Thrill Seeker Read online

  I don’t have enough experience to know how well my fantasies might translate to real life. It worked with B, but I don’t know if it can work again. Submission seems to mean different things to different people. I know I don’t want to be an obedient slave to a strict master. That’s not my cup of tea. I want him to be driven, slightly out of control, loving his power over me and relishing how he makes me suffer. Or maybe that’s all I know and I’m trying to recreate the past.

  Anyway, those questions! I’m 5'6" (I think it says this in my profile.) Dress size 10 and 34C bust (So shallow of you, yes!). I run three or four times a week so I’m in pretty good shape. The photos on my profile are a little out of date (taken last summer). My hair’s longer and darker now but still wavy. And no, you can’t have an undressed photo of me! I haven’t even seen your face yet. Besides, you’ve had an awful lot from me already. I’m far too honest. I need to retain some mystery!

  I’m envious of you being in New York, although not if the heat’s anything like it’s been here. So hot and muggy. I’m having to sleep with the windows open and just a single sheet as my bed cover. If it weren’t for the sea, I think people would be fighting in the streets in Saltbourne. The sea’s like a pressure valve, takes the heat off. Even so, everything requires so much effort right now. It’s like wading through treacle. Or molasses, since you’re in The Big Apple. We need a thunderstorm to clear the air and give the plants a good watering.

  Anyway, you asked about my abduction fantasies. Like I said, I’m not usually so open with people I’ve recently ‘met’ but I feel comfortable with you. We seem to have complementary kinks, yes, and I feel as if you understand where I’m coming from. You don’t think I’m weird or damaged, and you seem to recognise I’m not submissive as a person. This is a sex thing not a personality trait.

  I appreciate your point about us starting from an equal base. Trouble is, we don’t live in an equal culture, do we? Sometimes I struggle with that. I worry I’m a bad feminist for saying I want to be dominated by a man. But then I remind myself, this is how I get my rocks off and so do lots of women. It doesn’t mean we’re stepping back in time or we don’t want equal rights. If anything, it’s a step forward. Because what I’m saying, really, is ‘Hey, this is how I like to get fucked so could you please take note, mister?’ Historically, women haven’t been able to say that, have they? Lie back and think of England. That’s what we’ve had. And the fear of pregnancy or being called a slut puts a downer on things. But times change, thank God. And for whatever reason, this is me. It’s how I’ve turned out. I’m sexually submissive. Who can say whether that’s innate or acquired? And does answering that even matter? The result’s the same, isn’t it? I want to be tied up and taken over. I want to be hurt and used. I want him to do bad, wicked things to me so I’ll have gazillions of orgasms and feel whole as a person. I have a strong submissive streak, sure. But I’m not a Stepford wife. I’m horny. Big difference!

  Anyway, I think you get what I’m saying. I hope so. I liked your thoughts on hotel rooms. In that spirit, I’m putting a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on our door so I can share this fantasy with you. Be gentle with it, please!

  How it starts doesn’t matter too much.

  It’s being his that counts, being his prisoner, having choice removed from me.

  I might be in a forest, running scared, aware he’s on my tail. I might be bundled into the back of a car, two men keeping me quiet while he drives to a secret location. (I like that idea the most. He’s driving, glancing in the rear-view mirror. He says something along the lines of ‘What’s she like? Is she wet? Test her for me.’)

  I might be in the Australian outback. I might be walking home from work, from the supermarket, the pub, the moon. But somehow, I’m captured. Strong arms, harsh words, a struggle, a threat. Then I’m taken to a place far away from my life. It’s like your hotel room, I guess. The usual rules don’t apply. (I work in admin for the local council – maybe I just hate my job and want an escape!) Anyway, he has me, he w ants me. It’s mainly him but he has allies. No one knows where I am.

  Sorry. I wish I could turn my fantasy into a proper story for you but I can’t. In my mind, it’s just a jumble of bondage, blindfolds and gags; of being held captive and used by a stranger or, if I’m being honest, by several strangers.

