The Agreement Ch. 02

Jeff had fulfilled his part of his bargain with Karen, his wife of six years: he had participated in a three-way with another man. It had turned out much better than he had feared. In fact, it was the best sex he could ever remember having with his wife--probably the best sex he ever had with anyone in his entire life. He had lost count of how many times he had come that night. And, for reasons he still didn't understand, even though he had done just about everything a man could do with another man, he didn't think of any of what he had done that night as homosexual. He still thought of himself as ardently and exclusively heterosexual. Karen's presence had transformed it all into a new kind of straight sex--had made it all okay. Except for that one encounter, he had never looked at another man in sexual terms, even in the most speculative way.

Not that he wanted to have another encounter with Karen and another man, even if Karen wanted to try it again. It had freaked the other guy out completely, and Jeff was content with leaving it as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It was the cost--even if it ended up being freely paid--of what he really wanted: the three-way Karen had offered to have with another woman in exchange.

Now deciding who to be their partner was proving to be more difficult than Jeff had anticipated.

"No one you've ever had a relationship with, love," Karen said as they lay spooning together in bed. "Or ever wanted to." All such discussions took place in bed. All such discussions together when they were naked. All such discussion invariably led to sex.

"Okay," Jeff said, spooning with her, his cock, still soft, in the crack of her bottom.

"No one I've ever caught you looking at," she said. She had frequently seen him admiring another woman, although he always denied it.

"Okay," he said, rocking against her, his cock stiffening.

"No one at your job."

There were several woman at work--some of whom Karen didn't even know about--who, were he unmarried and given the opportunity, Jeff would happily fuck. "Okay," Jeff said, thinking in particular about one data analyst about ten years younger than both Jeff and Karen who usually dressed in tight bottoms and revealing tops. Jeff was fully hard now as he slid his cock between his wife's delicious buttocks.

"No one at my job," Karen said. Jeff had only gone to Karen's office once or twice. There were several young, attractive women there. Perhaps that was why she rarely found reason for him to visit. Jeff visualized Karen's office and remembered her co-workers as he stroked against her. There was a beautiful young redhead with a chest she seemed especially proud of.

Karen raised her leg and Jeff put his cock between her thighs, stroking without entering her. He felt her hot wetness against the top of his cock.

"No one at the gym," she said, making a small guttural sound. They both went to the same health club a few blocks from their apartment. There were so many hot women there, usually wearing very little where the men could see them and dressing or undressing in the locker room where Karen and other women could see them. Jeff and Karen almost always followed their visits with frantic but satisfying sex as soon as they got home.

"Okay," Jeff said, as he shifted his angle and entered her easily. She was completely ready for him. He reached down and found her hand already between her labia stroking her clit. He helped her.

"No one family member, no matter how distant," Karen said. Jeff had met one of Karen's unmarried second or third cousins a few times at weddings and other social functions. She looked like Karen but was about five years younger. Karen would watch him tolerantly as he flirted with her.

"Okay," Jeff said, shifting his position so that she was lying on her stomach and he was on top of her, entering her from the rear. Withdrawing from her, he parted her legs, sat up on his shins, and used both hands to pull her hips up so that she was on her shoulders and her knees.

Her hand was still busy between her legs. He kept his left hand on her hip and put his right hand on her right buttock. He smoothly slid back into her, more deeply from this position.

She moaned softly. "No one who's actually looking for a threesome," Karen choked out. "We're not answering any ads."

"Okay," Jeff said, teasing her sweet little asshole with his thumb. Her moaning grew deeper. He rocked his hips to draw himself almost entirely out of her and then drive himself home again and again. There was no more conversation until they both came.

"Whew," Jeff said as he threw himself on his back beside her. Karen had collapsed onto her stomach, turning her head to look at him. "We're not just going to pick up a stranger in a bar, are we?" They rarely went to bars and, when they did, virtually never talked to strangers.

"No," Karen said. Her face had the postorgasmic glow that, whenever he saw it, made Jeff fall in love with her all over again. She smiled softly at him.

"Who's left, then?" he asked. "How are we going to find anyone?"

"I don't know, love," Karen said. We'll know the right girl when we find her."

"So we just have to wait?"

