During the long drive home from a business trip I needed a break, and pulled into a roadside diner I often frequented when I made this drive.

It was always what I needed — fresh coffee, a bite of home-cooked food, friendly faces. But tonight’s drive was different. Tonight I didn’t want to go home.

The morning of my departure on that trip, my fear that my husband was cheating on me had been confirmed — when Gus told me he was moving out and moving in with Annette, his secretary (who’s half his age)! He said he’d be gone by the time I got back so that we could “avoid a scene.” Now on the long drive home I was crying the whole way. Sure, our marriage had deteriorated. Still, the thought of being alone at my age (42) was frightening.

And I wasn’t ready to face an empty house. So there I sat, gazing down into my coffee in the diner, when a voice jolted me back to reality: “Are you all right?” it said. Startled, I looked up and around. “Are you okay?” the voice said again. I saw that it was coming from the booth opposite the table where I was sitting, A smart blonde woman in a blue summer dress was looking at me with evident concern.

“Yes, I’m fine,” I said. “Just miles away in thought.”

“You look worried to death.” With that, she slid out of the booth and sat down opposite me, still with a mother-hen look. Maybe because she was a few years older than me, her action seemed to show genuine concern rather than nosiness.

“Anything I can do?” she said. “I’m good at listening, if nothing else.”

“Just marital problems,” I said, glad to have someone to talk to. “It isn’t always easy, being married.”

“Sometimes I’m glad I’m single,” the woman said, raising a ring-free finger to show me.

“Sometimes I wish I was.”

She seemed to understand that this would be a good time to change the subject. “I’m Donna, by the way,” she said. “What brings you here anyway?”

“I’m Ronnie,” I said. “I’ve been away on business, and now I’m on my way home. Only I don’t really want to be.”

Donna was so easy to talk to that I was able to relax a little, and before long we were chatting away — about nothing in particular, just life in general. I didn’t realize how late it was until the waitress came over to say that they were closing.

“Damn,” I said, looking out at the raindrops glittering under the streetlights and bouncing off the asphalt road. “I hate night driving in the rain.”

“Far to go?” Donna asked.

“Farther than I’d like in this.”

Now in reality driving in the rain, even at night, doesn’t bother me that much. For some reason I was fibbing.

“Why not stay over somewhere and drive on tomorrow?”

“Good idea,” I said. “Except it’s too late to find a room now.”

“Perhaps it is,” Donna said, turning pensive. Abruptly her face brightened. “You could stay at my house! I’m just up the road, and I have a spare room.”

I still couldn’t face going home, so I accepted. Donna’s place was indeed just a couple of hundred yards up the road from the diner. If I wondered at the time why she was sitting in a diner so close to home, I guess I figured she just needed to get out of the house. (After all, I didn’t want to be in my house that night.) It was a small two-bedroom place, with a porch just big enough to shelter us while she fiddled for the key. “I’ll make some coffee,” she said as she ushered me into a compact but warm and comfortable living room. She disappeared into the kitchen, then returned with brandy and two glasses. Brandy was a welcome alternative to coffee and a sleepless night.

We chatted on while working our way through a couple of glasses of brandy each, this time talking a little about our personal lives. Donna had never been married, she said, so when she asked why I didn’t simply retaliate in kind, I thought it sounded naive more than anything.

Eventually I began to yawn, and Donna excused herself to get my room ready. By then I was feeling a lot better, quite mellow even. She came back with a strange look and said, “I have a problem, Ronnie. I forgot I have decorators coming in and the spare bedroom has been stripped for them. There’s no way anyone can sleep there.”

I had a sudden panic. “But I can’t drive after all that brandy.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s my mistake. You sleep in my bed, and I’ll sleep here on the sofa.”

“No way,” I said. “I can’t kick you out of your bed.”

“Yes, you can. It’s my fault.”

It still felt like too much of an imposition. “I can’t,” I said. Then a thought struck me. “Is it a double bed?

Because if it is, we can both sleep in it, if you don’t mind.”

“Well yes, we could,” she said, “but are you sure you want to?”

Normally I wouldn’t have dreamed of sharing a bed with a strange woman, but the brandy — and necessity — said otherwise. “Of course I want to,” I said. “I’m just grateful to have a bed.”

