A Christmas Present for Karen

Chapter 1

The cold front covering New England was so intense that the conditions outside Karen Lincoln's nineteen-twenties farmhouse were Siberian-like and according to the local radio station's weather forecast, it was unlikely to get any warmer over the next five days. It had snowed heavily for three days, leaving a blanket of snow three feet deep and isolating her from the outside world.

She liked living on the outskirts of town, but there were drawbacks and snow, when coupled with a three hundred foot driveway, was one of them. On the first day of the storm, she'd made her way into town and back, but during the evening the wind had strengthened to gale force and had driven the snow into drifts of up to six feet. On the second day, not needing to go out, she had settled in to wait out the weather.

An English teacher, she'd taught in the same high school since starting work and had reached the point where she'd had her fill of teaching. She'd found it fun once, but in recent years had become disillusioned with the attitude of the school board, the pupils and their parents and although she would never have admitted it, at fifty-five she was merely passing the time until she could take early retirement.

Her disenchantment with teaching was mirrored by a similar disenchantment with the rest of her life. Divorced and single, her parents dead, her two adult children living a continent away on the west coast, she'd gradually come to believe life offered only more of the same; more sitting at home, more reading and more time spent watching a dwindling number of watchable television programs. What was worse, she was doing it on her own.

She'd been married once, but nine years previously, she'd returned home one lunch time to pick up some forgotten end-of-year reports and caught her husband in their living room, fucking Melissa, their neighbour, and the neighbour's friend. That it was the neighbour hadn't been a complete surprise. The first time she and David had been invited next door for a swim, she had watched with envy and growing anger as her husband had spent the afternoon with his eyes glued to the neighbour's bikini clad body.

When they'd returned home, rather than confronting him, she had gone into the bathroom, stripped naked, looked in the mirror and cried. She was fat, her tits and bum drooped, there were wrinkles everywhere and she looked old. How could she possibly compete with a neighbour who was young, attractive and shapely; her body toned by visits to the gym, her perfect tits a testament to silicone and the plastic surgeon's art?

If finding her husband fucking the neighbour wasn't a complete surprise, what had been a surprise was finding him engaged in a threesome, coupled doggy fashion with Melissa who, in turn, was lying between the legs of an equally young and shapely female, her head bobbing up and down as she played with her recumbent partner's clit. Throughout the twenty-three years they'd been married, David had never shown the slightest inclination to mount her from behind and yet she had caught him rutting like an animal and with a woman he'd known for a less than twenty-three weeks.

Initially shocked into immobility, her first thought, once she had recovered, had been to rush into the room and attack him, but for some reason, which she had never been able to reconcile, she'd continued to stand in the hallway and watch; transfixed by the scene being acted out before her.

She'd realised she ought to be angry; but she'd found the ménage erotic, a sexual combination she'd only imagined, but which, in reality, was far more exciting than she had thought possible. With the exception of the friend, who was still wearing the top half of a yellow bikini, the participants were naked, the women's bikinis scattered across the floor, the red and yellow scraps of material a vivid contrast to the beige of the carpet. As she'd watched, rather than wanting to stop them, she'd found herself wishing she was one of the participants and it was her, rather than Melissa, who was on her knees and impaled on David's cock.

Within seconds she had become aroused; her cunt moist and her nipples erect. She'd reached inside her blouse, put her hand inside her bra and rubbed her breast and teased the nipples, her usual reaction when she was excited. Her right hand had just begun to inch down her body, heading towards her cunt, when the recumbent member of the ménage had looked up, noticed her standing outside the door and screamed, breaking the spell and returning her to the present.

The next few seconds were a blur of action. The two women had grabbed their discarded bikinis and headed home; brushing past her with their faces averted; neither able to look her in the eye. David had remained, naked and shamefaced; standing by the bed; his glistening, but rapidly deflating cock evidence of his infidelity.

No longer spellbound by the ménage, she had turned on him, shouting and screaming; alternating between asking how he could treat her this way and ordering him to get out. He'd tried to plead with her; offering excuses; 'it was a mistake', 'it was the first time', and platitudes; 'I love you', 'I won't do it again', but given all she'd had to put up with in the previous few months, she'd found his protestations both pathetic and unbelievable. In response, she'd thrown a vase at him, which had missed his head by the proverbial whisker before crashing against the wall. Realising he risked being the target for other missiles and further excuses were likely to be futile, he'd grabbed his underwear and followed the two women out of the back door.

The period immediately following her husband's departure was to prove a trial, both financially and emotionally. The loss of David's paycheque and her divorce lawyer's seemingly never ending legal bills had eaten into her finances such that by the time she'd managed to sell the house and had received her divorce decree; her already meagre savings had been reduced to a pittance. Over time, moving into a less expensive house and a bequest from her mother's estate had resolved her financial problems, but the same could not be said for her emotional issues.

If she had hoped to gain a measure of revenge by throwing her husband out, she was to be severely disappointed as he'd merely moved next door and within days, had formed a ménage-a-trois with Melissa and Lisa, the third party in the threesome. It was a development which was to provide a daily, unwanted reminder of his infidelity and what she had found even more trying, had made her an object of pity among her friends.

