Strange how pure chance can change a life. If I hadn't chosen to join John in Paris for Christmas, if I hadn't flown through Denver, if I hadn't gone to the bookstore to kill time, if I hadn't seen the book on display, if I hadn't bought a copy, if I hadn't been seated next to Solene on the plane.

My husband, John, is a civil engineer. His company was working on a big project in Paris and for some reason it was necessary for them to have a qualified engineer visit the site to make an inspection every single day. Since all the other engineers at the firm had children, John volunteered. In return, the company had booked him a swank hotel in the Place de Concorde right next to the Louvre and offered to fly me out to be with him over the holiday.

The final link in the chain of events was the arrival of my long-awaited iPhone. John had watched Steve Jobs make the announcement and ordered his within minutes of it going on sale. I had waited for it to arrive so I could try it first, big mistake.

I eased my butt into my business class seat, accepted the complimentary sparkling wine from the steward and pulled the iPhone out of my pocket for a final surf before the cabin door closed. Solene noticed immediately and was impressed. The iPhone wasn't available in France yet. In those first few months, the iPhone was a sure fire conversation starter.

We got talking about families and what we would be doing over Christmas. Solene would be spending hers in the country with the family. I said that I would be spending mine in Paris with just my husband.

"A pity to not be with the family, no?"

Not in the slightest, missing seven days of purgatory with daily services in church listening to patronizing sermons from our pastor was no pity at all. The flight wasn't just my first trip abroad, it was the first time I had been on a plane, the first time I had been out of state.

The steward announced the cabin door was closing. As I opened my bag to put the iPhone away, Solene saw the book and smiled.

"I have the same one!" Solene exclaimed, "What a coincidence."

The book had been a sensation in France some years earlier but the English translation had just hit the shelves. The candid autobiography of a French publisher describing her expansive sex life in unvarnished detail.

Solene pulled her own copy out of her bag, the French edition of course. The front cover had a full-length nude of the author. As she held it up, I realized Solene had the same hairstyle, an A-line bob which came out in a sphinx-like triangular form at the sides.

"I am quite the fan of her work," Solene said.

Perhaps it was coincidence, but I think it must have been fate. I opened the book and began reading.

***

I had told myself the visit to Alladin's was a Christmas present for John. We had watched porn together and enjoyed it. If live music was better than recorded, surely the same was true for porn? 

But the real reason for choosing that particular show was Solene had recommended it. Ignatius Loyola had got it wrong, the church had had me till I was seventeen, not just seven. I had started to push back before I got married but my only outward sign of rebellion was ditching home school for community college. A chance meeting on a plane, a few chapters of a book were all that it had taken to bring that world crashing down.

Solene looks quite similar to me. We are both brunettes, medium height, brown hair, and dare I say it, easy on the eye. But Solene was everything I was not; educated, cosmopolitan, self-assured, everything I wanted to be.

The night began with a gourmet feast in the hotel restaurants, Les Ambassadeurs, one of the very top restaurants in Paris. Five courses of the tasting menu were delivered with a matched wine course. Foie gras, the real stuff, not the pate, seared in a lemon seasoning, quail in a rich cream sauce, filet medallions with gratin, crème brûlée, cheeses. Any other day such a meal would have been enough to call it a night but in my jet-lagged haze, 8pm felt like mid-morning.

We watched a series of strippers bump and grind to an assortment of songs. The theater had a vague Arabian Nights theme with the door to the theater being in the shape of a genie's bottle. Some of the dancers wore a hip skirt and did a belly dance. The effect was titillating rather than arousing. 

Then one of the dancers made an announcement at the end of their act in French too rapid for me to catch. John translated it as, 'if you would like to meet any of us a private show, talk to the cashier'.

Learning that the women on the stage were available was like watching the scene in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy arrives in Oz and the film suddenly changes to color. These were bodies that could be touched, caressed, bodies that would return the touch. These bodies weren't just offering an illusion of intimacy, As they shimmied and whirled and stretched around the pole, these bodies were offering the deed. All it took to shatter the fourth wall was a little coin.

What is more, the deed was performed on stage. This act began with the normal pole bump-and-grind. A lithe willowy blonde with flowing limbs spreading her legs wide to show the crotch of her panties. As the blonde was shedding her bra, a brunette with that same A-line sphinx bob handed out drinks to the audience.

As the girls exchanged words, John translated for me: 

"Can't you wait for the interval?"

