Faithful Affair: Revivals

Tom enjoyed watching cricket, and he enjoyed watching cricket with Ella even more. Watching an evening game with her, with a room booked in a hotel just across the road was even better: no long walk back to the car, no sitting in the car waiting in a massive queue to get out of the car park, no long drive home too late at night -- just a short walk in the fading light, breeze through the bright lights and welcoming motifs of reception, into the lift and up to their room. And up to all the possibilities of being in a hotel...

There is something about having a room booked in a hotel. It is a different place, and it is all yours for the night. There is a strangeness that gives you a chance to break out from the norm; and on the unfamiliar furniture -- what exotic use might be made of that? -- there will be no clutter of half-finished jobs or other reminders of the things that constantly drag on your time at home, so you can focus -- really focus -- on each other. And on each other's finest features. And on each other's erotic assets.

Besides, don't hotels have a reputation for being the place for all sorts of clandestine rendezvous, from carefully planned secret assignations of lovers to the spontaneous hook-ups of lonely strangers far from home? And where else would you meet up with a 'high-class call girl'? Anything could happen in a hotel room...

Except that tonight, something was not happening. It was hard to say why. They had enjoyed watching the game, and all the attendant razzmatazz, together; and they had enjoyed the luxury of not having to dash to the car park, and the cool evening air as they did finally walk slowly back to the hotel. Yet Tom felt tetchy and ill-at-ease. Did Ella want to go down and join the scrum in the bar? Were they missing out on the chance to meet a famous cricketer? He didn't think so; and he had thought that they were secure enough not to need their lives to be bolstered by meaningless encounters with glad-handing celebrities, but maybe the fact that such a question had even arisen in his mind had cracked his usual self-confidence. Why was he not consumed with passion for her?

Perhaps it was the lust-damping jeans that she was wearing. They were very appropriate for watching cricket from the public stands in the evening, but workmen's trousers really didn't do it for Tom when he thought of taking a woman to a hotel. It was Ella -- glorious, fucking gorgeous, sexy Ella -- inside those jeans, Tom told himself; but it was no good, he was sinking by the stern now. He just felt tired.

They kissed and cuddled perfunctorily, but nothing was happening. Ella seemed to be no more stirred than he was. Tom knew that he didn't look or feel all that exciting, either. Sometimes it goes like that. Maybe they just needed an early night tonight. Ella muttered that she was going to have a shower, and pulled away. Tom dug his pyjamas and spongebag out of the suitcase, and then whiled away some time eying up some of the clues in the crossword that they would no doubt tackle together just before putting out the lights and going to sleep.

When Ella emerged from the bathroom, they must surely have exchanged some words. However, their mood was so functional and their words so ordinary that history was not even listening to the words, let alone recording them. Tom went in to do all that a man must do before going to share a bed with anyone, and stumbled out again with his towel round his waist and nothing more on his mind than some possible crossword answers.

The world, however, had changed.

Ella was not, as Tom had imagined, sitting primly in bed, wearing a dull nightie and looking at the crossword: Ella was standing in the middle of the floor, in the long, black, slinky robe that always made her look taller and even slimmer than she actually was. Her hair was neatly brushed, her face awake and alert and framed by sparkling jewellery. She looked very cool, and not at all like a woman who was only thinking about going to sleep. Tom stopped dead in his tracks; his mouth may have fallen open, but no words came out.

Ella too was silent, but in a rather more controlled way. Calmly, and without taking her dangerous eyes off him, she turned slightly sideways and slowly loosened the belt of her glamourous dressing gown, just enough to allow her to reveal not only a fine length of naked leg but also her very scanty knickers. It was only a very brief flash that she allowed him before covering herself decorously once more, but Tom recognised them instantly. They were the sort of classy knickers that have a man in two minds, torn between enjoying the way they glamorise the flesh they hide and ripping them off to take possession of the real thing.

"Oh!" said Tom, slowly, as the implications sank in and raging lust erupted inside him.

