroke, because there was no way I was seeing what I was seeing. Jack stood in the doorway to our bedroom, wearing nothing but a pair of very tight leather pants. He had gotten his hair trimmed and had even had someone style the usually unruly mass. He was showered and wearing the cologne I bought him last Christmas. And on his face was an expression I'd never seen before, dominant, confident, and unquestionably male. My toes curled in my Keds tennis shoes at the sight of him. This wasn't the Jack that sat in his underwear and read CNN to me every evening nor was it the Jack that tucked me into bed with a peck on the lips and wished me sweet dreams every night. This was Jack...my Jack...only it wasn't. The expression on Janie's face was priceless. She stood there staring at me with her jaw hanging open and her purse dangling from one finger. After I'd given her time to close her mouth I motioned her forward with a snap of my fingers. "Come." I blinked at Jack and stayed planted in place. Who did he think I was? Rin Tin Tin? I dropped my purse on the kitchen table and stared at him in disbelief. A part of me wanted to do the happy dance and trot after him, but the bigger part of me that was the forty-nine year old woman I actually was instead of the twenty year old I wished I were stayed rooted in the spot. Ok, this wasn't going so well. I refocused my energies on my wife and thought to myself, what would one of the dominants in her books do? The answer to that was easy. The woman would come, one way or another. I took a step toward Janie and then another and another. Reaching out a hand, I peeled her jacket off her shoulders. She looked at me as if I had suddenly announced we were voting Democrat instead of Republican in the next election. I stopped, leaving her jacket bunched at her elbows and her arms immobilized behind her back and dragged Janie down the hall. What. The. Fuck. I dragged my heels determined that I wasn't going anywhere unless I wanted to. I certainly hoped Jack liked the garage because I was going to be living in it for the rest of his natural life and perhaps beyond. I wasn't afraid. In all our years of marriage, Jack had never raised a hand to me. Hell, for all the fights we'd had the worst thing that had ever come out of his mouth was 'bite me'. I had no reason to fear him now. "Jack, what are you doing?" I turned Janie to face the bed. A true Dom might have forced her on her knees and demanded that she suck his cock. Well, I valued my cock a little more than to trust it to Janie's teeth right now. She needed time to get used to the idea that I was the one in complete control and, just like the characters in her books, all she had to do was agree with the plan. "Put it on," I said motioning to the box in the center of the bed. "Oh, you got me a present." I opened the box expecting something other than what I got. I had been eyeing a purse at the Super Center for weeks and was waiting for it to go on sale. Maybe, he had noticed and bought it for me. I held up the flimsy material no bigger than a dishrag and wondered exactly how something not even large enough to respectably cover a Barbie doll was going to fit on my size ten body. The corset and matching panty was a pretty thing, black satin, intricate embroidered silver flowers, and dangling shiny crystal beads. Jack had thought of everything including the spiked heels made of black patent leather and very delicate straps around the ankles. He even had included garters and silk stockings. But, I wondered where in the hell he had gotten the idea in the first place. "It's beautiful, but I don't think...well, I think my corset and spiked heels days are a little behind me." "Either put it on or I'll put it on you." Janie was nervous, biting her lip and staring doubtfully at the corset and shoes clutched in her grip. I really wanted to give her a hug and reassure her that yes, the outfit would fit and it would look perfect on her. But, I had to stay in character, if I were going to make her fantasy come true. "Decide. I'll give you ten minutes to shower and change. If at the end of the allotted time, if you're not properly attired I'll have to punish you." "Punish me?" I stifled a giggle. The idea of Jack punishing me was simply hilarious. He was not and had never been the heavy in the family. If the kids or the dog were in trouble, it was him that they ran to and me they ran away from. Jack was trying so hard though. Afterwards, we were going to have a long talk about where he'd come up with this outrageous idea, but for now, would it kill me to play along? Lit candles cast soft shadows in the room. On the bedside table were mysterious shapes draped in black satin. He had stripped the usual flannel sheets off the bed and put on slippery black satin sheets instead. The music playing from the speakers was from my favorites list. Yeah, I could lose myself and play the submissive. After all, how hard could it be? "Yes sir." Jack set the wind up timer he had swiped from my kitchen and gave me the look that said he meant business. He shut the door behind him as I scrambled for the shower. I had ten minutes to transform myself from middle aged, mid-western, housewife into a sex kitten and oh boy, wasn't that going to take a miracle. I showered and shaved every conceivable part of my body in record time. Pausing to glance at my smeared makeup in the mirror, I tried to go for a smoky, sultry, somewhat slutty look. I didn't exactly pull it off. My eye shadow was too dark and it looked like I had given myself a black eye in my haste to dress. I didn't have any bright red lipstick and had to settle for my usual pale pink. I dabbed on some perfume, gathered up my courage, and contemplated the corset and the stockings. I had never worn an outfit like this in my life. Jack preferred naked. Naked and under the sheets I could do, but stuffing my overly curvy body into this teeny tiny corset was going to take a miracle. Holding my breath and loosening the laces, I wiggled into the thing and hoped for the best. I was terrified to exhale for fear I wouldn't be able to inhale again. The corset was tight and the boning poked me, but astounded, I stared at myself in the mirror. I had boobs. They were full and bulging over the beaded top of the corset. Hooking the closures tightly closed, I somehow managed to work the panties and stockings into place. The corset was snug enough that the cut accentuated my curves and the stout boning and tight satin held me in precisely in all the right places. My waist, instead of being the lumpy, bumpy, bulgy, wiggly fat that just comes with bringing two kids into the world, was smooth and curved in an hourglass shape. I wobbled in the spiked heels, but I really didn't care. The shoes made my short, stubby legs look ten miles long. Besides, I didn't plan on wearing them for very long anyway. I struggled to do something with my unruly hair and settled for a quick French twist at the nape of my neck. In the bedroom the timer ticked away the remaining seconds and from the kitchen, I could hear Jack padding barefoot across the floor as he impatiently paced. I wasn't exactly sex kitten material. That ship had sailed a long time ago and no amount of satin was going to change that fact. But, I had to admit that I was pleasantly surprised. Uncertain of myself and not exactly sure of what other surprises Jack had in store for me, I wiped my sweaty palms on a bath towel just as the timer rang announcing my time was up. I cracked my knuckles and sauntered toward the bedroom as if I owned it. And technically, I did. While waiting for Janie to shower and dress, I had unfastened the top button on the ridiculously tight leather pants. But, now with the fly buttoned up so snugly and biting into my waist, I barely dared to breathe. Giving into my fears of middle age, I had popped the little blue pill that promised an erection as firm as a flagpole. With the confidence that came along with knowing I was not going to disappoint, I flung the bedroom door open wide. She stood there at the foot of the bed, a vision of black satin and loveliness. Her eyes veiled by mascara and heavy makeup, still my wife, but somehow transformed. I had been a teenage boy and as such knew the ache of a hard on. Not that I got hard every time the wind blew anymore, and hadn't for sometime, but looking at her, I was. It couldn't be the pill, not working that quickly. It had to be her, the mood, the smell of erotic musk in the room, and the music working me up into a frenzy of male hormones. Low T could kiss my ever-loving ass. This boy was raring like a stallion and ready to show his little filly a damn good time. God, what to do with her? My first instinct