"I want to see your body"

"You can see from the balcony"

"I want to see up close"

"Why don't you then?"

The blonde stripped off her panties and dropped them on the floor. The waitress climbed onto the stage. Moments later, both were naked with sphinx bob eagerly kissing and licking the length of the blonde's body on a rotating plinth which had somehow appeared.

John's hand gripped me tighter around the waist.

"I am so wet," I whispered.

"I want to fuck you" John replied

"I want to see her private show."

We watched the show run through its cycle until sphinx bob reappeared for her waitress act. The lines were exactly the same but even so, it was clear that these weren't great actors. You could tell from the way they made eye contact, the smiles, the caresses: these girls were really into having sex with each other.

After the second act, sphinx bob made her announcement again and John squeezed my waist and gave me a look.

Indecision got the better of me. It was all too fast. By the time my mind had got to 'yes', both girls were already engaged. To add insult to injury, sphinx bob had been claimed by another couple. We didn't get a third chance.

***

Next morning, I woke to find a continental breakfast waiting for me. John had already left to make his required inspection at the construction site. After coffee and a croissant, I took a leisurely shower and returned to reading the book in my bathrobe. 

Her world seemed to be as far from mine as could possibly be, and yet there I was, in Paris at its very center. It was not the descriptions of the endless encounters, bodies and sexual acts that attracted me as her ability to engage them without the anxiety, embarrassment and guilt that held me back. It was enough for her to think she might enjoy some new sensation to be willing to try it.

Was Solene really so much more sophisticated in matters of sex or did she just have more time with the book?

It was only while regretting the fact that my anxiety at Aladdin's the night before had cost both of us a potentially enjoyable experience and we wouldn't have the opportunity to try again that evening that I suddenly remembered it was Christmas Day. 

John would be returning soon. I resolved to make him a Christmas present neither of us would ever forget. I shrugged off the bathrobe and searched my handbag for a sharpie.

John found my 'checklist' to his liking. After a long kiss, I opened the silk kimono John had bought me the year before to reveal my left breast with a checkbox and a drawing of a pair of lips..

My dancing wasn't as practiced as the dancing at Aladdin's but John's trouser snake was soon standing straight. I rode John cowgirl, completing the checkboxes on my front, then turned round with his cock still inside me to reveal the final checkboxes on my lower back.

I slid myself off his cock and into a sixty-nine. John read off the final four checkboxes: one finger, two fingers, three fingers, cock.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" John asked.

"Happy Christmas!" I replied, placing a tube of lube in his hand.

We were not complete novices at anal play, but I had never gone beyond a finger before. John took it slow and steady, working my clit with his tongue as he opened up my ass with his finger.

I came hard, twice, the first time at one finger, the second at three. I remember being relieved to have got my orgasms out of the way.

The act itself was performed in doggy position, the same way John had taken my first virginity on our wedding night. John held his stiff cock at the entrance to my pussy and let me slide myself back at my own pace. After a few practice thrusts, John pressed the tip of his cock against my anus. I took a deep breath and surrendered my anal cherry to my husband's prick.

***

Lunch was at Madame Brasserie on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower, one of the few attractions to be open that day. The company had somehow secured reservations for second service.

The food was slightly simpler than the previous night's feast but incredibly well made, a salad with goats cheese and smoked duck breast to start followed by trout with a fennel risotto and orange sauce topped off with a mandarin Mont-Blanc cake. Each course accompanied by a selected wine.

As we savored each degustation, I thought back to our morning spent in bed and the sensation of John's cock entering me, filling me in an unfamiliar way. It had been uncomfortable but not particularly unpleasant. Surrendering my anus to John had given him considerable pleasure and left me with a feeling of achievement. If I could train myself to appreciate fine dining without feeling guilty about immodest living, maybe I could train myself to enjoy new sexual experiences in the same way.

"John," I began, "I have something I want to do."

"Anything you like as long as it's legal," John replied.

"I want to go back to Alladin's and I want to watch you fuck that young lady."

***

Next morning, I again woke to find John had left for his inspection tour. Finding neither coffee nor croissants, I showered, dressed and found myself an appropriately Parisienne cafe for breakfast.

Solenne called to congratulate me on my previous day's accomplishment. I had sent her a coded text from the dinner cruise, now she wanted all the details. Which rather to my surprise, I gave without hesitation.

