The Man in the Middle

by Ashley B. D. Zacharias

Mark Oakfeld was surprised to receive an email from his ex-wife. Then he read the subject line – “It's been five years...” – and remembered what he had said when he last spoke to her. A fine spring day was ruined for him.

His miserable marriage to Marcia Rush had ended five years ago to this day. He had been twenty when he met her, twenty-one when she bullied him into proposing – “You are going to marry me, aren't you? You make love to me every chance you get. Don't you like me?” – and twenty-two when they got hitched. Tied the knot. Locked on the old ball and chain. Til-death-do-us-parted. She had been an adventuresome lover before the engagement – sex in the park at midnight, blow job in the car, doggie-style with a smile, whatever – but considerably less so after she had her diamond – “I don't think that would be very comfortable. Can't we just snuggle, dear?” She waved a major red flag two months before the wedding when she insisted that they become celibate – “Our wedding will be more special if we don't make love again until our wedding night.” – but he ignored his instincts and plowed ahead with the ceremony. On their honeymoon, she had said “No” more often than “Yes” – in ten days they had made love exactly four times – and that was the most intimate part of their three-year marriage. When the honeymoon was over, it was really over. He could count on his fingers the number of times that they made love between the end of the honeymoon and the end of their marriage. But the biggest surprise was that she had been the one who ended it. One evening, she quietly announced that she wanted to leave him and that she didn't want to talk about it because she wasn't going to change her mind. It quickly became clear that her phrasing was a euphemism. She did not intend to leave anything; she expected him to do all the leaving. She would keep the apartment, furniture, stereo, and wedding pictures. He would pack what clothes he could fit into a suitcase and get the hell out of her life.

He did exactly that. But to his dismay, she wouldn't stay the hell out of his.

After a month hiatus, she began insisting on seeing him at least twice a week for the next three months. She was clubbing, sleeping with whoever she could pick up, and telling him about it like he was her best girlfriend. By the end of summer, she was living with some guy and he was living in his office. She told him that her new significant other was ten years older than Mark and earned three times his salary. Like that was supposed to impress him. Mark was a graduate student living on a teaching assistant's stipend. Three times his salary was still a pretty moderate sum – considerably less than he was earning now as a college professor.

He didn't mind that she stopped talking to him on the day that she moved in with her new boyfriend. He was happy that some other sucker had taken her off his hands.

Now the bitch was back.

As promised.

As soon as their divorce was official, she had broken her silence and come to him, begging him to take her back. Her life was shit; the man that she was living with was a beast; the divorce was a mistake; she was sorry; she had learned her lesson; everything would be wonderful if only Mark would marry her again.

He had no intention of stepping back into the quicksand, but to stop the begging, he had told her that they needed some time to get their lives in order. Five years. He told her to get on with her life and he would get on with his and, in five years, they would see where they were at. If they were still interested in each other, they would talk about getting back together.

He had expected that five years would be long enough for her to move on and forget about him. His mistake.

Now, five years later, he was no longer a student. He had a good job teaching at a community college and was certain to be promoted and tenured within two years. More important, he was engaged to a fine woman and was planning to get married in August, children soon to follow. There was no way that he was going to give that up a nice, sane life to crawl back into Marcia's neurotic bed.

Yet here she was, emailing him after the five-year cooling-off period, expecting him to throw everything away and devote himself to making her life a bowl of cherries again. He should have expected it. Marcia loved wallowing in misery. She was never, ever going to find joy in life no matter what she was doing or who she was with. But she had no intention of dwelling in a lonely, private hell when there were so many other people that she could drag down into her pit to keep her company. And Mark's name was at the top of her guest list.

He should have simply deleted her email and moved on, but three things stayed his finger from the delete button. First, he was still bitter and angry with her. She had made his life a misery for most of his early twenties. Those should have been his best years and she had poisoned them irreparably. Second, he was curious about what she had done with her life since leaving him. He had to admit that Marcia was full of surprises. She was far more adventuresome than he or his new fiancee. Her neurotic narcissism could be wildly entertaining when she made an effort. Third, and most complicated, he wanted to see if there was some way that he could make her happy at last. He had good reason to hate her, but, somewhere deep in his heart, he still felt something for her. Pity? Affection? Love, even? Maybe the reason was more logical than that. Maybe, after spending those years of his life into trying to make her happy, he wanted to see some sign of success. Or maybe it was blunt egotism. Maybe he believed that his hard-earned Ph.D. in psychology should give him the tools that he could use to make her life better.

Or maybe he just saw her as vulnerable and wanted to experiment a little with another human being.

For whatever reason, he studied her email, straining to read between the lines, looking for some way to fix Marcia. Some way short of sacrificing his own life by dumping his fiancee and re-marrying the hell-hound bitch. He might be a bitter fool still half in love with the woman who had abused him and spurned him, but he was not self-destructive. Unlike Marcia.

Her email message was simple. She said that she had learned a lot about herself in the last five years. She was married to an insurance adjuster who had no imagination whatsoever. She had married a boring man because she wanted stability after her wild years, but now felt like she was suffocating. She had never really loved Frank and had mainly married him to punish herself for having slept around so much after her divorce. Now it was time for her self-imposed punishment to end. She hoped that he wasn't angry at her for taking up with other men. She was still in love with him and promised that things would be better this time. She would move to Madison to be near him if he would give her a second chance.

Mark saw a lot in Marcia's email. First, he saw that the entire email was about her and nothing else. Every single point that she made was about what she felt, what she wanted, and what she would do. Marcia was as self-centered as ever.

Second, he could see that she was freezing her new husband, Frank, out of bed just as surely as she had done to him years ago. Calling him “boring” and claiming that she “had never really loved him” could be nothing more than her justification for not sleeping with him.

Third, he saw new evidence that she was hiding a deep masochistic streak. She had hinted that she was a masochist during their marriage but he had never pursued it, in no small part because he didn't trust her. He always feared that the final act in a BDSM scene with Marcia would be her on the phone to 911 and him taken away in handcuffs to be charged with assault, forceable confinement, and rape. In this email, she was talking about punishing herself by deliberately marrying the wrong man. If that wasn't the epitome of true masochism, he couldn't imagine what was.

He did not reply until the next day. He wanted a night to sleep on his answer. And he felt no compunction about making her wait overnight for him. When they had been married, he had spent night after night waiting for her to give him what he wanted and had never felt a twinge of regret about it.

The next day, he sent her a brief email. All it said was “I'm thinking.” That would keep her on tenterhooks for another day or two.

His email did not lie. He was thinking. Hard. To be exact, he was furiously designing a psychological experiment. An ecologically-valid real-world experiment with Marcia and Frank as his unwitting subjects. An experiment that could never be submitted to any ethics committee for approval and could never be written up for publication in any journal.

