So, in the first week of November the madness began; I had become an unfaithful wife; a slut, a harlot.
I had started an affair with one of our closest family friends; a man we had known well for nearly twenty years, whose family we had shared holidays with, Christmases with and who was the father of our kids' best friends.
Already in an unexpected state of arousal brought on by the erotic story I was writing on a journey home from London, I had bumped into Tony on the train and had spent the full ninety minute trip enjoying his company. I had been using Tony as a model for one of the characters in my story and myself for another. The two characters were in the process of having wild, unprotected sex in his marital bed so to meet him in person at that moment had been quite a shock. My first reaction had been embarrassment tinged with guilt but he had soon put me and my ease and the journey had passed in very pleasant conversation with perhaps his normal level of light flirting.
The result was that my level of arousal had still been high when the train pulled into the rather bleak parkway station. Always the gentleman, Tony had given me a lift home from the station but for reasons I still do not fully understand even now, when he kissed me goodbye in the hallway with his usual playful squeeze of my bottom, instead of the equally playful removal of his hand and mock scolding I would normally have given, for I had left his palm on my buttock and raised my arms around his neck.
The kissing, stripping, fondling, crude but passionate fucking and mutual climaxes that had followed on our lounge floor had introduced me to a whole new world of pleasure.
It had also introduced me to a world of constant fear and guilt.
The fact that for several years, my sex life with my husband Pete had been dominated by fantasies in which I was taken in many ways by many different men didn't excuse my crime. The fact that Pete had been urging me to take a lover in real life for many months only could only go so far in moderating my feelings of shame and guilt.
What was worse, the following Monday when I had gone to Tony's apartment to tell him it all had to end immediately, things hadn't gone at all to plan. Instead of a painful, embarrassing parting of the ways we had fallen into each other's arms for a second time and, an hour later as I drove home with two more doses of my lover's semen inside my body, I was a lost cause.
I was too ashamed even to turn to my online cuckold friends for advice. Every one of them would have told me the same thing; that in a wife-sharing relationship there had to be trust; that I shouldn't have gone with another man without my husband's knowledge and acquiescence. Knowing what he would say – and indeed did eventually say - I hardly dared tell Richard, one of my most helpful cuckold friends what I had done.
But for Tony and me, the dam was well and truly breached. For the next two weeks we were like kids with a new toy, meeting and making love as often as we could, aware of the risk and danger of discovery but unable or unwilling to resist.
Several times I came to his flat (and came in his flat), once in the early morning before work which made me arrive in my office late and a little dishevelled. Once we went to a hotel at lunchtime, one evening we even made love in the back of my SUV in the dark recesses of a country car park. It was crude, uncomfortable; painful even but made me feel like a teen again.
I must have been terribly distracted at home. Pete didn't seem to notice any physical change in me but he certainly did notice that our sex life had come to a grinding halt. Given almost constantly 'freshly-fucked' state of my body and to be brutally honest, the increasing soreness between my legs there was no way I could take the risk of letting my husband near me.
But this intensity or passion couldn't last and, as Tony rolled off me one Saturday morning when I was supposedly at the gym, sweat dripping from his forehead onto my pink flushed chest, we realised - just in time - that if we continued at this rate it would not be long before we were discovered.
It was very difficult, but it was obvious that for safety's sake we simply had to see each other less often.
The compensation was that when we did meet, we would make sure we could be together for longer. I worked only a half day on Thursdays, usually spending the afternoon grocery shopping and in the gym. Tony runs his own business and, with a little difficulty, could arrange to be 'out of the office' when he needed to be.
It took a shamefully short time for us to come to terms with what had happened and overcome the (initially considerable) guilt. Neither of us had cheated on our spouses before. Despite Tony being separated from his wife Julie who was herself in the midst of a rather public affair and the fact that my husband Peter had been urging me to take a lover for many months, we both knew there was something very wrong about what we were doing but were pathetically helpless to resist.
I had always despised people who were unable to resist temptation. I had been contemptuous of the few friends I knew who had put their own pleasure before the good of their families and cheated on their partners. But now everything had changed; now I was in that position myself I began to understand just how torn a woman lover can be between two lovers.
