Awakening My Husband's Inner Slut
by Mizz Cherry Poppins

 

 

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Disclaimer

This is an original work of fiction by Mizz Cherry Poppins. All characters, places and events are made up, and any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Every character in this story is over 18. It contains explicit sexual content and is meant for adult readers only.

Yes, this story is full of smut, but it's smut with a story. I like to take my time building the characters and their world, so that when things get filthy, it feels earned. And when we get there, I don't hold back on the details.

Author's Note

If you enjoyed this chapter, please leave a comment. I read every single one, and I love hearing from you, especially your theories about where Chloe and Oliver are heading. Some of you might be closer than you think. You can also email me at mizzcherrypoppins@proton.me.

A note on this chapter: Yes, it's long again. I'd love to tell you I planned it that way, but the truth is Chloe and Oliver simply refused to get through one Wednesday quickly. Every time I thought a scene was done, something or other came up, and by the time they'd finished with me, the chapter had quietly let out its waistband again. At this rate the anniversary will arrive sometime next spring. I'm trying to stop, honestly I am. But they keep having more to say, and I keep letting them, so I'm afraid you'll just have to settle in again.

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Chapter 3

 

Wednesday

I reached across the bed for him before I'd even opened my eyes. His side was empty, and when I put my hand flat on the sheet where he should have been, it was cold.

The clock on my bedside table said twenty past six, twenty-five minutes before my alarm. Oliver hadn't been up before me on a work day for as long as I could remember.

"Babe?" I called, not very loudly. "Are you in the bathroom?"

The bathroom door was half open, with the light off behind it. He didn't answer, and I couldn't hear the tap or the shower.

I lay there for a minute and took stock. My thighs ached at the top, which I wasn't going to complain about. The tissue with the plug wrapped in it had gone from my bedside table. On the chair in the corner, my stockings were folded into a neat square, with the suspender belt on top and its straps tucked under so that none of the clips hung down. The pile from the foot of the bed was on top of the chest of drawers, stacked like a delivery, with the biggest box at the bottom and the babydoll packet squared off on top. Nobody else I knew would fold a suspender belt, or stack sex toys. The knickers weren't with any of it.

I was naked, and my robe was on the floor on my side of the bed, half underneath it, where it had ended up after I'd let it slide off my shoulders to climb on top of him. I leaned out and fished it up by the belt.

The silk was creased, which I'd expected. What I hadn't expected was a patch on the front, about the size of my palm, right where my lap had been. It had dried stiff and shiny, and it crackled when I rubbed it between my finger and thumb. For a second I couldn't think what it was. Then I remembered him across my knees, leaking through the front of those knickers while I had two fingers inside him, and I sat on the edge of the bed holding my robe up to the window like a bride who'd found a stain on her wedding dress.

That robe had cost more than the entire sale basket at Kitty's. My husband had christened it.

I put it on anyway, twisted it round so the patch sat on my hip instead of the front, tied the belt and went down.

Oliver was at the island in an old navy T-shirt and his boxers, with a mug of tea in front of him. He was sitting right on the front edge of his stool, with both hands round the mug, looking out at the garden.

He glanced round when I came in, and then he was very interested in his tea.

"Morning," he said.

"Morning." I stopped in the doorway. "You're up."

"I'm up."

"Before me. Should I ring someone?"

"Couldn't sleep."

"You said that yesterday."

"It was true yesterday as well." He got off the stool, a bit stiffly. "I'll do you a coffee."

"I can do my own coffee."

"You can't, though," he said, and took the handle out of the machine.

I sat down on the stool next to his and watched him weigh the beans. He did everything he always did, the scales and the little metal stamp and the cloth, except that he didn't look at me once while he did it.

"Bins are out," he said, to the machine.

"Is it bin day?"

"It's Wednesday. I took them out at quarter to six. Next door already had theirs out."

"At quarter to six?" I asked.

"I didn't want us to be the only house that hadn't." He pressed the button, and the machine started to hum. "It's meant to rain later. From about four. You'll want an umbrella."

"I've got one in the car."

"The little one?"

"It's an umbrella, Oliver. It keeps rain off."

"It keeps rain off your head." He was watching the coffee come through now, with his eyes on the clock on the oven. "I changed the grind a bit. It was coming through too fast yesterday. Twenty-two seconds. It wants to be nearer thirty."

"I'll take your word for it."

"Twenty-nine," he said, and stopped it, and seemed pleased about that for a moment. "I'm on site this morning. At the loft."

"The one with the stairs?" I asked.

"That's the one. I'm meeting the builder there at ten thirty. I want to look at the stairs again before he starts on them. The landing's still ten centimetres out, whichever way you draw it." He put the coffee down in front of me and stayed on his side of the island, leaning on the counter by the machine. "And he'll want to know about the window."

"What about the window?"

"Whether it opens in or out."

"Does it matter?"

"It matters to the window."

I drank some of the coffee. It was very good, which was annoying. He picked up the cloth and wiped the steam wand, which he'd already wiped.

"Babe," I said.

"Mm."

"Why are you talking to me like I'm one of your clients?"

"I'm not."

"You've told me about the bins, the rain and the window, and how many seconds my coffee took. All you need is a hard hat."

"I'm just talking."

"You're doing small talk. In our kitchen. With me."

"I'm fine."

"I didn't ask if you were fine," I said.

He folded the cloth in half, and then in half again, and put it down by the machine with the edges lined up. I let him do it, and drank my coffee, and waited.

"Where are your knickers?" I asked.

That got his head up. "What?"

"The black ones. My stockings were on the chair, all folded up like a hotel towel, with the suspender belt on top. The knickers weren't."

"In the wash," he said.

"You've washed them?"

"They're in the basket. On their own. It says on the label it's hand wash only, so I didn't put them in with anything else." He picked his tea back up, though he was standing nowhere near his stool. "They needed washing."

"Babe, what did you do to them?"

"Nothing. You did it," he said. "I was just in them."

I put my coffee down, untied the belt of my robe, took hold of the front and turned it round so the patch was facing him, right over my lap.

"Did I do this as well?"

He looked at it, and then he put his hand over his eyes.

"That's…" he said behind his hand.

"I know what it is, love. I'm wearing it."

"I'll pay for it."

"You can't pay for it. You're not getting it dry-cleaned. Can you imagine handing that over at the counter?"

He took his hand away. He was trying very hard not to smile, and not managing it.

"I'll buy you a new one," he said.

"I like this one."

"With that on it?"

"Especially with that on it."

He put his tea down and gave up, laughing out loud with his head down, until he'd forgotten all about the cloth. He came round the end of the island and sat down on his stool again, very carefully, on the front edge of it.

I tied my robe back up and turned my stool to face him. "You said something last night," I said. "Right at the end. When I thought you were asleep."

"I said a lot of things last night."

"You said please. A lot."

"I'm aware."

"And at one point you promised me anything I wanted. Including the babydoll."

"I'm aware of that as well."

"And then, when the light was off…"

"I know what I said." He turned his mug round by the handle so it faced the garden. "I said they weren't the problem. The knickers."

"Did you mean it?"

He didn't answer straight away. Outside, a pigeon landed on the fence, walked the length of it, and flew off again.

"I've been sitting here since I got up," he said, "trying to work out if I meant it."

"And?"

"And I think I did."

I wanted to get off my stool and climb onto his lap, but he looked like a man who'd just put a very heavy box down and needed a minute, so I stayed where I was and wrapped my foot round the leg of his stool instead.

"Tell me what it was like," I said.

"You were there."

"I was there for my bit. I want yours." I nudged his stool with my foot. "Not the plug, not me. Just them. What was it like, having them on?"

He didn't answer straight away. He looked out at the garden for a bit first, frowning, like he was trying to get it all in the right order.

"The stockings were tight," he said.

"They're meant to be tight."

"No, I know. But I thought they'd just sit there, like socks. They don't sit there. They hold on, the whole way up." He put a hand flat on his thigh, just above his knee. "And then they stop. Right about here, on me. And then there's nothing, just your leg, and it's cold."

"That's the best bit."

"Is it?"

"Ask anyone."

"And the hair," he said.

"What about the hair?"

"It went flat. All of it, under the nylon. It didn't look like hair any more. It looked like someone had laminated my legs."

I snorted into my coffee, and some of it went up my nose. "Oh God, it did."

"You noticed."

"I was rolling them up you. I had a front-row seat."

"And they didn't reach."

"They didn't reach. You'd need longer stockings or a shorter husband."

"So we'll need longer ones," he said.

I stared at him. "We will?"

"Well, those are yours. They don't fit me."

"Oliver Blackwood. Are you asking me to buy you stockings?"

"I'm saying the ones we've got don't work. It's a sizing issue."

I couldn't stop smiling at him. "Put it on your snagging list, then."

"It's already on there."

"Then we're getting longer stockings."

He nodded at that. Then he said, more to the mug than to me, "The suspender belt's clever, actually."

"Clever?" I asked.

"All the weight's at the waist. It sits on your hips, and the straps pull down, and the stockings pull up, and it all just holds. Nothing's stuck. Nothing's sewn to anything. It's all tension." He drew it in the air with one finger, a line across and four short lines down. "It's a really good bit of design."

"Did you lie awake working out the engineering of a suspender belt?"

"Some of it."

"How much of it?"

"Most of it," he said. "Until about half four."

I put my mug down so I wouldn't drop it.

"And when you did the clips up at the front," he said, and then he stopped and started again. "I could feel them all night. Every time I moved. Just here." He touched his thigh again, higher this time. "This little press of metal. I'd forget it was there, and then I'd turn over and it'd remind me."

"Did you like it?"

"I liked it," he said. "I didn't think I'd like any of it, and I liked all of it. The knickers didn't even fit."

"Nothing fits you. You're six foot."

"Five eleven."

"You're five eleven of leg. What about the lace?"

"I thought it'd scratch. It didn't scratch." He picked at a mark on the worktop with his thumbnail. "It was soft. On my skin. I didn't expect it to be soft."

"That's what you're paying for. The cheap stuff's like wearing a net curtain."

"And they were twenty-five pounds. With the belt."

"Less than your plug," I said.

He didn't say anything to that. He got up, put the kettle on, and stood by it with his back to me while it boiled, though his tea was still half full.

"And the rest of it?" I asked.

"The rest of it?"

"Your arse, love."

"Oh. That." The kettle clicked off. He didn't do anything with it. "I looked it up this morning."

"Looked what up?"

"What happened. When you…" He turned round and leaned on the counter. "When you found the…"

"Your prostate."

"It's a gland," he said. "It's about the size of a walnut, apparently."

"You looked up the size?"

"I wanted to know what you'd been pressing on. I thought there must be some kind of mistake." He folded his arms. "It's right there. It's two inches in. Thirty-four years I've had it, and nobody mentioned it."

"I mentioned it."

"No, you haven't."

"Yesterday. In the shop. There was a whole shelf of them."

"There was a shelf of things I didn't know what they were for."

"And I told you what they were for. I said it was like nothing on earth."

"You said apparently." He looked at the ceiling. "There's no apparently about it. You put one finger in me and pressed, and I nearly shot off your lap. What the fuck was that, Chloe? Seriously. I thought I'd been plugged into the mains."

"That's more or less what you shouted at the time. I think next door heard."

"Well, I'm saying it again in daylight."

"And the plug?" I asked.

