Wildwood

by Janine Ashbless

  It was good. It was better than good. How much in life can you be really sure of? We make our best guess, but even our own hearts deceive us. It’s so hard to know what path to take, what battle lines to draw, to know what is wanted from what is good, to know inspiration from impulse, to know risk from self-destruction. As I fucked with Ash, as we explored and ransacked and possessed each other, I was sure. Absolute conviction held in my every fibre that here, with the magician with the copper hair and troubled eyes coloured like the woods, whose voice was hoarse in my ear and whose gentle hands were grown fierce on my skin, the man who filled me and pressed me down and lifted me higher with every stroke, above everything else in the world, it was truly right.

  9: Snared

  I WOKE HOURS later. Ash had spooned up behind me as we’d dozed off and I could feel his warm skin against my back and see his arm draped over me, his hand resting on the duvet by my breasts. I lay for a moment, wondering if that arm was protective or possessive or simply cosy.

  Like everything else he did Ash’s fucking had been careful, committed and so intense it was almost unsettling. He wasn’t a man you went with for a bit of a laugh. In his own way, I thought, he was as just as emotionally dangerous as Michael – the two of them had a lot in common. Now, I added ruefully to myself, more than ever.

  I slipped from under his arm and sat up on the edge of Miranda’s bed. I expected Ash to stir but he rolled face down in the pillows, his breathing deep and even. Night had fallen and I guess the unaccustomed luxuries of a soft mattress and a warm room were too much for him. The glow of the bedside lamp picked out the shape of his muscles, the gloss of his skin and a strange scar on his back: a puckered sunken scar, perfectly round and about the size of a penny, close to his spine in the region of his right kidney. I wondered briefly what it was. My fingertip hovered over it. I didn’t want to leave; I wanted to lick my way down his spine and sink my teeth into his biteable arse, but I was busting for the toilet. Reluctantly I scurried for the door.

  A few minutes later, safely enthroned in the bathroom, I took the time to look about me. The room wasn’t cold but it was a bit stark, tiled to the ceiling on all four walls in white, with white and chrome fittings. I’d have like to have drawn a bath and sunk into its soothing waters; I’d seen more action with more partners in the past 24 hours than I could usually claim in months, and my muscles were starting to protest. Sadly, Miranda did not possess a bath, but instead the whole of one end of the room was glassed off to make a magnificent shower cubicle. My casual interest gradually sharpened. It would be nice to get back into the bed scrubbed and fresh and smelling of perfumed soap. I love dirty, but I love clean too. First one then the other, turn and turn about.

  Flushing the cistern I went over and experimented with the taps until I had a good strong cascade of warm water. Miranda had a fine stock of shower gels and soaps, and I happily let the water strip the salt and the ache from my skin as I lathered up with a bar smelling of coconut and ginger. I was busy shampooing when the door opened and Ash, muzzy with sleep, ambled in and lifted the toilet seat.

  I stopped what I was doing to watch. I like to watch my men piss – it feels voyeuristic and transgressive and dirty on my side, and there is something irreducibly masculine about the way they do it. I admit I envy them the ability to take a leak standing up. It has so much more grace and dignity than being obliged to sit, I thought, feasting my eyes on the muscled lines of Ash’s bum and legs, and, of course, they get to handle their cocks while they’re at it. Lucky bastards. He pissed with force, a strong golden jet. I think Ash felt the weight of my gaze because midstream he cast me a sideways glance and a sleepy, knowing smile. My stomach made a funny little squirming dance at that look.

  After pressing the flush Ash came over to the shower cubicle and slipped inside with me. I was just rinsing off, and he traced the wet ringlets of my hair. Then I pulled him under the shower jet and helped the water caress him. He stretched and eased his muscles and ducked his head under the spray to soak his dreadlocks. I loved the way he scrunched his face up as he lifted it to the shower’s fierce caress, and the way the water flicked from the ends of his hair when he shook his head. He reached for the bottle of shower gel but I got there before him, squeezed it onto a big violet shower scrunchie and then used the nylon blossom to lather up his chest and shoulders. He submitted with a grin, not interfering or distracting me, just resting his fingertips on my waist. Stepping round behind him I scrubbed him with firmer strokes, revelling in his muscular back and his hard arse. I slapped his bum just to see the suds and water go flying. I raked my nails through the hairs on his thigh. His body was a great big toy for me to play with and he did not resist. When I slipped a soapy hand between his cheeks and right underneath he shuddered but spread for me. I was gentler there, respecting the more sensitive skin, cupping his scrotum in my slippery hand and rolling the balls tenderly in their sac. I was very thorough; these things are important.

