Brett

 

I woke up with a start on the big day. It was well before the alarm, the sky still dark outside. Grace was snuggled into my side, her breaths steady against my shoulder as she adjusted herself to my movement.

Dread. That’s all I felt. The kind of sickness you feel as a kid when you’ve got a dentist appointment looming and know they’re going to use the drill on you.

Only worse.

Ten times worse.

A hundred times fucking worse.

I told myself I had a hard on because that shit is hardwired first thing, regardless of the circumstances. Regardless of the fact Grace had wanted my dick until the early hours, craving more, more and more on top, even when she was flopping limp from exertion with sweat glistening on her forehead.

I stayed put under the covers, trying to keep myself still so I didn’t wake her, staring up at the ceiling and wondering just what the fuck that sonofabitch really had planned for her. Wondering if I’d be able to watch without losing my shit halfway through and saying balls to the wall to the whole sorry lot of it. Wondering if I’d shame myself beyond all reason by getting another hard on while he was shunting his way inside the pussy I’d called mine since before she’d even let me have it.

I was still staring up at the ceiling when the alarm finally did go off and my beautiful wife stirred at my side. She stretched, yawning wide before it dawned on her too, just as it had me.

Her eyes found mine in the half light and they were petrified.

“Shit,” she whispered. “It’s really today.”

“Only if you want it to be,” I said for the millionth time. “We can say no.”

“And say goodbye to our dreams for this place along with it.”

She rolled away from me and gulped a load of water from the glass on her bedside table. I admired the slope of her naked back, wondering if I should use the opportunity to distract her once more before getting up.

She made the decision for me, swinging her legs from under the covers and rising in a beat. She grabbed her dressing gown from the hook behind the door and stepped up to the window, pulling back the curtains to stare at the morning sea.

“We have to do this,” she said. “I love this place too much to leave.”

“And I love you too much to see you do anything you don’t want to.”

She didn’t answer, and there was that gut curl again. The one that told me she wanted this in the same sordid way I wanted to see her do it. That vile ghost of perversion baying down deep.

“He’d better transfer half the cash this morning, or I’m ruling game over,” I told her and she nodded.

“We should cut down on the to-pay list, spend some of it before I crap myself and shy away from his door later.”

My frown felt etched into my skin and her eyes widened as she caught sight of it.

“That was supposed to be a joke,” she said, but she wasn’t laughing.

I showered quickly, then brushed my teeth and watched her through the steamed glass as she took one after me. I couldn’t believe I’d be sharing her, the woman who’d only ever known my touch.

Maybe it was the biggest mistake of my life. Maybe he would be better than me.

Maybe she’d like him more.

I was grimacing at my own stupid paranoia when I swilled my mouth out. She wrapped a towel around her head as she stepped out. I watched her in the mirror as she pressed herself up behind me and wrapped her arm around my waist.

“What are you scowling at?”

“I’m being paranoid. It’s ridiculous.”

“Paranoid about the guy upstairs? Yeah, it is ridiculous,” she assured me.

“If he does anything amazing you’ll have to teach me the tricks. Anything he can do and all that.”

Her smile was real and full of love. “You know plenty of tricks already.”

I made sure I was dressed well, even for the kitchen. I wanted to feel as much of a man as another guy fucking your wife for cash allows you to feel.

Fine jeans and a decent black shirt would do the job.

Grace took her time in front of her wardrobe, clearly weighing up her own clothes choices.

“What do you think he’ll want me to wear later?” she asked and I shrugged it off as barely worth a thought.

“You’ll be wearing whatever you want to wear, fuck what he thinks about it.”

She pulled out a tight purple blouse with pretty white spots on it. “I guess he’s interested in me out of clothes, not in them.”

I took her hand before we headed through to the dining room, being sure to keep her close as we waited for the asshole to show his face.

He was earlier today, suited and booted as per usual with a broadsheet paper on his lap before nine a.m.

I gave him a nod and headed through to the kitchen as Grace went to take his order, wondering if I should try to engage him a little, man to man, on the run up to the seedy spectacle later. He wanted a full English, again. Eggs not overdone, again.

I cooked it up quickly and peered out through the doorway as Grace ferried it over to him. The way he looked at her was ravenous, and it wasn’t for bacon.

That’s about when I figured the cash transfer was due, breakfast in peace be fucked for him.

I took a seat opposite as he folded up his newspaper and picked up his cutlery, and if he was surprised he didn’t show it, cutting up his mushrooms like it was any other weekday morning.

“You want the money,” he said, and I hated how the guy seemed to know all this stuff. He pulled his phone from his pocket and pressed his thumb to the fingerprint thing. “I’ll need your details.”

I recited them by heart, the wind taken out of my sails a bit to find him so amicable.

“Done,” he said, just like that, and sure enough there was twenty-five grand sitting in our account when I logged into mobile banking from my own handset.

“Thanks,” I grunted, still struggling to believe the figures in front of me were really real and there for the taking.

“The pleasure will be all mine,” he said. “Now fuck off and leave me to my breakfast.”

Fucking off away from the prick was my fucking pleasure.

Making it through the day was a whole lot easier with a whole load of cash to spend, too.

Grace spent most of the afternoon on the phone paying bills, and I spent it sifting through paperwork.

It was when she called her sister to transfer back the couple of grand we’d borrowed that I overheard her asking a question out of the blue.

“Do you still speak to Polly Piper?”

My ears pricked up at the name. I shook my head across the table at her, but she waved me aside with a scowl.

“From school, yeah. She’s friends with a guy called Thomas Heath, have you ever heard of him?”

The sag of her shoulders told me she was onto a dead end.

“No, definitely not Thomas Browning. Thomas Heath. Tall, fit, super gorgeous, from London. Rich.”

I raised an eyebrow as she said her goodbyes and hung up.

“She hadn’t heard of him, then?” I prompted.

“No, never. Polly Piper was friends with a kid called Thomas at school, but it wasn’t that one. She didn’t think Polly had ever even been to London, said she’s been glued to the bakery since forever.”

“I guess it will be one of life’s mysteries then,” I commiserated, then wished I’d picked my words better. Grace hates an unsolved mystery.

“When we head back to visit maybe I’ll call in for an apple turnover, see what I can get out of her.”

Over my dead fucking body. Thomas Heath would be the last thing on her mind by then.

I only just managed to bite my tongue, and had to bite it again when he joined us in the bar at just before seven.

I didn’t even get the chance to ask him what he was drinking before he held a hand up and placed a coat hanger draped in black satin across the bar top. His words were all for Grace.

“For you, later. Please wear this,” he told her. “I’ll be back for a quick drink before time.”

I made to tear into the assortment before he was even out through the door, but Grace’s hand slapped on mine before I’d even taken a look.

“No,” she said. “Let me see first. I might be embarrassed.”

My grunt was loud and more than a little obnoxious. “We can be embarrassed together, open it up.”

But she wouldn’t.

Her eyes were fierce, burning with a whole pit of nerves as she snatched the hanger from my reach.

I guess it was the first sign of the troubles in the water.

I should have heeded the warning.