Lincoln looked closely at her. She wasn't usually so forthcoming in saying what she wanted, but on her he didn't mind it.
"Have you given up on our marriage completely?" she asked him, suddenly invoking a panic in him as he didn't know how to answer. It was a perfectly reasonable question, but what did he want? He did not know. And he wouldn't lie.
"Diana, my head is a muddle right now. I am not in the right head space to be able to think clearly about anything."
"Have you completely given up on our marriage, Lincoln? I am not asking where you want me to be in your life - I just want to know if you have already reached that point, where you know you do not want to ever be a part of my life again."
He looked at her again and tried to imagine never seeing her again. He knew he had needed this past month to focus on only one thing, but as he sat in front of her, and considered her not being around at all, he did start to feel a sadness and a sense of panic.
"No. I am screwed up, but no, I haven't reached a point where I don't want you in my life, Diana. Do you want me in your life?"
Diana had already pondered that question earlier, as she had prepared to see him. He had made a huge mistake - if being honest with herself, he actually had made a long run of mistakes back to back recently, and seemed to be getting himself deeper and deeper wrapped up in whatever it was about that girl that had him so captivated.
"You are my husband. I have needed this time away from you, and I do not know how we can move forward from all of this, but I am not ready to give up on us yet. But Lincoln, you need to talk to me. Now. Tonight. Hold nothing back. Show me that courtesy."
With such a speech he was coaxed to start speaking.
~~~~~
"There are aspects of being with her that I found … addictive. During the three years I was visiting her, I came to realise things about me that I did not know about before, and I became … excited … about them."
"Such as?" Diana asked, and saw him gather courage to speak on.
"The first thing was scratching and using her nails on me to create marks. I don't know what it was about, but when I felt marks on me, I … liked it. So I told her to keep doing that to me."
He looked at his wife to see how she was handling this information so far, but she only nodded, not seeming judgemental at all, so he continued.
"After that I think I bought something else - a whip or a riding crop - I can't remember the order."
"You used these things on her?" she asked but he shook his head.
"No. I needed her to use them on me. To hurt me. Over our time together I gave her many things to use on me … and in me…" he admitted and Diana found a strong dislike for what he was saying, coming on.
"All that time, you were getting that young girl to hurt you, over and over … and then you would come home to me, for what? 'Normal' sex?"
He wanted to be able to deny it, but couldn't.
"I never stopped wanting to have sex with you. With her I don't even know if it was a sexual thing, especially in our last year together. All I know is that I wanted that pain - I want that pain. And she can give it to me."
They sat silent for a long time.
"Say something, Diana," he begged her, hating to feel the hurt he was delivering to her.
"I … don't know what to say. I had always suspected you were having an affair, Lincoln. I haven't been oblivious to your patterns of going out on those nights, week after week…"
"Why didn't you ever say anything to me? Why didn't you ask?"
He saw her face change, taking on a look of extreme weariness all of a sudden.
"Because you are you. I married you with full understanding of the way you attract people, Lincoln. I always expected that as your wife I would probably have to share you with other people…"
"Diana, I never have seen anyone other than her. Never. Not during our marriage. Not even when we were dating. I was always faithful to you…"
"Until three years ago."
He nodded at her in acknowledgement.
"Yes, until three years ago."
After a long silence as their meals were presented to them, she spoke once more.
"But Lincoln, she has now gone…"
"She will come back," he said automatically, for a moment having let his guard down and spoken naturally without any regard for the way he had wished to control the conversation and not hurt her.
"Why did she leave, Lincoln, if the two of you were so happy?" she asked and saw a disappointed look on his face.
"I don't know. I have to find her and ask her, so that I do know."
At that point Diana Kokiri saw how much her husband had been affected by the young woman - and not in a good way. This was not what she had assumed it was - it was not an affair between two people who had fallen in love. This ran deeper, further into these desires he had spoken of - his obsession with having someone hurt him.
"Are you still looking for her?" she asked, disbelieving he could be so stupid, after all the bad decisions he had already made.
"I have now found out where she is … when the time is right, I will go and approach her, and I know she will want to be with me again."
Diana looked at him, now feeling quite sorry for him. He truly believes she wants to be with him, she thought to herself. He cannot comprehend that she may have left because of him. To get away from him.
She sat quiet now, feeling like she had heard quite enough to determine how things had been in the 'relationship' between her husband and that girl. It was not any great two-way love affair, as she had always imagined it was. To her it seemed to be more of a one-sided obsession … and an obsession that was not necessarily welcome by the girl in question.
They ate in silence but Lincoln kept looking at her. He could see that she was processing what he had told her. He would rather have not told her, but he found that it actually felt good to be talking about everything so openly to her. He remembered the day he had gone to the police, and his brief thought then that Diana would be the perfect person to talk to about everything, if only he could do it without hurting her so much. But looking at her right now, he understood her saying that she had always expected him to be with other women, so she was not so shocked by his revelations after all.
