by Lucy Wild
Apparently, he’d not written anything since. It had been his debut play, a huge hit, bringing in enough money to buy him somewhere palatial and filled with servants. Instead he’d remained right there in that farmhouse, closing himself off from the world after the death on stage. But that was nearly twenty years ago. It was strange to think I would have been just three years old when it happened. Surely that was long enough to give consent again? And weren’t we in with a good shot? Who better to put on his famous play than the drama group in his hometown?
I pushed open the gate and walked up the path, doing my best to avoid the nettles which drooped towards me on either side. I took a deep breath before knocking on the door, going over my speech one last time.
“Mr Atherton, I’m sorry to disturb you but I’ve come to ask a very important question.” Then push my arms together and shove my chest forward and he’d be putty in my hands. Hopefully.
I gave it about thirty seconds before knocking again. Listening, I couldn’t hear anything inside but there was a noise coming from the back of the house, a thudding sound that I couldn’t identify. Walking back to the lane, I took a few steps across to the gravel drive that swept around to the back of the house, not wanting to risk my tights on the jungle of his lawn.
I walked up the drive as the sound grew louder. In the back yard, I found the source of the noise. A topless man was chopping wood, an axe held high above his head as he brought it swinging down onto a log, splitting it in two. I had been about to say something but the sight of him brought me up short. He was more than six foot tall, his arms bulging as he gripped the axe, his chest nothing but muscle. Sweat poured down him as he leaned for the next log, putting it in place on a stump before lifting the axe again.
The sight of such a masculine figure made my heart skip a beat. My insides tingled as I looked at his arms, imagining them wrapping round me or perhaps holding me in his lap to spank me. I blushed at the thought, fanning my face as I took a step towards him, in awe at the sight of such rugged machismo. He was pushing forty but he had the body of a much younger man. Only the flecks of white in his hair gave away his true age. That and my maths skills at working out how old he had to be to have written his masterpiece twenty years before.
He brought the axe down again and as it split the log, a piece whipped through the air, slamming into my leg. I screamed in pain and he looked up, blinking in surprise at the sight of me standing there. “You,” he said, dropping the axe and striding over to the house.
“Hold on,” I said, limping after him, still rubbing my leg. “Where are you going?”
“Get off my property,” he snapped without looking back, his hand already on the door handle.
“Wait,” I said, tapping him on the shoulder. “I just wanted to speak to you. Hang on.” My mind whirled as it tried to work out where I knew that voice from. It hit me a second later. “You’re my hero.”
“What?” he snapped, twisting round to look at me.
I wanted to speak but having those dark eyes burning into me stopped my brain from working. All I wanted to do was submit to him, melt into his arms, let him sweep me into that house and do whatever the hell he wanted with me. “I…” I muttered, pausing before forcing myself to think, “I mean, you’re the man who helped me last night, right?”
“What do you want? Why are you here? I’m not a bloody mechanic. If there’s something wrong with your car-”
“No, it’s not that. I wanted to ask you about your play.”
His eyes narrowed. “You want to what?”
“I want to ask if you’ll give consent for me to perform it. That is, for my group to perform it. Not that it’s my group, of course. I’m getting this all wrong. There’s a drama group in town and they let me join and I wondered if you’d let us put on your wonderful play. It would be good for the town, you see”
“Listen,” he said, letting go of the door handle, turning to loom over me, his fists clenched. “I have no love for this town. I couldn’t care less what’s good for it. All I want is to be left alone. Now get off my property and don’t ever come back.”
“Or what,” I blurted out. “You can’t threaten someone like that just for asking.”
“It’s not a threat, it’s a warning.”
“Has anyone ever told you, you’re a very rude man?”
“All the time.”
He turned, pulled open the door and vanished inside, slamming the door behind him.
SIX
GEORGE
If I had done what I originally planned, I never would have seen her. I was supposed to get the wood chopped in the morning but I had woken up late and all my plans went to shit. I never woke up late. I was always up early.
But last night had been hell. I often struggled to get to sleep but this was different, this was worse. I was up until three, laid in the dark, trying to get the image of that girl out of my head. I shouldn’t have helped her. If I’d just driven away, I’d have been able to keep my desire under control. But I did help her. Pandora’s box was open. All the feelings that I’d learned to keep locked away and only let out at the club were bubbling up inside me. I kept picturing me stopping to help her, tearing her clothes off her, dragging her back here to become my permanent little plaything. The only thing that helped me to settle was a shot or two of whiskey, another reason why I woke up late.
I headed out to the lumber yard when I finally got up, bringing back enough wood to get the fence posts done. The edge of my land bordered a public footpath and people had a tendency to try and wander onto my land. I’d put up a fence years ago but parts of it were rotting and a couple of sections had given way. The last thing I wanted was to find people trespassing in my private territory.
By the time the fence posts were ready, I had a pile of off cuts to deal with. It was just after seven in the evening and the light was starting to fade. If I wanted to get them all chopped in time, I needed to get a move on. I was about a quarter of the way through the pile when I hit a log at the wrong angle and a piece flew off. I looked up when I heard a scream and there she was, my innocent little girl, looking far hotter than she had in the dark, which was saying something.
