This story is different from my other cuckold tales.

Both readers of erotic literature, Becky and her husband David had been enjoying my Acts of Infidelity series for some time before she decided to get in touch. In an open marriage herself, she wanted me and my other readers to understand that there is a different aspect to partner-sharing that my ‘Cuckold’ stories so far had missed.

Although she knows first-hand the pain and pleasure than can be derived from allowing a partner to take another lover, Becky wanted readers to understand that there is a more balanced, less one-sided way of living and loving that I had not so far presented.

She wrote to me to explain the way her marriage works and offered to work with me to create something new. I replied and we became online friends. This story is the result.

It made a very pleasant change to work with the female half of an open relationship. I hope you agree that the result is both unusual and enjoyable.

***

“So what should I call him?” I asked my husband one dull Tuesday evening in February.

“Huh?” David replied, not raising his eyes from the pile of papers that were fanned out over the kitchen table in front of him.

“Chris,” I explained. “Is he my lover, my friend with benefits, my fuck-buddy? None of these seems quite right. We connect on so many different levels.”

I was standing at the ironing board, pressing his work shirts having just finished my own awkward-to-iron dresses and the toddlers’ nursery clothes. Apart from the topic of conversation, it was a normal, sexually-stereotypical scene as found in millions of households every night.

“Call him what you like,” my lover of eight years, partner of five and husband of three grumpily suggested. “It’s what you do with him that counts, not what you call him.”

“What do you call Sarah?” I asked.

“Sarah!” came the sulky reply.

I couldn’t blame David for his attitude. Even in an open marriage like ours, it couldn’t be easy for a husband to have to listen to his wife singing the praises of the new man in her life and in her bed.

Unfortunately, I had been doing this regularly for over six months.

In a perverse way I was enjoying my husband’s discomfort. After all, hadn’t I put up with hearing him extol the many virtues of the girl who had been his Other Significant Other for most of the two years that had passed since we had agreed to open our minds, our marriage and our bodies to additional partners?

I had a lot to thank Sarah for. It was her deepening relationship with my husband that had brought things between David and me to a head and precipitated us into the open marriage we had been enjoying since the extraordinary night I first became aware of her.

Sarah and David’s relationship had been a presence in our marriage even before the ink had dried on the secret document now hidden at the foot of my wardrobe.

Yes, our new marriage contract is actually a written document. It might even be legally binding too; certainly the website from which it had been downloaded made that claim, but I couldn’t imagine it ever being tested in a court of law.

I hung David’s newly-pressed shirt on a hanger and placed it with the others on the back of the kitchen door then took another from the linen basket.

I enjoyed ironing. What with two small children and my hectic job in a London Hospital it was a calming, relaxing activity which I viewed as a relief rather than a chore. Let my husband spend his evening marking essays and theses if that was what he needed. I was having a night off from stress.

Of course, being with Chris was another way I could relax but that had been last night – if you could call the antics we had got up to ‘relaxation’. The low-cut, sleeveless top I was wearing to iron had been deliberately chosen to display the marks of my most recent date for my husband to see.

To my amusement, David was pretending not to notice the fingertip bruises on my upper arms and the small but distinctly tell-tale hickey that my lover had left on my lower neck.

By the time he and I were in bed together tomorrow night, the more hidden marks and sore places on my body would have faded but right then, the chafing of my shirt against my sore, braless nipples and the rubbing of the gusset of my panties against my still-pink vulva were pleasant reminders of my developing relationship with my own ‘Other Significant Other’.

I shivered with pleasure when I remembered that there was so much for Chris and me still to explore; so much still to try out together… but sadly my next date would have to wait until the following week.

Tonight I had to babysit; tonight was David’s night. In a short while, my husband would be on his way to spend the evening with his young girlfriend. They were going for dinner in a trendy backstreet restaurant in Soho; one he and I had visited many times and loved. He would probably stay the night in her flat too, so I would have to get the kids to nursery in the morning on my own and wouldn’t see him until he came home from work tomorrow evening.

But I mustn’t complain; last night had been for me. Last night it had been David’s turn to look after our daughters while Chris and I enjoyed some private time together.

Most of the dates we had with our Other Significant Others were during the week; we had agreed that the weekends would be family time and with only one or two agreed exceptions, we have stuck to this.

I seldom stayed out overnight. Although I knew David was more than capable of coping on his own, as their mother I was still uncomfortable leaving our daughters all night too often. I usually arrived home sometime between midnight and one o’clock to be there when they woke up in the morning.

With time, I was sure this would change and I would feel happier spending whole nights with Chris but, as I said, the relationship was quite new and I was still finding my way around the world of polyamory.

So, what makes an outwardly-normal, attractive, successful couple abandon the monogamous life enjoyed or endured by the vast majority of their friends and peers? What do David and I get out of bringing others into the most intimate aspects of their lives?

The answers are complex and I suspect, different for every couple. In our case a fear of boredom, a need for adventure and I suppose, a desire to have our cakes and eat them too were involved but even that is too simplistic.

My life with David has been one of balance from the start. We met at University, we were both top students on our courses, we were both moderately attractive, both overly confident academically and yes, we both had problems with commitment and promiscuity.

In my case, I was almost as interested in girls as I was in boys but was just coming to terms with it. To be honest, I still am though it is has been some time since I have put that interest into practice.

