Adultery Separate Vacations by DanielQSteele1

[Ramesh_Rocky]

                                                               


                                                                               Story :- Separate Vacations
 

Written by DanielQSteele1

Note :- " this is one good story i read from other site all credit goes  to original author DanielQSteele1 "

[Ramesh_Rocky]

Most of the times the bad things that are coming your way aren't really surprises. Oh, you can tell yourself that you were caught off guard, but if you look back, you can almost always realize there were signs, indications of something bad heading your way. You just didn't want to realize it -- or deal with it.

Tiffany and I -- I'm Bruce Davis -- had been married for 9 years when this story occurred, back in 2006. I'd like to say they were perfect years of marital contentment as we raised our two daughters, who were six and eight at the time that our marriage crashed and burned.
But they weren't. Like most real marriages, we had our ups and downs.
We had gotten married in a perfect storm of lust and young love just after graduating from the University of Florida. We'd met at a fraternity party. I was the frat boy and she the sorority hottie. She likes to tell everybody we dated for two weeks before anything happened. But really....
##########################
We had found an empty room upstairs. It was covered in coats and wraps and other crap, but it was empty. I pushed her in ahead of me and enjoyed the view of her tight ass in a skintight pair of shorts twitching ahead of me. When she turned to face me twin apples caught in a blue pullover attracted my eyes and hands.
"Did I say you could do that?" when she came up for breath after another record breaking kiss.
"Are you saying I can't?"
"I didn't say that. But you're moving awfully fast. I just met you an hour ago. You're going to think I'm the sluttiest tramp in the world."
"Oh, God, I hope so," I said as I caught both nipples in my hands and squeezed. She closed her eyes and moaned until I filled her mouth with my tongue again. We went over on the bed and I couldn't believe her small hand was already molded to my cock which was throbbing with every beat of my heart.
She pulled back so she could look me in the eye.
"I shouldn't do this, Bruce. God knows I want to. I don't know why. I haven't been able to take my eyes off you since I saw you. Do you believe in love at first sight?"
I'm not a total idiot so of course I said, "Yes," but then my conscience got to me.
"I don't know, Tiffany. It's an easy line for a guy to say, but all I can honestly tell you is that I haven't been able to take my eyes off you. Normally I'd be staring at Delores' tits, but I can't even tell you what she was wearing tonight."
She looked down at the nipples popping out through the pullover.
"She is so much bigger than me. I really don't have that much up top. Are you sure you wouldn't rather be-"
I bent down and bit her right nipple through her fabric and told her honestly, "Right now there isn't anyplace else in the world I'd rather be."
That went double fifteen minutes later when my exploding cock was nestled deep inside her pussy which seemed to be running at 135 degrees Fahrenheit. I'd had to work for five minutes to get it in there.
She wasn't the tightest pussy in the world, but she had to be right up there in the top 15 or 20. She told me later she wasn't a virgin when we did it, but Jesus, her two lovers must have had cigarette-sized dicks.
I thought she was having a fit when I told her I was getting ready to come into my condom, but it just turned out that when she was excited she had very, very intense orgasms. Like eyes-rolling, fingernails embedded in my flesh, teeth buried in my lower lips -- orgasms.
I think I really fell in love with her when she went down, pulled my condom off, and started to lick my dick clean. She said she'd never done anything that dirty with her other boyfriends, but she wanted to do it with me. And she liked it.
#########################
We dated for two years until I graduated with a degree in English literature and she with a degree in Business Administration. That should have given me a good heads up that this would not be a marriage made in heaven.
I liked books and movies and writing and game playing. She was a by-the-numbers business type that loved working deals, figuring how to make money and planning what to do with the money when she got it.
Her mother hated me, which I should have expected. But her mother was a head case. She had married a good looking, big dicked salesman type out of college and suffered through ten years of his screwing every pussy that he got within reach of until one day he walked in and told her he was leaving her and eight-year-old Tiffany because he had found the love of his life: a cocktail waitress working at a bar in Orlando.
He left Tiffany's mother with a mortgage-laden house, a car that lasted two months before making its way to the junkyard, two strains of sexual diseases, a $5,000 Visa card debt, $20,000 in other assorted debts, and a broken heart.
She had bounced around until she found -- eventually -- a position as a secretary which led to a paralegal position at Martin, Devon, Bailey and Bartley in Jacksonville. The lawyers there liked her --so much so that the word I heard was that before she'd been there two years she'd fucked every attorney, aide, investigator and even a few delivery guys.
I guess after having been saddled with an asshole who really didn't appreciate her pussy for a decade, finding a whole building full of men who really, really did appreciate her tits and ass did wonders for her ego and temperament. She really wasn't a bad looking woman.
But while she fucked and sucked with great abandon, she trusted no one who had their sex organs on the outside of their body. And she'd raised Tiffany to hold the same opinions.
Sex was fine. Love was fine. But you keep your own bank account, you have your own money, you keep it so you can walk away at any time and survive on your own without the prick who'd been giving you his prick.
I picked up on the lack of trust early on in our dating life, but I understood where her mother was coming from and tried to reassure her that I was a different kind of man. I would never leave Tiffany in the lurch.
Didn't matter. Especially when after graduating I decided teaching was not what I wanted to do. I wanted to write. The Great American Novel no less. And I needed time and freedom to do that.
So I found myself working at a Blockbuster store in Orange Park, Florida, a little bedroom community south of Jacksonville where both Tiffany and I had grown up.
Tiffany, of course, went to work in a real estate development firm that built some of the highest dollar combination golf/country club/yachting properties on the Northeast Florida coast.
Through the years she advanced from a junior associate to one of the highest paid people who wasn't an owner. She handled sales, public relations, government relations, investor relations -- relations in general.
Old, old, old story. I was still working in a Blockbuster, albeit working my way up to store manager by choice and a regional troubleshooter when hell broke out at any of the Blockbusters within a 50 mile radius of Jacksonville.
I had tried to write the Great American Novel nine times. I'd actually finished it once and was up to 123 rejects. I was beginning to be a little dejected.
Tiffany was pulling down ten times my monthly salary, in salary alone not even mentioning stock options and other perks, driving a brand new 2006 Lexus, wearing clothes that you had to fly to Atlanta or New York to buy.
Despite that, I paid the home mortgage, which alone wiped out 60 percent of my monthly income. I paid the electric, the telephone bill, satellite, etc.
Tiffany kindly paid for the gas for every vehicle that she drove, not my 1994 Volkswagen Beetle which was big enough only for me and one passenger so every family trip was made in one of her vehicles -- either the Lexus or her personal Land Rover new Range Rover Sport SUV or a company one she had whenever she wanted it.
Why did we live that way?
Because there was no money that was 'ours.' Her income and her savings were hers. Always had been from the time we married. We had separate checking and savings accounts. One of the biggest fights we ever had, one that almost wrecked us in the first six months of our marriage, was her insistence that I NOT be on her bank accounts.
We almost didn't' get married at all when her mother had one of her asshole boyfriend lawyers draw up a pre-nup that said I couldn't' touch any money she brought into the marriage or made while we were married, but that my income would be joint. Of course, a guppy would have starved on my income, but I drew the line on that. No pre-nups And after a few months the subject just went away.
But she wouldn't yield on separate monies for the two of us. And that enraged me.
"You don't trust me? You don't fucking trust me? You think I will steal your goddamned money, you miserable bitch."
I had been a little upset when she explained to me that I would NEVER be on a joint account with her. Common bills like the house and utilities were my responsibility as husband. Clothing, food, trips, entertainment, the kids' education, all the extras were hers. But her money was hers. She would never try to get on my accounts.
It still upset me.
"Okay you miserable bitch. I tried. I tried. I honestly tried to live with your crazy ass ideas and your crazy ass mother. I bent over backwards until I broke my back. But this is the end. Go fuck yourself, or better yet go to Martin, Devon, Bailey and Bartley and I'm sure you'll find plenty of hard dicks to fuck you. Your mom will probably share, like the true slut she is."
I barely managed to avoid having my brains smashed by a piece of wedding china from one of her mom's rich lawyer boyfriends as I stalked out. She followed me out cursing a blue streak and doing her best to send me to the ER using more china.
I was sorely tempted to go back, but I'd never touched her in anger and even while she was royally pissing me off, the trouble was that I still loved her crazy ass.
We held out a week. We met at a neutral bar, made some hurtful comments to each other about how childish the other was, and barely made it my car before I was inside her and she was bruising my lips and trying to pull my cock out by the roots with her cunt. We took makeup sex to ridiculous new levels.
But I couldn't break her insistence that our money be kept separate. Her money was hers. Always would be.
I could see us old and gray together. I'd barely have enough money to buy some gruel for my morning breakfast in the servants quarters outside the big house where Tiffany lived with her mother and our children.
So I pinched pennies and the only new clothes I could afford were those that Tiffany bought for me when I had to attend one of her business functions and she didn't want to be embarrassed by my cheap, old clothing.
You ask, why the hell did I stick around? I was working my ass off, watching my pennies while my wife had a net worth of well over a million dollars. Actually between two and three million.
You didn't hold her in your arms, your dick inside her furnace of a pussy while she screamed at you to fill her up with your seed....actually she said hot cum.
You didn't hold her on the nights after a visit with her mother, or on Father's Day, when she buried her head against your chest and her tears couldn't be stopped while she tried to heal the wound her fucking poor excuse of a father had left in her heart.
She didn't smile at you in the dunes at St. Augustine Beach as she hit you in the face with a chunk of ice cream and ran shouting at your daughters to get away before the ice cream monster caught them all. She didn't cover your face with kisses when you brought her down in the dunes and your little daughters piled on you to rescue their mother from the ice cream monster.
That is a little of what we had. It wasn't perfect. Far from it. And I think I knew deep down that someday it would all come crashing down on my head.
We didn't have a marriage in the sense that my mother and father, before he died, would have recognized. We lived together and had a relationship and had kids, but it wasn't permanent. It never could be. And I wondered sometimes if deep down Tiffany knew that.
We had a good marriage, in a lot of ways, except that it wasn't a marriage.
The world crashed down on my head in June of 2006.
Kaitlyn and Kristen ran into the house where I was seated in my office working on my tenth Great American Novel. Tiffany had picked them up from her mother's house and was walking in behind them.
"Daddy, daddy, I'm going to go surfing with Uncle Stephen."
Eight-year-old Kaitlyn ran up to me and hugged me saying, "And I'm going to learn how to dance the hula. Grandma told me she'd take me to a college on the Big Island where they teach you. We'll be there for a month, so we'll have plenty of time to learn."
"Oh," I said, wondering what I'd missed out on. "That sounds like fun. Where are we going?"
"Oh, we're going to Hawaii," Kaitlyn said. "I wish you could go too."
"What?"
"Mommy said you had to work. I wish you could get off and come with us. Mommy is going to be lonely without you there."
I looked up at Tiffany and just stared at her but she wouldn't drop her eyes. She wasn't going to be embarrassed.
"So we -- that is you and the girls -- are going to Hawaii for a month and I'm staying home to work, dear. Do I understand? When did all this come up?"
"Several members of the firm booked a hotel on Oahu and have planned a month worth of activities. We've had a great year and the owners are coming along and helping with the expenses. The girls are out of college and Mom was able to get away from the law firm."
"And Uncle Stephen? Would that be Stephen Middleton?"
She just stared back at me.
"Yes. He decided to take his vacation with us. Us all."
"Adjoining rooms? Is he staying in your hotel?"
"The same hotel. Yes. We're all staying there. Not adjoining rooms. Try to behave like an adult. It's a group vacation."
"Which I'm not a member of?"
"The firm is paying a lot of the expenses, but they're not made of money. They're not paying for spouses. Anybody who wants a spouse has to come up with the money to cover them."
I leaned back in my swivel chair and told the girls, "Go play. Mommy and I have to talk for a minute. Give me a kiss."
They did and when they'd left I said, "Well how much will we have to come up with? And it would have been nice if you'd given me some heads up. I don't know how I'll be able to free up a month away from work."
She kept staring at me with an unreadable expression. Looking back, I hope it was guilt.
"I don't think you'll have to worry about that. I expect you'll be staying here."
I couldn't believe what I'd just heard.
"You don't think I'll be going?"
She sat down on the edge of my desk and looked down at me. Her hair was cut short and she wore a scoop neck blouse and a blue dress that showed off her fantastic legs.
"I had the costs expensed out. It would cost $8,000 for you to come with us. Can you afford that?"
I said the words out loud to make sure I hadn't completely lost it.
"You're saying I can't go unless I come up with $8,000 of MY money to pay for the trip?"
"It's really only fair, Bruce. This is partially business and partially personal. You know the rules we've set up. You should be responsible for your share of the costs."
"I thought that YOUR money was for entertainment, family outings and the like. This doesn't qualify?"
She finally looked down at her feet, which she was tapping gently on the tiled floor of the office.
"Bruce, this is more business than personal, except for the girls, and mother will be there for them."
"And don't forget Uncle Stephen. He'll be along to take care of the girls. Is that all he'll be taking care of?"
She glared at me.
"You jealous asshole. You know there's nothing going on with Stephen. He's just a friend. A good friend. It's nice to be able to talk business sometimes with somebody who-"
"Is your equal, Tiffany? Not a clueless loser like your husband? You enjoy his company. Have you found out if his cock is as big as the secretaries say?"
Her eyes narrowed?
"Where the hell..."
"You don't think I ever hear any of the gossip about the guy? I have been to some company outings. I've heard the woman buzzing about him. I know he's gone through most of the secretaries and he's considered hot shit by the married and unmarried women of the company. You ever checked out his equipment?"
She would have caught me across the face, but I knew her temper and I've taken karate for 15 years. I caught her hand in mid-air.
"You sorry bastard. I've never cheated on you. Although, God knows, why I haven't I couldn't tell you. You want to know why you're not going with us, Bruce? The real reason?"
"Enlighten me."
"I knew you couldn't come up with $8,000. You know that's pocket change to me. I could pay your way and never even notice it. But why should I? You're my husband. I make $300,000 a year in a bad year. You make barely $40,000.
"You're not stupid. You could have gotten a real job, with a real company. Where I wouldn't be ashamed every time somebody asks me what my husband does. A video store manager? For God's sake. I'm ashamed of you, Bruce, and I hate being ashamed of you.
"I'm going to leave your ass behind because I want to rub your nose in the fact that you've let me down, and you're letting your daughters down. I want you to develop some balls, go get a decent job and, for God's sake, let this adolescent dream of writing the Great American novel go to hell.
"The way it is now, I'm the man in this damned family. I'm the dominant one, and that's not natural."
She gave me a look and I knew something bad was coming.
"You asked me if Stephen has a dick as big as the girls say. Yeah, he does. I've seen him in a bathing suit and he is hung. God he is hung.
"There was a time last summer...on that trip to the beach you didn't take. He caught me behind the dunes. He put my hand on that monster and made me jerk him once or twice. Of course, I slapped his face and tried to dropkick his balls back into his abdomen. He didn't try again.
"But, God help me, I wanted to jerk him off. I wanted to suck him off. I wanted to spread my legs and let him spear me with it. Because I like him. And I respect him.
"He's a man. He may be an aggressive asshole, but he's a man. If I didn't love you, at least a little bit still, I would have let him take me in the dunes."
She stood up and smoothed down her skirt.
"I'm not going to fuck him this trip. I don't plan to anyway. I want you to think about that. Because if things don't change, if you don't change, there's going to come a day when he puts my hand on that monster and I won't take it away."
I stared at her and knew this day had been a long time coming. We didn't have a marriage. We had a partnership and I wasn't keeping up my end of the bargain.
I had known and sensed her waning respect for me. Even our sex wasn't as hot as it had been. How could it? How could a woman be really turned on by a man she didn't respect as a man?
I let her walk away and we didn't say another word to each other for the remainder of the day. I worked on my computer until late and she was already asleep when I entered our bedroom.
She was up before me the next morning. I found her drinking coffee at a table set on our covered back porch. The house edged some woods and there were days you could see deer from the table. There were none today. I grabbed a cup and sat down beside her.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

"When?"

