Tentation and Desire.

The lies that he told himself were mostly anchored in truth. That his wife of ten years and two kids would still love him when his plan had been realized, for example.

That her secret beast of wanton yearning had simply lain in slumber all these years, waiting only for his prodding at the proper moment to release its fiery lust upon the eager loins of the world.

That he was sober enough to be having this level of discourse with himself while driving her aimlessly about the suburban hell into which their middle-aged marriage had thrust them, within which they now slowly bobbed like flies caught in the outermost strands of an insidious web.

All of these untruths spun within the tightening fist of his mind while his wife's laughter bounced rhythmically to the beat of her hand on his thigh.

"Don't you just love date nights?," she asked of her reflection in the mirror. "Oh, I do. I most certainly do."

He checked the rearview mirror again for flashing lights. It had been twenty years since he had received so much as a traffic ticket, yet the spectre of a looming cop hung behind the gently swaying tree-shaped air freshener whose pungency was just enough to cover the smell of his supposedly secret smoking habit. Another falsehood nestled within the cozy comforts of unquestioned pretense.

"Where are we going?," she asked. His eyes still scanned the receding horizon behind them. A pause came between songs, and she repeated her question. He shrugged and said, "Oh, I don't know. Where do you want to go?"

Suddenly, like a dam bursting on a clear spring morning, she began to sob.

"I - don't - know!"

Words of a most devilish sort flooded his mind. But of course, he responded sweetly with: "Sweetie, what is the problem?"

For, like most husbands whose wives are fiendishly more attractive than they are, our man lived with his balls in the eternal vice of her threats to leave him. It was in fact what he wanted, but only for one night at a time: and preferably if he could watch the proceedings.

But that would have to wait for later, he hoped. He had successfully intoxicated her at not one, but two fine drinking establishments earlier that mid-summer's evening, and she had giggled most demonically as he commented that a pair of men at the second bar could not remove their eyes from her. The smoldering grin that she flashed him lit within his heart the flame that, admit it or not, burned within the fantasies of every groom: the secret desire to see his mate, his most prized trophy, ridden hard by another stallion.

But now they were back to her proverbial plea: "I am so fucking bored with our lives."

It was not an uncommon expression within the long history of their romantic affairs. But it's presence had swollen in recent months, as they ventured, unrequited, through the bars of the 'burbs. And within her cries, he had always seen the razor gleaming above the neck of their marriage.

He was just about to speak in defense of their choice to move into this land of matching houses and PTA meetings when he caught a distant gleam within the murky shadows of his own unspoken dreams. In vain, for years he had tried to tap the deeply hidden artery of her longing for lunacy, that urge that he knew dwelt within her heart in the decades before their children came. But ever she had shut him down: such quests were the domain of younger, less established folk, she quipped; by this, he knew that she meant folk with nothing to lose from being caught in the net of debauchery into which he sought to thrust them headlong.

But perhaps here, within the abyss of her boredom, he could at last uncover the secret to shedding her guard against his ploys. Perhaps, if he posed such journeys not as a grasping for a peak but a thrusting away from a valley, he could catapult her into the lair of his lust.

"I know what you mean," he began. And then he looked coyly at her. "But at least we have each other."

"Horseshit," she retorted. "I'm bored. All we have out here is Mexican restaurants and chain brands. God, what I wouldn't give for a dive bar with a broken sign!"

"Some place like Arnie's," he offered. And she sighed longingly while rolling down the window.

Right after they had been married, the couple had lived in a tiny apartment on the East side of town. It was miles to any good grocery store, but there was a little place across the street where they used to crash on most afternoons and almost as many evenings. The crowd was just sketchy enough to keep you on your toes, but the place had a charm that just pulled you in.

"Oh, God, remember when we used to go dancing on the patio back there?" She laughed, her mood instantly improved. Zero to pissed off and back again in sixty seconds, he thought to himself. Typical fucking woman.

"Oh, honey, let's go dancing!"

His heart leapt. How many times had he asked her to drive into Downtown to go someplace to dance, in the hopes of skipping out to the restroom and pretending to lose her so that she would get caught grinding on the dance floor with the horny hunks that he would send her way? How many times had he fantasized about walking into the restroom and spreading a rumor among the men there that he was just her driver, and that she was a wealthy widow hunting the city for some anonymous cock?

