Ambleside was a small town on the edge of one of the lakes and I walked around it gripping Jack’s arm, my woollen gloves sliding on the leather. Nothing was open but he was right, it was busier. We had to keep stepping off the narrow pavement to walk past other people.
It was a pretty place. We walked along past a tiny picturesque house, which was built over the top of a stream. He said that’s what he’d wanted to show me. We leaned on the wall watching the river flowing underneath the house for a while, looking for fish in the clear water, and then walked past a giant water wheel.
Further along he took me down a path leading away from the high street. There was a sign pointing like an arrow, saying ‘waterfall’. It took about half an hour to walk up the path to it, and all the time you could hear the water as the pathway wove across the clear stream, through a wood.
‘Nice place?’ he asked when we stood just below the head of the roaring waterfall – watching it.
‘Yes.’
He was standing behind me. His arms wrapped around me. I leaned back against him and rested my head on his shoulder.
It felt good, despite what I knew about him, and despite the fact that he’d slipped into control-freak mode today. A part of me liked the alpha-male masculinity of his control-freak side. The other side wanted to slap him when he got arrogant and began ordering me around. Captain Control; that was what people called him when he was like that at work. But the way he’d ordered me last night and at the fort, and what he’d asked me to do – that was sexy.
He had his beanie hat on and his scarf wrapped right up around his neck. It was getting colder, especially in the shade of the trees.
We got back in the car after we’d seen the waterfall and he drove for about half an hour, but he drove sensibly because it was on a busy main road. I watched the scenery all the time, looking through the passenger window. Everything was beautiful around us. The road dropped down and followed the edge of a glass-like lake that reflected back all the hills around it. There were so many places you could just stop and walk, and so many places you wanted to capture in a photograph.
When he turned off the road I saw a brown sign saying ‘Castlerigg Stone Circle.’
‘This place should be quiet by now, I hope. It isn’t ever all that busy, but sunset is one of the best times to see it. I like it most in winter, when the sky is a metallic grey and a little threatening; it adds to the mystery of the place.’
‘What mystery?’
‘You’ll see.’
He was being Mr Cryptic today, as well as Captain Control. I’d never known Jack be cryptic or spellbound like this. He was like a child showing off his favourite toys – only it wasn’t toys, it was places.
‘Shut your eyes,’ he said, once we’d walked through a wooden gate on to a pathway into a field. I did, but my heels sank into the turf. His suede gloves covered my eyes, like he didn’t trust me to keep my eyes shut, and his strong body moved behind me, the leather of his jacket making creaking sounds.
‘Walk forward slowly.’
It was awkward because my heels were sinking and we were walking up a slope, so it was slow progress, but he kept his hands over my eyes. I was getting used to him keeping me in the dark. But I didn’t mind it. Not when I thought of last night. But then there’d been the sex on the top of the world with my eyes open looking out for miles, feeling like I owned the world – as if I had been the queen of it. My heart did a little skip behind my ribs, then it thumped in a steady beat. It was waiting for Jack to throw something new at me. Sex on the wing of an aeroplane!
I laughed aloud.
He didn’t comment.
But then… Prostitutes… The memory swept through me on a chilly breeze.
I wasn’t over the news, but I was trying really hard not think about it. It was in the past. He was right. It just made me feel weird to know I’d gone with a guy who did that sort of stuff. But he’d said he wasn’t carrying any nasty diseases, so it shouldn’t matter, I suppose…
‘Okay, here’s a good view.’
His hands slipped away and my heart burst into a full-on thud like the bass beat that had pulsed through his speakers in the car. I opened my eyes. ‘Oh…’ I didn’t know what to say. ‘Wow.’
The air was colder as I breathed in, but it tasted really clean up here. ‘My God. That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’
‘I’ve thought about suggesting this place for adverts, but I can’t bring myself to do it, it would feel disloyal, like I was breaking some unspoken code. It would ruin it if loads of people started coming up here.’
I looked at him. ‘You’re more complex than I thought.’
He smiled.
I turned around, looking at the ring of stones. Then walked towards them. ‘How old is this?’
‘Stone Age.’
It wasn’t the stones that were beautiful, though, it was their setting. The stones themselves were no higher than an average person, or below that, but they’d been brought up here, to a place, to a particular hill, which seemed as if you were balanced in the clouds with God, speaking with the other hills around you. Perhaps ancient man thought these hills were gods and they’d come up here to try and speak with them.
I looked at Jack. ‘What was this place used for?’
‘Look at the panel. It gives you all the information. Last time I read it, it said for trading—’
‘I can’t imagine anyone just coming up here to buy or sell a pot.’
He laughed at me. Probably because I had a dopey look of awe on my face.