But an experiment that would give him considerable satisfaction.

* * *

Frank Balm was not a happy man. He had not been happy since he had married Marcia in Las Vegas almost three years ago. Before they entered the Graceland Chapel of Love, Marcia had been an enthusiastic, though mercurial lover. As soon as she and he were wedded in eternal bliss, she had developed an unexpected enthusiasm for a platonic relationship. She did not bother claiming headaches or starting fights, she simply said that she was not interested. Night after night for almost a thousand nights she had not been interested.

He was under no illusion about the dynamic forces that maintained his marriage. He earned a good salary. She spent it. In return, she kept him company, presented a contented, stable face to the world, and kept his shirts pressed. His colleagues thought that he had a perfect marriage and that helped bolster his reputation as a stable, reliable, conservative professional. His professional appearance, in turn, helped keep him on track to earn a regular and substantial paycheck. Which Marcia spent on clothes and makeup so that she could keep looking like his contented wife.

But he was far from contented and he doubted that Marcia was any happier than him. He thought about leaving her almost daily.

That changed in a flash when he received an email from “Marcia19990613@hotmail.com”. In it, she told him that he was a terrific husband. Tonight, when he got home from work, she was going to express her appreciation in the most intimate and loving way she could. She was going to take him into the living room, sit him in his favorite chair, and give him the longest, sloppiest, most enthusiastic blow job that he could imagine. And when he came in her mouth, she was going to swallow every drop, revelling in the taste of him.

She really said that: “revelling in the taste of him.” Right there on the computer screen.

He almost creamed his shorts on the spot. He had to struggle to adjust his pants to accommodate his erection. He felt like a tree trunk had sprouted from his crotch.

He barely managed to read the last paragraph that asked that he use the special hotmail account that she had set up for their most personal correspondence. She wanted to keep it off their home computer.

He could do that much for her.

He spent the rest of the afternoon trying to crunch the numbers on the Miterland claim, but could not keep his mind off Marcia's promise. After a three year drought, there was a hard rain coming tonight.

* * *

Marcia checked her email for the dozenth time since yesterday. What was taking Mark so long? How much was there to think about? She had giving him a simple decision. Invite her back into his life or not. He just had to say that he wanted to try again and she'd leave Frank race back to him in an instant. And if he refused, well, then, she'd just have to convince him. And keep working to convince him until he broke down and admitted that, “Yes, I still want you!” It was what he wanted to say because she was sure that he still loved her, even if it was in some deep hidden place in his heart.

She had confidence in her powers of persuasion. And Mark was such a nice person, it wouldn't be that hard to persuade him.

It would be good for him to take her back. He would see that she was a different person now. When she had been his wife, she had not taken as good care of him as she should have. She knew that. He had been a student then, trying to get his dissertation written and looking for a teaching position somewhere. He had been under a lot of stress. She should not have complained so much about him not helping out with the housework. They had had a small apartment. It only took her fifteen minutes to vacuum the whole thing. And she could watch TV while she sorted the laundry and ironed her clothes. She shouldn't have bothered him about all that. She understood now. If he would take her back, she wouldn't complain any more, not even if she had to do all the housework by herself.

She would make him understand that he didn't need to think about anything. He just had to say that he wanted her and she would make everything happen.

She was a beautiful woman. And she was a much better cook now. That was the way to a man's heart, right? Through his stomach? She had been an adequate cook when they were married, but she was practically a gourmet chef now. She had been taking cooking courses for years. If she could cook even one meal for him, he would marry her immediately.

What was for him not to want?

Success! Her computer finally flashed that it had received an email from Mark. This would be the one that invited her back. She felt it in her heart.

But her face fell when she read it. What the hell was this? Mark wasn't this kind of man! He couldn't have done what his email said! She read it again, carefully, but the words didn't change. The email said that he was still thinking about taking her back into his life, but he needed some evidence that she had changed as much as she claimed. Before he would consider re-marrying her, he needed proof that she could treat a husband properly. So he had arranged a test for her. He had taken the liberty of sending her husband, Frank, an email in her name. Frank thought that she had promised to take him into their living room as soon as he came home from work tonight, sit him down, and give him an enthusiastic, world-class blow job. In her email, she had promised her husband that she would finish by swallowing every drop. Then Mark, the bastard, warned her that she had to do exactly what she had promised in her email – the email that she had not written but that Frank had received from her. Otherwise three things would happen. First, Mark would know that she was not willing to be a good wife, not even to her current husband. Second, Frank would be terribly disappointed and would start thinking about leaving her rather than waiting for her to leave him. And, third, if she didn't perform, Frank would receive an email apology from her tomorrow asking him to cancel all of her credit cards because she didn't deserve them any more.

She screamed at her computer. What in hell? She didn't swallow! She never swallowed! Never, ever!

Did Frank know that? Had she ever given him a blow job? She couldn't remember. Maybe back when they were first dating. In her “wild days” she had given a number of men blow jobs early in their relationships to keep them interested. But she couldn't remember if Frank had been one of those men.

But one thing that she did know was that she never swallowed. Usually she had made the men wear a condom – unlubricated, of course – before putting her mouth on their organ, but that was not a hard and fast rule. She had given a few bareback blow jobs as special favors. But she never swallowed. That was a hard and fast rule. If the man was going ungloved then she always kept a kleenex at hand and discretely spit their seed into it after the act. She never swallowed.

Would Frank really cancel her credit cards? Could he? They were in her name. Didn't that mean that only she could cancel them? He wouldn't dare. But Mark might cancel them. Mark could call the credit card companies, claim to be her husband, claim that her purse had been stolen in a violent mugging, and that he needed to put an emergency halt on all her cards until she came out of the coma. Mark was a genius. He had a Ph.D. and was teaching at a college. He would figure out some way to make good on his threat and cancel her cards.

How would he know if she had given Frank a blow job or not? Maybe he hadn't even promised Frank that he would get one. Maybe Mark was just making up a story. Did she dare refuse to comply and risk the consequences?

Her hand was shaking with anger and fear when she dialled Frank's work number, but she kept her voice calm and light. “Hi, honey. I was just calling to see what time you were coming home for dinner tonight?”

“I'll be there at five o'clock, darling. I'll be right on time. You can be sure of that. I can hardly wait to get home.”

“Okay, dear. I'll see you then.”

She hung up the phone and sighed. Frank sounded like a man who had been promised a welcome-home blow job. He was practically panting on the phone.

Mark hadn't lied about that much, at least.

This wasn't right. It was like rape. Hell, it wasn't “like rape”, it was rape. She was being forced to perform a sexual act against her will. That is the definition of rape.

She thought about the credit cards in her purse and sighed again. She loved those credit cards. She finally admitted that she had no choice. She was going to be eating cock for dinner tonight.

