Unexpected Top (Ball & Chain)

Unexpected Top

Cassandra Carr

Sometimes a wife has to go to extreme measures to save her marriage. Cissy Holden isn’t happy. Her husband Len doesn’t help out around the house and shows little respect for her. Even worse, their sex life leaves much to be desired. The chemistry they enjoyed when they first met has faded and Cissy is at her wits’ end.

She decides to take matters into her own hands—literally—and introduces her wayward husband to the concept of a Female-Led Relationship (FLR). At first he’s all for it since he’s getting sexual favors for doing chores, but as Cissy ratchets up the control, Len starts to wonder if he’s less of a man if he lets her. Even more confusing is the fact that the sex, another area where Cissy has taken control, is through the roof. What does that say about him? Only time will tell if Len will fully jump on board, or if Cissy has made the biggest mistake of her life.

Unexpected Top

Cassandra Carr

Dedication

To Kelli Collins, because she wanted a femdom story. This is the closest I could do…

Chapter One

The bathroom door slammed, rattling on its hinges, and Cissy Holden winced. Her marriage was in big trouble, and this latest attempt to spice up their sex life could only be called an unmitigated disaster. She and her husband Len had grown further and further apart, sexually and otherwise, over the past year or two, and Cissy had no idea how to fix the problem.

Len poked his head out but didn’t so much as glance in her direction. “I’m taking a shower.” No “why don’t you join me” was implied in the sentence, more like “stay the hell out”.

Cissy rolled onto her side and curled up, fighting tears. Again.

She’d suggested they try dominance and submission after reading about it in the erotic romances she loved, but Len clearly hadn’t been into the idea. Trying to make the experience as authentic as possible, Cissy had gone to the local sex shop, sweating profusely and face as red as a fire hydrant, to buy a set of fleece-lined cuffs and a blindfold. After she’d presented the items to Len earlier in the evening, he’d scoffed at the cuffs and ignored the blindfold.

Then he’d done the same thing he’d been doing for the last couple of years of their twelve-year marriage. Woman on bottom, man on top. Perfunctory foreplay. Quick penetration. She missed the days when he’d spend time kissing her, touching her and making sure she was as aroused as he was before entering her. Tonight, after ten minutes of him rutting on top of her and her not responding—what was there to respond
to
—he’d come and immediately climbed off her before stalking into the bathroom.

The shower turned off and she feigned sleep. It was better than having to face her husband. Did he not want her anymore? Cissy loved Len. She could hardly remember a time she hadn’t loved him. They’d met and begun dating in high school, and after she’d graduated from community college with her accounting degree, they’d married.

Len had been older than her twenty-one years and had been out on his own with a great job in quality assurance testing by the time they’d taken the plunge. She’d hardly been able to believe her luck when the football quarterback with his All-American, blond-god looks had even noticed her, and when they got married and didn’t have to scrimp and save like their friends, she felt even more blessed.

Now it was twelve years later, and although Len wasn’t in the same shape he’d been in during his younger years, he still looked damn fine, whereas Cissy had filled out some from working a full-time desk job. Her extra weight had settled on her thighs, ass and belly, as it did for so many women. She certainly wasn’t ugly, with hair that was still thick and wavy, tumbling halfway down her back the way her husband had said he liked it years ago.

Cissy frowned. Maybe it wasn’t enough anymore. Maybe Len didn’t find her desirable and only had sex with her because it was his duty as her husband, kind of like taking out the garbage or paying the cable bill. They were childless by choice, but now Cissy felt a bone-deep loneliness. Without Len to share her life with, she had nothing.

Len padded back into the room and was soon asleep, but Cissy lay awake for hours, going over and rejecting idea after idea to save her marriage, her stomach churning as her fear it was too late grew with every passing minute.

* * * * *

As they sat at the kitchen table together the next morning, Cissy trying to force down cottage cheese while she read another of her erotic romances and Len chomping on his third bowl of cereal as he did the crossword, Cissy stopped dead. Perhaps this was one of the problems. She and Len didn’t talk anymore. It wasn’t as if they hated each other. It was more…friendly at this point. When had that happened?

Setting down her spoon, she then closed her book and asked, “What’s on tap for you today?”

Without looking up, he answered, “I need to mow the lawn before it gets too hot.”

