Dark Enchantment

by Janine Ashbless

  He feels my eagerness and tilts my head so he can look at me. I can make out nothing beyond the shine on those glasses. ‘Good,’ he whispers. ‘Very very good.’ Then he plucks my lips from his swollen glans. ‘It’s not going to save you though.’

  Pulling me to me feet, he scoops me up bodily without ceremony or any obvious effort and dumps my arse on the sloping plastic lid of one of the garbage skips, making an almighty clang. My bare skin would recoil from the grubby stickiness but I’ve no leisure to worry about such things, as he rips off my panties – literally rips them, snapping the elastic. The skip holds me at the right height for penetration and, forcing me back on my elbows and splaying my knees, that’s exactly what he intends to do.

  ‘Now,’ he says simply, his face over mine as he guides his big cock with its bronze ornamentation to my pussy.

  Gripping my hips he pulls me down sharply onto him, piercing me to the core. I feel the metal spiral as it slips in. I feel him spread my sex with his thickness, and it’s so unfair that I’m not ready for this, that I’m not used to it any more. I try not to squeal but it tears from me. He’s sweating, he’s shaking – he wants this so much. My arse skids around on the plastic bin lid and he has to hold me in place as he thrusts. It all makes a noise, the lid and my heels banging on the skip, my gasps and his groans. Lights come on, scattered across the black brick faces. A window opens noisily overhead.

  No one calls out. The watchers do it in silence.

  All my resistance has deserted me and I fall back upon the plastic incline. My exposed breasts are banging wildly up and down as he thrusts into me and I can hardly draw breath; there is no part of my body that he doesn’t seem to have invaded. He reaches forward one hand with hardly a hitch in his rhythm and shoves his calloused fingers into my mouth. I can taste my sex on him. There’s a ring on his third finger and it bites into my lip.

  He rolls a single ruby aril out of the sticky crowd, using only a fingertip: up the length of my torso, over my ribs, between my breasts to my collarbone and my throat. There is such longing in his expression, such absorption; my supine and passive body is everything to him. As he tips the fleshy seed over the angle of my jaw he lifts his eyes to mine, pleadingly. He has never given up, though I’ve offered him no hope. He rolls it around my lips and then tenderly slips it between them. For a moment we both hold our breath. Then I let the tip of my tongue protrude, the pip balanced upon it. For a heartbeat we are motionless. Then I close my lips, and bite down upon the seed. It is sour and sweet at the same time, as fragrant as perfume, and tears swim in my eyes as I swallow. It’s the first food I’ve eaten since he brought me here.

  In his midnight eyes light blossoms. Very gently he plucks another pomegranate seed from the platter of my belly and feeds it to me. Then he places the third between his own lips and leans over me. His mouth brushes against mine. I take the pip from him, and as its juice wets my lips he kisses me. He tastes of wild sour fruit and ruby-red desire. I twine my fingers in his dark hair as I open to him, to his mouth and his passion.

  And in the back alley of a midnight city the man in black leathers brings both of us full circle and almost collapses over me, his shudders bone deep as he comes and comes. He goes down on his elbows and his long hair brushes my bare skin. I lie quiescent but for my panting as I recover from the pounding he’s given me, and my sex feels awash with him. He pushes himself up onto splayed arms to stare at me with blank plastic eyes. His lips curve. With an unsteady hand I remove his shades so that I can see his eyes at last, and all at once I can read his expression: the satisfaction, the relief, the rueful acknowledgement of what I do to him. Sweat speckles his brow and upper lip.

  ‘I’m sorry, Seffany,’ he says in that husky voice that sends shivers down my spine, ‘I couldn’t wait.’

  He always was too impatient, I tell myself. If he’d been just that bit more restrained when it came to the pomegranate seeds he could have had me for four months, or six, or all year round, but three seeds had been all he’d been able to hold himself back for. I laugh as I cup his face, feeling the dark stubble harsh on my hand. How can you blame someone who wants you that much?

  ‘The snake was … a nice touch,’ I giggle.

  ‘Ah.’ He runs his tongue over his upper lip. ‘For you. I hoped …’

  ‘I like it.’

