‘Never mind her. She’ll never be any good to you.’
Julia’s fingers had strayed to his loosened dog collar, at which she pulled gently.
‘I’ve always wanted to take this off you,’ she whispered.
‘No, you can’t,’ he whispered back, but there was no firmness in it, no purpose. She pulled it free of his shirt, exposing the lower part of his neck, which she bent and kissed.
‘Poor Adam,’ she crooned. ‘So intense, so full of fire. So desperate for a fuck.’
She let one finger move down Adam’s chest, gliding between his pectoral muscles, dipping down into his abdomen. His capacity for resistance was gone. He was floating somewhere in a place where his moral compass didn’t operate, a badland. A badland that was good, that felt good, as good as Julia’s fingertip tracing his waistline before grasping his belt and sliding it through the buckle.
The memories of Julia’s kiss and Evie’s pole-dance had left him semi-erect even through the unpleasantness that had followed. Julia’s sudden statement of intent, in removing his belt and unbuttoning his trousers, brought him to full engorgement straight away.
‘Nobody has ever done this for you?’ she said, still disbelieving, pushing his trousers over his hips and thighs to release his cock. ‘Except yourself, of course.’
‘I try,’ he gasped, ‘not to. I try to think of – other things …’
‘It’s killing you,’ she said. Her hand closed around his testicles. ‘Feel that, Adam. So tight, so pulsing with need. You must be awash in sexual desire, 24 hours a day, with nowhere for these little swimmers to swim to, except when you dream. You do dream, don’t you, Adam?’
‘I told you,’ he gasped. ‘I dream. All the time. Vivid dreams. Sinful dreams.’
‘Your only outlet. Your brain and body conspire in your sleep, Adam, to get the release they’re so desperate for. You deny them, you deny yourself. You aren’t made for abstinence. Your unconscious has spoken.’
‘Don’t say that, don’t say that. I can resist …’
‘You can’t.’
He arched his back and gripped at the sheets as Julia’s fist found his cock, wrapping itself perfectly around its rigid girth. The feel of her clasp, of his enclosure in it, tipped him over an edge. He couldn’t turn back now. This was his fate, for good or ill.
‘You shouldn’t,’ she said, and her hand moved up, moved down, weakening his spine. ‘Why resist it? It’s what you want. Fear is not a virtue, darling, and it’s fear that holds you back. That’s not strength. That’s not muscular Christianity. That’s craven cowardice.’
The pep talk, coupled as it was with a slow jerking back and forth of his foreskin, didn’t really sink in. But he was absorbing the gist, letting it settle into his consciousness together with the divine sensation of being touched intimately by a woman, so that the two would always be inevitably linked.
She made me do it. Already his bargain with his maker was being stored up for rehearsal. She has a serpent’s tongue.
He wondered, in his delirium, if she really did have a serpent’s tongue, and if so, how that would feel, licking and flicking around the sensitive underside of his glans.
But Julia did not need to perform any manoeuvre more extravagant than her perfectly judged handjob to take Adam to that higher plane of pleasure. He was already too close, caught in the grip of her elegant fingers and her seductive whisperings. Behind his eyes, bright colours burned while every muscle tensed, every string pulled tight.
‘Julia,’ he panted. ‘Julia, I …’ The words tailed into a low, suffering sigh. His abdomen and Julia’s fingers were smeared with ejaculate, rapidly cooling where it lay.
He could no longer feel his bones and his thoughts drifted into a place of repose, of sleep, of forgetting. He didn’t even last long enough in his post-orgasmic wakefulness to look into Julia’s face.
When he came to, she was lying naked in the bed beside him.
‘Oh God!’ he cried, once an initial sensual, sleepy warmth had given way to hard reality. ‘What have I done? What’s happened to me? Julia, why are you …?’
‘Oh sweetheart, please calm down. You’ve done nothing. You’ve rather been done to, though. Don’t you remember?’
‘Yes, yes. So that was – all?’
