The wedding of society girl Erica Greendale to Stephen Laughton is fast approaching. In the story's prologue, however, one-time almost-lover Gavin McClain and envious Maid of Honour Helen have been plotting an evil wedding-day surpise.
You are invited to celebrate the marriage of
Erica Louise Greendale
To
Stephen Edward Laughton
On Saturday 20th July 2013
At St Xavier’s Church, Islington
And afterwards at Langham London Hotel
RSVP
~~~~
Erica Greendale woke early on the day of her wedding. She should have opened her eyes to a feeling of simple ecstasy, but her head was muddled by strange half-remembered dreams and one glass too many of Rioja the night before. Or two. Well at least she hadn’t tried any more pharmaceutical experiments like on that other night. The crazy one. What kind of madness had that been?
Helen was responsible for it all, most recently having cajoled her into the pre-wedding girls’ night just past. Not that Erica had needed much persuading. Her chief bridesmaid had become quite the goddess of indulgence recently and, to be fair, Erica hadn’t been putting up much of a fight. She padded in slippers to the kitchen and washed down two Advil with a glass of water, before returning to bed.
For two more hours she slumbered fitfully, awakening hot and perturbed with a speeding heart rate and moistness between her thighs. However hard she tried, she could not recall Stephen having featured in her dreams. Should not the thoughts of a bride-to-be—even the subconscious ones—focus on her groom the night before she married? And who were those cloudy figures fading from her newly-woken mind?
It troubled her …
She threw off the stifling covers and breathed deeply, staring at her bedroom ceiling—following the stucco-ripple patterns with her eyes, as she had always done in childhood to calm herself after a nightmare. This had been her first bedroom, where once she played with Wedding Day Barbie and stuck up the bridal pictures she had crayoned or sketched in school. And now reinstalled herself there for a single night before her transformation—into the image she had idealised since her earliest years. She succeeded in calming herself—her breathing returning to normal and her heart-rate slowing—as she bathed in this comforting truth.
“This time I’m the bride.” The residue of her night terrors drained away as she spoke the words to herself. “Stephen Laughton’s bride.” She retested that now well-worn phrase: “Mrs Erica Laughton”, then tried out the more old-fashioned “Mrs Stephen Laughton.” What a rapturous thought, to have found, at twenty-six, a man worthy of all her matrimonial dreams. It made her toes curl and her stomach fizz. She experienced a whole-body thrill of girlish excitement. This was her day. Headache quite dispelled, she got up, wrapped her dressing gown around her and headed for the kitchen.
“I was just about to come and wake you.” Her mother was already busy at the stove, dressed in casual blouse and slacks and busy with the traditional Greendale family breakfast. “Sit down, dear, I’ve got a plate all set out.”
“I only want a coffee, thanks.”
“You need to eat something,” her mum insisted. “And if I can’t spoil you today, when will I get the chance again?” So Erica sat down at the breakfast bar and gave herself up to maternal attention.
She observed her mother as the bacon and eggs were dished out. Strands of grey were apparent in Jane Greendale’s hair, but it still retained the luxuriant chestnut she had bequeathed to her daughter. Those dark eyes, creamy skin and elegant curves were part of that same legacy. There was the merest creep in her mother’s appearance towards the matronly, Erica noticed as she sipped her orange juice, and she wondered if she could avoid a similar fate in later years. Keep her full figure toned for Stephen and still be able to fit back into her gorgeous wedding dress …
“Well I think I’ve got the places worked out for the reception, at last.” Erica’s dad was displaying the low-key irritability he saved for special occasions, as he strode into the kitchen pocketing his mobile phone. “Why you and Stephen had to let the guest list run this long I’ll never know. I’m only a constituency MP, it’s not like I’ve made Cabinet, yet. I’m sure you could have trimmed …”
“Keith, it’s hardly the time to bring that up,” her mum said, turning from the sink in exasperation.
“Distant relatives, friends you haven’t seen in years, I mean … this … this … Gavin McClain chap. And partner. Remind me what he’s doing here?”
Erica looked up from her plate, trying to mask her unease. “I was his PA, remember?”
“For all of—what—two months?”
Damn. Her dad simply couldn’t let things go. “He was very good to me when Stephen and I weren’t … when Stephen had gone to …”
Mum interjected swiftly. “Keith, it’s your daughter’s wedding day. Are you trying to be insensitive? Leave her be.”
He left the room, muttering apologies and claiming stress.
Ironically it was her mother who picked up the subject. “I must admit I was surprised to see you’d invited that McClain fellow. Didn’t you and he step out for a while?”
“Well … in a manner of speaking,” Erica said, trying to dismiss the subject. “But we were really just friends. He was a good boss. I’m glad he agreed to come.”
Erica’s one-time employer had been so very supportive when Stephen went to the States. People got Gavin all wrong, she considered. Aloof, alpha-male, the ultimate player—such was his reputation. But how consoling he’d been when she broke down in tears on her second day of working for him. Passing her his handkerchief and letting her cry it all out, insisting that he take her out to lunch.
