Carol finding her way

We held hands all the way back from the Chinese restaurant, walking in step leaning on each other now and then. These were back streets in a dirty city but somehow the light seemed softer, less frightening, like we were in a world of our own. Any other day I’d have been looking for trouble, I mean you never know, do you. In the back of my mind, I’m sure I’d have been wide awake if some mugger had come at us, but they didn’t.

It felt like the night belonged to us; as if we were walking in our own little bubble. Okay, so at times I am a soft romantic, but I hadn’t felt like that in a while. I think Carol could feel it too— we had something and neither of us wanted to lose it.

When we got back to the hotel we had a drink and watched a movie; porn was extra and the idea of porn while caged didn't turn me on so we settled for some half baked romance that I can’t even remember the name of.

When it ended Carol got the bolt croppers out of the drawer and then completely surprised me by taking them to the room next door. I sat wondering what was going on. I was kind of dumbstruck and not sure whether to follow her or wait, which ended up as waiting. She was back a minute later.

"What was that about?" I said.

"I'm still trying to make up my mind."

"So I stay locked up while you decide?"

"It's not fair, is it. I don't mean it to be. If you hadn't posted the key it would have been off by now..."

"So it's my fault?"

"Not fault, love. No faults, no blaming, but it was your choice. I'm respecting that choice."

"I did choose to buy those bolt croppers too."

"I know, but the big thing is that you put me on the spot— quite right too, but I'm finding it hard. I thought I should sleep in the other room tonight."

That left me stunned. Was she punishing me or should I be taking what she said at face value?

"Did I do something wrong?"

"No, love. Not at all. It’s not you. I know I’m being horrible but I can’t tell you why because I'm still confused. Don’t try to read my mind, it's all a shambles in there. I have to have space to think."

"Could you do me a favour?"

She looked at me with raised eyebrows.

"Could you sleep nude and let me have your nightdress?"

"What?"

"Don't fret, I don't want to wear it or anything, I want the scent on my pillow."

Carol stood in the doorway for a second, half turned as if to come back and then turned again, disappearing into the other room and closing the door. I sat for a moment, unsure of what to do again. Maybe that was a dumb thing to say, putting pressure on her when it might have been better to let things take their course. I got up and tried the door but she'd locked it.

All my good feelings collapsed. How did I read this so wrong? I lay on the bed still fully clothed going over and over the way the evening had gone, trying to remember everything I’d said. I couldn’t think of anything. She did say I’d put her on the spot— maybe that was a mistake— but she also said 'quite right too'.

I tried calling her room on the hotel phone— I could hear it ringing but she didn’t answer. Damn, had she gone out? What should I do now? If she’d gone off bar hopping anything could happen. Visions of her post-Eddie adventure sprang to mind, which paradoxically was a good thing because I thought of tracking her phone. It took a minute to discover that she was still in the hotel, or at least her phone was.

Should I call her mobile? It's a weird thing when I'm dithering about something and I know I'm dithering but I can't stop.

I lay on the bed fully clothed, on top of the covers and tried to relax. Stop thinking about Carol, stop thinking about us, about anything. I concentrated on my breathing, slow in... slow out... slow in... How fast is slow? I stood my phone on the side table and set a counter running. Twelve breaths per minute. Two seconds in, pause one second, two seconds out. Three minutes of that made a difference. I was beginning to think I was cracking it when there was a knock on the door--- the room door, not the connecting door.

Who? Had Carol locked herself out? I sprang off the bed and ran to the door. So much for calming down. There was a hotel maid there with a parcel.

"This was left in reception for you," she said.

I thanked her and shut the door. There was no address or anything, just my name and the room number, but it looked like Carol's writing. I tore the parcel open and found her nightdress. I buried my face in it, breathing her scent into my lungs, into my head, into everywhere I thought it could go. I almost fell onto the bed, flat out with several layers of the folded garment covering my face.

I must have been lying on the bed for ten or twenty minutes, I don’t know— maybe it was longer. I was like a wimpy kid with a security blanket and I fell asleep still clutching the nightdress.

