That's What Friends Are For

More Nostalgic Recollections From The Golden Age of Troilism

A man always remembers his first time. His first fight, first beer, first fuck. And I can recall with absolute clarity the night I became a cuckold. The skin-crawling, scalp-tightening realisation that another man had just had my wife; the wave of cold, sickening dread that swept through me, clutching my balls in its icy grip, plucking them off like frozen fruit, unmanning me.

I remember how the humiliation slammed into me like an uppercut, how my mouth dried, my knees shook and my stomach turned over; the way I walked around on dead, unresponding legs, like some punched-out boxer trying to find a friendly corner where the pain would stop.

No, no man ever forgets the night he becomes a cuckold.

* * *

Yet try as I may, I still can't be absolutely certain of the year. I know it was early in the 1980s and that portable VCRs and video cameras had just come on sale, because that was how John, my best friend, hooked me, with videos of his wife Carol.

Looking back, I can't believe I didn't see through the way he played me along, like some prize fish, landing me exactly when he wanted. But things happened gradually over several months and I never suspected a thing. It was a dangerous game we were playing and I guess a psychiatrist might well suggest that somewhere deep down I wanted it to happen, that subconsciously I engineered my own cuckolding. If I did, I certainly wasn't aware of it.

No, the plain truth is I had plans of my own for Carol. My real reason for getting my own wife, Karen, to pose for the Polaroids and then the video - and later on getting her into the bondage and the outdoor sex scene - was quite simple. I wanted to fuck Carol, and I'd wanted to for years.

Okay, I'll come clean and admit that showing John the pictures of Karen did do something odd for me, something I didn't really understand or even wanted to think about too much. It was a kind of Masochism, I suppose. It was about this time I first read Leopold von Masoch's book, "Venus in Furs" and I can't deny that I found some of his feelings familiar; that letting another man see my wife naked wasn't entirely unpleasant. I always got this weird feeling in my bowels each time I showed John the latest set of pictures, or the latest tape, and watched his eyes sweep greedily over every little detail of Karen's body. A kind of fluttering sensation that tickled my belly and sent shudders down my spine. At one and the same time I wanted to rip the pictures away from him, yet show him more, even stronger.

And yes, maybe I did occasionally fantasise about John and Karen together. But I was no reckless kid. I was a married man in my late twenties, the father of a young son. I had a lovely wife and home. I wasn't about to risk losing all that by pushing things too far. I was old enough to know that fantasies are best left as they are. And smart enough to know that the closer you could get to turning them into reality, the more intense they became. The secret was to take them to the wire but stop short.

I think I was twenty-eight when the Polaroids first started, which makes the year 1982 or 1983. So Karen would have been twenty-six, John about thirty and Carol a year older. We were used car dealers, John and me, except he wore a suit and had a fancy title in a Ford dealership, while I hawked my clapped-out stock of old smokers from one garage forecourt to another, moving on whenever the locals looked like forming a lynch mob.

After a few skirmishes in the late seventies, we eventually realised that if we did business together, we could save the time and trouble of him driving his trade-ins all the way to the auctions, where as often as not, I'd buy them and drive them all the way back.

We did pretty good out of it, too. Soon we were socialising; me and John at first, then with our wives, and finally as families. We got on so well we even went on holiday to Ibiza together one summer - must have been in '82 - and came back still on speaking terms. Once John and Carol had staked their claim to the best bedroom in the villa, that is, even though we'd gone equal shares on the cost. That just about summed John up - he always had to get the better of everyone, to come out on top. But I needed his trade-ins more than he needed my cash back-handers, so I went along with him.

It was on this holiday that I first experienced the electrifying effect Carol could have on me. The four of us had arranged a baby-sitter for the evening and had gone out to a bar where we ended up getting drunk as skunks and dancing the night away, mainly with our own partners. Both girls looked absolutely stunning in their summer dresses and neither wore very much underneath. Carol wore a short skirt and a white T shirt so tight the dark circles of her nipples were clearly visible. And Karen had on this thin white dress that showed off her tan and clung to her like a second skin.

Me and Karen were dancing to a slow one when she started winding me up, clasping her hands at the back of my neck, looking me straight in the eye, singing the words of the song and grinding her mound into me. The effect on me was inevitable, and clearly outlined in my thin summer slacks.

