25.
It was obvious that Sophie had told Alex what I'd said. That her way of seeking resolution to this matter wasn't to discuss it with her husband; it was to run to her lover.
Did she think he would have the same effect on me as he had on her? That his air of authority, the natural confidence she had spoken of, would win me over too.
If so, she was in for a shock.
But I will admit that I didn't particularly want to meet him. For the same reason I hadn't asked her how big his cock was, or how much she enjoyed him fucking her. If there were things about him that I knew, or at least perceived, to be better than what I had to offer, if there were things he did better than me, if the way he looked was better than me, I didn't want to know.
I was happy with the anonymous, faceless version of him I currently had.
All I needed to turn me on about him fucking Sophie was the vague idea of his cock inside her. It was the images of her reactions that were the erotic part.
But to refuse to meet him would look like cowardice. Like I was wimping out. Putting him in an even more favourable light to Sophie. So it was with reluctance that I messaged her back and agreed to meet him.
Alex had told Sophie to ask me to meet him at 7 o'clock, at a new bar I hadn't been to before. I decided to walk in to town, it was only a ten minute stroll and I figured I might need a few drinks by myself after meeting Alex.
As soon as I walked in to the bar I understood why he had chosen it. The background music was low, so we could talk about this delicate matter without having to raise our voices. And there were a number of tables with chairs and sofas arranged around them, perfect for discreet conversations.
I arrived bang on 7 o'clock and realised that I hadn't actually asked Sophie what Alex looked like. It didn't matter. He'd obviously asked her. As soon as I walked in a guy at the bar signalled to me with his drink. I knew instantly it was him.
He looked like he was in his early forties, but for some reason I just knew he was older than that. Late forties perhaps, maybe even early fifties.
He was well dressed, as expected, in that apparently effortless way which can often take a lot effort. I knew it didn't for him. A pair of dark blue jeans paired with a white cotton Oxford shirt, a Prince of Wales check jacket, accessorised by brown Chelsea boots and a brown leather belt.
He was roughly the same height as me, 6', but even though he was wearing a jacket I could tell he was in good shape. That he 'looked after himself', as Sophie had put it.
It goes without saying that he was good looking, his black hair groomed, thick on top, with a line cut into it and a close-trimmed fade on the side. He should have been too old for a style like that, but like everything else he carried it off perfectly.
He was everything I knew he would be. Everything I hoped he wouldn't.
As I walked towards him he stepped forward and said my name, questioningly, to check he had the right man, and offered his hand at the same time.
I had wondered if I would shake his hand, but I reasoned that we might as well start off with a degree of civility. After all, even boxers touch gloves before a contest.
He asked me what I wanted to drink and we made small talk about the decor of the bar while we waited for my pint. It was slightly awkward and somewhat surreal, discussing the merits of the interior design of a bar with the guy who's fucking your wife.
Then he gestured towards a table in the furthest corner away from the bar and said "Shall we sit somewhere a little more private?"
There were two large Chesterfield sofas either side of the table, and we were probably taking up a lot more space than we needed, but I didn't care, the table was quiet and private and that was all I was worried about.
Alex sat down on the far side, looking back towards the bar, and I sat directly opposite him, both of us in the middle of our respective seats.
As soon as we had sat down, Alex was the first to speak.
"Firstly, I should apologise," he said. I thought he meant for fucking Sophie. But he didn't. "I should have discussed taking things to a different level with Sophie with you first. Sought your agreement. It's what I would usually do if I had a husband's permission to play with his wife. Sleeping with her is one thing, but S&M play is quite another."
So he was apologising for spanking her without clearing it with me. Never mind the fact that he originally screwed her without my agreement. I supposed he took my subsequent acceptance of this with Sophie as a tacit acknowledgement that I was cool about it. No apology needed for that, therefore .
He was still talking. "But Sophie was very keen to try it out, to get started and I just couldn't say no to her."
I knew that feeling.
"She's a wonderful girl. You're a very lucky man, and she loves you very much. She has such enthusiasm to explore and try different things, and she has led such a sheltered life, sexually, that it's rare to have such a blank canvas to work with."
I must have reacted to the 'sheltered life' comment, because he clarified what he meant quickly.
"That's not intended as a slight. From the way Sophie tells it, you obviously know how to handle yourself with a woman, and more importantly how to handle her. What I mean is that she had only ever slept with one man."
I noted his use of the past tense in that last sentence. This man, sitting opposite me, who was the only other man ever to put his cock inside Sophie. And in one place even I hadn't.
"But listen," he said, "obviously you know all that. That's not why I wanted to talk to you. You know why I wanted to talk to you."
I nodded. "Yeah, because of the argument we had last night, when I told Sophie I didn't want her to do this anymore. I presume you want to change my mind."
"Well, almost," he replied. "I want YOU to change your mind, but the end result is the same. Yes, I felt it was best to talk to you, just us, man to man, because I felt I could. You are obviously a confident guy if you've given your wife permission to stray, obviously a man I can talk to frankly, cards on the table. Not some loser who is going to be all possessive or jealous, or go nuts, so that I can't have a proper conversation with him... and trust me, I've had that before." he shook his head with disdain at the memory of it.
But he was right. I could talk about this openly and frankly with him. We could both say what we thought, what we needed to say, without resorting to arguments. Or worse.
He paused for a moment, then, seeing that I was in agreement with his assessment of me, he began again.
"Look, I don't know what you think of me. Quite possibly you think I'm a cunt, but I wanted to say that I'm not the enemy here. I'm not your enemy. And neither am I a threat to you. I hope you can see that?"
He nodded towards me, encouraging me to agree.
