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Message-ID: <42995asstr$1055999405@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: Jack C Lipton <jcl@penrij.uucp.jtan.com>
Subject: {ASSM} Ecstatic Cling [12/12] Helen (rom MF oral slow hyp mc reluc)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 01:10:05 -0400
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Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories
Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d

Author: Jack C Lipton <cupasoup@softhome.net>
Title: Ecstatic Cling: Helen
Part: 12/12
Universe: Ecstatic Cling
Summary: Marital Issues get resolved the "hard" way
Keywords: rom MF oral slow hyp mc reluc
Revision: $Revision: 1.14 $
Archive: http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/CupaSoup/www/
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RCS: $Id: cling12.x,v 1.14 2003/06/15 13:55:53 jcl Exp $


		      Ecstatic Cling
		    Night 12:   Helen

		     by Jack C Lipton

We stopped kissing soon enough.  Too soon in some ways, not
soon enough in others.

I was once again chained to the woman I had loved and
married but I hardly felt like the same man, and, to me now,
she was hardly the same woman.

She still had an appreciable fraction of my heart, which did
seem odd considering the activities of the last 11 nights.
I'd had more sexual contact than I ever dreamt possible and
feared that I had evolved too far to be able to accept her.
At the same time, though, I didn't think I'd evolved far
enough, either.  It was harder to face the idea that she
must have evolved at least as much as I had in the
intervening time, so...

I suddenly realized that we were each facing the same real
question:  did we really want the other back?

Another problem was that the eleven previous partners didn't
have any history with me.  While there were no memories full
of pleasure, it seemed that painful memories are easier to
recall.  Unlike the last eleven women, this one woman had a
history with me.

And it hadn't been pain free, either.  A paucity of pleasant
memories did not help to defray the painful.

I'd never wanted to lose her but I realized that I could now
cope with such a loss better, for I knew I could start over
if I needed to.

I also knew that I didn't *want* to start over.  I did want
her back.  I still felt love for her.  But did she still
want me?  Did she still love me?

Even now, standing facing her, memories came tumbling in,
the good times and the bad.  The not so good times and the
awful times.  Her looking down on me and my own withdrawal
from her.  My sense that she'd wanted to dominate me warring
with my desire for her approval.

In adjacent moments my image of her jumped back and forth
between being my lover, with a history, and being a complete
stranger, my heart not able to decide between love and loss.
I saw both a reflection of my self and a stranger now as I
watched her eyes, not realizing she felt the same while
watching me.

There was no doubt that Ruth knew this problem.

"All right, all of you, sit down.  No toys.  Just sit back.
We need to get you all re-oriented."

The room had been quiet from us pondering the people we had
arrived with.  The therapist/counselor group was watching 
all of us subjects closely.  Helen and I sat down in a way
that was reassuring:  in perfect counterpoint.  We were
already moving as one.

"Folks, now is the toughest time for all of you.  You are
probably looking at your spouse and not recognizing them."

There were a lot of nods.  I saw Helen nod, as I did.  It
was hard to settle on what she now meant to me;  I was still
quite confused.

"First things first, before you start to re-learn about who
your spouse is, we want a baseline."

We were each handed a piece of paper with a list of names
on it;  my list had all twelve women that I'd slept with
and three blank columns each for "sexual" and "emotional"
fulfillment.  I could see that Helen's had a list of all of
the men in the room and included five extra names (I
recognized her ex-husband's name and the four she'd
mentioned having fooled around with between her divorce and
meeting me).  The pencil felt awkward in my right hand.
This wasn't going to be easy with my left hand chained to
Helen's "write" hand.

"You will need to grade your partners in order of value to
you for emotional as well as sexual satisfaction, one to the
person who did the most for you and working down from there.
Use the leftmost pair of columns.  We'll be doing this again
tomorrow.  You have five minutes."

So it was fairly quick to rank the women sexually, at least,
all based on how how special I felt through their
attentions.  While Helen was not at the bottom of that list,
she didn't make it to the top, either.

Ranking them emotionally was what took the most time, first
in choosing the selection criteria.  I finally chose to rank
based on how close I felt to the person when not engaged in
sexual activity.  Again Helen was not at the bottom of my
lists.  That the two lists did not completely coincide was
not unexpected.

We handed the papers back.  Somehow I wasn't even tempted to
look over Helen's rankings.

"So this next day you'll spend together re-learning who the
other is.  Each of you has been changed by this process.
Your spouse has also changed.  You cannot avoid being
different.  In the next forty-eight hours you will either
re-meld as a married couple, even if you have to adjust your
definitions of the marriage contract, or it will be all over
for you as a couple.  Barring some extremely unlikely
circumstances, none of those you've been with here that you
may think you prefer is likely to be available to you.  So,
your first job is to clean your spouse and re-learn their
body and show them you want to keep them.  Are you all
ready?"

We nodded, again in synchrony.  I helped Helen up and we
headed for the showers.  We got there early enough that we
got first dibs under a sprayer.

Helen was a stranger to me yet ... not.

Yes, we were now in an incredible synchrony of motion as we
washed each other but part of me was recognizing things that
hadn't changed.  I was also noticing the differences from
the woman I had "known" as well.  At the same time she acted
in familiar ways, almost reflexively, she would also act in
now unpredictable ways.

She'd not touched me so tenderly in a long time.  (Well,
I was no less guilty of a lack of tenderness in recent
months...)  The realization that I still loved this woman
and wanted to be the instrument of her happiness came to me
but it was not unalloyed by the pain of emotional abrasions
suffered at her hand.  In all of this confusion I knew I
still loved her and wanted her.

Lost for the moment was thinking about how much pain she had
received from my own behavior.

At the same time, however...  I still wanted to punish her
for what I'd been through, too.  Within me I could still
feel the ghost of Helen "past".  Some scars would take a lot
longer to be smoothed over.  I could work to forgive but
forgetfulness would require even more effort.

Even forgiveness would take effort on my part.

So there we were, washing each other.  Tenderly, putting our
best foot forward, so to speak, unsure of ourselves and
unwilling to over-extend ourselves.  I had my moments of
contentment and my flashes of anger, doing my best to calm
myself when she teased me.

After this whole program, I *still* disliked being teased
by her.  There had been too many events in the past where
she'd teased me and there was no follow-through, where I'd
felt betrayed by my own physical (and emotional!) response.

So I was still quick to anger, even now.  It took work on my
part to suppress it and see what would happen.

That my ability to suppress anger from my facial expression
was impaired at this point was not yet known to me, even
though I got to see flashes of anger now and again in her
face.