If she was going to do this, then she was going to do it right. She would show Mark that she knew how to treat a man properly. She had time to get to Victoria's Secret before five.

But she wasn't going to swallow.

* * *

Mark sent Frank an email from Marcia19990613 asking him to tell her how much he had enjoyed last night.

An hour later, he received a long, rambling reply. Mark could imagine Frank's hands pounding the keys with wild abandon as he told Marcia how much it thrilled him to get sucked off by a beautiful woman kneeling before him wearing nothing but scarlet lingerie. And seeing her wash down his cum with a glass of chianti as though it were fine caviar was a thrill that he would never forget.

Mark smiled. Frank might forget that particular thrill when he experienced some of the other thrills that would soon be coming from his loving wife.

He typed a short message to Marcia telling her that he was impressed with her performance. He liked the red lingerie. That was a good touch. And he didn't mind if she washed the taste of Frank's semen away with a glass of wine. He was impressed that she had fulfilled her promise to swallow every drop. She had made herself look very desirable.

Then he mentioned that, having passed the first part of his test so well, he was certain that she would have no problem with the next part. He would tell her about it in a day or two. He warned her to be sure to keep checking her email because he would hate to see her disappoint everyone through simple carelessness.

When that email was sent, he created a new hotmail account with the name, “HappyFrank12345”. From that account, he sent an email to Marcia asking that she not use his business email for personal messages. He would rather receive her personal messages in his hotmail account where they would be safe from the company snoops. He signed it, “Love, Frank.”

* * *

Marcia stared at the email from Mark. How in hell did he know that she had worn scarlet lingerie and washed Frank's cum down with red wine? Damn. Was he peeking through her windows? Surely not. He lived in Wisconsin. Then her heart leapt with the electric thought that maybe Mark had travelled all the way across the country just to see if she had really changed.

She glanced out the window, reflexively, to see if he was standing on the sidewalk waiting for her; then chided herself for the gesture. Mark was a genius. He wouldn't do something so obvious and trite.

Unless he still loved her.

She glanced through the window again.

When she looked back at her computer screen, she saw that she had received another email, this one from Frank asking her to use a different account for “personal” emails. The header said that the email was from a hotmail account, not his work address. That was fair enough. She certainly didn't want a bunch of corporate IT geeks drooling over her kinky emails to Frank.

As instructed, she checked her email compulsively every hour during the next two days. On Friday, she received another email from Mark. She clicked it open and poured over the contents. Her heart fell. He wasn't proposing that she elope with him, he was telling her that Frank was going to expect another kinky sex session when he got home from work. This time she had apparently promised Frank that she was going to go topless for the evening. She promised to remain nude from the waist up from the time he arrived home until they went to bed. Furthermore, once supper was finished, she would be pleased to handcuff her hands behind her back so that he would be free to play with her tits as much as he liked without any accidental interference from her. Mark warned her that she better not complain to Frank about anything that he did to her tits or she would fail the test. Then she would have to do it all over again next week, but wearing a gag as well as handcuffs.

Damn. She loved her tits and she hated having a man staring at them or pawing and grabbing at them. She did a quick calculation in her head. The best that she could do would be to stretch supper out until seven, which included cleaning up the dishes and starting the dishwasher, and the earliest that she could suggest bed was nine. That meant that Frank was going to have complete, unrestricted access to her naked boobs for at least two hours.

There was no way around that, short of refusing outright to spend the evening topless and handcuffed.

So that was it. She would refuse to play along.

Then her email flashed again.

This time it was a message from HappyFrank12345. Her husband said how much he loved her and looked forward to seeing her. He said that he couldn't imagine anything as wonderful as spending the evening with her.

Damn. He sounded even more excited and happy than when he had been promised a blow job. She might not be in love with him, but she couldn't slap him in the face with a flat refusal. It would be like kicking a happy puppy.

Besides, she knew that, somehow, Mark would know if she let Frank down.

She had no choice. Her puppies were going to be in play tonight.

Damn.

It was noon. She had plenty of time to find a pair of handcuffs before she had to start dinner. She grabbed her purse and tried to remember where the nearest sex shop was located.

* * *

Mark chuckled happily. He knew exactly how Marcia felt about her tits. They were her proudest asset.  Her breasts were full and round and lovely. And, ever since she had developed in her early teens, she had taken a special thrill from bullying men with her breasts.

She would wear tight sweaters in the winter and sniff at men who dropped their eyes from her face. In the summer, she would wear tight tee shirts with cute sayings across the chest and sneer at men who tried to read them. She would wear dresses showing as much cleavage as was decent and then raise an eyebrow at any man who looked down, hoping to force a blush from him.

Dating gave her ample opportunities to drag men down to a whole new levels of humiliation. He keenly recalled her slapping his hands when he first tried to caress her. She'd laughed and made a joke about it but there was no mistaking the gleam of superiority in her eye. She held power over any man who wanted to touch her more than she wanted to be touched so she made herself not want to be touched at all. She expected men to kneel in worship before the alter of her breasts, not profane them with lustful grubbing at her.

Well, that was going to change tonight. Tonight she was going to have to allow Frank to grub at her tits to his heart's content and there wasn't a damn thing that she could do about it.

Wednesday had been all about her mouth; that was first base. Today was all about her tits; second base. Monday would be all about third base. He began to plan the next step in his experimental procedure.

* * *

Marcia opened her email from Mark with no small amount of trepidation. It had been two days and she could still feel Frank's hands and mouth on her boobs. God, how could a man spend that many hours playing with a woman's breasts? They simply weren't that interesting. But he had kept his erection all evening while he was playing with her. Arousing him like that hadn't been her idea but there was no way that she could tell him that he wasn't getting any relief when they went to bed. She had had to force herself to smile at him and part her legs wide. Actually, the sex hadn't been all that bad. Frank was so turned on that it was over in a flash and then she got a good night's sleep.

Based on her experience over the past week, the likelihood that Mark's latest message would say that he was ready to welcome her back into his life seemed slight; that he would insist that she perform some new, weird sexual ritual with Frank was far more probable.

As expected, Mark began by mentioning that the fuzzy handcuffs were a good idea. They seemed both more kinky and more fun than a simple functional police-issue chrome model. Marcia knew that the only reason that he mentioned them was to confirm that he knew exactly how well she was following his instructions, even in the privacy of her house.

The second paragraph contained the meat of the message. Apparently another email that she had not written to Frank promised that she would surprise him with a new hairstyle tonight. That was all. Just that she was going to get a new hairstyle that would feel cooler for the summer. Was that supposed to be a problem? She loved getting her hair done and she'd already been thinking about a shorter style. Something that would be fun and easy to care for.

