"do Me"

"Vaughan!" Jemima pounced as I closed our front door behind me, before I'd even dropped my briefcase and gym-bag. She flung her arms around my neck and wrapped her legs around my hips, ensconcing me in black cotton, bleached hair and the overpowering aroma of her special occasion, vetiver bath oil. Her tongue ram-raided my mouth and her heart knocked against my ribs as if she would even get inside me too given half a chance. My heart sank. She had been at the pornography again.

She gasped off my face. "Do me."

"Jemima," I complained. "I injured my back at the—"

"Call me Nicholas." She underlined the terrible joke with a grind of her hips on the front of my suit, and before I could rein in my hungry hands they'd swooped under her skirt to feast on bare bottom.

"This is quite a change from last night," I said.

"I think I'm actually dripping," she huffed into my ear, wetly.

"OK, so we're pretending that you didn't wake me up, fiddling yourself over your phone? After telling me you weren't in the mood because you'd already had a biggie in the shower?"

She sealed me mute with another messy kiss and I carried her - clung to me like a baby monkey - into the lounge.

I was rather unsure what I would do with her; despite my body having one or two ideas, my mind nagged that I was simply setting myself up for more disappointment.

Before you jump to conclusions, let me explain that even after ten years, I loved my wife as much as the day we met. I was that lucky blighter in the rom-coms; the gentle-giant law student who married the manic-pixie-dream-girl. But the twinge I bore at the base of my spine right then - as she fidgeted in my arms while I headed for the sofa - was a testament to how I'd been trying to keep up with Jemima's porn-stars. Yes, this was childish and shallow, but faced with lifting 20kg or 40kg, paranoia would taunt me with the balloon-toy, veiny males she pleasured herself over and I'd always overdo it. How did something that started as her endearing sexual honesty turn into this antisocial porn habit? I decided to unpeel her now, before one of us ruined everything again.

"Come on, Sweetpea, lighten up," she said, locking her feet behind my back. "Let's lick, fuck and suck, in that order. Know what I mean? I've been inattentive. I owe you." She probed a tongue deep into my ear, prepping it for the whisper-bomb: "I want you to cum in my mouth."

Her pornographic talk was petrol to my smouldering unease. Jemima and I did not talk this way, these were just words she used to turn herself on. If I took up her offer, she'd immediately reach for her iPad and log in to that damned 'Tabbycat's Purr'. Then she'd keep me on tenterhooks while she used our lovemaking to validate her addiction. Three or four times. With her fingers or - worse - the dildo she'd ordered off one of the bloody banner ads. Then she'd leap on me sixty-nine and, in a second, orgasm so hard she'd be utterly done for days.

I should have informed her weeks ago I'd gone off all this. Instead I'd dimwittedly played along in the hope it was just a phase. Jemima's only serious relationship before me had been with a woman she'd met while travelling in her gap year: a stout, rainbow-braided, earth-mother who I had no hope of competing with. So, when she discovered this 'girl-porn' site I went along with it, believing it (mistakenly) to be a site of women for women. "A need shared over a need denied," being one of Jemima's more common axioms, of which there were many. And honestly, I did rather enjoy it at first, who wouldn't? Cuddling up with your masturbating wife while watching some red-lipped harlot - in a cat mask, basque and nothing else - pleasuring a succession of her, largely female, friends?

Everything was fine until we had the talk. About starting a family. I wanted children, but Jemima didn't, her fashion career just kicking off. Then what started as her monthly 'cheeky-treat' became weekly, and lately, almost every other day. I had no idea what the connection might be, except that my response can't have helped; a balling resentment that I could neither explain, nor control, stopping me from cumming for her. Ever.

I slumped onto the sofa with Jemima still on top of me. She pecked giggly kisses under my jaw and behind my ears, but rather than lowering my guard, it raised goosebumps. I mentally counted down. I didn't even get to five.

"You need a little... something?" she said, Cleopatra eyes peeping up from under her fringe. "There's a new one on 'The Purr'? She gets this monster cock in a sixty-nine-" talking to her hands, held a foot apart under wide eyes "- and actually cums with it. So. Fucking. Horny... You ok?"

Every bit of me blazed.

Jemima cupped my face in her cool palms and tilted it to hers, her icy blue eyes endeavouring to peer into my hot head. My voice leaked through clenched teeth. "Am I supposed to be aroused by this... exploding musclecock? Or just shamed into cumming myself somehow?"

