The Woodworker S Wife

(Or the anatomy of a seduction from the husbands point of view)

This is not my normal subject and after a lot of thought I'm placing this story in the loving wives category, although it could just as easily be in Romance. Let me know if you think I was wrong.

If you are looking for a BTB or cuckold story

stop reading now

you are only going to waste your time. For me Loving Wives is all about relationships on the edge, problems, their solutions and redemption.

This is a long and convoluted story of a naive talented young artist, a marriage under attack and a husband's response to a predatory older, world wise man. It charts the attempted seduction of the wife (you will need to read the tale to find out if he succeeds). It builds up slowly, you have been warned!

There is some sex but not as much as my other stories.

I can't thank Romantic1 enough for the time he spent reviewing, commenting on and editing this story, any remaining mistakes are mine.

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Prologue.

Wood: a simple word that can never do justice to this wonderful gift that the planet earth has given us. I've been in love with it for as long as I can remember. Wood is alive to the touch and no two pieces are the same. It warms to the touch and the very smell of freshly sawn timber is so evocative. It can be rough or smooth, a symphony of shades and textures.

My grandfather, a jobbing carpenter gave me my first carved piece when I was four. I still have it, a rough carved oak horse. He taught me all he knew and when I'd drained him of his skills, he took me to his masters of forming wood. I sat at their feet and learnt my trade.

I work with wood and I love what I can do with it almost as much as I love my wife. But there can come a time to all men when enough is enough and I had finally reached that point.

What you ask could I be blathering on about? Well it's simple, well simple to me. After ten years of what I thought was a happy marriage my wife had just dropped the proverbial bombshell.

Ok, let's back up a moment and give you a chance to get up to speed with the events that are unfolding about my hapless head. A bit of background would help as well I guess.

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I'm Dave and I'm married to Zoe. We met at Art College in the south of England twelve years ago. I was at the college to put an academic stamp to the woodworking skills I'd acquired during my teenage years. It was a compromise my parents had insisted on. They would support the direction I wanted to travel so long as I had a degree to fall back on. So at the end of a pleasant three years I graduated with a degree in fine arts.

Zoe's a portrait artist who has been steadily gaining a local reputation. Two years ago she exhibited several nude and semi-nude studies in a small gallery in Brighton. Now she's begun selling canvases nationally. She's been getting more and more requests for sittings.

One of our friends once described us as an average couple. And I suppose in a way she was right. I'm thirty-two, and I'm average height, five foot ten. I'm reasonably muscular, a benefit of working with my hands I guess. Dark brown hair and steel blue eyes set in an angular face. Personally, I've never thought of myself as average.

Zoe will always be beautiful to me; she's a year younger. She has a cute but not classically beautiful face, long light brown hair that's always flecked with paint, blue eyes, and a cute little button nose. She's five foot six and has a slim build and I'm madly in love with her, and she with me. If she has one fault it's that she's too trusting of people. More than once I've had to extricate her from a situation that had got away from her.

The one thing about us that I would never describe as average was our love for each other. You see those trashy magazines descriptions of 'soul mates', well that's us. From that first time we met, neither of us has ever considered a life apart. Our love life is extensive and inventive, and is still as vibrant as the first time. Now we have a five-year-old daughter, Siobhan who is the apple of our eyes.

At heart I'm a simple man who loves making beautiful objects from wood. I've translated that love into a small business making bespoke pieces of furniture from exotic woods. I make less than twenty pieces a year, but I sell them for a ridiculous amount. My order book is full and I have enough work for the next two years. How much do I make a year, I'm not sure. My furniture sells for between £20,000 and £50,000 depending on the size and complexity. You do the maths. Of course the furniture pays the bills but my true passion is the small wooden sculptures I fashion in my spare time. I have a piece by an artist called John Fox; it's of a cat sleeping on a pillow. A beautiful simple piece that's also a little box, the curled up cat is the lid.