He thought about that one. "Going in was the worst bit. Then it was in, and I couldn't stop knowing it was there. Every time I moved. Every time you moved." He came back to his stool and lowered himself onto it. "And then you took it out, and that was the strangest bit of all."

"You said you felt empty," I said.

"Yeah, but you said that was normal. You said it'd wear off in a minute, and it didn't. I could still feel it when I put the bins out."

"Are you sore?" I asked.

"A bit."

"How sore? Ow sore, or…"

"Why do you think I've been standing up for the last ten minutes?" He shifted on the stool. "I've been sitting on the very front edge of everything since I got up. I put the bins out walking like a cowboy."

I put my head down on the island, on my arms, and stayed there until I'd got myself together.

"It's not funny," he said, over the top of me.

"You said cowboy, Oliver."

"I was describing it accurately."

When I sat back up, he'd stopped smiling. He was turning his mug round again, a quarter-turn at a time.

"Can I ask you something?" he asked.

"Anything."

"Does it mean anything? That I liked it."

"Mean what?"

"You know what." He kept his eyes on the mug. "I've never thought about men. Not once, ever. I watched that video and I wasn't looking at him."

"I know you weren't. I was there."

"So does it?"

I could have made a joke of it. I'd been making jokes all morning, and I could see he half wanted me to, so he could laugh and not have asked. I didn't.

"No," I said. "It means you've got a prostate, and a wife who knows where it is."

He breathed out through his nose.

"Every man's got one, Oliver. Loads of them love it, and most of them are as straight as you are. They just never let anyone near it, because they're too busy worrying about exactly what you've just asked me." I took his hand off the mug and held it. "And if it did mean something, I'd still be sitting here in a robe you came on, wanting to do it all again."

He turned his hand over and held on to mine.

"Right," he said. "Good. Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay." He drank the rest of his tea, which must have been stone cold, and put the mug down. "What I can't work out is the other bit."

"Which other bit?"

"You. Telling me what to do."

"Did you hate it?"

"You wouldn't let me cum."

"I did let you cum."

"Eventually. After you'd stopped me four times."

"Twice."

"Four times," he said. "Twice in the shower, once on your lap, and once when you got off me. I counted."

"You were counting? While I had my hand round your cock?"

"I had a lot of time to count."

I went back over it on my fingers, and he was right. "Oh, bloody hell, it was four," I said. "You still haven't told me if you hated it."

He was quiet for long enough that I nearly asked again.

"No," he said.

"No?"

"No. I thought I would. The first time you stopped, in the shower, I was furious. I nearly said something I'd have had to apologise for."

"You did say something. You said no. Quite a lot."

"And then by the time you got off me, I'd have done anything you told me to." He shook his head. "That's the bit I can't work out."

"So what did you like about it?"

"I didn't have to decide anything." He let go of my hand to rub the back of his neck, and then put his hand back. "Everything else, I'm deciding. Where the stairs go. What to get you for Saturday, and whether it's good enough. Even in bed, with you. I'm always thinking, is she close, is that the right speed, should I move my hand. Last night I didn't think about any of it. You told me to turn round, and I turned round."

"And you put your hands up on the wall like you were being arrested."

"I didn't know what else to do with them. That's the point. I didn't have to think about whether it was right. I just did it."

I thought about him in the shower last night, with his forehead on the tiles and his hands up by his head, doing exactly what he was told.

I slid off my stool, put one hand on my hip and tried to look down my nose at him, which is harder than it sounds in bare feet.

"So what you're telling me," I said, "is you want me in thigh-high boots with a whip."

He nearly choked on nothing. "I didn't say that."

"A leather corset?" I pulled the belt of my robe tight, which ruined it straight away, because the stain swung back round to the front. "Laced up the back. Red lipstick. You on your knees, calling me Mistress."

"Chloe."

"Calling you a worthless little worm."

"Please don't call me a worm." He was holding his empty mug in front of him with both hands, like a shield.

"Slave, then."

"I'd honestly rather worm."

"Mistress Chloe," I said, in my best pitching-to-clients voice. It was so convincing that we both winced.

"Mistress Blackwood," he said, before he could stop himself, and then looked horrified.

I slapped the worktop. "Oh, that's good. That's very good. That sounds like a headmistress."

"I didn't mean…"

"Mistress Blackwood will see you in her office, Oliver." I crooked a finger at him. "Now."

He laughed and swivelled his stool away from me, as if he could get out of range. "Stop it."

"I'd have to go back to Kitty's for that riding crop."

"You are not buying the riding crop."

"You looked at it."

"I looked at everything. I didn't know where else to put my eyes." He swivelled back round, put the mug down and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. "I looked at the spreader bar."

"You looked at the spreader bar for about a minute."

"Because I was trying to work out what it was for."

"And did you?"

"I worked it out," he said, from behind his hands. "We're not doing the spreader bar."

"I wouldn't know what to do with one either." I took my hand off my hip and gave up. My robe kept falling open, and I couldn't keep a straight face. "I'd be rubbish at it anyway. I'd keep asking if you were comfy."

"You did keep asking. Every few minutes. 'Okay? Okay?'"

I climbed back onto my stool. He took his hands down. His ears had gone red at the tips, and he was grinning at the worktop.

"Can I tell you something?" I asked.

"Go on."

"I loved it. Teasing you." I hadn't planned to say it like that, but once I'd started I couldn't see any reason to stop. "When you were standing in the shower with your hands by your sides, begging me, and you weren't allowed to touch me… I've never been that wet in my life. I was the one doing it to you, and I was the one who couldn't stand up."

He turned his stool round to face me.

"You were very wet," he said.

"I was dripping, Oliver. I came against that glass so hard I could barely stand."

"I noticed," he said, quietly.

Neither of us said anything for a while. The fridge hummed. Somewhere down the street, a bin lorry was working its way towards our house.

"So," I said.

"So."

"Would you do it again?"

"Which bit?"

"Any of it. Some of it." I put my bare foot back on the rung of his stool. "Tonight?"

"What, tonight?" he asked.

"If you want to. If you're not too sore."

"What would we be doing?"

"Things."

"What things?"

"Things I've thought of."

"You've got a plan," he said.

"I've got a plan. You're not the only one in this house who can make a list."

I waited for the questions. Where, what, how big, whether he'd need to read anything first. He didn't ask any of them.

"Yes," he said.

I'd been ready to pitch it to him, and I'd had a whole case lined up. I sat there with all of it and nobody to give it to.

"Okay," I said. "Then I want you to do something for me today."

"What?"

"Wear a pair of knickers. Under your clothes."

"No."

"You haven't even heard which ones."

"I don't need to. I've just told you I can't sit on a stool." He got up and took his mug to the sink. "I'm going up a loft ladder at half ten with Mrs Penrose standing at the bottom of it. She's seventy-two, Chloe. She stands there and watches me measure. She brings me a biscuit and holds it up to me. I am not taking a biscuit off a seventy-two-year-old woman with a thong up my arse."

"Then don't split your trousers."

"Chloe."

"Just for today. All day, under your chinos. Nobody knows except you."

"You'll know. You'll be thinking about it all day."

"I'll be thinking about nothing else," I said.

He ran the tap into his mug and stood there with his back to me, which was what he did when he was deciding whether a thing was a no or not yet.

"The black ones are in the wash," he said.

"Soaking, I hope."

"They needed soaking."

"I know, love. I've got the robe to prove it." I swivelled my stool round to follow him. "There's another pair."

"There isn't another pair."

"In the set. The red one. With the babydoll."

He turned off the tap. "That's not a pair of knickers. That's a thong."

"It's a thong in a large. It's yours."

"It's got a bow on it."

"It's a very small bow."

"There's a bow on it, Chloe. A red one. I'd be crouching under a roof joist all morning in a red thong with a bow on it."

"It's under your trousers, Oliver. The bow's not going to wave at anyone."

"I'd know about the bow."

I could see what was going on underneath. It wasn't the bow at all. It was the same thing as the sunglasses and the barber's window: somebody, somewhere, finding out. So I left the bow alone.

"Who's going to see it?" I asked. "Are you planning to take your trousers off in front of the client?"

"No."

"In front of anyone at the studio?"

"Obviously not."

"Then nobody sees it. It's under your chinos and your shirt, and it's the size of a hanky." I got down off the stool, went over and stood next to him at the sink. "Last night you were in our bedroom with me, and I'd had my hands all over you for an hour. It's easy to like anything like that."

"That's not true."

"You were begging me in my old stockings, Oliver."

"That's different."

"That's exactly my point." I took the mug out of his hand and put it on the draining board. "I want to know if you like it when it's just you. At your desk, at eleven o'clock on a Wednesday, with nobody touching you and nobody telling you to. I want to know if it's the knickers, or if it's me."

He was quiet, and I could tell I'd got somewhere, because he'd stopped arguing about the bow.

"And if I hate it?" he asked.

"Then you go into the loo at the studio, take it off, put it in your pocket and text me. And I'll never put you in it again."

"You'll put me in it again tonight."

"I'll put you in something else tonight," I said, and he looked at me sideways.

"If I fall off that ladder," he said, "I want it on record that this was your idea."

"I'll tell the paramedics myself."

"You'll be at work."

"I'll ring them from work."

He gave a short laugh, mostly through his nose.

"Go on, then," he said.

"Yeah?"

"Yes. Fine. Go on."

I kissed him on the mouth, hard. He kissed me back, and then he was the one who pulled away.

"Shower," he said. "I'm getting in the shower before I change my mind."

"I'll get it out of the packet for you."

"You're going to watch me put it on, aren't you."

"Babe," I said, "I'm going to watch you put it on and take a photo."

"You're not taking a photo."

"I'm not taking a photo," I said, which neither of us believed.

He went out into the hall ahead of me and up the stairs one at a time, very carefully, with his hand on the banister, like a much older man. I followed him up with my coffee and didn't say a single word about it.

He went into the bathroom and pulled the door almost shut behind him, and a moment later I heard the shower start.

I put my mug down on the chest of drawers, lifted the babydoll packet off the top of his stack and slid the thong out of it, leaving the babydoll and the fishnets folded inside. It was even smaller out of the packet. There was a little triangle of red satin at the front, edged with black lace, and then two strings that met at the back under a bow the size of my thumbnail, sitting right on the top band. I hung it over the end of the bed, bow side out, where he'd see it the second he came out of the bathroom, and opened the plum box.

The plug sat in a moulded plastic tray, with the little black remote beside it, a short white cable coiled underneath, and a leaflet folded into a square. Wash before first use was the second line. I'd learned that one last night. Further down, it said the plug took about two hours to charge, and that the remote ran on a battery that came already fitted, with a plastic tab to pull out before you used it.

Two hours. If I put it on now, it'd be ready long before tonight.

I took the plug downstairs in my robe and ran the hot tap at the kitchen sink. I washed it with the hand soap off the windowsill, working the lather round the rounded tip and down to the little handle on the base, while the pipes hummed overhead with Oliver's shower. Then I dried it on the tea towel, realised what I'd just done, and put the tea towel straight in the washing machine.

The shower was still running when I got back upstairs. I sat on my side of the bed with the plug in one hand and the remote in the other, pulled the plastic tab out of the remote, and pressed the button with the little lightning bolt on it to see if it worked.

It worked. The plug went off in my hand like a phone on a glass table, so loud that I nearly threw it across the room. I stabbed at the remote, hit the wrong button, and it switched to a pattern instead, three long pulses and a short one, buzzing away against my palm.