  A great deal more gently than he’s been so far, he scoops me up into a sitting position and I twine my arms about my husband’s neck and we kiss, and laugh between kisses because it feels so good. He kisses like a parched man drinking great draughts of water, holding me tight against him. When he’s temporarily slaked he nuzzles my throat and ear and hair and whispers, ‘Are you all right?’

  I wrap my hands in his long coarse hair. ‘I went half-mad missing you.’

  He nods, understanding. ‘Time to go home.’ Slipping his cock from me and readjusting his clothes, he picks me up and I wrap my legs about his waist. He holds me as lightly as if I were a child and carries me carefully back down the alley. I have eyes only for him: for that dark stern face and those broad shoulders, for that hard mouth that can be so exquisitely tender. I’m perversely scared he’ll lose me before he gets me safely back.

  ‘A good year for you, Seffany?’

  ‘I live for the winter. You know that.’

  ‘How’s the family?’

  ‘Same as ever.’

  ‘How’s your mother?’

  ‘Still hates you.’ Freed from my enthralment to her and from the black swamp of emotions that it entails, I can sympathise with Demi; she has good reason to resent what the family has done to her over the years. When she finds out that I’m missing she will be angry enough to tear the leaves off the trees, and she will rage and weep and withdraw from the world, but there’ll be nothing she can do about it for now. Me and my husband have all of three months together, guaranteed, before she pulls legal strings and forces us apart once more.

  Hades shakes his head, smiling that at-least-I-try smile. Then we reach the bike and he sets me on my feet.

  ‘Nice bike.’

  ‘Thought you’d like it.’ He swings astride it and indicates the seat behind him. It’s a bloody big machine; my legs don’t come near to touching the ground. The saddle is soft though, and comfortable against my pantyless flesh. I can feel our combined wetness oozing from me to grease the leather.

  ‘Nice,’ I repeat, holding the bar behind me. My skirt has ridden right up my thighs. He slides a hand up my leg, tucking the limb close against his, all but baring me.

  ‘Let’s see how far we get before I have to fuck you again.’ He pulls me tight up against him, wedging himself into the angle of my thighs so that I can feel his solidity through the leathers, stirring my bruised flesh and awakening my appetite anew. I wriggle against him, reaching round to squeeze the bulge of his crotch. My need pleases him and I hear the intake of breath between his teeth. He kicks the engine into life and I feel the throb of the engine through my spine. ‘I wouldn’t want you to go cold on me,’ he says.

  There’s no chance of me going cold, I think as he pushes the bike forwards off its stand. Though the world freeze over, I’ll never lose this heat. The bike growls like a lion as we ride. As the street lamps flash past overhead and the kerbstones peel back and the road drops away beneath our wheels, I look briefly up, catching a last glimpse of the city skyline as we plunge steeply down the road to the Underworld, and he takes me home.

  Cold Hands: Warm Heart

  ‘SO, WHAT ARE we doing here?’ I asked when we’d finished dining on the cold mutton and potted meats from the hamper, washed our distinctly bachelor repast down with a passable Chablis and finally settled back with brandy – from crystal glasses, carefully packed – and cigars that were produced from a humidor which looked both oriental and antique: Morgan might have no talent for picnic dinners but he could be relied upon to provide excellent smokes. I glanced around at the shrouded furniture that cluttered the parlour where we were sitting. ‘If w
e’re going to be doing any shooting, wouldn’t it have been better to invite a few more people?’

  And bring some servants, I might have added. We’d had to lay our own fire, and a sorry job we’d made of it. The October chill had soaked into the bones of this house and though our blaze had finally caught, it was not yet doing much to warm a room that hadn’t been inhabited for some weeks at least, by the looks of things. I didn’t want to think about the state of the bedlinen upstairs; we were, I suspected, in for a clammy night.

  ‘We’re not here for the shooting,’ Morgan said, taking out his cigar and examining it for flaws, ‘though it is said to be excellent here. And there are trout in the river. Perhaps next time, Thorpe.’

  ‘Then what are we here for?’