was to toss her down on the bed and score one for the home team. In all the books I had read there was a plot and a plan to be carefully played out before the magic moment. I had jack shit except for my imagination. I ran my eyes over Janie as if she were a cut of prime beef in a butcher shop window. Inspecting her, I nodded my approval. She wobbled in the high heels and her cheeks blushed furiously red. Nervously, she clasped her hands in front of her stomach and nibbled at her bottom lip. I wanted to reassure her that I was just as nervous, but that would completely bungle the effect I was going for. I had to be confident and in complete control in order to pull this off. The Misadventures of Mrs. Taken Commanding her gaze, I waved to the various items on the bedside table veiled by the black satin drape. In movements so slow they were almost painful, I pulled back the drape for her to see exactly what I had in store for her. "Pick one," I said in the deepest, huskiest voice I could muster. Pick one? I eyed the items on display and wondered just exactly what Jack had planned for each and every one of them. Some of the items were obvious. In this day and age, who didn't know where a dildo went? Others were a little less clear as to exactly what their purpose was. But, I couldn't help it, in a moment as serious as this seemed to be, my eyes landed on the spatula with the red ribbon tied to the handle, and upon seeing it, I cracked a smile. Nope, I wasn't going there, not with a kitchen spatula anyway. But, he was asking me to choose the means of my own destruction. What would it be? The miniature vibrator? The eight-inch purple sex toy? The nipple clamps? Ice? The flogger? The tube of something slippery? The blindfold? The handcuffs? How was I going to decide? Going completely into character mode and pulling upon every literary piece of smut I had ever read, I cast my eyes to the floor. "Perhaps, you should decide what I deserve, Sir." At the breathy exhale of the word Sir from Janie's lips, my heart pounded. That was all the permission I needed to do what I wanted to do. Gathering up the red ribbon that had secured the box shut, I took her wrist in my hand. The bed was old and made of thick wood. The four posts gleamed dully in the dim candlelight. I really wanted to make this a birthday neither one of us would forget. "Your safe word is Abigail." "Abigail? That's my mom's name." "Yeah, and nothing is as effective at getting me out of the mood as the mention of your mother. Now be quiet and give me your wrist." "You're tying me up?" "Yes." I wrapped the red satin ribbon around Janie's slender wrists and lifted her hands above her head. Figuring out where to tie her was easy. The four-poster bed made an excellent hitching post. Janie was skittish and nervous, her skin rippling beneath my fingertips as I inched my fingers up to check the slipknot. My heart was pounding. Where was Jack? The Jack I knew at any rate. Who was this imposter that had replaced my usually mild mannered husband? It was like Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets Fifty Shades of Grey. My mind was racing almost as fast as my heart. I really didn't expect this BDSM experiment to go as far as it had. I most certainly did not anticipate getting tied to my very own bedpost with the ribbon off my birthday present. There was a book I'd read a long time ago about a woman who was handcuffed by her husband. I couldn't remember how the book ended, but I remembered he'd had a heart attack after handcuffing her. He was dead in the floor and she was handcuffed to the bed and could not get free. I could not imagine the humiliation of being discovered by my kids dressed like I was, tied to the bedpost, and with the assortment of kinky toys Jack had on display on the nightstand. "Jack, what if you have a heart attack or something? I need to be able to get loose." "It's a slipknot. You can free yourself anytime you want. But, the question is, do you really want to?" I asked. Janie nibbled her lip in contemplation as if she really were going to make a run for it. I had been so sure she would be into this that I hadn't considered the possibility. She had asked me to choose an object from the nightstand, so I did. I clicked on the vibrator and ran it down the valley between her breasts. "Do you, Janie? Do you want me to stop?" What did I want? I had been fantasizing about this for years. I had read every erotic romance novel I could discreetly get my hands on. The scenarios were trapped in my head and here he was, Jack, in the flesh and so ready and willing to bring them to life. I trusted my husband, after thirty years as man and wife, how could I not? In bed, I had always been unrestrained and free to do as I pleased. Could I give over complete control to the man I trusted most in the entire world and if I couldn't what did that say about me and about us? The buzzing of the vibrator over first one nipple and then the other was maddening. I curled my toes into the pointed tips of my shoes and took a deep breath. Jack was patient with me, but then again, he always had been the patient one out of the two of us. The word Abigail was on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it down. Did I want him to stop? Yes, a part of me did, but no, the bigger part of me did not. I could see the wheels of my wife's mind turning and turning. She could change gears faster than a Ferrari on an open stretch of deserted highway. Did she want me to stop? I suppose, in a way she did. Did she want me to keep going? Well, wasn't that up to me to convince her? I clicked off the vibrator and tossed it to the floor. Running my fingertips along her thighs and stretching my long fingers, just barely tickling all those places I knew she liked for me to tickle, I asked, "Tell me what you want, babe. Green light or red light? It's up to you." "Green," I gasped bucking my hips against the assault of his fingertips along my inner thigh. "Green." He chuckled at me in that masculine, cocky way of his that reminded me so much of the boy of eighteen I'd fallen in love with so many years ago. "That's my girl." I started out slow, just getting Janie used to the idea of being restrained and myself in no small measure used to restraining her. The miniature vibrator did short work of getting the party started, but I didn't think she was ready for bigger and better things just yet. I took my time loosening the corset and working the clasps free. I always was a planner of sorts, not to the efficiency of Janie, but I had chosen a corset with both laces and closures out of simple convenience of getting her naked faster. There was something to be said for slow though. She was wiggling, closing her fingers into tight fists, and I hadn't even begun to touch her, really touch her, yet. I had to admit I was enjoying the hell out of being the one to set the pace and drive it to where I wanted to go. I worked one breast free and got busy on the other. Janie's nipples were taut and firm against the pads of my fingers. It seemed I wasn't the only one who liked my being in control. Taking one of those ripe peaks between my teeth I worried at the sensitive flesh until she leaned heavily against me and panted in time with the passing of my tongue over her nipple. We had always been the quiet type in the bedroom. With two kids and a ranch style house with all the bedrooms stacked on top of each other. You learn to be quick about taking your pleasure and you learn to be quiet about it. Well, the kids were grown and we had no particular reason to be quick or quiet any more. Once in a while things would get a little noisy and tonight, that was where I wanted her. I wanted her noisy and shouting all the things a man needs to hear from his wife. I lifted her leg and positioned her foot on the edge of the bed and damn, was that a beautiful sight. My wife bound by the wrists to the bedpost by a red satin ribbon, her lips plump and swollen from my kiss, and her thighs spread wide, wantonly revealing her innermost self for my viewing pleasure. I dipped a finger inside of her depths just to see if her responses were an act. After all, she had read plenty of books and she might have just as easily have been taking her cues from them instead of from me. I wanted genuine. I wanted it real. I wanted it to be everything. I wanted to milk every breathy pant, every wiggle of her hips, tremble of her knees, and soft whimper out of her that I possibly could before I even thought about giving into my own needs. "You're wet," I said. Dipping my finger deeper into her spread wetness, I found the spot we both knew she liked so well. She blamed her lack of response on the plague better known