Asking For Trouble Read online

  The thought that he had similar fears to me was reassuring and yet deeply disturbing. Was I a weirdo obsessive? Maybe I was. Hadn’t I recently considered phoning him in order to hang up? Hadn’t I just been trailing him halfway around town? Was that normal?

  Was my perspective warped? Or was his perspective warped? Maybe we were both crazy.

  ‘Look,’ I said, attempting to calm the situation. ‘It’s nothing. Stop overreacting. I was just trying to catch up with you. I was simply wondering if –’

  ‘Well, don’t,’ he said in a tight-mouthed snarl. ‘Don’t ever try and catch up with me. OK?’ I saw the hands at his side clenching and unclenching.

  ‘Jesus,’ I said, no longer bothering to conceal my amazement. ‘Whatever you say.’ An instinct for self-protection made me clutch my carrier bag to my chest. ‘It was only coffee.’

  There was silence, then Ilya’s expression softened and he nodded at my bag. ‘Been shopping?’ he enquired, putting on a gentle smile.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, wrapping the bag tighter.

  ‘Anything special?’

  I shrugged, my eyes downcast. I knew I looked sulky but I didn’t give a damn. However wrong it’d been of me to follow him, I didn’t think I deserved such aggression.

  ‘Are we still on for Friday?’ he asked. He reached his fingertips to my chin, tilting my face so I was forced to meet his gaze. His smile broadened and his eyes sparkled roguishly under their heavy lids.

  He was trying to make amends. He knew he’d been out of order.

  And his raw, rough beauty was so devilishly sexy that I couldn’t help but crumble.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, attempting an easy smile. ‘So long as I’m richly rewarded, you bastard.’

  Ilya grinned and bent to press a kiss to my cheek. ‘I’ll do my very best,’ he said. ‘Which direction are you going in now?’

  I didn’t know if he was suggesting he might come along with me or suggesting I fuck off.

  So I said, ‘The opposite direction to you.’

  ‘Fine,’ he replied. And we said our goodbyes.

  My shopping spirit had vanished. I went home.

  Friday night, and the small strip bulb above my bathroom mirror made my features seem shadowy and gaunt. I gazed at my painted face, at those darkly shaded eyes and those glossy, fat red lips – BJ lips one of my exes used to call them, as in blow-job lips because they’re very full and fleshy.

  I hadn’t planned on wearing gloss, hadn’t even thought about the stuff. But when I’d first applied Tulip Red – not my usual colour – I looked too much like me out on the town, albeit me with brighter lips and trashier eye make-up.

  I wondered if I should remove my nose stud but I liked the edge it gave me so it stayed.

  Seeking inspiration, I clattered in the long-forgotten dregs of my make-up bag, and I found it – a real blast from the past: my lipgloss, once a much loved friend and now somewhat forlorn and cloudy in colour.

  Nonetheless, I reckoned it might just be the finishing touch. I was glad I wasn’t an organised kind of girl who did make-up-bag spring cleaning. I unscrewed the top, loaded the sponge-tipped wand with goo and slicked it over my lips. They glistened deliciously, almost to the point of dripping. Perfect. Nice and sleazy does it.

  I dug a few pins in my hair and teased it this way and that so it looked temptingly tousled. The roots were dark against the tawny dye. I was pleased about that.

  In fifteen minutes’ time, I would cross the road to Ilya’s and, for one night, I would be his common little whore, flaunting my easy ways, giving him what he wanted. I was eager and nervous, my stomach full of butterflies; and I was excited and horny, my sex full of juices.

  But my face in the mirror looked scared and drawn.

  I poured myself a vodka, wanting to replace my anxiety with the buzz of frivolity. In my mind, I kept going over our little confrontation in the North Laine. The more I thought about it, the more over the top Ilya’s reaction had seemed. His flare of aggression unsettled me deeply. Could he turn nasty? Was he a paranoid soul? Or did he truly have something to hide?

  Perhaps he’d been trying to shake me off because he was meeting another woman. Or perhaps it was something far worse than that, although I didn’t know what. Again, I wondered if he might be dangerous.

  Oh Jesus, lighten up, Beth. It’s just a game. He’s OK. He’s even bothered to think of an opt-out clause: cuttlefish.

