I now know the following to be true.
The basest sins of the flesh can overrule the most elevated emotions of the heart.
I press my sweaty forehead to the cool tiles in the men’s loo and attempt to catch my breath as the flush disposes of the wadded-up loo roll holding the evidence of how violently I just came with my own fist.
Madeleine.
I zip myself up. My heart may be hammering, but my mind is clear. Its constant friction, feedback, has quieted, helpless in the face of the most extraordinary dopamine rush I can remember having. Endorphins have flooded my nervous system with a supreme sense of wellbeing. If I sat cross-legged on this hard floor right now and closed my eyes, it’d be as though I was sitting on the dark ocean floor where only stillness reigns.
If ever there was an indecent proposal, the one Maddy made to me in the bar this morning is it. I thought I’d be in for a bollocking. Instead, she suggested I work out my stresses and frustrations and anxieties on her body.
When a beautiful woman sits across from you, and encourages you to slide your hand up her leg, and tells you she’s granting you free rein over her stunning body? When she begs you to use her as a plaything, when she takes the improper word you threw out—unspeakable—and gives it oxygen, uses it as a threshold for how you should profane her?
A man doesn’t take a proposition like that lightly.
Which is why I’ve sat at my desk all day, pretending to assess the efficiency of our capital structure and, in reality, fantasising.
Fantasising hard about this gift. This gift that’s totally fucking left-field and yet has been given so freely.
No catches.
No strings.
Simply to use Maddy’s gorgeous, willing body for my own pleasure.
I blame fourteen years of Catholic education for the fact that I can’t quite believe it. That it seems to good to be true. Essentially, that I could be permitted to fuck my way back to sanity with no negative repercussions for anyone involved.
Base urges finally overtook Catholic guilt, human grief and theological musings, and I called her over to my desk.
And sweet Jesus.
The moment I wrapped a hand around her thigh, the second my fingers met the wet fabric of her thong, and most definitely the instant I sank them inside her body, I was a fucking goner.
Lost in the sweet song of her flesh. In the sheer rapture of having her come apart before my eyes.
At my hands.
On my fucking desk.
I didn’t know an experience that dirty could yield such purity of thought.
I’m still marvelling that it could be this easy. That she really means it. That I get to use her mouth and her hands and her pussy for my nefarious purposes whenever I want, just because.
Because it gets us both off, I suppose.
I assume this is how it is for people who aren’t held back by religious hangups or spousal grief. They fuck, and they feel better. I suspect I’m overthinking it.
The thought of fucking her, though… it’s enough to make my well-used cock react.
It seems to me my biggest problem will be keeping this woman interested.
Yes, she seems to like me. Sure, she’s into the whole secret, forbidden aspect of this setup, but come on. She’s at Alchemy every night doing God knows what, when the kinkiest thing I ever permitted myself to do with Claire was probably tying her up with her own stockings.
And now Maddy’s expecting me to do unspeakable things to her.
I’m so out of my depth. There’s a yawning chasm between what I’m capable of and the side of myself I show to others, and I don’t know where to land on this one.
Time to call in the cavalry.
I practically drag Cal for a beer at five. I’m keen to get home to the girls, but I need to have this conversation before my head explodes. Gen would worry about Maddy if I confided in her, and Rafe’s too conflicted given the Belle factor, but I know Cal will withhold all judgement and actually give me some decent advice.
Up until now, our sex lives could not have been more different.
The faithful husband and the relentless playboy.
And the icing on the cake? He’s been with Maddy too. Taken things much further than I have. Which I fucking loathe.
Besides, I need a beer after spending the past couple of hours remembering how euphoric I felt after Maddy climaxed all over my fingers and trying to avoid the knowing smirks she kept giving me from her desk.
Having her breathless I want to suck your dick ringing in my ears didn’t much help, either.
‘I knew it,’ Cal says, when I tell him I require his assistance with Maddy. He slams his bottle on the table and looks at me expectantly. ‘Did you go for it with her the other night in the club?’
I nod sheepishly.
‘Jesus Christ, you dark fucking horse. Can’t believe I missed that.’
‘I wasn’t sure if you saw,’ I admit, ‘though you had your face buried so deep in that blonde’s cunt it’s no wonder you had zero peripheral vision.’
He raises his bottle and we clink.
‘I’m impressed,’ he says. ‘I didn’t even think I’d get you through the doors. You can lead a horse to water, but I wasn’t expecting you to fucking drink.’
I drank from her well like a man dying of thirst, I think. I stay wisely silent.
‘You had your eye on her before we went through, didn’t you?’ He shakes his head. ‘I think you’ve had eyes on her for a while.’
‘No comment.’
