Broken

“Please, stop apologizing,” I replied. “It was done before you met me. It’s just is a lot to realize all at once.”

“Right,” she said.

“So, during this time, you were sleeping with Kristin and Jessica. Were you sleeping with Jason?”

“Yes,” she said. “We all slept together at once most of the time. Of course, we had our alone time, too, but it was for fun. None of us were in relationships at the time, and we were young and interested. I don’t know how to explain it to you, other than to just tell you that it happened, and I should have told you about it from the beginning. When you meet someone that you know you want for the rest of your life, you get scared that things about you will scare them away.”

I had known from the beginning that Amber wasn’t a virgin. I married her knowing she had been with other people, just like me. In that day and age, it was really rare that you met someone saving themselves for marriage. On top of that, our sexual chemistry was one of the things that helped us grow stronger and stronger during the beginning of our relationship. So, yeah, I knew she wasn’t innocent, but I never imagined that she had been in a foursome. My mind was racing a million miles a minute, and I leaned back into the couch, rubbing my hands over my face. Wow, my wife had spent a good amount of years sleeping with three other people at one time, something that normally would immediately turn any man on, but my thoughts on it were all scrambled up in my head. Kristin reached over and put her arm around my shoulder, pulling me closer to her.

“Hey, big guy,” she said softly. “Your wife doesn’t love you any less. She’s just a bigger freak than you knew about. That’s a good thing.”

Kristin laughed quietly, and I smiled, glad that she had loosened up the conversation a bit. Things were starting to get heavier than I knew how to handle. I pulled my hands away from Amber and reached out, taking the glass of Scotch from Jason. I nodded to him, feeling kind of strange that he had actually had his dick in my wife before I had ever met her. The thought that she would sleep with someone like Jason kind of blew my mind, although I could see the appeal of being young and adventurous with a man that obviously knew his way around a woman, but still, I had been friends with Jason and never knew about their past. I took in a deep breath and tipped back my glass, letting the liquor burn my throat and move down into my chest. The heat from it instantly warmed me up, and I let out that breath, feeling the stress from my shoulders begin to move away. Amber was still looking down, snuggling close to Kristin for support. I felt bad having her think that it changed my opinion about who she was, because it didn’t in any way.

“I know all of this is overwhelming,” Jason said, leaning forward. “I know that just the idea of sleeping with other people might seem a little bit strange. I have to admit, if I step back into my old shoes, of thinking one woman is what love means, I could see how the idea of an open relationship was more than wrong feeling. But when I let that go and realized that love is way more than some feeling of possession, it opened us both up to an entirely new part of our relationship. I love my wife more than almost anything else in life. I have loved Kristin for a very long time, even longer than I really knew that I did. And she knows that I love her, not just because I tell her on a regular basis, but because I show her that she can trust me in every way possible, even when it comes to something like sex.”

Jason smiled over at Kristin, and for the first time since we had met up with them, I saw a true look of love between the two of them. They were always the loud couple, the ones that were the life of the party, making everyone feel at home. However, during that, they never really showed that level of intimacy that they were talking about.

“Having sex with other people doesn’t diminish that love,” he continued. “It just allows us to express it in ways that a lot of couples don’t. They either don’t because they are afraid to, or they don’t think they could handle something that deep. In some ways, not all couples can handle something like that, but you and Amber have already shown that the two of you are capable of handling something like that. We both enjoy sex with each other and with other people, but at the end of the day, we are always coming home to each other, and our bond grows stronger and stronger every time we step back through those doors. When we share ourselves with other people that we care about, that trust level goes up, and we get to watch each other enjoy the pleasures of life that we may not be able to provide in that moment. It’s really an awesome feeling, but only once you let go and decide that you are able to handle it.”

I shook my head, listening to what he had to say. It was definitely interesting, coming from the male perspective, especially when it wasn’t just about cheating the system and getting a different pussy than his wife’s. He really did love her in a way that I couldn’t really even begin to understand. They had this sensual and emotional bond that went beyond just the actions of the flesh and meant something to the two of them. I really had no choice but to take what he said into consideration and really think about the meaning behind them.

What Jason and Kristin had sounded absolutely ideal. They were madly in love, living their lives together on a daily basis, while at the same time, enjoying the freedom and trust to carry out their deepest desires and fantasies with whoever they wanted to. It was such a foreign concept in my mind, but it was incredibly tempting to think about. Amber looked over at me and smiled sweetly, showing in her eyes that she was desperate for me to be okay with her past. Her past wasn’t even what was really on my mind. It was the lifestyle that Kristin and Jason wanted us to be part of.

It was seriously like having your cake and eating it, too. But as far as I always knew, that was supposed to be impossible. However, watching the way that Jason looked at Kristin, I suddenly realized it was completely different than the way that he looked at my wife. There was an incredible amount of emotion behind Jason’s look to his wife, while lust was all that I could see when he looked at Amber. Immediately, I began to feel better about the fact that he had slept with her a long time ago. I knew that he wasn’t a threat to our relationship.

