The Choice (11 page)

‘I thought the Hawkubites was a male-only society?’

‘It is, and has been for nearly three hundred years, but female guests have attended on a few occasions. It’s a great honour, as I’m sure you’ll agree, although naturally it comes with certain provisos attached.’

Even drunk I had begun to smell a rat. ‘What provisos exactly?’

‘Oh, nothing you can’t cope with, just keeping to the dress code, enjoying yourself, being a good sport, and of course, keeping what happens to yourself. Stephen, in particular, must never know, as I’m sure you’ll agree. The poor boy would only be jealous.’

‘And the dress code is? A school uniform perhaps? A saucy French maid’s outfit? Or just stark naked? And what’s for afters, blow-jobs all round?’

‘Ah ha, I detect from your tone that you are not keen on the idea, in which case I have been authorised to offer you a thousand pounds.’

I’d been meaning to tease him, playing along for a while before turning him down on his outrageous offer, but he had gone too far. We were still arm in arm, and with one quick jerk I had detached myself. One sharp kick to his ankle and he was off balance. A push and he was clawing at the air as he fell backwards, his face set in a truly comic expression of panic and surprise. The bank was about five feet high, above open water, which he hit with a splash, and disappeared briefly beneath the surface before coming up spitting muddy water
and
flailing for support. He did not look at all happy, and I decided to beat a hasty retreat.

I had reacted instinctively, and as soon as I’d calmed down and sobered up began to worry about the consequences of what I’d done. Fortunately Giles proved too much of a politician to be spiteful, and even sent me a bunch of flowers, which was waiting outside my room when I got back from rowing. The note attached was an apology, saying that he had misjudged me and asking my forgiveness. I didn’t believe a word of it, but decided to accept on the grounds that if the story got out it was sure to do me more harm than good. I also decided not to tell Stephen, both because Giles could simply deny everything or claim that I’d come on to him and because it wasn’t something I wanted to share.

That was the sensible choice, but it didn’t help with my feelings. Giles had effectively asked me to prostitute myself, and he had to have thought there was a fair chance I’d accept. I tried to tell myself that it was simply a result of his bizarre, public-school attitude towards women, but he had touched a nerve. Had I accepted it would have meant he’d made me a high-class call-girl, something I’d fantasised over more times than I could remember.

I knew I would never do it, but it didn’t hurt to think about it, save for the shame of imagining myself in the hands of the man who had dared to proposition me. Several times I’d considered asking Stephen if he’d like to play out a fantasy, but sex between us had always been too raw and too urgent for that sort of thing. Now I was glad I hadn’t, because I was fairly sure it would have got back to Giles, and I definitely couldn’t do it in the near future, because if he found out he would assume it was his offer which had triggered my fantasy, an unbearable thought. He might also repeat the offer.

All of it was still in my head as I went through the motions of rowing practice, which was now so familiar that I could follow the cox’s calls without conscious effort. I was even commended on my rhythm by the coach, and by Stephen, who had finished just before us and was standing outside the Emmanuel boathouse as we came in. He looked sweaty and masculine, his clothes plastered to the hard muscles of his chest and abdomen, making me smile as I approached him.

‘Hi, did you see that? We bumped the second boat before they’d reached The Boatman’s.’

‘That was good, but you’ll have to do better if you want to beat the City boats.’

‘We’re getting there. Are you going back to college?’

‘Yes, the long way round, if you like?’

We’d frequently taken out our passion on each other in the meadows by Jackdaw Lane, and I knew exactly what he meant. My feelings were still a bit raw after my encounter with Giles, and I was going to refuse, only to think of how amused he’d be to know he’d got to me. Instead I smiled and offered my hand to Stephen.

A lot of people were looking at us as we walked across the front of the boathouses, some of them no doubt with a pretty clear idea of what we were up to, but that I didn’t mind. As Giles himself had pointed out there’s nothing wrong with straightforward, healthy sex, certainly nothing to be ashamed of, although I did prefer people not to know we did it outside quite so often. That didn’t seem to bother Stephen at all, his hand closing on my bottom as we waited for a friendly punt to take us across the mouth of the Cherwell.

