by Maya Hess
Banks filled with offshore accounts, advocates’ brass plaques and firms of accountants ran up the entire length of the street and spilled into neighbouring streets too, by the looks of the workers that flooded from their offices to wheel and deal over lunch. I made my way, against the flow, to the prestigious building of Macaulay & Fisher Advocates Limited, where I was greeted in a plush reception area, decorated mainly in gold and green, by an immaculately dressed woman in her thirties. Suddenly, I felt very out of place in my walking boots, jeans and waterproof. I caught sight of myself in a gilt-framed mirror and ran a finger beneath my dark-rimmed eyes, while my other hand worked through the mess that was my hair. Judging by my appearance, which was usually fresh and sun-kissed, my mission to reclaim Creg-ny-Varn was taking its toll. I was tired, fed up and, having discovered that Connor already had a girlfriend and had no doubt been reading my journal, I was ready to go home to Spain. I was only keeping the appointment with Lewis because he had shifted other clients around to make time for me.
‘Ailey, you found us.’ His rich voice calmed me and I took a deep breath and stood, blushing as he kissed me slowly on both cheeks in front of the receptionist, who would have been wondering why her boss would want to make contact with someone who looked as if she lived on the street. ‘Come into my office and have some tea.’
Tea sounded good. Proper tea, boiled in a kettle and brewed in a pot with a cosy and stirred with a spoon. Drinking tea from a cup and saucer would be a treat, a biscuit or two a bonus. Lewis didn’t let me down.
‘Thanks,’ I said, the china cup rattling in its saucer. ‘I’ve been dunking teabags into barely hot water that tastes of smoke. As for milk, well, that’s a luxury.’
‘You’re welcome to spend time with us at our place. Liz would be delighted.’ Lewis pushed back his unruly hair. Even dressed in a shirt and trousers, although without a tie, he managed to appear ready for a fishing trip or a day digging the garden. I noticed how his shoulders strained beneath the striped cotton. Then he winked and leaned forward across his desk, his slightly stubbly chin resting in his hands, and whispered, ‘Liz has been very keen to see you again since I told her about our encounter at the beach cottage.’
‘You told her?’
‘Of course. She could hardly contain herself. She wanted to know everything that we’d been up to and I was awake all night describing every detail. She was especially thrilled that we’d spotted her at the window.’
‘I see,’ I said and took a sip of my tea. ‘And she wasn’t –’
‘Jealous? Not at all. She’s been desperate for this for ages.’
‘This?’
‘Another woman, silly. For me to find another woman for us.’ Lewis was stretched across the huge leather-topped desk, his elbows spread wide on top of a stack of files, and the glint in his eyes told me that work on my case was far from his mind.
‘Us?’ I was beginning to sound silly with my monosyllabic replies that curled up at the edges like autumn leaves.
Lewis glanced at his watch. ‘We’ve got about twenty minutes and she’ll be here. Did you enjoy your shopping spree?’
Lewis had kindly driven me into Douglas earlier that morning and dropped me in the shopping area of the town. I had wandered the narrow streets, meandering through expensive boutiques and high-street stores with only enough spare money to buy a plastic cup of hot chocolate. The money that remained in my purse was for food, and the wages from my cleaning job, although I had yet to see any money, would be my return fare home.
‘Yes, thanks, although I didn’t buy anything.’ I had walked slowly up to the offices of Macaulay & Fisher, hoping to use up some of the time Lewis thought I desired in the shops.
‘That certainly doesn’t make sense,’ he joked. ‘Liz can’t go near a clothes shop without having the urge to strip and try everything on. And you can guarantee that she’ll step out of the changing cubicle in skimpy undies just to ask me something pointless. She’s not happy unless she’s had at least three strangers see her body each day.’ Lewis grinned and leaned back in his leather chair, perhaps uncomfortable from the tightening within his trousers. ‘Once she even took me back into the changing rooms with her and leaned over a stool while I –’
My shocked expression interrupted him. He began to rifle through the papers on his desk and located a clean notebook. He cleared his throat.
