“Maybe it’s a mid-life crisis?”
Tam’s suggestion wasn’t without substance. Something inside Caroline had changed. Or maybe nothing had changed and that was the problem. Could she have been suppressing these desires for years, concealing them in order to maintain the perfect marriage, or at least the perfect image of a marriage? Tam was her closest friend, and she could trust her with such intimate grievances. But this was more than a grievance. Caroline was bored, depressingly so, and she couldn’t live that way for the rest of her life. She was considering divorce, but had no real reason for such radical action.
“Maybe I’ve just flipped,” she muttered into her coffee cup. “Why would I want to leave Lawrence? He’s a fantastic husband. Really…fantastic. But…”
“But not exciting.” Tam finished Caroline’s sentence for her as she so often did.
“No, not exciting. Very safe. When I was younger—ah,” Caroline smiled sadly at the memory. Now almost forty she felt that her younger self had never even existed. “When I was younger I had a lover who spanked me. It was his thing. And mine too, I suppose. I enjoyed it. Then I had another who liked sex in public places. I enjoyed that as well. It was dangerous and risky. It was…”
“Exciting!” Tam concluded. “Then you fell in love. Lawrence is as you say, fantastic, but from what you’ve told me he likes to feel secure. He has a very defined comfort zone. Sex in public places and slapping your ass are forms of love that are never going to venture into that zone. It’s a dead zone. You’re never going to feel content with your sex life with Lawrence.”
“So I should leave?”
Tam sipped her coffee. “I don’t know, Caroline,” she admitted. “It’s not my place to say.”
Lawrence fretted. He often fretted because he was a worrier and that’s what worriers did, but today he had a real problem on his mind. Caroline had gone out for lunch with her friend Tam. That was never a good thing. It meant something was troubling Caroline, something she couldn’t talk to him about. He hated being left in the dark when it came to his wife’s issues. He wanted to be able to help her with anything, but if she didn’t tell him….
Really, she didn’t need to. Something was different. She didn’t seem to want him to cuddle her or kiss her, or even touch her anymore. Last night in bed she had refused sex and claimed a headache. She’d never done that before, but from reading the odd article in the various women’s magazines left scattered around the house, he knew this was a bad sign. Women who blamed headaches for not wanting sex were lying. Caroline hadn’t had a headache. She just hadn’t wanted his affection.
So what was wrong? Lawrence wracked his brain. Had Caroline gone off sex altogether? He doubted this. She had always been a liberated woman with a flirtatious aura about her. And besides, losing interest in sex wouldn’t be something she’d hide from him. She’d just tell him straight. “Lawrence,” she’d say bluntly, “I’m really not in the mood for sex. Play with yourself for tonight, would you dear?” Lawrence would be embarrassed by this candor, but that’s what he loved about her. She wouldn’t skirt around the subject. No. It was something else. But what?
Opening up a search engine on his computer, he surfed the web for possible solutions. A number of past forum posts, presumably made by men in a similar position to Lawrence, indicated a potential lack of spice in their relationship. Lawrence pondered this. His relationship with Caroline had never really had spice. He would stroke her, kiss her tenderly, make love to her. He thought that’s what women wanted. A gentle, romantic sexual experience. Scrolling down the message board he discovered, in fact, that what many women wanted was domination. Lawrence had never been very dominating. Did Caroline want to be whipped brutally? He could never do that. Or tied up and verbally abused? It just wasn’t in his nature.
Wandering into the kitchen to escape the accusing glare of the computer screen which seemed to mock his unadventurous attitude, he hunted through the cupboards for a suitable snack to divert his attention. Caroline had purchased the ingredients for a cake: flour, sugar, almonds, ginger root…. Ginger root. Somewhere on the forum he’d been perusing he’d seen a post….
Ignoring his appetite, he returned to his computer and scrutinized the screen. This, he thought more enthusiastically now, might just be achievable.
Caroline returned home to a tidy house. Unusually tidy. Not that the home she shared with Lawrence was often unkempt, but he did have a habit of procrastinating when he’d promised her he’d take care of the chores. Somehow, the cleanliness of her home dulled her mood even further. The atmosphere was sterile. She felt as if she was walking on eggshells though there had been no arguments. Her conversation with Tam had convinced her she needed to talk to Lawrence. She wasn’t happy and telling her husband this, while awkward and upsetting, was imperative.
On hearing Caroline’s return, Lawrence put away the duster he had been polishing the surfaces with. He had spent the majority of the afternoon cleaning. He wasn’t sure why. He’d needed some activity to distract him from his nerves, which were somersaulting in his stomach now that his wife was home. With a deep breath he strode into the hall to greet her.
