Grace

 

We put a face on it, welcoming our new guests with our usual wide smiles and friendly handshakes. We showed them to their rooms, gushed about the beautiful beach and told them all about breakfast times, acting like life was all peachy here in our little slice of heaven.

I almost believed it myself.

We spent that afternoon in the lounge, just as Brett promised, holding each other tight through the unspoken tension while my favourite sitcoms blared on screen.

We served our fresh handful of guests in the bar that evening and asked all our usual friendly questions about their lives and loves. We talked about tennis, countryside living and the state of the economy, only this time financial topics didn’t fill me with the same dread as they had just a week ago.

We shared a few bottles of house white with a particularly nice couple who enjoyed a healthy friendship with alcohol, and finally, at the end of the night, we wiped down the sides and switched off the lights, filing on through to the quiet of our own private space.

And there I lay, in my baggiest PJs, staring up the ceiling in bed while Brett finished in the bathroom, trying not to think about the man who’d flipped all my switches and left me a mess in his wake.

My pussy was still sore, and my ass still felt fresh from a battering, my belly tumbling at the horror of all the dirty things I’d done. But still my clit pulsed and tingled at the thought of being stretched open wide by the man who’d known my everything, despite being a total stranger.

I rolled into Brett as he slipped between the covers, hooking a leg over his and resting my cheek on his shoulder. His arms were welcoming, but his dick was not.

“You must be sore,” he told me, kissing my head as though his lack of desire was all with me in mind.

“It’s going to be like this, is it?” I asked him.

“Like what?” he grunted, still holding me tight.

“Like I’m soiled goods now I’ve been used by a man for money.”

My words were overly harsh and I knew it, but I couldn’t take them back. Didn’t want to take them back.

His eyes were fierce enough to burn in the darkness as he turned towards me. “You aren’t soiled fucking goods,” he said. “You aren’t soiled anything. You’re just sore and I’m just tired, and this is night fucking one after that cunt’s departure. Give it a fucking minute, Grace.”

It wasn’t enough. Not for me. Not now.

My hands were persistent as they snaked down to his boxers and slipped inside. His breath was a hiss as my fingers gripped and tugged, coaxing him to put this filthy mess behind us and make it right again.

“Fuck, Grace,” he said, and thrust into my grip. I was on autopilot as I pulled the covers back and peppered his body with kisses, trailing down his belly as I freed his cock and positioned him ripe for my mouth.

I knew this game. Knew how to suck, lick and tease. Knew how to slide my fingers down his thighs and bring his skin to horny goosebumps as he fought the urge to buck into my mouth and leave me retching.

But no. Not tonight.

His fingers were rough as he took my hair and made me suck him deep, thrusting up from the mattress and into my throat in a blatant imitation of the other man’s violent moves.

It was brutal. Desperate. Filled with fake fire as he groaned and snarled and aimed for maximum impact.

But it wasn’t the force which had my excitement flatlining. It wasn’t even the drastic change from all our years of learned compatibility.

This wasn’t him. Wasn’t us. Wasn’t love in the way I’d known it from him my entire adult life.

I took it gladly regardless, with a thumping heart and churning gut, hoping this was just a stupid blip and we’d be right as rain in the blink of an eye. But even as I took it all, staring up at him with warm eyes as he jammed in hard, I knew he was thinking of him. Of Thomas Heath. Of me with spit streaming down my face as I thrashed and spluttered and begged for more.

I’d have given the same to Brett if I knew how. I’d have given the same to Brett if he’d seized it from me the way Heath had.

But he didn’t.

Couldn’t, maybe. Floating on the same sea of uncertainty as I was as we jammed to some alien groove.

The halfway house of fucking me hard but not hard enough was a sickly no man’s land where nothing felt genuine. Not my effort nor his pleasure.

My eyes watered, and it wasn’t just from my gag reflex. The sadness was a tarnished penny I’d swallowed down deep, metallic and bitter and enough to put me in the foetal position, knees up high to my chest once I’d swallowed down his cum and retreated. Having him curled around the back of me made no difference. His steady breathing did little to lull me into my sweet little bubble of security.

It wasn’t regret that haunted me that night. Not the disgusting reflections on a man who’d used me like a cheap slut while I’d begged for more, or my desperate efforts to make him come for me. It wasn’t my swimming thoughts which drove me to the edge of the bed and away from Brett’s warm arms, nor the promise of the soothing sea through the window.

It was Thomas Heath’s business card in the dining room rubbish bin.

I wasn’t going to call him, not in the rest of this lifetime, but still I fished it out from the depths with my breath held tight, rubbing a grease stain with my finger to make sure the contact numbers were still readable.

I slipped it into the reception desk drawer with other guests’ contact details for upcoming bookings, uncertain quite why I was rescuing it as I closed that drawer up tight.

And then I went back to bed with my husband, praying to everything on this earth that it was still where I belonged.