Wildwood (19 page)

When the stag stepped out of a thicket and stood before us, head lifted proudly, I wasn’t afraid despite its size. Its seventined antlers trailed scraps of velvet it was burnishing off in readiness for the rut, and its shaggy neck was as red as autumn bracken. Some trick of the light as it was sieved through the leaves made those antlers look golden. I slipped my hand from Ash’s and stepped forwards towards the deer, fingers outstretched. It wasn’t afraid. It dipped its nose, nostrils flaring as it sought my scent, then suddenly – and yet without a suggestion of haste – turned away and with a kick of its elegant legs was out of sight among a stand of saplings.

Ash caught me from behind. ‘Careful,’ he murmured, as if I were drunk. I could hardly complain; I did feel tipsy. It hadn’t occurred to me that the stag might have been a threat.

Ash led me back to the hollow where I collected my small bundle of clothes and changed into my own trainers. Then he walked me home, steering me cautiously through the orchard and keeping a sharp lookout. I had rather more idea now of what he had to fear away from the shelter of the wood and told him, ‘It’s all right: Michael’s not on site today. He got called away suddenly at the start of the week.’ My words sounded sour even to me, but Ash visibly relaxed.

It didn’t deter him from his mission of taking me back to my cottage. He didn’t ask permission this time to enter, either, steering me right through to the bathroom. My blood leapt hopefully as he reached over and turned on the shower. ‘You’ve got to wash, Avril.’

‘Join me?’ I suggested, easing off my shoes.

Ash smiled and shook his head. ‘Come on.’

I stuck my lower lip out and backed up against the door frame, refusing to oblige. I didn’t care if he was all spent up for the day; we could work something out. I wanted to feel his hands on me and his skin against mine; there was an ache like hunger in my belly. ‘Make me,’ I said with a quick grin.

With a sigh, Ash began to slip the shirt buttons down my breastbone. I didn’t resist. I bit my lip and watched his face, fascinated, as he undressed me. He was acting like a responsible bloke looking after a very drunk female friend, all detached self-deprecating concern. I liked that, in a strange way. I liked the gentleness of his hands too, and the way he took his time. I liked the way he had to keep reminding himself to look away from my breasts as he slid the shirt off my shoulders and undid the webbing belt cinched at my waist. I liked the line of his lips and the fall of his hair against his cheek and the glint of the rings in the red gold of his eyebrow. I wanted so much to touch him. But I didn’t dare, not after the mess I’d made of things last time.

Out of nowhere, tears welled up in my eyes. Christ, I am drunk, I thought in amazement.

The bathroom was starting to fill with steam.

Softly he let the trousers slip down from my hips and pool on my feet. There I was standing against the door frame, naked but for my wine-red knickers, yet it was the desire in my expression that was the most shamelessly naked thing about me. His fingertips brushed my hip and he caught his breath. As he
lifted
his eyes to mine I saw my longing mirrored there, its edge as keen and cruel as my own.

‘Avril.’ The word was inaudible; I saw only the movement of his lips.

Oh God – I was on the verge of begging, and I mustn’t do that. ‘I dream about you,’ I told him, and something flickered in the depths of his eyes.

‘Do you?’

‘Do dreams matter?’

‘They can do. Depends what you dream.’

‘I dream we’re in the wood. It’s always the wood. Why’s that?’

‘“I have come to the borders of sleep”,’ he quoted softly, taking me by surprise. ‘“The unfathomable deep / Forest where all must lose / Their way, however straight / Or winding, soon or late; / They can not choose”.’

I shivered. ‘That’s good. Who wrote it?’

‘A poet … A friend of mine.’

‘I like it, but it’s a bit creepy. Like the wood.’

‘Ah.’

‘Do you feel that way too?’

‘About the poem?’

‘About the wood.’

‘Ah. Yes, of course. It’s too old for humans to be comfortable there.’

‘There are places where we should be uncomfortable though,’ I answered. ‘Like the deep ocean. The forests. Under the stars. There are places we shouldn’t feel safe. It’s good for us.’

Ash nodded, seriously. His fingers curled around the curve of my bare shoulder. ‘Are your dreams comfortable?’ he asked.

I moistened my lips. ‘I dream that we’re together.’

He exhaled. ‘Am I … fucking with you?’ His words filled me with cream.

‘Yes.’

‘In the wood.’

‘Yes.’

