The Houseguest: A Novel About Sharing (and) Temptation Read online

  THE HOUSEGUEST

  A Novel About Sharing (and) Temptation

  By Arnica Butler

  *********

  Copyright 2016 by Arnica Butler

  All rights reserved. No duplicating and no resale, but

  feel free to share with friends or family.

  Published by Thirteenth Line Publications

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, companies, organizations, products and events in this book, other than those that are clearly in the public domain, are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, companies, organizations, events, or products, is purely coincidental.

  All characters depicted in this story are 18 years or older.

  Cover characters are models. Image(s) is/are licensed from:

  deklofenak / DepositPhotos

  Published by Thirteenth Line Publications

  Other Novels by Arnica Butler:

  Body Of Research

  A Well-Laid Trap 1

  A Well-Laid Trap 2

  The Hobby Job

  Not Black And White: A Hotwife Novel

  A Gamble: The Making Of A Hotwife

  The Tenant: A Very Naughty Hotwife Novel

  The Hotwife Summer

  A Conventional Hotwife

  Grand Slam: An Interracial Hotwife Adventure

  Well-Constructed Affairs

  Nikita Gets In Too Deep: A Hotwife Exploration

  Human Interest 1: A Lead-In To Wife-Watching

  Ela's Performance: A Romantic Wife-Watching Novel

  A Dark Place: Cuckolded in Lagos

  The Hotwife Tattoo

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Preface

  Chapter 1: Reunions

  Chapter 2: Ethan

  Chapter 3: Surprises

  Chapter 4: Moves

  Chapter 5: Home Alone

  Chapter 6: According To Plan

  Chapter 7: Nanny-cam

  Chapter 8: Aftermath

  More From Arnica Butler

  Excerpt

  PREFACE

  When I began writing The Houseguest, I wanted to do something different from my typical story, which is to explore a hotwifing relationship that isn’t just a one-off, maybe starting in the middle of a relationship. I often have this inclination, but the story somehow ends up falling through on me. If I trapped myself in a situation such as the one in the book, I thought, there’s no way I could wriggle out of dealing with the ongoing relationship.

  True enough, there wasn’t. However, the story got really, really long, and it turned into two stories in my mind. I haven’t published for a long time, and so I had the idea that there really was a way to deliver a discreet story in each of the two parts. This first part is more like my usual fare: the buildup and the teasing. I have a lot of fun writing that kind of thing, and I guess I keep going back to it no matter how hard I try to start in the middle of a relationship because it’s my favorite part. There is no cliffhanger at the end of this book: you can enjoy what has happened as a complete, fun, escapist story that simply ends here because it ends here.

  But, I’ve already written about half of the remaining story, which is what happens afterward, when this couple has a bull living in their house. It’s a lot more delicate work, and it’s outside of my own comfort zone. I’m excited about it but I can’t say how long it will take me to finish. That’s why I’ve decided to go ahead and publish this part now.

  I know some people hate sequels and two-parters. I’m honestly not trying to vex my readers by doing things this way. I just wanted to get a story out, and I think what is here can genuinely be enjoyed within its own right. So, as always, please enjoy!

  CHAPTER 1: REUNIONS

  “I think I'm ready to go,” Natalie whispered to me as she leaned gently against the bar. She wobbled a little, but she made it look smooth.

  Sort of.

  “Oh yeah?” I smiled, reaching instinctively for her elbow to help prop her up. She smiled and leaned her whole arm on the bar as her ultra-high pumps gave way to her inebriation. She had to take a lurching step out of one of them, in order to catch herself before she went down like a felled tree.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, nodding.

  She looked down to lift her foot and put it into her shoe, which was an extremely sexy black heel about an inch and a half higher than she usually wore. I thought the pumps were fantastic, because they reminded me of the Natalie who had actually turned my head and caused me to run into a newspaper vendor eleven years before. Natalie's legs – undoubtedly her best feature because they are long and flawlessly toned – were always nice. But they were show-stopping when she put on very high heels and flaunted them a little with a short skirt like the one she was wearing that night.

