‘And here was me thinking you wanted to go on top tonight.’ Ryan chuckled, the lines around his green eyes deepening. Melinda was struck, as she always was, by how handsome her husband was. How loving, how kind-hearted, how willing to follow her into a crazy scheme like making love on the most prominent landmark for miles. Perfect in every respect apart from his inability to provide her with a baby. Then she shook the thought away, aware the fault could just as easily lie with her.
To her surprise, the wine was palatable – not as sweet as she might have expected, but deceptively potent. Ryan had stripped off his T-shirt, revealing the muscular contours of his chest, skin tanned to the lightest of nut-brown shades by his long hours labouring on building sites. Melinda reached out, seeking to trace her fingers over his hairless pecs and flat belly, down into the waistband of his shorts, but suddenly it all seemed like too much of an effort. Yawning, Ryan settled back on the blanket, as though preparing for her to undress him, but his eyelids were fluttering shut, and as Melinda unzipped his fly, reaching in to grab his fat, semi-hard cock, he gave a gentle snore.
She’d have laughed at the way her brilliant plan had unravelled so spectacularly if she hadn’t been just as tired. Next time, forget the wine, she chided herself, fighting against the urge to close her own eyes. But cuddling up against Ryan and falling asleep, cradled in the warmth of the September night, would be so tempting …
The sight of a figure striding up the hill towards them startled her back to wakefulness. Shaking Ryan’s shoulder, she attempted to rouse him so he could cover himself. She had no idea of the interloper’s identity, but the last thing she wanted was for anyone to discover her husband lying here, half-naked and vulnerable. Her efforts were in vain. Ryan was dead to the world, and the stranger was coming ever closer.
She wasn’t sure who she’d been expecting out here at this time of night, maybe a poacher or a curious policeman, but the man who came to stand in front of her was neither of these. Melinda had never seen anyone quite like him. Well over six feet tall, broad-shouldered, long-limbed, with the hard, defined muscles of a heavyweight boxer. Shaggy, shoulder-length dark hair fell untidily into brown eyes that had an almost feral glitter, and his chin bore a thick growth of beard. If that wasn’t enough to make a lasting impression on her, his outlandish appearance was crowned by the fact he was stark naked and carried a flint-tipped spear. His feet were bare and his skin a deep, even mahogany, grimed with dust and sweat. The scent of him was sharp, utterly masculine, strangely intoxicating.
‘Who – who are you?’ Melinda forced the words through dry lips.
He said nothing in reply, simply stared at her. Following her gaze, Melinda became aware that as she’d scrambled to a sitting position, her sun dress had rucked up round her hips. The stranger had a perfect view of her bare, wet sex.
She knew she should have made the effort to close her legs, but she wanted him to look, to see the parts of her normally reserved only for the enjoyment of the man she’d married. Instinctively, she knew this silent stranger meant her no harm. The exact opposite, in fact. Suddenly, it all became clear. It might only be a superstitious legend, but tonight at least, the Lowdale Man walked, answering the call of the woman who had come to him in her desperate need to be made pregnant.
He dropped the spear to the grass and crouched over her. Melinda glanced to her side, where Ryan slumbered in blissful ignorance of this bizarre turn of events, but her husband’s outline seemed fuzzy, indistinct, as though she was looking at him from a long way away. The lights of Lowdale village, down below her, had disappeared entirely. She shook her head, but her vision didn’t clear. It was almost as though she was floating somewhere outside of time, where the rules of the everyday world no longer applied.
The stranger grinned, wrapping his fist round his erect cock. It reared up from a wild mass of dark curls, longer and thicker than anything Melinda had ever seen, even on the porno DVDs Ryan sometimes borrowed from the lads he worked with. She wasn’t at all sure she’d be able to take something of those almost supernatural dimensions, but she was more than willing to try. Every filthy fantasy she’d ever had about being fucked by a well-hung stranger while her husband watched flashed to the front of her mind. Except it seemed poor old Ryan was destined to sleep through the whole performance.
Dropping a finger between her still-splayed thighs, Melinda touched her clit. The merest contact sent pleasure fizzing throughout her body, sparking the need for more. Looking up at the stranger, she frigged herself with wanton abandon, letting him see how horny she was, how ready to be fucked.
