[Note: This is a three-part story. The three parts will be posted on consecutive days.
Yes, I know that pregnancy and STDs are problems in the real world--but this is a story, and they're not a problem here.]
"Honey, have you ever thought about having an affair?"
***************
DAN'S STORY
That may seem like a very loaded question, but I asked it in all innocence. Ellen and I have always talked a lot, always asked each other odd questions, always shared the pleasure of discussing everything under the sun.
"Why do you suppose the clouds stay up?"
"If Jesus came back to earth today, what would he have to say about the Christian religion?"
"What's the point of putting up that new office building downtown, when they had to tear down two perfectly good office buildings to do it?"
"Ever wondered why frogs make that crazy noise at night?"
"What do you think it would be like to have three or four husbands?"
Those might strike you as some of the dumbest, or dullest, questions ever. But my wife and I had fun talking about each of them, at one time or another.
We met at Ohio State, in a junior year philosophy seminar (I was a philosophy major, she double-majored in philosophy and political science). From our first date we talked and talked. You might almost say our attraction was as much intellectual as sexual.
Well—almost! Ellen is a short, voluptuous blonde, about 5'4", with wonderful big breasts and a curvy figure. In her mid-forties she's only gained about 15 pounds from her college weight, and she still looks fantastic. I've stayed in pretty good shape, too, but when we're in public together I might as well be invisible: it's Ellen that people are looking at.
Once we'd spent a couple of evenings together, Ellen and I knew we were meant to be together. We graduated, got married, stayed in Columbus, and both found jobs at OSU. Ellen has worked in the Registrar's Office for years now, and I'm the chief tech support person for the Economics Department. We raised two kids: Dan Jr. just graduated from Denison University and works in Chicago, and Alexis is a junior at Northwestern.
And all that time—23 years now—we've been talking. Friends joke that either one of us could talk the bark off a tree, but together we could talk the white off a polar bear!
Like every other long-married couple, we found that our sex life had gotten less intense and less frequent, though it was still very pleasurable. We'd gone through the early stage—where you make love all the time, and you basically can't keep your hands off each other. And we'd had the parent stage, where you're either too tired or too busy with the kids to have sex very often.
There were ebbs and flows—maybe a couple of months where our interest picked up, and sex became more frequent and much more exciting. But there were also slow periods, where work or family problems or a minor illness pushed sex far onto the back burner.
And now we were in the empty nest stage, when we once again had time and privacy. So we did do it more, but nowhere near as often as in the early days. And as much as we loved each other, there's just no way sex can be as thrilling after 25 years together. Pleasurable, intimate, special—yes to all those things. But not white-hot or breath-taking.
What was deeper, and richer, and better than ever, was our sense of love and trust and mutual understanding. We both loved to talk, and to listen. We spent hours talking about all sorts of things, from Asian philosophy to the crazy way our neighbors trimmed their hedges. And as I've said, odd questions that no one else would ever think to ask came naturally to us.
All of which is a long way of saying that there was nothing strange or all that significant about the question I asked Ellen that Sunday afternoon:
"Honey, have you ever thought about having an affair?"
But what was strange was her reaction. We were both in the kitchen, putting away groceries; and Ellen just turned and looked at me for a moment, open-mouthed. Then her face blushed red, and she quickly turned away. She grabbed a couple of soup cans and moved towards the cupboard, saying, "of course not, Dan. Don't be ridiculous."
Her response surprised me—it wasn't a ridiculous question, at least not for the two of us.
"I don't know, Ellen. It doesn't seem like such a crazy question. Lots of people have affairs. I know I've at least thought about it from time to time."
By this time she had turned back to face me, and she looked calmer.
"Yes, I guess you're right," she said. "I suppose I spoke too soon. I've certainly had a few affairs with George Clooney, late at night inside my head." She gave me a smile, but it was kind of a tense one.
"That's not really what I meant, Ellen. What about an actual affair, with someone we know? Have you ever thought about that, what it would be like, how you'd keep it a secret, that sort of thing?"
She sat down at the table. I noticed she wasn't meeting my eye. "Not really. I mean, there are men we know whom I find attractive, but I've never gone very far down the road of imagining an affair with any of them." Then she turned and looked at me.
