Surrogates

‘Do you like that?’ she murmured, glancing over her shoulder.

‘Oh God, yes,’ he grunted.

‘I thought you weren’t going to show. I was angry,’ she said. ‘Oh, I definitely had plans for the vegetables I was sending Cook for your dinner tonight.’ She nodded at the basket of mixed phallic veg sitting on the ground next to her.

His cock jerked. ‘Show me,’ he whispered. ‘Show me what you were going to do to my veg.’

She took a heavy courgette slightly thicker than his cock, crooked and arched nearly in the shape of a banana. She gave it a leisurely deep-throating that had him thumbing the underside of his cock again, that had him imagining how it would feel if it were him getting the benefit of her delicious tongue. Her cheek muscles tugged and pulled on the courgette like it was a rod of steel.

When she was absolutely certain she had his full attention, she repositioned herself to face him. She wriggled her bare arse down on to the mat with her legs splayed. With one hand she scrunched her skirt into a wad just below her navel, raking her long slender hand over tightly trimmed pubic curls, then she slid two fingers into her milky cunt and opened herself. With a little lifting of her buttocks and shifting of her hips she was ready. She snugged the hard jut of the courgette up tight against her reluctant pout.

Suddenly it was as though he weren’t even there, and that made it all the harder for him to hold his wad. She spat on her fingers and rubbed saliva around the place where the courgette met the tight press of her cunt hole. As though the task at hand demanded all the focus in the world, she alternately lubricated and pushed, lubricated and pushed, all the while making tight little grunting sounds low in her belly. He couldn’t take his eyes off the slow but relentless yielding of her grudging pussy to the press of the veg. With each push, with each shift, her clit marbled and beaded harder and harder just above the nudging of the courgette. She continued to push and stroke, push and stroke until at last her pussy hole yielded, her eyes fluttered and she caught her breath in a little gasp as the veg slid cock-deep into her gash.

‘Ah!’ she breathed. ‘That’s better. That’s just what I needed. Such a tight fit, but oh so yummy.’ Then she raised her eyes to meet his and offered him a smile that was almost shy. ‘Now I’m ready to come.’ Fingers still wet from her efforts with the veg, she undid the buttons of her sundress, releasing high firm breasts topped with heavy raspberry nipples into the pinching, kneading caress of one hand.

‘I don’t know about you –’ she grunted as she began to thrust and gyrate against the veg ‘– but I won’t be able to hold back long with all this heft up in my tight little fanny. And when I’m done coming, I’ll let you take the veg to the house for Cook. That way if you want to sneak a taste of my cunt, who’ll know?’ With each breathless thrust she lifted her arse off the gardening mat, giving him teasing glimpses of her gripping anus, and she knew exactly what he was looking at. She offered a throaty chuckle. ‘Maybe next time I’ll let you watch me shove a nice plump carrot back there. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

He only nodded. This was the point in their wank sessions where he always fell silent, too taken in by the heat of her, by the want of her, by the knowing that this was as much as he could allow himself of her, no matter how willing she was. He yanked at his cock like it was a wild thing he had to tame. He yanked until it hurt, and he kneaded his balls, feeling the surge at the base all ready to spill out on to the warm earth in front of Francie. It was the best he had to offer her right now, his humiliation, his need, his lust once removed.

She fell back on to the ground with a little cry, legs apart, offering him an exquisite view of the tremors of her orgasm tightly stretched around the courgette. The view, combined with the ripe scent of her, was more than he could endure, and he unloaded in heavy spurts on to the ground scant centimetres from her bare thigh. He unloaded till he thought he’d turn himself inside out, convulsing and grunting until he was spent, bent forward on his knees in the veg bed next to her, gasping and gulping for breath.

It was almost enough to give him the courage to ask Isabel for a divorce. He was sure he could almost do it after such erotic bliss, and what a lovely surprise it would be for Francie. But before he could verbalise that bliss, Bel’s voice rang out over the garden wall.

‘Dan? Dan, are you there?’ Fortunately they heard her before she found them.

Francie cursed under her breath, grabbed the basket and fled into the greenhouse.

With a painful effort, Dan shoved his cock into his trousers and kicked at the earth to bury the evidence. ‘Coming, Bel.’ He fought hard not to sound breathless as his wife, dressed in tight jeans and a vest that showed plenty of her ample cleavage, stepped through the gate. He forced a smile. ‘I thought you were at your sister’s for the night, sweetheart.’

