Monday 18th December 2017

“So, honey, where next?”

Five small words, issued in a misleadingly calm voice by my husband that Monday night. Chris finally departed, Dave and me now alone. My travels complete, but five weeks of evolution and revolution to discuss and consider.

I looked across at Dave and suddenly felt too tired to discuss the topic. It wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have when I was feeling so tired. Tired and exhausted after Chris and I had made love three times, I smiled weakly at Dave and kissed him softly.

“Suggestion, baby. Let’s just enjoy being together tonight, take a personal day tomorrow and talk about this when we’re both fresh?”

Dave smiled and hugged me, and without another word shared we silently agreed to take the moment and delay for a few hours starting to unpeel the onion together.

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I was awoken the next morning by the feeling of a tender kiss on my lips and the aroma of Arabica coffee beans.

“Morning, honey. You looked so peaceful I didn’t want to wake you. Anyway, I made you breakfast,” as he helped me sit up and I felt the weight of a breakfast tray on my legs, a small price to pay for a lovely way to enter the day.

We chatted about this and that as I devoured the substantial breakfast Dave had wisely set before me, thoughtfully anticipating how hungry I’d be after the evening before with Chris. Dave had obviously already eaten, content to sit next to me, watching and enjoying my pleasure by proxy, just a coffee to keep him company.

The pastries and cooked food devoured in record time, I sensed a slight nervousness in the tone of my husband’s voice and in his face, triggering similar feelings in my chest. I sensed he was waiting for the last forkful of bacon to disappear before he unleashed the first of many questions that were wrinkling his forehead and making his normally calm voice shaky.

I was right, barely had the tinkle of metal on plate rung out as I laid down my knife and fork then the first statement and question arrived. “Jill, honey, I love having you back after what at times seemed an eternity, but I’ve got a thousand and one questions about where we go from here. In some ways, it seems the road-trip with Chris was the easy bit. Black and white, pre-agreed rules. No areas of grey. But now you’re back, after all that’s happened with you and Chris, what happens next?”

I knew this had been coming and had spent half the night awake or sleeping only fitfully as I struggled with the question Dave had just asked. In truth, I’d been so keen to accept both parts of Chris’s road-trip offer that when I’d accepted and worked on Dave to accept, I’d not thought through the long-term consequences. Having crossed the Rubicon in the grandest and most unequivocal of styles, what lay on the other side of the river? Now we were well and truly back from the land of make-believe and pretend. The land where Chris and I had spent the vast majority of five weeks living as man and wife, with only three shortened weekends and our nightly telephone calls acting as tethers between me and Dave.

But as in all good stories, there comes a day when the price has to be paid. The day of reckoning. This wasn’t one of those stories I’d studied at college, it was real life, but the same truth applied. And Tuesday 18th December, less than a week before our family Christmas celebration, was the day that the piper needed to be paid. When the little fantasy world I’d been living in could be sustained no longer. When we needed to think about and talk about what I’d been desperately trying to avoid thinking about.

I don’t know how long these thoughts rattled around my head, but I was brought back to earth by Dave’s light and slightly exaggerated cough.

“Jill?”

His single word making me inwardly smile, reminding me of one of the many reasons I loved this wonderful man. His patience and generosity of spirit. He must have been burning up inside, yet still be was patient and loving in putting my needs first.

“Sorry, honey. Truth is, I’ve been putting off thinking about this, and my mind was somewhere else, and I’ve honestly not given a great deal of thought to what happens next.”

I felt my cheeks color up as I confessed to Dave that I’d just been living for the here and now these last few weeks, not allowing myself to think through the difficult questions that I knew lay ahead.

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Dave and I spent nearly all of that Tuesday talking about every different aspect of our newly changed lives. Pulling at this option and that option. Putting each up on a ramp, peering and pulling here and there and trying to work out what it meant and what was the best to do.