Even now I tell myself that, if Pete hadn't told me so often to find another man I would never have let myself get into that position but of course I can never be sure.
What I am sure is that throughout our affair it never once crossed my mind to leave my husband. Nevertheless the strong physical attraction and extraordinary sexual compatibility between Tony and me brought a new and exciting dimension into both our lives that neither of us wanted to end. Over the next few weeks as we grew more used to each other's bodies, we relaxed more and more and the pleasures of the bed grew more and more intense.
To my amazement, once the first few crazy weeks of my affair were over, although I could still not reach orgasm with him, sex with my husband recommenced and was immediately much more intense and exiting too. It was still completely dominated by Pete's fantasies of watching me with another man but, although the man in Pete's fantasies changed from day to day, there was only ever one face in my mind as we played out scenario after scenario in our bedroom.
Often I would lie next to my sleeping husband pondering how two such apparently similar men could be so very different as lovers. It went far beyond the mere differences in size and shape of their erect cocks.
Part of it was novelty, I'm sure. After years being as tall as my partner – taller when in heels – it felt good to be with a man who was over six inches taller than me and made me feel pleasantly dominated. Though both men were slim; my husband's body was if anything better trained and more athletic than my lover's but it was also covered in thick dark hair. Tony's almost hairless chest on the other hand had at most a soft, sparse, downy feel which in a strange way made me feel cleaner and younger too.
But increasingly often I would lie awake wondering what on earth I thought I was doing. Though in no way prepared to stop, I found it harder and harder to keep on deceiving my husband in this way. The battle inside me raged constantly; between the love I unquestionably still felt for Pete, the increasing passion felt for Tony and the certainty in my mind that it was all wrong and that I should never have got myself into this situation.
For a whole mad month the affair continued like this, my body shared between my two lovers. To this day I can't understand how Pete never realised that he wasn't the only man using me but he gave no sign of suspicion at all so what happened next really did come as a complete shock to him.
It was Sunday night – the second weekend in December - and we were in bed. Pete and I had just reached the end of an unusually intricate fantasy in which I had taken not one but two men's cocks into my body at the same time. This was an extreme scenario even for him but I had happily gone along with it and he had climaxed loudly and messily inside me as I loved so much.
I hadn't come close to orgasm myself and hadn't slept with Tony for a few days so was feeling more than a little frustrated. As my husband's cock softened inside me then slipped stickily out, he rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, his face hot and pink.
"That was amazing, Penny," he croaked. "You've been practicing!"
I forced out a rather false-sounding laugh; that much was certainly true.
"You didn't cum though, did you?" he asked.
"It doesn't matter," I began.
"It DOES matter," he insisted. "I mean it! I wish I could make you feel as good as... as good as you just made me feel!"
"It's not you," I said unconvincingly. "It's me Pete!"
There was a long pause as he regained his breath. I brought my aching legs together, feeling the warm stickiness on my upper thighs and thinking how different it had all felt with Tony in his apartment only a few days ago.
That was the last time he and I had fucked; the last time I had reached orgasm. The last time I had cheated on my husband, my inner voice suddenly said loudly, turning the memories of arousal and excitement into deep feelings of remorse and shame.
"You know it would be okay?" Pete's voice brought me out of my reverie with a start.
"Hmmm?"
"I said it would be okay if you found someone to bring you what I can't."
"I know. You've told me so many times!" I replied.
"And I mean it," he insisted. "If that's what it takes then I would be okay about it!"
"Do you really mean it, Pete?" I asked, staring at the ceiling. "I mean really, really mean it?"
"Of course! If I can't make you cum then we'll have to find someone who can."
The familiar words of persuasion suddenly took on a new meaning. Suddenly I realised the moment of truth had arrived; I had to tell my husband about my affair, I had tell him there and I had to tell him then. There would never be a more appropriate moment to break news as difficult to hear as this.
Looking back, telling Pete there and then was madness; ill thought-out madness too, unfair both to my husband and my lover but at that moment it seemed the only option. So, without even thinking about warning Tony, I took a deep breath, felt my chest tighten with anxiety then took a bold step into the unknown.
"There's something I have to tell you," I began falteringly.