by Jade West
I slid the door closed behind us.
“Wow,” she said. “This is amazing.”
“Yes. It is.” She was looking at the sea, but I was looking at her. The messy cascade of blonde down her back, her eyes in the morning light. “How are you feeling? Are you… sore?”
She smiled. “I feel like someone shoved a boot up my pussy and kicked my ovaries. Repeatedly. Clodhoppers, with steel toecaps.”
“Sorry about that.”
“I’m pretty sure I’ve got internal bleeding.” But she was laughing. “If I slip into unconsciousness, please call me an ambulance. It will likely be my womb falling out of the gaping hole you guys left me with.”
“Maybe we should give you danger money. For the risk.” But I was laughing, too.
“I just hope my bits go back together again.” She grinned and her eyes were sparkling. “I’m too young for a saggy pussy.”
“Pelvic floor,” I said. “You’ll be fine, I promise.”
“It was worth it. Probably.”
“Only probably?”
She shrugged. “Depends how long it keeps me from riding. There’s no way I’ll be mounting up for the next few days.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Should have thought.”
“I was joking. It’s all good.” She leaned over the railings to check out the street below, and my shirt hitched up her thighs, draping beautifully over the rounded curve of her ass. Another day. Definitely.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s all good, Katie.”
She turned to me and her eyes met mine, and there were nerves there. Nerves and questions.
“Was I ok?” she said. “I mean,” she brushed her hair from her face, “did I meet your… criteria?”
Direct. I liked that.
“Yes. You were ok.” I stretched out my arms, enjoying the morning breeze, and her eyes roved my chest. Landed on the swell in my boxers. “You were more than ok. You were incredible.”
It made her blush. “Thanks.”
“You want to continue? With our arrangement?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I want to continue.” She smirked. “Definitely. Really definitely.” Her eyes twinkled.
“Rick’s quite something,” I remarked.
“Yeah, he is.” Her smile was so easy. So honest. “He says the same about you.”
“He flatters me.”
“I’m not so sure.” She laughed. “I don’t think you’re all that bad.”
“Not all that bad?” I tipped my head. “Is that supposed to be praise?”
“Yeah.” Her laugh was intoxicating. Light and unguarded and fresh. “That’s praise.”
I watched the waves break on the pebbles, the litter pickers on the front, the straggle of people making their way places down below. Quiet. The calm before the storm of a sunny tourist Sunday. An illusion of stillness amongst the chaos that Brighton offers.
And that’s how I felt. Like this was an illusion. A moment of quiet connection with a storm on the horizon.
My heart picked up its beat, and there was the urge in me. The urge to lay it all out on the table. Negotiate. Hammer out the details.
If there would even be any details. We never usually made it that far.
Chill, Carl, just give it a fucking minute, man.
“What do you want out of life, Katie?”
She raised her eyebrows. “That’s quite a question for stupid o’clock in the morning.” She paused. Took deep breaths of sea air. “Everyone always wants to know where you’re going. What do you want to be when you grow up? What do you want to study at university? What car are you going to drive? What’s your life plan? What salary band do you want to be in when you hit thirty? When are you going to get a mortgage?”
“I wasn’t looking for your twenty-year plan.” I smirked. “Just a rough idea.”
She stared at me and her eyes were piercing, weighing me up. “You’ll think it’s stupid.”
“Your stable idea? Why would I?”
“You just would.”
“Why don’t you try me?”
She shrugged. “I used to think there was something wrong with me, that I had some kind of defect because I wasn’t as ambitious as my friends in high school. The career planners would tut and shrug at me and say I was worth so much more. I didn’t want a degree from Cambridge telling me how clever I was, or some megabucks career path that would land me with a Mercedes and a three-bed semi in suburbia by the time I was twenty-five.”
“So, what did you want?”
“I wanted the things in my heart,” she said. “Still do. Horses. Freedom. Life. Riding was everything to me when I was growing up. Still is.”
