Chapter 1

Paul couldn’t look at his wife as they got up in the morning. “Honey?”

“Mmhf,” Anita sighed as she stretched, the voluptuous woman’s curly brunette locks shaking back and forth as she worked the kinks out of her neck. “Yeah, babe?”

“I, uh ... I took advantage of you last night.”

She frowned and looked at him. “What?”

“You’d been so tired from work that we hadn’t had sex in months. I woke up rubbing myself on you and you seemed to be responding, so ... uh, but I didn’t notice until after that you hadn’t woken up.”

“Jesus, Paul! Please tell me you used protection!”

He held up his hands defensively. “Yeah, always!”

Anita sat there considering. “Shit ... you really couldn’t tell I was asleep?”

“You were gasping, even pushing back at me ... it was dark.” He shrugged at her.

Anita realized that she had actually woken up feeling somewhat refreshed that morning, which was novel considering how hard she worked at her job as a warehouse manager, which required not only a lot of brainpower to schedule space for incoming freight and truck access, but she also sometimes needed to get hands-on moving stuff when people called in sick. It was a rewarding, union-paid position that she was lucky to have, and in fact she earned more than her engineer husband, though she never brought it up. However, with her hectic and stressful schedule came sleep issues that she needed to take pills for, and it seemed that the new ones she had been prescribed knocked her out so completely that she didn’t even notice her husband making love to her!

She gave him a gorgeous smile. “I forgive you, babe ... you didn’t know.”

“So I’ve been thinking...” Anita mentioned to her husband during the dinner he had made for them, “I’m so tired from my job that my sex drive is pretty much nonexistent. If you need to ... y’know ... while I’m sleeping, go for it.”

Her slim, brown-haired husband paused with his soup spoon in front of his face. “Uh ... really?”

Anita thought back to how refreshed she’d felt that morning. “Yeah, we’ll give it a try ... you’ve been so patient ... just remember, condoms!” She pointed a finger at him.

“I’ll buy an extra pack tomorrow!”

That night, Anita took her sleeping pill and felt a strange little thrill in her stomach, kind of when she had first started dating her husband right out of high school. It had been 7 years since then, his hair was thinner than it was, and he wore glasses now, but he was still the kind and deeply intelligent man she had fallen in love with. This was also something new in a relationship that she had to admit had become a bit stale, though she felt that Paul was too much of a gentleman to mention it and she didn’t want to crush his fragile male ego. If she woke up feeling as refreshed as that morning, plus her husband got his rocks off, so much the better.

She strolled into the bedroom, removed her bathrobe to reveal her curvy form to the obvious delight of her husband, and slipped into the bed next to him. He kissed her passionately and tried to move his hands down her body but she stopped him. “Too tired ... just wait a bit, hm, ‘til I’m asleep? Don’t tell me you didn’t feel a bit naughty after you figured out what happened last night.”

He gave her a sheepish grin, turned onto his back, and pulled out his phone to play some match-3 games until her medicine took effect. It didn’t take long. “Anita?” He gave her a little shake.

“Mhr...” she sighed but remained unmoving.

Paul pulled his wife’s covers off to reveal her sexy body in the bedside table light. They were actually the same height, 5’9”, which was something his friends sometimes poked fun at, but he always felt that meant that they were perfect for each other because neither of them had to bend down to kiss. He rubbed at his wife’s perfect C-cup breasts and noted her nipples as they crinkled up. He took one into his mouth and heard her sigh. He moved a hand between her legs and her body instinctively spread her shapely thighs as his fingers rubbed along her vaginal lips, searching for her hidden clitoris. Soon, he was rubbing that directly as he continued to suck on her nipples.

“Nhgh...” she sighed.

Smiling, Paul grabbed a condom and wrapped up his average six incher before he got between his wife’s legs, pushed inside, and thrust into her with abandon, a gleeful grin on his face as he got to have sex two nights in a row after a dry spell of months. He knew that he was a lucky man ... his beautiful wife would have been out of his league if they had met at this point in their lives.

