I was standing in the kitchen of our cottage, waiting for the kettle to boil, admiring the roses in our secluded garden, and attempting to recover my focus. I had begun the next chapter of my book, but the longer I worked on it, the more I realised that I would have to do some fieldwork. That had set me daydreaming about potential travel and accommodation options... I needed a break, I needed coffee, and most of all I needed Janine, but she had gone out early to do some modelling for our jeweller friend, Ellen.
We'd been living together for a few months at this point and, as I had said to all those who cared about me, allowing Janine into my life was the best decision I had made since my wife passed away. The near-forty-year age gap was significant, obviously, but neither of us were bothered by it. Janine's attitude, which was infectious, was that we should live for today and make one another happy -- so we did. I'd lost quite a lot of weight. This was partly due to Janine's gentle persuasion in terms of my diet, but mostly due to an increase in exercise. We spent a lot of time walking, cycling and, not to put too fine a point on it, fucking. Whilst Janine enthusiastically took the lead sexually, she mostly liked me to do the physical work. That morning, she had woken me early with a sloppy blowjob that had nearly had me coming in her mouth, but she was on her hands and knees an instant later.
"Come on, get that cock inside me. Treat me like the little slut I am."
My cock was in her pussy within seconds and I pounded away. After a few moments, the smartwatch on my wrist vibrated to indicate that it was tracking exercise. This sex position generally logged as 'spinning' and Janine joked that I just used her as an exercise bike.
"You love it," I replied, slapping her arse cheeks hard enough to be able to see handprints.
"I do," she grunted, "But you can do it harder than that."
"Do you mean this," I asked, thrusting harder, "Or this?" I slapped her again, delighting in the redness that developed.
"Both."
As an exercise regime it was clearly working. I was over a stone lighter than I had been six months ago. Right now, however, I had been sitting at a desk for four hours and my sexercise partner was not at home. I reached for the phone to send a message, but just as I picked it up it buzzed in my hand.
- Hello Lover xxx Missing me yet?
- Yes!!!! I need some exercise xxx
- Back in twenty. Get the kettle on.
- Ahead of you there. Coffee will be ready for you.
- I love you xxx
I sent a couple of heart emojis in response to this last message, and set about making a bigger pot of coffee.
Precisely twenty minutes later, the back door opened. Janine appeared, wearing a wraparound dress which she immediately untied and removed. As usual, she was wearing nothing underneath. She hung the dress on a peg on the door and turned, pushing her little tits at me.
"What do you think of these?"
Janine's nipples were decorated with some new jewellery: heart-shaped Celtic knot-work with round holes in the middle for her nipples to poke through. My cock literally jerked upright under the loose trousers I was wearing.
"I think I need to inspect them much, much more closely." I pulled her towards me and pretended to scrutinise her tits but instead planted a kiss on each nipple. "Is there a story behind these?"
"Ellen's latest design. I put them on so she could take photos for the website and she said I might as well keep them and get some customer feedback. You need to go on the website and write something suitably complimentary."
"Ok," I said, "But does it have to be right now?"
"No... I'd say you have time to do a couple of things first."
"A couple of things?"
"Yes." Janine's green eyes were sparking at me. "Coffee." She glanced down at the tent in my trousers. "And me."
I poured the coffee and we stood for a few moments, sipping at our mugs. My eyes were drawn to her smooth, hairless pussy, and I recalled the temporary tattoo she'd had there for a few days at the very beginning of our relationship. An idea formed in my mind.
"Is there going to be a pendant version?" We had given Ellen the idea of making matching pendants to go with her nipple jewellery, and she had done quite nicely out of it. "I'd happily buy you the pendant to go with those."
"I knew you'd say that. If you hadn't, I'd have bought one anyway. Ellen says it will be ready about this time next week."
"That's good," I said. "We need to go and see your tattooist friend."
"We do? I thought you weren't happy about me getting a tattoo."
"I wasn't happy about you having my initials permanently tattooed in an intimate place in the first five days of our relationship, but the temporary tattoo was brilliant."
"And?"
"And I'd like you to show the tattooist the pendant and get her to do a temporary tattoo of it."
"It's Ellen's design though."
"I'm aware. Maybe they should collaborate. Could help them both."
"So I get Ellen's design tattooed on my pussy...?"
"Yes."
"...and then I show it to Ellen?"
"Yes."
"You want Ellen to see my pussy?"
"Ellen's already seen your pussy, sweetheart. That was obvious from the jewellery with my initials on." Janine blushed, and I laughed. "I worked that out the moment I saw the design." I put my empty coffee cup on the kitchen table. "Now then," I said, reaching for Janine's hand, "I have something that needs your immediate and personal attention... upstairs."