‘Throw me a bone.’ He drinks.
‘Right.’ I sigh. Here goes. ‘She’s very beautiful, obviously. And she seems to—we seem to have reached some sort of very early, um, understanding that I should enjoy her… physically to… work through some of my… issues.’
Good Lord. This is excruciating.
His grin is so wide I’d like to punch it off his face. ‘What?’ I demand.
‘You’re saying she wants to fuck around with you, no strings, so you can blow off some steam?’
‘That’s basically it,’ I say cautiously. It is indeed a basic but adequate summary, and when Cal puts it like that, it doesn’t sound quite as torrid as I’ve built it up to be in my head.
He throws his head back and starts to laugh.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Mate.’ He slaps the table. ‘I’m fucking thrilled for you. That’s exactly what Rafe and I’ve been saying you need. And Maddy—whew.’ He blows out a breath. ‘She’ll look after you well, if you catch my drift.’
I completely catch his drift, and that’s what has me paralysed with indecision. I chew the inside of my cheek.
‘You’ve got yourself some gorgeous pussy,’ Cal says. ‘So what the hell is the long face for? Don’t tell me you’re feeling guilty?’
‘It’s not that,’ I say, though the truth is slightly more complex. ‘It’s just’—I lean forward—‘I think she has high expectations. There’s been some… heat between us, and I have a horrible feeling she’s got it into her head that she’ll be some kind of—’
He’s enjoying every sordid second of this. ‘Some kind of what?’
I clear my throat. ‘Some kind of, um, sex slave, where I do all these’—may as well use the word—‘unspeakable things to her and we have some depraved, intoxicating entanglement. That’s definitely her articulation of our dynamic, not mine,’ I add hurriedly. ‘Though I may have mentioned my intention to bid for her on Friday night, so, you know. I think she has high expectations.’
Callum is shaking his head and biting his lip like I’m the jammiest bastard in town, which I most definitely am not.
‘Fucking hell, French. You realise this is what you call a high-quality problem, right?’
‘I know,’ I say miserably. ‘But I’m a bit scared.’
He guffaws. ‘Scared of her fucking you into a sex coma or scared you won’t be able to come up with the goods?’
Oh, I can come up with the goods, all right. I had her orgasming within a couple of minutes earlier, had her begging me for more last week in the club. And, given the violence of my own climax earlier and the constant semi I’ve had all day, there are no problems with my dick.
My real fear is that she succeeds in pushing buttons I’ve never let anyone push before.
Buttons that will detonate me.
I lean forward. Purse my lips before giving him an honest reply.
‘Actually, the opposite. She’s tormenting me. And you know me, mate. I don’t let rip. But she’s driving me crazy, and I’m worried what’ll happen…’
‘If you let yourself go?’ he asks.
I look down at my beer. ‘Basically, yes.’
Calling her over to my desk may have seemed casual. The opportunistic predator. But really, that was barely scratching the surface of what I’d like to do to that woman.
‘Zach.’
I glance up. There’s sympathy on his face. Cal plays the happy-go-lucky guy, but when the chips are down he’s steady as can be. He’s a great friend to have in your corner.
‘I think you know this already,’ he says. ‘But this is Maddy we’re talking about. She can handle it.’
I nod. ‘Yep,’ I say absently.
‘Mate. I’m serious. She gets up to all sorts in the club. She knows exactly what she’s asking you for, and I bet she knows exactly what you’re capable of, if that’s what you’re worried about. She wants it.’
I scratch my forehead with my thumbnail. ‘I’m worried that all the dark shit that’s been inside of me this past year might come tumbling out if I let it, you know? I’m worried I might be better off trying to hold it all in.’
‘You know that’s unhealthy,’ he says. ‘It’s absolutely not better for you to hold it all in, and I doubt it’s what she wants, either. You’re both adults. You can talk through boundaries and stuff before you get naked, if you prefer.’
Jesus fuck. I’ve made her come twice now, but we haven’t got naked together.
Yet.
A vision of Maddy’s beautiful body undulating beneath me as I fuck her has me practically reeling.
Her words from this morning come back to me. Her face as she spoke them.
I get off on being someone’s plaything.
You’re like an unexploded bomb.
I want to be the one you unleash all that angst and repression on.
The way she devoured my erection with hungry eyes.
I want you to make that my problem.
Fucking hell.
She’s already given me her express permission to take my roiling mess of emotion and frustration and grief and exhaustion and resentment and use her as my very own flesh-and-blood method of catharsis, but I think I needed to hear Cal confirm for me what I already knew.
It’s okay for me to channel the very darkness inside me for my own pleasure, and for Maddy’s.
It’s what she wants from me.
And it’s what I need from her.
