Offering Me Claire Ch. 01

Note to readers: This story involves the fetish of smoking as well as a healthy dose of B&D. If that offends you, please move on but don't bother telling me how you feel about it. Smoking is legal and people who smoke do so by choice. As I've said elsewhere, from the moment it begins, life comes with a death sentence. How we live in between is a matter of free choice. Many of us find the site of an attractive woman smoking to be about as sexually erotic as anything on earth. If you don't, then please find another story to read.

For those who do, I think you'll enjoy reading about my ex-wife's second greatest gift to me. The first was her decision to start smoking in her late '20s. This was a close second.

*****

"So how often do you think about him?" I asked.

Kate took a very long drag on her cigarette. As she exhaled she said, "You said we wouldn't discuss this and now less than a month later, you're asking me questions about it. I told you I had fun, but the reason I did it was because it was such a huge turn on for you. Isn't that enough, honey? Sex feels good but as you said, sex isn't the same thing as making love and since I didn't make love with him, it isn't something I think about. I do however, think about how turned on you were watching us."

She got up and sat on my lap and said, "You see, my handsome husband, I make love with you. I just let him fuck me. And there's a world of difference between making love and just being fucked. So while I did have fun, 90% of the enjoyment for me was watching you even though you asked me not to. I kept sneaking quick glances your way so I could see your face and watch your reaction. You were so focused on what we were doing. I've never seen you like that before. It was just so hot. And that is what turned me on. But to answer your question, no, I don't think about him. Ever."

She exhaled a long plume of smoke then leaned down to kiss me. "Are you disappointed?" she asked as I moaned after tasting her smoky lips.

"No, of course not. I was just curious. It was just so hot to watch you, though. Does it bother that I do think about it—a lot? That I imagine you with someone else when I make love to you?"

Kate finished her cigarette and said, "Well, as long as you're thinking about me and not some other woman, then no, I guess it doesn't bother me. After all, wasn't that the purpose for finding someone else to fuck me? To create images and memories for you? How could I then be jealous of images and fantasies as long as you love me?" She kissed me again knowing how much I loved that then said, "You do still love me, don't you?"

I stopped fantasizing and had to look at her to see whether she was serious or not. I couldn't be sure so I said, "Hey? Are you seriously asking me that?"

"Well, kind of. I mean, I can't help but wonder if maybe there was something more going on than just wanting to watch me. I know I'm being a little paranoid, but in case you hadn't noticed it, you're my entire life. I was so miserable before I met you. I spent years with an abusive, alcoholic husband and I was at a point where I felt so unattractive and even worthless. And then you came into my life and I've been happier than I ever dreamed possible since. So for me, the thought of anything coming between us makes me feel sick. Is there anything between us?"

"Katie? I love you more than anything or anyone on earth. I love only you. This other thing? It's a fantasy and that's all it is. Are you feeling guilty about it or something?"

"No. Not at all. You've helped move past all of that guilt nonsense. I live my life the way I want to now. And I love my life with you. Had you not come along, I'd be stuck back in South Carolina living with Joan and probably going to the Mormon Church putting on a social mask every day pretending to be happy while living a lie. This is the life I want and I want to live it with you. I love every single thing we do and I loved doing that for you. I don't love the guy I did it with, but I did really liked doing it for you. Okay?"

"So we're good?" I asked.

"As far as I'm concerned we are. Are we good from your perspective?" she asked turning my question around on me.

"We're perfect," I told her. I knew we weren't, but I couldn't put my finger on exactly what was missing. It was gnawing at me and it wouldn't go away. For whatever reason, it just wouldn't bubble up to the surface.

In the meantime, I enjoyed everything Kate did for me. To be honest, she did everything I'd ever dreamed about doing with a woman. She understood and completely accepted what I called my 'three S's' and happily fulfilled all of them. She wore the sexy sweaters I loved, she'd started smoking when she was 29 because she knew I wanted a wife who smoked, and she loved sex as much as I did (if not more.) Hell, she'd even let me set up a date for her in which she allowed a really good-looking 18-year old, recent high school graduate, fuck her while I watched. Kate was anything and everything I'd ever wanted in a woman and yet it was beginning to feel like even that might not be enough. But the hell would be enough? What was it that was missing?

