I didn't know where they were, but more to the point, I didn't know what to do with myself. Going through the motions, I parked my car and went inside. The house was still empty, and I could tell they had not been here. I made myself a cup of tea and sat on the sofa, but my mind was working overtime and I couldn't settle. I stared into the fireplace and didn't move for about half an hour. I kept expecting a phone call with the worst possible news, and every minute that it didn’t come, the stress got worse and worse.
They still weren’t back. Needing to break the tension, I abandoned the drink on the coffee table and went out. I couldn't stay here. I had to get away. The walls were closing in on me.
I got into my car and drove. I didn't really think about where I was going. I just needed the movement. When I got onto a dual carriageway, I put my foot down and drove as fast as possible, savouring the way the window wipers quivered in the high-speed wind. I'd been driving for about an hour before I noticed the petrol light glowing orange on the dash board. I'd barely begun to reduce my speed when I ran out of fuel. The engine died, the car juddered, and I barely pulled into the hard shoulder before it rolled to a halt.
Fuck.
I had no idea when I'd last seen a petrol station on this road, so I decided to consult Google. I swore loudly when I saw that the nearest petrol station was six miles away.
The heavens opened, and water fell out of the sky in sheets.
Chapter 14
Matt:
The training exercise had gone great, and I really enjoyed getting to work with Ben and Andy again. Now we were in different roles, we had rarely got a chance to work together since our basic training. Ben was usually in a kitchen preparing food for officers, Andy was normally in a hangar refuelling planes and making repairs to them, and since I had been moved to the admin corps, I was almost always in an office processing reports.
“We make a pretty good team, even outside the bedroom,” Ben remarked, and I nodded in agreement.
“Do you think she'll like this gift?” Andy asked, holding up the beautifully wrapped box. We'd had to go all the way to Reading to pick it up from a special shop. We could have ordered one online, but since we had not been home, that would have ruined the surprise because Becky would have had to have signed for it in our absence.
“I think she'll love it,” Ben said, and I agreed. Ben was probably best qualified to know the answer to this question, anyway, because he was most interested in the outcome. However, the three of us had sort of conspired on this one, because of that dare Becky had accepted. After we had collected the gift, we had picked up some wrapping paper at the motorway services and wrapped it up in the car park.
“If she doesn’t like it, it would look good on the mantelpiece.” Andy's comment made us all laugh out loud. There had been another reason we’d gone to Reading, but we weren’t planning on sharing that with Bex until Saturday afternoon. We wanted that to be even more of a surprise than this present.
The Land Rover turned on to our road and approached the house.
“That's odd,” I said, frowning, “Her car's not there.”
“But it's seven o'clock,” Ben said, “Where else could she be?”
Andy stopped the car, not parking it properly, and pulled out his phone.
“I'll get to the bottom of this,” he said as he scrolled to her number in his contacts. He put her on speaker phone, and we listened to the brr-brr as it rang.
“Andy?” Becky sounded very stressed.
“Hi, Bex, where are you?”
A stream of words poured out of the phone; Becky was clearly upset about something, but her voice had gone so squeaky that none of us could understand a word she said.
“Tell us where you are,” I commanded in a firm dominant voice.
“I'm broke down on the road on the other side of Leighton Buzzard.”
We got as many details from her as possible, then set out to find her.
“Typical,” Ben remarked as we drove off. “Her car really picked its moment to clap out.”
I suspected there was more to the story than that, but I supposed we wouldn't find out until we got to her.
* * *
Andy:
“That's her, there!” Ben cried, as the little red Fiesta came into view at the side of the road.
I was so pleased to see the vehicle looking unharmed, I’d been worried someone might crash into her, with the speed people drove at on this stretch. As we slowed to pull over, a lowered, rusty black VW Golf flashed its lights, peeped the horn and practically drove over us in its desperate effort to break the speed limit. Every week on the radio at work I heard Chiltern FM reporting that this road was closed due to another accident.
I hadn’t driven down it since one of the lads at the air base had died here.
“At least she stayed in the car,” Matt said. I nodded in agreement. With the rain pouring down, and the fact it was going dark, this was not the weather to be standing around on a grass verge. I parked behind her, leaving the lights on and engine running so that we could see to find out what had gone wrong with her car.
It looked fine. That was a relief. At least she hadn't been in an accident. We tripped over each other trying to get out of the car and get to her. I reached her first. I tapped on the window on the passenger side. She leaned over and unlocked the door, opening it slightly in the process. I got in. Matt and Ben climbed into the backseat.
“We were so worried about you,” Ben said.
I realised I hadn’t got any tools with me, so if her car needed a big fix, we’d have to tow the bloody thing all the way to our house so I could get the right parts and work on it in the garage. I hoped it wasn’t engine damage. Almost nothing was unfixable, but fiddly engine work was a complete nuisance.
“You were worried about me? I was going out of my mind when you didn't come back! You were supposed to be back hours ago!” Her tone was accusatory. A BMW tore past us so fast that Bex’s Fiesta shook on its axles. This wasn’t the best place to be having any kind of conversation at all.
