Asking For Trouble (11 page)

‘Just the one punter?’ I said with a sly grin.

He grinned back. ‘A lorryload.’

‘Yeah,’ I drawled. ‘I could get into that.’

Ilya crinkled down my bra cups, exposing me again, then trailed his tongue in wet rotations around a nipple.

Shit, I thought. I could seriously fall for this guy.

‘So what about a fantasy with one punter?’ he murmured.

‘Maybe,’ I replied. ‘If I make him good at using and abusing me. But only when I’ve finished with the lorryload.’

‘Oh, but of course,’ said Ilya, smiling up at me.

‘What about you?’ I asked. ‘What are your fantasies?’

He grated his teeth over my crinkling nipple then, holding the tip in a gentle bite, he drew my breast high until I felt an edge of pain. He released me.

‘Fucking you up the arse,’ he said.

I drew a quiet breath. ‘You told me that one on the phone.’

‘And?’

‘And?’ I repeated. ‘And tell me another.’

Ilya took my nipple between his teeth again and slowly plucked upwards before letting my flesh drop back.

‘OK,’ he said, pushing my skirt higher and placing a hand on the swell of my mons. ‘It’s having a whore come round to my flat.’ He thumbed strokes across my clitoris. ‘She looks just like you. She wears a miniskirt, heels and stockings. Her tits are nearly falling out of her top. Lots of make-up. Tarty porn-style underwear. I make her do whatever I want her to do. I use and abuse her, tell her she’s a cheap little slut.’

He looked at me fixedly, those jewel-bright eyes boring into mine. ‘Next Friday, if you’re free.’ He didn’t smile, he just kept on thumbing me, a smooth tease that made my clit flesh out.

I gave a little whimper. ‘No, I don’t know,’ I said softly. ‘I’m not sure. I might feel daft. It’s fantasy stuff. And I’m not wearing –’

‘Act it out,’ he said. ‘Reality’s the ultimate fantasy.’

Then a finger slid through the wet valley of my sex to press on the indent of my anus.

I moaned as he massaged me there, spreading my juices over the little muscled ring. And I gasped as he gently eased his finger into my narrow hole.

‘Anyone done this to you before?’ he asked, driving slowly back and forth, his eyelids droopy with lust.

‘No,’ I whispered. It was a lie. I’m not that inexperienced but I didn’t want to encourage his anal sex fantasy. I wanted to know him better before I even considered agreeing to it.

‘Do you like it?’ he breathed.

‘Mmm,’ I murmured.

‘What about this?’ he asked, and he brought his other hand to my pussy, his fingers swooping into the wet pout of my folds. He gazed down at my face, his buried digits moving in both orifices.

‘Ah God, yes,’ I groaned, squirming into his thrusts.
And with his thumb, he began rocking my clit, stimulating it until it was a knot of jangling nerves.

‘Say you’ll be my whore,’ he said in a commanding tone.

I eyed his surging cock, traced with thick veins and flaring violently at the crown.

‘Fuck me and I might,’ I challenged. ‘Fuck me hard.’

‘Ah, you greedy little slut,’ he enthused, disengaging his fingers. Then he began tugging at my clothes, yanking my top up, my skirt down, my bra off. His strength and roughness excited me desperately. In the chaos I lunged to grab a condom from my bedside stash. When I was stripped naked, Ilya flipped me on to all fours.

‘Be my whore,’ he said, circling my waist with his arm and clasping me tight. ‘Or you don’t get fucked.’ His swollen prick pressed into the split of my buttocks.

‘You swine,’ I hissed. ‘Yes, yes, I will.’

I heard him bite at the foil-packaged sheath. Then his rubbered-up cock nudged and, in one fierce, fluid movement, penetrated me. Again and again he penetrated. He was roused to a frenzy and he just plunged and plunged as if he wanted to fuck me to destruction.

‘Hard enough?’ he barked.

I gasped yes, no, and clutched the foot of the bed, locking my elbows rigid as he hammered into my depths, sending vibrations to my head. He dropped a finger to my clit and frigged it hard. It didn’t take much and, in seconds, I’d hit my peak and I was crying out for him to hurry, to climax, because my body couldn’t take much more. It was approaching stupor. With relentless vigour, Ilya ploughed on.

‘Come,’ I wailed. ‘Please, oh God. Come.’

And he did – in his own good time.

We rested. Ilya was a smoker. I listened to him move soft-footed through the living room then rifle through his trousers, discarded in the hall. He shouted for an ashtray. I directed him to the very back of the cupboard under
the sink in the kitchen, but he returned instead with an empty Coke can.