We’d always had this tendency as a couple. Both hating risk and the unknown, but the more we talked about it the more we realized the last few weeks couldn’t simply be reversed or air-brushed out. We’d both gone into the whole road-trip thing thinking about the pluses and minuses of the five weeks themselves, whereas in some ways the bigger question was where this left our normal everyday lives when the road-trip was over.

We talked about all kinds of alternatives, including the obvious one of telling Chris that things had to go back to how they’d been before that fateful night when I’d slept with Rocco and him. But although it appealed to the big parts of Dave and I that hated risk, we were both honest with each other enough to admit there were two big problems with this choice. Problem one, neither of us wanted to end the thing with Chris. In our different ways, both Dave and I enjoyed the set-up with Chris. Which wasn’t to say we were blind to the problems of importing the nicely boxed-off and segregated five-week experience into our everyday lives. But we both enjoyed the new set-up. For me, I loved both the sex and my burgeoning relationship and closeness with Chris. As well as the way he was treating me differently at work, with more respect and responsibility. (I’ll leave it to Dave himself to describe what he was getting out of the set-up.)

The second problem with trying to put the genie back in the bottle and turn the clock back six weeks was that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to resist. On a daily basis, I’d still be working closely with Chris. Spending eight hours plus each day with him, the sexual and emotional chemistry between us undeniable. This and the knowledge of how great the sex with him had been, and how it seemed to get better and better the more time we spent together acting as a constant temptation each and every day. I prided myself on having strong willpower, but I doubted my ability to resist this particular temptation. And it would have killed me inside to go behind Dave’s back and cheat on him – even for a single moment. Dave was the love of my life and I’d never forgive myself if I did anything to damage that love and trust.

All of this – including my difficulty in resisting temptation – we discussed that cold Tuesday in December. Other couples might have been discussing Christmas shopping or the dates family and relatives would be arriving, but Dave and I were discussing how our lives had changed out of all recognition in the last couple of months, since we’d attended our first neighborhood swinging party.

Having decided we couldn’t and didn’t want to try and put the genie back in the bottle, we agreed to set some basic ground rules. The most important rule we both agreed was good communication. Dave was okay for me to spend time with Chris and for Chris to continue to be my regular lover. But he wanted to know what was happening, rather than have to wonder or second guess me every time I was half an hour late coming home.

We were also honest enough with each other to know that we needed to up the game in terms of our own relationship. We both knew that a big part of the appeal of my relationship with Chris was the excitement and thrill of the new and exciting. Any couple married for as long as Dave and I know that however much you love each other and however deep that love is, sometimes things can get a bit too much ‘rutty’ and familiar.

With the contrast of my new shiny and exciting relationship with Chris, Dave and I felt a sense of excitement as we agreed that we needed to up our game, Dave joking that as he now had a rival he’d better get back on his A-game, demanding that we’d have at least two date nights a week however busy we both were with work or other commitments. This was something we’d not practiced in such a structured and formal way since the kids were young and we’d felt the need to be really disciplined in carving out time for us as a couple, rather than our all-consuming roles as mum and dad to our three happy little monsters.

As Dave teased me about his new rival, his face told me he was deadly serious about our date nights, and I smiled at myself that this new lifestyle was really a ‘win-win’ for me. A handsome and virile new lover and at the same time a re-invigorated husband. What was not to like?

Which brings me on to Gemma. Dave’s fun-loving red-haired admirer and sometime lover. As strange and hypocritical as it might sound, I still found it hard to think of her and Dave together in the same way I was together with Chris. The whole situation with Gemma was a real cocktail and mish-mash of different feelings and emotions.

Yes, I’d arranged for her to come over and keep Dave company that first night I was with Chris during the road-trip. And yes, I’d given her the green light to see Dave anytime they wanted while I was away with Chris in November and December. But now I was back, Gemma and Dave seemed as big a question to me as Chris and I were to Dave.

