could take, how much was too much. A great part of the whole exercise was to do with instilling trust in Beth. He wanted her to trust us implicitly, without reservation. He wanted to make her completely dependent on us for her well-being; this applied not only to her physical condition (we made her eat properly and exercise and get enough sleep), but also her mental state. She was prone to anxiety, to worrying endlessly, both about things she could have some influence on (her work, her living space, her sexual life), and things she couldn't (the state of the world, the state of her friends' marriages, her parents' health). Matthew's theory, I think, was that Beth needed to have all her defences broken down, needed in a sense to be dismantled, before she could be built up again, stronger and more independent.
That certainly applied to her relations with other men. When we first encountered her, she had a boyfriend. His name was Brian. I don't think either of us took to him much, but we were obliged to take him into our confidence. The plans we had for Beth could not be executed while he remained in ignorance of the fact that she was now an owned girl. To our surprise, he seemed to more or less take this in his stride. I don't know to what extent he already knew that she was kinky. He himself was pretty vanilla, I think, except that he seemed rather fascinated by the fact that Beth wasn't, and wanted to find out more about this side of her. We saw the two of them together a few times, and Matthew tried as carefully as he could to explain what motivated submissive girls like Beth and me, and what motivated dominant men like him to want to control us. I think Brian more or less understood it intellectually; it was just that he didn't get it personally. He couldn't really see why any of us found the situation so full of sexual excitement.
Clearly there was a bit of a problem with Brian, because as things developed between Beth and us he was in danger of getting shut out. Beth was seeing more and more of us, and so less and less of him. And her sexual energies were increasingly directed towards us. She had become, as Matthew liked to put it, cathected upon us, and so more and more detached from Brian.
Matthew decided that, in order to be fair to him, we ought to make an effort to include him. He himself seemed to show no appetite for controlling Beth. During our meetings together Matthew would occasionally give him opportunities. I remember once that Beth had committed some minor infringement, for which she was due to be punished. Matthew asked Brian if he would like to administer the spanking that was required. We were all sitting round the kitchen table, and Matthew produced a wooden spoon and asked Brian if he would care to use it on Beth. He went bright red and stammered that, no, it wasn't really his thing, but that he was happy to watch Matthew administer what was necessary.
Matthew decided something more was needed, to try to bring Brian into the arrangement. He talked to me about his idea, which was that there should be a foursome (this was very soon after Matthew had finally fucked Beth, after keeping her waiting for weeks, an act which I shall describe shortly). The relationship with Beth had been consummated, but Beth had not informed Brian; by now we suspected, as proved to be the case, that all was not well between them. Matthew thought that perhaps Beth's involvement with us was the cause of strain between Brian and Beth. Later we were to find there was far more to it than that. But Matthew thought that if we had somehow caused the problem, we ought to do what we could to help solve it. Accordingly he suggested to me that we should, as it were, give Brian a reward. And at the same time, this would be a good test of Beth's submission to us that she consented to have her boyfriend fuck me.
Perhaps I should digress for a moment on the nature of my relationship with my husband.