Arnica Butler - Well-Constructed Affairs Read online

  WELL-CONSTRUCTED AFFAIRS

  A Wife-Sharing Journey

  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:

  konradbak / DepositPhotos

  Published by Thirteenth Line Publications

  Other Novels by Arnica Butler:

  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 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 Dark Place: Cuckolded in Lagos

  The Hotwife Tattoo

  READERS!

  SIGN UP for our newsletter!

  We email once per week and do not spam.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  1 Lunch

  2 Billy

  3 Dangerous Thoughts

  4 Thinking Of Another

  5 Very Discreet

  6 Arrangements

  7 The Waiter

  8 That's Marriage

  9 Adria's Fantasy

  10 Lily's Advice

  11 Fernando

  12 Wedding

  13 Close Call

  14 Guilt

  15 Real Call

  16 Ana's Fantasy

  17 Homecoming

  18 More Advice

  19 Booze Cruise

  20 Confessions

  21 Make Up Sex

  1 LUNCH

  “You gotta get that heap outta the way, man!”

  John Querte rolled his window down. The scent of damp cement and dust and the intense summer heat filled the interior of his air-conditioned car. He leaned his head out of the window, with a slight timidity that made him cringe inwardly. John realized that Jack was just fucking with him as soon as he saw the project manager's face. The heavily muscled man, who seemed to be at every job site in the city, was already laughing and shaking his head.

  John ducked back into his car and rolled up the window, giving Jack a wave and a forced grin in appreciation of his humor. Jack pointed directly above his own head; he already knew what had brought John to “the trenches” from the air-conditioned office where John spent most of his time.

  A few other hard-hat capped heads turned to follow the direction of Jack's pointing finger. John leaned against the steering wheel to get a look.

  Oh for fuck's sake.

  He turned off the ignition and sighed. He gave a leer to the men who were smiling upward, enjoying their view. Then he got out of his car and walked over to Jack.

  John looked up once he was standing next to him.

  “Adria!” he called, and then suddenly wished he hadn't. His wife turned, and moved closer to the railed edge of the half-constructed building.

  Normally Adria, as a construction engineer, wore Carhartts, or a pant suit if she was required to have on professional attire.

  Today, for some inexplicable reason, she was wearing a skirt.

  A young guy, standing about five feet from John, whistled.

  Adria's middle finger was quickly drawn. “Can it, Ferguson.”

  The exchange was playful and friendly; a talent of Adria's and one of the main reasons she could hack it as construction engineer in spite of being a woman, and an attractive one at that.

  John sucked in his breath and bit down on his reactions to the scene in front of him, which played out often enough. Adria had things under control and he had nothing to worry about. Even if the whole crew on the ground was still looking up at Adria, she had chosen her skirt well. There was really nothing to actually see. The skirt came to Adria's knees in a body-hugging line, and while it was pleasant to imagine that they could all see further into the small shadow of opportunity just above her neat, well-sculpted calf – they couldn't.

  And even if they could have, they wouldn't have whistled. Adria didn't actually put up with that kind of shit, and this job site was essentially hers.

  “Be right down honey,” she said cheerfully to John.

  Ferguson, as he was apparently called, leaned on a shovel and squinted at John. There was a mild menace in his eyes. “Where you takin' Mrs. Querte off too? Little bit of lunch?”

  John did his best to look cool. He hung his hands on his back pockets. “Something like that.”

  “Tuna salad?”

  “Shut the hell up Ferguson, before you get your ass fired,” Jack said, and John didn't want to admit he was thankful but he was. He hated the job-site banter, which was the main reason he stayed tucked away in an architectural firm. Crude jokes, lame macho camaraderie.

  But Adria somehow managed it. John couldn't help feeling a little sting of embarrassment that his wife managed male testosterone with more skill than he did.

  Jack smashed a huge hand down on John's back, and John did his best to stiffen up and not wince. The man was exceptionally large, and his hand came down like a dropped anvil in a cartoon. “Where are you takin' her, though, John? And why the hell you never invite me to lunch? I like sushi. I like shit like that. No one ever thinks to ask Jack if he wants some sushi.”

  John smiled at Jack. He liked the man's personality, which largely consisted of being terrifying in appearance, surprisingly adept at diplomatic relationships between people like John and people like Ferguson, and making jokes about how no one ever thought to get him sushi or teddy bears or flowers.

  “I like sushi,” Ferguson. offered. His sneer was more pronounced now.

  “Don't you have a damn thing to do, Ferguson?” Jack hollered.

  But Ferguson never answered because the light, feminine click of heels had begun to echo behind him, and like every other man on the job site, his attention had been stolen away by an alluring job site oddity: an attractive woman.

  John's wife.

  Five feet and eleven inches of almost mathematically perfect proportions. A medium build, but all of it lean, and a much-welcomed sight in the male-dominated world of commercial construction. Her breasts were average-sized but pert and precisely curved, like a mannequin's. She had a full ass, firm and well-formed, full, toned thighs.