"Sweetpea?"

After the leak. The torrent. "You know what I do? I watch you watching them. I remember every time you moan or nudge my ribs. Then when you're out? I agonise over them. I try to work out what it is you need from me. Maybe I needed to shove harder, last longer, lick quicker, slower, firmer, gentler. Or maybe I need even bigger arms and chest, better abs." I ripped my shirt open, Jemima winced as buttons pinged everywhere. For a moment, the only sound was plastic spinning on the wooden floor. I had never done that before. It was very satisfying.

Jemima's lips flattened. She slid caresses under my shirt, over my skin, tracing the grooves in my tired muscles. She leant the gentlest kiss to me. Then another. But each kiss went off in my skull with a burst of pain. Typical, she should try and kiss through it. Deny our situation. Not this time.

"I think we might need a break from each other," I said.

I expected tears. I expected begging. I got a tongue in my ear.

"Listen," she said, eventually, hopping off me. "I'd planned to give this to you after I'd sucked you off. An extra treat. But I think you need it now." She thumped into the kitchen and returned with a gift card. A massage at a fancy spa, booked and paid for. Tomorrow.

Jemima bunched her skirt in wringing hands. "They call it the 'life-changer' massage. I thought that would make you laugh. You will go, won't you?"

I hated spas. I hated being touched by strangers. But I still had to blink back a tear. Jemima didn't do expensive gifts, and this would have cost her a fortune. I swallowed. Whatever we were going through, she still loved me.

"Go get a rub down." She grabbed the hem of her dress and stepped onto the sofa astride my lap. "It will be good for your back. It might even cheer you up." She lifted her skirt to her waist. "Bring you back to me." She pushed her hips toward my face.

Jemima kept her mound bald to show off a tattoo she'd got before we'd met. Flowery Alice-in-Wonderland script said: 'Eat me'. Some might see this as a vulgar joke, but it always acted upon me like a spell, direct from Jemima's body to mine. "Ignore your worries," it said. "Everything will be OK. Just eat."

Bedazzled, I kissed the proffered soft lips between my wife's legs. The kiss of moisture I received in return lifted my spirits. Perhaps she understood. Perhaps this time there would be no porn and we could simply make love.

I pressed again, dabbing a light tongue to her swollen nub. She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, stroking the back of my head. "We don't do holidays, remember?" She pulled my head harder to her. "We change our lives, instead."

I lapped along her groove, steadying her by her bottom when her legs shook. Jemima was indeed full of these axioms. Another one of her mantras crossed my mind right then, as it often did when my tongue was slicked with her: "How can anyone resist women? They're delicious!"

Neither of us had any idea that, in less than 24 hours, I would consider using this as a defence.

#

I marched up and down the high street, fists clenched, bleary eyes unable to find that damned spa. I'd hardly slept. What started as tender and sweet the night before had ended with me alone, aching-hard and shivering on the sofa, locked out of our bedroom. Every blink still flashed Jemima's ashen, white lipped face, the spill of a tear.

Then the universe - which clearly had it in for us - stepped in.

I found the spa. The place turned out to have an unmarked entrance that I might have passed by again but for the flammable combination of my sexual agitation and an elegantly dressed woman knocking at the door.

It is a shallow admission, but I don't think I'm the only person that - irrespective of how much they love their partner - carries in them some subliminal ideal that their eye secretly, constantly, measures others against. A model of perfection so finely tuned that it will snag on a single face in a crowd if it even broadly meets the standard. And it is very rare indeed that, on drawing near, you find that each level of the ideal is met: Long black hair? Tick. Long black lashes? Tick. Obsidian eyes? Tick. Alabaster skin? Tick. Voluptuous overbite? Bingo!

My objectifying stare must have alerted this Ms Overbite because she shot a scowl at me when I approached. As if to ratify my judgement - if not the tenderness of my insides that afternoon - when the woman's glare hit, my chest palpably stung with longing. That had never happened before, not even with Jemima.

"Sorry," I said, idiotically broadcasting that I had something to be sorry for.

The woman's frown melted. She seemed to bite back a smile, or was it just politely half formed? And what was it in the slope of her eyes that suggested deep sadness? And was I staring too long at those delicately pink, plump lips? She pointed at the door. "You going in here?" she said. Breathy American accent. Double bingo.

