by Lucy Lord
‘Well, Belle’s the girl to help you with that,’ says Max, who seems to have relaxed his protective attitude somewhat. ‘You two have fun. We’ll see you later.’ And he and Dave get up and walk down the hill together, chatting away companionably.
Taking a deep swig of my repulsive, hot beer, I say, ‘So a bit of retox is what you need, eh? Are you stone-cold sober apart from the hot beer?’ Sweet-talking charmer, that’s me.
Ben laughs. ‘Not exactly. We had a few beers and spliffs on the shoot, and Susie and I had a couple of lines in the helicopter.’ I briefly envisage scratching Susie’s eyes out. ‘But the rest of you have had a twenty-four-hour start on me.’
‘In that case, you need something a bit stronger than this horrible beer, don’t you? I’ve got some vodka in my tent … Actually, no! We could have mojitos in Max’s yurt. I’m sure he won’t mind,’ I gabble, praying he won’t. ‘And there are some lovely flat surfaces in there too.’
‘Well, that sounds like a great idea. If you’re sure Max will be OK with it. Shall we chuck these?’ He gestures towards the now gently festering Stellas. I nod, and he helps me to my feet as I attempt to retrieve our rubbish.
‘Here, let me take those,’ he says chivalrously, taking the plastic beakers out of my hands, touching my fingers as he does so. My heart starts racing again as he holds my gaze for far longer than necessary.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to find Damian?’ I ask, worried suddenly that I’m hijacking him.
‘Surer than I’ve ever been,’ he says with a wink and, just for a minute, I relax.
There is, on my part, a slight sense of déjà vu as Ben and I mix mojitos in Max’s yurt. And, again on my part, a definite sense of disappointment. After all that delicious expectation, now we are alone together, Ben hasn’t touched me at all. He’s been perfectly polite and properly impressed by the yurt. We’ve shared a couple of lines. But all that hands-on flirtiness? Nada. Zilch. Rien. I’m beginning to wonder, yet again, whether I imagined it. Were the drugs stronger than I thought, perhaps?
Still, I’m incredibly aware of his presence. And, to be honest, feeling extremely horny. That final line has left me teetering precariously close to the edge.
‘Well, let’s take these drinks outside.’ Ben holds the door open for me. That’s it then. No more ecstatic expectation. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.
Outside, I cheer up a bit. I’m still at Glastonbury, the sun’s still shining and I’ve still got Ben to myself. All is not lost.
‘God it’s hot,’ I say, fanning myself with my programme.
A random stranger in Speedos, who happens to be speed-walking past, his arms doing that silly pumping movement that speed-walkers’ arms do, looks over his shoulder at us and says, ‘I’m heading towards the cold showers at the end of this field. Highly recommended!’
Ben and I look at each other and burst out laughing.
‘Shall we?’ he says.
‘Oh yes, a cold shower’s exactly what I need,’ I say, perhaps a little too truthfully.
As it’s getting to the time of day when the main acts start to come on stage, the field is relatively empty, and there’s no queue for the showers.
‘Last one in’s a sissy,’ says Ben, taking off his jeans to reveal a close-fitting pair of grey marl Dolce & Gabbana boxers. I step out of my miniskirt and we both run, giggling, into the showers.
‘Fuck me, that’s good,’ I exclaim as the cool, clean water sploshes down over my overheated limbs, washing away the sweat and the grime. But not the lust. I open my eyes to see Ben gazing at me again. Water is dripping off his long dark lashes as, excruciatingly slowly, he moves towards me and bends his head to mine.
Kissing him is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. When his hands aren’t moving over my slippery body, they are holding my face, as if he never wants to let me go. The sun is still beating down on us relentlessly, the sky almost as blue as Ben’s eyes. Once or twice he pulls away and gazes at me again, only to resume, seconds later, his exquisite exploration of my mouth.
Of course, he’s had a lot of practice, says an unwelcome voice in my head. I shut it up and concentrate on the quite wonderful matter in hand.
‘Oi you two, get a yurt, why don’t you?’ shouts some wag. We let go of each other reluctantly and start laughing again. Ben takes me by the hand and leads me purposefully back to Max’s yurt.
