Chapter 8 – Juliette
EIGHT
JULIETTE
Recommitting to getting my husband to divorce me: Part II
This was bad. This was something I shouldn’t do. This was almost as bad as sabotaging the crops, but it felt less permanent.
Like he would be mad, but he’d get over it.
I don’t want him to get over it. I want him to know how serious I am about leaving.
Creed had been taking care of the tractor for weeks now. It had become his obsession. Every part that could be replaced, he’d replaced. All the belts and fuel lines. The pistons and valves. He’d basically rebuilt the engine from scratch.
And all I had to do was pour regular gas into the diesel engine and…boom.
At first, he wouldn’t know what was wrong. If it even started, there would be all kinds of knocking and smoke as the engine ground to a halt without the right lubrication. Until it stopped. System wide damage throughout the entire engine.
Only then would he’d realize that he’d asked me to fill both our spare 5 gallon gas tanks while we’d been in town last week.
With diesel.
I could see it all now. Me blinking in earnest. My expression so innocent I could win an Oscar for it.
I’m pretty sure I filled it with diesel. I mean, how am I supposed to know? What do you mean it’s a separate filling unit at the gas station? How would I know that if I only ever filled up the trucks before?
I could do that all day.
He’d have to lose his temper. Even if it wasn’t directed at me, there would be cursing unlike anyone has ever heard before. Especially because he’d just gotten the damn thing working exactly as he wanted.
I’d found one of those old mini-cassette recorders in Herb’s study.
I had zero idea what he’d ever used it for, but when I replaced the batteries the damn thing worked like a charm.
I’d kept it in the back pocket of my overalls ever since.
Now was perfect timing. I would record his cursing as evidence that I was in an abusive situation.
When I played it back for him, he’d see how trapped he was with my evidence and he’d have to let me go. Because, what if I started sharing stuff like that with the sheriff? Or, maybe ran into a door knob with my face?
He’d have more to worry about than losing his precious stake.
He’d have to see it then.
I wasn’t worth the trouble.
Overall, I was an exceptionally crappy wife. I gave him shit constantly for not knowing anything about farming life. I only cooked half the time. I wasn’t fucking him. He hated my taste in TV shows. There were only, like, three we agreed on.
Why keep me when I wanted to go? Why stay in this marriage when he could have anyone else?
Sure, his face was fucked up, but he had a decent body. He was super handy with tools and shit. He cleaned up after himself. Always. And I knew from experience his dick was bigger than average size.
He could find a wife who wasn’t a virgin. Who would go down on him every night. Who fucking wanted to live with him and have his babies.
He’d be so much better off without me.
My fingers gripped the gas tank handle. It was getting too heavy to hold for much longer. But I was afraid if I put it down, I would chicken out.
I tried to imagine her.
The new wife. She’d be so happy to help him with the crops and do his laundry. She’d have children with him and those children would someday get my farm.
Would I know? When I was in Seattle working in some hospital because I’d chosen nursing as a profession? Would I feel it when they eventually died and their kids decided what happened next with the farm? The house?
Sonofabitch!
None of this was fair.
Just do it.
I took the cover off the container’s spout and stepped towards the tractor.
One step. Two. Three.
I stopped.
Really, I was doing him a favor. He would eventually fix the tractor again. Then he’d have it all. The farm. The house. The new wife.
“Put it down.”
I whirled around, the plastic container bumping against my thigh as gas sloshed out from the spout.
Creed stood there, his expression dark and something else.
Disappointed, maybe?
“I can smell it from here,” he said, like he’d been reading my mind. “That’s not diesel and you know it. Put the tank down.”
I started my rapid blinking. “It’s not? I’m sure it is. I know that when I had them filled-”
“Jules!” he barked. “Give it up. You’re not fooling anyone and why are you blinking like that?”
I put the container down and folded my arms across my chest.
“Come here,” he said.
“No.”
“Come. Here.”
He wasn’t going to hurt me. I knew that about him by now. So what, he was just going to yell at me some more? Fine, I would record that.
I was about to reach for the mini-recorder in my back pocket, when he moved. So fast for someone that big, it always startled me a little. He had his shoulder in my stomach and was lifting me up in a fireman’s hold before I could get a shout out.
“Put me down!” I was draped over his shoulder, his arm holding my upper thighs against his chest. I slapped at his back, but it didn’t faze him at all.
“You were going to ruin the tractor. On purpose!” he slapped my overall-covered ass and the recorder fell out. We both looked at it on the ground. “Then you were going to record my reaction?”
“I wasn’t!” I lied. “I didn’t know it wasn’t diesel.”
He was marching us toward the house with intent. He wasn’t going to get his gun, was he? Killing a tractor wasn’t like killing a man’s horse. It wasn’t a shooting offense, was it?
He stomped onto the porch, pushed open the front door, and carried me through the house to the couch in the living room.