But, right as he was about to spin the car around in the middle of the highway, she stopped him. "Oh, God, I don't wanna go dancing. Let's just get plowed."

"Where you want to go?" He rattled off a list of names of places within 15 miles of them. She shut them all down.

"Well, what about we go up to Porter? There are some little places around that old town square that are cute." He almost smacked himself for using the word "cute." But she didn't notice.

She grunted her assent and started playing with her phone.

"Who are you texting?," he asked.

"My boyfriend," she replied.

He sighed. That was their code language for her boss: a lawyer who would notoriously be sitting in his office working every night, sending her emails and texts. Our man had long ago abandoned the notion that her boss had an affection for her; the fat bastard would more eagerly fuck the hole of a donut than the firm asshole of his sexy bride. Not that she would be interested, of course.

Though, as our man sighed, that would be his luck. He finally gets what he wants - and the fantasy is ruined by images of his wife being smothered under the pale, greasy blubber-rolls of Mr. Curtis.

********

Our man had sufficiently sobered up when they finally pulled into a spot a few blocks away from the old town square, where parking was actually a larger problem than he had imagined. A good sign, he thought, that there was actually some nightlife in this place. His wife, on the other hand, had slipped into a fitful, snoring nap in the passenger seat.

"I guess that tequila was a lot stronger than we realized," he sighed as he threw the car into park. He ran through the various options before him.

He could pull into some darker spot behind the buildings and fuck her. Of course, that would be a challenge, because the back seat was filled with the children's carseats and fucking in the front seat never seemed to work. She would just get pissed off and demand to go home... where, he imagined, he could fuck her pretty good on the living room sofa where she always crashed as he paid the babysitter. He considered that a backup plan.

He imagined that he could probably get her to suck him off right here if the music were right. But then they would have to go home, and he would just go to bed. And as much as he liked blowjobs in the park, she gave terrible ones when she was this drunk. A few week's ago after going to a movie, he'd basically used her mouth like a loose Fleshlight in the parking lot. The only exciting part was imagining that they would get caught by the mallcop. But they didn't, and he drove home listening to 70s soft rock while she snored with his cum on her chin.

Or, he surmised, he could try to wake her up in a way that would get her interested in going out. There was a strong possibility that she could shut down the whole affair right here and now if he didn't handle this appropriately.

He looked up at the rooftop deck of the bar in the distance. A number of people sat outside smoking, a number of them possibly female. He raised an eyebrow and pondered sneaking over there for a smoke while she slept, then going home to pound one out. He didn't waste time with any fascination that he could lure one of those damsels into a sordid tryst before his betrothed arose from her slumber. Even if he had all night, he'd likely still go home alone.

"Ahhhhh, the burdens of being a man," he sighed. And he thought of how easily his wife could get laid if their roles were reversed. A girl with a smackable ass and a nice rack o' squeezies just has an easier way in life.

He closed his eyes and tried to imagine a scenario in which he could not only get her into the bar, but get her awake enough to flirt with strangers. If, that is, he could find strangers that would meet her unknown criteria. All that he was ever able to wrestle out of her during their dirty talk was that she got turned on by the idea of men with "strong abs and large cocks."

These were, of course, the two things that were least easily discerned from across the room when first walking into a bar (at least the kinds of bars that they visited).

And then, the real puzzler - how to get those strangers both aware of, and interested in, his debauched plans? It seemed an insufferably rough journey.

But that was his plight, and he would not abandon the quest tonight.

And so he leaned over and gently whispered in her ear, "We're heeeeee-ere! It's time for a drinky." At which point, he was shocked to see, she opened her eyes with a smile.

"Thank God. I thought that you were driving me out into some field to kill me, that took so long to drive up here."

"I thought we would try a new scene. Some place we haven't been, where we don't know anyone. I thought you'd like to try something new," he said as he leaned over and opened her door. He promptly popped out of his side of the car, bounced over to her side and extended an elbow.

"Madame? Your prince has arrived."

She waved him off. "Oh ya? Where is he? Let's go find him. I've been waiting to upgrade for too long, my warranty is about to expire."

