Chapter 7: A quiet day before the storm
The water from the showerhead was a scalding torrent, but Mark stood under it, motionless, letting it pummel the scent of canal water and sex from his skin. The taste of Anne still seemed to linger in his mouth. He rubbed his wrists, still painful from the handcuff. Through the fogged glass, he could see the vague outline of Julie moving in the main room, the soft clink of silicone being rinsed in the sink. A domestic sound, absurdly out of place. His skin was alive, every nerve ending reporting back the memory of her mouth. I knew that despite being 40 soon, he had experienced nothing. But how does sex gets better from here?
He turned off the water and dried himself with a stiff, white towel, methodically, as if reassembling his body piece by piece. When he emerged, steam billowing around him, The toys were gone, stored away in their black bag. Julie, wrapped in a robe, gave him a small, tight smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Your turn,” he said, his voice rough.
She nodded and disappeared into the bathroom. The sound of her shower starting was a white noise backdrop as he pulled on clean jeans and a sweater. He tidied the room then simply stood at the window, watching the late morning light soften over the gabled roofs, feeling the profound strangeness of being here, in this clean room, after what they had just done. When she came up, dressed in a light floral dress with a deep cleavage, the bed was neatly made, the room was pristine.
They walked without touching. The city air was cool, bracing, scented with wet leaves and distant fried dough. They looked like any other couple of a certain age, perhaps tourists, perhaps not. But the space between them vibrated with a shared, electric secret.
“How did you find her?” Mark asked finally. The question had been burning in him since he first understood the betrayal.
Julie kept her eyes forward, watching a tram rumble past. “The sex shop. There was a blue-haired woman behind the counter. I went back right after on the same morning. I think I was in a panic. I’d bought all that… equipment. And I realized I had no idea how to use it. Or if I even could.”
She laughed, a short, dry sound. “I must have looked completely deranged. She poured me tea in the back room, surrounded by leather harnesses and glass dildos. I just started talking. I told her about you. About us. Online. The meeting. What I wanted. What I was afraid of.”
Mark listened, fascinated. This was a Julie he hadn’t seen—vulnerable, planning, desperately seeking a guide.
“She listened for a long time. Then she said, ‘I know exactly who you need.’ She called her. Anne came to meet me that afternoon.”
“Where?”
Julie paused at a bridge, leaning on the cold stone balustrade. “She suggested a place. Neutral, but private. She said it would tell her if I was serious.” She pointed down a narrow alley, a slit between two tall, centuries-old houses. “Down there.”
The alley opened into a hidden courtyard, a secret pocket of stillness locked away from the city’s roar. Ivy smothered the high walls. A gnarled tree, its leaves turned gold, dominated the center. At one end stood a small, deconsecrated chapel, its stone steps worn smooth by time. Dappled light filtered through the leaves, painting the cobblestones in shifting patterns.
“Here,” Julie said, her voice dropping to a whisper, as if the past were still present.
“It’s quiet,” Mark observed.
“It wasn’t then. There were a few people. An old man reading on a bench. A student sketching the chapel.” She turned to face him, her eyes distant, replaying the scene. “Anne was already here. She looked… ordinary. Beautiful, but ordinary. She was dressed casually and seemed like another student. Not the creature of yesterday. We sat on those steps. We discussed terms, like a business meeting. My requirements. Her rates, her boundaries. My boundaries. The bonus for getting you cuffed and blindfolded.”
Mark could see it. The two women, negotiating his seduction in this serene, holy space.
“Then she asked me if I trusted her, to get the job done” Julie continued. “I said I didn’t know. So she said she’d show me a sample of her work. To prove her… understanding.”
A leaf detached from the tree and spiraled slowly down between them.
“She led me behind those trees". Julie stood and led Mark through the courtyard toward the same spot. " I was wearing that same dress. She hold my hands high above my head with one hand. Spread my legs with the other, just a little.” Julie’s breath hitched. “I told her it was daylight. People were there. She just smiled and said, ‘That’s the point, Julie. You’re hiring me for a fantasy. I need to know if you can handle the reality.’ So I did it. My heart was trying to break out of my chest. I leaned back, and I opened my knees.”
Mark felt a stirring in his groin, a dark, voyeuristic thrill. “And?”
“She slid her hand in my underwear. She wasn’t rough. She was… precise. Her fingers found me fast. I was already soaked, just from the fear, from the audacity of it. She looked me right in the eye, never breaking contact, as she pushed the fabric aside and slid two fingers inside me. Deep. In one smooth stroke.”