  Then I knelt behind him and scrubbed down the long lines of his legs, pressing my fingers hard into the muscle. His calves were like rock. Soap made up for the roughness of his hair, making everything slick and frictionless. Ash grunted and purred. I found out how much he was enjoying the attention when he turned to look down on me and his semi-hard erection bobbed in my face. Grinning, I ignored it and took up his feet one by one, resting each against my thigh as I poured on the shower gel and massaged his soles and his insteps and up between each toe. He had to stretch out his arms to the walls while balanced on one leg, supporting himself with fingertip pressure. The smile on his lips was touched with surprise. If he was ticklish he didn’t let it show, but that’s what you’d expect from Ash.

  When I was sure he was completely clean I stood and lathered up his torso again, just for luck, paying special attention to his nipples and the tattoo on his hip. ‘This drives me crazy,’ I said as my fingers stroked the inked curves. ‘Is it magic?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not in that way.’ Great white creamy blobs of foam were running down his abdomen and thighs. He looked perfect. I’d saved his crotch for last, a treat for myself. I had the most indecent grin on as I squirted the shower gel over his jutting cock, admiring the aesthetics of the pearlescent goo on his flushed member. Ash groaned with anticipation. Then I put the bottle aside in order to lavish both hands and all my attention on soaping him up, mixing turgid cock and soft balls and the coarse coppery thatch of his hair in one glorious slippery, sudsy melange that my hands couldn’t get enough of. Ash bit his lip. Strange things were happening to his breath, and in very short order there was nothing halfway about his erection.

  ‘Avril,’ he groaned, his hands suddenly closing over mine, stilling them on his hard-on.

  No? I asked with my eyes.

  Easing my hands from him, he pulled me full against him, and for a moment our bodies met in a wonderful slippery kiss, as if we were melting together. Warm steam billowed about us. Then he turned me in his arms so that my back was to his chest, and reached for the bottle of gel. Evidently it was my turn. I could have protested that I was already clean but I didn’t think he’d listen, and besides there were bits of me that were feeling very dirty indeed.

  With a firm clasp of his hand Ash squirted the creamy liquid over both my breasts and dribbled it down the line of my cleavage before discarding the bottle altogether. He didn’t bother with the shower scrunchie; he used his hands. He’d worked out exactly how sensitive my nipples could be and he used the knowledge ruthlessly, rolling and rubbing the innocent pink tips until I was squirming against him, helpless and undignified, my bum grinding against his braced thighs. He ran his hand down my belly and caressed soap into the delta of my sex, his fingers soaping my folds. Then he rolled me, gently but firmly, to face the wall. I put my hands on the sweating tiles.

  For a moment he released me in order to find a bar of soap. I whimpered with loss, only slightly mollified as he ran his slick hands down my back and over my bum cheeks. Then he delved
between my legs, soap and hands equally hard and slippery, and I forgot I’d been disappointed as he worked me into a lather of pleasure. I pressed my forehead to the cool tiles, eyes shut, transported by the alien, frictionless pressure. He rubbed the soap bar over my clit and pressed it to my cunt and in my reckless trance I wished he could shove the whole thing inside me. I thrust my arse cheeks out, begging him for more. He stroked up and down the interior of my crack, tracing rings around the secret star of my anus. I squirmed. He slid one finger, lubricated by that alchemical mixture of sex juices and soap, in through the tight ring of muscle. I gasped against the tiles.

  ‘Relax,’ he whispered in my ear, circling that finger joint, easing me open. His other hand, losing the soap bar, slid in around the front of my pussy to make sure I did just that, taking masterful possession of my clit. When he slipped a second finger in to join the first invader I felt as if my whole body were yielding to him. My muscles fluttered, my cheeks opened. I was seconds from orgasm.

