I had never seen my wife act like this, even during the times of passionate discovery in our early courtship. I hated to resort to the overused term “nymphomaniac,” but at this point I couldn’t think of anything else that would accurately describe the visceral intensity of her physical desire.
Whatever it was that had gone on in that motel room, Felicity was tapped directly into some portion of it. I was actually beginning to wonder if it was she who was in control, or something else. In any event, she was insatiable, and I was just plain exhausted. How she was still even awake, I had no clue.
I tried to reason with her. “Honey, it’s probably Ben.”
“Can’t be,” she whispered. “He’s supposed to call.”
“Yeah, but something tells me that’s him at the door.”
Her reply came in another breathy murmur. “Then he can just go away.”
I forced my arms upward and began levering my body to the side, actually finding myself needing to struggle in order to push her off my torso without hurting her. She wasn’t going to give up easily, and in fact, me resisting only seemed to inflame her libidinous mood further.
“Aye, where do you think you’re going?” she giggled as she pushed herself into a half sitting position, still straddling me. Then she proceeded to wrestle my arms back into place as she wriggled forward and dropped her knees across my elbows before beginning to slowly rock her hips.
“To get the door,” I told her flatly. “Let me up.”
“Aye, how about if we just borrow his handcuffs and send him on his way, then?” she murmured.
I was beginning to get concerned. I managed to pull my arms free after a healthy struggle and then tried to shift her off my chest. She immediately took hold of my wrists again, trying to force my arms back down, but I twisted my hands from her grasp and quickly took hold of hers.
“Oh, but I’m not finished with you yet,” she purred, then without warning she dug her fingernails into the backs of my hands and drew them across my flesh.
I yelped then called her name with more than a hint of sharpness. “Ouch! What the?! Felicity!”
“Hmmmmm?” she murmured as she continued to rock, seeming not only pleased with, but also intensely aroused by, what she had just done to me.
“Honey, get a grip here,” I told her, tightening my hold on her wrists.
The look she gave me was almost a glare as she snapped, “Aye, I knew I should have just tied you up like I wanted to do in the first place.”
“You wanted to what?” I asked.
“Make you my love slave,” she purred mischievously.
I simply didn’t have an immediate answer for that. I stared up at her for a moment before I finally forced my shoulder back then quickly forward, rolling with her and using the momentum to break free as I slid from the side of the bed.
“Honey, you need to ground and center, right now,” I told her.
“I’m grounded,” she replied. “Come back here and I’ll show you.”
“No you aren’t,” I said as I started quickly slipping into my clothes. “I don’t think you’re even you right now.”
She rolled to her side and grabbed the belt of my jeans as I pulled them on, engaging me in a tug of war with my own clothes. I stumbled back out of her reach, and she giggled again.
“Come back here, little man,” she ordered. “You need to kneel down and worship me.”
Now, I was really starting to worry. She was definitely channeling something, and while it may have started out as a neutral force, it was starting to become something that was not so benign.
“Stop it! Felicity, you need to ground. Whatever has got hold of you needs to go. Now.”
She ignored me, asking instead, “Where do you think you’re going?”
As she spoke, she took a quick swipe at me again, but I was already far enough away to easily sidestep the grab.
“I’m going to answer the door. If it’s Ben then it’s probably important,” I told her. “You know that.”
She rolled back and tossed her head against the pillow then let out a disappointed sigh before pouting at me and saying, “You’re no fun.”
I stopped in the middle of pulling a fresh t-shirt over my head and stared back at her. After a wordless moment, I proceeded to push my head through the neck hole in a quick motion and pulled the shirt on then regarded her seriously. I held out my hand and showed her the bright scratches where she had dug her nails into it.
“Okay,” I said. “While I’m certainly not opposed to spicing things up, this is a bit far, and I think you would have to agree. If you were yourself right now, that is.”
I watched her face as she looked at the deep marks she had gouged into the back of my hand. At first I feared that I might only be enticing her, but there was definitely a flicker of realization in her eyes, so I continued.“Look, we both know something ethereal is driving this, and…”
I looked up with a start as the sound of a fist pounding heavily against our front door set the dogs off once again. The raucous clamor served as a fresh reminder that I needed to get out there and answer it.
I looked back to my wife and appended my prematurely truncated sentence. “…The problem is that I just didn’t realize how far it had gotten into you, or I would have stopped this a lot sooner. Anyway, look, I need to go get the door. You stay in here and ground yourself, okay?”
The flicker had grown into a full-fledged glimmer, and she gave me a quick nod, which went a long way toward allaying my earlier fears.
“I’ll be back to check on you in a minute,” I told her as I started out of the bedroom then stopped and looked back, adding as an afterthought, “You might want to consider putting some clothes on.”
I pulled the door shut behind me then headed up the hallway and out into the living room. I stumbled around the dogs, commanding them to sit as I put my eye to the peephole on the front door. As I suspected, I caught the back of Ben’s head as he was starting down the stairs with a cell phone up to his ear. I shushed the dogs again then twisted the deadbolt and pulled the door open just as the phone began to ring.
My friend stopped and turned at the sound then thumbed off the cell phone and stuffed it back into his pocket. As he did so the ringing phone across the room cut off mid-peal. He started back up the stairs and pulled open the storm door as he gave me the once over. “I was startin’ ta’ get worried. I get ya’ outta bed or somethin’?”
I stepped to the side so he could enter, and as he moved past me, I noticed a manila envelope tucked under his arm.
“Actually, yeah,” I answered, punctuating my words with a nod.
“You sleepin’?” His tone was surprised.
“Not exactly.”
“Oh,” he replied, seizing immediately on the implication. “Sorry ‘bout that, white man. Uh, so you an’ Firehair were… Uh… Um, look, I can run down the street for coffee and maybe…”
“Don’t apologize,” I told him with a shake of my head, cutting him off as I pushed the door shut and motioned for him to have a seat. “You actually did me a favor.”
“Yeah? How’s that?”
I paused then said, “It’s kind of a long story.”
“I don’t wanna hear it, do I?”
“Probably not.”
“Then don’t tell it.”
“I’ll try not to,” I replied. “Besides, I have a feeling you’ve got a story I don’t want to hear either.”
“What makes ya’ say that?”
“You told us earlier this morning you’d be calling this afternoon.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Yeah, so, you didn’t call. You showed up at the door instead. That always means something quite a bit more serious is happening… Or is going to soon enough.”
“I’m that predictable, eh?” he huffed.
“Let’s just say I’ve grown accustomed to the warning signs.”
“Well, speakin’ of signs,” he said, waving the manila envelope in the air. “Got some here I want ya’ ta’ look at. Might wanna get Firehair in here so she can check ‘em out too.”
I glanced down the hallway toward the bedroom then down at the back of my hand. A thin trickle of blood was seeping through my skin from one of the deeper scratches. “Don’t tell me,” I said without turning. “The coroner determined that several of the injuries on Wentworth’s body were consistent with intense sadomasochistic sex play.”