Ouch. Fuck.’
Maddy flinches as I dry her back. There are red, scratched patches on her shoulder blades and down her spine and on her gorgeous bottom.
‘I’ll put some cream on those bits in a sec,’ I tell her, patting her bottom dry before squatting and towelling one shapely leg.
‘Your elbows must be fucked too,’ she says.
‘Yeah.’ I flex one. ‘But it was worth it.’
I grin up at her. She’s quiet, but she seems mellow. Hopefully she’s as blissed out from those orgasms as I am.
‘Good.’ She rakes her fingers through my hair and I tilt my head back, enjoying the simple pleasure of her touch.
After I’ve stood again and squeezed some of the moisture out of her long hair, I hand her the towel and watch as she rearranges it under her arms so she can tuck it in across her chest. I grab another towel from the rail and do the same around my waist. The rest of me can drip dry.
We stare at each other for a moment before I ask, ‘Cream?’
‘Oh, yeah.’ She grabs a tub off the bathroom shelf and leads the way into the bedroom.
I’m not sure what I was expecting—something kitsch and hyper-girly, probably, but, instead, the room feels restorative. Feminine but grown up. The walls are papered in a soft blush with some kind of big floral pattern. Her bed is huge, white and perfectly made. I wonder how many men she’s had in it and then silently tell myself to cut it out. The room is also surprisingly clutter-free.
‘Did you tidy up for me?’ I tease her.
‘Fuck off.’ She peels the towel off and gets onto the bed, settling on her stomach and resting her head to one side.
‘Fuck off is code for yes, I assume.’
‘It’s code for maybe. And for please don’t look under the bed.’
I chuckle, admiring the slim curves of her naked body as I discard my towel and climb on beside her. She really does have a stunning figure: willowy and undeniably athletic while being very feminine.
‘I’m much more interested in looking at what’s on the bed,’ I assure her.
‘Like what you see?’ she asks. Our eyes meet.
‘Very much,’ I say quietly. She smiles, pleased.
I set the tub down next to her and scoop her damp hair up in my hands, twisting it so I can lay it in a kind of doughnut to one side of her neck. The tub reads LUXURY BODY BUTTER, and its contents are indeed unctuous. I scoop up a generous dollop and rub it between my palms before crouching and smoothing it over her shoulders. Down her back and over her bottom. She sighs contentedly.
She really is a sight for sore eyes.
I rub the cream into her skin, beginning gently but working up to a massage, because my large hands make easy work of covering her back, mapping her skin, and besides, her muscles could probably do with a good rub after what they’ve just endured.
I really did not mean to fuck her on the floor of her shower, but once I had her lying down and spread out for me, I was a goner.
Story of my life with this one.
I smile fondly.
We’re silent for a few moments while I work on her tight muscles.
‘You’re paying an awful lot of attention to my bum,’ she observes lazily. Her voice sounds almost slurred with what’s probably fatigue but may also be contentment.
‘It’s very tight,’ I assure her. My thumbs drag up either side of her crack and I find myself getting mystifyingly hard once again. Good Lord. I’ll need a hydration drip with this woman around.
‘Mmm,’ is all she has to say about that.
‘You know,’ I say to her back, admiring the softness of her skin under my fingertips, ‘I don’t think I’ve really told you this. I mean—hopefully I’ve made my attraction to you pretty clear—but you really are a stunningly beautiful woman.’
She stretches like a cat under me. ‘Thank you. Get up for a second.’
I rise up slightly and she flips herself over beneath me, repositioning her hands behind her head and offering me a very fucking gratifying view of those gorgeous tits. That flat stomach.
I lower myself back down so my bum is resting on her thighs, my cock on her pelvic bone, and let my appraising gaze drag over her in the bright daylight. Despite the ways we’ve used each other’s bodies to date, being here with her like this feels more intimate than anything that’s come before.
‘You know I think you’re hot too,’ she says, her tone awkward. ‘I mean, obviously.’
