Later that evening, the clock ticked almost to ten. She’d be home shortly, he thought. He didn't wish to mention anything of what had happened. It was just easier to say nothing.

“Hey how was your day with Mimi, Sand?”

Percy spoke walking on eggshells. He didn’t want to force a rise from her, so thought it best just to be leisurely, with a bit of small talk!

She sat down on the sofa in a huff!

“Well, we did the usual, I suppose. Had a bite to eat, Mimi was telling me she wants to go back to Laos to see her family, grandmother and so forth.”

So she was talking to him, but it was hardly the nitty gritty! It wasn’t like either of them could forget what had happened - so he took it in his stride to take the reins and sort it out once and for all.

“Firstly; let me apologise about what happened. You are a hundred per cent correct. It was terrible for you to learn about Peppermint Glaciers like that, and especially from somebody at the time you didn’t know as Clayton. You didn’t deserve to feel degraded as you did. I showed both of us up! I want to be honest with you about the future. From now on, that’s all.”

Sandy surveyed him, her eyes fixated on his. She could see the heart-felt nature of his apology. It was genuine. Enough time had now passed to reflect upon the conflict between them. The dust had settled; she guessed. Thankfully, she was in a better place to understand things differently that evening.

She took his face in her hands and cradled him for a moment. Back and forth, giving him her womanly solace that he so needed right now. She was babying him, of course, although this was not the subtext he could see. She pulled him closer and the feeling of his head next to her warm breasts became the only thing necessary at that point. That human connection his wife gave him suddenly made all else pale in significance.

“I agree! We can move forward from here. I’ve had time to think and you know what makes me smile the most is knowing you are my devoted husband! It’s a tough bond to break, hun! I know you will try your best. It’s a learning curve this life so don’t feel too bad about yourself. So in that light, I’ve got an idea that will cheer you up! Why don’t you pop a pair of little kisses on both my cheeks? It will be the cherry on the cake of your apology, and I believe it will make us whole again.”

Oddly, but in haste he did her bidding - but it was not without strange feelings of her attitude towards him. It felt like a directive, subtle in its approach, almost nuanced by how she expressed it. A tad weird and all.

He proceeded as she had tentatively asked to plant two affectionate kisses upon her, softly and with care, connecting with her radiant face.

They then sat together in silence on the sofa for a while. Yet for the first time in so long, things had switched. He was lying in her arms and she was comforting him. He was as snug as a bug in a rug. It all felt a bit off though, first with her softly asks of kisses and now this - things seemed different! It felt she was seeking his devotion.

Percy embraced Sandy’s comforting presence as they lay together on the sofa. Her arms clasped around him gave him physical support, as well as an emotional one, acting both in symmetry, so what more could he want at this intimate moment?

Yes, his mind had veered in the thick mix of it all! He reflected on that letter, and the things he had picked up on at the time that appeared to be strange to him.

“Sandy, can I ask you a question?”

Perturbed in his sense of self-pity, Percy propelled the jumble of anxieties to the front of his mind. In his haste, he felt it was only fair he got some answers from his wife. He removed himself from her arms, the action of a subtle body language flip, giving way to the untoward feelings he harboured. A disharmony of such sorts, a racing fervour to delve to the bottom of his unanswered qualms, swimming abrasively inside of him.

“Yea, what is it?” She rasped, affirming in herself that he was acting odd. What exactly was happening with him right now?

“Well, you know the letter you left me. Reflecting on it, it felt quite off. I got a sense you were channelling a bit of a frustration towards me! I mean, I know it’s silly, but you didn’t put your usual kisses at the end as you always do, whether it be by text or whatever.”

He felt pretty stupid at that last remark! Yet all that had happened lately caused his headspace to whirl and made him feel somewhat muddled. Why did he have to worry about such irrelevant issues? His clouded judgment made him fixate on the minor details, but that’s who he was.

Sandy smirked, she had never seen him behave so cautiously at what she felt was practically a something or nothing. It was all an over the top reaction to an issue he’d blindly allowed to become so irrational in his head.

“Percy, firstly if I can say, I’m getting the distinct feeling that your apology was not so much the ‘Big Sorry’ you intended. You often do this, you fester on something and give the impression all is well. When the actual truth is you allow that corrupted brain of yours to take over! Therefore, we avoid discussing the real matter at hand. Why do you think I didn’t put kisses? It’s not so hard to work out, is it? You're over sensitive, carrying all your eggs in one basket! Black and white as per usual, on the utmost trivial of matters! No kisses, you say Percy! I’m sorry, but that just takes the absolute biscuit. You’re my husband, for god’s sake!”

