One Too Many Page 7

  “I saw plenty,” he replied. “I saw indeed that you were enjoying yourself, but my opinion still stands. Your benchmark isn’t objective.”

  “I’ll let you know if you’ve changed my parameters when Tuesday night is done.”

  “Please do,” he said and offered his hand for another handshake.

  I gripped hard. “One thing’s for sure. I’m flattered you think such an inexperienced little idiot is worth so much money.”

  “Inexperienced doesn’t equal idiot, and I’m confident you’ll be worth every penny.”

  I was the one to drop the handshake, managing just a flash of a smile before pulling away. “I’m going to spend time with my husband. Enjoy the rest of your day, Mr Heath.”

  “You’ll find him with his dick in his hand,” he said as I stood from my seat.

  I laughed out loud. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

  He shrugged with a smirk on his face. “Go and find him if you don’t believe me. Hurry though, or he’ll be done and you’ll be none the wiser.”

  I rolled my eyes as I walked away but he didn’t see me. His attention was fixed through the window at the sea I loved so much. He didn’t even give me another glance.

  The idea that my husband was pleasuring himself was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard, but it didn’t stop the weird little rumble in my belly. It was Thomas Heath’s unfaltering confidence, in everything. The way he stared so easily as he spoke, as though his words were absolute truth and nothing else. As though he could see right into the heart of me, of us, of everyone.

  And what would he see in mine?

  I pushed through to the kitchen and called Brett’s name, but there was no answer and no sight of him either. I poked my head around the pantry doorway, but he wasn’t in there, which left only one place remaining. The bathroom at the back past the fridges.

  I don’t know why I approached so quietly. I don’t know why I pressed my ear to the door and held my breath to listen.

  And I don’t know why my whole body chilled to the bone when I heard the familiar grunts and slick slaps of hand motions as my husband worked his dick on the other side.

  “Brett,” I said, and knocked once, loudly. “Brett, let me in.”

  I heard him stumble and curse and flush the toilet, no doubt struggling for composure before letting me in like everything was normal.

  But things were anything but normal.

  “Just a sec,” he grunted, but I knocked on the door again.

  “Let me in, Brett. Now,” I ordered with a voice strangely on edge.

  The bolt clicked on the other side and he pulled the door open with a fake smile, his face still flushed from his exertions and his zipper still flying low.

  I pushed my way inside and closed the door behind me, just him and I standing in the small space, eye to eye as the toilet gurgled and refilled behind him.

  “What were you doing?” I asked.

  His smile and shrug were fake to the core. “Taking a piss. That’s what people usually do in the bathroom, no?”

  I don’t know why I felt the tears coming. My whole world felt flipped upside down and shaken raw. Everything was topsy turvy and unbalanced.

  Scary.

  Horny.

  Fluttery and sad and guilty.

  I didn’t even know anymore.

  “Hey,” he said, landing a firm hand on my shoulder. “What is it? If you don’t want to go through with this shit, we’ll call it off. Just say the word.”

  I sniffed back the crazy hulk of emotion and shook my head. “It’s not that.”

  “What then?”

  His eyes were so warm. So familiar. But his stance wasn’t. The way his dick was still a thick ridge in his pants and his breath was still short was anything but familiar under the circumstances.

  “I heard you,” I whispered.

  “Heard what?”

  I rolled my eyes even as they filled with tears. “What’s happening to us, Brett? What’s going on here?”

  “You tell me,” he said. “Back there, the way you were looking at him. You want him, don’t you?”

  “No!” I spat. “Fuck, no!”

  “I’m not criticising,” he told me, his hand still gripping tight. “Fuck, Grace, I hate his fucking guts. Hate his fucking face. Hate everything about this fucked-up situation.”

  “So do I!” I told him, but he shook his head.

  “But you don’t. I saw it in your eyes. You want to, but you don’t.” He took a breath. “And neither do I. I walked out of there with the equal desire to smash the cunt’s teeth in and jerk one off before I jizzed in my fucking pants.”

  “I’m glad you opted for the latter,” I said, managing a weedy laugh at the absurdity of all this.

  “I don’t know what the fuck is going on,” he admitted. “But I do know one thing. We’re in it together, all the way.”

  I took a breath and nodded, relieved that he was still a constant in the chaos.

  “Fifty grand,” I whispered. “It’s really going to be fifty grand.”

  “And it’s really going to be you going through with all this shit,” he said. “But I’ll be right there with you.”

  I cast a look at the ridge at his crotch. “What were you thinking about?”

  He shrugged. “The things he said, I guess. You with your throat full of cock. Your ass open wide.”

  The words took me aback a little coming from him. I guess it was obvious, because his brows pitted a little as his eyes ate mine up.

  “You liked it too,” he told me. “The things he suggested.”

  It was my turn to shrug and fake smile. “I don’t know, Brett. I guess it intrigued me. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It can mean whatever you want it to mean,” he grunted, and his eyes darkened in a heartbeat.

  That one moment changed everything.

  His grip on my shoulder tightened and he pushed me to my knees with a force I wasn’t expecting. My breath caught as I dropped, eyes widening up at his as he glared down at me with a ferocity I didn’t know.

