The Bet

I couldn't cope with this, lying naked in bed. I was suddenly terribly afraid that she had just given me a last goodbye fuck before riding off into the sunset with him. Trying to keep my voice steady I said, "Let's go downstairs and have that cup of tea we never had while you tell me about it from the start."

Sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table, Sally began, "The first three days there was a storm and Damien was ill so it was the fourth night before we slept together in that way. I'm not saying that I went on board eager to have sex with him again but I had steeled myself for it so those first three days were a bit of an anti climax. When we did start to screw I started to fall for him pretty quickly but I convinced myself that I just liked being in bed with him a lot. It was after a month that I started to admit that I cared for him and after the week alone with him on a small island, I knew I was absolutely crazy about him. The trouble was that I believed what they say about it being impossible to love two people at the same time and that meant that if I loved him so much then I couldn't love you anymore - that was why I felt so guilty when I wrote to you. I really felt that I couldn't live without him. Damien guessed how I felt and he warned me saying, 'Don't forget that when this holiday is over, I will be going out of your life forever.' I didn't believe it. We were so good together that I thought I could hold him but he kept saying, 'You are going back to Phil - you've got a good husband there but I would be no good for you at all."

Sally paused for breath and this gave me the chance to ask, "Just what is so special about this guy for him to have such an effect on you."

"He always does and says exactly the right thing - and he's a marvellous lover," she told me honestly.

"A great deal better than me you mean," I said bitterly.

"No -- he's probably not that much better really. He was different, that was part of it and we were in relaxed idyllic surroundings. You've got to remember that for days on end there was nothing to do except lie in the sun or fuck - and lying in the sun soon gets terribly boring." A small smile touched her mouth as she said the last bit and I found myself smiling in response. The next moment she was serious again saying, "Towards the end of the holiday when I knew for certain that he was going to stick to the bet agreement I started to panic not knowing how I could manage to live without him. I tried to persuade him to keep on seeing me when we got back. I said 'I said Phil is a reasonable bloke, I'm sure that when I explain it to him he will agree to some sort of arrangement'. Damien just laughed and told me that he didn't think you would be reasonable about it at all. So I said that I would meet him secretly and you wouldn't have to know but he said that you had played fair with him so he was honour bound to play fair with you."

What my wife had just told was deeply hurtful but I was filled with relief that Damien was not waiting on the sidelines to claim her back the following day. "Do you still love him?" I had to ask.

"Yes I still love him but I know now that it is possible to love two people at the same time. Standing on the station waiting for you today, I realised how much I was looking forward to seeing your face and knew that I still love you as much as I ever did."

I sighed with relief. I also realised that I was very aroused - no doubt from hearing about her sexual activity with that other man. "So everything is all right. Let's grab something to eat and go back to bed."

Sally shook her head. "No - I said that there are two things you need to know and now that I have started telling you about Damien I've got to get everything off my chest."

My heart sank. I thought that she had already told me all the bad news - if there were two things worse than that, I didn't think I wanted to know. "Go on," I mumbled as my penis shrivelled to virtual non-existence.

"I'm so ashamed," she began, "I've been very mean to you and I have also been unfaithful to you as well. I don't count all the times that Damien and I fucked on the holiday because that was part of the bet and couldn't really be called cheating but I have done it with him since we came ashore and that was wrong. The boat wasn't delayed, it docked on time but I sent you that cable so that I could have one last night with him. Damien wanted to stick rigidly to the terms of the bet but I pleaded with him. It was so mean and selfish of me because I knew how you must have been counting the minutes to me getting back and I made you wait an extra twenty-four hours.

"How?" I asked stupidly, my mind unable to comprehend what she was telling me.

"When Damien refused to see me again after I was back with you I pleaded with him for one last night. I said that all the times I had been to bed with him on the holiday was because I had to due to the bet - I said that I wanted to do it just once when it was completely my choice. He did agree to that so I sent you the cable and on leaving the ship we booked into that station hotel. This morning we put all my stuff on a trolley to make it look as if I had just got off the train."

"I bet he screwed you more than more just the 'one last time' - when was the last time you did it with him?"

"Ten o'clock this morning," Sally told me honestly, knowing it would hurt me to know that she had left his bed less than four hours before jumping into mine.

"Whore," I said, not meaning it but needing to strike back.

"I know that's exactly what I am," Sally said contritely. "When I did it, it seemed right but I can see now how selfish I was. When Damien walked away to his car leaving me to wait for you, it was as if his influence had lifted allowing me to see how very much I still loved you. I would give anything to have come back to you yesterday. I'm so ashamed of myself."