Mark dropped the hammer in the third paragraph. Marcia couldn't believe what she was reading. The email said that she was not to change a single hair on her head. Not a single hair. The new hairstyle that she was going to give her husband would be found between her legs. This afternoon she was to shave her crotch completely bald. She was not to have a single hair left below her waist. When she saw her husband, she was to tell him that she had changed her hair style, as promised, but she was not to tell him what she had changed until after supper. Then she was to show him.

Furthermore, she was to keep her pussy bald for the entire summer, at least until Labor Day. After that, she could let it grow out or keep herself shaved, depending on what Frank preferred. She was not to grow her pubic hair again unless she discussed it with Frank and obtained his consent first.

Whether she kept herself bald by shaving every day, or used a depilatory, or had herself waxed was up to her. But, she was to permit no hair below her waist to grow longer than peach fuzz until the fall.

And, just to keep a nice contrast, she was to let the hair on her head keep growing out until Labor Day. After that, she could negotiate a new hairstyle with her husband if she wished.

Marcia wanted to cry. What right did Mark have to dictate such things to her? And what made her hair, whether on her head or her pussy, any of her husband's business?

She asked herself how Mark could possibly know if she shaved her crotch or not. But she knew that he would know somehow and, if she didn't do what he asked, he would never take her back.

She trudged upstairs and took her razor and shaving cream out of the medicine cabinet.

* * *

Frank read the email from Marcia and then shrugged and moved it into his archive. So she was going to get a new hair style. So what? She changed her hair all the time. Red, blonde, permed, chopped, shagged, whatever. He would be happy if she just let her hair grow out in its natural waves of brunette and left it alone. Her stylist cost him hundreds of dollars every month. He paid it because Marcia seemed happier when she changed her hair, but that didn't mean that he had to like it.

He was disappointed that the email did not mention anything sexual. He had never been so happy as during the past few days when his wife had seemed to develop a renewed interest in sex play, even better than when they had first been dating. The topless handcuff evening had been heavenly. His hands were still tingling from excitement. He wondered if she would ever give him an experience like that again.

That evening when he arrived home, he was surprised to see Marcia looking about the same as she had in the morning and presumed that she had failed to get an appointment with her hair dresser. Then, as she kissed him on the cheek, she whispered, “I hope that you like my new hair style.”

He looked at her again and nodded. “Your hair looks nice,” he replied noncommittally, trying to discern what was different. He still couldn't see any change.

She giggled at his expression and understood his confusion. “Don't worry, dear. You'll see what's different soon enough. Dinner's ready. I made chicken jalapeno. I thought that you'd like to eat something hot tonight.” She giggled again.

After they finished eating and she cleared the table, she went to him him in the family room where he was watching television as usual.

She turned off the tube, then stood in front of him and said, “I really need to know what you think about my new hair style.” Without waiting for an answer, she lowered her hands, grabbed the hem of her knee-length skirt and pulled it up to her waist. She was wearing no panties.

His eyes almost popped from his head.

“Want to eat something hot for dessert?” she asked.

He followed her into the dining room where she lay on her back on the table and spread her legs wide for his dining pleasure.

* * *

On Wednesday and again on Friday, Marcia was instructed simply to make love to Frank. Nothing strange or kinky. Just straight missionary style sex.

Frank had been faithful to his marriage, so, for three years, he had experienced no pleasure except what he could give himself during his morning shower. Now, getting sex four times in one week was a delicious treat. Finding a promise of impending sex in his email in the afternoon elevated the pleasure to near ecstasy.

For Marcia, getting laid regularly wasn't much of a problem. She was relieved that she didn't have to do anything special these times, just let Frank in and have his way for a few minutes.

Her only surprise was that, on Friday, she had an orgasm. It wasn't an earth shattering experience, more like a little wave of pleasure that flowed out of her pussy for a few seconds, but it was nice. Normally she didn't have orgasms when she was with a man. She could count on one hand the number of times that it had happened before. She knew that it had never happened with either of her husbands; it had happened only a couple of times with other men that she had dated during her “wild years”.

The only thing that upset her came in her email on Friday email, which not only had informed her that she had promised Frank sex on Friday night, also cautioned her that she was to make sure that she checked her email again on Saturday because she would receive important instructions.

She knew that she was going to be forced to do something kinky again and feared what it might be.

Mark should be damned impressed by how hard she was working to prove that she would be a good wife for him.

* * *

Frank and Marcia were invited to a party at Frank's boss's house on Saturday night. This happened a couple of times a year.

On Thursday, Frank had sent an email to Marcia19990613@hotmail.com to remind her about it. And Marcia had sent back an email asking him to tell her of what he expected to happen at the party. Frank was mildly confused and annoyed by her pretence at absentmindedness. He wondered if she had some sneaky agenda that she was putting into play. On previous occasions, she had complained about parties, threw temper tantrums, and threatened to stay home. In the end, she had always accompanied him and used her not inconsiderable social skills to charm the other guests. That was good for his career.

She had been so reasonable and loving lately – exciting, in fact – that he took the trouble to reply in some detail. Pretending to accept her absentmindedness, he reminded her that his boss would be entertaining his colleagues and other friends. It would be an informal affair – mostly conversation while standing around a well-loaded buffet table. He augmented this description with a list of the names, positions, and important facts about the most important guests who she should remember from previous parties.

Early Saturday morning, Marcia received an email from Mark containing some explicit instructions about how she was going to behave on Saturday night. For the most part, she was to be sociable and supporting of her husband. And, contrary to previous years, she was not to complain about the other guests' behavior all the way home afterward, but was to continue to support her husband by offering only good opinions of his colleagues.

Marcia was both offended and appalled by this comment. Offended because it implied that she was hypocritical, acting friendly toward people to their face while criticizing them behind her back; and appalled because that was exactly what she always did feared that if Mark knew how she behaved after accompanying Frank to a party, he must have been privy to the inner workings of her marriage for at least six months before she first emailed him. Mark must have realized that the five-year deadline was approaching and must have begun monitoring her wifely behaviour six months early. Amazing. Had he bugged their car? He was wicked smart, but she could not imagine him being that smart. On the other hand, the amount of attention that he was paying to her proved that he was serious when he promised that he would take her back if she behaved properly.

It never occurred to her that Mark had seen her act this way throughout her marriage to him and had simply assumed that she had not changed her evil ways. She suffered from narcissistic personality disorder and thought about nobody but herself but that did not mean that she was introspective or insightful. She deluded herself about herself as much as she deluded herself about everything else in her world.

She continued reading her email from Mark. It dictated two appalling instructions. Would Frank actually want her to do that? At his boss's party? In his boss's home?

What the hell did she care? She was hitching her cart to Mark's horse now. If that meant driving Frank's horse over a cliff, then that was not her concern.