"Next Wednesday." Four days from now.
"This is wrong, Tiffany, and you know it. Don't do this."
She set her cup down and looked at me with sadness, but resolve.
"It's going to happen. There won't be any embarrassment. All anybody at the company knows is that you couldn't get away from work. I told them you'd probably take a week or so while we were gone and have a bachelor vacation, a chance to get away from the wife and kids. Some of the guys thought it was a great idea.
"Look, why don't you take some vacation time. You could go down to Key West, or up to the Smokies for a few days. You might like it. And...I think it might do us both some good to spend some time away from each other. Separate vacations aren't a terrible thing. A lot of couples take them nowadays."
"Do you want a divorce?"
Her eyes flared again.
"Don't threaten me, you son of a bitch. Just because I want to make you think about our life, and I want to get away from you for a little while, you are not going to try to scare me with talk about a divorce."
"I'm not threatening you. I'm just asking you a question."
"Well then, to answer your question. No. I don't want a divorce. I want some changes. I want you to demonstrate that you love me. I love you."
"And you're going to demonstrate that love by going away with a big dick wonder for a month and leaving me alone here to kill time and wonder if he's started fucking you yet."
She just sat there and finished her coffee.
I spent Sunday and part of the next few days with the girls, taking them to the Beach and to Water World and one day to Disneyworld in Orlando. I felt like I was saying goodbye to them, and maybe I was.
I spent as little time as I could with Tiffany and she found reasons to be out of the house with the girls or by herself.
We slept in the same bed but we could have been a million miles apart. She didn't offer, and I didn't ask, for any intimacy.
Tuesday and Tuesday night were spent making final preparations and Wednesday morning she got the girls up at 5 a.m. to prepare for the ride to Jacksonville International Airport where they'd catch a connecting flight from there to Los Angeles and from there on to Oahu.
Her mother had spent the night previously, without saying more than five words to me and she took the girls out after each had given me a kiss and hug and promised to call me every day.
I was sitting out at the table facing the back yard. It was still dark. She came up behind me and I sensed she was about to bend over to kiss me.
I held my hand up and she froze. I didn't look back at her.
"You still have time, Tiffany. You don't have to do this."
She stood there silently.
"I have loved you since the first moment I saw you. I wanted to grow old with you. Please don't walk out that door."
She still didn't say anything. After a long moment, she finally said, "We don't have any more time. I have to go."
She turned and I heard her heels clicking on the floor. As she reached the door to the interior of the house, I said softly, "I won't be here when you get back."
She stopped then, and I like to think she was conflicted. Then she stepped inside the house and was gone.
I sat there for a long time. Until the sun rose and beyond. Through my tears I saw two deer appear like phantoms in the pale early sunlight when the day hadn't yet decided if it was ready to make an appearance. One was small, the other a mature version. Mother and child. I don't know why, but I cried like a baby.
I felt like I had the morning my mother had called me to tell me that my father had gone to sleep the previous night and never woke up. And I remembered that I hadn't been by to see them in two weeks. I thought there would always be more time. And suddenly there wasn't.
What do you do when you realize that the biggest decision of your life was the wrong one. The woman you'd bet your life on, you'd trusted to bear your children, was not the woman you should be with.
I didn't know just who I should be with, but it wasn't the woman I had loved with every fiber of my being until a few hours before.
I looked at my watch and realized about this time they were getting ready to board their plane. I wondered if Tiffany really knew what she was giving up when she stepped on board with our daughters. Or if she even cared.
Eventually I got up and even managed to go to work because it was a regular work day. I hadn't told anyone what was happening. That night I surveyed the house. I had some belongings, but nothing that couldn't be packed into the back of a friend's pickup truck.
That night about 9:30 p.m. my cell phone rang and both my daughters told me about how exciting the flight to Los Angeles had been and how scary the long flight over the Pacific had been before they finally reached Oahu. They were already in their hotel and checking out the room's mini-bar and where the icemakers were located on their floor.
They told me they loved me and handed the phone to their mother.
"Bruce-"
I hung up on her and when the phone rang again in 30 seconds I turned it off. The house phone rang and I picked up the receiver and buried it under two pillows so I couldn't hear anything.
Then I went out to a bar called O'Brien's on the Westside of Jacksonville and knocked back a few, played some pool and tried to remember what it had felt like to be single. Now I remembered. It had felt shitty.
The next day I called a few friends who'd gone through divorces and got the names of a few attorneys. Even preliminary calls told me that I'd be flat broke before I got much of the way through their retainers.
And I realized that it didn't matter who I got. Nobody was going to have the firepower to go up against the attorneys that Tiffany could hire or her mother could sweet talk into representing her.
Then I started looking around for a cheap apartment. We were living in a $1 million home in an expensive gated community between Orange Park and Jacksonville, one which we could only afford because Tiffany had put a half million dollar cash deposit down on it. It basically belonged to her even while I sweated monthly to pay the mortgage.
I was looking for something decent, a two-bedroom, on the Westside not too far away from our home where I could see the kids, assuming Tiffany didn't screw me out of that too.
That night the cell phone rang again. I didn't want to take it, but I did want to talk to Kaitlyn and Kristen. I hit the talk button. Tiffany said, "You miserable son of a bitch. Why do you have to..."
"I don't want to talk to you, Tiffany. I thought that was clear. Could I talk to my daughters?"
"So that's the way you want it? You're going to turn this into a major fight, just like you have with every disagreement we've ever had in our marriage?"
"Can I talk to the girls?"
"No, fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you."
She must have been using a hotel phone because she managed to slam it down with a vengeance.
I didn't talk to the girls that night, or the next two nights. Sunday night the phone rang and when I picked it up Kaitlyn was on asking why I hadn't been at the house to take their calls. I told her I'd had to work late at the store, and that was a reasonable excuse because I did get called out some.
When I'd finished talking to her and her sisters, and learning how nice Uncle Stephen had been and the things he'd done with them and their mother, Tiffany came back on the phone.
"Can you just for a minute pretend to be a grownup and talk to me, Bruce? What is the point of acting like a spoiled..."
I tried to imagine what bad words she'd said after I hung up on her and hoped she was able to exert enough self control to keep them to herself in front of the girls.
I didn't hear from anybody on the island until the next Friday night. The call came from Tiffany's cell, but when I punched it on her mother, Marge, said, "So you were able to tear yourself away from your girlfriends long enough to answer a call from your wife?"
"Are the girls there, Marge?"
"Yes, but you won't hear a word from them unless you try acting like an adult. What kind of spoiled little boy won't talk to his wife because she wouldn't take him on a vacation with her -- a vacation he couldn't afford because instead of working to support his family he insists on playing with videos and pretending to be a writer?
"Because of you, you miserable failure, instead of enjoying the vacation of a lifetime with her family and co-workers and friends, she worries about what kind of crazy things you're thinking of doing while she's supposed to be having fun. You're ruining it for her, your daughters and everyone else. You should be ashamed of yourself."
"Can I talk to my daughters?"
"When you calm down and decide to start acting like a husband instead of a juvenile delinquent, we might let you talk to them. Right now I'm afraid you'll just upset them. Their mother has been so upset, they know something is going on and it's starting to upset them."
"So you and Tiffany aren't going to let me talk to my daughters?"
"No, not when you're like this."
"Okay. Tell Tiffany she can go back to fucking big-dick Stephen and you can go back to fucking a few of your married fuck buddies from that law firm.
"And by the way, I don't have any girlfriends. I'm not like that asshole skirt chaser of a husband that you couldn't keep satisfied in your bed. Have fun."
This time Marge slammed the phone down on me.
By the middle of the next week I'd found a two bedroom apartment in a not-too shabby Westside apartment complex and managed a deposit with first and last month's rent.
By that weekend I'd gotten with a couple of friends and moved my personal belongs, a chair, and a few other items and I'd set up housekeeping in my new place.
The Friday night I'd finished moving my stuff in and was sitting around drinking a few cold ones with the guys who'd helped me the cell rang and it showed Tiffany. I had started missing the girls big time and so I answered.
"Hello, Tiffany."
"Hi. Bruce..."
"Are the girls there?"
"Yes. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have kept you from them this week. I know it was wrong, but you're driving me crazy."
"Can I talk to them?"
"Yes. YES. You can talk to them. They're in the other room with mom. Before I put them on, could we talk for a minute?"
"About what?"
"About you. About us. You've blown an argument up into a nuclear war. I know I hurt your feelings...not taking you with us...but it's only a vacation. Couples go away without each other all the time."
She lowered her voice and I knew she was whispering.
"Baby, I miss you. I want you so bad at night...and I can't even do anything about it because I'm always with the girls or mom."
"Or Uncle Stephen."
There was a long silence.
"I know I hurt you, but I was so damned angry at you. Stephen...did...try something in the dunes, but trust me, he walked funny for a week after that. He's not the man I want in my bed. You are. He's been flirting since we've been here, but he knows better than to put his hands on me again."
"I begged you not to go. And you walked away from me."
"Can't you understand, Bruce. We can be lovers and good and have our own independent lives. I need to have an identity away from you."
"And your own money."
"And my own money."
"Can I talk to the girls?"
"Yes, I'll get them. And we can straighten all this out when we get home. But baby, I want you well hydrated and rested when we get back because I am going to fuck you into the ground."
I didn't say anything and in a moment Kaitlyn and Kristen were on the phone. I wondered later if Tiffany knew what my silence meant.
We talked for nearly a half hour and I could only pray that Tiffany would find it in her heart to cover the bill because a half hour cross-ocean cell phone bill would probably require a bank loan on my part to get paid.
When the girls and I had finished Tiffany came on before I could hang up.
"Bruce. I love you. You know that, don't you."
I sighed and I knew somehow that this time she caught it.
"Yes, Tiffany, I know you love me."
There was a long silence and I was about to hang up when she said softly, "You're not going to tell me you love me? I don't know we're ever talked on the phone in our entire married lives that you haven't told me you loved me."
There was something that sounded suspiciously like a sniffle.
"Don't do this," she said softly, and I almost reminded her I'd used those same words to her and had she listened? But I didn't. There was no point in being needlessly cruel. She was going to be hurt enough in a few weeks.
"Yes, baby, I love you. I always have and I always will."
I hung up. I couldn't add, "but that's not enough anymore."
Over the next two weeks I removed everything I wanted or needed from our home and moved it to my apartment. I checked the house every day to make sure everything was running right and no one had gotten in. Burglars did hit expensive homes, even with the security provided by gated communities.
I didn't have to take my name off of any of her bank accounts of other banking instruments, but I made sure that I took all of my precious little money out of any account she had her name on. My junker car was in my name alone, as was my medical insurance and retirement accounts, although God knows she wouldn't have touched either of those.
I had divorce papers drawn up by a decent attorney who only charged me an arm and a leg to come up with the basics. Mr. Davis was seeking a divorce from Mrs. Davis on grounds of incompatibility. No alimony or division or property was sought.
I asked for joint custody of the girls, even though my attorney -- the best that little money could buy -- had been frank in telling me there was no way in hell the court was going to order that in these circumstances.
The best I could hope for, the graying, beaten down little man who had taken my $2,000 retainer told me, was maybe two weekends a month during college, alternating holidays and birthdays and maybe a month in the summer.
I already knew that would be the most painful part of what was about to happen, but Que. sera, sera.
I talked to the girls almost every night now and fortunately Marge never got on the line. They told me about the wonderful sights they'd seen, the trips to a Macadamia factory, to the black lava beaches, to Waikiki.
They told me how Uncle Stephen had gotten them surfing and how he had managed to talk Mama into going out on a long board and how they had crashed and come up sputtering but Uncle Stephen had somehow gotten her to the shore.
They told me about how they and other children in the party played at a club for little ones in the hotel while Momma and Grandma and others including Uncle Stephen went out to dinner and dancing.
And how Momma had come in laughing late one night with her lipstick smeared and told them that Uncle Stephen was just being a silly man.
It should have hurt more than it did, but I already had steeled myself to the loss of this woman and this marriage, and somehow, it didn't.
Tiffany got on the phone and almost every time closed with, "I love you and I miss you. Take your vitamins."
I made myself tell her I loved her. It wasn't hard. I did love her. I didn't know how long I'd love her, but unfortunately, I still did.
And then it was Friday again and they called to tell me they were getting on an airline to head back. They'd stop overnight in LA and then get back in Sunday about 3 p.m. Their Range Rover Sport had been kept in storage at the airport so they wouldn't need a ride.
"Why don't you get a cab to the airport so we can ride back together. The girls are missing you terribly. But not as much as I am."
I didn't say anything, except, "I'll meet you there. I'll get there about 2 p.m."
I sat in the airport waiting area where their flight was due in. I drank a hot coffee and then another. I could have used a stiff alcoholic drink. I felt nervous, jumpy jittery. I couldn't make myself sit still for long. I walked to the windows where you could watch the planes come in, back to my seat, around the waiting area.
Had I done the right thing?
This was going to tear our lives apart. My relationship with my girls was never going to be the same. No matter what happened, this was the end of the 'Before' period of my life. Anything from now on would be dated "A.T." -- after Tiffany.
But eventually the announcement was made that the flight had landed. I watched the parade of humanity, the old and young, the tired and those full of nervous energy, young girls running out to boyfriends and grannies and grandpas greeted by grandchildren.
A good chunk of the crowd, about 30, were with Tiffany's company or Marge's law firm. I recognized Stephen, tall, dark and handsome, walking off beside Tiffany and the girls. He had a briefcase in one hand and in the other --he held Kristen's hand. The miserable son of a bitch.
I had told myself I was not going to explode at anything I saw, but I only hoped I could avoid killing the SOB. He might take my place in the girls' lives after I was out, but I wasn't out yet.
I cut through the crowd like a Great White through a college of tuna, as people moved away to let me through. Stephen caught sight of me first and after one glance at me stopped dead still and let go of Kristen's hand.
He must have said something to Tiffany because she stopped to look at me and I saw her go a little white. I don't know what I looked like, but it must not have been pleasant.
She moved to step between me and Stephen but two little female bodies hurled themselves on me first and between kisses and hugs and feverish cries to "look what I got Daddy," I must have started looking more human because Stephen lost that tense expression on his face.
Tiffany was on me then and threw her arms around me. She would have kissed me full on the lips but I turned my head just enough so that her lips grazed my cheeks. I hugged her so she couldn't try for another kiss and a moment let her go -- actually pushed her away gently. She gave me a hurt look.
I bent down and took my girls in my arms. I kissed them as if I was never going to touch them again, and inside me that's what it felt like.
Finally, Tiffany put her hand on my shoulder.
" Bruce, Bruce, let's go. You've got the rest of the weekend, the rest of their lives to love on them."
I finally stood and released them. Tiffany came into my arms and I held her. I looked at Stephen and he had the grace to back away and pretend he had other things that suddenly needed doing. I noticed Marge standing beside Stephen. I might have glared at her. Regardless, she glared back.
Tiffany tried to kiss me on the lips and again I moved so her lips graced my cheek. She just stared at me as if not believing what was happening.
Marge came up to stand beside us. Tiffany exchanged a look with her and before Marge could say anything, Tiffany told me, "Why don't you go get our car, Bruce and meet us at the departure loading zone. We'll say goodbye to Stephen....and everybody and be ready when you get around there."
I nodded and walked away. Despite what Tiffany had said, I noticed the looks that the members of her company and her mother's law firm gave me as I walked past them.
It was partly pitying and partly curious as if they wondered how I was able to walk around with my head up after being deserted by my wife. I wondered if any of them believed her fairy tale about my having to work, or if she'd even gone to that much trouble to avoid embarrassing her loving husband.
I got the SUV and pulled it around to the pickup area. As I parked, I turned off the ignition and slid out from behind the wheel. I got the girls inside and seatbelted, got Marge into the middle seat and then went around to where Tiffany was about to slide into the passenger side.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

I handed her the car keys.