Let’s be honest from the start, both David and I love sex and are good in bed. I don’t mean to sound conceited, it’s just that we have both had enough partners to know this as a fact. David is caring, sensitive, attentive and has plenty of stamina where sex is concerned. Less so when it comes to housework.

I’m open-minded, adventurous in bed, easily aroused but considerably harder to satisfy. If I’m even more honest, until my marriage I was a much easier lay than a girl’s reputation could normally withstand too.

As a result, David and I had been drawn together. At University, we had slept together several times on a purely casual basis before we realised we had started to connect on an intellectual and emotional level as well as the physical one which was working so well.

I suppose our long-term relationship had started before either of us realised it.

David is not the best lover I have had by any means, but he’s still very good and works hard to make sure my needs are looked after, whatever they happen to be at the time. Yes, he does have a big cock but by no means the biggest I have had, and I know better than to equate mere size with performance.

I often tell him that the affection we share makes up for the many flaws in his technique and in return, he assures me my own considerable shortcomings in the sack can be overcome with patience.

I love him to bits!

We are well-matched in many ways. In normal circumstances, neither of us is very romantic or sentimental as this story shows only too clearly but he is my best friend and I am still very glad I married him - which I did three years ago after finding I had accidentally become pregnant.

David is a college lecturer, a job that brings him into contact with large numbers of available young women. He’s grown much better-looking with time, but in an alternative kind of way, usually dressing East-London-trendy with a topknot, bushy beard, slightly short, tight trousers and no visible socks.

It’s a style that seems to go down a treat with his female students, most of whom are at least partly in love with him. I’m sure Sarah isn’t the only girl whose body he has enjoyed in the past, but that’s okay as long as it remains in the past.

I’m skinny and flat-chested with a moderately pretty, slightly quirky face. I used to have long brown hair but since the last birth, I’ve had it cut short for a change. Apart from when I’m with Chris or at work, I can usually be found in tight trousers or leggings with Doctor Martens boots, a black motor cycle jacket and woollen hat.

I work in a local hospital. I suppose I meet a lot of attractive men there too, but the circumstances are often shall we say, unfortunate and my work clothes are hardly designed to show off what little figure I have. There are always opportunities to stray in a hospital community but as I want my career to develop, apart from at the very beginning of our new open marriage, I’ve taken care not to soil my own doorstep, so to speak.

Our relationship is a model of modern gender balance; we consult each other over everything. We share the cooking, cleaning, decorating, child-care, bank accounts – everything a normal, close, millennial couple should do. We earn similar salaries, we split the rent down the middle, we have mutual friends as well as our own separate circles.

My nineteen-eighties-rampant-feminist Grandmother approves of us. She might even approve of the part of our marriage we don’t talk about but I’m not ready to tell her about that just yet.

So why do I need another sexual outlet? The answer goes way back.

I lost my virginity relatively late by the standards of my school. I’m an only child, my parents didn’t talk about sex at home and I wasn’t the most attractive girl in the school anyway, so an abundance of opportunities to have or even understand sex simply hadn’t arisen. Or at least on the few occasions they had arisen, they had been with the wrong boys so, as I entered the Upper Sixth form, I was the last of my circle of friends still to be in possession of her cherry.

Feeling increasingly isolated and unable to join my more experienced friends’ conversations, I became determined to lose it. Ridiculous is it might sound to any men reading this story, it’s not such an easy thing for a girl to do ‘the right way’ if she’s not in a long-term relationship.

From watching my friends and their antics, I had seen just how bad an experience a girl’s first penetration could be, even if it wasn’t reluctant and was with a long-standing boyfriend. I had seen what getting it wrong could do to a girl’s reputation too so, when I decided the time had come to kiss goodbye to my hymen, it was a deliberate decision on my part and I was determined to do it right.

One Saturday night in November I went to a club in town with a couple of friends. There I got slightly drunk for Dutch courage and allowed myself to be danced with and eventually picked up by an attractive but older man who called himself Mike. I guess he was in his early thirties; nearly twice my age. He was quite good-looking, but also had an air of kindness about him which made me think he might be gentle.

He clearly fancied his chances with me. I was drawn towards him and, sensing an opportunity, he responded.

Well after midnight and the wrong side of a few drinks, I agreed to go back to his flat knowing full well what was likely to happen, hoping it would and wondering if it would hurt.

Well, the inevitable did of course happen and equally predictably it did hurt; emphatically so. No sooner were we in his lounge than his lips were on mine and his hands were all over me. The ease with which his fingers and tongue aroused me then directed me towards the sofa made the decade or more difference in experience obvious.

I was helpless; massively aroused, slightly frightened but still determined not to leave that place still a virgin.

Mike seemed equally fixed on the same outcome, concentrating almost all his efforts on my groin. Within what seemed like seconds, my so-short dress was raised and his hand was inside my knickers, fingering me expertly in a way no boy had ever come close to.

My first bewildering, manually-induced climax followed swiftly, my body shaking and trembling, leaning heavily against him as I came helplessly and messily on his hand.

From there it was a simple and inevitable progression in which, though too shocked and inexperienced to play any positive part in my defloration, there was a complete absence of resistance on my part.

Mike can hardly have believed his luck as he lay me on my back on the cushions and fumbled clumsily with his trousers.

There was the sound of a metal belt-buckle being unfastened and a zipper being lowered, my heart thumping as I realized it was all happening for me. There was a fumbling out of my line of sight that I later realised was him rolling on a condom before rising over me.