as menopause, and maybe in part, it was. Well, tonight she was having no problem responding to even the subtlest of touches. Maybe, Janie, after thirty years of making love basically the same way, needed more inspiration. I could do inspiration. I could give my wife everything she needed the same way she had always inspired me. I was going to die. Keeping my balance on a single spiked heel while my hands were suspended above my head by a loosely tied red ribbon and my other foot was planted on the bed as Jack tortured and teased the most sensitive parts of me was killing me. I should have worried about myself having the heart attack in bed instead of him. After thirty years, he knew my body almost as well as I did. Every couple hit dry spells in their sexual relationships. We were no exception. There were bad days and good days in the bedroom. But, today was going to be a good day, a very good day. He stroked the spot I so desperately needed him to stroke, driving me harder and faster to the brink. Trying to remain upright on the spiked heel when all I wanted to do was collapse onto the bed and let him have his wicked way with me was harder than I would have thought. It took a certain amount of concentration to stand and endure such a seductive onslaught. Jack was pulling out all the stops. Kissing me when I needed to be kissed. Stroking me where I needed to be stroked in that instinctive way that long time lovers possess. After so many years of being quiet out of fear of being overheard by the kids, it was second nature to hold back the moans building in my throat. Jack would have no part of that. He stopped just before I came and chastised me. I would make noise. I would moan when I wanted to. I would beg and plead for more. I would cry out his name when I came or he wasn't going to let me come at all. "Please." "Better, but not good enough," I said. It took everything I had not to give into that one word escaping her parted lips on a breathy sigh. I was hard and aching and damn did a quick romp to take the edge off sound good. It's amazing how you can look at someone your entire life and never really see them at all. I had watched my wife give birth to our kids. I had seen her in health and in sickness. I had seen her shake with laughter and I had dried her tears. I had seen the light flicker in her blue eyes and fade to the point where I thought it was gone forever and I watched the fire build and build in their depths until it threatened to consume her. I had seen her at her best and at her worst. But, watching her standing there, so splayed and perfect, I realized I had never really seen her like this before, not as a woman, so sexy and erotic, and as mine, all mine, before now. I had shared my wife, with our kids, with her family and her friends, with her career and with mine. But, I had never really had her to myself before now. I had been missing out on so much. "God, I love you." "Does that me you'll untie me and let me come?" I pressed a finger to her lips and reached for the flogger on the nightstand. The little vixen wanted an orgasm. Well, she was going to have to earn it. "Not yet." Other than being slightly amused by my embarrassment, the girl working the counter at the sex shop was very helpful. I went in there with the intent of gleaning a bit of last minute inspiration and walked out with a head full of ideas and another bag of toys. The toys were cheaper on the Internet and I had the convenience of having them shipped to the garage instead of to our home address. Being innocent and clueless about all things BDSM, I had chosen a flogger that looked interesting to me. The sales girl quickly informed me how wrong I had been. For a first timer, she had something a little bit tamer in mind. She had steered me away from the floggers with the stiff leather tails and beaded tips like the one I had bought online and guided me to the back of the store. She picked out a flogger that was soft and flexible. She said a blow would sting and have the effect I was going for. She advised that it could bruise and possibly break the skin if used hard enough, but it wouldn't cause as much damage as the model I had picked out online. The flogger I had picked out, or so she said, was for the more advanced and we needed a beginner flogger. Beginner. Flogger. Did those two words even belong in a sentence together? And how weird was it that I had actually learned the proper name for the parts of a flogger? Janie's eyes widened as I dangled the flogger under her nose and gave the handle a flick, slapping the tails against the bedpost. The tails, the soft, flexible leather made a vicious sounding smack as they landed against the wood. I swallowed hard, as did she. The sound alone had me practically pissing my pants and I was the one giving, not receiving. I didn't want to bruise or batter my wife. I wanted to tease and tantalize and work her up into a panting frenzy of feminine desire, not send her to the emergency room. Gathering my courage, I ran the butt of the flogger over her parted lips and trailed it down the graceful curve of her neck. Anticipation was part of the game. Pleasure and pain, I needed to remember that. Gently as I could manage I swung the tails and aimed for her nipples. The response was immediate. She inhaled a startled gasp and arched her back. Her skin was pink from the blush of arousal, but not from pain. Her nipples were hard and distended, flushing berry red the way they did when she was excited. Peeling off the corset, I left it abandoned on the floor and guided Janie by the hip until she was facing away from me with her back bare and exposed. Before today, I had never really considered punishment and pleasure in the same context. With her back to me and tied at the wrists, no matter how loosely, she was in the punishment position and I was damned determined to give her pleasure. "You belong to me. You are mine to do with whatever I please." I wanted to snicker as soon as the words left my mouth. It was probably more to the truth to say Janie owned me. Otherwise, I wouldn't be doing this to her...for her in the first place. I was good with traditional, what the Internet called, vanilla sex. Hell, I'm a guy and who did I think I was kidding? Any sex was good sex. I flicked the flogger's handle and winced as the gentle blow landed between her shoulder blades. I sucked in a breath as the tails of the flogger struck me between the shoulder blades. It didn't hurt, not really. Stung a little, but it wasn't quite what I had expected. I had delivered two babies into the world and once a woman has gone through that experience it puts pain into a whole different perspective. But, it wasn't true pain Jack was after, and me either, for that matter. I belonged to him? Well, yes and no. It was obvious with me trussed up to the bedpost and him licking his dry lips and flicking the tails of the flogger so lightly and teasingly against my backside that we belonged to each other. A part of me wanted just a bit more of a bite from the flogger's leather tails. But, the bigger part of me was good, maybe even great, with the illusion he was so willing to give me. I wondered if I was supposed to resist. Jack really wouldn't hurt me and if things did get a little too rough, I had a safe word. I suppose the bigger question was did I want to belong to him? Did I want him to use me? And the answer to that was, yes I did. Anticipation was killing me. Jack alternated between soft caresses up and down my spine and over my backside and stinging strikes with the flogger. I never knew where he was going to touch me next or when I could expect another teasing blow from the flogger. I moaned and shivered from the sheer adrenaline rush of waiting for what was going to happen next. "I belong to you, sir," I gasped. "Good girl." I reached up and untied Janie's hands. Massaging the circulation back into her arms, I planted a kiss on the tip of her nose. She was flushed from head to toe and covered in goose pimpled flesh. I was aroused and hard. Somehow, dominating my wife had made me feel ten feet tall instead of my normal five feet-eleven inches. Her hair had come loose from the French twist at the nape of her neck and soft tendrils curled to frame her face. I had no idea of what I was going to do next. But, I had a feeling that whatever it was, she was as eager to receive, as I was to give. Unable to stop myself and so into my role as dominant. I fisted the remnants of her French twist and brought her lips to mine, claiming them in an eager somewhat vicious kiss. Breaching her lips and forcing them apart with my tongue, I kissed her long and hard. Leaving no inch of her mouth unexplored, I continued the