Then Carol broke into our reverie by tapping Karen on the shoulder and saying this was a 'ladies excuse me'. So we swapped partners and I tried desperately to keep some air between me and Carol while I tried to get the damn thing to go down, even visualising my mother-in-law wearing nothing but a shower cap and rubber gloves. But as every man knows, erections have a will of their own and suddenly I had a dick with attitude, one that figured that since he was on holiday too, he'd stay up as long as he liked, and fuck you, too, pal.

Seconds later Carol and I were pushed close together by the crowd and my secret was out. Well, not exactly out, but getting that way. I'll never forget her expression. It was priceless, the way she changed from looking shocked to flattered in about two seconds flat. She thought it my reaction to her, see? Then next thing I knew, she was pulling me so close my hard-on was practically drilling into her belly, and whispering in my ear that 'someone seems pleased to see me'. Well, I could hardly tell her it was all Karen's doing, could I? Not and hang on to my nuts.

Besides, before long, hanging onto my nuts was exactly what Carol was doing. Whether it was too much booze or too much sun or far more likely, sheer animal magnetism on my part, Carol took full advantage of the dark dance floor to er, get the measure of her man, if you get my drift. Finally she discreetly clamped one hand around my dick and buried her face into my neck.

Karen saw the love-bite later on that night, as we fell into bed. It certainly proved to be an interesting conversation starter. It wasn't until after she collected one of her own the following night, with John being the prime suspect, that she seemed to get over it. She's like that, Karen, never lets me get away with a damned thing. We might well have all gone further, maybe even swapped, but fate intervened in the way of a stomach bug and the most intimate we ever got as a foursome was keeping the lavatory seat warm for each other as we coped with two days and nights of the squits.

It was right at the end of that year, sometime between Christmas and New Year, that John started putting the pressure on. We'd paid them an afternoon visit to exchange belated presents for the kids and had got through several bottles of wine when in all innocence, Karen asked Carol what she'd bought John for Christmas. There was an awkward pause and a snort of laughter from John that had Carol blushing furiously in seconds, before she gave up and joined in. She'd bought him a new Polaroid camera and from Carol's embarrassed expression, it was obvious they'd been making full use of it. Sounds tame now, but this was the early eighties and Polaroids were the cutting edge of swinging technology.

Carol must have known what John had in mind and watched us like a hawk, but he managed to show me the photos anyway. To disappear together into his study or garage would have been a dead giveaway, so he waited until the girls were clearing up in the kitchen before handing me a thick envelope, giving me a broad wink and suggesting I paid a quick visit to the bathroom.

There was a set of ten and Carol had done a strip routine down to her knickers. Finally, on the last shot, her bra came off - and as near as dammit, so did I. Hoping no-one would notice the tent in my slacks, I walked casually downstairs, to where my host was waiting, with sly grin spread all over his face.

I wasn't sure what to say - hell, I wasn't sure I could even speak, but fortunately the girls came back into the room. When they were looking the other way, I caught John's eye and pushed the envelope down the side of my chair, between the cushions. And that's how it all started, how I inadvertently arranged my own cuckolding. A quick look at a small, blurry, too-light Polaroid of Carol showing her tits and suddenly I was like a dog with two dicks. Karen didn't know what hit her as soon as we got home and she got our son to bed.

Soon I could think of nothing else but those damned pictures. They occupied every waking moment. Carol unzipping the familiar blue dress, Carol in her black lace undies, Carol taking her stockings off. And finally, Carol smiling sheepishly at the camera, her naked breasts on full display.

Naturally, I decided to play things very cool. In fact I think I lasted damn near the whole of next day before I phoned John and suggested a boys' night out, and once we met up in our local pub, The Feathers, I managed to make small talk for, oooh, the best part of a minute before I asked him if he'd taken any more pictures.

That's when I struck a deal with the devil. Sure he'd taken some more, he said with a smile. And they were a lot stronger than the ones I'd seen. But first he wanted to see some of Karen. It was only fair, he pointed out. Besides, that way he could be sure I'd keep my mouth shut, since if I dropped him in the shit with Carol, he could do the same to me with Karen. That's what friends are for, Mark, he told me with a laugh.

