Thrill Seeker Page 4

  ‘See what you make me do,’ he accused, his Dunfermline accent rolling through gritted teeth. ‘Fucking you in this nasty place, like a whore. A greedy little whore. Why d’you do it, hen? Why d’you make me fuck you like this, eh?’

  The boat creaked and I feared it might break, its wood too brittle and splintered to take us. Baxter slammed relentlessly, his cock thumping at my core. He released my hair and hooked me around the waist, holding me steady as he powered on, his breath fast, his grunts spittle-moist and urgent. He was a hefty man with crude hands, his broad chest tangled with dark hair, his thighs as big as a warrior’s. He was a few pounds overweight but proportionate so the extra layer merely added to his bulk and strength. Besides, I like a man with padding.

  To look at him, sturdy in a suit, hair rumpled, jaw unshaven, his tie permanently askew, you wouldn’t believe he could move with such grace and ease; wouldn’t believe how his pelvis could undulate when he lingered over a slow, cruel fuck; wouldn’t believe how fast he could move in the sack. But then to look at him, you’d never guess he was as broken as the boats around us, a big, angry, soft-hearted Scot with a weakness for women and whisky.

  I loved him for a year and now I wish I’d never met him.

  That night on the beach is etched in my memory as one of our high points, later to became a low because it was laced with betrayal. At the time, drunk on romance, I’d seen the desolate beauty of the fishing quarter as an environmental echo of Baxter. He was all around me, his masculinity echoing in the remnants of this coastal industry, in the coils of thick rope, the heavy chains and dark, dangerous secrets of the sea.

  ‘C’mere, you wee bitch,’ he urged, snatching himself from me. ‘Suck my dick. Come on, jump to it.’

  He maneuvered me into place, dragging me by my hair. I complained, resisting him because it was too dark to see and the boat was grotty. I wanted to know where I was putting my hands, what I was kneeling on. Was it clean, safe? Would we break the boat and end up in a heap of matchwood? But Baxter didn’t care about niceties and he knew, at heart, neither did I.

  I stumbled towards him on all fours. I was wearing cute, blue, hold-up stockings with a daisy detail on the ankle. Not so cute now. Baxter’s thighs were bound with a confusion of clothing and his cock was hard enough to cut diamonds. For a brief moment, moonlight glossed his tip, adding a pearly pink sheen to the flushed violet marbling. The veins on his shaft were thick like those ropes, flowing with blue mysteries like the sea. He gripped himself, holding steady as he aimed for my mouth, pulling me on to him.

  Had anyone been watching they might have wondered if I were consenting to this. But I was, very much so. Baxter’s bossiness turned me on like nothing else. I saw his cock as him condensed, full of rage but exposed and vulnerable too. At that moment, I couldn’t differentiate between wanting the man and wanting the cock. I wanted him and it to overwhelm me. Then I could disappear into him, like disappearing into the vastness of the black, boundless night. That’s what I craved: the oblivion of dissolution, the intoxicating peace I found in the white heat, white light of lust, sweat and surrender.

  I sucked his end, lips tight over his encircling ridge, then slid wetly to his root. ‘Tha-at’s right,’ he cooed. His tender, selfish approval made my cunt loosen. He tasted of latex so I blew him with a quick sloppy mouth until he tasted of himself. Then Baxter took over. He held my head firm and began fucking my throat with brutal, pornographic thrusts. He used me as if my pleasure and comfort meant nothing to him. But Baxter was good, always judging it so he never went too far.

  ‘No teeth,’ he snapped. ‘I dinnae want to feel teeth.’ He made me cough and splutter. I didn’t know how much more I could take but I wanted to take it for him. I wanted to be the best I could be. I shielded my teeth with my lips. Tears spilled from my eyes.

  He pulled out, hand pumping on his cock, blurrily fast. ‘Show me your tits.’

  ‘Bax! Supposing someone—’

  ‘Show me your fucking tits. I want to come on them.’

  I surveyed the dark beach and unbuttoned quickly. This was no time to quibble. With his free hand, Baxter shoved my top from my shoulders, greed making him clumsy. ‘Hang on,’ I said, struggling to unbutton. I shrugged back my top, lifted my flesh from my bra and offered myself, my nipples crinkling, so tight and hard. Baxter groaned in approval. I had to wait like that, complicit in my own submission and debasement. But I loved feeling objectified, loved being nothing but a pair of tits Baxter could claim with his territorialising jizz. There, I felt de-civilised and free.

