Chapter 18
Selena
Did we have the right vibe?
Would we achieve cult couple status?
Would the glossy magazines want to feature our wedding?
These were the things I spiralled over at school; these were the cracks of insecurity that I identified in Taylor’s lyrics, that I seized and ran with.
These days, with my adolescent angst far less of a distant memory than I’d like it to be and my adolescent assumptions about the future way off target, as it turns out, I’m far more fixated on ‘Out of the Woods’.
That’s the other thing I didn’t tell Ben.
But, like in the song, whether he and I are out of the woods yet is something I ask myself over and over and fucking over.
It sounds far less cool in my head than it does when Taylor asks it.
I spend a lot of time with thoughts (read: obsessions) about the future ricocheting around in my head. It’s still an enormous effort to wrench my thinking from the years and years I spent meticulously pondering and planning my marriage to Xav.
How many kids would we have?
How long would we wait to have them?
What kind of father would he be? Answer: focused, dutiful, committed, loving.
What kind of husband would he be? Answer: the first three adjectives stand, but I was never sure about the last one…
Anyway, I’ve had to recalibrate everything I know about my future, and I have far fewer answers yet about my new husband than my old fiancé.
But it’s hard to give a damn about a single one of the questions that send me spiralling at three a.m. when I walk into the bathroom of my family’s palatial chalet.
Because my husband is standing in the shower, water streaming down his face and over every perfectly cut muscle, his dick in his hand as steam billows around him.
‘Get in the shower, sweetheart,’ he says with that mixture of arousal and impatience and arrogance that turns me straight to putty.
Mere months ago, I was an innocent, my preferred form of porn a photo of Jonathan Bailey wearing slutty little specs and a DRINK YOUR MILK t-shirt.
Poor, sweet, na?ve Selena.
This is porn.
I peel off my clothes as quickly as possible: off come my salopettes, my white t-shirt with the famous interlocking Cs picked out in gold sequins (it’s been sunny enough to swap out the base layers for t-shirts), my ski socks and my underwear.
I’m sweaty and exhausted and shaky-legged after a mogul-filled morning in excellent snow, but when my husband looks like this, and when he looks at me like this, none of that is relevant compared to the ache deep in my core, the need for him to fill me up, to use me.
No sooner have I stepped into the huge marble-and-glass shower enclosure than he scoops me up in his arms, moulding my body to his under the torrent by clamping down on my bottom as he gets me in a headlock.
His kiss is hot, urgent, and I luxuriate in the feeling of his tongue dominating mine as his cock thumps against my lower stomach and I glide my hands over the hard, soaking musculature of his shoulders and arms and back and—finally—that rock-hard arse of his.
The man is a god.
Useless to deny it.
And Jesus, he knows how to kiss.
The throbbing between my legs grows more insistent.
We’ve enjoyed a few showers together so far, but there’s something about being here, away from home and prying eyes, in the dazzling white playground of the French Alps where hedonism is positively expected.
I feel so much lighter out here than I do in real life, and right now, pleasantly buzzed from sharing not only that bottle of rosé but a host of memories and vulnerabilities, too, I think I’d let Ben do whatever the hell he likes to me.
He pulls away a little, breathing hard, his green eyes flooded with black pupil as he paints a line down my stomach with his dick while he uses his free hand to pet and pinch one of my nipples.
I shudder with the pleasure of it and widen my stance.
My mouth is already watering with anticipation of what we’ll get up to in here.
‘I want you,’ he says gruffly, ‘to turn around, and to bend over, and to hold on to that handrail for dear life. Got it, princess?’
I nod, my entire body thrumming at his touch. ‘Yeah.’
‘Good girl.’ He leans forward and kisses me lingeringly before releasing his dick so he can slap me on the bottom. ‘Do it.’
Feeling self-conscious in the best way, I turn, bending over as slowly and gracefully as I can for my rapt audience of one before gripping the vertical rail jutting out of the wall.
Ben’s taken me from behind a couple of times now, and it’s a lot, but it’s also the closest I’ve ever got to coming from penetrative sex, so I’m highly motivated to keep trying.
While I haven’t orgasmed that way yet—not without Ben playing with my clit at the same time, that is—the needy ache that builds when he fucks me like that is totally different from a regular orgasm, and intriguing as hell.
He steps right in behind me and runs his dick down between my cheeks, pausing at my entrance before sliding it over my clit. I shake my bum a bit, because that feels truly excellent.
