I kicked the chair leg three times. Not the wild kicks of a struggle but three distinct beats. I grunted three times as back-up. I wanted to be free. Den took no notice. Oh God, he wasn’t paying attention, wasn’t expecting me to bail so shortly after agreeing to this. He slid a finger along my crease and dipped down into the warm well of my wetness. ‘That’s what I like to find.’ He curled his fingers forward, pressing and pumping. ‘Enthusiasm.’
The thug gave a grunting half-laugh. ‘Me and all. Slut’s well up for it, no question.’
I writhed violently, making loud noises of protest. They would think I was roleplaying the shamed victim they were coercing into submission. How could I communicate?
Den strummed my clit with his thumb. ‘You see, Natalie, my friend and I – ’
He snatched his fingers from me as if burnt.
‘What the – ’
His body swung away. Somebody roared. I was pitched forward so hard the chair rocked dangerously. My feet hit the ground. Hurtling towards us from the shadows came Baxter, face red with rage, his tie flapping, his suit shifting clumsily. Liam was with him, brandishing his crowbar. Firelight glinted on the hooked, metal rod. Liam, lithe and rangy, rushed at us like a savage bearing a flaming torch.
My eyes skittered in all directions. The fastening on my cuffs clanked against the wooden stool as I jerked and squealed. Den was already on the other side of the table, naked, alert, his fingertips on the surface, opting for defence rather than attack. As the thug hurried to remove his jacket, Liam leaped at him, emitting a terrifyingly wild, guttural cry. The noise chilled to the bone. In one swift movement, Liam drove the thug backwards, crowbar across his thick, dumb neck. He slammed the guy against a supporting column with such violence I feared he might bring the dress circle crashing down.
Then Baxter was by my side on his knees, eyes darting as he fiddled impatiently with my chains, trying to fathom how I was secured. His breath pumped, a sheen of sweat glossing his face. I was beyond relieved and yet at the same time, Baxter’s assumption I was a damsel in distress irked me already. Was this jealousy masquerading as a rescue? Was this an attempt to win me back? Had he followed me here? Jeez, I was getting quite the collection of stalkers.
‘For fuck’s sake, Nats,’ said Baxter. ‘What are you like?’ He kept glancing across to Den, his dark chaotic hair flicking on his forehead, fire reflected in his gleaming sweat.
I grunted, nodding and shaking. Baxter got the message and stood. With big, gentle fingers, he unhooked the claw gag from my cheeks. I slurped back a mouthful of moisture. ‘What are you doing here?’ I gasped. ‘What on earth – ?’ I licked along my gums and waggled my aching jaw.
‘What’s it fucking look like?’ he said. ‘I’m rescuing this stupid, wee bitch I’m in love with.’
He unbuckled the bridle and slipped it from my head. Den watched from a cautious distance. Liam kept the thug against the column, chin angled high, crowbar across his neck. The thug grunted and huffed, making no attempt to fight back.
‘I chose to be here, Bax,’ I hissed. ‘You of all people should know this might not be what it seems. I like getting tied up. Remember? I might not have needed the Sir Galahad act.’
Baxter unfastened the collar from the chair’s hoop and unbuckled it from my neck. ‘I saw you safeword,’ he snapped, flinging the collar to the ground. ‘The signal was fucking obvious. You need rescuing from yourself, that’s your trouble.’
‘In your dreams,’ I scoffed.
Baxter gave an incredulous laugh. ‘No! No, not in my fucking dreams.’ He freed my hands and I rotated my stiff, creaky shoulders. ‘You’re dangerous, you know that, hen? A fucking liability. You don’t know when to stop. And neither does your chappie over there.’
He shot a scathing glance in Den’s direction. From behind the table, Den watched us warily, fingers steepled on the pine surface. His face was slack with shock, its composure and cleverness gone.
Baxter knelt by my feet, briskly unbuckling my ankle cuffs. ‘And for fuck’s sake, Nats,’ he said, ‘why the Hell are you hanging out with that …’ He glanced at Den, struggling for words. ‘That yoga teacher?’
Den’s eyes shifted from Baxter to Liam and back. I could tell he wasn’t thinking about anything except himself and his own welfare. Probably wondering if Baxter was going to lamp him.
