Awakening My Husband's Inner Slut
by Mizz Cherry Poppins

 

 

* - * - *

 

Chapter 1

 

Friday

My knee slipped off the edge of the seat for the third time and I grabbed the headrest behind him to stop myself sliding into the footwell. Oliver laughed against my tits, which should have killed the mood completely and somehow didn't.

"You all right?" he asked.

"Don't stop," I said, and sank back down onto his cock until I was sitting on him properly again, with my skirt bunched round my waist and my stockinged knees sliding about on the leather.

The windows had gone completely white. Somewhere below us the whole of Avenbridge was lit up, which was the entire reason he'd given for driving up Wrenfield Hill after dinner, and I couldn't see a single light of it. I could see Oliver, though. His shirt was half unbuttoned and his hair was standing up where I'd had my hands in it, and he had his face buried in my chest like a man who'd been thinking about this all through dessert. I'd shoved my bra down under my tits when we climbed into the back, and my blouse was hanging off one shoulder, and every time I rocked forward he caught a nipple in his mouth and sucked until I made a noise I'd have been mortified by anywhere else.

A seatbelt buckle was digging into my left knee and I could not have cared less. I rode him harder, grinding forward instead of bouncing because there wasn't room for anything else, and his hands slid from my hips to my arse and pulled me down onto him every time.

"Fuck, babe, right there," I said. "Don't you dare change anything."

He didn't. He kept his mouth on me and his hands where they were, and I chased it, rocking faster, until I was coming with my fingers clamped round the headrest and my thighs shaking against his, and I said his name into his hair, more or less.

Oliver lasted about four more strokes. He gripped my hips hard enough to leave marks, pushed up into me with a grunt and then another, and pressed his face into my neck.

"Christ," he said against my skin.

He came inside me, and I held still on him while he twitched, both of us breathing like we'd run up the hill instead of driving.

For a while neither of us moved. Sweat was cooling on my back where my blouse had stuck to it, and his chest was rising and falling under my hand. A car came round the bend and past the lay-by we were parked in, its headlights sweeping across the fogged glass, and I pressed my forehead against his and started to laugh.

It took me ages to stop laughing, mostly because every time I nearly managed it, Oliver asked "What?" and set me off again.

"Nothing," I said. "You're thirty-four, you've got a mortgage, and you've just shagged me in a lay-by."

"We've got a mortgage."

"I'm aware." I lifted myself off him, which was not graceful, and felt his cum run down the inside of my thigh. "Oh, for fuck's sake. Babe, is there anything in here? Tissues? A receipt? Anything?"

"Door pocket."

I reached into it and pulled out a packet of wet wipes. It was a brand-new packet, with the seal still on. I held it up between us, and Oliver looked at it and then out of the window he couldn't see through.

"These are new," I said.

"We needed wipes."

"In the door pocket. Of the back seat." I peeled the seal off. "How long have you been planning this?"

"I haven't been planning anything."

"Oliver."

He scratched the back of his neck. "A couple of weeks. I drove up and looked at a few spots."

"You did a recce."

"I wasn't going to bring you somewhere with no view."

I cleaned myself up as best I could in a space the size of a phone box, still laughing, more quietly now. He had his trousers round his knees and his shirt hanging open, and he managed to look slightly wounded anyway, as if I'd found a mistake in one of his drawings.

The windows had started to drip at the corners, and now that we'd stopped moving the cold was getting in. I could feel it on my bare shoulder and all down my damp back. I pulled my bra up and did my blouse up two buttons out, then ran a hand down my leg and found a ladder going from my left knee halfway to my ankle, which was the seatbelt buckle's doing.

"Where are my knickers?" I asked.

"Front."

"How are they in the front?"

"You threw them."

I had no memory of throwing them. Oliver did his trousers up, opened the door and let in a blast of air that made me yelp, then walked round the car and got into the driver's seat like a normal person. I climbed through the gap between the seats instead, got a knee on the armrest and my arse somewhere near his ear, and landed in the passenger seat with my skirt round my waist again. My knickers were in the footwell next to my shoes.

"You could have walked round," he said.

"In my stockings? On gravel? No, thank you."

He started the engine and put the heater on full. The fan roared, the windscreen began to clear from the bottom up, and there it was at last, the whole of Avenbridge spread out below us, lit up all the way to the edges.

"Worth the drive?" he asked.

"It's all right." I put my knickers back on under my skirt, wriggling, and he watched me do it without any shame at all. "Is this my anniversary present, then? Because you're a week early."

"No. I've got a few ideas for that."

"Course you have. Is there a spreadsheet?"

"It's not a spreadsheet." He fiddled with one of the air vents. "It's a list."

I looked at him in the glow from the dashboard, with his hair everywhere and his collar sticking up on one side, so pleased with his wet wipes and his view. The cheeky bugger had been planning this for a fortnight and kept a straight face all through dinner.

"I want to see this list," I said.

Oliver turned the heater down a notch. "No, you don't."

"Oh, I absolutely do." I held my hand out.

He looked at my hand and then at the windscreen. "It's not finished."

"Babe. Phone, please."

He sighed, unlocked it and handed it over without even glancing at the screen first. The list was in his notes app under Anniversary, and it said: Dinner, somewhere we haven't been. Weekend away? Coast, check her diary. Card!! First anniversary is paper. Proper paper. Frame something?

"This is all really sweet, love," I said, and scrolled to the bottom to check there wasn't anything else. "There's nothing filthy on here."

"It's an anniversary list."

"You've just had me in the back of the car with the wipes ready."

"That wasn't on that list."

"So there's another list?"

He held his hand out for his phone and didn't answer, and I laughed so hard I banged my elbow on the door.

"Right," I said, when I could. "You've had your thing. I want a turn."

"Fine. What's your thing?"

I hadn't got that far. I stuck my feet up on the dashboard and picked at the ladder in my stockings while I thought about it.

"Feet," he said.

I left them where they were.

"The hot tub," I said. "At night, with the garden lights on."

"We've done the hot tub."

"Not with the lights on. The neighbours can see straight down into the garden."

"That's my point."

"That's my point." I pulled a loose thread out of the ladder and the hole got bigger. "Your turn. Help me."

He thought about it properly, frowning at the city like there'd be a test. "The hotel bar thing. We go in separately, and you pretend you don't know me."

"You'd last five minutes before you asked me how my day was."

"I would not."

"You'd ask if I'd eaten."

He didn't argue with that.

"Your office," I said. "After hours. On that big desk you won't let me put a mug on."

He winced, and then didn't say no.

"A weekend somewhere with no phone signal," he said.

"That's the nice list."

"The lists are starting to overlap."

"That's your fault for having two."

"I don't know, Chloe," he said eventually, and leaned his head back against the headrest. "It's your turn. Anything you want."

I looked at him with his collar still up, and his lovely, sensible hands on the steering wheel, and started reeling them off.

"One of those vibrators with a remote. In my knickers, at dinner, and you get the remote."

"In a restaurant?"

"In a nice restaurant."

He glanced at his phone like he might add it to a list.

"You tie me to the bed," I said, "and I'm not allowed to come until you say so."

"You'd never manage to keep quiet."

"Then you'd have to gag me. Or I tie you up, and you don't get to come till I say so."

"That's fair."

"And you've been after my arse since the honeymoon. You can have it for the anniversary."

He laughed. "That's not your turn. That's mine."

"Fine, then I'll have yours. I'll peg you."

I'd never once thought about that, not properly. I'd seen the word in some magazine quiz years ago, rolled my eyes, and turned the page. But now I was picturing Oliver face down on our bed with my hands on his hips, the way his had been on mine twenty minutes ago, and me fucking his arse while he groaned into the pillow, and I couldn't stop thinking about it.

Oliver turned in his seat to look at me. "What the… What?"

He wasn't laughing. He was staring at me with his mouth slightly open and a bit of colour in his face, and I pressed my thighs together and didn't take it back.

"Isn't that…" He made a vague shape with one hand. "You… wearing a…"

"Strap-on," I said. "Yes."

Then he did laugh, properly, with his head back against the headrest. "No. Fuck off. No."

I took my feet off the dashboard and swung round to face him, with one leg tucked up under me on the seat.

"You said anything," I said.

"I meant a weekend at the coast."

"You did not mean a weekend at the coast. You'd just had me in the back seat."

"I meant anything within reason."

"You didn't say within reason."

"It was implied, Chloe." He reached for the heater dial, found it was already where he wanted it, and took his hand back.

He hadn't started for home, though. The engine was running and his hands were back on the wheel, and we were still sitting in the lay-by with the whole city in front of us. I'd sat across a table from enough clients to know that a man who really meant no was usually already standing up.

"You're actually serious," he said.

"I'm about seventy per cent serious now."

"It's gone up?"

"It's gone up quite a lot in the last minute, yes."

He dragged both hands down his face and left them over his mouth, looking at me over the top of them.

"Go on, then," I said. "What's the problem?"

"Where do I start?" he asked through his fingers.

"Start with the biggest one."

He took his hands away. "It'll hurt."

"Not if we go slowly," I said, and I didn't make a joke of it.

"How do you know?"

"Same way you'd do it to me, I assume." I tipped my head at him. "You've looked it up. Don't pretend you haven't. You've been after my arse for a year, you'll have read the entire internet."

He went red right up to his ears.

"So you tell me," I said. "How would it work?"

"I'm not doing a presentation."

"You'd be brilliant at it. You'd have slides."

He snorted and looked out at the city, and I let him have a minute, because the next one was going to be harder.

"It's the…" He waved a hand at roughly my lap. "The thing itself. You'd be wearing a… and I'd be on my…"

"Hands and knees, yes."

"Don't."

"Sweetheart, I've been on my hands and knees for you more times than I can count. Half an hour ago I had a seatbelt buckle in my knee for you. Did I look ridiculous?"

"That's different."

"Why?" I asked.

He didn't have an answer. He tapped the indicator stalk with one finger, on and off, so it clicked away in the quiet.

"You'd look like a man having the best night of his life," I said. "I know what your face does when you're having a good time. I've just watched it."

He switched the indicator off. "And what if someone found out?"

"Who's going to find out? Are you planning to tell your mum?"

"Christ, no."

"Then it's you and me, in our own house, with the door shut. Who's going to see?"

He opened his mouth to argue and I raised my eyebrows at him, and he thought better of it and shut it again. Down the hill a taxi pulled away from the kerb, and he watched it go.

"Where would you even get one?" he asked after a while.

"A sex shop, babe. Where did you think we'd get one, the garden centre?"

"I know where," he said. "I meant someone would actually have to go in."

"I'll go in. I don't mind." I sat up so fast my knee hit the centre console. "Or we could go together."

The red that had only just left his ears came straight back. "You want me to walk into a sex shop with you?" he asked.

"Holding hands, if you like."

"Can you imagine?"

"I can, actually."

"I was only asking hypothetically."

"You don't do hypothetically, love. You do lists."

"It's a practical question."

"It's a practical question about a strap-on." I grinned at him. "There'll be nice ones, with proper lighting and women working in them who've seen everything and won't bat an eyelid at you."

"I'd bat an eyelid."

"You'd bat both of them. It'd be lovely."

"What do they even sell in those places?" he asked, not looking at me.

"Everything. Toys, harnesses, lube. Lingerie."

"You've got plenty of lingerie."

"Who said it'd be for me? A lot of men like getting dressed up for it too, you know."

He turned his head very slowly. "Dressed up in what?"

"Stockings. A suspender belt. Knickers. Something silky." I watched his face. "A lovely little nightie."

I'd only said it to wind him up. Then I pictured those long legs of his in stockings, and him bent over our bed in a nightie that barely covered his arse, and honestly, fuck, that wasn't a bad idea at all.

"Now you're taking the piss," he said.

"Partly." I reached over and pushed his hair off his forehead, where it was still sticking up. "You've got the legs for it, though. We could make a proper girl of you, princess."

"Don't call me princess."

"I'll think about it."

He looked down then, only for a second, at my leg tucked up on the seat and the ladder running down from the knee, and when he looked up he found me watching him.

"Not that pair," I said. "Those are wrecked. I'd get you your own."

"Chloe."

"In your size. Black, I think, with a seam up the back."

"Probably not," he said.

"That's not a no."

"It's a probably not."

"Which is a maybe with its coat on."

He gave up and smiled at that, then rubbed his eyes and looked at the clock on the screen. "It's late."

"It is."

"I'm not saying yes," he said.

"I didn't ask you to."

He put the car into drive and took the handbrake off, and we pulled out of the lay-by and started down the hill with the heater roaring and the city lights coming up to meet us. He didn't say anything else.

"Still not a no," I said.

 

◇ — ◇ — ◇

 

Monday

"It's just reading very… warm, darling," Henrietta said, from every speaker in my car at once. "Peachy. We said nude. Nude isn't peachy."

"Absolutely," I said, and mouthed fuck off at the windscreen while I waited for the lights to change. "I hear you, Hen. The thing is, nude covers quite a range, and the shade we shot is the one your team signed off in…"

"I know. I know. And I'm not blaming anyone." She was blaming me. "But when I stood under that billboard on Saturday, I just thought, oh. Oh no. It's giving apricot."

Henrietta Fane-Whitlock was Maison Severine's marketing director and the most Made in Chelsea woman alive. She said "darling" the way other people breathed, and I'd watched her take apart a forty-page deck with one long, polite sigh. Today she wanted all six billboards reshot. Six of them, on two weeks' notice, because a model in a lace bra, twenty feet high over a roundabout, was giving apricot.

"Let me talk to the studio," I said. "I think we can cool it down in the grade without going near a reshoot."

"Could we? Darling, that would be heaven."

The lights changed. I moved off and nearly sailed straight past the turning into Ravenswood, swung in late enough to get a horn from the van behind me, and waved an apology into my rear-view mirror.

"Was that a horn? Are you driving, darling?"

"Just turning in. I'll get you three cooler options by Wednesday."

"Cooler. Yes. Oyster, not apricot."

"Oyster. Got it."

"You're a star. Ciao, ciao."

By the time she rang off I was halfway down Pelham Grove, and I let out a groan that went on for most of the street.

It was the only good thing about Mondays, that street. There were big old trees down both sides, just getting their first yellow leaves, and the houses sat back behind low brick walls and hedges that people actually bothered to cut, each one a bit different but all red brick, with white-painted windows, wide bays at the front, and stained glass in the top half of the front doors. Ours was the one with the black door, because Oliver had spent a whole weekend getting the paint to the exact shade of black he wanted, which was apparently different from the five other shades of black at the shop. His car was already on the drive. The house next to ours already had its curtains drawn and its kitchen light on, and somewhere up the road a kid was bouncing a ball against a garage.

I parked behind him and sat there for a minute with the engine off, getting Henrietta out of my shoulders.

The house smelt of garlic and onions before I'd even got the door shut. I kicked my heels off in the hall, left my bag where it landed, and was already wriggling out of the jacket of my navy suit as I padded down to the back of the house in my skirt and tights. The radio was on in the kitchen, something with a lot of guitar that he liked and I tolerated, and Oliver was at the hob with his sleeves rolled up and a tea towel over his shoulder, pushing mince round a pan. Past him, through all that glass, the garden was going blue, and the hot tub was a dark lump under its cover at the far end.

"Hello, you," he said.

I didn't say hello back. I went straight past him to the fridge, got out the bottle of white he'd put in there, and took a swig from it before I'd even shut the door. When I turned round, he'd stopped stirring and was watching me over his shoulder.

"Uh oh," he said.

"You will not believe these people."

"Which people?"

"Maison bloody Severine." I got two glasses down and poured, without asking if he wanted one. "Henrietta stood under a billboard on Saturday and decided it was apricot."

"What?"

"The nude." I put his glass down next to the hob and leaned on the counter beside him. "She thinks it's too warm. Peachy. Apparently it's giving apricot."

"What does that even mean?"

"It means she's forty-one and has a nephew." I took a mouthful of wine. "It's a woman in a bra, Oliver. It's meant to be the colour of a woman. And now she wants it reshot. All six. In two weeks."

"Ouch."

"I know."

He tipped a tin of tomatoes into the pan and stirred. "Did she actually say reshoot? Or did she say she doesn't like it?"

I started to tell him she'd said reshoot, and stopped, and went back over the call in my head. She'd said she didn't like it. She'd said apricot about four times. I was the one who'd said reshoot, to be the first to say it before she did, and she'd jumped on the grade the second I offered it.