The brandy overcame any shyness I might have had as we got ready for bed. I had brought my suitcase in and pulled my nightshirt out. When I put it on, I kept my panties on underneath — removing them seemed a step too far. Otherwise I had no qualms about undressing in front of Donna, or she in front of me. She made no attempt to hide her body as she undressed and pulled on pajamas. She had an outstanding body for a woman in her mid-40s, with fantastic firm tits and a flat-as‑a-pancake stomach that made me feel bad about my slightly pendulous breasts and rounded belly.

We climbed into bed, and Donna reached to switch off the bedside light, then said good night, and we settled down for sleep. I’m not sure how long it was, but I was in that hazy zone between waking and sleeping when I felt a soft touch against my back. I took it to be accidental, probably a hand stretched out in sleep. Then I felt a touch on my back, gentle but deliberately, through the thin cotton of my nightshirt.

There was nothing else, just the soft touch of Donna’s hand wandering over my back. I suppose I should have made it clear that I wasn’t that sort of woman, but it felt nice — warm and friendly. So I pretended to be asleep and let the exploration continue.

What really surprised me was that I really wasn’t surprised! In the back of my mind I had felt all along that Donna was making a play for me. Now I could no longer deny the obvious. But an even bigger surprise was that I didn’t mind! If my husband was getting his pleasure from a 20-something, why shouldn’t I enjoy this nice woman? If it became too much, I could always “wake up” and stop her.

At that moment, however, I had no intention of stopping Donna. I felt erotic warmth as her hand moved across my back, roaming farther as she gained in confidence — from my shoulders down to the base of my spine and on to the first curve of my bottom, then back up. I just lay there and enjoyed it, struggling to control my breathing, trying not to let her know I was awake. The truth was that I was getting turned on whether I wanted to or not.

I wondered how long Donna would keep going, and whether she would take things further. For that matter, I wondered, did I want her to take things further? Part of me was screaming yes, while a less adventurous part of me shouted an equally loud no.

Donna’s wandering hand began to include my arm, fondling my shoulder, then down almost to my wrist. When her fingers crossed from the short sleeve onto bare skin, I got goose bumps! It got even better. As Donna’s fingertips moved back up my arm, they touched my breast. The brief contact sent a jolt through me, and I couldn’t prevent a murmur of pleasure escaping my lips. Now she knew that I was not only awake but enjoying her touch.

I rolled onto my back. “Are you okay?” she whispered.

I nodded, then realized she couldn’t see me. My voice came out as a croak. “Yes, I’m fine,” I said as her hand stroked my arms, stomach, neck, breasts — always moving, sending thrill after thrill all through me. I kept thinking, I should not like this this much!

I wanted Donna to really touch my breasts, so I let out a little “pleasure” sound each time her fingertips skated over them, giving an involuntary extra-loud gasp when she caught my nipple as she passed. Her fingers cupped my breasts and squeezed a little before passing on — her first overtly sexual move. I moaned to encourage her, and she continued to stroke my breasts with one hand.

It made me feel great, but I wanted more. In time Donna moved closer. I felt her breath on my face. Her hand reached farther down, nearly to my pubic mound. If only she would touch me there, I thought — even through my nightshirt and panties. I parted my legs to send the message that I was ready. She responded the way I hoped: Her hand slid down until her palm was cupping my mound! I gasped.

She moved in closer. I slipped my arm around behind her head, resting on her shoulder in the semblance of an embrace. She moved up against me so that I felt the curves of her breasts through our clothing. I felt her breath on my cheek, an inch or two away. I turned my face toward her, and her lips brushed my cheek. She backed away, but I followed, finding her lips and letting my open mouth rest against hers. She moaned into my mouth, a sound of both contentment and need, and pressed her hand more firmly against my pubic mound, rubbing her palm over my pussy.

I surrendered. Donna could do whatever she wanted, and I would want whatever she did. My tongue sought hers and our lips melted together. I pulled her to me, opening my legs more. When she lifted the hem of my nightshirt, exposing my panties, I lifted my hips to help. She rubbed the crotch of my panties, and I was more aroused than I’d been in years. An orgasm was building, and I didn’t mind coming so quickly. I felt sure that Donna would make me keep on coming until I was spent. Suddenly I wondered if I would be able to do the same for her.

I pulled my mouth free, wrapped both arms around her and held her close as my climax drew nearer.

“Harder,” I gasped. “I’m going to come.”

“Then come,” she urged, rubbing me ever more forcefully through my panties. “I want you to.”

