‘Come on then, Alan,’ she said, an urgency in her voice now.
‘Let's find a sheltered place, though.’
He was out of the fawn-coloured Capri in a flash, opening the boot and reaching for the rug inside. Babs stepped from the car, closing the door behind her and making sure it was locked.
It was one of the things Alan was serious about, his car. She looked around, the chill night air almost quelling her excitement, and thought the forest looked very unreal in the moonlight.
‘Okay, Babs?’ Alan was beside her and she knew his short-ness of breath was due to excitement. He loved to experiment, did Alan, loved to try new things all the time. In the seven months she had known him - six of them carnally - they must have investigated every position there was. Even though she was the more mature in years, she had come to it as a young girl, eager to learn, almost desperate to experience. Lunch-times in the office, when the others had gone out and she and Alan had pretended to work on, they had disappeared into the back room where the records of all their clients were kept and made love among the filing cabinets - on the floor next to them, up against them, even on top of them. He had beaten her buttocks with a belt, used her anus as a vagina, bitten her breasts until she screamed, almost choked her with his spurting semen.
She had sat on his face and made him drink her juices, had painfully bound his penis and testicles with his own tie and yanked him yelping around the filing room, had straddled, ridden and raped him, had smeared him with face cream and manipulated him. He had loved it all. And she had loved it all.
On the few occasions they had managed to get away together
- to Reg it was business conventions, to the office, who were not fooled, it was coinciding holidays or, surprise, surprise, mutual illnesses they indulged themselves to the full, rarely leaving the hotels they had booked into. Masochism and sadism were attempted but only by mutual consent and only at amateur status; neither liked to hurt or be hurt that much. Bondage was fun but it made the wrists chafe. Wearing each other's under-wear was okay if the lights were off. After a while, when their imagination for new experiences seemed to have become exhausted, they both realised there was more enjoyment in normal intercourse. It just depended on where you did it. Neither cared to look into the future, to where their relationship was leading, for their excitement was always in the present, never tomorrow or the day after. They were not in love, but they loved what they did, and when it ended, that would be the end.
The moon suddenly disappeared and they were plunged into darkness.
‘I don't like this, Alan,’ Babs said, nervously.
‘It'll be out in a minute, don't worry. Come here, and have a cuddle.’
He pulled her to him and pressed his body hard against hers, his eyes staring over her shoulder into the darkness. He didn't care too much for the dark himself. He breathed a silent sigh of relief when the moon appeared once more.
Taking her hand, he pressed on farther into the undergrowth, pushing the higher foliage away with his hand, the rug draped over one shoulder.
‘Not too far, Alan,’ Babs pleaded.
‘No, darling, just a bit further. It's nice and thick just ahead.
It'll screen us from the road.’
A scuttling noise made them stop.
‘What's that?’ Babs whispered.
Alan listened for a few moments, but heard nothing more.
‘Must have been an animal. We probably scared it.’
He moved on and she meekly followed.
‘This'll do,’ he said leading her down into a slight dip, wondering why he had whispered. He stamped on the grass, trampling any gorse that might be there, then threw down the rug, pulling each corner straight.
‘Okay, lover?’ he said, his face faint and white in the moonlight
‘I'm not sure, Alan,’ she answered, but he knew she wanted him as much as he wanted her. He pulled her down on the rug and began to unbutton her coat and she forgot about the forest and night creatures. Babs' plumpness was of the firm, springy kind, her figure rounded provocatively rather than flabbily, and Alan's excitement grew when her breasts and stomach became exposed to the moonlight. He bent his head and kissed her neck, lowering himself so his lips brushed against the tops of her breasts which threatened to spill over the silky material of her bra. His tongue drew a slivery trail over her stomach, sudden goose-pimples making her flesh hard and brittle.
Although the cold made her shiver, it seemed to add a new dimension to their lovemaking, the chill numbing her on the outside, warmth flooding through her on the inside. And the stars above her, the air around her, gave the feeling that they were being observed and that added to the thrill. The goose-pimples made her body lose its numbness, made it tingle, tickle when he touched her. He pulled her arms free of the coat and began to slip the blouse from her shoulders.
