7 Years Bad Sex (7 page)

She wasn’t wrong.

Myles continued talking. ‘Speaking of pleasure… I hope that man of yours showed you his wicked ways after I left?’

Casey gulped. All of a sudden, the babble of conversation died as everyone waited for her answer. She should laugh and put Myles in his place, as she had done so many times before. But given the sexual non-events of their honeymoon, she found herself tongue-tied and unable to take the joke. Instead, she could feel a furious colour rising in her cheeks.

Liza came to her rescue, probably without knowing so. ‘Aw, look at her, she’s blushing! I bet we’re going to see a honeymoon baby in… oh… about nine months!’

The whole room burst out laughing, and Casey forced herself to join in. The awkward moment passed, and Myles marched off with Alex towards the buffet, no doubt to elicit salacious details. Well, she would leave Alex to ride that one out by himself.

She settled herself on a sofa flanked by Liza and Sasha and held court. Sasha was dying for the inside story on the honeymoon beyond the sparse details Casey had shared on the phone.

‘How was it, sweetie? I felt like I’d lost my right arm, not being able to contact you! I want to hear all about it.’

Casey rolled her eyes. ‘You’re as bad as Myles!’

‘I am not! I want to hear about the yacht and the cruise and all the fabulous places you’ve seen. How was it?’

Casey heaved a sigh of relief. She could have kissed Sasha for giving her a reprieve, and she gladly launched into an animated recap of all their adventures.

‘Dolphins? Wow! I’m so jealous!’ Liza exclaimed after Casey described swimming out in the open sea.

Casey glowed with the memory. ‘It was pretty spectacular, I have to say. And Sasha, you’re simply the best for all the surprises on our wedding day. I don’t know if I’ve thanked you enough!’

She pulled her friend into a hug. At the same time, she caught Alex looking at her from across the room, and she blew him a kiss. He winked at her, and she felt ludicrously thrilled. It was almost like the old days, when they first dated.

Sasha intercepted their exchange and chuckled. ‘Honestly, you. Hugging your best friend and making eyes at your husband at the same time. Tsk!’

‘I think it’s sweet,’ Liza offered good-naturedly. ‘They’re allowed to be a bit loved-up after their honeymoon.’

‘A bit? I’d say, a lot!’ Sasha teased, as Casey’s reprieve abruptly came to an end.

‘So…
did
you have lots of lovely sex, then?’

‘You
are
as bad as Myles,’ Casey tried to prevaricate, but this time Sasha didn’t let her off. She and Liza nudged closer to Casey and started whispering to her.

‘Go on, you can tell us. Getting married, does it change anything?’

Casey swallowed, desperate to buy some time.
How on earth was she supposed to answer this one truthfully?
It wasn’t her fault that she was the first in their friendship group to get married, and after a month, she was hardly the authority on married life.

Besides, she longed to blurt out the truth about their peculiar difficulty, but she couldn’t quite get herself to do so. For starters, this definitely wasn’t the right place.
What was she supposed to say?
She stalled some more.

‘Why would it change anything?’

‘I dunno.’ Liza shrugged. ‘Does it make it more exciting? Less exciting? Did you do it non-stop?’

‘We’re your best friends,’ Sasha coaxed. ‘You’ve always told us everything! Don’t leave us high and dry now.’

Casey cleared her throat. Mentally she cursed all the intimate girlie chats she had ever had with Liza and Sasha, not only about Alex, but about
their
respective boyfriends-of-the-day as well. It had seemed so natural at the time, dissecting their love lives, every nuance, every movement: Will he call me? Does he love me?

Now all that was coming back to bite her, and she wished they had never gone there in the first place.

‘It was—it was great. It was exciting. Different exciting, but don’t ask me how. And yes, we kept busy.’
At least that wasn’t a lie; they had kept busy—just not in the way she was implying.

‘“Great?” That’s it? You give us “great” and “busy”?’ Sasha burst out laughing. Alex’s head whipped up, and Casey was worried he would guess what they were talking about. She waved coyly and blew him another kiss.

Alex mouthed something at her that might have been ‘you tease’, but she couldn’t be sure.

Casey rallied to her cause. ‘Yup,’ she grinned. ‘I give you “great”, and that’ll have to do. Married women don’t tell.’

‘Aw, no!’ Sasha and Liza protested in unison. ‘That sucks!’

Sasha threw Liza a meaningful look. ‘Perhaps that joke about the honeymoon baby wasn’t such a joke after all.’

If only!