He found it difficult to describe, later, just how he felt as his libido went from zero to 100% in such a short space of time. One moment he was thinking about pyjamas and crosswords; in the next, it was inconceivable that there could be anything on his agenda but raw sex. Mostly, he decided, it was like the whoomph of their gas boiler at home starting up as the click of a switch opened a valve and sent a sudden flood of fuel to meet the seemingly insignificant pilot light. It was certainly nothing like the match-to-petrol picture that Ella suggested -- for one thing, he had not been feeling broodingly sexy and in need of a trigger: he had come out of the shower with no thought of sex on his mind at all, but evidently he carried inside him some tiny but permanently alive flame that was only waiting for Ella to provide some fuel. More than that, the inconsequential, uncontrolled flash of a wild petrol fire was way wide of the mark: it was the contained and purposeful eruption of power, the energising roar of a boiler lighting up, that was much more like the surge of sexual desire, and strength, that swept through his body.

There was no shortage of desire on Tom's part now. He stepped forward and they grappled. There was nothing perfunctory about this kissing, either; and the careful cuddles of earlier were forgotten in a whirl of reckless grabbing and grasping. He clawed at her shoulders and mauled her breasts; she pressed herself against him; he caressed her ribs and crushed her waist; she grabbed his cock and fondled his balls; he gripped her hips and kneaded her buttocks. Her teasing gown was overwhelmed at the onslaught and fell away; only her fancy knickers now stood in the way to give her some illusion of protection from his raging hunger, and their resistance was short-lived. He just had to have her.

They hadn't even reached the bed yet: they were still standing in the middle of the room, locked in a furious embrace, Tom's towel and her robe and knickers in heaps beside them. Tom had rarely felt such urgency, and he desperately wanted to impart to Ella some sense of what her superb body and her loving invitation had so suddenly aroused in him. He wanted her to know that she had unleashed the monster from which his careful consideration had always sheltered her. He was not out of control -- God forbid that he should ever be so with her -- and his loving concern for her wellbeing was in no way diminished, but he determined that tonight, for once, he would fuck her his way without question or discussion or concession. By the crazy logic of sex, that would be his gift to her: he would dare to take all the responsibility, and to hell with courtesy. His cock was ready, full and hard, and already starting to ache for release; he would ram it into her, brutally, and he would take his pleasure. It might not be very tender tonight, but she would know that she was a full-on woman who had aroused her man's lust and been well and truly fucked.

He spun her round so that he was behind her, grabbing her breasts, pulling at her nipples, mad for her body; then he half-carried, half-pushed her towards the end of the bed and forced her down to bend over it. Before she knew what was happening, he had kicked her long legs wide apart, and then still wider apart. And then he was ramming himself into her pussy, his hands gripping like iron claws on her hips.

He had never treated her so roughly before, nor even imagined doing so, but he just wanted her to know how mad for her he was, and he judged that she needed to feel that. He pumped himself into her, holding her hips as she stood there straddled and bent over, taking it all. He revelled in letting his raging excitement lead him, but it was not long before he could contain it no longer and he bored into her in one last triumphant thrust and exploded inside her. He tottered for a moment, gasping for air, before collapsing on top of her, utterly spent.

Ella had no complaints about it, either then or when Tom felt compelled to ask her later: she had enjoyed it, she said, and she pointed out that had she at any point said, 'Stop' or 'No', then Tom would have stopped. Nevertheless, as he came down from his high, Tom felt slightly uneasy about his unusually ruthless behaviour. The line between role-playing dominance and outright abuse might be thinner than he had thought -- especially when the role-play was spontaneous and one-sided -- and he knew that he had been edging into potentially dangerous territory. He made a mental note to talk about it with her sometime. But not now. His pulse and his breathing might be getting back towards normal, but his head and his heart would be buzzing for some time. That was hot! Oh, yes: that was hot, hot sex...

That was a night to remember, a night that had seemed empty and hopeless until Ella found a bit of magic and launched their evening to the stars. Tom would never forget it -- just as Ella would never forget what would happen to her a couple of years later when Tom was able to return the compliment and stage a revival of his own...

It has to be said that not all hotels produce the same erotic effect: it requires a certain cool, modern efficiency and anonymity, and preferably firm beds and solid floors. Friendly, old-fashioned seaside hotels, where families greet each other on entering the dining room, and children are entrusted with keys and excitedly run errands, are much healthier places overall. They provide a base for life-affirming adventurous days and long romantic evenings, and friendships to feed the soul. However, their creaking floorboards and squeaking bedsprings do tend to inhibit rapturous sexual congress. You don't really want the charming Mr and Mrs B. in the room next door to have to explain to their delightful little daughters why your headboard was banging against their wall all night. Moreover, if you are staying more than one night, you might be a little wary of what evidence the chambermaid (with whom you are already on first name terms) might stumble upon.