He nodded, slowly. ‘Sounds like a good dream.’

‘It is. It could almost be real.’

He looked at me silently, need balanced against doubt in his face.

‘I wake up wet,’ I whispered, touching his lips with my fingertips. He didn’t flinch away. ‘Nearly every night. Wanting you to finish what you’ve started. Wanting it to be real.’

He seemed to have stopped blinking. ‘And what … What do we do? In your dreams?’ We were so close, standing there in the bathroom doorway, that the softest murmur could be heard even over the hiss of the shower. I held his eyes with mine, light-headed with the unexpected power.

‘Sometimes we run through the woods and you throw me down on the moss and take me from behind. Sometimes you put me up against a trunk and do me rough and hard. Sometimes you just lick my tits and I go crazy. I have,’ I explained, and I was nearly trembling, ‘very sensitive nipples, you see.’

He looked down. ‘In your dream, this is?’ His fingers brushed my right nipple. I felt the tiny shock through my whole breast, and the tip tightened.

‘No,’ I whispered. ‘Really.’ I bit my lip as his thumb circled the rosy halo and it responded eagerly. ‘The first time you sucked my boobs … Ah …’

‘I remember.’

‘Christ. You nearly made me come there and then.’

Ash seemed almost hypnotised, though his hand kept moving. ‘I didn’t know –’ he flicked the flushing nipple, watching it swell and harden ‘– you’re that sensitive.’ His eyes rose to meet mine. ‘Soft or hard?’

‘Ah. Oh.’ My mouth had become disconnected from my brain
‘Both
. In turn. You know.’ My eyes were pleading. ‘Quite hard, near the end.’

His fingers closed slowly in a pinch. ‘Like this?’ he asked as lightning flashed behind my eyes and my clit spasmed. I made an inarticulate noise halfway between a yelp and a moan. ‘Oh. I see.’ He seemed quietly pleased by his first experiment and pulled on the nipple, distorting the swell of my breast.

My eyes rolled. ‘Ah!’ Without thinking I reached out to press my hand to his chest; he reacted instantly, letting go of my hot little stud and grabbing my wrists in both hands.

‘Oh no,’ he said, shoving both wrists to the small of my back. His body was suddenly pressed up against mine. Then, still gripping my crossed wrists in one hand, he cupped the breast he’d just abandoned and squeezed the soft flesh. My torment turned instantly to delight as he stooped to seize the nipple in his mouth. I arched my back, pushing up against his parted lips and sliding tongue, and my body writhed though I made no real attempt to pull out of my bondage. He ate at me hungrily, suckling one breast and then the other, and it was nothing like the gentle attention he’d paid with his mouth when he’d anointed me for going into the wood; it was slow but deliberately provocative, like a challenge. My nipples rose to meet that challenge, hard and plump as cherries even under the threatening nip of his teeth.

But it was all awkward work for a man of his height and he changed his mind suddenly, bending to catch my thighs in both hands and lift me bodily from the floor. I gasped, taken by surprise; it was easy to underestimate the strength behind Ash’s long lines. Suddenly I was taller than him, looking down on his face levelled with my breasts. He jammed me back against the door frame, pinning me with his body, and I wrapped my thighs about his chest. My mons was mashed against his hard torso. His forearms were taking the weight of
my
thighs and the tips of his fingers stroked the gusset of my panties, making me quiver. He wasn’t in any position to secure my hands now and he didn’t try to shake me off as I buried my hands in his long hair and urged his mouth back to my wet, erect nipples.

It was the most tender, exquisite, terrible mauling he gave me; gentle one moment, wickedly stinging the next. He wasn’t impatient like so many men; he seemed to revel in it. I watched his mouth tugging my tit, his eyes closed, his throat working in smooth swallows. I ran my hands over his face and he cast me a burning glance from those hazel eyes that took my breath away.

‘Oh, you’re beautiful,’ he whispered, his mouth moving from my right to left breast. Somehow, when he said it I believed it.

He set my breasts on fire with those hot kisses and, as if my body was touchpaper, the flames ran through my shoulders and down my spine and set off an explosion in my sex. I came without bothering to restrain my screams, reckless with delight. Delight that my tits were getting eaten. Delight that at last Ash was making love to me.

As I gasped my way through the sweaty afterwash of orgasm he buried his face between my glossy, reddened orbs, his breath hot and harsh on my breastbone. Then he let me slide back down to earth, holding me against the door frame until he could be sure my feet were firmly on the floor. ‘I dream too,’ he whispered in my ear.