We had both found the experience unpleasant and uncomfortable bordering on actual pain. Solene reported that after her first time, sitting down or standing up had given her reminders of the abuse she had suffered for a week. And yet, we both found having been violated in that fashion gave us a certain something we liked having even if it was not necessarily pleasure.

There is an intimacy and directness in anal sex that is different from regular sex. My mind can wander sometimes with a cock in my mouth or even my pussy. But when I have a cock in my ass, I think about nothing else, I feel alive.

A week after her first time, Solene had repeated the experience to help her decide whether she liked it. Unable to decide on her preference, several months had passed until our chance meeting on the plane. She could think of nothing else on the ride from the airport and her first words to Jean at the door were Baise-moi dans le cul.

Without a pause, Jean had pushed Solene into the armchair, raised the hem of her dress and skewered her face to face, first in the front and then raising her legs to take her back passage. Solene encouraged me to try this position as soon as John returned from his inspection: the sex had been animaux.

I told her I would be resisting this temptation as we had already agreed to return to Aladdin's that evening and in any case, I had not yet recovered from my first experience. Solene gave a heartfelt oh là là and demanded a promise to give her all the details.

***

To our great disappointment Aladdin's didn't reopen until Thursday. We arrived shortly after it opened, took seats right at the front of the stage and waited for sphynx bob to appear. After two strippers, the willowy blonde arrived onstage, but with a different waitress. This pairing lacked the chemistry of the first. The show continued through three more strippers and the boy/girl act and all the way through to the start. I had almost given up hope, it was Christmas after all or it might just be her night off. And then the curtain lifted again and there she was alone, naked and working the pole with an electric energy that was a joy to behold.

This time, I made no attempt to hide my interest and was rewarded with frequent eye contact and smiles. At the end of the act, instead of making the public announcement she would be available, she came up to the edge of the stage to talk and a couples massage was quickly agreed.

Inside the booth, Jean quickly negotiated the 'extras', he handed her some Euros and she left the room for a few minutes.

"What do we do now?" I asked. My uncertainty suddenly returning as I realized I had no real idea what a massage involved. 

"We both get naked," Jean replied, "her name is Kat by the way."

John took the first turn on the table. I had expected to just watch but Kat poured some oil onto my hands and motioned to follow her movements. For the next hour, we explored Jean's body and each other's. We each took turns giving and receiving. Kat showed me new ways to give John pleasure and to receive pleasure. She wrapped her body around mine as I kneaded John's broad shoulders, her hands caressing my breasts, my buttocks, my vulva. 

Time and being melted into sense and touch. I had come to watch John fuck Kat, to see his adulterous cock penetrate her flesh. But now I understood that Kat was merely an extension of my will, another pair of hands, another mouth, another cunt with which to give him pleasure.

At last, I found myself laid out on the massage table watching Kat place the necessary rubber sheath on John's cock, dangling inches from my face. John gently massaged my temples as Kat rubbed her body against mine, mouth to mouth, breasts to breasts, pussy to pussy. We kissed, long and deep and Kat's kisses descended the length of my body to find my clit.

Kat pivoted into a 69 and we drank long and deep from each other's center, our tongues sliding over each other's labia and into the hole between them. Kat's legs started to tremble, then she said something urgent in French and John pressed his cock rudely into Kat's hole. I was close to coming myself but I wanted to feel the bitch come with John inside her first.

***

I woke Friday morning to coffee, pastries and a phone call from John to say there was a problem at the site followed by a call from Solene. I gave her the full story including the concerning fact that in the heat of the moment, I had considered Kat as a thing, a piece of meat to be used by John's cock.

"But that's good," Solene insisted, "you are taking control back from them."

My family and their crazy church had told me I must wear my hair a certain way, must wear long flowing dresses that covered my shoulders, must be satisfied with a homeschooled education that would have limited my future to homemaker and dutiful wife if John hadn't rescued me.

I had been trained to see myself in subjugation to the will of others, to my parents, to the church, to the men around me. After years of slowly asserting my independence step by step, I was finally beginning to find the real me. But was it good to find the real me if I didn't like what I found?

After twenty years of abdicating all questions of morality to the dictates of a zealous interpretation of scripture had left me without a moral compass of my own. Understanding those questions became the focus of my postgraduate studies and eventually an academic career.

Having felt I had taken a step forward, I was anxious not to take it back again. I felt the need for some permanent outward manifestation of this change, a piercing maybe or a tattoo. Solene agreed and said we should do the same thing but what?