I closed my eyes tightly, silently begging him not to let me see my first ever erect cock in case the sight frightened me so much I wouldn’t go through with it.

I made a small, instinctive gesture of resistance, pressing my knees together as my knickers were pulled down my thighs but I was far too aroused to stop then. I made a second, equally feeble attempt at saving myself when he pushed my knees apart, spreading my legs wide, fully exposing my vulva to a man for the very first time.

I remember the look of triumph on his face when he realised I really was going to let it happen.

I remember something warm, smooth and alarmingly large being rubbed up and down my slit until it found my entrance. I bit my lip as I felt his first tentative pressure, parting my labia and trying to enter me, failing as my hymen blocked his way. I remember the sharp bolt of pain it produced and his surprise at finding himself with an indisputable virgin.

I remember him backing off and trying again, this time a little harder. The pain was sharper still. He tried a third time, then a fourth, each more determined and forceful than the last until with a strange, painful and slightly nauseating yielding sensation, my hymen finally tore.

With a gasp of triumph from above and low, half-choked moan from me, Mike’s erect cock slipped slowly and painfully into my vagina and my virginity was gone; on my back on his sofa, my short, tight dress rammed under my armpits, my damp, torn knickers tangled around one ankle.

As a virgin in the very act of being penetrated, I was tense and went stiff as a board. Mike was too drunk and too excited to be as gentle or sensitive as I had hoped, and I had literally no idea how to respond to his progress but after a few failed attempts, his thirty-plus-year-old cock finally sank its full length into my teenage body and my virgin status was no more.

Both the pain of my hymen tearing and the extraordinary alien feeling of having a part of someone else’s body inside mine for the first time were a real shock. Both blood and tears began to flow, but once the seal had been broken so to speak and he was clumsily thrusting in and out of my over-tight, desperately-lubricating vagina, I gradually stopped crying.

Soon, to my surprise, I began to derive some new and unfamiliar pleasure from the new sensations that were emanating from my loins. My body responded clumsily but instinctively, loosening and lubricating as never before. Encouraged by the rapidly-decreasing resistance, Mike began to thrust harder and deeper. The sting in my belly returned, along with a warm wet glow and I bit my lip hard, my mind spinning with the completely unexpected mix of pleasure and pain.

“Tight! You’re so fucking tight!”

Mike gasped as his strokes grew faster and erratic as, unrealised by me, his climax was approaching rapidly. His face twisted and contorted, frightening me but before I could react, his orgasm broke and he began to cum in the condom inside my sore, battered vagina.

The feeling of relief when his penetrations slowed to a halt was almost palpable, but as his cock began to soften then slipped from my body, a strange feeling of disappointment passed over me too. I had not been expecting that at all.

Afterwards we lay together on his sofa like too spoons, Mike stroking my battered body, me trying to conceal the tears that were running down my cheeks. My instincts were to get out of there; get home, get clean, be normal again but something else told me to stay put; that I had only had the merest taste of what might be awaiting me.

So, against all those instincts, I lay trembling in his arms until the room grew too cold. When he suggested we went to bed, I said nothing but simply let him lead me through to his room.

When Mike took me a second time in the small hours, this time properly naked, on my back and much more comfortable in his bed, there was pleasure from the start. To my delight, the pleasure grew stronger and stronger as I became more relaxed. The more I relaxed, the more his technique seemed to improve too and the more pleasure there was for us both.

When he came inside me for a second time, my eyes were open, my mind alert and though still a long way from orgasm, I had felt enough to know it was something I wanted and wanted badly.

When I left his flat in the morning, my torn knickers in my handbag, I was hooked. It was to take three months and two more partners before I had my first proper vaginal orgasm but when I did, I knew I was a lost soul.

I didn’t see Mike again, though he tried very hard to turn our one-night stand into a relationship, calling and messaging me frequently. I wasn’t ashamed of what I’d done; far from it. It was just that he had served his purpose and, having just discovered an entirely new form of pleasure, I was in no mood to limit my experience of it.

And anyway, I was much too young to be involved with a man his age.

Looking back, I was young and behaved selfishly. In truth, I have a lot to thank him for. Although I now know his technique in bed left a lot to be desired, Mike remembered about and took care of birth control, he was relatively gentle, very caring afterwards, entirely confidential so when he dropped me off in the morning (at a friend’s house so he wouldn’t know where I really lived), my self-respect was enhanced rather than damaged.

Mike, if by some chance you are reading this, you were a Gentleman and I hope you can forgive the cruel way I treated you.

Anyway, having now been introduced to the pleasures of the flesh, I was almost desperate to experience more. During my final year at school I slept with half a dozen boys, most of them only once. I was careful to make sure I didn’t acquire too bad a reputation – my parents still had to live in the town - but when I left school and discovered the freedom of University over a hundred miles away, I took maximum advantage of it.

And you can be sure there was no shortage of boys willing to oblige any equally willing girl, however skinny, flat-chested and plain she might look.

I was careful, at least as far as safe sex was concerned and only twice got myself into a position where I had to go through the motions with someone I would rather not have bedded, but I learned fast and soon came to enjoy even the awkward experiences.

If I’m really honest, one of my very best sessions in bed - at Uni or since - was a drunken night with a boy so unattractive I would never have wanted even to be seen with him in the daytime. Afterwards, I made sure I was never seen with him again but after dark, in bed and with the lights out… wow!