Her show had the desired effect. He pushed her back onto the blanket, straddling her with his thickly muscled thighs. Grasping the neckline of her dress, he ripped the material as easily as if it were tissue, baring her to his gaze. Melinda had never felt so deliciously submissive. Her other-worldly lover could do whatever he wished to her, just as long as he filled her with that freakishly big dick of his.
A thick, gnarled finger slipped into her pussy, followed in quick succession by two more. They pushed her ribbed, velvet walls apart, thrusting in and out as they prepared her for what was to come. She wished Ryan was awake and alert, able to witness her ecstatic expression as the stranger finger-fucked her while she fondled her own nipples. The little buds were hard as flint chips, begging to be licked, and as the man’s thumb nudged against the puckered entrance to her arse, Melinda raised her breast to her mouth and did just that. She’d never attempted anything quite so rude before, but tonight a wild excitement coursed through her veins, removing any inhibitions she might have had.
Judging her to be open enough to receive him, her lover flipped Melinda over onto all fours, pulling the tattered remnants of her dress from her body. This was the position the beasts used when they rutted, the most appropriate for their coupling. The Lowdale Man knew nothing of soft, sweet lovemaking, the kind where you gazed into each other’s eyes and whispered endearments as you stroked and teased each other; this was something primal, lust at its most basic and immediate. The coming together of hard cock and hot, wet cunt; the only outcome fast, explosive orgasm.
He pressed up against her rump, cockhead nudging at her hole, demanding admittance. Melinda moaned, pushing back at him, needing to have that huge, virile thing inside her. For a moment, it didn’t seem as though the bulbous crown could possibly fit in her tight channel, then he gave a forceful shove and she felt him enter her. ‘Fuck, it’s too big,’ she heard herself groan, but he kept pushing and somehow her cunt kept finding room for him. She was as crammed with cock as she had ever been in her life; if it had been Ryan’s dick, she’d have been able to feel his body tight up against her, his balls slapping against her as they fucked, but this man hadn’t even managed to get two-thirds of his length inside her.
The slightest thrust from him sent fierce erotic sensations rippling through every part of her. She swore she could feel it in her scalp, her fingertips, the end of her nose. Running an experimental finger over her clit, she almost screamed aloud. She was so widely stretched, the fleshy button stood out like a beacon. If only she could have had Ryan’s face beneath her crotch, licking and lapping at her sex as the stranger thrust into her from behind. Instead, her own caress would have to do the trick.
As her lover began to shaft her, hands gripping her hips, pulling her hard onto his rigid length, Melinda swore she could hear a drum beat, low and constant. In other circumstances, she might have believed it to be coming from a distant car stereo, or the jukebox in the White Hart, but she knew different. The drums were beating out a rhythm older than the village, the soundtrack to an ancient rite, long ago forgotten. It urged the hips of any man who heard it to move, faster and faster, ploughing in and out of his woman, taking her, claiming her as his. No one could resist it, Melinda was convinced of that; to hear it was to be compelled to fuck.
Sweat oozed from her pores, her blonde hair clinging in damp strings to the nape of her neck. Her tits jiggled and boun
ced in time with his savage thrusts. Juice poured from her, trickling in sticky snail-trails down the insides of her thighs. The stranger’s pounding of her cunt was growing more insistent, making it harder for her to keep her fingers steady on her clit. He gripped her arse so tightly, she was sure his fingers would leave bruises. On and on he went, his powers of endurance almost beyond belief. She’d never had sex like it, never been taken to the very limits of her strength. She was light-headed, delirious, but she couldn’t get enough of him.
With a primeval roar, the man stiffened and came. Melinda could feel every squirt as he unloaded the contents of his balls at the entrance to her womb. ‘Oh, Lowdale Man, do it. Fill me with your spunk,’ she screamed, in the second before her own climax ripped through her and the world turned black.
