I had never had a hotel call to tell me they were willing to pay if I wanted to switch my reservation to a competitor. It happened about four months ago. A lady named Melissa called and said that, due to a major booking, they were offering to find new rooms at nearby hotels for people who had already booked a room on our weekend. “There’s a Hyatt just a mile away that we can book for you on these dates, sir.” That was surprising. The Providence House was a charming (if a little dated) old hotel well away from the glittering downtown Hyatt. Any other time, I would have jumped at the upgrade.
“Do I have to?” I asked. “We always book 307 on this weekend. It’s our anniversary and we’ve spent the last twelve anniversaries in Room 307 at the Providence House. I made the reservation last year!”
“We don’t want to inconvenience you, especially since you come back every year, but we’re calling as a courtesy…” and here she seemed uncertain. “On account of this large booking, sir. The whole hotel will be full of folks for this…booking.”
Neither of us said anything for a second.
“Is it like a convention?” That seemed unlikely; there couldn’t have been more than forty rooms in the place.
“Of a sort, yes.”
I wasn’t born yesterday. I grinned into the phone. “Is it like swingers or something?”
I chuckled a little when she said, “Umm, I don’t think I’m supposed to say but it is ‘adult-oriented’.”
I could hear the air-quotes.
I told her we’d take our chances.
( . )( . )
Somehow, I ‘forgot’ to mention the call to Julia.
( . )( . )
My imagination had run wild the last few months. I hadn’t dwelled much on how the big reveal would go down, but, fueled by an increasingly steady diet of videos and stories, I had pictured a few dozen scenarios in which the two of us found ourselves at the center of a writhing pile of thrusting, sucking, moaning naked people. But as we boarded the plane, I began to seriously grapple with how to confess my foreknowledge to Julia.
We had looked into some kinky stuff before. We tried bondage but I can barely tie my own tie right so we gradually lost interest. We had also gone to a “fetish fair” a couple of hours away from where we lived and bought a heavy flogger. She liked that. For the first few months after we bought it, Julia wanted us to take turns using it at least a couple of times a week. After a while, I became a little ambivalent about it and now it had settled to the bottom of our “sex-chest” with all the forgotten sex toys.
And we had fantasized about group sex many times. Usually, I brought up a variation of a scenario where a guy hit on Julia at some bar and we ended up taking him back to our hotel. Julia’s versions were always more exotic, taking place on trains in Europe or while sheltering from a snowstorm.
But never had I ever whispered to Julia, “Hey, we’re in a hotel where every other person is a swinger. Want to ask if we can join in?”
While she slept in the window seat overlooking the wing with her head on my shoulder, I remembered her social anxiety. And her dislike of surprises. I started to sweat and felt cramps beginning to augur in my intestines.
( . )( . )
In all the weeks of fantasizing about this day, I often imagined that the lobby of The Providence House would be crowded with obvious swingers. Whether that meant women in corsets and men in ass-less leather chaps or just lots of cleavage and gold chains, I didn’t know. But I was sure I would recognize it when I saw it.
And I was sure Julia would immediately sense the sexual energy in the air (and hopefully think “This could be fun”).
But on the drive from the airport, Julia looked concerned. “Are you OK? You’re so pale and you’re really sweaty.”
In truth, I was feeling pretty bad. I could now add nausea to the cramping. ‘My conscience is so vindictive,' I thought. “I’m fine,” I said. “I probably just need some Immodium or GasX or something. I’ll be fine by dinner.”
But when we parked and I opened the trunk of the rental car to get the bags, I nearly fainted. It felt like someone had stabbed me in the abdomen. Julia saw me stagger and immediately came to my side. She was talking fast, but I don’t remember much of it. I turned and sat on the edge of the open trunk compartment, gripping her with one hand and my right side with the other. Another couple had pulled into the lot a second after we had and they approached with very worried expressions. I remember thinking, “This couple is dressed like tourists, not swingers.”
Someone said something about an ambulance.