Over the years I created a few pieces that hopefully have given others as much satisfaction as that cat box still gives me. I don't sell them; I wait until I find the right person and give it to them. I recall one night drinking in the local pub with Zoe. In my pocket was a small carved mouse that had been sitting on my bench. I'm not sure why I'd picked it up that evening but I had. A woman in her forties walked in with a younger copy of her and sat down at a table near us. It felt like the mouse was fighting to get out of my pocket. I walked over to her and placed it in front of her.

"This wants to belong to you," I said.

She picked it up and looked at it for a long time as it sat on her upturned palm. I swear I saw it twitch and then settle down. She looked up and smiled at me with tears in her eyes. "Thank you; today would have been our 20th anniversary and my husband's pet name for me was

'Mouse'.

I could stand and watch Zoe work for hours when she's concentrating on a model and the creation of an image on the canvas in front of her. I love the way she chews on the end of her brush as she concentrates. And the way she flicks the hair back behind her ear sings to my heart. She loses herself to the passion of her art. The model would be posed and then Zoe would move to a separate plane. More than once I've had to take the brush from her tightly bent fingers, and release the poor model at the end of a long all-day session.

Not that I'm the only one to watch the other. I would catch glimpses of her sneaking glances at me while I'm crafting my wood, smiling to herself as she did so, sketching away. I found her notebook on her bench one afternoon. It was full of charcoal sketches of me. In our bedroom hangs the only full-size painting of me she's completed. I'm bent over my bench concentrating on the piece in front of me. It's one of the few she's finished of me. She tells me that I'm her hardest subject. She's never satisfied that any of her paintings or sketches of me are good enough. She never feels that she can capture the essence of me in paint. That one she tells me is the closest she's ever come to showing the depth of my love of the wood I'm working on.

There are a few pieces of carving I've kept hidden from her. For every now and again I would come a piece of wood that would hint of a figure hidden deep within its heart. I would work to release its soul. In the early days I found figures of Zoe, but after our daughter was born, mother and child appeared. Into each of the pieces I poured my soul and the love I have for the subjects. I've never shown them to any one, not even Zoe. They sit hidden at the back of a locked cupboard, all twelve of them.

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We first met one sunny afternoon in May, during my final year at college. She was in her second year. At the time I was living in Brighton with a couple of other art students. The house was included in the Brighton artist's open house scheme. If you've never heard of this then you are missing an amazing opportunity to meet artists and view their work in their own homes. It runs for a couple of months every year. Some impressive local artists open their homes to the general public. One of my housemates was an outstanding sculptor and our place was a popular stop on the tour. He was happy for the rest of his housemates to show a few of their pieces alongside his. So I would display a few of my smaller carvings and at least one piece of furniture.

My carvings are very tactile, they beg you to pick them up and feel their sinuous curves. For the last two years I'd place the same piece in the middle of the table. I told anyone who looked at it if they could work out what it was and it represented they could keep it. In those two years a lot of people had offered their opinions but none had been right. A few had recognised that it was a stylised woman but none could see the emotion it portrayed.

On the Saturday of last weekend of the years' open days I saw a young woman pick the piece up. She held it reverently as she slowly turned it over and over in her hands and I saw tears forming in the corner of her eyes.

I walked over to her, "What do you see?" I asked.

She looked up at me from the piece in her hands. "A beautiful woman," she said. Looking back down she added, "A beautiful woman twisted in grief for the loss of a loved one."

Again she looked at me, "This is your work." It wasn't a question. "You knew the subject." Again it was not a question.

I nodded, "It's my cousin, she'd just lost her six month old daughter in one of those out of the blue cot deaths."

I had poured all of my own grief into that piece. I'd offered it to Gina and her husband but she couldn't take it. 'It's too powerful a piece' she told me. 'The emotions are too raw, I'd cry every time I saw it'. So it sits on my table waiting to find the person who deserves to own it.

And that was the first time I met Zoe. I tried to give her the carving but she wouldn't take it.

"It's part of you, you should never give it up." And I realised she was right the piece had found its owner, only I'd been too close to it to realise that it had been me all along.

As a consolation prize I offered to take her out to dinner. She'd accepted with a gracious smile. Over dinner later that night we'd exchanged our life stories and by the end of the meal I knew I was in love with the woman sitting opposite me. Our first tentative kiss as I walked her home sent shockwaves coursing through my body. Zoe gasped and pushed herself against me, her lips seeking mine for a second longer deeper kiss.