My hips started to rotate of their own will. When I came, it was like an explosion, with shock waves surging from my pussy all through me. I arched my back and grabbed onto Donna. My pelvis jerked and twitched as I thrust at her hand, gasping and mumbling incoherently. It was the most wrenching climax I ever had, and when it finally subsided I lay back gasping for breath, with my heart trying to pound its way out of my chest.

Donna’s hand was still between my legs, motionless now, as if to comfort my throbbing pussy. “You enjoyed that, didn’t you?” she said in the dark, with a sort of triumphant giggle.

“Can you please switch the light on?” I said. “Just the bedside one.” I needed to see her face, to see if she was truly pleased with what we’d done or if she was just gloating over another lesbian conquest.

“Yes, sure.”

“I’m a lights-on person,” I explained, breathlessly telling an only-partial truth as the bedside lamp illuminated us.

“Me too,” Donna said, kneeling on the bed, gazing down at me, her expression seeming to contain genuine warmth. I smiled at her. For a moment or two we simply smiled at each other with lustful thoughts running through our heads. Then Donna began to unbutton her pajama top.

“Good idea,” I said, and scrambled to my knees and reached for the hem of my nightshirt.

“You’re so beautiful,” she said. “I wanted you the moment you walked through the door of the diner. I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Me too,” I said as I dropped my nightshirt over the edge of the bed. I looked back at Donna, now wearing only her pajama bottoms. How wonderfully sexy she looked! Her body was youthfully feminine, her breasts firm, with long, dark nipples, erect and inviting. When we got into bed I hadn’t looked at her in a sexual way. Now I wondered why not.

Again we just stared at each other for a brief while. Then Donna’s hand came toward me. Her fingertips were surprisingly hesitant as they stroked my breasts. I closed my eyes, soaking up the sensation of the fingers going lightly from one breast to the other, hardly touching, just gentle fingernails skating over my skin. It was a delightfully erotic sensation, made even more so by my being still hot and shaky from my climax. It was almost too beautiful to bear.

“Oh, Donna,” I said. I opened my eyes and moved toward her, still on my knees, until we were up against each other, with her hard nipples pressing softly onto the soft skin of my breasts. She wrapped her arms around me and pulled me close, squeezing her bullet nipples into my flesh, making me gasp, partly from the embrace and partly from the glorious feeling of being wanted. My arms went around her too, as if of their own volition, and we hugged, cheek to cheek, body to body, both naked to the waist, enjoying the feeling of skin on skin.

We kissed again, gently at first, then with increasing passion, until we were forcing our mouths together, tongues probing and tasting, both of us moaning and gasping for breath. Donna’s fingers were digging into my back, hurting me, but pleasurably so, because the discomfort told me how strongly she wanted me. Soon her grip loosened a little and one hand began a cautious journey down my back. I knew where it was headed, and my heart pounded in anticipation.

She ran her hand down onto my bottom, stroking it through my panties. It seemed like forever that she ever so gently circled and caressed me. After a couple of minutes she pulled her hand back, and her fingertips found their way under the waistband of my panties, wriggling around to the front and then down until they were brushing through my pubic hair, seeking my slit. I wanted to be touched, played with, anything, so I leaned back and spread my legs wider to encourage her.

“I know what you want.” Donna whispered in my ear. “But can we get rid of these first?” She snapped the elastic of my panties against my hip. Before she could say anything more I had my thumbs under my waistband pushing them down. She watched me sit back and pull them over my feet, then kneel again in front of her, naked now.

“Wow!” she said. “I’d better do the same, huh?” She looked down at her pajama bottoms and then grinned at me, nodding excitedly. She slid to the edge of the bed and sat on it as she pulled them off. Then she stood in the light of the bedside lamp, showing herself to me.

“You’re beautiful,” I said, staring at her body. Her smile widened.

Donna sat back on her haunches, and I knelt straddling her thighs and facing her. I was very conscious that my legs were wide and my pussy was blatantly available. She wrapped one arm around my neck and pulled my head down into a kiss and at the same time with her free hand reached in between my legs. Her fingers glided over my mound and cupped my pussy. At the sudden pleasure of her contact I gasped into her mouth and felt her lips curl into a smile at my reaction. Feeling her hand on my naked pussy took my breath away. Nobody could have prepared me for how good it felt.

At first she didn’t move, and I knelt quietly with her hand over my slit and her lips on mine, with my arms around her back, clinging to her and pulling her tight. Then her tongue pushed into my mouth again and her hand pressed against me, pushing up more and more firmly, spreading my labia until they parted. Her fingers found my wetness.

