Pam's Pain

"If you don't like it we don't have to see them again," my husband insisted for the umpteenth time.

We were lying in bed after a pleasant but somewhat unsatisfying Sunday evening lovemaking session.

"We're doing well but we can't take it for granted," he continued. "You said yourself that you were ready to try something a bit edgier, didn't you? You agreed we could do with a breath of fresh air in our sex life, didn't you?"

"I suppose so," I replied uncertainly.

"Right! So let's just try it once and see how it goes," Paul cajoled.

It was the weekend before the events of this story took place and I was lying in the semi darkness of our marital bedroom frowning. At forty, I was a year younger than Paul, my good-looking husband and the father of our two young children who had just rolled off my leaking body and was lying alongside me on the rumpled sheet.

"We mustn't lose the momentum, must we?" he continued, kissing me on the cheek and beginning to stroke my tummy. "Having come so far, we don't want to slip back to the boring, stale days, do we?"

I sighed resignedly.

"I've said I'll try it and I meant it. Just don't expect me to be as enthusiastic as you; it's your fantasy after all, not mine. And I'm not promising to do anything with them, okay?"

"Great," my husband smirked as he lay back and turned off the bedside light. "You'll love it, Pam. I know it!"

***

Paul and I had been together for nearly twenty years and had been married for fifteen of them. In our early years together when I had been much more daring, our sex life had been wild, imaginative and very frequent. For several years we had experimented with positons, locations and even a few pleasurable perversions but as the kids had arrived and began to dominate my life; as I had become more tired and my figure had lost its youthful, gym-toned shape, my adventurous spirit had gradually reduced too.

Eventually, like so many married couples, we had settled into a boring, unadventurous routine that satisfied neither of us and had consequently lost most of its appeal.

As the frequency and intensity of our lovemaking slowed, Paul seemend to take up every form of manly passtime imaginable; DIY, car maintenance, team sports, going to football matches and lots of late night working, all of which were activities he did without me.

As a result, I began to feel that he had lost interest in me, that he no longer found me interesting or attractive. This slowed brought our unreliable sex life to a complete halt. I felt unloved and unwanted by my husband; he felt sexually abandoned by me.

It was a recipe for disaster and soon started to interfere with our relationship. Now of course I know that most couples go through something like this at some time but at the time it felt as if my world was ending. There were long silences, occasional rows and jealousies on both sides until, after a particularly bitter and spiteful row - fortunately not in front of the children - during which he called me a frigid bitch and I accused him of having an affair with a colleague from work, we decided to take the advice contained in so many of my women's magazines and had visited a relationship counsellor for help.

I have to say, the woman was a genius; by the end of the very first session she had expressed the problem in two sentences.

'Men need to have sex to feel loved. Women need to feel loved to have sex'.

According to the counsellor, by rejecting Paul sexually I was making him feel less than a man. Many men in the same circumstancesmight look to other women to help him recover some of thier confidence. Paul assured me he had not yet done this and I believed him; instead he had subconsciously been driven to assert his masculinity in other ways, hence all the stereotypical male activities he had taken uo.

In my case the counsellor believed my loss of libido had probably started with a strong dissatisfaction with my own body post-childbirth. Because I felt unattractive, I couldn't believe anyone else found me desirable or interesting.

Reinforcing this, I had perceived Paul's increased interest in 'manly' things as a lack of interest in me. I had even suspected his late night working might be a cover story for an affair which had reduced my interest in sex still further.

In addition, she believed I had coped with the new responsibility children bring by letting the control freak side of my nature take over. As a result, I couldn't do anything that involed letting myself go or losing control in any way; something our sex life had once involved in spadefuls.

The more Paul wanted me to let go, the less likely I was to do it. The less I did it, the more he wanted me to. A vicious circle; painfully predictable!

The bad news was that, although we both still loved each other, we had reached a point where our dysfunctional sex life represented a serious threat to our marriage.