The longer they sat like that, each in their own thoughts, the more he started to look at her more as his wife once again. It had been more than a month since he had been sexual in any way - he had not even indulged in self-pleasure by himself since Diana and Lexi had both stepped out of his life.
Diana caught his look and accurately perceived it. He had always been fairly sexual, she knew, with a high sex drive. She studied him, purposely not making any suggestion herself.
Eventually he spoke.
"I don't want to deceive you anymore, Diana. I don't know where my head is, or where I am at. Right now I cannot promise you a happy ever after. I cannot promise you anything. But I would like your company … tonight."
He left his speech at that. There was no romantic wording or grand gesture to try and get her to want to be with him sexually. He had put it to her plain and simple - he wanted to have her body this one night. Nothing more than that. It was there for the taking, laid out in front of her. And she could take it or leave it.
"Alright," she said and he let out a sigh of relief. "One night."
He nodded at her, and she saw a hunger start to grow in his eyes.
"One night."
~~~~~
They made their way back to the apartment, and once there he led her directly into the bedroom. She was curious to see how things would play out, given that usually they had sex when they just both happened to be in bed at the same time and it was a matter of reaching out one's arms to the other. It had been a very long time since they had actually made love, from outside of the bed.
They didn't say anything more to one another - all words seemed to have already been spoken for the time being. Instead he stood with her, put his arms around
her and kissed her - passionately. Diana had not been kissed like that literally for years. It felt foreign to her, but she let herself indulge in it, curious about what her husband had been sharing with someone else all this time.
He pulled away from her and directed her to turn around, and Diana felt his hand lightly push her hair out of the way as he kissed her neck, an area that she did not remember having been explored before … ever. As he kissed her there he unzipped her dress and let it fall to the floor. She was a long time fitness lover and did not need to wear a bra, given her petite breast size, so was now only wearing panties.
Lincoln indulged in kissing her. Never before had his wife been this receptive to these simple attentions, and he had given up trying to truly please her years ago. From standing behind her, he reached around her body and let one hand caress a nipple, while the other he slipped downward and into her remaining underwear. As always, she was dry. He would change that. Tonight he would not just accept that. Tonight he would get her aroused, and then he would slip inside her and feel her moisture enclose him as he did.
Diana let him touch her. She was not used to it - to her it was a foreign feeling that she had never warmed to - but she allowed it. He was still kissing her neck as his hands were wandering, and she closed her eyes and concentrated on the feelings beginning to flow through her.
She felt him stop his attentions and push down her underwear, leaving her naked. He didn't turn her around yet, instead taking a moment to leave her like that, and she sensed that he was removing all of his own clothing. When he had finished, he turned her to face him, and she looked at him in wonder that she had forgotten how toned he kept his body. He held her tight, both of them naked, and started to kiss her passionately again, eventually feeling her arms come around him and hold him also.
After a long while he let his finger fall down once more, and on first touch could feel - for the first time that he could remember - at least a slight amount of wetness. The realization drove him on, and he nudged her back onto the bed and guided her to move up so she could lie down fully.
Diana watched him, unaware of what was happening. When he moved between her legs she prepared for their usual routine - him slide into her, orgasm and then slide out, turn over and go to sleep.
But this time he did not do that. She realized too late that he was bending his head down, and knowing that she had always pushed him away so he could not kiss her there, he clamped his arms and hands down on her thighs to keep her still, before moving his tongue onto her. She had always stopped him but tonight she would let him do it. That was what went through his mind … and hers. She had never felt comfortable about oral sex, but she wanted to. So she lay back and let him do it. And after a while she relaxed. After a while longer she started to feel the pleasure in it. And after longer still, she had the first orgasm she had experienced literally in decades.
Lincoln was in heaven when she climaxed against his tongue. He should have persisted in their earlier years about this. But he still could not come to terms with forcing a woman to do something she did not want to do. That was what he told himself, anyway.
He raised his head and moved his body up to kiss her. The thought initially sickened Diana - she didn't want to taste herself - but she forced herself to forget her fears and let him do it, and once he was kissing her so passionately again, she forgot about it altogether.
Lincoln enjoyed the taste of her lips and kept kissing her as he slid inside of her. Even though they were in their usual position - her on the bottom, him on top - it felt different because they were kissing, and the lights were on, and they were coming at it from a different place than they usually did.
Diana felt the difference too. Even him entering her felt different, she supposed because of the orgasm she'd had. And again she let herself go with the feelings she was experiencing, finding that she was relishing being in this bed with her husband once again. Feeling like she could look past his indiscretion and they could start over again, with things like this different.
