2 comments/ 24431 views/ 7 favorites Swinging in the Decades By: 4glory6 Cassie was so sophisticated and nonchalant about it, taking for granted that Brady and I were game for it, that I just let it happen. Brady certainly was game for it. It was going to be the eighties after all. Everyone was going to be free and easy and devil may care. It would be the sixties again, done right. A chance for exercising "all you need is love" without the backdrop of a tragic war in Vietnam. We were at the University of Delaware in Newark, still defining our dreams for the future. Brady was in graduate school, nearing the completion of his MBA. I had suspended my studies for this one last push to get Brady established. I needed two more years for my teaching certificate, and I'd have my chance when Brady was set up in business. His prospects were bright. Brady was one of the best salesmen I knew. It had been Brady who had sold me on Cassie's idea. Cassie was in her junior year in interior design. It was Cassie and I who were friends. I worked as a secretary in the fine arts department—working nine to five for that last push to get Brady his MBA. Cassie was a DuPont, which really meant something here in Delaware. Beyond that, she was a fashion plate and as thin and blonde and sophisticated as they get. I had to constantly watch my weight, while she gorged herself when we lunched together. But that's another story in itself. Suffice to say that it was symbolic of our relationship, though, and how I let her take the lead. Cassie lived life to the hilt without a hint of a problem. I always seemed on the edge of being something that wasn't quite good enough. I think some of what prompted me to go with the flow on this New Year's Eve idea was that Brady jumped at the idea. I worshipped Brady at the time. I couldn't imagine how I'd managed to land him. He was a dreamboat and a half and all of the girls in college had set their cap for him. "That's a man who's going to go far," I remember a professor saying one day as Brady was walking out of a math class we shared. "Whoever manages to hitch to that wagon is going to have a good life." Although I'd been attracted to Brady, it wasn't until that point—from something a woman professor said—that I became willing to do anything that he wanted as long as there was a hope that I could get hitched to that wagon. Of course I let him have his way with me when he got around to asking me out—in the backseat of his Mustang convertible down by the Delaware Canal below Wilmington. He asked me if I'd like to see where F. Scott Fitzgerald's house was, and it turned out that now it was in an industrial area with vast parking lots deserted on weekend nights and had become a favorite make-out spot. He hadn't asked me if it was my first time and I didn't volunteer that it was. It wasn't the last time that my reticence on that subject would back me into a corner. The sex was good, though, even though Brady was all about getting his own pleasure. After that first time, I found pleasure in it to—especially in a little kinky fetish of his. He'd done the right thing when I thought I'd gotten pregnant, but there always seemed to be a sense of resentment underlying our lives when it turned out I wasn't. This inexplicably was followed by a sense of greater separation between us when I finally was, which happened too soon for his plans. "It almost spoiled my plans for a business career, with an MBA and all," he'd said when I first told him I might be pregnant. "And now it doesn't look like—" "We'll be fine," I'd said, interrupting him because I didn't want anything I did to be a reason that he didn't go far in business, as the professor had predicted. "I'll put my schooling on hold. I can get a job at the university," I'd said. "We'll get you through graduated school first and then I'll go back for my teaching certificate." That's where I met Cassie—at the university. She was a star student, and I was working in the fine arts dean's office. So, it was me who brought Brady and Cassie together. There were occasions later when Brady reminded me of that, as if it explained away everything else. Cassie was a newlywed too, which is probably why we got along so well and became friends. It certainly wasn't because we were alike in any way. And, typical of Cassie, she'd landed the biggest catch in the university. Pete was the star player on the university football team, an all-American halfback, which was saying a lot for a smaller university like Delaware to be blessed with. He was as confident of himself and his worth as Cassie was. And he was known to have tried out all of the top women at the university from the entire cheerleading squad down to the homecoming queen and, it was rumored, that math professor as well. And somehow Cassie had gotten him to propose the summer between his junior and senior year and they'd been married the same September weekend Brady and I had been. Of course her wedding had been the best that DuPonts could muster up and Brady and I were married before a justice of the peace. Four months later, we were moving into a new decade, the 1980s, and when the four of us had met for lunch to go off for Thanksgiving break, where I met Pete for the first time, Cassie had suggested that we celebrate the New Year in style. We found that both couples were still going to be in Newark for New Year's. I had to work, of course—New Year's Eve was on a Monday that year, and the university didn't