by Fiona Walker
And again, her instant response was one of electric excitement and anticipation. Amazingly, the children had both gone to sleep in the past ten minutes and the room was a dark, exciting cloak of sexual energy. Hugo’s warm, hard body pressed to hers, his breath on her neck, hard-on rising into the hollow of her back, a warm, steel-hard thigh sliding between her legs.
As he reached around beneath her arm to caress the swell of her breast, she gasped with apprehension and freefall lust. She didn’t want the spell to break, that mounting desire to fail her, her body to recoil, the children to wake and distract her from lover to mother.
Spooned tight against her, he slid every long, luscious inch of hard cock into her with slow, patient self-control, letting her eager body suck him up further and higher.
Leisurely, rhythmically, he claimed her back until her heart was roaring and racing, pulse drumming, her body as desired and desirable as it had ever been, filling up with the first effervescent bubbles and pops of an orgasm.
‘Baa Baa Black Sheep …’
Cora was awake.
The bubbles instantly went flat and the dark cloak lifted.
‘Mummy – baa baa – baby!’ The little girl trilled.
On clue, with barely a snuffle of warning, Amery started to bawl at top capacity.
‘Fucking great!’ Hugo muttered under his breath as he withdrew and lay back against the pillow with a frustrated groan.
Tash, suddenly feeling very wobbly in every sense of the word, pulled on her baggy sleepwear and crawled out of bed to settle them.
As soon as she left the bed, her warm patch was occupied by Beetroot, who crawled up from the foot of the duvet on her belly to adoringly kiss and lick Hugo’s arm and ear.
‘Thanks for the offer, Beet’ – he tucked her under his arm and scratched her proffered chest – ‘but I’d rather your mistress was doing that.’
His eyes gleamed in the dark as he looked over Beetroot’s head to where Tash was breastfeeding Amery on the little armchair between the travel cots, while quietly singing Cora to sleep.
‘I’ve got more chance of winning on Sunday than rogering the missus this week,’ he sighed.
Beetroot wagged her thin tail sympathetically and licked his chin.
*
In the horsebox park on the Blenheim estate, another dog was determined to lick his bedfellows. Eager to make amends with Karma, Twitch the terrier would not settle with Rory on the bunk above the Luton cab. Instead, he had scrabbled up on to the foot of Beccy’s bed and was trying to penetrate the sleeping bag in which Karma and her mistress were companionably snuggled.
Amazingly, Karma snored and grunted contentedly, fast asleep.
Unable to sleep at all, Beccy listened irritably to the snuffling and whining as Twitch scrabbled and nibbled at the zip near her ankle. There was a distinctly damp sensation penetrating the layers of duck down.
Across the darkened living quarters, Rory let out a yawn. ‘Beccy,’ he called in a soft but arrogant drawl. ‘Can you roll over? You’re snoring again.’
‘It’s not me!’ she hissed back indignantly. ‘It’s the dog.’
‘Okay, whatever. Roll the dog over.’
‘Which one?’ she muttered, aiming a sly kick at Twitch through the sleeping bag, but he gripped on to her bunk with his claws, still whining in what he clearly thought to be an endearing fashion, and Rory fell silent, trying again to sleep.
Beccy gazed moon-eyed into the darkness and weighed up the relative merits of Hugo and Lough Strachan. On paper it was a closely fought thing, with Lough coming out fractionally ahead because he wasn’t married, wasn’t a father and had sexy tattoos. But in her sleepless heart there was no contest. Hugo won every time. She sighed dreamily and thought about his face, imagined it hovering above her, tilting to kiss her mouth, muttering ‘I love you Beccy, I love you with all my heart.’
‘What?’
She blinked in alarm at Rory’s voice breaking into her fantasy. Had she said something out loud?
‘Nothing!’ she whispered, heart hammering.
‘I thought you said something?’
‘No. Just having a dream.’
‘Okay. Well please dream more quietly.’
