INR

INR, Again

by Ashley Zacharias

Rick was gone to work and I was cleaning up the breakfast dishes when Lester suddenly popped into my mind. First, I tried to ignore the thought but I could not. He kept looming large in my mind. Then, I tried to think about something else but that was hopeless, too. All thoughts led back to Lester. When I thought about cooking supper tonight, I couldn't help but remember how much Lester liked my chicken with lime and jalapeño pepper. And I couldn't help but think that maybe he'd be happy with me again if I cooked it for him again. When I tried thinking about volunteering for the afternoon shift at the food bank. That didn't work, either. As soon as I thought about volunteering, I reminded myself that I volunteered at the food bank now instead of helping the Republican Party because Lester would probably drop into the Republican Local Office and, every time I saw him, I couldn't help but talk to him, hoping that, maybe this time, things would turn out differently. Finally, I had to admit to myself that anything that I thought about was going to lead back to Lester one way or another. He was only a couple of degrees of separation from anything that I could imagine. Anything, that is, except for that one big thing that loomed like an elephant in the room.

I forced myself to walk upstairs, sit down at the computer and compose an email to Rick. The subject heading said nothing but, “INR”; the body of the message said, “At your convenience, any time until tomorrow noon. Please be brutal.” My experience at Rick's hands two months ago had demonstrated beyond a doubt that my gentle husband could be more brutal than I could have imagined; brutal enough to terrify me. And what had I done after he had brutalized me last time? I had urged him to go even further next time. Now, with Lester haunting my thoughts again, next time had to start now.

The email was short, but hard to type; my hands were shaking so badly that it was difficult to strike the keys accurately. When I was finished, I had to use both hands to keep the mouse steady enough to click the Send icon. Why did they make the icon so damn small?

As soon as the message disappeared from the screen, I began to cry softly to myself. Tears rolled slowly down my cheeks. Pain was coming. Humiliation was coming. Degradation was coming. Sooner or later, Rick was coming. And when he came, he was surely going to rape me bad.

How soon? He might already be reading the email. Hell, he didn't even have to open the email. The “INR” in the subject line would tell him all he needed to know; those three letters meant that “I needed raping” and gave him absolute permission to violate my body any way he wanted, as hard as he wanted, and as often as he wanted between now and noon tomorrow. How long did it take an email to show up in his computer? How long would it take for him to read it? How long to decide what to do to me? Maybe he was already walking out of his office, telling his secretary that he was feeling ill and was going to take the rest of the day off. It was only ten o'clock. He could be home in half an hour. That would give him more than a full day, twenty-five and a half hours to be exact, to brutalize me without rest or respite if he was of a mind to really put it to me. And why wouldn't he do me as soon as he could? What man could sit around in his office writing memos and phoning clients when he could be towering over his woman, pounding into every orifice in her body with wild abandon without fear of consequence or recrimination.

Maybe it wasn't too late to stop him. I turned back to the keyboard and began typing furiously. Subject: “Please don't.” Message: “I've changed my mind. Please do not come after me. I'm begging you. Make love to me tonight if you want, but be kind and gentle like always.”

I clicked the Send icon as quickly as I could, praying that the counter-message would arrive before Rick left his office.

I waited and watched the email window, my heart pounding, whispering my prayer to the gods of the Internet. “Please, please let him get my message. Please, please let him understand that I've really changed my mind.”

Nothing happened for the longest time but I dared not move from my chair, staring at the Inbox icon on the screen, waiting for a reply to arrive. Every time I heard a car outside, I strained to hear if it was pulling into our driveway, shaking in terror until the muted rumble of the engine continued down the street.

Then the computer dinged; a new email had arrived. A glance at the screen told me that it was from Rick. My heart sank when I read his subject line, “No Mercy.” The body of his message said, “Type until your fingers are raw, beg until your voice is hoarse. You have no power to stay me from my course. Your pleas are my marching music and your desperation is my motivation. My lust has slipped its chains. Nothing can stop me now. No matter what you say, I am coming for you and I will show you no mercy.”

I cried out in despair. I had told him that the “INR” signal was irrevocable; that once sent, he should ignore any attempt to revoke it. Obviously he believed me. He was playing by my rules, now.

Too weak with fear to stay in the chair, I slid to the floor and curled up into a ball of raw terror. Last time he had bent me over the dining room table, tore my clothes from me and raped me. I had tried to stop him but had been powerless against his superior physical strength. It had been a miserable, demeaning experience. So what had I done about it the next day? I had told him that simple rape was not enough. I had told him that he should make the next rape worse. What kind of fool am I?

My heart was pounding like a bass drum. I was moaning like an abandoned soul that had been dropped into the deepest pit of Hell.

An hour passed. What had I told Rick two months ago? I hadn't just asked him to rape me, I vaguely recalled telling him that he could break my nose, blacken my eyes, beat me black and blue. Had I really said those things or only thought them? I couldn't kid myself. I had really said them. Last time he had visited ample pain onto my body. I remembered the bruises on my face and chest and back.  It had been almost a week before they had faded enough for me to cover them effectively with makeup. I remembered the pain in my crotch. It had been tender to my touch for days. The next few times that I had let Rick make love to me, he had been his normal, gentle self but it had hurt terribly. I had had to stifle my cries so that he wouldn't know that his rape had been so brutal that I had been left torn and bruised. A rape is never over when the act ends; the echos linger for a long time.

And, still, I had urged him to do more to me next time. This time. What had I been thinking?

When I had sent the INR message, I had unleashed hell and it was coming for me. Already I was repenting as sincerely as any sinner ever had, praying to a deaf god for forgiveness that would never be granted. Rick had no inkling of why I so richly deserved my terrible punishment, but that made no difference. He was going to do it regardless simply because I had asked him to do it. He loved me so much that he would do as I asked without hesitation. And I was pretty sure that he enjoyed doing it to me.

I lost track of time. Had it been one hour or two? Surely it had not been three hours yet. Curled on the hardwood floor, the pressure points on my shoulder and hip and ankle had blossomed into flowers of pain. With the advent of the pain, I began to think about my predicament a little more rationally. If I was powerless to stop what was coming, I should at least prepare for it.