He rubbed his hands together in a state of nervousness. She was right, but it’s how he was. The overwhelming ratchet of issues blaring at him recently was just too much to curtail! It had really taken an effect on him! The problem was, he never knew when to close his mouth. He dug a hole!

“It wasn’t just that actually: it was also those nasty frozen hot dogs you left for me in the sink. You know I don’t like those. I’ve never once before eaten them, it felt like you were punishing me or something.”

This riled Sandy - she threw daggers at him hastily at his assertions! It was an attack on her kindness!

“I prepared your dinner as I always have”

She lied somewhat. He’d cleverly hit the nail right on the head! Yet admitting the truth to her position was not an option, not at all. She continued, “I was rushing to meet Mimi, so I just got the nearest thing I could find. I found them stacked right in the back of the freezer! To think you are upset at that makes me wonder what else, much, much bigger, you could react to. You are behaving like a child, Percy.”

She used her tongue cleverly in a patronising way as to tap inside this ardent issue. The child being the nail in the coffin that would annoy him. She knew how his brain worked, a bit of tugging ‘here and there’ at his senses, making him realise just how absurd he was being. She knew she had acted with a subtle vehemence, offering him up those horrid hotdogs! A part of her had engineered it all along, pre-planned, showing him he had embarrassed her in front of Mimi and Clayton, but that wasn’t all of why she’d done it.

Mimi had mentioned to her after the event that Clayton had confided to her that Percy was a proper ‘do gooder’ at work - a fan favourite of his boss, Dick Holroyd.

Not just that, but what hit home hardest was he had apparently never once mentioned her to him or anybody else at work. This double downed the mistrust she felt he had towards her and their marriage. Why on earth would he feel so bad and vulnerable in himself as to not to mention her? Sandy, his gorgeous wife and lover.

Yes, you can bet she was glad this had come to the forefront. Major alarm bells in her mind were uncovering just how weak he was. It had taken not long into the marriage for it to appear.

Yet there was a fun time element in it as well. Being older than him, she knew deep down she wore the trousers in the relationship and she wanted to stamp her mark from now on. After all, she loved him, but he had to understand who was the boss!  

“Being childish, you say! Never was that my intention, not one bit. Maybe I just didn’t understand how you felt. Maybe, just maybe, I wanted you to grasp the torment of this and everything else that has been going on lately.”

Oh no, he had a faux pas at that moment! Shit, never was the plan to reveal any of those more inward feelings. Why the hell had he just said that? It was how she was making him feel that had roused him without thought - and in a crippling notion everything had come out, not at all as he had intended.

“Oh, everything else. You mean, like your insecurities surrounding me? Clayton as per what Mimi told me said he had not even the slightest clue who I was! I heard he felt shocked to learn my name when we me. What kind of man doesn’t sing song and dances about his wife? It’s surely meant to be a big part of marriage that makes a person happy. A husband who can show strength of who he is, and above all else not fritter about in a mind-set fraught with a collusion to keep me as a separation from his life, and those he works with.”

Oh no, he had done it now! His mind was playing mental gymnastics, zapping around like arcade ping-pong, at scintillating speeds, unable to control the buttons any longer! Sure he had pressed her buttons alright and now he just sat there glum faced with the revelations he had harboured rising to the surface, teetering on the edge of explosion!

“Go do the washing up and afterwards you can clean the garage out! It’s time for you to think through what I’ve just said. Right now, you lack the capacity to give me an honest response. There would be no point listening to you grovelling right now. Percy Brockton, you are a big kid!”

She threw herself off the Sofa with immediate effect and left the room!

--

The newlyweds’ sex life was less than to be shouted about, but you could say Percy managed giving Sandy her wants & needs, sort of. He was below average in cock size and that had not caused him too much trouble growing up. That was because of his heavy lust for a bit of the ol’ tongue thrusting cunnilingus!