give us the day off just because we'd be off on Sunday and then on Tuesday again. And Pete wasn't doing well in his studies and had a lot of classwork to make up because his own football season was being expanded beyond that of the university's team by his all-star status. We were discussing what we each expected the eighties to be like, and Cassie and Brady were talking about a new era of free love and doing "what came natural." This led to talking about swinging and what we all thought about it. Cassie and Brady thought it was just nifty and, I'll have to say, it seemed to me like it would just be a continuation of the seventies for them. I had felt Brady chomping at the bit about the monogamous life ever since we'd gotten married, and god knows Cassie wasn't shy about talking about the attributes of every good-looking man she saw. Pete kept pretty silent on the subject, but he had a reputation as a womanizer and user and Pete kept pretty silent about nearly everything. Pete scared me a bit. He was tall and beefy—not fat, very muscular. Sort of overpowering. And brooding. He didn't come across as all that bright, supported by the trouble he was having with his studies. But Brady assured me that he had to be smart to be as good a football player as he was. He had to learn and retain many play scenarios and formations. He was sort of like a volcano—reserved on the outside but giving the sense of seething inside, able to break out in violence at any moment. It both frightened and attracted me. Brady said that was what made Pete a great football player. What I wondered, though, was what about it made him such a ladies' man. Was it just because he was an all-American jock? Thinking about it scared me, though, so I tried not to. Cassie's suggestion, enthusiastically backed by Brady, though, forced me to think about the possibilities. Of the four, I was the weak link. I could talk about the swinging life with bravado, but I hadn't lived it. Brady had been my only lover. I hadn't told him that, because I sensed he wanted to have been the man I'd wanted out of all other possibilities. And he was. It just wasn't because I'd tried them all out sexually. Cassie's suggestion was that, since all of us were stuck in Newark for New Year's Eve, since both couples were struggling financially and couldn't afford to buy tickets to a blow-out party, and since it was a decade being rung in—one that we all agreed would be a free and easy decade sexually—and since we all had great bodies (which I'll have to admit I found flattering for Cassie and Brady to say in my case—the other three certainly had 10 bodies), why didn't we welcome in the decade by partying together and trading partners as the new decade dawned? And by that, she meant, at the stroke of midnight Brady would be fucking her and Pete would be fucking me. Cassie and Brady discussed it so openly that my eyes went to Pete. But he seemed to be distracted, his eyes following the figure of a waitress as she moved between the tables. No interest in me at all, I thought, so Cassie and Brady could fantasize all they wanted. I thought at the time it was a joke and it would never happen, but at 9:00 p.m. on Monday, December 31st, 1979, there Cassie and Pete were at our apartment door, carrying a casserole dish as their contribution to a late dinner and a cheap bottle of champagne. Cassie was dressed to the nines, something considerable cleavage and thighs, like she was going to the DuPont Country Club or the DuPont Hotel for New Year's festivities. Pete was in a DU sweatshirt, baggy shorts drooping below his knees, and sneakers without socks. Cassie was all bubbly and smart talking. Pete was brooding and quiet. He went straight for our bedroom and switched on the TV to click between the New Year's Eve football games. I should mention that our apartment was the attic of a single house. The staircase was at one end and came up into a long room that started off dining room, ran into living area and then was screened off for Brady's study cubicle. The kitchen was in a dormer off the back of the house, to the right of the entrance into the apartment. Beyond the long living room was a bath in the dormer to the right and then our bedroom. The TV was in the bedroom, against the window wall and facing the bed, close enough to be reached when sitting at the foot of the bed. It was in there mostly because Brady didn't want the distraction of having it in the living room near where he had to study. Even then I assumed that the swinging business was all a joke and that we were just having dinner together, would go and all sit on the bed and watch Dick Clark bring in the New Year and then Pete and Cassie would go home and Brady, wound up by cheap champagne, would ravish me on the bed. Which was fine with me. I even was looking forward to that little fetish of his. I'd grown to enjoy it. I knew that Cassie would come looking like a fashion plate, so I had taken some of the money I siphoned off my overtime to cover gifts and things I didn't want Brady to see the bill for and bought myself a matching silk blouse and skirt that had looked a lot better on me in the mirror at the department store than it did in the mirror on the back of our bedroom door. Dinner was fine. Even the cheap wine Brady had pulled out for dinner was fine. The conversation at dinner was fine and free. No mention was made of anyone trading partners later. The Grasshoppers we had after dinner were fine. Brady