John had been particularly taken by one of the dancers who had nipple, navel and labia piercings. Solene laughed at the last since she would need to shave her pubic hair first or nobody would be able to see the jewelry. This set me off laughing as it was the same for me: The pact was made.

Sex in the City had already brought the Brazilian Wax to popular culture. Solene emailed me the proof that she had kept her part of the pact before I had booked an appointment. She sent three photographs, before, afterwards and the receipt. 

The salon was part of a chain and it didn't find long to find one nearby. 

Having hot wax poured over your flesh and the hairs ripped away is almost as bad as it sounds. The aesthetician was a matronly figure in her 40s who spoke in an Eastern European accent so thick it was barely possible to tell whether she was speaking English or French.

***

Issues at the site kept John busy all day Friday and through the weekend. Construction materials that were supposed to be arranged in a specific order for the crews to use had been arranged in the opposite order. It wasn't John's fault but it was John's responsibility to come up with a solution or there would be a very expensive delay.

Plans to visit Jean and Solene at their chateau were put on hold. Instead, they would come to Paris for New Years Eve while the grandparents looked after their children.

I spent three days soaking in the sights alone, reporting my movements to Solene on an almost hourly basis; Louvre, Musée d'Orsay, Picasso's house, Champs Elysees. Stacks of museum catalogs began to accumulate on the hotel dresser until John pointed out that it would be cheaper and easier to send them DHL than try to take them back with me on the plane.

I decided on a surprise for Solene: A visit to the hairdresser converted my church hair into the A-line sphinx bob just like her's.

***

We met for an early lunch at a restaurant close to Solene's apartment near the Bastille. Most of the attractions being closed on account of it being a Monday, we had planned an afternoon of shopping followed by a meal and Aladdin's or the sound and light show at the Arc de Triomphe in the evening. Solene adored my new hairstyle.

The plan was abandoned before the entrees arrived. Like myself, Solene was ready for anything, the boys were more cautious. We agreed to begin with play in the same bed and take it from there.

Jean was an architect and as Solene had told me on the plane, the apartment was undergoing a major renovation which through clever design and an astute understanding of the Paris building codes would double the floor space turning a two-bedroom apartment into four. This process was stalled waiting on some permit or inspection and all the bedroom space was littered with tools or filled with stacks of furniture. The mattress of an XL bed destined for the master suite stood on end in the kid's bedroom with a mini-grand piano stacked in front of it.

The only usable room was the kitchen/livingroom which only contained a mattress, a worn leather loveseat serving as a makeshift headboard and a portable TV.

The apartment was not entirely unprepared for our visit however. Four champagne glasses stood on the counter next to a well stocked fridge. A dish next to the loveseat contained condoms and lube.

The men wandered round the geeking out about the engineering challenges as Solene pressed me onto the bed and began undressing me. We were already kissing naked when the boys joined us. Clothes were shed, brides claimed and kissed. Being watched was a new experience for me. I decided I liked it.

Jean's approach to lovemaking was very different to John's making no effort to achieve the simultaneous orgasm porn and the sex manuals implied to be the paramount achievement of all intercourse. My only simultaneous orgasm to date had been with Kat when I had desperately wanted to watch her come. As Kat said afterwards, it's just sex, not a Vulcan mind meld.

There is no right or wrong to sex, ways of giving and taking pleasure which in certain situations and with certain partners may be better or worse. Watching porn had been the beginning of unlearning the fucked-up indoctrination forced onto me but porn also presents a skewed view of sex with everyone trying too hard and succeeding too easily. Does anyone sigh and moan quite like that? Watching real people have real sex gives the real story.

Jean used his fingers and tongue to make sure Solene came before attempting penetration. After both concentrating solely on her pleasure, they both concentrated on his. Having John finish me after he came wasn't a failure.

The mattress was only a double, not even as big as an American queen and so our bodies constantly touched and collided. As John pounded me hard from the front, I could see and feel Jean's prick pounding Solene doggy fashion inches from my face. Both men fell into the same rhythm, thrusting at the same time. Watching Jean fuck Solene was almost like watching myself while I was being fucked.

Afterwards, we propped ourselves up against the loveseat sipping champagne. Solene and I did most of the talking, "thank you," "that was beautiful," "I never expected". After a while the boys moved to the kitchen area, presumably returning to their discussion of prestressed concrete girders as Solene and myself discussed the more intimate matters on the loveseat.