"You just said 'walked away to his car'?" I queried, my mind ignoring her apology and fixing on this random piece of information. "I passed a car very like his on my way to the station."

"That would be him," she nodded but then paused and said, "That's something else - Damien wasn't exactly straight about the car. There was no question of him selling it because the holiday cost him nothing. He works for a travel firm and could claim three months free holiday for him and a companion anywhere in the world that he wanted to go."

"Bastard," I said.

"If I had found out near the start I would have been very angry but by the time that he did confess I would have forgiven him anything. He said ' All's fair in love and war,' and then laughed as if it was funny."

"The lying cheating fucking swine," I swore.

"Be fair - you did your own share of cheating.

"Not me - I played it straight down the line and the more fool me," I protested.

"Hardly - you came to the restaurant that night to deliberately ruin his only real chance of winning the bet. That was very mean of you and I was so cross that I let him kiss me on the way down in the lift. You needn't have bothered because I wasn't going to let him seduce me - in fact I found the secluded table, low lights and the rest all rather amusing."

"It was the only time that I felt really vulnerable."

"Well it cost you," she said. "That last night when I thought he was risking everything because he was so besotted with me, it seemed so unfair that you had cheated him out of his only real chance - and that's why I let him win."

Her words answered the question that had been bothering me ever since that night and also made me admit for the first time that I had behaved in a less than honourable fashion. The whole thing was my own damn fault - and that not just agreeing to the stupid bet in the first place. The only thing for me to do was to forget everything and start again. "Let's go back to bed," I said.

This time it was more the familiar Sally of before with only one small glitch when she almost slipped into an alternate scenario. At one point she started moving down the bed obviously intending to take my cock in her mouth but then changed her mind to crawl back and continue kissing. Now throughout our marriage, oral sex was invariable mutual in the old sixty-nine position and always initiated by me going down on her. This small inadvertent action gave me a small window into how differently she had behaved with him. We had done the oral as foreplay and only accidentally to completion but something told me that she had found the taste of his cum less unpleasant than mine.

This knowledge caused a mental blip but when we coupled it hardly put me off my stroke. I had three months sexual hunger to work off and every intention of humping all night but on only the second time around, Sally fell asleep under me completely exhausted. Next morning I got up to make her breakfast in bed and when she had finished eating I started to slip in beside her intending to carry on where I had left off. To my surprise she stopped me saying, "I said there were two things I had to tell you but I've only told you one. I intended to tell you everything yesterday when I was confessing but I was so afraid that you wouldn't want me when you knew and I did so need to spend the night with you."

After all that she had related I could not imagine anything that could be so dire. Laughing I pushed aside her restraining hand and got into bed saying, "Spit it out then. I don't care what kind of kinky stuff you got up to with him; I still want you for my wife."

"I'm pregnant," she said.

I felt as if I had been turned to stone. "Pregnant - it's impossible, you've been on the pill for years."

Sally nodded. "I know it was stupid," she agreed and then the whole story came out. "It was when we went to the first island. Going ashore in a dinghy I knew that something small had fallen overboard but could not work out what it could have been but when we had been left alone, I realised it was the small hold-all with my pills, make-up and toiletries. There was meant to be a radio for emergencies but when we tried to call the ship it turned out that the battery was flat. So we searched the cabin and turned up two packets of condoms, a full one of three and one with only two in. Trouble was they only lasted us for the first day. So we tried other things but although I always enjoyed sucking him off, I couldn't really do that every time and it was impossible to be alone for a week in a place like that without fucking at all. So we decided to take a chance - the thing was that the condoms had really been too small for him and two had split so it seemed likely that the damage had already been done. Then on only the second time that he had me bareback I felt sure that I had conceived and resigned myself to the fact. At the end of the week, the ship that picked us up was smaller than the liner we set off in and the doctor hadn't got any of my kind of pills - he said that they were only available in England, (you know all the others are bad for me). I thought that I had already been knocked up so it seemed pointless for Damien to use condoms for the remaining seven weeks of the holiday - neither of us liked them at all. As it happened, it turns out that I wasn't impregnated on the island after all but I am definitely pregnant now."

"Does Damien know?"

"Yes - he was quite pleased. We even talked about names - he'd like Daniel for a boy or Danielle if it's a girl."

"You've got to be less than three months - we can still do something about it," I suggested hopefully.

Sally shook her head, "Phil, you know how I feel about abortion and anyway I would like something to remind me of him."

'And remind me' I thought ruefully, resigning myself to the fact that although I had my wife back I was destined to be a father by proxy.