For the umpteenth time Keith looked at his watch and groaned — another two hours to go before he could legitimately switch off his computer and leave for home; two more hours of tedium. He sighed, and applied himself to the report on the screen in front of him, making a mental note that he really would have to speak to its author about their appalling spelling and grammar — it would have to be rewritten of course. Christ, what did they teach them at university these days?

It was when he realised that he had read the same paragraph three times that he knew my mind was wandering, so he hit the save button and closed the file. It was no good, his heart just wasn't in it and the couple of beers he had had in the pub at lunchtime didn't help. He sat back in my chair with his hands behind his head, closed my eyes, and allowed himself to daydream. It was his birthday, a big one — fifty years old — and he wondered where the years had gone since he was a new PhD graduate fresh out of college, bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready to change the world.

His colleagues had been very kind and had given him a very nice present of a new wristwatch — a fancy piece that told the time on all seven continents at the touch of a button. Was that an oblique reference to his rather strict attitude to their time keeping or perhaps a suggestion that it was time he thought about early retirement? He looked across at the birthday card sitting on top of the filing cabinet . . . . a rather saucy one with a picture of a scantily clad lovely and the caption LIFE BEGINS AT 50. That was his secretary, on the face of it a demure forty something lady but with a cheeky streak that surfaced when she had had a couple of drinks too many at the company Christmas party a few months before. He realised that he knew very little about Mrs McMillan, Susan’s, private life — she had only been working for him for about six months since his previous secretary had left to have a baby. He had no complaints about her work; she was very efficient and businesslike and always smartly dressed in black skirt and white blouse. “Hmm,” he wondered, “what secrets were hidden behind that straight laced image?”

When he had kissed his dear wife of twelve years that morning as he left the house she had said, “Have a nice day dear, but don't be late home, and no drinking in the pub tonight. I will have something nice cooked up to celebrate your birthday, a cosy candlelit dinner for two with a bottle of that special wine we bought from the vineyard in France we visited last summer.”

Sweet Isabella, she was so good to him, putting up with his occasional moods and she had been such a wonderful wife and stepmother to his two children from his first marriage. She was nearly fifteen years younger than him, and they had met at an international conference in Milan where she was an interpreter. He had been giving a paper on some rather abstruse subject and she had visited his hotel room the evening before to clarify some of the more technical terms. His first wife had died a couple of years previously and he had had little time for female company so it was nice to meet someone whose company was congenial, and who seemed to enjoy his company in return. It hadn't exactly been love at first sight but they had continued to keep in touch by email and Skype and after a protracted courtship they had married in Italy in the summer of 2007.  They spent their honeymoon on the tiny romantic island of Isola Bella on Lake Maggiore before returning to England to set up home together — in his opinion a beautiful island for his beautiful bride.

It had been what you might call a good marriage, nothing spectacular and no serious disagreements, other than the usual trivial arguments that every couple have. They were financially secure with a nice comfortable home and they enjoyed entertaining their many good friends from the neighbourhood. His first wife’s second pregnancy had been very difficult and they decided by mutual agreement not to have any more children, so a few months after their child was born he had had a vasectomy. When he finally asked her to marry him he had told Isabella that if his sterility meant that she felt unable to say yes to his proposal he would understand. As it was Isabella grew to love her two stepchildren as if they were her own. They were now both married with good careers and were busy making their way in the world so there was little likelihood of any grandchildren, for a while anyway. In fact, boring as it may sound, they were very happy and quite content to grow old together. Their sex life had been perfectly satisfactory and mutually enjoyable, although probably a bit vanilla by some people’s standards, and as far as he knew, she had never been tempted to stray from the nest.

At last the afternoon light leached from the sky, the lights came on outside and it was time to call it a day and head for home. The drive home was uneventful; the traffic was light with none of the long jams that sometimes doubled the length of his journey and left him feeling frustrated and out of sorts. For once the idiots seemed to have gone elsewhere to endanger someone else’s life. So after half an hour he was turning the key in the front door lock looking forward to a pleasant meal with half a bottle of wine, although a little better than the usual cut-price stuff, to be followed by coffee in the lounge with a glass of a good single malt and maybe a celebratory cigar. After that he supposed that they would watch a little TV and then retire to bed for mutually agreeable lovemaking before falling asleep in each other's arms for a blissful nights sleep.

As he opened the inner door to the vestibule Bella, as he had always called her, was waiting there to welcome him home — she must have been following him with the ‘Find my Friends’ app on her iPhone — but then he had his first surprise of the evening. Instead of her customary slacks and blouse Bella was wearing a cute little black dress that he had never seen before, so short that he could just see the tops of her lacy black stockings.

