Chapter 5

The next morning Doug woke up feeling miserable. It was Saturday, so he didn't have to go to school. He spent the morning on the couch, making frequent trips to the john, each of which left him a little paler and weaker. He said he thought he was coming down with the flu.

Sue fussed over him. She went to the store and bought a carton of Sprite. "It's much easier on an upset stomach than water," she said as she gave him a glass of it. "No, Doug, don't gulp it down. I know you're thirsty, darling, but just sip it, a little at a time. It's better for you that way. Are you hungry?"

He made a face and shook his head.

"Well, tell me when you want something to eat. I bought a can of chicken soup for you."

By that afternoon Doug was running a fever of a hundred and two degrees. He was sweating and shivering. Sue phoned the doctor but of course his office was closed over the weekend. She told the answering service it was an emergency, and the woman said she would try to locate the doctor and give him the message.

It was nearly an hour before the doctor returned Sue's call. He said it sounded like the flu, all right, that there was a lot of it going around. The doctor told her to put Doug to bed, give him plenty of fluids and a couple of aspirin every four hours to keep his fever down, adding that if Doug wasn't better by Monday he would see him at his office.

Following the doctor's instructions, Sue put Doug to bed, gave him aspirin and fussed over him all the more. This was Doug's first illness since their marriage. Sue couldn't do enough for him. She nursed him to the point of babying him. Doug ate it up. He felt luxuriously pampered. If he hadn't felt so rotten, he would've enjoyed being sick.

Hub worked that day. He often did on Saturday, he and a couple of his oldest and most trusted employees. They did cash jobs for home owners. The money from these jobs bypassed the business books and went directly into their pockets, half for Hub, the other half being divided equally between his two workers.

On this particular Saturday, they were pouring a concrete patio for a comely young divorcee in her late twenties. She'd given Hub a mild come-on when he'd been at her house estimating the job, and now, as the work on the patio progressed, she began openly flirting with him. Being the type of man he was, Hub found this not in the least displeasing. The divorcee was a trifle plump but still very attractive since her generous curves were all in the right places. She had no kids to get in the way. Hub decided that an affair with her might be very pleasant indeed.

"What do you want me to fix for supper?" Sue asked, when Hub got home.

"Nothing for me, Suzy baby," he said airily as he breezed through the living room. "I'm going out for dinner. Got a date with a sexy divorcee that's hot to trot."

Soon as he'd showered and shaved and gotten dressed up in his best suit, Hub was off again. Once more that inexplicable jealously crept over Sue. She didn't want Hub, but she didn't want any other woman to have him, either. It didn't make a lick of sense but it was real nevertheless. Real enough that Sue spent a wretched evening alone, staring blankly at the TV as she tortured herself with mental pictures of Hub and this other woman making wild passionate love.

It was lucky for Sue that she was in bed asleep when Hub got home at two a.m., half drunk and with the worst case of the stone- ache he'd had since he was a teenager. The divorcee had been far from a pushover. After wining and dining her, he'd taken her dancing and then to her place, where he'd spent two solid hours working her up only to learn that she was in the middle of her period. Before he went to bed, Hub stood for long moments at the washbasin in the john, disgustedly splashing cold water over his bloated, aching testicles.

"Hub, do you have to have that TV blaring like that?" Sue protested the following afternoon, shortly after Hub had switched on the baseball game and settled down on the couch with his shoes off and a can of beer in his hand. "Doug's sick. He's trying to sleep, he needs his rest."

"Then shut the goddamned bedroom door," Hub snorted. "Whose house is this, anyway?"

Sue stamped to the bedroom and shut the door, remaining inside with her husband. The TV was still too loud. Doug was sleeping, but fitfully so. For about ten minutes Sue paced the floor, her shoes off so as not to disturb Doug. She was fuming, clenching and unclenching her fists, gritting her teeth.

How can any one man be so callous and selfish?! she railed silently. God, what an animal he is! I hate him!

Her stepfather-in-law's lack of consideration for Doug's condition infuriated Sue. This was too much. It was time for a showdown. She made up her mind that she wasn't going to let Hub get away with this for another minute.

Without bothering to put her shoes back on, she let herself out of the bedroom and, after quietly shutting the door behind her, she made a beeline for the TV and defiantly turned down the volume to about half as loud as Hub had set it. Her temples were pounding and her palms felt moist as she glared across at him, ready to lash out at him if he so much as said a word about her turning down the sound.