It finally came time to check her for soap residue.  Now I
found yet another discrepancy between Helen now and the wife
I'd arrived with: while the taste of her sex was very
familiar to me her moaning and groaning in response to my
attentions was not.  The physical motions she took in
further spreading her legs and touching my head was
completely unprecedented in our relationship, she'd never
done anything to encourage me like that before.  I was
finally learning new things about her in the kinds of
attention she got the most pleasure from.  The greatest
change I witnessed, though, was to hear her orgasmic scream!
This was such a huge change from all I was familiar with, I
suddenly had a feeling of adequacy run through me having
satisfied her sexually.  I pressed my luck and kissed her
with her own juices on my lips and she surprised me with her
aggression;  we were soon devouring each other.

It seemed too soon when she pushed me back; it was my turn.

Given our past I would have expected her to defer the next
phase of turnabout despite her having learned what it was
about...

It's said there's no such thing as a bad blow-job, and, I
must admit, in the last eleven days I learned the truth of
this.  I could rate them on a scale of best to worst, though
"worst blowjob" is pretty oxymoronic.  Instead of worst, I
should use the word "least inspired".  The least inspired
efforts were, in my memory, early on in the rotation, all
due to lack of skill combined with reluctance to provide
such one-sided service.   Skills-- even mine-- had improved.
With my wife between my knees, kneeling in front of me, I
suddenly felt valuable to her as she started, increasing as
she caught my eye, so we looked in each others eyes as she
worked her magic on me.  This was something that I'd only
fleetingly felt before.  Helen's efforts now were being
rewarded by my own vocalizations (how easy for me to forget
that she'd appreciate the same kind of feedback I myself
desired) and finally by my body's surrender to her exercise
of a new-found skill.

And, just to make sure I knew about it, she displayed her
reward for working my body before swallowing.

This was my wife?

This was the woman who told me that I wasn't entitled to
oral sex?  This was the woman who complained that I needed
to act more human and less like an animal?  That seemed to
think that my desire for the pleasure of sex was wrong?

It was a shock to find myself so weak once she finished
draining me.  This whole process had just smoked most of my
knowledge of "who" my wife was.  All of my expectations of
her behavior seemed to be wrong so far.  There were enough
reminders of the "old" Helen that I was very confused, my
feelings mixed.  I'd flip between my new-found adoration of
Helen and the anger from my past with her.  These flashes
of anger were, well, uncomfortable.  I wanted to give her
the benefit of the doubt.

Wanting and acting are not necessarily the same thing;  my
minds will was one thing, my visceral reactions to flashes
of memory seemed to get way ahead of me at times.

So, while we worked on preparing the dining room for dinner,
we talked a bit ...  and Helen was still a mixture of the
old and new.  This new Helen, though, could talk to me about
her sexual desire-- and response-- without blushing or even
flinching, no hesitation in her clear, melodious voice.
Without realizing it at the time, I was able to talk to her
about how *I* was feeling.

So I broke the pattern first.

"Hon, thank you for going down on me.  That was very good of
you and very well done.  Thank you.  I love you..."  I added
a hug and even started a kiss, which she returned.

When we broke off the kiss, she told me, "You did good too,
thank you sweetheart.  I love you too."

I was so used to being cut down by her, being told that I
was wrong to feel a particular way, or "hearing something
incorrectly" that just her willingness to listen to me would
have been unnatural two weeks ago.  That she was willing to
pay attention and discuss our sexuality at all was a far
greater shift.

This was my wife?

So, in some ways, I forgot (for now) a lot of our history
and started treating her like a new partner, the way I had
for Alice, Dawn, Beth and the rest.  I was soon able to
concentrate on both her and our tasks at hand.  The work of
dining room set-up and table settings went quickly and we
had some time to sit.

And then she told me to kiss her.

That sudden sense of wrongness struck me and the anger I'd
thought to be gone re-surfaced.  My face must have hardened
given her reaction, recoiling away from me, to the limit of
the chain.

Then she did something unusual.  She apologized.  "I'm
sorry, Jack, I didn't mean to upset you, what did I do...?"

I had to think for a moment.  What cruel game was she
playing?  How was I to be disapproved of now?  My anger
did not disperse, but a feeling of trepidation must have
been added to the mix as I worried over what she meant.

Then my anger was gone in a flash when she added "Please
tell me..."

Hearing Helen ever say please when addressing me for
anything has been, to put it mildly, unnatural.  For that
moment, though, she ceased to be the wife I had so much
painful history with and was another person altogether.

I answered honestly, "I want to be asked, not told.  Even
for something so trivial.  If you'd merely reached over to
hug me and give me a kiss it would have been even better,
something you were giving *me* rather than something I was
expected to deliver.  I don't know why, but I can't really
explain it better..."

She leaned in, kissed me, stopped for a moment, "I'm sorry"
and leaned in again, and we worked to find the "zone".

So we were still in a blissful state when everyone else
walked in and dinner was being served up before we were
tapped on the shoulders.

Dinner with Helen was nice enough, though we still had our
little flashes of nostalgic stupidity;  I saw flashes of
anger in her face probably as often as she saw them in mine.
We were both now paying enough attention to each other that,
on seeing these flashes, we'd stop, think, discuss the why
and wherefore and then work to correct the offending action
yet still apologize to the other for the irritation.

Admittedly, she had to ask more often about what triggered
such a reaction in me than I did of her, but this was most
likely because sensitivity to me was newer to her.

Despite our focusing on each other, we did watch those
around us and we could see ourselves as no different from
any of the others.  I could tell that June was a lot more
attentive with her husband Mark.  Jeff was getting used to
paying his wife Alice more attention after taking her for
granted for so long.  Carl and Joanie seemed to have a long
way to go, though, he'd not gotten enough sense beat into
him and it looked like Joanie had to work at reminding him
of this.

With all of us reunited with our spouses dinner was a very
different time than it had been in the past.  Here we were
rediscovering the people we were married to.

It's funny, but, despite all that had happened between Helen
and myself, I still loved her.  The pedestal she once stood
on was now rubble, destroyed by my knowledge of my own self,
but I still found her deep in my heart.  Yes, I could start
over, I could reject her (for a change) but I didn't want to
be guilty of rejection.  I didn't want to be guilty of the
kind of behavior that had hurt me so deeply.

Why I didn't worry about what kind of thoughts were running
through Helen's mind is odd since I used to obsess over how
she was judging me.

It is fortunate there were no food-fights between couples
since that would have increased the effort Helen and I put
into cleaning up the dining room.  We had time for a quick
rinse before joining everyone in the Lobby for the evening's
group discussion.