I drew back to stare at him, breathless and not sure what he meant. ‘The same …?’

‘The same dreams. It’s the Wildwood, Avril; nothing but the wood at work in us. It’s not just a place on the map, you know.’

I shook my head. I could feel him pressed up against me, feel the solid curve of his cock.

‘Have a shower, Avril. Wash it off. Get some sleep.’ Ash let me go.

‘You’re going to leave me like this?’ I whimpered.

Ash bit his lip. ‘Yes.’

How?
I wanted to yell, but what I asked was ‘Why?’

He touched my face, his eyes dark with desire. I held my breath. Then he blinked, and in that tiny movement he somehow withdrew from me, mastering himself. ‘Avril, you need to choose which side you’re on.’

My heart fell with a crash. ‘I thought I had done.’

‘It takes more than just words or dreams. Now, come on. In the shower.’ Carefully he drew me to the bath and put me under the warm water, knickers and all. All the fight had gone out of me. I accepted the bar of soap he put into my hands. He watched to make sure that the water had touched every inch of my skin and soaked my hair before quietly turning away and, gathering up his fallen clothes, leaving.

7: Hunting with the Hounds

MICHAEL DIDN’T SHOW
up on site for weeks. We were working on the lawn below the house when he did. Some previous landowner had had a summerhouse built right around the trunk of a big walnut and the wooden structure had collapsed in on itself over the last few years. I’d spotted dieback in the tree’s crown and I wanted to inspect the bole for signs of honey fungus, so the three of us were dismantling the rotted timber of the Edwardian pergola and throwing it into a skip. Tony looked up as he swung a beam onto his shoulder, grunted and indicated with a jerk of his head that I needed to take a look behind me.

Michael Deverick stood on the gravel path, hands in his trouser pockets, with the rueful air of someone who couldn’t walk across the lawn without ruining his £300 shoes.

‘Wants a word, you reckon?’ said Tony.

‘Tosser,’ said Owen amiably under his breath. They had nothing personal against Deverick, who almost never interfered with our work, but Owen regarded anyone who wore a suit for anything but funerals and weddings as a waste of space.

‘OK.’ I shucked off my heavy leather gloves and dropped them on a clear patch of grass before strolling over, taking enough time to compose my features. Over the days I’d had time to shuffle through every emotion and attitude in the deck as far as Michael was concerned. I thought I was ready to face him again. That didn’t prevent the sudden lurch in my belly as he turned that smile of his on me.

‘Avril. Seeing you makes the journey down here worthwhile.’

I said nothing, but raised an eyebrow cynically. I was tanned a deep copper brown by the summer but right now I was gleaming with exertion and flecks of paint and smears of mildew were gummed to my skin. I put one hand on my hip and stood with my back straight, refusing to yield under his alarmingly intimate gaze. At least we were out of earshot of the others, so long as we kept our voices down.

‘You must know what it’s like to be at the beck and call of your work,’ he added.

‘I certainly do.’

‘I didn’t mean to be away so long. I’ve missed you. Believe me. I’ve had to resort with distressing frequency to your fine, fine photo.’

I couldn’t match his gaze steadily, no matter how hard I tried. ‘Right,’ I muttered. I’d not demanded that he delete the damn thing as I figured there was no point. He was perfectly capable of either refusing point-blank or of acquiescing only to lie.

‘It’s extraordinary, you know. Nobody would believe me. To find, in the middle of bloody nowhere, such a treasure: the most perfect, beautiful arse on the planet.’

Every card in the deck, and the one I turned up right now was desire. I was hot and melting already. It was his gently teasing voice and the tilt of his lips and those goddamn eyes. I had no resistance. It was so unfair.

‘You’ve no idea, Avril, how tempted I’ve been to boast about you. To let others see what I’ve seen.’

‘I bet.’

He grinned. ‘I’ve thought about taking you up to London for a board meeting. Just to see you walk the length of a long table on hands and knees, arse up, and get a standing ovation from every man in the room.’

‘What do you want?’ I growled.

‘Ah.’ His eyes widened. ‘Where to start? I did want to discuss the state of the rhododendron shrubbery. Perhaps we should stroll down there for a look.’

I cast a despairing glance around. ‘It rained last night,’ I managed to say. ‘Your suit will be ruined.’