7 Years Bad Sex (8 page)

‘Naughty, naughty, naughty,’ Casey purred in a voice so husky and raw that it was nearly an octave deeper than normal. Alex swallowed hard.

‘I’m sorry,’ he squeaked and bit his lip, trying not to laugh at himself.

For a moment, Casey’s extraordinary façade slipped and her lips creased into a lopsided smile. She, too, suppressed a giggle.

Alex half rose from his chair, but she patted him on the shoulder with her whip and commanded him to sit. Alex obediently sat, relishing the heat between his legs and the tremor in his fingers.
This was going to be good—oh so good.
If
this
was what their little performance problem brought out in them, then wow. So be it.

He succumbed to Casey’s game, playing along at every step of the way as she pranced around him, placing her stiletto’d foot brazenly between his legs only millimetres from his groin, running her fake black fingernails along his cheek—surely they were fake, they had to be, they weren’t there last night, but oh, he rather liked them, the tingling feel of them, the shivers they sent down his spine…

Alex grew dizzy with desire.

‘Kiss me,’ he pleaded.

‘Not so hasty,’ came the reply.

Casey shimmied some more, pulled at some straps, and suddenly released the G-string from under her wrap. Now she was bare in all the right places under that rubber dress of hers, and Alex realised that he had access to all areas.

Right on cue, she sat on his lap, rubbing against him. Moaning, breathing heavily, licking his ears and his cheeks. And finally, finally kissing him deeply, greedily, hungrily.

They clung to each other like they were drowning, and when they eventually overbalanced, they toppled off the chair and fell to the floor in a tangle of limbs. Somehow, Casey ended up on top of Alex, and the sight of her breasts straining against the rubber and chains sent him mad. He pulled roughly at her ponytail so that her head yanked back to expose the long, delicate curve of her neck. For a moment, he fantasised about being a vampire and sinking his teeth into her tender flesh.
That
had never occurred to him before, but he didn’t have time to dwell on the notion.

Casey was up for it too, he could tell. She was panting hard and clawing at her outfit.

‘Get it off,’ she whimpered. ‘Get it off, get it off!’

‘Not so fast.’ Alex decided to turn the tables and tease his wife a little.

‘Please,’ Casey begged, increasingly desperate.

‘All in good time,’ Alex gasped, although he knew he wouldn’t be able to restrain himself much longer.

‘Please,’ Casey wheezed one more time. And then she passed out.

 

~Casey~

 

‘What happened?’ Sasha was completely agog. It was a Saturday nearly two weeks after the rubber dress incident, and Casey and Sasha had holed up at Sasha’s flat for a girls’ night in while Alex and Myles went to paint the town red. Blue Heart was having a rare weekend off.

Casey crinkled her nose. ‘I had an allergic reaction. I spent the rest of the night in a tepid bath trying to soothe my skin. It was red and blotchy, and it looked like it would flake off in big strips. It was awful. Alex very nearly took me to the hospital.’

‘An allergic reaction?’

‘Yup. Apparently I’m really sensitive to rubber, even the anti-allergy stuff that they sell in the shop.’

‘What shop?’ Sasha was confused.

‘You know. The shop where I bought the outfit. It was meant to be hypoallergenic. Yeah, right.’

‘You bought a hypoallergenic rubber dominatrix outfit in a kinky shop to play bedroom games with Alex, and you had an allergic reaction?’ Sasha repeated.

‘Yup, that’s the long and short of it.’

‘But why?’

‘Because I’m allergic to rubber, and I didn’t know.’

Sasha grabbed a sofa cushion and whacked Casey with it. ‘No, silly. Why did you buy the outfit in the first place?’

‘Oh. Yeah. That.’ Casey could feel a blush spread across her face. This was the moment she had been dreading. It was also the moment she had been working towards. If she couldn’t unburden herself to her best friend soon, she was sure she would implode. But now that the time was upon her, she felt reluctant to breach Alex’s confidence.

On the other hand, she needed to talk to
someone
. She needed some help.
They
needed some help.

She gulped. ‘Okay. Here goes. But you must swear on your mum’s life never to share this with
anybody
.’

Sasha adopted a serious look and raised her right hand. ‘I solemnly swear.’

So out tumbled the whole story, starting with the wedding day and ending with her near-trip to the hospital after the rubber experiment.

Sasha was horrified. ‘You mean—you’re saying you can’t have sex with each other?’

‘That’s about it, yeah.’

‘But why not?’

‘We don’t know!’ Casey’s voice was a near-wail. ‘I wouldn’t be telling you all this if I had the answer.’

Sasha sipped at her wine. ‘Have you Googled this?’

