House of Cards Ch. 01

Here's something to think about: even little things can destroy your life. An example: If it hadn't been our 16th Wedding Anniversary, Marianne and I would have been eating dinner at one of our usual favorite places, instead of the fanciest restaurant in Cleveland. If it hadn't been such a fancy restaurant, I wouldn't have seen her face as she sat down--I would have been standing behind her and holding her chair, instead of letting a waiter do it. If I hadn't seen her face, I would have missed the little grimace of discomfort as her bottom touched the chair.

She saw my concerned look, and before I could ask anything she said, "Just a muscle cramp—my calf is sore today for some reason." Then she quickly went on to change the subject: "Oh Tom, what a beautiful restaurant this is. Thank you for bringing me here tonight!"

Here's something else to think about: Often we know something long before we realize that we know it. Marianne's grimace was a face she had made before, when she was suffering from what we jokingly called the "Honeymoons". When we were first married, on one of our honeymoon nights in Puerto Rico we had a lot to drink, and made love so vigorously (and so often) that the next day her pussy lips were sore and swollen, and it was uncomfortable for her to sit down. We had to take a day or two off from regular fucking, though we found many other ways of giving each other pleasure! The same thing happened during our "Second Honeymoon" six years later, when we left the kids with my parents and spent a week in Cancun. One exciting and passionate night of sex led to two days of soreness for Marianne —thus the name "Honeymoons".

Since then our sex life had calmed down quite a bit, as I guess it does for pretty much every married couple raising children, and the "Honeymoons" had not happened again. But the look on Marianne's face on our Wedding Anniversary was the "Honeymoons" look, and I recognized it right away, though I didn't realize until later that I had.

In fact our anniversary dinner was wonderful, and so was the rest of the evening, though not without a surprise—again, one whose meaning I didn't understand until later. Throughout dinner we shared great food, two bottles of champagne, and lots of happy memories. We talked about our two teenagers, both away for the summer at camp. We laughed about the awkwardness of our early dates in college, and about how it took a few tries until we knew what we were doing together in bed. Marianne had slept with two men before me—each of them only once, and without much pleasure. I'd had a steady girlfriend in high school, but she wouldn't let me fuck her until a month before graduation, and we'd done it only a few times before I left for college.

When Marianne and I got home from the restaurant—tipsy and very much in love—I carried her up to the bedroom and began to strip her naked, but she stopped me.

"Tom, wait. Let me put on the new nightie I bought just for tonight."

She disappeared into the bathroom, and by the time I was naked and in bed, she had emerged in a long pale blue nightgown that was nearly transparent. Her lovely breasts and perfect nipples showed clearly, as did the dark bush of her pubic hair. At 38 Marianne was gorgeous. The inevitable effects of bearing two children had been held at bay by good genes and lots of exercise (we ran 3 miles together at least twice a week). She was statuesque and magnificent—5'8" with dark hair and brown eyes, with wide hips and long legs. To me she was even sexier than when I first met her nearly two decades before. I had been in love with her—and in lust with her—ever since.

After some passionate necking and touching, I moved lower on the bed, seeking to raise her nightgown and arouse her with my tongue. Marianne adores it when I lick her, though she's much less enthusiastic about going down on me. Almost always our sex together includes some time with her enjoying my tongue and mouth between her legs. For this reason it surprised me when she stopped me.

"No, Tom, please. Tonight I want to be just for you." She gently forced me back down on the bed, stroked my cock, then took it into her mouth. When I reached for her pussy with my hands, meaning to pleasure her while she pleased me, she again stopped me.

"No, honey. Tonight has been so wonderful—let me just do this for you."

As I said, Marianne usually isn't so crazy about giving me blow jobs, but this one was sensational. She teased me, with her warm breath and her tongue and her lips and her hands. She got me close, then backed off with a wicked smile and stroked me softly, looking into my eyes and ignoring my groaning pleas to let me come. She licked down my shaft and lovingly took each of my balls in turn into her mouth, stimulating them gently with her tongue. Then she started it all over again! "Please, Anni, please! Let me come!" It must have been nearly half an hour of agonizing pleasure before she finished me off, taking me deep into her mouth and letting me shoot an enormous load of cum down her throat. My hips jerked and I groaned uncontrollably as the pleasure shot through me.