  I like the idea of being afraid and not knowing what will happen next. Someone else is running the show, a man who enjoys my fear and distress. It’s impossible to truly fantasise that part because I’m creating it in my head so I know what’s about to happen. But I suppose that’s the emotion I’m chasing here. With sex in real life, not just in fantasy, the more authentic the danger feels, the hotter it is for me.

  Sorry, I’m rambling. Where was I? Oh yes.

  The place I’m held prisoner is off the map. It’s derelict, hidden. No one can find us. I have to co-operate or things will get worse. Usually, my captors are a gang working together with one guy at the helm. He calls the shots, he’s the manager, the ring-leader. He decides what I need or, more likely, what he needs.

  Sometimes, he wants to see me get fucked by half a dozen men while he watches. Sometimes, he wants to fuck me himself then pass me around when I’m used and exhausted. Sometimes, he brings me food, slaps my face, and tells me I’ll get cock tomorrow. Sometimes, he chains me to his bed so I’m there for him in the morning. He calls me his ‘little bitch’.

  Yikes. I should probably stop there or I might regret this in the morning!

  I hope my fantasy doesn’t sound too pervy. There’s other stuff as well. More detailed scenarios. Stuff I masturbate to or think about when I’m with someone and close to coming.

  But to go back to B, the guy I mentioned at the head of this message. Since we split about two years ago, I’ve been looking for a man who could satisfy my darker side as he could. A man who wouldn’t be freaked out by my fantasies, a man who’d understand that even though I like to be overpowered in bed, it doesn’t mean I’m a soft touch or a doormat.

  Sometimes I wonder if B and I had a sexual connection I’ll never find again. I hope not. I loved where he could take me. I want to go there again, to hand over control to someone who knows what to do with it.

  I haven’t seen a proper photo of you so this is kinda unfair (Send me a photo! You keep promising!) and I might be getting ahead of myself. But it does feel, sexually at least, that you’re close to the kind of man I’m looking for. A pity you live 70+ miles away. How about we talk on the phone when you’re back in the UK? You have my number.

  N xox

  Kagami says: Natalie, I’m closer than you know.

  ‘There’s no one here, Nats,’ said Liam. ‘Maybe the window got blown open and it knocked the vase over. Come on, let’s go inside.’

  We were in the garden, soaked, Liam starkers and me in my flimsy slip, the pair of us like some latterday Adam and Eve. The noise of rain on foliage surrounded us, and on the other side of the end wall, water gushed down the steep stone gutter of Tanner’s Passage. A lantern bracketed to the brick of the passage cast patches of white light over the highest leaves, rainfall shimmering in the glow. I’d found the wooden door leading from my garden to Tanner’s Passage unbolted. I’d eased the bolt back, saying nothing to Liam.

  I figured he must have climbed in over the passage wall then exited by my gate. Either that, or he’d scaled the wall I shared with my neighbours, Benjamin and Steve, who were away celebrating a wedding anniversary in Berlin. But the latter route seemed unnecessarily difficult. My house was the last in the street, adjacent to Tanner’s Passage. The wall between was easy enough to climb if you were fit and the coast was clear. And who on earth would be out on a night like this?

  All my windows were open because of the heat. What had I said? So hot and muggy. I’m having to sleep with the windows open and just a single sheet as my bed cover.

  The kitchen window’s invariably open because I don’t have a catflap and Rory needs to come and go. Kagami must hav
e climbed in that way. He must be back from New York. Had he listened to us fucking? Would the sound carry from my bedroom down to the garden or kitchen? Would he have heard us above the storm? Or had he been deeper inside my house? Closer than I knew? No, the footprints stopped at the table. He was here to deliver his warning.

  ‘Hold me,’ I said to Liam.

  From behind, Liam embraced me, strong arms tucked beneath my breasts. My heart was still banging at a rate of knots. I felt drained of strength. Liam’s arms reassured me. Cool rivulets trickled between our bodies and when he pressed his lips to my neck, it felt as if his mouth were melting over my skin. Water dripped from my hair and streamed down my spine. My silk slip clung to me. Beneath my feet, the slate steps were cold and wet.

  A fork of lightning split the sky, a silent, jagged bolt illuminating the world. A few seconds later, thunder crashed so hard it felt as if the ground were being torn in two.