How? How does a woman prepare to be beaten and raped? What is the dress code? Does one strip naked to make access easy? Or does she wear her dowdiest, most shapeless sweat suit in hopes of  dampening the enthusiasm of her rapist? Or does she go the other way? Should she wear her sexiest negligee and most whorish makeup in the hope that that the man will be overcome by his need, slake his lust as quickly and simply as possible and then fall asleep, leaving her mostly undamaged and feeling almost untouched?

Silly thoughts. I looked down at my jeans and teeshirt. Clothes didn't matter. Rick had undoubtedly already decided what he was going to do to me and he was going to it when he got home no matter what I wore. These clothes were as good as any other. If he tore my teeshirt to ribbons, it didn't matter; it was inexpensive. If the jeans got bloody, they could be soaked in cold water tomorrow and then washed clean.

Bloody? There had been no blood last time. But last time he had not broken my nose. I had the impression, based mostly on movies, that broken noses bled a lot. Was that true? Maybe I'd find out tonight. Or maybe not. I remembered asking Rick to surprise me in unpleasant ways. He was a smart man with a rich imagination. If he took my request literally then I don't know what I should expect. Only that I should expect a truly unpleasant experience.

If I cannot prepare myself for the unknown then all I can do is be brave and accept whatever comes, when it comes, as best I can.

I pulled myself off the floor and stood tall and brave. What a joke. I wasn't a brave woman. A brave woman doesn't tremble in terror. I was using every ounce of strength in my entire body just to keep standing upright. And Rick wasn't even in the house yet. For all I knew, he might stay away all evening. He might not come for me until the darkest hour of the night. Maybe he would go to a bar after work and spend half the night getting stinking drunk and then stumble home in an alcoholic rage, completely out of control, and beat me senseless.

Even if that's what I deserve, I'd never have to courage to endure that much punishment. Of course, courage no longer mattered. What I had set in motion would play out whether I was brave or cowardly, whether I fought back like a tiger or curled into a ball and took a beating without a whimper. A bad time was coming and there wasn't a damn thing that I could do about it.

But I had to be honest with myself. Rick wasn't going to beat me half to death because that wasn't his style and it wasn't his assignment. His assignment was to rape me. Rape me bad. Sooner or later, he was going to walk through that door, push me down and force himself upon me in whatever ways he could imagine, using as much violence as necessary to get his way. That was the deal. I had been clear and explicit about that.

My only option was to wait and for him to get here and then accept whatever he wanted to do to me.

Or was it? I had a daring thought. I could run. I could sneak out right now, before he got here. I could get in my car and start driving. To where? Anywhere. I could drive to a random motel on the edge of town and hide until my offer to be a rape victim expired at noon tomorrow. That would work. A few bucks for a room for the night and I would suffer nothing. No pain. No degradation. Nothing.

I looked at his email again. He says, “No mercy.” I say, “Fuck that.” I asked him – no, begged him – to call it off and how had he responded? He had threatened me all the more. Well, I'll show him what his “no mercy” means. It means that I'm out of here.

I practically ran down the stairs, paused to pull a pair of shoes on and grab my purse and raced out the front door.

INR, my ass, I thought as I slid behind the wheel of my car. I don't need raping. I need to get out of here, that's what I need.

I popped the shift of my lovely red Explorer into reverse and pulled out of my driveway. I was proud of myself for having enough clarity of thought to look carefully in both directions before backing into the road. A little thing, but in my state, every little thing done right was a big deal. No cars were coming down our quiet little street so I charged through our neighborhood full speed ahead. On the drive across town, a couple of other drivers glared at me when I cut a little too close to them, so maybe I wasn't being quite as careful as I thought. No surprise. I was more than a little distracted by rushes of pure terror and punctuated by moments of elation at the prospect of escaping unscathed. Twenty minutes later, I was pulling into the lot of the Valley Motor Inn on the highway out of town with no accidents and no new moving violations added to my already spotty driving record.

The middle-aged clerk looked as bored as lumber as he took my credit card imprint and handed me the key to Room 18. I guess single, beautiful, thirty-something women with no luggage checked into his motel every afternoon.

The motel had exterior entrances to the rooms and 18 was on the ground floor, giving me easy, anonymous access. My room was on the highway side but I parked in a space behind the building so that my car couldn't be seen from the road before walking back around the front to let myself into the room.

It was a pretty standard motel room, sparsely furnished but cleaner than I had expected.

I had no luggage to unpack so I dumped myself on the bed, grabbed the remote and clicked the TV to life, not caring about anything but the joy of being safe, pain-free, and unraped. Running like a coward and hiding in a hole might not be the most dignified thing to do but it left me with a hell of a lot more dignity than being forced to bend over a dining-room table and raped from behind.

Tomorrow, I would apologize to Rick for standing him up for our little rape date and cook him a special dinner. He liked spaghetti and that was easy enough. Cheap, too. Maybe, if he accepted my apology, I would let him make love to me. Nice, gentle, happy lovemaking. Not rape.

Before I could find a channel to watch, I heard a sharp rap on the door. I clicked the set off to hear better. “Yes?” I called out.

A low voice mumbled, “Manager. You forgot to sign your registration card.”

What a compulsive idiot. Who cared if I signed the damn card or not? I bounced off the bed, cracked the door open and stuck my hand out. “Give me the card,” I sighed through the crack.

Instead of having the card slip into my hand, the door slammed into me, throwing me back, and a man wearing a plastic clown mask burst into the room. I started to shriek until he held a huge shiny knife in front of my face and hissed in a low bass growl. He didn't articulate any intelligible words, he just hissed. I understood what he meant. He wanted me to shut up. And he had the knife that could make my silence permanent if he wanted. I clamped my mouth shut tight and forced myself to stay silent. He slammed the door closed behind his back and advanced on me. I stepped back, reflexively, but he shook his clown-covered head and waved the knife slowly, the point weaving toward my face. I stopped moving. As soon as he was close enough, he grabbed my arm and twisted me around so that I was facing away from him. As I was turning, he slipped the arm holding the knife around my neck so that the sharp side of the blade pressing lightly against the side of my throat.

I dared not move for fear of sliding against the razor-sharp edge and slicing my jugular vein or carotid artery or whatever vital blood vessel was nearest the surface of my skin in that particular spot.

He grabbed my right wrist and moved it to the small of my back, then did the same with my left. I dared not resist and left my wrists exactly where he put them. I heard chirps of a ratchet and felt cold steel caress each wrist in turn. He had cuffed my hands behind my back.