  All that changed when his fingers eased out and he nudged the head of his cock to my bum hole instead. The spasm of fear was instinctive and instantaneous; my eyes snapped open wide. ‘No!’

  ‘Yes,’ he murmured. ‘Just relax.’ I could feel his length, hot and so slippery, between my cool cheeks. The pressure wasn’t unbearable, but it wasn’t withdrawn either

  ‘I’ve not … I’ve not done that before.’

  His breath was hot on my ear. ‘Then give it to me as your first, Avril.’ He kissed my burning cheek. ‘Give it up to me.’

  My whole body seemed to have turned to jelly. I did want to give it to him; I wanted to give him anything he wanted. I wanted to surrender my soul. ‘I’m not sure I can,’ I confessed.

  ‘Yes. Yes, you can.’ His fingers stirred my clit, soothing, inflaming. ‘Just relax and let me do it all.’ He pressed against his target and I groaned, partly in fear, partly in discomfort, rising up on my toes. The fingers that had been playing with my bum slid round and fastened onto one nipple and I felt the little electric jolt chase all the way down to my clit.

  The noises in my throat were suddenly less protesting, more helpless. ‘Oh God!’

  Ash was patient, and he was very well lubricated. Fraction by fraction he ratcheted his cock head up into my arse, sliding in through the sphincter which could clench and flutter but never fully lock against him. Slow, rolling waves of sensation radiated from my bum up and down my body. My spine seemed to be one crackling length of exposed nerves. I felt hot; I felt cold. My legs were trembling wildly. My tits screamed for comfort and I stabbed my nipples against the cool tiles until Ash pinched them and then I nearly wept with relief.

  Michael would have talked me through this. Michael would have said, ‘I want to fuck your ass. I want to fuck your beautiful big ass, you naughty girl, and you want me to do it, don’t you? You want to give me your butt crack and let me stick my big prick in it and come in your dirty, wicked, tight little asshole.’

  Ash said nothing. There was just his harsh breathing on my ear and his hands on my tits and my sex and his cock boring into me, filling my world. There was just my softness giving way before his hardness. Then suddenly the discomfort melted to a sensation of fullness and I knew that it was done, he was in, and there was a wet sensation running down my crack and my thighs that I couldn’t tell whether it was sweat or blood or soap or just my imagination.

  ‘OK?’ he whispered, his lips trembling over my skin, his tongue etching his name on my soul.

  What the hell choice did I have? I’d yielded to him and he’d taken it all. He had conquered territory I’d never given up to any other man and now he was going to lay claim to it. He began to move, sliding his cock in and out. I felt every inch. I think he was quite careful, but the sensation was extraordinary and my body very nearly could not cope. It was dirty and it was divine; it was like taking a shit on the high altar of St Paul’s Cathedral while the entire choir sang the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’; it was like fucking God.

  I came on his hands and on his cock. My lips were pressed to the tiles, which spat back my cries down my throat as everything exploded. After that all my clenched muscles relaxed – except for my arse whose tight ring was spasming like a hand about his shaft, completely out of my control, gripping and relaxing in a pulsing dance. He took his cue from that, thrusting firmer and deeper. I felt his balls slapping my pussy and I felt him quicken and shudder and I heard his groan as he filled my virgin hole with his cream. Suddenly I was slippery inside as well as out. Ash’s arms locked around me and he groaned into my wet hair and my throat, over and over.

  ‘Good?’ he asked, still holding me, when his crisis had passed.

  ‘Good,’ I whispered, twisting to lick the sweat from his jaw.

  After all that, we needed to get washed yet again.

  When I emerged from the bathroom there was a certain hitch to my gait, courtesy of a novel sensitivity in the tender membranes of my anal bud. I borrowed a pair of knickers from Miranda’s drawer, figuring she could spare them and that my need was great. They were white lace with blue flowers, rather expensive looking, but I couldn’t find anything plainer; the rest of my clothes seemed very dowdy in contrast as I pulled them on. Aching for a coffee, I filled the kettle at the sink. The wet street below the window was a confusion of headlamps and neon, blurred by rain.

  ‘What’s the time?’ Ash asked as he came out, towelling himself. There was a slight frown knotted between his brows.

