Any Way You Want Me (20 page)

‘Hell-o, matron,’ he said. He’d reached my bra – the lilac push-up one. ‘This can definitely stay on for a while.’

I started tugging at his clothes, wanting to speed things up. Dammit, I’d stopped caring about the hearts-and-flowers thing, now I just wanted him to be inside me again. I just wanted the sharp shock of sex with him, this man I barely knew.

‘Slowly,’ he said. He pushed my hands away, held them behind my back for a second. As soon as he let go of them, though, I attacked his buttons once more, tried to pull down his trousers.

He stepped back from me. ‘You’ve asked for it now,’ he said. ‘I warned you.’

A delicious thrill ran through me. What did he mean by that?

I soon found out. A pale blue silk tie, from his suit, hanging up on the door. My wrists tied behind my back as I stood there, in just my bra and knickers. For a split-second, I felt nervous again. He seemed to have this hard, sexual edge to him, a flash of cruelty in his eyes. He stepped behind me and I suddenly felt terrified he was going to leave the office and go home, with me left standing there.

Then he pressed up close behind me and started kissing me. ‘You are so gorgeous,’ he whispered into my neck.

I closed my eyes. I could hardly bear not being able to touch him. My hands flapped uselessly behind my back as he kissed between my shoulder blades and down, down my back. Goose pimples prickled up all over me.

‘I should keep you here, locked away,’ he teased. ‘My little prisoner.’

Now he was kissing my thighs, parting them slightly with a hand. I could feel a flush of heat spreading across my face, down my throat. His finger slid into my knickers, and I groaned.

He pushed me forwards so that I was in front of the desk, started bending me over it.

‘No, wait,’ I said, turning round, ‘I want to see you. I want to look at you.’

Then somehow or other, we were both on his desk, sending files flying to the floor and pens scattering to the side. Something fell over with a crash, but neither of us looked or cared.

‘Come on,’ I panted. I was on my side, with something hard, the edge of a folder it felt like, digging into my waist. ‘Keep going. Keep going. Keep . . . Ohhh . . .’

And then he was in me and his weight on me was almost unbearable, and then his face contorted, and he seemed to stop breathing and . . . It was over. He sank down, limbs relaxed.

We lay there for a few seconds in silence, and then he pulled out of me. Bloody hell. No contraception again.

I moved my head and felt something sharp. ‘Ouch,’ I said. ‘Alex, what’s . . .’

I froze at such a terrible gaffe. ‘Oh, shit. Sorry, Mark.’

‘It’s all right. Call me what you like,’ he replied jokily. It was too dark to see his eyes properly, though; I couldn’t tell if I had hurt him.

‘Sorry. I was going to say, Is something in my hair?’ With my hands still behind me, it was difficult to tell. I levered myself upright.

‘Stop – careful,’ he said, suddenly. His fingers were combing my hair. ‘Look.’

I looked. A piece of broken glass, coming to a sharp point. ‘We broke this, ’Mark said, picking up a framed photo. A tanned Julia, in shades and a duck-egg-blue bikini, beamed out at me from underneath her cracked covering. ‘That’s symbolism for you.’

‘Yes,’ I said, looking away. I thought of Gwen and the bitter set of her mouth, the angry tone in which she’d spoken about her husband’s affair.
That slaggy mistress
. . .

He held the shard of glass up to the light. ‘Could have killed you if it had gone in your neck,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘What a way to go.’

I struggled to get my hands free. ‘Thanks for that, Mark. Very cheery. Can you untie this, please? I’d better make a move.’

‘Already? You haven’t finished your wine.’ He had found my glass, was holding it up to my mouth. I started giggling and the glass shook between my lips. Red wine dribbled down my chin and into my cleavage. ‘Mark! Stop it! Untie my hands!’

‘What’s it worth?’

I pulled my head away from the glass. ‘Fifty pence,’ I said, still giggling.

He shook his head. ‘You’ll have to do better than that, Sadie,’ he said, sounding sorrowful. ‘Come on, drink up.’

I spluttered as the glass was put to my lips again, gagged on the wine he poured into my mouth. I pressed my lips shut, and there were more dribbles down my chest. I swallowed quickly. ‘Hey, you’d better not ruin this bra,’ I said, ducking away again.

‘Come on, what’s it worth, me untying you?’ he said. He sat down on his sofa, watching me with amusement.