"Poor thing," she said, reaching over and playing with his cock, softening but still wet with her juices. "Until then, you'll just have to have sex with your wife," she said, flopping his cock back and forth until it got hard again. She swung one leg over his body, lifted herself onto her knees, and used both hands to guide him into herself.

===

After that, whenever they found themselves with an appealing young woman, Jeff would look at his wife and raise one eyebrow. Karen would squint at him and give her head a small shake, and Jeff would lower his eyebrow and shrug disappointedly. The attractive neighbor down the hall? No. The freckle-faced receptionist at their doctor's office? No. The good-looking waitress at their favorite restaurant down the block? No. The cute little check-out girl at the supermarket? No. Their friendly, playful dental hygienist? No.

After months of Karen rejecting every candidate he suggested, Jeff despaired that they would never find a woman Karen found acceptable even to consider, much less someone they'd actually take to bed. Then, one night in bed, Karen made an announcement. "I got a text from my old college roommate Deirdre. She's broken up with her boyfriend and she's coming into town to interview for a job. I texted her back she could stay here."

It was as if Karen had put her mouth on Jeff's cock. He was immediately hard. "Your college roommate?" was all he could say.

"Yeah. Deirdre. You've met her. She visited the year after we graduated. And then she came to our wedding. She was one of my bridesmaids. She would have been my maid of honor, but I had to let my sister."

He remembered. She was of Irish heritage, had straight, reddish-brown hair, green eyes, an oval face. She was small and attractive. When she'd visited, she had slept on the living room couch. Jeff had thought she was cute, but at that stage in his relationship with Karen he was too much in love with his wife even to even imagine the possibility of having sex with another woman.

"Dee," he said.

"She doesn't like to be called that anymore, love. She's Deirdre now."

"I'll try to remember that," Jeff said. He paused and swallowed. "Would she be a candidate?" he asked.

Karen pressed herself against him. "Maybe," she said, wiggling her bottom against his side. He turned so that she could feel his hardness. She wriggled against it. "We'll see how it goes."

"When you were roommates," he said, sliding up and down against her, "did you ever...?"

"Not really," she said, shifting her pelvis back and forth.

"Not really isn't no. What does 'not really' mean?" he asked, lifting her thigh.

"Well, we watched some porn together a few times," Karen said.

"And what happened?" Jeff asked, using his hand to position himself at her entrance.

"Well," she said, drawing a breath as he entered her, "not very much. We played with ourselves." She put her hand on herself, as if to demonstrate.

"With each other?" Jeff asked, stroking deeply inside her.

"No, with ourselves. We were in our own beds," she said, sighing, "not together. Under the covers."

"Did you come?"

"Oh, yes," she said. "Several times. It's much easier when someone is doing the same thing at the same time, making noises and everything. Like the girls on that Australian amateur porn site say it is."

Jeff was imagining it all in his mind's eye. "Anything else?"

"Once, I remember, we kissed."

"What's the big deal?" Jeff asked. "I see you kiss your friends all the time."

"I don't mean like that, like friends. I mean one Saturday night when we didn't have dates we got pretty drunk and we tried to really make out."

This was enough to pitch Jeff over the brink. He came inside Karen, shuddering again and again. Karen clenched on him, moved her fingers a little harder and faster, and brought herself to her own shuddering climax.

"And what happened?" Jeff asked, on his back again.

"Not too much," Karen said, turning to lie on her back next to him. "We deep-kissed and we felt each other up through the top of the shirts we slept in." Jeff was getting hard again. "But we were too drunk and we just kept laughing, so we stopped and went to bed. Separately." Disappointed, Jeff softened.

"So why'd it be any different this time?"

"I don't know. That's why I said we'll see."

===

Like many people living in Manhattan, Jeff and Karen didn't have a car, so they didn't go to pick Deirdre up at the airport. She called deep into the evening the night her plane landed, and they waited for the taxi to bring her to their door about an hour and a half after her call. When she rang the downstairs bell, they both went down to help her with her luggage.

She looked different from how Jeff remembered her. Her hair was shorter and curlier. She was wearing more make-up. The last time he had seen her, after the wedding and just before Jeff and Karen had gone on their honeymoon, she'd been dressed casually. Now she wore a woman's business suit. She was still very cute and looked younger than her years, which would be Karen and Jeff's age, about thirty. They opened the inner doors and helped her in with her bags.

