7 Years Bad Sex (3 page)

‘I’m so sorry,’ he muttered feebly.

‘It’s not your fault,’ Casey assured him with a weak smile. He felt terrible.

‘How can you say it’s not my fault?’ he responded, gesturing vaguely at his loin region. ‘I’m the one who vanished.’

‘My killer yawn,’ Casey replied, somewhat enigmatically. ‘It’s not
your
fault.’

Alex shook his head and looked his wife in the eye. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’ Then he noticed the tears glistening on her cheeks, and his heart broke. He dabbed at the droplets with his thumb, worried that Casey would bat his hand away, but she smiled.

‘I think it’s maybe the sea air. Or the alcohol. Or all the excitement,’ she offered.

Alex pondered this for a moment. She might have a point there. He had drunk rather a lot, he supposed. Although, they had made love after a lot more alcohol before.

‘I couldn’t help it,’ Casey continued. ‘This yawn, it simply came over me. It was nothing to do with you, I swear. I promise.’

Alex gulped. Evidently Casey was making excuses for him. And now she was also making advances on him, eager to show her love, her desire. She stroked all the right places and cupped him in her hand
just so
. But his body didn’t respond at all. There was nothing.

For the first time in his entire adult life, Alex was paralysed with confusion. He couldn’t let Casey down, not this night. But the more he willed his body to oblige, the less turned-on he felt. Casey hadn’t quite cottoned on to the situation yet.

‘What’s the matter, big boy?’ she teased, working her fingers around him. ‘Are you playing hard to get?’

‘Casey.’ Alex’s voice emerged rather more gruff than he had intended. He swallowed and coughed to clear his throat. ‘Casey, stop.’

He had to get her to abandon her efforts, well intentioned though they were, before he died of humiliation.
But how did you tell your wife that you couldn’t perform on your wedding night?

Casey’s hand stopped mid-massage and remained clamped around the source of his shame for a few seconds. Her eyes searched his, and he tried to smile as they looked at each other. Mercifully, he felt the pressure on his groin ease as Casey peeled her fingers off, and he took a deep breath.

‘Alex?’ There was a tremor in Casey’s voice, and he forced himself to smile widely. ‘Alex, what’s up?’

‘I think it’s more a question of what’s not up,’ he tried to joke.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I really don’t know.’ Alex shrugged.
How could he begin to express how he felt?
He sucked at that kind of stuff, except when he was writing songs. He sighed. ‘I don’t know. One minute, I’m hot like never before, and the next, I can’t get it in. I have absolutely no idea what happened.’

‘Is it because I yawned?’

‘No, it’s not because you yawned,’ Alex snapped.
What the heck was she going on about?
Then he softened his voice, horrified at the hurt in Casey’s face.

‘So sorry, sweetie, that was uncalled for. I’m not quite sure what’s going on. I feel… deficient, somehow. I simply… there’s nothing. I can’t… I don’t know… It’s—’ He paused.

‘You can’t get it up again?’ Casey supplied on his behalf.

Alex sighed once more. ‘That would be it.’

For a moment, they lay side by side in silence. Alex was dizzy and somewhat nauseous. His world, his manliness, had been rocked to the core. Unbidden memories sailed through his head of all the times he had poked fun at the advertisements relating to ‘erectile dysfunction’, having felt confident that such an affliction would never concern him. And yet here he was, very much dysfunctional in the erectile department.

Next to him, Casey yawned again, clapping her hand to her mouth. ‘So sorry. I don’t know what’s come over me.’

‘It’s only a yawn,’ Alex replied.

‘It’s not just a yawn,’ Casey confessed. ‘I’m all… I’m all dried up. And tired. Like all I want to do is sleep. One minute, we were going for it, and the next, I’m yawning and totally not turned on anymore. Like someone threw a switch.’

Alex sat up a little, excited by the metaphor. ‘That’s exactly what it’s like, like someone has thrown a switch. But I’ll be damned if I can un-switch it.’

Casey sat up, too. ‘D’you know,’ she mumbled through another yawn. ‘It’s not a big deal. We’ve had a long day, we’ve been in the fresh air all day, and we’ve drunk a lot. We’re probably knackered out.’

‘You think?’ Alex was ready to grab onto this lifeline of an explanation and hold on tight. ‘You think that’s really all it is?’

‘Of course I do.’ Casey laughed, obviously failing to comprehend the seriousness of his self-doubt. ‘We’ve made love loads of times. Our bodies sing to each other. There’s no reason why we should suddenly be all frigid with each other. It must be tiredness.’ She was warming to her theme, and a certain sparkle had returned to her eyes.

