Asking For Trouble Page 7

  ‘I’m not looking for a relationship,’ I continued. ‘I don’t want anything serious or heavy or messy.’

  I thought of Martin and of all the pain involved in caring for someone. Could I be detached enough to have a relationship that was pure sex? Could I shut my brain off from my body? It sounded iffy because already I was fascinated to the point of lunacy by this Ilya guy and we hadn’t even met. But hey, I reassured myself, wasn’t that fascination fuelled by lust? And by Ilya setting himself up as Mr Dark Man of Mystery? Once we got it together, that would all fade. So yes, I decided, an angst-free, no-commitment, sexy good time could be had by all.

  How naive I was back then.

  ‘I just . . . I’m in the mood for a fling,’ I said. ‘A summertime fling.’

  ‘So autumn’s our cut-off point then?’ he replied matter-of-factly.

  Christ, he was talking about finishing and we hadn’t even begun. I could picture him writing ‘the end’ in his diary.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, trying to be light. ‘We’ll see how it goes. We might not last that long.’

  ‘We will,’ he said. ‘I reckon we’ll be good together, Beth. Suggest something. Tell me a fantasy I can help fulfil.’

  I fell silent for a while, unusually shy. I’d never bared my sleazy soul to long-term lovers, let alone to someone I’d yet to meet.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be major league,’ he prompted. ‘Start off small. We can build up if things work out.’

  ‘OK,’ I said quietly. ‘Then it’s really simple . . . but it’s something I’ve thought quite a lot about in recent days. It’s not really fantasy; it’s more . . . I just want us to fuck. Nothing wild. I mean, I don’t even know what you look like, not properly. A fuck would be a good starting point, don’t you think? No small talk, no big talk. Just a fuck.’

  He didn’t reply. Immediately, I feared I’d disappointed him by being far too pedestrian. Was a simple fuck not part of his game-plan? Had I put him off? Did he expect more from me? Was my request like the photo I’d sent him: dull and unimaginative?

  I could hear his disapproval in the lengthening silence.

  ‘You asked me to suggest something,’ I said, defending myself with aggression. ‘And that’s what I suggest. I’m not saying it’s my ultimate fantasy or anything. What’s wrong? Do you only get off on weird stuff? Are you –’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ he said levelly. ‘I was just waiting for you to elaborate. You know, a time and a place, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, severely humbled. ‘Oh, OK. Well, what about my place? Say, tomorrow evening? If you’re free, that is.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, a little too chirpily for my liking. ‘No can do. Tuesday night, maybe?’

  I curbed a rising anger. Tuesday night was Body Language night. He must have known that. He was fucking me about, playing games.

  ‘I’m busy,’ I replied curtly.

  There was a pause, then he said, ‘Tell you what, let’s forget about arranging a time. I’ll just call on you. If you’re there, you’re there. If you’re not, you’re not.’

  My instinctive reaction was ‘no way’. We weren’t talking about a social call here. We were talking about fucking. I didn’t want a surprise attack. I wanted to be armed and dangerous, sweet-smelling and sexy. I couldn’t just fuck at the drop of a zip. Supposing he called at a really unsexy moment, when I’d just staggered up the hill from the supermarket? Or when I had a face pack on? Or people round?

  His suggestion would condemn me to living in a continuum of ‘what if’s. What if he buzzed me in the next second? Or the next? Or the next?

  But I was pretty much living like that already; and besides, I probably could just fuck at the drop of a zip. My lust was set on long, slow simmer. It wouldn’t take much to bring it up to boil.

  So perhaps I should exploit that and turn those foolish fancy ‘what if’s into reality.

  Go for it, Beth, I told myself. Live dangerously. Anyway, if his timing’s bad, you don’t have to answer the door.

  ‘I’ll keep an eye on your window,’ he said. ‘If it looks like you’ve got company or –’

  ‘OK,’ I said as casually as I could. ‘The ball’s in your court. Call on me sometime.’

  ‘Great. I will,’ he replied. ‘It’ll be within the next fortnight.’

  I wanted to shout: ‘Within the next four minutes!’ But I just said, ‘OK, fine. See you when I see you.’

  When he’d gone, I masturbated to ‘what if’s.