‘Have I
Googled
this? Sasha, we’ve both been all over the Internet. We’ve bought self-help books. We even downloaded a copy of the bloody Kama Sutra. Oh, and “The Joy of Sex”. But we can’t do it.’

Sasha giggled. ‘You’ve got a copy of “The Joy of Sex”?’

Casey rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, we’ve got a copy of “The Joy of Sex”. But it ain’t helping us one bit.’

‘So you’ve actually read it?’

Now it was Casey’s turn to thump Sasha with a cushion. ‘Yes, we’ve actually read it. Together. In bed. Completely naked and ready to follow instructions. But it’s not bloody working for us, and I’m a desperate woman. Wanting to make love has become the big white elephant in the room. It’s always there, but we pretend we don’t see it.’

‘Wow.’

‘Yeah. Wow. Not sure “wow” is the best word, but it’ll do. Wow.’ Casey grimaced some more.

‘What a bummer.’

‘Eloquently put. Anything else you’d like to say?’

Sasha turned serious. ‘I’m sorry, Casey. I don’t mean to be callous. I’m simply—I’m so stunned. You two have always been like the incarnation of true love…’

‘I know, I know,’ Casey waved her arms. ‘I’m sure we were sickening in our perfection, but we’ve got our come-uppance now.’

Sasha scratched her head. ‘There must be some sort of reason.’

‘That would be good, because then we could fix it. Right now, we daren’t even look at each other for fear of getting horny and not being able to do it—
again
.’

‘More wine?’

Casey giggled. ‘You’re incorrigible. Yes, more wine please.

‘It’s like you’ve been cursed,’ Sasha ruminated.

‘Hear, hear,’ Casey mumbled through a mouthful of wine. ‘Don’t think I haven’t Googled that too. But I don’t believe in curses, and, even if I did, I can’t come up with anything that would explain our situation.’

‘Have you upset anybody? Maybe some mysterious woman is sticking pins in your respective voodoo dolls every day.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Casey snorted. ‘You don’t believe in that crap, do you?’

‘Of course not. But some people do.’

Casey shook her head. ‘I think we’ve got to a place where we’re totally overthinking it. And then nothing happens, because that’s precisely what we fear.’

‘But everything else is hunky dory?’ Sasha launched a sideways enquiry. ‘You know, being married and all that?’

‘Everything else is fine. Being married is no different to having lived together for two years, except I’m now legally Mrs Morgan. But it’s good. We’re good together, like we’ve always been. We don’t argue, we rehearse, we record. Alex writes songs… Everything’s perfect except for this one thing.’

‘Hm.’

The women sat in silence for a few moments.

‘I suppose it’s not
that
big a thing,’ Sasha finally offered.

‘It’s not?’ Casey had been rationalising her thoughts along the same lines, but she was eager for affirmation from her best friend.

‘It’s only sex, right?’

‘It’s only sex,’ Casey echoed. ‘Although…’

‘Although what?’

‘It’s difficult to start a family without having sex.’

‘Ah. Yes, that
is
a problem.’ Sasha nodded thoughtfully. ‘Are babies on the agenda?’

‘Well, no, they’re not. At least not
yet
. But I can’t help thinking that they
won’t
be on the agenda at all if we can’t get this sorted out.’

‘Is there a blazing hurry about the babies?’

Casey shook her head. ‘No. Definitely not.’

‘In that case, I prescribe yet more wine, and let me dig for solutions. Meanwhile, have you tried celibacy?’

‘We have. That’s kind of where we’re at right now.’

Sasha grinned. ‘What can I say? Keep up the good work. We’ll figure it out. We can’t have the rock star couple of the decade not getting down and dirty with each other. I’ll do some research for you. Have faith.’

Chapter Six:

 

Getting Down to Play

 

~Alex~

 

‘Are you all right, man? Only you’re looking kind of hungry.’ Myles sniggered and elbowed Alex in the ribs. They were in a super-trendy dance club in Farringdon, and a whole truckload of dolled-up girlies on a hen do had just arrived. Alex snapped to.

‘Come again?’

‘Now that’s fightin’ talk,’ Myles guffawed. ‘You look like you wanna come again—with that bird over there.’

‘What bird?’ Alex had been miles away, thinking of Casey. Missing her. Ridiculous, he knew. She was only up the road with Sasha, but still. This was their first night apart since the wedding, their first night off from weekend gigging, and he couldn’t help but notice her absence. He supposed that was a good thing, especially considering their precarious circumstance. He smiled.

‘
That
bird. The one you’re making moon eyes at. Say, mate, aren’t you getting enough with the missus?’

