Thick And Thin The Beginning

CHAPTER ONE

I'm sure I'm awake, but damn, I still feel like I'm swimming in the sticky molasses of dreamland. Then it hits me. The dope! I'm moving like a zombie because I'd gotten zombified the night before with some powerful weed. Weed that Lance had brought over.

Lance?! Now I move, managing to roll onto my side and look across the bed. Is he still here? No. There is indeed another body lying next to me, but it belongs to my wife, Chrissy. Had Lance really been here in bed with us or was it all just a smoke dream?

Finally my eyes clear and focus. Chrissy is also on her side, with her back to me. Her light red curls are seriously tousled and there's a dark splotch by her ear. It looks wet, maybe sticky. It's cum. Lance's cum. So yes, he had been in our bed.

In our bed. In Chrissy's mouth. In Chrissy's pussy. As had I. At the same time.

As the memories of the previous night start coming back to me, a queasy feeling grows in my stomach. What had we done? What had I allowed? What next? Queasy or not, I also have a hard-on. We had done some incredible things, that's what we'd done. Chrissy and I had allowed things we'd never even talked about, let alone done before.

Deciding for the moment to focus on my hard cock rather than my anxiety, I raise myself up on my elbow and reach out toward Chrissy. My higher elevation makes the numbers on the clock radio on Chrissy's nightstand come into view. It's 9:05 and I'm supposed to be in the office for a case meeting at 10:00, even though it's a Saturday morning.

Before my arm reaches Chrissy, I drop it and push myself away and out of bed as quietly as I can. Getting to my feet, I feel surprisingly good. Tired, but good. Lance had promised no booze-like hangover from his botanicals, and he'd been right.

In our ensuite bath, I do a quick buzz with my electric shaver, a more thorough job with the toothbrush, then into the shower. I'd thought of taking just a quick rinse, but the warm water raises the smells of sex and smoke on me, so I do a full shampoo and body lather.

Back in our bedroom I put on a pair of briefs and step into some khaki trousers, then pull on a long-sleeved rugby shirt that will be acceptable for this informal meeting. I grab a pair of socks that I'll put on by the front door, where my shoes are. Turning to give Chrissy one more look before leaving the bedroom, I find her eyes are open and she's smiling at me.

"Going to sneak out without a goodbye kiss?" Her tone is teasing.

"Didn't want to wake you since I have to rush. I'm going to be cutting it close for Paul's meeting," I say as I walk over and kiss her cheek.

"What time is it?"

"Almost 9:30," I answer, hoping Saturday morning traffic will be light so the trip is only 20 minutes instead of the 30 it takes on weekday mornings.

She immediately realizes just how tight I'm cutting things, since she makes the same trip every weekday herself. But still she reaches out and takes hold of my arm, apparently not wanting me to dash off just yet.

"Last night was pretty wild, eh?" Her voice is lower; a mixture of sultriness and concern.

"Yes," I reply simply; not sure what else to say.

"It's all a little foggy," she offers. "But I think we had a good time, didn't we?"

I try to keep a light tone. "Foggy, that's about right." Suddenly remembering the erection I'd gotten earlier while thinking about it, I add with more real feeling, "And yeah, it does seem that everyone had a good time."

Chrissy squeezes my arm and says with a bit of relief, "So, we're okay?"

Giving her a longer kiss on her warm cheek, I whisper, "Yeah, we're okay," softly into her ear.

"But now I have to go. I'll see you in a few hours, okay?"

"Okay. Say hey to Paul and Clive. Love you." Her head relaxes back into her pillow; she'll likely be back asleep before I've left the apartment.

During the drive over to Lieberman and Lennox, or L&L as we who work there call it, I struggle to get myself mentally ready for that morning's meeting. But the memories and images of our "pretty wild" night keep intruding on my thoughts.

I've worked for L&L as a paralegal for four and a half years. Chrissy's been there for three, also as a paralegal. We'd sparked and started dating soon after she arrived, although we hid it from everyone to allow her to establish herself at the firm. After six months we went public and six months after that we married. We'll celebrate our second anniversary in another month. I've always been very happy with our sex life, finding it spontaneous and adventurous and open to exploration. But last night represented a quantum leap in all of those areas.