‘We’ll drip all over it,’ I say, regretting it as soon as the words are out of my mouth. Moron. Ben shakes himself like a wet dog to get most of the water off and says,
‘There’s bound to be a towel in there. He’s got a mini-bar, after all.’ He emerges seconds later with a huge bath sheet. Soft, white and fluffy, of course.
‘Dry your hair with that, darling.’ Darling again! I can’t believe this is happening to me. Inside the yurt, he lays a fresh, dry towel on the floor and gestures for me to sit down next to him.
‘I don’t want you scratching yourself on this rough floor.’ He traces the outline of my face with his finger.
I try to be more compos mentis, with little success.
‘Why didn’t you do this when we first got here?’
‘I was afraid that if I touched you, I wouldn’t be able to control myself – thank God for cold showers.’ Ben laughs. ‘I do have some standards. I’m not going to fuck you in your brother’s yurt.’
My face drops.
‘But we can do a hell of a lot of other things.’
He kisses me again and moves one hand gently down my body. Up and down, up and down my torso, firmly on my hip, my waist, my rib-cage, then feather-light on the underside of my left breast, yet never touching the rest of me, the other bits that are crying out for attention. I try to touch him back, but he pushes my hands away and says, ‘Easy babe,’ manoeuvring me gently towards the floor until I’m fully supine.
He strokes me all over, across all the hitherto non-erogenous zones, untying the strings on my bikini until I’m lying naked in some kind of erotic trance, every nerve ending on red alert. Just as I think I can stand it no longer, his fingers brush my left nipple and I gasp, loudly.
‘Oh,’ he laughs. ‘Nice, is it?’
I am incapable of speech so gasp some more. He moves down and takes my swollen breast in both hands and starts sucking, then nibbling gently. I am trying to do things to him, but it’s impossible. All I can do is throw my head back, pull at his gold-streaked hair and moan.
‘Pleeease, Ben, pleeease.’
He pulls himself up to look me in the eye. ‘Pleeeeease Ben what?’ He is smiling, and teasing me in every sense of the word. His beautiful, high-cheekboned, full-lipped face, the face I have loved for so many years, is inches from mine.
‘Oh please just fuck me, I can’t bear this.’
‘You are a very naughty girl,’ Ben murmurs, gently pushing my legs apart. I’m desperate for whatever is going to happen next, not caring how wanton I look, not giving a fuck about anything else ever for the rest of my life.
‘I told you, I’m not going to fuck you in your brother’s yurt.’ He tweaks my left nipple hard. It hurts and turns me on even more. Then he lowers his head between my legs and starts licking, sucking, stroking. Two, three fingers inside me at once.
‘God, you dirty bitch, you love it, don’t you?’
It sends me right over the edge and I push against him, wanting more and more, crying out so loudly as I come that Ben shoves his other hand over my mouth, roughly.
‘Shhhh, darling. Remember we’re in Max’s yurt.’ His voice is more gentle than his actions.
Eventually I come to my senses and gaze at him, still unable to believe what has just happened. Ben lies down next to me and kisses me again, pushing my damp hair off my face.
‘Wow. I always thought you’d be sexy, but … Jesus, Bella …’
I wrap both arms and legs around him, burying my burning face in his shoulder, trying to hide my sudden shyness. We stay like that for a couple of minutes, until,
still throbbing and vulnerable, I ask, ‘Erm – shall we have another drink now?’
‘Great idea. I’ll mix the mojitos if you chop out another line.’ Ben kisses me again and winks. Now he’s diffused my unwelcome attack of selfconsciousness, I think I might, actually, have died and gone to heaven. I lie on my back, looking up at the celestial yurt ceiling, listening to the festival sounds outside. Are we really still at Glastonbury?
Once Ben’s mixed the drinks and we’ve snorted yet another line, we lie back down, smoke and talk about our respective childhoods.
‘Damian was my saviour,’ he says as he strokes my back with his lovely long fingers. ‘Working-class Wales in the early Eighties wasn’t a great place to grow up if people thought you were different. There was still a lot of racism around, but Damian dealt with it really well. He was academic, and laid-back – well, you know how he is – and took everything with the most extraordinary good humour. Eventually everybody loved him.’