"What?""
"You'll have to drive home, Tiffany. I drove my car over here."
"How -- why? I told you that we'd ride home together."
"I'll -- uh -- you just drive home and get settled in."
I pushed the keys into her hands and walked her around to the driver's side.
"I'll get my car."
That's all I said and I know she thought I meant I was going to drive to what had been our home. I should have said something, I know. But I couldn't do it in front of the girls. And I couldn't stand the thought of going back to what had been and no longer was our home. I know it was a shitty thing to do, but I drove back to my apartment and turned off my cell. There was no home phone.
So I would never know of my own direct knowledge, but I could envision it in my mind and I later learned I was pretty close.
I could see her driving to the house, unlocking it and unpacking the SUV with Marge's help. It would take awhile to unpack the debris of a month's worth of clothing, souvenirs, brochures....etc. Then she and Marge would be getting the girls into the bathroom for baths and dressing them in pajamas, telling them that daddy would be home soon.
By that time it would be around 7 p.m. and they would be feeding the girls. I expected that she and Marge would settle them down with a little television before making them go to bed early after a long, long day.
And then, I expected around 8 p.m. or so Tiffany would have called me for the fourth or fifth time and gotten no answer.
I figured she would wander into my office at some point and look around, hoping to get a glimpse of what I'd been up to for the month she'd been gone.
It was then that she'd notice that all the papers and documents and my old desktop and my new laptop and other regular working materials were gone. Everything was neat as a pin.
Everything except the pile of documents with my wedding ring lying on top.
I figured that it would take a few moments for what she was seeing to sink in. Then she would pick up the ring, try to figure out what was going on and pick up the documents. She would stare at them and, I hoped, break down into tears. And after awhile Marge would wander in and then all hell would break loose.
I know I was being a damned coward. I should have driven over there and when the girls were down, simply told Tiffany we were through. And I was being brutal.
I thought I was just being a coward, but looking back, I know I wanted to hurt her as badly as I could. She had torn my heart out, destroyed our marriage and my world. And even if it was mean and low of me, I wanted some payback.
I knew Marge would tell her daughter to let me go fuck myself and that she was better off without me. And I knew Tiffany, with that hair trigger temper of hers, would go crazy trying to find me to curse me as a cowardly sack of shit.
But how? While Tiffany was gone I'd opened a new cell phone account using a friend's address so it couldn't be traced back to me. I had a new cell number. I didn't have a new home phone. I wouldn't answer the old cell and there's no way it could be used to track me down.
She didn't know that many of my friends, but if she did manage to reach anybody, they'd been sworn to vows of secrecy and would tell Tiffany they had no idea I'd moved, or if I was staying with somebody.
I hadn't changed my address with corporate, changed my address for anything, simply so somebody in her law office couldn't contact a friend to pull my address out of their billing records. I'd talked a friend into putting up a deposit on the electricity so that the electric was in his name.
I knew that worse than the anger at my leaving her with divorce papers with -- according to her -- no warning, would be the unleashed rage that would have her stomping all over the house, trying to vent without terrifying our daughters.
I watched television on the cheap little 32 inch black and white screen TV and DVD player for an hour and plugged in the laptop to work on the novel, but I deliberately didn't log onto my internet account.
Around 1 a.m. I had started flagging. The nervous energy and anger finally ebbed and I couldn't keep my eyes open. I hit the bed and set the alarm for 7 a.m.
Saturday morning I got up and threw some clothes into a carrying case and hopped into the junker and drove down to Daytona Beach. Two buddies of mine celebrating their new bachelorhood had invited me down for the weekend and I was going to take them up on it.
Her law firm could hire the best PIs in the world and they'd never find me before the start of the next week.
I knew it was going to hit the fan that Monday because I'd be back to work. But I had prepared myself.
I was restocking the shelves with returned DVDs when Mike came to the back and pointed to a well dressed, silver haired guy standing at the customer service counter. He looked back at me as Mike was talking to me and I nodded. He walked back.
"Mr. Davis?"
"Yes. Would you be with the firm of Martin, Devon, Bailey and Bartley?"
He nodded without smiling. He didn't seem to be carrying any legal papers. I was honestly surprised to see him instead of Tiffany. I figured she'd be storming into the store hurling hot lead with fire in her eyes and steam coming out of her ears.
"Yes. Matt Henry. I was asked by the firm to come by and try to get a little bit of information from you. We're representing your wife."
"What do you need to know?"
"Well, why would you file for divorce out of the blue with absolutely no warning to your wife and then vanish off the face of the earth for nearly 72 hours leaving her no way to contact you to find out what precipitated this?"
"There's no mystery. She knows what 'precipitated it.' She precipitated it. And she shouldn't be surprised. When she walked out on me, deserted me for a month, I told her I wouldn't be at home when she came back.
"I gave her fair warning. She just didn't want to believe me. She's been so used to wearing the pants in our family for most of our marriage that I guess she just forgot that I'm still a man and I still deserve to be treated like one."
He looked at me with a little surprise showing on his face. Obviously Tiffany hadn't gone into a great deal of detail with her mom's law firm about our life or what had happened when she went on the one month vacation without her dear husband.
"She doesn't want a divorce."
'I do."
"Mr. Davis, please. I don't know a lot about your marriage, obviously, but there's no record and your wife gave us no indication there had been previous marital difficulties. You've been married for more than eight years, have two young children.
"To file for a divorce under those circumstances is...unusual. Is there -- someone else?"
He threw his hands up as if to forestall any protest I might have and said, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked that. Your attorney would tell you not to answer any such question, but honestly, in this day and time seeking a divorce to be with somebody else is not something that would prejudice your case unduly. It's just that -- "
He looked at me with a speculative glance.
"I've handled divorces for nearly 20 years. Men and women don't out of the blue seek a divorce after a long and apparently happy marriage. I've been with the firm for 15 years and I've known Tiffany -- your wife -- since she was a teenager. I think I know her fairly well.
"And your actions -- they've shaken her. Nobody is that good an actress. She said she had absolutely no idea you were even...unhappy...much less distressed to the point of walking out on her and your two daughters."
"Then she's the biggest idiot that ever walked the earth, and I know she isn't that big an idiot. Look, Mr. Henry, the divorce papers are fairly clear cut. I don't want anything from Tiffany. All I want is to be away from her, and retain contact with my daughters, as much contact as possible.
"And, it's none of your business, but I don't have a relationship with another woman, with anybody outside my marriage. Although, you might ask Tiffany if she could say the same."
He looked a little surprised at that, then asked, "You've obviously arranged it so your wife couldn't reach you. She still can't, unless it's at this store. She doesn't have your address or a phone number and apparently you haven't seen or responded to any of her e-mails. Is there a reason for that?"
"Yeah. I don't want to talk to her. I don't want to receive emails from her. I don't want her showing up on my doorstep to fight with me or try to fuck me into changing my mind. I'm not going to."
"You're that determined to go ahead with this? She didn't ask me, but I feel honor bound to ask, is there any possibility you would consider going to see any kind of counselor, any counseling, to see if there's any way to keep your marriage intact?"
"No. I won't go to a counselor. I wouldn't go if ordered by the court, and I don't think a judge would order it, but I'd go to jail first. Make sure she knows that."
He looked genuinely puzzled.
"Why in the world would you be so adamant about this? Counseling has been known to help in the most bitter of divorces."
"Not in this one."
I stopped and realized he had no idea what he had stepped into. It wasn't his fault.
"I'm not being hard nosed to hurt her, Mr. Henry. I know you believe in what you're saying. But I've been married to her for eight years and I know my wife. She will never change and I can't change to what she wants me to be.
"I'm doing what is best for both of us, even if she won't admit it. She needs to be free to find -- somebody -- more appropriate for her. Somebody she can be happy with. And I need -- my freedom."
He just shook his head.
"I'll relay the information, but you know she'll come after you, don't you?"
"Yeah, I know it. That's going to be the hard part of this, but it won't do her any good. Try and tell her that, even if she won't listen to you."
#########################
Tiffany sat at a long table. Her mother sat beside her and next to her sat Stephen Middleton. Across the table from her sat Matt Henry, senior partner Wilson Wilkes and the senior and founding partner Mort Bailey. A pretty, long haired blonde, Amber Dawson, was standing by in case anyone wanted coffee or anything to drink.
"....and that's pretty much the gist of what your husband had to say. It's pretty simple. He wants out of the marriage, he wants visitation and contact with his daughters, and he wants to have absolutely no contact with you. And he doesn't want any of your money or assets."
"The asshole," Marge Benner said, glaring at Henry as if he were in cahoots with Bruce Davis. "Did you get him to admit that he's been screwing around on Tiffany. You know that's what this is all about."
"Mother!"
"Damn it, Tiffany, have you ever listened to anything I've said? He's a lazy, no good bastard just exactly like your father. He has no energy, no ambition, and no man walks away from a woman like you and his children unless he's got a girlfriend, or two or three, on the side. Mark my words, we'll find out that's what this is all about."
Bailey rubbed his chin. He was 74, but still strong and active and one of the best minds in the firm.
"It's puzzling, Marge. As Matt says, the papers are very straightforward. Of course, he had that little pissant Morgan filing, and he can barely tie his shoes much less file a decent legal brief, but even so...
"Tiffany, he never signed a pre-nup, and he's got to know you're worth millions. There's your house alone that's worth a good million in this market. That's maybe $4 million in assets and even with a friendly judge, and any halfway decent attorney, I don't see how he'd walk away with less than $1 million. He's not asking for a penny. That makes no sense."
"He probably doesn't have any idea what she's worth," Marge snapped, softening her tone a little as she looked at Bailey. A few years ago, despite his age, he had wielded a very large cock very expertly and they had had a lot of fun times together. He had been good to her.
"The man's an idiot. He didn't sign the pre-nup out of sheer stubbornness. I don't think he could plan far enough ahead to think about walking away with any of Tiffany's money."
Tiffany leaned forward and put her head in her hands.
"I don't think he'd come after my money mom. That's not what this is all about. He's hurt. I hurt his pride. And he's trying to hurt me."
Stephen spoke up for the first time, reaching out to cover one of her small hands with his large one.
"I could tell he was upset at the airport, Tiff, but do you really think he would plan all this out, go ahead with a divorce, and chance losing his kids, just because you hurt his feelings, hurt his pride?"
She pushed his hand away but didn't make a production of it.
"I never would have thought so, but I guess....he was hurt more...."
She lowered her head to her hands.
"He told me he wouldn't be here when I got back," she whispered. "It was the last thing he said to me as I walked out the door. And I walked out anyway."
Her mother put her arms around her.
"He doesn't deserve you, baby. He never has. The only good thing he ever did was give you two beautiful daughters. But he's served his purpose now. You need to move upward. You're a beautiful woman. You're successful and wealthy and you're going to go higher. You need someone of your own caliber, not a loser."
"He's not a loser."
Marge hugged her daughter, ignoring the men around them.
"You think I don't know how you feel, baby. You think I didn't love that selfish bastard that walked out on us? I worshipped the ground he walked on. I degraded myself to keep him. I loved him for years afterward. But I got over him.
"Just like you'll get over Bruce. Trust me, baby. You will get over him."
"I'm going to talk to him."
"Don't. Don't be a fool. Let him go."
She shook her mother's hands off her.
"I'm going to talk to him. He's never been able to resist me up close and personal. I can change his mind. And we can forget all this and put it behind us."
"I don't think that's a good idea," Marge said.
"Let it go Marge," Bailey said in a tone that told her to stop talking. "You were in love with that bastard husband of yours when you came here and it took you years to get over him. She's only had a few days. Let her try. If it doesn't work, at least she'll know she tried."
###########################
She was waiting for me when I closed shop at 10 p.m. Tuesday night. She was in a SUV I didn't recognize so I wasn't able to sneak out away from her. As I walked out to my junker the door of the SUV swung open and she stepped out. She was dressed in jeans that showed her belly button, a younger style than she usually wore, but it looked good on her. She wore a v-necked blouse that let the small swells of her breasts show.
"You were really going to walk out on the girls and me and never even talk to me again?"
"That was the idea, but I wasn't walking out on the girls. I'll keep my relationship with them, if you don't try to screw things up."
"How can you do this, Bruce? I thought you loved me. Were you lying all these years, or did you just stop loving me somewhere along the way?"
"Why don't you just let things go, Tiffany. The wheels are in motion. It's too late to go back. We're through."
"Why? Why can't we go back? Nothing is set in stone. It's just some papers now. Your feelings are hurt. And your pride is hurt. And I'm sorry. But you don't throw away your family and your wife because of one fight."
"It's not just one fight Tiffany. It's not because you deserted me for a month. It's not just because I'll never know and be able to trust that you didn't fuck Stephen while you were there."
"I didn't fuck him, Bruce. Why would you say that?"
"Did you wear that skimpy bikini when you were out surfing with him, Tiff? Did he give you mouth to mouth when you came in? Did he rub that big dick all over you while you were out in the water away from the girls?
"And when you came in with your lipstick all smudged and told the girls that Uncle Stephen was silly, was he just kissing you or did he put that big monster inside your pussy or your mouth? Don't bother answering because I'll never know the truth about what happened.
"And it doesn't matter. If you had sex with him, or didn't, we're still through. The sex isn't the problem."
"What is the problem, Stephen? Is it still just about money?"
She pressed herself against me and I felt the hard nubs of her nipples rubbing my chest in the humid summer air. She reached up to put her arms around my neck, figuring that once again the lure of those breasts and that steamy pussy would reduce me to jello.
I pulled her arms free from around me and set them at her side.
"It is about the money, Tiffany, and it's not. We don't have a marriage. We have a partnership. What is yours is yours and what's mine is mine. There is no 'our.' The only thing we truly share are our two girls, and if you could establish legal ownership of them and cut me off, I think you'd do that too."
She backed away and stared at me with hurt in her eyes.
"You want me to be your property, that's it, isn't it. That's always been our problem. You want to own me. Why can't you see that I have to be my own woman. We can love each other and be together, but I have to have my own life as well."
"I want to own you and everything you have. And I want you to own me and everything I have and ever will have. Marriage is a joining of two people. In the old saying it said making two one flesh. As far as I'm concerned, everything I've had had, everything I ever will have is yours. We don't need a legal document.
"You see, I trust you. I trust you with my life, with my heart, with my children. Even if you screwed me over, broke my heart, I wouldn't regret loving you and trusting you and opening myself up to you. But you can't trust me. You can't leave me in a position to hurt you, because deep down you know I will.
"You remember when we first got serious. You wanted to live together. To see if we'd be compatible. Your mother was all for it. And I said no.
"If you love somebody, you love somebody. You make a commitment. You don't keep running shoes under your bed ready for that moment when you're ready to make a break for it. I was the one that insisted we marry.
"If it was up to you, we'd still be living together. No real bonds except our children. And you'd always have those shoes ready to go off and make a new life for yourself if I turned on you, disappointed you, hurt you."
I reached out and held her face in my hands and I knew this was when the pain really began. This was for real and I was going to lose her, give her away actually. I was going to give her her freedom, because that was what she really needed.
"We've never really been married, Tiffany. We have a legal document, but no marriage. We have never been joined together. We've just been two people living in the same house, having sex and raising two children. That's not a marriage.
"It's what you want, but I've never wanted it. And I just decided when you walked out on me, that I couldn't go on living that way.
"So go back to that house we used to live in. Sign the papers. Don't fight it. Let me see the girls and you go and fuck Stephen or anybody else you want to. Make lots of money and have a good life, and let me try to find a life for myself."
I turned around and walked away from her. She didn't call me or try to stop me. I think I heard crying. But she let me go.
She let me pick up the girls every other weekend with no static. She didn't try to talk to me, just sent the kids out to meet me.
I talked to the girls and tried to explain to them that sometimes mommies and daddies just couldn't live together even though they still loved each other. And that nothing would ever change my loving them.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

I think Kaitlyn understood, because she was old enough to know friends whose parents had divorced. But Kristen never did. She cried when she left her mother, and she cried when she left me. And I felt like the shittiest human being on the planet.