‘I bet you,’ she said, ‘I bet you if we looked up “sex on the wedding night”, we’d find all sorts of stuff about how couples like us don’t do it.’

‘Do you reckon?’

‘Shall we have a look?’

Alex nodded. Humiliating though it was to end his wedding night examining consummation statistics, perhaps there was some comfort in it. And then he would be able to sleep, and tomorrow would be another day.

Casey had already hopped out of bed and retrieved her tablet. She fired up the search engine and sat back next to him, showing him the results page. Agog, they stared as the screen filled with articles about sex on the wedding night—or lack thereof.

‘Look at that one,’ Casey prompted and pointed to a link.

‘“More than one in four couples don’t have sex on their wedding night because they’re too tired or too drunk or both”,’ Alex read out loud. He grinned. ‘Well, I’m both tired and drunk, but I didn’t think I wouldn’t be able to… you know. Love you.’

‘But your body may think otherwise,’ Casey persisted. ‘Read that one.’

Alex waited for the link to materialise. ‘Wow,’ he exclaimed. ‘This is shocking. I had no idea. More than half of couples in this survey don’t make love on their wedding night, and nearly a fifth wait
three days
?’ He frowned. ‘I’m not waiting three days!’

Casey gave a soft laugh. ‘Nobody’s asking you to. But what say we stop freaking out and call it a night? We’re obviously quite normal.’

‘I hate being normal,’ Alex grumbled.

Casey poked him in the ribs. ‘You know what I mean. Normal is good, in this context. Stop fretting.’

‘But it’s so embarrassing!’

Casey rolled her eyes at him when he said that. No doubt she would give him a little lecture now.

‘Why is it embarrassing?’ she challenged. ‘To whom? I’m not embarrassed. You shouldn’t be embarrassed. And anyway, who’s to know? It’s not like you have to tweet about it.’ She grinned. ‘You know what they say: “What goes on in the bridal suite stays in the bridal suite”.’

At this, Alex burst out laughing. Only Casey could twist an old rock star adage into something to break the tension in this situation.

‘I like that,’ he said when he could speak again. And it was true, he felt a little better, a little less panicked, about his inability to live up to expectations. ‘What do we do now?’

Casey shrugged. ‘We can either go to sleep, or we can go outside and watch the sunrise. What do you want to do?’

Alex chewed his lower lip.
What did he want to do?
Truth be told, he would love to sleep. But on the other hand, he had already let his bride down in one critical respect, no matter how much the statistics reassured him that it was quite normal.
What would Casey want to do now? What should he say so he wouldn’t disappoint her further?

‘Tell you what,’ Casey cut into his musings. ‘Let’s open the porthole, turn off the lights, and let ourselves be rocked to sleep by the waves. And tomorrow is a new day.’

Alex softly shook his head. It never ceased to amaze him how Casey could read him like an open book.

‘You are one wonderful woman, Mrs Morgan,’ he whispered. ‘And I love you so much.’

‘I love you too, Alex.’

Chapter Two:

 

A ‘Not So Honey’moon

 

~Casey~

 

The cabin was filled with air, light, and the sound of waves lapping against the hull of the yacht. Casey opened her eyes and stretched luxuriously. She smiled widely as she recalled the previous day. She was married. They were on their honeymoon! Life was awesome.

Her smile widened as she took in the view. From her position in the bed, all she could see were oak-panelled walls, white curtains, and the pure azure of the sky stretching above the Mediterranean Sea.
What a perfect way to wake up.

She stretched some more and reached out a hand to find Alex next to her. He was still asleep, breathing deeply and contentedly—or so it seemed to Casey—and she half turned to drink in the presence of her husband. His dark curly hair was tousled with sleep, and a few locks fell across his forehead and over his closed eyes. He hadn’t bothered to put on pyjamas, allowing Casey to admire his smooth, broad chest. The nobbles of his clavicles jutted out prominently, and Casey swooned. She loved that hint of vulnerability in a big, strong, powerful bloke. One of Alex’s arms was flung back onto the pillow as if to show off the intricate band of tattoo that graced his biceps, and Casey resisted the temptation to touch it. She longed for his arms around her body.
Perhaps it was time to finish off what they had left undone last night?