The discussion started off with tapes of couples thanking
each other for the oral attention during "cleansing".  I was
gratified that we weren't the center of attention.

Carl and Joanie, Bill and Peggy and Claude and Beth were,
though.  Carl hadn't thanked his wife for her attention
despite her thanking him for his oral efforts;  he'd only
grunted.  Neither Bill nor Peggy brought up the subject at
all, it seemed they both took it for granted.  Claude,
despite being an insensitive control-freak, had thanked
Beth for her efforts and she'd only shrugged.  On Joanie's
face (and on Claude's) we could see the flash of hurt.

I watched the couples and saw a look of enlightenment strike
Carl first (when their clip was played and he finally paid
enough attention to Joanie's expressions) and then Beth.
Each turned to their spouse and apologized.  Once they each
got forgiven they were smart enough to thank their spouses
or their good work.

Peggy and Bill, though, ended up on the hot seat.

So Ruth put on the pressure first:  "So, Bill, considering
that she's not gone down on you before, why didn't you think
to thank her for doing something so different from before?"

He looked like a cornered animal.  Had I ever looked like
that?  "Well ... she ... doesn't like ... to talk ...  about
sex."  It was like he had a problem expressing himself.

Well, he'd shown himself able to talk about this more freely
before but the ghost of Peggy past was probably still far
too alive in his soul.

Peggy was suddenly struck with sensitivity, a strange sight
to all of us who'd dealt with her, as she turned to her
husband and kissed him.  "I'm sorry hon, and I'm so used to
knowing you'll do good going down on me, I never thought to
thank you for your good work.  I love you.  You did good.
Thank you."

The looks of surprise, bewilderment and finally contentment
on Bill's face felt good to me.  He backed off from the kiss
long enough to, in a steady voice, thank her for loving him
enough to give him such good oral attention.

Peggy and Bill then melted together again, an inspiring
vision.

This, I felt, was my cue.  I grabbed Helen and pulled her
into a clinch.  She didn't resist in the least, which helped
me since that was her past pattern.  This new Helen was far
more accepting of my attention.

We were smart enough to not hunt for "the zone" but that
placed us in the minority.  Of the twelve couples in this
program, only three others pulled out of our kissing
sessions.  It was our job, as Ruth directed us now, to wake
the others.

We watched a tape of George and Belle as they worked through
their housekeeping work and could see the little flashes of
anger and annoyance on each and saw them do as we did:  stop
and analyze what they'd done wrong to the other.

We had a whole discussion about this, and it was mentioned
that Helen and I had done that over dinner.  We nodded but
mentioned Roy and Sandi had been doing it as well.

Ruth finally settled the discussion of who did that by
interrupting us:  "All of you should be sensitive to your
partner.  We've worked to make sure that none of your
spouses can maintain a poker face towards you when they feel
hurt by you.  Some will be bold enough to speak out but that
is not as likely, so you need to pay attention to the facial
expressions of your mate."

I suspected there was additional conditioning to this as
well, since I realized that I'd felt hurt when I saw Helen
hurt by me.  If our empathic responses had been turned up,
that meant that Helen had been getting a lot of those
signals from me as well.

After the meeting we took care of our nightly ablutions and
went to bed.

I wasn't in a very sexy mood that night.  I wasn't feeling
aggressive.  I was more in the mood to cuddle my wife and
fade into sleep, despite my erection.

The plans of mice and men...

Well, I made the mistake by not talking to her about it.
She'd almost made the mistake of just accepting my lack of
interest (since, for the longest time, she'd not wanted to
fool around) but there must have been some kind of extra
work done in conditioning her.  I heard her speak as we
spooned.

"Jack, what's wrong with me?"

I kissed her shoulder.  "No, nothing is wrong with you.
What's the matter?"

"Don't you want to have sex with me?"

Again, I had to think, my alarm klaxon signaling RED ALERT.
The minefield had just been sighted and it was all around
me, I was doomed...

I was in the presence of the "old" Helen.  So I backed off a
bit, before answering, "I didn't want to presume, I didn't
think you'd be eager..."

I got pushed onto my back and my bride was fully impaled on
my member before I could finish the sentence, soaking it in
her slippery furnace.  I've never, never, NEVER felt her
this hot or wet before.

She'd also never been on top of me, always telling me that
it "wasn't right".

Oh, it was right.

Boy, was it right.

I'd enjoyed the female superior position several times in
the last two weeks and now, given Helen's interest, I was
suddenly filled with the hope of enjoying it a lot more in
my future with her.

Despite the distracting effects of our joining I was able to
reach and squeeze her breasts, her nipples at attention,
rubbing and squeezing them helped her first orgasm hit hard.
This causing her to pause, panting, before starting up the
reciprocating action again.  Her second orgasm on top of me
was no less powerful than her first (measured by the
strength of her vaginal spasms) but she rode me through it
as best she could.

Her third climax in this ride was simultaneous for us both
as I joined her in our moaning and screaming.

When she was laying on top of me, both of us seemingly
boneless (my own "bone" not yet deflated), she stopped
panting long enough to moan, "that was *so* good..."

I had to agree.  It was intense, it was wonderful, it was so
unlike the Helen of the past, I had to say something to this
wonderful woman who'd replaced the cold woman who'd been my
wife:  "I love you, sweetheart.  You're so good to me..."

I hate the wakeup call.  I really do.  Especially since I'd
slept under my wife, my morning erection already embedded.

It's a little hard to reach the phone quickly when you're
under a woman who is impaled on your erection, especially
if you are trying not to awaken her immediately or to
otherwise lose the "advantage" of position.

Well, that was a forlorn hope.  She had the flexibility to
reach out and stop the ringing, all without removing my wood
from her body, and then started to ride me again.

This time she was more orgasmic than the night before which,
really, didn't seem possible at first, and her pauses this
time as short as possible.  Despite the discomfort of my
full bladder my own climax was not long in coming, hosing
down her insides with my gift of seminal fluid.

We kissed a bit, took our morning piss, and headed down to
the exercise room.  By the time we got there Helen's thighs
showed that I'd been between them this morning and she was
sharing "thumbs-up" salutes with other women wearing
identical trophies.

The oddness of her pleasure in showing her sexual side (and
apparent approval of _me_) was very unlike the Helen past.
This Helen, so proud of her sexuality, was doing wonders for
my own sense of importance to her.  No longer did it seem to
me that her sexual relationship with me was so awful that it
had to be kept hidden for others, lest they look down on
her.