She found herself confiding in, then laughing with him, going out on dates during which he took things so exquisitely slowly—kissed her and held her in arms which could have crushed her had he not been so gentle. She’d been beguiled by that great strong man and the tact with which he let her know he wanted her.
God, she’d said yes. She’d been on her way to his apartment in freshly bought lingerie to give herself up to him. Not that she really believed she could have changed him, be the one to tame the untamable. But at the very least he would have been a distraction from her loss of Stephen.
One hell of a distraction. God, had he been mixed into her dreams last night?
The whole Gavin-memory swelled up from nowhere; she’d sublimated it completely, even when Helen convinced her to invite her ex-boss to the wedding. It would be an appropriate thank-you, the chief bridesmaid had insisted. Think how understanding he was, she said, when Stephen literally flew back into Erica’s life, having scaled down his work in America so he could restore their relationship.
The romantic overtures of one man usurped by another … Gavin hadn’t said a single unkind word when she broke the news. He’d been the consummate professional, moving her within the firm on the same salary lest she feel uncomfortable with him. And he was going to be there today, possibly with a special someone else. Oh God, in another life …
She pushed away the thought along with her plate. “Thanks mum, but I really can’t eat another bite. I need to shower. The girls will be here soon.” And she fled both the kitchen and the pestering thought. By the time she reached the bathroom she had shaken the latter.
It was Stephen who had all her affection now—her sweet, high-flying entrepreneur, who had flown in from the USA like he had carried those two dozen roses all the way, so that he could propose. “So I can right the mistake of my life, Erica—leaving you.” She looked in the mirror, brushed her bed-hair away from her face and checked the bags under her eyes—tell-tale of her disturbed sleep. Yes—even after a rough night she was strikingly pretty. She had always been secretly proud of the huge brown eyes, heart-shaped face and full mouth. Further thanks to her mother for all of those.
Coquettishly biting her lip, she eased off her terry-cloth robe and slid the straps of her silk nightie from her shoulders, letting it shimmy all the way down her body leaving her naked. Proudly she looked upon what she would be offering up to Stephen. Her heart and soul in the church that afternoon and her body that evening. Her pilates toned body. The honey glow of her skin. Her full, high breasts, each topped with a large and sweet russet nipple. All for him—for Stephen’s eyes only to roam over as freely as they liked.
What a cruel yet wonderful idea to withhold herself from him after the proposal night.
That precious evening—Erica primed for Gavin—had been transformed from lust to romance by Stephen’s miraculous reappearance.
“I’ve missed you so, so much,” he groaned as their bodies united on his bed. “I’ll never leave you again, sweetheart, I promise.” He shafted inside her, strong but restrained, and they achieved their rapture together—or as close as made no difference. It was tender, loving and beautiful. But she chose to make him wait till his wedding night for further enjoyment of her soft flesh.
Tonight he could have her anew. Like a virgin … She considered the song lyric and giggled at what a terrible tease she was. I’ll be a beautiful, pure, sexy bride all wrapped up for my beloved. At the day’s end he’ll sweep me away from all those watching eyes and make me his completely. Plunder my chaste treasure all over.
Shower water tumbled onto her. She imagined herself bathing under a Belize waterfall on honeymoon with Stephen watching—as she wrung out the tresses of her hair, palmed her luscious breasts in slow circles, smoothed her hands over her gracefully athletic thighs and taut round ass.
She was acting it out as she washed, her soaped-up hands loving the curves of her own ripe young body. She slithered her way down over her trim stomach and further on over the mound she had had waxed a day before, letting the tip of her middle finger tease her clitoris. Not too much or she’d never be able to stop—and she had done so well in restraining herself these past weeks. It was only fair that she should save up her pleasure since she had asked the same of Stephen.
Her finger lingered on her bud and she gasped at the thought of her groom’s hands upon her, shaping themselves to the curve of her buttocks, his erect cock gliding against her tummy—her suave gentleman getting all hot and ungentlemanly as she teased him with her own roaming fingers. It was only fleetingly that the image changed to someone broader, taller; someone she had made out with eight months prior in the front of his car, a man with a great masculine frame and a cock that couldn’t help but bulge against the inside leg of his trousers when there was any physical contact between them …
Erica broke away from her self-pleasuring with a gasp the instant the image of Gavin formed in her mind. She breathed deeply letting it dissolve and then resumed her clitoral attentions, willing Stephen back like she was trying to conjure up his wet naked form against her. She held him there in her mind pure and precious. But then the image changed again and she was swaying, undulating between two male bodies; one of them Gavin perhaps, the other Stephen, or were these two different men altogether? She felt wanton and slutty, someone other than herself—a girl unhinged with sex, not a bride on the morning of her wedding. Someone capable of losing herself to a pair of strangers …
She broke off her teasing, gasping this time, cheeks burning in recognition of the two phantoms who had pressed in on her. They had been the pair of figures in her dreams for sure. Why the hell was she still clinging to that tawdry fantasy?
She hurried from the shower, but the thought persisted as she towelled and moisturised herself, massaging lavender oil into her skin. It was all Helen’s fault, persuading her to go to that infernal club.
