‘Will you do me a favour?’ he said, and he took my hand and placed it over his crotch.
I raised my head, gently massaging his groin and feeling him swell rapidly beneath my palm. ‘I haven’t got any money,’ I said.
Ilya’s face contorted into one of its wincing smiles. ‘No, nothing like that,’ he replied. ‘Just suck me off, Beth.’ He gave me a little grin and lifted his bandaged right hand. ‘I can’t even wank properly at the moment. It’s been hell.’
I smiled back. ‘I suppose a fuck’s out of the question.’
“Fraid so,’ he answered. ‘Anyway, I probably wouldn’t last long.’
And so I peeled the zip over his humped-up dick and let his cock spring free. His shaft was broad and hard, its blue veins up and pulsing. My cunt ached. It didn’t seem right that such strength and virility could emerge from a virtual cripple.
‘Don’t mind if I join you?’ I breathed, unfastening my Levi’s.
‘Be my guest,’ he replied.
I shoved my jeans and knickers to my knees, then I opened my mouth wide above his prick. I went down, hardly touching him until my gaping lips were at his root. Then I clamped my mouth around him, smothering his erection in wet heat.
He groaned, long and low, and I reached between my thighs to finger my dampening pussy. Sunlight warmed my bare arse. Ilya kept on groaning as I sucked and slipped, fellating him slowly while I brought myself off.
He was right: he didn’t last long, and nor did I.
With a muted cry, Ilya climaxed, and I drank his juices – that’s how much I liked him – still frigging myself until I’d peaked too. I didn’t even allow myself to gasp and groan freely, preferring instead to keep Ilya’s cock in my mouth for as long as possible.
Lazily, I rolled my tongue around his retracting size, letting him slip from my lips when he’d shrunk back to normal. I rested my cheek against his thigh.
After a while, Ilya said, ‘So who was the guy this morning?’
I struggled with my memory. The morning seemed a million miles away, and when I recalled Luke he seemed as big and important as a pin. I gazed up at Ilya. Was he jealous? Threatened? Of course he wasn’t. Stupid notion.
‘It’s my new blond bimbo.’ I smiled. ‘My main squeeze dried up so I needed someone to fuck.’
Ilya controlled a grin. ‘And?’ he asked.
I shrugged, not sure what he meant, and rested my head on his leg again.
‘Did the earth move?’ said Ilya. ‘Have I got competition?’
‘Well, he can walk,’ I said. ‘So that’s one up on you. And he doesn’t look like a cyclops.’
Ilya stroked my cheek. ‘Just wait till I get back,’ he said. ‘Your cunt won’t know what’s hit it.’
I toyed with his lolling prick, wondering when that would be.
‘I might even try raping you again,’ he said softly. ‘If you play your cards right and promise not to bite.’
I gave his inner thigh a reprimanding little nip.
‘So tell me about him,’ said Ilya, his tone mildly curious but nothing more.
‘There’s not much to tell,’ I said truthfully. ‘Luke’s just into marathon fucking sessions. And that’s about it. He’s got stamina, but not much imagination. I might work on him though. Let him settle in first, then pow.’
‘Lucky guy,’ murmured Ilya. ‘Maybe the two of you could give me a floor show one day.’
‘Don’t think he’s quite ready for that,’ I said. ‘Not yet.’
‘Shame,’ he replied. ‘It’d be nice to sit here and watch the two of you going at it. I could fuck you by proxy.’
I pursed my lips, raising my eyes to meet his, trying to give him a ‘shut up’ expression. It seemed to work, and Ilya just smiled.
More than anything I wanted to hold him, to wrap my arms round him and soothe away his aches and pains and troubles. And my own. But that barrier which said ‘do not touch me emotionally’ seemed to have gone down, only to be replaced by one that said ‘do not touch me physically’. He was too sore. I hate ironies when they’re cruel.
‘When are you leaving?’ I asked, unable to keep the melancholy note from my voice.
‘Tomorrow evening.’
‘Oh, I see.’
We were quiet for a while. I half wanted tomorrow evening to come faster so that his fortnight would be over faster.
‘Beth,’ he said questioningly. ‘What are you doing for the next twenty-four hours?’