From this point forward, compliance was my only option.

Staying behind me, he raised the knife from my neck and held it in front of my face again, this time pointing it directly between my eyes with the edge facing down. He held it there for a long moment while he moved his left hand up to grab my throat and pull me back against his chest. I was terrified that he was going to stab me in the face. I dared not so much as squeak for fear that it would set him off. I wanted to stay alive. Oh, God, did I want to stay alive.

His breath whistled harshly though the plastic mask in my ear. My breath sounded even louder as my lungs bellowed in terror.

My eyes stayed fixated on the point of the knife as though it had hypnotized me instantly. I followed it's progress as he continued turning it and slowly lowered it until the tip was resting against the soft hollow of my neck just above the collar of my teeshirt. Though I could no longer see the tip itself, I continued to watch as much of the blade as I could. I felt a stab of pain as he nicked me and I whimpered involuntarily. He hissed a quick shush in my ear and continued to slid the point of the knife down to the lower extent of my throat. I could feel it slipping underneath the edge of the crew-neck collar and saw the white cotton tenting away from my skin. He pulled down slowly, applying more and more force until the collar was digging into my neck at the sides and stretched almost to my cleavage against the razor-sharp blade. Suddenly the fabric parted and slit across the blade. Once the blade started the cut the shirt, the man pulled it slowly downward, first revealing my breasts encased in bra cups, then past my waist, unveiling my midriff, until finally the lower hem was severed. The front of my teeshirt was left hanging open like the curtains on each side of my chest.

The man raised the knife again and used the tip of the blade to slide the remnants of cotton off my shoulders. I could feel the cold steel sliding along my skin and looked to assure myself that he was not cutting me. Yet.

When the ruined teeshirt was hanging from my wrists around the handcuffs at the small of my back, the man brought the knife back to the center of my chest to slide the point down my sternum into the cleavage between my breasts, the sharp edge still pointing away from me. When he severed the connection between the bra cups, my breasts sprang apart, falling away into their natural position, still loosely covered.

My first thought was that I could no longer wear either my teeshirt or my bra. When the man left., he would be leaving me topless. My second thought was that he wouldn't care if I were topless if he intended to kill me. And if I were dead, I wouldn't be worrying about being topless, either.

He used the point of the knife to push the bra straps off my shoulders. When the remains of the bra slipped down my back to join the teeshirt around my cuffed hands, my breasts were left naked to the cool air in the room. I looked down to see that my nipples were erect and the areolae puckered. From the cold? Fear? Arousal? I hated the thought that I might be aroused despite my humiliation and terror, but it was the truth. Sometimes a woman can hate her own biology.

He pulled his hand away from my neck. A second later, I heard a rip and then something covered my eyes. Duct tape. He had blindfolded me with a piece of duct tape. I felt him press the tape hard against my forehead, across my nose, and tight over my cheeks. I could see nothing but pure black.

Nothing happened for a long time. What was he doing? Closing curtains? No. They were already closed. Searching through my purse? Maybe. Looking for something to steal? Probably. Looking at my naked tits? Almost certainly.

While I stood there with my tits on display, I thought about the man. Was it Rick? I prayed that it was only my husband but I didn't see how that could be possible. Rick had not come home before I'd left. If he did not leave early, and Rick seldom left before quitting time, then he would be at work for another couple of hours. And even if he had left early and had arrived shortly after I left, he would have found the house empty and would not know where to find me. That was the whole point of running and hiding in this random motel. This man, however, had burst through my door within a couple of minutes of my having checked in. Even if Rick had been looking for me, there had not been enough time for him to have found me. This man had come prepared with a knife, handcuffs, and duct tape. When would Rick have had time to assemble a rape kit?

Despite my prayers, I knew in the pit of my stomach that this man was a stranger. A violent sociopath who was as likely to murder me as not. Who was he? The manager of the motel? Probably not. The manager couldn't leave his desk for this long without someone noticing and coming to look for him. A friend of the manager? That was more likely. Maybe a friend had asked the manager to call him if a woman of a certain age checked into his motel alone. Or maybe he was just an anonymous sociopath who parked on streets near motels and watched for beautiful women arriving alone. It didn't matter. I was helpless in the hands of a violent stranger and did not doubt that he was going to rape me very soon.

I began to pray that he would get it up quickly, get it over with quickly, and get out without killing me. I believed with all my heart that failed rapists were more likely to kill their victims than successful ones, if just to keep the woman from reporting their impotence to others. If this man had trouble getting an erection, then he was going to blame me for not being sexy enough and kill me.

I wished that he'd free my hands so that I could help massage him erect. I was good at getting Rick erect. It was one of the few things that I did well in bed.

I flinched when I felt his hands slip into the waistband of my jeans. I sucked in my stomach so that he could more easily unbutton them. When the button let go, he unzipped them and pulled them roughly over my hips. When I felt them fall around my ankles, I stepped out of them, being careful not to lose my balance and fall over. I hated myself for being such a pathetic, eager, accommodating victim. But what choice did I have? I went further and raised my feet, one foot at a time, so that he could pull my socks off.

Standing, naked and blind, wearing only my panties, I wondered if he would pull them down or tear them from me.

I felt the tip of the knife slide across my stomach. He was going to cut them off. And cut them he did. The fabric pulled into my crotch and against my hips as he forced the blade through the material. There was a sudden release and I felt the soft flutter of shredded cotton against my thighs as the bits of material fell to the floor.

Now there was no barrier, physical or symbolic, standing between any part of my body and my rapist.

Hard hands fell on my shoulders pushed downwards. I understood what he wanted and dropped to my knees. I parted my lips and teeth to make it easier for him to push himself into my mouth. There was no end to the lengths that I was willing to go to satisfy him. I wanted to earn my life by giving him pleasure. But he did not want to enter my mouth. At least not right now. When I was on my knees, he went behind me – he must have squatted – and unlocked my handcuffs.

If I were going to make a break for it, this was the time. But I couldn't escape blind and I'd never get the tape off my face before he caught me and cut me to bloody ribbons. I waited passively with my unbound wrists still pressed to the small of my back to see what he wanted.