She plopped out of the car and broke a heel. Uncaring, she tottered over to the curb, sat down and broke the other. A hiccup and a little fart later, she looked up with a roll of her head. "Alright, bitch, let's go get our drink on."

"You are such a dainty princess," he smirked as he hoisted her up. Intentionally clumsy, he shoved a hand under her dress and cupped the broad cheek of her apple-bottom.

"Not so fast, buddy, my prince might be watching," she quipped.

"I'll have to charge him admission to the show," our man retorted. His bride swatted his hand away as she shuffled towards the bar.

From the trees, unseen eyes peered down to watch their shadows mix with the puddles on the sidewalk.

********

On the first floor of the bar, the crowd was as thin as her boss's comb-over. A few rowdy drunks occupied the corner booth, and some college kids sat at the bar watching baseball.

"Let's sit at the bar," our hero suggested. Seeing his wife's imminent refusal, he reminded her: "You know, they never wash those pleather seats in the booths and God knows what all has spilled on them."

Her lip curled and she pulled out a stool from the bar. He imagined her spread-eagled in one of the booths as the bikers from the corner ran a train on her, drenching the disco-era couches with their seed and her juices.

The bartender was a buxom little thing with a blond stripe down the front of her otherwise fiery red hair. She raised an eyebrow as the pair approached her bar. "You guys come from next door?"

"No," our man replied. "We just drove in from Hardy. What is going on next door?"

"Oh, it's just a bit of a crazy place, and your lady friend looks overserved. We're not allowed to serve people that come from over there."

As his wife bristled while considering a retort, our dear knight-in-soiled-armor placed his hand on her thigh to calm her. "No, we just drove in from Hardy. We were at dinner and wanted a change of scenery. We'll both take a vodka martini, hers with one olive and mine with three."

The bartender continued to consider the furled lips of our man's lioness, at which point our brave hero placed a twenty dollar bill on the bar and smiled. The bartender took the cash without a flinch and turned to make the drinks.

"I'm going to the restroom," he said. "Don't leave me stranded here."

"You better hope someone doesn't snatch me away," she replied. "I'm a catch. A stone-cold sober fox of a catch."

Oh shit, we're gonna get kicked out, he thought. Hopefully, the bar next door isn't as concerned with propriety.

******

When he rounded the corner on the way back from the restroom, he stopped in his tracks. While pissing, he had been hoping she would notice the college boys and strike up a conversation. But when he returned, they had moved on to the pool table.

But in their spot now sat a pair of men about ten years older than him. And, to his delight, they were engaged in a lively conversation with the mother of his children. One even had his arm on her shoulder as they clinked their glasses together.

Instantly, his newly drained cock stiffened like a compass aligning with the tug of the earth. Onward, it cried! Beyond the shadows and over the brink - only there will we find our fortune!

He approached with a smile but the men's laughter quickly dissipated. The one man retracted his arm and pretended to be watching the game. Yet our man proceeded undaunted and was about to introduce himself before his wife looked up and smirked, "Well, it seems the old ball and chain is back. And here I was thinking I'd get a free drink from these guys."

The man who had been touching his wife muttered something underneath his breath and started to slide away when our intrepid philanderer gained a burst of courage. "No, it's alright. That just means they have great taste in women."

The men laughed and introduced themselves to each other. Meanwhile, the object of their shared affection had slurped down her martini and begun to waive at the bartender.

"Sorry, honey, you're cut off."

As she turned to head to the kitchen, the bartender smirked with satisfaction at the fumes that arose from the wife's ears. Undaunted, our protagonist casually slipped his drink over to his wife, who tipped her invisible hat before launching back into conversation with the men beside her. They had been talking about the absurd nature of suburban living and how much better things were out here, where the two men had apparently lived their whole lives. The wife lauded their choice of residence and launched into her tirade:

"Besides the DUMB BITCH that thinks she runs it, this place is great. It has character. I am so fucking sick of the cookie-cutter plastic Lego land where we live. It's killing me."

She clutched dramatically at her her blouse, pulling it down and showing off even more of her impressive, post-pregnancy cleavage. "It's K-I-L-L-I-N-G me!"

