Thrill Seeker (12 page)

The van door slid open and I squealed, afraid of being seen by passersby. Quickly, the door swooshed and banged into place, leaving the van rocking. In the ensuing silence, I felt horribly alone. If only I could see who this man was. I hoped he’d remove my blindfold when we got to wherever we were going. What if he didn’t and I never got to see his face? Hell, I should have thought this through more.

I’d never set out to snag Mr Right but I’d veered so far off that track I was now at the mercy of Mr Dangerously Wrong. If the thrill of my fantasy weren’t so addictive, I’d be coming to my senses about now. But clarity of thought counts for little when you’re bound and gagged, intensely horny, and are being taken into the unknown by a man you’ve never seen.

The floor beneath me rumbled as the engine started. I noticed a ticking somewhere by my feet. Clock? Time-bomb? The mattress beneath me swayed as the van moved. A short while later, I sensed us turn a corner. Left or right, I couldn’t say. A small wave of motion sickness lifted inside me. The ticking stopped. What was it? Where was he taking me?

Another fragment: ‘
the more authentic the danger feels, the hotter it is for me.’

I lay there in the dark, thinking, ‘What a dumb, reckless thing to say to a stranger on the internet.’

If only I’d said it to Baxter when I’d had the chance, I could have got this fantasy out of my head without fearing for my life.

Baxter used to say, ‘What a mess you’ve got yourself into. Look at the state of you. How d’you end up up like that, eh, hen?’

I remembered being half-dressed and roughly bound, face forward over the back of my armchair, arse upturned, dainty dress bunched beneath the ropes. Baxter came upstairs from the kitchen carrying a bottle of beer. Just the sight of him acting all cocky and leisured after rendering me helpless made my groin flare. I loved how he was so masculine without being macho; loved how that was expressed in so many different ways: the suit, the beer, the easy swagger, the hard-on, the pace, the control.

He took the bottle-opener from the mantelpiece and flicked the lid off his beer, watching me all the time. My lust blazed to feel his eyes roaming over me. I tried to picture what might be running through his mind. I felt like a target he was plotting to destroy, his cunning hunger homing in on the weak spot of my desire, aiming to ruin me by taking me to ecstasy and back.

‘What a fucking mess,’ he said, shaking his head in despair.
He took a swig of beer then proceeded to stalk me, circling the chair while acting baffled and sympathetic. Occasionally he’d readjust a rope or stroke me with possessive tenderness, continuing to make out I was to blame for having ended up in such a humiliating position.

All I could do was wait for him to unleash himself on me. The more he made me wait, the wetter I became. And as ever, the wetter I grew, the more horny, triumphant and grateful Baxter was when he finally started to fuck me. ‘Ah yessss,’ he’d hiss, spinning out the ‘s’ as he sank in deep. ‘What a beauty.’

Another memory: Baxter making me confront myself in the full-length mirror in the bedroom. I was on my knees, hands cuffed behind my back, both of us naked. I’d just been sucking his cock, or rather he’d just been fucking my mouth. He once taught me a word:
irrumatio
. Not
fellatio
, where I suck his cock, but
irrumatio
, where he fucks my mouth. ‘Learn to love it,’ he’d growled, hands in my hair, cock driving hard enough to make me splutter.

When he withdrew, he stuffed my knickers into my mouth, feeding in the last of the fabric with two big fingers. My cheeks bulged, pink lace foaming from my lips as he turned me to meet my reflection. He held me by the hair, waggling my head in warning when I tried to look away. Black tears streaked my face, my eyes bloodshot, my skin hectic and blotched. Next to me, his cock was ramrod-stiff, gleaming with my saliva, his pubes curling damply.

‘Look at the state of you,’ he said brightly. ‘How d’you end up like this, eh? Dirty little cocksucker. You know why your panties are in your mouth, eh? Do you?’

I shook my head, grunting into cotton.

‘Because I dinnae want to hear you speak,’ he said. ‘All
that mouth’s fit for is being used. Not got a dick in it? Then it’s surplus to my requirements. Now come on, suck me again. Do it!’

I grunted to indicate he needed to first remove the underwear from my mouth. My hands were tied, see? Baxter was having none of it. ‘Spit them out,’ he said. ‘Prove how much you want my dick.’

