by Nigel May
Which was why a sack-emptying bunk-up with Sutton Rivers was just what he needed. His screwing of Sutton had been one of those things that had come, quite literally, out of nowhere. He had never fancied her and certainly never had any deep-seated desire to climb under the duvet with her, but one night after an industry awards ceremony in London three years earlier, he had somehow found himself alone with Sutton back in her Velvet hotel suite. Sheridan had asked him to accompany her to the event as he had matters to deal with, doubtless both of a business and an erogenous nature, at Velvet New York and would be out of the country. A continual supply of the best champagne and the drunken flirtations of Sutton had seen him bring the awards ceremony to a somewhat hedonistic climax as he presented Sutton with a lascivious honour of his own – the joy of being yet another notch on his already rather splintered bedpost.
It was an action he’d regretted the moment he opened his eyes the next morning, having passed out on the hotel suite bed mere moments after discharging his drunken desire into her. It was clear though that he was not going to be able to sneak off and Walk of Shame his way back to his own hotel room. Sutton was already up, pouring him a coffee, and wearing the slinkiest of negligees that barely covered the cheeks of her curvaceous ass. She had her back to him, but turned on hearing him stirring from his coma and smiled. Even though Julian had seen that smile a million times before, this time it caused a pool of disbelief deep within his core to ripple with fear.
‘Morning, lover! I’m just fixing you a coffee… I assumed you liked it…’ Sutton paused and let her tongue point upwards at her top lip before adding the word ‘black’. She moved back to the bed, placing the coffee on the bedside table and climbing back in alongside her husband’s best friend. ‘Not that you’ll be drinking it quite yet, Julian,’ she purred. ‘I think I have some more business for you to attend to.’ As she spoke, she lifted up the hem of her negligee to reveal her sex.
Despite his horror at waking up to find that he had fucked his boss’s wife, Julian’s cock rose automatically to attention at the sight of her almost hairless quim. He felt his cheeks flush with a heated embarrassment at his inability to control his own libido. Needless to say, the coffee had been stone cold by the time he had finally gotten round to drinking it.
Thirty-six months later and Julian was still coming face to flange with Sutton’s pussy on a regular basis. Always at her instigation and always when there was no chance of Sheridan catching them. Julian was Sutton’s little secret and she intended for it to stay that way. And Julian had no way of ever saying no, or ever not doing anything that Sutton wanted him to. He was her plaything.
But three years on meant that Sutton was three years older and that meant she had undergone an amount of plastic surgery and cosmetic work that most women wouldn’t be able to clock up in a lifetime. And even though Julian’s cock was sufficiently detached from his brains for it to work independently when Sutton called upon it, he was definitely finding that pushing Sutton’s head down to fellate him while he shut his eyes, or doing her from behind, was becoming the only way to keep himself hard: he was pushing fifty after all.
It wasn’t that Sutton had become ugly, far from it, it was just that he had seen so much change in her over the years that her eyebrows heading skywards, her nose narrowing and her stretched skin were not the turn-on he needed. That was why he was currently sliding his rod into her doggy-style as Sutton lay face down, her ass elevated, on the bed in her Sandy Lane hotel suite.
‘Feed me, Julian. Give it to me!’ Sutton pushed her body back onto his length, trying to take in every orgasmic millimetre of his member between the walls of her pussy. Julian had to admit it was the one part of her that he still couldn’t help but find irresistible. It was tight and could drain his cock as dry as any pussy or ass he had ever ploughed. But to do so he was finding more and more he had to disconnect from the sound of Sutton’s voice or the sight of her overly enhanced face if he was to reap total satisfaction from his sexual encounters with La Rivers senior.
