Denouement free porn video

I'm finding it hard to begin this last chapter, the road to my story's conclusion such a crooked path to retread. 

I'll start with the day after Karen and Milly finally got it together. 

As soon as we had waved Milly off at the station, I decided enough was enough. I wanted no more to do with her. But to erase her from my mind, my life, there could be no more of those hedonistic weekends in our favourite haunts. I would have to isolate myself from our social clique, acquaintances and friends. It had to happen immediately — for my sanity's sake.

The previous year, Karen and I had relocated to Lancashire because of my work. The upheaval had left me homesick, so it was easy to convince Karen my utter unhappiness was still down to the move.

To get me through the coming weeks I needed a diversion. I decided sex with a new partner would be just the thing to cure me of the virus called Milly. Because let there be no mistake, that is precisely what the girl had become: a vicious little emotional-malady. She had contaminated not only myself but had also infected others with her love-witch coquetry. But more of that later.

And so I suggested to Karen that we might place an advert in one of the swinging magazines, one of the many I had purchased over the years. Or maybe we could reply to someone else's ad. Either way, she agreed it might be fun.

In the end, we decided responding to an ad would be much quicker than placing one ourselves. It would take nearly a month for one to go live and for us to receive any replies. Until then, we'd never taken our fantasy of meeting strangers for sex any further than using it as an erotic fuse to ignite our sex-life.

My preference was to have a threesome with a girl of a similar age to Karen. But that was a tough call. Middle-aged couples and single blokes were the order of the day back then. But more to the point, Karen wasn't keen on the idea of a girl, said she was no longer fussed now she had experienced sex with Milly. 

"Does that mean you've got those sapphic yearnings you used to tell me about out of your system?" I asked her.

"Pretty much," she replied. "I only considered it in the first place because it turned you on. Then, after a while, I wanted to try it just to see what it would be like. And now, I know."

"You seemed to be enjoying yourself when I watched you with Milly."

"I love Milly dearly — like a kid sister," Karen said, then continued, "And don't get me wrong, I enjoyed being with her like that." She became silent, and I could see her thinking. "Yeah, being naked with her was lovely, touching and kissing her was too. But it was only nice in the same way having a cat on your knee and stroking it is nice. A girl will never excite me like being with a man does."

"You seemed pretty excited when she made you cum."

"They have machines that can make a girl cum, Luca."

And so a couple it had to be. Alec and Sarah.

They'd sent us photos; draped and undraped, as they used to say back in the day. Alec was worryingly handsome. At over six foot and built like a rugby scrum-half, Karen creamed her panties when she first laid eyes on his photos. "He'll do nicely," she said, her eyes bright as brass buttons at the sight of his cock-shot, the instant deal-closer.

His wife Sarah was quite petite. About five-two. Same as Karen but more waif-like. When I saw the couple pictured side by side, saw how his bulk emphasised her slightness, I wondered how she ever endured his lovemaking. I imagined him being quite the brute in bed — him an overgrown boy, her his fragile toy. I remember thinking: God, do I really want a guy like him fucking my wife! But Karen was keen and talked me round. And I also came to see Sarah's petiteness as precisely what I needed: a counterpoint to Milly's sturdy-girl curvaceousness. 

Travel or accommodate? We decided they should come to us. And after the fiasco of our group fuck on holiday with Karl and Milly, this time we would make sure each couple would go to separate rooms.

Before our guests arrived, we were both more nervous then I could ever have imagined. It was strange watching my wife prepare herself for another man, a stranger, a brute of a man like Alec. She spent an hour on herself, continually changing this or that item of clothing, underwear, even jewellery. 

It all seemed so clinical. Choose a couple and ask them over, then fuck the night away. But we made the pretence of a typical social occasion, laid on nibbles, beer and wine. By now, I was free of my cannabis habit and would remain so in perpetuity.