She had two fingertips poised over my entrance, with the heel of her hand pressed firmly against my clit. I froze in anticipation of what I knew was coming. “Yes, please, Donna, touch me!”

The two fingers slid in me, going deep and then bending into a kind of hook that rubbed against the roof of my passage as they moved inside me. I pulled my mouth away and threw my head back, clinging to Donna while I moaned and pushed my hips forward toward her, inviting her to penetrate me deeper.

God, it was amazing! She was twisting her fingers inside me, withdrawing them until they were nearly out of me and then plunging them back in, all the time wriggling them around. At one point, without warning she clamped her mouth around my nipple, sucking at it, lapping at it, then tugging at it with sharp teeth.

Consumed with pleasure, I gasped, “I’m coming again!”

“Let it happen!” she said.

The sensation built until, like a dam bursting, ecstatic waves raced through me. My body alternated between tensing in delight and relaxing until the next wave struck. Donna kept plunging her fingers in and out of me and rubbing my clit with her palm, doing everything to give me pleasure.

Eventually my orgasm subsided, and I was left shuddering with aftershocks. I more or less collapsed on top of Donna, slumping onto her, kind of sitting open-legged on her thighs. “Oh God, Donna,” I panted, “that was amazing.”

“Good,” she said, stroking my hair.

I opened my eyes to look at her. She was licking my wetness from her fingers and, judging by the look on her face, enjoying the taste. She blushed as I watched, but that didn’t stop her from sucking her fingers until all trace of me was gone. I loved to see her enjoying my juices, and wondered whether I would enjoy hers as much.

Needing to return the favor, I pulled away from Donna and reversed positions, so that she was kneeling over my legs with hers wide apart. She looked down at me with her arms draped over my shoulders, then closed her eyes in what seemed an obvious hint for me to begin. My gut tingled.

With one hand I began to circle her abdomen gently. Her skin fluttered under my touch. Gradually my circles widened, until I was stroking the underside of her breasts and the top of her pubic mound, letting myself become accustomed to this blissfully erotic contact with a woman.

All this time Donna just knelt over me with her hands on my shoulders, her head tipped slightly back, just like mine had been. Her only reaction was little pleasure noises coming from deep in her throat.

Feeling more confident now, I let my hand stray downward. At first I just cupped Donna’s mound, with my fingertips touching the top of her pussy. But then, as she pushed forward in encouragement, I reached farther between her legs. With my palm over her pussy I felt for her slit, and my fingers found the wetness.

I paused, looking up into Donna’s eyes seeking her permission. “Yes,” she said. “Please!”

I sank two fingers in her slippery hole, and the others curled up along her slit. I pushed inside her as deep as I could, wriggling around, feeling her vagina rhythmically opening and closing on me.

‘’God, you’re good,” she rasped as I began to thrust in and out of her. I didn’t know how true it was, but it made me feel good that she said I was making her feel good. I kept looking at her face for the expressions of delight that kept flitting across it.

I pulled away, letting my wet fingertips slide up Donna’s slit. I found her clit. It was bigger than mine, engorged and hard, sticking out from its hood. My two fingers stroked very softly across its tip, barely touching but making her jerk. Her eyes were closed, her mouth open in a wide smile. I stroked her again, and she groaned. Her hips shuddered every time that my fingers passed over her clit. I pressed more firmly, rubbing her properly. She gripped my shoulders and gasped. Her fingertips dug into my flesh each time she was jolted with arousal.

I wanted to make her come, so I continued to rub her clit, and soon her hips were swaying back and forth. I rubbed her harder and faster, in time with their movements. Her head went back, and loud noises of pleasure told me that she was close. I watched her face with growing excitement, waiting for the moment when she would reach climax. Her cry of “yes” came as a long drawn-out wail.

With her body shaking uncontrollably, Donna buried her head in my neck, kissing and biting me. Soon it was over, and she slumped back. “That was really something,” she said. “I hope there’s more to come.”

“There is,” I said. “Lie down.”

In fact, there was a whole lot more, carrying us through the night and most of the next day. Over that time, while we had chances to talk, I told Donna about my husband leaving me. She in turn confessed that she had seen me in the diner before, and always hoped to meet me — and last night seized her opportunity. When the time came for me to leave, she asked if her joining me would make the ominous trip home easier. I said it would, and it did.

Since then her visits have become more frequent and longer. Now we’re talking about making them permanent. When I decided, in the depths of depression, to stop at the diner, I couldn’t have imagined how it would change my life!