Chapter 6 – Dinner for Four

We lay tangled together in the afternoon quiet. Donna's head rested on my chest, her hand moving slowly, absently, across my stomach, her naked body entangled with mine.  It was the Tuesday after our trip to Trieste and that surprise at the airport when we returned. We had texted and decided we needed to meet to discuss the dinner our partners had surprisingly arranged after they had met at the airport. But other needs had been met first, and now we lay together in post coital bliss.

"I needed that," she said quietly.

"So did I," I replied, kissing her gently on the lips.

We lay there for a while without talking, which was its own kind of conversation. But it couldn't last. We had to discuss the coming weekend.

"So, Saturday," Donna said finally.

"I know. How on earth did this happen?"

She propped herself up on one elbow and looked at me, her expression caught somewhere between amusement and apprehension. "Goodness knows, you couldn’t make it up could you. But we need to decide how we play this."

"Carefully," I said. "Very carefully. We need to behave like people who have met once at the airport.  No more than that."

"No finishing each other's sentences," I said.

"No knowing looks."

"No touching."

She raised an eyebrow. "That last one is going to be the hardest."

I laughed, and the tension loosened slightly. But it came back as I thought it through properly. "The real risk isn't the big stuff," I said. "It's the small things that could trip us up. Knowing how you take your coffee. Knowing David's work and habits. Laughing at something we have remembered together, knowing anything about each other’s work."

Donna was quiet for a moment. "I hadn't thought about all of that."

"We have to be strangers who are being friendly. Nothing more."

"And if one of us slips?"

I had no good answer to that. "We can't slip," I said. "The consequences could spell disaster and an end to all of this."

She lay back down, her cheek against my chest again. "We could cancel. Claim illness."

"Sarah's already planning the menu," I said. "She mentioned a beef stroganoff this morning. She is genuinely excited. If I cancelled it now, she'd want to rearrange it straight away."

"And David is already registered with the choir for their next concert.” Donna said. "He came home on Sunday talking about your wife like she was a long-lost friend."

"This is distinctly getting weird now," I said, and there was a distinct irony in it that was almost funny.

"We can't cancel and we can’t postpone unless one of us is on life support," Donna agreed. "We just have to put on our best faces and get through it."

"At least it’s just one evening," I said. "We just have to get through one evening at the moment. That’s something worth doing so that we can carry on meeting without them"

She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "One evening, but of course we know it won’t end there will it. They'll want us to get together again. More meals in the future, perhaps a walk in the Ashdown Forest followed by a pub lunch. The best part so far is that David will be at choir every Wednesday and so will Sarah."

The picture was almost absurd in its domestic horror. "We will have to cross those bridges when we come to them, One thing at a time for the moment. After all, David may find me intolerable company.” I said.

Donna smiled and exhaled slowly. “Well, I’m not going to place bets on that outcome. You are a perfectly charming companion.” Then she was quiet for a long moment, her fingers tracing slow patterns on my chest. When she spoke again, her voice had changed.

"Andy."

"Yes."

"I don't want to spend the time we have left this afternoon talking about dinner parties."

I looked down at her. She tilted her head up to meet my eyes, and what I saw there was not anxiety. It was something warmer and more immediate than that.

"What do you want to spend it on?" I asked, though I already knew.

"Enjoying your body," she said simply.

She moved up to kiss me, slow and deliberate, her hand sliding down my stomach with unmistakable intent, and all thoughts of Sarah's cooking and David's choir schedule dissolved completely. This time there was no urgency. No chasing release, no breathless need. Just Donna's hand moving slowly up my chest, her fingers spreading flat against my skin as if she was reminding herself that I was real and present and here.

I turned toward her and cupped her face in both hands, tilting it up to mine. We kissed slowly, thoroughly, the kind of kiss that has nowhere particular to be. Her lips were soft and warm and familiar now in a way that made my chest ache. I felt her exhale through her nose as she relaxed into the kiss, her body shifting closer, her breasts pressing hard against my chest.

My hands moved into her hair, then down the length of her back, tracing the curve of her spine. She made a small sound against my mouth and pressed herself closer still. I could feel the warmth of her skin everywhere we touched, and when my hands reached the swell of her hips and pulled her firmly against me, she broke the kiss to look at me, her eyes dark and soft.

