Then she replied with a text that sent a jolt of powerful confused heat through his chest:
> How about eight o’clock? Too late a start? Just have to blow off my husband—guess I was supposed to do something with him tonight, but I’m sure I can cancel that easily enough.
Hugo felt his cheeks burning, his heart palpitating.
Had she sent her text messages to the wrong number? Did she actually have another guy that she’d agreed to date? Had she finally given in to temptation to ask Connor out? Was she pursuing Fabian again? Was there someone else who had successfully negotiated her defenses?
He felt suddenly very cold, very small. Well, he had encouraged her to think about other men. He had told her how hot the thought was to him—the suggestion had been clear that as far as he was concerned, he wanted his wife to try dating other guys.
And now, she was. It just seemed so shocking that she would do it like this—without telling him. Perhaps even trying to use someone else’s phone to conceal herself.
In his fantasy, Hugo had assumed if she finally agreed to try it, she would keep him fully informed leading up to, and after, a date with someone else. Knowing about it, about how it made her feel, about everything she experienced—that was the whole point of this. If he didn’t know about it, it was simply an affair.
He tried to calm down. Madeleine would never be stupid enough to send a text to the wrong number, would she? Especially one like this. She had to be doing it on purpose. It was a game, to make him think she was having a date with another man.
Role play, it had to be.
He texted back:
> That’s fine. See you there—looking forward to it!
He half expected the next text to be some awful apology, that she’d meant her texts for someone else. He felt his insides squirming around. If she did that, it would at least make things honest again between them. But it would confirm that she’d actually accepted someone’s request for a date. Though half of him badly wanted that situation to happen one day, the rest of him didn’t feel entirely ready for that entire shocking scenario.
Her final text was no apology.
> Fantastic! See you then, can’t wait to see you xx
Kiss, kiss indeed.
He sat still for a moment or two.
He looked at the clock. Plenty of time to get showered and off to the W. If she had a date planned with some hunky other guy, he wouldn’t be showing up, judging by the misdirected text messages. Hugo could turn up instead, and demand to know what the bejesus was going on.
Oh, he’d be forgiving, he’d even probably tell her he was actually happy for her to start dating—but he would make the firm demand for her to tell him everything if she did. Maybe she’d be angry about that, maybe she’d say it would spoil the fun for her—but if that was the case, he wasn’t sure he wanted any of it—even with the strong urge inside him to know she was experiencing that wicked thrill of being with a new man.
If this was all a clever little role-play Madeleine had contrived for their Date Night, well, she’d be expecting him to turn up. He seriously hoped that was the case.
He hauled himself up off the edge of the sofa. One way or the other, he had to get down to that hotel. For either a date or a confrontation, either way, he needed a shower and a set of smart clothes.
He was about to get up and head for the bathroom when their landline phone rang. It startled him a little, since they so rarely received calls to that phone, particularly since it was unlisted.
He dived for it, said with a hint of uncertainty: “Hello?”
“Oh hey, sweetie.” It was Madeleine. Hugo felt his stomach twinge.
“Hey honey, what’s up?” he asked, neutrally.
She sighed. “They had me working a little late at the store—the new JK Rowling detective novel came in today, so the demand was crazy.”
“Oh, right.”
Another sigh. “Look, I know we’ve been really looking forward to Date Night, but I just had a call from Lucy and she’s really messed up right now—she found out that Greg’s going out with some other girl now, so—”
“Oh. Well they did split up.” Heart pounding in his throat, Hugo found himself pretending to engage with her lie, not really knowing what else to say.
What was she doing? Really blowing him off?
“You know how she gets—and she’s sitting in a brand new, virtually empty apartment. I said I’d go over there, maybe stay the night—that okay?”
Still, he could not work out whether this was part of a role-play idea, or whether he actually had an adulterous—or soon-to-be adulterous—wife on his hands. Why was he so hard as he spoke to her, hands trembling so much it was difficult to hold the phone up to his ear?
This was exciting to him, unnerving and breathtaking like that moment a roller coaster car climbs to the top of the first high peak at the start of the ride.
“Uh… sure, honey. We can do Date Night another time. I guess… it’s been a pretty busy week anyway, we’re both probably tired.”
“You’re the best,” she said. “I promise I’ll make it up to you.”
He suddenly thought about the last time she’d missed a planned date night—their anniversary. And how she’d made up for that. That had been no role play. She had actually shown that piano player her bare pussy.
What if this were real, right now?
“Honey—you called on the landline?” he asked her, the first time signaling that something was strange about all this.
“My phone battery died, had to use Ryan’s,” she said, then gave a little chuckle. “You know, you’ve had that cell number ever since I’ve known you, but I don’t know it off by heart? But because I set up the phone in the apartment, that number’s lodged in my head.”
“Funny.”
Hugo thinking she could have tried to remember the number her new date had given her, and what came out of her head had actually been her husband’s cell number. Was that likely?
Madeleine’s call to the landline seemed to back up the text message that stated her need to blow off her husband—it was one more piece of evidence against the theory that those texts had come from some unknown adulterous woman who’d gotten the phone number wrong.
