Asking For Trouble Read online

  ‘Say you’ll be my whore,’ he said in a commanding tone.

  I eyed his surging cock, traced with thick veins and flaring violently at the crown.

  ‘Fuck me and I might,’ I challenged. ‘Fuck me hard.’

  ‘Ah, you greedy little slut,’ he enthused, disengaging his fingers. Then he began tugging at my clothes, yanking my top up, my skirt down, my bra off. His strength and roughness excited me desperately. In the chaos I lunged to grab a condom from my bedside stash. When I was stripped naked, Ilya flipped me on to all fours.

  ‘Be my whore,’ he said, circling my waist with his arm and clasping me tight. ‘Or you don’t get fucked.’ His swollen prick pressed into the split of my buttocks.

  ‘You swine,’ I hissed. ‘Yes, yes, I will.’

  I heard him bite at the foil-packaged sheath. Then his rubbered-up cock nudged and, in one fierce, fluid movement, penetrated me. Again and again he penetrated. He was roused to a frenzy and he just plunged and plunged as if he wanted to fuck me to destruction.

  ‘Hard enough?’ he barked.

  I gasped yes, no, and clutched the foot of the bed, locking my elbows rigid as he hammered into my depths, sending vibrations to my head. He dropped a finger to my clit and frigged it hard. It didn’t take much and, in seconds, I’d hit my peak and I was crying out for him to hurry, to climax, because my body couldn’t take much more. It was approaching stupor. With relentless vigour, Ilya ploughed on.

  ‘Come,’ I wailed. ‘Please, oh God. Come.’

  And he did – in his own good time.

  We rested. Ilya was a smoker. I listened to him move soft-footed through the living room then rifle through his trousers, discarded in the hall. He shouted for an ashtray. I directed him to the very back of the cupboard under the sink in the kitchen, but he returned instead with an empty Coke can.

  It was growing dark. A street lamp shone hazily through the muslin curtains.

  As Ilya lay there, contentedly inhaling, I felt serious nicotine cravings for the first time in seven and a half months. Dangerous, I thought; he could make me weaken.

  ‘We need to use a word,’ he said. ‘If this is going to work, we need a codeword for stop. So if you don’t like anything I do to you – not just Friday, at any time – then say . . . say “cuttlefish”.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked with a slight laugh.

  ‘Because it’s a nice word,’ he replied. (Oh, how I adored him for that.) ‘And cuttlefish are interesting. And I reckon they suit what we’re doing. They change colour. They signal to each other.’

  ‘And then they get eaten by budgies?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He smiled. ‘But I was thinking of the creatures, not their bones.’

  He drew on his cigarette.

  ‘Anyway,’ I said. ‘I meant, Why a codeword? Sounds a bit Special Branch to me. Why can’t I just say “no” or “stop”?’

  ‘Slips out too easily,’ he said. ‘And “no” and “stop” are good words to use when you don’t mean them. Cuttlefish is deadly serious.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ I said. ‘But isn’t that what people do who are into S/M and bondage? Safeword, I think they call it. Not my scene, I’m afraid. Too many Goths, too much equipment. And besides –’

  ‘In fact . . .’ cut in Ilya. He took a final thoughtful drag on his cigarette then dropped the butt in the Coke can. It landed with a plink and a fizz. ‘In fact, let’s make cuttlefish truly serious,’ he said, exhaling a stream of smoke. ‘This isn’t a romance or a relationship. It’s going to be a sex thing like we agreed.’

  I said nothing. He sounded so certain of it.

  ‘So,’ he continued, ‘let’s make it into a bit of a game. What if “cuttlefish” means not just “stop” but “the end, finito”? No discussions. No analysis and future plans. Just “cuttlefish”. The end.’

  I pondered the implications of this. In theory, it sounded good: an affair that was pure lust with no messy break-up. Wasn’t that what I wanted?

  ‘So if I want rid of you,’ I said, feigning a cool, cruel heart, ‘then I do something you don’t like and make you say “cuttlefish”?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘Or maybe you just say “cuttlefish”. I have to accept. No arguments.’ He swung himself from the bed, walked out of the door then returned, fastening up his trousers. ‘And vice versa,’ he said. ‘If I think it’s time to move on or whatever, then you have to accept me saying “cuttlefish”.’

