‘Yes,’ he said.
‘But not physically?’
‘Not yet.’
‘You’re scaring me.’
‘That’s the point.’
I paused, leaning against the cream wall at the side of a townhouse, trying to catch my breath. ‘Which makes it less scary.’ One up to Natalie.
He laughed crisply. ‘Then I’ll have to try harder.’
‘Trust me. You’re doing fine.’
‘So …’ he said, adding no further words.
‘So,’ I replied. Across the street, a lank-haired man in an oversized suit walked by, occasionally lurching in a drunken sidestep. I was in ruined, period-drama territory, tatty townhouses forming orderly rows and gentle crescents, the pavements lined with tall railings like regimented black spears. Sepia net curtains hung in the windows, despondent ‘Vacancies’ signs repeating along the streets as regularly as the lanterns and peeling stucco columns. I watched the drunk man fumble at an enormous door then stagger into a dim hallway of nicotine-stained light.
‘So,’ I resumed. ‘You broke into my house.’
‘I need you to know I’m a serious player.’
‘Oh, I’ve got that message,’ I said. ‘Loud and clear.’
‘Who were you fucking that night? It sounded sweet.’
I began to walk on, too much adrenaline to keep still. ‘None of your business. You’ve intruded enough already.’
‘I’ve barely started.’
I tried to conceal my choppy breath. I wondered if he could hear my footsteps on the flagstones. ‘If you push it too far –’
‘I won’t,’ he said.
‘You might,’ I replied. ‘You don’t know what’s too far for me.’
‘True. But I’m a good judge, I pay attention. And if I push it too far, I think you’ll let me. I think you’ll like it.’
I said nothing, afraid it might be true.
‘I know you better than you realise,’ he went on. ‘I’ve seen you running on the seafront in the evenings. You’re determined, disciplined, focused. But even when you run, you look as if you want to escape that drive and order.’
‘Why do you watch me?’ I asked. ‘Where do you live? Don’t you have better things to do with your time?’
‘I’m not stalking you, don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I just want to get a good sense of who you are, of what makes you tick. I take my responsibilities as a dominant very seriously. If we’re going to take this further, I need to see you when you’re off guard. Easy for anyone to present a version of themself to someone online. That’s not enough for me, not if we’re going to play dangerous games together.’
‘Is that what we’re going to do?’
‘I think we’re doing it already.’
‘I’m not sure what you mean by dangerous.’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘If you knew, you could opt in or out, and that would remove the feeling of danger. You have to trust me.’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because you want to.’
I gave a hollow laugh as if to imply his answer was inadequate. But at the same time, I recognised he spoke the truth. I wanted to risk trusting him because I believed he could help satisfy my hunger to submit in a situation charged with danger. He knew, as did I, the allure of danger lay in its promise to make me experience submission as being brutally imposed upon me, a prospect infinitely more thrilling than yielding to him willingly like a doe-eyed puppy.
‘I’ve met other women like you,’ he continued. ‘Women who delight in being used, treated like a slut. Worthless. Insignificant. Just a cunt for me to shove my cock in. Women who need a man to take them over so they’re free to be who they really are.’
‘I can’t have this conversation right now,’ I said. ‘I’m walking home. It’s not convenient.’
‘No need to be ashamed.’
‘I’m not. But I can’t respond properly. Someone might hear.’
‘Then stop and listen to me.’
I kept up my brisk pace, still not knowing what to do. Pursue this? Or play safe? ‘Pursue,’ said my lust. ‘Play safe,’ said my head.
‘I don’t know you from Adam,’ I said.
‘Not true. We’ve shared a lot, been incredibly intimate and open with each other.’
‘I don’t know what you look like, where you live, who you are.’
‘Do you want to know who I am?’
‘Course I do,’ I said, my casual tone belying my eagerness to meet him and discover more. ‘I wouldn’t tolerate your intrusions otherwise.’
‘So trust me.’
I passed the gated entrance to Saltbourne Community Crafts where Liam has his workshop. A security light clicked on, flooding the cobbled courtyard with brightness. Liam would be horrified by my recklessness. With distance, I’d probably be horrified too but I was buzzing with fear and excitement, aching to hand myself over to this confident, challenging stranger who promised so much.
