Sugar Daddies (20 page)

“Morning, campers,” he said, and kissed Katie’s pretty mouth. He slung an arm over her shoulders and pulled her a few paces in my direction so he could do the same to me. “Let’s go get an early breakfast, I’m fucking famished.”

I drove the way home, and Rick took the back seat this time. Katie was in more pain than I’d anticipated, and I felt a little guilty for it. She’d pulled herself up into the passenger seat with a grimace on her face but claimed she was dandy, just a little bruised. That
would be true enough, but I still felt guilty all the same.

Conversation flowed like a dream on the way back up country, stupid stories, and old jokes and politics and the occasional silly YouTube video, but it was mainly flowing in their direction. Rick leaning forward in his seat to stare at Katie’s phone screen, or tickling her neck through the gap in her headrest. They were in deep, into each other like some corny old romance flick. If old romance flicks covered the bonding experience of double penetration, that is.

I think they call it instalove.

I was amused. Not quite jealous.

Encouraged, but not enough to let the prospects turn me into a stupid optimist.

I was happy.

We were happy.

So happy that I pulled the car off the motorway at the wrong junction and headed for Woolhope. They didn’t notice at first, too engrossed in a game of ‘what would you rather?’

Would you rather eat a donkey’s penis or take a cracked rib?

Would you rather fuck Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt?

Would you rather have no sex for the rest of your life or ten hours sex every day for the rest of your life?

Would you rather die now, or never at all, not for the rest of time?

“Would you rather find another stupid game, or walk the rest of the way home?” I said, but I was joking.

“Spoil-fucking-sport! Out he comes, Mr Grumpy!” Rick laughed.

“Quick-fire round, your turn,” Katie said, and her attention was all on me. “Would you rather… work the rest of your life or retire right now?”

“Work the rest of my life.”

“Would you rather… have bogeys for saliva, or piss for saliva?”

I raised an eyebrow. “What the fuck
kind of question is that?”

“Answer!” Rick said. “You HAVE to answer!”

I shrugged. “Piss? Jesus, I’ll go with piss.”

“Would you rather live in a zoo or an aquarium?”

“Zoo.”

“Would you rather have twenty kids until you die or never see a kid again?”

“Twenty.” I looked at her. “I’d rather have twenty kids than no kids.”

She rested back in her seat. “Rather you than me. Kids would totally wreck the cool-as-fuck house you guys have got going on. I think you’d rethink if it happened.”

“No,” I said. “I wouldn’t.”

Rick leaned forward, stuck his chin on my shoulder. “Um, where the fuck are we?”

And Katie noticed. She sprang to life, staring out of the windows. “Woolhope,” she said. “We’re heading for Woolhope.” She turned to me. “Why are we heading for Woolhope?”

Rick chimed in. “Yeah, Carl, why are we heading for Woolhope? You got a sudden urge to mount a horse?”

I shot him a look in the rearview mirror. “Katie’s feeling a little worse for wear, I figure it’s the least we can do.” I glanced in her direction. “You want to see your horse, I presume? Muck him out or whatever you horsey folk need to do of a weekend.”

She nodded. “Yeah, but I was… I was going to do it later… get Jack to help.”

“And now there’s no need, is there? We can help.”

Rick seemed happy enough to go along with it. He patted her shoulder and she tipped her head, pinned his fingers against her cheek. “We can help. Good call, Carl.”

“It’s up here,” she said. She pointed to a pub on the right. “Turn off here, over the common, then swing up to the left, you’ll see it.” I
followed her directions and she became visibly animated, restless in her seat despite the boot-kicked cervix. “Here,” she said. “It’s up here.”

I turned down a long bumpy driveway.
Weston’s Maintenance Services.
It looked like an agricultural yard, a little worse for wear. Some rusty old machinery out the front of a farmhouse, a few chickens dashing about the place. She pointed to a space in front of an old rickety barn, and I parked up. She was out of the car before I’d even turned the engine off, and her expression was a wonder.

Rick jumped out after her and she took his hand, started pointing things out. She made him poke his head in the barn as I locked the Range, and then pointed down a concrete path, her eyes locked on me.

“He’s down here,” she said. “Do you want to meet him?”

I felt like I was meeting the parents. That’s how serious she was.

I nodded. “Lead the way.”

She ambled along in spite of the soreness and Rick flashed me the biggest smile over his shoulder. His smile said
I love you.
It also said
win
. Seems he wanted to meet the horse as much as she wanted to introduce him.

We trudged past a stable block and I can’t say I was all that impressed. Rough around the edges was putting it kindly. It was the kind of dirty you get from age, mud and lack of funds, not from lack of care. The roof looked as though it was a bodge job, and some of the doors looked about to fall off. Then there was mud, a lot of mud, and there’d been rain here, enough that I feared for my shoes. She trooped on regardless of care for her pumps, and led us through a wood-chipped dressage ring that was missing a couple of sections of fencing, until she stopped, at a gate, and there were open fields beyond.

