“For the two of us, I think.”
This statement made her look up at him somewhat sharply. “Do I look that much like her?” she asked.
He nodded in reply.
“And... do I fuck like her?”
This made him smile. “No, not much.”
“Is it... better?”
“It’s... different. I’m different. I’m sorry. Better to be honest, don’t you think?”
“Of course.” Kris paused. “How is it different?” she asked after a while.
It took him a while to respond. “Before... before I would not have needed to dominate so much, so completely. But, now I do. It doesn’t work, otherwise.”
“What doesn’t work?”
“Sex. Life. Everything. If I can dominate, then death will have no dominion, as they say.”
Kris settled back into the chair. “Jesus,” she breathed under her breath. “You are fucked up. And I thought I was in a bad way. Scratch that. I am in a bad way.” She watched him carefully, intrigued.
“Did you ever... you know? Did you ever have anal sex with her?”
He smiled but did not reply, instead commenting: “I’m sorry. I didn’t realise it was your first time. I wouldn’t have been so rough.”
Kris laughed. “Oh, honey, I’m not as innocent as you think but... really, I need to be in the mood and you... you took me by surprise back there.” She bit her lip, watching him carefully, and at one point scratched her nose, leaving a smudge of black carbon on her skin. “You’re... you’re a very big guy, you know. I’m just not sure I’m ready for that. Not yet.”
He looked back at her now, his eyes shining with a different light now. “So you’ll stay?” he asked.
Kris watched him carefully for a few moments before speaking. “Yes,” she said at last. “I’ll stay. Heck, we’ve only got a few days together before I have to go. But there need to be a couple of rule changes. You... you plug into something inside me, and I’m not talking about that amazing thing you’ve got between your legs. You do something to me, and mostly I like it. Shit, until today I liked everything you did—and I want more, much more. But before you try something new, you need my explicit agreement: none of this safe word bullshit. Do I make myself clear?”
He smiled. “Yes, perfectly.”
“Oh, and come to think of it, I’d prefer to have my phone back. Yes, I know that I can’t pick up a signal here, and I get the thing about the keys—it helps that I know where they are. But with my phone... you can be just a little too controlling at times. It’ll just make me feel better knowing it’s to hand, that’s all.”
“Of course.” Daniel himself looked more relaxed now as he leaned back into his seat. As she stared at him, something occurred to her.
“The other day you let slip that you paid a lot to keep yourself free from distractions. How much of this place do you own?”
He laughed, then shrugged. “Normally I would prefer not to tell but, what the hell. You know the mountain to the west? About ten miles away? You can see it from the bedroom.”
She nodded.
“Well, I own that. Actually, most of the land beyond that to the sea, and from Comrie to the main road.”
Kris was a little shocked but not as much as she would have expected when first she came to Comrie. “Who the hell are you, Daniel Logan?” she asked quietly.
By way of response, he stood up and extended his hand towards her. “Would you like to come to bed and find out?”
With a crooked smile, she shook her head. “Actually,” she told him, “I’d prefer to stay here and draw a while. Don’t worry: it’s nothing personal. It’s just been so long since I’ve felt like doing it... the sensation is kind of pleasant. Also,” here she grimaced slightly. “To tell you the truth, I’m pretty sore down there. I don’t think I’ve shagged like that since I was a teenager, and you can have too much of a good thing, you know.”
To show that this was less a rejection, more a renegotiation, she took hold of the fingers of his hand and placed them to her face, enjoying the warmth of his skin against her cheek. Before he left her, she kissed the tips of his fingers and watched him go, only then turning back to a new sheet of white paper and taking up the dark, charcoal stick in her nimble hand.
Chapter Ten
Once more Kris was outside the croft, raising the long-handled axe and balancing it behind her head before letting it fall onto the piece of wood that she had carefully placed on the block before her.
The process was laborious and long-winded, and Daniel could have completed the required amount to fire up the range in less than half an hour whereas she, nearly an hour later, was by nowhere near ready. Today, however, this was not the point. Rather she enjoyed the feeling of lifting up the axe, feeling gravity tug against her as she placed it on the window ledge, the sensation of fulfilment when she managed to hit the wood before her (by no means a guaranteed fact) and, usually after considerable tugging and banging with the axe buried in the softer material, finally split it into pieces more suitable for burning. After so long performing this task, she was aware of muscles in her arms, shoulder and back that she had not known the existence of before that day, and the whole feeling was one of immense pleasure.
Before her, in the distance, she could see the mountain. Daniel’s mountain. She couldn’t remember its real name, but that didn’t matter. From what he had told her, pretty much as far as she could see (before the Highlands themselves in the far off distance) belonged to him. Of course, it was always possible that he was a fantasist, but the casual way in which he had shared this piece of knowledge led her to suspect that he was telling the truth.
That fact was itself rather exciting to her. She had never owned any property, never really owned much of substance beyond her rather worn Toyota—though that itself looked in better shape (though less suited to this landscape) than Daniel’s Land Rover. What excited her was less the prospect that she could share in such possession (yet it would have been a lie to deny that at some level deep down inside her, this fantasy was certainly taking shape) as the simple notion that she was intimately involved with a real landowner, some eccentric who clearly had a deeper past than her own.