"She said she doesn't like it," I said.

"So it's a grading job."

"It's a grading job." I reached past him for a bit of mushroom off the chopping board, and he smacked the back of my hand with the wooden spoon without looking. "Ow. You're very annoying when you're right."

"I'm very annoying generally. You married me anyway."

I ate the mushroom. He went back to the sauce, and I filled the big pan for the spaghetti and put it on the back ring.

"Go on, then," he said. "What did she actually say?"

"She said…" I pulled my shoulders back and put my nose in the air. "'Darling, I'm not blaming anyone. It's not a blame thing. It's a feelings thing.'"

He laughed into the pan. "She did not say that."

"She said exactly that. Then she said oyster." I went looking for the salt, and he passed it to me before I'd got as far as the cupboard. "Not apricot, oyster. Like I'm meant to know what that looks like on a person."

"Grey," he said. "Slightly damp."

"Lovely. I'll put that in the brief." I got the parmesan out and started grating far too much of it into a bowl. "It's about two per cent warmer than she wants. Two per cent, Oliver. And last week she told me she's off carbs, then ate a croissant in our meeting. I watched her do it."

"Do the voice again."

"'Darling, that would be heaven.'"

"She sounds like your mother."

"Don't you dare."

I said it lightly. My mother had sat across a dinner table from my father for thirty-five years, and as far as I knew, neither of them had said anything surprising to the other in the last twenty.

I ate a pinch of parmesan every time he turned his back, and on my way past to get the plates I kissed the back of his neck, just under his hair, and he leaned into it without stopping stirring.

We'd had a whole weekend since Friday. A lie-in, a big shop, a film on the sofa on Sunday night with my feet in his lap. Twice I'd caught him looking at me like he was about to say something, and both times he'd asked if I wanted a cup of tea.

The spaghetti went in. He had at least ten minutes of stirring ahead of him, so I came up behind him and wrapped my arms round his waist and put my chin on his shoulder. He was warm from the hob and smelt of garlic, and he leaned back against me with a long, happy sigh.

"This is nice," he said.

It was. The radio had moved on to something slower, and I swayed with it a bit while he stirred, and my hips went with it. It took me a good few seconds to notice where my hips were, and what they were moving against. My pelvis was pressed right up to his arse and rocking, slow, in time with the music, exactly the way his did against me when he came up behind me in bed.

I nearly stopped. Then I thought about Friday, and about the look on his face when I'd brought up pegging, and I grinned into his shoulder and did it on purpose. I pulled him back against me by the waist and rolled my hips into him, slower and deeper, and right on the beat.

"Mmm," I said in his ear. "This does feel right."

He went completely still. The spoon stopped. I felt him work out what was happening, which took about a second and a half, and then he jumped out of my arms so fast that he took the spoon with him and flicked a line of bolognese right up the splashback.

"What the fuck?"

I had to hold on to the counter. I couldn't breathe. He was standing in the middle of the kitchen with the spoon held up like he might defend himself with it, sauce dripping off the end onto the floor, and looking at me like I'd turned into somebody else.

"I'm just playing!" I said, when I could say anything.

"You were…" He pointed the spoon at my hips. "That was…"

"I was cuddling you."

"That was not cuddling!"

"It was cuddling with movement." The spaghetti started to boil over, and I went and turned it down, still laughing. "You leaned back into it, babe. You said it was nice."

"I didn't know what it was."

"Well, now you do."

He went and got the kitchen roll and wiped the splashback down very carefully, then the floor, then the spoon, then the splashback again where there wasn't anything left. I drained the spaghetti and plated it up, and while I was spooning sauce over both plates I gave my hips one small, slow roll against the edge of the counter, just to see.

"Stop it," he said, without turning round.

"I'm not doing anything."

"You're doing it to the counter."

I carried the plates over to the table at the glass end of the kitchen and put his down where he always sat, next to mine. Oliver put his wine glass down, looked at his plate, picked it up and carried it round to the other side of the table, and sat down opposite me with his back very straight, like he was at a job interview.

For the first few minutes he was unbearably polite. "This parmesan's really nice," he said.

"It's parmesan. I grated it."

"You grated it well." He nodded at the bowl. "So when do you think the studio can turn the grade round?"

"Wednesday, hopefully. Thursday at the latest."

"Wednesday." He nodded again, slowly, the way he did with clients, like he was going to minute it. "Good. That's good."

I reached across the table for the pepper, and he whipped his wine glass out of my way so fast it nearly went over. He caught it and put it down very carefully on his other side.

"Sorry," he said to the glass.

"How was your day?" I asked.

"Fine."

"What did you do?"

"Drawings." He twirled a forkful of spaghetti and looked at that instead of me. "The loft conversion."

"The one with the awkward stairs?"

"That one."

He ate the forkful. He cut the next one with the side of his fork, which nobody does to spaghetti, and still didn't look up. I lasted about another minute.

"For fuck's sake, Oliver." I put my fork down. "I rubbed up against you. I didn't stab you. Can you eat your dinner like a person?"

He looked up, and the corner of his mouth started to lift, and I watched him try to stop it. "I am eating like a person."

"You're eating like a hostage. You moved your glass away from me. You apologised to it."

He held out for another second, then gave up and pushed his plate an inch away.

"I've been thinking about it," he said. "Friday. All weekend."

"I know."

"How do you know?"

"Every time you looked like you were going to say something, you made me a cup of tea."

"They were good cups of tea."

"They were lovely cups of tea, love." I waited, and he didn't say anything else. "So what have you been thinking?"

He picked his fork up again, looked at it, and put it back down. "All sorts. Mostly that it's mad."

"Mad how?"

"I was measuring a stairwell this morning," he said, "and I lost count halfway up because I was thinking about it. I had to go back down and start again."

I bit the inside of my cheek.

"And I thought I'd have talked myself out of it by now. I can usually talk myself out of anything in a day."

I reached across the table and squeezed his wrist. "And you haven't."

"No." He turned his glass round by the stem, once and then back. "If we did… and I'm saying if…"

"Noted."

"Could it just be the one thing? Without the rest of it." He waved a hand at himself, from his collar down. "The dressing up. That's the bit where I'd just feel like an idiot."

I could have taken that. It was more than I'd expected by Monday, and the version of me that sits in meetings would have shaken his hand and got it in writing.

"I've been thinking about that bit too," I said. "Since Friday."

"Right."

"No, I mean a lot." I picked my glass up, then put it down again without drinking. "I keep picturing it."

He looked straight at me then. "Picturing what?"

"You. In stockings. Something soft on you, maybe something of mine." My face was getting warm, which almost never happened to me. "And you letting me. You trusting me enough to let me see you like that, and me being the one in charge for once, and…"

"For once?" he asked.

"You know what I mean."

"You're in charge of most things."

"Not in bed, I'm not."

He didn't argue with that either.

"It's not about you being less of a man, if that's what's going round your head," I said. "It's me and you. We do stupid, brave things. We did the hot tub in January."

"That was cold, not brave."

"It was both. And if you hate it, we stop. The second you say. No sulking, no pitch, nothing. We stop and get a takeaway."

"You'd sulk."

"I'd sulk a tiny bit. Quietly. In another room."

He was quiet for a bit, turning the glass. "I wouldn't even know what I'm doing."

"You wouldn't have to do anything. That's sort of the point."

"You wouldn't know what you were doing either."

I picked a strand of spaghetti off my plate with my fingers and ate it.

He put his glass down. "Chloe."

"What?"

"Would you?"

"I might," I said, "have a bit of experience. With the equipment."

"With who?"

"Not a man."

He stared at me across the table. "Not a…" He stopped. "Oh."

"Jess," I said. "And a girl at uni, before her. Only a few times with her."

"You never said."

"You never asked if I'd fucked anyone with a strap-on, hun. It doesn't really come up over Sunday lunch."

"Jess," he said, like he was trying to fit her into a new shape.

"The American." I couldn't help smiling. "She was very enthusiastic. About everything. Brunch. Hiking. That."

"She took you hiking?"

"She got me up a hill at six in the morning to look at a lake. Once."

"Only once?"

"Once was plenty. I moaned the whole way up, and she sang."

That got a proper laugh out of him, the first since the kitchen. Then he went quiet again, and started pushing a bit of mince round his plate.

"Was she…" He stopped and started again. "Did she like it?"

"She loved it."

"Right." He looked down at his plate. "And you were…"

"I got good at it." I couldn't keep the grin off my face. "It took a while, and a lot of lube. But by the end I could fuck her with it until she was shaking and swearing at me in that accent of hers, and I was very proud of myself. I'd have put it on my CV."

He ducked his head, and some of the stiffness went out of his shoulders. He also shifted in his chair and crossed his legs under the table, and I decided, very generously, not to mention it.

"I still don't know what it'd even look like," he said after a while. "In my head it's just me on the bed, looking ridiculous."

"It doesn't look ridiculous."

"How would you know?"

I ran my finger round the rim of my glass. "I may have had a look. On Saturday."

"A look at what?"

"People doing it. While you were downstairs making me tea."

He put both elbows on the table. "You looked it up."

"I looked it up. Before I had to shut the laptop, because you came in with a biscuit."

"What did you see?" he asked.

"A few videos. Enough to know it's not some weird niche thing. Loads of couples do it, and most of them don't bother with the dressing up at all."

"Right. Good."

"But a lot of the men love that part," I said. "The stockings, the knickers, being looked after. You can see it on their faces. It's like they've finally been allowed to stop being in charge of everything."

He didn't say anything.

"Honestly, it was hot," I said.

"I don't believe you."

"Then come and see for yourself."

He went very still. "See what, exactly?"

"Porn, Oliver. We could watch some. Together. You can see them doing it, and decide for yourself whether anyone looks ridiculous."

He stared at me. "Together."

"That's usually how it works when two people watch something."

"We've never…" He stopped. "We've never watched porn together."

"We'd never had sex in the back of the car either. It's been that sort of week."

"What if it's awful?"

"Then we laugh at it and go to sleep."

"And what if it's…" He rubbed his jaw. "What if it isn't?"

I reached over and took his hand, and this time I didn't tease him. "Then that's good news, isn't it?"

He looked up at the ceiling, then out at the dark garden, then back at me. "Not on the telly."

"Which one?"

"Either."

"Fine. Not down here, then. The one in our room. In bed. Much comfier than squinting at a laptop."

"We watch Bake Off in bed."

"And we'll carry on watching Bake Off in bed."

"How would it even get on there?"

"I'll put it on from my phone."

"And then it's in the history. Next time we put Bake Off on, it's sitting there on the home screen next to Paul Hollywood."

"Private tab, love. I'll mirror it from my phone, and the telly won't remember a thing." I smiled at him. "I work in advertising, remember? I know exactly what gets tracked these days, and how."

He thought about that for longer than a man who wasn't going to do it would need to. "And would it be one where he's… dressed up, or just…"

"I'll find one of each."

He stood up, picked up both our plates and carried them to the sink.

"Oliver."

"I'm doing the washing up first," he said. "Bolognese sets if you leave it."

He ran the hot tap, and I sat at the table with my wine and watched him wash a saucepan faster than I'd ever seen him wash anything.

I finished my wine and stood up. "I'm going for a shower."

"Okay," he said to the saucepan.

"And then we're doing it. Tonight."

He turned round with the saucepan dripping in his hand. "Tonight?"

"Tonight, babe. Not Thursday. Not 'once we've had a chance to think it through properly.'"

"I wasn't going to say…" He gave up halfway through and turned back to the sink. "Fine. For now."

"What does 'for now' mean?" I asked.

"It means I'm drying this first."

"Don't take all night with that saucepan," I said.

I went back down the hall to the stairs, scooped my heels up from by the front door on the way past, and the radio got quieter behind me with every stair. Our bedroom was at the front of the house, over the bay. I nudged the door shut with my foot, dropped the heels by the door to the dressing room, and got undressed. My skirt and blouse went over the chair, and I sat on the edge of the bed to peel my tights off one leg at a time, then undid my bra with the sort of groan you only let out when nobody's listening. I turned the shower up as hot as I could stand and stood under it until Henrietta and the billboards had run off me and down the drain. I pushed my wet hair back off my face and looked down at myself.

I'd never needed anyone to tell me I'd got good tits, but Oliver told me anyway, most days, usually with his face in them. They were big and heavy and they were mine, and he still looked at them like he couldn't believe his luck, nearly three years in. He was a hips man too. He liked the curve where my waist went in and came back out again, and he liked to hold on to it. I could see exactly where he'd held on to it on Friday. There were four faded marks on each hip, gone yellow and green round the edges, where his fingers had been when he pulled me down onto him in the back of the car.

I pressed my thumb into one of them, and it ached a bit, in a nice way.

Then I thought about it the other way round. Me with a harness buckled round my hips, right over those marks, and a cock sticking out of it. Oliver on his hands and knees on our bed in front of me, and my fingers digging into his hips like his had dug into mine. Me easing that cock into his arse an inch at a time, slowly, the way I'd learned to, and then fucking him harder once he started pushing back on it, until he was making noises I'd never once heard out of him.

My hand slid down over my stomach and between my legs. My pussy was wet, and not from the shower. I rubbed slow circles round my clit and pinched my nipple with my other hand, and kept picturing him with his back arching and his hands balled up in the sheets, saying my name like he was asking me for something. I went faster. My legs started to shake and I had to lean my shoulder on the shower screen, and I could feel it building, right there. Another minute and I'd have come.

It would have been so easy to keep going.

I took my hand away and turned the water off. Not yet.

I stepped out onto the bathmat and dried off, still throbbing between my legs, running the towel over my tits and down my legs and giving my hair a quick rub. Through the door I heard him come up the stairs, and then the creak of our bed as he sat down on it. I wrapped the towel round me, tucked the end in under my arm, and opened the door with my red hair still dripping down my back.

He'd put the bedside lamp on and was sitting on the bed in his boxers, propped up against the headboard with his arms folded, staring at the blank TV on the wall like he was waiting to be called in to see the dentist.

"You were quick," I said.

"You said not to take all night."

"I didn't think you'd listen."

"I'm only doing this for you," he said. "Just so we're clear. And I want it on record that…"

I smiled at him, pulled the tucked end of the towel out from under my arm, and held it closed for a second, just long enough for him to notice. Then I let go, and it slid down my body and landed round my feet, and I stood there in the lamplight, still damp, with nothing on at all.

"…that I…" He looked at my tits, then at my hips and the marks on them, and then back up at my face like I'd done it on purpose, which I had.

"That's not fair," he said.

"Nothing about this is fair. Shove up."

I climbed onto the bed next to him, picked up my phone off the bedside table and mirrored it to the TV. My home screen appeared on the TV, enormous, with forty-two unread emails from work in the corner, which I ignored. I opened a private tab.

"Ready?" I asked.

"No."

"Good." I started typing.

Every letter came up on the TV a foot high as I typed it. S-T-R-A-P-P-E-D.

"Chloe."

S-I-S-S…

"Chloe, what is that?"

…I-E-S. Dot com.

He read it out loud before he could stop himself. "Strapped Sissies?"

"It's just what it's called."

"I'm not a… that's not…" He unfolded his arms and folded them again. "Absolutely not."

"Babe, they're all called something like that. It's not about you. Don't take it personally."

"It's quite hard not to take it personally when it's a foot high on the screen."

I hit enter, and the page loaded into a grid of thumbnails in bright pink and black, with titles in capital letters, every single one of them shouting.

FORCED SISSY TAKES IT ALL

SISSY HUBBY PEGGED BY WIFE

MAKING HIM MY SLUTTY GIRL

"Oh my God," Oliver said.

"Okay," I said. "Hang on."

"I'm not doing any of that," he said.

"We're not watching any of that." I was already scrolling.

"Making him my slutty girl, Chloe."

"Will you stop reading them out?" I was laughing now, and trying not to, which made it worse. "Look. We're scrolling straight past the forced stuff. All of it. Watch."

The forced ones went on for a long time, which did not help my case, but then there was a row of tags along the top of the page, and I tapped one that said Couples, and the whole grid changed to videos that looked like they'd been filmed on a phone at home. The women in the harnesses looked like someone's girlfriend, and the men looked like someone's boyfriend, on all fours on the bed or on their backs with their legs held up.

He stopped talking.

I nudged him. "See? Normal people."

"Normal people with a camera."

"Fine. Normal people with a camera… and a lot of lube."