Deirdre smiled broadly and hugged and kissed first Karen and then Jeff. He felt her breasts press against his chest and made sure to keep his hips from hers so she wouldn't feel his already growing excitement. They all traded the usual remarks about great it was to see each other, how the trip was, and other pleasantries.

Up in their apartment, Jeff helped Deirdre take off her coat and hung it up on the coat tree next to the front door. Deirdre's breasts were fuller than he'd remembered them.

"I have to pee," Deirdre said.

"You remember where the bathroom is, don't you?" Jeff asked, trying unsuccessfully not to imagine her lifting her skirt and lowering her panties and sitting down on the toilet.

"Down the hall," Karen said, pointing. "First door on the right, opposite the bedroom."

Deirdre followed the directions.

Jeff looked at Karen and raised his eyebrow.

"We'll see," Karen said, looking at Jeff with a slight smile. "Take it easy, love."

They heard the toilet flush and the water run. The bathroom door opened and Deirdre walked out.

"When's the interview?" Karen asked. "How long are you planning to stay? You're welcome for as long as you like, of course," she said, laughing. "Are you hungry? Want a glass of wine?"

Deirdre laughed. "You haven't changed much, Kar. Still more questions anyone can answer. What's today? Saturday? The interview is Monday morning at ten-thirty. I wanted to come in a day early, in case the flight was late or I was jet-lagged. I'm going to take a bus up to Boston Monday afternoon, see my brother. Haven't seen him in six years--right after your wedding. Going to spend a few days with him and then fly back from there."

Jeff realized that they only had that night and the following one if it was going to happen. And the next night she'd probably be too preoccupied with the interview. It was, as they say, now or never.

"And no, I'm not hungry. I brought food with me for the trip, and I ate the plane food, too. But yes, I could use a glass of wine. I only drank water on the plane. Experienced travelers say you should never have alcohol when you fly."

"I didn't know that," Karen said.

"Well, now you do," Deirdre said, laughing. It was as if she had already been drinking.

"I'll get glasses," Jeff said, and went into the kitchen.

When he came back with three glasses and an opened bottle of Merlot, Karen and Deirdre were sitting next to each other on the couch, Karen at the left end and Deirdre to her right. "He admitted he'd been sleeping with someone at his office," she was telling Karen. "He begged me to forgive him, and I tried to, but it was like he had broken something that couldn't be fixed."

"That's terrible," Karen said. "You were with him a long time."

Deirdre shrugged and made a half-smile. "Shit happens. I haven't slept with him--or anyone else, for that matter--since he told me. We've been living in separate bedrooms in the same house--actually, I'm still sleeping in the bedroom and he's sleeping in his study--for about seven months while I figure out what I'm going to do with my life. Then I got a call from this recruiter here in New York."

Jeff sat down to Deirdre's right, not too far away and not too close. He set down the glasses and filled each of them. "Here's to new beginnings," he said, lifting his glasses.

The two women lifted their glasses and they all clinked. "New beginnings," the women repeated as they all drank.

"How are you two doing?" Deirdre asked, looking from Karen to Jeff and back again. "Have you been behaving yourselves?"

"Well, not completely," Karen said.

Jeff couldn't see the expression on Deirdre's face, but he could hear the shock and surprise in her tone of voice. "What do you mean, Kar?"

"We've been completely faithful to each other--at least I know I have. I don't know about him."

"Yes, you do," Jeff protested. "You know I've been completely faithful to you."

Karen smiled at him. "I'm teasing you, love. And, anyway, you haven't been completely faithful in your mind."

"A man's entitled to his imagination," Jeff said. "Even a cat can look at the Queen."

"So what do you mean, not completely?" Deirdre asked, mystification still in her voice.

"A few months ago we took a man to bed with us."

Jeff still couldn't see Deirdre's face, but she was silent as she took another sip of her wine.

"Are you serious, Kar?" she asked.

"Yes," Karen replied.

There was another silence. Jeff felt himself getting hard.

"What was it like?" Deirdre asked, and drained her glass. Jeff promptly refilled it.

"It was fantastic," Karen said. "It was great. It was incredible. It was even better than I'd ever imagined. And I'd imagined a lot."

