Grace

 

Something happened that night. I don’t know if it was with me and my slightly too much wine, or with Brett, or both of us combined, but things were very different once I’d waved Sarah off to her room and cleared our wine glasses away.

My husband was waiting in the doorway to reception when I got the lights. I started as I realised he was there, clutching my hand to my chest as I cussed him out for scaring me shitless.

He didn’t laugh, nor apologise, nor make any move to ease my tension. And that’s when I saw it. Felt it. Those brooding flames in his dark gaze I hadn’t even known had been missing for so long.

My belly fluttered, my heartrate picking up pace well beyond the jolt of fear, but my body’s reaction was so much more than that, instinctive to every cell inside me as I shifted on a hip, my pussy doing a needy little clench as Brett folded his strong arms tight across his chest and tipped his head.

“Did you sisters have fun?” he asked, his voice low and loud in the quiet.

I nodded like a fool, smiling like one too, not quite understanding why there was a strange zing up my spine out of nowhere.

“We did, thanks. Sisterly gossip is always the best.”

He exhaled as he smirked. “I’m sure you girls had a lot to talk about.”

I didn’t know whether I should be self-conscious about sharing the details, so I gave a little shrug and changed the subject. “Paperwork done?”

He nodded, just once. “Everything’s been taken care of, Grace.”

The space between us ate me up and spat me out, all chewed and exposed, a mess in the openness as he held back and kept his distance.

“You coming to bed?” I asked, and he shook his head.

“No,” he told me. “You’re coming with me.”

I managed a weak laugh as my brain raced ragged in its bid to interpret the weirdness, but my body was already there. Thrumming. Burning. Prickling with hungry little needles right across my skin.

“Where are we going?” I asked with a breathy voice.

He finally took a step forward, but just the one. “Remember when we first came to view this place?”

I nodded, everything well assigned to memory. “I do, yeah.”

“Remember when the agent led the owners away and left us to talk over there by the terrace doors?” Another step and his head was held high, shoulders still big and strong as his arms stayed tight across his chest.

That particular memory tickled before it dawned, and I felt my eyes narrow on his. “You mean–”

“What I said to you.”

The smile crept across my lips slowly. Really slowly. But not as slowly as his next long step toward me. The space contracted with the pressure, heavy like opposing magnets circling.

“You said you’d fuck me,” I said. “Everywhere.”

“And what happened?”

I laughed but it sounded stupid in the quiet. “You fucked me plenty, Brett, when we first moved in.”

“I don’t think I’ve been keeping my word these past few months, Grace,” he told me. “I think your mind’s been wandering, where I’ve been lacking.”

I shook my head, so defensive at the mind wandering that it made me shiver. “No. Not wandering.”

“Oh, yes,” he insisted, and his next step brought him closer. So much closer. “I think you’ve been hiding secrets. Dirty little secrets, sweetheart. Dirty secrets about what you’d like me to do to that body of yours. How you’d like me to make you feel. How hard you’d like me to push you. We’ve both been hiding ourselves, forgetting ourselves, holding our breath when we should be speaking out loud.”

We had a whole drawer jammed full of Heath inspired sex toys, but I could tell they weren’t on his mind in the slightest as he closed the distance between us. His hand swept up my bare arm and across my shoulder to my neck, where his fingers hooked and pulled me tight, gripping with such strength that I figured he’d been overhearing Sarah and me.

I struggled to recall what we’d said exactly, sifting blindly through the wine in an attempt to fathom how condemning her observations about him losing his confidence had been from his position. So I asked him. Blurted it out with nervous eyes and an apology all set to blurt out behind it.

“If you heard anything–” I began, but he silenced me with a finger on my lips.

“I assume that means you girls have been gossiping plenty about my prowess,” he said. “What did you tell her about Heath?”

My prickling skin made me shudder as my cheeks burned up. “Not much.”

“Stop lying to me, Grace,” he told me, but there was no real malice in his words.

This Brett was bristling with form, eyes alive with some simmering darkness I couldn’t quite place, but I liked it.