‘I can imagine that, he’s such a star. But I want to hear more about you.’
‘I was the runt, when it came to macho things. I was always very pretty – my mam and aunties absolutely doted on me.’ He’s reverted to his Welsh lilt, which makes his story all the more compelling. ‘When I was a toddler, they had to keep my hair very short so people didn’t think I was a girl. As you can imagine, this didn’t go down too well at school. They called me and Damian the poofter and the Paki. They used to beat the shit out of us. Luckily, once I started to take an interest in drama I was big enough to fight the fuckers back,’ he laughs, and my eyes fill with tears at the thought of the gorgeous little boy being beaten up by clod-hopping, non-artistic bullies.
It’s no use, I have to kiss him again.
At one stage, he gets up to pour us another drink and I am admiring the perfect curve of his buttocks, when I ask, a tad pathetically, ‘Why me? When you can have your pick of gorgeous women the world over?’
He laughs. ‘Don’t you realize how gorgeous you are, Bella?’ He’s back to his normal voice now.
‘Erm. Nope,’ I say, honestly.
‘Perhaps that’s what it is. All the women I meet through work are so full of themselves. Insecure, yes, and desperate to be reassured that they’re gorgeous all the time, but they do know they’re gorgeous, simply by virtue of what they do. Once a model agency accepts you, you’re a fully validated member of the beautiful people.’ It’s testament to Ben’s enormous charm that he manages to say this without sounding like the most egocentric prick on the planet.
‘I’ve always liked you,’ he continues. ‘You’re fun and funny and talented and you always light up parties with your slightly kooky take on things.’ Kooky? Just because I’m not an identikit plastic blonde? I possibly bristle a little as he says, ‘Like the dwarf pinching your dress. No one else I know has such funny stories.’ I smile at him, so he goes on, ‘And you’re gorgeous without knowing it. I think it was when Kimberly was being such an idiot in Ibiza that I started to realize you meant more to me than just a friend.’
He kisses both my nipples in turn, again and again. ‘And you have fucking amazing tits.’
I giggle, totally overcome with happiness.
‘You are insatiable, woman,’ he says, a little later. ‘There’s plenty of time for this when we get back to London. As long as you still want to, of course.’
And I kiss him some more, as if my very life depended on it.
It’s dark when we emerge from the yurt. Everyone has been texting us, trying to arrange to meet at the beer tent next to the Pyramid Stage in time for Primal Scream. We walk in, Ben’s arm around my shoulders, both of us looking, presumably, pretty obviously loved-up. Or should that be sexed-up?
Poppy says, less quietly than I imagine she intended, ‘Oh my God! Sorry, Belles, I’m too fucked to be subtle, but you two …?’
Ben smiles and squeezes me harder. ‘Got it in one, Pops.’
Everyone is smiling and congratulating us.
‘Man! Now we’re practically brothers!’ says Damian, laughing and enveloping Ben in a huge hug. He extends his left arm to include me in a group hug. ‘Guys, guys, what can I say?’ Squashed into his armpit, my face is fixed in a beatific smile.
‘Couple of slags deserve each other,’ is Mark’s charmless summary of the situation. I extricate myself from the group hug, remembering his kindness to little Kes last night, and plead, ‘Be happy for me, Marky?’
‘Course I am, babe.’ He smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes.
Dave gives me a hug and whispers, ‘Fair play to you, sweetheart – he’s fucking gorgeous!’
And Max gives me the biggest hug of all. ‘I’m happy as long as you’re happy, Belles. Just look after yourself.’
And then the unmistakeable strains of ‘Rocks’ start, and we all stumble out into the field to be part of the experience. The air fizzes with excitement as the band teases us with old Stones riffs before launching into it full throttle.
It’s not exactly what you’d call a romantic little ditty, but for dancing around in a field with 30,000 other drug-crazed pleasure-seekers, the song is pretty unbeatable. Searchlights scan the thrashing bodies; the band is a group of stick people with overwhelming presence. There is absolutely nothing in the world to compare with live, loud rock ’n’ roll. I dance and dance, swishing my hair around and grinning like a maniac. Poppy, eyes shining, keeps dancing up and hugging me, saying, ‘Oh Belles, I’m so happy for you.’ And all the time my darling, vulnerable Ben is never more than a foot away, his hand never far from my waist or shoulder.