"I'm not interested in Sophie in a romantic sense," he continued, "I give you my word on that." He looked at me solemnly, straight in the eyes, as he said it. And I believed him.
"All I'm trying to do is make sure we all have a bit of fun. Sophie especially. Because this is all about what we can do for her really, isn't it."
I could hardly argue with that, could I.
"And you can't deny that you have been having fun since this began, can you..." There was a glint of amusement in his eye as he said it. To be fair, he wasn't wrong. I had been having the best sex I'd had in years, with Sophie and with Hannah, but he only knew about half of that, the half that Sophie must have been telling him.
I was a little cross with her about that. Telling me, her husband, what she had done with her lover, was one thing. But telling her lover what she did with her husband was something else. And not really on, in my opinion. But I let it go, for now. That was a conversation to have with Sophie.
"No, Sophie has definitely been a little... different. I'll say that." I said.
Alex smiled. "Good. See, we're all having fun. It would be such a shame to stop now." He leaned forward. "Tell me what you are unhappy with. Let's see if we can't resolve this between us."
"Everything was fine," I said. "I wasn't sure if it would be, but when Sophie told me what she'd done, presented me with a fait accomplit, I realised I was more turned on by it than angry."
"So what happened to change your mind?"
"Nothing, really, not about her sleeping with other guys anyway. It was the marks on her the other night, and her talking about wanting to explore that side of things... It just didn't seem right to me." I shook my head. "I looked into it, watched some videos. It was pretty extreme, some of the things I saw being done. It just didn't seem to me to be something that Sophie would want to do."
I added hastily, "Really, I'm OK about the other stuff, the normal sex, but I don't know if she can have one without the other."
Alex sat back, nodding his head in understanding. "I get it now. When Sophie said you'd gone off the whole idea of an open relationship, I thought there must be more to it than just second thoughts."
He leaned forward again "Can I be honest with you?" he wasn't really asking me, "You said that this didn't seem like something Sophie would do, the... S&M, the bondage, the discipline, whatever you want to call it... but does any of this sound like Sophie? Does meeting a guy behind your back sound like Sophie?"
I shook my head. "No, it doesn't."
"No," he said, "And that has to lead us to ask the question about how well you know what Sophie wants." He paused. "I'm sorry if that sounds a bit brutal, but isn't it possible that Sophie could want things without you realising? That this could be something that Sophie would do, just as cheating on you is something Sophie would do. Neither of which you would have believed possible a couple of weeks ago."
He left the hypothesis hanging.
He was right. The counsellor in me knew he was right. I was viewing the situation through the eyes of the Sophie I thought I knew. But that was no longer Sophie. Somewhere along the line she had changed.
"I suppose," I said, "When you put it like that." I shrugged.
"Look," Alex said, "let me propose a couple of ideas to try and get things back on track for you and Sophie." I noticed that he was leaving himself off the list of beneficiaries.
"OK," I said, willing to listen at least.
"Well, firstly, I have no idea what form Sophie's journey into this lifestyle will take. No one does, not even Sophie. But I promise you that I will take things slowly with her. As
one man to another. I wouldn't have just gone straight to the extreme stuff, as you put it, anyway, " He held his hands up "I won't lie, I have done that. With the right women, at the right time. But Sophie isn't ready for that. I know that. Trust me. I agree with you there."
He continued, and "I'll be honest with you, that's not my main interest anyway. I'm more interested in the idea of control, and more the psychological than the physical side of that. I like the idea of opening Sophie up to new experiences... things she perhaps can't do with you, because you are simply too close to her. She can't be her true sexual self with you, not at the moment, because the old Sophie, the one you know, is still dominant when she is with you."
He looked at me, "Is that making sense to you?"
I nodded to show that it was, even though I was still working it through in my head. I didn't want it to appear as though I wasn't intelligent enough to understand what Alex was saying.
"I knew you'd get it," he said, "so... the second thing I suggest is that I take control, ownership, if you like, of this new Sophie, the one who wants to explore. Just for a little while, leaving you with 'your' Sophie." He made inverted commas with his fingers as he said this. "In that way I can make sure that she gets what she wants and doesn't make any missteps on her journey. I can look after her. How does that sound?"
At this point he'd lost me and I had to admit this. "I'm sorry," I said, "I'm not following you. How would that work? She would still be Sophie."
"Not exactly," he said. "I've done this a few times now. The way it works, the way I take ownership, is to create a different version of her, with a different name even. When she is with me she uses that name. When she isn't, when she is with you, or in work, for example, she uses her... everyday name."
"I'm not sure," I said, "That sounds like all of a sudden I'm agreeing to a lot more than just letting Sophie sleep with someone else."
Alex nodded, "I did think you might see it like that. And it's a perfectly reasonable viewpoint. Let me make it easier for you. I can see how you might be wondering what is in this for you... apart from pleasing Sophie and having great sex with her, of course... but I agree, a man like you does deserve a bit more than that."
He suddenly lowered his voice and his tone became more serious, as if he were letting me in on some great secret.
"I wouldn't do this for just anyone," he said, "but I can see that you will be able to handle this. If I'm asking you to let me take ownership of Sophie in this manner, it's only right that I give you something equally special and precious to me in return."
He stared at me, examining my face, to check that I understood what he was doing, what he was giving me. I looked straight back at him, my gaze unflinching, until he nodded at me, satisfied with what he had seen.
Then he looked over my shoulder, towards the bar and obviously made eye contact with someone before jerking his head upwards slightly. A confirmatory signal to whoever it was. A summons.
I looked at him then turned to follow his gaze. As I saw who was walking across the bar towards us, he said "I believe you are already acquainted with Hannah..."
|