More aggressively she said, "how about you, honey? There must be some reason this crazy question popped into your head. Have you got anything to confess?"
I laughed. "No, Ellen, I'm innocent. Of an affair, that is. But I've had daydreams a few times over the years—remember that 5th grade teacher that Dan, Jr. had? Miss Keller, or something like that? She was certainly a hot one." I laughed again. To me this was just a casual conversation, the kind of thing Ellen and I had done a million times before.
And now she seemed to be more in the spirit of it as well. "At last I learn the truth!" she said with a grin. "I'll have to get Miss Keller on the phone and hear her side of the story!"
We went back to the groceries, and within a few minutes our conversation had moved on to some other innocuous subject. The whole question about adultery dropped right off my radar.
Until that night. On a typical Sunday without the kids, we would have had a relaxed dinner, maybe watched some TV, and gone to bed early. Perhaps we would have made love, if either of us was strongly in the mood. But these days we had privacy all the time, so we probably wouldn't have.
But on this Sunday, Ellen disappeared upstairs after dinner, as soon as we'd cleaned up the dishes. I read over some papers for work, and at 8:30 was interrupted by a call from Ellen.
"Hon, when you have a minute could you come upstairs?"
What greeted me when I entered the bedroom was a shock. The room was lit only by a couple of candles on the night tables. In the middle of the bed lay Ellen, and she was a sight. She'd put on makeup and brushed her hair, leaving it down over her shoulders, and she was wearing her sexiest nightie. I'd bought it for her when we took a trip to Cancun—it was a real fuck-me nightie, see-through in all the right places, and she knew it turned me on to see her in it.
"See anything you like, cowboy?" Ellen murmured.
When I pulled my jaw back up off the floor I said, "I'm not sure, actually. I think I'll need to look more closely."
She laughed and said, "go jump in the shower and get your ass back here—you've got five minutes."
Needless to say I was back before her deadline! As I quickly washed I wondered what was up. For Ellen to suggest we make love wouldn't have been unusual, but for her to make such a big production out of it was completely unprecedented. It was the kind of thing she might do for our anniversary, or my birthday, but never on an ordinary Sunday night. At least not in the past 15 or 20 years.
When I came back to the bedroom, Ellen growled, "come here, you," and took me in her arms. We began to kiss, and her energy surprised me. Our sex-play didn't usually include a lot of kissing, but tonight she ravished my mouth with her lips and tongue. Her hands were all over me, aggressively. She rubbed them over my chest, running them through my chest hair, pinching my nipples lightly.
As I slid my own hands up under her nightie and up her back she groaned into my mouth, and pushed her heavy breasts against me. She dragged them back and forth against my chest, and through the thin nightie I felt how hard and erect her nipples were. It was very odd. She hadn't been this quickly turned-on for years, and then she'd been like this several times in the past month or so.
Our foreplay continued, with Ellen being more aggressive than I could remember. She pulled off the nightie and glided up and down my body, rubbing her belly against my erect cock, then surrounding it luxuriously with her breasts. She slid her body around mine like a cat, making noises of pleasure in her throat. I stroked her back, her breasts, her thighs, whatever I could reach, while blissfully enjoying what she was doing to me.
When she slid down lower, it was clear I was in for a blow-job, a rare thing from Ellen. (And I mean rare, like maybe twice a year.) Soon it became clear this would be a once-in-a-lifetime blow-job. She took her time, teasing me with her tongue before taking me deep in her mouth. She backed off, licked my balls, stroked my cock, cooed little affectionate words to the big guy, then slid him back in her mouth again.
I tried to pull her hips up towards me for a 69, but she pulled away, saying "just for you tonight, honey". She worked me slowly up to a fever pitch, then took me over the top. I gasped and groaned as I pumped myself into her mouth, and (again a surprise) she swallowed vigorously.
I lay back, trying to catch my breath, feeling the sweet tingle of total pleasure and relaxation shooting through my whole body. If it wasn't the absolute best blow-job of my life, it was certainly at least the best in the past 15 years.
"Wow!" I said. "What was that all about, sweetheart? Sex has been great lately, but you were absolutely a woman possessed tonight!"
She nestled up close, again deliciously rubbing her large breasts against me. "I just thought it might be time to remind you how much I love you, Dan."