  Her blonde hair was pulled back into a severe braid, so that she could place her hard hat on with little fuss. Her pretty features were organized with a Midwestern tidiness on her face, the only hint of disorganization being a very faint smattering of freckles on her otherwise flawless milk-colored skin.

  Adria was one of those women who was strangely stunning, though there was no one particular thing about her that could be described that way. Something about her strict appearance, particularly when she came to work at a site and pulled her hair back so severely, made John's cock twitch every time he saw her, and he wondered if it did the same for everyone else.

  “You should have a hard hat on,” she told John, and hooked a thumb at the sign in front of the car which declared the same. Her tone was one of
professional courtesy, and she wasn't joking.

  “I just got out of the car -” John began.

  At that moment, a white hard hat hit him in the gut, and he clasped it just in time to avoid making an utter fool of himself. As he guessed, it had been hurled by Ferguson.

  John put it on, knowing full well that he would be taking it off in ten seconds, which grated on his nerves. But nothing could be done.

  “I'm headed over to Bridge Street after lunch, Bose.” John cringed as Jack's surname, which sounded infinitely more affectionate than “Jack,” left his wife's lips with an additional dusting of sweetness that she reserved for Jack Bose and Jack Bose alone. John assured himself that the two just worked together often, and made a great comedic team: the hot blonde woman and the huge black tough guy, running construction projects all over town.

  Jack nodded, and held out his hand to take John's hard hat. John slapped it into his palm, and tipped his fingers at Jack in mock salute. Then he opened his wife's door for her.

  “Hey boss!” someone yelled, leaning over the railing of the floor she had just descended from. Two full minutes of site banter ensued between the three of them: Jack, Adria, and the man above. Adria made them all laugh with a wisecrack about girders that was completely over John's head, in spite of the fact that he was himself an engineer. Then she slid into the car.

  She removed her hat and her braid as they backed out of the lot. She shook her hair out and leaned over to kiss John on the cheek. “Hi sweetie. Where are you taking me?” She didn't wait for an answer. “God, what a day.” She pulled down the mirror and produced some light makeup from nowhere.

  “Wearing a skirt today, huh?” John said.

  Adria shook her hair a little and pressed her lips together. Then she threw herself back against the seat of the car and sighed. “Oh god. I have meetings all over the place. I don't have a second to change.”

  “I bet the guys really appreciate it,” John said. He wasn't entirely sure why he said things like this. Naturally, he knew why he though things like this: he was a guy, with a hot wife, and she worked most days on a construction site. Jealousy and insecurity burned through him daily.

  Adria, who was accustomed to all the stupid things men said on a daily basis, dug into her purse, ignoring the comment with the worst of all possible tactics: she seemed to literally have not even heard it. This was where Adria's talents really lay, and it was the reason she could work in a male-dominated environment like a job site with no problem. She didn't ruffle, or ripple inside, or flush or blush or get riled up in any way. When men talked shit to her, she just kept talking like she was deaf.

  It was cool. But it was also uniquely infuriating. John felt his chest constrict with the familiar, but confusing feeling of being both jealous and turned on and aggravated by his wife.

  “Shit,” she said plainly, and dropped the purse. She offered no follow-up.

  “You look good,” John tried again, hopefully, to provoke his unflappable wife. “Your skirt, I mean. They should pay you extra to dress like that.”

  “Do you have any gum?” Adria asked, digging into the storage console in the armrest. “That dust is killing me.”

  “Glovebox,” John said with resignation. Adria popped it open and began digging through the contents. “Thai okay?” he asked.

  “It's perfect,” she said.

  “You do look really nice,” he told her.

  Adria grinned. “I do, don't I?” She crossed her legs and batted her eyes at him.

  “And I bet all the guys are really happy.”

  “Those guys are happy,” she said, popping the gum into her mouth, “if I wear a Hazmat suit. Is this place very far? And you can drop me at Bridge and Tenth, right?”

  John wanted, almost desperately, to talk more about what the men at Adria's work thought of her skirt and just how happy they were if she wore a Hazmat suit. He wasn't entirely sure why he enjoyed it so much, but he did. It made him feel insecure, it made him jealous, it drove him crazy, but he wanted her to keep talking about it.

  But he knew he should stop.

  2 BILLY

  After lunch, Adria asked to be dropped off at Bridge and Twelfth, and John felt a slight pang at her request but he complied. He sometimes harbored the secret fantasy that his wife was embarrassed to be seen with an office rat like himself, or with her husband. Or perhaps she had some affair going on here, and she needed the time to walk down Twelfth and slide her wedding ring off, slip it into her purse, and continue on her way to meet a man who was more like what she wanted.