Determined to muffle her cries of exultation, Julian pushed Sutton’s face down into the pillow underneath her and drove his cock into her as deep and hard as he could. The cry of joy that came from her as she rocked her way to orgasm was now suitably disguised enough for Julian to pretend that the dark, delicious folds of flesh wrapped around his cock could belong to any one of his sexual fantasies. He was picturing Nikki’s face as he unleashed his seed into her mother. The reality might have been removed but the memory could live on forever. If he had to carry on banging his boss’s wife – and it would seem Sutton had no desire to give him up – then he was going to try and make it as nerve-tinglingly rapturous as possible.
Sutton lay in bed after Julian left her room. He had pulled his clothes back on almost the moment he had removed his member from inside her, and walked out. As he left he told her that he would be taking one of the Velvet jets to Toronto to deal with the hotel business there and that he would probably stay there for a few days as one of his homes was situated there and it was a place he loved to be. These days he didn’t often find himself in Canada with his work and seeing as he would be in Toronto on his own he wanted to make the most of it.
Sutton pulled the sheets up tightly under her chin and drew her knees up, causing a pyramid to form in the material. It was a position she often took up in bed, one she had taken ever since she was a little girl growing up in New York, and one that normally accompanied her desire to think about something. Today her thoughts were focussed on the man who had just left her room at breakneck speed, Julian Bailey. As she wrapped the cotton sheets around her they might as well have been woven from disappointment, such was the feeling coating her being. And Julian was the reason: it would appear that he was losing interest in her.
What her mouth wanted to cry was ‘How the fuck dare he!’ but what she heard herself cry was ‘How the fuck can I blame him?’. Sutton was forty-seven and yes, that was the same age as Julian himself, but she had no doubt that he was dipping his executive rod into as many people as he could. He and Sheridan were cut from the same cloth and neither could keep their cocks inside their boxer shorts. But was Julian all Sutton could achieve in the bedroom department? He was a great lover but he was hardly toy-boy material himself. Sure, she had the money to order ‘womb service’ whenever she liked and to pay some hot stallion to ride her into oblivion, but that was not what an insecure Sutton needed: she wanted to know that she could still pull a man using the charms of her own beauty. Hatton’s refusal and now Julian’s evident waning interest were crumbling her already fragile, teetering tower of confidence with the force of a twister.
Sutton was intelligent enough to know that what she and Julian had together was not, and probably never would be, a fairy tale romance with a happy ever after ending but sometimes she couldn’t help but let herself believe that it could be. The blissful romantic notion made her feel alive, young again and worthwhile. But then came the darker moments, when maybe clarity appeared against her wishes and she could read the signs of Julian’s waning desire. She had been totting them up over the last few months. Whereas at first their lovemaking had often been in the missionary position, their kisses urgent, their exploration of each other’s bodies without any boundaries, over recent times she had found herself flipped over for a one-angled session from behind, or Julian had foregone the kisses to immediately go down on her, often completing their union with his tongue without their lips ever meeting. Any mid-sex dirty talk she had tried to indulge in was met with his hands or his cock being inserted in her mouth. A coincidence, or was he trying to silence her, not wanting her to put him off? She suspected the latter.
Julian had always made her feel good and given her the feelings she needed to make her not doubt herself so much, or at least he had until recently. He had been the one man to show her some version of love, even if his gateway of choice was the one between her legs and not via her heart, and his mode d’emploi was to use sex instead of
candlelit dinners and moonlit walks along the banks of the Seine, or as the waves lapped their naked feet on the edge of the Caribbean Sea. In simple terms, apart from Sheridan, he was the only man who seemed to want to climb into bed with her. And Sutton was more than aware that to Sheridan, her own body was a last port of call for a gratuitous grope and a drunken fumble when all his other conquests were engaged otherwise. At least Julian chose to be with her, or he had done. Now he just seemed to be going through the motions.
What had happened to Sutton? Sometimes she wasn’t even sure herself.
Leaning across to the bedside table in her Sandy Lane suite, she reached for an ornate hand mirror resting there. It was something her mother, Tilisha, had given her when she was a little girl, a fairy-tale item worthy of a princess living in a fantasy castle, searching for her knight in shining armour. Tilisha had found it in a thrift store and paid no more than a few dollars but it was now one of Sutton’s most treasured possessions. It was something that she had kept throughout her entire life and would have with her until her dying day.