Anyway, I thought this over long and carefully, for at least a second. Sure, I'll take some, I said. No problem. Karen was a good sport. She'd be game for a laugh. Meanwhile if he could just see his way clear to letting me take another peek at the original set……

* * *

Now I'm not sexist by nature, honest. But am I the only man in England to notice that women can be so fucking mercenary at times? To cut to the chase, those first shaky Polaroids of Karen cost me a new washing machine, damn near a whole new wardrobe and the agreement that if ever I showed them to anyone else, she could remove my nuts very slowly indeed with a rusty can-opener; something that Karen acknowledged would be akin to her cutting her nose off to spite her face, and therefore best avoided by the photos remaining in her safe-keeping.

It took me two weeks to find them. One night after we'd drunk a whole bottle of vodka between us, shot two sets of ten and screwed ourselves silly, we both fell asleep on the bed in a post-nuptial, alcoholic haze. Sometime in the middle of the night I woke up and could hear Karen moving around the room. I played possum. Then the hall light went on. I kept my breathing regular, deep and slow, listening as she came back in and gathered up the photos that were scattered all over the bed and floor. As soon as she went out again, I opened my eyes and peeked through the crack between the door and the frame. She was in the hallway, crouched down by the open door of the cleaning cupboard - the first place I'd looked. I had to wait three days before I knew for certain that she'd be out of the house all afternoon. I eventually found them in a shoe-box, underneath the Christmas decorations. Like a kid with a new toy, I drove straight down to John's office.

As he shuffled through them, making polite noises, I got the same peculiar feeling I'd got when I'd seen the love-bite on Karen's neck the previous summer. And like then, I wasn't sure if I the sensation was pleasant or not. We were both car salesmen, remember, and well used to conducting negotiations. No way was I going to show him the most recent Polaroids. Instead he got the first set, which he noticed immediately was virtually pose-for-pose the same as the set of Carol that he'd shown me. When he got to number ten, the one in which Karen had finally dropped her bra, I felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach, and held out my hand for them back. Tantalisingly, he pushed the first nine across his desk to me and held onto the last one, looking at it dreamily until I stood and said I had to go.

A few days later, while we were having a drink after our regular Wednesday evening game of squash, John upped the stakes and I saw the first pictures of Carol naked, posing on the sofa I'd sat on so often. I wanted time to look at them and knew exactly how to get it. I handed him the two in which I'd managed to talk Karen into pulling her pants down and facing the camera.

And so it went on. Before long, both girls' confidence grew and they began to enjoy showing themselves off on camera. You could see it in their faces. And being salesmen and competitive by nature, John and me soon started trying to outdo one another, to see which one of us could talk our wives into showing the most. First came the open-leg shots, then the held-open poses, then the shaving routine, then the vibrators and so on. It was like a drug. Each time we shot a set we wanted to go further. Then John found this advert for a long remote control cable for the Polaroid camera and we started getting into the action ourselves. Within three months of starting out, we were showing each other pictures of our wives fucking and sucking in every position we could think of. And still we wanted more!

That's when the videos started. The portable VCRs that had just come onto the market were heavy, clumsy affairs with shoulder straps, an umbilical cord to a separate camera and a battery life of about twenty minutes. And they cost a fortune. Even so, John talked his directors into investing in one for the company, putting stars in their eyes about how this exciting new technology would revolutionise the way people would buy cars in the future.

I'll never forget the first one of him and Carol, or how quiet she was compared to my own wife. The only sounds were the creaking of the bed and the occasional moan. I remember I plied Karen with booze, then crept downstairs in the middle of the night to watch it. It had me reaching for my dick within seconds, this close, interminable, static shot of Carol having sex with her husband. The tape lasted a whole lot longer than I did. I was okay until she looked straight into the camera with a mouthful of cock, and winked. That was the moment my own dick started playing the whale.

I soon came under pressure to make one of me and Karen but things didn't go too well. Borrowing the camera made Karen suspicious. John must know what we want it for, she said. And if he does, Carol will. And she wouldn't be able to look either of them in the eye again. It was difficult trying to get hold of the damn camera, too, as all the directors in the dealership had mysteriously become so enthusiastic about its sales potential that most nights, one or other of them wanted to take it home to demonstrate it to their wives.

