Essence of an Affair

by Max Sebastian

  He knew how lucky he was to work for a company like this, and yet the company also recognized the talent he had, and the qualifications that supported him--he'd worked hard to get here--studying at the finest establishments in Europe, including the perfumeries of Grasse, on the French Riviera. He carried a fair amount of respect within the firm, even if he generally avoided co-workers who were not actively under the strict cleanliness protocols of the laboratory.

  So when he came to his own office within the laboratory, and decided to throw out everything that they had achieved so far on the current work-in-progress, there was a look of mild frustration on the faces of his three assistants--but a general feeling that whatever his reasoning was for doing so, he had to be right.

  'What is it, boss?' Lukas said, 'Too much orange blossom, right? I was thinking so only last week... it's too overwhelming...'

  But Jens shook his head. 'It's not the orange blossom. Our marketing people have decided on Faengslende as the name for this scent, right? Captivating. But we've refined it and refined it again, and to me... it's not captivating.'

  Katrine said, 'It's a very nice fragrance... I know so many women who would buy this in a second. My friends--'

  But Jens shook his head. As much as he respected Katrine's opinions, she was on the far side of her fifties by now--she, and her friends, were not the target market for this scent, though the marketing guys hoped older women might desire this scent because it was being aimed at sophisticates in their thirties or forties.

  Jens sighed. Was he being insane? Was his professional nose now being skewed by his awakening desire for his wife?

  He paused for a moment, then said, 'A woman is captivating in her own right. We're not here to cover that up, to conceal her behind a smokescreen of flowers and sugar. We should be discovering her, empowering her, celebrating her--not hiding her away behind a sweet barricade.'

  'What are you saying?' Katrine asked. Lukas and Maja just looked at him in confused silence.

  He sighed again. What did he mean? He could hardly tell them that he was inspired by his wife's potential infidelity. That her dalliance with a new lover had opened his eyes to true female beauty, which made him feel like his whole career up to this point was based on a lie.

  'I just think we need to go for something more subtle, more sophisticated--something that draws the attention to our client without stifling her, without trying to project something that she is not. A fragrance that allows her to breathe... and lets the world see who she really is.'

  God, he could hear himself sounding like one of those idiots in marketing. Talking about a fragrance without really saying anything. Using words just because they sounded good, rather than because they had any meaningful contribution to society.

  But what could he say?

  He looked down at Katrine, and at Maja, and they each seemed completely taken aback--surprised, delighted at what he had said, though they didn't quite know what to say in reply.

  Lukas, however, was still confused. 'I don't get it,' he said. 'A woman doesn't choose a fragrance because she wants people to know what she's really like...'

  Katrine and Maja laughed at that, and Katrine gave Lukas a playful slap on the back of the head--only she could get away with that. 'I think it's a wonderful idea,' she said. 'And Lukas knows nothing. Women want to be noticed, but they want to be themselves, they want to be recognized for who they are.'

  'They could just put on a little less perfume...' Lukas suggested, before drawing another little gentle slap from his wife.

  Jens smiled, and said, 'I'm sorry. All I can say is that I'll know what we're after when I find it...'

  The rest of the day was something of a washout in terms of the team's work, but Jens found himself merrily beavering away once he had admitted to himself what he was really doing--making a personal scent, a brand new fragrance geared to one specific woman, Effie.

  He worked feverishly, checking through the tiny vials of ingredients to find the ideas to boost his theory. For the most part, he didn't need to smell them to tell which were possibilities, and which would do nothing for his particular muse. No, use of his nose would only come once he had some strong candidates, and once he started working on the design of the overall scent, the structure. Though his nose was sensitive, for the most part perfumery was a craft that resided in his head. He could remember the scent of every ingredient, he could remember how it was to mix this with that. Only as he built a fragrance into something complex, as the ingredients mixed and reacted, and as the balance of the perfume's top, middle and base notes came together, did he need to work with his nose directly.

  Normally, it would take days, even weeks to get even an initial concept together for a new perfume. Yet Jens felt driven to prove himself, to show that he wasn't just having some kind of midlife crisis, he wasn't going insane. He worked harder than he'd ever worked before, and by the end of a very long day, he at least had something sketched out--three main ingredients that he believed would form the basis for the new scent. It was very basic, but it was something he could use to show people what he meant. A basis on which they could work.

  He called out for Lukas, then for Katrine and Maja, to see what they thought--but they had gone home already. Looking at the clock, he was somewhat surprised to find that it was eight o'clock in the evening already. How the time had flown. It had been a hard day, but an enjoyable one. He had been inspired. He liked thinking about Effie all day while he worked.

  But, he had never been this late at work. He felt obligated to text Effie to confirm he would be, unusually, late home from the office--in case she thought something bad might have happened to him to disrupt his routine.

  Her reply came quickly:

  (Effie): That's good to know--I was starting to get a little worried about you! I'm home, think I'll go take a nice cool swim in the pool. See you soon! xxx

  He read her text message and pictured her in his mind, in her swimsuit, moving gracefully through the water. It made him perk up immensely, and motivated him to get out the door as quickly as possible, and into his car for the short journey home.