* * *

The party was going well. Frank had spent the first half hour getting Marcia settled in and comfortable, and then had drifted away, leaving her to her own conversations. She was brilliant in situations like this because she worked hard to draw people out, to listen to what they said and to react appropriately. When they made a joke, she laughed in delight; when they said something clever, she was visibly impressed; and when they confessed a problem, she was solicitous without being judgemental.

Marcia's genius lie in her ability to hide the fact that her ability to forming deep bonds with people instantly was nothing more than a cynical manipulation of them for her own indirect aggrandizement.

Though Frank was engaged in his own conversations, he watched his wife from across the room and loved her all the more. She looked lovely in her knee-length black sheath dress and simple black pumps. He noted that the collar of her dress was uncharacteristically modest. Normally she showed a significant amount of cleavage but this dress had a loose cowl neck that draped at the level of her collar bones.

He had never seen her wear this dress before and knew that she had bought it when she was out shopping this afternoon. She always bought a new dress for an important occasion.

As he watched, she excused herself from the two men that she was entertaining and walked away in the direction of the bathroom. A minute later, she returned, caught his eye and gestured to him. There was something uncomfortable in the movement – a restraint in her gesture that spoke of an uncharacteristic self-consciousness.

He excused himself and went to her. As soon as he approached, she leaned and said softly into his ear, “Will you hold onto these until we get home, please.” She pushed something soft and textured into his hand.

He looked down and saw that he was holding a little packet of black lace. “What's this?”

“My bra and panties. I'd like you to keep them for me.” She walked away without waiting to hear his response.

He watched her ass as she walked across the room. He could see no visible panty line underneath the tight sheath dress. At the far side of the room, she turned and smiled sweetly at him. Her breasts flowed freely underneath her bodice. The material was heavy enough that her braless state was not brazen, but it was apparent if one looked carefully. If he strained hard, he imagined that he could see soft bumps where her nipples would be.

When he slid the undergarments into his pocket, he had to keep his hand there for a minute to try to hide his growing erection.

As she resumed her conversation with the two men, Frank could see a slight pinkness in her ears – a kind of proto-blush. He watched the men intently for the next couple of minutes but did not see either pair of eyes drop to his wife's chest. Either they were unaware of the disappearance of her intimate apparel or they had sufficient self-discipline to maintain their good manners in the face of temptation.

As she circulated over the next hour, he watched for leers or ogling on the faces of the other men in the room. He detected the occasional glance at his wife's tits and ass but no staring, drooling, or whispered comments. Men always looked at his wife a little more than at other women. He expected that. Now he could not tell if men were looking at her more than usual or not. If they were giving her any extra appreciation, it was not blatant.

She continued to slowly work her way around the room until she got back to his side. As soon as they had a minute between conversational partners, she leaned close and whispered, “I'm dripping for you. Meet me in the en suite bathroom in five minutes.”

His cock, no longer erect but not completely limp yet, either, sprang back to attention.

Five minutes, be damned. He rushed up to the master bedroom and shut himself in the en suite immediately.

A couple of minutes later, he heard a soft knock on the door.

When he admitted Marcia, she locked the door behind her, hiked her skirt to her waist to reveal her bald pussy framed by a black garter belt, hoisted her ass onto the vanity countertop, spread her knees wide to reveal her pink inner slit, and said, breathily, “Come and get me, tiger.”

He did.

He came quickly.

But she came before him.

* * *

On Monday morning, Mark smiled at Frank's email to Marcia19990613. Apparently he had had a lot of fun at the party on Saturday. As instructed, Marcia had spent an hour at the party sans underwear before fucking him and then spent another hour dripping inside her dress in public before letting him take her home and fuck her a second time in the comfort of their own bed.

Good, obedient girl.

Good, hot wife.

Time to ramp up the pressure on Marcia and see how much she can take.

He began typing a reply to Frank in Marcia's name.

As his fingers danced across the keys, his smile turned into an evil grin.

* * *

Marcia replied to Mark with an email consisting of a single word: “No!”

Five minutes later, she received a reply: “You must. You have already given him your promise. It's time for you to be brave. Give Frank the finest gift that any wife can give her husband and you'll show me that you are a true heroine. Your courage in bearing your humiliation and carrying through with your promise will mark your finest hour. I know that this requires exceptional strength, but I know that you have it in you. Show me that you are a treasure among women. You can do it.”

She replied: “Pick something else. Let him beat me. Let him degrade me in some other way. Make me walk jay-bird naked down Main Street and get arrested. Anything but this.”

He answered: “There is no alternative. Do what I ask or you'll never hear from me again. Now, stop complaining and get yourself ready.”

She stared at the screen for the longest time. Get ready? How could she get ready for this? It didn't require any preparation at all.

Unbidden, tears began to roll down her face. This was it. She couldn't do what he demanded, so she was never going to hear from him again.

She sobbed. She wailed. She cried until her eyes were red and dry.

Then, as the afternoon drew to a close, she began to get ready mentally. To distance herself from what she was about to do.

* * *

Frank was mystified. Marcia's email said was that she was going to show him something during the next three evenings that wives never showed their husbands.

That was it. She was going to show him something. What? He had seen her naked, had seen every part of her body. He had seen almost everything that she had done during the three years that they had been married, from bathing to making love.

What was left? They kept the bathroom door closed when relieving themselves so that was the only thing that he could imagine. But surely she knew that he had no interest in seeing her on the toilet.

Maybe some men would be interested in that kind of thing but she had grossly misjudged him if she thought that he was one of those.

What would he do if she invited him into the bathroom? Go in with her. Be polite. Pretend to be interested. Forget what he saw as soon as it was over. He could do it, but why should he have to?

Dinner was a quiet affair that evening. Both Frank and Marcia occupied with their own thoughts. Both wanted to tell the other to forget about whatever they had planned, but neither dared broach the subject because both thought that they were doing what the other wanted.

After dinner, Marcia invited Frank into the bedroom.

He was relieved that there was no mention of bathrooms, but was puzzled when he saw the bed stripped to the sheet and a dining room chair set at its foot. The missing bedclothes were piled on the other side of the room.

Marcia said, quietly, with a tremor in her voice, “You can sit there if you want, but you can also get up and take a closer look if you like.”

He sat.

She stripped off her clothes without ceremony and dumped them on the floor in a heap. Then she laid down on the bed and spread her legs so that he had an unobstructed view of her vulva.

He was startled by the buzz when she pulled the vibrator from under the pillow and turned it on.

For the next few minutes, she worked the vibrator between her wide-spread legs, over her lips and between them. Her breathing quickened, she began moaning, first softly, then more loudly. Her moans turned to grunts and then to throaty, quiet screams as her legs began to quiver and jerk.