Despite the history of abrasions we'd both accumulated with
each other, the number of "anger flashes" was minimal during
the exercise period.  (I didn't find that so surprising; we
didn't tend to exercise much together.)  For me, a person
who'd tended to avoid any organized exercise regimen, this
was a rather pleasant way to start a day and I was likely to
try to continue this kind of workout in the future.

Of course exercising nude would not be appreciated at the Y.

Whether I'd enjoy exercising while not chained to Helen
would be a question for the future.

By the time we got to the Luv Seat I could stroke but my own
climax was pretty far off;  stroking into Helen, though, got
me a lot of nice sound effects as she came more than once.

A man could get to like that sound of his love screaming in
ecstacy.

All right, I was addicted to her cries of ecstacy the first
time I heard them.  It was the kind of sound that made me
feel so very good when I heard it from any of the woman I'd
brought off loudly, but the scream seemed to resonate more
deeply within me when I heard *my* Helen screaming as her
vagina clamped down on me.

And I realized, at that moment, that I really still loved
her and wanted her back in my life.  This new dynamic in our
marriage was seductive.

The shower after our exercise reinforced our relationship
when Helen did a very good job shaving my bristled face.

When and where did she learn to work so tenderly?  When did
she become so gently caring of me?

I think it was a good thing that I'd developed some skill at
shaving a woman's mons and labia; Helen's stubble was easily
removed without any errors on my part, too.

When and where did I learn to work so tenderly?  When did I
become so gently caring of her?

Of course, something had to impact our little idyll.  It was
called breakfast.

Breakfast became another opportunity for us to abrade each
other, but at least we were not alone.

And, it seemed, the hypnosis sessions must've been making
each of us far more attentive to our own spouses than we'd
been on arrival;  each time I saw any anger in her eyes I
stopped and asked why.  Each flash of anger I felt was
reflected as anxiety in her eyes as she asked me why I felt
hurt.  Through this, we continued to sort out the little
issues, scars and land-mines from each other.

On reflection, the conditioning must have been pretty deep;
it always felt very good whenever we talked over issues and
reached any kind of solution, whether it was a change for
the actor to make or an acceptance of it on the part of the
audience.

So there was a lot of give and take during breakfast for us,
just as for the others, but...

The discussion period following breakfast was apparently
there to reinforce the conditioning we'd been receiving;
Helen and I seemed to be provoking each other in turn and
the pleasure of completion got more intense during the time
in the lobby.  The driving questions that Ruth went through
were triggering people in reacting.

The pulse of pleasure we felt with each resolution of a
point of conflict had to have been hypnotically impressed on
us; the pleasure reinforced the process.  It was easy to see
Helen responding the same way I did.

I could recognize that it was a programmed response, yes.

But ...

... I was getting to like it.  A lot.

Released from the lobby, we went to work on the three rooms
I was assigned for today.

Now, working with Helen was still fraught with discomfort
here and there, the little habitual acts that we each still
carried, things that none of the others had triggered in me
(and probably hadn't triggered in them) though this last
may have been because they weren't Helen any more than I
their husband.  So getting anything done with Helen was not
a quick job, since we kept running into each others
aversions.

And some of our own habitual responses or even just postures
we able to set each other off.  Some of these issues were so
deep-seated in ourselves that we needed to pay attention to
our own responses to seeing a behavior.

Really, just because I habitually put sheets on a bed a
specific way reminded her of other things I did (or said)
at other times when I was far less sensitive (and far more
angry and resentful) than today.

So it was the little associated cues we were tripping over
now, things where we ourselves associated events with other
stimuli.

On reflection, the number of habitual knee-jerk reactions
that accumulate during a marriage is nightmarish.  It's not
even the event itself, but things *associated* with an
emotional trauma.

It's funny but I think the cuffs were helping, since this
took everything out of our "mainstream" life.  Neither of us
could withdraw in anger or to sulk.  This chain also made it
harder to hide from one's self as reflected by one's
partner.

And there were times when I wanted to hide from her.

There were times I wanted to hide from *me*.

And I don't think Helen was particularly comfortable seeing
how many land-mines *I* was carrying from her own behaviors.

Of course, not being completely innocent myself made it
easier to recognize the need for forgiveness because I
needed it too.

And, no, with all of these little abrasions that DIDN'T get
resolved despite the land-mines we *did* manage to defuse
bringing us pleasure, we weren't even _tempted_ to make
love.  That was something that would have to wait.

Even if my dick was going from at ease to attention every
minute or so.  And back again.

So starting on lunch was something of a relief and again we
managed to work together despite the annoyances our
new-found sensitivities provided as interruptions.  By the
time we'd put everything out neither of us were happy
campers.  We kept hurting each other just by the little
behaviors we'd never thought about or noticed before:  the
position of a hand, a stance while lifting a platter, even
stretching was triggering recall of unpleasant memories.

So we were both hurting puppies through lunch.  Only two of
the other couples seemed any better off than we were, not
an encouraging sign.

Clean-up after lunch was agonizing.  We'd run out of easily
fixed things and now it was the familiar unconscious moves
we each made that was keeping me quite flaccid.  We got the
job done and proceeded to the hypnosis session.

The looks on Ruth and Leon's faces were startling to us as
they watched us enter.

"Are you both all right?  You haven't fought, have you?"

I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak.  I noticed,
from the corner of my eye, that Helen did the same.  We were
sat down and, well, it seems the fog rolled in.

Waking up was a lot more fun than arrival;  the dark cloud
that had been hovering over me seemed to be, for the most
part, dissipated.  I knew it was still there but it seemed
more distant somehow.  The attenuation in the pain
associated with that dark pall over my relationship with
Helen was a relief.

The message we received next was not one best suited for
reassurance;  Ruth told us that we had to not just work out
new behaviors but we also had to forgive each other's past.
Our pain had been the accumulated history of abrasions, the
unreleased resentment caused by the "little hurts" we'd
built up in our relationship.

Until we could forgive each other-- and make sure this
forgiveness was seen, recognized and acknowledged by the
other-- we would feel this pain.

Even under these circumstances, forgiveness is hard.

Very hard.

I'd been living under the shroud of guilt imposed by Helen's
reiterating my past failings whenever we had argued, so I'd
hung onto my own resentment to protect myself;  if she had
truly forgiven me, she would not have reminded me.

And, in retrospect, that was what it was about:  until we
could forgive the other, we could not feel forgiveness
ourselves.

So I spent some time looking into her eyes, as she looked
into mine.  I could see her anger there, her hurt, her past
continuing to live today.