He grabbed my right wrist, moved my hand down to my side and pressed my fingers around my ankle. Then he did the same with my left hand and left ankle. It was a strain but I gripped both ankles as tightly as I could. I heard another ripping sound and then felt sticky, clammy duct tape against the back of my right hand. With a few clumsy twists, he bound my right hand to my right ankle. Then he ripped off another strip of tape and added it over top of the first, I could feel my fingers and ankle merging into a single, solid unit. Then he moved around and did the same with my other hand and ankle.

Holding the position was a strain, but the tape gave me no choice. It was already difficult to tolerate but I could tell that it was going to get a lot worse before long. I wondered if I would live long enough to feel the pain when it reached its zenith.

I felt a hand wind itself into the hair at the back of my head and begin to drag me across the carpet. This new pain was intense. It felt like he was going to pull my scalp off. I scrambled to crawl as best as I could manage with my hands taped to my ankles, but I felt like the skin was being scraped off my knees by the industrial-quality carpet.

At least I would be leaving some DNA evidence for the crime scene investigators. Of course, they would have an entire body's worth of my DNA in this room when they found my corpse. I wondered if my rapist would leave any of his own DNA inside me or if he would use a condom.

In my struggles I found that I could relieve some tiny, just noticeable amount of strain on my shoulders by spreading my knees and ankles wide apart. It made my crotch feel exposed but, at the moment, that was or less concern than relieving the tension in my joints.

When he finished dragging me across the room, he unwound his hand from my hair and left me alone for a minute. I heard a zip and rustle of fabric near my ear, then a creak of bedsprings in front of my face. Hands wrapped themselves in my hair again, this time one hand at each side of my head. My face was pulled forward toward him.

I knew that my face was at the level of his crotch so I was not surprised when I felt the smooth head of his cock against my lips. It was erect, thank God, so I stuck my tongue out and began licking and sucking like my life depended on it. My life did depend on it. As I drew the flesh into my mouth, I prayed that I was working with all my skill on Rick's cock and not some stranger's. As I tried to work my erotic magic on the man, I cursed myself for not giving my husband a lot more head. I had only had him in my mouth a handful of times, never for long and not more recently than five years ago. I wouldn't know the difference in size and feel between him and any random stranger. What kind of wife doesn't know the feel of her own husband's cock in her mouth?

I was going to die wishing that I had been a better wife to my husband. If I survived this and lived to be ninety years old, would I feel regret that I had not served my husband's needs better than any callous whore would have eagerly done for a few bucks? As I sucked some stranger, using all my meagre and rusty skill to excite him to climax and fill my mouth with his cum, I vowed that my husband would get a lot more head from me from now on. Never again would I be unable to recognize the feel of my own husband's cock in my mouth. I made that unholy vow to God with utmost sincerity.

As I worked, I heard him grunting quietly and felt him pulling on my hair and pumping harder into my mouth. When he hit the back of my throat, I gagged, but he ignored my distress and kept banging into me as deeply as he could. I tried to open my throat wide to admit his entire length without gagging but nothing helped. I struggled against my bonds but my hands remained uselessly taped to my ankles. I dared not relax my jaw for even a second lest I accidentally nick him with my teeth. My jaw was aching horribly when, after an eternity, he finally filled my mouth with his salty spunk. I was surprised how long it took. I always thought that a man squirted a couple of times and that was it, but he kept pulsing on and off for a long time. Even after the last pulse, he did not withdraw, but kept his cock in place as it slowly relaxed. I could feel even more cum dribbling across my tongue as his cock slowly retreated. In my estimation, only a portion of his semen was ejaculated in the first, biggest squirts. Most of it followed later. I was embarrassed by the amount that I was learning from this foul stranger rather than from ministering to my own sweet husband.

After a few minutes, he pushed my head away and, as soon as he was clear of my lips, he slapped a piece of duct tape across my mouth, sealing his juices inside for my gustatory pleasure. Spit his cum out? I couldn't even casually let it dribble down my chin from the corner of my lips. And there wasn't a hope in hell of rinsing out with a nice glass of cool water and then brushing my teeth. I had no choice but to swallow as vigorously as I could in a futile attempt to clear the taste of him from my mouth. It didn't work. He was all over in there. I would keep tasting him for as long as he kept me gagged.

He left me kneeling on the floor for a long, long time. I heard bedsprings creak and knew that he was lying down. The man had worked hard and now he needed a rest. Maybe he'd even take a nap. I prayed that he wouldn't fall into a deep sleep until he had released me from this position. The manner of my restraint had already become a source of relentless agony. My shoulders were aching from the constant pressure on them, my knees were on fire from being bent so sharply, and I was suffering a million needle stabs in my calves and feet from lack of circulation.

I eased myself onto my side and tried to straighten my legs as much as possible to restore the blood flow through my knees. It was like trying to touch my toes in high school gym class, but doing it when lying on rough carpeting. The exercise helped a little, but at the cost of straining my back. I could not get my knees completely straight and could not hold even this partially straight position for long.

I didn't think that I could survive an entire night of being bent like this. Blood clots would form in my veins at my knees, break away, and clog the vessels in my brain and heart.

I could hear my rapist breathing slowly and regularly a couple of feet away. He was enjoying unlimited comfort in the bed that I had already paid for with money that Rick had earned.

After some time, it seemed like hours, the bed creaked again. Heavy feet hit the floor by my head.

More pain was coming and the duct tape covering my mouth couldn't keep a soft whimper from escaping.

But, to my surprise, I heard the door to the room open and then close again. I strained to hear footsteps, but could distinguish no meaningful sounds apart from the cars rumbling down the highway. Unlike my husband, the stranger always walked silently, either because he was naturally light on his feet or because he wanted to surprise me. Should I hope that the evil sociopath had left or should I hope that he was still here? If he was still here, then he would undoubtedly hurt me again in terrible ways before long. But if he had sated himself and left for good, then I was doomed to spend at least twelve hours in agony with my hands taped to my ankles until a maid or manager came to find out if I had left without checking out. Even if he was a sociopath, if he was finished with me, surely he could have shown a sliver of mercy and left me restrained, equally helpless but in a less painful, less humiliating position. Hadn't I given him a good enough blow job? I'd done my best. I must have pleased him. He had come copiously in my mouth. I could still taste his stale spunk. Didn't I deserve a reward for my efforts?

Without warning, heavy hands grabbed me and rolled me onto my back. I was startled because I was sure that he had left the room. I would have screamed if my mouth had not been taped shut.