Casey started sweating. She could feel her hands growing clammy, and she felt slightly dizzy. She wouldn’t be able to keep up the pretence for much longer, not with Liza and Sasha. Their probing eyes and inquisitive tongues would tickle the truth out of her sooner or later.

‘Drink?’ She jumped up before either of her friends could answer and went to explore the buffet.

‘Hey honey!’ Alex was right there. He encircled her in his arms and kissed her ear. ‘Had a good chat with your friends?’

‘Yeah.’ Casey smiled her brightest fake smile. ‘How about you and Myles?’

‘Oh, you know. I fed him a load of technicolour stories about shagging you senseless.’

‘You didn’t!’

‘I did. I had to! It was that or hours of grilling. He got what he wanted to hear. Now he’ll go and spread rumours, and we won’t have to deal with any further questions. There’s method to my madness.’

‘I see.’ Casey laughed reluctantly. Somehow this whole talking about sex thing made her uncomfortable. She had never been a prude, but things had changed. Whatever happened to ‘what goes on in the bedroom, stays in the bedroom,’ she wondered. Was nothing private anymore?

Alex leaned in closer. ‘Sweetie, I know it’s been tough. But…’ He faltered, and Casey could hear him swallow. ‘But I couldn’t really tell Myles the truth, could I?’

Casey wrapped her arms around Alex’s neck, and they started swaying in time to the music. ‘And what
is
the truth, exactly?’

The blood was roaring in her ears as she waited for his answer.
Why did he have to pick a noisy party to broach the subject?

‘I don’t know,’ Alex mumbled softly. ‘I simply don’t know. But we’ll fix it, I know we will. I love you.’

He kissed her gently on the mouth, temporarily forgetting that they had an audience. Their friends clapped and cheered. Alex drew Casey closer still. She could feel his breath against her neck and see his pulse throbbing in a vein on his temple. At the same time, there was a hardness in his groin that pressed into her thigh, and she pushed against it eagerly.

‘I told you we’ll fix this,’ Alex repeated. ‘I want it. Do you want it?’

‘Oh gosh, I do.’ Casey didn’t care how trite that sounded. ‘I do. But…’

‘But what?’

‘But what if the house has fallen down, or there’s a flood, or a pair of burglars are doing unspeakable things on our bed?’

Alex laughed out loud. ‘We’ll deal with it.’

‘And what if…’ Casey hesitated.

‘What if what?’

‘What if it doesn’t work again?’

Alex tilted his head. ‘We’ll deal with that, too.’

‘How?’

By way of response, Alex ground himself harder into Casey. ‘We’ll figure something out.’

‘Promise?’

‘Promise. But first, let’s dance. Let’s enjoy ourselves. Let’s have fun with our friends. Let’s take the focus away from the other thing. Maybe it’ll work if we pretend we don’t want it.’

It was Casey’s turn to laugh. ‘Pretend we don’t want it at all? I like it. Reverse psychology is the one thing we haven’t tried. Let’s go for it.’ She stepped out of Alex’s embrace and made a shooing gesture with her hands. ‘Be off with you and make merry with our friends. Just…’ She lowered her voice a little. ‘Just don’t drink too much. You know…’

‘I know. And you too.’

Casey shook her head. That was why she loved Alex, for these flashes of sensitivity and caring. Well, among other things. But really, what a turn-up for the books. They had very nearly had a proper conversation, and they had more or less agreed on a plan of action. That had to be a good thing. Channels of communication were being opened. They would conquer this… this
thing
that had befallen them. And for now, they would pretend they didn’t want it at all.
What a grand idea.

Chapter Five:

 

Dress for Success

 

~Alex~

 

Of course, pretending we didn’t want it didn’t work. It was a dumb idea.

Alex stood in the shower—alone—and tried hard to ignore the urge to satisfy himself. That would have felt like a betrayal of sorts, but oh man, he could have done with the release. All through the afternoon and evening, he and Casey had played coy with each other, and their excitement had shone around them like a visible aura. Or, at least, so it had seemed to him. He had worked hard at not forgetting himself at the drinks table, and he was practically sober when he, at long last, carried Casey over the threshold of their house for the second time in as many days. They were both drooling with desire and pretending they weren’t.

Everything had looked really promising, but when it came down to it, it hadn’t worked.
Again
. Their love-making was like a firework that had its fuse lit but failed to explode.

Casey was the first to give up. ‘Hey ho, never fear,’ she exclaimed. ‘Let’s open a bottle of wine at long last and watch a movie.’

