Darling Discovered

by Mrs. Darling

  Darling Discovered

  By Mrs. Darling

  Copyright 2016 Mrs. Darling

  Kindle Edition - ASIN: B01D3N5M3U

  Kindle Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of creative non-fiction inspired by real life events. Every effort has been made to recall memories of the happenings as they unfolded to make this memoir as accurate a depiction as possible. In order to maintain anonymity in some instances the locales and identifying characteristics, and details such as physical features, occupations, and specific events have been changed. The characters names are entirely fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  This book is available in print at most online retailers.

  DarlingDiscovered.com

  Dedication

  To every person who has ever had to fight (society, family, a partner, your own self) to live your most authentic life.

  Also to those who are still afraid to do so. I assure you, it is so worth it.

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Chapter One: The End of the Beginning

  Chapter Two: A Handshake

  Chapter Three: Moving On

  Chapter Four: Salt Water Heals

  Chapter Five: Firsts and Gifts

  Chapter Six: On the Road

  Chapter Seven: New Words. Old Fears

  Chapter Eight: Punishment in the Air

  Chapter Nine: Paper Anniversary

  Chapter Ten: What Goes Up Must Come Down

  Chapter Eleven: Sin City

  Chapter Twelve: The Decision Looms

  Chapter Thirteen: Hold On, Pain Ends

  Chapter Fourteen: Trust

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About The Author

  Connect With Mrs. Darling

  Author’s Note

  This is a work of creative non-fiction inspired by real life events, based on a husband and wife fighting daily to be their truest selves. The story is to be prefaced by saying that while the people are real, many events are real, and the evolution of the dynamic and self-discovery is very real, the time line has been adjusted to make for improved readability. Also, in order to maintain anonymity in some instances the locales and identifying characteristics, and details such as physical features, occupations, and specific events have been changed. The characters names are entirely fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Every effort has been made to recall memories of the happenings as they unfolded to make this memoir as accurate a depiction as possible.

  Please, readers, remember to take ample time getting to know your partner before engaging in BDSM. Risk-Aware Consensual Kink (RACK). Learn it; live it.

  One of the kindest things you could ever do for the Mister and his darling wife is to keep our secret sealed safe upon your lips. Now that you will know our tale, you never know when you will brush up against us in the grocery store; at yoga class. If you feel like you recognize us, please, dear reader, keep mum.

  Discretion is key. Anonymity a must.

  Much love from our home to yours.

  Kind Regards,

  Mrs. Darling

  Prologue

  The clock strikes midnight in the home painted the color of seagulls. As the chimes begin to quiet, another noise fills the air around me, setting a chill down my spine. I move quickly to the front, flipping on the light and throwing open the door.

  I see a man who was once somehow familiar but now is more of an enigma. The sight of him standing at the steps of the house this late quickens my pulse; with his dark hair wild and light eyes staring with intensity. Without the pretense of formalities he speaks words that make my heart leap in my throat:

  “Darlin, I am about to do everything I can to destroy you. Tomorrow I want you walking in pain. I would suggest you fight with everything you have. Make no mistake, if I capture you, I will hurt you. You have a ten second lead. Go.”

  Wait. What?

  Where can I run?

  What does he want?

  I’m in my nightgown!

  What if he catches me?

  All of these thoughts sprint through my brain in that single second until I hear him speak again.

  “One.”

  Shit. Go.

  I turn around and slam the front door in his face, locking it tight and sprinting towards the French doors that will lead out to the back side of the sleeping house. I kick off my loose slippers and the cold, wet grass hits my feet.

  Run.

  I hear him. Bursting out from around the side of the house and almost immediately closing the gap (thanks to his heavy black leather biker boots to my bare feet) my eyes begin to tear up. I have no idea what he will do if he catches me so I do my best to avoid it.

  I am pretty successful despite his advantages. I know this yard surrounded by eight foot wooden privacy fence on all sides like the back of my hand. When I moved in recently I began planting flower and vegetable gardens and have spent countless hours in the early morning sun investigating every last inch of the new yard.

  Being chased across the immense lawn, hiding behind trees and trying to sneak away, doing my best to reach the tool shed and hide, my whole body heats up, immune now to the cool and crisp air this Florida fall night has brought.

  My blood is pumping. My heart is racing. The exercise in the middle of the night underneath the starlit sky feels exhilarating.

  I can get away- is what I am thinking when the svelte man grabs the back of my nightgown in his fist and sends me crashing to the ground.

  My ego is more bruised than my tailbone and now this has become a much harder challenge.

  I will not let him take me. So we wrestle.

  I do my very best to slip away, using my slick and now dirty silk nightie to try and maneuver across the ground. I use the force of my legs and try to push him off. He grabs my ankles and uses one hand to pin them both down and the other to grab my wrists. Twigs are scratching my flushed, tingling skin and I realize I am losing.

