Page 60 of Gift Horse

I have no idea what I should be ready for, but I run my free hand down his chest, smiling at the way he smolders under my touch. “For you, I’m always ready.”

The words have no sooner left my lips than he dips me backward, my throat bared to him, his breath hot upon my skin.

He pulls me up, spins me out and twirls me back, my skirt flaring, cooling the heat that burns between us. He grabs me with the abruptness of a demand, but his hands are gentle, somehow still tender, and I’m as sure as I’ve ever been that this is the man I’m going to spend the rest of my life with. I wouldn’t have trusted another person to throw me around a dance floor like that.

“Te toco y se detiene mi mundo,” he whispers. “If I could spend the rest of the night with you alone, that’s where I’d want to be.”

The song ends in a hailstorm of cheers. Mariano walks me to the side of the dance floor and swaps me for Henrietta, which means I am to dance with… “Woah! That’s quite the dong you’ve got going on there, Alan!”

Alan shakes his codpiece at me. “We’re going to put on a show for you, later, Lolly. I’m Bottom, the weaver.”

Holy dog biscuits, that was not what I expected.Midsummer Night’s Dreamis a heck of a play to produce. Unless they’re only going to give us the kissing scene with Pyramus and Thisbe. If Alan is Bottom, who’s going to play his love interest, Hippolyta? I look around but can’t see the Faerie Queen. Perhaps she’s being shipped in specially? They have to havesomeonewho can act—that’s not a scene for amateurs. At least, not if you want to capture the cut and thrust of the jibes embedded in the wordplay. I catch myself fast enough. This is a money-making venture designed by my mother. If Alan wants to be the star of a world-famous play and is willing to pay through the nose, she’s going to let him garble the lines and drain the comic genius out of a scene where the Faerie King forces his Queen to fall in love with a donkey.

Alan very kindly tucks his prosthetic penis into one of the gaiters that binds his calf and trots me through a very basic two-step, chatting all the while. He wants to know if I know whether Reza has arrived, but I don’t know any Rezas, so the conversation quickly fizzles and he’s happy to hand me off to Chris, a dentist from Wolverhampton, who’s only here “because the wife wanted to schmooze that Latin polo hotshot.”

Between dances, I see my man steering the ladies with aplomb. He’s friendly. Solicitous even. But his eyes don’t sparkle when he’s chatting, not like they do for me. The hunger, his passion—all of it is missing when he spins them. If only we could ditch this farce and head upstairs. But no. This is what we do for the love of the game. It’s all part and parcel of getting back to the life we crave. And if this afternoon’s demonstration on the polo pitch was anything to go by, Mariano is every bit as hungry as I am to be back with his teammates. As I’ve told myself many times before: game face on. I can do this. I make the smallest small talk, dance the weirdest dances, smile and laugh and chat as if these are my friends rather than my duty. No one could possibly guess I’m faking it while dreaming of Mariano.

An hour on the dance floor and my feet are killing me. I excuse myself and leave the chartered accountant from Solihull—or was it the barrister from Bristol, or the Marquis de Whatever from Wherever—I’ve lost count—and make tracks towards Pippa, who’s still guarding the fish dish Mariano is supposed to praise.

“You going to tell me what this is really about, Pippa?” I snag a flute of champagne as a waiter passes.

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you. Isn’t that how the joke goes?” She laughs, but I’m not sure that she’s being funny.

Mariano is by the doors. He bows to his partner, raises his glass in my direction, eyes ablaze, insisting I surrender yet again, and disappears into the corridor. If that wasn’t an invitation for a horizontal tango, I’m a monkey’s uncle.

PLAY ACTING

Lolly Benoit. The Great House. The Cotswolds, England.