But even though the mirror stayed the same, it was Sutton’s face that seemed to change every time she gazed into it. She had morphed from an innocent girl to a streetwise and sassy New Yorker with a glint in her eye, a fusion of excitement about the future and a heartache borne of the tragedy that life could serve when you least expected it. She had progressed to a married woman, able to decorate her face with the best make-up and treat her skin with the finest lotions and potions her multi-million-dollar husband could afford, but was that when she had peaked? When had she stopped feeling happy with what she saw when she stared into the mirror? When had the face in the mirror become a stranger she just couldn’t place? When had she let herself become something to despise? How many tiny wrinkles and laughter lines had it taken?
Staring into the mirror, Sutton gazed at her reflection, bathed in the light of the beautiful Bajan sunlight that streamed through the window from outside. She could see every pore, every line and, in her mind, every imperfection – even those that weren’t actually there.
When had it started? With the discovery of Sheridan’s betrayal of the sanctity of their marriage, when she had caught him with the young opera star? That would make sense. She had been pregnant with Nikki at the time and couldn’t seem to cope with how misshapen her own body had become. Had she blamed Sheridan or herself for his straying? She knew the answer, even if she knew that it wasn’t really the right one.
After the birth she had attempted to shift the baby weight, hiring a personal trainer to shout at her and mould her into a shape most young mothers would have been more than happy with. She had taken photos of herself from every angle and analysed them in tortuous detail. She would stare at her face in the mirror that her mother had given her and run her fingertips across the planes she saw there. Across the jawline, the expanses of her cheeks, the ridges of her profile. Dissatisfaction gripped her with every action, the conclusion that she was somehow ugly always the same. Before she knew it she was booking herself in for her first cosmetic procedure in an attempt to stop herself from constantly cataloguing her self-diagnosed flaws. Without diagnosis she became body dysmorphic, obsessed with trying to improve her face and body with constant nips, tucks, pulls and procedures when it fact it should have been her mind she was trying to fix.
Sutton had never been treated for her condition, refusing to allow herself to believe she was actually suffering from something, but she knew that the mirror she had in her hand was a friend capable of untold betrayal. Sometimes she would see happiness and joy, usually after a visit to Jona Fleet in London or another of her team of surgeons around the world, but usually she would see an inescapable ugliness, her stare sometimes penetrating through her reflection to an imaginary tableau vivant of her own stages of life. Each dramatic scene was silently played by actresses who all looked like her but as they aged, they all became uglier and more disturbing to the onlooker. It was an ongoing process that she was determined to stop. Sheridan was the one who made her feel this way, he was at fault. It was him she needed to blame.
If Sheridan was to blame for the miserable way she was feeling as she lay in her bed in one of the most beautiful hotels on earth then he needed to be punished. This should not be happening. If he was happy to flaunt his infidelities with his not-so-subtle adulterous ways maybe it was about time that he found out a few home truths about how attractive his wife could still be to other people, even if not to her own self. Maybe he needed to find out about her and Julian… Maybe she should make that happen. But she’d need to be strong. And for that she’d need to be loved. And the only man showing her any kind of love, albeit purely physical, was Julian. She couldn’t let any lukewarm flame that still burned for her inside him burn out. Not just yet… She needed to turn that flame lava hot.
Sutton put the hand mirror down again on the bedside table. If Julian was off to Toronto for a few days then she would find herself there too. He wouldn’t be the only one chartering a Velvet jet to fly into Canada.
As she picked up the phone to call Kassidy to order a jet for her, little did she suspect Julian was only still bedding her because he hadn’t yet worked out how to turn down the boss’s wife… And that meant the flame would only ever be lukewarm at best.