“Now then,” he addressed her with a firmness that startled Caroline. “You’ve been gone longer than I expected. I want you to take off your clothes, please, and go up to the bedroom. I have a surprise for you.”
Caroline’s eyes were wide, her brows raised. Who was this man? In all their seventeen years of marriage, Lawrence had never spoken with such authority. And what was all this business about taking off her clothes…? It was only late afternoon for goodness sake!
“What…?” Caroline began, but Lawrence didn’t want to hear it. He moved closer to her and placed an index finger over her lips. Speaking softly, with his mouth edging ever closer to hers, he instructed her to do as she was told. In his head, he wanted desperately to go in for the kiss, to lock mouths with the woman he loved so deeply, but instead he brushed passed her and disappeared into the kitchen. Caroline ascended the stairs to the sounds of a knife blade colliding with the chopping board. What Lawrence was up to, she had no idea.
Five minutes later, with one hand behind his back, Lawrence appeared in the bedroom. He studied his beautiful wife, her creamy skin, her small breasts. She was perched on the edge of the mattress, clearly bemused and intrigued. He joined her there to finally satisfy his desire to kiss her. Slowly, tenderly, he moved his lips down to peck at her neck, his own arousal soaring. But it was too soon. He had plans.
Backing away, he told Caroline—quietly, but with a force that was usually lacking—to kneel on the bed.
“I want your ass in the air,” he commanded, “and your legs apart. As wide as you can get them.”
Caroline complied. How could this change have come about? Did he have a sixth sense? What was he going to do to her? Questions flooded her head.
With the aid of only cold water, which Lawrence had filled a bowl with, he inserted a finger into Caroline’s awaiting anus. She gasped at the intrusion. How long had it been since someone had ventured there? He slid the finger slowly in and out of her hole, in perfect rhythm with his wife’s clenching and relaxing. Then he withdrew, produced the ginger root—now carved into what the website had described, complete with images, as a butt plug shape—from behind his back and carefully eased it into Caroline’s ring. A small groan escaped her lips as the ginger was maneuvered into place. It was much larger than Lawrence’s finger and, while she was easily able to accommodate this new size, the suddenness of the introduction came as a shock to her. Besides, she wasn’t quite sure what was being introduced. A sex toy, perhaps? Some kind of vegetable?
Lawrence had stepped back and was admiring his work. “You have ginger up your ass,” he explained before leaving the room momentarily to wash his hands. On his return, with Caroline still kneeling obediently on the bed, he continued the lesson.
“Today I realized, probably, that you were wishing I would be more…exploratory when it came to our intimacy. This is called figging. The effects take a few minutes to kick in, but when they do you should, I hope, enjoy them. I know I will.”
Caroline was shocked. She had heard of figging, but had never known anyone who had tried it. For a few seconds longer she felt nothing, bar the mere presence of the ginger root in her body, but then it happened. Building slowly, like a topical ointment, the warmth of the ginger moisture gradually intensified until it swathed her entire lower region with a delightful heat. She moaned audibly as the burning sensation swept over her. It stung, but not unpleasantly. It was a delicious pain, an exciting pain. And when Lawrence pinched her buttocks, nipping them hard between his thumbs and forefingers, it was all she could do not to scream with a mixture of welcome discomfort and overwhelming ecstasy.
“This feeling will last about fifteen minutes,” he told her, moving around to the head of the bed to lay eyes on his wife’s beautiful face. She shuddered as she looked up at him, her Lawrence. How could she ever have thought of leaving him? “You can lay down if you’re careful.”
Caroline did as directed, and Lawrence lovingly brushed the hair from her face. Then they were one, clinging to each other, touching, caressing…. He unfastened his jeans and with an eagerness that had been absent for months, she took his cock inside her. They fucked rampantly and climaxed with power. This was different, Caroline thought. This was new. This was…breathtaking. With the fire of both lust and ginger burning brightly within her, Caroline closed her eyes and embraced the man she adored.
It was after ten when the couple had calmed themselves enough to settle down for the evening in the lounge. The ginger had long since been removed, but with her rim still tingling slightly, Caroline joined Lawrence on the sofa with two cups and a teapot. He smiled as she took his hand.
“It’s not something I’ve ever done before,” he told her. “I was worried how you’d react.”
“That’s what made it wonderful,” Caroline assured him.
He poured the tea and she retrieved a tin from the coffee table. For a second she let her eyelids drop, reminiscing upon the pleasant heat that had consumed her only a few hours ago. With a nudge that snapped Caroline out of her reverie, Lawrence handed her a cup of steaming hot tea. She placed it on the coffee table as she cut each of them a slice of cake. Freshly baked. Ginger, of course.