‘Christ, Casey!’ Alex exploded. ‘We’re newlyweds, not geriatrics approaching our ruby anniversary. We should be at it like rabbits.’

‘And you think I don’t know that?’ Casey shot back, clearly mardy now. ‘What do you suggest we do? Flog a dead horse until it miraculously rides again? It ain’t happening.’ She poked his flaccid appendage, and he didn’t feel a thing. Embarrassed, he raked a hand through his hair.

‘I’m sorry for shouting. I don’t know what’s come over me. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m sorry.’

‘Me too.’ Casey snuggled up to him and searched his face with her eyes. She longed to
talk
, he could see that, but he wasn’t in the mood. The few words he had managed at their surprise party earlier were as much as he could manage at this stage. He was frightened what would happen if they lifted the lid off Pandora’s box in earnest. So instead he retreated into the shower. But man, he was so
needy
.

Perhaps… Perhaps the idea of a movie wasn’t such a bad one, he suddenly thought. He had some X-rated material stashed away that might inspire them. Of course, he wasn’t entirely sure how Casey stood on the matter of porn—hard or soft—but maybe he could convince her?

Galvanised into action, he turned off the shower, wrapped himself in towels, and bounded into the lounge. He found Casey sitting among a pile of DVDs, looking thoughtful. With a start, he realised that she had located his stash of saucy flicks and was scanning through the blurbs on the covers. He swallowed.

‘I didn’t know you knew I had those.’

Casey laughed. ‘Doesn’t every man? Besides, who do you think sorts through this cupboard every few months in search of one movie or another?’

‘Errr.’ Alex was lost for words. Casey grinned some more.

‘I wasn’t thinking of Bridget Jones when I suggested a film, you know. How about this one?’

She held up a mildly X-rated porn movie with some semblance of a plot. He recalled watching it ages ago, probably before he had even proposed to her. He swallowed some more. Even though he had had the idea too, it was strange that his wife beat him to suggesting it. It was… It felt wrong.

However, his body was of a different opinion and had eagerly sprung into life this time.

‘That one’s pretty good,’ Alex croaked.

‘Great.’ Casey popped the DVD into the player and stretched out on the sofa, completely starkers. ‘Care to join me?’

‘Sure.’

‘Wine?’

‘Do you reckon? I mean, is it a good idea?’

Casey pursed her lips. ‘Abstinence hasn’t made a difference, so why not have a drink or two?’

‘Good point.’

So they watched the medium-rated porn flick together, sipping wine, cuddling into each other, and pretending this was all very normal.

The very weirdness of the situation was arousing, and Alex yearned for action. Yet he held himself back.

‘Alex?’

‘Hm?’

‘How about…’ Casey looked at him expectantly, not finishing her sentence, clearly hoping he would read her mind. Alas not.

‘How about what?’

Casey blushed. ‘I really… I could really do with…’

Alex finally nodded. ‘Same here, my sweet. Same here.’

For a moment, they got distracted by the couple climaxing on screen, and they watched the contortions on display in stunned silence.

‘Wow.’ Casey breathed. ‘I don’t know if I could do that.’

‘We could try?’

‘We’d have to order the Kama Sutra first for instructions.’

‘I’m sure that could be arranged. We can probably download a copy right now.’

‘Maybe some other time.’ Casey waved a dismissive hand. ‘But…’

‘But what?’

Casey blushed again. ‘Would you mind… Could we perhaps… Maybe we could just…’

‘Maybe we could just—what?’ Alex was lost again.

‘Do it ourselves. You know. To ourselves. As it were.’ Casey stumbled over her own words. ‘I know it sounds stupid and dumb, but I’m so desperate. Would you mind if I…’ She cleared her throat. ‘Helped myself?’

Alex let go of the breath he had been holding. ‘No.
No
. Of course not. Oh my gosh, let’s go for it.’

He put a hand on his hardness and was immediately flooded by a delicious warmth, a firm promise of release at long last. ‘Oh gosh, yeah, let’s do this.’

Casey leaned back on the sofa. ‘You don’t think it’s wrong?’

Alex groaned, already halfway on the road to oblivion. Now that he had started, there was no holding back. He was loath even to talk, but he forced out a brief response.

‘I think—it’s totally and utterly—phoar—weird—but who—gives a damn?’

A gentle sigh told him that Casey was surrendering herself to herself, but he was too wrapped up in his own pleasure to give her a second thought or even the merest glance. No distractions for him now. This had been coming far too long, too long, too long…

The promise of release became a reality, and for a small moment, the world was perfect again.