He gave a little whistle, “You are looking especially sexy and delicious my dear,” he said, and whistled again.

“Well it is my lover’s birthday,” she said in a husky voice, “and I wanted to make it very special for him. Now you go upstairs and change into something comfortable and I will fix you an appetiser,” and she gave him a passionate kiss on the lips rather than the usual peck on his cheek.

When he came back downstairs and went into the lounge, Bella kissed him again and handing him a dry martini gestured to a large package tied up with a big red bow on the coffee table. “Your birthday present, my darling,” she said, “why don't you sit down to open it. I do hope that you will like it.”

Intrigued, he tore off the packaging and had his second surprise. Inside there was a blindfold, four lengths of silky rope, a feather, a pair of nipple clamps joined by a chain, and in a smaller package, a wireless controlled bullet vibrator.

“My my, you are a naughty lady,” he said, and chuckled, “it seems you have something rather different planned for later on, in fact the thought is so exciting that I am tempted to skip the meal and take you upstairs straight away. Just look at what you are doing to me,” and pointed to the rather obvious bulge in his trousers.

Bella just smiled and leaning forwards, she gently caressed his rapidly hardening cock. “O no, my darling Keithy,” she murmured, “you will have to wait for the rest of your present, “the anticipation will make it even more pleasant. Now finish your martini, and go and sit down at the table while I fetch your birthday dinner. The wine has been open for an hour, long enough to breathe, so it will be just right. You pour us a glass each and I will be right with you.”

A few minutes later he had his third surprise of this evening of surprises. He was sitting at the table sipping his wine, which really was as good as the price tag merited, when Bella came in with his dinner on a tray as she had promised, but she had removed her dress and was wearing just a black demi-cup basque that just revealed her dark red nipples and paler areolae, black stockings and semi-transparent black panties.

Keith really didn’t remember much of the dinner, distracted by the sight of his wife’s lovely breasts winking at him across the dinner table. After they had been eating for a few minutes he became aware of a stockinged foot feeling its way up his thighs to stroke his cock, which by now was tingling rather pleasantly, and he was sure was beginning to leak a little precum.

When they had finished their coffee Bella went over to the sideboard, giving him the delicious glimpse of her very enticing bottom, returning with a glass of his best single malt. “When you have finished your drink,” she said, “follow me upstairs. I will be waiting for you but don't be long, I am already so hot for you and I can't wait for you to have your wicked way with me.”

To be perfectly honest he didn't do justice to the whisky, downing it in one gulp, before racing up the stairs in a state of high arousal. Bella was lying stretched out on the bed dressed only in her panties and, already wearing the blindfold. “Tie me up, my darling,” she said, “I am yours all night to do with me whatever you will. I want you to ravish me like the slut that I am,” and she moaned in anticipation.

After twelve years of mainly unadventurous sex this unexpected side to his wife was a revelation, and it took Keith all his willpower not to rip off his clothes, pull down her panties, and plunge his throbbing cock hard into her wet pussy, but first of all he intended to take full advantage of her willing vulnerability.

As she had begged, he gently tied Bella's wrists and ankles to the bed frame leaving her spreadeagled and powerless. Leaving her panties on for the time being, he started to stroke her breasts with the feather, making her moan even more. When her nipples were hard and erect he kissed each of her ample breasts in turn, sucking her nipples until they were literally throbbing in his mouth. This was a new experience for him and he was really a novice at this kind of sex play, but taking his cue from the erotic stories that he had read he then bit each nipple hard, making her cry out, and fixing the nipple clamps in place, gave the chain a sharp tug which made her writhe with pleasure.

Next he turned his attention to her pussy, pulling her panties down to her knees to give him full access to her hidden treasures. She was already very wet, and her lips were purple and swollen like a fruit rich for the picking. He picked up the feather once more and with the very lightest of touches, began to run it up the inside of her thighs, and across her lips. The effect on her body was electrifying and he could see her excitement growing by the way she was pushing her hips up from the bed each time he touched her pussy.

The feeling of power over Bella’s body that this new experience gave him was utterly delicious, and his cock was so hard that the pressure against his trousers was almost painful. He really wanted to plunge his shaft deep into her velvety depths and ravage her there and then. However, Bella had made it clear that tonight was all about his pleasure — it was his birthday after all, so with an effort of will he restrained the impulse, knowing that the longer he prolonged the game, the more explosive would be his ultimate climax, and anyway he wanted to have some more naughty fun first.

He set the bullet vibrator on a low setting and started to stroke Bella's pussy, running up and down her lips but avoiding her clitoris for the time being. She began to pull against her restraints, writhing in a state of erotic intoxication and moaning as she ascended closer to the nirvana of her orgasm.

