Seduction (13 page)

A movement at the edge of her vision made her turn her head. She had forgotten, for a moment, Nick, who was beside the bed again now, placing two glasses on one of the side tables. His own he kept in his hand, bringing it to his lips every few moments as he watched her carry on playing with her pussy.

The other man was now hunched over her, unhooking with deft fingers the clasp of her bikini top in the small of her back and then, when he had pulled the garment away from her and thrown it to one side of the bed, taking her breasts in his hands and bringing his face to each of them in turn. With his tongue
he lapped and slurped at them, and his moans were like echoes of hers: deep, almost animal. Both seemed, for a time, to forget that Nick was there at all, as if the coupling of their flesh had spirited them away, taken them elsewhere.

But Nick refused to be forgotten. Nick was there, beside them but closer now, his bathrobe hanging open. She turned her head and within its shadowy realms she made out his prick, stirring, seeking a way out, seeking
them
. The man, sensing her turning her head though his mouth was still clamped on one of her nipples, looked up too. His eyes met Nick's; there was no animosity. They were not rivals for her – she was reassured of that now. She raised one arm up towards her husband, ready to share and be shared.

Taking her hand, Nick placed his glass on the table and then clambered onto the bed, advancing towards the pair on his knees. When he was beside them, she reached into the folds of his gown and took his firm prick in her hand. Then, raising herself on her elbows, she brought her mouth towards him as he in turn lowered his hips towards her, and as they met she folded her lips around his cock and jabbed at the end of it with her tongue as he moved slowly in and out of her.

Backing down away from her, the other man was now at her groin, his face buried in her sex, teasing at the fronds of hair there to get at the sleek wet lips below, and at the pert pink bud of her clitoris nestling at the top. Her breath came hot and heavy on Nick's cock as the man pleasured her, her orgasm mounting steadily and inexorably in her like a rising tide. She wanted the man inside her, wanted to feel the contractions on his cock, this cock that she hadn't even seen yet. He was still wearing the navy shorts in which he had appeared at the door offering fresh towels.

Nick's hips began to buck a little, to tremble, and she knew that he too couldn't be far from climaxing. Anxious that they shouldn't both come and put an end to the delicious, and
deliciously unexpected, proceedings, she pulled her head slowly away, replacing her mouth with her fist but not moving the latter at all, just maintaining a firm grip that would keep him erect.

The other man, perceiving a change in pace, looked up, hair mussed around his questioning face. Raising one knee, she conveyed to him without the need for words that she wanted him to roll over now, so that he was the one on his back. With the hand that wasn't on Nick's cock, she pulled at the man's shorts; when they reached his mid-thighs, he took over and pulled them the rest of the way down his legs and then over his ankles and off.

She sat up, looking at Nick for guidance, or perhaps just approval. He nodded, and she knew then that he was happy with whatever she wanted to do next. She knelt, turned around and brought one leg over the man, who took hold of her hips and guided her gently down to him. She gasped as she slid onto the smooth baton of his prick, letting her upper body fold down onto his. As they brushed the fuzz of his chest, her nipples tautened.

The man's hands remained on her hips, and as their sexes melted into each other, he began to move her in slow circles on him. She looked down at him, but his eyes were closed. She hadn't kissed him, it occurred to her, and she brought her lips to his and did so. He returned the kiss, less chastely, his tongue prising open her lips and seeking hers, but he didn't open his eyes. For the first time she felt herself wondering who waited for him at home, and she was surprised to feel a tang of sadness. This would only ever happen once. Was that why it felt so beautiful and poignant all at once?

On her raised rump she now felt a second pair of hands, and as if acting with some kind of foreknowledge she moved her knees so that she knelt a little bit wider apart. Nick's hands grew tighter on her flesh, his fingertips sinking in, and she
gritted her teeth. She felt his lips and then his teeth on the ripe flesh of her buttocks, heard his moans. His tongue crept between her splayed cheeks and flitted at the rosebud of her sphincter. She moaned too. This was too good to go on. Something was about to give, to erupt.