We both did something that night we'd never done before. We made love on a first date - and again on many more dates.

Within weeks Zoe moved in with me for my last few months of college. A year later, just after she graduated we got married.

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We live on outskirts of a small town in East Sussex in the south of England, not too far from Brighton. Soon after I'd graduated I had inherited several acres of land, with a tumbled down old cottage, an old barn and stables from my favourite aunt. There was just enough money in the bequest to have the barn converted into a home for us. I converted the stables into a pair of studios; I knew what each of us wanted from our working space. I trusted no one else to do the work properly. So the studios had become my labour of love to the muses of our art. The studios were in a long block; each of us had a studio in one end. Between them I fashioned an office and gallery, which we shared as a place to display our work. .

As I mentioned, we got married after we'd both graduated. It took us several years to get settled and established, and to build our confidence and find the clientele we needed to survive. In those early days we'd be anxiously waiting for the post to deliver a cheque so we could afford to pay the outstanding bills and buy food for that week. We survived on cycles of feast and famine. Now hopefully that's all past us, we have the beginnings of a healthy bank balance and we can afford to send Siobhan to the kindergarten at the private school in the village.

We've always enjoyed a fairly full social life, most of which was centred on the local pub and our sports and golf club. The club catered for all, there was a full-sized pool and we would take Siobhan swimming a couple of times a week. Both of us liked to cook and entertain and least once a week we or our friends would have a dinner party.

Our years together haven't always been a perfect bed of roses. We've had our little arguments and disagreements, but importantly we never let them fester. We could always talk out our problems. In hindsight I suppose that was my first hint that there was a snake in our garden of paradise.

I'm not a jealous person; I've always trusted Zoe. I have to, considering the constant stream of attractive men vying for her attention in the studio. Many of whom posed naked or semi-nude for their portraits. We have a rule; she would never paint a naked man if I weren't working next door. And she would never take such a commission that required her to paint away from her studio. I've seen her painting Adonis's that even I could find attractive. But she was always calm and collected. She would see me watching and she would grin and blow me a kiss before returning to her palette of colours.

It was a couple of months ago that Zoe first let me know that she had been offered a very lucrative commission from a business colleague of one of her girlfriends.

We were sitting at the kitchen table. Zoe had just dropped our daughter off at the kindergarten and had picked up freshly baked croissants from the local baker.

As we sat buttering the still warm croissants she said, "Linda called yesterday. Her new finance director saw my painting of Paul, and he wants something similar."

I recalled the painting and was somewhat surprised that Paul had let the guy see the painting. It was a nude study of him and it hung in their bedroom. It was one of a pair that Zoe had painted as a gift for Linda and Paul's tenth anniversary last year. The other was of Linda and it also hung in their bedroom. Linda had been Zoe's flat mate when we met and we had stayed close friends with her and her husband ever since. She had been and still is my source of information on all things Zoe.

"Oh," I replied, "He wants a nude study of himself; that's a bit presumptuous isn't it."

"Apparently he's a bit full of himself. Linda says he seems to think the sun shines out of his arse."

I gave a little chuckle, "Does he have a wife as well that he wants a painting of?"

"I don't know, I guess I'll find out next week, he called yesterday for an appointment."

She popped the last of her croissant into her mouth and standing up, came around the table. She stood behind me and draped her arms across my chest. She nuzzled the back of my neck. She murmured, "One of these day I will do you justice and I'll hang a perfect 'you' on our bedroom wall."

I turned in my chair and pulled her onto my lap. "Why would you want a painting of me when you can have the original?"

She laughed and our lips met, "Because then I can have my cake and eat it dummy." She wriggled in my lap and smiled when she felt me respond.

"You are a wicked woman," I said, "Don't start something you're not willing to follow through with."

"Who says I'm not willing to follow through," Zoe murmured as she wriggled again.