Another month went by before I was able to begin understanding what was bothering me. Since we'd first met, it gradually became clear that Kate was submissive— extremely submissive. Neither of us had any idea what B&D or BDSM was but the way she reacted to things and what she most needed caused me to start putting the pieces of her sexual puzzle together.

She wasn't into being tied up on a rack and drawn and quartered or anything. But she needed to be spanked and restrained in order to really get off. I didn't mind doing it, but it just wasn't my thing. I played "dom" for her but it was just playing. For me, it was a means to an end whereas being submissive was Kate's way of making sex fun. I was getting to the point where it was more of a chore than a pleasure, but I wasn't about to tell me wife that. She'd be hurt to the point of being crushed.

In her mind, we had the perfect balance of give and give rather than the classic relationship of give and take. Most relationships are of the latter variety. You do something nice for me you may not really want to do, then I do the same for you. In our marriage, everything we did, we did because we enjoyed it. That it turned the other person on, too, was icing on the cake. Except that I was no longer enjoying having to tie my wife up or smack her pussy with a riding crop or use it on her breasts to induce an intense orgasm. Don't get me wrong. I kept doing it. I just didn't really like doing it all that much.

As to the emotion of guilt, I vowed never to feel guilty again when I left the Mormon church around the same time I met Kate, but that's exactly how I was feeling. Guilt comes when we internalize the feeling we're not doing something we believe we should be doing or when do we something we've internalized is wrong or immoral. Religion induces all kinds of guilt from thinking some particular thought to doing certain things to not doing other things. Like anger, guilt is a wasted emotion as it robs us of any chance we have to be happy or contented. And since there's no one "up there" to make us happy, one need only make oneself happy as long as one harms no one else. And yet I felt I should be making my wife happy but doing it was making me unhappy!

Okay, so now I understood what was bugging me so much for the last couple of months. The question then became 'so what are you going to do about it?' It's corollary was 'what does solving the problem look like?'

I was majoring in aerospace and mechanical engineering and my thought process was very linear. I was a logical, Point A to Point B kind of guy. Kate tended to emotionally feel her way through life although she was always able to follow my train of thought. So far, we'd never had a serious disagreement. We both loved each other passionately and looking back, I was still amazed I ever found the exact kind of woman I'd dreamed about for as long as I could remember. So this new revelation was particularly distressing because it had the potential to really upset the apple cart. I hated conflict but I hated feeling guilty even more. Something had to give—and soon. Fuck!

I'd been accepted to the University of Washington after finishing a year of community college at Green River CC in the city of Auburn. I still had gym privileges at GRCC but they would expire in a week. I drove up the long, winding hill to the campus and swiped my key card to go inside and put my gym bag in a locker.

For the next hour I pounded the hell out of my chest and back and by the time I was finished, I'd managed to break out of the mental funk that sapping all of my energy. I took a quick shower and threw on a t-shirt and some shorts. It was the last week of August which tended to have the best weather we got in Western Washington out of the entire year. The sky was crystal clear and a bright, brilliant blue. Mount Rainier was sharp and clear in the background to the East and I could even see the Olympic mountains to the West.

I'd gotten an overdue notice on a book I forgot to turn in, so I headed to the library to drop it off and pay the fine. It was only $7.38 but unless I got it cleared, the college wouldn't release my transcripts, so...

I went to the reception area, but no one was there. I looked around but didn't see anyone. The summer term was over and this was a break week but it seemed very unusual not to have even one person in there reading. I decided to walk around and see if I could find the person assigned to the desk. After making nearly an entire lap of the inside I caught a glimpse of someone sitting just outside on a bench. I stopped and looked and noticed it was Claire Hansen, a girl I'd gone to high school with.