‘Wasn’t it enough? I was hoping you might have rallied a little, after your nap.’
She bent her head to kiss him, but he struggled and pushed her off.
‘Julia, this is, this is – oh God – wholly inappropriate.’
‘Holy? There was nothing holy about it.’
‘Not holy! Oh just, just, just … What’s the time?’
Julia yawned. ‘About four-ish.’
‘We have to leave in an hour. Get up, get dressed. Oh God.’
‘Oh, must we?’ she purred with a wicked smile that made Adam feel suddenly much less resolved. ‘It’s so long since I shared a bed with an attractive man. Now I’ve got one next to me, I think it would break my heart to let him go.’
Adam bent his legs and hid his face in his knees.
She was sent to test me. I failed.
He rose heavily, still in his black shirt, which had ridden up to his nipples, his trousers rumpled around his ankles. His black boots had never been removed, and his stomach was tight with flaking dried semen.
He was thirsty and there was a vile taste at the back of his throat.
As soon as he registered it, he thought of Evie, and the huge surge of longing and guilt and tenderness and exasperation and loving hatred almost knocked him back on to the bed.
‘Adam, don’t be like this.’ Julia sat up, ran fingers through her hair.
‘Like what? We have to go. The driver’ll be waiting for us.’
And so will Evie.
He pulled up his trousers and buckled his belt. He left the room without a backward look.
In the car park, the villagers milled, many the worse for an afternoon spent in the seafront pubs.
‘’Ere ’e is – the reverend ’imself.’
Laughter of a not particularly charitable nature greeted Adam as he hurried across the car park, still beset by an urge to vomit. No sign of Evie.
‘You look rough, Rev. Too much communion wine?’
Adam shook his head and tried to smile, but the nausea was stronger than ever.
It was another five minutes before Julia appeared, looking as immaculate as ever.
She hoisted herself on to the bottom step of the bus with a feline smile and a flash of leg and left Adam to his clipboard.
What if she said something? What if she spread it round the village that they had …?
But the return of Evie broke into his worries. Back in her halter dress, she tripped through the cinder car park as merrily as if she had just returned from a picnic in a fragrant meadow rather than a pole-dance competition in a tawdry dive bar.
Drawing close to Adam, though, her placid expression soured.
‘Where’s your girlfriend?’ she hissed.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Yeah, you do. Your fancy piece. Nice bit of aristo fanny you’ve landed there, vicar. Congrats.’
‘Evie, there’s nothing –’
‘Oh, don’t bother about me. I know when I’ve been outclassed.’
She flounced on to the bus, with that same flash of knicker-free bottom she’d given him on the outward voyage.
He had to throw up into some scraggy weeds on the other side of a low brick wall before they set off again.
Chapter Eleven
THREE TIMES AROUND the old well Evie skipped, then three times in the other direction, then the final three revolutions before she sank to her knees and spoke the words of the spell.
‘I feel your strength tonight.’ The spirit spoke, after their long embrace of greeting. ‘How many did you take?’
She shrugged. ‘A few. Won a pole-dancing contest. Got lots of offers from that.’
‘What is this pole-dancing whereo
f you speak?’
‘Don’t matter. Thing is, love, we’ve got a problem.’
‘Evangeline.’ He seized her hands and she felt the flame that still burned in him, despite his phantasmagoric appearance, warming her to her core. ‘What is amiss?’
‘Her ladyship. She’s taken it upon herself to save him from me.’
‘The woman Shields?’
‘That’s the one.’
The spirit seated himself on the well wall and gazed abstractedly at the stars.
‘She has ever been a thorn in our flesh, has she not? Her ancestor it was laid open the manor for the witchfinders’ use. What is her purpose?’
‘She says she doesn’t think he deserves what’s coming to him. She knows what we mean to do – of course she does. Over the centuries, there ain’t been a Shields that’s bothered their heads about our business. They’ve let us get on with it. Too many troubles of their own. But she … I dunno. I think she’s fond of him.’