“Do you want to go see a movie or something later?”

Now he looked up. “What movie?”

“That new action movie about the guy who finds out he has the superpower to stop the sun from melting the Earth is out.”

“You’d go see that?” One of Len’s thick eyebrows rose and Cissy took a moment to study his face. He wasn’t hostile, just surprised. Besides the frustrating sexual experiences lately, they got along for the most part, but Cissy wanted more. Obviously marriages cooled off over the years, but she didn’t want to be married to a guy who was more of a friend, a buddy. She wanted to be married to a guy who would want her forever. If she’d wanted a friend, she would’ve married her best friend Shell. At least she’d put down the toilet seat.

“Sure,” she answered quickly. “Maybe we could grab some dinner after that. There’s a new fondue place in the mall.”

Which would force us to be together for hours since it’s a multi-course meal.

“Um, yeah, okay.” Len folded the paper and then stood. “I’d better get out there. Looks like a scorcher.”

“Yeah, turns out you
can
get a tan in Buffalo.”

Len smiled and his gorgeous brown eyes lit up. That was a private joke between the two of them since so many people assumed it was always cold in Buffalo. Her heart caught as she stared at him. She really did love him and couldn’t imagine her life without him, but was that enough to save her marriage? Did he still love her back? Did he even want to fix things? Cissy bit her lip. He’d agreed to go on this date.

That has to mean something.

With a lighter heart, Cissy began her daily chores. On a whim she decided to stop by the mall to buy a new outfit. Who knew if Len would even notice, but she had to try. Besides, the infernal cottage cheese diet she’d forced herself to keep at had helped her lose nearly eight pounds. It was time to show off her new, though still far from perfect, body.

While she was there she got a manicure and pedicure, and when she got back, Len was watching a baseball game, a beer in his hand as he lounged on the recliner. Cissy took a moment to appreciate his body. Len was clad in a pair of cargo shorts, which she happened to know showed off his ass beautifully, even if she couldn’t see it at the moment, and one of those tight, breathable t-shirts.

She wanted to take a shower before they had to go, but considered surprising Len by sucking his cock. He never turned that down—what sane man did? But then she remembered how Len had acted the night before and shook her head, feeling tears well in her eyes again. Before she got more upset and ruined the entire evening, she left the room to get ready.

They had a good time on their date, though not surprisingly Len didn’t seem to notice her new clothes. During the movie she’d tried to take his hand, and he’d held hers for a few moments but soon pulled away to grab his soft drink. Disappointed, Cissy dropped her hand back into her lap and tried to concentrate on the movie, which she knew Len was enjoying. It wasn’t her kind of thing though, and she found her attention wandering. All that time she’d spent staring at the ceiling the night before caught up with her, and she fell asleep before the end of the movie. When the house lights came up she woke with a start, looking around groggily.

Len looked at her sideways. “Man, you’re a pretty dull date.”

Sometimes it was hard to tell if he was joking, and she gave him an uncertain smile. She hated feeling like this, as if she was constantly walking on eggshells, afraid to say or do anything that might make everything worse. But the way he had begun to treat her recently, with distant politeness, indifference or, at the worst of times, barely concealed contempt was a stab to her heart. Cissy didn’t even think he noticed when he was putting her down. Len wasn’t a cruel man by nature. If she had to put a name to the whole situation, she’d say Len was bored, and that was almost worse than if something more overt was going on.

They left the theater, and when they got home Len turned on some late-night TV while Cissy retired to their bedroom to read. She didn’t want to push the sex thing, and if she was honest with herself, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to take another rejection. By the time Len came in, Cissy had fallen victim to emotional exhaustion and was asleep.

Len went fishing with a friend the next day, and Cissy sat down at the computer. She’d woken up determined to figure out what was wrong with their marriage and had come up with some actionable items to fix it that she hadn’t thought of yet. This was what Cissy did best—plan. Her job as a project manager for a large bank in the area made the skill come naturally.

After putting various search strings into her browser, she finally hit pay dirt. Apparently there was an entire faction of women who felt unappreciated and that their men didn’t care enough to try to keep their relationships working. But what she saw when she started clicking through the links on a bunch of websites related to the matter caused an involuntary guffaw to burst free. These women had decided to take charge of their men. And how.

