Essence of an Affair Page 4
A car went by, down this relatively quiet street, and he flinched as the awful smell of diesel fumes hit his nose. For a moment, Jens doubled over and nearly vomited in the street. Oh God. But then the moment passed, as did the nausea. He pulled out a clean handkerchief, and his little pot of eucalyptus oil, and got it ready in case another car swung by before he could seal himself up inside his own little air-conditioned vehicle.
He felt somewhat light-headed on the way home, but the best way he could find to distract himself from his nausea was to keep his mind on Effie--on Effie, and on her date. What were they doing right now? Having dinner somewhere? Drinks at a bar? Laughing and smiling and gazing into each other's eyes. Flirting like teenagers in love.
He pulled into his parking space in the lot beneath their apartment building, and when he got out of the car he had a full-on raging erection. He had to quickly hide it from old Mrs Pollitt, who lived down the hallway, as he arrived at their front door.
Inside, he pulled off his clothes and put them in the washing machine, which was now repaired and working again. After a shower, he felt much better, at least physically. He was feeling a little nervous about what Effie might be up to. If she gave her date the hint that she was ready for sex, how long would they both stay out before deciding to find somewhere to do the deed?
After a bite to eat, Jens found the need to distract himself from Effie's date, and so he headed up to the gym for a rare mid-week workout. The gym formed part of his and Effie's weekend routine, but there was no reason not to use it on a mid-week evening. He told himself this wasn't about trying to step up his fitness regime, out of some fear that he might lose Effie to her date--although that was what some of his anxieties were about, weren't they? What if Effie went out with her new man, and then never came back to him afterward?
What if she had a taste of normalcy, and it opened up the promise of a future without the troubles of living with a man who had OCD?
But he couldn't think that way. He kept trying to block that thought. Effie loved him. She had chosen this life, she had married him when she could have kept away, she could have waited for a normal guy to come along instead. Deep breath.
There was a text message waiting for him after his workout.
(Effie): Having a good time--I'm not sure how late I'll be, you shouldn't wait up for me! Xxx
It was an unnecessary text message, because when Effie went out in the evening he never waited up for her. He went to bed, and she had her swim instead of a shower before eventually coming to bed herself. But he felt uplifted by the fact that she had bothered to send him a text at all--it meant she hadn't forgotten about him, she was still keeping in touch.
He sent a reply:
(Jens): No problem! You have a wonderful time. Miss you! Xxx
That last part, about missing her, he'd never said to her before. It struck him as odd as soon as he sent it--but by then, he couldn't delete it, it had already been sent. He missed her. Normally, they had their strict routine, so there was no missing anybody. Right now, for the first time he could remember, he was actively yearning for her.
Eleven o'clock. This was the kind of time that a date might move on to something significant, he felt certain. Dinner was long gone, and there had been plenty of time for drinks after dinner. Was her text telling him not to wait up actually a subtle signal that she was about to go somewhere with her date--perhaps back to his place--to sleep with him?
Another shower. Another hard-on. He couldn't stop thinking about her date.
In a nice, clean pair of PJs, he tried to divert his attention by watching the TV, and then by playing Call of Duty on the PlayStation. He felt too restless even to enjoy shooting Nazis. He found himself thinking about what his therapist had said, found himself Googling the word 'cuckold'. There were 231 million results. It proved somewhat frustrating, however. The phrases that kept coming up suggested that if he was a cuckold, he wanted to be humiliated and degraded as his wife was taken by another man. That wasn't him at all.
With a little persistence, however, or at least long enough to get past the first page or so of the Google search results, he found entries that were more along the lines of how he felt. In particular, it was within recent articles on blogs and some magazine-style websites that things began to click.
'Being cuckold today means something very different from what it did when the word was first coined...' an online women's magazine stated, before explaining that the term used to refer to a man unable to keep 'his' woman from straying, or a 'fool' who did not realize his wife was cheating on him.
'We still use the word cuckold today, but it's less a source of mockery,' said the website, before going on to state that nowadays it simply referred to a man deriving sexual pleasure from his partner having sex with others who are not his partner, and that it was 'a really popular fetish, allegedly even in Hollywood.'
Within the Google results, naturally there were plenty of links to porn websites and porn videos. Jens had never been a fan of pornography--the few glimpses he'd had in the past had struck him as rather crude and tedious, so he avoided those now. But there were also stories available, and he read some of those and did connect with them. Then he found a forum website, where husbands who described themselves as 'cuckolds', and their wives as 'hotwives', discussed their thoughts, feelings and experiences.
What struck him about the forum was the wide range of behavior that was all classed under the same 'fetish' category--there were men here that Jens envied. There were also men describing desires and experiences that Jens could not understand. Men who wanted to wear women's clothing as their wives cheated on them. Men who wanted to be humiliated by their partners and their partners' lovers. Men who wanted to join their wives in exploring other men. These were not for Jens--and yet, the variety of people who claimed to enjoy 'sharing' their partners did make him feel that while he might be different from a lot of them, he was not unusual, he was not a 'freak'.
