by Gwen Masters
(05/24/06)

Clarice didn't love him anymore.

The knowledge came to her like a calculus problem finally solved. Something that made no sense whatsoever until the answer was right there in black and white, and then of course that was the way it was, why didn't she see it before?

At the moment of revelation she was looking down at Max, watching him watch her, his hands playing across her breasts in the same way they had for the last twenty years. Suddenly he was only the man she was married to, the guy who paid the bills, the man who liked his steaks rare and his vodka neat. He wasn't the love of her life anymore.

Was it a sin to fuck someone she didn't love? She supposed it was. But she closed her eyes and made him come anyway.

She knew her performance was convincing. In all the time they had been married, he never noticed when she faked it.

At confession the following week she sat primly in the little cubicle. Father Brian sat on the other side of the tarnished grate. Though she could see his profile, he carefully kept his face turned from her. She confessed her sins one by one and then said calmly, "I have slept with someone I don't love."

"Slept with?" the priest said, confused. She clarified. His eyes widened and though his profile did not change, his tone did.

"Have you spoken with your husband about the fact that you do not love him any longer?"

"No, Father."

She could barely see him through the grate that separated them, but she could see enough to read his displeasure clearly. The priest shook his head slightly, a frown on his face. It made his collar look even tighter around his throat. "The Lord blessed your marriage. Honesty between you and your husband is vital. This is what the Lord wants."

Clarice shifted in her chair and bit her lip, thinking. "But if I tell him that, it will destroy him, Father. Maybe I just need to find someone to fill the void, someone who will take care of my needs and still allow me to be a good wife."

"An unfaithful wife is not a good wife," the priest admonished.

"Divorce is not allowed," she whispered, and a long sigh came from the other side of the confessional. She ignored it, forgot about confessing her sins, and started talking about making new ones. "Divorce isn't allowed but infidelity isn't considered such a sin in the Church. Why is that? Why is infidelity overlooked but divorce is enough for excommunication?"

"That's a good question," Father Brian admitted. "But that doesn't change what we have here, does it? It doesn't change the fact that you need to do something in this marriage to which you have committed yourself. We offer counseling sessions for this. There is nothing wrong with admitting there is a problem with the marriage. There is something wrong with dealing with it by sinful means."

"Forgive me for the sin of considering it," she whispered.

"Yes," the priest returned, but Clarice was sure she heard a note of doubt. He gave her a remarkably light penance, and Clarice found herself in her car minutes later, looking at the rosary in her hand and feeling even more lost than before.

That night, Clarice looked at Max over the dinner table. She watched him chew the green beans, watched him dip the bread into the pool of butter on the potatoes, watched him cut through the steak. Watched the blood sluice out of it onto the plate. Her stomach turned.

"Do you still love me?" Clarice asked, and Max dropped his fork. It clattered against the plate. A dollop of mashed potatoes landed on her clean tablecloth.

"Where did that come from?" he asked.

"Things change," she whispered.

"They do?"

"Yes." Wetness seeped around the mashed potatoes on the tablecloth, widening the stain.

"Do you still love me?" he asked.

The question was her opening, her chance at freedom. But like a prisoner who has known nothing but the walls of a fortress for a little too long, she hesitated instead of dashing for the wide open gate.

"I don't know," she said.

"You don't know?"

She looked up at him. Her husband's face wasn't a mask of pain or confusion, like she had expected. It was a touch of anger and something else. Relief?

Relief?

She stared at him dumbly, unable to speak. Max shoved his chair back from the table so hard that he upset his wine. It sloshed over the tablecloth, red on cream, and Clarice groaned. She would never get that stain out. Somewhere deep in her mind, it occurred to her that she was more upset over the stain than over the certainty that her marriage was picking up momentum on a downhill slide at this very moment.

She looked up to see empty air where Max had been. She heard him tramping down the hallway, heading toward their bedroom.

"Max!" Clarice was gripped with sudden terror. What had she done? What was she thinking? So what if she didn't love him anymore! He was her husband and she had a responsibility to him, she had taken vows, right in front of God and everybody, she had worn that gold ring until it had made a permanent groove in her flesh. If some doctor took X-rays of her hand he would probably find a groove in her very bone. She was his for better or for worse and this just happened to be worse.

What had she done?

