Guess What Honey?

"And that included you," I said.

"Oh, yeah," Maddie declared, with a roll of her eyes. "I had a major crush on him."

"I've seen pictures of how you looked in high school, so I'm shocked that it never happened."

"Who says it never happened?" Maddie announced quietly, staring down at where her hands fiddled with the blanket.

"But wait... we had that talk about all our old lovers," I argued, Maddie's admission suddenly making me feel a hint of betrayal again. We'd both had a very open discussion about all our previous lovers when we first got engaged, and Maddie had undoubtedly never mentioned a black guy.

Maddie started to tear up again, her bottom lip quivering. I was running out of sympathy for her, though. My wife and the mother of our children had already openly admitted to secretly flirting with this handsome black man and even kissing him. But now, I was learning that she'd committed another lie of omission by leaving out this previous lover. It wouldn't have mattered to me that she'd been with a black man sexually, so I didn't understand her dishonesty.

"I was afraid to tell you about him," Maddie said, sniffling to the point I handed her a tissue, waiting patiently while she wiped her tears and blew her nose.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because I kept it a secret from everyone all these years. No one in school knew because I was terrified that my dad would find out. You know what a horrible bigot he is. If he'd ever found out, he would have disowned me," Maddie replied, her chest hitching several times as she spoke the words.

She was right. My father-in-law was just to the right of Adolph Hitler's stance on Jews regarding black people. And while I'd never thought of him as a danger to lynch anyone, that might not have been true if he'd known Maddie's secret. Still, that didn't explain why my wife hadn't told me.

"We had that conversation after we got engaged, Maddie. If you didn't think you could trust me, then you damned well shouldn't have married me," I said flatly, as I slid out of bed and began to pace around the room.

I felt Maddie's eyes following me and could hear her constant sniffles. But at the moment, I didn't care. My wife had already made me feel less than essential tonight by saying that my endless compliments of her beauty meant far less than a relative stranger's. And now, this new revelation had me feeling as if she didn't trust me either.

"I'm so sorry, Peter. I should have told you, and I know that now," Maddie declared, through her sniffles and tears. "But I wasn't sure how you would feel about it at the time, and I didn't want to wreck our relationship by bringing up something that I considered to be in my past."

"Only it's not so in your past. Is it Maddie?" I said sarcastically, continuing to pace as I did.

"Please forgive me, Peter," Maddie begged, jumping up from the bed and tracking me down, her hands grabbing my cheeks and forcing me to look at her. "I swear to you that I've dealt with Mark for the last time. I meant what I said earlier; from now on, one of my staffers will deal with him. I'll do anything to have you forgive me and make you feel as though you can trust me again."

"And who is it that I'm supposed to trust, Maddie? The woman who lied to me about her sexual past and was basically on the verge of an affair before deciding to come clean about it. Or the woman that I thought I married who was always completely honest and forthcoming to me, because I'm no longer sure that she exists."

"I was never close to having an affair!" Maddie cried out, stepping away from me and looking as though it was her who was now getting angry. "Yes, I flirted with Mark, and I danced with him and kissed him back when he kissed me. But I put a stop to it the second our lips parted and demanded that he take me back to the office."

"Then tell me that you didn't hope I would say it was okay for you to go on a date with him."

The change on my wife's countenance was instant. Gone were the anger and defensiveness, and in their place was more shame, Maddie's eyes going to the floor once again. Her silence was all the answer I needed. And despite the fact I'd been wholly aroused by the prospect of my wife being with another man sexually, her silent admission still felt like marital treachery.

"Now, tell me that you haven't fantasized about having this guy fuck you. Maybe you even did it last night when we were making love."

Maddie's eyes came up at that last remark, and I thought she would deny it for a moment. But then my wife's eyes once again went to the floor. And when they did, I, for some reason, felt my cock begin to swell between my legs.