I woke at two in the morning, still dressed, feeling awful, physically awful. I rolled myself out of the bed and damn near crawled to the bathroom. I stripped and ran the shower as hot as I could take it for a long time until I thought the heat and steam had done enough, towelled off and took myself back to bed. I had a moment of panic and checked where Carol’s mobile was. Still in the hotel. I had no way of knowing if Carol had gone out without her mobile. Would she do that to me? I quietly tried the connecting door; it was locked. I put a robe on and sneaked into the corridor to see if I could get in through the main door, that had the security lock set.

I woke up late. The connecting door was open and there was no sign of Carol. Looking at the clock I realised she must have gone to work. I checked where her mobile was— well on the way to her first appointment.

On the table next to my bed there was an open padlock and a key. One look was enough to tell that the key didn't fit that lock— so what the hell did that mean? I checked Carol’s phone position again; she has calls blocked while she’s driving, so no point in phoning.

Breakfast seemed like a good idea. I was on my second cup of coffee before an idea dawned on me. I finished breakfast and went straight to the room and tried the key in the lock on my cage. It didn’t fit.

What the hell was her game? I had no idea. Maybe it was simply a tease on a theme of locks. Where did she get the locks? She must have bought them last night when she was wandering around the hotel. I hunted around in the other room looking for clues and in the waste bin was a receipt for two luggage padlocks bought in the shop next to reception. So I had one of the locks but the wrong key. Did she make a mistake?

I decided that she was one step ahead of me but surely that was a good sign— she was interacting, she’d put some thought into it, we were still engaged in a relationship, in a marriage, I hoped. I spent a few hours until lunch working on one of my projects but by lunchtime I needed a break. After last night what I really wanted was the sauna but there was no way I was going there or the pool wearing the cage.

The only thing to do was use the bolt croppers and chop the lock. I could always buy another lock from the shop where Carol shopped last night. I went looking for the croppers. Same drawer as her underwear and alongside them was the combination lock from her belt but no sign of the belt. I stood looking at the lock for a minute.

What did that mean? Had she set herself free? I spiralled down again. I went back to deep breathing. Ten minutes of that and I decided to crop my lock and hit the sauna. An hour of that with a few lengths of the pool between the heat sessions and I felt a lot better. There was one possibility I hadn’t considered. What if she’d put one of her new locks on her belt and left me the key? If she did then it was a fair bet that she had the key to the other lock with her. I went back to the room, had a cold shower, put the cage on and clicked the lock into place. The worst that could happen was I’d have to chop it off again when I turned out to be an idiot.

Ten minutes later I got a text from Carol.

“Well done.”

What did she mean?

Seconds later a picture appeared of Carol’s anklet with a key on it, the same make of key as my lock.

How did she know? I sat on the bed and laughed; she’d bugged me. I’d been so preoccupied I hadn’t noticed that she’d moved the cameras. It must have been easy to find the WiFi signal and I guess it didn’t take much to get from there to the website. She probably got it from my phone or the laptop while I was asleep. I hadn’t made any big efforts to hide it. My bad, I should have; on the other hand, what the hell, if we both knew there could be no secrets, probably best.

I went shopping and found a store where I could buy a neck chain, the kind of thing you hang a locket on. I put my key on it, loosened my shirt and sent Carol a picture.

I got a text reply in a minute with a bunch of heart emojis.

Carol arrived back an hour later. She stepped through the door, closed it behind her and leaned back against the door.

“How did I do?” she said.

“You had me turning mental somersaults all day.”

“It wasn’t too awful, was it?” she said. “I was worried... you got my texts, didn’t you...“

I nodded; of course I got them, she knew I got them, I replied to them. I let it go; I was captivated by the concern in her voice.

“I had to DO something,” she said. “I thought ‘Actions speak louder than words,’ that’s what they say, don't they? I thought it really mattered that you knew I was catching up with you.”

“The bugging was a master stroke.”

“Oh thank you, teacher.”

I laughed.

“I still haven’t got myself completely sorted out," she said. "I think we still have a long way to go and I may yet scare the hell out of you but I want us to do it together.”

