CHAPTER 26

 

Cate was just buttoning up the front of her dress when there was a loud bang at the back of the car and it veered wildly to the right. “What was that?”

She gripped Kian’s broad shoulders to steady herself.

“I don’t know,” Kian twisted around so that he could see out of the back window.

The car quickly jerked back to the left. The tyres squealed, burning the tarmac, as the driver frantically struggled to get the car back under control.

Cate’s handbag which had been on one of the side-facing seats was on the floor and her cell-phone had fallen out. When she looked down at the screen, she realised with horror that it was trying to ring their house phone in Seattle. It was really late, the children would already be in bed and she didn’t want to wake them up so without even thinking, she let go of Kian and reached down to pick it up. The car suddenly jerked again and she was thrown off Kian’s lap and slammed against the side door.

“Cate?” Panicking, Kian made to undo his seatbelt.

“I’m OK,” Cate assured him. “Stay there.”

The car stopped and at first it was hard to adjust to how quiet and still it was.

“Hello?” Nate said.

Cate almost didn’t want to let go of her death grip of the seatbelt and door handle in case the car started moving again.

The driver pulled open the door on the opposite side, “thank goodness you’re both OK. One of the tyres blew.”

Kian picked Cate’s phone up off the floor. He tried to sound calm; there was no point in panicking Nate. “Sorry about that, mate. I must have dialled home by mistake. I had Cate’s phone in my pocket.”

After he’d convinced Nate that he and Cate were already at the airport and the noises he’d heard were just some teenagers playing video games nearby, Kian turned his attention back to Cate. “Are you hurt, angel?”

He knelt down in front of his wife; she’d bitten her lip so hard that it was bleeding a little. “Let’s get out of here.” She was gripping the seatbelt and door handle so tightly that her knuckles had turned white.

Kian lifted Cate gently out of the car. The driver came over to them. “I’ve called for a replacement car but there’s a burst water main on Heritage and the traffic is backed up.” He must have seen the blood on Cate’s lip, “are you OK, ma’am?” He looked anxiously at Kian, “should I call an ambulance?”

Cate shook her head, “I’m OK, thank you.”

Kian held her tighter against his chest, “I think it’s just shock.” He craned his neck, “is there anywhere nearby where we can get a drink?”

“There’s a bar on the next block.”

The driver said that he’d text them when the replacement car arrived. “I can walk,” Cate insisted.

“You’re still bleeding, angel,” Kian reluctantly put her down on the ground. He brushed his thumb gently over her swollen bottom lip but it continued to bleed.

He fumbled in his pockets and found her discarded panties. “I know it’s not ideal?”

Cate rolled her eyes, “I’ll do it.” She pressed the silk against her throbbing lip.

“I still think you should get checked out at the hospital.”

Cate shook her head, “the last time I went to a hospital here in L.A. I was having a miscarriage. I’d rather wait until we get back home to Seattle.”

Kian checked his watch, “there’s no way we’re going to make that last flight, angel. I’ll book us in at a hotel at the airport and we’ll get the first flight home tomorrow morning.”

Cate was disappointed that she wouldn’t be there when the children first woke up. “I think my lip might have stopped bleeding. How does it look?” She looked at her crumpled, blood-stained panties. “I’m guessing you don’t still want to keep them?”

Kian wrapped an arm around her waist and led her towards the bright lights of the bar. He took the panties and stuffed them in his pocket. “Let’s get a drink.”

The bar was packed but Cate spied two empty stools at the far end. As she hopped up on to one of the stools, it felt really strange not to be wearing any underwear. She was convinced that the other patrons could tell what she and Kian had been doing before the tyre blew out.

“Drink this,” Kian put a tumbler of amber liquid down in front of her.

“What is it?”

“Brandy,” Kian said. “It’s good for shock.”

Cate took a large gulp. “Ew!” As the foul-tasting liquid burned down the back of her throat, she started coughing. She’d never had brandy before. “That’s gross.”

Trying to be sympathetic, Kian rubbed her back but he couldn’t stop laughing at her flushed cheeks and watery eyes – it was like he’d asked her to drink battery acid.

As she sat back down on the stool, she realised how nice it was not to feel the butt plug, hard and foreign inside her bottom. The butt plug… Cate remembered Kian yanking it out but she’d spiralled into such a dizzy climax that she couldn’t remember what he’d done with it afterwards. She dumped her handbag on the bar and rummaged through it, praying that it was in there.

“What have you lost?” Kian asked, taking another swig from his bottle of beer.

It wasn’t there. “We’ve got to get back to the car.” Cate was beyond mortified. They had to find the butt plug before the poor driver did. She didn’t even want to think about a stranger touching something that had been so intimately inside her just an hour ago.

“What’s wrong?”

“We need to get the…” Cate looked over her shoulder. The bar was so crowded, if she said “butt plug” she could almost guarantee that she’d be overheard. “The thing.”

“What thing?”

Cate wanted to slap him. “You know… the thing.”

“You’re going to have to be more specific, angel.”

Cate narrowed her eyes at him, “fine. We need to get the present you gave me this morning.”

Kian threw his head back and laughed. He reached into his pocket, “you mean this?” The purple jewel peeked between his fingers.

“Put that away,” Cate yelped, quickly covering his hand with hers, “what if somebody saw it?”

“You’re so cute,” Kian chuckled. His wife was so proper sometimes.