A strong arm slipped behind my knees and another one under my shoulders. I was hoisted off the floor and dropped on the bed.

I knew this couldn't be Rick. I'm not a large woman, I'm definitely not fat, but I still weigh more than a hundred and twenty pounds. Rick spends his days sitting at a desk. He'd never be able to lift me off the floor when I'm trussed up like a side of beef. This man must be some kind of body builder. A body builder who walked like a cat.

Lying on my back on the bed with my hands taped to my ankles, my knees automatically flopped open. It would have taken more energy than I had at my disposal to keep them closed and would have increased my pain to unbearable levels. Spread wide like this, I must have made a pretty sight for the man. He must have enjoyed the view because he didn't move for the longest time. I imagined him standing at the foot of the bed, staring at my naked, splayed cunt and felt myself blush. Isn't that a hell of a thing? My mouth was filled with his cum and I was still concerned about my modesty. I know that Rick would enjoy a view like this and I'm ashamed to say that, if he were in the room and I were not bound and blindfolded, I would have closed my legs to deprive him of that little bit of joy. I made a second unholy vow to God that if I were ever alone with Rick again, I'd be happy to turn around, spread my legs wide, bend over as far as I could, reach back, pull my cheeks apart and let him stare at my most intimate geography as much as he wanted. How could I have ever thought that my dear husband deserved anything less than everything that I could give to him?

I knew what was coming but I was still surprised when the bed creaked and tilted towards the foot, the far end sinking under the stranger's weight. Strong hands grabbed my knees and forced them even further apart to allow his heavy hips to slid down the insides of my thighs. I felt the weight of the man roll along my torso from crotch to clavicle until he was entirely supported by my pelvis, abdomen, and chest. Hot, moist breath filled my right ear as I felt his rigid cock pressing against my juicy cunt. Why was I so wet? I sure as hell wasn't welcoming this second horrible violation.

I was vaguely thankful for was that he was about to stab me in my cunt with his cock and not in my belly with his knife.

The penetration was harsh and quick followed by a long and painful pounding. My clit was crushed against my pubic bone, my crotch stretched and scraped. I tried to move in rhythm with him, not to stimulate him better, but to ease the force of his thrusts against me. My efforts were useless; with my hands fastened to my ankles, I couldn't move nearly far enough or fast enough to make any difference. When he finally came, his orgasm was silent but strong. So strong that I wondered if this was the same man who had come in my mouth only a couple of hours ago. I thought that a man would have trouble coming so hard a second time so soon after he had come the first time.

Then a truly horrible thought entered my mind. Maybe this was not the same man. Maybe the sound of the door opening had been rapist number one letting rapist number two into the room. Maybe both men walked equally silently. Maybe it was even worse than that. Maybe there were more that two silent men in the room. Maybe there were a dozen. Maybe I would spend the night being the guest of honor at a gang rape. This was more than I had bargained for. I had asked for a simple rape by my husband, not pulling a train of strangers all night long.

As the man rolled off me, I began to cry. Not the high-pitched whining caused by physical pain, but deep, heart-felt sobs of self-pity. I don't know how my tears escaped the duct tape that was plastered over my eyes but there must have been some tiny gaps because they kept rolling down the sides of my face until the hair at the back of my head was wet with salty water.

Crying was a terrible idea. My nose got all stuffed up and I couldn't breath through the tape covering my mouth. I almost suffocated trying to get enough air to blow my nose. My rapist made no move to rescue me. If I hadn't forced myself to stop crying and managed to blow enough snot across my chin to get the air that I so desperately needed, I would have died. What would the coroner's report say? “Stupid rape victim cried until she drowned in her own snot.” I concentrated on continuing to breath and blow snot out of my nose until I felt safe again.

It must have been a disgusting sight for my rapist but he didn't seem to care.

I stopped paying attention to him and lay on my back, immobile and suffering for a long time. What had he done while I was struggling to breathe? Did he spend that time dispassionately watching me fight to stay alive, not caring about the outcome? Or had he already fallen asleep and was ignorant of my distress? Or had he left the room? I hadn't been paying attention, but I had the impression that he had risen from the bed some time ago. It didn't seem like there was a man's weight pulling down on the mattress.

Once again I was surprised by a touch. This time it was not a rough, heavy hand, it was the cold, sharp edge of the knife lightly slipping over my body. I could not tell if it was cutting me or not but I froze, daring not even to twitch for fear that I would force myself against the finely-honed blade. It circled around and around my breasts. I didn't feel like I was being cut and I silently prayed that I was right because my breasts would look like raw hamburger if all those strokes were slicing through my skin. Surely it would hurt a lot more if he were cutting me. But, I knew that sometimes shallow cuts with a very sharp edge could feel numb for a while before the nerves woke up and began to fire.

The blade left my breasts and traveled down the length of my stomach, over my hip bone, and down the outside length of my thigh. After describing some kind of intricate pattern there, it continued past my knee and down my calf to where my hands were taped to my ankles. I felt the tip of the knife slip between the tape and my skin and began to cut – not my skin but the tape. It seemed to take a long time, but I finally felt the tape part along one edge of my hand. Then the real pain started. First, the tape was ripped violently from my hand and ankle. I don't know if any of my skin had been pulled off and was still stuck to the tape, but it felt like the back of my hand and my ankle had been flayed. Then, even worse, my knee slowly, involuntarily extended, pulling the big muscles in my thigh and calf taut from their cramped position and letting the blood flow again. The pain was agonizing; only the tape over my mouth kept me from screaming so loudly that I would have attracted the attention of the drivers in the cars on the highway.

And that was only the right leg; I suffered the same agonies all over again when he ripped the tape from my left hand and ankle. Any thought of using my sudden freedom to bolt from the room was laughable. I could barely move my legs and shoulders.

The issue of escape was moot. Within seconds, the man taped my ankles together. Immediately, he rolled me onto my stomach, roughly pulled my arms behind my back, and taped my wrists together.

That was how I spent the night: lying on my stomach, hands taped behind the small of my back and my legs taped together, blindfolded, my mouth gagged and awash with stale semen, and listening to my rapist snoring softly beside me. I tried to convince myself that my rapist's snores sounded exactly like my husband's. I almost succeeded.