I did as told, glad to be rid of the knickers, gladder still to have Baxter gliding into my mouth again. I loved the strength in his shaft, loved to breathe in the intimacy of his pubes as he bunched my hair in his fists, pulling me close. And most of all, I loved it when he told me what to do. He knew I got off on that because I’d tried to explain it numerous times. I couldn’t say why I liked being forced to submit, only that I did; that I longed to be overtaken and reduced in this way. I didn’t so much get off on the act of submission but in being made to submit. I wanted to resist as if I hated it, the pleasure arising from the process of him doing what was necessary to push me to that place where I had either become greedy and willing or was too weak to fight back.

Does everything, I’d once wondered aloud to Baxter, have to be explained before it gets a pass? Does the nature-nurture debate need to be resolved before I’m allowed to fuck who and how I want? Didn’t gay people get asked the same question – Are you born this way or made? – and discover the answer is: ‘Accept us for who we are, don’t pathologise and try to fix us’?

Baxter took it in his stride, not seeking justification but happy to be with someone he viewed as on a par. My kinky desires were as legitimate as his, and together we could celebrate what we relished, and make each other happy.

What a mess you’ve got yourself into.

I could almost hear him and wished he were with me. Alone in the back of the van, I was suddenly wretched, the pain of my loss spiking like it hadn’t done in months. Oh, it was nothing compared to the immediate, soul-crushing loneliness I’d experienced when Baxter and I had split. But I felt it again, a loss too entangled with longing for me to come to terms with a Baxter-less future. Get over him. Move on. But that’s easier said than done. I’ve never yet discovered how to speed up the process. All I’ve learned in life is to not act on the pain of heartbreak, to understand that grief doesn’t grant you any rights. You’ve just got to sit it out like a hangover.

Tick, tick, tick.

The noise in the van kept coming and going. It sounded as if my time were running out, a countdown to the start or the end of something. Earlier in the journey I’d realised the ticking came from nothing more sinister than the van’s indicator lights. Nonetheless, I couldn’t disassociate the noise from that of a bomb about to explode.

Tick, tick, tick.

The van stopped, engine off. Moments later, the door rumbled open, bringing in a sweep of fresh air. Instinctively, I tried to close my legs. The spreader bar clanged its refusal, the leather cuffs jerking around my ankles. A slice of light peeped through a new chink in my blindfold. The floor of the van dropped as Den climbed in. He didn’t close the door so I guessed we were in a place hidden from public view.

‘You OK?’ His tone was sharp, the question perfunctory.

I nodded although I wasn’t sure.

He removed the spreader bar and ankle cuffs. Grateful, I drew my legs together.

‘Kneel up, move back,’ he said. ‘This way. We’re getting out. Come on. Trust me.’

But I couldn’t see a thing. Like a nervous animal being led by a friendly vet, I shied away from whatever was in front of me.

‘Come on, it’s OK,’ he cajoled, his voice gentler.

The blackness was behind my eyes and I was walking into the void, being taken to the edge of a precipice at midnight. Den got out first, feet thudding on the ground. He hooked his hands in my armpits to help me down. I let him take my weight as I climbed from the van in a terrified half-crouch.

My feet touched the ground. I stood alone. The van door banged shut. Traffic mumbled somewhere in the distance. Gulls shrieked. The sounds carried, suggesting we were close to the seafront, not hemmed in by buildings. I thought I heard far-off waves then decided the rhythmic slush was simply the pounding of blood in my ears.

‘This way.’ Den gripped my upper arms and we walked, his pace too fast for my tentative steps. Impossible not to believe the unseen ground was littered with dangers. I flinched, stalling, when an object flicked from my path with a wooden thunk. A little further on, glass crunched underfoot. I froze, shaking my head, protesting behind the ball gag, my shoulders hunching. Jeez, I was wearing sandals. Couldn’t he pay a little more attention?

‘Sorry, missed that,’ he said. ‘It’s OK, I’ve got you. Clear ahead. Good girl. Left here. Nearly there. Nearly. Perfect, now stand still.’

I stood shivering, cool air under my skirt reminding me I was without underwear. I listened to keys jangling, heard a door creak open. Den led me forward. The door closed behind us with a dull thump. Even through my blindness, I could tell we were in a trapped, dark place, a bad place that
stank of mouldering wood, dust and sadness. I heard bolts being shot. Ah, fuck. What was this? A castle? A dungeon?

‘This part’s tricky,’ said Den, ‘so I’m going to remove your wrist cuffs. Don’t do anything stupid.’

Yeah right, like what? Try and beat you up while ripping off my blindfold and gag?

He removed the cuffs. I flexed my fingers, arching my back to stretch out the muscles.