Within the first ten minutes of their arrival, I could see Alec and Sarah were pleased with us — just as we were pleased with them. At first, we chatted easily about whatever was topical at the time. Perhaps The Olympics in Moscow, or how the miners were threatening to strike for more pay and how Margaret Thatcher would handle things if they did. Stuff like that. I can no longer recall the details. 

But I do remember how the talk soon turned to sex. It was the couple's first time, and Sarah told us how nervous they both were while driving up the M53, though they hardly seemed it now. It was Sarah who, sitting by Karen on the sofa, asked her about our past experiences. Karen replied matter of factly, told her how we had fooled around Gemma and Malcolm, how they had been friends, and then more than just friends, which had all happened over three years ago by then. She said nothing about Karl and Milly.

Sitting on the armchair across from the girls, Alec asked, "Have you ever been with a girl, Karen?" There had been no mention of girl on girl in their ad, nor in the letters we exchanged.

The question took Karn by surprise, and she wavered for a moment.

Sarah turned to her husband and said, "Alec! You're embarrassing her."

"No, it's okay, Sarah," Karen said. "I do have a friend who I've — you know?" Then turning to Alec, "That thing you asked me about." 

"Did you guys have a threesome?" Sarah asked, hardly able to bridle her eagerness to hear more.

Karen looked at me, then back to Sarah. "Luca wishes!" Then she was thoughtful again before saying, "It's complicated, Sarah." And then she looked at me again, and I just looked back at her as if to say, whatever has happened between you and Milly is none of my business. 

"I don't know if I want to talk about it," Karen eventually said. "It's quite a private thing." She adjusted herself, turned to look at Sarah while bringing her knee up at an angle on to the sofa, the hem of her dress riding up to show an expanse of her bare inner thigh. 

And then I saw it happen between Karen and Sarah, that same wild excitement I had once seen surging between her and Milly.

 "Oh, that's a shame," Sarah said quietly without any hint of disappointment, now knowing stories were no longer needed.

"I wasn't going to do this again," Karen said."

"Do what?" Sarah asked, her eyes daring Karen to say it.

"Kiss a beautiful girl."

"What's changed your mind?" 

"You have, Sarah."

The pair leaned into each other and began to kiss. No part of either girl except their lips made contact with the other. I looked over to Alec, but he was already on his feet and heading for the sofa. I watched in resigned silence as he gently coaxed Karen to move closer to his wife so he could sit beside her. The whole manoeuvre took less than a few seconds. My wife was captured and about to be ravished, Or so I feared in those opening moments.

I let the couple share Karen for a while, Sarah kissing her and then releasing her so Alec could enjoy her lips too. It went on like that for a few minutes. Karen's head coaxed this way and that, her lips alternatively invaded by his and then her tongue. The three of them kissed and kissed as Sarah tentatively cupped Karen's breast through her clothes while her husband's hand stroked her bare thigh.

This impromptu threesome was not what Karen and I had planned. We had both agreed to take our respective partner to a separate bedroom. Now old insecurities began to rise. I was feeling left out, and so I went over and kneeled on the floor at Sarah's feet. She had turned slightly sideways to face Karen, and I began to stroke her outer thigh just above the knee, letting my fingers slide lightly back and forth over the nylon that sheathed her leg. Touching a new lover sexually for the first time is, for me, the sublimest of moments. When my hand encoached higher, I was delighted to find stocking-tops and suspenders. It was a novelty back then when tights were the order of the day. 

 When it was Sarah's turn to pass Karen over to her husband, she abandoned their little threeway and eased herself down on to the floor beside me. For a moment, we kneeled on the hearth rug facing each other, both our eyes anticipating what would come next.

"Did you enjoy kissing my wife?" I asked her.

"Oooh, yes, I did. Now I want to see how you compare."

Sarah leaned forward and slipped her tongue between my lips. Even though kissing Karen had aroused her, I sensed how sex with a woman was not the reason she was visiting us. A man was what she wanted, and there was no mistaking it. 