It's pretty clear that the addition of marijuana to last night's activities had played a major role in that quantum leap. Chrissy and I had both done our share of smoking in college, but since we'd gone to different schools and had both left that scene behind after graduating, we'd never smoked dope together.

One of my old college pot-smoking memories was revived last night as I'd watched intimate sparks beginning to flash between Chrissy and Lance. I'd been sitting there, half zoned out and watching "the movie of life" playing out in front of me, which was my norm when baked. Suddenly, I'd remembered a girl from college that I did smoke with. We were alone in her dorm room, sharing a Californian wine and a Jamaican doobie. I'd gotten very mellow, as usual; happy to melt into my chair and become Analyst Nerd.

Analyst Nerd

is a mental cartoon character that I see myself as in such situations or whenever I start overanalysing things, as I'm wont to do. He naturally looks like me, only even skinnier, with heavy glasses and he'd get completely lost in analysing the simplest shit going on around him.

Anyway, I was sitting there in this girl's dorm room, all goofy and studying the flower pattern of her blouse, when she'd suddenly straddled my lap and grabbed handfuls of my shirt.

"Weed makes you happy and sleepy, doesn't it?" she'd said. I'd merely nodded.

"Well, it makes me horny and if you don't get up out of this chair and fuck me, I'm going to walk down the hall until I find someone who will."

I may not have been feeling aggressively amorous before, but my libido wasn't completely zoned out, and I'd picked her up and carried her over to her bed where we had nice long, dirty, session.

It had struck me last night that the dope might be having the same effect on Chrissy as on that long ago lover. So, just as I'd done back then, I'd pulled myself from audience to actor. I didn't try to stop the sparks between Chrissy and Lance, but instead had added to them. It had indeed been a pretty wild night.

Suddenly, I find myself pulling into an L&L slot in the parking lot at work; muscle memory apparently having guided me the last mile or two. Hurrying into the building, the large clock on the wall behind the reception desk tells me I still have five minutes.

As I exit the elevator on the fifth floor, I see Paul Clervaux, the attorney I'm supporting on this case, turning into a conference room with a cup of coffee in one hand and an accordion file in the other. No one else is in the hallway, so I scurry to my desk and grab a legal box off the top; very happy that I'd prepared everything I needed yesterday before leaving the office. I manage to enter the conference room only two minutes behind Paul.

The investigator working with us on the case is Clive Thompkins and Clive is already seated at the table with his coffee and an array of case files spread out in front of him. I take the seat across from Clive, giving up on the idea of going for a cup of coffee of my own, regardless of how much I need it.

For the first hour, we go over the new material Clive came up with the previous night. I had actually helped him with surveillance earlier in the case, but last night he'd been on his own, collecting the last few nails Paul wanted for the coffin he was building. After Clive leaves, Paul and I spend the next two hours weaving Clive's new findings into the case.

L&L specializes in financial and estate planning for wealthy clients and their families. This mostly entails wills and trusts to pass on wealth to future generations with minimal tax consequences. But it also includes prenuptial agreements and divorce settlements, again aimed at protecting the clients' wealth.

In this particular case, a rich old man's trophy wife had fulfilled the prenup's time requirements for staying with the old bastard and had then filed for divorce. But we were going to show that she'd violated the fidelity clause. That meant she'd be offered a settlement package of only five or six hundred thousand dollars, rather than the millions she and her attorneys thought she would get.

When I started at L&L, I wondered why a cheating wife wouldn't just be tossed out on her ass empty-handed. That's when I learned about the carrot on a stick. The carrot

on

a stick was a method developed decades earlier by Saul Lieberman, founding partner of the firm and father of the current managing partner, Aaron Lieberman.

When your clientele has a lot of money, they usually also have plenty of extra pride and ego to go with it. Our client in this case, Jean-Paul Marange, had all three in abundance. So, while he would have been well within his rights to kick his second ex-wife to the curb with nothing and it would be a soothing balm to his pride, it would be a Pyrrhic victory. He would end up paying a different and substantially higher price for doing so.