"Chloe?" The water went quieter, as if he'd stepped out from under it. "What was that?"

"My phone," I called. "It's on vibrate."

"It sounded like a drill."

"Someone rang, and I didn't pick up."

I found the right button, and the plug went still. There was a pause from the bathroom, long enough for me to picture him standing there dripping and deciding whether to come out and look. Then the water got louder again.

I unplugged my phone charger from the socket by the bed, plugged the white cable into it instead and fitted the other end into the base of the plug. A small white light came on and started blinking. I laid the plug on my bedside table, right in the middle where nobody could miss it, and put the remote in my bedside drawer and shut it. Then I sat on the edge of the bed and waited.

The shower went off. A couple of minutes later he came out with a towel round his waist and his hair wet and pushed back, drying his chest with the hand towel, and stopped halfway across the room.

"What's that?"

"What's what?"

"That." He nodded at my bedside table. "It's blinking at me."

"It's charging."

"I can see it's charging, Chloe. Why is it charging?"

"Because it's got a battery."

"Why is it charging now?"

"Because the leaflet says it takes two hours."

"Two hours to be ready for what?"

I picked a bit of fluff off my robe that wasn't there. "Ready."

He came round the end of the bed, still holding the hand towel, and bent down to inspect it without touching it.

"That's the one with the remote."

"Is it?"

"It's purple. The other one's black. I know which one it is." He straightened up. "Where's the remote?"

"Somewhere safe."

His eyes went straight to my bedside drawer, and I put my bare foot up against the front of it.

"You said yes," I said. "Downstairs. You didn't ask what to."

"I didn't think you'd charge it in front of me."

"Where else was I meant to charge it? The garage?"

"That was the buzzing," he said. "That wasn't your phone."

"No, love."

"Someone rang, did they?"

"I panicked."

He started to say something else. Then he turned round and saw the thong hanging over the end of the bed.

"Oh," he said. "You've got it out already."

"Go on, then." I pulled my knees up onto the bed and wrapped my arms round them.

He unhooked it from the end of the bed and held it up by the waistband with both hands, at arm's length, turning it one way and then the other.

"Which way round does it go?" he asked.

"Bow at the back."

"Where's the front?"

"The bit with the most fabric."

"None of it's got the most fabric. There's a triangle. That's it. There's a triangle and some string."

"Then the triangle's the front, babe."

He dropped his towel on the floor and stepped into the thong one foot at a time, holding on to the end of the bed for balance, and drew it up his legs. When the string at the back slid between his cheeks, right over where he'd been sore all morning, he stopped with it halfway over his hips and sucked air in through his teeth.

"Still sore?" I asked.

"It's sitting right on it." He eased it the rest of the way up. "Right on it."

The front was hopeless. The little triangle had been cut for someone with nothing to hide, and he had plenty. He tried tucking everything downwards, and something escaped at the side. He tried it at an angle instead, with the same frown he'd given the coffee grind, while I sat on the bed with my knees up and bit my lip hard enough to hurt.

"You're enjoying this," he said.

"I'm enjoying this very much."

"You could help."

"I could." I didn't move. "Try it a bit lower."

"There isn't a lower. There's barely anywhere."

"Turn round."

He turned round. The bow sat right at the top of his arse, where the two strings met the band, with the rest of the string vanishing between his cheeks. From the back he looked like a present somebody had wrapped in a hurry.

"Oh, babe," I said. "Your little bow."

"Don't."

"It's right on top. Like the bit you pull to open it."

He turned back round, and the front wasn't a problem of fit any more. Me talking about him had done it. He was getting hard under the red satin, and the triangle couldn't cope. It was stretched so thin I could see the shape of him through it, and while I watched, a dark spot came up on the satin at the tip, small and wet and spreading.

He saw it too. "Oh, no."

"What?"

"It's…" He held his hands out on either side of it, without touching it. "It's leaking."

"I can see it's leaking."

"I've got to wear this all day. In front of Mrs Penrose."

"Then stop getting turned on," I said. I was still chewing my lip.

"You're sitting there biting your lip at me!"

"I'm not doing anything. I'm just sitting here."

He went into the dressing room. I heard a hanger scrape along the rail, and he came back to the doorway holding a pair of pale stone chinos up against himself. He glanced down at the wet spot on the front of the thong, then at the chinos, and went back in without a word. When he came out again, he had a pair of black jeans.

"Jeans?" I asked.

"Black jeans." He stepped into them and pulled them up. "If it does that again, nobody'll see it."

"You've thought this through."

"I haven't had time to think anything through."

He put on a pale blue shirt, tucked it in, and went to the long mirror on the inside of the dressing room door. He stood side-on to it, then turned the other way. He looked like a man on his way to see a client. You'd never have known.

I knew, though. I got off the bed and went over to him.

"Hold still," I said.

"Why?"

I knelt down on the floor in front of him.

"Chloe, I've just…"

I undid his button, pulled his zip down and folded the front of his jeans open. The red triangle was still damp, and he was still half hard underneath it. I hooked one finger in the top and drew it down, and there was a fresh drop sitting right on the tip of his cock. I glanced up at him, and then I licked it off, taking my time about it, and he grabbed the edge of the door so hard the mirror rattled.

"Fuck," he said. "Chloe. Fuck."

I tucked him back into the triangle, smoothed the satin over him, zipped him up and did his button, and patted the front of his jeans twice.

"Breakfast," I said, and got up and went to have my shower.

 

◇ — ◇ — ◇

 

By twenty to ten I'd been at my desk for nearly an hour, which after yesterday felt like a personal best. Dev's three grades had come through at six minutes to nine, with no message at all, just the files, and I had them open side by side across my screen.

The one on the left was the one I'd liked yesterday: paler, a bit greyer, the bra like the inside of a shell. The one on the right had been done again from the photo Will sent, and it was better, but it still had a touch of peach in it that Henrietta would spot from a moving car. The middle one was the one he'd brought back halfway. The model looked alive again, and the nude had gone exactly the colour Henrietta kept describing and never managed to show anyone. I'd been going back and forth between the pale one and the one Dev had brought back halfway for a while, and I kept ending up on his.

My mobile buzzed on the desk next to the keyboard.

Oliver: Every time I sit down I can feel the bow.

I put my hand over my mouth.

Chloe: Good

Oliver: I've stopped sitting down.

Chloe: Standing desk. Very good for your posture x

Oliver: Leaving for the loft now. If you don't hear from me, I've fallen off the ladder.

Chloe: Tell Mrs Penrose I said hello

Oliver: I am not telling Mrs Penrose anything.

While I was typing, the phone on my desk started ringing, and Reception came up on the little screen. I let it go. Whatever Bev wanted could wait until I'd finished being smug at my husband, and it rang out.

I'd just picked my mobile back up to reply when Millie appeared in my doorway, out of breath and pink to the ears, holding her notebook against her chest. She was in a striped shirt and wide jeans, and she looked like she'd run all the way from her desk.

"Henrietta's here," she said.

"Here where?"

"Here here. Bev rang you, and you didn't pick up, so she rang me. Henrietta's in the lift. On her way up."

"Oh, bollocks."

"Sorry."

"Why are you sorry?"

"I don't know," Millie said. "Sorry."

"Go and find out if she wants a coffee."

Millie went off down the corridor at a near run. I put my mobile down on the desk, grabbed my notebook, got up and made for the door to go and meet her at the lift, and nearly walked straight into her.

Henrietta was standing right in my doorway with one hand raised, about to knock on a door that was already open.

"Chloe, darling!"

"Henrietta! Hi!" My voice was about twice as bright as I'd meant it to be.

She leaned in and kissed the air beside one cheek and then the other, and I kissed back with my notebook clutched against my chest. She was in an oxblood skirt that fitted her like it had been made around her, an ivory silk blouse tucked into it, and pointed black heels, with a black trench folded over her arm and her sunglasses pushed up into her hair, even though the sky outside had been grey since seven. Small diamonds in her ears, and a fine bracelet to match them, which slid down her wrist every time she moved her hand.

"I'm terribly early, I know," she said, and walked past me into my office. "I'm seeing Richard at ten, and I was in the lift, and I thought, Chloe's on this floor, I'll just pop in."

"Lovely," I said. "What a lovely surprise."

"Isn't it?" She'd already seen my screen. "Oh, and are those my girls?"

"Those are Dev's first goes. I haven't signed them off yet. I was going to send them over to you this afternoon, once I'd…"

"Darling, I'm here now."

She put her coat down on my chair, which left me standing in my own office, and leaned over my desk towards the screen, close enough that her nose was nearly on it. I hovered at her shoulder. I didn't know what to do with my hands, so I held my notebook.

"Not her," she said, about the one on the left. "She looks like she's been in the sea."

"It's quite cool, I agree."

"And that one's still apricot. I can taste apricot." She moved along to the one in the middle and stopped. She stayed there for long enough that I started to wonder if I should say something, and then she straightened up and put her hand flat on her chest.

"That," she said. "That's oyster."

"That's the one I'd have gone for."

"Then we agree. How marvellous." She turned round and looked me up and down. "Can it go up next week?"

"The week after next. The printer's tight this month. I've got the slot held, so if you're happy with this one, I'll get the files over by Friday."

"I'm very happy. I'm ecstatic. I'll tell Richard you're a genius." She picked her coat up off my chair and put it back over her arm. "You look tired, darling. Late night?"

"Something like that."

"Good for you." She checked her watch, and the bracelet slid down over it. "And you'll be hearing from Richard, I expect."

"About what?"

"Oh, next year, darling. Budgets. All terribly dull." She was already in the doorway. "Ciao."

She went off down the corridor towards the lifts, heels clicking, without looking back. I stood in my office holding my notebook until she'd gone round the corner.

"Ciao," I said to the empty corridor. "You absolute nightmare."

I sat down, picked my mobile up off the desk to finish my reply to Oliver, and turned back to the screen while I thought about what to say. The girl in the middle was still there in her oyster bra, looking pleased with herself. Henrietta had picked the right one, which was somehow the most annoying part.

I'd typed half a reply to Oliver when the phone on my desk rang again. This time it said Richard Halden, and I picked it up on the second ring.

"Chloe. Have you got half an hour?"

"Of course."

"Henrietta's asked for you. We're in the boardroom." He paused. "She's just come up from your floor looking very pleased with herself."

"We've signed off the billboard."

"Good. Come up."

The boardroom was on the top floor, at the end of the corridor past Richard's office: one long pale table, twelve chairs, a glass wall looking down over Bellhouse Square, and a jug of water that nobody ever poured from. Henrietta sat at the far end with her back to the view. Millie must have caught up with her, because there was a coffee in front of her in one of our good cups. Richard sat at the corner beside her, with a notepad he hadn't written on and his reading glasses folded in his hand.

He was sixty-two, and he'd started Halden Pryce above a dry cleaner's with Graham Pryce before I was born. Graham had retired to Portugal to play golf. Richard had stayed. He was in a charcoal suit that had clearly been made for him, with no tie and his grey hair cut short, and an old steel watch that I'd once found out was worth more than my car.

"Sit, sit," Henrietta said, and patted the chair on her other side.

I sat, put my notebook on the table and my mobile in my lap.

"Henrietta's been telling me about next year," Richard said.

"I've been telling him everything, darling. He's been very patient."