I smiled up at him, lifting my brows.
‘Only I’ve got this great idea for a role-play,’ he began. ‘It goes like this: I’m a fragile old man – who might manage a gentle fuck if he’s on his back and very, very comfortable. And you’re a dirty little slut who wants to sit on my cock, straddle my face, dance for me, wank for me, suck me off . . .’ He raised his bound hand. ‘Oh, and maybe rustle up some food as well.’
I stretched to kiss the tip of his cock. ‘My diary’s suddenly empty,’ I said. ‘And you’re in luck because I’m a pretty good cook. But, when I’m naked, I am kitchen dynamite.’
Chapter Eleven
I WAS SITTING at my computer, cranking out a book review for a local magazine.
Several feet to the left of me was the big bay window that looks across to Ilya’s flat. A late-August rainshower dappled the glass and the telephone wires sloping down to my building carried droplets of water like tiny glass cable cars.
For five days, nothing had stirred. Ilya’s blind remained half-up – a position unsuited to day or night; the lights didn’t go on or off.
They wouldn’t do. He was in Prague. For at least a fortnight.
But old habits die hard, and I couldn’t stop myself from continually checking the view.
And forever in my mind were thoughts that ranged from ‘maybe he’ll come back early’ to ‘maybe I’ll never see him again and I’ll just keep gazing at his window until one day someone else will move in’.
So I was typing in bits of my review, ruffling through notes, staring at the screen, and every now and then casting a glance beyond the rain speckles to Ilya’s flat.
His departure after the 24 hours we’d spent together – 24 hours of deliciously claustrophobic bliss, both domestic and debauched – had left a void inside me so vast that I couldn’t imagine anything would ever fill it. Not even Ilya’s safe return.
I didn’t know how things would be between us when – if – we were together again. There was nowhere left for us to go. ‘No emotional entanglements’ – that was one of the early rules of our game. Well, we’d broken that one, big style. And it couldn’t be fixed.
Ilya, apparently, tends not to stay in the same place for long: he gets bored, he moves on. That’s his lifestyle. And it doesn’t do to get too involved with people, he’d said. He prefers to keep his distance; that way no one gets hurt. But his feelings for me were becoming harder to control. That scared him and sometimes it made him angry – with himself or with me.
Hence the antique-shop aggression. He’d wanted to try to take things back a few paces, get us on track again; but he didn’t know how, and all those confused, pent-up emotions got expressed via the wrong outlet.
So where to next? We’d been silent on that subject, both of us tacitly agreeing to delude ourselves by pretending it wasn’t an issue.
And our options were pretty limited and unappealing. Would we try to rewind, box up our feelings and play at playing the game for a little while longer? I couldn’t begin to see how that would work.
And becoming more involved, in terms of a relationship, was surely not on the cards. Ilya and I belonged to separate worlds. Besides, as much as I cared for him and desired him, I didn’t think I could ever love or trust him.
I glanced across to his flat. I did a double-take, my heart going pitter-patter like the rain. Something – someone – had moved in the shadows.
I kept on staring. My computer hummed away. Everything was still over there. Was he back or had my eyes been playing tricks? Was it just the r
eflection of a tree in the breeze?
But no, there was movement again. Joy tamed by disbelief bubbled up inside me. He was home. My excitement mounted. The dark figure was moving closer to the window. Perhaps he was going to signal to me.
Then a slab of cold dread thumped into my guts, because Ilya does not wear caps with black-and-white bands. That’s what policemen wear.
My eyes riveted to the dark figure, I eased back my chair and stood.
I padded over to my rain-streaked bay window and, though it’s only a few feet away, that walk seemed to take for ever, as if I were wading through zero-gravity in huge, clumsy moon boots.
Below, parked outside Ilya’s building, was a police car, its Day-Glo stripe gleaming in the shower-murky street.
He was dead.
For five days, he’d been lying in a pool of blood, slowly rotting, and nobody knew except the man who’d murdered him – shot him, stabbed him, beaten him to a pulpy corpse – because he owed too much money.
He wasn’t in Prague. He was dead.
They would need someone to identify the body.