kiss until we both were breathless, wobbly in the knees, and quivering with anticipation. I had to clamp down on the parts of myself that were instinct and pure unadulterated male hormones. I had too many toys yet to play with and a wife so willing, ready, and able. "Tell me, Janie. Green light or red?" "Green." I barely managed to squeak out the word before Jack was guiding the matching thong over my hips and down my thighs. I was so weak kneed that I had to balance myself on his shoulder to lift first one leg and then the other so that he could remove the panties. I stood there practically naked except for the stockings, garter, and spiked heels. I wondered if he would take those off too or if he'd give into his needs first. To me, hose and heels and garters on or off, didn't matter. I was achy in all the right places and so willing to give my man exactly what he needed. On my knees and clutching Janie's panties in my fist, I stared up at her. She was a sight. Beautiful in ways I could never adequately put into words. But, I had never had a way with words. In all our years together, she had come to accept that about me. That I was a still water that ran deep. So many times, afterwards, she'd asked me if I enjoyed the sex. Too embarrassed and shy to admit the truth I'd mumble something that would placate and stuff the memory of what we had just done into the good drawer of my mental filing cabinet. She deserved better than that. She deserved to hear exactly what was on my mind. Janie was shaved bare down there. Maybe, she had done it for the occasion. I hadn't asked her why after twenty years of marriage she had started shaving there in the first place. I had never minded her pubic hair. I had never asked her to trim or shave or wax. I was glad for it now. Sleek and bare, I could see the most intimate part of her in graphic detail. She was wet and her clit swollen, her outer lips puffy and wonderfully pink. "Did I ever tell you that you have a beautiful pussy?" I blinked, astounded by the words that had just tumbled out of Jack's mouth in a decidedly husky masculine tone of sheer desire. We were not one of those couples that had pet names for their nether regions. In fact, we never talked about those parts at all. If he wanted me to suck him, he simply guided my lips down to where he wanted me to put them. It wasn't that I hadn't tried to add a little spice in the bedroom in that department. Sometimes, a few words of encouragement and dirty talk went a long way. But, Jack simply didn't operate like that and it wasn't like I was a brilliant conversationalist in between the sheets either. I don't think I could say the word cock and look Jack in the eye without blushing. Jack didn't wait for me to answer him. But, then again, was a response to such a comment really necessary? I thought when I first started shaving myself down there. He might at least mention it. He never had. Thank God he hadn't asked why I had started grooming myself there in the first place. It was too embarrassing. I don't know what made me look at myself down there in the mirror in the first place. I think it might have been a segment on Oprah or Dr. Oz. Something about how a woman should evaluate the health of her lady parts by viewing them in the mirror. The labia should be healthy pink and I simply had to know. Were mine? The Misadventures of Mrs. Taken I was relieved to know beyond any shadow of a doubt and thanks to a hand mirror I had stashed in the bathroom vanity that my lady parts were A-OK. Well, not everything in labia land was ok. There they were in the last place I ever expected to find them. Gray hairs. I had been coloring the hair on my head for years, maybe decades, since the first silvery strand in my ordinary brown made its very unwanted appearance. Did Miss Clairol make hair dye for there? I wasn't about to call the 1-800 help line and speak to one of their friendly representatives to find out. I did the only respectable thing a woman of thirty-seven years old could do. I shaved myself bare. On my knees and looking up at that beautiful slit between Janie's thighs there was only one thing on my mind. Janie put the C in conservative, or so I thought. There were some acts in the bedroom that were simply off limits. Not off limits as in she would kick me out of the house for a week, but I guess they'd be better considered as soft limits instead of hard, no way in hell, limits. I had only put my head between my wife's thighs once or twice in the whole time we had been married. Now, smelling the musky perfume of her desire and catching the glimmer of her wetness on her pussy, that was exactly where I wanted to be. She balked in protest, shifting her hips away from me as I wrapped my fingers around her calf and guided her thigh up onto my shoulder. Unbalanced as she was on one leg and the spiked heel, she grappled with my shoulders for support. I had to ask myself, why she had such an aversion to letting me taste her. Was it that I had never done it right? Was she simply just too shy? Maybe, no matter how good my technique was, she didn't enjoy it. According to her romance books, women wanted men to do this to them and I certainly was happy to oblige my wife. I paused, inhaling all the sweetness of her and daringly snaked out my tongue to lick the outer boarders of her seam. "Shh, quiet now," I exhaled against her bare flesh. "I'm going to taste you." "Jack...I." He tightened his grip on my butt to hold me still as he lowered his mouth to me. There were some places that were simply too private and my privates were on that list of places. We had tried it once or twice, always at his insistence. To me, it was embarrassing to have his face and tongue planted in my twat. Sure, the sensations were pleasant, sometimes very pleasant. But, I couldn't get over the physical mechanics of the act and the fact that he had a bird's eye view, making my private place too very public. I sat back on my haunches and gave Janie a minute to get used to the idea that yes, this was going to happen. She was nervous, perhaps more nervous than she had been in the backseat of my old Chevy Nova the first time we had sex. I had seen my wife in any and every compromising position conceivable. I found it hard to believe that after delivering two babies in a roomful of strangers she would still be so shy about her body. Janie had no problem doing me the favor of sucking my cock till I whimpered like a pup. She didn't swallow, but by the time I was so worked up that I came in her mouth I could care less about the whole spit or swallow issue. Truthfully, there was no such thing as a bad blowjob from my perspective. I simply wanted to return the favor and give her what she had so willingly given me for more years than I could count on my fingers. Unsure of how to rope her in, I referenced my mental file of smut and went Dom on her. "Whom do you belong to?" I rolled my eyes and cursed the night I had left my most recent smutty read on the coffee table. I had to admit the sight of Jack on his knees staring up at me as if I were the center of the known universe had a certain appeal. Over the years there had been no embarrassing act that I hadn't committed within my husband's view. Hell, I didn't even bother with closing the bathroom door, not since the kids had moved out. What was my problem with what he wanted to do? It was supposed to feel good, and reluctantly, I confessed to myself that it did on those few rare occasions when I had let him dine at the Y. His fingertips were very convincing. Stroking away my shyness and hesitancy over what he wanted to do to me. Maintaining my balance on the spiked heel was a trick. Apparently, he was going to get a taste of me whether I agreed to it or not. He withdrew a finger and with a wicked gleam in his eye licked it clean. He parted my lips with his thumbs and blew a hot stream of air on my swollen clit earning a shiver and a gasp from me. Jack had trimmed his beard and the rough scrape of his coarse facial hair along my thigh was almost my undoing. He reached and fumbled with something on the nightstand. I had no idea what. I was so focused on him. I heard the clink of ice in the bowl and was shocked, wonderfully shocked when he placed a cube between his front teeth and lowered his mouth to my center. It was cold. His breath against my chilly skin was hot. It was wet and wild. Cool drops of water skated down my inner thighs. He did things with his fingers, stretching me and getting me ready for his inevitable and greatly anticipated invasion. What he did next surprised me most of all. I assumed once he deemed me hot and bothered enough he would lower me to the bed and we would fuck like bunnies on Easter