Chapter 10: Thinking It Over - Together

I would like to say that the week following our final surrender to the fact of our mutual affairs with Mark and Phyllis were blissful and unmarked by stress. But that would not be true. We skirted the issue time and again, touching on it, then veering away.

It was Friday when David began the serious talk about our weekend. It was bed time.

"We should talk about this,... I think..." David began. He was sitting on the end of the bed taking off his shoes.

"O.K." I said quietly.

I stopped unbuttoning my blouse and waited, not sure what was coming. Phyllis and Mark had dropped us off in our driveway and our suitcases still lay in the corner where we had dropped them. The weekend had been exciting, but of course a bit scary. Pairing off to sleep with our friends' spouses was quite a different matter than secret indiscretions that could be selectively ignored or hidden. That truth I had already pondered since that breakfast when we had faced each other for the first time, fresh from the arms of lovers we were sitting down with.

In fiction, the partners would blissfully accept all this and have one last "party fuck" after breakfast before going their separate ways. It isn't that way. Not really.

Phyllis was nervous, as indicated by the constant chatter she kept up as she turned the omelet and fried the potatoes and sautéed onions for breakfast. I laid out the remaining bakery goods.

We sat down at the table, each in his own way trying to be cheerful in spite of a nagging concern.

I took a deep breath and broke the tension.

"Let's do this,..."

I held my hands out. Slowly, we all joined hands around our round little breakfast table.

"Here's to... friendship,... I don't know what life would be without you three..."

"Amen!" Phyllis said quietly, and leaned over to kiss her husband and then another kiss on the cheek of David fresh from her bed.

"Yes,... me too" said Mark.

David looked at me and shrugged slightly, then nodded. "That's true,..." he murmured, leaning to touch my lips with his.

And that was more or less how we had left it at the cabin. Up in the air, some would say. Many, no doubt, would say that they would have had long conversations thrashing all this outrageous behavior out in the open. Or, they would say that someone should be punished, or all should be punished. But of course, god has his ways of punishing and it isn't the way of people's punishment, I think. Maybe there will come a punishment, I can't know that.

And when all is said and done, I'm not sure the world would be a lot nicer place to live if everyone talked out all their feelings and their thoughts. I'm just not so sure. I am sure that it is rare to have everything sorted our perfectly in mind or deed.

So it was with us, each with his own thoughts. And to be honest, in our case, each with his own pleasures to turn over and over in the long hallways of our memories. We were happy together.

The drive home was quiet. We were both tired, I think, wiped out by the emotional turmoil of the last 24 hours. We tidied up the house during the afternoon and David went outside to clear a limb that had fallen off one of the large oak trees. The sound of the chainsaw lingered on the evening air as I prepared dinner.

It was a good night for an early bed time and we both were upstairs by 10PM. David was deep in thought, his brow furrowed; eyes on the floor.

I finished unbuttoning my blouse and looked at him expectantly. His eyes slipped down to my breasts, then back to my eyes.

"How are we looking at this?"

"Not sure,... how do you mean?"

"Come on Beth,... after all, we have just fucked our friends, and enjoyed it, and in the next room. I could hear you screaming your pleasure, you could hear me,... fucking Phyl,... it's gotta be a little,... extraordinary?"

I dropped my blouse and unsnapped my jeans. "Yes, I know."

"You fucked Mark; you opened up your legs, lay back on the bed and let him shove his dick into you! We probably didn't think that was the way it would be twenty years ago. So,... I just want to know how to look at this. How we are looking at it. You know? I can't exactly be the outraged husband, since I was fucking Phyllis right in the next room! But, shouldn't I be... I dunno."

"I think that life is not... always exactly the way we think it will be,... not simple and to a fixed plan,... you know?"

I pushed my jeans down and kicked them aside, standing in yellow flowered panties and bra, looking tensely at him as he unzipped his pants and dropped them to the floor.

I stood in front of David as I opened the folding doors and reached for a robe. He touched my bottom lightly with both hands and moved them in a soft caress.

"I love these, whose are they?"

"Mine." I giggled.

He laughed. "You know what I mean..."

"Victoria's Secret" I corrected and he squeezed my buns. "Don't you think I'm a little too big there?" I turned and stood with the long lacy peignoir open in the front.

"Nope."

"You're a wise fool, David." I said, bending to kiss the top of his head.

"Am I a fool to stand by while someone else shares it?... that's the question," he said, "or am I going to hate myself one day?"