Baxter was right. Den didn’t know when to stop and it was stupid of me to get involved with someone like him. Not all thrills are worth having. I hardly dared think what might have happened if Baxter and Liam hadn’t stepped in. Well, charged in, to be exact.
Baxter tapped my calf. ‘Stand up.’
I stood, free of all shackles. Baxter rose with me. Shaking his head, he shucked off his jacket and draped it over my shoulders, urging me to put my arms in properly. He tugged the lapels together as if he were about to send me off to school. I felt doll-sized, my hands lost in the sleeves, the jacket’s broad shoulders sloping from mine. The silky lining soothed where it slid against my skin.
I smiled at him, full of gratitude and dazed by his presence. ‘I love it when you’re all bossy and protective.’
He grinned back. ‘Aye,’ he said, his tone softer. ‘And that’s another reason I’m here. Now come on. Say goodbye to your nice, wee chums. I’m taking you home. I think you’ve had enough excitement for one evening.’
I hugged his jacket around me. ‘Bax,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I have. Not quite.’
Twenty
You know what they say: two’s company and three will knock your socks off.
Well, maybe they don’t but I was saying it to myself later that night, along with the qualifier that it had to be the right three. Foolish of me to have trusted Den to introduce a man he thought I might like. He’d got away with it once when he’d invited Ty to join our games and had almost repeated the success with the security guard as our third player. But when the thug had hinted he might blackmail me into consenting to more than I was comfortable with, the precariousness of my situation became stark. I could see now I’d lost control in a way that was very real. I should have seen the warning signs earlier and not escalated the dangers by taking more and more risks for the sake of my sexual highs.
Lucky I’d had Baxter and Liam looking out for me, ironically because Den had pushed it too far by sending me the photo. His clever games had finally caught up with him and he’d snagged himself in a net of his own making. I couldn’t criticise him for the times he’d toyed with the clarity of mutual consent. After all I’d been complicit in that. I understood now I’d expected too much when I’d taken all those chances on trusting him to not push me too far. He wasn’t telepathic. But his attempts to manipulate me with psychological games were out of order. How can you refuse to join in something if you’re not aware it’s happening? And involving Liam was beyond the pale.
After the drama of my rescue, the three of us wanted to decompress and pick over recent events. Baxter suggested the pub. I suggested bed.
‘Done,’ said Baxter. ‘Let’s grab a bottle of whisky en route.’
‘Um, hang on. I’m not sure about this,’ said Liam.
With a little more discussion, Liam came round to the idea, won over, I think, by Baxter’s no-nonsense attitude, filthy tongue and gargantuan sexual appetite. Hard to stay anxious when confronted by such enthusiasm.
Back at mine, Baxter treated my house with his former familiarity, bounding down to the kitchen while Liam and I were still removing our coats. I notched up the central heating and Liam crouched to tickle Rory’s small, sooty ears. She was tense; green eyes wide in her white-splashed face. The fireworks would have unsettled her, as would our arrival, in particular, Baxter’s. She used to scarper whenever he was around. He was too big, loud and quick. He made her nervous. I sympathised, except I liked the faint threat he presented and had no urge to hide.
Baxter returned, three glass tumblers in his hand. He headed for the next flight of stairs, marching up to the bedroom. R
ory slunk off, belly to the ground.
‘Come on!’ snapped Baxter. ‘This dick isnae gonna suck itself.’
We were magical together, lost in creating a world of lust, exploration and pleasure. My bedroom isn’t overlooked so I left the curtains open, fireworks cascading down, making the room shiver with bursts of colour. A futon, we discovered, is ideal for a threesome, allowing bodies to move beyond the mattress without disrupting the flow. Baxter played nice, relatively speaking, keeping the full extent of his dominance in check, presumably to accommodate Liam. He didn’t want to intimidate or turn off my other lover. Nor did he want to go too far when he and I were still emotionally fragile.
We fucked, sucked, licked, kissed and came, sporadic rainbows falling on our entangled, sweat-shiny limbs. The noises outside worsened, sounds so alarmingly loud they had to come from illegal imports. Explosions rocked the town.
‘Strewth, it’s like a war zone out there,’ said Baxter when we were taking a breather. ‘Even more so than usual.’