I liked Gemma, and at least in theory, I liked that Dave wasn’t alone and was having fun if I was with Chris. But I didn’t get the same pleasure of thinking of him and Gemma together as Dave obviously got from thinking of me together with Chris. And not only that, that sense of jealousy and fear that had been so strong their first time together had hardly reduced at all.

Dave knew all this and being who he is he offered, not for the first time, to stop ‘seeing’ Gemma. But despite my mixed feelings, I declined his offer. I might have felt jealousy and a thousand other feelings, but I loved Dave and didn’t want him alone while I was playing. And I still had enough self-respect and desire not to be a hypocrite to push my negative feelings away.

So as we talked that Tuesday about how things would be, Dave had my green light to carry on seeing Gemma. That was one of the more difficult things we discussed, the other being my feelings for Chris.

Not surprisingly it was Dave rather than me who raised this question. But it took him until the afternoon to work up the courage and find the words to open up this topic. We’d just put the dishes in the dishwasher and poured a coffee when the nervous look on his face betrayed that he was about to ask something he’d been putting off all morning.

“Jill, sweetheart, I know it may be difficult to talk about, but I’ve got to know how things are between you and Chris … not, you know, in terms of the physical side … but in terms of the emotional side … feelings …”

As he spoke I could see how hard it had been for Dave to ask me this, and I reached across the table to squeeze his hand, all the time looking deep into those loving eyes.

I paused, trying to both get my own thoughts straight and then find exactly the right words, to be honest, but at the same time to not set off an accidental explosion or cause undue pain. But each second of silence seemed to deepen the pained look on Dave’s face, so I took a deep breath and dove straight in, head first, squeezing Dave’s hand extra hard in case any stray word should do unintended harm.

“What do you want to know, honey?” my first rather mean-spirited answer, giving nothing away.

“Everything.”

Squeezing even harder, I started. “Wow. Everything. Okay, then. Well, the first thing to say is that I don’t love him. At least not in that way. Not in the way I love you. And I guess it’s complicated. After the last few years and especially after how I helped him get through Kate, part of me will always think of him like a little brother and love him in the same way. But yes, these last few weeks have changed that, putting on top the closeness and feelings you always get between lovers.”

I paused, looking at Dave to see the effect of my words, my pause allowing him to jump in and ask for more. “So you are closer to him emotionally … closer than before?”

“Does that surprise you?” I asked back, not meaning it to sound accusatory or mean, but immediately regretting my tone and question as I saw the hurt look on Dave’s face.

“Sorry, honey. I didn’t mean it to come out like that.” His gentle smile told me we were okay so I answered his question.

“When I asked if it surprised you, I guess what I meant is that it’s inevitable that we’re closer than we were five weeks ago. Given how much time we’ve spent together, what we’ve been through at work, and that we’ve been lovers and slept together for so many nights.

“But what I need you to know, Dave, honey, is that this isn’t a threat to you. Yes, I am closer to Chris. And yes, in a different way, I love him and that love’s more than it was before. But, honey, it’s nothing compared to what I feel for you.”

There were tears in my eyes as I said this and saw Dave’s reaction, happy that he knew we were being honest and open with each other and that we were together overcoming and dealing with this difficult subject.

It was Dave’s turn to squeeze my hand. “Thank you for being straight with me, honey. For telling me the truth, and not hiding anything or sugar-coating it.”

Our eyes locked together, as Dave’s words trailed off I knew he wasn’t done. That there was something more he wanted to say.

“And honey, you don’t need to worry about being straight with me about your feelings for Chris. I’ve got eyes to see,” he gently ribbed me before admitting what he was struggling to say. “And anyway, honey, I don’t know why, but when I see the closeness and the growing closeness between you and Chris, for some strange reason it excites me. I don’t know why, and at the same time, it frightens me more than a little. But over these last few weeks as I’ve watched the two of you growing closer, I’ve come to realize for some strange reason it excites me.”