‘He is loved?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. She just fancies him, I reckon. But if it goes any further …’
‘Is it like?’
‘Well, you know, I think I’ve got him well enough hooked in. At least, I hope I have.’
‘Hope isn’t enough, Evangeline. Hope will not bring me back to glory. There are still three months until the harvesting. You must keep his blood up and his thirst high for you. There is no other course.’
‘I know it. God, John, it’s hard, though.’
He drew her on to his lap and cradled her head in his shoulder. His snowy ruff tickled her cheek in that comfortingly familiar way and she felt herself reassured.
‘There’s no other girl in the whole of England could win him,’ whispered John. ‘No other girl in the whole of England can make a man’s heart pound louder and his cock stand prouder than my Evangeline. You are my sweet and wicked little miracle.’
His hand pulled up her skirt in bunches, drawing the fabric slowly over her sun-kissed thighs. She stretched out her legs, assisting him, and laid back in his arms until her neck tipped and coils of her hair trailed in the tufty grass. He kept an arm braced beneath her spine, holding her firm while she began to raise one leg.
‘This has done fine work for me,’ said John, patting the spreading slit between her legs that was exposed by her actions. ‘This saves me a little more each time it is filled. Fill it again, Evangeline, fill it endlessly. Let your greedy cunt be my salvation.’
His fingertips nestled in the wet channel, strumming Evie’s clit while she let her leg point up to the stars.
Now, here, with his hand upon her, she felt a different order of pleasure than she did in her everyday dealings with village lads and passing fancies. Those were playthings, to be used, to be enjoyed and discarded once the orgasm had been gained. This was a deeper connection, a rooted thing, the fruit of ancient seeds.
She and John had history spanning three and a half centuries – she continued her line and, she hoped, she would end it. The time was approaching when all the efforts of her ancestresses would be realised. John would return and they could enjoy the togetherness they were never granted in life. Oh, she longed for it.
Her clit vibrated with her lover’s touch. She felt the strength of it, making her cunt quiver with need for his cock. She shoved the triangles of fabric that covered her breasts roughly aside, exposing her hard nipples to the evening air. With her own skilled fingers, she twisted and tweaked them, working in concert with John to bring her body into a state of possession. Possessed by pleasure, desire, and love, she whipped this way and that in her lover’s arms until her orgasm had its way with her.
And then it was John’s turn. Tipping her from his lap, he pushed her on to her knees and had her leaning over the old well wall with her skirts about her waist.
‘Who’s had you here today?’ he enquired gruffly, piercing her cunt with three long fingers.
‘Three village lads and the man who owned the pub where I won the contest.’
‘Is that how you won?’
‘No, it was fair and square! But I gave it him afterwards, in the tap room.’
‘I see. And here? Who’s had you here?’
One finger nudged at her anus. She shivered and tensed it, even as a slow smile spread across her face.
‘None today, lover.’
‘None yet. Spread wide your cheeks, my wench.’
Evie obeyed, her fingers pressing into the soft, firm flesh as they pulled apart her buttocks. She felt the drift of air along the crack, then John dipped his cock into the plentiful gush of her pussy juices and rubbed it, thoroughly and with stately pace, until it was completely slick and coated with them.
‘Keep yourself open for me.’
She gripped tighter as John’s blunt cockhead travelled across her perineum and into the lower reaches of her arse. When he settled himself against her anus, she did her very best not to let the muscles contract, despite her natural inclination.
She felt her breasts squashing into the mouldering brick and breathed in the damp, peaty air of the well, but nothing could overpower that singular sensation of John’s cock pushing against her most intimate orifice.
That first nudge forward always earned a whimper from her as she worked hard to keep herself spread and accessible. She trembled through the first few inches, the familiar burn, the panic-inducing sense of over-fullness, the fear that she might split or tear, and then that moment was over and John was snaking up inside her, filling her bottom in the rudest, crudest possible way.