Julie’s cheeks were flushed now. “She curled them. Right there. She found a spot my ex-husband never knew existed in fifteen years of marriage. She worked it with this… this expertise. I had to bite my lip to keep from crying out. The old man turned a page. The student’s pencil scratched. And Anne fucked me with her fingers, her thumb pressing hard on my clit, until I was shaking. She leaned in, her lips at my ear, and whispered, ‘You see? It’s all about control. You’re paying me to take yours. To give it to him. Can you come for me now, quietly, in front of God and these nice people?’”
“Did you?” Mark’s voice was a hoarse whisper.
“I was so close. The pressure was terrifying, exquisite. Anne didn’t stop. She didn’t even slow down. She just kept pumping into me, her wrist a blur under my dress, her eyes holding mine captive. It took her a couple of minutes, I came. Silently. My whole body seized. It was violent. It was like being unmade.”
She fell silent, the memory saturating the space between them. The courtyard was empty now, but charged with her confession.
Mark stepped closer. He could smell her shampoo, see the rapid pulse in her throat. “That’s why you liked it,” he said, the pieces clicking into a devastating whole. “In the closet. Watching her with me.”
Julie nodded, a single tear escaping and tracing a line down her cheek. “Yes. I came harder in that dark closet, listening to you lick suck her, smelling her on you. I want to watch, I want to be watch even more, I want stranger to be shocked by my own depravity.”
Her raw honesty was a supernova, burning away the last of his restraint.
“Show me,” he said.
“What?”
“Where you stand. Show me.”
A wild, frantic energy passed between them. Julie turned and leaned against a tree, exactly as she had before. Her posture deliberately open, challenging. Mark stood before her, blocking her from view of the archway, should anyone enter.
She didn’t see them at first.
“Interview me,” he said. A woman walked into the courtyard from the opposite archway. She was looking at her phone.
Julie understood. Her hands went to the button of his jeans. She popped it, yanked the zipper down. He was already hard, straining against his boxers. She freed him, the cool air a shock. Then she lifted her own dress, revealing she wore nothing underneath. The sight of her, her sex glistening from the memory alone, was almost enough to finish him. She turned back, her forearms resting on the tree, offering herself.
“Fuck me,” she commanded, her voice low and thick. “Right here. Right now. Prove you understand.”
He didn’t need another invitation. He gripped her hips, and drove into her in one brutal, claiming thrust. She cried out, the sound echoing off the stone walls, a profane prayer. The woman looked up, directly at them. She saw. She froze for a second, then hurried past, her head down. Mark set a punishing pace immediately, each slam of his hips pushing her back body against the tree. There was no tenderness, no exploration. This was raw re-enactment, a seizing of the narrative, but also something else, a memory being replayed.
"Years ago, we were chatting, it was summer. You said you were reading, suntanning in your undies on a reclining chair in your garden"
"Fuck yes - I remember that day" Julie's panting "I came hard, touching myself in my parent's garden." "Oh Fuck fuck" She pauses "I wanted you to fuck me where anyone could see it - I wanted them to see me, it would have made you real"
“You said you wish I could fuck you against the tree next to you. Is this what you wanted?” he grunted, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her thighs. “For years later to be fucked in a sacred spot? To have your own story rewritten?”
The woman came back. Quietly, shy, submitting to her own curiousness and her arousal. She's standing by the archway, watching them, squeezing her legs, one hand rubbing her breast.
“Yes!” she gasped, her head thrown back, her nails scraping on bark. “Oh god, yes, Mark! Don’t stop!”
He leaned over her, changing the angle, grinding his pelvis against her with every thrust, making sure the base of his cock rubbed mercilessly against her clit. “You liked watching her cum? You liked being the little mouse in the wall?”
Julie locked eyes with the stranger. The woman, now hand in her own jeans, quietly started to masturbate in the courtyard watching them.
“I came!” she screamed, her composure shattering, the two memories collapsing into one present moment. “I came so hard I thought I’d pass out! Both times. and I loved it, you fucking bastard, I loved every second!”
Her words, filthy and true, pushed him to the edge. The chapel loomed above them. Leaves rustled. The lady's phone rang, Mark realized they were exposed, utterly, and that Julie knew all along. He was past caring.
He felt her inner muscles begin to clench around him, a frantic, fluttering rhythm, pulling him deeper, impossibly deep.
“Come with me,” she begged, her eyes wide, pleading. “Please. Mark. Now.” With a guttural roar he buried himself inside her and let go, jets of hot release pulsing into her depths as her own climax milked him, wave after shuddering wave, their cries mingling in the quiet courtyard.
