After the Speeches

The taxi smelled of wet wool and somebody else's perfume. Joanna kept her shoes in her lap because the heels had started a war with her feet at the speeches.

Marcus had his hand high on her thigh under the coat. Not subtle. Not trying to be. His knuckles sat against the lace she had put on at noon and thought about all through the vows.

"You're going to leave marks," she said.

"That's the idea."

She was thirty-nine. He was forty-four. Fourteen years of this and he still made her feel like the reception had been a long piece of foreplay they had sat through out of manners.

The speeches had been the worst of it. Marcus's cousin talking about destiny while Marcus's thumb drew idle circles on the inside of Joanna's knee under the tablecloth. She had crossed her legs. He had uncrossed them. She had smiled at an aunt and thought, very clearly, about being bent over the nearest locked door.

"In the car," she had whispered, when the cake came. "As soon as we leave. I don't want conversation."

He had looked at her over the rim of his glass like she had just offered him a weapon.

The hotel was one of those pale coastal places that photographed well and sounded like the sea even with the windows shut. Their floor was quiet. A shoe in the corridor. A distant lift.

Marcus had the key card in his teeth for a second while he found the slot. Joanna laughed and then the laugh died because he shoved the door open, hooked two fingers in the front of her dress, and walked her backward until her shoulders hit the wall.

"Tell me if it's too much."

"It isn't."

"Say the word anyway."

"Red," she said, because they had used it for years and it still worked. "I'm not saying it. Get on with it."

He kissed her like he was angry about the three hours of small talk. She bit his lower lip. He made a noise she felt in her spine and yanked the dress up. The zip complained. She helped him wreck it. Her bra lasted ten seconds longer.

"Fuck, look at you."

"Then stop looking and do something."

He dropped to his knees on the hotel carpet and put his mouth on her through the underwear first, just to be a bastard about it. Joanna's head tipped back into the wallpaper. When he dragged the lace aside and licked her properly she swore at him, which only made him slower.

"Marcus."

"What."

"Don't tease. I sat through your cousin's speech. I earned this."

He laughed against her cunt and then stopped being kind. Two fingers, then three, his mouth on her clit with no patience left in it. She came standing up, one heel still on, the other lost somewhere near the minibar, a sound punched out of her that the neighbouring room would have opinions about.

He stood, wiping his mouth with his thumb, and turned her to face the wall.

"Hands."

She put them on the wallpaper. He got his cock out. She heard the belt, the zip, the ugly little catch of breath when he stroked himself once through her wetness.

"Still."

"Yes."

He pushed in hard enough that she rose onto the ball of her remaining shoe. No careful inching. The stretch dragged a groan out of both of them. He held there, buried, his mouth at her ear.

"This is what you wanted in the car."

"Yes."

"Say it properly."

"I wanted you to fuck me like you were done being polite."

"Good girl."

He fucked her like that. The wall took the rhythm. Joanna's cheek pressed to painted plaster. He had a handful of her hair and used it. Not theatre. The specific pull she liked, the one that made her eyes water and her cunt clamp down.

"Harder."

He gave her harder. The slap of it filled the room. She reached back and dug her nails into his hip until he hissed.

"You going to come on my cock or do I have to put you on the bed and hold you there?"

"Bed. Don't you dare be gentle."

He pulled out. The sudden empty made her swear. He walked her to the bed by the hair, not cruel, not careful, and put her face down with her knees on the edge. One hand in the middle of her back. The other lining himself up.

When he shoved back in she made a broken noise into the duvet.

"That's it. Take it."

She did. She always did when they got like this. The sweetness lived in other hours. This hour was for the version of him that did not ask twice.

He reached under her and found her clit with two rough fingers. The angle was merciless. Joanna came again with her mouth open against hotel cotton, pulsing around him in helpless little grabs. He did not stop. He praised her for it in the filthy register he only used when they were alone.

"Again."

"I can't."

"You can. You will."

He slowed just enough to make her feel every inch, then snapped back to that punishing pace. Joanna's thoughts went thin. There was the wet sound of him fucking her, the sting in her scalp, the heat spreading through her belly, and the knowledge that she had asked for every bit of it.

"Colour."

"Green. Green. Don't stop."

He didn't. When he finally came it was with his hips flush to her arse and a groan that sounded like it hurt. She felt him spill, hot, deep, and the aftershocks of her third orgasm milking him for it.

They stayed like that. Breathing. The sea still going outside like it had not noticed.

Marcus eased out. Joanna hissed. He kissed the back of her shoulder, suddenly careful, and fetched the water bottle from the desk because he always did after they went that hard.

She rolled onto her side. Her mouth felt used. Her cunt felt used. The dress was a write-off.

"Your cousin is never getting married again," she said.

"I'll send a better present."

He sat on the edge of the bed. She pulled him down by the ruined tie until he was lying beside her, still half dressed, heart going like he had run.

"Too much?" he asked, quieter.

Joanna looked at the ceiling. A crack in the plaster like a river.

"No. I needed that. The whole night I kept thinking about you putting me on my knees in the bathroom during the photos."

"We can still do the bathroom."

She smiled without opening her eyes.

"Give me twelve minutes. Then you can hold my wrists and make me say thank you."

Marcus's laugh was hoarse.

"Twelve."

"Don't be late."

She used the twelve minutes. Water. The bathroom light. A look at her own mouth in the mirror, smudged, satisfied, still hungry. When she came back he was standing by the window with his belt in his hand, not as a threat, as a question.

"Wrists," she said.

He sat on the closed lid of the toilet because the bathroom was small and they had made a joke of it three hours earlier. She put her wrists together. He looped the belt, tight enough to mean it, and held the tail.

"Thank you," she said, before he asked.

"For what?"

"For not being careful when I told you not to be."

He pulled her forward by the belt until she had to go to her knees on the cold tile. The position was inelegant. She liked that. His cock was already filling again, slick from her, and she took it into her mouth with a gratitude that was not polite and not fake.

"That's it. Look up."

She looked up. He used her mouth in short strokes, the belt keeping her hands useless at her chest. When he pulled her off he was breathing like the reception had been a sport.

"Bed or here?"

"Here. I want to remember the tile."

He turned her, kept the belt in one fist, and pushed back into her from behind while she braced her bound hands on the sink. The mirror gave her everything: her wrecked mascara, his mouth at her shoulder, the raw look of being held and filled and not asked to make it pretty.

"Thank you," she said again, because she had promised, and because the words made him slam deeper.

"Again."

"Thank you. Fuck. Thank you,"

He reached around and found her clit with no patience at all. The third climax of the night came ugly and honest. She watched herself take it. He followed with his forehead against her spine and the belt still wrapped around her wrists.

After, he undid the leather like it was something precious. Kissed the marks. Ran the tap so she could drink from her hands.

"Your cousin," Joanna said, when she could speak, "is never getting married again."

"I'll send a better present."

They left the bathroom light on. Neither of them mentioned sleep. The sea kept doing what the sea did, and Joanna, wrists pink, dress finished, thought that this was still the part of the marriage she would not explain to anyone who asked how the wedding had been.