I scrolled a bit further and found one called REAL COUPLE: WIFE PEGS HUBBY FOR THE FIRST TIME. The thumbnail was a girl with a messy bun, kneeling on a bed behind a man who was grinning over his shoulder at her. That was the one. Two thumbnails along there was another, with a man on his knees in black stockings and a lacy suspender belt, and a woman standing behind him with her hand on the back of his neck. I could feel Oliver looking at it.

"That one's for later," I said.

He didn't say no.

I tucked my feet under me, leaned back against his shoulder, and pressed play on the first one.

The picture wobbled, then steadied on a bed with a grey headboard and somebody's phone charger trailing off the side table. A girl leaned into the frame from behind the camera, laughing.

"Is it on? Is the little light on?"

"It's on, babe," said a man's voice somewhere off to the side.

"Oh God," Oliver said. "They're going to be nice."

"Shh."

She stepped back so we could see her. She was wearing a black harness and nothing else, with a pink cock sticking out of the front of it, nowhere near as big as I'd expected. He was already on the bed on his hands and knees, looking back at her over his shoulder with the kind of nervous grin I'd seen on Oliver's face all evening.

"You okay?" she asked him.

"Yeah. Just go slow."

"I'm always slow."

She squeezed a huge dollop of lube into her hand, and Oliver made a small noise next to me.

"Is that normal?" he asked. "That much?"

"That's not that much."

"She's basting him."

"That's what I said at dinner. Lots of lube." I kept my eyes on the screen. "Watch what she's doing."

She was taking her time. She worked one finger into him, then two, talking to him the whole way through, low and teasing, and he pushed back against her hand and swore into the mattress.

"That's it. Relax for me. Good boy."

"Fuck… yeah. That's… fuck."

I wasn't watching the screen any more. I was watching Oliver, and Oliver was watching that man's face. He'd stopped making comments. His arms had unfolded at some point and his hands were flat on the sheet on either side of him, and the front of his boxers had started to tent.

He saw me notice and moved one hand to cover it.

I took his wrist and moved it back to the sheet. "No, you don't."

"It's a physical response," he said. "It doesn't mean anything."

"Tell that to your boxers."

On the screen, she'd lined herself up behind him and was pushing the head of the cock into him, inch by inch, with one hand on his hip.

"Breathe out for me. There you go. Oh, look at you taking it."

He groaned. It wasn't a polite groan. Oliver's cock jumped in his boxers like it had heard him.

I put my mouth by his ear. "See? Nobody looks ridiculous."

"He looks like he's dying."

"He looks like he wants every inch of it, babe. Look at his face."

Oliver's eyes went straight back to the man's face on the screen and stayed there while I put my hand flat on his stomach, just above the waistband. He didn't move it away, so I slid it down over the front of his boxers and wrapped my fingers round his cock through the cotton. He was rock hard.

"Chloe."

"Lift up."

"What?"

"Lift your hips up."

He lifted them, and I pulled his boxers down and off and dropped them over the side of the bed, and then it was just the two of us, naked in the lamplight, and the girl on the screen fucking her boyfriend while he swore at her to keep going.

"Fuck, that's good. Don't stop."

"You love getting fucked up your arse, don't you?"

"Yeah… fuck, yeah, I do."

I took Oliver's cock in my hand and stroked him slowly up the shaft, from the base to the tip and back down again, matching her pace on the screen. He let out a breath through his teeth and his head went back against the headboard.

"Imagine that's you," I said. "On our bed. Me behind you."

"Don't."

"Me holding your hips. Going slow, like her. Until you're asking me for more."

"Chloe…"

I could feel him getting close. His stomach tightened, and his hips started to lift off the bed to meet my hand, and he made a sound at the back of his throat that I knew very well, and I let go of his cock just before he got there.

He opened his eyes. "What… why did you stop?"

"Not yet."

"You can't just…"

"I can. Tonight I'm in charge." I waited until his breathing slowed down a bit, then took hold of his cock again and started over, slower than before.

I edged him twice more. Each time I stroked him until he was right about to come and then let go, and each time he swore at me. The second time, he grabbed my wrist, then let it go again when I looked at him. By then there was a wet patch of precum on his stomach, and he'd stopped pretending he wasn't watching the screen.

I picked my phone up off the sheets with my other hand.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Changing the channel."

I went back and pressed on the other one, and the room changed colour as it loaded. This one was darker, a bedroom lit by fairy lights. A man was kneeling on the edge of the bed in black stockings with a seam up the back, a lacy black suspender belt, a matching bra and a pair of lace knickers pulled down to his thighs. His legs were shaved and he was wearing red lipstick. Behind him, a woman stood on the floor in heels and a black lace bra, with a red harness round her hips and a black cock sticking out of it, shiny with lube. She was running the head of it up and down between his cheeks, and stroking her other hand down his back.

"Look at you," she said. "Look at you in your pretty stockings for me."

Oliver went completely quiet. His cock twitched in my hand.

I squeezed it once. He looked at me, then straight back at the screen, and didn't say anything.

"Who's my good girl?"

"I am."

She pressed the head of the cock against him and held it there, not pushing, and he tried to push back onto it. She stepped back, just enough that he couldn't.

"Uh-uh. Good girls don't take. They ask."

He was shaking. "Please."

"Please what?" she asked.

"Please fuck me."

She pushed into him in one long slow stroke, and he moaned, high and shaky, and dropped his head down onto the bed, his stockinged legs trembling, and I could feel Oliver throbbing in my hand.

My thighs were slick, and I could feel it every time I shifted on the bed. I'd been on the edge since the shower, and watching him watch them had pushed me right back up there, and I couldn't sit still any more.

"Right," I said, and let go of him.

"Chloe, please don't stop again…"

"I need your mouth. Now." I put a hand flat on his chest and pushed him down until he was lying on his back.

I got up on my knees and straddled his head, facing the TV at the end of the bed, with a knee on either side of his face. Underneath me, he said "Oh," very quietly.

"Hello," I said, and sat down on his face.

He made a muffled noise. Then his hands came up and took hold of my hips and pulled me down onto him, and his tongue slid into me.

He licked me in long strokes from the bottom of my pussy up to my clit, the way he knew I liked it, and I put a hand on his chest to steady myself. I rolled my hips against his mouth, slow at first. On the TV, the woman was fucking the man in stockings with long, deep strokes, holding on to him by his suspender belt, and he was moaning like he'd never been happier in his life.

"Good girl. Such a good girl for me. Take it."

"Oh God, it's so deep."

"That's it," I said, and ground down harder. "Use your tongue."

His tongue flicked over my clit, and then he sucked on it until my thighs tightened round his head. I could hear him breathing hard through his nose underneath me. When the man on screen cried out, Oliver's cock jumped against his stomach, and I watched it.

"Oh, you like that," I said. "Don't you?"

He groaned into me, which wasn't a no.

His cock was standing up off his stomach now, flushed dark and wet at the tip. I couldn't leave it alone any longer. I leaned forward over his body into a sixty-nine, braced one hand on his thigh, and took his cock in my mouth.

The noise he made went right through me. I sucked his cock as unhurriedly as I'd stroked it, deep and then back up to the tip and off again. Every time he started pushing his hips up for more, I stopped and held him still with my hand round the base until he gave up and went back to licking me. He was moaning into my pussy, and I was moaning round his cock.

"I'm going to come," said the man on the screen, "please, please can I come?"

"Not yet," she said.

Hearing her say it, with his tongue on my clit and his cock in my mouth, I couldn't hold off any longer. I pulled off his cock and ground down hard on his face, and I came with my hand wrapped round him and my thighs clamped round his head, swearing into the sheet by his knee. He held my hips and kept licking me all the way through it, until I had to lift off him because I couldn't take any more.

I rolled off onto my back next to him, breathing hard. My legs wouldn't keep still.

He was lying there with his mouth wet and his cock standing straight up, dark purple and slick at the tip. He looked like a man who'd been made to wait outside a shop for an hour.

"Chloe," he said. "Please."

I rolled onto my side, propped myself up on one elbow, and wrapped my hand round his cock again.

"Watch the telly," I said.

He watched. On the screen, the woman had pulled the man up onto his knees with his back against her chest, and she was fucking him and stroking his cock at the same time, her mouth right by his ear.

"Come for me, good girl. Let me feel you come."

I stroked Oliver faster.

He didn't last ten seconds. His back arched up off the bed and he grabbed a fistful of the sheet. He came so hard the first spurt hit his chest, and the rest went over my fingers and his stomach. He groaned the whole way through it, long and low, with his eyes on the screen.

I kept stroking his cock gently until he flinched and pushed my hand away, and then I leaned down and licked his cum up off his stomach, slowly, all of it, while he lay there with his chest heaving and watched me do it.

"Mm," I said, and licked my lips. "Somebody enjoyed that."

"I can't feel my legs."

"I'm not surprised. That was a lot."

"That was…" He gave up and laughed at the ceiling, breathless. "Bloody hell, Chloe."

I lay down beside him with my head on his shoulder. On the TV, the video was still going. The man in the stockings was lying on his side now, flushed and grinning, while the woman stroked his hair.

"Do you know what you were watching," I asked, "when you came?"

He didn't answer. Under my cheek, his chest was going up and down, slow and heavy, and I realised I'd been listening to it for a couple of minutes, thinking he was just getting his breath back. I lifted my head. His eyes were shut, his mouth had dropped open a little, and one hand was still balled up in the sheet, and as I watched, he let out a tiny snore.

I reached across him for my phone. Before I turned the TV off, I pressed the little heart under the video and saved it.

 

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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.
Mizz Cherry Poppins

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: it's a long one! We see everything through Chloe's eyes, so I wanted to spend a whole day in her life first: the coffee machine, the office, lunch with Tash and a very educational trip to a sex shop. That way, when the bedroom door finally shuts, it feels earned rather than forced. So grab a cup of tea, or a glass of wine, and settle in.

And finally, a huge thank you to enemyoffun, who made the cover image. This thank you should have been in Chapter 1, but I rushed it out and forgot, and I'm sorry. Honestly, I've been more organised about a butt plug than I was about thanking you. You deserve better, and you've got it now, in writing, one chapter late.

 

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Chapter 2

 

Tuesday

"Come on," I said to the coffee machine. "Don't you dare."

It did anyway, with a long, wet gurgle, and dribbled something into my cup that looked like the water you rinse a paintbrush in.

Oliver had chosen the machine. He'd spent most of a month reading about pressure and grind sizes before he bought it. Now it sat on the counter by the window, all chrome and dials, with a little set of scales beside it that he used every time and I had never once touched. When he made it, it gave him something thick and dark with a layer of foam on top. When I made it, which was most weekday mornings because he was still asleep, it gave me cups of brown water like this one, and I usually gave up and bought a coffee on the way in.

It was twenty-five to eight, and I had to be at my desk by nine. I was standing in the kitchen in my green silk robe, with my hair still damp from the shower and twisted up in a clip, and not a scrap of makeup on yet, pouring a cup of brown water down the sink. I knocked the old grounds into the bin, filled the basket again, and jabbed the button with the little cup on it so hard I bent my nail back.

"Ow. Fuck."

"You haven't tamped it."

Oliver was standing in the doorway in his boxers and an old grey T-shirt with a hole in the collar. His hair was flat on one side and sticking straight up on the other. He didn't have to be anywhere until he decided he did, and on a normal Tuesday I left him face down across the whole bed.

"Morning to you too," I said. "What are you doing up?"

"Couldn't sleep." He came over, took the handle thing out of the machine, tipped my grounds in the bin and started again, weighing fresh beans on his little scales.

"You couldn't sleep?" I asked. "You were out like a light last night. I asked you a question and got a snore back."

"I don't snore."

"Tiny little snores, babe. I'd worn you out."

"What did you ask?"

"What you were watching when you came."

He pressed the coffee down with a little metal stamp, with a lot more concentration than it needed. The machine hummed for him, and what came out was dark and slow and actually looked like coffee. He put the cup down in front of me, then weighed out more beans and started one for himself.

I needed a travel mug, or I'd be drinking this in the car between my knees. The travel mugs lived on the top shelf of the cupboard by the fridge, because Oliver had designed the kitchen for someone his height, and I went up on my toes and stretched. The robe, which I hadn't tied properly, slid open down the front and off one shoulder.

"That's new," he said behind me.

I came down off my toes with the mug and turned round. He was looking at my bra.

It was new: black lace so fine I could see my freckles through the cups, with a narrow band of black silk underneath and tiny gold sliders on the straps. The knickers matched, cut high on the hip and sheer all the way across the back. It wasn't really a Tuesday set, but it had been sitting in my drawer since last week, and I'd got bored of waiting for an occasion.

"Maison Severine," I said. "They sent a bag of samples over after the shoot."

"Your apricot people?"

"Don't. And yes."

"Do they just give you these?" he asked.

"The account team gets a bag after every big shoot, and I get first pick. Which is only fair, because I'm the one who has to listen to Henrietta."

"What do they cost? In the shop?"

"A hundred and eighty for the bra."

He looked at me. "Pounds?"

"No, babe, buttons. Yes, pounds."

"For the bra."

"The knickers are another eighty."

"There's hardly any of it."

"That's what you're paying for."

He came round the island and stood in front of me. Usually, when I stood in front of him in anything lacy, his hands went straight to my tits. This time he put one finger under the strap at my shoulder and ran it down to where it met the cup, and then along the seam underneath. He had his work frown on, the one he wore for a stair that didn't quite meet its landing.

"It's so thin," he said.

"It's meant to be."

"How does it hold anything up?"

"Wire, mostly. And good seams. You'd like the seams."

He looked at the seams, then took the edge of the lace between his finger and thumb and rubbed it, a bit longer than you'd need to if you were only checking.

"It's soft," he said.

"Feel the knickers. They're even softer."

He took his hand back as if the lace had got hot. His coffee had finished while neither of us was looking, so he went back to the machine and stood with his back to me, wiping bits of it that were already clean with a cloth.

"About last night," he said to the machine.

"Mm?"

"About…" He folded the cloth in half and put it down. "What you asked me. Before I…"

"Fell asleep on me."

"Before I fell asleep." He took the handle out of the machine, knocked the old grounds out towards the bin and missed.

I picked my coffee up and blew on it, and didn't help him at all.

He bent down to scoop the grounds off the floor. "The second one," he said from somewhere near the bin.

"I know, babe. I was there."

He came back up. "Then why did you ask?"

"I wanted to see if you knew."

He tipped them into the bin this time, and shut the lid on them. "It's porn, Chloe. It's made to do that. Anyone would, with that on."

"Anyone would," I said.

"And she was…" He waved a hand around. "She was very good-looking."

"She was gorgeous. Those legs. I'd have let her do it to me."

His head came up. "Would you?"

"Don't look so shocked. I've been with women. You know that."

"I knew that. I didn't know about the rest of it till last night." He leaned back against the counter with his coffee. "So it was her. Mostly."

"Partly," I said. "She was part of it. I'm not arguing."

"Good."

"But I had the best seat in the house, love."

"You were sitting on my face."

"Exactly. I was sitting right on top of you." I wrapped both hands round my coffee. "And when he started begging her, when he kept asking her to fuck him, please, please fuck me, you reacted. I saw you."

He went pink from the neck up, and drank some coffee he hadn't let cool down, and burned his mouth.

"Ouch."

"I'm not pointing the finger," I said. "Do you know what did it for me?"

"Go on."

"Her. When he asked if he could cum and she said not yet. I heard her say it, and I came all over your face. I couldn't have stopped if I'd tried."

Saying it out loud in the kitchen on a Tuesday morning, with a coffee in my hand, I could feel it starting up again, and I hitched myself onto one of the stools and crossed my legs. Eighty quid's worth of knickers, and at this rate I'd be changing them before work.

Oliver watched me cross my legs. Then he looked at the ceiling.

"So we both liked the porn," he said.

"We both liked the porn."

"That's not the same as doing it."

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

He looked surprised that I'd agreed with him, and slightly suspicious, as if he'd won an argument too early and was waiting to find out what it was going to cost him.

I put my coffee down. "So we don't do it. Not all of it. Not yet."

"Not yet," he said.

"We start small. We get you something to wear. Something cheap, just to put on and see how it feels."

"Something like what?"

"Knickers. A pair of stockings. A little slip, maybe."

He looked down at himself, at his boxers and his long hairy legs and his bare feet on the kitchen tiles, and then at my bra again. "On me."