( . )( . )
I won’t bore you with the details of my appendectomy. Surprisingly (at least to me), I was released from the hospital that evening. I was well-medicated and didn’t feel much pain. But I was pretty unsteady on my feet so Julia pulled into the carport of the hotel and helped me into the lobby. She had apparently talked to the hotel on the phone while I was in surgery and let them know we would need some assistance. When we came into the lobby, the woman came out from behind the desk and helped me to take a seat on the nearest couch while a couple of guys (neither wearing ass-less chaps) rushed out to help Julia with the bags. Although it was late, I could see that the little hotel bar was pretty crowded and the lobby was unusually noisy, but I was feeling a little loopy from the pain meds and just wanted to stretch out on a soft bed and sleep. In a few minutes, Julia was back from parking the car and had the room keys in her hand. It was obvious that she couldn’t assist me and handle the baggage, so one of the guys who helped her bring in the bags from the car rode with us in the elevator to the third floor. I barely noticed. I leaned against the wall outside 307 while Julia fumbled with the key swipe. When the door opened, I stumbled in and made a beeline for the bed. I heard the man who had helped us say good luck to Julia before she shut the door.
I remember flashes of the TV and Julia reminding me to drink water, but the rest of that night was sort of a haze.
Apparently, I slept through all the noise of the headboard thumping loudly on the other side of our wall until shortly before dawn.
( . )( . )
I woke up to Julia opening the blinds to the bright morning sun. I groaned. Compared to the experience of the day before, I hesitated to call what I was feeling “pain,” but I was not feeling “good” either. My abdomen and shoulder were very sore. In fact, my whole body was aching as if I had fallen off a porch the night before. “You have to get up and walk,” Julia said and started to help me put on a shirt. “The nurse said you should walk as much as you can bear today and tomorrow. Let’s go downstairs and get breakfast.”
For the first time in almost twenty-four hours, it hit me: Does she know the place is full of swingers? As if reading my mind, Julia started to tell me about the neighbors’ antics the night before. The hours of headboard-thumping, the cries of ecstasy, the loud voices in the hall at all hours of the night. Apparently, she had gone down the hall for ice at about 11:30 the night before and not one, but three doors were partially open, with people either having sex on the beds, or standing around watching.
“You would have loved it,” she said. “But, seriously, this place has changed.”
My brain wanted me to play dumb but my mouth wasn’t taking advice.
“It’s a hotel takeover,” I said. It came out a little faster than I intended. She cocked her head. “The, umm, hotel is, uh, full of swingers for the weekend. I was, uh, going to tell you…umm, yesterday. But then the thing…happened.”
I could see that she was weighing the instructions the nurse had given for my recovery against the strong urge to dope-slap me. “Did you sign us up for something?”
“No!” I tried to put my hand on her arm but she pulled away. “I mean, I knew it was happening, but I didn’t reach out to anyone. I thought if you were into it, you know…. But if you’re not, we can ignore them.”
“Well,” she said. Her lips were very tight. “If I understand this right, you planned to surprise me with the news that we were spending our twentieth anniversary in a hotel full of swingers but you forgot because you got a sudden bout of appendicitis and we had to spend all day and night at the hospital. Is that the only thing that went wrong with your plan?”
I looked at my shoes against the closet door. “Do you think you can help me put my shoes on?” I asked.
“You can go to breakfast in your socks,” she said and got up to walk to the door.
( . )( . )
It didn’t help that the breakfast lounge was packed when we got downstairs. It’s not a huge lounge, so ten people is a crowd. There were twice that many people and they spilled out into the lobby filling the couches and armchairs. We paused at the doorway and I was about to suggest we try to leave the hotel and find a diner, but almost all eyes turned to us. A few people pointed. Apparently, the ambulance yesterday had made for a splashy entrance.
Before we knew it, several people had gathered up their styrofoam cups and plates and were offering us their seats. Even though she was furious, Julia is a Midwesterner and would sooner eat a spider than make a scene. In just a second, we were seated at a table that had already been pushed together with another. There were three women and a man at the table and several others hovering.
A man set down two styrofoam cups of coffee in front of us and deposited a handful of creamers and sweeteners. “I’m Rick,” he said. “I helped you with your bags last night,” he added. He was also one of the two who had given us their seat at this table.
In a flash, the table in front of us was crowded with bagels, fruit, yogurt cups, and glasses of juice. The entire continental breakfast was being transported to our table. Even Julia, still considering ways to strangle me, was touched by their concern and desire to be helpful. They were wonderfully kind people. I alternated between feeling like a king and a bug.
Did I mention that two of the middle-aged women at our table were topless?
“I take it you’re the holdouts,” one of the women, who had introduced herself as Jenny, asked. She looked a little like Geena Davis, a thought that would have excited me a day earlier on account of Julia having a huge crush on Davis. I pushed that thought away. “We normally hold this, erm, event at a bigger hotel but they are renovating so we tried to buy out this place. The management said one couple couldn't change because they had a special occasion…” she trailed off.