  Seeing all his ‘I’m about to leave’ moves, I shrugged on my top and did up a couple of buttons.

  ‘I think it’s flawed,’ I said. ‘Supposing you want to . . . or you’re doing something I don’t like. But I don’t want things to end. Then what?’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, stooping for his T-shirt. ‘Then you have to decide how much you don’t like it.’

  ‘But . . .’ I faltered. ‘I don’t know what you have in mind, but my pain threshold’s not that high.’

  Ilya flexed his chest into his T-shirt. ‘Then I have to suss out that threshold, weigh up how much pain you can take,’ he said evenly. ‘Or how much humiliation or whatever it is. I don’t want you to say “cuttlefish”.’ He smiled. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

  ‘Gee, thanks,’ I replied.

  ‘Friday, then?’ he asked, arching his dark brows. ‘Say, ten-ish?’

  I nodded. ‘Yeah, OK,’ I said. ‘Friday.’

  ‘Great,’ he said, and stroked a quick finger across my cheek. ‘Make it good, Beth. I’ll see myself out.’

  Chapter Five

  I HAD THREE days to shop for some whore clothes; and three days to try to work out just who – or what – I was getting involved with.

  It concerned me that I was embarking on some weird sex-game relationship with a guy I hardly knew, who was inventing rules and safewords, and who was very keen on probing my dark, dirty fantasies. Was this hugely irresponsible of me? Was it dangerous?

  Maybe it was, I thought. And while the idea of being reckless and abandoned gave me a delicious thrill, I wondered if I ought to tell someone about it – just like you’re meant to tell someone when you arrange a date with a handsome, 6' 2", g.s.o.h. from the classifieds.

  The sensible thing, I reckoned, would be to let Jenny and Clare know what I was up to. Then, if they hadn’t heard from me for a while, they could go and get the police to check out this Ilya guy and look under his floorboards for my body.

  But I didn’t want to. I wanted whoring for Ilya to be my secret.

  But I wanted that secret to be less of a mystery to me. I was hungry to know more about my partner-in-sleaze, mainly because I was nosy, but also because I was worried.

  The nosy part of me wanted more stuff to go in that mental shoebox labelled ILYA. So far, it contained his handwriting, a near-nude photo, memories of our phone-call sex and memories of our ‘no small talk’ sex. Now I wanted to top that lot up with ordinary information – his job, his age, social life, blah, blah.

  And that ordinary information, I thought, might make me less nervy. It would give Ilya some grounding in reality.

  But I’m no supersleuth and I didn’t have a clue how to go about it. I looked his name up in the phone book; he wasn’t listed. I kept an eye on his window; his hours were irregular.

  Did that make him less of a sex-crazed psycho-killer or more? Neither, I decided, because even madmen can have their number in the book and hold down nine-to-fives.

  I was stumped. But accidents will happen, and my shopping trip for whore clothes turned out to be more eventful than I imagined. And it left me fairly spooked.

  Ready for a spending spree, I left my house, knowing more what I didn’t want to look like than what I did.

  The trouble was, I didn’t know how to translate my sleazy, seedy fantasies into actual clothing. And the more I thought about sleaze, the less I understood it. Wasn’t sleaze just a word people used for sex they disapproved of? For sex that was furtive, guilty, hollow and quite often paid for?

  The only thing I
felt guilty about was liking guilty sex. And Ilya had really pushed those buttons when he’d called me slut and whore. I liked being told I was a bad girl for wanting cock.

  But what did a bad girl wear?

  Should I go for New York hooker in hot pants?

  Or maybe the downmarket dregs of British police dramas with people saying stuff like ‘Tart’s in reception, Guv, wants a word,’ and there’s a woman there with pale bruised legs, being snotty and chewing gum?

  Christ, should I chew gum?

  No, Beth. Don’t go overboard. And don’t even think about the legs.

  It was a bright, warm afternoon. Surrey Street was clogged with one-way traffic and, across the road, the pub’s plastic tables were set out on the pavement. A group of people were sitting there, drinking lager and breathing in petrol.

  I walked past small houses, past a couple of gutted shops and past the sex shop – wondering, as everyone must do, what happens in there and how they make their money, because hardly anyone seems to go in or out.