Sunday. He didn't. He eased the purple sex toy inside of me, going slow and easy, letting me feel every bump and ridge on the toy's surface on the way in, giving it a twist, and likewise, letting me feel the slow glide of the toy against me on the way out. I had never whimpered in my life, but I did so now as he lowered his mouth and his tongue to my clit, making gentle and well calculated strokes against the tingling, swollen nub as he fucked me with the toy. "Jack, I'm going to fall." My hand against the small of Janie's back was the only thing holding her upright. She tasted so good, slightly salty with just a hint of sweetness. Her scent in my nostrils and the taste of her on the tip of my tongue was everything I had ever wanted. I took it easy with the toy easing it carefully in and out of her in time with the passing strokes of my tongue. The toy, much to my male resentment for all things made of purple latex, was thicker and longer than me. But, she seemed to be enjoying herself. The surface was coated with Janie's arousal. I stopped licking her clit for a minute, just to sample the juices coating the toy. Her sharp little fingernails dug into my shoulders and the muscles of her thigh tightened around the back of my neck. I would have loved nothing better than to let Janie orgasm right then and there. She was close. I could feel her muscles quivering in response to even the slightest brush of my fingertips or flick of my tongue against her. I wanted her there and she was. But, letting her finish would end the game too quickly and I wasn't ready to be done with it yet. "Go ahead and fall, babe. I'll catch you." I howled in protest as Jack withdrew the toy one last time and put it with the rest of his collection on the nightstand. I dug the spiked heel of my shoe into his back to let him know how annoyed I was with him. I needed to finish. Now. He bit the skin on my inner thigh and asked the question again. Who did I belong to? The answer came easier now. Who did I belong to? "You." "Ah, that's the answer I wanted to hear. Good girl." Janie didn't hesitate this time when she answered me. The word was breathless and out of her swollen lips, spoken with such certainty. She deserved a reward. A true Dom might offer such a reward by allowing his Sub to suck his cock. I wasn't a Dom and Janie, not a Sub. And there was no way around it. Whether I had taken one Viagra or a dozen, once she put her pretty pink lips around my shaft, I was a gone man. This scene was about control and I couldn't afford to lose it yet. "Green light or red, babe?" "Green. Now can I come?" I tossed Janie on the bed and did my best glower. The same one I had used on the kids when they were little. I had sent more than one pair of little feet scampering for cover with my patented 'you're gonna get it' glare over the years. Janie rested on her elbows staring up at me wide eyed. But oh no, this little disobedient vixen wasn't going to get the chance to scamper away. I pinned her with a raised brow and planted my hands on my hips. "Are you complaining?" The expression on Jack's face was one that promised punishment. The last time I had seen that particular glare on my husband's face was when Janie snuck out her bedroom window to meet up with her boyfriend in the middle of the night. By the time she had come slinking home in the wee hours of the morning and so busted I was certain he was going to ground her for the rest of her natural life. He had but to look at her with that expression on his face and she burst into tears and apologies. She never snuck out again and I wouldn't have either if Jack had looked at me the way he looked at her then. He was looking at me that way now. It might be an act, but it was a very convincing one that had me contrite and repentant within seconds. "No sir. Not complaining at all. But, how can I pleasure you?" I grinned at my wife's question. With her things had always been measured on a give and take scale. If she received, she expected to pay it back. Sometimes though, she simply didn't realize the pleasure was in the giving. "Believe me, babe. You are." I eyed my implements on the nightstand and realized I owed the sales girl no small measure of thanks. I'd asked for nipple clamps wanting to see and feel the pinch of them for myself before taking them home to try out on Janie. I was glad I had. I had an assortment of clamps in the garage that were gentler than some of the ones on display in the store. I didn't want to torture my wife or cause permanent damage. I simply wanted to play with her the way she needed me to. The clamps were actually very decorative. They were studded with crystal rhinestones and came equipped with a vibrating feature. The sales girl assured me their grip, while snug and just a little uncomfortable, was not too severe. She had tried to sell me a model with a chain and another clamp that went to the clit. I had thought about it, but quickly put the idea out of my head. Baby steps, I had reminded her. Baby steps. I flicked Janie's nipples with a fingernail getting them up nice and firm before I slid the clamp in place. She wiggled on the bed and gripped the satin sheets in her fists. I needed to know. Were the clamps too much? Was I hurting her? "Red or green, babe?" "Yellow?" The clamps pinched almost painfully tight, nothing worse than when I had breastfed the babies though. There was nothing quite as uncomfortable as a voracious newborn latching onto your distended nipple. Jack was careful, applying the second clamp with one hand and stroking between my thighs with the other till he had my complete attention and I focused on the pleasure instead of the discomfort caused by the clamps. I squeaked in surprise as he pressed a button and the clamps came to life. The sensations of the tightness squeezing my nipples and the vibrations that seemed to vibrate through my whole chest were...they were good. Janie rode my hand, bucking her hips and seeking out her orgasm. The buzz of the clamps was soft and non-intrusive. No worse than the fan we slept with at night to cover up the noise from the road outside our bedroom window. I had no idea before I started this trip into sexual wonderland how tiring being a Dom truly was. I was hard and achy, almost twitchy from the constant throbbing of my pulse through my cock. I wanted to fuck my wife, not make love, but rut inside of her like an animal. Normally, that would be exactly what I'd do, scratch my itch. But, I had promised myself that tonight was for her and not for me. Besides, I was having a pretty good time making her squirm. "Better?" "God, yes. Please, baby, please." "Not yet." Janie moaned in protest and I started to feel a little guilty about pushing her so hard. Not guilty enough, however, to keep from reaching into my bag of tricks for the next toy. This particular item was an impulse buy. At the store, the butterfly looked so innocuous, pink and pretty in its crisp plastic and white cardboard wrapper. My wife's name was Janie, but Jeanie was close enough to spark my interest. I had a passion for all things electronic. It was just a little hobby of mine and over the years I had managed to save us a penny or two on replacing broken gadgetry. All the sales girl had to do was mention that the thing, whatever it was, came with a remote control and I was sold. I had so many things sitting on the counter to buy she even gave me a ten percent sexy senior discount. Sexy senior? I was only forty-eight, but hey ten percent was ten percent, so who was I to complain. In the back of my mind I wondered if she was coming on to me. I generally didn't notice other women. Maybe, it was that I was standing in the middle of a sex shop and well, pictures of beautiful women with bare body parts were everywhere, that had me noticing her just a little more than I was comfortable with. She was pretty and young, so damn young. I couldn't help but feel a pang of regret and just a little like a dirty old man for entertaining the thought. The sales girl, younger than my daughter, probably got a hefty commission on sales. She knew how to work what she had beneath those short shorts and teeny tiny tight tank top. And she definitely knew how to coax a fumbling, bumbling, stuttering middle-aged man out of his hard earned cash. Maybe, I was just that entertaining and I broke up the ordinary hum-drum of peddling vibrators to a bunch of giggling women looking to get their kicks with a piece of plastic. Who knows? I couldn't say that I wouldn't be back though to see what I had missed in my fit of embarrassed purchases. If I actually managed to give my wife the birthday present she had decidedly earned after thirty years of putting up with me and we