“Bex, why are you out here?” I asked, cutting through the crap.
“I needed to clear my head, I was worrying too much sitting at home waiting for you three to come back.”
I didn’t understand why being at home would be more concerning than being out here.
“Why would you be worried? It was a standard training exercise.”
“Let me see,” she began, “One, all your phones were out of range in Mozambique. Two, you should've been back before me; it's Friday, and your plane was supposed to arrive at lunchtime. Even if they made you work the afternoon, you should have had time to get home before I finished work. Three, I finished late, so you definitely had no excuse for not being there when I got back. Four, my fiancée died in a freak accident. The universe has clearly told me that I can’t depend on people surviving from one day to the next. Five, you went to the fucking arse end of nowhere in Mozambique to do something dangerous; God knows what! How was I supposed to know any of you were okay? Why didn't any of you text me when you landed?”
Wow. She was pissed off. From where I stood, it seemed to be fifty percent overreaction, but that meant fifty percent of it was completely fair.
“Why didn't you try ringing any of us?” Matt asked shrewdly. That was also a fair point.
“Because… Because…” But she couldn't finish the sentence and began crying instead. I reached over and put my arms around her, while Matt and Ben made soothing noises from the back. Now we'd established most of the initial facts, it made sense for us to get her into my Land Rover and take her home. We could discuss this at more length when we got back.
“Any idea what's wrong with your car?” I asked.
“P-p-p-petrol,” she stammered through sobs.
In the back, Ben snorted and Matt sighed. I wanted to join in, but mostly I was relieved that I didn’t need to do any big repair work, when I could be spending time with her instead.
“I thi
nk I saw a petrol station a few miles ago,” I said, “Let's drive up the road and get some fuel, then you can come home in my car with me, and one of the other two can drive yours back.”
“I'm insured as a second driver on the Fiesta,” Matt said.
“Then it's sorted,” I remarked with an air of finality. Another BMW zoomed past. Its rear end wobbled precariously as the driver went over a battered speed hump at about eighty. I was seconds away from just grabbing Bex and forcing her to get in my car so I could drive her to safety.
I supposed this was how stressed she’d felt when we hadn’t come home or let her know what was happening.
* * *
Becky:
Back at the house I was still finding it hard to get warm after being in the car for so long with no heating. To top it off, I was fairly certain the lads were upset with me. I didn’t feel like they had the right to a grievance after what they’d put me through. I sat wrapped in a blanket on the sofa while Ben made tea, Andy phoned a curry shop for takeaway and Matt was still bringing my car back.
It was sort of ironic, really, that I’d been worrying about them so much, but I’d been the one that needed help.
The front door banged closed and a few seconds later, Matt walked into the living room.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Yeah. I will be. Now that you three are back safe and sound.”
He raised an eyebrow then came and sat down next to me.
“Becky, what happened to Adam... I can’t even imagine what you went through. We were his friends, and we were broken up when he died, but you were picturing a life with him. Planning a wedding together. That sort of pain will burn bright in your heart for a long time.”
“I know,” I said, getting tears in my eyes when Matt mentioned the wedding we’d been looking forward to.
“But that was an accident. And you have to trust Andy, Ben and I to find our way back to you.”
Tears spilled over my lashes. I was vaguely aware that Ben had come in with cups of tea, and Andy had sat down on the other side of me.
“Do you know what I had to do on the day after my boyfriend died?” I asked. “I had to ring every vendor, the venue, the registrar, and tell them all to cancel the wedding. And they all wanted a reason because no-one just lets you cancel things anymore. And I had to explain to every single one of them, over and over, that my fiancée had died. The company providing the helium balloons didn’t even believe me, and you should have heard the nasty shit the woman said to me.”
“Fuck,” Andy said, putting an arm around me as I cried.
“Why didn’t you tell us you needed help? We would have done it for you,” Ben added.
“I wanted to manage; I wanted to stand on my own two feet. After all, how can I ever depend on anyone, ever again?”
“Bex, we’ve lost people out on deployments, team members we were really close with. It never gets easier, but above the pain of the loss, you have to understand that overall, most people come back. Most people are fine. And you have to focus on that. Otherwise we’d all stop getting out of bed every morning,” Andy said, rubbing my shoulder gently.
“How can you build a life, though? When anyone could die at any minute, for any reason? I used to have such a clear picture of what my life was going to be like, but I haven’t been able to see a real future for myself since Adam died.”
“You have to build a life anyway. Because we could all trip over and hit our heads on concrete tomorrow, or get hit by a bus or whatever,” Ben said, sitting in the armchair opposite me. “You can’t go backwards, so you have to keep looking forward, and never close your eyes to the possibilities the future holds.”
I nodded, still feeling sniffly. Andy handed me a tissue and I blew my nose loudly. It was the least sexy I’d ever felt.
“But you three need to understand how this happened,” I said when my nose felt better. “If we’re going to continue doing stuff together, you need to all know that I will worry about you, and if you’re late back or whatever, one of you needs to take five seconds to send me a text so I know you’re okay.”
“Sorry, that was definitely our fault,” Ben said, looking sheepish.