I gave Tiffany my cell phone number and a few times late at night the phone would ring. I could hear someone breathing, and I think crying, but they never said anything, just hung up after a few moments. I knew who it was.
And I knew she was hurting. But I was too. I could have stopped at any minute. I could have turned back. And I would have had her and the girls and our house and our old life. But I would never have what I truly wanted.
And now I did wonder if she had been faithful. And I wondered if she had been, could she continue to be. Everything she had said to me the day she announced our separate vacations was still true.
She missed me and she was lonely and she was afraid of change. But none of those affected the fact that we were fundamentally mismatched. We were two people who should never have gotten married.
Time passed and three months later with an expedited schedule, I got a notice and showed up on a Wednesday in Circuit Judge Katherine Holden's courtroom.
I was there with my pitiful attorney, Jeffrey Morgan, who I don't think even had the nerve to look the opposing attorney in the eye. His hands shook and I wondered again if it was as obvious to everyone else as it was to me that he was a flaming alcoholic.
Tiffany sat in a demure powder blue blouse and matching skirt looking like something out of Betty Crocker, alongside Matt Henry. She didn't look over at me as the judge asked us a few questions.
"Mrs. Davis, it's evident this divorce action was brought by your husband and equally as evident that you opposed it. But you haven't thrown up any roadblocks, asked for any counseling, nor has your husband asked for any share of your financial assets or child support which in almost every other case where there's such a financial disparity between the two parties is almost inevitable.
"The only thing he has asked is an equitable share of time with your two daughters and you've not only acceded to that, but given him more time than he requested.
"I have to say, you have both surprised me. I understand that you've already indicated, Mr. Davis, that you won't consider counseling, but could I ask you to reconsider?"
Morgan just looked at me.
"No ma'am. I would not consider it."
She looked at Tiffany.
"It would be well within my rights to order both of you to undergo at least three months of counseling, Mrs. Davis. In this case I can't help but feel that you two have not apparently had any discussions of the underlying problems that led you to this courtroom. Would a delay of three months pose an intolerable hardship to either of you?"
"No ma'am," she answered, looking at me. "I don't want you to order counseling. Bruce has already indicated he'd rather go to jail than sit down with me and try to save our marriage. I don't have a lot of pride left, but I have some, and I will not force him to sit down with me when all he wants to do is leave me behind."
The judge gave me a hard look.
"Is that correct? You said you would go to jail before you'd sit down and talk with your wife and a counselor?"
"Yes ma'am."
"And if I said I would put you behind bars until and unless you agreed to go to counseling. I could hold you for six months without even another hearing. Would you be prepared to go to jail for that length of time just to gain your freedom from your wife and family?"
"I'd go to jail. If you held me for a year or two. Eventually you'll be replaced or die. And I'm not seeking my freedom from my daughters. I love them. I just want to be free of my wife."
"Are you in love with another woman, Mr. Davis? Do you have plans to engage in another relationship after this divorce is granted?"
"No, although I hope I will find someone else after this marriage ends. And I hope Tiffany can do the same."
She looked at me and then at Tiffany and just shook her head.
"I have no legal authority to question you about your emotional involvements since adultery or infidelity or anything like it is not alleged on either side.
"It's just that...I've been on this bench for seven years. I've seen a lot of divorces. Sometimes people divorce because they fall out of love or just get tired of each other. That's so obvious I don't even have to look for the signs anymore.
"That's not the case here. I can look at you two and see there is still an emotional attachment between you. And when there is that kind of passion, there's almost always an outside precipitating cause. It's either adultery, infidelity, suspicion of infidelity, some type of emotional harm or injury that one or the other party cannot get past.
"Both of you have in your court documents not alleged any type of such conflict, and in fact, you've behaved more rationally and responsibly, and in your case Mr. Davis unselfishly, than the couples who just don't care one way or the other about each other anymore."
She looked down at the documents in front of her.
"I will honestly tell you both that I have a bad feeling about granting this divorce. I will ask you one more time. Would you consider counseling, or if you're adamant about that Mr. Davis, would you simply consider a postponement. Give yourselves another three months to think about what you're doing. These divorce papers will still be here in three months if you want them."
"No, your honor. Three months won't make a difference. Three years won't make a difference. "
She looked at Tiffany.
Tiffany looked over at me and there were tears in her eyes but she wouldn't let herself go.
"No your honor. If my husband wants to get rid of me that badly, I'm not going to stand in his way. Give him his divorce."
"The divorce is granted. Mr. Davis, you are a free man and Mrs. Davis, you are a free woman. I wish you both well."
Tiffany didn't even look at me as she walked out of the courtroom with Henry. I sat back down for a minute and then realized a new attorney and new clients were waiting to sit down. The divorce merry-go-round never stops.
I walked out a free man, but freedom is over rated. I'm fairly tall and in fairly good shape and I've had girls in the store and female customers come on to me, but I never took advantages of any of the offers. I didn't when I became a bachelor...for two months.
One December night in the middle of the month, I was working in a Blockbuster filling in for a sick manager when a dark haired woman came in with her elderly silver haired grandmother. They were chatting away in Italian.
My mother was born in Naples and had grown up in Italy before meeting my father who was in the Air Force at the time. So I had grown up with a fairly good understanding of spoken Italian and a rough ability to speak it. They were asking a question about a movie and I answered without thinking, in English.
They both stared at me and the grandmother tilted her head and looked at me as if trying to recognize me and said in Italian to her granddaughter, "A paisan, and not too bad on the eyes. You should flirt a little."
I blushed a little and said, again in English, "My mother was born in Naples and I understand more than I speak. Thank you for the compliment, and your granddaughter is entirely too beautiful to be chasing men. They should be chasing her."
The grandmother looked at me and smiled and a slow smile grew on the granddaughter's face. She was beautiful. Long black hair, red lips, and a set of breasts that threatened to overwhelm her sweater.
It was sweater weather because it gets cold in December in Jacksonville. It was raining which made it even colder. Jacksonville is a Florida city, but it's more apt to consider it South Georgia weather wise and we've had bone-chilling freezes as early as December.
Anyway, she was huge and when I'd gone back with my mother to visit relatives in Naples before I'd met Tiffany, I got the impression that most Italian babies would never starve. Almost every Italian woman seemed to have big tits.
And Delanna Smith, her father was a good old Georgia boy, was definitely all Italian female. She was the apple of her grandmother's eye and her daddy was big and protective, but two weeks later after celebrating New Year's Eve together she was bucking underneath me and trying to push my cock all the way through her pussy while I milked her two handed and tried to suck her tits off.
The only thing I'd ever missed with Tiffany was that she didn't have large breasts. I'd learned to live with it and I loved our sex life, but manhandling those huge fleshy mounds while I pumped her as hard as I could made sex with Delanna unforgettable.
She'd made me come hard inside her twice when she grabbed my dick and with her mouth and hands made me hard again and rolled me over and enveloped my dick in those mountains of titties. She started massaging my dick roughly and sucking on the tip as it popped out between her breasts.
"I know you want this," she said because sucks, " because guys always want to tittyfuck me. How'd you manage to hold out so long."
"I didn't want you to think that all I wanted you for was your boobs."
"It's okay," she said sucking and slurping. "All I want you for is your big hard dick."
So for four months we did our best to fuck each other to death. And while I didn't love her, not the way I had Tiffany, she kept me happy in bed, she was funny and loving and good company.
When we finally broke up it was my girls, oddly enough, who precipitated the split. She had loved the girls when she'd met them....loved them too much in a way.
One night after I'd had them for the weekend and took them home she used her mouth, pussy, ass and tits to drain me four times. I lay back in my bed in my cheap apartment and thought that life wasn't too bad.
"We need to talk," she said and a shiver went through me. Whether you're dealing with a girlfriend or a wife, those are four words you never want to hear.
"Where are we going?" she asked and those are another four words a single guy never wants to hear.
"Back to your house in a little while and maybe we'll take a movie in tomorrow?" I said smiling.
She shook her head.
"I'm serious. What are we? Fuck buddies? Boyfriend/girlfriend? Lovers? Do you ever want to make this permanent?"
I tried to come up with an appropriate answer and she read me. I asked, "Why are we talking about this, Delanna? Can't we just be friends and have fun and fuck each others' brains out?"
She put her face down on my chest and said, "I hurt every time I see your girls. I know how much you love them. I really like them. But I want my own babies. I'm not getting any younger. I would be a great mother. Have you ever thought of us...."
I couldn't lie to her. She was a sweet woman, a good woman, and she wanted more than I could give her. Just like I had wanted more than Tiffany could give me.
And that was the end of that. When I dropped her off at her apartment, we kissed and I knew there was no point in calling her again. I got a card from her a year later announcing her wedding in a big Mandarin Catholic church. I didn't go. Because I wondered why I was stupid enough to let her go. She was a good person and a great fuck and would have been a wonderful mother. But I didn't love her.
The April night in 2007 after I dropped her off I was at home at 11 p.m. after finishing a shift at my home Blockbuster. It was a Sunday night. The phone rang. I picked it up.
"Mmmmmmm...ohhhhhh....that's sooooooo gooooddddd...."
What the hell? I knew who it was, but what was she doing?
"Oh, Goooodddddddddddddd....it won't go in...it's bigger than it ever has been...."
"Tiffany, I'm hanging up if you're going to be pulling this shit."
"Don't you hang up you bastard, don't you dare.....oh ...Stephen, fuck me baby..."
"That's it. Fuck you, you bitch."
"No, Stephen's fucking me, you cowardly bastard. If you got even a fraction of a ball left, don't hang up that goddamned phone. If you can throw me away, the least you can do is listen to another man give me what I need."
She wasn't pretending. I could hear the squish of organs rubbing against each other, the noise a cock made sliding in and out of a wet pussy. She might be faking it, but somehow I thought he was inside her as I listened.
"We've been fucking for six months, Bruce, since the day our divorce was final...and my pussy should be loosened up, but some nights...GODDDDDDDAAAAMMMMMMIIIIITTTTTTT...Stephen it's going to come out my throat...but don't' stop....."
He pounded and hammered her over and over. I should have hung up...I wanted to...but it was like watching two cars colliding in slow motion. I couldn't force myself to hang it up.
And in my mind's eye I could see that body and pussy I had loved being penetrated and ravaged by Stephen's huge cock. I could see her drooling, from the pussy and mouth as he drove her over the edge again and again. I could hear the non-stop gasping that meant she was orgasming over and over.
She wasn't that good an actress. I don't think anybody could be. She let out a long, shuddering exhalation and he breathed loudly and then it sounded like he was lying down beside her.
It took her a minute and I was about to hang up when she got her breath back.
Her voice was whispery but got stronger as she went on.
"You know, don't you Bruce. You wanted to think I was faking it...but you know, don't you. You remember when I was with you. We fucked so many times. You'd know if I was faking, and I wasn't, and you know it. Stephen is lying beside me with that huge cock...it's soft now, but it's still almost seven inches long.
"It's so damned big....a lot of times even when he's done and I can't squeeze another cum out of him, I like to lay here and just run my fingers all over all over it and then get down and lick it up and down and up and down. It's my toy....no matter how depressed or bad I feel, I can lay down here and play with it and I get to feeling better.
"And I have you to thank, Bruce. I wanted to call tonight and thank you. The girls told me a couple of nights ago about that big boobed bitch of yours. I know you must be in Heaven. I was never big enough for you, you son of a bitch.
"Well, you want to know something...I never knew it, but you were never big enough for me. I never knew what having a really big cock stuck up your ass or your pussy or down your throat really felt like.
"He's better than you...he's better than you ever will be...he's better than you could ever be.....you never opened me up the way he does, you never filled me up the way he does, you never filled my mouth and throat with so much hot white cum that I nearly drowned...what a way to go....
"And if I was ever crazy enough to let you in my bed again, I might pretend so I wouldn't hurt your feelings, but you would never do it for me again. I'm ruined for you.
"I actually feel sorry for you, Bruce. You got a wild hair and your feelings hurt and you threw away a woman that loved you. And now you'll never get me back, unless you'd settle for a pity fuck."
After a long time, she said, "You still there, Bruce?"
"Not any more, Tiff. Don't call again."
I snapped my cell flip top closed. When it rang again I set it on the floor and smashed it with a clock radio until I'd killed them both. Then I went to my liquor cabinet, pulled out a nearly full quart of Jim Daniels and proceeded to get seriously wasted.
I had to have a cell phone so I replaced it despite not having that much free cash.
And two nights later I smashed the new one all to hell and gone when she tried to give me a stereophonic cuckolding by phone.
I didn't want to replace it, but there has to be a way for the company to contact you and I bought a third phone. And smashed it three nights later.
I knew I was being stupid, but it was either smash the phone or drive to her -- what used to be our -- home or his apartment and smash him and lose the chance to see my daughters again unless it was on visiting days at the state prison.
Two weeks later he was walking into his apartment about 8 p.m. in the dark when I came up behind him just as he unlocked the door. A kick to his back sent him through the doorway, slamming the door open so hard it bopped him in the face before he got all the way in. He came down on a flimsy wooden coffee table and reduced it to splinters.
It took the breath out of him and he just lay there for a minute. I sat on the couch opposite him and just watched. He rose to his knees and shook his head. When the door slammed back it bloodied his nose and busted his lip. He was bleeding.
He looked up at me and noted I had closed the door behind us so we were unlikely to be disturbed until we'd finished our discussion.
"I don't care what fucking karate shit you try, you asshole, I'm bigger than you and I'm going to smash your fucking face in....you coward...had to jump me from behind...not only have I got a bigger dick than you, and I make Tiff scream louder than she ever did for you, but you're afraid of me...."
I held my hands out in a peacemaking gesture.
"I'm sitting right now nice and quiet. I'm not jumping you. Why don't you get up and try to kick my ass? Please."
He had the heart for it. He got up and charged me. And after I put him down he got up again. He was holding his side and he couldn't breathe right, but he went after me again. I could have killed him, but I just broke his nose. He stayed down longer that time, but after awhile, he just shook his head and rubbed the blood out of his eyes.
"She loves my dick, you know. She's not just saying that to rev you up. She can just play with it for hours..until my skin gets sore and then I let her suck me. And there's nothing -- I mean nothing -- that I want to do that she won't do.
"You're the stupidest fucking moron I've ever known. You threw away that piece of ass because you got your feelings hurt."
I didn't' say anything, just remained seated on the couch across from him. His big screen television which had been hanging from the wall was a collage of metal and glass on the floor after I'd sent him into it. Two chairs were pieces of kindling. A pretty nice piece of mounted modern art was scattered in pieces across his den.
"You can still leave and I won't hurt you."
He actually smiled. I had to stop myself from liking him.
"Your move."
"Well, let me get myself up," he said moaning and managed to make it to his feet. He came at me and I didn't see the leg of one of the chairs until it was whistling by just over my head. I took it away from him and hit him in the side and then in the stomach and then in the back over his kidneys.
He collapsed like a balloon that's had a spike driven through it. This time he wasn't going to be getting back up. I sat back down and after awhile he was able to roll over onto his back. He looked up at me and I saw for the first time that he'd had enough.
"I guess.....I should...taken that karate shit.....seriously.....but...I always....thought....it was...camera tricks."
He laughed and spit blood.
"Shows how much...I know....right?"
"For a pussy, you didn't do too badly."
He lay back and tried to draw air into his lungs for a few minutes.
"I guess...you're going to beat me...to death now, right?"
"No. How can I beat you to death? I was never here. I'm in a video game marathon at a friend's house in St. Augustine right now. Have been there for the last 18 hours and I'll probably be there for the next 24. Got seven people who will swear I never left the house."
"So I got the crap....kicked.....out of me...by a figment...of my imagination?"

[Ramesh_Rocky]

I smiled at him. I couldn't help it. If he hadn't been fucking my wife and he didn't have that huge dick that had enchanted her, I would have really liked the son of a bitch.