  13

  A Closer View

  Arriving home, Jens went straight up to the swimming pool. He was pleased that Effie was still up there--he could hear her swimming while he washed his hands in the men's changing room, and then he emerged into the pool area itself, and there she was, gliding through the cool water, so streamlined, so elegant, almost balletic as she moved.

  It took a little while before she realized he was there, watching her every move, taking in the beauty of her curves, the movement of her muscles. When she did, she swam up to the side, near where he sat on one of the long benches along the side of the pool. She was all smiles.

  'Hey! What are you doing up here?'

  'Just waiting for you to finish. Watching you swim.'

  She almost seemed to blush, her smile turning coy. 'You seem to like watching me a lot, recently.'

  He laughed. 'You might say I've had my eyes opened.'

  'By my dating?'

  'I guess so.'

  'So if I stopped dating now... would you lose interest in me?'

  He looked down at her, his manhood stirring as he laid eyes all over her body squeezed in that tight one-piece swimsuit. How could he possibly lose interest in her now? 'I don't think anything could happen that would make me lose interest in you now,' he said.

  She smiled again. 'But you don't want me to stop dating, do you? It excites you more than anything.'

  He gave a little nod. 'Your sexuality excites me,' he said.

  'It could do that, just between the two of us,' she pointed out.

  He smiled. 'But why limit it to just you and me?'

  She grinned up at him. He could tell it excited her too, the prospect of dating other men. Whether it be Nicolai, or some other lover in the future. She wanted, desperately, to be able to make love to her husband. But the thrill of dating someone new was also now in the mix, and she
couldn't close the door on that, if given the choice.

  After a pause, she pulled herself up out of the pool, the water rushing off her body as she climbed out, and stood before him, her magnificent body just inches away from him.

  'Would you like a closer view?' she asked him, looking down at him now with another beaming smile.

  'I would,' he smiled up at her, and ran his eyes all over her. She took his breath away, standing so close he could see the individual stitches around the edge of her swimsuit, as she toweled herself dry.

  She seemed to track his eyes around her body, and tugged on the edges of her suit here and there, as though to offer him just a little more flesh to see.

  'Come downstairs with me, and I'll take it off for you,' she said.

  'Please,' he replied, serious.

  She stepped away toward the changing room, and beckoned him along with her with a single finger. But when he went with her, they went straight through the women's changing room without stopping.

  'You're not going to take your clothes?'

  She grinned. 'I'll come back for them.'

  It seemed odd, that she would walk around the apartment building in her swimsuit. Sexy, though, somehow. They found the elevator and pressed the call button, and he was hoping that another guy would pass by, and perhaps lay eyes on her. He was proud of her, but there was some small sexual thrill in the thought of other men desiring her, and yet she was married to him--he would get to see her when she took off that swimsuit. The hallways outside the pool, and outside their apartment, were empty, however.

  When they arrived back at their apartment, Effie let go of his hand--and he realized she had been holding it ever since they had left the pool area. Wow. He'd been distracted by the sight of her in that suit, of course, and the hope that she might be seen by someone else. But it hadn't been such a big deal, had it, holding her hand? It felt kind of nice.

  Inside, Effie closed the front door firmly behind them and waited a few moments until Jens walked over toward the couch to sit down and collect his thoughts.

  Then she took a couple of steps toward him and said, 'So, you want to see this?'

  'Oh, uh... sure...' he said, feeling awkward sitting there on the couch, embarrassed that such a stunning creature was standing right there a few meters away in just a bathing suit, and he didn't really know how to behave, what to say, how to sit, where to put his hands.

  'Are you okay?' she asked, concerned.

  'Yeah,' he tried a smile, and then he tried being honest. 'I... uh... don't know what to do...'

  Well, if he couldn't be honest with Effie, who could he be honest with?

  She rewarded him with the sweetest smile, and took another couple of steps toward him. 'I know how you feel,' she said, 'it's how I feel when I'm on a date with Nico.'

  'Oh, it is?' he shifted on his seat, feeling his erection subside a little. He hadn't thought through quite how nervous she probably was going out on a date with someone she didn't know all that well.

  She grinned, 'When he started showing an interest in me... I was terrified.'

  'Yeah?'

  'At work, sometimes I used to hide in the bathroom if I saw him coming.'

  'But you didn't have to... I mean, just because he was interested in you, doesn't mean you had to...'

  Effie shook her head. 'I was terrified... but it was a real thrill, finding out he wanted me,' for a moment, she realized what she was saying, and stopped, worried she might be making her husband jealous. But she glanced down at Jens, and he seemed to be relaxing a little more, enjoying hearing about her and Nicolai.

  She took another step toward her husband. 'In the back of my mind, I knew that I was allowed to respond to this guy's interest if I wanted to... that my husband was okay with me seeing other guys, even if I hadn't ever done anything about it before...'

  Standing in front of him, she was moving her body gently, almost as though slowly dancing to some unheard music. Jens was just stunned by her, breathless, feeling as though he was invading her privacy just by looking at her--and yet she was encouraging him, slowly turning on the spot to let him check out her body all the way around.