But I was awed by this place, like everything around here. I hadn’t been abroad, my parents had never travelled and Rick and I had never had the money to go anywhere. This place had nothing to be compared to for me, except itself and as itself. It was the most perfect part of the world I’d ever seen.
I looked at Jack. I was still in awe of what had happened last night, too, but then I hadn’t travelled around guys either, not like he’d journeyed around women. I suppose nothing had been special for him last night.
I looked back at the view. I was also still shocked to know he had an eight-year-old daughter. But the thing that knocked my feet out from under me most was the relationship he’d had with Sharon –prostitutes as presents – I was never going to be able to look Sharon in the eyes if I saw her again.
Oh, but I was trying hard to do what he’d asked and not think of that; I just wasn’t winning.
They had been in the office. Emma couldn’t have known.
I walked into the centre of the ring of stones and stood there for a moment looking at the view, then I opened out my arms and spun around. The place had a magnetic pull. I was trying to live in the moment, but I didn’t ever want to forget this. This was a perfect memory to be filed away and kept forever.
I slipped my hands around Jack’s middle, over his stomach. ‘Hey…’ He was washing up. By hand. He didn’t have a dishwasher here. My fingers reached to his belt buckle and undid it.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Acquiring this for when you’ve finished in here.’ I started pulling his belt out of his dark jeans.
‘Why?’
‘You used the forfeit you won from me yesterday. I haven’t used mine.’
He glanced over his shoulder at me, smiling, as his belt slipped free from his jeans. ‘I’ll finish this up right away.’
He’d cooked for us. He hadn’t let me do a thing. He’d cooked prawns and stir-fried vegetables. I was impressed. He was a better cook than me. But then he was better at everything than me.
I wrapped the belt around my hand and went into the living room. There was no TV; he had nothing to do in the cottage, not even a bookshelf. All he had was the tin of cannabis in the cupboard and the music player. It was playing the Arctic Monkeys, ‘AM’, and the cannabis, his other entertainment, was left open on the side as we’d had a joint with our after-dinner coffee. ‘What do you do when you come up here alone?’
‘Relax. Think. I’m busy in the day and generally I just sit and think in the evening!’ He shouted from the kitchen
‘You’re so weird, I don’t get you…’ I bent and pulled a cushion off the sofa, then threw it on the floor as he’d done last night.
‘I think you get me more than most women I’ve known,’ he said when he came into the room.
I turned around. I didn’t know what to say. We’d agreed to forget the past, and I didn’t want to consider what other women thought about him. Or think about how many of them there’d been. ‘Turn out the light, then sit down in that chair.’
He smiled.
I forced my mind to focus on now, and fun, as the cannabis played in my bloodstream. And maybe a little revenge. We’d had sex twice and both times he’d controlled it – and after his confession I didn’t feel so great about it. This was my turn.
I was going to mess with his freaky need for domination.
I smiled to myself and scattered more cushions on the floor as he watched from the chair with a smile twisting his lips. The sort of smile he gave me at work if we were flirting – before he disappeared into his office.
The wood-burner threw out heat behind me, but I wanted the room hot like it was when I did yoga, hot enough to make Jack sweat, so I opened the wood-burner door and threw a couple of logs into the flames.
When the room was ready I turned around and looked at him, my hands on my hips.
His fingers gripped the chair’s arms and his lips parted in a wider smile, saying, what do you want to do with me?
Everything, Jack.
If I was a nice, decent girl, I should be back in London by now. I should have grabbed his offer to get out of here. Jack was depraved when it came to sex. But the truth was, knowing he was so bad made my heart race harder, being here was like living the best dare. I’d bungee-jumped into bad-girl status. But I’d needed this to get over Rick. This feeling – the way my heart had thumped with adrenaline all day, because I never knew what to expect – this had been what I’d missed out on with Rick.
I was going to enjoy this.
I unwrapped the belt from my hand, put it down on the sofa, then stripped off my jumper and top and threw them on to an empty chair, so I stood in front of him in my purple bra and jeans.
He breathed out. ‘You look good, Ivy’
‘Give me your hands.’
He held his hands out. ‘But think about it. Don’t you want me to take my top off first, babe?’
‘Oh.’ I made a face at him. Trust Jack to be clever. Like I’d said, he was better at everything. ‘Take your top off, and don’t call me babe, in that patronising tone.’
He gave me one of his twisted smiles, his eyes dancing with life and humour as he stripped his sweater and his t-shirt off. The flickering orange light from the wood-burner played over him.
His body was incredible. His stomach was stupidly firm. I imagined you could hit him with an iron bar and he wouldn’t flinch, and I could see every muscle moving beneath his skin when he moved, even tiny ones you wouldn’t be able to see on most men. His skin creased at his side when he threw his sweater and t-shirt on to the sofa, with mine.