"I'd say a burglar or two, maybe home invaders, broke in and you fought them off. You can reach a phone and call 9-11 and have somebody here in a few minutes."
He smiled back.
"I could probably call them in time... for them to catch you before you...got back to your alibi....and....what would you do then?"
"Spend a few years in prison. But I'd get out. And the next time I'd have an iron clad alibi and I'd rip your dick off with my bare hands and cripple you so you'd never walk again. I'd do it even if I had to go back to prison. You can buy a gun, but you can't watch your back forever."
He took a deep breath and coughed up blood again, then breathed shallowly until he could talk again.
"I guess I have to...chalk this up to...experience.....I'm going to miss her...you know...but she's not worth....dying for...."
I got off the couch and knelt down beside him. He drew back for a second but I didn't reach for him.
"You can still see her."
"What?"
"I divorced her...you're right....I lost the right to say who she can fuck....and if she wants you...that's okay. But...."
I looked down at him and made a quick chopping motion in the direction of his dick. He flinched.
"But, you will never, ever, go along with her calling me while you two are having sex again. As long as you live. I don't care how you do it, but convince her that would get you killed. If she really likes you, she ought to be willing to stop tormenting me."
He shook his head.
"I thought it was true. You still love her.... don't you? Why in the hell....did you throw her away....?"
"It was the best thing for both of us. Don't try to figure it out, and please...if I can ask you any favors and I won't hurt you if I find out you went against me, don't ever tell her I still love her. It would just make things worse."
I got up and walked out and there was no one around in the night and I made it back to St. Augustine in an hour and a half to my friend's marathon gaming session and it was like I had never been gone.
Nothing else happened. I heard from the girls a week later about Uncle Stephen's house being invaded and his fighting two men off. And mom cried and spent the day at the hospital with him. Eventually she went back to work and Uncle Stephen went back to work and the cops had absolutely no luck finding the two black guys who had tried to rob him.
It was a Saturday night and my latest cell phone rang at 11 p.m.
"Hello Bruce."
"To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Stephen told me everything."
"He probably suffered a little brain damage from that beating he took. No telling what he thinks happened."
"I feel guilty. You hurt him really bad, and it's all my fault. I won't....call you again like that."
"Thanks."
"I knew you still loved me. The sad thing is, now, it doesn't matter anymore. I could never be satisfied with you now, even if you came to your senses. And even though I don't call you, you know I'm going to be fucking him. As often as I can. Because I can't get enough of him."
I didn't say anything.
"Do you ever wonder, Bruce...sometimes late at night and you're all alone, what it would be like if we were still together? I know you'll find other women. But they won't be me."
This time she didn't slam the phone down, just hung it up gently. But it still sounded like the end of the world.
I dated and I fucked and I partied over the next six months. I took the girls to college events and to soccer practice at the YMCA field in Orange Park in the Spring. There were times in the months after my little heart to heart with Stephen that I sat in one bleacher cheering the girls and Stephen and Tiffany sat 50 feet away on another bleacher.
We'd catch each other's eyes and nod once in a while. I'd see Tiffany talking to Stephen as they snuggled and stared at me, but they weren't obnoxious about it. They were just another couple watching their kids.
Then during the summer when I went to pick them up or when we went to summer camp events and Theatrical Camp because Kaitlyn was a budding thespian, I noted that Stephen wasn't around any more. Not once in a while, but he had vanished.
The next time the girls came over and I subtly pumped them I learned that Stephen had started disappearing four months ago and for the last two months they hadn't seen him at all.
Mom had told them that she and Uncle Stephen decided to stop seeing each other. They weren't fighting, just wanted to take a break. Kaitlyn told me that Mom hadn't cried, but she'd walked around looking sad for a week and then she seemed to be her old self.
And the first new guy the girls had never seen before had come to pick Mom up on a Friday night while Grandma babysat.
I wondered if he had dumped her or she'd finally got her fill of his big dick. And now she had gone to playing the field. Just like me.
So we lived our lives on parallel tracks, trying not to pay attention to what the other was doing, connected only by two little girls, one of whom had her period and started developing little breast buds.
And then I was really glad that Kaitlyn had a mother, because no way did I feel up to guiding her through the treacherous waters of adolescence -- being a teenage or even pre-teen girl.
The other major change in my life occurred about six months after Tiff and I divorced. I was at one of the Blockbusters in Arlington when a big dark-haired man came in with a half dozen DVDs to return He was cursing under his breath as he dumped the DVDs off and then pulled out his cell phone and punched a number in.
He talked for a minute and then slammed it shut and said, "Fucking waste of air...sorry son of bitch...you miserable bastard....""
I usually shot the breeze with customers I knew and tried to tell them what was out that was new and worth renting. I knew this guy and he was usually a happy-go-lucky bastard who, when he came in, was usually with a woman, always a "10" on his arm, and usually a different "10" each time.
He was obviously not in a renting mood tonight.
"I'd give you the new release list, Mr. Fleming, but something tells me you're not in a DVD-watching mood. Is there anything I can do to help?"
He looked at me and shook his head as if to physically dispel the dark thoughts and said, "Oh, hey Bruce. Nah, nothing you can do. It's just a goddamned shame that when you pay people good money to come up with words for you, the sons of bitches get drunk and overdosed and I wind up trying to come up with the copy myself. And I'm not a word man."
I thought he was in public relations, for some little firm in Jacksonville. We'd talked briefly over the last couple of years when I'd run into him about the vicissitudes of the PR game.
Then he stopped muttering and looked at me and, I think, saw me for the first time.
"Bruce....am I remembering correctly? You write novels and short stories?"
"Yeah, plugging away....haven't sold the novels yet but I've placed some short stories."
"You ever done any non-fiction? Any PR or promotional writing?"
"No."
"Could you?"
"I don't know. I doubt it. I don't really know anything about that type of writing. I haven't even tried it since college. There must be tons of guys around that have experience doing that kind of thing."
"Yeah, there are, but I don't know any I can trust that will finish a job for me tonight."
"Tonight? You mean, like in the next 4 hours or so?"
"You'd have till 8 a.m. tomorrow, which means about 11 hours."
"You ought to try to find somebody else. If I can't get it done, I'd feel bad about getting you in a bind."
"I'm already in a bind, Bruce. You know we're a boutique agency. We're small, but we work for really high dollar clients and we've built up a good reputation over the last 20 years. Hank --Henry -- Clark and I are the owner/partners. We built it since we left UF. Hank has always been the word and idea man. I handle clients and sell our stuff.
"We've gotten a little too big for ourselves lately and we had to bring in three writers. Which was enough, but we've got this account and we need copy for a very expensive retirement community that needs to go into the printer tomorrow morning to make the deadline for their national ad campaign.
"Two of our writers are jammed on big accounts that provide a good chunk of our income. Hank is a walking zombie because...of his family situation...and my last hope was just busted by the cops for possession of cocaine after plowing his car into the front of a nightclub in Orlando. He blew a .19, which means his blood is basically almost pure alcohol.
"I am shit out of luck, Bruce, unless you could help me. Even if you can't do it, it would at least give us a shot."
"I -- uh -- I'll take it but I'll tell you right now I might not be able to do it. You'd be better off looking for a pro."
"I'm going to, but in the meantime could you try to crank out some copy? I've got some samples, their talking points, stuff that will show you what they're looking for and what we need."
I told him I would and I looked it over between customers and took it home with me. I didn't get to bed until 4 a.m. and was up at 6 a.m. in time to get into Jacksonville and be in his office by 7:30 a.m.
I had kept it as simple as I could, basing my copy on what I thought the owners were trying to sell. What they were trying to sell was security and reassurance that even though you were aging and might need some help with daily living, you were still better than 95 percent of the working stiffs and Their Place was the Right Place for a special person like you.
It was pure horseshit of course, but it appealed to the twin needs to assuage the fear of dying on the part of aging customers and stroke their ego at the same time. I wasn't sure if my stuff was any good at all, but I thought I'd hit close to the mark.
I sat across from Vic Fleming and watched as he read through the copy, then read it again and read it a third time.
He finally looked up at me, hit the intercom after which a blonde with 42DD tits and an ass to die for swayed into his office and took the papers from him.
"Candy, get that to the courier and get it over to The Right Place before 8 a.m."
She took it without a word, gave him a glance that should have melted steel, and glanced at me on the way out. I could feel every nerve ending in my body tingling.
"Who do you have to kill to get a job around her?" I asked, only half joking.
"She's a very sweet lady, high IQ, great secretary, happily married and the mother of two small boys. But she's also wonderful eye candy and we've gotten a lot of business from guys that were dreaming about getting between her legs. Fortunately," he said and lowered his voice so only I could hear him, "she likes what I have between my legs. She loves her husband, but she's not fanatical about it."
Then he turned his attention back to me.
"It's not the best or most polished stuff I've ever seen, but it's useable and good enough that they'll come back to us. For a first time effort, on the fly, under unbelievable deadline pressure, it's pretty damned good. What do I owe you?"
"I've got no idea what to charge. Whatever you think is fair."
He opened his wallet and passed me five $100 bills and then fished a form out of his desk and slid it over to me.
"Sign this. You're signing away any rights to your text so we can use it whenever and however we please and you can't come back and sue us if it winds up making somebody a million dollars. That's because you're a freelancer. If you were working in the shop your work would be covered and we wouldn't need to do this."
I looked at the $500 and couldn't believe my eyes. $500 for only two or three hours of real concentrated work. It was a nice piece of change. I reached out and shook his hand and got up to leave.
Before I could make it out the door, he asked me, "Would you like to try this again. I think with some effort and maybe a little training by one of our regular writers, you'd be a valuable addition to this firm. The money is good for freelancers. I'd like someone who can write fast, and turn out acceptable copy."
I shrugged.
"Sure. I can always use the money."
"Ever thinking about doing this full-time, if it works out?"
I thought about it for a moment.
"Naw, I don't think so. I like Blockbuster and the people I work with. This way I've got time for my fiction writing, I'm keeping my Blockbuster option open, and I would almost always be available when you needed a quick turnaround."
He just nodded at me. Before I could leave, he said, "I could introduce you to Candy. Maybe you could go out to lunch sometime. Let her fill you in on how the office works. It would be good to know."
"No thanks."
"I could tell you were impressed and she's been around here long enough that I know when she's interested. It might be fun. And it's a definite perk to working around here."
I shook my head.
"No. No offense or anything personal, but I'm not interested. I divorced my wife six months ago and I think she might have been running around on me before we made it final. I just don't -- I don't want to do that to some other poor bastard."
He looked at me and smiled a sad smile.
"You and my friend Hank. God, I'm glad I've never loved anybody like that. Sometimes I think I've missed out on something important, and other times I say my prayers of thanks that I missed out on it."
I walked out and for the next year and a half wrote ad copy for Vic and Hank. And made enough to beef up my bank account and take the girls to a few nice places.
I was nowhere near Tiffany's league, but I was making more money part time than I was with my full-time Blockbuster job. And I was up to 400-plus rejections on the Great American Novel and wondered if my dreams would die before I did.
#############################
Vic Fleming sat up a little straighter in his chair behind the big marble desk he had had carried to three different offices over the years as the firm had grown or changed locations for strategic reasons.
It was probably something very childish, but a memory of a desk like this seen in some movie or documentary when he was a child had stuck in his head.
And when he and Hank had begun making the money they had never dreamed of making, he had the desk produced to his specifications. He always felt more powerful, more in control of the world around him behind this desk.
He sat up straighter in what he recognized was an instinctive attempt to preen for this young woman entering his office.
The woman entering his office was well dressed, although not too dressy, and appeared very professional. Despite looking all business, she was still hot. Young, probably too young for him, but what the hell, robbing the cradle occasionally was fun. Slim, brunette, not ostentatiously built, but there was just something...
He reached down as unobtrusively as he could to move his rapidly thickening cock to a more comfortable position. Having a big dick was usually not something that posed a problem, but getting an erection in front of an attractive woman in a business setting was not good business.
As it was, he was forced to be somewhat impolite simply because he couldn't stand up to shake her hand without embarrassing himself.
She just looked at him for a moment with a hint of a smile as he gestured to one of the chairs in front of the desk, then sank gracefully into it, crossing her legs and revealing some very nice leg encased in sensuous nylon.
"Miss...Hampton, I believe it was....I appreciate your taking the time to come down to our office, but I would have been happy to meet you."
She shook her head.
"No need. I had business downtown. And I wanted to talk to you in person and meet some of your staff. And it's Mrs. Hampton. I'm keeping my ex's name for awhile since some of our larger customers are familiar with me under my married name."
"Meet some of our staff? I'm afraid I don't understand."
She reached into a slim briefcase she had set down beside her chair and pulled some papers out and leaned over to hand them to him. As she leaned forward some very nice swells of small but attractive breasts peeked out from her cleavage. He wondered if it was accidental.
He looked over the papers she had handed them. They were primarily print ads, along with a few transcripts of radio ads and a few television ads with still shots attached.
"We've used other advertising firms in the past, but the owners of our firm and staff including myself felt they'd gotten a little...stale....over the past year. We started looking around at some other agencies' work and some friends pointed to your agency as a possibility to handle some of our new advertising campaigns.
"After we decided to study your agency, we got a list of your clients and started looking at the print and media ads you've done for them. We were pleasantly surprised.
"These ads are ....I don't know quite how to say it and we haven't quite pinned down exactly what the quality that impresses us is, but the easiest way to explain it is that they are fresh, Their concepts and writing doesn't seem like the same old-same old.
"I've dealt with a lot of advertising agencies over the past 10 years and I think I've developed a pretty discriminating eye. I like the work and the feel for the written word and the buyer's market pitch that whoever prepared these had.
"I'd be happy to meet with anyone on your staff, but I really would like to meet the individual or individuals who did these."
Fleming looked over them and most were relatively easy to place. A couple were harder to place, but a few moments recollection brought them back to him. He wasn't surprised.
"I know who did these, Ms. Hampton. We run a small shop here as I'm sure you've been told. Our total staff including Mr. Clark, my partner and co-owner, and myself, amounts to only 15 people including secretaries. We have four writers and idea people. One is Hank Clark, we have two writers on staff, and a fourth writer who is basically a freelancer but on call whenever we need him."
He laid the papers down in front of him against the cool marble desktop.
"These were all done by the fourth writer. He's a freelancer. Actually, I brought him into the business about a year and a half ago. We were in a crunch and I ran into him where he was working at his fulltime job. I knew he'd written some things and asked him if he were willing to give copywriting a shot.
"He did and the rest is history. I started using him for freelance assignments and he always delivered, always did a good job, and he was fast as hell. Fast and dependable, and good. It doesn't get much better than that."
She looked down at the papers.
"He did these as a part-timer? I'm impressed. Actually amazed. You wouldn't believe how much crappy copy I've had to wade through over the years, from people who were supposed to be dependable professionals.
"I'm quite surprised that you let him hang out there as a freelancer. Somebody else is going to notice this guy and snatch him up."
"I've had the same worry. Unfortunately, he likes his full-time job and he's also a writer of fiction on the side. One of those guys who keeps trying to write the 'Great American Novel.' But a few months ago my partner and I finally bit the bullet and decided we didn't want him to get away.
"Hank and I have always been 100 percent owners. We split the company 45-45 and offered him a 10 percent ownership stake to be exclusively ours. If he writes for us exclusively for five years, he's vested in half that, and if he stays with us a full ten years, he gets 10 percent of the company. He can stay or sell his percentage and walk away. It's win-win for everybody."

[Ramesh_Rocky]

"Ten percent ownership for a part-timer. I don't know that I've heard about that. They don't do that in the land development business for sure. I've worked for my company for over a decade, and I'm still a hired hand. A very well paid hired hand, but I don't own any of the company. I envy him."

"We had to think very hard before we did. This company is our life, mine and Hank's. And our regular writers are good. But this guy is -- something special. Before Hank -- ran into some personal problems, he and I always worried about what would happen if something put him out of action for a good while.
"I can sell ice to Eskimos, but I have no damned word sense at all. And our writers are good, but...they're workhorses. They can get the job done, if you show them the job.
"But this guy actually has an imagination and despite the cliché, he's one of those guys who really can think outside the box. And he's younger than we are so if he stays with us, eventually Hank and I could ease back and let him take the reins, but still keep some control.
"Like I said, a win-win for everybody."
She sat up straighter and re-crossed her legs and despite himself Vic Fleming found himself looking for a shot of pussy. She wasn't wearing panties, although it wasn't blatant. And the look she gave him let him know she'd noticed.
He sighed. She was tempting, but his fourth wife was entering into the jealous bitch stage and he really didn't want to go through the divorce dance right now. Better to be good and safe, than sorry.
She took the papers back and said, "I have some ideas and I'd like some of this wordman's input. Do you think he'd be willing to meet with me tonight? There's a nice, new Thai restaurant in Baymeadows that I was wanting to try out. We could eat and talk. I'll put it on my tab since it's business for him."
"He's single so if he's free there'd be no problem. Give me your number and I'll call him and if he can make it I'll have Candy, my secretary, call you. Okay?"
"Sure. By the way, what is this Wunderkind's name?"
"Davis, Bruce Davis."
"Hmmmmm....."
"That's an interesting.....hmmmmmmm. You know Bruce?"
"I'm not sure if it's the same guy, but a friend of mine was married to a Bruce Davis once. The marriage didn't work. But Davis isn't that unusual a name. And the Bruce Davis my friend was married to....wouldn't be a rising star in the advertising world. He wasn't that kind of guy."
"Ask him yourself. The world can be a small place."
#######################
I walked into the Star of Siam at 8 p.m. I'd gotten a call from Candy because Vic had to run out on an important business matter. I think he just had to go home and fuck his fourth wife.
He was keeping that marriage together with fucking, grit and grim resolve not to go through another divorce for awhile. We'd gotten to know each other over the past year and a half and I knew he was fucking around on her, as he'd fuck around on whoever took her place.
Despite that, and despite the difference in the way we looked at women and life, I'd always liked him. He was what he was and didn't really make any bones about it. Women were interchangeable pussies, good for pretty much one thing and for hanging on your arm at social events. Beyond that, I don't think Vic had ever had a deep emotion about women in his life
He was the complete opposite of his friend and soul mate Hank Clark in that way, and Hank had the scars to show for it. He loved his wife as much or more as I'd loved Tiffany, but she had put him through a hell I couldn't even imagine. And yet they'd come through on the other side.
It was funny in a way. She'd done him far worse than anything Tiffany had ever done, and they were together. Tiffany and I would never be together. Goes to show you never can tell.
I asked the waitress for a Mrs. Hampton and she took me to a room off to the side of the main dining area.
There was a doorway made of shimmering beads and as she pushed through I saw Mrs. Tiffany Hampton sitting at a table at the back of the small room. She had a briefcase beside her that she was looking through. A glass of what was probably White Wine was beside her.
She looked up and me. She wasn't smiling, but not angry either. She was the very model of the modern businesswoman. I don't think she had a hair out of place. Her clothing was just attractive enough to let you know she could afford to dress to show off her face and body, but there was virtually no cleavage or leg showing.
"Hello Bruce."
"Mrs. Hampton."
I stood across from her at the table but I made no move to sit down.
"You going to sit down?"
"Not sure. Probably not."
"Why not? Your boss, Vic Fleming, said you were a company man, always willing to go the extra mile to get the job done for your firm. Although, I'll admit that I find that hard to believe. The Bruce Davis I knew would never go the extra mile for anyone, or anybody. Especially for a job that paid him decent money. I thought making a decent living was against your religion, or something."
I looked at her and couldn't believe that she still looked that good, couldn't believe the old reaction I'd always had to her was still there.
"That's the reason why I'm not sitting down. This isn't a business meeting, Mrs. Hampton. This is just another of your attempts to screw around with my head. Pretty clever, I have to admit. You had to track me down to my new job, which I've taken pains to make sure the girls know nothing about. Then you had to have my work researched so you could come in and pretend to be interested in my copy.
"It's been two years, Tiffany. We've made new lives for ourselves. You had an affair with your big-dick boyfriend for nearly a year and then followed that up by managing to get yourself married and divorced in the blink of an eye.
"Why the hell can't you just leave me alone? I don't keep coming back after you. I only came here tonight because I was curious to find out what your latest scheme is."
She grabbed the white wine and took a sip slowly. Then she set the glass down on the table and stared up at me with a slight smile tempering the bland expression on her face.
"How do you manage to stand upright with your head so swollen with your own importance, Bruce? Do you walk around thinking that everything anybody does revolves around you?
"Are you really egotistical enough that you think I'd go to the trouble of shadowing you to find out you'd gotten a new job? And then I'd research your copywriting. And pretend to be looking for a new firm.
"Just to have another chance to talk to a man that dumped me and his daughter after eight years of marriage? In case you forgot, I found out there are other cocks out there. Bigger and better than yours, in fact.
"Maybe I haven't found a better husband yet -- my first attempt after you was, l'll admit, a pitiful failure -- but I'm looking and eventually I'll find one with a big cock, the ability to keep it in his pants when he's not around me, and enough self confidence to be able to live with a woman who has her own identity.
"There are men like that out there. I just happened to miss them my first two times out."
I slowly tightened my fingers around the back of the chair in front of me until my knuckles were white.
"That's why I'm not sitting down, Tiffany. You'd think after two years we might have gotten past the poison between us, but it doesn't go away. You have to keep tearing at me, and I keep coming back like a bull charging at a red cape."
"Says the man who is so frightened of spending time around his ex-wife that he hasn't spent any time, or even talked with her, in two years. You can't stand to be around me, Bruce, and I've figured out why. You can't stand to be reminded of what you lost -- what you threw away. So you're hiding and sulking like a little boy and you won't come out and play anymore."
"This is hopeless."
I started to turn away, when she said, "You are such a fucking coward. For a big mean karate bully, you are terrified of a woman. You are afraid to even sit down and share a meal and talk business. What are you so afraid of, stud? I don't bite. And in your case, I won't even kiss it. That make you feel better?"
I sat down.
"Let's talk business, then. And by the way, I wouldn't let you touch any part of your body to any part of mine. No telling where it's been, or what you've been doing with it."
She motioned to the waitress to get my order, adding quickly before she arrived, "You wish. You're never going to squirt into any part of this body."
The conversation was strained, to say the least, as the waitress took our orders and we started to talk about the copy I had written.
"I have to admit, you could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather when
Fleming said your name. I wondered for a second if I'd wandered into the twilight zone. My Bruce...writing business copy, making a really nice second income freelancing and actually becoming a partner in a prosperous business. I honestly didn't know you had it in you."
I looked at her face checking for sarcasm, but she actually seemed serious.
"It was nothing I planned..."
"I can believe that."
"I was just at the right place at the right time."
"And you're a good copywriter."
"Writing is writing. It's just that this pays so much better."
"Whether you believe it or not, Bruce, what I said was true. I wasn't looking for you. The company is looking for some new advertising approaches, new blood, and that's what led me to Fleming and Clark.
"Your copy and your style is fresh. We need new talent, and the more money Fleming and Clark make, the better off you are. As long as we're here, why not look at some of the things we're working on and give me your thoughts."
So she brought out some documents and specs and while we ate Gai Pad Met Mamuang, or stir-friend chicken with cashew nuts and Panaeng, or beef in spicy coconut cream, I told her what I thought might make the millionaire owner/partners even more rich.
Some of the ideas she dismissed as pure horseshit, stupid, derivative, trite, etc. Others, however, had her tapping her chin with a pen, usually a sign she was thinking deeply about something. She started taking notes on a legal steno pad she pulled from the briefcase.
I looked around and realized we were the last customers in the restaurant. Somehow it had gotten around to 11:45 p.m. and they closed at 12. The waitress hovered near us, waiting for us to pay up and get out.
Tiffany grabbed the bill before I could get it, saying, "No. I said this was on me. This is business. Funny how time flies when you're having fun. It was kind of fun, wasn't it."
I wondered what her definition of fun was and said so.
She laughed.
"You realize this is the longest we've talked, the longest we've been together, without snarling at each other in two years?"
"Just goes to show that nothing is impossible. You think you guys, the partners, might be interested in any of the stuff we talked about?"
She finished putting the papers away and zipping the briefcase closed.
"Yes, actually I think they might be. Really, I know they will be. We'll almost certainly be back in touch with your bosses in a few days to a week. I'll probably be the point man for our side. Do you think you could stand to work with me for a few weeks or however long it takes us to finish up this project?"
"As long as it's strictly business. This wasn't actually too bad. I've had worse times having root canals, so at least I know spending time with you isn't the most painful experience in the world."
"Funny. I never realized you were so funny when we were married. By the way, you seeing anybody seriously? I noticed you haven't gotten remarried."
"I've haven't gotten married, or even divorced one time since we split. I guess it takes me longer to get my relationship legs under me. You planning on taking the plunge again soon?"
"No. I think I'll cool it for awhile. Concentrate on my business life and the girls. God, did you know that Kaitlyn has a little boyfriend? The little bastard is already trying to get her to play spin the bottle games at kids parties. I had to talk to his mother to cool him down."
"She told me about it."
"She told you?"
"Believe it or not, both of them do talk to me. I just told her to kick him in the balls if he got too grabby. Glad you gave her that birds and bees talk so she knows about male equipment and how to grab a guy's attention."
She smiled at me and for a moment I thought I saw the old Tiffany.
"Can you believe -- could you ever have believed we'd be worrying about protecting our daughter from horny boys. Sometimes I feel a hundred years old. Where did the time go?"
I was determined that I was not going to mist up.
"I don't know Tiff. I wish I did. I wish....never mind. I guess I'll see you if Vic or Hank set up a meeting in the future."
"There's a pretty nice bar, for grownups, about two blocks from here. They have our music and a live band tonight. The girls are with Mom tonight. You care to have a drink to wind down?"
"No. Thanks, but...I have to go to work tomorrow. I'll walk you to your car."
As we stood beside her 2008 Lexus IS 250 Sedan, she looked up at me and shook her head.
"When did you turn from a man into such a pussy, Bruce? A good looking woman is willing to have a drink with you and you turn her down. I promise you, I won't be comparing your dick to Stephen's the entire time we're out, but...Never mind. I knew you wouldn't have the balls to drink with me. We both know what's going to happen."
"And that is?"
"You're going to wind up begging me for a fuck. And this time I'm going to walk away from you and leave you with your tongue hanging down to your knees."
"You are so fulla shit."
"Then prove it, tough guy."
At 2 a.m. they announced last call and people began to toss down the last of their drinks and try frantically for last minute hookups.
"Oh, shit. I will never make it home without a cop busting me."
I looked at the empty glasses around me and cursed myself as an idiot. Why had I let her goad me into going out drinking. It had been fun. I'd forgotten how much fun she could be as we sang along with songs from the late 90s and earlier that we had danced and fucked too in our college days.
I caught myself glancing at her when she looked away from me. Why the hell did she have to be so screwed up? Why had I been unable to break away from her before I got sucked into a marriage and two little girls had been brought into the world.
But, would the world be worth living in if they weren't in it? Maybe our marriage had been a mistake, but they weren't.
"Me neither. Why don't we get a cab?"
"Share a cab?"
"Why not? Unless you don't think you can keep your hands off me for the time it takes to get home? You've had a hard on since we've gotten here."
"Talk about having an inflated opinion of yourself. There a lot of really hot women in here. Like that big blonde over there."
"Her boobs are store bought. Can't you tell?"
"And I should care about that, why?"
"Men are pigs. You want to call a cab?"
Forty five minutes later we were trying to swallow each others' tongues in the small living room of the apartment I'd called home for two years. It was the first time she'd ever set foot in my apartment.
She pushed me away, gasping for breath.
"I told you, you bastard, you couldn't keep your hands off me."
"You were jerking me off before we were out of the nightclub parking lot, you horny bitch."
"You had my bra off on the way to the cab."
Then with virtually no transition she was on her knees and my dick was in her mouth and she was sucking and squeezing with her fingers around it.
"I thought....you....said...."
She looked up at me and smirked.
"Cat got your tongue?"
"You weren't interested...."
"It's small...but I don't mind giving you a mercy suck... no fucking through. You're never getting in there again."
Then she was being rammed up against the living room wall by my dick while she wrapped her legs around my waist and I lifted her ass up so I could slam my cock up inside her.
"I thought...you'd be....wide open...after Stephen's big cock....but you're tight..."
She was biting my shoulder and I knew I'd have to have a tetanus shot.
"It's been....it's been.,..oh god...oh god....ohhhhhhhh"
I did my best to hammer her ass through the wall.
"That's right, bitch, come all over my dick....yeah I feel that...come hard....seems big enough for you now....is it big enough?"
"You're....uh...tiny, so fucking tiny....I don't know...how I can even feel you...."
I set her feet down on the floor and pulled out. She just leaned against the wall and looked at my cock dripping with her.
"wha....what?"
I pulled even further back.
"If it's so damned small, I'm not going to bother...."
She tried to reach it but I held her hands and she could only strain at me.
"YOU BASTARD...give it to me...."
"Sorry, Tiff, why don't you give Stephen a call..."
"He wouldn't tease me, you bastard. He'd ram it in me until it hit my tonsils."
"Like I said, call him. I'm not going to disappoint you with my tiny dick."
Even though I had her wrists, she dropped to her knees, ducked her head under her outstretched arms and was on my dick like a baby bird after a worm. She took it in and then with a second lunge took it in up to the balls.
I'd tried to keep trim down there because several girls had told me they didn't like spitting out public hair. But Tiffany just went to town sucking everything her mouth could get to.
At some point I lost the will to hold her wrists and raising her mouth off my throbbing cock she tackled me and was on top of me and slamming that hot wet pussy down again and again. I raised my head and I thought she must have been breaking the sound barrier with her hips and ass, pounding and pounding and pounding.
I came and before I could wilt her constant slipping and sliding up and down the semi-soft stalk brought blood back into it and I was hard again.
I grabbed her and pulled her off and threw her down on her stomach. I reached down and ran my fingers through her cunt, laved her asshole with the fluids.
"Nooooooo...not there....you're not having my ass......"
I slid the head into the tight puckered hole as the fluids lubricated my entrance.
"I'm going to fuck your ass until you scream, you miserable cheating bitch. If your cunt is that tight, your asshole is going to be something else."
"Don't...DON'T.....stop..goddammit that hurts....not so fast..."
"Is that what you told Stephen, bitch? He was bigger than me and I bet he rammed it up your ass plenty of times. You like it up the ass, remember?"
"He was....he was..."
"What?"
"He was bigger soft...."
"And...?"
" He was only a little bigger around and when....you get real hard...he was only a couple of inches longer...."
I was all the way in and I pulled her to me and held her and felt the warmth of her rectum tight around my cock, tighter than her pussy could ever be.
"So why.." I asked, pulling back and ramming it in as hard and deep as it would go and feeling her whole body jerk in my hands, "did you lay it on so thick about how fucking big he was and how he filled you more than I ever could."
I pulled out and then hammered her again and again and felt her gasp and try to catch her breath and tried to beat her asshole to death with my dick. She was probably trying to talk but every time she got some breath she expelled it with a gust of air as I fucked her with no mercy.
"Don't stop..dontstop don'tstopdon'tstop.... Fuckmebaby... fuckmyasssodamnedhard..."
I couldn't get a breath in me to even scream as I exploded into her and she made only incoherent noises. After a long time I was able to breath enough to ask her, "why....Tiff....why torture me?"