decided to play again. I could ignore the pictures of the guy parts easily enough. Blamed such big cocks and guys with rock hard abdomens on the magic of photo shop. No ordinary American male looked like that. But, wasn't that the whole point. I hadn't seen very many women in person that even remotely resembled the women in the pictures either. Ah... the wonderland of eternal youth and beauty that is the sex industry. I picked up Janie's leg and slid her foot through the harness. After a little adjusting I had the straps comfortably in place. I snapped the waist strap into place and after fumbling with the remote, turned the butterfly on. The sound of her breathy gasp of pleasure was music to my ears. She hadn't quite reached the pinnacle of urgent begging yet. But, we were close, very, very close. "I take it that's a green light?" I couldn't form words let alone answer Jack's question. Green light? I was seeing stars. I nodded and groaned from the gentle buzzing vibrations assaulting my clit and nipples. He gave the golden chain stretched between the nipple clamps a sharp tug and guided my hands to my ankles, wrapping my fingers around the heels of my shoes. Spread wide like this, panting and wriggling there was no place to hide. I didn't want to hide. I wanted him to see me, wild and coming apart at the seams, and for him to take pride in the fact that he had gotten me this way. "Don't move your hands." I ran my fingers up Janie's thighs. With her spread so wide and open, her sex glistening with wetness, I regretted that I hadn't invested the thirty-seven dollars and change on a spreader bar. No matter, I was pretty handy with tools and I could manage to fabricate something out of scraps in the garage for the next time. And by this point with her gasping and biting her lip, and her labored puffs of breath, I was pretty sure there would be a next time. "Keep yourself open for me, babe. Just like that." I slid the purple toy into my wife's tight, wet sheath and turned it on. Janie gasped and bucked her hips to drive the toy in deeper. I planted the toy inside of her and where I got the inspiration to give the instructions that I did, I had no idea. "Stay tight around the toy. Don't let it slide out. Don't come. I own you and I own your orgasms. I forbid you to come." I wanted to tear the remote out of Jack's grip. I wanted to release my ankles and fuck myself into next week with the sex toy he had planted into my depths. He was torturing me by forbidding me to come. He had adjusted the speed on the butterfly fluttering over my clit. I was wet and slippery and holding the toy in place, tightening my muscles around it all the while feeling the vibrations pulsing through my body. It was maddening. I was going to come. I needed to come. He tickled my inner thighs distracting me from my oncoming orgasm and praised me for how tightly I clenched my pussy and held the toy in place. As annoyed as I was by being forbidden to come, I was also extremely turned on. I found that I wanted to obey his every whim just to hear his words of praise and feel his hands, no matter how slight the touch, on my body. I did my Kegel exercises faithfully. I was able to clench my body around the toy and hold it in place. The tone of Jack's voice told me how very impressed he was by my efforts. He scolded me once. I had gotten carried away by the stroke of his fingertips and the dazzling sensations of the vibrator and drifted to a remote place deep inside of myself. The toy slipped. The punishment as consequence was abrupt and very unpleasant. He turned off all the toys and left me on my back, grasping my ankles, with the lifeless toy buried inside of me. While I was stuck like that, holding back a whimper of sheer distress, Jack swatted my clit, my thighs, my breasts, and my belly with the soft, flexible leather tails of the flogger. The sensation of the leather striking my most intimate parts had me bowing off the bed. Not because it hurt but because it felt so damn good. The word was torn from my throat in a half uttered plea. "More. Please, sir. More." I hit the remote and sent the butterfly buzzing to life. The sound of the word Sir and her begging for more got me. I was hard, aching and damn horny for my wife. But, I was also hip deep into the role-playing of being her sir and I had forgotten about myself and my needs and centered solely on hers. Very pleased with both Janie and myself, I deemed that she had earned her orgasm. We had a sex toy buried somewhere in a box beneath the bed. I wasn't absolutely confident in my ability to get her off without hurting her. There were things we did in bed that took a lot of inspiration. Sometimes, not often, but when she was already miles ahead of me in terms of seeking her pleasure, she would finish herself. Damn, I loved to watch her do that. I had to pretend I wasn't watching. Otherwise, she would stop. Tonight, I was going to watch and she was going to know I was watching. I spread her wide and settled for a front row seat between her thighs. "Use the toy and give yourself what you need. Come for me, babe." I unclasped the butterfly and flung it, still buzzing, to the side. I gently pressed down on her knees to pin her in place. She wasn't going to hide this from me. I wanted...no, I needed to watch her get herself off. "Do it. Now." Reluctantly, I slid my fingertips up my thighs and to my center. My body was a livewire of sensations. Jack had removed the butterfly and from somewhere on the bed I could still hear it buzzing. The toy was planted deep inside of me. He held me pinned to the bed by my knees and his eyes were watching every move I made as intently as a cat watches a mouse. We had a sex toy. The thing never left its home in the box under the bed, as far as Jack knew. That wasn't necessarily the truth. Sometimes, a girl had to take matters into her own hands to salvage what was left of her sanity. The Misadventures of Mrs. Taken I never told Jack about the things I did when he was working late or I managed to score a rare day at home to myself. He would have flipped out if he knew that I played with the toy, especially alone. The sex toy had no fancy bells or whistles, not like the stuff he had gotten to experiment with today. It vibrated and was a flesh tone color and pretty much a standard penis in shape and size. The toy had been my idea. And it had been a good one. It just wasn't something we played with together. Embarrassed and shy, I began to pump the toy in and out of my core. Jack was intent, his eyes fixed on me as I fucked myself, at first slower then faster and faster with the toy. His voice was gruff and breathless as he muttered words of encouragement and dipped his hand to unbutton the fly of his pants. "That's it, babe. Get yourself off for me. I want to watch you come." Jack swabbed his palms over my breasts and paused to pinch the nipples. "Does it feel good?" he asked. He was stroking himself, getting harder and harder and pumping his cock in time with the motions of my hand. I was almost there. But, it seemed like such a waste, in an odd way me fucking myself and him giving himself a hand job when we could be fucking each other. "Please, babe. Please, fuck me." "No." I was insistent. I wanted to watch my wife come and I was going to. I could not withstand the pulsing need building in my groin for much longer. I stroked myself to keep from plunging inside of her. Janie was panting, her breasts heaving with each rapid intake of breath. She was enjoying herself immensely. It was odd, for as shy as she was with me. She seemed to have no difficulty figuring out how to navigate the toy to bring herself pleasure. Maybe, the toy under the bed wasn't as disused as I thought. I got so engrossed with what she was doing. I forgot my cock and splayed her lips wide, watching the toy glide in and out of her wet depths and her swollen clit pulsate. When she finally came. It was a thing of beauty. The wetness inside of her gushed around the toy and dribbled down her lips. I knew she wasn't completely done yet. Janie might have had her fantasies, but I had a few of my own too. I eased the toy out of her trembling grip and lowered my face to her dripping center. I wanted my wife to come in my mouth. And today, on this day of firsts, she was going to. Janie didn't shy away as I tongued her clit and opening her wide slid the toy inside of her. She welcomed the toy and my mouth with a furious bucking of her hips. I pressed my hand to her belly to hold her still as I continued tasting and working my wife into a bundle of quivering nerves. The moisture from her coated my lips and was sweet on my tongue. I drank every drop she gave me and swallowed it down. Nothing, absolutely