One Too Many

by Jade West

  “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 wi
th 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.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Thomas

  I was fresh from a shower with a towel low around my hips when my mobile vibrated on the bedside table.

  I couldn’t hold back the smirk. I knew it was her before I clocked the area code. Two days later than my estimate, so kudos to her self-restraint, but still well within my weekly prediction window.

  “Grace,” I said as I clicked to accept, my voice so sure of itself that I was certain I’d have her knickers wet before she was done with the niceties.

  The response stopped me dead in my tracks.

  “Wrong guess, asshole,” Brett Foster told me, and his tone made my gut tighten. It wasn’t the bitter growl of someone on the edge of a divorce, calling up to give me a mindless threat of violence from the other side of the country. There wasn’t the slightest hint of insecurity, nor of a man struggling to stay on the rails of his own sorry life.

  “Brett,” I said. “This is a surprise. Not entirely pleasant.”

  It wasn’t pleasant. My pulse was drumming, my composure straining as I fought the urge to hang up and bail on him and his shitty late-night call. I hated it, despised even the hint of my self-control reeling under pressure.

  “Thanks for the business card,” he continued. “So nice to know we could call on you.”

  “Purely good manners on my part,” I lied, and I heard his arrogant smirk right across the miles.

  “You don’t know the meaning of good manners, Heath, but nice try.”

  I forced a sigh. “If you called me in the middle of the night purely to bid me thanks for leaving my contact details, I’ll be saying goodnight.”

  But I didn’t hang up, and the bastard knew I wouldn’t. He hung on in silence just to prove the point, and it was all wrong. This whole ridiculous interaction was all wrong.

  “What the fuck do you want?” I said, finally, and he laughed out loud before his voice calmed to a low rumble.

  “You, me, and my beautiful wife,” he told me. “No fucking sensors, no chairs set out at a safe distance, no pile of dirty cash to unbalance the equation.”

  It was my turn to laugh. “And why would I do that?”

  “Because your ego won’t let you turn down a rematch. You know it, and I know it, so cut the fucking crap.”

  My jaw tightened at his brashness. “You don’t know anything about me. And you sure as fuck don’t know anything about my ego.”

  “Oh, but I do,” he said. “I watch, I learn. Watching from the substitute bench, you see fucking everything.”

  “This isn’t one of your shitty high school sports games now. It’s me taking what I want, when I want it.” I let my strength gather itself in the pit of me, fighting every whisper of revolting nerves.

  “Come back down here,” he said. “Call it a challenge. Your game against mine. Grace’s sweet pussy can be the referee.”

  “I’ve already claimed that prize,” I goaded. “Many times over.”

  “You bought it, now it’s time to earn it. Anyone can be a winner if they play dirty.”

  “Playing dirty is my favourite way to play,” I hissed, expecting a rise from him that never came.

  “Rematch next Tuesday,” he said, with his voice too fucking even for belief. “The top suite is available, I’ll make you a reservation right now, that’s if you’re up
to the challenge.”

  “Look,” I said, and my voice wasn’t even at all. It was a hiss. A spit. Fuming with bile as the teenage memories came spewing back up. “I’ve no time for your sad fucking challenges. My time is in demand, and so is my dick. I’ve dipped it in your coastal honeypot to my satisfaction already, thank you.”

  I waited for the goading. The schoolyard taunts of how he’d kick my ass on the playing field. His primitive grunts about how I needed to get myself down there and show him what I’m made of.

  But they didn’t come.

  “Fine,” he said. “Have it your way. You know how to book online if you change your mind.”

  And then he was gone.

  The line went dead. The dull bleep of the call-dead tone was enough to bring sweat to my forehead, my back blistering with the chill of hardball negotiations turned sour.

  I tossed the phone on the bed, cursing Brett Foster for everything his life was worth. Cursing their sad determination to ignore the fact that they were ruined. That I’d fucking ruined them.

  I poured myself a scotch and drank it down in one, savouring the vintage burn like it stood a chance of soothing the rancid pit in me.

  And then I called up his fucking website, before my senses could catch up with the rest of me.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Grace

  I couldn’t believe it when the ping of an online reservation hit Brett’s phone before we were through to the bedroom, but he could.

  His smile was triumphant, eyes glittering with glory as he turned the handset to face me. I didn’t need to read the text, but I did anyway, taking the phone from his grip with shaking fingers.

  Thomas Heath. Master suite.

  A seven night booking.

  Seven.

  Seven nights.

  My mouth dropped open.

  “He can’t be serious,” I stammered, but Brett nodded.

  “Oh, he can,” he said. “He’s fucking serious alright. But not as serious as I am.”

  “We should think about this,” I flustered. “We don’t know who he is, not really. We don’t know what he’s planning, what he’s thinking, what he’s capable of.”