The Cabin: Chloe's Story (Book Two) (The Cabin Novellas) Read Free Page A

raided the medicine cabinet, fantasizing about that guy fucking me on the train.

Two
     
    Ben
     
    Leaving the office, I made my way out onto the street. That pounding had started in my temples again and I knew within ten, fifteen minutes, my brain would feel as if someone had set loose a herd of buffalo inside my skull. They would charge around the corridors of my mind, kicking up flaky lumps of grey matter with their giant hooves. Rubbing my temples with the balls of my hand, I headed away from work for the day and set off in the direction of home for the weekend. I wouldn’t take my car, my head was hurting way too much already, and sometimes the headaches could be blinding. I had enough shit in my life without wrecking the goddamn car and me along with it. Chloe really would freak out if I truly became permanently paralyzed below the waist. I was so tired most nights, I could hardly raise a smile, let alone anything else. I knew that pissed Chloe off, but she didn’t have the worries I had. The credit crunch had hit the banking sector hard, despite what the distrusting public thought. To them we were all just greedy bankers, but that just wasn’t true. The shareholders probably, but not the guys and girls at my level. It was a hard slog, and with redundancies looming daily, I had to work hard if I wanted to avoid the axe when it inevitably came swinging down. I just wish Chloe could see that. The receptionist job she held in town wasn’t going to pay the mortgage on the apartment, the two cars, and everything else. No, the buck pretty much stopped with me and it stressed me out. I wanted more from life than just a one-bed apartment overlooking a car park. I wanted a house big enough to one day raise a family in, and a garden for them to play in. These days, that didn’t come cheap.
    But these days, Chloe just seemed to be obsessed with sex. What guy wouldn’t want a wife like that? Most I guess, but not me – not right now. The pressure at work had not only caused me to suffer from migraines, but it had affected the old pecker, too. It had nothing to do with how I felt about Chloe. Shit , she was hot when she wanted to be – which was most of the time. She always had the knack of being able to turn me on, so the fact that I found it increasingly difficult to get a hard-on now, had nothing to do with Chloe. It had to do with me and my job.
    It had started slight at first, and whereas I’d once been able to get hard at the sight of her in her skimpy panties that she liked to wear, I now noticed that my dick would barely twitch, let alone get stiff. But the more I worried about it – the more I thought Chloe would think I was some kind of sexual inadequate – the less able I was to get a hard-on. So I started to make excuses. I was tired, my head ached, or there was a football match on the TV. And it’s funny because before you knew what was happening, the football had become more appealing than watching Chloe writhe around on the bed in her silk panties. Football had become safer – there was no expectation on me – it was all on the players. But secretly, I stressed about it and I stressed about work. I really did start to get headaches and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a hard-on. And on it went, around and around in a big circle. I knew me and Chloe were drifting apart. I knew she had taken to using that sex toy on herself. I woke one night on the sofa where I had fallen into a drunken stupor. I could hear the sound of it buzzing as she rubbed it frantically against her clit in the bedroom. But instead of going to her and giving her what it was she really craved, I rolled onto my side, and closed my eyes against the tears which stung them.
    There was a chemist on my way home, I went inside. The pain in my head now making me feel sick, I staggered inside. Beads of sweat covered my brow. I took a pack of painkillers from the counter and paid for them. The pharmacist gave me a worried look, and