As they talked, our hero weighed his options. What would a real swinging couple do in this situation, he wondered? Should I just casually approach one of these guys about it? Or would that creep them out? Would they prefer the idea of fucking her behind my back, or in front of me? At least she is doing her part, he thought as her hand went to one of the men's shoulders as she laughed at some joke he made about soccer moms.

Our hero opted for the role of disinterested husband who is totally fine with his wife having flings; that way, he figured, the men could feel safe and he might get a shot at seeing some action. How he arrived at that decision was a complicated algorithm that weighed the amount of alcohol that he estimated these men had consumed, the noted absence of a wedding ring on the finger of the man who was closest to his wife and the fact that our protagonist had intentionally sat a few barstools away from his wife when he returned from the restroom. This move he thought particularly sly, as it made obvious that he was not possessive of her and was in fact quite fine with them getting as close as they'd like to her intoxicated charms.

Suddenly, in a moment of remarkable fortune, his wife gave him a boon that he could not have foreseen. She stood up quickly and announced, "I have to pee."

As she sloshed her way towards the back of the bar, the eyes of both men went immediately to her ass. Meanwhile, the eyes of her husband went straight to the source of their gaze, which quickly averted when they noticed him looking at them.

"She's a bit of a wild one," our dear friend announced to these total strangers while he imagined their elephantine cocks bulging inside of her ass and her pussy while she filled her throat with his own meager dong.

"Sure seems like it! You guys been married for a while?"

"I suppose. Ten years."

Rick, the man whose left ring finger was free from bondage, announced that he had been married once but it didn't last. His wife had been a workaholic and he left her when he realized that she loved her job more than him; that, and she caught him fucking their neighbor.

"Sounds like your wife has a stressful job, too. Putting up with that shit would kill me. That's why I work for myself."

Rick then explained that he owned a little import-export business right down the street. He lived and worked out of an old warehouse and liked to come in here to get a drink after work.

"Ain't got no wife to bug me about coming home drunk as a skunk. I tell ya, man, marriage is a tough gig. Takes too much acting, and I kept forgetting my lines, if you know what I mean."

Benjamin, the quieter married man beside Rick, exploded in laughter. "Ha! Not me. I'm gonna have hell to pay when I get home. Anytime I hang out with this guy -" here he slapped Rick hard on the back, forcing him to spill his drink in his lap.

"Shit, man, now somebody's gonna have to take a shot off of my balls so that I don't waste this scotch."

As if on queue, our man's wife rounded the corner and made her bold return to the group. She frowned as she picked up her empty glass and looked sheepishly at her husband.

"I think I know someone who might be interested," said our man with a conniving little grin.

Rick guffawed loudly as Benjamin literally fell off his stool.

"Alright, you guys, get the hell out of here. Rick, you and Benjamin better walk your ass back to your place before his wife comes around here. If she sees him talking to this drunk bitch, she's cutting him off for a month."

*********

Before the cops arrived in response to the wife's cursing retorts, the Three Drunk-a-teers (as the wife dubbed them) corralled her enough to get her out of the bar and onto the sidewalk. As she spun to give one final salute to the bartender, she promptly slipped and landed flat on her ass.

This, of course, elicited nothing but more raucous laughter from the trio that clung to her limbs and dress.

"Shit, girl, we can't take you nowhere," said Rick as he helped lift her up. His hands continued to bolster her softer parts as she gained her ground, and he leaned in close to whisper something in her ear. She snorted a laugh and faux slapped him, forcing an instant rush of blood to flow from her husband's head into his nether regions.

Meanwhile, Benjamin cluelessly giggled while slowly spinning in circles. But then, as the crew debated how to wheelbarrow themselves into a bar without getting instantly banned, Benjamin uttered the most glorious line of the night.

"Hey, Rick, why don't we take this party back to your place?"

********

"This is happening. This is happening. This is really fucking happening. What the fuck am I doing? Is this insane? Holy shit, this is really happening. Did I bring condoms? Fuck, I knew we should have gotten her fixed. Shit. This is really happening."

These were among the more lucid thoughts in our man's mind, whose drunken fog had been replaced with a crystal clear vision of his wife getting boned by Rick while Benjamin pointed and blushed from the corner. Poor bastard of a married fuck. Maybe he would at least have a cameraphone so that he could jerk off later?