That makes me sound really shallow and maybe I was then. I hope I’m not any more.

I met David in my second year through Nicky, a strong-willed, full-figured brunette who had been in the same Hall of Residence as me the year before and who had become a close friend. She and I were part of a group of six girls sharing a house in one of the infamously student parts of the city. Nicky had a similar attitude to sex and relationships as I did (meaning we were happy to have the one without the other), so it was natural for us to live together.

David (never Dave) was one of a loose group of half a dozen boys we bumped into at parties, got drunk with, had fun with and on multiple occasions slept with, on what was supposed to be a casual, no-strings basis.

On more than a few occasions, Nicky and I slept together too but we did not publicise that.

Though David was not the most attractive of the bunch of boys, I wasn’t the most attractive of the girls either so as time passed and some of the no-strings hook-ups morphed into full-on monogamous relationships, he and I ended up together more and more often.

By the time our University studies were ending, David and I had drifted in an unplanned way from casual hook-ups to regular dates and from there into a near-monogamous relationship ourselves. After graduation, we both got jobs in the same city in which we had studied and without actually talking about it, both assumed we would live together.

We found a one-bedroom flat, moved in and before either of us realised it, had become to outward appearances a normal couple starting out on life like so many others all around us. However we felt inside, for over two full years we behaved like a normal couple too, going out with friends, squabbling over furniture and for the first time since we had been together, keeping our relationship mostly monogamous.

To be fair, the pressures of beginning our careers helped us remain faithful to each other too. On the one hand, we were constantly tired and had to study outside of work too so were less able to look elsewhere. On the other hand, we quickly found that both David’s school and to a lesser extent, my hospital provided plenty of opportunities for temptation to strike.

I succumbed only twice in the first two years, both were one-night-stands with colleagues, neither was particularly memorable. David knows about them both and has confessed to twice this number himself. Knowing him and his maths, this means he probably slept with half a dozen girls during that time, but we don’t compete on numbers.

It was a very pleasant existence during which we grew closer and closer. David is an easy person to live with and to my surprise, it appears I am too. We could have gone on like this with the occasional act of infidelity on both sides for years, but events dictated otherwise.

The watershed came at the beginning of our third year together when I missed a second period, peed on a stick and found I was pregnant.

There was no question who the father was. How it could have happened remains something of a mystery; top of the list of suspects is a drunken evening on holiday after two days of food poisoning during which I must have sicked-up my birth control pills.

David and I had long, deep conversations late into the night before we realised that neither of us could contemplate an abortion and, however we felt about physical fidelity in a relationship, our hearts and souls had become too deeply intertwined to be separated even by this news.

I can’t remember which of us first thought of marriage, but I do know that it felt right for both of us; notbecause either of us felt any social pressure to tie the knot; it just seemed the right thing to do at the time.

Three years on, I have no regrets.

As you might expect given our personalities, the ceremony was non-religious, short, light-hearted and full of close friends, several of whom had slept with one or (in the case of Nicky) both of us in the past, though not necessarily at the same time. We made promises, exchanged rings, laughed, joked, everyone except me drank heavily and our life together moved to its next stage.

A few months later when our daughter was born our lives became more complicated but were still very manageable. I took maternity leave; David took paternity leave and we both began to share the parenting. A few months later David knocked me up again – deliberately this time – and our younger daughter was born nine months after that.

With two babies born barely a year apart, our balanced relationship took a lurch to the left with me taking most of the load for a while. But once I had learned to express milk properly – no small feat with boobs as small as mine - David was able to play a much bigger part and to his credit, did so.

It was less than two years after our wedding – two monogamous years on my part and at a time when having two children under the age of two was most demanding - when David told me that he wanted us to have a more open marriage.

I suppose it shouldn’t have come as a shock, but it did.

The pressures of having a young family along with demanding jobs had pushed our sex life into the background more than either of us should have allowed. Given his and my sexual histories, I suppose I should have seen it coming but at the time I was too caught up in being a mother and trying to hold down a job to notice the air of dissatisfaction that had crept into our relationship from both sides.

He broke the news in bed one Sunday evening after I had just made yet another excuse not to have sex with him.

“You mean you want us to split up?” I asked, horrified.

“No!” David insisted so vehemently that I believed him.

“Then you’re already sleeping with someone else,” I stated as calmly as I could. “Right?”

“Well…” he replied unconvincingly.

“It’s either that or you reckon you’re onto a winner with some girl and want my okay first.”

There was a long pause.

“We’re not exactly doing well, sex-wise are we?” he replied rather than answering directly.

That was so obviously true that it needed no response from me.

“Aren’t you missing it too?” he asked. “We used to have fun in bed, didn’t we?”

“We do have two kids to deal with,” I said with more indignation than bitterness.

“I love you and the girls, you know that,” he insisted. “I’m really happy being married to you and being their Dad but I just need…”

“To get your end away more often and with more women?”

“I suppose so,” he confessed. “It’s not as if we haven’t done it already.”

I was too shaken to reply though it was undeniably true.

“I’d be happy for you to find someone else as well,” he added quietly.

“That’s generous of you,” I snorted sarcastically.

There was an even longer silence before I asked quietly.

“Is she good in bed?”

“Very!”

“Shit!”

I rolled over until my back was towards him then pretended to be asleep.