"Please,” she begged, “you are being so cruel,I want to cum so badly, please stop teasing me, and make me cum.”

He said nothing, but turned up the setting and pressed the bullet against her clitoris with one hand and slid two fingers into her hot slippery vagina to caress her g-spot. Bella began to cry out as waves of pleasure consumed her body and drove her over the edge into the sweet oblivion of her first climax. As she descended from the peak of orgasmic bliss, he slipped the bullet into her pulsing tunnel, and stepped back to remove his clothes. Kneeling between her parted thighs he set the control to the highest setting, and began to slide his shaft between her engorged lips and along the hard bud of her clitoris. This was enough to drive her over the edge again and she screamed at the top of her voice as another wave of ecstasy possessed her body.

He was about to pull the bullet out ready to thrust his throbbing manhood between her lips and deep into her velvety depths when he had his fourth, and ultimately most pleasurable surprise.

“Stop now darling,” Bella called out.

“Why,” he said, “is there something wrong, I thought you were having fun.”

“No, nothing is wrong,” she replied, “but it is my turn to tease you now, so release my restraints and lie on your back on the bed with your arms above your head and your legs spread.”

Perplexed, he did as she asked, and when he was in position she tied him in place and put the blindfold over his eyes and then just left him there with his aching cock pointing obscenely at the ceiling. There was silence for a few moment and then he thought he heard the bedroom door open followed by whispering and what he could swear was a giggle.

“What's going on?” he cried out in alarm, while his cock was rapidly beginning to deflate..

“Don't worry,” Bella crooned, “you are going to enjoy it, and I promise you are about to get the birthday present of your dreams.”

As she spoke two pairs of lips began to slide up and down his shaft making it harder than ever. This was something beyond his wildest imaginings, and it got even better when one pair of lips wrapped themselves around his cock and the other pair started to suck his balls. The sensations were exquisite and the first stirrings of his impending orgasm began to boil in his loins, but as he was about to reach the delicious point of no return his two torturers stopped abruptly and left him hanging helpless on the edge.

There was more whispering and then he felt a pair of naked thighs straddling his hips and another his head. The sweet tasting pussy that was pressed to his mouth was definitely Bella’s — he could feel the vibrations from the bullet in her vagina — but who was it that was riding his cock so expertly. But such questions were soon driven from his mind; the sensations in his throbbing member were more than exquisite and he was soon on the verge of ecstasy again. Later that night when he replayed the scene in his mind just before falling asleep he was at a loss for words to describe his climax; it was more like a volcanic eruption as he ejaculated stream after stream of hot cum deep inside the silky heart of the cunt massaging his shaft and milking every last drop until he was totally spent.

Both women came soon after, the contralto moans of his wife joining with the soprano cries of his mystery lover. Too soon the delicious moment was over, and he was left alone lying on the bed in blissful lethargy. He heard more whispering and giggles before the bedroom door opened and then shut, and Bella returned to the bed to release his constraints and remove the blindfold. “Happy birthday darling,” she murmured and then kissed him long and hard.

Later, as they lay cuddled naked in each other's arms under the duvet, Bella said sleepily, “I have one more surprise for you my precious husband, but you will have to wait until the morning.”

“Well, what is the other surprise you have for me my dear,” he asked as they sat over breakfast the next morning.

Bella didn't say anything, but opened the drawer to the kitchen table and took out a large envelope, which she handed to him with a smile. When he opened it he found a pair of return air tickets to Milan a month hence, and photographs of a small but exquisite villa tucked into a corner of the Giardino dell’isola Bella, surrounded by pine trees and overlooking the azure waters of the lake.

“That looks like a rather exclusive place,” he said, “not to mention expensive. Can we afford it?”

“Don’t worry my love,” she replied, “it belongs to a wealthy friend of my late father. He used to loan it to my father for the occasional weekend when there were clients he wished to impress. At the rear there is a small sunken marble pool, Roman I believe, overlooking the lake, surrounded by a pretty little colonnade. It is very romantic and intimate and I thought it would be ideal for a second honeymoon.”

Then she delivered a little bombshell. “There is room enough for three or four people in the villa, so I have asked your secretary Susan to join us. She has been rather lonely since her divorce last year and she has no children to fill her time.”

“You seem to know rather more about my secretary than I do,” he said.

“Oh yes darling,” she replied and laughed. “A prudent wife always makes sure she becomes friends with her husband's secretary, and his mistress if he has one. That way she always knows where he is, and preserves her marriage into the bargain. My mother was bosom friends with my father's mistress for many years, and when he died mamma sold the house which was much too large by then, and they moved in together.”