 

~Casey~

 

‘Morning.’

‘Morning.’ Alex grunted over the rim of his coffee cup. Sitting at the kitchen table, he was surrounded by sheet music and pens, and his laptop was perched on a stack of books with his favourite music transcription program open and waiting. Alex was working. Casey smiled to herself. If Alex was working, he was happy. And that was good.

She was happy, too. Semi-delirious, in fact. The unexpected release of the previous evening had been gratifying in more than one respect. Casey felt immensely reassured to know all her bits were still in perfect working order. There was nothing wrong with either of them. They had gone to sleep happier and more relaxed than they had for days, even if perhaps their union hadn’t been strictly speaking of the marital kind. Who cared?

In fact, Casey felt so buoyed by happy hormones that she had concocted a new plan. One that was inspired by a combination of trying on her black lacy underwear the other day and watching that porn flick. One that she would never previously have considered but was now totally hooked on. However, she didn’t want to give herself away, so she took care to arrange her face in a neutral expression.

‘You going to be working for some time?’ she asked innocently.

‘Huh?’ Alex looked up, clearly distracted, then computed her question. ‘Oh, yeah. If you don’t mind. I feel inspired today.’

‘I bet,’ Casey whispered to herself. Aloud, she said, ‘Do you want another cup of tea?’

‘Yes, please. If you’re making one.’

‘Have you had breakfast at all?’

‘Huh?’

Casey laughed. Alex in working mode was like the proverbial genius, all distracted and in faraway places. She was reasonably sure that he hadn’t eaten. Nor had he got dressed or shaved.

‘Toast? Bacon?’ she suggested cheerfully.

‘Err yeah, why not.’ Alex waggled his fingers in a ‘go for it’ gesture.

Casey busied herself making breakfast. All the while her mind was formulating her plan, and she couldn’t wait to get out of the house. Actually, she couldn’t wait to get back into the house and see the look on Alex’s face.

‘I’m off,’ she announced at last. ‘I’m going for a quick trip to outer space. You don’t mind?’

‘What? No, of course not. Have a great day.’

Alex hadn’t listened to a word she said, but it didn’t matter. The surprise would be awesome.

 

~Alex~

 

The front door slammed, and Alex gave a start. He hadn’t stopped working since six a.m., and he had only a vague recollection of Casey getting up, fixing him breakfast, and then rushing out. It appeared she was back, although it was only—he checked the time on his laptop—noon. It wasn’t like Casey to be back so soon. She normally took ages to do whatever it was she did. Besides, hadn’t she said something about checking out a space? He had assumed she was looking at new venues for their private music teaching business.

In their spare time, when they weren’t practicing, recording, or performing, they gave singing and drumming lessons to bolster the unpredictable and relatively slim income they received from the royalties for Blue Heart’s music. While the band was destined for great things, they couldn’t quite make a living out of it yet, and they didn’t want to have to rely on cover gigs at the weekend for much longer. Hence the lessons business. Anyway, that was what he thought Casey had been up to. But she was back already. Maybe it hadn’t gone well.

‘Everything all right?’ he called out.

‘Perfect.’ Casey didn’t stop to talk to him but raced up the stairs instead.

Alex shrugged and read through his most recent composition. He was calling it ‘Twisted Love’, and it was a fast song with a pounding beat. A love song, but not of the traditional kind. He wondered what Casey and the rest of the band would make of it.

He was tapping at the keyboard to make some adjustments to his arrangements when Casey stepped into the kitchen.

‘Hello, gorgeous,’ she murmured. ‘I hear you’ve been naughty.’

There was something in her voice that made him look up even though he was in the midst of a critical harmonic tweak. His jaw dropped.

Casey was practically naked. Except she was wearing an impossible black rubber-and-string contraption that should have been repulsive but looked unbelievably sexy. He stared and gawped even while the heat was rising in his body.

Casey gave a slow, provocative half-twirl, revealing exactly what she had on. There was a lacy rubber G-string under a body-hugging halter-necked rubber wrap that was held together—just—with a silver chain criss-crossing her front and only barely managing to contain her breasts. Her feet were in impossible black stilettos with a silver spike for a heel. Alex felt himself stiffen in all the right places, and his breathing quickened.

Her hair was scraped back into a severe ponytail, and while Alex was still drinking in his wife’s unexpected dominatrix attire, Casey revealed with a flourish her last accoutrement, which she had been hiding behind her back: a whip. She flicked it experimentally before poking him under the chin with it, forcing him to raise his head and look her squarely in the eyes.