He sat naked on the futon, a debauched emperor propped against a heap of pillows. His glass of single malt glowed with honeyed light. I couldn’t stop looking at him, could barely keep my hands from pawing and petting. Dark hair cloaked his torso, swirling around his dusky, flat nipples and thinning over his padded girth. A broad streak ran from his navel to his bushy pubes and his colossal thighs were densely covered. Oh, those thighs, as powerful as a rugby player’s, as thick as tree trunks.
I saw him as if through a lens that had just been brought into focus. I’d forgotten the precise shape of him, the position of stray hairs and moles, the lump of his Adam’s apple, the variations across his skin, the network of veins and faint silvery stretch marks in the small of his back. I’d forgotten his beautifully flawed ordinariness. Inevitably, I would lose the tiny details when he left my house but the sight of Baxter, restored to my bed, had a trippy clarity.
I stretched across the futon, setting my tumbler on the floor. The fairy lights around my mirror cast pools of coloured lights on the polished bare boards. I rested my head on Baxter’s thigh, eyeing the pretty curve of his soft, damp cock and the pouch of his balls, fuzzed with wiry hair. Liam was on his back, gazing at the ceiling. He had his knees hooked over mine, the end of a joint pinched between thumb and forefinger.
The racket and flashes of bangers and fireworks took me back to the stormy night when Den had broken in. I recalled his note: CLOSER THAN YOU KNOW.
Well, not any more. I wanted to know how close someone was to me. I didn’t want to play bewildering games where I was toyed with for another person’s kicks. My taste for submission was here to stay, but I wanted my darkness encircled with honesty and light. I had no desire to see Den again. The shutters had crashed down on my lust and fascination, cutting him off.
With the distance brought about by Baxter and Liam’s fury, I realised I’d become so drawn in by Den’s cultivated mystique, not to mention his cruel manner and gym-honed physique, I’d lost perspective. I’d taken too many risks, had justified my behaviour with too many excuses. I could find no reason why he’d asked Liam to make the harness and photograph me, except he was intending to prove how much secret control he could exert over my life.
Enough was enough. I wasn’t going to contact him, not even to give him a piece of my mind. I didn’t imagine either he’d be keen to take on the formidable duo of Baxter and Liam.
Liam rolled over to extinguish the joint. ‘Oh man,’ he said, laughing. ‘That guy’s face when we stormed in.’
‘Wish I could have seen it from your point of view.’ I giggled from the hash I’d smoked, wishing I could have seen many things from their point of view. I was particularly charmed by the story of Liam, worried, heading over to Sonny’s Bar when I’d failed to answer my phone. He’d hoped to find me but, instead, had stumbled upon a hefty, mop-haired guy in a suit, tie undone, nursing a whisky.
‘Never met him before in my life,’ Liam had recounted. ‘But he may as well have been sat under a sign saying “Here be Baxter Logan”.’
‘And I’m thinking to myself,’ Baxter added, ‘ach, here we go again. Here’s some wee bastard I don’t recognise, about to kick off ’cause he blames me for his stint in the nick.’
In a garbled rush, Liam had explained to Baxter who he was and what he knew, expressing his fear I might be in danger. They’d left Sonny’s and hung around outside the theatre, thanks to Liam’s suspicion the derelict building might be involved. Initially, he hadn’t clocked that Den, his client, had been mentioned in the article he’d sent to me about The Hippodrome, but after checking the webpage on his phone, he realised they were one and the same. When I’d texted to tell him my middle name was India, he knew the harness was intended for me.
They’d seen me enter the theatre with Den and then had broken in, aiming only to ensure I was safe and wanted to be there. But Liam’s anger had rocketed on recognising the security guard, and his objective had changed. Baxter, irrational, possessive and protective, wanted to thump anybody who encroached on territory he regarded as his. The final straw, he said, was seeing me kick the safesign against the chair leg.
‘Although to be fair,’ he added, ‘if I hadn’t seen that, I don’t think I could have walked away and left you there. Wrong of me, I know, I know! Your choice. It’s what you’re into. But I cannae bear the thought of someone hurting you. Well, not unless it’s me.’
He had no qualms about sharing me with Liam. I fancied his broad-minded willingness stemmed from knowing Liam didn’t want to top me. He wasn’t competition.
Baxter drained his whisky and set his glass on the floor. ‘So are you two going to show me this wee squirting trick again?’ he asked. ‘Because I don’t think there’s been anywhere near enough obscenity tonight.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ I replied.