  “On some fucked-up wavelength somewhere the guy might be doing us some good,” he growled, and I couldn’t hold back a gasp as he tugged his cock back free.

  He was still swollen, dark and veiny and huge in front of my face.

  “I can do everything he can do,” he grunted and pressed the wet tip of his cock to my bottom lip. It was the most natural thing in the world to open wide and suck him deep.

  I slavered like a hungry little slut, losing myself in the comfort of his rough hand in my hair as he shunted himself forward.

  This wasn’t us, not even close.

  My husband didn’t manhandle me to my knees in our tiny back kitchen bathroom and fuck my face like he wanted to choke me to tears.

  But he did today.

  All because of the man who’d be doing it in two days’ time.

  I stared up at him like the girl who’d crushed on him back in high school, realising all over again how magnificent the man was that I’d pledged my life to, and realising along with it how much more of each other there was still to explore beyond the smooth channels of routine and years in bed together.

  “Be a good girl and take it,” he growled, and I shivered at his words. He tugged my cami top down until my tits spilled free, pinching a nipple between his thumb and forefinger while I spluttered around his cock.

  I didn’t know this Brett, not like this, but I liked him.

  “You’ll suck him to the fucking balls, but you’ll be thinking of me,” he barked, and I nodded my head as much as I could manage. “You’re mine, don’t you ever fucking forget it. He’s a nobody. Just one fucking night in a lifetime.”

  I loved the jealousy in his words. Loved the possessiveness with which he tugged at my hair.

  His.

  I was his.

  My fingers slipped between my legs and I murmured around his dick as my clit sparked like a needy little slut.r />
  “This was why I was hard,” he grunted from above. “Thinking of you, doing this to me.”

  He was convincing himself, not me, but he was welcome to. I hoped I was equally as committed to self-delusion.

  I feared we’d both need it, just as we both needed this, right here, right now.

  When Brett shot his cum over my tear-streaked face in long thick streams while he cursed and groaned and swore I was all fucking his it was the most raw I’d ever seen him.

  And when he hauled me to my feet and buried his face between my sopping thighs, bringing me to climax with his seed still dripping from my filthy cheeks, my screams were all for him.

  Chapter Ten

  Thomas

  Over the well-worn course of paying for sex with other men’s wives, I’d become accustomed to expecting the unexpected.

  Still, it had been a surprise to see the glowing flare of excitement behind Brett’s disgusted eyes as he’d glared at me across the breakfast table.

  I didn’t expect any less of the rage from him. The simmering gutful of hatred clearly straining to unleash across the space between us was as satisfying as I’d ever dreamed it would be. I didn’t even expect any less of the nervous but heady anticipation fluttering across from Grace and her big wide eyes, either. I mean, I wouldn’t. Monogamous and committed or not, the prospect of a well-groomed stranger offering you a vast sum of money to take his dick was enough to make even the most frigid of women wet their knickers.

  No. Nothing much surprised me, not these days. But seeing Brett storm away from the table, angled in a pitiful effort to hide the tent in his pants as he struggled with his demons, was enough to bring a smile to my face.

  I do enjoy unexpected turns in the road.

  I remembered with delight Grace’s utter bemusement at my words.

  Hurry though, or he’ll be done and you’ll be none the wiser.

  I wondered if she’d scurried along quickly enough to have found him with his fist clenched tight around his dick, or if he’d managed to evade her scrutiny a little better than he’d evaded mine.

  Maybe he was pounding that pretty little pussy deep as I drank up the rest of my average coffee and vacated my table. The question would be – if either of them were truly honest with themselves – were they thinking purely about the animalistic desire to consume one another amidst the chaos, or were they thinking about the filth to come.

  I knew where my money would be.

  I grabbed my thick woollen overcoat from my room upstairs and ventured out along the front for a closer look at nature’s beautiful canvas. The tide had shifted, pulling back in flat, shallow sweeps of magnificence. It seemed a good time to venture down the sandy stone steps and onto the beach itself, so I did. I took off my brogues and winter socks in favour of sinking my bare toes into the sand. It was dusty at first, and then wet, hard under my feet even as the waterlogged ground squelched around my toes. I breathed in deep and long, enjoying the gusts of wind around my ears as my lungs drank in the tranquillity of the wide open space.

  I kept walking, slowly, my eyes up ahead to the rocky crags and the sloping incline back up to civilisation. I had no urge to venture amongst humanity, not today, so I kept well away, daring to skirt the edges of the waves and caring little for how they swallowed up my trouser cuffs and left my skin raw and cold underneath.

  I’d climbed an outcrop of rock amongst the ebbing tide before those text messages from the previous evening came back into my consciousness. I picked at some barnacles on the rock face and considered denying her an answer entirely, but the sad little boy inside scratched at my poor dead heart until it jolted into some semblance of emotion.

  It was a shiver of regret. Barely more than a guilty nip in an ocean of oblivion. I pulled my phone from my inside pocket and the text was still there, still glaring, taunting the weakness inside me and begging for more.

  Please, Tom. Hold onto hope. You’re nothing without it. Walk away.