On the two occasions I did manage to borrow it, Karen did a strip but refused to go any further, and John made it clear there that the tape of Carol and the Cucumber wouldn't be forthcoming until he got something similar in return. Not that that stopped him telling me about it most days. You won't believe what she does with this cucumber, he'd whisper down the phone - it'll hook you onto salad for life.

Eventually it was Karen who provided the solution to the impasse. She's always been a great wife to me, always supported me in whatever I tried to do. It was the same with hobbies. In our teens she tagged along to football matches she didn't want to go to and cheered me on from the touchline. In our early twenties, though nursing a baby, she somehow found time to learn Spanish with me when I suddenly announced that my ambition was to sell up and run a bar in Ibiza. Whenever I got a new hobby, be it golf or squash or photography, I seemed to have to spend a fortune on the right gear and Karen never complained, just went along with me.

Now it was the same with our Polaroids. She let me talk her into posing because she knew I wanted it so badly. At least that was how it was at first. It wasn't too long, however, maybe after half a dozen packs of film, before I began to see my wife in a new light. Through the eyepiece of the camera I could practically see Karen's self-confidence blossom. The sex between us had always been good but after a Polaroid session it was amazing. Something, whether it was the camera or the sexy underwear or (more likely, now I look back) the sneaking suspicion that I was somehow showing her pictures to John, brought out the rampant exhibitionist in my normally demure wife.

One night Karen showed me a new catalogue that she'd sent off for. That's how we bought most of her sexy underwear and all the vibrators and sex toys she was fast accumulating. But this brochure was different. Everything in it was made of leather and chrome. My eyes popped out on stalks when she showed me the things she thought she'd look good in. And not just at the prices either.

I'd expected her to want the pants and bra set, maybe even a basque. And I wasn't disappointed. But then I saw the red circles she'd drawn around all these straps, harnesses, studded collars, wrist cuffs and ankle restraints. I must have looked shocked because suddenly she snuggled into me, her eyes glittering with a brightness I'd never seen before. As I turned the page and saw more red ink around a pair of beautifully made stocks, I felt her unzipping me. By the time I got to the torture rack I was past caring about the price. Karen could suck for England in those days.

You won't believe what that stuff cost! But I soon realised it was the smartest money I'd spent in a very long time. I should have guessed before then that Karen was submissive by nature. But I just thought she was easy-going. In fact I'd often remarked on the way she tried to duck responsibility for big decisions - it was always me that made them.

The best advice I ever had on sex came from an old boy I knew from the car auctions. We were sharing a table in the snack-bar one day and talking about the trials and tribulations of selling used cars. "Just find the button, son," he spluttered through a mouthful of hamburger. The button? "Yeah, the button. The thing that turns them on. Might be leather seats or mag wheels, might be the sound system, whatever. Everybody's got a button, son. You just gotta find it, then press it."

Now, after several years of marriage, I realised I'd finally found Karen's button. And suddenly I had a different wife on my hands. The first night I trussed her up in her new leather gear she made so much noise she woke our son up and started the dog next door barking.

I soon learned - we soon learned - that it was a sense of helplessness that unleashed this rampant animal within her, turned Karen the respectable wife and mother into Karen the uninhibited, insatiable, slut-from-hell. Tying her up seemed to give her a strange kind of freedom, though 'total abandon' might be nearer the mark.

Consultative, considerate sex, she explained one night in the heat of the moment, required a lady to refuse certain practices for the sake of propriety. Not that she actually used those words. But I got the gist when I tied her legs to the headboard and she hissed that if I were to fuck her in the arse right now there wouldn't be a damned thing she could do about it. So I did and soon every dog in the street, not just the mutt next door, was howling along with her. It was bedlam.

John, meanwhile, was practically coming in his pants each time I recounted the sordid details of the latest depravity, which I usually did just before asking if he happened to have the tape of Carol and the Cucumber with him. Eventually he offered a compromise. If he couldn't see Karen on video, he'd settle for seeing her perform 'live'. This was a compromise? Not for nothing was John the best car salesman in town.