Lincoln was thinking no such thoughts. His focus was solely on how it felt to be having sex again. It had been so long since he'd had release, and it felt like a new experience to be moving inside of his wife, with her being so aroused and wet for him. He followed the signals of his body, increasing in tempo of his thrusts as he needed to, and finally reached that place - that blissful place - as he went over the edge, collapsing heavily onto her.
When he looked at her he immediately felt overwhelmed. This was Diana - his wife. And he had just made her orgasm. And she had been wet when he had entered her. It was different - and he could see on her face that she thought so too. He pulled out of her but continued to lie on her and kiss her, until he felt the room cool down.
Gently he guided her to get under the covers, as he did the same, and pulled her close to him. They generally never cuddled anymore. It wasn't something they had done for many years. But tonight neither pulled away from it.
"Will you stay?" he asked her and she responded in barely a whisper.
"Yes."
~~~~~
The next morning Diana woke up, not certain what she would find with her husband, or how he would react to her. When she turned her head, she saw he was no longer in their bed. She got out, put on her dress once more, and after using the bathroom, walked out to the living room to find him.
But he was not there. He was gone. Looking at the clock she saw it was only 9am, so he had left early without even saying a good morning to her. She did not know how she should feel about that. But in her heart she knew it wasn't acceptable to her, for him to shrug her off quite so easily. It might have only been one night, but walking out without any kind of greeting was beyond belief to her. It spoke volumes about how little he regarded her now.
She did not want to wait around any longer. Instead she made herself presentable, and took a few minutes to look through all the storage areas in the apartment one more time - cupboards, drawers, wardrobes - to make absolutely certain that nothing of hers was left behind before she walked out of there for the very last time.
The previous day she had grabbed her things from obvious places, much like a snatch and grab, in an effort to get in there and out of there as quickly as possible. This time she explored everywhere, and when she opened his drawers, one by one, she saw things she had not seen before.
In the first drawer of this stack of long drawers, she saw the whip. She tentatively put her hand onto it and felt the rawness of the leather. It was an earthy feel that she realized she never felt these days. She considered taking the whip out, but resisted the temptation, now interested in seeing what else he had in the drawers that she had never ventured to go near before.
The second drawer held a chain - heavy and thick. She did not want to think about what he needed that for. It wasn't some thin, weak chain - it was an industrial strength chain that had weight behind it. She closed the drawer and continued her exploration.
In the next drawer down she found the riding crop. This she did pull out, looking at it with curiosity. Another level of inquisitiveness made her slap the end of it down onto her hand. But she didn't like that feeling, and it caused in her a small amount of distress that these things had all been here last night, and he could have used any of them on her. Or made her use them on him. These were the tools he had talked about during their dinner - the things he had made that girl use on him. But why? Where did that desire come from? She had never even known he had that side to him - and she had known him for twenty years. That sad thought flowed through her mind - had she ever really known him?
Having seen enough she closed the drawers and made sure that everything was as it should be, in preparation for letting herself out. She took the apartment key off her key ring and put it on the side table in the entranceway, on top of the note she had left the day before, which remained unmoved.
The night had been better than she had been imagining her first meeting with him would be, but this was n
ot where she wanted to be anymore. This was not how she wanted to live her life. She wanted much more from a husband than he could give her. It was time for her to move on too.
Before she walked out she remembered she had not checked the drawer of the side table yesterday, when she had removed her belongings. She opened it now and her sight was captivated by a piece of paper on top of the varied items in the drawer. She pulled it out and looked closely at it.
There was a date on it - yesterday's date. And in Lincoln's handwriting was the name of a town, and a name of a supermarket. Below those two items, was one more thing written - 'Lexi'.
Diana breathed out heavily in the realization. He had told her last night during dinner that he had finally located her - that girl - and now wanted to speak to her. This was where he would go to see her.
But not before Diana spoke to her herself.
Later that day she made her travel plans and headed off to another small town, where she walked into the supermarket, and immediately saw the girl she was looking for. Except, seeing her now, in person, Diana noticed that she was no longer a girl. And she no longer looked so alive and fresh as she had in that photo that had been broadcast for all to see. She almost seemed to have undergone the same level of stress that Lincoln had … a stress that had contributed to a slight increase in ageing.
Diana approached the checkout, said what she wanted to say to the young girl she had shared her husband with for three years, and then walked out. She did not harbor any resentment toward the girl. And if Lexi had helped Lincoln with things that Diana knew she would not have been able to do, she should not be condemned. She should, if anything, be thanked.
~~~~~
After the evening and night with his wife, Lincoln resumed work the next morning feeling refreshed and more alert than he had in over a month. He pondered the knowledge again that he now knew where Lexi was. But he would hold onto that information. He would wait at least another month - maybe even two. She might come back to him in that time by herself, and then he would hold all the power, as she asked to come back into his life.
Darkness of Heart (Painful Deliverance Book 2) Page 6