.

      “Your husband doesn’t spank you like you deserve?” he queried, thrusting harder and harder.

      “No,” she choked out again.

      “But you deserved it, didn’t you, Pansy?” he asked.

      “Yes,” she cried out. Her fingers were enthusiastically rubbing her clitoris.

      He grasped her bright-red buttocks and began roughly kneading them with his hands as he continued to batter her with his thrusts. “You can still feel it, can’t you, Pansy?” he asked her, knowing full well by her moans that she could. She responded in the affirmative. He squeezed her buttocks harder. He saw that she liked these painful reminders by the way her movements became more and more frantic with every squeeze from his prying fingers. Seeing that she enjoyed it, Jack became increasingly crude with her. “You’ll remember it tonight, too, when you fuck your husband, won’t you?” he asked her, and when she paused over the reminder of her husband, he repeated, “Won’t you, Pansy?” It was at that moment that she climaxed, ironically, while she was crying out that she would indeed remember this later that evening when she was in bed with her husband.

      Almost immediately after the last waves of pleasure passed, Pansy felt a peculiar detachment from Jack, even though he continued to drive himself into her, all the while telling her what a “cheating whore” she was. She kept her head down and pushed her hips toward him, hoping he would finish quickly. “Oh, yeah,” he groaned. “Push that pussy out for me.” And with that she at last felt him erupt inside her. Her arousal was fading fast now, with morose quickly following on its heels.

      Jack remained joined with her for much longer than she would have liked him to, but finally he pulled himself out of her and went over to the bed and collapsed on top of it. She stood up, unsure of what to do next. Awkwardly, she pulled the panties out of her mouth. She realized that Jack was still watching her when she heard him laugh. This pleased and annoyed her at the same time.

      She moved with controlled calm, aware that just beneath the surface there was—lying dormant until she was alone—a wealth of recriminations and anguish over what she had just done. For the moment, she walked around in a kind of daze, picking up her scattered items of clothing and clumsily putting them on. Jack merely watched her quietly from the bed.

      When she was fully dressed she faced him self-consciously. In spite of her jumbled emotions she managed an awkward laugh. She waited for him to say something.

      He surprised her with, “Are you okay?”

      This seemed too personal somehow, so she brushed it aside with a small wave of her hand and in a shaky voice she replied, “Of course.”

      He saw her discomfort. “Look, Pansy,” he told her. “I want to see you again. I like you. I know it got a little…well, let’s just say I lost my head.”

      In spite of her regret Pansy felt a brand-new kindling of desire from his words. “I don’t know, Jack,” she said hesitantly. “I’ve never done anything like this before, and I feel…I feel—” She stopped, at a loss for words.

      “You enjoyed it, Pansy. There’s nothing wrong in that.”

      “I know,” Pansy answered quickly. She did not want to think about the things they had done and she certainly didn’t want to discuss them. “It’s not that. I mean…it’s…I don’t know what it is. I need to think.”

      “I want to see you again, Pansy,” he repeated. He suddenly seemed terribly vulnerable to her.

      “I have to go,” she said. She approached him on the bed where he sat watching her and lightly kissed his cheek. She wasn’t sure what else she was supposed to say or do. “Bye for now, Jack,” she said.

      Once she reached the shelter of her car, Pansy slumped down and let out a long, shaky sob. She was all at once assailed with so many conflicting sensations that she couldn’t even pinpoint what she actually felt. Overall there was a sensation of distress so potent it fell over her like a dark blanket of misery. She wept bitterly for several moments and then her tears stopped abruptly. As she forcibly resumed the familiar activities of her life, like turning the key in the ignition and shifting the car into Drive, she determinedly fought the revulsion that was steadily creeping over her.

      “It’s going to be okay,” Pansy said out loud. “It was a onetime thing that I won’t ever do again.” She tried vigorously to pinpoint what it was that was bothering her so much. Certainly there was no love lost between her and her husband, and even more certainly there had been no real wrongdoing on her part, especially in light of her husband’s many indiscretions. And yet, this was the first time she had ever been unfaithful to him. Even so, she could not believe that the simple act of adultery, committed within such a marriage as theirs, could bring about such anguish. She was actually feeling afraid; but of what? Images of her affair with Jack kept tumbling into her consciousness and, though she recoiled at the reminders, when she forced her mind to receive them she found that they still had the power to arouse her. Yet this realization only seemed to make her feel worse. How could she have allowed herself to be treated that way? How could she have begged for it like she did? She could still feel the wetness of her panties from having held them in her mouth for so long and her revulsion and fear returned. Was she depraved?

      On a deeper level that she could not yet dwell upon, Pansy faintly acknowledged that she had never felt such pleasure as she had with Jack. She continued to scrutinize her feelings over the matter as she drove home, struggling to achieve some sense of calm before having to face her husband. This mere contemplation of her husband brought forth such a sense of panic that she nearly lost control of the car. Her mind had only to mingle the thought of her husband with the memories of that afternoon to put her in a state of absolute terror. She knew well how abominable the things she had done with Jack would be to her husband. Were he to find out, he would most certainly destroy her. This, then, was the primary source of her fear. Anger came at her from every direction at the realization. Yet she whispered frantically, over and over again, “He must never find out!”

      When at last she arrived home, Pansy appeared calm, except for a slight trembling. She entered the house tentatively. Tom was there. She could hear his voice, loud and argumentative, as he shouted objections at someone, most likely over the telephone. She was still steeped in morbid fear and regret, and longed for a hot shower. She dreaded seeing Tom more than usual, but oddly enough, the sight of him as she paused in the doorway of his office, slumped in his chair, angry and arrogant and bitter, seemed to fully exonerate her of any culpability. She struggled to wipe the grimace from her features as she stared silently at him, recalling absently how her mother once warned her that frowning might make her face stay that way. She intended to move away from the doorway before capturing his attention but, like a bystander at a gruesome accident, she couldn’t seem to pull herself away.

      “Tapes malfunction every day,” he was saying to the person on the other line.

      Especially when you’re around, Pansy thought.

      She reflected that she felt different. Perhaps what she had done today had changed her somehow. But if she had changed, Tom had not. He was the same self-absorbed, miserable bastard. He looked up suddenly, barely registering her presence before proceeding to look through her as if she were no more than a picture on the wall.

      “Yeah, yeah,” he said into the phone. “You act like this bum deserves the royal treatment or something. He’s the scum of the earth.”

      Innocent until proven guilty, Pansy thought.

      Tom slammed down the receiver suddenly and immediately launched into a tirade, addressing her, seemingly, but nevertheless oblivious of her.

      “Goddamn paperwork is going to keep me up all night,” he said. “They need to decide if they want me to sit around dotting i’s and crossing t’s, or if they want me to get out there and serve and protect.” This was a familiar theme for him, but by now it was glaringly plain to Pansy that by “dotting i’s and crossing t’s,” Tom was not referring to some pointless red tape but, rather, he spoke of the actual