"I've been very interested," Richard said. His face was perfectly pleasant and gave away nothing at all.

"You've been doing that face," Henrietta said. "Your sums face. You're adding me up." She turned to me. "Right. You know the main campaign. Spring and autumn, the billboards, the shops, all of it. We'd like to give you the whole year this time, not just bits."

"That's wonderful," I said.

"It is wonderful. And then there's the new lines." She put her cup down so she could count on her fingers. "Bridal, first. Because every bride in the country is getting married in cream polyester from a website, and it breaks my heart."

"It's a big market," Richard said.

"It's a tragic market, Richard. Then loungewear. Cashmere, silk, things you could wear all Sunday and still look expensive." She folded down a third finger. "And sleepwear. Proper silk. The sort of thing you'd be quite happy to answer the door in."

"That's three lines," Richard said.

"And this is the bit I really care about." She put her hand flat on the table. "All of it goes up the sizes. Everything, the new lines and the old ones. Properly. Not two extra sizes on the end of a rail and a model who's a ten pretending."

"Plus sizes across the whole brand?" I asked.

"Across the whole brand. Because curvier women have been offered beige and good intentions for about forty years, and they deserve luxury as much as anybody does. More, frankly. They've waited longer." She picked up her coffee again. "And the new lines all launch in the spring."

Richard put his glasses on and wrote something on his notepad for the first time. "Same spring?"

"Same spring," Henrietta said.

"Shoots in January, then," I said. "Which means creative signed off before Christmas, so the pitch for the launches would be early December at the latest."

"Is that tight?" Henrietta asked.

"It's tight," I said. "But it's doable."

My mobile lit up in my lap. I glanced down without moving my head.

Oliver: Leather seats were a mistake.

I looked straight back up at Henrietta.

"There's a little shop in Milan, Richard," she was saying, "that sends every single nightdress home in a velvet box. You open it and you feel like a duchess."

I knew exactly which car he was sitting in, and exactly what he was sitting on in it. I bit the inside of my cheek and wrote Milan, velvet box in my notebook, so my face had something to do.

"And the budget would reflect that, of course," Henrietta was saying. "Richard and I will be sensible about money. Won't we, Richard?"

"We'll be sensible," Richard said. He took his glasses off again and turned to me. "Chloe. Can your team carry all of that? Honestly. On top of what you've already got."

My mobile lit up again.

Oliver: I don't know how women wear these.

I put my hand flat over the screen, under the table, and looked at Richard.

"Not as it is," I said. "Not honestly. I'd need a senior account manager, someone who's launched a range before, and another exec under them. Millie stays on the billboards and the shops, so the main campaign doesn't slip while we're doing the launches."

Richard nodded slowly, and wrote that down too.

"And the plus sizes," I said, and turned to Henrietta. "If you're serious about them, they get shot on the same day as everything else. Same photographer, same lighting, same set. No separate little shoot in a cheaper studio a month later."

Henrietta put her cup down.

"Because women can tell," I said. "If the pictures look like a different brand, they'll know they've been put in a different room. Then all you've done is sell them beige with a better label."

For a second Henrietta didn't say anything at all, which in two years I'd never known happen.

"Richard," she said. "I want her."

"You've got her," Richard said.

"I want her on all of it. Not passed down to somebody."

"She won't be passed down to anybody." Richard put his glasses in his top pocket. "We'll do the numbers this week. I'll have something to you by Monday."

"Friday," Henrietta said.

"Monday," Richard said pleasantly. "Henrietta, I've been doing this for thirty-five years."

"Monday, then. Ugh." She stood up and gathered her coat. "You're both terribly clever and I hate it."

We walked her to the lift together, Richard on one side and me on the other. She air-kissed me, one side and then the other, and gave Richard two real kisses, while the doors stood open and beeped at her.

"Ciao, darlings."

The doors slid shut, and the last I saw of her was the sunglasses in her hair. Richard put his hands in his pockets and stood there watching the numbers count down.

When the numbers reached the ground floor, he didn't turn back towards the boardroom.

"Come through to my office a minute, would you?" he asked.

"Of course."

He went ahead of me down the corridor, and I followed him, going back over everything I'd said in that room and trying to work out which bit had been wrong. The walls of his office were covered in our old ads, framed, going back to the eighties. He didn't go round behind his desk. He sat on the arm of the little sofa by the window, and I stood, because I wasn't sure if this was the sort of conversation you sat down for.

"How long have you been here now?" he asked.

"Twelve years in October."

"Twelve years." He shook his head. "You came in for your interview in a suit that was too big for you."

"It was my mother's."

"I thought it might be. You were twenty-one, and you'd prepared a ten-minute presentation nobody asked you for, and you did it anyway, standing up, in that suit." He smiled at the window. "Graham wanted to hire somebody else."

"You never told me that."

"I've never needed to. Do you remember your first year? Hollins Farm?"

"The yoghurts. Oh, God."

"Twelve thousand leaflets," Richard said. "With last year's prices on them. You came into this office white as that wall and told me before anyone else could, and then you went and rang the client yourself."

"You told me everyone sends the wrong file once."

"And not to do it twice." He looked at me. "You haven't."

I said I hadn't, though I could feel my face going warm, which hadn't happened in his office since about the yoghurt.

"Henrietta Fane-Whitlock is the most difficult woman I've had in that room in thirty-five years," he said. "And she just asked for you by name. I want you to lead it. All of it, the year and the launches. We'll talk about what that means for you properly in the new year, but I wanted you to hear it from me today."

"Thank you," I said. "Richard. Honestly."

"Don't thank me. You'll be seeing a great deal more of Henrietta." He stood up off the arm of the sofa. "How's Oliver?"

"He's well. Busy. He's got a loft with a staircase that won't behave."

"Lovely man. I liked him the first time you brought him to the Christmas party. And at your wedding he came and found me, halfway through the evening, just to thank me for coming. It's this weekend, isn't it? A year?"

"Saturday."

"Give him my best. And take him somewhere nice."

"I'm planning to," I said.

"Good." He glanced at his watch, then went over and opened his door. "Right. I've kept you long enough. Go and find yourself two new people."

"I will. Thank you, Richard."

He nodded, and I went out past him and back down the corridor to the lifts. I pressed the button and waited, holding my notebook and my phone, and when the doors opened the lift was empty. I stood at the back of it, against the mirror, and grinned at my own reflection all the way down.

On the way past Millie's desk, I told her Henrietta had loved the coffee, which may even have been true, and she looked so relieved I thought she might hug me. Then I shut my office door and sat down. I'd carried my mobile face down all the way from the boardroom, and only now did I turn it over. The two texts were still sitting there, a minute apart.

Chloe: I was in a meeting with Richard AND Henrietta when that came in

Chloe: How do women wear them? Welcome to my entire life

Chloe: Also Richard wants me to lead all of Maison Severine next year. Tell you later x

He didn't answer. By now he'd be standing in Mrs Penrose's hall with his tape measure out, and I sat there smiling at the screen anyway.

I put my phone down next to the keyboard and made myself do some work.

I started with Dev, because he'd be waiting. The one you brought back halfway, I wrote. She called it oyster and put her hand on her heart. Print files to Sam by Thursday, please, so we've got a day spare. I sent it and opened the next email, and before I'd finished reading that one, his reply came through.

Fine.

From Dev, that was practically a hug.

Then I rang Sam, who picked up sounding as if she was walking fast somewhere.

"Chloe. Sorry. Hello."

"Is this a bad time?"

"It's always a bad time. My eldest's at home with a temperature, and he's rung me twice to tell me he's dying." A door banged on her end. "Go on. The six sites."

"We've got sign-off. Files with you by Thursday, a day early. Is the slot still good?"

"Still holding it. Did they swallow the cost?"

"She didn't even ask."

"God, I'd love a client like that." Her mobile was ringing in the background. "That's him again. I'll call you back."

"Give him my love."

"I'll give him a Calpol," Sam said, and hung up.

After that, I opened a new note on my laptop and typed Next year at the top. I meant it to be a quick list. Senior account manager, launch experience. Exec under them. Launch timeline: bridal, loungewear, sleepwear, all spring. January shoots, all three, one photographer. Plus sizes on the same days, same set. Pitch to Henrietta early December. Then I thought of the casting, and the shops, and the new packaging, and somebody to do the social side who wasn't twelve, and Henrietta's velvet box. By the time I stopped typing, I had to scroll to get back to the top.

Millie knocked on my open door a bit later, with a mug of tea she'd made me without being asked.

"Thought you might want this," she said. "After Henrietta."

"You're an angel. Come in a sec."

She came in, put the mug down on my desk, and sat on the edge of the chair across from me, holding her notebook on her knees.

"We've got next year," I said. "All of Maison Severine. The main campaign and three new lines."

Her mouth fell open. "All of it?"

"All of it. Which means I'm going to be up to my neck in launches, and I need someone I trust on the main campaign. The billboards and the shops. That's you."

She opened her notebook and started writing it down.

"You don't need to write that down, Millie."

"I might forget."

"Millie." I waited until she looked up. "Yesterday you got something wrong, and then you went and found Will and put it right. That's the part people remember. The ones who get good at this aren't the ones who never make a mistake. They're the ones who own it and fix it, and you've already done that once. You'll be brilliant on the billboards. I wouldn't be giving them to you otherwise."

"I honestly thought you were going to take me off the account."

"I thought about it for about five seconds," I said. "Then I saw you at your desk with your headphones on, checking that file like it might bite you, and I knew you'd be fine."

"Really?"

"Really. Now go on, before Henrietta comes back and wants another coffee."

She closed the notebook on her pen and gave a small, nervous laugh. "Okay. Right. I'm going to go back to my desk before I do something embarrassing."

She went, and I drank my tea and went back to my list.

Not long after she'd gone, my phone buzzed.

Oliver: Survived.

Oliver: Window opens in.

Oliver: Mrs Penrose stood at the bottom of the ladder the whole time. Looking up.

Chloe: Looking up at what exactly

Oliver: At me measuring the joists, I hope.

Oliver: I took the biscuit.

Chloe: So proud of you

Oliver: Crouching was the worst part. Nobody warns you about crouching.

Chloe: Every woman alive could have warned you about crouching

I sat back in my chair with the phone in both hands, picturing him folded up under a roof joist with his tape measure, a red bow at the top of his arse and a seventy-two-year-old woman holding a plate of biscuits underneath him.

Chloe: I want proof

Oliver: Of what?

Chloe: That you've still got it on. Photo please. Your arse at least

The dots came and went three times.

Oliver: I'm parked outside a seventy-two-year-old woman's house.

Chloe: She's not going to see it. I am

Oliver: She's at her front window, watching me not drive off.

Chloe: Not now then. When you're back at the studio

Oliver: No.

Chloe: You've been wearing it for me all morning. I've sat through a meeting with Richard thinking about it. I just want to see it

Oliver: You saw it this morning. You were on your knees.

Chloe: Exactly. I've been thinking about that too

Chloe: One photo. I'll be very grateful tonight

Oliver: How grateful?

Chloe: Very

Oliver: Fine. At the studio.

I put the phone down and tried to read a contract about bus shelters in Leeds for the next half an hour, and I'm not sure I took in a single word of it. At twenty past twelve, my phone buzzed twice in a row.

There were no words with them, just two photos.