"On you."

"I'd look like a rugby club fundraiser."

"You'd look like my husband in knickers," I said. "And I'd like it."

"You'd want a photo."

"I might want a photo. I've got plenty of you in your cycling shorts, and I still fancy you in them."

He turned his cup round on the counter by the handle.

"Too much?" I asked.

"A bit."

"Then there's only one more thing, and it's the easy one." I waited until he looked at me. "A plug."

He'd been about to drink. He put the cup down instead.

"A small one," I said. "To see how you get on with it. Before anything bigger comes anywhere near you."

"A plug."

"A butt plug, love."

"I know what a plug is. How small?"

"Small. The little ones are about the size of a finger."

"Whose finger?"

"Mine, obviously."

He looked at my hand on the counter as if he was measuring it. "And it just stays in."

"For a bit. Then it comes out."

"And if it doesn't come out, I'm not explaining it to a doctor."

"They've got a base on the end. That's the whole point. It can't go anywhere."

"What if it hurts?"

"Then it comes out, and we try a smaller one, or we don't bother."

"At least nobody could see it," he said into his coffee.

"So let me get this straight. The knickers are the problem, and something up your arse is fine."

"I said it was the lesser of two evils."

I had to put my face in my hands. When I looked up, he was trying not to smile, and failing at it.

"Babe," I said. "Nearly three years together, a year married on Saturday, and I still can't keep my hands off you. I want it to stay like that. I don't want us to turn into the couple that only ever does the nice list."

"There's nothing wrong with the nice list."

"There's nothing wrong with it at all. I love the nice list. I just want the other one as well." I reached over and hooked a finger in the hole in his collar. "And if you hate it, you say so. You don't have to explain, or be polite about it. One word and it's off, it's out, it's in the bin, and I don't bring it up again."

"You'd bring it up again."

"I wouldn't. I'd just give you a look every time we walked past an Ann Summers."

He didn't take my finger out of his collar.

"So we go and get them," I said. "After work. Together."

"Today?"

"Today."

"Can't we just order one online? It'd be here in a couple of days."

"I don't want to wait a couple of days. And it'd turn up in a box on the doorstep, and you're the one who's home first. You'd be signing for it."

He pushed his hair down on the flat side, which made the other side stick up more.

"Besides," I said, "I want to choose it with you. Not off a photo on a website."

"And if I came," he asked, "I'd get a say? In what we got?"

"Course you would," I said, and drank my coffee. He could have as much say as he liked. I'd be the one with the basket.

"Where would we even go?" he asked.

"Leave it with me."

"That's what worries me."

"I'll find one. It's not like they're hiding."

"Someone could see us going in." He gestured at the garden, which was sunny, and full of birds. "It'll still be light."

"Then you can wear sunglasses."

"Chloe."

"It's a shop. You go in, you look at things, you pay, you come out. You've done it hundreds of times. You did it at B&Q every weekend for two years."

"B&Q doesn't sell butt plugs."

"You don't know that. You never went down every aisle."

He laughed into his coffee, and I looked past him at the clock on the oven. It said nine minutes past eight.

"Oh, shit."

I tipped the rest of my coffee down my throat, nearly choked on it, and ran for the stairs with my robe flapping open behind me.

I got dressed and did my face in twenty minutes, which for me was a record: wide grey trousers, a cream silk shirt and my black heels, my hair up still damp, and my mascara left for the first red light. I was going to be late whatever I did. When I came back down, he was standing in the hall in his boxers, holding out my travel mug. He'd made me another coffee in it.

"You're an angel," I said, and took it.

He was looking at the front of my shirt, where the silk lay over the lace and you could just about see the line of it if you knew it was there.

"You've still got them on," he said.

"All day, babe." I kissed him. "I'll text you."

I had the front door open and one foot on the step when he said, "Chloe."

"What?"

"Not anywhere near my studio. Or your office."

"Somewhere nobody knows us," I said. "Promise."

He was still standing in the doorway in his boxers when I backed off the drive.

 

◇ — ◇ — ◇

 

Dev had put three new versions of the Maison Severine billboard up side by side on the big screen in the studio. Each one was a different go at the cooler colour Henrietta wanted, and the model in the middle one looked as if she'd been dead for about a week.

"No," I said.

"You haven't looked at them yet."

"I've looked at the middle one. She's a corpse."

The studio was at the back of the second floor, where the blinds stayed down all year so the light never changed, and something with a lot of bass was always playing quietly in a corner. Dev sat square to his desk with his pens lined up along the edge of his keyboard, black, blue, red, and his glasses pushed up on his head. Behind him the retoucher had slid her headphones down round her neck and gone very still. Millie stood just inside the door with her notebook open. She'd been with us three weeks, and she wrote down everything anyone said, possibly including "no."

"It's what the brief asked for," Dev said. "Cooler. Less red in the skin."

"Less red, Dev. Not no blood."

He took his glasses off his head, cleaned them on the hem of his shirt, and put them on to look at the middle one again.

The one on the left was right. The nude bra had gone from peach to something paler and greyer, like the inside of a shell, and the model's skin still looked like skin. She had her arms up behind her head, and the lace sat flat across the cups with a narrow seam running along underneath. I was wearing a Maison Severine bra under my shirt with exactly the same seam, and at breakfast my husband had run his finger along it as if he was checking the joinery.

I leaned in to point at the one on the right, and Dev said, "Don't touch the screen."

"I wasn't going to touch it."

"You were going to touch it."

I put my hand in my pocket. "Why is that one warmer than the billboard we've already got up?"

"Because that's what we were told to match." He clicked, and a small picture opened in the corner of the screen: the photo that was already twenty feet high over a roundabout, apricot from top to bottom. "That's the reference we were sent."

"Who sent it?"

Millie's pen stopped.

"I…" She shut the notebook on her finger. "It was in the shared folder. The file said final. I thought… I'm so sorry."

"That file stopped being the final one three versions ago."

Her face went blotchy all the way down her neck.

I took a breath. "Okay. Find Will. Get the right photo to match from him, send it to Dev, and copy me in."

"Sorry. I'm really…"

"Millie. Go and find Will."

She went off down the corridor to find him, and Dev watched her go before he turned back to the screen.

"She'll learn," he said.

"I know she will." I looked at the three of them again. "Leave the one on the left alone. Bring the middle one back about halfway. And do the warm one again, from the photo Will sends you."

"Halfway isn't a value."

"You'll know it when you see it. You always do."

He sniffed, and he was already dragging a slider across before I'd got to the door.

"I need all three by ten tomorrow," I said.

"You'll have them by nine," he said, without looking round.

On the stairs, a girl from the strategy team stopped me with her laptop hugged to her chest.

"Chloe, did you get my email about Thursday?"

"I got it. I haven't read it."

"It's only three slides."

"After lunch. I promise."

Back on my floor, I shut my office door for the first time all morning and rang the media agency.

"Chloe!" Sam said. "How was your weekend?"

"Quiet. Nice. Yours?"

"My eldest had a sleepover. Six eleven-year-olds. I'm still finding popcorn in the sofa."

"Brave woman."

"Stupid woman. What can I do for you?"

"Maison Severine. The six sites." I pulled my chair in and found a pen. "If we get you new artwork, what's the latest you need files for a repost?"

"All six?" I heard her typing. "For a posting the week after next, I'd want files by Friday at the latest. The printer's tight this month."

"And the cost?"

"Print and posting on six sites. I'll send it over, but you won't love it."

"Send it anyway. And hold the slot for me, would you? Don't let it go."

"Holding it."

"Thanks, Sam."

I'd barely put the phone down when my mobile rang, and Tash's name came up on the screen.

"Hello, you."

"Are you alive?" Tash always sounded as if she was lying on a chaise longue, even when she was on the bus. "Because I very nearly am not. I've just spent an hour telling a man whose grandfather owned half of Shropshire that he can't put his entire inheritance into a vineyard because his girlfriend likes rosé."

"How did he take that?"

"He cried, Chloe. A man of forty-six. In a waistcoat."

"Oh, Tash."

"I was very kind. I gave him a tissue. Then I moved him into bonds." I heard a door shut on her end, and the noise of an office went away behind her. "Lunch. I need a large glass of something and I've got news, and it is not suitable for the office."

"It's Tuesday."

"It's a filthy Tuesday. Calloway's? Twenty minutes?"

"Is this about a man?"

"Obviously it's about a man. What else is there? Twenty minutes."

She'd hung up before I could say goodbye.

I had twenty minutes and a screen full of email, and I'd answered about three of them when my phone lit up on the desk with a text from Oliver. It was a link and nothing else, and the preview underneath said The Complete Beginner's Guide to Butt Plugs, with a picture of a row of them in pastel colours, lined up like macarons.

Chloe: Are you reading this at work??

Oliver: I'm self-employed. I'm always at work.

Chloe: So that's a yes

Oliver: Silicone or glass?

I put my hand over my mouth.

Chloe: Why would anyone want glass

Oliver: It holds its temperature. Apparently you can warm it up in water first. Or put it in the fridge.

Chloe: Oliver I am in the OFFICE

Oliver: You started this.

Chloe: Silicone. To start with.

Oliver: To start with.

Chloe: Don't read the bit about sizes, you'll frighten yourself

There was a long pause, and the dots came and went twice.

Oliver: Too late.

Somebody knocked, and Millie put her head round the door with a sheet of paper. I turned my phone face down on the desk so fast it skidded.

"Sorry," she said. "Sorry. Will says you need to sign off Dev's overtime for tonight. For the regrade."

"Course." I held my hand out for the sheet. My face was hot, and I could feel her looking at it.

"Are you okay?"

"Fine. It's warm in here." I signed it and gave it back. "Millie."

She stopped in the doorway.

"Everyone sends the wrong file once," I said. "Just don't do it twice."

Her shoulders came down about an inch. "I won't."

When she'd gone, I picked my phone back up. Oliver had sent another text while I was signing.

Oliver: Glass is out.

I laughed out loud on my own, and a man from finance going past my door looked in to see what was funny.

Chloe: Coward x

Oliver: Realist.

Chloe: Having lunch with Tash. I'll text you where and when for tonight

Oliver: Don't tell Tash.

Chloe: I'm not insane

Oliver: You told me you wanted to put a strap-on on.

Chloe: That's different. You're married to me

I sent the girl from strategy a message promising her two o'clock, put my computer to sleep, and took my handbag off the back of the door.

Out on the floor, Millie was at her desk next to Will's with her headphones on, staring at her screen as if it might bite her. Will caught my eye over her head and nodded at me, which meant he'd checked the file and it was the right one this time. I nodded back and kept walking, and I didn't stop at Millie's desk, because she'd only have said sorry again.

While I waited for the lift, I found my sunglasses at the bottom of my handbag, and I put them on as the doors opened.

Outside, the sun was warm for September, and the pavement was full of people on their way to lunch. Calloway's wasn't far if I went straight there. I went the long way round, past the roundabout, so I could look up at my apricot girl one last time before Dev turned her into an oyster.

Calloway's was down a side street off Bellhouse Square, in what had been a bank once. It still had the high ceilings, and the old marble counter where the cashiers used to sit was the bar now. At lunchtime every table was full.

I saw Tash through the window before I got to the door. She was sitting at a table on her own, with a bottle of Sancerre open in a cooler and a glass already poured for me, scrolling on her phone with her sunglasses pushed up into her hair. As I watched, she checked the time, frowned at it, and topped up her own glass.

Inside it was loud and warm, all voices and cutlery and plates. I squeezed past the end of the bar, said sorry to a man whose chair I knocked with my handbag, and waited while a waitress squeezed past the other way with a tray of drinks.

Tash was wearing a fitted dark green dress with sleeves to the elbow and a high neck, which looked as if it had been made to sit across a desk from a duke, and leopard-print heels, which looked as if they'd been made for anything but that. She'd worn her grandfather's signet ring on her little finger since we were fifteen.

She didn't look up until I pulled out the chair opposite her. Then she looked me up and down.

"Are we in hiding?" she asked.

I'd forgotten I still had my sunglasses on. I took them off and sat down. "It's sunny."

"It's Avenbridge. It's never sunny." She pushed my glass across the table towards me. "Drink that. You look like someone's sent their soup back."

"Someone's sent back six billboards."

"Drink first," Tash said. "Billboards after."

I drank some of the wine. It was very cold and very good, and I'd have liked about four more glasses of it.

"Just the one," I said. "I've got to drive back later."

"Then I'll drink the rest of yours."

A young waiter came over to our table with his sleeves rolled up and a tea towel over his shoulder. His name was Marco, he was from somewhere outside Naples, and he'd been in love with Tash for about two years.

"Signora," he said to her, and put a bowl of olives down by her elbow that neither of us had ordered, and a menu in front of me.

"Marco. You're an angel. Is the lamb on?"

"For you, the lamb is always on."

"Then I'll have the lamb." She looked across at me. "And you're having the salad with the burrata."

"I might not be."

"You've had the salad with the burrata every time since February."

I looked at the menu for long enough to make a point of it, and then I gave it back to Marco. "The salad with the burrata, please."

"And then she'll steal my chips," Tash said.

"I won't steal your chips."

"You'll have half of them." She smiled up at Marco. "Extra chips, please."

He went off to put the order in. Tash watched him go the whole way to the kitchen door, with her chin on her hand.

"Leave him alone," I said. "He's a baby."

"I'm only looking. I'm allowed to look. Looking's free." She ate an olive. "I've been at my desk since half seven, you know. Half seven, Chloe. With a man crying at me by ten. What time did you get in?"

"Twenty past nine."

She put the olive stick down. "Twenty past nine? You're at your desk by quarter to every day, like a nun."

"I was late."

"You're never late. You've never been late for anything in your life. You were late on a Tuesday, which means you were shagging."

"I wasn't shagging."

"Then you were thinking about shagging."

"I was arguing with a coffee machine."

"That's the saddest thing you've ever said to me, and you once told me you'd taken up pottery."

"Oliver bought it," I said. "It's very expensive and it hates me. It only works for him. I make brown water, and he makes something you could stand a spoon up in. He was up early this morning, for once, so he made me one."

"And then you shagged him on the kitchen island."

"We talked."

"About what?"

I picked an olive out of the bowl and ate it, slowly, so I didn't have to answer straight away. "Work stuff."

"Liar. Your ears have gone pink." She leaned back in her chair. "Fine. Keep your secrets. I'll get them out of you after the lamb. Right. These billboards."

"Don't." I put my glass down. "Henrietta stood underneath one on Saturday and decided the bra was the wrong colour. Six billboards, Tash. A lingerie model the size of a house, and Henrietta's had a feeling about it."

"Oh, God. Not a feeling."

"An apricot one." I drank some more of my wine. "I've had the studio on it all morning, trying to turn a peach into an oyster."

Tash snorted into her wine. "Your job's so stupid. I love it."

She lifted the bottle out of the cooler and held it over my glass, and I put my hand over the top.

"God, you're boring today," she said, and filled her own instead.

"And then the new girl on my team sent the studio the wrong file," I said, "so they spent the whole morning matching the exact colour we're trying to get rid of."

"Oh, the poor thing. Did you bite her head off?"

"I was a bit sharp."

"We've all done it. Mine ended a marriage."

"It did not."

"In my first month at the bank. I had a client who kept a second account, just for his mistress. Her flat, her car, her little treats."

"Classy."

"Very. The statements for that one went to her flat, obviously. And I was going through his file, being terribly thorough, and I saw two different addresses and thought, well, that's a mistake. So I changed them both to his home address."

"Tash."

"His wife opened it over breakfast. Three years of earrings." She ate another olive. "It was a very long phone call. And do you know what he said at the end of it?"

"What?"

"'Thank you, Natasha. I'd been meaning to tell her.'"

"What happened to them?"

"He married the mistress. The wife kept the house in Menorca and took up with her tennis coach. They're all much happier."

"And your crier from this morning? What happened to him?"

"He sent me a text an hour later saying 'I've had a think and you're right,' and then a picture of a vineyard." She turned her phone round to show me. It was a vineyard. "He's going to visit it. Just to look at it. The girlfriend's going with him."

"So he's buying it."

"He's buying it by Christmas. I'll move him back out of bonds in the new year, and he'll cry again, and I'll give him another tissue." She put her phone face down on the table. "That's my job. I'm the most expensive box of tissues in Avenbridge."

