Mavi isn’t famous. She wanted to be. The driving force behind her relocation from the country to the capital forty-odd years ago was the dream of A-list stardom. She got her foot on the first rung of the celebrity ladder, with a few TV adverts propelling her to Z-list status, but that’s where she stayed. Even so, she sees herself as one of the lucky ones. Nobody ever tried to take advantage of her, and though it should be a given that it shouldn’t ever happen to anyone, she still considers it an achievement.
We’re going out tonight. I’m already dressed and waiting for her. As she pulls a paddle brush through her thick tresses I have to stifle a smile. It’s a novelty to see the spiky little thing being used for its actual purpose for once. Watching the long strokes of her arm taking the bristles from root to end, I notice the flashes of silver.
I used to tell her she had hair so golden I was convinced it had been spun by a miller’s daughter. But these days her crowning glory is flecked with hundreds of paler strands, and whenever she gets the hump about it I gently remind her that platinum will always be deemed more valuable than yellow gold.
Once her hair is rolled into a chignon and secured with a glittering clip, she picks up her stockings. I’m mesmerised by the way her long fingers pull the fine silk up her legs, over her knees and to her thighs, concealing the purple spider veins that decorate her calves. I notice darker patches on her pale arms. Loose skin waving ever so slightly under her bicep as she reaches up to unhook her dress from the rail in the wardrobe.
As I stare I feel the surface I’m lounging against change from smooth, to sharp, then hard and textured. I busy myself with my cufflinks, trying to appear nonchalant, but I know what I’ve done. Without realising it, I’ve inched along the wall, putting my back to the closed bedroom door. Being as silent as possible, I turn the lock.
Mavi smiles at me. I smile back, licking my lips when she lifts her arms over her head, dress in her hands. The move doesn’t lift her tits as high as it used to. There is no flash of underboob for me to drool over, but there is a slight hardening of her nipples. Is it because she knows I’m watching? Or is it because she caught sight of herself in the mirror to my right just before she let the dress cover her face.
My eyes follow the hem as she slowly pulls the gauzy sheath down her body. From just beneath her rib cage to the tops of her thighs she’s covered in stretch marks. The delicate silver lines make her look like she’s already wrapped in the finest, rarest lace. I know every one of those lines. I touch them whenever I touch her, trace them with my fingers. They’re the tapestry of her life, or our life together, and they only serve to make her more beautiful to me.
No sooner has she smoothed the dress against her thighs am I edging it back up again. Her throat is warm, the pulse in her neck strong against my lips. I breathe in her spiced vanilla perfume. Run my hands over her wrinkled stomach, cup her tits and pant into her ear as I watch firmness return to her cleavage. When I kiss her throat again I press my tongue against her skin and feel her pulse quicken.
Fuck, this woman drives me crazy. Every time I look at her my balls ace, my cock becomes so hard it turns a vicious shade of purple. Her fingers have found it now and I’m delirious with desire. I can’t see anymore. I can’t hear anything over the rush of blood in my ears. All I can do is feel.
Her. Me.
I feel her wobble as the backs of her knees hit the bed and I feel the flesh that cushions her hips give beneath my fingers as I catch her. I lower her onto the mattress. Bury my face between her tits, buck against her thigh because I’m impatient and can’t make myself wait until my cock is in her before I start thrusting.
Mavi is whispering. She always does this when we fuck. Always has. Whenever I mention it to her and ask her to tell me what she’d said, she just laughs and tells me that she was reinforcing the spell her younger self had cast over me. I’ve never doubted the truth of it.
Her hands are in my hair. Mine are in hers. The clip is on the bed, her golden locks are in my fist and I’m yanking her head to the side so I can get at her neck. Then her shoulder. Collarbone, breastbone, the swell of her left tit. When I lift my head again I only just register the angry mark I’ve left beside her nipple.
God, she’s tearing at my zip. One cufflink is gone. Her feet are on my hips, pushing at my trousers, I’m panicking because my cock is still trapped in my briefs and it should be buried in Mari. Then her hands are there, releasing it, guiding it into her gilded cunt, freeing me.
As always, she gasps when my swollen tip pushes inside, and I groan. I stop, choking on my own breaths, scraping her hair out of her face so I can watch her expression change with each inch I’m about to give her. A breathless smile. The smile fades to a wide ‘oh’. Fingernails dig into my forearms and her eyes flash all white before the lids drift closed and she whispers a plea for me to fuck her.
Deep, long thrusts, almost out, all of me back in, achingly slowly. Teasing it out of her because I know she wants me to loosen my hips and piston into her until she shreds the bedsheets. I want to keep doing it just like this, but I’m no fool. As soon as her hands move from my arms to my arse I know I’m going to give her what she wants. I can’t not, her nails are digging into my cheeks, her cunt is clinging to my cock, every move she makes designed to draw me in deeper.
Groans turn to growls. Mari widens her legs, pulls them back so she can feel my balls slapping off her arsehole. Oh God, the bed springs are screaming. Or is that Mari? The headboard is hammering against the wall. Or is it the neighbours again? I don’t fucking care because Mari is coming and then I’m coming and there’s nothing else in the world but that.
In the satisfied silence that follows I gaze lovingly at my wife. At the wrinkles around her eyes. The softness of her jaw and the lines around her lips. People recognise her, sometimes, but they don’t see her. Not really. They’re so busy searching her features for the girl she was they fail to see the woman she is. But I see her. All of her. She was beautiful then, she’s beautiful now, and beautiful is what she will always be.
