Wildwood (11 page)

The best-looking man who wasn’t my unscrupulous and possibly dangerous employer. ‘Bloody hell,’ I whispered to myself.

I was nearly home, in fact I was just coming up to the back of the cottage, when above the rattle of raindrops on my hood I heard a snort and round the corner of the building stepped a familiar bull-horned figure. My heart leapt into my throat then crashed back into my stomach. ‘Oh Christ!’

He snorted again, softly. I could see the gleam of his rain-slick skin. His dark eyes flashed rings of white.

‘Stop there!’ I snapped, raising the torch in both hands. ‘Don’t move or you know what I’ll do!’

The threat was pathetic, but he stopped dead. His broad chest rose and fell.

‘Oh, you do understand English then?’ I should have switched the torch on anyway, but I didn’t. The smell of wet cow wafted to me. I took a cautious pace forwards. ‘Bull Peter? Is that your name?’

His head tilted, bovine ears flicking forwards to catch my voice. I could see his nostrils flaring and narrowing with every breath. His neck was very thick, his head – apart from the horns and the ears – human but blunt and heavyset, with chestnut curls on his scalp. His skin was precisely the same colour as a ginger biscuit. His expression, which showed only around the
eyes
, was curious but a bit vacant. A beef breed, I thought, not dairy. Beef cattle are bred more docile.

An arse man, not a tit man then. It was his lucky day.

‘Hey now, Peter. You’re not going to hurt me, are you?’ I took another couple of steps, brandishing the torch like Van Helsing brandishing a crucifix. He scraped the earth with one hoof and looked nervous. ‘It’s all right. All right.’ I was within arm’s length now. I reached out with one hand and brushed my fingertips across his chest.

He felt like man, not tree stump. Warm despite the rain. His musculature was that of a man too, except for those feet. He even had nipples. ‘Wow,’ I whispered to myself. He shivered, his hide dancing under my fingertips. I stroked his chest slowly, still holding the torch between us and angled up at his face, my thumb on the button.

Deep in his chest he uttered a noise, half bovine low and half groan.

‘Shush.’ I let my hand trail down to his belly, and followed its path with my eyes. He had no pubic hair. His cock already hung big and distended, though it wasn’t totally out of proportion for a human. Unlike his bollocks, that is. He really was hung like an animal.

‘You’re not real, Bull Peter,’ I whispered, discovering that he had no navel. ‘So what’s the harm?’ My exploring fingertips circled his prick and he shuddered all over. He felt hot in my cold hand and it thickened at once in response to my touch, so that all of a sudden my fingertip couldn’t reach my thumb around its circumference. I stroked him up and down rhythmically. He was like velvet to the touch and, beneath that, hardwood. ‘Oh, you’re a big boy,’ I told him, delighted.

He seemed hypnotised. His head was tilted high. The eye of his cock gleamed, his own lubrication mingling with the rain. I wanted to fondle the big pouch of his balls but I only had
one
hand free so I had to release his cock. His whole frame surged back to life and he laid his hands on the front of my coat. His fingers were thick and blunt.

I should’ve switched the torch on.

He tore my waterproof open, pulling the zip from the rubberised cotton with no apparent effort. Then he tore open my sweatshirt and blouse together, exposing me to the sudden chill, and slid to his knees in front of me. I gasped with shock, rocking on my heels. His head dropped to a level with my torso and then his tongue slid out and lapped at my breast as if trying to lick it off. I was overwhelmed by sensation as he mouthed and licked and tried to suckle at my nipples, coating me in his saliva, his brown eyes rolling. Overwhelmed so completely that I didn’t notice him rending the front of my trousers until the elastic and plastic and the thin leggings beneath had given way with a sound of tearing. I laid my hand on his face and cried out. Then I lost my grip as he ducked his head and licked right up between my legs, nearly lifting me off the floor. Only his hands, transferred to my thighs, kept me from tumbling. He pinned me in place as, snuffling, he explored my exposed sex and gently butted my clit.

Bloody hell – his tongue was
long
, inhumanly so. He had no problem ascertaining my state of readiness or of effecting entry. And there was no question but that I was ready for him. The torch slid out of my numb hand. As he stood he lifted me, holding me to his chest, and bellowed in triumph. The vibration made my head ring.