Marco came back out of the kitchen with two plates up one arm and the chips in his other hand, and turned sideways to get between the tables to us. He put Tash's lamb down in front of her first, pink in the middle, and then my salad, with a whole ball of burrata sitting on top. Then he put the chips down in the middle of the table, between us, and gave me a look that said he knew exactly whose they were going to be. I took one before he'd even got his hand back.

"See," Tash said.

"It's one chip."

"It's the first chip. By the time I've finished this lamb, there'll be six left, and you'll have had the rest."

"I'll buy you more chips."

"You can't buy me chips here. Marco's in love with me. I get them for nothing." She pulled the plate an inch towards her side of the table, and I took another one anyway.

She ate for a while. "So. Saturday. A whole year."

"Saturday."

"Has Oliver planned something, or do I need to ring him?"

"He's planning something. There's a list."

"Of course there's a list." She cut into her lamb. "What's on it?"

"I'm not supposed to know."

"So you've read it."

"I made him show me. It said 'Dinner, somewhere we haven't been,' and 'Weekend away, question mark,' and then 'Card' with two exclamation marks, because the first one's paper and he doesn't want to get it wrong."

Tash put her knife and fork down. "That's the most romantic thing I've ever heard. Nobody's ever written me a list." She picked her fork back up. "Does he still do that thing? With his tongue?"

"Tash."

"What? You told me about it. At Georgina's hen. In some detail."

"I was very drunk at Georgina's hen."

"You were very descriptive at Georgina's hen. Half the table heard. Does he still do it?"

"Yes," I said. "He still does it."

"Good boy."

I could have told her about last night, the bit I'd normally tell her, anyway: me sitting on his face, and him not stopping until I'd cum. But that wasn't the bit that mattered, and I couldn't tell her one without her asking about the rest. I took a mouthful of burrata instead, and chewed it until the urge passed.

Tash was watching me, and she didn't say anything. She drank some wine, and when I looked up again she was smiling into her glass like a woman sitting on something enormous.

"Right," I said. "Your turn. What's the news?"

"Oh, you want my news now?"

"You rang me to tell me about it."

"I rang you because I needed lunch." She put her glass down, and then she moved the olives out of the way, as if she needed the room. "Do you remember Hugo's party? At the end of May?"

"The one with the swing band."

"That's the one. And there was a man there, a friend of Daddy's, standing by the fireplace, very tall, grey at the sides, the sort of jaw you could cut a sandwich with. In a linen jacket."

"I don't remember him."

"You'd gone home. You always go home." She leaned in. "He's the head of a boys' school."

"Which one?"

"I'm not telling you which one. You'd know it. You'd know his face. His name's on letters to half the parents in the county." She lowered her voice, which for Tash meant the next table could only hear about half of it. "And I've been sleeping with him since June."

I put my fork down. "You're sleeping with a headmaster."

"Do keep up."

"Tash, he's a friend of your dad's. Please tell me he isn't married."

"Very married. Twenty-two years. Two children at university." She waited a moment, enjoying my face. "And his wife knows."

"She knows?"

"She was there. The first time." Tash picked a chip out of the middle of the plate and bit the end off it. "He invited me back to theirs after a dinner, and I thought, oh, here we go, she's away at her sister's. And she wasn't. She was sitting in an armchair in the corner of their bedroom in a silk dressing gown with a glass of brandy, and she said, 'Don't mind me, I'm only going to watch.'"

"Fuck off. You're joking."

"Hand on heart. And she did. She watched the whole thing. She didn't say a word, and she didn't move except to drink her brandy. And Chloe, I have never in my life been fucked like that man fucked me. And seeing her sitting there in the corner, watching every second of it… I've never been so wet in my life. I've had a lot of men, Chloe, you know I have, and not one of them has ever come close. I couldn't walk straight the next day. I had a meeting with a pension fund at nine and I sat through it like I'd been riding a horse."

I couldn't stop laughing. The man on the next table had stopped pretending to read his paper.

"Then what?" I asked.

"Then it happened a few more times. Same armchair. Same brandy." Tash ate the rest of the chip. "And then, about five weeks ago, she put the brandy down."

"Oh my God."

"She got up out of the chair, and she came over to the bed, and she said, 'I'd quite like to try,' very politely, as if she was asking if she could have a go at croquet. She'd never been with a woman. Never even kissed one. Twenty-two years of marriage, two children and a Labrador, and she'd never once."

I thought about the wife in the armchair, watching first, and then about last night: the man on the screen in his stockings, and Oliver watching him. I drank some of my wine.

"And?" I asked.

"And she's insatiable, Chloe. I've created a monster. She texts me now. She texts me while he's at assembly." Tash's eyes had gone very bright. "She's fifty-one, and she's got the best tits I've ever had my hands on. Present company excepted."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. And she's so grateful. She keeps saying thank you. In bed. Afterwards. Like I've fixed her boiler."

"And him?"

"He watches now, mostly. He's got the armchair. Then he joins in when he can't stand it any more, which isn't very long." She sat back with her glass. "I've never been so happy in my life. Three times last week. I'm exhausted. I fell asleep in a meeting about inheritance tax."

"You're going to get caught."

"By whom? Everyone who could catch us is in the room."

"The school."

"He's very discreet. He's a headmaster. He's spent thirty years keeping things from parents." She smiled at me over the top of her glass. "And she's ordered things for the two of us. She's got very adventurous, very quickly. We went shopping."

"Shopping where?"

"There's a lovely little place in Saltmarket. Kitty's Toy Chest. Have you never been?"

"Never."

"Oh, you'd love it. Everything's out on the shelves, and you can pick it all up and give it a squeeze. And the women who work there know absolutely everything. They don't giggle at you, either. You tell them what you're after and they sort you out, the way a good bra fitter would. She went in there terrified and came out with a harness and a smile, and I had to hold the bag."

I dragged a chip through the sauce on her plate and didn't look at her.

"I might go," I said. "I've been thinking about treating myself."

"Treating yourself?"

"Something new. For me."

"For you?" Tash asked.

"It's allowed."

"Of course it's allowed." She didn't stop looking at me. "It's Kitty's Toy Chest, on Lamb's Row, just off the market. Blue door, no sign in the window apart from the name. They're open till eight."

"Thanks."

"Chloe Ashworth."

I hadn't heard my maiden name out of her in about a year, and it made me look up from the chips.

"You've been sitting there all lunch with something you're dying to tell me," she said. "You went pink about the coffee machine, you nearly told me something about the tongue and then ate a whole burrata instead, and now you want a sex shop." She held up a hand when I opened my mouth. "I'm not asking. I'm just saying I've noticed. And when you want to tell me, I want all of it, every filthy bit."

"There's nothing to tell."

"There's always something to tell." She finished her wine and waved at Marco for the bill. "And for the record, if you're treating yourself, don't buy anything cheap. Cheap toys die halfway through, and there's nothing sadder."

Marco brought the bill on a little saucer with two mints, and Tash had her card down on it before I'd even found my purse.

"My treat," she said. "I did all the talking."

We picked our way back out between the tables. Outside, she put her sunglasses back on, kissed me on both cheeks, and walked off towards the bank with her leopard heels clicking on the pavement. Halfway down the street she turned round and walked backwards for a few steps, still looking at me, and then she went round the corner.

I stood outside Calloway's for a minute with my sunglasses in my hand, saying it over in my head: Kitty's Toy Chest, Lamb's Row, a blue door.

Then I put them on and walked back to the office the quick way.

Bev was on the front desk, with her reading glasses on a chain round her neck and a headset over her grey bob. She'd been on that desk longer than anyone could remember, and she looked up and smiled when I came through the doors.

"Ooh, sunglasses," she said. "Is it nice out?"

"Gorgeous." I pushed them up into my hair. "You should get out in it."

"I'm here till six, love. I'll see it on the way home." Her phone rang, and she gave me a little wave and pressed the button on her headset. "Good afternoon, Halden Pryce."

Two men from finance got into the lift with me, arguing about somebody's fantasy football team, and they were still arguing when I got out on my floor. Millie was at her desk with a sandwich in one hand, typing with the other. She sat up straighter when she saw me go past, and I gave her a smile on the way, so she'd know she could eat her lunch in peace.

I shut my office door and sat down, and looked at my computer for a second. Then I took my phone out of my handbag instead. I wasn't about to put a sex shop into a work computer that kept a record of everything I'd ever looked at.

I typed Kitty's Toy Chest, and the shop's listing came up at the top of the results.

Kitty's Toy Chest

4.8 stars (212 reviews)

Adult store, 14 Lamb's Row, Saltmarket

Open, closes 8 pm

Under that there was a phone number, and a little map with a red pin on it at the edge of the market, and then a row of photos people had posted. The first was the blue door Tash had told me about, with the name painted on the glass in gold. Then a few of the inside, with wooden shelves, warm lights and a long glass counter like an old-fashioned chemist's. One showed a wall of toys in every colour you could think of, and another a rail of lace lingerie next to a stand of stockings in flat packets.

The last photo was of a mannequin's legs in a pair of black stockings with a seam up the back, standing on a little box in the window. I enlarged it with my finger and thumb and sat looking at it for longer than I needed to. The mannequin's legs were shorter than Oliver's. Everybody's legs were shorter than Oliver's. I thought about those long legs of his in a pair like that, with the seams running straight up the backs of his calves, and for a second I forgot I was at work.

I scrolled down to the reviews.

Bex W.

Went in absolutely mortified, came out with a bag and a new best friend. Ask for Kitty!

Steph K.

Staff were so patient with my husband, who asked a LOT of questions. Five stars.

I could already picture Oliver being the husband in that one.

Andrew M.

Lovely shop, everything in a plain bag, nobody on the street would ever know. Parking's a nightmare though.

Lou Parker

Came in for one thing and left with four. Leave your credit card at home.

I didn't plan to leave my credit card at home. I rang the number before I could think about it any more.

It rang four times before a woman picked up. She sounded young and cheerful, as if she was halfway through eating something.

"Kitty's Toy Chest, this is Jo."

"Hi. What time are you open till tonight?"

"Eight, officially. Sometimes a bit after, if there's still someone in."

"Lovely." I picked a pen up off the desk and put it down again. "Can I just check what you've got in, before I come over?"

"Yeah, ask away."

"Have you got a good range of plugs? Different sizes?"

"Loads. Tiny right up to frankly ambitious. Silicone, glass, metal, and a few that vibrate."

"And dildos?" I asked.

"A whole wall of them. All sizes, all shapes."

"One more thing," I said. "Your lingerie. Do you have bigger sizes? Long stockings, that sort of thing?"

"Plenty. We've got a lot of plus sizes, and a lot of our lingerie is cut to fit all sorts of bodies, not just the standard ones."

"Including…" I stopped, and nobody could see me, so I said it. "Including a tall man?"

"Oh, yeah, definitely." She said it as easily as she'd told me the opening hours. "We get a lot of men who like to dress, and their partners. We've got stockings and tights in long lengths, knickers that actually fit, suspender belts with a bit more give in them. And we've got a whole section for crossdressers, so breast forms, the silicone ones you stick on, and the full chest pieces as well, the ones that go over your head and look real. Nipples and everything. They're honestly amazing, you'd never know."

I didn't say anything for a second. I was picturing it: a pair of soft, heavy silicone tits on Oliver's flat chest, filling one of my bras out, and his face when he looked down and saw them.

"Hello? Are you still there?"

"Still here," I said. "Sorry. That's really helpful."

"Do you know where we are? Lamb's Row, just off the market. If you're driving, use the car park behind the market hall. It's free after six, and you won't find a space on the street."

"Free after six? Perfect." I said thanks a couple more times than I needed to, and Jo said, "See you later, then," and hung up.

I put the phone down and sat there grinning at a closed door like an idiot.

Then I picked the phone up again and texted Oliver.

Chloe: Found one. Kitty's Toy Chest, Lamb's Row in Saltmarket. 6.15, outside the blue door

He started typing almost straight away.

Oliver: Saltmarket?

Chloe: Nobody we know goes to Saltmarket

Oliver: That's what worries me.

Chloe: Get a cab from yours, I'll drive us home after

Oliver: Kitty's Toy Chest.

Chloe: Don't

Oliver: I've looked it up. 4.8 stars.

Chloe: You absolute nerd

Oliver: One review says ask for Kitty.

Chloe: We're not asking for Kitty

Oliver: What do I say when we get in there?

Chloe: Nothing. I'll do the talking. You can carry the basket

The dots came and went for a while.

Oliver: 6.15.

Oliver: I'll be the one in sunglasses.

 

◇ — ◇ — ◇

 

The car park was behind Saltmarket's old market hall, a big Victorian building with a glass roof where they sold fruit and veg in the mornings. It was half empty, and the barrier was up because it was after six. I left the car under a tree, checked my lipstick in the mirror, and walked round to Lamb's Row with my handbag over my shoulder and the evening sun on the back of my neck.

Lamb's Row was a narrow little street of old brick shops, with a barber's, a place selling vinyl records, a café stacking its chairs, and halfway down, the blue door with Kitty's Toy Chest painted on the glass in gold.

Oliver was standing across the street from it, outside the barber's, in his navy work chinos and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, wearing a pair of sunglasses. He had his hands in his pockets and was studying the barber's price list in the window as if he was thinking of having all of it done.

I stopped next to him and read the price list too. "Are you going for the hot towel shave?"

"I'm early," he said, without looking round.

"I can see that." I looked him up and down. "Babe."

"What?"

"The sunglasses."

"It's sunny."

"It's quarter past six. You look like a footballer leaving court."

"Nobody looks twice at a man in sunglasses."

"Everybody looks twice at a man in sunglasses staring at a barber's window across the road from a sex shop."

He finally turned his head. I could see myself in both lenses. "Nobody knows I'm across the road from a sex shop."

"You've been standing here for…" I checked his face. "How long?"

"Ten minutes."

"Twenty."

"Fifteen," he said. "And a woman came out of there with a bag, so I went into the record shop for a bit."

"Did you buy anything?"

"I nearly bought a Phil Collins album. I'd have done anything." He nodded across the street at the blue door without really looking at it. "Do they all just walk out with bags?"

"That's usually how shops work, love."

A man went past us pushing a bike, and Oliver turned to the barber's window again and read Beard Trim £12 with a lot of interest.

I put my hand flat on his back, between his shoulder blades, and I could feel how tense he was through his shirt. "Are you coming in, or shall I bring you a catalogue out here?"

"You go in first," he said. "And I'll come in a minute later, and it'll look like I'm just…"

"Just what?"

"Just with you."

"You are just with me. You're my husband." I took his hand off the window ledge and held it. "We're going in together, and you're opening the door."

"Why am I opening the door?"

"Because you're a gentleman. And because I want to see your face when you do."

He breathed out through his nose. Then he took his sunglasses off, folded them and tucked them into his shirt pocket. For Oliver, that was the same as walking in naked. We crossed the road. He opened the blue door, and a little brass bell over it rang so loudly that he nearly let go.

It was cool inside and smelled faintly of vanilla and leather. It was bigger than it had looked in the photos, with the same warm lights and the long glass counter. Behind the counter, a girl with a nose ring and her hair up in a scrunchie looked up from her laptop and smiled at us.

"Hiya. Shout if you need anything."

"Thanks," I said.

Oliver said "Thank you" at the same time, much too formally, as if he'd been handed his coat at a wedding.

He looked round by the door, and then at me. "There aren't any baskets."

"Then you'll have to carry it all in your arms."

He looked as if that was worse.

The girl went back to her laptop. I walked further in, and Oliver came with me, so close that his arm touched mine with every step.

The first wall was the toys. There were vibrators in every colour, standing up on little plinths, from tiny ones the size of a lipstick to things that looked like they'd need a licence. Oliver looked at them once and then fixed his eyes on a point about a foot above the top shelf.

"You can look," I said.

"I am looking."

"You're looking at the ceiling."

"It's a nice ceiling." He tilted his head. "That's an original Victorian cornice, that."

"Oliver."

He looked down at the wall for about three seconds, then picked up the nearest thing to hand, which was a small silver bullet with a little cord on it, and turned it over.

"It's not a fuse," I said.

"I know it's not a fuse." He put it back very carefully, in exactly the same place. "What is it?"

"It's a bullet. It vibrates. You hold it on… things."

"Which things?"

"Mostly my things."

He nodded as if I'd told him the U-value of a window, and moved on along the shelf. He was reading the backs of the boxes now, which I'd known would happen sooner or later, and I let him. At the end of the shelf, there was a row of things in black silicone that were all curves and angles and didn't look like anything.