“Apart from surprising each other and frightening ourselves half to death have you any idea how that might work? Kiss and make up is great...”

“But the part before that can be tough?”

“Tough? Terrifying, more like.”

Her face fell a little. “Was it that bad?”

I stood up tore off my shirt, pulled off my belt and dropped everything else. In a few seconds, I was standing there in my cock cage and socks.

“I think it's time we got it all out in the open, especially if you feel good enough to tease me like today. You need to know that you're playing with fire. Now what do you see?” I said.

A puzzled frown replaced her smile. “I see the man I love,” she said after about half a minute.

“Anything strike you as odd... unusual... new?”

“Apart from the ironmongery?”

“Apart from that?”

“You’ve lost me.”

“I went to the gym this afternoon, in between changing locks. They had a set of medical scales, you know, the big scientific-looking things. I couldn't resist standing on them. I’ve lost almost twenty pounds.”

“Oh God,” she said, “Really?”

“Science doesn't lie.”

“Is that because of me?”

“Did I tell you I was going on a diet?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Exactly.” I sat on the bed. “Do you know why you haven’t noticed?”

“Yes,” she said, her face moving from puzzled to sad regret as she spoke. “Because I neglected you, ignored you while I was hooked on wild adventures.” She stopped for a second. “Oh fuck, that's so bad— you didn’t lose that in a couple of weeks. You’ve been bothered for months. Those little questions that kept I ignoring... God, I’m sorry. I wish I’d know... I should have known...” She drifted into silence.

“There is a flip side to all that, you know.”

She unbuttoned her blouse and threw it on the chair and then dropped her skirt. “What?”

“When I bugged you and Dean it dawned on me that you’d been working out, slimming down and hiding it from me for two months.”

“Mmmm," she said. "I didn’t do that for them. The hotels all had gyms... it may have turned Dean on... I know he watched me in the gym, I was flattered. I kept working out, I didn't fuck all the time. Did you... did you like it?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “It shocked the hell out of me; petrified me because it obviously wasn’t for my benefit, but when I saw you in the shower before Dean arrived I was turned on something rotten.”

Carol shrugged off her bra and stood wearing holdups and her chastity belt. She did a slow twirl. "It was for my benefit, not for Dean or Jay. I should have shared it from the start..." she stopped for a second. "Yeah, you're right, there was some guilt about everything else as well."

She spun around again.

“Please don’t,” I said, “I can’t take too much temptation in this cage.”

 She was on her knees in front of me with the key in seconds.

“I think I’m becoming an exhibitionist,” she said. “I need an audience.”

“And my cock is the audience?”

“You bet.”

“Shall I take yours off?”

“Not yet.”

She stood up again, twirling, almost dancing in front of me.

“Sorry I didn’t do this before,” she said, watching my cock grow. “If I’d known I could make it do that, I might...”

She stopped. “I might not have been tempted.”

“Quite a lot of emphasis on the ‘might’ there.”

“Oh fuck,” she said.

“Should I... we... assume that you might go on being tempted? I mean, how would you see that working?”

“I don’t plan to, really I don't, but I didn’t plan to last time. Really, I haven’t a clue,” she said. “You kind of did say I could, if it went that way, you know with work, like with Eddie. I'd need a way of checking with you... um... unless...”

She sat on the bed next to me.

“Unless?”

“This is tricky,” she said.

“Try.”

“Well, unless not knowing or being scared I might leave is an essential part of it with you.”

She held her hand up to stop me saying anything. “Actually I can’t do that,” she said. “When I didn’t know I was hurting you it was alright— I mean, it wasn’t alright but I didn’t know it wasn’t. I couldn’t knowingly do that to you— I mean, twenty pounds is a lot of hurt. I can't do it unless it's okay with you.”

She looked at me, doubt in her eyes. "I know I teased you after Eddie and I've been messing with your head the last day. It's been a great mind fuck but I don't want to keep doing it. It's a sort of a turn on to think about, and I know I can do it, but I can see that it doesn't turn you on and it doesn't make me feel good afterwards."