was on a kick of celebrating with the cocktail that was a third Crème de menthe, a third white Crème di cacao, and a third cream. He thought it made us sophisticated. He referred to it as our NYC cocktail. Even the one joint we passed around was fine, although I was already getting a little woozy by then. Twenty minutes before twelve—before the onset of the 1980s—we repaired to the bedroom and sat along the foot of the bed like birds on a power line, watching Dick Clark trying to make it seem like everything was just too exciting for words and that we were building up to something. We were building up to something. We all hoped that the eighties would be life changing for all of us. Since we were coming out of the university into careers, that seemed a good bet. Cassie had already asked who would be kissing who at the stroke of midnight and Brady had reminded her that we were switching couples, so Cassie was sitting next to Brady and I was sitting next to Pete. OK, I thought, this would be "it" as far as the trading partner's bit went. I was a little put out that Cassie and Brady started practicing kisses before it hit midnight. Maddeningly Pete was still clicking between Dick Clark and the football games on the West Coast. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning his elbows on his knees and acting like he was going to launch himself into the TV screen. At the stroke of twelve, though, as balloons were going up on the TV screen and Auld Lang Syne was wheezing out of the speakers, he slid back onto the bed. Leaving the channel on Dick Clark and the beginning of the televised firework displays from across the world, he turned and enveloped me in those beefy arms of his and smothered me to his chest. His mouth went to mine and he was French kissing me. It took my breath right away. It was both brutal and overpowering—and a complete surprise. He hadn't said much all evening. He certainly hadn't shown any interest in me. In contrast, Cassie and Brady had been flirting with each other outrageously. While fireworks went off on the TV, Pete had come off the bed while still locking my body in his embrace and my lips with him, and was insinuating his knees between my thighs. A big paw went between our chests while his other arm was encircling my back, and I felt the buttons of my new blouse—my never-worn-before expensive silk blouse—being popped as my blouse was being ripped open. He arched me back, pushed my bra up above my breasts, and moved his mouth from mine to my breasts. His mouth was all over them, and he was sucking hard on my nipples. I perhaps should have tried to push him away at that point—which would have been futile if he didn't want to be pushed away—but I was involuntarily moaning for what he was doing with my breasts. I went limp, my arms dangling at my sides, and, sensing my quick surrender to him, he gave a muffled little laugh from the cleft between my breasts. I was too shocked to cry out or anything, although I was moaning and groaning. I looked to my side for help from Cassie and Brady, but they both were gone. The paw went under the hem of my skirt and I felt him tear the fabric of my panties away. He cupped my mound and I felt his index finger searching for and finding my clit. He somehow got the sweatshirt over his head and his shorts down on the floor without giving me the feeling that I would be free enough to struggle away and retreat. It was obvious that he'd done this many times before and that he was used to having his way with women. He was heavily muscled and hard bodied, and I moaned in want for him even though I knew it was wrong. Brady was hard bodied, but not nearly as muscled—or as movie-star handsome—as Pete. I made ineffectual sounds that I meant to be objections but that came out more as moans of want. Brady was a good lover, but he wasn't anything like this. He wasn't overpowering and insistent and so, so big down there, as I now knew as Pete's engorged staff rubbed on my belly and thighs and moved into position. I involuntarily widened the stance of my legs, instinctively knowing that he was going to fuck me no matter what and that it would be a chore taking all of him inside me. His mouth was possessing mine again, stifling any form of resistance I might give. But my body was betraying me. I didn't want to put up any resistance. I clutched at his beefy shoulders as he slid inside me, thick and long. I was wet and open for him, as he probably assumed I would be. He let me arch back on the bed, with one arm encircling my waist and the hand of the other one cupping the back of my head as he pumped in and out of me. I was in full flow, so, other than the size of him, there was little pain—mostly, I had to admit, pleasure. He alternated between holding his face above mine, staring into my eyes with his—his bearing a somewhat vacant stare that I took as a somewhat business-as-usual getting his rocks off with an available coed—gaze. Somehow this helped me. I shouldn't want him inside me, but he was such a hunk and overpowering and . . . and good at the stroking, withdrawing his bulb from time to time to press on my clit, before diving in again and making me almost lift my body off the bed at how filling he was and at the changing in the intensity of pumping of the cock, making me flow and jerk—and approach and explode along with the fireworks on the TV and then rise to new levels of pleasure, because he had stamina and was still fucking me after I'd