Turning away from my wife to hide my arousal. I returned to the bed and slid between the covers, using our comforter to conceal my growing erection. Maddie just stood in place, still looking at the floor with her back to me. I sat there and watched her, wondering what my wife was thinking. After a moment, Maddie turned and disappeared into the bathroom without saying a word. I felt as though we were at a critical juncture. I'd pushed her pretty hard to this point and thought it was time to start pulling my wife back in. Because despite the things she'd done, I was still very much in love with Maddie and didn't want to wreck my marriage.

I heard the toilet flush and the sink running, and seconds later, Maddie appeared from the bathroom. She made her way to her side of the bed without looking at me. In my favor, she didn't look mad; if anything, Maddie looked broken.

"Do you hate me?" she asked once she was situated under the covers.

"No, of course not," I replied, suddenly feeling the length of my day. "I still love you as much as I always have."

"How?" Maddie asked, and in her voice, I could hear that she genuinely didn't understand why.

"Because real love doesn't fail that easily. It can be damaged, and trust can be lost, but real love is too strong to die such an effortless death."

"So, where do we go from here?" Maddie asked, her voice still sounding tired but now a little hopeful.

This was the hard part. I still had so many questions I wanted to ask, but I was afraid of pushing my wife while she was in such a vulnerable state. I needed her to be clearheaded and not feel threatened to get the answers I really needed to hear. And I thought we both needed a break from the emotional rollercoaster we'd been riding so far tonight.

But there was still one more question I had to have the answer to tonight.

"Earlier, after we got the girls to bed and the two of us were sitting in the living room, you were texting with him, weren't you?"

It was purely a guess on my part. But one that I felt had a reasonable chance of being correct. Her announcement about the new distributor who'd been flirting with her had just seemed wholly unlike my wife. So after giving it some thought while I was riding around, it occurred to me that maybe he'd been the one she was texting and had goaded her into bringing the topic up to see how I would react.

The sudden look of fear in my wife's eyes told me that I'd guessed correctly. Maddie didn't answer me. Instead, she turned and grabbed her phone off her bedside table and held it out to me.

I opened it and brought up her messaging app. I then looked for the name Mark and quickly found it. Bringing up their conversation, I quickly scrolled back to the very first text the two had shared and was stunned by what I found. The pair had been passing messages for more than three weeks now. My wife was always on her phone every night as we sat watching television. So she'd been doing this right up under my nose the entire time.

I began to read, knowing that she was watching me. The texts were playfully flirtatious, to start with. The kind of thing it wasn't unusual to see happening between good friends or coworkers. But then this Mark guy had started to get more pointed with his game, asking Maddie if I'd ever given her multiple orgasms during our intercourse together while claiming he could make it happen within the first five minutes of sex with him. To Maddie's credit, she'd told him that it was none of his business what our sex life was like. But Mark had arrogantly said that was code for me not doing my job of keeping my wife sexually satisfied.

By their second week of texting, Mark was beginning to talk to Maddie about becoming a hotwife. He explained the lifestyle and told her she was far too beautiful to be limiting herself to one partner. That was also around the time he started to try and convince her that I would probably find the idea exciting. I couldn't help but bite at my bottom lip reading that. I'd never met this guy and wouldn't know him from Adam, yet he seemed to know far too much about me.

This past week, I could tell from the texts when the kissing incident had occurred. One week ago tonight, Mark had started their exchange by saying that he refused to apologize for doing something they'd both wanted to happen. Maddie had vehemently denied it to begin with, but by the time of their last text that night, she had admitted to being curious about what it would be like to kiss him.

He'd used that information to begin goading her into imagining sex with him, telling Maddie how demanding a lover her could be. He promised my wife that he could go several times in one night and make her come like no man she'd ever been with. The jerk had left unspoken the fact that his boast included me.

And finally, I got to tonight's texts. Sure enough, my wife's potential paramour had been goading Maddie to bring up the topic of their flirtations and the fact that he had asked her out on a date. Maddie had resisted at first, but then he'd told her she would be doing me a disservice by not being honest with me about her feelings. And my wife had bought his logic, hook, line, and sinker.

But then I read on and discovered that Maddie had confided in him that I'd left suddenly. I read on as he offered her words of comfort, each line I read feeling like a dagger in my heart. The fact that she'd turned to him for comfort told me just how much Maddie trusted the man, which was a big problem for me. It made me wonder if my wife hadn't already developed feelings for this guy that went far beyond the physical attractions she'd described to me.

