The Bridge

"Amanda's my friend, but she' s a fool. I'd never offer my man to another woman and most especially not you. You're her man and she's your woman, and I'm not, and as long as you are with her I'll not sleep with you again."

"Think on this as a holiday romance. And nothing more."

And then she kissed me hard on the lips, smiled ruefully, and then she got up out of bed and without a backward glance went to the door and was gone.

I lay on my back gazing at the ceiling and wondered what had just happened. I understood that I had been unfaithful to Amanda even though she had created the conditions for it to happen. I had willingly allowed Marrika to seduce me and was complicit in her betrayal of her friend. I thought about telling Amanda what had happened but realised that not only might she finish with me but much more importantly she would lose Marrika as friend. I resolved to say nothing and move on. The problem was that something had happened, and it could not be undone.

5

In the morning at breakfast we all behaved as if nothing had happened. Amanda was nursing a hangover and didn't say much, took two aspirins, and went back to her room to lie down. In midmorning my parents unexpectedly arrived back to Vancouver having taken an early morning flight following a miraculous improvement in my grandmothers' health. Marrika went to pack, and I think to hide.

In the mid-afternoon Amanda, now recovered, and I drove Marrika the short distance to Vancouver International Airport from where she was flying to Helsinki via London. They planned to meet at Xmas in Helsinki and Amanda's last words were.

"See you at Xmas Marrika," as she gave her a hug.

I pecked Marrika on the cheek.

"Have a good flight."

Three days later Amanda finished with me. It was a fairly unique place to end a relationship. We were travelling cattle-class in a Boeing 747 and were about five hours out from Vancouver cruising at around thirty thousand feet somewhere over North-eastern Canada when she "did the dirty".

We had both been drinking fairly steadily for the last couple of hours and I'm sure this made the process easier for her. I can't remember exactly what words she used but the gist of it was that she was going to Sweden for a year, and we would be apart for that period, that long distance relationships didn't normally last even when people were in love, that although she liked me she had realised she didn't love me, and lastly she didn't believe she would be able to stay celibate and faithful to me for that long.

As she told me her plans I wasn't disappointed, and I had been half expecting this to happen. Our relationship had fundamentally changed after she had "offered" Marrika to me and I had "accepted." Her willingness to share me with another woman did not fit with my concept of how a relationship should be and I wondered whether her "generosity" should have been a sign that our relationship was soon to end. Nonetheless thinking back on that afternoon it had been both unusual and very erotic.

We slept most of the way back to Heathrow where we parted. Amanda was travelling to her parents' home in Egham from where she would travel to Stockholm in a few weeks' time. Egham is only five miles from the airport, and she took a taxi. We parted at the taxi rank before I took a tube into London and travelled on to my student flat in Birmingham.

As Amanda's cab pulled up and the cabbie loaded her bags she pecked me on the cheek and smiled.

"It was fun. Say thanks to your Mum and Dad. I'm sure I'll see you when I come back next year."

And then.

"Be good to Marrika and don't hurt her. She likes you very much. She told me that she went to you again in the night. That wasn't why I finished with you; I had already decided. She felt so guilty, but I told her there was nothing to forgive and we are still friends and still plan to meet at Xmas. Maybe she'll have news of you?"

Her last word were,

"Have a good trip back. Stay safe. Bye."

6

Amanda's parting words only confirmed my resolve to renew my acquaintance with Marrika. She was in Finland somewhere in Turku and I didn't have her telephone number and drew the line at ringing Amanda to ask for it. In any case, I didn't think a phone call would be the best approach, so I resolved to wait for her to return to Birmingham at the end of September in four weeks' time.

It was the longest month of my life. A couple of days before the start of term I went to the History Department notice board to discover what courses she was taking and got lucky. Her name, Marrika Lahti, revealed that that term she was taking tutorials concerning The Crusades and her first tutorial was on the Tuesday after term started. I had already decided I would be waiting for her outside the building after her tutorial finished.

On a late September morning I stood outside the History Building. I knew Marrika was inside; I had watched her go in. An hour passed and then another half hour when finally the door opened and Marrika stepped through. She was alone.

I called across to her and she turned to me, smiled broadly, crossed the street, and hugged me. Then she pulled away.

"I'm sorry Christopher. It was my fault. I'm surprised you want to see me again. Amanda wrote to me and told me she'd finished with you. She said it wasn't anything to do with me and I still don't believe her."

"I need a coffee and somewhere warm to sit," I said.

"I've been freezing my balls off waiting here for the last 90 minutes."

So we went back inside the building and as I thawed out in the coffee bar I explained to her what Amanda had said when she finished with me.

"It had nothing to do with you. And I didn't spend the last four weeks thinking about you night and day, and the last hour and a half wondering what I would say to you when we met, because I blamed you for anything. I came here today to ask you to go out with me starting tonight."

Marrika smiled.

"What's the plan? Dinner and bed?" she asked with a glint in her eye.

"I was thinking of the pub. And what happens afterwards is up to you. I know I want far more than sex from you."

"And so do I," said Marrika.

"But for now I have a better suggestion than yours. Let's start with the sex" she continued.

"Bed, and then fish and chips and the pub, and then more bed. And we can go from there."

And then she giggled.

We walked hand in hand back to her flat which was about a mile from the university. She had moved out of hall, and she shared a house with three other girls and her room was upstairs. The house was empty.

Her large room was clean and tidy and soon warned up when she switched on an electric bar heater. She had a large double bed with a bright multi coloured quilted cover and a large teddy bear sat at the head of the bed. There was a work desk in one corner with a shelf of books above it and in the far corner sat an armchair covered in an embroidered throw. A chest of draws with a mirror on the wall and an old double wardrobe completed the furniture. The air smelt of lavender.