My mouth was paper. I nodded. Now she smiled. Briefly, but generous and unaffected, as if I was quite a surprise. Then she sighed at her shoes. My skin warmed and knees threatened to unhinge. She was Jemima's height, and as slim too, but otherwise fuller all over. More womanly. I banished the shameful comparison before I telegraphed that as well.

The door thunked and a silver-haired Thai woman let us in. I had never been to a spa before, but the women both seemed to know what to do, so I followed them wordlessly up some stairs. To avoid my instinctual need to assess how firm my ideal woman's round bottom might be, I paid particular attention to my surroundings. The spa was larger inside than out; simply furnished, fragrant and spotless. Ambient music seemed to thrum from everywhere.

I took a towel when offered, then a robe, then, mysteriously, some strange paper underwear that appeared to be for me alone. There was further confusion when we got to the changing rooms and - still on autopilot - I followed the elegant woman into hers. I realised my error with a jolt, and leapt out of as if from scalding water, ears aflame.

The Thai woman grumbled, apparently dumbfounded, and showed me to another room. Inside, I stripped out of my suit, shirt and underwear (no tie, it was the weekend) and scrubbed down in a large marble shower, then pulled on the disposable pants. They were tiny and barely covered me, so I decided to keep the towel round my waist, and preferably my robe on. I answered a light knock on a second door, to be led out by a young Thai woman into a minimalist, but warm and fragrant space; dark stone and white glass spectacularly doubled by a coppery reflective ceiling. My masseuse was dressed smartly in black silk with a white magnolia in her hair. She bowed with a welcoming, cheeky smile. I felt like James Bond. My muscles relaxed instantly.

Then things spiralled into wrongness.

Stretched out on her front on a white upholstered massage table, was the elegant woman, hair in a loose bun, her back and legs bare. A strip of folded black silk lay across her bottom. Unconcerned at the nervous Bond looming over her, she hummed under the oiling strokes of her own magnolia-sporting masseuse. To their right lay another, empty, massage table. Between, on a linking stone shelf, a copper bowl of scented oil warmed over tealight candles. The cavernous space was otherwise empty. There appeared to be nowhere else for me to go. Was it usual for massages to be mixed gender?

I averted my eye from the nearly nude woman's uninterrupted sweeps of skin and tried to put out of my mind that only I had been given underwear, so she was more than likely bare under that silk. My masseuse took my robe. Then my towel. Ms Overbite blatted her lashes and turned away as I presented myself in my paper underpants. Again with the sting. In the flutter of her blink, she'd skipped a glance over my body.

I lay on my front and tried not to show my nervousness at giving over to an expert's touch. My horizontal companion turned back to face me, now that I was flat out and covered up, too. The cool directness of her gaze suggested a confidence born of hardship. Someone who had decided that nothing mattered anymore. She leant toward me. "I think they think we are a couple," she whispered conspiratorially, waving her wedding ring and nodding at mine.

"Oh! Please forgive me." I went to push off the bench. "I've clearly blundered into your session."

The woman snorted. A dry laugh that didn't make it to her lips. "You for real? You're like some superhero's butler alter-ego."

I struggled to parse whether that was a compliment or not. Either way, I gathered my modesty strip, ready to take my leave.

She waved. "No, don't go. They take their time here, so it's good to have someone to talk to." She held out her hand. "Tabitha."

We were orientated badly for shaking hands, lying as we were, so I took her right with my left and awkwardly squeezed and waggled. In comparison to the masseuse's warm, strong fingers, Tabitha's were cool and soft. She blinked at me and glowed for a second, like sun passing through rainclouds.

"Vaughan," I said.

Tabitha's masseuse poured oil over her feet and rubbed them. Tabitha leant up on her elbows. She seemed unbothered at revealing her cinnamon nipples. I wondered if there was another frustrated husband, overdoing it in a gym somewhere.

She took a good look up and down me. "You a model?"

I laughed, then yelped as my masseuse hit the stiff muscle in my back. "No. You?"

"Yep," she said.

"Really?"

The black sweep of her eyebrows arched half way up her forehead. She narrowed her eyes.

"Oh!" I blurted. "That came out wrong. I didn't mean... of course you're a model. I mean look at you, you're... you're extraordinary!"

Tabitha dropped her head into her arms; whether exasperated or because of the Thai woman working her instep, I couldn't tell.

"What kind of modelling do you do?" I gabbled, wanting her attention back.

Tabitha shut her eyes. "Oh, I'm not fussy," she sighed.

