Chapter 12
Benedict
My brother looks a lot like the schoolboy who threw a stone straight through the greenhouse window and has returned, reluctantly, to face the music.
The only difference is that he also looks a lot like a grown man who’s been so well fucked that nothing can touch him—not even our father’s imminent death.
It’s a brave return. We are a couple of days post the wedding, and he’s left Ivy and the twins in our family’s fuck-off mansion in Little Venice.
I know he would have been here sooner, except for the fact that, when he reunited with Ivy, he found her and her little sisters living in a hellhole of a council flat in some godawful tower block and insisted on moving them out.
I can’t imagine he’s happy about having left his love behind, but no one understands duty more than my elder brother—one recent, notable exception aside, that is.
Slinky and I are eating breakfast with Flora and Ma in, funnily enough, the breakfast room when Xav rocks up. He stands in the doorway, looking wary. I’m not surprised. It’s the first time he’s seen Slinks since he dumped her. I get to my feet to greet him.
‘Jesus,’ I mutter in his ear as we bro-hug. ‘You look indecently happy. I really hope your dick is chafed as fuck.’
He chuckles and slaps me on the back. ‘Not far off it.’
‘Good.’
We release each other and he stands there awkwardly.
‘Anyway, congratulations, mate.’ He slaps me on the arm.
I think he means thank you, but I’ll let it slide.
I know we’re all playing this super-fun game of pretending that Slinks and I actually chose this fate.
His eyes dart nervously to her and back. ‘Congratulations, Selena.’
My wife holds his gaze and stays silent a fair few seconds longer than is strictly necessary before she says simply, ‘Thank you.’
Fucking hell. Even I’m sweating. Remind me not to get on the wrong side of her. Though I’m not surprised she’s icing him out. She’s certainly entitled to make him feel her wrath.
Xav clears his throat and approaches the table. ‘Hello, Ma.’ He bends and kisses our mother on both cheeks.
‘Xavier,’ Ma says frostily. This guy will be out in the cold for a long, long time if the women in his life have anything to do with it. Luckily for him, our sister has the warmest heart imaginable and is an Ivy mega-fan.
‘Hiiii,’ she squeaks, pushing her chair back so she can round the table and get him in a bear hug that involves them swaying from side to side. ‘How’s Ivy?’ she stage-whispers. I snort. Trust Flora to open proceedings with the elephant in the room.
‘Er, she’s great, thanks,’ he says, releasing her gently. I can feel the awkwardness emanating from him. Poor fucker.
No.
He’s not a poor fucker. I am. He’s getting railed to within an inch of his life by his hot little girlfriend who used to actually have sex for a living. He is in seriously good hands.
I, on the other hand, have balls of actual sapphire blue.
I meant what I told Slinky when I proposed: I intend this to be a real marriage, physically speaking.
That means I won’t sleep with other women from now on.
What it also means is that I’m completely dependent on my wife taking pity on me and putting out at some point—ideally in the very near future.
She understands this, while I understand that this is very new for her, that I don’t exactly have her trust, and that I will need to be patient until she feels ready to put herself in my hands.
Christ, the thought of her ‘putting herself in my hands’ is enough to make my dick twitch. I sit rapidly back down at the breakfast table and reach for my orange juice.
I just hope she hurries up and sees fit to ride my dick very fucking soon.
At the end of the day, I stepped up and married her.
I can’t think of a more effective way for her to show her gratitude.
For the past three mornings, I’ve woken up hard as a rock.
This morning, I actually woke up spooning her, my dick pressed up against her, my hand palming her stomach through the flirty little silk nightgown she was wearing.
Honestly, someone should tell her that if she wants to keep me at arm’s length, she should seriously downgrade the night attire.
You know those extra-vivid dreams you have right before you wake up? Well, this morning, I was preparing (in my dream, I should stress) to tug up that nightie and slip right in so that I could fuck her slowly just like that before flipping her onto her stomach and taking her like that.