Muffled sounds from above deck suggested that the crew were up and working. It made sense, Casey mused. The yacht was evidently in motion, and they were probably already on their way to Spain. Barcelona was their next destination, and Casey was looking forward to seeing the Font Màgica and Park Güell. But that would be later that day, or even the next day. They had no fixed schedule, no timetable, and they were taking the stops on their bespoke honeymoon cruise as their mood and the weather moved them. So there was plenty of time for some nuptial nookie.

She jiggled her body closer to Alex until her nose nearly touched his.

‘Alex?’

An unintelligible grunt rewarded her opening gambit, and she tried again.

‘
Mr
Morgan, are you awake?’

Alex peeled open one eye. ‘Not quite.’

‘Can you make yourself awake?’

‘Do I have to?’

Casey chuckled. Her newly-baked husband was clearly hung over. ‘We have some unfinished business, remember?’

Alex opened his other eye. A lazy smile spread across his face.

‘I remember. Good morning, Mrs Morgan.’ He reached up and pulled her head to his. His lips pursed in readiness for a kiss, but Casey gave an inadvertent recoil.

Alex raised his eyebrows. ‘What’s wrong?’

Casey felt herself blushing and stalling for time. All her amorous inclination had been killed stone-dead with a single whiff of Alex’s morning mouth, but there really was no polite way of saying this to him.

‘I need a pee.’

‘You need a pee?’

‘And I want to brush my teeth.’ Casey found herself gabbling in hopes that Alex would take the hint. ‘I probably reek. All that garlic of yesterday, you know?’

She looked into Alex’s eyes intently, trying to communicate with him.
You reek, darling. It’s all that garlic of yesterday, you know?

Alex laughed. ‘You do have a touch of bad breath. Go on, I’ll wait for you here.’

What did he mean,
she
had bad breath? He had
no
idea. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t at all good.

Casey reluctantly rose from the bed. ‘What about you? Don’t you want to…?’ She made a tooth-brushing motion with her hand.

Alex grinned and ran his tongue over his teeth. ‘Nah. I’m all right.’

Damn it.
Men.
Why couldn’t they take a hint?

‘Okay. I’ll quickly…’ Casey pointed at the bathroom, then made a dash for it. Her mind was working furiously.
How was a wife supposed to handle this delicate situation?
There was
no
way she could kiss him unless he brushed his teeth. It wasn’t that she was overly obsessed with oral hygiene. They had had many a morning love-in before. It was simply that on this particular morning, Alex really, seriously, and honest-to-God
honked
. In a big way.

Casey swallowed hard while she squeezed extra toothpaste on her toothbrush. She paced up and down in the compact luxury bathroom, observing herself in the mirror as her mouth was frothing. Behind her, the shower beckoned invitingly. With a start, Casey realised that that was it!
The solution, the answer, the remedy!

She finished brushing her teeth and started running the shower. Before she stepped in, she opened the bathroom door and called to Alex.

‘Oh lover boy! Come slather me in lather!’

This was an old joke of theirs going back to the very first time they had coupled after a gig. It had been in a dingy backstage shower room with peeling paint and tiles that refused to stick to the walls. They had covered each other in a lather of shower gel until their bodies had been too slippery to hold, and yet somehow they had managed to go all the way—with cataclysmic effects. Casey’s loins danced eagerly at the memory. Yes, this was the way forward.

She stepped into the shower and stood under the steaming hot water, waiting for Alex to appear. At last, there he was!

He sauntered into the bathroom looking like a Roman god, all dark broody looks—and with a vital part of his anatomy very much standing to attention. Casey whistled, and Alex bowed.

‘Morning glory,’ he laughed. ‘Let me get rid of that, and then I’ll see to you, madam.’

Casey grinned. ‘I do like it when you talk rough.’

After turning to face the shower jets to discreetly give Alex some privacy, Casey gave a start as a draft of cold air caressed her skin when he entered the stall. Immediately, his arms snaked around her waist from behind, and he cupped her breasts in his hands. She could feel his arousal pressing into her buttocks, and she shuddered in excitement.
We’re back in business.

Alex grabbed some shower gel off the shelf and started slathering her body, working the lotion into her skin with delicious circular motions, and Casey let out little moans of pleasure. Yet curiously, the more he rubbed, the less excited she became. In fact, the touch of his hands was becoming downright irritating, and Casey was confused.

She wriggled her soapy body out of his grasp to face him and snuggled her head against his neck. Maybe if he focused on her back for a while, things would stop being strange. Obligingly, he started stroking her rear, but the movement was perfunctory, almost robotic, as if Alex, too, had lost interest. Now that she thought of it, she realised that his hardness had subsided again.