After she’d forced down – at Kian’s insistence – the rest of the disgusting brandy, the replacement car still hadn’t arrived. Kian was still finishing his bottle of beer so Cate went to the restroom. As she was walking back to the bar, she heard whistles and loud cheers coming from the other side. Her curiosity piqued, Cate manoeuvred through the crowds. When she got near the front, she realised that they were all watching as a man with bleached blonde hair and bulging biceps cockily straddled a mechanical bull.

The klaxon sounded and the bull began to jerk and spin. “Oh God, I’m going to puke.” It only took a couple of seconds before the tank of a man was tossed up in the air and landed heavily on the thick red crash mats below.

“That’s Pedro,” the man with the klaxon yelled. “He doesn’t suffer fools.”

“Who’s next to take him on?” There were no volunteers. Cate could feel the butterflies in her stomach; she had always, always wanted to have a go on a mechanical bull. She looked at the crowds of people surrounding the bull and almost backed out. She’d read somewhere that Beyoncé had an alter-ego when she went on stage, Sasha Fierce. Cate needed to give her own alter-ego an equally powerful name. Today she’d worn a butt plug, danced a sexy-ass Rumba on national TV and got her very first ten, had a mind-blowing orgasm in the back of a town car, drank brandy for the first time and she’d nearly been in a car accident. Why the heck not add ride a mechanical bull to that list?

“I’ll do it,” Cate said quickly before she could change her mind.

Klaxon Man raised an eyebrow, “a little thing like you wants to take on the mighty Pedro?”

Cate felt giddy, “why not?”

“Alrighty then,” Klaxon Man said. “Let’s give the lil’ lady some encouragement, shall we?”

“Ride the Bull,” the crowd started shouting.

Klaxon Man leaned close to Cate, “if you can stay on for more than thirty seconds, I’ll give you a hundred bucks.” The expression on his face said that he thought his money was perfectly safe. “You’re the first lil’ lady brave enough to take on my bull tonight. It’s more than time to shake things up a little.” As she picked her way across the squashy crash mats, he cheekily swatted her behind. “I won’t go any easier on you though.”

When Cate didn’t come back straight away, Kian retraced her steps to the restrooms. “Ride the Bull.” Something told him to follow the shouts.

“What’s your name, sweet thing?”

“Sarah,” Cate laughed, thinking about what Liv would say if she could see her now knickerless and straddling this huge mechanical bull. Not so Serious Sarah.

“Excuse me,” Kian pushed his way to the front. She might have said her name was Sarah but he knew his wife’s voice.

Fuck! Cate was sat with the mechanical bull wedged between her slender thighs. Her red dress had ridden up a little, giving the other patrons a tantalising glimpse of her soft skin.

As the bull began to move, Cate moved with it - the rocking of her hips reminded him of how she’d ridden his fingers earlier that evening.

It jerked harder and spun faster until she was just a blur of red. She was so fucking alive. Her laughter, so genuine and free, captivated everybody watching.

With one hand raised in the air, her breasts bounced, straining against the front of her dress. Kian licked his lips; he could still taste her nipples against his tongue.

“What I wouldn’t give to be between those thighs” The jerk next to Kian said to his friend.

Kian clenched his fist inside his pocket, feeling the hard jewel of the butt plug. He nudged the jerk, “that’s my wife.”

Before the jerk could reply, Kian gave him a smug grin, “and it’s every bit as good as it looks.”

She was thrown from the bull and landed on the red crash mats. As Klaxon Man leaned over, Cate brushed her hair out of her eyes, “how long?”

He chuckled, “one minute twenty.”

“Yes!” Cate raised her fist in the air. “You can keep the hundred bucks.”

Kian didn’t like seeing Klaxon Man so close to his wife. He climbed into the pit and picked her up, careful to smooth her skirt over her legs. She might have forgotten that she wasn’t wearing any underwear but he certainly fucking hadn’t.

“Do you know this guy, Sarah?” Klaxon Man frowned at Kian.

“You could say that,” Cate giggled. “He’s my husband.”

Kian carried her out of the crowded bar. “You can put me down,” Cate insisted when they were on the quiet sidewalk.

“If I put you down,” Kian gritted his teeth, “there’s a good chance I’ll be arrested for public indecency.”

Cate laughed, “you really got turned on watching me ride a mechanical bull?”

Her naiveté still surprised him. “Every single man in that room got turned on watching you ride that bull, angel.”

Cate shook her head, “you’re very sweet.”

Kian kissed just below her ear, “right now, I’m anything but sweet. I’m this close to fucking you hard against the nearest flat surface.”

The driver came up to them, “oh good you’re here. I’ve been trying to call you. The replacement car has arrived.” He looked at Cate, who was still cradled in Kian’s arms. “Oh dear, are you still feeling poorly, Mrs Warner?”

“She’s OK,” Kian grimaced, trying to ignore his painfully hard cock. “She’s just ridden that goddamn mechanical bull.”

The driver’s eyes widened, “Pedro?” He looked at Cate, “you rode Pedro?”

“Um, yes?”

“He’s a legend around here,” the driver explained, “only one person has ever stayed on him longer than a minute and he was an ex-Rodeo champion.”

Cate leaned closer to Kian so only he could hear her, “I must have really strong thighs then.”

“Temptress,” Kian grunted, the very last thing he needed to think about right now, when they were so far from the privacy of a hotel room was Cate’s oh-so-sexy thighs because of course, that just made him think about what was between them; her hot, damp pussy without the barrier of her panties.