Jesus. I know I should feel lucky that this transaction has netted me an indecently hot wife, but I don’t feel lucky when I wake up throbbing and leaking, and I certainly didn’t feel lucky this morning when Slinky went from breathing softly and pressing her little tush against my dick to going rigid and bolting out of bed and straight into the bathroom.
Fuck my life.
Maybe my insistence that we share a bed was premature. Maybe I should crawl off to one of the spare rooms until my wife decides she wants to give me my conjugal rights.
Xav takes a seat at the table and picks up the pot of tea. I have to hand it to him: the guy has chutzpah. Our elite education was good for something, I suppose—it’s qualified us to brazen it out and maintain decorum in even the most excruciating of circumstances.
‘I saw the papers,’ he says blithely. ‘It seems you two pulled off a hell of a coup.’
Well, I suppose this is a marginally better topic for breakfast conversation than our dying father.
Marginally.
‘No one suspected a thing,’ I say. ‘They were all absolutely gobsmacked. Weren’t they, Slinks?
’ I lay an arm along the back of her chair.
She’s looking particularly lovely today, her shiny brown hair tied back in the kind of perky, virginal ponytail that makes her look like she’s off to play lacrosse and makes me horny as fuck.
She’s not a virgin. At least, I don’t think she is.
She’s had a few short relationships, from what I know, even if anything longer term was impossible thanks to her high-profile engagement.
Still, I have strong suspicions that she’s at the more innocent end of the spectrum of sexual experience, which is really fucking unhelpful, because Jesus, the things I could show her.
Why is the thought of instructional sex so hot?
And why is she so hot? And why am I so fucking sexed up this morning?
‘It all went off perfectly,’ she says, drizzling honey onto her Greek yoghurt. That’s about as superlative as Slinky gets.
‘It’s still so weird that my brother got married and I wasn’t there to see it,’ he muses aloud. There is so much subtext there that I have no intention of touching it with a bargepole.
‘You weren’t missed,’ my sister says, grinning at him. ‘Oh, that sounded so rude. I meant people weren’t upset with you for staying away. I don’t think anyone really noticed.
‘Except for the Daily Mail.’ I point my teaspoon at him, and Xav, Flora, and I laugh. Slinky and Ma do not.
The Mail published one of the many hilarious headlines on New Year’s Day: BIG brOTHER IS NOT WATCHING. BENEDICT STEALS WIFE AND TITLE FROM UNDER XAVIER’S NOSE.
We kept all the papers. I might have to frame that one in my study.
‘Yoghurt?’ Slinky asks, sliding a huge cut-glass bowl of the stuff towards me. She gives me a small smile that I take to mean I’m still not sure about you, or this, but I like you a whole fucking lot more than your douchebag brother.
I lounge back in my chair and grin at her, letting my eyes sweep appreciatively over her face in a way I know she’ll pick up on. Reflexively, she licks her lips and I inwardly punch the air.
‘Why thank you, sweetheart,’ I tell her. ‘I’d love some.’
The vigil by my father’s bedside goes on forever, or so it seems. Days bleed into nights, and I suspect the only person actually enjoying the situation is my bride, because we’re on totally different sleep schedules.
She even escapes down to London for a couple of days for meetings.
While she and her folks base themselves out of Wentworth’s original Oxford headquarters, several of the divisions are in London.
I’m sure she’s glad to get away from her husband’s relentless morning glories and the air of death that hangs over Belvedere this week.
I should be grateful—we all should be—that Pa has been able to spend his last few months at home.
It’s an insane level of privilege, after all, to have this round-the-clock care for him, complete with a proper hospital bed and endless equipment and countless medical professionals on rotation.
I know that. Ivy’s poor stepmum, Dawn, has this horrific condition called Lewy body dementia where basically your brain and your body crap out.
It sounds utterly tragic. And, before Xav had her transferred to the private care facility we’re funding, she was in this ghastly nursing home with no proper care.
Stories like that really do put our privilege into perspective, but what I’m beginning to realise is that you can’t glamorise or sanitise this stuff. A bit, sure, but not fully.
It’s still utterly, unrelentingly shite.