Having got it out in the open, Dave immediately looked more relaxed and at peace with himself. Just like he’d looked when he’d owned up to watching those secret FaceTime calls which Chris had arranged for my kinky hubby. The only tension left in his face was due to a lingering question of how I might react to his confession.

And there was nothing for Dave to fear on that score. My reaction was a wry smile and a sense of relief that Dave’s evident enjoyment of my growing closeness to Chris made things a lot easier for me. My relief mixed in with a secret happiness that Dave’s confession and own feelings would allow me to throw myself into my budding relationship with Chris without having to worry too much about things on the home front. I was that rare girl who had a husband who enjoyed watching me with another guy and who didn’t mind the emotional closeness that was likely to result – within sensible limits. The only price I had to pay was the nagging feelings I got whenever I thought of Dave with Gemma or saw them together.

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Jill has asked me to pick up the story over the next few months.

She’s pretty much said it all in terms of the conversations Jill and I had that Tuesday. The only thing I think she missed is the part of the conversation where we both discussed just how far things had moved on and developed since mid-October. When we’d started on this new path of experimentation and seeing how we felt about opening up our marriage.

There’s no other way to describe the revolution that was now consuming our lives, after twenty-plus years of conventional love, marriage and family life. After our first faltering steps with Daryl and Gemma, Jill had tried to apply the handbrake but I’d given her what I thought at the time was the slightest of nudges. And here we now were, after five weeks of things gathering momentum in a way we’d never envisioned.

And as we talked that Tuesday, Jill and I were agreeing to let the runaway train to continue and see what it would lead us. Sure, we’d agreed to some sensible ground rules about communication, honesty and strengthening our own relationship. But this aside, we were agreeing that because it excited each of us in our different ways, we were going to let the patterns and relationships of the last five weeks run on as the norm back in Miami.

If Jill and I had known then what we know now, we’d have had second and third thoughts about this plan. We’d not have been so blasé and naïve about some of the discussions of that Tuesday.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If the image in my mind is of a runaway train, that train didn’t immediately leave the station in the days after our heart-to-heart conversation. In fact, that Monday night, December 18th was the last time Jill saw Chris for a couple of weeks. With the holidays and college breaks upon us, our innocent and wholesome family life reasserted itself over Christmas and the New Year. Despite everything that had happened these last two months, we were first and foremost ‘mum and dad’. We might have been enjoying our new games and lifestyle, but this was as nothing compared to our family life and the love we had for kids John, Abigail, and Sarah.

Having the kids back around for two whole weeks was wonderful, with both Jill and I using leave and accrued time in-lieu to be at home for most of the nearly three weeks the kids were back home. And ninety-nine percent of the time Jill was in the moment and the here-and-now, enjoying family life. But a few times during that break I did catch her looking wistful or exchanging furtive texts with someone whose identity I didn’t have to guess at.

The only part of our ‘new lifestyle’ that intruded in any way into our Christmas fortnight was when Callan and Charlotte joined us and the kids for a couple of meals. With no kids of their own and having spent so many hours coaching our three at the soccer club, Callan and Charlotte had grown close to our three. Sort of adopted kids as they didn’t have any kids themselves. And knowing how they loved the kids and were trying to make a go of their marriage, Jill and I were only too happy to invite them around to our place for a couple of family meals.

With our three now fully-fledged young adults, they weren’t slow to express their happiness that ‘Uncle Callan’ and ‘Aunty Charlotte’ were back together again. Their approval brought smiles of the most natural joy to the faces of our two good friends. Seasonal goodwill and joy to all, as I’m sure someone has said before me a zillion times.

Apart from Callan and Charlotte, our next-door Byron was the only other non-family member who featured in our break. Given their shared love of sports, the young black high school sports coach had become good friends with Callan. Knowing that his two house-mates had headed back to family and Byron was on his own, on the two nights that Callan and Charlotte ate with us Callan asked if it was okay to see if Byron wanted to join us.