I don't know if I dozed off or not but I was totally exhausted in the morning when I felt the man stirring beside me. Stirring and horny. He wasted no time slicing through the tape on my ankles, rolling me onto my back, forcing my thighs apart with his knees, and raping me again. He was fast and rough; even faster and rougher than the previous night. I hoped that he was taking a quickie for the road and not using me one last time before slicing my throat.

When he had finished taking his pleasure with me, he grabbed me by the hair and dragged me off the bed. Holding my head at waist level, he pulled me across the room. With my feet free, I could scramble across the floor, making sure that the rest of me followed my head. When I felt tile underneath my feet, I realized that he was taking me into the bathroom. He pulled me backward until I tripped and fell, ass first, onto the toilet seat. I hadn't drunk anything in more than twenty-six hours and was thirsty as a camel, but I still had to pee bad. To hell with modesty. I peed even though he was probably still in the bathroom watching me. It was the first and last time that I ever peed in front of a man. At least I think I peed in front of him. Because I was still blindfolded, I don't know if he was actually there or not.

With my hands taped behind my back, I couldn't wipe myself dry but there was nothing that I could do about that, either. Today, chaffing was the least of my worries.

I waited, too tired and sore to try to guess what he would do next. After a short time, he subjected me to the most cruel part of the entire experience. Grabbing me by his favorite handle, my hair, he pulled me off the toilet, bent me backwards over the sink until my head was forced against the sink faucets and began wrapping duct tape around and around my head and the spout. He kept wrapping and wrapping, fastening my head, face up, firmly to the hard, immoveable iron pipe. Every so often he would stop, tear the tape off, and start wrapping again. He must have used the entire roll. The only part of my head that was left sticking out of the layers of tape was my nose and the top of my scalp.

My position was excruciating. My back was bowed over the sharp edge of the narrow strip of counter in front of the sink. The corner was cutting into my upper arms. My legs were in a terribly awkward position and straining to take as much weight off my back as possible. My neck was stretched out and I feared that if my legs gave way, the weight of my sagging body would break my vertebrae, leaving me dead or paralyzed.

After he was finished, the bastard took the opportunity to play with my tits for a seemingly endless amount of time. He massaged them, he tweaked my nipples, he caressed their curves, he bounced them back and forth. He must have spent ten minutes playing with them, ignoring that I suffered the agonies of hell during every second.

Then, when he tired of that, he pulled my legs apart, straining them even more, and spent another few minutes playing with my cunt, pulling at my outer lips, stretching the inner ones, poking my clit, probing around inside with his fingers. By the time he finished, he must have known my nether geography better than my gynaecologist. Certainly he knew it better than my husband. He was a curious bastard and I was terrified that he was sizing me up for some hideous mutilation.

I made my third unholy vow to God during this torture. I vowed that, if I survived this day with my parts intact, I would let my husband play with my tits and cunt any time he wanted for as long as he wanted. There was no way that Rick deserved to receive anything less than this man was taking from me.

I felt his knife again, but he didn't use it to carve my womanhood into ribbons of bloody flesh; he slipped it between my wrists and cut through the tape that bound them together behind my back. He only cut only the side furthest from my back, but I could pull my wrists away from the tape if I wanted. If I dared. What was he planning next? How would he bind me now that he had my head taped to the bathroom faucet? Would he tape my hands to some other part of the plumbing? All I could do was wait and see, fearful that if I moved, I would displease him and feel his wrath in the form of a knife cutting my throat.

Suddenly I was seized with terror because I saw the logic behind this bondage. My head was bent back, exposing my throat. My throat was fixed directly over top of the sink. He could drape a small, improvised plastic tarp over my head and neck to catch any spray and then slip the knife under and slit my throat with a single stroke. I would bleed out in a minute, every drop of my blood swirling down the drain. When he had bled me dry, he could carry my white corpse out to his car wrapped in a sheet without spilling a single incriminating drop. Though everyone would know that I had stayed in this room overnight, there wouldn't be a speck of evidence that I had been killed here. I had paid for the room in advance. If he drove away in my car and disposed of my body elsewhere, the police would assume that I had been running away from my husband and had stopped here overnight before driving off to parts unknown and beginning a new life under a new name.

Rick would spend the rest of his life wondering what had happened to me.

With a furious surge of desperation, I ripped my hands away from the tape and began scrabbling at the wrappings that held my head in place. I pried my fingers under the edges of the tape and pulled at them, this way and that, but couldn't loosen it. Giving up and thinking for a minute, I figured out that I had to find the end of the tape and unwind it. I wasted another few minutes scrabbling around trying to catch the end of the tape and failing. I told myself to calm down. I had to solve this problem methodically. Trying to ignore the pain in my back and the strain on my legs, I began following the edges of the tape. The outermost piece would be distinguished by having two edges that I could feel; the lower layer would have some if its edges covered by the outermost layer.

By the time I found the end of the tape, my legs were quivering from the strain. I could not hold myself up much longer; death by broken neck was looming large in my mind. I wanted to bawl my eyes out, but dared not, remembering that, as long as my mouth was covered, a stuffed-up nose would kill me more certainly than anything else.

I unwound and unwound the tape. Every time I came to the end of a piece, I had to discard it and  search anew for the end of the next piece. As best as I could tell by feel, the pieces seemed to be about five feet long. I must have unwound more than a dozen pieces before I got to the final layer.

Then the fun really began. The tape was stuck tight to my hair and skin. I was sure that I was leaving my scalp half bald as I frantically jerked the tape free, certain that I was pulling of huge chunks of skin from my face as I ignored the pain and yanked at it. I did it because I had no time left for finesse; I would be better off scarred for life than dead for eternity. The sociopath could return at any time and finish me off. I didn't know why he had been gone for as long as he had – maybe he was having trouble finding a suitable plastic bag to catch the blood spray – but I was sure that he was going to come back and kill me at any second. Why else would he have left me in such a convenient position for a throat cutting? And even if he didn't come back in time, my legs were giving out. They were quivering violently from exhaustion. If they collapsed before I freed my head, the weight of my body would surely break my neck. If the break did not kill me outright, it would leave me quadriplegic, which, in my mind, would be even worse.

When I finally ripped the last bit of tape from the faucet spout, freeing myself, I collapsed to the floor in utter exhaustion. But I forced myself to move; I dared not linger for even a second. I peeled the tape from my eyes, taking both eyebrows with it, and squealed behind the gag that was still covering my mouth. After being blindfolded for more than twelve hours, my eyes were hypersensitive to light. The bastard had left every light in the bathroom shining. Squinting against the pain, I pulled the last bit of tape from my mouth and took the first really deep breath that I had been permitted all night.