I pondered this for a while. It wasn't impossible. We had a through-lounge with a dining area at the back of the house and a seating area at the front. All I had to do was leave a gap in the dining room curtains one night and get Karen to perform in the lounge. Our back garden wasn't overlooked and the dog next door was getting sick of getting a kick up the arse each time he howled. It might just work.

It did. The following Saturday night John got his wish and saw Karen 'live' in her new slut-from-hell role. Saw me strap her arms behind her back, bind her breasts until they bulged and turned purple. Saw me strap her into the kit that had arrived that morning, a charming combination of leather and chrome bars delicately called a leg-spreader, and the leather gag we'd bought to keep the noise down. And despite the double glazing, he heard her muffled groans and screams as I took her to the moon and back.

Next day, over a lunchtime drink in The Feathers, I got the tape of Carol and the Cucumber. But to be honest, it didn't change my feelings about salads one way or the other. Compared to what Karen was doing, it was tame stuff indeed. My long-nurtured lust for Carol was waning fast. I had a new woman now, one who needed a lot more than a garden vegetable to satisfy her. And Karen, in turn, had a new man. One intent on exploring new and secret pleasures. And in particular, the heady cocktail of pain and pleasure that only showing my wife off to another man could produce.

But the night it all went tits-up wasn't entirely my fault. The leather straps and cuffs and gags that rendered her helpless were Karen's idea. And it was Karen who came up with the next bizarre step our sex life took. The one that a fortnight later handed her over to another man on a plate, trussed up like a Christmas turkey waiting for the stuffing.

But I digress. To understand the night it all went wrong, you've got to hear about the first time we tried it, when it worked like a dream. It was a sultry June evening, and the air was thick and warm and the last light of the dying sun was slowly turning the twilight gold. And it took place in a secluded pinic area, in a lovely wooded park on the other side of town called The Heath.

It happened because the warm weather had made Karen want to do it outdoors again, where the risk of being seen added a new, exciting frisson to our love-making. It happened because the games people play soon take on a life of their own.

It had been a month or so before this when we first invented our new game. In it we played different roles, lying to each other, telling each other we were going out with friends on Saturday night. Then getting ready separately, making small talk to cover our nerves, avoiding eye contact to conceal our guilt. Going out at different times, in separate cars, but to the same pub. Then meeting up, but this time as strangers. Getting to know each other all over again. Chatting about this and that and flirting shamelessly, then coming on strong and leaving in a hurry, and ending the evening as married lovers do, having frantic sex in car parks and lay-bys, anywhere there was a chance of being seen.

Then afterwards, laying there bathed in sweat, we'd keep up the role-playing and talk about our 'other halves', as new lovers do. Giggling together at the thought of Karen-the-respectable-wife, dancing around her handbag in some crummy disco, while I shafted my new mistress, Karen-the-insatiable-tart. Laughing until we cried at the way that Mark-the-boring-husband would be playing darts in some scruffy pub, never suspecting for a minute that his innocent little wife was opening her legs to Mark-the-superstud in the back of her car. It was a powerful, addictive game that we couldn't take much further. But we did.

* * *

Okay, the outdoors bondage scene was my idea, I'll admit it. As was tipping off John where we'd be and when we'd be there.

That's the trouble with sex games, they're a slippery slope. You stretch your comfort zone, force yourself to try something new, and then discover you enjoy it. But next time it's not quite the same. You're not breaking any new taboos. The risk of coming unstuck, of doing something you might regret is no longer there. The whiff of danger is addictive, so you up the stakes, seek fresh boundaries to break.

And the first time we played our new outdoor game in front of John gave me and Karen the best sex we'd ever had. Up there on The Heath on that warm June night, I experienced the most intense feelings of my life, meeting this other Karen, this insatiable slut who'd try anything. Watching, with John alongside me in the undergrowth, as she drew up in her car and waited, her window lowered for my signal. Then, on giving the whistle, feeling my heart trying to tear itself out of my chest, as I watched the woman I loved spreading the rug on the ground, then herself on the rug, totally unaware that John was with me, watching. Watching her pull her top up over her breasts and her skirt up over her hips and lay back against the car, facing us, fingering herself through the soft, open straps of the leather underwear.

