Wildwood (23 page)

‘You’re mine,’ said Michael in my ear. ‘I’m going to let her play with you, because that’s my pleasure, but you belong to me. Your body knows that already, doesn’t it?’

I whimpered under my breath. I had no idea whether he was staking his claim or simply enjoying the game, but he was right about my body; it was wholehearted in its treacherous
collaboration
. As Michael drew back one side of my gown to expose my right breast my nipple stood proud to meet him, not so large or dark as Jenny’s but hard anyway, a sweet brown nut.

‘Well. Somebody’s feeling … perky.’ He took it between thumb and finger, twisting it gently, enough to make me quiver. ‘I get so carried away in admiring your arse, Avril, that I forget how much you love having your juicy little tits touched. You’d do almost anything to have me do this.’ He pinched me softly and I cried out in pleasure and humiliation, causing him to smile. ‘Oh, that’s good, is it?’

‘Yes,’ I said in the smallest of voices.

‘You want more?’ He used his nails on my skin and I heaved against him. He kept playing as Jenny crawled up over me, and he traced the whorls of my ear with his tongue, his breath hot. His touch was nearly enough to distract me from her green, inhuman eyes. She made a low, musical, almost birdlike sound in her throat as she leant in to kiss me. Then Michael withdrew the tip of his tongue from my ear and turned to her. ‘No,’ he said in a voice like lead.

A sneer flickered over Jenny’s face, but she lowered her head obediently to my breasts. She stroked one hand down my breastbone, easing the other panel of silk aside, tugging the knot of the belt loose so that I was bared all the way down to my pubic triangle. Then she returned her attention to my tits, stroking the sensitive inner surfaces until I shut my eyes, my skin singing. Her fingers were cold. Her mouth was too, inside and out, as it closed around my left nipple. I gasped out loud.

‘Oh yes,’ said Michael. ‘You are particularly sensitive there, aren’t you?’ His own excitement was more than evident, pushing up against me through his trousers. ‘Isn’t she good?’

She was incredible. Her tongue was cold, and she used it to stir my nerve endings to tingling frenzy. She licked and she lapped and she suckled and she nibbled. I looked down at her
only
once and saw that there was sand in her hair, a fine drift of golden mica glittering in the natural parting lines. Then I had to shut my eyes again as the tide of sensation dragged me under and I gave way to the tormenting pleasure of her lips, arching my back to push more of my breasts into her delicious mouth. Michael abandoned that territory to his ally and slipped his hand between my thighs instead. I writhed and let my legs part, unresisting as he explored me thoroughly.

‘Oh, Avril, your pot is quite full, isn’t it? Full of your warm fuck honey. You are a wicked girl, getting so turned on. You know I’m a bad, bad man but you’re sat in my lap wriggling like a whore and you’re letting a strange girl suck your beautiful tits. You’re in slut heaven, you wicked girl.’

From the other side Jenny’s slim hand joined his between my thighs, slipping inside me. His hand was warm, hers was not; the contrast of sensations nearly turned me inside out. His imprisoned erection ground up against me. His other hand tightened on my wrists until the fingers bit into my flesh.

‘You’re so turned on you’re about to come,’ he whispered. ‘I haven’t even got my cock in you, and you’re coming already.’

And I was.

‘Yes,’ he murmured as I writhed upon him, ‘that’s it. That’s it.’

I came back downstairs in the middle of the night and stumbled into the kitchen for a glass of orange juice. I’d managed about an hour’s sleep so far in the cramped confines of a bed most certainly not built for three and I was dehydrated and aching. When I did sleep my dreams had been so vivid that they’d woken me. I stood in the kitchen doorway sipping my drink and looking at our clothes, scattered where they’d been shed. My head felt like it was stuffed with memories and dream images too crowded together to take flight, stamping and clambering over one another and clamouring for release. I tried to
ignore
them; I knew it would be days before I could sort out my feelings. Michael had managed everything on his wish list and a few more. If I gave myself space the visual memory that pushed to the forefront now was of reaching up with my tongue to lick his dangling balls as he fucked Jenny, who was lying face down on me with her own face buried busily between my legs. The mental picture of his shaft sinking into her tight sex, inches from my nose, threatened to send my head into meltdown and I shook myself. It was too early to deal with any of this, and would have to wait for the morning. I needed to sleep on it.