She came. No acting. No pretence. He knew that he was seeing a real, honest-to-god, primal, bestial, bone-shaking orgasm.

He stood and looked down at her. Her vaginal lips were bright pink. There was a flush spreading across her breasts and up her neck. Her eyes were glazed. Her face beaded with sweat.

He had felt her come twice in the past week when they had made love, but he had never seen anything like this. He had no idea that she could have such a powerful sexual response.

She turned off the vibrator and turned her head away from him.

He pulled the top sheet from the pile beside the bed and tenderly laid it over her. He could not kiss her because she kept her face turned away from him, but he bent close and whispered in her ear, “Thank you. I love you so much, you can't imagine.”

He went downstairs and did not see her again until he came to bed for the night. He thought about what he had seen. The most surprising thing was that she did not put the vibrator deep inside herself. She pushed the tip less than an inch into herself at the most. Nor did she press it to her clitoris constantly. She touched her clit briefly on occasion, a little more toward the end, but mostly she moved it around the inner lips of her vagina.

When he went upstairs, the bed was made again and Marcia was already asleep under the covers.

Before he fell asleep, too, he remembered that her email had said that she would show him something for three evenings. There were two more to come. He could not imagine what she could do for an encore.

* * *

Mark received about what he expected on Marcia19990613 – an email from HappyFrank12345 that was effusive with gratitude for the show the previous night. He passed it along to Marcia's real email address unedited and without comment.

He was disappointed to see that she did not even reply “You're welcome” back to him. So he did it on her behalf. Frank deserved some acknowledgement.

Mark would make sure that she was going to pay for slighting her husband, even in this small way.

Frank was getting a rare show on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, but he wasn't getting laid. That had to be fixed.

Mark began planning for an interesting Friday night for Marcia and her loving husband.

* * *

Tuesday night's show was an almost identical replay of Monday, except that there was no vibrator allowed. Marcia showed Frank how she frigged herself to orgasm with her bare hands.

Wednesday night's variation was that Frank was no longer a passive spectator, he was now a passive participant. Marcia laid him down beside her, took his hand in hers, spread a little KY on his fingers, and then frigged herself with his hand, guiding his fingers over herself gently at first, then with more pressure toward the end.

If seeing her have an orgasm was like being in heaven, feeling her hips rock under his hand, feeling her press herself against her fingers, feeling her quiver and contract against his palm made him soar to a higher cloud in the celestial paradise.

Frank doubted that any man had ever felt so deeply in love with his wife before.

Marcia doubted that any woman had ever felt so deeply degraded before.

Mark, reading the unspoken messages in their emails, doubted that any ex husband had ever felt so deeply avenged before.

He sent Marcia his next email on Thursday afternoon in order to give her a good twenty-four hours to contemplate his next test of her love for him.

* * *

Frank was floored when he received an email from Marcia19990613 on Friday afternoon. She told him that she had known what she had been doing to him during the three years of their marriage. She had been depriving him of the pleasure that he deserved while giving herself the ecstasy that he had witnessed on the first three evenings of the week. She had been cuckolding him with her vibrator and her own hands. Now she was acknowledging that he deserved love and she deserved punishment. Tonight, they would both get what they deserved. She would provide him with an instrument of chastisement, a paddle, and present her ass to him for a well-deserved beating. After he had punished her to his satisfaction, she would make sweet love to him. That would prove to him that she had accepted her punishment as her due and that she did not resent him for administering it properly. He was to ignore her cries and pleas to stop until he had satisfied himself that she had been well and truly punished. No matter what she might say under the influence of the paddle, she guaranteed that if he failed to punish her sufficiently, she would not allow him to make love to her. She would do right by him only if he did right by her.

That night, after supper, she fulfilled her promise and presented him with a paddle so that he could do right by her. Though her ass was flaming red and burning like the fires of hell, she took him to bed and did right by him in return.

She was surprised to find that she felt fulfilled by the experience. Mark had been correct. She did feel like she deserved to be punished for the way that she had treated Frank.

She fell asleep in his arms, awash in contentment.

* * *

On Monday Mark sent Marcia an email asking her how she felt about offering herself to Frank for punishment.

She replied honestly.

Then she added that if Mark took her back into his life, she would let him punish her in the same way for her failures in their earlier marriage. She knew that she deserved to have her ass well bruised by him, too, for her behavior.

Mark thought about his current fiancee and wondered if she would ever offer to submit to a paddling to compensate him for her failings. He laughed aloud at the thought. Not if the sky fell and Hell froze over would she suffer humiliation at his hand. She would leave him if he dared even suggest such a thing.

Marica – the neurotic, narcissistic, vicious bitch – was beginning to look pretty damned desirable compared to any other woman that he had known.

It would be almost worth marrying her again just to see her pleasuring herself with a vibrator.

Almost.

He distracted himself from that self-destructive train of thought by preparing emails for Frank and Marcia for the following week.

It was time for Frank to man up and grow a pair. If he didn't start taking some initiative in his marriage, Marcia was going to keep stomping all over him with her cloven hooves till death did them part.

* * *

Frank opened the Monday morning email from Marcia19990613 with eager anticipation. What had his darling wife planned for him this week?

He read the short message with consternation.

It said that he had rubbed her the right way and now she would grant him three wishes this week. She was waiting to hear his first wish so that she could fulfil it.

That was it. It was up to him to tell her what he wished for.

What did he want to do to her?

With dismay, he realized that he did not know.

He could not imagine wanting anything but to make love to her in bed in the usual way.

Surely that would be too simple. Too mundane. After all the things that she had done for him, from handcuffing herself topless for the evening to screwing him in the bathroom at a party, how could he rise to the bar that she had set?

He thought about what he wanted all morning. And all through lunch. And most of the afternoon. When it drew near four o'clock, he realized that his time was up. Marcia no longer had enough time to go find a feather duster or a cheer leader costume. She would have begun cooking supper already.

In desperation, he sent her an email that said that he wanted to make love to her tonight like a regular married couple.

And that's exactly what they did.

And he enjoyed it as much as anything else that they had done in the past two weeks.

* * *

Mark sighed theatrically. Marcia had granted Frank's three wishes. The man could have had anything his heart desired. Anything that he could imagine short of a criminal act. And what had he wished for? Making love on three consecutive nights. Not even a blow job. Not even doggy style. Simple, straightforward, missionary-position love making. For three nights in a row.

Marcia had to be disappointed by that. There were women who would be pleased as punch by his boring, mundane approach to love, but Marcia was not one of those women. She loved her fantasies. Loved them more than reality, in fact.

Mark had no intention of spending the rest of his life arranging Frank's sex relations for him, day by day. Somehow, he going to have to make Frank to step up to the plate and start entertaining his own wife.