I'd lost her. I cursed my witlessness. I wished Jemima was with us. She would have something scintillating and flirtatious to say. She would get a kiss out of that impossible mouth. And yes, I am totally aware how wrong this sounds. While Tabitha couldn't see me, I marvelled at her. I considered kissing her. I imagined my wife and I alternating, plucking lips to Tabitha's with aching slow tenderness. Then Jemima's mouth exploring her, glimpses of the slip of eager tongues.

With telepathic insight, and a playfulness that quite caught me by surprise, Tabitha stuck her tongue out at me.

"Sorry," I coughed. "I thought you couldn't see me." She had tested me again, and for a second time my mindless apology had exposed a guilty secret. She would make a cracking lawyer.

"You're so transparent," she said. "I can read you with my eyes closed."

Even though that made no actual sense, I still wished the masseuse would rub me away to nothing at all. "Forgive me," I said.

"Oh please," Tabitha said, squirming a little. "This is a very sexy situation, that's all."

She watched her bombshell explode in my face with quiet amusement. I think my chin might have quivered. Tabitha's melancholy calm, counterpointed by the notion she might find me attractive, had me all but salivating for more attention. A desire only held in check by my guilt; knickerless in its dress and gripped to me like a baby monkey.

The torture was short lived, however.

Because it immediately got much worse. My masseuse lifted the silk from my hips, screening me from Tabitha and averting her eye even though I was paperily beknickered. "Please turn over, sir," she said.

A combination of Tabitha, the massage, and my torrid imagination had got me profoundly hard. "I'm ok, thanks," I said. "It's just my back that needs um..."

"But I am not finished," the masseuse said. "Erection no problem, sir. It sometimes happen for men."

Solid advice to us all, of course, but it did not help. Tabitha said, "Ha." And wriggled over onto her back, her breasts like taunting children. She made absolutely no attempt to look away either. Her ease irritated me and, slightly blood drunk, I turned over, too. The caveman in me was proud of his club, while the polite lawyer felt confident I was in part strapped down by the elastic of my breached paper panties. So I might be spared some-

"Sir, this is too tight!" The masseuse seemed to accuse me, then with a firm and practiced sweep - like that magic trick with a tablecloth - she dragged the pointless underwear off my hips and legs without disturbing my silk strip a jot. Unlike my flushed member which grabbed the chance to struggle against the light material like an escapologist, eager to present itself to a certain amorous eye.

The Thai women, professionals that they were, made no comment. Tabitha whistled. She made no secret of scrutinising me and relishing my unease. Then her bravado seemed to falter. She blinked at my pathetically concealed manhood as if it were a Jack-in-the-box. Her cheeks pinked and she bit her lip.

"Is that... because of me?" She said eventually, in a small voice that seemed to come straight from her subconscious.

What could I say? Yes, and betray Jemima? No, and upset Tabitha? I clamped my mouth shut.

She nodded, appreciating my dilemma. "Well, I like it. If it is for me." Her flush deepened. She stretched restlessly. "Oh my," she sing-songed. "I didn't expect this deliciousness today!"

I laughed like a goon.

While the masseuse finished Tabitha's legs and returned to the silver bowl to gather more oil, Tabitha absently inspected her wedding ring above her, then slipped it off and put it on top of her phone, laid on the table beside her. "I'm just glad my horniness is less-" She mimed my cock with her fist and a rigid forearm "-and more like this." She peered at the oil the masseuse was dribbling thickly over her breasts.

I swallowed. "Thank you for that image, Tabitha."

Tabitha shrugged. "Enjoy. Now we're even."

The Thai women worked at our bodies like miners at a flesh coalface. I tried - and failed - to avoid the slippery pliancy and stiff nipples of Tabitha's oiled breasts in the Thai girl's hands. I also failed to ignore Tabitha's constant peeping at my silken ramrod, while simultaneously failing to put her liquid arousal out of my mind. I tried staring at the ceiling but the copper was polished to mirror, and showed nothing but my great lumpen body, barely fitting on the table - with a strip of black across my middle that may as well have been a flag for my pole - while Tabitha lay glistening and comely beside me, crimson now, smouldering straight back.

It amazed me how aroused this woman was, just from my unconcealable attraction to her, and then vice versa, in a resonant loop. A sixty-nine of infatuation. Were we both so starved of approval at home? Is that why her demeanour seemed so defeated? My heart pummelled harder than the masseuses' fists on my chest. I shut my eyes. Whatever. But when your ideal idealises you, it cannot end well.