Our man was sprinting his way back to the car so that he could drive them to Rick's place. Rick had generously offered to guard the girl while her husband fetched the ride. Our man nearly leapt through the window in his excitement, thrusting the keys into the ignition and twisting the car to life as he adjusted the swollen member between his legs. "How the fuck did I keep a hard-on while running," he wondered.

Nevermind that. The lock over his sexual treasure chest was finally cracking open, and he refused to let scientific inquiry or logic stand in his way.

As he pulled up to the bar, the husband saw Benjamin lighting a cigarette from the passenger seat of his mini-van across the street. Poor fucking bastard, he thought. I bet that he never even took advantage of the one good feature of driving a mom wagon.

Meanwhile, as they sat on a bench outside of the bar, our man's darling bride was under a full-on sexual assault from the dread pirate Rick. One of his hands was climbing under her skirt, and the other was pinching the nipple of her right breast. She was leaning over to one side, her head rolled around with her eyes closed, looking like she'd been drugged.

Shit, our man thought. What if they roofied her? Why the hell would they do that? She has to work tomorrow morning. Shit.

As he pondered this, Benjamin jumped to life. He saw our man taking in the scene, and furiously laid into his horn. Rick nearly leapt out of his skin, the warning signal apparently coming a bit late and a bit long for his tastes. Meanwhile, the wife flopped facefirst onto the bench that Rick had so rapidly vacated.

Our man got out of the car and approached the raggedy duo. Rick, apparently too horny to be perceptive of another man's feelings, immediately began to back off like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Meanwhile, our man noticed the crowd of onlookers that had gathered to watch the softcore porn enactment outside the bar.

"It's cool, Rick. Don't worry. Let's just get back to your place and we can have some fun."

Rick's jaw dropped open. The two men looked at each other for a moment, neither quite certain that the unspoken had been understood. And then a sudden sense of calm developed between them. As each took an arm of the woman whom they both planned to fuck that night, it was like the world silenced itself to watch what would happen.

"Welllllll, fuck yeah, man, let's get it on!"

Poetic, Rick. Poetic. I hope your cock is bigger than your vocabulary.

********

This is the point of no return, our man told himself as he followed the mini-van with bumper stickers featuring the stick figure equivalents of Benjamin's family. This is where I either turn around, go home, pay our babysitter and have a normal roll in the hay with my wife... or I haul my (possibly drugged) bride's borderline comatose frame into a rusty warehouse to watch a total stranger possibly give her an STD.

And, while she may not recall a thing in the morning, I will remember this decision for the rest of my life.

But what if she wakes up in the middle of it? What if she realizes what I have done? Is there any way she would go along with it? What if she jumps up and goes insane, calls the cops or some shit?

Our man then thought back to their conversation on the way up here, and his wife's comments at the bar before she passed out.

Could it be possible that my wife is bored enough to get nailed by Rick's hammer? That she would even want this in her more sober moments, but is at last collapsing into her desire through the plying power of booze?

He pondered what to do as Benjamin's brake lights lit and Rick's lecherous paw reached out the window to point at the shadowy entrance of his lair. The warehouse was surrounded in shade with a single, uncovered bulb burning above the slowly opening garage door.

As the door raised, our man could dimly see what lay beyond. A cavernous room filled with workbenches, machinery and overflowing crates. Strewn among them were mismatched couches and wingback chairs, and over all of it hung a dimly familiar pattern of Christmas lights. He could see a pair of guitars leaning gloriously against a wall covered in posters of scantily clad women.

Benjamin parked in the driveway, leapt from the van and turned around. The grin on his face was both childish and malevolent as he slowly raised his hand to wave.

"Come on, buddy," yelled Rick over his shoulder as he adjusted his crotch through his jeans. "I'm gonna find us some beer and some tunes. Get her in here!"

Our man's heart pounded in the pit of his pants. He felt like his balls were about to burst as he tightly gripped the wheel of his car. He could turn off the car and carry his bride inside, or he could turn around and go home for a furious fuck in fidelity.

He looked over at her, with her head leaning to one side and her tits bulging out of her shirt. A button had either snapped or been opened, and she looked supremely fuckable but unaware of her exposure.

What should he do?