experienced my first orgasm. He wasn't just rushing to his own ejaculation. For nearly half an hour we worked—together—in rhythm, with me moving my pelvis with his, answering his rhythmic thrustings with ever-increasing cries of pleasure and encouragement that made the fucking a well-oiled machine of mutual giving and taking and that must have given him assurances that I wanted just what he was giving me. At the height of pleasure the bulb of his cheap condom burst and I was gloriously bathed with his cum as I jerked into a spasm of orgasms fed by after spurts of his cum. I felt him shudder and collapse a bit on me. As he rose off me then, he lowered his face and nuzzled and kissed each of my nipples in turn. "That was good. Enjoyed that. Nice tits. Something to grab and hold onto. Curves. Most college girls are too angular," he said as he rolled the spent and ineffectual condom off his cock, both of us pretending at that point that it had done its job, and lobbed it expertly into the wastebasket across the room. I had no idea when he'd rolled that on or where it had come from. A false feeling of relief rushed over me, though. I hadn't thought about protection the entire time he was fucking me. He'd at least meant to wear protection. This was followed by a sharp stab of concern that the condom hadn't held. I was still in a daze as he turned and changed the TV channel to the West Coast games, immediately becoming engrossed in the play on the field. It was mostly the liquor and the joint, I realized, that had made me so passive. But it also was because I hadn't said anything about the proposal to trade partners. Pete took it so matter-of-factly. Like it was what I wanted and expected too. Like any girl he wanted would open their legs for him—which probably was close to the truth. I had to think that I had made the others assume that I was open to it. I was embarrassed and, yes, feeling guilty—and more than a little cheap. A slut. But then there was a bad little fairy sitting on my shoulder telling me that I'd loved being fucked by this athletic hunk. I'd even enjoyed the impersonal nature of it. I'd certainly enjoyed some of what he did to me that Brady didn't. Welcome to the eighties, I thought. This was just what Cassie and Brady had said it would be like. "Wonder if they're still getting it on," I heard Pete say. He went to the bedroom door and looked into the living room. "Yep, still goin' to town," he said. He turned back to me. He was naked except for the sneakers, and his body was beautiful. And the cock. I'd had no idea that I'd had something that big inside me. Brady's cock was fine, but. . . . I wondered about taking it Brady's special way from Pete. "Yep, that sure was nice. Happy New Year's," he said, as he came back to the bed below me—I hadn't moved a muscle since he'd left me. I was still lying on the bed, my butt on the edge, and my feet on the floor, my legs spread, my tits pushing out between the ripped-open blouse, my bra up at my neck, and my skirt pulled up to my waist. He laughed. "That bra ain't doin' you much good," he said. He leaned over, moved his hands around to my back inside my blouse, and expertly unhooked the bra, just like he'd done that a thousand times before. Which he probably had. He just as expertly pulled my blouse off my back and then my unhooked bra over my head. The skirt followed, and I was just as naked as he was. Swinging in the Decades "Nice body. I think they call it voluptuous," he said, "and mighty fine tits. Really like tits you can get a grip on." A hand was cupping my mound again. "And a natural redhead. That was a surprise." He was talking like I took football players every Tuesday and Thursday—which was probably what he believed as I hadn't objected to the plans. It didn't matter that I was too dopey and inexperienced to have tried to assert any control. I wasn't answering him, other than in moans as his fingers explored in my folds, a thumb going to my clit and two other fingers entering me and slowly moving in an out. I gasped as another of the fingers entered my ass—and then another. Brady's fetish came to mind. "You open right away," he whispered. "You've done this before." Yes, I thought, still gasping and taking in gulps of air as he worked his fingers inside me, I most certainly have done this before. But just with Brady. With my husband. Only with my husband. He probably didn't require me to say anything. I was just another lay to him. Just getting his rocks off. Exercising a privilege he had as a star football player. Not exactly like my vision of just another star athlete, though. He was spending time and effort on me. I should have been insulted by how matter-of-fact he was with it. But it helped, really. The impersonal nature of it—his feeling of victory by natural right helped me. He went down on his knees between my thighs and he had his face pushed into my pelvis and his tongue between my folds. I arched my back and moaned all the way down the chromatic scale. I dug my fingers into the curly blond hair on the back of his head and wantonly held him close into me. This is something that Brady had never done to me—for me. He was standing and smiling and was fingering another packet, his cock engorged again. "Guess they'll still be at it for a while," he said. "You're really nice. Nice smooth skin. Love the red hair. And I'm horny again." He gave me a questioning look and held the condom packet up. "Why bother now?" I murmured, my