Deirdre turned to look at Jeff. She studied his face. "What was it like for you?"

He met her lovely green eyes, more serious than he remembered them. "Much better than I'd expected. Of course, I ached everywhere for several days afterwards. It's not something I'm planning to do again, but, actually, it was pretty incredible. And it was great to let Karen have what she wanted."

"Why'd you do it?" she asked, her eyes shifting between her two hosts.

"We'd made an agreement," Karen said. "I knew that Jeff had the fantasy of going to bed with me and another woman--that's pretty much every straight man's fantasy, after all--and I'd said that I'd be willing, but only if we could take a man to bed. I was pretty sure we could handle it. No pun intended."

"But the deal was that we had to be with a man before a woman," Jeff added.

"So he wouldn't get what he wanted and then chicken out of letting me have what I wanted," Karen explained.

Deirdre was making good progress on her second glass of wine. She shifted her position on the couch as if she suddenly couldn't get comfortable. "Interesting," she said slowly. "And how'd it go with the woman?"

"We haven't found the right woman yet," Karen said.

"Until now," Jeff said without premeditation.

Deirdre made a soft, startled noise, but her body language didn't suggest that she was repulsed by the notion. She put her wine glass down on the coffee table slowly, carefully. The three of them shared an awkward silence.

"Do you remember us fooling around when we were roommates our senior year?" Karen asked, putting her own glass down.

Deirdre took a long breath. "Of course I do, Kar," she said. "And I admit I sometimes wonder what would have happened if..." She didn't finish the sentence. "But we were kids. I haven't ever fooled around another with woman like that since then. It was a long time ago."

"Eleven years," Karen said. With one hand, she cupped Deirdre's chin and turned her head. Karen leaned in and kissed Deirdre softly on the lips. Jeff held his breath as he waited for what would happen next. Deirdre didn't resist. He couldn't see everything, but it seemed that Karen's tongue had parted Deirdre's lips, and that Deirdre had opened her mouth. He looked down to see Karen's hand on Deirdre's skirt just above her knee. Jeff couldn't remember ever being as hard, or his heart pounding harder.

Karen slowly drew her head back from Deirdre's. "Do you think you might want to try this?" she asked softly.

"I'm overwhelmed," Deirdre said. "It's hardly what I expected when I asked if I could stay with the two of you. I don't know what to say."

"If I understand what you've told me, you haven't been with a man in over six months."

"That's true, Kar. I haven't. But do you want to share your husband with another woman?"

"Better under my supervision than what happened to you, Deirdre," Karen said.

It was as if the two of them were having the conversation without Jeff even being there.

"Here's what I'm going to do," Karen said softly. "I'm going to give you bedsheets and a blanket. I'm also going to give you a pair of my pajamas and a towel so you can take a shower. Then Jeff and I are going to shower and go to our bedroom and close the door. And it'll be completely up to you. You can just sleep out here, and we'll never mention this again. Or you can come into our bedroom and we'll all see what happens."

"I still don't know," Deirdre said. "I mean, it's not as if I haven't fantasized about those kinds of situations. But sometimes the fantasies are better than the reality."

"I understand completely," Karen said. Jeff saw that Karen's hand was still on Deirdre's thigh. "I don't want to ruin our friendship. If you say stop, we stop. Any time. No matter what. I promise."

"And you won't have to do anything you don't want to," Jeff said. "I promise, too."

===

Jeff felt awkward as he cleared the wine glasses and the bottle from the living room as Karen took care of what she had said. She gathered up sheets, a pillow, a blanket, a bath towel, and a pair of pajamas that were going to be a bit too big for Deirdre and put them all on the couch, where Deirdre was sitting.

"Can I get you anything else?" Karen asked casually. As far as Jeff could tell, she felt no awkwardness. "A toothbrush?"

"No, I have all that stuff in my bag," Deirdre said. "Thanks." It was almost as if the conversation had never occurred. Jeff didn't understand how they could be so easy with each other.

"Okay, then. Jeff and I are going to use the bathroom first and then go to bed. So goodnight...or see you later."

"Yes," Deirdre said, committing to neither. She gave both Karen and Jeff an undecipherable smile. "Thanks for everything."