“Let me help you with those,” I volunteered when I saw the young wife from next door struggling with grocery bags. She smiled sweetly as I picked them up and led the way.

As soon as I set them down in her kitchen she offered me a choice of drinks and put out some snacks. Besides her basic gratefulness, she seemed to be happy to have someone to talk to. We traded life stories for an hour until I mentioned I had to get back to work. She was interested that I could work from home and set up another time we could talk about that.

This quickly developed into a regular thing. Her husband of only a year was gone a lot for work so I even got invited over for lunches or dinners. I’d bring my share and got her to enjoying wine with meals, something new from her religiously teetotalling upbringing. My argument was the easy one from the miracle of water to wine.

For a youngster of twenty, forty-percent of my own age, she was conversant on a lot of topics and I really enjoyed her company. With her available time, she was self-educating thanks to the Internet. I have a doctorate so guided her in the explorations of some useful and beneficial interests.

Hannah was interested in the technical writing I did and had an excellent mastery of the English language so I gave her proofreading tasks which made her feel important and useful. I even paid her a bit for that.

I was introduced to Ryan, her engineer husband who was about five years older. Although I didn’t get to spend much time with him he seemed to be a nice enough guy and we did find some things to talk about. He was getting promoted regularly in the big civil engineering company he worked for but that meant he spent more and more time at project sites which could be anywhere in the world.

Under the influence of a little more wine than she was used to, aided by the fact that her husband had been gone for a week, Hannah did something I didn’t expect. She sat next to me on my couch after a shared dinner, sipping some more wine and listening to an album of folk music.

“Can I get close to you and have you put your arm around me?” Her request surprised me but I happily complied. We sat that way for quite a while until the album ended.

She sat up and gave me a little kiss, saying, “I’d better go or I might do something I shouldn’t!” When I looked puzzled she added, “I miss my husband.” OK, I got it. It was a compliment that this attractive young woman would even think of me that way, a bearded man two and a half times her age.

The fact that I was a gentleman and respected her seemed to add a lot of trust to our relationship. She commented that I didn’t seem interested in women, or at least I wasn’t dating. That question opened up a whole area we hadn’t discussed.

I assured her that I was very much interested in women and thought she was quite attractive, but she was married and I respected that. I hadn’t found anyone interesting enough to date for a while and with working at home didn’t meet many possibilities. I told her I’d had a couple of long term intimate relationships but they hadn’t led to anything permanent, as if even marriage could be considered “permanent”.

My candidness opened up her talking about a private part of her upbringing. Raised, as she had said before, by an ultra conservative family, she hadn’t dated in the contemporary sense. Ryan was the son of long-time family friends and their introduction had been arranged. He had been “around” a bit because of his college education and subsequent work so was fascinating and she fell in love.

A virgin until the wedding night, her somewhat experienced and reasonably wise husband had gotten through the earlier conditioning about sex and showed her how to enjoy it. That was a problem now, she admitted, since he was gone so much.

We didn’t touch on that subject for a while until she mentioned how much stuff about sex was on the Internet. Her husband had shown it to her as part of her “awakening”. He’d also bought her some sex toys to use during his absences. She blushed when telling me that.

Her most interesting comment was, “I found porn pictures and videos interesting at first but what I enjoy the most are the stories, both true and fiction.”

I then told her that I felt the same way and would even write them for fun, kind of a creative sexual outlet.

The perked up at that, “Where do you post them?”

I told her and said my pen name as “Tony Tiger”.

She went wide-eyed, “You’re SHITTING me!” I’d never heard her use earthy language before.

I nodded and signed in to the site to prove it. She just looked and didn’t know what to say. Finally, “You are one of Ryan and my favorite writers. I love the way your women are so tuned in to their sexuality and feel free to enjoy it as God intended.”

It was my turn to be at a loss for words, but I managed, “I’ve never met one of my readers face to face before. This is something.”

Hanna got us some refills on the wine we were drinking and toasted, “To good sex!”

Ryan came over that night and we talked about the stories they liked the best. I noticed they were most often about wives that wanted to explore sex but never had the chance.

A couple of weeks later, almost a week after Ryan left on his latest work trip, this time to the Middle East for three weeks, Hannah wanted to visit, as often happened. I fixed dinner this time and she was her usual chatty self as we ate. After we did the dishes we sat down to watch a movie, a frequent thing. At least that’s what I thought would happen.

“Mr. Tony, from what you’ve said earlier I think you’d like to have sex with me? Is that right?”

“The simple answer is Yes, I surely would. What kind of question is that?”

She was a bit uncomfortable but determined to stay her course, “Ryan and I have been having some serious discussions since that evening we talked about your stories. He knows it’s difficult for me when he’s gone and that I never had the chance to be ‘single’ like he did. He is OK if I choose to have sex with you while he is away. Never when he is home though. Kind of like a second husband which you already are in many ways except in bed. Does that make any sense?”

I replied, “You know that has popped up in several of my stories. So what do you want to do?”

“I’ve not abandoned my values altogether so here is what I propose. I wasn’t kidding about the ‘second husband’ thing. If we could have some kind of commitment ceremony I would feel lots better. What do you think?”

I concurred that such a thing would clarify the relationship. That we weren’t just jumping in bed for fun and frolic, not that it wouldn’t be that too. “I’ll tell you what,” I offered, “You work on the wording and I’ll set it up for tomorrow night here. I surmise that our conjugations would best not be in your marital bed but in mine.”