***

“Have you thought about it?” David asked five days later over a chaotic weekend breakfast with the girls in two high chairs at the rather small kitchen table.

“About what?”

My reply was disingenuous. There could be only one subject he would raise in this way.

“About my idea,” he frowned, wiping our youngest daughter’s face with her bib.

I had thought about little else since he had broken the news though David, perhaps worried, certainly disappointed by my immediate negative reaction, had not mentioned it again.

My first instinctive reaction was that of any betrayed, vulnerable wife and mother whose other half had just announced that he had slept with another woman and wanted to keep doing so. I felt betrayed, outraged, angry, hurt and afraid all at once.

I had cried alone several times, but when the raw edge of those emotions had become slightly blunted, to my surprise, the more I thought about it, the less terrible the idea began to feel.

The truth was that the period of near-monogamy that had apparently just ended had been the exception rather than the norm in our relationship. We had got together through promiscuity, had slept with other people before our marriage and had deliberately taken no vows of fidelity during the ceremony so why should either of us have expected the other to remain faithful forever?

Our sex life had become moribund, there was no denying that. It was one of the reasons why I had started avoiding intercourse with him. With two small children in the house, tiredness had played its part but in all honestly, that had been an excuse too.

Though I hadn’t really recognised it at the time, dissatisfaction had set in on both sides. In truth, the surprise was more that it had been David rather than me who had first come clean about it and suggested a way out.

“About seeing other people,” he said impatiently. “What do you think about the idea?”

I looked at the two messy girls, decided they were far too young to understand anything their parents said and replied.

“It’ll take a bit of getting used to,” I eventually said.

David looked up, his expression a combination of delight and disbelief.

“You’re okay with the idea?”

“I don’t know,” I told him truthfully. “I really don’t know. I wasn’t expecting it.”

“But you’re not saying no,” he asked eagerly.

“I need more time to think about it.”

“How much time?” he asked eagerly.

“Is she putting pressure on you?” I countered.

David looked sheepish and didn’t reply.

“When does she want to see you?”

“Tonight,” he replied, not looking me in the eye.

“Tonight?”

He nodded sheepishly.

“It’s her birthday.”

I took a long, deep breath and thought hard. We had no plans for the evening; I was supposed to have been on the late shift, but it had been rescheduled at short notice. I had expected David to cook, the two of us to eat in the flat then maybe – maybe I would have let him make love to me in bed afterwards.

The reluctance with which I had been prepared to let this last thing take place told me all I needed to know. I took a deep breath.

“Go and see her,” I said. “Stay the night if you want.”

The look of joy on my husband’s face almost defied belief.

The feeling of discomfort, unease and disbelief in my belly wasn’t far behind.

“Just make sure you’re home by ten-thirty tomorrow. Mum and Dad are coming, remember?”

***

The false confidence with which I had given David permission to sleep with his new lover was as much an attempt to convince myself it was okay as it was to convince him. Doubts flooded in throughout the day, especially when he was showering and changing early in the evening.

I have to say he looked drop-dead gorgeous as well as nervous and hesitant when he came into the lounge to kiss me and the girls goodnight. When I presented him my cheek for a peck, my whole body was stiff and I couldn’t look him in the eye but, like the cool girl I wanted myself to appear, I went through with it and a few minutes later we three women were alone in the flat for what proved to be a very long night indeed.

Nothing on television could keep my attention. Every single item of clothing we possessed was ironed to within an inch of its life and yes, I did cry several times.

I’m not sure I could have made it and remained sane it if our younger daughter hadn’t had a cold and been awake every couple of hours. In the end I brought her into our bed where she passed the night in the space her father usually occupied. My own sleep was fitful, my dreams, waking and sleeping full of images of my husband’s lips on his lover’s face or even his slim, tight buttocks rising and falling between her open thighs.

But even the longest night must come to an end and eventually this one did too. Both the girls are very early risers so as the day began, their demands helped distract me once again. When our younger daughter went back to sleep around nine o’clock, I had a few minutes to myself so spent them in the bedroom and bathroom making sure I was looking the absolute best I could after a sleepless night when my now-unfaithful husband returned home.

It was just after ten o’clock when we heard his key in the door and his footsteps in the hallway. The three of us were in the kitchen playing at the table, the younger girl in her high chair. They both became excited at their father’s return and it took all of my self-control to appear cool and unruffled by the momentous event that had so recently taken place.

With his daughter in his arms, David entered the kitchen, not quite confident in the reception he would find. His nerves were plain to see.

“Hi Bex,” he said awkwardly.

I rose to greet him, noting to my delight the appreciative glance he gave both me and my choice of clothes. He bent forward and kissed me on the cheek. The smell of very recent sex was still on him; for a split second an image of the two of them having a last-minute farewell fuck in her doorway flashed through my mind.

“Did you have a nice time?” I asked, suppressing my feelings hard.

“Very nice. Thank you so much,” he said with a sincere look on his face.

“It’s okay. Want some tea?” I asked as casually as I could manage.

Both relieved at the distraction, there was an awkward silence for perhaps a full minute while we both quietly took stock of the situation. David seemed pleasantly surprised both by my appearance and my reaction to his return. Before my eyes, the air of cool confidence that had characterized his University years flooded back into him in a way I hadn’t seen for a long time.

The outward calmness I had fought so hard to present was slowly working its way inside me too. To my surprise, as I looked at my husband I found myself becoming more relaxed, more accepting of what had happened, and a good deal more attracted to him than I had felt in a long time.

