Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
For the next several days I laid low. Did the bare minimum around the house. Did not refuse Michael when he sat in the big chair in the living room.
The annual St. Angeles Chamber of Commerce Banquet was coming up and I went to the country club as I always did the day before to decorate and prepare the tables.
At first I felt sick to my stomach to see that Alix was another one of the wives there. Strange to think we had been friendly before, swapped recipes or talked about what it was like to be married to surgeons. The pressure they must be under. The importance of a soft, comforting home life.
And all along she’d been fucking her husband and mine.
But then I realized something.
Alix was much more nervous than I was. I was wondering if everyone knew Michael had cheated on me with her, but she was the one licking her lips and shifting her eyes around anxiously.
As I folded the fine linen napkins into a beautiful origami shape, she sidled up to me.
At first, she said nothing.
But I had learned from experience if you waited long enough, eventually the other person would talk.
“You aren’t really going to have sex with my husband, are you?” she asked, her fingers worrying the edge of the tablecloth.
“Yes, I am,” I said composedly.
“But why?”
“Well, that would make it true, wouldn’t it? What Michael said? That we have an open relationship and that’s why he’s having sex with you.”
She squirmed. Her eyes looked red-lined and heavy, like she hadn’t been sleeping well.
“We aren’t having sex anymore! Michael told me days ago that he didn’t want to.”
I felt a little flicker of heat in my chest.
But I said nothing.
“Come on, please don’t have sex with my husband. I’m not going to have sex with Michael again, I swear. It was a mistake.”
“Hmm,” I said non-committally.
Alix was darting her eyes around.
“If you don’t want your husband to have sex with me, you should take this up with him,” I said.
“But he wants to,” she whined. “He says it’s only fair.”
I shrugged.
“Come on, please, Lavender. I know you don’t really want to.”
“No, you don’t,” I said. “You don’t know anything about me. You don’t care what I want.”
Then I moved away to arrange flowers with the other ladies as she made a desperate, beseeching noise deep in her throat.
But my heart was hardened.
I was stronger than I thought, I was braver than I thought.
On my way home I stopped by an estate sale and randomly bought a faded old floral chair with pretty dusky pink roses and I hauled it awkwardly into the house myself.
By the time Michael got home, I was sitting in a warm corner of the kitchen and was reading with a cup of tea.
I didn’t look up when he came in, but I smelled the flowers, heard the crinkly sound of the paper. An armful of them, long-stemmed red roses.
Red for love. Red for devotion.
“What’s that?” he asked as he set his keys down.
“My new chair,” I said neutrally, turning another page.
Michael would hate it. I knew he would hate it. He hated anything fussy, or too feminine, or frilly.
But he said nothing.
Instead, he set the flowers down on the table, and I felt him look at me.
“Buy whatever you like, sweetheart. Where’s dinner?”
“Oh, I already had some takeaway from Wheatgrass,” I said. “There’s something warming for you on the stove.”
There was another moment of silence, and I almost held my breath as I felt him contemplate me.
Then he walked over to the stove and raised the lid of the frying pan.
I turned a page of my book. It was very good.
“What is this shit?” Michael asked harshly.
The raw, jagged note in his voice sent a shiver of fear down my spine.
I forced myself to meet his eyes as my heart began to pound faster.
“Do you not want a peanut butter sandwich? I can make you something else if you like?”
He was expressionless except for his eyes, which seemed to burn out of his face.
I waited, feeling my pulse flutter in my wrists and throat.
“No, I don’t want something else to eat,” he said, and his voice had dropped several octaves, until it was a harsh low whisper, and it seemed to rasp across the floor and the distance between us.
“I want a goddamn fucking kiss when I get home. I want you to look up from your book for two seconds. I want us to eat together. I want my wife back. I want you to stop this bullshit. You’re driving me fucking insane with your behavior.”
I watched in horror as his long, strong fingers moved to his tie and he began to undo it, short, jerky, rough motions.
“And where is your ring?” he shot at me.
Sweat began to trickle down my back.
“It’s soaking over there,” I said. “It was kind of dirty. I don’t have to wear it all the time.”
There was a cold, dangerous silence.
“Lavender, do you think I’m fucking joking?” he snapped, stalking over to the bowl where my rings were soaking.
He raised his fist and brought it down on the delicate glass, shattering it with a horrible splintering crash.
“You think this is funny? You think I’m some fucking stable person you can do this to? You have no idea how fucking far I’ll go to keep you mine.”
He tore off his white coat, ripping at his tie, smearing blood from the shattered glass all over the fabric.
I screamed then, dropping my book as I tried to shrink back in my chair, too frozen to move as he stalked toward me.
His hands were dripping with blood from the glass, and he ran shaking fingers through his hair, smearing blood across his face, the scarlet liquid congealing in his golden blonde locks.
“You’re scaring me!” I shrieked. “What’s wrong with you?”
“You! You’re what’s wrong with me! Alix came to my office begging me to stop you from having sex with Reuben. I told her under no account were you going to be doing that. She wasn’t convinced. She isn’t convinced you’re going to stop.”
“I’ll stop if you stop,” I said, although I was trembling so hard I couldn’t have stood up if I tried.
His eyes darkened, two high spots of color on his cheeks as he flipped me on my belly and ripping down my skirt and panties.
The glass dropped with a chilling tinkle to the ground.
Then he delivered a massive spank to my ass, so hard it drove me face first into the chair.
“You’ve made me lose my patience, Lavender. I don’t like that.”
He spanked me again, even harder this time, as I gritted my teeth in pain, refusing to let him have the satisfaction of my whimper.
But I couldn’t resist a squeal as he suddenly stopped and spread my burning cheeks wide.
“This is about a damn baby, isn’t it? Well, shut up and take my seed.”
“Why would I want a baby with you?”
He positioned me on my knees, my muscles screaming in displeasure as his fingers dug into my ass, began to press past the resistant ring of my asshole.
“What do you want, then, pretty girl? If you go back to how we used to be, I’ll give you anything you want. I can give you and our baby all the comfort and luxury you could ever want.”
His words were a demented croon as he pressed his fingers deeper into my ass, the blood from his cut dripping on my overheated flesh.
“I want you to leave me alone,” I gasped, clutching the back of the chair for support.
“I can’t,” he gasped, tipping my ass up as his big tip nudged my sore lips open. “I’m obsessed with you, Lavender.”
“Liar,” I breathed as he slid inside me, thick, slick, and depraved. “I don’t want your love anymore. It’s sick and twisted. You are sick and twisted. I wish you’d let me go.”
“I’ll never let you go,” Michael said, the sound of our bodies connecting obscene, wet heavy slaps, his hands on my ass, his hands on my hair. “You know you could never leave me, darling. We were made for each other.”
He could dominate my orgasms now, make me come over and over again on his cock. As many times as he wanted.
But there was that fierce defiance that still burned inside me.
If Michael didn’t believe I could ever leave him. . . he was wrong.