The first summer had been difficult. After sharing a house for twenty-three years, living alone had proved a challenge and one which had been exacerbated by the presence of the ménage. The house next door had a swimming pool and whenever the sun shone, the lovers had taken every opportunity to disport themselves, clearly for her benefit, in varying degrees of nakedness. The women had paraded in the tiniest of bikinis which just managed to cover what a male friend had referred to as 'the good bits', while the normally conservative David had forsaken the scruffy, knee-length shorts he'd worn for swimming during their marriage and had adopted the type of swimming trunks normally found only on the beaches of southern Europe.

She had attempted to dismiss, as adolescent behaviour, the incessant displays of affection which had accompanied the displays of naked flesh, but she hadn't always found it possible. Even if their actions fell short of actual sex, she'd found the sight of her neighbours kissing and fondling erotic. On several occasions, including two, booze fuelled evenings when the women had dispensed with their bikinis, she'd gone inside and pleasured herself to images inspired by the lovers; many of which had seen her playing Melisa's original role in the threesome.

If her orgasms had been satisfying, and in most instances they had, the aftermath had not. She'd been both angry at herself and ashamed; angry David had left and condemned her to a life of onanistic sex and ashamed she found images based on her husband's infidelity, sexually stimulating.

It wasn't just the sexual nature of the displays which she'd found difficult; the women were attractive and she'd found it impossible to ignore the difference between her five foot seven and one hundred and seventy-five pound body and the almost anorexic bodies of her husband's lovers. She'd understood comparing her body with those of the neighbours was pointless as they were twenty years younger than her and the laws of nature dictated there would be a marked difference between her body and theirs and a difference which wouldn't be to her advantage. However logical the argument, she'd found herself being intimidated by their almost perfect bodies to the extent she'd given up sunbathing in her back garden and had come to accept she was fat, unattractive and undesirable to men.

With the exception of Christmas, which she'd spent alone for the first time in her life, her daughter having left for the west coast immediately following her college graduation in the spring, the winter had been easier. The pool had been closed, the displays of naked flesh and affection had ceased and winter clothing meant the differences in body shape had not been so readily apparent.

If the winter had proved easier, the following the summer had proved at least as difficult as the first. David had opened the pool in time for the Memorial Day weekend and while the Saturday had been cool, the Sunday had been warm and by early afternoon the backyard was full of guests, including some who had been mutual friends of David and her during their marriage. She had decided to ignore it and had called Ann, a friend and colleague from school and arranged to go shopping, but had changed her plans when she'd seen two long-time friends park their car across the road and go next door.

Both Scott and Deb Warner had sided with David after the break-up, Deb having even gone so far as to spread malicious gossip about her relationship with Ann, and since it was a pool party, she decided it might be worth staying and taking a peek - if only to laugh at Deb.

Deb was fat, definitely fatter than her and she was curious to see what she was going to be wearing. Uncharitably, she imagined her in a flower-print bikini, bat-wings flapping, cellulite rippling the back of her thighs and rolls of belly fat overhanging the bikini bottom and hiding it completely from sight.

After calling Ann and cancelling their shopping trip, she made her way upstairs to a rear bedroom, the window of which offered an unrestricted view of the pool area, and she knew, if she stood far enough from the window, she would be almost invisible to the people next door. When she looked there was nobody in the pool, but the yard was full, most of the women sitting on chairs while the men were standing around either the barbecue or the makeshift bar.

She located Deb almost immediately; she wasn't wearing a bikini, but a blue, one-piece swimsuit with a skirt and contrary to her imagination, there didn't appear to be any rolls of fat hanging anywhere. To her left and standing with their backs to her, were David's two women, both in what appeared to be new and even smaller bikinis and talking to an older woman. As she watched, Lisa, the woman she had identified to her female friends as 'the one whose pussy was being licked', turned to greet another guest and in so doing offered her profile; a profile, which it was immediately apparent, was not in keeping with her usual svelte outline.

Lisa had put on weight and her first reaction had been to feel smug, but a closer look revealed the only place it had accumulated was around her belly and rather than getting fat, she was obviously pregnant and from the looks of it, had been for at least five or six months. How she'd managed to miss it she didn't know, although when she'd thought about it later, she realised she hadn't seen much of Lisa since February and when she had, she'd been wearing either winter or loose fitting clothing.

The knowledge was a bombshell. She had come to accept she was no longer married to David and rather than her, he was getting his jollies from the floozies from next door – whenever she'd described them she'd been tempted to call them the whores from next door, but had settled for floozies, a word she'd borrowed from her mother. That one of them would become pregnant was something she had never contemplated, but from what she could see, it appeared at least one of them was expecting David's bastard.

She found the notion ridiculous. David was forty-eight with two children, the youngest of whom was twenty-two. He'd stopped trying to impregnate her immediately after their second child was born and had never again expressed any interest in having another. At the time, it was a decision with which she'd been happy to agree, since she was only twenty-four and had given birth to two children in seventeen months.

At his insistence, she had taken the pill, which she'd done until she was almost forty, after which she'd used an IUD in order to comply with his directive to the effect that he didn't want another child and it was up to her to insure they didn't have one. His apparent change of heart was incomprehensible.