[Ramesh_Rocky]

She rolled toward me. She was covered in a fine sheen of sweat. For having had two babies, she was still slim and trim. Her pussy was red and swollen from the beating I had just given it.

"You left me without any warning, you son of a bitch. You walked out on me AND your two young daughters. You have the nerve to talk about me about torturing somebody?
"You will never know how I felt that weekend after you vanished. I couldn't reach you to scream at you...to fuck you....to try to tell you how sorry I was. I felt like tearing my eyes out, but I had to keep it together for our girls..."
She took a deep breath and let it out.
"I fucked Stephen and I told you how big he was and that you'd never match him in bed because I wanted to hurt you as bad as you hurt me."
"Was he that big and good?"
She looked at me and she had the grace to appear a little guilty.
"Yes, Bruce, he was that big. Even a couple of inches makes a difference, and he was good. And I loved the way he fucked me and he did reach places you never did. And he made me cum over and over."
For having just fucked this woman into incoherence, I didn't feel all that hot right now.
She reached out and took my hand in hers.
"In case you forgot, you fucked me into a lot of climaxes when we were together. He was fantastic, but you weren't chopped liver. I'm not going to lie and say that I didn't love fucking him, but....I never loved him. Not the way I loved you. Even if you never believe me, I didn't fuck him in Hawaii. Not that he didn't try. But I didn't."
We lay there for what seemed like a long time. After awhile I rolled to the side of the bed.
'I'll call you a cab. It's late but you'll be home in an hour or so."
She leaned on an elbow and looked up at me.
"Coward. Coward. Coward. You're even afraid to spend the night with me...sleep with me after great sex. Are you so afraid that your iron self control will crack and you'll ask me if you can crawl back and we can try to make a go of our marriage again."
I could have said, "will never happen." But I felt a tenderness and a loss for this woman and what would it hurt to have one last night together. I laid back down beside her and she put her head against my shoulder and I fell asleep that way. Her tears ran down my chest to wet the bed.
The morning light coming through a bedroom window would have roused me if she hadn't nipped at my rampant cock with her small, sharp teeth. Not hard enough to hurt, just to let me know she was down there.
In a moment I had her head in my hands and I fucked her mouth as fast and hard as I could and watched her gulp when I came inside her. She licked me clean as she had so many years ago and I rolled her over and slid down and returned the favor until she screamed.
We took a shower together and dressed, her for work and me to lounge around for a few hours until it was time to go into Blockbuster. She sat across from me at the tiny kitchen table and sipped coffee from my coffee maker.
"Where to from here?"
"I go back to my life, Tiff, and you go back to yours."
She looked at me sadly.
"Last night changed nothing?"
I looked her straight in the eye.
"What could it change, Tiff? Could it make me love you any more? Could it make the sex any hotter? I forgave you for the hurt you did to me a long time ago. And I guess I believe you that you didn't fuck around with Stephen in Hawaii. Even if you did, I could have gotten past that. But..."
"But you still have to own me, don't you Bruce? You have to have this archaic -- you are my property, woman -- marriage that hardly anybody outside of the oil states has anymore."
"Yes, I guess that's the way you see it. I have to have YOU -- all of YOU -- in the marriage. All your money, all your love, all your commitment, all of you, all in. No more running shoes under the bed. You have to once and for all get past your father's betrayal."
She looked into her coffee cup like there were grounds she could read to tell the future.
"Could we -- at least -- see each other sometimes....like this. I guess I could live with not waking up beside you every morning...if I knew that....we weren't through for good."
I wanted to make her smile so badly but I made my heart into a stone.
"I won't see you again, Tiff. I can't. This is tearing my heart out. I want you more than I can stand, and I know I can't have you. Because you're not mine. You never have been. There's a part of you that you hold back. I tried to live with you for nearly ten years, praying that you would change. But you never did. You never will, Tiff. I don't think it's in you."
She stood up.
"So this is goodbye?"
"Once and for all and for real. Yes, it's goodbye."
I didn't watch her as she left. I put my head in my hands and wondered if I was the stupidest fucking man that ever walked the face of the earth, or just one of the unluckiest.
######################
I had just dropped my latest assignment off and stopped at Candy's desk. It was September 15 and September 17th was my birthday. Vic and Hank had both asked me to make it by Sardelli's, a nice Italian family restaurant, on the 17th for an office party/birthday celebration.
Candy wore a - for her - fairly demure light blue blouse and pants suit. The blouse gaped open with her breathing, exposing cleavage that matched anything Delanna had ever shown me.
I leaned over her desk and looked down at her breasts as she looked up at me and smiled.
"Getting a nice view?"
"The view from up here is heavenly, Candy."
She gave them a little wiggle/jiggle that caused me to stiffen up dangerous. I was afraid I might burst my zipper.
"It's always nice to be appreciated, Bruce. But I always had the impression that....you wanted to avoid office...entanglements...."
"You were married until six months ago, Candy. No matter how hot you were, I didn't want to get involved with a married woman."
"That's why I always thought you were a nice guy. A lot of men wouldn't be so particular but...I know why you were that way. Are you and your ex-"
"Finally done, Candy. It took me a long time, but I'm ready to move on. You dating anybody in particular right now?"
She shrugged, which also did nice things to those tits.
"Various people. Looking for a nice guy that's interested in more than my boobs."
"Would you consider a nice guy that's interested in your boobs?"
"I didn't think you were ever going to get over that ex of yours."
"It took me awhile. But I think I am ready to move on. Are you over your ex?"
"For the last few years, actually. I know a lot of guys around here think I'm just a slut, but I probably should have split two years ago. It's just that he was a great guy and a great father. We just weren't a good husband and wife."
"Would you consider being my date to my birthday party?"
"You ask a girl for a date two nights ahead of time?"
"I know it's short notice and I'm sure you have a crowded calendar. If you can't do it, at least keep me in mind for the future."
"Don't be so quick. Yeah, I can be your date. Just for fun....right now...right?"
"Nothing heavy, Candy. I just want some -- no pun intended -- eye candy for my arm that night. Then let's see where it goes."
"Okay. Just for laughs, Bruce."
She took a deep breath and let it out and her tits rose and fell. My eyes were about ready to pop out.
She pretended to slap at me.
"Damn, but it's good for a girl's ego to be around a man who really, really appreciates what she has."
"Consider yourself appreciated."
########################
I picked up Candy from her home on the Westside, saying hello to her two little ones who looked like they would become friends with my two girls if anything developed, and we drove toward the downtown where Sardelli's was located only a few blocks from the giant BellSouth tower.
We drove around for awhile until we found parking and then walked three blocks in the humid September air that left me perspiring before we got inside Sardelli's.
Most of the secretaries, the word guys, Vic and his latest wife Honey who was hanging onto him by her fingernails, and Henry and Patricia Clark were all there already started on wine and popping Arancini di Riso rice balls back with red wine.
I got hellos and congrats and jokes that turning 33 was the real official sign of old age. You were no longer a kid when you were nearly halfway to retirement. I joked back and Henry and Patricia came over to pat me on the back and hug me. Henry, make that Hank which everyone called him, looked 10 years younger than he had when I'd started writing for him and Vic.
And there's no wonder. I had come in late, but he'd been going through Hell, married to a woman that he loved and hated in equal measure, a woman who'd tortured him in ways that I couldn't even imagine.
She was almost as tall as me, as gorgeous a woman at nearly 50 as I'd ever seen. Jet black hair, huge tits, a body and face that screamed 'fuck me'. She came over on Hank's arm and hugged me to her and I couldn't stop the erection that started building behind my zipper. And I knew from the glance she gave that she knew exactly what her body and even the smell of her did to me, and every other male in the place.
And yet, she turned from me to give her shorter husband a kiss and you could read in her eyes that his cock was the only one in the room for her. Vic had told me he'd known them since the days when the three of them attended UF and he wouldn't have given a nickel for the chances of his old friend holding onto the only woman he'd ever loved.
We'd gone out drinking one night and he said the only thing he could compare it to was two fish caught on the same hook. No matter how much they thrashed and fought to get away from each other, no matter how much they hurt each other, there was no way they could break free of each other.
Watching them, and knowing something of what they'd gone through, I wondered if I would have changed places with my boss. He had gone through hell, but you could find a way past infidelity. I couldn't find a way to change the past and allow the woman I loved a way to trust and finally give herself to me. Another man, or men, I could maybe have fought. But how do you pay for the sins of an errant father.
I reached out and grabbed a glass of red wine, gulped it, and decided that was the last fucking morbid thought I was going to entertain tonight. I was with friends, it was my birthday, I had a gorgeous, big tittied blonde as my date, and the odds were very good , that if not tonight, then soon I'd be enjoying all the pleasures that body had promised for the past year and a half. This was going to be a good night!
We had finished the appetizers and main courses and were having some Marzipan Lucky Pigs and Almond Torrones for desert when Vic stood up and said, "Alright, alright. If you guys can stop stuffing your faces. It's time for a word from the birthday boy. Bruce, say something witty."
I stood and said, "Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking," and despite the fact that it wasn't funny, the place dissolved in gales of laughter. Maybe because most of us were about two sheets to the wind.
I banged my empty wineglass on the table until the laughing stopped.
"All kidding aside....I want to thank all of you for being here and for coming up with the idea of this party. You guys know that I have a family of sorts with my friends from my day job at Blockbuster. I've known those guys for years. But in the last year and a half, I feel like I've acquired a new family. You're my friends."
I stopped and looked around at the now familiar faces in the room.
"I....don't have to tell most of you that this has been a pretty....rough two years for me. My marriage ended. I lost my wife. I...got another 50 rejection slips on the Great American novel."
At that the room broke into hysterical laughter again. Everybody knew and joked about my pursuit of the GAN, as everyone dubbed it.
"Thanks one hell of a lot," I said, pretending anger. "Some friends you are! But, the fact is, it would have been a hell of a lot lonelier, and colder, and more painful two years for me if I hadn't run into Vic Fleming one Fall night. Thank you Vic."
Then I sat down. Vic stood up again and said, "In the spirit of the night, I'd like anyone who'd like to make any comments about our friend to stand and do so."
"I'd like to say a few words."
Everyone there, including me, turned their gaze to the entrance to the private dining room, to look at the woman standing there dressed in a stylish black dress with an oversized handbag hanging on her arm. A few of them knew who she was because I'd shown them her picture, but most just stared in curiousity.
I couldn't believe my eyes. She walked forward into the room until she was standing directly in front of the table where Candy and I sat.
"Why are you doing this, Tiffany? I thought....thought we'd settled things...ended things..."
"I didn't come here to embarrass you Bruce, or cause you any trouble. Can I have a minute to talk to you."
"Couldn't you have done this some other time, Tiff? This was a party for me. I was having a good time. Jesus, do you live to make me miserable?"
"After we finish this time, I promise you, I will never contact you or bother you in any way again. Word of honor."
Candy put her hand on my arm.
"Give her a few minutes, Bruce. You need to."
"Okay. What do you want to say, Tiff?"
She reached into the oversized handbag and pulled out a snub-nosed .38 revolver. I felt, rather than heard, the abrupt intake of breath around the room. She held it loosely in her right hand while I froze. Then she reached out and laid it down on the table in front of me.
She reached back into the handbag and came out with a small purple box and laid it on the table beside the revolver.
I think you really could have heard a pin drop.
"Open the box, Bruce."
I reached out with two hands, which only trembled slightly, and lifted the lid on the jewelry box, to reveal matched diamond wedding rings. There were two sets, each set consisting of two identical gold bands woven into a kind of Moebius strip topped with diamonds.
I was trying to make sense of it all when she dropped to one knee, holding onto the table with one hand.
"In front of God and your friends, Bruce, I want to ask you to marry me. Will you marry me?"
I couldn't think of a word to say.
"It's a simple question, Bruce. Will you marry me. Be my husband again. Be my life again."
"Tiff..."
"You were right and I was wrong, Bruce. I see that now. I'm not holding back. No separate accounts. No pre-nups. No hesitation. I want to be your wife for the rest of my life. I want to go to bed with you and wake up with you. I want to belong to you forever. Every part of me. My ass, my pussy, my breasts, my heart, my body...it's yours. If you'll have me."
I could only stare at her. Was I dreaming at home. I had wanted this for so long. And now that I had it, I couldn't believe it.
"Tiff, are you sure? I know how hard this has got to be, but if we get back together again and I find out you aren't serious....you'll kill me, baby. Or you might as well."
She had gotten back to her feet and picked up the .38 again. Once again I heard people gasping.
"I won't change my mind, Bruce. But, you better not change your mind."
She held the .38 with the snub nose pointing to the ceiling.
"I know that I'm screwed up, Bruce. I've always known it. And I've seen how what Dad did screwed up mom's life. She's the way she is -- because of him. But, after I said goodbye to you the other morning I decided I wasn't going to let him ruin the rest of my life. I love you and I want you in my life. I'm taking a chance on you being different from dad.
"But-" she said looking at me without a hint of a smile, "I am not being completely naïve. If I ever -- I mean ever -- catch you screwing around on me, I am going to take this .38 and blow your balls off. It probably won't kill you, but your screwing days will be over."
She put the .38 back in her handbag.
"That's the deal, Bruce. If you haven't been lying to me for two years, and you do still love me, this is what you wanted. I've done all I can do. Now the ball is in your court."
She left the diamond rings on the table in front of me.
"I'll leave you to party with your friends. Think about it, Bruce, and make up your mind."
She turned and started walking out of the private room.
Candy swatted me on the back of my head.
"Don't be an idiot."
Before Tiffany had reached the entrance to the room I had her by the shoulders. She was crying.
"You know this has nothing to do with your becoming successful, don't you? I love it. I'll admit that. But I'd have taken you if you were a beach bum and worth 10 cents. I learned my lesson, Bruce. I'm never letting you go again."
I held her and whispered into her ear, "I'm never letting you or the girls go again either. You're stuck with me for the rest of your life."
Then I turned her around and began introducing her to my friends. And, as a very good writer often says, life goes on.