  A girl can only take so much anticipation. And six days is a long time to anticipate sex, especially when you don’t know that it’s going to be six days and you have to think it could be any moment now.

  But six days it was: six days of nervous, horny tension; six days of wondering whether I should risk a shaving rash and do my legs yet again; six days of being on stand-by, completely at the mercy of Ilya Travis’s whim.

  My time was his, not my own.

  Every morning I dithered before my wardrobe, choosing clothes with great deliberation: this is sexy; this is easy access; this colour’s good on me. And my underwear was top-notch; not once did I slacken and think, So what if knickers and bra don’t match?

  The wait was unbearable. I hated being indoors. I couldn’t settle to any work. I had to question every sandwich I made in case it was now – buzzzz – with a mouthful of cheese and pickle. And my evening meals got seriously sexy.

  But I hated being outdoors as well, in case it was then – buzzzz – while I was holed up in a recording studio, or trundling around town with an armful of posters, or simply having a fine old time at the pub.

  I kept watching his window. Sometimes I saw movement; sometimes nothing. Movement got me all fired up, but stillness didn’t calm me. It didn’t mean he wasn’t at home. I wished I had a view of his front path then I could have monitored his ins and outs. But his house is in a low-walled garden – more gravel than greenery – and there are some big messy shrubs at the side. I couldn’t see a thing.

  Martin called on me once, back from his brother’s. Buzzzz. I was furious.

  ‘Why the hell can’t you phone before coming round?’ I yelled as he sauntered into my flat.

  ‘Since when have you been appointments only?’ he replied, eyebrows all surprised.

  ‘Since now,’ I fumed. ‘Since I started living here and . . . and valuing my privacy.’

  ‘I was just passing,’ said Martin, clearly shocked at my outburst.

  He wasn’t. I don’t live in the part of town where people are just passing. It’s residential.

  I told him he’d called at a bad time.

  ‘I brought you a present back from my hols,’ he said, slinging a paper-bagged box onto the sofa. ‘Fudge. Same as what you get on the Palace Pier ’cept the box says Devon.’

  I love fudge. This was emotional blackmail.

  ‘Just passing?’ I enquired sarcastically. ‘With fudge?’

  He spat out a sigh of exasperation.

  I told him I was in no mood for talking and, besides, I was just about to go out for the evening.

  ‘Who with?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘Tom and Clare,’ I said viciously. ‘We’re going down the Arts Club to hob-nob, and no you can’t come.’

  ‘Tom ‘n’ Clare! Tom ‘n’ Clare!’ he mimicked, sour and truculent. ‘Can’t anybody say one fucking name without the other?’

  ‘They’re in love,’ I snapped. ‘You got a problem with that?’

  ‘Pah,’ he spat. ‘In fucking love.’

  ‘I see the break’s done you good,’ I snarled, and he gave me a killer look before saying he might book an appointment with me one day, if I could possibly deign to squeeze him in. Then he left in a huff.

  My most noble emotion was relief.

  Ilya called on a hot, hot day. I should’ve known he would, after everything I’d said about the heat making me horny.

  I’d spent the afternoon down the beach with Jenny, Mike and some mate
of Mike’s by the name of Luke, who we’d met en route. This was my first encounter with Luke – Luke who I was later to seduce into being my very casual, far-too-young-for-me lover.

  I hadn’t intended going to the beach, but the three of us, me, Jen and Mike, had been in the office, sorting out some Body Language publicity. I employ Jen and Mike – art-school drop-outs – on an ad-hoc, cash-in-hand basis. Things just weren’t working out that day and so we’d agreed: ‘Sod this. It’s too hot. Let’s hit the beach.’

  And we did. We locked up and ambled down Queens Road, which was thronging with a freshly disgorged trainload who were, like us, beach-bound. They were all babbling away, towels and mats poking from their bags, eager to reach that brilliant blue sea under that brilliant blue sky which lies, so enticingly, at the foot of the road.

  To us hardened Brightonians, Queens Road is an everyday road; we walk past its shops and offices when it’s miserable and pissing down, when the sky is grey, the sea is sludge and the horizon’s completely lost.