I smile at her, and she laughs.
‘What?’ I ask.
She shakes her head like she’s embarrassed. ‘I dunno. It’s just—yeah, I had a thing for you at work. You know, the hot, quiet type. The challenge. But I didn’t honestly think you’d be straddling me in my bedroom on a Sunday afternoon.’
I lean forward so I can brush my palms over the satiny skin of her stomach as I consider what she said. ‘I know. Neither did I.’ I throw a leg over and climb off so I can lie down beside her. I loop an arm around her waist and roll her onto her side, facing me. This is unchartered territory for us. The parameters of the brief were pretty clear—that we make shameless use of each other’s bodies for our mutual gratification—so I have no idea how she feels about this post-coital… lingering.
‘I can go,’ I offer. ‘If you’d rather I maintain an air of mystery.’ I grin, attempting levity.
She grabs my bicep. ‘No. Don’t go until you have to.’
‘Okay.’ I gaze at her face next to me, those huge eyes soft and that porcelain skin of her face delicately flushed. She really is stunningly beautiful. Her lips, which always seem so rosy even without makeup, are begging to be kissed.
So I do.
I throw a hairy leg over her satiny one and tug her in towards me. And I do what we haven’t properly done so far in this unconventional arrangement. I kiss her without an agenda beyond demonstrating my attraction, and my gratitude, and my awe.
I kiss her slowly and thoroughly, drinking in every morsel of sensation, revelling in the way she arches into the kiss, in how she sucks so deliberately on my bottom lip, and sighs as my fingers stroke down her spine, and how she roams her own fingers over my bicep.
It’s beautiful, and God is it arousing, but it feels less like foreplay and more like getting to know each other.
I break the kiss when I feel her shiver. ‘You cold?’
‘A little,’ she admits.
I reach down and grab a woolly throw from the end of the bed, pulling it over both of us, and then I burrow in closer to her.
‘Can I ask you something personal?’ she asks. ‘You don’t have to answer if it upsets you.’
I stiffen. ‘Okay.’
‘Am I your first… fuck? Since your wife passed?’
There’s no way in my mind that I can reconcile these two elements of my life. That I can begin to square the intimacy and adoration Claire and I shared with this animalistic desire for Maddy. Nor can I square the sheer weight of the grief that sits on me with the strange but undeniable truth that Maddy brings the light. That when my hands are on her body, devouring her and debasing her and worshipping her, I’m granted a true sense of levity.
Trying to reconcile these two women makes me feel guilty and ashamed and totally fucking bewildered, but neither is trying to compartmentalise them working for me.
Which is what gives me the courage to tell Maddy the truth. ‘You’re my first everything since my wife.’
She blows out a breath. ‘I thought so—I mean, it sounded that way from what you’ve said before. But—are you okay with it?’
‘I’m not okay, necessarily, in that I’m not sure what to make of all this.’ I look her in the eye. ‘But if you’re asking if I’m enjoying my time with you, and if I’m attracted to you and grateful for what you’ve given me, the answer to all those is an unequivocal yes.’
‘Good.’ She kisses me. ‘Because I thought maybe I’d been a bad influence on you. You know, with my shamelessness. I suspect you were very well behaved till I dragged you down with me.’
I stroke the length of her back as I consider how to articulate my thoughts on that.
‘You use the word shameless like it’s a bad thing, but from where I’m standing, it’s a good thing. I’ve met enough Catholics to know what a devastating handicap shame can be—God knows, I suffer from it enough myself. But you just get on with it. You know what you want and you go for it, especially at the club, and I admire it.’
‘You wouldn’t want your daughters ending up like me, though, would you?’ she presses.
I frown. ‘You’re not being fair to yourself. Does the mere thought of the girls at a place like Alchemy in a few years make me sick to my stomach? Obviously. But Jesus, Mads. You seem to own your sexuality, and trust me, that’s a rare and beautiful thing.’