After another ten minutes, during which Beccy tried very hard not to breathe too loudly, not to think about Hugo and not to listen to Twitch whinging and scrabbling at her feet, she suddenly became aware of a strange lapping sensation around her toes. Twitch had broken through the toughened two-way anti-arctic zip and was doing a little soft-soaping en route to his Labradoodle target.
Beccy started to giggle, the combination of tickly tongue and sleepless silliness heightening her muffled hysteria.
Twitch slurped all the more eagerly, knowing that he’d finally broken down the defences and was making headway in his charm offensive.
‘Oooh!’ Beccy let out a little squeal and pulled her foot away as a sharp tooth caught her toenail.
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Rory muttered. ‘If it’s not enough that you snore, whine and scratch at your bed like the first Mrs Rochester, the horny groaning thing is just too much.’
‘What?’ Beccy gulped, suddenly horrified that he might think his dog was pleasuring her.
But the truth of the situation was almost as bad.
Rory thought that she was masturbating.
‘Look, I’m a pretty impenetrable sleeper as a rule,’ he grumbled now, ‘but tomorrow’s a big day and I haven’t had a drink tonight, so the hangover I arrived with earlier is turning into bloody delirium tremens up here. I have to sleep this mother off to get through that dressage test, so I’d really appreciate it if you drop the volume on any gusset typing going on down there. I’m all for that usually, too – especially if I can watch – but frankly tonight’s killing me. Pax?’
Beccy was too frozen with mortification – not to mention white-hot anger – to reply.
She booted Twitch off the bed, feeling slightly guilty because it wasn’t really his fault and she was projecting her anger on a small, irritatingly persistent dog when it was his master she wanted to kick squarely in the balls.
Closing her eyes tightly and burying her face in her pillow, Beccy found that she could no longer fantasise about Hugo’s rearing manhood thrusting towards her and was instead visualising the toe of her foot thrusting towards Rory’s precious man-package. It was a surprisingly satisfying way to pass the sleepless minutes and before she knew it she was dropping into dreamland and Rory’s package took on a life of its own, swept along by her subconscious into the most extraordinary shapes.
Chapter 21
The first day of dressage at Blenheim was marked by high winds and uninterrupted autumnal sunshine. It was far colder than usual for this time of year, and the northerly gusts stripped golden leaves from trees and paper wrappers from bins like metallic particles in a giant glitter lamp, but it made for beautiful scenes in the ancient park as the lake rippled like a giant silvery salmon skin, the blue skies flattered the magnificent palace and horses with the wind up their tails performed airs above the ground.
Hugo’s first ride was no exception. The young Vixen, one of Snob’s progeny, had none of her siblings’ sense and practically turned herself inside out with fear as the dressage arena flower arrangements flew past at ear level. As all dressage tests are marked the same regardless of the weather, Hugo received a cricket score of penalties and was well down the field.
Rory, graced with an after-lunch slot during which the wind dropped and the sun strengthened, benefiting from the judges’ post-prandial generosity and emboldened by the arrival of Sylva Frost to cheer him on, rode the test of his life on Humpty, whose back end was as bright white as his front was glossy black, making him look as though he’d galloped into an ink pot.
Left holding his warm-up bandages and his mobile phone as Rory danced around the arena like a gay hussar, Beccy tried to be critical but she knew he was riding magnificently and the horse was responding with something truly
magical. He looked like a Red Indian on a celebrated warhorse, and the audience – a smattering of dressage devotees and chilly shoppers taking a break from the retail village to eat their burgers in the stands – lit up.
Rory’s phone was also lighting up in Beccy’s grip as text message after text message poured in from the same source. Faith.
Never one to respect privacy, Beccy read them all with a raised eyebrow and little interest as a procession of How’s it going? How RU? Tell me how UR getting on? messages floated past.
Eventually, tempted by her mischief gremlins, she sent a reply. Been arrested for public sodomy in palace grounds.