‘And if I do decide to trust you,’ I said, ‘and give you a chance to prove yourself, then what?’
‘Then I’ll take this up a notch. I intend to kidnap you and hold you prisoner. My prisoner.’
‘Whoa, steady on!’
He didn’t reply. I walked faster as if trying to escape him but carrying him by my ear all the time. The silence continued for so long I feared he might hang up and leave his threat lingering. I assumed he wanted me to say yes or no. But I didn’t know what I wanted to say so I kept quiet.
Sure, I’d shared an abduction fantasy with him but it didn’t follow I wanted him to act on it as literally as he’d just implied. He must mean a scene, something we’d roleplay when we finally hooked up.
Eventually, I stopped hurrying, although my heart and mind kept up their wild, crazy paces. In the quietness, my footsteps were loud and lonely. I turned a corner and walked up a steep street of terraced stone cottages, slivers of light peeping through curtains. The small front gardens were tired, hollyhocks on the brink of toppling, their faded flowers of late summer rendered colourless by the night. The row was narrow with cars half-parked where people walk. There was no traffic at this hour. With an instinct for personal safety, I took to the middle of the road.
‘You still there?’ he asked. ‘Or have I scared you off?’
‘I’m still here.’
‘You don’t scare easily, do you?’
‘Depends,’ I said. ‘I’m just trying to be realistic here. You’re toying with me, I can see that. I don’t think I’m in genuine danger.’
‘But you can’t ever be sure,’ he said. ‘Does that scare you?’
‘I’m pleasantly scared,’ I said. ‘I guess I’m starting to trust you. I might regret this.’
‘You won’t,’ he said. ‘I’ll make sure you don’t.’
Above the rooftops in the distance, the castle ruins on the cliff-top were a hunched black tumble against a charcoal sky.
‘It would be good to talk about this kidnap thing some more,’ I said.
‘Yeah?’ He sounded breezy and sarcastic. ‘You want to talk now?’
My heartbeat faltered. I turned, scanning the quiet street, unnerved by the threatening edge in his voice. The curtains were open in one of the cottages and on an enormous, wall-mounted TV screen images played of a bomb-ravaged dirt road in the Middle East.
‘Where are you?’ I said. ‘Are you nearby? Are you watching me?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Hey, this isn’t fair.’ I began striding quickly, my senses sharpening. ‘I’m a woman walking home at night. Don’t fuck with that. I need to know what’s real danger and what’s play.’
‘Calm down,’ he said. ‘I’m miles away. You’re safe from me.’
I slowed. ‘OK, good, thanks.’
‘For the meantime, at any rate,’ he added.
‘Ha ha,’ I said dryly, trying to show I wasn’t afraid.
‘So this kidnap thing,’ he said, echoing my choice of words and making them seem trite
. ‘You up for it?’
I swallowed, my throat dry as a bone. ‘Maybe.’ I sounded cheerful and unfazed, not at all how I felt. ‘I need to know more though. Maybe we should meet for coffee and discuss.’
He laughed loudly. ‘Coffee? I don’t think so.’
‘Why not?’
‘Too easy, too pat. I want to give you the best experience I can and take you close to the reality of what you crave. No good if we’ve chatted nicely over a latte beforehand. The thrill is on the edge where fear and lust don’t know which way to fall. Don’t you agree?’
Jeez, he understood what I wanted so well.
‘What’s the plan, then?’ I asked. ‘How do we do this?’
‘You want to hear what I have in mind?’
I was almost home but I didn’t want his voice inside my house, didn’t want him that close again. A short flight of stone steps cut into a low wall led to a tarmac path edged with straggly grass and a rusting, municipal handrail. Up there, an expanse of cloud-veiled darkness lay over a shabby football pitch, a hut selling tea and ices, and one of the designated routes to the ruined, cliff-top castle. I hunkered down in the steps, hidden and safe, protected by slumbering stone and by the silence of the centuries.
My voice was a whisper. ‘Yes, tell me.’