Then she felt the bulb of Nick's cock snuffling at her entrance, and she cried out. Was this physically possible, what he was going to try to do? Would it harm her? It was so long since he had taken her that way, and that was when there was nobody else inside her. She was afraid, and yet she felt more thrillingly alive than ever before.

Nick pushed inside her; primed by the movement of the cock inside her pussy, she came immediately, scarcely knowing, in her delirium, where she was. Somehow the two men staved off their own climaxes, and as she regained feeling she could feel how their cocks thumped against each other as they drove into her, establishing a tempo of their own. A few minutes after orgasming and then recovering from her numbness, she was coming again, and then again, in thrall to the friction from their combined thrusting.

Approaching exhaustion, she was astonished that either man managed to hold off for as long as they did. But finally, as if of some common accord, each of them grasped her hips, bringing their movement to a halt, and, their hands overlapping, gave themselves over to what seemed to be one single almighty climax that ravaged through both of their bodies like an earthquake of which she formed the epicentre, the origin. Then each pulled out of her and relinquished hold, the man beneath her falling away, shuddering, eyes closed, as her husband fell back, panting and swearing, onto the bed.

She lay with her hand on her pussy, not thinking about anything, and after a few minutes she heard the man get up and rummage around on the floor for his clothes. Nick rose too, helped him find his clothes, and then walked him to the door
of their room. She raised herself on one elbow, knowing it was unlikely that she would see the man again, since they were only staying here for two nights, and tomorrow they had planned to dine out in a neighbouring village. She wanted to thank him, but then she realised that there was no need.

‘You don't need to go, mate,' Nick was saying, one hand clamped to the man's back. Nick was still naked, his skin in the falling light of the unlit room covered with a sheen of sweat. ‘Stay for a drink, won't you?'

But the man was waving his hand airily. ‘It's not possible. I'm running late. You know –
service du soir
.' And as if remembering, he turned to take up the pile of towels that he had left by the door when they invited him into their room, into their life.

‘Thank you,' she mouthed after him, knowing, even as she did, that he would never know how grateful she was.

She dozed off, and when she awoke the cicadas were in full song beyond the window, out in the Provençal night. Nick was bending over her, his lips brushing her earlobe.

‘. . . table in five minutes . . .' he was saying. ‘. . . didn't want to disturb you . . . going to be late . . .'

She groaned, rubbed her eyes. ‘Do we have to?' she said, surprised at herself – she was a sucker for gourmet restaurants, always had been.

He smiled down at her, and she revelled, for the first time in years, in his eyes on her, in her nakedness. She felt sexy, open, free of some kind of burden. She knew she would never be young again, and she didn't care. She thought of her eighteen-year-old body, and for the first time she didn't regret it. She was proud of the marks that experience had left on her, that time had inscribed on her still-glorious flesh.

She lay motionless, gazing up at him, attentive to the white noise of the male cicadas. The clicking noise they made – which, she had read in her guidebook, was not created by their
wings rubbing together as with crickets, but by the contraction and relaxation of internal muscles – was their mating song.

She half-sat, reaching out for her husband.

‘But what about dinner?' he said.

She smiled. ‘Cancel the table,' she told him. ‘Let's have room service.'

Carrie Williams is the author of the Black Lace novels
The Blue Guide
and
Chilli Heat
. Her third novel,
The Apprentice
, is published in April 2009.

HE WAS WAITING
for her. She knew he would be, but his presence in the doorway still caught her off guard. He was six-three, two hundred and twenty pounds – his presence would have caught anyone off guard. She got out of her car, a BMW sports car that looked the worse for wear because it wasn't suited for the rough-and-tumble back roads of Montana, and took her time smoothing her skirt. Picking an invisible piece of dust from the black of the fabric, she flicked it away on the warm, dry wind that whipped her blonde hair around her shoulders. She tucked a wayward strand behind her ear and carefully locked the car door, though there wasn't another human being for twenty miles. There was nothing out here but horses and cows . . . and Edwin Dobbs, her husband. To him, it would look like she didn't give a damn about being here, but she was really just trying to buy some time. As if a few seconds more would make any difference.