Byron seemed to really appreciate the gesture and his lively conversation only added to two great evenings, although a few times when he thought no-one was looking I did catch him looking a little too admiringly at my beloved wife. But I could hardly blame him; even just shy of her forty-fifth birthday she was a very sexy and beautiful woman. And deprived of my kinky enjoyment of the Jill-Chris relationship, seeing the way Byron looked at Jill only made my cock stiffen with arousal.

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Tuesday 2nd January 2018

Indeed, that feeling I felt watching Byron admire Jill was the backdrop to the clothes I chose to lay out for Jill as she showered ahead of her first day back in the office. Of course, I’d played this game with Jill before: my choice of clothes to send her off to work in an unspoken signal for how I’d be okay if things got a bit ‘romantic’ between her and her handsome younger boss. And the night before, I’d teased Jill about how she must be looking forward to going back to work after two weeks without ‘her boyfriend’. Jill had just smiled sphynx-like, not denying it, but adding that she wanted to make the most of the kids being back.

As I laid out a just-about-decent-enough white blouse with matching red bra, underwear and heels, I wondered how her willpower would survive eight hours of office temptation.

As soon as she emerged wrapped in her long white bath towel, Jill spotted my game, and just for a moment, I worried she might be mad at me. But instead, her smile was even-tempered and calm. “I told you, honey, I want to see as much of John and the girls as I can before they head back.”

But my hope stayed alive as Jill didn’t make any moves to change the clothes laid out for something more conservative. Instead, she avoided making eye-contact as she scooped her big boobs into the waiting red lacy cups and wriggled into the tight black skirt I’d chosen for her first trip of 2018 back into the lion’s den.

As Jill finally left for work, she gave me a chaste kiss on the cheek rather than our normal kiss. Probably her subtle little dig and revenge for the clothes stunt. “See you later, honey.” 'Later', slightly elongated to tease me, her face straight as she got her own back a little more.

With the privileges of rank, I had an extra day at home. And even though I did various things with the kids and various ‘honey-do’ tasks, I couldn’t stop my mind almost constantly wondering what Jill and Chris were up to.

I was in torment – albeit one which equally balanced suffering with pleasure and anticipation. I thought I’d have to wait until early evening or something like that to be put out of my misery. But I’d neglected the fact that I wasn’t the only one who enjoyed the privileges of rank, because just after two in the afternoon I got a cryptic text from Chris.

‘Hope you’re somewhere private for the next hour or so.’

My fingers were immediately shaking, my pulse racing and breath shortening. Having just finished a family lunch, luckily the kids had decided to take Dad’s credit card to the local mall for some much-needed clothes shopping, so they weren’t around to notice the sudden change in their father’s demeanor. His suddenly pale face and dilated pupils. But just in case they came back unexpectedly, I retired to my den, in case what I hoped and expected was about to happen did happen.

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I was frightened enough of an unexpected return that I didn’t dare link my phone to the big screen, having to make do with the five-and-a-half-inch screen of my iPhone. I didn’t have long to wait.

“Hey, Dave. Happy New Year,” grinned Chris’s handsome face, pointed directly at the camera, his head right next to Jill’s as he stood behind her, his hands cupping her big breasts through the sheer fabric of the blouse. Jill’s eyes screwed tightly shut, this and her breathing leaving me in no doubt as to how much she was enjoying the firm squeezes and mauling her boyfriend was giving her big boobs.

“Happy New Year, Dave. And thanks for the late Christmas present,” he teased, his hand gesturing top to bottom along Jill’s standing form. “Better late than never, Dave. And I have to say I love the way you wrap your gifts. Most guys are rubbish at gift-wrapping. But you, Dave, excelled yourself,” his words accompanied by the movement of his hands as he started unbuttoning Jill’s blouse. The shiny, sheer semi-respectable blouse I’d dressed Jill in earlier that day, when foolishly I’d thought I was the one in control of the game.