The good news was that we had previously been highly compatible in bed and highly sexually active. What was more, so far neither of us had actually been unfaithful and we had sought help in time to do something about it.

If we re-kindled our sex life, Paul would feel more loved and would want to spend more time with me; I would feel more attractive and want to spend more time with him. We could turn our vicious circle into a virtuous one - if we did it right.

The counsellor had gone on to suggest a number of intimate activities that might help and, with some reluctance on my part we had started to give them a try.

With two nearly-teenage kids in the house it had been hard making space in our busy lives for each other but with a little time-management help from the Counsellor and a lot of childcare from my parents we managed to set aside at least two sessions each week to try and rescue our sex lives and our relationship.

It had been very awkward at first but it had started to work!

Over a few months and after a slow start, we tried everything the Counsellor suggested; every type of sexy underwear imaginable (made me feel really sexy too); doggy-style sex (okay but a bit undignified and animal-like for me); cunniligus (a very nice feeling indeed but felt 'dirty' and made me very conscious of what childbirth had done to me 'down there') and sex toys (a bit cold and calculating but worked exceptionally well on my body if not on my mind).

Some ideas had failed miserably. Even half-drunk I could not bring myself to suck my husband's cock until he came no matter how much he tried to persuade me. In the past I used to suck him off every time I had a period but now the mere thought of having semen in my mouth again made me feel sick.

However good it made my husband feel and whowever well my body responded when I did it, fellatio made me feel like a whore.

But these setbacks were minor; as the adventurous spirit of our love life returned, both of us could feel the passion coming back into our marriage and our love for each other remained as strong as ever. So with the Counsellor's continued encouragement we persevered until eventually we found a hard-core of sexual activities that had a really positive effect both on my libido and on Paul's.

There was no doubt at all what turned my husband of fifteen years on most. However much he tried to laugh it off, it was a plain as the nose on my face that, of all the many things we had tried, the thing that had aroused him most by far was the acting out of fantasies.

Fantasies and role play were ideas our Counsellor had recommended most and I must confess, they had worked well for both of us. If I'm really honest, the effect they had on me was powerful, especially when combined with my own favourite preference.

Sometimes we would simply tell each other our secret desires. Other times we would pretend to be other people, acting out our roles in bed. On a handful of occasions we pretended to be strangers meeting in a bar or hotel for the first time, talking to each other about our spouses as if they were somewhere else.

Twice we booked a room in the hotel and continued the fantasy throughout the night, fucking each other with a passion that recalled our first weeks together, calling each other by our made-up names right through the night.

I loved these little dramas but the excitement they engendered in my husband was truly profound. It was also a little disturbing especially as the fantasies that turned him on most were always swinging or wife-swapping. Indeed, within a short time, Paul's swinging fantasies had come to dominate our sex life. And the more swinging fantasies we played out, the more arousing we both found them. And the more we were both aroused, the more vivid and realistic they became.

So we had found what turned Paul on most. What about me?

I'm sure a psychologist could explain the truth caught me entirely by surprise. There was no way I would tell even the Counsellor this but the things that had worked best for me all involved pain. It had been a shock to discover but there was no denying the fact that I loved pain, Well, at least I loved being hurt by someone I knew would never hurt me.

And if we could find a scenario that put both Paul's love of fantasies with my love of pain, so much the better!

How did we find this out? Well, like so many things it began by accident. Paul and I had been having a row in our bedroom; it had been silly and trivial even for us but neither of us was going to back down and aplologise. I had decided to end the row by flouncing off downstairs and had just delivered what I had intended to be my killer exit line about his recent sexual performance before walking out of the bedroom and slamming the door.

Paul however had had other ideas. To this day he can't explain what possessed him but before I could reach the bedroom door, he had grabbed me, slung me over his knee, pulled up my skirt, pulled down my knickers and had delivered a dozen loud firm spanks to my bottom with the flat of his hand.