‘Myles!’ Alex surprised himself and his best mate in equal measures with his shouted reprimand. He made an effort to drop his voice. ‘But really, can’t you lay off Casey? What’s eating you?’

‘Me?’ Myles was all pretend outrage. ‘What’s eating me? Nothing’s eating me. But you two, you’ve been behaving like randy cats that never get the deed done. What’s with you?’

Alex nearly choked on his drink.
Was it really that obvious?

‘And now,’ Myles continued mercilessly, ‘you’re making eyes at the first available piece of totty in sight. What’s up? Don’t you love Casey anymore?’

‘Of course I still love her!’ Alex was shocked that Myles should be thinking along those lines. ‘In fact, I miss her. It’s our first night apart since we tied the knot.’

Myles made a gagging noise deep in his throat. ‘I get it. You’re lovesick. I need more beer.’

He ambled off to the bar. Alex was left behind feeling as though the floor had been pulled out from under him. Did it really show to the whole world that he and Casey were leading a frustrated quasi-celibate existence? If so, that was a disaster. No wonder the rest of the band had been handling them with kid gloves during practice and at gigs. Casey had assumed it was because they were now married. In truth, everyone could see that they weren’t shagging. He sighed.
What a mess.

Myles returned with a couple of beers, and, for a microsecond, Alex debated confiding in his erstwhile best man. But he thought better of it. Myles didn’t do that kind of talk. And once the words were out there, they would be truly out there. As in, well and truly all over the social media. Myles might be his best mate and an ace guitarist, but a great confidant he was not.

Alex picked up his beer and downed it. ‘Can we go now?’

Myles spluttered his beer all over the table. ‘What, now? We only just got here! This is supposed to be a night
out
.’

‘I know. I’m sorry, mate, but it’s not my scene tonight. Can’t we get a movie and hunker down at your place?’

Myles shot him a sceptical look. ‘Sure. If that’s what you want.’

‘That’s what I want.’

 

After four hours filled with two action movies and twelve cans of beer, Myles had passed out and was snoring softly on his sofa. Alex, however, couldn’t sleep. Yeah, he had had a great time, but he felt really out of sorts, especially after what Myles had said in the club, and he wasn’t really in the zone for hanging out. Still, he had stuck with his best mate. He couldn’t very well have gone home. But he wished he had.

He grumbled to himself and tried to get comfortable on the sofa once more. Myles emitted a particularly loud snore, and Alex wanted to do a runner. Suddenly it occurred to him that he might as well go and sleep in Myles’s bed if Myles wasn’t in it. The sheets might not be the cleanest, but heck, he would stay in his clothes and have a nice hot shower back at home in the morning.

No sooner thought than done. Alex padded gently across the vast wooden floor and shut the door to Myles’s bedroom behind him. At last, that stopped him hearing the snoring. He pulled back the duvet and gingerly climbed into the enormous super-king-sized bed. Something rustled under his bottom, and he expected to find a porn mag.

‘Myles, Myles, Myles, you need a steady girlfriend,’ Alex grinned to himself. But his grin quickly faded with uncertainty. It wasn’t a porn mag that Myles was harbouring in his bed. It was a catalogue of some description.

Alex squinted at the images, confused by what he was seeing. ‘What
is
this stuff? Is Myles into some unusual cookery fad that I don’t know anything about?’

He turned the page this way and that but couldn’t make sense of the assortment of images showing blender-shaped multi-coloured sticks and balls. Eventually he resorted to looking at the front page and nearly choked on suppressed laughter. Myles’s bedtime reading was a mail-order catalogue for sex toys. Alex had apparently been staring at vibrators and massagers of the ‘most exclusive variety’.

The laughter built and built until Alex could hold it back no more. He had to stuff a pillow in his mouth to drown out his guffaws. Tough man and bad boy Myles was given to ogling some of the kinkiest sex toys on the planet.

‘I wonder if he has any of these stashed away here somewhere?’ Interest piqued, Alex pondered rifling through his mate’s wardrobe but drew the line at snooping. Instead, he amused himself looking at the catalogue some more. He fervently wished Casey were there to share the joke with him. She would have a field day with this stuff. He could almost hear her voice.
Eek, what do you suppose that one does? And what orifice does it go into?

He was still shaking with laughter when the idea hit him. There was stuff in here that might actually be helpful. They had tried the kinky outfit route, and it would have worked if Casey hadn’t reacted to the rubber. So why not kinky toys?

Alex picked up the catalogue again. Some of these implements looked really entertaining, especially as their actual use was a mystery to him. If nothing else, he and Casey could have some intimate fun with this stuff.