I slipped on my sandals.
‘And so do you know where Mr Travis is?’ asked the officer. ‘Or how we might contact him?’
I was going to say Prague, but I stopped myself. I didn’t know if I was allowed to give that information to the police. I shook my head. ‘Just on holiday, I think. I’m not sure where.’
The relief was overwhelming. It was still sluicing through me, like rainfall in the gutters outside. He wasn’t dead. He’d just been burgled, though nobody seemed to know quite when.
Ilya’s landlord was poking at the splintered wood of the flat door.
‘So you’re not a close acquaintance of Mr Travis, then?’ continued the officer.
‘Not really, no,’ I said. ‘We’re more, just a bit neighbourly really.’
‘So you’re not in a position to confirm that the television and video are missing?’
‘No, suppose not.’ I shrugged, but it was pretty bloody obvious that they were.
‘Well, I’m afraid there isn’t a great deal we can do,’ he said, flicking shut his notebook.
And that was that, more or less. Mr Travis could contact them on his return if he wished to report anything missing.
I didn’t bother asking if they were going to fingerprint the place. I knew what the answer would be: No point. Happens all the time. Mr Travis was simply unlucky.
Better that, I thought, than dead.
Luke has the face of a dazed angel.
His eyes are chestnut brown with lashes so long they ought to belong to a woman or a camel. His summer-bronzed complexion is flawless – he doesn’t even seem to have pores – and his features are perfect, clean lines. If it weren’t for the bleached hair with dark roots, and the ring piercing his brow, mothers might coo over his fresh boyish health.
And however much he wittered on about drugs and clubs, skate-punk and easy sex, he was, to my mind, disappointingly wholesome.
I yearned for Ilya’s craggy masculinity – for that too-big nose, those hooded eyes and that swarthy skin. I ached for his wit, his intellect, his menacing charm and his big bad secrets. I didn’t want to play the older woman to Luke’s eager appetite. I wanted to play the insignificant slut to Ilya’s sweet-sick demands. I wanted tender kisses from Ilya, too, but I tried not to dwell on that.
He’d promised to phone me. I heard nothing.
Prague, for a fortnight, came and went.
Luke was lying naked on my living-room floor, resting his cheek on folded arms.
This, for him, was an unusually serene posture, and his mood, too, was surprisingly mellow. More often than not, Luke couldn’t stay still for any length of time and he treated all silences as uncomfortable ones. Maybe he was starting to feel more relaxed in my presence. Maybe he was just tired.
Late-morning sunlight, muted by the gauzy muslin curtains, glowed warmly on his back and shot glints into his rumpled blond hair. Against the honey gold of his body, his arse was deliciously creamy. I trailed a finger down the groove of his spine, then continued further into the cleft of his buttocks.
‘Bisexual?’ I said, trying not to smile. ‘You kept that one quiet.’
‘Yeah well,’ he said, with a dismissive little shrug.
I didn’t quite believe him. It was too much.
All I’d been trying to do was develop his fuck-centric sexuality a little. I’d been gently pushing him to open up about his fantasies, the perviest thing he’d ever done or seen, what he thought about when he wanked, that kind of stuff.
His answers had been pretty scanty, to say the least. He’d been more interested in batting the questions back to me.
I didn’t think he was ready to hear the dark side of my desires, so I’d lied and said having anal sex was my wickedest deed to date.
This seemed to intrigue him and he’d started quizzing me – Was it better than vaginal sex? Did it hurt? Why did I like it? Do lots of couples do it? Straight couples, not just queers?
Then, after a little more probing from me, Luke had said, ‘Well, I suppose I’m a bit bi.’
Now whether he was saying this because he wanted to rescue himself from naivety, or whether he thought it put him in a suitable position to bugger me, I didn’t know. I just knew I didn’t believe him. I thought it was another example of Luke wanting to be in everyone’s gang.
Fighting to contain my amusement, I carried on rubbing my finger in the split of his arse.
‘So what do you mean by “I suppose” and “a bit”?’ I asked. ‘Are you saying you’ve actually been with other blokes? Or you just want to?’
At length, he said, ‘I’ve been with a couple of guys. A while ago. Not at the same time or anything.’