We drank our tea, speaking little but meaning a lot as the atmosphere between us gradually softened.

As he played with his older daughter, I began to see my husband differently. Not so much in a new light, but there was something about him – something sexy and exciting that I hadn’t seen in years and which had not been there twenty-four hours earlier.

The reasons I had fancied him so much in the first place rushed back upon me. The brightness of his personality, his cheeky cheerfulness, the mischievous glint in his eyes when he looked at me; all these and more began to return. He even carried himself differently; he was more upright, more confident.

Perhaps there was even a trace of swagger about him. Everything about him was so much more desirable

My parents arrived just before eleven and the six of us went out for the day. It was almost impossible not to discuss his night away but of course with the Grandparents around, self-control was an absolute necessity. David’s aura of confidence and attractiveness persisted throughout the day so by the time the two kids were in bed, the Grandparents had left and we were finally alone, I was so wound up with lust that I nearly tore his clothes from his body and forced him to give me the hardest, most violent fucking we had enjoyed since the first of our daughters was born.

As his strokes grew faster, deeper and more powerful, I looked up into his dark eyes to see them sparkling with lust. Knowing that those eyes had less than twenty-four hours ago been looking down into those of another girl and that the cock buried deep inside me had so recently been inside her too, drove me to heights of passion that had hardly been seen since our marriage.

Afterwards we lay side by side, panting and sweating in the half-darkness.

“Wow!” David gasped, his eyes wide. “That was amazing! Where did that come from Bex?”

I could only smile. The same question was filling my mind.

“I was worried you’d be upset,” he said after a pause to gather breath.

“I am upset, can’t you tell?” I replied, my skin still tingling from climactic after-shocks.

“You’re hiding it well. You were like an animal,” he smiled.

“I’m letting it all out,” I corrected him.

There was another pause.

“We need to find someone for you,” David eventually said softly. “And soon too, if we’re going to open our marriage properly.”

“Before I can change my mind about you two?”

“To make it fair for you too,” he replied in a voice that told me I had been at least partly right.

“And you’re sure YOU can live with someone fucking me?” I asked. “It wasn’t easy for me last night.”

“If you can stand it, I’ll have to, won’t I?”

He rose over me once again. My legs opened automatically. As he entered me, I looked up into his handsome face and wondered, after years of monogamy, what it would be like to see the features of another, as yet unknown man, looking lustfully down on me once again.

***

So, the decision was made; David and I were to have an open marriage. Just like that!

But when it came to the reality of how to do it in real life, we weren’t sure how to start. Okay, David already had his ‘bit on the side’ but we knew that unless we got advice and laid down a few rules, things could go badly wrong. We were nervous of course, knowing there were a lot of potential unknowns and with David already sleeping with Sarah once or twice a week, there was pressure to get things sorted quickly.

But who to ask? Though we were no strangers to promiscuity, since University we had had no similarly-thinking community to talk to and now we had kids to consider.

Where else would we start but online? There we found podcasts which purported to provide relationship advice to ‘monogamish’ couples. We listened to them intently. From there we moved on to blogs and chatrooms, learning how other couples managed their multiple partners, learning a new language en-route; entwinement levels, boundaries and labels.

Eventually we felt confident enough to come out to the one couple from University who we had remained close to and who we believed had been in an open relationship ever since. David and I had slept with them in the past, though not as a group, so we felt more able to ask if they would tell us about their sex lives.

Perhaps if it was working for them, it might work for us too.

What we found was that there are almost as many different relationships as there are couples living them but over time, a common set of rules seemed to materialize.

Apart from understanding that ‘no must mean no’, it’s important to remember preferences and boundaries aren’t fixed forever. They can change with time and with partners so listening to each other constantly and without reservation is vital, as is complete honesty, encounter by encounter.

Some hard limits had to be agreed too; everything must be discussed beforehand;our relationship must come first; all questions must be answered. Safe sex at all time, no matter who with and of course the really important one: no falling in love.

The next problem was of course, how to find those extramarital partners

With Sarah already on the scene, David had suffered no such problem, hitting the ground running as far as our new lifestyle was concerned. He and Sarah spent their first ‘official’ night together within days of our agreement, but I had no lover waiting in the wings and had to start from scratch.

What with that and having a new baby to deal with, it took much longer for me to find the right man to enhance my life both inside and outside the bedroom in the way that Sarah was already doing for my husband.

There were a good few attempts to find that man on the way, but until Chris had arrived on the scene, all had ended in disappointment. Some had ended in significant embarrassment too, but I didn’t want to think of those mistakes.

David and I started with the usual dating apps, having fun looking at profiles together, talking openly about whether we fancied the person on screen, whether we thought they would fancy me and what they might be like in bed. Planning my infidelity with my husband was a surreal experience, only becoming scary when an actual date had been arranged and was imminent.

These apps were okay in principle but as I was emphatically not looking for love, I found myself in a few awkward situations. It was soon clear that we needed to move on to the more specialist apps and sites for men and women seeking affairs.

These yielded better results. There was no shortage of couples looking for a single, bisexual female to join them in spicing up their sex life but despite my continued interest in my own gender, David wasn’t yet ready for me to move in the direction so I mentally crossed them off the list and concentrated only on men.