Baxter sprang up from his sprawl, dislodging me from his thigh. He grabbed me under the arms, hitching me up against his torso as he scrambled to his knees. He hooked a playful arm around my neck, bending me backwards so my tits were thrust out. ‘You,’ he said, amused, ‘have got it coming to you, you cheeky wee bitch.’
I laughed as Liam rolled onto his elbow, grinning. Lazily, he reached up to trace a hand over my belly, his touch sliding towards my pubes.
‘Show me,’ said Baxter. ‘Show me how you make her squirt.’
Liam sat up, his glazed eyes sharpening as he focused on my exposed, sloping body. ‘You cool with this?’ he asked.
Before I could reply, Baxter clamped his hand to my mouth. ‘Just fucking do it to her,’ he said.
I squealed against Baxter’s hand then tugged him away, laughing. Baxter and I knew each other well enough to play rough but it was unfair to expect Liam to join in.
‘I’m good, Liam,’ I reassured. ‘Go for it.’
So he did, giving Baxter a broken commentary as he demonstrated his technique. ‘I like to start off slow, make sure she’s turned on.’ His hand roved over my flesh and he bent to print kisses on my body.
‘Aye, well, I think I can help you out there,’ said Baxter. He fondled one breast, his big hand encompassing me, massaging heavily so I grew slack and lustful. As Liam kissed along my inner thighs, Baxter muttered filth into my ear. His low words drifted into my desire-addled consciousness. ‘You’re all mine, you know that? You’re a slutty wee bitch, Nats. And no one loves that as much as I do.’ His lips tickled my ear. ‘No one understands you the way I do.’
Liam’s fingers slithered through my folds, splitting my lips. He sprawled on his front, his long legs sticking out from the futon, his toes resting on the dark, wooden floor. With a wide, wet tongue, he lapped at my crease, tickling my entrance and sloshing wetness over my clit.
‘And no one’s ever seen me as you do,’ continued Baxter. He kept caressing my breasts, his hand warm and gentle. ‘No one.’ He took the lobe of my ear between his teeth and pressed. I whimpered as the pain spread, reading his bite as a secret reminder of our con
nection and a warning of worse pain to come. He released my lobe, briefly covering the soreness with a nibbling kiss. He dropped his voice further, his broad thumb circling one nipple. ‘I cannot wait till we’re alone,’ he breathed.
A bolt of lust hit my groin. I groaned, my cunt turning to molten throbs. ‘Aye, you and all,’ Baxter murmured. ‘I can see it in you.’
He spanned thumb and forefinger below my chin, tilting my head against his stomach, holding me tight as if offering me to Liam. Liam stopped licking, replacing tongue with fingers. He latched on to my swollen clit, sliding the little hood over the tender nub beneath. I gasped, sensation rippling along my thighs as he worked me. But he didn’t stay there. Instead he knelt and eased his longest two fingers inside me, curling them high and hard on to my plumped-up sweet spot.
Before long I was dissolving in Baxter’s arms, Liam’s strong fingers hooked inside me. Baxter’s cock bumped against my buttocks, while in front of me Liam’s jutted up from his chestnut-red pubes. Hands and kisses moved on my body. I hardly knew which caresses belonged to Baxter and which to Liam. I hardly cared either, preferring to switch off my concentration as I gave up to the bliss of being indulged.
‘You’ve got to really work it.’ Liam slammed his middle fingers into the pad of my G, his elbow shunting as if he were trying to tug something from me. ‘It can look quite violent.’
‘Ach, I dinnae mind that,’ said Baxter.
I wailed as the pressure swelled within me. All too soon, my walls loosened and I was slushy around Liam’s pounding fingers. I slumped in Baxter’s supporting arms, crying out as liquid rushed from me in a hot, unstoppable fountain.
‘There,’ breathed Liam, pleased. He withdrew from me, his wrist and hand glistening.
‘Fucking beautiful,’ said Baxter. ‘I reckon I’ll have that mastered in no time. Now shall I show you what else she likes?’
Without giving me chance to catch my breath, Baxter tipped me forwards, manhandling me with firm hands and a chivvying slap on my buttocks. Even something as simple as that, as the way we changed position, was perfect. I felt as if I’d been wearing someone else’s clothes for the last two years; clothes that almost fit, but not quite.
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