  I sat on a stiff-backed chair, legs crossed. My lipstick left a cheap kiss on the rim of the glass and I imagined it would smear sluttishly when Ilya kissed me. But then, I thought, will he kiss me? I’m playing the whore, and I don’t think they go in for kissing. Maybe I should say something when I go over there: ‘I don’t kiss, I don’t do anal and I don’t do anything without rubbers. Take it or leave it.’

  I hoped I could do it without feeling self-conscious. The nearest I’d been to role-playing before was a few mild sessions of silk-scarf bondage. I’d feigned resistance, but there had been a playful, giggly edge to things. And that doesn’t really do much for my arousal. I know sex can be funny, but that doesn’t mean funny is sexy, not when you’re really getting down to it.

  That’s why I like to keep my fantasies private: I don’t have to make them acceptable by sugaring them with humour; and when they’re safe in my head, there’s only one person who might find them comical and that’s me. And I don’t. I find them hot, especially when they’re crude and degrading. But Ilya seemed to be on my wavelength. He wasn’t laughing.

  I smiled to myself, starting to feel sassy and brassy once again. I liked the idea of our sex being a transaction – no intimacy, no seduction – just up front and down to it, clinical and sleazy. And, instead of cash, my payment was pleasure – not the kind of pleasure I might receive from a caring lover, but the pleasure I would take from being debased and used, from being Ilya’s plaything – a worthless bit of trash he could abandon on a whim.

  I looked down at my shoes, eyeing them with satisfaction. I’d borrowed them from Clare, much to her amusement. I didn’t tell her the reason I wanted them. I made up some nonsense about fancying a little practice at fuck-me shoes. Don’t think she believed me.

  I’d bought an arse-skimmingly short, bright-red slip dress. It was deliciously tarty. The best thing of all was the zip that didn’t lie flat and the bit of thread hanging from the hem. I’d splashed out on a plethora of stockings and sussies too, but they made me feel like I was in drag. So I opted for bare legs instead.

  The dress was filthy-tight. It made me curve and splurge in all the right places and gave me a drop-dead cleavage, no bra required. My nipples poked through the shiny thin fabric.

  Underneath I wore crotchless knickers – red gauze edged in black lace. They were scratchy, horrible things but I enjoyed the mild discomfort: it was a constant reminder that my undies were cheap and vulgar and, tonight, so was I.

  Yes, I looked the part. I was sleazy and easy, a whore for Ilya’s taking.

  I drained the last of my vodka, shuddered, then went to my windowless bathroom for a final mirror-check. Looking good, I thought, as I touched up my gloss-slathered lips.

  Then I planted one high heel on the edge of the bath and gently dabbed a tissue into the gaping split of my knickers. All the anticipation had made me horny as hell. My vulva was booming with thick heat and I was far too wet to be leaving the house in an itsy-bitsy slapper dress and knickers that were hardly there. I didn’t want to drip my way across the road.

  I was about to leave but a twinge of nervousness made me write down details of where I was, who I was with and our arrangement to act out a whore fantasy. Just in case. Then I slipped on my squeaky leopard-print mac, took a deep breath and left. It had just turned ten-fifteen.

  Outside, the lamp-lit streets were quiet and the sky was sprinkled with stars.

  I glanced up at Ilya’s flat window. The bamboo blind was down and the light shining behind it was red. I smiled to myself. He’d put a brothel-red
bulb in, whether as a joke or not I didn’t know and I didn’t care. I liked to see it, different from all the other windows. It was something for everyone to see, and yet only he and I understood it.

  My excitement fluttered as I mused on how Ilya might treat me. I was hungry for more of his insulting, dirty talk; hungry to be his slut and whore.

  Leggy and awkward on my borrowed heels, I teetered across the road. The night air was a cool breath, stealing under my skirt and whispering over my exposed juicy sex.

  The front gate was open, and I made my way up the wide steps to Ilya’s building, clutching on to the pale wall like a gin-soaked lush. In the gloom of the arched portico, I eyed the cluster of bells and laid a finger to his. I pressed long and hard. My short fingernails were red, and I’d chipped at the polish to enhance my slut image.

  ‘It’s Beth,’ I said confidently when Ilya’s voice crackled through the circle of tiny holes. Then, with a buzz and a click, the huge, paint-flaky door was mine to heave against and enter.