He'd had enough of being seen as a 'freak', simply for wanting to keep away from other people, for washing his hands five times after touching anyone or anything he did not consider clean.
And importantly, it seemed, that many of the wives of the husbands on this forum who knew of their husbands' fantasies were supportive, or at least not judgmental. While some wives rejected their husbands' desires, it made Jens feel that perhaps, if he told Effie about his feelings, she wasn't the kind of person who would judge him, or ridicule him.
Midnight. God, she still hadn't returned. Something had to be happening.
Jens tried sleeping, to no avail. His mind was racing too much, and his manhood was too hard a lot of the time to allow him to relax. He got up, did some cleaning, though the apartment was always spotless. He found himself peering into Effie's underwear drawer, thinking about those 'date' panties she'd been wearing the last time she'd been out late. Was she wearing sexy lingerie tonight as well?
He'd never paid much attention to what Effie wore before, let alone her underwear. Now he found himself sifting through her drawer, and many of the items he saw were kind of sexy. Some of them he would definitely have described as 'date' underwear, and he wondered if she'd bought them recently, or if she'd always had something in reserve in case another man caught her eye.
It was probably a mistake, sifting through her panties. Imagining her wearing the sexy ones out on a date. Picturing another man peeling them off her beautiful body. Remembering how wet her date had made her the last time, and the strangely alluring scent of her arousal. He thought about it, and then even without touching himself, there was that familiar warm jolt between his legs, and his cock was pulsing as it spurted out his come.
It made Jens groan in frustration and embarrassment, and then dash to the bathroom to tear off his soiled PJs. It made Jens take yet another shower--a long shower--scrubbing frantically at himself to get himself clean again.
And while he was in the shower, he missed the text message from Effie that read:
So when she did get back to the apartment after her quick swim, and slipped into the bedroom dressed in a little red tank top and white gym shorts, ready for bed, Effie ran right into a naked Jens as he came out of the bathroom after his shower. This was getting to be a regular habit.
'Oh, hey!' she said, a touch startled.
'Hey, I didn't know you were back,' he said, attempting a smile, but feeling himself blushing ferociously.
'I... you're still awake?'
She looked stunning. Ravishing. Even wearing her nightwear. Jens could see her nipples pushing against the thin material of her tank top, stiff as bullets. Had she really just had sex with another man? Had she really had his hands all over her, his lips, his cock inside her?
'How... was your date?' he said, hardly believing that he said it, but feeling himself resolve to open the communications between them, to end the kind of white lies that, later, might lead to bigger lies, damaging lies.
He saw her catch her breath, and then she seemed mildly afraid. 'You... knew about that?' she asked him.
Her confirmation only made his cock harder. He held his hands in front of it, but she probably only had to look downward to catch a glimpse of it.
'I figured it out,' he said, trying to sound relaxed, non-judgmental.
She took half a step back, and he hated that for the first time ever, she seemed to be afraid of him. 'Are you... upset?' she asked him. 'Are you angry at me?'
He smiled, and said, 'No, not at all. Actually... kind of the opposite.' He figured, well, if he couldn't tell the truth to Effie, he didn't deserve her for a wife anyway--and he moved his hands away from his hard cock.
'Oh!' she exclaimed, genuinely shocked. And then she said, 'Oh...' softly, as though now she saw it, she desired it, her voice turned sultry and sexy. 'This is how you feel about me going on a date?'
He gave her a sheepish smile. 'Crazy, isn't it? My therapist says he thinks I might have some kind of a sexual fetish. Cuckolding, it's called.'
'I think I've actually heard of that,' she said with a slight nod, but she couldn't tear her eyes away from his big, hard cock.
She took her half step back toward him. He could smell the chlorine on her, from her swim. 'Can I touch it?' she said quietly. 'I have had a swim...' Then she looked up at him, and her expression instantly turned apologetic, as though she realized she would be offending him, she would be unsettling him, she might make him feel ill.
'Uh... maybe... yeah,' he said, offering her a nervous smile. His cock twitched a few times at the thought of her touching it, but he was nevertheless unsure about it. They didn't touch. The occasional, very brief hug, had been all, except for the briefest kiss--closed mouth--on the lips at their wedding ceremony. 'I think it might be okay,' he added, trying to seem more confident.
Slowly, she moved her hands together in front of her, and brought them between his legs, to cup his balls. He jumped a little as she touched him there, but then as the fingers of one of her hands gently curled around the base of his stiff shaft, he took a deep breath and was able to relax. It felt good--surprisingly good. Holding him like that, completely still, she looked up at his face to gauge his reaction. He did his best to smile, though the feelings flowing through his body were stronger than he was used to.
'I never thought you could,' she said quietly.
'Well, I guess I'm making progress too, huh?'
She smiled. 'And this is really because I went out on a date this evening?'
He nodded. She moved her hand on his cock, just a little stroke, but he caught his breath, it felt wonderful, he could hardly believe it.
'You okay?' she asked him.
He nodded again. Then he said, 'Tell me about your date.'