  Out of animalistic fight or flight instinct I bring my mouth towards his muscular arms I manage to bite his right forearm. Hard. I may have even broken skin but right now all that concerns me is getting away. It catches him off guard.

  The indignation on his face is obvious: nostrils flaring, mouth open in shock from my daring move. He moves on his knees to once again grab me and it’s more callous this time. Painful. Just as he had assured. He shoves me back to the ground, with more force than before, and I hit the back of my head on the cold sod. He takes both hands and all of his weight and unceremoniously flips me over, shoving my mouth and face into the dirt.

  I’m shocked and jumping out of my skin from the turmoil of emotions. The earth smells alive somehow, rich and murky and waiting to devour me too. He puts the entirety of his body down the length of mine pinning me.

  I have the word I can say to stop this engraved on my lips but I don’t want to speak it aloud. Not yet. Not now. This is what my day has been waiting for. This is what my life has been waiting for.

  “Stop, please no please!” I beg, sounding muffled from the grass beneath me.

  Immediately I am prompted to “Shut up. You know begging is pointless. If you
want to stop, you know how.”

  Time stands still for a moment. Only our heaving chests move.

  I realize that he’d never allow the neighbors to hear so I inhale deeply and start to scream. I barely get a peep out before a large hand clamps over my mouth, shutting out the noise, and he pinches my nose shut with his thumb and finger. I am, literally, breathless.

  He whispers hot in my ear without offering me the grace of air in my lungs, “Do I need my knife out, darling?”

  It stops all fight in me better than if he had doused me in ice water. The dominant man puts his knee in my back and reaches down with the other, throwing the bottom of my nightie up.

  He just rips, just tears off my underwear, lifting the bottom half of me up from the sheer force.

  The man lets go of my mouth and I gulp in the night air. He allows me the gift of three full breaths before he uses a hand to pull open my jaw and shove my torn panties into my gaping mouth.

  “Better than the knife, right?” my captor asks, still pinning my body down tight, making me sink into the filth even further. I start to wonder if there are bugs on me and it sends me over the edge. This is where he has brought me to face my personal fears. Tempt my limits. Dare me to live just outside of the comfort zone.

  The tears finally begin to spill over and I hear from behind me, “I asked you a question.”

  I do my very best to nod my head in agreement and hear him laugh a sadistic laugh. Keeping a knee in my back he pulls his leather belt out of the loops and both roughly and expertly wraps up my wrists, freeing himself in the process to proceed in successfully completing his mission.

  I want him inside me so bad I can taste it as much as I can taste the faintest hint of laundry detergent from the destroyed panties in my mouth.

  I am simply an animal caught in a trap. Any other thoughts are admonished. I am his meat, his reward, and I am about to be swallowed whole. Breathing through my nostrils only, my cries from the spanking of his bare hand across my chilled skin are muffled.

  Hard as a rock with the excitement of capturing his prey he penetrates each of my holes with no regard for me. He succeeds as master of the chase.

  Under the shining light of the late night stars, glowing bright but offering no assistance, I am entirely devoured by my husband.

  Chapter One: The End of the Beginning

  2 Years Earlier

  234...235...236...

  5,491...5,492...5,493...

  9,138...9,139...9,140.

  Nine thousand one hundred and forty.

  I am staring at a twenty page packet that arrived via old-fashioned postman. I requested the report from my cellular provider on a whim (bullshit, Chloe, it was out of the inability to shake a feeling deep inside yourself) detailing my husband’s phone records in four columned front and back pages laden in tiny black telephone numbers.

  9,140. The number of text messages going both ways, sent and received over the past three months, between my seemingly so perfect Mr. Leo Donnovan’s phone number and a strange one I don’t recognize.

  The shaking begins in my hands first, feeling like ice, turning the crumpling pages into a crude version of the paper fans I made by the dozens growing up in sunny South Florida. The shake spreads throughout my body and I set the pages onto the floral duvet covering the bed that I am sitting on in our master bedroom.

  Ohmygodweretheyhere? races through my brain faster than I can stop it from coming and I rise off the bed as quickly as my aching body can take me. I look at the bed like it is an accomplice in this tale of terror and walk the few steps through our Atlanta suburb Tudor home to the closest bathroom, where I promptly throw up my late afternoon snack.

  I wash up in the sink and regretfully see myself in the mirror. A pale, average looking woman, face and body more plump than ever, feeling frailer than ever, hair shorter than ever, cut in a shoulder length dirty blonde bob with seven months of darker root growth. Not a stitch of makeup is on my blemished face. My ocean blue eyes even look like a duller version of what they were on my wedding day just a few months ago.

  Newlywed (nearly dead?) and now this. Now with “9,140” burned into my vision.

