One Too Many Read online

  A set of cuffs. Not the sweet ones from the cute sex shops with leopard print fur and safety catches. These were the real deal, stainless steel and glinting with menace even in their packaging.

  He tore into a third parcel. I watched mute as he revealed a set of leather paddles. One of them had holes cut out in a pattern like a cheese grater.

  “Less air resistance,” he explained like I’d asked. “Should give your pretty ass quite a thwack.”

  “I’ll be a wimp,” I blustered. “There’s no way I’ll–”

  “We’ll see,” he interrupted. “We’ll see on everything.”

  I picked up another box without being encouraged. This one was big and tearing into it revealed a huge waterproof sheet with loops to fit it over a mattress.

  “Worried about wetting the bed?” I asked and wished I hadn’t.

  “Not worried,” he said. “Maybe you should be though.”

  I managed a bitter laugh. “I’m not wetting the bed, Mr Heath. I haven’t wet the bed since I was a toddler.”

  “You’re mine for nine hours straight. You’ll be doing whatever I tell you to do.”

  It was enough. I got to my feet and brushed my prickly arms down as though I could brush his filth right the way off me.

  “Open the rest yourself,” I said. “I’m done with this.”

  “You wish you were.” He wasn’t smirking this time, and that made it worse somehow. His face was entirely serious. “Except you don’t wish you were, pretty Mrs Foster. You’re lying to yourself, even now. Pretending you want out of here when all you’ll be thinking about in bed tonight is all the ways I’ll be using these things on your tight little body.”

  I cleared a couple of paces before I dared to cough up a comeback.

  “You’re deluded,” I told him. “You think this is about you.”

  His stare was hard. “I know it’s about me. Long after the money is in your account, it’ll still be about me.”

  I forced another laugh. This time it sounded nasty. Cold enough to be evil.

  “Goodnight, Mr Heath,” I told him, shooting only the shortest glance back over my shoulder before I escaped to the safety of the corridor.

  It wasn’t short enough to miss the tent under the bath sheet, or the size of it.

  I made it around the corner and down one flight of stairs before I came to a standstill and pressed myself back against the wall.

  I needed a moment. Just one long moment to compose myself before heading back down to my husband.

  But I didn’t.

  I needed more than that.

  I pulled the skeleton key from my back pocket and let myself into the nearest vacant bedroom.

  And I hated every second it took to rub myself to a frantic orgasm in the crisp white bedding.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Brett

  I woke up with a start on the big day. It was well before the alarm, the sky still dark outside. Grace was snuggled into my side, her breaths steady against my shoulder as she adjusted herself to my movement.

  Dread. That’s all I felt. The kind of sickness you feel as a kid when you’ve got a dentist appointment looming and know they’re going to use the drill on you.

  Only worse.

  Ten times worse.

  A hundred times fucking worse.

  I told myself I had a hard on because that shit is hardwired first thing, regardless of the circumstances. Regardless of the fact Grace had wanted my dick until the early hours, craving more, more and more on top, even when she was flopping limp from exertion with sweat glistening on her forehead.

  I stayed put under the covers, trying to keep myself still so I didn’t wake her, staring up at the ceiling and wondering just what the fuck that sonofabitch really had planned for her. Wondering if I’d be able to watch without losing my shit halfway through and saying balls to the wall to the whole sorry lot of it. Wondering if I’d shame myself beyond all reason by getting another hard on while he was shunting his way inside the pussy I’d called mine since before she’d even let me have it.

  I was still staring up at the ceiling when the alarm finally did go off and my beautiful wife stirred at my side. She stretched, yawning wide before it dawned on her too, just as it had me.

  Her eyes found mine in the half light and they were petrified.

  “Shit,” she whispered. “It’s really today.”

  “Only if you want it to be,” I said for the millionth time. “We can say no.”

  “And say goodbye to our dreams for this place along with it.”

  She rolled away from me and gulped a load of water from the glass on her bedside table. I admired the slope of her naked back, wondering if I should use the opportunity to distract her once more before getting up.

  She made the decision for me, swinging her legs from under the covers and rising in a beat. She grabbed her dressing gown from the hook behind the door and stepped up to the window, pulling back the curtains to stare at the morning sea.

  “We have to do this,” she said. “I love this place too much to leave.”

  “And I love you too much to see you do anything you don’t want to.”

  She didn’t answer, and there was that gut curl again. The one that told me she wanted this in the same sordid way I wanted to see her do it. That vile ghost of perversion baying down deep.

  “He’d better transfer half the cash this morning, or I’m ruling game over,” I told her and she nodded.

  “We should cut down on the to-pay list, spend some of it before I crap myself and shy away from his door later.”

  My frown felt etched into my skin and her eyes widened as she caught sight of it.

  “That was supposed to be a joke,” she said, but she wasn’t laughing.

  I showered quickly, then brushed my teeth and watched her through the steamed glass as she took one after me. I couldn’t believe I’d be sharing her, the woman who’d only ever known my touch.

  Maybe it was the biggest mistake of my life. Maybe he would be better than me.

  Maybe she’d like him more.