As she read more she was surprised to learn there were so many women who played the dominant role in their households. Through her erotic romance reading, she knew how many women were submissive to men, but had no idea so many women had submissive guys.

Leaning her chin on her hand, she read about how the women made rules and expected their men to abide by them. That in itself intrigued her, since she was constantly doing things like waiting for Len to come home from work so they could eat dinner, and of course he never called to tell her he was going to be late. That was just the beginning. At this point in their marriage, they were basically living two separate lives. He had no accountability toward her, and she was getting tired of being so low on his priority list.

Cissy was even more shocked as she clicked on another link. Several pictures of what were obviously men’s asses came up on the screen, each bright red and showing other kinds of marks. What was this?

She read the first caption and gasped. When their men broke rules, this particular group of women spanked them. Part of their punishment was having a picture of their spanked asses posted online in this group, along with a journal-type entry about what they’d done to earn the spanking and what had transpired during the actual punishment.

Her breathing sped up and her pussy gushed with juices. “Holy shit. I wish I could do that to Len. I bet he’d think twice about his behavior if he knew an ass blistering was coming.” And based on the pictures she saw, ass blistering was an accurate statement. These women didn’t go easy on their men, and the guys’ asses were bright red, marked, bruised, welted—she couldn’t believe it.

Scrolling down, she saw other pictures, including several of men’s cocks, some caged in some sort of funny-looking contraption, others reddened and with a kind of a whip included in the picture. Did these women whip their men’s cocks? What man would put up with that?

Cissy snapped the lid of the laptop closed, her mind reeling. Sure, she’d read about women being spanked, and she’d wondered what it would feel like if Len put her over his lap and spanked her. But the opposite? It wasn’t like Len was huge, but he was obviously much stronger than she. How did these women manage to spank their men without the guys simply refusing or stopping the punishment? Her brain was racing, along with her heart, and she jumped when the side door from the garage banged open.

“Stupid fucking rain,” Len grumbled. “Maybe the fish don’t mind it, but I sure as hell do.” He deposited his equipment on the hardwood floor in the kitchen despite the face Cissy made as the house began to fill with the smells of fish and lake water. “I said I’d check the radar on the laptop to see when this storm is gonna end and then call Dave back. I suggested to Dave that we just go to a bar and catch the game instead of running all over the fucking place trying to get away from the storm.”

Len walked toward her and she snatched the laptop off the table. She hadn’t closed that website window before she’d slammed the computer shut and she could just imagine what Len would say if he saw it.

“No, you can’t.”

His eyebrows knitted. “Why the hell not?”

“I’m, um, I’m in the middle of looking at something. For you.”

Len made to grab the laptop. “Look for it later. I told Dave I’d call him.”

Jumping up, Cissy nearly knocked over the chair. Hugging the laptop to her chest, she said, “No. Go look on your work computer.”

“What the fuck’s going on with you?” Len made another grab for the laptop, his eyes narrowing and a snarl forming in the corners of his mouth.

Cissy crossed the room, still clutching the computer. “Haven’t I asked you not to swear so much?”

He rolled his eyes. “Yes, Mom.”

“There’s no need to make every fifth or sixth word a swear word.” It wasn’t as if she were some sort of nun, but she didn’t see why an intelligent man like Len would have to curse constantly.

“What-the-fuck-ever,” he tossed back as he left the room, leaving all his stuff in a pile next to the garage door and not even removing his muddy boots.

At that moment Cissy envisioned going after him, dragging him into their bedroom by his ear and making him bend over the bed for a paddling. They didn’t even own a paddle like the ones she’d seen online, and there was no way in hell Len would ever let her do that, but the thought of reddening his bare ass for his attitude was highly satisfying at that moment.

Len left the house again shortly thereafter, not taking his fishing gear with him or making any move to put it away, and to get away from the smell, Cissy went upstairs. After climbing onto the bed, she opened the computer and went back to that website, devouring every inch of it, fueled by her anger at first, but then something else took over. She was getting aroused reading about how these women punished their men for their bad attitudes and poor behavior. The members of the website recommended easing the man into giving up control, starting in the bedroom and working out from there, since in their experience most men didn’t seem to care who did what in the bedroom as long as they got laid.