Page 61 of Always Alchemy

‘Can I come through?’ Tobias calls.

‘Sure!’ Dex replies, blithe as you like. The man who hid his desires in the darkness is about to put on a show for a photographer, and he’s happy as hell about it. It’s a wonderful thing to see.

‘As you are,’ Graf says, fiddling with his camera. I take him at his word and start to shampoo Darcy’s hair. As I lather her up from behind and massage her skull, the noises of appreciation she makes are positively orgasmic. Dex steps up in front of her, rubbing lavender-scented shower gel lovingly over her belly.

‘Any action?’ I ask him.

‘Not yet,’ he says.

It’s only been a few days since he and I have been able to feel anything, though Darcy’s felt flutters inside her for a few weeks longer. Checking for them, though, is our new favourite pastime.

‘Time to rinse,’ I tell her gently. She tips her head back,and I’m sufficiently taller than her to enjoy the view of her water-sluiced face and starry lashes, her radiant smile and the shampoo streaming over her swollen tits and stomach in foamy rivulets. As I drag my gaze away from her, my eyes meet Dex’s. He’s transfixed, too.

In a few months, we’ll be knee-deep in shitty nappies and drunk on adoration and sleep deprivation. We’ll be the most grateful, worshipful, incredulous servants to our queen and our little prince, and it will be the messiest, most exhilarating adventure of our lives.

But for now, we’re here together with our love and our hopes and our visions for the future—visions that, like tremulous buds, are startlingly close to bursting into the full glory of their reality.

As I rinse Darcy’s hair clean of shampoo and Dex smooths the suds over her belly, I hear the click of a camera shutter and a moment preserved in time.

ZACH

‘This is the very best kind of déjà vu,’ I say, sauntering towards my wife with one hand in my pocket and a black silk blindfold fluttering from the other.

She looks staggering, standing there in front of the very cross I trussed her up on that first time. Resplendent. We jointly agreed that our Slave Night reenactment would involve marginally less skin on show than that first time. There’s no fucking way random guys get to perv at my wife’s spectacular tits for the paltry sum of a hundred pounds—the price the calendar will sell for. That would be laughable.

So this afternoon, while the girls are at school and Jonnynaps at home with Ruth, Maddy has decked herself out in a one-piece that’s all black lace and tiny straps. She’s had her hair professionally blow-dried so it cascades over her shoulders in dark, glossy waves, and she’s resurrected those sexy-as-fuck bondage-style gladiator sandals, their leather ties crisscrossing up her legs in a way that’s so hot I wonder why we don’t get them out more often.

In a word: she isspectacular.

‘At least you’re getting me for free today,’ she says cheerily, and I laugh, recalling the blind panic I felt that night at the knowledge that I had to somehow win the bidding for my dangerous little colleague without blowing the girls’ entire school fees fund. The preemptive horror in my mind that I might wellnotwin, that some other fuckwit would outbid me and take her off to do all manner of filthy things to her, and that she would without a doubt let him to teach me a lesson.

I shake my head at the mere thought of it.

‘I mean, technically,’ I say. ‘This may be the least expensive day of our marriage, in fact.’

‘Haha. That’s so uncool. I’mverylow maintenance.’

Nothing about my wife is low maintenance. Especially when she goes shopping with Belle, Darcy and Nat or gets invited along by Gen to one of the trunk shows she loves to throw.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

‘The Maddy Master Expenditure spreadsheet says otherwise.’

We grin at each other. There is no spreadsheet, obviously, but I like to taunt her at regular intervals with the possibility that there is.

‘Better get your money’s worth then,’ she says, our eyes still locked. It’s a similar sentiment to the one she shared onSlave Night, and the thought makes my dick throb. I lick my lips.

‘I’ll be sure to. Let’s get you ready, shall we?’

She nods, instantly more pliant. I love this about my wife. She’s so feisty, but as soon as I go remotely Dom on her she rolls over like a kitten. I will never, ever stop finding it sexy as hell.

I step up so I’m right in front of her and hold out the blindfold.

‘I love you all in black,’ she murmurs, staring at my mouth. I too have resuscitated my ensemble from that indelibly memorable night.

‘I love you in every single way,’ I whisper back.

‘I hope Graf gets this over quickly,’ she says. ‘It’s not like we often get The Playroom to ourselves.’

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