"You're already hard," she murmured, and there was tenderness in it as much as desire.

"Can you blame me," I said.

She smiled and reached down, wrapping her hand around my cock, stroking slowly from base to tip. I groaned quietly and closed my eyes for a moment, feeling her fingers move with a deliberate, unhurried confidence. She knew exactly what she was doing. She had learned a lot more about me in three days in Trieste with the kind of attentiveness that still undid me when I thought about it.

I moved my hand between her thighs and found her already wet, warm and slick against my fingers. She drew a sharp breath through her nose as I stroked her slowly, parting her gently, my fingers finding her clit and circling it with the same gentle patience she was showing me. Her grip on my cock tightened briefly.

I kissed her jaw, her neck, the soft hollow below her ear. She tipped her head back to give me better access and I took it, kissing my way down to her collarbone while my fingers continued their slow work between her thighs. She was rocking against my hand now, small and unconscious movements, her hips following the rhythm I was setting.

I kissed down to her breasts, taking one nipple into my mouth, feeling it harden against my tongue as I sucked gently. Donna's hand tightened in my hair. I stayed there a while, moving between one breast and the other, my fingers still moving softly against her until she was pulling at my shoulders with real need.

"Come here," she murmured, guiding me so that I lay on top of her.

I settled between her thighs, and she reached down to position me at her entrance, her eyes finding mine as she did it. I pushed inside her slowly, inch by careful inch, feeling every sensation of the journey inside her. She was so warm, so wet, so perfectly fitted to me that I had to stop and breathe when I was fully seated inside her, just to hold myself back from becoming far too excited.

We lay forehead to forehead for a moment, just breathing, just being inside the same space, her hands resting on my shoulders, my weight braced on my forearms either side of her.

Then I began to move. Long, slow, deep strokes, pulling almost all the way back before pressing in again, feeling her body accept me each time with a warmth that was almost unbearable. Donna's legs wrapped around mine, her heels pressing into the backs of my thighs, encouraging the depth of each thrust. She was watching my face and I was watching hers, and there was nowhere to hide in that kind of looking, and neither of us wanted to hide.

"I love you," she said softly.

"I love you too," I said.

I meant it both times. That was the simple and complicated truth of all of it.

I moved my hand down between our bodies and found her clit again, pressing and circling gently as I continued to thrust, and the effect was immediate. Her breath shortened, her inner muscles beginning to grip me more insistently with each stroke. Her head tilted back and her lips parted.

"Keep doing that," she breathed. "Exactly that."

I kept doing that.

Her hips were rising to meet me now, our rhythm finding the kind of precise agreement that you cannot manufacture, that only comes from paying close attention to another person. I could feel everything, the slick heat of her around my cock, the flutter of her beginning to build, the slight tremble in her thighs.

The climax was inevitable, she came quietly and completely, her body arching up against mine, her pussy clenching around me in long, rhythmic pulses, her fingernails pressing hard into my back. I didn't stop moving, working her through it, feeling every contraction, and then my pleasure tightened into something I couldn't hold back any longer. I thrust deep and held there, my cock pulsing inside her, filling her as she continued to shudder beneath me, and we stayed locked together like that through the long diminishing waves of it, her face pressed against my neck and my face buried in her hair.

We lay still afterwards for a long time. Her hand moved slowly up and down my back. My heartbeat gradually found its own pace again. Neither of us spoke, and neither of us needed to. The afternoon light lay across the bed in a long warm stripe, and outside the neighbour's lawnmower had stopped, and the world was very quiet.

Both of us were very happy and content, but eventually, I had to go.

Saturday arrived with the inevitability of a visit to the dentist when you are suffering from toothache. The weather was fine, which seemed an omen that all would go well. Sarah was up early, animated, pulling things from the fridge, consulting a recipe in one of her cookbooks. Later that day the house was filling the house with the smell of something slow-cooking in the oven. She was genuinely happy with this new turn of events. That was the reality I kept banging my head against. She was genuinely, uncomplicated happy about the evening, about new friends, and the chance to cook for people she wanted to know better.

"Can you set the table?" she called from the kitchen as the time approached for our guests to arrive. "The silver cutlery is in the sideboard drawer."

I set the table and made sure all was ready for the food to be served later.