When Melinda came to, it took several moments for her to work out where she was. Glancing over, she saw Ryan, still sleeping peacefully. The two of them were alone; not a trace of a naked, spear-carrying stranger. She’d obviously had the strangest dream, brought on by the dandelion wine, a dream where she was stripped and fucked by the pre-historic guardian of the hillside. The Lowdale Man was just a legend, she told herself firmly, nothing more. But that didn’t explain the pleasurable soreness between her thighs, nor the torn sun dress lying in the dewy grass.
At last, Ryan stirred, pulling himself slowly into a sitting position. ‘Hey, Melinda, are you OK?’
‘Yeah.’ As she smiled at him, she knew she was giving off a freshly fucked glow, impossible to disguise.
‘It’s funny. I know we must have just had sex, but I don’t remember a thing about it.’ Ryan stuffed his limp cock back into his shorts, then hunted around till he found his T-shirt.
‘Oh, it was amazing. Look at what happened to my dress.’ Melinda gestured to the ruined garment. ‘It was like I was being fucked by a wild man.’
‘Glad to be of service.’ Ryan dropped a gentle kiss on the top of her head, before helping to wrap the blanket around her, covering her up for their walk home.
Halfway down the hill, Melinda glanced back over her shoulder, pausing just long enough to offer a silent thank you to the chalk figure. The rite had worked; she knew with a conviction she couldn’t explain that her period would be late this month. Putting her hand in Ryan’s, she was already looking forward to the moment when she could tell him they were going to have a baby.
Gabriel
by Athena Marie
I am lost in pounding industrial rhythms and dark lyrics that sing of lust, pain, obsession and salvation. The music is pumping through me and I can feel the beat in counterpoint with my heart. I am dressed in black latex, and though my outfit is stifling and oppressive in the heat of the club, the way it feels against my body, like a second reptilian skin, makes the discomfort worth it.
I rarely come here any more. Only on nights when I consciously step into my alter ego. Only when I need this darkness and this pounding music to dissolve and absolve my pain. For it is only here on this dance floor where I can lose myself. And always I hope that in losing myself I will find myself. Always I hope that some night at this club I will find … something.
As I move, serpent-like on the dance floor, I meet the eyes of a man sitting alone in the corner. He’s been watching me since I arrived and his penetrating gaze is becoming unnerving. Of course I’m used to being watched but there’s something about his attention that is disconcerting. He doesn’t look away when our eyes meet. He doesn’t look at anyone else. It’s as if I am the only person he can see.
He is dressed like everyone here – in black, complete with a trench coat and combat boots laced up to his knees. And yet, he could never blend in with the crowd. In a room full of people with black hair – most dyed simply for the sake of being dark – his shimmering golden curls are out of place. Men in this club often attempt to pull off the “gothic prince” look but I’ve never seen anyone do it quite so well. His very essence exudes power and it makes me nervous. He is too beautiful, too masculine, and sitting silent and alone, still and stoic like a statue in the corner, he sends a clear message that he has no interest in wasting his time with those he considers beneath him. It appears I am the only one that does not fall into that category.
In an attempt to escape his piercing stare I wend my way off the dance floor, order another glass of wine, then head to the small lounge at the back of the club. Relieved to find the room empty, I sit down on one of the many well-worn couches and stretch my legs. A moment later, a large man clad in black leather, wearing thick eyeliner and spikes around his wrists, enters the room. I swear under my breath.
‘Hey, beautiful. I haven’t seen you in ages.’ He plops down on the couch beside me and I scoot away. ‘You partying tonight?’ He opens his sweaty palm to reveal two blue pills inside a small plastic bag.
For a brief moment I consider his offer. I take a deep breath and shake my head. ‘No. Sorry, Mike.’
‘Aw, but it’s Friday night, baby! Let’s have some fun.’
I turn away and feign interest in the amateur macabre art hanging on the walls. ‘I’m having enough fun, thanks.’
‘Doesn’t look like it to me.’ He scoots closer.
‘I should go find my friend.’
I begin to stand but he wraps his moist hand around my arm and pulls me back down. ‘I’ll keep you company, baby. We need to catch up.’
Suddenly a cold breeze flows through the room. I shiver and look around to find the source. What I see makes my breath catch in my lungs. The man with the golden curls is standing in the doorway, his trench coat flared out behind him. He enters the room and the air crackles with electricity. I feel the hairs on my arms stand up. His eyes are severe and they are focused directly on me.