After spending two days bemoaning Frank's lack of initiative, he decided that he was going to have to bite the bullet and set up a system or he would end up stuck with Marcia forever.

He pulled books on socket programming and HTTP protocols off his bookshelf and set to work.

* * *

On Friday morning, Marcia received an email from Mark. It simply said that she would have to make love to Frank every day this week, in any way that she and Frank wished. It then warned her to check her mail on Friday. There would be a test.

The following Friday, after making love to her husband six nights in a row, Marcia opened her next email from Mark. It said that she was going to have an opportunity to find out how much Frank valued her lovemaking. Tonight, after supper, she would offer Frank a choice. If he wanted to make love to her for a seventh night in a row, she would be pleased to go to bed with him. On the other hand, if he was not so eager to screw her one more time, then she would be pleased to get the paddle, bend over the dining room table, and receive a sound whacking.

He could not have both. He could punish her soundly for whatever reason he chose, or for no reason at all if he wished. No explanation would be required. But, if he punished her, then she would not make love to him again until Monday night.

On the other hand, if he chose to forgo punishing her, then she would be happy to continue making love to him every day through the weekend.

Underneath a veneer of annoyance, Marcia was delighted. What an interesting question. This was the opposite of her previous paddling. Last time the rule was: if no punishment then no love. This time the opposite rule was in effect: if punishment then no love. Given a forced choice, would Frank rather make love to her or punish her? She did not think that he was a sadist who would enjoy seeing her flinch and cry in pain just for the fun of it. So the answer was a no-brainer. He would choose love. Provided that he thought that she did not deserve to be punished. Deserved it so much that he would forgo his own pleasure to administer it to her.

She thought that she deserved punishment. Not only had she deprived him of pleasure for almost three years of their marriage, she had been callously perfunctory in bed during the last week, lying there like a cold fish, waiting for him to finish up and get off her. And then taking secret pleasure in hearing him thank her profusely for such a mediocre effort.

She thought that she deserved punishment, but she doubted that Frank did. She believed him when he wrote emails that proclaimed his gratitude for the little effort that she put into accommodating him.

In a fit of perverse insanity, she wrote back to Mark: “Fuck the damn paddle. Make this a real test. If he thinks that I deserve to be punished then tell Frank that I'll give him some rope and a cane. He can tie me bent across the dining room table and give me twelve of his best. You tell him that if he wants to hurt me, then he can do some real damage.”

She was regretting her impetuousness even before she hit the “send” key.

But she sent it anyway.

* * *

Mark felt ill when he read Marcia's message on Monday morning. For more than one reason.

“I got my answer. I'm typing this standing up. My ass feels like corduroy. I don't know if it'll ever be smooth and pretty again. Now Frank's telling me that he's going to cane me any time he feels like it. You've unleashed a sadist on me, and I need you to rescue me from him. I'm going to have to move to Wisconsin to get away from him.”

He never intended to put Marcia in danger; his goal had been discomfort and humiliation.

If he had removed Frank's inhibitions to the extent that he was going to be dangerous to Marcia, then it was his responsibility to get her safely out of her house.

On the other hand, maybe she had egged him on to the point that he had no choice but to react severely.

He hated that that thought had popped into his mind unbidden. Wasn't that what every abusive husband said? That is was his wife that made him do it? That if she'd just been a better wife he never would have hit her?

Damn.

What was he going to do?

The psychologist's standard answer to every dilemma is to collect more data.

He began by asking Marcia directly if she had tried to be a loving wife during the week before the caning.

Marcia replied that she might have been a little lax in her attentiveness to Frank's needs. But she would be a lot more attentive to Mark's when she came to Wisconsin.

In Mark's opinion, “a little lax” was not sufficient to merit a caning. But Marcia was not known for her honesty, either. There was no statement that she couldn't re-cast to put herself in a flattering spotlight. If she said “a little lax”, she probably meant that she'd been treating him like shit all week and that she wasn't surprised that he couldn't take it any more.

No one knew how to jerk a guy around like Marcia.

It was time to get Frank's perspective on this fiasco. As Marcia, he sent an email that asked Frank how he felt about the weekend. He deliberately made his question as open-ended as possible so that he would not bias Frank's response.

A half hour later, he was astounded by the reply. Frank wrote that he had enjoyed spending the weekend in bed with her.

In bed with her? This weekend? That wasn't the deal. The deal was either a caning or sex. Not both.

He re-read Frank's email. Then he went back to Marcia's emails and re-read them.

He slapped his palm to his forehead, a bit of theatricality that was wasted for lack of an audience.

He knew Marcia better than this. She was playing a game on him and he was letting her suck him right into it. Never in her life had that woman let the truth get in the way of a good drama. Reporting that Frank had made love to her, simply and directly, three times over the last three days was not nearly as exciting as reporting that he had brutally abused her. So she reported brutal abuse even though it had never happened. And then tried to cast that as a reason for leaving her husband and moving back to Wisconsin to make Mark's life hell again.

He did not have the least doubt that she was sitting on her un-marked ass, laughing like hell at him right now.

No one knew how to jerk a guy around like Marcia.

Did she really think that she was going to get away with this lie? Did she care? Understanding dawned slowly. This was a test. He had put Marcia through a test and now she was testing him in return.

What was the subtext? What was she really saying if he read between the lines? Was she saying that she would have preferred the caning? Or was she saying that she didn't think that he knew what was happening between her and Frank?

Mark knew that this was a critical point. If he didn't pass her test, then she would gain the upper hand and drive him to disaster.

The more he thought about it, the more he came to understand what she was thinking at a deeper level. Marcia was brilliant in social situations because she could take a high-level view of social interactions. She thought in terms of social strategies, not tactics. She wasn't giving him information. She was reframing their relationship. Her goal was to shift the focus of his game away from her and Frank to her and Mark. She was taking control of the game whether he believed her story about the caning or not.

Calling her on her lie would be a mistake because it would keep the focus where he did not want it. A better response would shift the focus back on Frank where it belonged.

He had learned a few useful things from Marcia when he had been dating her, married to her, and divorcing her.

* * *

Frank shook his head when he read Marcia's latest email. He didn't have time for sex on weekday mornings. He had to get up and get ready for work. How could she say that she wouldn't let him leave for work until he had made love to her? If he had to get to work, then he had to get to work and she couldn't stop him from leaving. He didn't want to have to wake up an hour early every morning just to have sex when he could have just as good a time at night before they went to sleep. What was she thinking?

He wrote a terse reply back that said simply that he'd rather make love at night like normal people.

She replied that she didn't care. She was Job One in his life and she wanted to get laid in the morning. If he wanted her to be happy, he was just going to have to get it up and get it on before he got up. Every morning. Period.

She had already reset his alarm.