Solene wanted a full swap, so did I, John was insouciant, "whatever makes you happy love." Jean was more demonstrative responding with a rapid fire stream of French which John translated for me as, "My mind is willing but you have drained my cock and my balls for a week you wanton hussy." while Solene giggled.

"Mais je ne suis pas encore rassasiée!" Solene shot back.

"She says she's not full yet," Jean retorted in mock exasperation, "she'll never be full! John, I am asking you as a friend, you must help fill her up because I am empty!"

Jean pulled a small circular side table and two bentwood chairs from one of the tottering stacks and sat in one with a huge sigh, "It is at this point in the film that I should be wearing a beret and deliver a lengthy philosophical exposition on the nature of love and the soul."

John sat down next to him, "and I should be wearing all black and quote from Sartre and Kierkegaard"

"Sartre said he had an essential love, but it was a good idea to experience contingent affairs", Jean replied.

"So you agree with your wife?" John replied.

"Sartre agrees with my wife." Jean countered, "I am happy to share my wife with you if that gives her pleasure, but I would rather know you as a friend before I take yours."

"Ah that is very deep, you have earned your beret".

The boys returned to their talk about girders but their eyes never moved from our direction as we talked about sex. Solene returned to my suggestion of a piercing. An article on the Web claimed that a clitoral hood piercing gave increased stimulation. Nipple piercings caused them to become permanently erect. Labial and naval piercings didn't provide anything beyond decoration.

We pulled up images on my phone and watched a video of the piercing process. Solene was astonished to find such a thing: oh là là!

Again, the boys feigned indifference.

"We are going to get our clits pierced!", I announced.

"Whatever," John retorted.

"No sex for four weeks!" Solene added.

"I won't be able to for six." Jean replied, sardonically.

"Backdoor only!" I said.

"Better for me!" John exclaimed.

"You make me very happy," Solene said to me. We kissed full on the lips. The kiss became an embrace and the embrace became more.

Solene wanted to move into a sixty-nine but I insisted she take her turn, kneeling between her legs working the length of her slit with my tongue. The feel of the skin she had made smooth for me was delicious. Solene purred as my tongue reached her clit and purred again when my fingers entered her ass and pussy. After she came, Solene did the same for me and after I came we ground our pussies together, scissoring, then twisting into that sixty-nine.

We rode the rollercoaster of orgasms, sense and touch until we collapsed into a naked, sweaty heap.

"Bring more champagne!" Solene demanded.

"We have worked for it!" I added.

Jean refused to get up from his chair but John relented, opening a fresh bottle. Solene sat in my lap to make room for John on the loveseat. I couldn't find my glass so I shared with Solene.

"Will you fuck this young lady for me?" I asked my husband.

"Anything for you my love," John replied.

I put my hands on Solene's thighs and pulled her legs apart, exposing her slit while Solene took a gulp from the glass. I guided my husband's cock into her pussy. John skewered her with savage thrusts.

"Baise-moi, Baise-moi," Solene shouted with each thrust. Then as her body began shaking suddenly insisted "dans le cul, dans le cul."

I raised Solene's legs up and apart, her butt hanging off the ends of my knees. John's cock and my fingers quickly brought her to a shattering climax. But what impressed me the most was the fact that Solene held the almost full glass throughout without spilling a drop.

Solene tried to persuade Jean to join us but as he pointed out, John hadn't come yet, it was still his 'turn'. I walked over to Jean's table.

"Both." I said, "I want both of you."

We stood and kissed while Solene got Jean's cock stiff with her mouth. Then I sat on John's cock, taking him in my ass. Jean stood in front of us, his erect cock bulging in his hands.

"And now, we share," Jean said.

Jean's cock slid inside me. I felt fuller than I had ever felt before in my life, the two cocks rubbing against each other as if they might wear thin the flesh separating them and become one. Orgasms ebbed and flowed as the men used me like a giant fist masturbating both cocks at once. By the time I fully regained my senses, I was lying on top of Solene cum slowly dripping onto her belly from both my holes.

It was late evening by the time we left the apartment to find food but not so late that all the shops had shut. A skin art shop by the Metro had exactly what we were looking for. The entire process took less than twenty minutes for both of us. It was only after we emerged that we realized our mistake: now Solene would have to wait four weeks for her turn receiving a double penetration.