He quickly reached his peak and came. “Unhh!” His cum filled the tip of the prophylactic, protecting his wife from the possibility of a pregnancy that she was not ready for and might never be, based on how she’d been talking recently. His job was good but certainly not enough to take care of her and a new baby as she recovered, and who knew if she’d be able to retain her job after the maternity leave? By her union rules, her employers had no choice, but there was what was on paper and then there was reality.

He held the base of the condom as he pulled out to make sure that none of the dangerous substance was unaccounted for before tying it up and tossing it into the trash. Then he pulled the covers back up, kissed his wife’s cheek, and burrowed into her neck before quickly falling asleep.

Weeks passed and ‘the new normal’ was working for both of them. Paul was unable to make love to his sleeping wife when she was on her period with a pad stuffed into her ‘granny panties’, but that was only a few days a month. He was a happy man, though he did miss how passionate she used to be when they made love while both of them were conscious.

It was a Friday night and Paul’s wife had gone to bed early. As he finished washing the dishes, he smelled a skunk out back but then saw the telltale red glow of his next door neighbor’s marijuana cigarette bobbing back and forth in the other man’s backyard. Paul dried his hands and went outside.

“That you, Paulie?” Abel asked from across the fence.

Paul winced. Abel always called him that but Paul had never said that he didn’t like it ... what would be the point? Like in high school, names were just names, and ‘Paulie’ was a lot better than some of the ones the geeky guy had been called back then. “Yeah. What’s up, Abel?”

“Just hittin’ a spliff before gettin’ back to gibbin’ some fuckin’ noobs online ... typical Friday night,” the other man responded, then after a moment asked, “Uh, y’want some?” Paul saw the red glow rise over the shoulder-height fence.

Why not? Paul reasoned. The two men had hung out a few times since Abel moved next door a couple years ago but they’d only been surface-level friendly. He took the joint and gave it a pull, holding the smoke for a moment before letting it back out. He was proud of himself for only coughing a little before he handed it back.

“Ha! I knew you weren’t so straight-laced, Paulie! Y’wanna come over? I got an extra controller.”

“Uh, no thanks, Abel ... my wife’s waiting for me.”

“Oh yeah! Well, y’gotta keep a woman like that happy, m’man, though by the sound of those logs being sawed, she’s already fuckin’ Mr. Sandman.”

Paul paused, listening. Sure enough, he heard his wife snoring away through their open bedroom window. “Oh, uh, right.” Seeing Abel holding the joint out again, he took it for another hit.

“Yer a lucky guy, Paulie ... Anita’s a sexy lady.”

Paul felt flush, not only from the pot but from the knowledge that he got to have regular sex with the gorgeous woman he married while this rude guy was stuck playing video games by himself. Unfortunately, after a third pull of burning cannabinoid infusing his brain, he lost his train of thought.

“No fuckin’ way! Can I watch?”

Paul froze. “Uh, what?”

“Well, Paulie, first, I don’t believe that you fuck your wife while she’s asleep...”

Paul gasped. Somehow he’d accidentally let slip about his nocturnal arrangement! Was it because of the pot? He looked at his phone ... he had lost some time, not to mention his memory. He shook his head to try to clear it.

Abel continued, “Second, if you are telling the truth, what do you think yer hot wife would say if she knew you told me about it?”

“Uh...”

“So...” Abel grabbed the fence and levered himself over it, landing in front of Paul and staring down at him from his 5’11” height. “You let me watch or I tell her. You think she’ll be happy yer blabbing it all over town?”

“I didn’t ... you...” Paul stammered. “Uh, I was kidding, Abel ... she doesn’t let me do that.” He stepped back toward his back door.

“Uh huh ... so if I ask her about it tomorrow she’ll laugh?”

Paul could feel a flush of heat run up the back of his neck. Why had he been so stupid?!