"You can still hear it, can't you?" she asked demandingly.

"Just fine," he replied, flashing her a lopsided grin. He held out his beer can. "This one's empty. Since you're here, throw it in the trash and bring me another one."

"Where do you get your nerve?" Sue muttered as she snatched the can out of his hand.

"The same place you get your sassiness," he said, chuckling amusedly as she went off in a huff toward the kitchen.

When Sue grudgingly served Hub his beer, he made a crack about her being a cute little barefooted waitress. She tried to slap his smirking face, but he caught her wrist and twisted her arm until, wincing with pain, she sank to the floor on her knees.

"Don't you ever draw back your hand to me again," he warned, still more amused then angry. "The next time I'll spank your sassy ass, and that's a promise."

"I'm not your waitress, or your slave, either," Sue whined, rubbing her arm as she got to her feet. "Next time you want something, get it yourself!"

As she spun on her heel and ran back to the kitchen, Hub's mocking laughter rang humiliatingly in her ears. Sue felt like crying but she wouldn't give the brute the satisfaction of knowing he'd brought her to tears. Instead she busied herself washing the dirty dishes she'd been neglecting in order to care for her sick husband.

She was letting the dishwater drain from the sink when Hub called, "Hey, barefoot waitress, this last can you brought me must've had a hole in it. It's empty."

"Hub, please, not so loud! Doug is trying to sleep."

"All you've gotta do to shut me up is bring me another beer."

Sue gritted her teeth, clenched shut her eyes and, making fists, threw back her head to stifle the scream which was rising in her throat.

"Well?"

"All right, all right, I'm coming!"

Her nostrils were enlarged with rage and her eyes were glaring with hatred when she gave him a full can of beer and took his empty.

"You're even more beautiful when you're angry, Suzy baby," he taunted.

"Drop dead," she hissed.

"What have you been doing out there?"

"Tidying up the kitchen," she replied tersely.

"Well, you're making too much noise. Stop it or I'll have to turn the TV back up."

"I've got to do something."

"Why, for crissake? It's Sunday afternoon."

"You've got my nerves on edge."

"Then open yourself a beer. Join me. It's a good game. You'll enjoy it."

"Thanks but no thanks. I'll go sit with Doug. I'm sure you've managed to wake him up by now," Sue told him icily as she turned away and padded barefoot toward the bedroom, the empty beer can in her hand.

But Doug wasn't awake. Despite the TV and Hub's resonantly masculine voice calling for more beer, Doug was sleeping peacefully and soundly. She backed from the room and closed the door again. She walked to the kitchen and disposed of the empty beer can. Almost robotlike she opened the refrigerator, got out a can of beer for herself, opened it and went back into the living room.

"I thought you were going to sit with Doug," Hub said, when Sue sat down at the other end of the couch and took a sip of beer.

"He's asleep."

"Change your mind about watching the game?"

Sue nodded. She took another sip of her beer.

"Why?"

She shrugged, unable to answer because she didn't know why herself.

Hub reached across, took hold of her arm and dragged her over beside him. Sue gave him a disgusted look but didn't protest his ungallant action. For a couple of moments they sat there side by side, in stony silence, both of them watching the baseball game on TV. Then Hub put his hand on Sue's knee. She pushed it off. He put it back. She knocked it away. He slapped it back down and gripped her knee.

Sue sucked in her breath. He was hurting her. She whimpered and left his hand alone this time. He relaxed his painful grip and patted her dimpled knee soothingly. Sue gulped audibly. She tilted the beer can to her lips and took three large swallows.

Despising Hub the way she did, it was beyond Sue's comprehension how she could sit there beside him letting him play with her knee while she watched, of all things, a dumb baseball game! Yet that's exactly what she did until he sent her to the kitchen to get him another beer. When she returned, he drew her down beside him and scooted even closer to her than before. She could feel his hip and thigh touching hers.

His hand returned to her knee, patting and caressing, then wedging in between her knees. Sue knew she should object, but she didn't. She clamped shut her legs but this didn't prevent him from stroking the insides of her thighs.

"Hub, don't," she murmured half-heartedly, when he pushed her legs apart so he could stroke higher up the inner slopes of her soft and shapely legs.

The baseball game held nine-tenths of Hub's attention. He was drinking beer with his left hand and watching the game with great interest. Not so much as glancing Sue's way, he effectively silenced her belated protest by squeezing down rather harshly on a handful of her tender thighflesh until Sue gasped and spread her legs for him.