I could see a hint of her cleavage and it drew my eyes, making my cock twitch in my trousers. She was rubbing her leg in pain and the sight turned me on. Seeing the discomfort in her eyes made me want to be the cause of her pain, or her pleasure. Damn it, my mind was already running away with itself. I couldn’t stand there any longer or I’d end up grabbing hold of her and pulling her into the house, spank her for having the audacity to trespass on my property as if it belonged to her.
I dropped the axe and turned for the house but she ran after me, tapping me on the shoulder and making my insides boil. Christ, I wanted to fuck her so badly.
I tried snapping at her, I tried being rude to her but the look on her face just made me want her more. She looked so surprised by my tone of voice, shocked by my manner, as if no one had ever spoken to her like that before. Spoiled little rich girl. If only she knew what I wanted to do to her, she’d have been far more shocked.
Then she asked about the play and I came within a whisker of spanking her in the yard, lifting that slutty little skirt of hers and yanking down her panties to reveal her bare ass. How dare she? She acted like it was the most natural thing in the world to come and get my consent. She knew nothing about the world, nothing about my reasons for not letting anyone perform it anymore.
It wasn’t who I was, not anymore. I’d left that life a long time ago, shutting it away at the same time as shutting myself away. The last thing I wanted was for my name to be talked about again, fan mail on the doormat, people turning up and gawping in at the window, coming to look at the man that got Cassie killed.
I went inside and slammed the door shut, leaving her out there. Then she had the gall to shout through the door, try and get me to come out. Well, it worked. I pulled open the door and watched her cower back as I snarled at her. “Get off my
land. I see you again, you’ll be taught a lesson you won’t forget.”
At least that made her go. Another second in front of me and the lessons would have begun and no amount of pleading from her would have stopped them.
I watched out of the front window until she was gone. Only when I was sure she wasn’t coming back did I go outside and finish chopping the wood, blotting her out of my mind with manual labour until I was exhausted.
I woke up aching the next morning, my shoulders stiff. I walked it off before heading out on the quad bike with the fence posts in the trailer. I made my way across the fields to the edge of my land. Parking up on the trail, I took the spade and began to dig alongside the drainage ditch, not stopping until the first hole was a foot and a half deep. It took five minutes to pull the rotten post free and it was as I was tossing it aside that my foot slipped on the edge of the ditch, starting all my problems.
I started to slide down the mud at the slope of the ditch. Within seconds I was sinking into the thick gloop at the bottom of the ditch. I went to pull my left foot out but doing that only made my right foot sink further. Within seconds, I was stuck fast, both feet wedged in place. I spent ten minutes trying to work myself free before I had to stop, my legs tiring. The steep sides of the ditch were slick with mud and I couldn’t grip anything, I’d done too good a job of clearing it of undergrowth a month earlier.
“You look like you need a hand,” a voice said. I looked up, shielding my eyes from the sunlight and found myself looking into the eyes of the person I least wanted to see.
SEVEN
DONNA
“You’ll be taught a lesson you won’t forget.”
That was the last thing he’d said to me. The little girl in me wanted to run away from such venom. The brat in me wanted to push him, wanted to test his boundaries, call his bluff. After all, what was the worst he could do, call the police? I doubted they’d even bother to turn up. “Excuse me Officer, a woman has had the audacity to ask me if she can perform my play, could you arrest her please?”
The clenching of his fists was what sent me away in the end. I didn’t know him. I didn’t know what he was capable of. Better not to antagonise him. I could come back when he was in a better mood and ask again. I didn’t want to go back to the drama group and tell them I’d failed. It wasn’t that I felt that they’d mind. It was more that I didn’t want their first impressions of me to be someone who couldn’t keep her promises.
I did a bit of unpacking when I got back to the house but soon lost the motivation to do anymore. I was too angry. It took time to work out what was irritating me so much. It was him. He’d got under my skin. How dare he threaten me like that? He had absolutely no right. I was still furious with him when I climbed into my nest of blankets that night but as I slept, a different thought came to me.
I dreamt of him threatening me on his doorstep again, his chest glistening with sweat as he towered over me, his hands reaching out to send me packing. But he didn’t do that. Instead, he grabbed me, dragging me over to the stump of wood in the middle of the yard. He tossed me over it, my ass in the air, splinters digging into my stomach as he whipped up my skirt and began spanking me, his enormous calloused hand slapping down onto my knickers before he ripped them in two, wanting to spank my bare skin. I wriggled in place to try and free myself but he was far stronger than me, his knee in the small of my back, holding me in place.
I remembered it vividly the next morning. His hand had slid between my legs, finding me wet, grunting that I was a slut, a whore, a dirty little girl who enjoyed what was supposed to punish. He didn’t stop feeling me though despite his words of disgust at my reaction to the spanking. His fingers slid into me as I twisted in place, my hand reaching for his trousers, pulling out the hugest cock I’d ever seen, so big I could barely fit it inside my mouth.