"What on earth are those?" he asked.

I leaned over and read the card. "Prostate massagers."

"What?"

"For your prostate. You put it up…"

"Yes, thank you."

"…and it hits the spot. Apparently it's like nothing on earth."

He put his hands back in his pockets. "Apparently."

"I'm just reading you the card."

We went round the end of the wall. The next section was everything I'd never had a reason to look at closely: handcuffs lined with fur, a riding crop hanging on a hook, a spreader bar he looked at for a long time before he worked out what it was for and then very quickly stopped looking at it. I had to bite my lip.

At the back of the shop there was lingerie on rails, and there was the mannequin from the photo, standing on its little box in the black seamed stockings. Oliver stopped in front of it. It wasn't for long, but he did stop. Then his eyes moved to the shelf beside it. There was a row of silicone breast forms there in clear plastic boxes, pairs of them in different sizes and skin tones, soft and heavy-looking, each with a nipple so real I wanted to touch one to check. Underneath them was a basket of the gel chicken fillets half the girls at my school had stuffed in their bras for the leavers' ball. And on the bottom shelf, in bigger boxes, were whole chest pieces: a sheet of pale silicone shaped like a neck and collarbones and a chest, with a full, round pair of breasts on the front, like something lifted off a statue.

He stood there for a second too long. I didn't say anything. I picked up a box of massage candles and read the back of it until he moved on.

The plugs were on a shelf near the counter, in a tidy row from small to large. Oliver went straight to the smallest and picked it up. It was black silicone, smooth, with a little flared base, and it fitted in his palm. He looked at the base and pressed it with his thumb.

"Is this one…" he started.

"Can I help you two with anything?"

The woman who'd come over from the back was younger than me, with long black hair over one shoulder, pale skin with freckles across her nose, and a black wrap top that was doing a great deal of work. I saw Oliver see it. I watched him decide very firmly to look at her face, and then at the plug, and then at a point on the floor.

"We're just looking," he said.

"Grand. Look away." She had an Irish accent, soft and quick. "I'm Niamh. Give us a shout if you want to know anything at all. Nothing's a stupid question in here, honest to God. I've heard the lot."

"Actually," I said. "We'd love some help."

Oliver looked at me. I smiled at him.

"Lovely." Niamh turned to me, with the plug shelf behind her. "So is it your first time with one of these, or are you upgrading?"

"First time," I said.

That was true. It just wasn't true about me.

"Ah, brilliant. So you'd want to start small." She took the smallest plug out of Oliver's hand without even looking at him and held it up for me. "That's the tester. This is the one I'd go for. Body-safe silicone, nice and smooth, good flared base so it can't go wandering. You'd barely know it was there after a while."

"Is the base wide enough?" Oliver asked.

Niamh looked at him. "Sorry?"

"The base. Relative to the… to the widest part." He made a shape with his finger and thumb. "Is that ratio standard, or does it vary?"

There was a short pause.

"It's… yeah, it's a good ratio," Niamh said. She looked at me, and I looked back at her with my most pleasant client face. "That one's very safe. You'd need to be really trying to lose it."

"Is it all silicone?" Oliver asked. "Not a blend?"

"All silicone."

"Because I read that some of the cheaper ones are a blend, and they can…"

"We don't sell those," Niamh said. "We won't have any of that rubbish in here."

"Right. Good." He nodded slowly. "Thank you."

Niamh put the tester back on the shelf, crouched down and slid open a drawer underneath it, full of boxes. She found the right one, a slim black box with a picture of the plug on the front, and stood up and handed it to me, not to him.

I held on to it and looked at the rest of the row. Halfway along there was one a bit bigger, in a deep plum colour, with a little rounded handle on the base and a small black remote sitting next to it on the shelf.

"What about this one?" I asked.

"Ah, now." Niamh's face lit up. "That's a gorgeous one. Vibrates, ten settings, and the remote works from across a room. Through a wall, even. I had a couple in last month who use it in restaurants."

I thought of Oliver in the car on Friday, with the city lights all over his face, while I told him I wanted one of those in my knickers at dinner with him holding the remote. I looked at him now. From the look on his face, he was thinking about it too, just the other way round.

"It's bigger," Oliver said.

"A bit bigger," I said.

"You said small."

"That one's small." I lifted the black box. "This one's for later."

"Later when?"

"Later whenever you like. Or never." I picked the plum one up off the shelf and held it next to the box. "Or it's for me."

"Is it for you?"

"It might be."

He looked at Niamh, who had found a box of something on the next shelf that needed straightening very urgently. He looked at the plum plug in my hand. He didn't tell me to put it back.

"Fine," he said.

"Fine?"

"I said fine."

"I'll get you a box for that one," Niamh said, without turning round, and went back into the drawer. She came up with a bigger box, plum and black, with the remote showing through a little window in the front, and swapped it for the tester in my hand. "And you'll want lube with those. Loads of it. Over here."

The lube was on a stand by the counter in neat rows of bottles. I remembered Tash with her wine glass, don't buy anything cheap, and reached past the little ones for a big bottle of the thick stuff in a plain white bottle that was nearly twice the price of the others.

"That's the good one," Niamh said, with approval. "You'll not regret that."

"How much is…" Oliver bent to read the price, and straightened up. "For lube?"

"It's a false economy otherwise," I said.

"Who told you that?"

"Everybody knows that."

We'd got as far as the dildos, a long wall of them on the far side of the counter in every size from a finger to a forearm, when the curtain at the back moved and a woman came out with a box of stock on her hip. She was older than the girls, with fine lines round her eyes when she smiled, blonde hair cropped short, red lipstick, a man's white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a tattoo of a swallow on the inside of one wrist. She put the box down on the counter and came over as if she had all the time in the world.

"Is Niamh looking after you?"

"She's been lovely," I said.

"She is lovely. I'm Kitty. It's my shop." She looked at the things in my arms, and then at the dildos I was standing in front of, and then at Oliver, who was reading the label on a bottle of toy cleaner as if it was a novel. "Are we going for one of these as well?"

"Maybe a small one," I said.

"Small's good. Everybody comes in wanting one of those." She nodded up at a huge, veiny purple thing on the top shelf, and Oliver glanced up at it and back down so fast I heard his neck click. "Then they get it home and it sits in a drawer and frightens them. Start smaller than you think you need. You can always come back."

She took one down from the second shelf. It was about five inches, smooth and gently curved, in a pale pink, with a flat base so it would stand up.

"That's a nice one to start with. Comfortable. Easy to handle."

I took it and squeezed it. It was soft over firm, like the plug, and heavier than it looked. Oliver was watching my hand.

"What do you think?" I asked him.

"It's…" He cleared his throat. "Fine."

"You keep saying fine."

"It keeps being fine."

Kitty's eyes went from me to him and back again, very slowly. She didn't say a word. She looked as though she was enjoying her evening.

"We'll take it," I said.

"Lovely." Kitty took the tester back from me, put it on its shelf, and opened the cupboard underneath. She came out with a pink box with the same dildo inside it, behind a little plastic window. "Let me take all that off you." She took the box, the two plugs and the lube out of my arms, so my hands were free. "I'll put them on the side for you. Anything else?"

"Just a look at the lingerie."

"Help yourself. The sale's on the rail at the back, if you like a bargain."

I did like a bargain, so we went straight to the back. The sale rail was against the back wall next to the mannequin, and there was a basket underneath it full of things in packets with yellow stickers on. Oliver followed me, because he wasn't going to stand on his own next to a wall of dildos.

I went through the rail. Most of it was cheap and looked it: shiny satin that would show every crease, lace that would scratch, and a red PVC thing I held up just to watch his face. Then, in the basket, I found a flat cellophane packet with a pair of black lace knickers folded up inside it, and another packet under it with a black lace suspender belt, six straps and little metal clips. They were stuck together with one yellow sticker that said £25.

I held them both up.

"No," Oliver said.

"I haven't said anything."

"You're going to."

"I was going to say these are twenty-five pounds."

"For both?"

"For both. That's less than your plug."

"It's not my plug."

"It is now, babe."

I turned the packet with the knickers in it over. The picture on the back was of a woman from behind, and as far as I could tell there wasn't much of the back to them at all.

"Niamh?" I called. "Sorry. Could I have a look at these out of the packet?"

"Go on, then." She came over, took the packet from me, slit the tape with her thumbnail and shook them out. She held them up by the waistband. From the front they looked ordinary enough, a little triangle of black lace. Then she turned them round. The back was two thin straps of lace running down from the waistband, with nothing in between them at all.

"Open-back," Niamh said, and she was already grinning. "Very popular. Everything's covered at the front, and the back's…" She gave a little snort of laughter. "Well. Open for business."

I took them from her and held them up for Oliver, front first, and then I turned them round, slowly.

He looked at the back of them for a long time. "Where's the rest of it?"

"That's the whole point."

"Niamh!" Kitty called from behind the curtain. "Can you give us a hand with this delivery? It's the heavy one."

"Two secs," Niamh called back. "Sorry, I'll be right with you." She went off through the curtain, and we heard a box being dragged across a floor and Kitty swearing at it.

I stepped in close to Oliver, with the knickers hanging off my finger. "Do you know what's good about these?"

"I'm sure you're going to tell me."

"You can keep them on." I lowered my voice. "With a plug in. I wouldn't even have to take them off you."

He looked at the curtain, and then at the counter, where the girl with the nose ring had her headphones in. "Chloe."

"Bent over the end of the bed, in these, with stockings on…"

"We're in a shop."

"We're in a sex shop, love. It's the one place I'm allowed to say it."

"There's a man looking at the handcuffs."

I looked round, and there he was, a man with grey hair and a cycling helmet under his arm, turning a pair of furry handcuffs over in his hands. He hadn't heard a word. I went up on my toes and kissed Oliver just under his ear anyway.

"And the suspender belt holds the stockings up," I said, "so everything stays where it is while I…"

The curtain swept open, and Niamh came out wiping her hands on her jeans. "Sorry about that. Right, where were we? Can I help with anything else?"

"We'll take these," I said, and folded the knickers back into their packet. Then I crouched down by the bargain basket under the rail and started going through it.

"Shout if you need me." She stayed at the end of the rail, putting hangers straight.

Near the bottom I found a packet that made me laugh out loud: a babydoll in cheap red satin and black lace, see-through where it shouldn't be, with cut-outs at the sides and a slit up the front, a matching thong with a tiny bow on it, and a pair of black fishnet stockings thrown in. It was trashy, the kind of thing someone gets given as a joke at a hen party. The sticker said £28, crossed out from £55, and I could see exactly how it would look on him.

"Absolutely not," he said.

"I'm not saying tonight."

"So there is a tonight."

"Why did you think we came today?"

He looked at the packet in my hand. "Not that, though."

"Not that. That's for another night. But it's twenty-eight pounds, and it's the last one, and someone else will have it if we leave it."

"Let them."

I turned the packet over and found the label. One size fits most. That wasn't going to cover it. Niamh was still at the end of the rail, and I caught her eye.

"Sorry. Does this come in a bigger size? A large, maybe? And long stockings?"

Niamh stopped. She looked at the packet. She looked at me: at my hips, at my waist, at all five foot eight of me, and then, very slowly, she looked past me at Oliver. He had found a shelf of massage oils and was reading the ingredients on one with total concentration.

"I'll have a look in the back for you," Niamh said, and her voice was perfectly steady. "I'm fairly sure we've a large. And the long-length fishnets are grand, they'd go up to… well. They go up a good way."

"Lovely," I said.

She went off through the curtain. Oliver put the massage oil back on the shelf with great care and turned round.

"Why does it need to be a large?" he asked, very quietly.

"Because you're not a small, babe."

He looked at the curtain Niamh had gone through. "She looked at me."

"She looked at both of us."

"She looked at me longer."

Niamh came back out with a packet in her hand. It was the same set, in large, with a pair of long fishnets. She handed it to me, smiled, and went off to the counter without looking at Oliver at all.

"Now she won't look at me," he said, under his breath.

"She's being polite."

"That's worse."

We went to the counter. The girl with the nose ring had gone, and Kitty was there instead, with our things laid out in a neat row on the glass: the two plug boxes, the pink box with the dildo in it, and the big white bottle of lube. I put the knickers down next to them, back in their slit-open packet, with the suspender belt, and the babydoll set on top, and she rang it all up without a flicker.

"It's a nice little collection, this," she said, putting things into a bag. "Very sensible. Good starting kit."

"Thank you," Oliver said.

Kitty looked at him. "You're welcome." She pressed a few keys on the till. "Two hundred and eighty-six pounds."

Oliver made a small noise.

"It's the lube," I told him, and tapped my card on the machine. It beeped, and Kitty tore the receipt off and tucked it into the bag. She folded the top over twice. It was a plain brown paper bag, the same as you'd get from a deli, with no name on it anywhere, and she slid it across the counter, not towards me but towards him.

Oliver picked up the bag. He held it the way you'd hold a pie someone had just given you, a little away from his body, with both hands.

"Thank you," he said again, and turned round and walked into the edge of the lube stand. Three small bottles fell off it, bounced, and rolled under the counter.

"Oh, God. Sorry." He was already crouching down with the bag clutched to his chest, reaching under the counter with his other hand. "Sorry. I've got them. I'll…"

"Leave them," Kitty said.

"No, it's fine, I can…" One bottle rolled further away from his fingers. He went after it on one knee.

"Love." Kitty leaned over the counter and looked down at him. "You're not the first man to knock that stand over."

I took him by the elbow and pulled him up. He stood there red to the ears, with the bag in both arms and one bottle of strawberry lube in his hand.

He put it very carefully on the counter. "Sorry."

"Go," Kitty said, laughing now. "Have a lovely evening."

The bell rang over the door again as we went out. Lamb's Row was still warm and gold, and the café across the road had got all its chairs stacked now. Oliver walked about twenty steps down the street before he said anything.

"Did they know?"

"Know what, love?"

"Who it was all for."

I thought about Niamh's face when I asked for the large, and Kitty sliding the bag across the counter to him.

"Babe," I said, "they knew before you'd finished asking about the base ratio."

He stopped walking. He took his sunglasses out of his shirt pocket, unfolded them, and put them back on.

Oliver didn't say anything on the walk back to the car park. He held the bag against his chest with both arms, and when I unlocked the car he got in, put it on his lap, and did his seatbelt up over the top of it.

"You can put it in the footwell," I said.

"It's fine here."

"Nobody's going to steal it."

"I didn't say anyone was going to steal it."

I pulled out past the market hall and onto the main road, and the sun was low enough now that I had to put the visor down. Oliver was looking out of the window with his hand flat on top of the bag.

"What do you want for dinner?" I asked.

"I don't mind."

"I could cook. There's chicken."

"There isn't chicken. You used the chicken on Sunday."

"There's pasta."

"There's half a bag of penne and a jar of pesto that's been open since August."

"Then I'll make penne with pesto."

"That pesto's got a skin on it, Chloe."

"You can scrape the skin off."

"I'm not scraping the skin off a pesto." He turned from the window at last. "Let's just get something."

"Fine. What do you want?"

"I don't mind."

"You said that already. Chinese?"

"We had Chinese on Saturday."

"Pizza, then."

"You always say pizza and then you eat two slices and complain you feel heavy."

"That was one time."

"You lie on the sofa and say, 'I feel so heavy,' every single time."

"Because pizza is heavy, Oliver. It's bread with cheese on it." I stopped at the lights by the station. "What do you want, then?"

He thought about it. "Curry."

"You always want curry."

"Because it's always the right answer."

When the lights changed I pulled away and didn't argue, because he was right. He turned back to the window with a little smile, the first one I'd seen on him since the barber's.

"Jaipur Lounge?" I asked.

"Obviously Jaipur Lounge."

"I'm getting something different this time," I said.

"You say that every time."

"I mean it this time. I'm getting the king prawn thing. The one in coconut."

"And then you'll eat half my lamb," he said.

"I won't eat half your lamb."

"You'll take one bite of the king prawn thing, and say it's nice, and then you'll eat half my lamb."

I indicated and turned into Ravenswood. "You get the same thing every time. Lamb rogan josh, pilau rice, garlic naan. It's like being married to a vending machine."

"It's a good order," Oliver said. "It's a tested order. I'm not going to put two years of research at risk on a Tuesday."

"And two naans."

"One each."