I handed the phone back to my wife and pulled the covers up around my chest. I gripped them tightly as I did my best to remain calm. Of all the things Maddie had done tonight that hurt me, her seeking solace from the man who'd created a rift in our marriage was the worst. But I didn't want to discuss it with her tonight. I needed a little time to think about what my wife had done. I needed time to cool off and to be able to come at this with a clear head. And even more, I needed time to figure out exactly why the thought of my wife fucking this man excited me so goddamn much.

"I think we both need to take the night to think about everything," I said, reaching over to turn off the lamp on my bedside table. "I say that we give it tonight and tomorrow to both think about what we want and then come back to this discussion after getting the girls to sleep tomorrow night."

I could tell that my plan didn't please my wife. I knew that I was leaving her in a sort of limbo. But as unfair as that was of me, Maddie had brought most of this on herself. Yes, she'd been sold a bill of goods by a slick salesman, but she'd bought it all the same.

I held my left arm out across our expensive bedsheets, my sign for Maddie to cuddle in the crook of my shoulder. That seemed to ease my wife's concerns a bit. She turned and cut off her lamp before settling beside me and laying her head against my shoulder.

"I love you, Peter," Maddie said softly, her voice full of emotion.

"I love you, too," I replied, and I hoped that would prove to be enough when all was said and done.

CHAPTER THREE

That next day was rough sailing for us both. Especially Maddie, who actually had to go to work. I at least had the benefit of working from home doing web design, allowing me the opportunity to catch a little catnap or two, when I needed it most.

I didn't get much work done regardless. I spent most of my work hours reading everything I could find on my sexual predilection towards the idea of seeing my wife with another man. And the news that this suave and confident man was black had only fervently stoked the fires of my arousal all that much more for reasons I couldn't explain. Despite slipping from our marital bed twice during the night to masturbate feverishly in the privacy of our bathroom to such lurid thoughts as my gorgeous and sexy wife down on her knees sucking a black man's cock, I'd spent most of the day with a near-constant erection.

I'd come to discover that my particular mental bent was hardly unusual. It seemed that thousands of men worldwide got off on seeing their wives and girlfriends taken by another man. I read published academic papers on the subject and even firsthand accounts from husbands and wives who lived the lifestyle. I even joined a message board related to the topic and chatted with men much like myself. They were a great help in clarifying a few of the murkier aspects of the lifestyle for me, encouraging me to at least give it a try one time. These men all seemed to have one driving force behind their motivations to share their wives: their love for the women they married and their desire to see those women happy and sexually fulfilled.

As my afternoon progressed, I went offline and spent the final two hours before our girls came home from school, reflecting on all I'd learned. Terms like reclaiming, sperm competition, hotwife, and cuckold; reverberated around my mind. And as I walked down our driveway to meet Katie and Alisa at the bus, I'd made a certain peace with my part in this little passion play. Yes, I was still trying to work out the details in my mind, but I knew what I planned to do. That realization had my stomach rolling with waves of jealousy and humiliation-fed nausea; so I did my best to shut the topic out of my mind as I greeted my two girls with a smile.

When Maddie returned home two hours later, I'd already fed the girls a snack and helped them with their homework. The pair greeted their mother excitedly at the door with hugs and kisses before disappearing back into the family room to watch a video on our big-screen television.

"Hi," Maddie said almost shyly, as her hands encircled my waist where I stood at the counter chopping vegetables. Though I couldn't see her face, I could hear the uncertainty in Maddie's voice, that single word speaking volumes as to her current mindset.

"Hey, beautiful," I declared, turning my body to face Maddie and drawing her lips to mine. I wanted my kiss to be reassuring and impart the depth of love I held for her. "How was work?"

"Long and horrible," Maddie declared, her eyes beginning to well with tears. "I couldn't stop thinking about..."

"Shhh!" I said softly, touching my right index finger to her lips gently. "Later, when the girls are asleep."

