"What should I do, Pete?" I asked my husband anxiously over rather poor phone line.
It was eight thirty in the evening and I was sitting in my car in the darkest corner of the sports club car park, still in my gym clothes. I could feel my body cooling and stiffening from the exercise I had just finished but I couldn't wait to go all the way home, shower and change before talking to him.
As it was, I had only just managed to catch Pete at his conference in between dinner and the tedious 'thank you' speeches that always followed. Desperate for his advice and support, I had just garbled everything I could remember about my brief but terrifying conversation with Will, the young, athletic housemate of my first and only one-night-stand, Darren.
Will was the only possible witness to that night of foolish passion; a night which had resulted in the baby that was even then - and against all probability - growing in my middle-aged womb.
The boy had witnessed my 'walk of shame' letting me out of the house early the following morning and could have no illusions as to what I had been doing there. Apart from the obvious look of guilt on my face, my body must have reeked of sex.
I hadn't seen or heard anything from either Will or Darren for well over a month until that evening when he had approached me in the sports club where Pete and I were members and they both worked. As I had just explained to my husband during a short but meaningful conversation, Will had expressed a wish to get to know me better and had invited me to have a drink with him when he finished his shift later that same evening.
Pete thought a long time before replying. When he did reply it wasn't very helpful.
"Jesus Penny, you do make life complicated!" he began.
"That's not what I need to hear right now Pete," I replied, though it was unquestionably true.
"Sorry. It's just that..."
"I know," I interrupted. "And I'm sorry too; really I am. But what should I do?"
Pete thought for a moment.
"He didn't give you any clue at all about what he wants?"
"Nothing. He was very friendly - at least on the surface," I replied.
"He didn't ask for money or anything?"
"No. Nothing."
Pete paused again.
"Well I suppose we should find out what he wants before getting too worried. You might have been reading too much into it. He might simply want to talk to you."
"But about what?" I asked anxiously. "And why? I'd never met him before that morning. There's nothing to talk about apart from that night. It has to be that."
"You could be right," Pete conceded. "But there's no point fighting battles we don't know we have. I think you should meet him and find out what he wants. Then we can make a better decision."
It made sense but at that moment I wished so badly that I didn't have to handle it alone.
"What if he puts me on the spot? What if he wants money?"
"Then we'll talk about it again," Pete said calmly. "He won't expect a cheque there and then. He did ask you to come to the pub first. That's out in the open; you wouldn't be in any physical danger."
"But what if..."
"Penny, when your knickers are on you're one of the most capable people I know," Pete reassured me. "You'll know what the best thing is to do. I trust you absolutely."
"Really? Despite all..."
"Really. I trust you to do what needs to be done."
"And you'll back any decision I make? Whatever it is?" I asked anxiously.
"Absolutely. Anything you decide will be okay with me as long as it buys us time to think."
"But what if..."
"Sorry Penn; the meeting's starting again. I've got to go; I'm speaking next. Let's talk later when we know more. Bye for now."
I tapped the red button on my phone angrily and swore. Pete had thrown the whole responsibility back onto me. Okay, I was the one who had been seduced and had put myself in this position but I had really needed to talk things through before going to meet my potential blackmailer.
Now I was on my own both physically and metaphorically. Maybe all I could do was try and stall; keep things quiet until Pete returned and we could consider Will's demands carefully - whatever they might turn out to be.
I started the engine and drove home, my mind buzzing. Twenty minutes later I was standing in the shower washing the dried sweat from my body. In a calmer frame of mind I realised Pete was right; what harm could possibly come from meeting the young man in the open for a drink? He was hardly going to demand money with menaces in front of an audience, I told myself.
At work I handled difficult colleagues, patients and their families on a weekly if not daily basis; I should be able to handle a twenty-something young man. If he raised the issue of my night with Darren I would simply have to stonewall him until Pete returned.
The problem night not arise at all. Pete and I could get on with our lives; perhaps even including the wife sharing he was getting so impatient about taking part in. As he had said so often, I had got what I wanted out of our lifestyle; it was time he had a taste of his fantasy too.
As that fantasy was to watch me being fucked but other men, our desires were highly compatible - especially now we might have found a real if unexpected route to make it all happen in safety.
***
After dinner a few nights earlier I had showed Pete the websites of the short list of escort couples I had found as potential fuck-buddies for our revived lifestyle. Two couples were based in Manchester, the other in Leeds. One couple was in their twenties, one in their forties and the last a strange mix of a girl in her late twenties and a man in his early fifties.
Pete appeared torn. On the one hand he was still very uncomfortable about the idea of using 'prostitutes', as he continued to call them. I preferred the 'escort' terminology I had found in my researches; it felt so much more professional and appealing. Increasingly, this did look as if it might well be the best - possibly only way in which we could safely provide my husband with the fulfilment of his deepest fantasy; of watching me being fucked by another man.
In the days since I had revealed my pregnancy to him, this fantasy had taken a much sharper edge and was dominating our hugely revived and now exhaustingly active sex life. Indeed hardly a day had passed in which my unplanned conception had not been gone over and over in extreme detail in bed, a process that had invariably ended with a near-violent penetration and noisy insemination but for me, a continued absence of orgasm.
Apart from this physical manifestation of his increased interest, there was other evidence that my husband might be coming round to the idea, not least of which was the trail of websites in our pc's browsing history that Pete appeared to have visited of his own accord.
As well as the websites of the couples themselves, I could see he had searched for other escorts too, both single men and couples. There were several sites that specialised in homemade cuckold video postings; I followed his history and watched some of the videos Pete had found.
I quickly discovered that although the film quality was universally poor, there was a rawness and passion about real encounters - especially the orgasmic cries of the women involved as they were fucked - which gave them an erotic power that few of the 'proper' porn moves I had watched could come close to matching.