When Rory seemed genuinely surprised and rather overwhelmed to find himself briefly topping the leaderboard, Beccy felt a needle of guilt at her behaviour, but then he ruined it by swaggering off with a glamorous posse to have champagne in the members’ tent without so much as a thank-you, let alone a personal introduction, leaving her to do all the work to prepare Humpty and his kit for the gruelling day to come.
The arrival of Sylva Frost, her family and supporters, her documentary crew and a Cheers! photoshoot team effectively took over the members’ tent and soon threatened to hijack the entire event but nobody complained – at least not openly – because the press coverage was so immediate and so phenomenal. It was predicted that cross-country day attendance could increase by as much as ten per cent if she stayed around. On a cold weather year when the event clashed with a rugby international, this was invaluable exposure.
Sylva was feeling rather bad-tempered. First, because she had not eaten anything but cabbage soup in three days; secondly, because Dillon was not there; mostly because Mama was there, along with the children.
‘You must be seen with them,’ Mama had hissed as they rushed between chauffeur-driven cars and private marquees, her golden-bullet hairdo safely pegged down by a Chanel scarf.
‘They cramp my style,’ Sylva hissed back, weighed down by eighteen-month-old Hain rather than the usual designer handbag.
She knew her mother was right, but she still resented being manipulated and wanted to be child-free to get to know Rory’s event team, particularly his handsome coach, Hugo Beauchamp.
As it turned out, she hardly exchanged two words with Hugo, who eschewed the champagne tents in favour of the stable lines, from which Sylva’s entourage was banned.
Rory, however, was a welcome distraction. Sylva was only too happy to flirt in return, despite Mama’s disapproval and the fish eyes of so many cameras trained on her. She felt rebellious and light-headed from lack of food and so, accepting an impromptu invitation to the formal reception in the magnificent Orangery that evening, she arrived in a moss green velvet tube dress and six inch heels that showed off her temporary curves. Unhampered by children, she flirted outrageously with Rory all evening.
Riding high on his dressage score and his new-found celebrity as Hugo’s protégé, Rory was on fire. His ego was well flocked enough to believe that Sylva’s solitary reason for attending the trials was to see him, and the thought fuelled his drive to win. Amazingly, he stayed sober a third night running, although he had no such abstinence in other departments.
Erection pressing urgently into her side, he steered Sylva into a dark corner of the neglected coat check, both hopelessly excited by the risk of public exposure.
‘Where are you staying tonight?’ he breathed into her ear between kisses.
‘A hotel near Oxford.’
‘Is your driver waiting outside?’
‘Yes, but we cannot go there – my children are there. We must go to your horsebox.’ The novelty of it excited her enormously.
‘Beccy is there.’
‘Who?’ Her eyes flashed with gratifying jealousy.
‘Hugo’s groom.’
‘Make her wait outside.’ She unzipped his fly and reached inside.
Rory groaned as all the blood from his body seemed to rush towards her touch.
‘I can’t do that.’
‘Then maybe she would like to join in?’
He groaned even louder, attracting the attention of a passing waitress. She’d teased him before that she liked threesomes, but he had no great desire to share Sylva with strange Beccy and her self-pleasuring, dog-hugging weirdness.
‘Definitely not your type,’ he laughed.
‘Then, my darlink,’ she giggled, hand closing firmly around his balls, ‘we will do it right here.’
Sidling behind a clothes rail and pulling a brace of long coats across to cloak them like curtains, the couple hastily and breathlessly united, rattling Barbours, Puffas and finest worsted tweed on their hangers.
Just as they were thrusting and gasping towards an exquisite photo-finish, the coat hangers were swept aside and a very dog-eared Haggart shooting coat pulled from a hanger.
‘Don’t mind me!’ laughed a bright voice. ‘Oh, hi Rory. I haven’t seen you since you were in the Pony Club. You are doing well. Super dressage. Give my regards to your mother.’
‘Who was that?’ Sylva squeaked, terrified that it was someone who would expose her to the press and thus scupper her plans to bag Dillon Rafferty.
‘Don’t worry. It was just Penny Moncrieff. She won’t have a clue who you are.’