The house looked beautiful. Sarah had lit candles for the table, had me opening wine to breathe, and arranged small dishes of olives and other nibbles on the side tables in the lounge. She'd changed into a burgundy dress I'd always liked, her hair up. She looked lovely, and the sight of her standing in the kitchen doorway, checking her watch, wiping her hands on a tea towel, was causing me some very mixed emotions.

The doorbell went at twenty to eight, and I went to open the door.

David was exactly as I remembered him from the airport, tall, well-dressed, an easy smile. He was holding a bottle of red wine and a bunch of white tulips. Donna stood beside him in a dark green wrap dress, her hair down, and she met my eyes for precisely the length of time that a person meeting someone for the second time would, and not a fraction longer.

"Andy," David said, extending his hand. "Great to see you again. Thanks so much for having us."

"Our pleasure," I said, shaking it. "Come in, come in."

Sarah appeared behind me, wiping her hands again, and her face lit up. "You found us all right? Come through. Oh, what beautiful flowers, you shouldn't have."

We moved into the lounge. I poured wine. David settled easily into the armchair nearest the fireplace and began talking to Sarah about the road layout in the neighbourhood with the confident ease of a man who is comfortable in company. Donna sat on the sofa, her glass in hand, and I sat across from her, and we were strangers at a dinner party.

It was the strangest sensation I have ever experienced. Stranger even than our arrival at the airport. At the airport there had been shock and adrenaline to carry me through. Now there was just a comfortable room, candlelight, the smell of cooking from the kitchen. And then there was the woman I loved sitting opposite me, and nothing on either of our faces to suggest it to our respective partners in the room. We chatted about various things, about nothing in particular, just feeling out what interests each other had. Inevitably David and Sarah chatted about their love of choral music, whilst Donn and I tried not to develop a conversation that was likely to come back to haunt us.

After about twenty minutes, Sarah stood. "I need to go and check on things. Won't be long. Andy, top everyone up." And with that she disappeared into the kitchen.

David reached into his jacket pocket and produced a cigarette packet, looking slightly sheepish. "Would anyone mind terribly if I nipped outside for one of these? Donna keeps trying to get me to quit."

"Of course," I said. "Back door is through the kitchen, or the front if you prefer."

"Front is fine." He stood, patting Donna's knee briefly as he passed. "Back in five."

The front door closed.

The room was very quiet.

I looked at Donna. She looked at me. Then we were both on our feet, and I had my arms around her, and she had her face pressed against my neck, and for a moment we just held each other.

"You all right?" I murmured.

"Yes," she said against my collar. "You?"

"Just about."

She pulled back and looked at me, quickly, urgently. "We're doing fine. Just keep it natural."

"He's going to ask about Trieste," I whispered.

"I know. Conference hotel, near the waterfront, walked around the old town." She said it quickly, like a rehearsed list. "That's all I know, I'm a delegate who barely had time to sightsee. Trieste for me was the inside of a corporate hotel chain"

"Good." I squeezed her hands and stepped back, and we were back in our seats again by the time the front door opened and David came back in, rubbing his hands together.

"Better," he said cheerfully, dropping back into his armchair. "Right. Now then, Andy. My wife tells me you were in Trieste at the same time as her conference. How was it? I've never been."

I felt Donna go very still in my peripheral vision.

"Excellent," I said, settling back in my chair with what I hoped was relaxed enthusiasm. "Wonderful city. The food is incredible, the harbour is beautiful, and it's not overrun with tourists the way other places are. I'd go back tomorrow."

"Business trip was it?"

"Yes, business mainly," I said. "Meeting a new company who wanted me to undertake some marketing projects for them, and getting to know the company and its business. But I always like to find time to see a bit of the city as well when I do that. Soak up a little of the local feelings"

"Sounds interesting," David said approvingly. " I'm in Brussels fairly regularly and I've never once done anything other than hotel and office. Could be any city in the world." He turned to Donna. “You should have done a little of that. You told me it was all conference and meetings rooms when you were not in the exhibition. You could easily have stayed on for a couple of days to look around. Shame you did not know Andy before you went, He could have shown you around. Introduced you to some local restaurants perhaps.”

"That would have been a pleasure," I said. "It makes a difference when you have things to see with someone else. We missed an opportunity there Donna,"

Sarah reappeared in the doorway before this could develop in a dangerous direction. "I’m just serving up," she announced. "Would you like to come to the table?"

