Undulate (Alchemy, #2)

by Elodie Hart

What would it be like to be Maddy? To exist solely for the present moment, to enjoy the shallow, fleeting pleasures of life in all their superficiality, whether they’re the glass of champagne she’s sipping or the imminent prospect of sweaty, anonymous sex with strangers next door?

No wonder the church is so terrified of sex. No wonder it’s spent millennia using fear and hellfire to warn us away from it. It’s the most powerful, intoxicating force there is. Nothing else can compete.

He snorts. ‘Mads, anyone who bids for you thinking you’re a virgin is going to be demanding their money back pretty fucking quickly.’ I open my mouth in mock horror. ‘Rude.’ Also, you know, true.

But he’s so fucking hot, it was so fucking hot with him last night, that I can’t seem to pull myself together. My restlessness last night was two percent fury that he thought he could pull a stunt like he did on Thursday and ninety-eight percent agonising over the deliciousness of the memory of being astride him. Of the picture he made beneath me, his bowtie undone, top button open, my fingers raking through that lustrous, thick hair.

I would have said yes to you doing whatever you wanted to me. Obviously.’

‘It’s specific. To you. No matter how fucked up my home life still is—and believe me, it’s a total shit show, no matter what it looks like from the outside—my brain is so fucking full of you I can barely hold it together. All I can think about is doing unspeakable things to you. The whole. Fucking. Time. So for the love of God, please stop fiddling with your hem, because I can’t look away.’

‘Good Lord, you’ve been out of the game for too long. Bless your little cotton socks. I’m saying you should do unspeakable things to me. Maybe it would help you work through some of your issues—not your grief, obviously. But your stress.’

I get off on being someone’s plaything. And we’ve established how fucking hot you are, and you’re like an unexploded bomb. I want to be the one you unleash all that angst and repression on.’

I needed to hear Cal confirm for me what I already knew. It’s okay for me to channel the very darkness inside me for my own pleasure, and for Maddy’s. It’s what she wants from me. And it’s what I need from her.

‘She’s all yours, sir,’ Ben says, releasing my arm. ‘Stick around, will you?’ a voice asks him. It’s Zach. It’s, like, definitely Zach. I think. ‘Safeword?’ the same voice asks. I smile. ‘Spreadsheet.’

‘Bless me Father, for I have sinned.’ I steeple my fingers in front of my face. ‘It has been a million years since my last confession.’

There’s a soft chuckle from the other side of the wooden grille that separates me from my confessor. ‘Well, well, well. If you’ve come to confess that you own a sex club, it’s about time.’

‘No one’s come in all morning, and I’m thirsty. Besides, it’s not every day Zachary French blesses us with his presence.’ ‘I’m surprised I haven’t gone up in a ball of flames,’ I confess.

I’ve gone after the easiest, lowest form of gratification, and I’ve done something unholy instead of trying to seek the highest path.

I consider. ‘It was how I imagine taking crack to be. It was total fucking ecstasy, but in the darkest, unhealthiest possible way.’

‘With all due respect, mate,’ he says, ‘the girls deserve a father who’s happy and fulfilled and loved. Not someone crippled by grief. No one, and I mean no one, would deny your right to happiness.’ He drains his pint. ‘I’ve got to be getting back, I’m afraid. But, and I say this with love, maybe it’s time to get out of your own way, you pompous arsehole.’

This is what we’ve been missing. We’ve done the fast fucking, but not the slow feasting. She’s made herself fully available to me—her body, in any case—and yet I haven’t properly, thoroughly, decadently availed myself of her delights. That changes right now.

When my orgasm hits, it’s elemental and wondrous, a thing of such power, such beauty that my soul is catapulted far, far above this room to a place that’s all light and stillness.

‘Mark my words, darling, you don’t want to be the Maria to his Captain Von Trapp,’ she tells me. ‘He’ll go full you brought music back to my life on you.’ ‘Except by music, he’ll be talking about sex,’ Belle interjects unhelpfully.

‘I should tell you, too. It’s important to say these things when we have the chance. That’s something I learnt the hard way. You, Mads, are an incredible human being.’

I also feel like I’m in way over my head and I have no fucking clue how to do any of this grownup stuff, like be with a guy like you who I want to make happy more than anything else, but I don’t know how to look after you and be what your girls need too, because I’m out of my depth, and maybe it’ll all be a total shitshow.’

My only hope of building a meaningful future for me, and for my daughters, is to focus on moving forward, and on choosing the light while honouring what an amazing wife and mother Claire was. And that’s not to say I’m using you just for your light like a beautiful little candle.’

His face grows serious. ‘At first, I might have been trying to find oblivion through you, to be honest. It was so fucking tempting to just lose myself in you. But lately, I feel more found than lost.’

He is such a fucking decent guy, and that’s the hardest thing of all. That’s the shittiest, most heartbreaking part, because I’ve never wanted to make someone happy like I want to make Zach French happy. But maybe there’s only a particular type of happiness I can give him, and maybe it’s not actually happiness at all. Maybe it’s oblivion.

I’m kind of crying-slash-hiccuping as I finally brave eye contact. Those blue, blue eyes are alight with concern. And love. Oh. Shit. That’s what love looks like. It is very fucking nice. ‘I love you,’

He sniggers before rolling us over again so I’m pinned beneath him. ‘Repeat after me, Madeleine. It will last between us.’

I need you to move at your own pace for your own reasons. It’s not out of any reticence on my part. I’m all in.’

Sometimes, you don’t understand what’s been written in the stars until those same stars have served their prophecy up to you.

‘I love my wife so much,’ I mutter, and when she pulls away and smiles seductively I know she’s trying to stay in character. I shake my head. ‘Mads,’ I say, my heart swelling for this woman who lets me inside her beautiful body and has given me and the girls her whole future.