I scanned the pasture and there were a couple of horse-shaped dots in the distance. I was trying to guess which one was hers when she surprised me.

Sweet little Katie put her hands around her mouth and she bellowed.

“Samsonnnnnnnnnn.”

It was quite a volume.

She stepped up onto the bottom bar of the gate and did it again, and I was about to suggest we just walk on down the field and catch the beast as I presumed most horse owners needed to do when there was a rumble of hooves, thumping up the grass at some pace. I stepped away from the gate on instinct, and so did Rick, and the horse came into view, charging up the bank at reckless speed. Katie leaned over regardless
, holding out her arms and calling his name, and I nearly grabbed her, nearly pulled her back and out of harm’s way before the hairy brute ploughed into her, but he didn’t. He pulled to an instant halt, and he was all snorts, and nudging. His big furry head was over the fence, butting her in a way that I can only
assume was affectionate, and she was giggling, happy.

“This is Samson,” she said, like an introduction was necessary. “This is my big baby boy.”

He was a big fucking boy. A huge black beast with a white stripe down his face. She kissed his nose, and reached up to scratch his ears, and Rick scratched his ears, too.

“Come see him, Carl,” she said. “He’s friendly.”

But the beast didn’t like me. Not all that much. I stepped forward and I was tense, and wary of him, and he was wary of me. He eyeballed me, then flinched, taking a step back and snorting like a fucking dragon.

“Steady,” she said to him. “Hey, boy, steady.”

“He doesn’t like me,” I said.

“He will,” she laughed. “He’s just nervous of you. You must be… tense.”

“Tense?”

“They pick up on body language,” she said. “Energy, emotion, fear, anger. Whatever. They pick up on everything.”

“You’re too fucking stiff,” Rick laughed. “You’re not at the office now, you know. You need to loosen up, chillax. Let it all hang out.”

I beckoned to the horse, tried to keep my tone light, but he’d have none of it. He didn’t care for me at all.

I felt strangely disappointed.

“Never mind,” Katie said. “He’ll get used to you.” She realised what she’d said and her eyes widened. “If you come back, I mean.”

“We’ll be back,” Rick said. “Won’t we, Carl?”

Two sets of eyes on me, looking to me, looking for answers to a question I couldn’t answer. Not really.

“Sure,” I said. I started walking back the way we came. “Now let’s get shovelling this fucking horseshit before I change my mind.”

I should’ve gone home. I mean
technically
I’m only theirs for the weekend, and Sunday night was in the realms of overtime, surplus to the requirements of our arrangement. But I stayed.

I stayed because I wanted to, because they offered, because I liked them.

Both of them.

I stayed because I wanted to fall asleep between two hot bodies again. I stayed because, despite the fact I could still feel the ache of the pounding I’d taken the night before, I wanted them again.

I wanted them so much I was a sticky hot mess.

I sent a text to Mum, letting her know I was out for another night, and one to Jack, asking him to mind Samson until I showed up after my stupid meeting with the sperm donor, and then I settled down for the evening, kicking back between Carl and Rick on the sofa, listening to Rick’s soul compilation and drinking posh tea. And then they’d stripped naked, and I had, too, and we’d jumped into their massive white bed with me snug in the middle, and their arms had held me tight.

But they hadn’t fucked me.

And even though my battered cervix was relieved, I can’t say I wasn’t a little disappointed.

It appeared Carl and Rick were gentlemen. Gentlemen who’d been super keen to point out I wasn’t
on duty
. That I could take it easy. That they weren’t expecting anything.

So they’d kissed me and held me, without even a hint of anything more.

I’d have taken both. I’d have even tried to take it like a trooper and open my legs for another cervix bashing. But how can you say that? I mean,
should
I have said that? What’s the etiquette on that kind of shit?

They
were paying
me.
And part of me wished they weren’t, that this was just me and them, just because.

But that was crazy fucking thinking. Crazy. And thoughts like those weren’t going to get me my little riding yard or bail Jack out of trouble.

Thoughts like those could get stuffed.

I’m an early riser, but Carl beat me on Monday morning. He was already up when I opened my eyes to find myself sprawled happily on his empty side of the bed. The bathroom was still steamy when I took a pee and
brushed my teeth, and I found him downstairs, listening to the early morning news on the radio while he spooned up muesli. I sat myself down at the island and gave him a smile.

Carl was scary hot again this morning. Intimidating. He
wore a jet-black suit with angles that were killer. He was clean-shaven and bright-eyed and his jaw looked
made of steel.

“Breakfast?” he said, and nudged the muesli box in my direction. “We have toast, eggs, bacon. Rick probably has one of those breakfast nut bars or some other trendy squirrel food in the cupboard.” He pointed behind me. “Bowls and plates are in the top. Cutlery in the drawer underneath. You’ll soon learn your way around.”