Hotel rooms are curious things. They range from the grey and mundane to the opulent, from the single-bed-and-Good-News-Bible to generous suites with all the conveniences. They all share one thing—that deep thrum of possibility suggested by their otherness. Places outside the world where anything goes. Where one might be anything one wanted, be anyone. They are powerful, and dangerous, and sexy.

The email tumbled into her inbox among the steady drip-feed of dross, the copyings-in, the arse-covering, the bake sales. It was not in any of her current projects so it vanished for a while into the folder Flick had entitled ‘meh’. Not spam, but not a priority.

Felicity Kepler settled back and, prior to a wander, and a wee and a coffee checked the meh folder. Well, wow. Kelvin in accounts had adopted another baby. There was a car parked across the line in the back carpark and an invitation to a knitting klatsch and a Crossfit cult newsletter. No cakes though, which was a shame. She fancied a cupcake. Sugary coffee would have to—what was this?

There it was. A simple query.

Would she represent Brane Solutions at iFOAM in Barcelona, in April?

Would she? Her heart rate shot up and her mouth went dry. A thrill of pride and swiftly behind it, arousal. The words made her shift and unfold and throb behind her knickers. A week, on her own. Being HER, not Mum, not Wife and not merely Flick the QM from QA. She’d be her own captain. Free.

A whole week in BCN too! Mountains, and ruins and sea and the piled up higgledy-piggledy masses of the old city and the broad palmy boulevards elsewhere. She would be Brane Solutions by day, but her by night. Revisit her that still lived there, a different her, one that had not come home, one that had allowed herself to be seduced. Her knickers shifted deliciously at the memory of the sweaty clubs and hurried fumblings in doorways. The hot spill of come on her bare thighs. That night on the beach, a whole gang of them in the waves, young bodies gilded by far-off streetlights and the flashes of fire from a storm over Minorca.

Her turn this time. Tom was always escaping the endless drudge by going on trips and conferences. The cleaning, the washing up, the school uniform. The constant battery of food. Always food. Her head and hips filled with a fierce glee and the day passed in a fugue of half-distracted work and occasional touches of herself. The hot, fluttering ridges of flesh through the separating fabric of her knickers, reading the signals of arousal that spilt across it like the radio-music from the stars.

Home was frantic as usual and it was not until later,…