Mal laughs from the bed. ‘You know she does. Get your belt out of your jeans and give her a warm-up.’
Jake pulls out the brown leather strap and rises to his knees. He looks from the belt to Rachael’s bum, back and forth, as if assessing his capacity for the job.
Eventually, he wraps the belt around his hand and gives her the lightest little flick,
hardly using any of his wrist in the motion.
‘Harder, please,’ she says respectfully.
‘I don’t think I can,’ he apologises. ‘No offence to Mal, but I don’t really get the thing about hurting girls. What if I just spank you with my hand a bit?’
‘That’s perfectly acceptable, sir.’
He is the limpest spanker I’ve ever seen, but he falls into his stride after a few floundering taps and I can see that Rachael is getting into it too. We cheer him along from the sidelines until he is grinning and confident, and he begins to make serious palm prints.
‘Nothing like a good spanking is there?’ I say idly to Mal, who agrees, of course.
Lincoln and O join us on the bed, and then we fall into a delicious sticky mess of body parts, joining and disconnecting, his, hers, theirs. Sometimes we don’t know which bit belongs to whom, and the joy is in not caring. Jake and Rachael pile on at some point and, eventually, so do Lloyd and Jade.
I mash my face into widespread pussies while somebody’s cock bangs at me from behind, or I ease another prick into my arse while a delicate female tongue laps at my clit or my nipples. I get stretched and slapped, kissed and caressed, frigged and fucked until my skin is rubbed raw and my breath runs out.
Somebody pulls a muscle and somebody else falls off the bed. A spring goes in the mattress and we all have to slide onto the floor. Through the thicket of limbs and cocks and tits, I make my way, slowly but inexorably, to Lloyd.
And that’s where I end up. It’s where I think I’ll always end up.
At 3 a.m. we all don complimentary bathrobes and go to the fitness suite, where Jake unlocks the hot tub. The hot tub where Lloyd and I first made out.
We sit in the bubbles, sipping fizzy wine and letting our bodies uncoil and recover from the feast of sex. Jake has reinvented himself as a dom – I rather think he fancies himself as Rachael’s dom – and he sits with his arm around her, asking her endless questions about what she has done in her life. It’s cute and perhaps it would work, but I’m not sure Jake has the imagination to take it as far as Rachael would want him to. Perhaps she’s best sticking with her regular roster of casual masters.
Lincoln and Jade sit side by side, in heavy-lidded trances, listening to the conversations around them. Lincoln might meet somebody one day. Well, to be fair, he already has. He meets somebody every day. But perhaps one day the somebody will tempt him to stick around instead of moving on to the next tight Lycra-clad bum.
As for Jade, she loves her flings. Especially flinging herself at every Big Name that ever books out the top floor. She has a list of starry conquests as long as her arm – in fact, some of them are tattooed on it. She enjoys herself. They enjoy themselves. Who could ask for anything more?
As for Mal and O, linked together by arms and legs, they are a couple whose symbiosis pleases me. His dominance, her submission, their steadfast loyalty and harmonious energy – these seem like things to aspire to. Like Lloyd and I, they flow in and out of other people’s sex lives, leaving only enrichment and happy memories in their wake. None of the debris of jealousy or insecurity floats in their slipstream. I wonder how they do it. I shall ask them.
And that just leaves Lloyd and I. We are together, but we are inclusive. We love life, we love sex, and we want to share our love with other people. It’s not traditional and it’s not for everyone but it’s right for us. Whatever opprobrium society wants to level at us we can handle as long as we are with each other.
And really, what are we doing wrong?