‘I’m going to pick you up,’ he said. ‘So work with me.’

Suddenly my feet were off the floor and my head was where my stomach had been. I squealed within my mouth and reached for him, accidentally clouting him on the jaw. I found his shoulder and clung on. I was in his arms, scooped up as if he were carrying me over the threshold like a new bride. Some bride. Some groom.

We moved forward, slow and effortful. I heard him kick away debris, sensed him edge around obstacles. Once, my feet brushed against a wall. I grew nervous of stuff touching my face, cobwebs and fallen things, so I nuzzled into his chest to shield myself. He was broad and solid, and I felt safe. He bumped a door open and took us through. I breathed him in, eager to have the smell of his body masking the smell of mildew and age. I strained for the sound of his slightly laboured breath. Jesus, who was he? Whose arms was I trusting? Where on earth had he brought me?

When he set me down, the sounds around us were different, the dankness less offensive to my nose. Our movements echoed in a cavernous space. High above, I heard pigeons cooing and I caught a drift of healthier air.

‘We’re going down some steps now,’ he said. ‘Take my hand.’

Blindly, I reached out. He hooked his arm in mine, linking
fingers and locking our forearms together in a supportive hold. Our hands were tacky as if we were equally nervous.

‘Shallow steps,’ he said, as I faltered on the first.

We took the steps one at a time, me shuffling like an old woman. He gave me tender rewards: That’s right, good girl. Low in my body, every word turned to a voluptuous throb. After an eternity, we paused. Den released my hand. Without his touch, I felt isolated and unsteady, half-fearful I might fall over on my own two feet.

‘You want to see your new home?’ he asked.

I nodded, thinking, Actually, I want to see you.

He fiddled with my blindfold then swept it from my eyes. I blinked, my ball gag trapping a gasp, my visual cortex overwhelmed by a spectacle of crumbling decadence. We were in a dark, derelict fairytale, monsters lurking in the shadows. No, in a tilting, gothic amphitheatre of chipped gilt and torn velvet. I turned, scanning wildly. No, no, this was an old Victorian theatre, fallen into ruin.

We stood among a high tier of seats, curving rows of scruffy, crimson chairs sloping towards a balcony edge. What would you call it? The dress circle? In the drop below would have been the stalls but now it was a chairless arena, the flooring stripped back to scarred concrete. The stage, flanked by ornate gold columns and romping cherubs, was bisected by a scalloped, bottle-green canopy hanging at forty-five degrees. One green velvet curtain pooled on the bare boards, tassels of gold floating on its surface like strange, precious water lilies. Below the stage, the barrier of the orchestra pit echoed the richness elsewhere, invisible musicians penned in by a fence resembling decorative brocade.

Although the auditorium was empty, it seemed as if rows of skeletal ghosts were gazing at that stage, vintage
programmes flaking in their laps, everyone frozen by a play without end.

I looked left, right and above. Curlicues of gold licked at elegant pillars, at balconies and boxes that might have been crafted from sugar-frosting. Bald patches of plaster gaped through the splendour. Higher still, in a domed ceiling swirling with reds and golds, hung an enormous chandelier, tiers of glass pendants grey with dust, supporting wires twisting like vines around its stems. Chunky lights in the dome cast a diffuse milky haze, rendering the theatre vaporous, on the verge of disappearance.

Ozymandias
, I thought.
My name is Ozymandias, look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.

‘Impressive, isn’t it?’

His voice startled me, so close and yet so small in the theatre’s desolation. I swung around, shocked by his presence, shocked I’d been too stunned to give him my immediate attention.

As if my struggle to absorb my surroundings wasn’t enough, there he was, my captor, my tormentor, standing on a step behind me. My heart leaped into my mouth. I recoiled, tottering dangerously, hands raised in defence. I screamed but the noise was locked in my throat.

I’d been cheated, betrayed.

He was there and yet he wasn’t.

Once again, he was masked. He had no face, no eyes.

Athletic build: check.

6'2": check.

Face: no check; no fucking check!

Instead, I gazed at stark, white features too smooth to be human. At a scuffed, fibreglass mask patterned with grids of small black holes. I thought of Munch’s
The Scream
, that
elongated face melting into terror. But the mask was hard and nasty too, a warrior’s mask. Two sharp red triangles slashed the cheekbones while between the eyes, a third red mark suggested a vicious frown. The marks sparkled with red glitter. He was a cyborg, an alien.