  I was grimacing at my own stupid paranoia when I swilled my mouth out. She wrapped a towel around her head as she stepped out. I watched her in the mirror as she pressed herself up behind me and wrapped her arm around my waist.

  “What are you scowling at?”

  “I’m being paranoid. It’s ridiculous.”

  “Paranoid about the guy upstairs? Yeah, it is ridiculous,” she assured me.

  “If he does anything amazing you’ll have to teach me the tricks. Anything he can do and all that.”

  Her smile was real and full of love. “You know plenty of tricks already.”

  I made sure I was dressed well, even for the kitchen. I wanted to feel as much of a man as another guy fucking your wife for cash allows you to feel.

  Fine jeans and a decent black shirt would do the job.

  Grace took her time in front of her wardrobe, clearly weighing up her own clothes choices.

  “What do you think he’ll want me to wear later?” she asked and I shrugged it off as barely worth a thought.

  “You’ll be wearing whatever you want to wear, fuck what he thinks about it.”

  She pulled out a tight purple blouse with pretty white spots on it. “I guess he’s interested in me out of clothes, not in them.”

  I took her hand before we headed through to the dining room, being sure to keep her close as we waited for the asshole to show his face.

  He was earlier today, suited and booted as per usual with a broadsheet paper on his lap before nine a.m.

  I gave him a nod and headed through to the kitchen as Grace went to take his order, wondering if I should try to engage him a little, man to man, on the run up to the seedy spectacle later. He wanted a full English, again. Eggs not overdone, again.

  I cooked it up quickly and peered out through the doorway as Grace ferried it over to him. The way he looked at her was ravenous, and it wasn’t for bacon.

  T
hat’s about when I figured the cash transfer was due, breakfast in peace be fucked for him.

  I took a seat opposite as he folded up his newspaper and picked up his cutlery, and if he was surprised he didn’t show it, cutting up his mushrooms like it was any other weekday morning.

  “You want the money,” he said, and I hated how the guy seemed to know all this stuff. He pulled his phone from his pocket and pressed his thumb to the fingerprint thing. “I’ll need your details.”

  I recited them by heart, the wind taken out of my sails a bit to find him so amicable.

  “Done,” he said, just like that, and sure enough there was twenty-five grand sitting in our account when I logged into mobile banking from my own handset.

  “Thanks,” I grunted, still struggling to believe the figures in front of me were really real and there for the taking.

  “The pleasure will be all mine,” he said. “Now fuck off and leave me to my breakfast.”

  Fucking off away from the prick was my fucking pleasure.

  Making it through the day was a whole lot easier with a whole load of cash to spend, too.

  Grace spent most of the afternoon on the phone paying bills, and I spent it sifting through paperwork.

  It was when she called her sister to transfer back the couple of grand we’d borrowed that I overheard her asking a question out of the blue.

  “Do you still speak to Polly Piper?”

  My ears pricked up at the name. I shook my head across the table at her, but she waved me aside with a scowl.

  “From school, yeah. She’s friends with a guy called Thomas Heath, have you ever heard of him?”

  The sag of her shoulders told me she was onto a dead end.

  “No, definitely not Thomas Browning. Thomas Heath. Tall, fit, super gorgeous, from London. Rich.”

  I raised an eyebrow as she said her goodbyes and hung up.

  “She hadn’t heard of him, then?” I prompted.

  “No, never. Polly Piper was friends with a kid called Thomas at school, but it wasn’t that one. She didn’t think Polly had ever even been to London, said she’s been glued to the bakery since forever.”

  “I guess it will be one of life’s mysteries then,” I commiserated, then wished I’d picked my words better. Grace hates an unsolved mystery.

  “When we head back to visit maybe I’ll call in for an apple turnover, see what I can get out of her.”

  Over my dead fucking body. Thomas Heath would be the last thing on her mind by then.

  I only just managed to bite my tongue, and had to bite it again when he joined us in the bar at just before seven.

  I didn’t even get the chance to ask him what he was drinking before he held a hand up and placed a coat hanger draped in black satin across the bar top. His words were all for Grace.

  “For you, later. Please wear this,” he told her. “I’ll be back for a quick drink before time.”

  I made to tear into the assortment before he was even out through the door, but Grace’s hand slapped on mine before I’d even taken a look.

  “No,” she said. “Let me see first. I might be embarrassed.”

  My grunt was loud and more than a little obnoxious. “We can be embarrassed together, open it up.”

  But she wouldn’t.

  Her eyes were fierce, burning with a whole pit of nerves as she snatched the hanger from my reach.

  I guess it was the first sign of the troubles in the water.

  I should have heeded the warning.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Grace

  I guess that’s when it hit me, absolutely for real.

  The twenty-five grand landing in our account in concrete figures on Brett’s mobile banking app was cold, hard reality, as were the voices of our creditors when I called and paid off our outstanding balances. But this. This bundle of whatever outfit Thomas Heath had conjured up for me to wear for him was another level of oh fuck, this is really happening altogether.

  My cheeks were scalding under my foundation, even before he’d draped it on the bar top and left me staring dumb as he retreated. Brett’s curiosity was almost childlike in his enthusiasm to check out what was waiting within the satin shroud, and that’s the first time my nerves really shot away beyond all control.