mind going to the second the first condom gave way and the higher plane of pleasure his ejaculation deep inside me had given me. This was a one-time fantasy we were playing, after all, wasn't it? Pete turned me onto my stomach, my feet still on the floor, One of his arms encircling my waist and holding my hips off the bed at the angle he wanted. He was cupping my throat—but pretty gently for a man as beefy as he was—and arching my spine. I groaned and gave a little cry as he entered me again from the rear and began to slow pump me. The friction of skin on skin now. Nothing like it. Brady and I didn't do that, not wanting children any time soon. After he got started he moved his hands to cupping my breasts and thumbing my nipples. This time his touchdown was synchronized with one by San Diego on the TV. He flooded me in three strong spurts, and I felt in flowing down the sides of his cock and dribbling down my thighs. We held there for moments, I, at least, savoring the fuck, not being sure how he felt—at least until I felt him thickening again. The glorious of youth and an athlete in his prime, I thought. He took one hand from my breasts and move it to my mound again, finding both my clit and my cunt, as he withdrew his cock. I moaned, sensing what was coming next. "I want you the other way. You're open. You've done it before." He waited a fraction of a moment, probably to see if I was try to deny to, to deny I'd done it before. But I had done it before. It was a favorite of Brady's, especially if he was randy where it was inconvenient to have protection. I gasped as Pete entered my ass, slowly but relentlessly. Thicker than Brady. All consuming. But when he was fully saddled and started to slow pump me, and I moved with him, giving him assurance that I would accept it. We sighed in unison as he latched his teeth onto the scruff of my neck, and I trembled underneath him. Brady just sat there on the sofa in the living room, his shirt open and his cock laying, flaccid, on his naked thigh, a silly grin on his face, as I saw Cassie and Pete to the door. Pete had withdrawn into himself again, and Cassie was bubbly as usual, impeccably clothed in her designer outfit as if nothing had happened. The only sign in her that anything had happened was that her hair was down. It had been up, piled on her head in a beehive, the last time I'd seen her in the bedroom. I was more embarrassed now than any time earlier in the evening. I was trying to hold the blouse closed over my tits and the skirt I had quickly pulled up my legs looked like it had been wadded up and thrown in a corner. There was no reason to be embarrassed around Pete; he had seen and handled everything. But I was embarrassed in his presence now that we were standing by the door and muttering pleasantries—or at least Cassie and I were. Pete had withdrawn inside himself again and was acting antsy to be gone. Some of the West Coast games had another quarter to play. I was finding it hard to face Cassie, though, although she wasn't having any difficulty jabbering cheerily. After they left, I marched over to in front of Brady, gave him the evil eye—which he didn't deign to acknowledge—and then flounced into the bedroom, slammed the door, and locked it. I decided that was a good approach to the feelings I wanted to get across to Brady. The locking of the door was an empty symbolic gesture, though, as we both well knew it could be unlocked with a paper clip. When Brady had popped the lock and entered the bedroom in full erection, it was almost with relief that I opened my arms to him. We coupled with an unprotected abandon that resulted nine months later, after Brady had graduated and started his first job, with me in labor with our first son, Brian, rather than resuming my college studies. When I came out of the bedroom the next morning, slightly hung over by what I had imbibed the previous night, Brady was sitting at his desk, reading a business book, as if nothing had happened the night before. I didn't say anything either, nor did Cassie, when I saw her at the university the following Wednesday. I didn't see Pete for another ten years. That doesn't mean I didn't think of the evening I'd been with Pete throughout that time, even though I assumed he'd forgotten all about me and just gone on to his next willing woman. His next lucky woman, I'll have to admit, if I'm being honest. * * * * The letter from Cassie, addressed to both of us, but Brady had opened it, came in September of 1989. If I'd gotten to the letter first, I might have tossed it before Brady saw it. "She asks if we remembered New Year's Eve of 1979," Brady said. Of course I remembered. I'd never forgotten Pete—never had stopped fantasizing about Pete. That doesn't mean I'd done anything like that since, though. I made a noncommittal noise that could mean almost anything. Brady didn't require more from me. He already was salivating. "She says they can be in Chicago for New Year's and reminded us that we had agreed we'd make getting together on the decade New Year's a regular event." I didn't remember any such agreement. But I was already thinking of that heavily muscled torso of Pete's and the size of his cock. And his head between my legs. Brady still hadn't done anything like that to me—for me. It had been a mixed ten years for Brady and me. His wagon had, indeed, zoomed up into the sky. He was a vice president of marketing now for his international firm and was based in Chicago, although