The Agency by Ally O'Brien

played his last match. No purses. No promotional appearances. No endorsements for shoes and T-shirts. Just a shriveling bank account. In those circumstances, a man does what he must, and that means marrying up. Find an older woman with a hunger for eye candy and the wallet to pay for it. That’s what Darcy did. Fifteen years later, he professes no love for his wife, but she has him neatly sewn into her pocket, like a teacup dog you pull out at parties. For a man of Darcy’s size, it gets cramped in there.
    “God, it’s been forever,” I said.
    We both kicked off our shoes and propped our stockinged feet on my father’s coffee table. The champagne went down smooth and fast.
    “Three weeks, and it feels like three months,” Darcy said. “I’m sorry, my dear, it took her forever to leave town.”
    “Where is she tonight?”
    “Paris. Eurostar. Back tomorrow.”
    “So you can stay all night?”
    “I can.”
    “Heaven,” I said, nibbling his ear.
    “What’s new in your world, Tessie? I heard about Lowell, of course.”
    I understood his curiosity, but I wasn’t especially interested in making small talk about work. We had other things to do.
    “They found him in a white corset, you know.” My voice a seductive whisper. My throat rumbling with laughter.
    “Are you serious?”
    “No.”
    “You are so bad.”
    “That’s what Emma tells me.”
    “Your sense of humor is going to get you into trouble someday.”
    “Why don’t you get me into trouble now?” I said.
    “Now?”
    “Now.”
    Some things you do not need to ask a man twice.
    His slim, long fingers undid each of the buttons on my shirt and peeled back the strawberry silk. The girls made a dramatic appearance, sky high, bursting in black lace. Emma has nothing to fear from me in the tits department, but mine were at their best tonight.
    “Oh, my,” he said.
    I popped the buttons on the sleeves myself, extracted each arm, and dropped the shirt from my fingers onto the floor behind the sofa.
    His face found my cleavage. Kissed my skin. Inhaled my perfume. His hands squeezed my breasts like a greengrocer testing ripe grapefruits. There is nothing like a thin layer of silk buffing and twisting your nipples. They puckered into two rocklike nubs.
    “Fast or slow?” he asked.
    “Fast now, slow later,” I said.
    He left my bra on. He stood up from the sofa, all big and strong, and began to undress. He knows I like it when he is naked, and I’m not. Cuff links, then white shirt, then undershirt, then braces, then socks, then pants pooling at his ankles, then low-rise blackbriefs peeled down and flicked aside. For a breathtaking moment, it was just the two of us in the room. Me and his dick.
    “You’re looking healthy,” I said.
    “I took a vitamin V.”
    God help me, I really need to buy stock in Pfizer. That is a wonderful, wonderful company.
    He held up one hand, pointed his index finger down, and made little circles with it. Turn around.
    “Ah,” I said.
    I got the picture.
    I faced the other side of the sofa, jacked my arse in the air, and he came up behind me. When he tugged my zipper down, I expected to hear seams popping as my hips reinflated to their natural size. He pried my jeans over my backside, pulling my knickers with them. I’ve never seen that particular angle on myself, and I really don’t want to, but I heard him let out a decidedly pleasurable gasp behind me, and then Darcy, his dick, and the good people of Pfizer all squeezed in together under my bum and almost launched me into orbit with the first thrust.
    Oh, shit, I said silently, and then not long after, much louder, I heard myself say for the first time, “
ohhhh
.”
    You’d think I would be satisfied with great sex. You’d think that after two hours of tongues, dicks, nipples, and orgasms, I would be sated enough to fall asleep without doing any further damage to my life. Is that so much to ask? One light-speed ride in the living room, one achingly slow ride in