It was a mouth-drying, stomach-churning moment when she turned over so her head was facing away from us and stuck her rump up in the air in an open invitation to be mounted. For one awful moment I almost signalled John to go ahead and fuck her. Instead, I slipped quietly out of the bushes, knelt behind her and without the slightest foreplay, unzipped myself fucked her in full view of my friend. Throughout this, me and Karen never once said a word to each other; and never once did Karen turn round to see who was shafting her. I remember thinking, as I came frantically inside her, that it could have been John doing this and Karen would never have been any the wiser. I should have realised that it had occurred to John, too.

And yet it still wasn't enough, I still wanted to show him more. When I finished, I withdrew abruptly and turned Karen onto her back and pulled her round until she was facing John's hiding place, with her legs wide apart. Then I knelt astride her face and ordered her to finger-fuck herself while she sucked me. And as soon as her view was blocked, I put one hand behind my back and waved my friend forward. When it was safe to risk a quick glance over my shoulder, I could see him lying in the grass no more than six or seven feet behind us, his eyes fixed on Karen's sticky fingers.

After Karen's final cries subsided that night, I sat where I was for a while to give John time to get back under cover, then we sorted ourselves out, packed up the rug and after promising to meet again up here and a final kiss, she got back into her car and drove off home.

As soon as she'd gone, John came out of his hiding place, practically beside himself with frustration. This wasn't the pushy, ambitious John who usually got the better of me, it was a man whose hands were shaking at what he'd just seen, a man who now looked up to me, who needed me, whose secret pleasures were within my gift. Once he'd started talking he couldn't stop. He'd crept so close to Karen at one point he said, he could have touched her, not that he'd ever dream of doing it, he added quickly when he saw my expression change.

I was late getting back. John had gone on and on about how much he envied me, how much he'd love to fuck Karen. And I had lapped it up, hadn't I? For once I'd got the edge on him. Carol could take the whole vegetable rack to bed with her and not even come close to what Karen was capable of. By the time we parted he'd agreed to get Carol to do an outdoor session too, and I'd done my best to sound enthralled at the prospect of watching them from the bushes. But the truth is I had already begun to make the change from voyeur to exhibitionist and all the time he was talking about Carol, I kept drifting off, thinking about me and Karen's next show, what we could possibly do to top tonight's exhibition.

When I got home, the other, respectable Karen was waiting up for me and we swapped stories about the boring night we'd had, never breaking the pretence once. Looking back, it was obvious we were playing with fire. And two weeks later I shouldn't really have been surprised at the way I got my fingers burned.

* * *

It was at the right point in Karen's monthly cycle, when even the normal wife-and-mother version had always been randy. We'd had to come up with a kind of code when we were planning these 'secret lover' meetings, so we didn't break the role-playing. That was what the whole thing pivoted on, and it was amazing how quickly we slipped into the separate characters.

The way we got round it was to call this 'other couple', the slut and the stud, Kay and Mike, instead of Karen and Mark. Karen would spin these stories about her friend Kay, about the things she did behind her husband's back, how she went up on The Heath some nights and screwed anyone up there who wanted her, just stuck her arse in the air and took whatever came. I'd tell similar tales about my friend Mike, how he met some married slut up there and gave her what for, right out in the open. On the day, we'd openly speculate if they'd be going up there tonight and if they did, what time they'd be meeting and what they'd be doing.

One evening soon after our first night with John on The Heath, Karen handed me one of the bondage magazines that had started arriving at the house in plain brown envelopes. It was open at a page where a woman was gagged and blindfolded and strapped face down to a bed with her arse stuck up in the air. Alongside side her, a naked, whimpish man with a little soft dick was putting his fingers to his lips in a signal to the other man in the shot, a big black stud with a massive hard-on, who was kneeling right behind the woman, poised for entry. The picture was captioned 'Birthday Surprise'. Instantly my stomach did a somersault. Was this Karen's way of telling me she knew all about John watching? I coloured up and made small talk, keeping my eyes on the page so I didn't have to meet hers. If this was Karen's fantasy, it was disturbing stuff indeed.

But I'd got it wrong. Karen assured me that she didn't want ten inches of black magic as a birthday surprise, thankfully. But she did bring up the subject of her 'friend' Kay and how Kay had told her that she wanted to try the leather wrist and leg restraints and the blindfold next time she went up onto The Heath looking for lovers.