They collapsed into a heap on the tree, a tangle of limbs and half-fastened clothing, breathing in ragged, shared gasps. The immensity of what they’d just done—the confession, the act—settled over them like dust.
They didn't linger, Julie stirred, pulled back her dress. She touched his face, her fingers gentle now. “You passed the interview,” she whispered.
He caught her hand, they run away, past the woman leaning on the wall, panting, who seemed to had collected what she needed.
“So what’s the next stop?” he asked, his voice raw.
“Souvenirs shopping,” she said. Her grip was firm, proprietary. They walked out of the courtyard’s sanctity and back into the fluid noise of the city, their bodies humming with spent energy. The sex shop was only a few canals over, its windows discreetly tinted, the display artful rather than crude.
A bell chimed softly as they entered. The air smelled of leather, silicone, and sandalwood incense. The blue-haired woman looked up from behind the counter, her eyes sharp, recognizing Julie immediately. A slow smile spread across her face as her gaze flicked to Mark, then back.
“You,” she said, her accent melodic. “I heard from Anne the interview was a success. Did she deliver?”
Julie released Mark’s hand and stepped forward. “She did. Beyond. I wanted to say thank you.” Her voice held a genuine gratitude that surprised Mark. This woman had been a conspirator, an architect.
The woman nodded, accepting the thanks as her due. “And you brought a friend today - was he?”
“I was” Mark confirmed. "Thank you". Julie turned to her “We want a souvenir. Something to exchange. When this is… over. Could you check them out separately and wrap them?”
They wandered the aisles in a silence that was neither awkward nor comfortable, but deeply focused. He watched her consider items. She finally stopped before a glass case. He couldn't see what items were layed inside. “This” Julie said, not asking."The larger size".
The woman unlocked the case. “A perfect choice.” she giggled as she proceeded to wrap them. “A memory of pressure. Of fullness. To be carried,” Mark was utterly clueless, both about what to receive, and what to give. Mark found what he needed. "This" he said. He paid without looking at the price. The woman placed it in his own bag. "You two are really a pair". She handed Mark's bag to Julie, and the other to Mark. “To future memories. Don't open until you leave” she said, her meaning clear.
They ate an early, simple dinner at a brown café, wooden tables sticky with generations of varnish. They spoke little, picking at bitterballen and steaming bowls of stew. The black boxes sat on the table between them like unopened verdicts. The frenetic energy of the day was banked now, replaced by a coiled, anticipatory stillness. They were not talking about it, but they were both thinking about tomorrow.
Back in the hotel room, the silence grew thicker. Julie picked up her box, ran a thumb over its lid. “Let s have a quiet evening for once. You need to keep your strength for tomorrow, old man” she said, not meeting his eyes. “It’s not over, pretty boy” now smiling at him. Mark saw her on her phone earlier today. A chill ran down his spine. He knew she had plotted with Anne all day.
She turned to face him, her expression unreadable. She walks over him, handing him something in the palm of his hand. “Tomorrow, I might let you fuck my ass.” She was already walking away to the bathroom, let him Mark reveal the simple butt plug with a gem on it. The crude words hung in the plush air, a promise and a threat. “But for now… just a quick fuck in the shower. Get in.” her voice echoed from the shower, where the water was already on.
He obeyed, stripping while the water was on full, steam already beginning to billow. He joined her the glass door shutting with a click. The water was searing hot, needling their skin. She pressed him against the wet tiles and took his cock in her hand, stroking him to hardness with a brutal, efficient rhythm.
“The plug,” she said over the drumming water, her mouth against his neck. “What are you waiting for.” She turned over, offering her ass to him for the second time today.
He knelt in the streaming water. The sight of her ass, water sluicing down the cleft, was brutally arousing. He pressed the cool, slick bead against her tight hole. She moved away. “No,” she whispered, her voice husky against the tiles. “Use your mouth first.”
He obeyed. Again. His hands, slick from the water, found the full curves of her ass. He spread her apart, his thumbs digging into the soft give of her flesh. The view was starkly intimate, her pink hole clenched tight against the steam and streaming water.
He leaned in.
His tongue, hot and broad, licked a firm, flat stripe from her dripping slit all the way up to the puckered tension of her ass. She jolted, a sharp gasp swallowed by the shower’s roar. He didn’t tease. He pressed his face into her, his mouth sealing over her asshole.
He rimmed her with a focused, dirty thoroughness. His tongue probed and circled, a relentless, wet pressure against that most forbidden nerve. He ate her out from behind, his fingers delving into her cunt between each focused assault on her ass, tasting her sharp, musky mix of soap and sex.