Such a woman would certainly be well-paid by a tabloid for providing a juicy tale of what went on in the failed marriage of one of the ten richest men in the state. A powerful, influential man, who's a personal advisor to our senior U.S. Senator as well as our Governor and her two predecessors.

He obviously didn't want it splashed around that he'd been cuckolded by his wife or have her spinning sad tales about how she had to do it because he was an impotent old fart. Not only would it further bruise his massive ego, it could also truly hurt his standing among his peers. That, in turn, could lose him influence over government officials responsible for policy that affected his many business interests.

Much better to pay the divorcee significantly more than she otherwise deserved for her silence. That was the carrot.

Old Man Lieberman's twist on the old carrot and stick idea had been to not give the ex the carrot all at once. Instead, it remained tied to the stick and she or he was allowed to nibble on it over a period of time. If the ex broke the confidentiality rules of the settlement, the stick would yank the remaining carrot right out of his or her mouth.

Saul Lieberman's original partner, Angus Lennox, had added a devious knot to help keep the carrot tied to the stick. Part of the divorce settlement would be a counterintuitive agreement for the injured party to pay the legal fees of the adulteress or adulterer. In cases like these, that could end up being a quarter of the total settlement package. The cheater's lawyers were also not paid everything up front. The payments would be spread out for 12-24 months depending on the amount and the last payment would cover the final 25 percent.

This created a scenario where the ex-wife or husband could live reasonably comfortably for a number of years before having to support themselves or they could find themselves broke, but with a massive legal debt that their own lawyers knew they'd never be able to pay. So, the cheaters had incentive to keep their mouths shut and their lawyers had incentive to help them do so.

The investigator's job was to provide the proof of infidelity, which became the original stick. I would then research how that stick could be used as a lever to manoeuvre the cheating spouse and its attorneys into an exposed position where they knew they'd lose any case in civil court. Then a lawyer like Clervaux would fashion the appropriate carrot to tie to the stick so it never went to court, or to the media, in the first place.

Clive was a retired city detective who had a state-issued private investigator license to pull off some of the things he did and they often weren't very nice. Fortunately, being on retainer at a "high class" law firm meant that he had a nice, steady stipend and good performance bonuses to augment his retirement pay and allow him to keep his finger in the world of law enforcement.

Early on in this investigation I'd gone with him on a couple of surveillance shifts as an extra pair of eyes, watching the back while he watched the front until he knew the players and their patterns. In the end, his photos, hotel records and interview notes, along with certain financial transaction records that I had dug up, made it abundantly clear that the latest Mrs. Marange had been keeping her young pussy in shape with the help of a number of men other than Mr. Marange.

Paul was quite happy with our results and told us he was confident that he'd be able to put this case to bed (his pun was quite intentional) within a week of showing some of our cards to Mrs. Marange's attorneys.

During my drive back home, I can't help but compare the two cases, old man Marange and his trophy wife, and me and Chrissy. Both women had violated their marriage vows by having sex with another man. Of course, Mrs. Marange had done it behind her husband's back, while my wife had done it right in front of me with my consent and participation. Mrs. Marange had done it with at least three men that we could prove, while I was quite confident that Lance had been the first and only outside lover for Chrissy during our relatively short time together between courtship and marriage.

As I cruise along back home, wondering about the state of that marriage, I'm so distracted by my thoughts that I nearly become part of a traffic accident in the intersection ahead of me. While I avoid that disaster, I'm now hemmed in by stalled traffic waiting for the cops to clear a path around the wreck.

While I sit there, stuck, I begin replaying the events that eventually led to last night's wild encounter.

CHAPTER TWO

About six weeks earlier, I was in the pool at our apartment complex, swimming laps as I usually do three or four days a week. It's a slightly upscale place that caters to young adults without children, so you can get in your laps without worrying about kids straying into the roped off lane and generally being a nuisance.

I was 1600 yards into my 2000-yard session, when I saw a pair of legs hanging over the edge of the pool as I came in to the wall. I made my flip turn, but didn't push off for the next lap. Instead, I stopped and looked up at the person. My goggles were a bit fogged, so I could only tell it was a man with a good physique. 'Another real swimmer,' I thought.

"400 more to go," I said.