She looked him in the eye, raising one quizzical eyebrow. 'Are you sure?' she said. Then, as Jens smiled again, mildly embarrassed, she moved her hand again, gently stroking, and this time she didn't stop. 'I guess this is telling me you do want to hear, huh?' She laughed. 'When we talked about this... arrangement... I thought you were fairly clear you didn't want to know anything about it.'
'I didn't know,' he said, his breathing accelerating along with his heart rate.
'So... how much do you want to know?' she asked him.
'Everything. I don't like it being a secret. I want to know.'
For a moment or two, she stared at his hard cock in her hands as she gently pumped his shaft. Then she said, 'Do you want to sit down? Make yourself comfortable?'
6
Her Touch and her Tale
She ushered him down onto the edge of her bed, the twin nearest the door to the en-suite bathroom, and then she sat beside him, reaching over to place her hand on the base of his cock. She was careful to sit slightly apart from him, an inch or so of space between their corresponding thighs, concerned that too much touching all at once would overwhelm him.
But she still put her hand back on his cock, enclosed his shaft in her fingers. It felt amazing.
'We're really doing this, huh?' she said, a beaming smile spread across her pretty face.
'Uh-huh,' he said, trying so hard not to come as she started stroking him again.
'And you're sure you didn't take a handful of Viagra just because you figured I was out on a date? Because if we're saying no secrets anymore...'
'No,' he grinned. 'I didn't take anything.'
'Mmm...' she said, gazing down at his hardness as she squeezed it and caressed it. 'You have the nicest cock, you know that? So big... and hard...'
She giggled as she felt him respond physically to her words.
'So you want to hear about my date, huh?' she said, and again his cock throbbed in her hand. 'I guess you don't need to answer my questions verbally.'
'No,' he returned her grin.
'And you're not... jealous or anything like that?'
He shrugged. He'd never really felt jealousy. He wasn't a jealous person, and Effie had never made him feel insecure in any way. He'd always thought that marrying someone like him wasn't something a woman would or could do lightly, and that therefore she had to really care about him.
'I'm not jealous,' he said. 'I... like the idea that you could go out and have fun with somebody...'
'You do like it, don't you?' she said, indicating his seriously hard cock. 'So you want to know, what, his name? Who he is? How we met? What's going on?'
'Everything,' he said.
She nodded, and looked him straight in the eye, as though to assess him one last time for the possibility that he was leading her on, that he didn't really want to know, or that he couldn't handle it. Then she said, 'His name is Nicolai, he's a management consultant.'
Jens focused on breathing, on controlling the wonderful feelings her hand provoked in him--because too much of a good thing would soon mean it was all over, and he didn't want it to be all over too soon. But he thought Nicolai somehow didn't seem to fit the man he had seen her leave the office with at the start of her date.
'You're not sleeping with him to protect your job?' he joked.
She laughed. 'No, I wouldn't do something like that. Nicolai's just been brought in to manage our takeover of another company--we won't be losing any jobs on our side.'
Jens nodded. 'Is he... older than you?'
She tilted her head, uncertain. 'Maybe a bit. But he's nice. He's kind. He's fun.'
'He's good-looking?' he asked her.
She glanced up at him, again gauging him, making sure he wasn't trying to trap her, wasn't trying to get her in trouble. He wasn't.
'He is good-looking,' she said, and then giggled again as his cock twitched in her hand. 'I guess you'd say he's fairly tall, very short blondish hair. Blue eyes. He takes good care of himself, physically.'
'And this was, what, your first date? Second?'
She hesitated. Th
en, 'Third.' She sighed, and said, 'Sorry. But you said you didn't want to know--'
'I know I did. I was wrong.'
Now she brought two hands to his cock, to squeeze him, to stroke him a little harder--though it was still careful, still fairly gentle. She had wonderfully soft hands.
'Is this okay?' she asked him.
He nodded, and attempted a reassuring smile. 'So what happened on your third date?'
'Well... we went out for dinner... and then we had a few drinks at a bar nearby...'
She leaned into him as she worked on his cock, and her thigh came gently into contact with his. He suspected she didn't realize it, but he didn't mind. He was coping. Her leg was so warm, her gorgeous caramel skin so smooth. As she leaned over him, he could see down her tank top, a nice view of her cleavage--and he could see her nipples, so stiff pressing against the thin cotton.
And as she leaned into him, he could smell the chlorine of her swim, even after her rinse in the shower. He was also able to detect that other smell, faintly. Her personal smell--the scent that was unmistakably Effie, and nothing else. Mild, inviting, with a touch of butterscotch sweetness.
'What did you talk about?' he asked her.
'Work... politics... our childhoods,' she said. Then, 'Actually, I did tell him about you.'
'So he knows you're married?'
'I told him you can't... well, I guess I was wrong about that.'
'Not entirely wrong,' Jens corrected her.
She looked at him, hopeful, but also somehow happy with what she had. 'But we can work on this, don't you think?' she said, and he very much liked the implication that she wanted to work on this, in this particular way. 'I mean, this is amazing progress, don't you think?'
'I suppose so.'
'Maybe I don't even need to date someone else...'
She looked him in the eye again, and he smiled, 'I think it would be better for us if you did.'