We already had everything we needed. In fact we did another Polaroid session that night when we did a test run, so Karen could tell 'Kay' how to tie herself up properly without any help from anyone. The leg-spreader was first, obviously, and Karen could easily put it on whilst kneeling. The chrome bar was about eighteen inches long and had a soft leather curved pad at each end, from which wide leather straps went around the legs just above the knees. The blindfold went on next, and finally the locking wrist-cuffs. These were separate, soft leather straps that fastened around each wrist, each with a chrome ring sewn into them, to take another strap, chain or in this case, a small brass snap-locking padlock. With a little practice, Karen managed to close it, at which point she was helpless, with her hands secured behind her back.

I could have taken full advantage to explore Karen's limits there and then but decided instead to save the experience until the our next time on The Heath. So we did it doggy-style, and though we made all the right noises, both of us realised that these days, our alter-egos seemed to get a lot more out of outdoor sex than we did in the safety of our bed. Our next visit to The Heath loomed large in both our thoughts afterwards.

* * *

To this day I don't really know how much John had planned that night's events. But he didn't come into The Feathers at eight o'clock as planned. He arrived twenty minutes late, threw down a couple of beers and left just ten minutes later, saying he had a quick call to make and would see me in our hiding place up on The Heath at nine o'clock, the time I'd arranged with Karen.

That was probably when he did it, loosened the high-tension lead on the ignition coil. John knew cars and he knew keys and besides, I was driving a Ford made in the late seventies, and he wouldn't even have needed to get into the car to spring the hood. It was a nice touch, fucking around with the HT lead. I left the pub at twenty to nine, so didn't have a lot of time to spare. I knew just enough about engines to get me into trouble and it took me the best part of twenty minutes to find the problem and lash it up well enough to get me going.

It was just about the same time I was sticking the wire to the contact with some hurriedly-purchased chewing-gum, that it dawned on me that John knew the signal me and Karen used and that right now, would be waiting in the bushes while my wife was getting undressed on the picnic rug, and putting on the leg-spreader, the blindfold and the wrist-cuffs.

Okay, I know we should have changed the signal every time we did it. But I was a used car-dealer, not some spook in Intelligence. And unlike voices, one whistle sounds much the same as another. All these painful facts were slamming into me like body punches as what little I knew about the internal combustion engine evaporated into the warm night and I worked myself into a fumble-fingered panic.

To make things worse, the direct road across town was closed due to an accident and when I pulled into the car-park on The Heath, it was nearly nine thirty and I was somewhere between being sick with worry and fighting mad.

The secluded picnic area where Karen would be waiting was about half a mile from the car park and uphill for most of the way. The evening was warm and light and there were still some people about. Ahead of me, close to the point where I could leave the path and cut through the bushes to our meeting-place, a courting couple were standing on the path, their arms around one another, facing away from me. They were looking for somewhere quiet, obviously. As I grew closer I heard the girl snorting in between bursts of laughter. They didn't hear me until I was almost upon them, then they turned and still smiling, stood apart to let me pass.

It was then that I realised what they were laughing at. Somewhere close by, a woman in the middle of an orgasm was making some very familiar noises indeed. Now, who did I know that wailed and howled like that? The hairs on my arms stood up. Who did I know would be blindfolded and helpless on a picnic rug, with her arse stuck up in the air, while she took it from behind from a man she assumed was her husband? The blood froze in my veins.

Even so, I just couldn't run straight to the spot. The courting couple were watching me, waiting for my reaction. So incredibly, I played the cool, calm and collected Englishman, and walked on nonchalantly, until the path twisted and I lost sight of them. The cries of pleasure were fainter now, below me and to my right, and even as I strained to catch them, to get my bearings, they subsided, then stopped. I crashed through the bushes like an express train, the branches whipping at my face, the brambles tearing at me legs, frantic to find my wife. But the undergrowth was thick and I had never approached the spot from this direction before and when I finally found Karen, it was too late.

He'd heard me coming and had gone, of course. But he'd been there. Karen was exactly as like the woman in the magazine had been, on her knees with her head down and her bare arse pointing skywards, her eyes blindfolded, her hands tied behind her back, her legs held wide apart by the chrome and leather spreader. She was moaning softly to herself. I felt sick.