I felt myself relaxing; maybe we were through the worst.

“Do you think I look thinner, I mean, look better for it?”

“Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“Actually yes, a lot better.”

“You are allowed to insult my former self.”

“Okay, so you did need to lose it and now you look a lot better. Maybe you need to work out a little and put some muscle back, but then you could scare, especially if you started flirting.”

“You think I should?”

“I kind of hoped you’d never ask— I know it’s only fair, and if I've been a slut, why shouldn't you— and you’ve... you’ve been a hero, I mean, you've put up with all my nonsense the last day... I don’t know if I could cope if you did the same kind of thing back at me.”

“I coped,” I said. I knew my voice was flat with no great pride or enthusiasm. “Sorry, that’s a bit blunt. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, it’s okay, love, I deserve it. The thing is, I mean, I know it was hard and I feel bad about that, but with Dean and Jay, you had no choice. Could you have coped if I told you beforehand that I was going to fuck my boss with a big cock and an even younger black guy with an even bigger one?”

“Put like that?” I laughed. “Yeah, I’d have had a problem, it might have taken a day or two... month or two maybe... I might have asked a lot of questions, maybe even advised against it, but if I knew for sure that you weren’t leaving me and it made you happy I hope I’d have figured a way through... and given that amount of time I could have organised better lighting and a zoom lens.”

She laughed, pulled me back on the bed and kissed me, real passionate stuff so I could hardly breathe. She let up about ten minutes later.

“It’s kind of strange talking about this," I said. "I was half expecting you to bring home another Eddie.”

She rolled on top of me, lifting herself up on her forearms to look at me from close up. "I almost did but then I thought of how I'd been teasing you all day and I couldn't do it."

"Go on."

"Fucking other guys is one thing, I've done that, I know about that, but deliberately putting you through this stuff is new. It was kind of fun thinking about it, wondering how I'd feel, wondering what it was doing to you... but it was scary too. I didn't dare swim too far from the shore, if you know what I mean. I needed to reconnect with you and by this afternoon I knew I wasn't learning anything new and keeping it going would be a distraction..."

There was something hanging in the air on the end of that. Sure, I was glad she saw the need for connection and I was relieved about where she'd gotten to. Reconnecting and communicating felt good, but there was something else. I lay on the bed and did my best to look a little puzzled, questioning, waiting to see if she'd go on.

"Actually," she said. "It would have been weird, the buyer today was a woman."

"Oh," I said. "Did you want to try that?"

She rolled off me and lay on the bed looking at the ceiling. "I had a lot of crazy thoughts."

I lifted the chain off my neck, ready to unlock her.

"Not yet," she said. "Let me talk first. In fact, go sit in the chair so I can see you."

I got up and then she changed her mind. "No," she said. "Stand by the bed, here close to me."

She leaned across and kissed my cock. "I want to watch the excitement needle."

"You're calling this a needle?"

"Barometer, maybe, or excitement monitoring tool, the EMT?" She giggled.

"I think that stands for Emergency Medical Technician."

Carol's turn to giggle. "Well, it does cure some things, I guess," she said. "Andrea, the buyer I saw today, asked me how I coped now Dean had been fired. I wasn't sure what she meant, so I acted dumb. ‘You mean you weren't, you know, with Dean?’ she said. I tried to look coy. 'He tried it on with everyone, so he must have had a go at you,' she said. I was shocked and I probably looked a bit down. You were right about Dean, love."

"Do you think she had an affair with Dean?"

"I didn’t ask her straight out. I kind of hinted around the idea. I think she did... mostly because she seemed to assume I’d be looking for sex while I was away from home, as though that’s what she’d have been doing. She asked me how I coped away from my husband. So I told her you were with me this week. That's when she surprised me."

Carol reached out and held my cock for a second. "Firm but not rock hard," she said.

"Go on, what was the surprise?"

"She said, 'Lucky you, I wish mine was like that.' I think they're not together. My guess is that she had a thing with Dean and it broke them up. I think it was a while ago, she wasn’t jealous of me fucking Dean, but I think she was curious about how our marriage has survived when hers didn’t.”