‘Thanks.’ Sylva wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or mortified, but she was certainly put off her stroke sufficiently to lose interest in Rory and their mutual pleasure amid the country clothing.
Returning to the horsebox in a foul temper, Rory found Beccy watching a DVD of last year’s Blenheim, snuggling up to Karma and loyally sewing the seams of Hugo’s best cross-country breeches.
‘Who rained on your parade?’ she asked.
Rory was too glum to answer. Gathering Twitch to his chest, he clambered up into his bunk and pulled the covers over his head.
Tactfully switching off the DVD, Beccy picked up her phone and took Karma outside for a final run, daring herself to check if there were any messages.
She switched the phone on and jumped sky high when it beeped an alert, but it was just listing missed calls. One, predictably, was from her mother. Two were from Lough. She checked the log details, calculating that he had called in the early hours of the morning New Zealand time, which was odd because she knew his flight times and he should have been airborne.
She leaned back against the horsebox, tilting her head up to look at the stars and shivering as the cold wind bit at her skin. She could hear chattering and laughter in the lorries around her that glowed like a miniature city set up in a windblown Oxfordshire field. She suddenly felt horribly excluded from it all, a stranger forced to watch life from the outside, much as she had felt all her life.
Save me again, she texted Lough.
When Beccy’s phone finally beeped with a reply, Rory woke up and started grumbling at her to switch the bloody thing off. I’m the one who needs saving now.
Feeling very cold and very panicky, Beccy switched her phone to silent mode. An hour later another message came. I’ve screwed up. Totally screwed up.
Chapter 22
Blenheim was lashed by rain and high winds on the second day of competition. As a result, the dressage suffered from low spectator numbers and high penalties. Last in the arena, Hugo’s horse Sir Galahad was just as unforgiving as his previous ride and failed to reward Hugo’s loyal, sodden followers with anything spectacular as he squelched around the rectangle like a reluctant teenager dragging his feet through Peter Jones for a school uniform fitting. When a burger container flew between his front legs as he cantered up the centre line, Sir Galahad swerved, bucked and then planted himself on the spot. Hugo’s score was even worse than on Vixen the day before and left him too far out of contention for any honours unless he could pull off a cross-country miracle, by riding clear inside the time while everyone else took the scenic route.
The last thing he wanted to face as he emerged from the riders’ tent with his dismal test sheet was a barrage of photographers and a film crew, but such was
his fate when Sylva Frost shimmied up to him, trout pout curling into a devilish smile that rained scented air-kisses around him.
‘Uuugo,’ she laid on the Bond Girl accent, employed as always when faced with an attractive but disinterested man. ‘You have been avoiding me! I think you don’t vant to sell me a horse.’
With a baby blue cowboy hat crammed on her platinum extensions, and wearing a matching baby blue Puffa, fake tan darker than a teak woodstain, and brown leather jeans so tight and shiny that her slender legs disappearing into Ugg boots resembled sapling trunks planted in terracotta pots, she cut a ludicrous figure amid the mud, rain and wind-whipped canvas. Hugo had neither the time nor the inclination to get involved, particularly with a man waving a vast, insect-like camera at him from one shoulder like a grumpy extra from a Star Wars battle scene.
Hugo couldn’t take Sylva seriously and was certain that any nonsense she was spouting about buying an event horse was purely for publicity, but he was far too well brought up – not to mention aware of recent blights to his public image – to be rude to her face, particularly in front of her camera crews.
‘Indeed, nothing would give me greater pleasure. Why not walk with me, and we’ll talk …’ He strode ahead and she was forced into hot pursuit, shapely Rear of the Year captured from every angle as it raced after him.
Hugo wanted to have a quick word with Ben and Sophia, who had brought family and friends to come along to support their horse, believing Sir Galahad was really in with a chance. He felt it only right that he commiserate and give a thorough explanation before he got wrapped up with other commitments, but the Merediths were nowhere to be seen and Tash had his phone.