My mouth was dry and scummy with stale spunk but that was the least of my worries. As soon as I could see basic shapes, I looked around to see if the man was still in the bathroom with me, enjoying watching me struggle to free myself, knowing that he could restrain me again when he wished. But he was not there. I was alone in the little room.

I crawled over to the bathroom door and locked it. I was under no illusion that the door would hold against a serious battering, but that would make a lot of noise and noise in a place with walls as thin as this motel room would be my salvation. Surely my attacker would be wiser than to try to smash through the door. Until now, he had been as silent as a ghost. He had spoken once from outside, claiming to be the manager. Since then, he had not said another word; not a single word during an entire night of abusing me physically, sexually, and psychologically. And he had kept me equally silent during all that time with the gag. He was a monster, but a canny, careful monster, not a raging out-of-control monster.

When I could see properly, I looked around the bathroom again. It was littered with piles of duct tape. Great clumps of my lovely red hair were stuck to it. I expected to see bloody hunks of skin as well, but saw nothing like that.

Peering fearfully into the mirror, I saw my face looking back. It was covered with livid red splotches but no actual blood. My eyebrows were mostly gone, but I seemed to still have a full head of wildly-tangled red hair. I touched my cheeks. They felt sticky; the tape had left half of its adhesive stuck to my skin.

I tried to wash the adhesive off, but it was impervious to water. I shouldn't have been surprised. The tape had been designed to repair ducts. To clean my face, I would have to scrape it off. I would worry about that later.

I rinsed the scum out of my mouth and drank copious handfuls of water but it didn't help much. My mouth still felt foul. I wouldn't feel right until I could brush my teeth. Fuck. Who was I kidding? There was no way that a tooth brushing or a douching or anything else was going to make me feel right; not now and maybe not ever. Not only had a stranger deposited his cum in my mouth and cunt, he had put the memory of his filthy cock in my mind. However much I washed my body, there was no way to wash my mind. I would never again be clean of him again.

I began to cry. This time, with my mouth clear, I could let myself cry for as long as I wanted.

How stupid had I been to get myself into this position?

And I wasn't in the clear  yet. I was still trapped in the bathroom. Was the rapist waiting in the motel room, ready to beat me into submission as soon as I came out, to slap his handcuffs back on me and spend another night raping me with casual abandon? Did I dare open the door and find out if he was there? Did I dare not open the door?

I grabbed the door knob, turned off the lights, and crouched low on exhausted legs before opening the door a crack. My logic was that, if he tried to stab me in the dark, he would do it at chest level and the knife would pass over my head; and if he tried to rush the door, I could tackle his knees and trip him. It was a slim chance, but it was my only chance and I had to take it, come hell or high water. My logic was good, but unnecessary. There was no man waiting outside; or anywhere else that I could see. The room looked empty.

I crept out and checked the closet, looked under the bed, and peered around the furniture. I found no trace of the man anywhere. The only evidence that anything untoward had happened here was the piles of duct tape in the bathroom and the teeshirt, bra, and panties piled next to my jeans, all sliced up.

I checked my purse. My wallet was still there with my money and credit cards inside. My rapist was not a thief. As well, my car keys, house keys, and the motel room key were in the purse. I checked the motel room door. It was locked from the inside.

I looked at the phone. A woman who had been raped – really raped like I had – was supposed to call the police and report it. They would interview me; collect evidence – fingerprints, fibers, semen samples, photograph bruised and torn intimate parts – and then interview witnesses, including the manager of the motel, the other guests, and people in the buildings across the street. And when they had completed their investigation, what would happen? My marriage would be over. I didn't think that Rick was the man who had raped me last night, but if he was, then he would be arrested. I would swear that I had consented, that we were just playing a game, and Rick would be tried and convicted anyway. The evidence would show that I had been damaged by real violence, not playacting. The evidence would contradict my testimony that we had engaged in consensual sex and juries loved hard evidence. Even if I could convince the police not to arrest Rick, he would never trust me again. How could he trust a woman who had asked him to do something and then reported him to the police for doing exactly what she had asked.

On the other hand, if a stranger had raped me – the more likely scenario – then Rick would leave me. We both know that he was supposed to be the one who raped me. Yet I had gone out of my way to ensure that I would be available to some stranger instead. I had run from our home, picked a random hotel, and opened my door to a strange man in order to get myself raped. A simple sexual affair would be enough to end most marriages. But this? This was far worse than having a simple affair. How could he ever believe that I had asked him to rape me and then deliberately avoided him and 'accidentally' made myself vulnerable to someone else. As soon as he heard the facts, he would have to conclude that I didn't think that he was man enough to do the job on me and had solicited another man to replace him. How could he keep living with me after a kick in the balls like that?

If I called the police, I was completely and utterly screwed by every possible outcome. My only choice was to get the hell out of here now and never, ever tell anyone what had happened to me last night.

Instead of calling the police, I collected the evidence myself. That was the ultimate degradation: picking up every scrap of duct tape and every bit of ruined clothing and stuffing them into the plastic dry-cleaning bag that I retrieved from the closet. Of all the things that I had done – sending the email asking to be raped, acquiescing to every demand of my rapist, giving him every bit of pleasure that I could – cleaning up the motel room after him was the act that finally made me the accomplice in my own rape.

The clock beside the bed said that it was nine-thirty. The sun peeking around the curtains confirmed that it was midmorning. I still had to endure two and a half hours until noon when my request to be raped would expire. If Rick could find me, he could still rape me half to death.

I had no luggage to pack. My last task was to get dressed, get into my car and drive home. I slipped my jeans, socks and shoes on and then sat on the edge of the bed and wondered how I was going to make it out to the car and then drive all the way across town when I was naked from the waist up. I would be reported by the first person with a cell phone that I encountered. I would be arrested by the first cop who saw me.

There was only one thing to do. I retrieved my teeshirt from my bag of evidence, slipped it on backwards and tucked it into my jeans to hold it in place. My back was completely exposed but my tits were covered. Covered tits was the only thing that counts in this fucked-up civilization. Everybody would freak if a woman showed her tits in public, but, as long as they were covered by a layer of stretchy fabric, they could bounce like basketballs in a gym bag when she walked and there would be no problem. Men would notice, that was for sure, but the law didn't care.