I laid my cheek against the top of his head and drew my arms around his neck, pulling him close to by breasts. He touched my mound with his fingers and toyed with the soft cushion of hair under my panties. I knew it looked sexy the way the dark triangle showed though the translucent panty and probed through the little panel of lace. It felt good to have his fingers toy with me and I sighed happily and closed my eyes. I rocked him in my arms as he slipped his other hand between my legs and slowly caressed up my thigh until his finger rested along the slit of my pussy.

"Oh, dear, let's hope that neither of us does that." I said quietly.

He nodded his head and I felt his lips open and close in a kiss in the open valley of my bra. He nuzzled the soft roundness of my breasts and they swelled under his kiss almost involuntarily as I took a deep breath.

"Mmmm, what's that perfume?" he murmured.

"Giorgio." I said. "Like it? I bought it special for you! You always like things with a little Jasmine."

He took a deep breath, nose buried against my cleft. "Mmmmm, yessssss!" he sighed.

David fondled my mound in gentle circles and his fingers felt nice and comforting between my thighs.

"Isn't this... wrong, though? Isn't this stolen... forbidden fruit?"

"I suppose so."

"How, then... what..." he stopped. "How can you stand the thought that I have fucked Phyl, then? Why aren't you outraged? Don't you love me any more?"

"Yes, I love you, and always will, darling." I paused for awhile.

"You know, very early, I had to recognize that you were a charming, good looking man who many women were attracted to. I could see that women at parties loved to talk to you. I was pleased by that, but it was intense, you know, they liked to get you off to the side, one on one. One night I looked across the room and saw you deep in conversation with Sally and watched the almost sexual pleasure that each of you were having. The touches, the smiles, the serious looks. I could see it from way across the room. When you went into field sales, I had to come to grips with the likelihood, the absolute likelihood that on some lonely evening on the road, some other Sally would touch you in just the same way, look into your eyes in just that intense way. And I knew that it was unrealistic to think that you could escape the temptation to take that Sally or indeed our own neighborhood Sally to bed, no matter how we both loved each other"

He started to protest.

"No, it's true. I vowed never to ask, I prayed never to know. But I realized that it was true of ME, too, and of all the attractive, successful people in that room if they could speak freely. How many people on our street are walking around with secret sexual memories they can't discuss with ANYBODY? I can tell you at least five out of the twenty houses on this street who have actually told me theirs, and that means that nearly all of them are in that situation. I decided that whatever happened with you on the road or wherever, I would not be thrown off our love, our deep down love for each other. And I still feel the same way. I hoped that you would feel the same way."

"And what about the ones who have divorced and remarried, each time 'till death do us part?' Some of them three times, I might add. Their lovers haven't been separated by more that a few weeks in some cases, and probably overlapped. They are respected members of the community even though they cast their children adrift! Surely we would never do that!"

"When I got into political activities, it was as electrifying as anything in my life. I found a sexuality to the activities connected to gaining political power that I couldn't have imagined. That sexual electricity is something I wouldn't miss for the world. It has ended up with us having two extremely close friends."

"You're OK with this, for sure?" he asked muted against my breasts, kissing, nuzzling, cheeking the soft flesh of me.

"Friendship, close friendship longs to be expressed in... intimacy, more and more intimacy,... that's what I realize. Every friendship yearns for some additional expression to tell that other friend how much you thank god you met them, that you still have them. You want to touch their hand, always expressing that overwhelming gratefulness of a closeness to another human being that lets you tell all, say all, shout all your thoughts, your innermost thoughts if you want to and have them returned, lovingly burnished, carefully handled... back to you."

"God made us this way so that the ultimate expression of such friendship is sex. I don't know why, but it is certainly true. Maybe it is wrong, but it is natural."

David put his arms around my bottom, locking his hands behind me and lay back on the bed, pulling me on top of him. His cock probed against my mound and I closed my eyes with the pleasure of its firm touch. I moved against it and felt it settle to one side of my mound.

"You're a wonder, you know that, woman? I think I may have to admit you are smarter than I am. "The slap he gave the left side of my bottom resounded and a hot glow seared it in warmth." I could feel his laugh jiggle against my stomach.

"So, at least we can talk about it, eh? And don't have to go to bed afraid to dream and tell a secret?" he said, his hand soothing away the sting that blazed my ass.

I looked down at him, my darling husband, and nodded, my smile a little crooked.

"Yes. Well, at least not too many secrets. Maybe that's good? Maybe so."

We talked late into the night, mostly lying like that, my legs slipping down between his bare legs and feeling him harden and loll against my fleshy hip.