‘Oh,
Mark
,’ I groaned, frenziedly trying to loosen the knots. My chin was wet; my legs were sticky. ‘Don’t be mean. Much as I’d love to be your prisoner up here in your ivory tower, I . . .’

Ah. I’d done it! I held my hands up in triumph and stuck my tongue out at him. ‘Ha! Should have settled for fifty pence, shouldn’t you?’

He grabbed me around the waist and pulled me over to sit on his knee. ‘I’m going to be thinking about that for days, you know. You and that fantastic bra, boobs almost bursting out of it as you struggle to get free, red wine dripping from your chin—’

‘Stop it, you pervert,’ I told him, swinging a leg round so that I was astride him.

He put his hands over my breasts. ‘
Have I
ruined this bra?’ he asked. ‘I’ll get you another one.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said. ‘Whatever you say, Mark.’

‘No, I will. I’ll get you the works. I’ll get you anything you want. Red crotchless knickers, peephole bra with two-inch tassels . . .’

‘Very funny,’ I said, poking his chest. I put my head on one side, considering him. He took me by surprise every time I saw him. I’d thought him the mild-mannered gent the first night I’d met him – A Good Catch, I’d said to myself, hadn’t I? Polite and charming. The perfect host. And now here I was, sitting on his lap, while he promised me the tackiest underwear money could buy.

‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked.

‘You. What a funny mixture you are,’ I replied.

‘Isn’t everyone?’

‘I suppose so, but . . .’ I shrugged. ‘You’re unpredictable. I never know what you’re going to say next.’

He put his arms around me, hugged me in so that I slid all the way down his legs and we were crotch to crotch. ‘Good,’ he said.

There was a silence again.

‘OK, your turn,’ I said. ‘What are you thinking about?’

He ran a finger under the strap of my bra. ‘You. How much I fancied you. As soon as I saw you.’

‘Really?’ I tried to hide my astonished delight but failed abysmally. ‘Did you really?’

‘Of course I did! We all did! You in that low-cut top, making everyone laugh, being so bubbly and funny and . . .’

‘Pissed,’ I reminded him.

‘Yeah, that as well, but . . . phhwooarrr. I could hardly get to sleep thinking about you that night. Thinking about how much I wished—’

I kissed his nose. ‘How much you wished what?’

His voice had been wistful; now he laughed it off. ‘Oh, just how much I wished you’d given me a blow job under the dinner table. I could tell from your dirty mouth it would have been good.’

‘You . . .!’ I gave him a push and tried to sound stern, rather than shocked. ‘No, what did you really wish?’

He took my hands in his, and looked serious for the first time all evening, so serious in fact that I regretted asking. ‘I wished that we could have met each other before – well, before we both settled down with different people,’ he said.

There was a silence while I tried to make sense of this. Hang on a minute, I was thinking, wasn’t this supposed to be a bit of no-strings, no-feelings sex on the side? I didn’t think that people involved in no-strings, no-feelings sex on the side were meant to start talking about wishes like that. Because I thought everyone knew that wishes didn’t come true, however much you wanted them to. And some wishes just
couldn’t
come true, end of story.

‘Right,’ I said, stalling for time. I didn’t like the way the conversation was going. He was looking too serious, too much like he wanted me to reciprocate. But I didn’t want any falling-in-love stuff from him. No way! I knew where falling in love got you. I’d been there, done that, had the children.

‘That’s . . . sweet,’ I said eventually. I climbed off his knee and turned away, hunting for my clothes. ‘Listen, I’d better go.’

He stayed put on the sofa; I could feel him watching me dress. ‘What’s up?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ I told him.

‘Have I said something wrong?’ he asked.

‘No, but . . .’ I pulled on my trainers, wondering how best to phrase it. ‘Let’s not get all heavy, yeah?’

He shrugged, then leaned back against the sofa. ‘What, you mean let’s stick to joking about tasselled bras and blow jobs?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

He stood up and drank the rest of his wine. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We’ll stick to that. For now.’

I ran home with my mind in turmoil. I had been gone for ages. I felt sick with guilt for what I’d done with Mark, but at the same time, I felt I was rushing with the sweetest, purest drug, on the best high I’d had for years. How was it possible to feel so dreadful and so exultant in the same second?

I kept my eyes straight ahead as I ran. I was a bad, bad person. I was cheating on Alex. Not just a one-off either; I’d done it twice now. Three times if you counted the near-miss at the Laurel Tree. I was the type of slaggy mistress that women like Gwen hated. I kind of hated myself for it too.