“We didn’t say anything because we didn’t want to accidentally get pulled into telling you what we were doing,” Andy added.
“What do you mean?” I looked between them as if the answer might be apparent in the thin air around their heads.
“We were late back because we drove to Reading to get you a present,” Matt said.
“We wanted it to be a surprise,” Ben added.
“Oh, God. I’m so sorry.” I felt really stupid about how upset I’d got over the fact they weren’t here when I got back.
“But we know now that we should have let you know we were fine,” Matt pointed out. I nodded.
“Please just let me know next time. I hadn’t heard from any of you for two weeks. Anyway, I didn’t see a present.”
“We put it in a safe place,” Matt said.
“You can open it now, but you can’t use it until after the curry arrives,” Andy added.
Intrigued, I agreed to the rules with a nod of my head, and Ben got up and left the room for a minute. When he came back, he held a gift that had been wrapped in beautiful pink paper with a gold swirling design on it. There was a ribbon and one of those tiny cards attached, too.
“Here.” Ben handed it to me, and the anticipation in the room went up by several notches.
I turned the card over and read it.
Bex, this is a little something to tell you how much we missed you.
Andy, Matt and Ben xxxx.
My heart melted. I carefully unfastened the ribbon then the wrapping paper, pulling out a discreet black box. “What is it?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.
“Open it you numpty,” Andy replied with a laugh.
Inside the box, there was a silver steel butt plug, with a beautiful red jewel embedded in the base. It was really nice.
“What do you think?” Ben asked, literally on the edge of his seat.
“It’s gorgeous... but will it ever fit in my bottom?” At its widest point, it was enromous.
“With a lot of lube, I think it will slide right in,” Ben replied. “You’ve done anal before, you’ll be fine.”
I looked at it doubtfully.
“You’ll look stunning with it inside you,” Andy added. “With that red gem on the outside, suggesting that you’ve got a plug in your bum.”
I ran my fingers over the surface. It was so cold and smooth. I wanted so badly to try it, but I was worried about whether it would hurt.
“If it’s too big, will you take it out straight away?” I asked doubtfully.
“Of course, we will,” Ben replied.
“We want you to be comfortable, but we also want to push your boundaries,” Matt added. I nodded.
“Okay. I’ll try it. After dinner.” I put the lid back on the box and hugged my three men. “Thank you for getting me a beautiful present and I’m sorry I got so worried about you.” I nibbled on my lip for a minute, because there was something else I wanted to try, too.
“Spit it out, Bex,” Andy said. He was as perceptive as ever.
“Well, we’ve never used the sex dungeon—”
“Playroom,” Matt interjected. I rolled my eyes.
“Whatever. Anyway, I wondered if we could try something in there. A spanking, maybe?”
The three men looked at me with their jaws on the floor.
“You sure?” Matt asked. I nodded. We all needed this, right now.
“All of us?” Ben asked.
“I don’t know. How do you usually do this?” I asked. I’d not really paid much attention to how they had organised our past scenes.
“Let’s all go together, this time,” Andy said. “That way we’ll all know what’s been said and done.”
“Is that a polite way of saying you want to watch?” I teased him.
“Nope. It’s a
polite way of saying these two can watch while I show them how it’s done,” Andy replied, cocky as ever.
“Finish your dinner, we’ll all have a cup of tea in the living room and then we’ll show you the playroom,” Matt said decisively. With that settled, butterflies decided to start flying around my tummy while I tried to concentrate on eating.
Chapter 15
Bex
After dinner, we discussed what we were going to do together over tea, then when we were ready, Ben led the way to the mysterious playroom. When I’d first started reading into BDSM, what seemed like a lifetime ago, back in January, I’d just assumed that it would all happen in here. And yet, I realised now we had been steadily doing more and more intense BDSM scenes for months and this was the first time we had used the playroom.
Inside, I eyed the furniture with a mixture of amazement and fear. But unlike the first time I’d stepped in here, this time, I felt ready.
“Do you remember your safeword?” Andy prompted.
“Jellybean,” I replied more confidently than I felt.
“Good girl,” Matt told me.
“Take your clothes off, then go over to the St. Andrew’s cross and put your arms above your head,” Ben told me, pointing to the big X-shaped wooden thing on one side of the room. I nodded and pulled off my jeans and t-shirt. I unfastened my lacy bra and wiggled out of my knickers. Leaving my clothes near the door, I made my way over to the St. Andrew’s cross.
“Matt, fasten her in on that side,” Andy said, taking my left wrist and buckling it into a thick leather shackle attached to the cross. Matt restrained my other wrist, then they both fastened my ankles, forcing my legs wide apart.
“This room is almost completely soundproof, so don’t worry about anyone hearing outside,” Andy told me. The news excited me and scared me at the same time. We were completely cut off from the rest of the world.
“For a warm up, Ben’s going to use a gentle leather flogger,” Andy told me. “This is a sensual spanking, and it should hurt but not more than you can handle, so tell us if you’re struggling and make sure you use your safeword if you need to just stop. We’ll never hold it against you.”
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