Suzanne's Supreme Night of Poker

First section of a four-part story.

It all started off playful. Not innocent, but playful.

Jim's buddies for many years had had their monthly gatherings. Here in southern Indiana, in this quiet corner of the American heartlands, their meetings were nothing out of the ordinary. Sometimes it was "poker night." More often it was a visit to their favorite local, the Tank, with its dark, dank interior and the ever entertaining dartboard.

The boys liked wagering with each other over almost anything. There could be other activities too, but the four of them somehow always had it fixed in their calendars, and even when holiday season or busy schedules or family events made things difficult or complicated, they never went more than six weeks without a get-together.

The other girls made light of it, but I was the only one who really felt at all slighted. I think they thought it was good for their husbands to get together and blow some male steam off, and this was just the right way to keep everything okay and steady on the home front. Jim's buddies were solid, hardworking guys, not what you would call cultured or anything, but they were good men.

Chrissie said her Roderick always came home in a good mood, and was apt to be more expansive, and talkative and appreciative of her for a bit after one of their meetings. When I pointed out "why" he might have been in a better mood when he got home (I had a pretty good idea of how much they drank), she just laughed and brushed it off.

I was the lone outsider among all the couples. My urban Long Island family roots were eight hundred miles away, culturally light-years, while I think the next girl who was furthest from home was Stacey, and she was just from upstate.

I'd met Jim on a river rafting expedition one summer between college semesters. He was the guide for our trip in the hills of Kentucky, and I had been taken with him straight away. Kind blue eyes, dark hair, woodsman's patchy beard, nice long rangy build, flannel shirts and jeans, a little shy, even awkward.

Jim did not fit my usual attraction profile at all. I was used to highly cerebral, or at least well-educated types, which was not Jim in the least. Not that Jim isn't smart - he is, in his own way - but let's just say you don't see copies of Kafka on his bedroom nightstand.

We were married the next year after my graduation from university and I moved west. He was working at his father's business, a hardware wholesaling outfit, and pretty soon I was swept up with his family, neighbors and friends.

For two years it was fantastic. I was away from intellectual competition, which could be cutthroat around New York. After a string of increasingly volatile and unsatisfying college relationships, I was happy to have a nice stable life with a good man. We coupled a lot those first two years, then along came Aden, and then Buster. After twelve years of marriage, I had a house full of males and it was mostly good.

Jim was great with the boys, took them fishing and camping, coached their sports teams, gave me weekends off a bunch. The intervening years were the complicated ones of family but it still was good, and Jim and I usually found a way to make love at least once a week.

But I had gotten a bit resentful of the kind of male camaraderie that Jim had built up with his band of buddies. A different kind of attention that didn't get shared with me. And there were times when it seemed that he felt his close-knit crew were more important than me, too.

His best friend Rob was over after work that Wednesday. He's a big guy, broad shouldered and handsome in a rough-hewn way, and like most of the other guys, had gone to high school with Jim. His dark hair was thinning and he had a large chest and beer-belly to go along, but he held his weight well. He took up a lot of space, looked real strong.

I always liked looking at his thick forearms with his sleeves rolled up, the way the sinews worked when he held a beer or gripped a door knob. He was in a workshirt and jeans. They were talking in the kitchen over a couple long-necked Buds when I came in with groceries from the store. It was July and hot. He was standing next to the window overlooking the front lawn.

"Hey good looking," said Rob, his standard greeting.

"Hey Rob, how's biz?" Rob ran a construction business, employed eight, sometimes ten guys, and while he didn't tend to get the big development contracts, his crew had built a good dozen or so houses in town since I had moved here, along with plenty of remodeling work.

"No complaints," he shrugged, and we talked a bit about stuff, weather and kids and the Red's chances of winning the division. His wife Sharon, who I liked a lot, was going to visit her sister in Cincinnati over the weekend. She was a big girl in every way. Tall, big hips, big chest, big dark unruly hair, broad easy smile. Their two kids were heading quickly towards largeness themselves.

He then shot a glance over at Jim.