  But unfortunately for Natalie, it had been a long time since she had done two things: wear heels that high, or have three glasses of red wine in quick succession.

  It had also been a long time, I noted with pleasure, since Natalie had been as much fun as she was being right now. She moved her head so that her hand, still propped up on the bar, pushed her thick brown hair from her face. Natalie's hair was sort of unremarkable in color, but shiny like polished oak wood. I enjoyed the way she pushed it out of her face and gave it a shake. “If I have to listen,” she confided, and wobbled again in her shoes as she put her foot back into the one she had stepped out of, “to one more person tell me how they invented Post-Its, I am going to pepper-spray someone.” She looked down again, as if her shoes had a mind of their own and she needed to see what they were doing. “Jesus, these shoes.”

  Natalie stepped out of the pumps and leaned toward me. “The only person I can stand here is Jake Matcher, and that's because...” she leaned very close to me, silly and drunk, “He worked for Theranos and so he keeps his mouth closed.”

  “Theranos...?” I say.

  Natalie waved her hands impatiently at me. “Just make the call,” she said. Then she leaned on the bar facing the bartender, who, I noticed with some satisfaction, immediately attended to her with a charming smile. Natalie had one foot resting on her opposite calf now, and she was squirming a little in her bare feet. The dress she was wearing was shorter than her usual get-ups, and the material slid a little up her legs as she squirmed. It gave me (and everyone in the bar) an enhanced view of her legs, and a tantalizing hint of what was further up.

  I noted as I leaned backward against the bar and took out my phone that the nice view had not gone unnoticed by Natalie's old classmates. Many were stealing glances, or outright staring over their conversation partners' heads, at Natalie's thoroughbred legs. And possibly her cute butt, which hadn't done much besides get slightly fuller and more attractive in the past ten years since she’d seen most of these people.

  I texted my friend Ethan. He was an old buddy from my high school and early university years who was, coincidentally, living in the Chicago area now. We were visiting Chicago for a variety of reasons: this reunion of Natalie's university classmates who had all been in some kind of special, ultra-academic bachelor program; a friend of Nat's in Evanston who had a new baby; and Ethan, who we had thrown into the mix because… why not? It wasn’t every day you ran into someone from Yorkdale.

  South Carolina.

  You haven’t heard of it.

  I looked back at the bar with alarm when the bartender set a drink down in front of Natalie.

  “Don't worry,” he assured me. “Club soda.”

  Then he winked at Natalie.

/>   She straightened up and stabbed at the ice with her straw, making a funny noise. It was heard to read, sort of like, “Ohhhh.” But it could have meant anything. Oh, that's a young man I'd like to take a bite out of. Or, oh, I can't believe I'm so wasted.

  I arched my eyebrow in interest.

  The phone buzzed in my hand.

  “Okay,” I said, reading the text. “Ethan says we can be there any time. I called a cab.” I laughed when I looked back up at Natalie. “And they have wine.”

  I watched her tip her head back and down the club soda. “Perfect,” she purred.

  Something stirred inside of me. Natalie slid her feet back into her shoes, and watching the black pumps enclose her skin was unreasonably erotic. I felt my cock coming to life.

  “I'm going to make the rounds,” she said. “Get a drink. Then we're outta here.”

  The bartender was ready with my refill of whiskey. His eyes were on my wife as he poured, though. When he looked back at me and saw me staring at him, he just shrugged and smiled.

  I left him a big tip.

  Natalie managed to stay in her shoes and walk with the slinky grace she had once possessed when she wore high heels. I watched the men she embraced gawk at her; there was definitely a remnant of wild attraction among most of them. Next Natalie was doing fist-bumps, which meant she was a little overdone, so I slammed my whiskey. It was probably advisable to get her out of here.