‘I intend to kidnap you and hold you prisoner,’ he repeated. ‘I’m going to snatch you when you least expect it and take you far away from your life. I’m going to take you over completely. I’m going to lead you down dark paths where you’ll meet someone you don’t know: yourself. This isn’t about handcuffs or pain or roleplay. Those are just props I use to reduce you to a deep state of submission. And when you’re there, you’ll let me do anything I want. You’re so gone you can barely even speak. You’re not my prisoner at all. If I told you to walk away, you’d beg me to keep you safe. Not safe in my arms but safe in my sadism. That’s where you want to be. That’s where I want to keep you.’
I gulped nervously. He seemed to know what he was doing. His confidence alone excited me, not to mention the content of his words. For a moment, I forgot my strategy of honesty and self-assertion. I wanted him to take over entirely and give me no say in the matter. Then I remembered it was important to let him know we were matched in our desires, and that I agreed to this. ‘I think I’d like that,’ I said, speaking softly in my stone-step nook.
I strained to catch the sound of him breathing. Was he aroused on the other end of the line? Was he jerking off?
After a pause he said, ‘Listen. And listen carefully because you need to understand this, Natalie. I don’t give a single fuck what you like.’
With that, he ended the call.
Five
For days, his parting shot echoed through my mind. I told myself he did care, of course he did. He was merely roleplaying the bad guy, assuming I’d find it horny. And oh boy, did I ever. I loved the idea he’d be rough and cruel, that he’d make out my desires were of no significance and he’d fuck me this way and that, using me to satisfy his own unrestrained hunger.
Den was a far cry from nice-guy Grant who would instruct me to lie back and enjoy. And that’s what I was searching for, wasn’t it? A dark, twisted dominant man who’d be part of my journey towards my Northern Lights. Those lights, my shimmering destination, didn’t reside with an individual. They were the glow of me understanding and accepting my weird, kinky self. Den was a train ride on that journey. So at last, it appeared my luck was in.
Nonetheless, I longed for concrete details. I figured Den was withholding practicalities to add realism to our kidnap scenario. I simply had to do what I’d said and trust him. Or more accurately, take a chance on him.
Mostly I was prepared to take that risk. Just sometimes, alone at night when the house was taunting me with its creaky, old bones, I feared he might break in, carry me off to an unknown place and I’d never be heard from again. In the clear light of day I dismissed the notion. I had a job to go to, a cat to feed, friends who would notice my absence.
One evening, watching a band play in a local beer garden as part of a mini festival, I grew convinced he was in the audience. Moths flickered in the halogen glow of floodlights while chatter burbled below the music. The air, warm and still, smelled of cigarettes, beer and a pungent, heady perfume, night-scented stocks or honeysuckle. From a tangle of foliage, a small, ornamental lion smiled up at me. In my veins, the Rioja to blood ratio was high.
I loved life. There and then, it was held and perfect. Everything around me glowed with a quality apparently greater than itself, as if the essence of the thing had leaked beyond its edges. Then I noticed a guy at the back of the beer garden, standing with a pint in his hand. Tall, built, shorn head. My heart flared even as I told myself that plenty of tall, muscular guys shaved their heads.
But the idea took hold and in the evening’s wine-smudged enchantment, the thought of him watching me became conceivable and exciting. I kept glancing over my shoulder to try and catch him looking my way. To my disappointment, his focus stayed on the band.
When the song ended, applause clattered. I leaned across to Marsha, speaking loudly above the noise. ‘Hey Marsh, I’ve got a new man on the go!’
I wasn’t even sure why or what I was telling her. I’d no intention of fessing up to anyone about the kidnap fantasy, especially not Marsha, eight years married and safe as houses. She’d think I was nuts and probably come up with a hundred and one reasons why I needed to stop.
‘Yeah?’ Marsha moved her glass to rest her arms on the table. Red-wine stains bracketed the corners of her mouth and her tongue was purple. ‘Where d’ya find him? The internet again?’
I laughed. ‘Where else? He’s called Den, thirty-six years old.’
‘Go on.’
I realised I didn’t have much else to tell. ‘I haven’t actually met him yet but we’re getting on great in email.’
Marsha grinned. ‘Well, good luck with that, babes. Keep me posted, eh?’ Then she sat back as the next song started, a haunting ambient warble bleeding into the night.
