Enchanted Again (2 page)

“Did you need to be punished because you’re an adulterous whore?” he asked, pounding himself even more violently into her. He found this kind of talk exciting, as well.

“Yes!” she cried unintelligibly, slipping her fingers over her clitoris.

“That’s it,” he coaxed when he noticed her arm reaching between her legs to touch herself. “No need to be shy with old Jack. I know what cheating sluts like you like even better than you know yourself.” He could see his words were exciting her even more. He wanted to hear more of her replies. “Have you ever been spanked like that before?” he asked her.

“No.”

“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 tasks involved in investigating a crime—tasks which Tom felt he was above having to perform. He relied solely on his instincts when he decided whose rights to violate, and those instincts had been schooled over the years with the various prejudices he had acquired, all of which he considered “intelligence,” and which rarely coincided with the evidence that kept cropping up to make him look bad. The appropriate processing of evidence was a thorn in his side, and those who pressed for details were, to him, troublemakers.

Pansy knew from experience that Tom particularly disliked being disagreed with.

She warred with the muscles in her face that were reflexively assuming an expression of acute contempt. “They don’t appreciate you,” she muttered perfunctorily, but her lips and tongue cringed over the words, and they came out sounding like an accusation.

“Damn right, they don’t,” he said, looking directly at her then, perhaps to see if there was any insincerity in her remark; for if he had any sense of reality he would never be able to trust such a comment. He got up and stretched. Pansy’s eyes moved over him, noting with loathing the way his ill-fitting uniform emphasized the unsightly bulges that stretched out across his abdomen and hips, giving him an androgynous appearance from the waistline to his thighs. She wondered if he had ever actually physically pursued a suspect and then, quite unexpectedly, a small snort of laughter burst from between her lips. She immediately covered over it with a cough.

Feeling compelled to say something in the silence that followed, Pansy asked, “Is this the same case you’ve been working on all week?”

Tom let out a long sigh. “Yeah…the Foreman case. This new jackass at the D.A.’s office keeps sending it back to me…finding things to nitpick over.” Pansy had no doubt that the “things to nitpick over” were really holes in the case—holes that the former district attorney would have ignored, pressing forward blindly only to push for a plea in the end. That way everyone came out a winner. Everyone except the accused, that is—if he or she was innocent. And what were the chances of that?

“What’s the matter this time?” Pansy asked, stalling until she could find the right moment to escape. She wondered that he didn’t notice how different she was. She was certain she must look different. But then, even she couldn’t identify what it was exactly that had changed about her. All she knew for certain was that she had changed. She shuddered. Tom went on, oblivious of any change. He was oblivious of
her,
she realized suddenly.

“This D.A. actually accused me of harassment!” he said, thrilled for an audience to talk to, even if it was only Pansy. “He just won’t accept the fact that the guy is guilty.”

“What did he do?”

“He killed his wife!” Tom said, looking at her as if to say,
How do you like that?
“He killed his goddamn wife!”

She wondered. It was one thing to accuse someone of murder; it was another entirely to prove it. Coming from Tom she found it hard to believe. She felt an instinctive aversion to the positions he took on nearly everything now. She wondered about this new district attorney. She secretly admired him. So, he refused to play ball? Well, that was refreshing. Although, she knew from experience that the D.A. would eventually come around. They always did.

She watched Tom, mesmerized, as he poured out his troubles with the case to her. She struggled to find any redeemable qualities in him but failed. She wondered why she married him. Poor, impotent, misunderstood Tom! She pitied the people he came up against, and another wave of fear and dread came over her. Thank heavens he hardly ever noticed her. He had no inkling whatsoever that less than an hour earlier she had been in a hotel room, groveling on her hands and knees, begging to be beaten with a belt.

Finally Tom wound down enough for her to make a graceful escape, which she did with a sigh of relief. A sense of guilt lingered over her, gaining strength with each little pang of discomfort that reminded her of her time with Jack. She pondered over the guilt for a moment; she thought she had gotten over that in the car. It occurred to her that the guilt was for herself, not Tom. The love between her and Tom had been gone for many years now, but she had stayed, and this suddenly bothered her. Yet how could she leave? As inept as he was at everything else, Tom did manage to somehow keep a roof over her head. She was certain she could not manage as well on her own. Things were difficult enough as they were. It seemed to her that this was an impossible world to survive in all alone, and it seemed more difficult every day. In the event of a divorce, Tom, with his connections, would see to it that she got nothing. She would have to start over from scratch. Who would take care of her? She thought about Jack and shuddered. There was nowhere for her to go.

But the thought of Jack lingered and grew stronger. Little flashbacks of what he had done to her kept playing themselves out in her mind, giving her almost as much pleasure as the actual events had. The memories sent simultaneous surges of shock and excitement through her. But what shocked her the most was Jack’s interest in her to begin with. Why had he chosen her? She knew there was nothing remotely outstanding about her. Most men didn’t even notice her. She had never possessed any one particular characteristic that drew them to her, but then again, she didn’t feel she was especially unattractive either. There were things that she saw in herself that she felt were overlooked…perhaps Jack saw these things, too. She recalled how persistent he had been with her when they met. He had approached her quite unexpectedly in the coffee shop just around the corner from where she lived. She had gone there every morning for years, and then one day he was there. She noticed him immediately because he was the first patron of the bustling little shop ever to notice
her.
His eyes were always on her when she happened to glance at him, and he smiled unabashedly when she caught him staring. It was Pansy who would, at these moments, look quickly and guiltily away.