  My response was curt and cold, just as it should be.

  Hope is dead. Tuesday night she’ll be mine. Signed, sealed. And truly delivered.

  A particularly large wave crashed up around me, fighting the death throes of its inevitable retreat. Its foam misted my glasses as I smiled at the horizon.

  Even nature fights its course, just as people do. Struggling to cling onto ground that’s no longer theirs as it pulls from their grip. They could spit and foam and snarl, like the waves around the rocks this morning. They could burst forth in one final moment of rage and madness, marking the scene with one final spark before burnout, but it was always the same.

  The tide would wane and retreat, and the bond between sand and sea would sever until the water was just a glint in the distance and the beach was shivering naked out of reach.

  Brett and Grace would fall, just as the others before them. Their bond of a lifetime severed with a blade so sharp and practised they’d never even feel it coming.

  I ignored the vibration of the new message until the waves really had given up their bid to hold onto the outcrop. There was only the stillness of rock pools around me as I pressed the button to call up the text.

  You’re better than this.

  It made me laugh out loud in the stillness.

  She was wrong.

  My distant Polly’s beautiful notions of the humanity inside me were sweet in their idiocy, coloured by her foolish optimism that love was anything more than the pitiful illusion of human closeness amongst the chaos.

  Love was selfish. Fragile. Temporary.

  Grace and Brett would find that out for themselves soon enough, and so would the sweet girl back home when I told her of the final jewel in my crown of spite.

  I scrolled through my online purchases to distract myself, checking again the priority delivery dates. Everything would be in place by Tuesday. Packages of toys and tools to turn pretty Grace into a whimpering little slut as I took her body to places she’d never known.

  I found myself pondering if Brett’s filthy fascination would extend to a hard on while he watched his wife take my cock all night long.

  One guy some months back had taken his dick out halfway through and attempted to join in proceedings. He’d taken the rebuttal like a slap in the face, flailing like a clumsy teenager in his objections until I’d threatened to halve their payment.

  I really couldn’t imagine a bull like Brett doing the same. He’d keep it under wraps, of that I was certain.

  My phone vibrated again as I considered lighting up a cigar for the walk back. The words flashed at the top of the screen before I had the chance to ignore them.

  Please, Tom, talk to me. Don’t shut me out.

  How I wished I had something to say.

  I missed the naive kindness in her voice, untainted by years of bitter inferiority. I missed her sweet laugh as she told me about her day, the same old shit from the same old customers at the bakery she’d been working at for ten years straight. She amazed me with her ability to find reward in the same static routine on loop. Never tiring, never growing jaded. Always seeing the best in everything and everyone around her.

  Leaving her alone for pastures new had been the greatest decision I’d ever made. For her, not for me.

  I may have been selfish, but I’d never scraped the depths enough to take her down with me. I thought too much of her for that.

  It was just a shame she’d never know, and more of a shame that I’d never feel that kind smile of hers against my lips.

  My cigar was a struggle to light but its deep plumes were like satin in my throat. I dropped back to the wet sand with feet so cold they were burning. The familiarity of the discomfort was a welcome reminder of all that had been, and all that would be.

  I was smiling all the way back across the beach.

  Soon it would be done, and finally, for once in my life, that little boy in me would find his peace. Even if just for a triumphant heartbeat.

  Chapter Eleven

  Brett


  We busied ourselves that afternoon, smiles fake but bright as we went about our everyday business, checking out the bulk of our handful of residents and pretending as best we could that Thomas Heath didn’t exist. I scrubbed the kitchen after we’d waved them off, while Grace took stock of our supplies. You’d never know there was anything afoot from the outside when I kissed her cheek and she disappeared upstairs to sort out the bedrooms for tomorrow morning.

  It was while I was changing kegs in the cellar that I opted to do a bit of research on the guy promising us fifty grand. My fingers were shaking as I scrolled through the internet search, my pride smarting at the full extent of this guy’s successes in the city.

  He was loaded. Really fucking loaded. He had directorships listed in so many companies I lost count. Profiles listed on Britain’s most wealthy sites with grainy pictures of him grinning that smug smile of his like he was lord of fucking everything.

  He was one of those weird virtual currency winners, investing early and cashing out with what one site estimated was over fifty million a year or so back.

  Fifty fucking million.

  No wonder he could cough up 50k for a night with Grace. He could fuck her every night for a month and not even break a sweat.

  It was a strange feeling, being up against a guy like that. All smirk and cockiness and a bloated bank balance. I wished he was a balding, fat guy in his sixties with inch thick glasses, not the suave geek chic things he wore like some kind of genius professor.

  Genius professor with a six pack and perfect teeth.

  I wished I could take those off him with my fist at least.

  I’d never suffered with confidence. I wasn’t the kind of guy who got intimidated by other men, or people in general. I’d been born lucky on that front, doing just fine and dandy through those formative school years that fucked some kids up so bad they went into adult life with more issues than sense. I’d been proud of my career, proud of my marriage, and proud of buying this place at thirty-two.

  So why did I feel like such a loser against this prick who’d showed up in our bar?