‘No, Alan,’ she protested, 'it's too cold for that.’
He kissed her lips and ignored the protest, pulling the blouse free. He looked down at her white, bare shoulders, at her face staring up at him, yearning yet innocent, and, for a moment, he almost loved her. Almost, and only for a moment: desire quickly overwhelmed emotion. He reached behind her and undid the clasp holding the bra together, then slid it down along her arms. He pushed her back onto the rug and began to tug at the skirt. After the initial struggle over the hips, it pulled away easily from her legs. Her tights came next, along with her shoes.
He took his time with the panties, touching her first through the flimsy material, making her squirm and causing her to grab his hand to guide it more skilfully, urging his fingers to reach inside. He pulled away, knowing her pleasure would take her too far, upset their timing.
Her body looked like white marble as he stood and gazed down on her: soft, yielding marble that could absorb his own body. Her hands hooked into the sides of her panties and pulled them down over her hips, over her ankles, over her feet. She delicately placed them to one side, then lay back on the rug, her legs slightly apart, a small black triangle the only contrast against her pale skin.
Alan quickly threw off his clothes, letting them fall in an untidy heap, knowing he would regret it later when he would be scrabbling around in the dark searching for them and feeling the cold; but for now, it hardly mattered. All he cared about was being joined with that wonderfully passionate body lying at his feet. He fell to his knees, then smothered her with his own body, pressing against her, moving and sliding, squeezing and caressing.
Her arms encircled his waist, moved up to his shoulders, back down to his buttocks, pulling him against her, sinking her fingers into the fleshy parts. Her knees rose on either side of his thighs and she hooked her heels around his calves, using her legs to pull him in tighter.
His mouth encircled a nipple and he drew his breath in, making the nipple erect and angry red. He sought her lips, his hand giving the abandoned breast rough comfort. Soft moans of pleasure were escaping her now and he had to control his own murmurings, not wanting to make too much noise just in case there really were others in the forest. But as their movements became more frantic, so their appreciation grew louder.
Babs reached down for him, wanting him inside her, no longer prepared to prolong the foreplay. She found his penis and heard him groan, then she pulled it towards her, her legs spread wide, heels off the rug now and making indents in the earth. He jerked his hips back, when he felt the lips of her vagina, and kept his organ there, teasing her with its touch.
‘Alan, please,’ she implored, and he was smiling in the darkness and she was smiling too, wanting him inside but wanting the game to go on. He deliberately pushed himself away and changed her small cry of disappointment to one of delight when he sank his head between her thighs and thrust his tongue into the deep moist passage. Her hips rose from the rug, her whole body moving frenziedly, and he had to hold her in a tight grip so he would not lose her. She thrust her body out to meet his teasing lips and tongue and he brought his knees forward to suppor
t her weight more easily. He lifted one thigh so it was over his shoulder, then the other, her legs closing around his head in a grip he thought might flatten his ears permanently. He was finding it difficult to breathe, but she refused to loosen her hold, using her hands and the backs of her legs to draw him in further, her neck and shoulders supporting the weight of her upper body.
Alan thought he might suffocate and was ready to panic when he felt her body go stiff and taut in the last paroxysms before orgasm. Her hand, reaching beneath her buttocks and finding his penis erect in his lap, encouraged him to make the final effort and he plunged as deeply as he could, stretching the retaining tendon at the base of his tongue until he thought it might tear, her moving hand causing the pleasure in his lap to mingle with the pain in his head and lungs, the pain somehow enhancing the pleasure, the pleasure somehow nullifying the pain.
She failed to hold back her cries and, at that stage, didn't care; Alan's flesh-enclosed ears did not even hear. Her arched back became wet from him as both bodies convulsed with their separate releases, and their figures created a bizarre, trembling sculpture in the moonlit clearing. They became locked rigid for the last dying seconds of orgasm, then their bodies slowly crumpled to the ground. Lying there breathless, chests heaving, they allowed their frantic hearts to slow before moving together again.