He turned the catalogue over thoughtfully. There was
no
way he would surrender his personal details to a dubious mail order purveyor of sex toys. That wouldn’t do. No, he would simply have to find an actual shop. Paying cash in a real shop, however dodgy, where nobody knew him—yeah, he could manage that.

 

~Casey~

 

Something was cooking in the kitchen. The lights were low, and the table was set with fancy crockery and candles. Something was definitely up.

Casey sniffed the air appreciatively. She detected the fishy tang of prawns cooked in garlic oil. There was a delicious hint of chilli and paprika, and she could pick up the scent of chorizo baking in the oven. Her stomach rumbled in anticipation. She had spent all afternoon in the studio working on the vocal tracks for Blue Heart’s new album. Normally the band insisted on staying together whilst recording even individual parts, but Liza had been taken ill, and Myles had taken her home.

Alex had stuck around when they left, but after a while, the sound engineer had subtly suggested that Alex might as well leave too. So Alex had taken off, and Casey had found herself alone in the studio.

She smiled. She had assumed that Alex would have gone to the pub or maybe hunkered down for some writing at home. Instead, he had put together a meal of tapas for them both. Bless him!

‘That smells good,’ she greeted him happily. ‘Have I mentioned lately that I love you?’

Alex chuckled. ‘The way to a woman’s heart is through her stomach, it seems.’

‘Absolutely.’ Casey wrapped Alex in a hug. ‘I dig the apron and the oven gloves. That’s a nice look.’

Alex bowed. ‘Thank you, ma’am. If you care to be seated, dinner shall be served.’

‘Wow. I clearly must go out to work on my own more often,’ Casey joked. ‘I like the domesticated husband routine.’

‘Watch what you wish for, gorgeous,’ Alex replied as he set down steaming dishes on the table. ‘Wine? Red or white?’

Casey surveyed the offerings before her. ‘Red, I think.’

‘Excellent choice.’

Alex ditched the apron and oven gloves and sat down with Casey. ‘Bon appétit.’

‘Thank you.’ Casey tucked into some prawns greedily. ‘What’s this all in aid of?’

‘You’ll see, darling, you’ll see.’

Casey shivered. What had this husband of hers planned for the evening? He was obviously on an all-out seduction mission.

They hadn’t attempted sex or even talked about it since the rubber dress incident. Instead, they had devised a new evening routine involving books, movies, music, and wine. In bed, they did a crossword. Without intending to, they had fallen into an almost geriatric marriage lifestyle.

Tonight, however, it seemed that Alex was poised for romance. Casey chewed and swallowed to dislodge the lump of dread that had caught in her throat. Yes, dread. She was dreading ‘it’ going wrong again. The more often they tried and failed, the worse it was going to get, she was sure of it.

‘You’re miles away, sweetheart. Are you okay?’ Alex broke into her thoughts, and she forced a smile on her face.

‘Fine,’ she replied, her voice catching only slightly on the lie.

‘I’ve a surprise for you,’ Alex announced.

‘Really? What is it?’

‘You excited?’

How can I be excited if I don’t know what you’ve planned?

‘You know I love surprises,’ Casey offered evasively.

‘Oh, and this one will be fun!’ Alex rubbed his hands together gleefully.

‘Does it involve—’ Casey couldn’t get herself to finish the sentence.

‘Possibly.’ Alex did it for her. ‘But lots of fun for sure. I can’t wait!’

Casey laid down her fork. ‘All right, let me see. Where is it?’

‘In the lounge. Close your eyes.’

‘Close my eyes?’

‘Close your eyes. Go on, do it.’

Obediently, Casey closed her eyes. Immediately Alex took her hand and guided her towards the lounge. He opened the door and propelled her in gently.

‘Ta-da! You can open them now.’

Casey opened her eyes and gasped. On the lounge table was set out an array of bewildering objects of all shapes and sizes in various bright and gaudy colours.

‘What do you think?’

Casey cleared her throat. ‘What
is
this stuff?’

‘Aha, I’m glad I’m not the only one stumped by the purposes of this equipment. I’ve been shopping, you see.’

‘I see,’ Casey replied drily. ‘Only I don’t see.’

Alex tugged at her hand and led her to the table. ‘Sit down,’ he encouraged her. ‘Let’s have a play.’

‘A play?’

‘Yup. These are toys.’

‘Toys?’

‘
Sex
toys.’

‘Sex toys?’

‘Uh-huh. When I was staying with Myles the other night, I stumbled over this catalogue he had. I was intrigued, so I went shopping.’

‘Myles owns sex toys?’

Alex burst out laughing. ‘I’m not sure whether he actually owns any, but he appears to like reading a sex toys mail order catalogue at bedtime.’

‘And you know this how?’