I lean back as he approaches, unsure as to which of these two men is more dangerous. He stops inches in front of me and looks down at me in silence. Immediately, I am taken aback by the striking shade of his eyes. They are emerald green, almost iridescent, and I watch in confusion as they soften, then slowly travel over every facet of my face. He studies me for what feels like for ever. He studies me as if he has never seen a woman before. Then he reaches out and with long graceful fingers gently touches a lock of my dark hair.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Mike glancing back and forth between us. He clears his throat and abruptly the strange man before me drops the strand of my hair, narrows his eyes, and turns to face him.
‘I’ve been looking for you, Michael.’ He speaks slowly and his voice is deep and resonant.
Mike looks him up and down and raises his eyebrows in contempt. ‘Yeah? Do I know you?’
‘No. But I know you.’
In a sudden blur of movement the man with the golden curls pulls Mike up by his collar and slams him back against the wall. I hear Mike exclaiming profanities but I’m already halfway across the room. I don’t know what the hell is going on but I’m not about to hang around to find out. Just as I reach the door, it slams shut. Frantically, I twist at the handle but it doesn’t turn. Shrinking against the door, I turn around to see the man holding Mike up against the wall by his throat. His face is turning red as he kicks his feet desperately, trying to find the security of the ground.
‘Give them to me.’
Mike tries to shake his head only to have it slammed brutally against the wall. His assailant repeats his demand. Fumbling in his jacket pocket Mike pulls out the baggie of blue pills.
‘Not those ones.’ The golden-haired man’s voice, now frighteningly sinister, echoes through the room.
Mike drops the bag of pills as his bug-eyes begin to protrude further from his purple face. In horror I watch as the hand around his throat continues to tighten. A moment later Mike’s struggling stops and his head droops forward. Plastering myself into the corner, willing myself to become invisible, I watch as his attacker lays his body on a nearby couch. He stands over him, his back to me. The room is silent but for my pounding heart and the muffled bass from the room down the h
all. Finally, he turns to face me with an outstretched hand.
‘Don’t be afraid.’
I repress a sob. I know what happens to people who witness murders. Especially in a place like this.
‘He’s fine. Trust me.’ He reaches into Mike’s pocket and pulls out a pill vial, this one filled with little white tablets.
‘He’s not dead?’ My knees are weak beneath me. I steady myself against a nearby chair.
‘No. But had I not come, Julia, you may not have been so lucky.’
‘What do –? How do you know my name?’
He brushes off his shirt nonchalantly and shrugs. ‘The same way you know mine.’
My eyes narrow as my fear begins to transform into anger. ‘What? I don’t know who you are! Look, if you don’t mind I’d like to get back to my friends now.’ I raise my chin and straighten my spine in an attempt to feel stronger than I am. But he can see right through me. He knows that I came alone. ‘Fuck this. I’m out of here.’ I grab my drink off the table and turn to go, silently praying that I will find the door unlocked.
‘I’m your only friend here, Julia. And I wouldn’t drink that if I were you.’
‘Yeah, why not?’
He holds up the vial of white pills and nods towards my glass. I follow his gaze to the crimson liquid within and remember back to the moment I had turned away from Mike. In stunned silence I dump the wine into the trash. Suddenly I feel fragile. Frayed at the edges. I try not to think of what could have happened to me.
‘I’m sorry I frightened you. He’s hurt a great deal of women, Julia. And you would have been next.’
‘Are you a cop or something?’ But I know it couldn’t possibly be that simple. Cops don’t look like him.
He chuckles and a devastatingly handsome smile spreads on his face. ‘Of sorts.’
I can’t help but smile in return. For in his smile there is such sincerity, such kindness, that my fear and anger begins to dissolve. When he crosses the distance between us he moves as if on air. No, he’s definitely not a cop. He reaches out and brushes the back of his hand tenderly down my cheek. His touch is warm and soft, and he positively vibrates with a potent combination of masculinity and sensuality that makes my skin tingle.
Restored to Love Page 3