“Oh, fuck, Mark,” she moaned, her forehead grinding against the tile. Her hands scrambled for purchase. “Just like that. God, your mouth.”
He was lost in it, the smell of her, the submission of the act, the way her legs trembled. This was penance and worship. He fucked her ass with his tongue, his fingers deep into her cunt, then flattened it to lap at her clit before returning to burrow against her ass again. She was pushing back against his face now, fucking his mouth, her cries growing louder, more ragged. He pulled back, breathing heavily. Water streamed down his face. He fumbled for the silicone plug, its surface warm from the water. He pressed the slender, jeweled end against her, still glistening from his saliva.
“Wait,” she panted. “Rub me. With your thumb. Hard.”
He obeyed. He used his left hand, his thumb finding her swollen clit as he positioned the plug with his right. He rubbed tight, insistent circles as he pressed the tapered tip against her resistance.
“Yes,” she hissed. “Now push. Fucking push it in.”
He applied steady pressure. Her body yielded slowly, a breathtaking, tight surrender. He watched the silicone disappear, inch by inch, until the flat base and its fake gem sat flush against her, sealing her up. His thumb never stopped its ruthless circles on her clit.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she chanted, her knuckles white against the wall. Her whole body was tensed, a bowstring pulled taut. The invasion, combined with the relentless friction on her clit, was driving her violently toward the edge.
He leaned close, his lips at her ear. “You’re full of me now,” he growled, his voice raw. “You’re packed with it. You’ll feel it tomorrow when we walk.”
The words, the possession in them, tipped her over. Her orgasm ripped through her with a silent, breathless intensity. She convulsed, her inner muscles fluttering around nothing, her ass clenching rhythmically around the intruding plug. He held her up, his hand splayed on her belly, feeling the tremors wrack her.
When she finally stilled, sagging against him, the only sound was the pounding water. He turned her around. Her eyes were glazed, her mouth slack. She looked utterly spent, and utterly his.
She reached down between them, her hand closing around his cock, which was rigid and throbbing. She gave him three rough, efficient strokes. “Fuck,” she breathed. “Yeah. That’s it. Now fuck my cunt. Quick and hard. I want to feel it inside me while you’re pounding me.” She kissed him, a deep, claiming kiss. He stood, his own arousal a painful throb. He guided himself into her soaking pussy from behind, the angle deep and punishing. He set a soft, calm pace, each thrust jostling the plug slowly inside her other channel. She moaned softly from both pleasure and pain broken sound lost in the steam, her body clenching around both intrusions.
“The beads,” she said over the drumming water, her mouth against his neck. “From the bag. Get that one.”
He fumbled with the black bag, his fingers finding the graduated beaded plug. She took it from him, coated it in soap, and turned around, bracing her hands on the wall. “Do it. Stretch me. The last one should be your size.” He removed the simple plug, pressed the cool, slick beads against her tight hole. She pushed back against him, a silent demand. He applied steady pressure, watching the first bead disappear. She didn't blink. He pushed in further, the resistant muscle gradually, reluctantly, yield, and the second bead popped past the rim. She gasped, her back arching. He bite her ear as he pushed again, diverting the pain. She screamed when the last one got in, her knees weak, holding onto to the shower head.
He resumes fucking her, stuffed in both holes. It was fast, animal, a release of tension rather than an exploration. A diversion from the pain in her butt. He came with a shudder, his release washed away instantly by the shower. She followed, her inner muscles fluttering around him, her moans muffled by the tile.
They toweled off in silence, the bathroom a tropical cave. She removed the beaded plug with a groan. She looked at him, almost begging, not to do it tomorrow, and proceeded to replaced it with its smaller companion for the night.
They slipped into bed, picking up her phone. He watched her type, the blue light illuminating her focused face.
We’re ready for tomorrow. Meet up where you said? she sent.
The reply was almost immediate. 10 a.m. at the canal boat. Don’t be late. Anne.
Julie showed him the screen, then placed the phone on the nightstand. She turned off the light, plunging the room into a darkness broken only by the distant glow of canal lights through the slit in the curtains. She curled on her side, away from him. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, the plug of the pressed inside her a persistent ghost of sensation.
Sleep came fitfully, populated with vivid, fleeting images: Anne’s blonde head between his legs, Julie’s face against the tree bark, the cool weight of the unknown gift in its unopened box. He dreamed of perfect, relentless bodies moving in a dark water, and of a pressure that was both threat and gift, waiting for the morning.