Chris soon had Jill stripped nearly naked. His hands were squeezing and milking her big boobs, her nipples swollen and hard, shouting clearly to me how much she’d missed this and was loving being back with Chris after two weeks' enforced abstinence. Jill and I had made love plenty over the last two weeks (although we were always a little more subdued when the kids were home), but every sight and sound from that little digital screen left me in no doubt how much Jill was enjoying this more than any of our love-making sessions. This strange thought appealed to my masochistic side as much as it also caused a bittersweet pain. At least I had her love and heart, even if Chris was able to give her physical pleasure beyond what I could achieve.

Jill’s swollen nipples, gentle moans, and facial expression all shouted loud and clear how much she was loving her time back with Chris. And I had to admit that even on that little screen the scene was as sexy as hell: Chris nuzzling and kissing Jill’s neck, one hand skillfully alternating between her large breasts whilst the other toyed with her pussy through the damp fabric of the lacey red panties I’d chosen for her.

Aside from her panties, Jill was clad in nothing more than red self-supporting stockings and the matching red four-inch heels I’d chosen for her. As Chris enjoyed and manipulated her body, Jill continued to mewl softly and push her body back against his body, no doubt feeling his large erection strong and hard and ready to give her what she wanted and had been denied these last two weeks.

Giving in to temptation just as Jill had, and reasoning I’d see their car arrive through the window, I switched the image to the big TV in my den - just in time to see Jill open her eyes and speak for the first time, a playful and thoroughly contented smile playing on her lips.

“Well, honey, you’ve only got yourself to blame. I had every intention of being a good girl today, but then you went and did that clothes thing again …”

Jill had been looking directly at me through the camera as she spoke, but having said her piece she pirouetted on her shiny four-inch heels, wrapped her arms around her lover and gave him a passionate and emotion-laden kiss that seemed to go on and on. Unsurprisingly, Chris seemed to be loving the kiss, his hands cupping Jill’s shapely panty-clad ass and pulling her closer still as their mouths worked each other, refusing to be parted as Jill’s big boobs were squashed flat against her boyfriend’s chest.

When they’d temporarily had enough, without moving her body Jill craned her neck as far around as she could and spoke to me. “Enjoy the show, Dave, honey. I know you’ve missed this almost as much as I have. And now I’m going to let you watch while I suck Chris’s wonderful big cock. And then I’m going to let him take me to bed and lie back a happy woman as he sticks that big cock of his in your property, and makes love to me for the rest of the afternoon and evening.”

This was different. Very different from how things had been during the road-trip and on the night Chris had come around before Christmas. Something had changed. Something caused by the conversations Jill and I had had that Tuesday night two weeks ago.

I was shaking with a new and intense mix of trepidation and excitement as Jill turned her body and worked towards the camera, getting so close and bending down so that her face filled the entire screen, blocking out Chris and giving me a close up of just how hard and swollen her nipples were as she approached the camera.

There was an incredibly excited look on her face as she looked directly at me, flushed pink with excitement and arousal, her pupils dilated and her expression almost fearful that she might be denied her heart’s desire at the last minute. Her voice quivered with nervous excitement and need. “Honey, last chance. Are you okay with this? Because I plan to spend the rest of the day making love with Chris. Even after the kids come home and you’re not able to watch any more.”

I’m ashamed to admit that a mean little part of me did think about saying ‘no’ and seeing how Jill would react. But the thought passed in a nano-second because I could see how much Jill needed this, and an equally big part of me needed it almost as bad.

My voice was as croaky and shaky as Jill’s as I said those three or four little words that released the last semblance of restraint on the runaway train that was to become 2018. My mind and soul were already telling me that things were now different, but nonetheless, I told Jill what she wanted to hear. Because I loved her and I wanted this nearly as much as her. At least I thought I did.

“Yes, it’s okay.”

(Thanks to cbears52 for editing and proofing.)