  The lofty hall was in darkness for a moment then, with another click, it was flooded with stark light. Like my place, I thought, with switches here and there to give you rationed electricity. And, like at my place, there were a couple of bicycles propped in the hallway, making the place smell faintly of rubber. But it didn’t look as good as my building. It was shabbier and the carpet was a hideously patterned brown monstrosity.

  I wobbled up the communal staircase to the landing, my calves already aching from the shoes. At the end was a slightly open door, and I approached, seeing the brass number plate there. His flat. A touch of chivalry wouldn’t have gone amiss, I thought, piqued that he wasn’t holding the door for me.

  I pushed in and the landing light clicked off behind me.

  ‘It’s Beth,’ I said again, half expecting a stranger’s voice to reply, ‘Who?’

  ‘I know,’ came Ilya’s voice, and I turned left to its source, seeing a door ajar with fuzzy red light bleeding from it into the unlit hall. Shoulders back, breasts thrusting, I stalked into the room, noticing the window that, had the blinds been up, would have looked across to my window. It felt a little strange.

  Ilya was lying full-length on a sofa, ankles crossed, watching my grand entrance. In the crimson flush of the table-lamp, he was shadowy and indistinct, his close-cropped hair tinged with a ruby sheen. He didn’t bother with a smile. He just looked me up and down, hooded eyes flicking in a quick check rather than lingering in a leer. His dark angular face – half-chiselled, half-crooked – was austere, unmoved.

  For a moment he became the inscrutable bogeyman of my imagination again, but then I remembered we were playing roles. He was being my detached, arrogant punter and I had to be his whore. Inspired, I strode forward, taking a quick recce of my surroundings as I did so.

  First impressions: not good. And it would have been a hell of a lot worse if it hadn’t been for that red light blurring the room’s harshness. There was a very temporary feel to the place, as if it had been let on a part-furnished basis and Ilya was keeping it that way. And there was nothing high on the walls the way there is in most people’s houses. There were no pictures, no tall bookshelves. It was all very low-level, which really isn’t good when you’ve got a high ceiling.

  And his fireplace – a sturdy marble affair – was chip-boarded over, with nothing personal or nice on the mantelpiece – just dull-looking junk: a couple of batteries, packet of fags, scruffy stack of paper, that kind of thing.

  I was slightly disappointed – not because I’d been expecting Ikea-catalogue swank, but more because I’d hoped to gain a few clues about him: his tastes, his lifestyle, et cetera.

  But, apart from that, I didn’t dwell on the spartan, shabby nature of his flat. I simply thought, Oh well, he’s a bloke. They’re not that good at interior design. Anyway, you wanted down-market, Beth. You’ve got it.

  Ilya didn’t move from his sofa-sprawl, so I slipped off my mac, cast it on to a sagging armchair, and turned to face him. I stood, legs apart, and struck a hand-on-hip pose. Giving a defiant toss of my curls, I stared boldly at him.

  Here I am, I thought. Go on, check out the goods. Objectify me to your heart’s content. Help me shake off the last vestiges of Beth and make me meat, merchandise, cunt for sale – a cunt so greedy that I’ll do it for free.

  As Ilya raked me with his eyes, his lips twisted in a vague sneer and he nodded to himself. The beats of my heart shot up.

  I could tell he approved. I looked deliciously cheap, so easy and vulgar. How he could he resist such a hot little piece?

  ‘Well?’ I asked, giving the word an aggressive note. ‘Do you like what you see?’

  Ilya stood in a bored kind of way, as if he were forcing himself to go and make a cup of tea.

  ‘You’ll do,’ he said, and then it was time up on me looking the whore. I had to start playing the whore and I was ready and willing. I was going to slum it beautifully.

  ‘So, mister?’ I ventured. ‘What do you have in mind?’

  Ilya gave a playful half-grin, came to stand in front of me and reached under the hem of my dress. It wasn’t far from there to my knickers, and he gave a murmur of appreciation when his fingers alighted, not on a gusset, but on my moist, brazen sex. He did a cursory exploration, his thumb rubbing over my pubis to find the wisps of gauze and lace that were my underwear.

  ‘Whore,’ he whispered, and as he spoke he eased a couple of fingers into my vagina.