Max was standing in the bedroom, looking down at the floor. He appeared very interested in the designs on the carpet. It was as if he had forgotten his mission and purpose. Clarice touched his back and he flinched.

"I've known for a long time there was something wrong," he said. "I didn't know it was this bad. I know we've been stifled and unhappy for years."

She heard "we."

"You've been unhappy too?" she said. "You never said..."

"Neither did you."

"I don't know what I need," she whispered. "Sometimes when we're making love I think I feel the things I should feel but then..."

"When was the last time you came with me?" he asked bluntly. Clarice was too stunned to answer. Max turned to look at her. His eyes were wide and clear and there was something in them she had never seen before.

"Last night," she whispered.

His eyes narrowed. "Liar," he said, and the word was long, drawn-out into a vicious tease.

"Last year," she corrected.

Max blinked once. "I've been having an affair," he said.

Clarice drew her hand away from him as if she had been shocked with electricity. She stumbled back against the open door and the edge of it cut into her back. She tasted blood in her mouth. She had bitten her tongue. An affair? Max?

"But you never try anything new in bed," she hissed. "She obviously hasn't taught you much."

In two steps Max had a grip on Clarice's wrist. She tugged hard to free herself and he used brute strength to pull her out of the doorway. He flung her onto the bed. She bounced once, then turned onto her back and scrambled away from him, her feet bunching up the covers and shoving the pillows from their careful places. Max grabbed her ankle and hauled her back down. With the other hand he yanked on the top of her blouse.

The buttons flew and ticked on the hardwood floor.

"What are you doing?" she screeched.

"I think what you need is the same thing I need," Max said. He hadn't even broken a sweat. He removed his glasses and dropped them to the floor, and this surprised Clarice enough that she stopped moving. Had Max ever been so careless?

"Are you going to get on your knees, Clarice, or should I make you do it?"

"I'm not going to suck you off," she spat out, and tried to kick her ankle free. He twisted ever so slightly and Clarice gasped when the tiny sliver of pain shot through her leg.

"No, you're not," he clarified. "Not yet."

"You're crazy!" she almost screamed.

Max yanked hard on her bra. The elastic stretched against her flesh but there wasn't much give, and she felt the snaps go, two little hitches against her back and then he had access to what he wanted. He took one nipple in his hand and pinched. Hard.

"Ow!" Clarice hollered. Max glared at her.

"Tell me you don't want it like this, Clarice. Tell me that and I'll stop." He twisted her nipple just enough to make her cry out again. "I fucking dare you, Clarice."

Her mouth dropped open. She had never heard Max curse before. "What did you say?" she asked.

"I said: I fucking dare you to tell me to fucking stop, Clarice."

He let go of her ankle. When he reached for the snap of her jeans, she was too stunned to stop him. They were halfway down her legs before she remembered that her husband had just admitted to an affair, that she didn't love him, and that they were supposed to be fighting, not fucking.

But she was more turned on than she had been in years.

She kicked the jeans off. Max eyed her warily, expecting some sort of trick. Clarice arched into his hands and he obliged by squeezing her breasts hard. Still looking at her, he scraped his teeth over one nipple before he bit down.

The pain flashed through her and she writhed under him. His hips pressed against her crotch. She was dripping wet and what was in his pants was hard as a rock.

"I want you," she gasped.

Max licked a trail down her body. She listened to the sound of his zipper opening and his pants hitting the floor, even as his tongue found her clit. For the first time since they had been married, Max wasn't gentle. He nibbled and licked and sucked until Clarice felt as though her whole body would come apart at the seams.

That was before he slipped a finger up her ass.

Clarice arched off the bed, all thought gone. She screamed when she came.

Another finger joining the first brought her back down to earth. This new invasion hurt a little but the pain was eclipsed by the thrill and the sheer goodness of it. She ground down on his hand while he bit softly along the inside of her thighs.

"Do you want me to fuck you there?" he asked. He was just as breathless as she was.

"No," she immediately said, and Max pushed a third finger inside her. She yelped and tried to move away but his other hand held her steady. She found herself pushing hard against him and chanting "no" at the same time, a mantra of uncertainty.

"I'm going to fuck your ass, Clarice," he told her. "I'm going to fuck you there and I'm going to come deep inside you. Because I've decided that I like dirty little sluts and it's high time I had one of my very own, don't you think?"

