he asked.
‘No!’ she protested. ‘Not at all.’
‘Am I travelling too much? Is that what’s brought on this talk of vibrators? Were you faking your orgasm just now?’
‘No,’ Alice said, ‘no. I was just—For an article. I was just editing out loud. Thinking.’
‘I can’t see how a shuddering lump of rubber could possibly better what’s great as it is,’ Mark said defensively. ‘Wouldn’t it detract from the intensity and meaning of our lovemaking – cheapen it?’
Alice felt badly. She hadn’t anticipated Mark’s hurt. She’d thought, at most, he’d be endearingly embarrassed and grateful for her dominance and initiative. Or else regard her as harmlessly kinky without taking offence. ‘I was just editing an article,’ she lied again, ‘that’s why I brought it up. That’s all.’
He nodded. Full of surprises, his wife. He kissed her. ‘Goodnight, Alice,’ he said, ‘I love you.’
‘If you peel onions under a running tap, your eyes don’t water.’
Saul watched Thea peeling onions under a running tap. ‘How do you want the aubergine?’ he asked. ‘Sliced or diced?’
‘Sliced, please.’
‘Under running water?’
‘No need. But spread them out then sprinkle salt over them to take away any bitterness.’
Saul sliced the aubergine. He reached up to take the salt from the cupboard. Thea sensed the closeness of his body just behind her. His shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbow. Just a glance at his forearm, the soft hairs spattering down to his wrist, the delineation of muscle, shot desire through to her stomach. She could smell him and the pleasure of it flickered her eyes shut. Saul brushed his hand fleetingly between her shoulder blades and then set about salting his sliced aubergine. Pass the butter, please. Fingertips touched and electrical impulses charged. Eye contact. Adrenalin. You have flour on your cheek. I’ll just brush it away for you. Thank you – here, let me feed you a fingerful of home-made mayonnaise. I need to reach up for that casserole dish. Yes, and when you do, I get to see your stomach lengthen and tauten and when you bring your arms down, your breasts swell.
‘Saul, can you pass me that tea towel? Thanks.’
‘Glass of wine? Red? Budge over – the corkscrew is in that drawer.’
Saul gently moved Thea to one side, his hands either side of her hips. She leant back lightly against his body and the proximity of his bulk sent a shiver of anticipatory pleasure through her. Suddenly Saul forgot about corkscrews. It seemed his reason for being there, behind Thea, was expressly to have his hands on her hips, his lips at the ultra-sensitive kiss of skin behind her ear. She pressed back against his chest and turned her cheek quickly; his lips leaving her neck and travelling over her jaw line to her mouth, her lips parted and her tongue tip was eager to dance with his. Behind her, rocking against her, her neck twisted round to reach his face, Saul gorged on her mouth. Something clanged down to the floor but they only half heard it. Thea whipped herself around so that she was facing him, her arms now thrown around his neck, her fingers enmeshed in his hair, urging his face against hers. He had a hand in the small of her back, his other clasping her right buttock. He pressed against her and she pulled herself up at him. The seam of her jeans was catching the swell of her sex and she parted her legs to find Saul’s thigh for further friction. He backed her up against the fridge, his leg wedged between both of hers, his hands now in her hair, over her breasts, pulling and grabbing; the smattering of his evening bristles rasping against her cheeks, her chin, her neck.
Thea tried to unbutton Saul’s shirt but it was taking too long so he pulled it over his head, undid his belt and ripped down his trousers to his knees. At the same time, Thea wriggled from her T-shirt and Saul pulled her bra straps down over her arms, not bothering with the clasp, not minding that it remained on, just as long as her tits were exposed for him to feel, to see and to suck. Thea’s hand worked energetically over and under his boxer shorts, at last liberating his straining, leaping cock. They crumpled themselves down onto the rubber floor, romping and humping and snogging and sucking. Saul tugged Thea’s jeans down, freeing her right leg. He moved her knickers to one side and took his mouth down to her. He could have spent hours feasting on her juice but tasting the rush of her moistness gave an urgency to the moment. With his trousers around his ankles, eyes closed, breathing fast and audible, Saul thrust into Thea and she ground against him. They humped and bucked and grunted and fucked, coming simultaneously; eyes scrunched shut, voices loud, faces racked into near-grimaces with the intensity of it all while their bodies spurted and sponged. And then they rolled apart, lay on the rubber floor, sticky and slippery and sweaty and satisfied, unable to speak while they let their heartbeats settle down.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Saul exclaimed on rolling towards Thea, his eyes slightly bloodshot. Just a few centimetres to the right of her face, a Sabatier knife lay glinting.
‘Christ,’ Thea agreed, her face flushed, a rash to one corner of her mouth. She reached her hand to Saul’s face and gently flicked chopped parsley from his hair.
‘Ouch!’
‘Sorry, babe.’
‘I don’t think the beads go there, Richard.’
‘I’m sure I saw it on some porn vid once. All right, how about here?’
‘Well, they fit – but I can’t say my world is shuddering. Porn vid? What porn vid?’
‘How about if I try this with them? Hang on.’
‘Do what with them where?’
‘This! I’m doing it!’
‘Are you? Oh.’
‘Hang on, what about—’
‘Don’t you dare!’
‘We’re kind of running out of orifices, Sal.’
‘Do you think it’s orifices or orificii?’
‘Wait a sec, let’s try – this. Move that leg a bit. A bit more. There.’
‘Ouch. Give them here. You roll over.’
‘You must be bloody joking!’
‘Look, shall we just bin the beads and have a good old shag?’
‘Now you’re talking.’
‘Happy anniversary, big boy.’
Seven months after Alice and Mark were married, after Saul and Thea had formed a couple, Adam came into the world. Until then, Alice had hailed her wedding as marking the zenith of her creative and organizational talent. But Adam surpassed all of that. Adam was Alice’s baby. Her true love. Her life’s work. Her future ambition. Her past achievement, her present success. Her key to larger offices two floors above.
Just before her first wedding anniversary, Alice won Launch of the Year for Adam at a prestigious industry awards ceremony. The trophy, a rather dramatic slash of perspex in a gravity-defying swoop into a lump of softwood, shared pride of shelf-space in her executive office two floors up, alongside a framed first issue of Adam – the one with Clint Eastwood on the cover.
‘Our project name was Quentin,’ Alice told a packed Grosvenor House ballroom at that awards night, ‘but as we kept having to stress “as in Tarantino, not Crisp” we needed something synonymous with Alpha Male. So our magazine became Adam. Biblical connotations end with the title – as we all know, publishing is no Garden of Eden, it’s a men’s mag jungle