  He knew that this was new site though, and he also knew that Adria liked to approach it from a few blocks down. She liked to get the sense of how the place was when she dropped by unexpectedly.

  Or at least that's what she said.

  Adria cursed her heels, which were low but still bothered her. She was too tall to wear very high heels: John was six-two, but that didn't leave a lot of wiggle room for her. She liked the way heels elongated her calves and made her feel sexy. But on job sites they were a nightmare. Even at only an inch, her current shoes were pissing her off. So was her suit, which was a pretty worsted twine-colored skirt that flattered her figure but was cooking her from the inside out. Sweat was forming on her inner thighs, and the last thing she needed was someone on her crew watching a droplet of sweat run down her leg from above her hemline.

  A chorus of whistles rained down on her from above when she reached Eleventh.

  Adria was used to this sort of thing (any attractive woman in a city would be), and normally she didn't even pause for it. The truth, which she wouldn't have admitted to anyone – not even John – for any amount of money, was that she sort of liked the attention she got from men. She had been kind of an ugly duckling all through high school, and a nerd on top of it. Somewhere in the middle of university she had really come together, and discovered, working out in the field, that there were a lot of men (outside the College of Engineering) who weren't afraid to talk to her. They didn't scurry away when they saw her: they headed right for her.

  She didn't really want anything to do with these guys, she always thought. They were so different from the cool intellectuals she worked with, and anyway, she was married to one of those guys and she loved him. She loved that he was incredibly smart, and he was very good-looking. These men were good-looking, too, but in a sort of dirtier, more sexual way...

  Adria stopped herself from letting her thoughts go too far.

  But she also stopped in response to the whistle.

  She looked up, expecting to find familiar faces. Instead, a quick scan of the men looking down at her revealed that she didn't know any of them.

  “Lookin' good baby,” one of them said, and two of them smiled. Another whistle came from somewhere.

  Adria smiled venomously, and then clicked down the street. Another lewd whistle followed her.

  She secretly liked it. But she was going to have to get this under control.

  When she went through gate to the site, she was pleased to see Ken Foreman (the joke was lost on no one) standing outside the trailer. He was hollering at someone, but when he caught sight of Adria he raised his eyebrows and dropped off mid-sentence. Adria held up her finger to silence him.

  “You got some new crew,” she said, giving a nod of greeting to the workers Ken had been talking to. She knew them from a couple jobs ago, and even if she barely recognized them, she knew they remembered her. The best tactic she could take was to make it look like she knew who everyone was. She knew it smoothed a lot of things over.

  “You know these guys,” Ken protested. “What are you doing in this get-up?” Ken liked to carry on two conversations at once, for the sake of efficiency.

  “Meetings. Not those guys, the ones up on the deck.”

  Ken rolled his eyes. “Those guys,” he said. “Sent them over from BantaCorp. 'Fuck shit up.”

  No further explanation was needed. Ken ran a tight ship and Banta didn't.

 
; “You Mike's replacement?” he continued.

  Adria nodded, and decided the answer was good enough for everything Ken had just said. If there was one thing she'd learned about these guys (and maybe men in general) it was that they didn't like to chit-chat.

  Then she smiled. “Let's go have some fun with those guys,” she said. She flashed her eyes up to the floor where the whistling Banta guys had been standing, and saw one of them watching the scene from above. “Take me into the office,” she told Ken. “Act like I'm really angry.”

  Ken looked confused, but he turned and opened the door for her. Adria affected an angry demeanor as she stepped through the door. When she was out of sight, she spun around and told Ken her plan, which made him laugh.

  “I want to know what you four yokels were hollering at this woman!” Ken screamed.

  The four looked fairly un-contrite, Adria noticed, as she stood with her arms crossed in front of her, looking severe. Inside of herself, though, she was feeling the familiar betrayal of her sensible side. Giving into to a more carnal side of herself.

  A new, dirty occupant of her mind.

  She ran her eyes quickly over the four men. One of them in particular caught her attention, and though she managed to keep her exterior cool and collected, she felt a ripple of heat pass through her, twisting up in her stomach and pooling in her pelvis. The man had his arms folded and looked amused. His face was covered in a day-old shadow of black stubble, and the sight of it made her involuntarily think of his jaw scraping across her cheek. His eyes were piercing blue, hovering over his set jaw, and a face that was at once youthful and hardened. A streak of dirt was rubbed on his forehead.

  But it was more his physique that had her thinking. His forearms were enormous and criss-crossed by wiry strength and veins, and beneath his white shirt she could see that firm muscles composed his torso as well. His skin was tanned from work in the sun, and he had the kind of hard-work, ground-in dirt covering him that she had recently started to find...distracting. She stared at the scrapes on his knuckles. A man who works with his hands, she thought, and her mind wandered away to what it might feel like to have hands like that on her skin. Under her shirt, moving up to where her satin bra kept her breasts enclosed...