After leaving Matt's place that night, she made her way back home and sat on her porch watching his house carefully. Shivering from the chilly pre dawn air, she thought about the bizarre twist events had taken as she twisted the bustier in her hands. There were still lights on over there, upstairs and down. The sex she had expected, but the beating... Then the revelation about why his wife had left him, his emotional outburst... those things she had not been prepared for.
She could feel his cum on her thighs, cold and mostly unwelcome.
The light went out in the upstairs window, and though she sat there and watched for another half-hour, they stayed on downstairs. Good, that meant he'd screwed up. She'd left the backdoor unlocked, and it didn't appear that he'd bothered to go downstairs and check. When he went out during the day, he almost always used the front door. That gave her a chance to get out of this situation.
Chilled, she let herself into her own front door, and went upstairs. She took off the loose dress and the garter belt with the stockings, wincing as she moved the sore flesh of her lower back and buttocks. Looking in the mirror, she saw the still livid welts that would be bruises before long. Matt had been vicious, more than she could have expected of him. Of course, she hadn't expected him to beat her when she'd gone over a few hours before. But then, before he had shown up a few days ago with that photograph, she hadn't known him very well.
She slipped her nightgown over her head, stuffed the bustier, garter belt and stockings deep into the hamper. She told herself that she really needed to get rid of them.
Moving as quietly as she could, she padded to her bedroom and slipped into the bed next to her husband. He rolled over, put his arm around her waist and snuggled in, spooning. She forced herself not to react as he pressed his body against her aching back.
"You're cold," he whispered. "Everything okay with Jane and her kids?" he asked, reminding her of the lie she had had to tell him.
"They're fine, everyone's okay," she told him. "The baby has colic, that's all. In fact," she couldn't believe how easily the story came to her, "Jane was so embarrassed at getting me out of bed in the middle of the night that she made me promise not to tell her husband."
"Really?" He chuckled softly.
"Yes, poor thing. She's so frazzled these days. Don't tell him about it, okay? She'd just feel awful."
"No problem." He was drifting off again, she could tell. She lay there in his arms, amazed at what was happening inside her. She was being blackmailed by her neighbor; she was at his beck and call for sexual favours. While she hated what he was doing to her, the beating tonight being not the worst of it, some growing part of her liked it.
She turned that thought over in her mind... "The beating not the worst of it?" What did that mean? The physical pain she had experienced that night was bad, humiliating, but this control that Matt was exerting over her... that could just be worse. And she had just lied to her husband for the second time in one night.
Here was this man, certainly good looking enough, who wanted her. Who wanted her enough to stoop to blackmail and threats? Her husband was a good man, a provider, and a good father to their daughter. But he was hardly her lover anymore. Oh, there was love there, certainly, but the passion had died long ago. When they did make love, it was simple, straightforward, and more sex than making love. She'd craved more for a very long time, but she knew her husband, and knew that he wasn't going to change.
That's why she had turned to the contractor, Tom, that day. Her first slip in nearly ten years of marriage... And she had opened herself up to this. To Matt and his god-damned camera.
But if he didn't check his backdoor when he went out later that day... there was hope.
She lay in the circle of her husband's arms, contemplating her freedom as she drifted off to sleep.