Julia speared a piece of cantaloupe with her black plastic fork and lifted it a few inches over her plate. She kept her eyes on her coffee. “We usually spend our anniversary here,” she said. “My husband,” and here she pushed the cube of cantaloupe into her mouth and chewed it thoughtfully, “before he nearly died from a burst appendix…” She swallowed and smiled at the little crowd. “You’re all very sweet. I’m truly touched. But my husband did not tell me we were spending our anniversary weekend at a swinger party, so...”
The room was silent. I was trying not to look at Jenny’s boobs. I felt I had to say something.
“My appendix didn’t actually burst,” I offered. “They were able to get it out…lacka…daisically…” I trailed off.
“I think you mean ‘laparoscopically’,” Rick offered. I shot him a look of gratitude for the assist.
“In hindsight,” Julia speared a grape with her fork. “I should have asked them to use a steak knife.”
Almost everyone laughed at that.
As it happened, several of the folks there made an effort to make our stay as comfortable as it could be. By the time we were leaving the breakfast lounge, the topless Jenny and Sarah, together with John and Hannah (all of whom had shared our table) and the ever-helpful Rick had offered to help in any they could. Knowing that I was not in any shape for another car ride, they offered to go get drinks and snacks for the hotel fridge or to sit with me while Julia went to fill my prescriptions. Julia refused all offers but was visibly moved by the effort they were making. We agreed to ask if we needed anything and then headed back up to the room.
“That was so nice,” I said when the elevator doors closed.
Julia punched the button for three with her index finger. “Just shut up.”
( . )( . )
She was in a slightly better mood when she returned from the local grocery store with my meds and a bag or two of snacks, drinks, and a big bottle of wine. She had also gone through the small selection of paperbacks and picked out one that was…unrepugnant. “It is a beautiful day, out there,” she said.
On cue, there was a knock at the door. Julia rushed over and opened it and in came Jenny while John, Hannah, and Rick stood in the doorway. They were fully clothed. “We’re heading out to shop and see some sights,” Jenny offered. “We just wanted to know if we can bring you back anything?”
“You’re so sweet,” Julia said. “I just got back from the store. I think I’ll read today and walk him around the halls from time to time. But have fun shopping. I love the shops downtown. Oh, and if you haven’t gone before, you should check out the botanical gardens.”
That changed everything. It turns out Jenny and Hannah were both gardeners. Julia is a Master Gardener back home, so she was in her bliss as she described the gardens to the little crowd.
Jenny had an idea. “You know, we know everyone in the hotel. And, like it or not, they all know you now. Why don’t you come shopping with us and show us the gardens? If he needs you, he can call and we’ll rush back. We can leave the door open and ask the others to check in on him while we’re out?”
Julia resisted at first, but the others thought it was a great idea. After a few minutes, she turned to me. “Do you think you’ll be OK by yourself for a few hours?”
I was so relieved that she, at least, was not going to spend a beautiful day watching hotel cable and hobbling up and down the hall. “Please go with them,” I said. “I’ll be fine and, in fact, I’ll feel a lot better about everything if you can salvage some of this weekend.”
Twenty minutes later, she had changed into a sundress, arranged my medicine and snacks on the nightstand, and left to meet the gang in the lobby. She left the door open.
( . )( . )
It was after six when she came back. I was dozing while Jeopardy played on the TV and opened my eyes to see Julia sitting on the bed, stroking my hair. “How are you feeling?” she asked…very gently. Clearly, she had had a good day out with her new friends.
“I’m fine. How was it?”
She had had a great time. She showed me two tops she had bought and talked about the botanical gardens. Apparently, they had loved the place so much they had lunch there, and a few glasses of wine. She now knew all about Jenny and John, and Hannah and Rick, and another couple, Steve and Wendy, who had joined them at the last second. “You remember them from yesterday,” Julia said. “They were the ones who helped us in the parking lot.”
I didn’t.
“Anyway, you must be hungry. A bunch of them are having a cookout in the park across the street and I thought you could use the walk. Did you walk at all today?”
“Yes, several times.” It was a lie. Unless walking ten feet to the bathroom and back counted.
“Good. Get dressed.” She rummaged through her suitcase and took a handful of clothes to the bathroom. “They’re already heading over.”
( . )( . )
We walked over to the park to find around twenty people arrayed around one of those fixed park grills and two picnic tables crowded with food and coolers. Since this was a public park, everyone (including Julia) was drinking from red Solo cups in case the cops came through. Some of them made an effort to offer me their chairs, but I had to decline, preferring to stand, as getting out of chairs was still uncomfortable.
