Chapter 8

There is no denying that she is probably right. From everything she has told you, Grudge is considerably larger, stronger, and more accustomed to physical confrontation than you are. You have no particular desire to test your abilities against a man who looks as though he regards violence as an ordinary form of communication.

Nevertheless, hearing your wife acknowledge that imbalance so casually has unsettled something in you. You have always considered yourself capable of protecting her. You have never imagined that protection necessarily requires winning a fistfight, but there is a difference between understanding your limitations privately and hearing your wife laugh at the idea of your confronting another man.

What disturbs you even more is the peculiar arousal accompanying your embarrassment. You picture Grudge standing shirtless in front of your wife, his enormous tattooed body blocking her view of the weight room, his face twisted with anger as he shouts that appalling insult. You imagine the other gym members watching silently, unwilling to intervene.

You imagine your wife sitting beneath his furious gaze, frightened but stubbornly refusing to surrender the machine. And then you remember her laughter. He'd kick your ass. You realize your traitorous cock is stiffening The words repeat themselves in your mind with uncomfortable clarity. You dislike the thought of another man being able to intimidate you so easily. You dislike the fact that your wife apparently recognizes it.

Yet the admission has exposed the same bewildering fascination that accompanied her first story about Grudge. There is something about the man's overwhelming physical presence, his contempt for ordinary social boundaries, and your wife's willingness to confront him that you cannot seem to dismiss. You wonder whether she understands how thoroughly she has embarrassed you.

Upstairs, your wife closes the bathroom door and begins undressing for her shower. Her earlier laughter fades as she remembers the confrontation in greater detail. She had been genuinely frightened when Grudge shouted at her. His voice was so loud, and his anger so immediate, that for a moment she wondered whether she had made a terrible mistake.

Yet she had refused to retreat. That knowledge fills her with an unfamiliar sense of triumph. She stood up to the biggest, meanest man in the gym, endured his insults, and finished her workout while he watched her. She knows perfectly well that his decision not to escalate the confrontation was his own, but she nevertheless feels as though she has won something.

Then she remembers your expression when she laughed at the suggestion of your confronting him. She hadn't intended to hurt your feelings. The idea simply struck her as ridiculous, given the extraordinary difference between you and the enormous stranger. She loves you, respects you, and has never expected you to behave like some swaggering tough guy.

Still, she cannot deny that the comparison occurred to her immediately. She turns on the shower and steps beneath the hot water, but the confrontation refuses to leave her thoughts. She remembers Grudge standing over her, shirtless and furious, his enormous tattooed shoulders blocking the overhead lights. Her fingers find her clit again and begin to rub.

She remembers the way his face darkened when she challenged him, and how his voice carried across the weight room when he called her a dumb cunt. Everyone heard him. Everyone looked. Yet nobody intervened. She had never felt so publicly humiliated, and she had certainly never encountered a man so utterly indifferent to what anyone thought of his behavior.

As she plunged a finger inside her cunt, his final threats return to her with uncomfortable clarity. Keep fucking with me, sweetheart, and I'll teach you what happens when you piss off the wrong motherfucker. She remembers how he leaned toward her, his face close enough for her to see the old scar crossing his eyebrow, and how deliberately he emphasized the warning.

She had managed to smile and walk away, but she knows how frightened she really was. Grudge could have dragged her off that machine before anyone reacted. He was considerably larger and stronger than she was, and the silence of the surrounding gym members suggested that nobody was particularly eager to challenge him. She wonders whether he recognized her fear beneath her defiance,.

He seemed so confident that she would eventually regret confronting him. What troubles her is the fascination accompanying those memories. She is accustomed to having some control over how people treat her. She can usually end an unpleasant conversation with a sharp remark, an offended look, or a firm refusal to participate.

Grudge had brushed aside every one of those defenses. He had insulted her in front of an entire room of strangers and seemed almost amused by her attempts to preserve her dignity. In the privacy of the shower, she finds herself imagining a different outcome, one in which her confidence finally deserts her and she cannot think of anything clever to say.

She pictures him issuing orders in that harsh, gravelly voice while she struggles between the impulse to defy him and the desire to avoid another confrontation. The imagined loss of control disturbs her, but she cannot deny that its unfamiliar intensity has captured her attention. She masturbates furiously while imagining being dominated by Grudge.

She tries to understand why the thought of being ordered around by such an unpleasant man has become so compelling. Perhaps it is because she spends so much of her ordinary life making decisions, maintaining appearances, and behaving as everyone expects. Grudge represents something completely outside that orderly existence. He is vulgar, intimidating, and apparently unconcerned with anyone's approval.

In her imagination, he becomes an exaggerated embodiment of everything she has been taught to avoid, a man whose approval she would never ordinarily seek and whose contempt she nevertheless finds herself remembering. She imagines what it would feel like to surrender entirely and simply allow someone else to dictate what happens next.

The thought frightens her precisely because it contradicts everything she believes about herself. Yet the difference between imagining submission and facing a genuinely threatening man is not lost on her. She knows that Grudge's behavior was unacceptable, and she knows that his threats might be more than empty bluster. The fantasy offers her the illusion of choosing when to relinquish control, while the actual confrontation offered no such guarantee.

She feels her climax wash over her, then rests her forehead against the cool tile, troubled by how easily those two possibilities have become entangled in her thoughts. She is proud that she stood her ground, but part of her wonders what might have happened if she had not. More disturbingly, she realizes that she wants to see him again, if only to discover whether the strange power he seems to hold over her imagination survives another encounter.

By the time she turns off the shower, she has resolved to keep these thoughts entirely to herself. She cannot imagine explaining to you that a man who publicly insulted and threatened her has become the subject of such persistent, contradictory erotic fantasies. She suspects you would be angry, hurt, or simply bewildered.

She wraps herself in a towel and studies her reflection through the steam-covered mirror, searching for some visible sign that the afternoon has changed her. There is none. She looks like the same woman who left for the gym that morning, although she now understands that her feelings about Grudge are considerably more complicated than simple hatred.

She tells herself that she will avoid him tomorrow, that she has made her point, and that another confrontation would be foolish. Nevertheless, as she begins getting dressed, she catches herself wondering whether he is still angry with her, and what he might say the next time they meet. She wonders whether he will remember what happened the next time he sees her. She is certain that he will.

Downstairs, you remain on the sofa for several minutes before finally rising and walking toward the small bathroom off the hallway. You close the door behind you and look at yourself in the mirror, remembering the expression on your wife's face when she laughed. You know she wasn't deliberately trying to humiliate you.

That knowledge does remarkably little to ease the sting. You sit on the toilet and pull out your erect dick. You imagine standing opposite Grudge in the weight room, looking up into his battered face while he regards you with the same contempt he showed your wife. You start to stroke yourself. You imagine attempting to deliver some stern warning about treating her respectfully, only to have the enormous man laugh in your face.

The imagined scene is absurd, embarrassing, and strangely difficult to abandon. You remain in the bathroom longer than necessary, privately wrestling with thoughts you would never willingly confess to your wife as you jerk yourself off. By the time you finish, you have convinced yourself that the entire matter is best forgotten.

Upstairs, your wife reaches much the same conclusion. Neither of you believes it. And somewhere across town, Grudge is almost certainly still angry about the woman who moved his shirt, quoted the gym rules to his face, and made him stand there while she finished her workout.

For the first time, the enormous stranger has a reason to remember your wife as something more than another hot piece of ass at the gym. He has a reason to remember her name, if he ever learns it. And neither of you has considered what might happen if he decides that today's confrontation isn't over.