She had not entirely forgiven him for his abusive behaviour, but she was glad that she had not left for reasons that were not simply materialistic. The truth was that Daniel was breaking down barriers within her that she had known about for years but had been unable to face up to on her own. And she had to admit that, with that one exception, the sex was fantastic.
Throughout part of the night she had been sketching and drawing, starting a fire in the hearth so that she would have some light to see, less concerned now with visual precision than with the impressionistic capture of her imagination. After a while, she had dozed off upon the sofa then, in the early hours of the morning, she had crawled—almost silently—upstairs.
Daniel had been sleeping on the bed, naked but for the sheet that covered his lower portion—and that his demonic manhood was hidden from her enabled her to revive her desire for it. He was a satyr down below, that she knew, and if she was to remain here she would simply have to accept it. She wanted to accept it—but more on her own terms. With a sense of sadness as she watched him sleeping in the dim crescent moonlight that illuminated the window, she realised that she only had a few very brief days here. After that, who knew what would happen?
With that thought, she had removed her clothes, letting them drop to the floor, and climbed into bed next to him. Still dreaming, he had reached out for her with one of his massive limbs, pulling her close, and she had curled her naked body next to his, enjoying his warmth. He was not forgiven, but the soft animal inside her wanted him, despite everything. When he had woken, she did not allow him to penetrate her, but instead she kissed and licked his erection, sucking down his seed while he in turn gently kissed and pleasured her, bringing her to a softer orgasm.
As sunlight entered the bedroom, she lay back in his arms. “I�
��ve just remembered. Shit—I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me before.”
“Remembered what?” he asked.
“Your eyes—who they remind me of. David Bowie. My mom was really into him when I was young.”
Daniel snorted at this. “Thanks. Now you’re making me feel rather old. Always the best of feeligns.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what comes of fucking a younger woman. You should get used to it. There’s not much else of you that’s like him though. He’s always been a bit too androgynous for my tastes while you... well, you really are all man. Even the bad bits. Come to think of it, especially the bad bits. My mom really liked his stuff, but I found him a little creepy.”
“Oh come on, he wasn’t that bad surely. I rather like some of his music as well—and before you say it, I was not old enough to hear most of it first time round.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” Kris let her head fall back and looked up at the ceiling of the room, suddenly rather sad at the memory of her mother. “I only have some pretty fleeting recollections of her,” she said, more to herself than him. “She died when I was seven.”
“And your father, is he still alive?”
Kris was silent for a while. “No,” she replied at last. “He died a few years ago.” Her body tensed up at the thought of her father. The familiar prickles started to swoop across her limbs in waves and her mind closed down.
“There it goes again.” Daniel’s voice was quiet.
“What?”
“Your armour. It comes across you quickly but very effectively. I should have been more... observant, the other day.”
Kris brushed aside her objections to his previous behaviour, and instead tried to change the subject for a number of reasons. “And your parents?”
She felt him shrug behind her. “There’s very little to tell. You should have guessed that I’d be tight lipped on such a subject.”
“And you dare to reprimand me on my reaction to mine?”
“It’s not that. There’s something different—unusual—in the way you react when any thought arises about your father. A closing up.”
Kris was silent for a moment. It was her turn to shrug. “I guess so,” she replied.
“If it helps to talk.”
“Not really,” was her only response, although it was only moments later that—once more—the dam inside her began to trickle, sprigs and branches of old memory springing leaks as they tumbled away as she lay there.
“We hadn’t talked for years before he died. That’s probably where the rot set in, after he had gone, and I couldn’t talk to him about my feelings for him. I never got to make amends—or for him to put things right with me.”
“What had he done to you?” Daniel’s voice was cautious, probing. Kris was unable to respond immediately. The flash of her mind in another bedroom, a long time ago, made her suddenly rigid—but at the same time, other pieces of the barrier to her memories were crumbling slightly. The pressure to speak was relentless.
“Did he...?” Daniel left the rest of his sentence unspoken, and for a few seconds Kris was unable to comprehend his meaning. When she did, she jumped forward and turned to face him, her face vivid with shock.
“No, no! Nothing like that! Well, not so bad. No, really, it’s not what you think. He was a drunk, and he was too free with his fists from time to time but...” Yet she could not go on. The old censor was back in place. Kris felt her jaw suddenly seize up, and her left fist clenched. She wanted to shout in frustration at it all.
But she could not shout. And so, instead, she had come out into the open air, dressed in one of Daniel’s shirts and her jeans, and was lifting the axe up and letting it fall. The mindlessness of those actions, surrounded as she was by the louring sky with clouds floating from the sea towards the distant mountains, in turn cleansed her memory.
When she returned inside, she found Daniel preparing something to eat. While she had no desire to completely unman him, she had to admit to a sense of satisfaction at this reversal of traditional gender roles. She herself was carrying a pile of wood, and her torso was sweaty and mired a little in her body’s own secretions. Only a week or two previously this would have filled her with disgust, but now... now she rather enjoyed the sensation of being honestly dirty.