She turned to face me sitting astride my lap, pulling the hem of her skirt up to the top of her thighs. The shear fabric of her panties moulded itself to her slit, her pussy a dark shadow. She rolled her hips pushing herself against the bulge in my jeans. She wrapped her arms around my neck, her lips urgently seeking mine in a crushing kiss. She grasped the bottom of my tee-shirt, pulling it over my head and throwing it on the floor behind me. She bent her head forward and sucked one of my nipples into her mouth.

I picked her up and she wrapped her legs around me grinding her pussy into me. I sat her down on the edge of the table. She reached down fumbling with the belt of my jeans. I unbuttoned and pushed them and my boxers down letting my cock spring free. I stepped out of them and she grasped my shaft, stroking it. I hooked my fingers in waistband of her panties and pulled them down her legs. She kicked one leg free, her panties dangling from the other.

She looked at me with lust and desire. No words were needed. She rubbed my purple crown along her slit. I just pushed forward seating myself deep inside her with a guttural groan. She locked her heels behind me pulling me closer. I fumbled at the buttons of her blouse, frustration made me tear it apart, and I freed her breasts from their fabric constraint.

I thrust in to her, my hands on her breasts, her nipples hard and her areolas puckered in desire.

"Harder," she muttered as she rolled her hips. "Christ, fuck me as hard as you like." She had her hands locked behind my neck holding on to me.

And fucked harder she got, the table rocked and the legs scraped on the stone floor as I thrust harder and faster.

"Ohhh God...ohh god...ohh god," she kept moaning in time with my thrusts. She pulled me closer and I moved my hands to grasp her arse cheeks. I was grunting with the effort and she moaned, kissing any part of me she could reach.

The base of her neck flushed red and her moans grew louder and her movements more urgent. Then with a scream she came, her cunt clutching at my cock dragging an orgasm from me. Hot cum splashed the inside of her cunt as she flexed her muscles milking me of every last drop.

I picked her up, my cock still hard and inside her. She locked her legs and arms around me and I carried her to the lounge and we collapsed on the sofa. I looked at her flushed features. She'd lost her blouse and her bra was around her neck. Her skirt looked like a belt around her waist and she'd never looked more beautiful to me.

"Fuck Dave, where did that come from?" She gasped.

"You inspired me, you always do."

As her breath returned to normal, she whispered, "I love you."

As I kissed her in reply my cock softened and I slid out followed by a gush of cum.

"Shit," she said and grasped a handful of tissues from the side table and began wiping herself.

"Have you got time for a shower?" I asked.

She nodded, "Geraldine isn't due for her sitting until eleven."

I picked her up and carried her upstairs to our bathroom and stood her down. She removed her battered skirt and bra as I ran the water.

She held her skirt up for me to see. "I think it's died a happy death, you owe me a new one lover boy."

I smiled and said, "A price well worth paying." She laughed and pulled me into the shower.

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We were both hurrying across the courtyard to the studios when Geraldine drove up and parked.

Geraldine's an old family friend, she's a lawyer who had recently taken her silk and been appointed a Queen's Counsel. Her chambers wanted a portrait and Zoe had got the commission. I've known Geraldine since I was young. Our families were close friends and we holidayed together. She's five years older than me and she was my first crush as a twelve-year old.

We greeted her and she gave us a knowing look. Zoe led her off to her studio and I headed to mine. I was supposed to add the finishing touches to the sideboard that stood in the middle of my workshop. But that day it held no attraction to me. Instead I was drawn to a piece of zebra wood that had been sitting on a shelf for months. I'd known that there was something important hiding inside of it. I wasn't sure what; just that it was important to me, but now I knew what it was.

Twice I had to cover it when Zoe came into my workroom. I'm not sure why I felt I needed to hide it from her, but I knew I should. It was late afternoon before I was satisfied with my handy work. A ten-inch reclining nude lay on my bench. It was unmistakably (at least to me) a pregnant Zoe in a post orgasmic state. Her head stretched back resting on a pillow, her hair cascading waves. One hand rose to touch her lover, the other resting protectively across her bulging abdomen. One leg was straight, the other had the knee slightly raised and falling to the side, open and welcoming. It glowed with an inner depth and the beeswax polish brought out the striking contrast in the grain of the wood.