Wildwood (21 page)

Then he fucked me, one elbow on the table, one hand on my knee holding me wide open. Unable to get a purchase with my legs I was nearly helpless, at his mercy for my own pleasure. I’d expected something quick and rough, and I wasn’t wrong. What took me by surprise was how turned on I was by the discomfort of the hard desk and by the frustration of being unable to get my legs apart and round him. I writhed and jiggled like I’d never done before. As Michael quickened to his climax he ran the hand up from my knee to my crotch, his thumb stirring my clit to make sure I came. I was already teetering on the edge of that roller-coaster drop into orgasm, but I wasn’t going to protest.

‘Look at you,’ he grunted. ‘Legs wide open for the boss. Getting fucked by your boss. You’re shameless. You shameless slut.’ As I came down the plunge and went into roll after pulsing roll he thrust savagely, and then just as I was flattening out into exhaustion he whipped his cock out and came up the length of my body, ragged pennants of jism unfurling to splatter on my breasts and belly.

Over his groan I heard the sound of feet on the stairs.

‘Christ!’ My heart turned over and went crashing down into my stomach.

Michael’s eyes flashed open. ‘Shush.’

‘Mr Deverick?’ The voice was close, just outside the plastic barriers. A man’s voice.

‘Come on in.’

I felt a bolt of sheer panic go through me. I made one attempt to sit up but Michael put his hand on my breastbone and shoved me down flat on the table. His face was like a mask. ‘Stay down.’

I heard the rustle of the plastic curtain. ‘Mr Deverick …’ Then: ‘Jesus Christ …’ I knew exactly what the builder could see: his employer stood between a pair of splayed knees. ‘Sorry, mate, I’ll come back later.’

‘No. Stay.’ Michael adjusted himself and pulled up his fly, his eyes never letting mine go. ‘I’ve just finished.’ He stepped away, leaving me totally exposed. ‘Take a look if you like.’

‘Fucking hell,’ said the other man in awe.

It was my worst nightmare. The blackest fear I could think of. I put my forearm over my eyes in a pathetic attempt to hide. I tried to close my knees but Michael slapped them casually apart and I had no strength to resist; it was far too late. My breasts heaved as the air fled in and out of my lungs.

‘Like her, Mr Dunster?’ Michael walked smartly around the desk to my head.

‘Fuck yes.’ Dunster sounded more stunned than anything. I was glad I couldn’t picture his face. I was glad it was no one I knew.

‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she? She’s a goddess, Mr Dunster, laid upon the sacrificial altar for you. Come a bit closer if you like.’

His feet squeaked on the plastic floor covering. He swore again under his breath, keeping it going like a mantra.

‘You should worship her, Mr Dunster. Get your face down in there, why don’t you, and pay her beauty homage?’

‘Ah … Not where you’ve just dipped your wick.’

For a moment Michael’s voice went very cold. ‘I came on her tits, you’ll find. Get on your knees. Taste her.’

I felt callused hands on my thighs and I cried out in protest. At once Michael clapped his hand to my throat, drawing my head back. His touch was gentle but firm. He laid my arm aside and suddenly I was looking into his face upside down over mine, his blue eyes like salvation. ‘Shush,’ he chided me tenderly.
Then
he looked back down the length of my body. ‘What are you waiting for? Make her come and I’ll give you a fifty per cent bonus this month.’

Dunster’s warm head pushed between the tops of my thighs and pressed against my slit. One arm circled my left thigh; I imagined that the other hand was going to his own crotch. I began to sob, the tears spilling out to run down to my ears, and Michael brushed the tears away with his thumbs and bent to brush his lips against mine, gently. ‘It’s OK,’ he whispered.

Then Dunster’s mouth found my wetness and my openness, his tongue delving the length of my split sex, and all the world went away. That world with all its fears and betrayals was too much for me to deal with. All that I knew was his mouth and Michael’s, one on either end of my body, and Michael’s hand sliding down to caress my breasts and throat. He’d never been so gentle with me. His lips were soft like the touch of petals. Dunster was serious, revelling in his task, his sucking mouth and lapping tongue dedicated. My body was still charged with desire from our frantic quickie and he found his job neither difficult nor unpleasant. His slurping was enthusiastic as he drank my juices. And I was nothing, less than no one, just lips and tits and cunt, no Avril attached to them any more.