It was like Julia had known these people all her life. She had a cup full of wine and she joined the couples she had spent the day with and was quickly introduced to almost everyone there. I was too. In fact, many of them went out of their way to keep my cup of water topped off and to offer me plates of food. Everyone who couldn’t tell me about having their own appendix out told me about their cousin or neighbor who had had theirs out.
But Julia was getting a different sort of attention. I noticed that she was wearing one of her new tops: a sort of silky maroon-colored thing that showed off a lot of cleavage. Everyone she talked to, men and women alike, stared openly at her large breasts. An hour or so in, Jenny, who had already downed a large cup of…whatever…actually bumped her hip suggestively against Julia’s and, with her eyes fixed on Julia’s tits, said, “I just can’t take my eyes off those, Julia.”
Julia blushed but I couldn’t hear her reply.
Rick, as ever, was standing right next to me and saw and heard the same thing. “I guess after your…procedure, you’re out of…action, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said, miserably. “No exertion for a couple of weeks.”
Rick dug his toe in the dirt and took a sip of whatever from his solo cup. “It’s going to be a long night. Did you bring headphones?”
Julia was pretty lit as we headed back across the street to the hotel with several of the partiers. I was trailing the group by a few steps, Hannah and Rick on either side of me. They were talking about something but I was fixated on Julia. In the three hundred yards between the picnic table and the parking lot, she touched the arm, shoulder, or back of Jenny and John at least a dozen times. I was incredibly turned on. Wretchedly turned on.
Back at the room. Julia closed the door behind her, helped me change my little wound dressing, and went into the bathroom to change again. She left the door partly open as I stretched out on the mattress with a barely suppressed groan. “What are your plans tonight?” I asked.
She laughed. She knew what I was thinking. “Don’t be silly. My plan is to stay right here. Maybe we can find a good movie on TV.” I could hear her rummaging in her toiletry bag.
“We don’t have to,” I said. “There’s a party and lots of cool people. We could…mingle.”
More rummaging. “I think that cookout was about as much excitement as you can handle tonight,” she answered. I could tell by her voice that she was concentrating on something. “If we can’t find anything on TV, I’ll read and you can play on your iPad.”
After a few minutes, she came out of the bathroom and sat in the chair beside the bed. She picked up the remote. “How do I get to the menu channel?”
Her makeup was perfect.
( . )( . )
By 9 PM, the voices in the hallway were getting pretty loud. By nine-thirty, the headboard in the next room over was banging against our wall. I was hard as a rock. Julia seemed to be engrossed in the HGTV show that was droning on the TV. But when a commercial came on, she looked around the room.
“Do you want some ice for your water?” she asked and walked over to the dresser and the nearly empty ice bucket.
I was grinning inside. “Sure,” I said. “Can you check the machine to see if there are any potato chips?”
“You got it,” she said. She refilled her wineglass, grabbed the bucket and stuffed a few dollar bills in her hip pocket for the vending machine. She stopped in front of the full-length mirror and adjusted her top so her cleavage was perfect. “Back in a few minutes.”
On the TV, some very corny people were talking about flipping a house. Then Property Brothers came on. Julia is insanely horny for the Property Brothers, but she missed the whole show. It was ten minutes into another numbing house-flipping show when I heard a key card fumbling at the door. It took several seconds before the door opened. Julia came in with a bag of chips and her empty wine glasses. No ice bucket.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Her eyes were a little glassy and her face was flushed. “I got to talking to Jenny and Rick and the others and forgot to bring your chips. Her lipstick was smeared a little.
“It’s OK,” I pretended to yawn. “I actually dozed off for a bit. I think I’ll go to sleep.”
She came to the bedside and smoothed my hair. She swayed just a little. “You get some sleep, honey,” she said. “I must have forgotten your ice bucket. I’ll be back in a minute.” She stopped at the mini-fridge and refilled her wine cup and went back into the hallway.
The house-flipping show ended and a second Property Brothers came on. I decided to go for a walk. I got up slowly and took a deep breath. As I reached for the door, I was, weirdly, embarrassed that I hadn’t been able to put my shoes on. I needn’t have been. I opened the door to see that the door to the room across the hall was wide open. A man in his thirties, at the most, was leaning against the dresser with his pants around his ankles while a woman in her fifties was on her knees, taking his whole cock in her mouth. There were several other people in the room. The bed was not visible through the door, but I could tell there were several people on it. In a hallway with just sixteen doors, almost half of them were open. I started to walk down the hall, pausing to look into the open rooms. In one room, a woman was seated in the soft armchair while another woman (Hannah?) kneeled between her legs. John was standing beside the chair, stroking his cock.