  I don’t even recognize myself. Who am I? Who have I become? And importantly, maybe even mostly, who am I going to become in the next week or two?

  I splash cold water on my face and brush my teeth and head back out moderately refreshed.

  I grab the phone records and walk disjointedly downstairs, clutching the handrail in a death grip for support (emotional or physical, I am not quite certain) to get my smart phone that is charging on the kitchen counter.

  Looking out the window over the sink I see spring just beginning to blossom. Green is just peeking through the brown, looking new and fresh, ready to give birth to a new year. Ironic. Here I am, perched on the edge of something new as well but I don’t want this new. I feel hopelessly desperate to turn back time and bury my head in the sand.

  I use my thumb to slide the phone awake and check what I have missed. Nothing. No missed calls. No missed text messages.

  With a tremble that is almost painful I look at the pages and punch in the phone number my husband has corresponded with over three thousand times a month. Mental math gets me to an average of a hundred times a day.

  One hundred messages a day for three months straight. I feel vomit rise up in my throat again.

  Ring. Ri-

  Voice mail.

  Her voice gives no name but she sounds smooth and sultry, nothing like my voice that is always a little louder and harsher than most women in any given room.

  I hang up. What message am I supposed to leave? “Hi, I think you are having an affair with my husband, can you please call me back to confirm?” The tears begin and go from zero to sixty instantly.

  I am sobbing, hitching in my breath, doing everything I can in my power to tell myself that I can’t get this upset right now, that it is dangerous. As the sun is sinking down in the kitchen window, neighbors entirely oblivious to my world falling apart just yards away, the loud pipes of Leo Donnovan’s motorcycle are sounding louder with each teardrop that falls.

  What do I say? What will he say?

  Silence rings out around me as I do my best to calm myself, practicing my new breathing techniques, pulling deep in through the nose and slowly releasing out through the mouth. Repeat.

  Mr. Leo T. Donnovan (“Leo” not short for anything fancy, just Leo. Just my Leo. The Mr. to my Mrs.) steps through the door looking like a picture torn from a business magazine: breathtakingly handsome in a trim suit, the tie undone at the end of the work day. Dark, neat goatee that is starting to show glimpses of silver makes him look more stately than old, and his tall, lean build matches his sharp facial features. Though I can’t see them right now, his cool and piercing hazel eyes distinguish him from the typical “suits.”

  Of course I don’t see those eyes.

  His eyes are plastered towards the phone in his right hand, not looking up to see me standing in his peripheral vision just 3 feet away, waiting silently at the sink in the kitchen where I learned his favorite Mexican recipes.

  I sniffle (accidentally? On purpose? Somehow both?) and he whips his head towards me. I watch his face transform from surprise to guilt to concern in the space of a single heartbeat.

  “Chloe, what’s wrong? Is everything ok?” he asks with concern.

  With the unassuming hand of a professional magician he shuts down the smart phone and slides it into his dress slacks. Now you see it, now you don’t, I think, and it makes me laugh out loud. I don’t recognize the flat sound. It’s as foreign to me as my mirrored image was upstairs.

  Leo is looking at me with complete bafflement now.

  “Chloe?”

  I can’t speak even though now is when I am supposed to be doing so. Since I don’t know what to say I simply hand Leo the sheets I brought with me spelling out almost ten thousand accusations of deceit.

  He takes them. And a look of absolute ho
rror crosses over his face.

  When his eyes meet mine we both see the truth reflected back.

  It is in this exact moment I feel liquid running down my thighs. It isn’t a gush or a burst like I had imagined over the past nine months. Just a trickle of steady fluid and try as I might I couldn’t stop it from coming.

  My water just broke.

  Pain. White hot searing pain is all I feel over the next seventy-two hours.

  The pain of childbirth, gripping my midsection in the worst kind of hurt I can ever imagine physically.

  Emotionally? Pain just as equal.

  I am with a man in the labor and delivery room who is now a complete and utter stranger to me. I don’t want him there but I still can’t imagine doing this without him.

  A child is being brought into this world and handed to parents who are broken. 'Cause there is no going back from this. Right? I can’t imagine how. The day my perfect little girl is born is the day my marriage dies.

  I close my eyes and recall my mirrored image and what a stranger I looked like to myself. The feeling intensifies at the hospital. I don’t recognize myself as a woman or wife, I don’t recognize my husband, I don’t recognize our relationship. It is as if somebody flipped a switch and everything that was black is now white.

  Leo and I don’t speak about anything other than bringing our child into the world the entire time at the hospital, neither of us bringing up the giant cheating elephant in the room.

  What good would it do in this moment?

  I wonder, in between contractions, if the pain inside is intensified because of how entirely uncharacteristic this is of the man I call my husband. Whenever I heard stories of marriage problems like this I always listened to it with a haughty notion of, “I guess that’s why I made so sure to find myself such a good man before getting married.”