Chapter 31: Venturing Out
The bathroom steamed gently from the shower she’d just taken. Caleb leaned against the doorframe. Sandi stood at the sink, a towel wrapped around her torso. She met his eyes in the mirror.
“Sit with me,” she said, nodding to the closed toilet lid.
He sat.
She let the towel drop. She took a razor from the shelf. She spread her legs slightly, bending one knee, and began to shave her pussy. The ritual was swift, efficient, practiced. She rinsed the razor under the tap, the sound loud in the quiet room. She patted the skin dry with a hand towel, then turned, presenting herself to him. Smooth. Bare. A statement.
“Come through,” she said, walking past him into the bedroom.
He followed. He sat on the edge of the bed. She sat at her dressing table under the soft glow of the vanity lights. She dried her sun-streaked auburn hair with a diffuser, scrunching the waves into a carelessly sexy tumble. Then she began her makeup. Foundation, a touch of bronzer to accentuate the fading tan, mascara that darkened her hazel eyes into something smouldering. She applied a deep, wine-colored lipstick, blotting it carefully. She didn’t speak. He didn’t either. The silence was thick with intent.
Finally, she stood. From the wardrobe she took the new hold-up stockings. She sat on the bed beside him to roll them on, the black silk whispering up her calves, over her knees, stretching taut over her thighs. The wide silicone bands gripped her skin. Then the shoes. She stepped into the patent-leather high heels, the sharp click of each heel on the floorboard a punctuation mark. She stood before him, wearing only the stockings and the shoes. Her body was a landscape of pale skin, dark seams, and gleaming black.
She took the new stone-colored trench coat from its hanger and slid her arms into it. She didn’t fasten a single button.
“Take me for a drink,” she said. “The King’s Head.”
The pub was a fifteen-minute walk, but she wanted to drive. “I don’t want to walk in this,” she said simply, meaning the coat, the nothingness beneath it.
The King’s Head was moderately busy for a Tuesday. A murmur of conversation, the clink of glasses, the distant thock of an arrow from the dartboard. Caleb went to the bar, ordered a pint for himself and a large white wine for Sandi. He felt hyper-aware, like a man carrying a live explosive. He brought the drinks to a small, round table in a corner booth, where Sandi already sat with her back to the room.
She shifted on the leather bench, letting the coat fall open at her sides. To anyone else, she was just a woman in a trench coat sitting in a pub. To Caleb, who faced her and the room, the view was devastating. The coat hung open, revealing her completely naked body from throat to ankle. The V of her coat’s lapels framed the soft slope of her breasts, her nipples tight in the pub’s warmth. The fabric fell away at her waist, showing the flat plane of her stomach, the neat, shaved junction of her thighs. The black tops of her stockings cut across her upper thighs, the seams running straight down the back of her calves to her heels, which were hooked on the bottom rung of her chair.
She took a sip of wine, her eyes on his. Then her left hand drifted down from the table into her lap. He watched, his pint frozen halfway to his mouth, as her fingers trailed over her inner thigh, then dipped between her legs.
She wasn’t flamboyant. It was a slow, idle exploration. Her middle finger slid along her slit, gathering wetness. She circled her clit, her breath catching almost imperceptibly. She pushed a finger inside herself, then withdrew it, glistening. She brought it to her mouth, sucked it clean, never breaking eye contact.
“It’s not for them,” she said quietly, her voice barely carrying over the pub noise. Her hand returned to her cunt, two fingers now, sliding in and out with a soft, wet sound only he could hear. “And it’s not even really for you. Not to please you.” She bit her lip as her fingers worked a little deeper. “It’s for me. I need to slip back down inside that feeling. That state. The one from the island. Where my body was just a tool for feeling good. Where my brain switched off and my cunt switched on. Do you understand? I’m trying to find the door back in.”
He nodded, his throat tight. He understood perfectly. He was the guardian at the gate.
“You’re going to have to be my best friend from now on,” she said, her fingers pausing, buried inside her. “Not my husband.” She said it like a question, her head tilted.
He nodded again, conspiratorially.
With her clean right hand, she twisted the rings from her left. Her engagement solitaire and her platinum wedding band. She placed them on the wooden table between their drinks. They looked shockingly small and final there.