34
The taste of the tequila warmed Sheridan Rivers’s throat as he downed the liquid in one swift motion. It was his favourite brand of the spirit and the only one that he kept in his bar in the penthouse suite at Velvet Barbados. Like him, it was rich, smooth and, in his mind, deliciously irresistible. A theory he’d been keen to put to the test with the golf-loving Mexican tourist at Sandy Lane, but sadly Julian’s news about Nikki’s treachery had put paid to that.
Sheridan picked up an award that was sitting on the bar of his suite. The accolade was heavy and had been presented to him nearly two years earlier for being Tycoon of the Year, a title that he had hoped maybe his eldest daughter would herself be winning one day. Fat chance after what he had heard from Julian.
Sheridan positioned the award back on the bar and scanned his watch. Nikki should have been there over forty-five minutes ago. He’d texted her saying that he wished to see her. He hadn’t said why and had been surprised when she hadn’t shown up on time. He knew she was in Barbados, or at least she had been in the last twenty-four hours, as another cutie Sheridan had his eye on, a young woman working on reception, had told him that she had overheard one of her colleagues making the reservation for Nikki at The Cliff the night before.
He tried ringing her phone again. It went straight to voicemail. He tried Kassidy’s too, to see if she had any idea. Again it clicked straight through to the messaging service. Annoyed at his inability to progress the situation he clicked the phone off and slammed it down on the bar alongside the award.
‘Where the fuck is everybody? I pay these people to work for me,’ he cursed, conveniently forgetting that he had given Kassidy a much-needed weekend off.
He reached for the bottle again, pouring another shot of the tequila into his empty glass. For a brief moment he remembered the drinking he had done in Crete the night of Max’s death. A wave of regret washed over him. At least he wouldn’t be driving today and besides he needed something to take his mind off the fact that his daughter was not only betraying him but seemingly ignoring his wishes as well.
Enjoying the warmth as the AquaRiva moved down his throat, Sheridan picked his phone back up. He checked the time – what for, he didn’t really know. The person he wished to phone worked for him round the clock as far as Sheridan was concerned, even if he was halfway around the world.
Sheridan relished the continuing heat of the spirit. He needed warmth, as his heart was decidedly frosty about what he was set to do. But it had to be done. A lesson needed to be learnt.
He spoke as soon as a voice at the other end of the phone picked up.
‘It’s Sheridan. I need you to do something for me. It concerns Nikki…’ He bar
ked his orders as loudly as he could to try and drown out the sound of his heart shattering.
Nikki had received the messages from her father but she couldn’t reply. Not yet. She didn’t know what she could say to try and win him over. So, when in doubt, get the hell out. It was the coward in her rising to the surface. She wasn’t proud of her actions, but she had chosen to ignore a rendezvous with her dad and head straight to the airport to fly away from Barbados as soon as possible. She had decided not to use any of the Velvet jets as the pilot would doubtless have to tell her father where she was headed and for now all she wanted to do was hide. Out of sight and hopefully out of mind. After a few hours’ wait at the airport, spent looking over her shoulder every second in case her father, mother, Julian, Kassidy or anyone else she knew should be trying to track her down, she boarded an Air Canada flight to Toronto. There was only one place she wanted to be right now and that was alongside Blair Lonergan. In a world that had suddenly turned upside down, he was the only person she could think of who might be able to help her make sense of everything.
As she took her seat at the back of plane, her phone sounded. She hadn’t yet turned it off as the vehicle was still on the runway, awaiting take-off. She guessed it would be her father again, demanding to know where she was. As she looked at the number she knew it wasn’t.
It was a call she knew she had to take. A sense of dread passed over her as she answered.
‘Hello…’
‘I need more money. It’s time for you to cough up again.’
She listened to the voice on the other end of the line then hung up, her orders completed, just as the cabin crew requested all electronic devices be switched off. She would have phoned Blair to tell him she was on her way but there was no time now – he’d be happy to see her, she knew it.