In the room that shared a wall with us, there was a good crowd of people. Two women who I had not met were on the bed while several men took turns fucking them or having their cocks sucked. Several other women and men stood around eating snacks and chatting.
My dick was hard. Bitterly hard. I kept going up the hall until I came to the little chamber with the ice and vending machines. A guy about my age who had been introduced to me in the park as Tim was leaning back against the soda machine while another guy (whose name I didn’t remember but whose dad had apparently had his appendix out by a ship’s surgeon while on a cruise two years earlier) was on his knees stroking Tim’s cock while he flicked the end with his tongue.
I turned and walked slowly back the way I had come, pausing to take in the sights again at each of the doors I had passed.
I passed our room and continued to the other end of the hall. At room 301, there was an ice bucket sitting beside the half-open door. I paused for just a second before I pushed it open and stepped into the room. Steve and Wendy were standing by the window watching whoever was on the bed. They looked at me and smiled.
I took another step and I could see Rick’s back and bare ass as he was slamming himself against a woman’s round ass. The woman he was fucking had her face buried in Jenny’s pussy and was moaning loudly. I recognized the small birthmark on Julia’s right butt cheek. My intestines slithered inside me even as I felt a stirring in my balls. This must have been how Eve felt when she swallowed that first bite of fruit. Sickening. Delicious.
I moved around the bed until I was standing next to Steve and Wendy. Julia was groaning as Rick looked at me and grinned. He began to slam her even more furiously and she was sucking and lapping at Jenny’s pussy. I was mesmerized.
I didn’t know where to focus my gaze. Her butt cheeks shook from the pounding Rick was giving her. That was new. But the look of hunger on her face as she eagerly lapped at Jenny was equally intoxicating. Jenny had one hand on the back of Julia’s head, grinding her pussy on her face, while she was sucking the cock of some guy I hadn’t met yet. She caught my eye and winked.
Steve elbowed me and I looked down to see that he had dropped his pants and was stroking his dick. It was long and very thick and heavily veined. “She promised I’m next,” he said.
Julia was gripping the bed sheets and turned her head to face me. Her face was slick with Jenny’s juices. She squeezed her eyes shut and let out another loud groan and I could see her whole body shudder.
Rick pulled out and shot his load onto her ass. Julia gave me a sex-drunk smile and turned back to Jenny’s pussy while she reached her left arm back and rubbed his cum into her butt cheek.
Almost as soon as Rick stepped away, Steve took his place. He placed his huge cock against her opening, then, while Julia moaned around her mouthful of Jenny and clenched the bedsheets again, he slowly pushed it into her, pausing to back out and then in a little further.
Julia shuddered and held herself as still as she could as he began to pick up the pace. Soon he was plunging all the way in, his big balls slapping against her clit, then pulling almost all the way out, only to plunge to the hilt again. She began to match his rhythm and the headboard began to bang noisily against the wall.
In all, I watched three men fuck Julia, and she sucked another two off before I could feel the pain meds wearing off. My cock and balls were aching. But, by far, the most uncomfortable thing was making small talk with people waiting to fuck my wife. Eventually, Julia moved off the bed and leaned against the dresser. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to live out your plan,” she said. “It really was a dumb plan,” she added and took a sip from a water bottle.
I leaned forward and kissed her slowly, letting our tongues brush each other's lips. “It was brilliant,” I said. “A fucking brilliant plan. But I have to go back to bed. Now.”
“I’ll get my clothes and be there in a minute,” she said. “Leave the door open. I lost my key card.”
I hobbled back down the hall, swallowed a couple of pills, turned out the light and made sure the door was slightly open. The neighbor’s headboard was thumping on the wall. I could hear laughter, loud voices, and (more faintly) moaning from the hallway. Very gingerly, I began to stroke my cock.
After about ten minutes, the door opened and closed. I heard Julia grunt as she stumbled on one of my shoes. “Shh,” she said. Then, “Scoot over a bit.” It was painful to shift my body to the middle of the bed, but I did as I was told. Julia climbed into bed on my left.
Then ‘Julia’ climbed into bed on my right.
“What’s…?”
“Shh,” Julia whispered in my right ear as someone’s hand grasped the base of my cock from the left side. I felt hair brush across my belly, then lips touched the tip of my aching cock.
Julia whispered, “The doctors said no exertion for you, so we want you to lie very, very still.”