  'In the end,' she said, 'I was getting so worked up whenever I saw him... so turned on by the possibilities... I had to just face my fear and, you know, start talking to him...'

  He could smell the chlorine on her, and it did seem reassuring to him, clean. And yet somehow, he wanted more, he wanted to live more dangerously, he wanted Effie to just be Effie, not a woman who felt obligated to swim or to shower just to spend time with her husband.

  'Why don't you take off your clothes?' she said quietly, and he almost missed her suggestion.

  She was looking down, seeing the bulge in his pants, and she wanted to see more--this wasn't a one-way experience, Effie wanted to take pleasure from the gradual opening up of their sexual connection, as well.

  'Uh... sure,' he said, trying to pretend to be bolder than he was. Trying to stifle his fears, his awkward self-consciousness, his own personal embarrassment at being so inexperienced, so unprepared.

  He pulled himself up to his feet, getting so close to her as he did so that he almost touched her body with his face as he stood. She took a step back, gave him space and a reassuring smile as he fumbled with his clothes, and managed to strip them off leaving himself in just a pair of boxer shorts.

  'Those too,' she grinned, pointing at his underwear.

  'Oh... uh...' He hadn't had a shower after work, or anything. What if she thought he was dirty, disgusting? But in the scheme of things, it suddenly felt more embarrassing to him to decline Effie's request than to do as she asked. He tugged his boxer shorts down, stretching the material over his large erection and then down his thighs to join the pile of clothing on the floor.

  'Sit,' she said, calm, confident, taking control.

  He did so, feeling mildly stupid at his nakedness in front of her, trying not to think about the hygiene issues of sitting there on the couch, his bare butt touching the black leather. He felt so vulnerable, a little embarrassed--and yet the way she looked at him, lusting after his hardness, rather than laughing at it, reassured him.

  'Now, take hold of it in your hand,' she said, and he didn't have to ask what she meant.

  She slipped one of the straps of her swimsuit off her shoulder and then turned away from him, as though to hide herself as she took down the other strap, and slowly peeled her swimsuit down to her waist. Then she turned back toward him, her hands covering her breasts... and then not covering her breasts. She was so beautiful, and for a moment he couldn't tear his eyes away from those dark, stiff nipples.

  'That's it,' she said, dancing silently for him, brushing her hair back over her shoulders, stroking her own body, rubbing her hands over her breasts. 'Touch it, baby. Stroke it.'

  Now she tucked her thumbs into her swimsuit and pulled it further, down over her hips. She bent down to drag it down her thighs, and when she stood to step out of it, she just about blew his mind.

  'You like?' she smiled, so sweetly.

  'You...' he said, and she could see what he was looking at.

  'I thought it would be easier on you if I just... shaved it,' she said. 'Do you like it like that?'

  She looked like a model, particularly so because in this age of the Internet, of free and easy pornography, the models all had shaven pussies from what he'd seen.

  'I like it,' he said, then he found himself wondering what her date might think.

  She danced for him, and enjoyed his attention, telling him now and again to keep stroking his cock, as though she needed to. To squeeze it, to pump it. She told him how much she wished she could take it inside her, in her mouth, in her pussy. All the while, she was displaying herself for him--stretching, bending, gyrating to the pulse of unheard music. After a while, he began to detect a slight sheen on her skin as she began to perspire, he could smell something more than just the chlorine on her body--she was getting aroused. And he was turned on by her
more and more.

  'Can I touch it?' she asked him

  'Yes,' he said, suddenly aware of the sweat that was now arising on his own body.

  She knelt between his legs and reached for his shaft, smiling prettily as though he'd just given her a bunch of freshly-picked flowers. He caught his breath as her fingers closed around his girth, startled by the contact, and in such a sensitive, private place. Though it was his wife, it was still somewhat shocking for him, his nakedness before her, completely unconcealed, his bare cock so close to her, seen by her, touched by her.

  Was he embarrassed? That was certainly part of it. But she seemed so content to hold that thing in her hands, to squeeze it in her fingers, to gently stroke it, to cautiously pump its length. She seemed so happy, he came to accept her doing it--helped by the realization that she wasn't reacting to the contact the way he had, she wasn't disturbed by the prospect of being so close to another person, a naked person, a naked man, a potential source of dirt and disease.

  It felt nice, physically. But what aroused him more was the excitement on her face, the strange joy that it gave her for him to allow her to touch it. It aroused him, and it made his erection harder in her hands, so that she glanced up and giggled, saying, 'You do like it,' with mild surprise and undoubted pride.

  Her grip around him tightened a little more as she progressed, and her gaze shifted from his member up to his face as she monitored how he was responding to her touch. But she seemed so enthralled with it that, at last, he began to relax and let go, and even enjoy her touch.

  So this was how it was.

  After a while, he even started feeling a little foolish that he'd never allowed her to try this before, earlier in their marriage, perhaps even while they'd dated. All he had to do was focus on ignoring his fears about the hygiene thing. Have her do it fresh from the pool, or fresh from a shower. At the same time, he knew full well in the back of his mind that he would not have handled this five years before. He was different now. He had made progress.