nothing had ever tasted sweeter or better than my wife's come. I came all over my husband's face. Jack was a gentleman about it, licking his lips and kissing my thighs. Whispering the words of praise that every woman secretly wanted to hear. The sheets were a damp mass underneath me. The afternoon had given way to the purple of twilight. We had been at this for hours and still somehow, neither one of us had quite gotten our fill. Giggling from the haze of orgasm, I stretched and sighed contentedly. "Sir," I said unable to wipe the grin off my face. "I want to repay the favor." She was asking to suck my cock? My demure wife of thirty years was crouched on the bed loose boned, sexily disheveled and looking more like a sex kitten than a woman who baked cookies for the Women's Auxiliary bake sale every Fourth of July was asking to suck my cock. "No. This is for you." Janie was not put off or hampered in the least by my refusal of carnal pleasures. She worked the zipper of my ridiculously tight leather pants down and wrapped her fingers around the base of my cock. Somehow, that was all the convincing I needed. "I know," she said. "And believe me, doing this to you is for me." Somehow, in the essence of all things BDSM or even remotely kinky, it didn't seem right to give Jack a blowjob in the exact same way that I had for the last thirty years. I slid off the bed and coaxed him to his feet while I remained planted in the spot on my knees on the floor. The leather pants were a size too small and had to be miserably tight. Working them down his hips like I would ease a banana out of its peel, I dutifully relieved him of the leather pants. I appreciated the effort and hard work he had put into pulling them on and although the black leather really didn't suit the man I knew he was and as sexy as he looked wearing them. I was glad the pants were off. His erection was firm and proud. I hadn't seen him this hard since we had begun this wild ride called married life. He truly did have a beautiful penis. Not that I would ever dare call any man's, especially not Jack's dangly parts beautiful to his face. The ripe head of him was a blush plum color and perfectly shaped. The hard ridge between the head and the shaft was broad and pronounced. His balls were tight against his groin and covered with a salt and pepper down of coarse hair. Up this close and personal, I could see the vasectomy scars that ensured there would not be another addition to our little family unit. Jack hadn't wanted to put the family jewels on the chopping block. But, at the time we were pushing forty and it just didn't seem like a good idea to put it off any longer. I had been on the pill since Jack Junior came into the world. Jack hated condoms and as for all those other contraceptive creams and gadgets, they hardly seemed worth the small margin of error. I had done my part and once the clock struck midnight on his fortieth birthday, I deemed it was his turn to do his patriotic duty. He took it like a man and out of sheer pity for the boys I doled out plenty of Tylenol, ice packs, and sympathetic pats of on the top of his balding head for his courage. That was almost ten years ago and the silvery scars had long since healed. Not having to worry about birth control should have ushered in a new era in our coupledom. We could be spontaneous. Once the doctor had declared him fit for duty and sterile as an operating room, I was ready to try out our new declaration of independence. Jack, however, was still a little gingerly with taking out the boys for a test drive. Eventually, I got him on board with the program. But, as far as the whole spontaneity thing went, our encounters were still much as they always had been. Freshly showered, under the cover of darkness and the sheets on Saturday nights, and maybe if I was lucky, Sunday afternoons, kinds of encounters. I really don't mind. There's a certain relief to comfortable predictability, I guess. I think of my mom, single and definitely not getting laid at the age of seventy-nine, or at least I hope she isn't, and I realize some sex, even predictable, run of the mill, sex is better than no sex at all. Maybe, at forty-nine, I can't afford to be too picky. After all, how many good years could we possibly have left? Determined to give it the old college try and go for broke, I took the head of him into my mouth and sucked like a Hoover. I went for what I hoped was erotic, sucking and licking at him while looking up over the curve of his belly and meeting his glazed stare. His thighs tensed beneath my fingertips. The muscles were tight enough to bounce quarters off of. Jack usually hated to have the boys fondled, but I cupped them in the palm of my hand and gently ticked the coarse hair. He was definitely enjoying what I was doing. Encouraged, I slid my mouth over the entirety of his length and buried my face in his groin while doing that little flicking motion he liked for me to do with the tip of my tongue. As a general rule I gave Janie all the consideration I could while she was sucking me off. There was something about having my cock near anything sharp enough to separate me from my favorite appendage that had always given me a measure of pause. She was giving it good. As good if not better than I had given it to her. I was supposed to be the Dom and that meant throwing caution to the wind and taking exactly what I wanted. I fisted what was left of the fancy French twist at the nape of her neck and guided her head up and down my shaft, setting the pace. Her palm was warm against my balls, her thumbs gently tracing over the pubic hair in slow lazy circles. I usually didn't like having my balls touched. But, with Janie on her knees, sucking me for all she was worth, and watching me with those wide blue eyes of hers. The heat of her hand and the friction of her fingers over that sensitive part of me added to the experience and it was getting me there a hell of a lot quicker than I wanted. In bed, the best I had ever managed was three times in a row before collapsing into a post-coital coma of bliss. I had to slow her down or this was going to be the best almost sex I had ever had in my entire life. I had a feeling tonight, with the building pressure in my groin, I wasn't going to make it past once. Gripping the twist of hair still held in place by the pins, I eased her mouth up and down my cock. I was a grunter and a groaner in the sack. Tonight Janie deserved a bit more than my usual non-verbal communication. Hell, the woman deserved poetry and sonnets recited in her honor. The best I could manage was a few barely comprehensible sentences. "That's it, babe. Damn, that's good. My sexy...sexy...sweet Janie." Jack was close. I could taste the salty pre-ejaculate on the tip of my tongue. Usually, when he reached this point. There was no stopping it from happening. He was going to explode. Usually, I shied away a bit at this point. I love making my man shoot into outer space, but I wasn't about to swallow or spit that on my brand new carpet. I didn't think making a mad dash to the bathroom with a mouthful of come for a quick swish and rinse with the mouthwash would necessarily make him believe that I had enjoyed it. But, that was the truth though. I was enjoying it...a lot. It was just, what to do with it afterwards. The truth was, on my knees at his feet and watching the expressions flit across his face as I did my naughty business was arousing. This wasn't our typical assume the position and brace yourself kind of sex we had been having for most of our married life. This was different. Tonight was a wild ride through uncharted territory. It was erotic. It was unpredictable. Jack loved being in control and to my amazement I liked being so wildly out of control and yielding to his whims. We were like new creatures rising from the ashes of middle age. More birthdays would come. Time would keep on marching forward and dragging us along with it. The things middle-aged couples worry about were still there. The 401Ks, the creaking joints, gray hairs, wrinkles, the pre-planned funeral arrangements we had yet to make, and the eventual knowledge that one day there wouldn't be the two of us anymore, but only one of us left behind; all that was still there in the back of my mind. I had stuffed everything into a distant corner at least for now. Tonight was our escape from the uncertainties in life. I was a beautiful vixen kneeling at my husband's feet, worshiping his cock and he was the center of my known universe. I withdrew my cock before I reached critical mass and there was no stopping. I didn't want to stop, but I didn't want this to end so soon. Janie's brows wrinkled in confusion. Usually, once