The wind was buffeting me along the road, sending a beer can skittering and bouncing down the pavement ahead of me. The branches of the trees were groaning. Oh, and how I had groaned with
Mark
. He made me feel so . . . desired. So horny. He made me feel like sex kitten Sadie again. I hadn’t felt like that for a long time.

So that was all skin-tinglingly marvellous and breath-stoppingly exciting but . . .

I ducked my head. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to confront the ‘but’. The ‘but’ was so enormous and terrifying, I couldn’t quite bring myself to look it in the eye. I knew that once I started thinking about the consequences, they would snowball out of proportion. Because it wasn’t just Alex I would be hurting. It was the kids, too, and I’d rather flay myself alive than have to hurt them.

Plus there was Julia. She struck me as the kind of woman who would want to flay me alive as well. We could both do it, take turns, maybe.

Anyway, I wasn’t going to think about her. I would see Mark maybe once or twice more, get him
completely
out of my system, then nip the whole thing in the bud before anyone got hurt. And before anyone found out, more to the point.

I felt myself fill with virtuous intentions, like a balloon, puffed up with its own hot air. I would renounce Mark, and the secret would go with me to the grave. I would renounce my inner slut too, send her packing, and instead would become a devoted partner and mother to Alex and the kids. I would cook proper meals for them rather than opening packets of Alphabites and fishfingers all the time. I would read Molly’s story books all the way through, instead of editing them down to two lines per page in the hope of an early bedtime. And as for Alex, I would make more of an effort. I’d be super-partner. I’d be dirty in the bedroom and clean around the house. Yes, I’d do the whole domestic goddess thing – perhaps even trying out some of Nigella’s recipes in the book Alex had given me, rather than leaving it on our shelf like some kind of upmarket ornament.

Then I spoiled all my good work by thinking,
Mark
would never have given me a cookbook. A rotating-head vibrator maybe, or that tasselled bra he seemed to know all about perhaps, but cookery? I doubted it.

I was home. ‘I’m back!’ I yelled, poking my head around the sitting-room door. James the little red engine was falling off a bridge again on the telly, but there was no one watching.

Alex called back an echoey hello and I looked upstairs in alarm. Oh no. The kids were still in the bath. I’d been planning to leap in the shower like last time, wash away my guilt and the smell of sex before I could be seen. But with Molly and Nathan still splashing around up there, what was I going to do?

I was dithering horribly. ‘Mummy, come see me!’ Molly was yelling from upstairs. ‘I got a bubbly beard!’

I couldn’t go in there. Alex would know at once. I smelled of Mark. He was all over my skin.

‘Just a sec,’ I yelled back. Then I stripped off in front of the washing machine and bundled everything in. Everything – knickers, bra, the lot. I grabbed a large towel from the washing pile on the dresser and wrapped it around me.

‘Room for me in there?’ I asked jokingly as I went into the bathroom.

Oh God, I was so horrible. I was a whore, a slut. I was . . . Oh, I hated myself as I slid into the water between my pink beaming children. Molly wrapped her slippery arms around me and decorated my hair with bubbles, and Nathan stretched out his fat hands for a cuddle, and oh, they were so innocent and unknowing, and I was so deceitful and full of shit and evil.

Alex was strangely quiet. No banter tonight. In fact, he barely said hello. ‘You were ages,’ he said. It was a statement and a question at the same time. I couldn’t read his eyes; his face was impassive.

‘Yeah, sorry,’ I said. ‘I bumped into Nicki on the way back and stopped for a chat.’

‘Nicki?’ he repeated. His eyes never left my face.

I grabbed the Teletubbies flannel and draped it over my head, making the kids giggle. ‘Blub, blub, blub,’ I said to them, reaching out to tickle Molly in her most ticklish spot, under the knees. ‘It’s the flannel monster! Yeah, Nicki,’ I added in a normal voice. ‘Why?’

‘Just wondering.’

I didn’t answer. I felt sick with paranoia. He knew. He must know. He never ‘just wondered’ about anything I did usually. He barely listened to what I told him, let alone wonder about it for any length of time. Oh God. The game was up. Someone had told him something. Or he had followed me, seen me going to Mark’s studio . . .

I gasped inadvertently under the flannel. Act normal, I thought, and put the flannel on Nathan’s head to make him laugh, then busied myself soaping Molly’s hair and sculpting it into a bubbly Mohican.