‘This makes you mine,’ he rasped in her ear. ‘This is how I have you. I know you let the other boys do it to you, but in my mind, this makes you mine.’
‘You’re the only one who makes me feel it this way,’ she said. ‘You’re the only one who puts his stamp on me.’
‘I’m all the way inside you now. I’m going to fuck this sweet, tight arse for all I’m worth. Hold it wide and say a prayer.’
Evie didn’t feel the chafing of the brick against her skin, nor the strain of her thigh muscles, nor the pitiless jolting of her stomach against the edge of the well. All she felt was her arse being well and truly buggered, hard and fast, by the man who owned her soul. She knew he took a kind of revenge this way, a kind of assuaging of his masculine pride for the uses he put her to, but she knew it was only because he loved her that he did it, only because he found it all so unbearable.
But soon it would all be over. Soon they could be together.
She sobbed out an orgasm of immense proportions, then clenched him tight within her, milking him of his seed.
He rolled her over and over in the dusty grass, kissing her until her lips were sore and almost numb.
‘I have to go, my love,’ he whispered, and she saw his strength fading, his image losing its distinctness. ‘Keep him close. Keep him in your sights. Love me.’
‘Always.’
Adam was surprised to see Evie the following evening. In his miserable confusion over Julia’s behaviour on the outing, he had quite forgotten that it was Evie’s Bible study night.
‘Oh … Evie,’ he said, standing at the door, watching her stomp in, curls flying. ‘Yes, you’re quite right.’
‘Forgotten me already?’ she said, hand on hip at the study door. ‘It’s all Julia, Julia, Julia now, I s’pose? My charms don’t stand up to hers.’
‘What’s she said to you?’ Adam felt the blood drain from his face. All day he had been wrestling with the horrible dread that Julia might spread the tale of their little seaside interlude all over Saxonhurst and beyond.
‘Nothing. She don’t need to. You and her was thick as thieves yesterday. Where’d she take you, after you did your spectacular puke at the pole-dance contest?’
‘Nowhere, nowhere. Just – some public lavatories. To clean myself up. Then for a cup of tea. Nothing special.’
Thou shalt not bear false witness.
‘She’s got an eye for you.’
Ada
m opened the study door and ushered Evie in.
‘Oh, nonsense, Evie.’
‘She has. What she said …’ Evie trailed off.
‘What did she mean by that? About knowing your game, and how I didn’t deserve it? It didn’t make much sense to me.’
‘Just raving. She’s like that. You know her.’
Adam contemplated Evie’s shifty eyes and guessed she was equivocating. He pulled out a chair for her and motioned her to sit.
Standing over her, he asked, ‘So, what is your game, Evie?’
For the first time since arriving in Saxonhurst, he felt at an advantage over this tormenting minx. Something about the – thing – with Julia had lent him a certain confidence that had been lacking before. He wasn’t sure why, but he intended to make the most of it.
She looked up at him coquettishly.
‘Game? I don’t play games. I’m a straightforward kind of a girl. What you see …’ She stretched out her long, bronzed legs from under the denim miniskirt she wore and crossed them at the ankles. ‘Is what you get.’
‘What I see is what I get?’ Adam swallowed, staring down at her. ‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Positive. Keep looking, vicar.’ Her voice was soft and she bit on a finger. ‘That’s what you get.’
Nobody breathed for a good half a minute, then Adam inhaled hugely.
‘The Sermon on the Plain,’ he said, plucking a Bible from the shelf.
‘Not the Mount? That a different one, is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Pity. I like a nice mount.’
‘A plain is just as good.’
They were deep into the teachings of Christ when Adam’s phone rang – an unexpected event in itself, causing him to wonder aloud who on earth would be calling him.
The voice on the other end was brisk.
‘Adam. We need to talk.’
‘Ah, yes.’ He looked furtively at Evie, wondering if she could hear Julia’s voice from her corner of the room. ‘I’m with a parishioner at the minute. Perhaps I could call you back.’
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