The first was from the front, taken looking down: his black jeans undone and folded open, a strip of red satin underneath, and the edge of his hand holding his shirt tails out of the way. The second he must have taken in the mirror in the studio loo. He was side-on to it, with his jeans pushed down to the tops of his thighs, and from his shoulder down to his knees there was just him: his bare arse, the red string disappearing between his cheeks, and the little bow sitting on top of it, where it was supposed to be.

His face wasn't in either photo. He'd done exactly what I asked and not a single thing more.

I locked my screen and checked the doorway to make sure nobody was walking past. Then I unlocked it again and looked at the second one for a lot longer than I should have at work.

Chloe: Oh my GOD

Chloe: Saving both

Oliver: Delete them.

Chloe: Never

Oliver: I have a client call in five minutes and I'm in a toilet with my trousers down.

Chloe: Then pull them up babe. I'll see the rest later x

He didn't reply to that one.

By lunchtime I still hadn't moved from my desk, and I wasn't going to get out. Through my open door, I saw Jacob, the graduate trainee, going past at the far end with a list in his hand.

"Jacob!"

He doubled back and put his head round my door. "Hiya. I'm doing a Marlowe's run, if you want anything?"

"Please. A ham and cheese toastie. And a latte."

He wrote it on his list. "Anything else? They've got the salted caramel brownies in again."

"Don't tell me that."

"So that's a yes."

"That's a yes. You're a lifesaver, Jacob."

I took a twenty out of my purse and held it out, and he came in to take it.

"It's literally my job," he said, and went off towards the lifts.

When he came back about half an hour later, he put the bag on my desk with my change on top. I kicked my ankle boots off under the desk, put the brownie to one side for later, took the toastie out of its paper and got about two bites in before my mobile started ringing.

It said Sue x. Oliver's mum.

I swallowed most of my mouthful and picked up. "Hi, Sue."

"Hello, love. Are you eating? You sound like you're eating."

"I'm at my desk. It's a toastie. It's fine, honestly."

"I won't keep you long. I've just got back from book club, and I need to tell someone who'll take my side."

I put the toastie down. "What happened?"

"They picked another one about a woman who walks across Spain to find herself. That's three this year, Chloe. I said, why can't any of them find themselves on a bus?"

"What did they say?"

"Margaret said I wasn't open to the journey." She sniffed. "I've been open to journeys my whole life. I took thirty ten-year-olds to the Lake District on a coach. Twice."

I had to put my hand over my mouth, so nobody outside my office would hear me.

"Anyway, that's quite enough about Margaret. Are you two excited for the weekend?"

"I can't quite believe it's been a year," I said.

"Nor can I. I keep thinking about that morning." Her voice went softer. "Oliver came round to ours to get ready, did he ever tell you that? He wanted to do it from his old room. And I went up at about eleven to see if he wanted a cup of tea, and he was standing in front of the mirror in his suit, doing his tie up again. He'd done it about six times. And he said, 'Mum, what if she's changed her mind?'"

"He never told me that."

"He wouldn't. He'd die. So I sat him down on his old bed, and I said, Oliver, that girl's been waiting for you to ask her for two years. She'll be there before you are."

"I was," I said. "Ten minutes early."

"I know. I told him afterwards." She was quiet for a second. "Has he planned anything? For Saturday? Or do I need to give him a push?"

"He's planned it. There's a list."

"Oh, thank God. There's always a list with him. He had a list for his tenth birthday party. Who was sitting where. Now, listen. Ian and I were talking last night, and we'd love to do something for you both. A proper family dinner. Your mum and dad as well. All of us."

"That's lovely, Sue."

"I thought we could all go out on Saturday. Somewhere nice. Our treat."

"Oh, Sue, that's so kind of you," I said. "But Oliver's got something planned for Saturday night. Just the two of us. I think it's a whole thing."

"Of course it is. Of course you'll want Saturday to yourselves. Ignore me." She didn't sound at all put out. "Then what about before? I could do a roast at ours. Friday, maybe? Ian could do his potatoes."

"Friday might work. I'd have to check with Oliver."

"You check with him. And ask your mum, would you? I never know if our house is too small for your mother."

"Your house is lovely."

"It's got a carpet in the downstairs loo, Chloe. Your mother's got a chandelier in hers." I could hear her smiling. "Oh, and talking of Oliver, he rang me this morning. From his car, at about ten."

"Did he?"

"Out of the blue. And do you know what he wanted? He wanted to know how you get a mark out of silk."

I picked up my coffee and held it in front of my mouth.

"I said, what sort of mark? And he went very quiet, and he said, 'Just a mark, Mum.'" She laughed. "So I told him. Cold water, a bit of washing-up liquid, don't rub it. Is it one of your things he's spilled on?"

"It's my robe," I said, very steadily.

"Oh, Chloe. Well, you tell him cold water. Never hot. Hot sets it."

"I'll tell him."

"Good. Right, I'll let you get back to your toastie. Ian's sitting in the car outside waiting to take me to the garden centre, and he's started tooting." Somewhere behind her, a car horn tooted twice. "There he goes. Ring me about Friday, love."

"I will. Bye, Sue."

"Bye, love. Give Oliver a kiss from me."

She hung up. I sat there with my coffee in front of my face for a while longer, until I was sure I could put it down without laughing. Then I found Oliver's name in my phone.

He picked up on the third ring, and when he spoke, his voice was low.

"Hang on."

I heard chairs, somebody laughing somewhere behind him, and then a door shutting, and the noise of the studio went away.

"Sorry. Hi." His normal voice was back. "Before you say anything. What do you mean, lead all of it?"

"I mean all of it. Henrietta came in this morning without warning anyone, picked the right billboard in about four seconds, and then sat in the boardroom with Richard and handed us all of next year. Every campaign, and three new lines on top. And then Richard took me into his office afterwards and told me he wants me running it."

There was a pause on the line.

"Chloe. That's…" I heard him breathe out. "That's huge."

"It's quite huge."

"It's very huge. Are you pleased?"

"I'm terrified. And very pleased." I swivelled my chair round to face the window. "And then he said we'd talk about what it means for me properly in the new year."

"What does that mean?"

"I've got no idea. That's what I've been sitting here trying to work out."

"A pay rise?"

"Maybe. Or a title. Or he's being nice and it means nothing at all."

"Richard doesn't say things that mean nothing," he said. "He's not that sort of man."

"No," I said. "He isn't."

"Well done," he said, quietly. "I mean it. Well done."

I pressed my lips together for a second, because I hadn't expected that to get me.

"He sends you his best," I said. "He called you a lovely man."

"I am a lovely man."

"You're a lovely man who's been in a thong all morning."

"Those two things aren't mutually exclusive."

"Clearly not." I picked the brownie up off the desk and turned it over in its paper. "And then your mum rang."

"Oh, God. What did she want?"

"A family dinner. For the anniversary. Your mum and dad, and mine, all of us round a table. She offered to take us out on Saturday, and I said you'd got something planned."

"Good."

"So she said she'd do a roast at yours instead. Friday, she thought. Your dad's doing his potatoes."

"Not Friday," he said, straight away. "Sunday. Make it a proper Sunday lunch. We'll be back by then."

I sat up.

"Back," I said. "Back from where?"

There was a silence on his end, long enough to boil a kettle.

"From… Saturday."

"Saturday's a dinner, Oliver. You don't come back from a dinner."

"You do. You come back from a dinner every time you go to one."

"Not on a Sunday lunchtime, you don't." I was grinning at the window now. "'Weekend away, question mark.' You've taken the question mark off, haven't you?"

"I'm not discussing it."

"You've booked somewhere."

"I'm not confirming or denying anything."

"Where is it?"

"I'm going to ring my mum about Sunday," he said, very firmly, "and you're going to ring yours."

"Oh, don't make me ring my mother."

"She's your mother."

"She'll want to know what she's supposed to bring, and what everyone's wearing, and whether your dad's still doing that thing with the gravy."

"He is. He's very proud of it."

"I know. I'm still not telling her." I put the brownie down again. "Your mum says to give you a kiss, by the way."

"Don't."

"From her. I'm only passing it on."

"I'm at work, Chloe."

"And she says, about that mark on my silk robe," I said, as innocently as I could manage, "cold water. Never hot. Hot sets it."

The line went completely silent.

"Oliver?"

"She told you."

"She asked me which of my things you'd spilled on."

"Oh, no."

"I told her it was my robe."

"I only asked her how to get a mark out of silk. I didn't say what kind of mark." He sounded like a man lowering himself into a hole. "I was going to do it before you got home. You'd never have known."

I spun my chair round to face the wall and laughed, and on the other end I could hear him waiting for me to finish, which only made it worse.

"I love you," I said, when I could. "I love you so much. You rang your mum."

"It seemed like the quickest way to find out."

"You could have googled it."

"Google doesn't know about silk the way my mum does."

I turned my chair back round to face the desk.

"I've been looking at the photos," I said, more quietly.

"Chloe."

"The second one, mostly. I've had it open three times since you sent it. Your little bow."

"I'm putting the phone down."

"I keep thinking about tonight," I said. "About what you're going to be wearing by the time I've finished with you. And about that drawer by my bed."

His voice changed completely.

"Yes. Mm," he said, in his work voice, the one he used with clients. "I'll have a look at that this afternoon."

Someone had come in. I could tell from the way he'd said it, all bright and businesslike, and somewhere behind him I heard another voice say something I couldn't catch.

"Is somebody there?" I whispered. "Tell them about your bow."

"That's very helpful. Thank you."

"Tell them you've got a remote-controlled…"

"Thank you," he said. "I'll call you back."

He hung up. I sat there in my office with the phone in my hand and laughed until somebody walking past my door slowed down to see what the joke was about.

 

◇ — ◇ — ◇

 

The rain had started in the afternoon, more or less when Oliver had said it would, and it hadn't let up since. By the time I left the office, it was coming down so hard it bounced off the pavement, and the little umbrella was sitting in my car, which was no use to me at all. I ran across the car park with my handbag over my head, and halfway there my phone buzzed inside it. I got into the car with my hair stuck to my neck and my boots soaked through, pulled my phone out of my handbag and wiped the rain off the screen with my thumb.

Oliver: Rang Mum. Sunday's fine. One o'clock. She's thrilled.

I put the phone in its holder on the dashboard and pulled out into the rain.

The traffic out of the centre was crawling, all red brake lights smeared across the windscreen, and the wipers on full. I sat in it for ten minutes, not moving, and thought about the drawer by my bed. Then I remembered I'd promised to ring my mother.

I pressed the button on the steering wheel and said, "Call Mum."

It rang five times, and I'd started to think she was out, before she answered.

"Chloe."

"Hi, Mum. Is this a good time?"

"Your father's watching the news, so it's as good a time as any. You sound as though you're in a car wash."

"I'm driving home. It's pouring."

"It's been pouring here for hours. I had the Garden Society at two, and we had to move the whole thing into the conservatory, and Barbara Leigh-Hunt brought her dog."

"Into the conservatory?"

"Of course into the conservatory. Weren't you listening? A wet spaniel, among the orchids. I'll be finding hair in them till Christmas."

"Oh, Mum."

"I said nothing. I put the kettle on and said nothing at all." I could tell she'd said quite a lot. "Anyway. Was there something you wanted?"

The car in front moved a few feet, and I moved after it. "Sue rang me today. She wants to have everybody over for lunch on Sunday, for our anniversary. You and Daddy, and them, and us."

"At their house?"

"Yes. She's doing a roast."