She went behind Daniel, reaching around his waist with her arms and squeezing him. It was his turn to stiffen. He knew that he was still on a kind of probation, and so his testing and pushing of her had gone into abeyance. Instead, he was waiting for those signs that would allow him to proceed.
For a little while she simply let her head rest against his back, his shoulders high above her face. She smelt him, enjoying the warmth of his broad shoulders. When she was ready, she began to speak.
“I’d been out for three days. I hadn’t left any phone number of information where I was going. It wasn’t the first time I’d gone missing, but never before for so long. I was fifteen.”
As she spoke, Daniel stopped chopping food on the wooden board and let his hands rest on the surface, remaining silent and still while she talked.
“I’d met a guy, nearly ten years older than me. He was smart. He was drop dead gorgeous. He had a car, and money. He was my first real crush, my first love. It wasn’t that long before I lost my virginity to him. There had been fumblings before that, but he was the first one to really do it with me.
“And of course I wanted to spend as much time as I could with him. Things were going through a tough patch at home. Dad was as often crawled round the inside of a bottle, and when he wasn’t there he was spending time with one of his floozies. Actually, I’m pretty surprised I made it to fifteen still a virgin with the example I got at home.
“But it was pretty thoughtless of me. I guess the first day he treated it as a fairly normal occurrence—if he even noticed. The second day perhaps he started to worry. Apparently I found out later that he’d phoned school, but I was taking a fairly liberal approach to my education by that point. There wasn’t much that I wanted to learn there that they could teach me. By the third day, however, when I returned home, he was frantic, absolutely out of his mind.
“I knew I was in trouble the moment I set eyes on him. He didn’t beat me often—don’t get the wrong impression—but from time to time... I guess he just couldn’t help himself. I sometimes wonder if he ever hit mom, but she died long before he started drinking heavily.
“I tried to get away, but... but...” She paused. “He must have known what I’d do. Heck, I’d learned most of what I knew from him. He grabbed my hair and dragged me into the bedroom. Fuck it. He’d been prepared. He had some cord—you know, like that nylon stuff they use to tie up boats with? Really strong stuff. I was screaming and yelling at him, but he was just staring intently at me while he bound it over and over around the end of the bed, tying my wrists ever tighter. I couldn’t move, and I was kicking out at him, calling him every name under the sun. God! I fucking hated him then—hated him more than anyone I’d ever hated in my life.
“Then... then he told me to shut up. I’d never seen him like that before. It was... it was like he was in absolute control of himself. This was pretty unusual for him by this point. He was, to be honest, well on his way to becoming a fucked up mess. But for a little while he knew entirely what he wanted to do.
“I was scared. Absolutely terrified. He pulled down my jeans. I started screaming again, but he slapped me across the face—hard. Damn! I can still feel that blow now, even though it was over a decade ago. He pulled down my jeans and my knickers, so my backside was exposed as I was bent over the bed. Then... then he drew his belt out of his trousers, and curled it up in his hands.
“I was looking behind me, shaking in complete fear. I can still remember the shiny, dark brown surface of the leather as it looped and folded, the tiny stitches around the eyelets, the tarnished metal hoop at the end.
“He didn’t hold back when he hit me. He was fucking brutal. I mean, really brutal. I’ve never
been hit that hard before or since. I’m not sure how many lashes he gave me with that belt of his, but it hurt me more than anything I’d ever experienced. The bruises took nearly a month to disappear and for a couple of days it was painful to even sit down. He was crying by the end, and when he finished he left me in that room for the rest of the night, still tied up to the bed. I could hear him from time to time, drinking downstairs, and I wondered what the hell he would do. I was genuinely terrified for his sanity at one point, but he didn’t return to my room until the next day when he came to untie me, apologising profusely for the violence of his actions.”
She stopped talking for a while. Daniel said nothing, but she could feel him listening, as though with his whole body, thoroughly attentive to her.
“The worst thing... the worst thing wasn’t the pain, or the humiliation, though both were pretty bad. No, that’s not why I keep closing down whenever I think of that day. It was... it was the fact that within seconds of seeing that belt in his hands, before he’d even touched me, I knew exactly what he was going to do and... and I became so wet down there. I thought I’d experienced my first orgasm with the nice, older guy who would take me out in my car and fuck me in the back seat after we’d been to the movies, or perhaps it was when I used to play with myself in the fields beyond our house. But those orgasms were nothing to what I felt that day when dad beat me with his belt, when he tied me up and punished me for being a bad girl.”
She stopped speaking and pressed her face deeper into Daniel’s back. Still he said nothing, but it didn’t matter—was even better that way. She could feel from his silence that he understood. This, perhaps, was what he had been waiting for. It was certainly, she realised at last, what she had wanted for such a very long time.
“How were things between you after that?” Daniel asked at last. Still his back was turned to her, but it was as though he was concentrating on her aura.
Fractured Crystal: Sapphires and Submission Page 9