Dinner was beautiful. Sarah had performed her magic in the kitchen, and the rice and stroganoff were perfectly cooked. David’s wine complemented it perfectly, and the conversation moved with the easy momentum of four people who had no reason to be uncomfortable with each other. Donna and I were acting our skins off and trying to steer it away from Trieste whenever possible.

David was Charming and funny. He had a dry wit and an easy way of drawing people out, and I could see exactly why Sarah had liked him immediately at the airport. He asked good questions and listened to the answers properly. Under different circumstances, I thought, I would have liked him. I did like him in fact. It was just that I was liking his wife a hell of a lot more, but thankfully he didn’t know it.

About halfway through the main course, Sarah turned to Donna.

"So where were you staying in Trieste? Was the hotel nice? I always worry about foreign hotels. They can vary so much."

I took a careful sip of wine.

"Oh, it was fine," Donna said, with a slight laugh that conveyed mild, convincing resignation. "Conference hotels are mainly big American chains, so standards are pretty good. But you know how these things are, you can go all around the world and never leave America these days. The hotel was comfortable enough, right near the waterfront, which was lovely. But honestly, the days were so full I barely saw much of the city."

"Did you manage to get out at all?"

"A little. There's a wonderful café culture there. I found a place near the harbour, just around the corner from the hotel, that did the most beautiful cappuccino. That was about the extent of my sightseeing."

"Sounds exactly like my kind of place," Sarah said warmly. “Sitting with a coffee and a pastry and watching the world go by. What’s not to like.”

"I keep telling her she should have taken a day off or extended her stay." David put in. "Skipped a session, gone and explored."

Donna smiled at him. "Next time perhaps, if you are sure you won’t miss me."

I caught her eye for the briefest moment as she reached for her glass. Nothing in her expression moved. She was remarkable.

The conversation drifted on. David turned back to me, and we talked for a while about travel in general, about his regular trips to Brussels and Amsterdam, about work. At some point he mentioned that his firm was going through a restructure that would mean even more frequent overnight travel in the coming months.

"Nightmare," I said sympathetically.

"Necessary evil, I am afraid." he replied, with a philosophical shrug.

Donna was listening to Sarah talk about her garden. She didn't look at me.

We moved on to dessert, and then to coffee in the lounge, and the evening continued to carry us forward in the perfectly ordinary way of a first social dinner among people who have decided, mutually and without discussion, that they like each other. It was almost a pleasant evening. It would have been a genuinely pleasant evening, under any other set of circumstances.

As David set down his coffee cup, he said, "Oh, Sarah, I had a look at the choir details. Wednesday evenings?"

Sarah brightened immediately. "That's right. Seven-thirty, usually done by nine-fifteen at the latest."

"Perfect. I’d like to come along this week if that's all right."

"We'd love to have you," Sarah said. " Men are a rarity in the choral world, so an additional tenor would be no problem at all. I'll text the conductor. Don't worry, it's not as frightening as it sounds. It's a friendly group. I’ll hold your hand to get you started"

David laughed. "I'll hold you to that."

We said our goodbyes in the hallway at just after ten. Sarah and Donna exchanged numbers, Sarah insisting they should have lunch together soon, Donna agreeing warmly. David shook my hand with the firm grip of a man who has decided you're worth knowing, and then they were down the path and into their car, Donna giving a little wave before closing the door, and then the rear lights disappeared around the corner.

I closed the front door.

Sarah leaned against the wall behind me, kicking off her heels with a happy sigh. "That was a lovely evening," she said. "I really like them, they are a lovely couple."

"Yes," I said. "They seem great."

With that it was time to tidy up and do the washing up before heading upstairs to sleep.

The rest of the weekend and the start of the next week passed without incidence. Wednesday arrived, a bright day led into a clear evening with a bite still in the air. Sarah was dressed for choir by seven, her coat on, bag over her shoulder, checking she had her music folder.

"I’ve promised David that I will introduce him to a few people before it starts," she said, looking for her keys. "In case he's nervous. Have you seen my keys?"

The thought of David being nervous made me smile. I doubted that was a character trait of his. "On the hook," I said, lifting the keys off the hook by the front door and offering them to her.