We’re getting on great in email. I had to admit, it sounded lame.
Moments later, when I glanced over my shoulder, the man had vanished. I felt as if I’d conjured him up by enthusiasm alone and he’d dematerialised as a consequence of Marsha’s disinterest.
I said nothing else to anyone for a couple more days. Heard nothing either. That was the worst of it. I kept wondering whether to text him. ‘Hi, I enjoyed our chat the other night.’ Or ‘So when do I get kidnapped?’ Or maybe something porny. ‘I want to suck your big, hard cock like a dirty little slut.’
But I didn’t text. Sometimes I checked my phone history to look at the time of his initial text (23.53) and my return call (00.02). I wasn’t looking for anything, just proof of a connection.
The following week, I went to see Liam. I’ll tell him everything, I thought. Well, nearly everything. Since Liam and I had started seeing each other a few months previously, we’d always let each other know if someone else was on the scene, even if they were just a potential date. Our understanding was another relationship wouldn’t necessarily affect what we had, unless a new lover wanted monogamy, but being open about these things was polite and decent. Besides, honesty kept complications at bay.
It was a Tuesday, and I’d worked till half six, finishing off an urgent report whose formatting had acquired a life of its own at the last minute. Everything is urgent in my job and yet nothing is. I work for Saltbourne Council’s parking department. We’re not performing open-heart surgery and yet my line manager acts as if we are. She’s a woman who causes everyone’s stress levels to rise merely by entering a room, half-running in a stiff-legged kind of way, hobbled by her pencil skirt.
When I left the office, I fancied a drink and some non-parking related conversation so I texted Liam to see if he was around. He was still at the workshop. ‘Drop in,’ he replied. ‘Am carving something I think you will like.’
I bought four bottles
of fancy cider, Liam’s tipple of choice. He suits cider. His hair is russet like autumn apples, his skin creamy like their flesh, and he spends a lot of time hanging out with trees. Saltbourne Community Crafts, the location of Liam’s workshop, is a council-supported, cooperative venture housed in former stables in the shabby Georgian part of Old Town. Centuries ago, when storms sent the fashionable set hurrying back to London, mud on their breeches, seaweed in their ringlets, the townhouses were left to rot.
Today, they’re B&Bs and cheap hotels. Several are derelict, their windows boarded up, puny buddleia sprouting from their cracks. When I’d spoken to Den while leaning against one of these buildings, I hadn’t thought it might be unwise to linger in a slightly dodgy part of town. Ah well, I’d survived, hadn’t I?
Community Crafts is one of the areas small successes. The workshops edge the old stableyard and when the weather’s good, some of the artisans set up stalls on the cobbles or open their doors, inviting the public to watch them work.
The place was quiet when I arrived, just a couple of guys across the yard from Liam’s place smoking by a cluster of reconditioned furniture. At the security gate, Liam greeted me with a kiss, his copper curls flecked with sawdust, scruffy T-shirt hanging from broad, angular shoulders. He smelled of wood and sweat. I wanted to eat him. In the workshop, he opened two ciders. My groin gave a quick thump at the sight of his enormous, long hands, his thumb on his Swiss army knife, his wrist angling in a flick on the bottle tops.
He passed me a bottle and our fingers brushed together. He has such beautiful hands, big, knuckly, vigorous and clever. Even when they’re at rest, those hands seem full of life, as if every action they ever performed simmers below the surface and every future action is on the brink of being realised. They are hands that can carve wood, slice leather, fashion rope from nettles, build fires in forests, break the necks of small mammals, roll joints, construct shelters and make me come and gush, time and again.
‘Cheers!’ We clinked bottles and I sank into a low chair of chrome and torn leather, feet on the cluttered worktop. A fluorescent strip light hummed faintly above us, its cold glare outshining mellow sunshine filtering in through high, dusty windows at the rear of the room. Scraps of leather, chunks of wood, sawdust and twists of metal littered the cobbled floor while all around us, tools poked from pots or dangled from racks like small, medieval torture implements. Liam stood, arse perched on the worktop’s edge, and circled my bare ankle with his fingers, rubbing while I moaned about my boss.
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