"Poker over here next Tuesday night babe, that okay with you?" said Jim, obviously prodded.

I made a face, since I had been hoping for other things that week. The kids would be away at camp for a whole week, the first that both of them would be gone from home at the same time, and it would have been a nice excuse for Jim and I to do some things together, maybe go out to dinner once or twice so I didn't have to cook, and we could pretend it was just the two of us again.

I shot Jim a sharp look, but either he didn't catch my meaning or just ignored it. His expression was bland.

"Only day that's going to work for all of us for the next month," he said mildly. His eyes squinted, and he stroked his sparse little beard with one hand, his beer in the other.

I was annoyed for a couple reasons, maybe even some I couldn't quite identify at that moment. The guys usually didn't check in with the wives anyway, just announced the dates, but when poker was at one of the homes, the girls got stuck with most of the food prep and of course the clean-up, which didn't tend to be disastrous, or frat-party like, but still was extra work.

It felt like entitlement, I guess, and that bugged me.

"Do I get to play too?" I asked. This was a long running routine among them, that I always asked about joining the card games, and inevitably got teasing responses from the guys. They liked their male brand of dealing and wagering.

"Anytime you want," said Rob, with a long, calculating smile, eyes traveling me from top to bottom. "Any of us guys always like playing with wives."

Jim chuckled and I was ready to kick him in the shins.

So, just to irritate him, I put on a sultry little smile of my own.

"How would I qualify to play with you big fellas?" I asked wantonly.

Rob gave me a long, slow, thoughtful look.

"Well, high heels for starters," he said, gazing at my legs. "A short skirt? Short top? You girls all know plenty well how to play." His eyes teased me.

Jim's face had lost some of its humor.

"You know damn well I don't do high heels, Rob. Under any conditions. But short skirts I got," my eyes teased Rob right back.

Jim shifted on his feet and harrumphed.

"Well, none of the other wives have ever played cards at our games, don't see any reason why things shouldn't stay that way." He folded his arms in front of him. "It's guys' night."

I gave Jim a mildly annoyed look but a faint smile lingered on Rob's face.

We talked a bit about other things while I unloaded the groceries.

Later that night in bed I wanted to make love with Jim. It had been awhile, and I found my minor irritation with him earlier had not only departed but had reversed itself. I wanted him, and wanted him to want me. I can forget how handsome he is sometimes, and how genuinely sweet a guy he is overall.

We had a pretty easy way to communicate our interest in love-making, at least from my end. I make sure to be in bed first, which happens normally anyway, since I like to read in bed before heading to sleep.

When Jim settles in, whether he is planning to read or not, I just drift my hand over to his crotch, and give a light caress to his penis through his undershorts. That is signal enough, and while Jim will sometimes give me a reason why he isn't up for it - health, tiredness, business distractions, whatever - more often than not that is all we need to get started with each other.

Tonight was not an exception. He got a little smile on his face and we turned out the lights, and faced each other under the covers, just sheets now in the summer weather.

As usual, he kissed my neck, which I never grow tired of, and rustled my hair, and I ran my fingers over his narrow haunches and penis after I had pulled his undershorts off. He was already hard, so smooth, always nice.

But then, something got into me, not sure why. I wanted our foreplay to have some talk, some fantasy talk.

Sharing our fantasies usually wasn't an easy proposition. Jim is a quiet sort, and these kinds of conversations were always a bit more guarded than exploratory for him. I think he was always afraid that he might concoct some fantasy that repulsed me or made me feel inadequate or something. And I am not sure how comfortable he was with fantasies anyway, it didn't seem to be a Midwest kind of thing, where "practical" seemed to be the dominant theme.

For me, on the other hand, fantasies were tremendous. Of course, ninety-five percent of my sexual life as an adolescent had been in the fantasy realm, and while real sex had felt actualized and more immediate and intensely satisfying when it finally arrived, far later than I had wanted, there were nice parts about what you could imagine in your head too.