"Oh, yes." She kissed my cheek. "Don't wait up. We will probably go into the pub after the singing is over for the night."

And then she was gone.

The house settled into its own quiet around me as I looked forward to enjoying an evening alone. I poured a small glass of wine and took it into the sitting room. I had a couple of reports from work to read through before submitting them, and this seemed to be the ideal opportunity to put those projects to bed.

At half past seven, the doorbell rang.

I knew before I opened it.

Donna was on the doorstep, slightly flushed from walking quickly, her coat half unbuttoned, her hair loose around her shoulders. She didn't wait to be invited in. She stepped through the door, and I had barely closed it behind her before she had her arms around my neck and was kissing me with a warmth and hunger that made my work and my wine and my studied composure feel like things that someone else had been planning.

"Hello," I managed, when she eventually let me breathe.

"Hello," she said, smiling against my lips. "We have until nine. David's driving, so he'll hang around a bit afterwards but is unlikely to join them for any socialising this time, but I told him I had a headache and an early start." Her hands were already moving to my shirt buttons. "Spare room?" she said.

"How do you know where the spare room is?"

"I don't," she said. "But that’s where we are heading so we don’t leave any surprises for your wife. Show me. The way Mr Lover Man"

There was a particular quality to the urgency of what followed that was entirely its own thing, entirely unlike Trieste, unlike Tuesday afternoon in Donna's bedroom. In Trieste we had had the luxury of time and languor, long mornings and unhurried evenings and the sense that the world had suspended its usual rules on our behalf. Now we had until nine o'clock and a narrow spare bed with curtains that were two inches too short, and what we had instead was its own kind of intimacy.

My belt buckle snagged and refused to cooperate, and Donna made a noise that was half frustration and half laughter, batting my hands away and dealing with it herself with an air of focused competence that made me love her quite unreasonably.

"Right," she said, when she had managed it. "There."

"Thank you," I said.

"Don't mention it. Next time wear something elasticated!"

Then my hands were on her waist, and her mouth was on mine and the comedy of it dissolved entirely.

I pulled her blouse free from her skirt and ran my hands up the warm skin of her back, feeling the clasp of her bra, unsnapping it with one hand while she worked at my shirt buttons from below. She pushed the shirt off my shoulders and I drew her blouse over her head and unclipped the loosened bra and let both fall somewhere onto the floor, and then we were pressed together, her naked breasts against my chest, her hands moving across my back with an urgency that made my breath catch.

I kissed her jaw, her neck, the soft hollow of her collarbone. She tipped her head back and her mouth emitted a small animal moan, her fingers pressing into my shoulders. I moved down and took one nipple into my mouth, feeling it harden immediately against my tongue, and she drew a sharp breath and pushed her fingers into my hair to hold me there. I stayed a while, moving between one breast and the other, my tongue circling slowly, and her breathing grew uneven and shallow above me.

"Andy," she said, with a particular weight on it. "We haven't got all night."

"I'm aware," I said, without stopping.

She laughed under her breath and tugged at my hair, pulling me back up to her mouth, kissing me deeply while her hands went to my trousers. I reached down and undid her skirt and let it fall to the floor to add itself to the growing pile of clothing we were generating. Then I and found the waistband of her knickers, working them down over her hips while she pushed my trousers to the floor and I stepped out of them rapidly and we manoeuvred ourselves onto the narrow bed in a series of adjustments that required more coordination than grace. At one point she nearly went off the edge entirely, and I caught her, and she pressed her face briefly into my shoulder making a sound that was definitely laughter.

"Elegant," she said.

"Always," I agreed. “It’s been many years since I seduced anyone in a single bed, I’m not quite built for the process anymore.”

Then she kicked her knickers down and off in one movement, and she pulled me over her, and the laughter faded into something else entirely.

She was warm and wet, and I took a moment, kneeling between her thighs, to run my hands slowly from her knees up the inside of her thighs while she watched me with dark, patient eyes. I leaned down and put my mouth where my hands had been, pressing a kiss to her inner thigh, then higher, until she made a sharp sound and her hips lifted off the bed and her legs opened.

I worked her slowly with my tongue, finding her clit and circling it, listening to her breathing tighten and break. Her fingers found my hair again. The room was very quiet except for the small sounds she was making, the creak of the narrow bed, and the distant sound of the street outside.

