Karen Ziegler - Her husband_s boss

"As a matter of fact, Henry, Kathy had done nothing for me but fuck one of my friends, a rather harmless little man, earlier this week," Max said, smiling with cool amusement. "Of course, I did try her out first and, believe me, she guarded her virtue well until I slipped a little special aphrodisiac into her drink. However, I noticed that she really responded, as though she hadn't had a good fuck in her whole life."

"You lousy bastard!" Henry almost screamed with fury. "Then what is she doing in there with those three dirty bums?"

"I don't know," the middle-aged executive said simply. "Why don't you ask June?"

The young husband whirled around and caught sight of the beautiful older woman just as she was about to slip unnoticed back into her office. With a strangled cry of frustration and anger, Henry walked quickly across the deeply-carpeted floor and seized her by the arm, dragging the dark-haired woman back from the doorway and throwing her brutally down onto a chair.

"Wh-why did you do that to her?" Henry raged down at the gorgeous brunette, his eyes afire with wrath he felt. "How could you let them use her like that?"

June stared hatefully up at him and Max for a moment and then slowly her face relaxed into a smug, satisfied smile. "Henry, dear, you're forgetting one thing," she murmured venomously. "Whatever horrible things we made your poor little wife do, she certainly did enjoy them."

Henry did not even have to look back to the obscene tableau taking place in the two-way mirror to know that the mockingly smiling woman was speaking the harsh truth. No matter how much she had been drugged, he reasoned bitterly, Kathy had no right to just surrender that way and enjoy the animal-like orgy he had just watched. And if she could enjoy it, well, she was nothing more than a two-bit whore and deserved everything she had gotten and more, by God.

"Jesus Christ stop smirking, June, and bring the little bitch out here," Max instructed his raven-haired mistress with the beginning of a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. When the tall shapely woman had left the room, the slightly greying president turned to his young employee and casually said, "Why don't you pay her back, Henry? Hell, she's given you enough trouble since you've been married, according to what I could gather from my conversation with her. Why don't you teach her a lesson she'll never forget?"

"Christ, I'd like to," Henry muttered, grateful at this point for some sympathetic understanding, no matter what the source. "I'm damned if I know what would shock her enough, though. After this, it would have to be something pretty radical, something so wild that she'd have to come back to me."

"I think I can help you, son," the older man said with the same smooth sincerity he had used on Kathy almost a week before. "If I really thought it would help you two, I'd gladly take the trouble to set up a party in my own home… You know arrange some things that would make this afternoon look like a Sunday school picnic, at least to your wayward little wife."

"Yes, I guess that's probably what she needs," the handsome, young man agreed bleakly. His anger was cooling now to a slow festering resentment and somehow the idea of his once-innocent young wife being forced into a situation from which only he could rescue her, if he chose to, filled him with a sort of grim, diabolical satisfaction. "What time?"

"How about seven o'clock on Sunday night?" Max suggested solemnly, barely concealing his glee at the success of his cunning new scheme. "And don't worry, I'll have a few choice pieces for you too Henry, my boy, so you can have a little fun before the lady begs to be taken home."

"Great, I'm going to need that," the bright young editor scowled. "I want to get myself a few phone numbers too, because that little bitch is going to have to come crawling on her hands and knees before I ever give her any again."

"Oh, Henry, darling, thank God you're here," Kathy's sobbing voice suddenly sounded, filling the room as the now fully-clothed girl rushed in from June's office, her pretty face streaked with tears as she rushed up to her husband and clung tenaciously to him. "I… I have to tell you something. I've done something… awful… but I did it for us. Oh God, I hope someday you'll be able to forgive me!" she babbled into his lean shoulder, her shame-torn body trembling uncontrollably with the delayed shock of what had happened to her in the bedroom next door.

"You don't have to tell me anything, sweetheart," Henry informed her stiffly, disentangling himself from her as though she were something filthy. "I just saw what happened in there, and it was charming honey. I didn't know you were so talented that way."

As she saw the cold distaste in her husband's unsmiling expression, Kathy instinctively moved away from him. At first, her guilt made her think that Henry had every right to think of her as contemptible and unclean, the same way she felt about herself at that moment. But gradually, as his words registered fully in her tortured mind, she looked up into his face again, her dark eyes sparking with slowly kindling anger.

"Did you say that you saw those men rape me, Henry?" she asked with exacting slowness, as if wanting to be certain of every word. After what she had just experienced, she wanted to be absolutely certain of Henry's position. "You sat out here and watched?"

"Was it rape, you little whore?" her husband sneered. "Tell me about your great-aunt who died, honey. You don't get paid for rape."

Throughout the whole nightmarish week, Kathy had somehow clung to her sanity with the idea that everything she was doing would ultimately help her marriage but now even that slim hope seemed to be fading away. She felt herself losing her last grip on her emotions and through the stinging tears that brimmed out of her flashing brown eyes, she glared up at Henry and snapped out, "I didn't get paid for this one, darling. If it makes you feel any better, you can take my word for it, you just watched your wife being raped!"

After that, Kathy let herself simply break down like a limp rag and cry openly. She had no more will to fight him as Henry led her grimly out of Max's office on their way down to the company parking lot. Neither of them spoke a word during the long drive home.

Kathy Cummings' pixy-like face was alight with wonder as Max Alexander ushered her and Henry into his huge house the following Sunday night. Even though the address of the Alexander family mansion had suggested that it would be imposingly grandiose, the awe-struck young blonde had not expected the sprawling house to be quite so magnificently appointed and comfortable. Built in the old California-Spanish style of the mid-eighteenth century, the stark-white walls and red-tiled floors were the perfect setting for the gay, colorful modern furniture and paintings that Max preferred. The sleekly-dressed, obviously sophisticated people milling from room to room in the lavishly-adorned house seemed just as carefully chosen for decoration as the furniture. Kathy was still not certain just why she and Henry had to go to this cocktail party, especially after all they had been through with Max in the last traumatic week, but Henry had been adamant, ignoring her mild protestations about the propriety of the whole thing. From the way most of the men and women were already paired off, drinking and chatting amiably around the generously-stocked bar and buffet table, the young blonde sensed that all the guests knew each other very well and she felt uncomfortably awkward and out-of-place as she followed her husband meekly to the bar.

Surrounded now by all these elegantly-attired strangers, Kathy wished fervently she could look to her sullen husband for companionship and support but since Friday afternoon, he had been as cold and distant as a stranger. Not that she had worried very much about his cruel, indifferent attitude toward the humiliation she had endured for the sake of their marriage; no, she had decided on the ride home from the Alexander Building that painful afternoon that he would have to learn to push aside his hurt pride or simply call off the marriage, no matter how much it would hurt them both. As a matter of fact, today she had almost reached the point where she was looking forward to the promising evening here at Max's, if only to have break from the stony, resentful silence that filled their modest home. Even though she was perfectly willing to take her share of the blame for what had happened she was growing weary of Henry's undoubting assumption that everything that ever had or would go wrong with their marriage was due to her innumerable shortcomings. In fact, even if he did finally recover from his anger and shock, she had a strange feeling that she would never be able to really forgive him for the way he had been treating her.