  He’d told me next to nothing so far. We’d left London under a pall of secrecy, without notifying anyone or leaving any clue as to where we’d gone. We’d driven to the Welsh Borders and arrived under cover of darkness, without pausing at the village inn for the recuperative tipple or the blazing fire that I was rather in need of after such a long and chilly drive. All I knew was that our location was Morgan’s own country residence; he’d made me read him directions from the hand-made map. The house was called Levingshall and was ensconced in a bend of the River Lugg – or possibly one of its tributaries – and though there’d been neither tenant nor servant to greet us, Morgan had the front door key in his possession.

  ‘We’re here because I’m thinking of living here after I get married.’

  I nodded, not much the wiser. ‘You think Cicely will like it? I suppose it’s good for gardening. Very … damp.’ My recollection of the grounds was that they were substantial but overgrown. We’d crossed a stone bridge to get here and the river ran round three sides of the garden. If the shutters had been open I didn’t doubt we’d be able to hear it. ‘Good for her Japanese azaleas or whatever it is she’s keen on at the moment.’

  ‘It’s an excellent house. And there are good neighbours: the Torrington-Henrys over Ludlow way; and the Milburns have a place further up the valley. Cicely won’t be bored.’

  Cicely, in my opinion, would find it terribly remote. But one doesn’t criticise a friend’s marriage plans. Besides, I was interested in the dark inward look on Morgan’s face; in what he so obviously hadn’t said yet. ‘But there’s something wrong?’ I hazarded.

  He raised one eyebrow. ‘There’s a ghost.’

  ‘A ghost.’ I blinked, and without thinking looked around us as if one of the palely sheeted lumps of furniture were likely to raise shrouded arms and moan eerily. ‘Is that why there’s no one here?’ Why the place was shuttered fast? Why there were no staff? Why Morgan had never lived here nor even, so far as I could tell, visited the place?

  ‘Not at all. The tenants never had any complaints. Their lease ran out, that’s all, and given the timing of the wedding I thought it convenient.’

  ‘It’s a quiet ghost then?’

  ‘Nobody has seen hide nor hair of it in three hundred years, Thorpe.’

  I was slightly disappointed. ‘Not much chance of us spotting it then, is there?’

  ‘Ah.’ Morgan looked smug. ‘It’s a very particular ghost, they say. It only … manifests … when the owner of the house spends the night here, which is why we haven’t ever lived in the place. My father regarded the whole thing as a joke, to be perfectly honest, but it’s a family tradition: the taboo of the Morgans.’ His eyes glinted.

  ‘And what does it look like?’

  ‘It’s a woman, apparently.’

  I tilted my brandy glass towards him. ‘And?’

  ‘And the story is that if the master of the house stays here overnight, she turns up and … he dies.’

  I flicked ash off my cigar into the hearth and remarked, ‘Not terribly friendly then.’

  ‘That’s why we’re absentee landlords. Nobody’s risked it in generations.’

  I ran my tongue around my teeth. ‘How does she kill them?’

  Morgan shrugged. ‘Not sure. One is said to have thrown himself from the bedroom window and broken his thigh.’

  ‘You believe that, old man?’

  ‘I aim to prove it one way or another.’

  ‘Ah. Tonight.’ I leant back in my armchair, affecting a nonchalance that was not entirely sincere. The glimpse I’d caught in the car headlights of the house exterior had been disheartening: a solid building part farmhouse and part fortification, very ancient in parts but with big leaded windows that had been added in later, more peaceful times. Though picturesque, I suspected that even by daylight it would have a sombre feel to it; at night, camping upon the parlour rug as the cold and empty rooms yawned about us and the draught flitted in under the oaken door to chill our ankles, it was somewhat eerie. ‘I can see why you didn’t tell Cicely we were coming.’

  Morgan shifted in his seat. ‘Cicely would have been terrified for me. You know she takes all this spiritualism stuff seriously. She knows the legend of Levingshall from Mama, and wouldn’t countenance our living here. So,’ he sighed, ‘I have to disprove it before our wedding.’

  ‘What if you don’t?’ I wondered. ‘Disprove it, I mean.’

  Morgan raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you worried, Thorpe? No need for concern. The ghost is only dangerous to the master of Levingshall, they say. You shall be perfectly safe whatever happens. Which, most likely, will be nothing worse than a cold and uncomfortable night in bed.’