She had a playfulness about her that even the intensity of her sexual arousal did not dispel. Many times she would break off from our kissing to look me in the eyes and smile. It was as if she hardly believed what was happening between us, almost incredulous it was a good-looking trendy young guy and his equally beautiful wife who had responded to her and Alec's magazine small ad.

And for my part, I found her utterly delicious. Her skin was all summer-fortnight-tan, so different from Milly's Snow Queen alabaster wan. The lithe eagerness of her lips informed me that all she wanted at that moment was to please me. A girl like Sarah was just what I needed. 

I whispered that we should go upstairs, stood up and gave her my hand and hauled her onto her feet. Before we left the room, I took a last glance at Karen and Alec. He was still clothed, Karen now naked, his mass obscuring her body. Only her pale knees emerged from under him to flank either side of his hips, while her arms were pale ribbons of flesh cast around him, her hands resting flat against his back. I wondered if his cock was proportionate to the rest of him. I thought about how Karen would soon be enjoying the kind of pussy pounding she loved so much.

Upstairs, I did not undress Sarah. I was so eager to be naked with her that I undressed myself in a frenzy. Naked, I stretched out on top of the duvet from where I watched her slowly remove her final few things. Her breasts were small and perfectly formed, had the taught liveliness of a younger girl. Her hips were quite boyish, only her suspenders, stockings and heels spoiling the illusion of a young athlete, a girl who had spent long hours of her on pommel-horse and bars.     

"Should I leave these on?" she asked, standing at the bedside looking down at her stockinged legs, feet still in their heels.

"If you don't mind."

"Why should I mind? I'm wearing them for you. Do they really turn you on?"

"What do you think?" I asked as I lifted my engorged cock from where it rested heavy and vertical over my abdomen. I raised it to ninety degrees, made it a centre-pole for the bonfire of passion that we would soon set alight. "But not as much as you," I said, slowly wanking my cock, drawing the fore-skin way back.

When Sarah eased herself down beside me, she took my cock in her palm and gently squeezed to get a measure of its circumference and density, did it in that thoughtful way many women adopt when they first find they have a new hard cock to enjoy.

"And this will do nicely," she said before going down to take the better part of it between her lips. 

If truth be told, I'm not a great lover of receiving fellatio. I know: weird, huh? I much prefer to dump my load in a woman's pussy. But I let Sarah have her minutes of oral exploration. She licked me from balls to tip, slowly and skillfully, moaning her pleasure to enhance my pleasure as she worked on me. It was her way of letting me know how much she liked my cock. And I thought perhaps Alec could not be that big after all.

And then my head was between her legs, both hands sent around her hips to gather up the flesh of her rump, my palms spilling with heaps of her buttock-flesh. I squeezed and plumped until even her minimal flesh became corpulent, then drawing it down until it bunched all squidgy against my throat, the press of her arse-fissure giving ground to my chin, absorbing much of it as I licked her to completion.

When her orgasm washed over her, she sent her fingers nails to find my scalp, twisting the strands of my longish hair into knots until her ecstasy passed and gently rolled away.

I love it when a woman's body begins to unwind after her orgasm. That is the point at which I prefer to enter her, allowing her no time to reclaim her breath.

And then I was fucking Sarah like I wanted to fuck Milly, as a punishment met out for the months of longing she had put me through. It became a vicious, unrelenting pounding. I closed my eyes, and the centre of my universe became Sarah's cunt — her cunt as Milly's cunt. And then I knew I was not the inadequate sexual worm I had begun to think of myself as being. At that moment, I was no longer the pitiful shipwreck Milly had made me.

But Sarah did not cry out or beg me to slow. Her knees came back, her strappy-shoed ankles hard in the small of my back urged me to fuck her harder, faster, deeper. Her arms came reaching up for my head, demanding I meet her gaze. And when I did, I saw astonishment in her eyes, almost a glee from imagining she alone had aroused in me such frenzy. She pulled my face down to hers so that I could kiss her while I fucked her. And when our lips met, I found between them all the passion I had stoked in her fed back to me, a circuit of giving and taking surging between our mouths. And not just our mouths: our sexual organs, limbs and bodies too.

