Remember When

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Jessica sat back and looked up from her keyboard. Writing about Ken was more difficult than writing about Larry had been. It made good material because it was pure, condensed s*x, but it also raised issues she’d never fully worked through. By the time Ken had completely untied her, the people down the beach had stopped coming closer, but it was clearly intentional. They were close enough that she could see them clearly, so surely the reverse was true as well. Her legs had been stiff and her arms numb when she’d finally been released. Her c**t was raw where Ken had rubbed it intermittently all night, and her lower half was covered in his fluids and her own.

While she’d been consumed by the need for orgasm, these things had been remote, but the instant she’d achieved release she’d been overwhelmed with shame and revulsion. She was standing naked on a beach in broad daylight with a man she barely knew, a man who was fully dressed himself, who had manipulated her sexually all night long, who had pushed her sexually until she’d begged first for release and, finally, for the last thing in the world she’d ever wanted. For hours she’d been consumed entirely with base needs, but once freed of them she’d been humiliated beyond anything that she would have been able to imagine.

Had the story ended there, had she gotten on a plane that night and returned home, she would probably be less confused today. She probably wouldn’t have a book to write about Ken. But she’d felt as much pleasure as she had pain, as much need as she had shame, and in a way she still couldn’t quite articulate, she had surrendered something on that beach that she hadn’t felt quite free to take back. She’d returned to the room with Ken and he had forbidden her to bathe. More than anything in the world she’d wanted to cleanse herself of what had happened on the beach, but for some reason she had obeyed him. She’d followed his instruction to sit quietly on the straight-backed desk chair and think about what she’d just experienced while he showered, and when he’d came out of the shower clean and perhaps more refreshed than she’d wanted to see him, she had obeyed his instruction to kneel and service his c**k.

She’d hated him as she’d taken his c**k in her mouth, but she also felt an undeniable twinge in her crotch, an unavoidable response to the command he had assumed of her body. Her p***y had throbbed and longed for him, even as she’d nearly choked on the taste of him.

So the remaining three days had gone, and then she’d returned home and never seen him again. The decision seemed to have been mutual—she hadn’t wanted to see him again and he hadn’t called—which only served to aggravate the questions in her mind. For a week she’d let him use her like a paid w***e, and had enjoyed it even as it tormented her. When it was over, she’d been happy to walk away for good. Ken had been the last man she’d been involved with before she’d met her husband, and so the issues he’d raised had been pushed to the back of her mind as she’d embarked on a normal, stable relationship that had lasted for several years.

Now, though, it seemed like old cans of worms were popping open everywhere. Eve would likely have said that it was because of these books, but Jessica thought just the opposite. She thought that the books had occurred to her because the worms had already been crawling out of their cans: s****l issues left unexplored, relationships that had never felt finished, her own reactions suppressed. Her husband had been straight-laced and conservative, not open to s****l exploration or expecting his wife to be adventurous. It was ironic that he’d been the one to end up having an affair after downplaying s*x throughout their marriage.

Alone for the first time in ten years, Jessica knew that despite her rationalizations, she wasn’t just trying to earn a quick buck. Just like all of the other writing she’d done, these books were a journey inward as much as outward, an exploration of parts of herself that she’d long put on hold or forgotten, perhaps even some that she’d never discovered. For all of the strange undertones and frightening aspects of their brief encounter, her short excursion with Ken had shown her that she could completely abandon her reason to her sexuality. With him, that had been uncomfortable, maybe even dangerous. But, in another context, it was an intriguing possibility that had been left unexplored.

She thought back to the days of innocent exploration with Larry, when every experience had been new and her trust complete and unquestioning. There had been more than a few stones in the path that led from Larry to Ken, but she felt that somehow she’d skipped a step or taken a wrong turn. She’d felt that so strongly that she’d essentially stopped in her tracks, marrying the next apparently stable man that she dated and staying right where she was for a decade. Now she was nearly 40, but she looked good and had a lot of energy. She could pass for 30 if she wanted to, but she didn’t think she did. She was comfortable where she was. And she was comfortable with the idea of exploring her sexuality and relationships more freely, and with more confidence, than she ever had…but not quite yet.

Instead, she was going to learn what she could from the past, reliving the good and taking note of the negative as she created a book secretly dedicated to each of the significant men in her life. In the process, she just might also generate enough income to keep the house her husband had walked away from and gain the experience and confidence she needed to take the next step toward a writing career.