he made frequent trips out of town. I'd never gotten back to school after the birth of Brian, who was followed the next year by Billy. I was still doing secretarial work, although now it was for a high-level executive in a major law firm in Chicago. That and childcare were all I could manage. I had to work, though. It always seemed we never had enough of the money we needed for the toys Brady wanted. Over the last ten years I'd had two beautiful boys—and Brady had had three affairs. That he had eventually admitted to. I was a stick-it-out sort of gal, though, and Brady had always come back to me. And there were the two beautiful boys to think about. I sometimes had thought of cheating on Brady too just for revenge, but after that New Year's Eve in 1979, I'd decided that he wouldn't care—that he might even want to go down the swinger road with me by his side and available to other men, which I wasn't ready to do. At least when I wasn't thinking about Pete. But I'd been weak—and stupid—then. Now I had two beautiful children to think of. "Really, Brady," I said. "The eighties didn't turn out as we fantasized them then. We've grown up, haven't we?" Apparently not, because Brady answered Cassie that we'd love to do a repeat to ring in 1990. They could come to our house. "We have children, Brady," I said, pursing my lips, but other lips already getting a little wet in remembrance of Pete. "Who your parents have already said they'd love to have visit them over New Year's." All resistance was for naught, however, as Cassie and Brady made the arrangements between them. If it had been a little rough for Brady and me in the ensuing decade—if not financially—it had been worse for Cassie and Pete. Not for Cassie. She'd graduated, gotten a great decorating job in New York City with the help of her DuPont name, and was as bubbly and floating along in the cream as usual. Pete hadn't graduated from college. He'd failed too many courses, blown his knee out in an all-star game, wound up taking an electrician's program, and joined the army. Cassie had carried him financially, keeping him for reasons that I well understood, even though he'd only fucked me that one night. Meanwhile, our Christmas cards from them suggested that they embraced the swinger and open-marriage lifestyle we had decided would be the earmark of the eighties. Cassie wasn't shy about noting the notches on her girdle or about being catty about some of the women Pete had laid. When I opened the door on New Year's Eve, though, it was only Cassie—not appearing to have aged a day in the last ten years—standing there. "It's just me," she said cheerily. "Pete's with the army in Panama." I hadn't thought about that in relationship to Panama. I knew Pete was in the army, mostly working on the electronics of battle tanks, if Christmas cards were to be believed, but I hadn't connected that with the U.S. invasion of Panama a week and a half earlier to bring down the regime of Manuel Noriega. "Well . . ." I said. "Well, come on in," Brady said from behind me. "Shit, you're looking luscious as ever," he added and he put out a hand and drew Cassie past me. I wondered for a while how this was going to work out. I had no intention of sharing Brady with Cassie in bed. In the event, though, they didn't have any such intention either. They disappeared upstairs at 11:30, while I was still in the kitchen whipping up dessert. Cassie hadn't brought anything to add to supper this time other than herself. I sat there, stirring far too much sugar in my tea and eyeing the dobosh torte I had wasted the afternoon constructing and trying to think how this had gotten so out of hand—how I let Brady push me around like this. And Cassie too. I almost didn't hear the doorbell ring. It was Pete, standing there in his military uniform, looking very spiffy and hunky. He had matured in those ten years, but it all had moved into a package that, if anything, was a bit more broad in the chest and narrow in the hips and more arousing than he'd been as a university football player. He looked sad, though, and a little confused. "We were told you were in—" "I was furloughed for New Year's," he answered in a little boy lost voice. "Had a rough Christmas. Lost some buddies." "By all means come in, then. There's a torte and tea in the kitchen." What a silly thing to say to a hunky soldier on your doorstep, I thought. I was flustered. He was doing things to me internally just by standing there and looking for vulnerable. "Cassie's upstairs," I added, "with Brady." Also not such a bright thing to say. "I didn't come for Cassie," he said. We fucked in the guest room—Cassie and Brady were in the master bedroom and having quite a session of it from what I could hear. Or rather I fucked Pete. We disrobed, quickly, and lay on the bed in an embrace—but we'd only started into tentative foreplay when he began to cry. Not in soft sobs but almost blubbering. Out poured the complete story of how they were called in to try to get a tank moving that was outside of the presidential palace in Panama City, and a Noriega supporter had lobbed a Molotov cocktail into the turret. Pete's buddy who he was working on the recalcitrant tank's circuitry with only had time to shove Pete up and out of the tank before the bomb went off inside, killing two soldiers Pete had worked with for a couple of years. "It's OK," I murmured—although it wasn't really OK. I wanted Pete to fuck me. "We'll just lay here and I'll hold