I checked that the coast was clear – no sign of my rapist or any other voyeurs on this side of the building – and then casually sauntered around to my car carrying the plastic bag of evidence with me. Thankfully, the other side of the building was equally deserted and I made it to the car without attracting any undue attention.

When I got home, I entered, fearful that Rick would be waiting to finish the task that I had assigned to him. Thankfully, the house was quiet and empty. I cleaned myself up as best as I could, taking a long shower and brushing my teeth twice, and then spent the afternoon sitting on the couch in shock, staring at the television set but seeing and hearing nothing. I kept going over and over the events of the past twenty-four hours in my mind. I knew that I had put myself into a bad position, but the more I thought about the ramifications of what had happened, the more I realized how bad it really was.

I had probably been raped by a stranger. If that were true, then he would have gone through my purse before he left. He would know my name and address. Worse, he had to know that I had not called the police because there would be no report in the newspaper or on television. He would not hear of any manhunt. If he drove by the motel he would see that the room was not sealed; that there was no crime scene tape or police investigators collecting evidence. He may have even parked somewhere up the street and waited all day to see if the police ever came.

He would know that I had not called the police and that meant that he could rape me again any time he wanted. He could come to my house as often as he liked and rape me any way he wanted, and be confident that I would never report him.

I had made myself a perfect sex toy for a sociopath.

How could I ever stay in this house alone again?

Yet I couldn't tell Rick that we had to move away. I couldn't change my name or phone number without giving him a damn good reason. The truth would destroy him, yet any believable lie that I could invent would lead directly to a police investigation. As a citizen with a spotless record, Rick believed that the police were on his side. He would seek police assistance with any kind of crime or threat no matter how hard I tried to convince him otherwise.

All I could do was get on with my life, keep looking over my shoulder, and, if my sociopath showed up, give him whatever he wanted, any way he wanted it, and hope that he would let me live for another day. And wait for yet another raping.

I desperately hoped, against all evidence to the contrary, that I had been raped by my husband. But I could never confirm that by asking him directly. If he had not been my rapist, then the question alone would tell him that I had been raped by someone else and our lives would come crashing down.

That evening, Rick arrived home from work at the usual time, greeted me pleasantly, and asked about my day. On the one hand, he gave no hint that he had spent the previous night raping and torturing me. On the other hand, he gave no hint that he had come home last night and found me missing; and that I had been missing for twenty-four hours. Surely if he had not been my rapist, he would ask where I had gone. Unless he guessed the truth, that I had fled to avoid being raped by him. Either he had raped me or he had accepted that I had escaped being raped. Either one would suit me.

For days, I waited for him to mention our game – to make some comment, however indirect, that would indicate whether he had been the one who had done me or not – but he never said a single thing that was out of place, never gave me the least hint one way or the other. I had to accept that because it was implied by my rules. I had been crystal clear that the INR condition only lasted until noon the following day and then our marriage would resume as though nothing had happened. Rick was frustratingly good at pretending that nothing had happened.

I managed to keep Rick from seeing my bruises for the next couple of weeks. I wore full makeup on my face every day and made love to him in the dark every night. It wasn't all that hard to keep him from seeing my body in the light when I was making sure that he got enough loving in the dark to keep him from asking too many questions. I kept my first and third unholy vows religiously. Until I was fully healed, I suffered less when I gave him blow jobs than when I let him push into my crotch. And, I was happy to let him play with my tits to his hearts content; they had not been bruised or injured during my night of horror. He does love to play with my tits. A couple of weeks later, when my skin cleared, I turned on the lights and kept my second one as well. I can't believe how long he likes to sit and stare at me naked.

Never before has Rick seemed as happily in our marriage as during these last couple of months.

Every day I pray that it was Rick who raped me that night, but, as hard as I try, I can't make myself believe  it. How could he have found me so quickly after I checked into the motel? And the man who spent the night with me had been so strong, so cunning, so light on his feet. How could he have been my gentle, impractical, lumbering, naive husband.

I'm now plenty familiar with the feeling of Rick's cock in my mouth. It seems similar to the sociopath's, but I can't tell for sure. I do know from experience that a cock feels a lot different when I'm gently sucking and teasing it with my tongue and lips than when it's being rammed against the back of my throat with unrestrained violence. Rick's spunk seems to taste the same, but don't all men's spunk taste about the same?

The only thing that I know for certain is that I'm going to have to ask Rick to rape me again. I've got no choice but to send him an INR message sometime within the next couple of months. You see, if I never invite him to rape me again, then he'll wonder if he did something wrong the last time. I can't tell him that he raped me so well that I don't need it any more because it probably wasn't him that committed the rape. On the other hand, I can't let him think that my need to be raped was satisfied by avoiding him. He'd have to wonder how that happened. The only way that he won't get suspicious is if I ask him to do me again. This time when I send him an INR message, I'll have to arrange for him to rape me outside the home so that he thinks that it's normal for me to leave the house after I declare open season on myself. And I'll have to give him some clue, either in the message or at home so that he'll know where to go to catch me. That way, when he remembers the time that he couldn't find me, he'll simply conclude that he failed to understand whatever clues I must have left for him.

Of course, my next rape may not be done by Rick. If the sociopath is watching me, he will come for me one day while Rick is at work.

No matter who rapes me next, it's going to be horrible because it's not a game any more. If it's the sociopath, he's going to be brutal because it's in his nature. If it's Rick, he's going to think that I need something extra bad to make up for missing my last rape. I recall suggesting a beer bottle up the ass. Rick's going to act on that suggestion sooner or later. My sphincter twitches in anticipation of the pain every time I see a beer bottle in Rick's hand. They're damn big. I don't think I could take one up my ass without getting torn open no matter how much lube he uses. I think I'll spend a couple of weeks stretching myself before I send the message. That's another painful humiliation to look forward to.

There's one silver lining in this whole mess, though. I haven't thought fondly about Lester since I sent Rick my last INR message. I have other things to think about now. That's what I wanted in the first place, to be relieved of the burden of my ongoing mental infidelity. I just never though that it would be replaced by such dark terrors as those that now occupy my thoughts and dreams, day and night.

I certainly got what I wished for.

Pity me.