She'd had plenty of time to prepare for this moment. It had been thirteen months, after all. Thirteen months and six days, to be exact, since she walked out the door and left all of this behind. It had been longer than that, maybe twice as long, since she had told him she couldn't be a rancher's wife any more. It had taken her awhile to figure out how she was going to do it, make the break and leave him. She sometimes thought
she had waited longer than she should for him to decide he'd rather have her than his damn ranch. She'd gotten tired of waiting.

She walked up the sagging porch steps to stand in front of him. ‘Hey, Win. You're looking good.'

He
was
looking good. Win hadn't changed much in a year. His perpetual golden tan emphasised the pale blue of his eyes and the straight, white line of his teeth when he smiled, which he wasn't likely to do. His shoulders were as broad as she remembered, tapering down to a narrow waist. She knew that beneath the cotton chambray shirt and worn denim jeans was a flat, rock-hard stomach and well-toned muscles any bodybuilder would envy. Win's formidable body came from hard work and real sweat, not time spent in a gym. Win's body was a powerful, efficient rancher's body, but it was also a lover's body, capable of picking her up and carrying her from the barn to their bedroom upstairs without breaking a sweat. She shivered at the memory of his callused hands on her body, rough but ever so gentle, even as she reminded herself it wasn't ‘their' bedroom any longer.

Win gave her a slow, lingering appraisal. ‘City life has been good to you, Lee,' he said. ‘You've got a little more meat on your bones than you used to.'

Only Win could compliment a woman with an insult. She could explain to him why he shouldn't have said it, as she had a hundred times with other comments, but Leslie just shook her head. It wasn't her job to fix Win Dobbs any more.

‘So, are you going to invite me in or are we going to dance?'

He took a step back and gestured into the house. ‘You don't need an invitation into your own home.'

She looked around. Not one thing had changed. The furniture, simple, practical and all in shades of beige and brown, was just as she remembered it. She had tried brightening the place up with colourful pillows and curtains, but it didn't help
against the unrelenting brown. Win had always preferred a rather Spartan lifestyle, so there weren't any knick-knacks or magazines or pictures to break the neat, monklike interior. All of those had gone with her, except for one thing: their wedding picture. It wasn't a professional photograph, just an enlarged snapshot Win's brother had taken outside the modest chapel where they had exchanged vows.

The brown-framed picture sat on the brown mantel, just as it had for four years. A memento she didn't want of a day that was ingrained in her memory, for better or worse. Leslie had taken everything else when she'd moved out, but she had left their wedding picture because she hadn't wanted to be reminded of her failure.
Her
failure, as if Win's role in their doomed marriage didn't count because he wasn't the one who left. Now the photo caught her eye and she couldn't look away. They looked happy. Had they been happy? She really couldn't remember any more, though she could remember every other detail of that long-ago day.

‘Why are you here, Lee?'

Leave it to Win to cut to the chase. He wasn't much one for small talk, but she had hoped for at least a little civil conversation first. Not that it would change the end result.

‘Can I get something to drink?'

He looked at her, long and slow, his eyes seeing beyond her clothes and into the heart of her. He knew she was stalling, she could see it in the slight turn of his lips and the narrowing of his eyes. She looked away rather than meet that all-knowing gaze and confirm his suspicions.

‘Sure. What do you want?'

What did she want? That was the question. Instead of giving him a list of things he could never fulfil even if he was willing to try, she said simply, ‘I'll have a beer. If you have any.'

She knew there would be cheap beer in the fridge just as she knew the bed would be made with two or three of his
grandmother's worn quilts now that the weather was starting to turn cooler at night; just as she knew he'd only let her nurse her beer for so long before he got impatient and reminded her there were afternoon chores to be done; just as she knew there was little she could say that would make everything between them all right again. All right. She could never settle for ‘all right'. It had to be everything or nothing.