you." We rocked against each other, which turned Pete on enough that he got hard and seemed to want the comfort of sex. He had come with condoms, but I would have taken the risk, if he hadn't. I pushed him onto his back and mounted his cock and rocked back and forth on it until he became so overtaken with want that he rolled over on top of me and took me deep and totally. I held him close again when he was spent, listening to his breathing calm down and then regularize as he dozed. I went to sleep too. I have no idea what time of night it was—how far into 1990 we were—when he woke me, stroking my breasts with one hand, two fingers of his other hand inside my ass. "What I really want—" he started to whisper. But I didn't let him finish. I brushed my lips across his, turned on my belly, and raised up on my knees. Immediately he was covering me, close on top of me, his lips buried in the back of my neck, a hand cupping one of my breasts, and the fingers of the other hand exploring in the folds of my cunt. I trembled and jerked a bit as his cock slid into my ass. The friction of skin on skin. No condom wanted. I hummed slightly, contentedly, as he started stroking inside me slowly . . . and then I writhed and screamed out encouragement as he stroked faster and faster until we orgasmed almost simultaneously after it seemed he'd fucked my ass for hours. The next morning Cassie seemed surprised to see Pete at breakfast—just with a towel around his waist. But it was more a surprise that he hadn't told her he'd gotten a furlough. She continued to flirt with Brady, and didn't appear to be giving any thought to whether Pete or I would be displeased. She flirted with Brady enough that they disappeared back up to the master bedroom after breakfast. My answer to that was to return to the guest room with Pete and demand to have my towel back. * * * * Brady didn't consult with me in setting up the New Year's Eve event for 2000. I didn't really expect him to, although it surprised me that we—any of the four of use—continued to give thought to that "tradition." During the intervening decade since the Chicago meeting, I had learned that many of Brady's out of town trips had been to New York City and that he and Cassie had entered into a sporadic and long-term relationship. I, in turn, had retreated into raising my boys. Earlier in 1999, though, Brady had taken an assignment to head his firm's Paris office and had arranged for Billy to go to a boarding prep school. Brian was studying at the University of Delaware. My parents were operating as State-side home base for both of them. "Can't very well take them to Paris with us, Ellen," he'd said. "They can't keep their studies on schedule if we do." He was right, of course. But I didn't forgive him from taking away the only pleasure I had in life anymore. I barely spoke to him between September and New Year's Eve. And that might be why Brady didn't bother to tell me that our Christmas and New Year's trip to Zurich, partially on business, would include a traditional New Year's meeting with Cassie and Pete. It was only when we saw them walk into the lobby of our hotel in Zurich and Pete went over to the reception desk to check in that I learned that Cassie was working in Paris now too—and that she and Brady were meeting regularly. Pete acted pretty much as always, like he was along for the ride and to carry Cassie's purchase. He was older now, and a bit stockier. But he'd managed to keep his body-builder's figure and was as blondly handsome as ever. Maybe more handsome than ever. He was out of the army and still living with Cassie and wasn't working at all at the moment, because he couldn't get an electrician's license in France and because Cassie didn't consider an electrician's job to be a real one anyway. We ate dinner in the hotel restaurant, with Cassie and Brady chattering with each other like a long-married couple and Pete and I being mostly silent, with downcast eyes, except when we looked at each other when he thought the other one wasn't looking. At the end of the meal, Brady pulled the key card of our hotel room out of his pocket and said to Pete, "Cassie and I will use my room. I trust you have the card to yours." Pete looked a little embarrassed, and Cassie fished the key to their room out of her purse and handed it to him. "You're looking good still. Still very good," I said quietly when Cassie and Brady were gone. "But, strangely enough, I don't feel like going to your and Cassie's room." "Neither do I," Pete said, looking up at me shyly. "That pretty much explains our life now," he continued. "Cassie keeps the keys. She's the successful one. She and I—" "Let's go for a walk," I said. "Zurich is beautiful at night in the snow. Let's walk down toward the lake." Looking almost relieved, Pete said, "I'd like that. You're still looking lovely too. Sorry I didn't say that sooner. Redheads still get me." And I'd love to be got by you, Pete, I thought. But I didn't say that. We walked down the main street, lined with leafless trees festooned with fairy lights in their branches, to the banks of the lake and sat down on a bench facing the frozen lake. It was only about an hour to midnight, but there were still ice skaters out on the lake. There were others out walking, as we were, as well, all of us bundled up against the cold. Most of the other were couples and, like the two of us, were closely plastered to each other. I tried to tell myself that in our case it was