Ben's wife was not amused by his sexual antics the night of her birthday. After two nights on the couch Ben was allowed to return to the bedroom but the climate there was definitely chilly and that had nothing to do with the air conditioning.
In the office the day to day routine went on as usual. There was no reference by
Ms. Jackson or Roxanne to the little warm up event they had treated him to before they sent him home to celebrate with Clare.
This suited Ben perfectly because he was finding it hard enough to make any brownie points at home without the distraction of his sexy colleagues waylaying him at work.
It was about two weeks after the 'birthday' that Roxanne told Ben that Ms. Jackson wanted him in conference room L-4 at 5:00 o'clock and that he should expect to be tied up for an hour or so, maybe a little more.
There was nothing unusual about the circumstances so Ben appeared on time at L-4 as requested.
When he entered the room he was a little surprised by the setting. L-4 was one of the more casual meeting rooms. There were two or three small tables that would seat groups of four or six people as well as a couple of comfortable couches and chairs.
Ms. Jackson was sitting at one end of one of these couches. On the other end sat an attractive young lady. He would soon be introduced and find out that she was
Mrs. Sarah Goldstein.
Sarah looked to be in her late twenties / early thirties and was wearing dark framed glasses. Her hair was black and turned into an elaborate coil on the back of her head. She was wearing a grey cashmere sweater, pearls, a dark pleated skirt and medium heels. Her hands were folded on her knees. Although she was sitting very primly in her seat there was an air of barely contained excitement about her.
She was a pretty woman but Ben was more interested in the array of technology that was set up in front of her. There were two video cameras on tri-pods set back about twelve feet from the couch and directed at Sarah diagonally from her left and her right. There was a sound boom overhead and two or three of those umbrella light reflectors you saw in photo studios. There were also tele-prompters standing beside the cameras and behind the couch. A significant bundle of cables ran across the floor and over to a nearby table. There, Roxanne was fiddling with a control board and a couple of monitors.
Ben wondered if Sarah might be there to be interviewed about her 'soon to be released' children's book or something.
"Ben. You're right on time..." Ms. Jackson said, without getting up.
"This is Sarah Goldstein, a client of ours. She's been looking forward to meeting you. Sarah, this is Ben Clark."
"Hello Ben."
"Hello Mrs. Goldstein."
"Oh please Ben. You must call me Sarah."
"Sure...Fine...Sarah."
Ms. Jackson continued with her introduction.
"Ben. Sarah recently was granted a divorce from Mr. Goldstein and we were able to obtain what, I think it would be fair to say, is a fairly handsome settlement."
"You're being very modest Vickie. I swear that Ben left that court room with a tear in his eye. Oh sorry Ben..." Sarah said turning her smile towards Ms. Jackson's assistant.
"Coincidentally my husband, ex-husband's, name is Ben too. That's part of the reason I was so interested in meeting you.
Ben just stood there with a polite smile on his face, wondering where this was all going.
Ms. Jackson continued...
"Sarah has been through a very trying time but we have finally reached a reasonable conclusion to the legal end of matters. But, as is often the case in a messy divorce, there are still emotional issues to come to terms with. That's why I asked you to come up Ben. I think you can help. I'll let Sarah explain."
Sarah took a deep breath and then turned her full attention to Ben
"Thank you Victoria. Mr. Clark, let me give you just a little history. My husband Ben is considerably older than I am, older and very wealthy. We were married seven years ago and for the first five years everything went along just fine. We had a little girl and a very good relationship, including a satisfying sex life. Nothing fancy but still good."
"Then, about two years ago, the trouble started. All of a sudden Ben got this fixation about oral sex. He wanted me to give him a blow job. Nothing else would do. He wanted me to go down on him and he wouldn't stop. We had been perfectly happy up until them. I don't know what got into him."
"Every day, day after day, he told me he wanted me to get down on my knees and do him. Now I had made it very clear from day one that I wasn't that kind of girl. I was perfectly willing to go to bed with him, to make love like two normal, healthy people but that I wasn't going to do oral sex with him."
To Ben this was beginning to sound unnervingly like his own marriage.
"He tried bullying me and harassing me and painting me out to be some kind of ice queen. But it wasn't like that. I thought he was being completely selfish but he didn't want to hear anything like that from me."
"After about six months of constant battling it all stopped. I mean no more demands for oral sex, no more sex, period. I thought he had come to his senses and that soon we would get back to the normal routine we had had before."
"I guess I was a little naïve at that point. I soon found out that things weren't ever going to be the same again. It turns out that Ben had started seeing one on my gym buddies, Mitzi Roth. Mitzi had gone through her own divorce about a year prior to this. The first thing she did when she got her settlement was go out and get a new pair of boobs. Then she went on a manhunt. It was common knowledge around the gym that she had snagged a hot one. But I had no idea at first that it was my Ben."
"But it wasn't long until I found out. He didn't make the least effort to be discreet about it. The next thing I know I'm hearing that Mitzi is on his arm at the charity events that we used to go to. And I guess that's because she wasn't as squeamish as I was about getting on her knees for him."
"So I confronted him and he didn't even bother to try and deny it. He told me he was going to move in with her because 'she understood what a man needs'. And his lawyer is telling him he can get a divorce from me on the grounds of 'mental cruelty' and he won't have to pay me a cent."
"So that's when I came to see Victoria. When I told her what Ben had done and how he had threatened me, she said that he was sadly mistaken if he thought her could trade me in for a new model just like that. He could walk away if he wanted to but it was going to cost him."
"And she was right of course. I don't think Ben had any idea how much it was going to cost him. But now he knows and I'm happy for that. Now I don't want you to think I'm some kind of a vindictive bitch. But my husband, ex-husband, is a very wealthy man, as I said before. In fact he can easily afford to support two families. Oh he'll moan about what he has to pay for a while but then he'll just go on doing what he wants to do, completely oblivious to all the pain and humiliation he has caused me."
"So there's something else that I'd like. I'd like to hurt him just a little bit, the way that I've been hurt. I talked about all this with Victoria and she came up with what I think is a wonderful idea. I would like my Ben to see me giving the blow-job he always wanted, but not to him of course. I'd like to send him a picture of me going down on someone, just to let him know what he might have had if he'd been a little more compassionate, a little more understanding."