She was angry, but most of all she was jealous. It was almost twelve months since he'd left, but despite her acceptance of the situation and her determination to get over him, from time to time, she still found herself feeling jealous of the two women. She knew she was being irrational and that she couldn't compete. The two women were in their late twenties and much younger than her, far more attractive, probably better in bed and in getting two for the price of one; David was fulfilling a male fantasy. Being jealous was a waste of time and energy, but she couldn't entirely rid herself of the feelings.

Lisa's pregnancy only served to re-enforce those feelings, although they were not based on him having impregnated Lisa rather than her, but because Lisa could have a child and she couldn't. She knew it didn't make sense; she didn't want any more children, but the onset of menopause following David's departure – she'd blamed it on the stress - and the accompanying knowledge she couldn't have more children, for some reason, had been upsetting. Lisa's pregnancy had only aggravated the upset.

Over the following eight years, the anger and pain had gradually disappeared. She'd experienced a measure of revenge a year later, when Melissa had left David in favour of a thirty year old corporate lawyer who, apparently, was a better catch than a forty-nine year old, regional marketing manager for a sporting goods company. It had been a surprise when Lisa had not only stayed with David, but had married and had another child by him. The last time she had seen them together, the svelte figure she'd envied had disappeared and she'd taken delight in noting Lisa's figure looked remarkably similar to the figure she'd had at the same age.

When she looked back on her marriage, she realised she'd been cheated, not only by her husband's infidelity, but also in her sex life. She had been able to accept the former, but had never been able to forgive him for the way his attitude to sex had supressed her sexuality. Sex with David had not been satisfying and if she had donned her teacher's hat and assessed his performance as a lover, she would have given him, at best, an 'F' coupled with a comment to the effect that 'David's performance has been disappointing. He really must try harder'.

He had taken her virginity three months after they had met at college. He'd been persuasive, gradually increasing the pressure on her until she'd felt compelled to say yes. She'd been apprehensive, his cock looked big and much too big for her cunt, but she had convinced herself he loved her and when they came to make love for the first time, he would be loving and tender.

The reality had been painful and nothing like she'd imagined. He'd been clumsy and inexperienced, groping her and trying to ram his cock inside her with little concern for her well-being. She'd been tight, it had taken him a long time to pierce her hymen and once he had, he'd cum almost immediately, filling her cunt with cum and totally unconcerned he might impregnate her.

His performance had improved slightly over the course of their married life, but he'd never been an ardent, attentive or adventurous lover and after the children were born, the first, a son, four months after their marriage and five months after she'd graduated, they had quickly settled into a routine of once-a-week sex, usually on a Friday night, and for some reason, always in the missionary position.

David had been her first serious boyfriend and when they'd met her knowledge of sex had been rudimentary, mainly because she'd had no one to teach her. Her mother, who had been in their middle fifties when she was a teenager, had been too embarrassed to discuss sex with her and an unholy combination of Roman Catholics and Evangelicals had ensured sex education had not been taught in her school. As a result, when she'd first made love to David, other than a brief, almost asexual, lesbian affair with her college room-mate, she'd had no theoretical or practical knowledge of sex and wasn't aware an orgasm during sex wasn't just a male prerogative, but that women were also entitled to one. It was only after starting work and having been counselled by Ann, she had become aware a very occasional orgasm was neither acceptable nor the norm.

At Ann's suggestion she'd acquired a vibrator, the latest version of which was a pink rabbit she called 'her friend Peter'. The first time she'd used one, she'd felt both uneasy and guilty and had waited until her husband and children were out for the day before she took it out from its hiding place in her underwear drawer.

Although Ann had provided some basic instructions; 'It's like using your fingers – only better. I usually stick it in my pussy to get it wet and then switch between my pussy and my clit – but it's a matter of personal preference and you'll soon discover what you like best' - she had found herself reluctant to use it.

The rabbit was intimidating, even more intimidating than her first sighting of David's erect cock. She hadn't expected David's cock to be so large, but if anything, the rabbit looked to be thicker and longer and what was more intimidating, appeared to require a degree in nuclear physics to operate it. She'd read the instruction manual and when she had finished was still totally confused on how to invoke the various vibratory and rotatory motions. She'd almost called Ann and asked her to come over and show her how to use it, but had persisted and after ten minutes of pressing all six buttons controlling rotation and the four controlling vibration had found a combination which was acceptable.

Her first efforts were tentative; just brushing the head over her clit and then inching the head into her cunt, but the longer she played with herself, the better it started to feel and contrary to her original concerns, it didn't feel wrong, but exciting. By the end of the afternoon, an afternoon in which she had cum eight times and had almost exhausted the batteries, she had come to realise she was orgasmic and using the rabbit guaranteed she would reach her climax. In contrast, sex with David certainly hadn't come with the same guarantee. It was as if he was the only person allowed to get any pleasure from their sex life and any enjoyment she garnered was only a bi-product of their coupling.

In an effort to improve the enjoyment she got from their love-making, she'd attempted to introduce her friend, but when she'd produced it from under her pillow, he'd yelled at her.