Then I was all cunt.

I came, sobbing, three times, one after another like a cascade of fireworks. The last time Dunster was almost gobbling, and when he’d done he mashed his face, groaning, into my flesh and jerked off. I felt it splash up my leg.

‘Tissue,’ said Michael after a decent interval, opening a drawer and throwing him a pack. As Dunster fumbled about, Michael stroked the hair back from my forehead and kissed me again. His eyes were shining.

I didn’t sit up. I felt so drained that I was sure I could simply cease breathing and die there. I closed my eyes.

‘Well, um, Mr Deverick …’

‘You wanted something when you came up here?’

For a few minutes they discussed the complications of customised soffits that were not up to the order specifications over the length of my supine body as if I were not there at all. I felt as if I’d ceased to exist. My breathing slowed until I must have looked as if I were asleep. I had nothing to fear about the future; the worst had already happened.

‘I’ll, er, keep this one under my hat, shall I?’ Dunster still sounded dazed. ‘Jesus.’

‘It would probably be for the best.’

I heard him leave. I opened my eyes and looked up at the man who’d betrayed me. He was watching the plastic curtains with an intense expression. Then I heard it: a cry, a thump that became a long tumbling series of blows – the sound of a man falling headlong down a staircase. From the floor below came shouts of enquiry and alarm.

‘A stroke,’ said Michael quietly. ‘Extensive damage to the speech areas of the brain. Even when he recovers he’ll never speak or write an intelligible word again.’ He slid his hands under my shoulders and sat me up on the desk. ‘Your need for discretion,’ he murmured into my ear, ‘has cost me a foreman.’

I think that was the moment I first realised what Michael was doing to me. I should have been horrified and disgusted and frightened. And I did feel all those things, faintly. But overriding every other emotion at that moment was a great wave of relief.

Michael wasn’t the only fleeting visitor to the estate. One warm August night I was just getting ready for bed when I heard something scraping and rattling outside my living-room window. Grasping a torch and a steel felling lever I went out
to
investigate. The torch, chosen in case it turned out to be Bull Peter again, wasn’t necessary for the sake of illumination as there was a full moon that night. As I peered around the corner I saw it was a big deer rattling its antlers against my plastic water butt and, as it lifted its head, catching my scent, I saw the gleam of the moonlight on those tines and realised it was my stag from the wood, the one with the golden antlers.

I caught my breath. He stared at me, breathing hard. There were big dark patches on his flanks and I caught a rank whiff of his sweat. Then, still staring, he put out a foreleg and pawed deliberately at the empty bucket under the stopcock of the barrel, knocking it sideways.

‘You want some water?’ I whispered, not wanting to frighten him. The stag retreated a few paces. His ribs were heaving. ‘OK then. Hold on.’ Carefully I sidled along the wall to the bucket, watching him intently just as he watched me. Filling it from the butt, I swung it out into the open and backed off. The stag came forwards without hesitation, moving with all the unearthly grace of his species, and dipped his muzzle in the water, drinking greedily. Not for long though – all at once there came from over the other side of the house a sound of horns and the faint but insistent clamour of a pack of hounds. The stag’s head swung up and a rasping bellow came from his throat. Springing away, he disappeared into the moonlit shimmer.

‘Shit,’ said I. Then, ‘No you bloody don’t!’ and I ran back into the house, scrabbling through the junk on the kitchen table to get my phone. It’s complete bollocks, the myth that every country person is in favour of blood sports, and stag hunting in particular turns my stomach. It used to be very big up on the Devon moors; more recently it had become illegal. But when I grabbed the phone two things made me hesitate: I’d never heard of hunting with hounds at night, and it had
suddenly
occurred to me that if there was a clandestine hunt taking place on the estate then my employer could well be its instigator.

As I stood there the belling of the hounds grew much louder, sweeping about the house, and with it came the thunder of hooves. Dark forms flickered past the windows. Stuffing my phone into my pocket I ran out of the house, not even stopping to shut the door. The noise and the figures of the rearmost riders were dwindling in the direction of the old orchard. I picked up my heels and ran after them.