I think she came again just as I emptied my cock into her. But there again, maybe she didn't. How was I to know? I was lost to myself in orgasm, plummeting and tumbling to freedom from thoughts Of Milly. When I was done and lay by her side, I realised fucking Sarah had cured of the gnawing dis-ease of her.

                                                *****

The only people from our old clique that we chose to stay in contact with during those months of self-imposed isolation were Karen's older sister Maggie and her husband, Dave. I have not mentioned Dave before, but he was my closest friend of the time. I regarded him as a brother — not just in-law. When they visited, the four of us would go into Manchester and do the pubs and clubs, sometimes have a meal out beforehand. 

One night in early August, Dave dropped his bombshell. We were in some Manchester club. Maggie and Karen had gone off to dance.

"Things are not too good between Maggie and me at the moment," he volunteered out of the blue.

Even though he and I had not previously discussed the state of his marriage, it was hardly breaking news. I'd lost count of how many of our nights with the couple had ended with the pair rowing. Maggie wanted a baby, and for them to kick their hedonistic lifestyle and settle down.

 Dave would not commit. And so Maggie would get drunk, and then back at home — ours or theirs — she would harang him mercilessly. He would just soak it up and tell her he loved her, which would drive her even more crazy. And then Karen would try to rationalise with her, and there would be tears. Eventually, Maggie would cease making sense, her words increasingly incomprehensible. Finally, she would pass out drunk in her chair, and we would help her up to bed. It became a ritual I dreaded. Karen and I thought it was a storm they would weather, and we tried to ride it out with them hoping it would pass and they would become the people we loved. 

"Worse than usual?" I asked.

"Much."

"So tell me then."

"It's Milly," he said, then paused as if waiting for my response. But when I just stared, he blurted out, " I think I'm falling in love with her." 

"You mean our Milly — Karl's Wife?"

"I don't know any other Millys. So yeah: 'Our Milly'. She and I kissed a few weeks ago, and now I can't get her out of my head."

"Jeez! Dave. She's just a kid; You're ten years older than her." I began to catalogue the reasons Dave and Milly were wrong for each other. "And she's married, for Christ's sake. And just think about Maggie. If ever she finds out what you've—"

"—I know. I know!"

"Have you and her . . . ?" I tried desperately to keep my tone laddish, feigned salacious interest to cover my raging jealousy.

"That's the problem: no, we haven't."

And even though I had vowed to give Milly up, now knowing that back in our old home town she and Dave were having this charade of an affair, it made me want to stand up and punch him. I sat looking at him, his hopelessness as plain as day on his face, a mirror image of my Milly induced emotional wreckage.

Learning about Dave and Milly made me realise I had not quite exercised her ghost.

                                         ****

A few weeks later. Maggie's twenty-seventh birthday party in their home. I did not want to attend but there was no way out. That's not entirely true. A masochistic part of me wanted to see Dave crawl over broken glass to the feet of young Milly. 

On the night I was sitting with Karl, Chrissy and Steve in the lounge when all of a sudden I could hear Maggie's shouting, her voice shrill with rage. The room became hushed, cowed into an embarrassed a silence, quickly broken by me:

 "Maggie and Dave must be doing their Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf routine again."

No one laughed. Then the kitchen door burst open, and Milly dashed into the living room followed by Maggie waving a bread knife wildly in her hand. I stood up, prepared to take it from her if need be. In her rage, she screamed at Karl, "Get that fucking whore-of-a-wife-of-yours out of my house before I kill her." I remember how the blade of the knife flashed in her hand as she waved it wildly above her head under the light fitting. Karen came following behind, reaching to take the knife but not succeeding, then pulling at Maggie's elbow in a feverish panic to stop her from reaching Milly. 