  ‘It’s moving inland,’ said Liam. ‘Getting closer.’

  I clasped his arms, making him squeeze me tighter. His grip crushed my ribs but there was nothing he could do to quell the thrill of my fear.

  Two

  In my twenties, my father died, and shortly after that I embarked on a low-sex relationship that lasted for six years. Six sodding years! I wonder now if I was craving security after my bereavement and after what had happened with my piano tutor, Alistair Fitch.

  Impossible to say. But crazy to think how long Jim and I stayed together in Dullsville. We met as students in Manchester, moved south together after graduating, and both thought we’d found ‘The One’. That’s a hard dream to let go of so, who knows, I might have clung on, irrespective of my past. During our last two years, Jim and I forgot how to fuck. We were practically pandas. We didn’t even kiss. I’d make a play for him in bed and he’d say, ‘Not tonight, Natty. It’s a bit much.’

  I began to feel I was a bit much: demanding, over-sexed, irritating, and on top of that, unattractive. So I stopped trying. Difficult to see what Jim was getting from the relationship. He said he loved me but I think most of all, he loved an easy life.

  When we broke up, I emerged blinking in the sunshine with my desire and confidence in tatters. I was barely alive. For months I lived in a daze, too scared to rebuild myself in case I discovered I was made of nothing and had no foundations on which to build. My life was over. I was emptied out. Here lies Natalie Lovell, age twenty-seven, loving daughter, sister and medical curiosity, a woman made of meringues, cobwebs and shadows of the dead.

  Then a woman brought me back to life. She was a gift from a friend. I lay on a massage table in a warm, dimly lit room, my face resting in the table’s hole. I was staring into the abyss, wearing a pair of paper knickers, and trying not to fret about being alone with a stranger. From the speakers came the faint twitter of birds, and in the air hung a cloying scent of spicy oranges. I was stiff and reluctant until she touched me. Her firm, oiled hands moved across my back and I remembered I had a body. For too long, I’d been living in my head and heart, all choked up.

  With slow expertise, my life-saver stroked and kneaded, rubbed this way and that, told me my shoulders were full of tension. My skin hummed under her fingers, my nerve-endings drawing in sensation, synapses firing. She pressed and pummeled, making me wince in pain, but I liked it. I grew loose and floppy. When she smoothed her hands down the sides of my body, she skimmed the bulge of my flattened breasts. For the first time in months, I felt that old stirring in my groin. I imagined her continuing, rolling me over and paying as much attention to my front as my back. I wanted her healing hands everywhere. I barely knew this woman but it wasn’t her I wanted, just her touch. The touch of anyone who cared enough to give me pleasure.

  I left the treatment rooms a different person. Nothing had happened, no funny business. But I’d re-established a connection with my own body. I’d remembered the simple joys of physicality, of skin on skin, of silencing the chattering mind and taking pleasure in touch. Maybe I started to give off a different vibe after that, I don’t know. But a few weeks later, no major effort required, I was dating Grant, a guy who reminded me sex can be life-alteringly glorious and that getting off was no bad thing either.

  On our first night, Grant blindfolded me, fixed my wrists and ankles to all corners of his bed, told me to relax and enjoy. I swear, I felt like paying him afterwards. He had massage oils, velvet gloves, warm breath, clever hands and, it seemed, all the time in the world.

  ‘What’s that? Ah, ah, what is it?’ I kept saying, frustrated by my sightlessness.

  ‘Doesn’t matter, just enjoy,’ he cooed.

  ‘Tell me, oh God. I don’t think I can cope.’

  He laughed merrily.

  At one point, I was pulling on the ropes, begging him to tell me what he’d done. He’d been kissing my shoulders, my breasts and then, from nowhere, one of my nipples was enveloped in a blanket of heat. It wasn’t a fiery, intense heat but a deeply comforting heat. My nipple glowed, the warmth radiating into the tissue of my breast. Then it happened to my other nipple, and I was lost.

  ‘Please tell me what that is.’

  He chuckled.

  ‘Please,’ I cried. ‘I have to know. What are you doing?’