  But to visitors on hot sunny days that road must scream out: ‘Go directly to the beach, do not pass go, do not stop to collect £200.’ It’s got those street lamps that you only ever see in holiday towns – the tallest street lamps in the world, with white glass balls on ornate black brackets. The road, full of traffic, slopes down to the sea in a series of slumps and bumps, like a gentle big-dipper; and, at the bottom, squashed between buildings, is a slice of the English Channel, shimmering blue and hazy with heat: Mum! I can see the sea!

  In the midst of the excitement, we trundled down to West Street, past higgledy-piggledy buildings in any style of architecture you care to mention.

  At the bottom, the amusement arcades were all pulsing and glittering, whooping and beeping – trying to outshine the sunshine and saying ‘yah boo sucks’ to the concrete monsters opposite. But that’s Brighton: for all the flowing white grace of its posh squares and crescents, harmony is not something that the town, as a whole, is big on.

  Shunning the subway, we crossed far too many lanes of traffic and reached Kings Road. At last the seafront, with its dead fairy lights strung between lampposts and its piers east and west – one bright and brash, its big wheel spinning; the other elegant and derelict, its windows all glassless. The sky was flawlessly blue and the sun was high.

  We strolled along the esplanade, glancing beyond the mint-green railings and out to sea, encouraging each other to take deep breaths of the salt-and-vinegar, exhaust-fumed air.

  We paused for a while to lean on the railings and wonder exactly where, in that mass of flesh, umbrellas and deckchairs, we might find space to park ourselves.

  We were just complaining about the tourists packing out our beach and hogging the tables at our bars down below, when this blond thing in long red shorts roared up on a skateboard. He did a bit of a snaking and turning, then clattered to a halt. He knew Mike, but not, as it later transpired, quite as well as he made out.

  When we moved on, he sort of scootered along beside us. When we made our way down the stone steps and joined the milling crowds of the lower esplanade, he followed, chattering away to Mike. And when we drifted past the gaudy stalls with their carousels of postcards, jelly shoes, windmills and special-offer seven sticks of rock for a pound, so did he.

  Eventually, we squashed ourselves into a patch on the pebbles. Jen and I continued our meeting in a half-arsed fashion, then we just lazed. Luke hung around for most of the afternoon, bouncing off once or twice when he spotted someone he knew. He went for a swim as well – very brave, I thought, considering all the shit that’s supposed to be swilling around in there – and he emerged vibrant and dripping, combing his fingers through tangled wet hair, a beaded thong round his neck, thin red shorts clinging to his thighs.

  I didn’t really pay much attention to him, except to think: nice face, nice body, could be a model in an Australian-soap or a kids’-TV-presenter kind of way; shame he’s such a prat.

  It was lethargically hot, with only the merest of breezes coming in from the sea. I lay there, arm across my eyes, top rolled up to bare my midriff, skirt raised high to bare my legs. The heat pressed on my sweat-damp skin. We drifted in and out of conversations.

  In the distance, one of the bars played sunny salsa rhythms. Eager kids scrunched across the shingle, chasing and screaming. Gulls wheeled and squawked or strutted near the squatting camps of people, fearless and huge, shaking at litter. Luke brought beer over in plastic glasses. It was almost too much of an effort to drink the stuff.

  I was itching to get back home.

  I kept thinking, Ah, his hand here, trailing across my belly; his head here, nuzzling into my thighs; his cock here, sliding into my cunt.

  Would he be slow and seductive? I wondered. Or rough and hungry? I was greedy for him. I wanted red-hot passion and gallons of testosterone.

  I tried to imagine his face, to build up a picture of him from the glimpse he’d offered in his photo. I couldn’t do it. I still thought of him as my faceless man.

  Perhaps he’d called while I was out. I hoped so, because, while I was at the mercy of him deciding when, I liked to think of him being at my mercy too. He might decide, ‘Yes, now’s the moment,’ and I would be out somewhere, innocently thwarting his anticipation, just as mine had been thwarted by the ending of every day.

  I forced myself to stay at the beach until the crowds thinned, the shadows lengthened and the dipping sun cast a burnt-gold sheen on the water. We sat for a while, clasping our knees and gazing at the ghostly West Pier – connected to the shore these days by a makeshift jetty because one day soon, so they say, the pier’s going to be restored to its dance-hall glory and we’re all going to have one rip-roaring, hootin’-tootin’ helluva knees-up there.