I lay there, spent and gasping. "Anni, that was unbelievable!" I said, using the pet name I often called her by during sex. By the time it had occurred to me that we hadn't fucked, and that I hadn't licked her or stroked her, the light was out and she was snuggled under my arm, relaxed and warm. When I once more said, "Honey, what about you?" she replied sleepily, "All for you tonight, darling."

So—why would I think about either of the strange little moments in the evening? No reason to. Who would care about a little grimace, or refuse a loving blowjob? No one. And that included me, until precisely eleven days later when my world began to crumble around me.

I had come back late Saturday night from a two-day conference in Chicago. I'm an engineer, and there was a meeting to discuss new federal load-bearing rules for commercial buildings. By the time I got home from the airport it was after 1 am, and I knew Marianne would be asleep. I stopped by the laundry room and took a minute to empty the dirty clothes out of my suitcase into the hamper. As I bent down, I noticed a pair of her panties that had fallen behind the hamper and were nearly hidden against the wall.

It was a silky black thong—in fact, her only thong, the one I had bought as a sexy present a year before and which she saved for special nights with me. Marianne is not a big fan of thongs—"They're not so bad if you feel like flossing your ass-crack!" is what she said to me once—but she wore that one a few times because she knew it excited me. I hadn't seen her wearing it in some time, but here it was, crusty and stiff on the crotch with what could only be a man's cum. One sniff confirmed the evidence of my eyes.

You know how sometimes in stories a character will claim "my head spun", and the reader thinks it's just a figure of speech? Well, my head spun. I felt dizzy and lightheaded, and I nearly tumbled to the floor. I kind of stumbled back into the kitchen and collapsed into a chair. I felt as though I had been hit in the back of the head with a 2 x 4.

Over the next few minutes my mind played every trick it could, as I tried desperately to make this something other than what it had to be. Could the panties have been lying there for months, since the last time she'd worn them with me? No—the hamper got moved every couple of weeks when the room was swept. Could she have worn them one day recently without me noticing? No—I saw her get dressed every morning. Could it have been my cum, from the last time we made love? No—that was three days before my trip, and she put on regular panties the next day. Could the mess in them be Marianne's own juices, maybe the result of a masturbation session while I was away? No—I knew what cum smelled like.

In the end, my mind caught up to what I already knew in my heart. My wife, the woman I had loved with my entire being for more than 16 years, was cheating on me. I didn't cry then; I was too stunned. I just sat and stared vaguely around the kitchen, drank a beer without tasting it, and let the inevitable questions pile up in my brain and stomp all my happiness to death. Who was it? How long? Did she love him? What would this mean for our marriage? Did we even have a marriage left? What would I do?

I am not one of those men who is turned on by the idea of their wives fucking another man. In fact, the idea doesn't give me a hard-on; it revolts me. I had never had fantasies about her with someone else. I didn't want her to screw someone else; I didn't want to watch it; I didn't want to think about it. And she knew that.

Marianne and I had made a commitment to one another to be faithful. I guess every married couple does, at least at the moment of the wedding, but we had also discussed it since then. At a neighborhood barbecue, about 8 years into our marriage, I'd been drawn aside by a casual friend, a nice but somewhat stuffy fellow named Harry. We sometimes made fun of him behind his back because he spoke in a kind of pedantic way, and was never without his pipe in his mouth. But a nice guy nonetheless. He took me for a short walk, and in a roundabout way told me that he and his wife Eileen were swingers, that they were attracted to Marianne and me, and that they hoped we might try swinging with them.

I was pretty shocked by this, but I calmly told him I'd think about it and discuss it with Marianne. But I said, "I don't know quite how to bring this up with her—I think she will find it pretty shocking." Harry just grinned at me. "Don't worry about that part, Tom," he replied. "Eileen is talking to Marianne about it right now!"

I was amused by how carefully they had planned it, and I promised Harry I'd speak to Marianne and let him know. I was at least a tiny bit tempted—Eileen was a short, curvy woman with a voluptuous figure, and also a lot of fun—but I couldn't imagine Marianne having any interest at all in swinging, or in Harry.

After the party, Marianne brought up the subject on our walk home before I could even say anything. "Can you believe that, Tom? Harry and Eileen swingers? And they want us to join them?"