I squeaked out loud as his arm snaked around my waist and hoisted me from my feet. I scrabbled in his grip as he dragged me with him back through the doorway into reception, but I was half-giggling, nervous all the way. We were under the hard lights of the main entrance hall when his body wrestled mine behind the counter and slammed me forward onto the desk. The guest comment book went tumbling as my palms fought for purchase, back arching with a mind of its own as his hot mouth ravaged the nape of my neck.

Tingles. So many tingles.

“What is this?” I asked, even as my ass shimmied back at his crotch.

I wasn’t expecting the nip of his teeth on my shoulder.

“Remember that time Hanley School sent their rugby team over for the pre-season warm up match and we couldn’t get it together enough to beat their asses that game? They goaded the ever-living fuck out of us before they got their bus home that night. And we took it in silence like a team of losers, because that’s what we felt like. Losers.”

I nodded, not having a clue what relevance that had to the way his fingers flicked my jeans button loose and slammed down inside my knickers. “I remember,” I told him, “You looked like death when they pulled away. I thought you were going to kill someone.”

“And what happened next?” he asked me.

I smiled at the memory. “The rematch. I’d never seen you so psyched in my life.”

“Winners don’t quit over one little loss, Grace. They come back stronger. They fight until they’re done. Until the victory is theirs or they lose the battle so hard they lay down dead. We forgot it that game, but we never forgot it for another.”

His fingers were so firm between my legs. Rough but skilled. This wasn’t aimless lust gone mad. It was focused. Determined. I squirmed against the contact, hips begging him to push inside.

“You won,” I whispered. “Fuck, Brett, you always won. I don’t think I ever saw you lose a game after that. Not all the way through final year.”

“Not until we arrived here,” he hissed, breath panting hard against my ear as he ground the ridge of his dick against my ass. “Not until I fell flat at the first batch of hurdles and didn’t get back on my fucking feet. Not with the hotel down the road threatening to eat us alive. Not with the stress of losing everything we’d given up our lives to pursue down here in the arse end of nowhere.”

I turned my face back toward his, still bucking at his touch, even as my eyes met his with pain. “It was my fault,” I admitted, finally. “I brought us here. I’m sorry.”

I wasn’t expecting him to smile. “You pretty much dragged us fucking down here, Grace. Wouldn’t shut up about the place.”

“You could have said no,” I argued. “You should have said no.”

He shook his head. “Fuck saying no to your dreams, Mrs Foster. Giving you your dreams is my whole fucking world. If we could go back, I’d do it all over again. Only this time I wouldn’t let the shit knock me flying.”

This was my Brett. The Brett I married. Strong and safe and bristling with fight, all for me. His eyes were as hungry as I’d ever seen them, his lips hungry to match as they landed on mine and took their fill.

“I’ve missed you,” I whispered between kisses. “Please don’t leave me again.”

“I’ll never fucking leave you,” he whispered back. “I’ll never leave my fucking self, either. Not for anything. Not for a poxy hotel down the road, nor a wanker that rolls up from London.”

My breath hitched at the reference. “He’s gone,” I said. “It was always you I wanted. Not him. He was nothing.”

His fingers dug lower in my knickers, curling just right to sink inside me to the knuckle.

“You wanted him,” he hissed. “And I let him take you. I let him smash me to the ground and I took it like our team did with Hanley that night, too fucked up to fight him on an even playing field.”

I gasped as his palm ground my clit, pushing back enough to shimmy my jeans down around my hips.

“He’s gone,” I said again. “It’s all about us now.”

All my needy thoughts of Thomas Heath scorched away to nothing. There was only my husband. Only his touch. His warmth. The hardness of his dick against my ass as he tugged down his own jeans and thrust his length between my cheeks.

I couldn’t hold back the moan as he pinned me to the reception desk and teased the head of himself against my wet slit with his fingers still inside me.

I hadn’t known want like it in weeks. Months even. Since before Thomas Heath ever darkened our door with his crazy offer, since before we’d found ourselves bogged down in the stench of final demand letters and paltry winter bookings.