"How kind of her." It was very nearly enthusiastic. "What time do they eat?"

"One o'clock."

"Should I bring something? Flowers? A pudding?"

"Bring a bottle of wine, Mum. That's all. Sue will do everything else."

"A bottle of wine. Red or white?"

"Red. It's a roast."

"Red, then. I'll write it down. I'll ask your father which one. He'll take an hour. And what's Oliver doing for Saturday?"

"He won't tell me."

"Your father booked the Linden Room for our first. It closed years ago. It was very good. Your father had the sole."

"And?"

"And then we went home. He had an early start."

That was it: their whole first anniversary, a piece of sole and an early night.

I thought about Oliver at home, probably already in the kitchen with that red string still up his arse, and the drawer by my bed with the remote in it. The traffic moved, and I put my foot down.

"That sounds… lovely, Mum," I said, in the voice I used on clients whose ideas I hated.

"Don't use that voice with me, Chloe. What would you rather I told you? That we came home and went at it like rabbits?"

"Mum!"

"Well." Somewhere behind her, a man's voice asked who it was. "It's Chloe, Edward. She's driving."

"Is she on that speaker thing?" my father asked, closer now. "Chloe? Can you hear me?"

"Hi, Daddy."

"How's Oliver? Still knocking walls down for people?"

"He's up somebody's loft this week."

"Good man. Tell him from me, don't let them talk him into a…"

"Edward, I'm talking to her."

"I'm only saying hello, Caroline."

"You've said hello. Go back to the news." There was the sound of a door, and my mother came back, a little more crisply. "He's gone. Now, while I've got you. Philippa Fairfax rang me on Monday."

"Tash's mum?"

"She's very worried about Natasha."

"Why? What's happened?"

"Nothing's happened. That's what she's worried about. She's thirty-three, Chloe, and Philippa says she's never brought anybody home who lasted beyond a weekend. She asked if I knew of anyone suitable."

"Suitable?" I asked.

"A nice man. And I thought straight away of Piers."

"Piers who?"

"Piers Whitcombe. Penelope and John's boy. You must remember Piers."

I did remember Piers. He'd been at every one of my parents' Christmas drinks since I was about twelve, standing in a corner with a glass of orange juice and saying sorry to people he hadn't bumped into.

"Mum, he's thirty-eight, and he lives in his parents' annexe."

"He's renovating it. It's an investment."

"He's been renovating it for six years."

"He's a very nice boy, Chloe."

"He's a very nice boy who still calls you Mrs Ashworth. Tash would eat him alive."

"That's exactly what Natasha needs. Somebody steady."

I thought about Tash at lunch yesterday, with her leopard heels, telling me about the headmaster, and his wife watching from the armchair. Then I thought about poor Piers Whitcombe in that armchair instead, sitting very upright in the corner of somebody's bedroom with a brandy he didn't really want, watching politely and saying sorry. I had to hold the steering wheel very tightly.

"Chloe? Will you mention him to her?"

"I'll mention him," I said, in a voice that only wobbled slightly. "I'm not promising anything."

"That's all I ask." She sounded satisfied. "Sunday, then. One o'clock. Red wine."

"Red wine. Love you, Mum."

"Drive carefully, Chloe. The roads will be awful."

She rang off. The traffic finally started to move, and I drove the rest of the way home with the wipers going and the rain hammering on the roof, snorting to myself every time I thought about Piers. When I turned into Pelham Grove, Oliver's car was already on the drive, and there was a light on in the hall.

I let myself in and stood dripping on the mat. The house was warm and smelled of onions.

"In here," Oliver called.

He was at the island with his sleeves rolled up, in the same black jeans and pale blue shirt he'd left in that morning, with a chopping board in front of him. There were two steaks on it, a row of fat sausages, a gammon steak with its little ring of fat, and an onion he'd got halfway through. The rain was coming down on the glass roof of the extension so hard it sounded like gravel.

He looked up at me and started laughing.

"I'd like to see you do better," I said.

"I told you you'd want an umbrella."

"I had an umbrella. It was in the car."

"That's not where umbrellas go, Chloe."

I came round the island in my wet boots and kissed him, and he kept his oniony hands up out of the way like a surgeon.

"Sunday's sorted, then," I said.

"Mum's already planning the pudding."

I looked at the board. "What's all this?"

"A mixed grill. It's the right weather for it."

"That's a lot of meat."

"You're very welcome to have less of it."

"I didn't say I wanted less of it," I said, and went to find a towel.

The utility room was off the kitchen, behind the door by the fridge. I sat on the step stool to peel my boots off, and they came away with a wet noise. I took a towel off the airer for my hair. Then I saw the sink. My green robe was lying in it under a few inches of cold water, with the bottle of washing-up liquid standing right next to it, lid down, ready.

"Cold water?" I called through.

There was a pause from the kitchen.

"Never hot," Oliver called back.

I went upstairs with the towel round my neck. In the bathroom I peeled off my wet dress and tights and left them in a heap on the floor. I towelled my hair until it was only damp and left it down. I put on a black silk cami and the loose shorts that went with it, nothing underneath, and nothing on my feet.

On my bedside table, the little light on the plug had stopped blinking. It was a steady white now, which meant it was ready.

I unplugged it and held it in my hand for a moment, plum-coloured and smooth. I thought about him downstairs at the hob with his back to the room, in his black jeans with that red string up his arse, cutting up onions as if it was an ordinary Wednesday. I'd meant to wait until after dinner. I smiled at the plug, and decided I wasn't going to.

I took the lube out of my drawer and the remote with it, and picked up the book I'd been not reading for a month. I put the plug, the lube and the remote underneath it, held it all flat against my front, and went back down.

He was at the hob now, with his back to me, pushing the onions round a frying pan with a wooden spoon. He heard me on the kitchen tiles and glanced over his shoulder, and his eyes went straight down to the shorts and up again.

"Aren't you cold?" he asked.

"Not for long."

He turned back to his pan, and I put the book down on the island behind him. I slid the plug out from under it without a sound, then the lube, and left the remote where it was. Then I went up behind him, close enough that my front was against his back, and put my arms round his waist.

"Hello," I said into the back of his neck.

"Hello."

"I've been looking at your photos all afternoon."

The wooden spoon stopped. "Hmm."

"The second one, mostly." I ran my hands down over his belt. "Your bare arse. That little bow on top. I nearly got caught twice."

"I'm doing the onions."

"Keep doing the onions."

I undid his belt, slowly, and then his button. He kept stirring. I pulled his zip down, hooked my thumbs into the waistband of his jeans and pushed them down over his hips to the tops of his thighs. There it was, the red string, and the bow sitting at the top of it.

"Mmm," I said. "You're still wearing it."

"You told me to."

"Good boy."

The spoon stopped again. I watched the back of his neck go pink.

I slid my hand round the front of him, onto the little red triangle. He was soft when I got there, and he didn't stay that way for long. I felt him thicken under the satin, pushing against my palm, and I held my hand on his cock and did nothing at all with it while he got harder.

He pushed into my palm.

"No," I said, and took my hand off his cock. "Not that. Not yet."

He groaned under his breath. I let him wait. Then I ran one finger down his spine to the bow and followed the string down between his cheeks, until my fingertip was pressing against his hole through the string.

He went very still. "What are you doing?"

"Turn the hob off."

"The onions…"

"Turn the hob off, Oliver."

He reached out and turned the knob. The onions hissed and went quiet. I took him by the hips, turned him round, walked him three steps backwards to the island and pushed him down over it with one hand flat between his shoulder blades. He went down onto his forearms on the stone, beside the chopping board and the sausages.

"Arch your back for me."

He did.

"Spread your legs."

He shuffled his feet apart as far as his jeans would let him.

"Head down."

He put his forehead down on his arms. I stood back for a second to take him in: his jeans round his thighs, his bare arse in the air over our kitchen island, and that red string running down between his cheeks.

"You've no idea how good you look," I said.

"I've got some idea."

I hooked the red string aside with one finger and held it there, so he was bare for me, and squeezed the lube straight onto his hole. He jumped at the cold.

"Bloody hell, Chloe."

"Sorry." I wasn't. Still holding the string out of the way, I rubbed the lube over him in slow circles, until he stopped flinching and his hips started to move. "Is it still sore?"

"A bit."

"Do you want me to stop?"

He didn't answer straight away. "No."

I slid one finger into him, easily, and felt him clench round it and then let go. I worked it in and out, taking my time. When I curled it forward, he let out a deep, shaky moan into his arms that went right through me.

"That's it," I said. "You remember that. I know you do."

"Fuck…"

I added a second finger, and he groaned, and pushed back onto them by himself. I leaned over him with my other hand on the small of his back.

"Do you know what I thought about all day?" I asked. "In that meeting, with Richard and Henrietta? You. Like this. Bent over something with my fingers in you."

His fingers spread flat on the stone.

"All the way through it," I said. "Richard asked me a question, and I had to make the answer up."

He pushed his forehead harder into his arms when I twisted my fingers. I slid them out, and he let out a small, lost whimper, and I picked up the plug.

I covered it in lube until it dripped onto the floor, and set the tip of it against him.

He lifted his head. "What's that?"

"What do you think it is?"

I felt him clench against the tip.

"It's bigger."

"Only a bit." I pressed, very gently, and felt him tense. "Breathe out for me. Nice and loose, the same as last night."

He put his head back down on his arms and let his breath go, and I pressed again. It slid in a little, and then the widest part started to stretch him, and he went rigid.

"Shit," he said through his teeth. "Shit."

"Nearly there, love. Don't fight it."

I held it there and waited. I didn't push, and I rubbed the small of his back with my other hand until I felt him give. The widest part slipped through, and the rest of it slid in all at once, until the base was snug between his cheeks with the little handle sitting right on top of the string.

"Oh, fuck," he said, very quietly. "Oh, fuck me."

"It's in."

He stayed bent over the island, and I watched his shoulders slowly come down. "It's… it's a lot fuller than the other one."

"How does it feel?"

"Full." He swallowed. "Strange. Full."

I put my hand flat on his arse and smoothed the string back over the base. Then I reached over to the book, slid the remote out from under it, and pressed the button with the lightning bolt.

He came up off the island so fast he nearly took the chopping board with him.

"FUCK! Chloe!"

"Too much?"

"Turn it… oh, God…" he said. "Oh, fuck, turn it off, turn it…"

I pressed the button with the little arrow on it instead, and the buzzing changed to slow, deep pulses. He gripped the edge of the island with both hands and his whole body shook.

"That's worse," he said. "That's so much worse. Please."

"Please what?"

"Please turn it off. Or… or don't. I don't know. Fuck."

I pressed the arrow again. Three long pulses and a short one. On the third long one he pushed his forehead down onto the stone and moaned out loud, and I could see his cock straining against the front of the thong.

"That's the one I found this morning," I said. "While you were in the shower."

He didn't answer. His knuckles had gone white on the edge of the island.

I let it run for a few more seconds, watching him rock his hips against the edge of the island, and then I switched it off. He sagged down onto his arms and stayed there, panting.

"Okay?" I asked.

"No."

I laughed and pulled the string of his thong straight over the plug, and then pulled his jeans back up over his hips. I zipped his jeans up, did the button and buckled his belt, then patted the back of his jeans twice, right over the handle. He jumped.

"Right," I said. "Back to your onions."