for the warmth. But I knew I was fooling myself. "I understand why Cassie stays with you," I said as our discussion on trivia was getting a little forced. "But I can't understand why you stay with Cassie." "And I don't understand why you stay with Brady," he countered. "I have children," I answered. "But your children aren't with you." "I know. But they should be. They were here for Christmas. They left just two days ago. So, I still have my children—sometimes." "I don't have any children," Pete said. He said it with such regret that I went silent. I didn't know what to say. I didn't want to make him sad—any sadder than he already seemed to be. My mind fixated on my son, Brian, and the question I had often entertained on whether Pete really had no children. Brian was blond. There were no blonds on Brady's family tree. I couldn't help but wonder if Pete was thinking the same. Did he even remember what we'd done that night twenty years ago tonight—and that his protection had failed? "You said that you understand why Cassie stays with me," he said after a few minutes of silence. "You know why," I answered. "You are a divine lover. You should know you are. Cassie stays with you because you are hard bodied and have a cock to drive a woman crazy and can send a woman over the moon with your face between her thighs. I don't want to be crude, but let's be serious here. And that's not even mentioning the fetish of the ass fuck and how good you are at it." Swinging in the Decades "You like the ass fuck as much as I do?" he asked, somewhat incredulously. "The way you do it, yes." "I don't want to go back to Cassie and my room in the hotel," he said. "Neither do I," I answered. "But you see the way it is. I don't have enough Swiss francs in my wallet to do more than tip a hatcheck girl to retrieve Cassie's mink coat." "I have some money—and credit cards. I'd love Brady to see the charge on the cards. I'm not above buying your body for New Year's." And I did have enough money for a small hotel down an alley, which no doubt had a reputation for just how we used it—and that had thick, soundproof walls. * * * * Christmas of 2009 was one of whirlwind trips for me to cover the distance between Brian's home in Tampa and Billy's in Denver. They both were married now and had children of their own. But they fought for equal time from me at Christmas, and, although I didn't tell them, that they each wanted me around was all the Christmas present I needed. I was rattling around the house in Chicago now. I'd gotten it in the divorce settlement and hadn't gotten around to selling it. I would have sold it three years earlier except that Brian had remarked that he considered it home and always felt good coming back to it. Billy had nodded his head in agreement with that, so I kept the house—for my boys. For whenever they wanted to come home. I had been at loose ends waiting for the divorce to come through until I was going through a photo album and ran across Brady's MBA graduation photos. I returned to college, got my teaching degree, and teach French in a nearby high school now. I put the years of living Paris to some good use at least—god knows I had to learn the language to survive there—and it feels great to have money to spend—on myself—that I earned myself. Brady was still in Paris—married to Cassie now, and I can't help thinking that they deserve each other. I was confident they were cheating on each other. Pete had finally had enough of being kept and had left her. He was back in the States now, being an electrician somewhere, I suppose. He was too old now to have rejoined the army. It's funny. I only really was with Pete in person those three times those last three decades, but it seemed like we were old friends—and lovers. But it was only a relationship in memory. We didn't write to each other. I didn't even know where he was. It didn't matter. I was sure all of the regard was from my side. Brady had sent expensive gifts to the boys and their children—and to me too—but he hadn't even hinted the possibility of showing up for Christmas. He was still good to me financially, although I tried to live on what I made other than having the house mortgage free. I'd been saving what Brady sent me and planned to shove it on to the boys someday. I worked hard to keep them from resenting him. Ever the cheery salesmen, he just floated across the surface, not really getting upset with anybody or anything. He was somewhat surprised when I asked for the divorce after that last affair. But he rolled with the punches. Cassie had already been acting like his second wife in Paris. I imagine it took him a week or more to even realize I'd packed up and come home. I was sitting in the kitchen of the Chicago house at 11:00 p.m. on New Year's Eve 2009, waiting for a mummified Dick Clark to mumble in the decade of 2010 on the TV and eating dobosh torte and drinking tea for nostalgia's sake, when I heard the doorbell chime. It was Pete, of course. When I opened the door, he held out a couple of Swiss franc notes. "I trust your children can take care of themselves now?" he said. "I've only got a couple of Swiss francs, but I hear this hotel goes cheap for the right man and that the rooms have soundproof walls." I stood, looking at him, fighting the tears. I must have been slow on the uptake, as he gave me a sad look and said, "Maybe you're still waiting for the right man?" "I was," I said, my voice clogged with emotion, "but he's here now."