It had taken barely half a dozen of those strokes on my bare buttocks before I knew we had hit the spot! The effect on my arousal was immediate and incredible; by the time he had delivered the last slap I was almost in heat! As soon as he released me I flew at him, practically tearing off my husband's clothes, throwing his to the bedroom floor and mounting him as he lay there.

The orgasm that followed had been simply world class.

The genie was now well and truly out of the bottle. From that night onwards we began to experiment; pulling my hair, smacking my bottom with a paddle or, best of all, pinching my nipples. All these made me feel highly aroused but set me on a circle of arousal:

The greater the pain, the greater the arousal I felt.

The greater my arousal, the more intense and immediate the climax that would follow.

The more intense the climax I enjoyed, the more I desired one even more intense.

The more I desired a climax, the greater the pain I could tolerate.

I began to believe that all I needed to reach the ultimate climax was a little more pain; a little harder spanking, a little firmer nip or bite on my nipples; a little more discomfort between my legs.

I had even started to have erotic dreams about it; having my nipples bitten; perhaps even having my vulva whipped but I kept them very much to myself, reluctant to tell even my husband the whole truth for fear of appearing a slut.

And so my libido returned, as strong as it ever had been. In response, my husband's soared too and for a good many months our sex life blossomed. We had come close to being discovered 'in flagrante delicto' by our kids more than once but this had simply added to the thrill.

But an intensity this strong couldn't last foerever. As with other things in life, we quickly found out that novelty is very transient and breeds a powerful need for constant refreshment.

Just as my own desire for minor pain had grown more and more extreme, it wasn't long before even our wife swapping fantasies had become a bit routine and Paul at least felt we needed to push the boundaries further.

We varied the scenarios by pretending to be other people - policemen, doctors, builders, our friends, celebrities - even big black men with huge cocks. We tried role-playing scenarios in bars or hotel lounges which gave me a big thrill and worked well for a while but it soon became obvious that even this wasn't satisfying my husband anymore.

I should have spotted it sooner; I should have realised what was going to enter his mind next but of course I was too slow to head off the idea before it was too late.

So, a few months later and with a crushing inevitability I should have foreseen, one Sunday evening when we were in bed, my loving husband hesitatingly suggested that we should act out one of our fantasies for real.

Paul wanted us to try swinging in real life.

I was recovering from a rather intense orgasm at the time so wasn't thinking clearly. At first I had thought it was just the fantasy game he was still playing but he had persisted until I eventually realised that he was very serious.

My husband of fifteen years and the father of my children really did want to swap me for another woman.

Okay, it would only be for an evening! Okay, I would get another man in return but even so, it was a very big thing for a previously faithful wife to contemplate, even if her mind was still in a post-orgasmic fuddle.

It says something about the power of those fantasies that I contemplated it at all.

It says more about my husband's powers of persuasion that, after three full months of relentless covert and overt persuasion I had reluctantly agreed we should find out a bit more about it.

It says even more about my own weakness that, a few weeks later and after hours of exploration on the internet, I had reluctantly agreed to meet a couple he had found through an online swinging site 'just to see if we get on and learn a bit more about the whole scene'.

I had made it clear that I did not intend to do anything when we met, that it was just a fact-finding mission and that my knickers would be staying firmly in place. But the delight on my husband's face had been disturbing so it will be no surprise at all to learn that, with only a few days to go before we were due to meet our potential temporary lovers, I was getting cold feet.

My husband was apparently having no such second thoughts and had become used to providing constant reassurance as our conversation that Sunday evening - the last before our proposed 'date' - was clearly demonstrating.

***

"Tell me about them again," I asked, staring at the bedroom ceiling, not daring to look at my husband but hoping that his words would give me at least some of the reassurance I needed.

"Like I told you, they're a really nice couple. I contacted them through one of the swinging clubs I found on the net. They know it's our first time; the woman in the club couldn't have been friendlier or more understanding. They sounded really nice, Pam."

"I'm still not sure," I mumbled. "What else do you know?"

Paul sighed.

"As I told you last week and the week before, they're from London but they have a chalet on the coast in a really upmarket resort. She told me they often meet special friends there."