I remember walking around the clearing in a daze, breathing hard from my uphill run, or perhaps in the pain of my cuckolding. I remember Karen calling out my name, softly at first, then with rising concern. I remember going over to her and crouching alongside her, trying to make some reassuring sounds without actually speaking, stroking her naked back and upturned buttocks. And I remember the unseen power that gripped my wrist and forced my hand down between her legs, to check if the deed really had been done. It had.

My vulnerable, trusting wife had been taken in as completely as I had. Fooled by a whistled signal, she had undressed in a sheltered clearing, made herself helpless and staked herself out for the man she loved. Like some rare and precious orchid awaiting pollination, she had quivered in anticipation, the delicate petals of her sex moistening and unfurling as they awaited their ravishing. My head roared at the thought of my perfect English flower groaning in pleasure as firm yet unfamiliar flesh parted those soft pink petals, at how easily they would have opened, how eagerly she would have pushed back onto the probing male stamen, let it enter her.

How frantically the treacherous bastard that called himself my friend must have taken his pleasures, knowing he was only minutes, even seconds away from discovery! How shamelessly he must have relished the moment of entry, how deep that first forbidden thrust must have been. How copiously he must have seeded my wife, how he must have relished the moment when he filled her open womb with his quicksilver pulses of sperm, fouling the sweet nest I thought was mine and mine alone! Thanks pal, I could hear him crowing, that's what friends are for!

Even now, when I relive those moments in the quiet of the night, I am still cut to the core by the sharp, bittersweet pain of knowing that deep inside my wife, part of her has been claimed by another man and will always belong to him.

But I remember other things, too. Darker, inexplicable things it hurts to admit. The sense of shame I felt at the way my manhood returned when I withdrew my fingers, looked at the evidence on them, held them to my nose. My horror and self-loathing when my penis thickened and uncoiled with a will of its own, then stiffened and strained as I thought of doing the unthinkable. I can still recall the crawling, carnal lust that awoke in my bowels; the feeling of disbelief as I knelt down behind my wife, pushed down my pants and claimed her, as another man had done just a few minutes before.

Some feelings and images are so shameful, so private, that only in the endless hours of sleepless nights can I bear to unlock them and savour their unspeakable secrets.

How wonderfully depraved it was to taste the soft and sweetly rotten fruits that man had left behind in my wife! How smoothly their warm nectar eased my own entry! How sleek and stretched and slippery a woman could feel, so rank and recent from another man!

Soon an oil-slick of his semen was seeping from my wife, coating my shaft in thick vanilla cream, matting my pubic hair with wet strings of drool and flecks of foam.

How exquisite, how obscene, were the slithery swamp-sounds of her sex, oozing in time to the sucking and pumping of my own pounding rhythm.

How monumental was my moment of my release, when it came! When at last I shed all human restraint and finesse, and became a beast of the field wallowing in the squalor and stench of the rutting, taking his turn on a female in heat.

Adding his own life force to the living river inside her.

* * *

It was after just after eleven when we got home and the phone was ringing as we walked through the door. She didn't want me to worry, Carol told me in a shaking voice. John was in good hands, they were doing everything they could for him.

But the other driver had been killed and apparently John had been drinking and the police were treating it very seriously. That's why they wanted to build up a picture of his movements. That's why she'd given them my name and thought she'd better warn me they'd be getting in touch.

But what was he doing on the other side of town when he should have been having a drink with me, she wondered? The first call to the emergency services had been at eight-forty-three. But John was supposed to be meeting me at eight in The Feathers and stay there all evening. Did I have any idea where he was going, who he was meeting?

I gasped and floundered like a drowning man, trying to stop the whirlwind in my head. If John hadn't been up on The Heath tonight, then ……

Carol's voice hardened. "Karen was out on her own, too, wasn't she, Mark? On one of her mystery nights out? Funny, that, them both being out on their own…"

I could see where her thoughts were heading, but couldn't even breathe, let alone speak. "I want to talk to her, Mark," Carol rasped, her voice raw with emotion. "Hand her the phone!"

Copyright David Cook 1999 All Rights Reserved E-mail d.cook@netcom.co.uk other articles and stories on a similar theme available