He stood up very slowly, with both hands on the island, and turned round. His face was pink all the way up to his hair.

"You want me to cook," he said. "Like this."

"Mm-hmm," I said, and smiled at him.

"I can't stand up straight."

"Then cook bent over."

He went back to the hob, a bit stiffly, and turned the onions back on.

I poured myself a glass of red from the bottle he'd left open on the side, hitched myself up onto a stool at the island right behind him, and opened my book at a page somewhere in the middle. I read the same paragraph three times without taking in a word of it. In front of me, Oliver was standing very stiffly at the hob, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

"How are the onions?" I asked.

"Fine."

I pressed the button. Just once, a short buzz, and he grabbed the edge of the hob.

"Shit! Chloe!"

"Sorry," I said. "My finger slipped."

He turned back to the pan. He put the sausages in, and the gammon, and they started to spit. I turned a page of my book.

"Are you doing mash?" I asked.

"Yes."

"With butter?"

"Obviously with butter."

"Is it going to be nice?"

"It'll be fine," he said, and I pressed the button again.

He dropped the tongs. They clattered on the hob, and he stood there with both hands flat on the worktop until it stopped.

"What the hell, Chloe?"

"What?" I asked, as sweetly as I could.

He turned round and looked at the remote in my hand, and I could see him going back over it.

"Fine," he said slowly. "Every time I say fine. Are you doing that every time I say fine?"

I hadn't been, until about ten seconds ago. "I am now."

"That's not fair."

"Nobody said it was going to be fair."

He picked the tongs up and turned the sausages over with enormous concentration. I watched him do it, the back of his neck, his shoulders tight under the blue shirt, the way he was standing with his feet just slightly too far apart.

"How are the sausages?" I asked.

"They're…" He caught himself. "They're good."

"Just good?"

"They're coming along."

"And the steak?"

"The steak's going in last. It only needs a few minutes."

"Is that a big steak?"

"It's a normal-sized steak."

"It looks very big to me."

"It's a sirloin. It's not…" He stopped stirring. "Are you doing this on purpose?"

"Doing what?"

"You know exactly what."

"I'm only asking about your meat," I said, and turned another page.

He put the steaks in, and they hissed in the pan. He mashed the potatoes in the saucepan with the masher, with the butter and a splash of milk, and he was doing well. He'd got all the way through the mash and halfway through the gravy without slipping once.

"How long till it's ready?" I asked.

"About five minutes."

"And how are you feeling?"

"I'm fine," he said, and then, "oh, no, wait, no…"

I pressed it and held it down. He leaned both hands on the edge of the hob with the wooden spoon still in one of them and his head hanging, and made a long, low groan that had nothing to do with gravy. I let go after a few seconds. He stood up very straight.

"I hate you," he said, to the gravy.

"No, you don't."

"No," he said. "I don't."

He plated it up: the steaks, the sausages, a slice of gammon each, a big spoonful of mash, and the onion gravy poured over everything. He carried both plates over to the table in the extension, walking as if there were a full glass of water balanced on his head, and set them down. Then he looked at the chair.

"Sit down, love," I said, picking up my wine. "It's getting cold."

He lowered himself onto the chair the way you'd get into a cold sea, a bit at a time, with one hand on the edge of the table. The second his full weight went down, his face changed completely.

"Everything all right?" I asked.

"Perfectly fine," he said, and I picked up the remote and pressed it.

He grabbed the edge of the table, and the cutlery jumped.

"You walked straight into that one," I said.

He picked up his knife and fork and held them very tightly. "Eat your dinner."

I picked up my own knife and fork and started on my steak.

"This is really good, babe."

"Thank you."

"And the gravy's better than your dad's."

He tried very hard not to look pleased, and failed. "Don't tell him that."

"I'm telling him on Sunday."

"He'll sulk all the way through pudding."

The rain was still hammering on the glass over our heads.

"I rang Mum on the way home," I said.

"How was she?"

"She'd had the Garden Society in the conservatory, and somebody brought a wet spaniel." I cut into my sausage. "And then she told me about their first anniversary. Dinner at some restaurant that closed years ago. Daddy had the sole. And then they went home, because he had an early start."

"That's it?"

"That's what I said. Well, I said it sounded lovely, and she heard what I meant." I put my fork down. "And then she said, 'What would you rather I told you, Chloe? That we came home and went at it like rabbits?'"

He put his fork down and stared at me.

"Your mother said that?"

"My mother said that, on speaker, with my father listening in the next room."

He'd gone red to the tips of his ears. "I'm never going to be able to look her in the eye on Sunday."

"Nor am I." I picked my fork back up. "Then she wanted to talk about Tash."

"What about Tash?"

"Philippa rang her. Tash's mum. She wants Mum to find Tash a nice man, and Mum's come up with Piers Whitcombe."

Oliver thought about it. "Piers who says sorry when you hold a door open for him?"

"That Piers."

"He'd be terrified of her."

"That's what I said." I pushed a bit of mash round my plate. "And the thing is, there's no point anyway. Because Tash is already seeing someone. Two someones."

He stopped chewing. "Two?"

I thought about it for a second, and then I leaned in over the table. "You remember Hugo's party in May?"

"Vaguely."

"There was a headmaster there. A friend of her dad's. Tall, grey bits at the sides, a very good jaw. Married about a hundred years."

"Oh, no."

"Oh, yes. Since June. And the first time she went back to his house, she thought his wife was away at her sister's. She wasn't. She was sitting in an armchair in the corner of the bedroom in her dressing gown, with a brandy, and she told Tash not to mind her. She was only going to watch."

"She watched?"

"The whole time. Didn't say a word. And then a few weeks ago, apparently, she decided watching wasn't enough for her, and climbed into bed with them."

"No."

"Yes. So now he's the one in the armchair, watching the two of them, until he can't stand it any more and joins in."

He'd put his knife and fork down completely. "Which school?"

"She wouldn't tell me. She said I'd know his face."

"I'd know his face," he said slowly, "because I'd have seen it on a letter."

"Probably. Half the county has, apparently." I reached over and put my hand on his wrist. "Babe. You can't tell anyone. Ever. I'm telling you because it's you, and that's where it stops."

"I won't say a word." He turned his hand over and held mine. "Who would I even tell? Mrs Penrose?"

"I mean it."

"I know you do. I won't." He picked up his water.

"And apparently," I said, "the wife's got the best tits Tash has ever had her hands on."

He choked on his water and had to put the glass down.

"And all the while," I said, "poor Piers Whitcombe is being lined up to take her out for a nice dinner."

"He'd probably end up in the armchair."

"That's exactly what I thought in the car. I nearly crashed." I sat back with my wine and watched him over the rim of the glass. "Would you?"

"Would I what?"

"Sit in the armchair. If it was me."

He stopped with a piece of steak halfway to his mouth.

"Absolutely not," he said.

"No?"

"No."

"You hesitated."

"I was chewing."

"You weren't chewing. Your fork was in the air."

"Chloe, I am not sitting in an armchair with a brandy watching you…" He stopped, and put the steak in his mouth to stop himself finishing the sentence.

"Watching me what?"

He chewed for a long time.

I let him off, for now. "How was Mrs Penrose, really?"

"Sad, actually." He cut a piece of gammon. "You know why she's doing the loft?"

"For the money?"

"Her husband built a model railway up there. Ken. He spent twenty years on it. It went all the way round the roof, with tunnels, and a little station with a clock on it."

"That's lovely."

"He died two years ago. Her grandson boxed it all up for her last month, and now she wants it for her granddaughter, who's coming to live with her for university." He put his fork down. "She showed me where the station used to be. She cried a bit. And then she gave me a custard cream."

"Oh, love."

"I didn't know what to do. I was halfway up a ladder in a thong, holding a biscuit, and she was crying about Ken."

I tried very hard not to laugh, and failed, and then felt awful about it. He didn't seem to mind; he was grinning down at his plate. Over our heads, the rain kept drumming on the glass.

"Is the steak all right?" I asked.

"It's very nice."

"Just very nice?"

"It's excellent. It's perfectly cooked. It's, I'd say, among my better steaks."

"Among your better steaks," I said. "You're working very hard there."

"I've learned."

"How's the plug?"

He looked at me. "It's…"

I waited, with my thumb on the remote.

"It's a lot," he said carefully. "It's very much there. It's a lot more than the little one."

"Bigger."

"Bigger. Fuller." He shifted on the chair, and winced. "Every time I move, it's… everywhere."

I put my knife and fork down, pushed my chair back and got up. I walked round the table with the remote in my hand and stood behind his chair. I put my other hand on his shoulder, bent down until my mouth was right beside his ear, and pressed the button. Low, just a hum.

He gripped the edge of the table.

"You think that's full?" I asked, very quietly. "That's tiny, babe. That's nothing. Do you know what comes after that?"

He shook his head.

"The pink one. The one Kitty picked out for us. Five inches of it." I turned the plug up one setting, and he groaned, low, and I felt it through my hand. "It's sitting in its box on the chest of drawers upstairs. I'm going to cover it in lube and open you up with it, slowly, until you can take all of it."

"Oh, fuck."

"And then, one night soon, I'm going to buy a harness." I turned it up again. He'd shut his eyes. "I'm going to strap a cock on, and get you on your knees on the bed, with your arse in the air for me. And I'm going to push it into you, inch by inch, until my hips are right up against you. And then I'm going to fuck you. Hard. With my hands on your hips, and you begging for more."

He was panting, and his knuckles were white on the table.

"Would you like that?" I asked, into his ear.

He didn't answer. He'd started rocking very slightly on the chair, onto the plug.

"I asked you a question, Oliver."

"Yes," he said, hoarsely. "Yes."

"Yes what?"

He swallowed. "Yes, I'd like it."

"Say it properly."

"I want you to…" He stopped, and his whole body shook as I clicked it up one more. "I want you to fuck me. With a strap-on. Please."

I kissed him just below his ear. Then I switched it off, walked back round the table, sat down in my chair, and picked up my knife and fork.

"Your steak's getting cold," I said.

He sat there for a moment with both hands flat on the table, flushed to the ears. Then he picked up his fork, and so did I, and we finished our dinner.

When we'd finished, he stood up, a bit stiffly, and reached for my plate. It was what he always did. He'd stack them and scrape them and put them in the dishwasher, because he couldn't go to bed with plates on the table.

"Leave them," I said.

He held my plate in mid-air. "They'll be awful in the morning."

"Leave them, Oliver."

He looked at the plate, and at me, and back at the plate. Then he put it down on the table and let go of it as if it might go off.

I got up and held out my hand. "Come on."

"Where?"

"Upstairs," I said. "It's time for a bit more fun."

He took my hand. I led him out of the extension, across the hall and up the stairs. He came up behind me one step at a time, holding the banister with his other hand, the same as he'd gone up them this morning. Halfway up he stopped and leaned on the wall for a second. I waited for him without saying a word.

In the bedroom, I switched on the lamp, went to the chest of drawers and lifted the packet off the top of his stack. The babydoll was still folded up inside it, with the fishnets underneath. I slid them out and held the babydoll up by its straps. It hung there between us, red satin and black lace, with its little cut-outs at the sides and the long slit up the front.

He looked at it, and folded his arms. "I'll look like the entertainment at a hen party."

I pressed the remote in my pocket. He grabbed the bedpost.

"Sorry," I said. "What was that?"

"Nothing."

"You were saying something about a hen party."