  My slap to his outstretched hand was hard and fast, his recoil one of shock, eyes wide as they met mine and found my defensiveness burning off the scale.

  “No,” I snapped. “Let me see first. I might be embarrassed.”

  His grunt had a sulky quality that set my hackles up even higher. “We can be embarrassed together. Open it up.”

  But no.

  No way in hell.

  I scooped the bundle up in my arms before he could protest any further, crushing the fabric tight to my side as I backed up to a safe distance.

  “I mean it,” I told him. “I need to do this on my own.”

  Need.

  I hated how desperate the word sounded.

  He didn’t understand, and I didn’t blame him. He couldn’t disguise the hurt as it flashed across his face, even if he followed it up straight after with a shrug. I knew I was being a bitch, but I couldn’t stop. Barely able to function enough to breathe and keep my shit together, let alone apologise.

  “Please yourself,” he offered. “If you don’t like it, don’t wear it.”

  My heart was in my throat, so all I did was nod, my lips pressed tight together in what must have looked like a mean little line.

  I wanted to say I was sorry. That I was just scared. For me, for us. For this night of craziness and what it would mean tomorrow and the day after, and all the days from then on.

  For the humiliation of wearing something picked out by a stranger with filthy designs on my body, despite never actually seeing it in the flesh. For the potential horror of having to tell him it didn’t fit. That my thighs were too flabby, or my tits weren’t big enough, or I couldn’t get the buttons done up at the waist.

  For seeing myself in the mirror and feeling like a has-been rack of mutton trying to dress up like a fifty-grand lamb.

  I wanted to tell Brett I loved him. That I was scared of him seeing me like this, whatever like this might be. That I didn’t want him to keep this vision of me for the rest of our married life, remembering how I trussed myself up in some other guy’s seedy clothes choice and performed like a circus clown with my holes spread wide.

  “Go have a look,” Brett said, and I realised I was hovering there like an iron scarecrow, the muscles in my arms straining tight at my sides, doing nothing useful and wanting nothing more than to wrap around my husband’s big safe shoulders and tell him this was a mistake.

  But no.

  It wasn’t a mistake.

  Paying the creditors hadn’t been a mistake, nor had the joyous surprise in my sister’s voice when I’d called to pay her back the monies owed.

  Looking out of the window at our treasured beach this morning and knowing I was safeguarding a thousand more mornings of doing the same, that wasn’t a mistake either.

  I managed a nod and the faintest of smiles.

  My voice was raspy when it came out. “I’ll be back soon.”

  I turned away before he could reply, forcing my legs to carry me out the back through the kitchen and on to the safety of our own private bathroom.

  I wriggled the bolt closed behind me and it grumbled out a rusty screech I’d never heard, having never used the thing in all the time we’d been here. I sat on the toilet lid, trying to calm my erratic breathing as I braced myself to confront the first fantasy of the man upstairs.

  I was picturing leather. Latex. Something I’d need a sack full of talcum powder and a vat full of baby oil to get into, if it was even possible.

  Maybe he’d dress me up as one of those tacky farmyard animals after all. Maybe I’d be wearing a horsey harness all ripe for the ponytail butt plug up my ass later. Maybe I’d be one of those naughty nurses, or a thirty-year-old schoolgirl, or even worse.

>   An adult baby in a frilly pair of panties.

  Maybe he’d make me call him stupid names on my knees, trussed up like some stupid idiot with my muffin top sagging over ridiculously tight latex panties. Daddy, or Master, or some other pompous title that would make me cringe forever and never be able to meet my own eyes in the mirror without bursting with shame.

  I could have cried, so nervous that my hands were shaking at the thought of looking inside the satin and facing the inevitable.

  I knew it was ridiculous. An outfit was the least of my concerns under the circumstances. It just felt so… invasive. So… humiliating.

  And more than that.

  Even under all the nerves and the raspy breath and the burning cheeks, there was something more.

  My damn thighs were quaking, edgy enough to tremble along with the flutter of what was between them. I’d been clammy all day, in places I shouldn’t be. Places I didn’t want to be.

  I had no idea that it was possible to be so utterly petrified and turned on at the same time.

  I was nauseous as I dared to hitch the black satin cover up and off the hanger, but what greeted me was enough to take my breath in one gulp.

  It was beautiful.

  Not leather or latex or farmyard fancy dress.

  Black lace and ribbon, beautifully stitched and presented on the hanger. The cups of the bodice were low, no doubt cut off under the nipple, but the fabric was quality and the shape would be flattering, even if my curves weren’t as toned as they would have been a decade ago.

  The panties were a thong with satin tie ribbons at the hips and a slit in the gusset. I wondered if he really was planning to slam his dick inside me with those pretty knickers still in position. I almost hoped so, and this time I didn’t fight it, because what was the point?

  I liked it, or didn’t. Wanted to run upstairs into Thomas Heath’s dirty hands and out the front door and far away all at the same time. It would be heaven, or hell, or both. My pussy clenched at the thought, even as my belly churned with the horror.

  I turned my attention back to the outfit, taking a breath and forcing myself to focus.