Sadly, I found a depressingly large proportion of the men I talked to and even those I met to be over-confident, narcissistic, poor judges of their ability in bed and, most frequently, simply cheating on their other halves rather than being in open relationships themselves.

That’s doesn’t mean I didn’t sleep with them – or at least some of them – but either they or I knew that the relationship wasn’t going any further. I did not want to be a marriage-breaker; however good-looking and good in bed they might have been, they were not for me.

That didn’t mean I didn’t have a lot of fun on my quest. The notches on my metaphorical bedpost increased considerably during that time but I knew that casual encounters with a series of strangers wasn’t what I wanted or needed in the longer term.

Then I found Chris. He was different from the start.

Nearly twice my age, also married and with two children at Uni, I almost didn’t bother replying to his prompt but I’m so glad I did. Quietly confident rather than brash; soft-spoken and attentive, relaxed and unpressurised, his manner even on-line was seductive and reassuring.

It took surprisingly few online chats before we spoke on the phone, and only one phone call before we agreed to meet for coffee. Having had so many disappointments with online dates, I was apprehensive but in person he was every bit as charming and even more attractive as he had been on the phone and online.

He asked me for dinner. After talking to David, we agreed I should go but for safety’s sake, I should meet him in a familiar place; the cool, trendy restaurant in Soho.

We met, we got on well – really well. I told him about David, the girls and our recent marriage contract. He told me rather less; he was ‘Something in the City’, living in his London flat during the week and going back to his family in the country at weekends.

It wasn’t entirely clear whether his wife knew or cared about what he got up to in his London life, but as the evening went on and his deep brown eyes burned deeper into me, I began to care less and less myself.

By eleven o’clock I trusted him enough to let him take me home in a taxi. We had dinner again four days later. This time the taxi after dinner took us to his flat where I learned to my delight that age is no indication of a person’s energy in bed and that experience and expertise can be worth their weight in gold.

When I returned home at one in the morning, sneaking into bed alongside a husband who was clearly pretending to be asleep, I was sweaty, flushed, dishevelled and still trembling with the last remaining climactic aftershocks.

I was also fully in lust and at least a little bit in love.

That was six months ago. Since then my relationships with both the men in my life have matured considerably but in very different ways. David will always be the love of my life but I’m learning that there is more than one kind of love and that there is room on my heart for both. In that ‘other’ way, I am in love with Chris too and with that, comes a closeness and compatibility in bed that makes everything better.

There’s an old-school charm about him which neither my marriage nor my series of flings had provided. He made me feel special from the first time we met for that exploratory coffee. That feeling of being special hasn’t diminished at all since then.

He opens car and restaurant doors for me, takes my hand at important moments either out of affection or the need to help me balance – which is often, given the high heels and tight cocktail dresses he likes me to wear.

He dresses smartly himself and takes me to romantic, expensive clubs and restaurants that David and I could seldom afford. And he will not countenance going Dutch. We have been to the theatre and the opera together, something David and I never do and on two occasions we have stayed overnight in one of London’s smartest hotels. We would probably have done more of this if I hadn’t felt to need to be home every morning when our daughters wake up.

He is romantic in a way that simply wouldn’t fit with David’s personality. He sends me flowers after every date, whether or not we have sex. He buys me lingerie and jewellery which I wear only for him. He has even taken me dress-shopping a couple of times, something David would never even think of.

With Chris I can be and often am a different person. It’s exciting – and that’s before we get into the bedroom.

He’s well over six feet tall, slim, athletic and attractive - of course in an ‘older-man’ kind of way - but the appeal goes much deeper than simply looks. He’s a successful, high-powered businessman who likes to be in charge of everything – and that includes me.

When I’m with David, we negotiate and agree everything. It’s a good, balanced way to run a marriage.

When I’m with Chris, he’s very attentive to my needs but basically, he’s in control. I would never tolerate this kind of behaviour from David. To be fair, he would never even try to control me in this way and even with Chris I found it a bit too much at first. But now I’ve got used to it, I can tell you it’s actually liberating not to have to make decisions for a change.

I wear what he wants me to wear, I do my hair the way he likes and in bed, we do things that David and my balanced relationship would make impossible.

I can’t imagine ever letting David spank me; the power in our relationship is too well balanced for that. But I really love it when I’m deliberately cheeky and Chris pulls me over his knee, lifts up my skirt or dress, pulls down my panties then spanks my bare buttocks with the flat of his hand, sending me home with glowing pink cheeks.

More recently, he’s started using a leather paddle which is actually designed to leave marks for days afterwards. David cannot possibly have missed those.

I can’t imagine letting David tie me up or put me in handcuffs. I can’t imagine letting him hurt me, putting clamps on my nipples, labia or evemn my clitoris - the pain from there can be sublime - but when Chris does it, I simply adore it and climax almost immediately.

As a confident, successful, professional woman the idea of being dominated and abused by anyone, let alone an older man should be complete anathema to me. But it turns out that I have quite a penchant for both domination and pain, and if the last few dates are anything to go by, an increasing one.

With Chris I’ve surprised myself, exploring avenues that I might never have known existed if my only sexual outlet had been David. Indeed, even as I stood there talking and ironing, my nipples and labia were still pink and sore; a pleasant but sadly fading memento from my date the night before.

David has no taste for S&M and I don’t want him to have. To be honest, before I met Chris and we got to know each other better in the bedroom, I hadn’t known I had that kind of kink in me either.