Milly looked terrified, and she cringed at her husband's side. Karl was already on his feet and ushering her to safety. They stopped at the hall door, Karl turning to say something to Maggie while Milly peered over his shoulder. When she saw Karen, she called to her, "Tell her, Karen. We weren't doing anything, were we!"

I looked at Karen, saw the dirty look she gave Milly.

"I don't know what I saw," Karen said.

"But I know what I saw," said Maggie. " — you with your tongue down my husband's throat."

Then Dave appeared. He did not look at Maggie; he only had eyes for Milly. But Milly's gaze was fixed on Karen, her eyes pleading for an alibi. "Please, Karen, tell your crazy sister that I never kissed her drip of a husband."

Maggie asked Karen, "What exactly did you see?"

"The three of us — Milly, Dave and me were talking in the kitchen. I had to go to the bathroom, so they were on their own for a couple of minutes. By the time I came back, you were freaking out."

Milly began pleading with Karen: "But you were talking with us all the time so you must know we never kissed. Why are you acting like this, Karen? You saw what happened, so why won't you tell her?"

I did not know what to think. Karen was never a good liar. Her way of dealing with unpleasant truths was to dodge the question, give ambiguous answers in a tone of certainty. I concluded that she hadn't seen Milly kissing Dave but suspected they had. I knew she would not lie to defend Milly against her sister. Milly had put her into an impossible bind, and she hated her for doing so.

We managed to calm Maggie down. Dave took her into the front room to feed her a good helping of bullshit. 

Later I managed to get Milly alone in the kitchen. "What was all that about earlier? You know, what Maggie was saying about you and Dave?"

"Dave's a sweet guy, but he's just not my type." 

I studied her carefully, saw a flush come into her cheeks. "Dave is quite smitten with you." 

"What makes you say that?"

"He told me about you and him kissing in Razors Edge."

"Have you told Karen?"

"Not yet."

"And will you."

"Probably."

"Will she hate me when she finds out."

"I don't know. How do you feel about Dave?" 

"Kissing him was just a bit of fun, that's all."

"Is that what tonight was: just a bit of fun?"

"Tonight has not been fun, Luca."

"Do you ever think of our night in the cottage."

"Sometimes."

"You do realise that I love you, don't you, Milly?" There, I'd said it. Those words were supposed to make everything all right. Now she would understand and return my feelings. How could she not?

"And I love you too, Luca."

I could not believe what she said. I just stared and stared.

"And I love Chrissy and Steve, Karen and Malcolm. I love all my friends."

I turned from her, walked from the kitchen, her voice calling to me as I opened the door, "What wrong, Luca? What did I say?"

                                              ****

At home, later that week, I asked Karen about what had happened in the kitchen between Milly and Dave.

"The three of us were talking, that's all. But I've seen the way Dave looks at Milly. And she encourages him too, plays the ingenue to his wise old man."

"So they didn't kiss?"

"Maggie says they did. That's good enough for me."

"But you never saw them?"

"I saw nothing. But afterwards, Milly really pissed me off — how she expected me to lie for her."

I told her what Dave had said, how he'd kissed Milly, then before she could respond, asked, "Will you tell Maggie?"

"Probably. But I'm going to speak to Milly first."

                                                                 *****

A couple of weeks later we received a letter from Milly telling us her mother was terminally ill, had only weeks left to live, and that she and Chrissy would be nursing her at home. Even though their mother died only two weeks later, we did not see Milly and Karl again until New Year's Eve. A party at Chrissy and Steve's house.

There were lots of people present that we did not know. Late in the evening, I came out of the upstairs bathroom and found Chrissy on the landing.

"I need you to kiss me," she said, reaching out for me and drawing me to her. I'd forgotten how limber her body could become, how it would mould itself to mine with such fluid, casual sensuality.