  He’d capitulated on that one, telling me there was a glass of hot water by the bed. He’d been filling his mouth with the liquid then sliding his lips around each nipple. ‘And that’s all I’m telling you,’ he said. ‘No more questions. You’ll spoil it for yourself.’

  I have to confess, after his explanation the sensation wasn’t as wild. Grant was right, I shouldn’t have asked. But gradually, I relaxed, allowing him to stimulate me inside and out. He didn’t seem to care about his own pleasure – getting his kicks, instead, from mine. To be honest, that aspect did get weird after a few dates. Soon, I was aching for him to lose control, to be so overwhelmed with lust he’d grab my hair, pin me to the kitchen counter and bang me six ways till Sunday. But no, ‘Just lie back, Natalie, enjoy.’

  When he came, he barely made a sound. Sex was a polite, luxurious affair. I started to feel bad for wanting it badder. Harder, nastier, dirtier. Unfurling inside me was a craving for unfathomable, dark satisfactions. The nicer Grant was, the stronger my hunger for something other, for a sexual passion capable of dismantling me. Soon, I was wanting to re-live the lust that Alistair Fitch, with his sharp eye for vulnerability and his predatory guile, had drawn from me all those years ago in his cluttered, blue music studio. But this time, I wanted to seek my own pleasures, to taste them without dread, shame and confusion.

  Was I kinkier than most people? Quite possibly. But ultimately I figured Grant had control issues and anyway, if I was kinkier than most, I simply needed to find others in my minority. A doddle, no?

  Grant and I weren’t meant to be but I’ll be forever grateful to him for instilling in me the need to avoid that dead, sexless jail that had trapped me for so long. He made me take stock and, over time, I became deliberately bolder. I realised I had two choices. I could stick my neck out and start being honest about my desires, or I could suppress my feelings and remain in the closet, hoping someone would eventually find the door to let me out.

  Basically, I could live or die; or at least, live a life not fully realised. Giving up on certain aspects of yourself, the parts others might find distasteful or threatening, is the easiest thing in the world. It’s the safest route, the path of least resistance. But I was starting to feel if I followed that track of inertia, my lost and abandoned fragments would return to haunt me. I’d end up restless and frustrated, hunting for the flawed, shining jewels shame and doubt had made me bury.

  After my father was diagnosed, he said, ‘And I never got to see the Northern Lights.’ Everyone in the family insisted he still had time. We’d book a cruise for him and Mum, and he could sit on the deck, a tartan blanket on his lap, gazing up at the dances of a shimmering green sky. Of course, there was no guarantee the lights would show but at least we’d have tried.
But stage four stomach cancer had other ideas and Dad left us, age fifty-two, with too many dreams unseen.

  I didn’t want to be like that, ticking along and pinning my hopes to a future which fate could snatch away. I wanted my Northern Lights, damn it. If my candor scared some guys off, then clearly they weren’t for me. And I would never have met Baxter Logan if I hadn’t embarked on a policy of openness, although I’m not sure that constitutes a recommendation.

  But now, after my home had been broken into, I feared I’d pushed it too far. Had I, in talking so freely about my fantasies and desires, become a bit much? Had I lost sight of what was appropriate? Safe?

  Behind me in bed, Liam stirred. He rolled away from our spooning, his hand dragging sleepily across my breasts. My back was damp. I fought the urge to roll after him for comfort, instead sliding my leg towards his to maintain contact with his body. My safety anchor. Tomorrow night, I would be alone. And the night after that.

  No, Monday evening I had a date. If it went well, maybe I wouldn’t need to sleep alone. Oh, what an awful thought! I couldn’t go on a date in the hope of snagging an unsuspecting bodyguard. Besides, dates rarely went well for me, my first date with Baxter being an enormous exception.

  I should tell Liam. He’d stay over if I asked. He wouldn’t want me to be scared.

  But I didn’t want to involve Liam. He knew my kinks, more or less, and while he didn’t share them or feel able to cater to them, he was cool with what I wanted. But this was on a different scale altogether. We weren’t talking bondage and roleplay. Some guy I’d never met had found my address and broken into my house.