Alan pulled her coat over them and they huddled together, their bodies warm but aware that the chill would soon bite its way in.
‘Alan, Alan, thank you,’ Babs said when her breathing had become more controlled. ‘It was lovely.’
Alan could only grunt, the sound muffled, for his head was snuggled against her breasts beneath her coat. He felt utterly exhausted and his lips were sore.
Babs ducked under the coat and lay her head close to his.
‘Didn't you think it was lovely?’ she said.
Alan stretched his legs down and the grass tickled his feet.
He quickly drew his knees up again. ‘Yes, Babs, terrific.’ But now, satiated and beginning to feel cold, he thought about getting home; he'd told Marjie he wouldn't be too late.
Babs lifted her head to kiss his cheek, then turned and lay on her back, limbs stretched akimbo, a contented smile on her face. Her body was still warm from their lovemaking and even her exposed feet refused to acknowledge autumn's frigid presence. Something prickled one foot and she moved it away, closer to the other.
‘Darling,’ she said, watching a cloud swallowing the moon,
'have you ever wondered why it's so good with us, I mean.’
She lifted the edge of the coat and looked down at him, waiting for an answer.
‘No, Babs,’ he replied.
She returned her gaze to the heavens. ‘It's never been this way with Reg, not even when we were first marrried.’
The top of Alan's head appeared as though he were testing the air before emerging fully. ‘I suppose we're just physically compatible,’ he said. ‘Some people are. Some are compatible mentally, others physically. Me and you are physical.’
‘Not just that, Alan.’ She was a little hurt at the suggestion.
‘Oh, no, not just that, Babs,’ he quickly assured her. ‘It's just that some people are more, er, more energetic than others. But I think our minds are tuned in as well. We do seem to understand each other.’ He wondered if he could sneak a look at his watch without her seeing.
Babs tucked her arms beneath the coat, the chill beginning to reach her. Why fool herself? Alan wanted one thing from her and she wanted one thing from him. Sex was also a thing of the mind, and that was where they both tuned in mentally.
She wondered if Reg had given the boys their dinner yet.
Something prickled her foot again and this time, her senses beginning to lose their dullness, she became alarmed. It might not just be a leaf, or grass, or a twig touching her; it might be an animal.
‘Alan!’ she said sharply and began to sit up, the coat falling and revealing her ample breasts. It took a fraction of a second to register the pain, then she screamed and jerked her leg up, reaching for her injured foot, and she screamed again, louder, when she felt the two bloodied stumps that were left of her toes.
Alan jumped up, frightened by her cries, and looked around, trying to see what had happened, what had hurt her.
‘Babs, what is it?’ He grabbed her shoulders and tried to hold her still. What happened? Tell me! ' His own voice had risen to a shriek.
‘My foot! Something's bitten my toes off!’ she screeched.
‘Oh God! It's all right, Babs. Calm down. Let me have a look!’
But there was no time to look, for the rat, excited by the blood, ran forward and attacked her foot again, sinking its incisors deep, through the hand that clutched the injured limb, and into the foot itself. Alan shrank away when he saw the black creature, not knowing what it was, thinking it must be a wild dog because of its size. The moon suddenly burst from its cloud covering and dread hit him as he recognized the beast.
The pointed nose, the long sleek body with its hunched lower back, the stiffened tail it was a Black rat!
Babs' screams startled him from his paralysis; he grabbed the rat at a point near its neck and pulled. The screams reached a new pitch as Babs' flesh was ripped and Alan fell backwards, the struggling creature still in his grasp. It twisted its head and bit into Alan's thigh, gnawing at the flesh and swallowing blood as it burrowed deeper. The main artery was severed and more blood gushed into the rodent's throat, almost choking it, forcing it to withdraw its head. The blood jetted from the wound in a high arc and the air was full of its smell.