"I never finish mine," I said.

"I finish yours."

"Then just get one."

"Then there isn't enough naan," he said, and he said it as if that was the end of it, so I let it be the end of it.

Jaipur Lounge was on the parade at the bottom of Ravenswood, between the dry cleaner's and the Co-op, with the same red sign it had had for twenty years and a photo of some pink palace in the window, faded by the sun until the pink had gone nearly white. I parked outside.

Oliver looked down at the bag for a moment. Then he put it in the footwell, pushed it under the seat with his foot, and got out.

We went in out of the evening into the smell of cumin and frying onions, and the man behind the counter looked up and smiled when he saw us. He was a big, cheerful man with a pen behind his ear, and he'd been serving us for nearly three years.

"Lamb rogan josh, pilau rice, two garlic naan," he said to Oliver, before Oliver had opened his mouth. Then he turned to me. "And chicken korma for madam?"

"Actually," I said, "I'm going to try something different."

"Very good. What would you like?"

"The king prawn one. In coconut."

"The king prawn malabar. Very good choice." He wrote it down, looked at Oliver, and then back at me. "And extra rice?"

"She'll eat half my lamb," Oliver told him.

"I know," the man said, and wrote it down. "For the lamb."

We sat on the bench by the window to wait. Oliver picked up a menu he knew by heart and read it anyway while I went through my emails on my phone. Dev had sent me a preview of the middle grade, brought back halfway, with no message at all. It was perfect. Every couple of minutes Oliver looked up from the menu and out at the car.

"Nobody's going to steal it," I said again.

"I'm not looking at the car."

"You're looking at the car, love."

"I'm looking at the Co-op."

It was about ten minutes before the food came out in a carrier bag, warm and heavy, with the poppadoms in a separate paper bag on top. Oliver carried it to the car and fished the shop bag back out of the footwell before he got in. He sat with both of them on his lap all the way home.

I pulled onto the drive behind his car. He got out with the curry in one hand and the paper bag in the other, and stood on the step holding both of them while I found my keys. I unlocked the black door and he went in first.

The house was cool and quiet and smelled of nothing at all, which after Kitty's Toy Chest and Jaipur Lounge felt very strange. I kicked my heels off in the hall and dropped my keys in the dish. Oliver stood in the hall holding both bags and looked from the shop one to the stairs. Then he put it down on the third stair, very carefully, square to the edge, like a man setting down something that might go off.

"It won't go off," I said.

"I know it won't go off."

He took the curry through to the kitchen. I got two plates down, then put them back and got two forks out of the drawer instead, and a couple of cans of Coke from the fridge.

"Plates?" he asked.

"No plates. Sofa."

"We'll spill it."

"You'll spill it. I've got the reflexes of a cat."

"You spilled a whole korma on the old sofa. We had to get it cleaned."

"That's why we have a new sofa."

We didn't bother getting changed, so I was still in my work trousers and my silk shirt, and Oliver still had his sleeves rolled up and his sunglasses hooked in his shirt pocket, as if he might need them again at any moment. We sat down at either end of the sofa with the cartons open on the coffee table, and I picked up the remote and went through the channels until I found something that made me stop.

"Oh, it's Bridget Jones," I said.

"We've seen it."

"Everybody's seen it. That's the point."

It was about halfway through, the bit where she's getting ready for her date with Daniel Cleaver and standing in front of the mirror in her bedroom, trying to decide between a little pair of sexy knickers and an enormous pair of beige pants that came up past her belly button.

"Oh, that's lovely," I said, with my mouth full. "Try it."

"I'm fine with mine."

I had another mouthful of the malabar. Then I leaned across and helped myself to a forkful of his lamb.

"There it is," Oliver said, without looking at me.

"I'm just tasting it."

"You're tasting it for the rest of the evening."

On the telly, Bridget went for the big pants. Then, later, Daniel Cleaver found them, and his face when he did was the reason everybody had watched this film forty times. I had to put the carton down before I dropped it.

"You'll want a pair of those," I said, "for the winter."

"I'm not wearing those."

"No. You'll be wearing the ones with no back."

He'd just taken a bite of naan, and it went down the wrong way. He coughed into his fist while I passed him his Coke. He drank half of it, then chewed the rest of the naan for a long time, looking straight ahead at the telly. On the screen Bridget was being chased round her bedroom. Oliver had stopped watching it. He was looking at his fork.

"Babe," I said.

"Mm."

"You're quiet."

"I'm eating."

"You've been quiet since the shop. You've been quiet since you got up this morning, actually, apart from about the coffee machine."

He put his carton down on the coffee table and wiped his fingers on a napkin, one finger at a time.

"Can I ask you something?" I asked.

"You're going to anyway."

"You drove me up Wrenfield Hill on Friday and had me in the back of the car in a lay-by. You got in the hot tub with me in January, when it was freezing." I tucked my feet up under me on the sofa. "You're not a nervous man, Oliver. Why is this one different?"

He was quiet for long enough that Bridget had got to the end of her scene and the adverts had started.

"Because I knew what I was doing," he said.

"With the lay-by?"

"With all of it. I'd planned the lay-by. I'd been up there twice and looked at the view. I knew where the wipes were." He picked a bit of foil off the edge of the carton. "With the hot tub, I knew how to get you into it and how to get you out of it before you got hypothermia. I'm good at those."

"You are very good at those."

"I've got no idea how to be good at this." He didn't look at me. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do, or what it's going to feel like, or what my face is going to do, or whether I'm going to be any good. And you're going to be watching."

I put my carton down next to his, and turned his face towards me with my hand, so he had to look at me.

"You don't have to be good at it," I said.

"I know."

"No, love, you don't know. You've never in your life done anything you weren't sure you'd be good at first. You read for a month before you bought a coffee machine." I shifted along the sofa until my knees were against his leg. "This is the one thing you get to be rubbish at. With me. Nobody's marking it."

"You'll laugh."

"I might laugh. I laugh at you every day. You laugh at me. That's what we do." I took his hand off his knee and held it. "And if it's awful, if you hate it, we stop, and I'll make you a cup of tea, and I'll never mention it again."

"You'll mention it."

"Every time we walk past an Ann Summers."

That got a smile out of him, a small one, but it was there.

"And you'll be the only one there," he said.

"I'll be the only one there. Nobody else gets to see you. Not Niamh, not Kitty, not the man with the cycling helmet." I squeezed his hand. "Just me. And I already know you look gorgeous when you're nervous. You go pink right up to your ears."

"I don't."

"You're doing it now."

He put his free hand up to his ear, which made it worse. Then he turned his hand over in mine and held on.

On the telly, the adverts finished and Bridget came back on. We watched the rest of it with the cartons on our knees, and I ate half his lamb, and he didn't say a word about it.

When the credits came up, he took the cartons into the kitchen, scraped them into the bin and rinsed them out, because he couldn't leave them overnight. I waited in the hall. When he came out, drying his hands on the tea towel, I bent down and picked the paper bag up off the third stair.

"Shower first," I said.

He looked at the bag, and then at me. "Together?"

"Together."

I went up first, and didn't look back to see if he was following. I could hear him on the stairs behind me.

I put the paper bag on the end of the bed, went into the bathroom and turned the shower on. Oliver had designed it, so it was big enough for two, with a glass panel instead of a door. When I turned round, he was standing in the bathroom doorway.

"Come here," I said.

He crossed the bathroom to me, and I started on his shirt buttons at the top, undoing them one at a time without looking at them. I was looking at him instead. When I got to the pocket, I took his sunglasses out and put them on the side of the basin.

"In case you need them," I said.

"Very funny."

I pushed the shirt off his shoulders and let it drop to the floor. He looked down at it lying there, and I watched him decide not to pick it up. Then I unbuckled his belt, unzipped his chinos and pushed them down over his hips so he could step out of them. I hooked my thumbs into the waistband of his boxers and crouched to take those down too. When I stood back up, he was already half hard.

"Well," I said.

"Don't."

"I haven't said anything."

"Your face has."

He stood there naked on the bathmat with his hands hanging at his sides, as if he didn't know what they were for any more. He'd never just stood there before. He'd always been the one doing the undressing.

"Your turn," I said.

He reached for my shirt. His fingers were slower than mine and more careful. He undid the first button, then the second and the third, until he got to where the silk opened over the lace, and there he stopped.

I'd forgotten about it, nearly. I'd had it on all day under my shirt, through Dev, Millie, Tash and Kitty's, and I'd stopped feeling it hours ago. Oliver hadn't forgotten. He opened the shirt the rest of the way and pushed it off my shoulders, and then he just looked.

"You wore these all day," he said, as if I'd done it to him on purpose.

"Mm-hmm."

He ran his finger along the edge of the lace where it met my skin, the same way he'd done it at the coffee machine, from the strap down to the cup and along the seam underneath. He didn't look at my tits. He looked at the bra. He looked at the little gold sliders on the straps and the line where the lace turned into silk, and he touched them one after another as if he was learning them.

"Undo it," I said.

He reached round, found the hooks and undid them first time, one-handed, which he'd always been able to do. But he didn't drop it. He took it off me and held it, the whole weight of it in his hand, which was hardly anything. Then he folded it in half, cup into cup, and put it down on the side next to his sunglasses.

I looked at the folded bra, and then at him. I was standing there with my tits out in front of my husband, and he'd looked at the bra. He glanced up, caught the grin spreading across my face, and swallowed.

"It's a hundred and eighty pounds," he said.

I undid my trousers and let them fall. He went down on one knee on the bathmat in front of me without being asked, took hold of the sides of my knickers and drew them down my legs very slowly. He was looking at the lace the whole way. When they were round my ankles I stepped out of them, and he picked them up and put them on top of the bra.

"Get in the shower," I said.

I pulled him in under the hot water with me, and it flattened his hair against his forehead. I pushed it back off his face and kissed him. He kissed me back with his hands on my waist, and I could feel him hard against my stomach.

I got the shower gel off the shelf, squeezed some into my hands and rubbed them together. I took my time over him, sliding my soapy hands across his chest until I could feel him breathing faster under my palms. Then I worked my way over his shoulders and down his arms to his fingers. When I came back to his chest, I ran my soapy thumbs over his nipples. He made a soft little "oh" at the back of his throat, and his nipples stiffened under my thumbs. So I did it again, slower, then pinched them gently. He gasped and got even harder against my stomach.

"You like that."

"I didn't know I liked that."

"There's a lot you don't know yet, love."

I let the water rinse the soap off his chest. Then I bent my head, took his nipple into my mouth and flicked it with my tongue. He made that noise again, louder this time, and his hand came up into my wet hair and held on. I moved across to the other one and licked it slowly, looking up at him while I did it, and hummed against him.

"Mmm," I said, and I could feel myself grinning.

I went down over his stomach, lower, and took his cock in both of my soapy hands. He was completely hard now. I wrapped both hands round him and stroked him from the base to the tip, with the soap making it slippery and easy, twisting a little at the head the way I knew drove him mad, and he groaned through his teeth. He put one hand flat on the tiles behind me to hold himself up.

"Do you know what I'm going to do to you tonight?" I asked, into his ear. I wasn't waiting for an answer.

"Chloe…"

"I'm going to put you in those little lace knickers, the ones that leave your arse bare for me. And then I'm going to put you over my knee and take my time with you." I squeezed him, just under the head. "And you're going to let me."

"Fuck," he said, very quietly.

His other hand came off my waist and went between my legs. I was wet before he touched me, and not from the shower, and he knew it the second his fingers found me. He knew me. He slid two fingers between my lips and up over my clit and round it, slow, the way he'd learned over nearly three years of practice, and my knees nearly gave way.

"Oh, you bastard," I said.

"You started it."

"I'm in charge."

"Then tell me to stop," he said, and pushed two fingers inside me.

Stop was the last thing I wanted. I leaned back against the wet tiles with my hand still wrapped round his cock and spread my legs wider for him. He fucked me with his fingers, deep and slow, while his thumb rubbed tight little circles on my clit and the water poured down between us. I tried to keep stroking him. I couldn't. I could barely hold on to him.

"Don't stop," I said. "Don't you dare stop."

He bent his head and sucked my nipple into his mouth, and I came hard on his fingers with my back arched off the tiles.

"OLIVER! Oh God, oh God… OLIVER!"

Half of Pelham Grove must have heard it, and I didn't care one bit.

He held me up till my legs were mine again. Then he took his fingers out of me and looked very pleased with himself.

"Don't look at me like that," I said.

"Like what?"

"Like you've won something."

"I have won something."

"Have you?" I wrapped my hand round his cock again, and he stopped looking pleased and started breathing hard instead. I stroked him faster this time, with my other hand cupping his balls, while he leaned into me with his forehead on my shoulder and his hand braced on the wall. I could feel him getting close. His hips started to move.

"Oh, fuck," he said, low and ragged, into my shoulder. "Fuck. Chloe, I'm…"

I let go of him right on the edge, and his cock twitched in the empty air between us.

"No," he said. "No, no, no. Chloe, please."

"Not yet."

"You can't…"

"I can. Remember?" I kissed him, softly, on the side of his mouth. "Turn round."

He stood there, breathing hard, with the water running down his face.

"Turn round, babe. Hands on the wall."

He turned round and put both hands flat on the wall, high up, as if he was being searched. I nearly laughed, but I didn't. His back was long and wet, with the water streaming down it. I soaped my hands again and washed him from his shoulders all the way down his spine, to the dip at the bottom of it. Then I put both hands on his arse and held it. He went still.

"Is this okay?" I asked.

"Yes."

I washed his arse, both cheeks, round and round with my soapy hands, and I felt him start to relax under them, a little at a time. Then I slid my hand down between his cheeks.

He took a sharp breath through his teeth. My fingers were slippery with soap and slid down easily, until the tip of my middle finger found his hole and stopped there.

I didn't push. I just rested it there, wet and slippery, against him, and felt him clench under it, and then, very slowly, unclench.

"Okay?" I asked.

"Fuck." His voice was hoarse. "Yes. Don't stop."

I moved my finger in a small, slow circle, with the soap making it slide, and he pushed his forehead against the tiles between his hands. His whole body was shaking. I felt him push back against my finger, just a fraction, before he caught himself and held still.

I reached round him with my other hand and found his cock. He was rock hard in my hand. I stroked him once, from the base right up to the tip, with my fingertip still resting on his hole.

"Oh, fucking hell," he said. "Chloe."

"Is that all it takes?" I asked, close against his back. "One finger?"

I stroked him again, even more slowly this time, and circled his hole with my fingertip as I did it.

"Ah… ah, God…"

"Is this what you were thinking about all day? Sitting in your studio, reading about plugs?"

"Yes. Fuck, yes."

"Tell me what you want."

"Please."

"Please what?"

He shook his head against the tiles. "I don't know. I don't know. Please."

I kept stroking him, so slowly it must have been agony, pressing with my finger just enough for him to feel it and not an inch more. When his hips started to move between my two hands, I took them both away.

He stayed where he was, with his forehead on the tiles. I stepped up close behind him, put my arms round his waist and kissed him between the shoulder blades.

"That's all for now," I said.

"For now," he said, into the wall.

"Turn round. Your turn to watch."

He turned and leaned his back against the wall, his cock still hard and aching for me. I squeezed more gel into my palm and cupped my tits, lifting them up for him, heavy and slippery with soap. I let them slide through my fingers and caught them again. Then I rolled my nipples between my fingers and thumbs, gently at first, then harder, until I gasped and my head tipped back under the water.

"Chloe…"

"You like watching me do that?"

"You know I do."

I pinched them again, harder, and moaned for him, and one of his hands started to move.

"Hands by your sides," I said.

He dropped his hand back to his side. I slid mine down over my stomach and between my legs. I was still swollen from his fingers, so sensitive that the first touch made me catch my breath, and I started slowly, two fingers circling my clit while he watched.

"Do you know how wet you made me?" I asked. "With your fingers?"

"Chloe."

"I'm still wet, babe. Do you want to feel how wet I am?"

He nodded, hard.

I stepped half out of the water so it wouldn't rinse me away, slid two fingers deep inside myself and drew them out slowly. Then I put them in my mouth and sucked them clean, watching his face the whole time.

"Mmm. Oh, but you can't," I said. "You've got to keep your hands by your sides."

He made a sound in his throat as if I'd hurt him. His fists were clenched so hard his knuckles had gone white, and his cock was straining up towards me, with nothing touching it at all.