More often than not, he would ejaculate prematurely, so focusing on the job nestled sweetly between Sandy’s legs became the usual. His devotion to that goddess jewel, wonder and awe of the visual beauty enlightened him for the female form with an utterly insatiable appetite. The smells of womanly pheromones tickled his senses like a teenage boy on his first date. It was pretty pathetic actually, yet his own makings blinded him! He would sport a stiffy almost as soon as he bowed his head, but then it was too late. Not much a macho man at all, tugging his little Percy prick as he went.

His submissive leanings were to the enticement of magnificence that lay before him, spellbinding you could say - yet not in a good way, more in a negative manner, counterproductive to his other internal duties that he fell short on.

Yet it was quite cute how his slender physique budded itself within those heavenly goddess thighs at either side of him, acting as anchors for his hands to hold on to as he made the ecstatic pleasures of his wife his sole goal. His little tinker bell body bobbing up and down to the pace as he lavished Sandy with all his fervour. It was emasculating, to say the least, and until now she had not quite seen it in her little man.

You could say they enjoyed a regularity of special times together. Yet Sandy wanted more and saw him as a bit of a wet fish. All being useful only for that weasel tongue he had. She often wondered what a girth of a real cock felt like. His was pretty damn puny, so she’d end up feigning the intercourse, hurrying him up to go down on her. At least she orgasmed then, but ya know! Settling largely for less had become the predominant factor, making the best of an average situation, but deep down, she craved more!

Percy was quite the vanilla bunny type for something a little more kinky - he thought going down on a lady was the ‘Be all and end all’ of a high functioning sex life. To him, he believed he was adhering to Sandy’s needs, and that she felt exactly the same. It just wasn’t the case, though!

She took a warm shower to feel better after Percy’s wussy antics. Milking up her curvaceous self in a beautifully scented coconut & raspberry body wash. She thought back to the missed opportunity of ‘kissy time’ that had been lost in the gutter on the night of the big upset. Yet in reflection and hindsight, a part of her realised that it would have just been more of the ‘run of the mill’ antics churning out in a state of boredom. He, accustomed and tuned to his happiness, whereas she was empty!

Was it a potential blessing in disguise that the situation had taken a sharper turn in the mechanics of their marriage? It seemed tweaks and turns to go backwards and revert to their old selves were now at a crossroads in their relationship. With what was now a larger imprint of a power-struggling hierarchical battle, they were up against.

The intrigue sent rapid waves of newer, bolder sexual urgencies through her body! All at once, like electric energy cascading onto the top of a lighthouse, lighting up the sky as the seas crashed, and the thunder roared! She had not felt an excitement quite like it for an age. Things were very much developing.

It was apparent Percy had a big problem with big true to himself. A big problem being true to Sandy. Swathes of a sewage ridden stench of dishonesty in the marriage were taking a presence. She knew it was not akin to allowing him to revert to his old self, not now. A big part of the thrill was testing his resolve, pushing him across the plains as a tumbleweed to see how far he would beckon to her newly found, untapped Matriarchy!

--

The following day at work, Percy was in a rotten mood! Everything plus more was going wrong for him right now. He got back to his desk after lunch, noticing something rather untoward written about him! What met his eyes were the words ‘Cookie boy’ scruffily scrawled on his white board! What the fuck did that mean? He looked around in an initial angst - maybe the perpetrator was close! Stupid as it was, he sensed this had naturally taken place whilst he had been away from his desk, with the culprit now nowhere to be seen.

What was a cookie boy? Some silly gag he thought? He racked his brain, reeling off the expression ‘as the cookie crumbles’, sadly alluding to the feeling that he was indeed crumbling at this point! Yep, perhaps that was the joke? It was obviously Clayton Bailey’s makings and conveniently his team had gone home as it was half day Fridays. Percy had put in for some overtime, anything to further delay putting off the situation with Sandy. Yet prolonging the problem, just added another pathetic dent into his weakening mental frame. Oh god!

He did a quick search of Google images with ‘Cookie boy’ but it just pulled up cartoon images of a gingerbread man and other childish sort caricatures. No this wasn’t right and just as he was about to close the window down he glanced at a picture of a woman with her boobs out and muscle type black guy with his torso showing. Crouched at their feet was a smaller white guy. Underneath it said ‘Cucky Christmas’ with the image of a sleigh hurtling in the background and the white guy wearing an elf costume and reindeer antlers. What in the wholly fuck was this? It didn’t take him long to understand Clayton’s sick joke wasn’t about gingerbread cookie men! He decided to further investigate.