  In point of fact I’d already decided I was going to stay down by the fire and doze in my armchair, but I was stung by his mocking tone. ‘I don’t know,’ I murmured. ‘You might be better not to be too sceptical. When I was living in Paris –’

  ‘Ah, here we go with the Parisian stories!’ Morgan rolled his eyes.

  ‘– there was an appartement in my building that simply couldn’t be let. They say a young man, an artist, had hanged himself there, and all the tenants complained that their possessions would be moved about while they were out, or go missing while their backs were turned.’

  ‘Sounds like an infestation of chambermaids to me,’ he chuckled. ‘French girls with their light and dextrous little fingers … You should know all about that.’ His verdict ended with a wink and a grin, and I had to shake my head in protest, smiling wryly.

  ‘Still, I was no keener than any other man to rent those rooms, Morgan. It seems to me that where we are most ignorant, there we should be most wary.’

  Morgan looked both amused and exasperated. ‘Oh, I am wary. I told no one, not even the land agent, that we would be here. I wanted no one to prepare for our arrival. No one human, at any rate. If there is no ghost then I shall have proved the house safe, and if there is a ghost – see, Thorpe, I am not the dogmatic sceptic you would think me – then I am prepared to greet it as cordially as it treats me.’

  ‘Her,’ I muttered.

  ‘Her, as you say. Of course one should never be ungracious to a lady visitor.’

  ‘You’re not the slightest bit nervous?’

  ‘Of course not.’ His manner was disparaging. ‘The kind of thing that might have frightened my rude ancestors into apoplexy will have no such effect on me, I assure you. We are not so burdened by fears and superstitions in this century. And we have rather better resources at our disposal.’ Leaning forwards, he pulled from under his chair a long slim box that I recognised. I’d seen its morocco binding at many a house party up and down the length of Britain, and counted it as a travelling companion abroad too on a number of occasions. It had been the bearer of fatal tidings for more grouse, pheasant and assorted wildfowl than I could enumerate.

  ‘If there is a ghost,’ I said dryly, ‘what good do you think a shotgun will do you?’

  ‘I dare say that dry bones are quite as susceptible to a twelve-bore cartridge as living ones. And as for anything immaterial – what would I have to fear?’

  I had to hand it to him: Morgan was never lacking in confidence. As for myself, I was less sanguine about the situation, but not
yet unhappy. My curiosity was piqued, certainly, and with it my sense of adventure. And if I have rather more imagination than my friend, I was determined not to let it get the better of me. I rose, throwing the stub of my cigar into the fire, and started to stroll about the room, stretching my legs. We’d uncovered only the two chairs we’d dragged to the hearth; now I twitched the dust sheet off a couple more pieces of furniture, discovering a high-backed oak settle and a coffer that turned out to be empty.

  ‘Looking for ghosts?’ asked Morgan, spreading his legs indolently.

  ‘In hostile territory, secure your immediate surroundings,’ I replied, quoting the cadet officer who’d taught us both at Winchester. We shared a grin. I bundled up another sheet and added, ‘Hello!’

  It was species of large chaise longue or day bed I’d uncovered: very heavy looking, carved of the black oak so typical of Welsh farmhouses. The counterpane was of Indian cotton, but looked clean enough. ‘Bags the bed here!’ I said smartly.

  ‘Too nervous to go upstairs?’

  I shot him a pointed look. ‘It will be as cold as Erebus up there, and I don’t suppose the mattresses will be aired.’

  He nodded. ‘Well, I intend to sit up. If we stay down here, we can take turns to watch and to sleep.’

  ‘Sounds fair.’ I turned to the nearest wall and pulled down the sheet draped over a frame there. I was expecting to find a painting; what I uncovered was a mirror, its glass a little spotted at the edges, its depths grey. I paused, struck by the play of firelight on Morgan’s face. His handsome aristocratic features and sandy moustache contrasted with my blunter, darker countenance and my pensive expression. ‘Why is it that the ghost seeks out the master of the house?’ I asked suddenly.

  ‘Mm?’ He looked up from inspecting the swirl of brandy in his glass.

  ‘Is it revenge?’