I put my hand back between my legs and slid my fingers back inside myself, rocking my hips against my hand while the water ran down my tits and my stomach. I let my head fall back against the glass behind me. I moaned, loud, and kept moaning.

"Please," he said. "Chloe, please let me touch you. Please."

"No. Watch."

He watched. I fucked myself with my fingers, faster now, with my other hand squeezing my tit. Every time I opened my eyes, his were fixed on my hand. He looked like I'd taken everything he had and was holding it just out of his reach.

I could feel myself about to cum, and I let it happen. "Oh God, I'm going to…"

I came with my fingers deep inside me and my eyes locked on his, shaking against the glass, and he groaned out loud as if it was him cumming instead of me.

When I could stand up straight again, I rinsed off, and reached round him to turn the water off. In the quiet I could hear him breathing, and the last of the water running into the drain. I got the big towel off the rail and wrapped it round his shoulders, then dried him myself: his chest, his arms, down his stomach, and carefully round his cock, which was still standing to attention and furious about it. I knelt to do his legs one at a time, his long, hairy legs, all the way down to his feet, while he held on to the edge of the basin and let me.

When I stood up, I wrapped myself in the other towel and tucked it in under my arm.

"Stay here," I said.

"For how long?"

"Until I call you."

"What are you going to do?"

I picked my bra up off the side, folded the way he'd folded it, and looked at it, and put it back down.

"Get things ready," I said, and went out, pulling the door almost shut behind me.

I switched on the lamp on my side of the bed, tipped the paper bag out onto the duvet and sorted it into one pile at the foot of the bed. The knickers and the suspender belt went on top, side by side. The lube and the pink box with the dildo in it went right next to them, then the plum plug in its box and the babydoll set in its packet.

Oliver was leaning in the bathroom doorway in his towel, watching me do it.

"I said stay in there," I said.

"I'm in there. This is the doorway."

I opened the black box with the little plug in it and read the leaflet. Wash before first use. I should have known.

I went past him into the bathroom, and he turned to watch me. I ran the hot tap, pumped hand soap into my palm and washed the plug carefully, working the lather over the whole length of it and round the little flared base. In the mirror I could see him watching me. Neither of us said a word. I rinsed it, dried it on the hand towel and held it up between us, clean and black and shining.

"There," I said. "All clean."

He swallowed.

"Are you ready?" I asked.

He looked at the plug for a long moment. "No."

"Good," I said, and went back out.

I put my green robe on, the same one I'd been fighting the coffee machine in that morning. I tied it loosely and sat on the end of the bed with the plug beside me.

"Come here, then," I said.

He came out of the doorway with the towel round his waist, and stopped at the end of the bed, looking down at the black lace laid out on the duvet.

"Towel off."

He undid it and let it drop. He was semi-hard, and as I watched, looking at the knickers made him harder.

I picked them up and held them open in front of him at knee height. "Step in."

"Chloe…"

"Left foot."

He put a hand on my shoulder for balance and stepped in, left foot, then right. I drew them up his legs slowly, over his knees and up the backs of his thighs, and settled the waistband on his hips. Then I sat back and looked.

The little triangle of lace at the front had no chance. His cock pushed it out in front of him, with the head peeking out over the waistband, pink against the black.

"They don't fit," he said.

"They fit where it matters." I turned him round with my hands on his hips. The back was just the two thin straps of lace, framing his bare arse. I ran my thumbs down them from his waist to the tops of his thighs, and he shivered. "Oh, that's perfect."

The suspender belt was harder. It went round his waist, under the waistband of the knickers, and I had to stand up to fasten the hooks at the back while he held his arms out to the sides, as if I was fitting him for a suit. Six little straps hung down his thighs with their clips swinging.

"Now what?" he asked.

"Now stockings. Sit."

He sat on the end of the bed. I went into the dressing room and came back with an older pair of my black stockings, knelt on the rug in front of him and gathered one up between my thumbs.

"These are mine," I said. "Your own come later. In your size, with a seam up the back."

"You said that on Friday."

"I meant it on Friday."

I slid the stocking over his toes and eased it up over his foot and his heel, then rolled it up his calf. The nylon pressed the hair on his shin flat underneath it. It should have looked ridiculous, but it was the sexiest thing I'd ever seen. I kept rolling, past his knee and up his thigh, until the stocking ran out about a hand's width short of the clips waiting for it.

We both looked at it.

"Your legs are too long," I said.

"I told you I'd look like a rugby club fundraiser."

"You don't." I took hold of the welt with both hands and pulled, slowly, until the nylon thinned to grey over his thigh and I was sure it would ladder. Then I held it there with one hand while I stretched the front strap of the suspender belt down to meet it with the other. The clip wouldn't reach. I pulled harder. Oliver sucked in his stomach as if that would help.

"That's not going to help."

"It might."

It didn't, but I got the little rubber button under the nylon on the third try and snapped the clip shut over it, and it held. I let go very carefully. "There."

"The back ones won't reach."

"Then the back ones can hang."

I did the other leg the same way, swearing at it under my breath, until both front clips were done. Then I sat back and looked at my work.

I glanced at my heels lined up by the dressing room door. "I'd have you in a pair of those as well, but you're a ten and I'm a five. Shoes can wait until we've got some in your size." I stood up and held out my hand. "Come and see."

The long mirror was on the inside of the dressing room door. I opened it, stood him in front of it and stood behind him with my chin on his shoulder.

He didn't laugh. I'd thought he might, to get it over with, but he didn't. He looked at his feet first. Then his eyes went slowly up the black stockings to the bare skin above them, and over the little clips to the lace triangle with his cock sticking out of the top of it. Last of all, he looked at his own face.

"I look…" he started.

"Say it."

"I don't know what I look like."

"You look fucking gorgeous," I said. "I told you this morning I'd like it. I was wrong. I love it."

He turned and looked over his shoulder at the back of himself in the mirror: the open back of the knickers, his bare arse framed by two thin straps of black lace, and the loose back suspenders hanging down against it. Then he turned back to the front, and his cock twitched against the lace. We both saw it.

"Oh," he said, very quietly.

"Yeah," I said. "Oh."

I picked up the lube and the plug from the end of the bed and climbed up to sit against the headboard, with my legs out straight in front of me and my robe falling open. Then I patted my lap.

He looked at my lap, and then at me.

"Over my knee," I said. "I promised you that too."

"Chloe…"

"Over my knee."

He climbed onto the bed and lay down across my thighs. His chest and arms were on the duvet on one side of me, and his knees on the other, and his arse was right there in my lap, bare between the two straps of lace.

I put both hands on it.

"Oh, I've wanted this all day," I said. I took a handful of each cheek and squeezed, hard, then pulled them apart a little and let them go. "Since breakfast. Since you told me a plug was fine."

"I said it was the lesser of two evils," he said into the duvet.

"You're wearing both evils now, love."

I kneaded him, digging my fingers in, until I felt him start to push up into my hands without meaning to. Then I lifted my right hand and brought it down on his arse with a smack that rang round the bedroom.

"Ow! Chloe!"

"Too hard?"

He didn't answer. A red handprint was coming up on his cheek, and I could feel his cock pressing into my thigh through the lace.

"No," he said, finally.

I smacked the other cheek. This time he didn't shout. He made a low noise into the duvet and pushed his hips down into my lap.

"Oh, you like that," I said. "You absolute dark horse. Three years, and you never told me you liked being spanked."

"Mmph."

"I'll take that as a yes." I smoothed my palm over the pink marks, round and round, until he let out a long breath under me. "Right. Let's see what we've got to work with here."

I took a cheek in each hand and spread him open.

He went tense all over. I held him there anyway and looked, taking my time, letting him feel me looking. His hole was pink and tight, and it clenched as I watched, then slowly relaxed.

"Would you look at that," I said softly. "Isn't that pretty."

"Chloe, don't…"

"Don't what? Don't look at it? I've been looking at it in my head all day." I leaned over him and let a long string of spit slide off my tongue, down onto his hole. He jumped.

"Did you just…"

"I did." I rubbed it in with my thumb, slow circles over his hole, warm and wet, and he stopped talking. "You've had my spit in your mouth for three years. You can have it there for one night."

He groaned into the duvet. I kept circling him with my thumb, pressing a little and easing off, never pushing in. By the time I stopped, his lower back was shaking and his hips were twitching against my thighs.

"Please," he said.

"Please what?"

"I don't know. Just… please."

I squeezed the lube straight out of the bottle onto him. He gasped at the cold, and I laughed.

"Sorry. Should have warmed it."

"You're not sorry."

"I'm not, no." I poured more into my palm and slicked my fingers with it until they shone. Then I put the pad of my middle finger against him, right where I'd had it in the shower.

"Let yourself go loose for me," I said. "Don't fight it."

His back rose and fell. I pushed, very slowly, and the tip of my finger slid into him.

"Oh, fuck," he said. "Oh, fuck."

"Okay?"

"It's… yeah. It's strange. It's okay. Don't stop."

I went in a little at a time, easing back out and sliding in a little deeper, until my middle finger was all the way inside him. He was so tight round it I could feel his heartbeat.

"That's one finger," I said. "That's all one finger is. And you're squeezing it like you never want to let it go."

"I don't," he said. "I don't want you to… oh, God."

I moved my finger slowly in and out, then curled it towards his stomach until I found his prostate, a firm little swell just inside him. I pressed it gently.

He came up off my lap on his elbows. "SHIT! Fuck… Chloe!"

"There it is," I said.

"What was that? What the fuck was that?"

"That," I said, and pressed it again, and watched him shake, "is why the prostate massagers have a whole shelf."

I fucked him slowly with my middle finger, pressing that spot every few strokes, while he panted into the duvet.

"Chloe," he said. "Chloe, Chloe, God, I'm leaking all over you."

"I know. I can feel it. My whole lap's wet." I eased my finger out, poured on more lube and pressed two fingers against him. "Two now. Nice and easy."

It took longer. I went very slowly, stopping every time he tensed and stroking the small of his back with my other hand while I waited for him.

"That's it," I told him. "You're doing so well. Open up for me. A bit more. God, you look pretty like this, in my stockings, with my fingers in you."

"Don't say pretty."

"Pretty," I said, and pushed a little deeper, and he moaned. "Very pretty."

Bit by bit he opened for me, until both fingers were in to the knuckle and he was pushing back onto them by himself.

"You're pushing back onto my fingers," I said. "Do you feel what you're doing?"

He moaned into the duvet and pushed back harder, and I laughed low in my throat.

"Greedy."

"Do you want the plug?"

He went quiet. Then he said, "Yes."

"I want to hear you ask for it."

"I want the plug," he said into the duvet. "Please. Put it in me."

"Put it in where?"

He made a strangled sound. "Chloe."

"Where, babe?"

"Up my arse," he said. "Please. Put it up my arse."

I slid my fingers out of him slowly, and he made a small, lost noise at the emptiness. I covered the plug in lube until it dripped, then set the tip of it against his hole.

"Push back against it," I said. "The same as you were doing for my fingers."

He pushed back as I pressed, and the plug went in a little way before the widest part started to stretch him. He stiffened.

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

"Nearly there. Stay loose for me. You're nearly there."

He let out a long, shaky breath and pushed back again, and I felt him give. The widest part slipped past, and the rest of it slid in on its own, all at once, until the base settled snug between his cheeks.

"Oh," he said, and a shaky laugh came out of him. "Oh, fuck."

"It's in."

"I know it's in." His voice was shaking. "Oh, God. I can feel it everywhere."

I tapped the flat black base with one fingertip. Just a tap.

"Fuck!"

"Sorry," I said, smiling, and tapped it again.

"You're not sorry! Stop it! Chloe, you're… oh, fuck, don't do that, oh, God, do that again."

I did it again, and he buried his face in the duvet.

"Fuck… you're evil, Chloe. You're actually evil."

I slid my hand under him, between his stomach and my thigh, and found his cock through the lace, soaked and rock hard. I pulled the front of the knickers down under his balls and wrapped my hand round him.

"Now," I said. "Let's see how long you last with that in."

I stroked him slowly. Every time he moved, the plug pressed inside him, and every time it did, he jerked against my hand.

"Chloe. Chloe, wait. Oh, God, that's… I'm not going to…"

"Already?"

"It's the plug. It's… oh, fuck, Chloe, I'm close, I'm so close…"

He was swelling in my hand. I stopped dead and squeezed him at the base.

"No, no, no…"

"Not yet."

"Please, I can't…"

"You can," I said. "You're going to cum inside me." I let go of him. "On your back."

He rolled off my lap very carefully and lay down on his back next to me. As his weight came down on the plug, his eyes went wide.

"Oh," he said. "Oh, that's… oh."

"Pressing on it, is it?"

"Everything's pressing on it."

I got up onto my knees, untied my robe and let it slide off my shoulders. He lay there with his head on my pillow and his cock hard and wet, and he looked at me as if he couldn't believe his luck.

I swung a leg over and straddled him. I took hold of his cock and rubbed the head of it through how wet I was, up and down, and his hands came up and gripped my hips.

Then I sank down onto him.

I took him in one slow slide, all the way down, until I was sitting on him and my weight pressed him down into the mattress and onto the plug. He arched up off the bed and cried out, and I felt him throb inside me.

"Don't you dare," I said.

"I'm not. I'm not. Oh, God, don't move."

I moved anyway, riding him slowly and grinding down on him at the bottom of every stroke. Every grind pushed him back onto the plug. His face changed every single time. His fingers dug into my hips hard enough to hurt, and I didn't care. I leaned forward with my hands on his chest and rode him faster, until my tits were swinging over his face and he lifted his head to catch one in his mouth.

"That's it," I said. "Fuck me back."

He pushed his hips up off the bed to meet me. Every time he came back down the plug pressed him, and he swore, louder each time.

"Fuck… fuck, Chloe… oh, fuck, fuck…"

"Harder," I said. "Harder, Oliver. Fuck me."

I could feel myself getting there, the heat building low down and tightening. I could feel him getting there too, his cock swelling inside me and his breath coming short and sharp.

"Chloe, I'm going to…"

I lifted off him.

His cock slid out of me and slapped wet against his stomach.

"NO! No, no, no, please! Please, Chloe. Please, I'll do anything, please let me…"

"Anything?"

"Anything. The babydoll. Anything. Please. Please."

I smiled down at him and held myself there for three more seconds, just to watch his face. Then I sank back down onto him, all the way, in one go.

He came almost at once. I felt the hot pulse of him deep inside me, and his whole body bucked up off the bed onto the plug and up again.

"CHLOE! Oh, fuck, CHLOE!"

Hearing him shout my name like that, I came too. I ground down on him through it, my nails in his chest, and he was still pulsing inside me.

"Oh God, Oliver, oh God, oh… fuck, fuck, OLIVER!"

I collapsed forward onto him. For a long time neither of us moved. His heart was going like a hammer under my cheek, and so was mine.

"Bloody hell," he said eventually, to the ceiling.

"Mm."

"Bloody hell, Chloe."

"I know, babe."

I lifted myself off him gently and lay down beside him. After a minute I reached down and stroked the bare top of his thigh, just above the stocking.

"I'm going to take it out now," I said. "Okay?"

He nodded.

"On your side for me. Facing away."

He rolled onto his side. I knelt up behind him and put one hand on his hip, and with the other I took hold of the flat base of the plug.

"Nice and loose now," I said. "Don't clench on me."

He let his whole body go soft against the mattress. I drew the plug out of him very slowly, and when the widest part came through he made a long, low sound into the pillow. Then it was out all at once, and he shivered from head to foot.

"Okay?" I asked.

"Empty," he said. "It feels empty."

"That's normal, love. It goes in a minute."

I wrapped the plug in a tissue and put it on the bedside table. Then I wiped him gently with another one and dropped it in the bin, switched the lamp off, and lay down behind him with the duvet pulled up over both of us.

I fitted myself round him, my front to his back and my knees tucked in behind his. Then I slid my hand down over his hip, through the open back of the knickers, and left it on his bare arse.

"Chloe," he said, after a while, half asleep.

"Mm?"

"This morning. You said the knickers were the problem."

"I said that's what you thought."

He was quiet so long I thought he'd gone to sleep.

"They're not," he said.

His breathing slowed and deepened under my hand, and a minute later he let out a tiny snore. I lay there in the dark with my hand on my husband's arse. Down on the rug at the foot of the bed, where it must have been knocked off at some point, I could just make out the babydoll in its packet.

 

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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