‘You playing poker?’ Sean laid two bags of groceries on the counter.
‘Mm-hmm, won’t be long.’
While she was engaged in her game, he took the chance to watch her. She was absent-mindedly eating a flaccid burger – some frozen crap she’d bought from the local shop. He went over to the table and lifted it off her plate.
‘What’s this? Eating before dinner?’
‘It is dinner. I got a packet, so you can have some too.’ Cherry spoke mindlessly, her attention on the game. It was fair enough; she was working.
But Sean took a bite of the burger. ‘No, it isn’t dinner.’ It was just as well he’d gone to the shop after his run, if this was her offering.
‘It is. That’s mine, and you’re eating it.’ She grasped for the burger whilst looking at her computer screen.
Sean held it out of reach. ‘Nope, Cherry. Your dinner is in those bags over there, and I’m cooking it, right after I’ve had a shower. Keep winning, and I’ll bring you a drink.’
That got her attention. She glanced up at him, not fighting his decision to chuck her so-called food in the bin, but surprised. At what? That he cared enough to do this?
‘What? I know we’re both busy, but we don’t have to avoid each other. We can have the occasional meal together, like adults. Right? Pasta together the other day was nice.’
She narrowed her gaze.
‘It was.’ Sean began emptying the shopping bags. ‘You make a good pasta and tomato sauce.’
Cherry’s expression warmed as she dropped her eyes back to the screen. ‘Liar... But sure, Seany, a meal together would be nice.’
‘Good.’ He placed a glass of Diet Irn-Bru in front of her, bubbles fizzing at the edges of the glass. Thunder rumbled again, and he looked out the patio doors in time to see a streak of white lightning spotlight his jungle of a garden.
Upstairs, in the shower, Sean relieved himself of the sexual tension Cherry had ramped up in him. He couldn’t fuck his wife, but there were no rules about taking himself into oblivion whilst thinking about her naked and wet, the sweet aroma of honeysuckle entwining around him like her legs. And in Sean’s imagination, there were definitely no rules about what would happen under those circumstances. No rules about how loudly she would moan as he took her, about how many times she would come under him, on top of him, around him.
The hammering rush of the water on the shower floor drowned out his frustration, and as the rain clouds split open, he came hard and urgently over his hand, against the tiles, into the Cherry of his imagination.
The problem was that self-pleasuring in the shower was fine as a short-term measure, but it was like building a temporary fence after a storm when another was bearing down. As soon as Sean went downstairs and saw her setting the table in her skinny jeans and tight little vest, the tension coiled up again. Living with this fiercely beautiful creature was both incredible and frustrating in equal measure.
For a short while, they ate in silence, Sean stealing glances at Cherry far too frequently, only to find those swan-lashed eyes gaping right back. Afteraround the seventh time of this happening, he chanced a wink, and her face broke into a smile – radiant, feminine warmth that rendered him near senseless.
Sort this out, Butler.
‘Listen,’ Sean grabbed onto his water glass like it was a life preserver. ‘Thanks for the sandwich today; it was delicious. But please, don’t do that again.’
‘Don’t do what again?’ Cherry was all innocence. ‘Make you a sandwich?’
‘You can make me a sandwich, but don’t come with that sandwich to my work, dressed like Betty Boop and then kiss me like you want to fuck me into next week. It’s too much.’
‘Oh, okay.’ Now she dropped the naïve act. ‘You were there too, Seany, kissing me back like you also wanted to fuck into next week, and possibly the one after that. It takes two…’
‘Aye, I was. It does. I’m not laying down the law. I know I said we need to act like we’re madly in love, but you are sex on two legs, and kisses like that make it messy. Very fucking messy. And the problem is that I want a different messy with you. I want tangled and sweaty and sticky and fucking hopelessly messy nights and days with my firecracker of a wife. So, seeing as we have an arrangement that behind closed doors this is a marriage on paper only, I think it’s best if we keep things a bit more…um––’
‘Boring?’
Sean sighed. This woman. ‘Fuck’s sake. You’re the one who wanted out. Now you’re saying it’s boring if we don’t practically fuck in public, meanwhile not fucking in private. That’s – for want of a more varied vocabulary – fucked up, Cherry.’
‘Sorry, but I am doing this “madly in love in public” thing to save your pride.’
‘Aye, fine.’ On this, she had a point. Today had perfectly presented their marriage to his workmates as happy and, quite frankly, horny. ‘I was going to say, let’s keep things a bit more sedate. Surely, we can look at each other…I dunno…fondly, without the over-the-top fondling, right?’
‘Yes. I can do that. Sorry. I got carried away today.’
‘We both did.’
