When I got home from the hardware store with the part for the lawnmower, Diana was sitting right next to Alan on the sofa in the living room. Their knees were touching. I guess they didn’t hear me coming in the back door. It’s understandable. I had just taken my bike instead of the car and so I arrived very quietly. Alan seemed to jump back, away from Diana, when I stuck my head into the room to say “Hi!” I had seen his pickup in the driveway, so I figured he’d come over to talk about the retaining wall. Diana did the design, but they hadn’t decided on the kind of stone to use.

Both of them looked disturbed to see me, especially Alan.

“I don’t want to interrupt,” I said.

“It’s OK,” said Alan, “I was just going.”

“Alan brought me these flowers, Jim. Wasn’t that sweet?”

I hadn’t noticed the little vase of wildflowers on the coffee table.

“I was just driving by,” said Alan. “I’ll bring the price list for the stones on Monday.”

“Stay for coffee, please.” Diana looked imploringly at Alan.

“Well…just for a quick coffee.”

Coffees in our house are never that quick. We grind the beans and use a push-pot. I’d need to get the larger pot from the upper cupboard. But that was fine, since it gave us more time to talk. Diana really wanted Alan to stay. It was understandable. He’s a nice guy and a breath of fresh air. Most of our friends teach at the college or they’re married to people who do. So we end up always talking about the latest issue of The New Yorker or The New York Review of Books, and, always, politics. Alan went to college but he’s not a big talker. He’s very physical, and ten years younger than I am. So that makes him just a couple of years older than Diana. She likes it when he comes over to work, as a handyman, around the house or in the garden. And she teases me about it.

“Alan worked all afternoon out there,” she’d say, for instance. “Of course he had his shirt off. It was fun to watch him from the porch.” Or, another time, “I just saw Alan’s new tattoo. You can only see it when he takes off his shirt.”

Diana, who’s very perceptive about these things, even noticed that we make love almost every night after Alan comes over to work.

One evening, lying in the dark catching our breath, she said, “You don’t have to admit it, but I can tell that it turns you on when he comes over here.”

I thought for a moment and said, “It’s not a good theory. I didn’t even see him today, or on Sunday—the time you got on top. That was really…ardent. And I didn’t see Alan over here on Sunday.”

“But you knew he did. I told you. Sunday was when he pulled a muscle digging out the birch-tree stump. Remember? I had to rub his back with rubbing alcohol. He said I should be a professional.”

“Yes, you mentioned that. It’s true. Your massages are fantastic. But I don’t see….”

I stopped, because just as I said it I was picturing Diana’s pretty, strong, manicured hands sliding over Alan’s firm bare back. She must have been wearing her cut-offs and one of her sleeveless shirts. In the silence of my interrupted sentence, I felt Diana’s hand on my member, still wet from her and from me. It was beginning to recover and to stiffen up again.

“You don’t have to see him around, sweetheart. I can feel the results.”

She laughed and kissed me, sliding over so that her breasts brushed against my chest. Her nipples were stiff and as our tongues played she tugged on my cock. I could feel her wet crotch against my left thigh as she spread her legs and began to rock herself rhythmically so that her clitoris swelled against my skin.

I had the coffee beans ground. Diana and Alan were still in the living room, so I guessed that the idea was for me to brew the coffee and bring it in to them. While I waited for the water to boil so that I could pour it over the grounds, I looked through the portfolio of her newest photos. It was lying on the desk where we keep the phone and the mail. Diana’s new hobby was digital photography. She had a Canon SLR and took hundreds of pictures a week. Only a few of them did she take to the fancy color printer at Staples where she could make large glossy prints.

There were the usual flowers, some with butterflies—with this high-speed Canon you could catch them. And then the brook rushing over the rocks, one of her favorite motifs. And then there was one, only one—so why should it bother me?—of Alan, working in the garden. His bare chest gleamed with sweat as he lifted his ax to chop one of the birch-roots.

The steam kettle whistled and I turned off the flame and poured the water into the push-pot. It made a whoosh. I got the cups and some cookies and put them on a tray, then the milk and sugar, and took the whole thing into the living room.

Alan, again, seemed to pull away. Diana had her hand on his forearm in a friendly way.

“Did you know that Alan hiked the whole Appalachian Trail?”

“No,” I said. “That’s impressive.”

Over dinner that evening, Diana asked me if I would mind her doing some figure studies for her advanced photography class. I wasn’t sure what that was. She smiled and said that it was a fancy artistic term for nudes.

I just asked where she was going to get models. “You must have to pay people to do that,” I said.

“No, I’d just get volunteers. I figure that Alan would do it. He’s shy, but he doesn’t seem to have any complexes about his body.”

I try not to be sexist, but I guess it’s a difficult thing to root out entirely. When Diana said “nudes” I just thought of women. But I knew better than to say that. I’d get a whole lecture. So I just nodded and said “You’re probably right.” Then I added, as a kind of sarcasm, “That way you can do a whole inventory of his tattoos.”