However, I had gotten Jim to confess fairly early on in our marriage, when we were still quite new together, that he would enjoy being in bed with me and another girl. He got a little embarrassed when I pressed him on it, and in fact, the idea of sharing him with another woman had been a bit unsettling to me, to say the least. I couldn't even imagine who might qualify, who I could imagine on the other side of him, playing with his penis, wanting his intimate attention the same as me.

Somehow, before we got very far into our love-making that night, I got him talking about this again. I could tell it still was an idea that bounced around his head from time to time. When I asked if there was anyone in particular who might work, he was totally evasive.

Maybe he didn't have a good visualization of it all anyway, perhaps it was just the idea of the thing, having two females fawning over his cock at the same time, giving him pleasure, two girls together, two sets of boobs to play with, two excited crotches anxious for his penis to penetrate them, nothing more concrete than that. I mentioned some other wives in town as possibilities, friends of friends, even some local teenagers I knew he thought were cute. He shook his head firmly each time.

And then, and there shouldn't be reading too much into this, I asked him about the reverse, how he might feel about me being in bed with more than just him and his own manly penis.

I could feel his body tighten with this question, I think I took him by surprise.

He hemmed and hawed, rambled a bit. He was worried that I might find another guy better than he was. He worried about violating local customs, setting precedents, endangering reputations, what it might mean for the future. Complications to what was already a good marriage.

When I probed a bit more however, it became clear that it did excite him a bit. It was almost as if he could wrap his head around this suggestion of mine, then maybe his own fantasy wasn't so crazy either. That it was okay to entertain possibilities outside the usual. It seemed to me that there were a couple parts to this, maybe more.

The first was the absolute illicitness about sharing me, here in our quiet little well-ordered world. We would be breaking norms, blasting boundaries apart, doing something nasty and secret and exciting. I think the more he thought about seeing someone else couple with me, as long as he didn't feel threatened by the individual, and as long as he could participate too, the more it was arousing to him.

I think another part was maybe the triumph that might come from sharing me, knowing that he had a treasure of a partner and was comfortable and powerful enough in himself that he could be magnanimous. I got him to talk a little about what kinds of things he thought might be fun to do with three in bed.

I had never been a great beauty, but in our group I was rare among the wives for being trim and having a relatively narrow waist. I knew sometimes the guys would tell him how good I looked, and he was proud of that.

At the town pool I was one of the few women in our age group comfortable in a two-piece swim-suit. I would get looks from both the men and the women, but the emotions behind the looks were totally different, and diametrically opposed - one set lustful, the other envious, or maybe somehow disapproving. I was lively, engaging, not the Midwestern norm. Something about his words made me shiver with feelings that were a mixture of excitement and danger.

While we talked I played with his penis, running my fingers softly up and down its length, and it had gotten very hard. It's a nice one, curved and thicker than you might have thought, given his build, and it had never disappointed me. His great cock had been our shared entertainment since we had first met. We both liked it, and what it did.

Well, for whatever our discussion was worth, the rest of the evening was absolutely scintillating. He was very ardent, kissed and played with my chest and nipples for an extended time, hovered on his knees over my head and ran the underside of his stiff penis over my face and cheeks before I licked and sucked him a bit, and he mounted me for a long and lovely coupling.

I shivered when his penis went up me initially, that moment of being penetrated never ceases to be enthralling, one of those enchanting continual delights of life. He was very excited, and ended up pushing real hard and strong at the end.

I was very close to coming myself, closer than usual. I almost never can orgasm just by coupling with him, it always takes some extra work before or after. But his penis pulsed sweet inside me while his slender rump quivered at the end with his climax.

He lay on top of me for awhile afterwards, resting, with his long, strong arms around me, and we kissed and cuddled, his penis still inside me. Then he got down between my thighs and finished me off with his mouth. It was very sweet, a really nice long rolling climax. I was very pleased.

We drifted off to that lovely, deep, warm sleep that follows a good love session.

He looked closely at me during breakfast the next morning as I dished him up his eggs and toast. It appeared that he was wondering if we really had had our discussion the night before.