We'd had a very pleasant chat earlier that summer when she told me she'd had a crush on me her sophomore year when I was a senior. She used to come to the gym early to watch me lift under the guise of practicing her cheerleading routine. I thought she was by far the prettiest girl in the school but because I still had very little self confidence, I didn't think she even knew I was alive. I wasn't aware back then she'd never seen me before I had my braces removed and when I was 20 pounds overweight. A friend told her I'd been nicknamed "Bucky" for years due to my horribly misaligned teeth, but it didn't register with her because the guy she saw looked nothing like the old me.

I went from being ignored and/or ridiculed every day to being hounded by the best-looking girls in school almost overnight. I was so overwhelmed by it that I tended to ignore them and that started rumors going around that I was gay. Who ignores the hottest girls on campus unless he is gay, right? Okay, he might have an even hotter girlfriend, but I didn't. At least not until I met Karen Mooreland via my friend, Glen Haroldson, who were both Mormons. I started hanging around with them and eventually joined the Church because his family befriended me. although I never really bought into it but I did get baptized, confirmed, and ordained with the Aaronic Priesthood.

Karen was my first date, my first girlfriend, my first kiss, my first blow job, and my first fuck. She was a very aggressive, very sexual girl who also happened to be a Latter-day Saint. Or would that be Latter-day Sinner? Either way, she was a year and a half older than me and I'd had a crush on her before she graduated from my high school. Like all other girls, she was unaware I was even alive. She went to Brigham Young University and was home while her dad was ill when we met and soon thereafter...fucked.

That relationship didn't last long but it gave me some self confidence and that led to me having an affair with two (much) older, married women before I graduated from high school. I enlisted in the Marine Corps to get out of my small town and to qualify for the GI Bill so I could eventually go to college. My parents were extremely poor, and it was too much to ask them to pay. So I signed up and shipped out shortly after graduation that June.

I met Kate during my last assignment in Beaufort, South Carolina, where I was assigned to the Marine Corps Air Station. I met her as I was nearing the end of a year-long relationship with a Mormon girl named Joan, who was 3 1/2 years older than me. It was a rocky relationship all along as she was a total control freak. My doubts about Mormonism, religion in general, and even the existence of God were growing rapidly. I'd always had a thing for women who smoked but tried to repress it after I joined the Mormon religion. When I finally told her how I felt about the Church and how I wanted to marry a woman who enjoyed smoking, she went ballistic. I'd met Kate, who was living with Joan after she left her abusive, alcoholic husband a couple of times. The day I ended my relationship with Joan, I was going over to her house to put up birthday decorations for Kate. She was supposed to be at work but surprised me when I unlocked the door. She helped me decorate for her own 'surprise' party then we left together and had a very long, very pleasant first talk. I ended things with Joan that night and began seeing Kate after Joan went off on her essentially forcing Kate to move out and back in with her mom.

Kate was bad girl trapped in a good girl's body but she didn't know that when I met her. She married very young and spent years with an asshole husband who drank all their money away and who liked slapping her around when he was shit-faced—which was every day. Through a series of events which included several long talks and a first date, Kate fell as hard for me as I did for her. But because things blew up with Joan and me, they also blew up for Kate just as I was going on a final two-week deployment to Nevada. I tried calling to talk to Kate but Joan answered, reamed me out, and never told Kate I called. Kate didn't have a cell phone so she thought I didn't care for her. When I couldn't reach her I thought perhaps it was for the best and didn't pursue it.

Even so, she told me she couldn't stop thinking about me and my three S's and her curiosity got the best of her. After the falling out with Joan, Kate moved in with her mother. Coincidentally, that same week, her younger sister came home for an unexpected visit. She smoked and Kate told her about me and how she wanted to be the kind of girl I wanted or at least be ready to be should we cross paths again. She asked her sister to show her how to smoke and in spite of her younger sibling's warnings, she persisted and got her way. When I returned to South Carolina, we ran into one another in a local grocery store late one night just before it closed. While I was gone, I'd decided to leave the Mormon Church and vowed to break as many rules as I could. To that end, I put a six-pack of beer in my cart as I'd never even tasted alcohol before. In yet another coincidence (sign from God, right) Kate walked up behind and surprised me when she commented about the beer in my shopping cart. I invited her over and she soon shared with me how she'd decided to start smoking (at 29) and that it was her decision. I'd told her before there was no way I would ever ask a woman to start smoking. I'd just determined to find one who did. Kate made her determination to try and be that woman. She smoked for me for the first time outside on my little patio and shortly thereafter, we were in my bed fucking our brains out. I proposed to her, took her back home to Washington State where I'd grown up, and once her divorce was final, we were married by a local justice of the peace.