So, en route from a family gathering to a short holiday at exactly that sort of friendly, old-fashioned seaside hotel, they had carefully inserted an overnight stay in a plain modern business hotel. They rather lamely justified this stopover publicly on the grounds of 'breaking the journey', even though the hotel was barely an hour's drive short of their destination; they possibly justified it to themselves on the grounds of extending their holiday at the lower cost of a plain city hotel rather than adding an expensive night in coastal luxury. In their hearts, however, they knew that they were going there simply for a dirty night of the sort of sex that was more about their genitals than their hearts. However much that seemingly unromantic physical coupling might actually answer the peculiar stresses and strains of their life together, and however much it might really add to the sum of their mutual understanding and bonding, it would still look suspiciously sordid to any outsider in the cold light of day. Well, as the infamous Lily Langtry had (with far less justification) long ago remarked of her liaisons with the Prince of Wales (though she was by no means the first to use the motto): "They say? What say they? Let them say!" Ella had packed a suitably slinky dress and Tom had his dinner suit to lend a certain Bond-like cool to the proceedings.

Things had not gone according to plan, however. The family gathering had been brilliant. They had no complaints at all about that: Tom and Ella kept sex in its place, and valued good times with their wider family far above a mere night of rumpy-pumpy. But nonetheless, the buffet had been far larger and more lavish than they had expected and the whole thing had gone on much later -- as parties do when they are really going well. That was all good in itself but, purely from the perspective of arriving for their carnal tryst late, tired and overfed, it was a disaster: in fact, if it had not been for an inspired last-minute move by Tom, it would have put paid to the whole thing.

They generally liked a certain sense of narrative build-up to their special evenings. They found something particularly stimulating about having a time of being together in public while knowing just where they would later be going in private. Ella might well be concealing her best cork-popping lingerie (or, for that matter, a complete lack of underwear) under a suitably decorous dress, and would have taken care to make sure that Tom knew it -- perhaps naughtily disclosing her secret to him at the most inconvenient and potentially embarrassing moment she could contrive. Maybe they would trade a few inventive and amusing double-entendres along the way; without doubt they would be mentally stripping and caressing each other long before actually stepping into the carnal vortex.

This was not a process to be rushed, but now they had only limited time and no particular inclination to do anything. There was no question of having a meal now, not even a packet of crisps from the bar; if anything, they craved Alka-Seltzer rather than a naughty, stylish cocktail.

Once again, they were stuck. Of course, they could still have sex if they decided to, but there was now something just too cold-blooded about it. There is wanting to have sex, and there is wanting to want to have sex -- and that is a completely different thing, a psychological minefield of bluff and double-bluff, fantasy and wilful self-deception.

They could perhaps forget it, and sit down on the inadequate seating and play cards or Scrabble. They could put on the TV; they could sit and read; or they could simply go to bed. Nothing was working for them, they just felt tired and bitterly frustrated.

Eventually, Tom came to a decision. He gave up -- or so Ella thought. "I'm going to have a shower," he announced grimly.

"I'll have one after you," said Ella resignedly. Tom had expected that. He could only hope, thinking rapidly once more through the plan that had occurred to him only a few moments earlier, that her shower would give him enough time. But there were a couple of corners that he could cut; and yes, they would actually add to the effect...

Ella came out of her shower as innocently as Tom had come out of his, that night after the cricket; and as she turned out of the bathroom door and faced the room, she stopped as suddenly as Tom had, too.

There was a surprisingly handsome man sitting in the chair, facing her. He bore little resemblance to the fidgety, frazzled chap who had grumpily gone to take a shower little more than 15 minutes ago. He sat confidently, his ankles comfortably crossed, one elbow on the arm of the chair and his chin resting on the hand. He was wearing a dinner suit, but he was wearing it in the relaxed, casual manner of a man who had been wearing it formally all evening and was now ready to move on to something rather more interesting and private -- the jacket tossed aside and the bow tie untied and hanging loose about his unbuttoned collar. His cufflinks glittered in the subdued lighting he had arranged.

"Good evening," said the man coolly, smiling enigmatically and frankly admiring her, up and down, through steady, grey-blue eyes.

"Oh, good evening," replied his stark-naked wife, equally coolly. She did not flinch from his openly lustful inspection; rather, she returned his gaze with considerable interest.