Or was I seeing myself in her reflection?  Was I seeing *my*
anger, my hurt, my past?

And what was she seeing reflected in my own eyes as she
gazed into them?

This wasn't going to be resolved so quickly, for there was
part of me that still clung to that pain as if an old
friend, providing some kind of definition over who I was,
anchoring my identity in this reality.

But ... Who am I, after all?

Am I no more than this bundle of fear, guilt, anger and
resentment?

Could I ever be more than that?

When I'd met Helen she'd not been in the market for someone
serious, so she'd not approached the blind date as anything
more than a lark.  That we'd hit it off so well had spooked
our mutual friends and I sometimes thought that they'd not
had high expectations despite our shared preferences in
clothing (green fatigues).

So who am I *now*?  I felt love and tenderness for Helen all
mixed in with anger over my dependence on her for defining
myself.  Over time, what I'd seen of my reflection from her
eyes had become less and less flattering to me, her actions
(and lack of action) had been undermining everything that
our dating had seemed to get so right.

Who should I be?

Who should she be?

That I was confused should come as no surprise.

And the first tear that ran from my left eye bothered me,
until I saw her own eyes were as wet as mine.  Could she be
asking herself the same questions?

And that's where we'd gotten when we were told to stand up
and get going.

We got.

We worked to clean the lobby as a rather somber couple.
Despite our introspection, we worked together very well and
our comfort levels rose as we got this cleaning task done.

The first step out of a funk or depression is to *choose*
to take that first step.  It doesn't really matter so much
what you *do* as long as it's something productive.  Taking
such a step is a way to turn your back on the past and
choose to make the future.

That we had a job to do was not the part that made much of a
difference, it was *how* we did the job, together, that
helped to work off the encroaching pall of depression.

And that's how it could work:  I would choose to *be*.  I
didn't need to know who I would be at the end of the process
because life makes that a continual evolution, but I'd been
waiting, my soul asleep for so long, awaiting an actual
awakening.  And it had arrived in the last two weeks.

I knew some of the traits I wanted the real "me" to have.
Forgiveness of my own sins against myself was needed before
anything else, then I could work on forgiveness of Helen for
all of the little things that had hurt me during our time
together.

I just hoped she was in tune enough with me to realize the
same was true for herself.

It never occurred to me that we could "put on a show" for
the others;  we were still pretty far apart.  In looking at
her face I could watch the storms within, clouds obscuring
and then a smile like the sun appearing before another cloud
arrived.

It was a quiet, somber almost funereal atmosphere as our
group shuffled in; the counselors were far more cheerful but
even they looked like there was a lot of weight they were
carrying.

Ruth and Leon, though, at this point looked pretty beat.
Obviously this phase is very difficult on all parties in
their efforts to reassemble what had been separated almost
two weeks before.  That we'd all been on the verge of
fissioning anyway before we got here could not be helping
matters.  Inducing fusion in these people back with their
original mates must have been daunting.

And I'm glad I only had to worry about me and Helen.

The papers we filled out a day before were placed in our
hands to update, filling in the next set of columns.

It shames me now to have dropped Helen further down on one
of the lists; even though she'd moved up on the sexual scale
but down on the emotional scale.

If I'd thought about it I would have been curious about how
Helen would have rated _me_ in this exercise.

The way I felt at that moment was a sudden sense of despair.
How could she possibly rate higher in my eyes than those now
above her on either list?

Once the papers were handed in, we were able to turn to the
process of cleansing.  It felt funny to have been with the
same partner two days in a row but there was something about
this second day that felt better to me.  And, seriously, my
ranking of Helen would have gone up if I'd been polled after
this cleansing.

 From there we went into the setup of the dining room, which
went much smoother than the day before.

Despite the frictions still existing, we could easily work
together since that had nothing to do with our shared past.
It was easy to stay focused for any pause would allow our
hurts to re-surface.

When we were done-- ahead of the 40 minutes alloted-- I
pulled her to me and kissed her, making no effort to find
the "zone", so I pulled back and told her I loved her.

Her face suddenly burst into a smile that warmed my heart
instantly before she replied with a thank-you, telling me
that she loved me too.  Her squeezes were nice too.

"Hon," I continued, "we need to forget the past and need to
forget a lot of our history together.  I love you enough to
forgive you-- though, really, I'm not comfortable acting
unilaterally."

Her face showed some shock before steadying again.  I could
tell she was mulling over what I said.

And we had a new fight.

"What could I possibly need forgiveness from _you_ for?"

That trapped part of me asserted itself, I started thinking
that maybe I could gnaw my own arm off to get away from her.
So what that I'd lose my "good" hand but I'd be able to
escape this woman so certain of her "innocence".

I just sat down at the nearest table, dragging her down with
me.  I had a momentary flash of memory-- we were probably
under observation-- but that thought faded quickly.

"Helen, dearest, no person is without sin.  Just as much as
you're so certain that I have trespassed against you,
consider that I've been stepped on by you as well.  You've
presumed on my love for you and have ignored me when I've
wanted attention from you.  There *are* sins of omission,
you know, as you've charged me with so many sins of
commission."

Helen has never taken criticism well, nor does she like to
be reminded of fallibility, so this was getting her quite
riled up.

"And, Helen, you've made mistakes.  You *will* make more
mistakes in your life, just as *I* will.  It's only human,
you're no more perfect than I am, so realize that you've
hurt me many times but you never paid enough attention to me
to have realized it.  The past needs to be dead.  We need to
work towards the future, and carrying the weight of our past
with each other hurts, you know."

Her face was phasing between consternation, anger and
anxiety before she told me, "All right, I'll take a shot at
it.  I'll forgive the past...  for now."

I couldn't ask for more than that much of a concession from
her.  I agreed, letting her know that I could let go of the
past for now as well.

We shared another kiss, initiated by me, which she resisted
at first but soon got into the spirit; it was not very long
before we found the "zone".

A miracle occurred--  we broke the kiss before the others
started to filter in.

Dinner included corn on the cob again;  this time she chose
to impale herself on my erection (which took some active
encouragement on her part to bring up; being with my wife
had not kept me excited enough for spontaneous woodies given
the problems our relationship been carrying) and we ate in a
very cooperative state sharing our food.  Buttering her
small breasts and tonguing them was pleasant for both of us.

It wasn't until we had finished our meals that we started
grinding ourselves together seriously, fucking our brains
out to reach our mutual climax, telling each other how much
we loved the other.

At this moment I realized that the past was unimportant now,
she was here, with me, and it was now, not "then".  All of
my anger was shed as we worked ourselves together.