‘Right, tell me everything you’ve found out so far about Ethan Kinrade. Any detail, however small, may be useful.’ Lewis looked me straight in the eye. ‘Although I have to tell you honestly, Ailey, I don’t hold out much hope. If your father’s wish was for his estate to go to Mr Kinrade then –’
‘I understand,’ I said. ‘Let’s get to work.’
Picking over the bones of what I had discovered about Kinrade was, after fifteen minutes or so, proving fruitless. While Lewis was patient and took notes about everything I revealed, none of the information was particularly useful when it came to putting together a case.
‘Is there anything else you can think of? Anything that may go against his character?’
‘There’s the library,’ I offered and pulled a face. ‘He’s pretty much turned it into a kinky bondage room.’ I was saddened that the beautiful room had been desecrated but also secretly wished that I’d had the chance to mess around in it with Dominic when he’d caught me spying in the basement. Plenty of time yet, I thought.
‘I’m not sure there’s a law against that unless he had a hoard of young beauties tied up against their will.’ Lewis pushed back in his chair and ran the end of his pen along his lips. ‘Ailey, if I were you, I’d simply confront the man and talk to him about how you feel. I really don’t think you have a case for kicking him out of his home but you may appeal to his humane side if you voice your feelings to him.’
‘A possibility, I suppose, but the wretched man’s always away from the island.’ Lewis was right. Seeing the flimsy facts about Ethan Kinrade spread out in black and white made me realise how futile it all was.
‘I’m not sure that’s true. I saw him again today. He was buying the newspaper at the local shop when I went out to fetch milk.’
‘Kinrade?’
‘He said good morning to me. So you see, introduce yourself and in all probability you’ll find yourself as a guest at Creg-ny-Varn with Mr Kinrade behaving perfectly reasonably.’ To indicate just how serious he was about his suggestion, Lewis closed his notebook and pushed it aside. The intercom buzzed.
‘Your wife’s here, Mr Macaulay. Shall I send her straight in?’
Lewis grinned and rose from his chair, confirming that his wife should join them. When he greeted Liz, I noticed the expensive cloth of his suit trousers pull snugly around his well-shaped bottom. His shirt, too, stretched across the sheets of his back muscle as he wrapped his arms around his wife’s body, squashing her large breasts between them. They kissed without a care for my presence, a deep kiss which implied an urgent need that wouldn’t wait.
‘Ailey, how nice to see you again.’ Liz smiled and allowed Lewis to relieve her of several shopping bags from designer boutiques.
‘Anything nice?’ Lewis took a peek into one of the bags and looked up grinning. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘You got me a present.’
‘Would you like to see?’ Liz didn’t wait for an answer nor, it seemed, was she particularly aware of my presence any more because she dashed into Lewis’s private bathroom and returned only a minute later virtually naked.
‘Whoa!’ Lewis steadied himself on the desk.
Liz was wearing the sexiest, most alluring lingerie that I had ever seen. Personally, I was used to wearing simple white thongs or perhaps a black one in the evening and I often went braless. My entire wardrobe consisted of little more than loose skirts – many of them see-through for Marco’s benefit – and a few tight-fitting tops that emphasised the neat shape of my breasts. In the cooler months, I snuggled within soft sweaters and jeans.
But what Liz was wearing had not o
nly taken Lewis’s breath away and most likely any thoughts of the afternoon’s work, but had also rendered me motionless, aside from my quickening pulse, as I realised that I wanted to be the one who peeled off the delicate slivers of lace and replace them with my mouth.
‘That’s so pretty,’ I offered in an attempt to break the silence as Liz posed before us. ‘I love the colour.’
‘The fabric’s beautiful too. Come and feel the quality.’ Liz beckoned me over and I quickly realised that refusing would result in her insisting and then I would look silly and shy if I didn’t, and besides, my fingers were tingling at the prospect of a small touch, perhaps just below her breast or around the rim of her panties. I remembered my diary and realised that it was happening again. I wondered if every time I found myself sexually mixed-up since my return to the island, Connor and Steph were reading through the pages of my journal. It was entirely possible and gave me both pleasure and pain to think of them engrossed in each other’s bodies after an extra dose of my fantasies. But while my writings had brought them together and opened up a new world of sexual possibility for me, Connor seemed further away than ever.