I’d come so often that I’d lost count.

Michael had fallen asleep between the two of us, eventually. Jenny … Well, I had no idea if things like her did sleep, but she’d certainly curled up into a ball and given the impression of it. She’d never uttered a word all evening, though she mewed like a cat when she reached orgasm. I ran my hand up my arm, shivering. She was cold as porcelain inside and out, that one, and had no sexual aroma at all. It was like fucking with a plastic toy. I wondered what would happen if you cut her: Was there any blood in those veins?

I was heading back to the stairs when I saw Michael’s jacket on the back of a dining chair. That was when the notion first entered my head. Ash had said the grimoire would be kept close by him all the time and I was certain that if this was the case it wouldn’t be in a hotel room or even the Grange; Michael simply wasn’t here that often. He was always on the move. That left his car. I went and nudged the jacket, and felt through the fabric the hard cluster of a set of keys.

Despite the orange juice my mouth dried up again. I squinted up the stairs, alert for any movement or sound, but the tick of the landing clock was the only noise. I turned back to the jacket. A warning instinct prickled the hairs on the back of my neck:
if
the grimoire was in the car, Michael was not going to have left it unguarded. Well, time spent with Ash had taught me at least one trick and I ran my hands across my skin and reached between my thighs, searching out the encrustations of Michael’s semen. Only when I was certain my hands smelt of him did I reach into the pocket, holding my breath. The keys fizzed against my fingertips like a battery against the tongue. Gently I eased them out into the light. Then, my heart hammering in my throat, I stole out into the hall and slipped out quietly into the night.

My bedroom, converted from the roof space, thankfully didn’t have a window overlooking the front of the house. I never would have dared to do what I did if there’d been a possibility of being overlooked. Stark naked, I pointed the vehicle’s remote key at the big black 4x4 and saw the indicators flash once as it unlocked. I went into the boot first, careful not to touch the bodywork with anything but my anointed hands. The courtesy light cast a weak glow. There was a laptop in a zipped bag, a set of clothing hanging in a plastic cover from the high roof and a small travelling bag, the sort made of toughened security plastic, which was locked. I nearly panicked then. I had to force myself to go through the keys one at a tíme until I found the one that fitted. Looking over my shoulder every few seconds, I rummaged carefully through the contents. I was disappointed; it contained nothing but toiletries, more clothes and a few official-looking letters and documents. And, like a toy, a tiny wire model of the art installation in the foyer of the Grange, exquisite in its detail.

I could have given up then. I wanted to. It would have been so much easier just to sneak back to bed and lie alongside him. I was getting cold. But I moved the bag aside and went into the storage compartment under the carpet.

There it was, next to the tool set: a flattish cardboard box,
dark
blue and bearing no mark. A shirt box, maybe. When I eased off the lid I found a leather-bound book inside. All the breath came out of me in a moan.

This was it; I’d done just what Ash had asked. I could tell him where the grimoire was now, and leave the rest up to him. Or, I thought, I could take it. My stomach tightened. I looked out towards the wood, but there was no moon up and I could see nothing at all beyond the car’s dim glow. I could take the book and run to Ash, right now; he could hide it in the wood and Michael would never get it back.

No, I told myself. I couldn’t go to there naked and stinking of sex with Michael – the Wildwood would kill me. That was what I told myself, knowing full well that it was Ash I didn’t want to face like this.

I could take the book and hide it, though the risk was terrible.

When in doubt, act. Thinking opens the way for fear and doubt. Thinking leads only to paralysis. The world doesn’t belong to those who agonise over every decision and consequence; it belongs to men like Michael Deverick.

I took the book and left the box as one last layer of camouflage. I didn’t open the volume; a look at the thick uneven page edges and the hand-stitched binding told me this was no photo album or keepsake, even if the faint smell of mustiness hadn’t betrayed its age. I replaced everything as well as I could, locked the car and turned back to the house. Going indoors was nerve-racking; in my mind’s eye I was already picturing Michael waiting for me, his face black with fury. But the living room was as I’d left it. I looked wildly around at the cupboards, then scooted behind the sofa and stuffed the book into the washing machine. There was a load of dirty clothes just sitting there in the drum and I buried the grimoire under them.