Although he hasn’t mentioned it, David must have realised something of what we get up to. He can’t possibly have missed the marks on my body that remain for up to a week afterwards. He didn’t even say anything when I came home one morning without my pubic hair. Chris had ordered me to shave myself in front of him and I have kept myself smooth ever since.

But then I don’t mention the love bites that routinely appear on David’s neck; probably an inevitable consequence of having sex with a girl barely out of nappies.

Oh, didn’t I mention it? My husband’s Other Significant Other is only twenty-one which means they started sleeping together when she was nineteen. Nineteen! She’s a student at the College in which he teaches. Not one of his own students - that would be tricky ethically, but I still tease him about being a ‘cradle-snatcher’.

She’s impossibly young and very pretty. I used to get unbearably jealous – I still do if I’m honest. It’s odd; having my own OSO doesn’t seem to make me any less jealous towards my husband.

Perversely, I’m also envious of him for having Sarah. As I said, she’s everything I’m not: blonde, full-figured and very attractive. What’s worse, she’s very much my type too. As I have said, my experience of girl-on-girl is limited, but the memories are vivid and extremely potent. I do sometimes wonder whether I should try and get to know Sarah better myself.

Maybe one day she and I might spend some time together when David is away… I wouldn’t be averse to trying a threesome with her and Chris if the opportunity presented itself. I once went to bed with David and another boy at University. At first it was little more than a clumsy, inexperienced fumble but we learned fast and pushed our boundaries and in the end, it turned out very well – at least for me!

The idea of being with Sarah and another man turns me on more than I’m quite comfortable with, but for some reason, I wouldn’t want that other man to be David.

Jealousy can only be tolerated so far.

But back to Chris and my relationship.

It surprised me how quickly and smoothly we progressed down the S&M road. There must have been something about me that Chris could read early on because during only our second session in the bedroom, he insisted I stripped in front of him while he remained fully dressed.

I did so, feeling very unsure but even more excited. Then before I realised what was happening, he had turned me round, tied my hands behind my back with one of my own stockings and pressed me down onto my knees. At first I was shocked and began to object but something deep within me wanted to play along and see where this went.

I’m so glad I did.

Chris lowered his trousers and shorts, releasing his already-hard cock inches from my face. It was impressive but not worryingly large and had a pronounced upward curve. It was also the first circumcised cock I had seen up close.

The clumsy, hands-free blow-job I administered on my knees wasn’t one of my best, but I loved every second of it. Chris seemed pleased too if the moaning noises coming from above me were genuine. After a few minutes of bobbing up and down, he took my head between his hands, held it firmly and began to slowly fuck my mouth.

The sensation of helplessness was amazing; I could feel myself lubricating for all I was worth!

I loved it even more when he lifted me onto the bed and laid me on my back. My hips were thrust obscenely upwards by my tied hands under my bottom. Chris climbed between my open thighs, lowered his head and repaid the compliment with his own mouth on my soaking wet vulva.

I came within seconds, very hard – even for me, leaving me to my astonishment, utterly helpless. But he was merciless, his fingers and tongue working as a team both outside and inside my body, bringing a stream of climaxes that threatened to rob me of consciousness completely. The more I gasped, the harder he worked on my vulva until my head was spinning and my body was drained.

Just as I thought I was about to faint, he rose from between my thighs, his face messy with my juices and rolled me firmly onto my front. Before I knew what was happening, he had mounted and entered me from behind, his cock stretching my already-over-sensitised entrance tightly and filling the deepest depths of my loins.

I reached a loud, body-shaking climax almost before he bottomed out inside my vagina.

Chris drove me home himself afterwards, tired, flushed and for the first time in years, completely satisfied. When he kissed me on the cheek in the doorway and asked the usual ‘can I see you again’ question, the enthusiasm with which I agreed made me blush.

We met again a few days later for dinner then spent a few more hours in his flat. The rest is history.

***

So, there you have it. Our marriage isn’t like most marriages. We’re not swingers; neither of us sleeps around. Neither of has been cuckolded either – or maybe both of us have. Either way, it doesn’t feel like it.

Both of us are getting to live out our fantasies. For the moment at least, David is enjoying being with a much younger girl and I’m having fun being the spoiled plaything of an older, wealthier man. The fact that both these extra-marital adventures involve having sex with others is only part of the excitement.

I’m fascinated by Chris, spoiled by him, in lust with him and to some extent mesmerised by him, but I feel no desire to be his wife or bear his children. That said, I’m in no hurry to move on from him either – there’s too much more for us to explore together that simply doesn’t fit with David and my balanced relationship.

In know David is at least a bit unsettled by the speed with which my relationship with Chris has developed and by its direction, which he cannot fail to have guessed from the state of my body alone. But he has said very little, choosing instead to try and adapt to his changing wife and the new influence in our marriage.

I do worry sometimes that David and Sarah might fall properly in love, though at the moment, it really does seem just like fun. I worry that he might stop wanting me; that we might start to hate each other; that he might fall out of love with me but be too afraid to tell me.

David listens to my worries and reassures me, understands me a bit better each time, kisses me and tells me he loves me. The fears start to fade away,proving once again that he’s the right husband for me.

I don’t know where we will go from here, but I do know that we will never have a ‘normal’ marriage.

As long as it works for both of us and doesn’t harm our children, long may our Other Significant Other’s last.

I hope you have enjoyed hearing our story.

Becky x