“A stable will complete you?” I was trying not to sound patronising. I didn’t want to patronise her.
She shook her head. “Not the stable. The joy.”
“The joy?”
She nodded. “It was the best part of my week when I was growing up, that one little hour of riding on a Saturday morning. Mum works in care, and has done since I was born. Crappy money, long hours. We did alright, but she couldn’t really afford the luxuries. An hour on a Saturday was all I got, and I was grateful. I loved it.” She shifted position and a grimace flashed across her face. “Yowch, ovaries. Anyway, I want to offer that same joy. Set myself up in a little yard, a couple of horses, offering decent lessons. Affordable lessons. Maybe a couple of loan arrangements for kids in exchange for them helping out about the yard.” She shot me a look of fire. “I’m not stupid, I mean, this will make money. Enough to live. I’m not some hopeless dreamer. It needs to make money to be sustainable. But just, enough.” She checked out my eyes and smiled. “Told you you’d think it was stupid.”
And I did. Partially. I thought it was a waste of a sharp, vibrant gifted girl who clearly had some brains in her skull. I thought she could be aiming for higher, bigger. A huge stable filled to the brim with horses — eventers, and racers, and show ponies, and a whole riding programme dedicated to the disadvantaged, if that’s what she wanted.
“Why so soon? Why not live a little first? Tread the corporate boards to get a bit of experience behind you. Travel. Make some sound investments to see you through any dips in the road? You said your mother works long hours for crappy money, is that what you want? What about life? What about all the experiences out there to be lived?”
“I am living,” she said. “The yard is where I feel alive.” She sighed. “It’s owned by a guy called Jack. A nice guy. The best guy. He’ll rent me the stables and the land, but he’s up against it. His wife left him, and his maintenance business is failing and the bank is after the clothes from his back.” She met my eyes. “It’s my shot. My dream. I just need a bit of cash to put it together. That’s why I’m here, with you. Partly.”
“Only partly?”
“Only partly, yeah. The other part is for me. Just because… you know.” There was a blush on her cheeks again. “A girl has needs.”
“Sacrifice a few years to pursue a career and maybe you could buy Jack’s land. Have a stable of your own, not one you rent from someone else. A couple of years away from the dream to set yourself up for life, for the long haul.”
She laughed. “I’m a graduate, big whoopy. Just some regular business graduate from Worcester. Who’s going to give me a few hundred grand for a couple of years’ work? I’ll come out with a scrappy bit of savings and a few years of wasted time. I’d rather have the time. The bottom rung of a ladder you want to climb is better than a couple of rungs on one you don’t, don’t you think?”
And it was on my tongue. It was on my fucking tongue.
Right there. Right fucking there.
I leaned into her, and I took her elbow, and she stared up and me and her eyes were wide and her lips were parted, nervous. As though I was going to kiss her, as though I was going to press my lips to hers and tear that shirt from her body and take her poor, battered pussy right here on this balcony.
But I wasn’t. I wasn’t going to do anythi
ng of the fucking kind.
“Katie…” I said, and then I stopped.
Not to give it a fucking minute, man, but because the balcony door slid open and out stepped Rick, stark bollock naked aside from his glasses, with his hair a tangled mess all on one side.
Only Rick looks so hot when he’s that fucking dishevelled.
Katie smiled, and he smiled back, and I stepped away. Recoiled like I’d been bitten, but they didn’t notice.
“Morning, campers,” he said, and kissed Katie’s pretty mouth. He slung an arm over her shoulders and pulled her a few paces in my direction so he could do the same to me. “Let’s go get an early breakfast, I’m fucking famished.”
I drove the way home, and Rick took the back seat this time. Katie was in more pain than I’d anticipated, and I felt a little guilty for it. She’d pulled herself up into the passenger seat with a grimace on her face but claimed she was dandy, just a little bruised. That would be true enough, but I still felt guilty all the same.