The climax was, well, surprising for me.  Her cry of joy did
something to me as I moaned out my own release.  It felt as
if I was being turned inside out...

In the back of my mind, an accountant raised his hand.  He
was trying to get my attention, telling me that Helen had
just jumped up the list.

As we came down we were panting, breathless.  This climax
had hit us both like a freight train, I think we were both
more than a little stunned in the aftermath.

Our eyes met again... and I couldn't look away.  I could
feel her response as her eyes looked at me, her body going
into gentle spasms, keeping my erection surprisingly full.

We kissed.

We floated together.

We gently stroked each other.

Nothing else existed for me but her eyes.  Even when we
blinked, we went right back to looking at each other.  I
could feel a hunger within me for her undivided attention,
feeling like a glutton as I received the dosage of attention
I'd desired for so long.  So I poured my attention on her,
in equal measure.

It was hard, well, that too, but it was hard to realize that
*she* was feeling a compulsion to try drowning me with her 
attentions.  We drank it all from each other.  We loved it.
We continued to stroke together, not able to stop, gently
working our way up to another orgasm.

She had more than one orgasm during that long climb, and I
watched her eyes focus first on my face and then my eyes
after each shuddering peak, soon to be followed by more.  It
took me five of her cums to reach my own release, taking her
by surprise, our eyes once again focusing on each other as
we went over.

Our previous shared orgasm was as nothing to this one, it
was like my own brain was being turned inside out.  The fog
seemed to roll in, covering my vision.

My vision cleared quickly, almost instantaneously.  We found
each other's eyes again, seeking to see the other.

I saw happiness in her eyes as she looked at me and my heart
thudded in my chest again... for she *saw* me...  and her
face radiated happiness.  My own must've been as well.

As our sexual excitement ebbed we were able to pay more
attention to our surroundings--  and heard more than a
little bit of moaning.  When we relaxed enough we disengaged
and started the clean-up while the other couples were still,
well, coupling.  Some were further along than others.

One couple seemed nowhere near the pinnacle Helen and I
reached.

Ruth and the counseling couples were watching over their
charges, and I stopped by Ruth and asked her what they'd
done to us.

Her reply of "I'll explain it tonight to you all... but
think of it as a reward for doing the right thing" left me
barely more informed than I started out with.

Obviously the hypnosis sessions had added something, but
what?

I could see that some couples had gone "all the way" into
the brain-busting orgasms and only on couple didn't get to
the same state of nirvana we had:  Carl and Joanie.

Helen and I, though, paid attention to clean-up, doing our
best to get ahead of the game since I wanted to wash Helen
again before our meeting.

It took a while for the other couples to come down enough to
start heading for their next assignments;  soon Helen and I
were alone.  We discussed the latest sexual encounters, all
in glowing terms.  I also found myself with a woman wrapped
around me, hugging me, exchanging "I love yous" with her on
an almost constant basis, in word and touches.  I was
feeling wonderful.  I did my level best to reflect my own
caring back to her.

It's funny, there's nothing like the feeling of seeing your
own love for someone accepted and prized by that person.  It
is sometimes hard to believe someone loves you so it is hard
to accept at times;  here I learned to *finally* stop
doubting that I was worthy of Helen's love.

I wondered what had been done to us, so, thinking it over,
the realization that I couldn't remember anything I was
angry with Helen about.  I could actually recall some of the
events, even some of the details, but there was no longer
any "heat" to the memory.  It was a wonderful feeling of
detachment.  I asked Helen and her own recall was similarly
limited to recalling facts but not feelings.  She added a
telling remark: "... and they somehow doesn't seem important
any more."

Whatever had been done to us made it harder to recall our
little resentments;  while we'd not forgotten, we'd actually
forgiven.  With this knowledge we relaxed and I finally,
after all this time, felt she'd forgiven me my various
mistakes, as I had done for her.

With the dining room cleaned and smiling at each other
almost constantly, we made our way to the showers and gave
each other a good wash-down.

What had happened to us at dinner?  We'd been pretty distant
up to the point that we'd started working together.  The two
back-to-back climaxes had wrung me out and I was more than a
little bit happy when we could sit and rest in the lobby for
this evening's meeting.

We got to the meeting in time and found the seats rearranged
around a simple chair in the middle of the room;  we took
seats around it, Helen curling as close to me as possible to
make room for Dawn and David to sit on the other half of the
small couch.  It was tight enough that we were touching.
Helen did greet David nicely as I had smiled to Dawn.

When Ruth called the session to order, she and Leon walked
up to the chair and called Carl and Joanie up;  Carl was
directed to sit and his wife joined him, straddling his lap
and impaling herself on his erection.

Her moan on the way down was not lost on the rest of us;
Helen's nipples suddenly swelled and crinkled while my own
member started to awaken from his too-short nap.

Ruth put her hand on Joanie's shoulder to keep her from
moving, so they sat there motionlessly.

"Joanie, I noticed at dinner that you came a lot stronger
than your husband.  How was it?"

The answering smile would have blinded us if we'd not been
getting a lot of practice.  Joanie's nodding was quick, too,
in agreeing.

"Carl, didn't you forgive your wife for all of her past
mistakes?  Or are you holding onto them?"

Carl looked suddenly like a cornered animal.  Helen and I
looked at each other at the same time and our eyes met.  I
could almost see the laughter in her eyes...  or was that a
reflection of my eyes?

Carl finally answered, "Well, she's got a lot to answer for,
you know."

I heard June as the first to yell out: "Yeah, Right!", but
that caught on and the rest of us agreed by repeating the
mantra.

I don't know why, it just *felt* right.

Ruth pinned his ears back with "She forgave you, didn't she?
And she had more complaints against you, didn't she?"

The sudden sheepish look on his face told the story.

Ruth pressed the advantage: "Tell her you're sorry for
holding back and forgive her for her past transgression."

He tried to stonewall, spluttering "But... but..."

"Carl, do you want her back as your wife?"

That stupid bastard.  God, what a stupid bastard, he was
hesitating as if he was thinking about it.  I think Joanie
brought the question to a head by pulling off of his member.
He looked around at the rest of us, as if expecting us to
support his decision to back off from his wife.

Now, two weeks ago, he might have gotten more sympathy.

Even from me.

Now he was alone.  Completely alone.  None of us looked at
him with anything but pity.

He got off of the chair and dropped to one knee in front of
his wife, kissed her right hand, still chained to him, and
we heard him:  "I'm sorry, Joannie.  Please forgive me for
giving you a hard time right now.  I'm sorry I've held our
past against you, you've been a good wife."