‘I’m going to die,’ he confesses. ‘Not going to survive this. Best view I’ve ever, ever seen.’
‘Please at least try,’ I say, and he laughs.
‘I will.’
I have a confession to make. Ben may be gorgeous and huge and highly skilled, but none of those things are actually the secret sauce when it comes to his success in the bedroom.
Nope.
It’s how he talks to me, the filthy, outrageous things he says and the way he says them, that makes me absolutely feral.
Like now.
‘The way I’ve imagined bending you over and fucking you senseless, for years and years,’ he says, continuing to slide his dick up and down between my cheeks.
‘You’d be standing there at some party, looking so polished and perfect, and I’d be thinking, I’d rail her so hard she’d spurt like a fucking geyser. ’
‘Really?’ I manage. ‘Did you?’ I don’t know why, but playing the I used to have forbidden fantasies about you is my absolute favourite game to play with Ben.
How much of this he’s reverse-engineering versus recounting from memory, I have no clue, but it doesn’t stop me from being addicted to it—especially when he’s doing that with his dick.
‘God, yes.’ He notches himself at my entrance, and I brace for the inevitable intrusion.
‘I’d watch you with my fucking brother, and I’d imagine pulling you off to the loos’—he drags a hand over my wet cheek—‘and pushing you down and pulling up whatever hot little dress you were wearing and baring this gorgeous arse for me. I’d get on my knees and lick you till you were ready.
But you don’t need that now, do you? You’re fucking soaking for me. ’
I totally am, and he’s not talking about the water. I shimmy my hips and rest my head against the fist I’m making around the handrail. ‘No. I just need you.’
‘Be more specific, baby. What part of me do you need?’
‘Your dick.’
‘Say it.’
I roll my forehead against my hand in frustration and embarrassment. I hate that he’s making me say it, not sure I’ll ever be completely comfortable speaking like this, but I’m too desperate to care much. ‘I need your dick, honey.’
‘That’s my princess. Hold on tight.’ With that, he thrusts hard against me and drives himself half in.
I know he’s got further to go, but holy shit, the feel of it, of the huge, blunt intrusion, is like nothing else.
I blow out a breath as he pauses, urging myself to take the rest. Knowing how good it will feel.
A moment later, I really know how good it feels, because he thrusts forward again and rams the rest of his cock inside me, pushing the very air out of my lungs as the torrent of water thunders around us. He laughs, and it sounds like disbelief.
‘Jesus Christ, sweetheart. I’ll take this sight to my grave.’
‘You’d better,’ I pant. ‘I don’t bend over for just anyone, you know.’
‘I know.’ It sounds filthily conspiratorial. ‘And you never will again, will you? I’m the only lucky bastard who’ll ever, ever get the privilege of fucking my wife.’
I’ll never understand how he makes the most debauched things sound almost more sacred than those performative vows we made on our wedding day.
But he does.
‘Fuck, your cunt looks good from here,’ he groans. ‘You’re so fucking stretched.’
‘Oh God,’ I whimper. It’s so obscene, the idea of my being stretched around Ben’s cock, the idea that he can see it—that he can watch himself disappearing inside my body over and over again—even more so.
I feel so full of him. He slides both hands down my back and over my hips before gripping tightly, and I brace further, knowing what’s coming, knowing my husband is about to plough into me.
I saw the amount of girls eyeing him over lunch.
It was outrageous, all those gorgeous little ski bunnies shamelessly eye-fucking him and tossing their hair in his direction and giving him come-to-bed smiles as they sauntered past, showing off their incredible figures in skintight designer skiwear.
The whole of bloody Chelsea is here this week, it feels like.
Yet here I am, bent over for him, wearing his family’s ring as he promises me that no one else will ever get to do this to me. It’s me who’s got him this hard, me he’s apparently been fantasising about for years.
God, I’m a lucky bitch. For all the shit I’ve endured these last couple of months, I absolutely did not envision myself bent over in the shower for the youngest de Vere brother when I threw this very ring back at Xavier on Boxing Day.
The universe is a wonderful, fucked-up thing.
‘I am going to split you in fucking two,’ Ben tells me, dragging himself out of me slowly.
It’s as ominous as the cautious ascent of a rollercoaster before the vertical drop.
‘I can’t even— Fuuuck.’ That’s the broken sound he makes as he ruts back into me, and he sounds like I feel, because holy hell.
He finds his rhythm.
This feels different.