the party started I didn't stop till the fat lady sung. Tonight wasn't going to be like that. I was going for broke. In my research of all things smut related. There was the legendary climaxing together. Obviously, the authors of said books didn't get how hard that was to achieve. But, the books were fiction and that left a little wiggle room for creative license. The idea of coming in my wife's mouth was appealing, but I wanted to come inside of her pussy and I wanted her there with me. The two of us coming together, the idea of it was a bit terrifying. To me, the two of us achieving orgasm at the same time was the sexual pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There were other things mentioned in the books that were supposed to be at the very pinnacle of sexual experiences. I had tried to wrap my head around the idea and simply couldn't. Maybe, although I was willing to try about anything in bed, I was too conventional in my thinking. Perhaps, it was just a hard limit for me and I had no doubt, for her too. When they were about five or six years old, I remember taking the kids to the doctor's office for their yearly checkup. Bored out of my wits and trying to control the two of them long enough to actually herd them into an exam room, I had picked up a magazine to pass the time. There was this advertisement for ear thermometers on one of the glossy pages. This baby, maybe it was because the little tyke resembled Jack Junior that had the ad catching my eye. The baby had this astounded expression on his round, cherubic face. The bright yellow caption read 'you want to put that where?' and I completely agree. Different strokes for different folks and all that, but there are some things, in my opinion, that should never, ever be put in some places. Anal sex was out of the question. Whether backdoor action was the ultimate in sexual experiences or not, it wasn't happening. I fisted Janie's hair and jerked her head up. I could practically see the shivers running down her spine. I quickly filed her response in my mental filing cabinet along with all the other things I had discovered that she liked. A little slap and tickle, and hair pulling were a definite thumbs up. Her eyes were wide and the pupils dilated. Inspired, I grabbed my cock by the base and batted the head across her mouth. She opened wide to take me in and damn, if that didn't get the blood racing. The train was going to run off the tracks if I didn't pull it together and get my head back in the game. Gently jerking on Janie's disheveled hair, I guided her onto her feet. Being in complete control, moving her where I wanted her, and having her so compliant and ready sent a rush of lust from the tip of my cock to spread throughout my entire body. I had always been considerate of Janie. Never in my life had I ever pulled the 'I'm the man and because I say so' routine on my wife. Every choice and every decision we had ever made in our lives we had done so together. Sometimes, that took no small measure of compromise. Sometimes, when there was no compromise to make. I let her win and other times she let me win. Even now, with me in control of what happened next and guiding her by the roots of her hair, she still could say no at anytime and I'd cease and desist immediately. I sat on the edge of the bed. The sheets were cool and slippery against my bare skin. I had never turned anyone over my knee. No matter how much trouble the kids managed to get themselves into. I had never been forced to resort to spanking them. Janie and I didn't believe in corporal punishment. But, tonight wasn't about punishment as much as it was about pleasure. "I think someone has earned her birthday spanking." Guiding me by the hair, Jack turned me over his knee. I had to admit. It was a bit embarrassing being a full-grown adult woman and flipped ass over teakettle over my husband's knee like a disobedient child. I had never been spanked before. Not even as a little kid. Sure, I had gotten my hands swatted, but what else would a panicked parent with a rambunctious and ceaselessly curious four year old about to stick a fork into a light socket do? I had swatted Janie and Jack's hands a time or two myself. But spanking them as in turning them over my knee? Never. I wiggled on Jack's lap in protest. My bare ass was up in the air and my head down facing the carpet and Jack's incredibly long toes. He was going to spank me? I was forty-nine years old and that totaled out to a whole lot of spanking. "What?" I struggled to force my torso off Jack's thighs. With a subtle push with his palm between my shoulder blades and gripping what remained of my French twist to keep me there. I was face down, staring at the carpet we had robbed our savings account to buy. I swatted her on the ass just to get her used to the feel of my palm against her bare skin. I knew I wasn't really hurting her. The smack of my cupped hand made a vicious sounding thwack and her skin turned a flushed pink. In the essence of caution, determined not to leave bruises and welts on Janie. I had done my research. By cupping my palm, I was trapping air and cushioning the blow. I wanted the effect of the sound and the light sting of playful punishment. For good measure, I had tried out the technique on myself. I knew exactly how and with how much force to deliver my spanking. "Forty-nine birthday spanks and one to grow on. That was number one." "Fifty?" Jack delivered another tingling blow with his palm to by backside. I wiggled trying to free myself from his grip on my hair. He was stronger than me. I worked behind a desk and he, with his whole body. I had seen him heft tires and watched in wonder as he tossed them, rim and all, as if they weighed nothing. When there was heavy lifting to be done. He did the labor. I rode my bicycle and went to a Thursday night yoga class to keep fit. He didn't need to. Jack slapped me on the ass again and barked a very rude order to pay attention. I had forty-eight smacks to go. He delivered a series of three blows and then smoothed his palm over the tingling flesh. I had forty-four left. I exhaled as he swatted me again with his cupped palm. As far as birthday spankings went. He wasn't really hurting me. Embarrassing me and possibly taunting me, yes. I never knew when he was going to spank and when he was going to pause to tease the sting away with the trace of his fingertips or blow a gentle puff of air across the base of my spine. Truthfully, I found myself so absorbed in whatever he was going to do next that I lost count of how many birthday spankings I had left. I delivered five sharp blows across Janie's ass and then paused to plant a kiss to the flushed skin. My buddies had accused me of kissing my wife's ass for years. But, I had never really, at least not physically, kissed her on the ass before now. I dragged my teeth over the base of her spine and spoke with my lips suspended inches above her hip. "That's twenty, babe," I said breathlessly. I worked my hand between her thighs and toyed with her wet seam stroking her into a wiggling mass on my lap. I was so hard and the friction of her skin against my cock was getting a little difficult to ignore. I was turned on. I was enjoying spanking my wife. Maybe, that made me a pervert and maybe it didn't. "Green light, Janie?" His fingers had me wet and wanting. He stroked me slowly and gently, paying extra attention to that tender spot deep inside of me. I wanted to keep my mouth shut and steal the orgasm building within me away from him. His hard cock was poking me in the ribs. He was enjoying this and much to my chagrin, so was I. I had twenty-nine birthday spankings left, plus one to grow on, thirty in total. He was asking my permission to keep going. The skin on my ass was tingling and warm. The coarse dark hair on his thighs abraded my nipples. I could stop this with just a word. But, did I want to? "Green." The next contact with his palm against my bare ass was sharp and abrupt. "Ow!" I squeaked in protest. Jack rubbed the sting till it was gone and then, gave me another somewhat gentler spank. He dragged his hand down my spine and settled the heel of his palm on my butt cheek while with the fingers of his other hand he worked my wet center. There were so many sensations to experience all at once. The press and stroke of his fingers inside of me, the sharp sting and spreading warmth of each smack of his palm against my ass, the coarseness of the hairs on his thighs abrading my skin, the hardness of his cock pushing up to find me, the smell of sweet candles and his masculine scent, the sound of his soft words of encouragement, my own labored breathing, and the lingering taste of his kiss on my lips.