In three strides he had me pinned against the rough wall of the cottage and I was sobbing with fear and relief as he entered me with his prick. I was slick with his saliva and my own insane desire and he moulded me around him, rearranging my insides to make room for his pizzle. I’d braced myself for a real battering and that is what I got; his thrusts
were
deep and heavy and inexorable. They filled me with his fire. They crushed the breath from me and bruised my arse against the stones.

They were exactly what I needed.

When he’d come – and I’d come twice – and a shift of my weight on his hips had released a wash of his seed overflowing my sex and running down my thighs, I rested my head on his hot shoulder and listened to the thundering of his heart until consciousness left me.

It was a sudden draught that woke me, the chill on my newly exposed breasts. I opened sticky eyes and blinked, trying to make sense of things in the grey light.

It was just before dawn. The rain had stopped and a white mist lay over the silent land. I slid my hand through ivy and a small brown bird rocketed out of the leaves and flew away peeping its protests. That woke me up properly.

I was wedged, standing, between the back wall of my cottage and the remnants of a dead tree which had grown up too close to the foundations. My clothes were torn open down the front and my pubes were mashed against an old knot in the wood. Carefully I tilted sideways and slid out from the embrace of wood and stone, then stood, gnawing my lip.

I was quite sure that when I’d first looked around my new home there’d been no tree stump this close to the house.

Ash came to my house a few evenings later. I shouldn’t have been so surprised to open the door to him, after all he and I – and perhaps his fair-weather activists – were in theory the only people on the Kester Estate once the gates were locked at night. But somehow I’d assumed it was Michael, calling to try his luck.

‘I brought your flask back,’ he said, a little tentatively. He was wearing a long green coat this time to keep out the drizzle.

I gaped, then took the flask from his outstretched hand. ‘Do you want to come in for a drink?’ I suggested after a slightly impolite hesitation.

He nodded.

‘Coffee? Tea?’ I asked as I led him through to the living room. ‘I’ve got some bottled beer I think. You got the last of the sloe gin.’

‘Tea would be great.’ He looked around him curiously. I wished I’d had some warning of company and a chance to clear my usual mess. My little dining table was occupied by my dismantled chainsaw, which I was busy cleaning, and a new chain soaking in a margarine tub full of oil. ‘The sloe gin was much appreciated.’

Indoors, he seemed a whole lot taller. It was a tiny room and he seemed to fill it. I swept an armful of magazines off the sofa. ‘Sit down.’

He sat dutifully. Then as I retreated to the cupboard-sized kitchen he stood up immediately and followed me, stationing himself in the doorway and leaning on the post to watch. I felt rather self-conscious. Was he thinking of that night out in the meadow and my bare body? I wondered.

‘Milk? Sugar?’

‘Just tea, thanks.’

‘How is it going in the woods?’

‘Um. Soggy.’ He folded his arms.

‘I bet. How long have you been living out there?’ I asked as I hunted out tea bags.

‘Oh, pretty much since the last owner of the Grange died. That’s … getting on for four years now.’

I stared. ‘Winter as well?’

He nodded.

‘God. That must be … I mean, I like the outdoor life, but four years in a tent?’

He hooked a wry smile. ‘Sometimes it’s a bit grim. Most of the time it’s OK. And there are days I wouldn’t be anywhere else.’

‘But that’s much longer than Michael Deverick’s owned the place, isn’t it?’

‘I had a lot to do.’

‘To do?’

‘To get ready for him.’

Words failed me. ‘Right.’ I found the last teaspoon in the drawer. ‘What is it exactly that you’ve got against him?’ I thought I might as well hear it from both sides.

‘Exactly? The fact that he doesn’t give a crap what he destroys in order to accumulate the financial power he’s after. You want details? He owns a major investments company and puts money into anything that’ll make him a profit. His money’s behind exploratory oil drilling in Alaskan wilderness and the Russian Taiga. He makes a fortune from palm-oil plantations in the Far East and soya-bean production in South America on land that used to be virgin rainforest. Companies he’s got holdings in are busy right now all across Britain building roads and houses and airports on green fields so that the English can own their own cardboard huts on coast-to-coast identikit estates and escape on their cut-price carbon-heavy holidays every year to places that aren’t ruined yet but will be after they get there with their stag parties and their chip shops and their nightclubs. Oh, and he dabbles in armaments exports.’