“It will trigger interest,” she said. “Among our friends. Questions. It’ll spark conversations… about what might have happened on our holiday. Conversations that might lead to other things.” She nudged the rings toward him with a fingertip. “Pick them up. Seal the pact.”
He reached for them. She laid her wet hand over his, stopping him.
“It will signal,” she said, her voice dropping even lower, deadly serious, “to everyone but you and me, that our marriage is over. People will talk. They’ll pity you. Or blame me. They’ll whisper.”
He looked at the rings, then at her open coat, at her fingers still tucked inside her body. He turned his hand under hers and picked up the two rings. They were warm from her skin. He closed his fist around them.
“It’s the last thing anyone would expect,” he said, his voice rough. “But Christ, the thought of it… it makes me want to fuck you more than ever.”
A genuine smile, bright and wicked, spread across her lips. “Best friends for life now,” she murmured, her fingers beginning to move again, a slow, sure rhythm. “Living together. Fucking day and night. You with me. And me with anyone I choose.”
The image, coupled with the secret reality of her touching herself just feet from a crowd of unsuspecting people, sent a jolt of pure lust straight to his groin. He was painfully hard. She saw it in his face and her smile deepened. She withdrew her glistening fingers, wiped them on the underside of the table, and finished her wine.
“Time to go,” she said.
She stood, smoothing the coat. She didn’t button it. She simply put her hands in the pockets, which pulled the fabric closed in front, but the action created a tension that hinted at the lack of anything beneath. As they walked out, she moved with a subtle, rolling gait. If a man watched carefully—and some did—he might see the deep V at the top of the coat gape for a second, revealing the shadowed cleft between her breasts, the absolute absence of a blouse. If he glanced down as she passed, the swing of the coat might part at just the right moment to show a flash of pale inner thigh, the stark black line of a stocking top, and nothing, nothing at all, in between.
She caught the eye of a man in his fifties by the fruit machine. His eyes dropped, narrowed in confusion, then darted back up to her face. She held his gaze for a half-second and gave him the same small, knowing smile she’d given fishermen and waiters on a sun-baked island. Then she was gone, out into the cool night.
The car was parked in a dimly lit side street. She slid into the passenger seat. He got in the driver’s side, the rings a hard lump in his clenched pocket.
“Back seat,” she said, already opening her door.
He fumbled with his seatbelt, his heart hammering. They got out and into the back. It was a tight squeeze. She lay back across the leather, her coat sprawling open like wings. “Now,” she breathed. “Fuck your best friend.”
He tore at his jeans, freeing his cock. He was already leaking. He pushed her legs apart, the stockings slippery under his hands. He didn’t need to guide himself; she was already wet from her own ministrations. He drove into her in one brutal thrust, burying himself in the hot, clutching tightness of her.
“Yes,” she hissed, her head thrown back against the door. “Oh god, yes. This is it. This is the feeling.”
He fucked her with a frantic, possessive fury. The car rocked on its suspension. Each plunge was a claim staked in volatile territory. He gripped her stockinged thighs, his fingers sinking into her flesh.
“You’re my best friend,” he grunted, the words punching out in time with his thrusts. “And you have a fucking amazing cunt.”
She laughed, a wild, breathless sound. “It’s yours to use,” she moaned. “And everyone else’s to want. Fuck me harder. Make the car rock. Let people wonder.”
He obliged, slamming into her, his balls slapping against her. The scent of her, of sex, of leather, filled the enclosed space. She clawed at his back, her heels digging into his calves. Her climax built quickly, fueled by the adrenaline of the pub, the symbolism of the rings, the crude, raw friction of him inside her.
“I’m coming,” she gasped. “I’m coming on your cock, best friend.”
It tore through her, a silent, convulsing wave that locked her body around his. The intense, fluttering contractions milked him, dragged his own orgasm up from his spine. With a choked shout, he plunged deep and came, pulsing jet after jet into her, marking the newly defined territory of their insane pact.
He collapsed onto her, spent. Her coat was crushed beneath them. Through the window, he could see the yellow glow of a streetlight, the ordinary brick of a house wall. The mundane world, just outside.
Her hand came up and stroked his sweat-damp hair. “You have the rings?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“Good.” She shifted, wincing slightly as he slipped out of her. “Now take me home. I need a shower. And tomorrow, I start my new job.”