He rose on his elbow to look into my eyes.

"It's only an hour's drive away, Pam. We're only going to meet them for dinner; you don't have to sleep with him if you don't want to, I promise. If you say no, it's no! But you might not want to say 'no' when we meet them. What have you got to lose?"

I could think of a lot of things we could lose if things went wrong; trust, fidelity, innocence, our marriage, possibly our relationship with our children too if things went really badly wrong but I didn't say anything.

"Remember, it's only sex anyway," he added in what he obviously thought was a powerful argument in his favour. "Even if we do go to bed with them it'll only be for the one night. It's not like either of us will be starting an affair. It won't threaten our relationship."

I knew full well that my husband had no idea whether this was the true.

And he knew full well that I knew.

But I didn't argue. In truth, Paul's idea had not revolted me anything like as much as I let him believe. Those wife swapping fantasies had to a large extent worked their magic on me too but my fantasies weren't the wild orgies and multiple partner evenings that dominated my husband's imagination. No, my big fantasy was to have a single, sensitive lover who would pay as much attention to my needs as Paul usually paid to his own.

And if that single, sensitive lover was blessed with a very large cock too, then so much the better!

For this reason, though by no means as convinced as my husband, I had let him think that his persistence had gradually worn down my resistance. The look of disbelief and delight on Paul's face when I finally agreed had been almost comical.

Now the evening was actually in sight, although I wouldn't go so far as to say I was looking forward to it, at least I no longer felt completely horrified. But when it came to the crunch, whether I would have the nerve to turn my biggest fantasy into reality and actually go to bed with a stranger was another thing entirely so I was keeping my options very much open.

Sensing my continued uncertainty, Paul had kept his persuasive conversation going throughout the week.

"He's really good looking; you've seen the pictures. His wife says he's very well endowed," my husband continued, looking so deeply into my eyes that I felt embarrassed.

Although Paul's familiar tool was by no means small, huge cocks had been a feature common to both our fantasies.

"I suppose she's very well endowed too?" I asked cynically, my hands covering my microscopic boobs.

"She has got very big breasts, yes," he confessed. "But she's not as tall or as slim as you," he added hastily.

I sighed. Paul had always liked big boobs. My own were so small I didn't really need a bra, even after feeding two kids. They were almost invisible when I raised my arms. Even when breast feeding, I had only worn a maternity bra to stop leaks coming through my clothes. As a young woman I had often thought about having them surgically enhanced but it hadn't seemed to matter to Paul as much then as it apparently did now.

"And you don't have to do anything you don't want to. He's promised to make the night just for you; what you want, you will get. And if you don't fancy it at all, we'll finish dinner and come straight home," he delivered the killer line and waited for my reaction.

I sighed, wondering how many other wives up and down the country were being asked by their husbands to have sex with strange men so that they could sleep with other women.

"Well, I suppose if I can back out if I want..." I eventually said.

"You mean it? You'll still do it?"

Paul could hardly believe his luck.

"I mean I'll go for dinner with them," I said insistently.

"Pam, that's wonderful..."

"BUT!" I interrupted sharply. "I'm not saying I'll do anything more, understood?"

"Of course! I understand completely. It's your choice!"

He fell back on his pillow smiling like the cat that got the cream. A few minutes later he was asleep.

"There, I'd promised. There was no getting out if it now, girl!"

I lay awake half the night wondering what on earth I had let myself in for.

***

So it was that the following Saturday night I was sitting nervously on the edge of a large double bed in the main bedroom of an over-heated chalet feeling very uncomfortable in every way and wondering how I had let things get so far so quickly.

My knees and thighs, ludicrously exposed by the excessively short skirt my husband had insisted I wore, were pressed tightly together. My fingers were fidgeting anxiously in my lap. My chest and shoulders, barely concealed by the tight-fitting sleeveless top also chosen by my husband, were slumped with lack of confidence. My dark brown head with its long hair was lowered.