Chapter Forty-One
There's always a price to pay for pleasure.
Although there was no denying that I had enjoyed every moment of our date with Adam and Eve and had discovered a wonderful new level of sheer physical pleasure, the degree to which it unsettled me afterwards was far greater than I had expected.
By now I knew how easily I could make bad decisions hen highly aroused, so my own actions and activities that evening came as no surprise. Penny Barker had behaved like the cock-hungry slut she was and had loved it.
No. The problem, such as it as, lay with Pete.
Now my husband had not only twice watched me being fucked in the most undignified way possible by another man, he had himself delivered the kind of stellar performance in bed that he and I hadn't enjoyed for decades, fucking a younger, much more attractive woman to a massive, clearly genuine orgasm far more effectively than he had ever fucked me.
Having just very successfully fucked such a woman, how would my husband now feel about me?
As if that wasn't enough worry, as far as I knew, he had previously provided my closest friend Julie with an equally impressive night of satisfaction in all her orifices.
Though his one night with her could still upset me, the details had mostly been in my imagination. Eve was different; I had been close enough to see, hear and even smell the two of them in action. Eve's orgasms had been real; the aroma emanating from their bed was unmistakeable.
And if Pete could do such a comprehensive job of fucking first Julie then Eve, why had our sex life become as stale and moribund it had?
And Pete and Julie had had at least one conversation without my presence since then. Why did that make me so uneasy?
Was it all my fault of all in my mind? Was I the problem? Or was it just pregnancy that was making me doubt my husband's commitment?
That question in particular haunted me for the next few weeks. The fact that the sum total of my husband's supposed infidelities was far fewer than the number of times my unfaithful body had been filled with another man's cum, provided little relief.
The one-sided selfishness of my behaviour over the last year had been brought home in the most basic way possible. Now I understood that I was not the only sexually desirable person in our marriage. I could not take his love and attention for granted.
My husband Pete was every bit as sexual a being as me; good looking, desirable and very good in bed. If he wanted another lover, he would have no difficulty finding one and keeping her satisfied.
It took all my willpower to play the role of happy, contented wife the next day, a problem made far worse by the regular reminders of our joint infidelities that sprang so frequently from the soreness between my thighs and buttocks.
I was far too sore to make love with my husband that night or the following two, leaving me without even that simple physical reassurance. Pete did not even try to persuade me to have sex. No doubt he thought he was being sensitive to my predicament, but at the time I couldn't help interpreting it as a loss of interest in me.
The physical evidence of infidelity on both our bodies did not help.
Indeed, the love-bite Eve had left on my husband's neck could still be identified if he wore a low-necked shirt; something he was obliged to do in theatre. The unmissable and unmistakeable dark patch had caused a great deal of amusement at work during the week. Well-meant but rather ill-judged jokes about the demands a highly pregnant wife put on her husband in bed had plagued Pete all week.
And why in God's name could I not keep the memories of my first infidelity from my conscious mind?
Why did vivid images of Tony's handsome-but-completely-amoral face visit me in my dreams, day and night?
Why did the incredible feeling of his thick, stubby cock being repeatedly thrust in and out of my vagina keep returning, leaving me highly aroused and in frequent need of a change of knickers?
If Pete could tell what turmoil was going around inside me, he made no mention of it. Indeed, he showed no sign of being anything but happy with our marriage, our sex life and our impending parent and grandparenthood.
I knew I had no right to feel ill-used; after the last year, this was nothing more than justice being done, but in my highly pregnant state there was no way I could keep such destructive thoughts from my mind.
Over the next days and weeks, the insecurities that any seven-month pregnant woman might carry -- feeling unattractive, tired, uncomfortable in her clothes, worried that her husband might no longer want her - were multiplied the fact that both Pete and I knew the baby was not his.
But I knew I could say nothing; all I could do was bite my lip, keep my silence, be grateful I had such a wonderful husband and pray for an easy birth in a few weeks' time.
***
Time passed slowly but pass it did. Our sex life resumed with me paying a great deal more respect to my husband and more attention to his pleasure than I ever had before.
Perversely, this brought me more pleasure too, though still no orgasms.
Pete remained as attentive as ever, delighted by his wife's unexpected enthusiasm in bed and apparently looking forward to being a Dad again.
The twice-weekly calls I had with our daughter Isobel did not help. Still lamenting the distance between her and Jack -- Tony and Julie's son and the new lover in her life - Izzy was angry rather than tearful and seemed to need to vent that anger on me, her embarrassingly pregnant mother.