The sight of him danced through my nerves, a line of Irish dancers drumming out their steps, and the muscle around my womb clenched tight because it had the instinct to make babies with him. My body knew what was coming and every sensation was amplified by the cannabis.
‘Hands!’ My order was sharp because I felt so weird inside.
He held them out. I wrapped his belt around his wrists in a figure of eight a few times, then I pulled the end through the buckle and yanked it tight.
‘What now, Ivy?’
‘Wait and see.’
My guess was that me getting naked first would be the thing that would torture him and turn him on most. I smiled and unbuttoned my jeans, then slowly slid the zip down.
‘Phew.’ He laughed after he’d said it.
I’d played stripper for Rick a couple of times, but this wasn’t the same, probably because Jack was a ten-out-of-ten man with a depraved, extreme alpha-male sexuality. I was playing with fire stripping for Jack, teasing a tiger.
I put my thumbs into the waistband of my jeans, then slid my jeans down over my hips, just my jeans. ‘Arabella’ started playing on the stereo. What a song to strip to.
I stripped my jeans and socks off my feet. That wasn’t all that sexy.
He’d probably watched a hundred women strip. Don’t think of the past. It’s you stripping for him now. But the past was still intimidating. ‘Arabella’ played on. I rolled my hips, dancing to the music in my thong and bra, in the heat that the fire threw out into the room.
He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees to get closer, his tied-up hands lifting to brush over the crotch of my thong. ‘No touching! My pace!’
He laughed at that and tumbled back into the chair.
I turned around, turning my back to him, and carried on rolling my hips as I played with the edge of my thong over my bottom.
‘You’re being mean. I want to touch.’
I undid my bra strap then slid off my bra. He huffed out a sigh. He couldn’t see anything more as my back was turned to him. For ages I just kept teasing him, swaying my hips, dancing, then I squatted back, gripped the arms of the chair and wound my hips across his lap, not touching him and twerked a couple of times.
He didn’t even try to touch me.
It was the sexiest thing I’d ever done and if he’d touched me he’d have known I was turned on too.
I stood up and turned around. The heat in his eyes said it all, and the beat of the music throbbed through me. The dark small room here, out in the middle of nowhere, away from anything I was in real life, gave me the confidence and freedom to be wicked too. I could be anyone I wanted here. Make up a new me.
The cannabis in my blood urged me on.
I played with my breasts, squeezing them and rolling my nipples between my fingers. I could see from his face he was painfully hungry for sex, plus there was an obvious sign in his jeans.
I slipped my hand into my thong and touched myself there as I swayed to the music, still gripping one breast too. He was only watching my thong now. I put my other hand down there and ran one hand over the top of the silky fabric while the other played beneath. He sighed with a low growl. His face moody.
I turned around and played with the material that ran between the cheeks of my bottom, then leaned forward and touched myself from behind.
‘Come closer and let me touch with my mouth…’ It was a plea, not an order.
I did, but only because that was what I wanted too. I was as turned on as he was.
His tongue danced around where my fingers played, but I couldn’t really let myself go when I was standing – without something to lean on. My legs were getting weak.
‘Shit…’ I breathed as I un-seductively stripped off my thong and then I turned around and climbed on to the chair, with one foot either side of his thighs as he leaned back, so I could stand over him, straddling his legs in the chair.
I hissed out a breath when his tongue slid over me, then I touched myself again.
His hands came up and touched my bottom. He couldn’t grip me, but he did slide a finger into me while his tongue played around and I caressed my sensitive spot with little circles.
I came in minutes.
He wiped his chin on his arm as I collapsed on to his lap with a sigh.
This was Christmas Day. I’d never imagined I’d spend a Christmas day like this. Rick, his parents, my parents and my nan would be full of Christmas lunch, lounging in their chairs watching specials on TV and I was here…
I undid his button and his fly and freed Jack from his jeans and his designer-fitting boxers that hugged his hips and bottom in luxurious cotton, then dropped down to kneel on a cushion on the floor, and I played with my tongue and my hand and mouth, while his tied hands rested on my head and his hips pressed up in the rhythm of sex, enjoying my games.
‘If you carry on, I’m going to come.’ The music speakers played out ‘One for the Road’. I didn’t stop. I wanted to be in control and make him come. I liked having control over him; it had become a to-and-fro game, and now I was winning.
He swore when he came. ‘You fucking bitch.’ But it wasn’t said aggressively. It was said because he’d hit bliss and he hadn’t wanted to go there yet. Joyous control. His salty fluid filled my mouth when his hips jerked up. I swallowed it away, then rose up and kissed him with the taste in my mouth. ‘Bitch.’ He breathed over my lips when I pulled away.
‘Get up!’ I ordered.
He stood up, his erection bouncing, slightly falling forward because he’d come.
‘Strip your jeans off.’