I was still conscious of watching eyes when we’d reached the far side, and made him walk me quite a way up Jackdaw Lane before letting myself be pulled into the bushes. We chose the same place we’d used the first time, our favourite,
where
the low elder branch allowed me to sit down and indulge my love of cock worship in comfort. He’d got used to it, and went to stand in place before I’d caught up, making me smile as he spoke. ‘I’ll have the usual please, Miss Miller.’

‘Certainly, Mr Mitchell.’

He turned me on, just from the set of his powerful body and hot scent of his skin, but even as I sat down and began to nuzzle my face against the bulge in his rowing shorts I was having to make myself do it. Only as he began to stiffen did my rising desire push away my ill feelings, as I’d hoped it would. Soon I was nibbling and kissing at the long hard shape of his erection through his shorts, deliberately teasing myself until I was desperate to get him bare and into my mouth.

I was about to do it, but he broke first, muttering something unintelligible and snatching the front of his shorts aside to expose himself. With his cock and balls free to the weak autumn sunlight I took a moment simply to admire him before running the tip of my tongue all the way up, once, twice and a third time before popping him in my mouth. He gave a groan of satisfaction as I began to suck. His hands settled on my head, holding me firmly in place on his erection to stop me teasing, and I got down to work.

He was eager, pushing into my mouth and occasionally releasing his grip on my head to squeeze at his balls and tug on his shaft, until I was sure he would come at any moment. I wasn’t ready, and needed more despite the thrill of paying court to his cock, and pulled my top up to hold my breasts as I sucked, sure I was going to end up masturbating in front of him one more time. He saw, his voice hoarse with pleasure as he spoke.

‘Bad girl. I’m going to have to fuck you.’

His words were music to my ears. I pulled back immediately,
turning
my back to him and bending down with my hands on the branch. He’d twitched up my skirt and pulled my knickers down in an instant, baring me to his erection, but the position I was in and the act of being exposed behind had instantly turned my mind to Violet and the birch.

I tried to make it go away, but even as my body was filled I was imagining a variation of that awful routine, in which I’d be beaten and then fucked as my thank you instead of made to suck cock. To make it worse, Stephen was thrusting into me so fast and so deep that his hard belly was smacking against my bottom, adding to the fantasy. I gave in, telling myself that what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, but full of guilt as I thought of myself in the same position to Dr McLean, my skirt lifted and my knickers pulled down, my bottom smacked and his cock inside me as I was made to say thank you for my punishment.

There was as much despair as ecstasy in my groans as Stephen pushed into me, faster and faster, but I couldn’t stop myself. My hand went back to find my sex and I was playing with myself as I was fucked, already close to orgasm as I imagined the humiliation of being stripped in the woods, beaten and fucked.

I think I must have been mumbling something, or maybe it was because I was playing with myself, but Stephen suddenly slowed down and pulled out, only to enter me again as he spoke. ‘You are such a bad girl, Poppy Miller, but I know you like to come first so I’ll let you, but you’re going to have to pay for it.’

My first thought was that if I was such a bad girl I ought to have my bottom smacked, and I was so far gone I might have asked, but for the rest of what he said. I knew what he meant, that he’d make me suck and swallow, or do it in my face, but my mind reacted differently. He’d said I’d have to pay, but I
was
immediately imagining that he had paid me, and not just to suck him or bend over for entry, but for the whole crazed fantasy that had been building up in my head.

Again I tried to stop myself, but I was too close to orgasm and he’d begun to repeat the same trick, pulling out and entering me over and over again, adding a final, utterly filthy detail to my fantasy. In my mind’s eye I was no longer just with him, or James McLean. I was bent over the same branch, my bottom bare and rosy from a good whipping, a bundle of fifty-pound notes tucked into the waistband of my pulled-down knickers, as Violet watched Stephen, James, Giles and the entire membership of the Hawkubites take turns with me. They’d be lined up behind me, the cocks I’d just sucked erect clutched in their hands, penetrating me one by one, again and again, just as Stephen was doing.

