The Spare Chair

The lamb was gone and nobody had stood up to clear it.

Hugh kept his hand on his wife's knee under Adele's table and felt her leg jump, once, when Chris said the thing they had all been circling since the cheese.

"So. Spare room's made up. Or we don't use it."

Adele laughed into her glass. Thirty-six, barefoot, a smear of sauce on her wrist she had not noticed. Chris was forty-one and had the calm of a man who had already said the awkward sentence in his head. Hugh was forty-two. Lena, his wife, was thirty-nine, and the hand on his thigh under the table had been there since the second bottle.

They had talked about this for four months. Not in a rush. In the car after other people's dinners, in bed with the light off, once in a supermarket aisle where Lena had said, very quietly, that she wanted to see him wanted by someone else and wanted to be wanted where he could see it. Hugh had said yes before he had finished being afraid of yes.

"We talked about it," Lena said. "In the car. We're in."

"Rules," Adele said, practical. "No one gets dragged. Anyone can stop it. Condoms in the bathroom basket. We stay in the same rooms unless we all say otherwise. Tomorrow we are still friends who own a bad lasagne dish."

"Agreed," Hugh said.

Chris looked at him. "You watching first, or you in it?"

"In it. If Lena is."

"I am," Lena said. "I want to see you with her. I want Chris. That was the version."

They moved to the living room because the table still looked like dinner. Adele put music on low and then ignored it. She kissed Lena first, which Hugh had not expected and then could not stop watching. Soft, then not. Lena's hand went to Adele's waist. Chris came to stand beside Hugh and they both looked, two husbands suddenly useless and hard.

"Your wife kisses like she means it," Chris said.

"She does."

Adele broke the kiss and crooked a finger at Hugh. "Come here. She can have him."

Hugh went. Adele pulled him down onto the rug and kissed him with wine still on her mouth. Different from Lena. Quicker. She bit his lip and laughed when he groaned. Behind him he heard Lena's breath change and did not turn until Adele said, "Look."

Lena was on the sofa with her dress up and Chris's hand in her underwear. Her head was back. She found Hugh's eyes and nodded, flushed, a yes he had wanted and now felt in his stomach like a drop.

"Still good?" he said.

"Still good. Don't you dare be polite over there."

Adele had his belt open. She took his cock out and stroked it, watching his face while her husband pushed two fingers into his wife. The room smelled of dinner and skin. Hugh swore. Adele went down on him without ceremony, mouth hot, hand at the base, and he had to brace a hand on the coffee table not to thrust.

"She likes that," Chris said, amused, working Lena with his fingers. "Don't finish in her mouth. She wants you in her."

"Then tell me when," Hugh said, voice rough.

Lena came first, sudden, one hand in Chris's hair, the other reaching toward Hugh and not reaching. The sound of it undid him. He watched her thighs shake and felt a mean, bright jealousy that went straight to his cock. Adele felt it. She pulled off, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and lay back on the rug.

"Condom. Then you. And keep looking at her. That's the bit I want."

Chris tossed one. Hugh rolled it on with hands that were not steady and pushed into Adele while she watched her husband kneel between Lena's legs. The double picture was the point. Adele was tight and loud and grabbed his shoulders and told him harder. He gave it. Every thrust he could hear Lena, the wet sound of Chris's mouth, her voice saying his name and then not saying his name at all.

"Look at her," Adele said. "Look at your wife taking it."

He looked. Chris had his cock in her now, Lena's legs around him, her eyes open and fixed on Hugh. She smiled, wrecked. Hugh fucked Adele harder for that smile. The rug burned his knees. Adele came with a curse and a heel in his back. He followed, buried, the condom a thin mercy he was glad of.

They changed because nobody wanted the first shape to become the only one. Lena wanted his mouth while Chris fucked Adele on the sofa. Hugh gave it to her, tasting her, holding her hips while she ground down and talked.

"I can see them," she said. "He's got her legs up. She keeps looking at you. Don't stop."

He didn't. She came on his tongue, gripping his hair, and the sound Chris made a moment later said Adele had gone over with her. Hugh knelt up, cock hard again, and Lena took him in her hand and stroked him while Adele, flushed and laughing, told him to come. He did, across Lena's fingers, shaking.

The music ended. Nobody put more on.

Adele sat up, hair ruined, and said, "Dishes can wait."

Hugh laughed. His shirt was somewhere. Lena's lipstick was on Chris's throat and on his own mouth. He felt jealous and close and stupidly fond.

"Same next month?" Chris said.

"Ask us tomorrow," Lena said. "When I can feel my legs."

She found Hugh's hand. He held it. On the drive home she was quiet until the ring road, then said, "I liked hating it a little. The bit where you were in her and looking at me."

"I liked you letting me see," he said.

In the hallway of their own building Lena stopped him with a hand on his belt.

"Once more," she said. "Just us. I want the version where you already came in someone else and you still want me."

They barely got the door shut. Hugh put her against it, dress up, and fucked her with his hand over her mouth because the neighbour was the sort who knocked. Lena came fast, laughing into his palm, and he followed still half dressed, grateful and filthy and sure of her.

The spare room stayed made up and unused. That felt, in the end, like the right kind of waste.