Conversation flowed like a dream on the way back up country, stupid stories, and old jokes and politics and the occasional silly YouTube video, but it was mainly flowing in their direction. Rick leaning forward in his seat to stare at Katie’s phone screen, or tickling her neck through the gap in her headrest. They were in deep, into each other like some corny old romance flick. If old romance flicks covered the bonding experience of double penetration, that is.
I think they call it instalove.
I was amused. Not quite jealous.
Encouraged, but not enough to let the prospects turn me into a stupid optimist.
I was happy.
We were happy.
So happy that I pulled the car off the motorway at the wrong junction and headed for Woolhope. They didn’t notice at first, too engrossed in a game of ‘what would you rather?’
Would you rather eat a donkey’s penis or take a cracked rib?
Would you rather fuck Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt?
Would you rather have no sex for the rest of your life or ten hours sex every day for the rest of your life?
Would you rather die now, or never at all, not for the rest of time?
“Would you rather find another stupid game, or walk the rest of the way home?” I said, but I was joking.
“Spoil-fucking-sport! Out he comes, Mr Grumpy!” Rick laughed.
“Quick-fire round, your turn,” Katie said, and her attention was all on me. “Would you rather… work the rest of your life or retire right now?”
“Work the rest of my life.”
“Would you rather… have bogeys for saliva, or piss for saliva?”
I raised an eyebrow. “What the fuck kind of question is that?”
“Answer!” Rick said. “You HAVE to answer!”
I shrugged. “Piss? Jesus, I’ll go with piss.”
“Would you rather live in a zoo or an aquarium?”
“Zoo.”
“Would you rather have twenty kids until you die or never see a kid again?”
“Twenty.” I looked at her. “I’d rather have twenty kids than no kids.”
She rested back in her seat. “Rather you than me. Kids would totally wreck the cool-as-fuck house you guys have got going on. I think you’d rethink if it happened.”
“No,” I said. “I wouldn’t.”
Rick leaned forward, stuck his chin on my shoulder. “Um, where the fuck are we?”
And Katie noticed. She sprang to life, staring out of the windows. “Woolhope,” she said. “We’re heading for Woolhope.” She turned to me. “Why are we heading for Woolhope?”
Rick chimed in. “Yeah, Carl, why are we heading for Woolhope? You got a sudden urge to mount a horse?”
I shot him a look in the rearview mirror. “Katie’s feeling a little worse for wear, I figure it’s the least we can do.” I glanced in her direction. “You want to see your horse, I presume? Muck him out or whatever you horsey folk need to do of a weekend.”
She nodded. “Yeah, but I was… I was going to do it later… get Jack to help.”
“And now there’s no need, is there? We can help.”
Rick seemed happy enough to go along with it. He patted her shoulder and she tipped her head, pinned his fingers against her cheek. “We can help. Good call, Carl.”
“It’s up here,” she said. She pointed to a pub on the right. “Turn off here, over the common, then swing up to the left, you’ll see it.” I followed her directions and she became visibly animated, restless in her seat despite the boot-kicked cervix. “Here,” she said. “It’s up here.”
I turned down a long bumpy driveway. Weston’s Maintenance Services. It looked like an agricultural yard, a little worse for wear. Some rusty old machinery out the front of a farmhouse, a few chickens dashing about the place. She pointed to a space in front of an old rickety barn, and I parked up. She was out of the car before I’d even turned the engine off, and her expression was a wonder.
Rick jumped out after her and she took his hand, started pointing things out. She made him poke his head in the barn as I locked the Range, and then pointed down a concrete path, her eyes locked on me.
“He’s down here,” she said. “Do you want to meet him?”
I felt like I was meeting the parents. That’s how serious she was.
I nodded. “Lead the way.”
She ambled along in spite of the soreness and Rick flashed me the biggest smile over his shoulder. His smile said I love you. It also said win. Seems he wanted to meet the horse as much as she wanted to introduce him.