I came, screaming out loud at the awful thought of being made to prostitute myself with a dozen men, for a whipping and sex, without even being taken somewhere private so that they could take me one at a time, but in public and in front of my friend so that they all got to see how dirty I was, and that there was no possible doubt that I’d been paid.

8

CURIOUSLY, LETTING MY
imagination go so completely helped me to come to terms with what was going on in my head, at least to the point that I realised I would have to accept it as part of me, and cope. After all, I was developing fast in an unfamiliar world in which for the first time in my life I had to take responsibility for my own actions and, by and large, I felt I was doing quite well. I’d been reasonably careful with my money, kept to a fairly sensible amount of drink and avoided picking up any new vices such as smoking or drugs. I was doing fairly well at work and at sport, very well at the Chamber, and all of that because I made an effort to keep my life under control.

There was no reason my sexuality should prove any different. I’d developed an old fantasy, being a high-class call-girl, and found a new one, being whipped, but there was no reason I should give in to either, any more than I had needed to accept the challenge some of Giles’ friends had given me in the Chamber bar one evening, to try to drink an entire magnum of champagne in one go. Even my faintly disturbing feelings for Violet didn’t need to intrude on real life.

A few days after pushing Giles Lancaster into the river I’d got my head around the situation well enough to deliberately bring myself to orgasm over a complicated fantasy involving being paid to give oral sex to just about everyone I’d met in recent weeks, or at least all the attractive ones. I even included Violet, briefly, and was left feeling satisfied both sexually and because I felt I’d got things under control.

I had, at least for a while, and things stayed pretty much the same for the rest of the Michaelmas term. Stephen and I grew gradually more intimate, until he was calling me Miller as a matter of course and he knew how to please me better than any man before, both in bed and out. Giles Lancaster treated me with at least a measure of respect and didn’t make any more rude suggestions, while both of us kept what had happened firmly to ourselves. The regatta went well, if not exceptionally so, and I passed my first collections without any real difficulty. The Hawkubites held their dinner without me, trashed the restaurant as they had trashed so many before. Two of them were arrested, but not Giles.

It was only when I returned to Exeter that I realised just how much I’d changed in the space of just two months. Everything seemed smaller, or rather, lesser; my old friendships, my parents’ authority, even the buildings, everything but the landscape. That was bigger, the dark bulk of Haldon and the great sweep of the estuary raw and primitive beside the gentler hills and slow waterways around Oxford.

I spent most of my time at home, consciously avoiding Ewan and his friends, only going out occasionally and then with girls I’d known since childhood. Even there things had changed, and not just what they wanted to talk about, but their whole attitude to life. One was getting married in the spring, another was pregnant, both things I couldn’t even consider for at least ten years. They had no more understanding of my attitude than I did of theirs.

Christmas was the usual family affair, with aunts and uncles and cousins all together around a colossal turkey, presents and drink and arguments and a long afternoon walk beside flooded meadows. At New Year I tried to recapture something of what I felt I’d lost by going out to a party with all my old school friends, but found myself repeatedly defending my decision to
leave
Ewan, despite the fact that he was now comfortably shacked up with Carrie Endicott. I left early and listened to the bells ringing in the New Year as I walked home through empty streets.

Hilary term didn’t start until the middle of January, leaving me two long weeks with very little to do and everybody I knew was either away or wrapped up in work. In the end I went back up a few days early, only to find Oxford empty and cold. I’d known perfectly well that Violet was spending the break in Florence and wouldn’t be there, but I still found myself expecting her to pop her head around the door and offer coffee, while I found myself visiting Emmanuel simply to be where Stephen and I had walked together so often. Like Violet, he was abroad, but in Florida, teaching high-school children to row as a volunteer.

On the third occasion I found my steps taking me to Emmanuel I got such a peculiar look from the head porter that I walked on past the lodge. Not really knowing where I was headed, I carried on along Broad Street and turned up Parks Road. There was frost on the trees and a cold clear sky overhead, but I was well wrapped up, as was the man walking towards me, so that I didn’t recognise him until we were just yards apart – Dr James McLean.