It was growing dark. A street lamp shone hazily through the muslin curtains.

As Ilya lay there, contentedly inhaling, I felt serious nicotine cravings for the first time in seven and a half months. Dangerous, I thought; he could make me weaken.

‘We need to use a word,’ he said. ‘If this is going to work, we need a codeword for stop. So if you don’t like anything I do to you – not just Friday, at any time – then say . . . say “cuttlefish”.’

‘Why?’ I asked with a slight laugh.

‘Because it’s a nice word,’ he replied. (Oh, how I adored him for that.) ‘And cuttlefish are interesting. And I reckon they suit what we’re doing. They change colour. They signal to each other.’

‘And then they get eaten by budgies?’

‘Yeah.’ He smiled. ‘But I was thinking of the creatures, not their bones.’

He drew on his cigarette.

‘Anyway,’ I said. ‘I meant, Why a codeword? Sounds a bit Special Branch to me. Why can’t I just say “no” or “stop”?’

‘Slips out too easily,’ he said. ‘And “no” and “stop” are good words to use when you don’t mean them. Cuttlefish is deadly serious.’

‘Oh, right,’ I said. ‘But isn’t that what people do who are into S/M and bondage? Safeword, I think they call it. Not my scene, I’m afraid. Too many Goths, too much equipment. And besides –’

‘In fact . . .’ cut in Ilya. He took a final thoughtful drag on his cigarette then dropped the butt in the Coke can. It landed with a plink and a fizz. ‘In fact, let’s make cuttlefish truly serious,’ he said, exhaling a stream of smoke. ‘This isn’t a romance or a relationship. It’s going to be a sex thing like we agreed.’

I said nothing. He sounded so certain of it.

‘So,’ he continued, ‘let’s make it into a bit of a game. What if “cuttlefish” means not just “stop” but “the end, finito”? No discussions. No analysis and future plans. Just “cuttlefish”. The end.’

I pondered the implications of this. In theory, it sounded good: an affair that was pure lust with no messy break-up. Wasn’t that what I wanted?

‘So if I want rid of you,’ I said, feigning a cool, cruel heart, ‘then I do something you don’t like and make you say “cuttlefish”?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘Or maybe you just say “cuttlefish”. I have to accept. No arguments.’ He swung himself from the bed, walked out of the door then returned, fastening up his trousers. ‘And vice versa,’ he said. ‘If I think it’s time to move on or whatever, then you have to accept me saying “cuttlefish”.’

Seeing all his ‘I’m about to leave’ moves, I shrugged on my top and did up a couple of buttons.

‘I think it’s flawed,’ I said. ‘Supposing you want to . . . or you’re doing something I don’t like. But I don’t want things to end. Then what?’

‘Ah,’ he said, stooping for his T-shirt. ‘Then you have to decide how much you don’t like it.’

‘But . . .’ I faltered. ‘I don’t know what you have in mind, but my pain threshold’s not that high.’

Ilya flexed his chest into his T-shirt. ‘Then I have to suss out that threshold, weigh up how much pain you can take,’ he said evenly. ‘Or how much humiliation or whatever it is. I don’t want you to say “cuttlefish”.’ He smiled. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

‘Gee, thanks,’ I replied.

‘Friday, then?’ he asked, arching his dark brows. ‘Say, ten-ish?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah, OK,’ I said. ‘Friday.’

‘Great,’ he said, and stroked a quick finger across my cheek. ‘Make it good, Beth. I’ll see myself out.’

I HAD THREE
days to shop for some whore clothes; and three days to try to work out just who – or what – I was getting involved with.

It concerned me that I was embarking on some weird sex-game relationship with a guy I hardly knew, who was inventing rules and safewords, and who was very keen on probing my dark, dirty fantasies. Was this hugely irresponsible of me? Was it dangerous?

Maybe it was, I thought. And while the idea of being reckless and abandoned gave me a delicious thrill, I wondered if I ought to tell someone about it – just like you’re meant to tell someone when you arrange a date with a handsome, 6' 2", g.s.o.h. from the classifieds.

The sensible thing, I reckoned, would be to let Jenny and Clare know what I was up to. Then, if they hadn’t heard from me for a while, they could go and get the police to check out this Ilya guy and look under his floorboards for my body.

But I didn’t want to. I wanted whoring for Ilya to be my secret.

But I wanted that secret to be less of a mystery to me. I was hungry to know more about my partner-in-sleaze,
mainly because I was nosy, but also because I was worried.