"I was pretty surprised too, honey. I wish I could have seen your face when Eileen suggested that we swap with them."

Marianne laughed. "Well, I was taken aback. But I just politely said we'd talk about it, and let them know. No sense in saying something rude."

Later, in our bedroom, I returned to the topic. "Well, Marianne, do you have any interest in their offer?" "God, no, Tom!" she replied. "Can you imagine me in bed with that pompous man? Not in this lifetime!"

"But Marianne," I kidded her. "Don't you want to find out if he takes his pipe out of his mouth when he's fucking?" We both dissolved in laughter. It was clear that this wife-swapping invitation was not going anywhere!

I went on. "Honey, more seriously. We've never discussed the idea of swapping. I don't think it's anything I want to do, but are you tempted? Never mind Harry and Eileen—I mean with anyone?

She looked at me thoughtfully. "To be honest, Tom, I'm at least a bit curious. As you know there were only those two awful ... experiences I had in high school, and then no other man besides you in my life. So I can't help but wonder what it would be like with someone else. I love you and I love making love with you—it's not that I'm dissatisfied. I can't imagine finding a better lover. But I am a little curious."

She continued, "On the other hand, I don't want you having sex with anyone else! The thought of you holding and kissing another woman, of being between her legs, of putting your beautiful penis inside her, giving her the pleasure you give me—the idea of it makes be physically ill.. I want you all for myself! Our love-making is special to me because it's just for us, because neither of us ever shares ourselves with anyone else in that way."

I smiled at her, full of love for my amazing wife. "Anni, that's just how I feel. Sure I occasionally see a hot woman and have a brief fantasy—but our life together and the specialness of our sex are just too important to me. It's horrible even to imagine you with another man. I guess we are both just stick-in-the-muds, for whom marital fidelity actually matters!"

"Then come here, my stick-in-the-mud husband. I'm in the mood for some boring, maritally faithful sex!"

A few minutes later came the final, delightful surprise of that evening. As we fucked energetically in the doggy position, the two of us climbing towards orgasm, Marianne suddenly cried out, "Fuck me Harry! Give it to me, Harry—let me have that big dick of yours!"

I gasped, then collapsed in laughter along with Marianne. All thoughts of orgasm were forgotten as we howled together, tears of laughter running down our faces. I felt like the husband of the most wonderful woman in the world.

Now, as I thought back to that happy evening, my misery deepened. What had happened to the loving wife who was committed to ME, who had decided to refuse everyone else? I've always been a thoughtful and deliberate person—determined, but not quick to act until I knew everything about a situation. Even in my shock, and my despair, I already realized I had to know more. I couldn't confront Marianne, couldn't cry or yell or beat her or move out, until I knew the whole story.

The thought of making love to her in the next few days, of snuggling with her in bed, of pretending to be happy and in love when I actually felt like screaming, made me sick. How would I be able to hide my feelings from her? I actually thought for a moment, "How can I lie to my loving wife?" Then almost instantly came the answer: She's been lying to me! She's been cheating on me! She's been fucking God-knows-who behind my back, for God-knows how long!

By the time I climbed slowly up the stairs into my bedroom, it was after 2:30. Thank God I didn't have to face Marianne that night! When I got into bed, she murmured a hello without waking, and molded her body tightly up behind me, with an arm around my chest. I couldn't stand it! I wanted to cry. I wanted to kill her. I wanted her to tell me that this was just a horrible dream.

I hastily got back out of bed, pretending I needed to pee, and waited several minutes until I was sure she was completely asleep again. Then I crept back into bed, holding myself as far from her as possible, and stared open-eyed into the darkness, waiting for the most unlikely thing of all: sleep.

The next morning was Sunday, and I didn't awake until after 10:30—Marianne had let me sleep late. I could hear her downstairs, humming in the kitchen, and the smell of coffee wafted up to me. I stretched and yawned, smiling at the bright sunshine streaming in through the window. Perhaps a picnic today with Marianne? Then, after just a moment, the memory of what I had discovered the night before knocked the breath out of me, and the smile off my face. I remember thinking to myself that July 11th, the night of my return home, would probably forever be burned into my memory as the worst day of my life. But I was wrong about that: it turned out to be the 12th.