Diana looked pleased. She hadn’t detected the sarcasm. “Yes, exactly. That is such a good challenge. To get the designs from a whole bunch of angles and in different poses. I’m sure that he has tattoos I haven’t even seen yet.”

After dinner she suggested a massage. Her massages are terrific. And I try to reciprocate, imitating her moves. The massage is not sexual, but we always seem to end up having sex later. It’s so easy to drift into that—the two naked bodies covered with oil, relaxed, close together on a mat in the family room. Somehow we were both very much in the mood, and I did something that I rarely do, but it’s very hot for both of us. It’s not anal sex. We’ve never done that, but I was rubbing my erection in the cleft between her cheeks, rubbing it back and forth over the little puckered hole, which is very sensitive, and at the same time I was reaching around under her with my right hand and rubbing her clit with my fingers. Or rather, after a few seconds, Diana was bucking and thrusting her pussy on my fingers, humping herself on them.

She was close to coming, and so was I. I thought that I should enter her pussy before I came, but when I backed off to rearrange us, she said, emphatically, “DON’T STOP!” So shortly after that I shot all my white semen—it seemed like much more than usual—all over her back, some of it even reaching the back of her neck, while Diana writhed under me against my hand, which she soaked.

We flopped over onto the mat and lay there for a while.

“That was unbelievable!” I said. We were quiet, and then Diana said, “What did I tell you? Alan was over here today. And then we talked about the nudes…”

It was only a week later when I saw the first photos of Alan. Diana was right. He had no complexes about his body. Everything was there, in plain sight and full color. They had used several locations: the garden behind our house, a secluded spot near Mouse Creek, and what looked like an abandoned industrial building.

“That’s the old firehouse. It was Alan’s idea. He knows how to get in.”

What Diana was doing was ignoring the obvious. It wasn’t the location that needed an explanation. It was what Alan was doing. In the firehouse, he was grasping…well, his hose. Just stroking and stroking, while Diana had photographed from many angles, and clearly from very, very close. But the largest number of the photos showed Alan stretched out on the cement floor, eyes closed, his chest and belly covered in white puddles of cum.

Lots of cum.

“He’s so natural,” said Diana. “And he poses almost like a woman. You know, photographers always get women to touch themselves. But I wasn’t sure that Alan would do it.”

“So, what did you say? ‘Alan, could you now please jerk off?’”

Diana laughed. “Of course not, that would have frozen him up. I just discreetly clicked away, and I guess he was just feeling relaxed and needed some relief, and I’m pretty sure that being photographed was a turn on.”

She scrolled through the pictures on her ipad. “See, even here, in the garden, where he’s not touching himself, you can see that he’s pretty hard. I’m not going to show the last of the firehouse pictures in my class portfolio though.”

Looking at a man’s genitalia with my wife was not my idea of a fun way to spend the time. I just congratulated her—sincerely—on the quality of the photography, and went off to grade some papers.

Some of Diana’s enthusiasms seem to me to be extreme. But I recognize that I’m rather conservative. What I like is her ability to soar into an activity and to radiate and share the bliss she feels. And it seemed to me that we had never been happier together. Certainly we made love a lot, like honeymooners. That experience on the massage mat was something we repeated. Diana would say “fuck my cheeks!” and I would know what she wanted. I suppose that it was strange that the firehouse photos ended up on the wall of our bedroom, but nobody ever gets into our bedroom, so it’s not embarrassing.

Well, nobody ever got into our bedroom until my fortieth birthday. Forty years is a milestone, and Diana, from her much younger age recognized it as such and wanted to make it special.

She did make it special.

We went to the new French restaurant downtown, then went home for birthday cake and champagne. But as we were sipping the wine and licking up the last bits of frosting from our plates, Diana said that the real surprise was waiting in our bedroom. But first, I should open a the “first part” of the present. She handed me a box, nicely wrapped in a red and gold paper. Inside were a blindfold, leather and metal handcuffs, and a little belt with a red plastic ball in the middle. She told me that it was called a “ball-gag.”

Then she said that I needed to take off all my clothes right there in the living room. It was strange, but sexy. I undressed. Diana kept her clothes on. Then she put the cuffs on my hands, behind my back. She fixed the gag in my mouth, and then put on the blindfold. With her help I walked awkwardly into the bedroom, bumping into some walls along the way.

Now I was standing in the bedroom, not able to see anything. But it seemed to me that we weren’t alone.

“Just stand there and be patient,” Diana said. “You’re just going to listen for a while.”