‘We had to cancel. She’s down with some sort of stomach virus.’ She grimaced. ‘God knows, I don’t need that.’ She took his arm. ‘I’ll be keeping you company this evening, darling. I thought maybe we’d make our own entertainment a little later. My massage therapist says sex is great for keeping the skin looking young. She says you’d be surprised at all the health benefits of an active sex life.’

Dan gave a quick glance over his shoulder, hoping desperately that Francie hadn’t overheard, but she had disappeared.

Bel continued. ‘Cook told me you were out here, so I thought I’d come down and have Francie send up a few more veg for dinner. During my massage today, Ellen also told me that we’d both benefit from eating more veg. She says a diet full of veg is the next best thing to the fountain of youth.’ She gestured exuberantly. ‘She says veg and sex are the keys to health and vitality. She says Francie probably grows most of the veggie superfoods right here in her garden.’ She looked around. ‘Where is Francie anyway? You haven’t seen her, have you?

Chapter Two

‘I must be out of my fucking mind.’ Francie shoved the basket of vegetables that would enhance Dan and Bel’s dinner tonight on to the big staging table in the greenhouse and wiped frantically at her eyes with the backs of her hands. She wasn’t about to cry. She wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction.

They were going to feast on her vegetables. Her vegetables would give them the strength and stamina to make their own entertainment. Wasn’t that what Bel said? Make their own fucking entertainment, and why not? The woman was his wife. And Francie was nothing more than the hired help. The stupid hired help, who didn’t have enough brains to stay away from her gorgeous boss! Make that her arsehole boss, she mentally corrected herself. She bit back a sob and grabbed a tray of basil seedlings from the incubator. Cook wanted a couple of new basil plants for the kitchen. Bel had it in her head that basil was the herb of eternal youth and had practically been grazing on the stuff recently.

‘Excuse me, have you seen Dan?’

Francie spun around and nearly jumped out of her skin at the sight of the unexpected man standing so close behind her. She dropped the tray, and seedlings and compost exploded on to the floor.

That was it. That was the straw that broke the gardener’s back. She’d babied those seedlings along for weeks now, keeping them safe and warm and trauma-free, then this happens. She burst into tears.

‘Oh God! Oh God! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. Please don’t cry. Here, let me help you.’

But it was suddenly like the dam had burst. She had endured all these weeks of wanting Dan so badly, all these weeks of knowing that no matter what he said, no matter how hot their wank sessions were, at the end of the day it wasn’t her bed he shared. Then there were all the weeks of feeling guilty because while he stayed faithful to Bel, she didn’t care. She would have fucked him in a New York minute. And she liked Bel. That was a part of the problem. Bel was OK. Bel was wonderful. Still, she would have fucked him if he’d asked. But he didn’t. And it all bubbled over in one upturned tray of basil seedlings.

‘Here, sit down. Please don’t cry. I’ll take care of it,’ the man was saying, guiding her away from the mess on the floor. ‘There, there. It’ll be OK. Basil seedlings are tough. They’ll be OK, just please stop crying. Can I get you some water? Aspirin, maybe? Anything?’ He didn’t wait for her to answer. Instead he guided her to the stool near the staging table and settled her gently on to it. Then he knelt, scooped the spilled compost into the tray and began to replant the seedlings one by one. ‘There, you see? It’ll be OK. You see, no damage, just a little spill. Not even one broken stem. Don’t worry, these will be just fine.’

Even through the tears she recognised the untidy nails of a fellow gardener. It wouldn’t have mattered if his hands had been meticulously scrubbed and manicured, she would have known by the careful way he rescued the little basil plants, taking them gently by their stems and placing them back in the compost.

‘There, you see? Good as new.’ He placed the tray on the table next to the basket of veg. ‘Lovely veg, by the way,’ he added. ‘The courgettes are exquisite. Did you grow them?’ He picked up the one that had been shoved up her cunt only minutes before and she burst into tears again. A courgette! She had actually been reduced to fucking a courgette.

‘Oh dear. Oh God. I’m so sorry.’

She scrabbled off the stool to make a run for it, anywhere but here, someplace where she could hide her humiliation. ‘Wait! Don’t run off like that.’ He slipped an arm around her and caught her before she could flee. ‘I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. Please at least give me a chance to apologise.’

‘No, no. It’s not you,’ she sobbed against his shoulder. ‘You have nothing to apologise for. You’re doing great, wonderful, actually. It’s me. I’m so stupid. So absolutely stupid.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I know stupid when I see it, and you’re not it.’ He tightened his arms around her and she felt good solid muscle in the embrace. God, how long had it been since she felt good solid male muscle? She slipped her arms around his neck. He was tall and, as he tightened his embrace, he practically lifted her off her feet. Tall and strong, she thought, as the muscles low in her belly gave a little quiver.