  The distant fairground music floated around us. I was remote from our surroundings, wrapped in intimacy with Baxter. Waves crashed on the shore, giving the beach its timeless heartbeat. In my peripheral vision, a cluster of ragged black flags poked from a corroded oil drum, fluttering in the breeze. Stacked crab pots to my left became the wall of a rough, ancient cage made from wood and blue rope. We might have been in an underworld at the bottom of the ocean, those torn flags waving a dark, eerie triumphalism. We belonged here, not there where people were having brash, bright, candy-flossed fun.

  Baxter’s eyes were fixed on me, hand working furiously, face twisting. A lock of dark, wavy hair fell across his forehead as he hunched his shoulders, grimacing. Then he threw back his head, gave three sharp, agonised cries and came, cursing as if he wished it weren’t happening to him. His liquid splashed in soft, warm hits then his noises faded, stuttering and slowing like the pearls tumbling from his cock.

  ‘Fuck,’ he breathed, panting. He gave me his hand to lick clean. Then, because he’s a nice guy, he clasped my wrist and urged me onto my back.

  He pinned me at an angle, an arm held above my head, his fingers linked in mine. I felt stripped bare, his come cooling on my tits, the underside of my wrist delicate and thin-skinned beneath the strength of his grip, my armpit open to attack. He nudged my legs wider with a crude stab of his knee. The night breathed over my slippery cunt.

  ‘Let’s see what you’ve got to give, eh?’ he said, his whisper harsh and mean.

  Other than a little wriggling, I didn’t move from the position he’d put me in. He reached under my skirt and crammed thick fingers inside me, making me gasp. He fucked me like that, fast and furious, as if taking revenge for his own climax. When my cries got too loud he clamped a hand to my mouth, his face lit with crazy delight. He propped himself on an elbow, fingers still slamming.

  ‘This is what you like, isn’t it?’ His voice was a growl by my ear. ‘You trapped. Helpless. Me fucking you with my fingers.’

  He slowed, stroked my clit, spread my juices higher. His words echoed in my head, driving me to my tipping point. He knew what I liked, knew my fantasies. Best of all, he could give them right back to me, no judgment passed, my desires embellished with his fierce imagination. No one else had ever done that for me until Baxter. I saw it as a gift and was grateful to be known.

  Above me, beyond the bedraggled flags, a drift of silver-grey clouds floated across the dark. I panted, getting closer. Baxter breathed more obscenities in my ear, his words slow and clear. No shame or shyness from Baxter. His fingers filled my cunt, his thumb rocking my clit with a precise, steady rhythm. On my mouth, his hand was humid. I gasped against it as my orgasm tightened. ‘Beautiful,’ he breathed, seeing I was close. ‘Aye, there she goes, my beautiful wee bitch, there she goes.’

  In my thighs, sensation brimmed over, higher, and I was coming hard, pulsations wringing me out, squeezing and dancing. I cried as quietly as I could, allowing ecstasy to erase me, beyond skin, beyond words. White heat. Flight. Gone. Baxter lifted his hand from my mouth, becoming gentle as the shivers left my body. He smoothed a strand of hair from my face, licked my juices from his fingers then kissed me.

  I sat up, tasting myself on my lips and rubbing his come into my skin.

  Baxter chuckled. ‘What a mess you’ve made of yourself.’

  I wrapped my arm beneath his loose shirt, kissing his damp neck. He was briny
like the sea air. I kissed and licked some more, his stubble grating.

  Later, we stumbled from the beach, me giddy and high, Baxter grumpy and regretful. The boating lake by the prom gleamed like a dark mirror, a flock of moored swan pedalos gazing out with sinister, unseeing eyes. Baxter dusted himself down, complaining about the smear of seaweed on the knee of his suit, the God-knows-what on his jacket, the dampness of his shirt.

  ‘Look at the fucking state of me,’ he said. ‘I’m a tramp. You lead me astray, you know that?’

  A joke although not quite. Baxter was good at deflecting responsibility but I never saw that at the time.

  He never left my place without showering.

  He never let me mark him, no love bites, no scratches.

  He always stayed at my house; I only once went to his.