  Lust tumbled to my groin and I gave a faint moan, tottering slightly on my heels. Deftly, Ilya moved side-on to me, reaching round to cup my waist and hold me steady. We were standing almost at right angles, one of my hips pressing near to his hip, one of my feet placed between his. The heel of his hand rested against my mons, and the fingers within me were motionless, as if he were stopping up a dam.

  He stayed that way while he lowered his eyes in blatant survey of my plunging cleavage.

  ‘Nice tits,’ he said, and he waggled the fingers in my hole. ‘But you’re very wet for a whore. I’d rather you were dry then I could fuck you, maybe with a bit of lube, and I’d imagine you were hating it. Imagine you were sick of cock because you’d had so many stuck up you.’

  He moved his lips close to my ear. His breath tickled there.

  ‘Yes,’ he continued. ‘You’d visit me with a sore slack cunt because, all night, you’d been taking dick after dick. And the men all want you. Not because you’re anything special but because you’re cheap. Cheap and dirty, and your standards are low. Yeah, you’ll let anyone stick it in you. As long as it’s hard, you don’t care. You’re just a slut. And sooner or later you’ll be taking it up the arse because your cunt’s too fucked to be of use.’

  Then he slipped his fingers out of me and walked away, leaving me standing and stunned.

  Vulgarity tripped so easily from his tongue and that little speech had been particularly foul. And the shock was that it inflamed me with a hunger I couldn’t help but be ashamed of.

  I watched Ilya head for the kitchenette, sectioned off from the room by a half-wall. As he passed his sofa, he dashed his fingers across the back, wiping off my juices. He was feigning contempt; I hoped he was feigning.

  I stood there, unsure of what to do. I was desperately aroused and I was embarrassed by that. I wished I were proud of my taste for filth and debasement, but I wasn’t. Confessing to Ilya had been a first for me; acting it out was another.

  It scared me a little that my vaguely expressed fantasies seemed as good as an open book to him and that he could say things to me and do things to me that struck a frightening chord within the barely explored recesses of my dank, dirty mind.

  In the narrow kitchenette, Ilya reached a whisky bottle from a cupboard, poured himself a glass, then returned. The slut that was me was obviously not significant enough to be offered a drink. I challenged that.

  ‘Don’t I get a whisky, then?’ I asked.

  Ilya took a gulp.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Y
our mouth’s going to be full enough.’

  He set down his glass on a table and, with his foot, eased a wooden chair from under it, turning it to face me. He unbuckled his belt.

  ‘I want oral first,’ he said, unzipping quickly and revealing snug grey trunks, their button-flies bulging. ‘And I want it firm and good.’

  He kicked off the bottom half of his clothing then perched himself on the chair. His prick jutted powerfully upright. The sight made my pussy swoon, and I was reassured, grateful to my body for getting heated up by something clean and wholesome rather than coarse and crude.

  In the bloodshot, bleary room, Ilya sat there, legs wide and waiting for me.

  ‘I don’t swallow,’ I said, asserting my whore-self.

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ he challenged. He linked his fingers behind his head and flexed his spine, stretching in readiness for the good time about to roll.

  Oh God, I thought, I really don’t swallow. Please respect that. And it suddenly struck me that I didn’t know where one game ended and the other began.

  I was playing a game within a game. In the small game, I was acting the whore and a whore can set ground rules: ‘No this, no that.’ But that was part of a bigger game, one where there was just one rule: saying ‘cuttlefish’ if things got seriously out of order, and knowing that ‘cuttlefish’ was also the big full stop, end of relationship.

  I was hardly going to cry ‘cuttlefish’ because of a bit of come in my mouth, was I? Would Ilya exploit that and make me swallow? While I hoped he wouldn’t, it gave me a thrill to think I didn’t quite know what the limits were and that my saying ‘no’ meant absolutely nothing.

  So, with a provocative half-smile, I sashayed over to him. Laying my hands inside his knees, I knelt between his open thighs, pressing his legs wider as I lowered myself down. I ogled his erect prick with eagerness and greed. He was unfurled and, in the red-stained room, his glans had a cherry-dark flush to it.

  I love cocks. I love looking at them. I love sucking them. It turns me on hugely. I know some women say, ‘Yeah, giving a blow job, it’s OK, but you only really do it in part-exchange, don’t you?’ But I disagree. I genuinely love it.