It was as I slipped the keys back into his jacket that I heard
the
creak of wood and looked up to see Jenny leaning over the banister, watching me. My brain seemed to freeze up; I stood like a moonstruck calf as she descended the last few stairs, her lips parting in a terrible grin. In the hours we’d spent together I’d never once seen her teeth, but I saw them now and it suddenly made sense of the strange shape of her skull because they were teeth like an attack dog’s, only as green as pond scum.

They don’t like artificial light, I thought dimly, wondering where the torch was, but then I realised that we were already standing under a light bulb. Silently, as graceful as a pike in deep water, she crossed the carpet to where I stood. There was no suggestion of violence in her body language, only desire, and I was so dazed I didn’t know how to react. She was taller than me now; she could look me straight in the eye. She reached out her hands and clasped my numb face and brought her lips to mine in a lingering kiss. I tried to resist, but not swiftly or vehemently enough, and her cold tongue pushed between my lips. Then she hunched, her throat bulging, and began to vomit water into my mouth – cold silty water that went down my throat and back up to spurt out of my nostrils, into my stomach, down my windpipe. I tried to pull away but her grip on my head was implacable. I grabbed at her wrists but they were inhumanly strong. I clawed and punched wildly at her head, but she took no notice, and when I dug my thumbs in her eyes they yielded like frogspawn, only to fill the sockets again as my hands slackened.

Drowning is agony. I know, because that was what was happening to me; I was drowning, and the panic was overwhelming. I was partially aware that we were stumbling about the room crashing into the furniture, but the bruising I was getting from that was as nothing to the pain in my chest where it felt like liquid concrete was being forced into my lungs,
tearing
the fragile tissues. My vision began to cloud over, red and black. My flailing hands grew weaker.

Then suddenly Jenny released me, recoiling. As I fell to the floor I caught a blurry, lopsided glimpse of Michael standing there brandishing something white in his hand. It was the plastic canister of table salt from my kitchen, though I didn’t work that out till much later. ‘Avaunt!’ he roared.

Jenny, clutching at her shoulder, hissed through her long green teeth. Michael flung his hand out, a pale slosh of salt struck her full on and she dissolved instantly into a sheet of water, which hung for a moment before splashing to the floor. That was all I saw before I began heaving out the fluid from my lungs and stomach. It was so painful I was convinced I had to be regurgitating blood, but it soaked into the carpet like Jenny herself had, a clear liquid rendered pale brown with silt. A few stranded invertebrates wriggled their death throes on the rug: water fleas, a tadpole or two, a small black beetle. When I saw that I threw up again, and kept heaving till my stomach was empty. I was only dimly aware of Michael putting his arms around me and holding me through the spasms and the shuddering.

When I’d fallen quiet with exhaustion he helped me to my feet and guided me into the bathroom, where he wrapped me in a towel and washed my face gently with a warm cloth. He fetched me a cup of tea to sip too, and that helped take away the lingering taint of the murky pond water. Then when I could hold my head up properly once more he picked me up bodily in his arms and carried me back upstairs to bed. Lying alongside me he tenderly stroked me, easing my muscles into relaxation and reminding my body that it could feel more than pain and revulsion, until in the end we made love, very gently, holding one another close as we slipped into orgasm and sleep.

I woke when Michael, smelling of toothpaste, leant over me to kiss my forehead. For a few moments I was too groggy to remember what had happened and I just blinked sleepily at him.

‘Got to go,’ he whispered. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed. A grey pre-dawn steeliness picked out the pattern on the bedroom curtains in black. ‘I’ve got a flight to catch from Bristol Airport.’

The sudden recollection of what I’d done made me pull the edge of the duvet over my mouth and nose. As if in recognition he patted his jacket pocket absently and I heard the chink of his keys.

‘It’s a pity really,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘Still. See you later, Avril.’

As he let himself out of the front door I shook off the paralysis that had seized me and bounded downstairs. The grimoire was still there where I’d left it in the washing machine. I stared at it, listening to the sound of Michael’s car engine fading into the distance. It was my moment of revenge and I should have felt triumphant, but in actuality I felt terrible.