Chapter 1

"Will it be all right if Louise comes over?" Lisa asked me.

"Sure. I'd planned to do a little work on the car anyway."

Lisa was - and is - my wife and Louise was her best friend. I liked Louise, but when the two of them were together they would either be acting like silly schoolgirls or talk about boring things like clothes, gossip and their mutual interest: books. I read, too, but mainly factual books and if I read fiction I read crime. Lisa and Louise read romantic stuff, not exclusively, but those were usually the kind of books they discussed. In other words: they preferred to talk without having to look at the bored expression on my face, and I preferred to do something useful while they chatted.

Louise came over around three o'clock and we all had a cup of coffee before I went out into the garage to work on the car. It wasn't much, just a little scratch on the left door I wanted to fix before the rust attacked. I had a nice big garage fitted with just about everything I needed to do normal maintenance on our car. I was not a home mechanic, if you know what I mean, but I could do small things like change an airfilter. The only thing needed in the garage was running water; I had to go into the kitchen.

The kitchen was next to the living room where Lisa and Louise were chatting away. It was never my intention to sneak in unnoticed and eavesdrop on their conversation, but either I was very quiet or they thought I couldn't hear them. I heard them, but the words passed through me until a few caught my attention.

"... I want, you know, something to happen. You know, do it a little different."

It was Lisa's voice and Louise replied.

"What do you mean? In bed?"

"Um-hm."

"What?"

"I don't know. I mean, Tom is more or less my first," Lisa said.

I'm Tom. Lisa and I met when we were eighteen and got married at the tender age of twenty. Neither of us were terribly experienced when we met and it had never been a problem, or so I thought.

"I thought it was okay with the two of you," Louise said.

"It is! It doesn't matter, really. It's just... it's nothing, really. Did you read Fay Weldon's new novel?"

Perhaps Louise could hear it as well. I could; the disappointment in Lisa's voice. I went out again. It hurt at first. I didn't realise until that moment, but one of worst things you can tell a man is that he is boring in bed. Then I felt angry. We made love two to three times a week and I always thought of her first. Not only that but it was always me who had to take the initiative and it was never me who was too tired to make love. What was wrong? What was it she wanted?

Our lovemaking followed a pattern; she was right about that. We cuddled up close together. I usually began to caress her tits. My hand would move down to her pussy and start "warming her up". When she was ready I would enter her while I still stimulated her clit. After she had climaxed we would either continue in this position or I would get on top of her. It varied a little. Sometimes it would last ten minutes, sometimes an hour. What was wrong? This question led to new questions: if she wanted more, what was it and would it be something I wanted, too? Did I want things to be different?

My anger slowly disappeared while I began thinking about what I wanted. For beginners it would be nice if she showed a little initiative and interest in sex sometimes. She was interested in sex. She wasn't just lying there, waiting for me to do my thing and get it over with. It was just that I always had to start it. I wondered how she would react if I said I was too tired?

Perhaps it would also be fun to do it at a different time of day and in another place. We had showered together once a long time ago and it had been so much fun. It was after a party and we'd both been slightly intoxicated. Lisa was more relaxed when she'd had a few drinks. I did bring it up later but Lisa had some vague excuse about the shower stall being too small and that was the end of it. I had tried to seduce her a couple of times in the middle of the day and even in the morning, but she always had some excuse for not doing it.

The more I thought about it, the more unfair it seemed to be that she complained to Louise about our love life being too monotonous. If anyone was to blame, it was she, not me. My anger grew again and I almost polished the paint I had applied right off again.

There was one thing I had never suggested: oral sex. I had done it with one of the two girls I had known before I met Lisa. Back then, I thought of it as a pre-intercourse form of sex, meaning that at the time we did it, we hadn't gone all the way yet. Once I had tried the real thing I sort of forgot about oral sex, but lately it had crossed my mind and I remembered it as being very enjoyable. Lisa and I had never done it and I didn't know if Lisa had tried it at all. Perhaps I had been too shy to bring it up. In the four years we had known each other we had never really talked about our sex life.

That evening we watched a movie on the telly until late. After the movie Lisa yawned and said that she was awfully tired. I didn't bother to suggest anything.

Sunday morning after breakfast, Lisa took a bath. She came out wearing her short bathrobe. It only just covered her lovely buttocks and made her look very sexy. I moved up behind her and began massaging her shoulders. She liked that and leaned back against me. So far so good. I gave her shoulders a good massage before I moved my hands down the opening in the front and cupped her breasts.

"Perhaps we should go back to bed," I whispered in her ear.