‘Oh, no, no!’ Alan cried, for he knew damage to that artery could be fatal. He clutched at the leg to try and stem the flow, but the blood spurted through his fingers and splattered his face.
The rat, squirming between his legs and expelling Alan's blood from its throat, turned and leapt at his chest, raking the skin down to the bone with its claws. It clung there and, as Alan toppled backwards, it began to snap its way into his throat. The others, those that had been more hesitant, crept out from beneath the clearing's surrounding undergrowth, still cautious, for the fear of man was inbred, but becoming bolder as the sweet blood aroma aroused them.
Through tears of pain, Babs saw the approaching black shapes, and she too knew their meaning. She wanted to help Alan, but she was too afraid; she wanted to run, but her fear made her freeze. All she could do was bury herself beneath the coat, her knees tugged up into her chest, her hands clutching at the material, holding it tight around her. The pain in her foot was excruciating and the terror in her mind incapacitating. She prayed, the words tumbling from her lips in a garbled flow, that the creatures would leave them, would fade back into the night, would return to the hell they had come from. But Alan's screams told her they wouldn't. And the tugging at the coat, the sudden sharp, exploratory nips, told her the rats wouldn't leave until she and Alan had been devoured.
As the bites began to puncture her flesh and the agony made her body unfold and writhe, she saw Reg and the boys sitting around the dinner table, Kevin, the youngest, saying, ‘Mum's late, Dad . . . Mum's late . . . Mum's late . . .’
It was past midnight and no sounds had come from the inside of the tent for at least an hour. It stood alone, like a canvas sentinel, in a corner of the wide field, the forest a dark back-drop. Liquid, almost frozen, clung to the stiffened blades of grass around the tent, but inside it was snug and warm, heat from the boys' bodies providing its own central heating. A small night-light glowed weakly in the centre of the floor space, the seven slumbering boys and their supervisor spread around it in giant cocoon shapes, dreading the cold dawn which would force them to shed their sleeping-bag skins.
Gordon Baddeley, the supervisor, slept to one side, a one-foot gap between him and the nearest boy as though the dividing line were a wall behind which authority rested. Gordon maintained that such abstract symbolism was important.
The boys, their ages ranging from twelve to fif
teen, were all from a Barnardo's home in Woodford, and this was their out-door 'survival' week. There hadn't been much to survive, for the nearest shop was under two miles away, and wild lions, tigers and crocodiles were not reputed to inhabit that part of Epping Forest. The younger boys, however, did believe bears roamed free in that particular area. The field was empty of any other form of life, for it was not one of the official forest camp-sites, but a certain benevolent Lord Something-or-Other - the boys could never remember his name - allowed the Woodford orphanage to use that corner of a field on his estate for camping purposes. As he did not live on the estate any longer but rented the land out to local farmers, he was only a mythical figure to the boys, vague and aloof, like God.
Gordon Baddeley had been a Barnardo boy himself a few years before and was, so everyone said, a shining example of the goodness and honesty that could come from an orphanage background. After only three years in the outside world, working in a supermarket as a shelf-filler, winning promotion to assistant on frozen meats, he had returned to the orphanage that had reared him, turning his back on success because he wanted to help those like himself, the underprivileged. The home had been proud to accept him, although it wasn't common practice to take back those who had left, for Gordon had been an exceptional boy. Well-mannered, soft-spoken, hard-working, no outward emotional problems he was a boy the staff could point at and say: ‘You see, it works. Even though we can't give them the love and affection of true parents, we can turn out well-balanced young people like this.’
Not that Gordon was regarded as soft by the other boys; on the contrary, he was looked upon as 'a tough nut'. He was friendly but firm, could be rough but not unkind, funny when he wanted to be and serious when others wanted him to be. No chip on his shoulder, no nurtured grievances; he seemed to like most people and most people seemed to like him. All in all, they said, he was the perfect Dr. Barnardo boy. And after three years on the outside, he had come to realise that was all he ever wanted to be.
The world frightened him. It was too aggressive and too big.
Lair Page 8