He decided to let it lie. It seemed more exciting to him, now, that he get Madeleine off the line so he could ready himself for a taxi ride up to Times Square.
There were two possible outcomes of him showing up there, both of which he hoped might lead to a wild night in a luxury hotel room, the perfect situation for Date Night. But if he was late, and Madeleine assumed she’d been stood up by whoever it was she believed was turning up—that wasn’t worth thinking about.
*
He threw caution to the wind and got a cab uptown. It wasn’t that expensive. To step out onto the sidewalk in his crisp evening suit, and not feel the sweat and grime of a Subway journey, that made it worth it.
He decided that he had to trust her—she had to know what she was doing. If Madeleine was initiating an affair, then it was something she was exploring with a view to his confession that he harbored fantasies of her sleeping with other men. That meant when she was ready, she’d tell him the details.
This was Madeleine, after all—she did not have affairs. She’d come straight to him the moment her manager had even kissed her, for heaven’s sake.
He could trust her.
As Times Square approached, he was already semi-hard in anticipation, almost forgot to pay the cab driver he was so anxious to put an end to the uncertainty.
The cab had dropped him off just down from the hotel, since he didn’t want to wait 15 minutes just to drive one last block because of the insane number of people and cars around.
As he ducked around the corner just off Times Square itself, into W47th Street, he felt his phone vibrate in his jacket pocket—another text message. His heart skipped another beat. What did Madeleine have to say now? Had she realized she’d sent her text messages to the wrong ph
one before?
He paused outside the fairly innocuous entrance to the W hotel, and retrieved his phone.
It was a message from Lucy:
> Hey Hugo, thanks so much for letting me borrow your wife for the night! And I know it was supposed to be your date night and everything. Really appreciate it Luce xx
That stopped him in his tracks.
What on Earth did it mean? That Madeleine had actually gone over to Lucy’s new place in Brooklyn to help pull her back from the edge? That had all been hot air, though, hadn’t it? Part of her cover story.
Hugo felt a little foolish, standing out on the street in front of a luxury hotel he may not have had any call to be outside.
Either this was Madeleine cementing her cover story for her husband, and therefore she had merely sent those texts to the wrong phone by mistake—or else her arranging of an evening’s role-play was more complex than he’d appreciated. Lucy would have to be in on the truth either way—either if Madeleine was intending to meet her husband right now, or some other man.
Of course, there was also the possibility that Madeleine had been telling the entire truth—that she’d had to cancel because Lucy was feeling so awful. That the texts were completely unrelated. That Hugo was standing outside a hotel with no reason for being there at all.
But it was too much coincidence that Madeleine’s phone happened to have run out of batteries, and she’d had to call him via the landline. Hugo felt his loins stir. Adulterous or not, he now felt a strong craving for his Madeleine to be up there in the W bar, waiting for a man to come sweep her off her feet.
He took a deep breath and stepped inside the gloom, and headed past the dual water features toward the elevator that would take him to the hotel lobby on the seventh floor.
If he’d been stupid, and unfortunate, he figured the worst thing that could happen would be getting to the bar to find no one in there that he recognized. He wouldn’t have to tell Madeleine or Lucy that he’d been idiot enough to come all the way to the W to assuage his curiosity about that mystery text message.
As the elevator doors opened on the seventh floor, however, his swollen manhood was telling him quite clearly that Madeleine would be there, for good or ill.
Eleven
Madeleine and Hugo had stayed at the W once on the Globe’s dime, a few years back, before Hugo had even popped the question.
The decor inside was somewhat different this time, but the atmosphere was similar, and the effect took him right back to those heady days when they were still merely boyfriend-and-girlfriend, feeling invincible with no hint that the dying newspaper industry would cast them out.
As he hovered at reception, trying to work out a strategy, he hoped this connection might have been a reason why Madeleine would set her role play adventure right here.
If, on the other hand, she was here to meet another man, she could have selected this place merely because it was a luxury hotel that she knew, and might make her feel most comfortable for the nervous step of actually breaking her marriage vows.
Safely obscured in among a crowd of tourists, Hugo considered—and then rejected—the idea of going up to reception to ask if they had a room booked under Madeleine’s name.
What if she wasn’t even using her real name?
He knew it was only a mental delaying tactic. He was tiptoeing around the edge of a deep, icy pool he was supposed to just jump straight into. There was going to be no shock-free way into that cold, cold water.
Quietly, keeping to the shadows—profuse in that hotel, with its dark nightclub feel designed for a young, trendy clientele—he ventured toward the bar.
Even as he approached the entrance, he could just about see a young blonde woman perched on a stool at the bar, wearing a dress that looked painted on.
Hugo caught his breath.
From behind, he could not completely confirm her identity, though his nerves were jangling enough that he felt confident it was her.
Madeleine was here, waiting in the bar.
But who was she waiting for?
Hugo felt his insides burning, his pulse racing, his loins tingling. He turned, checking to see if anyone else was approaching the bar at that moment—or if anyone had spotted his curious behavior hovering outside the entrance to the bar. It looked as though he was safe.