"Who would you trust me with?" I asked, raising my eyebrows, taking a stab at what he was thinking.

I had guessed right and he started, then looked embarrassed, like he was a schoolboy caught breaking the rules.

"Well, not a stranger, that's for sure. Not sure that anyone we were close with would work either though." He looked at me oddly, taking in my body from head to toe. He seemed to be trying to visualize another guy taking his liberties with me.

"How 'bout Rob?" I asked, a small smile on my lips. "You could trust him, and you know very well I would not trade you for him, ever."

"Or anyone else," I said after a pause. "You are my guy. Forever. Period."

He gave me a small smile and his expression was a combination of surprise and intrigue.

"Yeah, maybe," he finally said, and then carefully turned the talk to other things, but I knew that some sort of reassuring had taken place. Jim doesn't say a lot, but I can read his body language (and his moods) better than anyone, including his Ma and any of his relatives. This little notion of mine was no longer an impossible concept. Suddenly I had a lot to think about.

So the next few days were interesting ones for me. My frequent daydreams were filled with exciting scenarios that made my groin squeeze in anticipated pleasure. I got a little plan going, or rather, a plan evolved for me by combining various pieces of smaller ones.

The thought of another penis in my life, and another man's attention, even if just a one-time thing, made me run my tongue over my lips. Having Jim watch me with someone - someone who desired me and wanted to do sexual things with me - the thought of that made me shiver too.

I couldn't quite believe that I might be able to pull my scheme off, as it got bigger and more complicated, whether everything would line up properly, or whether I would lose my nerve. But I have always been adept with plans, nudging details into place, knowing how to work leverage points and above all, having a sense of good timing.

"But playing cards is all about luck sometimes," I said to myself. Sometimes luck is better than skill, and you can play a winning hand without much behind it. Of course I knew Jim would always argue, at least with poker, that skill trumped luck, most of the time.

I would not just call his hand, but raise him.

I found myself smiling a lot to myself and itching for Tuesday to arrive. We dropped the kids off at camp Sunday afternoon. The house felt funny later, too quiet, too big, a bit empty while the two of us rattled around inside.

I had given a little thought to what I would wear Tuesday but knew it couldn't be overboard.

I had a beige, summer sun-dress, light fabric, mid-thigh, with ties behind that cinched my waist tightly, and I knew I looked good in it, since Jim always made a point of saying so.

My breasts, without a bra, would slink around nicely inside it, but the outfit wouldn't be an over-the-top exhibition kind of thing. The guys wouldn't notice immediately that my bra was missing, only after a little time, and some careful movement on my part. It wasn't cut too low in front, but I knew by leaning over strategically that folks would be able to get a good view when I wanted them to.

Most of the other wives I know are pretty unhappy with their breasts, and child-rearing had taken its toll on all of us in varying ways. I had been a B-cup in college for most bras, sometimes a C, but now with some added weight I was most often a C size. My biggest complaint was that mine were more pointed at their ends than I wanted, rather than round and full. They stuck out and drifted off to each side.

Naturally they had ballooned out when I was nursing each of the kids, and Jim had adored their temporary expansion, he couldn't keep his eyes off them, although strangely, he had been skittish about my milk, even when I offered it to him during our scarce intimate bed-time moments back then.

They had retreated of course after I stopped nursing, but I still liked how they looked in the mirror with my dress on. Their sharp ends were then an asset, and I knew my nipples would grow erect easily when brushing against the fabric.

I left my slightly-longer-than-shoulder-length hair loose, still dark and thick and woolly, instead of putting it back like I normally did with the summer weather. But I kept a hair thingy around my left wrist, in case I needed to put my hair back later. When I thought about why I would want it back, my crotch squeezed with pleasure.

And - this is a dark and illicit thing for me - I wore the black string-thong Jim gave me one year at Christmas, more as a joke than a real present. I know he had enjoyed picking it out, from wherever he found it. I didn't like it, those things cut into your ass-crack something fierce and really aren't comfortable at all, but they do succeed in making you feel thoroughly naughty.