Chapter One

      ‘Francie? Francie, are you there?’

      Dan made his way around behind the jungle of runner beans, getting a shoeful of soil when he stepped off the path. As the warm, moist earth infiltrated his dress socks, he would have cursed his clumsiness, but then he saw her on hands and knees, the swell of her hips slightly raised in her efforts to pull stubborn weeds. She didn’t have to do that. She was the head kitchen gardener, a goddess in her domain. He hired underlings to do the weeding, but fuck, he was glad she took the hands-on approach, especially at times like this. She had kicked off the silly blue plastic gardening clogs she always wore, and her bare toes curled into the soft earth as though the very touch of it was an irresistible pleasure. How could soil between toes be so goddamned sexy?

      The thin summer skirt she wore barely covered the heart-shaped roundness of her bottom, hugging her and clinging in the heavy summer heat to the delicious juncture where her thighs met. There were clearly no panty lines. She gardened in skirts, like she wanted to expose herself, like the acts of planting and digging and cultivating made her a naughty bitch who couldn’t get enough. But then that was the way he saw her in his fantasies, and oh shit, did he have fantasies about her! His cock jerked with an insistence that nearly took his breath away. ‘There you are,’ he breathed, fingers already fumbling at his fly.

      ‘Go away. I’m busy,’ she said, giving some unfortunate weed an angry tug, an act that made the thin skirt quiver, made the firm muscles of her buttocks beneath clench and release. And his balls surged, sending a testosterone buzz clear to the crown of his head.

      He ignored the anger in her voice. Well, he didn’t actually ignore it. Her saucy temper made his cock even harder. ‘It’s all right, darling, you keep on working. Just lift your skirt for me.’ He grunted softly as he released his cock into his hand.

      ‘Lift it yourself. I said I’m busy.’

      ‘You know I can’t do that, sweetheart.’

      She growled something particularly feral under her breath. He figured it wasn’t fit for polite company, which made him wish all the more that he’d heard it.

      ‘I’ve got such a load for you. I’ll come all over it if you don’t lift it for me,’ he said.

      ‘I have other skirts, Daniel.’ She only called him Daniel when she was really angry. ‘Why do I care where you come?’

      ‘Because you know where I really want to come, darling, and you have to know how badly I want it.’ He moved slightly to one side, not so far that her magnificent bottom wasn’t the centre of his attention, but far enough that, in her peripheral vision, she might catch a glimpse of him stroking his cock. Even if she couldn’t, she knew what he was doing, and he had no intention of being quiet about it. He lifted his balls free from his boxers and groaned at the feel of himself, so full, so heavy for her.

      She gave another angry yank at the offending weeds, and the resulting squeeze of her buttocks nearly sent him over the edge.

      He spat on his hand noisily, rubbed his saliva over the length of his cock and groaned again, squinting at her exquisite backside as though if he just stared at it hard enough he could slide the skirt up over her hips with sheer desire. And the view would be magnificent. The way her knees were open, the way she braced herself on the garden mat, would showcase the tight dark bud of her anus nestled just above the splayed pout of her pussy. And her pussy, he had no doubt, would be slickened from knowing what he was doing, from knowing what he’d come for, what he so desperately wanted … needed.

      ‘You were with her, weren’t you? You were with your wife,’ she said, reaching a gloved hand to deposit a handful of weeds in the trug next to her, an act that made the skirt ride up even further, leaving him breathless.

      ‘What? No! I wasn’t. I promise. I had a meeting with my accountant that overran. I swear it, Francie darling. I haven’t seen Bel since I got home. Besides she’s staying over at her sister’s this evening. They’re having a girls’ night out. Sweetheart, you know if I were with her, I’d tell you. Haven’t I always been above board about what goes on between Bel and me?’

      She knew he had. Not that there was much to tell, but on the odd occasion when Bel had had too much wine with dinner and demanded he do his husbandly duty, or when she was feeling morose about her advancing years, all thirty-four of them, and needed to be shown she was still sexy, he never lied about it. It didn’t matter what sex acts he’d had to perform to please his wife; when Francie asked for details, he gave them. A part of him hated that she always asked. Surely she knew it would be easier if she didn’t know, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. And he didn’t hold back anything, even though he was always careful to remind her that, when he did his duty where Bel was concerned, it was thinking about her, Francie, that made him come.

      And all the while he told Francie what he’d done to Bel, told her details that made him blush, details that made his cock stretch and arch towards her, she listened while her cunt got slick and fat. Even as those details made her angry and unhappy, she asked for them. And while he told her, she played