  “Come on, tiger,” I said, taking her elbow again. I felt her shake in her heels and she leaned into me. “We have to go,” I explained to the inquisitive faces around us. “So sorry. I.. have a bit of a reunion myself.”

  There was a lot of high-pitched squealing from the ladies, and some awkward cheek-kissing by the guys (this was a class of ultra-dorky people, most of whom seemed to be deep in the autism spectrum), before we staggered out to the lobby.

  Natalie leaned against me. It was late spring, a strange time for a reunion and bitterly cold to our Southern sensitivities. She wrapped her shawl tightly around herself, but decided it wasn't warm enough. She wormed her way under my peacoat and pressed her body up against mine.

  Since she was in a tight-fitting dress, I could feel every pleasant curve of her body against me: her medium-sized and delightfully firm breasts, her narrow waist, the flare of her hips. Her neck was close to my lips because of the extra height the heels gave her, and I stole a kiss beneath her earlobe. A flash of gooseflesh raced over her neck, and she shivered against me.

  For a moment, our eyes met, and there was a little crinkle in the air that we hadn't felt for a long time. I was sure she could feel my erection against her leg, fitting nicely in the fold of her hip – bless those heels. I'm it was why she had a wry little smile when she looked at me.

  “Yo. Lovebirds. You gettin' in? Or I gotta bounce?” Our cabbie, who had evidently pulled up some time ago to very little fanfare from us, was leaning over the front bench and yelling out the window in an almost cartoonish Chicago accent.

  Natalie made a purring noise again. “Such pleasant people up here, I'd almost forgotten.”

  And then her soft body evaporated from inside of my coat, and she dropped herself neatly into the cab, long legs last.

  CHAPTER 2: ETHAN

  “Holy shit,” I said under my breath.

  Natalie, who was still being tons of fun, leaned over my lap and looked out the window on my side of the street. She moved her head from side to side, and then started laughing at herself. The weight of her warm body on my lap, and the feel of her soft breasts brushing on my cock through my pants, got me thinking some very dirty thoughts again.

  “There's nothing out there,” she said, feigning indignation. “I thought there was something cool over here.”

  She pushed herself up, kissed me on the cheek, and fell back onto her side of the car.

  I forgot all about the neighborhood we were in – a community of old, brick mansions and vast manicured lawns. I regarded my wife, who pushed her hair out of her face again and then looked back at me.

  Her cheeks were flushed with the damp chill in the air, and Natalie's imported-from-England porcelain skin stayed rosy for a long time once it flushed. Her blue eyes were smiling, and she looked a little mischievous, which is a quality I loved in Natalie and hadn't seen for quite some time. She had even asked the cabbie to stop at a shoe store, and had come out with a pair of cheap bright pink flats with olive daisies on them. “Go big or go home,” she had said with a shrug, tossing the tissue paper at me and slipping on the flats.

  This was a nice change from Natalie Blanche-Ossington, soccer mom, mini-van driver, baker of muffins every Sunday, coupon huntress. Wearer of the strained suburban mom smile. Not that I minded that woman: she was a loving mother, she ran a tight ship filled with freshly-baked peanut-free muffins, and she was a great wife.

  But this Natalie, Natalie Blanche, was admittedly a lot more fun.

  A lot more like the woman I had married. Which I am not being some asshole and saying is the kind of woman who could be (or should be) raising kids and running a household. In fact, I hadn't even realized how much she'd changed until that evening. Her personality had just slowly eroded away, and all of the fun things she used to do just disappeared, little by little.

  “I guess it's right up here,” I said to the cabbie, who said nothing in return. This was a guy who had probably driven a cab his whole life. He shot daggers out of his eyes each time I had tried to be helpful by telling him what Google had to say about where we were going.

  “59 Meadowfield Lane,” he said, and the cab rolled toward the curb.

  “You su-”

  “This is it.”

  Whether it was or it wasn't, this was where we were getting out, his voice said.