"Everybody is out. If you want you can take a shower; but be quick."

As she spoke she tossed me a large bath towel.

A few minutes later we lay in bed, naked and entwined in each other's arms and legs. We were in no hurry. I think we both instinctively knew that we were committing to something very important in our lives.

We kissed gently at first, but then more hungrily, and then as she lay beside me I kissed her eyelids, her ears, and her neck, and then smothered her breasts and tummy with gentle kisses. We kissed some more, and she gently started to stroke me as I moved the flat of two fingers in a circular motion against her clitoris. She moaned very gently as she became increasingly aroused and when she was ready I lay between her legs and entered her. I moved very slowly and gently against her as I gazed into her eyes, and she looked back at me. As her pleasure grew her eyes widened, her lips parted, her sighs grew louder, and she tightened her legs around my back. The ascent to her climax was long and slow but as she approached her peak she started to cry out.

"Faster! Harder! Don't stop! Don't you dare fucking stop!"

"Give it to me! Give it to me! Give it to me!"

I moved faster and harder and felt her thighs tighten around me as she squirmed under me, and her vaginal muscles tightened. I watched as her mouth opened wide and her beautiful face contorted in her ecstasy, and she wailed

"Ohhhhhhhhhh!"

and then lay still beneath me.

And then I rolled off her and held her tight as her breathing slowly settled.

She kissed me hard on the lips.

"Lie back."

"And don't worry. I'm on the pill. I dared to hope."

She straddled me, and as she looked down at me took my hard prick with her right hand, positioned it between her vaginal lips and slowly lowered herself onto it. And then she rode me; slowly at first and then faster and faster. As my passion grew I started to thrust up into her and she started to moan and then scream.

"I Love it! L Love it! Oh how I love it!"

"Ohhhhhhhhhh!"

And as I emptied my sperm high inside her she ground herself against me and I felt her cunt and thighs tighten before she fell forward and collapsed across me.

7

Just one week later, as I lay in bed with Marrika, I told her I loved her.

"With every fibre of my being."

And she told me that she loved me too.

"I loved you from almost the first time I met you and got to know you. And I love you so very, very much. Please hold me and never let me go."

"You are mine and forever" I said.

"The things we do for love" she said.

I kissed away her salty tears. I hoped they were tears of happiness.

8

Within a few months we started to live together, a short while after that I proposed and two years later we were married in Helsinki. The marriage was a civil ceremony. Our parents attended along with my brother and Marrikas' two sisters. Half a dozen Friends from University were able to attend but the guest that made Marrika happiest was Amanda who was one of the witnesses and had turned up with her Spanish boyfriend Luis.

I believe Marrika finally understood that her friendship with Amanda was undamaged by everything that had happened. I was deliriously happy because I was marrying a women who was truly beautiful both inside and out.

In retrospect and forty years later

As we pass towards old age we can look back on a life well spent. We live in Helsinki where I am a lecturer in physics at the university and Marrika is a history teacher in a local school. We have brought up three children: two girls and a boy.

I now have a paunch and my hair is whiter than it was. Marrika is as beautiful as she ever was although her ass may be a little bigger and she worries constantly about her weight.

I love her still.

She is mine and mine forever. I will never let her go.

I would hazard a guess that very few of us have our first sexual experience with a future lifetime partner at a threesome. Any feelings of guilt or regret that any of us may have felt back then have faded with time, and almost forty years later have become unimportant, but if that threesome had never happened I might never have found Marrika. What is clear is that a specific set of circumstances had led up to it.

Most obviously if my parents had not had to go to Edmonton at the behest of my grandmother nothing could have happened, and most certainly not three in a bed.

Although I never discussed this with Amanda, if she had not been going to Spain I wonder whether she would still have finished with me when she did. I think not. Furthermore under those circumstances she might not have invited Marrika to have sex with us and our relationship might have continued and even flourished.

I suspect that once Amanda had made her decision to finish with me it would have been much easier for her to offer Marrika a "mercy fuck" on my behalf. I am indebted to an individual who follows me on literotica and who has pointed out that "Men fuck who they can; women fuck who they want." Amanda must have known that Marrika had real feelings for me. They were very close friends and often swopped confidences, and Amanda may have been acting altruistically when she shared me.

It may not have been entirely altruistic of course; there is no doubt that Amanda enjoyed the encounter as much as any of us did.

Finally there is the role played by The Bridge. After we had completed the crossing we were all nervous and likely to misinterpret our adrenaline induced state as sexual arousal. It was in that moment that I saw Marrika look to Amanda before Amanda nodded and Marrika kissed me. I believe it was in that moment that the plan they had made to seduce me was given the final go ahead by Amanda.

Had "misattribution of arousal" played its' part?

Would the threesome have happened if we had not visited The Capilano Suspension Bridge that Summer day?

Was the threesome that important?

I like to think it wasn't. I like to imagine that if it had never happened, and Amanda had still finished with me on the plane on the way home, I would have recognised my true feelings for Marrika and still waited for her outside the History Department on that Autumn morning so long ago.

Just one last word of warning to those who figure to take somebody they fancy bungy jumping, free fall parachuting, or running with the bulls in Pamplona with a view to "jumping their bones" afterwards.

Whilst stressful situations may increase sexual attraction, later research has showed that this only works if there is a pre-existing attraction. If someone is exposed to an unattractive individual they are likely to find them more unattractive following a stressful situation. Your plan may backfire; they may find you increasingly unattractive and you might break something or even get trampled by a Spanish fighting bull.