He told me a few days ago he wanted to replace that couch. Something new and soft brown leather that would be way more comfortable and size appropriate for him.
I told him it was the only good memory I had of my father and he dropped the suggestion.
That was also a lie. I just wanted to always make him as uncomfortable as possible.
“Put me down!” I shouted. This time in earnest. I started wiggling against his arm bar, but he tossed me around like I weighed nothing. When I thought he was putting me on my feet, he was actually just shoving the straps of my overalls off my shoulders, then I was being thrown over his lap.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“You want to be a brat,” he said. “You’re going to be treated like a brat.”
I felt the air on my bare ass a second before his hand came down on my skin.
Had he seriously just hit me? “You asshole! Let me go!”
“You were going to break the tractor.” Smack.
“The tractor we need to plant seeds.” Smack.
“You were going to put our planting season at risk.” Smack.
“For what?” Smack.
There was no point in refuting any of what he was saying because it was all true.
“Are you going to treat your new wife like this?!” I shouted back. I had tears streaming down my face, which had nothing to do with any kind of pain. Snot was running out of my nose and I was breathing and hiccuping all at the same time.
He stopped spanking my ass and let me catch my breath.
I braced my hand on his thigh and ran my arm across my eyes and nose.
“I don’t even know why I’m crying,” I sniffed. “You hit like a girl!”
His hand was just resting on my butt cheek, his fingers splayed out.
“What did you mean my new wife?”
“Nothing,” I spat, and worked to catch my breath. “Stupid.”
“What you did was childish,” he said. “You’re crying now because you know it.”
“Fine. Whatever. I didn’t do it, did I?”
“No,” he said, then started casually rubbing the spots he’d just turned red with his palm. “I watched you for about five minutes. Battling with yourself before you even approached the tractor.”
“What are you doing?” I asked him, trying to crane my neck over my shoulder.
His fingers slipped over my skin, below the curve of my ass. He was touching me. Down there.
“You needed to be punished for having the thought,” he said, his fingers brushing against the lips of my pussy.
I squirmed in his lap, but his arm against the small of my back held me in place.
“Now I’m going to show you something else,” he murmured.
I didn’t have time to say anything before I could feel the blunt tip of his finger inside me.
Whooshing out a breath, a thousand thoughts ran through my head. He was doing this thing. It wasn’t against my will.
Was it?
He slipped his finger out, ran his hand around my other butt cheek like he was following some pattern and then found my center and slipped his finger inside again. This time a little deeper.
I could feel my body’s slickness. Could feel how it made it easier for him.
Then his thumb was stroking me higher, between my pussy lips but not high enough.
“Higher,” I whispered.
“I’ll get there,” he murmured. “Nice and slow.”
His finger, the one just inside me, went deeper and I winced. It pinched a bit, but I didn’t care because his thumb was there. Right there. On that spot that I sometimes touched. It always felt good, but it never went anywhere. Not like the books said it should.
I rocked my hips against that thumb, that finger.
“What are you doing?” I gasped, as it finally felt like something was happening. An urgency between my legs that I couldn’t really describe.
“I’m fingering you,” he said, bluntly.
“No, I meant…” my voice trailed off.
His arm was no longer a bar against my lower back.
His hand was splayed on my naked ass, pushing down a little, even as his other hand worked me.
His finger started thrusting in earnest inside me.
I could feel every part of it. It wasn’t comfortable.
It wasn’t painful. It was…I didn’t know what it was.
Then his thumb was flicking against that spot higher up. That pressure point. Back and forth. Back and forth.
Then I felt it. This crazy wave of heat and pleasure ride over my body. It was between my legs, but it was beyond just there. I could feel it in my toes and my fingers. I didn’t want it to stop. I arched my back and that made it better. My hands gipping his thigh, my nails digging into his flesh.
“Fuuuuuuuck.”
But like any wave, it receded after a couple of seconds. I collapsed over his legs, my bare ass still there in his face. His dick was hard against his jeans. I felt it pulsing underneath me.
“Are we going to do it now?” I asked, my voice a dark whisper. I couldn’t say it was rape. Not after I’d let him…
“No.”
With a final swat on my butt, meant to get my attention rather than punish me, he pushed me off him until I was on my feet. I rushed my panties up over my hips and covered myself with the overalls as fast as I could.
I couldn’t imagine how I looked in that moment. I could feel my hair falling loose around my face, having escaped my ponytail. My eyes and nose were still red from crying.
I crossed my arms over my chest and I could feel how hard my nipples were. I wanted to pull on them.
Obviously, I didn’t.
“That wasn’t cool,” I finally said.
“Which part?” he asked me, as he stood. My eyes pinned to where he was still hard beneath his jeans. “Your punishment or your orgasm?”
“Either. Both. I don’t want you to do that again.”
He chuckled. “Liar. Now you have a taste. I’ll let you sit with that for a bit. But you need to get it through your head, there isn’t going to be a new wife because I’m not done with the old one yet.”