Page 60 of Always Alchemy

I muse aloud on this front as we stand in the very room that hosted our first threesome. We’ve been back many times since. The shower pressure is still first class.

My wife, unsurprisingly, takes my ruminations and runs with them like a Labrador with a stolen rotisserie chicken.

‘We could recreate that kind of Eiffel Tower moment when I sucked Dex off and he sucked your thumb!’ she suggests with indecent zeal.

I laugh. ‘Darling, there’s a scale, you see. Tasteful nudity is at one end, and fully-fledged on-camera fellatio is at the other. Let’s not go hardcore porno in front of the camera, shall we?’

‘Glad one of you has some propriety,’ Dex mutters, and I laugh and lean in so I can rake my fingers through his hair. Dex Hunter-Scott is the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen, and in about four months’ time, his gene pool will be unleashed on the world.

That’s right.

Dex is the biological father of Darcy’s unborn son.

Ourunborn son.

The funny thing is, I think Dex and Darce feel a little worried on my behalf—as if I’ll be devastated when the little guy arrives and I have no blood ties to him.

The sweet, sweet things are utterly deluded. Dear God, I’m notthatbad at biology. Dex takes Darcy’s cunt far more often than I do.

I want this for him.

While this relationship has made the three of us blissfully happy, it’s Dex who’s given up the most to make it a reality. It’s he who’s had to overcome every word of toxicity and dogma he’s been force-fed all his life. He who’s had to find courage beyond bounds, sever ties with his father, for Christ’s sake.

The very least I can do is ensure that the man who’s sacrificed so much to be with me fulfils his wish to father a child.

In any case, everyone knows that blood means far less in the definition of fatherhood than other factors, factors I intend to ace with every ounce of energy in my alpha heart.

With a lighting standin the bathroom, it feels pretty cramped. I suspect this will be more of an in-the-moment action shot than some of the others.

‘We’re going to do it in the nude,’ Darcy explains gleefully to a nervous-looking Graf. The guy’s a fashion photographer, so he can’t be a total prude. Models are always getting their kits off, aren’t they? Perhaps he’s more worried about bringing that lovely antique Leica into a steamy bathroom than he is about being assaulted with a whole load of sex organs.

‘Look,’ I tell him. ‘There’ll be boners. I apologise in advance, but it’s pretty much a given when the three of us are in the shower together. Just, um, shoot around them, all right mate?’

‘So,’ he says wearily—and possibly warily, ‘we’re aiming for an above-the-waist shot, is that correct?’

Darce, Dex and I glance at each other. I can see in their eyes that they’re happy for me to take the lead on this.

‘If that’s how you want to frame the shot,’ I say, ‘then fine. But feel free to go wider. No dicks or cunts in shot. We’ll try to keep Darcy within the bounds of decency, but it would be a shame not to celebrate this gorgeous baby bump.’And these gorgeous pregnancy tits.

‘I totally agree,’ he says, his gaze sweeping over her. Theonly reason I tolerate it is that Graf is married to a high profile male magazine editor. I know that an aesthete like him can’t see a display of femininity and fertility like the one our wife will put on and not be moved to immortalise it in the most exquisite images.

We strip off our clothes and head into the shower, Graf’s instructions ringing in our ears. He wants playfulness. Spontaneity. He wants to show the sheer joy that comes from the three of us being together with clothes and boundaries and inhibitions shed (not that there are ever many of the latter where my beloved wife is concerned).

I’m the first to get naked and head for the shower, the hungriest racehorse out of the starting blocks. Dex catches me with a whack of his t-shirt across my arse as I go, and when I turn back to him, he’s laughing. I shake my head at him, grinning, the happiness hitting me like a freight train.

It’s all so different from that first time when he followed Darcy in here like a lamb to the fucking slaughter. When he used every ounce of his Catholic mulishness to deny, to subjugate every desire he thought he shouldn’t want.

He’s a different man now.

He is his true and wonderful self.

‘You’re playing a dangerous game,’ I remark as I saunter through. I crank up the two shower heads and turn the heat to just north of tepid. We don’t want so much steam that it impedes visibility—or fogs up the camera. ‘Come on, you two!’ I shout. ‘And for fuck’s sake, try to remember we have company.’

I’m operating under the safe assumption that as soon as Graf’s got his shot, the steam level in here will ramp up far higher, both figuratively and literally.

They’re with me in moments, joining me under the torrent of water, Dex turning his head this way and that towet his hair, exactly as he did all that time ago, reaching up to slick back his hair. There’s no less desire as I watch him, but it’s a fuller, cleaner desire, rendered positively luminous by my certainty that he’ll bend over for me, or at the very least get on his knees for me, before this session is over. Those shadows that taunted me of fear and want and worry that I’d never, ever get him to acquiesce have long since faded.

My wife’s hair is turning darker under the spray, the water sluicing over her pregnancy curves. She’s needed—and demanded—every bit of both of us we can give, these past couple of months in bed. If I thought Darcy was insatiable before, pregnancy has her as ravenous for dick as it does for food. Happily for all of us, we’re more than content to sate her fierce appetites on both fronts.

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