Just then, Milly came up the stairs and asked:

"Can I borrow Luca from you, sis?"

"Only if I get him back in his original packaging," Chrissy replied.

Milly and I went into the spare room and closed the door behind us. We stood facing each other beside the bed where all the guest's coats lay discarded with only the glow of the street light through nets to illuminate the room. She looked at me so intently. It was if she had something important to say but could not quite bring herself to begin.

It seemed unlikely she had taken me aside like this to talk about the death of her mother, but all the same, just to say something, I said, "I'm sorry about your Mum, Milly."

My words gave her focus, and she said, "Her death has put so many things in perspective for me, Luca. I've been thinking about the people I know, how precious they are. And about you in particular. The way I've been with you since, you know — you must think me a heartless little shit."

"I don't think that of you," I replied. "I know how Karl feels about you and me. You were doing what was right for your marriage."

"I don't think I will be with Karl much longer."

"Oh?" I said, completely surprised by her words. But I had little time to process her statement as then she leaned in and kissed me. And, fool that I was, despite nearly half a year of battling to rid myself of feelings for her, I returned her kiss, put my arms around her and drew her to me. I kept repeating to myself: this is so fucking stupid. 

Once again, she had become the sorceress I had once imagined her to be. That imp of a tongue of hers began to coax and curl, little by little withdrawing back into its original darkness with my tongue hurrying to follow. I let it run the length of her top lip in passing before plunging fully into her mouth's lush warmth. We kissed and kissed, and our mingling saliva became so copious that I had to keep swallowing. My heart was racing, my breath desperate as asphyxiation.

"I want you!" she said when we separated to regain our breath.

I could not believe what I was hearing, said, "What, here? But I don't have protection." My brain could hardly process her words. And with my mind still reeling, I asked, "And what about Karl?"

"You don't need protection; I'm on the pill now. And yes: I want you to fuck me right here, right now! Don't worry about Karl. He's having it away with someone named Janice from his works. He's told me he loves her — so fuck him!" 

Already her fingers were at my belt and undoing my jeans, I pushed her hair back from her face and watched its shifting expressions as she slipped one hand into my jeans. She had been looking down, watching herself work on my zip, her eyes beaming as my cock emerged into the half-light. When she looked up and saw I was studying her, she smiled and said:

 "I've been so stupid, Luca. You're such a sweet person — and have such a lovely cock."

She seemed genuinely into me, but I could not help wondering if this was just more of her games. Things had cooled between her and Karen since the night of Maggie and Dave's party, and they hardly spoke anymore. Karen's letters to her hardly that of a lover, merely polite because of her recent bereavement. So I couldn't help wondering if all this was just a way back for her into Karen's good books, her bed.

But then my jeans and boxers were around my knees, and I couldn't give a shit about her motives. I was going to get to fuck her again. It would be my opportunity to redeem myself for my poor performance the previous summer. I would deliver to Milly the pounding I had imagined giving her that time I fucked Sarah. 

I bulldozed coats from the bed to make room for us. Then I encouraged Milly down onto her back and lifted the hem of her long skirt with both hands, bunching it around her waist before tackling her panties, no longer plain white cotton but a silky thong, which I jerked from her as she lifted her legs to let them pass. Before I moved onto her, I arranged her, parting and arching her legs as if preparing her for childbirth. I studied her sex; such a beautiful cunt, pink and fresh with the wispiest pubes you could ever imagine. I studied the rawness of her gash and remembered how she had tasted the last time I'd had her.

But there would be no foreplay this night, no licking pussy to tune her up. This was not about pleasing Milly: this was all about me. And so with our flesh made sepia by the sodium lighting seeping into the room, I fucked Milly for the second time in as many years — fucked her long and hard. It was like revenge: but not served cold. My cock was fierce, and its burgeoning size full of my malicious intent. I rubbed the raw end of it up and down the length of her sex to harvest her cum. Each time I passed the sodden gape of her pussy, I teased her by pretending this time I would enter her, and she would tense herself in expectation. And when my cock passed on by, she would relax, almost deflated.