He caught his thumbs in the front of them and slid them down, then used his feet to work them off the rest of the way, along with his socks. It was very deftly done and I watched every inch of his beautiful body moving. ‘Now take off your boxers.’ They were still at his hips, below his erection and his balls. He slid them down his dark hair-covered thighs and then off his feet.
I stepped back a couple of paces. ‘Lie on the cushions, on your tummy.’
I was going to have some real fun now.
He reached his hands above his head as he lay down.
I was faced with the beautiful arch, from his broad shoulders into his narrow waist and hips, and I could see the intricate patterns of muscle beneath his skin. Who knew how he managed to tone them all? His pert bottom begged me to repay some of his sadistic games from last night. I knelt down and smacked him with a hard, quick slap to leave an after-sting.
‘Ow!’
I laughed. But it felt like it wasn’t hard enough. I did it again.
‘Ivy! If you’re trying to get me hard again, not the way…’
I laughed in a way that mocked him. ‘Doesn’t it turn you on, Jack?’
I didn’t wait for the answer. I stood up, then ran upstairs, remembering my leather belt in my case. I ran back down with it, naked and uncaring, because with Jack I felt like I didn’t need to care. He didn’t care what he did.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Getting some pay-back,’ I answered as I straddled his thighs, then I whipped his arse with the end of the belt.
‘Ow! Fuck! I didn’t use anything!’
‘You’re stronger than me – this makes it fair.’
‘Ow! I won’t be able to sit down tomorrow!’
‘Shut up.’
‘Ow!’
I laughed as I carried on, but I wasn’t hitting him that hard, only enough so he would feel the same pain I had last night. ‘Aren’t you turned on yet, Jack?’
‘No.’ He breathed out, getting my point. ‘But are you? Is it turning you on, Ivy?’
Okay, so he’d made his point too because yes it was… A lot.
I didn’t stop or answer. He knew the answer. The sound of the leather cracking hit my senses through the cannabis. It marked his skin with red welts and made his body jolt under my legs. He could probably feel the moisture from me on his leg.
After I threw the leather belt aside, I kissed and licked every sore, red mark and I was horny as hell by the time I asked him to turn over.
So was he.
His eyes tagged me, the pupils really wide, and his erection was a stiff straight-upward column that begged for more attention. I shuffled upward, straddling his hips and his hands came down from above his head and held his erection, aiming it at me with hope.
I laughed, then rose up, to give him what he wanted. I positioned myself, watching his face as he watched where we’d join.
When I let his tip slip in, his hands slid out of the way and then I pushed all the way down, impaling myself as his arms lifted above his head.
The control was still all mine; he couldn’t control anything with his hands tied.
I lifted and rocked, rose up and slid down, playing the role of a seductive stripper. I didn’t have to be shy, reserved Ivy with him, the person who Rick had placed in a glassed-walled prison of average life. I was free. I could do what I wanted. Find out who I was without Rick.
But somehow I couldn’t see myself as the sex goddess Jack was making me. I wouldn’t be into the things he’d done with Sharon. If he wanted to sleep with other people and me, I’d run. But I was glad I had this moment to live a little of his life. I’d experienced the extreme end of heart-pounding sex – or at least the extreme as far as I was willing to go. I’d look back on this Christmas my whole life and treasure that I’d dared to do something so crazy – even if I only did it once.
I lifted up and dropped down on to him as his hips pressed up and he pushed into me. Even with his hands above his head, his body was so muscular he could move and participate easily, undulating underneath me to the rhythm I’d set.
His eyes were closed and his lips set in a firm line, as though he was biting the inside of his lip trying not to come. His whole body glistened orange with a thin sheen of sweat in the heat and the light from the fire.
I moved down, sheathing him and broke apart. The orgasm flooded me with the strength of a tsunami sweeping through my body, obliterating everything else. I collapsed, falling on to his chest.
‘Oh, fuck. Ivy.’ His arms came down and rested on my shoulders, capturing me in the bonds I’d tied around his wrists, and his body kept undulating, thrusting up into me, as he moved his feet so his heels could press down on the floor tiles to give him more purchase, and more strength. ‘Fireside’ played out from the stereo, in a manic rush of sound, confusing my cannabis-distorted brain. There was nothing seductive in what Jack did, there had never been in anything he’d done since we’d been up here, it was just hard, naughty, and sometimes desperate sex, the sort of sex I’d imagined to turn myself on when I was with Rick.
When I recovered from my orgasm I joined Jack in the hurried battle for pleasure, my hands on the cushions either side of his head, as his arms rested on my shoulders, and our gazes clung to each other, just looking, absorbing. I thought about nothing but the feel of our bodies punching together at our hips, my thighs gripping his, my breasts catching on his chest – and all the sensations inside me.
I came again, and he followed; a deep, primal sound erupting from low in his throat.