Maddie took a moment to gather herself, wiping the tears away that had been gathering in her eyes. She then disappeared back towards our bedroom and left me to my own thoughts as I returned to chopping vegetables.

Maddie rejoined me a few minutes later, dressed casually in a pair of leggings and a t-shirt. And though I could tell that our coming discussion still weighed heavily on her mind, Maddie did her best to seem her usual self as she helped me finish making our evening meal. Once it was ready, we called the girls in to eat, the four of us sitting down to a family dinner.

The girls were their typical talkative selves, regaling us with stories about their day at school. Maddie and I both feigned intense interest in the stories of their classmates and teachers while the undertones of what was coming surely rested at the forefront of mine and Maddie's minds. I know that it did mine.

When our meal was done, I offered to do the dishes so that my wife could spend an hour with the girls before beginning to prepare them for bed. I finished my chore and then retreated to my home office, where I did a little work on several projects that I'd otherwise avoided during my workday. Once I heard my wife beginning to get the girls in their bath, I closed down my computer and went to lay out the girls' sleepwear and outfits for the next day.

Once we'd kissed them goodnight, Maddie and I retreated back to the family room. There, I poured my wife a glass of wine, giving myself a tumbler of bourbon. Handing her the drink, I sat down beside Maddie and lovingly placed my arm around her, instead of sitting in my usual spot in my recliner.

"I love you," I said softly, opening our conversation.

"I love you, too, so much," Maddie declared, squeezing herself tightly against me.

Neither of us said anything else for the next half hour. The television was on and tuned into the Braves game. But I had the volume turned down, just concentrating on the feel of my wife's body against me. This was the calm before what could be the boiling turbulence of an emotional storm. But I was determined to see us both through it safely to the other side.

"Let's go to the bedroom," I announced, emptying the remainder of my bourbon and taking Maddie's nearly-empty wine glass from her hand.

We retreated to our room, stopping to check on the girls before finally finding ourselves alone in our inner sanctum. There, we both performed our nightly ablutions without conversation, both of us seemingly wanting those last few seconds to prepare ourselves for the discussion to come. I slipped between the covers in nothing but my boxers and a t-shirt, as I watched Maddie brush out her hair before tying it up in a ponytail. My wife, wearing nothing but a pair of lacy, black panties, disappeared into her closet, reappearing seconds later in a sheer, lacy, black chemise that left more than subtle hints of her large, shapely breasts.

"What I need out of you more than anything tonight, is complete and total honesty," I stated, as Maddie finally settled beneath the covers, both of us sitting up against the headboard. "I have some questions that need to be answered, and I intend to listen openly to whatever you say without condemnation or judgment. Once you've responded to all my questions, I'll tell you what's been on my mind all day."

Maddie didn't reply; she merely nodded her head in confirmation, as her right hand fingered her wedding and engagement bands. I took a deep breath and mentally prepared myself. I then slowly let it out and began our verbal trek towards what would likely turn out to be a complete change in our lifestyle.

"This guy in high school. I assume he was rough with you when the two of you had sex?

"Uh-huh," Maddie said, with a slightly embarrassed nod.

"And you enjoyed that, and if so, can you tell me why?" I asked while trying not to sound judgmental.

Maddie's face and chest flushed, and suddenly I knew for a fact that she was recalling her time with that black lover. She was reliving it mentally, and those recollections had her thick nipples protruding nicely through the chemise's lacy material. Her eyes had gone glassy and had taken on a heavily-lidded look, as she recalled that fond memory from her youth.

"Darren was only the second guy I'd ever been with," Maddie admitted, her voice sounding weak and far away. "He was the second of the three guys I slept with during my senior year of high school after I turned eighteen. And being with him was as different from the other two, as night is different from day."

I waited for her to go on, saying nothing to break her thought process. I knew that it was difficult for Maddie to reveal these intimate details that she'd long since kept buried in the depths of her mind. I was as sure of that fact, as I was of the knowledge that if I felt between my wife's legs at that moment, she'd be soaking wet. By prodding her to think about them, I knew that I was taking the risk of her not being able to bury them again.