With that, Ruth told him, "Back in the seat, Joanie, ride
him all the way, all right?"

Once they're re-assumed their positions, Joanie smiled to us
all before she started bouncing on his lap;  once bouncing
she only had eyes for her husband.  We were witnesses to
their climb to shared ecstacy, involuntarily excited by the
way their eyes stayed on the other, listening to them gasp
and moan, the little words of love reaching our ears, seeing
their commitment renewed.

We could tell that Joanie and Carl, this time, shared the
same kind of brain-melting orgasm together that Helen and I
had shared, and I looked into my wife's beautiful eyes and
smiled at her.

As soon as Carl and Joanie finally came down from their
exhibition, we applauded.  I saw Carl blush (for the first
time) and Joanie just smiled, happily.

They stayed on the chair, regaining their strength, while
Ruth and Leon walked up again next to them and got
everybody's attention.

"All right, we'll give you all a little bit of warning.  As
part of your conditioning during the psych interviews, we
managed to make a few minor adjustments.  Key amongst these
is that you can't take resentments to bed.  If you resent
your spouse in any way, your orgasms will be pretty lousy.
Your spouse will know, too, because there's feedback in this
plan, too.  If you want a good cum you'll forgive your
spouse as soon as possible... and let them know it... or you
won't enjoy sex."

I saw a smirk forming on Claude's face.  Ruth noticed it
and turned to him:  "Oh, yeah, if you've any resentment to
your wife, it doesn't matter who you go to bed with, your
orgasm won't be reinforcing that behavior."  Claude dropped
his smirk and looked a little uncomfortable.

"Now, all of you, go to bed.  Tomorrow we'll unlock you and
send you home."

We got.

Helen and I tried out the brain-melting orgasms again.

And again.

When we woke up we did it again.

Seriously, in objective terms, we'd gone and made sure to
accept the rewards of our "conditioning", making it much
deeper and strengthening it.  We did the worst possible
thing we could have if we'd wanted to break it.

The rewards, though, made up for a lot, so there was no
desire to break it;  we both *liked* the effects.  We had
finally found something that made us _happy_ rather than
merely pleased.

So, yes, we reinforced the conditioning that rewarded us for
keeping our spouse happy.  We did it happily.  We'd finally
rediscovered our love for each other.

The exercise room saw us arriving like smiling zombies and
each of us was offered the opportunity to dispense with the
chain.

What?  Would I want to be away from my wife?  Not just _no_
but HELL NO!  It was easy to tell that Helen felt the same
way.

So Helen and I declined;  I wanted to stay "trapped" longer
with her, and her with me.  I was happy to be with my wife,
proud to know she loved me, proud of the person she was.

It was to be expected, I guess, but none of the others were
eager to be released from their cuffs.

The "marital bond" had acquired, for us, a whole new
context.

We were spent from our frolic when we first awoke so there
was little to do with the Luv Seat since I was still quite
limp.  Helen's moaning during the exercises hadn't brought
me to a state of enough hardness to do anything, but the
seat did make it easier to go down on her.

Breakfast was another opportunity to be unchained.  Again we
declined, unanimously.

The morning meeting was very different, we weren't given a
choice to be unlocked.  We were given a small bag and two
keys on elastic for our cuffs.  We'd get to keep the cuffs
as a toy.

I don't think I've ever felt so sentimental about something
like this before... and it looked like it was shared.

We were still quite naked.

The nudity no longer bothered me at all, but I felt more
naked now unchained.  I reached out to hold Helen's hand,
finding it seeking _mine_.  Later, the first time I was
further than 3 feet from Helen, I turned to pursue her,
discovering that she was just as uncomfortable away from me.

Looking around, I saw the same kind of scene repeated.  Each
of us was reaching out to hold hands, now that we were no
longer attached to each other.  I saw the same kind of thing
happening with the counseling couples *and* Ruth and Leon.
Ruth then got up, Leon quickly jumping to her right side.

"Folks, it's going to be a little bit strange for the next
couple of hours before we can drive you all out to the
airstrip, but here's the ritual for everyone to practice:
I want you each to go around to all of the mates you had,
in sequence, and thank them for their time with you."

I was ready to cry as I stepped away from Helen and
approached Alice, who was also uncomfortable with her
husband stepping away.  I reached out and was finally able
to wrap her completely within my arms and kissed her.  We
spoke with our eyes, kissed again.  "Alice, you're such a
wonderful woman.  I'm going to miss you.  And I love you,
too."

"Jack, you're a good man too.  Yes, you're lovable and I do
love you, along with everyone else."

We kissed again before separating and I sought out Dawn, and
repeated my mantra.  I'd miss her.  I also added, "And, if
you are carrying my child as predicted, you let me know if
you and David need any kind of help, OK?"

She smiled, "I'll remember."  This was a sad parting but
then I came to Beth, sweet Beth.  Beth who was likely to be
carrying my child as well.  Our good-bye kiss and hug was
an intense event for me.

Evelyn was a little shaky when she got to me;  I think she
was remembering how difficult a time we had together.  Her
apology for not being more affectionate was accepted and I
let her know that I was more concerned with her mental and
emotional state.  We parted friends, hugging and squeezing
each other.

Joanie squeezed me, very tight, and told me that she'd take
me on the floor, right there, which shook me up.  We kissed
and cuddled, and I got down on one knee to kiss her between
her belly-button and mons, a kiss aimed at her womb.

What's funny is that I still felt love for all of the women
I'd been with here.  They might come in second best to Helen
now but I'd go pretty far for their happiness.

June was happy to have me in her arms, folding me in with
her powerful biceps, squeezing me, and kissing me.  She then
asked me to please kiss her womb too.

She asked so nicely I did as she asked.

Pam was rather more passive as we hugged and kissed;  I
could still feel her love for me, but she wasn't in a very
demonstrative mood just then.

I came to Peggy next.  Peggy and I circled each other;  I
have no idea what she was afraid of.  We finally found
ourselves in each other's arms and our good-byes were not
the storm I have expected.  Again, I acceded to a request
to kiss her womb.

Little Belle and I kissed deeply and the exchange of our
affections was warm and loving.

Kim and I wrapped our arms around each other and we hit the
zone kissing without trying hard.  Sandi tapped my shoulder
to "cut in" after that timeless moment.

Sandi was still fairly possessive of me... which seemed odd.
We kissed and, well, zoned.  Helen awakened us to take me
back, just as Sandi's husband Roy was waiting for her too.

We all sat down.  Ruth told us to switch partners.