“You need to live some,” her friend had advised.
“But I’m marrying Stephen now, I can’t go out misbehaving.”
“You can, and you need to. What, you seriously think he didn’t misbehave all those months he was in the States? An attractive successful man making a name for himself in Los Angeles—you can be sure he got plenty of attention and you don’t actually think he ignored it, do you? Yes—he came back for you and that’s beautiful, but you can be sure as hell he had his final fling while he was out there.”
Helen apologised afterwards if the sentiments had been unnecessarily harsh, but her point hit home. Erica and Stephen’s relationship had been officially over at the time; she didn’t know what he’d got up to in LA and she would certainly never ask. Didn’t she deserve then to have a little pre-matrimonial fun? Nothing horrible, just a few girly nights-out with some innocent flirtation thrown in.
Erica accompanied her friend to Eloise Mayhew’s 30th birthday bash—Eloise, the tartiest receptionist working at Rainbow Software—for some pre-nuptial letting down of the hair. The evening was as oestrogen-crazed as the bride-to-be might have expected, although with Helen beside her she threw herself into the low-grade frivolity with enthusiasm. It all took place in a private room at the Harlequin Club with exotic cocktails and a pair of male strippers. This is so naughty, she said to herself with a thrill, as the two guys paraded their buffed selves before their baying all-female audience. There was something bizarrely tempting about this raucous female abandonment. It was so un-Erica.
She squealed, laughed and clapped along in astonishment as various members of the party received lap-dances by their entertainment for the evening, or ground into them on the dance floor, reaching down brazenly to grope a bulging thong. Even worse was birthday girl Eloise tugging both guys off to a corner—the young blonde surfer-type and the shaven-headed one who looked like an Olympic swimmer. As they peeled away their thongs, Eloise reached out her tongue to lick the tips of both their cocks—cocks which at that angle Erica had to crane her neck to …
“Come on, I think you’ve seen enough, Mrs Laughton.” Helen pulled on Erica’s arm and fixed her with a sisterly stare.
Erica was ashamed afterwards that she had shown hesitation before coming to her senses and leaving with her friend.
“I don’t see how she can do that! How she can …”
“Suck off two hot guys in public?” Helen finished for her. “That’s Eloise. No shame, she won’t even give a damn on Monday morning. Although to be fair you couldn’t watch enough, could you? You were properly fixated.”
“I wasn’t … I didn’t …” Erica’s protest fizzled. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
“So which one of the dancers did you fancy the most?”
“I …” Erica was abashed to admit it, but there was a kind of liberation in doing so. “Well they were both pretty hot, weren’t they?” In a rough and ready kind of way …
“And you enjoyed watching, didn’t you?” Helen taunted. “Go on. Tell me, Erica. This is me you’re talking to. I know it’s not all sugar plum fairies in that head of yours.”
“It was … I …”
While ‘enjoy’ was not the word Erica would have chosen, the vision of Eloise between those two hot bodies, preparing to gorge on both their hard cocks, had lingered long in her mind. The thought of acting like Eloise had done, letting go of all one’s scruples and inhibitions, the antithesis of Wedding Day Barbie … Helen’s campaign to provide her with juicy memories had scored a success that night.
Now the strippers were haunting her dreams and making impromptu appearances in the shower with her. Because it hadn’t been the last time she saw then, had it? Robbie and Zach—God, she even remembered their names. Erica stifled a laugh as it flashed back to her. The boys had graced her hen night as well. One of her hen nights.
Helen’s plans had been so markedly different from those of her other friends, the ones she retained from school, that two bachelorette evenings were required. There had been the sedate one and the secret, the latter taking place in a hotel suite with select guests from work. It had been full of drunken frivolity and more than one surprise.
“Oops – I probably shouldn’t show you these,” Helen said, of the floral pill-box that had spilled out of her purse when she fumbled for a lipstick at the restroom sink.
“Show me what?” A couple of drinks down the line, Erica’s interest could not help but be engaged.
“Sweet Molly Malone,” Helen said cryptically, flipping open the box to reveal a couple of smiley-faced tablets. “Makes you feel ‘alive, alive-o’.”
Erica’s vital signs all increased at the prospect of something this illicit. “It’s…”
“Eloise’s party-pal of choice. Remember what a good time she was having at her 30th?”
“Oh God, I do. I don’t want to have that good a time.”
Helen laughed. “It doesn’t transform you into a raging nympho. Not if you don’t want to be in the first place.” They both grinned at the memory of Eloise’s flagrant misbehaviour. “It just helps you feel your kind of good.”
Erica’s fingers actually twitched as she eyed the pills. “But… I’ve so much to do for the wedding tomorrow...”
“Which is why we started extra-early. And why I’ll steer you away from a second bottle of red. Our friend Molly will liven up your evening, but shouldn’t do much else. Did you ever see Eloise look any the worse for wear on a morning after?”
In truth Erica couldn’t recall, but popping an unknown pill seemed a risk too far.
Helen saw it in her face. “My bad. As Maid of Honour it’s my job to make sure...