‘Well, that’s the Market,’ I said dubiously. I had to take Ash’s cold litany with a pinch of salt.

‘Those are the ones I know about because they happen to be legal. I don’t doubt there are others.’

‘Well he’s not a big fan of rules,’ I admitted. ‘So that’s the guy I’m working for, is it? I’d no idea he was so important.’

Ash raised both eyebrows.

‘I mean, I knew he was rich. He’s throwing money at this place.’

‘Yes.’ The word was loaded with meaning.

‘And you’re going to get in his way, are you?’

‘I’m going to try.’

I picked up the hot mugs and ushered him back into the living room. As he took off his coat and seated himself again I walked casually over to the window and cracked it onto the drizzly night. I really had no choice; Ash had brought in with him a reek of wood smoke and clothes that’d got damp and musty and never dried out. I had no great objection to the first – God knows I was used to it – but the mildewy smell was overpowering.

When I turned back his face was pinched. ‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘It’s OK …’ I was twice as embarrassed as he was. ‘It’s just –’

‘I try to get to the public baths and the laundrette in town but it’s this weather …’

‘Uh-huh.’ I grabbed for another subject. ‘You have a car then?’

‘I hitch.’

‘Right.’ I bit my lip. ‘Um, well, if you wanted a bath here there’ll be loads of hot water now. I forgot to turn the immersion heater off after mine.’

He looked doubtful.

‘And I’ve got a washer and tumble dryer; I could put your clothes through on a quick cycle if you wanted.’ I smiled encouragingly. ‘It all goes on Michael’s electricity bill.’

The ice cracked. ‘OK. That’d be nice. Thanks.’

I showed him the bathroom and climbed onto the chair to pull the biggest towel I owned out of the airing cupboard. He kept his eyes on me all the time, even when my backside was at face height. I felt a bit dithery. ‘You’ve got soap, shampoo,
whatever,’
I said, wishing I’d been able to hide my razor and the tumbled box of tampons. Why wasn’t I naturally
neat
? I opened the cabinet and pointed out the rack inside. ‘Bath fizzies here if you like them. That might be a good one for you. It’s lime and eucalyptus – not too girly.’

I left him in the bathroom and retreated to the armchair, feeling that I’d made a fool of myself. I didn’t have long to collect my dignity before Ash came out again, carrying his clothes in a bundle. He was wearing the towel around his waist and it was long enough to brush the tops of his feet, like a sarong. I fought not to look, and lost. His bare chest was nearly hairless and his left shoulder was covered in a jagged tribal tattoo. I’d expected him to be paper white, being a redhead, but he was tanned to the pale-gold of Jersey cream.

I wanted to lick him.

‘I’ll do it,’ I said, reaching for his bundle, but he carried it to the washing machine himself and loaded it, only letting me add detergent. My machines were kept under the stairs, half-concealed behind the sofa, the only place where there was room for them to be plumbed in. ‘Wash cycle three: there,’ I said, pushing the button.

‘Great.’ He waited for the machine to start drawing water, then returned to the bathroom.

He was in there a long time. Long enough for me to tidy the living room, hurl all my clothes off the floor and into wardrobes, straighten the bedlinen, change into a pair of leggings that didn’t have a spaghetti stain on them, wash up and finally sit down and give my full attention to berating myself for acting like a fourteen-year-old. I was a grown woman and he was a grown man and he was in my house naked and there wasn’t any more simple equation than that, was there?

My eye fell on his mug of tea, balanced on the arm of the sofa. It was cool now. I zapped it in the microwave to bring it
back
to steaming and carried it over to the bathroom door. Softly I knocked, my pulse racing. There was no sound from within. As it happens there’s no lock on my bathroom, so I opened the door and stepped inside.

Ash lay in the milky water under a warm cloud of eucalyptus-scented condensation. Far too tall for my bath, his knees were bent up revealing shins striped with red-gold hair and his dreadlocks dangled into the water about his shoulders. He was fast asleep. Greedily I studied what I could see of his body, but as I looked at the smudges under his eyes I felt a strange flutter of pity. I put the mug down on the corner of the bath. His eyes opened at that small noise and he looked straight up at me.

‘Don’t forget your tea,’ I said, my voice husky. I shut the door behind me as I left.