The nosy part of me wanted more stuff to go in that mental shoebox labelled
ILYA
. So far, it contained his handwriting, a near-nude photo, memories of our phone-call sex and memories of our ‘no small talk’ sex. Now I wanted to top that lot up with ordinary information – his job, his age, social life, blah, blah.

And that ordinary information, I thought, might make me less nervy. It would give Ilya some grounding in reality.

But I’m no supersleuth and I didn’t have a clue how to go about it. I looked his name up in the phone book; he wasn’t listed. I kept an eye on his window; his hours were irregular.

Did that make him less of a sex-crazed psycho-killer or more? Neither, I decided, because even madmen can have their number in the book and hold down nine-to-fives.

I was stumped. But accidents will happen, and my shopping trip for whore clothes turned out to be more eventful than I imagined. And it left me fairly spooked.

Ready for a spending spree, I left my house, knowing more what I didn’t want to look like than what I did.

The trouble was, I didn’t know how to translate my sleazy, seedy fantasies into actual clothing. And the more I thought about sleaze, the less I understood it. Wasn’t sleaze just a word people used for sex they disapproved of? For sex that was furtive, guilty, hollow and quite often paid for?

The only thing I felt guilty about was liking guilty sex. And Ilya had really pushed those buttons when he’d called me slut and whore. I liked being told I was a bad girl for wanting cock.

But what did a bad girl wear?

Should I go for New York hooker in hot pants?

Or maybe the downmarket dregs of British police dramas with people saying stuff like ‘Tart’s in reception, Guv, wants a word,’ and there’s a woman there with pale bruised legs, being snotty and chewing gum?

Christ, should I chew gum?

No, Beth. Don’t go overboard. And don’t even think about the legs.

It was a bright, warm afternoon. Surrey Street was clogged with one-way traffic and, across the road, the pub’s plastic tables were set out on the pavement. A group of people were sitting there, drinking lager and breathing in petrol.

I walked past small houses, past a couple of gutted shops and past the sex shop – wondering, as everyone must do, what happens in there and how they make their money, because hardly anyone seems to go in or out.

It’s a horribly discreet-looking place, with a grubby cream facade, a cream sign and cream blinds permanently blanking out the window. There’s nothing celebratory about it; no garish signs saying
ADULT VIDEOS
the way there are in London. It’s just cream. Creepy cream. The whole frontage seems to say, ‘And please wash your hands afterwards.’

Was that sleazy? I wondered. Or was it just rotten?

The shop reminded me of Ilya suggesting I dress in porno-undies. The very thought made me cringe. I don’t do heels, frills and stockings. It’s not me. While I got off on the idea of acting like a porn-slut, I didn’t fancy looking like one, not in the way Ilya meant.

Back then, my porn-film virginity was still intact, although my porn-mag virginity wasn’t. A few years before, I’d persuaded Rich – the then love of my life – to go out and buy something to satisfy my curiosity and – ahem – broaden my cultural knowledge and allow me to make an informed judgement as to the merits or otherwise of wank-mags.

I mean, I don’t have any brothers so I never got any
sneaky peeks of their teenage kicks and I couldn’t join in those conversations when people said, ‘Yeah, but the real problem with porn is that it’s just so bad.’ I needed knowledge.

Rich had returned with a couple of skin-mags, muttering how, nowadays, it was less embarrassing for a woman to buy this gear than it was for a man – his argument being that a woman does it and she’s sexually assured, she’s hot, breaking out after years of male oppression; a guy does it and he’s just a sad little wanker.

The magazines were seriously offensive – full of pricks and pussies, not much in the way of taxing reading matter. They didn’t offend me on that level, not a cat in hell’s chance. But aesthetically, they were rotten: airbrushed women with farcical pouts wearing fussy nylon lingerie and looking at least a decade out of date. There were black dots here and there, covering up the point of penetration and those great fountains of jism. It looked as if the men were ejaculating strings of jet beads – the devil’s semen.

But once I got past the taste barrier and laughter factor, I found the stuff pretty horny. The brazen vulgarity turned me on, but, most of all, I liked the way the sex was so depersonalised and anonymous, so blatantly devoid of heart and soul.

I had an idea that sex with Ilya could be something like that. But the trouble was, I had heart and I had soul. And I also had taste.

Before hitting the shops, I stopped off near the train station to make a phone call to nobody. As I’d hoped, the booth was plastered with cards advertising things like ‘busty blonde, just turned eighteen’. I stood there, nodding into the whining receiver while checking out the display.