"Come inside, Andy."

I moved up her body, my cock hard against her thigh, and she reached down and wrapped her hand around me, stroking with a firm, deliberate grip that made me exhale sharply against her neck. Two strokes, three, then she guided me to her entrance and I pushed slowly inside, feeling her moist warmth enclose me, inch by careful inch, until I was fully locked and loaded and we both lay still for a moment just breathing.

Then she shifted her hips to get comfortable, a clear and unambiguous instruction, and I began to move.

There was nothing slow about it now. The time pressure was a presence in the room as real as either of us, and we moved together with a focused, driving rhythm, her legs wrapping around my hips to pull me deeper with each thrust. She was meeting me stroke for stroke, her hips rising, her fingers pressed flat against my back. I braced on my forearms, watching her face, the flush across her cheeks and chest, her lips slightly parted, her eyes fixed on mine with an intensity that was almost too much to sustain.

"God, you feel good," she breathed.

I reached between us and found her clit, pressing against it with my thumb as I continued to move, and the effect was immediate. Her breath shortened into sharp, broken gasps, her inner muscles beginning to grip me tighter with each stroke. Her head went back against the pillow.

"Don't stop," she said. "Keep doing that, exactly that, don't stop."

I had absolutely no intention of stopping.

I could feel my own climax building, a long tightening wave at the base of my spine, and I held it back by sheer will power, wanting to feel her climax first, wanting to feel what I knew was coming. Her thighs were trembling now, her fingers pressing hard into my back, her body arching up against mine, and then she made a sound low in her throat and her pussy clenched around me in long, rhythmic pulses, her whole body shaking with the force of it.

That was all I could hold against. I thrust deep and stayed there, my cock pulsing inside her, filling her as she continued to shudder beneath me, her fingers clutching at my back, my face pressed into her hair, both of us breathing hard in the quiet spare room with its too-short curtains and its narrow bed and the clock on the windowsill moving inexorably toward nine.

We lay still afterwards, her hand finding mine in the dim evening light, both of us staring up at the ceiling, holding hands tightly. We had hardly spoken so far, but there were things to talk about from the weekend.

"Saturday went well," she said.

"It did," I agreed. "Better than I feared."

"The Trieste questions were interesting."

"You handled them perfectly. I wish David had told you that you could stay longer before we went. We could still be there!"

She turned her head to look at me. "So did you. The Brussels thing David mentioned. Did you register that?"

"More business trips," I said. "Yes."

"He goes at least once a month currently. Usually, two or three nights. But I am guessing that you won’t be able to escape Sarah too much." She let that sit between us for a moment. "But for now we are going to have choir nights at least."

"It's very thoughtful of Sarah to get him involved," I said dryly.

Donna laughed softly. "She's a lovely woman, Andy."

The weight of that particular observation settled over us both.

"I know," I said.

"We have to be careful," she said quietly. "Not just careful. We have to be invisible. No slipping. Not ever."

"I know."

"But we can do this." She said it with a conviction that I found I needed very much to believe. "We've already done the hardest part, haven't we? We sat through dinner."

"We did indeed. Score one for us so far."

She squeezed my hand, then sat up and reached for her clothes. The clock on the spare room windowsill said eight forty.

I watched her dress while I dressed myself alongside her. The efficient, unhurried way she did it, the small economy of movements, the glance in the mirror above the dresser to check her hair. Then she turned back to me, and for a moment she was just Donna, looking at me with those warm, knowing eyes, and everything else felt very far away. I kissed her once, then again, deep and prolonged, before taking her hand and leading her downstairs.

She kissed me again at the door, quickly and completely.

Then I opened the front door, and she stepped out, heading out the gate and down the road to where she must have left the car to avoid alerting the neighbours to anything untoward.

The house was quiet again. In about an hour, Sarah would come home, slightly flushed from singing, possibly smelling of the pub's house red, full of news about how David had got on with the group and whether the tenors were still fighting over their part in the next concert.

And I would say all the right things.

And I would smile in the right places.

And I would carry all of this, carefully and invisibly, inside the ordinary container of my ordinary married life. I wasn't sure whether that made me a very accomplished liar or simply a man in love with the wrong person at the wrong time. Perhaps, I thought it was a mixture of both. Whatever it was, I needed to keep it up.