What to do next? He’d ascertained that Madeleine’s story about sleeping over with Lucy was false—and ergo, that Lucy was in on whatever little game Madeleine was playing.
The bar was surprisingly empty for a Saturday night. When they’d been here before, it had been mid-week, and very lively. Perhaps it just wasn’t cool to go out on a Saturday night when you were the kind of person who might frequent a hotel like this, or else it was too early in the evening. There were some people around—mostly seeming to be tourists, probably Midwesterners with their checked shirts tucked tidily into pale jeans, big sneakers adorning their feet, all wide-eyed over the amazing sights inside and outside this place. In fact, if anything, considering the other patrons, Madeleine looked out of place here.
God, she looked good.
It took him a moment to work up the courage to go over there. His fevered brain just kept wanting to consider the options—but there was really only one available. Walk confidently over there.
If she was there to meet him, he’d instantly show that he was up for whatever role-play situation she envisaged. If she wasn’t there to meet him, and it was to be confrontation at the bar, then he would do best appearing strong, assured.
Hugo took a deep breath and made a beeline for the bar and for Madeleine.
*
She’d been nervously watching the entrance for however long she’d been waiting—that much was clear to him as he approached, and saw that flick of her eyes toward him, at first not registering the recognizable sight of her husband, then on the second, she saw him.
And what was her reaction? A slight start, perhaps. Either as she attempted to hide her shock that it was her husband strolling through that entrance, and not her intended date, or perhaps because she hadn’t expected to see him in a suit.
“Hey,” she said, hopping off the stool to greet him.
Hugo’s semi-hard cock twitched in his pants. It wasn’t going to be semi-hard for long. She was wearing a black satiny dress that seemed molded to her skin, held over her shoulders by the thinnest of straps, the neckline plunging so deep that more than half of her breasts appeared visible, her nipples only just covered, yet prominent as they pushed against the thin satin material.
Her cleavage was heart-stopping in that dress. Hugo was willing to bet that any man who’d come near her that evening, while she was in this dress, would have found it hard to direct his eyes anywhere other than that shapely valley between her breasts.
Off the stool, he saw that the dress only just made it far enough down her legs to cover her behind and conceal her panties from his gaze. Her legs looked fantastic in the nylons that made him just want to sink to his knees and wrap her thighs around his head.
“You made it,” she said, and he took a deep lungful of her floral perfume—a different scent to any that she usually wore—before she kissed him softly on both cheeks.
“Sorry I’m a little late,” he said, as though he was definitely supposed to be there.
“Oh, it’s no problem,” she said, and the fact that she wasn’t either explaining why she wasn’t currently at Lucy’s apartment, or asking him how come he was here actually made Hugo feel a little better.
She smiled, running her eyes up and down him, taking in the smart suit, open-neck shirt. Then she said: “Actually it gave me just enough time to come up with an excuse for my husband, and persuade my best friend to help cover for me.”
Hugo nodded slowly. “Your husband…” he said, proceeding with caution, not entirely certain that Madeleine wasn’t merely making a little joke. “Does he have any idea you’re doing this?”
She shook her head, then perched back on her stool,
showing him even more of her thighs. She nodded over to the bartender, who drifted over to top up her gin and tonic, and fetch a Bourbon and coke for Hugo.
“You know,” she said, “he actually has this fantasy of me dating another guy. Other guys, actually. He doesn’t seem too fussy.”
“Right,” Hugo smiled, feeling his ears burning, his heart fluttering as she talked about him in the third person.
She said, “We only talked about it recently. Funny thing is, I was already feeling this need to be a little more… you know… flirtatious with other guys. I’d forgotten how good it makes a girl feel.”
The bartender placed Hugo’s drink before him on the bar. He attempted to portray a picture of cool sophistication as he picked it up, focused on minimizing the tremor in his hand. But he badly needed the alcohol. It was everything he could do to stop himself simply throwing it down his throat.
“So why don’t you just tell him you’re here tonight, with me?”
She shrugged. “Seems a little insane, doesn’t it? Started out, I assumed he wanted me to go after some other guy because he was already cheating on me with someone else—or wanted to. Wanted to get rid of his guilt.”
“But he doesn’t want that, huh?”
“No, he doesn’t. I’ve come to see that—he’s just a voyeur. He gets off on watching, or even thinking about me in a sexual context.”
“Must be a good thing for a marriage.”
“I guess.”
“So you two are still… intimate?” Hugo found himself getting into the mindset of his character as dreamt up by Madeleine. But who did she want him to be?
“Oh yes,” she said. “Does that bother you?”
“Not at all. But you’re with me tonight, and you haven’t told him.”
She took a big sip of her drink, then looked him in the eye. “My husband might think he has a fantasy about me being with other guys, but I can’t risk our marriage. I have to see how he really feels about this kind of thing before I reveal to him that I’m in favor. Whether he actually can handle it.”
Hugo nodded. The words “reveal to him that I’m in favor” echoing and re-echoing around his head. God, that was both insanely exciting and the most terrifying thing he’d ever heard.
Madeleine Plays (A Wife-Watching Romance): Book Two of the Madeleine Trilogy Page 10