                                                                                        

                                                                             -  The End  -

[Ramesh_Rocky]

Story :- Separate Vacations: Parallel Lives


 

Written by qhml1

Note :- " this is one good alternative version written by qhml1  for original story i read from other site all credit goes  to original author DanielQSteele1[/url] "

[Ramesh_Rocky]

Auther Note:-  If you haven't read this story by DanielQSteele1, read it now. It won't make any sense if you don't. This story is my Moby Dick, the one I've fixated on since I read it the first time. DQS1 is a very talented writer, but he has a habit of making his male protagonists a little too noble, putting up with extraordinarily hurtful things from the women they love. This version, while it doesn't exactly go to the dark side, knocks at the door. I want to thank DQS for his graciousness in letting me use his characters, and Bebop 3 and the rest of my friends for their input.

There are a few characters from his other stories in this version. Bill Maitland from When We Were Married, as well as Lew and Mona Walters from The last Goodbye. And I probably got the timelines wrong but I tried to be as close as possible.
One more thing. This was the catalyst for my August event, Welcome To The New World. I thought of it and Bebob 3 took the idea and ran with it. It's probably more his project than mine, and I thank him.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

I sat there, watching the deer, the unbearable sadness welling up. It was over. I'd tried for ten years, but in the end it hadn't made a bit of difference. She would never be a full partner in any relationship she would ever have, and I was tired of trying. Her telling me how much of a failure I was, how little she respected me, how she may or may not cheat on me while she was off on 'the vacation of a lifetime', was the final nail in the coffin.

Sighing, I got up. She'd started this, expecting me to just roll over. I was pretty sure she was not going to believe what was about to happen.
I didn't have shit for money, she'd made sure of that, but I had a pretty good 401, and I knew I'd be hitting it first thing tomorrow morning. Hopefully there would be enough to get a decent lawyer.
They called from California later that night, and I talked to the girls, hanging up as soon as she took the phone. It took a little willpower to not answer the phone, but all I had to do was remember her little speech when she dropped the vacation news on me.
I went to work the next day, got with corporate, and started the ball rolling. The good news would be I could get 30 grand in just a few days. The bad news was I'd get 30 grand. It was a lot of money to me, but wouldn't buy an afternoon of time with the lawyers her company was tied into, and I was sure she'd come after me with everything they could think of. I'd just have to deal with it.
The next night her mother called and began ranting as soon as I answered. I didn't say a word, just hung up. She called back three more times, getting more abusive. I hung up every time, deciding to record all calls from then on. Thirty minutes later she called back.
"You selfish bastard! Thanks to you, she can't enjoy this trip at all because she's worried. You need to get over yourself, before she hooks up with a real man."
"You mean like that big dicked lawyer? Tell her to go for it. It doesn't matter to me any more."
"I will, he's four times the man you'll ever be, and I'm not even including your pathetic dick!"
"Fuck you, you worn out old whore! Isn't there a married lawyer out there somewhere waiting for his blowjob? I wouldn't want you to get behind schedule. So many dicks, so little time, how do you manage it?"
Her sharp intake of breath let me know I'd scored a hit, and I hung up before she recovered.
Two more days went by, and Tiffany called. After telling me she wasn't going to let me talk to my children, I hung up, and didn't answer the next ten calls that came in rapid succession.
Frustrated, I went out, ending up at a bar called O'Briens, a watering hole that welcomed all. You might rub shoulders with a trucker or construction worker on one side, and a high priced lawyer or a cop on the other. The whole thing was presided over by the retired boxer himself. He was still willing to mix it up if you got out of hand, and carried a ball bat when he needed to. People weren't overly polite, but the regulars knew better than to misbehave.
I ended up sitting with an old friend who happened to be there. The jukebox was on, a preponderance of Cranberries songs playing. It was a little loud, so we were basically shouting. I was telling him about my future plans, and asking if he knew any good divorce attorneys.
The song had just finished, and I was still in loud mode. "I can't afford much, and I know she'll have Martin, Devon, Bailey, and Bartley. They're tied up with her company, and she personally knows most of them. Hell, they'll probably do it for free. I'm screwed, but it won't stop me."
There were several business men in expensive suits sitting behind us, and while I didn't see it, the head of one shot up quickly. In a few seconds I felt a light tap on my shoulder.
"Excuse me, but I couldn't help overhearing part of your conversation. May I have just a few minutes of your time? It may be beneficial for both of us."
I sighed. "Why? Are you a divoce lawyer?"
He grinned and handed me a card. My eyes went wide. This was Lew Walters. I'd read about him in the papers. He was the lawyer millionaires wanted when it came time to end a marriage. He could break prenupts for one client, get the weakest of one upheld for another. He was best noted, though, for trying to find reasonable solutions to unreasonable situations. Many, seeing who they were facing, urged their clients to settle out of court.
I handed him the card back. "I really appreciate the offer, Mr. Walters, but there is no way I could afford your services."
He grinned. "Oh, my rates can be very flexible for the right cause. Please, just a few minutes. After you listen to me, if you want to walk away, I'll accept your decision."
I had little to lose, so I followed him to an empty table. "Before we start, let me tell you a little story. Once, there was an idealistic young lawyer fresh out of college, trying to make a name for himself. He had the misfortune early in his career to run afoul of a very prestigious, very connected law firm. They destroyed him, even though his client was in the right, using underhand and illegal tactics. A year later they did it again. It took years for the lawyer to rebuild his career, and the law firm used every opportunity after he started winning cases to undermine him. He's been wanting a rematch for years, and you just handed him one. The money is not important as revenge. That being said, if there is money involved, I expect to get my fee. If not, I'll do it pro bono and absorb the cost. Interested?"
We talked for about thirty minutes before a man appeared at our table. "I hate to interrupt, but we need to leave. Lew, I've had a few too many, and I need you to drive." It was strange looking into the eyes of a man I'd seen over a dozen times in the papers. It isn't often you meet The Angel Of Death and live to tell about it. He grinned and shook my hand.
"Bill Maitland. It's a pleasure to meet someone who can get Lew excited. It's been a while, since the..." He trailed off, looking embarrassed.
"Bruce Davis, sir. It's an honor to meet you." We made small talk while Lew paid our tab.
He came back, a question in his eyes. "You have my card. Call me tomorrow if you're interested."
I looked at his card after he left. Hell yes I was interested.
..................
Tiffany called the next day, apologizing for her silence and promising me I could talk to my children, if I just talked to her for a few minutes. I learned a little more than I wanted to hear about their activities with good old Uncle Stephen from the kids before she came back on to the line.
"Please, Bruce, you're taking a little argument and blowing it up into World War Three. I'm sorry I hurt your feelings. Separate vacations can be a good thing. It allows spouses to love each other more when they reunite."
I couldn't help it. "I'm sure it does, Tiff, if they're planned ahead. It's another thing entirely when your wife takes off for a month in the company of a man who wants nothing more than to fuck her, with no notice at all, hoping it will teach me a lesson. In all honesty, Tiff, it has. It may not be the lesson you wanted, but it's opened my eyes. You'll never fully be a wife and equal partner. You'll hold on to a separate piece of yourself, fully convinced that sometime down the road I'll let you down. We're getting very near the end of that road. I hope you like the destination."
"Bruce! Please, you're scaring me here. What can I possibly do to make it better, to get you to understand I have no intention of having an affair, and that I still love you?"
"Get your ass on a plane and come home."
There was silence for a long while. "I...I can't do that, Bruce. The kids are having a great time."
I snorted. "So you'll do anything to make it better, as long as it doesn't interfere with your vacation? Why have I never noticed what a fucked up bitch you are? Wait, I think I always knew, I just thought that if I loved you hard enough you'd come around. How's that working for me? Have a good time, Tiff. Have my children call me, if it doesn't cut into their time with Uncle Stephen too much. Oh, and one more thing. Tell that flaming bitch of a mother you have that's she's done a stellar job of scrambling your brains. And tell her, Tiff, whether we stay together of not, that she is never to speak to me again as long as she lives, and that's not negotiable."
I hung up before she could respond, and once again listened to it ring for hours.
I met with Lew the next day, and again the following Monday. He went right to the point. "You got any idea how much your wife is worth?"
"Not exactly, but I suspect quite a bit."
"She's worth four point four million in cash and assets. Surprised? So was I. She's worth that, and she makes you pay the mortgage, along with the rest of your bills? That seems a little skewed to me."
I told him, in great detail, how Tiffany thought. He couldn't keep the amazement off his face. "How could you stand it? My ex was adulterous bitch, but she never disrespected me like that. If she had, the marriage would have been over a lot quicker."
I shrugged my shoulders. "I loved her, and thought I could get her to change."
"So then, you want me to go ahead?"
I just nodded.
"How bad do you want it to be?"
I never really thought about it and shrugged. "I just want it done. I'd like reasonable access to my children and that's about it."
His look said it all. "If that's how you feel, you may as well leave now. I can't do a thing for you, her lawyers will eat you alive and laugh while they're doing it. She obviously hurt you badly. She takes off with your kids for a month long vacation, without you, in the company of people who could care less about the continuation of your marriage, and you just go out with a whimper? She was right, you do need to grow a set."
"What do you suggest?"
"Hurt her back. Give her something to think about, see how she responds. Get her undivided attention, make her focus on something besides herself for a change. You've rolled over so long the thought that you might actually do something about this is completely foreign to her. If you want to go through with the divorce, let her know. Tell you what, I'll have her served with preliminary papers in two days, right in the middle of her fun filled vacation. It won't really mean anything but it will get her attention. See how she reacts. If she blows it off, then we can start the dance. I'll film the whole thing, and keep tabs on her, see what she really is doing while she's away from you."
"I can't afford..."
He waved a hand. "I'll handle it. And if it comes to it, and you do go separate ways, you can afford it. There is no prenupt, so you get half of what she has, plus, your earnings are so disparate I'm sure there will be a couple of years of maintenance. I'm thinking really nice condo here."
Well, if I really wanted to hurt her, that would do it. The thought of having to actually give me part of her money would drive her insane. So I told Lew to go ahead, thinking I could always drop the whole thing when she came to her senses.
.............
I watched it on video later. The man was standing in the lobby of her hotel holding a sign with her name on it. She came down with the kids, her mother, assembled other vacationers, and Mr. Big Dick himself. Seeing the man, she smiled and approached him.
"I'm Tiffany Davis."
He looked at the photo on his phone. "Ma'am, I need to deliver these documents to you, and you have to sign for them. Could I see some ID, please?"
She dug around in her purse and handed him her driver's license. He thanked her, took a picture of it, and handed the thick envelope to her. "Mrs. Davis, you have been served. Have a good day." He started to walk off and stopped, addressing her again. "I was given a hundred extra to deliver a personal message. Bruce said to tell you 'lesson learned'."
Tiffany looked confused for a moment, opened the package, screamed, and let it flutter to the floor. Stephen Middleton picked some of the pages up, read them, and smirked. Her mother openly smiled behind her back. She immediately dialed my number.
"Thanks, you stupid bastard. Now she can find a real man."
"Bitch, don't you ever call me again."
I watched the surprised look on her face. She hit redial eight times before giving up. Tiffany took her own phone out, and her mother tried her best to take it away from her, but she fought her off. I answered on the first ring.
"Bruce, Bruce, what are you doing? You know I love you with all I have."
I actually laughed, surprising her. "Yes, you've given me everything, haven't you? Your love, your respect, your willingness to be an equal partner in our marriage. I do believe you actually love me, as long as I know my place, behind the kids, your mother, your job, and your money. I was never first in your heart, Tiff. If I was, it was a very long time ago. You love me? Come home, let's try to rebuild the wreckage our marriage has turned into."
Her tone changed instantly. "You've always wanted to own me, haven't you? Is this your pathetic cry for attention? I'll come home when this vacation is over, not a minute before. And you better like the taste of crow, because I won't allow you in to the house until you apologize and admit I was right."
"Tell you what, I'll practice my speech, make sure I have it just right. In the meantime, could I talk to our children?"
"AArgh!"
She hung up, thought about it a minute, and hit redial. She tried for an hour before she gave up.
The next day it was my turn to get a package. It contained a ticket, coach, for that afternoon, and a short note. "You win, you asshole. Get your butt on the plane, and we'll talk when you arrive."
I carefully pissed on the ticket, letting it almost dry out but still moist enough the smell would tell you what it was, sealed it in plastic and sent it back. Lew laughed his ass off when he heard, and then said I shouldn't have done it. Then he got quiet. "I had her checked out. She hasn't cheated on you, yet. But some pussy hound lawyer is sniffing around her, and her mother is throwing him at her every time she turns around. The mother and the erstwhile boyfriend have been observed in private talks a dozen times, and it bodes no good."
"Being served has shaken her. She's not really sure how to deal with you developing a backbone. Have you heard from her?"
I handed him my phone, and he transferred all the conversations to his computer. He looked at me, a sad smile on his face. "She really does love you, you know. Her brains have been scrambled for so long by her warped mother she was never prepared for a real relationship. It's why she's stuck. Her mother has ingrained into her that sooner or later you were going to cheat on her, and try to take her money. It's looking more and more like at least part of it is a self fulfilling prophecy. Think about what you'd like to happen, they come back from vacation in ten days and then it's really going to hit the fan. I want you prepared, because it could get very ugly. I urge you to try to get her to keep it civil, for the sake of the children."
He sighed, and I felt a moment of sympathy. His marriage had cratered, his wife carrying on a year long affair with his partner and best friend, but when he found out and filed for divorce she had fought it tooth and nail. It had been dragging along for almost a year with no resolution in sight. Rumor was their inability to conceive had a lot to do with the relationship devolving.
Tiffany called me several more times, allowing me access to the children. They wanted to know why I hadn't taken the ticket, as well as their mother. When I got Tiffany on the phone and she asked, I went off on her, gently as possible.
"Surely your head isn't that far up your ass. I wasn't invited until I started divorce proceedings, and it was more an appeasement move than one of genuine intent. You really think tossing me a bone would make everything better? All you had to do was come home. We could have taken the girls later and had a real family vacation. Alpha Bitch couldn't allow that, now, could she? It would have been considered a weakness to compromise. So stay, play with your lawyers and land developers, their wives and lovers, the pretty, rich, upscale people, and ignore your loser husband. If you had come home we MIGHT have had a chance."
Her temper finally got the best of her. "This is the last time I want to hear about your silly divorce plans! Yes, I did it to teach you a lesson. No, it didn't work out like I planned, not at all. I WILL NOT cut this vacation short. You need to think about how you're going to live up to my standards.
We have a lot of thing to go over when we return. I want you well rested, because I intend to fuck your brains out when we get home. Once we catch up on our loving, maybe we can look at things in a calmer manner."
"Really? The fuck him stupid defense is going to make up for being abandoned for a month so you could romp with the rich and powerful, flirt, maybe have a little fling, try out a really big dick and see if the girls were right? All I can say is enjoy ever minute of what's left with them, because they're none left with me."
"Bruce! I..." I was getting really good at hanging up.
Eight days later I was watching them deplane, looking tanned and tired, laughing and sharing memories. I promised I wouldn't lose it, the need to see my babies was just overpowering, but when I saw her walk out with Stephen Middleton, him holding the hand of my youngest daughter, looking like a loving family, I lost it. Some of the people recognized me, some were going to speak but one look at my face convinced them that would be a really bad idea.
He saw me first, actually flinching and letting go of her hand instantly. He must have said something to Tiff, and she turned with a smile, that disappeared as soon as she saw me. It was the hand of God that kept me from killing him where he stood, in the form of my girls. They swarmed me, hugging and kissing me, babbling about what they'd done and all the fun they had.
I let it go, reveling in the feel of my children in my arms. I finally looked up, to see Tiff smiling through tears. I stood, and she threw herself at me, trying desperately to hug and kiss me. I saw the confused look in her eyes whe I didn't return the hug and evaded the kiss, gently pushing her away.
"I'm so glad you came! I've missed you so much. You have no idea, but I intend to show you repeatedly tonight and for the rest of the weekend, the rest of our lives. Are you going to drive us home? Let me get our bags, and tell Step...uh, everyone goodbye."
"Take all the time you need. I'm not driving you home. I don't live there anymore, it would just complicate the divorce. I just wanted to see my daughters."