After that I heard a lot of rustling, some heavy breathing, and Diana laughing. I could hear buttons and a zipper and clothes being pulled off. Diana was not alone! Someone bumped a little against me, specifically against my cock. Then I distinctly heard a man’s laughter, along with Diana’s. They couldn’t stop laughing for a long while, but then I began to hear licking and other moist sounds. There was breathing and then the noises people make, not words, but just noises: moans, grunts, oohs and aahs.

I heard them jump onto the bed. The bed-springs creaked.

Finally they stopped trying to be quiet and I heard them saying things like, “Yes, like that! More” And then Diana saying, “Do it like him, between my cheeks, just rub. YES!” My heart was pounding and I was trembling, but I was also, most of all, aware that my cock was very hard.

The creaking was rhythmic. I thought I was going to fall down. My head was spinning. A special birthday. I heard Diana shriek with orgasm and I could smell her warm pussy but also, after a grunt, I could scent a load of male cum-juice.

They crashed onto the bed. I heard kissing sounds. I wondered what was coming next.

Then, Diana said, “It’s time.” The male voice said something muffled. He must have being disagreeing.

“You promised! Now you’ve got to do it. He’s my husband. This is his birthday present.”

I heard them get off the bed. Now I could feel their body-heat and also smell their sweat and juices.

Then—it was electrifying—I felt a mouth on my swollen cock. I heard Diana say, “Yes, that’s good. You see, you can do it. It’s not difficult.”

The lips on my cock tightened and I could feel a tongue against the lower side of my shaft.

“Now, lick the tip.”

The mouth released my penis and then began licking the tip. It was driving me wild!

I sensed that Diana was pushing his face against my crotch. Then she said, “Do his balls now. One at a time. That’s it, suck it deep into your mouth and hold it.”

It was the weirdest sensation. While he was holding my testicle in his mouth, my stiff cock brushed against his forehead.

“Now the other one. That’s good.”

Then she had him lick the shaft, repeatedly, from bottom to top; then circle the head with his tongue.

“Can you taste the salty droplets? Yum...”

He didn’t say anything, but I could feel the exquisite touch of the tip of his tongue as he licked up the pre-cum.

Then she had him hold my cock in his mouth. I couldn’t help swivelling my hips so that I could thrust into him, fucking his face. Now Diana was so close to me that I could feel her breast rub against my arm. She smelled hot and sweet and her nipple was hard as it pressed against my skin.

When I came, with the strongest orgasm I had ever had, I filled his mouth. I heard him gagging, and then he let go so that he could swallow.

“Now lick up the rest that’s dribbling out. Good boy.”

He was gone before Diana took off the blindfold. I heard her kissing him good-bye and a while later I heard his pick-up truck drive off.

Then she removed the blindfold and the gag. I couldn’t believe what had happened. It was like a dream—a good dream? or a bad one? My orgasm had been so powerful.

“How did you get him to do that? I mean, you know, go down...”

“That was easy,” she said. “I had something he wanted. Besides, you know, he’s really envious of you. He keeps telling me that, that you’re so lucky. He wishes he had a wife like me, he says.”

“But what gave you the idea to do this? I know that Alan adores you and that you fantasize about him.”

“The idea came from you, sweetheart!”

I must have looked so blank that she laughed.

“It’s obvious that you have a cuckold fantasy! You just couldn’t bring yourself to say it. But night after night, you proved it to me. Men are funny about putting things into words.”

As I looked at her—my hands were still cuffed—I realized what I often didn’t put into words and I needed to.

“I love you,” I said. “You’re a wonderful wife, and I love you deeply.”

Diana smiled and kissed me, her tongue pushed its way easily into my mouth. I could taste Alan there, along with her own saliva, and she reached down and started stroking me.

“Let’s make love,” I said.

“That’s what we’re doing,” she replied. “There are lots of ways. This is one.”

I stood there helpless while she stroked me. This was our bedroom, but I was experiencing it in an entirely different way. There were the photos of Alan on the wall, with his cum splashed onto his tattoos. There was the rumpled bed where they had done it, invisibly to me. While she stroked me, Diana nibbled on my earlobe and whispered, very softly and sweetly, “You want me to do it again, don’t you? You had better tell the truth, because if you don’t, I won’t let you come.”

I was on the edge of coming, my dick was throbbing already, but she stopped, waiting for me to answer. It was obvious what I needed to say.

“Yes! Sweet Jesus, YES!”

“Yes, what? Say it in words—your cock is already answering.”

“Yes, fuck Alan, fuck anyone you want. Just let me watch or listen...Do it right here, in our bed.”

By that moment I was really ready to shoot. Just the words, the shocking words, coming out of my own mouth, were enough to make me explode.

Diana just gave a gentle rub to the front of my cock-head and I sent a plume of white that arced over to the bed and splattered, and then another that fell on the floor, and a third that dribbled down Diana’s hand. She raised her hand to my face and didn’t have to tell me what to do. I licked her palm clean, and then each finger.

It was more delicious, at that moment, than the frosting on the birthday cake.