We trudged past a stable block and I can’t say I was all that impressed. Rough around the edges was putting it kindly. It was the kind of dirty you get from age, mud and lack of funds, not from lack of care. The roof looked as though it was a bodge job, and some of the doors looked about to fall off. Then there was mud, a lot of mud, and there’d been rain here, enough that I feared for my shoes. She trooped on regardless of care for her pumps, and led us through a wood-chipped dressage ring that was missing a couple of sections of fencing, until she stopped, at a gate, and there were open fields beyond.
I scanned the pasture and there were a couple of horse-shaped dots in the distance. I was trying to guess which one was hers when she surprised me.
Sweet little Katie put her hands around her mouth and she bellowed.
“Samsonnnnnnnnnn.”
It was quite a volume.
She stepped up onto the bottom bar of the gate and did it again, and I was about to suggest we just walk on down the field and catch the beast as I presumed most horse owners needed to do when there was a rumble of hooves, thumping up the grass at some pace. I stepped away from the gate on instinct, and so did Rick, and the horse came into view, charging up the bank at reckless speed. Katie leaned over regardless, holding out her arms and calling his name, and I nearly grabbed her, nearly pulled her back and out of harm’s way before the hairy brute ploughed into her, but he didn’t. He pulled to an instant halt, and he was all snorts, and nudging. His big furry head was over the fence, butting her in a way that I can only assume was affectionate, and she was giggling, happy.
“This is Samson,” she said, like an introduction was necessary. “This is my big baby boy.”
He was a big fucking boy. A huge black beast with a white stripe down his face. She kissed his nose, and reached up to scratch his ears, and Rick scratched his ears, too.
“Come see him, Carl,” she said. “He’s friendly.”
But the beast didn’t like me. Not all that much. I stepped forward and I was tense, and wary of him, and he was wary of me. He eyeballed me, then flinched, taking a step back and snorting like a fucking dragon.
“Steady,” she said to him. “Hey, boy, steady.”
“He doesn’t like me,” I said.
“He will,” she laughed. “He’s just nervous of you. You must be… tense.”
“Tense?”
“They pick up on body language,” she said. “Energy, emotion,
fear, anger. Whatever. They pick up on everything.”
“You’re too fucking stiff,” Rick laughed. “You’re not at the office now, you know. You need to loosen up, chillax. Let it all hang out.”
I beckoned to the horse, tried to keep my tone light, but he’d have none of it. He didn’t care for me at all.
I felt strangely disappointed.
“Never mind,” Katie said. “He’ll get used to you.” She realised what she’d said and her eyes widened. “If you come back, I mean.”
“We’ll be back,” Rick said. “Won’t we, Carl?”
Two sets of eyes on me, looking to me, looking for answers to a question I couldn’t answer. Not really.
“Sure,” I said. I started walking back the way we came. “Now let’s get shovelling this fucking horseshit before I change my mind.”
I should’ve gone home. I mean technically I’m only theirs for the weekend, and Sunday night was in the realms of overtime, surplus to the requirements of our arrangement. But I stayed.
I stayed because I wanted to, because they offered, because I liked them.
Both of them.
I stayed because I wanted to fall asleep between two hot bodies again. I stayed because, despite the fact I could still feel the ache of the pounding I’d taken the night before, I wanted them again.
I wanted them so much I was a sticky hot mess.
I sent a text to Mum, letting her know I was out for another night, and one to Jack, asking him to mind Samson until I showed up after my stupid meeting with the sperm donor, and then I settled down for the evening, kicking back between Carl and Rick on the sofa, listening to Rick’s soul compilation and drinking posh tea. And then they’d stripped naked, and I had, too, and we’d jumped into their massive white bed with me snug in the middle, and their arms had held me tight.
But they hadn’t fucked me.
And even though my battered cervix was relieved, I can’t say I wasn’t a little disappointed.
It appeared Carl and Rick were gentlemen. Gentlemen who’d been super keen to point out I wasn’t on duty. That I could take it easy. That they weren’t expecting anything.
So they’d kissed me and held me, without even a hint of anything more.