Kristin patted me on the knee and lifted herself up off the couch, walking over in front of Jason and putting her hands out. He smiled and took them in his, standing up in front of her and pulling her in close. He leaned down and gently kissed her lips, pulling back and running his lips over her nose and her cheeks. She smiled up at him adoringly and turned toward Amber and me, pulling his arm over her shoulder. She smiled at us and wrinkled her nose.

“We are going to go poke around in the kitchen and try to find something to make for lunch,” Kristin said, smiling at Amber and winking at me. “We’ll call for you guys when it is ready, and we can all sit down and have some food.”

“Thanks,” I said, nodding my head.

Jason reached down and shook my hand, and I nodded at him, letting him know that everything was okay between the two of us. I really felt like everything was fine in all aspects of the situation, but I knew that Amber was struggling with it. I watched as Kristin and Jason smiled at each other and walked away, leaving Amber and me to talk in private. I sat forward and clutched my hands together, looking at the floor. One thing I knew about my wife was that she needed to come to terms with her own conscience before anything I said would hold any weight with her. I cou

ld have sat there all day, telling her that I wasn’t mad, but until she reconciled what happened, she wouldn’t be able to let it go. Personally, my mind was on the fact that there was actually a way to be even closer to Amber than I already was, and get to have some really fantastic sex.

Chapter 13

Amber

The silence in the room was almost deafening, and I knew Matt was giving me a chance to work everything out in my mind before he put his thoughts into the mix. I was a lucky girl because my husband knew me so well that he even knew when talking wasn’t going to solve anything, and when it would solve everything. In that situation, I needed to be okay with the choice I had made not to tell him about the sex with my roommates. Until then, I would never be able to hear anything he had to say, good or bad. I took in a deep breath, feeling the butterflies in my stomach move into my lungs. I needed to say something, to break the ice in a way that would create a line of communication, not just open it up to an argument. The last thing I wanted to do was argue with him.

“I’m sorry for not telling you earlier,” I said. “I just thought that period of my life was behind me.”

Matt smiled and looked up at me, sitting back and turning to face me. I could see in his eyes that he was open to talking to me, and immediately, I started to feel better. Matt was not just my husband, he was my best friend, my confidant, and the person I went to with anything.

“I love you so much,” I said. “I have been afraid that you wouldn’t understand what me and my roommates had together. I can see how, if I were on the outside of things, I would have a really hard time understanding what it was all about.”

My heart was beating so fast, waiting for Matt to say something, anything that would make me know that he was still right there with me like he always had been. This was exactly the reason why I hadn’t told him about the four of us. I was too afraid that all the things that he loved about me would just dissolve. I was afraid that he wouldn’t like the crew anymore, too, leaving me with a husband that didn’t respect me and a bunch of people I loved cast out of my life.

“Well, that wasn’t what happened at my frat house,” he said, nodding slowly. “I won’t lie. There were some crazy stories about sex, but we tended to keep our wieners to ourselves. It was kind of in our code not to spend sensual evenings with each other in the frat house.”

“That would have been the most interesting fraternity on campus if you had,” I said, laughing hard.

The giggles flooded me, a welcome change from the anxiety that was clamping down on my chest from before. He always knew exactly what to say to break me from myself, making me feel like I was being too hard on my own heart, even when he wasn’t at all. He cracked a smile and started to laugh, laying his head against the back of the couch. He reached up and brushed the hair from my face, running his finger across my cheek. I closed my eyes, feeling his warm hand on my skin, feeling relieved that I wasn’t going to have to fight to get his affection back. I felt closer to him than I ever had before, and I realized that Kristin, though wild and brash, might just understand love even better than any of us. That was a hard pill to swallow since I always kind of saw Kristin as a wild card, getting her kicks wherever she wanted, and never really caring about love. The truth of it was, she probably cared more about love than me or Jessica. She just had a really strange way of showing it. It was obviously a way that her and Jason understood, and they were the only ones that mattered in the equation.

I smiled and climbed over onto Matt’s lap, wrapping my arms around his neck and looking deeply into his eyes. He smiled as I leaned forward, pressing my lips deeply against his and tasting the love and lust on his lips. Butterflies fluttered through my stomach, reminding me just how much I loved that man. He loved me, too, and I knew that, just like Jason had said. I didn’t need to hear him say it every day. I knew when he came home to me every evening, kissed me gently, and went through every moment in our lives, exciting, boring, and everything in between. I pulled back away from him and smiled, leaning in and pursing my lips by his ear.

“I have never wanted anyone else but you,” I whispered. “No matter what man I’ve slept with, no matter how many times I slept with other people, ever since the moment I laid eyes on you, you were the man I really wanted, in every way I could possibly want a man. You have given me the peace of mind, the love, the lust, and the emotions that have driven me through everything in my life. You are my best friend, my lover, and the man that I want to be with for the rest of my life.”