Sometimes, things happen, and you have a simple choice. You can feel betrayed, become bitter, and end things for ever because of just one incident, or you can embrace it, and make it part of the story of your love. I chose the latter.
Maria and I were no longer newlyweds, but were still only fifteen months married, and on holiday in Austria, having saved up to rent two rooms in a chalet, because we both love mountain walking in preference to lazing on the beach.
At the time, my wife was twenty four, and I was twenty seven. We had met at university in London. She had been a first year student when I was a foreign student taking a master's degree, and perfecting my English, and I had fallen for her immediately. Her long, auburn hair, elfin face, and slender body had taken my breath away.
Finding that Maria had similar tastes to mine, in music, films, books, and outdoor activities, had sealed the deal. I wanted to spend my life with her. Making love to her, and experiencing her warmth around my cock, and the ease with which she became aroused, and reached her gentle, awe inspiring climaxes, ensured that I felt no need for any other woman.
To my delight, Maria was not only beautiful, but was always willing, never had a headache, but was always deliciously wet and ready to be penetrated, and had breasts whose nipples loved to be touched, and licked, and mouthed, and a clitoris that responded exquisitely to my fingers, tongue, and cock shaft.
Not only was Maria so responsive to my love making, but she gave as willingly and as exquisitely as she received. Her hands knew how to arouse. A single touch of her fingers on my cock shaft would bring me to erection. Her mouth was divine. I did not care where or with whom she had learned to suck cock as perfectly as she did or to take it all the way, relaxing her throat to welcome it until her lips were at its base. I cared only that it was my cock to which she committed herself, throughout our long engagement, and in the formal words spoken on our wedding day.
That was now ten years back, and everything I have described remains true to this very day. Two beautiful children on, Maria remains as sylph like in her figure, and as whore like in our bedroom, as she was the day she first parted her slender legs to let me lie between them and slide my cock into the warm wetness of her cunt.
That perhaps describes the woman with whom I walked in the Austrian mountains, through dense pine forests, above lush green valleys, beside tumbling streams, and over grassy hills and dales. In the warmth of the Austrian summer my wife wore short shorts, khaki coloured cotton, with one inch turn-ups that made them even shorter, almost in danger of baring the under curves of her buttock cheeks.
With her shorts Maria wore a variety of teeshirts, but this one day I remember that her teeshirt was dazzling white. Beneath her teeshirt she wore a bra, her breasts, although not full, still requiring enough control to make any climbing or running that we might do, that bit easier than if they had been unsupported.
I remember that the teeshirt was white, because it was on top of the pile of walking shoes, socks, shorts, panties, and bra that she left on the grass beside the lake when she went swimming, and was still there when she waded out of the cool water, back to the grassy bank, water droplets running down her body, auburn hair flat against her back, arms, breasts and thighs covered in tiny goose bumps, areoles puckered, nipples like rubber, her copse of auburn pubic hair matted against her mound, her slit visible.
The sun was hot enough to warm her body from the cool mountain water where she had just swum, while I stood watching and admiring, envious of the ease with which a girl may be naked, but a man risks accusations of indecency if he dares to follow suit.
My caution was not shared by the two Austrian guys who joined us while we were sitting eating the sandwiches we had brought with us, and drinking two of the cans of Coke stowed in my back-pack. They grinned appreciatively at Maria's nakedness, and asked in accented English if she had swum, and if the lake was cold.
Maria was not for a moment phased by their arrival. She told them that it was not too cold, and they removed their things, scattering them in one untidy pile beside Maria's neatly folded clothing.
I guess that mountain walking keeps you fit, because both of the guys were slim, with decent but not overly muscular torsos, hairless chests with defined, but not bulging pecs. Their blonde copses of pubic hair matched their fuller, denser thatches of unruly head hair. Both of them were well hung. In a three way competition, myself included, it would have been a draw, with tapes needed to decide the final millimetre.
