He awoke slowly, fighting his grogginess like wrestling through thick, wet mud. His condition was worse because he couldn't figure out why it was so hard. Taking a moment in his struggle to consciousness, he thought back on what he could remember...

They had arrived late in the morning after a pleasant drive from the city. He and his wife had laughed and talked and thoroughly enjoyed their drive up from the city to their cabin in the mountains. It had been their family's favorite getaway for years with memories of many happy vacations with the children. This trip was the first one for them without their now nearly grown offspring and Valerie seemed particularly excited about it.

"Just you and me, Mike, think of it!" she'd bubbled happily as they packed. Now he wished he'd shown her a little more of an enthusiastic response, instead of his non-committal 'yeah, that'll be nice'. What if he was dead? What if he would never see her again?

They'd unpacked and he'd gotten a fire going to take the chill out of the rustic structure while she mixed them drinks in the little kitchen area. By the time she'd joined him, there was a beautiful blaze roaring away and he was grinning with pride.

"Lovely," she confirmed, handing him his drink with a glint in her eye. It was more than just a mischievous twinkle, but he couldn't read it, so he dismissed it. Now the memory of that look left him with a strange foreboding...

The memories suddenly got foggier... feeling overwhelmingly tired... Val helping him to bed... did she undress him... ?

He tried to stretch out some of his fatigue and was alarmed to find he could barely move his arms and legs. The sudden rush of adrenaline at this discovery had him instantly wide awake, his eyes fully open.

To his dismay, it was true. Someone had tied his arms and legs securely to the four posts of their large oak bed, leaving him splayed and... naked on top of it. Panic gripped his heart has he thought suddenly of his wife. Straining against his bonds, he cried out her name.

"Mike, it's ok - I'm right here."

He heard her soft voice from the area close to the foot of the bed. Raising his head as much as he could, he could just see her sitting in a comfy chair facing the bed.

"Are you ok, honey? What going on here?" His heart was still pounding as he tried to sort out what had happened to them when he became aware of her standing and moving to the side of the bed. She wasn't bound!!!!

She was standing next to him, wearing a soft satin dressing gown, sitting on the edge of the mattress, she leaned towards him, bringing a water bottle to his lips.

He hadn't realized how parched he was until he felt the cool liquid touch him and he began to drink thirstily, without thinking, gulping down several mouthfuls before he realized what had happened. Turning away from the bottle, water poured out onto his face, neck and shoulders, but he ignored it.

"You drugged me!" he accused, in a combination of incredulity and anger. The brief moment of guilt that washed over her face was all the confirmation that he needed. They'd known each other too long for him to miss that expression. "Valerie, what going on here?!?!" Tugging at his bonds, he demanded, "Untie me right now?"

She said nothing, having grabbed a towel to wipe up the spilt water, refusing to look at him. Now that her plan was being played out, she had reservations. It was all working exactly the way she had imagined it would except that she hadn't imagined feeling this guilty about the sedative she'd given her husband and the tieing him up to the bed. The tone in his voice did that for her.

Still, she'd resolved that this was the only way to get what she wanted and she wasn't about to back down now. With a slow deep inhale, she turned to face him once again, placing a finger on his lips to slow his barrage of questions. To her relief, he was silent, although his eyes still glared at her with a mixture of confusion and anger.

"Mike, this was the only way, " she whispered. "Please trust me, ok?"

"Trust you?!?!" he sputtered. "How can I? The woman I've been married to for all these years has just drugged me and trussed me up like a Thanksgiving turkey and she wants me to trust her?"

Despite his blustering anger, Valerie couldn't help but laugh softly as she surveyed his handsome body, laid out before her loving eyes.

"Honey, ain't never had a Thanksgiving turkey that looked that good!"

While he didn't laugh, he did seem to quiet and relax somewhat. "Sweetheart," he said more quietly, "please tell me what's going on here?"

Slowly her fingers stroked his cheek, tracing the outline of his lips with a gentle finger. "I gave you the sedative so that I could tie you up." She looked into his incredulous eyes. "You never would have agreed, you know."

She was right of course, but what did that matter? Why should she want to tie him up anyway?

"And I tied you up," she continued, "so that I could do what I wanted to do." Her eyes left his as she watched it stroke the smooth hard flesh of his chest. "'Cause you wouldn't let me do that either."

Despite his anger and continued perplexity, her hand gently caressing him as beginning to excite him. He felt the beginnings of swelling in his still flaccid penis and fought to control it. There was no way he was going to...

And then he realized what she was up to.

"You don't intend to... ?" And he shuddered. "Val, I've told you... I can't -it's wrong..."

She sighed. "I know... you've told and told me." That hand continued to stroke his body, down his chest, across his belly making the muscles contract involuntarily. He knew he wouldn't be able to keep himself removed from this kind of attention for very long. "But now you don't have a choice, my love."

Her warm mouth replaced her hand with soft, warm, wet kisses along his chest and onto the taut muscles of his stomach. He held his breath, sure that she was going to make good on her threat right then when she sat up and rose from the mattress. As angry as he was with her, irrationally he wanted her next to him again.

Tucking another pillow under his head, his wife went to stand just off the foot of the bed, well within his line of sight. As she spoke, she began to slowly unbutton each tiny little button on her dressing gown.

"It's been far to many years that you've denied me - denied us - some of the most basic pleasures of married love," she was saying as the shimmering cloth slowly opened in front of his eyes

"I know you have strong reservations about certain sexual practices, even though you offer lip service to 'everything is ok between a husband and wife'..."

Through increasingly parched lips he managed to say, "as long as both agree" even though he couldn't take his eyes off of her hands. Her body was still hidden to him under the soft folds of the gown.

"Yes," she acknowledged, stopping with the buttons at her hips and he felt suddenly impatient. "As you have said. Problem is, it's always been you who has decided what we agree on in this, my dear. And the truth is that I don't agree at all."

Still mesmerized by the movement of her hands, he watched as she pulled the gown off first one, and then the other of her smooth, white shoulders, before letting the entire thing fall to the floor - along with his bottom jaw.