Slowly, I approached Liz and raised my hand to her ribs. I connected with the lilac chantilly of the lace-up corset, feeling the warmth of her skin beneath the delicate panels. She was right and even I, who was not familiar with such items, could feel its beauty. Her beauty.
‘It’s under-wired as well, to keep me in place.’ Liz took my hand and slid it under the weight of her breast. ‘Feel how it lifts me.’ She took both of my hands and cupped my palms around her soft, round flesh.
I heard something from Lewis, a small moan of approval, and Liz too made a throaty noise when I allowed my thumb to wander up to the brown outline of her nipple, barely visible through the lace. I’d seen all this before in print, of course, in women’s monthly magazines left behind by our British lodgers. Sexy women in unattainable lingerie had always intrigued me: not because I wanted to strive to become them, as many young women aimed and usually failed to do, but as an inspiration for lust. A brief need for their bodies to be within reach. I wanted to touch and explore and do the things to them that Marco had done to me. I wanted to know what I felt like.
As my thumbs lingered on the dark circles of her breast, the buds of her nipples pushed up and out, causing a tiny rise beneath the patterned lace. I traced a line along the scalloped edge of the bra cup, leading up to the satin shoulder strap. Liz was wearing a velvet choker in deep purple and a cluster of gold chains with a glittering cross dangling between her almost spherical breasts.
‘Was it expensive?’ I whispered because I knew my voice would fail me.
‘Terribly,’ she giggled, eyeing Lewis for a second.
I stood back, causing a brief flash of concern to spread over her face, but when she realised I was simply appreciating her from different angles, she began to pose and show off her new extravagance. I stepped behind her and was pleased to see that her bottom was as full and rounded as her bust. Liz had a tiny waist, which emphasised her curves perfectly. She possessed a typical hourglass figure set upon pretty legs, dressed up with an ankle chain and mauve suede court shoes, the heels of which brought her a couple of inches below my height. I reached out and rested my hands in the small of her back, just above the band of skin between the edge of the corset and the hairline strap of her thong. Slowly, I brushed my hands over her skin and its barely-there covering of blonde hair, and passed around to the sides of her ass-cheeks – the flawless expanses of flesh that I longed to nibble and bite.
‘The thing about pretty lingerie, though,’ Liz said as I cradled her buttocks, ‘is that it never lasts very long. It took me all morning to choose these items, the stockings included, and I’m certain that Lewis will rip them off me in a matter of seconds later on.’
‘What makes you think I’ll wait until later?’ The male voice was obtrusive in what should have been an entirely female exchange.
‘Typical,’ I replied, grinning. ‘You look absolutely gorgeous and deserve to be worshipped and adored for hours.’ I briefly touched her corset, her panties, her stockings. ‘I’d love something like this.’ With that, I let go of her bottom and came to her side, reminding her how drab and practical I looked in my outdoor clothes and tied-back hair. ‘For now, this is what I’m stuck with and I barely feel like a woman. I was lucky enough to take a bath yesterday but that was the first in a long time. How I would love to straighten my hair and wear tarty red lipstick and dress up in underwear like yours!’
I only said all this because I was thinking of Connor and Steph entwined in front of the fire, my journal between them and their bodies ready to act out my secret fantasies. I was turning into that person again, the one who ends up in naughty, unthinkable trouble.
‘Then you must go back to our house with Liz and be pampered from head to toe.’ Lewis stood and adjusted his trousers. Without doubt, I noticed a bulge behind his zipper. It was strange to think that he had buried that same erection within me, while his wife made do with a vibrator and the hope that we were watching her. It was an unspoken tease.
‘Yes, Ailey, come home with me and let me give you a treatment you’ll never forget.’ Liz squealed at the suggestion and went back into the bathroom to dress. I was slightly disappointed that my brief touches hadn’t lured her into a naughty display for Lewis’s benefit but settled upon the promise of being pampered back at her house.
‘I have a meeting to go to but then I can get back early. Liz can give you a –’
‘Let’s get you back to my place, young lady, and give you a good going over.’ Liz emerged from the bathroom in her clothes again.