They swam for about ten minutes, ducking, diving and playing as much as they actually swam, and then came out, dripping water, walking back to where we were, confirming Maria's description of the water as being cool, but not too cold, their bodies as goose bumped as Maria's had been, their cocks shrivelled, droplets of water falling from their foreskins.
Like us, they had brought provisions, and they took ryebread, ham and cheese from one of their two backpacks and started eating, having sat with us, three guys and one woman together, three naked and one dressed.
"It's good, yes?" one of the guys said.
It was not exactly clear whether he meant the ryebread sandwiches, or the swim they had just had, or the view of the hills that surrounded us.
He possibly read the confusion in our eyes.
"How do you say, this nakedness, I mean," he explained, taking a huge bite and chewing ravenously.
"I love it," laughed Maria. "My husband was worried that someone might come and be offended."
"If they come, they see," the guy said. "They decide to come closer or go away. It's their problem. It is not ours."
"I guess not," said Maria.
Both of the guys were sitting cross-legged, facing the sun. They had tanned arms and legs, but their torsos were close to being white. Their cocks were beginning to recover from the cold, lengthening, thickening, and even rising.
"Okay, so, I am Pieter, and this is Klaus," the one who was doing the talking said.
I needed to assert myself, to get into the conversation.
"David," I said, "and Maria."
Pieter reached out his hand, and this started a round of handshakes, our arms crossing as we did so.
"I hope you do not mind that we are here," Pieter said. "I know some couples come here because it is so quiet, to be alone, maybe to make love in the open air and beneath the sun."
"No," I said. "It's fine."
"I think," Pieter continued, "if I had a wife like yours, I would want to fuck her here."
There was something about his Austrian accent that made his use of the word 'fuck' somehow natural and inoffensive.
Klaus joined the conversation for the first time.
"You have to forgive my friend," he said. "He sees a beautiful woman, and all he thinks about is fucking her. Next he will ask you if you would like him to fuck your wife while you watch."
"Do you blame me?" Pieter protested.
Klaus laughed out loud.
"Of course I don't blame you," he said. "But perhaps you do not always have to say everything that is in your head."
"And it was not in your head also?" Pieter said.
"Maybe," Klaus admitted, "but it might have been better to get to know our friends a little first, before exploring whether they would be open to some al fresco sex with us."
What happened next was so unexpected that I was left stunned and speechless. It was Maria who spoke, saying something I would never had thought that she might say.
"Would you like to watch?" she asked me.
In any other circumstances I might have thought that the question was a test, to make sure that I was not the kind of person who would want his wife playing around with other men. If it had been a theoretical question, in the privacy of our bedroom, I would have known that that was what it was.
This was different. With these guys having just suggested it, and with Maria and both of the guys already naked, it seemed pretty clear that this was not that kind of test.
She meant it.
My beautiful young wife was actually suggesting that she would let both of these guys make love to her, if I agreed to it.
Someone once said that words can never be unspoken. That question, from my wife, could never be unasked. She had told all three of us that she was willing to have these guys both make love to her, and even if I were to say that I was not happy, and tell the two Austrians where to go, I would always know that my wife would have gone along with it. As if to confirm this she added two more persuasive sentences.
"You could always take photographs for our album. They would be beautiful."
Pieter and Klaus were still chewing on their ryebread sandwiches. They knew better than to look at me. Instead they were both looking at my naked wife. She was sprawled on the grass, and she alone was looking deep into my eyes, penetrating all the way to my soul, daring me to agree.
She was right. A tableau of the three of them engaged in sexual intercourse, beside the mountain lake, would be incredibly beautiful. People take holiday photographs of all kinds. This was an opportunity to capture for ever my wife's youthful beauty, the two guys no more than props to give the photos depth and meaning.
Instead of answering, I unzipped the main pocket of my backpack and took out my camera, the five hundred grams of Nikon digital technology that I would use to record the moments that were about to follow.
Pieter and Klaus said nothing more. They finished chewing. They each drink from plastic water bottles to swill down any crumbs still in their mouths. Then they packed away their food and drink.