  It’s a horribly discreet-looking place, with a grubby cream facade, a cream sign and cream blinds permanently blanking out the window. There’s nothing celebratory about it; no garish signs saying ADULT VIDEOS the way there are in London. It’s just cream. Creepy cream. The whole frontage seems to say, ‘And please wash your hands afterwards.’

  Was that sleazy? I wondered. Or was it just rotten?

  The shop reminded me of Ilya suggesting I dress in porno-undies. The very thought made me cringe. I don’t do heels, frills and stockings. It’s not me. While I got off on the idea of acting like a porn-slut, I didn’t fancy looking like one, not in the way Ilya meant.

  Back then, my porn-film virginity was still intact, although my porn-mag virginity wasn’t. A few years before, I’d persuaded Rich – the then love of my life – to go out and buy something to satisfy my curiosity and – ahem – broaden my cultural knowledge and allow me to make an informed judgement as to the merits or otherwise of wank-mags.

  I mean, I don’t have any brothers so I never got any sneaky peeks of their teenage kicks and I couldn’t join in those conversations when people said, ‘Yeah, but the real problem with porn is that it’s just so bad.’ I needed knowledge.

  Rich had returned with a couple of skin-mags, muttering how, nowadays, it was less embarrassing for a woman to buy this gear than it was for a man – his argument being that a woman does it and she’s sexually assured, she’s hot, breaking out after years of male oppression; a guy does it and he’s just a sad little wanker.

  The magazines were seriously offensive – full of pricks and pussies, not much in the way of taxing reading matter. They didn’t offend me on that level, not a cat in hell’s chance. But aesthetically, they were rotten: airbrushed women with farcical pouts wearing fussy nylon lingerie and looking at least a decade out of date. There were black dots here and there, covering up the point of penetration and those great fountains of jism. It looked as if the men were ejaculating strings of jet beads – the devil’s semen.

  But once I got past the taste barrier and laughter factor, I found the stuff pretty horny. The brazen vulgarity turned me on, but, most of all, I liked the way the sex was so depersonalised and anonymous, so blatantly devoid of heart and soul.

  I had an idea that sex with Ilya could be something like that. But the trouble was, I had heart and I had soul. And I also had taste.

  Before hitting the shops, I stopped off near the train station to make a phone call to nobody. As I’d hoped, the booth was plastered with cards advertising things like ‘busty blonde, just turned eighteen’. I stood there, nodding into the whining receiver while checking out the display.

  I had half a mind to give Ilya a ring, not to speak to him – I had nothing to say – but just to hear his voice, answerphone or otherwise. I could find out if he was at home. He wouldn’t know it was me. I could just hang up. But I resisted. I thought it was too loopy.

  Instead I just loitered and drank in the sight of all those whores touting for business, some with professionally printed cards; others with just handwritten squares of paper. One had a felt-tip drawing of a sun next to the phone number, its caption SEASIDE SEX.

  It didn’t help much in terms of what I ought to buy, but it gave me a buzz of sleazy energy. And sleaze, I decided, didn’t have to be soiled with solemnity like the cream-coloured sex shop. Sleaze could be brash and bold, trashy and twinkly.

  My sleaze-buzz got tarnished with squalor when I made my way under the bridge of Trafalgar Street, recalling Ilya’s fantasy of fucking me in the doorway. As usual, someone was slouched there, lethargically begging for change. It was just too grotty.

  Putting it from my mind, I headed for the North Laine, Brighton’s pulsing rainbow heart. It’s a grid of terraced streets, dotted with pubs, and the seam that runs through it is a heaven of quirky shops and cafés.

  I was slightly jittery about bumping into someone, because the North Laine is big bumping-into-someone territory. It’s the place you go to get your ethnic tat, your retro clothes, your alternative cred or your second-hand books. If you want your clit pierced, a pair of seventies platforms, an obscure remix on vinyl or some exotic Chinese spices, then you go to the North Laine. Even if you don’t want anything, you still go to the North Laine, and preferably with your mates.

  I wanted to look like a whore, and I did not want to meet anyone with time to kill who might fancy tagging along.

