Thank you for rating my stories and providing feedback. I appreciate the messages and will write more chapters if there is a demand for them.
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It was our anniversary and Ashley was thirty-five minutes late for our reservation. I ordered a strong drink and relaxed while I waited for her.
I met Ashley six years ago. We were both in college, Ashley was a senior taking a fine arts degree and I was in my third year of medical school. Some friends convinced me to join them for a drink at the campus club.
When we arrived the room was full of undergrads in various stages of undress grinding to deep urban music, and I felt a little out of place as one of the older men in the room. I'm not much of a dancer, so I offered to order our drinks while my friends joined the throng of bodies on the dance floor.
I was immediately entranced by the young woman bartending.
She had an exotic look with a tanned, almost caramel hued complexion and brown sun streaked hair that spilled halfway down her back. Her eyes were an unusually deep shade of green. She was dressed to attract tips, with a short skirt that revealed the bottom of a firm ass when she moved from one end of the bar to the other.
She had unusually long, toned legs for such a petite woman, and they were accentuated by a pair of tall black heels. Her breasts threatened to spill from the top of a tight black corset.
"What can I get you?" She smiled. She had caught me staring at her chest.
"You're gorgeous." I breathed completely caught off guard. I had completely missed her first question.
"I'm not on the menu," she smiled at me confidently.
"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to..." I stammered. She patiently waited for me to finish my apology.
"If I didn't want you to stare, I would have worn a sweater." She replied with a smile and offered me her hand. "I'm Ashley."
We hit it off immediately and became inseparable.
When Ashley graduated she moved in with me at my bachelor apartment. She got a job at an advertising agency in town as a designer while I finished my degree and began my residency at the hospital.
Three years later, my friend Nick and I are establishing our own family medicine practice. Ashley and I moved from our cramped bachelor apartment to a small house just fifteen minutes from the hospital. She's been promoted to Art Director at work and is now responsible for some of her firm's biggest clients.
I chose Christmas to propose to Ashley in front of her family and we were married last summer.
Married life has not been good recently.
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Ashley arrived looking gorgeous as usual in a white blouse, black blazer and pencil skirt.
"Sorry, I had a tough time escaping tonight." She smiled and let her twenty-six year old body slide into the seat across from me.
"I was beginning to worry you wouldn't be able to make it." I had meant it as a joke but Ashley's demeanour stiffened.
"I told you this morning that I would probably be late." My wife's green eyes flared and she shifted uncomfortably. She nervously brushed a strand of her long hair behind an ear and glanced around the room.
I sipped on the water left in the bottom of my glass after the ice cubes had melted. "It would have been nice if you'd given me a call. I've been sitting here for over half an hour."
She glared at me. "I already told you this morning. You should have changed the reservation and made it for a later time."
"We both know that it wouldn't have mattered what time I made the reservation for, you would have been late." Bitterness was beginning to creep into my voice and I forced myself to settle down.
Ashley opened her mouth to respond but decided better, and settled for an irritated sigh.
Ashley and I have been growing apart over the last several months. I thought it had to do with our busy workloads so I began cutting back. I've been making sure that I'm home by 5:30 every day and taking weekends off whenever I can.
But Ashley hasn't cut back on her hours. She says she's in the middle of some big projects, but they've lasted for months. I've spent a lot of evenings alone in front of the television waiting for her to come home.
We sat in silence for several minutes until the waitress approached.
"May I start you off with a drink, M'am?"
Ashley glanced quickly inside the drink menu before ordering a glass of white wine.
"And may I get you another, Sir?" She gave me a warm smile and reached for my empty glass.
I nodded at her appreciatively. This was going to be a long night.
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It was two weeks later and our relationship hadn't improved much.
Ashley wasn't normally home until 7:00 most week nights now so I decided to join a nearby gym. I was in pretty good shape, but figured that it would be a good idea to spend my free time exercising instead of flopped in front of the television. I also thought that the gym would help me work out some of my sexual frustration.