"Good girl," he muttered, still not looking at her, and he patted her leg where he had just abused it.

This didn't seem real. It was just too ridiculously matter- of-fact and screamingly vulgar to be happening to her. The announcer's voice droned monotonously in her ears. She was looking in the direction of the TV set but not really seeing the action on the color screen. Sue's brain reeled luridly as she sat there with her legs open, sipping beer, letting Hub's possessive hand roam indecently higher and higher. Her dress was being hiked up slowly but surely as his hand caressed closer and closer to the Y where her parted legs joined her body.

His work-callused palm chafed her tender flesh. His kneading fingers felt like tongues of fire lapping at her bared thighs, especially to the moist, creamy skin at the very tops of her tremulous legs. The crotchband of her nylon panties was already becoming damp with the secretions of her unsummoned arousal when the heel of his hand began rubbing against her clefted mound. He cupped her cunt and held it lightly, nothing more. Sue began squirming in sensual discomfort, pressing her hot and sticky pussy tighter against his hand. She couldn't seem to help herself.

The inning ended and the station went to a commercial. Hub patted Sue's twat and sent her for more beer. She got him one and opened another for herself, too. When she sat back down beside him, he put his right arm around her, drew her close and French kissed her. Sue wondered if she were losing her mind as she licked back at his beery tongue and then sucked down hungrily on the vulgar, suggestively thrusting thing. She had a can of beer in each hand and couldn't very well defend herself when he snaked his left hand up under her dress, tugged the slimy secretion band of her underpants to the side and sank his thick, knobby-knuckled middle finger into the silky softness of her moist and lubricated split.

He'd just gotten his finger all the way into her when the game came back on. Abruptly he backed it out, breaking the kiss and turning away from her as he snatched his can of beer from her shaking hand. He lifted the can to his mouth and took a deep pull on it. Then, looking at the TV not her, he said, "Scoot down some and spread your legs, Suzy baby, so's I can pet that pretty little pussy while I watch the game."

Everything decent and good demanded the Sue get up off the couch and start acting like Doug's wife again. Only she didn't feel particularly decent at the moment and seemed to have very little will of her own. Obediently she slouched down as Hub had told her to do, sliding her loins forward so he could reach over and abuse her with no discomfort on his part. He pulled up her dress and she spread her legs for him.

A mood unlike any Sue had previously experienced was settling over her now. It was shameful of her to be sitting there in such an unladylike position, letting Hub touch her where no man but her husband had a right to, but she had no real desire to stop him. Sue felt much the same as she had when he'd made her masturbate him in the car, only now he was handling her private parts and the wrongness of it was every bit as exciting as the tactile sensations of his lewdly caressing hand were sensually pleasurable to her. She felt cheap and dirty, but it was simply delicious. So illicit. So daring, what with her husband sleeping in the very next room.

Sue closed her eyes and sipped at her beer. She couldn't hate Hub now, not while he was petting her most personal of all spots. He was still a brute, coarse and uncouth. Somehow he was managing to drag her down to his own vulgar level and, for the moment at least, Sue all but loved him for it.

Only the narrow strip of secretion-soggy nylon separated her private portal from the palm and fingers of his big work-callused hand. Up and down he rubbed, absently so because he was paying more attention to the baseball game than to her, and this told Sue how important she was to him. She was a sex toy to him, nothing more. This was all right with Sue. It made her feel all the cheaper but she didn't care because she didn't even like the big slob. It did feel good, though, the way he kept rubbing up and down between her legs. Very good. She began smiling sinfully between sips of beer, squirming her ass around, pressing her tingling, burning twat tighter against his passion-provoking hand. He was molding her slimy panties to her clefted mound and luridly stuffing them into the crack of her butt. His fingers dragged back and forth over her anus and even this obscene touching felt delightful to her.

Little sighs and moans began issuing from between Sue's tremulous lips as she gripped her empty beer can tightly and started hunching his hand involuntarily. She wished he would slip his hand inside her underpants and stick his finger inside her again. If he wanted to put his big penis in her now, right here on the couch, she was more than willing to let him do that, too. The right and wrong of what they were doing no longer mattered to Sue, for she was melting from the heat of her unbidden lust.

"Come on, you can do it. Strike him out," Hub said to the pitcher on the TV screen as he continued to absently play with Sue's feverish pussy and itchy rectum through the sheer material of her nylon briefs. "Watch that bastard on third. Don't let him steal home!"