Page 34 of The Spare

‘Milk me,’ I plead into her mouth. ‘Milk me dry.’

At my words, her kisses turn frantic. My balls are made of glass right now; my dick is on fire, my entire body alight. As my body gives up the fight and goes rigid, I abandon myself to a vicious, flawless burst of pleasure that roars through me. My fingers digging into her flesh, I hold her still as I pump and pump and pump, releasing every ounce of cum I have in me into my bride’s body.

Forget trite vows and staged kisses in front of a crowd.

This is how to make our marriage real:

By branding my wife from the inside out.

CHAPTER 16

Selena

My paternal grandfather established Wentworth in the 1950s. It began as a gentlemen’s coat maker, but it wasn’t until my dad succeeded him and Mum got involved that the business grew to resemble anything like it is today.

Three years ago, we launched Wentworth Home, with me assuming the role of its creative director at the ripe old age of twenty-six. It’s been a success on every metric. Privately, I’m pleased, although I’m not one to rest on my laurels. Every KPI achieved is just another rung on the ladder, another objective checked off my list; every goal is dead to me as soon as I’ve achieved it. The subsequent goals get loftier and loftier, and I push myself harder and harder to hit them.

Take our current project: bringing the Wentworth dream to life in the most aspirational of settings. We’ve leased a bijoux Georgian manor on the outskirts of Oxford and are filling it with our spring/summer home collection. Tomorrow the concept store opens to the press, billed as an opportunity to walk through a fantasy of our making, and every last detail has to be perfect.

Frankly, it’s a welcome escape from all the real stuff (you know, last-minute groom swaps and the like). And it’s just so pretty: visual crack for my eyeballs, a balm for my frazzled nerves. I thrive in situations like this, as long as I can lock in and focus on the project itself rather than the implications.

I mentally cast my father’s voice out of my head. Failure to hit the KPIs for this project is not an option.

‘At the risk of jinxing everything,’ Ewan says, strolling into the house’s kitchen, his arms full of bed linen, ‘I think the master bedroom looks chef’s kiss.’

‘Good.’ I blow out a breath.

‘Come and see it.’ He dumps the linen on the kitchen island and looks around. ‘This is looking fab. Nice work, Mills.’

‘Thanks.’ Milly, who works on our visual merchandising, or VM, team, looks over from where she’s stacking a glass-fronted cabinet with our hand-blown tumblers. She’s red in the face from the exertion of unpacking dozens of boxes of china and glassware.

‘Leave that there at your peril,’ I warn, pointing at the messy pile of linen Ewan’s dumped on the immaculate white island.

‘Yeah, yeah. I’ll grab it on my way back. C’mon. Then you’re sitting down and having some lunch. I’ve sent Andy out for some sandwiches.’

‘It’s too early for lunch,’ I say absent-mindedly, screwing up my eyes to take in the console in the hall, now dressed by the VM team. It’s too—what? Cluttered? A pair of our large lily-of-the-valley candles in milky-white votives stand just inside the pair of lamps with their gratifying sea-green-coloured cracked glaze bases. I tilt my head as I drift over, trying to identify the problem. Something’s off, but… ‘Take this for a sec.’ I pick up one of the candles and hand it to Ewan.

‘It’s two forty-five.’

‘What the hell? Shit.’ It can’t be that late; it just can’t. I’ve lost all sense of time. I slide the remaining votive to the middle of the console. Yes, that’s better. Having two of these was just too much.

‘Exactly. In ten minutes, you’re going to sit down and have a cup of tea and a sarnie, and you’re not going to argue. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ I say meekly. If it weren’t for Ewan, I’d probably be a skeleton—or at least malnourished.

He sets the redundant votive down near the front door, where a lacklustre gaggle of other rejects has accumulated. ‘You’re spot-on about the candle, by the way.’

I nod my satisfaction as I head upstairs, Ewan traipsing behind me. This house is truly gorgeous. It’s even more fun than a real home, because we’ll be able to change it up with the seasons. I’ve already decided that the pale green-grey on the hallway walls, for example, will be transformed for the autumn/winter collection with a few coats of Wentworth’s Classic Maroon.

The master bedroom is beautiful. We’ve gone for light and airy, with a few pastel-coloured nods to spring. The roman blinds look perfect, the four-poster from our new bed collection doesn’t overpower the room, as I’ve been worrying it might, and the linens are all perfect, except⁠—

‘You know what I’m going to say.’

He groans behind me. ‘The pillows.’

‘Yep. Sad, sad, sad. No one wants sad pillows. Ramp it up.’

‘No one wants to sleep with ten pillows,’ he argues.