One large hand began to stroke her mussed hair. She hadn’t worn it back today because Dan liked it loose, but Dan never touched it. This bloke was touching it, gently, tenderly, the same way he’d touched her seedlings. Her nipples beaded to a tight, nearly painful press against the rise and fall of his chest. She could feel the heat of his breath against the top of her ear, breath which seemed to have accelerated a bit. He continued, ‘In fact, if that veg garden I walked past is your doing, then I’d say you’re anything but stupid. You’re an artist. I’m in awe.’

Then she did the unthinkable. She curled her fingers in his thick brown hair and pulled his face down to hers. A little sigh of surprise escaped his throat, but he didn’t resist. Still standing on tiptoe, she brushed her lips across his. Not only did he not resist, but he returned the favour, cupping her cheek in his large hand and lifting her off her feet with the arm that now encircled her waist. The brush of lips became a full-fledged assault, tongues sparring, lips crushing, breath coming in harsh little gasps. And it wasn’t just the mouth. It was the overall effect of a real body, a real live male body barely able to contain the erection she could now clearly feel through his jeans. And just from the rub up, it made the courgette seem rather inadequate.

‘I don’t know you nearly well enough for this,’ he said when he finally came up for air. But before she could apologise for her unacceptable behaviour, his mouth was up for round two. This time, he lifted her bodily on to the staging table, her legs falling open on either side of him, her dress scrunching until rough denim raked the moist satin gusset of her knickers.

‘You’ve rescued my seedlings and fondled my courgette. That’s good enough for me,’ she breathed against his mouth.

She was just getting ready to open his fly and free Simba when Cook called from the garden path.

‘Francie? Francie, are you there?’

They barely managed to straighten themselves and look like they were engaged with the seedlings when a heavy-set woman in a pink track suit huffed through the greenhouse door all aflutter and already in full conversation mode. ‘There you are, Francie. Ms Bel says I’m not cooking enough vegetables. That silly massage therapist of hers says she should eat more, can you believe it? If the woman eats any more vegetables, she’ll be taking up residence in the toilet. Last I heard diarrhoea wasn’t an anti-ageing treatment, but what do I know? I’m just the cook. Oh, hello.’ She addressed the man next to Francie with a smile of approval, and smoothed her always frizzy hair with a flutter of her hand. ‘And who might you be?’

‘I might be Simon, Simon Paris. I’m here to see Dan … er … Mr Alexander, about the Renaissance garden he’s planning.’

‘He and Ms Bel just got home a few minutes ago.’ Cook nodded towards the big house rising above the shrubbery and trees. ‘You can walk back with me if you’d like.’

‘If you give me a second, I’ll pot up a couple of basil plants for you to take back with you,’ Francie said, when she’d caught her breath.

‘Oh, lovely, lovely,’ the woman said. ‘I’ll just have a wander around, see what’s ready, and get some ideas for next week’s menus.’ She turned on her heels and disappeared into the veg patch.

Before Francie knew what was happening, Simon found the dibber and the nesting terracotta pots she had planned to use for the basil then brought them to where the rescued plants perched on the table looking no worse for their tumble. ‘You OK?’ He asked, as she busied herself transplanting the seedlings, trying to salvage what little dignity remained to her.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Fine. Sorry about that. Just not a good day and, well, I’m a bit sensitive about my seedlings.’

‘I can understand that,’ he said, filling the pots with the mix of compost and grit she’d made up for the seedlings earlier. His hands were large and rough and clearly used to hard work. It was only then, only after she’d managed to regain some composure that she had time to properly take in the rest of the package. His faded but clean T-shirt bore the words ‘Renaissance Gardens’in flowing italic script stretched just tightly enough over one mounded pec to convince Francie that what was underneath would be as much a pleasure to look at as it was to be pressed up against. She glanced up into startling grey eyes which offset a spattering of sun-browned freckles, all balanced by a broad smile that might well have been the warmest thing she’d felt all day. All in all he was a lovely specimen of maleness that, when combined with the adept way he dealt with her seedlings and her physical attack on his person, made her feel a whole lot better.

‘I’m very sensitive about anything I’ve nurtured and tended to,’ he was saying by the time she got her eyes up past the nice chest to the equally nice face. ‘And these are lovely seedlings, sturdy, healthy, not leggy.’

‘Then you’re a gardener,’ she said.

‘I own a landscaping business.’ He nodded to the logo on his shirt. ‘Sadly I don’t have as much time to devote to my little veg plot as I’d like, but I manage a tomato or two and a few runner beans, you know. That sort of thing.’