Clarice was stunned. A wave of shame washed over her. Her face turned a brilliant red. Her heart pounded.

"I'm not a slut," she protested weakly.

"Not yet, but you want to be, don't you?"

She didn't answer. She just bucked up against his hand. When Max told her to get on her knees she did it meekly, but she could hardly breathe for how fast her heart was racing.

"Did you go to confession today?" he asked her, seemingly out of the blue. He had the lube from the bedside drawer, the bottle she had bought when menopause brought about all sorts of awful changes in her body. This time she was so wet he almost didn't need it. She moaned and arched her back at the sensation of the cold liquid sliding across her puckered rim. He was going in there...

"Yes," she whispered.

"Did you confess all your sins, Clarice?"

"Yes."

"I want you to confess them to me. I want you to tell me all the bad things you have done. I want you to tell me how you fucked me even while you didn't love me, and I want you to tell me how you faked those orgasms, and I want you to tell me how bad you want this cock in your ass."

Clarice started to tremble. The head of her husband's cock pressed hard against her back door and she tensed up, suddenly afraid.

"Confess," he whispered.

"I fucked a man I didn't love," she said, and as she did, she felt him push harder. Now there was a slow burning sensation between her cheeks, but she found it was more pleasant than anything else. "I faked orgasms for a long time. I acted like the good wife when I really wasn't."

"Tell me more."

"I played with myself while my husband was at work," she said, and Max paused in surprise. Clarice bit down hard on her lip while the burning spread, filling her whole center, making her whimper in protest.

"I'm not going to stop," he said, "Because I know you don't want me to. Confess."

"When I played with myself I pretended that I was fucking someone else. I pretended my husband was tied to the chair in the bedroom and made to watch while someone else made me come over and over and over."

Max pushed harder. Clarice cried out with the sudden flash of pain. Almost immediately the pleasure took over and then there was a dull roaring in her ears, the sound of her own blood pumping furiously. Her clit throbbed.

"Do you like being fucked up the ass, Clarice? Do you like feeling like a slut? Only sluts do that, you know. No good Catholic girl would dream of letting a man sodomize her. This makes you a Godless heathen, doesn't it? It makes you a slut, Clarice."

With that her husband shoved his cock to the hilt, buried himself between her cheeks and ground down hard against her. It hurt like hell but God help her, she wanted it. She cried out and thrashed under him, not sure if she really wanted to get away, knowing damn good and well he wouldn't let her anyway.

"Are you going to confess this to Father Brian?" Max panted. "Are you going to confess that you let that man you don't love fuck you up the ass? You're just sinning all over the goddamn place, aren't you, you fucking bitch?"

Max rubbed her clit with every word, a rhythm of curses and caresses that sent Clarice over the edge before he even started to truly fuck her, and she was coming hard before he pulled back and thrust in hard again. Before he started taking his own pleasure, she was screaming and clawing at the sheets.

Max didn't stop. She begged, she warned him she was too sensitive, the pleas coming out in an almost childish whine. He laughed against her back and kept right on doing what he was doing, and now he was sawing in and out of her ass, the lube making it easy but not gentle. She bucked up into him and in response he slammed down so hard that her breath left her in one long thrust.

He was cursing at her, calling her names like whore and cumslut and cocksucking bitch. She cried and screamed and her body heaved hard when she came, hard enough that she almost threw him off, and that was what it took to send him over the edge.

Max hollered when he came. He had never done that before.

Clarice lay under him when it was over, her wrists gripped by his hands. He wasn't letting go of her, and he was buried deep inside her, even though he was going soft and small.

"I guess she did teach you new tricks," Clarice said after a while.

"There is no one else," he said. "I lied. I wanted to see if it would faze you."

Clarice tried to move away from him, but he held her easily, as if she were weightless.

"That's not fair," she spat.

"It's not fair that you don't love me anymore," he told her.

"Maybe I do."

"Maybe you equate love with lust, Clarice. As long as I'm fucking you like a cheap whore, everything looks different, doesn't it?"

His cock was getting hard. Clarice wiggled against it, to help him along. Soon she was on her knees again and he was fucking her hard, bottoming out every now and then and making her cry out in surprise. She buried her face in the pillow and pushed back against him, spread her legs wider, begged him for things she never would have asked for even an hour before.

"Confess some more," he ordered, and she did.

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