  I browsed my way along Sydney Street, checking out shops selling fetish wear, kinky boots and glitz. But it was either too dominatrix or too damn good. I wanted to look tawdry and cheap, although not too tawdry and cheap – not like something the cat had dragged in.

  I moved on to Snoopers Paradise: a jumble of second-hand stalls under one big roof. After getting distracted by some angle-poise lamps, circa 1950, I anchored myself in the clothes bit.

  I browsed at leisure, rifling through decades of fashion: the good, the bad and the downright ugly. When I saw it, I knew I had to have it, not just for me-as-whore but for me-as-Beth. It was a plastic leopard-print mac – twice as fake as the real thing.

  In a flurry of excitement, I held it to my body. It was mid-thigh length and just my size.

  Buoyed up by my purchase, and churning with images of myself, I stepped out into the sunlight. My plan was to go in search of a bad-girl dress and some slut-undies.

  But I never made it. Because when I merged into the slow-flowing crowds outside, I spotted Ilya. Or, rather, the back of Ilya’s head.

  My heart jumped. Of all the people I’d feared bumping into, he was not on the list. Seeing him in public felt weird; he didn’t seem to belong there.

  I had a moment’s panic: I didn’t want to exchange chit-chat with him in the middle of everyday bustle; I didn’t want to meet him when I was clutching item one of my whore wardrobe.

  But he was several people ahead of me. He didn’t know I was behind him. He wouldn’t know if stayed behind him, perhaps followed him for a while – just to see which sort of shops he went into, just to get a bit of detail for that mental shoebox of mine.

  I dropped back a few paces, screening myself with people while keeping a sharp eye on his shorn head. Where was he going? To the Cheese Shop for some fancy cheese? To the Kensington for a drink? No, he passed them by. Moments later, so did I, keeping my head low as I skirted past the pub, fearing there might be someone sitting at the outdoor trestle tables who would call my name and ruin everything.

  Ahead of me, Ilya took a left turn. Damn, I’d been hoping he would go straight on to Sydney Street. A left turn meant not many shops, and rapidly thinning crowds. Should I take a left? At the end of the street, I stood amidst a bottleneck of people and dithered.

  I watched Ilya take a second left – going back the way we’d just come but along a quieter street. What excuse could I give if I followed him and he saw me? Upper Gardner Street: that meant boxy terraced houses and a few antique garages, some tatty, some posh. I could alwa
ys say I was furniture-hunting. And of course I’d seen him ahead. Hadn’t he heard me calling his name?

  I did a left and a left, dawdling along so Ilya was about half a street ahead of me. Where was he going? And why had he more or less doubled back on himself? Was he a bit lost? Maybe he hadn’t lived in Brighton long and he was simply exploring. Oh, there were so many things I wanted to know about him.

  Ilya walked the full length of the street and took a right turn, disappearing from my view. I rushed to catch up, scared I might lose him. North Road next. I could always say I was en route to the Post Office.

  Then it was another right into Queens Gardens. This was some zig-zag journey he was taking.

  Queens Gardens: that meant a row of pale cottages. I could always say . . . what? That I was heading for Trafalgar Street and I was taking the scenic route?

  My potential excuses were becoming more and more implausible. Maybe I should quit.

  Yes, I’d just take a quick look down Queens Gardens then get back to shopping. I’d forget all about playing detective. It was a stupid idea anyway.

  I turned the corner.

  Ilya was there. I almost ran into him. He was just standing still, next to the picture-framing shop. He was facing my direction, waiting for me. He looked pretty pissed off.

  ‘Oh hi,’ I said brightly, willing myself not to blush. ‘I . . . er . . . I saw you just back there. And I was wondering if, maybe . . . if you fancied a coffee or something. Do you? Do you fancy going for a coffee?’

  ‘What are you doing?’ he replied sternly. ‘Why are you following me?’

  ‘Following you?’ I exclaimed with a laugh so artificially flabbergasted that my cheeks ached. ‘I’m not following –’

  ‘You’ve been following me since Kensington fucking Gardens,’ he said, his blue-green eyes narrowing viciously. ‘What’s going on here? Have I landed myself with some kind of weirdo obsessive? Are you going to turn into a fucking stalker?’

  ‘Christ,’ I said, trying to hide my shock with another feigned laugh. ‘Of course I’m not. Get a grip.’