Afterwards, we stagger up the hill to our tents, tripping over guy ropes in the dark. Outside her tent, Poppy gives me another enormous hug.
‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t, lovey. I think that probably gives you carte blanche.’
Laughing, totally high on everything, I hug her back.
‘God I love you, Pops.’
‘I love you too, Belles.’ She crawls into her tent and Damian, who has been exchanging a similarly sentimental goodnight with Ben, follows suit. Ben looks at me.
‘I guess I’m sleeping outside then?’
‘Oh really, enough with the bloody teasing!’
‘Sorry. But I would like to wait until I’m invited into your humble abode.’
‘Dear sir, may I interest you in my humble abode? It’s not much, but it serves me well. I think you’ll find it sufficient for your needs.’ I ruin the effect by staggering as I try to curtsey on the sloping grass.
Ben takes my hand.
‘In that case, fine lady, I would be honoured to accept. After you.’ He gestures into my tent and I try not to imagine what my arse looks like as I crawl in. Ben crawls in after me. It’s dark, and there is very little room for manoeuvre. There was only just enough room for me last night, with the rucksack and bottles taking up so much space.
Ben reaches over to kiss me, and I’m lost again in the magic of being with him, his lips, his skin, his hair. Our hands are all over one another as we attempt to disrobe in the awkward space, the darkness making all the sensations even stronger. After everything he did to me earlier, I am determined to give Ben some pleasure too. I push him down onto my sleeping bag and start licking the tip of his cock, gently, with little flicks to start with. When he starts to moan, I take it in my mouth and suck and suck and suck, unable to believe I have Ben Jones’s cock in my mouth. I could suck it forever.
‘Don’t stop, please,’ he breathes as I start running my fingers up and down his inner thighs, balls and perineum, up and down, his cock in my mouth all the while.
‘Oh please, Bella …’
‘Please, Bella what?’ I ask, loving the power I have over him and remembering him saying the same to me earlier.
‘Touché,’ he laughs, breathlessly. ‘Just please fuck me, you gorgeous thing.’
Even though I can’t see it, I can feel that his cock, just like the rest of him, is quite staggeringly perfect. I lower myself down onto it and t
ake a sharp intake of breath.
‘Oh God, that feels so good,’ says Ben, holding me firmly by the hips and thrusting up inside me. My eyes are starting to get accustomed to the darkness and I can make out that his head is thrown back in ecstasy. I lower myself up and down with deliberate slowness initially, then start upping the pace to match his, reaching down to kiss him. Then we are biting, scratching, pulling one another’s hair in absolute animal abandonment, our pelvises fused together, rocking, thrusting, acting entirely independently of our minds, it seems.
Ben comes first, letting out a deep groan. Seconds later, feeling his cock still throbbing inside me, I come too.
‘Happy Glastonbury,’ I say, light-headed with euphoria, collapsing on the edge of my sleeping bag next to him and kissing him again.
‘Happy Glastonbury, my love.’ He kisses me back and tightens his arms around me.
It’s not ‘I love you’, but it’s a bloody good start.
Chapter 8
The bored-looking peroxide blonde looks me up and down with the contempt of a schoolgirl in a communal Topshop changing room. She is wearing white skinny jeans, layered long-line vests in clashing purples and oranges, and stacks of bangles the length of her emaciated arms. She must be all of nineteen and a half.
‘He’s in an editorial meeting. I’ll see if he can break away,’ she says eventually, over her shoulder, as she mooches off. Her legs are so thin there’s a large gap where they should meet at the base of her arse.
I have come to the Stadium office in my lunch hour to return some limited-edition vinyl that Ben borrowed from Damian ages ago. They all think they’re DJs, these metrosexual media men. Ben has asked me to do his dirty work as I’m still temping in Mayfair, a ten-minute walk away from the AMAP headquarters in Soho; he’s shooting in South London today.
Yes, the unthinkable has happened. Ben is officially my boyfriend. The lease on his rented flat in Belsize Park was due to expire any day, so he moved in with me a couple of days after we got back from Glastonbury, still feeling rough as badgers’ arses.