"It's very see-through," he said, very fast, holding on to the bedpost.

I pressed it again, and held it a bit longer. He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the post.

"Is it?" I asked.

"No," he said. "It's… it's fine."

I held it down.

"Fuck," he said to the bedpost. "Fucking hell, Chloe. Oh, fuck." Then he gave up swearing altogether.

"You said fine," I said.

"I know I said fine."

I let go. He stood there with his forehead on the bedpost, his shoulders heaving.

"Put it on me," he said.

"What was that?"

"Put it on me, Chloe. Please. Put it on me."

I put the babydoll down on the bed, took his shirt off him button by button, and dropped it on the floor. He didn't look at it. I undid his belt and his jeans and knelt to pull them down. He stepped out of them, until he was standing there in just the red thong with the plug's handle sitting at the top of it.

I picked up the suspender belt from the chair, where he'd folded it that morning, shook it out and fastened it round his waist under the waistband of the thong. Then I sat him on the end of the bed and knelt in front of him with the fishnets.

They were the long ones Niamh had brought out from the back. I gathered the first one up between my thumbs, slid it over his toes and his foot, then rolled it up his calf. The fishnet did nothing at all for the hair on his legs. It just stuck out between the little diamonds.

"We're doing something about these tomorrow," I said, and he didn't argue.

I rolled it up past his knee and up his thigh, and this time it kept going. It went up and up, all the way to the top of his thigh, with room to spare, and I fastened the front clip without even having to pull.

"It reaches," he said.

"That's one thing off your snagging list." I reached round behind him and found the back strap, and clipped that one on too. "They all reach."

I did the other leg, and all six clips, front and side and back, and sat back on my heels. He was looking down at his own legs in the fishnets, with the suspender straps running down from the belt to the tops, every one of them done.

"Six," he said, a bit hoarsely. "All six."

"I know, gorgeous. I counted."

I stood him up, picked up the babydoll, gathered it up and lifted it over his head. He put his arms up like a little boy being dressed for school, and I let it fall. It slid down over his shoulders and his chest, and the satin settled over his stomach. The slit up the front fell open over the red thong, and the cut-outs at the sides showed his skin, and through the black lace at the top I could see his nipples.

I turned him by the shoulders to face the long mirror on the dressing room door.

He took himself in, from his feet up. My tall, hairy, careful husband, in a cheap red babydoll and fishnets, with his cock pushing at a tiny red thong and a plum-coloured plug up his arse.

"I look like I've lost a bet," he said.

I pressed the remote. His knees nearly gave way, and he put a hand on the mirror to hold himself up.

"Try again," I said.

He stared at himself in the glass, with his hand flat against it, and his cock twitched under the satin.

"I look…" he said. "I don't know what I look like."

"You look like mine," I said, and took his hand off the mirror. "Come downstairs. I want you on the sofa."

He didn't move. He looked down at himself, at the babydoll and the fishnets, and then at the bedroom door.

"Downstairs?" he asked. "Like this?"

"Like this."

"The front room's right on the street, Chloe. What if someone looks in?"

"Then I'll draw the curtains." I took his hand. "Nobody's going to be out walking in this weather, babe. It's pouring."

He came down the stairs behind me with one hand on the banister and the other in mine, the babydoll swinging round the tops of his thighs. In the front room I went straight to the bay window and drew the curtains, all the way, and tugged the edges together where they met in the middle. Outside, the rain was hammering on the window and the street lamps were blurred orange. Nobody was out there at all.

When I turned round, he'd gone.

He came back from the downstairs loo with a big grey bath towel and spread it out on the sofa, very flat, tucking the corners down into the cushions.

"Really?" I asked.

"It's the new sofa."

"You're in a babydoll with a plug up your arse, and you're worried about the upholstery."

"I don't want this one going the same way as the last one," he said. "After your korma." He sat down on the towel very carefully, and then a bit more carefully, as his weight went onto the plug.

I sat down next to him and tucked my legs up under me, with the TV remote in one hand and the other remote in the other. I found The Devil Wears Prada starting on one of the film channels and left it on.

He groaned. "You've made me watch this four times."

"And you've loved it four times."

On the screen, Anne Hathaway arrived for her interview in her terrible jumper. I waited until Meryl Streep walked into the office and everyone scattered, and pressed the button.

He jumped about a foot off the towel.

"Who's she?" I asked.

"You know who she is."

"I've forgotten. Is she the nice one?"

"She's not the nice one," he said, through his teeth, and I turned it up a setting.

I asked him about the plot every few minutes, and every time he tried to answer, I pressed the button, until he'd given up on the film altogether and was sitting on the edge of the towel with his hands gripping his knees, staring straight ahead at Meryl Streep without seeing her at all.

"What's she just said?" I asked.

"I've got no idea."

"I thought you liked this film."

"I can't follow it."

"Shall we put something else on, then?"

He looked at me sideways. "Like what?"

I picked up my phone and connected it to the TV, the same as I had in the bedroom on Monday night, and typed in the website with my thumb. The film disappeared, and the page came up, all those thumbnails across the whole screen.

"Oh, God," he said.

I scrolled for a while, past couples on beds and couples in kitchens, until one stopped my thumb. The thumbnail was a sissy on a hotel balcony at night, bent over the railing, with a city lit up behind her. I pressed play.

She was dressed up completely. Somebody had put her in a cheap blonde wig, a bit too long and a bit too shiny, and she was wearing thick black eyeliner, false lashes and red lipstick, with a black lace basque, stockings and high heels. She was holding on to the balcony rail with both hands, and the woman behind her had a harness on and both hands on her hips. Below them, a whole city was lit up, all windows and traffic.

"Look at all those lights," the woman said on the screen. "Anyone could be watching you."

"Please," the sissy said. "Please don't stop."

Oliver had gone completely still beside me.

"Say it louder," the woman said. "Let them hear you."

"Please fuck me. Please."

I put my hand on his thigh, on the fishnet, just above the clip.

"Look at her," I said. "All dolled up like a cheap little slut, with her lipstick on and her arse in the air, taking it in front of the whole city."

He didn't say anything. He was watching the sissy's face, the lipstick and the lashes.

I slid my hand up the inside of his thigh and under the hem of the babydoll, onto the front of the thong. He was rock hard under it, and wet through the satin.

"Oh, babe," I said. "You like this one."

"I…"

I turned the plug on, slow and deep, and he shut his eyes.

"Open your eyes," I said. "Watch her."

He opened his eyes again and fixed them on the screen. I turned it up, and watched him watching her, and on the screen the woman pulled the sissy's wig back by a handful of blonde hair and fucked her harder against the rail.

I got down off the sofa onto the rug and knelt between his knees.

He looked down at me. I hooked my fingers into the top of the thong and drew it down, under his balls, and his cock sprang up at me, dark and wet at the tip. I wrapped my hand round the base of it and licked him once, all the way from my fist to the tip, looking up at him the whole time.

"Oh, fuck," he said.

I took the head of his cock in my mouth and sucked, and pressed the arrow on the remote at the same time. His hips jerked off the towel. I took him deeper, a bit more each time I went down, sliding my lips down the shaft until I could feel him at the back of my throat. I held him there, swallowing round him, until my eyes watered, and his hand came down into my hair and gripped it.

"Oh, God, oh, fuck, Chloe…"

I came up for air with a string of spit between my lips and the tip of his cock, and then went straight back down on him again, all the way, until my nose was against his stomach and the satin of the babydoll was brushing my forehead. I could hear the sissy on the telly begging, and above me, Oliver making a sound like he was being pulled apart, all in one long, broken groan.

I let his cock slide out of my mouth, slowly, and sat back on my heels with my lips wet.

"No," he said. "No, no, don't stop. Please."

"Not yet."

"Please."

I pulled my cami off over my head, and then my shorts, and got up onto the sofa beside him on my back, on his precious towel, with one leg up over the back of the cushions.

"Come here," I said. "Fuck me."

He was on top of me before I'd finished saying it. I wrapped my hand round his cock, guided him to me and pulled him in, and he slid into me in one long stroke. I was so wet I barely felt the stretch, only the fullness of him, and I cried out loud.

"Oh, fuck, yes. Like that. Fuck me like that."

He fucked me in long, deep strokes, braced over me on one arm, with the babydoll falling forward round his chest and brushing my tits. Every time his hips came forward, the plug moved inside him, and I could see it in his face. I found the remote down by my hip and turned it up, and he gasped and drove into me harder.

"That's it. Harder, babe. Don't you dare slow down."

"I can't… Chloe, I'm going to…"

I switched it off, pulled his face down to mine and kissed him, slow and deep, with him still buried inside me, until he'd stopped shaking.

"Not like this," I said against his mouth. "Off me. I want you behind me."

I pushed him off me, rolled over and got onto my hands and knees on the towel, with my arse up and my face pressed into the arm of the sofa. Then I looked back at him over my shoulder.

"From behind," I said. "Now."

He knelt up behind me, took hold of my hips with both hands, and pushed into me again, all the way, so deep that I moaned into the cushion.

"Oh, God, Oliver. Yes."

He started fucking me, hard now, with his hips slapping against my arse, and the babydoll hem brushing my back every time he came forward. I reached back between my own legs with the remote still in my hand, and found the pattern. Three long, one short.

He cried out loud. On the first long pulse he slammed into me, and on the second he lost the rhythm completely, and on the third he was just holding on to my hips and fucking me in short, wild thrusts, swearing at the back of my neck.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, Chloe, it's… I can't…"

"Keep going," I said into the cushion. "Keep fucking me."

I put my free hand between my legs and rubbed my clit, fast, while he fucked me, and my orgasm hit me so suddenly that I cried out. I came hard, clenching round his cock, with my face buried in the arm of the sofa, shouting his name into the cushion.

That did it. He drove into me once more and held me there, with his fingers digging into my hips. I felt him cum deep inside me, pulsing, over and over, while the plug kept buzzing and he shuddered against my back.

"OH, FUCK! Chloe!"

I switched it off. He sagged forward onto me, and we went down onto the towel together in a heap, him still inside me, his chest heaving against my back.

On the telly, the woman and the sissy had come in off the balcony. She had the sissy bent over the hotel sofa now, with one hand twisted in her blonde wig, and was fucking her so hard the sissy was clinging to the cushions. The remote was somewhere under the towel.

"I can't feel my legs," he said eventually, into my shoulder.

"Mm."

He slid out of me and rolled onto his back on the towel, as far as the sofa would let him, with one fishnet leg hanging off the edge and the babydoll rucked up round his waist. I turned over and lay half on top of him, with my head on his chest. His heart was still racing.

"That was…" he said, and stopped.

"I know."

"I've never cum that hard in my life."

"Nor have I." I ran my finger along the lace at the top of the babydoll. "Ready for round two?"

He groaned at the ceiling. "I'm spent. I'm completely spent, Chloe. There's nothing left."

"I'll give you a bit to recover."

"How long's a bit?"

"Long enough," I said.

He closed his eyes. I lay there with my head on his chest and my hand on the lace, listening to the rain on the window, and to him slowly getting his breath back. He thought round two was going to need him. It wasn't. The pink dildo was sitting in its box on the chest of drawers upstairs, and it wouldn't mind in the slightest how spent he was. I had a feeling he wouldn't either.

 

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Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed this chapter, I’d love to hear what you thought, so please leave a comment. Your feedback means the world to me.
Mizz Cherry Poppins