‘Oh? And what did you do together?’ I asked, pressing gently into the crinkled pit of his anus. ‘How come you’re so curious about my anal experiences? Didn’t you fuck?’
‘No,’ he said, propping himself up on one elbow and looking at me with those big doe eyes. ‘It was more, like, messing about. Just touching. You know, wanking. Sucking.’
I pictured his lips, stretched and taut round some other guy’s cock, and the image charged my cunt with a sudden erotic shock.
‘Tell me more,’ I coaxed. ‘Who with? When? Why only twice?’
He shrugged and poked at the carpet as if he were uneasy discussing the subject.
Luke was incapable of feigning emotion and discomfort. Maybe he wasn’t making it up after all. I really hoped he wasn’t.
‘It just happened,’ he replied. ‘And my mates don’t know about it. So . . . I mean, they’d really rip the piss if they found out. You’d better not tell anyone. I’ll kill you if you do.’
‘Course I won’t,’ I said kindly. ‘Anyway, who would I tell? I don’t really know these mates of yours. But if you ask me, they don’t sound that great.’
‘They’re OK,’ he said defensively. ‘They’re cool. Cool people.’
I massaged his buttocks, kneading into the muscle under the layer of softness. ‘Fancy any of them?’ I teased.
Luke gave me a filthy look.
‘Sorry,’ I said sheepishly.
Then the phone started to ring. Luke sighed heavily.
A few days before, my heart would have leapt excitedly because, in the run-up to Ilya’s expected return, it had done so for every phone call. Then his fortnight in Prague had become fifteen days, sixteen, seventeen. We were now into the twenties and my heart was tired of leaping. I let the phone ring.
‘You should unplug it more,’ said Luke. ‘It’s always interrupting.’
‘Could be important,’ I mumbled. I nibbled gently on his shoulder, trying to crush a rising hope as my answerphone message played then beeped.
‘Beth. Ilya.’
There was a silence as if he were waiting for me to pick up the phone. I scrambled for the receiver and the answerphone whined with feedback, recording my echoey greeting as I fumbled t
o turn it off.
With another sigh, Luke got up, walked into my bedroom and quietly closed the door. He could still hear me from there, but it was a nice gesture.
‘Where are you?’ I demanded breathily.
‘Back in Brighton,’ replied Ilya in a chirpy tone. ‘Have you missed me? Hope you’ve been keeping your cunt warm and supple for my homecoming?’
‘Where in Brighton?’ I spluttered. ‘At home? Have you seen your landlord? How did –’
‘No, I’m in a bed and breakfast,’ he said.
‘You’ve been burgled,’ I went on. ‘Someone broke in. Do you know? Christ, you didn’t need to go to a B and B. You should have just come here if you couldn’t get in. Is everything OK? Did you get stuff sorted out? Business or whatever? Are your ribs better? And your face? Someone’s nicked your telly and your video. The police –’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know all that,’ he said. ‘It’s OK.’
‘Well, when did you get back?’
‘Couple of days ago,’ he said breezily.
There was an ugly little silence.
‘Been seeing the sights?’ I asked in a tight, brittle voice.
Ilya gave a short harsh laugh.
I couldn’t understand it. Why was he being so offhand and remote? Was this his way of erasing the intimacy we’d shared?
‘So what are you doing tonight?’ he enquired. ‘Any plans?’
I allowed silence to spin out as I willed a carapace to form around my heart. ‘Not sure yet,’ I said crisply. ‘Might be going into town.’
‘How do you fancy being my whore again?’ he asked, barging past my aloof tone. ‘Get your slut gear on and pay me a visit? You’ll like it down here. It’s squalid and seedy. Just your thing.’
‘Is that it?’ I asked, struggling to curb my anger. ‘We just step back into playing our game? Pretend nothing’s happened?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Why not? I could do with a good dose of madness and sex. Couldn’t you?’
I drew a deep shivering breath. My bottled-up emotions pulsed like a migraine that filled the whole of my body. In any other relationship, with any other person, I would’ve torn into him. I would have lambasted him for trying to duck reality, for refusing to confront the truth of our situation.
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