An hour later, we were lying entwined on the bed, enjoying the gentle intimacy that often follows less-than-gentle sex. I was stroking one of Janine's boobs and kissing the top of her head, whilst she was lightly masturbating my cock, which was still semi-erect. It would be a while before I could manage another round, but Janine was patient and knew that persistence usually paid off in the end. Today, however, I had something to discuss with her, and this seemed like as good a time as any.
"I don't want to spoil the moment," I started, "But something's come up and we need to discuss it."
"Something's coming up here though. I'd much rather discuss that." Her movements quickened. "See?"
"We can discuss this first, and then you'll probably find that the other thing will be much easier to sort out."
"Ok then," she replied, in a theatrically whiny voice. "What is it?"
"Not here," I said, "Let's go and have a coffee somewhere."
"Sounds ominous."
"It's not, I promise."
We got dressed. Well, to be exact, I got dressed. Janine slipped on a pair of flip flops to walk to the back door, where she took about three seconds to put on the wraparound dress.
"Where are we going," she asked, as we left the cottage.
"Bridge Café? We can walk there and back."
"Ok."
We walked down the lane out of the village, hand in hand, and turned onto the footpath alongside the main road to town. It was a glorious afternoon but there was a decided chill in the breeze when it blew. Janine's nipples were very prominent through the close-fitting material of the dress. She noticed me noticing.
"These shield things make them stand out enough without that cold breeze," she laughed. "Think anyone will notice?"
"I think everyone will notice," I replied, "But you wouldn't have it any other way, would you?"
"Probably not. Perhaps I do take after my mum after all."
"No comment," I said. Even after eight months away from our home town, Janine had not reconciled with Sally, her mother. I had hoped that something might have changed, but I wanted us to be happy, so I said nothing.
"Can I ask you something?" Janine paused. "Something personal." This happened occasionally, and I had learnt to meet her questions with honesty and without embarrassment, as she seemed to do with whatever situation arose. For one so young -- she was now twenty-three -- Janine was a very wise and mature individual.
"Of course," I said, "Always."
"About your wife." We had wordlessly adopted a convention by which we never referred to my deceased wife by name, but I wondered whether it was time to change that. Was it disrespectful, I asked myself? Let's see what she wants first, I decided. Coward, said a little voice in my head. Janine, reading my mind as she often seemed to do, solved the problem. "Catherine."
I felt a pang of grief just hearing her name, and realised that the convention was nothing to do with Janine and everything to do with me. I'd allowed myself to move on, and hearing Catherine's name made me feel guilty, for want of a better word. My silence must have rung an alarm.
"You don't mind me using her name, do you?"
"Of course not!" I stopped walking and took Janine in my arms. "I loved Catherine with every ounce of my being, to the very last moment of her life, and I will love and cherish her memory until the very last moment of mine, but she is gone and you are here and now I love you as much as I loved her." I held Janine close. "My family know how much you mean to me, and they have accepted it, because they know that it has nothing to do with what went before. Loving you does not mean I didn't love her. Loving her as I did does not mean that I can't love you." Janine extricated herself from my embrace and kissed me.
"Can I ask my questions now?"
"Questions," I said. "Plural."
"Maybe."
"Go on then." We began walking again.
"Ok. You and Catherine... were you... exclusive?"
What I really wanted to say was 'why do you ask', but that would seem evasive. That said, the answer wasn't simple and I didn't really want to go into detail.
"For most of our marriage," I said, carefully, "We were." I paused for an instant. "However, there were a few times when we weren't, but we weren't cheating on one another." I paused again, because that wasn't strictly true. "Let's just say that it was complicated."
"So you both had sex with other people?"
"Yes, but that is a real oversimplification." Ok, I have been honest, mostly, I thought. Now I can ask. "Why do you ask?" Suddenly I was feeling a little threatened and, it has to be said, old. We were still walking, still hand in hand, and now it was Janine who stopped us.
"Look, I promise you that I'm not having sex with anyone else and this is just me finding out more about what made you both happy. I'm not about to run off and leave you all alone." She leaned forward and kissed me on the lips. "That was really clumsy of me, wasn't it? I know you worry about me going off with someone younger. It's not going to happen. I promise."
"Ok." I kissed her back. We started walking again. I decided to go down the honesty route. "So, Catherine was bisexual. She knew she was before our relationship and did nothing about it for years, and then one day it came up as a topic and she discovered how much it turned me on. So, for a few years, there were other women in our lives. There was another man, once, but that didn't turn out to be what either of us wanted and we never did it again."
"Wow." Janine was silent for a few moments. "Just, wow. I remember her when she was a teacher and she really didn't seem the type. Neither of you did."