“You still want him,” he snarled, but I shook my head. It made him laugh a fresh low laugh. “I don’t know if you’re lying to me or to yourself this time, Grace Foster, but that sweet little cunt wants a fresh bout with Thomas Heath and there’s no point fucking denying it.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. My breath was a staccato string of gasps as I bucked like crazy to encourage his dick inside me, but he didn’t take the bait, his sweeps of my wetness nothing short of torture.

“I don’t even fucking blame you,” he said under his breath. “The guy was on his fucking game from the moment he arrived until the moment he left. But next time he’ll meet a different man when he steps through that doorway. Next time he’ll meet a man who’ll go up against him and win.”

“There won’t be a next time,” I soothed, forcing down the way my belly lurched at the prospect. “I don’t need to see him again. Not ever.”

“No,” he growled. “But I do, Grace. I fucking do.”

I cried out when the head of his dick finally pushed in, thighs trembling at the stretch.

His fingers were still inside me, hooking the perfect spot. His cock strained for every little inch, throbbing hard as he stretched me wide.

“Tell me you want to see him again,” Brett prompted, and I was so lost to the glorious pulse of my ragged pussy that I did nothing but groan. “Tell me you want it, Grace. Two of us at once, for fucking real. Tell me what you did to make sure it happens.”

His mouth on my neck gave me shivers.

“What I did?”

“You know what you did, Grace.”

I couldn’t hide from him like this, not with his strength rippling hard at my back and demanding my all.

“I saved his business card,” I admitted in a hiss, heart panging at the confession even as I spat it out. “I’m sorry… I don’t know what came over me, I swear. I just grabbed it from the trash, and I didn’t know… I didn’t know what to do…”

I felt his smile. “Good girl,” he whispered, and I didn’t understand it. Not any of it. “Feels good to face the truth, doesn’t it?”

I nodded, squirming like a wanton little whore as he circled his hips against my ass. “I wanted you there with him that night, I wanted you both.”

“I know,” he said. “I wanted it too. I’ve been wanting it ever since, nearly as much as I want to drive you as wild as he fucking did.”

“You can,” I told him. “I know you can.”

“I will,” he whispered, sinking his cock into me.

The wine was dulling my brain to slower than usual, rolling around my skull behind the haze of need between my legs. “Please,” I whimpered. “Harder.”

He gave me harder. So much harder. Taking a handful of my hair and pulling tight, slamming to the balls in a thrust that left me reeling.

“Next time he won’t come out on top,” my husband snarled. “Next time I’m gonna play him on an even field. I’m gonna watch his game and make mine better, show him a performance he’ll never see coming.” Another smile against my skin, and I could feel the fight right the way through him. “And then I’m gonna lift the fucking trophy.”

Surely he couldn’t… wouldn’t… not seriously bring Heath back here.

I’d have sought out his eyes if his grip on my hair wasn’t tight enough to pain my scalp.

I loved it. Craved it.

“Are you serious?” I whispered. “Brett, just tell me if you’re serious. I can’t take it…”

My head dropped forward as he loosened his grip, and when my eyes returned to focus they were staring right at his fingers.

And the business card he was holding there.

He slapped it on the counter, right by my face.

“I’m deadly fucking serious,” he spat. “That cunt is due a rematch, and this time I’ll be the challenger.”

I came before he did, hard enough that he covered my open mouth with his free hand to stop me waking the kids in the rooms upstairs.

My pussy was a clenching little slut, eating up both the fingers and the dick he fucked me with so perfectly, his timing impeccable as he let himself follow me over the edge with a grunt.

We moved together, slammed together, breathing in frantic unison as our bodies thrummed in the madness.

He was still pulsing inside me when he picked up our reception handset and keyed in Thomas Heath’s mobile number. I hadn’t even caught my breath when he cleared his throat and prepared for the line to connect.

“It’s really late,” I said, eyes wide over my shoulder as I took in my husband with the office handset pressed to his ear. “He might not even hear it. Won’t know it’s us.”

“Oh, he’ll answer,” Brett replied with a smirk that rivalled Heath’s for confidence. “I fucking promise.”

And he did answer.

Oh, fuck, he really did.