See "In the Beginning" for the first part.
Now, a bit of background may be appropriate here. Before we ever met Trish and Claire, George and I had occasionally been in the situation where one of us had a girlfriend in the back of our car and the other was in the front with another. (Our car was a big old Hillman Minx, with a bench front seat and a steering-column gear stick, so this was really quite practical). Because of this, we weren’t all that bothered at seeing each other partly or completely undressed, nor indeed being within short range of each other while snogging, or even occasionally (if we got lucky) bonking.
It turned out that Claire and Trish had a similar lack of concern about such things, as they’d been playing the field together for some time, and had even swapped fellers once or twice. So, on cold evenings in their house that winter, while all four of us might start by sitting round that old two-bar electric fire in their front room with a bottle of cheap Spanish wine, we’d often get into a snogging session without bothering to go off to our separate rooms. After all, it was likely to be bloody cold elsewhere in that house!
Indeed, we sometimes ended up lying more or less side-by-side, shagging on the shag pile as you might say. If that meant that bodies occasionally touched each other ... well, nobody was really bothered. In fact, watching someone else having it off beside you while you’re similarly engaged can be quite a turn-on.
So one evening, with both birds lying back stark naked, side by side in post-coital bliss - with their eyes shut - George and I happened to catch each other’s eyes, and somehow realised that we had the same thought in mind. Believe it or not, by dint of a lot of gymnastics involving a fair bit of massaging and stuff, we honestly managed to switch women without them noticing! You may not believe that can be done (I wouldn’t if someone was telling me, I must admit), but it really is true. I checked up on it a couple of years after the event, and Trish confirmed that she and Claire had talked about it later, and that at first neither of them realised that we’d pulled a switch on them.
However, back to the moment. Trish opened her eyes quite soon. I was watching her myself, out of the corner of my eye, as I got going onto (and into) Claire. I was well turned on, of course, to say the least; but I was also more than a little unsure of what the reaction would be when the girls finally cottoned on.
Well, I was looking at Trish when she opened her eyes. She twitched a bit, then raised her eyebrows as she suddenly clicked that it wasn’t me that was up her. But she just chuckled throatily, turned her head my way, raised her eyebrows in mock amazement and shot me a wicked grin, and then gave George a wink and a really sweet smile. Then she wrapped her legs around his bum, and pulled him into her so hard that I practically heard the thump!
Meanwhile, Claire was blissfully unaware that George and I had swapped places - she always did like to screw with her eyes shut. Since this was in the first few weeks of our relationship and we were all still fairly new to each other, I suppose we didn’t really know our partners well enough for her to register the difference by anything specific that I did. George and I are about the same size, physique and hairiness, so she really didn’t have much to give her a clue unless she opened her eyes.
In fact, it wasn’t till she had actually climaxed that she did so. And I have to say she wasn’t all that articulate:
"Mmmm, that was nice, Geor... Oh! ... er, ... oh! Dave! Er, well, er, thank-you - er, ... well, it was still nice!"
She did look a bit put out at first, but then she saw that all of us were chuckling at her not having noticed, and she joined in with the laughter. I wasn’t quite sure how she’d really taken the swap, since she had seemed a bit bothered, but my fears were put to rest over the next day or two. From that day on, she loosened up quite a bit with me, and started to be just as willing to kiss or caress me in passing as Trish always had been with George. I can tell you, it’s quite an interesting experience to be standing in a doorway and have two women come up behind you and each grope one of your bum cheeks. Or to be snogging with your girlfriend, and suddenly be goosed by another woman (or vice versa, for that matter ...)
From then on, we swapped partners occasionally when the mood took us, although it was still (and always has continued to be) the exception rather than the rule.
- o -
A week or two later, on a bright late winter morning, George and Claire came into our room to discuss what we were all going to do that evening, while Trish and I were so enthusiastically "at it" that we didn’t even notice them coming in. And when we did, we certainly weren’t going to stop what we were enjoying doing just because we had an audience. After all, we were well enough used to doing it in company, so to speak!