  Occasionally, I would tease him about his secret wife and he would laugh in that big, hearty manner of his because no, he wasn’t fucking married, course he wasn’t, are you for fucking real? He was separated. Debra lived in Scotland but that could be Jupiter for all he cared, and they barely had anything to do with each other no more.

  In your dreams, Baxter Logan. In your fucking dreams.

  Since then, I’ve been trying and failing to get him out of my system. No, that’s not good enough: to rip him from the marrow of my bones.

  Another date, another dollar.

  How many since I embarked on this matchmaking merry-go-round? Fifteen? Twenty? And how many messages, memos, winks and pokes had I exchanged? Too many. Enough to sink a digital ship.

  In return for all this effort, apart from my disastrous success with Baxter, I’d met only two guys I liked. One, pre-Baxter, had stopped returning my calls after we’d been seeing each other for two months, no further explanation. The second, post-Baxter, had wanted exclusivity from the get-go, and I think that’s a big ask in the early stages of a relationship. Besides, after Baxter’s betrayal, I was in no hurry to commit or fall in love. I knew I’d be quick to bruise so I swore off men for a while, determined to heal before going in for another bout. When I eventually returned to internet dating, I wasn’t looking for love. I just wanted some fun and the chance to keep exploring my sexual self, to seek my Northern Lights.

  With Baxter, submission was more than I’d dreamed it could be. In the thick of it, when he pushed me towards my limit, I could go under and reach a place of beautiful, bombed-out absence, a strange sensation of being saturated in an ongoing miracle. Just held there, floating and far off. Untouchable. I learned the name for this: subspace; the word so ugly and inadequate for the experience it described. In that zone where I was lost to myself, dissolving and drifting, I felt more at peace than at any point I’d known before. So far, only Baxter had been able to show me that clearing. After him, nothing else could get me as high, but the compulsion to yield still clawed at me.

  I didn’t want that to be the case. I wanted to be able to submit on a casual basis but feared I might not be cut out for darkness with lightness, might not be able to surrender myself to someone I didn’t adore and fully believe in. Tonight’s date had described himself as an aspiring dominant. He was handsome and friendly, so I figured he was worth a shot.

  It was a Monday evening and Old Town was quiet. A late evening sun cast skinny shadows across stone and sparkled on the gilt embellishments of Saltbourne’s pink, domed turrets. Once, this fishing village had been fashionable. Then it fell out of favour, its genteel Regency visitors deterred by two destructive storms and the whims of the in-crowd. Those incongruous, Persian domes remain, adding a touch of Arabian Nights and misplaced frivolity to this rugged, sloping, half-derelict town.

  After a day at work, the weekend’s events seemed unreal and distant. Sat at my desk and typing up minutes, the break-in was a dream. Alone, the reality lodged most keenly. I hadn’t slept much the previous night, all the creaks in the house coming out to torment me. Now, with my footsteps ringing on old stone, I grew uneasy again. Could Den see me? Was he on my tail? Should I confide in Liam?

  My phone honked as I descended a steep passageway of steps scooped to thinness by centuries of feet. I waited till I was at the bottom before retrieving the phone from my bag. Still wary, I checked around me before checking the screen.

  Another text from my date: ‘Really looking forward to meeting you, Natalie! If I get to the pub first, I’ll text you so you know where I’m sitting. See you soon. Paul. xx’

  I locked my phone. Minor doubts I’d had about this guy were turning into significant reservations. Too keen, too needy, too anxious. I was already feeling suffocated and while I don’t expect a dominant to be all grrr and roar in regular interactions, an air of confidence doesn’t go amiss.

  I had another concern. He’d said, due to cheese, red wine and the gym, he was slightly heavier than in his profile pictures. Well, that could be OK, I thought. I like big blokes. Besides, cheese, red wine and the gym was a sexy combination. In his pictures, he was extraordinarily good-looking, a tall, slender guy with piercing green eyes and bone structure as fine as china. I couldn’t see a slight heaviness detracting from that.

  In The Smugglers Arms, a soulless, mock Tudor pub that’s useful for first dates because I don’t know anyone who drinks there, I wouldn’t have recognised him except that he was waving from a deep, leather sofa. He stood, jeans tight on his thighs. I greeted him with a peck on the cheek.

  ‘I was about to text you,’ he said. He had that first-date mania, smile a little too tense, eyes staring intently as if wanting to absorb me in case I fled.