It was my first ever grudge fuck. Each thrust became as punitive as the stroke of a sadist's paddle. I wondered if Milly was getting it; whether she sensed my bile and resentment. The bedframe was one of those metal types, and it creaked and squeaked, rattled and clanged beneath us as I pounded her. But I'll give Milly her due, respect where deserved. She did not wilt beneath me like some rare alpine in the glare of a fierce midday sun. Perhaps if she had been built more like Sarah or Chrissy, I might have cum more quickly, might not have been able to fuck her for so long. Even with all her soft, fragrant flesh, her bountiful womanliness, much to my surprise I found her almost boyish—mere flesh without feminine meaning.

Outside the bedroom door, other guests would come and go along the landing, to and from the bathroom. Someone must have heard Milly cry out because, at one point, the bedroom door creaked open spilling the bright light of the landing into the room. Whoever had peeped in, they quickly left, easing the door shut behind them.

Soon I was reaching the tail end of my endurance when the bedroom door opened again, sending a wave of light into the room. I could hear heavy footfalls on the stairs, laughter and scandalised chatter.

A second later, the hiss of Karen's lips in my ear: "You fucking-bastard!" 

Karen crouching by my head, berating me. "How could you with her again, knowing what she's really like."

But I wasn't going to stop now. I was on the cusp of an orgasm. It is only when the contents a beer bottle began cascading onto my head that I realised this was serious. 

I rolled from Milly in time to watch Karen storm from the room, pushing through the others who had gathered at the doorway to witness the spectacle. Dave and Maggie were among them. As I stood up to quickly pull up my eans, I heard Maggie say; See, Dave, your fucking little princess is just a common-or-garden-whore." 

I said nothing to Milly before I rushed to the door, desperate to reach Karen. Everyone stood aside to let me through, and Dave caught my eye as I left the room. There was such pathetic hurt written over his face. 

On the stairs, I passed Karl. "What's all the fuss?" he asked.

"Best ask your wife," I replied, hurrying on down the stairs.

Downstairs in the lounge I asked after Karen. Someone said she had gone outside, so I went out to look for her and found her weeping in our car. I got in beside her and held her. I was relieved when she did not push me away when I asked her what was wrong. I still could not understand what had caused her to be so upset. Milly and I had never been a problem for her. It took her a long while to stop crying, her sobs that of an utterly distraught child. All I could do was hold her.

Eventually, she calmed. "A while ago Milly told me about when you told her you loved her, said it with such glee. It was as if she was pleased that our marriage was no better than hers, perhaps even worse based on the lie of transparency. But I could see who she was then, so pleased with herself for wringing those words from you." 

And all I could do was tell Karen how stupid I'd been, and that I loved her more than my life.

She wiped her eyes, her nose on her sleeve, and then held my gaze. "Do you realise how much that hurt me, Luca? Hearing Milly tell me my husband had confessed his love to her! But I knew you were trying so hard to get over her. And when you said you didn't want to see our friends any more, I thought he's finally put her behind him, and that it'll be okay now. But then to find you with her, like that, after everything that's happened. Well — it feels to me like the end of us.

We fell asleep in the car. In the morning, when I felt sober enough to drive, we travelled back home in silence.

It took months to repair the damage I brought down on us. We spent long evenings that overflowed into early mornings talking things through. There were tears and rage. A week when Karen fled to her mother's house. But in the end, we became more than we ever had been, and a year later my son was born, two years later a daughter.

When in our early fifties, when we sound ourselves empty-nesters, I tried to get Karen to consider swinging again. But she would not even entertain the idea. And now, ten years on from those last-chance days, I am so grateful for her common sense. 

It was in my mid-fifties that I began writing. Eventually, I found my way to Lush where I now write out the fantasies I will never be able to live.

THE END