Since then, she'd been my ultimate fantasy of all things wrapped up in one person. Until, as I said, very recently.

That brings us back to Claire, who also smoked,. and who was every bit as beautiful as my wife but ten years younger. Were I single...

I tapped on the glass which startled Claire. She was just finishing a cigarette. She flipped her head around and saw me. "You scared me!" she mouthed so that I could read her lips.

"Sorry!" I mimed back. She held up a finger (no, not that one) letting me know to hold on and that she'd be right in.

A moment later she came back inside and said, "Even though you just scared the shit out of me, it's nice to see you again, Cal. What brings you here on my last day at GRCC?"

"An overdue book," I told her. "I believe I also owe the school some money."

"Ah! Trying to keep all the knowledge to yourself. Shame on you. We frown on that sort of thing around here," she said playfully. She got to her desk, entered her password into the computer and said, "Let me see your notice."

I handed it to her and she said, "Okay, here it is. You owe the school $7.38."

"Will you take a check?" I asked.

"Are you honest and trustworthy?" she said with mock seriousness. "After all, this is a lot of money."

"Depends on whom you ask, I suppose. I can assure you the check won't bounce. How's that?"

Claire lowered her head and raise an eyebrow. "Depends," she said using my word. "If it does, you'll have to contend with me and I can guarantee you you won't like that."

"Oh, really?" I said as I scrawled out the amount and signed it. "Do tell."

"Let's just say I can be very...persuasive." She took the check, looked it over, and said, "You wouldn't last a minute were I to employ my...special methods."

I gave her hot body an exaggerated once-over look and said, "Special methods? They can't be physical. I mean, look at you. You have those little stick arms and you weigh what? Maybe a hundred pounds—soaking wet? I'm 175 and have these." I never show off or talk about my body, so this was a silly, intentional exaggeration as I struck a pose.

Claire laughed and said, "You're a nut." She looked down at her computer screen and added, "And incredibly hot. If you weren't married..."

I broke my pose and said, "If I wasn't married...what?"

"It doesn't matter. You are married so I won't get to employ my techniques on you. And that's just a shame. Well, at least from my perspective anyway. I'd have you begging for mercy and that handsome face and gorgeous body of yours would do you no good. Trust me."

"Trust you? On what? That you think my body is smokin' hot or that you could get me to beg for mercy?"

"Yes," she said matter of factly.

I puffed up my chest and put my hands on my hips ala Superman and said, "Oh, really? Well I'd like to see you try. I'm a former Marine, too, you know." I then struck another goofy Atlas-Shrugged kind of pose and Claire laughed.

"Cute and funny. Well, as I said last time, all the good ones are taken."

"Hold on there!" I said. "I'm not gonna let you change the subject and get away with leaving your bold taunt hanging out there unchallenged that easily. I want to know how you think you'd get me to beg for mercy."

Claire looked up long enough to smile and say, "You're forgetting. I know your secrets. So it would be game over before it started."

"My secrets?" I asked less out of curiosity than to just hear her say it. I'd pretty much let the cat out of the bag when we spoke in June.

"Uh, huh," she replied while still not looking at me. "I'd just show up having had my hair and makeup done, wear a very sexy sweater with a short skirt and heels, then ask you for a light. It'd be game over just like that."

I moaned and said, "Okay. You're killin' me here. You win. I'd cave in a New York minute." I waited for her to look up again then asked her, "You didn't forget anything I shared with you, did you?"

She looked back at her screen and said, "Nope. Girls tend to remember every word a guy they like says. Especially if they have a huge crush on him." She didn't bother looking up or wait for me to reply. She just said, "So that'll be $7.48."