Chapter 1

It wasn't quite as though she was cheating. He had known for some time. And she knew he knew. She couldn't help crying out a bit louder when she came. She had always been quiet, her small throaty moan rising on those few special occasions when she seemed especially wet.

Now she came with mouth wide open, filling the darkened bedroom with unfamiliar words, telling him over and over how she wanted him, how she loved his cock inside her. When she straddled him and played with her breasts, or rose on her knees offering him entry from behind, he knew another man took her that way. Yet, they went on, week after week, knowing but not admitting, too fearful to let the words pass between them.

She was the first to break the silence.

"I have to tell you about him."

He couldn't look at her. He wouldn't.

She watched him look away, then glanced at the phone.

"I don't love him. I just can't say no to him."

His spine turned to stone at her words. His hands trembled, breath coming in thin packets that racked his chest.

"I want to stop. But when he wants me - "

Steven jumped when the phone rang. His eyes went to it, then to Elyse. She ignored the insistent warble, now pale and oddly neutral as she searched for his reaction.

She was slim and fragile in the cotton sundress. Enough light poured through it from behind her to reveal the outline of her breasts and waist. He guessed she was naked beneath it, then was sure of it as she approached the phone. She pressed it to her ear, listening, motionless, familiar lines of bare thigh revealed through the translucent cotton.

Elyse held the receiver out to him, knowing he would take it.

He listened, still frozen in place, while the voice delivered options and ultimatums.

"She still loves you, you know. She comes to me for something else, a sense of possession, an unresolved sensual necessity. You can choose to allow her this, or flee, freeing yourself of the pain and her love. The decision is yours."

The voice was precise and confident. He could see she knew it well. Her eyes were wide with anticipation and excitement. The voice told him everything, what was, and what was to be. And Steven knew that a

Part of her already belonged to the voice, but not the part that loved him. Could he share her flesh to keep her shining eyes?

"Your decision is one that's easier to agree to than to live with. But then, agreeing is only the first step, is it not? Can you take the second? Only time will tell. And time is growing short. So, to test your stride, the second step, if you're up to it. Simon says..."

At sundown, Steven followed his wife into the warm rain of the shower. Elyse offered herself to him, head back, erect nipples waiting for the soap in his hand against them, then down her belly, smooth slippery skin made fresh for her late-night lover. Her thighs tightened at his touch as a soapy river raced over them, swirling into the drain below. She turned her back to him, and he studied the lines and valleys of her shoulders, filled now with frothy white as he passed the soapy cloth over them. Finally, gliding down the deep crevice of her back, his hands now free of everything except the scented soap, he cupped and lifted the soft but firm globes of her ass, circling over them, feeling the weight of them in his hands. Her legs opened. She leaned against the shower wall, her open slit reminding him of his duty.

Simon says...

The soap made her slick and wet between her legs. Had it been that way before he touched her there? Did her back arch a little when his soapy fingers drifted into the space between fleshy cunt-lips?

After a quiet moan, her words - bitter, breathless, agonizing.

"Will you give me to him? Will you clean me, dress me, take me to him? Will you love me after I take another man inside me and cum, screaming under him, knowing I love you more each day?"

His answer was not with words, but with actions. He dried her with the large towel, careful not to dwell where more questions would come.