  I gave him a fifty on a $42.00 fare because I didn't feel like asking the guy for change. “Thanks,” I said, and he made no move to get change anyway. A slight nod of his head wrapped up the conversation.

  We scooted out, curb-side.

  “Wow,” Natalie said. In her hot-pink shoes she was a lot more stable, but she did look a lot more comical. I stood next to her in front of the enormous brick steps (ten steps up to a platform of brick, then ten more up to the door of the white-columned, mammoth house). Well-placed lighting cast a glow on huge maples trees, speckled with the buds of early spring. I looked down at my phone again to check the address. Nat leaned over to check it with me.

  “You didn't tell me this Ethan guy was loaded,” she said, and her voice had a tinge of mischief in it.

  Or so I decided to think.

  “You thinking of trading up?' I said, and gave myself a pleasurable pang of jealousy at the thought.

  She linked her arm through mine and gave her hair a toss. Then she utterly surprised me by saying: “Let's see about the rest of the package.”

  Indeed. Let's.

  We climbed the steps and rang the doorbell.

  Ethan answered the door.

  I hadn't seen him for almost nine years; he missed our wedding for some good reason I couldn't even recall at the moment. I gave him a quick appraisal: he looked almost exactly the same. Ethan had always been a real lady-killer, though not because he was suave or devastatingly handsome. He had an athlete's body, and the kind of rough-edged look that usually see on rugby captains, or quarterbacks who play for teams that let their man get sacked a lot. His face was good-looking in a tough kind of way, and he had a stare of focused intensity that had forced some permanent grooves into his forehead. He was kind of like a dark, American Gordon Ramsay. He was dressed in a nice shirt and an expensive pair of jeans, a sort of understated rich-casual look that was a definite upgrade from his university years. Seeing him after so long, I felt a flinch of fear that he was going to spring on me and give me a noogie.

  “Erik,” he growled, but it was subdued, and he made no move to jump on me. “How the fuck are you, man?” He somehow got a hold of my hand – nothing had changed about his dominating, bone-crushing grip, and pu
lled me toward him in a clapping bear-hug. “So good to see you, buddy.”

  There was a genuine, almost subdued tone to his voice, and it was strange. But he released me quickly and turned his attention to my wife. “You must be Natalie,” he said.

  Ethan of the former years would have taken Natalie's hand, and brought it to his lips. Instead, he swung his arms open and pushed the door wide, indicating that we should come in. “Get out of the cold, darlin.” His eyes fell down to her shoes – taking, I noticed, a long, lingering walk over her legs. “Nice kicks.”

  I turned to Natalie to see her reaction to Ethan, because I'd been anticipating it with a mixture of anxiety and perverse pleasure since we'd planned out trip. I felt sure I perceived a little ripple go through her as Ethan's steely blue eyes met hers, but the sobering-up Natalie did not melt into a pile of goo or bat her eyelashes.

  She did, however, hold up her high-heeled pumps as an answer, before stepping into the house.

  It was the sort of care-nothing attitude that the old Natalie might have had. Natalie-soccer-mom might have been mortified, and rushed to explain her outrageous shoe choice, but tonight's drunk Natalie set her pumps down neatly on the ground and didn't say “boo.”

  Ethan was right there to slide her shawl from her shoulders. “Let me get this for you,” he said.

  I got a nice stab of heat straight through my gut as Ethan's hands – veined and wiry with strength – slid over Natalie's shoulders. His fingers very deliberately lingered, just a tad too intimately, on her collar bone, brushing her skin as he swept the shawl off. Then he trailed his hands along her arm – not really obviously, of course, but I knew Ethan well, and I knew what he was doing – as he slipped it down to her wrists. This last gesture was unnecessary, it being a wrap-around shawl and all.

  And I had money on it that he grazed the bump of her ass, maybe just at her tailbone, as he pulled the shawl together behind her. After just a moment too long, he turned to hang it up in the closet behind him.