Carol squeezed my cock again. "Mmmmm, so you can see where this is going."

"I have no idea," I said.

"I told her it survived because of you." Carol looked up at me, all kinds of questions in her eyes.

"This woman is a dish. Did I mention that? She looks at least as good as me and remember, she's in the fashion business, she has a look; we supply displays and visual stuff, but that’s backroom stuff, Andrea is all about the look, her look."

"So what did you tell her?"

"I was curious if she'd be interested, and then I thought about you, and too many ideas were in my head at once."

"And?"

"At some point, I said something dumb that might have kind of hinted that it was a pity she couldn’t borrow you.”

"Shit."

"I backed off a bit, said you were off limits really, saying that I'd have to ask you. I must have looked a bit shaky and one way or another a whole lot came out."

"About us?"

"Yes, starting with the picture display and then I told her about the belt, and Eddie, well, not Eddie by name, but you get the idea. She thought that was awesome. I had to show her. I was glad I'd switched the locks or I think she'd have wanted to have a go like Eddie did."

I stood there shaking my head, not sure what to think but the possibility of a threesome did flit through my head and obviously, the thought occurred to my cock as well.

"I could call her," she said, fixing her gaze on my cock. "It might be a way to find out, you know, what we were talking about before— whether I could cope... all that. What do you think?"

“I know you’ve played with two men but how does it work with two women?"

“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess it partly depends on whether you think you can come twice in one evening. Do you think you can?”

Carol's voice was hesitant, knowing she was treading into tricky territory.

"There's only one way to find out," I said and then I laughed. "It's a tough one, isn't it. See how easily things can go from one extreme to another. I know what's going on in your head. If you invite this lady back and you've drained me out and I can't perform for her she's going to feel let down, she'll conclude that you play around because your husband is not good enough for you. On top of that, you'll feel that you've humiliated me and if you love me then that may not be good for either of us. How am I doing?"

"Pretty good," she said. "I'd have to go second and then you could fake it with me if you couldn't make the second go."

She pulled me close and kissed me. "I'd do that for you, honest I would, I mean, for both of us really. So what do we do?"

"You call her and see if she's up for this. I'm going to unlock you and put the vibrators in and then lock you up until she gets here. One thing for sure, I'm not having the cage again just so she can play at unlocking me."

"No, of course not, that's my job, if I can ever get it on you again."

"Are you okay with the vibrators?"

"Yes. I have to say yes, don't I?"

"No, it's up to you. Combo lock or key? Does she get to play like Eddie?"

There was a long pause and I could see a wicked grin coming over Carol's face.

"The combo, but she has to get it undone while you fuck her. If you come first then we lock you up and she gets me for the night. If she comes first... um..."

That sounded too complicated.

"I have a simpler plan," I said. "Call her now and invite her for dinner and we can see where it goes. Get on the phone while I sort out your underwear."

I unlocked her belt as she phoned and couldn't resist kissing her down there, and then somehow it went further than that and she came in a rush. I put the vibrating plugs in both holes and locked her up again. I only caught some of the conversation but the gist of it was that Andrea would be at the restaurant downstairs within the hour.

"You are being so good," Carol said. "I mean, you're rock hard and you haven't tried to fuck me and you haven't come."

"I've got to save it up. I'll have to give her a good ride and then fuck you just to prove I can."

Carol giggled. “There is no way I could get a cage on that thing even if you'd let me. That settles one question. Are you sure about this?”

“It’s you that needs to be sure, I get to fuck an attractive woman recommended by my wife— what’s not to like?” I paused for a second. “Actually I have no idea whether I’m okay or not. I’ve never imagined doing anything like this but if we’re doing it together we should learn something. We just have to totally absolutely promise to be together after.”

She kissed me, stopped for a second to pull away and look at me and kissed me again.

"So," I said. "Are you sure?"

"No, well, yes, sort of. Are we going for a threesome or do I have to stay in the other room while you fuck her?"