This is a work of fiction, any similarity to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
While this work does contain sex scenes it also attempts to examine the relationships between people who are involved in the adult industry and how fragile those relationships can be for couples who are also facing pressures from other things.
Towards the end of this work I introduce the first hints of an illness that is all too real; one that many doctors simply overlook despite the fact that it can be deadly if it is not discovered in time. In this story, as in reality, the first hints of this illness are very faint but even at that stage they can have a terrible impact on relationships.
More will be said about that illness in the sequel that is already being written but let me say here... that if you suffer from this illness, or you are in a relationship with someone who suffers from this illness then you have my respect.
Chapter 1 The Start of the Itch
Helen Weston was 42 but still had her looks and many people thought that she was much younger. She was happily married to Greg, the same man she had wed 23 years earlier and they were still passionately in love. Neither of them had ever strayed even though there had been plenty of opportunity for both of them.
They had built a successful business out of a decaying wreck that they had bought from his parents. And, thanks to their success in building their business, they now had a burgeoning side hustle in consulting and mentoring other similar businesses across the country.
They were even beginning to go beyond their own narrow industry niche and were working with businesses in other industry too. They were the perfect team for their side hustle for she could take data and extract every bit of information that was hidden in the figures as well as produce forecasts and projections that were both accurate and detailed.
Her husband could look at a business and recognise the strengths and weaknesses of that business and see possibilities for expansion and growth and they worked well as a team.
They spoke at conferences, seminars and workshops for small business and the Federal and State governments recognised them as experts in their field. They wrote for their own business blog, for industry journals, magazines and websites.
They were busy people but then they had the time to be busy. They had two children but both had all but left home. Amy, their daughter had left home and moved in with her boyfriend after an argument with her parents about the boyfriend.
She had also been in college but the last they heard she had dropped out and was working as a bartender. They wanted better things for their daughter but they weren't going to interfere.
Their son Simon, who was also in college lived on campus during semester but over the summer holidays was living the life of a beach bum somewhere down in Mexico so he hadn't been home in six months and they really didn't expect to see him till Thanksgiving.
Yet despite their 'fame' and new-found freedom they lived fairly modest lives. They still spent the majority of their working days at the lumberyard that had been in the family for three generations. His grandfather and father would not have recognised it as being the same business, but it was just as busy now as it had been back in his grandfather's day.
They had quickly recognised that the days of the independent lumber yards was drawing to a close and their business was dying so they had worked hard to move the business toward the growing home renovators' market.
These were the people who were taking old houses and giving them a makeover that not only returned older homes to their former glory but expanded them too and these homeowners were hungry for the timbers that were in common use back when the house was built but much harder to find these days.
These were timbers that the big players in the lumber industry didn't stock because it was too hard to get, too expensive for their target market and just didn't fit with their business model. If they couldn't buy it in bulk and couldn't sell it in large quantities at reduced prices then the big guys just didn't stock it.
Supplies of these old-style timbers were hard to get but Helen and Greg had worked hard to establish relationships with the few suppliers that were left. They had even developed contacts around the California who would let them know when an older building was up for demolition, and before it was demolished, they would send in a team to reclaim as much of the old timber as possible.
Despite their success, they still lived in the same home that they had bought when they graduated from college... although it had been extensively renovated and expanded to suit their family and lifestyle. They drove older vehicles; her Tundra twin cab was five years old while his Ford F-series truck was even older.
They were happy and contented... or at least Greg was... but Helen was bored with life in general and with her marriage in particular. Many experts say that a woman of Helen's age becomes vulnerable and can grow tired of her marriage because she thinks she is losing her looks and no man is going to find her attractive for much longer but that wasn't Helen's problem.
Helen had a different problem.
Helen still loved Greg with a passion and wanted to spend as much time with him as possible. Helen knew that she was still attractive and wasn't in danger of losing her good looks any time soon. Helen was just growing tired of always being good and she wanted to try being bad
Helen had been a virgin when she met Greg and he had been the only guy she had ever shared her body with... but now she had an itch that wouldn't go away... an itch for other men... an itch that needed to be satisfied.