  The evening ahead looked like being a warm one and the others made lazy plans to move on to a bar. I declined and went home to shower.

  As I was passing through my living room, towel turbaned around my head, I glanced across to Ilya’s flat – a habit I’d quickly formed. I saw movement. He was watching me. I stood for a brief while, unwrapped my hair and rubbed at it, then went on into my bedroom.

  The bay window there looks across to two shabbily grand houses, spaced apart by a small row of garages. Behind the garages are the juggled backsides of more houses, with zig-zag fire escapes and black satellite dishes. I closed my curtains. You never know who’s looking.

  I didn’t rush to dress, nor did I linger over staying naked beneath my robe. I tried, best I could, to do the post-shower thing at a natural pace. My skin glowed pleasantly after the day’s sun, especially on my shoulders, which were feeling slightly tight – not sore, just tight. I tan pretty easily but my shoulders had just caught. They were a bright ruddy-gold and I slapped moisturiser everywhere before lying on my bed to let the stuff sink in.

  It was a hot, muggy evening and the raised windows made no difference.

  I waited for the entryphone to buzz. I felt sure he would call soon. He must have seen from his window that now would be a good time, me half-naked and obviously not busy.

  But no. So I dried my hair to its usual wavy straggles and swished at clothes in my wardrobe.

  After some thought, I stepped into my flimsy, flippy black skirt and buttoned up my pale-blue crochet top. Being kind to my shoulders, I decided against a bra. Slipping on my geisha-girl sandals, I twisted in front of the slightly mottled wardrobe-door mirror. My legs were caramel and my shins gleamed. I was glad I’d put in the hours down the beach.

  I looked good, although I wasn’t exactly to my taste. Normally I wouldn’t be seen dead in such a glut of girly high-street fashion. While I like things that are pretty or flirty or cute, I like them in small doses.

  But, tonight, I wanted to be a little girl for Ilya, a sweet submissive miss who would coo inwardly at his swaggering dominance.

  My breasts were too evident though. You could see their paler flesh and the dusky pink of my nipples. I reached beneath the crochet web and te
ased my thumbs over the tips. I smiled to myself, feeling lust tingle as they wrinkled to cones. When I took my hands away, my hardened peaks strained against the blue mesh, threatening to push through the holes.

  I quite liked the effect, but I was keen not to look as if I was gagging for it. So I began to rummage in my drawer for a suitable bra.

  Buzzzzzz.

  Oh hell. My heart slammed. My sex flared.

  In a mad panic I wrenched on a plain black bra, buttoning up my top as I went to get the entryphone. Deep breath.

  ‘Hello?’ I said questioningly into the receiver.

  ‘Hello,’ he replied, muffled intercom voice smiling just a little.

  My fingers trembled as I buzzed him in, and I stood waiting at my flat door.

  When his lean dark figure rounded the stairs, my stomach contracted with desire. He approached me, smiling – more to himself than in greeting.

  He had a beautiful, bony, Slavic face. Just seeing that face made my inner thighs quiver. I didn’t stand aside and, as he reached the doorway, he placed a hand on my hip and moved close. Above the V-neck of his grey T-shirt, in the dip between his collar bones, there was a hint of black curling chest hair. I allowed myself to be shuffled blindly into my excuse for a hallway. He was at least a head taller than me.

  With a gentle backward kick, Ilya shut the flat door. Then he was edging me further into the hall until I was pressed against the opposite wall. His engorged crotch bulged against my belly and he bent his knees a touch to briefly grind himself into my pubis.

  His hand rubbed gently on my side and I could feel its broad strength as he stirred my skirt around the jut of my hip bone. For a long, delicious moment we exchanged a steady gaze, silently agreeing on the need to just look.

  His eyes were to die for. They were a deep blue-green, rimmed with black – intense like spilt petrol on tarmac. They were quite definitely not of this country, and they were set deep under dark craggy brows. The skin beneath them had a mauvish tinge. His nose was big and strong, curving like a scimitar. His lips were full and maroon, bruised almost.