“You mean that Antonella was your father's mistress?” he queried, “I just thought she was an old family friend. I must say you are very sanguine about it.”

“We all got along famously with her,” Bella replied, “Italians are so much more open and civilised about sex than you British with your stiff upper lip. She used to join us every Christmas, and often came on family holidays — she was really good fun with us children and used to read us stories when we were small. And I think that her relationship with mamma was rather more than sisterly, but then why not, there is nothing wrong in two women looking after each other's needs as long as they are discreet about it.”

“I have another confession to make,” she continued after a brief pause, “before I met you I was bisexual and had several lovers of both sexes. I discovered my true nature whilst I was at university when a girlfriend and I shared a small apartment. After one particularly wild party we began to make out and somehow ended up totally naked in bed with each other. We slept in the same bed from then on, and sometimes shared each other’s boyfriends. However when I fell in love with you I put that all behind me and chose to become a good Italian wife and devote my life to making you happy.”

Over the next few days Keith did a lot of thinking about the night of his birthday and what Bella had told him the next day. It wasn’t that he was upset or disturbed by what had happened, quite the opposite in fact. He was, however, concerned that he had failed his beloved wife by selfishly assuming that she was content with their marital relationship when in reality she had denied her true sexual nature for his sake. However a door in his mind now seemed to have cracked open a little giving him a vision of a much more liberated and unconventional approach to sex and he knew that he wanted to push that door open fully to embrace the tantalising erotic joys that it offered. Although he still needed to fully come to terms with his newly awakened desires, he found Bella’s revelation of her bisexuality arousing and erotic visions of her making love to his secretary before inviting him to fuck both of them kept intruding on his thoughts.

It was even more peculiar when he returned to work on the Monday morning. What did one say to a woman who had been so expertly sucking one’s cock before riding him to the peak of mutual ecstasy? Did he admit that he knew that she was the second woman in their delicious threesome? Maybe he had misinterpreted what Bella had said and when he walked through the anteroom to his office there was nothing in Susan’s manner to indicate that his suspicions were correct. It was both deeply perplexing and potentially highly embarrassing.

It was only in hindsight that he finally realised that the two most important women in his life had been plotting his birthday for some time. In the meantime he was caught in a web of impotent hesitation not knowing how to proceed, although his cock threatened to give away his debauched visions every time Susan walked into his office. The two women were secretly highly amused by this and every evening whilst he was driving home would talk on the phone discussing his predicament — their conversation punctuated by much giggling — and plotting the next stage in their mutual sexual journey.

After nine days of exquisite torture it was Susan who finally broke the impasse. Coming into his office late on the Wednesday afternoon she closed the door and turning to him with a grave expression on her face said that there was something she needed to discuss. His heart sank.

“My husband was a bit of a bastard,” she said, still sounding very serious, “but he did have some uses and now that I’ve managed to kick him out of my life I find myself in a quandary.”

Keith was totally perplexed at this and had no idea where she was leading.

Susan continued, “I’m in desperate need of a handy man to fix lots of little problems around the house and I don’t know where to turn.”

Like a fly caught in a spider’s web, Keith fell headlong into the trap that had been so carefully laid.

“I could come round and have a look to see if there is anything that I can do about your problems,” he said.

“Oh that would be wonderful Dr Mason,” she replied, “would this Saturday be okay? In fact,” she said, drawing the noose tighter, “why don’t you and your wife come round for dinner on Friday evening and stay the night? That would give you all day on Saturday and we girls could get to know each other better while you’re working. Of course don’t forget to bring your tools and suitable clothing — some jobs could be rather messy.”

“I’ll have to ask Bella,” he replied, “and I’ll let you know tomorrow, but it sounds good as long as we don’t have anything on that I haven’t been told about.”

When he told Bella that evening her immediate response was effusively enthusiastic, suspiciously so in retrospect, “Of course you must help Susan — I mean Mrs McMillan — handymen are so difficult to find these days and charge the earth for even simple jobs; and women living on their own are so vulnerable. And it is such a good idea to start on Friday after work. You can have a look round and assess the various jobs whilst Susan is preparing dinner, that way you can get on straight away on Saturday morning. I’ll pack an overnight bag for you which you can put in the boot with your tools and overalls on Friday morning.”

Keith was a little perplexed by Bella’s last remark, “I thought I would be coming home first to pick you up.”

“Sorry darling,” she replied, “I have a meeting in London in Friday and I won’t get back until between seven and eight. You drive to Susan’s straight from work and I’ll catch a taxi. I’ll take everything I need with me in a small suitcase along with the papers for my meeting.”

To be continued