And if he refused to wake up, then she'd play with his cock until it was stiff and then mount him while he slept. She was going to get hers no matter what.

Furthermore, to give it a fair test, they were going to have nothing but morning sex for a full month.

* * *

“A month? What the hell do you mean a month?”

Mark smiled at Marcia's outraged email. She wanted to be the center of attention? Okay. He had made her the center of his attention. He'd been too focussed on Frank. Trying to get him to develop a little imagination was like trying to convince a pig to sprout wings. Marcia had more imagination than any three men he knew. The trick was to turn it to good instead of evil.

The first step would be to get her more interested in Frank. He had suspected for a long time that Marcia spent half the day frigging herself at home and was too satiated to care about her husband in the evening. The obvious answer was to change the order of her day. She could start each day with real sex with her husband and then she could pleasure herself later if she wanted. Not only would she be more interested in sex when she was fresher, but she would tend to build an association between real sex and the self-administered pleasure that followed. That was simple Pavlovian conditioning. The conditioned and unconditioned stimuli had to be presented in the correct order.

A month would not be long enough to rebuild a lifetime of conditioning in the opposite direction, but it would be a good start.

He did not bother replying directly to Marcia's email to him. Instead, he sent an email from the HappyFrank12345 account to her. In it, Frank said how much he was looking forward to getting laid every morning.

Then he added the kicker. He casually added that, of course, if she wanted to do something exotic during the day or evening, that would naturally pre-empt the morning sex.

Mark smiled again. That was the operant conditioning. If Marcia wanted to escape the morning sex ritual, she could send Frank a suggestion to do something wild. She now had an incentive to spice up their sex life.

With the dual conditioning program in place, Mark clicked on the editor icon and returned to working on his pet software project. The sockets were working properly and he was slowly getting the HTTP handshaking worked out. By the end of the week, he would be getting the HTML parsing in place. Another week or two of work and his program should be ready for testing.

* * *

Marcia thought that Frank wanted sex in the morning. Frank thought that Marcia wanted sex in the morning. They did not communicate well enough with each other to realize that neither of them thought that coitus at dawn was a good idea. Once they had exchanged emails on the subject, the matter was closed. Usually, about half the time Frank woke up with a hard on and had to wait for it to subside before getting on with his morning ritual. Now that his hard ons were being put to good use rather than being wasted, he began waking up with a full-on woody every single morning.

Marcia was surprised to find that she was enjoying sex with Frank more at the end of the month than she had at the beginning. In the first week, she had found the enforced morning arousal a little annoying. She didn't come when she was having sex with Frank, but, as soon as he was out the door a half hour later, she gave herself the pleasure that she wanted.

By the end of the second week, she was looking at sex with Frank as pleasant foreplay before her main solo event.

By the end of the fourth week, she was experiencing the occasional orgasm during actual sex, then following it up with a second, better orgasm alone a half hour later.

To her surprise, the lesser orgasms that happened during sex gave her more pleasure than the greater ones that she gave herself.

During this period, Frank consistently sent her emails during the day telling her how much he loved the intimacy that they were sharing.

Out of courtesy, she replied in kind.

* * *

Mark was disappointed. According to the emails that were passing through the Marcia19990613 and HappyFrank12345 accounts, his subjects were sticking to their morning routine. He could not tell if the Pavlovian conditioning was having an effect on Marcia, but it was clear that the operant conditioning was failing. Not once had Marcia suggested some exotic variation in order to escape the morning ritual. By now she had to be getting bored with it. She got bored so easily.

It was time to spice things up a little.

And that meant that Frank was going to have to learn a little about spicy sex.

As soon as the month ended, he sent an email to Frank from Marcia19990613 that instructed him to find a pornographic story that he liked and give her a copy by noon Saturday. He should give her the whole story if it were short or, if it were long, a dozen of the best pages. On Sunday, she was going to dress up as the female protagonist and read the pages aloud to him, acting out the spiciest parts with him as best as she could. She would continue reading and performing for as long as possible, stopping only when they were too excited or too exhausted to read any more. If she managed to finish all the pages that he gave her then he had failed to find something that was sufficiently exciting and she would be disappointed.

Next, he sent an email directly to Marcia telling her how much he liked her story about being caned. Because she was so interested in fiction, he had arranged for her to share her interest with Frank. He explained what she was to do.

When she emailed her usual complaints back, he gave her his usual reply, that he would never consider re-marrying her if she could not prove to his satisfaction that she was willing to be a good wife; and that she had come so far and was so close to convincing him that it would be a shame to stop now.

* * *

Two days later Mark finally finished testing his new program. It worked fine, so he loaded the necessary data files and let it run.

From now on, his computer would automatically check the two hotmail accounts, Marcia19990613 and HappyFrank12345, correct the headers, and then forward incoming emails to the corresponding real email addresses. Additionally, every so often, it would consult a data base of pre-written templates and construct a new email pair that gave Frank and Marcia specific instructions. From now on, Frank would automatically get his fair share of blow jobs, doggy style sex, sex in automobiles, and other such treats. Marcia would get a certain number of paddlings, evenings in restraint, and public displays of moderately humiliating clothing. Once or twice a month, Frank would be instructed to search for new erotic stories that Marcia could act out for his benefit and pleasure.

The computer did not give instructions from Mark directly to Marcia, it simply sent her a blind copy of the promises that it was sending to Frank. It would be obvious to her that she had to fulfil whatever promises had been made or she risked disappointing Frank and ultimately losing him.

The software was not programmed to respond to complaints that Marcia sent to Mark's email account.

The result was that Marcia's focus would be shifted from trying to get back together with Mark to keeping her current marriage to Frank intact. Without Mark in the email loop, Frank was the only game available to her.

Mark was certain, from observing Marcia's willing participation over the past couple of months, that she was sufficiently masochistic that she secretly liked being forced to do kinky things for Frank.

The computer kept a complete log of all correspondence between the loving couple. During the first few months, he monitored it assiduously to ensure that it was working as expected. After that, he only bothered reading it when he wanted to be entertained or wanted to add a little more variety to the template files.

For the first couple of weeks she sent regular emails to Mark complaining about the instructions that the computer was giving her, but he ignored them. Her emails became sporadic and, after a couple of months, stopped completely.

After that, she never tried to get in touch with him personally again. Mark did not know if she no longer wanted him was because she was angry at him for forcing her to give her husband a full and vibrant sex life or if she forgot about him because she was so happy with with the new arrangement that she no longer wanted to leave Frank.

Mark chose to believe that latter. He liked to think that Marcia was living in an eternal erotic paradise. And if their marriage wasn't exactly her idea of paradise, he was pretty certain that it was Frank's.

Mark's greatest regret was that he would never be able to publish the results of his most successful real-world psychological experiment.