I’d slowed to a jog by the time I got to the apple trees and caught up with them though, partly because of the distance run and partly through caution. I could see a crowd of riders dressed in tweeds and dark-green hunting jackets milling about in a cluster. They were brandishing, of all things, the phosphorescent glow sticks that you get at concerts and parties, and the sickly greenish light lit them with an eerie glow. Moving as quietly as I could I hurried from tree to tree, closing in until I could see what was happening. Then I crouched in the long grass behind an apple bole, my heart hammering.

The stag had come to halt and was standing at bay, pivoting in circles with his head down and antlers presented menacingly. All around him was a ring of hounds – great big ones with coarse white hair and reddish ears – who were snarling and yammering and looking for their chance, but every time one closed enough to snap at the stag’s haunches he would whirl faster than I’d have thought possible and slash at it, sending the dog tumbling back into the pack. The men and women on horseback were cheering and urging their animals on.

I pulled out my phone with sweating hands, scanning the faces in the mob for Michael Deverick’s. It was hard to get a good look at them, though the general impression was of
exactly
the sort of country set I would have expected. Then one of the men, a big, paunchy, florid-faced one in a black jacket and cream jodhpurs, rode at the hounds, flailing with his whip and shouting. The dogs scattered, moving off from the stag as he cantered in a circle around the beast, which took a moment to stand and draw breath. The crowd, like the animals, fell gradually silent. When the master of hounds had done his job he walked his horse away and dismounted.

Then another of the riders took centre stage, as she slipped down from her big bay and walked straight towards the stag. I stared at her, disbelieving. She’d been riding side-saddle and a split skirt draped her jodhpured legs. She was a tall blonde valkyrie of a woman, made taller by one of those weird little top hats with a veil you only ever see on riding displays. She approached the stag very calmly. He was obviously exhausted; he stood with legs splayed and trembling, his eyes rolling. But he didn’t retreat from her or offer her any threat. He stood stock-still as she reached out a hand, laying it between his horns. Gently she stroked his forehead. He shuddered all over, steam rising from his wet flanks. Softly she murmured to him and ran her hands all over his head, stroking his cheeks and ears and muzzle until he had relaxed, resting his head against her, his great golden antlers almost grazing her face. Still murmuring in soothing tones, she turned her head and nodded at the circle. The master of hounds stepped forwards again drawing something from his boot, but the stag, if he noticed him at all, did not react. He didn’t try to flee even when the man thrust the big knife through his neck and cut down, severing in a single stroke veins, arteries and windpipe.

My stomach spasmed. The blood was bright, bright red and it went all over the woman’s legs and boots, steaming. She didn’t recoil. She held the stag’s head steady as his legs gave
way
and he folded to the floor. The dogs, as one, began to howl and the hunters joined in with horns and wild cheers.

I was beside myself with disgust and rage. I began to stab at the keys on my phone with numb fingers, no longer caring that these were exactly the sort of people that a country constabulary would recoil from arresting. Then, without warning, arms went round me from behind, a hand went over my mouth and I was hauled to my feet and spun around. I nearly slithered out of my skin with shock. Whoever it was put his back to the tree trunk, holding me to his chest, facing out into the dark. For a moment we struggled, silently. He wasn’t trying to hurt me, but I was under no such restriction; I bit the hand clamped over my mouth and when he let go I jabbed my elbow into his ribs, hearing him gasp. His grip slackened enough for me to drop out of it, my T-shirt rucking up to my armpits. But he grabbed me again before I was out of arm’s reach and slammed me back against him, and this time he had the sense to get his hand under my chin, pinning my head back again his shoulder. ‘Avril!’ a voice hissed in my ear.

It took the smell of wood smoke to tell me who it was. I’d seen little of Ash over the last few weeks; he seemed to have retreated deeper into the wood and was never at the camp when I called by. He did come around to my cottage every two or three evenings, usually very late when he felt safer leaving the wood, but he never stayed for more than a few minutes’ conversation. I had no idea whether he was looking out for me or checking up on me. ‘Shit!’ I rasped. ‘You’ve got to stop doing that!’

‘Would you rather it was someone else?’ His voice was tight with rage; I’d hurt him quite a bit I think. ‘Put the phone away for fuck’s sake!’

‘No! Piss off!’ I lifted it to my face, trying to make out the
keys
. ‘They cut his throat, Ash!’ I was trying to whisper, but it was coming out as a croak and only the horrible whooping of the hunters was masking my noise. ‘They hunted him down and cut his throat.’