After that, it became quite common for one couple to pop into the other pair’s bedroom in the morning, and stand around or sit on the end of the bed for a chat. If the residents thereof were still having a good grope, or even occasionally bonking, it simply didn’t really seem to matter much. In fact, once it was clear that none of us were very bothered about it, we started to make a bit of a deliberate thing of this voyeurism, actively trying to catch each other "at it".
And it became almost a point of honour, if the other couple sneaked in, for the ones still in bed to pretend not to notice, and to ... well, quite frankly to put on a bit of a show, trying to see just how obscene we could get. Once or twice this even ended up with both couples at it in the one bed, as the "visitors" got seriously turned on by the activities of the "hosts"!
Still, after those first few weeks the accommodation did begin to feel a bit cramped, despite these "extra incentives" as you might call them. And George and I realised that we were still paying rent on the village house that we weren’t using. So after some discussion, it was decided that Trish would move out with me to our house in the village, while George moved in with Claire in town.
We still went to all the same parties and still saw a lot of each other (in more ways than one); indeed, no party was complete if both George and I hadn’t had at least one good slow, smoochy, groping dance with the other’s partner. To this day, I suspect that some of our mutual friends thought we were some sort of a group marriage, we were so free and easy with each other. And in a way, I suppose we were; but we were starting to become two separate households, nonetheless.
- o -
One day the next year, as springtime came round, all four of us were over at George and Claire’s house again. So as to make room for more of George’s things, Trish was turning out some of her old stuff that she’d left in a couple of cupboards when she’d moved out with me.
"Right, this old sack’s for the Oxfam shop!" she exclaimed, holding up the very warm (but very conservative) full-length dress that she’d worn to the flicks the night we first all got it together. The cut of the dress was very staid, and the material was nigh on as heavy as good-quality curtains; but it had a quite attractive Paisley sort of pattern, and a nice texture.
"Hang on!" George said, his Yorkshire thriftiness coming to the fore, "You could make something of that instead of just chucking it!" He’s always had a bit of an artist’s eye for design (despite his background), so we listened as he explained his idea.
What George suggested was that Trish should first unstitch and remove the sleeves of the dress, then cut away about four to six inches of it down each side, all the way from armpit to ankle. This would turn it into a sort of full-length tabard.
Then she was to sew eyelets in up each side of the gaps to just below armpit level, and thread a long lace through them; the heavy weight of the fabric should make sure that it hung straight and didn’t reveal more of her than she wanted it to.
Trish was a bit doubtful, but it wouldn’t cost much and it sounded as though the result might be interesting; so George and I went out and bought the eyelets and laces and Trish spent an hour or two on her sewing machine. The result, when she tried it on, was almost unrecognisable as the rather fuddy-duddy garment it had been previously. There were now three or four inches of Trish visible all the way down on each side, and suddenly it was one very sexy number.
Trish cut the lace short on one side, around mid-thigh, so as to leave herself enough freedom to walk (and to flash a bit more leg - I haven’t mentioned it before, but her legs were and are two of her best features). But now it was done, we had to work out what she could do for underwear with it.
This might surprise you, given what I’ve already told you about Trish’s tendency to exhibitionism, but she was still totally convinced that she was overweight; and she was reluctant to dress too daringly in public because of this. From an earlier private chat with Claire, I’d gathered that she (Trish, that is) had indeed been positively chubby until quite recently, and simply hadn’t realised how much her figure had improved.
Well, you’ll remember that I mentioned thinking she was a bit on the plump side when I’d first spotted her that morning in the garden. But she’d already been losing weight then, and now her figure was really nice, although certainly she’d never be described as Twiggy-like. And, by the way, her figure is still pretty much the same as it was then, I’m glad to say! Her bust was perhaps a bit on the small side, but apparently it always had been, even when she was genuinely overweight; and myself, I always did prefer small firm titties to big soft ones.