I almost choked on it as he continued to push his fingers into me, the smell of him assailing my nostrils, the sound in the air that of my choking and my wetness as he brought me to a screaming orgasm that woke me up, a sheen of sweat coating my body, my clit throbbing at the memory of the dream. I never wanted to go back to sleep so much in my life.
It was just my luck that as I closed my eyes again, someone knocked on the door. I sat up, wondering whether to answer. But it was too late. The dream had vanished like morning mist when the sun rose and the only sign it had ever been was the wetness I could feel between my legs as I got up, a blanket wrapped around me, making my way to the front door whilst yawning loudly.
“Good morning, dear,” an elderly lady said when I answered it. “Hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No, no,” I replied. “I was already up. Sort of.”
“That’s good. I just thought I’d come and introduce myself. My name’s Susan. I live next door.”
“Oh,” I said, stifling another yawn. “Right, lovely to meet you. I’m Donna.”
I spent a couple of minutes listening to her talk about the garden, the way it had looked before Nancy moved in, how she hoped I had green fingers. Then the conversation moved on to the surrounding area. “There’s a lovely walk that goes right past the end of your garden,” she said. “You must try it. There’s blackberries just ripening in the woods up there. I know you’ll love them.”
“I do, as it happens. How did you guess?”
“Who doesn’t like blackberries? Be careful though, some of them are on Atherton’s land.”
“George Atherton?”
“You’ve heard of him already. That doesn’t surprise me. What’s he done to you?”
“Nothing, I just heard from the drama group that he was a famous playwright.”
“Was is the operative word. All he does now is grumble about people trespassing and race about in that car of his, no consideration for my chickens. He nearly ran over my best cock last week.”
A childish giggle rose up inside me but I stamped on it before it could escape. “Did he?” I squeaked.” Well, I’ll be careful.”
“Just stick to the path and you’ll be fine.”
“I will. Well, I better go get dressed if I’m going to get those blackberries. Lovely to meet you, Susan.”
“And you. Remember, keep to the path unless you want him yelling and shaking his fist at you.”
“I will,” I said, pulling the door closed to begin rummaging in the boxes for something to wear.
I thought I might as well go for a walk, have one last day of freedom before beginning my quest to find a job. The dream floated back up inside me as I dressed, only this time he caught me trespassing. “I warned you,” he said, bending me over his knee to spank me. I got dressed quicker than ever before, heading out the back door and down to the end of my garden. Through a gate was a flower filled meadow with a well worn path skirting the edge of it. I followed the path, ascending slowly towards a group of trees in the distance. When I reached the trees, the path split in two and I took the left fork, coming out into daylight a few minutes later. I could see a row of brambles curling around an old fence and I realised Susan had been right. Breakfast was handfuls of blackberries eaten from hands stained purple.
After I’d had my fill, I decided to walk on a bit further. I reached the crest of a hill and then down the other side. I could see a quad bike in the distance but there was no one near it. Intrigued, I made my way down the slope, a wicked daydream filling my mind. He was hiding, waiting for me. When I reached the quad, he’d leap out and accuse me of trying to steal it, tie me up and throw me in the back and…and…and all of a sudden, the sun felt incredibly hot despite the breeze and the gathering clouds.
I had just reached the quad bike when I heard a noise coming from the drainage ditch next to it. Looking over the side, I saw George down at the bottom, trying ineffectually to tug his feet free from the mud. “You look like you need a hand,” I said, watching as he twisted his neck to stare up at me.
“No,” he snapped back. “I’m fine.”
EIGHT
DONNA
I turned round, a smile on my face that I made sure was gone by the time I peered over the edge of the ditch again. “You called?”
“I need help.”
“You certainly do. But for now, let’s concentrate on getting you out of that ditch, shall we?”
His eyes flared anger and it looked like he was barely keeping his temper in check. Somehow, he swallowed his rage before saying, “Bring me one of those fence posts.”
“These?” I said, pointing next to me.”
“Yes, those. Bring one over here.”
I walked over to the pile of posts, leaning down to grab the nearest one. I could barely move the thing but by combining kicking, rolling, and swearing, I managed to get it over to the edge of the ditch. “Am I building you a ladder?” I asked, the smile escaping onto my lips for a brief second before I got it under control.
“Lean it down here. That’s it. A bit more and I should be able to grab it.”
“It’s slipping,” I said, feeling the wood easing itself out from between my fingers.
“Don’t let it fall, hold onto it!”
I tried putting my feet on it but it kept sliding down the steep edge of the ditch.
“Do something,” he snapped. “Quickly.”
The tone of his voice made it impossible to disobey him. I panicked, throwing myself onto the fencepost, the mud underneath me coating my clothes as he caught the other end of the post in his hands. “That’s it,” he said, “stay there.”
I had to press my whole weight against the post, feeling the mud soaking through to my skin as he gripped the sides of the pole and began to wriggle his feet free. “Is it working?” I asked, my face squashed against the edge of the wood.