‘Thank you,’ she whispers against my lips. ‘You know I’m Catholic, too? As in I was raised Catholic. Obviously I don’t practice, or believe, or anything.’
‘Seriously?’ Maddy is definitely not like any other Catholic I’ve met, reformed or not. I’ve made uneasy peace with my Catholicism, or lack of it, though my upbringing still has me in its clutches when it comes to sex. Rafe’s gone the other way. But Maddy seems free of it in a way I don’t recognise amongst many recovering Catholics.
‘I went to school with Belle. It was a convent. Honestly, the bullshit they spouted. Luckily, the sense my mum talked about sex and bodily autonomy and all that stuff stuck hard enough that I was able to shrug off the crap they tried to feed me at school. Belle wasn’t so lucky, because her dad is so fucking extreme.’
I know something of Belle’s upbringing from what Rafe’s told me, but I would never in a million years have guessed she and Maddy shared an education.
‘I think it’s good you took pity on me,’ I murmur, pulling her in tightly against my rapidly hardening cock.
‘Well, obviously you’re just a pity fuck,’ she says, shrugging in my arms, and I slap her bottom. ‘But why is it good?’
‘Because I didn’t really stand a chance around you.’ I roll her onto her back, caging her in with my arms. ‘Not only are you so sexy it’s ridiculous, but you’re sexual. You’re unapologetic, and when I’m with you I forget to be inhibited. Obviously it’s partly because I’m driven half-insane with lust whenever I get my hands on you, but also because it’s impossible to be uptight and prudish around you. I just get stuck in.’
‘And you’re okay with the public stuff?’
‘It’s not that I love it,’ I explain, ‘but I don’t hate it. So I don’t get off on it, per se, but I love watching you come apart for me, and I love watching how hard you come when there are other people involved. That said’—I run a fingertip lightly between her tits and down over her stomach—‘I got really fucking angry watching that guy Ben feel you up on stage. That’s why I had you on your knees as soon as I got my hands on you.’
‘I love being on my knees for you,’ she tells me, her eyes huge. ‘I don’t care if it’s in public or private. I meant what I said—I just want you to use my body. I love it when you stick that beautiful dick in my mouth. Anywhere.’
I groan in anguish, nudging her legs apart and crouching over her. The blanket slithers off us. Christ, she’s beautiful, lying there in the afternoon sunlight, gazing up at me with a surprised smile like she can’t quite believe I had it in me to say all those complimentary things to her. It gives me a pang, actually.
‘You certainly didn’t seem to care about other people when you went down on me anonymously on the Banquette,’ she continues, watching my face for a reaction.
I give her what I hope is a winning smile. ‘Am I forgiven?’
‘Forgiven?’ She strokes a path down my thigh with her foot. ‘I’ve got myself off a million times reliving it with my rose vibrator, imagining it was you.’
I’m instantly, fully, hard. ‘Seriously?’
‘Yep. The only thing I wish is that I’d known it was you so I could have enjoyed it even more. Do you think we could do it again sometime?’
The idea of eating Maddy again as she bends herself over that thing, taking what I have to give her has me lightheaded. ‘This week,’ I promise. ‘But I’m fucking you next time.’
She rolls her eyes. ‘It’s about time.’
‘You are on thin ice,’ I tell her. I drop my gaze to her lush tits with their dusky, delicious nipples. ‘I have about an hour before I need to go. You know what I want to do? Kiss every inch of your body. Take my time. I’m talking everywhere. You told me to use you, didn’t you?’
Her eyes are gratifyingly wide. ‘Yes. That’s what I love.’ She wriggles underneath me.
‘I know,’ I tell her, dipping my head and pulling hard on one nipple with my lips. Fuck, she’s delicious. I roll my tongue around it like it’s a tiny, exquisite sweet.
This is what we’ve been missing. We’ve done the fast fucking, but not the slow feasting. She’s made herself fully available to me—her body, in any case—and yet I haven’t properly, thoroughly, decadently availed myself of her delights.
That changes right now.