Casey drew back and searched Alex’s face for a clue of what he was feeling. His eyes were half closed, but his face mirrored her own confusion and something else… a hint of blind panic. Their in-shower, soap-extravaganza routine had never failed before. As an isolated event, she might have discounted this as a fluke. But on the heels of last night’s missed consummation, she couldn’t help but feel disconcerted.
Had they lost the knack?

A little voice piped up in her head.
Don’t make a big deal out of it. Simply get on with it and get out. Pretend nothing’s happened. Or rather, pretend nothing’s
not
happened.

‘Great,’ Casey mentally talked to herself. ‘Now I’m hearing voices, too. Maybe I’m going mad.’

But she recognised the wisdom of what her inner voice had suggested. She fixed a smile on her face and kissed Alex smartly, if briefly, on the mouth.

‘Do you know what?’ she chirped brightly, quite possibly a touch too brightly. ‘I’m starving. Shall we have some breakfast?’

 

~Alex~

 

Awkward. Awkward-awkward-awkward.

Alex gulped. He was having breakfast with Casey at a beautifully laid table on the upper deck, and all he could see was sex. Vaguely he wondered whether the crew were having a laugh at his expense, but that would involve them
knowing
, and the implications of that were far too disturbing to contemplate. Most likely the suggestive arrangements were in honour of their honeymoon, their
lune de miel
. The thoughtful crew on the yacht were French, after all, and everyone knew that the French took this honeymooning business very seriously indeed.

Nonetheless, after everything that had failed to happen between him and Casey so far, he found the sight of the banana rising up proudly between two apples in the fruit bowl faintly disturbing. Ditto for the oranges, which were arranged in pairs
just so
with their protruding little stalks. He didn’t even want to acknowledge what the melon slices wrapped in Parma ham suggested to him, nor did he understand what this food was doing on the breakfast menu, but there it was.

He sipped his hot strong black coffee and nearly choked when it scalded his tongue. Opposite him, Casey was tucking heartily into a croissant slathered with butter and honey—yes, slathered, there was
that
word again!—completely oblivious to his inner turmoil.

It’s a temporary blip
, he assured himself.
It’s got to be
. Because, as it happened, he could feel himself growing excited right there and then, so there was obviously nothing wrong with his equipment. Briefly, he toyed with the idea of seducing Casey on the deck, in full view of the crew should they care to watch, but he dismissed the notion. Two failed unions in less than twenty-four hours were already enough for anyone to bear. He would ensure that next time was perfect, but he needed some space to work out how he would engineer that perfection. Meanwhile, he resolved to put on his cheeriest face lest Casey should pick up on his worry. After all, they had a honeymoon cruise to enjoy.

As though reading his mind, Casey flashed him one of those dazzling smiles of hers, and his heart lifted. She loved him, and everything would be all right.

‘I love you,’ Casey said right on cue. ‘Do you know how gorgeous you are?’

‘I love you too. Another croissant?’

‘Ooh, aren’t you naughty?’ Casey’s hand was poised but wavered. ‘I shouldn’t really. But heck, only for today.’ She accepted the pastry and smothered it in honey.

‘Mmmmh mmmmh mmmm, delicious,’ she mumbled through the crumbs.

Alex chose a mini brioche and poured more coffee.

‘What’s the plan for today?’

Casey chewed and swallowed before she could answer. ‘Total relaxation,’ she offered. ‘I think we’re due in Barcelona tonight, or maybe tomorrow morning. I’m not quite sure. Meanwhile, there’s the pool, or we could take a dip in the actual sea. Maybe use the jet skis or the little launch for a jaunt of our own…’ She picked up a leaflet from the table and studied it for a moment.

‘There’s also an on-board cinema, or we could have a disco just for the two of us…’

‘Wow.’ Alex grinned. ‘We haven’t stinted on this cruise, have we?’

‘Ha!’ Casey chuckled. ‘We’re utterly bankrupt. We’ll be paying this off for the next five years, but who cares? We’ll never get this opportunity again. Three weeks on a yacht in the Med. Just the two of us. Stopping at random ports, going diving, hill walking, sightseeing, eating lots of beautiful food—it’s like heaven on earth!’

‘There’s a song about that,’ Alex joked.

‘I know. But you could always write one about it too, if you feel inspired.’

‘Maybe I will.’ Alex leaned back in his deck chair and stared into the sky. ‘All this blue. It’s so vast.’

‘You’re not going all deep and philosophical on me, are you?’ Casey teased.