"Counter clockwise or split?" he replied. He wanted to share the lane with me and was asking if I wanted us to swim in a counter clockwise circles or each take half the lane.

"Counter," I said, then pushed off the bottom and started stroking, staying to the right side of the lane. I was glad he knew the etiquette; it's really hard to keep your rhythm going when you have to keep looking out for someone who won't stay to his side of the lane.

As usual, I went the next 300 strong to finish, then eased off as a cool down for the final 100. Each time we passed I could tell the guy had a good, solid stroke. When I came in at the end of my swim, I crouched in the corner of the lane as I let my breath settle.

He executed a nice, clean flip turn into his next lap. 'Good technique,' I thought. Then I boosted myself up until I was sitting on the edge, just my feet in the water, still in the corner of the lane. The guy really was smooth.

When he came back down the next time, he clearly registered that I'd gotten out and stayed in the middle of the lane when he pushed off the wall. He also switched to a butterfly stroke. Now, I can do the fly, but I'm really a distance guy, so mostly swim freestyle. I wondered if he was just a show off. I've seen lots of guys who want to flex by muscling out a couple of lengths of butterfly. But it's easy to spot the poseurs because their strokes fall apart, usually before even covering 50 yards.

I put on sunscreen before sitting in a lounge chair and drinking from the plastic bottle of ice water I'd left in the shade under the chair.

When the guy came in for the turn at 150, he was still churning and his rhythm was still spot on. He was a real butterflyer.

He came in strong to finish 200 yards of fly and when he flipped and pushed off, he was back in freestyle and going easy, apparently cooling down.

I drank more water and lay back to relax and wait for my wife Chrissy to join me.

Soon, however, I heard a man's voice asking if I minded if he sat down next to me. I opened my eyes and saw it was Fly Guy.

"Nice stroke," I said, smiling and waving at the empty deck chair.

"You too," he replied. Then he held out his hand and said, "Lance."

"Bryan," I said as we shook.

"I just moved in," he said. "Are there many of us?"

I figured he was talking about serious swimmers and said, "Not a lot, you might make number six or seven. Plenty of fitness paddlers though. But they usually stay in the main part of the pool."

And so, Lance came into our lives.

He was about 5' 11", so two inches shorter than me, but he was a muscular 175, while I was a lanky 160. He had sun-bleached blonde hair, probably-bleached white teeth, and reminded me of Patrick Swayze in "Point Break", though with a "Ghost"-like clean shave and haircut. He was also friendly and amusing right out of the box. I wasn't surprised to find out he was a car salesman, but at the fanciest dealer in town, where they sold Maseratis, Ferraris and other exotics.

When Chrissy showed up about 10 minutes later, Lance gave me a look that said he was impressed with me. Chrissy has that effect on people and I generally don't mind basking in her glow.

At 5' 10", she's a tall woman and the way she carries her athletic frame makes her seem even taller. She ran the hurdles and also high-jumped in high school and college and has the long, powerful legs that make those possible. She's a bit small in the bosom, which is also good for her track and field pursuits. But her tits are perfectly formed apples with generous pink nipples on top of the pale skin of a natural redhead.

I've had to get used to guys hitting on Chrissy incessantly, but we've worked out our levels of comfort in flirting and response and have become quite adept at shutting down assholes who don't know how to control themselves.

I wondered if a car salesman would be a stereotypical hound dog. But I guess if you're used to dealing with the kind of people who can drop $250,000 for a new Portofino, you can probably keep your shit together around a sexy woman. Even when she's wearing a dark red bikini that showcases all her assets perfectly.

After introductions were made, we settled into comfortable banter. Chrissy and I were pleasantly surprised that it didn't contain any of the usual innuendos about her red hair or long legs. Nor, after he learned our jobs, any lame

Suits

references about how lucky I, 'Mike Ross', was to end up with 'Donna' after 'Rachel' dumped me for Prince Harry. Although just once, I wouldn't mind being 'Harvey' instead of 'Mike'. But no one ever seemed to see me that way. After 20 minutes or so, Lance said he had to take off, but hoped he'd be seeing us around again.

And he did. Lance and I spent a lot of time in the water together and the pool is also where Chrissy showed up after putting in her own laps at the nearby high school track.