Chapter 23

“You’ve been ages, Mummy!” Jasmin called out as Maya entered the house through the kitchen door. “Sophie said you must be swimming to America!”

Maya forced a laugh. “Not quite,” she said. She glanced at the clock. Half past nine. She had lost three hours. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

“Daddy was too busy to tell us, so we stayed up. Night, night, Mummy,” Jasmin kissed her and scuttled out of the kitchen. Maya slumped on to a chair and rested her forehead on the table. It wasn’t a dream. I know it happened. I have just been the sex toy for a load of strangers and I have to be honest, once it was happening, I enjoyed it all. Shame on you Maya! She shook her head. She felt no shame at all. She hadn’t sought out this adventure, but she wasn’t going to regret it. What was it Gaëlle had said? When you have a new or more extreme sexual experience, no matter how hard it may be to go through with it at the time, there’s a part of you that is glorying in the fact that it is happening to you and not to some other woman.

“Maya? Are you all right?” Eric asked, coming into the kitchen.

“I’m fine ... I think.”

“Good swim? You took your time.”

“Sit down, Eric. You will not believe what just happened to me, but I’m going to tell you anyway.”

“Before you do, I need to confess. I know about it, because I organised it.”

“What?” Maya’s voice was barely short of a shriek.

“Let me take you back to a conversation we had on our way home after the session with Adam and Oelipalo. Do you remember what you said then?”

“Not really. I wasn’t in any state to be coherent.”

“Then I’ll remind you. You were saying that you had felt safe, even in the most extreme moments. You were sure that if you’d asked Jo, or the two boys to stop and truly meant it, then they would have. I would have insisted on it.”

“I remember now. I was thinking about Gaëlle and what she told me it was like to be used as a sexual object without the right to say no.”

“And you were wondering how that would feel, remember?”

“I do.”

“So I set this up for you to find out. Did it work? I didn’t dare to be there because I couldn’t have resisted trying to rescue you.”

Maya flung herself at her husband. “You bastard! How could you do that to me? Why?”

“Because I love you, Maya”

They clung to each other. Maya drummed with her fists on her husband’s back, torn between anger at having been thrust, unwilling, into a gangbang and passion for the man whose love for her was so deep that he had taken this huge risk.

Eventually she pulled away. “I’m still going to tell you all about it,” she said, “because yes, I was scared and there were parts of it that made me suffer, but Eric, I have to admit it was wonderful. Is that appalling?”

“No it isn’t. It’s who you are and, as I said, I love you.”

Maya regained control of herself. “I’m intrigued, now,” she said. “How on earth did you manage to set it all up?”

“It was something that came out when I was chatting with Vanessa and Micky. He and Vanessa are swingers. He made discreet enquiries whether we were too, but I just made vague noises. Apparently, it’s a sort of undeclared game that goes on every summer. Last year, Micky was approached by a stranger who asked him whether Vanessa had ever participated in a gangbang. Micky said no, so the man asked if Micky would like her to have that experience.”