Journey to Another Life Ch. 06

He helped her to her feet, still astounded by how compliant and weak she felt. He walked her carefully to the bedroom, keeping the oversized white towel tight around her. She stooped slightly as he maneuvered her, like an old, tired, slightly disoriented woman. Her tears prevented her from seeing well so she relied heavily on him to guide her. Finally, they reached the bed and he sat her down, using the ends of the towel to dry her forearms and her thighs as she shivered and sobbed.

"I went to bed for many reasons," he told her, "but none of them were because I don't love you anymore." He made her look at him as he spoke. "You are my beautiful bride," he added, kissing the tip of her chilled nose.

"So you still love me?" Her big green eyes blinked several times while she pleaded for the answer she longed to hear.

"Yes, my love. I love you totally and forever. I'm incapable of doing anything else."

He was kneeling at her feet like a knight in a fairy tale. He took her chin in his hand and planted a kiss firmly on her lips. "There," he said, "that seals it."

A small, relieved smile spread across her face. "Thank god," she whispered. "I couldn't live with myself if I lost your love."

"Pretty girls shouldn't worry about things like that," Ed said. "Now you need to get under these covers and sleep. When you wake up, we can talk about this all you want, but for now, you need to rest."

She crawled between the sheets and curled up like a child. She didn't say "thank you," but shouted it with her eyes before she shut them and drifted off to sleep.

Ed undertook activities with sporadic interest for the next few hours. The moment she fell asleep, he phoned for maid service—he couldn't possibly enter the living room in its current state. And he certainly couldn't bear the thought of cleaning up the various stains that lurked everywhere. While the maid cleaned, he attempted a walk on the beach but didn't get far. He didn't want to leave Nikki alone too long, because if she awoke and didn't find him there, his absence would confirm her suspicions that he didn't love her any longer. He tried to watch television in the bedroom using headphones but neither sports nor news programming held his interest. When the maid had finished cleaning two hours later—giving him a courteous but guarded smile as she accepted his generous tip—he returned to the living room but found all he could do was stand in the middle of it and recall the lewd acts associated with each piece of furniture. Even the kitchen was off-limits—preparing food there seemed wrong, given what he knew had transpired on that floor and on those counters.

Yet he could sit on the balcony. With a fresh drink. He did his best to read the newspaper there, checking on her every quarter hour or so. At nearly four o'clock, she stirred. He entered the bedroom to find her sitting on the edge of the bed, staring off into space.

"Good morning. Sort of," he said as he sat next to her.

"Yeah," she half-snorted. "Sort of." She kept her eyes lowered.

"You okay?"

She shrugged. "I probably will be eventually. For now, I just feel ashamed and kind of ridiculous."

"Please, don't. We had an agreement. You were just doing what we both agreed on." And that was true enough, he told himself.

She turned to look at him. "But I feel like I went too far. It got out of hand. I wish I could take it all back."

Her words surprised him. "You do?"

"Well, aren't you ashamed of me? Wasn't my behavior appalling?"

He stroked her cheek and grinned. "I won't kid you. I was surprised by a lot of what I saw."

She nodded and bit her lip.

"But I was also turned on. Incredibly turned on."

"For a while," she interjected.

"For quite a while. You weren't kidding when you said you would show me a side of you I'd never seen before."

She frowned. "Yeah. The big slut. That's me."

"Nikki. Why are you beating yourself up about this?"

"I should have shown some restraint. I mean, I didn't have to act out every damn fantasy I ever had, did I? What the hell is wrong with me?"

Ed took her hand. "You're a lady with a strong drive. You can't help being so sexy."

She tried to stay angry with herself but a smile played at the corners of her mouth. "You liked it, then?"

"I liked it. I just don't think either of us were fully prepared for what we got."

She nodded. "Yes, that's a good way of putting it."

"I don't love you any less and I'm not ashamed of you," he said. He recognized now that the shame he'd felt the night before had been transitory. What remained was more a sense of loss or confusion than shame.

"I'm so glad. Because you know, really, I don't think I'm cut out for sluthood," she said, a tiny sparkle bringing life to her eyes. "Despite what you saw last night."

"That's entirely your decision." He squeezed her hand.