  ‘Gone eleven,’ I said, after looking around in vain for a clock and finally retrieving my watch from under the bed.

  ‘That’s late. She should be home by now, surely.’

  ‘Maybe she’s …’ He had a point; Miranda had promised to meet us straight from the office. ‘Well, she works London hours. She might have had a deadline or something.’

  Ash didn’t answer, but he pulled his clothes on with swift movements that suggested eloquently that he was not reassured. He got the rucksack out from under the chair too, to check that the contents were safe. I went to open the door, picturing quite irrationally Miranda coming up the corridor outside. Looking out, I stared, not really understanding. Then I pulled back in, checking the interior walls of the room.

  ‘Ash!’

  He looked up. ‘What?’

  ‘This door … Ash. Which is the way out?’

  Stuffing the book back into the bag, he strode over to join me. I waited for his verdict, still trying to orientate myself. There was no corridor on the other side of the door, just a bare, unfurnished room. The floorboards were rough, the walls stained to an indeterminate grey by years of dirt. There was

  a lone door in the wall opposite. The only feature was a single broken chair with no seat.

  Ash too looked around Miranda’s flat to see if we had somehow managed to mislay the outer door. ‘Shit,’ he said grimly. Then he crossed back over to the bathroom door and flung it open. No white tiles winked beyond the lintel, only another grey box room and a broken chair, at exactly the same angle as the first.

  How do you get lost in a single room?

  Striding back, Ash brushed past me into the strange room where the corridor should have been. I followed, uneasily. ‘What’s happening?’

  Deliberately, he laid the chair over on its back and then pulled open the furthest door. It revealed a third grey room beyond, another identical door and another seatless chair – this one laid flat upon its back. It was like one of those infinite vistas you get by tilting two mirrors together. I felt dizzy. ‘Ash?’

  ‘Get back into the flat,’ he said. I obeyed willingly, hurrying to the kitchen. Grasping the frame of the sash window over the sink, I tried to raise it but the wood resisted. I struggled for a minute, cursing under my breath. The sodium-lit vista outside twinkled mockingly in the rain. Then Ash reached in past me, grabbed the frame and heaved. Nothing budged. ‘Step back.’

  I retreated to the fridge. Ash picked up a saucepan and slammed it against the bottom pane, whic
h smashed. I put my hands over my mouth. Two inches behind the glass on which was painted that glittering night street was a wall of grimy brick. Ash struck that with the pan and the handle snapped off in his hand.

  On the largest shard of glass still in the frame the raindrops crawled down and a bus passed slowly in the street below.

  ‘Ash! What’s going on?’

  Slinging the handle into the sink he looked me in the face for the first time. He was really pale, and there was a cold, glittery look in his eye that I knew and did not like. ‘We’re trapped,’ he said flatly. ‘This is a trap.’

  ‘You mean … Michael’s caught up with us?’

  ‘Caught up?’ He glanced around our cluttered bolt hole. ‘No. This is the sort of thing you do on your own territory. Deverick got here before us. Long before us.’

  My stomach churned. I hated the way he was looking at me. ‘How?’

  ‘You tell me.’ His voice was quiet, under iron control. ‘This was your plan.’

  ‘Me?’ The look he had on made me recoil. ‘Hey, I had nothing … This isn’t –’

  ‘Does your friend Miranda even exist?’

  ‘Miranda?’ Suddenly the thing that had been nagging at the back of my mind all along stood out proud. ‘Oh God.’ I wanted to slap myself. ‘Miranda knew him. Through her brother. She knew Deverick. Oh God, Ash …’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I’d forgotten. She mentioned it at the wedding. But she’s never spoken about him since and I didn’t think …’

  ‘I bet you didn’t.’

  ‘You believe me, don’t you?’

  ‘Believe what? That you didn’t sell me out; that you’re just plain stupid?’ He might have noticed the rage kindle in my eyes but he marched on regardless. ‘Yeah, I’d love to believe that, Avril. We both know what he’s like. Women will do anything he wants. Miranda or you – what’s the difference? And either you or I was dumb enough to trust that there was one female who wouldn’t just open her legs to that man and let him take control.’