[Ramesh_Rocky]

Fresh tears erupted. "NO! I..."

I shut her off. "For once in your life, Tiffany, it isn't about what you want. I'll be by tomorrow, to pick up the girls, unless you deny me. That would not be a good idea."
Her mother was standing to the side with the girls, and could see from Tiffnay's expression it was not going well. She started towards us, and I warned her.
"Unless you want a very ugly, very public scene in front of your bosses and coworkers, I suggest you stop your mother. If the bitch says one word to me, I'll go off like a Roman Candle."
To her credit, Tiffnay stepped around me and stopped her. "MOM! This is between Bruce and I, so please, not a word."
It looked like the top of her head was going to blow off, but she stopped. When Tiffany turned I couldn't help it, and stuck my tongue out at her. The girls caught it and giggled. She went so red I thought she might just stroke out, but unfortunately, she didn't.
The girls were tremendously disappointed, not understanding, but cheered up when I told them I'd be by to pick them up tomorrow at eight, staring at Tiff, almost daring her to say something. She just nodded, and I turned and left.
Just before I went out of sight, I turned. Tiffany was in Stephen's arms, sobbing hysterically while her mother was rubbing her back. Guess she was still breaking in the new man.
...
It was more than a little awkward the next morning. The girls came running out, eager to spend time with me. Tiffany appeared at the door, a wistful look in her eye, as she watched the girls climb into the car. I took them to the park, then we got some food to go and drove to my apartment. It was a fairly nice apartment, but I only took it for six months. Lew said I'd be able to afford better, very soon. After we ate, I gently explained their mother and I were getting divorced.
My oldest sort of understood divorce because many of her friends were from broken homes, but my youngest didn't take it very well. I dried her tears and reassured her as best I could that I still loved both of them more than life, and I would always be a part of their lives.
Tiffany started towards me but I pulled away. I avoided her the rest of the weekend but she surprised me at work Monday night, sliding out of a car I didn't recognize. I knew it was coming, but it still hurt. She was dressed simply, in jeans and a top, but designed to entice. There was even a bit of tummy showing, and for her age, she carried the look well.
"Bruce, Bruce, honey please, come home. I hurt you, I know that now. It was probably not the best decision I ever made, but this can make us stronger. Come home to me and the girls, and let me make it up to you."
"I love you Tiffany. I really do. But you love yourself more. You'll never be a full partner to any man, you'll always hold a part of yourself back, ready to run if you get disappointed. I had most of you for a long time, waiting for you to commit fully. But you never will, not to me, not to anyone after me. I blame your mother. Let me ask you something, Tiff. Your father was a terrible man by all accounts, and your mother is justified in hating him. But we're all not him, baby. None of us. And while she seems to hate all men , it never bothered her to sleep with most of the men at that law firm. What was her official title there, Slut In Residence? Most all of them were married. Did she ever once feel guilty for doing to their wives what your father did to her? She's a very twisted woman, and her influence on you will destroy you if you don't come to your senses."
She didn't respond to the comments about her mother even though her face flushed in anger. "It's about my money, isn't it?"
I sighed. "There you go, Tiff. It's your money, it was never ours. I believe if you could have gotten sole custody of the kids you would have left me out of the loop there too. Does the expression 'two shall become as one' ring any bells? In was in our wedding vows. I don't want all of your money. I just wanted all of you. That will never happen, though, will it? Not with me, not anyone you may fall in love with later, not ever. I can't be what you want, and you can't give me what I need. There's really not much left to say, now is there?
And before you ask how I became so cold, I didn't. I love you more right now than I did when we dated, but my love just isn't enough. But I done shedding tears over what will never happen. Let it go, honey. Let us go. Go find someone like your big dick lawyer, talk to him like an equal while you fuck his brains out. Maybe you'll be happy then."
All the remorse, all the heartbreak, disappeared in a second. I wish I had recorded her rant. "You're exactly the way Mom said you were, aren't you? I loved you, gave you babies, and it still comes down to control and money! Well, fuck you! Just so you know, I never fucked Stephen while we were on vacation, but he sure tried hard enough. Maybe I will hook up with him, God knows it had been so long since I got to interact with a real man it'll all seemed brand new again.
Know this, asshole. I WILL NOT allow a divorce, not now, not ever. I've got the best law firm in the state backing me fully, and you can't afford shit! They'll eat you alive, and when you come begging me to take you back I will, after a while. I'm sure it'll take a month or two to shrink back to normal size after Stephen's monster gets done with me. I'll even try to pretend I'm having orgasms when you fuck me, thinking about his big dick just to get me excited. What do you have to say to that?"
She was glaring and crying at the same time, her arms folded over her small breasts. Breasts I always though was just the right size.
I looked at her for a slow count of ten, trying to not explode. "I guess I have to say you just burned your last bridge. Bring on your high dollar law firm. You just cried 'Havoc!', and I'm going to loose the hounds of war. I hope you remember this night for a long time to come."
I got in my beat up old Volkswagen and left, her mouth hanging open.
I got a couple of visitors over the next few days. The first was her mother. She stormed into the video store in full cry. It was a Friday night, and there were a good many customers about.
"You cheating son of a bitch! You reprehensible, low life motherfucker! Who's the bitch you're fucking? Or is it more than one? Answer me, Goddamnit!"
"Madame, I'm afraid I must ask you to leave the premises. You are disturbing my customers. There are children present, so watch your language."
I said it as calmly as I could, knowing it would piss her off even more. She ranted some more, before targeting a woman in her thirties, who was watching openmouthed. I had already signaled my clerk to call the cops, and they came through the door just as she lit into her.
"Is this the bitch? Well, honey, the mother of his WIFE is about to kick you whoring ass for fucking up her marriage. He won't want you when I'm done, hell, you won't want you when I'm done."
The woman, in full panic, ran down an aisle, with Mom in hot pursuit, screaming profanities. The customer turned a corner, and ducked behind the security officer officers, who had their tasers drawn. Marge tried to stop, but her heels let her down and she ran head on into the woman cop and they went down in a tangle. The large male cop had her in cuffs almost instantly, and they stepped back as she ranted and raged, screaming slurs at the Hispanic woman and the Black male.
The woman leaned over and said something in her ear, and she shut up instantly. She was a customer, and I asked her later what she'd said. She just grinned and said she asked her politely to behave. In the end, Marge was charged with attempted assault, assault on a law enforcement official, and trespassing, because she refused to leave. I got a bonus when I showed Lew the security tape and he had a restraining order invoked. She could not come within five hundred feet of me, my apartment, or my place of employment.
Three days later I was called to the front, to meet with a silver haired, distinguished looking man in an expensive suit. "Let me guess, Martin, Devon, Bailey, and Bartley, right?"
He looked a little uncomfortable and admitted he was, introducing hinself. I gave him no time to speak. "Go back to the office, Mr. Henry. Do not bother me here again or I'll get a restraining order against the whole firm."
He held his hands up. "Please, Mr. Davis. I'm not here to harass you. I'm here as a favor to your wife, to see if I can get you two together to hash out your problems."
"Oddly, Mr. Henry, my problems have diminished considerably since Tiff and I separated. Tell her to just let the divorce run it's course. I'm not asking for anything, but if she keeps up the pressure, I may reconsider. Tell her that if she loves her money as much as I think she does, to back off and let the divorce go through."
"But I understand up until the vacation you both were quite happy. Why would a simple vacation cause such a drastic shift? She understands she made an error in judgement, one she regrets deeply, but she is more than willing to talk it out."
"Tell me, Mr. Henry, were you on that vacation?"
"I was."
"With your wife?"
"Yes."
How many others had their spouses or significant others along?"
"I couldn't tell you exactly, most of them."
"Did Tiffany happen to mention why I wasn't along?"
"Yes, she said you couldn't get that much time off from your job."
"Well, Mr. Henry, she would have been wrong, if she hadn't waited until four days before she was supposed to leave to tell me. Even then, she said I would have to pay my own way if I wanted to come a long. She makes considerably more than I do, and part of our financial agreement was she would pay for all vacations. She said she was trying to teach me a lesson. Did you happen to hear the personal message I sent her when she was served? I know you were close, I have it on film. I make no threats here, but she was under constant surveillance after the first week. Though she was there as a private citizen, the trip was at least partially funded by your companies. Some of the things we filmed would be of great interest to some of the spouses that couldn't make the trip. I also saw how she acted with Mr. Middleton, in public, in the presence of most of the partners, while they all smiled. Free advice, watch him, before he lands your firm in a world of shit. If this gets ugly, I'll make sure most of the footage comes to light. Now, sir, go back to your firm, and tell them what I said. Tell her what I said. You have a good day, sir."
The man was reeling when he left, I could tell. I was guessing ninety per cent of what I told him was new information. I'd had enough, and called Lew. "Do it. Total destruction." I hung up before he could reply.
......................
Tiffany Davis sat at the conference table, her mother on one side, Stephen on the other, listening to Matt relate the gist of the meeting to her. Two of the senior partners were there, just listening.
She gasped when she heard she'd been under surveillance for three weeks, thinking about a few specific instances when her actions would not have passed as married behavior. She hadn't actually had sex with Stephen, but it had been a close thing several times, just managing to stop when she realized what she was doing. She understood now she had done those things out of shock and anger over the way Bruce was behaving, but she still did them. Her plan did not go anywhere near what she'd had in mind. She was still reeling over the fact that he truly wanted a divorce.
"And that's about it. Something here is just not adding up, Tiffany. Your husband has no resources above the 401 loan he'd taken out, and that kind of money isn't a fourth what three weeks worth of constant observation would have cost. So far, he hasn't even filed paperwork, the ones you were presented with on the island were separation papers and not signed, so we are still in the dark as to who represents him or what he really wants.
So far, he's not been demanding. He has to know you're worth millions, and there is no prenuptial. If he has the footage he says he has, if it gets ugly, it could cost you a bundle. I frankly don't know what to advise you to do. If you don't want the divorce, you need to figure a way to get to him without antagonizing him. If it can't be avoided, you need to act quickly to protect your assets."
Marge couldn't contain herself any longer. "Dump the loser, honey! He served his purpose an gave you two beautiful babies, now is the time to cut your losses and save your money."
"Bruce doesn't care about money, Mom. It was never really about that. I forced him into this position, and now I don't know how to fix it. He told me before I left that if I went he wouldn't be there when I got back, and I went anyway. I never once thought he would leave me for real."
No one really knew what to say at that point. Matt Henry secretly thought that success had made her arrogant, and her husband was the quiet, nonaggressive type who'd waited too long to make a stand. Plus, she had gotten very, very bad advice from her mother. He personally loathed Marge. She had made a run at him early in his tenure at the firm, and he'd turned her down flat. Nothing about the middle aged shrew appealed to him. He could see the vestiges of her beauty still, but attitude and lifestyle had sharpened her features into something less, human, for lack of a better word.
They were interrupted when a paralegal came bursting into the meeting, handing the senior partner a sheaf of papers, whispering to him urgently. The man actually started, before grinning.
"Well, well. Now we know who's representing him. Lew Walters. We've been up against him twice, and destroyed him both times. This won't be as hard as we thought."
One of the other partners, Wilson Wilkes, their resident expert in family law, had been listening quietly until now, sat up straight. "That well may be, Mort. But that was a long time ago, when he was first out of law college. I've seen him in action a few times. He's quick, deadly on cross, and he's a lot like us. He'll stop at nothing to win. Let's try negotiation first."
Matt had been reading the papers quietly, looking more distressed as he progressed. "This could be bad. Really bad. All your husband wants is out of the marriage, Tiffany, and ready access to his children, plus Lew's fee. That could easily be north of a hundred grand, depending on how hard you make him work. Fight him, and he won't hold back. He'll ask for half your assets and maintenance so he can, and I quote, 'live in the style he's become accustomed to.' That's about two point two million, and maintenance could run as high as six or eight grand a month, depending."
Marge screamed, and Tiffany fainted.
................
Lew called me a couple of weeks later. "They want a conference."
I was not in the mood. "Tell them no."
Lew sighed. "You should take a meeting, Bruce. Get it all out in the open, tell her once and for all there is no going back. Maybe Matt can talk some sense in her. It's either that, or drag it through the court. That could take months, believe me, I know."
His divorce was still going on, I think it was almost to the year mark, a record in Florida. His ex, Mona, was a pretty sharp lawyer in her own right, and I know it had been ugly. I met with him one day just after he left court, and he looked haunted. I took a chance, calling his best friend, Bill Maitland. He showed up forty minutes later and we got him into the car, going straight to O'Brien's. O'Brien took one look at us, grabbed a dusty bottle off the shelf, and walked us into a quiet corner.
"Here, me boyos, you'll be needing this." Fifty year old scotch, smooth as silk, with a punch that could knock a mule down. We killed the bottle. Bill had just finished up a rough divorce, and was still feeling the pain. God, I hoped I wasn't as wrung out as they were when mine was over. Bill raised his glass in salute as we finished the bottle. "To bitter endings, and sweet beginnings." We all raised our glass. I'd never heard a more apt toast. He told me later it was an old Irish saying.
I semi-stumbled up to the bar to pay, and Pat waved me off. "He's a good lad, Mr. Davis, with a fine wife. They worshipped the ground each walked on for years. Then they found out she couldn't conceive, and things went south. Both were in pain, and when he found solace in work, she had an affair with of all people his business partner. It went on for a year before he discovered them. It's been a very difficult time for both. She realised what she was losing, and is fighting tooth and nail to keep him. He's been hurt too bad, and even though he loves her desperately, he'll never take her back."
"What happened to the partner?"
O'Brien grinned. "Oh, they dissolved the partnership, and he went out on his own, continuing in his philandering ways. He finally seduce a girl almost half his age, which REALLY offended someone, and woke up one day with virtually every bone in his body broken. He was in a full body cast for eight months, and as soon as he could walk he left town. I hear he's in Portland, or somewhere else on the West Coast. Good riddance, that."
I looked at Lew as Maitland helped him to his feet, wondering if he was capable of such violence. I had been in martial arts for twenty years, and fought professionally for two, so I knew how destructive a human could be with a little training. Bill and Lew climbed in to the back of an unmarked cop car, and drove away. I turned to find a cab waiting for me, with a message from Maitland. "Thanks for helping my friend. He needed it badly today. If you ever need a favor, give me a call. The cab is paid for, and he'll take you anywhere you want to go."
I went home, took a semi-cold shower to humanize myself, and crashed. I was just about asleep when the phone rang. I answered groggily, and heard nothing. "Hello? Hello?" Then I heard it, ragged breathing with just a hint of a sob. "Tiffany?"
The line immediately went dead. I thought about calling her, but knew she wouldn't answer. It took me a long time to go to sleep.
I called Lew that afternoon. "Set it up."
................
Lew coached me remorselessly. "Let me do the talking. DO NOT let her drag you into a dialogue, and under NO circumstances speak to or answer a question from her lawyer. Do you understand?"
I did.
Our plan went down the tubes as soon as we entered a large conference room, to find it overflowing with lawyers and associates. Lew raised his eyebrow at Matt and he had the decency to blush.
Mort Bailey started the offensive immediately. "Young man, do you know who I am?"
Of course, I knew who he was, but I wanted to yank his chain. "I'm going out on limb, and this is just a guess. A really old lawyer?"
He went deep red and his partners looked strickened, and one paralegal had to turn to hide a grin. Lew looked shocked before he grinned.
"Good observation, Mr. Davis. This...gentleman...is Mort Bailey, one of the founders of this firm."
"Really? I thought they all died years ago. He's got to be what, a hundred now?"
Mr. Bailey was not amused. In his sternest voice, he started speaking. "You can stop being juvenile now, Mr. Davis. You're making me wonder why Tiffany wants to fight so hard to save the marriage. Now you listen to me, and listen well. You will drop this silly proceding. You will return home to your loving family. You will go through counseling for as long as it takes to reslove your differences, and I will expect a heartfelt thank you when we cross paths again. Our firm is willing to defray all expenses for the counseling, as a gesture of good faith."
Lew was openly smiling. "Jesus, Mort, this isn't some kid who took your car joyriding. And your gesture of good faith is just a blatant attempt to cover your ass if this goes to trial. We have pictures, a lot of pictures, taken by cameras with very good resolution. Think your firm's reputation will be intact if we expose the bacchanal your 'company vacation' turned into? I hope you say no to our proposals, I've been waiting nine years to shove something up that pompous ass of yours, and you gave it to me on a silver platter."