"Last night confirmed what I think I always suspected but never really thought about. I'm a one-man woman, Ed. I love you. I chose you and I want to be with you. That's why sex with you makes me so happy. This wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am stuff sounds great in fantasies but it feels like shit in real life."

He nodded to express empathy. "I love you, too. I'm just glad you got through it and you're okay. You gave me a scare this morning."

"I was scared myself. The thought of screwing up what we have frightens me more than you know."

"I love you no matter what, Nikki."

"Good. You know I'd never let anybody come between us, right?"

"Yes, I know that."

"If I had this to do over again, I'd do it so differently."

"Oh? What would you do?"

"Well, for starters, I'd get to know the person. Or people," she added sheepishly. "Treating those guys like objects made me feel like an object. If that makes any sense."

"Yes. Yes, it does. You're too warm a person to focus only on the sexual, I think."

"Exactly! I prefer a little talking, maybe even a little romance. What I did was no different than the way a couple of chimps would go at it."

"But they wouldn't have looked as good in that dress," Ed said.

She giggled. "Good point." She closed her eyes. "Oh god. That dress is pretty much gone, isn't it?"

"Fraid so," he said, unwilling to revisit the details of its demise.

"Oh well. It's probably better not to have any mementos hanging around," she pointed out.

"Still, though," he said, not wanting shame to be the predominant emotion of their discussion, "we lived out our fantasies, which is more than most couples ever do. And even though it wasn't quite what we expected, I have no regrets." Well, that was almost true, he reasoned. In time, he was sure that he'd feel no regrets at all.

"How did I get such a wonderful man?" She kissed him, the warmth and fullness of her lips a divine treat on his.

"The same reason I got such a wonderful woman. We deserve each other." He put his arms around her and squeezed. His throat was tight with affection for her.

She took a deep breath. "So how do we move forward?"

He paused, giving the matter some thought. "Well, we can't ignore or forget what happened. There's some pretty vivid pictures floating around in our heads."

"That's putting it mildly."

"We could spend the rest of our honeymoon reliving the best parts of what happened..."

Her eyes lit up. "Hmmm. Now that's an intriguing idea!"

"You like it?'

"Definitely! What parts did you like best?"

"Well, I was thinking—"

"No," she said, putting a finger to his lips. "Don't tell me. Show me!"

He hesitated, turned on but stunned that she'd be open to sex at this moment. This same woman who had wept in the shower, confessed to feeling like a slut, and engaged in every imaginable sexual act in the past twelve hours—now wanted to fool around.

"But sweetie, is this a good time? Aren't you...sore?" He wanted to be diplomatic, sensitive even. Her pussy had to be raw from last night's adventures.

"As a matter of fact, I am a little sore, but it's nothing I can't handle. Come on. Show me what you liked."

She was animated and alive—a complete turnaround from her mood only ten minutes earlier. Ed was suddenly aware that she was naked. He wanted to make her wet and feel that wetness but was that kosher so soon after her mini-breakdown? She was encouraging him, but could he trust this abrupt shift in her outlook?

"Was it when I ate their assholes?"

Her candor disarmed him, as it often did. "That was hot, yes, but I think the scene that first pushed me into a new zone happened even before you got back to the villa. When Dontari put his hands between your legs—"

"Like this?" She took Ed's hand and placed it on her warm, moist bush.

"More intimate, I think," he said as he moved his fingers to find her slit. He stroked her already swollen lips gently, urging the juice to come forward and coat his fingertips. She spread her legs and locked gazes with him.

The slut had returned.

"He played with your pussy, right there in the bar, and then when you turned around to go back to the dance floor, he let Armando smell his hand."

Her eyes widened. "Wow. I didn't know he did that."

Her cunt creamed as she spoke. He spread what she gave him around, much like he imagined Dontari had done to make her moan in the bar.

"Oh yes, he did it. You were loving his hand between your legs weren't you?"

Now a rush of heat accompanied the juice. "Yes," she purred. "But I especially loved it because I knew you were watching. I knew you knew what he was doing and I knew you were getting hard." She reached across his thigh to grab his erection. "Just like now. Only harder. Were you playing with yourself?"

She knew him too well. "A little," he confessed.

"I love that," she said, smiling at him. "I love knowing I turn you on."

The gleam in her eye didn't flicker with the defiance he'd seen the night before. It burned with love.