Icatch Mariano before he’s gone too far and whisk him towards the stairs. A quick glance tells me the hall is deserted, so I press the panel at the rise of the fourth step and ease open the door to our secret tunnels. He gives me a how-did-you-know-that-was-there look but ducks inside before I manage an explanation. Rumor has it that the famed sixteenth-century Jesuit, Nicholas Owen—who designed and built priest holes so that priests could flee Queen Elizabeth’s torturers—was the architect of our hideaway beneath the stairs, though there’s no way of proving it. He worked in secret, telling no one but the homeowner of the number of entryways to the hiding places, and the mechanism by which they might be opened. But our tunnels are so ingenious, with so many twists and turns, I have fully convinced myself that he was the designer.

I shut the door behind us only to find Mariano’s mouth eager for mine, which is good because I can’t explain my intimate knowledge of this house, not unless I want to expose how my family connections got me this job. Better to thoroughly distract him from any questions he might have. Not that Ineedan excuse to touch him. I run my hand down the crisscrossed leather that holds his breastplate in place, and his breathing hitches. I smooth a palm over his firm ass, and—yet another surprise from the gentleman tonight. “You’re going commando?” Not only that, he’s ready for action.

“No,mija.” My hand on him stills. How have I so misread this moment? His body? But he gives me a hungry kiss, then breaks it off too soon. His lips are so close they brush mine as he speaks. “It is you who command me.” Relief and hot desire flood through me. He’s misunderstood me in the most delicious of ways. I kiss him then—and I want to touch him everywhere, to feel him everywhere—I am readynownownow—but my hand stays upon the most insistent part of him, stroking him until he makes a soft, half-groaning, half-growling noise and pulls at my skirt.

Turns out the slit up the front of my dress does more than show Mariano my legs. It grants him access. His mouth curves in a smile against my throat when he discovers I have not worn any panties. “I went commando, too,” I say and laugh, not knowing if he understands my words. But he laughs, too—we’re as giddy as we are happy as we are compatible and in sync. It’s not just horse riding that we excel at. Or tango. We are—and I’m not exaggerating here—perfectly suited to one another. I don’t know why I wouldn’t let myself see it for so long. He understands my body, the length of him pressing into me as it did when we were dancing, except better—so very much better—because now his delicious skin slips against mine, and his cock glides against my slippery wetness.

“You are ready?”

“So ready.”

He draws the hard thickness of himself along my entrance and then back up, moving against that most delicious spot of desire, sending waves of need through me.

“Fuck yes.” It comes out as a moan instead of the declaration I intended, but it makes his eyes go even hungrier than the last time I said it.

“Ah, butmi preciosa… I have no pockets—I did not bring—” He puts the tiniest of spaces between us, a space I want to close immediately.

I thought we were past that moment, that conversation now. He’s mine and I’m his and that’s all I need to know. But the fact that he has such consideration for me in the throes of passion only makes him more beloved to me.

“It’s fine. I have an IUD. And there’s no one else. There hasn’t been for—” He is back, pulling me close again as he slides the tip of his cock lower, dipping into my folds. I am practically throbbing already, that’s how much I want him. “Please.”

He enters me with a long, slow, smooth thrust, and I feel every delicious inch of him, my body opening to welcome him closer, as close as two people can be. We fit together as if we were made for each other, and I shudder, though I want to hold my orgasm off for as long as I can and feel the length of him riding me. I wrap my leg around his and thrust, urging him deeper inside me, while his tongue and teeth play at my neck, my breast, my mouth.

The need, his and mine and ours, builds more quickly than I want, and not quickly enough. I want everything and more and somehow it’s all too easy for us to find exactly what sends the other into bliss. We’re both drenched in sweat and panting for air, our most private parts pulsing together in their own silent conversation.

“Spend the night with me, Lolly.” It’s a demand rather than a question. “I cannot bear to be without you.”

I straighten one of the shoulder pads on his outfit, my fingers tracing the outline of his lips. “It’s not good for sales, my darling. Sex sells. And if they know you’re having it off with the staff, it’s not going to be good for your stats.”

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