‘You took the words from my mouth,’ Lewis said. ‘I’ll join you ladies later. Have fun in the meantime.’
And then I was being driven across the island with the promise of much girly pampering making my heart skip beneath all the layers of my clothing.
* * *
I didn’t wear my dirty boots in the house. These were the first things to leave my body in a muddy heap by the door. My socks weren’t much better, although I had been washing my underwear in boiling water from the fire and scrubbing them with a bar of soap. I left my heavy jacket on the hook in the hall and began to relax as I entered the living room and warmed myself by the fire that had obviously been stoked earlier in the day.
‘Go straight upstairs,’ Liz suggested. ‘There’ll be plenty of hot water and I’ve loads of lovely body scrubs and lotions in the bathroom.’ She escorted me up the narrow stairs and retrieved several cream towels from a cupboard along the way. She showed me into a bathroom with low beams and a wooden floor and, in the middle, a cast-iron bath with lion’s-claw feet. There were dozens of candles and tea lights adorning the window sill and shelves and Liz meticulously lit each one. The warmth and glow that filled the bathroom made me want to shed all my clothes and never leave the room again. Liz turned on both taps, pulled the cord of the window blind and flicked off the main light so that even before I had taken off my clothes, I was drenched in sensual lighting.
‘Let me help you.’ Liz was tugging on my sweater and fiddling with my belt. ‘You’re so tense,’ she said as she trailed her hands down my body after discarding my woolly layers on the floor. ‘You can take a hot bath and then I’m going to give you an all-over massage. I’ll use aromatherapy oils to get you in the mood.’
‘The mood for what?’ I asked stupidly, feeling that I wouldn’t need anything to help me except Liz’s hands.
She didn’t answer but raised her eyebrows instead. ‘Go on, get them off.’ The slight nod of her head indicated clearly that she was waiting for me to discard my T-shirt and underwear and I knew that refusing out of stubbornness or shyness would be silly. Besides, not knowing when I might get another, I really wanted to indulge in a hot bath.
‘You win,’ I mumbled as I stretched my arms above my head to reveal an expanse of tanned skin left over from the Spanish summer. I dropped my shirt t
o the floor and reached to my back to unfasten my bra but Liz had already wrapped her arms around me, our bodies pressed together, and she was fiddling with the catch.
‘You’re so slim,’ she commented. ‘Do you ever eat?’
‘Like a pig when I get the chance.’ But I needn’t have replied because she wasn’t listening. Liz had deftly removed my boring plain cotton bra and cast it aside before transferring her attention to the little hillocks of flesh that were my breasts.
Just as I had done to her half an hour before, Liz cupped her hands beneath the mounds and weighed up my size in her palms. ‘Isn’t it odd,’ she said, ‘how we’re all shaped so differently and coloured in with different shades.’ I nodded, hardly able to keep my thoughts focused as she pushed my breasts together. ‘But we all feel in the same way, don’t we?’
I nodded, knowing this was how my touch had felt to her.
‘And can you imagine what Lewis would be thinking if he was watching us?’
I nodded again and a smile spread across my face. It was all in their plan, I realised. It was all written.
Liz ducked her head and brought her mouth down around my left breast. The sensation of her soft, wet lips on my skin was like nothing I had ever experienced and even as I stared at the top of her cropped, blonde hair it was hard to believe that it was another woman making me feel like this. I longed for my diary and a chance to record such a fantastic sensation. She looked up at me with heavy-lidded eyes. I felt sure she wanted more than a quick suck of my breast.
‘The water,’ I said, noticing how high the level had risen in the tub. Liz turned off the taps and then lingered over the withdrawal of my plain white knickers. She delighted in the revelation of the soft triangle of hair at the top of my legs and I secretly willed her to investigate further although I suspected that she would be getting to that.
‘Climb in,’ she said after swishing her hand in the water to test the temperature. She took a lavender-coloured bottle from a shelf and drizzled in a long stream of something that smelled divine, rather like the fresh herbs in the kitchen garden at Creg-ny-Varn. She swished again to create a thick layer of bubbles.