Chapter 5

We rise late for breakfast the following day, to find that Frederick's already in the dining room, seated at the table where we enjoyed dinner last night. The patio doors are open, bringing a warm, pleasant breeze into the room.

My sweet wife is blushing as Frederick offers his greeting to us. I lean in and kiss her cheek. "It's not like he could hear what we were doing, sweetheart… Although you were very loud," I whisper with a smirk.

"Alex," she hisses, turning away, but not before I see her smile as I hold out a chair for her.

She selects some fruit from the serving plate in the center of the dining table. I elect to pour a coffee instead and forgo a seat.

"Is that all you're having?" Frederick asks, nodding his head at my wife's plate.

"I'm a little unsettled," she admits, and the shy glance she sends my way might as well be an announcement.

Frederick chuckles. "Hmm, so I heard. Well, best keep your strength up."

I nearly choke on my coffee and am forced to thump my chest before I can take a breath. When I glance at her, I find my wife near crimson.

Frederick is smirking as he draws his cup of coffee to his lips. "There is nothing wrong with having an ardent wife. You're a lucky man, Alex."

My eyes twinkle as they shift to my wife. "So I tell myself every day."

It is not often I think about Frederick as an alpha. Not that one can really forget it when one looks at him, for he is everything that designation is known for. And yet he wears the civilized trappings so well.

He artfully changes the subject to the new cottage garden, which my wife is planning. I leave them to their conversation, taking my coffee to the open patio doors where I can gaze out.

The courtyard beyond is sheltered by trees to either side, while directly ahead is an open vista offering views across the meadows. I am taking in the view but also standing somewhere where my erection will not be noted. I shouldn't be aroused by the image that continues to visit my mind: that of my wife with another man. And yet, I cannot dispute that my eagerness last night was in part due to the fantasy I had conjured of the two of them together, imagining the dark interest on Frederick's face as he gazed upon her naked body.

My wife is beautiful, and demure in many ways, and yet there is a wanton underneath.

I imagine his big hands cupping her tits.

I take a sip of coffee and fight back a groan. I've lost all sense of propriety. It is her own fault, I tell myself with a smile. When a wife greets her husband in such a way, sinks to her knees, and sucks his cock like it is her favorite treat, little wonder I am still lost in a fog of passion.

Our intimate life is very good. I enjoy her body often, love to pleasure her, and am enrapt by the way her face is transfigured when she comes.

Yet, I know there was something a little out of the ordinary in her reactions last night, a wildness I wish to share with her again.

Is it Frederick's influence in some way?

I glance over my shoulder to where they are talking at the dining table, and I'm captivated again by the sight. How tiny she is next to him. The way he leans in, almost protectively, to hear what she has to say. There is nothing improper about anything they do, and yet just the sight of them there continues to stir my improper thoughts.

I shouldn't want my friend to fuck my wife.

It should disgust me.

And yet, I am hard—again—at the mere thought.

Gods, how am I going to get through the day? I enjoyed her often last night and then again this morning before we left the room. I should not have the capacity to get hard, but it's like my cock has a mind of its own, and I can't seem to escape the mental quagmire in which I find myself.

* * *

Alex is looking at me like that again. He has taken his coffee to stand beside the open patio doors with his back to us, yet every time he glances back, I can feel the heat in his gaze. I dare not lift my head and meet his eyes when I am holding my own libido back by a mere thread. Between my husband's heated glances and Frederick's deep, rumbling voice, with which he speaks to me in an intimately low tone, forcing me to lean in to hear, I am like a ship adrift in a stormy, carnal sea.

I have never even noticed Frederick's scent before. Today, it's like a rich, potent cloud tickling the back of my throat, and I cannot escape it nor its effect. My nipples are hard, and my pussy is weeping. A little of that is due to my husband's ardor last night and this morning, but I would be lying to myself if I claimed it was all down to that.

"You are not eating much, Clara," Frederick says, in a low voice, close to my ear. "Are you not hungry? You have done no more than move the fruit around your plate. I'm truly sorry if my teasing has made you uncomfortable in some way."

"Oh, no, don't be," I mumble, then make the mistake of glancing sideways at him. And I am caught up in the beauty of his hazel eyes with their long, long lashes. How did I never notice how pretty they were before? How can such a masculine man have such eyes? Surely, there is some unwritten law of creation to protect mortal women from their hypnotic powers. "You have very pretty eyes."

He smirks.

I blink a few times before, mortified, I snatch my gaze back to my plate, where I have, as he indicated, done nothing more than move the fruit around.

Why would I say that?

What madness has gotten into me?

I throw a nervous glance across at my husband, to find him staring at me.

Did he hear me? Does he see the condition I am in, aroused and needy while I think about his friend thrusting his coffee aside, spreading me out on the table, and sliding one of the plump strawberries through my slick pussy before presenting it to my lips, with a smirk? "There, does that taste better now?" the fantasy version of Frederick purrs.

I swallow.

"Clara, if I might have a word," Alex says.