  I smiled, searching for some vestiges of those elegant bones in his bloated face and bull-dog neck. Perhaps I looked manic too. I wanted to say, ‘That’s not red wine and cheese, mate! That’s burgers and kebabs.’ Instead, I chirped, ‘No need, I’m here! Nice to meet you!’ He wasn’t obese. He was stocky and it didn’t suit him. In his photos he’d looked cultured and intelligent. Now he seemed slow and stupid. Give him a chance, Natalie, I thought. Judge, book, cover and all that.

  We sat opposite each other at a long, low table, at our side a grand fireplace with dried flowers in its hearth. The space was awkward; both of us perched on the edge of our sofas, unable to hear properly because of tinny music coming from a speaker above us. Dreadful place. Why did I keep going there?

  We talked about our jobs, music and travel, and failed to laugh at each other’s jokes. I tried to picture him ramming his cock into my mouth and calling me names. The hand on his pint glass was chubby and I wondered if his fingers would feel good inside me. None of it worked. I couldn’t see how this uneasy, approval-seeking man might step into Baxter’s shoes by becoming a big, beautiful beast in bed. But if he were able to do that, maybe I could overlook the fat neck and lacklustre conversation to get my fix of twisted sex. And if that panned out OK, maybe I could stop pinning my hopes on a some faceless psycho who’d broken into my house to leave his kinky calling card.

  Kinky? No, Den’s calling card was beyond kinky. Again, I wondered if I ought to fess up to Liam so he could keep an eye out for me. No need, I reassured myself. I was safe. Den had removed his profile from FancyFree so there was a good chance he’d stopped already. And if he hadn’t stopped, well, that was fine too. I could handle myself. I was smart enough not to get embroiled in something seriously risky.

  ‘So how are we doing?’ Paul asked as we neared the end of our first drink.

  I smiled, stifling a sigh as I fiddled with the stem of my glass, thinking, stay or go?

  I often find it useful to narrow my choices down to two. Live or die? Live or live a lie? My instinct said this wasn’t going to work. Say goodbye, go home. But another voice, that of my devil’s advocate who lodges in my psyche in a room marked ‘desperate’, started telling me I was too damn picky. Dating was meant to be fun, an experiment to see if I could combine kink with friendship. This wasn’t a quest to find Baxter Logan the Second so why keep rejecting guys who were less than ideal? Lighten up, make some compromises,
Natalie.

  ‘Another drink while you think about it?’ suggested Paul.

  I met his gaze. His brows were tipped high, his smile wide. Too puppyish, too eager. Not my type at all. I shook my head. ‘Sorry. I need to go. It’s been nice meeting you but … sorry. I think it’s best we call it a day. We aren’t … I don’t think …’ I shrugged, hating this part. ‘I don’t think I’m your type. We’re not compatible.’

  Paul nodded, lips tight, eyes downcast. Eventually, he said, ‘Well, thanks for being honest.’

  I knocked back the remainder of my wine. ‘No worries. Any time.’ In a hurry, I gathered my belongings and left the pub, thinking what a dumb thing to have said. Any time? What did that mean in the context?

  Outside, Old Town was quiet, and my footsteps echoed in the dreary sterility of a Monday evening. Sometimes, if I’m in a masochistic mood, I go running in Old Town although I pay for it later with aching calf muscles. The seafront is my preferred spot. Most days after work, I jog down the narrow, sloping streets then, when I hit the expanse of Sea Road, I turn up the volume on my iPod and pound along the prom, inhaling sea-salt air and letting the horizon suck away the stresses of the day. On the way back, I often cheat, taking the funicular up to the cliff top, just a few streets from home.

  That evening, because I’d wanted to spend time tarting myself up, I hadn’t gone for my run. Almost without thinking, after leaving the pub in a mopey mood, I found myself heading downslope rather than in the direction of home, hungering to see the sea. Paul wasn’t going to rescue me from the clutches of Den by becoming another Baxter. Nothing had changed.

  The traffic was sparse on the seafront with the funfair to the west a pale imitation of its weekend, high-summer dazzle. By the pedalo lake, the plastic swans faced the blue-grey night with vicious beaks and haughty stares. I crossed to the main beach, casting a glance eastwards to the abandoned fishing beach. Sometimes, I want to revisit places I associate with Baxter and overwrite old memories with new. But mostly, I don’t want to lose the memories because they’re all I have. Stupid to want to keep the lie as if it were truth.