“Not a difficult concept, gorgeous.” Ed wasn’t looking at her. Not even slightly. “No. As in, no, we won’t be… making love tonight.” He paused then, his voice lowering. “In fact, I’ll be sleeping in the guest bedroom. Tonight, and for the next three weeks.”
His words left something unsaid. Something that Michelle deeply, truly, did not want to think about. Instead, she sat up and folded her hands in her lap, making sure her arms were pressing her tits together until they were about to spill right out of her top. Looking at him through a veil of her meticulously done-up hair, the hair she’d spent nearly an hour getting just so, she tried to turn her eyes into a tractor beam. “Sweetest… I need you. I need to feel you inside me, around me.”
Ed finally looked back at her, but his face was emotionless. “I said no.”
Pouting, Michelle was nonetheless determined to work through this inexplicable coldness from her cherished husband. She just couldn’t understand what had happened all of a sudden. “Sweetest, it’s Friday night. We can start off a whole weekend together, celebrating our love like last weekend.” She bent forward and beamed a grin at him. “I know you enjoyed that. Almost as much as I did, I think.”
Not a lie. That weekend had been something else, and Michelle had reveled in the love that had enveloped her. The sight of him now, in only a pair of sweats so that his muscular frame was on full display, was pure thrill. The memory of those two days, though, made her husband’s current dispassion… hurtful. Scary, even.
Ed watched her, long and hard, obviously struggling to come to a decision. Finally, he gave a rueful, self-deprecating smile. “I forgot some documents today, when I was meeting with the realtor. It was only nine in the morning when I came back to get them, so I figured I’d have no problem not crossing paths with you.”
Growing frightened, Michelle watched the saddest look he’d ever had make his face crumble. His next words were a spear through her chest. “I should have thought about how nice out it was today. A day to make you want to open a window. I should have thought of how we’re really not so far away from our… neighbors.”
She gasped and covered her hand with her mouth instinctively. Too little, too late. “Sweetest… what you heard…”
Ed ignored her fumbling, meaningless words. “You know what’s funny? I went to the park today, after… you know… and I just sat there, under the sun, and had a thought that, somewhere there was a man who was happy. A man who was with the person he loved, and had no doubts that it was right. That she loved him too.” A look of abject misery washed over him. “I had to force myself to acknowledge it; that it had to be true of at least one man, somewhere. It was hard, though, because I’m on my way to being sure that that kind of serenity doesn’t really exist.”
Michelle was shaking from raw nerves then, and she stuttered out a sound that was meant to be a reassurance, a declaration, but he plowed right over her. “So… no. No sex. No shared bed. This willow needs to be alone now.” Arms full of clothes and linens, Michelle watched her husband turn to leave in slow motion. It took an eternity, it seemed, before she could make her vocal cords work again.
“It was just dirty talk! It… it didn’t even mean what you think it did!” She was caterwauling now, and it poured out of her. “It wasn’t about you, it was… was an inside joke!” The lies were a life-preserver to her, and she prayed desperately that the holes weren’t too big to make it useless. “Ed, I love you so much… I can’t even imagine not being with you for an entire three weeks! That’s never even come close to happening since the first time we made love! Oh god, pleeeease!”
That actually got his attention, and he paused, looking back at her over his shoulder while laughing bitterly. “Three weeks? Misha,” the name was a dagger, “you’d better make your peace with at least that.” Before she could respond, he went on. “I made a deal with you though, and I’ll honor it. I’m sticking out the rest of the month, if only so that, in the time to come, you’ll never have the excuse of thinking this was my fault. So, yeah. Three weeks… then, well…” His shrug looked like it was bearing a thousand pounds. He did walk out then, despite Michelle’s wails.
The crash of him slamming the guestroom door, the feel of finality, was what she thought the sound of the eventual coffin closing on her would likely be.
__________
After a heart-wrenching weekend of absolute misery, the lonely, yawning gulf of the two worst days of her life, Michelle was ready. It was Monday morning, she was standing in front of that damned door she wished she’d never seen, dressed in a billowy blouse and long, thick skirt that would do a 19th century schoolmarm proud… and she was ready.
She raised her fist and knocked on Dominik’s front door for the first time since the first time, forcing him to come to her for once.
Fraught, jittery, but courageous minutes later, the man flung that door open, his face telling Michelle that he knew exactly who he would see. His face… and the fact that he was standing there butt-ass naked. She swallowed and tried to look him in his two eyes, rather than the one. Dammit woman, get it over with.
“Dominik,” only his full name from then on was her vow, “it’s over.”
Dominik Novak pressed his lips into a thin line and stared down at her. Michelle licked hers nervously. That was all the signal he needed.
Without warning, he took her by the arms and forced her over to the side of the house, across his large porch, and right up against the picture window that looked into his living room, plastering her back to it while pressing his body up close, wordless the entire time.
Michelle squawked and sputtered in indignant protest. “Dom, stop. Stop! I’m serious, we–” The denial was cut off when she heard the rip of her demure blouse being torn open and destroyed, aborted when the same happened to her thick bra, and finally forgotten when she felt those improbably-nimble fingers begin massaging her fleshy globes while methodically tweaking her achingly pointed nipples with exquisite familiarity.
“Oh, oh… oh nnn… hnngh… noooo…” Michelle feebly pushed on his chest. She bent her knees, at first dimly thinking to get some leverage, then because she just couldn’t keep them straight. That was when her hands when to his shoulders for support, and that was also when Dom, while popping one of those throbbing pink nipples into his mouth, reached down and yanked off her swishing skirt, where it made a pool of drab fabric at her ankles around the granny-panties that went along for the ride.
She wanted to scream at him to stop… but that would require volume, and she was, for the moment, still very cognizant that they were outside, in broad daylight. “Dom… Dom… hhmm… mmm…” She turned her head and squeezed her eyes shut. He saw it as an invitation and began running his tongue up and down her neck. She shuddered. She gushed. He felt it on the bare thigh he’d, at some unknown point, shoved between her spread legs.