Alice sat beside me.  We looked at each other and giggled.

Ruth ran through the switch schedule so we could sit next to
each person we'd been mated with that week for a minute
each.  It was quite a run of memories.

Back finally with Helen we were dispatched to our work
routine, so Helen and I cleaned the three rooms to return
them to their original condition, then went to the courtyard
to prepare for lunch.

We found ourselves setting up box lunches and getting the
coolers ready for the beach.  Carl and Joanie showed up with
a bunch of towels, George and Belle with more towels and
what looked like suntan lotion and we all packed up to head
for the beach.  David and Dawn had what looked like beach
blankets.

We'd been down here in the Caribbean and had so little
benefit from it, so walking out to the wet sand was hot but
pleasant.  Some were very pleased with the opportunity.

By this time, given my lunchtime work schedule, I was tanned
evenly across my whole body;  despite this, I still needed
suntan lotion.  I'd spent a lot of time hunting shade in the
past.  Helen and I shared the favor of rubbing it into each
other's skin.  We lay on the beach blanket in the sun, the
high-SPF rating protecting us from the sun.

It took a bit to realize that the naked mons on each woman
was going to be tanned as well;  I had to admit that Helen
did look *good* that way.

I heard another couple copulating in the sun, glanced over
to Claude and Beth going at it, closed my eyes again, and
felt myself harden.  It felt good lying there in the sun, my
erection waving in the breeze.

I felt a shadow fall on me-- between the breeze and the
sudden lack of sun, it was noticeable-- and before I could
react found myself with a woman completely wrapped around
my member, as I heard Helen moan.

My eyes popped open.  Peggy was on top of me.  A quick
glance showed me her husband Bill on top of Helen, my wife
going "What?"

Peggy spoke, "Jack, Helen, I realized we can share.  Helen,
I've got Jack's baby in me, you're carrying my husband's."

In counterpoint to this Peggy squeezed me inside, massaging
my dick and centering my attention on it.  I moaned.  Then I
heard Bill moan as Helen must have done the same.  Helen and
I looked to each other and I could see the light of approval
in her eyes, so I turned my face up and pulled Peggy down
for a kiss.  I could hear Helen and Bill kissing and then
could hear them stroking at each other.  It was exciting to
know that Helen could do this as Peggy rode me.

We learned something:  the resentment conditioning wasn't
all that picky, Peggy and I looked in each other's eyes as
we climaxed, our brains pretty much melting.  As we came
down I heard Helen and Bill experience their own very
powerful brain-destroying orgasm.

If we're going to fool around with others, well, this was
the way to do it, side by side.  Of course, we might be
limited to those within our little clique, but...

We were bonded to this couple now, as they were bonded to
us, and extension to our sexual and emotional relationship.

I guess it's a male thing;  I lay there, fucked out, content
and willing to share.  Helen told me later that she had no
problem but that her subsequent children should be mine, not
Bill's.

We did talk things over a bit and decided to get together
regularly, especially when our children arrived.

There was a break called for our lunches, after which we
rested again in the sun.  I could hear yet another couple
going at it.

Despite being fucked out, the sound of the powerful orgasmic
scream of a woman in this bonding orgasm that we'd been
introduced to managed to bring me back to hardness.

Helen didn't get a chance to impale herself;  Sandi came
over me while her husband re-introduced his organ to Helen.

We contentedly shared ourselves with this couple, even
though it took me a long time to reach one of our earth-
shaking orgasms.  Roy and Helen watched us and coached us
through Sandi's fifth and my first delivery of that session.

After Sandi kissed me, Helen did too.  Both Roy and I were
nonchalantly looking elsewhere as Helen and Sandi kissed
each other, even though I knew Helen to be very phobic of
the idea of touching (much less kissing) another woman.  We
did listen to them thank each other and we were again
working out some kind of visit schedule.

It was soon time to go inside.  With a visit to the shower
to take off the sand and lotion, we were finally led to the
luggage set up in the dining room.  When the word was given
we were all--  even the counseling couples-- allowed into
our bags to find clothes.

The initial enthusiasm of fishing out traveling clothes did
suddenly slow down as we looked around, looked at our own
bodies, then looked at the clothing.

It was like clothes were a completely alien thing.  Yes, I
could wear it, but I didn't think I could enjoy it.

So I was slow getting dressed.  I looked around, it was like
everyone, even Ruth and Leon, were reluctant to dress.

I was soon back into shorts (no underwear, I could barely
stand the shorts) and a polo shirt.  I saw Helen dispense
with her bra and panties and don a pair of shorts and she
took one of my polo shirts for herself.  We got our shoes
back (well, sandals, Birkenstocks) and we closed our bags
once our wallets and tickets were reclaimed.

I walked over to Ruth and thanked her, telling her that the
whole system seemed to have worked, adding, "but, with the
hypnotism, you were cheating, weren't you?"

The Mona Lisa has *nothing* on Ruth's secret smile.  I
kissed her goodbye, grabbed Sabrina and did the same (two
places, her belly was exposed so I pulled her shorts down
just enough to kiss her lump of baby) and wished her luck,
and then returned to Helen, pulling her into my arms and
rocking.

Our trip home was anticlimactic.  We split up from most of
the others in Atlanta, flying to New Jersey with George and
Belle.

While George and Belle were headed home to Pequannock, we
trekked out to Boonton and home.

Home.

Well, I hope our neighbors weren't going to be prying hard
enough to realize that we were going to be nudists within
our house.  Once in the house we stripped immediately and
Helen and I looked in each other's eyes before putting on
the cuffs, the keys on the opposite wrists.

With the click of the lock I felt like I was home.  Then we
used our bed, right away.

Helen worked out a schedule for us to break in all of the
rugs and furniture "the right way".  I was looking forward
to it.

We had to go out for groceries, so had to unlock and get
dressed again; it was a useful break.  We got to put the
groceries away nude and even chose to put the clothes away
that we'd returned with and found a CD-ROM packed with them.

There were pictures of us, just us...  the first day when
we were undressing, in the cuffs, that first afternoon.
There were pictures of us chained together and naked, as we
went at our work...  but there was one from the dining room
that caught us at our point of ecstacy, our eyes glowing at
each other.  We cried together, happy.

And, yes, we put the cuffs on again.  That piece of chain
was like an emotional crutch;  while we would probably
outgrow them there'd always be some comfort to be had.

Our bed that night got a good workout again.

As I faded into a sated slumber, the thought came to me:
tomorrow I'd be going to work.  I wondered how I'd do there,
away from my loving wife.

			End Ch 12

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